While, on
the other hand, through many of its subordinate characters, we have the
broad catholic truth kept ever before us, that, irrespective of all
formal profession or creed, voluntary acceptance of a higher life-law
than the seeking our own interests, pleasure, or will, is, according to
its degree, life's best and highest fulfilment; and thus we trace Him who
"pleased not Himself" as the life and the light of the world, even when
that world may be least formally acknowledging Him.
The three in whom this great lesson is most prominently illustrated in
the work before us are, of course, Romola herself, Tito Melema, and
Savonarola. And in each the illustration is so modified, and, through
the three together, so almost exhaustively accomplished, that some
examination of each seems necessary to our main object in this survey of
George Eliot's works.
Few, we think, can study the delineation of Romola without feeling that
imagination has seldom placed before us a fairer, nobler, and completer
female presence. Perfectly human and natural; unexaggerated, we might
almost say unidealised, alike in her weaknesses and her nobleness;
combining such deep womanly tenderness with such spotless purity; so
transparent in her truthfulness; so clear in her perceptions of the true
and good, so firm in her aspirations after these; so broad, gentle, and
forbearing in her charity, yet so resolute against all that is mean and
base;--everything fair, bright, and high in womanhood seems to combine in
Romola.
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