GEORGE ELIOT
George Eliot began fiction a decade later than Thackeray, but seems more than a decade nearer to us. With her the full pulse of modern realism is felt a-throbbing. There is no more of the ye's and thous with which, when he would make an exordium, Thackeray addressed the world—a fashion long since laid aside. Eliot drew much nearer to the truth, the quiet, homely verity of her scenes is a closer approximation to life, realizes life more vitally than the most veracious page of "Vanity Fair." Not that the great woman novelist made the mistake of a slavish imitation of the actual: that capital, lively scene in the early part of "The Mill on the Floss," where Mrs. Tulliver's connections make known to us their delightsome personalities, is not a mere transcript from life; and all the better for that. Nevertheless, the critic can easily discover a difference between Thackeray and Eliot in this regard, and the ten years between them (as we saw in the case of Dickens and Thackeray) are partly responsible: technique and ideal in literary art were changing fast. George Eliot was a truer realist. She took more seriously her aim of interpreting life, and had a higher conception of her artistic mission. Dickens in his beautiful tribute to Thackeray on the latter's death, speaks of the failure of the author of "Pendennis" to take his mission, his genius, seriously: there was justice in the remark. Yet we heard from the preface to "Pendennis" that Thackeray had the desire to depict a typical man of society with the faithful frankness of a Fielding, and since him, Thackeray states, never again used. But the novelist's hearers were not prepared, the time was not yet ripe, and the novelist himself lacked the courage, though he had the clear vision. With Eliot, we reach the psychologic moment: that deepest truth, the truth of character, exhibited in its mainsprings of impulse and thought, came with her into English fiction as it had never before appeared. It would hardly be overstatement to say that modern psychology in the complete sense as method and interest begins in the Novel with Eliot. For there is a radical difference, not only between the Novel which exploits plot and that which exploits character: but also between that which sees character in terms of life and that which sees it in terms of soul. Eliot's fiction does the latter: life to her means character building, and has its meaning only as an arena for spiritual struggle. Success or failure means but this: have I grown in my higher nature, has my existence shown on the whole an upward tendency?
If so, well and good. If not, whatever of place or power may be mine, I am among the world's failures, having missed the goal. This view, steadily to be encountered in all her fiction, gives it the grave quality, the deep undertone and, be it confessed, at times the almost Methodistic manner, which mark this woman's worth in its weakness and its notable strength. In her early days, long before she made fiction, she was morbidly religious; she became in the fulness of time one of the intellectually emancipated. Yet, emotionally, spiritually, she remained to the end an intensely religious person. Conduct, aspiration, communion of souls, these were to her always the realities. If Thackeray's motto was Be good, and Dickens', Do good, Eliot's might be expressed as: Make me good! Consider for a moment and you will see that these phrases stand successively for a convention, an action and an aspiration.
The life of Mary Ann Evans falls for critical purposes into three well-defined divisions: the early days of country life with home and family and school; her career as a savant; and the later years, when she performed her service as story-teller. Unquestionably, the first period was most important in influencing her genius. It was in the home days at Griff, the school days at Nuneaton nearby, that those deepest, most permanent impressions were absorbed which are given out in the finest of her fictions. Hence came the primal inspiration which produced her best. And it is because she drew most generously upon her younger life in her earlier works that it is they which are most likely to survive the shocks of Time.
The experiences of Eliot's childhood, youth and young womanhood were those which taught her the bottom facts about middle-class country life in the mid-century, and in a mid-county of England; Shakspere's county of Warwick. Those experiences gave her such sympathetic comprehension of the human case in that environment that she became its chronicler, as Dickens had become the chronicler of the lower middle-class of the cities. Unerringly, she generalized from the microcosm of Warwickshire to the life of the world and guessed the universal human heart. With utmost sympathy, joined with a nice power of scrutiny, she saw and understood the character-types of the village, when there was a village life which has since passed away: the yeoman, the small farmer, the operative in the mill, the peasant, the squire and the parson, the petty tradesman, the man of the professions: the worker with his hands at many crafts.
