Essays, complete. Collected and arr., with an introd. on her Analysis of motives

presented to

Gbe library

of tfoe

Tflniversit? of Toronto
*v

Professor W.J.Alexander

THE ESSAYS

OF

GEOKGE ELIOT:

COMPLETE,

COLLECTED AND ARRANGED, WITH AN JNTRODUCTIC
ON HER "ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES,"

BY

NATHAN SHEPPAED,

EDITOR OP "CHARACTER HEADINGS FROM GEORGE ELIOT," AND "THE DICK!
READER;" AND AUTHOR OF "SHUT UP IN PARIS."

NEW YORK :

FUNK & WAj&NALLS, PUBLISHERS,
10 AND 12 DET STREET.

# 9

EV

•

PEEFAOE.

SINCE the death of George Eliot much public curiosity has
been excited by the repeated allusions to, and quotations from,
lier contributions to periodical literature, and a leading news-
paper gives expression to a general wish when it says that
* ' this series of striking essays ought to be collected and re-
printed, both because of substantive worth and because of the
light they throw on the author's literary canons and predilec-
tions." In fact, the articles which were published anony-
mousfy in The Westminster Review have been so pointedly
designated by the editor, and the biographical sketch in the
" Fanous Women" series is so emphatic in its praise of them,
and so copious in its extracts from one and the least important
one of them, that the publication of all the Review and maga-
zine articles of the renowned novelist, without abridgment or
alteration, would seem but an act of fair play to her fame,
whilfe at the same time a compliance with a reasonable public
demand.

Nor are these first steps in her wonderful intellectual prog-
ress any the less, but are all the more noteworthy, for being
first Steps. " To ignore this stage," says the author of the
valuable little volume to which we have just referred — " to
ignore this stage in George Eliot's mental development would
be to lose one of the connecting links in her history." Fur-

6 PREFACE.

*{ nothing in her fictions excels tiu» style of these

papi Here is all her " cpigramirai ity," and an

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was . 1351 to
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The intr" chapter on : ves''
first appeared icle, and appears here al --ie re-
quest of ' been carefully revi: 1, in-
deed aim -.. :->r.

E ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

GEORGE ELIOT is the greatest of the novelists in the deline-
ation of feeling and the analysis of motives. In " uncovering
certain human lots, and seeing how they are woven and inter-
woven," some marvellous work has been done by this master in
the two arts of rhetoric and fiction.

If you say the telling of a story is her forte, you put her
below Wilkie Collins or Mrs. Oliphant ; if you say her object
is to give a picture of English society, she is surpassed by Bul-
wer and Trollope ; if she be called a satirist of society, Thack-
eray is her superior ; if she intends to illustrate the absurdity
of behavior, she is eclipsed by Dickens ; but if the analysis of
human motives be her forte and art, she stands first, and it is
very doubtful whether any artist in fiction is entitled to stand
second. She reaches clear in and touches the most secret and
the most delicate spring of human action. She has done this
so well, so apart from the doing of everything else, and so, in
spite of doing some other things indifferently, that she works
on a line quite her own, and quite alone, as a creative artist in
fiction. Others have done this incidentally and occasionally,
as Charlotte Bronte and Walter Scott, but George Eliot does
it elaborately, with laborious painstaking, with purpose afore-
thought. Scott said of Richardson : "In his survey of the
heart he left neither head, bay, nor inlet behind him until he
had traced its soundings, and laid it down in his chart with all
its minute sinuosities, its depths and its shallows. ' '

This is too much to say of Richardson, but it is not too
" / to say of George Eliot. She has sounded depths and ex-

an

"GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

plored sinuosities of the human heart which were utterly un-
known to the author of '4 Clarissa Harlowe." It is like look-
ing into the translucent brook — you see the wriggling tad, the
darting minnow, the leisurely trout, the motionless pike, while
in the bays and inlets you see the infusoria and animalculae as
well.

George Eliot belongs to and is the greatest of the school of
artists in fiction who write fiction as a means to an end, instead
of as an end. And, while she certainly is not a story-teller of
the first order, considered simply as a story-teller, her novels are
a striking illustration of the power of fiction as a means to an
end. They remind us, as few other stories do, of the fact that
however inferior the story may be considered simply as a
story, it is indispensable to the delineation of character. No
other form of composition, no discourse, or essay, or series of
independent sketches, however successful, could succeed in
bringing out character equal to the novel. Herein is at once
the justification of the power of fiction. " He spake a para-
ble," with an " end " in view which could not be so expedi-
tiously attained by any other form of address.

A story of the first-class, with the story as end in itself, and
a story of the first class told as a means to an end, has never
been, and it is not likely ever will be, found together. The
novel with a purpose is fatal to the novel written simply to
excite by a plot, or divert by pictures of scenery, or entertain
as a mere panorama of social life. So intense is George Eliot's
desire to dissect the human heart and discover its motives, that
plot, diction, situations, and even consistency in the vocabulary
of the characters, are all made subservient to it. With her it
is not so much that the characters do thus and so, but why
they do thus and so. Dickens portrays the behavior, George
Eliot dissects the motive of the behavior. Here comes the
human creature, says Dickens, now let us see how he will
behave. Here comes the human creature, says George Eliot,
now let us see why he behaves.

u Suppose," she says, " suppose we turn from outsL\

"GEORGE ELIOT S ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

mates of a man, to wonder with keener interest what is the re-
port of his own consciousness about his doings, with what
hindrances he is carrying on his daily Jabors, and with what
spirit he wrestles against universal pressure, which may one day
be too heavy for him and bring his heart to a final pause."
The outside estimate is the work of Dickens and Thackeray, the
inside estimate is the work of George Eliot,

Observe in the opening pages of the great novel of " Mid-
dlemarch" how soon we pass from the outside dress to the in-
side reasons for it, from the costume to the motives which con-
trol it and color it. It was " only to close observers that
Celia's dress differed from her sister's," and had " a shade
of coquetry in its arrangements." Dorothea's " plain dress-
ing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister
shared." They were both influenced by " the pride of being
ladies," of belonging to a stock not exactly aristocratic, but
unquestionably "good." The very quotation of the word
good is significant and suggestive. There were " no parcel-
tying forefathers" in the Brooke pedigree. A Puritan fore-
father, " who served under Cromwell, but afterward conformed
and managed to come out of all political troubles as the pro-
prietor of a respectable family estate," had a hand in Doro-
thea's " plain" wardrobe. " She could not reconcile the anx-
ieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences with a
keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery," but
Celia " had that common-sense which is able to accept moment-
ous doctrines without any eccentric agitation." Both were ex-
amples of ' ' reversion. ' ' Then, as an instance of heredity work-
ing itself out in character " in Mr. Brooke, the hereditary
strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance, but in his
niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues."

Could anything be more natural than for a woman with this
passion for, and skill in, " unravelling certain human lots," to
lay herself out upon the human lot of woman, with all her
" passionate patience of genius ?" One would say this was in-
evitable. And, for a delineation of what that lot of woman

10 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

really is, as made for her, there is nothing in all literature equal
to what we find in " Middlemarch," " Romola," " Daniel
Deronda," and " Janet's Repentance." " She was a woman,
and could not make her own lot." Never before, indeed, was
so much got 'out of the word " lot." Never was that little
word so hard worked, or well worked. " We women," says
Gwendolen Harleth, " must stay where we grow, or where the
gardeners like to transplant us. Wre are brought up like the
flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without com-
plaining. That is my notion about the plants, and that is the
reason why some of them have got poisonous." To appreciate
the work that George Eliot has done you must read her
with the determination of finding out the reason why Gwen-
dolen Harleth " became poisonous," and Dorothea, with all
her brains and " plans," a failure ; why " the many THeresas
find for themselves no epic life, only a life of mistakes, the off-
spring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the mean-
ness of opportunity." You must search these marvellous
studies in motives for the key to the blunders of " the blunder-
ing lives" of woman which " some have felt are due to the in-
convenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme power has
^hioned the natures of women." But as there is not" one
el of feminine incompetence as strict as the ability to count
three and no more, the social lot of woman cannot be treated
with scientific certitude." It is treated with a dissective delinea-
tion in the women of George Eliot unequalled in the pages of
fiction.

And then woman's lot, as respects her " social promotion"
in matrimony, so much sought, and so necessary for her to seek,
even in spite of her conscience, and at the expense of her hap-
piness— the unravelling of that lot would also come very natural
to this expert unraveller. And never have we had the causes
of woman's " blunders" in match-making, and man's blunders
in love-making, told with such analytic acumen, or with such
pathetic and sarcastic eloquence. It is not far from the question
of woman's social lot to the question of questions of human life,

"GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. 11

the question which has so tremendous an influence upon the for-
tunes of mankind and womankind, the question which it is so
easy for one party to " pop" and so difficult for the other party
to answer intelligently or sagaciously.

Why does the young man fall in love with the young woman
who is most unfit for him of all the young women of his ac-
quaintance, and why does the young woman accept the young
man, or the old man, who is better adapted to making her life
unendurable than any other man of her circle of acquaintances ?
Why does the stalwart Adam Bede fall in love with Hetty
Sorrel, " who had nothing more than her beauty to recommend
her ?" The delineator of his motives " respects him none the
less. ' ' She thinks that ' ' the deep love he had for that sweet,
rounded, dark-eyed Hetty, of whose inward self he was really
very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature, and
not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray,
to be wrought upon by exquisite music ? To feel its wondrous
harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the
delicate fibres of life which no memory can penetrate, and bind-
ing together your whole being, past and present, in one un-
speakable vibration ? If not, then neither is it a weakness to
be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek,
and neck, and arms ; by the liquid depth of her beseeching
eyes, or the sweet girlish pout of her lips. For the beauty of
a lovely woman is like music — what can one say more ?" And
so " the noblest nature is often blinded to the character of the
woman's soul that beauty clothes." Hence " the tragedy of
human life is likely to continue for a long time to come, in
spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best re-
ceipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind."

How simple the motive of the Rev. Edward Casaubon in
popping the question to Dorothea Brooke, how complex her
motives in answering the question ! He wanted an amanuensis
to " love, honor, and obey" him. She wanted a husband who
would be "a sort of father, and could teach you even
Hebrew if you wished it." The matrimonial motives are

12 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

worked to draw out the character of Dorothea, and nowhere
does the method of George Eliot show to greater advantage
than in probing the motives of this fine, strong, conscientious,
blundering young woman, whose voice " was like the voice of
a soul that once lived in an JSolian harp." She had a the-
oretic cast of mind. She was " enamored of intensity and
greatness, and rash in embracing what seemed to her to have
those aspects." The awful divine had those aspects, and she
embraced him. " Certainly such elements in the character of
a marriageable girl tended to interfere with .her lot, and
hinder it from being decided, according to custom, by good
looks, vanity, and merely canine affection." That's a George
Eliot stroke. If the reader does not see from that what she is
driving at he may as well abandon all hope of ever appreciat-
ing her great forte and art. Dorothea's goodness and sincerity
did not save her from the worst blunder that a woman can
make, while her conscientiousness only made it inevitable.
" With all her eagerness to know the truths of life she
retained very childlike ideas about marriage." A little of
the goose as well as the child in her conscientious simplicity,
perhaps. She " felt sure she would have accepted the
judicious Hooker if she had been born in time to save him
from that wretched mistake he made in matrimony, or John
Milton, when his blindness had come on, or any other great
man whose odd habits it would be glorious piety to endure.

True to life, our author furnishes the " great man," and the
" odd habits," and the miserable years of " glorious" endur-
ance. * ' Dorothea looked deep into the ungauged reservoir of
Mr. Casaubon's mind, seeing reflected there every quality she
herself brought." They exchanged experiences — he his desire
to have an amanuensis, and she hers, to be one. He told her
in the billy-cooing of their courtship that " his notes made a
formidable range of volumes, but the crowning task would be
to condense these voluminous, still accumulating results, and
bring them, like the earlier vintage of Hippocratic books, to
fit a little shelf." Dorothea was altogether captivated by the

"GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. 13

wide embrace of this conception. Here was something beyond
the shallows of ladies' school literature. Here was a modern
Augustine who united the glories of doctor and saint.
Dorothea said to herself : u His feeling, his experience, what
a lake compared to my little pool !" The little pool runs into
the great reservoir.

Will you take this reservoir to be your husband, and will
you promise to be unto him a fetcher of slippers, a dotter of
I'sand crosser of T's and a copier and condenser of manuscripts
until death doth you part ? I will.

They spend their honeymoon in Rome, and on page 211 of
Vol. I. we find poor Dorothea " alone in her apartments,
sobbing bitterly, with such an abandonment to this relief of an
oppressed heart as a woman habitually controlled by pride will
sometimes allow herself when she feels securely alone."
What was she crying about? "She thought her feeling of
desolation was the fault of her own spiritual poverty." A
characteristic George Eliot probe. Why does not Dorothea
give the real reason for her desolateness ? Because she does
not know what the real reason is — conscience makes blunderers
of us all. ** How was it that in the weeks since their marriage
Dorothea had not distinctly observed, but felt, with a stifling
depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she
had dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced
by anterooms and winding passages which feeemed to lead no
whither ? I suppose it was because in courtship everything is
regarded as provisional and preliminary, and the smallest
sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will
reveal. But, the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expecta-
tion is concentrated on the present. Having once embarked
on your marital voyage, you may become aware that you make
no way, and that the sea is not within sight — that in fact you
are exploring an inclosed basin. " So the ungauged reservoir
turns out to be an inclosed basin, but Dorothea was prevented
by her social lot, and perverse goodness, and puritanical

14 " GEOKGE ELIOT'S " ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

" re version, " from foreseeing that. She might have been
saved from her gloomy marital voyage " if she could have fed
her affection with those childlike caresses which are the bent
of every sweet woman who has begun by showering kisses on
the hard pate of her bald doll, creating a happy soul within
that woodenness from the wealth of her own love." Then,
perhaps, Ladislaw would have been her first husband instead of
her second, as he certainly was her first and only love. Such
are the chances and mischances in the lottery of matrimony.

Equally admirable is the diagnosis of Gwendolen Harleth's
motives in " drifting toward the tremendous decision," and
finally landing in it. " We became poor, and I was tempted."
Marriage came to her as it comes to many, as a temptation,
and like the deadening drug or the maddening bowl, to keep
off the demon of remorse or the cloud of sorrow, like the
forgery or the robbery to save from want. " The brilliant
position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would
create for herself in marriage" — these '* had come to her
hunger like food, with the taint of sacrilege upon it," which
she * * snatched with terror. ' ' Grandcourt ' ' fulfilled his side
of the bargain by giving her the rank and luxuries she coveted."
Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have but one
result. " She had a root of conscience in her, and the process
of purgatory had begun for her on earth. ' ' Without the root
of conscience it would have been purgatory all the same. So
much for resorting to marriage for deliverance from poverty or
old-maidhood. Better be an old maid than an old fool. But
how are we to be guaranteed against '* one of those convulsive
motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap
from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery " ? Rosamond
Lydgate says, * * Marriage stays with us like a murder. ' ' Yes,
if she could only have found that out before instead of after
her own marriage !

But *' what greater thing," exclaims our novelist, " is there
for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life,
to strengthen each other in. all labor, to minister to each other

ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. 15

in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable
memories at the last parting ?"

While a large proportion of her work in the analysis of
motives is confined to woman, she has done nothing more
skilful or memorable than the " unravelling" of Bulstrodc's
mental processes by which he " explained the gratification of
his desires into satisfactory agreement with his beliefs." If
there were no Dorothea in " Middlemarch" the character of
Bulstrode would give that novel a place by itself among the
masterpieces of fiction. The Bulstrode wound was never
probed in fiction with more scientific precision. The pious
villain finally finds himself so near discovery that he becomes
conscientious. " His equivocation now turns venomously upon
him with the fall-grown fang of a discovered lie." The past
came back to make the present unendurable. ^ The terror of
being judged sharpens the memory." Once more "he saw
himself the banker's clerk, as clever in figures as he was fluent
in speech, arid fond of theological definition. He had striking
experience in conviction and sense of pardon ; spoke in prayer-
meeting and on religions platforms. That was the time he
would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest of dream.
He remembered his first moments of shrinking. They were
private and were filled with arguments — some of these taking
the form of prayer.

Private prayer — but " is private prayer necessarily candid ?
Does it necessarily go to the roots of action ? Private prayer
is inaudible speech, and speech is representative. Who can
represent himself just as he is, even in his own reflections ?"

Bulstrode 's course up to the time of his being suspected
" had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable providences,
appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in mak-
ing the best use of a large property." Providence would
have him use for the glory of God. the money he had stolen.
" Could it be for God's service that this fortune should go to"
its rightful owners, when its rightful owners were " a young
woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest

16 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

pursuits, and might scatter it abroad in triviality — people who
seemed to lie outside the path of remarkable providences ?"

Bulstrode felt at times "that his action was unrighteous,
but how could he go back ? He had mental exercises calling him-
self naught, laid hold on redemption and went on in his course
of instrumentality. He was " carrying on two distinct lives"
— a religious one and a wicked one. " His religious activity
could not be incompatible with his wicked business as soon as
he had argued himself into not feeling it incompatible.. "

'* The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him.
There may be coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs
and emotions for the sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode
was not one of them. He was simply a man whose desires
had been stronger than his theoretic beliefs, and who had
gradually explained the gratification of his desires into satis-
factory agreement with those beliefs."

And now Providence seemed to be taking sides against him.
" A threatening Providence — in other words, a public exposure
— urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not a doc-
trinal transaction. The divine tribunal had changed its aspect
to him. Self-prostration was no longer enough. He must
bring restitution in his hand. By what sacrifice could he stay
the rod ? He believed that if he did something right God
would stay the rod, and save him from the consequences of his
wrong-doing." His religion was "the religion of personal
fear," which "remains nearly at the level of the savage."
The exposure comes, and the explosion. Society shudders with
hypocritical horror, especially in the presence of poor Mrs.
Bulstrode, who " should have some hint given her, that if she
knew the truth she would have less complacency in her bon-
net." Society when it is very candid, and very conscientious,
and very scrupulous, cannot " allow a wife to remain ignorant
long that the town holds a bad opinion of her husband." The
photograph of the Middlemarch gossips sitting upon the case
of Mrs. Bulstrode is taken accurately. Equally accurate, and
far more impressive, is the narrative of circumstantial evidence

"GEOKGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OP MOTIVES. 17

gathering against the innocent Lydgate and the guilty Bui-
strode— circumstances that will sometimes weave into one
tableau of public odium the purest and the blackest characters.
From this tableau you may turn to that one in " Adam Bede,"
and see how circumstances are made to crush the weak woman
and clear the wicked man. And then you can go to
" Romola," or indeed to almost any of these novels, and see
how wrong-doing may come of an indulged infirmity of
purpose, that unconscious weakness and conscious wickedness
may bring about the same disastrous results, and that repent-
ance has no more effect in averting or altering the consequences
in one case than the other. Tito's ruin comes of a feeble,
Felix Holt's victory of an unconquerable, will. Nothing is
more characteristic of George Eliot than her tracking of Tito
through all the motives and counter motives from which he
acted. ' i Because he tried to slip away from everything that
was unpleasant, and cared for nothing so much as his own
safety, he came at last to commit such deeds as make a man
infamous." So poor Romola tells her son, as a warning, and
adds : ' ' If you make it the rule of your life to escape from
what is disagreeable, calamity may come just the same, and it
would be calamity falling on a base mind, which is the one
form of sorrow that has no balm in it. ' '

Out of this passion for the analysis of motives comes the
strong character, slightly gnarled and knotted by natural
circumstances, as trees that are twisted and misshapen by
storms and floods — or characters gnarled by some interior force
working in conjunction with or in opposition to outward
circumstances. She draws no monstrosities, or monsters, thus
avoiding on the one side romance and on the other burlesque.
She keeps to life — the life that fails from ' * the meanness of
opportunity," or is " dispersed among hindrances," or
'* wrestles" unavailingly " with universal pressure."

Why had Mr. Gilfil in those late years of his beneficent life
1 ' more of the knots and ruggedness of poor human nature than
there lay any clear hint of it in the open-eyed, loving" young

18 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

Maynard ? Because " it is with men as with trees : if you lop
off their finest branches into which they were pouring their
young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some
rough boss, some odd excrescence, and what might have been
a grand tree, expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical,
misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely
oddity, has come of a hard sorrow which has crushed and
maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous
beauty ; and the trivial, erring life, which we visit with our
harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man
whose best limb is withered. The dear old Vicar had been
sketched out by nature as a noble tree. The heart of him
was sound, the grain was of the finest, and in the gray-haired
man, with his slipshod talk and caustic tongue, there was the
main trunk of the same brave, faithful, tender nature that had
poured out the finest, freshest forces of its life-current in a
first and only love.'*

Her style is influenced by her purpose — may be said, indeed,
to be created by it. The excellences and the blemishes of the
diction come of the end sought to be attained by it. Its
subtleties and obscurities were equally inevitable. Analytical
thinking takes on an analytical phraseology. It is a striking
instance of a mental habit creating a vocabulary. The method
of thought produces the form of rhetoric. Some of the
sentences are mental landscapes. The meaning seems to be in
motion on the page. It is elusive from its very subtlety. It
is more our analyst than her character of Rufus Lyon, who
" would fain find language subtle enough to follow the utmost
intricacies of the soul's pathways." Mrs. Transome's " lancet-
edged epigrams" are dull in comparison with her own. She
uses them with startling success in dissecting motive and
analyzing feeling. They deserve as great renown as " Ne-
laton's probe."

For example : " Examine your words well, and you will find
that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard
thing to say the exact truth, especially about your own feelings

"GEORGE ELIOT'S'' ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. 19

— much harder than to say something fine about them which
is not the exact truth. ' ' That ought to make such a revelation
of the religious diary-keeper to himself as to make him
ashamed of himself. And this will fit in here : " Our con-
sciences are not of the same pattern, an inner deliverance of
fixed laws — they are the voice of sensibilities as various as our
memories ;" and this : " Every strong feeling makes to itself
a conscience of its own — has its own piety."

Who can say that the joints of his armor are not open to
this thrust ? " The lapse of time during which a given event
has not happened is in the logic of habit, constantly alleged as
a reason why the event should never happen, even when the
lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the
event imminent. A man will tell you that he worked in a
mine for forty years unhurt by an accident as a reason why he
should apprehend no danger, though the roof is beginning to
sink." Silas Marner lost his money through his " sense of
security," which " more frequently springs from habit than
conviction." He went unrobbed for fifteen years, which
supplied the only needed condition for his being robbed now.
A compensation for stupidity : "If we had a keen vision
and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing
the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die
of that roar that lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the
quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity." Who
does not at once recognize " that mixture of pushing forward
and being pushed forward" as "the brief history of most
human beings ?" Who has not seen " advancement hindered
by impetuous candor ?" or " private grudges christened by the
name of public zeal ?" or " a church built with an exuberance
of faith and a deficiency of funds ?" or a man *' who would
march determinedly along the road he thought best, but who
was easily convinced which was best ?" or a preacher " whose
oratory was like a Belgian railway horn, which shows praise-
worthy intentions inadequately fulfilled ?"

There is something chemical about such an analysis as this

20 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

of Rosamond : " Every nerve and muscle was adjusted to the
consciousness that she was being looked at. She was by
nature an actress of parts that entered into her physique.
She even acted her own character, and so well that she did not
know it to be precisely her own ! " Nor is the exactness of
this any less cruel : " We may handle extreme opinions with
impunity, while our furniture and our dinner-giving link us to
the established order." Why not own that " the emptiness of
all things is never so striking to us as when we fail in them ?"
Is it not better to avoid " following great reformers beyond
the threshold of their own homes?" Does not " our moral
sense learn the manners of good society ?"

The lancet works impartially, because the hand that holds it
is the hand of a conscientious artist. She will endure the
severest test you can apply to an artist in fiction. She does
not betray any religious bias in her novels, which is all the more
remarkable now that we find it in these essays. Nor is it at all
remarkable that this bias is so very easily discovered in the
novels by those who have found it in her essays ! Whatever
opinions she may have expressed in her critical reviews, she is,
'not the Evangelical, or the Puritan, or the Jew, or the
Methodist, or the Dissenting Minister, or the Churchman, any
more than she is the Radical, the Liberal, or the Tory, who
talks in the pages of her fiction.

Every side has its say, every prejudice its voice, and every
prejudice and side and vagary even has the philosophical reason
given for it, and the charitable explanation applied to it. She
analyzes the religious motives without obtrusive criticism or
acrid cynicism or nauseous cant — whether of the orthodox or
heretical form.

The art of fiction has nothing more elevated, or more
touching, or fairer to every variety of religious experience,
than the delineation of the motives that actuated Dinah Mor-
ris the Methodist preacher, Deronda the Jew, Dorothea the
Puritan, Adam and Seth Bede, and Janet Dempster.

Who can object to this ? " Religious ideas have the fate of

ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. '21

melodies, which, once set afloat in the world, are taken up by
all sorts of instruments, some of them woefully coarse, feeble,
or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the
melody itself is detestable." Is it not one of the "mixed
results of revivals" that "some gain a religious vocabulary
rather than a religious experience ?" Is there a descendant of
the Puritans who will not relish the fair play of this ? " They
might give the name of piety to much that was only Puritanic
egoism ; they might call many things sin that were not sin,
but they had at least the feeling that sin was to be avoided and
resisted, and color-blindness, which may mistake drab for scar-
let, is better than total blindness, which sees no distinction of
color at all." Is not Adam Bede justified in saying that " to
hear some preachers you'd think a man must be doing nothing
all his life but shutting his eyes and looking at what's going on
in the inside of him," or that " the doctrines are like finding
names for your feelings so that you can talk of them when
you've never known them ?" Read all she has said before you
object to anything she has said. Then see whether you will
find fault with her for delineating the motives of those with
whom " great illusions" are mistaken for " great faith ;" of
those " whose celestial intimacies do not improve their domes-
tic manners," however " holy" they may claim to be ; of
those who " contrive to conciliate the consciousness of filthy
rags with the best damask ;" of those " whose imitative piety
and native worldliness is equally sincere ;" of those who
" think the invisible powers will be soothed by a bland paren-
thesis here and there, coming from a man of property" — paren-
thetical recognition of the Almighty ! May not " religious
scruples be like spilled needles, making one afraid of treading
or sitting down, or even eating ?"

But if this is a great mind fascinated with the insoluble
enigma of human motives, it is a mind profoundly in sympathy
with those who are puzzling hopelessly over the riddle or are
struggling hopelessly in its toils. She is " on a level and in
the press with them as they struggle their way along the stony

22 "GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES.

road through the crowd of unloving fellow-men. She says ' ' the
only true knowledge of our fellows is that which enables us to
feel with them, which gives us a finer ear for the heart-pulses
that are beating under the mere clothes of circumstance and
opinion." No artist in fiction ever had a finer ear or a more
human sympathy for the struggler who " pushes manfully on"
and " falls at last," leaving " the crowd to close over the space
he has left." Her extraordinary skill in disclosing " the pecul-
iar combination of outward with inward facts which constitute
a man's critical actions," only makes her the more charitable
in judging them. " Until we know what this combination has
been, or will be, it will be better not to think ourselves wise
about' ' the character that results. ' ' There is a terrible coer-
cion in our deeds which may first turn the honest man into a
deceiver, and then reconcile him to the change. And for this
reason the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of
the only practicable right." There is nothing of the spirit of
" served him right," or " just what she deserved," or " they
ought to have known better," in George Eliot. That is not in
her line. The opposite of that is exactly in her line. This is
characteristic of her : "In this world there are so many of
these common, coarse people, who have no picturesque or sen-
timental wretchedness ! And it is so needful we should re-
member their existence, else we may happen to leave them
quite out of our religion and philosophy, and frame lofty theo-
ries which only fit a world of extremes." She does not leave
them out. Her books are full of them, and of a Christly charity
and plea for them. Who can ever forget little Tiny, " hidden
and uncared for as the pulse of anguish in the breast of the
bird that has fluttered down to its nest with the long-sought
food, and has found the nest torn and empty?" There is
nothing in fiction to surpass in pathos the picture of the death
of Mrs. Amos Barton. George Eliot's fellow-feeling comes of
the habit she ascribes to Daniel Deronda, * * the habit of think-
ing herself imaginatively into the experience of others. ' ' That
is the reason why her novels come home so pitilessly to those who

" GEORGE ELIOT'S" ANALYSIS OF MOTIVES. 23

have had a deep experience of human life. These are the men
and women whom she fascinates and alienates. I know strong
men and brave women who are afraid of her books, and say
so. It is because of her realness, her- unrelenting fidelity to
human nature and human life. It is because the analysis is so
delicate, subtle, and far-in. Hence the atmosphere of sadness
that pervades her pages. It was unavoidable. To see only the
behavior, as Dickens did, amuses us ; to study only the motive
at the root of the behavior, as George Eliot does, saddens us.
The humor of Mrs. Poyser and the wit of Mrs. Transome only
deepen the pathos by relieving it. There is hardly a sarcasm
in these books but has its pensive undertone.

It is all in the key of "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie
Doon, ' ' and that would be an appropriate key for a requiem
over the grave of George Eliot.

All her writings are now before the world, and are accessible
to all. They have taken their place, and will keep their place,
high among the writings of those of our age who have made
that age illustrious in the history of the English tongue.

THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING.

As soon as the closing of the Great Exhibition afforded a
reasonable hope that there would once more be a reading pub-
lic, " The Life of Sterling" appeared. A new work by Carlyle
must always be among the literary births eagerly chronicled by
the journals and greeted by the public. In a book of such
parentage we care less about the subject than about its treat-
ment, just as we think the ** Portrait of a Lord" worth study-
ing if it come from the pencil of a Vandyck. The life of John
Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed
simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to
leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of
humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of
torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the facul-
ties, while it undermines their creative force. Sterling, more-
over, was a man thoroughly in earnest, to whom poetry and
philosophy were not merely another form of paper currency or
a ladder to fame, but an end in themselves — one of those finer
spirits with whom, amid the jar and hubbub of our daily life,

" The melodies abide
Of tlio everlasting chime." .

26 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

But his intellect was active and rapid, rather than powerful,
and in all his writings we feel the want of a stronger electric
current to give that vigor of conception and felicity of expres-
sion, by which we distinguish the undefinable something called
genius ; while his moral nature, though refined and elevated,
seems to have been subordinate to his intellectual tendencies
and social qualities, and to have had itself little determining in-
fluence on his life. His career was less exceptional than his
character : a youth marked by delicate health and studious
tastes, a short-lived and not very successful share in the man-
agement of the Atkenceum, a fever of sympathy with Spanish
patriots, arrested before it reached a dangerous crisis by an
early love affair ending in marriage, a fifteen months' residence
in the West Indies, eight months of curate's duty at Herst-
monceux, relinquished on the ground of failing health, and
through his remaining years a succession of migrations to the
South in search of a friendly climate, with the occasional pub-
lication of an " article," a tale, or a poem in Blackwood or
elsewhere — this, on the prosaic background of an easy compe-
tence, was what made up the outer tissue of Sterling's exist-
ence. The impression of his intellectual power on his per-
sonal friends seems to have been produced chiefly by the elo-
quence and brilliancy of his conversation ; but the mere reader
of his works and letters would augur from them neither the
wit nor the curiosa felicitas of epithet and imagery, which
would rank him with the men whose sayings are thought worthy
of perpetuation in books of table-talk and " ana." The pub-
lic, then, since it is content to do without biographies of much
more remarkable men, cannot be supposed to have felt any
pressing demand even for a single life of Sterling ; still less, it
might be thought, when so distinguished a writer as Arch-
deacon Hare had furnished this, could there be any need for
another. But, in opposition to the majority of Mr. Carlyle's
critics, we agree with him that the first life is properly the
justification of the second. Even among the readers personally
unacquainted with Sterling, those who sympathized with his

CARLYLE'S LIFE OF STERLING. 27

"ultimate alienation from the Church, rather than with his
transient conformity, were likely to be dissatisfied with the en-
tirely apologetic tone of Hare's life, which, indeed, is con-
fessedly an incomplete presentation of Sterling's mental course
after his opinions diverged from those of his clerical biogra-
pher ; while those attached friends (and Sterling possessed the
happy magic that secures many such) who knew him best dur-
ing this latter part of his career, would naturally be pained to
have it represented, though only by implication, as a sort of
deepening declension ending in a virtual retraction. Of such
friends Carlyle was the most eminent, and perhaps the most
highly valued, and, as co-trustee with Archdeacon Hare of
Sterling's literary character and writings, he felt a kind of re-
sponsibility that no mistaken idea of his departed friend should
remain before the world without correction. Evidently, how-
ever, his " Life of Sterling" was not so much the conscientious
discharge of a trust as a labor of love, and to this is owing its
strong charm. Carlyle here shows us his " sunny side." We
no longer see him breathing out threatenings and slaughter as
in the Latter-Day Pamphlets, but moving among the charities
and amenities of life, loving and beloved — a Teufelsdrockh
still, but humanized by a Blumine worthy of him. We have
often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently
to the task of the biographer — that when some great or good
personage dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed
compilations of letter, and diary, and detail, little to the pur-
pose, which two thirds of the reading public have not the
! \ chance, nor the other third the inclination, to read, we could
ihave a real " Life," setting forth briefly and vividly the man's
inward and outward struggles, aims, and achievements, so as to
make clear the meaning which hia experience has for his fel
:>ws. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) the
rorld possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential
n the formation of character than any other kind of reading,
the conditions required for the perfection of life writing —
personal intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the

28 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

beauty and the depth of familiar things, and the artistic power
which seizes characteristic points and renders them with life-
like effect — are seldom found in combination. " The Life of
Sterling" is an instance of this rare conjunction. Its compara-
tively tame scenes and incidents gather picturesqueness and in-
terest under the rich lights of Carlyle's mind. We are told
neither too little nor too much ; the facts noted, the letters
selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest conception of
what Sterling was and what he did ; and though the book
speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind
of scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose. The
portrait of Coleridge, for example, is precisely adapted to bring
before us the intellectual region in which Sterling lived for
some time before entering the Church. Almost every review
has extracted this admirable description, in which genial vene-
ration and compassion struggle with irresistible satire ; but the
emphasis of quotation cannot be too often given to the follow-
ing pregnant paragraph :

" The truth is, I now see Coleridge's talk and speculation was the
emblem of himself. In it, as in him, a ray of heavenly inspiration
struggled, in a tragically ineffectual degree, with the weakness of
flesh and blood. He says once, he ' had skirted the howling deserts
of infidelity.' This was evident enough ; but he had not had the
courage, in defiance of pain and terror, to press resolutely across said
deserts to the new firm lands of faith beyond ; he preferred to create
logical fata-morganas for himself on this hither side, and laboriously
solace himself with these. "

The above mentioned step of Sterling — his entering the
Church — is the point on which Carlyle is most decidedly at
issue with Archdeacon Hare. The latter holds that had Ster-
ling's health permitted him to remain in the Church, he would
have escaped those aberrations from orthodoxy, which, in the
clerical view, are to be regarded as the failure and shipwreck of
his career, appparently thinking, like that friend of Arnold's
who recommended a curacy as the best means of clearing up
Trinitarian difficulties, that " orders" are a sort of spiritual

CARLYLE'S LIFE OP STERLING. 29

Backboard, which, by dint of obliging a man to look as if he
re strait, end by making him so. According to Carlyle, on
ihe contrary, the real " aberration" of Sterling was his choice
)f the clerical profession, which was simply a mistake as to
lis true vocation :

" Sterling," he says, " was not intrinsically, nor had ever been in

he highest or chief degree, a devotional mind. Of course all excel-

ence in man, and worship as the supreme excellence, was part of

he inheritance of this gifted man ; but if called to define him, I

thould say artist, not saint, was the real bent of his being. "

"No man of Sterling's veracity, had he clearly consulted his own
heart, or had his own heart been capable of clearly responding, and
not been bewildered by transient fantasies and theosophio moon-
shine, could have undertaken this function. His heart would have
answered, ' No, thou canst not. What is incredible to thee, thou
shalt not, at thy soul's peril, attempt to believe ! Elsewhither for a
refuge, or die here. Go to perdition if thou must, but not with a lie
in thy mouth ; by the eternal Maker, no ! ' '

From the period when Carlyle's own acquaintance with Ster-
ling commenced, the Life has a double interest, from the
glimpses it gives us of the writer, as well as of his hero. We are
made present at their first introduction to each other ; we get
a lively idea of their colloquies and walks together, and in this
easy way, without any heavy disquisition or narrative, we obtain
a clear insight into Sterling's character and mental progress.
Above all, we are gladdened with a perception of the affinity
that exists between noble souls, in spite of diversity in ideas —
in what Carlyle calls " the logical outcome" of the faculties.
This " Life of Sterling" is a touching monument of the capa-
bility human nature possesses of the highest love, the love of
'[the good and beautiful in character, which is, after all, the es-
jsence of piety. The style of the work, too, is for the most
part at once pure and rich ; there are passages of deep pathos
which come upon the reader like a strain of solemn music, and

others which show that aptness of epithet, that masterly power
of close delineation, in which, perhaps, no writer has excelled
Carlyle.

We have said that we think this second " Life of Sterling"
justified by the first ; but were it not so, the book would
justify itself.

II.

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE.*

IN 1847, a certain Count Leopold Ferri died at Padua,
leaving a library entirely composed of works written by women,
in various languages, and this library amounted to nearly
32,000 volumes. We will not hazard any conjecture as to the
proportion of these volumes which a severe judge, like the
priest in Don Quixote, would deliver to the flames, but for our
own part, most of these we should care to rescue would be the
works of French women. With a few remarkable exceptions,
our own feminine literature is made up of books which could
have been better written by men — books which have the same
relation to literature is general, as academic prize poems have
to poetry : when not a feeble imitation, they are usually an
absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering
gait of a bad actress in male attire. Few English women have
written so much like a woman as Richardson's Lady G. Now
we think it an immense mistake to maintain that there is no
sex in literature. Science has no sex : the mere knowing and
reasoning faculties, if they act correctly, must go through the
same process, and arrive at the same result. But in art and
literature, which imply the action of the entire being, in which
every fibre of the nature is engaged, in which every peculiar
modification of the individual makes itself felt, woman has
something specific to contribute. Under every imaginable

* 1. " Madame de Sable. Etudes sur les Femmes illustres et la
Societe du XVIP siecle." Par M. Victor Cousin. Paris : Didier.

2. " Portraits de Femmes." Par C..A. Sainte-Beuve. Paris : Didier.

3. " Les Femmes de la Ke volutions. " Par J. Michelet.

32 THE ESSAYS OP "GEORGE ELIOT."

social condition, she will necessarily have a class of sensations
and emotions — the maternal ones — which must remain unknown
to man ; and the fact of her comparative physical weakness,
which, however it may have been exaggerated by a vicious
civilization, can never be cancelled, introduces a distinctively
feminine condition into the wondrous chemistry of the affec-
tions and sentiments, which inevitably gives rise to distinctive
forms and combinations. A certain amount of psychological
difference between man and woman necessarily arises out of
the difference of sex, and instead of being destined to vanish
before a complete development of woman's intellectual and
moral nature, will be a permanent source of variety and
beauty as long as the tender light and dewy freshness of morn-
ing affect us differently from the strength and brilliancy of the
midday sun. And those delightful women of France, who
from the beginning of the seventeenth to the close of the
eighteenth century, formed some of the brightest threads in
the web of political and literary history, wrote under circum-
stances which left the feminine character of their minds un-
cramped by timidity, and unstrained by mistaken effort.
They were not trying to make a career for themselves ; they
thought little, in many cases not at all, of the public ; they
wrote letters to their lovers and friends, memoirs of their every,
day lives, romances in which they gave portraits of their familiar
acquaintances, and described the tragedy or comedy which was
going on before their eyes. Always refined and graceful, often
witty, sometimes judicious, they wrote what they saw, thought,
and felt in their habitual language, without proposing any
model to themselves, without any intention to prove that
women could write as well as men, without affecting manly
views or suppressing womanly ones. One may say, at least
with regard to the women of the seventeenth century, that
their writings were but a charming accident of their more
charming lives, like the petals which the wind shakes from the
rose in its bloom. And it is but a twin fact with this, that in
France alone woman has had a vital influence on the develop-

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SA13LE. 33

raent of literature ; in France alone the mind of woman has
passed like an electric current through the language, making
crisp and definite what is elsewhere heavy and blurred ; in
France alone, if the writings of women were swept away, a
serious gap would be made in the national history.

Patriotic gallantry may perhaps contend that English women
could, if they had liked, have written as well as their neigh-
bors ; but we will leave the consideration of that question to
the reviewers of the literature that might have been. In the
literature that actually is, we must turn to France for the
highest examples of womanly achievement in almost every
department. We confess ourselves unacquainted with the
productions of those awful women of Italy, who held profes-
sorial chairs, and were great in civil and canon law ; we have
made no researches into the catacombs of female literature, but
we think we may safely conclude that they would yield no
rivals to that which is still unburied ; and here, we suppose,
the question of pre-eminence can only lie between England and
France. And to this day, Madame de Sevigne remains the
single instance of a woman who is supreme in a class of liter-
ature which has engaged the ambition of men ; Madame
Dacier still reigns the queen of blue stockings, though women
have long studied Greek without shame ;* Madame de Stae'l's
name still rises first to the lips when we are asked to mention
a woman of great intellectual power ; Madame Roland is still
the unrivalled type of the sagacious and sternly heroic, yet
lovable woman ; George Sand is the unapproached artist who,
to Jean Jacques' eloquence and deep sense of external nature,
unites the clear delineation of character and the tragic depth of
passion. These great names, which mark different epochs, soar
like tall pines amidst a forest of less conspicuous, but not less
fascinating, female writers ; and beneath these, again, are

* Queen Christina, when Mme. Dacier (then Mile. Le Fevre) sent
her a copy of her edition of " Callimachus, " wrote in reply : " Mais
vous, de qui on m 'assure que vous etes une belle et agreable fille,
n'avez vous pas honte d'etre si savante ?"

34 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT/'

spread, like a thicket of hawthorns, eglantines, and honey-
suckles, the women who are known rather by what they stim-
ulated men to write, than by what they wrote themselves — the
women whose tact, wit, and personal radiance created the
atmosphere of the Salon, where literature, philosophy, and
science, emancipated from the trammels of pedantry and
technicality, entered on a brighter stage of existence.

What were the causes of this earlier development and more
abundant manifestation of womanly intellect in France ? The
primary one, perhaps, lies in the physiological characteristics
of the Gallic race — the small brain and vivacious temperament
which permit the fragile system of woman to sustain the
superlative activity requisite for intellectual creativeness ;
while, on the other hand, the larger brain and slower temper-
ament of the English and Germans are, in the womanly
organization, generally dreamy and passive. The type of
humanity in the latter may be grander, but it requires a larger
sum of conditions to produce a perfect specimen. Throughout
the animal world, the higher the organization, the more fre-
quent is the departure from the normal form ; we do not often
see imperfectly developed or ill-made insects, but we rarely see
a perfectly developed, well-made man. And thus the physique
of a woman may suffice as the substratum for a superior Gallic
mind, but is too thin a soil for a superior Teutonic one. Our
theory is borne out by the fact that among our own country-
women those who distinguish themselves by literary production
more frequently approach the Gallic than the Teutonic type ;
they are intense and rapid rather than comprehensive. The wom-
an of large capacity can seldom rise beyond the absorption of
ideas ; her physical conditions refuse to support the energy re-
quired for spontaneous activity ; the voltaic-pile is not strong
enough to produce crystallizations ; phantasms of great ideas
float through her mind, but she has not the spell which will arrest
them, and give them fixity. This, more than unfavorable
external circumstances, is, we think, the reason why woman
has not yet contributed any new form to art, any discovery in

WOMAN IK FRANCE : MADAME DE SAB.lA 35

science, any deep-searching inquiry in philosophy. The
necessary physiological conditions arc not present in her.
That under more favorable circumstances in the future, these
conditions may prove compatible with the feminine organiza-
tion, it would be rash to deny. For the present, we are only
concerned with our theory so far as it presents a physiological
basis for the intellectual effectiveness of French women.

A secondary cause was probably the laxity of opinion and
practice with regard to the marriage-tie. Heaven forbid that
we should enter on a defence of French morals, most of all in
relation to marriage ! But it is undeniable that unions formed
in the maturity of thought and feeling, and grounded only on
inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women
into more intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and
complicate their share in the political drama. The quiescence
and security of the conjugal relation are doubtless favorable to
the manifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have
already attained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a
passion sufficient to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or
retaining its beloved object — to convert indolence into activity,
indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness into perspicuity.
Gallantry and intrigue are sorry enough things in themselves,
but they certainly serve better to arouse the dormant faculties
of woman than embroidery and domestic drudgery, especially
when, as in the high society of France in the seventeenth
century, they are refined by the influence of Spanish chivalry,
and controlled by the spirit of Italian causticity. The dreamy
and fantastic girl was awakened to reality by the experience of
wifchood and maternity, and became capable of loving, not a
mere phantom of her own imagination, but a living man,
struggling with the hatreds and rivalries of the political arena ;
she espoused his quarrels, she made herself, her fortune, and
her influence, the stepping-stones of his ambition ; and the
languid beauty, who had formerly seemed ready to " die of
a rose," was seen to become the heroine of an insurrection.
The vivid interest in affairs which was thus excited in woman

36 THE ESSAYS OF

must obviously have tended to quicken her intellect, and give
it a practical application ; and the very sorrows — the heart-
pangs and regrets which are inseparable from a life of passion
— deepened her nature by the questioning of self and destiny
which they occasioned, and by the energy demanded to sur-
mount them and live on. No wise person, we imagine, wishes
to restore the social condition of France in the seventeenth
century, or considers the ideal programme of woman's life to
be a mariaae de convenance at fifteen, a career of gallantry from
twenty to eight-and-thirty, and penitence and piety for the
rest of her days. Nevertheless, that social condition has its
good results, as much as the madly superstitious Crusades had
theirs.

But the most indisputable source of feminine culture and
development in France was the influence of the salons, which,
as all the world knows, were reunions of both sexes, where
conversation ran along the whole gamut of subjects, from the
frothiest vers de societe to the philosophy of Descartes.
Richelieu had set the fashion of uniting a taste for letters
with the habits of polite society and the pursuits of ambition ;
and in the first quarter of the seventeenth century there were
already several hotels in Paris, varying in social position from
the closest proximity of the Court to the debatable ground of
the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, which served as a ren-
dezvous for different circles of people, bent on entertaining
themselves either by showing talent or admiring it. The most
celebrated of these rendezvous was the Hotel de Rambouillet,
which was at the culmination of its glory in 1630, and did
not become quite extinct until 1648, when the troubles of the
Fronde commencing, its habitues were dispersed or absorbed
by political interests. The presiding genius of this salon, the
Marquise de Rambouillet, was the very model of the woman
who can act as anamalgam to the most incongruous elements ;
beautiful, but not preoccupied by coquetry or passion ; an
enthusiastic admirer of talent, but with no pretensions to talent
on her own part ; exquisitely refined in language and manners,

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 37

but warm and generous withal ; not given to entertain her
guests with her own compositions, or to paralyze them by her
universal knowledge. She had once meant to learn Latin, but
had been prevented by an illness ; perhaps she was all the
better acquainted with Italian and Spanish productions, which,
in default of a national literature, were then the intellectual
pabulum of all cultivated persons in France who are unable to
read the classics. In her mild, agreeable presence was ac-
complished that blending of the high-toned chivalry of Spain
with the caustic wit and refined irony of Italy, which issued
in the creation of a new standard of taste — the combination
of the utmost exaltation in sentiment with the utmost sim-
plicity of language. Women are peculiarly fitted to fur-
ther such a combination — first, from their greater tendency
to mingle affection and imagination with passion, and thus
subtilize it into sentiment ; and next, from that dread of what
overtaxes their intellectual energies, either by difficulty or
monotony, which gives them an instinctive fondness for
lightness of treatment and airiness of expression, thus making
them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness. "When
these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational
contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of
Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Conde, Balzac, and Bossuet, it
is no wonder that the result was something piquant and charm-
ing. Those famous habitues of the Hotel de Rambouillet did
not, apparently, first lay themselves out to entertain the ladies
with grimacing " small-talk," and then take each other by the
sword-knot to discuss matters of real interest in a corner ; they
rather sought to present their best ideas in the guise most
acceptable to intelligent and accomplished women. And the
conversation was not of literature only : war, politics, religion,
the lightest details of daily news — everything was admissible,
if only it were treated with refinement and intelligence. The
Hotel de Rambouillet was no mere literary reunion ; it
included hommes d'affaires and soldiers as well as authors, and
in such a circle women would not becomo baa bleus or dreamy

38 THE ESSAYS OF

moralizers, ignorant of the world and of human nature, but
intelligent observers of character and events. It is easy to
understand, however, that with the herd of imitators who, in
Paris and thp provinces, aped the style of this famous salon,
simplicity degenerated into affectation, and nobility of senti-
ment was replaced by an inflated effort to outstrip nature, so
that the genre predeiix drew down the satire, which reached its
climax in the Precieuses Ridicules and Les Femmes Savantes,
the former of which appeared in 1660, and the latter in 1673.
But Madelon and Caltros are the lineal descendants of Made-
moiselle Scudery and her satellites, quite as much as of the
Hotel de Rambouillet. The society which assembled every
Saturday in her salon was exclusively literary, and although
occasionally visited by a few persons of high birth, bourgeois
in its tone, and enamored of madrigals, sonnets, stanzas, and
bouts rimes. The affectation that decks trivial things in fine
language belongs essentially to a class which sees another above
it, and is uneasy in the sense of its inferiority ; and this affec-
tation is precisely the opposite of the original genre precieux.
Another centre from which feminine influence radiated into
the national literature was the Palais du Luxembourg, where
Mademoiselle d'Orleans, in disgrace at court on account of her
share in the Fronde, held a little court of her own, and for want
of anything else to employ her active spirit busied herself with
literature. One fine morning it occurred to this princess to
ask all the persons who frequented her court, among whom
were Madame de S£vigne, Madame de la Fayette, and La
Rochefoucauld, to write their own portraits, and she at once
set the example. It was understood that defects and virtues
were to be spoken of with like candor. The idea was carried
out ; those who were not clever or bold enough to write for
themselves employing the pen of a friend.

" Such," says M. Cousin, " was the pastime of Mademoiselle and
her friends during the years 1657 and 1658 : from this pastime pro-
ceeded a complete literature. In 1659 Segrais revised these por-
traits, added a considerable number in prose and even in verse, and

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 30

published the whole in a handsome quarto volume, admirably
printed, and now become very rare, under the title, ' Divers Por-
traits.' Only thirty copies were printed, not for sale, but to be given
as presents by Mademoiselle. The work had a prodigious success.
That which had made tlu fortune of Mademoiselle de Scudery's
romances — the pleasure of seeing one's portrait a little flattered, cu-
riosity to see that of others, the passion which the middle class
always have had and will have for knowing what goes on in the aris-
tocratic world (at that time not very easy of access), the names of
the illustrious persons who were here for the first time described
physically and morally with the utmost detail, great ladies trans-
formed all at once into writers, and unconsciously inventing a new
manner of writing, of which no book gave the slightest idea, and
which was the ordinary manner of speaking of the aristocracy ; this
undefinable mixture of the natural, the easy, and at the same time of
the agreeable, and supremely distinguished— all this charmed the
court and the town, and very early in the year 1659 permission was
asked of Mademoiselle to give a new edition of the privileged book
for the use of the public in general."

The fashion thus set, portraits multiplied throughout France,
until in 1688 La Bruyere adopted the form in his " Charac-
ters," and ennobled it by divesting it of personality. We shall
presently see that a still greater work than La Bruyere's also
owed its suggestion to a woman, whose salon was hardly a less
fascinating resort than the II6tel de Rambouillet itself.

In proportion as the literature of a country is enriched and
culture becomes more generally diffused, personal influence is
less effective in the formation of taste and in the furtherance of
social advancement. It is no longer the coterie which acts on

literature, but literature which acts on the coterie ; the circle
represented by the word public is ever widening, and ambition,
poising itself in order to hit a more distant mark, neglects the
successes of the salon. What was once lavished prodigally in
conversation is reserved for the volume or the " article," and

v the effort is not to betray originality rather than to communi-
cate it. As the old coach-roads have sunk into disuse through
the creation of railways, so journalism tends more and more to
divert information from the channel of conversation into the

40

channel of the Press ; no one is satisfied with a more circum-
scribed audience than that very indeterminate abstraction " the
public," #nd men find a vent for their opinions not in talk, but
in "copy." We read the Atkenwim askance at the tea-
table, and take notes from the Philosophical Journal at a
soiree ; we invite our friends that we may thrust a book into
their hands, and presuppose an exclusive desire in the " ladies"
to discuss their own matters, " that we may crackle the Times"
at our ease. In fact, the evident tendency of things to contract
personal communication within the narrowest limits makes us
tremble lest some farther development of the electric telegraph
should reduce us to a society of mutes, or to a sort of insects
communicating by ingenious antenna? of our own invention.
Things were far from having reached this pass in the last cen-
tury ; but even then literature and society had outgrown the
nursing of coteries, and although many salons of that period
were worthy successors of the Hotel de Rambouillet, they were
simply a recreation, not an influence. Enviable evenings, no
doubt, were passed in them ; and if we could be carried back
to any of them at will, we should hardly know whether to
choose the Wednesday dinner at Madame Gecffrin's, with
d'Alembert, Mademoiselle del'Espinasse, Grimm, and the rest,
or the graver society which, thirty years later, gathered round
Condorcet and his lovely young wife. The salon retained its
attractions, but its power was gone : the stream of life had
become too broad and deep for such small rills to affect it.

A fair comparison between the French women of the seven-
teenth century and those of the eighteenth would, perhaps,
have a balanced result, though it is common to be a partisan
on this subject. The former have more exaltation, perhaps
more nobility of sentiment, and less consciousness in their in-
tellectual activity — less of ihefemme auteur, which was Rous-
seau's horror in Madame d'Epinay ; but the latter have a richer
fund of ideas — not more ingenuity, but the materials of an ad-
ditional century for their ingenuity to work upon. The women
of the seventeenth century, when love was on the wane, took to

WOMAN" Itf FRAHCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 41

devotion, at first mildly and by halves, as English women take
to caps, and finally without compromise ; with the women of
the eighteenth century, Bossuet and Massillon had given way
to Voltaire and Rousseau ; and when youth and beautjf failed, t
then they were thrown on their own moral strength.

M. Cousin is especially enamored of the women of the seven-
teenth century, and relieves himself from his labors in philoso-
phy by making researches into the original documents which
throw light upon their lives. Last year he gave us some
results of these researches in a volume on the youth of the
Duchess de Longueville ; and he has just followed it up with a
second volume, in which he further illustrates her career by
tracing it in connection with that of her friend, Madame de
Sable*. The materials to which he has had recourse for this
purpose are chiefly two celebrated collections of manuscript :
that of Conrart, the first secretary to the French Academy, one
of those universally curious people who seem made for the an-
noyance of contemporaries and the benefit of posterity ; and
that of Valant, who was at once the physician, the secretary,
and general steward of Madame de Sable, and who, with or
without her permission, possessed himself of the letters address-
ed to her by her numerous correspondents during the latter
part of her life, and of various papers having some personal or
literary interest attached to them. From these stores M.
Cousin has selected many documents previously unedited ; and
though he often leaves us something to desire in the arrange-
ment of his materials, this volume of his on Madame de Sable
is very acceptable to us, for she interests us quite enough to
carry us through more than three hundred pages of rather scat-
tered narrative, and through an appendix of correspondence in
small type. M. Cousin justly appreciates her character as ll un
heureux melange de raison, d'esprit, d'agrement,, et de bonte ;"
and perhaps there are few better specimens of the woman who
is extreme in nothing but sympathetic in all things ; who
affects us by no special quality, but by her entire being ; whose
nature has no tons criards, but is like those textures which,

42 THE ESSAYS OF " GEOKGE ELIOT."

from their harmonious blending of all colors, give repose to tho
eye, and do not weary us though we see them every day.
Madame de Sable is also a striking example of the one order of
influence which woman has exercised over literature in France ;
and on this ground, as well as intrinsically, she is worth study-
ing. If the reader agrees with us he will perhaps be inclined,
as we are, to dwell a little on the chief points in her life and
character.

Madeline de Souvre, daughter of the Marquis of Courten-
vaux, a nobleman distinguished enough to be chosen as gov-
ernor of Louis XIII. , was born in 1599, on the threshold of
that seventeenth century, the brilliant genius of which is mildly
reflected in her mind and history. Thus, when in 1635 her
more celebrated friend, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, afterward
the Duchess de Longueville, made her appearance at the Hotel
de Rambouillet, Madame de Sable had nearly crossed that table-
land of maturity which precedes a woman's descent toward old
age. She had been married in 1614, to Philippe Emanuel de
Laval-Montmorency, Seigneur de Bois-Dauphin, and Marquis
de Sable, of whom nothing further is known than that he died
in 1640, leaving her the richer by four children, but with a
fortune considerably embarrassed. With beauty and high
rank added to the mental attractions of which we have abun-
dant evidence, we may well believe that Madame de Sable's
youth was brilliant. For her beauty, we have the testimony
of sober Madame de Motteville, who also speaks of her as
having " bcaucoup de lumiere et de sincerite ;" and in the
following passage very graphically indicates one phase of Ma-
dame de Sable's character :

" The Marquise de Sable was one of those whose beauty made the
most noise when the Queen came into France. But if she was ami-
able, she was still more desirous of appearing so ; this lady's self-
love rendered her too sensitive to the regard which men exhibited
toward her. There yet existed in France some remains of the polite-
ness which Catherine de Medici had introduced from Italy, and the
new dramas, with all the other works in prose and verse, which

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 43

came from Madrid, were thought to have snch great delicacy, that
she (Madame de Sable) had conceived a high idea of the gallantry
which the Spaniards had learned from the Moors.

u She was persuaded that men can, without crime, have tender
sentiments for women — that the desire of pleasing them led men to
the greatest and finest actions — roused their intelligence, and in-
spired them with liberality, and all sorts of virtues ; but, on the other
hand, women, who were the ornament of the world, and made to be
served and adored, ought not to admit anything from them but their
respectful attentions. As this lady supported her views with much
talent and great beauty, she had given them authority in her time,
and the number and consideration of those who continued to associ-
ate with her have caused to subsist in our day what the Spaniards
call fimzas."

