We can all remember how keenly we wondered, while its early chapters unfolded themselves, what turn in the way of form the story would take - that of an organized, moulded, balanced composition, gratifying the reader with a sense of design and construction, or a mere chain of episodes, broken into accidental lengths and unconscious of the influence of a plan. The error in Middlemarch is not precisely of a similar kind, but it is equally detrimental to the aspect of the work. Movement lingers in the story, and with it attention stands still in the reader. Romola sins by excess of analysis there is too much description and too little drama too much reflection (all certainly of a highly imaginative sort) and too little creation. Its predecessors as they appeared might have been described in the same terms Romola is especially a rare masterpiece, but the least entraƮnant of masterpieces. Middlemarch is at once one of the strongest and one of the weakest of English novels. Originally published in Galaxy, March, 1873 Henry James on Middlemarch - the complete review Quarterly
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