Wmim ;' '\v;%4& '"" : \ I j 1 / \ * i * j£,y;t fll ^kmSt^k^ wA'i‘1 ^ ?'S30& S '■ £> : r! l\\ * \ » N Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Getty Research Institute https://archive.org/details/essaysOOelio Portrait of Heine Original Etching by William Unger Illustrated Sterling Gdition \ ESSAYS BY GEORGE ELIOT BOSTON DANA ESTES & COMPANY PUBLISHERS PREFACE. ISHES have often been expressed that the articles V V known to have been written by George Eliot in the Westminster Review before she had become famous under that pseudonyme, should be republished. Those wishes are now gratified — as far, at any rate, as it is possible to gratify them. For it was not George Eliot’s desire that the whole of those articles should be rescued from oblivion. And in order that there might be no doubt on the subject, she made, some time before her death, a collection of such of her fugitive writings as she considered deserving of a per¬ manent form, carefully revised them for the press, and left them in the order in which they here appear, with written injunctions that no other pieces written by her, of date prior to 1857, should be republished. It will thus be seen that the present collection of Essays has the weight of her sanction, and has had, moreover, the advantage of such corrections and alterations as a revision long subsequent to the period of writing may have sug¬ gested to her. The opportunity afforded by this republication seemed a suitable one for giving to the world some “ notes,’ as George Eliot simply called them, which belong to a much later period, and which have not been previously published. The exact date of their writing cannot be fixed with any certainty, but it must have been some time between the ii PREFACE. appearance of “ Middlemarch ” and that of “ Theophrastus Such.” They were probably written without any distinct view to publication, — some of them for the satisfaction of her own mind; others perhaps as memoranda, and with an idea of working them out more fully at some later time. It may be of interest to know that, besides the “ notes ” here given, the note-book contains four which appeared in “Theophrastus Such,” three of them practically as they there stand; and it is not impossible that some of those in the present volume might also have been so utilized had they not happened to fall outside the general scope of the work. The marginal titles are George Eliot’s own, but for the general title, “Leaves from a Note-book/’ I am responsible. I need only add that, in publishing these notes, I have the complete concurrence of my friend, Mr. Cross. Charles Lee Lewes. Hiohoatx, December , 1883. TABLE OF CONTENTS. ESSAYS. Pag* WoRLDLINESS AND OtHER-WoRLDLINESS : THE POET YOUNG . . 9 (Westminster Review, 1857.) German Wit : Heinrich Heine .63 (Westminster Review, 1856.) Evangelical Teaching : Dr. Cumming .105 (Westminster Review, 1855.) The Influence of Rationalism: Lecky’s History .... 139 (Fortnightly Review, 1865.) The Natural History of German Life : Riehl.157 (Westminster Review, 1856.) Three Months in Weimar .194 (Fraser’s Magazine, 1855.) Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt.214 (Blackwood’s Magazine, 1868.) LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK. Authorship. 233 Judgments on Authors. 23& Story-Telling.240 Historic Imagination. 243 Value in Orioinality. 245 To the Prosaic all Things are Prosaic. 245 TABLE OE CONTENTS. Page “ Dear Religious Love ”. 245 We make our own Precedents. 246 Birth or Tolerance. 246 Felix qui non potuit . .. 247 Divine Grace a Real Emanation. 247 “A Fine Excess.” Feeling is Energy. 248 IMPRESSIONS OE THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. Looking Inward. 253 Looking Backward.265 How WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 279 A Man surprised at his Originality.293 A too Deferential Man.301 Only Temper .309 A Political Molecule.316 The Watch-Dog of Knowledge.320 A Half-Breed.327 Debasing the Moral Currency.334 The Wasp credited with the Honey-Comb.341 “ So Young ! ”. 353 How we come to give ourselves False Testimonials, and BELIEVE IN THEM .359 The too Ready Writer . 368 Diseases of Small Authorship . 377 Moral Swindlers. 386 Shadows of the Coming Race ..395 The Modern He? ! Hep ! Hep !.401 The Lifted Veil . 427 Brother Jacob . , , , ..475 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS, Page Heine. Frontispiece George Eliot.16 Portrait of Heine.63 Goethe . 196 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS: THE POET YOUNG. T HE study of men, as they have appeared in different ages and under various social conditions, may be con¬ sidered as the natural history of the race. Let us, then, for a moment imagine ourselves as students of this natural his¬ tory, dredging the first half of the eighteenth century in search of specimens. About the year 1730 we have hauled up a remarkable individual of the species divine — a surpris¬ ing 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 parodoxical specimen, if you ob¬ serve 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 the pro¬ fligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a parliamen¬ tary 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 mendicancy 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. 10 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. He personifies completely her nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the momen- tousness of death and of burial fees ; he languishes at once for immortal life and for “ livings ;” he has a fervid attach¬ ment to patrons in general, but on the whole lorefers 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 charac¬ teristic attire for “ an ornament of religion and virtue,” hopes courtiers will never forget to copy Sir Robert Wal¬ pole, and writes begging-letters to the King’s mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Gol¬ gotha and “ the skies; ” it walks in graveyards, 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 immortal¬ ity, he considers, it would be wise and agreeable to be inde¬ cent, 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, “tii3 highest style of man.” With all this, our new-made divine is an un¬ mistakable 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, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality, in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive j for this divine is Edward Y r oung, the future author of the “Night Thoughts.” WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 11 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 amongst 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 suggested by Monsieur Jourdain. When that distin¬ guished bourgeois was asked if he knew Latin, he replied, “Oui, mais faites comme si je ne le savais pas.” Assum¬ ing, 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 reconsidera¬ tion 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 transmis¬ sion through a long line of clerical forefathers, that the’ diamonds of the “Night Thoughts” had been slowly con¬ densed from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it was not so. His grandfather, apparently, wrote himself gentle¬ man, not clerk y and there is no evidence that preaching had run in the family blood before it took that turn in the per¬ son 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 emo tion, 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 quality, and that the very chyme and chyle of a rector are conscious of the gown and band. In due time the boy went to Winchester College, and sub- 12 ESSAYS OF GEOKGE ELIOT. sequently, though not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford, where, for his fathers sake, he was befriended by the war¬ dens 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 after¬ wards 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 in¬ clined 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 surprisingly 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 parasitic, we believe the larva is usually parasitic also, and we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing that Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about possible and actual patrons, and accommodating himself to their habits with con¬ siderable flexibility of conscience and of tongue ; being none WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 13 the less ready, upon occasion, to present himself as the cham¬ pion of theology, and to rhapsodize at convenient moments in the company of the skies or of skulls. That brilliant profli¬ gate, the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young afterwards 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 rhap¬ sodic solemnity. He probably sowed his wild oats after the coarse fashion of his times, for he has left us sufficient evi¬ dence that his moral sense was not delicate ; but his compan¬ ions, 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 “ Epistle 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 enthu¬ siasm, so nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron and the honor of the Deity. But the twofold nature of the sycophant and the psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the contrasted themes of the two poems, than in the transitions from bombast about monarchs to bombast about the resurrection, in the “ Last Day ” itself. The dedi¬ cation of the poem to Queen Anne, Young afterwards sup¬ pressed, for he was always 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, 14 ESSAYS OF GEOKGE ELIOT. 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 bound¬ less spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey towards 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 pur¬ suit, 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 “ Busixis ” was “ 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 ex¬ travagant 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 dis¬ playing 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 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 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 15 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 compensation 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, therefore, 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 dedica¬ tion to Parker, recently made Lord Chancellor, showing that the possession of Wharton’s patronage did not prevent Young from fishing in other waters. He knew nothing of Parker, but that did not prevent him from magnifying the new Chancellor’s merits; on the other hand, he did know Whar¬ ton, but this again did not prevent him from prefixing to his tragedy, “ The Revenge,” which appeared in 1721, a dedication attributing 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 grati¬ tude was a lively sense of anticipated favors. “ My present fortune 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 16 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. merit, though, 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 afterwards made to do duty in the “Instalment,” a poem addressed to Walpole: — “ Be this thy partial smile, from censure free; ’T was 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. Accord¬ ing to Young’s dedication, the Duke was “accessary” to the scenes of this tragedy in a more important way, “ not only by suggesting 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 dedicatory 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 1722 seems to have been the period of a visit to Mr. Dodington, of Eastbury, in Dorsetshire, — the “ pure Dor- setian downs,” celebrated by Thomson, — in which Young made the acquaintance of Voltaire; for in the subsequent) dedication 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, ad¬ dressed an “ Epistle to Dr. Edward Young, at Eastbury, in Dorsetshire,” which has at least the merit of this biographi¬ cal couplet — “ While with your Dodington retired you sit, Charmed 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 George Eliot. WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 17 poet in the variety and novelty of his hon-mots and repartees.” Unfortunately, the only specimen of Young’s wit on this occasion, that has been preserved to us, is the epigram repre¬ sented as an extempore retort (spoken aside, surely) to Voltaire’s criticism 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 repre¬ sents himself as having “ soothed ” Voltaire’s “ rage ” against Milton u 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 renowned! 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 t Mag that be found in thee, Voltaire ! ” The “ Satires ” appeared in 1725 and 1726, each, of course, with its laudatory dedication and its compliments insinuated amongst the rhymes. The seventh and last is dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole, is very short, and contains nothing in particular except lunatic flattery of George the First and his prime 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 envenomed satire into praise. Nor human rage alone his power perceives, But the mad winds and the tumultuous waves, E’en 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.” 18 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 172G, and that the warrant of George the First, granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, is dated May 3, 1726. The gratitude ex¬ hibited 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.” 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 £2,000 for this work. Young, however, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary re¬ sults of his publications; and with his literary profits, his annuity from Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention other bounties which may be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of wealth and position, WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 19 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 consequent cessation of Young’s reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the temperature of his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, .but also to turn his thoughts towards the Church again, as the second-best means of rising in the world. On the accession of George the Sec¬ ond, Young found the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry pre¬ viously unattempted by him — the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious bom¬ bast. “Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish,” was the title of this piece. He afterwards pruned it, and cut off, amongst 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 exam¬ ple, 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: — ** What powerful charm Can Death disarm ? Your long, your iron slumbers break ? By Jove, by Fame, By Georye'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 Esti¬ mate of Human Life,” with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the “ most shining representatives ” of God on earth and 20 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. a sermon, entitled “ An Apology for Princes; or, tlie Rever¬ ence due to Government,” preached before the House of Com¬ mons, 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, occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace.” Since he afterwards 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 affecta¬ tion 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 followed, quite as bad as those of his bachelorhood, ex¬ cept 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 (afterwards Lady Suffolk), George the Second’s mistress, which proves that he used other engines, besides Pindaric ones, in “ besieging Court favor.” The let¬ ter is too characteristic to be omitted : —- Monday Morning. Madam, — I know his majesty’s goodness to his servants, and hi? 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. Good Manner* Service. Age. Want. Sufferings \ and > for his majesty Zeal ) WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 21 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. uy being in his majesty’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 bet¬ ter. 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, &c., Edward Young. 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 Lad) Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three deaths suppost 22 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIO'h to have inspired “ The Complaint,” which forms the three first books of the “ Night Thoughts : ” — “ Insatiate archer, could not one suffice ? Thy shaft flew thrice : and thrice my peace was slain: And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had filled 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 imagi¬ nation 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 obvi¬ ous artificiality of the characters Young introduces as targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of conjectured criticism, there can hardly be one more futile than the attempt to discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures, the Lorenzos and Altamonts of Young’s didac¬ tic prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to face with a genuine, living human being; she would have been as much startled 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 sar¬ casms ; and his apostrophe to the moon, as more likely to be favorable to his song if he calls her “ fair Portland of the WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 28 skies,” is worthy even of his Pindaric ravings. His ostentar tious 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 su¬ perlative 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:— l( I have great joy in Dr. Young, whom I disturbed in a reverie. At tint he started, then bowed, then fell back into a surprise; then begar u 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 interpret 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 paraphrased St. Matthew, or wrote comments on St. Paul. . . . You would not guess that this asso¬ ciate 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 uamed not disparagingly in his Satires, was th6 brother of his old schoolfellow ; but to return to our hero.] “The «*ters,” 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, 1 As long as my rival stayed ; — as long as the sud 24 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 Sunderland, 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 ab¬ stinence. . . . 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 fol¬ lowed your humble servant on a milk-white palfrey. I rode on in safety, and at leisure to observe the company, especially the two figures 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, 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 heavens’ the while. The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who some¬ times 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, won¬ dering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid, looked round and declared his surprise.” WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- W ORLDLINESS. 25 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 “ Parson 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 Cibber was an in¬ dication 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 than £400, — in those days a disappointing sum; and Young, as we learn from his friend Richardson, did not make this the limit of his dona¬ tion, 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 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 Rich¬ ardson 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 epi¬ logues 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 Origi¬ nal Composition,” written in 1759, for the sake, he says, of communicating to the world the well-known anecdote about Addison’s death-bed, and, with the exception of his poem on Resignation, the last thing he ever published. 26 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT.' 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 dis¬ creet age, and the daughter (or 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. Ser¬ vants, 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 teetotaler); 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 rest of his father’s lifetime, 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 literary activity and ambition, —a collector of interest¬ ing documents, 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 corresponded 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 manuscripts, 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 WOliLDLINESS AND OTHER-WOliLDLINESS. 27 comes a “pound canister of tea;” another, a “young fatted goose.” Clearly, Mr. Jones was entirely unlike your literary correspondents 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 paius are almost continually taken up here, and . . . I have been, I now find, a considerable loser, upon the whole, by con-.- tinuing here so long. The consideration of this, and the inconven¬ iences I sustained, and do still experience, from my late illness, obliged me at last to acquaint the Doctor [Youug] with my case, and to assure him that I plainly perceived the duty and confinement here to be too much for me; for which reasou I must, I said, beg to be at liberty to resign my charge at Michaelmas. I began to give him these notices in February, when I was very ill; and now 1 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 advertise, and even, which is much wondered at, to raise the salary considerably higher. (What he allowed my predecessors was £20 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 intentions 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- sure a man that he can like for his next curate, nor one that will stay with him so long as I have done. Then, his great age will recur to people’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 1 am now writing to you, wish your assistance also. Rut my best friends here, who well foresee the probable consecjlienees, and wish me well, earnestly dissuade 28 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. me from complying: and I will decline the office with as much decencj as 1 can: but high salary will, I suppose, fetch in somebody 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 tender a 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 irre¬ movable obstruction to his happiness within his walls , as well as another without them , but the former is the more powerful, and like to continue so. He has this day been tryiug 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 I like to have to do with persons ivhose 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 £200) is talked of; whereof this vill and neighborhood is full. Some disbelieve; others say, ‘ 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.” WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-W 7 ORLDLINESS. 29 No other mention of Young’s affairs occurs until April 2, 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. Indeed, 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 opin¬ ion, 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 can¬ not as yet be certain; all I shall say is, it seems not improbable . . . I heartily wish the ancient man’s heart may prove tender towards his 6on ; though, knowing him so well, I can scarce hope to hear such desirable news .” 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 death-bed, 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, iutreat for¬ giveness, 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, 1 God bless him!' ... I know it will give you pleasure to be farther in- formed that he was pleased to make respectful mention of me in his will —expressing nis satisfaction in my care of his parish, bequeath¬ ing to me a handsome legacy, and appointing me to be one of his •xecutors.” 30 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. So far Mr. Jones, in his confidential correspondence with a “ friend who may he trusted.” In a letter communicated apparently by him to the “ Gentleman’s Magazine,” seven years later, — namely, in 1782, — 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, spontane¬ ous, and confidential hints. To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1,000, 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 letter from Archbishop Seeker, which probably marks the date of his latest effort after preferment. Deanery of St. Paul’s, July 8, 1758. Good Dr. 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 ! 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 neigh* WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 31 bor for upwards 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 there¬ fore the rather believe them when they give each other any extra-official praise. Bishop Hildesley, then writing of Young to Richardson, says : — 11 The impertinence of my frequent visits to him was amply re- warded; forasmuch as, I can truly say, he never received me hut 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 informing 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 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 expectations.” The same substance, we know, will exhibit different quali¬ ties 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 evi¬ dence, the outline of Young’s character is too distinctly trace¬ able 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 32 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 pleas¬ ure 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 pre¬ cisely the opposite conviction — 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 a mind in which the higher human sympathies were inactive. This judgment is en¬ tirely 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 gen ius 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 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 33 “common sense” in which Young was conspicuously defi¬ cient ; and it was partly owing to this deficiency that his genius, waiting to be determined by the highest prize, flut¬ tered 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 mani¬ fest. 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 towards antithetic apothegm and rhapsodic climax. The passages that arrest us in his trage¬ dies 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 embonpoint of the didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic 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 hU 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 ? Oor life much rather: Life is the desert , life the solitude ; Death joins us to the great majority: 'T is to be born to Plato and to Caesar; T is to be great forever; ’T is pleasure, ’t is 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, — VOL. LX. 3 34 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT, “ 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 en¬ larges his wings to our imagination ; and our fear of death, his scythe; as Time himself grows less. His consumption is deep; his annihila¬ tion 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 caunot but gloriously disturb and perplex thee, to take in all that thought 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 the more they are weighed, amaze the more; which to have supposed, before they were revealed, would have been as great madness, and to have pre¬ sumed 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 vio¬ lent 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 platitudes, and we have the perpetual text of the “ Night Thoughts : ” — “ Gold, pleasure buys; But pleasure dies, For soon the gross fruition cloya; Though raptures court, The sense is short: But virtue kindles living joys, — WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 35 “ Joys felt alone! Joys asked of none! Which Time’s and Fortune’s arrows mis*: 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 ex¬ alt our conceptions of Deity by vulgar images and compari¬ sons, which is so offensive in the later “Night Thoughts.” In a burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by the contemplation 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! ” Conceive the soul in its most solemn moments, assuring God that it does n’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 evei achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolution of al) 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 Roused the broad front, and called the battle on.” 35 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT, And this wail of the lost souls is fine: — “ And this for sin ? Could I offend if I had never been ? But still increased the senseless, happy mas*, Flowed in the stream, or shivered 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 afterwards called it, “ which modern poetry tasting, became mortal.” In relation to his own power, no one will question the truth of his dic¬ tum, that “ blank verse is verse unfallen, uncurst; verse re¬ claimed, 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 peculiarly susceptible to the intrusion of a superfluous word, or to an inversion which implies con¬ straint. Here, even more than elsewhere, the art that con¬ ceals art is an absolute requisite, and to have a witticism presented to us in limping or cumbrous rhythm is as coun¬ teractive to any electrifying effect, as to see the tentative grimaces by which a comedian prepares a grotesque counte¬ nance. We discern the process, instead of being startled by the result. This is one reason why the Satires, read seriatim, have a flatness to us, which, when we afterwards read picked pas¬ sages, we are inclined to disbelieve in, and to attribute to some deficiency in our own mood. But there are deeper rea¬ sons for that dissatisfaction. 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 WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 87 whicli owns loving fellowship with the poor human nature it laughs at; nor yet the personal bitterness which, as in Pope’s characters of Sporus and Atticus, ensures those living touches by virtue of which the individual and particular in Art be¬ comes the universal and immortal. Young could never describe a real, complex human being ; but what he could do, with eminent success, was to describe, 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 those felicitous 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 clever effort. In his gravest arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that he had set himself to work out the problem, how much antithesis might be got out 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 missed, these many years, the Church or Play: He makes no noise in Parliament, ’t is true; But pays his debts, and visit when’t is 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 share®. 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 ; 38 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 j 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 psycho¬ logical 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 con¬ duct 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 ’a ever in the wrong.” Of the diplomatic Julia: — “ 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 ; WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 39 “ ’T is hard, too, she who makes no use but ohat Of her religion, should be barred in that.” The description of the literary belle , Daphne, well pre¬ faces that of Stella, admired by Johnson: — “ With legs tossed high, on her sophee she sits^ Vouchsafing audience to contending w'its: Of each performance she’s the final test; One act read o’er, she prophesies the rest; And then, pronouncing with decisive air. Fully convinces all the town — she’s fair. Had lonely Daphne Ilecatessa’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 ? Oh 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 inspired, 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 Sa¬ tires, 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 sketch¬ ing, recurring to his old platitudes: — “ Can gold calm passion, or make reason shine 1 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. 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 40 ASSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Pindaric odes, in which he fell far below the level of his pra vious works. Two sources of this sudden strength were the freedom of blank verse and the presence of a genuine emo¬ tion. 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 vir¬ tue 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! ” Joy died with the loved one: — “ The disenchanted earth Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers 1 Her golden mountains, where ? All darkened 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 was.” In its unreasoning anguish, the soul rushes to the idea of perpetuity as the one element of bliss: — WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 41 " 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 arti¬ ficiality even in his grief, and feeling often slides into rhetoric; but through it all we are thrilled with the unmis¬ takable cry of pain, which makes us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole: — “ In every varied posture, place, and hour, How widowed 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 ghost* Of my departed joys.” But when he becomes didactic, rather than 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 42 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. with the less agreeable half of the critic’s duty; and 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 ex¬ pressed. 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. How, this disruption of lan¬ guage from genuine thought and feeling is what we are con¬ stantly detecting in Young; and his insincerity is the more likely to betray him into absurdity, because he habitually 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 eartl 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 ab- WORLDLINESS AND OTIIER-WORLDLINESS. 43 surdity of a man’s grasping the skies, and hanging habitually suspended 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 imag¬ ine how his heart can lean towards 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 44 ESSAYS OF GEORGE thinking of bishoprics and benefices, of smiling monarch*, patronizing prime-ministers, and a “ much indebted muse.” 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 remem¬ brance that he has added to his “ debts of honor: ” — “ What wretched repetition cloys us here! What periodic potions for the sick, Distempered bodies, and distempered minds ? " And then he flies pff to his usual antithesis: — “ In an eternity what scenes shall strike! Adventures thicken, novelties surprise! ” “ Earth ” means lords and levees, duchesses and Delilahs. South-Sea dreams and illegal percentage; and the only things distinctly preferable to these, are eternity and the stars. Deprive Young of this antithesis, and more than half his elo¬ quence would be shrivelled up. Place him on a breezy com¬ mon, where the furze is in its golden bloom, where children are playing, 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 pas¬ sages which convey this sentiment the most explicitly. In the one, he gives Lorenzo this excellent recipe for obtain¬ ing cheerfulness: — WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 45 “ Go, fix some weighty truth; Chain down some passion; do some generous good; Teach Ignorance to see, or Grief to smile; 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 possessed, On lightened minds that bask in Virtue’s heam». Nothing hangs tedious, nothing old revolves In that for which they long, for which they live. Their glorious efforts, winged with heavenly hope#. 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. Rolling 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 he till we hurst 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 46 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. the theatres, read the newspaper, and went home olten by moon and star light. 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, 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 j 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 amazingly 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 blossomed trees o'erturned 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 VVORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 4V 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 in¬ ternal 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 second¬ ary manner with abstractions. An orator may discourse very eloquently on injustice in general, and leave his au¬ dience 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 towards any one who professes strong feeling about abstractions, — in the interjectional “ humbug! ” which immediately rises to their lips. Wher¬ ever abstractions appear to excite strong emotion, this occurs in men of active intellect and imagination, in whom the ab¬ stract term rapidly and vividly calls up the particulars it represents, these particulars being the true source of the emotion; and such men, if they wished to express their feel¬ ing, w r ould be infallibly prompted to the presentation of details. Strong emotion can no more be directed to generali¬ ties apart from particulars, than skill in figures can be di¬ rected to arithmetic apart from numbers. Generalities are the refuge at once of deficient intellectual activity and de¬ ficient feeling. If we except the passages in “ Philander,” “ Narcissa,” and “ Lucia,” there is hardly a trace of human sympathy, of self- forgetfulness in the joy or sorrow of a fellow-being, through¬ out this long poem, w r hich professes to treat the various phases of man’s destiny. And even in the “Narcissa” Night, 48 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Young repels us by the low moral tone of his exaggerated lament. This married step-daughter died at Lyons, and, being a Protestant, 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 con¬ templating it after the lapse of five years. Young, however, takes great pains to simulate a bad feeling: — “ Of grief And indignation rival bursts I poured, Half execration miugled with my prayer; Kindled at man, while I his God adored ; Sore grudged the savage land her sacred dust; Stamped the cursed soil; and with humanity (Denied Narcissa) wished 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 sympathy, he only betrays more clearly his want of it. Thus, in the first Night, when he turns from his private griefs to depict earth as a hideous abode of misery for all mankind, and asks, — “ What then am I, who sorrow for myself 1 ” I; 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 to reason, if it costs us pain Unpaid.” WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 49 If there is no immortality for man, — 11 Sense! take the rein ; blind Passion, drive us on; And Ignorance ! befriend us on our way. \es, give the Pulse full empire ; live the Brute, Since as the brute we die. The sum of maji. 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 t # • Ambition, avarice, by the wise disdained, Is perfect wisdom, while mankind are fool*. And think a turf or tombstone covers all. • • • « Die for thy country, thou romantic fool 1 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, Whate’er his boast, has told me he’s a knave. His duty ’t is to love himself alone ; Nor 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 im¬ mortality ; 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 towards myself, I have a fellow-feeling with other men, who would suffer the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest towards 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 4 50 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT wife and children and friends, and through that love 1 sym¬ pathize with like affections in other men. It is a pang to me to witness the sufferings of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffer¬ ing the more acutely because he is mortal , — because his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, filled with hap¬ piness 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 generations 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 not afraid of some disagreeable consequences from the criminal laws of an¬ other world; but even if I could conceive no motive but my own worldly interest, or the gratification of my animal desire, I have not observed that beastliness, treachery, and parricide are the direct way to happiness and comfort on earth. And I should say that, if you feel no motive to common 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 conse¬ quences is a very insufficient barrier against the rush of im¬ mediate 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 tndy 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 benevo¬ lence ; as the musician who would care less to play a sonata of Beethoven finely in solitude than in public, where he was to be paid for it, is wanting in genuine enthusiasm for music.” ) WORLDLLNESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 51 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 advocates who, like him, pique themselves on the loftiness of their doctrine when they maintain that “ Virtue with Im¬ mortality expires.” We may admit, indeed, that if the better part of virtue consists, as Young appears to think, in con¬ tempt 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 mankind on this earth, — the motive to it must be gathered from something that lies quite outside the sphere of human sympathy. 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 our¬ selves 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, are we 52 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 in¬ dependent of theological ink, and that its evolution is ensured 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 con¬ temns,— in the sentiments he presents as laudable, rather than in those he decries. And in Young’s notion of what is lofty he casts a shadow by which we can measure him with¬ out 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! 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 jus¬ tice and mercy to brutes. worldlinejss and other wokldliness. 53 But, for a reflection of Young’s moral personality on a colossal scale, we must turn to those passages where his rhetoric is at its utmost stretch of inflation — where he ad¬ dresses the Deity, discourses of the divine operations, or de¬ scribes 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 meet¬ ing where the resolutions are not passed unanimously, — the poet completes his climax in this way: — "Hence, in one peal of loud, eternal praise, The charmed spectators thunder their applause.” In the same taste, he sings: — “ Eternity, the various sentence past. Assigns the severed throng distinct abodes, Sulphureous or 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 l The goddess, with determined 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 profoond, Ten thousand, thousand fathom ; there to rust And ne’er unlock her resolution more. The deep resounds; and hell, through all her glooiafc Returns, in gToans, the melancholy roar.” 54 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young thanks God “most: ” — “For all I bless thee, most, for the severe; Her deatli — my own at hand — the fiery gulf, That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent 1 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 exuberance 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 distinction. 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” is simply Young himself, “writ large,” — a didactic poet, who “lec¬ tures ” mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and ex¬ pects 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,” di¬ rected towards 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.” WORLDLINESS AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS. 55 Virtue, with Young, must always squint, — must never look straight towards 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 afterwards! 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 peda¬ gogic moralizing. On its theoretic and perceptive side, moral¬ ity touches science ; on its emotional side, art. Now, the products 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 op¬ posed to the perpetual consciousness of a rule. The action of faculty is imperious, and excludes the reflection why it should act. In the same way, in proportion as morality is emotional, i. 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 does 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 in¬ sist on a lesson, and despise everything that will not convey a moral — are deficient in sympathetic emotion. A certain poet is recorded to have said, that he “ wished everything of his burnt that did not impress some moral; even in love- verses, it might be flung in by the way.” What poet was ** who took this medicinal view of poetry ? Dr. Watts, o> 55 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOl. 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 think¬ ing in apothegms, who has an unintermittent flux of admoni¬ tion, can have little energy left for simple emotion. And this is the case with Young. In his highest flights of con¬ templation, 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 re¬ criminates 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,” so we may call Young’s dis¬ position, to see a rebuke or a warning in every natural object, the “ pedagogic fallacy.” To his mind, the heavens are “ for ever 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 elaborate imagery, and at length makes it the occasion of his most extraordinary achievement in the “ art of sinking,” by exclaiming, apropos, 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 singing, rarely pouring forth any continuous melody inspired by the spontaneous flow of thought or feeling. He is rather WORLDLINESB AND OTIIER-WORLDLINESS. 57 occupied with argumentative insistence, 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 numbed. All godlike passion for eternals quenched, All relish of realities expired ; Renounced all correspondence with the skies; Our freedom chained; quite wingless our desire; In sense dark-prisoned 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 CowpeFs blank verse ! Indeed, it is hardly possible to criticise Young, without being reminded at every step of the contrast pre¬ sented to him by Cowper. And this contrast urges itself upon us the more from the fact that there is, to a certain extent, a parallelism 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 professedly didactic, and mingle much satire with their graver meditations; 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 A oung. Cowper’s religion was dogmatically the more gloomy, for he was a Calvinist; while Young was a “ low ” Arminian, — be¬ lieving that Christ died for all, and that the only obstacle to any man’s salvation lay in his will, which he could change if ESSAYS OF GEORGE EETOT. he chose. There was real and deep sadness involved in Cow- per’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 towards inanimate and animate existence; in truthful¬ ness of perception and sincerity of presentation; in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in objects for their own sake, without self-reference; in divine sympathy with the lowliest pleasures, 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 presenta¬ tion of particular sorrows and privations, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper’s exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morn¬ ing sunlight on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail, and investing every detail with beauty! No ob¬ ject 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 because his mind is narrow, but be¬ cause his glance is clear and his heart is large. Instead of trying to edify us by supercilious 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 tbe winter’s morning WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 59 “ 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 feigned alarm And anger insignificantly fierce.” And then he passes into reflection, not with curt apothegm and snappish reproof, but with that melodious flow of utter¬ ance 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 warmed; ” or the villager, with her little ones, going out to pick “ A cheap but wholesome salad from the brook; ” and he compels our colder natures to follow his in its mani¬ fold sympathies, not by exhortations, not by telling us to meditate at midnight, to indulge the thought of death, or to ask ourselves liow we shall “ weather an eternal night,” but by jjresenting to us the object of his compassion truthfully and lovingly. And when lie handles greater themes, when he takes a wider survey, and considers the men or the deeds 60 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. which have a direct influence on the welfare of communities and nations, there is the same unselfish warmth of feeling, the same scrupulous truthfulness. He is never vague in his remonstrance or his satire; but puts his finger on some par¬ ticular vice or folly, which excites his indignation or “ dis¬ solves 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 himself 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 while 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 charity 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 1 ” 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 tha charms even of the wintry landscape, and thinks, — WORLDLINESS AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS. 61 * Happy who walks with him! whom what he find* 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 God." 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 sulphureous ; 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 Millen¬ nium — in the restoration of this, our beloved home of earth, to perfect 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 genera¬ tions on earth! — “ The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks Shout to each other, and the mountain-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 towards 62 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 knowledge. Portrait of Heine. GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. u ''VTOTHING,” says Goethe, “is more significant of men’s -IN 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 remember 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 give the idea of a people who went about their business and tlieir pleasure as gravely as a society of beavers ; the smile and the laugh are often mentioned metaphorically, but the smile is one of compla¬ cency, the laugh is one of scorn. Nor can we imagine that the facetious element was very strong in the 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 simpering 64 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 Chamfort or a Sheri¬ dan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, whose dinner had no other removes than from acorns to beechmast and back again to acorns, differed from the subtle pleasures 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 ex¬ perience 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 accord¬ ance 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 characteristics; 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 fantastic; but it detects an un¬ suspected analogy or suggests a startling or confounding in¬ ference. 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 such reason¬ ing always manifests itself in laughter. This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher, and deals less with words and with GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 65 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 sym¬ pathetic emotions, continually passes into poetry; nearly all great modern humorists may be called prose poets. Some confusion as to the nature of humor has been cre¬ ated 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 defini¬ tion which only applies to its later development. A great deal of humor may co-exist 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 illustra¬ tions of successful cunning and of the lex talionis, as in “ Reineke Fuchs,” 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 sympathetic 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 constitutes modern humor, was probably the cruel mockery of a savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy, — such is the tendency of things towards 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 that humor is in its nature more prolix — that it has not the direct and irresist¬ ible force of wit. Wit is an electric shock, which takes us by violence, quite independently of our predominant mental vnr.. t-x 66 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 lacerating per¬ sonality, if the “ shock ” of the witticism is a powerful 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 peren¬ nial, 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 overlap and blend with each other. There are bon mots, like many of Charles Lamb’s, which are a sort of face¬ tious hybrids; we hardly know whether to call them witty or humorous ; there are rather lengthy descriptions or narra¬ tives, which, like Voltaire’s “ 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, is in Sliakspeare and Moliere. A happy conjunction this, :or wit is apt to be cold and thin-lipped and Mephistophe- ean in men who have no relish for humor, whose lungs do lever crow like Chanticleer at fun and drollery; and broad- laced, 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 trans¬ parency, it warns off from flights and exaggerations which verge on the ridiculous; in every genre of writing it pre¬ serves a man from sinking into the genre ennuyeux. And it is eminently 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 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 67 wearisome unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of a.l monotony, of all lengtliiness, of all exaggeration. Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has given us to a complete 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. Vol¬ taire, 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 pur¬ pose. 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 humor. The sense of the ludicrous is continually defeated by disgust, 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 Lap- land 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 fre¬ quently tiresome to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, 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 satis¬ fied 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 imper¬ ceptible to him. To the typical German — Vetter Michel — it is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch; whether his tea-cup be more 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 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. B5 lie 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 in¬ sensibility 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 accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author. We have heard Germans use the word Langeweile, the equiv¬ alent 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 grundlich ( 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 super¬ lative as Barclay’s treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction. It is easy to see that this national deficiency in nicety of perception must have its effect on the national appreciation and exhibition of humor. You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shakspeare, 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 transcendent specimen of Sliakspearian wit. German face¬ tiousness is seldom 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 concerned 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 product. Italy was the birthplace of Pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello ; Spain had produced Cervantes; France had produced Rabelais and Moliere, and GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 69 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 re¬ paired 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 Dramaturgie ” remem¬ bers. Still, Lessing’s name has not become European 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 litera¬ ture ; 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 facetiousness, but which is quite decisive as to its quality. Whatever may be the stock of fun which Germany yields for home-consump¬ tion, 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 epigrammatic brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man, as we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate humor are inevitably the results of invigorated and refined mental 70 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 ances¬ tors spent their youth in German air, and were reared on Wurst and Sauerkraut , so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an English bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But whatever else he may be, Heine is one of the most remark¬ able men of this age: no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a sur¬ passing 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 scorch¬ ing 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 occa¬ sional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contem porary literature, and has hardly been exceeded by the license of former days. Hence, before his volumes are put within GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 71 the reach of immature minds, there is need of a friendly pen¬ knife to exercise a strict censorship. Yet, when all coarse¬ ness, all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humor, and just thought. It is apparently 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 transgres¬ sions seem to him quite gratuitous; he, forsooth, never lac¬ erated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible 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 over- zealous 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 ben¬ efit 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 fail¬ ings ; 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 descrip¬ tions scattered through his own writings. Those of our read¬ ers who happen to know nothing of Heine, will in this way be making their acquaintance with the waiter while they are learning the outline of his career. 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 72 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 12, 1799. However, as he himself says, the important point is, that he was born, and born on the banks of the Rhine at Diisseldorf, 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 child¬ hood, and of his school boy troubles there. We shall quote from these in butterfly fashion, 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 yester¬ day heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811 , lay in a buuch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. . . . Mon Dieu! if I had only such faith iu me that I could remove mountains, the Johan¬ nisberg 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 Rhine. ... I am again a child, and playing with other children on the Schlossplatz, at Diisseldorf on the Rhine. Yes, madam, there was I born ; and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven cities — Schilda, Kriih- winkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Diilken, Gottingen, and Schoppenstadt — should contend for the honor of being my birthplace. Diisseldorf is a town on the Rhine; 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 grandfather and my uncle, the old Herr von Geldern, and the young Herr von Geldern, both such celebrated doc¬ tors, 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 goodness. 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 but mind and plasters , and nevertheless studied day and night, as if he were alarmed lest the worms should find an idea too little in his head. And the little William lies there, and for this I am to blame. We were schoolfellows in the Frauciscan mon¬ astery, and were playing on that side of it where the Diissel flows be¬ tween stone walls; and I said, ‘ William, fetch out the kitten that GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 73 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 iD 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 morn¬ ing, they said, ‘Good-morning, father P and the princes answered, ‘ Good-inoruiug, 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, 1 The Elector has abdicated.’ And then he read again; and at the words, ‘ for the long-manifested fidelity 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 uni¬ form and scarred face, weep so bitteily all of a sudden. While we were reading, the Electoral arms were taken down from the 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, 1 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 afterwards had the good taste to change), perched on the bronze horse of the Electoral statue, sees quite a different scene from yesterday’s • — 74 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. “ 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 Roman em¬ perors, 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 in¬ different to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that they never really existed. . . . But oh! the trouble I h'ad 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: 1 Four can’t be taken from three, therefore I must borrow one.' 1 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 aud consolation in many troubled hours of life. . . . 