Here is the grand clement of the original femme pretieuse, and
it appears further, in a detail also reported by Madame de Motte-
ville, that Madame de Sable had a passionate admirer in the ac-
complished Due de Montmorency, and apparently reciprocat-
ed his regard ; but discovering (at what period of their attach-
ment is unknown) that he was raising a lover's eyes toward the
queen, she broke with him at once. " I have heard her say,"
tells Madame de Mottevillc, " that her pride was such with re-
gard to the Due de Montmorency, that at the first demonstra-
tions which he gave of his change, she refused to see him any
more, being unable to receive with satisfaction attentions which
she had to share with the greatest princess in the world.'*
There is no evidence except the untrustworthy assertion of
Tallement de Beaux, that Madame de Sable had any other
liaison than this ; and the probability of the negative is in-
creased by the ardor of her friendships. The strongest of
these was formed early in life with Mademoiselle Dona
d'Attichy, afterward Comtesse de Maure ; it survived the effer-
vescence of youth, and the closest intimacy of middle age, and
was only terminated by the death of the latter in 1663. A
little incident in this friendship is so characteristic in the trans-
cendentalism which was then carried into all the affections, that
it is worth relating at length. Mademoiselle d'Attichy, in
her grief and indignation at Richelieu's treatment of her rela-

44 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

live, quitted Paris, and was about to join her friend at Sable,
when she suddenly discovered that Madame de Sable, in a letter
to Madame de Rambouillet, had said that her greatest happi-
ness would be to pass her life with Julie de Rambouillet, after-
ward Madame de Montausier. To Anne d'Attichy this appears
nothing less than the crime of lese-amitie. No explanations
will appease her : she refuses to accept the assurance that tho
offensive expression was used simply out of unreflecting con-
formity to the style of the Ilotel de Rambouillet — that it was
mere " galimatias." She gives up her journey, and writes a
letter, which is the only one Madame de Sable chose to pre-
serve, when, in her period of devotion, she sacrificed the
records of her youth. Here it is :

" I have seen this letter in which you tell me there is so much
galimatias, and I assure you that I have not found any at all. On
the contrary, I find everything very plainly expressed, and among
others, one which is too explicit for my satisfaction — namely, what
you have said to Madame de Rambouillet, that if you tried to imag-
ine a perfectly happy life for yourself, it would be to pass it all alone
with Mademoiselle de Rambouillet. You know whether any one can
be more persuaded than I am of her merit ; but I confess to you
that that has not prevented me from being surprised that you could
entertain a thought which did so great an injury to our friendship.
As to believing that you said this to one, and wrote it to the other,
simply for the sake of paying them an agreeable compliment, I have
too high an esteem for your courage to be able to imagine that com-
plaisanee would cause you thus to betray the sentiments of your
heart, especially on a subject in which, as they were unfavorable to
me, I think yon would have the more reason for concealing them,
the affection which I have for you being so well known to every one,
and especially to Mademoiselle de Rambouillet, so that I doubt
whether she will not have been more sensible of the wrong yon have
done me, than of the advantage you have given her. The circum-
stance of this letter falling into my hands has forcibly reminded me
of these lines of Bertaut :

" * Malhenrense est F ignorance
Et plus inalheureux le savoir."

" Having through this lost a confidence which alone rendered life
supportable to me, it is impossible for me to take the journey so

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 45

much thought of. For would there be any propriety in travelling
sixty miles in this season, in order to burden you with a person so
little suitefl to you, that after years of a passion without parallel, you
cannot help thinking that the greatest pleasure of your life would be
to pass it without her ? I return, then, into my solitude, to ex-
amine the defects which cause me so much unhappiness, and unless
I can correct them, I should have less joy than confusion in seeing
you. ' '

It speaks strongly for the charm of Madame de Sable's nat-
ure that she was able to retain so susceptible a friend as Made-
moiselle d'Attichy in spite of numerous other friendships, some
of which, especially that with Madame de Longueville, were
far from lukewarm — in spite too of a tendency in herself to dis-
trust the affection of others toward her, and to wait for ad-
vances rather than to make them. We find many traces of
this tendency in the affectionate remonstrances addressed to
her by Madame de Longueville, now for shutting herself up
from her friends, now for doubting that her letters are accept-
able. Here is a little passage from one of these remonstrances
which indicates a trait of Madame de Sable, and is in itself a bit
of excellent sense, worthy the consideration of lovers and friends
In general : ."I am very much afraid that if I leave to you
the care of letting me know when I can see you, I shall be a
long time without having that pleasure, and that nothing will
incline you to procure it me, for I have always observed a cer-
tain lukewarmness in your friendship after our explanations,
from which I have never seen you thoroughly recover ; and that
is why I dread explanations, for however good they may be in
themselves, since they serve to reconcile people, it must always
be admitted, to their shame, that they are at least the effect of
a bad cause, and that if they remove it for a time they some-
times leave a certain facility in getting angry again, which,
without diminishing friendship, renders its intercourse less
agreeable. It seems to me that I find all this in your behavior
to me ; so I am not wrong in sending to know if you wish to
have me to-day. " It is clear that Madame de Sable was far

46 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

from having what Sainte-Beuve calls the one fault of Madame
Necker — absolute perfection. A certain exquisiteness in her
physical and moral nature was, as we shall see, the source of
more than one weakness, but the perception of these weak-
nesses, which is indicated in Madame de Longueville's letters,
heightens our idea of the attractive qualities which notwith-
standing drew from her, at the sober age of forty, such expres-
sions as these : " I assure you that you are the person in ail
the world whom it would be most agreeable to me to see, and
there is no one whose intercourse is a ground of truer satisfac-
tion to me. It is admirable that at all times, and amidst all
changes, the taste for your society remains in me ; and, if one
ought to thank God for the joys which do not tend to salvation,
I should thank him with all my heart for having preserved that
to me at a time in which he has taken away from me all
others."

Since we have entered on the chapter of Madame de Sable's
weaknesses, this is the place to mention what was the subject
of endless raillery from her friends— her elaborate precaution
about her health, and her dread of infection, even from dis-
eases the least communicable. Perhaps this anxiety was
founded as much on aesthetic as on physical grounds, on disgust
at the details of illness as much as on dread of suffering :
•with a cold in the head or a bilious complaint, the exquisite
precieuse must have been considerably less conscious of being
" the ornament of the world," and "made to be adored."
Even her friendship, strong as it was, was not strong enough to
overcome her horror of contagion ; for when Mademoiselle de
Bourbon, recently become Madame de Longueville, was at-
tacked by small-pox, Madame de Sable for some time had not
courage to visit her, or even to see Mademoiselle de Rambouil-
let, who was assiduous in her attendance on the patient. A
little correspondence h propos of these circumstances so well
exhibits the graceful badinage in which the great ladies of that
day were adepts, that we are attempted to quote one short
letter.

WOMAN" IN FRASTCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 47

" Mile, de Rambouillet to the Marquise de Sable.

" Mile, de Chalais (dame de compagnie to the Marquise) will please
to read this letter to Mme. la Marquise, out of a draught.

" Madame, I do not think it possible to begin my treaty with you
too early, for I am convinced that between the first proposition made
to me that I should see you, and the conclusion, you will have so
many reflections to make, so many physicians to consult, and so
many fears to surmount, that I shall have full leisure to air myself.
The conditions which I offer to fulfil for this purpose are, not to
visit you until I have been three days absent from the Hotel de
Conde (where Mme. de Longueville was ill), to choose a frosty day,
not to approach you within four paces, not to sit down on more than
one seat. You may also have a great fire in your room, burn juniper
in the four corners, surround yourself with imperial vinegar, with
rue and wormwood. If you can feel yourself safe under these con-
ditions, without my cutting off my hair, I swear to you to execute
them religiously ; and if you want examples to fortify you, I can tell
you that the Queen consented to see M. Chaudebonne, when he had
come directly from Mile, de Bourbon's room, and that Mme. d'Ai-
guillon, who has good taste in such matters, and is free from reproach
on these points, has just sent me word that if I did not go to see her
she would come to me."

Madame de Sable betrays in her reply that she winces
under this raillery, and thus provokes a rather severe though
polite rejoinder, which, added to the fact that Madame de
Longueville is convalescent, rouses her courage to the pitch of
paying the formidable visit. Mademoiselle de Rambouillet,
made aware through their mutual friend Voiture, that her sar-
casm has cut rather too deep, winds up the matter by writing
that very difficult production a perfectly conciliatory yet dig-
nified apology. Peculiarities like this always deepen with age,
and accordingly, fifteen years later, we find Madame D' Orleans
in her *' Princesse de Paphlagonia" — a romance in which she
describes her court, with the little quarrels and other affairs
that agitated it — giving the following amusing picture, or
rather caricature, of the extent to which Madame de Sable
carried her pathological mania, which seems to have been
shared by her friend the Countess de Maure (Mademoiselle

48 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT. "

d' Attichy). In the romance, these two ladies appear under the
names of Princessc Parthenie and the Reine de Mionie.

*' There was not an hour in the day in which they did not confer
together on the means of avoiding death, and on the art of rendering
themselves immortal. Their conferences did not take place like
those of other people ; the fear of breathing an air which was too cold
or too warm, the dread lest the wind should be too dry or too moist —
in short, the imagination that the weather might not be as temperate
as they thought necessary for the preservation of their health, caused
them to write letters from one room to the other. It would be ex-
tremely fortunate if these notes could be found, and formed into a
collection. I am convinced that they would contain rules for the
regimen of life, precautions even as to the proper time for applying
remedies, and also remedies which Hippocrates and Galen, with all
tbeir science, never heard of. Such a collection would be very use-
ful to the public, and would be highly profitable to the faculties of
Paris and Montpellier. If these letters were discovered, great advan-
tages of all kinds might be derived from them, for they were prin-
cesses who had nothing mortal about them but the knowledge that
they were mortal. In their writings might be learned all politeness
in style, and the most delicate manner of speaking on all subjects.
There is nothing with which they were not acquainted ; they knew
the affairs of all the States in the world, through the share they had
in all the intrigues of its private members, either in matters of gal-
lantry, as in other things, on which their advice was necessary ;
either to adjust embroilments and quarrels, or to excite them, for the
sake of the advantages which their friends could derive from
them ;— in a word, they were persons through whose hands the
secrets of the whole world had to pass. The Princess Parthenie
(Mme. de Sable) had a palate as delicate as her mind ; nothing could
equal the magnificence of the entertainments she gave ; all the
dishes were exquisite, and her cleanliness was beyond all that could
be imagined. It was in their time that writing came into use ; pre-
viously nothing was written but marriage contracts, and letters were
never heard of ; thus it is to them that we owe a practice so conven-
ient in intercourse."

Still later in 1669, -when the most uncompromising of the
Port Royalists seemed to tax Madame de Sable with lukewarm-
ness that she did not join them at Port-Royal-des-Champs, we
find her writing to the stern M. de S6vigny : " En vorite, je

IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 49

crois quo je ne pourrois micux faire que de tout quitter et de
m'en aller la. Mais que deviendroient ces frayeurs de n'avoir
pas de medicines a choisir, ni de chirurgien pour me saigner ?"
Mademoiselle, as we have seen, hints at the love of delicate
eating, which many of Madame de Sable's friends numbered
among her foibles, especially after her religious career had com-
menced. She had a genius infriandise, and knew how to grat-
ify the palate without offending the highest sense of refinement.
Her sympathetic nature showed itself in this as in other things ;
she was always sending bonnes bouches to her friends, and
trying to communicate to them her science and taste in the
affairs of the table. Madame de Longueville, who had not the
luxurious tendencies of her friend, writes : '* Je vous demandc
au nom de Dieu, que vous ne me prepariez aucun ragout.
Surtout ne me donnez point de festin. Au nom de Dieu, qu'il
n'y ait rien que ce qu'on peut manger, car vous savez que c'est
inutile pour moi ; de plus j'en ai scrupule." But other
friends had more appreciation of her niceties. Voiture thanks
her for her melons, and assures her that they are better than
those of yesterday ; Madame de Choisy hopes that her ridicule
of Jansenism will not provoke Madame de Sable to refuse her
the receipt for salad ; and La Rochefoucauld writes : ** You
cannot do me a greater charity than to permit the bearer of
this letter to enter into the mysteries of your marmalade and
your genuine preserves, and I humbly entreat you to do every-
thing you can in his favor. If I could hope for two dishes of
those preserves, which I did not deserve to eat before, I should
be indebted to you all my life. ' ' For our own part, being as
far as possible from fraternizing with those spiritual people
who convert a deficiency into a principle, and pique themselves
on an obtuse palate as a point of superiority, we are not
inclined to number Madame de Sable's friandiae among her
defects. M. Cousin, too, is apologetic on this point. He says :

" It was only the excess of a delicacy which can ba really under-
stood, and a sort of fidelity to the character of precieuse. As the
precieuse did nothing according to common usage, she could not dine

50 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

like another. We have cited a passage from Mme. de Motteville,
where Mme. de Sabl6 is represented in her first youth at the Hotel de
Rambouillet, maintaining that woman is born to be an ornament to
the world, and to receive the adoration of men. The woman worthy
of the name ought always to appear above material wants, and retain,
even in the most vulgar details of life, something distinguished and
purified. Eating is a very necessary operation, but one which is not
agreeable to the eye. Mme. de Sable insisted on its being conducted
with a peculiar cleanliness. According to her it was not every woman
who could with impunity be at table in the presence of a lover ; the
first distortion of the face, she said, would be enough to spoil all.
Gross meals made for the body merely ought to be abandoned to
bourgeoises, and the refined woman should appear to take a little
nourishment merely to sustain her, and even to divert her, as one
takes refreshments and ices. Wealth did not suffice for this : a par-
ticular talent was required. Mme. de Sable was a mistress in this
art. She had transported the aristocratic spirit, and the genre
precieux, good breeding and good taste, even into cookery. Her din-
ners, without any opulence, were celebrated and sought after."

It is quite in accordance with all this that Madame de Sable
should delight in fine scents, and we find that she did ; for
being threatened, in her Port Royal days, when she was at an
advanced age, with the loss of smell, and writing for sympathy
and information to Mere Agnes, who had lost that sense early
in life, she receives this admonition from the stern saint :
" You would gain by this loss, my very dear sister, if you
made use of it as a satisfaction to God, for having had too
much pleasure in delicious scents." Scarron describes her as

" La non pareille Bois-Dauphine,
Entre dames perle ires fine, ' '

and the superlative delicacy implied by this epithet seems to
have belonged equally to her personal habits, her affections,
and her intellect.

Madame de Sable's life, for anything we know, flowed on
evenly enough until 1640, when the death of her husband
threw upon her tho care of an embarrassed fortune. She
found a friend in Rene de Longueil, Seigneur de Maisons, of
whom we are content to know no more than that he helped

WOMAN IN FKANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 51

Madame de Sable to arrange her affairs, though only by means
of alienating from her family the estate of Sable, that his house
was her refuge during the blockade of Paris in 1649, and that
she was not unmindful of her obligations to him, when, sub-
sequently, her credit could be serviceable to him at court. In
the midst of these pecuniary troubles came a more terrible trial
— the loss of her favorite son, the brave and handsome Guy de
Laval, who, after a brilliant career in the campaigns of Conde,
was killed at the siege of Dunkirk, in 1646, when scarcely
four-and-twenty. The fine qualities of this young man had
endeared him to the whole army, and especially to Conde, had
won him the hand of the Chancellor Seguire's daughter, and
had thus opened to him the prospect of the highest honors.
His loss seems to have been the most real sorrow of Madame
de Sable's life. Soon after followed the commotions of the
Fronde, which put a stop to social intercourse, and threw the
^closest friends into opposite ranks. According to Lenet, who
relies on the authority of Gourville, Madame de Sable was
under strong obligations to the court, being in the receipt of a
pension of 2000 crowns ; at all events, she adhered through-
out to the Queen and Mazarin, but being as far as possible
from a fierce partisan, and given both by disposition and judg-
ment to hear both sides of the question, she acted as a con-
ciliator, and retained her friends of both parties. The
Countess de Maure, whose husband was the most obstinate of
frondeurs, remained throughout her most cherished friend,
and she kept up a constant correspondence with the lovely and
intrepid heroine of the Fronde, Madame de Longueville. Her
activity was directed to the extinction of animosities, by
bringing about marriages between the Montagues and Capu-
lets of the Fronde — between the Prince de Conde, or his
brother, and the niece of Mazarin, or between the three
nieces of Mazarin and the sons of three noblemen who were
distinguished leaders of the Fronde. Though her projects
were not realized, her conciliatory position enabled her to
preserve all her friendships intact, -and when the political

62 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

tempest was over, she could assemble around her in her
residence, in the Place Royal, the same society as before.
Madame de Sable was now approaching her twelfth lustrum,
and though the charms of her mind and character made her
more sought after than most younger women, it is not sur-
prising that, sharing as she did in the religious ideas of her
time, the concerns of " salvation" seemed to become pressing.
A religious retirement, which did not exclude the reception of
literary friends or the care for personal comforts, made the
most becoming frame for age and diminished fortune. Jan-
senism was then to ordinary Catholicism what Puseyism is to
ordinary Church of Englandism in these days — it was a
reckerchb form of piety unshared by the vulgar ; and one sees
at once that it must have special attractions for the precieuse.
Madame de Sable, then, probably about 1655 or '56, de-
termined to retire to Port Royal, not because she was already
devout, but because she hoped to become so ; as, however, she*
wished to retain the pleasure of intercourse with friends who
were still worldly, she built for herself a set of apartments at
once distinct from the monastery and attached to it. Here,
with a comfortable establishment, consisting of her secretary,
Dr. Valant, Mademoiselle de Chalais, formerly her dame de
compagnie, and now become her friend ; an excellent cook ; a
few other servants, and for a considerable time a carriage and
coachman ; with her best friends within a moderate distance,
she could, as M. Cousin says, be out of the noise of the world
without altogether forsaking it, preserve her dearest friend-
ships, and have before her eyes edifying examples — " vaquer
enfin a son aise aux soins de son salut et a ceux de sa sante. ' '
We have hitherto looked only at one phase of Madame de
Sable's character and influence — that of the precieuse. But she
was much more than this : she was the valuable, trusted friend
of noble women and distinguished men ; she was the animating
spirit of a society, whence issued a new form of French
literature ; she was the woman of large capacity and large
heart, wrhom Pascal sought to please, to whom Arnauld sub-

WOMAN IK FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 53

mitted the Discourse prefixed to his " Logic," and to whom
La Rochefoucauld writes : " Vous savez que je ne crois que
vous etes sur de certains chapitres, et surtout sur les replis
du co3ur. " The papers preserved by her secretary, Valant,
show that she maintained an extensive correspondence with
persons of various rank and character ; that her pen was un-
tiring in the interest of others ; that men made her the
depositary of their thoughts, women of their sorrows ; that
her friends were as impatient, when she secluded herself, as if
they had been rival lovers and she a youthful beauty. It is
into her ear that Madame de Longueville pours her troubles
and difficulties, and that Madame de la Fayette communicates
her little alarms, lest young Count de St. Paul should have
detected her intimacy with La Rochefoucauld.* The few of
Madame de Sable's letters which survive show that she ex-
celled in that epistolary style which was the specialty of the
Hotel de Rambouillet : one to Madame de Montausier, in
favor of M. Perier, the brother-in-law of Pascal, is a happy
mixture of good taste and good sense ; but among them all
we prefer quoting one to the Duchess de la Tremouille. It is
light and pretty, and made out of almost nothing, like soap-
bubbles.

" Je croix qu'il n'y a que moi qui face si bien tout le contraire de
ce que je veux faire, car il est vrai qu'il n'y a personne que j'honore
plus que vous, et j'ai si bien fait qu'il est quasi impossible que vous
le puissiez croire. Ce n'estoit pas assez pour vous persuader que je
suis indigne de vos bonnes graces et de votre souvenir que d' avoir
manque fort longtemps a vous ecrire ; il falloit encore retarder quinze
jours a me donner 1'honneur de repondre a votre lettre. En verite,
Madame, cela me fait paroitre si cotipable, que vers tout autre que
vous j'aimeroix mieux 1'etre en effet que d' entreprendre une chose si
difficile qu' est celle de me justifier. Mais je me sens si imiocente

* The letter to which we allude has this charming little touch :
" Je hais comme la mort que les gens de son age puissent croire qne
j'ai des galanteries. II semble qu'on leur parait cent ans des qu'on
est plus vieille qu'eux, et ils sont tout propre & s'etonner qu'il y ait
encore question des gens."

54 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT/'

dans mon ame, et j'ai tant d'estime, de respect et d'affection pour
vous, qu'il me semble que vous devez le connoitre a cent lieues de
distance d'ici, encore que je ne vous dise pas un mot. C'est ce que
me donne le courage de vous ecrire a cette heure, mais non pas ce qui
m'en a empeche si longtemps. J'ai commence a faillir par force,
ay ant eu beaucoup de maux, et depuis je 1'ai faite par honte, et je
vous avoue que si je n'avois a cette heure la confiance que vous
m'avez donnee en me rassurant, et celle que je tire de mes propres
sentimens pour vous, je n'oserois jamais entreprendre de vous faire
souvenir de moi ; mais je m'assure que vous oublierez tout, sur la
protestation que je vous fais de ne me laisser plus endurcir en mes
fautes et de demeurer inviolablement, Madame, votre, etc."

Was not the woman, who could unite the ease and grace
indicated by this letter, with an intellect that men thought
worth consulting on matters of reasoning and philosophy, with
warm affections, untiring activity for others, no ambition as an
authoress, and an insight into confitures and ragouts, a rare
combination ? No wonder that her salon at Port Royal was
the favorite resort of such women as Madame de la Fayette,
Madame de Montausier, Madame de Longueville, and Madame
de Hautcfort ; and of such men as Pascal, La Rochefoucauld,
Nicole, and Domat. The collections of Valant contain papers
which show what were the habitual subjects of conversation in
this salon. Theology, of course, was a chief topic ; but
physics and metaphysics had their turn, and still more fre-
quently morals, taken in their widest sense. There were
" Conferences on Calvinism," of which an abstract is pre-
served. When Rohault invented his glass tubes to serve for
the barometrical experiments in which Pascal had roused a
strong interest, the Marquis de Sourdis entertained the society
with a. paper entitled " Why Water Mounts in a Glass Tube."
Cartesianism was an exciting topic here, as well as everywhere
else in France ; it had its partisans and opponents, and papers
were read containing " Thoughts on the Opinions of M.
Descartes." These lofty matters were varied by discussions
on love and friendship, on the drama, and on most of the
things in heaven and earth which the philosophy of that day

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 55

dreamt of. Morals — generalizations on human affections,
sentiments, and conduct — seem to have been the favorite
theme ; and the aim was to reduce these generalizations to their
briefest form of expression, to give them the epigrammatic
turn which made them portable in the memory. This was the
specialty of Madame de Sable's circle, and was, probably, due
to her own tendency. As the Hotel de Rambouillet was the
nursery of graceful letter- writing, and the Luxembourg of
" portraits" and " characters," so Madame de Sable's salon
fostered that taste for the sententious style, to which we owe,
probably, some of the best Pens'ees of Pascal, and certainly,
the " Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld. Madame de Sable herself
wrote maxims, which were circulated among her friends ; and,
after her death, were published by the Abbe d' A illy. They
have the excellent sense and nobility of feeling which we
should expect in everything of hers ; but they have no stamp
of genius or individual character : they are, to the " Maxims' '
of La Rochefoucauld, what the vase moulded in dull, heavy
clay is to the vase which the action of fire has made light,
brittle, and transparent. She also wrote a treatise on Educa-
tion, which is much praised by La Rochefoucauld and M.
d'Andilly ; but which seems no longer to be found : probably
it was not much more elaborate than her so-called " Treatise
on Friendship," which is but a short string of maxims.
Madame de Sable's forte was evidently not to write herself, but
to stimulate others to write ; to show that sympathy and
appreciation which are as genial and encouraging as the morn-
ing sunbeams. She seconded a man's wit with understanding!
— one of the best offices which womanly intellect has rendered
to the advancement of culture ; and the absence of originality
made her all the more receptive toward the originality of
others.

The manuscripts of Pascal show that many of the Pensees,
which arc commonly supposed to be raw materials for a great
work on religion, were remodelled again and again, in order to
bring them to the highest degree of terseness and finish, which

56 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE E*LIOT."

would hardly have been the case if they had only been part of
a quarry for a greater production. Thoughts, which are
merely collected as materials, as stones out of which a building
is to be erected, are not cut into facets, and polished like
amethysts or emeralds. Since Pascal was from the first in the
habit of visiting Madame de Sable, at Port Royal, with his
sister, Madame Perier (who was one of Madame de Sable's
dearest friends), we may well suppose that he would throw
some of his jewels among the large and small coin of maxims,
which were a sort of subscription money there. Many of
them have an epi grammatical piquancy, which was just the
thing to charm a circle of .vivacious and intelligent women :
they seem to come from a La Rochefoucauld who has been
dipped over again in philosophy and wit, and received a new
layer. But whether or not Madame de Sable's influence served
to enrich the Pensees of Pascal, it is clear that but for her
influence the " Maxims" of La Rochefoucauld would never
have existed. Just as in some circles the effort is, who shall
make the best puns (horibile dictu /), or the best charades, in
the salon of Port Royal the amusement was to fabricate
maxims. La Rochefoucauld said, " L'envie de faire des
maximes se gagne comme le rhume." So far from claiming
for himself the initiation of this form of writing, he accuses
Jacques Esprit, another habitue of Madame de Sable's salon, of
having excited in him the taste for maxims, in order to trouble
his repose. The said Esprit was an academician, and had been
a frequenter of the Hotel de Rambouillet. He had already
published " Maxims in Verse," and he subsequently produced
a book called "La Faussetc des Vertus Humaines, " which
seems to consist of Rochefoucauldism become flat with an
infusion of sour Calvinism. Nevertheless, La Rochefoucauld
seems to have prized him, to have appealed to his judgment,
and to have concocted maxims with him, which he afterward
begs him to submit to Madame Sable. He sends a little batch of
maxims to her himself, and asks for an equivalent in the shape
of good eatables : " Voila tout ce que j'ai de maximes ; mais

WOMAN IN FRANCE: MADAME DE SABLE. 57

cornme je no donne rien pour rien, je vous demande un potage
aux carottes, un ragout de mouton," etc. The taste and the
talent enhanced each other ; until, at last, La Rochefoucauld
began to be conscious of his pre-eminence in the circle of
maxim-mongers, and thought of a wider audience. Thus grew
up the famous " Maxims," about which little need be said.
Every at once is now convinced, or professes to be convinced,
that, as to form, they are perfect, and that as to matter, they
are at once undeniably true and miserably false ; true as applied
to that condition of human nature in which the selfish instincts
are still dominant, false if taken as a representation of all the
elements and possibilities of human nature. We think La
Rochefoucauld himself wavered as to their universality, and
that this wavering is indicated in the qualified form of some of
the maxims ; it occasionally struck him that the shadow of
virtue must have a substance, but he had never grasped that
substance — it had never been present to his consciousness.

It is curious to see La Rochefoucauld's nervous anxiety
about presenting himself before the public as an author ; far
from rushing into print, he stole into it, and felt his way by
asking private opinions. Through Madame de Sable he sent
manuscript copies to various persons of taste and talent, both
men and women, and many of the written opinions which he
received in reply are still in existence. The women generally
find the maxims distasteful, but the men write approvingly.
These men, however, are for the most part ecclesiastics, who
decry human nature that they may exalt divine grace. The
coincidence between Augustinianism or Calvinism, with its
doctrine of human corruption, and the hard cynicism of the
maxims, presents itself in quite a piquant form in some of the
laudatory opinions on La Rochefoucauld. One writer says :
" On ne pourroit faire une instruction plus propre a un
catechumene pour convertir a Dieu son esprit et sa volonte
. . . Quand il n'y auroit que cet escrit au rnondc et 1'Evangile
je voudrois etre chretien. L'un m'apprendroit a connoistre
mes rniseres, et 1'autre a implorer mon liberateur." Madame

58 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

do Maintenon sends word to La Rochefoucauld, after the
publication of his work, that the tl Book of Job" and the
" Maxims" are her only reading.

That Madame de Sable herself had a tolerably just idea of
La Rochefoucauld's character, as well as of his maxims, may
be gathered not only from the fact that her own maxims are as
full of the confidence in human goodness which La Roche-
foucauld wants, as they are empty of the style which he
possesses, but also from a letter in which she replies to the
criticisms of Madame de Schomberg. " The author," she
says, " derived the maxim on indolence from his own dis-
position, for never was there so great an indolence as his, and
I think that his heart, inert as it is, owes this defect as much to
his idleness as his will. It has never permitted him to do the
least action for others ; and I think that, amid all his great
desires and great hopes, he is sometimes indolent even on his
own behalf." Still she must have felt a hearty interest in the
" Maxims," as in some degree her foster-child, and she must
also have had considerable affection for the author, who was
lovable enough to those who observed the rule of Helvetius,
and expected nothing from him. She not only assisted him,
as we have seen, in getting criticisms, and carrying out the
improvements suggested by them, but when the book was
actually published she prepared a notice of it for the only
journal then existing — the Journal des Savants. This notice
was originally a brief statement of the nature of the work, and
the opinions which had been formed for and against it, with a
moderate eulogy, in conclusion, on its good sense, wit, and
insight into human nature. But when she submitted it to La
Rochefoucauld he objected to the paragraph which stated the
adverse opinion, and requested her to alter it. She, however,
was either unable or unwilling to modify her notice, and
returned it with the following note :

" Je vous envoie ce que j'ai pu tirer de ma teste pour mettre dans le
Journal des Savants. J'y ai mis cet endroit qni vous est le plus
sensible, afin que cela vous fasse surmonter la mauvaise honte qui

WOMAN IN FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 59

vous fit mettre la preface sans y rien retrancher, et je n'ai pas craint
dele mettre, parce que je suis assuree que vous ne le ferez pas im-
primer, quand meme le reste vous plairoit. Je vous assure aussi que
je vous serai plus obligee, si vous en usez comme (Tune chose qui ser-
vit a vous pour le corriger eu pour le Jeter au feu. Nous autres
grands auteurs, nous sommes trop riches pour craindre de rien perdre
de nos productions. Mandez-moi ce qu'il vous semble de ce dictum."

La Rochefoucauld availed himself of this permission, and
" edited" the notice, touching up the style, and leaving out
the blame. In this revised form it appeared in the Journal des
Savants. In some points, we see, the youth of journalism was
not without promise of its future.

While Madame de Sable was thus playing the literary con-
fidante to La Rochefoucauld, and was the soul of a society
whose chief interest was the belles-lettres, she was equally active
in graver matters. She was in constant intercourse or cor-
respondence with the devout women of Port Royal, and of the
neighboring convent of the Carmelites, many of whom had once
been the ornaments of the court ; and there is a proof that she
was conscious of being highly valued by them in the fact that
when the Princess Marie-Madeline, of the Carmelites, was
dangerously ill, not being able or not daring to visit her, she
sent her youthful portrait to be hung up in the sick-room, and
received from the same Mere Agnes, whose grave admonition
we have quoted above, a charming note, describing the pleasure
which the picture had given in the infirmary of " Notre bonne
M£re. She was interesting herself deeply in the translation
of the New Testament, which was the work of Sacy, Arnauld,
Nicole, Le Maitre, and the Due de Luynes conjointly, Sacy
having the principal share. We have mentioned that Arnauld
asked her opinion on the " Discourse" prefixed to his
" Logic," and we may conclude from this that he had found
her judgment valuable in many other cases. Moreover, the
persecution of the Port Royalists had commenced, and she was
uniting with Madame de Longueville in aiding and protecting
her pious friends. Moderate in her Jansenism, as in every-

60 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

thing else, she held that the famous formulary denouncing the
Augustinian doctrine, and declaring it to have been originated
by Jansenius, should be signed without reserve, and, as usual,
she had faith in conciliatory measures ; but her moderation was
no excuse for inaction. She was at one time herself threatened
with the necessity of abandoning her residence at Port Royal,
and had thought of retiring to a religious house at Auteuil, a
village near Paris. She did, in fact, pass some summers there,
and she sometimes took refuge with her brother, the Comman-
deur de Souvre, with Madame de Montausier, or Madame de
Longueville. The last was much bolder in her partisanship
than her friend, and her superior wealth and position enabled
her to give the Port Royalists more efficient aid. Arnauld and
Nicole resided five years in her house ; it was under her
protection that the translation of the New Testament was
carried on and completed, and it was chiefly through her
efforts that, in 1669, the persecution was brought to an end.
Madame de Sable co-operated with all her talent and interest
in the same direction ; but here, as elsewhere, her influence
was chiefly valuable in what she stimulated others to do, rather
than in what she did herself. It was by her that Madame de
Longueville was first won to the cause of Port Royal ; and we
find this ardent brave woman constantly seeking the advice and
sympathy of her more timid and self-indulgent, but sincere and
judicious friend.

In 1669, when Madame de Sable had at length rest from
these anxieties, she was at the good old age of seventy, but she
lived nine years longer — years, we may suppose, chiefly
dedicated to her spiritual concerns. This gradual, calm decay
allayed the fear of death, which had tormented her more
vigorous days ; and she died with tranquillity and trust. It is
a beautiful trait of these last moments that she desired not to
be buried with her family, or even at Port Royal, among her
saintly and noble companions — but in the cemetery of her
parish, like one of the people, without pomp or ceremony.

It is worth while to notice, that with Madame de Sable, as

WOMAN" IIS" FRANCE : MADAME DE SABLE. 61

with some other remarkable French women, the part of her life
which is richest in interest and results is that which is looked
forward to by most of her sex with melancholy as the period of
decline. When between fifty and sixty, she had philosophers,
wits, beauties, and saints clustering around her ; and one
naturally cares to know what was the elixir which gave her this
enduring and general attraction. We think it was, in a great
degree, that well-balanced development of mental powers which
gave her a comprehension of varied intellectual processes, and
a tolerance for varied forms of character, which is still rarer in
women than in men. Here was one point of distinction
between her and Madame de Longueville ; and an amusing
passage, which Sainte-Beuve has disinterred from the writings
of the Abbe St. Pierre, so well serves to indicate, by contrast,
what we regard as the great charm of Madame de Sable's mind,
that we shall not be wandering from our subject in quoting it.

" I one day asked M. Nicole what was the character of Mme. de
Longueville's intellect ; he told me it was very subtle and delicate in
the penetration of character ; but very small, very feeble, and that
her comprehension was extremely narrow in matters of science and
reasoning, and on all speculations that did not concern matters of
sentiment. For example, he added, I one day said to her that I could
wager and demonstrate that there were in Paris at least two inhabi-
tants who had the same number of hairs, although I could not point
out who these two men were. She told me I could never be sure of
it until I had counted the hairs of these two men. Here is niy
demonstration, I said : I take it for granted that the head which is
most amply supplied with hairs has not more than 200,000, and the
head which is least so has but one hair. Now, if you suppose that
200,000 heads have each a different number of hairs, it necessarily
follows that they have each one of the numbers of hairs which form
the series from one to 200,000 ; for if it were supposed that there
were two among these 200,000 who had the same number of hairs, I
should have gained my wager. Supposing, then, that these 200,000
inhabitants have all a different number of hairs, if I add a single
inhabitant who has hairs, and who has not more than 200,000, it
necessarily follows that this number of hairs, whatever it may be,
will be contained in the series from one to 200,000, and consequent-
ly will be equal to the number of hairs oft one of the previous 200,000

62 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

inhabitants. Now as, instead of one inhabitant more than 200,000,
there are nearly 800,000 inhabitants in Paris, you see clearly that
there must be many heads which have an equal number of hairs,
though I have not counted them. Still Mme. de Longueville could
never comprehend that this equality of hairs could be demonstrated,
and always maintained that the only way of proving it was to count
them."

Surely, the most ardent admirer of feminine sballowness
must have felt some irritation when he found himself arrested
by this dead wall of stupidity, and have turned with relief to
the larger intelligence of Madame de Sable, who was not the less
graceful, delicate, and feminine because she could follow a
train of reasoning, or interest herself in a question of science.
In this combination consisted her pre-eminent charm : she was
not a genius, not a heroine, but a woman whom men could
more than love — whom they could make their friend, con-
fidante, and counsellor ; the sharer, not of their joys and
sorrows only, but of their ideas and aims.

Such was Madame de Sable, whose name is, perhaps, new to
some of our readers, so far does it lie from the surface of
literature and history. We have seen, too, that she was only
one among a crowd — one in a firmament of feminine stars
which, when once the biographical telescope is turned upon
them, appear scarcely less remarkable and interesting. Now,
if the reader recollects what was the position and average
intellectual character of women in the high society of England
during the reigns of James the First and the two Charleses — the
period through which Madame de Sable's career extends — we
think he will admit our position as to the early superiority of
womanly development in France, and this fact, with its causes,
has not merely an historical interest : it has an important
bearing on the culture of women in the present day. Women
become superior in France by being admitted to a common
fund of ideas, to common objects of interest with men ; and this
must ever be the essential condition at once of true womanly
culture and of true social well-being. We have no faith in
feminine conversazioni, whore ladies are eloquent on Apollo

WOMAN IN FRANCE I MADAME DE SABLE. 63

and Mars ; though we sympathize with the yearning activity of
faculties which, deprived of their proper material, waste them-
selves in weaving fabrics out of cobwebs. Let the whole field
of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then
that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of
being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between
the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the
truth and beauty of life. Then we shall have that marriage of
minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and
feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of
human happiness.

III.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING.*

GIVEN, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not
higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great
glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid
of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputa-
tion in English society ? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity
in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for pro-
found instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom,
bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given
piety ? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher ; he
will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great
ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition,
a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let
him shun practical extremes and be ultra only in what is purely
theoretic ; let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudi-
narian on fasting ; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity of
punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts

»

* 1. " The Church before the Flood." By the Rev. John Gum-
ming, D.D. 2. " Occasional Discourses." By the Rev. John Gum-
ming, "D.D. In two vols. 3. " Signs of the Times ; or, Present,
Past, and Future." By the Eev. John Gumming, D.D. 4. "The
Finger of God." By the Rev. John Gumming, D.D. 5. " Is Chris-
tianity from God? or, a Manual of Christian Evidence, for Scripture-
Readers, City Missionaries, Sunday-School Teachers, etc." By the
Rev. John Gumming, D.D. 6. Apocalyptic Sketches ; or, Lectures
on the Book of Revelation." First Series. By the Rev. John Cum.
ming, D.D. 7. "Apocalyptic Sketches." Second Series. By the
Rev. John Gumming, D.D. 8 " Prophetic Studies ; or, Lectures on
the Book of Daniel." By the Rev. John Gumming, D.D.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 65

of Time ; ardent and imaginative on the pre-millennial advent
of Christ, but cold and cautious toward every other infringe-
ment of the status quo. Let him fish for souls not with the
bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the drag-net of com-
fortable conformity. Let him be hard and literal ir» fain intf-
prctation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of un-
believers and adversaries, but when the letter of the Scriptures
presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth
century, let him use his spiritualizing alembic and disperse it
into impalpable ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of
Antichrist ; let him be less definite in showing what sin is than
in showing who is the Man of Sin, less expansive on the blessed-
ness of faith than on the accursedness of infidelity. Above
all, let him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, and rival
Moore's Almanack in the prediction of political events, tickling
the interest of hearers who are but moderately spiritual by
showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated problems and cha-
rades for their benefit, and how, if they are ingenious enough
to solve these, they may have their Christian graces nourished
by learning precisely to whom they may point as the " horn
that had eyes," " the lying prophet," and the "unclean
spirits." In this way he will draw men to him by the strong
cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized
with the name of piety. In this- way he may gain a metropoli-
tan pulpit ; the avenues to his church will be as crowded as the
passages to the opera ; he has but to print his prophetic ser-
mons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they will adorn the
drawing-room table of all evangelical ladies, who will regard
as a sort of pious ** light reading" the demonstration that the
prophecy of the locusts whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled
in the fact of the Turkish commander's having taken a horse's
tail for his standard, and that the French are the very frogs
predicted in the Revelations.

Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such circumstances is the
arrival of Sunday ! Somewhat at a disadvantage during the
week, in the presence of working-day interests and lay splen-

66 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

dors, on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a thou-
sand eyes, and predominates at once over the Amphitryon with
whom he dines, and the most captious member of his church or
vestry. He has an immense advantage over all other public
speakers. The platform orator is subject to the criticism of
hisses and groans. Counsel for the plaintiff expects the retort
of counsel for the defendant. The honorable gentleman on one
side of the House is liable to have his facts and figures shown
up by his honorable friend on the opposite side. Even the
scientific or literary lecturer, if he is dull or incompetent, may
see the best part of his audience quietly slip out one by one.
But the preacher is completely master of the situation : no one
may hiss, no one may depart. Like the writer of imaginary
conversations, he may put what imbecilities he pleases into
the mouths of his antagonists, and swell with triumph when
he has refuted them. He may riot in gratuitous assertions,
confident that no man will contradict him ; he may exercise
perfect free-will in logic, and invent illustrative experience ;
he may give an evangelical edition of history with the in-
convenient facts omitted : — all this he may do with impuni-
ty, certain that those of his hearers who are not sympathizing
are not listening. For the Press has no band of critics who go
the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch
for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a u feature" in
their, article : the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible
of all talkers. For this reason, at least, it is well that they do
not always allow their discourses to be merely fugitive, but are
often induced to fix them in that black and white in which
they are open to the criticism of any man who has the courage
and patience to treat them with thorough freedom of speech
and pen.

It is because we think this criticism of clerical teaching de-
sirable for the public good that we devote some pages to Dr.
Gumming. He is, as every one knows, a preacher of immense
popularity, and of the numerous publications in which he per-
petuates his pulpit labors, all circulate widely, and some, ac-

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 67

cording to their title-page, have reached the sixteenth thousand.
Now our opinion of these publications is the very opposite of
that given by a newspaper eulogist : we do not " believe that
the repeated issues of Dr. Cumming's thoughts are having a
beneficial effect on society," but the reverse ; and hence, little
inclined as we are to dwell on his pages, we think it worth
while to do so, for the sake of pointing out in them what we
believe to be profoundly mistaken and pernicious. Of Dr.
Gumming personally we know absolutely nothing : our ac-
quaintance with him is confined to a perusal of his works, our
judgment of him is founded solely on the manner in which he
has written himself down on his pages. We know neither
how he looks nor how he lives. We are ignorant whether,
like St. Paul, he has a bodily presence that is weak and con-
temptible, or whether his person is as florid and as prone to
amplification as his style. For aught we know, he may not
only have the gift of prophecy, but may bestow the profits of
all his works to feed the poor, and be ready to give his own
body to be burned with as much alacrity as he infers the ever-
lasting burning of Roman Catholics and Puseyites. jOut of the
pulpit he may be a model of justice, truthfulness, and the love
that thinketh no evil ; but we are obliged to judge of his char-
ity by the spirit we find in his sermons, and shall only be glad
to learn that his practice is, in many respects, an amiable noti
sequitur from his teaching.

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order.
There is not the slightest leaning toward mysticism in his Chris-
tianity— no indication of religious raptures, of delight in God,
of spiritual communion with the Father. He is most at home
in the forensic view of Justification, and dwells on salvation as
a scheme rather than as an experience. _He_jnsists on good
works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to be achieved
tpTHeglory of God, but he rarely represents them as the
spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with Divine
love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the histor-
ical, the circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and

68

practical. The great majority of his published sermons
are occupied with argument or philippic against Roman-
ists and unbelievers, with " vindications" of the Bible, with
the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism of
public events ; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual
and practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of
fringe in a hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in
the demonstration that the Pope is the Man of Sin ; he is copi-
ous on the downfall of the Ottoman empire ; he appears to
glow with satisfaction in turning a story which tends to show
how he abashed an " infidel ;" it is a favorite exercise with
him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth is
to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilber-
force being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Roman-
ists, Puseyites, and infidels arc given over to gnashing of teeth.
But of really spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of
Christ as a manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of
sympathy with that yearning over the lost and erring which
made Jesus \veep over Jerusalem, and prompted the sublime
prayer, " Father, forgive them," of the gentler fruits of the
Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth understanding
— of all this, we iind little trace in Dr. Cumming's dis-
courses.

His style is in perfect correspondence with this habit of
mind. Though diffuse, as that of all preachers must be, it has
rapidity of movement, perfect clearness, and some aptness of
illustration. He has much of that literary talent which makes
a good journalist — the power of beating out an idea over a
large space, and of introducing far-fetched d propos. His
writings have, indeed, no high merit : they have no originality
or force of thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no
depth of emotion. Throughout nine volumes we have alighted
on no passage which impressed us as worth extracting, and
placing among the "beauties" of evangelical writers, such as
Robert Hall, Foster the Essayist, or Isaac Taylor. Everywhere
there is commonplace cleverness, nowhere a spark of rare

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 69

thought, of lofty sentiment, of pathetic tenderness. We feel
ourselves in company with a voluble retail talker, whose lan-
guage is exuberant but not exact, and to whom we should never
think of referring for precise information or for well-digested
thought and experience. His argument continually slides into
wholesale assertion and vague declamation, and in his love of
ornament he frequently becomes tawdry. For example, he tells
us (" Apoc. Sketches," p. 265) that " Botany weaves around
the cross her amaranthine garlands ; and Newton comes from
his starry home — Linnaeus from his flowery resting-place — and
Werner and Hutton from their subterranean graves at the voice
of Chalmers, to acknowledge that all they learned and elicited
in their respective provinces has only served to show more
clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is enthroned on the riches of the
universe :" — and so prosaic an injunction to his hearers as that
they should choose a residence within an easy distance of
church, is magnificently draped by him as an exhortation to
prefer a house " that basks in the sunshine of the countenance
of God." Like all preachers of his class, he is more fertile in
imaginative paraphrase than in close exposition, and in this
way he gives us some remarkable fragments of what we may
call the romance of Scripture, filling up the outline of the
record with an elaborate coloring quite undreamed of by more
literal minds. The serpent, he informs us, said to Eve, " Can
it be so ? Surely you are mistaken, that God hath said you
shall die, a creature so fair, so lovely, so beautiful. It is im-
possible. The laws of nature and physical science tell you that
my interpretation is correct ; you shall not die. I can tell you
by my own experience as an angel that you shall be as gods,
knowing good and evil." (" Apoc. Sketches," p. 294.) Again,
according to Dr. Cumming, Abel had so clear an idea of the
Incarnation and Atonement, that when he offered his sacrifice
" he must have said, ' I feel myself a guilty sinner, and that in
myself I cannot meet thee alive ; I lay on thine altar this vic-
tim, and I shed its blood as my testimony that mine should be
shed ; and I look for forgiveness and undeserved mercy through

70 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

him who is to bruise the serpent's head, and whose atonement
this typifies.' " (" Occas. Disc." vol. i. p. 23.) Indeed, his
productions are essentially ephemeral ; he is essentially a jour-
nalist, who writes sermons instead of leading articles, who, in-
stead of venting diatribes against her Majesty's Ministers,
directs his power of invective against Cardinal Wiseman and
the Puseyites ; instead of declaiming on public spirit, pero-
rates on the u glory of God." We fancy he is called, in the
more refined evangelical circles, an " intellectual preacher ;'?
by the plainer sort of Christians, a " flowery preacher ;" and
we are inclined to think that the more spiritually minded class
of believers, who look with greater anxiety for the kingdom of
God within them than for the visible advent of Christ in 1864,
will be likely to find Dr. dimming' s declamatory flights and
historico-prophetical exercitations as little better than " clouts
o' cauld parritch."

Such is our general impression from his writings after an at-
tentive perusal. There are some particular characteristics
which we shall consider more closely, but in doing so we must
be understood as altogether declining any doctrinal discussion.
We have no intention to consider the grounds of Dr. Cum-
ming's dogmatic system, to examine the principles of his pro-
phetic exegesis, or to question his opinion concerning the little
horn, the river Euphrates, or the seven vials. We identify
ourselves with no one of the bodies whom he regards it as his
special mission to attack : we give our adhesion neither to
Romanism, Puseyism, nor to that anomalous combination of
opinions which he introduces to us under the name of infidel^
ity. It is simply as spectators that we criticise Dr. Cumming's
mode of warfare, and we concern ourselves less with what he
holds to be Christian truth than with his manner of enforcing
that truth, less with the doctrines he teaches than with the
moral spirit and tendencies of his teaching.

One of the most striking characteristics of Dr. Cumming's
writings is unscrupulosity of statement. His motto apparently
is/ Christianitatem, quocunquemodo, Ckristianitatem ; and the

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 71

only system he includes under the term Christianity is Calvin-
istic Protestantism. Experience has so long shown that the
human brain is a congenial nidus for inconsistent beliefs that
we do not pause to inquire how Dr. Gumming, who attributes
the conversion of the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, can
think it necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by argumenta-
tive white lies. Nor do we for a moment impugn the genuine-
ness of his zeal for Christianity, or the sincerity of his convic-
tion that the doctrines he preaches are necessary to salvation ;
on the contrary, we regard the flagrant un veracity that we find
on his pages as an indirect result of that conviction — as a
result, namely, of the intellectual and moral distortion of
view which is inevitably produced by assigning to dogmas,
based on a very complex structure of evidence, the place and
authority of first truths. A distinct appreciation of the value
of evidence — in other words, the intellectual perception of truth
— is more closely allied to truthfulness of statement, or the
moral quality of veracity, than is generally admitted. There
is not a more pernicious fallacy afloat, in common parlance,
than the wide distinction made between intellect and morality.
Amiable impulses without intellect, man may have in common
with dogs and horses ; but morality, which is specifically
human, is dependent on the regulation of feeling by intellect.
All human beings who can be said to be in any degree moral
have their impulses guided, not indeed always by their own in-
tellect, but by the intellect of human beings who have gone
before them, and created traditions and associations which have
taken the rank of laws. Now that highest moral habit, the con-
stant preference of truth, both theoretically and practically, pre-
eminently demands the co-operation of the intellect with th,e
impulses, as is indicated by the fact that it is only found in
anything like completeness in the highest class of minds. In
accordance with this we think it is found that, in proportion as
religious sects exalt feeling above intellect, and believe them-
selves to be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a spon-
taneous exertion of their faculties— that is, in proportion as

72 THE ESSAYS OP "GEORGE ELIOT."

they are removed from rationalism — their sense of truthfulness
is misty and confused. No one can have talked to the more
enthusiastic Methodists and listened to their stories of miracles
without perceiving that they require no other passport to a
statement than that it accords with their wishes and their
general conception of God's dealings ; nay, they regard as a
symptom of sinful scepticism an inquiry into the evidence for a
story which they think unquestionably tends to the glory of
God, and in retailing such stories, new particulars, further
tending to his glory, are " borne in" upon their minds. Now,
Dr. Gumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic pietist :
within a certain circle — within the mill of evangelical ortho-
doxy— his intellect is perpetually at work ; but that principle
of sophistication which, our friends the Methodists derive from
the predominance of their pietistic feelings, is involved for him
in the doctrine of verbal inspiration ; what is for them a state
of emotion submerging the intellect, is with him a formula im-
prisoning the intellect, depriving it of its proper function — the
free search for truth — and making it the mere servant-of-all-work
to a foregone conclusion. Minds fettered by this doctrine no
longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested
by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture ;
they do not search for facts, as such, but for facts that will
bear out their doctrine. They become accustomed to reject the
more direct evidence in favor of the less direct, and where
adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must resort to de-
vices and expedients in order to explain away contradiction.
It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the per- \
ception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the
man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the
precipice of falsehood.

We have entered into this digression for the sake of mitigat-
ing the inference that is likely to be drawn from that charac-
teristic of Dr. Cumming's works to which we have pointed.
He is much in the same intellectual condition as that professor
of Padua, who, in order to disprove Galileo's discovery of

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 73

Jupiter's satellites, urged that as there were only seven metals
there could not be more than seven planets — a mental condi-
tion scarcely compatible with candor. And we may well sup-
pose that if the professor had held the belief in seven planets,
and no more, to be a necessary condition of salvation, his
mental condition would have been so dazed that even if he had
consented to look through Galileo's telescope, his eyes would
have reported in accordance with his inward alarms rather than
with the external fact. So long as a belief in propositions is
regarded as indispensable to salvation, the pursuit of truth as
such is not possible, any more than it is possible for a man
who is swimming for his life to make meteorological observa-
tions on the storm which threatens to overwhelm him. The
sense of alarm and haste, the anxiety for personal safety, which
Dr. Gumming insists upon as the proper religious attitude,
unmans the nature, and allows no thorough, calm thinking no
truly noble, disinterested feeling. Hence, we by no means
suspect that the unscrupulosity of statement with which we
charge Dr. Gumming, extends beyond the sphere of his theo-
logical prejudices ; we do not doubt that, religion apart, he ap-
preciates and practices veracity.

A grave general accusation must be supported by details,
and in adducing those we purposely select the most obvious
cases of misrepresentation — such as require no argument to ex-
pose them, but can be perceived at a glance. Among Dr.
Gumming' s numerous books, one of the most notable for un-
scrupulosity of statement is the " Manual of Christian Evi-
dences," written, as he tells us in his Preface, not to give the
deepest solutions of the difficulties in question, but to furnish
Scripture Readers, City Missionaries, and Sunday School
Teachers, with a " ready reply" to sceptical arguments. This
announcement that readiness was the chief quality sought for
in the solutions here given, modifies our inference from the
other qualities which those solutions present ; and it is but fair
to presume that when the Christian disputant is not in a hurry
Dr. Gumming wtfuld recfcmmend replies teas ready and more

74 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

veracious. Here is an example of what in another place * he
tells his readers is " change in their pocket ... a little ready
argument which they can employ, and therewith answer a fool
according to his folly." From the nature of this argumenta-
tive small coin, we are inclined to think Dr. Cumming under-
stands answering a fool according to his folly to mean, giving
him a foolish answer. We quote from the " Manual of Chris-
tian Evidences," p. 62.

" Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped were among the
greatest monsters that ever walked the earth. Mercury was a thief ;
and because he was an expert thief he was enrolled among the gods.
Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard, and therefore he was
enrolled among the gods. Venus was a dissipated and abandoned
courtesan, and therefore she was enrolled among the goddesses.
Mars was a savage, that gloried in battle and in blood, and there-
fore he was deified and enrolled among the gods."

Does Dr. Cumming believe the purport of these sentences ?
If so, this passage is worth handing down as his theory of the
Greek myth — as a specimen of the astounding ignorance which
was possible in a metropolitan preacher, A.D. 1854. And if
he does not believe them . . . The inference must then be,
that he thinks delicate veracity about the ancient Greeks is not
a Christian virtue, but only a " splendid sin" of the unregen-
erate. This inference is rendered the more probable by our
rinding, a little further on, that he is not more scrupulous
about the moderns, if they come under his definition of " In-
fidels." But the passage we are about to quote in proof of
this has a worse quality than its discrepancy with fact. Who
that has a spark of generous feeling, that rejoices in the pres-
ence of good in a fellow-being, has not dwelt with pleasure on
the thought that Lord Byron's unhappy career was ennobled
and purified toward its close by a high and sympathetic pur-
pose, by honest and energetic efforts for his fellow-men ? Who
has not read with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, beau-

* " Lect. on Daniel," p.. 6.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 75

tiful as the after-glow of sunset, in which love and resignation
are mingled with something of a melancholy heroism ? Who
has not lingered with compassion over the dying scene at Mis-
solonghi — the sufferer's inability to make his farewell messages
of love intelligible, and the last long hours of silent pain ? Yet
for the sake of furnishing his disciples with a " ready reply,"
Dr. Gumming can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a
^ad-spirited falsity like the following :

* We have one striking exhibition of an infidel's brightest thoughts, in
some lines written in his dying moments by a man, gifted with great
genius, capable of prodigious intellectual prowess, but of worthless
principle, and yet more worthless practices — I mean the celebrated
Lord Byron. He says :

" 'Though gay companions o'er the bowl

Dispel awhile the sense of ill,
Though pleasure fills the maddening soul,
The heart — the heart is lonely still.

" 'Ay, but to die, and go, alas !

Where all have gone and all must go ;
To be the Nothing that I was,
Ere born to life and living woe !

Mf Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,

Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
Tis something better not to be.

" 'Nay, for myself, so dark my fate

Through every turn of life hath been,
Man and the world so much / hate,
I care not when I quit the scene.' "

It is difficult to suppose that Dr. Gumming can have been so
grossly imposed upon — that he can be so ill-informed as really
to believe that these lines were " written" by Lord Byron in
his dying moments ; but, allowing him the full benefit of that
possibility, how shall we explain his introduction of this feebly
rabid doggrel as " an infidel's brightest thoughts ?"

In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr. Gumming
directs most of his arguments against opinions that are either

76 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT. "

totally imaginary, or that belong to the past rather than to the
present, while he entirely fails to meet the difficulties actually
felt and urged by those who are unable to accept Revelation.
There can hardly be a stronger proof of misconception as to the
character of free-thinking in the present day, than the recom-
mendation of Leland's " Short and Easy Method with the
Deists" — a method which is unquestionably short and easy for
preachers disinclined to reconsider their stereotyped modes of
thinking and arguing, but which has quite ceased to realize
those epithets in the conversion of Deists. Yet Dr. Cumming
not only recommends this book, but takes the trouble himself to
write a feebler version of its arguments. For example, on the
question of the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testa-
ment writing's, he says : "If, therefore, at a period long sub-
sequent to the death of Christ, a number of men had appeared
in the world, drawn up a book which they christened by the
name of the Holy Scripture, and recorded these things which
appear in it as facts when they were only the fancies of their
own imagination, surely the Jews would have instantly re-
claimed that no such events transpired, that no such person
as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that their
crucifixion of Him, and their alleged evil treatment of his
apostles, were mere fictions."* It is scarcely necessary
to say that, in such argument as this, Dr. Cumming is
beating the air. He is meeting a hypothesis which no
one holds, and totally missing the real question. The only
type of " infidel " whose existence Dr. Cumming recognizes
is that fossil personage who ' ' calls the Bible a lie and a for-
gery." He seems to be ignorant — or he chooses to ignore
the fact — that there is a large body of eminently instructed and
earnest men who regard the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures
as a series of historical documents, to be dealt with accord-
ing to the rules of historical criticism, and that an equal-
ly large number of men, who are not historical critics, find

* "Man of Ev." p. 81.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 77

the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the Scriptures op-
posed to their profotindest moral convictions. Dr. Cum-
ming's infidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, tries to
convince himself that there is no God, and that Christianity is
an imposture, but who is all the while secretly conscious that
he is opposing the truth, and cannot help " letting out" admis-
sions " that the Bible is the Book of God." We are favored
with the following " Creed of the Infidel :"

" I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God is
matter ; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or not. I
believe also that the world was not made, but that the world made
itself, or that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever. I
believe that man is a beast ; that the soul is the body, and that the
body is the soul ; and that after death there is neither body nor
soul. I believe there is no religion, that natural religion is the only
religion, and all religion unnatural I believe not in Moses ; I believe
in the first philosophers. I believe not in the evangelists ; I be-
lieve in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes. I believe in
Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not in
revelation ; 1 believe in tradition ; 1 believe in the Talmud ; 1 believe in the
Koran ; I believe not in the Bible. I believe in Socrates ; I believe
in Confucius ; I believe in Mahomet ; I believe not in Christ. And
lastly, 1 believe in all unbelief."

The intellectual and moral monster whose creed is this com-
plex web of contradictions, is, moreover, according to Dr.
Gamming, a being who unites much simplicity and imbecility
with his Satanic hardihood — much tenderness of conscience
with his obdurate vice. Hear the " proof :"

" I once met with an acute and enlightened infidel, with whom I
reasoned day after day, and for hours together ; I submitted to him
the internal, the external, and the experimental evidences, but made
no impression on his scorn and unbelief. At length I entertained a
suspicion that there was something morally, rather than intellectu-
ally wrong, and that the bias was not in the intellect, but in the
heart ; one day therefore I said to him, ' I must now state my con-
viction, and you may call me uncharitable, but duty compels me ;
you are living in some known and gross sin.' The man's countenance
became pale ; he bowed and left me: '— " Man. of Evidences," p. 254.

78 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT/'

Here we have the remarkable psychological phenomenon of
an " acute and enlightened " man who, deliberately purposing
to indulge in a favorite sin, and regarding the Gospel with
scorn and unbelief, is, nevertheless, so much more scrupulous
than the majority of Christians, that he cannot " embrace sin
and the Gospel simultaneously ;" who is so alarmed at the
Gospel in which he does not believe, that he cannot be easy
without trying to crush it ; whose acuteness and enlightenment
suggest to him, as a means of crushing the Gospel, to argue
from day to day with Dr. Gumming ; and who is withal so
naive that he is taken by surprise when Dr. Gumming, failing
in argument, resorts to accusation, and so tender in conscience
that, at the mention of his sin, he turns pale and leaves the
spot. If there be any human mind in existence capable of
holding Dr. Cumming's " Creed of the In6del," of at the
same time believing in tradition and " believing in all un-
belief," it must be the mind of the infidel just described, for
whose existence we have Dr. Gumming' s ex officio word as a
theologian ; and to theologians we may apply what Sancho
Panza says of the bachelors of Salamanca, that they never tell
lies — except when it suits their purpose.

