We prefer, however, selecting Harold Transome,
certainly one of the most difficult and one of the most strikingly
wrought out conceptions, not only in the works of George Eliot, but in
modern fiction.
Harold, we believe, is not a general favourite with the modern public,
any more than he was with his own contemporaries. He has none of those
lovablenesses which make Arthur Donnithorne so attractive; and at first
sight nothing of that uncompromising sense of right which characterises
Adam Bede. He comes before us apparently no more than a clearheaded,
hard, shrewd, successful man of the world, greatly alive to his own
interests and importance, and with no particular principles to boast of.
How does it come that this man, when over and over again, in great things
and in small, two paths lie before him to choose, always chooses the
truer and better of the two? When Felix attempts to interfere in the
conduct of his election, even while resenting the interference as
impertinent, he sets himself honestly to attempt to arrest the wrong. He
buys Christian's secret; but it is to reveal it to her whom it enables,
if so she shall choose, to dislodge himself from the position which has
been the great object of his desires and efforts.
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