She matured through travel, books and social contact, her knowledge was greatly extended: she came to be, in a sense, a cultured woman of the world, a learned person. Her later books reflected this; they depict the so-called higher strata of English society as in "Middlemarch," or, as in "Romola," give an historical picture of another time in a foreign land. The woman who was gracious hostess at those famous Sunday afternoons at the Priory seems to have little likeness to the frail, shy, country girl in Griff—seems, too, far more important; yet it may be doubted whether all this later work reveals such mastery of the human heart or comes from such an imperative source of expression as do the earlier novels, "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss." For human nature is one and the same in Griff or London or Florence, as all the amplitude of the sky is mirrored in the dewdrop. And although Eliot became in later life a more accurate reporter of the intellectual unrest of her day, and had probed deeper into the mystery and the burden of this unintelligible world, great novels are not necessarily made in that way and the majority of those who love her cleave to the less burdened, more unforced expression of her power.
In those early days, moreover, her attitude towards life was established: it meant a wish to improve the "complaining millions of men." Love went hand in hand with understanding. It may well be that the somberly grave view of humanity and of the universe at large which came to be hers, although strengthened by the positivistic trend of her mature studies, was generated in her sickly youth and a reaction from the narrow theologic thought with which she was then surrounded. Always frail—subject through life to distressing illness—it would not be fair to ask of this woman an optimism of the Mark Tapley stripe. In part, the grave outlook was physical, temperamental: but also it was an expression of a swiftly approaching mood of the late nineteenth century. And the beginning can be traced back to the autumn evenings in the big farmhouse at Griff when, as a mere child, she wrestled or prayed with what she called her sick soul. That stern, upright farmer father of hers seems the dominant factor in her make-up, although the iron of her blood was tempered by the livelier, more mundane qualities of her sprightly mother, towards whom we look for the source of the daughter's superb gift of humor. Whatever the component parts of father and mother in her, and however large that personal variation which is genius, of this we may be comfortably sure: the deepest in the books, whether regarded as presentation of life or as interpretation, came from the early Warwickshire years.
Gradually came that mental eclaircissement which produced the editor, the magazinist, the translator of Strauss. The friendship with the Brays more than any one thing marks the external cause of this awakening: but it was latent, this response to the world of thought and of scholarship, and certain to be called out sooner or later. Our chief interest in it is due to the query how much it ministered to her coming career as creative author of fiction.
George Eliot at this period looked perilously like a Blue Stocking. The range and variety of her reading and the severely intellectual nature of her pursuits justify the assertion. Was this well for the novelist?
The reply might be a paradox: yes and no. This learning imparted to Eliot's works a breadth of vision that is tonic and wins the respect of the judicious. It helps her to escape from that bane of the woman novelist—excessive sentiment without intellectual orientation. But, on the other hand, there are times when she appears to be writing a polemic, not a novel: when the tone becomes didactic, the movement heavy—when the work seems self-conscious and over-intellectualized. Nor can it be denied that this tendency grew on Eliot, to the injury of her latest work. There is a simple kind of exhortation in the "Clerical Scenes," but it disappears in the earliest novels, only to reappear in stories like "Daniel Deronda." Any and all culture that comes to a large, original nature (and such was Eliot's) should be for the good of the literary product: learning in the narrower, more technical sense, is perhaps likely to do harm. Here and there there is a reminder of the critic-reviewer in her fiction.
George Eliot's intellectual development during her last years widened her work and strengthened her comprehensive grasp of life. She gained in interpretation thereby. There will, however, always be those who hold that it would have been better for her reputation had she written nothing after "Middlemarch," or even after "Felix Holt." Those who object on principle to her agnosticism, would also add that the negative nature of her philosophy, her lack of what is called definite religious convictions, had its share in injuring materially her maturest fiction. The vitality or charm of a novel, however, is not necessarily impaired because the author holds such views. It is more pertinent to take the books as they are, in chronologic order, to point out so far as possible their particular merits.