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 main¬ tained that Greek was an invention of the devil. God knows the suf¬ fering 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 would n’t go on Saturdays.” Heine’s parents were apparently not wealthy, hut his edu¬ cation was cared for by his uncle, Solomon Heine, a great banker in Hamburg, so that he had no early pecuniary dis¬ advantages 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 “ Buch der Lieder ” there are two exquisite sonnets addressed to her, which tell how his proud spirit was always GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 75 subaaed by the charm of her presence, and how her love was the home of his heart after restless weary ramblings; — “ Wie macktig auch mein stolzer Muth sicli bliike, In (leiner selig siissen, trauten Nahe Ergreift micli oft eiu demutlivolles Zagen. Und immer irrte ick nach Liebe, immer Nach Liebe, dock die Liebe fand ich nimmer, Und kekrte um nacli Ilause, krank und triibe. Dock da bist du entgegen mir gekommen, Und ach ! was da in deinem Aug’ gesckwommen, Das war die siisse, lauggesuchte Liebe.” He was at first destined for a mercantile life, but nature declared too strongly against this plan. “ God knows,” he has lately said in conversation with his brother, “ I would will¬ ingly 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 “Buck der Lieder ” under the title “ Die Grenadiere,” 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 the one who excites in me the most intol¬ erable emotion ; whereas Scott, in every one of his works, 76 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. gladdens my heart, soothes and invigorates me.” Another indication of his bent in these Bonn days was a newspaper essay, in which he attacked the Romanric 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 collision lies in the conflict between natural affection and the deadly hatred of religion and of race, in the sacrifice of youthful lovers to the strife between Moor and Spaniard, Moslem and Christian. Some of the situations are striking, and there are passages of con¬ siderable 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 pub¬ lished 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 say¬ ing of his tragedies, in a letter to a friend soon after their publication: “ I know they will be terribly cut up, but I will confess to you in confidence that they are very good, better than my collection of poems, which are not worth a shot.” Elsewhere he tells us, that when, after one of Paganini’s con certs, he was passionately complimenting the great master on his violin-playing, Paganini interrupted him thus: u 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. Whilst 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 years at Berlin, and the society he found there seems to have made these years an important epoch in his culture. GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 77 He was one of the youngest members of a circle which as¬ sembled 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 afterwards dedi¬ cated to her the poems included under the title “ Heimkehr; ” and he frequently 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 auy 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 impressive personality for superficial eyes. Per¬ haps even the deep-sighted were far from detecting in that small, blond, 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 willingly, 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 IY. once laughingly said, ‘ Paris vaut bien une messe ,’ jo I might with reason say, Berlin vaut bien une preche; and I could afterwards, 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.” At the same period, too, Heine became acquainted with Hegel. In his lately published “ Gestandnisse ” (Confes- 78 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. sions), he throws on Hegel’s influence over him the blue light of demoniacal 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 some¬ thing like real earnestness and enthusiasm, w T hich are cer¬ tainly not apparent in his present tlieistic confession of faith. “On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for this philosophy, and conviction on the subject was out of question. I never was an abstract thinker, and I accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doctrine 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 grandmother 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 feel¬ ings ; on the contrary, it heightened these to the pitch of heroism. I was at that time so lavish in generosity and self-sacrifice, 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 sarcastic lash or two, in passing, to Meyerbeer, for whose music he had a great contempt. The sarcasm conveyed in the substitution of reputation for music , and journalists for musicians, might perhaps escape any one unfamiliar with the sly and unexpected 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 preference for persons of whom he knew that they did not understand him, and to whom he all the more willingly granted the honor of his familiar GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 79 acquaintance. Thus every one in Berlin wondered at the intimate com¬ panionship of the profound Hegel with the late Heinrich Beer, a brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who is universally known by his rep¬ utation, and who has been celebrated by the cleverest journalists. This Beer, namely Heinrich, was a thoroughly stupid fellow, and indeed was afterwards 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 accompanied him every¬ where like his shadow. The equally witty and gifted Felix Mendels¬ sohn 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 con¬ vinced that no word of what he said was understood by Heinrich Beer; and he could therefore, in his presence, give himself up to all the in¬ tellectual outpourings of the moment. In general, Hegel’s conversa¬ tion 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 en¬ thusiasm 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 leprosy on the face of the heavens.’ ‘ For God’s aake,’ 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 poisoniug 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 80 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 blond young man, with the brim of his hat drawn over his nose, his coat flying open, and his hands stuck in his trouser-pockets, might have been seen stumbling along the streets of Hamburg, 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 inconveniences 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, re¬ garded as an improbable fiction, intended as a pretext for rais¬ ing a delicate white hand to his forehead. It is probable that the sceptical persons alluded to were themselves untroubled with nervous headache, 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: HEINRICH HEINE. 81 “ 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 pro¬ found 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 pop¬ ular of all his works, those which have won him his place as the greatest of living German poets and humorists. Be¬ tween 1826 and 1829 appeared the four volumes of the “ Reisebilder ” (Pictures of Travel), and the “ Buch der Lie- der ” (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 Harz, to the isle of Nor- derney, to his native town, Diisseldorf, to Italy, and to Eng¬ land, 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 ” (Zischlaute des Egoismus ) ; and his ridicule of Eng¬ lish awkwardness is as merciless as English ridicule of Ger¬ man awkwardness. His antipathy towards us seems to have grown in intensity, like many of his other antipathies ; and in his “Vermisclite Scliriften” he is more bitter than ever. Let us quote one of his philippics, since bitters are under¬ stood 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, mo tol. ix 6 82 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. fnentary disgust might betray me into this injustice; and on looking at the mass, I easily forget the many brave and noble men who dis¬ tinguished themselves by intellect and love of freedom. But these, especially the British poets, were always all the more glaringly in con trast with the rest of the nation j 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. Iu these moods it seems to me as if 1 heard the whizzing wheelwork by which they think, feel, reckon, digest, and pray; their praying, their mechanical Anglican church-going, with the gilt prayer-book under their arms, their stupid, tiresome Sunday, their awkward piety, are most of all odious to me. I am firmly convinced that a blaspheming Frenchman is a more pleas¬ ing sight for the Divinity than a praying Englishman.” On inis return from England, Heine was employed at Mu¬ nich 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 Heli¬ goland, which he had 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 dithyram- bic writing which, in less masterly hands, easily becomes ridiculous. u The thick packet of newspapers arrived from the Continent with these warm, glowing-hot tidings. They were sunbeams wrapped up iu packing-paper, and they inflamed my soul till it burst into the wildest conflagration. ... It is all like a dream to me ; especially the name, Lafayette, sounds to me like a legend out of my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on horseback, commanding the National Guard ? I almost fear it may not be true, for it is iu print. I will myself go to Paris, to be convinced of it with my bodily eyes. . . . It must be splendid, when he rides through the streets, the citizen of GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 83 two worlds, the godlike old man, with his silver locks streaming down his sacred shoulder. ... He greets, 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 Rights, the Decalogue of the world’s new creed, which was revealed to him amid the thunders and light¬ nings of cannon. . . . And the tri-colored flag waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets resound with the Marseillaise ! ... It is all over with my yearning for repose. I now know again what I will do, what I ought to do, what I must do. ... I am the son of the Revolution, and seize again the hallowed weapons on which my mother pronounced her magic benedictiou. . . . 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 stare, that shoot down from the heavens, and hunt up the palaces, and illuminate the huts. . . . Words like bright javelins, that whirr up to the seventh 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 Jiose 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 iustiuct of what has occurred. The fisherman who yesterday took me over to tne little sand-island, which is the bathing-place here, said to me smilingly, ‘ The poor people have won!’ Yes, instinctively the people comprehend such events, perhaps, better than we, with all our mean.- of knowledge. Thus Frau von Varnhageu 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. 1 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 Mcdor. . . . The dog Medor brought his master his gun and cartridge-box, and when his master fell, aud was buried with his fellow-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.” 84 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. The enthusiasm which was kept thus at boiling heat by imagination, cooled down rapidly when brought into contact with reality. In the same book he indicates, in his caustic way, the commencement of that change in his political tem¬ perature — 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 enthusiasm. The silver locks which I saw fluttering so majestically on the shoulders of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamorphosed into a brown peruke, 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 tri-colored 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 Ger¬ man air was not friendly to sympathizers in July Revolutions, is humorously intimated in the “ Gestandnisse.” “ I had done much and suffered much, and when the sun of the July Revolution 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 ofteu seemed to me as if the sun were a Prussian 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 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 85 In the fortress of Spandau, and he related to me how unpleasant it is when one is obliged to wear irons in winter. For myself 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 so unpleasant an im¬ pression, 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 volatile 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 phi¬ losophy and literature. He became a correspondent of the “Allgeineine Zeitung,”and his correspondence, which extends, with an interruption of several years, from 1831 to 1844, forms the volume entitled “ Franzosische Zustiinde ” (French Affairs), and the second and third volume of his “ Vermischte Schriften.” It is a witty and often wise commentary on pub¬ lic men and public events. Louis Philippe, Casimir 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 favorable 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 Ver- net’s pictures; now a criticism of Victor Hugo, or of Liszt; now an irresistible caricature of Spontini or Kalkbrenner; and occasionally 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 ESSAtS OF GEORGE ELIOT. SB Heine beyon4 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; and the accusations were supposed to have an irrefragable basis in the fact that he accepted a stipend from the French government. 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 foun¬ tain; 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 distin¬ guished salons, as a possible proselyte in the circle of the Saint Simonians. His literary productiveness seems to nave been furthered by this 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 in¬ stance, in French); the book on Borne ; “ Atta Troll,” a roman¬ tic poem; “ Deutschland,” an exquisitely 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 Ger¬ many, and the “ Romantische Schule,” a delightful introduc¬ tion to that phase of German literature known as the Romantic School. The book on Borne, which appeared in GERMAN WIT : HEINRICH HEINE. 87 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 mam who had worked and suffered in the cause of freedom — a cause which w r as Heine’s own. Borne — we may observe parenthetically, for the in¬ formation 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 partisan¬ ship and bitter humor. Without justifying Heine’s produc¬ tion 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, spirit¬ ualistic, despising the pure artist as destitute of earnestness. 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 in¬ difference 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 con¬ tempt, according to his own account; but the retort, which he resolutely 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 do¬ mestic life. It is said, we know not with how much truth, 88 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. that Heine had to answer for these in a duel with Madame Wohl’s husband, and that, after receiving a serious wound, he promised 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 transcendent talent, the dramatic vigor with which Borne is made present to us, the critical acumen with which he is characterized, and the wonderful play of wit, pathos, and thought which runs through the whole. But we will let Heine speak for himself, 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 towards those who surrounded him, was added the annoy¬ ance I felt from his perpetual talk about politics. Nothing but polit¬ ical 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 patri¬ otic gall, which he poured as a hitter sauce over everything. Calf s feet a la maitre d'lidtel , then my innocent bonne bouche, he completely spoiled for me by Job’s tidings from Germany, which he scraped to¬ gether 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 indifference for the object of Borne’s enthusiasm. For example, Borne was indignant that im¬ mediately 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 interest in Art which induced me to undertake this work was so utterly irreconcilable with the Rev¬ olutionary interests of the day; but Borne saw in it a proof of my indifference towards 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 Robert’s ‘ Reapers,’ Horace Vernet’s ‘Judith,’ and Scheffer’s ‘Faust.’ . . . That I never thought it worth while to discuss my political principles with him it is needless to say ; and once when he declared that he had /onnd a contradiction in my writings, I satisfied myself with the ironical answer, ‘You are mistaken, mon cher; such contradictions never occur in my works, for GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 89 always before I begin to write, I read over the statement of my polit¬ ical principles in my previous writings, that I may not contradict myself, and that no one may be able to reproach me with apostasy from my liberal principles.’” And here is his own account of the spirit in which the book was written: — u 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 important, and he atoned for it sufficiently by the cold silence which I opposed to all his accusations and raillery. While he lived I wrote not a line against him, I never thought about him, I ignored him completely; and that enraged him beyond measure. If I now speak of him, I do eo 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 observation, 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 courageously, 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 moment in the depths of my soul! Thou re- wardest 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, — polemics between Death and Exile! Dost thou stretch out to me a beseeching hand from the grave ? Without rancor I reach mine towards 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 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. yu of the Catholic Church. On this fact busy rumor afterwards founded the story of Ids conversion to Catholicism, and could of course name the day and the spot on which he abjured Protestantism. In his “ Gestandnisse ” Heine publishes a denial of this rumor; less, he says, for the sake of depriving the Catholics 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, more¬ over, a Jesuit church, namely St. Sulpice ; and I then went through a religious act. But this act was no odious abjuration, hut a very in¬ nocent conjugation ; that is to say, my marriage, already performed according to the civil law, there received the ecclesiastical consecration, because my wife, whose family are stanch Catholics, 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.’ 7 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 T almost sank down as I entered the magnificent hall where the ever-blessed goddess 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 dis¬ consolately, 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 nature have always “haunted like a passion,” has not de> scended from the second story of a Parisian house; this man of hungry intellect has been shut out from all direct observe HERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 91 tion of life, all contact with society, except such as is de¬ rived 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 whether to call it an alleviation or an intensification of the torture that Heine retains his mental vigor, his poetic imagination, 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 Ho¬ meric 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 published in 1851, and written chiefly during the three first years of his illness; and in the first volume of the “ Vermischte Schrif- ten,” 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 towards 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, quarrelliug, and piano-strumming. 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 pite¬ ous 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 92 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 become a thorough pietist, Catholics and Protestants by turns claiming him as a convert. Such a change in so uncompro¬ mising an iconoclast, in a man who had been so zealous in his negations as Heine, naturally excited considerable sensation in the camp he was supposed to have quitted, as well as in that he was supposed to have joined. In the second volume of the “ Salon ” and in the “ Romantische Schule,” written in 1834 and 1835, the doctrine of Pantheism is dwelt on with a fervor 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 Christi¬ anity as the enemy of true beauty in Art, and of social well¬ being. Now, however, it 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 religious views, it seemed probable that his love of mystifica¬ tion had found a tempting opportunity for exercise on this subject, and that, as one of his friends said, he was not in¬ clined to pour out unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the “ Romanzero,” dated 1851, there appeared, amidst much mystifying banter, a declaration that he had embraced The¬ ism 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 : — 11 As concerns myself, I can boast of no particular progress in poli¬ tics ; I adhered (after 1848) to the same democratic principles which had the homage of my youth, and for which I have ever since glowed with increasing fervor. In theology, on the contrary, I must accuse GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 93 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 he stifled, as many enlightened and well-meaniug friends would fain have had it. But I must expressly contradict the report that my retrograde movement has carried me as far as to the threshold of a Church, and that I have even been received into her lap. No: my religious convictions and views have remained free from any tincture of ecclesiasticism ; no chiming of bells has allured me, no altar-candles have dazzled me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and have not ut¬ terly 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; we 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, and that death will produce no particular change in our organic devel¬ opment. Swedenborg is a thoroughly honorable fellow, and quite worthy of credit in what he tells us about the other world, where he saw with his own eyes the persons who had played a great part on our earth. Most of them, he says, remained unchanged, and busied them¬ selves with the same things as formerly; they remained stationary, were old-fashioned, rococo — which now and then produced a ludicrous effect. For example, our dear Dr. Martin Luther kept fast by his doc¬ trine of Grace, about which he had for three hundred years daily writ¬ ten down the same mouldy arguments; just in the same way as the late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed in the u Alle- meine Zeitung”one and the same article, perpetually chewing over again the old cud of Jesuitical doctrine. But, as we have said, all per¬ sons who once figured here below were not fouud by Swedeuborg in such a state of fossil immutability; many had considerably developed their character, 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 there sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings; and there were 94 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony’s head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Chris tendom; and he who here below withstood the most terrible tempta¬ tions, 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 iu the lapse of time become 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 retraction 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 weari¬ some 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 Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with crushing force, to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only piti¬ ful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably 1 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 patho¬ logical, as the diseased exhibition of a predominant tendency, urged into anomalous action by the pressure of pain and men¬ tal privation, as the delirium of wit starved of' its proper nourishment. It is not for us to condemn, who have never had the same burden laid on us ; it is not for pygmies at GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 95 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 accu¬ sations, that ground is not, so far as we see, to be found in his writings. He may not have much faith in German revo¬ lutions and revolutionists; experience, in his case as in that of others, may have thrown his millennial anticipations into more distant 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 incompati¬ ble with true patriotism. He has expressly denied the report that he wished to become naturalized in Trance ; and his yearn¬ ing towards his native land and the accents of his native lan¬ guage 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 the crime of lese-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 condemnation in a particular case ; unless, indeed, we are to deliver our judgments on a principle of compensation, making up for our indulgence in one direc¬ tion by our severity in another. On this ground of coarse¬ ness and personality, a true bill may be found against Heine; not , we think, on the ground tha^ he has laughed at what is laughable in his compatriots. Here is a speci¬ men of the satire under which we suppose German patriots wince: — 96 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. “ Rhenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the German Rev¬ olution. Zweibriicken was the Bethlehem in which the infant Saviour —Freedom — lay in the cradle, and gave whimpering promise of re¬ deeming the world. Near his cradle bellowed many an ox, who after¬ wards, 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 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 — I, kill an innocent sentinel? I, who am the father of a family ! And this sentinel 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 “trimmer.” He has no sympathy, as he says, with “ that vague, barren pathos, that useless effervescence of en¬ thusiasm, which plunges, with the spirit of a martyr, into an ocean of generalities, 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 /’ ” “ But thou best, Brutus, thou liest, Cassius, and thou, too, lieat, 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 con¬ stantly hover before the poet in glorious splendor and majesty, he is the more irresistibly overcome by lau< ’hter when he sees how rudely, awkwardly, and clumsily those ideas seized and mirrored in the contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There are mirrors which GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 97 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 he 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 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, we feel as if each must have a twin melody born in the same moment and by the same inspiration. Heine is too impres¬ sible 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 “ Deutschland,” 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 sub¬ limity of his pictures 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 laughter at his overflowing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty to the ludicrous. This last power TOL. IX. 7 98 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 expres¬ sion 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 ” — is entirely in Heine’s manner; and so is Tennyson’s poem of a dozen lines, called “ Circumstance.” Both these poems have Heine’s pregnant simplicity. But, lest this comparison should mislead, we must say that there is no general resem¬ blance between either Wordsworth, or Tennyson, and Heine. Their greatest qualities lie quite away from the light, del¬ icate lucidity, the easy, rippling music, of Heine’s style. The distinctive charm of his lyrics may best be seen by com¬ paring 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 accompanying the grace of its movement. 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 history 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: — GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 99 “ Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen Uutl ich glaubt’ ich trug es nie, Und ich hab’ es doch getragen, — Aber fragt raich nur nicht, wie.” 1 He excel3 equally in the more imaginative expression of feeling; 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 ar¬ tificiality or of unsuccessful effort, but all seems to have developed itself by the same beautiful necessity that brings forth vine-leaves and grapes and the natural curls of child¬ hood. Of Heine’s humorous 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 ts too great a strain on the imagination 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 pict¬ uresque 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 irredeemable hell which the injured poet can create for him, the singing flames of a Dante’s terza rima ! u Kennst du die Hblle des Dante nicht, Die schrecklichen Terzetten 7 Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt Den kann kein Gott melir retten. “ Kein Gott, kein Heiland, erlost ihn je Aus diesen singenden flammen ! Nimm dich in Acht, das wir dich nicht Zu solcher Ilblle verdamraen.” 2 1 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 ? - It is not fair to the English reader to indulge in German quotations, but in our opinion poetical translations are usually worse than valueless. 100 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. As a prosaist, Heine is, in one point of view, even more distinguished than as a poet. The German language easily lends itself to all the purposes of poetry; like the ladies of the Middle Ages, it is gracious and compliant to the Trouba¬ dours. But as these same ladies were often crusty and re¬ pulsive to their unmusical mates, so the German language generally appears awkward and unmanageable in the hands of prose-writers. Indeed, the number of really fine German pro¬ saists before Heine would hardly have exceeded the numerat¬ ing powers of a New Hollander, 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 sxtra 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 chem¬ ist, compact, metallic, brilliant; it is German in an allotropic condition. No dreary labyrinthine sentences in which you find “ no end in wandering mazes lost; n no chains of adjec¬ tives 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 preci¬ sion, 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-eminently 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 repose, 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 For those who think differently, however, we may mention that Mr. Stores Smith has published a modest little book, containing “ Selections from the Poetry of Heinrich Heine,” and that a meritorious (American) translation of Heine’s complete works, by Charles Letand, is now appearing in shilling numbers. GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 101 effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow; he alternates between epigrammatic pith, imaginative 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 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 Eubens “ this Flemish Ti¬ tan, 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 prose writings are the “ Eeisebilder.” 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 and 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 feeling, 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 “Eeisebilder” he runs through the whole gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of thought, from the wflldly droll and fantastic to the sombre and the terrible. Here is a passage almost Dantesque in conception : — “Alas! one ought in truth to write agaiust no one in this world. Each of us is sick enough in this great lazaretto, and many a poleini 102 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. cal writing reminds me involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a little hospital at Cracow, of which I chanced to he 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 consumption 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, 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 “ Reise- bilder.” The years, if they have intensified his satirical bit¬ terness, have also given his wit a finer edge and polish. His sarcasms are so subtly prepared and so slyly 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 subdued the German language to its purposes, and made that language brilliant in spite of a long hereditary transmission of dulness. As one of the most harmless exam¬ ples of his satire, take this on a man who has certainly had his share of adulation: — u Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me under an obliga¬ tion to praise him. He belongs to that living pantheon of France, which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the velvet GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 103 benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed sternly repress all private feelings which might seduce me into an excessive enthusiasm. Other¬ wise 1 might be suspected of servility; for M. Cousin is very influen¬ zal 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 1 ? 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 f be remains notwithstanding a Hercules ! So when we relate similar cir¬ cumstances concerning M. Cousin, we must nevertheless add, with dis¬ criminating 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 Richard 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 Ger¬ man. Secondly, in order to read this book, a man must understand German. Thirdly, M. Cousin does not understand German. ... I fear I am passiug unawares from the sweet waters of praise into the bitter ocean of blame. Yes, on one account I cannot refrain from bit¬ terly 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 Schelliug and Hegel. Against this self-accusation, I must take M. Cousin under 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 attesting that in this respect M. Cousin is honor itself. ... I prophesy to you that the renown of M. Cousin, like the French Revolution, will go round the world! 1 hear some one wickedly add : Undeniably the renown of 104 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. M. Cousin is going round the world, and it has already taken its de¬ parture 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 terrace only at stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at any time for five francs. 1 For five francs ! 7 I cried with amazement; ‘ does he then show himself for money V ‘No; but he is shown fur money, and it happens in this way: There is a society of claqueurs, marchands de contremarques, and such riff-raff, who offered every 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 fraucs, the king would sing the Mar¬ seillaise. If the foreigner gave five francs, they raised a loud cheering under the king’s windows, and His Majesty appeared on the terrace, bowed, and retired. If ten francs, they shouted still louder, and gestic¬ ulated 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: — “Oh the women! We must forgive them much, for they love much, and many. Their hate is properly only love turned inside out. Some¬ times 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 Hahn-Hahu, who has only one eye.” EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. IVEN, 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 reputation in English society ? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety ? Let such a man be¬ come 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 latitudinarian on fast¬ ing ; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts of Time; ardent and imaginative on the pre-millennial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious towards every other infringement of the status quo. Let him fish for souls, not with the bait of in¬ convenient singularity, but with the drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let him be hard and literal in his interpretation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbelievers and adversaries; but when the letter of the Scriptures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth cen¬ tury, 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 106 ESSAYS OF. GEORGE ELIOT. than in showmg who is the Man of Sin, less expansive on the blessedness 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 spir¬ itual by showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated problems and charades 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 “un¬ clean 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 metropolitan pulpit; the avenues to his church will be as crowded as the passages to the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons 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 dem¬ onstration 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 splendors, on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the Amphit¬ ryon 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 honor¬ able gentleman on one side of the House is liable to have his facts and figures shown up by his honorable friend on th6 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 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 107 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 con¬ tradict him; he may exercise perfect free-will in logic, and invent illustrative experience; he may give an evangelical edition of history with the inconvenient facts omitted; — all this he may do with impunity, certain that those of his hear¬ ers 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 “ 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 desirable for the public good, that we devote some pages to Dr. Cumming. He is, as every one knows, a preacher of im¬ mense popularity; and of the numerous publications in which he perpetuates his pulpit labors, all circulate widely, and some, according to their titlepage, 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 u 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 per¬ nicious. Of Dr. Cumming personally we know absolutely nothing; our acquaintance 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 108 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. We are ignorant whether, like St. Paul, he has a bodily pres¬ ence that is weak and contemptible, 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 everlasting burning of Roman Catho¬ lics and Puseyites. Out 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 charity by the spirit we find iu his sermons, and shall only be glad to learn that his prac¬ tice is, in many respects, an amiable non sequitur from his teaching. Dr. Cumming’s mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity, — 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 insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith, as labors to be achieved to the glory 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 polem¬ ical, the historical, the circumstantial, and is only episodi¬ cally devout and practical. The great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or philippic against Romanists 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 copious on the downfall of the Ottoman Empire; he ap¬ pears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story which tends to show how he abashed an “ infidel; ” it is a favorite exer¬ cise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 109 earth is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites, and infidels are given over tc 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 weep 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 find little trace in Dr. Cumming’s discourses. 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 apt' ness 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 apropos. 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 clever¬ ness, nowhere a spark of rare thought, of lofty sentiment, 01 pathetic tenderness. We feel ourselves in company with a voluble retail talker, whose language is exuberant but not exact, and to whom we should never think of referring for precise information or for well-digested thought and expe¬ rience. His argument continually slides into wholesale asser¬ tion and vague declamation, and in his love of ornament he frequently becomes tawdry. For example, lie tells us 1 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 sub¬ terranean graves, at the voice of Chalmers, to acknowledge 1 Apoc. Sketches, p. 265. 110 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 resi¬ dence 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 para¬ phrase 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 elab¬ orate 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 impossible. The laws of nature and physical science tell you that my inter¬ pretation is correct ; you shall not die. I can tell you by my own experience as an angel that you shall be as gods, know¬ ing good and evil.” 1 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 victim, and I shed its blood as my testimony that mine should be shed; and I look for forgiveness and undeserved mercy through Him who is to bruise the serpent’s head, and whose atonement this typi¬ fies.’ ” 2 Indeed, his productions are essentially ephemeral; ne is essentially a journalist, who writes sermons instead of leading articles, who, instead 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, perorates on the “glory of God.” We fancy he is called, in the more refined evangelical circles, an “ intel¬ lectual preacher; ” by the plainer sort of Christians, a “ flow¬ ery preacher; ” and we are inclined to think that the more spiritually minded class of believers, who look with greater 1 Apoc. Sketches, p. 294. ‘ Occas. Disc., vol. i. p. 23 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. Ill anxiety for the kingdom of God within them than for the visible advent of Christ in 1864, will be likely to find Dr. Cumming’s declamatory flights and liistorico-prophetical exer- citations as little better than “ clouts o’ cauld parritch.” Such is our general impression from his writings after an attentive 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 dis¬ cussion. We have no intention to consider the grounds of Dr. Cumming’s dogmatic system, to examine the principles of his prophetic exegesis, or to question his opinion concern¬ ing 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 adhe¬ sion neither to Romanism, Puseyism, nor to that anomalous combination of opinions which he introduces to us under the name of Infidelity. It is simply as spectators that we criti¬ cise Dr. Cumming’s mode of warfare; and we concern our¬ selves less with what he holds to be Christian truth than with his manner of enforcing that truth, less with the doc¬ trines 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, Christianitatern, quocunque modo Christianitatem ; and the only system he includes under the term Christianity is Cal- vinistic Protestantism. Experience has so long shown that the human brain is a congenial nidus for inconsistent belief's that we do not pause to inquire how Dr. Cumming, who attrib¬ utes the conversion of the unbelieving to the Divine Spirit, can think it necessary to co-operate with that Spirit by argu¬ mentative white lies. Nor do we for a moment impugn the genuineness of his zeal for Christianity, or the sincerity of his conviction that the doctrines he preaches are necessary to salvation; on the contrary, we regard the flagrant unve¬ racity that we find on his pages as an indirect result of that conviction, — as a result, namely, of the intellectual and 112 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. moral distortion of view which is inevitably produced t>y 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 depen¬ dent 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 intellect, 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 constant preference of truth both theoretically and practi¬ cally, pre-eminently demands the co-operation of the intellect with the 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 themselves to be guided by direct inspiration rather than by a spontaneous exertion of their faculties, — that is, in proportion as they are removed from rationalism, — their sense of truthfulness is misty and confused. No one can have talked to the more enthusiastic Methodists, and lis¬ tened 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 deal¬ ings ; nay, they regard as a symptom of sinful scepticism an inquiry into the evidence for a story which they think un¬ questionably 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. Cumming, as we have said, is no enthusiastic pietist: within a certain circle, EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 113 within the mill of evangelical orthodoxy, his intellect ie perpetually at work; but that principle of sophistication which our friends the Methodists derive from the predomi¬ nance 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 accus¬ tomed to reject the more direct evidence in favor of the less direct, and where adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must resort to devices and expedients in order to ex¬ plain away contradiction. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception 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 miti¬ gating the inference that is likely to be drawn from that characteristic 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 Jupiter’s satellites, urged that as there were only seven metals there could not be more than seven planets, — a mental condition scarcely compatible with candor. And we may well suppose that if the Professor had held the be¬ lief in seven planets, and no more, to be a necessary condi¬ tion 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 hia 6 VOL. IA. 114 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. life to make meteorological observations 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, disin¬ terested feeling. Hence we by no means suspect that the unscrupulosity of statement with which we charge Dr. Gum¬ ming extends beyond the sphere of his theological prejudices ; we do not doubt that, religion apart, he appreciates and prac¬ tises 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 expose 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 fur¬ nish 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 would recommend replies less ready and more veracious. Here is an example of what in another place 1 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 argumentative small coin, we are inclined to think Dr. Cumming understands answering a fool according to his folly to mean, giving him a foolish answer. We quote from the “ Manual of Christian Evidences,” p. 62: — “ Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped were among the greatest monsters that ever w r alked the earth. Mercury was a thief ; and because he was an expert thief, he was enrolled among the gods. 1 Lect. on Daniel, p. 6. EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 115 baccnus 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 therefore 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 ” cf the unregenerate. This inference is rendered the more probable by our finding, a little further on, that he is not more scrupulous about the moderns, if they come under his definition of “Infidels.” But the passage we are about to ouote in proof of this has a worse quality than its discrep¬ ancy with fact. Who that has a spark of generous feeling, that rejoices in the presence of good in a fellow-being, has not dwelt with pleasure on the thought that Lord Byron’s unhappy career was ennobled and purified towards its close by a high and sympathetic purpose, by honest and energetic efforts for his fellow-men ? Who has not read with deep emotion those last pathetic lines, beautiful 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 Missolonghi, — the sufferer’s inability to make his farewell messages of love in¬ telligible, and the last long hours of silent pain ? Yet for the sake of furnishing his disciples with a “ ready reply,” Dr. Cumming can prevail on himself to inoculate them with a bad-spirited falsity like the following: — “ We have one striking exhibition of an infideVs brightest thoughts in some lines icritten 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 w Lord Byron. He says: — 116 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. ‘ 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! ‘Count o’er the joys thine hours have seen. Count o’er thy days from anguish free. And know, whatever thou hast been, ’T is 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 I hate, I care not when I quit the scene.’ ” It is difficult to suppose that Dr. Cumming can have bee* 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 introduc¬ tion of this feebly rabid doggerel as “an infidel’s brightest thoughts”? In marshalling the evidences of Christianity, Dr. Cumming directs most of his arguments against opinions that are either 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 mis¬ conception as to the character of free-thinking in the present day, than the recommendation of Leland’s “ Short and Easy Method with the Deists,” — a method which is unquestion¬ ably 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 tha trouble himself to write a feebler version of its EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 117 arguments. For example, on the question of the genuine¬ ness and authenticity of the New Testament writings, he says: “ If, therefore, at a period long subsequent 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 imagina¬ tion, surely the Jews would have instantly reclaimed 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.” 1 It is scarcely necessary to say that, in such argu¬ ment 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 forgery.” 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 according to the rules of historical criticism, and that an equally large number of men, who are not histori¬ cal critics, find the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the Scriptures opposed to their profoundest moral convictions. Dr. Cumming’s infidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, tries to convince himself that there is no God, and that Chris¬ tianity is an imposture, but who is all the while secretly con- scious that he is opposing the truth, and cannot help “ letting out” admissions “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 be¬ lieve 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 be- 1 Man. of Evidences, p. 81. 118 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. lieve that 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 believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tiudal, and Hobbes. I believe in Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not in revela¬ tion ; I believe in tradition; I believe in the Talmud; I believe in the Kordn; I believe not in the Bible. I believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I believe in Mahomet; I believe uot in Christ. And lastly, I believe in all unbelief.” The intellectual and moral monster whose creed is this complex web of contradictions is, moreover, according to Dr. Cumming, a being who unites much simplicity and imbe¬ cility with his Satanic hardihood, much tenderness of con¬ science with his obdurate vice. Hear the “ proof: ” — u 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 im¬ pression on his scorn and unbelief. At length I entertained a suspicion that there was something morally, rather than intellectually wrong, and that the bias was not in the intellect, but in the heart; one day there¬ fore I said to him, 1 1 must now state my conviction, and you may call me uncharitable, but duty compels me; you are living in some known and gross sin. 7 The man's countenance became pale; he bowed and left me." 1 Here we have the remarkable psychological phenomenon of an “ acute and enlightened ” man who, deliberately pur¬ posing to indulge in a favorite sin, and regarding the Gospel with scorn and unbelief, is, nevertheless, so much more scru¬ pulous than the majority of Christians, that he cannot “ em¬ brace 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 enlight¬ enment suggest to him, as a means of crushing the Gospel, to argue from day to day with Dr. Cumming, and who is withal so naive that he is taken by surprise when Dr Cumming, failing in argument, resorts to accusation, and so tender w 1 Man. of Evidences p. 254. EVANGELICAL TEACHING: 1)R. CUMMING. 119 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 Infidel,” of at the same time believing in tradition and “ believing in all unbelief,” it must be the mind of the infidel just described, for whose existence we have Dr. Cumming’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 hill — and I have ashed amid the moun¬ tains of Braemar 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 But¬ ler?’ ‘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?’ ‘Know it! Tell me that the Dee, the Cluuie, 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 my tongue cleave to my mouth’s roof, and my right hand forget its cunning, if I ever deny what is my deepest inner ex¬ perience, that this blessed book is the book of God.’ ” 1 Dr. Cumming is so slippery and lax in his mode of presen¬ tation, 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 truthfulness; in the other, of his judgment. His own faith, apparently, has not been altogether intui¬ tive, like that of his rhetorical peasant, for he tells us* 1 Church before the Flood, p. 35. 3 Apoc. Sketches, p. 405. 120 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. that he has himself experienced what it is to have religious doubts. “I was tainted while at the University 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 have read from that day, for fourteen or fifteen years, till this, and now J am as convinced, upon the clearest evidence, that this book is the book of God as that I now address you.” This expe¬ rience, however, instead of impressing on linn the fact that doubt may be the stamp of a truth-loving mind, — that sunt quibus non credidisse honor est, et fidei futurce 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 pow¬ ers and aspirations, but unable to find that faith in dogmatic Christianity. His own doubts apparentl} 7 were of a different kind. Nowhere in his pages have we found a humble, can¬ did, 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 anecdotes, and, where other re¬ sources 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 endeav¬ oring to meet and solve what he knows to be the real diffi¬ culties, contents himself with setting up popinjays to shoot at, for the sake of confirming the ignorance and winning the cheap 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 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: HR. CUMMING. 121 said, “ You see this heretical fellow has not a word to say for himself/’ Dr. Cumining, having drawn his ugly portrait of the iniidel, and put arguments of a convenient 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 syl¬ logism : Whatever tends to the glory of God is true ; it is for the glory of God that infidels should be as bad as possible; 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. 1 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. “ V oltaire,” 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 the very depths of the lowest sensuality.” With regard to many statements of a similar kind, equally at variance with truth, in Dr. Cumming’s vol¬ umes, 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 extrem- est supposition of educated ignorance will not reach. Even books of “evidences” quote from Voltaire the line,— “ Si Dieu n’existait pas, il faudrait l’inventer ; ” even persons fed on the mere whey and buttermilk of litera¬ ture must know that in philosophy Voltaire was nothing if 1 See Man. of Evidences, p. 73. * 122 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 athe¬ ist on this ground is as absurd as to say that a Jacobite opposed hereditary monarchy because he declared the Bruns¬ wick 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 experience are apocryphal, is not likely to put bor¬ rowed narratives 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 adduction 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 con¬ ceived 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 ver} r few specimens. Here is one: “ There is a thousand times more proof that the gospel of John was written by him than there is that the Ava(3acn<; was written by Xenophon, or the Ars Poetica by Horace.” If Dr. Cumming 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 prodi¬ gality 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.” How well Dr. Cumming EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 123 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 char¬ acter of the argument. It is called “ The Church before the Flood,” and is devoted chiefly to the adjustment of the ques¬ tion 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. Cumming’s mode of treating the question. He first tells us that “ the Bible has not a single scientific error in it; ” that “ its slightest intima¬ tions of scientific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,” and he asks : — 11 How is it that Moses, with no greater education than the Hindoo or the ancient philosopher, has written his hook, touching science at a thousand points, so accurately that scientific research has discov¬ ered no flaws iu 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 philoso¬ pher, to be incorrect, scientifically or historically ? ” According to this, the relation of the Bible to Science should be one of the strong points of apologists for Revela¬ tion ; 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 in¬ geniously, this fact, that the Jewish Lawgiver, though touch¬ ing science at a thousand points, has written nothing that has not been “ demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,” is an irrefragable proof of his having derived his knowledge from a supernatural source. How does it happen, then, that Dr. Gumming forsakes this strong position ? How is it that 124 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. we find him, some pages further on, engaged in reconciling Genesis with the discoveries of science, by means of imagi¬ native 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 dis¬ coveries by means of which its exact and strict truth has been demonstrated. And why should Dr. Cumming 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 dis¬ coveries. Perhaps, however, in saying of the Bible that its “ slightest intimations of scientific principles or natural phe¬ nomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,” Dr. Cumming merely means to im¬ ply 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 discoveries 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 argu¬ ments he urges on another. Dr. Cumming’s principles — or, we should rather say, con¬ fused notions — of biblical interpretation, as exhibited in this volume, are particularly significant of his mental calibre. He says : 1 “ Men of science, who are full of scientific investi¬ gation and enamored of scientific discovery, will hesitate be¬ fore 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 1 Church before the Flood, p 93. EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 125 between the discoveries of geology and our preconceived inter¬ pretations of the Bible. But this is not because the Bible is wrong, but because our interpretation is wrong.” (The ital- ics 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. Cumming, 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 cri¬ terion of its meaning lies in 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 interpre¬ tation adopted by the early German rationalists; in the latter case he has to show a further criterion by which we can judge what parts of the Bible are elastic and what rigid. If he says that the interpretation 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 bibli¬ cal text. Thus he makes the necessity of doctrines to salva¬ tion 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 admit¬ ting the principle of novelty in interpretation, completely 126 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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 appro¬ priate 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. Cumming, and occur even in his more de¬ vout passages, where their introduction must surely disturb the spiritual exercises of his hearers. Indeed, Roman Cath¬ olics 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 mas¬ terpiece of Satan; but reassure yourselves ! Dr. Cumming 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. 