She has also a rich and racy humor, sensitive and sober, refined and delicate.  She does not caricature folly with Dickens, or laugh at weakness with Thackeray; but she shows us the limitations of life in such a manner as to produce the finest humor.  She is never repulsive, grotesque or vulgar; but wise, laughter-loving and sympathetic.  Her humor is pure and homely as it is delicate and exquisite; and it is invariably human and noble.  She has an intense love and a wonderful appreciation of the ludicrous, sees whatever is incongruous In life, and makes her laughter genial and joyous.  Her humor is the very quintessence of human experience, strikes deadly blows at what is unjust and untrue.  It is both intellectual and moral, as Professor Dowden suggests.  “The grotesque in human character is reclaimed from the province of the humorous by her affections, when that is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty.  Her humor usually belongs to her entire conception of character, and cannot be separated from it.”  She laughs at all, but sneers at no one,—­for she has keen sympathy with all.

George Eliot is not so good a satirist as she is humorist.  Her humor is as fresh and delightful as a morning in May, but her satire is nearly always labored.  She is too much in sympathy with human nature to laugh at its follies and its weaknesses.  Its joys, its bubbling humor and delight she can appreciate, as well as all the pain and sorrow that come to men and women; and she can fully enter into the life of her characters of every kind, and portray their inmost motives and impulses; but the foibles of the world she cannot treat in the vein of the satirist.  In her earlier books she is said to have been under the influence of Thackeray, but her satire is heavy, and lacks his light touch and his tender undertone of compassion.  Here is a good specimen of her earlier attempts to be satirical: 

When a man is happy enough to win the affections of a sweet girl, who can soothe his cares with crochet, and respond to all his most cherished ideas with beaded urn-rugs and chair-covers in German wool, he has, at least, a guarantee of domestic comfort, whatever trials may await him out of doors.  What a resource it is under fatigue and irritation to have your drawing-room well supplied with small mats, which would always be ready if you ever wanted to set anything on them!  And what styptic for a bleeding heart can equal copious squares of crochet-work, which are useful for slipping down the moment you touch them? [Footnote:  Janet’s Repentance, chapter III.]

Similar to this is the account of Mrs. Pullett’s grief.