Page:Literary studies by Joseph Jacobs.djvu/46

where The Spanish Gypsy, had it been written in a natural medium, might have joined it), she went back with loving memory to the days and scenes of her childhood. In that wonderful series of works she produced living pictures of mid-England in the pre-Reform days before old Leisure was dead, and while the modern spirit was unborn. For width of conception, for accuracy of touch, for nobility of tone, those works have a place apart in English fiction. The next two novels, Middlemarch and Daniel Deronda, displayed a new set of literary motives in their composition. The loving interest of the artist in human nature was fused with the intellectual interest of the scientific observer of the social organism. The tales moved in a larger sphere, had a wider scope, and also a deeper background than the earlier works. A new view of the relations of man and society, and with it a new philosophy of history, informed every page and set every incident in a new light. Along with this change or development of tone there went a noticeable change of manner. Dealing with conceptions novel to her readers, George Eliot had to put them directly before their eyes in passages only interesting from a speculative point of view. But this very need of explanation argued incomplete 'artistry' (to use a word of Mr.