George Eliot.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue 131, 29 November 1902, Page 11 (Supplement)

George Eliot.

We pih.t below the Spectator's interctiny luviuw ot Sir Leslie Stephen's new buok on Geoige Eliot in the English Men of Letieis series. Sir Le.-nu Suphcn has produced an aljno»l pcilect Mudy of the gieat writer whom I'ioieaxir iSainthbury io content to place in ",i hitrh position" among the second class, of Enghbh novelists." For our own part, -i\e depiecate the method of cuticihiii that haw recouise to cla<-s-lislh. it if, impossible to classify authors on the mciit system as -we clarify undergraduates or sheep. 'Ihe end of letter.* it> neither a lupos nor an agricultural show. The function of lileratuie is the illumination and setting forth of life and Mature. The function of literary criticism is the proclaiming of such work as fulfils' tins function and the condemning of such as does not. In so far as a man or woman fulfils the .function of literature, be it only in one short poem, he or she is in the first and only class of literature. The other work may be left to the destructiveness of time, Avkicli cannot touch — "The rondure brave, the lilied loveliness Gold as it was, is, §hall be evermore." Sir Leslie Stephen does not tread in this book the devious paths of comparative criticism. He shows us clearly that it •is no part of his business to compare George Eliot with Jane Austen, with Charlotte Bronte, with ]\lrs. Gaskeil, for the purposes of class-list. His business is with the work that George Eliol x^rofluced, the causes that gave her work its particular characteristics, the tests that muut be applied in order to ascertain the extent to which that work may be regarded as mortal, the txtent to which it may be regarded as immortal. We have no doubt that Sir Leslie Stephen would leadily acknowledge that his tests are' not infallible, aud that it is possible that time, the only final critic, may condemn ap- | pects of work that he approves and approve work that he condemns. But it is beyond all doubt that George Eliot produced work that the final critic will approve, and that to relegate such work to a second clusss is to create a "secondclass immortality," a sort of suburb of Parnassus. Sir Leslie Stephen s.eems to us to have used admirable judgment in the way that he has dealt \\ ith the life of the novelise. I In so far as the details ol that liie are necessary to the understanding of the woik pioduced, in so far as they are neeessar/ to explain the methods and the form of production, they aie fully set' out. But when such details would merely satisfy the idle curiosity of the readsr, would merely pander" to the degraded taste that is infinitely moie interested in the quality of an author's linen than in the quality of his piose, the details are suppressed. Pull knowledge ol the early life of George Eliot is absolutely essential to the comprehensions of her life's work, and such knowledge id given ; but the later life is presented in broad outline only, illuminated by phrases and pas-s-ages that show clearly enough the efi'ect that her seclusion from the world had upon her later work. Miss Evans's extraordinary union with Mr. G. H. Lewes in so far as it affected her work is, of course, a legitimate subject of comment. Circumstances rendered a marriage impossible, and there can be no manner of doubo that the novelist regarded the union as absolutely moral and' willingly faced the social difficulties that the position inevitably cieatcd. While admitting that this quasi-marriage possessed features of morality that are absent in marriages that are dictated by low motives, there is an aspect of the question that could not have escaped George Eliot's philosophic mind, and did, we believe, as a matter of fact, deeply affect the whole tone and character of her work. "It may be a pretty pfcoblem," »jpys Sir Leslie Stephen, "for causi&ls whether the breach of an assumed 1 moral law is aggravated or extenuated by the offender's honest conviction that the law is not moral at twl. George Eliot at any rate emphatically took that position." That is so. Bui George Eliot the philosopher, the novel-writer, took up another position. The unending consequences ot our selfish acts upon the lives of others was a string in her harp that she never wearied of striking. "'lf we only look far enough off for tlie consequences ot our actions," she says in the "third chapter of the fifth book of "The Mill on the Floss," with bitter irony, "we enn