But such a success as that of _Romola_--the success of an historical novelist for whom history is alive and is not a mere tradition, mere decorative background--is hardly to be made more than once. _Romola_ may live at least as long as _Esmond_--in _Esmond_ the _tour de force_ is, if anything, more apparent; the machinery creaks sometimes yet more audibly in the working. In any case George Eliot did wisely to bring her imagination back to England, and to the shires ‘which we the heart of England well may call,’ and, having given us _Felix Holt_, to give us _Middlemarch_. _Middlemarch_, perhaps, has two faults as a work of art, but they are faults which evidence, at all events, the range of its writer’s mind. It is not properly one story, but several stories. The desire to put forth in a single colossal work--and _Middlemarch_ is of the length of two three-volume novels--a picture of the whole of provincial life, touched at points, and disturbed, by the problems of our time, resulted in the creation of a book in which the many threads of narrative were often but slightly blended. _Middlemarch_ is not a cabinet picture; it is a vast panorama. Again, in _Middlemarch_ there was visible, for the first time in George Eliot’s career, some relaxation--or worse than relaxation--of literary style. Though on the whole it is justly allowed to be a noble piece of English writing, it is in expression less lucid and felicitous than the earlier novels; and the germs of a style charged too much with scientific similes are found to be of increased growth in _Daniel Deronda_. In George Eliot’s earliest fiction, though it was written in mature years, her art was not developed. In her latest, it was not concealed.