The poetic impulse seems to have decayed soon after the Spanish Gypsy, as George Eliot gradually became absorbed in another novel. On 1st January 1869 she notes that she has projected a novel, to be called Middlemarch, besides a “long poem on Timoleon,” of which we hear nothing more. Middlemarch at first made slow progress. She began the “Vincy and Featherstone parts” in August. It is not till December 1870 that she is beginning a story to be called “Miss Brooke,” without any very serious intention “of carrying it out lengthily.” It became amalgamated with the other story. George Eliot appears to have suffered even more than usual from ill-health and despondency during the composition, and was troubled at times by the difficulty of bringing a superabundant variety of motives into artistic unity. The book was published on a new plan, coming out in eight parts—the first on 1st December 1871, and the last in December 1872. Middlemarch, she says, was received with as much enthusiasm as any of her former books, not even excepting Adam Bede. Its commercial success is proved by the fact that she made more by it than by Romola. Nearly 25,000 copies had been sold before the end of 1875. George Eliot was now admittedly the first living novelist. Thackeray and Dickens were both dead, and no survivor of her generation could be counted as a rival.