And first, the "Scenes from Clerical Life." It is interesting to the student of this novelist that her writing of fiction was suggested to her by Lewes, and that she tried her hand at a tale when she was not far from forty years old. The question will intrude: would a genuine fiction-maker need to be thus prodded by a friend, and refrain from any independent attempt up to a period so late? Yet it will not do to answer glibly in the negative. Too many examples of late beginning and fine fiction as a consequence are furnished by English literature to make denial safe. We have seen Defoe and Richardson and a number of later novelists breaking the rules—if any such exist. No one can now read the "Clerical Scenes" without discovering in them qualities of head and heart which, when allowed an enlarged canvas and backed by a sure technique, could be counted on to make worthy fiction. The quiet village life glows softly under the sympathetic touch of a true painter.
A recent reading of this first book showed more clearly than ever the unequalness of merit in the three stories, their strong didactic bent, and the charmingly faithful observation which for the present-day reader is their greatest attraction. The first and simplest, "The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton," is by far the best. The poorest is the second, "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story," which has touches of conventional melodrama in a framework reminiscent of earlier fictionists like Disraeli. "Janet's Repentance," with its fine central character of the unhappy wedded wife, is strong, sincere, appealing; and much of the local color admirable. But—perhaps because there is more attempt at story-telling, more plot—the narrative falls below the beautiful, quiet chronicle of the days of Amos: an exquisite portrayal of an average man who yet stands for humanity's best. The tale is significant as a prelude to Eliot's coming work, containing, in the seed, those qualities which were to make her noteworthy. Perusing the volume to-day, we can hardly say that it appears an epoch-making production in fiction, the declaration of a new talent in modern literature. But much has happened in fiction during the half century since 1857, and we are not in a position to judge the feeling of those who then began to follow the fortunes of the Reverend Amos.
But it is not difficult for the twentieth century reader, even if blase, to understand that "Adam Bede," published when its author was forty, aroused a furore of admiration: it still holds general attention, and many whose opinion is worth having, regard it with respect, affection, even enthusiasm.
The broader canvas was exactly what the novelist needed to show her power of characterization, her ability to build up her picture by countless little touches guided by the most unflinching faith in detail and given vibrancy by the sympathy which in all George Eliot's fiction is like the air you breathe. Then, too, as an appeal to the general, there is more of story interest, although neither here nor in any story to follow, does plot come first with a writer whose chief interest is always character, and its development. The autobiographic note deepens and gives at once verity and intensity to the novel; here, as in "The Mill on the Floss" which was to follow the next year, Eliot first gave free play to that emotional seizure of her own past to which reference has been made. The homely material of the first novel was but part of its strength. Readers who had been offered the flash-romantic fiction of Disraeli and Bulwer, turned with refreshment to the placid annals of a village where, none the less, the human heart in its follies and frailties and nobilities, is laid bare. The skill with which the leisurely moving story rises to its vivid moments of climactic interest—the duel in the wood, Hetty's flight, the death of Adam's father—is marked and points plainly to the advance, through study and practice, of the novelist since the "Clerical Scenes"; constructive excellencies do not come by instinct. "Adam Bede" is preeminently a book of belief, written not so much in ink as in red blood, and in that psychic fluid that means the author's spiritual nature. She herself declared, "I love it very much," and it reveals the fact on every page. Aside from its indubitable worth as a picture of English middle-class country life in an earlier nineteenth century than we know—the easy-going days before electricity—it has its highest claim to our regard as a reading in life, not conveyed by word of mouth didactically, but carried in scene and character. The author's tenderness over Hetty, without even sentimentalizing her as, for example, Dumas sentimentalizes his Camille, suggests the mood of the whole narrative: a large-minded, large-hearted comprehension of humankind, an insistence on spiritual tests, yet with the will to tell the truth and present impartially the darkest shadows. It is because George Eliot's people are compounded with beautiful naturalness of good and bad—not hopelessly bad with Hetty, nor hopelessly good with Adam—that we understand them and love them. Here is an element of her effectiveness. Even her Dinah walks with her feet firmly planted upon the earth, though her mystic vision may be skyward.