The total absence from Dr. Cumming's theological mind of
any demarcation between fact and rhetoric is exhibited in
another passage, where he adopts the dramatic form :

" Ask the peasant on the hills --and I have asked amid the mountains
of JSraemar and Deeside — " How do you know that this book is divine,
and that the religion you profess is true ? You never read Paley ? '
' No, I never heard of him.' — ' You have never read Butler ? ' * No, I
have never heard of him. '— ' Nor Chalmers ? ' ' No, I do not know
him.' — ' You have never read any books on evidence ? ' ' No, I have
read no such books.' -' Then, how do you know this book is true ? '
1 Know it ! Tell me that the Dee, the Clunie, and the Garrawalt, the
streams at my feet, do not run ; that the winds do not sigh amid the
gorges of these blue hills ; that the sun does not kindle the peaks of
Loch-na-Gar ; tell me my heart does not beat, and I will believe you ;
but do not tell me the Bible is not divine. I have found its truth
illuminating my footsteps ; its consolations sustaining my heart. May

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 79

my tongue cleave to my month's roof, and my right hand forget its
cunning, if I every deny what is my deepest inner experience, that
this blessed book is the book of God.' "— " Church Before the
Flood," p. 35.

Dr. Gumming is so slippery and lax in his mode of presenta-
tion that we find it impossible to gather whether he means to
assert that this is what a peasant on the mountains of Braemar
did say, or that it is what such a peasant would say : in the
one case, the passage may be taken as a measure of his truth-
fulness ; in the other, of his judgment.

His own faith, apparently, has not been altogether intuitive,
like that of his rhetorical peasant, for he tells us (" Apoc.
Sketches," p. 405) that he has himself experienced what it is to
have religious doubts. u I was tainted while at the Uni-
versity by this spirit of scepticism. I thought Christianity
might not be true. The very possibility of its being true was
the thought I felt I must meet and settle. Conscience could
give me no peace till I had settled it. I read, and I read from
that day, for fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now I am
as convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this book is the
book of God as that I now address you." This experience,
however, instead of impressing on him the fact that doubt may
be the stamp of a truth-loving mind — that sunt quibus non
credidisse honor est, et fidei futures pignus — seems to have
produced precisely the contrary effect. It has not enabled
him even to conceive the condition of a mind ' ' perplext in
faith but pure in deeds, ' ' craving light, yearning for a faith that
will harmonize and cherish its highest powers and aspirations,
but unable to find that faith in dogmatic Christianity. His
own doubts apparently were of a different kind. Nowhere in
his pages have we found a humble, candid, sympathetic
attempt to meet the difficulties that may be felt by an
ingenuous mind. Everywhere he supposes that the doubter is
hardened, conceited, consciously shutting his eyes to the light
— a fool who is to be answered according to his folly — that is,
with ready replies made up of reckless assertions, of apocryphal

80 THE ESSAYS OF " GEOBGE ELIOT."

anecdotes, and, where other resources fail, of vituperative
imputation. As to the reading which he has prosecuted for
fifteen years — either it has left him totally ignorant of the
relation which his own religious creed bears to the criticism
and philosophy of the nineteenth century, or he systematically
blinks that criticism and that philosophy ; and instead of
honestly and seriously endeavoring to meet and solve what he
knows to be the real difficulties, contents himself with setting
up popinjays to shoot at, for the sake of confirming the
ignorance and winning the heap admiration of his evangelical
hearers and readers. Like the Catholic preacher who, after
throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it as Luther, turned
to his audience and said, " You see this heretical fellow has
not a word to say for himself," Dr. Gumming, having drawn
his ugly portrait of the infidel, and put arguments of a con-
venient quality into his mouth, finds a " short and easy
method " of confounding this " croaking frog."

In his treatment of infidels, we imagine he is guided by a
mental process which may be expressed in the following
syllogism : Whatever tends to the glory of God is true ; it is
for the glory of God that infidels should be as bad as pos-
sible ; therefore, whatever tends to show that infidels are as bad
as possible is true. All infidels, he tells us, have been men of
" gross and licentious lives." Is there not some well-known
unbeliever, David Hume, for example, of whom even Dr.
Cumming's readers may have heard as an exception ? No
matter. Some one suspected that he was not an exception,
and as that suspicion tends to the glory of God, it is one for a
Christian to entertain. (See " Man. of Ev.," p. 73.) — If we
were unable to imagine this kind of self-sophistication, we
should be obliged to suppose that, relying on the ignorance of
his evangelical disciples, he fed them with direct and conscious
falsehoods. u Voltaire," he informs them, " declares there is
no God ;" he was " an antitheist, that is one who deliberately
and avowedly opposed and hated God ; who swore in his
blasphemy that he would dethrone him ;" and " advocated

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 81

the very depths of the lowest sensuality/' With regard to
many statements of a similar kind, equally at variance with
truth, in Dr. Gumming' s volumes, we presume that he has been
misled by hearsay or by the second-hand character of his
acquaintance with free-thinking literature. An evangelical
preacher is not obliged to be well-read. Here, however, is a
case which the extremest supposition of educated ignorance
will not reach. Even books of " evidences " quote from
Voltaire the line —

" Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait Tinventer ;"

even persons fed on the mere whey and buttermilk of literature
must know that in philosophy Voltaire was nothing if not
a theist — must know that he wrote not against God, but
against Jehovah, the God of the Jews, whom he believed to be
a false God — must know that to say Voltaire was an atheist
on this ground is as absurd as to say that a Jacobite opposed
hereditary monarchy because he declared the Brunswick
family had no title to the throne. That Dr. Gumming should
repeat the vulgar fables about Voltaire's death is merely what
we might expect from the specimens we have seen of his
illustrative stories. A man whose accounts of his own ex-
perience are apocryphal is not likely to put borrowed nar-
ratives to any severe test.

The alliance between intellectual and moral perversion is
strikingly typified by the way in which he alternates from the
unveracious to the absurd, from misrepresentation to con-
tradiction. Side by side with the abduction of " facts" such
as those we have quoted, we find him arguing on one page that
the Trinity was too grand a doctrine to have been conceived
by man, and was therefore Divine ; and on another page, that
the Incarnation had been preconceived by man, and is therefore
to be accepted as Divine. But we are less concerned with the
fallacy of his " ready replies" than with their falsity ; and
even of this we can only afford space for a very few speci-
mens. Here is one : " There is a thousand times more proof

82 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

that the gospel of John was written by him than there is that
the AvaftaaiS was written by Xenophon, or the Ars Poetica
by Horace." If Dr. Gumming had chosen Plato's Epistles or
Anacreon's Poems instead of the Anabasis or the Ars Poetica,
he would have reduced the extent of the falsehood, and would
have furnished a ready reply which would have been equally
effective with his Sunday-school teachers and their disputants.
Hence we conclude this prodigality of misstatement, this
exuberance of mendacity, is an effervescence of zeal in majorem
gloriam Dei. Elsewhere he tells us that " the idea of the
author of the * Vestiges ' is, that man is the development of
a monkey, that the monkey is the embryo man, so that if
you keep a baboon long enough, it will develop itself into a man.''1
How well Dr. Gumming has qualified himself to judge of the
ideas in " that very unphilosophical book," as he pronounces
it, may be inferred from the fact that he implies the author
of the " Vestiges" to have originated the nebular hypothesis.

In the volume from which the last extract is taken, even the
hardihood of assertion is surpassed by the suicidal character of
the argument. It is called " The Church before the Flood,"
and is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the question
between the Bible and Geology. Keeping within the limits
we have prescribed to ourselves, we do not enter into the matter
of this discussion ; we merely pause a little over the volume in
order to point out Dr. Gumming' s mode of treating the
question. He first tells us that " the Bible has not a single
scientific error in it ;" that " its slightest intimations of scien-
tific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance been
demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true," and he asks :

" How is it that Moses, with no greater education than the Hindoo
or the ancient philosopher, has written his book, touching science at
a thousand points, so accurately that scientific research has discov-
ered no flaws in it ; and yet in those investigations which have taken
place in more recent centuries, it has not been shown that he has
committed one single error, or made one solitary assertion which
can be proved by the maturest science, or by the most eagle-eyed
philosopher, to be incorrect, scientifically or historically?"

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 83

According to this the relation of the Bible to science should
be one of the strong points of apologists for revelation : the
scientific accuracy of Moses should stand at the head of their
evidences ; and they might urge with some cogency, that since
Aristotle, who devoted himself to science, and lived many
ages after Moses, does little else than err ingeniously, this fact,
that the Jewish Lawgiver, though touching science at a
thousand points, has written nothing that has not been
" demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true/' is an irrefrag-
able proof of his having derived his knowledge from a super-
natural source. How does it happen, then, that I)r. Gumming
forsakes this strong position ? How is it that we find him,
some pages further on, engaged in reconciling Genesis with the
discoveries of science, by means of imaginative hypotheses and
feats of " interpretation ?" Surely, that which has been
demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true does not require
hypothesis and critical argument, in order to show that it may
possibly agree with those very discoveries by means of which
its exact and strict truth has been demonstrated. And why
should Dr. Gumming suppose, as we shall presently find him
supposing, that men of science hesitate to accept the Bible,
because it appears to contradict their discoveries ? By his
own statement, that appearance of contradiction does not
exist ; on the contrary, it has been demonstrated that the
Bible precisely agrees with their discoveries. Perhaps, how-
ever, in saying of the Bible that its " slightest intimations of
scientific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance
been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,*' Dr.
Gumming merely means to imply that theologians have found
out a way of explaining the biblical text so that it no longer,
in their opinion, appears to be in contradiction with the dis-
coveries of science. One of two things, therefore : either he
uses language without the slightest appreciation of its real
meaning, or the assertions he makes on one page are directly
contradicted by the arguments he urges on another.

Dr. Cumming's principles — or, we should rather say, con-

84 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

fused notions — of biblical interpretation, as exhibited in this
volume, are particularly significant of his mental calibre. He
says (" Church before the Flood," p. 93) : " Men of science,
who are full of scientific investigation and enamored of scien-
tific discovery, will hesitate before they accept a book which,
they think, contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal
disclosures they have made in the bowels of the earth, or
among the stars of the sky. To all these we answer, as we
have already indicated, there is not the least dissonance between
God's written book and the most mature discoveries of
geological science. One thing, however, there may be : there
may be a contradiction between the discoveries of geology and our
preconceived interpretations of the Bible. But this is not
because the Bible is wrong, but because our interpretation 13
wrong." (The italics in all cases are our own.)

Elsewhere he says : " It seems to me plainly evident that
the record of Genesis, when read fairly, and not in the light of
our prejudices — and mind you, the essence of Popery is to read
the Bible in the light of our opinions, instead of viewing our
opinions in the light of the Bible, in its plain and obvious sense
— falls in perfectly with the assertion of geologists."

On comparing these two passages, we gather that when Dr.
Gumming, under stress of geological discovery, assigns to the
biblical text a meaning entirely different from that which, on his
own showing, was universally ascribed to it for more than three
thousand years, he regards himself as " viewing his opinions in
the light of the Bible in its plain and obvious sense !" Now
he is reduced to one of two alternatives : either he must hold
that the " plain and obvious meaning" of the whole Bible
differs from age to age, so that the criterion of its meaning lies
iu the sum of knowledge possessed by each successive age — the
Bible being an elastic garment for the growing thought of
mankind ; or he must hold that some portions are amenable
to this criterion, and others not so. In the former case, he
accepts the principle of interpretation adopted by the early
German rationalists ; in the latter case he has to show a

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 85

further criterion by which we can judge what parts of the
Bible are elastic and what rigid. If he says that the inter-
pretation of the text is rigid wherever it treats of doctrines
necessary to salvation, we answer, that for doctrines to be
necessary to salvation they must first be true ; and in order to
be true, according to his own principle, they must be founded
on a correct interpretation of the biblical text. Thus he makes
the necessity of doctrines to salvation the criterion of infallible
interpretation, and infallible interpretation the criterion of
doctrines being necessary to salvation. He is whirled round
in a circle, having, by admitting the principle of novelty in
interpretation, completely deprived himself of a basis. That
he should seize the very moment in which he is most palpably
betraying that he has no test of biblical truth beyond his own
opinion, as an appropriate occasion for flinging the rather
novel reproach against Popery that its essence is to " read the
Bible in the light of our opinions," would be an almost
pathetic self-exposure, if it were not disgusting. Imbecility
that is not even meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes
simply odious.

Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery are very
frequent with Dr. Gumming, and occur even in his more
devout passages, where their introduction must surely disturb
the spiritual exercises of his hearers. Indeed, Roman Catholics
fare worse with him even than infidels. Infidels are the small
vermin — the mice to be bagged en passant. The main object
of his chase — the rats which are to be nailed up as trophies —
are the Roman Catholics. Romanism is the masterpiece of
Satan ; but reassure yourselves ! Dr. Gumming has been
created. Antichrist is enthroned in the Vatican ; but he is
stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown-court. The
personality of Satan, as might be expected, is a very prominent
tenet in Dr. Cumming's discourses ; those who doubt it are,
he thinks, " generally specimens of the victims of Satan as a
triumphant seducer ;" and it is through the medium of this
doctrine that he habitually contemplates Roman Catholics.

86 THE ESSAYS OF

They are the puppets of which the devil holds the strings. It
is only exceptionally that he speaks of them as fellow-men,
acted on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as himself ; his
rule is to hold them up to his hearers as foredoomed instru-
ments of Satan and vessels of wrath. If he is obliged to admit
that they are "no sharns, " that they are "thoroughly in
earnest" — that is because they are inspired by hell, because
they are under an " infra-natural " influence. If their mis-
sionaries are found wherever Protestant missionaries go, this
zeal in propagating their faith is not in them a consistent
virtue, as it is in Protestants, but a " melancholy fact,"
affording additional evidence that they are instigated and
assisted by the devil. And Dr. Gumming is inclined to think
that they work miracles, because that is no more than might be
expected from the known ability of Satan who inspires them.*
He admits, indeed, that " there is a fragment of the Church
of Christ in the very bosom of that awful apostasy, "j- and that
there are members of the Church of Rome in glory ; but this
admission is rare and episodical — is a declaration, pro forma,
about as influential on the general disposition and habits as an
aristocrat's profession of democracy.

This leads us to mention another conspicuous characteristic
of Dr. Cumming's teaching — the absence of genuine charity.
It is true that he makes large profession of tolerance and
liberality within a certain circle ; he exhorts Christians to
unity ; he would have Churchmen fraternize with Dissenters,
and exhorts these two branches of God's family to defer the
settlement of their differences till the millennium. But the
love thus taught is the love of the clan, which is the correlative
of antagonism to the rest of mankind. It is not sympathy and
helpfulness toward men as men, but toward men as Chris-
tians, and as Christians in the sense of a small minority.
Dr. Cumming's religion may demand a tribute of love, but it
gives a charter to hatred ; it may enjoin charity, but it fosters

* " Signs of the Times," p. 38.
f " Apoc. Sketches," p. 243.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 87

all uncharitableness. If I believe that God tells me to love
my enemies, but at the same time hates His own enemies and
requires me to have one will with Him, which has the larger
scope, love or hatred ? And we refer to those pages of Dr.
Cumming's in which he opposes Roman Catholics, Puseyitcs,
and infidels — pages which form the larger proportion of what
he has published — for proof that the idea of God which both
the logic and spirit of his discourses keep present, to his
hearers, is that of a God who hates his enemies, a God who
teaches love by fierce denunciations of wrath — a God who
encourages obedience to his precepts by elaborately revealing
to us that his own government is in precise opposition to those
precepts. We know the usual evasions on this subject. We
know Dr. Gumming would say that even Roman Catholics are
to be loved and succored as men ; that he would help even that
" unclean spirit," Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch. But
who that is in the slightest degree acquainted with the action
of the human mind will believe that any genuine and large
charity can grow out of an exercise of love which is always to
have an arriere-pensee of hatred ? Of what quality would be
the conjugal love of a husband who loved his spouse as a wife,
but hated her as a woman ? It is reserved for the regenerate
mind, according to Dr. Cumming's conception of it, to be
" wise, amazed, temperate and furious, loyal and neutral, in a
moment." Precepts of charity uttered with a faint breath at
the end of a sermon are perfectly futile, when all the force of
the lungs has been spent in keeping the hearer's mind fixed on
the conception of his fellow-men not as fellow-sinners and
fellow-sufferers, but as agents of hell, as automata through
whom Satan plays his game upon earth — not on objects which
call forth their reverence, their love, their hope of good even in
the most strayed and perverted, but on a minute identification
of human things with such symbols as the scarlet whore, the
beast out of the abyss, scorpions whose sting is in their tails,
men who have the mark of the beast, and unclean spirits like
frogs. You might as well attempt to educate the child's sense

88 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

of beauty by hanging its nursery with the horrible and
grotesque pictures in which the early painters represented the
Last Judgment, as expect Christian graces to flourish on that
prophetic interpretation which Dr. Cumming offers as the
principal nutriment of his flock. Quite apart from the critical
basis of that interpretation, quite apart from the degree of
truth there may be in Dr. Cumming's prognostications —
questions into which we do not choose to enter — his use of
prophecy must be a priori condemned in the judgment of right-
minded persons, by its results as testified in the net moral
effect of his sermons. The best minds that accept Christianity
as a divinely inspired system, believe that the great end of
the Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating of men's
souls, the creating within them of holy dispositions, the sub-
duing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual enhancing of
the desire that the will of God — a will synonymous with good-
ness and truth — may be done on earth. But what relation to all
this has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of
the Christian in the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial
show, of which Satan is the wild beast in the shape of the
great red dragon, and two thirds of mankind the victims — the
whole provided and got up by God for the edification of the
saints ? The demonstration that the Second Advent is at hand,
if true, can have no really holy, spiritual effect ; the highest
state of mind inculcated by the Gospel is resignation to the
disposal of God's providence — " Whether we live, we live
unto the Lord ; whether we die, we die unto the Lord " — not
an eagerness to see a temporal manifestation which shall
confound the enemies of God and give exaltation to the saints ;
it is to dwell in Christ by spiritual communion with his nature,
not to fix the date when He shall appear in the sky. Dr.
Cumming's delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the
Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of Gog and Magog,
and in advertising the pre-millennial Advent, is simply the
transportation of political passions on to a so-called religious
platform ; it is the anticipation of the triumph of " our party,"

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 89

accomplished by our principal men being " sent for" into the
clouds. Let us be understood to speak in all seriousness. If
we were in search of amusement, we should not seek for it by
examining Dr. Cumming's works in order to ridicule them.
We are simply discharging a disagreeable duty in delivering
our opinion that, judged by the highest standard even of
orthodox Christianity, they are little calculated to produce —
" A closer walk with God,

A calm and heavenly frame ;"

but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency and pre-
tension, a hard and condemnatory spirit toward one's fellow-
men, and a busy occupation with the minutia3 of events, instead
of a reverent contemplation of great facts and a wise applica-
tion of great principles. It would be idle to consider Dr.
Cumming's theory of^ prophecy in any other light ; as a
philosophy of history or a specimen of biblical interpretation,
it bears about the same relation to the extension of genuine
knowledge as the astrological " house" in the heavens bears to
the true structure and relations of the universe.

The slight degree in which Dr. Cumming's faith is imbued
with truly human sympathies is exhibited in the way he treats
the doctrine of Eternal Punishment. Here a little of that readi-
ness to strain the letter of the Scriptures which he so often
manifests when his object is to prove a point against Roman-
ism, would have been an amiable frailty if it had been applied
on the side of mercy. When he is bent on proving that the
prophecy concerning the Man of Sin, in the Second Epistle to
the Thessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can extort from the
innocent word KaQiaai the meaning cathedrize, though why we
are to translate " He as God cathedrizes in the temple of
God," any more than we are to translate " cathedrize here,
while I go and pray yonder," it is for Dr. Cumraing to show
more clearly than he has yet done. But when rigorous lit-
erality will favor tne conclusion that the greater proportion of
the human race will be eternally miserable— then he is rigor-
ously literal.

90 THE ESSAYS OF

He says : " The Greek words, el? rovg al&vas TCJV
here translated * everlasting,' signify literally ' unto the ages
of ages ; alel &v, ' always being/ that is, everlasting, cease-
less existence. Plato uses the word in this sense when he says,
' The gods that live forever.' But I must also admit that
this word is used several times in a limited extent — as for in-
stance, 'The everlasting hills. ' Of course this does not mean
that there never will be a time when the hills will cease to
stand ; the expression here is evidently figurative, but it
implies eternity. The hills shall remain as long as the earth
lasts, and no hand has power to remove them but that Eternal
One which first called them into being ; so the state of the soul
remains the same after death as long as the soul exists, and
no one has power to alter it. The same word is often applied
to denote the existence of God — ' the Eternal God. ' Can we
limit the word when applied to him ? Because occasionally
used in a limited sense, we must not infer it is always so.
* Everlasting ' plainly means in Scripture ' without end ; ' it is
only to be explained figuratively when it is evident it cannot be
interpreted in any other way. ' '

We do not discuss whether Dr. Gumming' s interpretation
accords with the meaning of the New Testament writers : we
simply point to the fact that the text becomes elastic for him
when he wants freer play for his prejudices, while he makes it
an adamantine barrier against the admission that mercy will
ultimately triumph — that God, i.e., Love, will be all in all.
He assures us that he does not'" delight to dwell on the misery
of the lost :" and we believe him. That misery does not
seem to be a question of feeling with him, either one way or
the other. He does not merely resign himself to the awful
mystery of eternal punishment ; he contends for it. Do we
object, he asks,* to everlasting happiness ? then why object to
everlasting misery ? — reasoning which is perhaps felt to be
cogent by theologians who anticipate the everlasting happiness
for themselves, and the everlasting misery for their neighbors.

* " Man. of Christ. Ev." p. 184.

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 91

The compassion of some Christians has been glad to take
refuge in the opinion that the Bible allows the supposition of
annihilation for the impenitent ; but the rigid sequence of Dr.
Gumming' s reasoning will not admit of this idea. He sees
that flax is made into linen, and linen into paper ; that paper,
when burned, partly ascends as smoke and then again descends
in rain, or in dust and carbon. " Not one particle of the
original flax is lost, although there may be not one particle that
has not undergone an entire change : annihilation is not, but
change of form is. It will be thus with our bodies at the resur-
rection. The death of the body means not annihilation.
Not one feature of the face will be annihilated." Having
established the perpetuity of the body by this close and clear
analogy, namely, that as there is a total change in the particles
of flax in consequence of which they no longer appear as flax,
so there will not be a total change in the particles of the
human body, but they will reappear as the human body, he
does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of the body
involves the perpetuity of the soul, but requires separate
evidence for this, and finds such evidence by begging the very
question at issue — namely, by asserting that the text of the
Scripture implies " the perpetuity of the punishment of the
lost, and the consciousness of the punishment which they
endure." Yet it is drivelling like this which is listened to and
lauded as eloquence by hundreds, and which a Doctor of
Divinity can believe that he has his *' reward as a saint" for
preaching and publishing !

One more characteristic of Dr. Gumming' s writings, and we
have done. This is the perverted moral judgment that every-
where reigns in them. Not that this perversion is peculiar to
Dr. Gumming : it belongs to the dogmatic system which he
shares with all evangelical believers. But the abstract
tendencies of systems are represented in very different de-
grees, according to the different characters of those who
embrace them ; just as the same food tells differently on dif-
ferent constitutions : and there are certain qualities in Dr,

Gumming that cause the perversion of which we speak to
exhibit itself with peculiar prominence in his teaching. A
single extract will enable us to explain what we mean :

" The ' thoughts ' are evil. If it were possible for human eye to
discern and to detect the thoughts that flutter around the heart of an
unregenerate man — to mark their hue and their multitude, it would
be found that they are indeed ' evil.' We speak not of the thief, and
the murderer, and the adulterer, and such like, whose crimes draw
down the cognizance of earthly tribunals, and whose unenviable char-
acter it is to take the lead in the paths of sin ; but we refer to the
men who are marked out by their practice of many of the seemliest
moralities of life — by the exercise of the kindliest affections, and the
interchange of the sweetest reciprocities — and of these men, if unre-
newed and unchanged, we pronounce that their thoughts are evil.
To ascertain this, we must refer to the object around which our
thoughts ought continually to circulate. The Scriptures assert that
this object is the glory of God ; that for this we ought to think, to act,
and to speak ; and that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there
13 involved the purest and most endearing bliss. Now it will be found
true of the most amiable men, that with all their good society and
kindliness of heart, and all their strict and unbending integrity, they
never or rarely think of the glory of God. The question never occurs
to them— Will this redound to the glory of God ? Will this make his
name more known, his being more loved, his praise more sung ?
And just inasmuch as their every thought comes short of this lofty
aim, in so much does it come short of good, and entitle itself to the
character of evil. If the glory of God is not the absorbing and the
influential aim of their thoughts, then they are evil ; but God's glory
never enters into their minds. They are amiable, because it chances
to be one of the constitutional tendencies of their individual charac-
ter, left uneffaced by the Fall ; and they are just and upright, because
they have perhaps no occasion to be otherwise, or find it subservient to their
interests to maintain such a character." — " Occ. Disc." vol. i. p. 8.

Again we read (Ibid. p. 236) :

" There are traits in the Christian character which the mere
worldly man cannot understand. He can understand the outward
morality, but he cannot understand the inner spring of it ; he can
understand Dorcas' liberality to the poor, but he cannot penetrate
tbe ground of Dorcas' liberality. Some men give to the poor because they
are ostentatious, or because they think the poor Witt ultimately avenge their

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. CUMMING. 93

neglect ; but the Christian gives to the poor, not only because he has sensi-
bilities like other men, but because inasmuch as ye did it to the least of
these my brethren ye did it unto me."

Before entering on the more general question involved in
these quotations, we must point to the clauses we have marked
with italics, where Dr. Gumming appears to express sentiments
which, we are happy to think, are not shared by the majority
of his brethren in the faith. Dr. Gumming, it seems, is
unable to conceive that the natural man can have any other
motive for being just and upright than that it is useless to be
otherwise, or that a character for honesty is profitable ;
according to his experience, between the feelings of ostenta-
tion and selfish alarm and the feeling of love to Christ, there
lie no sensibilities which can lead a man to relieve want.
Granting, as we should prefer to think, that it is Dr. Cuin-
ming's exposition of his sentiments which is deficient rather
than his sentiments themselves, still, the fact that the deficiency
lies precisely here, and that he can overlook it not only in the
haste of oral delivery but in the examination of proof-sheets,
is strongly significant of his mental bias — of the faint degree
in which he sympathizes with the disinterested elements of
human feeling, and of the fact, which we are about to dwell
upon, that those feelings are totally absent from his religious
theory. Now, Dr. Gumming invariably assumes that, in ful-
minating against those who differ from him, he is standing on a
moral elevation to which they are compelled reluctantly to look
up ; that his theory of motives and conduct is in its loftiness
and purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious desires
and practice. It is time he should be told that the reverse is
the fact ; that there are men who do not merely cast a super-
ficial glance at his doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or
justice, but who, after a close consideration of that doctrine,
pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development, and
therefore positively noxious. Dr. Gumming is fond of
showing up the teaching of Romanism, and accusing it of
undermining true morality : it is time he should be told that

94 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE

there is a large body, both of thinkers and practical men, who
hold precisely the same opinion of his own teaching — with this
difference, that they do not regard it as the inspiration of
Satan, but as the natural crop of a human mind where the soil
is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs.

Dr. Gumming' s theory, as we have seen, is that actions are
good or evil according as they are prompted or not prompted
by an exclusive reference to the " glory of God." God, then,
in Dr. Cumming's conception, is a being who has no pleasure
in the exercise of love and truthfulness and justice, considered
as affecting the well-being of his creatures ; He has satisfaction
in us only in so far as we exhaust our motives and dispositions
of all relation to our fellow-beings, and replace sympathy with
men by anxiety for the '* glory of God." The deed of Grace
Darling, when she took a boat in the storm to rescue drowning
men and women, was not good if it was only compassion that
nerved her arm and impelled her to brave death for the chance
of saving others ; it was only good if she asked herself — Will
this redound to the glory of God ? The man who endures
tortures rather than betray a trust, the man who spends years
in toil in order to discharge an obligation from which the law
declares him free, must be animated not by the spirit of fidelity
to his fellow-man, but by a desire to make " the name of God
more known." The sweet charities of domestic life — the
ready hand and the soothing word in sickness, the forbearance
toward frailties, the prompt helpfulness in all efforts and
sympathy in all joys, are simply evil if they result from a
" constitutional tendency," or from dispositions disciplined by
the experience of suffering and the perception of moral loveli-
ness. A wife is not to devote herself to her husband out of
love to him and a sense of the duties implied by a close
relation — she is to be a faithful wife for the glory of God ; if
she feels her natural affections welling up too strongly, she is
to repress them ; it will not do to act from natural affection —
she must think of the glory of God. A man is to guide his
affairs with energy and discretion, not from an honest desire to

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 95

fulfil liis responsibilities as a member of society and a father,
"but — that " God's praise may be sung." Dr. Cumraing's
Christian pays his debts for the glory of God ; were it not for
tie coercion of that supreme motive, it would be evil to pay
them. A man is not to be just from a feeling of justice ; he
is not to help his fellow-men out of good-will to his fellow-
men ; he is not to be a tender husband and father out of
affection : all these natural muscles and fibres are to be torn
away and replaced by a patent steel-spring — anxiety for the
"glory of God."

Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the com-
plete prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious
systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than
religious systems, and though dogmas may hamper, they cannot
absolutely repress its growth : build walls round the living tree
as you will, the bricks and mortar have by and by to give
way before the slow and sure operation of the sap. But next
to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the principle of
persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more ob-
structive of true moral development than this substitution of a
reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the
sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only
in proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into
activity by their proper objects ; pity is strong only because we
are strongly impressed by suffering ; and only in proportion as
it is compassion that speaks through the eyes when we soothe,
and moves the arm when we succor, is a deed strictly benev-
olent. If the soothing or the succor be given because another
being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to be one of
benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of
self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in produc-
ing an action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct
motive ; and conversely, when the direct motive is strong, tho
action of accessory motives will be excluded. If, then, as Dr.
Gumming inculcates, the glory of God is to be " the absorbing
and the influential aim" in our thought* aud actions, this must

96 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

tend to neutralize the human sympathies ; the stream of feeling
will be diverted from its natural current in order to feed an
artificial canal. The idea of God is really moral in its in-
fluence—it really cherishes all that is best and loveliest in man
— only when God is contemplated as sympathizing with the
pure elements of human feeling, as possessing infinitely all
those attributes which we recognize to be moral in humanity.
In this light, the idea of God and the sense of His presence
intensify all noble feeling, and encourage all noble effort, on
the same principle that human sympathy is found a source of
strength : the brave man feels braver when he knows that
another stout heart is beating time with his ; the devoted
woman who is wearing out her years in patient effort to
alleviate suffering or save vice from the last stages of degrada-
tion, finds aid in the pressure of a friendly hand which tells
her that there is one who understands her deeds, and in her
place would do the like. The idea of a God who not only
sympathizes with all we feel and endure for our fellow-men,
but who will pour new life into our too languid love, and give
firmness to our vacillating purpose, is an extension and multipli-
cation of the effects produced by human sympathy ; and it has
been intensified for the better spirits who have been under the
influence of orthodox Christianity, by the contemplation of
Jesus as " God manifest in the flesh.'' But Dr. Curnming's
God is the very opposite of all this : he is a God who instead
of sharing and aiding our human sympathies, is directly in
collision with them ; who instead of strengthening the bond
between man and man, by encouraging the sense that they are
both alike the objects of His love and care, thrusts himself
between them and forbids them to feel for each other except
as they have relation to Him. He is a God who, instead of
adding his solar force to swell the tide of those impulses that
tend to give humanity a common life in which the good of one
is the good of all, commands us to check those impulses, lest
they should prevent us from thinking of His glory. It is in vain
'or Dr. Gumming to say that we are to love man for Gtrd's

EVANGELICAL TEACHING : DR. GUMMING. 97

sake : with the conception of God which his teaching presents,
the love of man for God's sake involves, as his writings abun-
dantly show, a strong principle of hatred. We can only love
one being for the sake of another when there is an habitual
delight in associating the idea of those two beings — that is,
when the object of our indirect love is a source of joy and honor
to the object of our direct love ; but according to Dr. Cum-
ming's theory, the majority of mankind — the majority of his
neighbors — are in precisely the opposite relation to God. His
soul has no pleasure in them, they belong more to Satan than
to Him, and if they contribute to His glory, it is against their
will. Dr. Gumming then can only love some men for God's
sake ; the rest he must in consistency hate for God's sake.

There must be many, even in the circle of Dr. Cumming's
admirers, who would be revolted by the doctrine we have just
exposed, if their natural good sense and healthy feeling were
not early stifled by dogmatic beliefs, and their reverence misled
by pious phrases. But as it is, many a rational question, many
a generous instinct, is repelled as the suggestion of a supernat-
ural enemy, or as the ebullition of human pride and corruption.
This state of inward contradiction can be put an end to only
by the conviction that the free and diligent exertion of the
intellect, instead of being a sin, is part of their responsibility —
that Right and Reason are synonymous. The fundamental
faith for man is, faith in the result of a brave, honest, and
steady use of all his faculties :

" Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell ;
That mind and soul according well
May make one music as before,
But vaster."

Before taking leave of Dr. Gumming, let us express a hope
that we have in no case exaggerated the unfavorable character
of the inferences to be drawn from his pages. His creed often
obliges him to hope the worst of men, and exert himself in
proving that the worst is true ; but thus far we are happier

98 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

than he. We have no theory which requires us to attribute
unworthy motives to Dr. Gumming, no opinions, religious or
irreligious, which can make it a gratification to us to detect
him in delinquencies. On the contrary, the better we are
able to think of him as a man, while we are obliged to dis-
approve him as a theologian, the stronger will be the evidence
for our conviction, that the tendency toward good in human
nature has a force which no creed can utterly counteract, and
which insures the ultimate triumph of that tendency over all
dogmatic perversions.

IV.

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE.*

11 NOTHING," says Goethe, " is more significant of men's
character than what they find laughable." The truth of this
observation would perhaps have been more apparent if he had
said culture instead of character. The last thing in which the
cultivated man can have community with the vulgar is their
jocularity ; and we can hardly exhibit more strikingly the wide
gulf which separates him from them, than by comparing the
object which shakes the diaphragm of a coal-heaver with the
highly complex pleasure derived from a real witticism. That
any high order of wit is exceedingly complex, and demands a
ripe and strong mental development, has one evidence in the
fact that we do not find it in boys at all in proportion to their
manifestation of other powers. Clever boys generally aspire
to the heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and the crudest
of all their efforts are their jokes. Many a witty man will re-
member how in his school days a practical joke, more or less
Rabelaisian, was for him the ne plus ultra of the ludicrous. It
seems to have been the same with the boyhood of the human
race. The history and literature of the ancient Hebrews gives
the idea of a people who went about their business and their
pleasure as gravely as a society of beavers ; the smile and the
laugh are often mentioned metaphorically, but the smile is one
of complacency, the laugh is one of scorn. Nor can we
imagine that the facetious element was very strong in the

* 1. "Heinrich Heine's Sammtliche Werke. " Philadelphia: John
Weik. 1855. 2. " Vermisohte Schriften von Heinrich Heine."
Hamburg : Hoffman und Campe. 1854.

100 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

Egyptians ; no laughter lurks in the wondering eyes and the
broad calm lips of their statues. Still less can the Assyrians
have had any genius for the comic : the round eyes and sim-
pering satisfaction of their ideal faces belong to a type which
is not witty, but the cause of wit in others. The fun of these
early races was, we fancy, of the after-dinner kind — loud-
throated laughter over the wine-cup, taken too little account of
in sober moments to enter as an element into their Art, and
differing as much from the laughter of a Chamf ort or a Sheridan
as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, whose
dinner had no other " removes" than from acorns to beech-
mast and back again to acorns, differed from the subtle pleas-
ures of the palate experienced by his turtle-eating descendant.
In fact they had to live seriously through the stages which to
subsequent races were to become comedy, as those amiable-
looking preadamite amphibia which Professor Owen has re-
stored for us in effigy at Sydenham, took perfectly au serieux
the grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. Heavy experi-
ence in their case, as in every other, was the base from which
the salt of future wit was to be made.

Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and it is in accordance
with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic
tendencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative
intellect. Humor draws its materials from situations and char-
acteristics ; Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations.
Humor is chiefly representative and descriptive ; it is diffuse,
and flows along without any other law than its own fantastic
will ; or it flits about like a will- of- the- wisp, amazing us by its
whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sudden, and sharply
defined as a crystal ; it does not make pictures, it is not fan-
tastic ; but it detects an unsuspected analogy or suggests a
startling or confounding inference. Every one who has had
the opportunity of making the comparison will remember that
the effect produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to
the effect produced on him by subtle reasoning which lays open
a fallacy or absurdity, and there are persons whose delight in

GERMAN WIT : HENKY HEINE. 101

such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter. This affin-
ity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion
as the species of wit is higher and deals less with less words
and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of
things. Some of Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist
in the suggestion of an analogy which immediately exposes
the absurdity of an action or proposition ; and it is only their
ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift them
from reasoning into Wit- -they are reasoning raised to a higher
power. On the other hand, Humor, in its higher forms, and
in proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emo-
tions, continually passes into poetry : nearly all great modern
humorists may be called prose poets.

Some confusion as to the nature of Humor has been created
by the fact that those who have written most eloquently on it
have dwelt almost exclusively on its higher forms, and have
defined humor in general as the sympathetic presentation of
incongruous elements in human nature and life — a definition
which only applies to its later development. A great deal of
humor may coexist with a great deal of barbarism, as we see
in the Middle Ages ; but the strongest flavor of the humor in
such cases will come, not from sympathy, but more probably
from triumphant egoism or intolerance ; at best it will be the
love of the ludicrous exhibiting itself in illustrations of success-
ful cunning and of the lex talionis as in Reineke Fucks, or
shaking off in a holiday mood the yoke of a too exacting faith,
as in the old Mysteries. Again, it is impossible to deny a
high degree of humor to many practical jokes, but no sympa-
thetic nature can enjoy them. Strange as the genealogy may
seem, the original parentage of that wonderful and delicious
mixture of fun, fancy, philosophy, and feeling, which consti-
tutes modern humor, was probably the cruel mockery of a
savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy — such is the ten-
dency of things toward the good and beautiful on this earth !
Probably the reason why high culture demands more complete
harmony with its moral sympathies in humor than in wit, is

102 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

that humor is in its nature more prolix — that it has not the
direct and irresistible force of wit. Wit is an electric shock,
which takes us by violence, quite independently of our pre-
dominant mental disposition ; but humor approaches us more
deliberately and leaves us masters of ourselves. Hence it is,
that while coarse and cruel humor has almost disappeared from
contemporary literature, coarse and cruel wit abounds ; even
refined men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon mot or a lacer-
ating personality, if the " shock'7 of the witticism is a power-
ful one ; while mere fun will have no power over them if it jar
on their moral taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is per-
ennial, humor is liable to become superannuated.

As is usual with definitions and classifications, however, this
distinction between wit and humor does not exactly represent
the actual fact. Like all other species, Wit and Humor over-
lap and blend with each other. There are bon mots, like many
of Charles Lamb's, which are a sort of facetious hybrids, we
hardly know whether to call them witty or humorous ; there
are rather lengthy descriptions or narratives, which, like Vol-
taire's u Micromegas, " would be more humorous if they were
not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant with suggestion
and satire, that we are obliged to call them witty. We rarely
find wit untempered by humor, or humor without a spice of
wit ; and sometimes we find them both united in the highest
degree in the same mind, as in Shakespeare and Moliere. A
happy conjunction this, for wit is apt to be cold, and thin-
lipped, and Mephistophelean in men who have no relish for
humor, whose lungs do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and
drollery ; and broad-faced, rollicking humor needs the refining
influence of wit. Indeed, it may be said that there is no really
fine writing in which wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit,
action. The wit may never rise to the surface, it may never
flame out into a witticism ; but it helps to give brightness and
transparency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which
verge on the ridiculous — in every genre of writing it preserves
a man from sinking into the genre ennuyeux. And it is emi-

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 103

nentJy needed for this office in humorous writing ; for as
humor has no limits imposed on it by its material, no law but
its own exuberance, it is apt to become preposterous and weari-
some unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all monot-
ony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration.

Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has given us to a com-
plete analysis, in which wit is as thoroughly exhausted of
humor as possible, and humor as bare as possible of wit, is in
the typical Frenchman and the typical German. Voltaire, the
intensest example of pure wit, fails in most of his fictions from
his lack of humor. " Micromegas" is a perfect tale, because,
as it deals chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not touch the
marrow of human feeling and life, the writer's wit and wisdom
were all- sufficient for his purpose. Not so with '* Candide."
Here Voltaire had to give pictures of life as well as to convey
philosophic truth and satire, and here we feel the want of hu-
mor. The sense of the ludicrous is continually defeated by dis-
gust, and the scenes, instead of presenting us with an amusing
or agreeable picture, are only the frame for a witticism. On the
other hand, German humor generally shows no sense of measure,
no instinctive tact ; it is either floundering and clumsy as the
antics of a leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lapland
day, in which one loses all hope that the stars and quiet will
ever come. For this reason, Jean Paul, the greatest of German
humorists, is unendurable to many readers, and frequently tire-
some to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the
absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to grada-
tion, which is the essence of tact and taste, and the necessary
concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region
of metaphysics. For Identitdt in the abstract no one can have
an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very
loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Empirismus
in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less
tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him.
To the typical German — Vetter Michel — it is indifferent
whether his door-lock will catch, whether his teacup be more

104 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

or less than an inch thick ; whether or not his book have every
other leaf unstitched ; whether his neighbor's conversation be
more or less of a shout ; whether he pronounce b or p, t or d ;
whether or not his adored one's teeth be few and far between.
He has the same sort of insensibility to gradations in time. A
German comedy is like a German sentence : you see no reason
in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you ac-
cept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather
than of the author. We have heard Germans use the word
Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly
wondered what it can be that produces ennui in a German.
Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to
pronounce that hochst fesselnd (so enchaining !) ; not the
heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that as grUndlick
(deep, Sir, deep !) ; not the slowest of journeys in a Post-
wagen, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke
before he reaches his journey's end. German ennui must be
something as superlative as Barclay's treble X, which, we sup-
pose, implies an extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction.

It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety of per-
ception must have its effect on the national appreciation and ex-
hibition of Humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of
Shakespeare, who tell you that what they think most admirable
in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quibbles ; and one of these,
a man of no slight culture and refinement, once cited to a
friend of ours Proteus's joke in " The Two Gentlemen of
Verona" — " Nod I? why that's Noddy," as a transcendant
specimen of Shakespearian wit. German facetiousness is sel-
dom comic to foreigners, and an Englishman with a swelled
cheek might take up Kladderadatsch, the German Punch,
without any danger of agitating his facial muscles. Indeed,
it is a remarkable fact that, among the five great races con-
cerned in modern civilization, the German race is the only
one which, up to the present century, had contributed nothing
classic to the common stock of European wit and humor ; for
Reineke Fuchs cannot be regarded as a peculiarly Teutonic

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 105

product. Italy was the birthplace of Pantomime and the im-
mortal Pulcinello ; Spain had produced Cervantes ; France had
produced Rabelais and Moliere, and classic wits innumerable ;
England had yielded Shakspeare and a host of humorists. But
Germany had borne no great comic dramatist, no great satirist,
and she has not yet repaired the omission ; she had not even
produced any humorist of a high order. Among her great
writers, Lessing is the one who is the most specifically witty.
We feel the implicit influence of wit — the " flavor of mind"
— throughout his writings ; and it is often concentrated into
pungent satire, as every reader of the Hamburgische Drama-
turgic remembers. Still Lessing' s name has not become Euro-
pean through his wit, and his charming comedy, Minna von
Barnhelm, has won no place on a foreign stage. Of course
we do not pretend to an exhaustive acquaintance with German
literature ; we not only admit — we are sure that it includes
much comic writing of which we know nothing. We simply
state the fact, that no German production of that kind, before
the present century, ranked as European ; a fact which does
not, indeed, determine the amount of the national facetious-
ness, but which is quite decisive as to its quality. Whatever
may be the stock of fun which Germany yields .for home con-
sumption, she has provided little for the palate of other lands.
All honor to her for the still greater things she has done for
us ! She has fought the hardest fight for freedom of thought,
has produced the grandest inventions, has made magnificent
contributions to science, has given us some of the divinest
poetry, and quite the divinest music in the world. No one
reveres and treasures the products of the German mind more
than we do. To say that that mind is not fertile in wit is only
like saying that excellent wheat land is not rich pasture ; to
say that we do not enjoy German facetiousness is no more than
to say that, though the horse is the finest of quadrupeds, we
do not like him to lay his hoof playfully on our shoulder.
Still, as we have noticed that the pointless puns and stupid
jocularity of the boy may ultimately be developed into the epi-

A)6

grammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man ; as
we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate humor are in-
evitably the results of invigorated and refined mental activity,
we can also believe that Germany will, one day, yield a crop of
wits and humorists.

Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future crop in the
existence of Heinrich Heine, a German born with the present
century, who, to Teutonic imagination, sensibility, and humor,
adds an amount of esprit that would make him brilliant among
the most brilliant of Frenchmen. True, this unique German
wit is half a Hebrew ; but he and his ancestors spent their
youth in German air, and were reared on Wurst and Sauer-
kraut, so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an Eng-
lish bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But whatever else he
may be, Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age :
no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things
in this world, worth studying ; a surpassing lyric poet, who has
uttered our feelings for us in delicious song ; a humorist, who
touches leaden folly with the magic wand of his fancy, and
transmutes it into the fine gold of art — who sheds his sunny
smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous rainbow on
the cloudy background of life ; a wit, who holds in his mighty
hand the most scorching lightnings of satire ; an artist in prose
literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe
the possibilities of German prose ; and — in spite of all charges
against him, true as well as false — a lover of freedom, who has
spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He
is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly-wrought
sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills ; and
as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest. It is
true, alas ! that there is a heavy weight in the other scale —
that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give
electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his
works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but
have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with
the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 107

and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and
has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days.
Hence, before his volumes are put within the reach of imma-
ture minds, there is need of a friendly penknife to exercise a
strict censorship. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all
Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other
men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of ex-
quisite poetry, of wit, humor, and just thought. It is appar-
ently too often a congenial task to write severe words about the
transgressions committed by men of genius, especially when the
censor has the advantage of being himself a man of no genius,
so that those transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous ; he,
forsooth, never lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresisti-
ble piquancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is not
mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation that lies in
transcendent power. We are also apt to measure what a
gifted man has done by our arbitrary conception of what he
might have done, rather than by a comparison of his actual
doings with our own or those of other ordinary men. We
make ourselves overzealous agents of heaven, and demand
that our brother should bring usurious interest for his five
Talents, forgetting that it is less easy to manage five Talents
than two. Whatever benefit there may be in denouncing the
evil, it is after all more edifying, and certainly more cheering,
to appreciate the good. Hence, in endeavoring to give our
readers some account of Heine and his works, we shall not
dwell lengthily on his failings ; we shall not hold the candle up
to dusty, vermin-haunted corners, but let the light fall as much
as possible on the nobler and more attractive details. Our
sketch of Heine's life, which has been drawn from various
sources, will be free from everything like intrusive gossip, and
will derive its coloring chiefly from the autobiographical hints
and descriptions scattered through his own writings. Those of
our readers who happen to know nothing of Heine will in this
way be making their acquaintance with the writer while they
are learning the outline of his career.

108

We have said that Heine was born with the present century ;
but this statement is not precise, for we learn that, according
to his certificate of baptism, he was born December 12th, 1799.
However, as he himself says, the important point is that he
was born, and born on the banks of the Rhine, at Dtisseldorf,
where his father was a merchant. In his " Reisebilder" he
gives us some recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear
old town where he spent his childhood, and of his schoolboy
troubles there. We shall quote from these in butterfly fash-
ion, sipping a little nectar here and there, without regard to
any strict order :

" I first saw the light on the banks of that lovely stream, where Folly
grows on the green hills, and in autumn is plucked, pressed, poured
into casks, and sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yesterday
heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a bunch of

grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg Mon Dieu !

if I had only such faith in me that I could remove mountains, the
Johannisberg would be the very mountain I should send for wherever
I might be ; but as my faith is not so strong, imagination must help

me, and it transports me at once to the lovely Bhine I

am again a child, and playing with other children on the Schloss-
platz, at Diisseldorf on the Bhine. Yes, madam, there was I born ;
and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven cities —
Schilda, Kr'ahwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Diilken, Gottingen, and
Schoppenstadt — should contend for the honor of being my birth-
place. Diisseldorf is a town on the Bhine ; sixteen thousand men
live there, and many hundred thousand men besides lie buried

there Among them, many of whom my mother says, that

it would be better if they were still living ; for example, my grand-
father and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern and the young Herr
von Geldern, both such celebrated doctors, who saved so many men
from death, and yet must die themselves. And the pious Ursula,
who carried me in her arms when I was a child, also lies buried
there and a rosebush grows on her grave ; she loved the scent of
roses so well in life, and her heart was pure rose-incense and good-
ness. The knowing old Canon, too, lies buried there. Heavens,
what an object he looked when I last saw him ! He was made up of
nothing bid mind and plasters, and nevertheless studied day and night,
as if he were alarmed Jest the worms should find an idea too little in
his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I am to

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 109

blame. We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, and were
playing on that side of it where the Diissel flows between stone
walls, and I said, ' William, fetch out the kitten that has just fallen
in ' — and merrily he went down on to the plank which lay across the
brook, snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell in himself, and
was dragged out dripping and dead. The kitten lived to a good old

age Princes in that day were not the tormented race as

they are now ; the crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night
they drew a nightcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peacefully
slept the people at their feet ; and when the people waked in the
morning, they said, ' Good morning, father ! ' and the princes an-
swered, ' Good morning, dear children ! ' But it was suddenly quite
otherwise ; for when we awoke one morning at Diisseldorf, and were
ready to say, ' Good morning, father ! ' lo ! the father was gone
away ; and in the whole town there was nothing but dumb sorrow,
everywhere a sort of funeral disposition ; and people glided along
silently to the market, and read the long placard placed on the door
of the Town Hall. It was dismal weather ; yet the lean tailor, Kilian,
stood in his nankeen jacket which he usually wore only in the house,
and his blue worsted stockings hung down so that his naked legs
peeped out mournfully, and his thin lips trembled while he muttered
the announcement to himself. And an old soldier read rather louder,
and at many a word a crystal tear trickled down to his brave old
mustache. I stood near him and wept in company, and asked him,
' Why we wept?' He answered, ' The Elector has abdicated.' And
then he read again, and at the words, ' for the long-manifested fidel-
ity of my subjects,' and ' hereby set you free from your allegiance,'
he wept more than ever. It is strangely touching to see an old man
like that, with faded uniform and scarred face, weep so bitterly all
of a sudden. While we were reading, the electoral arms were taken
down from ftie Town Hall ; everything had such a desolate air, that

it was as if an eclipse of the sun were expected I went

home and wept, and wailed out, ' The Elector has abdicated ! ' In
vain my mother took a world of trouble to explain the thing to
me. I knew what I knew ; I was not to be persuaded, but went
crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world was at
an end."

The next morning, however, the sun rises as usual, and
Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand Duke, whereupon there is
a holiday at the public school, and Heinrich (or Harry, for
that was his baptismal name, which he afterward had the

310 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

good taste to change), perched on the bronze horse of the Elec-
toral statue, sees quite a different scene from yesterday's :

" The next day the world was again all in order, and we had
school as before, and things were got by heart as before — the Koman
emperors, chronology, the nouns in im, the verba irregularia, Greek,
Hebrew, geography, mental arithmetic ! — heavens ! my head is still
dizzy with it — all must be learned by heart ! And a great deal of this
came very conveniently for me in after life. For if I had not known
the Roman kings by heart, it would subsequently have been quite
indifferent to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that
they never really existed. . . . But oh ! the trouble I had at
school with the endless dates. And with arithmetic it was still
worse. What I understood best was subtraction, for that has a very
practical rule : ' Four can't be taken from three, therefore I must
borrow one.' But I advise every one in such a case to borrow a few
extra pence, for no one can tell what may happen. ... As for
Latin, you have no idea, madam, what a complicated affair it is.
The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if
they had first had to learn Latin. Luckily for them, they already
knew in their cradles what nouns have their accusative in im. I, on
the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the sweat of my brow ;
nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I know them . . . and the
fact that I have them at my finger-ends if I should ever happen to
want them suddenly, affords me much inward repose and consolation
in many troubled hours of Hfe. ... Of Greek I will not say a
word, I should get too much irritated. The monks in the Middle
Ages were not so far wrong when they maintained that Greek was an
invention of the devil. God knows the suffering I endured over
it. ... With Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I had always
a great liking for the Jews, though to this very hour they crucify my
good name ; but I could never get on so far in Hebrew as my watch,
which had much familiar intercourse with pawnbrokers, and in this
way contracted many Jewish habits — for example, it wouldn't go on
Saturdays."

Heine's parents were apparently not wealthy, but his educa-
tion was cared for by his uncle, Solomon Heine, a great banker
in Hamburg, so that he had no early pecuniary disadvantages
to struggle with. He seems to have been very happy in his
mother, who was not of Hebrew but of Teutonic blood ; he
often mentions her with reverence and affection, and in the

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. Ill

" Buch der Lieder" there are two exquisite sonnets addressed
to her, which tell how his proud spirit was always subdued by
the charm of her presence, and how her love was the home of
his heart after restless weary ramblings :

" Wie machtig auch mein stoker Muth sich blahe,
In deiner selig siissen, trauten Nahe
Ergreift mich oft em denmthvolles Zagen.
*****
Und immer irrte ich nach Liebe, immer
Nach Liebe, doch die Liebe fand ich nimmer,
Und kehrte um nach Hause, krank und triibe.
Doch da bist du entgegen mir gekommen,
Und ach ! was da in deinem Aug' geschwommen,
Das war die siisse, langgesuchte Liebe."

He was at first destined for a mercantile life, but Nature de-
clared too strongly against this plan. u God knows," he has
lately said in conversation with his brother, " I would willingly
have become a banker, but I could never bring myself to that
pass. I very early discerned that bankers would one day be
the rulers of the world." So commerce was at length given up
for law, the study of which he began in 1819 at the University
of Bonn. He had already published some poems in the corner
of a newspaper, and among them was one on Napoleon, the
object of his youthful enthusiasm. This poem, he says in a
letter to St. Rene Taillandier, was written when he was only
sixteen. It is still to be found in the " Buch der Lieder"
under the title " DieGrenadiere," and it proves that even in its
earliest efforts his genius showed a strongly specific character.

It will be easily imagined that the germs of poetry sprouted
too vigorously in Heine's brain for jurisprudence to find much
room there. Lectures on history and literature, we are told,
were more diligently attended than lectures on law. He had
taken care, too, to furnish his trunk with abundant editions of
the poets, and the poet he especially studied at that time was
Byron. At a later period we find his taste taking another
direction, for he writes, " Of all authors, Byron is precisely

112

the one who excites in me the most intolerable emotion ;
whereas Scott, in every one of his works, gladdens my heart,
soothes, and invigorates me." Another indication of his bent
in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, in which he at-
tacked the Romantic school ; and here also he went through
that chicken-pox of authorship — the production of a tragedy.
Heine's tragedy — Almansor — is, as might be expected, better
than the majority of these youthful mistakes. The tragic col-
lision lies in the conflict between natural affection and the
deadly hatred of religion and of race — in the sacrifice of youth-
ful lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, Moslem and
Christian. Some of the situations are striking, and there are
passages of considerable poetic merit ; but the characters are
little more than shadowy vehicles for the poetry, and there is
a want of clearness and probability in the structure. It was
published two years later, in company with another tragedy, in
one act, called William Ratcliffe, in which there is rather a
feeble use of the Scotch second-sight after the manner of the
Fate in the Greek tragedy. We smile to find Heine saying of
his tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon after their publica-
tion : "I know they will be terribly cut up, but I will con-
fess to you in confidence that they are very good, better than
my collection of poems, which are not worth a shot." Else-
where he tells us, that when, after one of Paganini's concerts,
he was passionately complimenting the great master on his
violin-playing. Paganini interrupted him thus : " But how
were you pleased with my bows?"

In 1820 Heine left Bonn for Gottingen. He there pursued
his omission of law studies, and at the end of three months he
was rusticated for a breach of the laws against duelling.
While there, he had attempted a negotiation with Brockhaus
for the printing of a volume of poems, and had endured the
first ordeal of lovers and poets — a refusal. It was not until a
year after that he found a Berlin publisher for his first volume
of poems, subsequently transformed, with additions, into the
" Buch der Lieder." He remained between two and three

GERMAN WIT ! HENRY HEINE. 113

years at Berlin, and the society he found there seems to have
made these years an important epoch in his culture. He was
one of the youngest members of a circle which assembled at the
house of the poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the translator of
Byron — a circle which included Chamisso, Varnhagen, and
Rahel (Varnhagen's wife). For Rahel, Heine had a profound
admiration and regard ; he afterward dedicated to her the
poems included under the title " Heimkehr ; " and he fre-
quently refers to her or quotes her in a way that indicates how
he valued her influence. According to his friend F. von
Hohenhausen, the opinions concerning Heine's talent were very
various among his Berlin friends,' and it was only a small
minority that had any presentiment^ of his future fame. In
this minority was Elise von Hohenhausen, who proclaimed
Heine as the Byron of Germany ; but her opinion was met
with much head-shaking and opposition. We can imagine how
precious was such a recognition as hers to the young poet, then
only two or three and twenty, and with by no means an impres-
sive personality for superficial eyes. Perhaps even the deep-
sighted were far from detecting in that small, blonde, pale
young man, with quiet, gentle manners, the latent powers of
ridicule and sarcasm — the terrible talons that were one day to
be thrust out from the velvet paw of the young leopard.

It was apparently during this residence in Berlin that Heine
united himself with the Lutheran Church. He would will-
ingly, like many of his friends, he tells us, have remained
free from all ecclesiastical ties if the authorities there had not
forbidden residence in Prussia, and especially in Berlin, to
every one who did not belong to one of the positive religions
recognized by the State.

" As Henry IV. once laughingly said, ' Paris vaut lien une messe,' so
I might with reason say, ' Berlin vaut bien une preche ;' and I could
afterward, as before, accommodate myself to the very enlightened
Christianity, filtrated from all superstition, which could then be had
in the churches of Berlin, and which was even free from the divinity
of Christ, like turtle-soup without turtle."

114 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT/'

At the same period, too, Heine became acquainted with
Hegel. In his lately published " Gestandnisse" (Confessions)
he throws on Hegel's influence over him the blue light of de-
moniacal wit, and confounds us by the most bewildering
double-edged sarcasms ; but that influence seems to have been
at least more wholesome than the one which produced the
mocking retractations of the " Gestandnisse." Through all
his self-satire, we discern that in those days he had something
like real earnestness and enthusiasm, which are certainly not
apparent in his present theistic confession of faith.

" On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for this philoso-
phy, and conviction on the subject was out of question. I never was
an. abstract thinker, and I accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doc-
trine without demanding any proof, since its consequences flattered
my vanity. I was young and proud, and it pleased my vainglory
when I learned from Hegel that the true God was not, as my grand-
mother believed, the God who lives in heaven, but myself here upon
earth. This foolish pride had not in the least a pernicious influence
on my feelings ; on the contrary, it heightened these to the pitch of
heroism. I was at that time so lavish in generosity and self-sacri-
fice that I must assuredly have eclipsed the most brilliant deeds of
those good bourgeois of virtue who acted merely from a sense of duty,
and simply obeyed the laws of morality."

