orderly, English country we might fancy they had gone out with the
fairies. And yet Borrow meets a decayed pedlar in Spain who seems to
echo his own sentiments; and tells him that even the most prosperous
of his tribe who have made their fortunes in America, return in their
dreams to the green English lanes and farmyards. 'There they are with
their boxes on the ground displaying their goods to the honest rustics
and their dames and their daughters, and selling away and chaffering
and laughing just as of old. And there they are again at nightfall in
the hedge alehouses, eating their toasted cheese and their bread,
and drinking the Suffolk ale, and listening to the roaring song and
merry jests of the labourers.' It is the old picturesque country life
which fascinates Borrow, and he was fortunate enough to plunge into
the heart of it before it had been frightened away by the railways.
'Lavengro' is a strange medley, which is nevertheless charming by
reason of the odd idiosyncrasy which fits the author to interpret
this fast vanishing phase of life. It contains queer controversial
irrelevance—conversations or stories which may or may not be more
or less founded on fact, tending to illustrate the pernicious
propagandism of Popery, the evil done by Sir Walter Scott's novels,
and the melancholy results of the decline of pugilism. And then we
have satire of a simple kind upon literary craftsmen, and excursions
into philology which show at least an amusing dash of innocent vanity.
But the oddity of these quaint utterances of a humourist who seeks
to find the most congenial mental food in the Bible, the Newgate
Calendar, and in old Welsh literature, is in thorough keeping with
the situation. He is the genuine tramp whose experience is naturally
made up of miscellaneous waifs and strays; who drifts into contact
with the most eccentric beings, and parts company with them at a
moment's notice, or catching hold of some stray bit of out-of-the-way
knowledge follows it up as long as it amuses him. He is equally at
home compounding narratives of the lives of eminent criminals for
London booksellers, or making acquaintance with thimbleriggers, or
pugilists, or Armenian merchants, or becoming a hermit in his remote
dingle, making his own shoes and discussing theology with a postboy, a
feminine tramp, and a Jesuit in disguise. The compound is too quaint
for fiction, but is made interesting by the quaint vein of simplicity
and the touch of genius which brings out the picturesque side of
his roving existence, and yet leaves one in doubt how far the author
appreciates his own singularity. One old gipsy lady in particular,
who turns up at intervals, is as fascinating as Meg Merrilies, and
at once made life-like and more mysterious. 'My name is Herne, and
I comes of the hairy ones!' are the remarkable words by which she
introduces herself. She bitterly regrets the intrusion of a Gentile
into the secrets of the Romanies, and relieves her feelings by
administering poison to the intruder, and then trying to poke out his
eye as he is lying apparently in his last agonies. But she seems to
be highly respected by her victim as well as by her own people, and
to be acting in accordance with the moral teaching of her tribe. Her
design is frustrated by the appearance of a Welsh Methodist preacher,
who, like every other strange being, is at once compelled to unbosom
himself to this odd confessor. He fancies himself to have committed
the unpardonable sin at the age of six, and is at once comforted by
Borrow's sensible observation that he should not care if he had done
the same thing twenty times over at the same period. The grateful
preacher induces his consoler to accompany him to the borders of
Wales; but there Borrow suddenly stops on the ground that he should
prefer to enter Wales in a suit of superfine black, mounted on a
powerful steed like that which bore Greduv to the fight of Catrath,
and to be welcomed at a dinner of the bards, as the translator of the
odes of the great Ab Gwilym. And Mr. Petulengro opportunely turns
up at the instant, and Borrow rides back with him, and hears that
Mrs. Herne has hanged herself, and celebrates the meeting by a fight
without gloves, but in pure friendliness, and then settles down to the
life of a blacksmith in his secluded dingle.