always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified." Gqorge Eliot knew well enough herself that her action (however "moral"' as far as she herself was concerned) was not merely a protest against the indis&olubility of marriage, but went to the very bases of organised social life. "At present," saj-s Dr. Kenn to Maggie, in the chapter where '"St. Ogg's passes judgment" — "at the present everything seems tending towards the relaxation of ties — towards the substitution of wayward choice for the adherence' to obligation, which has its root in the past." Adherence to obligation — the obligations of humanity, the obligations of nationality or race, the obligations of family life, the sense of 'duly in the least as in the greatest — is George Eliot's philosophy of life. Yet her "choice of life" (to use Johnson's phrase in Rasselas), full of blessedness " as it was to her, ran contraiy to i~e whole trend of her philosophy, and therefore she, who, "came to fiction from philosophy," was, as we insisted many years ago, "the most melancholy of authors." George Eliot's first work in fiction was, of course, "Scenes of Clerical Life." The first part appeared in Blackwood's Magazine in January, 1857. Dickens, and Dickens alone, at once lietected that the i.uthor was a woman, anJ asserted that "bhe exquisite truth and delicacy both of the humour and pathos of these stories" were unequalled. Sir Leslie Stephen points out with truth that "Dickens's appreciation is the more cicditable to him bee uiie the v. ork is conspicuous by its freedom from his besetting faults;" ;md it might be thought that the value of the criticism is greatly heightened by fact. Sir Ls.«lie adds that "it is the constant, though not obtrusive, suggestion of the depths below the surface of trivial life which gives an impro-iive dignity to the work ; and, hi any case, murks one most distinctive characteristic of George Eliot's genius."' This fact feems to us an additional evidence of the futility of hard-and-fast comparative criticism. Miss Austen suggested no such depths, and jeL her dialogue is very comparable with that of George Eliot at her best. Nevertheless, to compare the two is to miss the art of each. It is as-fruit-less as to compare the landscapes of Claude and Turner. "Adam Bede," the second novel, was published in the beginning of ISSB. It, "whatever else may be said of it, placed the author in the first rank of the 'Victorian' novelists." Sir Leslie Stephen refuses to accept the author's view and intention that the novel should derive its main interest from Dinah Morris, intelligible though it was "that should take a Methodist, preacher for her centre 01 interest." But Dinah is not only "too good for human nature's daily food;" she 'has not "the defects incident to her position," and is, therefore, not wholly tiue to life. Moreover, the critic feels that "tho development of the story does not quite follow the lines required by the reader's sympathy;" the interest is "with the pathetic criminals and not with the admirable fem;>le confessor," and "the last book, therefore, comes upon us, if we take this view, a,s superfluous and rather unpleasant." The novel, in fact, is not really centred upon the re-

ligious motive. There Sir Leslie Stephen's hostile criticism ends. The work he considers to be a masterpiece. He even admits that Adam's "later discovery of Dinah's merits" wab posiib'e. "Men do become commonplace and reasonable ah they grow oidcr," s-uys the culic piofoundly and with a sorrowful tense of lealKition. Mrs. Poyser is, we should imagine, Sir Leslie's favourite among (Jeorge Eliot's citations. He writes of her with a warmth Hint is an obvious I haw ing from the usaial judicial characteiittic<- of his criticism and his prote. 3H" S ' Poyser may take rank with Sam Uciler as one of "the inesistible humourists. She has a special gift for attracting us by the most unscrupulous feats of •sophistry." We should prefer to rank Mrs. Poyser's feats with those of the king of sophists, Sir John "FaUtaff. Sir Leslie Stephen's enthusiasm is not, however, limited to Mrs. Poy.scr. The first part of "The Mill on the Floss"— though the whole story sufkis from its lengthmeets with the most ungrudging approval It; "represents to my mind the culmination of George Eliot's power. . No book, I imagine, ever set forth so cleaily and touchingly the glamour with which the childish imagination invests the trivial aud commonplace." But the "comparative weakness"' of tlie masculine portraits is a fault here as el&ewhore, and there is a "jar" in finding