Evil does evil to the end; weakness never gathers strength;
even goodness never varies from its level: it suffers, but is not
corrupted; it is the goodness of instinct, not of struggle and aspiration;
it happens to belong to this or that person, just as his hair happens to
be black or brown. Everything in the surroundings and the action is to the
last degree matter-of-fact, commonplace, inevitable; there are no
picturesque coincidences, no providential interferences, no desperate
victories over fate; the tale, like the world of the materialist, moves
onward from a predetermined beginning to a helpless and tragic close. And
yet few books have been written of deeper and more permanent fascination
than these. Their grim veracity; the creative sympathy and steady
dispassionateness of their portrayal of mankind; their constancy of
motive, and their sombre earnestness, have been surpassed by none. This
earnestness is worth dwelling upon for a moment. It bears no likeness to
the dogmatism of the bigot or the fanaticism of the enthusiast. It is the
concentration of a broadly gifted masculine mind, devoting its unstinted
energies to depicting certain aspects of society and civilization, which
are powerfully representative of the tendencies of the day.
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