Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/19

 And this:—

And this:—

Lastly, the best lyric in the poem:—

Besides the want of spontaneity and simplicity in the verse, there are other points which make us feel, with whatever reluctance to admit the thing we undoubtingly see, that in "The Spanish Gypsy" something is wanting, and in that something everything that endears a poem as a poem. The writing has the diffuseness of literature rather than the condensation of poetry; and, admirable as some of it is, we wish it away: at the lowest, we say to ourselves, if a poet had had