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 instruments of Satan, and vessels of wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are “no shams,” that they are “thoroughly in earnest,” — that is because they are in¬ spired by hell, because they are under an “ infra-natural ” influence. If their missionaries are found wherever Protes¬ tant 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. Cumming EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 127 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. 1 He admits, indeed, that “ there is a fragment of the Church of Christ in the very bosom of that awful apostasy,” 2 and that there are members of the Church of Rome in glory; but this admission is rare and epi¬ sodical, — 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 correla¬ tive of antagonism to the rest of mankind. It is not sym¬ pathy and helpfulness towards men as men, but towards men as Christians, 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 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, Puseyites, 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 dis¬ courses keep present to his hearers, is that of a God who hates his enemies, a God who teaches love by fierce denun¬ ciations of wrath, a God who encourages obedience to his precepts by elaborately revealing to us that his own govern¬ ment is in precise opposition to those precepts. We know the usual evasions on this subject. We know Dr. Cumming 1 Signs of the Times, p. 38. 2 Apoc. Sketches, p. 24o. 128 ESSAYS OF GEOKGE ELIOT. would say that even Koman 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 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 a child’s sense 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 testi¬ fied in the net moral effect of his sermons. The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system be¬ lieve that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but the educating of men’s souls, the creating within EVANGELICAL TEACHING: I)R. CUMMING. 129 them of holy dispositions, the subduing of egoistical 'preten¬ sions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire that the will of God — a will synonymous with goodness 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 eager¬ ness 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. Cum- miug’s delight in shadowing forth the downfall of the Man of Sin, in prognosticating the battle of Gog and Magog, and in advertising the premillennial Advent, is simply the trans¬ portation of political passions on to a so-called religious plat¬ form; it is the anticipation of the triumph of “our party,” 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 or¬ thodox Christianity, they are little calculated to produce “ A closer walk with God, A cairn and heavenly frame ; ” but are more likely to nourish egoistic complacency and pre¬ tension, a hard and condemnatory spirit towards one’s fellow- men, and a busy occupation with the minutiae of events, instead of a reverent contemplation of great facts and a wise VOL. IX. # 130 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. application 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 interpreta¬ tion, it bears about the same relation to the extension of gen¬ uine 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 readiness to strain the letter of the Scriptures which he so often manifests when his object is to prove a point against Romanism 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 Tliessalonians, refers to the Pope, he can ex¬ tort from the innocent word KaOlaai 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 “ Ca¬ thedrize here, while I go and pray yonder,” it is for Dr. Cum- ming to show more clearly than he has yet done. But when rigorous literality will favor the conclusion that the greater proportion of the human race will be eternally miserable, — then he is rigorously literal. He says : “ The Greek words, eis tovs alwvas tw alwvwv, here translated ‘ everlasting/ signify literally ‘unto the ages of ages;’ aid wv, ‘always being,’ that is, everlasting, ceaseless 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 instance, ‘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 that 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 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. GUMMING. 131 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. Cumming’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 aw¬ ful mystery of eternal punishment; he contends for it. Do we object, he asks, 1 to everlasting happiness ? then why ob¬ ject to everlasting misery ? — reasoning which is perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who anticipate the everlast¬ ing happiness for themselves and the everlasting misery for their neighbors. 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. Cumming’s reasoning will not admit of this idea. He sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into paper; that paper, when burnt, 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 resurrection. The death of the body means not annihilation. Not one feature of the face will be annihilated.” Having es¬ tablished the perpetuity of the body by this close and clear analogy, namely, that as there is a total change in the parti- 1 Mail, of Christ. Evidences, p. l&*. 132 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. cles 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 in¬ volves the perpetuity of the soul, but requires separate evi¬ dence for this, and finds such evidence by begging the very question at issue; namely, by asserting that the text of the Scriptures 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. Cumming’s writings, and we have done. This is the perverted moral judgment that everywhere reigns in them. Not that this perversion is peculiar to Dr. Cumming: it belongs to the dogmatic system which he shares with all evangelical believers. But the ab¬ stract tendencies of systems are represented in very different degrees 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. Cumming 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 un¬ regenerate 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 character 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 unrenewed and unchanged, we pronounce that their thoughts are evil. To ascertain this, we must refer to the object around which our thoughts ought EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 138 continually to circulate. The Scriptures assert that this object is the glory of God; that for this we ought to think, tcFact, and to speak; and that in thus thinking, acting, and speaking, there is involved the purest and most enduring 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 inas¬ much as their every thought comes short of this lofty aim, in so much ioes 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 chauces to be one of the constitutional tendencies of their individual character, left uneflaced 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 main¬ tain such a character 1 Again we read : 2 — 11 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 the ground of Dorcas’ liberality. Some men give to the poor because they are os¬ tentatious , or because they think the poor will ultimately avenge their neglect; but the Christian gives to the poor , not only because he Ims sensibilities 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. Cumming appears to express sentiments which, we are happy to think, are not shared by the majority of his brethren in the faith. Dr. Cumming, 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 1 Qcc. Disc. voL i. p. 8. 1 Ibid. p. 230. 134 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. profitable; according to his experience, between the feelings of ostentation anti selfish alarm and the feeling of love to Christ, there lie no sensibilities which can lead a man to re¬ lieve want. Granting, as we should prefer to think, that it is Dr. Cumming’s exposition of his sentiments which is defi¬ cient rather than his sentiments themselves, still the fact that the deficiency lies precisely here, and that he can over¬ look 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. Cum- ming invariably assumes that, in fulminating 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 prac¬ tice. It is time he should be told that the reverse is the fact; that there are men who do not merely cast a superfi¬ cial glance at his doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or jus¬ tice, but who, after a close consideration of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development, and therefore positively noxious. Dr. Cumming is fond of show¬ ing up the teaching of Romanism, and accusing it of under¬ mining true morality: it is time he should be told that 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. Cumming’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, consid- EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 135 ered as affecting the well-being of his creatures; he has sat¬ isfaction 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 obliga¬ tion from which the law declares him free, must be animated not by the spirit of fidelity to his fellow-man, but by a de¬ sire to make “the name of God more known.” The sweet charities of domestic life — the ready hand and the sooth¬ ing word in sickness, the forbearance towards frailties, the prompt helpfulness in all efforts and sympathy in all joys, are simply evil if they result from a “constitutional ten¬ dency,” or from dispositions disciplined by the experience of suffering and the perception of moral loveliness. 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 nat¬ ural 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 en¬ ergy and discretion, not from an honest desire to fulfil his responsibilities as a member of society and a father, but — that “God’s praise may be sung.” Dr. Cumming’s Christian pays his debts for the glory of God ; were it not for the coer¬ cion 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 re¬ placed by a patent steel-spring, — anxiety for the “ glory of God.” ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 186 Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the corn* plete prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as re¬ ligious systems have been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and though dogmas may ham¬ per, 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 that hatred of the enemies of God which is the principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Benevo¬ lence 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 benevolent. If the sooth¬ ing 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 producing an action , but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the action of accessory motives will be excluded. If, then, as Dr. Cumming inculcates, the glory of God is to be “ the absorb¬ ing and the influential aim ” in our thoughts and actions, this must 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 influence — it really cherishes all that is best and love¬ liest in man — only when God is contemplated as sympathiz¬ ing 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 EVANGELICAL TEACHING: DR. CUMMING. 137 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 degradation, 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 ex¬ tension and multiplication 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. Cumming’s God is the very opposite of all this. He is a God who, instead of sharing and aiding our human sym¬ pathies, is directly in collision with them; who, instead of strengthening the bond between man and man, by encourag¬ ing 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 for Dr. Cumming to say that we are to love man for God’s sake : with the conception of God which his teaching presents, the love of man for God’s sake involves, as his writings abundantly show, a strong principle of hatred. We can only love one being for the sake of another when there is an habitual delight in associat¬ ing 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. Cumming’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. 138 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. and if they contribute to His glory, it is against their will. Dr. Cumming 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 ques¬ tion, many a generous instinct, is repelled as the suggestion of a supernatural 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 dili¬ gent exertion of the intellect, instead of being a sin, is part of their responsibility, — that Bight and Beason are synony¬ mous. 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. Cumming, let us express a hope that we have in no case exaggerated the unfavorable charac¬ ter of the inferences to be drawn from his pages. His creed often obliges him to hope the worst of men, and exert him¬ self in proving that the worst is true; but thus far we are happier than he. We have no theory which requires us to attribute unworthy motives to Dr. Cumming, no opinions, religious or irreligious, which can make it a gratification to us to detect him in delinquencies. On the contrary, the bet¬ ter we are able to think of him as a man, while we are obliged to disapprove him as a theologian, the stronger will be the evidence for our conviction that the tendency towards good in human nature has a force which no creed can utterly coun¬ teract, and which ensures the ultimate triumph of that ten¬ dency over all dogmatic perversions. THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. HERE is a valuable class of books on great subjects -L 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 vacil¬ lation 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 remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he likes to have it said that “his errors are to be deplored,” leaving it not too cer¬ tain 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 Chris¬ tianity which opposes itself to nothing in particular, an unde¬ fined 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 ex¬ cesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which 140 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 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.” He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up 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 scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought, — a spongy texture of mind, that gravi¬ tates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is stanch 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 knowl¬ edge 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 skele¬ ton. Among such serviceable writers, Mr. Lecky’s “ History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Eu¬ rope ” entitles him to a high place. He has prepared him¬ self for its production by an unusual amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations with much judgment; and he gives proofs of those important moral qual¬ ifications, 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 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 141 with disquisition; and his writing is freer than elsewhere from an apparent confusedness of thought, and an exuber ance 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 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 argu¬ ments against them, but because of their incongruity with prevalent habits of thought. Here is his statement of the two classes of influences by which the mass of men, in what is called civilized society, get their beliefs gradually modified: — 11 If we ask why it is that the world has 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 persons would proba¬ bly be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and foimd 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. u 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¬ selves 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 142 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. with derision, though it is probable that some of his audience 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; hut they are aware that, at certain known periods of history, controversies on those subjects 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 pervading 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 aud 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 seem to be irreconcilable even with his own remarks later on; but they lead him to the statement, thoroughly made out by his historical survey that “ the movement was mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible; that men came gradually to disbelieve in witch¬ craft, 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 possession of the clergy.” We have rather painful proof that this “ second class of influences ” with a vast number go hardly deeper than fashion, and that witchcraft to many of us is absurd only on the same ground that our grandfather’s 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 invis¬ ible world are usually unctuous personages dressed in excel¬ lent broadcloth, who soar above the curtain-poles without any broomstick, and who are not given to unprofitable in¬ trigues. The enlightened imagination rejects the figure of a witch with her profile in dark relief against the moon, and THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 143 her broomstick cutting a constellation. No undiscovered nat¬ ural laws, no names of “ respectable ” witnesses, are invoked to make us feel our presumption in questioning the diabolic inti¬ macies 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 fore¬ shortened 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 unbe¬ lievers in heavy gentlemen who float in the air by means of undiscovered laws are also taxed with atheism; illiberal as it is not 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 re¬ markable parallelism, Sir Thomas Browne goes on: “Those that, to refute their incredulity, 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 mere drapery of circumstance, if it were not for this prominent difference between our 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 conditions, 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,—the sum of conditions resulting from the laws of material growth, from changes produced by great historical collisions shattering the structures of ages and mak¬ ing new highways for events and ideas, and from the activities 144 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of higher minds no longer existing merely as opinions and teachings, but as institutions and organizations with which the interests, the affections, and the habits of the multitude are inextricably interwoven. No undiscovered laws account¬ ing 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 representation of the co-existences 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 seances at a guinea a head for the sake of being pinched by “Mary Jane” can annihilate rail¬ ways, steamships, and electric telegraphs, which are demon¬ strating 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 com nected 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, — “ all those conceptions of diabolical presence, all that predisposition towards the miraculous, which acted so fearfully upon the imaginations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, existed; but the implicit faith, the boundless and triumphant credulity, with which the virtue of eccle¬ siastical rites was accepted, rendered diem comparatively innocuous. If men had been a little less superstitious, the effects of their supersti* THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 145 tion would have been much more terrible. It was firmly believed that any one who deviated from the strict line of orthodoxy must soon suc¬ cumb beneath the power of Satan; but as there was no spirit of re¬ bellion or doubt, this persuasion did not produce any extraordinary terrorism.” Tlie 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 excellent work, u De la Magie,” — “ Crescit cum magia hceresis, cum hceresi magia .” Even those who doubted were terrified at their doubts, for trust is more easily undermined than terror; fear is easier 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 interfusion with higher faculties which we call awe. Secondly, Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic Protes¬ tantism, 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 sentiments were, that he would not suffer a witch to live (lie was not much more merciful to Jews); and, in spite of his fondness for children, believing a certain child to have been begotten 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 convic¬ tions of men who in mere individual capacity and moral force were very much above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, 10 VOL. LX- /46 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. during the comparatively short period of their ascendency, surpassed all Christians before them in the elaborate ingenu¬ ity of the tortures they applied for the discovery of witch¬ craft and sorcery, 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 pro¬ fession of men, called “ prickers,” to thrust long pins into the body of a suspected witch in order to detect the insensible spot which was the infallible sign of her guilt. On a super¬ ficial view one would be in danger of saying that the main difference between the teachers who sanctioned these things, and the mucli-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 proposi¬ tions. We do not share Mr. Buckle’s opinion that a Scotch minister’s groans were a part of his deliberate plan for keep¬ ing the people in a state of terrified subjection; the ministers themselves held the belief they taught, and well might groan over it. What a blessing has a little false logic been to the world ! Seeing that men are so slow to question their prem¬ ises, they must have made each other much more miserable, if pity had not sometimes drawn tender conclusions not war¬ ranted 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 in¬ consistent 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 concen¬ tration of the mind upon it corresponds to that predominance of technical skill in art which ends in degradation of the art¬ ist’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 THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 147 its end, which is treated in an interesting manner by Mr. Lecky. It is worth noticing that the most important de¬ fences of the belief in witchcraft, against the growing scepti¬ cism in the latter part of the sixteenth century and in the seventeenth, were the productions of men who in some de¬ partments were among the foremost thinkers of their time. One of them was Jean Bodin, the famous writer on govern¬ ment and jurisprudence, whose “ Republic,” Hallam thinks, had an important influence in England, and furnished “a store of arguments and examples that were not lost on the thoughtful minds of our countrymen.” In some of his views he was original and bold; for example, he anticipated Mon. tesquieu in attempting to appreciate the relations of govern¬ ment and climate. Hallam inclines to the opinion that he was a Jew, and attached Divine authority only to the Old Tes¬ tament. But this was enough to furnish him with his chief data for the existence of witches and for their capital punish¬ ment ; and in the account of his “ Republic,” given by Hallam, there is enough evidence' that the sagacity which often en¬ abled 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 main¬ tain the reality of witchcraft. It should be said that he was equally confident of the unreality of the Copernican hypothe¬ sis, on the ground that it was contrary to the tenets of the theologians and philosophers and to common-sense, and there- fore subversive of the foundations of every science. Of his work on witchcraft, Mr. Lecky says : — “ The 1 Demonomanie des Sorciers ’ is chiefly an appeal to authority, which the author deemed on this subject so unanimous and so conclu¬ sive 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 148 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. the fathers. He showed how the laws of all nations recognized the existence of witchcraft; and he collected hundreds of cases which had been investigated before the tribunals of his own or of other countries. He relates with the most minute and circumstantial detail, and with the most unfaltering confidence, all the proceedings at the witches’ Sab¬ bath, the methods which the witches employed in transporting them¬ selves through the air, their transformations, their carnal intercourse with the Devil, their various means of injuring their enemies, the signs that led to their detection, their confessions when condemned, and their demeanor at the stake.” Something must be allowed for a lawyer’s affection towards a belief which had furnished so many “ cases.” Bodin’s work had been prompted by the treatise, “De Prestigiis Daemo- num,” written by John Wier, a German physician,—a treatise which is worth notice as an example of a transitional form of opinion for which many analogies may be found in the his¬ tory of both religion and science. Wier 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 advantage 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 be¬ sought 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, Trois 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 afterwards, on the other side, came Montaigne, whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at negatives without any apparatus of method. A certain keen narrowness of THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 149 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 busi¬ ness to persuade one’s self that the test of truth lies in the multitude of believers : “ En une presse ou les fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre.” 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 la- quelle concevoir il n’y a pas moins de science qu’a concevoir la science.” And apropos of the immense traditional evi¬ dence which weighed with such men as Bodin, he 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 kuot. Apres tout, c’est mettre ses conjectures a bien haut prix, que d’enfaire cuire un homvie tout vij .” Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is a sign that the weather is changing; yet much later, namely, after 1GG5, when the Royal Society had been founded, our own Glanvil, the author of the “ Scepsis Scientifica, — a work that w as a remarkable advance towards a 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. 150 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELiO'T. “ The ‘ Sadducismus Triumpliatus,’ 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 iu England. Every¬ where 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 Ortho- ' dox faith united in discrediting witchcraft. They laughed at it, as palpably absurd, as involving the most grotesque and ludicrous con¬ ceptions, 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 iu 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 tlie miraculous. He saw that the reason why witchcraft was ridiculed was because it was a phase of the miraculous, and the w r ork 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 posses¬ sion in the Bible were invariably placed on a level with those that were tried in the courts of England. That the evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he firmly believed; and this, indeed, was scarcely dis¬ puted ; but, until the sense of a priori improbability was removed, no possible accumulation of facts would cause men to believe it. To that task he accordingly addressed himself. Anticipating the idea and almost the words of modern controversialists, he urged that there was such a thing as a credulity of unbelief; and that those who believed so strange a concurrence of delusions as was necessary on the sup¬ position of the unreality of witchcraft, were far more credulous than those who accepted the belief. He made his very scepticism his prin¬ cipal weapon ; and, analyzing with much acuteness the a priori objec¬ tions, he showed that they rested upon au 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 rea¬ soning based on the supposition could dispense men from examining the evidence. He concluded with a large collection of cases, the evidence of which was, as he thought, incontestable.” We have quoted this sketch because Glanvil’s argument against the a priori objection of absurdity is fatiguingly urged in relation to other alleged marvels which to busy THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 151 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 Glan- vil, in combating 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 Scientifica.” But perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable to this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition, because, while they have attacked its misapplica¬ tions, they have been the more solicited by the vague sense that tradition is really the basis of our best life. Our senti¬ ments 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 functions or into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of any profound comprehensive view of man’s historical development and the dependence of one age on another, a mind at all rich in sensibilities must always have had an indefinite uneasiness in an undistinguisffi ing attack on the coercive influence of tradition. And this may be the apology for the apparent inconsistency of Glan- vil’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; 152 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. with clearness of conception, with calm justice, bent on ap predating the necessary tendency of ideas, and with an appropriateness of illustration that could be supplied only by extensive 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 damna¬ tory, — doctrines held as fully by Protestant sects as by the Catholics; and in proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposi¬ tion to the favorite modern notion of persecution defeating its own object, that the Church, holding the dogma of exclu¬ sive 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 gov¬ ernments, by their power over institutions and patronage, as well as over punishment, have not power over the interests and inclinations of men, and over most of those external con¬ ditions 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, gov¬ ernments 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, persecu¬ tion 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 perpetual source of motive, the eternal, un¬ mitigated miseries of a hell that was the inevitable destination of a majority amongst 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, lie commends to the special attention of his readers the follow¬ ing quotation from a work attributed without question to the THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 153 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 a time when there was warm debate on the question of toleration; and it was his great object to vindicate him¬ self and his French fellow-Protestants from all laxity on this point: — u Peut on nier que le paganisme est tombe dans le monde par Pauto- rite des empereurs romains? On peut assurer sans temerite que le paganisme seroit encore debout, et que les trois quarts de PEurope seroient encore payens si Constantin et ses successeurs n’avaient em¬ ploye leur autorite pour l’abolir. Mais, je vous prie, de quelles voies Dieu s’est il servi dans ces derniers .siecles pour retablir la veritable religion dans Poccident ? Les rois de Suede , ceux de Danemarclc, ceux d'Angleterre, les magistrals souverains de Suisse , des Pais Bas, des titles libres d'Allemagne, les princes dlecteurs, et autres princes souve¬ rains de Vempire, riont ils 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, is the legitimate conse¬ quence. 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 St. Francis, the fierce denunciations of a St. 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 unmending anguish as the destiny of a vast multitude whose nature we share, than the rubicund cheerfulness of some modern divines, who pro¬ fess to unite a smiling liberalism with a well-bred and tacit but unshaken confidence in the reality of the bottomless pit. 154 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. But, in fact, as Mr. Lecky maintains, that awful image, with its group of associated dogmas concerning the inherited ourse, 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. iNo man now writes eager vindi¬ cations 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 con¬ currence of 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, scien tific, and moral development of rationalism, the seculariza¬ tion of politics, and the industrial history of rationalism, embrace a wide range of diligently gathered facts ; hut 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 modification 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 pub¬ lished exposition. Certain epochs in theoretic conception, certain considerations, which should be fundamental to his survey, are introduced quite incidentally in a sentence or two, or in a note which seems to be an afterthought. Great writers and their ideas are touched upon too slightly and with too little discrimination, and important theories are THE INFLUENCE OF RATIONALISM. 155 sometimes characterized with a rashness which conscientious 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 ration¬ alism 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 the 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 preva¬ lent 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- headed gentleman who represents the spirit of the age by observing, 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 “pre¬ dispositions,” 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 definition ; but Mr. Lecky does not supply this, and the origi¬ nal 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 characteristics of modern thought 156 ESSAYS OF GEOfLGE ELIOT. and civilization, compared with ancient, as a radiation in the first instance from a change in religious conceptions. The supremely important fact that the gradual reduction of all phenomena within the sphere of established law, which car¬ ries as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous, has its determining 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 pre¬ conceived notions which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. There is not room here to explain and justify the impres¬ sions of dissatisfaction which have been briefly indicated; but a serious writer, like Mr. Lecky, will not find such sugges¬ tions altogether useless. The objections, even the misunder¬ standings, 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 im¬ plied in the assertion that philosophers of the sensational school “ can never rise to the conception of the disinter¬ ested ; ” 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. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. T is an interesting branch of psychological observation ta -L note the images that are habitually associated with ab¬ stract 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 tolera bly fair test of the amount of concrete knowledge and expe¬ rience which a given word represents in the minds of two persons who use it with equal familiarity. The word rail¬ ways , for example, will probably call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly locomotive, the image either of a Bradshaw, or of the station with which he is most famil¬ iar, or of an indefinite length of tram-road; he will alternate between these three images, which represent his stock of con¬ crete acquaintance with railways. But suppose a man to have had successively the experience of a navvy, an engi- neer, 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 pre¬ sent themselves to his mind at the mention of the word rail¬ ways, 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 ulti- mate function in civilization. He may talk of a vast net¬ work of railways stretching over the globe, of future lines in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment-rooms in the Sand¬ wich Islands, with none the less glibness because his distinct 158 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. conceptions on the subject do not extend beyond his one sta tion 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 complex 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- exhibitions, shall we find a group of true peasantry ? What English artist even attempts to rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as the pictures of Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo ? Even one of the greatest painters of the pre-eminently 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 eauld 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 English rustics, whose costume seems to indicate that they are meant for plough¬ men, with exotic features that remind us of a handsome 'priino tenore. Bather than such cockney sentimentality as this, as an education for the taste and sympathies, we prefer the most crapulous group of boors that Teniers ever painted. But even those among our painters, who aim at giving the rustic type of features, who are far above the effeminate THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 159 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 are usually buxom and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dis¬ lodge from the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead of life. The painter is still under the in¬ fluence 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 chive their team afield; idyllic shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes; idyllic villagers dance in the check¬ ered shade, and refresh 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 twin¬ kles, the slow utterance, and the heavy slouching walk, re¬ mind one rather of that melancholy animal the camel, than of the sturdy countryman, with striped stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, who represents the traditional English peas¬ ant. 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 bur¬ den over the meadow, and the bright-green space, which tells of work done, gets larger and larger, you pronounce the scene “smiling / 7 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 expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far as possible from your conception of idyllic merri¬ ment. That delicious effervescence of the mind which we call fun, has no equivalent for the northern peasant, except tipsy 160 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. revelry; the only realm of fancy and imagination for me 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 sim¬ ple 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 upright 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 mas¬ ter’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 butter¬ cups, nor is integrity in the least established by that classic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make men moral, some¬ thing more is requisite than to turn them out to grass. Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr. Ruskin’s in¬ dignation, are surely too frank an idealization to be mislead¬ ing ; and since popular chorus is one of the most effective elements of the opera, we can hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant lace bodices and picturesque motley, unless we are prepared to advocate a chorus of colliers in their pit costume, or a ballet of char-women 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 extension of our sympathies. Appeals founded on generalizations and statistics require a sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in activity; but a picture of human life such as a great artist can give, sur¬ prises even the trivial and the selfish into that attention to what is apart from themselves, which may be called the raw material of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into Luckie Mucklehackit’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 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 161 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 towards linking the higher classes with the lower, towards obliterating the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of sermons and philosophi¬ cal 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 personal lot. All the more sacred is the task of the artist when he under¬ takes 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 conver¬ sation 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 towards a false object instead of the true one. This perversion is not the less fatal because the misrepre¬ sentation which gives 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 popula¬ tion ; 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 contribution Art has ever made to the awakening of social sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Plornisli’s colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun-picture, while there is the same startling aspiration in his de¬ scription of the gestures and phrases of Boots, as in the TO L. IX. 11 162 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. speeches of Shakspeare’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 re¬ produce external traits that serve in some degree as a cor¬ rective to his frequently false psychology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children and artisans, his melodramatic boatmen and courtesans, would be as obnoxious as Eugene Sue’s ideal¬ ized proletaires, in encouraging the miserable 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 millennial 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 ten¬ dency created by the splendid conquests of modern general¬ ization, 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 uncultured classes are prepared for a condition which appeals principally to their moral sensibilities; the aristocratic dilettanteism which attempts to restore the “ good old times ” 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 co-exist with a real knowledge of the people, with a thorough study of their habits, their ideas, their mo¬ tives. The landholder, the clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining-agent, have each an opportunity for making precious observations on different sections 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 auy man of sufficient moral and intellectual breadth, TIIE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 163 whose observations would not be vitiated by a foregone con¬ clusion 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 tendencies in their position towards disintegration or towards development, — and if, after all this study, he would give us the result of his observations 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 de¬ gree done for the Germans by Riehl; and we wish to make his books known to our readers, not only for the sake of the interesting matter they contain, and the important reflec¬ tions 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 peas¬ antry ; 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 peasantry, we must remember what the tenant- farmers and small proprietors were in England half a cen¬ tury 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 ser¬ vants, and sat with them round the kitchen-lire in the even- 164 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. ing. In those days the quarried parlor was innocent of a carpet, and its only specimens of art were a framed sampler and the best tea-board; the daughters, even of substantial farmers, had often no greater accomplishment in writing and spelling than they could procure at a dame-school; and, in¬ stead 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 farmers, whose style of living and mental culture are often equal to that of the professional class in provincial towns, we can hardly enter the least imposing farmhouse without finding a bad piano in the “ drawing¬ room,” and some old annuals, disposed with a symmetrical imitation of negligence, on the table; though the daughters may still drop their h’s, their vowels are studiously narrow; and it is only in very primitive regions that they will con¬ sent 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 Bauerntlium, or peasantry, described 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 so modified to express the personality of the individ¬ ual, 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. Foi THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 165 example, in certain districts of Hesse are seen long faces, with, high foreheads, long, straight noses, and small eyes, with arched eyebrows and large eyelids. On comparing these physiognomies with the sculptures in the church of St. Eliza¬ beth, at Marburg, executed in the thirteenth century, it will be found that the same old Hessian type of face has sub¬ sisted unchanged; with this distinction only, that the sculp¬ tures 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 explains why the old German painters gave the heads of their subjects a greater uniformity of type than the painters of our day; the race had not at¬ tained to a high degree of individualization 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 dia¬ lect, 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 his¬ tory, to which he clings with the utmost tenacity. In certain parts of Hungary there are still descendants of German col¬ onists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who go about 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 Hunga¬ rian. Another remarkable case of the same kind is that of the Wends, a Sclavonic race settled in Lusatia, whose num¬ bers amount to two hundred thousand, living either scattered 166 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. among the German population, or in separate parishes. They have their own schools and churches, and are taught in the Sclavonic tongue. The Catholics among them are rigid ad¬ herents 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 charac¬ teristics of his race. German education, German law and government, service in the standing army, and many othe/ agencies, are in antagonism to his national exclusiveness; but the wives and mothers here, as elsewhere, are a conserva¬ tive influence, and the habits temporarily 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 cus¬ toms indicate that they have been, from the first, an agricul¬ tural people. For example, they have traditional modes of treating their domestic animals. Each cow has its own name, generally chosen carefully, so as to express the special quali¬ ties of the animal; and all important family events are narrated to the bees, a custom which is found also in West¬ phalia. 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 towards Lusatia, that he may be as lucky as the Wends, who live there. The peculiarity of the peasant’s language consists chiefly in his retention of historical peculiarities, which gradually disappear 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 reck¬ ons. In the baptismal names of his children he is guided by THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 167 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 inherit¬ ance 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 I., 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, as 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 Huttenberg 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 petticoats 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 au untraditional costume, as an English servant-girl would now think herself in a linsey-woolsey apron or a thick muslin cap. In 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 unliistorical 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 168 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. could be persuaded to put them on his own table. However, the unwillingness of the peasant to adopt innovations has a not unreasonable foundation in the fact, that for him ex¬ periments 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 the¬ orists, who complain of the farmer’s obstinacy. The peas¬ ant has the smallest possible faith in theoretic knowledge; he thinks it rather dangerous than otherwise, as is well in¬ dicated 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 standing term of ignominy for the inhabitant of the Rhine village, who repays it in kind by the epithet karst (mattock) or kukuh (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 u 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 his¬ torical offence the magistrates of the district had always inflicted the equally historical punishment of shutting up the most incorrigible offenders, not in prison, but in their own pigsty. In recent times, however, the government, wishing to correct the rudeness of these peasants, appointed an “ en¬ lightened” 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, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 169 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, a as had been beforetime.” And the magistrate who abolished in¬ carceration in the pigsty could never obtain the respect of the neighborhood. This happened no longer ago than the beginning of the present century. But it must not be supposed that the historical piety of the German peasant extends to anything not immediately connected with himself. He has the warmest piety towards the old tumble-down house which his grandfather built, and which nothing will induce him to improve 5 but towards 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 discern the remnants of the feudal relations in innumerable customs and phrases, but you will ask in vain for historical 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 Charle¬ magne and Frederic Barbarossa. Riehl well observes that the feudal system, which made the peasant the bondman of his lord, was an immense benefit in a country, — the greater part of which had still to be colon¬ ized,— rescued the peasant from vagabondage, and laid the foundation of persistency and endurance in future genera¬ tions. If a free German peasantry belongs only to modern times, it is to his ancestor who was a serf, — and even, 111 the earliest times, a slave, — that the peasant owes the foundation of his independence, namely, his capability of a settled ex- 170 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. istence,— nay, his unreasoning persistency, which has its important function in the development of the race. Perhaps the very worst result of that unreasoning persist¬ ency is the peasant’s inveterate habit of litigation. Every one remembers the immortal description of Dandie Din- mont’s importunate application to Lawyer Pleydell to man¬ age his “ bit lawsuit,” till at length Pleydell consents to help him to ruin himself, 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 lit¬ igious peasant piques himself, like Mr. Saddletree, on his knowledge of the law, and this vanity is the chief impulse to mnny 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. Pie hi justly urges the importance of simplifying law proceedings, so as to cut off this vanity at its source, and also of encour¬ aging, by every possible means, the practice of arbitration. The peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, for the same reason that he does not make love and marry in sum¬ mer, — because he has no time for that sort of thing. Any¬ thing 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 Westerwald, was enlisted as a recruit, at Weilburg in Nassau. The lad, having never in his life slept in a bed, when he had got into one for the first time began to cry like a child; and he deserted twice because he could not reconcile himself to sleeping 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 because their condition was too much im¬ proved ! The genuine peasant is Dever ashamed of his rank THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 171 and calling; lie 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 peas¬ ant 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-function¬ aries, there is no example. The German novelists who undertake to give pictures of peasant-life, fall into the same mistake as our English novel¬ ists ; they transfer their own feelings to ploughmen and woodcutters, and give them both joys and sorrows of which they know nothing. The peasant never questions the obliga¬ tion of family ties, — he questions no custom , — but tender affection, as it exists amongst 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, because he shook the food out of his trembling hands. Then these same ungrate¬ ful children observed one day that their own little boy v T as 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 172 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELlOt. 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 sto¬ ries,” says Riehl, “ transferred their own emotional life to the peasant, they obliterated what is precisely his most pre¬ dominant characteristic, namely, that with him general cus¬ tom 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 headwork 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 population, 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, oppor¬ tunity 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 them under new circumstances, and on relations foreign to his experience. Hence it is that the German peasant who emigrates, so constantly falls a victim to unprincipled ad¬ venturers 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 colonise; and among all Ger¬ man emigrants, the peasant class are the most successful. But many disintegrating forces have been at work on the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 173 peasant character, and degeneration is unhappily going on at a greater pace than development. In the wine districts especially, the inability of the small proprietors to bear up ander the vicissitudes of the market, or to insure a high qual¬ ity 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 inevitable 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 de¬ pendent on ready money than formerly : thus, where a peas¬ ant 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 discounted, 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 de¬ veloped in him. His only knowledge of modern history is 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 cus¬ toms, and torments him with new formalities. The source of all this is the false system of “enlightening” the peasant which has been adopted by the bureaucratic governments. A system which disregards the traditions and hereditary attach¬ ments of the peasant, and appeals only to a logical under- 174 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. standing which is not yet developed in him, is simply dis¬ integrating and ruinous to the peasant character. The inter¬ ference 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 con¬ ditions of which are bound up with the historical character¬ istics of the peasant, the bureaucratic plan of government is bent on improvement by its patent machinery of state- appointed functionaries and off-liand regulations in accordance with modern enlightenment. The spirit of communal ex¬ clusiveness, the resistance to the indiscriminate establish ment of strangers, is an intense traditional feeling in the peasant. “ This gallows is for us and our children,” is the typical motto of this spirit. But such exclusiveness is highly irrational, and repugnant to modern liberalism; there¬ fore a bureaucratic government at once opposes it, and encourages to the utmost the introduction of new inhabitants in the provincial communes. Instead of allowing the peas¬ ants to manage their own affairs, and, if they happen to believe that five and four make eleven, to unlearn the prejudice 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 a scientific theologian, and as little as possible of a peasant. In this, Riehl 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 comparison in England, where many of us can remember country districts in which the great mass of the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 175 people were Christianized by illiterate Methodist and Inde- pendent ministers, while the influence of the parish clergy¬ man 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 revolu¬ tionary 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 government 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 happen¬ ing there ; so he 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 received 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 176 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. they had a common plan of co-operation. This, however, the peasants have never had. Systematic co-operation im¬ plies general conceptions, 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 pro¬ portions. And the revolutionary 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 afterwards, with a doubtful look, whether it were to con¬ sist of infantry or cavalry. When royal domains were de¬ clared 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 continue as before, and whether the removal of the feudal obligations meant that the farmer should become owner of the land. It is in the same naive way that Communism is interpreted by the German peasantry. The wide spread among them of communistic doctrines, the eagerness with which they lis¬ tened to a plan for the partition of property, seemed to coun¬ tenance the notion that it was a delusion to suppose the peasant would be secured from this intoxication by his love of secure possession and peaceful earnings. But, in fact, the THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 17? peasant contemplated partition by the light of an histori¬ cal reminiscence rather than of novel theory. The golden age, in the imagination 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 posses¬ sions 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 firewood, free glazing 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 par¬ tition had never entered the mind of the peasant commun¬ ist ; and the perception that this was an essential preliminary to 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 prev¬ alent. Here the peasant is generally sunk to the position of the proletaire, living from hand to mouth ; he has nothing to lose, but everything to gain by partition. The coarse nature of the peasant has here been corrupted into bestiality by the disturbance of his instincts, while he is as yet inca¬ pable of principles; and in this type of the degenerate peas¬ ant is seen the worst example of ignorance intoxicated by theory. A significant hint as to the interpretation the peasants put 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 burdens imposed on them by their mediatized princes, by presenting their demands in a very rough way before the ducal or princely Scliloss; they ;et their faces against the VOL. IX. 12 178 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. bureaucratic management of the communes, deposed the gov¬ ernment functionaries who had been placed over them as burgomasters and magistrates, and abolished the whole bu¬ reaucratic 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 revo¬ lution, but by a purely narrow and personal impulse towards 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 Bare, 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 peo¬ ple, 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 reconstitu¬ tion 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 external authority which the revolutionary party had won in Baden that attracted the peasants into a participation of the struggle. Such, Ptielil tells us, are the general characteristics of the German peasantry, characteristics which subsist amidst a wide variety of circumstances. In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, the peasant lives on extensive estates ; in Westphalia he lives in large isolated homesteads; in the Westerwald and in Sauerland, in little groups of villages and hamlets ; on the Pliine, land is for the most part parcelled out among small proprietors, who live together in large vil¬ lages. Then, of course, the diversified physical geography of THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 179 Germany gives rise to equally diversified methods of land- culture ; and out of these various circumstances grow numer¬ ous specific differences in manner and character. But the generic character of the German peasant is everywhere the same, —in the clean mountain-liamlet and in the dirty fishing- village on the coast, in 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 foregoing portrait of the German peasant, that Riehl is not a man who looks at objects through the spectacles either of the doctrinaire 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 completion 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 pedes¬ trian, 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-political-conservatism; 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 historical elements must, he believes, be simply destructive of social vitality. 