Page:Heroines of freethought (IA cu31924031228699).pdf/335

THE foregoing sketch was so far written before “Daniel Deronda” was begun. That novel, now completed, shows no falling off in strength or literary merit. It is destined to be even more popular than "Middlemarch.” Every sentence is polished and freighted with meaning. The critical sense is soothed and satisfied by the perfection in the smallest details of the pen-pictures drawn by this greatest of living novelists. This is a result in part of her careful writing, ‘She writes slow or fast, according to her intellectual temper,” says the London correspondent of the New York Herald, “but never without frequent revision. She does not permit a line, proof, or autograph to leave her, until she has made it precisely what she wants. In addition to composition, she studies hard, and is constantly in pursuit of knowledge.