(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an unmarried woman who could not go about and had no command of anything, must necessarily be dull through all the degrees of comparison as time went on.) "You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the first prize." "I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how well Miss Arrowpoint shot?" (Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to choose some one else than the woman they most admired, and recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.) At this point we come upon an element of difference between the novel and the drama which has not hitherto been fairly appreciated, so far as I know. Consider for a moment the wholly supernatural power which is necessarily involved in the project of thus showing the most secret workings of the mind and heart of this young girl Gwendolen Harleth! In real life what power less than God's can make me see the deepest thought and feeling of a fellow-creature? But since the novel is always a transcript of real, or at any rate of possible, life, you observe that wherever these workings of heart and brain are thus laid bare, the tacit supposition is, in plain terms, that God is the writer, or that the writer is a god. In the drama no supposition is necessary because here we become acquainted with only such matters as are shown us in the ordinary way, by scenery or by the speech or gesture of the actor. This consideration seems to me to lift the novel to the very highest and holiest plane of creative effort; he who takes up the pen of the novelist assumes, as to that novel, to take up along with it the omniscience of God. He proposes, in effect, to bring about the revelations of Judgment Day long before the trumpet has sounded. George Eliot shows us the play of Gwendolen Harleth's soul with the same uncompromising fulness with which the most literal believer expects to give account of the deeds done in the body at the last day. In contemplating this vast ascent from the attitude of the dramatist to that of the novelist--the dramatist is a man; the novelist--as to that novel, is a god--we are contemplating simply another phase of the growth of man from Shakspeare to George Eliot.