1 What has grown up historically can only die out historically, by the gradual operation of necessary laws. The external con¬ ditions which society has inherited from the past are but the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human 1 Throughout this article, in our statement of Riehl’s opinions, we must he understood not as quoting Riehl, but as interpreting »\'d :? him. 180 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT- beings who compose it; the internal conditions and the exter nal are related to each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take place only by the gradual consen¬ taneous 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 cornfield. Je- dem Menschen , says Rielil, ist sein Zopf angeboren, warum soil denn der sociale Sprachgebrauch nicht auch sein Zopf haben ? — which we may render : “ As long as snobbism runs in the blood, why should it not run in our speech ? ” As a neces¬ sary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must ob¬ tain purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices 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 in anything but a rational state; the great sections of the civilized world are only approximatively intelligible to each other, — and even that, only at the cost of long 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 defi¬ niteness and certainty. Suppose, then, that the effect which has been again and again made to construct a universal lan¬ guage 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 many-hued significance, 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, r % ’ch is a great deal more than science. With the anomalies inconveniences of historical language, you will have THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 181 parted with its music and its passions, and its vital qualities as an expression of individual character, with its subtle capa¬ bilities 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 communication of ideas by a graduated adjustment of ticks, to be represented in writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A melancholy “ lan¬ guage 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 rami¬ fications 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 tendencies 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 remain undis¬ turbed 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 England, where we have to recall it by an effort of memory and reflec¬ tion ; for though our English life is in its core intensely tra¬ ditional, 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 : — goodness mingled with what they now regard as outworn prejudices. Indeed my philosophical notions, such as they are, continu¬ ally carry me back to the time when the fitful gleams of a spring day used to show me my own shadow as that of a small boy on a small pony, riding by the side of a larger cob- mounted shadow over the breezy uplands which we used to dignify with the name of hills, or along by-roads, with broad grassy borders and hedgerows reckless of utility, on our way to outlying hamlets, whose groups of inhabitants were as dis¬ tinctive to my imagination as if they had belonged to different regions of the globe. From these we sometimes rode onward to the adjoining parish, where also my father officiated, for he was a pluralist, but — I hasten to add — on the smallest scale; for his own extra living was a poor vicarage, with hardly fifty parishioners, and its church would have-made a LOOKING BACKWARD. 273 very shabby bam, — the gray, worm-eaten wood of its pews and pulpit, with their doors only half-hanging on the hinges, being exactly the color of a lean mouse which I once observed as an interesting member of the scant congregation, and con¬ jectured to be the identical Church-mouse I had heard re¬ ferred to as an example of extreme poverty; for I was a precocious boy, and often reasoned after the fashion of my elders, arguing that Jack and Jill were real personages in our parish, and that if I could identify Jack I should find on him the mark of a broken crown. Sometimes when I am in a crowded London drawing-room (for I am a town-bird now, acquainted with smoky eaves, am' tasting Nature in the parks), quick flights of memory take me back among my father’s parishioners, while I am still conscious of elbowing men who wear the same evening uni¬ form as myself; and I presently begin to wonder what va¬ rieties of history lie hidden under this monotony of asjDect. Some of them, perhaps, belong to families with many quar- terings ; but how many “ quarterings ” of diverse contact with their fellow-countrymen enter into their qualifications to be parliamentary leaders, professors of social science, or journalistic guides of the popular mind ? Not that I feel myself a person made competent by experience; on the con¬ trary, I argue that since an observation of different ranks has still left me practically a poor creature, what must be the condition of those who object even to read about the life of other British classes than their own ? But of my elbow¬ ing neighbors with their crush-hats I usually imagine that the most distinguished among them have probably had a far more instructive journey into manhood than mine. Here, perhaps, is a thought-worn physiognomy, seeming at the present moment to bo classed as a mere species of white cravat and swallow-tail, which may cnce, like Faraday’s, have shown itself in curiously dubious embryonic form leaning against a cottage-lintel, in small corduroys, and hungrily eat¬ ing a bit of brown bread and bacon; there is a pair of eyes, now too much wearied by the gas-light of public assemblies, id VOL. IX. 274 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. that once perhaps learned to read their native England through the same alphabet as mine — not within the boun¬ daries of an ancestral park, never even being driven through the country town five miles off, but — among the midland villages and markets, along by the tree-studded hedgerows, and where the heavy barges seem in the distance to float mysteriously among the rushes and the feathered grass. Our vision, both real and ideal, has since then been filled with far other scenes, — among eternal snows and stupendous sun-scorched monuments of departed empires, within the scent of the long orange-groves, and where the temple of Neptune looks out over the siren-haunted sea. But my eyes at least have kept their early affectionate joy in our native landscape, which is one deep root of our national life and language. And I often smile at my consciousness that certain con¬ servative prepossessions have mingled themselves for me with the influences of our midland scenery, from the tops of the elms down to the buttercups and the little wayside vetches. Naturally enough ! That part of my father’s prime to which he oftenest referred had fallen on the days when the great wave of political enthusiasm and belief in a speedy regeneration of all things had ebbed, and the supposed mil¬ lennial initiative of France was turning into a Napoleonic em¬ pire — the sway of an Attila, with a mouth speaking _.roud things, in a jargon half-re volutionary, half-Roman. Men were beginning to shrink timidly from the memory of their own words, and from the recognition of the fellowships they had formed ten years before ; and even reforming English¬ men, for the most part, were willing to wait for the perfec¬ tion of society, if only they could keep their throats perfect, and help to drive away the chief enemy of mankind from our coasts. To my father’s mind the noisy teachers of rev¬ olutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong government which cuuld maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word “ government ’’ LOOKING BACKWARD. 275 in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my effective religion, — in contrast with the word “ rebel/’ which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables, and, lit by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an argument dispensing with more detailed inquiry. I gathered that our national troubles in the first two decades of this century were not at all due to the mistakes of our administrators, and that England, with its fine Church and Constitution, would have been exceedingly well off if every British subject had been thankful for what was provided, and had minded his own business — if, for example, numerous Catholics of that period had been aware how very modest they ought to be, considering they were Irish. The times, I heard, had often been bad; but I was constantly hearing of “ bad times ” as a name for actual evenings and mornings, when the godfathers who gave them that name appeared to me remarkably com¬ fortable. Altogether, my father’s England seemed to me lovable, laudable, full of good men, and having good rulers, from Mr. Pitt on to the Duke of Wellington, until he was for emancipating the Catholics; and it was so far from pro¬ saic to me, that I looked into it for a more exciting romance than such as I could find in my own adventures, which con¬ sisted mainly in fancied crises calling for the resolute wield¬ ing of domestic swords and fire-arms against unapparent robbers, rioters, and invaders, who, it seemed, in my father’s prime, had more chance of being real. The morris-dancers had not then dwindled to a ragged and almost vanished rout (owing the traditional name probably to the historic fancy of our superannuated groom) ; also the good old king was alive and well, which made all the more difference, because I had no notion what he was and did — only understand¬ ing in general that, if he had been still on the throne, he would have hindered everything that wise persons thought undesirable. Certainly that elder England — with its frankly salable boroughs, so cheap compared with the seats obtained under the reformed method, and its boroughs kindly presented by 276 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. noblemen desirous to encourage gratitude ; its prisons, with a miscellaneous company of felons and maniacs, and without any supply of water; its bloated, idle charities; its non-resi¬ dent, jovial clergy; its militia-balloting; and, above all, its blank ignorance of what we, its posterity, should be thinking of it — has great differences from the England of to-day. Yet we discern a strong family likeness. Is there any country which shows at once as much stability and as much suscep¬ tibility to change as ours ? Our national. life is like that scenery which I early learned to love, not subject to great convulsions, but easily showing more or less delicate (some¬ times melancholy) effects from minor changes. Hence our midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and conservative spirit for me; yet at every other mile, since I first looked on them, some sign of world-wide change, some new direction of human labor, has wrought itself into what one may call the speech of the landscape — in contrast with those grander and vaster regions of the earth which keep an indifferent aspect in the presence of men’s toil and devices. What does it signify that a liliputian train passes over a viaduct amidst the abysses of the Apennines, or that a cara¬ van, laden with a nation’s offerings, creeps across the un¬ resting sameness of the desert, or that a petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over the face of an Egyptian colossus, immovably submitting to its slow burial beneath the sand ? But our woodlands and pastures, our hedge-parted cornfields and meadows, our bits of high common where we used to plant the windmills, our quiet little rivers here and there fit to turn a mill-wheel, our villages along the old coach-roads, are all easily alterable lineaments that seem to make the face of our mother-land cympathetic with the laborious lives of her children. She does not take their ploughs ana wagons contemptuously, but rather makes every hovel and every sheepfold, every railed bridge or fallen tree-trunk, an agree¬ ably noticeable incident; not a mere speck in the midst of unmeasured vastness, but a piece of our social history ir pictorial writing. LOOKING BACKWARD. 277 Our rural tracts, where no Babel-chimney scales the heav¬ ens, are without mighty objects to fill the soul with the sense of an outer world unconquerably aloof from our ef¬ forts. The wastes are playgrounds (and let us try to keep them such for the children’s children, who will inherit no other sort of demesne); the grasses and reeds nod to each other over the river, but we have cut a canal close by; the very neiglits laugh with corn in August, or lift the plough- team against the sky in September. Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with pickaxes and barrows; and while hardly a wrinkle is made in the fading mother's face, or a new curve of health in the blooming girl’s, the hills are cut through or the breaches between them spanned, we choose our level, and the white steam-pennon flies along it. But because our land shows this readiness to be changed, all signs of permanence upon it raise a tender attachment instead of awe : some of us, at least, love the scanty relics of our forests, and are thankful if a bush is left of the old hedgerow. A crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy¬ leaved toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of gray thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing to visit. And then the tiled roof of cottage and homestead; of the long cow-slied where generations of the milky mothers have stood patiently ; of the broad-shouldered barns, where the old-fashioned flail once made resonant music, while the watch-dog barked at the timidly venturesome fowls, making pecking raids on the out- flying grain,—the roofs that have looked out from among the elms and walnut-trees, or beside the yearly group of hay and corn stacks, or below the square stone steeple, gathering their gray or ochre-tinted lichens and their olive-green mosses under all ministries — let us praise the sober har¬ monies they give to our landscape, helping to unite us pleas¬ antly with the elder generations, who tilled the soil for us be¬ fore we were born, and paid heavier and heavier taxes, with much grumbling, but without that deepest root of corruption — the self-indulgent despair which cuts down and consumes, and never plants. 278 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. But I check myself. Perhaps this England of my affec¬ tions is half-visionary — a dream in which things are con¬ nected according to my well-fed, lazy mood, and not at all by the multitudinous links of graver, sadder fact, such as belong everywhere to the story of human labor. Well, well, the illusions that began for us when we were less acquainted with evil have not lost their value when we discern them to be illusions. They feed the ideal Better; and in loving them still, we strengthen the precious habit of loving something not visibly, tangibly existent, but a spiritual product of our visible, tangible selves. I cherish my childish loves, the memory of that warm little nest where my affections were fledged. Since then I have learned to care for foreign countries, for literatures foreign and ancient, for the life of Continental towns dozing round old cathedrals, for the life of London, half-sleepless with eager thought and strife, with indigestion, or with hun¬ ger ; and now my consciousness is chiefly of the busy, anx¬ ious, metropolitan sort. My system responds sensitively to the London weather-signs, political, social, literary; and my bachelor’s hearth is imbedded where, by much craning of head and neck, I can catch sight of a sycamore in the Square garden. I belong to the “ Nation of London.” Why ? There have been many voluntary exiles in the world; and probably in the very first exodus of the patriarchal Aryans— for I am determined not to fetch my examples from races whose talk is of uncles and no fathers —some of those who sallied forth went for the sake of a loved companionship, when they would willingly have kept sight of the familiar plains, and of the hills to which they had first lifted up their eyes. HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. T HE serene and beneficent goddess Truth, like other deities whose disposition has been too hastily inferred from that of the men who have invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with much of the worship paid to her even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done in her honor; no thumb-screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of flesh, but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even life-long maiming. Less than formerly; but so long as this sort of Truth-worship has the sanction of a public that can often understand nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridicule, it is likely to continue. The sufferings of its victims are often as little regarded as those of the sacrificial pig offered in old time, with what we now regard as a sad miscalculation of effects. One such victim is my old acquaintance, Merman. Twenty years ago Merman was a young man of promise, a conveyancer with a practice which had certainly budded, but, like Aaron’s rod, seemed not destined to proceed further in that marvellous activity. Meanwhile he occupied himself in miscellaneous periodical-writing, and in a multifarious study of moral and physical science. What chiefly attracted him in all subjects were the vexed questions, which have the ad¬ vantage of not admitting the decisive proof or disproof that renders many ingenious arguments superannuated. Not that Merman had a wrangling disposition: he put all his doubts, queries, and paradoxes deferentially; contended without un- 280 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. pleasant heat, and only with a sonorous eagerness, against the personality of Homer • expressed himself civilly though firmly on the origin of language; and had tact enough to drop at the right moment such subjects as the ultimate reduction of all the so-called elementary substances, his own total scepticism concerning Manetho’s chronology, or even the relation be¬ tween the magnetic condition of the earth and the outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexibility was naturally much helped by his amiable feeling toward woman, whose nervous system, he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difficult topics; and also by his willingness to con¬ tribute a song whenever the same desultory charmer proposed music. Indeed, his tastes were domestic enough to beguile him into marriage when his resources were still very moderate and partly uncertain. His friends wished that so ingenious and agreeable a fellow might have more prosperity than they ventured to hope for him; their chief regret on his account being that he did not concentrate his talent, and leave off forming opinions on at least half a dozen of the subjects over which he scattered his attention, especially now that he had married “ a nice little woman ” (the generic name for ac- cpiaintances’ wives when they are not markedly disagreeable). He could not, they observed, want all his various knowledge and Laputan ideas for his periodical-writing which brought him most of his bread, and he would do well to use his talents in getting a specialty that would fit him for a post. Perhaps these well-disposed persons were a little rash in presuming that fitness for a post would be the surest ground for getting it; and, on the whole, in now looking back on their wishes for Merman, their chief satisfaction must be that those wishes did not contribute to the actual result. For in an evil hour Merman did concentrate himself. He had for many years taken into his interest the comparative history of the ancient civilizations, but it had not preoccupied him so as to narrow his generous attention to everything else. One sleepless night, however (his wife has more than once narrated to me the details of an event memorable to her as HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 281 the beginning of sorrows), after spending some hours over the epoch-making work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with regard to the possible connection of certain symbolic monuments common to widely scattered races. Merman started up in bed. The night was cold; and the sudden withdrawal of warmth made his wife first dream of a snow¬ ball, and then cry, “ What is the matter, Proteus ? ” “A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a revelation, is all wrong about the Magi- codumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and I have got hold of the right clew.” “ Good gracious! does it matter so much ? Don’t drag the clothes, dear.” “ It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I shall set the world right; I shall regenerate history; I shall win the mind of Europe to a new view of social origins; I shall bruise the head of many superstitions.” “Oh no, dear, don’t go too far into things. Lie down again. You have been dreaming. What are the Madicojum- bras and Zuzitotzums ? I never heard you talk of them before. What use can it be, troubling yourself about such things ? ” “That is the way, Julia! That is the way wives alienate their husbands, and make any hearth pleasanter to him than his own.” “ What do you mean, Proteus ? ” “Why, if a woman will not try to understand her hus¬ band’s ideas, or at least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand, — if she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is a fool because others contradict him, — there is an end of our happiness. That is all I have to say.” “Oh no, Proteus, dear. I do believe wl at you say is right. That is my only guide. I am sure I never have any opinions in any other way, — I mean about subje cts. Of course there are many little things that would t-pn.se you, that you 282 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. like me to judge of for myself. I know I said once that I did not want you to sing ‘Oh, ruddier than the cherry/ because it was not in your voice. But I cannot remember ever differing from you about subjects. I never in my life thought any one cleverer than you.” Julia Merman was really “ a nice little woman,” not one of the stately Dians sometimes spoken of in those terms. Her black silhouette had a very infantine aspect; but she had discernment and wisdom enough to act on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought treason¬ ably of his ideas in relation to the Magicodumbras and Zuzu- motzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well for her that she did not increase her troubles in this way; but to do her justice, what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her husband’s troubles. Not that these were great in the beginning. In the first development and writing out of his scheme, Merman had a more intense kind of intellectual pleasure than he had ever known before. His face became more radiant, his general view of human prospects more cheerful. Foreseeing that truth as presented by himself would win the recognition of his contemporaries, he excused with much liberality their rather rough treatment of other theorists, whose basis was less perfect. His own periodical-criticisms had never before been so amiable; he was sorry for that unlucky majority whom the spirit of the age, or some other prompting more definite and local, compelled to write without any particular ideas. The possession of an original theory, which has not yet been assailed, must certainly sweeten the temper of a man who is not beforehand ill-natured. And Merman was the reverse of ill-natured. , But the hour of publication came; and to half a dozen persons, described as the learned world of two hemispheres, it became known that Grampus was attacked. This might have been a small matter; for who or what on earth, that is HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 283 good for anything, is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity, or malice, and sometimes even by just objection ? But on ex¬ amination it appeared that the attack might possibly be held damaging, unless the ignorance of the author were well ex¬ posed, and his pretended facts shown to be chimeras of that remarkably hideous kind begotten by imperfect learning on the more feminine element of original incapacity. Grampus himself did not immediately cut open the volume which Merman had been careful to send him, not without a very lively and shifting conception of the possible effects which the explosive gift might produce on the too eminent scholar — effects that must certainly have set in on the third day from the despatch of the parcel. But in point of fact Grampus knew nothing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent him an American newspaper containing a spirited article by the well-known Professor Sperm N. Whale, which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the passages quoted from Merman being of rather a telling sort, and the paragraphs which seemed to blow defiance being unaccountably feeble, coming from so distinguished a Cetacean. Then, by another post, arrived letters from Butzkopf and Dugong, both men whose signatures were familiar to the Teutonic world, in the “ Selten- erscheinender Monat-schrift,” or Hyrick for the insertion of Split Hairs, asking their Master whether he meant to take up the combat, because, in the contrary case, both were ready. Thus America and Germany were roused, though England was still drowsy; and it seemed time now for Grampus to find Merman’s book under the heap, and cut it open. Eor his own part, he was perfectly at ease about his system; but this is a world in which the truth requires defence, and specious falsehood must be met with exposure. Grampus having once looked through the book, no longer wanted any urging to write the most crushing of replies. This, and nothing less than this, was due from him to the cause of sound inquiry; and the punishment would cost him little pains. In three weeks from that time the palpitating Merman saw his book announced in the programme of the leading Review. !No 284 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. need for Grampus to put his signature. Who else had his vast yet microscopic knowledge, who else his power of epi¬ thet ? This article — in which Merman was pilloried and as good as mutilated, for he was shown to have neither ear nor nose for the subtleties of philological and archaeological study — was much read and more talked of; not because of any interest in the system of Grampus, or any precise con¬ ception of the danger attending lax views of the Magicodum- bras and Zuzumotzis, but because the sharp epigrams with which the victim was lacerated, and the soaring fountains of acrid mud which were shot upward and poured over the fresh wounds, were found amusing in recital. A favorite passage was one in which a certain kind of socialist was described as a creature of the walrus kind, having a phantasmal resem¬ blance to higher animals when seen by ignorant minds in the twilight, dabbling or hobbling in first one element and then the other, without parts or organs suited to either; in fact, one of Nature’s impostors, who could not be said to have any artful pretences, since a congenital incompetence to all precision of aim and movement made their every action a pretence — just as a being born in doeskin gloves would nec¬ essarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but we all know what his judgment would be worth. In drawing-room circles, and for the immediate hour, this ingenious comparison was as dam¬ aging as the showing-up of Merman’s mistakes, and the mere smattering of linguistic and historical knowledge which he had presumed to be a sufficient basis for theorizing; but the more learned.cited his blunders aside to each other, and laughed the laugh of the initiated. In fact, Merman’s was a remarkable case of sudden notoriety. In London drums and clubs he was spoken of abundantly as one who had written ridicu¬ lously about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis : the leaders of conversation, whether Christians, Jews, infidels, or of any other confession, except the confession of ignorance, pro¬ nouncing him shallow and indiscreet, if not presumptuous and absurd. He was heard of at Warsaw, and even Paris took knowledge of him. M. Cachalot had not read either Grampus HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 285 or Merman, but heard of their dispute in time to insert a paragraph upon it in his brilliant work, “ L’Orient au Point de Vue Actuel,” in which he was aispassionate enough to speak of Grampus as possessing a c ip d’eeil presque franpais in mat¬ ters of historical interpretation, and of Merman as neverthe¬ less an objector qui merite d'etre connu. M. Porpesse, also, availing himself of M. Cachalot’s knowledge, reproduced it in an article with certain additions, which it is only fair to dis¬ tinguish as his own, implying that the vigorous English of Grampus was not always as correct as a Frenchman could de¬ sire, while Merman’s objections were more sophistical than solid. Presently, indeed, there appeared an able ex trait of Grampus’s article in the valuable “ Rapporteur Scientifique et Historique,” and Merman’s mistakes were thus brought under the notice of certain Frenchmen who are among the masters of those who know on Oriental subjects. In a word, Merman, though not extensively read, was extensively read about. Meanwhile, how did he like it ? Perhaps nobody, except his wife, for a moment reflected on that. An amused society considered that he was severely punished, but did not take the trouble to imagine his sensations; indeed, this would have been a difficulty for persons less sensitive and excitable than Merman himself. Perhaps that popular comparison of the walrus had truth enough to bite and blister on thorough ap¬ plication, even if exultant ignorance had not applauded it. But it is well known that the walrus, though not in the least a malignant animal, if allowed to display its remarkably plain person and blundering performances at ease in any element it chooses, becomes desperately savage, and musters alarming auxiliaries when attacked or hurt. In this characteristic, at least, Merman resembled the walrus. And now he con¬ centrated himself with a vengeance. That his counter-theory was fundamentally the right one he had a genuine conviction, whatever collateral mistakes he might have committed; and his bread would not cease to be bitter to him until he had convinced his contemporaries that Grampus had used his 286 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. minute learning as a dust-cloud to hide sophistical evasions — that, in fact, minute learning was an obstacle to clear-sighted judgment, more especially with regard to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, and that the best preparation in this matter was a wide survey of history, and a diversified observation of men. Still, Merman was resolved to muster all the learning within his reach, and he wandered day and night through many wildernesses of German print; he tried compendious methods of learning Oriental tongues, and, so to speak, get¬ ting at the marrow of languages independently of the bones, for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or tex tual tampering. All other work was neglected ; rare clients were sent away, and amazed editors found this maniac indif¬ ferent to his chance of getting book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But at last he had prepared sixty condensed pages of eager argu¬ ment, which seemed to him worthy to rank with the best models of controversial writing. He had acknowledged his mistakes, but had restated his theory, so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them; and he had even found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the explorer, and other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this last from that greatest of fossils, Megalosaurus, was demonstrated by Merman to be capable of three different interpretations, all preferable to that chosen by Grampus, who took the words in their most literal sense; for (1) the incomparable Saurian, alike unequalled in close observation and far-glancing com¬ prehensiveness, might have meant those words ironically; (2) motzis was probably a false reading for potzis, in which case its bearing was reversed; and (3) it is known that in the age of the Saurians there were conceptions about the mot¬ zis which entirely remove it from the category of things com¬ prehensible in an age when Saurians run ridiculously small: all which views were godfathered by names quite fit to be HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 287 ranked with that of Grampus. In fine, Merman wound up nis rejoinder by sincerely thanking the eminent adversary, without whose fierce assault he might not have undertaken a revision, in the course of which he had met with unexpected and striking confirmations of his own fundamental views. Evidently Merman’s anger was at white heat. , The rejoinder being complete, all that remained was to find a suitable medium for its publication. This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums would not lend themselves to con¬ tradictions of Grampus; or if they would, Merman’s article was too long and too abstruse, while he would not consent to leave anything out of an article which had no superfluities, — for all this happened years ago, when the world was a differ¬ ent stage. At last, however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not on hard terms, since the medium, in every sense modest, did not ask him to pay for its insertion. But if Merman expected to call out Grampus again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of Merman’s incapacity. The Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but subsidiary elements in Grampus’s system, and Mer¬ man might now be dealt with by younger members of the Master’s school. But he had at least the satisfaction of find¬ ing that he had raised a discussion which would not be let die. The followers of Grampus took it up with an ardor and industry of research worthy of their exemplar. Butzkopf made it the subject of an elaborate Einleitung to his impor¬ tant work “ Die Bedeutung des ^Egyptischen Labyrinthes ; ” and Dugong, in a remarkable address which he delivered to a learned society in Central Europe, introduced Merman’s theory with so much power of sarcasm that it became a theme of more or less derisive allusion to men of many tongues. Merman with his Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis was on the way to become a proverb, being used illustratively by many 288 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. able journalists, who took those names of questionable things to be Merman’s own invention—“than which,” said one of the graver guides, “ we can recall few more melancholy examples of speculative aberration.” Naturally, the subject passed into popular literature, and figured very commonly in advertised programmes. The fluent Loligo, the formidable Shark, and a younger member of his remarkable family, known as S. Cat- ulus, made a special reputation by their numerous articles, eloquent, lively, or abusive, all on the same theme, under titles ingeniously varied, alliterative, sonorous, or boldly fan¬ ciful — such as, “ Moments with Mr. Merman,” “ Mr. Merman and the Magicodumbras,” “ Greenland Grampus and Proteus Merman,” “ Grampian Heights and their Climbers, or the New Excelsior.” They tossed him on short sentences; they swathed him in paragraphs of winding imagery; they found him at once a mere plagiarist and a theorizer of unexampled perversity, ridiculously wrong about potzis and ignorant of Pali; they hinted, indeed, at certain things which to their knowledge he had silently brooded over in his boyhood, and seemed tolerably well assured that this preposterous attempt to gainsay an incomparable Cetacean of world-wide fame had its origin in a peculiar mixture of bitterness and eccentricity which, rightly estimated and seen in its definite proportions, would furnish the best key to his argumentation. All alike were sorry for Merman’s lack of sound learning; but how could their readers be sorry? Sound learning would not have been amusing; and as it was, Merman was made to furnish these readers with amusement at no expense of trouble on their part. Even burlesque-writers looked into his book to see where it could be made use of; and those who did not know him were desirous of meeting him at dinner, as one likely to feed their comic vein. On the other hand, he made a serious figure in sermons under the name of “ Some ” or “ Others,” who had attempted presumptuously to scale eminences too high and arduous for human ability, and had given an example of ignominious failure, edifying to the humble Christian. HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 289 All this might be very advantageous for able persons whose superfluous fund of expression needed a paying investment; but the effect on Merman himself was unhappily not so tran¬ sient as the busy writing and speaking of which he had be¬ come the occasion. His certainty that he was right naturally got stronger in proportion as the spirit of resistance was stimulated. The scorn and unfairness with which he felt himself to have been treated, by those really competent to appropriate his ideas, had galled him and made a chronic sore; and the exultant chorus of the incompetent seemed a pouring of vinegar on his wound. His brain became a reg¬ istry of the foolish and ignorant objections made against him, and of continually amplified answers to these objec¬ tions. Unable to get his answers printed, he had recourse to that more primitive mode of publication, oral transmission, or button-holding, now generally regarded as a troublesome survival; and the once pleasant, flexible Merman was on the way to be shunned as a bore. His interest in new acquain¬ tances turned chiefly on the possibility that they would care about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis; that they would listen to his complaints and exposures of unfairness, and not only accept copies of what he had written on the subject, but send him appreciative letters in acknowledgment. Repeated disappointment of such hopes tended to embitter him; and not the less because after awhile the fashion of mentioning him died out, allusions to his theory were less understood, and people could only pretend to remember it. And all the while Merman was perfectly sure that his very opponents, who had knowledge enough to be capable judges, were aware that his book, whatever errors of statement they might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining-rod, pointing out hid¬ den sources of historical interpretation ; nay, his jealous ex animation discerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain shifting of ground, which — so poor Merman declared — was the sign of an intention gradually to appropriate the views of the man he had attempted to brand as an ignorant impostor. 290 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. And Julia? And the housekeeping, — the rent, food, and clothing, which controversy can hardly supply, unless it be of the kind that serves as a recommendation to certain posts ? Controversial pamphlets have been known to earn large plums ; but nothing of the sort could be expected from un¬ practical heresies about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, — painfully the contrary. Merman’s reputation as a sober thinker, a safe writer, a sound lawyer, was irretrievably injured; the distractions of controversy had caused him to neglect useful editorial connections, and indeed his dwindling care for miscellaneous subjects made hi& contributions too dull to be desirable. Even if he could now have given a new turn to his concentration, and applied his talents so as to be ready to show himself an exceptionally qualified lawyer, he would only have been like an architect in competition, too late with his superior plans: he would not have had an opportunity of showing his qualification. He was thrown out of the course. The small capital which had filled up defi¬ ciencies of income was almost exhausted, and Julia, in the effort to make supplies equal to wants, had to use much in¬ genuity in diminishing the wants. The brave and affection¬ ate woman, whose small outline, so unimpressive against an illuminated background, held within it a good share of fem¬ inine heroism, did her best to keep up the charm of home and soothe her husband’s excitement, —parting with the best jewel among her wedding presents in order to pay rent, without ever hinting to her husband that this sad result had come of his undertaking to convince people who only laughed at him. She was a resigned little creature, and reflected that some husbands took to drinking and others to forgery; hers had only taken to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, and was not unkind — only a little more indifferent to her and the two children than she had ever expected he would be; his mind was eaten up with “subjects,” and constantly a little angry, not with her, but with everybody else, es¬ pecially those who were celebrated. This was the sad truth. Merman felt himself ill-used bj HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 291 the world, and thought very much worse of the world in con¬ sequence. The gall of his adversaries’ ink had been sucked into his system and ran in his blood. He was still in the prime of life, but his mind was aged by that eager, monoto¬ nous construction which comes of feverish excitement on a single topic, and uses up the intellectual strength. Merman had never been a rich man, but lie was now con¬ spicuously poor, and in need of the friends who had power or interest which he believed they could exert on his behalf. Their omitting or declining to give this help could not seem to him so clearly as to them an inevitable consequence of his having become impracticable, or at least of liis passing for a man whose views were not likely to be safe and sober. Each friend in turn offended him, though unwillingly, and was suspected of wishing to shake him off. It was not altogether so ; but poor Merman’s society had undeniably ceased to be attractive, and it was difficult to help him. At last the pres¬ sure of want urged him to try for a post far beneath his earlier prospects, and he gained it. He holds it still, for he has no vices, and his domestic life has kept up a sweetening current of motive around and within him. Nevertheless, the bitter flavor mingling itself with all topics, the premature weariness and withering, are irrevocably there. It is as if he had gone through a disease which alters what we call the constitution. He has long ceased to talk eagerly of the ideas which possess him, or to attempt making proselytes. The dial has moved onward, and he himself sees many of his for¬ mer guesses in a new light. On the other hand, he has seen what he foreboded, that the main idea which was at the root of his too rash theorizing has been adopted by Grampus and received with general respect, no reference being heard to the ridiculous figure this important conception made when ushered in by the incompetent “ Others.” Now and then, on rare occasions, when a sympathetic tete-a-tete has restored some of his old expansiveness, he will tell a companion in a railway-carriage, or other place of meet¬ ing favorable to autobiographical confidences, what lias been ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. ^■ 2 . the course of things in his particular case, as an example of the justice to be expected of the world. The companion usually allows for the bitterness of a disappointed ma.*\ and is secretly disinclined to believe that Grampus was to blame. A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. MONG the many acute sayings of La Rochefoucauld, there is hardly one more acute than this: “ La plus grande ambition n’en a pas la moindre apparence lorsqu’elle se rencontre dans une impossibility absolue d’arriver oil elle aspire.” Some of us might do well to use this hint in our treatment of acquaintances and friends; from whom we are expecting gratitude because we are so very kind in thinking of them, inviting them, and even listening to what they say — considering how insignificant they must feel themselves to be. We are often fallaciously confident in supposing that our friend’s state of mind is appropriate to our moderate es¬ timate of his importance, — almost as if we imagined the hum¬ ble mollusk (so useful as an illustration) to have a sense of his own exceeding softness and low place in the scale of being. Your mollusk, on the contrary, is inwardly objecting to every other grade of solid, rather than to himself. Accustomed to observe what we think an unwarrantable conceit exhibiting itself in ridiculous pretensions and forwardness to play the lion’s part, in obvious self-complacency and loud peremptori¬ ness, we are not on the alert to detect the egoistic claims of a more exorbitant kind, often hidden under an apparent neu¬ trality or an acquiescence in being put out of the question. Thoughts of this kind occurred to me yesterday, when 1 saw the name of Lentulus in the obituary. The majority of his acquaintances, I imagine, have always thought of him as a man justly unpretending and as nobody’s rival; but some of them have perhaps been struck with surprise at his reserve in praising the works of his contemporaries, and have now 294 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. and then felt themselves in need of a key to his remarks on men of celebrity in various departments. He was a man of fair position, deriving his income from a business in which he did nothing, at leisure to frequent clubs and at ease in giving dinners, — well-looking, polite, and generally accept¬ able in society as a part of what we may call its bread-crumb, the neutral basis needful for the plums and spice. Why, then, did he speak of the modern Maro or the modern Flaccus with a peculiarity in his tone of assent to other people’s praise which might almost have led you to suppose that the eminent poet had borrowed money of him and showed an in¬ disposition to repay ? He had no criticism to offer, no sign of objection more specific than a slight cough, a scarcely per¬ ceptible pause before assenting, and an air of self-control in his utterance—as if certain considerations had determined him not to inform against the so-called poet, who, to his knowledge, was a mere versifier. If you had questioned him closely, he would perhaps have confessed that he did think something better might be done in the way of Eclogues and Georgies, or of Odes and Epodes, and that to his mind poetry was something very different from what had hitherto been known under that name. For my own part, being of a superstitious nature, given readily to imagine alarming causes, I immediately, on first getting these mystic hints from Lentulus, concluded that he held a number of entirely original poems, or at the very least a revolutionary treatise on poetics, in that melancholy manu¬ script state to which works excelling all that is ever printed are necessarily condemned; and I was long timid in speaking of the poets when he was present. For what might not Len¬ tulus have done, or be profoundly aware of, that would make my ignorant impressions ridiculous ? One cannot well be sure of the negative in such a case, except through certain positives that bear witness to it; and those witnesses are not always to be got hold of. But time wearing on, I perceived that the attitude of Lentulus toward the philosophers was essentially the same as his attitude toward the poets; nay, A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 295 there was something so much more decided in his mode of closing his mouth after brief speech on the former, there was such an air of rapt consciousness in his private hints as to his conviction that all thinking hitherto had been an elab¬ orate mistake, and as to his own power of conceiving a sound basis for a lasting superstructure, that I began to believe less in the poetical stores, and to infer that the line of Lentulus lay rather in the rational criticism of our beliefs and in sys¬ tematic construction. In this case I did not figure to myself the existence of formidable manuscripts ready for the press ; for great thinkers are known to carry their theories growing within their minds long before committing them to paper, and the ideas which made a new passion for them when their locks were jet or auburn, remain perilously unwritten, an inwardly developing condition of their successive selves, until the locks are gray or scanty. I only meditated im- provingly on the way in which a man of exceptional faculties, and even carrying within him some of that fierce refiner’s fire which is to purge away the dross of human error, may move about in society totally unrecognized, regarded as a person whose opinion is superfluous, and only rising into a power in emergencies of threatened black-balling. Imagine a Des¬ cartes or a Locke being recognized for nothing more than a good fellow and a perfect gentleman ; what a painful view does such a picture suggest of impenetrable dulness in the society around them ! I would at all times rather be reduced to a cheaper esti¬ mate of a particular person, if by that means I can get a more cheerful view of my fellow-men generally; and I confess that, in a certain curiosity which led me to cultivate Lentu- lus’s acquaintance, my hope leaned to the discovery that he was a less remarkable man than he had seemed to imply. It would have been a grief to discover that he was bitter or malicious; but by finding him to be neither a mighty poet, nor a revolutionary poetical critic, nor an epoch-making phi¬ losopher, my admiration for the poets and thinkers whom he rated so low would recover all its buoyancy, and I should 296 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. not be left to trust to that very suspicious sort of merit which constitutes an exception in the history of mankind, and recommends itself as the total abolitionist of all previous claims on our confidence. You are not greatly surprised at the infirm logic of the coachman who would persuade you to engage him by insisting that any other would be sure to rob you in the matter of hay and corn, thus demanding a difficult belief in him as the sole exception from the frailties of his calling; but it is rather astonishing that the whole¬ sale decriers of mankind and its performances should be even more unwary in their reasoning than the coachman, since each of them not merely confides in your regarding himself as an exception, but overlooks the almost certain fact that you are wondering whether he inwardly excepts you. Now, conscious of entertaining some common opin¬ ions which seemed to fall under the mildly intimated but sweeping ban of Lentulus, my self-complacency was a little concerned. Hence I deliberately attempted to draw out Lentulus in private dialogue, for it is the reverse of injury to a man to offer him that hearing which he seems to have found nowhere else. And for whatever purposes silence may be equal to gold, it cannot be safely taken as an indication of specific ideas. I sought to know why Lentulus was more than indif¬ ferent to the poets, and what was that new poetry which he had either written or, as to its principles, distinctly conceived. But I presently found that he knew very little of any partic¬ ular poet, and had a general notion of poetry as the use of artificial language to express unreal sentiments ; he instanced “ The Giaour,” “ Lalla Rookh,” “ The Pleasures of Hope,” and “ Ruin seize thee, ruthless King,” — adding, “ and plenty more.” On my observing that he probably preferred a larger, simpler style, he emphatically assented. “Have you not,” said I, “written something of that order?” “No, but I often compose as I go along. I see how things might be written as fine as Ossian, only with true ideas. The world has no notion what poetry will be.” A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 297 It was impossible to disprove this, and I am always glad to believe that the poverty of our imagination is no measure of the world’s resources. Our posterity will no doubt get fuel in ways that we are unable to devise for them. But what this conversation persuaded me of was, that the birth with which the mind of Lentulus was pregnant could not be poetry, though I did not question that he composed as he went along, and that the exercise was accompanied wfith a great sense of power. This is a frequent experience in dreams, and much of our waking experience is but a dream in the daylight. Nay, for w r hat I saw, the compositions might be fairly classed as Ossianic. But I was satisfied that Lentulus could not disturb my grateful admiration for the poets of all ages by eclipsing them, or by putting them under a new electric light of criticism. Still, he had himself thrown the chief emphasis of his protest and his consciousness of corrective illumination on the philosophic thinking of our race ; and his tone in assuring me that everything which had been done in that way was wrong, that Plato, Robert Owen, and Dr. Tuftle, who wrote in the “ Regulator,” were all equally mistaken, gave my superstitious nature a thrill of anxiety. After what had passed about the poets, it did not seem likely that Lentulus had all systems by heart; but who could say he had not seized that thread which may somewhere hang out loosely from the web of things, and be the clew of unravelment ? We need not go far to learn that a prophet is not made by erudition. Lentulus at least had not the bias of a school; and if it turned out that he was in agreement with any cel¬ ebrated thinker, ancient or modern, the agreement would have the value of an undesigned coincidence not due to for¬ gotten reading. It was therefore with renewed curiosity that I engaged him on this large subject, the universal erroneousness of thinking up to the period when Lentulus began that process. And here I found him more copious than on the theme of poetry. He admitted that he did con¬ template writing down his thoughts, but his difficulty was 298 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. their abundance. Apparently he was like the wood-cuttei entering the thick forest, and saying, “ Where shall I begin ? ” The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office; on what logic really is, as tending to support the buoyancy of human me¬ diums and mahogany tables; on the probability of all mir¬ acles under all religions when explained by hidden laws, and my unreasonableness in supposing that their profuse occur¬ rence at half a guinea an hour in recent times was anything more than a coincidence; on the hap-hazard way in which marriages are determined — showing the baselessness of social and moral schemes; and on his expectation that he should offend the scientific world when he told them what he thought of electricity as an agent. No man’s appearance could be graver or more gentleman¬ like than that of Lentulus as we walked along the Mall, while he delivered these observations, understood by himself to have a regenerative bearing on human society. His wrist¬ bands and black gloves, his hat and nicely clipped hair, his laudable moderation in beard, and his evident discrimination in choosing his tailor, all seemed to excuse the prevalent esti¬ mate of him as a man untainted with heterodoxy, and likely to be so unencumbered with opinions that he would always be useful as an assenting and admiring listener. Men of science, seeing him at their lectures, doubtless flattered them¬ selves that he came to learn from them; the philosophic ornaments of our time, expounding some of their luminous ideas in the social circle, took the meditative gaze of Lentulus for one of surprise, not unmixed with a just reverence at such close reasoning toward so novel a conclusion; and those who are called men of the world considered him a good fellow, who might be asked to vote for a friend of their own, and would have no troublesome notion to make him unac¬ commodating. You perceive how very much they were aU mistaken, except in qualifying him as a good fellow. A HAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 299 This Lentulus certainly was, in the sense of being free from envy, hatred, and malice; and such freedom was all the more remarkable an indication of native benignity, because of his gaseous, illimitably expansive conceit. Yes, conceit; for that his enormous and contentedly ignorant confidence in his own rambling thoughts was usually clad in a decent silence, is no reason why it should be less strictly called by the name directly implying a complacent self-estimate unwarranted by performance. Nay, the total privacy in which he enjoyed his consciousness of inspiration was the very condition of its undisturbed, placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests; in attempting to make an impression on others, he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague de¬ preciation of what others do, and vague ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But Lentulus was at once so unrecep- tive, and so little gifted with the power of displaying his miscellaneous deficiency of information, that there was really nothing to hinder his astonishment at the spontaneous crop of ideas which his mind secretly yielded. If it occurred to him that there were more meanings than one for the word “motive,” since it sometimes metmt the end aimed at, and sometimes the feeling that prompted the aiming, and that the word “ cause ” was also of changeable import, he was naturally struck with the truth of his own perception, and was con¬ vinced that if this vein were well followed out much might be made of it. Men were evidently in the wrong about cause and effect; else why was society in the confused state we be¬ hold ? And as to motive, Lentulus felt that when he came to write down his views he should look deeply into this kind of subject, and show up thereby the anomalies of our social institutions; meanwhile the various aspects of “ motive ” and “cause ” flitted about among the motley crowd of ideas which he regarded as original, and pregnant with reformative effi¬ cacy. For his unaffected good-will made him regard all his insight as only valuable because it tended toward reform. BOO ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. * The respectable man had got into his illusory maze of dis¬ coveries, by letting go that clew of conformity in his thinking which he had kept fast hold of in his tailoring and manners. He regarded heterodoxy as a power in itself, and took his inacquaintance with doctrines for a creative dissidence. But his epitaph needs not to be a melancholy one. His benevo¬ lent disposition was more effective for good, than his silent presumption for harm. He might have been mischievous but for the lack of words; instead of being astonished at his inspirations in private, he might have clad his addled origi¬ nalities, disjointed commonplaces, blind denials, and balloon¬ like conclusions in that mighty sort of language which would have made a new Koran for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to the ancient Koran, but one would not desire the roc to lay more eggs, and give us a whole wing-flapping brood to soar and make twilight. Peace be with Lentulus, for he has left us in peace. Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact, — from calling on us to look through a heap of millet-seed, in order to be sure that there is no pearl in it. A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. A LITTLE unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged under the stress of social intercourse. The talk even of an honest man must often represent merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable, rather than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter in hand. His thought, if uttered, might be wounding; or he has not the ability to utter it with exactness, and snatches at a loose paraphrase ; or he has really no genuine thought on the question, and is driven to fill up the vacancy by borrowing the remarks in vogue. These are the winds and currents we have all to steer among, and they are often too strong for our truthfulness or our wit. Let us not bear too hardly on each other for this common incidental frailty, or think that we rise superior to it by dropping all considerateness and deference. But there are studious, deliberate forms of insincerity which it is fair to be impatient with — Hinze’s, for example. From his name you might suppose him to be German; in fact, his family is Alsatian, but has been settled in England for more than one generation. He is the superlatively defer¬ ential man, and walks about with murmured wonder at the wisdom and discernment of everybody who talks to him. He cultivates the low-toned tete-a-tete , keeping his hat carefully in his hand, often stroking it, while he smiles with downcast eyes, as if to relieve his feelings under the pressure of the remarkable conversation which it is his honor to enjoy at the present moment. I confess to some rage on hearing him yesterday talking to Felicia, who is certainly a clever woman, and without any unusual desire to show her cleverness, occa* 302 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. sionally says something of her own, or makes an allusion which is not quite common. Still, it must happen to her, as to every one else, to speak of many subjects on which the best things were said long ago; and in conversation with a person who has been newly introduced, those well-worn themes naturally recur as a further development of salutations and preliminary media of understanding, such as pipes, chocolate, or mastic- chewing, which serve to confirm the impression that our new acquaintance is on a civilized footing, and has enough regard for formulas to save us from shocking outbursts of individu¬ alism, to which we are always exposed with the tamest bear or baboon. Considered purely as a matter of information, it cannot any longer be important for us to learn that a British subject, included in the last census, holds Shakspeare to be supreme in the presentation of character; still, it is as admis¬ sible for any one to make this statement about himself as to rub his hands and tell you that the air is brisk, if only he will let it fall as a matter of course, with a parenthetic light¬ ness, and not announce his adhesion to a commonplace with an emphatic insistence, as if it were a proof of singular in¬ sight. We mortals should chiefly like to talk to each other out of good-will and fellowship, not for the sake of hearing revelations or being stimulated by witticisms; and I have usually found that it is the rather dull person who appears to be disgusted with his contemporaries because they are not always strikingly original, and to satisfy whom the party at a country-house should have included the prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis Bacon, and Voltaire. It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities; naturally, for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue. It is right and meet that there should be an abundant utterance of good sound commonplaces. Part of an agreeable talker’s charm is that he lets them fall continually with no more than their due emphasis. Giving a pleasant voice to what we are all well assured of, makes a sort of wholesome air for more special and dubious remark to move in. A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 303 Hence it seemed to me far from unbecoming in Felicia that in her first dialogue with Hinze, previously quite a stranger to her, her observations were those of an ordinarily refined and well-educated woman on standard subjects, and might have been printed in a manual of polite topics and creditable opinions. She had no desire to astonish a man of whom she had heard nothing particular. It was all the more exas¬ perating to see and hear Hinze’s reception of her well-bred conformities. Felicia’s acquaintances knew her as the suit¬ able wife of a distinguished man, a sensible, vivacious, kindly disposed woman, helping her husband with graceful apologies written and spoken, and making her receptions agreeable to all comers. But you would have imagined that Hinze had been prepared by general report to regard this introduction to her as an opportunity comparable to an audience of the Delphic Sibyl. When she had delivered herself on the changes in Italian travel, on the difficulty of reading Ariosto in these busy times, on the want of equilibrium in French political affairs, and on the pre-eminence of German music, he would know what to think. Felicia was evidently embar¬ rassed by his reverent wonder, and, in dread lest she should seem to be playing the oracle, became somewhat confused, stumbling on her answers rather than choosing them. But this made no difference to Hinze’s rapt attention and sub¬ dued eagerness of inquiry. He continued to put large ques¬ tions, bending his head slightly, that his eyes might be a little lifted in awaiting her reply. “ What, may I ask, is your opinion as to the state of Art in England ? ” “ Oh,” said Felicia, with a light deprecatory laugh, “ I think it suffers from two diseases — bad taste in the patrons, and want of inspiration in the artists.” “That is true indeed,” said Hinze, in an undertone of deep conviction. “ You have put your finger with strict ac¬ curacy on the causes of decline. To a cultivated taste like yours this must be particularly painful.” “ I did not say there was actual decline,” said Felicia, 304 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. with a touch of brusquerie. “ I don’t set myself up as the great personage whom nothing can please.” “ That would be too severe a misfortune for others,” says my complimentary ape. “You approve, perhaps, of Rose¬ mary’s ‘Babes in the Wood/ as something fresh and naive in sculpture ? ” “ I think it enchanting.” “ Does he know that ? Or will you permit me to tell him ? ” “ Heaven forbid ! It would be an impertinence in me to praise a work of his, to pronounce on its quality; and that I happen to like it can be of no consequence to him.” Here was an occasion for Hinze to smile down on his hat and stroke it—-Felicia’s ignorance that her praise was ines¬ timable being peculiarly noteworthy to an observer of man¬ kind. Presently he was quite sure that her favorite author was Shakspeare, and wished to know what she thought of Hamlet’s madness. When she had quoted Wilhelm Meister on this point, and had afterward testified that “ Lear ” was beyond adequate presentation, that “Julius Caesar” was an effective acting play, and that a poet may know a good deal about human nature while knowing little of geography, Hinze appeared so impressed with the plenitude of these revela¬ tions that he recapitulated them, weaving them together with threads of compliment: “ As you very justly observed; ” and “ It is most true, as you say; ” and “ It were well if others noted what you have remarked.” Some listeners, incautious in their epithets, would have called Hinze an “ ass.” For my part, I would never insult that intelligent and unpretending animal, who no doubt brays with perfect simplicity and substantial meaning to those ac¬ quainted with his idiom, and if he feigns more submission than he feels, has weighty reasons for doing so; I would never, I say, insult that historic and ill-appreciated animal, the ass, by giving his name to a man whose continuous pre¬ tence is so shallow in its motive, so unexcused by any sharp appetite, as this of Hinxe’s. A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 305 But perhaps you would say that his adulatory manner was originally adopted under strong promptings of self-interest, and that his absurdly overacted deference to persons from whom he expects no patronage is the unreflecting persistence of habit—just as those who live with the deaf will shout to everybody else. And you might indeed imagine that in talking to Tulpian, who has considerable interest at his disposal, Hinze had a desired appointment in his mind. Tulpian is appealed to on innumerable subjects, and if he is unwilling to express him¬ self on any one of them, says so with instructive copiousness ; he is much listened to, and his utterances are registered and reported with more or less exactitude. But I think he has no other listener who comports himself as Hinze does — who, figuratively speaking, carries about a small spoon, ready to pick up any dusty crumb of opinion that the eloquent man may have let drop. Tulpian, with reverence be it said, has some rather absurd notions, such as a mind of large discourse often finds room for. They slip about among his higher con¬ ceptions and multitudinous acquirements, like disreputable characters at a national celebration in some vast cathedral, where to the ardent soul all is glorified by rainbow-light and grand associations ; any vulgar detective knows them for what they are. But Hinze is especially fervid in his desire to hear Tulpian dilate on his crotchets, and is rather trouble¬ some to bystanders in asking them whether they have read the variouo fugitive writings in which these crotchets have been published. If an expert is explaining some matter on which you desire to know the evidence, Hinze teases you with Tulpian’s guesses, and asks the expert what he thinks of them. In general, Hinze delights in the citation of opinions, and would hardly remark that the sun shone, without an air of respectful appeal or fervid adhesion. The “ Iliad,” one sees, would impress him little, if it were not for what Mr. Fugle¬ man has lately said about it; and if you mention an image or sentiment in Chaucer, he seems not to heed the bearing cf 20 VOL. IX. ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 3oe your reference, but immediately tells you that Mr. Hautboy, too, regards Chaucer as a poet of the hrst order, and he is delighted to find that two such judges, as you and Hautboy, are at one. What is the reason of all this subdued ecstasy, moving about, hat in hand, with well-dressed hair, and attitudes of unimpeachable correctness ? Some persons, conscious of sa¬ gacity, decide at once that Hinze knows what he is about in flattering Tulpian, and has a carefully appraised end to serve, though they may not see it. They are misled by the com¬ mon mistake of supposing that men’s behavior, whether ha¬ bitual or occasional, is chiefly determined by a distinctly conceived motive, a definite object to be gained or a definite evil to be avoided. The truth is that, the primitive wants of nature once tolerably satisfied, the majority of mankind, even in a civilized life full of solicitations, are with difficulty aroused to the distinct conception of an object toward which they will direct their actions with careful adaptation ; and it is yet rarer to find one who can persist in the systematic pur¬ suit of such an end. Few lives are shaped, few characters formed, by the contemplation of definite consequences seen from a distance, and made the goal of continuous effort or the beacon of a constantly avoided danger. Such control by fore¬ sight, such vivid picturing and practical logic, are the dis¬ tinction of exceptionally strong natures ; but society is chiefly made up of human beings whose daily acts are all performed either in unreflecting obedience to custom and routine, or from immediate promptings of thought or feeling to execute an immediate purpose. They pay their poor-rates, give their vote in affairs political or parochial, wear a certain amount of starch, hinder boys from tormenting the helpless, and spend money on tedious observances called pleasures, with¬ out mentally adjusting these practices to their own well- understood interest, or to the general, ultimate welfare of the human race; and when they fall into ungraceful compli¬ ment, excessive smiling, or other luckless efforts of com¬ plaisant behavior, these are but the tricks or habits gradually A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 307 formed under the successive promptings of a wish to be agreeable, stimulated day by day without any widening re¬ sources for gratifying the wish. It does not in the least follow that they are seeking by studied hypocrisy to get something for themselves. And so with Hinze’s deferential bearing, complimentary parentheses, and worshipful tones, which seem to some like the overacting of a part in a comedy. He expects no appointment or other appreciable gain through Tulpian’s favor; he has no doubleness toward Felicia; there is no sneering or backbiting obverse to his ecstatic admiration. He is very well off in the world, and cherishes no unsatisfied ambition that could feed design and direct flattery. As you perceive, he has had the education and other advantages of a gentleman, without being conscious of marked result, such as a decided preference for any particular ideas or functions ; his mind is furnished as hotels are, with everything for oc¬ casional and transient use. But one cannot be an English¬ man and gentleman in general; it is in the nature of things that one must have an individuality, though it may be of an often-repeated type. As Hinze in growing to maturity had grown into a particular form and expression of person, so he necessarily gathered a manner and frame of speech which made him additionally recognizable. His nature is not tuned to the pitch of a genuine direct admiration, only to an atti¬ tudinizing deference which does not fatigue itself with the formation of real judgments. All human achievement must be wrought down to this spoon-meat, this mixture of other persons’ washy opinions and his own flux of reverence for what is third-hand, before Hinze can find a relish for it. He has no more leading characteristic than the desire to stand well with those who are justly distinguished; he has no base admirations; and you may know by his entire presen¬ tation of himself, from the management of his hat to the angle at which he keeps his right foot, that he aspires to cor¬ rectness. Desiring to behave becomingly, and also to make a figure in dialogue, he is only like the bad artist, whose pic¬ ture is a failure. We may pity these ill-gifted strivers, but 308 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. not pretend that their works are pleasant to behold. A man is bound to know something of his own weight and muscular dexterity, and the puny athlete is called foolish before he is seen to be thrown. Hinze has not the stuff in him to be at once agreeably conversational and sincere, and he has got himself up to be at all events agreeably conversational. Not¬ withstanding this deliberateness of intention in Ins talk, he is unconscious of falsity; for he has not enough of deep and lasting impression to find a contrast or diversity between his words and his thoughts. He is not fairly to be called a hypocrite; but I have already confessed to the more exaspera¬ tion at his make-believe reverence, because it has no deep hunger to excuse it. ONLY TEMPER. HAT is temper ? Its primary meaning, the proportion and mode in which qualities are mingled, is much neglected in popular speech, yet even here the word often carries a reference to an habitual state or general tendency of the organism, in distinction from what are held to be spe¬ cific virtues and vices. As people confess to bad memory without expecting to sink in mental reputation, so we hear a man declared to have a bad temper, and yet glorified as the possessor of every high quality. When he errs, or in any way commits himself, his temper is accused, not his charac¬ ter ; and it is understood that, but for a brutal, bearish mood, he is kindness itself. If he kicks small animals, swears vio¬ lently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is grossly rude to his wife, it is remarked apologetically that these things mean nothing — they are all temper. Certainly there is a limit to this form of apology, and the forgery of a bill, or the ordering of goods without any pros¬ pect of paying for them, has never been set down to an un¬ fortunate habit of sulkiness or of irascibility. But, on the whole, there is a peculiar exercise of indulgence toward the manifestations of bad temper, which tends to encourage them, so that we are in danger of having among us a number of virtuous persons who conduct themselves detestably, just as we have hysterical patients who, with sound organs, are apparently laboring under many sorts of organic disease. Let it be admitted, however, that a man may be “a good fellow ” and yet have a bad temper, — so bad that we recog¬ nize his merits with reluctance, and are inclined to resent 310 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. his occasionally amiable behavior as an unfair demand on our admiration. Touchwood is that kind of good fellow. He is by turns insolent, quarrelsome, repulsively haughty to innocent peo¬ ple who approach him with respect, neglectful of his friends, angry in face of legitimate demands, procrastinating in th< fulfilment of such demands, prompted to rude words anC harsh looks by a moody disgust, with his fellow-men in gen¬ eral— and yet, as everybody will assure you, the soul of honor, a steadfast friend, a defender of the oppressed, an affectionate-hearted creature. Pity that, after a certain expe¬ rience of his moods, liis intimacy becomes insupportable ! A man who uses his balmorals to tread on your toes with much frequency, and an unmistakable emphasis, may prove a fast friend in adversity; but meanwhile your adversity has not ar¬ rived, and your toes are tender. The daily sneer or growl at your remarks is not to be made amends for by a possible eulogy, or defence of your understanding against depreda¬ tors who may not present themselves, and on an occasion which may never arise. I cannot submit to a chronic state of blue and green bruise as a form of insurance against an accident. Touchwood’s bad temper is of the contradicting, pugna¬ cious sort. He is the honorable gentleman in opposition, whatever proposal or proposition may be broached ; and when others join him, he secretly damns their superfluous agree¬ ment, quickly discovering that his way of stating the case is not exactly theirs. An invitation, or any sign of expectation, throws him into an attitude of refusal. Ask his concurrence in a benevolent measure; he will not decline to give it, be ¬ cause he has a real sympathy with good aims, but he com¬ plies resentfully; though where he is let alone, he will do much more than any one would have thought of asking for. No man would shrink with greater sensitiveness from the im¬ putation of not paying his debts; yet when a bill is sent in with any promptitude, he is inclined to make the tradesman wait for the money he is in such a hurry to get. One sees ONLY TEMPER. 311 that this antagonistic temper must be much relieved by find¬ ing a particular object, and that its worst moments must be those where the mood is that of vague resistance, there being nothing specific to oppose. Touchwood is never so little engaging as when he conies down to breakfast with a cloud on his brow, after parting from you the night before with an affectionate effusiveness, at the end of a confidential conver¬ sation, which has assured you of mutual understanding. Im¬ possible that you can have committed any offence ! If mice have disturbed him, that is not your fault; but, nevertheless, your cheerful greeting had better not convey any reference to the weather; else it will be met by a sneer which, taking you unawares, may give you a crushing sense that you make a poor figure with your cheerfulness, which was not asked for. Some daring person perhaps introduces another topic, and uses the delicate flattery of appealing to Touchwood for his opinion, the topic being included in his favorite studies. An indistinct muttering, with a look at the carving-knife, in reply, teaches that daring person how ill he has chosen a market for his deference. If Touchwood’s behavior affects you very closely, you had better break your leg in the course of the day : his bad temper will then vanish at once ; he will take a painful journey on your behalf; he will sit up with you night after night; he will do all the work of your department, so as to save you from any loss in consequence of your acci¬ dent ; he will be even uniformly tender to you till you are well on your legs again, w r hen he will some fine morning in¬ sult you without provocation, and make you wish that his generous goodness to you had not closed your lips against retort. It is not always necessary that a friend should break his leg for Touchwood to feel compunction, and endeavor to make amends for his bearishness or insolence. He becomes spon¬ taneously conscious that he has misbehaved, and he is not only ashamed of himself, but has the better prompting to try and heal any wound he has inflicted. Unhappily, the habit of being offensive “ without meaning it ” leads usually to a 312 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it. The kind¬ nesses, the complimentary indications or assurances, are apt to appear in the light of a penance adjusted to the foregoing lapses, and, by the very contrast they offer, call up a keener memory of the wrong they atone for. They are not a spon¬ taneous prompting of good-will, but an elaborate compensa¬ tion. And, in fact, Dion’s atoning friendliness has a ring of artificiality. Because he formerly disguised his good feeling toward you, he now expresses more than he quite feels. It is in vain. Having made you extremely uncomfortable last week, he has absolutely diminished his power of making you happy to-day. He struggles against the result by excessive effort; but he has taught you to observe his fitfulness, rather than to be warmed by his episodic show of regard. I suspect that many persons who have an uncertain, in¬ calculable temper, flatter themselves that it enhances their fascination; but perhaps they are under the prior mistake of exaggerating the charm which they suppose to be thus strengthened; in any case, they will do well not to trust in the attractions of caprice and moodiness for a long continu¬ ance or for close intercourse. A pretty woman may fan the flame of distant adorers by harassing them; but if she lets one of them make her his wife, the point of view from which he will look at her poutings and tossings, and mysterious ina¬ bility to be pleased, will be seriously altered. And if slavery to a pretty woman, which seems among the least conditional forms of abject service, will not bear too great a strain from her bad temper, even though her beauty remain the same, it is clear that a man whose claims lie in his high character, or high performances, had need impress us very constantly with his peculiar value and indispensableness, if he is to test our patience by an uncertainty of temper which leaves us abso¬ lutely without grounds for guessing how he will receive our persons or humbly advanced opinions, or what line he will take on any but the most momentous occasions. For it is among the repulsive effects of this bad temper, ONLY TEMPER. 313 which is supposed to be compatible with shining virtues, that it is apt to determine a man’s sudden adhesion to an opinion, whether on a personal or impersonal matter, without leaving him time to consider his grounds. The adhesion is sudden and momentary, but it either forms a precedent for his line of thought and action, or it is presently seen to have been inconsistent with his true mind. This determination of par¬ tisanship by temper has its worst effects in the career of the public man, who is always in danger of getting so enthralled by his own words that he looks into facts and questions, not to get rectifying knowledge, but to get evidence that will justify his actual attitude, which was assumed under an im¬ pulse dependent on something else than knowledge. There has been plenty of insistence on the evil of swearing by the words of a master, and having the judgment uniformly con¬ trolled by a “ He said it; ” but a much worse woe to befall a man is to have every judgment controlled by an “I said it” — to make a divinity of his own short-sightedness or passion- led aberration, and explain the world in its honor. There is hardly a more pitiable degradation than this, for a man of high gifts. Hence I cannot join with those who wish that Touch- wood, being young enough to enter on public life, should get elected for Parliament, and use his excellent abilities to serve his country in that conspicuous manner. For hitherto, in the less momentous incidents of private life, his capricious temper has only produced the minor evil of inconsistency, and he is even greatly at ease in contradicting himself, provided he can contradict you, and disappoint any smiling expectation you may have shown that the impressions you are uttering are likely to meet with his sympathy, considering that the day before he himself gave you the example which your mind is following. He is at least free from those fetters of self-jus¬ tification which are the curse of parliamentary speaking; and what I rather desire for him is that he should produce the great book which he is generally pronounced capable of writ¬ ing, and put his best self imperturbably on record for the ad¬ vantage of society; because I should then have steady ground 314 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. for bearing with his diurnal incalculableness, and could fix my gratitude as by strong staple to that unvarying monu¬ mental service. Unhappily, Touchwood’s great powers have Deen only so far manifested as to be believed in, not demon¬ strated. Everybody rates them highly, and thinks that whatever he chose to do would be done in a firstrate manner. Is it his love of disappointing complacent expectancy, which has gone so far as to keep up this lamentable negation, and made him resolve not to write the comprehensive work which he would have written if nobody had expected it of him ? One can see that if Touchwood were to become a public man, and take to frequent speaking on platforms or from his seat in the House, it would hardly be possible for him to maintain much integrity of opinion, or to avoid courses of partisanship which a healthy public sentiment would stamp with discredit. Say that lie were endowed with the purest honesty, it would inevitably be dragged captive by this mys¬ terious, Protean, bad temper. There would be the fatal pub¬ lic necessity of justifying oratorical temper, which had got on its legs in its bitter mood and made insulting imputations, or of keeping up some decent show of consistency with opin¬ ions vented out of temper’s contradictoriness. And word? would have to be followed up by acts of adhesion. Certainly, if a bad-tempered man can be admirably virtu¬ ous, he must be so under extreme difficulties. I doubt the possibility that a high order of character can coexist with a temper like Touchwood’s. For it is of the nature of such temper to interrupt the formation of healthy mental habits, which depend on a growing harmony between perception, conviction, and impulse. There may be good feelings, good deeds, — for a human nature may pack endless varieties and blessed inconsistencies in its windings, — but it is essential to what is worthy to be called high character, that it may be safely calculated on, and that its qualities shall have taken the form of principles or laws, habitually, if not perfectly, obeyed. ONLY TEMPER. 815 If a man frequently passes unjust judgments, takes up false attitudes, intermits liis acts of kindness with rude be¬ havior or cruel words, and falls into the consequent vulgar error of supposing that he can make amends by labored agreeableness, I cannot consider such courses any the less ugly because they are ascribed to “ temper.” Especially I object to the assumption, that his having a fundamentally good disposition is either an apology or a compensation for his bad behavior. If his temper yesterday made him lash the horses, upset the curricle, and cause a breakage in my rib, I feel it no compensation that to-day he vows he will drive me anywhere, in the gentlest manner, any day, as long as he lives. Yesterday was what it was, — my rib is paining me; it is not a main object of my life to be driven by Touchwood, and I have no confidence in his life-long gentle¬ ness. The utmost form of placability I am capable of is to try and remember his better deeds already performed, and, mindful of my own offence, to bear him no malice. But I cannot accept his amends. If the bad-tempered man wants to apologize, he had need to do it on a large public scale, — make some beneficent dis¬ covery, produce some stimulating work of genius, invent some powerful process, — prove himself such a good to con¬ temporary multitudes and future generations as to make the discomfort he causes his friends and acquaintances a vanish¬ ing quality, a trifle even in their own estimate. A POLITICAL MOLECULE. rT^HE most arrant denier must admit that a man often fun I thers larger ends than he is conscious of, and that while he is transacting his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger than any purpose of his own. Society is happily not dependent for the growth of fellowship on the small minority already endowed with comprehensive sympathy. Any mole¬ cule of the body politic, working toward his own interest in an orderly way, gets his understanding more or less pene¬ trated with the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way, by the nature of things, into a faint feeling of fraternity. But at this moment I am think¬ ing of Spike, an elector who voted on the side of Progress, though he was not inwardly attached to it under that name. For abstractions are deities having many specific names, local habitations, and forms of activity, and so get a multitude of devout servants, who care no more for them under their high¬ est titles than the celebrated person who, putting with forci¬ ble brevity a view of human motives now much insisted on, asked what Posterity had done for him that he should care for Posterity ? To many minds, even among the ancients (thought by some to have been invariably poetical), the god¬ dess of wisdom was doubtless worshipped simply as the pa¬ troness of spinning and weaving. Now spinning and weaving, from a manufacturing, wholesale point of view, was the chief form under which Spike from early years had unconsciously been a devotee of Progress. A POLITICAL MOLECULE. 317 He was a political molecule of the most gentleman-like ap¬ pearance, not less than six feet high, and showing the utmost nicety in the care of his person and equipment. His um¬ brella was especially remarkable for its neatness, though perhaps he swung it unduly in walking. His complexion was fresh, his eyes small, bright, and twinkling. He was seen to great advantage in a hat and great-coat — garments frequently fatal to the impressiveness of shorter figures ; but when he was uncovered in the drawing-room, it was impossi¬ ble not to observe that his head shelved off too rapidly from the eyebrows toward the crown, and that his length of limb seemed to have used up his mind so as to cause an air of abstraction from conversational topics. He appeared, indeed, to be preoccupied with a sense of his exquisite cleanliness, clapped his hands together and rubbed them, frequently straightened his back, and even opened his mouth and closed it again with a slight snap, apparently for no other purpose than the confirmation to himself of his own powers in that line. These are innocent exercises, but they are not such as give weight to a man’s personality. Sometimes Spike’s mind, emerging from its preoccupation, burst forth in a remark de¬ livered with smiling zest — as, that he did like to see gravel- walks well rolled, or that a lady should always wear the best jewelry, or that a bride was a most interesting object; but finding these ideas received rather coldly, he would relapse into abstraction, draw up his back, wrinkle his brows longi¬ tudinally, and seem to regard society, even including gravel- walks, jewelry, and brides, as essentially a poor affair. Indeed, his habit of mind was desponding, and he took melancholy views as to the possible extent of human pleasure and the value of existence; especially after he had made his fortune in the cotton manufacture, and had thus attained the chief object of his ambition — the object which had engaged his talent for order and persevering application — for his easy leisure caused him much ennui. He was abstemious, and had none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man’s time, first with indulgence, and then with the process 318 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of getting well from its effects. He had not, indeed, ex¬ hausted the sources of knowledge, but here again his notions of human pleasure were narrowed by his want of appetite; for, though he seemed rather surprised at the consideration that Alfred the Great was a Catholic, or that, apart from the Ten Commandments, any conception of moral conduct had oc¬ curred to mankind, he was not stimulated to further inquiries on these remote matters. Yet he aspired to what he regarded as intellectual society, willingly entertained beneficed clergy¬ men, and bought the books he heard spoken of, arranging them carefully on the shelves of what he called his library, and occasionally sitting alone in the same room with them. But some minds seem well glaced by nature against the ad¬ mission of knowledge, and Spike’s was one of them. It was not, however, entirely so with regard to politics. He had had a strong opinion about the Reform Bill, and saw clearly that the large trading-towns ought to send members. Portraits of the Reform heroes hung framed and glazed in his library ; he prided himself on being a Liberal. In this last particular, as well as in not giving benefactions, and not making loans without interest, he showed unquestionable firmness. On the Repeal of the Corn Laws, again, he was thoroughly convinced. His mind was expansive toward foreign markets, and his imagination could see that the people from whom we took corn might be able to take the cotton goods which they had hitherto dispensed with. On his conduct in these political concerns, his wife, otherwise influential as a woman who be¬ longed to a family with a title in it, and who had conde¬ scended in marrying him, could gain no hold; she had to blush a little at what was called her husband’s “ radicalism,” — an epithet which was a very unfair impeachment of Spike, who never went to the root of anything. But he understood his own trading affairs, and in this way became a genuine, constant political element. If he had been born a little later he could have been accepted as an eligible member of Par liament, and if he had belonged to a high family he might have done for a member e' the Government. Perhaps his A POLITICAL MOLECULE. 81 b indifference to “views ” would have passed for administrative judiciousness, and he would have been so generally silent that he must often have been silent in the right place. But this is empty speculation; there is no warrant for saying what Spike would have been and known, so as to have made a calculable political element, if he had not been educated by having to manage his trade. A small mind, trained to useful occupation for the satisfying of private need, becomes a representative of genuine class-needs. Spike objected to certain items of legislation, because they hampered his own trade, but his neighbor’s trade was hampered by the same causes; and though he would have been simply selfish, in a question of light or water between himself and a fellow- townsman, his need for a change in legislation, being shared by all his neighbors in trade, ceased to be simply selfish, and raised him to a sense of common injury and common benefit. True, if the law could have been changed for the benefit of his particular business, leaving the cotton trade in general in a sorry condition while he prospered, Spike might not have thought that result intolerably unjust; but the nature of things did not allow of such a result being contemplated as possible; it allowed of an enlarged market for Spike, only through the enlargement of his neighbors’ market, and the Possible is always the ultimate master of our efforts and de¬ sires. Spike was obliged to contemplate a general benefit, and thus became public-spirited in spite of himself. Or rather, the nature of things transmuted his active egoism into a demand for a public benefit. Certainly, if Spike had been born a marquis he could not have had the same chance of being useful as a political ele¬ ment. But he might have had the same appearance, have been equally null in conversation, sceptical as to the reality of pleasure, and destitute of historical knowledge, — perhaps even dimly disliking Jesuitism as a quality in Catholic minds, or regarding Bacon as the inventor of physical science. The depths of middle-aged gentlemen’s ignorance will never be known, for want of public examinations in this branch. THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE, M ORDAX is an admirable man, ardent in intellectual work, public-spirited, affectionate, and able to find the right words in conveying ingenious ideas or elevated feeling. Pity that to all these graces he cannot add what would give them the utmost finish, — the occasional admis¬ sion that he has been in the wrong, the occasional frank wel¬ come of a new idea as something not before present to his mind! But no; Mordax’s self-respect seems to be of that fiery quality which demands that none but the monarchs of thought shall have an advantage over him, and in the pres* ence of contradiction, or the threat of having his notions cor¬ rected, he becomes astonishingly unscrupulous and cruel for so kindly.and conscientious a man. “You are fond of attributing those fine qualities to Mordax,'’ said Acer, the other day, “but I have not much belief in virtues that are always requiring to be asserted, in spite of appearances against them. True fairness and good¬ will show themselves precisely where his are conspicuously absent — I mean in recognizing claims which the rest of the world are not likely to stand up for. It does not need much love of truth and justice in me to say that Aldebaran is a oright star, or Isaac Xewton the greatest of discoverers; or much kindliness in me to want my notes to be heard above the rest in a chorus of hallelujahs to one already crowned. It is my way to apply tests. Does the man who has the ear of the public use his advantage tenderly toward poor fellows who may be hindered of their due if he treats their pretensions with scorn ? That is my test of his justice and benevolence.” THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 321 My answer was, that his system of moral tests might be as delusive as what ignorant people take to be tests of in¬ tellect and learning. If the scholar or savant cannot answer their haphazard questions on the shortest notice, their belief in his capacity is shaken. But the better-informed have given up the Johnsonian theory of mind as a pair of legs able to walk east or west according to choice. Intellect is no longer taken to be a ready-made dose of ability to attain eminence (or mediocrity) in all departments; it is even admitted that application in one line of study or practice has often a lam¬ ing effect in other directions, and that an intellectual quality or special facility which is a furtherance in one medium of effort is a drag in another. We have convinced ourselves by this time that a man may be a sage in celestial physics, and a poor creature in the purchase of seed-corn, or even in theorizing about the affections; that he may be a mere tum¬ bler in physiology, and yet show a keen insight into human motives ; that he may seem the “ poor Poll ” of the company in conversation, and yet write with some humorous vigor. It is not true that a man’s intellectual power is, like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point. Why should we any more apply that fallacious standard of what is called consistency to a man’s moral nature; and argue against the existence of fine impulses or habits of feel¬ ing in relation to his actions generally, because those better movements are absent in a class of cases which act peculiarly on an irritable form of his egoism ? The mistake might be corrected by our taking notice that the ungenerous words or acts which seem to us the most utterly incompatible with good dispositions in the offender, are those which offend ourselves. All other persons are able to draw a milder conclusion. Lan- iger, who has a temper but no talent for repartee, having been run down in a fierce way by Mordax, is inwardly per¬ suaded that the highly lauded man is a wolf at heart; he is much tried by perceiving that his own friends seem to think no worse of the reckless assailant than they did before; and Corvus, who has lately been flattered by some kindness from Hi VOL. IX. 322 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Mordax, is unmindful enough of Laniger’s feeling to dwell on this instance of good-nature with admiring gratitude. There is a fable that when the badger had been stung all over by- bees, a bear consoled him by a rhapsodic account of how he himself had just breakfasted on their honey. The badger re¬ plied, peevishly, “ The stings are in my flesh, and the sweet¬ ness is on your muzzle.” The bear, it is said, was surprised at the badger’s want of altruism. But this difference of sensibility between Laniger and his friends only mirrors in a faint way the difference between his own point of view and that of the man who has injured him. If those neutral, perhaps even affectionate persons, form no lively conception of what Laniger suffers, how should Mor¬ dax have any such sympathetic imagination to check him in what he persuades himself is a scourging administered by the qualified man to the unqualified ? Depend upon it, his con¬ science, though active enough in some relations, has never given him a twinge because of his polemical rudeness and even brutality. He would go from the room where he has been tiring himself through the watches of the night, in lifting and turning a sick friend, and straightway write a reply or rejoinder in which he mercilessly pilloried a Laniger who had supposed that he could tell the world something else or more than had been sanctioned by the eminent Mordax — and, what was worse, had sometimes really done so„ Does this nullify the genuineness of motive which made him tender to his suf¬ fering friend ? Not at all. It only proves that his arrogant egoism, set on fire, sends up smoke and flame where just be¬ fore there had been the dews of fellowship and pity. He is angry, and equips himself accordingly — with a penknife to give the offender a comprachico countenance, a mirror to show him the effect, and a pair of nailed boots to give him his dis¬ missal. All this to teach him who the Romans really were, and to purge Inquiry of incompetent intrusion, so rendering an important service to mankind. When a man is in a rage, and wants to hurt another in consequence, he can. always regard himself as the civil arm THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 323 of a spiritual power, and all the more easily because there is real need to assert the righteous efficacy of indignation. 1 for my part feel with the Lanigers, and should object all the more to their or my being lacerated and dressed with salt, if the administrator of such torture alleged as a motive his care for truth and posterity, and got himself pictured with a halo in consequence. In transactions between fellow-men it is well to consider a little, in the first place, what is fair and kind toward the person immediately concerned, before we spit and roast him on behalf of the next century but one. Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious as they are, and of the highest sacramental virtue, have their dangers, like all else that touches the mixed life of the earth. They are arch¬ angels with awful brow and flaming sword, summoning and encouraging us to do the right and the divinely heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their presence; but to learn what it is they thus summon us to do, we have to consider the mortals we are elbowing, who are of our own stature and our own appetites. I cannot feel sure how my voting will affect the condition of Central Asia in the coming ages, but I have good reason to believe that the future populations there will be none the worse off because I abstain from conjectural vilification of my opponents during the present parliamentary session, and I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my contemporaries. On the whole, and in the vast majority of instances, the action by which we can do the best for future ages is of the sort which has a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in his sourness he does harm. The deed of J udas has been attributed to far-reaching views, and the wish to hasten his Master’s declaration of himself as the Messiah. Perhaps — I will not maintain the contrary — Judas repre¬ sented his motive in this way, and felt justified in his trai¬ torous kiss; but my belief that he deserved, metaphorically speaking, to be where Dante saw him, at the bottom of the Malebolge, would not be the less strong because he was not convinced that his action was detestable. I refuse to accept 32* ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. a man, who has the stomach for such treachery, as a hero impatient for the redemption of mankind, and for the be¬ ginning of a reign when the kisses shall be those of peace and righteousness. All this is by the way, to show that my apology for Mor- dax was not found on his persuasion of superiority in his own motives, but on the compatibility of unfair, equivocal, and even cruel actions with a nature which, apart from special temptations, is kindly and generous ; and also to enforce the need of checks, from a fellow-feeling with those whom our acts immediately (not distantly) concern. Will any one be so hardy as to maintain that an otherwise worthy man cannot be vain and arrogant? I think most of us have some in¬ terest in arguing the contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self-justifying. There are fierce beasts within; chain them, chain them, and let them learn to cower before the creature with wider reason. This is what one wishes for Mordax —• that his heart and brain should restrain the outleap of roar and talons. As to his unwillingness to admit that an idea which he has not discovered is novel to him, one is surprised that quick intellect and shrewd observation do not early gather reasons for being ashamed of a mental trick which makes one among the comic parts of that various actor, Conceited Ignorance. I have a sort of valet and factotum, an excellent, respect¬ able servant, whose spelling is so unvitiated by non-plionetic superfluities that he writes night as nit . One day, looking over his accounts, I said to him jocosely: “ You are in the latest fashion with your spelling, Pummel; most people spell 1 night ’ with a gh between the i and the t, but the greatest scholars now spell it as you do.” “ So I suppose, sir,” says Pummel; “ I’ve seen it with a gh, but I’ve noways give in to that myself.” You would never catch Pummel in an inter¬ jection of surprise. I have sometimes laid traps for his aston¬ ishment ; but he has escaped them all, either by a respectful THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 825 neutrality, as of one who would not appear to notice that his master had been taking too much wine, or else by that strong persuasion of his all-knowingness, which makes it simply im¬ possible for him to feel himself newly informed. If I tell him that the world is spinning round and along like a top, and that he is spinning with it, he says, “ Yes, I ? ve heard a deal of that in my time, sir,” and lifts the horizontal lines of his brow a little higher, balancing his head from side to side as if it were too painfully full. Whether I tell him that they cook puppies in China, that there are ducks with fur coats in Australia, or that in some parts of the world it is the pink of politeness to put your tongue out on introduction to a re¬ spectable stranger, Pummel replies, “So I suppose, sir,” with an air of resignation to hearing my poor version of well- known things, such as elders use in listening to lively boys lately presented with an anecdote-book. His utmost con¬ cession is that what you state is what he would have sup-' plied if you had given him carte blanche instead of your needless instruction, and in this sense his favorite answer is, “I should say.” “ Pummel,” I observed, a little irritated at not getting my coffee, “ if you were to carry your kettle and spirits of wine up a mountain of a morning, your water would boil there sooner.” “ I should say, sir.” Or, “ There are boiling springs in Iceland. Better go to Iceland.” “ That’s what I’ve been thinking, sir.” I have taken to asking him hard questions, and, as I expected, he never admits his own inability to answer them, without representing it as common to the human race. “What is the cause of the tides, Pummel?” “Well, sir, nobody rightly knows. Many gives their opinion, but if I was to give mine, it ’ud be different.” But while he is never surprised himself, he is constantly imagining situations of surprise for others. His own con¬ sciousness is that of one so thoroughly soaked in knowledge that further absorption is impossible; but his neighbors appear to him to be in the state of thirsty sponges, which it is a 326 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. charity to besprinkle. His great interest in thinking of for¬ eigners is that they must be surprised at what they see in England, and especially at the beef. He is often occupied with the surprise Adam must have felt at the sight of the assembled animals — “ for he was not like us, sir, used from a b’y to Womb well’s shows.” He is fond of discoursing to the lad who acts as shoeblack and general subaltern, and I have overheard him saying to that small upstart, with some severity, “ Now don’t you pretend to know, because the more you pretend the more I see your ignirance ”— a lucidity on his part which has confirmed my impression that the thor¬ oughly self-satisfied person is the only one fully to appreciate the charm of humility in others. Your diffident, self-suspecting mortal is not very angry that others should feel more comfortable about themselves, pro¬ vided they are not otherwise offensive : he is rather like the chilly person, glad to sit next a warmer neighbor; or the timid, glad to have a courageous fellow-traveller. It cheers him to observe the store of small comforts that his fellow- creatures may find in their self-complacency, just as one is pleased to see poor old souls soothed by the tobacco and sn uff for which one has neither nose nor stomach one’s self. But your arrogant man will not tolerate a presumption which he sees to be ill-founded. The service he regards so¬ ciety as most in need of, is to put down the conceit which is so particularly rife around him that he is inclined to believe it the growing characteristic of the present age. In the schools of Magna Grsecia, or in the sixth century of our era, or even under Kublai Khan, he finds a comparative freedom from that presumption by which his contemporaries are stir¬ ring his able gall. The way people will now flaunt notions which are not his, without appearing to mind that they are not his, strikes him as especially disgusting. It might seem surprising to us that one strongly convinced of his own value should prefer to exalt an age in which he did not flourish, if it were not for the reflection that the present age is the only in which anybody has appeared to undervalue him. A HALF-BREED. N early, deep-seated love to which we become faith- less has its unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all newer joys by the intrusion of re¬ gret and the established presentiment of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love of ideas, prac¬ tical beliefs, and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a gradual conversion, dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. In this sort of love it is the forsaker who has the melancholy lot; for an aban¬ doned belief may be more effectively vengeful than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught young and trained to polite life, if he feels a hereditary yearning, can run away to the old wilds and get his nature into tune. But there is no such recovery possible to the man who remembers what he once believed, without being convinced that he was in error; who feels within himself unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits, and intimacies from which he has far receded, without conscious justification or unwavering sense of superior attrac¬ tiveness in the new. This involuntary renegade has his character hopelessly jangled and out of tune. He is like an organ with its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding themselves without method, so that hearers are amazed by the most unexpected transitions — the trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe confounding both. Hence the lot of Mixtus affects me pathetically, notwith¬ standing that he spends his growing wealth with liberality 328 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. and manifest enjoyment. To most observers he appears to be simply one of the fortunate and also sharp commercial men, who began with meaning to be rich, and have become what they meant to be — a man never taken to be well-born, but surprisingly better informed than the well-born usually are, and distinguished among ordinary commercial magnates by a personal kindness which prompts him not only to help the suffering in a material way through his wealth, but also by direct ministration of his own; yet with all this, diffusing, as it were, the odor of a man delightedly conscious of his wealth, as an equivalent for the other social distinctions of rank and intellect, which he can thus admire without envying. Hardly one among those superficial observers can suspect that he aims or has ever aimed at being a writer: still less can they imagine that his mind is often moved by strong currents of regret, and of the most unworldly sympathies, from the memories of a youthful time when his chosen associates were men and women whose only distinction was a religious, a philanthropic, or an intellectual enthusiasm; when the lady, on whose words his attention most hung, was a writer of minor religious literature; when he was a visitor and exhorter of the poor in the alleys of a great provincial town, and when he attended the lectures given especially to young men by Mr. Apollos, the eloquent Congregational preacher, who had studied in Germany, and had liberal advanced views, then far beyond the ordinary teaching of his sect. At that time Mixtus thought himself a young man of socially reforming ideas, of religious principles and religious yearnings. It was within his prospects also to be rich, but he looked forward to a use of his riches chiefly for reforming and religious pur¬ poses. His opinions were of a strongly democratic stamp; except that even then, belonging to the class of employers, he was opposed to all demands in the employed that would restrict the expansiveness of trade. He was the most demo cratic in relation to the unreasonable privileges of the aris- tocracy and landed interest, and he had also a religious sense of brotherhood with the poor. Altogether he was a sincerely A HALF-BREED. 329 benevolent young man, interested in ideas, and renouncing personal ease for the sake of study, religious communion, and good works. If you had known him then, you would have expected him to marry a highly serious and perhaps literary woman, sharing his benevolent and religious habits, and likely to encourage his studies — a woman who, along with himself, would play a distinguished part in one of the most enlight¬ ened religious circles of a great provincial capital. How is it that Mixtus finds himself in a London mansion, and in society totally unlike that which made the ideal of his younger years ? And whom did he marry ? Why, he married Scintilla, who fascinated him, as she had fascinated others, by her prettiness, her liveliness, and her music. It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal; or, if not wholly captivated, at least effectively cap¬ tured, by a combination of circumstances, along with an un¬ warily manifested inclination which might otherwise have been transient. Mixtus was captivated and then captured on the worldly side of his disposition, which had been always growing and flourishing side by side with his philanthropic and religious tastes. He had ability in business, and he had early meant to be rich; also, he was getting rich, and the taste for such success was naturally growing with the pleas¬ ure of rewarded exertion. It was during a business sojourn in London that he met Scintilla, who, though without for¬ tune, associated with families of Greek merchants living in a style of splendor, and with artists patronized by such wealthy entertainers. Mixtus on this occasion became famil¬ iar with a world in which wealth seemed the key to a more brilliant sort of dominance than that of a religious patron in the provincial circles of X. Would it not be possible to unite the two kinds of sway ? A man bent on the most use¬ ful ends might, with a fortune large enough , make morality magnificent, and recommend religious principle by showing it in combination with the best kind of house and the most liberal of tables; also with a wife whose graces, wit, and 330 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. accomplishments gave a finish—sometimes lacking, even to establishments got up with that unhesitating worldliness to which high cost is a sufficient reason. Enough. Mixtus married Scintilla. Now this lively lady knew nothing of Non-conformists, except that they were unfashion¬ able ; she did not distinguish one conventicle from another; and Mr. Apollos, with his enlightened interpretations, seemed to her as heavy a bore, if not quite so ridiculous, as Mr. Johns could have been, with his solemn twang, at the Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a local preacher among the Meth¬ odists. In general, people who appeared seriously to believe in any sort of doctrine, whether religious, social, or philo¬ sophical, seemed rather absurd to Scintilla. Ten to one these theoretic people pronounced oddly, had some reason or other for saying that the most agreeable things were wrong, wore objectionable clothes, and wanted you to subscribe to some¬ thing. They were probably ignorant of art and music, did not understand badinage, and, in fact, could talk of nothing amusing. In Scintilla’s eyes the majority of persons were ridiculous, and deplorably wanting in that keen perception of what was good taste with which she herself was blessed by nature and education; but the people understood to be re¬ ligious, or otherwise theoretic, were the most ridiculous of all, without being proportionately amusing and invitable. Did Mixtus not discover this view of Scintilla’s before their marriage ? Or did he allow her to remain in ignorance of habits and opinions which had made half the occupation of his youth ? When a man is inclined to marry a particular woman, and has made any committal of himself, this woman’s opinions, however different from his own, are readily regarded as part of her pretty ways, especially if they are merely negative; as, for example, that she does not insist on the Trinity, or on the rightfulness or expediency of Church rates, but simply regards her lover’s troubling himself in disputation on these heads as stuff and nonsense. The man feels his own superior strength, and is sure that marriage will make no difference A HALF-BREED. 331 to him on the subjects about which he is in earnest. And to laugh at men’s affairs is a woman’s privilege, tending to enliven the domestic hearth. If Scintilla had no liking for the best sort of Non-conformity, she was without any troublesome bia^ toward Episcopacy, Anglicanism, and early sacraments, and was quite contented not to go to church. As to Scintilla’s acquaintance with her lover’s tastes on these subjects, she was equally convinced on her side that a husband’s queer ways, while he was a bachelor, would be easily laughed out of him when he had married an adroit woman. Mixtus, she felt, was an excellent creature, quite likable, who was getting rich; and Scintilla meant to have all the advan¬ tages of a rich man’s wife. She was not in the least a wicked woman; she was simply a pretty animal of the ape kind, with an aptitude for certain accomplishments, which educa¬ tion had made the most of. But we have seen what has been the result to poor Mixtus. He has become richer even than he dreamed of being, has a little palace in London, and entertains with splendor the half- aristocratic, professional, and artistic society which he is proud to think select. This society regards him as a clever fellow in his particular branch, seeing that he has become a considerable capitalist, and as a man desirable to have on the list of one’s acquaintance. But from every other point of view Mixtus finds himself personally submerged: what he happens to think is not felt by his esteemed guests to be of any consequence; and what he used to think, with the ardor of conviction, he now hardly ever expresses. He is trans¬ planted, and the sap within him has long been diverted into other than the old lines of vigorous growth. How could he speak to the artist Crespi, or to Sir Hong Kong Bantam, about the enlarged doctrine of Mr. Apollos ? How could he mention to them his former efforts toward evangelizing the inhabitants of the X. alleys ? And his references to his his¬ torical and geographical studies, toward a survey of possible markets for English products, are received with an air of ironical suspicion by many of his political friends, who take 332 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. his pretension to give advice concerning the Amazon, the Euphrates, and the Niger, as equivalent to the currier’s wide views on the applicability of leather. He can only make a figure through his genial hospitality. It is in vain that he buys the best pictures and statues of the best artists. Nobody will call him a judge in art. If his pictures and statues are well chosen, it is generally thought that Scintilla told him what to buy; and yet Scintilla, in* other connections, is spoken of as having only a superficial and often questionable taste. Mixtus, it is decided, is a good fellow, not ignorant, no — really having a good deal of knowledge as well as sense, but not easy to classify otherwise than as a rich man. He has, consequently, become a little uncertain as to his own point of view; and in his most unreserved moments of friendly intercourse, even when speaking to listeners whom he thinks likely to sympathize with the earlier part of his career, he presents himself in all his various aspects, and feels himself in turn what he has been, what he is, and what others take him to be (for this last status is what we must all more or less accept). He will recover with some glow of enthusiasm the vision of his old associates, the particular limit he was once accustomed to trace of freedom in religious speculation, and his old ideal of a worthy life; but he will presently pass to the argument that money is the only means by which you can get what is best worth having in the world, and will arrive at the exclamation, “ Give me money ! ” with the tone and gesture of a man who both feels and knows. Then if one of his audience, not having money, remarks that a man may have made up his mind to do without money, because he pre¬ fers something else, Mixtus is with him immediately, cor¬ dially concurring in the supreme value of mind and genius, which indeed make his own chief delight, in that he is able to entertain the admirable possessors of these attributes at his own table, though not himself reckoned among them. Yet he will proceed to observe there was a time when he sacrificed his sleep to study; and even now, amidst the press of business, he from time to time thinks of taking up the manuscripts which A HALF-BREED. 