His sketch of Hegel is irresistibly amusing ; but we must
warn the reader that Heine's anecdotes are often mere devices of
style by which he conveys his satire or opinions. The reader
will see that he does not neglect an opportunity of giving a sar-
castic lash or two, in passing, to Meyerbeer, for whose music
he has a great contempt. The sarcasm conveyed in the substi-
tution of reputation for music and journalists for musicians,
might perhaps escape any one unfamiliar with the sly and un-
expected turns of Heine's ridicule.

" To speak frankly, I seldom understood him, and only arrived at
the meaning of his words by subsequent reflection. I believe he
wished not to be understood ; and hence his practice of sprinkling
his discourse with modifying parentheses ; hence, perhaps, his pref-
erence for persons of whom he knew that they did not understand

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 115

him, and to whom he all the more willingly granted the honor of his
familiar acquaintance. Thus every one in Berlin wondered at the
intimate companionship of the profound Hegel with the late Heinrich
Beer, a brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who is universally known by
his reputation, and who has been celebrated by the cleverest journal-
ists. This Beer, namely Heinrich, was a thoroughly stupid fellow,
and indeed was afterward actually declared imbecile by his family,
and placed under guardianship, because instead of making a name
for himself in art or in science by means of his great fortune, he
squandered his money on childish trifles ; and, for example, one day
bought six thousand thalers' worth of walking-sticks. This poor
man, who had no wish to pass either for a great tragic dramatist, or
for a great star-gazer, or for a laurel-crowned musical genius, a rival
of Mozart and Rossini, and preferred giving his money for walking-
sticks — this degenerate Beer enjoyed Hegel's most confidential
society ; he was the philosopher's bosom friend, his Pylades, and ac-
companied him everywhere like his shadow. The equally witty and
gifted Felix Mendelssohn once sought to explain this phenomenon,
by maintaining that Hegel did not understand Heinrich Beer. I now
believe, however, that the real ground of that intimacy consisted in.
this — Hegel was convinced that no word of what he said was under-
stood by Heinrich Beer ; and he could therefore, in his presence, give
himself up to all the intellectual outpourings of the moment. In
general, Hegel's conversation was a sort of monologue, sighed forth
by starts in a noiseless voice ; the odd roughness of his expressions
often struck me, and many of them have remained in my memory.
One beautiful starlight evening we stood together at the window, and
I, a young man of one-and-twenty, having just had a good dinner and
finished my coffee, spoke with enthusiasm of the stars, and called
them the habitations of the departed. But the master muttered to
himself, ' The stars ! hum ! hum ! The stars are only a brilliant lep-
rosy on the face of the heavens.' 'For God's sake,' I cried, 'is
there, then, no happy place above, where virtue is rewarded after
death ? ' But he, staring at me with his pale eyes, said, cuttingly,
* So you want a bonus for having taken care of your sick mother, and
refrained from poisoning your worthy brother ? ' At these words he
looked anxiously round, but appeared immediately set at rest when
he observed that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to
invite him to a game at whist."

In 1823 Heine returned to Gottingen to complete his career
as a law- student, and this time he gave evidence of advanced

116 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

mental maturity, not only by producing many of the charming
poems subsequently included in the " Reisebilder, " but also by
prosecuting his professional studies diligently enough to leave
Gottingen, in 1825, as Doctor juris. Hereupon he settled at
Hamburg as an advocate, but his profession seems to have been
the least pressing of his occupations. In those days a small
blonde young man, with the brim of his hat drawn over his
nose, his coat flying open, and his hands stuck in his trousers
pockets, might be seen stumbling along the streets of Ham-
burg, staring from side to side, and appearing to have small
regard to the figure he made in the eyes of the good citizens.
Occasionally an inhabitant more literary than usual would
point out this young man to his companion as Heinrich Heine ;
but in general the young poet had not to endure the inconven-
iences of being a lion. His poems were devoured, but he was
not asked to devour flattery in return. Whether because the
fair Hamburgers acted in the spirit of Johnson's advice to
Hannah More — to " consider what her flattery was worth
before she choked him with it" — or for some other reason,
Heine, according to the testimony of August Lewald, to
whom we owe these particulars of his Hamburg life, was left
free from the persecution of tea-parties. Not, however, from
another persecution of Genius — nervous headaches, which some
persons, we are told, regarded as an improbable fiction, in-
tended as a pretext for raising a delicate white hand to his fore-
head. It is probable that the sceptical persons alluded to were
themselves untroubled with nervous headaches, and that their
hands were not delicate. Slight details, these, but worth telling
about a man of genius, because they help us to keep in mind
that he is, after all, our brother, having to endure the petty
every-day ills of life as we have ; with this difference, that his
heightened sensibility converts what are mere insect stings for
us into scorpion stings for him.

It was, perhaps, in these Hamburg days that Heine paid
the Visit to Goethe, of which he gives us this charming little
picture :

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 117

"When I visited him in Weimar, and stood before him, I involun-
tarily glanced at his side to see whether the eagle was not there with
the lightning in his beak. I was nearly speaking Greek to him ;
but, as I observed that he understood German, I stated to him in
German that the plums on the road between Jena and Weimar were
very good. I had for so many long winter nights thought over what
lofty and profound things I would say to Goethe, if ever I saw him.
And when I saw him at last, I said to him, that the Saxon plums
were very good ! And Goethe smiled."

During the next few years Heine produced the most popular
of alt his works — those which have won him his place as the
greatest of living German poets and humorists. Between 1826
and 1829 appeared the four volumes of the " Reisebilder"
(Pictures of Travel) and the " Buch der Lieder" (Book of
Songs), a volume of lyrics, of which it is hard to say whether
their greatest charm is the lightness and finish of their style,
their vivid and original imaginativeness, or their simple, pure
sensibility. In his " Reisebilder" Heine carries us with him
to the Hartz, to the isle of Norderney, to his native town
Diisseldorf, to Italy, and to England, sketching scenery and
character, now with the wildest, most fantastic humor, now
with the finest idyllic sensibility — letting his thoughts wander
from poetry to politics, from criticism to dreamy reverie, and
blending fun, imagination, reflection, and satire in a sort of
exquisite, ever-varying shimmer, like the hues of the opal.

Heine's journey to England did not at all heighten his regard
for the English. He calls our language the * * hiss of egoism
(Zuchlaute des Egoismus) ; and his ridicule of English awk-
wardness is as merciless as — English ridicule of German
awkwardness. His antipathy toward us seems to have grown
in intensity, like many of his other antipathies ; and in his
'* Vermischte Schriften" he is more bitter than ever. Let us
quote one of his philippics, since bitters are understood to be
wholesome :

" It is certainly a frightful injustice to pronounce sentence of con-
demnation on an entire people. But with regard to the English,
momentary disgust might betray me into this injustice ; and on

118 THE ESSAYS OF

looking at the mass I easily forget the many brave and noble men
who distinguished themselves by intellect and love of freedom. But
these, especially the British poets, were always all the more glaringly
in contrast with the rest of the nation ; they were isolated martyrs to
their national relations ; and, besides, great geniuses do not belong
to the particular land of their birth : they scarcely belong to this
earth, the Golgotha of their sufferings. The mass— the English
blockheads, God forgive me !— are hateful to me in my inmost soul ;
and I often regard them not at all as my fellow-men, but as miserable
automata — machines, whose motive power is egoism. In these
moods, it seems to me as if I heard the whizzing wheelwork by which
they think, feel, reckon, digest, and pray : their praying, their me-
chanical Anglican church-going, with the gilt Prayer-book under their
arms, their stupid, tiresome Sunday, their awkward piety, is most of
all odious to me. I am firmly convinced that a blaspheming French-
man is a more pleasing sight for the Divinity than a praying Eng-
lishman."

On his return from England Heine was employed at Munich
in editing the Allgemeinen Politischen Annalen, but in 1830 he
was again in the north, and the news of the July Revolution
surprised him on the island of Heligoland. He has given us a
graphic picture of his democratic enthusiasm in those days in
some letters, apparently written from Heligoland, which he has
inserted in his book on Borne. We quote some passages,
not only for their biographic interest as showing a phase of
Heine's mental history, but because they are a specimen of his
power in that kind of dithyrambic writing which, in less
masterly hands, easily becomes ridiculous :

" The thick packet of newspapers arrived from the Continent with
these warm, glowing-hot tidings. They were sunbeams wrapped up
in packing-paper, and they inflamed my soul till it burst into the
wildest conflagration. . . . It is all like a dream tome ; especial-
ly the name Lafayette sounds to me like a legend out of my earli-
est childhood. Does he really sit again on horseback, commanding
the National Guard ? 1 almost fear it may not be true, for it is in
print. I will myself go to Paris, to be convinced of it with my bod-
ily eyes. ... It must be splendid, when he rides through the
street, the citizen of two worlds, the godlike old man, with his sil-
ver locks streaming down his sacred shoulder. . . . He greets,

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 119

with his dear old eyes, the grandchildren of those who once fought
with him for freedom and equality. . . . It is now sixty years
since he returned from America with the Declaration of Human
Eights, the decalogue of the world's new creed, which was reTealed
to him amid the thunders and lightnings of cannon. . . . And
the tricolored flag waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets
resound with the Marseillaise ! . . . It is all over with my yearn-
ing for repose. I now knew again what I will do, what I ought to
do, what I must do. . . . I am the son of the Kevolution, and seize
again the hallowed weapons on which my mother pronounced her
magic benediction. . . . Flowers ! flowers ! I will crown my head
for the death-fight. And the lyre too, reach me the lyre, that I may
sing a battle-song. . . . Words like flaming stars, that shoot
down from the heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate the
huts. . . . "Words like bright javelins, that whirr up to the sev-
enth heaven and strike the pious hypocrites who have skulked into
the Holy of Holies. ... I am all joy and song, all sword and
flame ! Perhaps, too, all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams
wrapped in brown paper has flown to my brain, and set my thoughts
aglow. In vain I dip my head into the sea. No water extinguishes
this Greek fire. . . . Even the poor Heligolanders shout for joy,
although they have only a sort of dim instinct of what has occurred.
The fisherman who yesterday took me over to the little sand island,
•which is the bathing-place here, said to me smilingly, ' The poor peo-
ple have won ! ' Yes ; instinctively the people comprehend such
events, perhaps, better than we, with all our means of knowledge.
Thus Frau von Varnhagen once told me that when the issue of the
Battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the maid-servant suddenly
rushed into the room with the sorrowful cry, * The nobles have
won ! ' . . . This morning another packet of newspapers is come,
I devour them like manna. Child that I am, affecting details touch
me yet more than the momentous whole. Oh, if I could but see the
dog Medor. . . . The dog Medor brought his master his gun and
cartridge-box, and when his master fell, and was buried with his fel-
low-heroes in the Court of the Louvre, there stayed the poor dog like
a monument of faithfulness, sitting motionless on the grave, day and
night, eating but little of the food that was offered him— burying the
greater part of it in the earth, perhaps as nourishment for his buried
master !"

The enthusiasm which was kept thus at boiling heat by
imagination, cooled down rapidly when brought into contact

120 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

with reality. In the same book he indicates, in his caustic
way, the commencement of that change in his political temper-
ature— for it cannot be called a change in opinion— which has
drawn down on him immense vituperation from some of the
patriotic party, but which seems to have resulted simply from
the essential antagonism between keen wit and fanaticism.

" On the very first days of my arrival in Paris I observed that
things wore, in reality, quite different colors from those which had
been shed on them, when in perspective, by the light of my enthusi-
asm. The silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on the
shoulders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamorphosed
into a brown perruque, which made a pitiable covering for a narrow
skull. And even the dog Medor, which I visited in the Court of the
Louvre, and which, encamped under tricolored flags and trophies,
very quietly allowed himself to be fed — he was not at all the right
dog, but quite an ordinary brute, who assumed to himself merits not
his own, as often happens with the French ; and, like many others,
he made a profit out of the glory of the ^Revolution. . . . He was
pampered and patronized, perhaps promoted to the highest posts,
while the true Medor, some days after the battle, modestly slunk
out of sight, like the true people who created the Revolution."

That it was not merely interest in French politics which sent
Heine to Paris in 1831, but also a perception that German air
was not friendly to sympathizers in July revolutions, is humor-
ously intimated in the '* Gestandnisse. "

" I had done much and suffered much, and when the sun of the July
Bevolution arose in France, I had become very weary, and needed
some recreation. Also, my native air was every day more unhealthy
for me, and it was time I should seriously think of a change of cli-
mate. I had visions : the clouds terrified me, and made all sorts of
ugly faces at me. It often seemed to me as if the sun were a Prus_
sian cockade ; at night I dreamed of a hideous black eagle, which
gnawed my liver ; and I was very melancholy. Add to this, I had
become acquainted with an old Berlin Justizrath, who had spent
many years in the fortress of Spandau, and he related to me how un-
pleasant it is when one is obliged to wear irons in winter. For my-
self I thought it very unchristian that the irons were not warmed a
trifle. If the irons were warmed a little for us they would not make

GERMAN WIT I HENRY HEINE. 121

so unpleasant an impression, and even chilly natures might then
bear them very well ; it would be only proper consideration, too, if
the fetters were perfumed with essence of roses and laurels, as is the
case in this country (France). I asked my Justizrath whether he
often got oysters to eat at Spandau ? He said, No ; Spandau was too
far from the sea. Moreover, he said meat was very scarce there, and
there was no kind of volaille except flies, which fell into one's
soup. . . . Now, as I really needed some recreation, and as
Spandau is too far from the sea for oysters to be got there, and the
Spandau fly-soup did not seem very appetizing to me, as, besides all
this, the Prussian chains are very cold in winter, and could not be
conducive to my health, I resolved to visit Paris."

Since this time Paris has been Heine's home, and his best
prose works have been written either to inform the Germans on
French affairs or to inform the French on German philosophy
and literature. He became a correspondent of the Allgemeine
Zeitung, and his correspondence, which extends, with an
interruption of several years, from 1831 to 1844, forms the
volume entitled " Franzosische Zustande" (French Affairs),
and the second and third volume of his " Vermischte
Schriften." It is a witty and often wise commentary on
public men and public events : Louis Philippe, Casiinir Perier,
Thiers, Guizot, Rothschild, the Catholic party, the Socialist
party, have their turn of satire and appreciation, for Heine
deals out both with an impartiality which made his less favor-
able critics — Borne, for example — charge him with the rather
incompatible sins of reckless caprice and venality. Literature
and art alternate with politics : we have now a sketch of
George Sand or a description of one of Horace Vernet's
pictures ; now a criticism of Victor Hugo or of Liszt ; now an
irresistible caricature of Spontini or Kalkbrenner ; and occa-
sionally the predominant satire is relieved by a fine saying or a
genial word of admiration. And all is done with that airy
lightness, yet precision of touch, which distinguishes Heine
beyond any living writer. The charge of venality was loudly
made against Heine in Germany : first, it was said that he was
paid to write ; then, that he was paid to abstain from writing ;

122 THE ESSAYS OF

and the accusations were supposed to have an irrefragable basis
in the fact that he accepted a stipend from the French govern-
ment. He has never attempted to conceal the reception of
that stipend, and we think his statement (in the " Vermischte
Schriften") of the circumstances under which it was offered
and received, is a sufficient vindication of himself and M. Guizot
from any dishonor in the matter.

It may be readily imagined that Heine, with so large a share
of the Gallic element as he has in his composition, was soon at
his ease in Parisian society, and the years here were bright with
intellectual activity and social enjoyment. " His wit," wrote
August Lewald, " is a perpetual gushing fountain ; he throws
off the most delicious descriptions with amazing facility, and
sketches the most comic characters in conversations." Such a
man could not be neglected in Paris, and Heine was sought on
all sides — as a guest in distinguished salons, as a possible
proselyte in the circle of the Saint Simonians. His literary
productiveness seems to have been furthered by his congenial
life, which, however, was soon to some extent embittered by
the sense of exile ; for since 1835 both his works and his
person have been the object of denunciation by the German
governments. Between 1833 and 1845 appeared the four
volumes of the " Salon," "Die Romantische Schule" (both
written, in the first instance, in French), the book on Borne,
" Atta Troll," a romantic poem, " Deutschland, " an ex-
quisitely humorous poem, describing his last visit to Germany,
and containing some grand passages of serious writing ; and
the " Neue Gedichte," a collection of lyrical poems. Among
the most interesting of his prose works are the second volume
of the " Salon," which contains a survey of religion and
philosophy in Germany, and the " Romantische Schule," a
delightful introduction to that phase of German literature
known as the Romantic school. The book on Borne, which
appeared in 1840, two years after the death of that writer,
excited great indignation in Germany, as a wreaking of
vengeance on the dead, an insult to the memory of a man who

GERMAN WIT : HENEY HEIKE. 123

had worked and suffered in the cause of freedom — a cause
which was Heine's own. Borne, we may observe paren-
thetically for the information of those who are not familiar
with recent German literature, was a remarkable political writer
of the ultra-liberal party in Germany, who resided in Paris at
the same time with Heine : a man of stern, uncompromising
partisanship and bitter humor. Without justifying Heine's
production of this book, we see excuses for him which should
temper the condemnation passed on it. There was a radical
opposition of nature between him and Borne ; to use his own
distinction, Heine is a Hellene— sensuous, realistic, exquisitely
alive to the beautiful ; while Borne was a Nazarene — ascetic,
spiritualistic, despising the pure artist as destitute of earnest-
ness. Heine has too keen a perception of practical absurdities
and damaging exaggerations ever to become a thoroughgoing
partisan ; and with a love of freedom, a faith in the ultimate
triumph of democratic principles, of which we see no just
reason to doubt the genuineness and consistency, he has been
unable to satisfy more zealous and one-sided liberals by giving
his adhesion to their views and measures, or by adopting a
denunciatory tone against those in the opposite ranks. Borne
could not forgive what he regarded as Heine's epicurean
indifference and artistic dalliance, and he at length gave vent
to his antipathy in savage attacks on him through the press,
accusing him of utterly lacking character and principle, and
even of writing under the influence of venal motives. To these
attacks Heine remained absolutely mute — from contempt ac-
cording to his own account ; but the retort, which he res-
olutely refrained from making during Borne's life, comes in
this volume published after his death with the concentrated
force of long-gathering thunder. The utterly inexcusable part
of the book is the caricature of Borne's friend, Madame Wohl,
and the scurrilous insinuations concerning Borne's domestic
life. It is said, we know not with how much truth, that Heine
had to answer for these in a duel with Madame Wohl's hus-
band, and that, after receiving a serious wound, he promised

124: THE ESSAYS OF

to withdraw the offensive matter from a future edition. That
edition, however, has not been called for. Whatever else we
may think of the book, it is impossible to deny its transcen-
dent talent — the dramatic vigor with which Borne is made
present to us, the critical acumen with which he is character-
ized, and the wonderful play of wit, pathos, and thought which
runs through the whole. But we will let Heine speak for him-
self, and first we will give part of his graphic description of the
way in which Borne's mind and manners grated on his taste :

" To the disgust which, in intercourse with Borne, I was in danger
of feeling toward those who surrounded him, was added the annoy-
ance I felt from his perpetual talk about politics. Nothing but po-
litical argument, and again political argument, even at table, where
he managed to hunt me out. At dinner, when I so gladly forget all
the vexations of the world, he spoiled the best dishes for me by his
patriotic gall, which he poured as a bitter sauce over everything.
Calf's feet, d la maitre d'hdtel, then my innocent bonne bouche, he com-
pletely spoiled for me by Job's tidings from Germany, which he
scraped together out of the most unreliable newspapers. And then
his accursed remarks, which spoiled one's appetite ! . . . This
was a sort of table-talk which did not greatly exhilarate me, and I
avenged myself by affecting an excessive, almost impassioned in-
difference for the object of Borne's enthusiasm. , For example, Borne
was indignant that immediately on my arrival in Paris I had nothing
better to do than to write for German papers a long account of the
Exhibition of Pictures. I omit all discussion as to whether that inter-
est in Art wh ich induced me to undertake this work was so utterly irre-
concilable with the revolutionary interests of the day ; but Borne saw
in it a proof of my indifference toward the sacred cause of humanity,
and I could in my turn spoil the taste of his patriotic sauerkraut for
him by talking all dinner-time of nothing but pictures, of Eobert's
* Reapers,' Horace Yernet's ' Judith,' and Scheffer's ' Faust.' . . .
That I never thought it worth while to discuss my political princi-
ples with him it is needless to say ; and once when he declared that
he had found a contradiction in my writings, I satisfied myself with
the ironical answer, ' You are mistaken, mon cher ; such contradic-
tions never occur in my works, for always before I begin to write, I
read over the statement of my political principles in my previous
writings, that I may not contradict myself, and that no one may be
nble to reproach me with apostasy from my liberal principles. ' '

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEIXE. 125

And here is his own account of the spirit in which the book
was written :

" I was never Borne' s friend, nor was I ever his enemy. The dis-
pleasure which he could often excite in me was never very impor-
tant, and he atoned for it sufficiently by the cold silence which I op-
posed to all his accusations and raillery. While he lived I wrote not
a line against him, I never thought about him, I ignored him com-
pletely ; and that enraged him beyond measure. If I now speak of
him, I do so neither out of enthusiasm nor out of uneasiness ; I am
conscious of the coolest impartiality. I write here neither an apology
nor a critique, and as in painting the man I go on my own observa-
tion, the image I present of him ought perhaps to be regarded as a
real portrait. And such a monument is due to him — to the great
wrestler who, in the arena of our political games, wrestled so cour-
ageously, and earned, if not the laurel, certainly the crown of oak
leaves. I give an image with his true features, without idealization —
the more like him the more honorable for his memory. He was
neither a genius nor a hero ; he was no Olympian god. He was a
man, a denizen of this earth ; he was a good writer and a great
patriot. . . . Beautiful, delicious peace, which I feel at this mo-
ment in the depths of my soul ! Thou rewardest me sufficiently for
everything I have done and for everything I have despised. . . .
I shall defend myself neither from the reproach of indifference nor
from the suspicion of venality. I have for years, during the life of
the insinuator, held such self -justification unworthy of me ; now even
decency demands silence. That would be a frightful spectacle ! — po-
lemics between Death and Exile ! Dost thou stretch out to me a be-
seeching hand from the grave ? Without rancor I reach mine toward
thee. . . . See how noble it is and pure ! It was never soiled
by pressing the hands of the mob, any more than by the impure gold
of the people's enemy. In reality thou hast never injured me. . . .
In all thy insinuations there is not a louis d'or's worth of truth."

In one of these years Heine was married, and, in deference
to the sentiments of his wife, married according to the rites
of the Catholic Church. On this fact busy rumor afterward
founded the story of his conversion to Catholicism, and could
of course name the day and spot on which he abjured Prot-
estanism. Tn his " Gestandnisse" Heine publishes a denial of
this rumor ; less, he says, for the sake of depriving the Cath-

126

olics of the solace they may derive from their belief in a new
convert, than in order to cut off from another party the more
spiteful satisfaction of bewailing his instability :

" That statement of time and place was entirely correct. I was
actually on the specified day in the specified church, which was,
moreover, a Jesuit church, namely, St. Sulpice ; and I then went
through a religious act. But this act was no odious abjuration, but
a very innocent conjugation ; that is to say, my marriage, already
performed, according to the civil law there received the ecclesias-
tical consecration, because my wife, whose family are staunch Cath-
olics, would not have thought her marriage sacred enough without
such a ceremony. And I would on no account cause this beloved
being any uneasiness or disturbance in her religious views."

For sixteen years — from 1831 to 1847 — Heine lived that
rapid concentrated life which is .known only in Paris ; but
then, alas ! stole on the " days of darkness," and they were
to be many. In 1847 he felt the approach of the terrible
spinal disease which has for seven years chained him to his
bed in acute suffering. The last time he went out of doors,
he tells us, was in May, 1848 :

" With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and I almost sank
down as I entered the magnificent hall where the ever-blessed god-
dess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal.
At her feet I lay long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have
pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on me, but at the
same time disconsolately, as if she would say, Dost thou not see,
then, that I have no arms, and thus cannot help thee ?"

Since 1848, then, this poet, whom the lovely objects of Nat-
ure have always " haunted like a passion," has not descended
from the second story of a Parisian house ; this man of hungry
intellect has been shut out from all direct observation of life,
all contact with society, except such as is derived from visitors
to his sick-room. The terrible nervous disease has affected his
eyes ; the sight of one is utterly gone, and he can only raise
the lid of the other by lifting it with his finger. Opium alone
is the beneficent genius that stills his pain. We hardly know

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 127

whether to call it an alleviation or an intensification of the
torture that Heine retains his mental vigor, his poetic imagina-
tion, and his incisive wit ; for if this intellectual activity fills
up a blank, it widens the sphere of suffering. His brother
described him in 1851 as still, in moments when the hand of
pain was not too heavy on him, the same Heinrich Heine, poet
and satirist by turns. In such moments he would narrate the
strangest things in the gravest manner. But when he came to
an end, he would roguishly lift up the lid of his right eye with
his finger to see the impression he had produced ; and if his
audience had been listening with a serious face, he would break
into Homeric laughter. We have other proof than personal
testimony that Heine's disease allows his genius to retain much
of its energy, in the " Romanzero," a volume of poems pub-
lished in 1851, and written chiefly during the three first years
of his illness ; and in the first volume of the " Vermischte
Schriften," also the product of recent years. Very plaintive is
the poet's own description of his condition, in the epilogue to
the " Romanzero :"

" Do I really exist ? My body is so shrunken that I am hardly
anything but a voice ; and my bed reminds me of the singing grave
of the magician Merlin, which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in
Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward
heaven. Alas ! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that
moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about
my mattress-grave in Paris, where early and late I hear nothing but
the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strum-
ming. A grave without repose, death without the privileges of the
dead, who have no debts to pay, and need write neither letters nor
books— that is a piteous condition. Long ago the measure has been
taken for my coffin and for my necrology, but I die so slowly that
the process is tedious for me as well as my friends. But patience :
everything has an end. You will one day find the booth closed where
the puppet-show of my humor has so often delighted you."

As early as 1850 it was rumored that since Heine's illness
a change had taken place in his religious views ; and as rumor
seldom stops short of extremes, it was soon said that he had

THK taakYfi OF " UKOKGF. KLLOT.

become a thorough pietist. Catholics and Protestants by turns
claiming him as a convert. Such a change in so uncom-
promising an iconoclast. in a man who had boon so zealous in
his luxations as Heine, naturally excited considerable sensation
in the camp he was supposed to have quitted, as well as in

he was supposed to have joined. In the second volume of
the " Salon." and in the " Romautischo Sehtile," written in

! and ';>,"». the doctrine of Pantheism is dwelt on with a

•r and unmixed seriousness which show that Pantheism
was then an animating faith to Heine, and he attacks what he
considers the false spiritualism and asceticism of Christianity
as the enemy of true beauty in Art, and of social well-being.
Now, however, is was said that Heine had recanted all his
heresies ; but from the fact that visitors to his sick-room
brought away very various impressions as to his actual relL

seemed probable that his love of mystification had
found a tempting opportunity for exercise on this subject, and
that, as one of his friends said, he was not inclined to pour out
unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere
curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the " Romanzero,"

1 1851, there appeared, amid much mystifying banter, a
declaration that he had embraced Theism and the belief in a
future life, and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and
reliability to this affirmation was the fact that he took care to
accompany it with certain negations :

A . -corns myself. I can boast of no particular progress in pol-
itics ; I adhered (after 1848) to the same democratic principles which
had the homage of r :vnd for which I have ever since glowed

with increasing fervor. In theology, on the contrary, I ninst accuse
myself of retrogression, since, as I have already confessed, I returned
to the old superstition—to a personal God. This fact is, once for all,
not to be stifled, as many enlightened and well-meaning Mends

.1 fain hare had it But I must expressly contradict the report
that my retrograde movement has carried me as far as to the thresh-
old of a Church, and that I have even been received into her lap.
No : my r< ;»nd views have remained free from any

.re of ecclesiasticism ; no chiming of bells has allured me, no

GEKMAN WIT: HENRY 11EINK. 129

altnr candles have dazzled me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and
have not utterly renounced my reason."

This sounds like a serious statement. But what shall we say
to a convert who plays with his newly-acquired belief in a
future life, as Heine does in the very next page ? He says to
his reader :

" Console thyself ; wo shall meet again in a better world, where I
also mean to write thee better books. I take for granted that my
health will there be improved, and that Swedenborg has not deceived
me. He relates, namely, with great confidence, that we shall peace-
fully carry on our old occupations in the other world, just as we have
done in this ; that we shall there preserve our individuality unaltered,
tvud that death will produce no particular change in onr organic de-
velopment. Swedenborg is a thoroughly honorable fellow, and quite
worthy of credit in what ho tells us about the other world, where he
saw with his own ryes the persons who had played a great part on
our earth. Most of them, ho says, remained unchanged, and busied
themselves with the same things as formerly ; they remained station^
ary, were old-fashioned, rococo — which now and then produced a
ludicrous effect. For example, our dear Dr. Martin Luther kept fast
by his doctrine of Grace, about which he had for three hundred years
daily written down the same mouldy arguments — just in the same
way as the late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed in
the Allijcmeiue Ztitung one and the same article, perpetually chewing
over again the old cud of Jesuitical doctrine. But, as we have said,
all persons who once figured here below were not found by Sweden-
bor;; in siK-h ii state of fossil immutability : many had considerably
developed their eharacter, both for good and evil, in the other world ;
and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had been heroes
and saints on earth had (here sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings ;
nnd there were examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For in-
stance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head
when ho learned what immense veneration and adoration had been
paid to him by all Christendom ; and ho who here below withstood
the most terrible temptations was now quite an impertinent rascal
and dissolute gallows-bird, who vied with his pig in rolling himself
in the mud. The chaste Susanna, from having been excessively vain
of her virtue, which she thought indomitable, came to a shameful
fall, and she who once so gloriously resisted the two old men, was a
victim to the seductions of the young Absalom, the son of David.
On the contrary, Lot's daughters had in the lapse of time become

130

very virtuous, and passed in the other world for models of propriety :
the old man, alas ! had stuck to the wine-flask."

In his " Gestandnisse, " the retractation of former opinions
and profession of Theism are renewed, but in a strain of irony
that repels our sympathy and baffles our psychology. Yet
what strange, deep pathos is mingled with the audacity of the
following passage !

" What avails it me, that enthusiastic youths and maidens crown
my marble bust with laurel, when the withered hands of an aged
nurse are pressing Spanish flies behind my ears ? What avails it me,
that all the roses of Shiraz glow and waft incense for me ? Alas !
Shiraz is two thousand miles from the Rue d'Amsterdam, where, in
the wearisome loneliness of my sick-room, I get no scent, except it
be, perhaps, the perfume of warmed towels. Alas ! God's satire
weighs heavily on me. The great Author of the universe, the Aris-
tophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with crushing force,
to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest
"sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting in comparison with His,
and how miserably I am beneath him in humor, in colossal
mockery."

For our own part, we regard the paradoxical irreverence with
which Heine professes his theoretical reverence as pathological,
as the diseased exhibition of a predominant tendency urged
into anomalous action by the pressure of pain and mental
privation — as a delirium of wit starved of its proper nourish-
ment. It is not for us to condemn, who have never had the
same burden laid on us ; it is not for pigmies at their ease to
criticise the writhings of the Titan chained to the rock.

On one other point we must touch before quitting Heine's
personal history. There is a standing accusation against him
in some quarters of wanting political principle, of wishing to
denationalize himself, and of indulging in insults against his
native country. Whatever ground may exist for these accusa-
tions, that ground is not, so far as we see, to be found in his
writings. He may not have much faith in German revolutions
and revolutionists ; experience, in his case as in that of others,
may have thrown his millennial anticipations into more distant

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 131

perspective ; but we see no evidence that he has ever swerved
from his attachment to the principles of freedom, or written
anything which to a philosophic mind is incompatible with
true patriotism. He has expressly denied the report that he
wished to become naturalized in France ; and his yearning
toward his native land and the accents of his native language is
expressed with a pathos the more reliable from the fact that he
is sparing in such effusions. We do not see why Heine's
satire of the blunders and foibles of his fellow-countrymen
should be denounced as a crime of l&se-patrie, any more than
the political caricatures of any other satirist. The real offences
of Heine are his occasional coarseness and his unscrupulous
personalities, which are reprehensible, not because they are
directed against his fellow-countrymen, but because they are
personalities. That these offences have their precedents in men
whose memory the world delights to honor does not remove
their turpitude, but it is a fact which should modify our con-
demnation in a particular case ; unless, indeed, we are to
deliver our judgments on a principle of compensation — making
up for our indulgence in one direction by our severity in
another. On this ground of coarseness and personality, a true
bill may be found against Heine ; not, we think, on the
ground that he has laughed at what is laughable in his com-
patriots. Here is a specimen of the satire under which we
suppose German patriots wince :

" Khenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the German rev-
olution. Zweibriicken was the Bethlehem in which the infant Sav-
iour— Freedom — lay in the cradle, and gave whimpering promise of
redeeming the world. Near his cradle bellowed many an ox, who
afterward, when his horns were reckoned on, showed himself a very
harmless brute. It was confidently believed that the German revolu-
tion would begin in Zweibriicken, and everything was there ripe for
an outbreak. But, as has been hinted, the tender-heartedness of
some persons frustrated that illegal undertaking. For example,
among the Bipontine conspirators there was a tremendous braggart,
who was always loudest in his rage, who boiled over with the hatred
of tyranny, and this man was fixed on to strike the first blow, by

132 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

cutting down a sentinel who kept an important post ' What ! '

cried the man, when this order was given him — ' What !— me ! Can
you expect so horrible, so bloodthirsty an act of me ? I — J, kill an
innocent sentinel ? I, who am the father of a family ! And this sen-
tinel is perhaps also father of a family. One father of a family kill
another father of a family ? Yes. Kill — murder ! '"

In political matters Heine, like all men whose intellect and
taste predominate too far over their impulses to allow of their
becoming partisans, is offensive alike to the aristocrat and the
democrat. By the one he is denounced as a man who holds
incendiary principles, by the other as a half-hearted " trim-
mer." He has no sympathy, as he says, with " that vague,
barren pathos, that useless effervescence of enthusiasm, which
plunges, with the spirit of a martyr, into an ocean of generali-
ties, and which always reminds me of the American sailor,
who had so fervent an enthusiasm for General Jackson, that he
at last sprang from the top of a mast into the sea, crying,
" I die for General Jackson J"

' ' But thou liest, Brutus, thou liest, Cassius, and thou, too, liest,
Asinius, in maintaining that my ridicule attacks those ideas which are
the precious acquisition of Humanity, and for which I myself have
so striven and suffered. No ! for the very reason that those ideas
constantly hover before the poet in glorious splendor and majesty,
he is the more irresistibly overcome by laughter when he sees how
rudely, awkwardly, and clumsily those ideas are seized and mirrored
in the contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There are mir-
rors which have so rough a surface that even an Apollo reflected in
them becomes a caricature, and excites our laughter. But we laugh
then only at the caricature, not at the god"

For the rest, why should we demand of Heine that lie should
be a hero, a patriot, a solemn prophet, any more than we
should demand of a gazelle that it should draw well in harness ?
Nature has not made him of her sterner stuff — not of iron and
adamant, but of pollen of flowers, the juice of the grape, and
Puck's mischievous brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of
kindly affection and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is,
after all, a tribute which his enemies pay him when they utter

GERMAN" WIT : HENRY HEINE. 133

their bitterest dictum, namely, that he is " nur Dichter" — only
a poet. Let us accept this point of view for the present, and,
leaving all consideration of him as a man, look at him simply
as a poet and literary artist.

Heine is essentially a lyric poet. The finest products of his

genius are

" Short swallow flights of song that dip
Their wings in tears, and skim away ;"

and they are so emphatically songs that, in reading them, wo
feel as if each must have a twin melody born in the same
moment and by the same inspiration. Heine is too impressible
and mercurial for any sustained production ; even in his short
lyrics his tears sometimes pass into laughter and his laughter
into tears ; and his longer poems, " Atta Troll" and " Deutsch-
land," are full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a
wide compass of notes ; he can take us to the shores of the
Northern Sea and thrill us by the sombre sublimity of his pict-
ures and dreamy fancies ; he can draw forth our tears by the
voice he gives to our own sorrows, or to the sorrows of " Poor
Peter ;" he can throw a cold shudder over us by a mysterious
legend, a ghost story, or a still more ghastly rendering of hard
reality ; he can charm us by a quiet idyl, shake us with laugh-
ter at his overflowing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of sur-
prise by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty to the
ludicrous. This last power is not, indeed, essentially poetical ;
but only a poet can use it with the same success as Heine, for
only a poet can poise our emotion and expectation at such a
height as to give effect to the sudden fall. Heine's greatest
power as a poet lies in his simple pathos, in the ever-varied but
always natural expression he has given to the tender emotions.
We may perhaps indicate this phase of his genius by referring
to Wordsworth's beautiful little poem, " She dwelt among the
untrodden ways ;" the conclusion —

" She dwelt alone, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be ;
But she is in her grave, and, oh !
The difference to me" —

134 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

is entirely in Heine's manner ; and so is Tennyson's poem of a
dozen lines, call "Circumstance." Both these poems have
Heine's pregnant simplicity. But, lest this comparison should
mislead, we must say that there is no general resemblance
between either Wordsworth, or Tennyson, and Heine. Their
greatest qualities lie quite a way from the light, delicate lucid-
ity, the easy, rippling music, of Heine's style. The distinctive
charm of his lyrics may best be seen by comparing them with
Goethe's. Both have the same masterly, finished simplicity
and rhythmic grace ; but there is more thought mingled with
Goethe's feeling — his lyrical genius is a vessel that draws more
water than Heine's, and, though it seems to glide along with
equal ease, we have a sense of greater weight and force, accom-
panying the grace of its movements.

But for this very reason Heine touches our hearts more
strongly ; his songs are all music and feeling — they are like
birds that not only enchant us with their delicious notes, but
nestle against us with their soft breasts, and make us feel the
agitated beating of their hearts. He indicates a whole sad his-
tory in a single quatrain ; there is not an image in it, not a
thought ; but it is beautiful, simple, and perfect as a " big
round tear' ' — it is pure feeling, breathed in pure music :

"Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen
Und ich glaubt' ich trug es nie,
Und ich nab' es doch getragen —
Aber fragt mich nnr nicht, wie." v

He excels equally in the more imaginative expression of feel-
ing : he represents it by a brief image, like a finely cut cameo ;
he expands it into a mysterious dream, or dramatizes it in a
little story, half ballad, half idyl ; and in all these forms his art
is so perfect that we never have a sense of artificiality or of
unsuccessful effort ; but all seems to have developed itself by
the same beautiful necessity that brings forth vine-leaves and

* At first I was almost in despair, and I thought I could never
bear it, and yet I have borne it— only do not ask me how ?

GERMAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 135

grapes and the natural curls of childhood. Of Heine's humor-
ous poetry, " Deutschland " is the most charming specimen —
charming, especially, because its wit and humor grow out of a
rich loam of thought. " Atta Troll" is more original, more
various, more fantastic ; but it is too great a strain on the im-
agination to be a general favorite. We have said that feeling
is the element in which Heine's poetic genius habitually floats ;
but he can occasionally soar to a higher region, and impart deep
significance to picturesque symbolism ; he can flash a sublime
thought over the past and into the future ; he can pour forth a
lofty strain of hope or indignation. Few could forget, after
once hearing them, the stanzas at the close of " Deutschland,"
in which he warns the King of Prussia not to incur the irredeem-
able hell which the injured poet can create for him — the singing
flames of a Dante's terza rima !

" Kennst du die Holle des Dante nicht,
Die schrecklichen Terzetten ?
Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt
Den kann kein Gott mehr retten.

"Kein Gott, keiii Heiland, erlost ihn je
Aus diesen singenden Flammen !
Nimm dich in Acht, das wir dich nicht
Zu solcher Holle verdammen." *

As a prosaist, Heine is, in one point of view, even more distin-
guished than as a poet. The German language easily lends
itself to all the purposes of poetry ; like the ladies of the Mid-
dle Ages, it is gracious and compliant to the Troubadours.
But as these same ladies were often crusty and repulsive to their

* It is not fair to the English reader to indulge in German quota-
tions, but in our opinion poetical translations are usually worse than
valueless. For those who think differently, however, we may men-
tion that Mr. Stores Smith has published a modest little book, con-
taining " Selections from the Poetry of Heinrich Heine," and that a
meritorious (American) translation of Heine's complete works, by
Charles Leland, is now appearing in shilling numbers.

136

unmusical mates, so the German language generally appears awk-
ward and unmanageable in the hands of prose writers. Indeed,
the number of really fine German prosaists before Heine would
hardly have exceeded the numerating powers of a New Hol-
lander, who can count three and no more. Persons the most
familiar with German prose testify that there is an extra fatigue
in reading it, just as we feel an extra fatigue from our walk
when it takes us over ploughed clay. But in Heine's hands
German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, becomes,
like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, brill-
iant ; it is German in an allotropic condition. No dreary laby-
rinthine sentences in which you find " no end in wandering
mazes lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long
drawn out ; no digressions thrown in as parentheses ; but
crystalline definiteness and clearness, fine and varied rhythm,
and all that delicate precision, all those felicities of word and
cadence, which belong to the highest order of prose. And
Heine has proved — what Madame de Stael seems to have
doubted — that it is possible to be witty in German ; indeed,
in reading him, you might imagine that German was pre-emi-
nently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant
does it become under his management. He is far more an
artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and re-
pose, and the calm development which belong to Goethe's
style, for they are foreign to his mental character ; but he excels
Goethe in susceptibility to the manifold qualities of prose, and
in mastery over its effects. Heine is full of variety, of light
and shadow : he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imag-
inative grace, sly allusion, and daring piquancy ; and athwart
all these there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness, and grandeur
which reveals the poet. He continually throws out those finely
chiselled sayings which stamp themselves on the memory, and
become familiar by quotation. For example : " The People
have time enough, they are immortal ; kings only are mortal."
— "Wherever a great soul utters its thoughts, there is Gol-
gotha."— " Nature wanted to see how she looked, and she

GERiiAN WIT : HENRY HEINE. 137

created Goethe." — "Only the man who has known bodily
suffering is truly a man ; his limbs have their Passion history,
they are spiritualized." He calls Rubens " this Flemish Titan,
the wings of whose genius were so strong that he soared as
high as the sun, in spite of the hundred-weight of Dutch
cheeses that hung on his legs. " Speaking of Borne's dislike to
the calm creations of the true artist, he says, " He was like
a child which, insensible to the glowing significance of a
Greek statue, only touches the marble and complains of
cold."

The most poetic and specifically humorous of Heine's pirose
writings are the 4t Reisebilder." The comparison with Sterne
is inevitable here ; but Heine does not suffer from it, for if he
falls below Sterne in raciness of humor, he is far above him in
poetic sensibility and in reach arid variety of thought. Heine's
humor is never persistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety
and drollery ; where it is not swelled by the tide of poetic feel-
ing, it is continually dashing down the precipice of a witticism.
It is not broad and unctuous ; it is aerial and sprite-like, a
momentary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. In
the " Reisebilder" he runs through the whole gamut of his
powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wildly
droll and fantastic to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a
.passage almost Dantesque in conception :

" Alas ! one ought in truth to write against no one in this world.
Each of us is sick enough in this great lazaretto, and many a polem-
ical writing reminds me involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a lit-
tle hospital at Cracow, of which I chanced to be a witness, and where
it was horrible to hear how the patients mockingly reproached each
other with their infirmities : how one who was wasted by consump-
tion jeered at another who was bloated by dropsy ; how one laughed
at another's cancer in the nose, and this one again at his neighbor's
locked-jaw or squint, until at last the delirious fever-patient sprang
out of bed and tore away the coverings from the wounded bodies of
his companions, and nothing was to be seen but hideous misery and
mutilation. "

And how fine is the transition in the very next chapter,

138 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT. "

where, after quoting the Homeric description of the feasting
gods, he says :

" Then suddenly approached, panting, a pale Jew, with drops of
blood on his brow, with a crown of thorns on his head, and a great
cross laid on his shoulders ; and he threw the cross on the high table
of the gods, so that the golden cups tottered, and the gods became
dumb and pale, and grew ever paler, till they at last melted away
into vapor."

The richest specimens of Heine's wit are perhaps to be found
in the works which have appeared since the " Reisebilder. "
The years, if they have intensified his satirical bitterness, have
also given his wit a finer edge and polish. His sarcasms are so
subtly prepared and so slily allusive, that they may often
escape readers whose sense of wit is not very acute ; but for
those who delight in the subtle and delicate flavors of style,
there can hardly be any wit more irresistible than Heine's.
We may measure its force by the degree in which it has sub-
dued the German language to its purposes, and made that lan-
guage brilliant in spite of a long hereditary transmission of dul-
ness. As one of the most harmless examples of his satire,
take this on a man who has certainly had his share of adula-
tion :

" Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor Cou-
sin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me under an
obligation to praise him. He belongs to that living pantheon of
France which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the
velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed sternly repress
all private feelings which might seduce me into an excessive enthusi-
asm. Otherwise I might be suspected of servility ; for M. Cousin is
very influential in the State by means of his position and his
tongue. This consideration might even move me to speak of his
faults as frankly as of his virtues. Will he himself disapprove of this ?
Assuredly not. I know that we cannot do higher honor to great
minds than when we throw as strong a light on their demerits as on
their merits. When we sing the praises of a Hercules, we must also
mention that he once laid aside the lion's skin and sat down to the
distaff : what then ? he remains notwithstanding a Hercules ! So
when we relate similar circumstances concerning M. Cousin, we

GERMAN WIT : HEtfRY HEINE. 139

must nevertheless add, with discriminating eulogy : M. Cousin, if he
has sometimes sat twaddling at the distaff, has never laid aside the lion's
skin. . . . It is true that, having been suspected of demagogy,
he spent some time in a German prison, just as Lafayette and Rich-
ard Coeur de Lion. But that M. Cousin there in his leisure hours
studied Kant's ' Critique of Pure Reason' is to be doubted on three
grounds. First, this book is written in German. Secondly, in order
to read this book, a man must understand German. Thirdly, M.
Cousin does not understand German. ... I fear I am passing
unawares from the sweet waters of praise into the bitter ocean of
blame. Yes, on one account I cannot refrain from bitterly blaming
M. Cousin— namely, that he who loves truth far more than he loves
Plato and Tenneman is unjust to himself when he wants to persuade
us that he has borrowed something from the philosophy of Schelling
and Hegel. Against this self -accusation I must take M. Cousin un-
der my protection. On my word and conscience ! this honorable
man has not stolen a jot from Schelling and Hegel, and if he brought
home anything of theirs, it was merely their friendship. That does
honor to his heart. But there are many instances of such false self-
accusation in psychology. I knew a man who declared that he had
stolen silver spoons at the king' s table ; and yet we all knew that the
poor devil had never been presented at court, and accused himself of
stealing these spoons to make us believe that he had been a guest at
the palace. No ! In German philosophy M. Cousin has always kept
the sixth commandment ; here he has never pocketed a single idea,
not so much as a salt-spoon of an idea. All witnesses agree in at-
testing that in this respect M. Cousin is honor itself. ... I
prophesy to you that the renown of M. Cousin, like the French Rev-
olution, will go round the world ! I hear some one wickedly add :
Undeniably the renown of M. Cousin is going round the world, and
it has already taken its departure from France."

The following " symbolical myth" about Louis Philippe is
very characteristic of Heine's manner :

" I remember very well that immediately on my arrival (in Paris)
I hastened to the Palais Royal to see Louis Philippe. The friend
who conducted me told me that the king now appeared on the ter-
race only at stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at any
time for five francs. ' For five francs ! ' I cried with amazement ;
' does he then show himself for money ?' ' No, but he is shown for
money, and it happens in this way : There is a society of claqueurs,
marchands de contremarques, and such riff-raff, who offered every

140 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

foreigner to show him the king for five francs : if he would give ten
francs, he might see the king raise his eyes to heaven, and lay his
hand protestingly on his heart ; if he would give twenty francs, the
king would sing the Marseillaise. If the foreigner gave five francs,
they raised a loud cheering under the king's windows, and His Maj-
esty appeared on the terrace, bowed, and retired. If ten francs, they
shouted still louder, and gesticulated as if they had been possessed,
when the king appeared, who then, as a sign of silent emotion, raised
his eyes to heaven and laid his hand on his heart. English visitors,
however, would sometimes spend as much as twenty francs, and then
the enthusiasm mounted to the highest pitch ; no sooner did the
king appear on the terrace than the Marseillaise was struck up and
roared out frightfully, until Louis Philippe, perhaps only for the
sake of putting an end to the singing, bowed, laid his hand on his
heart, and joined in the Marseillaise. Whether, as is asserted, he
beat time with his foot, I cannot say.' "

One more quotation, and it must be our last :

44 Oh the women ! We must forgive them much, for they love
much— and many. Their hate is properly only love turned inside
out. Sometimes they attribute some delinquency to us, because they
think they can in this way gratify another man. When they write,
they have always one eye on the paper and the other on a man ; and
this is true of all authoresses, except the Countess Eahn-Hahn, who
has only one eye."

V.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE.*

IT is an interesting branch of psychological observation to
note the images that are habitually associated with abstract or
collective terms — what may be called the picture-writing of the
mind, which it carries on concurrently with the more subtle
symbolism of language. Perhaps the fixity or variety of these
associated images would furnish a tolerably fair test of the
amount of concrete knowledge and experience which a given
word represents, in the minds of two persons who use it with
equal familiarity. The word railways, for example, will prob-
ably call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly locomo-
tive, the image either of a ' ' Bradshaw, " or of the station with
which he is most familiar, or of an indefinite length of tram-
road ; he will alternate between these three images, which rep-
resent his stock of concrete acquaintance with railways. But
suppose a man to have had successively the experience of a
" navvy," an engineer, a traveller, a railway director and
shareholder, and a landed proprietor in treaty with a railway
company, and it is probable that the range of images which
would by turns present themselves to his mind at the mention
of the word " railways," would include all the essential facts
in the existence and relations of the thing. Now it is possible
for the first-mentioned personage to entertain very expanded
views as to the multiplication of railways in the abstract, and
their ultimate function in civilization. He may talk of a vast

* 1. " Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft." Von W. H. Kiehl. Dritte
Anflage. 1855. 2. " Land und Leute." Yon W. H. Biehl. Dritte
Auflage. 1856.

142 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT. "

net-work of railways stretching over the globe, of future
" lines" in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment-rooms in the
Sandwich Islands, with none the less glibness because his dis-
tinct conceptions on the subject do not extend beyond his one
station and his indefinite length of tram-road. But it is evi-
dent that if we want a railway to be made, or its affairs to be
managed, this man of wide views and narrow observation will
not serve our purpose.

Probably, if we could ascertain the images called up by the
terms " the people," " the masses," " the proletariat," " the
peasantry," by many who theorize on those bodies with elo-
quence, or who legislate without eloquence, we should find that
they indicate almost as small an amount of concrete knowledge
— that they are as far from completely representing the com-
plex facts summed up in the collective term, as the railway
images of our non-locomotive gentleman. How little the real
characteristics of the working-classes are known to those who
are outside them, how little their natural history has been
studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our Art as well as by our
political and social theories. Where, in our picture exhibi-
tions, shall we find a group of true peasantry ? What English
artist even attempts to rival in truthfulness such studies of pop-
ular life as the pictures of Teniers or the ragged boys of
Murillo ? Even one of the greatest painters of the pre-emi-
nently realistic school, while, in his picture of " The Hireling
Shepherd," he gave us a landscape of marvellous truthfulness,
placed a pair of peasants in the foreground who were not much
more real than the idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney
ornaments. Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy
with our peasantry could give a moment's popularity to such
a picture as " Cross Purposes," where we have a peasant girl
who looks as if she knew L. E, L.'s poems by heart, and Eng-
lish rustics, whose costume seems to indicate that they are
meant for ploughmen, with exotic features that remind us of a
handsome primo tenore. Rather than such cockney sentimen-
tality as this, as an education for the taste and sympathies, we

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 14:3

prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever
painted. But even those among our painters who aim at giv-
ing the rustic type of features, who are far above the effeminate
feebleness of the " Keepsake" style, treat their subjects under
the influence of traditions and prepossessions rather than of
direct observation. The notion that peasants are joyous, that
the typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is
when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound teeth,
that cottage matrons arc usually buxom, and village children
necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge
from the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into litera-
ture instead of life. The painter is still under the influence of
idyllic literature, which has always expressed the imagination
of the cultivated and town-bred, rather than the truth of rustic
life. Idyllic ploughmen are jocund when they drive their team
afield ; idyllic shepherds make bashful love -under hawthorn
bushes ; idyllic villagers dance in the checkered shade and re-
fresh themselves, not immoderately, with spicy nut-brown ale.
But no one who has seen much of actual ploughmen thinks
them jocund ; no one who is well acquainted with the English
peasantry can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in which
no sense of beauty beams, no humor twinkles, the slow utter-
ance, and the heavy, slouching walk, remind one rather of that
melancholy animal the camel than of the sturdy countryman,
with striped stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, who rep-
resents the traditional English peasant. Observe a company
of haymakers. When you see them at a distance, tossing up
the forkfuls of hay in the golden light, while the wagon creeps
slowly with its increasing burden over the meadow, and the
bright green space which tells of work done gets larger and
larger, you pronounce the scene ' ' smiling, ' ' and you think
these companions in labor must be as bright and cheerful as
the picture to which they give animation. Approach nearer,
and you will certainly find that haymaking time is a time for
joking, especially if there are women among the laborers ; but
the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and then, and ex-

144 THE ESSAYS OF ( ' GEOKGE ELIOT."

presses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your
conception of idyllic merriment. That delicious effervescence
of the mind which we call fun has no equivalent for the north-
ern peasant, except tipsy revelry ; the only realm of fancy and
imagination for the English clown exists at the bottom of the
third quart pot.

The conventional countryman of the stage, who picks up
pocket-books and never looks into them, and who is too simple
even to know that honesty has its opposite, represents the still
lingering mistake, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee
for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indicate an up-
right disposition. It is quite true that a thresher is likely to
be innocent of any adroit arithmetical cheating, but he is not
the less likely to carry home his master's corn in his shoes and
pocket ; a reaper is not given to writing begging-letters, but he
is quite capable of cajoling the dairymaid into filling his small-
beer bottle with ale. The selfish instincts are not subdued by
the sight of buttercups, nor is integrity in the least established
by that classic rural occupation, sheep- washing. To make men
moral something more is requisite than to turn them out to
grass.

Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin's indig-
nation, are surely too frank an idealization to be misleading ;
and since popular chorus is one of the most effective elements
of the opera, we can hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant
laced boddices and picturesque motley, unless we are prepared
to advocate a chorus of colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet
of charwomen and stocking-weavers. But our social novels
profess to represent the people as they are, and the unreality of
their representations is a grave evil. The greatest benefit we
owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the ex-
tension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generaliza-
tions and statistics~requife a sympathy ready-made, a moral
sentiment already in activity ; but a picture of human life
such as a great artist can give, surprises even the trivial and
the selfish into that attention to what is a part from themselves,

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN" LIFE. 145

which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment.
When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, or
tells the story of "The Two Drovers ;" when Wordsworth
sings to us the reverie of " Poor Susan ;" when Kingsley
shows us Alton Locke gazing yearningly over the gate which
leads from the highway into the first wood he ever saw ; when
Hornung paints a group of chimney-sweepers — more is done
toward linking the higher classes with the lower, toward oblit-
erating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of ser-
mons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the nearest thing
to life ; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending
our contact with our fellow-men beyond the bounds of our per-
sonal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when
he undertakes to paint the life of the People. Falsification
here is far more pernicious than in the more artificial aspects
of life. It is not so very serious that we should have false
ideas about evanescent fashions — about the manners and con-
versation of beaux and duchesses ; but it is serious that our
sympathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, the
tragedy, and the humor in the life of our more heavily laden
fellow-men, should be perverted, and turned toward a false ob-
ject instead of the true one.

This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepresen-
tation which give rise to it has what the artist considers a
moral end. The thing for mankind to know is, not what are
the motives and influences which the moralist thinks ought to
act on the laborer or the artisan, but what are the motives and
influences which do act on him. We want to be taught to feel,
not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for
the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his
suspicious selfishness.

We have one great novelist who is gifted with the utmost
power of rendering the external traits of our town population ;
and if he could give us their psychological character — their
conception of life, and their emotions — with the same truth as
their idiom and manners, his books would be the greatest con-

146

tribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sym-
pathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Flemish's colloquial
style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there is
the same startling inspiration in his description of the gestures
and phrases of " Boots," as in the speeches of Shakespeare's
mobs or numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humorous
and external to the emotional and tragic, without becoming as
transcendent in his unreality as he was a moment before in his
artistic truthfulness. But for the precious salt of his humor,
which compels him to reproduce external traits that serve in
some degree as a corrective to his frequently false psychology,
his preternaturally virtuous poor children and artisans, his melo-
dramatic boatmen and courtesans, would be as obnoxious as
Eugene Sue's idealized proletaires, in encouraging the miser-
able fallacy that high morality and refined sentiment can grow
out of harsh social relations, ignorance, and want ; or that the
working-classes are in a condition to enter at once into a mil-
lennial state of altruism, wherein every one is caring for every-
one else, and no one for himself.

If we need a true conception of the popular character to
guide our sympathies rightly, we need it equally to check our
theories, and direct us in their application. The tendency
created by the splendid conquests of modern generalization, to
believe that all social questions are merged in economical
science, and that the relations of men to their neighbors may
be settled by algebraic equations — the dream that the un-
cultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals
principally to their moral sensibilities — the aristocractic dilet-
tantism which attempts to restore the " good old times1' by a
sort of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity and
veneration as we grow prize turnips, by an artificial system of
culture — none of these diverging mistakes can coexist with a
real knowledge of the people, with a thorough study of their
habits, their ideas, their motives. The landholder, the clergy-
man, the mill -owner, the mining-agent, have each an oppor-
tunity for making precious observations on different sections

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 147

«

of the working-classes, but unfortunately their experience is
too often not registered at all, or its results are too scattered
to be available as a source of information and stimulus to the
public mind generally. If any man of sufficient moral and
intellectual breadth, whose observations would not be vitiated
by a foregone conclusion, or by a professional point of view,
would devote himself to studying the natural history of our
social classes, especially of the small shopkeepers, artisans, and
peasantry — the degree in which they are influenced by local
conditions, their maxims and habits, the points of view from
which -they regard their religious teachers, and the degree in
which they are influenced by religious doctrines, the interaction
of the various classes on each other, and what are the tenden-
cies in their position toward disintegration or toward develop-
ment— and if, after all this study, he would give us the result
of his observation in a book well nourished with specific facts,
his work would be a valuable aid to the social and political
reformer.

What we are desiring for ourselves has been in some degree
done for the Germans by Riehl, the author of the very
remarkable books, the titles of which are placed at the head of
this article ; and we wish to make these books known to our
readers, not only for the sake of the interesting matter they
contain, and the important reflections they suggest, but also as
a model for some future or actual student of our own people.
By way of introducing Riehl to those who are unacquainted
with his writings, we will give a rapid sketch from his picture
of the German Peasantry, and perhaps this indication of the
mode in which he treats a particular branch of his subject
may prepare them to follow us with more interest when we
enter on the general purpose and contents of his works.

