ng to it--their perfect
conviction that their own family traditions (such as the copious eating
of salt in their broth) are the standard of all that is good--their
consecration of all their most elevated feelings to the worship of
furniture, and clothes, and table-linen, and silver spoons--their utter
alienation from all that, in the opinion of educated people, can make
life fit to be enjoyed. The humour of Mrs. Glegg's determination that no
ill desert of a relation shall interfere with the disposal of her
property by will on the most rigidly Dodsonian principles of justice,
according to the several degrees of Dodsonship, is excellent; and so is
the change in her behaviour towards Maggie, whom, after having always
bullied her, she takes up for the sake of Dodsondom's credit when
everybody else has turned against her....

[1] "Adam Bede," i. 54.

The writer does not seem to be aware that the fools and bores of a book,
while they bore the other characters, ought not to bore but to amuse the
reader, and that they will become seriously wearisome to him if there be
too much of them. Shakespeare has contented himself with showing us his
Dogberry and Verges, his Shallow and Slender, and Silence, to such a
degree as may sufficiently display their humours; but he has not filled
whole acts with them, and, even if he had, a five-act play is a small
field for the display of prolix foolishness as compared with a
three-volume novel. Lord Macaulay has been supposed to speak sarcastically
in saying that he "would not advise any person who reads for amusement to
venture on a certain _jeu d'esprit_ of Mr. Sadler's as long as he can
procure a volume of the Statutes at Large";[1] but we are afraid that we
should not be believed if we were to mention the books to which _we_
have had recourse by way of occasional relief from the task of perusing
"George Eliot's" tales.

[1] "Miscellaneous Writings," ii. 68.

In the case of "these emmet-like Dodsons and Tullivers," the authoress
again defends her principle. "I share with you," she says, "the sense of
oppressive narrowness; but it is necessary that we should feel it, if we
care to understand how it acted on the lives of Tom and Maggie."[2] We
must confess that we care very little for Tom and Maggie, who, although
the inscription on their tombstone and the motto on the title-page of
the book tell us that "in their death they were not divided," do not
strike us as having been "lovely and ple