333 he hopes some aay to complete, and is always increasing his collection of valuable works bearing on his favorite topics. And it is true that he has read much in certain directions, and can remember what he has read; he knows the history and theories of colonization, and the social condition of countries that do not at present consume a sufficiently large share of our products and manufactures. He continues his early habit of regarding the spread of Christianity as a great result of our commercial intercourse with black, brown, and yellow populations; but this is an idea not spoken of in the sort of fashionable society that Scintilla collects round her husband’s table; and Mixtus now philosophically reflects that the cause must come before the effect, and that the thing to be directly striven for is the commercial intercourse — not excluding a little war, if that also should prove needful as a pioneer of Christianity. He has long been wont to feel bash¬ ful about his former religion, as if it were an old attachment, having consequences which he did not abandon but kept in decent privacy, his avowed objects and actual position being incompatible with their public acknowledgment. There is the same kind of fluctuation in his aspect toward social questions and duties. He has not lost the kindness that used to make him a benefactor and succorer of the needy, and he is still liberal in helping forward the clever and indus¬ trious ; but in his active superintendence of commercial un¬ dertakings he has contracted more and more of the bitterness which capitalists and employers often feel to be a reason¬ able mood toward obstructive proletaries. Hence many who have occasionally met him when trade questions were being discussed, conclude him to be indistinguishable from the ordinary run of moneyed and money-getting men. Indeed, hardly any of his acquaintances know what Mixtus really is, considered as a whole —nor does Mixtus himself know it. DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. “ L ne faut pas mettre un ridicule ou il n’y en a point: c’est a se gater le gout, c’est corrompre son jugement et celui des autres. Mais le ridicule qui est quelque part, il faut l’y voir, l’en tirer avec grace et d’une maniere qui plaise et qui instruise.” I anr fond of quoting this passage from La Bruyere, because the subject is one where I like to show a Frenchman on my side, to save my sentiments from being set down to my pecul¬ iar dulness and deficient sense of the ludicrous ; and also that they may profit by that enhancement of ideas when presented in a foreign tongue, that glamour of unfamiliarity conferring a dignity on the foreign names of very common things, of which even a philosopher like Dugald Stewart confesses the influence. I remember hearing a fervid woman attempt to recite in English the narrative of a begging Frenchman, who described the violent death of his father in the July days. The narrative had impressed her, through the mists of her flushed anxiety to understand it, as something quite grandly pathetic; but finding the facts turn out meagre, and her audi¬ ence cold, she broke off, saying, “ It sounded so much finer in French — J’ai vu le sang de mon pere and so on — I wish I could repeat it in French.” This was a pardonable illusion in an old-fashioned lady, who had not received the polyglot education of the present day; but I observe that even now much nonsense and bad taste win admiring acceptance solely by virtue of the French language, and one may fairly desire that what seems just discrimination should profit by the fashionable prejudice in favor of La Bruyere’s idiom. But DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 335 I wish he had added that the habit of dragging the ludicrous into topics where the chief interest is of a different or even opposite kind, is a sign not of endowment but of deficiency. The art of spoiling is within reach of the dullest faculty : the coarsest clown, with a hammtr in his hand, might chip the nose off every statue and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning at the effect of his work. Because wit is an exqui¬ site product of high powers, we are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of the monotonous jester, that he is establishing his superiority over every less face¬ tious person, and over every topic on which he is ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as a joking apparatus. Some high authority is needed to give many worthy and timid persons the freedom of muscular repose, under the growing demand on them to laugh when they have no other reason than the peril of being taken for dullards; still more, to inspire them with the courage to say that they object to the theatrical spoiling, for themselves and their children, of all affecting themes, all the grander deeds and aims of men, by burlesque associations, adapted to the taste of rich fishmongers in the stalls and their assistants in the gallery. The English people in the present generation are falsely reputed to know Shakspeare (as by some innG- cent persons the Florentine mule-drivers are believed to have known the “ Divina Commedia,” not, perhaps, excluding all the subtle discourses in the Purgatorio and ParacLiso) ; but there seems a clear prospect that in the coming generation he will be known to them through burlesques, and that his plays will find a new life as pantomimes. A bottle-nosed Lear will come on with a monstrous corpulence, from which he will frantically dance himself free during the midnight storm; Rosalind and Celia will join in a grotesque ballet with shepherds and shepherdesses; Opnelia, in fleshings and a voluminous brevity of grenadine, will dance through the mad scene, finishing with the famous “attitude of the scissors ” in the arms of Laertes; and all the speeches in 336 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. “Hamlet” will be so ingeniously parodied that the origi¬ nals will be reduced to a mere memoria technica of the im¬ prover’s puns — premonitory signs of a hideous millennium, in which the lion will have to lie down with the lascivious monkeys, whom (if we may trust Pliny) his soul naturally abhors. I have been amazed to find that some artists, whose own works have the ideal stamp, are quite insensible to the damag¬ ing tendency of the burlesquing spirit which ranges to and fro, and up and down, on the earth, seeing no reason (except a precarious censorship) why it should not appropriate every sacred, heroic, and pathetic theme which serves to make up the treasure of human admiration, hope, and love. One would have thought that tlieir own half-despairing efforts to invest in worthy outward shape the vague inward impressions of sublimity, and the consciousness of an implicit ideal in the commonest scenes, might have made them susceptible of some disgust or alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions no better than a dissolv¬ ing view, where every noble form is seen melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined of the unhappy medueval Jews that they parodied Calvary by cru¬ cifying dogs; if they had been guilty, they would at least have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecution. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have no other excuse than the reckless search after fodder for degraded appetites — after the pay to be earned by pas¬ turing Circe’s herd where they may defile every monument of that growing life which should have kept them human ? The world seems to me well supplied with what is genu¬ inely ridiculous; wit and humor may play as harmlessly or beneficently round the changing facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sunshine over the rippling sea or the dew}' meadows. Why should we make our delicious sense of the ludicrous — with its invigorating shocks of laughter, and its irrepressible smiles, which are the outglow of an inward radiation as gentle and cheering as the warmth of morning — DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 33 ? flourish like a brigand on the robbery of our mental wealth ? or let it take its exercise as a madman might, if allowed a free nightly promenade, by drawing the populace with bon¬ fires which leave some venerable structure a blackened ruin, or send a scorching smoke across the portraits of the past, at which we once looked with a loving recognition of fellowship, and disfigure them into butts of mockery ? — nay, worse, use it to degrade the healthy appetites and affections of oui nature, as they are seen to be degraded in insane patients, whose system, all out of joint, finds matter for screaming laughter in mere topsy-turvy, makes every passion preposter¬ ous or obscene, and turns the hard-won order of life into a second chaos, hideous enough to make one wail that the first was ever thrilled with light ? This is what I call debasing the moral currency: lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition, so that it will command less and less of the spiritual products, the generous motives, which sustain the charm and elevation of our social existence — the something besides bread by which man saves his soul alive. The bread-winner of the family may demand more and more coppery shillings or assignats or greenbacks for his day’s work, and so get the needful quantum of food; but let that moral currency be emptied of its value, let a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, majesty, and pathos, and the more you heap up the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with social virtue. And yet, it seems, parents will put into the hands of their children ridiculous parodies (perhaps with more ridiculous illustrations) of the poems which stirred their own ten¬ derness or filial piety, and carry them to make their first acquaintance with great men, great works, or solemn crises, through the medium of some miscellaneous burlesque, which, with its idiotic puns and farcical attitudes, will remain among their primary associations, and reduce them, throughout their time of studious preparation for life, to the moral imbecility 22 VOL. IX. 338 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of an inward giggle at what might have stimulated their high emulation, or fed the fountains of compassion, trust, and con¬ stancy. One wonders where these parents have deposited that stock of morally educating stimuli which is to be inde¬ pendent of poetic tradition, and to subsist, in spite of the finest images being degraded, and the finest works of genius being poisoned as with some befooling drug. Will fine wit, will exquisite humor, prosper the more through this turning of all things indiscriminately into food for a gluttonous laughter, an idle craving, without sense of flavors ? On the contrary. That delightful power which La Bruyere points to — “ le ridicule qui est quelque part, il faut l’y voir, l’en tirer avec grace et d’une maniere qui plaise et qui instruise ” — depends on a discrimination only compatible with the varied sensibilities which give sympathetic insight, and with the justice of perception which is another name for grave knowledge. Such a result is no more to be expected from faculties on the strain to find some small hook by which they may attach the lowest incongruity to the most moment¬ ous subject, than it is to be expected of a sharper, watching for gulls in a great political assemblage, that he will notice the blundering logic of partisan speakers, or season his obser¬ vation with the salt of historical parallels. But after all our psychological teaching, and in the midst of our zeal for education, we are still, most of us, at the stage of believing that mental powers and habits have somehow, not perhaps in the general statement but in any particular case, a kind of spiritual glaze against conditions which we are continually applying to them. We soak our children in habits of con¬ tempt and exultant gibing, and yet are confident that, as Clarissa one day said to me, “ We can always teach them to be reverent in the right place, you know.” And doubtless if she were to take her boys to see a burlesque Socrates, with swollen legs, dying in the utterance of cockney puns, and were to hang up a sketch of this comic scene among their bedroom prints, she would think this preparation not at all to the prejudice of their emotions on hearing their tutor read DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 839 that narrative of the “ Apology,” which has been consecrated Dy the reverent gratitude of ages. This is the impoverishment that threatens our posterity: a new Famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd grin and clumsy hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest of our human sentiments. These are the most delicate elements of our too easily perishable civiliza¬ tion. And here again I like to quote a French testimony. Sainte-Beuve, referring to a time of insurrectionary disturb¬ ance, says: “ B-ien de plus prompt a baisser que la civilisa^ tion dans les crises coinme celle-ci; on perd en trois semaineg le resultat de plusieurs siecles. La civilisation, la vie, est une chose apprise et invents, qu’on le sache bien: 1 Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes.’ J es homines apres quelques annees de paix oublient trope cette verite: ils arrivent k croire que la culture est chose innee, qu’elle est la meme chose que la nature. La sauvagerie est toujours la a deux pas, et, des qu’on lache pied, elle recommence.” We have been severely enough taught (if we were willing to learn) that our civilization, considered as a splendid material fabric, is help¬ lessly in peril without the spiritual police of sentiments or ideal feelings. And it is this invisible police which we had need, as a community, strive to maintain in efficient force. How if a dangerous “ Swing ” were sometimes disguised in a versatile entertainer, devoted to the amusement of mixed audiences ? And I confess that sometimes when I see a cer¬ tain style of a young lady, who checks our tender admiration with rouge and henna and all the blazonry of an extravagant expenditure, with slang and bold brusquerie intended to sig¬ nify her emancipated view of things, and the cynical mockery which she mistakes for penetration, I am sorely tempted to hiss out “ Petroleuse ! ” It is a small matter to have our pal¬ aces set aflame, compared with the misery of having our sense of a noble womanhood, which is the inspiration of a purifying shame, the promise of life-penetrating affection, stained and blotted out by images of repulsiveness. These things come not of higher education but of dull ignorance, fostered into pertness by the greedy vulgarity which reverses Peter’s vision- ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. a40 ary lesson, and learns to call all things common and unclean. It comes of debasing the moral currency. The Tirynthians, according to an ancient story reported by Athenseus, becoming conscious that their trick of laughter at everything and nothing was making them unfit for the con¬ duct of serious affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and ir this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to a people who, in a crisis of the public well-being, were at the mercy of a poor jest. THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB. ■'VT'O man, I imagine, would object more strongly than AM Eupliorionto communistic principles in relation to ma¬ terial property, but with regard to property in ideas he enter¬ tains such principles willingly, and is disposed to treat the distinction between Mine and Thine in original authorship as egoistic, narrowing, and low. I have known him, indeed, insist, at some expense of erudition, on the prior right of an ancient, a mediaeval, or an eighteenth-century writer to be credited with a view or statement lately advanced with some show of originality; and this championship seems to imply a nicety of conscience toward the dead. He is evidently unwilling that his neighbors should get more credit than is due to them, and in this way he appears to recognize a cer¬ tain proprietorship even in spiritual production. But per¬ haps it is no real inconsistency that, with regard to many instances of modern origination, it is his habit to talk with a Gallic largeness and refer to the universe: he expatiates on the diffusive nature of intellectual products, free and all- embracing as the liberal air; on the infinitesimal smallness of individual origination compared with the massive inheritance of thought on which every new generation enters; on that growing preparation for every epoch through which certain ideas or modes of view are said to be in the air, and, still more metaphorically speaking, to be inevitably absorbed, so that every one may be excused for not knowing how he got them. Above all, he insists on the proper subordination of the irritable self, the mere vehicle of an idea or combination ux ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. which, being produced by the sum total of the human race, must belong to that multiple entity, from the accomplished lecturer or popularizer who transmits it, to the remotest gen¬ eration of Fuegians or Hottentots, however indifferent these may be to the superiority of their right above that of the eminently perishable dyspeptic author. One may admit that such considerations carry a profound truth, to be even religiously contemplated, and yet object all the more to the mode in which Euphorion seems to apply them. I protest against the use of these majestic conceptions to do the dirty work of unscrupulosity, and justify the non¬ payment of conscious debts, which cannot be defined or en¬ forced by the law ; especially since it is observable that the large views as to intellectual property, which can apparently reconcile an able person to the use of lately borrowed ideas as if they were his own, when this spoliation is favored by the public darkness, never hinder him from joining in the zealous tribute of recognition and applause to those warriors of truth whose triumphal arches are seen in the public ways, those conquerors whose battles and “ annexations ” even the carpenters and bricklayers know by name. Surely the ac¬ knowledgment of a mental debt which will not be imme¬ diately detected, and may never be asserted, is a case to which the traditional susceptibility to “debts of honor” would be suitably transferred. There is no massive public opinion that can be expected to tell on these relations o” thinkers and investigators, relations to be thoroughly undeis stood and felt only by those who are interested in the life of ideas and acquainted with their history. To lay false claim to an invention or discovery which has an immediate market value; to vamp up a professedly new book of reference by stealing from the pages of one already produced at the cost of much labor and material; to copy somebody else’s poem and send the manuscript to a magazine, or hand it about among friends as an original “ effusion; ” to deliver an ele¬ gant extract from a known writer as a piece of improvised eloquence — these are the limits within which the dishonest THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE IIONEY-COMB. 343 pretence of originality is likely to get hissed or hooted, and bring more or less shame on the culprit. It is not necessary to understand the merit of a performance, or even to spell with any comfortable confidence, in order to perceive at once that such pretences are not respectable. But the difference between these vulgar frauds — these devices of ridiculous jays, whose ill-secured plumes are seen falling off them as they run — and the quiet appropriation of other people’s philosophic or scientific ideas, can hardly be held to lie in their moral quality, unless we take impunity as our criterion. The pitiable jays had no presumption in their favor, and foolishly fronted an alert incredulity; but Euphorion, the accomplished theorist, has an audience who expect much of him, and take it as the most natural thing in the world that every unusual view which he presents anonymously should be due solely to his ingenuity. His borrowings are no incongruous feathers, awkwardly stuck on; they have an appropriateness which makes them seem an answer to anticipation, like the return phrases of a melody. Certainly one cannot help the ignorant conclusions of polite society; and there are, perhaps, fashion¬ able persons who, if a speaker has occasion to explain what the occiput is, will consider that he has lately discovered that curiously named portion of the animal frame. One cannot give a genealogical introduction to every long-stored item of fact or conjecture that may happen to be a revelation for the large class of persons who are understood to judge soundly on a small basis of knowledge; but Euphorion would be very sorry to have it supposed that he is unacquainted with the history of ideas, and sometimes carries even into minutiae the evidence of his exact registration of names in connection with quotable phrases or suggestions. I can therefore only explain the apparent infirmity of his memory in cases of larger “ conveyance ” by supposing that he is accustomed, by the very association of largeness, to range them at once under those grand laws of the universe in the light of which Mine and Thine disappear and are resolved into Everybody’s or Nobody’s 5 and one man’s particular obligations to another 344 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. melt untraceably into the obligations of the earth to the solar system in general. Euphorion himself, if a particular omission of acknowl¬ edgment were brought home to him, would probably take a narrower ground of explanation. It was a lapse of memory; or it did not occur to him as necessary in this case to men¬ tion a name, the source being well known; or (since this seems usually to act as a strong reason for mention) he rather abstained from adducing the name because it might injure the excellent matter advanced, just as an obscure trade-mark casts discredit on a good commodity, and even on the retailer who has furnished himself from a quarter not likely to be es¬ teemed firstrate. No doubt this last is a genuine and fre¬ quent reason for the non-acknowledgment of indebtedness to what one may call impersonal as well as personal sources: even an American editor of school classics, whose own Eng¬ lish could not pass for more than a syntactical shoddy of the cheapest sort, felt it unfavorable to his reputation for sound learning that he should be obliged to the “ Penny Cyclopaedia,” and disguised his references to it under contractions in which Us. Knowl. took the place of the low word Penny. Works of this convenient stamp, easily obtained and well nourished with matter, are felt to be like rich but unfashionable re¬ lations, who are visited and received in privacy, and whose capital is used or inherited without any ostentatious insist¬ ence on their names and places of abode. As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love — when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them. But it is always in¬ teresting to bring forward eminent names, such as Patricius or Scaliger, Euler or Lagrange, Bopp or Humboldt. To know exactly what has been drawn from them is erudition, and heightens our own influence, which seems advantageous to mankind; whereas to cite an author whose ideas may pass as higher currency under our own signature, can have no ob¬ ject except the contradictory one of throwing the illumination THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB. 345 over his figure, when it is important to be seen one’s self. All these reasons must weigh considerably with those spec¬ ulative persons who have to ask themselves whether or not Universal Utilitarianism requires that in the particular in¬ stance before them they should injure a man who has been of service to them, and rob a fellow-workman of the credit which is due to him. After all, however, it must be admitted that hardly any accusation is more difficult to prove, and more liable to be false, than that of a plagiarism which is the conscious theft of ideas and deliberate reproduction of them as original. The arguments on the side of acquittal are obvious and strong — the inevitable coincidences of contemporary think¬ ing, and our continual experience of finding notions turning up in our minds without any label on them to tell us whence they came; so that if we are in the habit of expecting much from our own capacity we accept them at once as a new inspiration. Then, in relation to the elder authors, there is the difficulty first of learning and then of remembering exactly what has been wrought into the backward tapestry of the world’s history, together with the fact that ideas acquired long ago reappear as the sequence of an awakened interest or a line of inquiry which is really new in us; whence it is con¬ ceivable that if we were ancients some of us might be offering grateful hecatombs by mistake, and proving our honesty in a ruinously expensive manner. On the other hand, the evi¬ dence on which plagiarism is concluded is often of a kind which, though much trusted in questions of erudition and historical criticism, is apt to lead us injuriously astray in our daily judgments, especially of the resentful, condemnatory sort. How Pythagoras came by his ideas, whether St. Paul was acquainted with all the Greek poets, what Tacitus must have known by hearsay and systematically ignored, are points m which a false persuasion of knowledge is less damaging to justice and charity than an erroneous confidence, supported by reasoning fundamentally similar, of my neighbor’s blame¬ worthy behavior in a case where I am personally concerned 346 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. No premises require closer scrutiny than those which lead to the constantly echoed conclusion, “ He must have known,” or “ He must have read.” I marvel that this facility of belief on the side of knowledge can subsist under the daily demon¬ stration that the easiest of all things to the human mind is not to know and not to read. To praise, to blame, to shout, grin, or hiss, where others shout, grin, or hiss — these are native tendencies; but to know and to read are artificial, hard accomplishments, concerning which the only safe supposition is, that as little of them has been done as the case admits. An author, keenly conscious of having written, can hardly help imagining his condition of lively interest to be shared by others ; just as we are all apt to suppose that the chill or heat we are conscious of must be general, or even to think that our sons and daughters, our pet schemes, and our quarrelling correspondence, are themes to which intelligent persons will listen long without weariness. But if the ardent author happen to be alive to practical teaching, he will soon learn to divide the larger part of the enlightened public into those who have not read him, and think it necessary to tell him so when they meet him in polite society, and those who have equally abstained from reading him, but wish to con¬ ceal this negation, and speak of his “ incomparable works ” with that trust in testimony which always has its cheering Bide. Hence it is worse than foolish to entertain silent suspi¬ cions of plagiarism, still more to give them voice, when they are founded on a construction of probabilities which a little more attention to every-day occurrences, as a guide in reason- ing, would show us to be really worthless, considered as proof. The length to which one man’s memory can go in letting drop associations that are vital to another can hardly find a limit. It is not to be supposed that a person desirous to make an agreeable impression on you would deliberately choose to insist to you, with some rhetorical sharpness, on an argument Thich you were the first to elaborate in public; yet any who listens may overhear such instances of obliviousness. You THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB. 347 naturally remember your peculiar connection with your acquaintance’s judicious views; but why should he ? Your fatherhood, which is an intense feeling to you, is only an additional fact of meagre interest for him to remember; and a sense of obligation to the particular living fellow-struggler who has helped us in our thinking, is not yet a form of mem¬ ory the want of which is felt to be disgraceful or derogatory, unless it is taken to be a want of polite instruction, or causes the missing of a cockade on a day of celebration. In our suspicions of plagiarism we must recognize, as the first weighty probability, that what we, who feel injured, remember best is precisely what is least likely to enter lastingly into the memory of our neighbors. But it is fair to maintain that the neighbor who borrows your property, loses it for awhile, and when it turns up again forgets your connection with it and counts it his own, shows himself so much the feebler in grasp and rectitude of mind. Some absent persons cannot remember the state of wear in their own hats and umbrellas, and have no mental check to tell them that they have car¬ ried home a fellow-visitor’s more recent purchase. They may be excellent householders, far removed from the suspicion of low devices, but one wishes them a more correct perception, and a more wary sense that a neighbor’s umbrella may be newer than their own. True, some persons are so constituted that the very excel¬ lence of an idea seems to them a convincing reason that it must be, if not solely, yet especially theirs. It fits in so beautifully with their general wisdom, it lies implicitly in so many of their manifested opinions, that, if they have not yet expressed it (because of preoccupation), it is clearly a part of their indigenous produce, and is proved by their immediate eloquent promulgation of it to belong more naturally and appropriately to them than to the person who seemed first to have alighted on it, and who sinks in their all-originating consciousness to that low kind of entity, a second cause. This is not lunacy, or pretence, but a genuine state of mind very effective in practice, and often carrying the public with 348 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. it, so that the poor Columbus is found to be a very faulty adventurer, and the continent is named after Amerigo. Lighter examples of this instinctive appropriation are con¬ stantly met with among brilliant talkers. Aquila is too agreeable and amusing for any one, who is not himself bent on display, to be angry at his conversational rapine — his habit of darting down on every morsel of booty that other birds may hold in their beaks, with an innocent air, as if it were all intended for his use, and honestly counted on by him as a tribute in kind. Hardly any man, I imagine, can have had less trouble in gathering a showy stock of informa¬ tion than Aquila. On close inquiry you would probably find that he had not read one epoch-making book of modern times, for he has a career which obliges him to much cor¬ respondence and other official work, and he is too fond of being in company to spend his leisure moments in study; but to his quick eye, ear, and tongue, a few predatory excursions in conversation, where there are instructed persons, gradually furnish surprisingly clever modes of statement and allusion on the dominant topic. When he first adopts a subject he necessarily falls into mistakes, and it is interesting to watch his gradual progress, into fuller information and better nourished irony, without his ever needing to admit that he has made a blunder or to appear conscious of correc¬ tion. Suppose, for example, he had incautiously founded some ingenious remarks on a hasty reckoning that nine thirteens made a hundred and two, and the insignificant Bantam, hitherto silent, seemed to spoil the flow of ideas by stating that the product could not be taken as less than a hundred and seventeen. Aquila would glide on in the most graceful manner, from a repetition of his previous remark to the continuation — “All this is on the supposition that a hundred and two were all that could be got out of nine thir¬ teens, but as all the world knows that nine thirteens will yield, 1 ” etc. — proceeding straightway into a new train of ingenious consequences, and causing Bantam to be regarded by all present as one of those slow persons who take irony THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB. 349 for ignorance, and who would warn the weasel to keep awake. How should a small-eyed, feebly crowing mortal like him be quicker in arithmetic than the keen-faced, forcible Aquila, in whom universal knowledge is easily credible ? Looked into closely, the conclusion, from a man’s profile, voice, and fluency, to his certainty in multiplication beyond the twelves, seems to show a confused notion of the way in which very common things are connected; but it is on such false correlations that men found half their inferences about each other, and high places of trust may sometimes be held on no better foundation. It is a commonplace that words, writings, measures, and performances in general, have qualities assigned them, not by a direct judgment on the performances themselves, but by a presumption of what they are likely to be, considering who is the performer. We all notice in our neighbors this refer¬ ence to names as guides in criticism, and all furnish illustra¬ tions of it in our own practice; for check ourselves as we will, the first impression from any sort of work must depend on a previous attitude of mind, and this will constantly be determined by the influences of a name. But that our prior confidence or want of confidence in given names is made up of judgments just as hollow as the consequent praise or blame they are taken to warrant, is less commonly perceived, though there is a conspicuous indication of it in the surprise or disappointment often manifested in the disclosure of an authorship about which everybody has been making wrong guesses. No doubt if it had been discovered who wrote the “Vestiges,” many an ingenious structure of probabilities would have been spoiled, and some disgust might have been felt for a real author who made comparatively so shabby an appearance of likelihood. It is this foolish trust in pre¬ possessions, founded on spurious evidence, which makes a medium of encouragement for those who, happening to have the ear of the public, give other people’s ideas the advantage of appearing under their own well-received name; while any remonstrance from the real producer becomes an unwelcome 350 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. disturbance of complacency with each person who has paid complimentary tributes in the wrong place. Hardly any kind of false reasoning is more ludicrous than this on the probabilities of origination. It would be amusing to catechise the guessers as to their exact reasons for thinking their guess “likely;” why Hoopoe of John’s has fixed on Toucan of Magdalen; why Shrike attributes its peculiar style to Buzzard, who has not hitherto been known as a writer; why the fair Columbia thinks it must belong to the Reverend Merula; and why they are all alike disturbed in their pre¬ vious judgment of its value by finding that it really came from Skunk, whom they had either not thought of at all, or thought of as belonging to a species excluded by the nature of the case. Clearly they were all wrong in their notion of the specific conditions, which lay un .xpectedly in the small Skunk, and in him alone — in spite of his education nobody knows where, in spite of somebody’s knowing his uncles and cousins, and in spite of nobody’s knowing that he was clev erer than they thought him. Such guesses remind one of a fabulist’s imaginary council of animals assembled to consider what sort of creature had constructed a honey-comb, found and much tasted by Bruin and other epicures. The speakers all started from the prob¬ ability that the maker was a bird, because this was the quarter from which a wondrous nest might be expected; for the animals at that time, knowing little of their own history, would have rejected as inconceivable the notion that the nest could be made by a fish; and as to the insects, they were not willingly received in society and their ways were little known. Several complimentary presumptions were expressed that the honey-comb was due to one or the other admired and popular bird, and there was much fluttering on the part of the Nightingale and Swallow, neither of whom gave a positive denial, their confusion perhaps extending to their sense of identity; but the Owl hissed at this folly, arguing from his particular knowledge that the animal which pro¬ duced honey must be the Musk-rat, the wondrous nature of THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB. 851 whose secretions required no proof; and, in the powerful logical procedure of the Owl, from musk to honey was but a step. Some disturbance arose hereupon, for the Musk-rat began to make himself obtrusive, believing in the Owl’s opinion of his powers, and feeling that he could have pro¬ duced the honey if he had thought of it, until an experimental Butcher-bird proposed to anatomize him as a help to decision The hubbub increased, the opponents of the Musk-rat in¬ quiring who his ancestors were, until a diversion was created by an able discourse of the Macaw on structures generally, which he classified so as to include the honey-comb, entering into so much admirable exposition that there was a prevalent sense of the honey-comb having probably been produced by one who understood it so well. But Bruin, who had probably eaten too much to listen with edification, grumbled, in his low kind of language, that “ Fine words butter no parsnips ; ” by which he meant to say that there was no new honey forthcoming. Perhaps the audience generally was beginning to tire, when the Fox entered with his snout dreadfully swollen, and reported that the beneficent originator in question was the Wasp, which he had found much smeared with undoubted honey, having applied his nose to it; whence, indeed, the able insect, perhaps justifiably irritated at what might seem a sign of scepticism, had stung him with some severity, an infliction Beynard could hardly regret, since the swelling of a snout normally so delicate would corroborate his statement, and satisfy the assembly that he had really found the honey- creating genius. The Fox’s admitted acuteness, combined with the visible swelling, were taken as undeniable evidence, and the revela¬ tion undoubtedly met a general desire for information on a point of interest. Nevertheless, there was a murmur the reverse of delighted, and the feelings of some eminent animals were too strong for them • the Orang-outang’s jaw dropped so as seriously to impair the vigor of his expression, the edifying Pelican screamed and flapped her wings, the 352 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. Owl hissed again, the Macaw became loudly incoherent, and the Gibbon gave his hysterical laugh; while the Hyena, after indulging in a more splenetic guffaw, agitated the question whether it would not be better to hush up the whole affair, instead of giving public recognition to an insect whose prod¬ uce, it was now plain, had been much over-estimated. But this narrow-spirited motion was negatived by the sweet¬ toothed majority. A complimentary deputation to the Wasp was resolved on, and there was a confident hope that this diplomatic measure would tell on the production oi honey. “SO YOUNG!” G ANYMEDE was once a girlishly handsome, precocious youth. That one cannot, for any considerable number of years, go on being youthful, girlishly handsome, and pre¬ cocious, seems, on consideration, to be a statement as worthy of credit as the famous syllogistic conclusion, “ Socrates was mortal.” But many circumstances have conspired to keep up in Ganymede the illusion that he is surprisingly young. He was the last born of his family, and from his earliest memory was accustomed to be commended as such to the care of his elder brothers and sisters ; he heard his mother speak of him as her youngest darling with a loving pathos in her tone, which naturally suffused his own view of himself, and gave him the habitual consciousness of being at once very young and very interesting. Then, the disclosure of his tender years was a constant matter of astonishment to strangers who had had proof of his precocious talents; and the aston¬ ishment extended to what is called the world at large, when he produced “A Comparative Estimate of European Nations” before he was well out of his teens. All comers, on a first interview, told him that he was marvellously young, and some repeated the statement each time they saw him; all critics who wrote about him called attention to the same ground for wonder; his deficiencies and excesses were alike to be accounted for by the flattering fact of his youth, and his youth was the golden background which set off his many- hued endowments. Here was already enough to establish a strong association between his sense of identity and his sense of being unusually young. But after this he devised and 2S von. ix. 354 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. founded an ingenious organization for consolidating the liter¬ ary interests of all the four continents (subsequently includ¬ ing Australasia and Polynesia), he himself presiding in the central office, which thus became a new theatre for the con¬ stantly repeated situation of an astonished stranger in the presence of a boldly scheming administrator found to be re¬ markably young. If we imagine with due charity the effect on Ganymede, we shall think it greatly to his credit that he continued to feel the necessity of being something more than young, and did not sink by rapid degrees into a parallel of that melancholy object, a superannuated youthful phenome¬ non. Happily he had enough of valid, active faculty to save him from that tragic fate. He had not exhausted his foun¬ tain of eloquent opinion in his “ Comparative Estimate,” so as to feel himself like some other juvenile celebrities, the sad survivor of his own manifest destiny, or like one who has risen too early in the morning, and finds all the solid day turned into a fatigued afternoon. He has continued to be productive both of schemes and writings, being perhaps helped by the fact that his “ Comparative Estimate ” did not greatly affect the currents of European thought, and left him with the stimulating hope that he had not done his best, but might yet produce what would make his youth more surpris¬ ing than ever. I saw something of him through his Antinoiis period, the time of rich chestnut locks, parted not by a visible white line, but by a shadowed furrow from which they fell in massive ripples to right and left. In these slim days he looked the younger for being rather below the middle size ; and though at last one perceived him contracting an indefinable air of self-consciousness, a slight exaggeration of the facial move¬ ments, the attitudes, the little tricks, and the romance in shirt collars, which must be expected from one who, in spite of his knowledge, was so exceedingly young, it was impossi¬ ble to say that he was making any great mistake about him¬ self. He was only undergoing one form of a common moral disease j being strongly mirrored for himself in the remark “SO YOUNG!” 355 of others, he was getting to see his real characteristics as a dramatic part, a type to which his doings were always in cor¬ respondence. Owing to my absence on travel, and to other causes, I had lost sight of him for several years; but such a separation, between two who have not missed each other, seems in this busy century only a pleasant reason, when they hap¬ pen to meet again in some old accustomed haunt, for the one who has stayed at home to be more communicative about himself than he can well be to those who have all along been in his neighborhood. He had married in the interval, and as if to keep up his surprising youthfulness in all relations, he had taken a wife considerably older than himself. It would probably have seemed to him a disturbing inversion of the natural order that any one very near to him should have been younger than he, except his own children, who, however young, would not necessarily hinder the normal surprise at the youthfulness of their father. And if my glance had re¬ vealed my impression on first seeing him again, he might have received a rather disagreeable shock, which was far from my intention. My mind, having retained a very exact image of his former appearance, took note of unmistakable changes, such as a painter would certainly not have made by way of flattering his subject. He had lost his slimness, and that curved solidity, which might have adorned a taller man, was a rather sarcastic threat to his short figure. The English branch of the Teutonic race does not produce many fat youths, and I have even heard an American lady say, that she was much “disappointed” at the moderate number and size of our fat men, considering their reputation in the United States; hence a stranger would now have been apt to remark that Ganymede was unusually plump for a distinguished writer, rather than unusually young. But how was he to know this ? Many long-standing prepossessions are as hard to be corrected as a long-standing mispronunciation, against which the direct experience of eye and ear is often power¬ less. And I could perceive that Ganymede’s imvrought sense of his surprising youthfulness had been stronger than the 356 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. superficial reckoning of liis years and the merely optical phenomena of the looking-glass. He now held a post under government, and not only saw, like most subordinate func¬ tionaries, how ill everything was managed, but also what were the changes that a high constructive ability would dic¬ tate ; and in mentioning to me his own speeches, and other efforts toward propagating reformatory views in his depart¬ ment, he concluded by changing his tone to a sentimental head-voice and saying: — “But I am so young, people object to any prominence on my part; I can only get myself heard anonymously, and when some attention has been drawn the name is sure to creep out. The writer is known to be young, and things are none the forwarder.’’ “Well,” said I, “youth seems the only drawback that is sure to diminish. You and I have seven years less of it than when we last met.” “ Ah,” returned Ganymede, as lightly as possible, at the same time casting an observant glance over me, as if he were marking the effect of seven years on a person who had prob¬ ably begun life with an old look, and even as an infant had given his countenance to that significant doctrine, the trans¬ migration of ancient souls into modern bodies. I left him on that occasion without any melancholy fore¬ cast that his illusion would be suddenly or painfully broken up. I saw that he was well victualled and defended against a ten years’ siege from ruthless facts; and in the course of time observation convinced me that his resistance received considerable aid from without. Each of his written produc¬ tions, as it came out, was still commented on as the work of a very young man. One critic, finding that he wanted so¬ lidity, charitably referred to his youth as an excuse. An¬ other, dazzled by his brilliancy, seemed to regard his youth as so wondrous that all other authors appeared decrepit by comparison, and their style such as might be looked for from gentlemen of the old school. Able pens (according to a famil¬ iar metaphor) appeared to shake their heads good-humoredly, “ SO YOUNG !•• 357 Implying that Ganymede’s crudities were pardonable in one so exceedingly young. Such unanimity amidst diversity, which a distant posterity might take for evidence that on the point of age at least there could have been no mistake, was not really more difficult to account for than the prevalence of cotton in our fabrics. Ganymede had been first introduced into the -writing world as remarkably young, and it was no exceptional consequence that the first deposit of information about him held its ground against facts which, however open to observation, were not necessarily thought of. It is not so easy, with our rates and taxes and need for economy in all directions, to cast away an epithet or remark that turns up cheaply, and to go in expensive search after more genuine substitutes. There is high Homeric precedent for keeping East hold of an epithet under all changes of circumstance, and so the precocious author of the “ Comparative Estimate” heard the echoes repeating “ Young Ganymede,” when an illiterate beholder at a railway station would have given him forty years at least. Besides, important elders, sachems of the clubs and public meetings, had a genuine opinion of him a,s young enough to be checked for speech on subjects which they had spoken mistakenly about when he was in his cradle; and then, the midway parting of his crisp hair, not common among English committee-men, formed a presumption against the ripeness of his judgment which nothing but a speedy baldness could have removed. It is but fair to mention all these outward confirmations of Ganymede’s illusion, which shows no signs of leaving him. It is true that he no longer hears expressions of sur¬ prise at Ins youthfulness, on a first introduction to an aamin ing reader; but this sort of external evidence has become an unnecessary crutch to his habitual inward persuasion. ITis manners, his costume, his suppositions of the impression he makes on others, have all their former correspondence with the dramatic part of the young genius. As to the incongruity of his contour, and other little accidents of physique, he is probably no more aware that they will affect others as incon- 358 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. gruities, than Armida is conscious how much her rouge pro¬ vokes our notice of her wrinkles, and causes us to mention sarcastically that motherly age which we should otherwise regard with affectionate reverence. But let us be just enough to admit that there may be old- young coxcombs as well as old-young coquettes. HOW WE COME TO GIVE OURSELVES FALSE TESTIMONIALS, AND BELIEVE IN THEM. I T is my way, when I observe any instance of folly, any queer habit, any absurd illusion, straightway to look for something of the same type in myself, feeling sure that, amidst all differences, there will be a certain correspondence; just as there is more or less correspondence m the natural history even of continents widely apart, and of islands in opposite zones. No doubt men’s minds differ in what we may call their climate, or share of solar energy, and a feeling or tendency which is comparable to a panther in one may have no more imposing aspect than that of a weasel in another: some are like a tropical habitat, in which the very ferns cast a mighty shadow, and the grasses are a dry ocean in which a hunter may be submerged; others like the chilly latitudes in which your forest-tree, fit elsewhere to prop a mine, is a pretty miniature suitable for fancy potting. The eccentric man might be typified by the Australian fauna, refuting half our judicious assumptions of what nature allows. Still, whether fate commanded us to thatch our persons among the Eskimos or to choose the latest thing in tattooing among the Polynesian isles, our precious guide, Comparison, would teach us in the first place by likeness, and our clew to further knowledge would be resemblance to what we already know. Hence, having a keen interest in the natural history of my inward self, I pursue this plan I have mentioned, of using my observation as a clew or lantern by which I detect small herbage or lurking life; or I take my neighbor, in his least becoming tricks or efforts, as an opportunity for luminous 360 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. deduction concerning the figure the human genus makes in the specimen which I myself furnish. Introspection which starts with the purpose of finding out one’s own absurdities is not likely to be very mischievous, yet of course it is not free from dangers, any more than breaming is, or the other functions that keep us alive and active. To judge of others by one’s self is, in its most inno¬ cent meaning, the briefest expression for our only method of knowing mankind ; yet, we perceive, it has come to mean in many cases either the vulgar mistake which reduces every man’s value to the very low figure at which the valuer him¬ self happens to stand, or else the amiable illusion of the higher nature misled by a too generous construction of the lower. One cannot give a recipe for wise judgment; it re¬ sembles appropriate muscular action, which is attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give. The danger of the inverse procedure, judging of self by what one observes in others, if it is car¬ ried on with much impartiality and keenness of discernment, is that it has a laming effect, enfeebling the energies of in¬ dignation and scorn, which are the proper scourges of wrong¬ doing and meanness, and which should continually feed the wholesome restraining power of public opinion. I respect the horsewhip when applied to the back of cruelty, and think that he who applies it is a more perfect human being because his outleap of indignation is not checked by a too curious re¬ flection on the nature of guilt — a more perfect human being because he more completely incorporates the best social life of the race, which can never be constituted by ideas that nul¬ lify action. This is the essence of Dante’s sentiment (it is painful to think that he applies it very cruelly) — “ E cortesia fh, lui esser villano — ” 1 and it is undeniable that a too intense consciousness of one’s kinship with all frailties and vices undermines the active heroism which battles against wrong. 1 Inferno, xxxii. 