Page:The Essays of George Eliot, ed. Sheppard, 1883.djvu/240

 soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in a skull. Thus, in "The Revenge," "Alonzo," in the conflict of jealousy and love that at once urges and forbids him to murder his wife, says:

His prose writings all read like the "Night Thoughts," either diluted into prose or not yet crystallized into poetry. For example, in his "Thoughts for Age," he says:

This is a dilution of the magnificent image—

Again:

"A requesting Omnipotence? What can stun and confound thy reason more? What more can ravish and exalt thy heart? It cannot but ravish and exalt; it cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take in all that suggests. Thou child of the dust! Thou speck of misery and sin! How abject thy weakness! how great is thy power! Thou crawler on earth, and possible (I was about to say) controller of the skies! Weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous truths I have in view: which cannot be weighed too much; which