How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Book.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely ordered variety on the chords of emotion – a soul in which knowledge passes instantaneously into feeling, and feeling flashes back as a new organ of knowledge." (2.22.81)
Will Ladislaw is explaining poetry to Dorothea during one of their first conversations in Rome. If you're reading a work of literature, it's important to sit up and pay attention whenever a character or the narrator starts talking about literature or writing – the author is often referring to him or herself. So Will's description of poets as having "soul[s …] quick to discern [and] quick to feel" could be read as a moment in which George Eliot stops and pats herself on the back, saying, "Yep, we writers sure have great souls!"
Quote #8
For my part I am very sorry for him. (3.29.3)
Here's yet another instance in which the narrator uses the first person singular ("I") and inserts herself into the story. Is this disruptive? Do you find it jarring when she does this? Or do you go along with it?
Quote #9
However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation. (4.37.18)
Dante and Petrarch were famous medieval Italian poets who were famous for writing love poetry about their ideal women (Beatrice and Laura, respectively). Eliot could be referencing them in order to make her own position in the same literary canon seem more legitimate. She's writing herself into the same literary genealogy that includes Dante and Petrarch, so she must be a great writer, too.