With "Adam Bede" she came into her own. The "Clerical Scenes" had won critical plaudits: Dickens, in 1857 long settled in his seat of public idolatry, wrote the unknown author a letter of appreciation, so warm-hearted, so generous, that it is hard to resist the pleasure of quoting it: it is interesting to remark that in despite the masculine pen-name, he attributed the work to a woman. But the public had not responded. With "Adam Bede" this was changed; the book gained speedy popularity, the author even meeting with that mixed compliment, a bogus claimant to its authorship. And so, greatly encouraged, and stimulated to do her best, she produced "The Mill on the Floss," a novel, which, if not her finest, will always be placed high on her list of representative fiction.
This time the story as such was stronger, there was more substance and variety because of the greater number of characters and their freer interplay upon each other. Most important of all, when we look beyond the immediate reception by the public to its more permanent position, the work is decidedly more thoroughgoing in its psychology: it goes to the very core of personality, where the earlier book was in some instances satisfied with sketch-work. In "Adam Bede" the freshness comes from the treatment rather than the theme. The framework, a seduction story, is old enough—old as human nature and pre-literary story-telling. But in "The Mill on the Floss" we have the history of two intertwined lives, contrasted types from within the confines of family life, bound by kin-love yet separated by temperament. It is the deepest, truest of tragedy and we see that just this particular study of humanity had not been accomplished so exhaustively before in all the annals of fiction. As it happened, everything conspired to make the author at her best when she was writing this novel: as her letters show, her health was, for her, good: we have noted the stimulus derived from the reception of "Adam Bede"—which was as wine to her soul. Then—a fact which should never be forgotten—the tale is carried through logically and expresses, with neither paltering nor evasion, George Eliot's sense of life's tragedy. In the other book, on the contrary, a touch of the fictitious was introduced by Lewes; Dinah and Adam were united to make at the end a mitigation of the painfulness of Hetty's downfall. Lewes may have been right in looking to the contemporary audience, but never again did Eliot yield to that form of the literary lie, the pleasant ending. She certainly did not in "The Mill on the Floss": an element of its strength is its truth. The book, broadly considered, moves slow, with dramatic accelerando at cumulative moments; it is the kind of narrative where this method is allowable without artistic sin. Another great excellence is the superb insight into the nature of childhood, boy and girl; if Maggie is drawn with the more penetrating sympathy, Tom is finely observed: if the author never rebukes his limitations, she states them and, as it were, lifts hands to heaven to cry like a Greek chorus: "See these mortals love yet clash! Behold, how havoc comes! Eheu! this mortal case!"
With humanity still pulling at her heart-strings, and conceiving fiction which offered more value of plot than before, George Eliot wrote the charming romance "Silas Marner," novelette in form, modern romance in its just mingling of truth and idealization: a work published the next year. She interrupted "Romola" to do it, which is suggestive as indicating absorption by the theme. This story offers a delightful blend of homely realism with poetic symbolism. The miser is wooed from his sordid love of gold by the golden glint of a little girl's hair: as love creeps into his starved heart, heartless greed goes out forever: before a soulless machine, he becomes a man. It is the world-old, still potent thought that the good can drive out the bad: a spiritual allegory in a series of vivid pictures carrying the wholesomest and highest of lessons. The artistic and didactic are here in happy union. And as nowhere else in her work (unless exception be made in the case of "Romola") she sees a truth in terms of drama. To read the story is to feel its stage value: it is no surprise to know that several dramatizations of the book have been made. Aside from its central motive, the studies of homely village life, as well as of polite society, are in Eliot's best manner: the humor of Dolly Winthrop is of as excellent vintage as the humor of Mrs. Poyser in "Adam Bede," yet with the necessary differentiation. The typical deep sympathy for common humanity—just average folks—permeates the handling. Moreover, while the romance has a happy issue, as a romance should according to Stevenson, if it possibly can, it does not differ in its view of life from so fatalistic a book as "The Mill on the Floss"; for circumstances change Silas; if the child Eppie had not come he might have remained a miser. It was not his will alone that revolutionized his life; what some would call luck was at work there. In "Silas Marner" the teaching is of a piece with that of all her representative work.
