Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/40

 Tulliver's sudden love for a dandy like Stephen Guest may grate against Mr. Swinburne's critical feelings, but is, no doubt, true to human nature. It is this fidelity to the facts of life that gives the prominent sadness to her works. She has chosen tragic themes, and tragic events are apt to be sad. Perhaps the most dominant idea of her Weltanschauung is the conception of law in human character.

might stand as a motto to all her works.

It is character in process of change that engages all her interest. Hence there is less of the conventional, less of the worldly, in her work than in most great novelists. We have soul speaking to soul: Dinah to Hetty, Savonarola to Romola, Felix to Esther, Dorothea to Ladislaw, Mordecai to Deronda. When the conventional is introduced it is chiefly for humorous purposes; the humour of the immortal scene at the Rainbow Inn in Silas Marner consists in its archaic conventionality. Interest of character is, however, the predominant interest of George Eliot's work. Nearly one-half of Adam Bede is taken up by the first week of the action, during which we learn to know the chief characters. The