scenes of the second book are so fragmentary and unconnected with the remainder of the story as to help it but little.  In the middle of Adam Bede are several chapters devoted to the birthday party, which are quite unnecessary to the development of the action. Daniel Deronda contains two narratives which are in many respects almost entirely distinct from each other, and the reader is made to alternate between two worlds that have little in common.  There is much of the improbable in the account of the Transome estate in Felix Holt, while the closing scenes in the life of Tito Melema in Romola are more tragical than natural.  Yet these defects are incidental to her method and art rather than actual blemishes on her work.  For the most part, her work is thoroughly unitary, cause leads naturally into effect, and there is a moral development of character such as is found in life itself.  Her plots are strongly constructed, in simple outlines, are easily comprehended and kept in mind, and the leading motive holds steadily through to the end.  Her analytical method often makes an apparent interruption of the narrative, and the unity of purpose is frequently developed through the philosophic purport of the novel rather than in its literary form.  Direct narrative is often hindered, it is true, by her habit of studying the remote causes and effects of character, but she never wanders far enough to forget the real purpose had in view.  She holds the many elements of her story well under command, she concentrates them upon some one aim, and she gives to her story a tragic unity of great moral splendor and effect.  Even the diverse elements, the minute side-studies and the profuse comments, are all woven into the organic structure, and are essential to the unfoldment of the plot.  They seem to be quite irrelevant interruptions until we look back upon the completed whole and study the perfected intent of the story.  Then we see how essential they are to the epic finish of the novel, and to that total effect which a work of genius creates.  Then it is seen that a dramatic unity and well-studied intent hold together every part and make a completed structure of great beauty.

Her dramatic skill is great, and her dialogues thoroughly good.  Her characters are full of power and life, and stand out as distinct personalities.  The conversation is sprightly, strong and wise.  Probably no novelist has created so many clearly cut, positive, intensely personal characters as George Eliot, and this individualism is depicted as acting within social and hereditary limits; hence dramatic action is constantly arising.  Shakspere and Browning only surpass her in dramatic power, as in the creation of character.  Yet her method of producing character differs essentially from that of Shakspere, Homer and all the great creators.  She describes character, while they present it.  Homer gives no description of Helen; but of her beauty and her person we learn all the more because we are left to find them out from the influence they produce.  We know Hamlet because he lives before us, and impresses his personality upon every feature of the great drama in which he appears.  George Eliot’s manner is to describe, to minutely portray, and to dissect to the last muscle and nerve.