But when we reach "Romola" there is a change, debatable ground is entered upon at once. Hitherto, the story-teller has mastered the preacher, although an ever more earnest soul has been expressing itself about Life. Now we enter the region of more self-conscious literary art, of planned work and study, and confront the possibility of flagging invention. Also, we leave the solid ground of contemporary themes and find the realist with her hang for truth, essaying an historical setting, an entirely new and foreign motive. Eliot had already proved her right to depict certain aspects of her own English life. To strive to exercise the same powers on a theme like "Romola" was a venturesome step. We have seen how Dickens and Thackeray essayed romance at least once with ringing success; now the third major mid-century novelist was to try the same thing.
It may be conceded at the start that in one important respect this Florentine story of Savonarola and his day is entirely typical: it puts clearly before us in a medieval romantic mis-en scene, the problem of a soul: the slow, subtle, awful degeneration of the man Tito, with its foil in the noble figure of the girl Romola. The central personality psychologically is that of the wily Greek-Italian, and Eliot never probed deeper into the labyrinths of the perturbed human spirit than in this remarkable analysis. The reader, too, remembers gratefully, with a catch of the breath, the great scenes, two of which are the execution of Savonarola, and the final confrontation of Tito by his adoptive father, with its Greek-like sense of tragic doom. The same reader stands aghast before the labor which must lie behind such a work and often comes to him a sudden, vital sense of fifteenth century Florence, then, as never since, the Lily of the Arno: so cunningly and with such felicity are innumerable details individualized, massed and blended. And yet, somehow it all seems a splendid experiment, a worthy performance rather than a spontaneous and successful creative endeavor: this, in comparison with the fiction that came before. The author seems a little over-burdened by the tremendousness of her material. Whether it is because the Savonarola episode is not thoroughly synthetized with the Tito-Romola part: or that the central theme is of itself fundamentally unpleasant—or again, that from the nature of the romance, head-work had largely to supplant that genial draught upon the springs of childhood which gave us "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss";—or once more, whether the crowded canvas injures the unity of the design, be these as they may, "Romola" strikes one as great in spots and as conveying a noble though somber truth, but does not carry us off our feet. That is the blunt truth about it, major work as it is, with only half a dozen of its kind to equal it in all English literature. It falls distinctly behind both "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Esmond." It is a book to admire, to praise in many particulars, to be impressed by: but not quite to treasure as one treasures the story of the Tullivers. It was written by George Eliot, famous novelist, who with that anxious, morbid conscience of hers, had to live up to her reputation, and who received $50,000 for the work, even to-day a large sum for a piece of fiction. It was not written by a woman irresistibly impelled to self-expression, seized with the passionate desire to paint Life. It is, in a sense, her first professional feat and performance.
Meanwhile, she was getting on in life: we saw that she was seven and thirty when she wrote the "Clerical Scenes": it was almost a decade later when "Felix Holt, Radical" appeared, and she was nearing fifty. I believe it to be helpful to draw a line between all her fiction before and after "Felix Holt," placing that book somewhat uncertainly on the dividing line. The four earlier novels stand for a period when there is a strong, or at least sufficient story interest, the proper amount of objectification: to the second division belong "Middlemarch" and "Daniel Deronda," where we feel that problem comes first and story second. In the intermediate novel, "Felix Holt," its excellent story places it with the first books, but its increased didactic tendency with the latest stories. Why has "Felix Holt" been treated by the critics, as a rule, as of comparatively minor value? It is very interesting, contains true characterization, much of picturesque and dramatic worth; it abounds in enjoyable first-hand observation of a period by-gone yet near enough to have been cognizant to the writer. Her favorite types, too, are in it. Holt, a study of the advanced workman of his day, is another Bede, mutatis mutandis, and quite as truly realized. Both Mr. Lyon and his daughter are capitally drawn and the motive of the novel—to teach Felix that he can be quite as true to his cause if he be less rough and eccentric in dress and deportment, is a good one handled with success. To which may be added that the encircling theme of Mrs. Transome's mystery, grips the attention from the start and there is pleasure when it is seen to involve Esther, leading her to make a choice which reveals that she has awakened to a truer valuation of life—and of Felix. With all these things in its favor, why has appreciation been so scant?