150 . FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 361 But certainly nature has taken care that this danger should not at present be very threatening. One could not fairly de¬ scribe the generality of one’s neighbors as too lucidly aware of manifesting in their own persons the weaknesses which they observe in the rest of her Majesty’s subjects; on the contrary, a hasty conclusion as to schemes of Providence might lead to the supposition that one man was intended to correct another by being most intolerant of the ugly quality or trick which he himself possesses. Doubtless philosophers will be able to explain how it must necessarily be so, but pending the full extension of the a ‘priori method, which will show that only blockheads could expect anything to be other¬ wise, it does seem surprising that Heloisa should be dis¬ gusted at Laura’s attempts to disguise her age — attempts which she recognizes so thoroughly because they enter into her own practice; that Semper,, who often responds at public dinners and proposes resolutions on platforms, though he has a trying gestation of every speech and a bad time for himself and others at every delivery, should yet remark pitilessly on the folly of precisely the same course of action in Ubique; that Aliquis, who lets no attack on himself pass unnoticed, and for every handful of gravel against his windows sends a stone in reply, should deplore the ill-advised retorts of Quis- piam, who does not perceive that to show one’s self angry with an adversary is to gratify him. To be unaware of our own little tricks of manner or our own mental blemishes and excesses is a comprehensible unconsciousness; the puzzling fact is that people should apparently take no account of their deliberate actions, and should expect them to be equally ig¬ nored by others. It is an inversion of the accepted order: there it is the phrases that are official, and the conduct or pri¬ vately manifested sentiment that is taken to be real; here it seems that the practice is taken to be official and entirely nullified by the verbal representation which contradicts it. The thief making a vow to Heaven of full restitution and whispering some reservations, expecting to cheat Omniscience by an “ aside,” is hardly more ludicrous than the many ladies 362 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. and gentlemen who have more belief, and expect others to have it, in their own statement about their habitual doings than in the contradictory fact which is patent in the daylight. One reason of the absurdity is that we are led by a tradition about ourselves, so that long after a man has practically de¬ parted from a rule or principle, he continues innocently to state it as a true description of his practice — just as he has a long tradition that he is not an old gentleman, and is startled when he is seventy at overhearing himself called by an epi¬ thet which he has only applied to others. “ A person with your tendency of constitution should take as little sugar as possible,” said Pilulus to Bovis, somewhere in the darker decades of this century. “ It has made a great difference to Avis since he took my advice in that matter; he used to consume half a pound a day.” “ God bless me ! ” cries Bovis. “ I take very little sugar myself.” “Twenty-six large lumps every day of your life, Mr. Bovis,” says his wife. “ No such thing ! ” exclaims Bovis. “You drop them into your tea, coffee, and whiskey your self, my dear, and I count them.” “ Nonsense! ” laughs Bovis, turning to Pilulus, that they may exchange a glance of mutual amusement at a woman’s inaccuracy. But she happened to be right. Bovis had never said in¬ wardly that he would take a large allowance of sugar, and he had the tradition about himself that he was a man of the most moderate habits; hence, with this conviction, he was naturally disgusted at the saccharine excesses of Avis. I have sometimes thought that this facility of men in be¬ lieving that they are still what they once meant to be — this undisturbed appropriation of a traditional character which is often but a melancholy relic of early resolutions, like the worn and soiled testimonial to soberness and honesty carried in the pocket of a tippler whom the need of a dram has driven into peculation — may sometimes diminish the turpitude of FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 363 w hat seems a flat, barefaced falsehood. It is notorious that a man may go on uttering false assertions about his own acts till he at last believes in them. Is it not possible that some¬ times, in the very first utterance, there may be a shape of creed-reciting belief, a reproduction of a traditional self which is clung to against all evidence ? There is no knowing all the disguises of the lying serpent. When we come to examine in detail what is the sane mind in sane body, the final test of completeness seems to be a security of distinction between what we have professed and what we have done, what we have aimed at and what we have achieved, what we have invented and what we have witnessed or had evidenced to us, what we think and feel in the present and what we thought and felt in the past. I know that there is a common prejudice which regards the habitual confusion of now and then, of it was and it is, of it seemed so and I should like it to be so, as a mark of high imaginative endowment, while the power of precise statement and description is rated lower, as the attitude of an every-day prosaic mind. High, imagination is often assigned or claimed as if it were a ready activity in fabricating extravagances such as are presented by fevered dreams, or as if its possessors were in that state of inability to give credible testimony which would warrant their exclusion from the class of accept¬ able witnesses in a court of justice; so that a creative genius might fairly be subjected to the disability which some laws have stamped on dicers, slaves, and other classes whose posi¬ tion was held perverting to their sense of social responsi¬ bility. This endowment of mental confusion is often boasted of by persons whose imaginativeness would not otherwise be known, unless it were by the slow process of detecting that their descriptions and narratives were not to be trusted. Cal- lista is always ready to testify of herself that she is an imag¬ inative person; and sometimes adds, in illustration, that il she had taken a walk and seen an old heap of stones on her way, the account she would give on returning would include many 364 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOt. pleasing particulars of tier own invention, transforming the simple heap into an interesting castellated ruin. This creative freedom is all very well in the right place; but before I can grant it to be a sign of unusual mental power, I must inquire whether, on being requested to give a precise description of what she saw, she would be able to cast aside her arbitrary combinations and recover the objects she really perceived, so as to make them recognizable by another person who passed the same way. Otherwise her glorifying imagination is not an addition to the fundamental power of strong, discerning perception, but a cheaper substitute. And in fact, I find, on listening to Callista’s conversation, that she has a very lax conception even of common objects, and an equally lax memory of events. It seems of no consequence to her whether she shall say that a stone is overgrown with moss or with lichen; that a building is of sandstone or of granite; that Meliboeus once forgot to put on his cravat or that he always appears without it; that everybody says so, or that one stock-broker’s wife said so yesterday ; that Philemon praised Euphemia up to the skies, or that he denied knowing any particular evil of her. She is one of those respectable wit¬ nesses who would testify to the exact moment of an appari¬ tion, because any desirable moment will be as exact as another to her remembrance; or who would be the most worthy to witness the action of spirits on slates and tables, because the action of limbs would not probably arrest her attention. She would describe the surprising phenomena exhibited by the powerful Medium, with the same freedom that she vaunted in relation to the old heap of stones. Her supposed imagi¬ nativeness is simply a very usual lack of discriminating perception, accompanied with a less usual activity of misrep¬ resentation, which, if it had been a little more intense, or had been stimulated by circumstance, might have made her a profuse writer, unchecked by the troublesome need of veracity. These characteristics are the very opposite of such as yield a fine imagination, which is always based on a keen vision, FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 365 a keen consciousness of what is, and carries the store of definite knowledge as material for the construction of its inward visions. Witness Dante, who is at once the most precise and homely in his reproduction of actual objects, and the most soaringly at large m his imaginative combinations. On a much lower level we distinguish the hyperbole, and rapid development in descriptions of persons and events, which are lit up by humorous intention in the speaker — we distinguish this charming play of intelligence, which resem¬ bles musical improvisation on a given motive, where the farthest sweep of curve is looped into relevancy by an in¬ stinctive method, from the florid inaccuracy or helpless exag¬ geration, which is really something commoner than the correct simplicity often depreciated as prosaic. Even if high imagination were to be identified with illu¬ sion, there would be the same sort of difference between the imperial wealth of illusion which is informed by industrious observation, and the trumpery stage-property illusion which depends on the ill-defined impressions gathered by capricious inclination, as there is between a good and a bad picture of the Last Judgment. In both these the subject is a combi¬ nation never actually witnessed, and in the good picture the general combination may be of surpassing boldness; but on examination it is seen that the separate elements have been closely studied from real objects. And even where we find the charm of ideal elevation with wrong drawing and fantastic color, the charm is dependent on the selective sensibility of the painter to certain real delicacies of form which confer the expression he longed to render; for apart from this basis of an effect perceived in common, there could be no conveyance of testhetic meaning by the painter to the beholder. In this sense it is as true to say of Fra Angelico’s Coronation of the Virgin, that it has a strain of reality, as to say so of a portrait by Rembrandt, which also has its strain of ideal elevation to Rembrandt’s virile selective sensibility. To correct such self-flatterers as Callista, it is worth re¬ peating that powerful imagination is not false outward vision, 366 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. but intense inward representation, and a creative energy con¬ stantly fed by susceptibility to the veriest minutiae of expe¬ rience, which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and fresh wholes, — not the habitual confusion of provable fact with the fictions of fancy and transient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association which informs every material object, every incidental fact, with far-reaching memories and stored residues of passion, bringing into new light the less obvious relations of human existence. The illusion to which it is liable is not that of habitually taking duck-ponds for lilied pools, but of being more or less transiently and in varying degrees so absorbed in ideal vision a& to lose the consciousness of sur¬ rounding objects or occurrences; and when that rapt con¬ dition is past, the sane genius discriminates clearly between what has been given in this parenthetic state of excitement, and what he has known, and may count on, in the ordinary world of experience. Dante seems to have expressed these conditions perfectly in that passage of the Purgatorio where, after a triple vision which has made him forget his surround¬ ings, he says: — “ Quando l’anima mia tono di fnori Alle cose che son fuor di lei vere, Io riconobbi i miei non falsi errori.” Canto xt. He distinguishes the ideal truth of his entranced vision from the series of external facts to which his consciousness had returned. Isaiah gives us the date of his vision in the Temple, “the year that King Uzziah died;” and if after¬ ward the mighty-winged seraphim were present with him as he trod the street, he doubtless knew them for images of memory, and did not cry, “ Look! ” to the passers-by. Certainly the seer, whether prophet, philosopher, scientific discoverer, or poet, may happen to be rather mad; his powers may have been used up, like Don Quixote’s, in their visionary or theoretic constructions, so that the reports of common- sense fail to affect him, or the continuous strain of excitement FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 367 may have robbed his mind of its elasticity. It is hard for our frail mortality to carry the burden of greatness with steady gait and full alacrity of perception. But he is the strongest seer who can support the stress of creative energy, and yet keep that sanity of expectation which consists in distinguishing, as l)ante does, between the cose, che son vere outside the individual mind, and the non falsi errori which are the revelations of true imaginative power. THE TOO READY WRITER. O NE who talks too much, hindering the rest of the com¬ pany from taking their turn, and apparently seeing no reason why they should not rather desire to know his opinion or experience in relation to all subjects, or at least to renounce the discussion of any topic where he can make no figure, has never been praised for this industrious monopoly of work which others would willingly have shared in. However various and brilliant his talk may be, we suspect him of impoverishing us by excluding the contributions of other minds, which attract our curiosity the more because he has shut them up in silence. Besides, we get tired of a “manner” in conversation as in painting, when one theme after another is treated with the same lines and touches. I begin with a liking for an estimable master, but by tne time he has stretched his interpretation of the world unbrokenly along a palatial gallery, I have had what the cautious Scotch mind wonld call “enough” of him. There is monotony and nan rowness already to spare in my own identity; what comes to me from without should be larger and more impartial than the judgment of any single interpreter. On this ground even a modest person, without power or will to shine in the conversation, may easily find the predominating talker a nuisance; while those who are full of matter on special topics are continually detecting miserably thin places in the web of that information which he will not desist from im parting. Nobody that I know of ever proposed a testimonial to a man for thus volunteering the whole expense of the conversation. THE TOO READY WRITER. 369 Why is there a different standard of judgment with regard to a writer who plays much the same part in literature as the excessive talker plays in what is traditionally called conver¬ sation ? The busy Adrastus, whose professional engagements might seem more than enough for the nervous energy of one man, and who yet finds time to print essays on the chief cur¬ rent subjects, from the tri-lingual inscriptions, or the idea of the infinite among the prehistoric Lapps, to the Colorado beetle and the grape disease in the south of Trance, is gener¬ ally praised, if not admired, for the breadth of his mental range and his gigantic powers of work. Poor Theron, who has some original ideas on a subject to which he has given years of research and meditation, has been waiting anxiously from month to month to see whether his condensed exposition will find a place in the next advertised programme, but sees it, on the contrary, regularly excluded, and twice the space he asked for filled with the copious brew of Adrastus, whose name carries custom like a celebrated trade-mark. Why should the eager haste to tell what he thinks on the shortest notice, as if his opinion were a needed preliminary to discussion, get a man the reputation of being a conceited bore in conversa¬ tion, when nobody blames the same tendency if it shows itself in print ? The excessive talker can only be in one gathering at a time, and there is the comfort of thinking that every¬ where else other fellow-citizens who have something to say may get a chance of delivering themselves; but the exorbitant writer can occupy space and spread over it the more or less agreeable flavor of his mind in four “ mediums ” at once, and on subjects taken from the four winds. Such restless and versatile occupants of literary space and time should have lived earlier, when the world wanted summaries of all extant knowledge, and this knowledge being small, there was the more room for commentary and conjecture. They might have played the part of an Isidor of Seville or a Vincent of Beau¬ vais brilliantly, and the willingness to write everything them¬ selves would have been strictly in place. In the present day, the busy retailer of other people’s knowledge, which he has 4* VOI,. IX. 370 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. spoiled in the handling, the restless guesser and comments tor, the importunate hawker of undesirable superfluities, the everlasting word-compeller, who rises early in the morning to praise what the world has already glorified, or makes himself haggard at night in writing out his dissent from what nobody ever believed, is not simply “ gratis, anhelans, multa agendo nihil agens; ” he is an obstruction. Like an incompetent architect, with too much interest at his back, he obtrudes his ill-considered work where place ought to have been left to better men. Is it out of the question that we should entertain some scruple about mixing our own flavor, as of the too cheap and insistent nutmeg, with that of every great writer and every great subject — especially when our flavor is all we have to give, the matter or knowledge having been already given by somebody else ? What if we were only like the Spanish wine¬ skins which impress the innocent stranger with the notion that the Spanish grape has naturally a taste of leather. One could wish that even the greatest minds should leave some themes unhandled, or at least leave us no more than a para¬ graph or two on them, to show how well they did in not being more lengthy. Such entertainment of scruple can hardly be expected from the young; but happily their readiness to mirror the universe anew for the rest of mankind is not encouraged by easy publicity. In the vivacious Pepin I have often seen the image of my early youth, when it seemed to me astonishing that the philosophers had left so many difficulties unsolved, and that so many great themes had raised no great poet to treat them. I had an elated sense that I should find my brain full of theoretic clews when I looked for them, and that wher¬ ever a poet had not done what I expected, it was for want of my insight. Not knowing what had been said about the play of Romeo and Juliet, I felt myself capable of writing some¬ thing original on its blemishes and beauties. In relation to all subjects I had a joyous consciousness of that ability which is prior to knowledge, and of only needing to apply myself in THE TOO READY WRITER. 371 order to master any task — to conciliate philosophers whose systems were at present but dimly known to me, to estimate foreign poets whom I had not yet read, to show up mistakes in a historical monograph that roused my interest in an epoch which I had been hitherto ignorant of — when I should once have had time to verify my views of probability by looking into an encyclopaedia. So Pepin; save only that he is indus- trious while I was idle. Like the astronomer in Rasselas, I swayed the universe in my consciousness, without making any difference outside me; whereas Pepin, while feeling himself powerful with the stars in their courses, really raises some dust here below. He is no longer in his spring-tide ; but hav¬ ing been always busy, he has been obliged to use his first impressions as if they were deliberate opinions, and to range himself on the corresponding side in ignorance of much that he commits himself to; so that he retains some characteristics of a comparatively tender age, and among them a certain sur¬ prise that there have not been more persons equal to himself. Perhaps it is unfortunate for him that he early gained a hear¬ ing, or at least a place in print, and was thus encouraged in acquiring a fixed habit of writing, to the exclusion of any other bread-winning pursuit. He is already to be classed as a “ general writer,” corresponding to the comprehensive wants of the “ general reader,” and with this industry on his hands it is not enough for him to keep up the ingenuous self-reliance of youth: he finds himself under an obligation to be skilled in various methods of seeming to know; and having habit¬ ually expressed himself before he was convinced, his interest in all subjects is chiefly to ascertain that he has not made a mistake, and to feel his infallibility confirmed. That impulse to decide, that vague sense of being able to achieve the unat¬ tempted, that dream of aerial unlimited movement at will without feet or wings, which were once but the joyous mount¬ ing of young sap, are already taking shape as unalterable woody fibre; the impulse has hardened into “ style,” and into a pattern of peremptory sentences; the sense of ability in the presence of other men’s failures is turning into the official 372 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. arrogance of one who habitually issues directions which he has never himself been called on to execute; the dreamy buoyancy of the stripling has taken on a fatal sort of reality in written pretensions which carry consequences. He is on the way to become like the loud-buzzing, bouncing Bombus, who combines conceited illusions enough to supply several patients in a lunatic asylum, with the freedom to show him¬ self at large in various forms of print. If one who takes him¬ self for the telegraphic centre of all American wires is to be confined as unfit to transact affairs, what shall we say to the man who believes himself in possession of the unexpressed motives and designs dwelling in the breasts of all sovereigns and all politicians ? And I grieve to think that poor Pepin, though less political, may by and by manifest a persuasion hardly more sane, for he is beginning to explain people’s writ¬ ings by what he does not know about them. Yet he was once at the comparatively innocent stage, which I have confessed to be that of my own early astonishment at my powerful originality; and copying the just humility of the old Puritan, I may say, “But for the grace of discouragement, this cox¬ combry might have been mine.” Pepin made for himself a necessity of writing (and getting printed) before he had considered whether he had the knowl¬ edge or belief that would furnish eligible matter. At first, perhaps, the necessity galled him a little, but it is now as easily borne, nay, is as irrepressible a habit as the outpouring of inconsiderate talk. He is gradually being condemned to have no genuine impressions, no direct consciousness of enjoy¬ ment, or the reverse, from the quality of what is before him: his perceptions are continually arranging themselves in forms suitable to a printed judgment; and hence they will often turn out to be as much to the purpose if they are written without any direct contemplation of the object, and are guided by a few external conditions which serve to classify it for him. Tn this way he is irrevocably losing the faculty of accurate mental vision; having bound himself to express judgments which will satisfy some other demands than that of veracity, THE TOO READY WRITER. 373 he has blunted his perceptions by continual preoccupation. We cannot command veracity at will; the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be deli¬ cately guarded, and as an ancient Rabbi has solemnly said, “The penalty of untruth is untruth.” But Pepin is only a mild example of the fact that incessant writing with a view to printing carries internal consequences which have often the nature of disease. And however unpractical it may be held to consider whether we have anything to print which it is good for the world to read, or which has not been better said before, it will perhaps be allowed to be worth considering what effect the printing may have on ourselves. Clearly there is a sort of writing which helps to keep the writer in a ridiculously contented ignorance, — raising in him continually the sense of having delivered himself effectively, so that the acquirement of more thorough knowledge seems as super¬ fluous as the purchase of costume for a past occasion. He has invested his vanity (perhaps his hope of income) in his own shallownesses and mistakes, and must desire their pros¬ perity. Like the professional prophet, he learns to be glad of the harm that keeps up his credit, and to be sorry for the good that contradicts him. It is hard enough for any of us, amidst the changing winds of fortune and the hurly-burly of events, to keep quite clear of a gladness which is another’s calamity; but one may choose not to enter on a course which will turn such gladness into a fixed habit of mind, commit¬ ting ourselves to be continually pleased that others should appear to be wrong, in order that we may have the air of being right. In some cases, perhaps, it might be urged that Pepin has remained the more self-contented because he has not written everything he believed himself capable of. He once asked me to read a sort of programme of the species of romance which he should think it worth while to write — a species which he contrasted in strong terms with the productions of illustrious but overrated authors in this branch. Pepin’s romance was to present the splendors of the Roman Empire 374 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. at the culmination of its grandeur, when decadence was spirit ually but not visibly imminent; it was to show the workings of human passion in the most pregnant and exalted of human circumstances, the designs of statesmen, the interfusion of philosophies, the rural relaxation and converse of immortal poets, the majestic triumphs of warriors, the mingling of a quaint and sublime in religious ceremony, the gorgeous de¬ lirium of gladiatorial shows, and under all the secretly working leaven of Christianity. Such a romance would not call the attention of society to the dialect of stable-boys, the low habits of rustics, the vulgarity of small schoolmasters, the manners of men in livery, or to any other form of uneducated talk and sentiments; its characters would have virtues and vices alike on the grand scale, and would express themselves in an English representing the discourse of the most powerful minds, in the best Latin, or possibly Greek, when there oc¬ curred a scene with a Greek philosopher on a visit to Rome, or resident there as a teacher. In this way Pepin would do in fiction what had never been done before; something not at all like “Rienzi” or “Notre Dame de Paris,” or any other attempt of that kind, but something at once more penetrating and more magnificent, more passionate and more philo¬ sophical, more panoramic yet more select; something that would present a conception of a gigantic period; in short, something truly Roman and world-historical. When Pepin gave me this programme to read he was much younger than at present. Some slight success in an¬ other vein diverted him from the production of panoramic and select romance; and the experience of not having tried to carry out his programme has naturally made him more biting and sarcastic on the failures of those who have actually written romances without apparently having had a glimpse of a conception equal to his. Indeed, I am often comparing his rather touchingly inflated naivete , as of a small young person walking on tiptoe while he is talking of elevated things, at the time when he felt himself the author of that un¬ written romance, with his present epigrammatic curtness and THE TOO READY WRITER. 375 affectation of power kept strictly in reserve. His paragraphs now seem to have a bitter smile in them, from the conscious¬ ness of a mind too penetrating to accept any other man’s ideas, and too equally competent in all directions to seclude his power in any one form of creation, but rather fitted to hang over them all as a lamp of guidance to the stumblers below. You perceive how proud he is of not being indebted to any writer; even with the dead he is on the creditor’s side, for he is doing them the service of letting the world know what they meant better than those poor pre-Pepinians them¬ selves had any means of doing; and he treats the mighty shades very cavalierly. Is this fellow-citizen of ours, considered simply in the light of a baptized Christian and tax-paying Englishman, really as madly conceited, as empty of reverential feeling, as unveracious and careless of justice, as full of catch-penny de¬ vices and stagey attitudinizing, as on examination his writing shows itself to be ? By no means. He has arrived at the present pass in “the literary calling” through the self- imposed obligation to give himself a manner which would convey the impression of superior knowledge and ability. He is much worthier and more admirable than his written productions, because the moral aspects exhibited in his writing are felt to be ridiculous or disgraceful in the personal relations of life. In blaming Pepin’s writing, we are ac¬ cusing the public conscience, which is so lax and ill-formed on the momentous bearings of authorship, that it sanctions the total absence of scruple in undertaking and prosecuting what should be the best warranted of vocations Hence I still accept friendly relations with Pepin, for he has much private amiability; and though he probably thinks of me as a man of slender talents, without rapidity of coup d'oeil, and with no compensatory penetration, he meets me very cordially, and would not, I am sure, willingly pain me in conversation by crudely declaring his low estimate of my capacity. Yet I have often known him to insult my betters, and contribute (perhaps unreflectingly) to encourage injurious rVT6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. conceptions of them; but that is done in the course of his professional writing, and the public conscience still leaves such writing nearly on a level of the Merry-Andrew’s dress, which permits an impudent deportment and extraordinary gambols to one who, in his ordinary clothing, shows himself the decent father of a family. DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. ARTICULAR callings, it is known, encourage particular JL diseases. There is a painter’s colic; the Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the inhalation of steel-dust; clergymen so often have a kind of sore throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets named after them. And perhaps, if we were to inquire, we should find a similar relation between certain moral ailments and these various occupations, though here in the case of clergymen there would be specific differences; the poor curate, equally with the rector, is liable to clergy¬ man’s sore throat, but he would probably be found free from the chronic moral ailments encouraged by the possession of glebe and those higher chances of preferment which follow on having a good position already. On the other hand, the poor curate might have severe attacks of calculating ex¬ pectancy concerning parishioners’ turkeys, cheeses, and fat geese, or of uneasy rivalry for the donations of clerical charities. Authors are so miscellaneous a class that their personified diseases, physical and moral, might include the whole proces¬ sion of human disorders, led by dyspepsia and ending in mad¬ ness— the awful dumb-show of a world-historic tragedy. Take a large enough area of human life, and all comedy melts into tragedy, like the Fool’s part of the side of Lear. The chief scenes get filled with erring heroes, guileful usurp¬ ers, persecuted discoverers, dying deliverers everywhere the protagonist has a part pregnant with doom. The comedy sinks to an accessory, and if there are loud laughs they seem a convulsive transition from sobs; or if the comedy is 878 ESSAYS OF GEORGE El IOT. touched with a gentle lovingness, the panoramic scene is one where “ Sadness is a kind of mirth, So mingled as if mirth did make us sad And sadness merry .” 1 But I did not set out on the wide survey that would carry me into tragedy, and, in fact, had nothing more serious in my mind than certain small chronic ailments that come of small authorship. I was thinking principally of Vorticella, who flourished in my youth, not only as a portly lady walk¬ ing in silk attire, but also as the authoress of a book entitled “ The Channel Islands, with Notes and an Appendix.” I would by no means make it a reproach to her that she wrote no more than one book ; on the contrary, her stopping there seems to me a laudable example. What one would have wished, after experience, was that she had refrained from producing even that single volume, and thus from giving her self-importance a troublesome kind of double incorporation which became oppressive to her acquaintances, and set up in herself one of those slight chronic forms of disease to which I have just referred. She lived in the considerable provincial town of Pumpiter, which had its own newspaper press, with the usual divisions of political partisanship and the usual varieties of literary criticism — the florid and allusive, the staccato and peremptory, the clairvoyant and prophetic, the safe and pattern-phrased, or what one might call “ the rnany- a-long-day style.” Vorticella, being the wife of an important townsman, had naturally the satisfaction of seeing “ The Channel Islands ” reviewed by all the organs of Pumpiter opinion, and their articles or paragraphs held as naturally the opening pages in the elegantly bound album prepared by her for the reception of “ critical opinions.” This ornamental volume lay on a special table in her drawing-room, close to the still more gorgeously bound work of which it was the significant 1 The Two Noble Kinsmen. DISEASES OE SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 379 effect, and every guest was allowed tlie privilege of reading what had been said of the authoress and her work in the “ Pumpiter Gazette and Literary Watchman,” the “ Pumpshire Post,” the “ Church Clock,” the “ Independent Monitor,” and the lively but judicious publication known as the “ Medley Pie; ” to be followed up, if lie chose, by the instructive perusal of the strikingly confirmatory judgments, sometimes concur¬ rent in the very phrases, of journals from the most distant countries, as the “ Latchgate Argus,” the “ Penllwy Universe,” the “ Cockaleekie Advertiser,” the “ Goodwin Sands Opinion,” and the “ Land’s End Times.” I had friends in Pumpiter, and occasionally paid a long visit there. When I called on Vorticella, who had a cousin- ship with my hosts, she had to excuse herself because a message claimed her attention for eight or ten minutes; and handing me the album of critical opinions, said, with a certain emphasis which, considering my youth, was highly compli¬ mentary, that she would really like me to read what I should find there. This seemed a permissive politeness which I could not feel to be an oppression; and I ran my eyes over the dozen pages, each with a strip or islet of newspaper in the centre, with that freedom of mind (in my case meaning free¬ dom to forget) which would be a perilous way of preparing for examination. This ad libitum perusal had its interest for me. The private truth being that I had not read “The Channel Islands,” I was amazed at the variety of matter which the volume must contain, to have impressed these different judges with the writer’s surpassing capacity to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all forms of pre¬ sentation. In Jersey she had shown herself a historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist. There were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our “ fictionists ” to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, “ the recording angel ” (who is not supposed to take account of literature as such) “would 380 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. assuredly set down the work as a deed of religion.” The force of this eulogy on the part of several reviewers was much heightened by the incidental evidence of their fastidious and severe taste, which seemed to suffer considerably from the imperfections of our chief writers, even the dead and canon¬ ized : one afflicted them with the smell of oil, another lacked erudition, and attempted (though vainly) to dazzle them with trivial conceits; one wanted to be more philosophical than nature had made him; another, in attempting to be comic, produced the melancholy effect of a half-starved Merry-An¬ drew ; while one and all, from the author of the “ Areopagi- tica ” downward, had faults of style which must have made an able hand in the “ Latchgate Argus ” shake the many-glanced head belonging thereto with a smile of compassionate dis¬ approval. Not so the authoress of “The Channel Islands;” Vorticella and Shakspeare were allowed to be faultless. I gathered that no blemishes were observable in the work of this accomplished writer, and the repeated information that she was “ second to none ” seemed after this superfluous. Her thick octavo — notes, appendix, and all —was unflagging from beginning to end; and the “Land’s End Times,” using a rather dangerous rhetorical figure, recommended you not to take up the volume unless you had leisure to finish it at a sitting. It had given one writer more pleasure than he had had for many a long day — a sentence which had a melancholy reso¬ nance, suggesting a life of studious languor such as all previous achievements of the human mind failed to stimulate into enjoyment. I think the collection of critical opinions wound up with this sentence, and I had turned back to look at the lithographed sketch of the authoress which fronted the first page of the album, when the fair original re-entered, and I laid down the volume on its appropriate table. “ Well, what do you think of them ? ” said Vorticella, with an emphasis which had some significance unperceived by me. “ I know you are a great student. Give me your opinion of these opinions.” “ They must be very gratifying to you,” I answered, with DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 381 a little confusion; for I perceived that I might easily mis¬ take my footing, and I began to have a presentiment of an examination for which I was by no means crammed. “On the whole — yes,” said Yorticella, in a tone of con¬ cession. “ A few of the notices are written with some pains, but not one of them has really grappled with the chief idea in the appendix. I don’t know whether you have studied political economy, but you saw what I said on page 398 about the Jersey fisheries ?” I bowed — I confess it — with the mean hope that this movement in the nape of my neck would be taken as sufficient proof that I had read, marked, and learned. I do not forgive myself for this pantomimic falsehood; but I was young and morally timorous, and Vorticella’s personality had an effect on me something like that of a powerful mesmerizer, when he directs all his ten fingers toward your eyes, as unpleasantly visible ducts for the invisible stream. I felt a great power of contempt in her if I did not come up to her expectations. “Well,” she resumed, “you observe that not one of them has taken up that argument; but I hope I convinced you about the drag-nets ? ” Here was a judgment on me. Orientally speaking, I had lifted up my foot on the steep descent of falsity, and was compelled to set it down on a lower level. “ I should think you must be right,” said I, inwardly resolving that on the next topic I would tell the truth. “I know that I am right,” said Yorticella. “The fact is that no critic in this town is fit to meddle with such subjects unless it be Yolvox, and he, with all his command of lan¬ guage, is very superficial. It is Volvox who writes in the ‘Monitor.’ I hope you noticed how he contradicts himself ? ” My resolution, helped by the equivalence of dangers, stoutly prevailed, and I said “No.” “ No! I am surprised. He is the only one who finds fault with me. He is a Dissenter, you know. The ‘ Monitor ’ is the Dissenters’ organ, but my husband has been so useful to them in municipal affairs that they would not venture to run my 382 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. book down; they feel obliged to tell the truth about me. Still, Volvox betrays himself. After praising me for my penetration and accuracy, he presently says I have allowed myself to be imposed upon, and have let my active imagina¬ tion run away with me. That is like his Dissenting imperti¬ nence. Active my imagination may be, but 1 have it under control. Little Vibrio, who writes the playful notice in the ‘Medley Pie/ has a clever hit at Volvox in that passage about the steeple-chase of imagination, where the loser wants to make it appear that the winner was only run away with. But if you did not notice Volvox’s self-contradiction you would not see the point,” added Vorticella, with rather a chilling intonation. “ Or perhaps you did not read the ‘ Med¬ ley Pie’ notice ? That is a pity. Do take up the book again. Vibrio is a poor little tippling creature ; but, as Mr. Carlyle would say, he has an eye, and he is always lively.” I did take up the book again, and read as demanded. “It is very ingenious,” said I, really appreciating the difficulty of being lively in this connection; it seemed even more wonderful than that a Vibrio should have an eye. “You are probably surprised to see no notices from the London press,” said Vorticella. “I liave one, — a very re¬ markable one, — but I reserve it until the others have spoken, and then I shall introduce it to wind up. I shall have them reprinted, of course, and inserted in future copies. This from the ‘ Candelabrum ’ is only eight lines in length, but full of venom. It calls my style dull and pompous. I think that will tell its own tale, placed after the other critiques .” “People’s impressions are so different,” said I. “Some persons find ‘ Don Quixote ’ dull.” “Yes,” said Vorticella, in emphatic chest-tones, “dulness is a matter of opinion ; but pompous ! That I never was and never could be. Perhaps he means that my matter is too important for his taste; and I have no objection to that. I did not intend to be trivial. I should just like to read you that passage about the drag-nets, because I could make it clearer to you.” DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 388 A second (less ornamental) copy was at her elbow and was already opened, when to my great relief another guest was announced, and I was able to take my leave without seeming to run away from “ The Channel Islands,” though not with¬ out being compelled to carry with me the loan of “ the marked copy,” which I was to find advantageous in a reperusal of the appendix, and was only requested to return before my de¬ parture from Pumpiter. Looking into the volume now with some curiosity, I found it a very ordinary combination of the commonplace and ambitious — one of those books which one might imagine to have been written under the old Grub Street coercion of hunger and thirst, if they were not known before¬ hand to be the gratuitous productions of ladies and gentlemen, whose circumstances might be called altogether easy, but for an uneasy vanity that happened to have been directed toward authorship. Its importance was that of a polypus, tumor, fungus, or other erratic outgrowth, noxious and disfiguring in its effect on the individual organism which nourishes it. Poor Vorticella might not have been more wearisome on a visit than the majority of her neighbors, but for this disease of magnified self-importance belonging to small authorship. I understand that the chronic complaint of “The Channel Islands ” never left her. As the years went on, and the publication tended to vanish in the distance for her neighbors’ memory, she was still bent on dragging it to the foreground ; and her chief interest in new acquaintances was the possibility of lending them her book, entering into all details concerning it, and requesting them to read her album of “ critical opin¬ ions.” This really made her more tiresome than Gregarina, whose distinction was that she had had cholera, and who did not feel herself in her true position with strangers until they knew it. My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the fe¬ male sex; but I presently found that here too the male could assert his superiority and show a more vigorous boredom. I 384 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. have known a man with a single pamphlet containing an as- surance that somebody else was wrong, together with a few approved quotations, produce a more powerful effect of shud¬ dering at his approach than ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume, including notes and appendix. Males of more than one nation recur to my memory who produced from their pocket on the slightest encouragement a small pink or buff duodecimo pamphlet, wrapped in silver paper, as a present held ready for an intelligent reader. “ A mode of propagandism,” you remark in excuse ; “ they wished to spread some useful corrective doctrine.” Not necessarily; the indoctrination aimed at was perhaps to convince you of their own talents by the sample of an “ Ode on Shakspeare’s Birthday,” or a translation from Horace. Vorticella may pair off with Monas, who had also written his one book, — “ Here and There ; or, a Trip from Truro to Transylvania, ” — and not only carried it in his portmanteau when he went on visits, but took the earliest opportunity of depositing it in the drawing-room, and afterward would enter to look for it, as if under pressure of a need for reference, begging the lady of the house to tell him whether she had seen “a small volume bound in red.” One hostess at last ordered it to be carried into his bedroom to save his time; but it presently reappeared in his hands, and was again left, with inserted slips of paper, on the drawing-room table. Depend upon it, vanity is human — native alike to men and women ; only in the male it is of denser texture, less volatile, so that it less immediately informs you of its presence, but is more massive and capable of knocking you down if you come into collision with it; while in woman vanity lays by its small revenges as in a needle-case always at hand. The difference is in muscle and finger-tips, in traditional habits and mental perspective, rather than in the original appetite of vanity. It is an approved method now to explain ourselves by a refer¬ ence to the races as little like us as possible; which leads me to observe that in Fiji the men use the most elaborate hair¬ dressing, and that wherever tattooing is in vogue the male DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 385 expects to carry off the prize of admiration for pattern and workmanship. Arguing analogically, and looking for this tendency of the Fijian or Hawaian male in the eminent European, we must suppose that it exhibits itself under the forms of civilized apparel; and it would be a great mistake to estimate passionate effort by the effect it produces on our perception or understanding. It is conceivable that a man may have concentrated no less will and expectation on his wristbands, gaiters, and the shape of his hat-brim, or an appearance which impresses you as that of the modern “ swell,” than the Ojibbeway on an ornamentation which seems to us much more elaborate. In what concerns the search for admiration, at least, it is not true that the effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. The cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, such as might be seen when George the Fourth was king, must have been widely different in quality and intensity from the impression made by that small scroll of hair on the organ of the beholder. Merely to maintain an attitude and gait which I notice in certain club men, and especially an inflation of the chest accompanying very small remarks, there goes, I am convinced, an expendi¬ ture of psychical energy little appreciated by the multitude — a mental vision of Self and deeply impressed beholders, which is quite without antitype in what we call the effect produced by that hidden process. No! there is no need to admit that women would carry away the prize of vanity in a competition where differences of custom were fairly considered. A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt which forces him to walk sideways down the staircase; but let the match be between the respec¬ tive vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and here too the battle would be to the strong. VOL. IX. 26 MORAL SWINDLERS. I T is a familiar example of irony in the degradation of words that “ what a man is worth ” has come to mean how much money he possesses ; but there seems a deeper and more melancholy irony in the shrunken meaning that popular or polite speech assigns to “ morality ” and “ morals.” The poor part these words are made to play recalls the fate of those pagan divinities who, after being understood to rule the powers of the air and the destinies of men, came down to the level of insignificant demons, or were even made a farcical show for the amusement of the multitude. Talking to Melissa in a time of commercial trouble, I found her disposed to speak pathetically of the disgrace which had fallen on Sir Gavial Mantrap, because of his conduct in rela¬ tion to the Eocene Mines, and to other companies ingeniously devised by him for the punishment of ignorance in people of small means: a disgrace by which the poor titled gentleman was actually reduced to live in comparative obscurity on his wife’s settlement of one or two hundred thousand in the consols. “ Surely your pity is misapplied,” said I, rather dubiously; for I like the comfort of trusting that a correct moral judg¬ ment is the strong point in woman (seeing that she has a majority of about a million in our island), and I imagined that Melissa might have some unexpressed grounds for her opinion. “ I should have thought you would rather be sorry for Mantrap’s victims—the widows, spinsters, and hard-work¬ ing fathers, whom his unscrupulous haste to make himself rich has cheated of all their savings, while he is eating well, lying MORAL SWINDLERS. 387 softly, and, after impudently justifying himself before the public, is perhaps joining in the General Confession with a sense that he is an acceptable object in the sight of God, though decent men refuse to meet him.” “ Oh, all that about the Companies, I know, was most un¬ fortunate. In commerce people are led to do so many things, and he might not know exactly how everything would turn out. But Sir Gavial made a good use of his money, and he is a thoroughly moral man.” “ What do. you mean by a thoroughly moral man ? ” said I. “ Oh, I suppose every one means the same by that,” said Melissa, with a slight air of rebuke. “ Sir Gavial is an excel lent family man — quite blameless there • and so charitable round his place at Tip-top. Very different from Mr. Barab- bas, whose life, my husband tells me, is most objectionable, with actresses and that sort of thing. I think a man’s morals should make a difference to us. I’m not sorry for Mr. Barab- bas, but I am sorry for Sir Gavial Mantrap.” I will not repeat my answer to Melissa, for I fear it waa offensively brusque, my opinion being that Sir Gavial was the more pernicious scoundrel of the two, since his name for virtue served as an effective part of a swindling apparatus; and perhaps I hinted that to call such a man “ moral ” showed rather a silly notion of human affairs. In fact, I had an angry .wish to be instructive, and Melissa, as will sometimes happen, noticed my anger without appropriating my instruc¬ tion ; for I have since heard that she speaks of me as rather violent-tempered, and not over-strict in my views of morality. I wish that this narrow use of words which are wanted in their full meaning were confined to women like Melissa. See¬ ing that “ morality ” and “morals,” under their alias of Ethics, are the subject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis a pressing matter of dispute — seeing that the most famous book ever written on Ethics, and forming a chief study in oui colleges, allies ethical with political science, or that which treats of the constitution and prosperity of states, one might expect that educated men would find reason to avoid a per- 388 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. version of language which lends itself to no wider view or life than that of village gossips. Yet I find even respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by prais¬ ing him for his pure moral character; by which one must sup¬ pose them to mean that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at the curious result, that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man lie quite outside both morality and religion — the one of these consisting in not keeping mistresses (and per¬ haps not drinking too much), and the other in certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God, which can be carried on equally well side by side with the basest conduct toward men. With such a classification as this it is no wonder, con¬ sidering the strong reaction of language on thought, that many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent science and philosophy, are far to seek for the grounds of social duty, and without entertaining any private intention of committing a perjury which would ruin an innocent man, or seeking gain by supplying bad preserved meats to our navy, feel them¬ selves speculatively obliged to inquire why they should not do so, and are inclined to measure their intellectual subtlety by their dissatisfaction with all answers to this “ Why ? ” It is of little use to theorize in ethics while our habitual phrase¬ ology stamps the larger part of our social duties as something that lies aloof from the deepest needs and affections of our nature. The informal definitions of popular language are the only medium through which theory really affects the mass of minds, even among the nominally educated; and when a man whose business hours, the solid part of every day, are spent in an unscrupulous course of public or private action which has every calculable chance of causing wide-spread injury and misery, can be called moral because he comes home to MORAL SWINDLERS. 389 dine with his wife and children and cherishes the happiness of his own hearth, the augury is not good for the use of high ethical and theological disputation. Not for one moment would one willingly lose sight of the truth that the relation of the sexes and the primary ties of kinship are the deepest roots of human well-being, but to make them by themselves the equivalent of morality is ver¬ bally to cut off the channels of feeling through which they are the feeders of that well-being. They are the original fountains of a sensibility to the claims of others, which is the bond of societies; but being necessarily in the first instance , a private good, there is always the danger that individual self¬ ishness will see in them only the best part of its own gain; just as knowledge, navigation, commerce, and all the condi¬ tions which are of a nature to awaken men’s consciousness of their mutual dependence and to make the world one great society, are the occasions of selfish, unfair action, of war and oppression, so long as the public conscience or chief force of feeling and opinion is not uniform and strong enough in its insistence on what is demanded by the general welfare. And among the influences that must retard a right public judg¬ ment, the degradation of words which involve praise and blame will be reckoned worth protesting against by every mature observer. To rob words of half their meaning, while they retain their dignity as qualifications, is like allowing to men who have lost half their faculties the same high and perilous command which they won in their time of vigor, or like selling food and seeds after fraudulently abstracting their best virtues; in each case what ought to be beneficently strong is fatally enfeebled, if not empoisoned. Until we have altered our dictionaries and have found some other word than “ morality ” to stand in popular use for the duties of man to man, let us refuse to accept as moral the contractor who enriches himself by using large machinery to make paste¬ board soles pass as leather for the feet of unhappy conscripts fighting at miserable odds against invaders; let us rather call him a miscreant, though he were the tenderest, most 390 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT- faithful of husbands, and contend that his own experience of home happiness makes his reckless infliction of suffering on others all the more atrocious. Let us refuse to accept as moral any political leader who should allow his conduct in relation to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, and boldly say that he would be less immoral, even though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impartiality. And though we were to . find among that class of journalists who live by recklessly report¬ ing injurious rumors, insinuating the blackest motives in opponents, descanting at large and with an air of infallibility on dreams which they both find and interpret, and stimu¬ lating bad feeling between nations by abusive writing which is as empty of real conviction as the rage of a pantomime- king, and would be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear diabolical — though we were to find among these a man who was benignancy itself in his own circle, a healer of private differences, a soother in private calamities, let us pronounce him nevertheless flagrantly immoral, a root of hideous cancer in the commonwealth, turning the channels of instruction into feeders of social and political disease. In opposite ways one sees bad effects likely to be encouraged by this narrow use of the word “ morals,” shutting out from its meaning half those actions of a man’s life which tell mo¬ mentously on the well-being of his fellow-citizens, and on the preparation of a future for the children growing up around him. Thoroughness of workmanship, care in the execution of every task undertaken, as if it were the acceptance of a trust which it would be a breach of faith not to discharge well, is a form of duty so momentous that if it were to die out from the feeling and practice of a people, all reforms of institutions would be helpless to create national prosperity and national happiness. Do we desire to see public spirit penetrating all classes of the community and affecting every man’s conduct, so that he shall make neither the saving of MORAL SWINDLERS. 391 his soul nor any other private saving an excuse for indif¬ ference to the general welfare ? Well and good. But the sort of public spirit that scamps its bread-winning work, whether with the trowel, the pen, or the overseeing brain, that it may hurry to scenes of political or social agitation, would be as baleful a gift to our people as any malignant demon could devise. One best part of educational training is that which comes through special knowledge and manipula¬ tive or other skill,—with its usual accompaniment of delight, in relation to work which is the daily bread-winning occupa¬ tion, — which is a man’s contribution to the effective wealth of society in return for what he takes as his own share. But this duty of doing one’s proper work well, and taking care that every product of one’s labor shall be genuinely what it pretends to be, is not only left out of morals in popular speech; it is very little insisted on by public teachers, at least in the only effective way — by tracing the continuous effects of ill-done work. Some of them seem to be still hopeful that it will follow as a necessary consequence from week-day services, ecclesiastical decoration, and improved hymn-books; others apparently trust to descanting on self¬ culture in general, or to raising a general sense of faulty circumstances; and meanwhile lax, makeshift work, from the high conspicuous kind to the average and obscure, is allowed to pass unstamped with the disgrace of immorality, though there is not a member of society who is not daily suffering from it materially and spiritually, and though it is the fatal cause that must degrade our national rank and our commerce, in spite of all open markets and discovery of available coal- seams. I suppose one may take the popular misuse of the words 11 morality ” and u morals ” as some excuse for certain absurdi¬ ties which are occasional fashions in speech and writing — cer¬ tain old lay-figures, as ugly as the queerest Asiatic idol, which at different periods get propped into loftiness, and attired in magnificent Venetian drapery, so that whether they have ?. human face or not is of little consequence. One is, the no- 392 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. tion that there is a radical, irreconcilable opposition between intellect and morality. I do not mean the simple statement of fact, which everybody knows, that remarkably able men have had very faulty morals, and have outraged public feel¬ ing even at its ordinary standard; but the supposition that the ablest intellect, the highest genius, will see through mor¬ ality as a sort of twaddle for bibs and tuckers, a doctrine of dulness, a mere incident in human stupidity. We begin to understand the acceptance of this foolishness by considering that we live in a society where we may hear a treacherous monarch, or a malignant and lying politician, or a man who uses either official or literary power as an instrument of his private partiality or hatred, or a manufacturer who devises the falsification of wares, or a trader who deals in virtueless seed-grains, praised or compassionated because of his excel¬ lent morals. Clearly, if morality meant no more than such decencies as are practised by these poisonous members of society, it would be possible to say, without suspicion of light-headedness, that morality lay aloof from the grand stream of human affairs, as a small channel fed by the stream and not missed from it. While this form of nonsense is con¬ veyed in the popular use of words, there must be plenty of well-dressed ignorance at leisure to run through a box of books, which will feel itself initiated in the freemasonry of intellect by a view of life which might take for a Shak- spearian motto, “Fair is foul and foul is fair, Hover through the fog and filthy air,” and will find itself easily provided with striking conversation by the rule of reversing all the judgments on good and evil which have come to be the calendar and clock-work of society. But let our habitual talk give morals their full meaning as the conduct which, in every human relation, would follow from the fullest knowledge and the fullest sympathy, —a meaning perpetually corrected and enriched by a more thorough appre¬ ciation of dependence in things, and a finer sensibility to MORAL SWINDLERS. 