In England, at present, when we speak of the peasantry we
mean scarcely more than the class of farm -servants and farm-
laborers ; and it is only in the most primitive districts, as in
Wales, for example, that farmers are included under the term.
In order to appreciate what Riehl says of the German peas-

148 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT.''

fl

antry, we ransl remember what the tenant-farmers and small
proprietors were in England half a century ago, when the
master helped to milk his own cows, and the daughters got up
at one o'clock in the morning to brew — when the family
dined in the kitchen with the servants, and sat with them
round the kitchen fire in the evening. In those days, the
quarried parlor was innocent of a carpet, and its only speci-
mens of art were a framed sampler and the best tea-board ; the
daughters even of substantial farmers had often no greater ac-
complishment in writing and spelling than they could procure
at a dame-school ; and, instead of carrying on sentimental
correspondence, they were spinning their future table-linen,
and looking after every saving in butter and eggs that might
enable them to add to the little stock of plate and china which
they were laying in against their marriage. In our own day,
setting aside the superior order of fanners, whose style of
living and mental culture are often equal to that of the pro-
fessional class in provincial towns, we can hardly enter the least
imposing farm-house without finding a bad piano in the
'* drawing-room," and some old annuals, disposed with a sym-
metrical imitation of negligence, on the table ; though the
daughters may still drop their A's, their vowels are studiously
narrow ; and it is only in very primitive regions that they will
consent to sit in a covered vehicle without springs, which was
once thought an advance in luxury on the pillion.

The condition of the tenant-farmers and small proprietors in
Germany is, we imagine, about on a par, not, certainly, in
material prosperity, but in mental culture and habits, with
that of the English farmers who were beginning to be thought
old-fashioned nearly fifty years ago, and if we add to these the
farm servants and laborers we shall have a class approximating
in its characteristics to the Bauernthum, or peasantry, de-
scribed by Riehl.

In Germany, perhaps more than in any other country, it is
among the peasantry that we must look for the historical type
of the national physique. In the towns this type has become

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 149

so modified to express the personality of the individual that
even " family likeness" is often but faintly marked. But the
peasants may still be distinguished into groups, by their
physical peculiarities. In one part of the country we find a
longer- legged, in another a broader-shouldered race, which has
inherited these peculiarities for centuries. For example, in
certain districts of Hesse are seen long faces, with high fore-
heads, long, straight noses, and small eyes, with arched eye-
brows and large eyelids. On comparing these physiognomies
with the sculptures in the church of St. Elizabeth, at Marburg,
executed in the thirteenth century, it will be found that the
same old Hessian type of face has subsisted unchanged, with
this distinction only, that the sculptures represent princes and
nobles, whose features then bore the stamp of their race, while
that stamp is now to be found only among the peasants. A
painter who wants to draw mediaeval characters with historic
truth must seek his models among the peasantry. This ex-
plains why the old German v painters gave the heads of their
subjects a greater uniformity of type than the painters of our
day ; the race had not attained to a high degree of individ-
ualization in features and expression. It indicates, too, that
the cultured man acts more as an individual, the peasant more
as one of a group. Hans drives the plough, lives, and thinks
just as Kunz does ; and it is this fact that many thousands of
men are as like each other in thoughts and habits as so many
sheep or oysters, which constitutes the weight of the peasantry
in the social and political scale.

In the cultivated world each individual has his style of
speaking and writing. But among the peasantry it is the race,
the district, the province, that has its style — namely, its
dialect, its phraseology, its proverbs, and its songs, which
belong alike to the entire body of the people. This provincial
style of the peasant is again, like his physique, a remnant of
history, to which he clings with the utmost tenacity. In
certain parts of Hungary there are still descendants of German
colonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who go about

150 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT. "

the country as reapers, retaining their old Saxon songs and
manners, while the more cultivated German emigrants in a
very short time forget their own language, and speak Hun-
garian. Another remarkable case of the same kind is that of
the Wends, a Slavonic race settled in Lusatia, whose numbers
amount to 200,000, living either scattered among the German
population or in separate parishes. They have their own
schools and churches, and are taught in the Slavonic tongue.
The Catholics among them are rigid adherents of the Pope ;
the Protestants not less rigid adherents of Luther, or Doctor
Luther, as they are particular in calling him — a custom which
a hundred years ago was universal in Protestant Germany.
The Wend clings tenaciously to the usages of his Church, and
perhaps this may contribute not a little to the purity in which
he maintains the specific characteristics of his race. German
education, German law and government, service in the standing
army, and many other agencies, are in antagonism to his
national exclusiveness ; but the wives and mothers here, as
elsewhere, are a conservative influence, and the habits tem-
porarily laid aside in the outer world are recovered by the
fireside. The Wends form several stout regiments in the
Saxon army ; they are sought far and wide, as diligent and
honest servants ; and many a weakly Dresden or Leipzig child
becomes thriving under the care of a Wendish nurse. In their
villages they have the air and habits of genuine sturdy peasants,
and all their customs indicate that they have been from the
first an agricultural people. For example, they have tradi-
tional modes of treating their domestic animals. Each cow
has its own name, generally chosen carefully, so as to express
the special qualities of the animal ; and all important family
events are narrated to the bees — a custom which is found also
in Westphalia. Whether by the help of the bees or not, the
Wend farming is especially prosperous ; and when a poor
Bohemian peasant has a son born to him he binds him to the
end of a long pole and turns his face toward Lusatia, that he
may be as lucky as the Wends, who live there.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN" LIFE. 151

The peculiarity of the peasant's language consists chiefly in
his retention of historical peculiarities, which gradually dis-
appear under the friction of cultivated circles. He prefers any
proper name that may be given to a day in the calendar, rather
than the abstract date, by which he very rarely reckons. In
the baptismal names of his children he is guided by the old
custom of the country, not at all by whim and fancy. Many
old baptismal names, formerly common in Germany, would
have become extinct but for their preservation among the
peasantry, especially in North Germany ; and so firmly have
they adhered to local tradition in this matter that it would be
possible to give a sort of topographical statistics of proper
names, and distinguish a district by its rustic names as we do
by its Flora and Fauna. The continuous inheritance of certain
favorite proper names in a family, in some districts, forces the
peasant to adopt the princely custom of attaching a numeral to
the name, and saying, when three generations are living at
once, Hans L, II., and III.; or — in the more antique fashion
— Hans the elder, the middle, and the younger. In some of
our English counties there is a similar adherence to a narrow
range of proper names, and a mode of distinguishing collateral
branches in the same family, you will hear of Jonathan's Bess,
Thomas's Bess, and Samuel's Bess — the three Bessies being
cousins.

The peasant's adherence to the traditional has much greater
inconvenience than that entailed by a paucity of proper names.
In the Black Forest and in Hiittenberg you will see him in
the dog-days wearing a thick fur cap, because it is an historical
fur cap — a cap worn by his grandfather. In the Wetterau,
that peasant girl is considered the handsomest who wears
the most petticoats. To go to field-labor in seven pet-
ticoats can be anything but convenient or agreeable, but it is
the traditionally correct thing, and a German peasant girl
would think herself as unfavorably conspicuous in an untradi-
tional costume as an English servant-girl would now think
herself in a " linsey-wolsey" apron or a thick muslin cap. In

152 THE ESSAYS OF

many districts no medical advice would induce the rustic to
renounce the tight leather belt with which he injures his
digestive functions ; you could more easily persuade him to
smile on a new communal system than on the unhistorical
invention of braces. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the
philanthropic preachers of potatoes, the peasant for years threw
his potatoes to the pigs and the dogs, before he could be
persuaded to put them on his own table. However, the un-
willingness of the peasant to adopt innovations has a not
unreasonable foundation in the fact that for him experiments
are practical, not theoretical, and must be made with expense
of money instead of brains — a fact that is not, perhaps,
sufficiently taken into account by agricultural theorists, who
complain of the farmer's obstinacy. The peasant has the
smallest possible faith in theoretic knowledge ; he thinks it
rather dangerous than otherwise, as is well indicated by a
Lower Rhenish proverb — " One is never too old to learn, said
an old woman ; so she learned to be a witch. "

Between many villages an historical feud, once perhaps the
occasion of much bloodshed, is still kept up under the milder
form of an occasional round of cudgelling and the launching
of traditional nicknames. An historical feud of this kind still
exists, for example, among many villages on the Rhine and
more inland places in the neighborhood. Rheinschnacke (of
which the equivalent is perhaps " water-snake") is the stand-
ing term of ignominy for the inhabitant of the Rhine village,
who repays it in kind by the epithet " karst" (mattock), or
" kukuk" (cuckoo), according as the object of his hereditary
hatred belongs to the field or the forest. If any Romeo among
the " mattocks" were to marry a Juliet among the " water-
snakes," there would be no lack of Tybalts and Mercutios to
carry the conflict from words to blows, though neither side
knows a reason for the enmity.

A droll instance of peasant conservatism is told of a village
on the Taunus, whose inhabitants, from time immemorial, had
been famous for impromptu cudgelling. For this historical

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 153

offence the magistrates of the district had always inflicted the
equally historical punishment of shutting up the most incor-
rigible offenders, not in prison, but in their own pig-sty. In
recent times, however, the government, wishing to correct the
rudeness of these peasants, appointed an " enlightened" man
as a magistrate, who at once abolished the original penalty
above mentioned. But this relaxation of punishment was so
far from being welcome to the villagers that they presented a
petition praying that a more energetic man might be given
them as a magistrate, who would have the courage to punish
according to law and justice, *' as had been beforetime." And
the magistrate who abolished incarceration in the pig-sty could
never obtain the respect of the neighborhood. This happened
no longer ago than the beginning of the present century.

But it must not he supposed that the historical piety of the
German peasant extends to anything not immediately connected
with himself. He has the warmest piety toward the old
tumble-down house which his grandfather built, and which
nothing will induce him to improve, but toward the venerable
ruins of the old castle that overlooks his village he has no piety
at all, and carries off its stones to make a fence for his garden,
or tears down the gothic carving of the old monastic church,
which is " nothing to him," to mark off a foot-path through
his field. It is the same with historical traditions. The
peasant has them fresh in his memory, so far as they relate to
himself. In districts where the peasantry are unadulterated,
you can discern the remnants of the feudal relations in innumer-
able customs and phrases, but you will ask in vain for histori-
cal traditions concerning the empire, or even concerning the
particular princely house to which the peasant is subject.
He can tell you what " half people and whole people" mean ;
in Hesse you will still hear of " four horses making a whole
peasant," or of " four-day and three-day peasants ;" but you
will ask in vain about Charlemagne and Frederic Barbarossa.

Riebl well observes that the feudal system, which made the
peasant the bondman of his lord, was an immense benefit in a

154

country, the greater part of which had still to be colonized — •
rescued the peasant from vagabondage, and laid the foundation
of persistency and endurance in future generations. If a free
German peasantry belongs only to modern times, it is to his
ancestor who was a serf, and even, in the earliest times, a
slave, that the peasant owes the foundation of his indepen-
dence, namely, his capability of a settled existence — nay, his
unreasoning persistency, which has its important function in
the development of the race.

Perhaps the very worst result of that unreasoning per-
sistency is the peasant's inveterate habit of litigation. Every
one remembers the immortal description of Dandie Dinmont's
importunate application to Lawyer Pleydell to manage his " bit
lawsuit/' till at length Pleydell consents to help him to ruin him-
self, on the ground that Dandie may fall into worse hands. It
seems this is a scene which has many parallels in Germany.
The farmer's lawsuit is his point of honor ; and he will carry
it through, though he knows from the very first day that he
shall get nothing by it. The litigious peasant piques himself,
like Mr. Saddletree, on his knowledge of the law, and this vanity
is the chief impulse to many a lawsuit. To the mind of the
peasant, law presents itself as the " custom of the country,'*
and it is his pride to be versed in all customs. Custom with
him holds the place of sentiment, of theory, and in many cases
of affection. Riehl justly urges the importance of simplifying
law proceedings, so as to cut off this vanity at its source, and
also of encouraging, by every possible means, the practice of
arbitration.

JThe peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, for the same
reason that he does not make love and marry in summer —
because he has no time for that sort of thing. Anything is
easier to him than to move out of his habitual course, and he
is attached even to his privations. Some years ago a peasant
youth, out of the poorest and remotest region of the Wester-
wald, was enlisted as a recruit, at Weilburg in Nassau. The
lad, having never in his life slept in a bed, when he had got

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 155

into one for the first time began to cry like a child ; and he
deserted twice because he could not reconcile himself to sleep-
ing in a bed, and to the " fine" life of the barracks : he was
homesick at the thought of his accustomed poverty and his
thatched hut. A strong contrast, this, with the feeling of the
poor in towns, who would be far enough from deserting be-
cause their condition was too much improved ! The genuine
peasant is never ashamed of his rank and calling ; he is rather
inclined to look down on every one who does not wear a
smock frock, and thinks a man who has the manners of the
gentry is likely to be rather windy and unsubstantial. In
some places, even in French districts, this feeling is strongly
symbolized by the practice of the peasantry, on certain festival
days, to dress the images of the saints in peasant's clothing.
History tells us of all kinds of peasant insurrections, the object
of which was to obtain relief for the peasants from some of
their many oppressions ; but of an effort on their part to step
out of their hereditary rank and calling, to become gentry, to
leave the plough and carry on the easier business of capitalists
or government functionaries, there is no example.

The German novelists who undertake to give pictures of
peasant-life foil into the same mistake as our English novelists :
they transfer their own feelings to ploughmen and wood-
cutters, and give them both joys and sorrows of which they
know nothing. The peasant never questions the obligation of
family ties — he questions no custom — but tender affection, as it
exists among the refined part of mankind, is almost as foreign
to him as white hands and filbert-shaped nails. That the aged
father who has given up his property to his children on condition
of their maintaining him for the remainder of his life, is very
far from meeting with delicate attentions, is indicated by the
proverb current among the peasantry — " Don't take your
clothes off before you go to bed." Among rustic moral tales
and parables, not one is more universal than the story of the
ungrateful children, who made their gray-headed father,
dependent on them for a maintenance, eat at a wooden trough

156 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

because lie shook the food out of his trembling hands. Then
these same ungrateful children observed one day that their own
little boy was making a tiny wooden trough ; and when they
asked him what it was for, he answered — that his father and
mother might eat out of it, when he was a man and had to
keep them.

Marriage is a very prudential affair, especially among the
peasants who have the largest share of property. Politic
marriages are as common among them as among princes ; and
when a peasant-heiress in Westphalia marries, her husband
adopts her name, and places his own after it with the prefix
geborner (nee). The girls marry young, and the rapidity with
which they get old and ugly is one among the many proofs
that the early years of marriage are fuller of hardships than of
conjugal tenderness. " When our writers of village stories,"
says Riehl, u transferred their own emotional life to the
peasant, they obliterated what is precisely his most predomi-
nant characteristic, namely, that with him general custom holds
the place of individual feeling.'*

We pay for greater emotional susceptibility too often by
nervous diseases of which the peasant knows nothing. To him
headache is the least of physical evils, because he thinks head-
work the easiest and least indispensable of all labor. Happily,
many of the younger sons in peasant families, by going to seek
their living in the towns, carry their hardy nervous system to
amalgamate with the overwrought nerves of our town popula-
tion, and refresh them with a little rude vigor. And a return
to the habits of peasant life is the best remedy for many moral
as well as physical diseases induced by perverted civilization.
Riehl points to colonization as presenting the true field for this
regenerative process. On the other side of the ocean a man
will have the courage to begin life again as a peasant, while at
home, perhaps, opportunity as well as courage will fail him.
Apropos of this subject of emigration, he remarks the striking
fact, that the native shrewdness and mother-wit of the German
peasant seem to forsake him entirely when he has to apply

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 157

them under new circumstances, and on relations foreign to his
experience. Hence it is that the German peasant who emi-
grates, so constantly falls a victim to unprincipled adventurers
in the preliminaries to emigration ; but if once he gets his foot
on the American soil he exhibits all the first-rate qualities of
an agricultural colonist ; and among all German emigrants the
peasant class are the most successful.

But many disintegrating forces have been at work on the
peasant character, and degeneration is unhappily going on at a
greater pace than development. In the wine districts especial-
ly, the inability of the small proprietors to bear up under the
vicissitudes of the market, or to insure a high quality of wine
by running the risks of a late vintage and the competition of
beer and cider with the inferior wines, have tended to produce
that uncertainty of gain which, with the peasant, is the inevi-
table cause of demoralization. The small peasant proprietors
are not a new class in Germany, but many of the evils of their
position are new. They are more dependent on ready money
than formerly ; thus, where a peasant used to get his wood for
building and firing from the common forest, he has now to pay
for it with hard cash ; he used to thatch his own house, with
the help perhaps of a neighbor, but now he pays a man to
do it for him ; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now pays
them in money. The chances of the market have to be dis*
counted, and the peasant falls into the hands of money-lenders.
Here is one of the cases in which social policy clashes with a
purely economical policy.

Political vicissitudes have added their influence to that of
economical changes in disturbing that dim instinct, that
reverence for traditional custom, which is the peasant's prin-
ciple of action. He is in the midst of novelties for which he
knows no reason — changes in political geography, changes of
the government to which he owes fealty, changes in bureau-
cratic management and police regulations. He finds himself
in a new element before an apparatus for breathing in it is
developed in him. His only knowledge of modem history is

158 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

in some of its results- — for instance, that he has to pay heavier
taxes from year to year. His chief idea of a government is of
a power that raises his taxes, opposes his "harmless customs,
and torments him with new formalities. The source of all this
is the false system of u enlightening" the peasant which has
been adopted by the bureaucratic governments. A system
which disregards the traditions and hereditary attachments of
the peasant, and appeals only to a logical understanding which
is not yet developed in him, is simply disintegrating and
ruinous to the peasant character. The interference with the
communal regulations has been of this fatal character. Instead
of endeavoring to promote to the utmost the healthy life of the
Commune, as an organism the conditions of which are bound
up with the historical characteristics of the peasant, the
bureaucratic plan of government is bent on improvement by
its patent machinery of state-appointed functionaries and off-
hand regulations in accordance with modern enlightenment.
The spirit of communal exclusiveness — the resistance to the
indiscriminate establishment of strangers, is an intense tradi-
tional feeling in the peasant. *' This gallows is for us and our
children," is the typical motto of this spirit. But such ex-
clusiveness is highly irrational and repugnant to modern
liberalism ; therefore a bureaucratic government at once op-
poses it, and encourages to the utmost the introduction of new
inhabitants in the provincial communes. Instead of allowing
the peasants to manage their own affairs, and, if they happen
to believe that five and four make eleven, to unlearn the prej-
udice by their own experience in calculation, so that they may
gradually understand processes, and not merely see results,
bureaucracy comes with its " Ready Reckoner" and works all
the peasant's sums for him — the surest way of maintaining
him in his stupidity, however it may shake his prejudice.

Another questionable plan for elevating the peasant is the
supposed elevation of the clerical character by preventing the
clergyman from cultivating more than a trifling part of the land
attached to his benefice ; that he may be as much as possible of

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 159

a scientific theologian, and as little as possible of a peasant. In
this, Kiehl observes, lies one great source of weakness to the
Protestant Church as compared with the Catholic, which finds
the great majority of its priests among the lower orders ; and
we have had the opportunity of making an analogous com-
parison in England, where many of us can remember country
districts in which the great mass of the people were christian-
ized by illiterate Methodist and Independent ministers, while
the influence of the parish clergyman among the poor did not
extend much beyond a few old women in scarlet cloaks and a
few exceptional church-going laborers.

Bearing in mind the general characteristics of the German
peasant, it is easy to understand his relation to the revolution-
ary ideas and revolutionary movements of modern times. The
peasant, in Germany as elsewhere, is a born grumbler. He has
always plenty of grievances in his pocket, but he does not
generalize those grievances ; he does not complain of " govern-
ment" or " society," probably because he has good reason to
complain of the burgomaster. When a few sparks from the
first French Revolution fell among the German peasantry, and
in certain villages of Saxony the country people assembled
together to write down their demands, there was no glimpse in
their petition of the ' ' universal rights of man, ' ' but simply of
their own particular affairs as Saxon peasants. Again, after the
July revolution of 1830, there were many insignificant peasant
insurrections ; but the object of almost all was the removal of
local grievances. Toll-houses were pulled down ; stamped paper
was destroyed ; in some places there was a persecution of wild
boars, in others, of that plentiful tame animal, the German
Rath, or councillor who is never called into council. But in
1848 it seemed as if the movements of the peasants had taken
a new character ; in the small western states of Germany it
seemed as if the whole class of peasantry was in insurrection.
But, in fact, the peasant did not know the meaning of the part
he was playing. He had heard that everything was being set
right in the towns, and that wonderful things were happening

160 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

there, so lie tied up his bundle and set off. Without any
distinct object or resolution, the country people presented
themselves on the scene of commotion, and were warmly re-
ceived by the party leaders. But, seen from the windows of
ducal palaces and ministerial hotels, these swarms of peasants
had quite another aspect, and it was imagined that they had a
common plan of co-operation. This, however, the peasants have
never had. Systematic co-operation implies general concep-
tions, and a provisional subordination of egoism, to which even
the artisans of towns have rarely shown themselves equal, and
which are as foreign to the mind of the peasant as logarithms
or the doctrine of chemical proportions. And the revolu-
tionary fervor of the peasant was soon cooled. The old
mistrust of the towns was reawakened on the spot. The
Tyrolese peasants saw no great good in the freedom of the
press and the constitution, because these changes " seemed to
please the gentry so much." Peasants who had given their
voices stormily for a German parliament asked afterward,
with a doubtful look, whether it were to consist of infantry or
cavalry. When royal domains were declared the property of
the State, the peasants in some small principalities rejoiced
over this, because they interpreted it to mean that every one
would have his share in them, after the manner of the old
common and forest rights.

The very practical views of the peasants with regard to the
demands of the people were in amusing contrast with the
abstract theorizing of the educated townsmen. The peasant
continually withheld all State payments until he saw how matters
would turn out, and was disposed to reckon up the solid benefit,
in the form of land or money, that might come to him from
the changes obtained. While the townsman was heating his
brains about representation on the broadest basis, the peasant
asked if the relation between tenant and landlord would con-
tinue as before, and whether the removal of the '* feudal obli-
gations ' meant that the farmer should become owner of the
land?

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 161

It is in the same nai've way that Communism is interpreted
by the German peasantry. The wide spread among them of
communistic doctrines, the eagerness with which they listened
to a plan for the partition of property, seemed to countenance
the notion that it was a delusion to suppose the peasant would
be secured from this intoxication by his love of secure posses-
sion and peaceful earnings. But, in fact, the peasant contem-
plated " partition" by the light of an historical reminiscence
rather than of novel theory. The golden age, in the imagina-
tion of the peasant, was the time when every member of the
commune had a right to as much wood from the forest as would
enable him to sell some, after using what he wanted in firing —
in which the communal possessions were so profitable that,
instead of his having to pay rates at the end of the year, each
member of the commune was something in pocket. Hence
the peasants in general understood by " partition," that the
State lands, especially the forests, would be divided among the
communes, and that, by some political legerdemain or other,
everybody would have free fire-wood, free grazing for his cattle,
and over and above that, a piece of gold without working for
it. That he should give up a single clod of his own to further
the general " partition" had never entered the mind of the
peasant communist ; and the perception that this was an es-
sential preliminary to * 4 partition" was often a sufficient cure
for his Communism.

In villages lying in the neighborhood of large towns, however,
where the circumstances of the peasantry are very different,
quite another interpretation of Communism is prevalent. Here
the peasant is generally sunk to the position of the proletaire
living from hand to mouth : he has nothing to lose, but every-
thing to gain by * ' partition. ' ' The coarse nature of the peas-
ant has here been corrupted into bestiality by the disturbance
of his instincts, while he is as yet incapable of principles ; and
in this type of the degenerate peasant is seen the worst ex-
ample of ignorance intoxicated by theory.

A significant hint as to the interpretation the peasants put

162 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

on revolutionary theories may be drawn from the way they
employed the few weeks in which their movements were un-
checked. They felled the forest trees and shot the game ;
they withheld taxes ; they shook off the imaginary or real bur-
dens imposed on them by their mediatized princes, by present-
ing their " demands" in a very rough way before the ducal or
princely " Schloss ;" they set their faces against the bureau-
cratic management of the communes, deposed the government
functionaries who had been placed over them as burgomasters
and magistrates, and abolished the whole bureaucratic system
of procedure, simply by taking no notice of its regulations, and
recurring to some tradition — some old order or disorder of
things. In all this it is clear that they were animated not in
the least by the spirit of modern revolution, but by a purely
narrow and personal impulse toward reaction.

The idea of constitutional government lies quite beyond the
range of the German peasant's conceptions. His only notion
of representation is that of a representation of ranks — of
classes ; his only notion of a deputy is of one who takes care,
not of the national welfare, but of the interests of his own
order. Herein lay the great mistake of the democratic party,
in common with the bureaucratic governments, that they
entirely omitted the peculiar character of the peasant from
their political calculations. They talked of the " people,"
and forgot that the peasants were included in the term. Only
a baseless misconception of the peasant's character could induce
the supposition that he would feel the slightest enthusiasm
about the principles involved in the reconstitution of the
Empire, or even about the reconstitution itself. He has
no zeal for a written law, as such, but only so far as it
takes the form of a living law — a tradition. It was the ex-
ternal authority which the revolutionary party had won in
Baden that attracted the peasants into a participation of the
struggle.

Such, Riehl tells us, are the general characteristics of the
German peasantry — characteristics which subsist amid a wide

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 163

variety of circumstances. In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and
Brandenburg the peasant lives on extensive estates ; in West-
phalia he lives in large isolated homesteads ; in the Westerwald
and in Sauerland, in little groups of villages and hamlets ; on
the Rhine land is for the most part parcelled out among small
proprietors, who live together in large villages. Then, of
course, the diversified physical geography of Germany gives
rise to equally diversified methods of land-culture ; and out of
these various circumstances grow numerous specific differences
in manner and character. But the generic character of the
German peasant is everywhere the same ; in the clean moun-
tain hamlet and in the dirty fishing village on the coast ; ia the
plains of North Germany and in the backwoods of America.
** Everywhere he has the same historical character — everywhere
custom is his supreme law. Where religion and patriotism are
still a naive instinct, are still a sacred custom, there begins the
class of the German Peasantry."

Our readers will perhaps already have gathered from the fore-
going portrait of the German peasant that Rtehl is not a. man
who looks at objects through the spectacles either of the doc-
trinaire or the dreamer ; and they will be ready to believe what
he tells us in his Preface, namely, that years ago he began his
wanderings over the hills and plains of Germany for the sake of
obtaining, in immediate intercourse with the people, that com-
pletion of his historical, political, and economical studies which
he was unable to find in books. He began his investigations
with no party prepossessions, and his present views were
evolved entirely from his own gradually amassed observations.
He was, first of all, «a pedestrian, and only in the second place
a political author. The views at which he has arrived by this
inductive process, he sums up in the term — social -potiticol-
conservaiism ; but his conservatism is, we conceive, of a
thoroughly philosophical kind. He sees in European society
incarnate history, and any attempt to disengage it from its his-
torical elements must, he believes, be simply destructive of

164 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

social vitality.* What has grown up historically can only die
out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws.
The external conditions which society has inherited from the
past are but the manifestation of inherited internal conditions
in the human beings who compose it ; the internal conditions
and the external are related to each other as the organism and
its medium, and development can take place only by the
gradual consentaneous development of both. Take the familiar
example of attempts to abolish titles, which have been about as
effective as the process of cutting off poppy-heads in a corn-
field. Jedem Menschem, says Riehl, ist sein Zopf angeboren,
warum soil denn der sociale Sprachgebrauch nicht auck sein
Zopf haben? — which we may render — *' As long as snobism
runs in the blood, why should it not run in our speech ?" As
a necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must
obtain purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prej-
udices of hereditary affection and antipathy ; which is as easy
as to get running streams without springs, or the leafy shade
of the forest without the secular growth of trunk and branch.

The historical conditions of society may be compared with
those of language. It must be admitted that the language of
cultivated nations is m anything but a rational state ; the great
sections of the civilized world are only approximatively intelli-
gible to each other, and even that only at the cost of Jong
study ; one word stands for many things, and many words for
one thing ; the subtle shades of meaning, and still subtler
echoes of association, make language an instrument which
scarcely anything short of genius can wield with definiteness
and certainty. Suppose, then, that the effect which has been
again and again made to construct a universal language on a
rational basis has at length succeeded, and that you have a
language which has no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no
cumbrous forms, no fitful simmer of rnany-hued significance,

* Throughout this article in our statement of Riehi's opinions we
must be understood not as quoting Eiehl, but as interpreting and
illustrating him.

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 165

no hoary archaisms " familiar with forgotten years" — a patent
deodorized and non-resonant language, which effects the
purpose of communication as perfectly and rapidly as algebraic
signs. Your language may be a perfect medium of expression
to science, but will never express life, which is a great deal
more than science. With the anomalies and inconveniences of
historical language you will have parted with its music and its
passions, and its vital qualities as an expression of individual
character, with its subtle capabilities of wit, with everything
that gives it power over the imagination ; and the next step
in simplification will be the invention of a talking watch, which
will achieve the utmost facility and despatch in the communica-
tion of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be repre-
sented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A
melancholy " language of the future !" The sensory and
motor nerves that run in the same sheath are scarcely bound
together by a more necessary and delicate union than that
which binds men's affections, imagination, wit and humor,
with the subtle, ramifications of historical language. Language
must be left to grow in precision, completeness, and unity, as
minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness, and sympathy.
And there is an analogous relation between the moral tenden-
cies of men and the social conditions they have inherited.
The nature of European men has its roots intertwined with the
past, and can only be developed by allowing those roots to re-
main undisturbed while the process of development is going
on until that perfect ripeness of the seed which carries with it
a life independent of the root. This vital connection with the
past is much more vividly felt on the Continent than in Eng-
land, where we have to recall it by an effort of memory and
reflection ; for though our English life is in its core intensely
traditional, Protestantism and commerce have modernized the
^face of the land and the aspects of society in a far greater
degree than in any continental country :

" Abroad," says Kuskin, " a building of the eighth or tenth cen-
tury stands ruinous in the open streets ; the children play round it,

166 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

the peasants heap their corn in it, the buildings of yesterday nestle
about it, and fit their new stones in its rents, and tremble in sympa-
thy as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it as separate,
and of another time ; we feel the ancient world to be a real thing,
and one with the new ; antiquity is no dream ; it is rather the chil-
dren playing about the old stones that are the dream. But all is con-
tinuous ; and the words ' from generation to generation' ' under-
standable here."

This conception of European society as incarnate history is
the fundamental idea of Riehl's books. After the notable fail-
ure of revolutionary attempts conducted from the point of view
of abstract democratic and socialistic theories, after the practi-
cal demonstration of the evils resulting from a bureaucratic sys-
tem, which governs by an undiscriminating, dead mechanism,
Riehl wishes to urge on the consideration of his countrymen a
social policy founded on the special study of the people as they
are — On the natural history of the various social ranks. He
thinks it wise to pause a little from theorizing, and see what is
the material actually present for theory to work upon. It is
the glory of the Socialists — in contrast with the democratic
doctrinaires who have been too much occupied with the general
idea of " the people" to inquire particularly into the actual life
of the people — that they have thrown themselves with enthu-
siastic zeal into the study at least of one social group, namely,
the factory operatives ; and here lies the secret of their partial
success. But, unfortunately, they have made this special duty
of a single fragment of society the basis of a theory which
quietly substitutes for the small group of Parisian proletaires or
English factory-workers the society of all Europe — nay, of the
whole world. And in this way they have lost the best fruit of
their investigations. For, says Riehl, the more deeply we
penetrate into the knowledge of society in its details, the more
thoroughly we shall be convinced that a universal social policy
has no validity except on paper, and can never be carried into
successful practice. The conditions of German society are
altogether different from those of French, of English, or of
Italian society ; and to apply the same social theory to these

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 167

nations indiscriminately is about as wise a procedure as Trip-
tolemus Yellowley's application of the agricultural directions
in Virgil's " Georgics" to his farm in the Shetland Isles.

It is the clear and strong light in which Riehl places this im-
portant position that in our opinion constitutes the suggestive
value of his books for foreign as well as German readers. It
has not been sufficiently insisted on, that in the various
branches of Social Science there is an advance from the
general to the special, from the simple to the complex, analo-
gous with that which is found in the series of the sciences, from
Mathematics to Biology. To the laws of quantity comprised
in Mathematics and Physics are superadded, in Chemistry,
laws of quality ; to these again are added, in Biology, laws of
life ; and lastly, the conditions of life in general branch out
into its special conditions, or Natural History, on the one
hand, and into its abnormal conditions, or Pathology, on th«
other. And in this series or ramification of the sciences, the
more general science will not suffice to solve the problems of the
more special. Chemistry embraces phenomena which are not
explicable by Physics ; Biology embraces phenomena which are
not explicable by Chemistry ; and no biological generalization
will enable us to predict the infinite specialities produced by the
complexity of vital conditions. So Social Science, while it has
departments which in their fundamental generality correspond
to mathematics and physics, namely, those grand and simple
generalizations which trace out the inevitable march of the
human race as a whole, and, as a ramification of these, the laws
of economical science, has also, in the departments of govern-
ment and jurisprudence, which embrace the conditions of social
life in all their complexity, what may be called its Biology,
carrying us on to innumerable special phenomena which outlie
the sphere of science, and belong to Natural History. And
just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or chem-
istry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to es-
tablish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that
your particular society of zoophytes, mollusks, and echinoderms

168 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

may feel themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skin ;
so the most complete equipment of theory will not enable a
statesman or a political and social reformer to adjust his meas-
ures wisely, in the absence of a special acquaintance with the
section of society for which he legislates, with the peculiar char-
acteristics of the nation, the province, the class whose well-
being he has to consult. In other words, a wise social policy
must be based not simply on abstract social science, but on the
natural history of social bodies.

Riehl's books are not dedicated merely to the argumentative
maintenance of this or of any other position ; they are intended
chiefly as a contribution to that knowledge of the German peo-
ple on the importance of which he insists. He is less occupied
with urging his own conclusions than with impressing on his
readers the facts which have Jed him to those conclusions. In
the volume entitled " Land und Leute," which, though pub-
lished last, is properly an introduction to the volume entitled
" Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft, " he considers the German
people in their physical geographical relations ; he compares
the natural divisions of the race, as determined by land and
climate, and social traditions, with the artificial divisions which
are based on diplomacy ; and he traces the genesis and in-
fluences of what we may call the ecclesiastical geography of
Germany — its partition between Catholicism and Protestantism.
He shows that the ordinary antithesis of North and South Ger-
many represents no real ethnographical distinction, and that the
natural divisions of Germany, founded on its physical geog-
raphy are threefold — namely, the low plains, the middle moun-
tain region, and the high mountain region, or Lower, Middle, <
and Upper Germany ; and on this primary natural division all j
the other broad ethnographical distinctions of Germany will be '
found to rest. The plains of North or Lower Germany
include all the seaboard the nation possesses ; and this,
together with the fact that they are traversed to the depth of
600 miles by navigable rivers, makes them the natural seat of
a trading race. Quite different is the geographical character of

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 169

Middle Germany. While the northern plains are marked off
into great divisions, by such rivers as the Lower Rhine, the
Weser, and the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this cen-
tral region is cut up like a mosaic by the capricious lines of
valleys and rivers. Here is the region in which you fiiid those
famous roofs from which the rain-water runs toward two differ-
ent seas, and the mountain-tops from which you may look into
eight or ten German states. The abundance of water-power
and the presence of extensive coal-mines allow of a very diversi-
fied industrial development in Middle Germany. In Upper Ger-
many, or the high mountain region, we find the same symmetry
in the lines of the rivers as in the north ; almost all the great
Alpine streams flow parallel with the Danube. But the major-
ity of these rivers are neither navigable nor available for indus-
trial objects, and instead of serving for communication they
shut off one great tract from another. The slow development,
the simple peasant life of many districts is here determined by
the mountain and the river. In the south-east, however, in-
dustrial activity spreads through Bohemia toward Austria, and
forms a sort of balance to the industrial districts of the Lower
Rhine. Of course, the boundaries of these three regions can-
not be very strictly defined ; but an approximation to the limits
of Middle Germany may be obtained by regarding it as a tri-
angle, of which one angle lies in Silesia, another in Aix-la-
Chapelle, and a third at Lake Constance.

This triple division corresponds with the broad distinctions
of climate. In the northern plains the atmosphere is damp and
heavy ; in the southern mountain region it is dry and rare, and
there are abrupt changes of temperature, sharp contrasts between
the seasons, and devastating storms ; but in both these zones
men are hardened by conflict with the roughness of the cli-
mate. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is little of
this struggle ; the seasons are more equable, and the mild, soft
air of the valleys tends to make the inhabitants luxurious and
sensitive to hardships. It is only in exceptional mountain dis-
tricts that one is here reminded of the rough, bracing air on

170 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

the heights of Southern Germany. It is a curious fact that, as
the air becomes gradually lighter and rarer from the North
German coast toward Upper Germany, the average of suicides
regularly decreases. Mecklenburg has the highest number,
then Prussia, while the fewest suicides occur in Bavaria and
Austria.

Both the northern and southern regions have still a large
extent of waste lands, downs, morasses, and heaths ; and to
these are added, in the south, abundance of snow-fields and
naked rock ; while in Middle Germany culture has almost over-
spread the face of the land, and there are no large tracts of
waste. There is the same proportion in the distribution of for-
ests. Again, in the north we see a monotonous continuity of
wheat- fields, potato- grounds, meadow-lands, and vast heaths,
and there is the same uniformity of culture over large surfaces
in the southern table-lands and the Alpine pastures. In Mid-
dle Germany, on the contrary, there is a perpetual variety of
crops within a short space ; the diversity of land surface and
the corresponding variety in the species of plants are an invita-
tion to the splitting up of estates, and this again encourages to
the utmost the motley character of the cultivation.

According to this threefold division, it appears that there
are certain features common to North and South Germany in
which they differ from Central Germany, and the nature of this
difference Riehl indicates by distinguishing the former as Cen-
tralized Land and the latter as Individualized Land ; a distinc-
tion which is well symbolized by the fact that North and South
Germany possess the great lines of railway which are the
medium for the traffic of the world, while Middle Germany is
far richer in lines for local communication, and possesses the
greatest length of railway within the smallest space. Disre-
garding superficialities, the East Frieslanders, the Schleswig-
Holsteiners, the Mecklenbnrghers, and the Pomeranians are
much more nearly allied to the old Bavarians, the Tyrolese,
and the Styrians than any of these are allied to the Saxons,
the Thuringians, or the Rhinelanders. Both in North and

THE NATURAL HISTOltY OE GERMAN LIFE. 171

South Germany original races are still found in large masses,
and popular dialects are spoken ; you still find there thoroughly
peasant districts, thorough villages, and also, at great intervals,
thorough cities ; you still find there a sense of rank. In Mid-
dle Germany, on the contrary, the original races are fused
together or sprinkled hither and thither ; the peculiarities of
the popular dialects are worn down or confused ; there is no
very strict line of demarkation between the country and the town
population, hundreds of small towns and large villages feeing
hardly distinguishable in their characteristics ; and the sense of
rank, as part of the organic structure of society, is almost ex-
tinguished. Again, both in the north and south there is still a
strong ecclesiastical spirit in the people, and the Pomeranian
sees Antichrist in the Pope as clearly as the Tyrol ese sees him
in Doctor Luther ; while in Middle, Germany the confessions
are mingled, they exist peaceably side by side in very narrow
space, and tolerance or indifference has spread itself widely
even in the popular mind. And the analogy, or rather the
causal relation between the physical geography of the three re-
gions and the development of the population goes still further :

" For," observes Eiehl, " the striking connection which has been
pointed out between the local geological formations in Germany and
the revolutionary disposition of the people has more than a meta-
phorical significance. Where the primeval physical revolutions of
the globe have been the wildest in their effcts, and the most multi-
form strata have been tossed together or thrown one upon the other,
it is a very intelligible consequence that on a land surface thus bro-
ken up, the population should sooner develop itself into small com-
munities, and that the more intense life generated in these smaller
communities should become the most favorable nidus for the recep-
tion of modern culture, and with this a susceptibility for its revolu-
tionary ideas ; while a people settled in a region where its groups are
spread over a large space will persist much more obstinately in the
retention of its original character. The people of Middle Germany
have none of that exclusive one-sidedness which determines the
peculiar genius of great national groups, just as this one-sidedness
or uniformity is wanting to the geological and geographical character
of their land."

172 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

This ethnographical outline Riehl fills up with special and
typical descriptions, and then makes it the starting-point for a
criticism of the actual political condition of Germany. The
volume is full of vivid pictures, as well as penetrating glances
into the maladies and tendencies of modern society. It would
be fascinating as literature if it were not important for its facts
and philosophy. But we can only commend it to our readers,
and pass on to the volume entitled " Die Btirgerliche Gesell-
schaf t, ' ' from which we have drawn our sketch of the German
peasantry. Here Riehl gives us a series of studies in that nat-
ural history of the people which he regards as the proper basis
of social policy. He holds that, in European society, there
are three natural ranks or estates : the hereditary landed aris-
tocracy, the citizens or commercial class, and the peasantry or
agricultural class. By natural ranks he means ranks which
have their roots deep in the historical structure of society, and
are still, in the present, showing vitality above ground ; he
means those great social groups which are not only distin-
guished externally by their vocation, but essentially by their
mental character, their habits, their mode of life — by the prin-
ciple they represent in the historical development of society.
In his conception of the " Fourth Estate" he differs from the
usual interpretation, according to which it is simply equivalent
to the Proletariat, or those who are dependent on daily
wages, whose only capital is their skill or bodily strength —
factory operatives, 'artisans, agricultural laborers, to whom
might be added, especially in Germany, the day -laborers with
the quill, the literary proletariat. This, Riehl observes, is a
valid basis of economical classification, but not of social
classification. In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum pro-
duced by the perpetual abrasion of the other great social
groups ; it is the sign and result of the decomposition which is
commencing in the organic constitution of society. Its ele-
ments are derived alike from the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie,
and the peasantry. It assembles under its banner the desert-
ers of historical society, and forms them into a terrible army,

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 173

which is only just awaking to the consciousness of its corporate
power. The tendency of this Fourth Estate, by the very
process of its formation, is to do away with the distinctive his-
torical character of the other estates, and to resolve their pecul-
iar rank and vocation into a uniform social relation founded on
an abstract conception of society. According to Riehl's classi-
fication, the day -laborers, whom the political economist desig-
nates as the Fourth Estate, belong partly to the peasantry or
agricultural class, and partly to the citizens or commercial
class.

Riehl considers, in the first place, the peasantry and aristoc-
racy as the " Forces of social persistence," and, in the second,
the bourgeoisie and the " Fourth Estate" as the " Forces of
social movement."

The aristocracy, he observes, is the only one among these
four groups which is denied by others besides Socialists to have
any natural basis as a separate rank. It is admitted that there
was once an aristocracy which had an intrinsic ground of exist-
ence, but now, it is alleged, this is an historical fossil, an anti-
quarian relic, venerable because gray with age. It what, it is
asked, can consist the peculiar vocation of the aristocracy,
since it has no longer the monopoly of the land, of the higher
military functions, and of government offices, and since the
service of the court has no longer any political importance ?
To this Riehl replies, that in great revolutionary crises, the
" men of progress" have more than once *' abolished'" the
aristocracy. But, remarkably enough, the aristocracy has
always reappeared. This measure of abolition showed that
the nobility were no longer regarded as a real class, for to abol-
ish a real class would be an absurdity. It is quite possible to
contemplate a voluntary breaking up of the peasant or citizen
class in the socialistic sense, but no man in his senses would
think of straightway " abolishing" citizens and peasants. The
aristocracy, then, was regarded as a sort of cancer, or excres-
cence of society. Nevertheless, not only has it been found im-
possible to annihilate an hereditary nobility by decree, but

174 THE ESSAYS OF

also the aristocracy of the eighteenth century outlived even
the self-destructive acts of its own perversity. A life which
was entirely without object, entirely destitute of functions,
would not, says Riehl, be so persistent. He has an acute criti-
cism of those who conduct a polemic against the idea of an
hereditary aristocracy while they are proposing an " aristocracy
of talent," which after all is based on the principle of inheri-
tance. The Socialists are, therefore, only consistent in declar-
ing against an aristocracy of talent. " But when they have
turned the world into a great Foundling Hospital they will still
be unable to eradicate the * privileges of birth.' ' We must
not follow him in his criticism, however ; nor can we afford to
do more than mention hastily his interesting sketch of the
medieval aristocracy, and his admonition to the German aris-
tocracy of the present day, that the vitality of their class is not
to be sustained by romantic attempts to revive medieval forms
and sentiments, but only by the exercise of functions as real
and salutary for actual society as those of the medieval aristoc-
racy were for the feudal age. " In modern society the divi-
sions of rank indicate division of labor, according to that dis-
tribution of functions in the social organism which the histori-
cal constitution of society has determined. In this way the
principle of differentiation and the principle of unity are iden-
tical."

The elaborate study of the German bourgeoisie, which forms
the next division of the volume, must be passed over, but we
may pause a moment to note Riehl's definition of the social
Philister (Philistine), an epithet for which we have no equiva-
lent, not at all, however, for want of the object it represents.
Most people who read a little German know that the epithet
Philister originated in the Burschen-leben, or Student-life of
Germany, and that the antithesis of Bursch and Philister was
equivalent to the antithesis of " gown" and " town ;" but
since the word has passed into ordinary language it has as-
sumed several shades of significance which have not yet been
merged into a single, absolute meaning ; and one of the ques-

THE NATURAL HISTORY OP GERMAN LIEE. 175

tions which an English visitor in Germany will probably take an
opportunity of asking is, 4 * What is the strict meaning of the
word Philister ?" Riehl's answer is, that the Philister " is one
who is indifferent to all social interests, all public life, as dis-
tinguished from selfish and private interests ; he has no sym-
pathy with political and social events except as they affect his
own comfort and prosperity, as they offer him material for
amusement or opportunity for gratifying his vanity. He
has no social or political creed, but is always of the opin-
ion which is most convenient for the moment. He is
always in the majority, and is the main element of unreason
and stupidity in the judgment of a " discerning public." It
seems presumptuous in us to dispute Riehl's interpretation of a
German word, but we must think that, in literature, the epithet
Philister has usually a wider meaning than this — includes his
definition and something more. We imagine the Philister is
the personification of the spirit which judges everything from
a lower point of view than the subject demands ; which judges
the affairs of the parish from the egotistic or purely personal
point of view ; which judges the affairs of the nation from the
parochial point of view, and does not hesitate to measure the
merits of the universe from the human point of view. At least
this must surely be the spirit to which Goethe alludes in a pas-
sage cited by Riehl himself, where he says that the Germans
need not be ashamed of erecting a monument to him as well as
to Blucher ; for if Blucher had freed them from the French, he
(Goethe) had freed them from the nets of the Philister :

" Ihr mogt mirimrner ungescheut
Gleich Bliichern Denkmal setzen !
Yon Franzosen hat er euch befreit,
Ich von Philister-netzen. "

Goethe could hardly claim to be the apostle of public spirit ;
but he is eminently the man who helps us to rise to a lofty
point of observation, so that we may see things in their rela-
tive proportions.

The most interesting chapters in the description of the

176 THE ESSAYS OF

"Fourth Estate, " which concludes the volume, are those on
the " Aristocratic Proletariat" and the " Intellectual Proleta-
riat.'* The Fourth Estate in Germany, says Riehl, has its
centre of gravity not, as in England and France, in the day
laborers and factory operatives, and still less in the degenerate
peasantry. In Germany the educated proletariat is the leaven
that sets the mass in fermentation ; the dangerous classes there
go about, not in blouses, but in frock coats ; they begin with
the impoverished prince and end in the hungriest litterateur.
The custom that all the sons of a nobleman shall inherit their
father's title necessarily goes on multiplying that class of aris-
tocrats who are not only without function but without adequate
provision, and who shrink from entering the ranks of the citi-
zens by adopting some honest calling. The younger son of a
prince, says Riehl, is usually obliged to remain without any
vocation ; and however zealously he may study music, paint-
ing, literature, or science, he can never be a regular musician,
painter, or man of science ; his pursuit will be called a " pas-
sion," not a " calling," and to the end of his days he remains
a dilettante. " But the ardent pursuit of a fixed practical call-
ing can alone satisfy the active man." Direct legislation can-
not remedy this evil. The inheritance of titles by younger
sons is the universal custom, and custom is stronger than law.
But if all government preference for the " aristocratic proleta-
riat" were withdrawn, the sensible men among them would
prefer emigration, or the pursuit of some profession, to the
hungry distinction of a title without rents.

The intellectual proletaires Riehl calls the " church militant"
of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no other country are
they so numerous ; in no other country is the trade in material
and industrial capital so far exceeded by the wholesale and
retail trade, the traffic and the usury, in the intellectual capital
of the nation. Germany yields more intellectual vroduce than it
can use and pay for.

" This over-production, which is not transient but permanent, nay,
is constantly on the increase, evidences a diseased state of the na-

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 177

tional industry, a perverted application of industrial powers, and is a
far more pungent satire on the national condition than all the pov-
erty of operatives and peasants. . . . Other nations need not
envy us the preponderance of the intellectual proletariat over the
proletaires of manual labor. For man more easily becomes diseased
from over-study than from the labor of the hands ; and it is precisely
in the intellectual proletariat that there are the most dangerous seeds
of disease. This is the group in which the opposition between
earnings and wants, between the ideal social position and the real, is
the most hopelessly irreconcilable."

We must unwillingly leave our readers to make acquaintance
for themselves with the graphic details with which Riehl fol-
lows up this general statement ; but before quitting these ad-
mirable volumes, let us say, lest our inevitable omissions should
have left room for a different conclusion, that Riehl's conserva-
tism is not in the least tinged with the partisanship of a class,
with a poetic fanaticism for the past, or with the prejudice of
a mind incapable of discerning the grander evolution of things
to which all social forms are but temporarily subservient. It
is the conservatism of a clear-eyed, practical, but withal large-
minded man — a little caustic, perhaps, now and then in his epi-
grams on democratic doctrinaires who have their nostrum for
all political and social diseases, and on communistic theories
which he regards as " the despair of the individual in his own \.\ }
manhood, reduced to a system, " but nevertheless able and will-
ing to do justice to the elements of fact and reason in every
shade of opinion and every form of effort. He is as far as
possible from the folly of supposing that the sun will go back-
ward on the dial because we put the hands of our clock back-
ward ; he only contends against the opposite folly of decreeing
that it shall be mid-day while in fact the sun is only just
touching the mountain -tops, and all along the valley men are
stumbling in the twilight.

VI.

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS.

SILLY NOVELS by Lady Novelists are a genus with many
species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that
predominates in them — the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the
pedantic. But it is a mixture of all these — a composite order
of feminine fatuity — that produces the largest class of such
novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery
species. The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress
in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable
duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers
in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in
the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly
indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling ;
her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to
irregularity ; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect ;
she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious ; she dances
like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or
it may be that the heroine is not an heiress — that rank and
wealth are the only things in which she is deficient ; but she
infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing
many matches and securing the best, and she wears some
family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the
end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion
at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs,
which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhet-
oric ; indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make
speeches, and to rhapsodize at some length when she retires to
her bedroom. In her recorded conversations she is amazingly

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 179

eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations amazingly witty.
She is understood to have a depth of insight that looks through
and through the shallow theories of philosophers, and her
superior instincts are a sort of dial by which men have only to
set their clocks and watches, and all will go well. The men
play a very subordinate part by her side. You are consoled
now and then by a hint that they have affairs, which keeps you
in mind that the working-day business of the world is somehow
being carried on, but ostensibly the final cause of their existence
is that they may accompany the heroine on her " starring"
expedition through life. They see her at a ball, and they are
dazzled ; at a flower-show, and they are fascinated ; on a
riding excursion, and they are witched by her noble horseman-
ship ; at church, and they are awed by the sweet solemnity of
her demeanor. She is the ideal woman in feelings, faculties,
and flounces. For all this she as often as not marries the
wrong person to begin with, and she suffers terribly from the
plots and intrigues of the vicious baronet ; but even death has
a soft place in his heart for such a paragon, and remedies all
mistakes for her just at the right moment. The vicious
baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband
dies in his bed requesting his wife, as a particular favor to him,
to marry the man she loves best, and having already dis-
patched a note to the lover informing him of the comfortable
arrangement. Before matters arrive at this desirable issue
our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and gifted
heroine pass through many mauvais moments, but we have the
satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into em-
broidered pocket-handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclines
on the very best upholstery, and that whatever vicissitudes she
may undergo, from being dashed out of her carriage to having
her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of them all with a
complexion more blooming and locks more redundant than
ever.

We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved
from a serious scruple by discovering that silly novels by lady

novelists rarely introduce us into any other than very lofty and
fashionable society. We had imagined that destitute women
turned novelists, as they turned governesses, because they had
no other *' ladylike" means of getting their bread. On this
supposition, vacillating syntax, and improbable incident had a
certain pathos for us, like the extremely supererogatory pin-
cushions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a
blind man. We felt the commodity to be a nuisance, but we
were glad to think that the money went to relieve the neces-
sitous, and we pictured to ourselves lonely women struggling
for a maintenance, or wives and daughters devoting them-
selves to the production of " copy" out of pure heroism — per-
^haps to pay their husband's debts or to purchase luxuries for a
I sick father. Under these impressions we shrank from criticis-
jing a lady's novel : her English might be faulty, but we said to
' ourselves her motives are irreproachable ; her imagination may
be uninventive, but her patience is untiring. Empty writing
was excused by an empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated
by tears. But no ! This theory of ours, like many other
pretty theories, has had to give way before observation.
Women's silly novels, we are now convinced, are written
under totally different circumstances. The fair writers have
evidently never talked to a tradesman except from a carriage
window ; they have no notion of the working-classes except as
11 dependents ;" they think five hundred a year a miserable
pittance ; Belgravia and *• baronial halls" are their primary
truths ; and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man
who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if not a prime
minister. It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with
violet-colored ink and a ruby pen ; that they must be entirely
indifferent to publishers' accounts, and inexperienced in every
form of poverty except poverty of brains. It is true that we
are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their
representations of the high society in which they seem to live ;
but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other
form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, their

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 181

literary men, tradespeople, and cottagers are impossible ; and
their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of rt-
producmg both what they have seen and heard, and what the\
have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness.

There are few women, we suppose, who have not seen some-
thing of children under five years of age, yet in " Compen
sation," a recent novel of the mind-and-millinery species,
which calls itself a ** story of real life," we have a child of
four and a half years old talking in this Ossianic fashion :

" ' Oh, I am so happy, dear gran' mamma ;•— I have seen— I have
seen such a delightful person ; he is like everything beautiful — like
the smell of sweet flowers, and the view from Ben Lernond ; — or no,
better than that — he is like what I think of and see when I am very,
very happy ; and he is really like mamma, too, when she sings ; and
his forehead is like that distant sea,' she continued, pointing to the
blue Mediterranean ; * there seems no end— no end ; or like the
clusters of stars I like best to look at on a warm fine night. . . .
Don't look so ... your forehead is like Loch Lomond, when the
wind is blowing and the sun is gone in ; I like the sunshine best
when the lake is smooth. ... So now— I like it better than
ever . . . It is more beautiful still from the dark cloud that has
gone over it, when the sun suddenly lights up all the colors of the forests
and shining purple rocks, and it is all reflected in the waters below. ' "

We are not surprised to learn that the mother of this infant
phenomenon, who exhibits symptoms so alarmingly like those
of adolescence repressed by gin, is herself a phoenix. We are
assured, again and again, that she had a remarkably original in
mind, that she was a genius, and ** conscious of her original-
ity," and she was fortunate enough to have a lover who was
so a genius and a man of " most original mind."

Tins lover, we read, though " wonderfully similar" to her
" in powers and capacity," was " infinitely superior to her in
faith and development," and she saw in him " ' Agape ' — so
rare to find — of which she had read and admired the meaning
in her Greek Testament ; having, from her great facility in
learning languages, read the Scriptures in their original
tongues.''1 Of course ! Greek and Hebrew are mere play to

p j^vX) <*K

182 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

a heroine ; Sanscrit is no more than a b c to her ; and she can
talk with perfect correctness in any language, except English.
She is a polking polyglot, a Creuzer in crinoline. Poor men !
There are so few of you who know even Hebrew ; you think
it something to boast of if, like Bolingbroke, you only " under-
stand that sort of learning and what is writ about it ;" and you
are perhaps adoring women who can think slightingly of you
in all the Semitic languages successively. But, then, as we are
almost invariably told that a heroine has a " beautifully small
head," and as her intellect has probably been early invigorated
by an attention to costume and deportment, we may conclude
that she can pick up the Oriental tongues, to say nothing of
their dialects, with the same aerial facility that the butterfly
sips nectar. Besides, there can be no difficulty in conceiving
the depth of the heroine's erudition when that of the authoress
is so evident.

In ** Laura Gay," another novel of the same school, the
heroine seems less at home in Greek and Hebrew but she
makes up for the deficiency by a quite playful familiarity with
the Latin classics — with the " dear old Virgil," " the graceful
Horace, the humane Cicero, and the pleasant Livy ;" indeed,
it is such a matter of course with her to quote Latin that she
does it at a picnic in a very mixed company of ladies and gentle-
men, having, we are told, ** no conception that the > nobler sex
were capable of jealousy on this subject. And if, indeed," con-
tinues the biographer of Laura Gay, " the wisest and noblest
portion of that sex were in the majority, no such sentiment
would exist ; but while Miss Wyndhams and Mr. Redfords
abound, great sacrifices must be made to their existence."
Such sacrifices, we presume, as abstaining from Latin quota-
tions, of extremely moderate interest and applicability, which
the wise and noble minority of the other sex would be quite as
willing to dispense with as the foolish and ignoble majority.
It is as little the custom of well-bred men as of well-bred
women to quote Latin in mixed parties ; they can contain their
familiarity with '* the humane Cicero" without allowing it

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 183

to boil over in ordinary conversation, and even references to
" the pleasant Livy" are not absolutely irrepressible. But
Ciceronian Latin is the mildest form of Miss Gay's conversa-
tional power. Being on the Palatine with a party of sight-
seers, she falls into the following vein of well-rounded remark :
" Truth can only be pure objectively, for even in the creeds
where it predominates, being subjective, and parcelled out into
portions, each of these necessarily receives a hue of idiosyn-
crasy, that is, a taint of superstition more or less strong ; while
in such creeds as the Roman Catholic, ignorance, interest, the
basis of ancient idolatries, and the force of authority, have
gradually accumulated on the pure truth, and transformed it,
at last, into a mass of superstition for the majority of its
votaries ; and how few are there, alas ! whose zeal, courage,
and intellectual energy are equal to the analysis of this ac-
cumulation, and to the discovery of the pearl of great price
which lies hidden beneath this heap of rubbish." We have
often met with women much more novel and profound in their
observations than Laura Gay, but rarely with any so inoppor-
tunely long-winded, A clerical lord, who is half in love with
her, is alarmed by the daring remarks just quoted, and begins
to suspect that she is inclined to free-thinking. But he is
mistaken ; when in a moment of sorrow he delicately begs leave
to " recall to her memory, a depot of strength and consolation
under affliction, which, until we are hard pressed by the trials
of life, we are too apt to forget," we learn that she really has
*' recurrence to that sacred depot," together with the tea-pot.
There is a certain flavor of orthodoxy mixed with the parade
of fortunes and tine carriages in " Laura Gay," but it is an
orthodoxy mitigated by study of "the humane Cicero," and
by an " intellectual disposition to analyze."

" Compensation" is much more heavily dosed with doctrine,
but then it has a treble amount of snobbish worldliness and
absurd incident to tickle the palate of pious frivolity. Linda,
the heroine, is still more speculative and spiritual than Laura
Gay, but she has been " presented," and has more and far

184 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

grander lovers ; very wicked and fascinating women are intro-
duced— even a French honne ; and no expense is spared to get
up as exciting a story as you will find in the most immoral
novels. In fact, it is a wonderful pot pourri of Al mack's,
Scotch second- sight, Mr. Rogers's breakfasts, Italian brigands,
death-bed conversions, superior authoresses, Italian mistresses,
and attempts at poisoning old ladies, the whole served up with
a garnish of talk about " faith and development" and " most
original minds." Even Miss Susan Barton, the superior au-
thoress, whose pen moves in a ' ' quick, decided manner when
she is composing," declines the finest opportunities of mar-
riage ; and though old enough to be Linda's mother (since we
are told that she refused Linda's father), has her hand sought
by a young earl, the heroine's rejected lover. Of course,
genius and morality must be backed by eligible offers, or they
would seem rather a dull affair ; and piety, like other things,
in order to be comme ilfaut, must be in 4k society," and have
admittance to the best circles.

