Justin  McCarthy  wrote  of  her  thus  in  the  Westminster  Review,  ere
yet  she  had  taken  the  name  of  Vittoria  :

Emilia's  own  character  is  the  life  and  beauty  of  the  story.  She
is  genius  without  culture ;  goodness  without  rule ;  love  without
worldly  restraint.  Her  passion  for  music,  for  Italy,  and  for  Wilfrid
is  blended  with  consummate  skill.  I  remember  no  character  in
modern  literature  that  so  faithfully  pictures  the  nature  which  is
filled  with  a  genius  for  music.  Not  even  Consuelo,  in  George
Sand's  novel,  is  so  perfect  an  impersonation.  The  musical  and  the
poetic  are  not  represented  in  life  by  the  same  sort  of  human  nature;
but  in  books  there  is  hardly  any  distinction  ever  drawn.  The
novelist  commonly  acts  as  if  there  were  but  one  kind  of  artist
nature,  and  as  if  the  sole  difference  between  painter,  poet,  and
musician  were  contained  in  the  different  modes  wherein  the  genius
of  each  expresses  itself.  In  life  every  one  must  be  to  some  degree
conscious  how  entirely  unreal  is  this  assumption.  The  most  gifted
musician  often  disappoints  in  intellectual  companionship  all  but
musicians.  Intellect,  and  strangely  enough  the  more  poetic  phase
of  intellect,  seems  often  wanting  in  the  singer  whose  whole  soul  is
filled  with  music.  Mr.  Meredith  has  expressed  his  sense  of  this
peculiarity  in  the  admirably  drawn  character  of  Emilia.  In  every-
thing, save  that  which  regards  song  alone,  her  intellectual  nature
is  commonplace  and  prosaic.     Passion  lifts  her  to  heights  which  are


HIS   HEROINES    AND   WOMEN-FOLK  245

in  themselves  essentially  poetic  and  dramatic ;  and  a  pure,  truthful
simplicity  keeps  her  always  above  the  vulgarities  of  existence.  That
which  would  vulgarise  others  is  dignified  by  her;  but  still  she  has
nothing  whatever  in  her  honest  childlike  heart  which  reminds  one
of  the  Sappho  or  the  Corinna ;  or  even  of  the  stage  singer  whom
ordinary  romancists  have  sometimes  painted.