393 both physical and spiritual fact, — and this ridiculous ascrip¬ tion of superlative power to minds which have no effective awe-inspiring vision of the human lot, no response of under¬ standing to the connection between duty and the material processes by which the world is kept habitable for cultivated man, will be tacitly discredited without any need to cite the, immortal names that all are obliged to take as the measure of intellectual rank and highly charged genius. Suppose a Frenchman—I mean no disrespect to the great French nation, for all nations are afflicted with their peculiar parasitic growths, which are lazy, hungry forms, usually char¬ acterized by a disproportionate swallowing apparatus — sup¬ pose a Parisian who should shuffle down the Boulevard with a soul ignorant of the gravest cases and the deepest tender¬ ness of manhood, and a frame more or less fevered by de¬ bauchery, mentally polishing into utmost refinement of phrase and rhythm verses which were an enlargement on that Sliak- spearian motto, and worthy of the most expensive title to be furnished by the venders of such antithetic ware as “ Les Mar¬ guerites de l’Enfer,” or “ Les delices de Beelzebuth.” This supposed personage might probably enough regard his nega¬ tion of those moral sensibilities which make half the warp and woof of human history — his indifference to the hard thinking and hard handiwork of life, to which he owed even his own gauzy mental garments, with their spangles of poor paradox — as the royalty of genius, for we are used to witness such self¬ crowning in many forms of mental alienation; but he would not, I think, be taken, even by his own generation, as a living proof that there can exist such a combination as that of moral stupidity and trivial emphasis of personal indulgence, with the large yet finely discriminating vision which marks the intel¬ lectual masters of our kind. Doubtless there are many sorts of transfiguration, and a man who has come to be worthy of all gratitude and reverence may have had his swinish period, wallowing in ugly places; but suppose it had been handed down to us that Sophocles or Virgil had at one time made himself scandalous in this way; the works which have 394 ASSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. consecrated their memory for our admiration and gratitude are not a glorifying of swinishness, but an artistic incorpora¬ tion of the highest sentiment known to their age. All these may seem to be wide reasons for objecting to Melissa’s pity for Sir Gavial Mantrap, on the ground of his good morals; but their connection will not be obscure to any one who has taken pains to observe the links uniting the scattered signs of our social development. SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. M Y friend Trost, who is no optimist as to the state of the universe hitherto, but is confident that at some future period, within the duration of the solai system, ours will be the best of all possible worlds,— a hope which I always honor as a sign of beneficent qualities, — my friend Trost always tries to keep up my spirits, under the sight of the extremely unpleasant and disfiguring work by which many of our fellow-creatures have to get their bread, with the assurance that “all this will soon be done by machinery ” But he sometimes neutralizes the consolation by extending it over so large an area of human labor, and insisting so im¬ pressively on the quantity of energy which will thus be set free for loftier purposes, that I am tempted to desire an oc¬ casional famine of invention in the coming ages, lest the humbler kinds of work should be entirely nullified while there are still left some men and women who are not fit for the highest. Especially, when one considers the perfunctory way in which some of the most exalted tasks are already executed by those who are understood to be educated for them, there rises a fearful vision of the human race evolving machinery which will by and by throw itself fatally out of work. When, in the Bank of England, I see a wondrously delicate machine for testing sovereigns, a shrewd implacable little steel Rhad- amanthus that, once the coins are delivered up to it, lifts and balances each in turn for the fraction of an instant, fin. It' it wanting or sufficient, and dismisses it to right or left with rigorous justice ; when I am told of micrometers and thermo -396 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. piles and tasimeters, which deal physically with the invisible, the impalpable, and the unimaginable; of cunning wires and wheels and pointing needles which will register your and my quickness so as to exclude flattering opinion; of a machine for drawing the right conclusion, which will doubtless by-and- by be improved into an automaton for finding true premises; of a microphone which detects the cadence of a fly’s foot on the ceiling, and may be expected presently to discriminate the noises of our various follies as they soliloquize or con¬ verse in our brains, —my mind seeming too small for these things, I get a little out of it, like an unfortunate savage too suddenly brought face to face with civilization, and I exclaim: “Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race ? and will the creatures who are to transcend and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving out the effluvia of the labora¬ tory, and performing, with infallible exactness, more than everything that we have performed, with a slovenly approxi¬ mativeness, and self-defeating inaccuracy ? ” “ But,” says Trost, treating me with cautious mildness on hearing me vent this raving notion, “ you forget that these wonder-workers are the slaves of our race, need our tendance and regulation, obey the mandates of our consciousness, and are only deaf and dumb bringers of reports which we decipher and make use of. They are simply extensions of the human organism, so to speak, limbs immeasurably more powerful, ever more subtle finger-tips, ever more mastery over the in¬ visibly great and the invisibly small. Each new machine needs a new appliance of human skill to construct it, new devices to feed it with material, and often keener-edged facul¬ ties to note its registrations or performances. How, then, can machines supersede us ? They depend upon us. When we cease, they cease.” “ I am not so sure of that,” said I, getting back into my mind, and becoming rather wilful in consequence. “ If, as I have heard you contend, machines as they are more and more perfected will require less and less of tendance, how do I know that they may not be ultimately made to carry, or may SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 397 not in themselves evolve, conditions of self-supply, self-repair, and reproduction, and not only do all the mighty and subtle work possible on this planet better than we could do it, but with the immense advantage of banishing from the earth’s atmosphere screaming consciousnesses which, in our compara¬ tively clumsy race, make an intolerable noise and fuss to each other about every petty ant-like performance, looking on at all work only as it were to spring a rattle here or blow a trumpet there, with a ridiculous sense of being effective ? I for my part cannot see any reason why a sufficiently penetrat¬ ing thinker, who can see his way through a thousand years or so, should not conceive a parliament of machines, in which the manners were excellent and the motions infallible in logic; one honorable instrument, a remote descendant of the Voltaic family, might discharge a powerful current (entirely without animosity) on an honorable instrument opposite, of more up¬ start origin, but belonging to the ancient edge-tool race, which we already at Sheffield see paring thick iron as if it were mel¬ low cheese — by this unerringly directed discharge operating on movements corresponding to what we call Estimates, and by necessary mechanical consequence on movements corre¬ sponding • to what we call the Funds, which, with a vain analogy, we sometimes speak of as ‘ sensitive.’ For every machine would be perfectly educated, that is to say, would have the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act not the less infallibly for being free from the fussy accompaniment of that consciousness to which our prejudice gives a supreme governing rank, when in truth it is an idle parasite on the grand sequence of things.” “ Nothing of the sort! ” returned Trost, getting angry, and judging it kind to treat me with some severity; “ what you have heard me say is, that our race will and must act as a nervous centre to the utmost development of mechanical processes: the subtly refined powers of machines will react in producing more subtly refined thinking processes, which will occupy the minds set free from grosser labor. Say, for example, that all the scavengers’ work in London were done. 398 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. so fax as human attention is concerned, by the occasional pres¬ sure of a brass button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will then have a multitude of brains set free for the ex¬ quisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the delicate ma¬ chines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the production of epic poems or great judicial harangues. So far from mankind being thrown out of work, according to your notion,” concluded Trost, with a peculiar nasal note of scorn, “ if it were not for your incurable dilettanteism in sci¬ ence as in all other things — if you had once understood the action of any delicate machine — you would perceive that the sequences it carries throughout the realm of phenomena would require many generations, perhaps eons of understand¬ ings considerably stronger than yours, to exhaust the store of work it lays open.” “Precisely,” said I, with a meekness which I felt was praiseworthy; “ it is the feebleness of my capacity, bringing me nearer than you to the human average, that perhaps ena¬ bles me to imagine certain results better than you can. Doubtless the very fishes of your rivers, gullible as they look, and slow as they are to be rightly convinced in another order of facts, form fewer false expectations about each other than we should form about them if we were in a position of somewhat fuller intercourse with their species ; for even as it is, we have continually to be surprised that they do not rise to our carefully selected bait. Take me then as a sort of re¬ flective and experienced carp, but do not estimate the justice of my ideas by my facial expression.” “ Pooh! ” says Trost. (We are on very intimate terms.) “ Naturally,” I persisted, “ it is less easy to you than to me to imagine our race transcended and superseded, since the more energy a being is possessed of, the harder it must be for him to conceive his own death. But I, from the point of view of a reflective carp, can easily imagine myself and my congeners dispensed with in the frame of things, and giving SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 399 way not only to a superior but a vastly different kind of en tity. What I would ask you is, to show me why, since each new invention casts a new light along the pathway of dis¬ covery, and each new combination or structure brings into play more conditions than its inventor foresaw, there should not at length be a machine of such high mechanical powers that it would find and assimilate the material to supply its own waste, and then, by a further evolution of internal molecular movements, reproduce itself by some process of fission or budding. This last stage having been reached, either by man’s contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one sees that the process of natural selection must drive men altogether out of the field; for they will long before then have begun to sink into the miserable condition of those unhappy characters in fable, who having demons or djinns at their beck, and being obliged to supply them with work, found too much of everything done in too short a time. What demons so potent as molecular movements, none the less tremendously potent for not carrying the futile cargo of a consciousness screeching irrelevantly, like a fowl tied head downmost to the saddle of a swift horseman ? Under such uncomfortable circumstances, our race will have diminished with the diminishing call on their energies ; and by the time that the self-repairing and reproducing machines arise, all but a few of the rare inventors, calculators, and speculators will have become pale, pulpy, and cretinous from fatty or other degeneration, and behold around them a scanty hydro- cephalous offspring. As to the breed of the ingenious and intellectual, their nervous systems will at last have been overwrought in following the molecular revelations of the immensely more powerful unconscious race, and they will naturally, as the less energetic combinations of movement, subside like the flame of a candle in the sunlight. Thus the feebler race, whose corporeal adjustments happened to be accompanied with a maniacal consciousness which imagined itself moving its mover, will have vanished, as all less adapted existences do before the Attest — i. e., the existence composed 400 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of the most persistent groups of movements and the most capable of incorporating new groups in harmonious relation. Who, if our consciousness is, as I have been given to under¬ stand, a mere stumbling of our organisms on their way to unconscious perfection,—who shall say that those fittest ex¬ istences will not be found along the track of what we call in¬ organic combinations, which will carry on the most elaborate processes as mutely and painlessly as we are now told that the minerals are metamorphosing themselves continually in the dark laboratory of the earth’s crust ? Thus this planet may be filled with beings who will be blind and deaf as the inmost rock, yet will execute changes as delicate and com¬ plicated as those of human language, and all the intricate web of what we call its effects, without sensitive impression, without sensitive impulse; there may be, let us say, mute orations, mute rhapsodies, mute discussions, and no conscious¬ ness there even to enjoy the silence.” “ Absurd ! ” grumbled Trost. “ The supposition is logical,” said I. “ It is well argued from the premises.” u Whose premises ? ” cried Trost, turning on me with some fierceness. “ You don’t mean to call them mine, I hope ? ” “ Heaven forbid. They seem to be flying about in the air witli other germs, and have found a sort of nidus among my melancholy fancies. Nobody really holds them. They bear the same relation to real belief, as walking on the head for a show does to running away from an explosion or walking last to catch the train.” THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 0 discern likeness amidst diversity, it is well known, JL does not require so fine a mental edge as the discerning of diversity amidst general sameness. The primary rough classification depends on the prominent resemblances of things : the progress is toward finer and finer discrimination according to minute differences. Yet even at this stage of European culture, one’s attention is continually drawn to the prevalence of that grosser mental sloth which makes people dull to the most ordinary prompt¬ ing of comparison, the bringing things together because of their likeness. The same motives, the same ideas, the same practices, are alternately admired and abhorred, lauded and denounced, according to their association with superficial differences, historical or actually social. Even learned writers, treating of great subjects,.often show an attitude of mind not greatly superior in its logic to that of the frivolous fine lady who is indignant at the frivolity of her maid. To take only the subject of the Jews : it would be difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about them which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print; but the neglect of resemblances is a common prop¬ erty of dulness which unites all the various points of view — the prejudiced, the puerile, the spiteful, and the abysmally ignorant. That the preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness; that their revival is a sign of reviving nationality; that every heroic defender, every pa¬ triotic restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has VOL. IX. 402 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. made them his watchword ; that even such a corporate exist ence as that of a Roman legion or an English regiment has been made valorous by memorial standards, — these are the glorious commonplaces of historic teaching at our public schools and universities, being happily ingrained in Greek and Latin classics. They have also been impressed on the world by conspicuous modern instances. That there is a free modern Greece is due — through all infiltration of other than Greek blood — to the presence of ancient Greece in the consciousness of European men; and every speaker would feel his point safe if he were to praise Byron’s devotion to a cause made glorious by ideal identification with the past; hardly so, if he were to insist that the Greeks were not to be helped further because their history shows that they were anciently unsurpassed in treachery and lying, and that many modern Greeks are highly disreputable characters, while others are disposed to grasp too large a share of our com¬ merce. The same with Italy ; the pathos of his country’s lot pierced the youthful soul of Mazzini, because, like Dante’s, his blood was fraught with the kinship of Italian greatness, his imagination filled with a majestic past that wrought it¬ self into a majestic future. Half a century ago, what was Italy ? An idling-place of dilettanteism or of itinerant motiveless wealth, a territory parcelled out for papal suste¬ nance, dynastic convenience, and the profit of an alien Government. What were the Italians ? No people, no voice in European counsels, no massive power in European affairs: a race thought of in English and French society as chiefly adapted to the operatic stage, or to secure as models for painters; disposed to smile gratefully at the reception of half-pence ; and by the more historical remembered to be rather polite than truthful — in all probability, a combination of Machiavelli, Rubini, and Masaniello. Thanks chiefly to the divine gift of a memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present, and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute, all that, or most of it, is changed. THE MODERN Il%P! IIEP! HEP! 403 Again, one of our living historians finds just sympathy in his vigorous insistence on our true ancestry, on our being the strongly marked heritors, in language and genius, of those old English seamen, who, beholding a rich country with a most convenient seaboard, came, doubtless with a sense of divine warrant, and settled themselves on this or the other side of fertilizing streams, gradually conquering more and more of the pleasant land from the natives who knew nothing of Odin, and finally making unusually clean work in ridding themselves of those prior occupants. “ Let us,” he virtually says — “ let us know who were our forefathers, who it was that won the soil for us, and brought the good seed of those institutions through which we should not arrogantly but gratefully feel ourselves distinguished among the nations as possessors of long-inherited freedom; let us not keep up an ignorant kind of naming which disguises our true affinities of blood and language, but let us see thoroughly what sort of notions and traditions our forefathers had, aud what sort of song inspired them. Let the poetic fragments which breathe forth their fierce bravery in battle, and their trust in fierce gods who helped them, be treasured with affectionate rever¬ ence. These seafaring, invading, self-asserting men were the English of old time, and were our fathers, who did rough work by which we are profiting. They had virtues which incorporated themselves in wholesome usages, to which we trace our own political blessings. Let us know and acknowl¬ edge our common relationship to them, and be thankful that, over and above the affections and duties which spring from our manhood, we have the closer and more constantly guiding duties which belong to us as Englishmen.” To this view of our nationality most persons, who have feeling and understanding enough to be conscious of the connection between the patriotic affection and every other affection which lifts us above emigrating rats and free-loving baboons, will be disposed to say Amen. True, we are not indebted to those ancestors for our religion; we are rather proud of having got that illuminatiou from elsewhere. The 404 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. men who planted our nation were not Christians, though they began their work centuries after Christ, and they had a de¬ cided objection to Christianity when it was first proposed to them; they were not monotheists, and their religion was the reverse of spiritual. But since we have been fortunate enough to keep the island home they won for us, and have been on the whole a prosperous people, rather continuing the plan of invading and spoiling other lands than being forced to beg for shelter in them, nobody has reproached us because our fathers, thirteen hundred years ago, worshipped Odin, massacred Britons, and were with difficulty persuaded to accept Christianity, knowing nothing of Hebrew history and the reasons why Christ should be received as the Saviour of mankind. The Bed Indians, not liking us when we settled among them, might have been willing to fling such facts in our faces, but they were too ignorant; and, besides, their opinions did not signify, because we were able, if we liked, to exterminate them. The Hindoos also have doubtless had their rancors against us, and still entertain enough ill-will to make unfavorable remarks on our character, especially as to our historic rapacity and arrogant notions of our own superi¬ ority. They perhaps do not admire the usual English profile, and they are not converted to our way of feeding; but though we are a small number of an alien race, profiting by the territory and produce of these prejudiced people, they are unable to turn us out; at least, when they tried, we showed them their mistake. We do not call ourselves a dispersed and a punished people ; we are a colonizing people, and it is we who have punished others. Still, the historian guides us rightly in urging us to dwell on the virtues of our ancestors with emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, the nobleness of a people, depends on its capability of being stirred by memories, and for striving for what we call spiritual ends — ends which consist not in an immediate material possession, but in the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates the collective body as with one soul. A people THE MODERN IIEP! HEP! HEP! 405 having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labors and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children’s children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history, and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing “some great story of a man,” and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An in¬ dividual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence yet existing in the past — in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored. A common hu¬ manity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than of communism to suffice for social energy. I am not bound to feel for a Chinaman as I feel for my fellow-countryman : I am bound not to demoralize him with opium, not to compel him to my will by destroying or plundering the fruits of his labor, on the alleged ground that he is not cosmopolitan enough, and not to insult him for his want of my tailoring and religion when he appears as a peaceable visitor on the London pavement. It is admirable in a Briton with a good purpose to learn Chinese; but it would not be a proof of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in the original more than he tastes the poetry of his own tongue. Affection, in¬ telligence, duty, radiate from a centre, and nature has decided that for us English folk that centre can be neither China nor Peru. Most of us feel this unreflectingly, for the affectation 406 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of undervaluing everything native, and being too fine for one’s own country, belongs only to a few minds of no danger¬ ous leverage. What is wanting is that we should recognize a corresponding attachment to nationality as legitimate in every other people, and understand that its absence is a pri¬ vation of the greatest good. For, to repeat, not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each individual citizen. Our dignity and recti¬ tude are proportioned to our sense of relationship with some¬ thing great, admirable, pregnant with high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease or prosperity. And a people possessing this good should surely feel not only a ready sympathy with the effort of those who, having lost the good, strive to regain it, but a profound pity for any degradation resulting from its loss, — nay, some¬ thing more than pity when happier nationalities have made victims of the unfortunate whose memories, nevertheless, are the very fountain to which the persecutors trace their most vaunted blessings. These notions are familiar; few will deny them in the ab¬ stract, and many are found loudly asserting them in relation to this or the other particular case. But here as elsewhere, in the ardent application of ideas, there is a notable lack of simple comparison or sensibility to resemblance. The Euro¬ pean world has long been used to consider the Jews as alto¬ gether exceptional, and it has followed naturally enough that they have been excepted from the rules of justice and mercy, which are based on human likeness. But to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half, and who made the most eminent struggle against the power of Borne, as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralizing offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying inconsistency in historical interpre¬ tation. Every nation of forcible character, i. e., of strongly THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 407 marked characteristics, is so far exceptional. The distinctive note of each bird-species is in this sense exceptional, but the necessary ground of such distinction is a deeper likeness. The superlative peculiarity in the Jews admitted, our affinity with them is only the more apparent when the elements of their peculiarity are discerned. From whatever point of view the writings of the Old Testa¬ ment may be regarded, the picture they present of a national development is of high interest and speciality; nor can their historic momentousness be much affected by any varieties of theory as to the relation they bear to the New Testament or to the rise and constitution of Christianity. Whether we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revelation, or simply as a part of an ancient literature, makes no difference to the fact that we find there the strongly characterized por¬ traiture of a people educated from an earlier or later period to a sense of separateness unique in its intensity — a people taught by many concurrent influences to identify faithfulness to its national traditions with the highest social and religious blessings. Our too scanty sources of Jewish history, from the return under Ezra to the beginning of the desperate re¬ sistance against Rome, show us the heroic and triumphant struggle of the Maccabees, which rescued the religion and independence of the nation from the corrupting sway of the Syrian Greeks, adding to the glorious sum of its memorials, and stimulating continuous efforts of a more peaceful sort to maintain and develop that national life which the heroes had fought and died for, by internal measures of legal administra¬ tion and public teaching. Thenceforth the virtuous elements of the Jewish life were engaged, as they had been with vary¬ ing aspects during the long and changeful prophetic period and the restoration under Ezra, on the side of preserving the specific national character against a demoralizing fusion with that of foreigners whose religion and ritual were idolatrous and often obscene. There was always a Foreign party reviling the National party as narrow, and sometimes manifesting their own breadth in extensive views of advancement or profit 408 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. to themselves by flattery of a foreign power. Such internal conflict naturally tightened the bands of conservatism, which needed to be strong if it were to rescue the sacred Ark, the vital spirit of a small nation — u the smallest of the nations ” — whose territory lay on the highway between three conti¬ nents 5 and when the dread and hatred of foreign sway had condensed itself into dread and hatred of the Romans, many Conservatives became Zealots, whose chief mark was that they advocated resistance to the death against the submergence of their nationality. Much might be said on this point toward distinguishing the desperate struggle against a con¬ quest which is regarded as degradation and corruption, from rash, hopeless insurrection against an established native gov¬ ernment ; and for my part (if that were of any consequence) I share the spirit of the Zealots. I take the spectacle of the Jewish people defying the Roman edict, and preferring death, by starvation or the sword to the introduction of Caligula’s deified statue into the temple, as a sublime type of steadfast¬ ness. But all that need be noticed here is the continuity of that national education (by outward and inward circumstance) which created in the Jews a feeling of race, a sense of coiqx> rate existence, unique in its intensity. But not, before the dispersion, unique in essential qualities, There is more likeness than contrast between the way we English got our island and the way the Israelites got Canaan. We have not been noted for forming a low estimate of our¬ selves in comparison with foreigners, or for admitting that our institutions are equalled by those of any other people under the sun. Many of us have thought that our sea-wall is a specially divine arrangement to make and keep us a nation of sea-kings after the manner of our forefathers, secure against invasion, and able to invade other lands when we need them, though they may lie on the other side of the ocean. Again, it has been held that we have a peculiar destiny as a Protestant people, not only able to bruise the head of an idolatrous Christianity in the midst of us, but fitted, as possessors of the most truth and the most tonnage, to carry our purer religion THE MODERN HEP I HEP! HEP! 409 over the world and convert mankind to our way of thinking. The Puritans, asserting their liberty to restrain tyrants, found the Hebrew history closely symbolical of their feelings and purpose; and it can hardly be correct to cast the blame of their less laudable doings on the writings they invoked, since their opponents made use of the same writings for different ends, finding there a strong warrant for the divine right of kings and the denunciation of those who, like Korali, Dathan, and Abiram, took on themselves the office of the priesthood, which belonged of right solely to Aaron and his sons, or, in other words, to men ordained by the English bishops. We must rather refer the passionate use of the Hebrew writings to affinities of disposition between our own race and the Jew¬ ish. Is it true that the arrogance of a Jew was so immeasur¬ ably beyond that of a Calvinist ? And the just sympathy and admiration which we give to the ancestors who resisted the oppressive acts of our native kings, and by resisting res¬ cued or won for us the best part of our civil and religious liberties — is it justly to be withheld from those brave and steadfast men of Jewish race who fought and died, or strove by wise administration to resist, the oppression and corrupt¬ ing influences of foreign tyrants, and by resisting, rescued the nationality which was the very hearth of our own relig¬ ion ? At any rate, seeing that the Jews were more specifi¬ cally than any other nation educated into a sense of their supreme moral value, the chief matter of surprise is that any other nation is found to rival them in this form of self- confidence. More exceptional — less like the course of our own history — has been their dispersion and their subsistence as a sepa¬ rate people through ages in which, for the most part, they were regarded and treated very much as beasts hunted for the sake of their skins, or of a valuable secretion peculiar to their species. The Jews showed a talent for accumulating what was an object of more immediate desire to Christians than animal oils or well-furred skins, and their cupidity and avarice were found at once particularly hateful and particu 410 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. larly useful: hateful when seen as a reason for punishing them by mulcting or robbery; useful when this retributive process could be successfully carried forward. Kings and emperors naturally were more alive to the usefulness of sub¬ jects who could gather and yield money; but edicts issued to protect “the King’s Jews” equally with the King’s game from being harassed and hunted by the commonalty, were only slight mitigations to the deplorable lot of a race held to be under the divine curse, and had little force after the Crusades began. As the slaveholders in the United States counted the curse on Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse on the Jews was counted a justification for hin¬ dering them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts; for marking them out as execrable figures by a peculiar dress; for torturing them to make them part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spitting at them and pelting them ; for taking it as certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; for putting it to them whether they would be baptized or burned, and not failing to burn and massacre them when they were obsti¬ nate ; but also for suspecting them of disliking the baptism when they had got it, and then burning them in punishment of their insincerity; finally, for hounding them by tens on tens of thousands from the homes where they had found shelter for centuries, and inflicting on them the horrors of a new exile and a new dispersion. All this to avenge the Saviour of mankind, or else to compel these stiff-necked people to acknowledge a Master whose servants showed such beneficent effects of his teaching. With a people so treated, one of two issues was possible: either from being of feebler nature than their persecutors, and caring more for ease than for the sentiments and ideas which constituted their distinctive character, they would everywhere give way to pressure and get rapidly merged in the populations around them; or being endowed with un¬ common tenacity, physical and mental, feeling peculiarly the ties of inheritance both in blood and faith, remembering na- THE MODERN HEP! HEP! IIEP! 411 tional glories, trusting in tlieir recovery, abhorring apostasy, able to bear all things and hope all things with the conscious¬ ness of being steadfast to spiritual obligations, the kernel of their number would harden into an inflexibility more and more insured by motive and habit. They would cherish all differences that marked them off from their hated oppressors, all memories that consoled them with a sense of virtual though unrecognized superiority; and the separateness which was made their badge of ignominy would be their inward pride, their source of fortifying defiance. Doubtless such a people would get confirmed in vices. An oppressive govern¬ ment and a persecuting religion, while breeding vices in those who hold power, are well known to breed answering vices in those who are powerless and suffering. What more direct plan than the course presented by European history could have been pursued in order to give the Jews a spirit of bitter isolation, and scorn for the wolfish hypocrisy that made victims of them, of triumph in prospering at the expense of the blunderers who stoned them away from the open paths of industry; or, on the other hand, to encourage in the less defiant a lying conformity, a pretence of conversion for the sake of the social advantages attached to baptism, an out¬ ward renunciation of their hereditary ties, with the lack of real love toward the society and creed which exacted this galling tribute ; or again, in the most unhappy specimens of the race, to rear transcendent examples of odious vice, reckless instruments of rich men with bad propensities, unscrupulous grinders of alien people who wanted to grind them ? No wonder the Jews have their vices; no wonder if it were proved (which it has not hitherto appeared to be) that some of them have a bad pre-eminence in evil, an unrivalled superfluity of naughtiness. It would be more plausible to make a wonder of the virtues which have prospered among them under the shadow of oppression. But instead of dwell¬ ing on these, or treating as admitted what any hardy or ignorant person may deny, let us found simply on the loud 412 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. assertions of the hostile. The Jews, it is said, resisted the expansion of their own religion into Christianity ; they were in the habit of spitting on the cross ; they have held the name of Christ to be Anathema. Who taught them that ? The men who made Christianity a curse to them; the men who made the name of Christ a symbol for the spirit of vengeance, and, what was worse, made the execution of the vengeance a pretext for satisfying their own savageness, greed, and envy; the men who sanctioned with the name of Christ a barbaric and blundering copy of Pagan fatalism, in taking the words “ His blood be upon us and on our children ” as a divinely appointed verbal warrant for wreaking cruelty, from genera¬ tion to generation, on the people from whose sacred writings Christ drew his teaching. Strange retrogression in the pro¬ fessors of an expanded religion, boasting an illumination beyond the spiritual doctrine of Hebrew prophets! For Hebrew prophets proclaimed a God who demanded mercy rather than sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God delighted not in the blood of rams and of bulls, but they apparently conceived him as requiring for his satisfaction the sighs and groans, the blood and roasted flesh, of men whose forefathers had misunderstood the metaphorical character of prophecies which spoke of spiritual pre-eminence under the figure of a material kingdom. Was this the method by which Christ desired his title to the Messiahship to be com¬ mended to the nation in which he was born ? Many of his sayings bear the stamp of that patriotism which places fellow-countrymen in the inner circle of affection and duty. And did the words “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” refer only to the centurion and his band, a tacit exception being made of every Hebrew there present from the mercy of the Father and the compassion of the Son, — nay, more, of every Hebrew yet to come, who re¬ mained unconverted after hearing of his claim to the Mes¬ siahship, not from his own lips or those of his native apostles, but from the lips of alien men, whom cross, creed, and bap¬ tism had left cruel, rapacious, and debauched 9 It is more THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 413 reverent to Christ to believe that he must have approved the Jewish martyrs who deliberately chose to be burned or massacred rather than be guilty of a blaspheming lie, more than he approved the rabble of Crusaders who robbed and murdered them in his name. But these remonstrances seem to have no direct applica¬ tion to personages who take up the attitude of philosophic thinkers and discriminating critics, professedly accepting Christianity from a rational point of view, as a vehicle of the highest religious and moral truth, and condemning the Jews on the ground that they are obstinate adherents of an out¬ worn creed, maintain themselves in moral alienation from the peoples with whom they share citizenship, and are destitute of real interest in the welfare of the community and state with which they are thus identified. These anti-Judaic advocates usually belong to a party which has felt itself glorified in winning for Jews, as well as Dissenters and Catholics, the full privileges of citizenship, laying open to them every path to distinction. At one time the voice of this party urged that differences of creed were made danger¬ ous only by the denial of citizenship, that you must make a man a citizen before he could feel like one. At present, apparently, this confidence has been succeeded by a sense of mistake; there is a regret that no limiting clauses were in¬ sisted on, such as would have hindered the Jews from coming too far and in too large proportion along those opened pathways; and the Roumanians are thought to have shown an enviable wisdom in giving them as little chance as possible. But then the reflection occurring that some of the most objectionable Jews are baptized Christians, it is obvious that such clauses would have been insufficient, and the doctrine that you can turn a Jew into a good Christian is’emphatically retracted. But, clearly, these liberal gentlemen, too late enlightened by disagreeable events, must yield the palm of wise foresight to those who argued against them long ago; and it is a striking spectacle to witness minds so panting for advancement in some directions that they are ready to force 414 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. it on an unwilling society, in this instance despairingly recurring to mediseval types of thinking — insisting that the Jews are made viciously cosmopolitan by holding the world’s money-bag; that for them all national interests are resolved into the algebra of loans ; that they have suffered an inward degradation stamping them as morally inferior, and — “ serve them right,” since they rejected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a ser¬ vile race, who have rejected Protestantism, though it has been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale may be judged by our advertisements, where the clause, “No Irish need ap¬ ply,” parallels the sentence which for many polite persons sums up the question of Judaism, “I never did like the Jews.” It is certainly worth considering whether an expatriated, denationalized race, used for ages to live among antipathetic populations, must not inevitably lack some conditions of nobleness. If they drop that separateness which is made their reproach, they may be in danger of lapsing into a cos¬ mopolitan indifference equivalent to cynicism, and of missing that inward identification with the nationality immediately around them which might make some amends for their inher¬ ited privation. No dispassionate observer can deny this danger. Why, our own countrymen who take to living abroad, without purpose or function to keep up their sense of fellowship in the affairs of their own land, are rarely good specimens of moral healthiness; still, the consciousness of having a native country, the birthplace of common memories and habits of mind, existing like a parental hearth quitted but beloved; the dignity of being included in a people which has a part in the comity of nations and the growing federa¬ tion of the world; that sense of special belonging which is the root of human virtues, both public and private, — all these spiritual links may preserve migratory Englishmen from the worst consequences of their voluntary dispersion. Unquestionably the Jews, having been more than any othei THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP I 415 .face exposed to the adverse moral influences of alienism, must, both in individuals and in groups, have suffered some corresponding moral degradation; but in fact they have es¬ caped with less of abjectness, and less of hard hostility toward the nations whose hand has been against them, than could have happened in the case of a people who had neither their adhesion to a separate religion founded on historic memories, nor their characteristic family affectionateness. Tortured, flogged, spit upon, the corpus vile on which rage or wantonness vented themselves with impunity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have remained proud of their origin. Does any one call this an evil pride ? Perhaps he belongs to that order of man who, while he has a democratic dislike to dukes and earls, wants to make believe that his father was an idle gentleman, when in fact he was an honorable artisan, or who would feel flattered to be taken for other than an English¬ man. It is possible to be too arrogant about our blood or our calling, but that arrogance is virtue compared with such mean pretence. The pride which identifies us with a great historic body is a humanizing, elevating habit of mind, in¬ spiring sacrifices of individual comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake of that ideal whole; and no man swayed by such a sentiment can become completely abject. That a Jew of Smyrna, where a whip is carried by passengers ready to flog off the too officious specimens of his race, can still be proud to say “ I am a Jew,” is surely a fact to awaken admiration in a mind capable of understanding what we may call the ideal forces in human history. And again, a varied, impartial observation of the Jews in different countries tends to the impression that they have a predominant kindliness which must have been deeply ingrained in the constitution of their race to have outlasted the ages of persecution and op¬ pression. The concentration of their joys in domestic life has kept up in them the capacity of tenderness; the pity for the fatherless and the widow, the care for the women and the little ones, blent intimately with their religion, is a well 416 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. of mercy that cannot long or widely be pent up by exclusive¬ ness. And the kindliness of the Jew overflows the line of division between him and the Gentile. On the whole, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of this scattered people, made for ages “ a scorn and a hissing,” is, that after being subjected to this process, which might have been ex¬ pected to be in every sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come out of it (in any estimate which allows for numer¬ ical proportion) rivalling the nations of all European coun¬ tries in healthiness and beauty of physique, in practical ability, in scientific and artistic aptitude, and in some forms of ethical value. A significant indication of their natural rank is seen in the fact that at this moment the leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew, the leader of the Repub¬ lican party in France is a Jew, and the head of the Conserva¬ tive ministry in England is a Jew. And here it is that we find the ground for the obvious jealousy which is now stimulating the revived expression of old antipathies. “The Jews,” it is felt, “have a dangerous tendency to get the uppermost places, not only in commerce but in political life. Their monetary hold on governments is tending to perpetuate in leading Jews a spirit of universal alienism (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with Oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatized, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats in Parliament at their disposal.” There is truth in these views of Jewish social and political relations ; but it is rather too late for Liberal pleaders to urge them in a merely vituperative sense. Do they propose, as a remedy for the impending danger of our healthier national influences getting overridden by Jewish predominance, that we should repeal our emancipatory laws ? Not all the Ger¬ manic immigrants who have been settling among us for gen¬ erations, and are still pouring in to settle, are Jews, but THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 417 thoroughly Teutonic and more or less Christian craftsmen, mechanicians, or skilled and erudite functionaries; and the Semitic Christians who swarm among us are dangerously like their unconverted brethren in complexion, persistence, and wealth. Then there are the Greeks, who, by the help of Phoenician blood or otherwise, are objectionably strong in the city. Some judges think that the Scotch are more numerous and prosperous here in the South than is quite for the good of us Southerners; and the early inconvenience felt under the Stuarts, of being quartered upon by a hungry, hard-work¬ ing people, with a distinctive accent and form of religion, and higher cheek-bones than English taste requires, has not yet been quite neutralized. As for the Irish, it is felt in high quarters that we have alwav^s been too lenient toward them; at least if they had been harried a little more, there might not have been so many of them on the English press, of which they divide the power with the Scotch, thus driving many Englishmen to honest and ineloquent labor. So far shall we be carried if we go in search of devices to hinder people of other blood than our own from getting the advantage of dwelling among us. Let it be admitted that it is a calamity to the English, as to any other great historic people, to undergo a premature fusion with immigrants of alien blood, — that its distinctive national characteristics should be in danger of obliteration by the predominating quality of foreign settlers. I not only admit this; I am ready to unite in groaning over the threat¬ ened danger. To one who loves his native language, who would delight to keep our rich and harmonious English un¬ defiled by foreign accent, and those foreign tinctures of verbal meaning which tend to confuse all writing and dis¬ course, it is an affliction as harassing as the climate, that on our stage, in our studies, at our public and private gatherings, in our offices, warehouses, and workshops, we must expect to hear our beloved English, with its words clipped, its vowels stretched and twisted, its phrases of acquiescence and polite¬ ness, of cordiality, dissidence, or argument, delivered always TOL. IX. 418 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. in the wrong tones, like ill-rendered melodies, marred beyond recognition, — that there should be a general ambition to speak every language except our mother English, which persons “ of style ” are not ashamed of corrupting with slang, false for¬ eign equivalents, and a pronunciation that crushes out all color from the vowels and jams them between jostling consonants. An ancient Greek might not like to be resuscitated for the sake of hearing Homer read in our universities; still he would at least find more instructive marvels in other developments to be witnessed at those institutions; but a modern English¬ man is invited from his after-dinner repose to hear Shak- speare delivered under circumstances which offer no other novelty than some novelty of false intonation, some new dis¬ tribution of strong emphasis on prepositions, some new mis¬ conception of a familiar idiom. Well, it is our inertness that is in fault, our carelessness of excellence, our willing igno¬ rance of the treasures that lie in our national heritage, while we are agape after what is foreign, though it may be only a vile imitation of what is native. This marring of our speech, however, is a minor evil com¬ pared with what must follow from the predominance of wealth-acquiring immigrants, whose appreciation of our po¬ litical and social life must often be as approximative or fatally erroneous as their delivery of our language. But take the worst issues, what can we do to hinder them ? Are we to adopt the exclusiveness for which we have punished the Chinese ? Are we to tear the glorious flag of hospitality which has made our freedom the world-wide blessing of the oppressed ? It is not agreeable to find foreign accents and stumbling locutions passing from the piquant exception to the general rule of discourse. But to urge on that account that we should spike away the peaceful foreigner, would be a view of international relations not in the long run favorable to the interests of our fellow-countrymen ; for we are at least equal to the races we call obtrusive in the disposition to set¬ tle wherever money is to be made and cheaply idle living to be found. In meeting the national evils which are brought THE MODERN HEP! HEn HEP! 419 upon us by the onward course of the world, there is often no more immediate hope or resource than that of striving after fuller national excellence, which must consist in the mould¬ ing of more excellent individual natives. The tendency of things is toward the quicker or slower fusion of races. It is impossible to arrest this tendency: all we can do is to mod¬ erate its course, so as to hinder it from degrading the moral status of societies by a too rapid effacement of those national traditions and customs which are the language of the national genius, the deep suckers of healthy sentiment. Such mod¬ erating and guidance of inevitable movement is worthy of all effort. And it is in this sense that the modern insistence on the idea of nationalities has value. That any people, at once distinct and coherent enough to form a state, should be held in subjection by an alien antipathetic government, has been becoming more and more a ground of sympathetic indigna¬ tion ; and, in virtue of this, at least one great state has been added to European councils. Nobody now complains of the result in this case, though far-sighted persons see the need to limit analogy by discrimination. We have to consider who are the stifled people and who the stiflers, before we can be sure of our ground. The only point in this connection on which Englishmen are agreed is, that England itself shall not be subject to foreign rule. The fiery resolve to resist inva¬ sion, though with an improvised array of pitchforks, is felt to be virtuous, and to be worthy of a historic people. Why ? Because there is a national life in our veins. Because there is something specifically English which we feel to be su¬ premely worth striving for, worth dying for, rather than liv¬ ing to renounce it. Because we too have our share — perhaps a principal share — in that spirit of separateness which has not yet done its work in the education of mankind, which has created the varying genius of nations, and, like the Muses, is the offspring of memory. Here, as everywhere else, the human task seems to ne the discerning and adjustment of opposite claims. But one end can hardly be achieved by urging contradictory reproaches. 420 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. and, instead of laboring after discernment as a preliminary to intervention, letting our zeal burst forth according to a ca¬ pricious selection, first determined accidentally, and after ward justified by personal predilection. Not only John Gilpin and his wife, or Edwin and Angelina, seem to be of opinion that their preference or dislike of Russians, Servians, or Greeks, consequent, perhaps, on hotel adventures, has some¬ thing to do with the merits of the Eastern Question; even in a higher range of intellect and enthusiasm we find a distribu¬ tion of sympathy or pity for sufferers of different blood or votaries of different religions, strangely unaccountable on any other ground than a fortuitous direction of study or trivial circumstances of travel. With some even admirable persons one is never quite sure of any particular being included under a general term. A provincial physician, it is said, once or¬ dering a lady patient not to eat salad, was asked pleadingly by the affectionate husband whether she might eat lettuce, oi cresses, or radishes. The physician had too rashly believed in the comprehensiveness of the word “salad,” just as we, if not enlightened by experience, might believe in the all- embracing breadth of “sympathy with the injured and op¬ pressed.” What mind can exhaust the grounds of exception which lie in each particular case ? There is understood to be a peculiar odor from the negro body, and we know that some persons, too rationalistic to feel bound by the curse on Ham, used to hint very strongly that this odor determined the question on the side of negro slavery. And this is the usual level of thinking in polite society concerning the Jews. Apart from theological purposes, it seems to be held surprising that anybody should take an in¬ terest in the history of a people whose literature has furnished all our devotional language; and if any reference is made to their past or future destinies, some hearer is sure to state, as a relevant fact which may assist our judgment, that she, for her part, is not fond of them, having known a Mr. Jacobson who was very unpleasant, or that he, for his part, thinks meanly of them as a race, though, on inquiry, you find that THE MODERN HER! HEP' HER] 421 he is so little acquainted with their characteristics that he is astonished to learn how many persons whom lie has blindly admired and applauded are Jews to the backbone. Again, men who consider themselves in the very van of modern ad¬ vancement, knowing history and the latest philosophies of history, indicate their contemptuous surprise that any one should entertain the destiny of the Jews as a worthy subject, by referring to Moloch, and their own agreement with the theory that the religion of Jehovah was merely a transformed Moloch-worship, while in the same breath they are glorifying “civilization” as a transformed tribal existence of which some lineaments are traceable in grim marriage customs of the native Australians. Are these erudite persons prepared to insist that the name “ Father ” should no longer have any sanctity for us, because in their view of likelihood our Aryan ancestors were mere improvers on a state of things in which nobody knew his own father ? For less theoretic men, ambitious to be regarded as practi¬ cal politicians, the value of the Hebrew race has been meas¬ ured by their unfavorable opinion of a prime minister who is a Jew by lineage. But it is possible to form a very ugly opinion as to the scrupulousness of Walpole or of Chatham; and in any case I think Englishmen would refuse to accept the character and doings of those eighteenth-century states¬ men as the standard of value for the English people and the part they have to play in the fortunes of mankind. If we are to consider the future of the Jews at all, it seems reasonable to take, as a preliminary question, Are they des¬ tined to complete fusion with the peoples among whom they are dispersed, losing every remnant of a distinctive conscious¬ ness as Jews ? or, Are there in the breadth and intensity with which the feeling of separateness, or what we may call the organized memory of a national consciousness, actually exists in the world-wide Jewish communities — the seven millions scattered from the east to west ? and again, Are there, in the political relations of the world, the conditions present or approaching for the restoration of a Jewish State planted on 422 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. the old ground as a centre of national feeling, a source of dignifying protection, a special channel for special energies, which may contribute some added form of national genius, and an added voice in the councils of the world ? They are among us everywhere; it is useless to say we are not fond of them. 'Perhaps we are not fond of proletaries and their tendency to form Unions, but the world is not therefore to be rid of them. If we wish to free ourselves from the inconveniences that we have to complain of, whether in proletaries or in Jews, our best course is to encourage all means of improving these neighbors who elbow us in a thick¬ ening crowd, and of sending their incommodious energies into beneficent channels. Why are we so eager for the dignity of certain populations of whom, perhaps, we have never seen a single specimen, and of whose history, legend, or literature we have been contentedly ignorant for ages, while we sneer at the notion of a renovated national dignity for the Jews, whose ways of thinking and whose very verbal forms are on our lips in every prayer which we end with an Amen ? Some of us consider this question dismissed when they have said the wealthiest Jews have no desire to forsake their European palaces and go to live in Jerusalem. But in a return from exile, in the restoration of a people, the question is not whether certain rich men will choose to remain behind, but whether there will be found worthy men who will choose to lead the return. Plenty of prosperous Jews remained in Babylon when Ezra marshalled his band of forty thousand and began a new glorious epoch in the history of his race, making the preparation for that epoch in the history of the world which has been held glorious enough to be dated from forevermore. The hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an adequate community of feeling, as well as widespread need, in the Jewish race, and the hope that among its finer specimens there may arise some men of instruction and ar¬ dent public spirit, some new Ezras, modern Maccabees, who will know how to use all favoring outward conditions, how to triumph by heroic example over the indifference of their THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 423 fellows and the scorn of their foes, and will steadfastly set their faces toward making their people once more one among the nations. Formerly, Evangelical Orthodoxy was prone to dwell on the fulfilment of prophecy in the “ restoration of the Jews.” Such interpretation of the prophets is less in vogue now. The dominant mode is to insist on a Christianity that dis¬ owns its origin, that is not a substantial growth, having a genealogy, but is a vaporous reflex of modern notions. The Christ of Matthew had the heart of a Jew: “Go ye first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The Apostle of the Gentiles had the heart of a Jew: “For I could wish that my¬ self were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh : who are Israelites ; to whom per- taineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the prom ises; whose are the fathers, and of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came.” Modern apostles, extolling Christianity, are found using a different tone; they prefer the mediaeval cry translated into modern phrase. But the mediaeval cry, too, was in substance very ancient — more ancient than the days of Augustus. Pagans in successive ages said, “ These people are unlike us, and refuse to be made like us; let us punish them.” The Jews were steadfast in their separateness, and through that separateness Christianity was born. A mod¬ ern book on Liberty has maintained that from the freedom of individual men to persist in idiosyncrasies the world may be enriched. Why should we not apply this argument to the idiosyncrasy of a nation, and pause in our haste to hoot it down ? There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew : not that he should shut out the utmost illumina- 'tion which knowledge can throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of inheritance which that his¬ tory has left him. Every Jew should be conscious that he is one of a multitude possessing common objects of piety, in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type 424 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. strong enough, eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to constitute a new beneficent individ¬ uality among the nations, and, by confuting the traditions of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to their fathers. There is a sense in which the worthy child of a nation that has brought forth illustrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the world, is bound by their visions. Is bound ? Yes, for the effective bond of human action is feeling; and the worthy child of a people owning the triple name of He¬ brew, Israelite, and Jew, feels his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and the possible renovation, of his national family. Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling, and call his doctrine a philosophy ? He will teach a blinding superstition, the superstition that a theory of human well¬ being can be constructed in disregard of the influences which have made us human. THE LIFTED VEIL Give me no light, great Heaven, but such as turas To energy of human fellowship , No powers beyond the growing heritage That makes completer manhood. THE LIFTED VEIL. - * CHAPTER I. T«