is
well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent
readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem
without any preconceptions may not discover its philosophic bearings. Yet
to the studious reader the philosophy must be the most conspicuous element
which enters into the poem, and it gives character and meaning to the work
far more fully than in the case of any of her novels.

The aim of the poem is to show how hereditary race influences act as a
tragic element in opposition to individual emotions and inclinations. The
teaching of _Romola_ is much of it reproduced, at least that portion of it
which inculcates renunciation and altruism. Its distinguishing features,
however, more nearly resemble those of _Daniel Deronda_. The race element
is introduced, and the effect of the past is shown as it forms character
and gives direction to duties. One phase of its meaning has been very
clearly described by Mr. R.H. Hutton, who says the poem teaches "how the
inheritance of the definite streams of impulse and tradition stored up in
what we call race, often puts a veto upon any attempt of spontaneous
individual emotion or volitions to ignore or defy their Control, and to
emancipate itself from the tyranny of their disputable and apparently cruel
rule." "How the threads," he says again, "of hereditary capacity and
hereditary sentiment control as with invisible chords the orbits of even
the most powerful characters,--how the fracture of those threads, so far as
can be accomplished by mere _will_, may have even a greater effect in
wrecking character than moral degeneracy would itself produce,--how the man
who trusts and uses the hereditary forces which natural descent has
bestowed upon him, becomes a might and a centre in the world, while the
man, intrinsically the nobler, who dissipates his strength by trying to
swim against the stream of his past, is neutralized and paralyzed by the
vain effort,--again, how a divided past, a past not really homogeneous, may
weaken this kind of power, instead of strengthening it by the command of a
larger experience--all this George Eliot's poem paints with tragical
force."

The main thought of _The Spanish Gypsy_ is, that the moral and spiritual in
man is the result of social conditions which, if neglected, lead to the
destruction of all that is best in human nature. In the description of Mine
Host, in the opening pages of the poem, this evil result of a