Is it not that continually in the narrative you lose its broader human interest because of the narrower political and social questions that are raised? They are vital questions, but still, more specific, technical, of the time. Nor is their weaving into the more permanent theme altogether skilful: you feel like exclaiming to the novelist: "O, let Kingsley handle chartism, but do you stick to your last—love and its criss-cross, family sin and its outcome, character changed as life comes to be more vitally realized." George Eliot in this fine story falls into this mistake, as does Mrs. Humphry Ward in her well-remembered "Robert Elsmere," and as she has again in the novel which happens to be her latest as these words are written, "Marriage a la Mode." The thesis has a way of sticking out obtrusively in such efforts.
Many readers may not feel this in "Felix Holt," which, whatever its shortcomings, remains an extremely able and interesting novel, often underestimated. Still, I imagine a genuine distinction has been made with regard to it.
The difference is more definitely felt in "Middlemarch," not infrequently called Eliot's masterpiece. It appeared five years later and the author was over fifty when the book was published serially during 1871 and 1872. Nearly four years were spent in the work of composition: for it the sum of $60,000 was paid.
"Middlemarch," which resembles Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" in telling two stories not closely related, seems less a Novel than a chronicle-history of two families. It is important to remember that its two parts were conceived as independent; their welding, to call it such, was an afterthought. The tempo again, suiting the style of fiction, is leisurely: character study, character contrast, is the principal aim. More definitely, the marriage problem, illustrated by Dorothea's experience with Casaubon, and that of Lydgate with Rosamond, is what the writer places before us. Marriage is chosen simply because it is the modern spiritual battleground, a condition for the trying-out of souls. The greatness of the work lies in its breadth (subjective more than objective), its panoramic view of English country life of the refined type, its rich garner of wisdom concerning human motive and action. We have seen in earlier studies that its type, the chronicle of events as they affect character, is a legitimate one: a successful genus in English-speaking fiction in hands like those of Thackeray, Eliot and Howells. It is one accepted kind, a distinct, often able, sympathetic kind of fiction of our race: its worth as a social document (to use the convenient term once more) is likely to be high. It lacks the close-knit plot, the feeling for stage effect, the swift progression and the sense of completed action which another and more favored sort of Novel exhibits. Yet it may have as much chance of permanence in the hands of a master. The proper question, then, seems to be whether it most fitly expresses the genius of an author.
Perhaps there will never be general agreement as to this in the case of "Middlemarch." The book is drawn from wells of experience not so deep in Eliot's nature as those which went to the making of "Adam Bede" and "The Mill on the Floss," It is life with which the author became familiar in London and about the world during her later literary days. She knows it well, and paints it with her usual noble insistence upon truth. But she knows it with her brain; whereas, she knows "The Mill on the Floss" with her blood. There is surely that difference. Hence, the latter work has, it would seem, a better chance for long life; for, without losing the author's characteristic interpretation, it has more story-value, is richer in humor (that alleviating ingredient of all fiction) and is a better work of art. It shows George Eliot absorbed in story-telling: "Middlemarch" is George Eliot using a slight framework of story for the sake of talking about life and illustrating by character. Those who call it her masterpiece are not judging it primarily as art-work: any more than those who call Whitman the greatest American poet are judging him as artist. While it seems necessary to make this distinction, it is quite as necessary to bear down on the attraction of the character-drawing. That is a truly wonderful portrait of the unconsciously selfish scholar in Casaubon. Dorothea's noble naturalness, Will Ladislaw's fiery truth, the verity of Rosamond's bovine mediocrity, the fine reality of Lydgate's situation, so portentous in its demand upon the moral nature—all this, and more than this, is admirable and authoritative. The predominant thought in closing such a study is that of the tremendous complexity of human fate, influenced as it is by heredity, environment and the personal equation, and not without melioristic hope, if we but live up to our best. The tone is grave, but not hopeless. The quiet, hesitant movement helps the sense of this slow sureness in the working of the social law:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly,
Yet they grind exceeding small."
