He writes as well when he has to make the guilty soul of Guido speak, as when the innocence of Pompilia tells her story.

The gain-serving lawyers, each distinctly isolated, tell their worldly thoughts as clearly as Caponsacchi reveals his redeemed and spiritualised soul.

The parasite of an aristocratic and thoughtless society in _Tertium Quid_ is not more vividly drawn than the Pope, who has left in his old age the conventions of society behind him, and speaks in his silent chamber face to face with God.

And all the minor characters--of whom there are a great number, ranging from children to old folk, from the peasant to the Cardinal, through every class of society in Italy--are drawn, even when they are slashed out in only three lines, with such force, certainty, colour and life that we know them better than our friends.

The variousness of the product would seem to exclude an equality of excellence in drawing and invention.