*' Rank and Beauty" is a more frothy and less religious
variety of the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine, we
are told, " if she inherited her father's pride of birth and her
mother's beauty of person, had in herself a tone of enthusiastic
feeling that, perhaps, belongs to her age even in the lowly
born, but which is refined into the high spirit of wild romance
only in the far descended, who feel that it is their best inheri-
tance." This enthusiastic young lady, by dint of reading the
newspaper to her father, falls in love with the prime minister,
who, through the medium of leading articles and ** the resume
of the debates," shines upon her imagination as a bright
particular star, which has no parallax for her living in the
country as simple Miss Wyndham. But she forthwith becomes
Baroness Umfraville in her own right, astonishes the world
with her beauty and accomplishments when she bursts upon it
from her mansion in Spring Gardens, and, as you foresee, will
presently come into contact with the unseen objet aime. Per-
haps the words " prime minister" suggest to you a wrinkled or

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 185

obese sexagenarian ; bat pray dismiss the image. Lord Rupert
Conway has been " called while still almost a youth to the
first situation which a subject can hold in the universe," and
even leading articles and a resume of the debates have not
conjured up a dream that surpasses the fact.

" The door opened again, and Lord Rupert Conway entered.
Evelyn gave one glance. It was enough ; she was not disappointed.
It seemed as if a picture on which she had long gazed was suddenly
instinct with life, and had stepped from its frame before her. His
tall figure, the distinguished simplicity o£ his air— it was a living
Vandyke, a cavalier, one of his noble cavalier ancestors, or one to
whom her fancy had always likened him, who long of yore had with
an Umfraville fought the Paynim far beyond the sea. Was this
reality?"

Very little like it, certainly.

By and by it becomes evident that the ministerial heart is
touched. Lady Umfraville is on a visit to the Queen at
Windsor, and —

" The last evening of her stay, when they returned from riding,
Mr. Wyndham took her and a large party to the top of the Keep, to
see the view. She was leaning on the battlements, gazing from that
* stately height : at the prospect beneath her, when Lord Rupert was
by her side. ' What an unrivalled view ! ' exclaimed she.

" ' Yes, it would have been wrong to go without having been up
here. You are pleased with your visit ? '

" ' Enchanted ! A Queen to live and die under, to live and die
for!'

" ' Ha !' cried he, with sudden emotion, and with a eureka expres-
sion of countenance, as if he had indeed found a heart in unison with
Ids own.' "

The " eureka expression of countenance" you see at once
to be prophetic of marriage at the end of the third volume ;
but before that desirable consummation there are very com-
plicated misunderstandings, arising chiefly from the vindictive
plotting of Sir Luttrel Wycherley, who is a genius, a poet, and in
every way a most remarkable character indeed. He is not only
a romantic poet, but a hardened rake and a cynical wit ; yet

186 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

his deep passion for Lady Uinfraville has so impoverished his
epigrammatic talent that he cuts an extremely poor figure in
conversation. When she rejects him, he rushes into the
shrubbery and rolls himself in the dirt ; and on recovering,
devotes himself to the most diabolical and laborious schemes ol
vengeance, in the course of which he disguises himself as i.
quack physician and enters into general practice, foreseeing that
Evelyn will fall ill, and that he shall be called in to attend her.
At last, when all his schemes are frustrated, he takes leave of
her in a long letter, written, as you will perceive from the fol-
lowing passage, entirely in the style of an eminent literary man :

11 Oh, lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, will you ever -cast
one thought upon the miserable being who addresses you ?
Will you ever, as your gilded galley is floating down the un-
ruffled stream of prosperity, will you ever, while lulled by the
sweetest music — thine own praises — hear the far-off sigh from
that world to which I am going ?"

On the whole, however, jrothj as it is, we rather prefer
" Rank and Beauty" to the two other novels we have men-
tioned. The dialogue is more natural and spirited ; there is
some frank ignorance and no pedantry ; and you are allowed
to take the heroine's astounding intellect upon trust, without
being called on to read her conversational refutations of sceptics
and philosophers, or her rhetorical solutions of the mysteries
of the universe.

Writers of the mind-and-millinery school are remarkably
J unanimous in their choice of diction. In their novels there is
usually a lady or gentleman who is more or less of a upas
tree ; the lover has a manly breast ; minds are redolent or
various things ; hearts are hollow ; events are utilized ; friend
are consigned to the tomb ; infancy is an engaging period ;
the sun is a luminary that goes to his western couch, or gather-
the rain-drops into his refulgent bosom ; life is a melanchui
boon ; Albion and Scotia are conversational epithets. Theix
is a striking resemblance, too, in the character of their moral
comments, such, for instance, as that " It is a fact, no less true

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 187

than melancholy, that all people, more or less, richer or poorer,
are swayed by bad example ;" that 4t Books, however trivial,
contain some subjects from which useful information may be
drawn ;" that " Vice can too often borrow the language of
virtue ;" that " Merit and nobility of nature must exist, to be
accepted, for clamor and pretension cannot impose upon those
too well read in human nature to be easily deceived ;" and
that "In order to forgive, we must have been injured.'*
There is doubtless a class of readers to whom these remarks
appear peculiarly pointed and pungent ; for we often find them
doubly and trebly scored with the pencil, and delicate hands
giving in their determined adhesion to these hardy novelties by a
distinct trbs vrai, emphasized by many notes of exclamation.
The colloquial style of these novels is often marked by much in-
genious inversion, and a careful avoidance of such cheap phrase-
ology as can be heard every day. Angry young gentlemen ex-
claim, " 'Tis ever thus, methinks ;" and in the half hour before
dinner a young lady informs her next neighbor that the first day
she read Shakespeare she ' * stole away into the park, and beneath
the shadow of the greenwood tree, devoured with rapture the
inspired page of the great magician/' But the most remark-
able efforts of the mind-and-niillinery writers lie in their
philosophic reflections. The authoress of " Laura Gay, "for
example, having married her hero and heroine, improves the
event by observing that " if those sceptics, whose eyes have so
long gazed on matter that they can no longer see aught else in
man, could once enter with heart and soul, into such bliss as
this, they would come to say that the soul of man and the
polypus are not of common origin, or of the same texture."
Lady novelists, it appears, can see something else besides
matter ; they are not limited to phenomena, but can relieve
their eyesight by occasional glimpses of the noumenon, and
are, therefore, naturally better able than any one else to con-
found sceptics, even of that remarkable but to us unknown
school which maintains that the soul of man is of the same
texture as the polypus.

188 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

The most pitiable of all silly novels by lady novelists are
I what we may call the oracular species — novels intended to
expound the writer's religious, philosophical, or moral the-
ories. There seems to be a notion abroad among women,
rather akin to the superstition that the speech and actions of
idiots are inspired, and that the human being most entirely
exhausted of common-sense is the fittest vehicle of revelation.
To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who
think that an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is
the best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the
knottiest moral and speculative questions. Apparently, their
recipe for solving all such difficulties is something like this :
\Take a woman's head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy
'and literature chopped small, and with false notions of society
baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day,
and serve up hot in feeble English when not required. You
will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who
is diffident of her ability to decide on theological questions —
who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating
with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all
church parties — who does not see precisely how it is that men
have gone wrong hitherto — and pity philosophers in general
that they have not had the opportunity of consulting her.
Great writers, who have modestly contented themselves with
putting their experience into fiction, and have thought it quite
a sufficient task to exhibit men and things as they are, she
sighs over as deplorably deficient in the application of their
powers. " They have solved no great questions" — and she is
ready to remedy their omission by setting before you a com-
plete theory of life and manual of divinity in a love story,
where ladies and gentlemen of good family go through genteel
vicissitudes, to the utter confusion of Deists, Puseyites, and
ultra-Protestants, and to the perfect establishment of that
peculiar view of Christianity which either condenses itself into
a sentence of small caps, or explodes into a cluster of stars on
the three hundred and thirtieth page. It is true, the ladies and

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY .

gentlemen will probably seem to you remarkab^
you have had the fortune or misfortune to mett wit.
general rule, the ability of a lady novelist to describe
life and her fellow-men is in inverse proportion to her v
fident eloquence about God and the other v xrld> and the means
by which she usually chooses to conduct you to true ideas of ,
the invisible is a totally false picture of the visible.

As typical a novel of the oracular kind as we can hope to
meet with, is " The Enigma : a Leaf from the Chronicles of
the Wolchorley House." The " enigma" which this novel is
to solve is certainly one that demands powers no less gigantic
than those of a lady novelist, being neither more nor less than
the existence of evil. The problem is .stated and the answer
dimly foreshadowed on the very first page. The spirited
young lady, with raven hair, says, " All life is an inextricable
confusion ;" and the meek young lady, with auburn hair,
looks at the picture of the Madonna which she is copying,
and — " There seemed the solution of that mighty enigma."
The style of this novel is quite as lofty as its purpose ; indeed,
some passages on which we have spent much patient study are
quite beyond our reach, in spite of the illustrative aid of italics
and small caps ; and we must await further " development" in
order to understand them. Of Ernest, the model young
clergyman, who sets every one right on all occasions, we read
that " he held not of marriage in the marketable kind, after a
social desecration ;" that, on one eventful night, " sleep had
not visited his divided heart, where tumultuated, in varied type
and combination, the aggregate feelings of grief and joy ;"
and that, ' ' for the marketable human article he had no tolera-
tion, be it of what sort, or set for what value it might, whether
for worship or class, his upright soul abhorred it, whose ulti-
matum, the self-deceiver, was to him THE great spiritual lie,
* living in a vain show, deceiving and being deceived ; ' since
he did not suppose the phylactery and enlarged border on the
garment to be merely a social trick." (The italics and small
caps are the author's, and we hope they assist the reader's

190

comprehension.) Of Sir Lionel, the model old gentleman, we
are told that " the simple ideal of the middle age, apart from
its anarchy and decadence, in him most truly seemed to live
again, when the ties which knit men together were of heroie
cast. The first-born colors of pristine faith and truth engraven
on the common soul of man, and blent into the wide arch
of brotherhood, where the primaeval law of order grew and
multiplied each perfect after .his kind, and mutually inter-
dependent." You see clearly, of course, how colors are first
engraven on the soul, and then blent into a wide arch, on
which arch of colors — apparently a rainbow — the law of order
grew and multiplied, each — apparently the arch and the law —
perfect after his kind ? If, after this, you can possibly want
any further aid toward knowing what Sir Lionel was, we can
tell you that in his soul " the scientific combinations of
thought could educe no fuller harmonies of the good and the
true than lay in the prima3val pulses which floated as an
atmosphere around it !" and that, when he was sealing a
letter, " Lo ! the responsive throb in that good man's bosom
echoed back in simple truth the honest witness of a heart
that condemned him not, as his eye, bedewed with love,
rested, too, with something of ancestral pride, on the un-
dimmed motto of the family — " LOIAUTE.' '

The slightest matters have their vulgarity fumigated out 'of
them by the same elevated style. Commonplace people
would say that a copy of Shakespeare lay on a drawing-room
table ; but the authoress of " The Enigma," bent on edifying
periphrasis, tells you that there lay on the table, " that fund
of human thought and feeling, which teaches the heart
through the little name, ' Shakespeare. ' : A watchman sees
a light burning in an upper window rather longer than usual,
and thinks that people are foolish to sit up late when they
have an opportunity of going to bed ; but, lest this fact should
seem too low and common, it is presented to us in the follow-
ing striking and metaphysical manner : " He marvelled — as a
man will think for others in a necessarily separate personality,

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 191

consequently (though disallowing it) in false mental premise
— how differently he should act, how gladly he should prize the
rest so lightly held of within." A footman — an ordinary
Jeames, with large calves and aspirated vowels — answers the
door-hell, and the opportunity is seized to tell you that he was
a " type of the large class of pampered menials, who follow
the curse of Cain — * vagabonds ' on the face of the earth, and
whose estimate of the human class varies in the graduated scale
of money and expenditure. . . . These, and such as these, O
England, be the false lights of thy morbid civilization !" We
have heard of various " false lights," from Dr. Gumming to
Robert Owen, from Dr. Pusey to the Spirit-rappers, but we
never before heard of the false light that emanates from plush
and powder.

In the same way very ordinary events of civilized life arc ex-
alted into the most awful crises, and ladies in full skirts and
manches d la Chinoise, conduct themselves not unlike the
heroines of sanguinary melodramas. Mrs. Percy, a shallow
woman of the world, wishes her son Horace to marry tho
auburn-haired Grace, she being an heiress ; but he, after the
manner of sons, falls in love with the raven-haired Kate, the
heiress's portionless cousin ; and, moreover, Grace herself
shows every symptom of perfect indifference to Horace. In
such cases sons are often sulky or fiery, mothers are alter-
nately manoeuvring and waspish, and the portionless young lady
often lies awake at night and cries a good deal. We are get-
ting used to these things now, just as we are used to eclipses
of the moon, which no longer set us howling and beating tin
kettles. We never heard of a lady in a fashionable " front"
behaving like Mrs. Percy under these circumstances. Hap-
pening one day to see Horace talking to Grace at a window,
without in the least knowing what they are talking about, or
having the least reason to believe that Grace, who is mistress of
the house and a person of dignity, would accept her son if he
were to offer himself, she suddenly rushes up to them and
clasps them both, saying, " with a flushed countenance and in

192 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

an excited manner" — " This is indeed happiness ; for, may I
not call you so, Grace ? — my Grace — my Horace's Grace ! — my
dear children !" Her son tells her she is mistaken, and that
he is engaged to Kate, whereupon we have the following scene
and tableau :

" Gathering herself up to an unprecedented height (!) her
eyes lightening forth the fire of her anger :

11 ' Wretched boy ! ' she said, hoarsely and scornfully, and
clenching her hand, * Take then the doom of your own choice !
Bow down your miserable head and let a mother's — '

" ' Curse not ! ' spake a deep low voice from behind, and
Mrs. Percy started, scared, as though she had seen a heavenly
visitant appear, to break upon her in the midst of her sin.

" Meantime Horace had fallen on his knees, at her feet,
and hid his face in his hands.

* Who then, is she — who ! Truly his * guardian spirit J
hath stepped between him and the fearful words, which, how-
ever unmerited, must have hung as a pall over his future exist-
ence ; — a spell which could not be unbound — which could not
be unsaid.

11 Of an earthly paleness, but calm with the still, iron-
bound calmness of death — the only calm one there — Kather-
ine stood ; and her words smote on the ear in tones whose
appallingly slow and separate intonation rung on the heart like
a chill, isolated tolling of some fatal knell.

" l He would have plighted me his faith, but I did not ac-
cept it ; you cannot, therefore — -you dare not curse him. And
here,' she continued, raising her hand to heaven, whither her
large dark eyes also rose with a chastened glow, which, for the
first time, suffering had lighted in those passionate orbs — ' here
I promise, come weal, come woe, that Horace Wolchorley
and I do never interchange vows without his mother's sanction
— without his mother's blessing ! ' "

Here, and throughout the story, we see that confusion of
purpose which is so characteristic of silly novels written by
women. It is a story of quite modern drawing-room society

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 193

— a society in which polkas are played and Puseyisrn discuss-
ed ; yet we have characters, and incidents, and traits of
manner introduced, which are mere shreds from the most
heterogeneous romances. We have a blind Irish harper, " relic
of the picturesque bards of yore," startling us at a Sunday-
school festival of tea and cake in an English village ; we have
a crazy gypsy, in a scarlet cloak, singing snatches of romantic
song, and revealing a secret on her death-bed which, with the
testimony of a dwarfish miserly merchant, who salutes strangers
with a curse and a devilish laugh, goes to prove that Ernest,
the model young clergyman, is Kate's brother ; and we have
an ultra-virtuous Irish Barney, discovering that a document is
forged, by comparing the date of the paper with the date of
the alleged signature, although the same document has passed
through a court of law and occasioned a fatal decision. The
" Hall " in which Sir Lionel lives is the venerable country-seat
of an old family, and this, we suppose, sets the imagination of
the authoress flying to donjons and battlements, where " lo !
the warder blows his horn ;" for, as the inhabitants are in
their bedrooms on a night certainly within the recollection of
Pleaceman X. and a breeze springs up, which we are at first
told was faint, and then that it made the old cedars bow their
branches to the greensward, she falls into this mediaeval vein of
description (the italics are ours) : * ' The banner unfurled it at
the sound, and shook its guardian wing above, while the star-
tled owl flapped her in the ivy ; the firmament looking down
through her * argus eyes ' —

' Ministers of heaven's mute melodies.'

And lo ! two strokes tolled from out the warder tower, and
1 Two o'clock ' re-echoed its interpreter below."

Such stories as this of " The Enigma" remind us of the pict-
ures clever children sometimes draw " out of their own head,"
where you will see a modern villa on the right, two knights in
helmets fighting in the foreground, and a tiger grinning in a
jungle on the left, the several objects being brought together

194 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

because the artist thinks each pretty, and perhaps still more
because he remembers seeing them in other pictures.

But we like the authoress much better on her mediaeval stilts
than on her oracular ones — when she talks of the Ich and of
" subjective" and " objective," and lays down the exact line
of Christian verity, between " right-hand excesses and left-
hand declensions." Persons who deviate from this line are in-
troduced with a patronizing air of charity. Of a certain Miss
Inshquine she informs us, with all the lucidity of italics and
small caps, that "function, not form, AS the inevitable outer ex-
pression of the spirit in this tabernacle age, weakly engrossed
her. ' ' And d propos of Miss May jar, an evangelical lady who
is a little too apt to talk of her visits to sick women and the
state of their souls, we are told that the model clergyman is
" not one to disallow, through the super crust, the undercur-
rent toward good in the subject, or the positive benefits,
nevertheless, to the object." We imagine the double-refined
accent and protrusion of chin which are feebly represented by
the italics in this lady's sentences ! We abstain from quoting
any of her oracular doctrinal passages, because they refer to
matters too serious for our pages just now.

The epithet " silly" may seem impertinent, applied to a
novel which indicates so much reading and intellectual activity
as " The Enigma," but we use this epithet advisedly. If, as
the world has long agreed, a very great amount of instruction
will not make a wise man, still less will a very mediocre
amount of instruction make a wise woman. And the most
mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form,
because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the
more solid education of women.

When men see girls wasting their time in consultations about
bonnets and ball dresses, and in giggling or sentimental love-
confidences, or middle-aged women mismanaging their chil-
dren, and solacing themselves with acrid gossip, they can
hardly help saying, "For Heaven's sake, let girls be better
educated ; let them have some better objects of thought —

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 195

more solid occupations." But after a few hours' conversation
with an oracular literary woman, or a few hours' reading of
her books, they are likely enough to say, " After all, when a
woman gets some knowledge, see what use she makes of it !
Her knowledge remains acquisition instead of passing into
culture ; instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity
by a larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a
feverish consciousness of her attainments ; she keeps a sort of
mental pocket- mirror, and is continually looking in it at her
own ' intellectuality ;' she spoils the taste of one's muffin by
questions of metaphysics ; * puts down ' men at a dinner-table
with her superior information ; and seizes the opportunity of
a soiree to catechise us on the vital question of the relation
between mind and matter. And then, look at her writings !
She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and af-l
fectation for originality ; she struts on one page, rolls her eyes!
on another, grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth. }
She may have read many writings of great men, and a few
writings of great women ; but she is as unable to discern the
difference between her own style and theirs as a Yorkshireman
is to discern the difference between his own English and a
Londoner's : rhodomontade is the native accent of her intellect.
No — the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a~")
soil to bear much tillage ; it is only fit for the very lightest (
crops. ' ' -"*

It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such
very superficial and imperfect observation may not be among
the wisest in the world ; but we have not now to contest their
opinion — we are only pointing out how it is unconsciously en-
couraged by many women who have volunteered themselves as
representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe
that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by asso-
ciating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed
her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cult-
ured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and
the less obtrusive for her knowledge ; it has made her see her-

196 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

self and her opinions in something like just proportions ; she
does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that
she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes
it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate
of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on
slight provocation ; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must
be made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of
exhibiting her memory and Latin ity does not present itself to
her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books to
confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write
books that delight them. In conversation she is the least
formidable of women, because she understands you, without
wanting to make you aware that you can't understand her.
She does not give you information, which is the raw material
of culture — she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest
essence.

A more numerous class of silly novels than the oracular
(which are generally inspired by some form of High Church
or transcendental Christianity) is what we may call the white
neck-cloth species, which represent the tone of thought and feel-
ing in the Evangelical party. This species is a kind of genteel
tract on a large scale, intended as a sort of medicinal sweetmeat
for Low Church young ladies ; an Evangelical substitute for the
fashionable novel, as the May Meetings are a substitute for the
Opera. Even Quaker children, one would think, can hardly
have been denied the indulgence of a doll ; but it must be a
doll dressed in a drab gown and a coal-scuttle-bonnet — not a
worldly doll, in gauze and spangles. And there are no young
ladies, we imagine — unless they belong to the Church of the
United Brethren, in which people are married without any
love-making — who can dispense with love stories. Thus, for
Evangelical young ladies there are Evangelical love stories, in
which the vicissitudes of the tender passion are sanctified by
saving views of Regeneration and the Atonement. These
novels differ from the oracular ones, as a Low Churchwoman
often differs from a High Churchwoman : they are a little less

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 197*

supercilious and a great deal more ignorant, a little less correct
in their syntax and a great deal more vulgar.

The Orlando of Evangelical literature is the young curate,
looked at from the point of view of the middle class, where
cambric bands are understood to have as thrilling an effect on
the hearts of young ladies as epaulettes have in the classes above
and below it. In the ordinary type of these novels the hero
is almost sure to be a young curate, frowned upon, perhaps by
worldly mammas, but carrying captive the hearts of their
daughters, who can " never forget that sermon ;" tender
glances are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the opera-
box ; tete-d-tetes are seasoned with quotations from Scripture
instead of quotations from the poets ; and questions as to the
state of the heroine's affections are mingled with anxieties as to
the state of her soul. The young curate always has a back-
ground of well-dressed and wealthy if not fashionable society
— for Evangelical silliness is as snobbish as any other kind of
silliness — and the Evangelical lady novelist, while she explains
to you the type of the scapegoat on one page, is ambitious on
another to represent the manners and conversations of aristo-
cratic people. Her pictures of fashionable society are often
curious studies, considered as efforts of the Evangelical imag-
ination ; but in one particular the novels of the White Neck-
cloth School are meritoriously realistic — their favorite hero, the
Evangelical young curate, is always rather an insipid personage.

The most recent novel of this species that we happen to have
before us is "The Old Grey Church." It is utterly tame
and feeble ; there is no one set of objects on which the writer
seems to have a stronger grasp than on any other ; and we
should be entirely at a loss to conjecture among what phases of
life her experience has been gained, but for certain vulgarisms
of style which sufficiently indicate that she has had the advan-
tage, though she has been unable to use it, of mingling chiefly
with men and women whose manners and characters have not
had all their bosses and angles rubbed down by refined conven-
tionalism. It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than

198 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

in any other, gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and
carriages. The real drama of Evangelicalism —and it has
abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to
discern and reproduce it — lies among the middle and lower
classes ; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give
an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather than
in the mighty ? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical lady
novelists show us the operation of their religious views among
people (there really are many such in the world) who keep no
carriage, " not so much as a brass-bound gig," who even
manage to eat their dinner without a silver fork, and in whose
mouths the authoress's questionable English would be strictly
consistent ? Why can we not have pictures of religious life
among the industrial classes in England, as interesting as Mrs.
Stowe's pictures of religious life among the negroes ? Instead
of this pious ladies nauseate us with novels which remind us of
what we sometimes see in a worldly woman recently " con-
.verted ;" — she is as fond of a fine dinner- table as before, but
she invites clergymen instead of beaux ; she thinks as much of
her dress as before, but she adopts a more sober choice of
colors and patterns ; her conversation is as trivial as before, but
the triviality is flavored with gospel instead of gossip. In
*' The Old Grey Church" we have the same sort of Evangeli-
cal travesty of the fashionable novel, and of course the vicious,
intriguing baronet is not wanting. It is worth while to give a
sample of the style of conversation attributed to this high-born
rake— a style that, in its profuse italics and palpable innuen-
does, is worthy of Miss Squeers. In an evening visit to the
ruins of the Colosseum, Eustace, the young clergyman, has
been withdrawing the heroine, Miss Lushington, from the rest
of the party, for the sake of a tete-d-tete. The baronet is jeal-
ous, and vents his pique in this way :

" There they are, and Miss Lushington, no" doubt, quite safe ; for
she is under the holy guidance of Pope Eustace the First, who has,
of course, been delivering to her an edifying homily on the wicked-
ness of the heathens of yore, who, as tradition tells us, in this very

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 199

place let loose the wild beastises on poor St. Paul !— Oh, no ! by
the bye, I believe I am wrong, and betraying my want of clergy, and
that it was not at all St. Paul, nor was it here. But no matter, it
would equally serve as a text to preach from, and from which to
diverge to the degenerate heathen Christians of the present day, and
all their naughty practices, and so end with an exhortation 'to ' come
out from among them, and be separate ; ' — and I am sure, Miss Lush-
ington, you have most scrupulously conformed to that injunction this
evening, for we have seen nothing of you since our arrival. But
every one seems agreed it has been a charming party of pleasure, and I
am sure we all feel much indebted to Mr. Gray for having suggested it ;
and as he seems so capital a cicerone, I hope he will think of some-
thing else equally agreeable to all11

This drivelling kind of dialogue, and equally drivelling narra-
tive, which, like a bad drawing, represents nothing, and barely
indicates what is meant to be represented, runs through the
book ; and we have no doubt is considered by the amiable
authoress to constitute an improving novel, which Christian
mothers will do well to put into the hands of their daughters.
BuJt everything is relative ; we have met with American vege-
tarians whose normal diet was dry meal, and who, when their
appetite wanted stimulating, tickled it with wet meal ; and so,
we can imagine that there are Evangelical circles in which
11 The Old Grey Church" is devoured as a powerful and inter-
esting fiction.

But perhaps the least readable of silly women's novels are
the modern-antique species, which unfold to us the domestic
life of Jannes and Jambres, the private love affairs of Sen-
nacherib, or the mental struggles and ultimate conversion of
Demetrius the silversmith. From most silly novels we can at
least extract a laugh ; but those of the modern-antique school
have a ponderous, a leaden kind of fatuity, under which we
groan. What can be more demonstrative of the inability of
literary women to measure their own powers than their fre-
quent assumption of a task which can only be justified by the
rarest concurrence of acquirement with genius ? The finest
effort to reanimate the past is of course only approximative — is

200 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

always more or less an infusion of the modern spirit into the

ancient form —

Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heisst,

Das 1st im Grund der Herren eigner Geist,

In dem die Zeiten sick bespiegeln.

Admitting that genius which has familiarized itself with all
the relics of an ancient period can sometimes, by the force of
its sympathetic divination, restore the missing notes in the
"music of humanity," and reconstruct the fragments into a
whole which will really bring the remote past nearer to us, and
interpret it to our duller apprehension — this form of imagina-
tive power must always be among the very rarest, because it
demands as much accurate and minute knowledge as creative
vigor. Yet we find ladies constantly choosing to make their
mental mediocrity more conspicuous by clothing it in a mas-
querade of ancient names ; by putting their feeble sentimental-
ity into the mouths of Roman vestals or Egyptian princesses,
and attributing their rhetorical arguments to Jewish high-
priests and Greek philosophers. A recent example of this
heavy imbecility is ** Adonijah, a Tale of the Jewish Disper-
sion," which forms part of a series, " uniting," we are told,
" taste, humor, and sound principles. " " Adonijah," we pre-
sume, exemplifies the tale of " sound principles ;" the taste
and humor are to be found in other members of the series.
We are told on the cover that the incidents of this tale are
"fraught with unusual interest," and the preface winds up
thus : " To those who feel interested in the dispersed of Israel
and Judea, these pages may afford, perhaps, information on an
important subject, as well as amusement." Since the "im-
portant subject" on which this book is to afford information is
not specified, it may possibly lie in some esoteric meaning to
which we have no key ; but if it has relation to the dispersed
of Israel and Judea at any period of their history, we believe a
tolerably well-informed school-girl already knows much more of
it than she will find in this " Tale of the Jewish Dispersion."
" Adonijah" is simply the feeblest kind of love story, sup-

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 201

posed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a
Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman vestal ; because they
and their friends are converted to Christianity after the short-
est and easiest method approved by the ' * Society for Promot-
ing the Conversion of the Jews ;" and because, instead of
being written in plain language, it is adorned with that peculiar
style of grandiloquence which is held by some lady novelists to
give an antique coloring, and which we recognize at once in
such phrases as these : — " the splendid regnal talent, un-
doubtedly, possessed by the Emperor Nero" — " the expiring
scion of a lofty stem" — " the virtuous partner of his couch"
— "ah, by Vesta !"— and " I tell thee, Roman." Among
the quotations which serve at once for instruction and orna-
ment on the cover of this volume, there is one from Miss Sin-
clair, which informs us that " Works of imagination are
avowedly read by men of science, wisdom, and piety ;" from
which we suppose the reader is to gather the cheering inference
that Dr. Daubeny, Mr. Mill, or Mr. Maurice may openly in-
dulge himself with the perusal of " Adonijah," without being
obliged to secrete it among the sofa cushions, or read it by
snatches under the dinner-table.

" Be not a baker if your head be made of butter," says a
homely proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean, let no
woman rush into print who is not prepared for the conse-
quences. We are aware that our remarks are in a very differ-
ent tone from that of the reviewers who, with perennial recur-
rence of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, we imag-
ine, in the experience of monthly nurses, tell one lady novel-
ist after another that they " hail " her productions " with de-
light." W~e are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is
pointed are accustomed to be told, in the choicest phraseology
of puffery, that their pictures of life are brilliant, their charac-
ters well drawn, their style fascinating, and their sentiments
lofty. But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of
speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment on the chary

THE ESSAYS OF " GEOliGE ELIOT."

praise, and often captious blame, which their panegyrists give
to writers whose works are on the way to become classics. No
sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective
talent, than she receives the. tribute of being moderately praised
and severely criticised. By a peculiar thermometric adjust-
ment, when a woman's talent is at zero, journalistic approbation
is at the boiling pitch ; when she attains mediocrity, it is
already at no more than summer heat ; and if ever she reaches
excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point.
Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been
treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. And every critic
who forms a high estimate of the share women may ultimately
take in literature, will on principle abstain from any excep-
tional indulgence toward the productions of literary women.
For it must be plain to every one who looks impartially and ex-
tensively into feminine literature that its greatest deficiencies
are due hardly more to the want of intellectual power than to
the want of those moral qualities that contribute to literary ex-
cellence— patient diligence, a sense of the responsibility in-
volved in publication, and an appreciation of the sacredness of
the writer's art. In the majority of women's books you see
that kind of facility which springs from the absence of any
high standard ; that fertility in imbecile combination or feeble
imitation which a little self-criticism would check and reduce
to barrenness ; just as with a total want of musical ear people
will sing out of tune, while a degree more melodic sensibility
would suffice to render them silent. The foolish vanity of
wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced by
any consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation im-
plied in futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by the ex-
tremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of supe-
riority in a woman. On this ground we believe that the aver-
age intellect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of
feminine literature, and that while the few women who write
well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their
sex, the many women who write ill are very far below it. So

SILLY NOVELS BY LADY NOVELISTS. 203

that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling a chivalrous duty
in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false
prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recom-
mending women of mediocre faculties — as at least a negative
service they can render their sex — to abstain from writing.

The standing apology for women who become writers with-
out any special qualification is that society shuts them out
from other spheres of occupation. Society is a very culpable
entity, and has to answer for the manufacture of many unwhole-
some commodities, from bad pickles to bad poetry. But
society, like " matter," and Her Majesty's Government, and
other lofty abstractions, has its share of excessive blame as well
as excessive praise. Where there is one woman who writes
from necessity, we believe there are three women who write
from vanity ; and besides, there is something so antispetic in
the mere healthy fact of working for one's bread, that the most
trashy and rotten kind of feminine literature is not likely to
have been produced under such circumstances. " In all labor
there is profit ;" but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less
the result of labor than of busy idleness.

Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that I
Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after I
their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both/
living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women
can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest —
novels, too, that have a precious speciality, lying quite apart
from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational re-
strictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction,
and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid require
ments. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, an
yet be beautiful ; we have only to pour in the right elements
— genuine observation, humor, and passion. But it is pre-
cisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the
fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women.
Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their
power of playing on the piano ; here certain positive difficulties

204 THE ESSAYS OF

of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevita-
bly breaks down. Every art which has its absolute technique
is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere
left-handed imbecility. But in novel- writing there are no bar-
riers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to
prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery.
And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's
ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits
some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute" — a
fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of
any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number
of " silly novels by lady novelists.'*

VII.

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS : THE
POET YOUNG.*

THE study of men, as they have appeared in different ages
and under various social conditions, may he considered as the
natural history of the race. Let us, then, for a moment
imagine ourselves, as students of this natural history, " dredg-
ing" the first half of the eighteenth century in search of
specimens. About the year 1730 we have hauled up a re-
markable individual of the species divine — a surprising name,
considering the nature of the animal before us, but we are used
to unsuitable names in natural history. Let us examine this
individual at our leisure. He is on the verge of fifty, and has
recently undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form.
Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly :
a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist ; a poet
whose imagination is alternately fired by the " Last Day"
and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic
applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah.
After spending ** a foolish youth, the sport of peers and
poets," after^ being a hanger-on of thejrofljgate^ Duke of
Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamentary career, and
angling for pensions and preferment with fulsome dedications
and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his imperfect
success, and has determined to retire from the general men-

* 1. "Young's Works." 1767. 2. "Johnson's Lives of the
Poets." Edited by Peter Cunningham Murray : 1854. 3. " Life of
Edward Young, LL.D." By Dr. Doran. Prefixed to " Night
Thoughts." Routledge : 1853. 4. Gentleman's Magazine, 1782. 5.
"Nichols's Literary Anecdotes." Vol.. I. 6. " Spence's Anecdotes."

206 THE ESSAYS OF

dicancy business to a particular branch ; in other words, he
has determined on that renunciation of the world implied in
** taking orders," with the prospect of a good living and an
advantageous matrimonial connection. And no man can be
better fitted for an Established Church. He personifies com-
pletely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. Ho
is equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of
burial fees ; he languishes at once for immortal life and for
" livings ;" he has a fervid attachment to patrons in general,
but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with
something more than official conviction, the nothingness of
earthly things ; and he will feel something more than private
disgust if his meritorious efforts in directing men's attention to
another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in
this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk
stockings as characteristic attire for " an ornament of religion
and virtue ;" hopes courtiers will never forget to copy Sir
Robert Walpole ; and writes begging letters to the King's
mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more
familiar than Golgotha and " the skies ;" it walks in grave-
yards, or it soars among the stars. His religion exhausts itself
in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the
ecstatic and the sententious. If it were not for the prospect
of immortality, he considers, it would be wise and agreeable to
be, indecent or to murder one's father ; and, heaven apart, it
would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave.
Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute ; the
brute is to be humbled by being reminded of its '* relation to
the stalls," and frightened into moderation by the contempla-
tion of death-beds and skulls ; the angel is to be developed by
vituperating this world and exalting the next ; and by this
double process you get the Christian — " the highest style of
man." With all this, our new-made divine is an unmistak-
able poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the worldling and
the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of Promethean fire.
He will one day clothe his apostrophes and objurgations, hit

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 207

astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, in last-
ing verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold
and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive : for this divine
is Edward Young, the future author of the " Night Thoughts.''

It would be extremely ill-bred in us to Suppose that our
readers are not acquainted with the facts of Young's life ; they
are among the things that " every one knows ;" but we have
observed that, with regard to these universally known matters,
the majority of readers like to be treated after the plan sug-
gested by Monsieur Jourdain. When that distinguished bour-
geois was asked if he knew Latin, he replied, " Oui, mais faites
comme si je ne le savaispas." Assuming, then, as a polite
writer should, that our readers know everything about Young,
it will be a direct sequitur from that assumption that we should
proceed as if they knew nothing, and recall the incidents of his
biography with as much particularity as we may without
trenching on the space we shall need for our main purpose — the
reconsideration of his character as a moral and religious poet.

Judging from Young's works, one might imagine that the
preacher had been organized in him by hereditary transmission
through a long line of clerical forefathers —that the diamonds
of the " Night Thoughts" had been slowly condensed from the
charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it was not so. His grand-
father, apparently, wrote himself gentleman, not clerk ; and
there is no evidence that preaching had run in the family blood
before it took that turn in the person of the poet's father, who
was quadruply clerical, being at once rector, prebendary, court
chaplain, and dean. Young was born at his father's rectory of
Upham in 1681. We may confidently assume that even the
author of the * ' Night Thoughts' ' came into the world without
a wig ; but, apart from Dr. Doran's authority, we should not
have ventured to state that the excellent rector " kissed, with
dignified emotion, his only son and intended namesake." Dr.
Doran doubtless knows this, from his intimate acquaintance
with clerical physiology and psychology. He has ascertained
that the paternal emotions of prebendaries have a sacerdotal

205 THE ESSAYS OF

quality, and that the very chyrne and chyle of a rector are
conscious of the gown and band.

In due time the boy went to Winchester College, and sub-
sequently, though not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford,
where, for his father's sake, he was befriended by the wardens
of two colleges, and in 1708, three years after his father's
death, nominated by Archbishop Tenison to a law fellowship at
All Souls. Of Young's life at Oxford in these years, hardly
anything is known. His biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell
us but the vague report that, when " Young found himself
independent and his own master at All Souls, he was not the
ornament to religion and morality that he afterward became,'*
and the perhaps apocryphal anecdote, that Tindal, the atheist,
confessed himself embarrassed by the originality of Young's
arguments. Both the report and the anecdote, however, are
borne out by indirect evidence. As to the latter, Young has
left us sufficient proof that he was fond of arguing on the
theological side, and that he had his own way of treating old
subjects. As to the former, we learn that Pope, after saying
other things which we know to be true of Young, added, that
he passed " a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets ;"
and, from all the indications we possess of his career till he was
nearly fifty, we are inclined to think that Pope's statement
only errs by defect, and that he should rather have said, " a
foolish youth and middle age." It is not likely that Young
was a very hard student, for he impressed Johnson, who saw
him in his old age, as '* not a great scholar," and as sur-
prisingly ignorant of what Johnson thought " quite common
maxims" in literature ; and there is no evidence that he filled
either his leisure or his purse by taking pupils. His career as
an author did not commence till he was nearly thirty, even
dating from the publication of a portion of the ' ' Last Day, ' '
in the Tatler ; so that he could hardly have been absorbed in
composition. But where the fully developed insect is para-
sitic, we believe the larva is usually parasitic also, and we shall
probably not be far wrong in supposing that Young at Oxford,

WORLDLIKESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 209

as elsewhere, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about
possible and actual patrons, and accommodating himself to the
habits with considerable flexibility of conscience and of tongue ;
being none the less ready, upon occasion, to present himself as
the champion of theology and to rhapsodize at convenient
moments in the company of the skies or of skulls. That brill-
iant profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young after-
ward clung as his chief patron, was at this time a mere boy ;
and, though it is probable that their intimacy had commenced,
since the Duke's father and mother were friends of the old
dean, that intimacy ought not to aggravate any unfavorable
inference as to Young's Oxford life. It is less likely that he
fell into any exceptional vice than that he differed from the
men around him chiefly in his episodes of theological advocacy
and rhapsodic solemnity. He probably sowed his wild oats
after the coarse fashion of his times, for he has left us sufficient
evidence that his moral sense was not delicate ; but his com-
panions, who were occupied in sowing their own oats, perhaps
took it as a matter of course that he should be a rake, and were
only struck with the exceptional circumstance that he was a
pious and moralizing rake.

There is some irony in the fact that the two first poetical
productions of Young, published in the same year, were his
1 ' Epistles to Lord Lansdowne, ' ' celebrating the recent creation
of peers — Lord Lansdowne's creation in particular ; and the
"Last Day." Other poets besides Young found the device
for obtaining a Tory majority by turning twelve insignificant
commoners into insignificant lords, an irresistible stimulus to
verse ; but no other poet showed so versatile an enthusiasm —
so nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron and
the honor of the Deity. But the twofold nature of the syco-
phant and the psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the con-
trasted themes of the two poems than in the transitions from
bombast about monarchs to bombast about the resurrection,
in the " Last Day" itself. The dedication of the poem to
Queen Anne, Young afterward suppressed, for he was always

210

ashamed of having flattered a dead patron. In this dedication,
Croft tells us, " he gives her Majesty praise indeed for her
victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her
rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing
the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind
her ; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still in
view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation,
in her journey toward eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven
of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still
onward from the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her
pursuit, and falls back again to earth."

The self-criticism which prompted the suppression of the
dedication did not, however, lead him to improve either the
rhyme or the reason of the unfortunate couplet —

" When other Bourbons reign in other lands,
And, if men's sins forbid not, other Annes."

In the " Epistle to Lord Lansdowne" Young indicates his
taste for the drama ; and there is evidence that his tragedy of
" Busiris" was u in the theatre" as early as this very year,
1713, though it was not brought on the stage till nearly six
years later ; so that Young was now very decidedly bent on
authorship, for which his degree of B.C.L., taken in this
year, was doubtless a magical equipment. Another poem,
" The Force of Religion ; or, Vanquished Love," founded on
the execution of Lady Jane Grey and her husband, quickly
followed, showing fertility in feeble and tasteless verse ; and
on the Queen's death, in 1714, Young lost no time in making
a poetical lament for a departed patron a vehicle for extrav-
agant laudation of the new monarch. No further literary
production of his appeared until 1716, when a Latin oration,
which he delivered on the foundation of the Codrington
Library at All Souls, gave him a new opportunity for display-
ing his alacrity in inflated panegyric.

In 1717 it is probable that Young accompanied the Duke of
Wharton to Ireland, though so slender are the materials for his

WORLDLItfESS AtfD OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 211

biography that the chief basis for this supposition is a passage
in his " Conjectures on Original Composition," written when
he was nearly eighty, in which he intimates that he had once
been in that country. But there are many facts surviving to
indicate that for the next eight or nine years Young was a
sort of attache of Wharton's. In 1719, according to legal
records, the Duke granted him an annuity, in consideration of
his having relinquished the office of tutor to Lord Burleigh,
with a life annuity of £100 a year, on his Grace's assurances
that he would provide for him in a much more ample manner.
And again, from the same evidence, it appears that in 1721
Young received from Wharton a bond for £600, in compensa-
tion of expenses incurred in standing for Parliament at the
Duke's desire, and as an earnest of greater services which his
Grace had promised him on his refraining from the spiritual
and temporal advantages of taking orders, with a certainty
of two livings in the gift of his college. It is clear, there-
fore, that lay advancement, as long as there was any chance of
it, had more attractions for Young than clerical preferment ;
and that at this time he accepted the Duke of Wharton as the
pilot of his career.

A more creditable relation of Young's was his friendship
with Tickell, with whom he was in the habit of interchanging
criticisms, and to whom in 1719 — the same year, let us note,
in which he took his doctor's degree — he addressed his " Lines
on the Death of Addison. ' ' Close upon these followed his
" Paraphrase of part of the Book of Job," with a dedication
to Parker, recently made Lord Chancellor, showing that the
possession of Wharton's patronage did not prevent Young
from fishing in other waters. lie knew nothing of Parker,
but that did not prevent him from magnifying the new Chan-
cellor's merits ; on the other hand, he did know Wharton, but
this again did not prevent him from prefixing to his tragedy,
' The Revenge," which appeared in 1721, a dedication at-
tributing to the Duke all virtues, as well as all accomplish-
ments. In the concluding sentence of this dedication, Young

naively indicates that a considerable ingredient in his gratitude
was a lively sense of anticipated favors. " My present fort-
une is his bounty, and my future his care ; which I will
venture to say will always be remembered to his honor ; since
he, I know, intended his generosity as an encouragement to
merit, through his very pardonable partiality to one who bears
him so sincere a duty and respect, I happen to receive the
benefit of it." Young was economical with his ideas and
images ; he was rarely satisfied with using a clever thing once,
and this bit of ingenious humility was afterward made to do
duty in the " Instalment,'* a poem addressed to Walpole :

*' Be this thy partial smile, from censure free,
'Twas meant for merit, though it fell on me."

It was probably " The Revenge" that Young was writing
when, as we learn from Spence's anecdotes, the Duke of
Wharton gave him a skull with a candle fixed in it, as the most
appropriate lamp by which to write tragedy. According to
Young's dedication, the Duke was " accessory" to the scenes
of this tragedy in a more important way, *' not only by sug-
gesting the most beautiful incident in them, but by making all
possible provision for the success of the whole." A statement
which is credible, not indeed on the ground of Young's ded-
icatory assertion, but from the known ability of the Duke,
who, as Pope tells us, possessed

" each gift of Nature and of Art,
And wanted nothing but an honest heart."

The year 1*722 seems to have been the period of a visit to
Mr. Dodmgton, of Eastbury, in Dorsetshire — the "pure
Dorsetian downs" celebrated by Thomson — in which Young
made the acquaintance of Voltaire ; for in the subsequent dedi-
cation of his " Sea Piece" to " Mr. Voltaire," he recalls their
meeting on " Dorset Downs ;" and it was in this year that
Christopher Pitt, a gentleman-poet of those days, addressed an

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 213

" Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Easthury, in Dorsetshire,"
which has at least the merit of this biographical couplet :

" While with your Dodington retired you sit,
Charm'd with his flowing Burgundy and wit."

Dodington, apparently, was charmed in his turn, for he told
Dr. Wharton that Young was ' * far superior to the French poet
in the variety and novelty of his bon-mots and repartees."
Unfortunately, the only specimen of Young's wit on this occa-
sion that has been preserved to us is the epigram represented as
an extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire's criti-
cism of Milton's episode of sin and death :

" Thou art so witty, profligate, and thin,
At once, we think thee Milton, Death, and Sin ;" —

an epigram which, in the absence of " flowing Burgundy,"
does not strike us as remarkably brilliant. Let us give Young
the benefit of the doubt thrown on the genuineness of this
epigram by his own poetical dedication, in which he represents
himself as having "soothed" Voltaire's "rage" against
Milton " with gentle rhymes ;" though in other respects that
dedication is anything but favorable to a high estimate of
Young's wit. Other evidence apart, we should not be eager
for the after-dinner conversation of the man who wrote :

" Thine is the Drama, how renown'd !
Thine Epic's loftier trump to sound ;—
But let Arion's sea-strung harp be mine ;
But where' s his dolphin ? Know' st thou where ?
May that be found in thee, Voltaire!"

The " Satires" appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course,
with its laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated
among the rhymes. The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir
Robert Walpole, is very short, and contains nothing in par-
ticular except lunatic flattery of George the First and his prime

214 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

4

minister, attributing that royal hog's late escape from a storm
at sea to the miraculous influence of his grand and virtuous
soul — for George, he says, rivals the angels :

" George, who in foes can soft affections raise,
And charm envenom'd satire into praise.
Nor human rage alone his pow'r perceives,
But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves,
Ev'n storms (Death's fiercest ministers !) forbear,
And in their own wild empire learn to spare.
Thus, Nature's self, supporting Man's decree,
Styles Britain's sovereign, sovereign of the sea."

As for Walpole, what he felt at this tremendous crisis

' ' No powers of language, but his own, can tell,
His own, which Nature and the Graces form,
At will, to raise, or hush, the civil storm."

It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh Satire
was published in 1726, and that the warrant of George the
First, granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-
day, 1725, is dated May 3d, 1726. The gratitude exhibited
in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, but the
" Instalment," a poem inspired by the thrilling event of
Walpole's installation as Knight of the Garter, was clearly
written with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension
and hopes for something more. His emotion about Walpole
is precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion about
the Second Advent. In the ' ' Instalment' ' he says :

" "With invocations some their hearts inflame ;
I need no muse, a Walpole is my theme.'

And 'of God coming to judgment, he says, in the "Night
Thoughts :"

" I find my inspiration is my theme ;
The grandeur of my subject is my muse."

WORLDLIffESS AND OTHER-WORLDLIffESS. 215

Nothing can be feebler than this " Instalment," except in
the strength of impudence with which the writer professes to
scorn the prostitution of fair fame, the " profanation of
celestial fire."

Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than three
thousand pounds by his " Satires" — a surprising statement,
taken in connection with the reasonable doubt he throws on the
story related in Spence's " Anecdotes," that the Duke of
Wharton gave Young £2000 for this work. Young, however,
seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results
of his publications ; and, with his literary profits, his annuity
from Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention
other bountiea which may be inferred from the high merits he
discovers in many men of wealth and position, we may fairly
suppose that he now laid the foundation of the considerable
fortune he left at his death.

It is probable that the Duke of Wharton's final departure for
the Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and the con-
sequent cessation of Young's reliance on his patronage, tended
not only to heighten the temperature of his poetical enthu-
siasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also to turn his thoughts
toward the Church again, as the second-best means of rising
in the world. On the accession of George the Second, Young
found the same transcendent merits in him as in his predeces-
sor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously un-
attempted by him — the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which
helped him to surpass himself in furious bombast. " Ocean,
an Ode : concluding with a Wish," was the title of this
piece. He afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other
things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for
humble retirement, which, of course, had prompted him to the
effusion ; but we may judge of the rejected stanzas by the
quality of those he has allowed to remain. For example,
calling on Britain's dead mariners to rise and meet their
" country's full-blown glory" in the person of the new King,
he says :

216 'THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

" What powerful charm

Can Death disarm ?
Your long, your iron slumbers break ?

By Jove, by Fame,

By George's name,
Awake ! awake ! awake ! awake !"

Soon after this notable production, which was written with
the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young took orders, and was
presently appointed chaplain to the King. " The Brothers,"
his third and last tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he
now withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in a
way more accordant with the decorum of his new profession,
by turning prose writer. But after publishing " A True
Estimate of Human Life/' with a dedication to the Queen, as
one of the " most shining representatives" of God on earth,
and a sermon, entitled "An Apology for Princes ; or, the
Reverence due to Government, ' ' preached before the House of
Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, and he
matched his former ode by another, called " Imperium Pelagi,
a Naval Lyric ; written in imitation of Pindar's spirit, occa-
sioned by his Majesty's return from Hanover, 1*729, and the
succeeding Peace." Since he afterward suppressed this second
ode, we must suppose that it was rather worse than the first.
Next came his two " Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors
of the Age," remarkable for nothing but the audacity of
affectation with which the most servile of poets professes to
despise servility.

In 1730 Young was presented by his college with the rec-
tory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, and, in the following year,
when he was just fifty, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a
widow with two children, who seems to have been in favor
with Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income — two
attractions which doubtless enhanced the power of her other
charms. Pastoral duties and domesticity probably cured
Young of some bad habits ; but, unhappily, they did not cure
him either of flattery or of fustian. Three more odes fol~

WORLD LIJTESS AND OTHER-WORLDLTtfESS. 217

lowed, quite as bad as those of his bachelorhood, except that in
the third he announced the wise resolution of never writing
another. It must have been about this time, since Young was
now " turned of fifty," that he wrote the letter to Mrs.
Howard (afterward Lady Suffolk), George the Second's mis-
tress, which proves that he used other engines, besides Pindaric
ones, in " besieging Court favor." The letter is too char-
acteristic to be ornmitted :

" Monday Morning.

" MADAM : I know his Majesty's goodness to his servants, and his
love of justice in general, so well, that I am confident, if his Majesty
knew my case, I should not have any cause to despair of his gracious
favor to me.

" Abilities. Want.

Good Manners. Sufferings ) , ,•

Service. and > Maip_fv

Age. Zeal ) Majesty.

These, madam, are the proper points of consideration in the person
that humbly hopes his Majesty's favor.

" As to Abilities, all I can presume to say is, I have done the best I
could to improve them.

" As to Good manners, I desire no favor, if any just objection lies
against them.

" As for Service, I have been near seven years in his Majesty's and
never omitted any duty in it, which few can say.

" As for Age, I am turned of fifty.

" As for Want, I have no manner of preferment.

" As for Sufferings, I have lost £300 per ann. by being in his Maj-
esty's service ; as I have shown in a Representation which his Majesty
has been so good as to read and consider.

" As for Zeal, I have written nothing without showing my duty to
their Majesties, and some pieces are dedicated to them.

" This, madam, is the short and true state of my case. They that
make their court to the ministers, and not their Majesties, succeed
better. If my case deserves some consideration, and you can serve
me in it, I humbly hope and believe you will : I shall, therefore,
trouble you no farther ; but beg leave to subscribe myself, with
truest respect and gratitude,

" Yours, etc., EDWARD YouNa.

218 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

" P.S. I have some hope that my Lord Townshend is my friend ;
if therefore soon, and before he leaves the court, you had an oppor"
tunity of mentioning me, with that favor you have been so good to
show, I think it would not fail of success ; and, if not, I shall owe
you more than any." — " Suffolk Letters," vol. i. p. 285.

Young's wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born in
1733. That he had attached himself strongly to her two
daughters by her former marriage, there is better evidence in
the report, mentioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kind-
ness and liberality to the younger, than in his lamentations
over the elder as the " Narcissa" of the " Night Thoughts."
" Narcissa" had died in 1735, shortly after marriage to Mr.
Temple, the son of Lord Palmerston ; and Mr. Temple him-
self, after a second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady
Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three deaths supposed to
have inspired " The Complaint," which forms the three first
books of the " Night Thoughts :"

f( Insatiate archer, could not one suffice ?
Thy shaft flew thrice : and thrice my peace was slain :
And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill'd her horn."

Since we find Young departing from the truth of dates, in
order to heighten the effect of his calamity, or at least of his
climax, we need not be surprised that he allowed his imagina-
tion great freedom in other matters besides chronology, and
that the character of " Philander" can, by no process, be made
to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition that the much-lectured
" Lorenzo" of the " Night Thoughts" was Young's own son is
hardly rendered more absurd by the fact that the poem was
written when that son was a boy, than by the obvious artifi-
ciality of the characters Young introduces as targets for his
arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of con-
jectured criticism, there can hardly be one more futile than
the attempts to discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures,
the " Lorenzos" and " Altamonts" of Young's didactic prose
and poetry. His muse never stood face to face with a gen-

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- \VOKLDLItfESS. 219

nine living human being ; she would have been as much star-
tled by such an encounter as a necromancer whose incantations
and blue fire had actually conjured up a demon.

The " Night Thoughts" appeared between 1741 and 1745.
Although he declares in them that he has chosen God for his
" patron" henceforth, this is not at all to the prejudice of some
half dozen lords, duchesses, and right honorables who have
the privilege of sharing finely-turned compliments with their co-
patron. The line which closed the Second Night in the earlier
editions —

" Wits spare not Heaven, O "Wilmington ! — nor thee" —

is an intense specimen of that perilous juxtaposition of ideas by
which Young, in his incessant search after point and novelty,
unconsciously converts his compliments into sarcasms ; and his
apostrophe to the moon as more likely to be favorable to his
song if he calls her " fair Portland of the skies," is worthy
even of his Pindaric ravings. His ostentatious renunciation of
worldly schemes, and especially of his twenty-years' siege of
Court favor, are in the tone of one who retains some hope in
the midst of his querulousness.

He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies of his
" Ninth Night," published in 1745, to more terrestrial strains
in his " Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom,"
dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle ; but in this critical year
we get a glimpse of him through a more prosaic and less re-
fracting medium. He spent a part of the year at Tunbridge
Wells ; and Mrs. Montagu, who was there too, gives a very
lively picture of the ** divine Doctor" in her letters to the
Duchess of Portland, on whom Young had bestowed the super-
lative bombast to which we have recently alluded. We shall
borrow the quotations from Dr. Doran, in spite of their length,
because, to our mind, they present the most agreeable portrait
we possess of Young :

" I have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed in a reverie.
At first he started, then bowed, then fell back into a surprise ; then

220 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

began a speech, relapsed into his astonishment two or three times,
forgot what he had been saying ; began a new subject, and so went
on. I told him your grace desired he would write longer letters ;
to which he cried ' Ha ! ' most emphatically, and I leave you to inter-
pret what it meant. He has made a friendship with one person here,
whom I believe you would not imagine to have been made for his
bosom friend. You would, perhaps, suppose it was a bishop or
dean, a prebend, a pious preacher, a clergyman of exemplary life,
or, if a layman, of most virtuous conversation, one that had para-
phrased St. Matthew, or wrote comments on St. Paul. . . . You
would not guess that this associate of the doctor's was — old Cibber !
Certainly, in their religious, moral, and civil character, there is no
relation ; but in their dramatic capacity there is some. — Mrs.
Montagu was not aware that Cibber, whom Young had named not
disparagingly in his Satires, was the brother of his old school-fellow ;
but to return to our hero. ' The waters,' says Mrs. Montagu, ' have
raised his spirits to a fine pitch, as your grace will imagine, when I
tell you how sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar question.
I asked him how long he stayed at the Wells ; he said, * As long as my
rival stayed ; — as long as the sun did. ' Among the visitors at the
Wells were Lady Sunderland (wife of Sir Robert Sutton), and
her sister, Mrs. Tichborne. ' He did an admirable thing to Lady
Sunderland : on her mentioning Sir Robert Sutton, he asked
her where Sir Robert's lady was ; on which we all laughed very
heartily, and I brought him off, half ashamed, to my lodgings,
where, during breakfast, he assured me he had asked after Lady Sun-
derland, because he had a great honor for her ; and that, having a
respect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after her, if we
had not put it out of his head by laughing at him. You must know,
Mrs. Tichborne sat next to Lady Sunderland. It would have been
admirable to have had him finish his compliment in that man-
ner.' . . . ' His expressions all bear the stamp of novelty, and
his thoughts of sterling sense. He practises a kind of philosophical
abstinence. ... He carried Mrs. Rolt and myself to Tunbridge,
five miles from hence, where we were to see some fine old ruins.
First rode the doctor on a tall steed, decently caparisoned in dark
gray ; next, ambled Mrs. Rolt on a hackney horse ; . . . then
followed your humble servant on a milk-white palfrey. I rode on in
safety, and at leisure to observe the company, especially the two fig-
ures that brought up the rear. The first was my servant, valiantly
armed with two uncharged pistols ; the last was the doctor's man,
whose uncombed hair so resembled the mane of the horse he rode,

WOBLDLIKESS AND OTHEK-WOKLDLItfESS. 221

one could not help imagining they were of kin, and wishing, for the
honor of the family, that they had had one comb betwixt them. On
his head was a velvet cap, much resembling a black saucepan, and on
his side hung a little basket. At last we arrived at the King's Head,
where the loyalty of the doctor induced him to alight ; and then,
knight-errant-like, he took his damsels from off their palfreys, and
courteously handed us into the inn.' . . . The party returned
to the Wells ; and ' the silver Cynthia held up her lamp in the heav-
ens ' the while. ' The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who
sometimes uttered things fit to be spoken in a season when all
nature seems to be hushed and hearkening. I followed, gathering
wisdom as I went, till I found, by my horse's stumbling, that I was
in a bad road, and that the blind was leading the blind. So I placed
my servant between the doctor and myself ; which he not perceiving,
went on in a most philosophical strain, to the great admiration of
my poor clown of a servant, who, not being wrought up to any pitch
of enthusiasm, nor making any answer to all the fine things he heard,
the doctor, wondering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid,
looked round and declared his surprise.' "

Young's oddity and absence of mind are gathered from
other sources besides these stories of Mrs. Montagu's, and gave
rise to the report that he was the original of Fielding's " Par-
son Adams ;" but this Croft denies, and mentions another
Young, who really sat for the portrait, and who, we imagine,
had both more Greek and more genuine simplicity than the
poet. His love of chatting with Colley Gibber was an indica-
tion that the old predilection for the stage survived, in spite of
his emphatic contempt for " all joys but joys that never can
expire ;" and the production of " The Brothers," at Drury
Lane in 1753, after a suppression of fifteen years, was perhaps
not entirely due to the expressed desire to give the proceeds to
the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author's
, profits were not more then £400 — in those days a disappointing
sum ; and Young, as we learn from his friend Richardson, did
not make this the limit of his donation, but gave a thousand
guineas to the Society. " I had some talk with him," says
Richardson, in one of his letters, " about this great action.
' I always,' said he, * intended to do something handsome for

THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

the Society. Had I deferred it to my demise, I should have
given away my son's money. All the world are inclined to
pleasure ; could I have given myself a greater by disposing of
the sum to. a different use, I should have done it.' ' Surely
he took his old friend Richardson for " Lorenzo !"

