ROMOLA, George Eliot's sole experiment in historical fiction, was originally published as a serial in The Cornhill Magazine fromJuly 1862 to August 1863. Hitherto George Eliot had taken the substance of her novels from memories of English life in the midland coun ties where she had grown up and passed her youth. Into her new field she was led primarily by an interest in Savonarola, the great Floren tine preacher and reformer of the Renaissance. Twice she visited Florence, where she made exhaustive studies in the politics of the period in order that her details might have the exact ness of an historian. Her novel opens with the death of Lorenzo, the Magnificent, in 1492, and closes with the execution of Savonarola is 1498. The portrait of Savonarola, with which she took great pains, has been subjected to much criticism. As she paints the prophet and preacher, he has a sort of dual personality. In her words : "The passionate sensibility which, impatient of definite thought, floods every idea with emotion and tends toward contemplative ecstasy, alternated in him with a keen percep tion of outward facts and a vigorous practical judgment of men and things.° So without his being quite aware of it, Savonarola comes perilously near duplicity in his dealings with the people. He invokes the "'trial by fire,° but hesitates and fears when the day of the ordeal arrives; he watches the clouds, and delays until the rains come to quench the fires prepared for him; then he can say that the hand of God is visible in the heavens to protect him. Still, in the end George Eliot says: "Power rose against him not because of his sins, but be cause of his greatness—not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble.°
On this historical background is projected the story of Tito Melema, a young Greek, beautiful and clever, who in a few short years betrays all who put their trust in him — Romola, Tessa, Savonarola and Badassarre his foster father, at whose hands he finally meets his fate. By many Tito is regarded as George Eliot's finest character study; but with this opin ion I do not agree. No one can deny the re lentless logic with which George Eliot pursues the downward career of this pleasure-loving young man; but the study would be more im pressive were not Tito so weak when the reader first meets him. We can understand his ingrati tude toward Baldassarre and that Tessa should be deceived by him; but we cannot understand the ease with which he imposes upon Romola and Savonarola. The plot, too, develops into a loose revenge-tragedy of the Elizabethan type, wherein Baldassarre, an impossible character outside of fiction, appears and disappears when ever the occasion demands his presence or his absence. Great as is the novel, it will not stand comparison with those novels in which George Eliot depicts the life she knew. Romola is really a new and weaker version of Maggie Tulliver in 'The Mill on the Floss,' without the flesh and blood of the Margaret in Charles Reade's 'Cloister and the Hearth,' who was Romola's contemporary; and for George Eliot's most powerful study in the deterioration of character, we must turn from Tito Melema to Dr. Lydgate in 'Middlemarch,' who began his career with noble ideals and afterwards lost them.