Excerpt from A Study of George Eliot's Romola The writer who was innocent enough to be lieve that passing up was the great thing In life, found little time for reading fiction, but de voted such time as he could command upon novels which had a recognized historical value. The idea of literary value, as such, aside from the more apparent beauties of style, had never impressed him as worthy of consideration. The literature of power seemed of less consequence than the literature of knowledge. It may be from this cause that the student had never read any of George Eliot's works and was led to read Romola because, at the time, his interest was centered in the study of Savonarola and the condition of Florence under the patronage and tyranny of Lorenzo. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.