His next work was " The Centaur not Fabulous ; in Six
Letters to a Friend, on the Life in Vogue," which reads very
much like the most objurgatory parts of the " Night Thoughts"
reduced to prose. It is preceded by a preface which, though
addressed to a lady, is in its denunciations of vice as grossly
indecent and almost as flippant as the epilogues written by
" friends," which he allowed to be reprinted after his tragedies
in the latest edition of his works. We like much better than
" The Centaur," ** Conjectures on Original Composition,"
written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of communicating to the
world the well-known anecdote about Addison's deathbed, and
with the exception of his poem on Resignation, the last thing
he ever published.

The estrangement from his son, which must have embittered
the later years of his life, appears to have begun not many
years after the mother's death. On the marriage of her second
daughter, who had previously presided over Young's household,
a Mrs. Hallows, understood to be a woman of discreet age, and
the daughter (a widow) of a clergyman who was an old friend
of Young's, became housekeeper at Welwyn. Opinions about
ladies are apt to differ. " Mrs. Hallows was a woman of piety,
improved by reading," says one witness. " She was a very
coarse woman," says Dr. Johnson ; and we shall presently find
some indirect evidence that her temper was perhaps not quite
so much improved as her piety. Servants, it seems, were not
fond of remaining long in the house with her ; a satirical
curate, named Kidgell, hints at " drops of juniper" taken as a
cordial (but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaller) ; and
Young's son is said to have told his father that " an old man
should not resign himself to the management of anybody."
The result was, that the son was banished from home for the

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLItfESS. 22

rest of his father's life-time, though Young seems never to
have thought of disinheriting him.

Our latest glimpses of the aged poet are derived from certain
letters of Mr. Jones, his curate — letters preserved in the British
Museum, and happily made accessible to common mortals in
Nichols's " Anecdotes." Mr. Jones was a man of some lit-
erary activity and ambition — a collector of interesting doc-
uments, and one of those concerned in the " Free and Candid
Disquisitions," the design of which was " to point out such
things in our ecclesiastical establishment as want to be reviewed
and amended." On these and kindred subjects he corre-
sponded with Dr. Birch, occasionally troubling him with
queries and manuscripts. We have a respect for Mr. Jones.
Unlike any person who ever troubled us with queries or manu-
scripts, he mitigates the infliction by such gifts as " a fat
pullet," wishing he " had anything better to send ; but this
depauperizing vicarage (of Alconbury) too often checks the
freedom and forwardness of my mind." Another day comes a
" pound canister of tea," another, a " young fatted goose."
Clearly, Mr. Jones was entirely unlike your literary correspond-
ents of the present day ; he forwarded manuscripts, but he had
" bowels," and forwarded poultry too. His first letter from
Welwyn is dated June, 1759, not quite six years before
Young's death. In June, 1762, he expresses a wish to go to
London " this summer. But," he continues :

" My time and pains are almost continually taken up here,
and ... I have been (I now find) a considerable loser, upon the
whole, by continuing here so long. - The consideration of this, and
the inconveniences I sustained, and do still experience, from my late
illness, obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor (Young) with my
case, and to assure him that I plainly perceived the duty and con-
finement here to be too much for me ; for which reason I must (I
said) beg to be at liberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I be-
gan to give him these notices in February, when I was very ill ; and
now I perceive, by what he told me the other day, that he is in some
difficulty : for which reason he is at last (he says) resolved to adver-
tise, and even (which is much wondered at) to raise the salary considerably

224 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

higher. (What he allowed my predecessors was 20Z. per annum ; and
now he proposes 50/., as he tells me.) I never asked him to raise it
for me, though I well knew it was not equal to the duty ; nor did I
say a word about myself when he lately suggested to me his inten-
tions upon this subject. "

In a postscript to this letter he says :

" I may mention to you farther, as a friend that may be trusted,
that in all likelihood the poor old gentleman will not find it a very
easy matter, unless by dint of money, and force upon himself, to pro-
cure a man that he can like for his next curate, nor one thai will stay
with him so long as I have done. Then, his great age will recur to peo-
ple's thoughts ; and if he has any foibles, either in temper or con-
duct, they will be sure not to be forgotten on this occasion by those
who know him ; and those who do not will probably be on their
guard. On these and the like considerations, it is by no means an
eligible office to be seeking out for a curate for him, as he has several
times wished me to do ; and would, if he knew that I am now writ-
ing to you, wish your assistance also. But my best friends here, who
well foresee the probable consequences, and wish me well, earnestly dis-
suade me from complying : and I will decline the office with as much
decency as I can : but high salary will, I suppose, fetch in some-
body or other, soon."

In the following July he writes :

" The old gentleman here (I may venture to tell you freely) seems
to me to be in a pretty odd way of late— moping, dejected, self-
willed, and as if surrounded with some perplexing circumstances.
Though I visit him pretty frequently for short intervals, I say very
little to his affairs, not choosing to be a party concerned, especially
in cases of so critical and tend eta nature. There is much mystery in
almost all his temporal affairs, as well as in many of his speculative
theories. Whoever lives in this neighborhood to see his exit will
probably see and hear some very strange things. Time will show ; —
1 am afraid, not greatly to his credit. There is thought to be an
irremovable obstruction to his happiness within his walls, as icell as another
without them ; but the former is the more powerful, and like to con-
tinue so. He has this day been trying anew to engage me to stay
with him. No lucrative views can tempt me to sacrifice my liberty
or my health, to such measures as are proposed here. Nor do Hike to

WOKLULINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 225

have to do with persons whose word and honor cannot be depended on. So
much for this very odd and unhappy topic."

In August Mr. Jones's tone is slightly modified. Earnest
entreaties, not lucrative considerations, have induced him to
cheer the Doctor's dejected heart by remaining at Welwyn
some time longer. The Doctor is, " in various respects, a very
unhappy man," and few know so much of these respects as
Mr. Jones. In September he recurs to the subject :

" My ancient gentleman here is still full of trouble, which moves
my concern, though it moves only the secret laughter of many, and
some untoward surmises in disfavor of him and his household. The
loss of a very large sum of money (about 200Z.) is talked of ; whereof
this vill and neighborhood is full. Some disbelieve ; others says, ' It
is no wonder, where about eighteen or more servants are sometimes taken
and dismissed in the course of a year.' The gentleman himself is
allowed by all to be far more harmless and easy in his family than
some one else who hath too much the lead in it. This, among
others, was. one reason for my late motion to quit. ' '

No other mention of Young's affairs occurs until April 2d,
1765, when he says that Dr. Young is very ill, attended by
two physicians.

" Having mentioned this young gentleman (Dr. Young's son), I
would acquaint you next, that he came hither this morning, having
been sent for, as I am told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. In-
deed, she intimated to me as much herself. And if this be so, I
must say, that it is one of the most prudent acts she ever did, or
could have done in such a case as this ; as it may prove a means of
preventing much confusion after the death of the Doctor. I have had
some little discourse with the son : he seems much affected, and I
believe really is so. He earnestly wishes his father might be pleased
to ask after him ; for you must know he has not yet done this, nor is,
in my opinion, like to do it. And it has been said farther, that upon
a late application made to him on the behalf of his son, he desired
that no more might be said to him about it. How true this may be
I cannot as yet be certain ; all I shall say is, it seems not improba-
ble ... I heartily wish the ancient man's heart may prove tender
toward his son ; though, knowing him so well, 1 can scarce hope to hear
such desirable news."

THE ESSAYS OF

Eleven days later he writes :

" I have now the pleasure to acquaint you, that the late Dr. Young,
though he had for many years kept his son at a distance from him,
yet has now at last left him all his possessions, after the payment of
certain legacies ; so that the young gentleman (who bears a fair char-
acter, and behaves well, as far as I can hear or see) will, I hope, soon
enjoy and make a prudent use of a handsome fortune. The father,
on his deathbed, and since my return from London, was applied to
in the tenderest manner, by one of his physicians, and by another
person, to admit the son into his presence, to make submission, in-
treat forgiveness, and obtain his blessing. As to an interview with
his son, he intimated that he chose to decline it, as his spirits were
then low and his nerves weak. With regard to the next particular,
he said, ' I heartily forgive him ; ' and upon mention of this last, he
gently lifted up his hand, and letting it gently fall, pronounced these
words, * God bless him f * ... I know it will give you pleasure to
be farther informed that he was pleased to make respectful mention
of me in his will ; expressing his satisfaction in my care of his par-
ish, bequeathing to me a handsome legacy, and appointing me to be one
of his executors."

So far Mr. Jones, in his confidential correspondence with
a " friend, who may be trusted." In a letter communicated
apparently by him to the Gentleman's Magazine, seven years
later, namely, in 1*782, on the appearance of Croft's biography
of Young, we find him speaking of " the ancient gentleman"
in a tone of reverential eulogy, quite at variance with the free
comments we have just quoted. But the Rev. John Jones was
probably of opinion, with Mrs. Montagu, whose contemporary
and retrospective letters are also set in a different key, that
" the interests of religion were connected with the character of
a man so distinguished for piety as Dr. Young." At all
events, a subsequent quasi-official statement weighs nothing as
evidence against contemporary, spontaneous, and confidential
hints.

To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1000, with the
request that she would destroy all his manuscripts. This final
request, from some unknown cause, was not complied with,
and among the papers he left behind him was the following

WORLDLI^ESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 227

letter from Archbishop Seeker, which probably marks the date
of his latest effort after preferment :

" DEANERY OF ST. PAUL'S, July 8, 1758.

" GooDDu. YOUNG : I have long wondered that more suitable notice
of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But
how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever
been given me to mention things of this nature to his Majesty. And
therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it would
be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly have on
some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set you above
the need of advancement ; and your sentiments above that concern for it, on
your own account, which, on that of the public, is sincerely felt by

" Your loving Brother,

" THO. CANT."

The loving brother's irony is severe I

Perhaps the least questionable testimony to the better side
of Young's character is that of Bishop Hildesley, who, as the
vicar of a parish near Welwyn, had been Young's neighbor for
upward of twenty years. The affection of the clergy for each
other, we have observed, is, like that of the fair sex, not at all
of a blind and infatuated kind ; and we may therefore the
rather believe them when they give each other any extra-official
praise. Bishop Hildesley, then writing of Young to Richard-
son, says :

" The impertinence of my frequent visits to him was amply re-
warded ; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he never received me but
with agreeable open complacency ; and I never left him but with
profitable pleasure and improvement. He was one or other, the
most modest, the most patient of contradiction, and the most in-
forming and entertaining I ever conversed with— at least, of any man
who had so just pretensions to pertinacity and reserve."

Mr. Langton, however, who was also a frequent visitor of
Young's, informed Boswell —

" That there was an air of benevolence in his manner ; but that he
could obtain from him less information than he had hoped to receive
from one who had lived so much in intercourse with the brightest

228 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

men of what had been called the Augustan age of England ; and that
he showed a degree of eager curiosity concerning the common occur-
rences that were then passing, which appeared somewhat remarkable
in a man of such intellectual stores, of such an advanced age, and
who had retired from life with declared disappointment in his ex-
pectations."

The same substance, we know, will exhibit different qualities
under different tests ; and, after all, imperfect reports of
individual impressions, whether immediate or traditional, are
a very frail basis on which to build our opinion of a man.
One's character may be very indifferently mirrored in the mind
of the most intimate neighbor ; it all depends on the quality
of that gentleman's reflecting surface.

But, discarding any inferences from such uncertain evidence,
the outline of Young's character is too distinctly traceable in
the well-attested facts of his life, and yet more in the self-
betrayal that runs through all his works, for us to fear that our
general estimate of him may be false. For, while no poet
seems less easy and spontaneous than Young, no poet discloses
himself more completely. Men's minds have no hiding-place
out of themselves — their affectations do but betray another
phase of their nature. And if, in the present view of Young,
we seem to be more intent on laying bare unfavorable facts
than on shrouding them in "charitable speeches," it is not
because we have any irreverential pleasure in turning men's
characters " the seamy side without," but because we see no
great advantage in considering a man as he was not. Young's
biographers and critics have usually set out from the position
that he was a great religious teacher, and that his poetry is
morally sublime ; and they have toned down his failings into
harmony with their conception of the divine and the poet. For
our own part, we set out from precisely the opposite convic-
tion— namely, that the religious and moral spirit of Young's
poetry is low and false, and we think it of some importance to
show that the " Night Thoughts" are the reflex of the mind in
which the higher human sympathies were inactive. This

WORLDLItfESS AtfD OTHER- WO RLDLINESS. 229

judgment is entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and
enthusiasm. The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment
lingers about many a page of the " Night Thoughts," and even
of the " Last Day," giving an extrinsic charm to passages of
stilted rhetoric and false sentiment ; but the sober and repeated
reading of maturer years has convinced us that it would hardly
be possible to find a more typical instance than Young's
poetry, of the mistake which substitutes interested obedience
for sympathetic emotion, and baptizes egoism as religion.

Pope said of Young, that he had " much of a sublime genius
without common-sense." The deficiency Pope meant to
indicate was, we imagine, moral rather than intellectual : it
was the want of that fine sense of what is fitting in speech and
action, which is often eminently possessed by men and women
whose intellect is of a very common order, but who have the
sincerity and dignity which can never coexist with the selfish
preoccupations of vanity or interest. This was the " common-
sense" in which Young was conspicuously deficient ; and it
was partly owing to this deficiency that his genius, waiting to
be determined by the highest prize, fluttered uncertainly from
effort to effort, until, when he was more than sixty, it suddenly
spread its broad wing, and soared so as to arrest the gaze of
other generations besides his own. For he had no versatility
of faculty to mislead him. The " Night Thoughts" only differ
from his previous works in the degree and not in the kind of
power they manifest. Whether he writes prose or poetry,
rhyme or blank verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations,
we see everywhere the same Young — the same narrow circle of
thoughts, the same love of abstractions, the same telescopic view
of human things, the same appetency toward antithetic apo-
thegm and rhapsodic climax. The passages that arrest us in his
tragedies are those in which he anticipates some fine passage in
the " Night Thoughts," and where his characters are only
transparent shadows through which we see the bewigged embon-
point of the didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic

230 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in a skull. Thus, in
' ' The Revenge, " "Alonzo,"in the conflict of jealousy and
love that at once urges and forbids him to murder his wife,
says :

" This vast and solid earth, that blazing sun,
Those skies, through which it rolls, must all have end.
What then is man ? The smallest part of nothing.
Day buries day ; month, month ; and year the year !
Our life is but a chain of many deaths.
Can then Death's self be feared ? Our life much rather :
Life is the desert, life the solitude ;
Death joins us to the great majority ;
'Tis to be born to Plato and to Cassar ;
'Tis to be great forever ;
'Tis pleasure, 'tis ambition, then, to die."

His prose writings all read like the " Night Thoughts/'
either diluted into prose or not yet crystallized into poetry.
For example, in his " Thoughts for Age," he says :

" Though we stand on its awful brink, such our leaden bias to the
world, we turn our faces the wrong way ; we are still looking on our
old acquaintance, Time ; though now so wasted and reduced, that we
can see little more of him than his wings and his scythe : our age
enlarges his wings to our imagination ; and our fear of death, his
scythe ; as Time himself grows less. His consumption is deep ; his
annihilation is at hand."

This is a dilution of the magnificent image —

" Time in advance behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep decrepit with his age.
Behold him when past by ! What then is seen
But his proud pinions, swifter than the winds ?"

Again :

" A requesting Omnipotence ? What can stun and confound thy
reason more ? What more can ravish and exalt thy heart ? It cannot
but ravish and exalt ; it cannot but gloriously disturb and perplex
thee, to take in all that suggests. Thou child of the dust ! Thou
speck of misery and sin ! How abject thy weakness ! how great is
thy power ! Thou crawler on earth, and possible (I was about to
say) controller of the skies ! Weigh, and weigh well, the wondrous
truths I have in view : which cannot be weighed too much ; which

WOHLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 231

the more they are weighed, amaze the more ; which to have sup-
posed, before they were revealed, would have been as great madness,
and to have presumed on as great sin, as it is now madness and sin
not to believe."

Even in his Pindaric odes, in which he made the most violent
efforts against nature, he is still neither more nor less than the
Young of the " Last Day," emptied and swept of his genius,
and possessed by seven demons of fustian and bad rhyme.
Even here his " Ercles' Vein" alternates with his moral plati-
tudes, and we have the perpetual text of the " Night Thoughts:"

" Gold pleasure buys ;

But pleasure dies,
For soon the gross fruition cloys ;

Though raptures court,

The sense is short ;
But virtue kindles living joys ; —

"Joys felt alone !

Joys asked of none !
Which Time's and fortune's arrows miss :

Joys that subsist,

Though fates resist,
An unprecarious, endless bliss !

"Unhappy they !

And falsely gay !
Who bask forever in success ;

A constant feast

Quite palls the taste,
And long enjoyment is distress."

In the "Last Day," again, which is the earliest thing he
wrote, we have an anticipation of all his greatest faults and
merits. Conspicuous among the faults is that attempt to exalt
our conceptions of Deity by vulgar images and comparisons,
which is so offensive in the later " Night Thoughts." In a
burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by the contem-
plation of Christ coming to judgment, he asks, Who brings the
change of the seasons ? and answers :

" Not the great Ottoman, or Greater Czar ;
Not Europe's arbitress of peace and war !

232 THE ESSAYS OF

Conceive the soul in its most solemn moments, assuring God
that it doesn't place his power below that of Louis Napoleon or
Queen Victoria !

But in the midst of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate imagery,
vaulting sublimity that o'erleaps itself, and vulgar emotions, we
have in this poem an occasional flash of genius, a touch of
simple grandeur, which promises as much as Young ever
achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolution of all
things, he says :

" No sun in radiant glory shines on high ;
No light but from the terrors of the sky."

And again, speaking of great armies :

" Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn
Rons' d the broad front, and call'd the battle on."

And this wail of the lost souls is fine :

" And this for sin?
Could I offend if I had never been ?
But still increas'd the senseless, happy mass,
Flow'd in the stream, or shiver'd in the grass ?
Father of mercies ! Why from silent earth
Didst thou awake and curse me into birth ?
Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night,
And make a thankless present of thy light ?
Push into being a reverse of Thee,
And animate a clod with misery ?"

But it is seldom in Young's rhymed poems that the effect of
a felicitous thought or image is not counteracted by our sense
of the constraint he suffered from the necessities of rhyme
— that "Gothic demon," as he afterward called it, "which,
modern poetry tasting, became mortal." In relation to his
own, power, no one will question the truth of this dictum,
that " blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst ; verse reclaim-
ed, reinthroned in the true language of the gods ; who never
thundered nor suffered their Homer to thunder in rhyme."
His want of mastery in rhyme is especially a drawback on the
effects of his Satires ; for epigrams and witticisms are pecul-
iarly susceptible to the intrusion of a superfluous word, or to an
inversion which implies constraint. Here, even more than else-

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDIJNESS. 233

where, the art that conceals art is an absolute requisite, and to
have a witticism presented to us in limping or cumbrous
rhythm is as counteractive to any electrifying effect as to see
the tentative grimaces by which a comedian prepares a gro-
tesque countenance. We discern the process, instead of being
startled by the result.

This is one reason why the Satires, read seriatim, have a flat-
ness to us, which, when we afterward read picked passages, we
are inclined to disbelieve in, and to attribute to some deficiency
in our own mood. But there are deeper reasons for that dis-
satisfaction. Young is not a satirist of a high order. His
satire has neither the terrible vigor, the lacerating energy of
genuine indignation, nor the humor which owns loving fellow-
ship with the poor human nature it laughs at ; nor yet the per-
sonal bitterness which, as in Pope's characters of Sporus and
Atticus, insures those living touches by virtue of which the in-
dividual and particular in Art becomes the universal and immor-
tal. Young could never describe a real, complex human^
being ; but what he could do with eminent success was to de-
scribe, with neat and finished point, obvious types, of manners
rather than of character — to write cold and clever epigrams on
personified vices and absurdities. There is no more emotion
in his satire than if he were turning witty verses on a waxen
image of Cupid or a lady's glove. He has none of these felici-
tious epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which Pope's
Satires have enriched the ordinary speech of educated men.
Young's wit will be found in almost every instance to consist in
that antithetic combination of ideas which, of all the forms of
wit, is most within reach of a clever effort. In his gravest ar-
guments, as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that
he had set himself to work out the problem, how much anti-
thesis might be got oat of a given subject, And there he com-
pletely succeeds. His neatest portraits are all wrought on this
plan. " Narcissus," for example, who

" Omits no duty ; nor can Envy say
He miss'd, these many years, the Church or Play :

234 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT.

He makes no noise in Parliament, 'tis true ;

But pays his debts, and visit when 'tis due ;

His character and gloves are ever clean,

And then he can out-bow the bowing Dean ;•

A smile eternal on his lip he wears,

Which equally the wise and worthless shares.

In gay fatigues, this most undaunted chief,

Patient of idleness beyond belief,

Most charitably lends the town his face

For ornament in every public place ;

As sure as cards he to th' assembly comes,

And is the furniture of drawing-rooms :

When Ombre calls, his hand and heart are free,

And, joined to two, he fails not — to make three ;

Narcissus is the glory of his race ;

For who does nothing with a better grace ?

To deck my list by nature were designed

Such shining expletives of human kind,

Who want, while through blank life they dream along,

Sense to be right and passion to be wrong."

It is but seldom that we find a touch of that easy slyness
which gives an additional zest to surprise ; but here is an
instance :

" See Tityrus, with merriment possest,
Is burst with laughter ere he hears the jest,
What need he stay, for when the joke is o'er,
His teeth will be no whiter than before. ' '

Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with a psycholog-
ical mistake as the basis of his satire, attributing all forms of
folly to one passion — the love of fame, or vanity — a much
grosser mistake, indeed, than Pope's, exaggeration of the
extent to which the " ruling passion" determines conduct in
the individual. Not that Young is consistent in his mistake.
He sometimes implies no more than what is the truth — that
the love of fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many.

Young's satires on women are superior to Pope's, which is
only saying that they are superior to Pope's greatest failure.
We can more frequently pick out a couplet as successful than
an entire sketch. Of the too emphatic " Syrena" he says :

" Her judgment just, her sentence is too strong ;
Because she's right, she's ever in the wrong."

Of the diplomatic " Julia :"

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 235

" For her own breakfast she'll project a scheme,
Nor take her tea without a stratagem."

Of " Lyce," the old painted coquette :

" In vain the cock has summoned sprites away ;
She walks at noon and blasts the bloom of day."

Of the nymph, who, " gratis, clears religious mysteries :"

" 'Tis hard, too, she who makes no use but chat
Of her religion, should be barr'd in that."

The description of the literary belle, i ' Daphne, ' ' well pref-
aces that of * ' Stella, ' ' admired by Johnson :

" With legs toss'd high, on her sophee she sits,
Vouchsafing audience to contending wits :
Of each performance she's the final test ;
One act read o' er, she prophecies the rest ;
And then, pronouncing with decisive air,
Fully convinces all the town — she's fair.
Had lonely Daphne Hecatessa's face,
How would her elegance of taste decrease !
Some ladies' judgment in their features lies,
And all their genius sparkles in their eyes.
But hold, she cries, lampooner ! have a care ;
Must I want common sense because I'm fair?
O no ; see Stella : her eyes shine as bright
As if her tongue was never in the right ;
And yet what real learning, judgment, fire !
She seems inspir'd, and can herself inspire.
How then (if malice ruled not all the fair)
Could Daphne publish, and could she forbear ?"

After all, when we have gone through Young's seven Satires,
we seem to have made but an indifferent meal. They are a
sort of fricassee, with some little solid meat in them, and yet
the flavor is not always piquant. It is curious to find him,
when he pauses a moment from his satiric sketching, recurring
to his old platitudes :

" Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine ?
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine ?
Wisdom to gold prefer ;" —

platitudes which he seems inevitably to fall into, for the same
reason that some men are constantly asserting their contempt
for criticism — because he felt the opposite so keenly.

236 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

The outburst of genius in the earlier books of the "Night
Thoughts" is the more remarkable, that in the interval be-
tween them and the Satires he had produced nothing but
his Pindaric odes, in which he fell far below the level of his
previous works. Two sources of this sudden strength were the
freedom of blank verse and the presence of a genuine emotion.
Most persons, in speaking of the ' * Night Thoughts, ' ' have in
their minds only the two or three first Nights, the majority of
readers rarely getting beyond these, unless, as Wilson says,
they " have but few books, are poor, and live in the country."
And in these earlier Nights there is enough genuine sublimity
and genuine sadness to bribe us into too favorable a judgment
of them as a whole. Young had only a very few things to say
or sing — such as that life is vain, that death is imminent, that
man is immortal, that virtue is wisdom, that friendship is
sweet, and that the source of virtue is the contemplation of
death and immortality — and even in his two first Nights he had
said almost all he had to say in his finest manner. Through
these first outpourings of ' ' complaint' ' we feel that the poet is
really sad, that the bird is singing over a rifled nest ; and we
bear with his morbid picture of the world and of life, as the
Job-like lament of a man whom "the hand of God hath
touched. ' ' Death has carried away his best-beloved, and that
" silent land " whither they are gone has more reality for the
desolate one than this world which is empty of their love :

" This is the desert, this the solitude ;
How populous, how vital is the grave I"

»
Joy died with the loved one :

' ' The disenchanted earth

Lost all her lustre. Where her glitt'ring towers ?
Her golden mountains, where ? All darken 'd down
To naked waste ; a dreary vale of tears :
The great magician's dead!"

Under the pang of parting, it seems to the bereaved man as
if love were only a nerve to suffer with, and he sickens at the
thought of every joy of which he must one day say — " it

WORLDLINESS AND OTHEB-WORLDLINESS. 237

was." In its unreasoning anguish, the soul rushes to the idea
of perpetuity as the one element of bliss :

" O ye blest scenes of permanent delight ! —
Could ye, so rich in rapture, fear an end, —
That ghastly thought would drink up all your joy,
And quite unparadise the realms of light."

In a man under the immediate pressure of a great sorrow,
we tolerate morbid exaggerations ; we are prepared to see
him turn away a weary eye from sunlight and flowers and
sweet human faces, as if this rich and glorious life had no
significance but as a preliminary of death ; we do not criticise
his views, we compassionate his feelings. And so it is with
Young in these earlier Nights. There is already some artificial-
ity even in his grief, and feeling often slides into rhetoric, but
through it all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of pain,
which makes us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole :

"In every varied posture, place, and hour,
How widow' d every thought of every joy !
Thought, busy thought ! too busy for my peace !
Through the dark postern of time long elapsed
Led softly, by the stillness of the night, —
Led like a murderer (and such it proves !)
Strays (wretched rover !) o'er the pleasing past, —
In quest of wretchedness, perversely strays ;
And finds all desert now ; and meets the ghosts
Of my departed joys. ' '

But when he becomes didactic, rather then complaining —
when he ceases to sing his sorrows, and begins to insist on his
opinions — when that distaste for life which we pity as a
transient feeling is thrust upon us as a theory, we become
perfectly cool and critical, and are not in the least inclined to
be indulgent to false views and selfish sentiments.

Seeing that we are about to be severe on Young's failings
and failures, we ought, if a reviewer's space were elastic, to
dwell also on his merits — on the startling vigor of his imagery
— on the occasional grandeur of his thought — on the piquant
force of that grave satire into which his meditations continually
run. But, since our ** limits" are rigorous, we must content
ourselves with the less agreeable half of the critic's duty ; and

238 THE ESSAYS OF " GEOKGE ELIOT."

we may the rather do so, because it would be difficult to say
anything new of Young, in the way of admiration, while we
think there are many salutary lessons remaining to be drawn
from his faults.

One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his
radical insincerity as a poetic artist. This, added to the thin
and artificial texture of his wit, is the true explanation of the
paradox — that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has
the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all
grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true
qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed.
The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or
what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience ;
hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any
criterion to arrest him. Here lies the distinction between
grandiloquence and genuine fancy or bold imaginativeness.
The fantastic or the boldly imaginative poet may be as sincere as
the most realistic : he is true to his own sensibilities or inward
vision, and in his wildest flights he never breaks loose from his
criterion — the truth of his own mental state. Now, this dis-
ruption of language from genuine thought and feeling is what
we are constantly detecting in Young ; and his insincerity is
the more likely to betray him into absurdity, because he habit-
ually treats of abstractions, and not of concrete objects or
specific emotions. He descants perpetually on virtue, religion,
" the good man, " life, death, immortality, eternity — subjects
which are apt to give a factitious grandeur to empty wordiness.
When a poet floats in the empyrean, and only takes a bird's-
eye view of the earth, some people accept the mere fact of his
soaring for sublimity, and mistake his dim vision of earth for
proximity to heaven. Thus :

" His hand the good man fixes on the skies,
And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl,"

may, perhaps, pass for sublime with some readers. But pause
a moment to realize the image, and the monstrous absurdity of
a man's grasping the skies, and hanging habitually suspended

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLItfESS. 239

there, while he contemptuously bids the earth roll, warns you
that no genuine feeling could have suggested so unnatural a
conception.
Again,

" See the man immortal : him, I mean,
Who lives as such ; whose heart, full bent on Heaven,
Leans all that way, his bias to the stars."

This is worse than the previous example : for you can at
least form some imperfect conception of a man hanging from
the skies, though the position strikes you as uncomfortable
and of no particular use ; but you are utterly unable to imagine
how his heart can lean toward the stars. Examples of such
vicious imagery, resulting from insincerity, may be found,
perhaps, in almost every page of the "Night Thoughts."
But simple assertions or aspirations, undisguised by imagery,
are often equally false. No writer whose rhetoric was checked
by the slightest truthful intentions could have said —

" An eye of awe and wonder let me roll,
And roll forever."

Abstracting the more poetical associations with the eye, this
is hardly less absurd than if he had wished to stand forever
with his mouth open.

Again :

" Far beneath
A soul immortal is a mortal joy."

Happily for human nature, we are sure no man really believes
that. Which of us has the impiety not to feel that our souls
are only too narrow for the joy of looking into the trusting
eyes of our children, of reposing on the love of a husband or
a wife — nay, of listening to the divine voice of music, or
watching the calm brightness of autumnal afternoons ? But \
Young could utter this falsity without detecting it, because,
when he spoke of " mortal joys," he rarely had in his mind
any object to which he could attach sacredness. He was
thinking of bishoprics, and benefices, of smiling monarchs,
patronizing prime ministers, and a " much indebted muse."

240 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

Of anything between these and eternal bliss he was but rarely
and moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he sinks very much
below even the bishopric, and seems to have no notion of
earthly pleasure but such as breathes gaslight and the fumes of
wine. His picture of life is precisely such as you would
expect from a man who has risen from his bed at two o'clock in
the afternoon with a headache and a dim remembrance that he
has added to his " debts of honor :"

" What wretched repetition cloys us here !
What periodic potions for the sick,
Distemper'd bodies, and distemper'd minds ?"

And then he flies off to his usual antithesis :

" In an eternity what scenes shall strike !

Adventures thicken, novelties surprise !' ' *

"Earth" means lords and levees, duchesses and Dalilahs,
South-Sea dreams, and illegal percentage ; and the only things
distinctly preferable to these are eternity and the stars. De-
prive Young of this antithesis, and more than half his eloquence
would be shrivelled up. Place him on a breezy common,
where the furze is in its golden bloom, where children are play-
ing, and horses are standing in the sunshine with fondling necks,
and he would have nothing to say. Here are neither depths of
guilt nor heights of glory ; and we doubt whether in such a
scene he would be able to pay his usual compliment to the
Creator :

" Where'er I turn, what claim on all applause !"

It is true that he sometimes — not often — speaks of virtue as
capable of sweetening life, as well as of taking the sting from
death and winning heaven ; and, lest we should be guilty of
any unfairness to him, we will quote the two passages which
convey this sentiment the most explicitly. In the one he
gives " Lorenzo" this excellent recipe for obtaining cheerful-
ness ;

" Go, fix some weighty truth ;

Chain down some passion ; do some generous good ;

Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile ;

WOELDLIKESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 241

Correct thy friend ; befriend thy greatest foe ;

Or, with warm heart, and confidence divine,

Spring up, and lay strong hold on Him who made thee."

The other passage is vague, but beautiful, and its music has
murmured in our minds for many years :

' ' The cuckoo seasons sing
The same dull note to such as nothing prize
But what those seasons from the teeming earth
To doting sense indulge. But nobler minds,
Which relish fruit unripened by the sun,
Make their days various ; various as the dyes
On the dove's neck, which wanton in his rays.
On minds of dove-like innocence possess'd,
On lighten'd minds that bask in Virtue's beams,
Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves
In that for which they long, for which they live.
Their glorious efforts, winged with heavenly hopes,
Each rising morning sees still higher rise ;
Each bounteous dawn its novelty presents
To worth maturing, new strength, lustre, fame ;
While Nature's circle, like a chariot wheel,
Boiling beneath their elevated aims,
Makes their fair prospect fairer every hour ;
Advancing virtue in a line to bliss."

Even here, where he is in his most amiable mood, you see at
what a telescopic distance he stands from mother Earth and
simple human joys — " Nature's circle rolls beneath." Indeed,
we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have
absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the
common landscape than Young's. His images, often grand
and finely presented — witness that sublimely sudden leap of

thought,

' ' Embryos we must be till we burst the shell,
Yon ambient azure shell, and spring to life" —

lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would
be familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the
theatres, read the newspaper, and went home often by moon
and starlight.

There is no natural object nearer than the moon that seems
to have any strong attraction for him, and even to the moon he
chiefly appeals for patronage, and " pays his court" to her.'
It is reckoned among the many deficiencies of " Lorenzo"

242

that he " never asked the moon one question" — an omission
which Young thinks eminently unbecoming a rational being.
He describes nothing so well as a comet, and is tempted to
linger with fond detail over nothing more familiar than the day
of judgment and an imaginary journey among the stars. Once
on Saturn's ring he feels at home, and his language becomes

quite easy :

"What behold I now?
A wilderness of wonders burning round,
Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres ;
Perhaps the villas of descending gods .'"

--

It is like a sudden relief from a strained posture when, in
the " Night Thoughts," we come on any allusion that carries
us to the lanes, woods, or fields. Such allusions are amaz-
ingly rare, and we could almost count them on a single hand.
That we may do him no injustice, we will quote the three best :

" Like Uossom'd trees overturned by vernal storm,
Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay.
*****

** In the same brook none ever bathed him twice :
To the same life none ever twice awoke.
We call the brook the same— the same we think
Our life, though still more rapid in its flow ;
Nor mark the much irrevocably lapsed
And mingled with the sea."
*****

" The crown of manhood is a winter joy ;
An evergreen that stands the northern blast,
And blossoms in the rigor of our fate. ' '

The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of
abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the want of genuine
emotion. He sees virtue sitting on a mount serene, far
above the mists and storms of earth ; he sees Religion coming
down from the skies, with this world in her left hand and the
other world in her right ; but we never find him dwelling on
virtue or religion as it really exists — in the emotions of a man
dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his fireside of an
evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little
daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the

WOELULINESS AND OTIIER-WORLDLINESS. 243

internal triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment,
in all the sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which
are found in the details of ordinary life. Now, emotion links
itself with particulars, and only in a faint and secondary
manner with abstractions. An orator may discourse very elo-
quently on injustice in general, and leave his audience cold ;
but let him state a special case of oppression, and every heart
will throb. The most untheoretic persons are aware of this
relation between true emotion and particular facts, as opposed
to general terms, and implicitly recognize it in the repulsion
they feel toward any one who professes strong feeling about
abstractions — in the interjectional " Humbug !" which im-
mediately rises to their lips. Wherever abstractions appear to
excite strong emotion, this occurs in men of active intellect and
imagination, in whom the abstract term rapidly and vividly
calls np the particulars it represents, these particulars being the
true source of the emotion ; and such men, if they wished to
express their feeling, would be infallibly prompted to the
presentation of details. Strong emotion can no more be
directed to generalities apart from particulars, than skill in
figures can be directed to arithmetic apart from numbers.
Generalities are the refuge at once of deficient intellectual
activity and deficient feeling.

If we except the passages in " Philander," " Narcissa," and
" Lucia," there is hardly a trace of human sympathy, of self-
forgetf ulness in the joy or sorrow of a fellow-being, throughout
this long poem, which professes to treat the various phases of
man's destiny. And even in the " Narcissa" Night, Young
repels us by the low moral tone of his exaggerated lament.
This married step-daughter died at Lyons, and, being a Prot-
estant, was denied burial, so that her friends had to bury her
in secret — one of the many miserable results of superstition, but
not a fact to throw an educated, still less a Christian man, into
a fury of hatred and vengeance, in contemplating it after the
lapse of five years. Young, however, takes great pains to
simulate a bad feeling :

244 THE ESSAYS OF

" Of grief

And indignation rival bursts I pour'd,
Half execration mingled with my pray'r ;
Kindled at man, while I his God adored ;
Sore grudg'd the savage land her sacred dust ;
Stamp 'd the cursed soil ; and with humanity
( Denied Karcissa) icistid them all a grave. ' *

The odiously bad taste of this last clause makes us hope that
it is simply a platitude, and not intended as witticism, until he
removes the possibility of this favorable doubt by immediately
asking, " Flows my resentment into guilt ?"

When, by an afterthought, he attempts something like sym-
pathy, he only betrays more clearly his want of it. Thus, in
the first Night, when he turns from his private griefs to de-
pict earth as a hideous abode of misery for all mankind, and

asks,

" What then am I, who sorrow for myself ?"

he falls at once into calculating . the benefit of sorrowing for

others :

" More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts ;
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.
Nor virtue, more than prudence, bids me give
Swollen thought a second channel."

This remarkable negation of sympathy is in perfect con-
sistency with Young's theory of ethics :

" Virtue is a crime,
A crime of reason, if it costs us pain
Unpaid."

If there is no immortality for man —

" Sense ! take the rein ; blind Passion, drive us on ;
And Ignorance ! befriend us on our way. . .
Yes ; give the pulse full empire ; live the Brute,
Since as the brute we die. The sum of man,
Of godlike man, to revel and to rot."

*****
" If this life's gain invites him to the deed,
"Why not his country sold, his father slain ?"
*****
" Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdain'd,
Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fools,
And think a turf or tombstone covers all."
*****

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINES8. 245

" Die for thy country, thou romantic fool !

Seize, seize the plank thyself, and let her sink."

* # * * *

" As in the dying parent dies the child,

Virtue with Immortality expires.

Who tells me he denies his soul immortal,

Whatever his boast, has told me he's a knave.

His duty 'tis to love himself alone.

oVbr care though mankind perish if he smiles."

We can imagine the man who " denies his soul immortal,"
replying, " It is quite possible that you would be a knave, and
love yourself alone, if it were not for your belief in immortal-
ity ; but you are not to force upon me what would result from
your own utter want of moral emotion. I am just and honest,
not because I expect to live in another world, but because,
having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty toward myself,
I have a fellow-feeling with other men, who would suffer the
same pain if I were unjust or dishonest toward them. Why
should I give my neighbor short weight in this world, because
there is not another world in which I should have nothing to
weigh out to him ? I am honest, because I don't like to inflict
evil on others in this life, not because I'm afraid of evil to
myself in another. The fact is, I do not love myself alone,
whatever logical necessity there may be for that in your mind.
I have a tender love for my wife, and children, and friends,
and through that love I sympathize with like affections in other
men. It is a pang to me to witness the sufferings of a fellow-
being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is
mortal — because his life is so short, and I would have it, if
possible, filled with happiness and not misery. Through my
union and fellowship with the men and women I have seen, I
feel a like, though a fainter, sympathy with those I have not
seen ; and I am able so to live in imagination with the genera-
tions to come, that their good is not alien to me, and is a
stimulus to me to labor for ends which may not benefit myself,
but will benefit them. It is possible that you may prefer to
* live the brute,' to sell your country, or to slay your father,
if you were nut afraid of some disagreeable consequences from

246 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

the criminal laws of another world ; but even if I could con-
ceive no motive but my own worldly interest or the gratification
of my animal desire, I have not observed that beastliness, treach-
ery, and parricide are the direct way to happiness and comfort
on earth. And I should say, that if you feel no motive to com-
mon morality but your fear of a criminal bar in heaven, you are
decidedly a man for the police on earth to keep their eye upon,
since it is matter of world-old experience that fear of distant
consequences is a very insufficient barrier against the rush of
immediate desire. Fear of consequences is only one form of
egoism, which will hardly stand against half a dozen other
forms of egoism bearing down upon it. And in opposition to
your theory that a belief in immortality is the only source of
virtue, I maintain that, so far as moral action is dependent on
that belief, so far the emotion which prompts it is not truly
moral — is still in the stage of egoism, and has not yet attained
the higher development of sympathy. In proportion as a man
would care less for the rights and welfare of his fellow, if he
did not believe in a future life, in that proportion is he wanting
in the genuine feelings of justice and benevolence ; as the
musician who would care less to play a sonata of Beethoven's
finely in solitude than in public, where he was to be paid for
it, is wanting in genuine enthusiasm for music. ' '

Thus far might answer the man who " denies himself im-
mortal ;" and, allowing for that deficient recognition of the
finer and more indirect influences exercised by the idea of
immortality which might be expected from one who took up a
dogmatic position on such a subject, we think he would have
given a sufficient reply to Young and other theological ad-
vocates who, like him, pique themselves on the loftiness of
their doctrine when they maintain that " virtue with immortal-
ity expires." We may admit, indeed, that if the better part
of virtue consists, as Young appears to think, in contempt for
mortal joys, in " meditation of our own decease," and in
" applause" of God in the style of a congratulatory address to
Her Majesty — all which has small relation to the well-being of

WORLDLLtfESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 247

mankind on this earth — the motive to it must be gathered from
something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sym-
pathy. But, for certain other elements of virtue, which are of
more obvious importance to untheological minds — a delicate
sense of our neighbor's rights, an active participation in the
joys and sorrows of our fellow-men, a magnanimous acceptance
of privation or suffering for ourselves when it is the condition
of good to others, in a word, the extension and intensification
of our sympathetic nature — we think it of some importance to
contend that they have no more direct relation to the belief in
a future state than the interchange of gases in the lungs has to
the plurality of worlds. Nay, to us it is conceivable that in
some minds the deep pathos lying in the thought of human
mortality — that we are here for a little while and then vanish
away, that this earthly life is all that is given to our loved ones
and to our many suffering fellow-men — lies nearer the fountains
of moral emotion than the conception of extended existence.
And surely it ought to be a welcome fact, if the thought of
mortality, as well as of immortality, be favorable to virtue.
Do writers of sermons and religious novels prefer that men
should be vicious in order that there may be a more evident
political and social necessity for printed sermons and clerical
fictions ? Because learned gentlemen are theological, #re we to
have no more simple honesty and good-will ? We can imagine
that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread of
common springs ; but, for our own part, we think there cannot
be too great a security against a lack of fresh water or of pure
morality. To us it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this
latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theological
ink, and that its evolution is insured in the interaction of
human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or of art,
with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with
undefinable limits.

To return to Young. We can often detect a man's deficien-
cies in what he admires more clearly than in what he contemns
— in the sentiments he presents as laudable rather than in those

248

he decries. And in Young's notion of what is lofty he casts
a shadow by which we can measure him without further trouble.
For example, in arguing for human immortality, he says :

"First, what is true ambition ? The pursuit

Of glory nothing less than man can share.

* * * *

The Visible and Present are for brutes,
A slender portion, and a narrow bound I
These Reason, with an energy divine,
O'erleaps, and claims the Future and Unseen ;
The vast Unseen, the Future fathomless !
When the great soul buoys up to this high point,
Leaving gross Nature's sediments below,
Then, and then only, Adam's offspring quits
The sage and hero of the fields and woods,
Asserts his rank, and rises into man."

So, then, if it were certified that, as some benevolent minds
have tried to infer, our dumb fellow-creatures would share a
future existence, in which it is to be hoped we should neither
beat, starve, nor maim them, our ambition for a future life
would cease to be " lofty !" This is a notion of loftiness
which may pair off with Dr. Whewell's celebrated observation,
that Bentham's moral theory is low because it includes justice
and mercy to brutes.

But, for a reflection of Young's moral personality on a
colossal scale, we must turn to those passages where his rhet-
oric is at its utmost stretch of inflation — where he addresses
the Deity, discourses of the Divine operations, or describes the
last judgment. As a compound of vulgar pomp, crawling
adulation, and hard selfishness, presented under the guise of
piety, there are few things in literature to surpass the Ninth
Night, entitled " Consolation," especially in the pages where
he describes the last judgment — a subject to which, with naive
self-betrayal, he applies phraseology favored by the exuberant
penny-a-liner. Thus, when God descends, and the groans of hell
are opposed by " shouts of joy," much as cheers and groans
contend at a public meeting where the resolutions are not passed
unanimously, the poet completes his climax in this way :

WOBLDLINESS AND OTHEH-WORLDLINESS. 249

" Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise,
The cJiarmed spectators thunder their applause."

In the same taste he sings :

"Eternity, the various sentence past,
Assigns the sever'd throng distinct abodes,
Sulphureous err ambrosial."

Exquisite delicacy of indication ! He is too nice to be
specific as to the interior of the " sulphureous" abode ; but
when once half the human race are shut up there, hear how he
enjoys turning the key on them !

"What ensues?

The deed predominant, the deed of deeds !
Which makes a hell of hell, a heaven of heaven !
The goddess, with detennin'd aspect "turns
Her adamantine key's enormous size
Through Destiny's inextricable wards,
Deep driving every bolt on both their fates.
Then, from the crystal battlements of heaven,
Down, down she hurls it through the dark profound,
Ten thousand, thousand fathom ; there to rust
And ne'er unlock her resolution more.
The deep resounds ; and Hell, through all her glooms,
Eeturns, in groans, the melancholy roar. "

This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young thanks
God "most:"

' ' For all I bless thee, most, for the severe ;
Her death— my own at hand— the fiery gulf,
Tliat flaming bound of wrath omnipotent !
It thunders ; — but it thunders to preserve;

its wholesome dread

Averts the dreaded pain ; its hideous groans

Join Heaven's sweet Hallelujahs in Thy praise,

Great Source of good alone ! How kind in all !

In vengeance kind ! Pain, Death, Gehenna, save". . .

i.e., save me, Dr. Young, who, in return for that favor,
promise to give my divine patron the monopoly of that ex-
uberance in laudatory epithet, of which specimens may be
seen at any moment in a large number of dedications and odes
to kings, queens, prime ministers, and other persons of dis-
tinction. That, in Young's conception, is what God delights
in. His crowning aim in the ** drama" of the ages, is to
vindicate his own renown. The God of the " Night Thoughts"

250 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

is simply Young himself " writ large" — a didactic poet, who
" lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of mortal and
immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven ; and
expects the tribute of inexhaustible " applause." Young has
no conception of religion as anything else than egoism turned
heavenward ; and he does not merely imply this, he insists on
it. Religion, he tells us, in argumentative passages too long to
quote, is " ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain," directed
toward the joys of the future life instead of the present. And
his ethics correspond to his religion. He vacillates, indeed, in
his ethical theory, and shifts his position in order to suit his
immediate purpose in argument ; but he never changes his
level so as to see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness.
Sometimes he insists, as we have seen, that the belief in a
future life is the only basis of morality ; but elsewhere he tells

us —

** In self-applause is virtue's golden prize."

Virtue, with Young, must always squint — must never look
straight toward the immediate object of its emotion and effort.
Thus, if a man risks perishing in the snow himself rather than
forsake a weaker comrade, he must either do this because his
hopes and fears are directed to another world, or because he
desires to applaud himself afterward ! Young, if we may
believe him, would despise the action as folly unless it had
these motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he pretended
to be ! The tides of the divine life in man move under the
thickest ice of theory.

Another indication of Young's deficiency in moral, i.e., in
sympathetic emotion, is his unintermitting habit of pedagogic
moralizing. On its theoretic and perceptive side, morality
touches science ; on its emotional side, Art. Now, the prod-
ucts of Art are great in proportion as they result from that
immediate prompting of innate power which we call Genius,
and not from labored obedience to a theory or rule ; and the
presence of genius or innate prompting is directly opposed to
the perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is

WORLDLINESS AKD OTHER- WORLDLItfKSS. 251

imperious, and excludes the reflection why it should act. In
the same way, in proportion as morality is emotional, i.e., has
affinity with Art, it will exhibit itself in direct sympathetic
feeling and action, and not as the recognition of a rule. Love
does not say, " I ought to love " — it loves. Pity does not say,
** It is right to be pitiful " — it pities. Justice docs not say,
" I am bound to be just" — it feels justly. It is only where
moral emotion is comparatively weak that the contemplation
of a rule or theory habitually mingles with its action ; and in
accordance with this, we think experience, both in literature
and life, has shown that the minds which are pre-eminently
didactic — which insist on a " lesson," and despise everything
that will not convey a moral, are deficient in sympathetic emo-
tion. A certain poet is recorded to have said that he " wished
everything of his burned that did not impress some moral ;
even in love- verses, it might be flung in by the way." What
poet was it who took this medicinal view of poetry ? Dr.
Watts, or James Montgomery, or some other singer of spotless
life and ardent piety ? Not at all. It was Waller. A significant
fact in relation to our position, that the predominant didactic
tendency proceeds rather from the poet's perception that it is
good for other men to be moral, than from any overflow of
moral feeling in himself. A man who is perpetually thinking
in apothegms, who has an unintermittent flux of admonition,
can have little energy left for simple emotion. And this is
the case with Young. In his highest flights of contemplation
and his most wailing soliloquies he interrupts himself to fling an
admonitory parenthesis at " Lorenzo,'*' or to hint that " folly's
creed" is the reverse of his own. Before his thoughts can
flow, he must fix his eye on an imaginary miscreant, who gives
unlimited scope for lecturing, and recriminates just enough to
keep the spring of admonition and argument going to the
extent of nine books. It is curious to see how this pedagogic
habit of mind runs through Young's contemplation of Nature.
As the tendency to see our own sadness reflected in the external
world has been called by Mr. Ruskin the " pathetic fallacy,"

252 THE ESSAYS OF

so we may call Young's disposition to see a rebuke or a warn-
ing in every natural object, the " pedagogic fallacy." To his
mind, the heavens are ** forever scolding as they shine ;" and
the great function of the stars is to be a " lecture to mankind."
The conception of the Deity as a didactic author is not merely
an implicit point of view with him ; he works it out in elab-
orate imagery, and at length makes it the occasion of his most
extraordinary achievement in the " art of sinking," by ex-
claiming, a propoSy we need hardly say, of the nocturnal
heavens,

" Divine Instructor ! Thy first volume this
For man's perusal ! all in CAPITALS !"

It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing attitude of
Young's mind, which produces the wearisome monotony of his
pauses. After the first two or three nights he is rarely sing-
ing, rarely pouring forth any continuous melody inspired by the
spontaneous flow of thought or feeling. He is rather occupied
with argumentative insistance, with hammering in the proofs of
his propositions by disconnected verses, which he puts down
at intervals. The perpetual recurrence of the pause at the end
of the line throughout long passages makes them as fatiguing
to the ear as a monotonous chant, which consists of the endless
repetition of one short musical phrase. For example :

" Past hours,

If not by guilt, yet wound us by their flight,
If folly bound our prospect by the grave,
All feeling of futurity be numb'd,
All godlike passion for eternals quench'd,
All relish of realities expired ;
Eenounced all correspondence with the skies ;
Our freedom chain'd ; quite wingless our desire ;
In sense dark-prison'd all that ought to soar ;
Prone to the centre ; crawling in the dust ;
Dismounted every great and glorious aim ;
Enthralled every faculty divine,
Heart-buried in the rubbish of the world.'*

How different from the easy, graceful melody of Cowper's
blank verse ! Indeed, it is hardly possible to criticise Young
without being reminded at every step of the contrast presented

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 253

to him by Cowper. And this contrast urges itself upon us the
more from the fact that there is, to a certain extent, a parallel-
ism between the " Night Thoughts" and the "Task." In
both poems the author achieves his greatest in virtue of the new
freedom conferred by blank verse ; both poems are profession-
ally didactic, and mingle much satire with their graver medita-
tions ; both poems are the productions of men whose estimate
of this life was formed by the light of a belief in immortality,
and who were intensely attached to Christianity. On some
grounds we might have anticipated a more morbid view of
things from Cowper than from Young. Cowper's religion was
dogmatically the more gloomy, for he was a Calvinist ; while
Young was a " low" Arminian, believing that Christ died for
all, and that the only obstacle to any man's salvation lay in his
will, which he could change if he chose. There was real and
deep sadness involved in Cowper' s personal lot ; while Young,
apart from his ambitious and greedy discontent, seems to have
had no great sorrow.

Yet, see how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in
spite of creed and circumstance ! Where is the poem that
surpasses the " Task" in the genuine love it breathes, at once
toward inanimate and animate existence — in truthfulness of
perception and sincerity of presentation — in the calm gladness
that springs from a delight in objects for their own sake, with-
out self-reference — in divine sympathy with the lowliest pleas-
ures, with the most short-lived capacity for pain ? Here is no
railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the happiest
lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond minuteness
of attention that belongs to love ; no pompous rhetoric about
the inferiority of the " brutes," but a warm plea on their
behalf against man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense
of enlarged happiness from their companionship in enjoyment ;
no vague rant about human misery and human virtue, but that
close and vivid presentation of particular sorrows and priva-
tions, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct
road to the emotions. How Cowper 's exquisite mind falls

254 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT.

with the mild warmth of morning sunlight on the commonest
objects, at once disclosing every detail, and investing every
detail with beauty ! No object is too small to prompt his
song — not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot
holding a bit of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy
town-lodging with a " hint that Nature lives ;" and yet his
song is never trivial, for he is alive to small objects, not be-
cause his mind is narrow, but because his glance is clear and
his heart is large. Instead of trying to edify us by supercili-
ous allusions to the " brutes" and the " stalls," he interests
us in that tragedy of the hen-roost when the thief has wrenched
the door,

" Where Chanticleer amidst his harem sleeps
In unsuspecting pomp ;"

in the patient cattle, that on the winter's morning

" Mourn in corners where the fence
Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep
In unrecumbent sadness ;' '

in the little squirrel, that, surprised by him in his woodland
walk,

*' At once, swift as a bird,

Ascends the neighboring beech ; there whisks his brush,

And perks his ears, and stamps, and cries aloud,

With all the prettiness of feign'd alarm

And anger insignificantly fierce."

And then he passes into reflection, not with curt apothegm and
snappish reproof, but with that melodious flow of utterance
which belongs to thought when it is carried along in a stream
of feeling :

" The heart is hard in nature, and unfit
For human fellowship, as being void
Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike
To love and friendship both, that is not pleased
With sight of animals enjoying life,
Nor feels their happiness augment his own."

His large and tender heart embraces the most every-day forms
of human life — the carter driving his team through the wintry
storm ; the cottager's wife who, painfully nursing the embers on
her hearth, while her infants " sit cowering o'er the sparks,"

" Retires, content to quake, so they be warm'd ;"
or the villager, with her little ones, going out to pick
" A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook ;"

WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 255

and he compels our colder natures to follow his in its manifold
sympathies, not by exhortations, not by telling us to meditate
at midnight, to " indulge" the thought of death, or to ask
ourselves how we shall " weather an eternal night," but by
presenting to us the object of his compassion truthfully and
lovingly. And when he handles greater themes, when he takes
a wider survey, and considers the men or the deeds which have
a direct influence on the welfare of communities and nations,
there is the same unselfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupu-
lous truthfulness. He is never vague in his remonstrance or
his satire, but puts his finger on some particular vice or folly
which excites his indignation or " dissolves his heart in pity,"
because of some specific injury it does to his fellow-man or to
a sacred cause. And when he is asked why he interests him-
self about the sorrows and wrongs of others, hear what is the
reason he gives. Not, like Young, that the movements of the
planets show a mutual dependence, and that

" Thus man his sovereign duty learns in this
Material picture of benevolence, ' '

or that —

" More generous sorrow, yhile it sinks, exalts,
And conscious virtue mitigates the pang. "

What is Cowper's answer, when he imagines some " sage,
erudite, profound," asking him " What's the world to you ?"

"Much. I was born of woman, and drew milk
As sweet as chanty from human breasts.
I think, articulate, I laugh and weep,
And exercise all functions of a man.
How then should I and any man that lives
Be strangers to each other ?"

Young is astonished that men can make war on each other —
that any one can " seize his brother's throat," while

" The Planets cry, ' Forbear.' "
Cowper weeps because

" There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart :
It does not feel for man.' '

Young applauds God as a monarch with an empire and a
court quite superior to the English, or as an author who pro-
duces ** volumes for man's perusal." Cowper sees his father's
love in all the gentle pleasures of the home fireside, in the
charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks —

256 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT.

" Happy who walks with him ! whom what he finds
Of flavor or of scent in fruit or flower,
Or what he views of beautiful or grand
In nature, from the broad, majestic oak
To the green blade that twinkles in the sun,
Prompts with remembrance of a present (rod."

To conclude — for we must arrest ourselves in a contrast that
would lead us beyond our bounds : Young flies for his utmost
consolation to the day of judgment, when

" Final Ruin fiercely drives
Her ploughshare o'er creation ;' '

when earth, stars, and sun are swept aside,

" And now, all dross removed, Heaven's own pure day,
Full on the confines of our ether, flames :
While (dreadful contrast !) far (how far !) beneath,
Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas,
And storms suphureous ; her voracious jaws
Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey,"

Dr. Young and similar " ornaments of religion and virtue*'
passing of course with grateful " applause" into the upper
region. Cowper finds his highest inspiration in the Millennium
— in the restoration of this our beloved home of earth to per-
fect holiness and bliss, when the Supreme

" Shall visit earth in mercy ; shall descend
Propitious in his chariot paved with love ;
And what his storms have blasted and defaced
For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair."

And into what delicious melody his song flows at the thought
of that blessedness to be enjoyed by future generations on
earth !

" The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks
Shout to each other, and the mountains tops
From distant mountains catch the flying joy ;
Till, nation after nation taught the strain,
Earth rolls the rapturous Hosanna round !"

The sum of our comparison is this : In Young we have the
type of that deficient human sympathy, that impiety toward
the present and the visible, which flies for its motives, its
sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague, and the
unknown : in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love
which cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels
its reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowl-
edge.

VIII.
THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM.*

THERE is a valuable class of books on great subjects which
have something of the character and functions of good popular
lecturing. They are not original, not subtle, not of close
logical texture, not exquisite either in thought or style ; but by
virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit to act on the
average intelligence. They have enough of organizing purpose
in them to make their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct
result in the mind even when most of the facts are forgotten ;
and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in their
theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience.
The vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity ; they
are the honest result of the writer's own mental character,
which adapts him to be the instructor and the favorite of " the
general reader." For the most part, the general reader of
the present day does not exactly know what distance he goes ;
he only knows that he does not go " too far." Of any re-
markable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he
likes to have it said that " his errors are to be deplored," leav-
ing it not too certain what those errors are ; he is fond of what
may be called disembodied opinions, that float in vapory
phrases above all systems of thought or action ; he likes an
undefined Christianity which opposes itself to nothing in par-
ticular, an undefined education, of the people, an undefined
amelioration of all things : in fact, he likes sound views —
nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the
past and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the
general reader may be known in conversation by the cordiality
with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements : say
that black is black, he will shake his head and hardly think it ;
say that black is not so very black, he will reply, " Exactly."

