to himself, if this attempted disguise had been entirely dispensed with.  By the time he has reached the sixth essay, “Only Temper,” the discerning reader, familiar with George Eliot’s books, will be ready to affirm that this is no other than the author herself speaking very frankly and finely her own sentiments.  In this essay the moral temper of her mind appears, and her strong inclination to subordinate the individual to the social requirements of life.

These papers are modelled on those of the great essay-making period in English literature.  Old-fashioned names are adopted, which have a greater or less significance in connection with the purpose of the essay.  The man with the excitable temper is called Touchwood, while the man who slides into a deferential acceptance of opinions made for him is Mixtus.  This method of the old essayists seems antiquated, cumbersome and unsuitable to the subjects discussed.  The persons described lose their individuality by its use, and the reader forgets that they were meant to be creatures of flesh and blood.  For the most part, they are mere abstractions, mere figures of straw, to be knocked over by the ingenious pen of the author.  Some special fault or sin is given the name of a personality, but it is too much isolated from actual existence to produce the impression of a living thing.

These essays much resemble occasional chapters in her novels, and might have been studies for a new work.  They are studies simply, done with a fine skill and polish, but fragmentary.  The large setting of her novels is needed to give them relief and proportion.  They disappoint as they are, for the satire is too apparent, and we do not see these characters in action, where their follies would obtain for them a more living interest.  They are studies of individual character, portraying types of social and literary weakness, such as may have come under George Eliot’s observation.  They are careful dissections of motives and conduct, and full of a minute analysis of the moral and intellectual nature of her characters.  There is abundance of candid criticism, shrewd observation and compressed wisdom of statement.  Occasionally she is at her very best; but she uses many long, cumbersome sentences, the satire is too harsh and the wisdom too unwieldy.  Her sympathy, love, pathos and pity are not so apparent as in her novels; she takes less delight in these creations, and evidently created them for purposes of dissection.  She is never so weak in her other writings as in these essays, so wanting in genius and large-heartedness.  She scourges many of the intellectual follies of the time, the conceit of culture, the pride of literature, and the narrowness of politics; but in most of the essays this is all.