that Maggie, the "beautiful soul," hhoukl not have realised what "a very poor animal" Stephen (!»uest is. Stephen is another instance of George Eliot's "incapacity for pourtraying the opposite sex." "1 am inclined to sympathise with tho&e readers of Clarissa Harlowe when thej r entreated Richardson to save Lovelace's soul. Do, I mentally exclaim, save this charming Maggie from damning herself by this irrelevant and discordant degradation." Nevertheless, we take it that Sir Leslie Stephen holds that "The Mill on the Flos-," token even as a whole, is a great work, aud the greatest that George Eiiofc produced. Aisy other opinion appears almost impossible despite the obiter dictum, attributed to Mi* Oscar Browning, thut "Daniel Deronda" h the greatest novel in tho English language. George Eliot's later novels, produced with infinite effort and charged with tremendous mental energy, do not, Sir Leslie Stephen to" think, possess all the vital force of the earlier work. "However, it would be absurd to speak without profound respect" of "Romola." "I am alternately seduced into admiration and repelled by viiat seems to me a most lamentable misapplication of first-rate powers." It is the historical setting that hopelessly fails. Put asida "the historical paraphernalia" and "there remains a singularly powerful representation of an interesting spiritual history. . . Thare is hardly any novel, except 'The Mil! on tl>e Floss,' in which the stages ia tlie inner life of a thoughtful and "tender nature are set forth v.ith so much tenderness and sympathy." Sir Leslie doubts if she ever a^ain leached a mark as high as that reached in the five novels that concluded with "Romola." in 1863. Her life, fiom which all criticism, all true freedom ol social intercourse, was excluded, certainly was against the production of work based on observation and experience. Psychological construction was compelled to take the place of analysis from experience and observation. Moreover, so sensitive a woman, working so conscientiously and with &o many misgivings, could hardly make her imaginary world a cheerful place of residence." '• 'Middiemarch' shows George Eliot's reflective powers fully ripened and manifesting singular insight into certain intricacies of motive and character;" but '"she seems to be a little out of touch with the actual -n orld, and to speak from a position of philosophic detachment, which somehow exhibits her characters in a rather distorting light. . . . Yet it is clearly a work of extraordinary power, full of subtle and accurate observation." In the last novel, "Daniel Deronda," "the story of Gwendolen's marriage shows undiminished power;" but, as in the case of Hetty Sorrel, Gwendolen "is- so charming in her way that we feel more interest in the criminal than in the confe&sor," Deronda. We agree that the perfection of Daniel Deronda is almost as irritating as the perfection of Sir Charles Grandison, but we cannot at all agree with Sir Leslie Stephen that .to take sjmpathy for the Jews as the motive of a hero showed in the novelist "a defective senibe of humom." Such a motive has fine dramatic possibilities, though we doubt if George Elliot realised them ; but we must confess that Daniel's unconscious sense of race is philosophy gone mad, and agree that the hero "is an amiable monomaniac and occasionally a very prosy moralist." Great novelist as George Eliot was, we cannot help believing that she would have been still gieater had hers been a life into which neither philosophy nor Mr. G. H. Lewes had entered. Her novels would then have been, to use Bit Leslie Stephen's illuminating definition of a novel, "transfigured experience 1 "" throughout. But on the other hand, we should have lost that note of the inevitable guidance of fate which nnkos "The Mill on the Floss," and in a less3r degree the other novels, read like a Greek tragedy, and the novelist would not have had the early invaluable aid of one whose loyal service to her is his chief title to fame. But her heroines would have been created, we believe, without the aid of philosophy, and they, from Milly Barton to Gwendolen Harleth, "have an* interest unsurpassed by any other writer." Sir ' Leslie Stephen's study of the work of George Eliot seems to us as judicial as it is illuminating, and relieved, as it is, by keen though kindly critical irony and by something approaching enthusiasm, it is certain of a cordial weleoir.e irom the very large public who delight in the novels of the true genius and tender-hearted woman of whom he treats.