SOURCE: "The Spanish Gypsy and Other Poems," in A George Eliot Companion, Barnes and Noble, 1981, pp. 166-78.

In the following excerpt, Pinion closely examines The Spanish Gypsy as well as individual verses in The Legend of Jubal and Other Poems, observing that while much of Eliot's poetry is flawed, there are also those poems which display deep feeling and dramatic power.

George Eliot's notes on The Spanish Gypsy stress the 'irreparable collision between the individual and the general' in tragedy. For Mrs Transome the 'general' is moral tradition; for Maggie Tulliver it is a conjunction of moral tradition, hereditary nature, and loyalties; with Fedalma and Don Silva it turns on hereditary obligations. 'Silva presents the tragedy of entire rebellion: Fedalma of a grand submission, which is rendered vain by the effects of Silva's rebellion', George Eliot writes. Although she finds tragedy in Zarca's 'struggle for a great end...