Page:Cartoon portraits and biographical sketches of men of the day.djvu/109

 are present whom that sermon hits. This is art. A sermon, preached to the reader only, is a mere excrescence on the narrative. It is a wart, though it may not be a blot.

The only situation of any power in 'The Mill on the Floss'—viz. the heroine and her lover drifting loose in a boat, and being out together all night—is manifestly taken from the similar situation in 'Love me Little, Love me Long.' But Eliot's treatment of the borrowed incident is petty and womanish by comparison with her model.

In 'Felix Holt,' the ground is admirably laid for strong situations : but in the actual treatment only two come out dramatically, and they are both borrowed. The young gentleman going to strike his steward, and being met by 'I am your Father;' and the heroine going into the witness-box to give evidence for her lover. The former is borrowed from an old novel, and the latter from Charles Reade's 'Hard Cash;' and it may be instructive to show how the inventor and the imitator deal with the idea.

We print in parallel columns quotations of the evidence given in court by both novelists' heroines.