Page:The Essays of George Eliot, ed. Sheppard, 1883.djvu/245



Of "Lyce," the old painted coquette:

Of the nymph, who, "gratis, clears religious mysteries:"

The description of the literary belle, "Daphne," well prefaces that of "Stella," admired by Johnson:

After all, when we have gone through Young's seven Satires, we seem to have made but an indifferent meal. They are a sort of fricassee, with some little solid meat in them, and yet the flavor is not always piquant. It is curious to find him, when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketching, recurring to his old platitudes:

platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into, for the same reason that some men are constantly asserting their contempt for criticism—because he felt the opposite so keenly.