Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/59

 'ESSAYS'

HESE essays will not add to the reputation of their author. Reprinted chiefly from the Westminster Review, it would be difficult to say that they stand prominently above the general average of such essays. Each of the quarterlies has created for itself a type, and these reviews are of the type familiar to us in such writers as the late W. R. Greg. They date from the period before Mr. Matthew Arnold had imported the method of Sainte-Beuve into English criticism, and in consequence they suffer by comparison with later work of a more subtle and artistic character. George Eliot's essays have not sufficient individuality to deserve new life for their own sake; on the other hand, they throw valuable light on certain problems connected with her art, and on this account merit republication.

The collection inevitably raises what must be the chief critical problem in connection with the literary career of George Eliot. How is it, the reader is impelled to ask, that a mind which produced these essays chiefly 31