I had much talk with George Eliot during the time--very short at
Florence--when she was maturing her Italian novel, _Romola_. Of
course, I knew that she was digesting the acquisitions of each day
with a view to writing; but I had not the slightest idea of the period
to which her inquiries were specially directed, or of the nature of
the work intended. But when I read _Romola_, I was struck by the
wonderful power of absorption manifested in every page of it. The
rapidity with which she squeezed out the essence and significance of a
most complex period of history, and assimilated the net results of its
many-sided phases, was truly marvellous.
Nevertheless, in drawing the girl Romola, her subjectivity has
overpowered her objectivity. Romola is not--could never have been--the
product of the period and of the civilisation from which she is
described as having issued. There is far too much of George Eliot in
her. It was a period, it is true, in which female culture trod upon
the heels of the male culture of the time perhaps more closely than it
has ever done since. But let Vittoria Colonna be accepted, as probably
she may be, as a fair exponent of the highest point to which that
culture had reached, and an examination of the sonnets into which
she has put her highest thoughts and aspirations together with a
comparison of those with the mental calibre of Romola will, I think,
support the view I have taken.
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