r presence!"

There is a strain of noble thought and lofty feeling in her poems, and
she rises easily to the necessary passion and fervor of verse; but her
expression is hampered by the metrical form.

General Characteristics.--George Eliot is more strictly modern in
spirit than either of the other two great contemporary novelists. This
spirit is exhibited chiefly in her ethical purpose, her scientific
sympathies, and her minute dissection of character.

Her writings manifest her desire to benefit human beings by convincing
them that nature's laws are inexorable, and that an infraction of the
moral law will be punished as surely as disobedience to physical laws.
She strives to arouse people to a knowledge of hereditary influences,
and to show how every deed brings its own results, and works, directly
or indirectly, toward the salvation or ruin of the doer. She throws
her whole strength into an attempt to prove that joy is to be found
only in strict attendance upon duty and in self-renunciation. In order
to carry home these serious lessons of life, she deals with powerful
human tragedies, which impart a somberness of tone to all her novels.
In her early works she treats these problems with artistic beauty; but
in her later books she often forgets the artist in the moralist, and
uses a character to preach a sermon.

The analytical tendency is pronounced in George Eliot's works, which
exhibit an exhaustive study of the feelings, the thoughts, the dreams,
and purposes of the characters. They become known more through
description than through action.

A striking characteristic of her men and women is their power to grow.
They do not appear ready-made and finished at the beginning of a
story, but, like real human beings amid the struggles of life, they
change for the better or the worse. Tito Melema in _Romola_ is an
example of her skill in evolving character. At the outset, he is a
beautiful Greek boy with a keen zest for pleasure. His selfishness,
however, which betrays itself first in ingratitude to his benefactor,
leads step by step to his complete moral degradation. The consequences
of his deeds entangle him finally in such a network of lies that he is
forced to betray "every trust that was reposed in him, that he might
keep himself safe."

George Eliot occasionally brightens the seriousness of her works with
humor. Her stories are not permeated with joyousness, like those of
Dickens, nor do they ripple with quiet