In her final novel, "Daniel Deronda," between which and "Middlemarch" there were six years, so that it was published when the author was nearly sixty years old, we have another large canvas upon which, in great detail and with admirable variety, is displayed a composition that does not aim at complete unity—or at any rate, does not accomplish it, for the motive is double: to present the Jew so that Judenhetze may be diminished: and to exhibit the spiritual evolution through a succession of emotional experiences of the girl Gwendolen. This phase of the story offers an instructive parallel with Meredith's "Diana of the Crossways." If the Jew theme had been made secondary artistically to the Gwendolen study, the novel would have secured a greater degree of constructive success; but there's the rub. Now it seems the main issue; again, Gwendolen holds the center of the stage. The result is a suspicion of patchwork; nor is this changed by the fact that both parts are brilliantly done—to which consideration may be added the well-known antipathy of many Gentile readers to any treatment of the Jew in fiction, if an explanation be sought of the relative slighting of a very noble book.
For it has virtues, many and large. Its spirit is broad, tolerant, wide and loving. In no previous Eliot fiction are there finer single effects: no one is likely to forget the scene in which Gwendolen and Harcourt come to a rupture; or the scene of Deronda's dismissal. And in the way of character portrayal, nothing is keener and truer than the heroine of this book, whose unawakened, seemingly light, nature is chastened and deepened as she slowly learns the meaning of life. The lesson is sound and salutary: it is set forth so vividly as to be immensely impressive. Mordecai, against the background necessary to show him, is sketched with splendid power. And the percentage of quotable sayings, sword-thrusts, many of them, into the vitals of life, is as high perhaps as in any other of the Novels, unless it be "Middlemarch." Nevertheless those who point to "Deronda" as illustrating the novelist's decadence—although they use too harsh a word—have some right on their side. For, viewed as story, it is not so successful as the books of the first half of George Eliot's career. It all depends whether a vital problem Novel is given preference over a Novel which does not obtrude message, if it have any at all. And if fiction be a fine art, it must be confessed that this latter sort is superior. But we have perfect liberty to admire the elevation, earnestness and skill en detail that denote such a work. Nay, we may go further and say that the woman who wrote it is greater than she who wrote "The Mill on the Floss."
With a backward glance now at the list, it may be said in summary that the earlier fiction constitutes George Eliot's most authoritative contribution to English novel-making, since the thinking about life so characteristic of her is kept within the bounds of good story-telling. And the compensation for this artistic loss in her later fiction is found in its wider intellectual outlook, its deeper sympathy, the more profound humanity of the message.
But what of her philosophy? She was not a pessimist, since the pessimist is one who despairs of human virtue and regards the world as paralyzing the will nobly to achieve. She was, rather, a meliorist who hoped for better things, though tardy to come; who believed, in her own pungent phrase, "in the slow contagion of good." Of human happiness she did in one of her latest moods despair: going so far in a dark moment as to declare that the only ideal left her was duty. In a way, she grew sadder as she grew older. By intellect she was a positivist who has given up any definite hope of personal immortality—save that which by a metaphor is applied to one's influence upon the life of the world here upon earth. And in her own career, by her unconventional union with Lewes, she made a questionable choice of action, though from the highest motives; a choice which I believe rasped her sensitive soul because of the way it was regarded by many whom she respected and whose good opinion she coveted. But she remained splendidly wholesome and inspiring in her fiction, because she clung to her faith in spiritual self-development, tested all life by the test of duty, felt the pathos and the preciousness of inconspicuous lives, and devoted herself through a most exceptional career to loving service for others. She was therefore not only a novelist of genius, but a profoundly good woman. She had an ample practical credo for living and will always be, for those who read with their mind and soul as well as their eyes, anything but a depressing writer. For them, on the contrary, she will be a tonic force, a seer using fiction as a means to an end—and that end the betterment of mankind.