* " History of the Kise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism
ill Europe." By W. E. H. Lecky, M.A. Longman & Co., London.

THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public
meeting and express his conviction that at times, and within
certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal ;
but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of
geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a
bigotry against any clearly defined opinion ; not in the least
based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of
coherent thought — a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates
strongly to nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is, the
utmost liberty of private haziness.

But precisely these characteristics of the general reader,
rendering him incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are
administered in a highly diluted form, make it a matter of
rejoicing that there are clever, fair-minded men, who will
write books for him — men very much above him in knowledge
and ability, but not too remote from him in their habits of
thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions of history
and science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save
him from a fatal softening of the intellectual skeleton. Among
such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky's " History of tho Rise and
Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe" entitles him
to a high place. He has prepared himself for its production
by an unusual amount of well-directed reading ; he has chosen
his facts and quotations with much judgment ; and he gives
proof of those important moral qualifications, impartiality,
seriousness, and modesty. This praise is chiefly applicable to
the long chapter on the history of Magic and Witchcraft, which
opens the work, and to the two chapters on the antecedents
and history of Persecution, which occur, the one at the end of
the first volume, the other at the beginning of the second. In
these chapters Mr. Lecky has a narrower and better-traced path
before him than in other portions of his work ; he is more
occupied with presenting a particular class of facts in their
historical sequence, and in their relation to certain grand tide-
marks of opinion, than with disquisition ; and his writing is
freer than elsewhere from an apparent confusedness of thought
and an exuberance of approximative phrases, which can be
serviceable in no other way than as diluents needful for the sort
of reader we have just described.

The history of magic and witchcraft has been judiciously
chosen by Mr. Lecky as the subject of his first section on the
Declining Sense of the Miraculous, because it is strikingly
illustrative of a position with the truth of which he is strongly

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 259

impressed, though he does not always treat of it with desirable
clearness and precision, namely, that certain beliefs become
obsolete, not in consequence of direct arguments against them,
but because of their incongruity witli prevalent habits of
thought. Here is his statement of the two " classes of influ-
ences" by which the mass of men, in what is called civilized
society, get their beliefs gradually modified :

" If we ask why it is that the world lias rejected what was once so
universally and so intensely believed, why a narrative of an old
woman who had been seen riding on a broomstick, or who was proved
to have transformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured the
flocks of her neighbors, is deemed so entirely incredible, most per-
sons would probably be unable to give a very definite answer to the
question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and
found it insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it does
not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of absurdity
is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it is difficult even to
consider them with gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability
was felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt simply on the
two grounds I have mentioned,

" When so complete a change takes place in public opinion, it may
be ascribed to one or other of two causes. It may be the result of a
controversy which has conclusively settled the question, establishing
to the satisfaction of all parties a clear preponderance of argument or
fact in favor of one opinion, and making that opinion a truism which
is accepted by all enlightened men, even though they have not them-
sel ves examined the evidence on which it rests. Thus, if any one in
a company of ordinarily educated persons were to deny the motion of
the earth, or the circulation of the blood, his statement would be
received with derision, though it is probable that some of his audi-
ence would be unable to demonstrate the first truth, and that very
few of them could give sufficient reasons for the second. They may
not themselves be able to defend their position ; but they are aware
that, at certain known periods of history, controversies on those sub-
jects took place, and that known writers then brought forward some
definite arguments or experiments, which were ultimately accepted
by the whole learned world as rigid and conclusive demonstrations.
It is possible, also, for as complete a change to be effected by what is
called the spirit of the age. The general intellectual tendencies per-
vading the literature of a century profoundly modify the character of
the public mind. They form a new tone and habit of thought. They
alter the measure of probability. They create new attractions and
new antipathies, and they eventually cause as absolute a rejection of
certain old opinions as could be produced by the most cogent and

definite arguments."

\

Mr. Lecky proceeds to some questionable views concerning
the evidences of witchcraft, which seern to be irreconcilable
even with his own remarks later on ; but they lead him to the

260 THE ESSAYS OF

statement, thoroughly made out by his historical survey, that
" the movement was mainly silent, unargumentative, and in-
sensible ; that men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft,
because they came gradually to look upon it as absurd ; and
that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those
who were least subject to theological influences, and soon
spread through the educated laity, and, last of all, took pos-
session of the clergy."

We have rather painful proof that this " second class of
influences," with avast number go hardly deeper than Fashion,
and that witchcraft to many of us is absurd only on the same
ground that our grandfathers' gigs are absurd. It is felt pre-
posterous to think of spiritual agencies in connection with
ragged beldames soaring on broomsticks, in an age when it is
known that mediums of communication with the invisible world
are usually unctuous personages dressed in excellent broadcloth,
who soar above the curtain-poles without any broomstick,
and who are not given to unprofitable intrigues. The en-
lightened imagination rejects the figure of a witch with her
profile in dark relief against the moon and her broomstick
cutting a constellation. No undiscovered natural laws, no
names of " respectable" witnesses, are invoked to make us feel
our presumption in questioning the diabolic intimacies of that
obsolete old woman, for it is known now that the undiscovered
laws, and the witnesses qualified by the payment of income
tax, are all in favor of a different conception — the image of a
heavy gentleman in boots and black coat-tails foreshortened
against the cornice. Yet no less a person than Sir Thomas
Browne once wrote that those who denied there were witches,
inasmuch as they thereby denied spirits also, were " obliquely
and upon consequence a sort, not of infidels, but of atheists."
At present, doubtless, in certain circles, unbelievers in heavy
gentlemen who float in the air by means of undiscovered laws
are also taxed with atheism ; illiberal as it is Dot to admit that
mere weakness of understanding may prevent one from seeing*
how that phenomenon is necessarily involved in the Divine
origin of things. With still more reimaikable parallelism, Sir
Thomas Browne goes on : *4 Those that, to refute their in-
credulity, desire to see apparitions, shall questionless never
behold any, nor have the power to be so much as witches.
The devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as
witchcraft, and to appear to them were but to convert them." It
•would be difficult to see what has been changed here but the

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 261

mere drapery of circumstance, if it were not for this prominent
difference between our own days and the days of witchcraft,
that instead of torturing, drowning, or burning the innocent,
we give hospitality and large pay to — the highly distinguished
medium. At least we are safely rid of certain horrors ; but if
the multitude — that "farraginous concurrence of all condi-
tions, tempers, sexes, and ages" — do not roll back even to a
superstition that carries cruelty in its train, it is not because
they possess a cultivated reason, but because they are pressed
upon and held up by what we may call an external reason — tho
sum of conditions resulting from the laws of material growth,
from changes produced by great historical collisions shattering
the structures of ages and making new highways for events and
ideas, and from the activities of higher minds no longer exist-
ing merely as opinions and teaching, but as institutions and
organizations with which the interests, the affections, and the
habits of the multitude are inextricably interwoven. No un-
discovered laws accounting for small phenomena going forward
under drawing-room tables are likely to affect the tremendous
facts of the increase of population, the rejection of convicts by
our colonies, the exhaustion of the soil by cotton plantations,
which urge even upon the foolish certain questions, certain
claims, certain views concerning the scheme of the world, that
can never again be silenced. If right reason is a right repre-
sentation of the co-existence and sequences of things, here are
co-existences and sequences that do not wait to be discovered,
but press themselves upon us like bars of iron. No stances at
a guinea a head for the sake of being pinched by " Mary
Jane" can annihilate railways, steamships, and electric tele-
graphs, which are demonstrating the interdependence of all
human interests, and making self-interest a duct for sympathy.
These things are part of the external Reason to which internal
silliness has inevitably to accommodate itself.

Three points in the history of magic and witchcraft are well
brought out by Mr. Lecky. First, that the cruelties connected
with it did not begin until men's minds had ceased to repose
implicitly in a sacramental system which made them feel well
armed against evil spirits ; that is, until the eleventh century,
when there came a sort of morning dream of doubt and heresy,
bringing on the one side the terror of timid consciences, and
on the other the terrorism of authority or zeal bent on checking
the rising struggle. In that time of comparative mental repose,
says Mr. Lecky,

262 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT.

" All those conceptions of diabolical presence ; all that predispo-
sition toward the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon the im-
aginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed ; but the
implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity with which the
virtue of ecclesiastical rites was accepted, rendered them compara-
tively innocuous. If men had been a little less superstitious, the
effects of their superstition would have been much more terrible. It
was firmly believed that any one who deviated from the strict line of
orthodoxy must soon succumb beneath the power of Satan ; but as
there was no spirit of rebellion or doubt, this persuasion did not pro-
duce any extraordinary terrorism."

The Church was disposed to confound heretical opinion with
sorcery ; false doctrine was especially the devil's work, and it
was a ready conclusion that a denier or innovator had held
consultation with the father of lies. It is a saying of a zealous
Catholic in the sixteenth century, quoted by Maury in his excel-
lent work, " De la Magie" — " Crescit cum mayia hceresis, cum
hceresi magia." Even those who doubted were terrified at
their doubts, for trust is more easily undermined than terror.
Fear is earlier born than hope, lays a stronger grasp on man's
system than any other passion, and remains master of a
larger group of involuntary actions. A chief aspect of man's
moral development is the slow subduing of fear by the gradual
growth of intelligence, and its suppression as a motive by the
presence of impulses less animally selfish ; so that in relation to
invisible Power, fear at last ceases to exist, save in that inter-
fusion with higher faculties which we call awe.

Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic Prot-
estantism, holding the vivid belief in Satanic agency to be an
essential of piety, would have felt it shame to be a whit behind
Catholicism in severity against the devil's servants. Luther's
sentiment was that he would not suffer a witch to live (he was
not much more merciful to Jews) ; and, in spite of his fond-
ness for children, believing a certain child to have been be-^
gotten by the devil, he recommended the parents to throw it
into the river. The torch must be turned on the worst errors
of heroic minds — not in irreverent ingratitude, but for the sake
of measuring our vast and various debt to all the influences
which have concurred, in the intervening ages, to make us
recognize as detestable errors the honest convictions of men
who, in mere individual capacity and moral force, were very
much above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, during the
comparatively short period of their ascendency, surpassed all
Christians before them in the elaborate ingenuity of the

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 263

tortures they applied for the discovery of witchcraft and
sorceiy, and did their utmost to prove that if Scotch Calvinism
was the true religion, the chief " note" of the true religion
was cruelty. It is hardly an endurable task to read the story
of their doings ; thoroughly to imagine them as a past reality
is already a sort of torture. One detail is enough, and it is a
comparatively mild one. It was the regular profession of men
called " prickers" to thrust long pins into the body of a sus-
pected witch in order to detect the insensible spot which was
the infallible sign of her guilt. On a superficial view one would
be in danger of saying that the main difference between the
teachers who sanctioned these things and the much-despised
ancestors who offered human victims inside a huge wicker idol,
was that they arrived at a more elaborate barbarity by a longer
series of dependent propositions. We do not share Mr.
Buckle's opinion that a Scotch minister's groans were a part of
his deliberate plan for keeping the people in a state of terrified
subjection ; the ministers themselves held the belief they
taught, and might well groan over it. What a blessing has a
little false logic been to the world ! Seeing that men are so
slow to question their premises, they must have made each
other much more miserable, if pity had not sometimes drawn
tender conclusions not warranted by Major and Minor ; if there
had not been people with an amiable imbecility of reasoning
which enabled them at once to cling to hideous beliefs, and to
be conscientiously inconsistent with them in their conduct.
There is nothing like acute deductive reasoning for keeping
a man in the dark : it might be called the technique of the
intellect, and the concentration of the mind upon it corre-
sponds to that predominance of technical skill in art which ends
in degradation of the artist's function, unless new inspiration
and invention come to guide it.

And of this there, is some good illustration furnished by that
third node in the history of witchcraft, the beginning of its
end, which is treated in an interesting manner by Mr. Lecky.
It is worth noticing, that the most important defences of the
belief in witchcraft, against the growing scepticism in the latter
part of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, were the
productions of men who in some departments were among the
foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was Jean Bodin,
the famous writer on government and jurisprudence, whose
"Republic," Hallarn thinks, had an impoitant influence in
England, and furnished " a store of arguments and examples

264 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

that were not lost on the thoughtful minds of our country-
men." In some of his views he was original and bold ; for
example, he anticipated Montesquieu in attempting to appre-
ciate the relations of government and climate. Hallam inclines
to the opinion that he was a Jew, and attached Divine au-
thority only to the Old Testament. But this was enough to
furnish him with his chief data for the existence of witches arid
for their capital punishment ; and in the account of his
" Republic," given by Hallam, there is enough evidence that
the sagacity which often enabled him to make fine use of his
learning was also often entangled in it, to temper our surprise
at finding a writer on political science of whom it could be said
that, along with Montesquieu, he was " the most philosophical
of those who had read so deeply, the most learned of those
who had thought so much," in the van of the forlorn hope to
maintain the reality of witchcraft. It should be said that he
was equally confident of the unreality of the Copernican
hypothesis, on the gound that it was contrary to the tenets of
the theologians and philosophers and to common-sense, and
therefore subversive of the foundations of every science. Of
his work on witchcraft, Mr. Lecky says :

"The ' Demonomanie des Sorciers' is chiefly an appeal to author-
ity, which the author deemed on this subject so unanimous and so
conclusive,- that it was scarcely possible for any sane man to resist it.
He appealed to the popular belief in all countries, in all ages, and in
all religions. He cited the opinions of an immense multitude of the
greatest writers of pagan antiquity, and of the most illustrious of the
Fathers. He showed how the laws of all nations recognized the ex-
istence of witchcraft ; and he collected hundreds of cases which had
been investigated before the tribunals of his own or of other coun-
tries. He relates with the most minute and circumstantial detail,
and with the most unfaltering confidence, all the proceedings at the
witches' Sabbath, the methods which the witches employed in trans •
porting themselves through the air, their transformations, their car-
nal intercourse with the devil, their various means of injuring their
enemies, the signs that lead to their detection, their confessions when
condemned, and their demeanor at the stake."

Something must be allowed for a lawyer's affection toward
a belief which had furnished so many " cases." Bodin's
work had been immediately prompted by the treatise " De
Prestigiis Daemonum," written by John Wier, a German phy-
sician, a treatise which is worth notice as an example of a
transitional form of opinion for which many analogies may be
found in the history both of religion and science. Wier

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 265

believed in demons, and in possession by demons, but his
practice as a physician had convinced him that the so-called
witches were patients and victims, that the devil took ad-
vantage of their diseased condition to delude them, and that
there was no consent of an evil will on the part of the women.
He argued that the word in Leviticus translated " witch" meant
" poisoner," and besought the princes of Europe to hinder the
further spilling of innocent blood. These heresies of Wier
threw Bodin into such a state of amazed indignation that if he
had been an ancient Jew instead of a modern economical one,
he would have rent his garments. " No one had ever heard of
pardon being accorded to sorcerers ;" and probably the reason
why Charles IX. died young was because he had pardoned the
sorcerer, Trios Echelles ! We must remember that this was in
1581, when the great scientific movement of the Renaissance
had hardly begun — when Galileo was a youth of seventeen, and
Kepler a boy of ten.

But directly afterward, on the other side, came Montaigne,
whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at negatives without any
apparatus of method. A certain keen narrowness of nature
will secure a man from many absurd beliefs which the larger
soul, vibrating to more manifold influences, would have a long
struggle to part with. And so we find the charming, chatty
Montaigne — in one of the brightest of his essays, ** Des
Boiteux," where he declares that, from his own observation of
witches and sorcerers, he should have recommended them to
be treated with curative hellebore — stating in his own way a
pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. It seems to him
much less of a prodigy that men should lie, or that their
imaginations should deceive them, than that a human body
should be carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a
chimney by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad business
to persuade oneself that the test of truth lies in the multitude
of believers — " en une prcsse ou les fols surpassent de tant les
sages en nornbre." Ordinarily, he has observed, when men
have something stated to them as a fact, they are more ready to
explain it than to inquire whether it is real : ** ils passent par-
dessus les propositions, mais ils examinent les consequences ;
ils laissent les choses, et courent aux causes." There is a sort
of strong and generous ignorance which is as honorable and
courageous as science — " ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il
n'y a pas moms de science qu'a concevoir la science." And
d propos of the immense traditional evidence which weighed

266 THE ESSAYS OF

•with such men as Bodin, ho says — " As for the proofs and
arguments founded on experience and facts, I do not pretend
to unravel these. What end of a thread is there to lay hold
of ? I often cut them as Alexander did his knot. Apres tout,
c 'est mettre ses conjectures a bien haut prix, que d 'en faire cuire
un homme tout dif. ' '

•Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is a sign that
the weather is changing ; yet much later, namely, after 1665,
when the Royal Society had been founded, our own Glanvil,
the author of the "Scepsis Scientifica," a work that was a
remarkable advance toward the true definition of the limits of
inquiry, and that won him his election as fellow of the society,
published an energetic vindication of the belief in witchcraft, of
which Mr. Lecky gives the following sketch :

" The ( Sadducismus Triumphatus, ' which is probably the ablest
book ever published in defence of the superstition, opens with a strik-
ing picture of the rapid progress of the scepticism in England.
Everywhere, a disbelief in witchcraft was becoming fashionable in
the upper classes ; but it was a disbelief that arose entirely from a
strong sense of its antecedent improbability. All who were opposed
to the orthodox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed
at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludi-
crous conceptions, as so essentially incredible that it would be a waste
of time to examine it. This spirit had arisen since the Restoration,
although the laws were still in force, and although little or no direct
reasoning had been brought to bear upon the subject. In order to
combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine the general question of the
credibility of the miraculous. He saw that the reason why witch-
craft was ridiculed was, because it was a phase of the miraculous and
the work of the devil ; that the scepticism was chiefly due to those
who disbelieved in miracles and the devil ; and that the instances of
witchcraft or possession in the Bible were invariably placed on a level
with those that were tried in the law courts of England. That the
evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he firmly believed ; and
this, indeed, was scarcely disputed ; but, until the sense of d priori
improbability was removed, no possible accumulation of facts would
cause men to believe it. To that task he accordingly addressed him-
self. Anticipating the idea and almost the words of modern contro-
versialists, he urged that there was such a thing as a credulity of un-
belief ; and that those who believed so strange a concurrence of de-
lusions, as was necessary on the supposition of the unreality of witch-
craft, were far more credulous than those who accepted the belief.
He made his very scepticism his principal weapon ; and, analyzing
with much acuteness the d priori objections, he showed that they
rested upon an unwarrantable confidence in. our knowledge of the
laws of the spirit world ; that they implied the existence of some strict
analogy between the faculties of men and of spirits ; and that, as
such analogy most probably did not exist, no reasoning based on the

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 267

supposition could dispense men from examining the evidence. He
concluded with a large collection of cases, the evidence of which was,
as he thought, incontestible."

Wo have quoted this sketch hecause GlanviPs argument
against the a priori objection of absurdity is fatiguingly urged
in relation to other alleged marvels which, to busy people
seriously occupied with the difficulties of affairs, of science, or
of art, seem as little worthy of examination as aeronautic
broomsticks. And also because we here see Glanvil, in com-
bating an incredulity that does not happen to be his own,
wielding that very argument of traditional evidence which he
had made the subject of vigorous attack in his " Scepsis Scien-
tifica." But perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable
to this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition, because,
while they have attacked its misapplications, they have been
the more solicited by the vague sense that tradition is really the
basis of our best life. Our sentiments may be called organized
traditions ; and a large part of our actions gather all their
justification, all their attraction and aroma, from the memory
of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born. In
the absence of any profound research into psychological func-
tions or into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of any
comprehensive view of man's historical development and the
dependence of one age on another, a mind at all rich in sensi-
bilities must always have had an indefinite uneasiness in an
undistinguishing attack on the coercive influence of tradition.
And this may be the apology for the apparent inconsistency of
Glanvil 's acute criticism on the one side, and his indignation at
the ** looser gentry," who laughed at the evidences for witch-
craft on the other. We have already taken up too much space
with this subject of witchcraft, else we should be tempted to
dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, who far surpassed Glanvil in
magnificent incongruity of opinion, and whose works are the
most remarkable combination existing, of witty sarcasm against
ancient nonsense and modern obsequiousness, with indications
of a capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing what
seems to us the hardness of these men, who sat in their studies
and argued at their ease about a belief that would be reckoned
to have caused more misery and bloodshed than any other
superstition, if there had been no such thing as persecution on
the ground of religious opinion.

On this subject of Persecution, Mr. Lecky writes his best :
with clearness of conception, with calm justice, bent on appre-

268

elating the necessary tendency of ideas, and with an appro-
priateness of illustration that could be supplied only by ex-
tensive and intelligent reading. Persecution, he shows, is not
in any sense peculiar to the Catholic Church ; it is a direct
sequence of the doctrines that salvation is to be had only
within the Church, and that erroneous belief is damnatory —
doctrines held as fully by Protestant sects as by the Catholics ;
and in proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as per-
secuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposition to the
favorite modern notion of persecution defeating its own object,
that the Church, holding the dogma of exclusive salvation,
was perfectly consequent, and really achieved its end of
spreading one belief and quenching another, by calling in the
aid of the civil arm. Who will say that governments, by their
power over institutions and patronage, as well as over punish-
ment, have not power also over the interests and inclinations of
men, and over most of those external conditions into which
subjects are born, and which make them adopt the prevalent
belief as a second nature ? Hence, to a sincere believer in the
doctrine of exclusive salvation, governments had it in their
power to save men from perdition ; and wherever the clergy
were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they
were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result.
" Compel them to come in" was a rule that seemed sanctioned
by mercy, and the horrible sufferings it led men to inflict
seemed small to minds accustomed to contemplate, as a per-
petual source of motive, the eternal unmitigated miseries of a
hell that was the inevitable destination of a majority among
mankind.

It is a significant fact, noted by Mr. Lecky, that the only
two leaders of the Reformation who advocated tolerance were
Zuinglius and Socinus, both of them disbelievers in exclusive
salvation. And in corroboration of other evidence that the
chief triumphs of the Reformation were due to coercion, he
commends to the special attention of his readers the following
quotation from a work attributed without question to the
famous Protestant theologian, Jurieu, who had himself been
hindered, as a Protestant, from exercising his professional
functions in France, and was settled as pastor at Rotterdam.
It should be remembered that Jurieu's labors fell in the latter
part of the seventeenth century and in the beginning of the
eighteenth, and that he was the contemporary of Bayle, with
whom he was in bitter controversial hostility. He wrote, then, at

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 269

a time when there was warm debate on the question of Tolera-
tion ; and it was his great object to vindicate himself and his
French fellow-Protestants from all laxity on this point.

" Pent on nier que le panganisnie est tombe dans le monde par
1' autorite des empereurs Eomains ? On pent assurer sans temerite
que le paganisine seroit encore debout, et que les trois quarts de
1' Europe seroient encore pa3Tens si Constantin et ses successeurs
n'avaient employe leur autorite pour 1'abolir. Mais, je vous prie, de
quelles voies Dieu s'est il servi dans ces derniers siecles pour retablir
la veritable religion dans 1'Occident ? Les rois de Suede, ceux de Dan-
emarck, ceiix d' Angleterre, les magistrals souverains de Suisse, des Pa/is
Bas, des villes livres d'Alleinagne, les princes electeurs, et autres princes
souverains de I" empire, n'ont Us pas emploie leur autorite pour abbattre le
Papisme?"

Indeed, wherever the tremendous alternative of everlasting
torments is believed in — believed in so that it becomes a motive
determining the life — not only persecution, but every other
form of severity and gloom are the legitimate consequences.
There is much ready declamation in these days against the
spirit of asceticism and against zeal for doctrinal conversion ;
but surely the macerated form of a Saint Francis, the fierce
denunciations of a Saint Dominic, the groans and prayerful
wrestlings of the Puritan who seasoned his bread with tears
and made all pleasurable sensation sin, are more in keeping
with the contemplation of unending anguish as the destiny of
a vast multitude whose nature we share, than the rubicund
cheerfulness of some modern divines, who profess to unite a
smiling liberalism with a well-bred and tacit but unshaken confi-
dence in the reality of the bottomless pit. But, in fact, as Mr.
Lecky maintains, that awful image, with its group of associated
dogmas concerning the inherited curse, and the damnation of
unbaptized infants, of heathens, and of heretics, has passed
away from what he is fond of calling "the realizations" of
Christendom. These things are no longer the objects of
practical belief. They may be mourned for in encyclical
letters ; bishops may regret them ; doctors of divinity may
sign testimonials to the excellent character of these decayed
beliefs ; but for the mass of Christians they are no more
influential than unrepealed but forgotten statutes. And with
these dogmas has melted away the strong basis for the defence
of persecution. No man now writes eager vindications of
himself and his colleagues from the suspicion of adhering to
the principle of toleration. And this momentous change, it
is Mr. Lecky 's object to show, is due to that concurrence of

270 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

conditions -which he has chosen to call " the advance of the
Spirit of Rationalism."

In other parts of his work, where he attempts to trace the
action of the same conditions on the acceptance of miracles and
on other chief phases of our historical development, Mr. Lecky
has laid himself open to considerable criticism. The chapters
on the " Miracles of the Church," the aesthetic, scientific, and
moral development of Rationalism, the Secularization of Politics,
and the Industrial History of Rationalism, embrace a wide range
of diligently gathered facts ; but they are nowhere illuminated
by a sufficiently clear conception and statement of the agencies
at work, or the mode of their action, in the gradual modifica-
tion of opinion and of life. The writer frequently impresses
us as being in a state of hesitation concerning his own standing-
point, which may form a desirable stage in private meditation
but not in published exposition. Certain epochs in theoretic
conception, certain considerations, which should be funda-
mental to his survey, are introduced quite incidentally in a
sentence or two, or in a note which seems to be an after-
thought. Great writers and their ideas are touched upon too
slightly and with too little discrimination, and important the-
ories are sometimes characterized with a rashness which con-
scientious revision will correct. There is a fatiguing use of
vague or shifting phrases, such as " modern civilization,"
" spirit of the age," " tone of thought," intellectual type of
the age," bias of the imagination." ''habits of religious
thought," unbalanced by any precise definition ; and the spirit
of rationalism is sometimes treated of as if it lay outside the
specific mental activities of which it is a generalized expression.
Mr. Curdle's famous definition of the dramatic unities as " a
sort of a general oneness," is not totally false ; but such
luminousness as it has could only be perceived by those who
already knew what the unities were. Mr. Lecky has the
advantage of being strongly impressed with the great part
played by the emotions in the formation of opinion, and with
tbe high complexity of the causes at work in social evolution ;
but he frequently writes as if he had never yet distinguished
between the complexity of the conditions that produce prev-
alent states of mind and the inability of particular minds to
give distinct reasons for the preferences .or persuasions pro-
duced by those states. In brief, he 'does not discriminate, or
does not help his reader to discriminate, between objective
complexity and subjective confusion. But the most muddle-

THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 271

headed gentleman who represents the spirit of the ago by ob-
serving, as he settles his collar, that the development theory is
quite " the thing" is a result of definite processes, if we could
only trace them. " Mental attitudes," and " predispositions,"
however vague in consciousness, have not vague causes, any
more than the " blind motions of the spring" in plants and
animals.

The word " Rationalism" has the misfortune, shared by
most words in this gray world, of being somewhat equivocal.
This evil may be nearly overcome by careful preliminary defi-
nition ; but Mr. Lecky does not supply this, and the original
specific application of the word to a particular phase of biblical
interpretation seems to have clung about his use of it with a
misleading effect. Through some parts of his book he appears
to regard the grand characteristic of modern thought and
civilization, compared with ancient, as a radiation in the first
instance from a change in religious conceptions. The su-
premely important fact, that the gradual reduction of all
phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries
as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous, has its de-
termining current in the development of physical science, seems
to have engaged comparatively little of his attention ; at least,
he gives it no prominence. The great conception of universal
regular sequence, without partiality and without caprice — the
conception which is the most potent force at work in the
modification of our faith, and of the practical form given to
our sentiments — could only grow out of that patient watching
of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions,
which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical
science.

There is not room here to explain and justify the impressions
of dissatisfaction which have been briefly indicated, but a
serious writer like Mr. Lecky will not find such suggestions
altogether useless. The objections, even the misunderstand-
ings, of a reader who is not careless or ill-disposed, may serve
to stimulate an author's vigilance over his thoughts as well as
his style. It would be gratifying to see some future proof that
Mr. Lecky has acquired juster views than are implied in the
assertion that philosophers of the sensational school " can never
rise to the conception of the disinterested;" and that he has
freed himself from all temptation to that mingled laxity of
statement and ill-pitched elevation of tone which are painfully
present in the closing pages of his second volume.

IX.
THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT.*

THE inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufels-
drockh, was disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and
senates, and creating a whole new democratic world. Has any
one yet said what great things are being done by the men who
are trying to banish ugliness from our streets and our homes,
and to make both the outside and inside of our dwellings
worthy of a world where there are forests and flower-tressed
meadows, and the plumage of birds ; where the insects carry
lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a stag-
nant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most
delicate forms of leafage ? They, too, are modifying opinions,
for they are modifying men's moods and habits, which arc the
mothers of opinions, having quite as much to do with their
formation as the responsible father — Reason. Think of certain
hideous manufacturing towns where the piety is chiefly a belief
in copious perdition, and the pleasure is chiefly gin. The(dingy
surface of wall pierced by the ugliest windows, the staring shop-
'fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, brass and gilt mouldings, and
advertising placards, have an effect akin to that of malaria ;Qt
is easy to understand that with such surroundings there is more
belief in cruelty than in beneficence^ and that the best earthly
bliss attainable is the dulling of the external senses. For it is
a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for
beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty ; the subtle
relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life for-
bids that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral
sensibility or our intellectual discernment ; and — more than
that — as it is probable that fine musical harmonies have a sana-
tive influence over our bodily organization, it is also probable

* " The Grammar of Ornament." By Owen Jones, Architect. Il-
lustrated by Examples from various Styles of Ornament. One hun-
dred and twelve plates. Day £ Son, London.

THE GRAMMAR OF ORNAMENT.

that just coloring and lovely combinations of lines may
necessary to the complete well-being of our systems apart fro
any conscious delight in them. A savage may indulge in dis
cordant chuckles and shrieks and gutturals, and • hink that tjhey
please the gods, but it does not follow that frame would
not be favorably wrought upon by the vibrat us of a grand
church organ. One sees a person capable of ch '-ing the worst*1
style of wall-paper become suddenly attiicteci by its ugliness
under an attack of illness. And if an evil state of blood and
lymph usually goes along with an evil state of mine!, ^-Vs *hall
say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity o:' '>ur ornamenta-
tion, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not. Iiing to do
with those bad tempers which breed false cone > ions ?

On several grounds it is possible to make a more speedy and
extensive application of artistic reform to our interior decora-
tion than to our external architecture. One >f t'jese grounds 5
is that most of our ugly buildings must stand ; we c.
ford to pull them down. But every year wu are decorating j
interiors afresh, and people of modest means may benefit
the introduction of beautiful designs into stu-: < -• ornaments,
paper-hangings, draperies, and carpets. Fine Lfte in the dec-
oration of inter; us is a benefit that spreads from the palace to
the clerk's house with one parlor.

All honor, then, to the architect who has ze; vindicated

al ornamentation to be a p.;t of the archi-
tect's function, a has labored to rescue that form of art which
is most closely nected with the sanctities and pleasures oft
our hearths fi -. :ie hands of uncultured tra ;en. AH the ^
nation ought at [.resent to know^tHaTthis eiliort is peculiarly
i-iated with the name of Mr. Owen Jones ; and those who
are most disposed to dispute with the architect about his color-
ing must at least recognize the high artistic pin^'iplc which
directed his attention to colored ornament* . proper

branch of architecture. One monument of - effort in this
way is his " Grammar of Ornament," of v i a new and
cheaper edition has just been issued. The one point in which
it differ? from the original and more' expensive edition, viz.,
the reduction in the size of the pages (the amount of matter
and number of plates are unaltered), is really an advantage ; it
is now a very manageable folio, and when the reader is in a
lounging mood may be held easily on the knees. It is a mag-
niticent book ; and those who know no more pf it than the
title should be tojd that they will find in it ; orial history

274 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

of ornamental design, from its rudimentary condition as seen
in the productions of savage tribes, through all the other great
types of art — the Egyptian, Assyrian, ancient Persian, Greek,
Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Moresque, Mohammedan-Petsian,
Indian, Celtic, Medieval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Italian.
The letter-press consists, first, of an introductory statement of
fundamental principles of ornamentation — principles, says the
author, which will be found to have been obeyed more or less
^instinctively by all nations in proportion as their art has been
a genuine product of the national genius ; and, secondly, of
brief historical essays, some of them contributed by other
eminent artists, presenting a commentary on each characteristic
series of illustrations, with the useful appendage of biblio-
graphical lists.

The title " Grammar of Ornament" is so far appropriate that
it indicates what Mr. Owen Jones is most anxious to be under-
stood concerning the object of his work, namely, that it is
intended to illustrate historically the application of principles, I
and not to present a collection of models for mere copyists. The *
plates correspond to examples in syntax, not to be repeated par-
rot-like, but to be studied as embodiments of syntactical princi-
ples. There is a logic of form which cannot be departed from
I in ornamental design without a corresponding remoteness from
perfection ; unmeaning, irrelevant lines are as bad as irrelevant
words or clauses, that tend no whither. And as a suggestion
toward the origination of fresh ornamental design, the work
concludes with some beautiful drawings of leaves and flowers
from nature, that the student, tracing in them the simple laws
of form which underlie an immense variety in beauty, may the
better discern the method by which the same laws were applied
in the finest decorative work of the past, and may have all the
clearer prospect of the unexhausted possibilities of freshness
which lie before him, if, refraining from mere imitation, he
will seek only such likeness to existing forms of ornamental art
as arises from following like principles of combination.

X.

ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT.

FELLOW-WORKMEN : I am not going to take up your time by
complimenting you. It has been the fashion to compliment
kings and other authorities when they have come into power,
and to tell them that, under their wise and beneficent rule,
happiness would certainly overflow the land. But the end has
not always corresponded to that beginning. If it were true
that we who work for wages had more of the wisdom and
virtue necessary to the right use of power than has been shown
by the aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not glory
much in that fact, or consider that it carried with it any near
approach to infallibility.

In my opinion, there has been too much complimenting of
that sort ; and whenever a speaker, whether he is one of our-
selves or not, wastes our time in boasting or flattery, I say, let
us hiss him. If we have the beginning of wisdom, which is,
to know a little truth about ourselves, we know that as a body
we are neither very wise nor very virtuous. And to prove this,
I will not point specially to our own habits and doings, but to
the general state of the country. Any nation that had within
it a majority of men — and we are the majority — possessed of
much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the bad practices,
the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous adulteration
of goods, the retail cheating, and the political bribery which
are carried on boldly in the midst of us. A majority has the
power of creating a public opinion. We could groan and hiss
before we had the franchise : if we had groaned and hissed in .
the right place, if we had discerned better between good and
evil, if the multitude of us artisans, and factory hands, and
miners, and laborers of all sorts, had been skilful, faithful,
well-judging, industrious, sober — and I don't see how there can
be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these qualities — v
should have made an audience that would have shamed,*/0
other classes out of their share in the national vices./ e
should have had better members of Parliament, better reiiae?for the

276 THE ESSAYS OF " GEORGE ELIOT."

teachers, lionester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less
impudence in infamous and brutal men ; and we should not
have had among us the abomination of men calling themselves
religious while Jiving in splendor on ill-gotten gains. I say, it
is not possible for any society in which there is a very large
body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our society
is — to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so
much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a
notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above
his fellows. Therefore, let us have done with this nonsense
about our being much better than the rest of our countrymen,
or the pretence that that was a reason why we ought to have
such an extension of the franchise as has been given to us. The
reason for our having the franchise, as I want presently to
show, lies somewhere else than in our personal good qualities,
and does not in the least lie in any high betting chance that a
delegate is a better man than a duke, or that a Sheffield grinder
is a better man than any one of the firm he works for.

However, we have got our franchise now. We have been
sarcastically called in the House of Commons the future
masters of the country ; and if that sarcasm contains any truth,
it seems to me that the first thing we had better think of is,
our heavy responsibility ; that is to say, the terrible risk we
run of working mischief and missing good, as others have done
before us. Suppose certain men, discontented with the irriga-
tion of a country which depended for all its prosperity on the
right direction being given to the waters of a great river, had
got the management of the irrigation before they were quite
sure how exactly it could be altered for the better, or whether
they could command the necessary agency for such an altera-
tion. Those men would have a difficult and dangerous business
on their hands ; and the more sense, feeling, and knowledge
they had, the more they would be likely to tremble rather than
to triumph. Our situation is not altogether unlike theirs. For
general prosperity and well-being is a vast crop, that like the
corn in Egypt can be come at, not at all by hurried snatching,
but only by a well-judged patient process ; and whether our
political power will be any good to us now we have got it,
must depend entirely on the means and materials — the knowl-
edge, ability, and honesty we have at command. These three
.things are the only conditions on which we can get any lasting
°.riefit, as every clever workman among us knows : he knows
\ t for an article to be worth much there must be a good
1 ition or plan to go upon, there must be a well-prepared

ADDRESS TO WORKING MBIT, BY FELIX HOLT. 277

material, and there must be skilful and honest work in carrying
out the plan. And by this test we may try those who want to
be our leaders. Have they anything to offer us besides indig-
nant talk ? When they tell us we ought to have this, that, or
the other thing, can they explain to us any reasonable, fair,
safe way of getting it ? Can they argue in favor of a particular
change by showing us pretty closely how the change is likely
to work ? I don't want to decry a just indignation ; on the
contrary, I should like it to be more thorough and general. A
wise man, more than two thousand years ago, when he was
asked what would most tend to lessen injustice in the world,
said, " If every bystander felt as indignant at a wrong as if he
himself were the sufferer." Let us cherish such indignation.
But the long-growing evils of a great nation are a tangled
business, asking for a good deal more than indignation in order
to be got rid of. Indignation is a fine war-horse, but the war-
horse must be ridden by a man : it must be ridden by rational-
ity, skill, courage, armed with the right weapons, and taking
definite aim.

We have reason to be discontented with many things, and,
looking back either through the history of England to much
earlier generations or to the legislation and administrations of
later times, we are justified in saying that many of the evils
under which our country now suffers are the consequences of
folly, ignorance, neglect, or self-seeking in those who, at
different times have wielded the powers of rank, office, and
money. But the more bitterly we feel this, the more loudly
we utter it, the stronger is the obligation we lay on ourselves
to beware, lest we also, by a too hasty wresting of measures
which seem to promise an immediate partial relief, make a
worse time of it for our own generation, and leave a bad in-
heritance to our children. The deepest curse of wrong-doing,
whether of the foolish or wicked sort, is that its effects are
difficult to be undone. I suppose there is hardly anything
more to be shuddered at than that part of the history of disease
which shows how, when a man injures his constitution by a life
of vicious excess, his children and grandchildren inherit dis-
eased bodies and minds, and how the effects of that unhappy
inheritance continue to spread beyond our calculation. This is
only one example of the law by which human lives are linked
together ; another example of what we complain of when we
point to our pauperism, to the brutal ignorance of multitudes
among our fellow countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid
on us by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made for the

278 THE ESSAYS OF "GEORGE ELIOT."

public "money, to the expense and trouble of getting justice, and
call these the effects of bad rule. This is the Jaw that we all bear
the yoke of, the law of no man's making, and which no man can
undo. Everybody now sees an example of it in the case of Ire-
land. We who are living now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of
those who lived before us ; we are the sufferers by each other's
wrong-doing ; and the children who come after us are and will
be sufferers from the same causes. Will any man say he
doesn't care for that law — it is nothing to him — what he wants
is to better himself ? With what face then will he complain of
any injury ? If he says that in politics or in any sort of social
action he will not care to know what are likely to be the con-
sequences to others besides himself, he is defending the very
worst doings that have brought about his discontent. He
might as well say that there is no better rule needful for men
than that each should tug and drive for what will please him,
without caring how that tugging will act on the fine wide-
spread network of society in which he is fast meshed. If any
man taught that as a doctrine, we should know him for a fool.
But there are men who act upon it ; every scoundrel, for
example, whether he is a rich religious scoundrel who fies and
cheats on a large scale, and will perhaps come and ask you to
send him to Parliament, or a poor pocket-picking scoundrel,
who will steal your loose pence while you are listening round
the platform. None of us are so ignorant as not to know that
a society, a nation is held together by just the opposite doc-
trine and action — by the dependence of men on each other and
the sense they have of a common interest in preventing injury.
And we working men are, I think, of all classes the last that
can afford to forget this ; for if we did we should be much
like sailors cutting away the timbers of our own ship to warm
our grog with. For what else is the meaning of our trades-
unions ? What else is the meaning of every flag we carry,
every procession we make, every crowd we collect for the sake
of making some protest on behalf of our body as receivers of
wages, if not this : that it is our interest to stand by each other,
and that this being the common interest, no one of us will try
to make a good bargain for himself without considering what
will be good for his fellows ? And every member of a union
believes that the wider he can spread his union, the stronger
and surer will be the effect of it. So I think I shall be borne
out in saying that a working man who can put two and two
together, or take three from four and see what will be the re-
mainder, can understand that a society, to be well off, must be

ADDRESS TO WORKING lEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 279

made up chiefly of men who consider the general good as well
as their own.

Well, but taking the world as it is — and this is one way we
must take it when we want to find out how it can be improved
— no society is made up of a single class : society stands
before us like that wonderful piece of life, the human body,
with all its various parts depending on one another, and with a
terrible liability to get wrong because of that delicate depend-
ence. We all know how many diseases the human body is
apt to suffer from, and how difficult it is even for the doctors
to, find out exactly where the seat or beginning of the disorder
is. That is because the body is made up of so many various
parts, all related to each other, or likely all to feel the effect if
any one of them goes wrong. It is somewhat the same with
our old nations or societies. No society ever stood long in the
world without getting to be composed of different classes.
Now, it is all pretence to say that there is no such thing as
class interest. It is clear that if any particular number of men
get a particular benefit from any existing institution, they are
likely to band together, in order to keep up that benefit and
increase it, until it is perceived to be unfair and injurious to
another large number, who get knowledge and strength enough
to set up a resistance. And this, again, has been part of the
history of every great society since history began. But the
simple reason for this being, that any large body of men is
likely to have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed than of
farsightedness and generosity, it is plain that the number who
resist unfairness and injury are in danger of becoming injurious
in their turn. And in this way a justifiable resistance has
become a damaging convulsion, making everything worse
instead of better. This has been seen so often that we ought
to profit a little by the experience. So long as there is selfish-
ness in men ; so long as they have not found out for them-
selves institutions which express and carry into practice the
truth, that the highest interest of mankind must at last be a
common and not a divided interest ; so long as the gradual
operation of steady causes has not made that truth a part of
every man's knowledge and feeling, just as we now not only
know that it is good for our health to be cleanly, but feel that
cleanliness is only another word for comfort, which is the
under-side or lining of all pleasure ; so long, I say as men wink
at their own knowingness, or hold their heads high because
they have got an advantage over their fellows ; so long class
interest will be in danger of making itself felt injuriously.

280 THE ESSAYS OF ^ GEORGE ELIOT."

No set of men will get any sort of power without being in
danger of wanting more than their right share. But, on the
other hand, it is just as certain that no set of men will get
angry at having less than their right share, and set up a claim
on that ground, without falling into just the same danger of
exacting too much, and exacting it in wrong ways. It's human
nature we have got to work with all round, and nothing else.
That seems like saying something very commonplace — nay,
obvious ; as if one should say that where there are hands there
are mouths. Yet, to hear a good deal of the speechifying and
to see a good deal of the action that go forward, one might
suppose it was forgotten.

But I come back to this : that, in our old society, there are
old institutions, and among them the various distinctions and
inherited advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves
along with all the wonderful slow-growing system of things made
up of our laws, our commerce, and our stores of all sorts,
whether in material objects, such as buildings and machinery,
or in knowledge, such as scientific thought and professional
skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the irrigation of
a country, which must absolutely have its water distributed or
it will bear no crop ; there are the old channels, the old banks,
and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new
and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has
been gradually altered. But it would be fool's work to batter
down a pump only because a better might be made, when you
had no machinery ready for a new one : it would be wicked
work, .if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only safe way
by which society can be steadily improved and our worst evils
reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with the
actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if every-
body could have the same sort of work, or lead the same sort
of life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to sup-
pose), but by the turning of class interests into class functions
or duties. What I mean is, that each class should be urged
by the surrounding conditions to perform its particular work
under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at
large ; that our public affairs should be got into a state in
which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless
conduct. In this way the public judgment would sift out
incapability and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and
even personal ambition would necessarily become of a worthier
sort, since the desires of the most selfish men must be a good
deal shaped by the opinions of those around them ; and for

ADDRESS TO WORKING HEX, BY FELIX HOLT. 281

one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go about dishonest
or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast sum of
money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be
pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now, changes

IT i * t • j 1 11 1 ' 1_ A j.1- "

ness. In the course of that substitution class distinctions must
inevitably change their character, and represent the varying
duties of men, not their varying interests. But this end will
not come by impatience. " Day will not break the sooner
because we get up before the twilight." Still less will it come
by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And more-
over, if we believed that it would be unconditionally hastened
by our getting the franchise, we should be what I call super-
stitious men, believing in magic, or the production of a result
by hocus-pocus. Our getting the franchise will greatly hasten
that good end in proportion only as every one of us has the
knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will make him
well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of
things in this world has been determined for us beforehand,
and in such a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on
a difficult voyage, and reach the right port, unless it is well
manned : the nature of the winds and the waves, of the tim-
bers, the sails, and the cordage, will not accommodate itself to
drunken, mutinous sailors.

You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to
you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine
way, and need not be made better. What I am striving to
keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we
should go about making things better, so that the public order
may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may be given to
this society of ours, this living body in which our lives are
bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832 I was in an elec-
tion riot, which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what
public disorder must always be ; and I have never forgotten
that the riot was brought about chiefly by the agency of dis -
honest men who professed, to be on the people's side. Now,
the danger hanging over change is great, just in proportion ?.s
it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large number
of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low
and brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their
hands, and may do pretty much as they like. If any one can
look round us and say that he sees no signs of any such danger

282

now, and that our national condition is running along like a
clear broadening stream, safe not to get choked with mud, I
call him a cheerful man : perhaps he does his own gardening,
and seldom taken exercise far away from home. To us who
have no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can
never get into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a
set of roughs, who have the worst vices of the worst rich — who
are gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual
simpletons and victims. They are the ugly crop that has
sprung up while the stewards have been sleeping ; they are
the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have been left
without all teaching save that of a too craving body, without
all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and
gin. They are the hideous margin of society, at one edge
drawing toward it the undesigning ignorant poor, at the other
darkening imperceptibly into the lowest criminal class. Here
is one of the evils which cannot be got rid of quickly, and
against which any of us who have got sense, decency, and
instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-
men could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to
the laws and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe ;
but wretched calamities must come from the very beginning of
such a struggle, and the continuance of it would be a civil
war, in which the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to
be even a false notion of good, and might become the direct
savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see to it that we
do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in the
breasts of our generation — that we do not help to poison the
nation's blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to
come. We know well enough that oppressors have sinnf^ in
this way — that oppression has notoriously made men mau ;
and we are determined to resist oppression. But let us, if
possible, show that we can keep sane in our resistance, and
shape our means more and more reasonably toward the least
harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end.
Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven
mad, but can keep that sober determination which alone gives
mastery over the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of
this sanity will be to act as if we understood that the funda-
mental duty of a government is to preserve order, to enforce
obedience of the laws. It has been held hitherto that a man can
be depended on as a guardian of order only when he has much
money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things would
be, that men who had little money and not much comfort

ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 283

should still be guardians of order, because they had sense
to see that disorder would do no good, and had a heart of
justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them from making more
misery only because they felt some misery themselves. There
arc thousands of artisans who have already shown this fine
spirit, and have endured much with patient heroism. If such
a spirit spread, and penetrated us all, we should soon become
the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best
ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no
government in future that will not be determined by our in-
sistance on our fair and practicable demands. It is only by
disorder that our demands will be choked, that we shall find
ourselves lost among a brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of
the country opposed to us, and see government in the shape of
guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom of fools.

It has been a too common notion that to insist much on the
preservation of order is the part of a selfish aristocracy and a
selfish commercial class, because among these, in the nature of
things, have been found the opponents of change. I am a
Radical ; and, what is more, I am not a Radical with a title,
or a French cook, or even an entrance into fine society. I
expect great changes, and I desire them. But I don't expect
them to come in a hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping.
A Hercules with a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy stable,
but not for weeding a seed-bed, where his besom would soon
make a barren floor.

That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say. We know all
that.

Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, most people
think they know them ; but, after all, they are comparatively
few who see the small degrees by which those extremes are
arrived at, or have the resolution and self-control to resist the
little impulses by which they creep on surely toward a fatal
end. Does anybody set out meaning to ruin himself, or to
drink himself to death, or to waste his life so that he becomes
a despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in
winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this is the pitiable
story. Well now, supposing us all to have the best intentions,
we working men, as a body, run some risk of bringing evil on
the nation in that unconscious manner — half hurrying, half
pushed in a jostling march toward an end we are not thinking
of. For just as there are many things which we know better
and feel much more strongly than the richer, softer-handed
classes can know or feel them ; so there are many things — many

284: THE ESSAYS OF

precious benefits — which we, by the very fact of our priva-
tions, our lack of leisure and instruction, are not so likely to
be aware of and take into our account. Those precious
benefits form a chief part of what I may call the common
estate of society : a wealth over and above buildings, ma-
chinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though closely con-
nected with these ; a wealth of a more delicate kind, that we
may more unconsciously bring into danger, doing harm and
not knowing that we do it. I mean that treasure of knowl-
edge, science, poetry, refinement of thought, feeling, and
manners, great memories and the interpretation of great
records, which is carried on from the minds of one generation
to the minds of another. This is something distinct from the
indulgences of luxury and the pursuit of vain finery ; and one
of the hardships in the lot of working men is that they have
been for the most part shut out from sharing in this treasure.
It can make a man's life very great, very full of delight,
though he has no smart furniture and no horses : it also yields
a great deal of discovery that corrects error, and of invention
that lessens bodily pain, and must at least make life easier for all.
Now the security of this treasure demands, not only the
preservation of order, but a certain patience on our part with
many institutions and facts of various kinds, especially touch-
ing the accumulation of wealth, which from the light we stand
in, we are more likely to discern the evil than the good of. It
is constantly the task of practical wisdom not to say, " This is
good, and I will have it," but to say, " This is the less of two
unavoidable evils, and I will bear it." And this treasure of
knowledge, which consists in the fine activity, the exalted
vision of many minds, is bound up at present with conditions
which have much evil in them. Just as in the case of material
wealth and its distribution we are obliged to take the selfish-
ness and weaknesses of human nature into account, and how-
ever we insist that men might act better, are forced, unless we
are fanatical simpletons, to consider how they are likely to act ;
so in this matter of the wealth that is carried in men's minds,
we have to reflect that the too absolute predominance of a class
whose wants have been of a common sort, who are chiefly
struggling to get better and more food, clothing, shelter, and
bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures for the sake of
having things more fairly shared, which, even if they did not
fail of their object, would at last debase the life of the nation.
Do anything which will throw the classes who hold the treas-
ures of knowledge — nay, I may say, the treasure of refined

ADDRESS TO WORKIXG ME'X, BY FELIX HOLT. 285

needs — into the background, cause them to withdraw from
public affairs, stop too suddenly any of the sources by which
their leisure and ease are furnished, rob them of the chances
by which they may be influential and pre-eminent, and you do
something as short-sighted as the acts of France and Spain
when in jealousy and wrath, not altogether unprovoked, they
drove from among them races and classes that held the tradi-
tions of handicraft and agriculture. You injure your own in-
heritance and the inheritance of your children'. You may truly
say that this which I call the common estate of society has
been anything but common to you ; but the same may be said,
by many of us, of the sunlight and the air, of the sky and the
fields, of parks and holiday games. Nevertheless that these
blessings exist makes life worthier to us, and urges us the more
to energetic, likely means of getting our share in them ; and I
say, let us watch carefully, lest we do anything tp lessen this
treasure which is held in the minds of men, while we exert
ourselves, first of all, and to the very utmost, that we and our
children may share in all its benefits. Yes ; exert ourselves to
the utmost, to break the yoke of ignorance. If we demand
more leisure, more ease in our lives, let us show that we don't
deserve the reproach of wanting to shirk that industry which,
in some form or other, every man, whether rich or poor, should
feel himself as much bound to as he is bound to decency. Let
us show that we want to have some time and strength left to
us, that we may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but for the
rational exercise of the faculties which make us men. Without
this no political measures can benefit us. No political institu-
tion will alter the nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from pro-
ducing vice and misery. Let "ignorance start how it will, it
must run the same round of low appetites, poverty, slavery,
and superstition. Some of us know this well — nay, I will say,
feel it ; for knowledge of this kind cuts deep ; and to us it is
one of the most painful facts belonging to our condition that
there are numbers of our fellow-workmen who are so far from
feeling in the same way, that they never use the imperfect
opportunities already offered them for giving their children
some schooling, but turn their little ones of tender age into
bread-winners, often at cruel tasks, exposed to the horrible
infection of childish vice. Of course, the causes of these
hideous things go a long way back. Parents7 misery has made
parents' wickedness. But we, who are still blessed with the
hearts of fathers and the consciences of men — we who have
some knowledge of the curse entailed on broods of creatures in

286 THE ESSAYS OP "GEORGE ELldt. "

human shape, whose enfeebled bodies and dull perverted minds
are mere centres of uneasiness in whom even appetite is feeble
and joy impossible — I say we are bound to use all the means
at our command to help in putting a stop to this horror.
Here, it seems to me, is a way in which we may use extended
co-operation among us to the most momentous of all purposes,
and make conditions of enrolment that would strengthen all
educational measures. It is true enough that there is a low
sense of parental duties in the nation at large, and that numbers
who have no excuse in bodily hardship seem to think it a light
thing to beget children, to bring human beings with all their
tremendous possibilities into this difficult world, and then take
little heed how they are disciplined and furnished for the
perilous journey they arc sent on without any asking of their
own. This is a sin shared in more or less by all classes ; but
there are sjns which, like taxation, fall the heaviest on the
poorest, and none have such galling reasons as we working
men to try and rouse to the utmost the feeling of responsibility
in fathers and mothers. We have been urged into co-opera-
tion by the pressure of common demands. In war men need
each other more ; and where a given point has to be defended,
lighters inevitably find themselves shoulder to shonlder. So
fellowship grows, so grow the rules of fellowship, which
crradually shape themselves to thoroughness as the idea of a
common good becomes more complete. We feel a right to
say, If you will be one of us, you must make such and such a
contribution — you must renounce such and such a separate
advantage — you must set your face against such and such an
infringement. If we have any false ideas about our common
good, our rules will be wrong, and we shall be co-operating to
damage each other. But, now, here is a part of our good,
without which everything else we strive for will be worthless —
I mean the rescue of our children. Let us demand from the
members of our unions that they fulfil their duty as parents in
this definite matter, which rules can reach. Let us demand
that they send their children to school, so as not to go on
recklessly, breeding a moral pestilence among us, just as strictly
as we demand that they pay their contributions to a common
fund, understood to be for a common benefit. While we
watch our public men, let us watch one another as to this duty,
which is also public, and more momentous even than obedience
to sanitary regulations. While we resolutely declare against
the wickedness in high places, let us set ourselves also against
the wickedness in low places, not quarrelling which came first,

ADDRESS TO WORKING MEN, BY FELIX HOLT. 287

or which is the worse of the two — not trying to settle the
miserable precedence of plague or famine, but insisting un-
flinchingly on remedies once ascertained, and summoning those
who hold the treasure of knowledge to remember that they
hold it in trust, and that with them lies the task of searching
for new remedies, and finding the right methods of applying
them.

To find right remedies and right methods. Here is the
great function of knowledge : here the life of one man may
make a fresh era straight away, in which a sort of suffering that
has existed shall exist no more. For the thousands of years
down to the middle of the sixteenth century that human limbs
had been hacked and amputated, nobody knew how to stop
the bleeding except by searing the ends of the vessels with red-
hot iron. But then came a man named Ambrose Pare, and
said, " Tie up the arteries !" That was a fine word to utter.
It contained the statement of a method — a plan by which a
particular evil was forever assuaged. Let us try to discern the
men whose words carry that sort of kernel, and choose such
men to be our guides and representatives — not choose platform
swaggerers, who bring us nothing but the ocean to make our
broth with.

To get the chief power into the hands of the wisest, which
means to get our life regulated according to the truest prin-
ciples man land is in possession of, is a problem as old as
the very notion of wisdom. The solution comes slowly,
becai;8'.! men collectively can only be made to embrace prin-
ciples, and to act on them, by the slow stupendous teaching of
the world's events. Men will go on planting potatoes, and
g else but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and
forces them to find out the advantage of a varied crop.
Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying to adapt the
world to their desires, till a time comes when the world
manifests itself as too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wis-
dom si.-iris outside of man and urges itself upon him, like the
marks of the changing seasons, before it finds a home within
•jbira, directs his actions, and from the precious effects of
Obedience begets a corresponding love.

But while still outside of us, wisdom often looks terrible,

and wears strange forms, wrapped in the changing conditions

r niggling world. It wears now the form of wants and

ands in a great multitude of British men : wants and

ur^v-i into existence by the forces of a maturing

rid. And it is in virtus of this — in virtue of this presence

288 THE ESSAYS OF

of wisdom on our side as a mighty fact, physical and moral,
which must enter into and shape the thoughts and actions of
mankind — that we working men have obtained the suffrage.
Not because we are an excellent multitude, but because we are
a needy multitude.

But now, for our own part, we have seriously to consider
this outside wisdom which lies in the supreme unalterable
nature of things, and watch to give it a home within us and
obey it. If the claims of the unendowed multitude of working
men hold w-ithin them principles which must shape the future,
it is not less true that the endowed classes, in their inheritance
from the past, hold the precious material without which no
worthy, noble future can be moulded. Many of the highest
uses of life are in their keeping ; and if privilege has often
been abused, it has also been the nurse of excellence. Hero
again we have to submit ourselves to the great law of inheri-
tance. If we quarrel with the way in which the labors and
earnings of the past have been preserved and handed down,
we are just as bigoted, just as narrow, just as wanting in that
religion which keeps an open ear and an obedient mind to the
teachings of fact, as we accuse those of being, who quarrel
with the new truths and new needs which are disclosed i;
present. The deeper insight we get into the causes of human
trouble, and the ways by which men are made better
happier, the less we shall be inclined to the unprofitable spirit
and practice of reproaching classes as such in a who!
fashion. Not all the evils of our condition are such as w
justly blame others for ; and, I repeat, many of them arc
as no changes of institutions can quickly remedy. To discern
between the evils that energy can remove and the evil
patience must bear, makes the difference between manlinesfc
and childishness, between good sense and folly. And
than that, without such discernment, seeing that we have grave
duties toward our own body and the country at large, we can
hardly escape acts of fatal rashness and injustice.

I am addressing a mixed assembly of workmen, and sc •
you may be as well or better fitted than I am to take up this
office. But they will not think it amiss in me that I have
to bring together the considerations most likely to be of sei-vi -i
to us in preparing ourselves for the use of our new
tunities. I have avoided touching on. special questions,
best help toward judging well on '"these is to approach the«»
the right temper without vain expectation, and with a resolu-
tion which is mixed with temperance.

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