confesses the failure of her art to do its work unaided. But much of that failure consists in the nature of the work which she wished to do with her novels.
Before she had written any work of imagination, Lewes expressed his doubts whether she had the power of dramatic presentation, though she might have 'wit, description, and philosophy.' As it turned out, she possessed the power of dramatic presentation in a very high degree; the breakfast at which Arthur Donnithorne did not confess to Parson Irwine, the last meeting between Dorothea and Rosamund, Tulliver's inscription in the family Bible, the appearance of Silas Marner at the Rainbow, Klesmer's visit to the Meyricks, may be instanced as examples of this. But the power of imaginative presentation, though it must have always existed, came to her late in life. It was most probably aroused by the attitude of moral defiance toward the world which her relations to Lewes had brought about. But there is also evidence in these volumes that the process of artistic assimilation was with her unusually slow, as she recognised in an interesting letter to Madame Bodichon:—
'I do wish much to see more of human life—how can one see enough in the short years one has to stay in the world? But I meant
