It is not necessary to resort to the invidious expedient of comparisons in order to account for the interest the announcement of a new novel by "George Eliot" has excited. Rumour, which never shrinks from busying itself with the "intentions" even of those authors who are least inclined to feel its appetite, had persistently asserted that it would be long before Middlemarch would be followed by another work of prose fiction.
Whatever other work "George Eliot" may have been, or may have engaged upon, the vein to which we owe Middlemarch and Romola is not yet exhausted; and while any attempt at criticism would be out of place so long as only an instalment of Daniel Deronda is in our hands, one observation may be made with absolute safety with regard to it. The self-contained strength of matured powers is impressed upon this book, and this is not more than was to be anticipated: but an equally unmistakable characteristic the absence of which would have caused less surprise in the freshness of this mellow fruit of genius.
From the third chapter onwards, at all events, Daniel Deronda exhibits all the signs of an author in the fullest enjoyment of his most proper gifts; and when we remember the indisputable fact that there are few great novelists who have measured the extent of their productivity by the endurances of the fulness of their powers, we rejoice to recognise in the first book the promise of a work belonging to the best "period" of its author's creations.
Promise is all of which we are as yet entitled to speak, for the audacity of those discoverers of art treasures who can in their minds construct the entire statue so soon as a part of it has been uncovered from the soil is best left unimitated. That "George Eliot" should prefer the method of publication he now for the second time adopts may or may not be regrettable. For ourselves, we are contented to observe that as the shilling number is an improvement on the morsel in a feuilleton, so the publication by books is a step in advance. The worst of it is that many who would read a novel as a whole refrain from doing so because they have read it in parts - a fate which even a story by "George Eliot" cannot escape in times when life is as short as ever and the world is not less busy than of yore.
Of Daniel Deronda himself we see but little in the first book. He makes his appearance only in the proem, and before the narrative, which soon occupies itself with the previous history of another personage of supreme importance to the story, has again reached the point at which it opens we are obliged to abide the course of another revolving month. The opening scene itself is laid in a locality familiar enough to novelists of the most various kinds and calibres - in the salon de jeu at Baden. Here, among the motley crowd, is discovered at the gambling-table a "problematic sylph" - Gwendolen Harleth, the heroine of the tale.
· This article is drawn from the archive at the Newsroom