Certainly it is a queer topsy-turvy world to which we are introduced
in 'Lavengro.' It gives the reader the sensation of a strange dream in
which all the miscellaneous population of caravans and wayside tents
make their exits and entrances at random, mixed with such eccentrics
as the distinguished author, who has a mysterious propensity for
touching odd objects as a charm against evil. All one's ideas are
dislocated when the centre of interest is no longer in the thick
of the crowd, but in that curious limbo whither drift all the odd
personages who live in the interstices without being caught by the
meshes of the great network of ordinary convention. Perhaps the oddity
repels many readers; but to me it always seems that Borrow's dingle
represents a little oasis of genuine romance—a kind of half-visionary
fragment of fairyland, which reveals itself like the enchanted castle
in the vale of St. John, and then vanishes after tantalising and
arousing one's curiosity. It will never be again discovered by any
flesh-and-blood traveller; but, in my imaginary travels, I like to
rusticate there for a time, and to feel as if the gipsy was the true
possessor of the secret of life, and we who travel by rail and read
newspapers and consider ourselves to be sensible men of business,
were but vexatious intruders upon this sweet dream. There must,
one supposes, be a history of England from the Petulengro point of
view, in which the change of dynasties recognised by Hume and Mr.
Freeman, or the oscillations of power between Lord Beaconsfield and
Mr. Gladstone, appear in relative insignificance as more or less
affecting certain police regulations and the inclosure of commons. It
is pleasant for a time to feel as though the little rivulet were the
main stream, and the social outcast the true centre of society. The
pure flavour of the country life is only perceptible when one has
annihilated all disturbing influences; and in that little dingle with
its solitary forge beneath the woods haunted by the hairy Hernes, that
desirable result may be achieved for a time, even in a London library.
_GEORGE ELIOT_
Had we been asked a few weeks ago to name the greatest living
writer of English fiction, the answer would have been unanimous. No
one—whatever might be his special personal predilections—would have
refused that title to George Eliot. To ask the same question now would
be to suggest some measure of our loss. In losing George Eliot we have
probably lost the greatest woman who ever won literary fame, and one
of the very few writers of our day to whom the name 'great' could be
conceded with any plausibility. We are not at a sufficient distance
from the object of our admiration to measure its true elevation. We
are liable to a double illusion on the morrow of such events. In
political life we fancy that all heroism is extinct with the dead
leader, whilst there are within the realm five hundred good as he.
Yet the most daring optimist can hardly suppose that consolatory
creed to be generally true in literature. If contemporaries sometimes
exaggerate, they not unfrequently under-estimate their loss. When
Shakespeare died, nobody imagined—we may suspect—that the English
drama had touched its highest point. When men are crossing the lines
which divide one of the fruitful from one of the barren epochs in
literature, they are often but faintly conscious of the change. It
would require no paradoxical ingenuity to maintain that we are even
now going through such a transition. The works of George Eliot may
hereafter appear as marking the termination of the great period of
English fiction which began with Scott. She may hereafter be regarded
as the last great sovereign of a literary dynasty, who had to bequeath
her sceptre to a comparatively petty line of successors: though—for
anything that we can say to the contrary—it may also be true that
the successor may appear to-morrow, or may even be now amongst us in
the shape of some writer who is struggling against a general want of
recognition.
Ephemeral critics must not pretend to pronounce too confidently upon
such questions. They can only try to say, in Mr. Browning's phrase,
how it strikes a contemporary. And a contemporary is prompted by
the natural regret to stray into irrelevant reflections, and dwell
needlessly in the region of might-have-beens. Had George Eliot lived
a little longer, or begun to write a little earlier, or been endowed
with some additional quality which she did not in fact possess,
she might have done greater things still. It is very true, and
true of others besides George Eliot. It often seems as if even the
greatest works of the greatest writers were but fragmentary waifs and
strays—mere indications of more splendid achievements which would
have been within their grasp, had they not been forced, like weaker
people, to feel out the way to success through comparative failure,
or to bend their genius to unworthy tasks. So, of the great writers
in her own special department, Fielding wasted his powers in writing
third-rate plays till he was five-and-thirty, and died a broken-down
man at forty-seven. Scott did not appear in the field of his greatest
victories till he was forty-three, and all his really first-rate work
was done within the next ten years. George Eliot's period of full
activity, the time during which she was conscientiously doing her
best under the stimulus of high reputation, lasted some twenty years;
and so long a space is fully up to the average of the time allowed
to most great writers. If not a voluminous writer, according to the
standard of recent novelists, she has left enough work, representative
of her powers at their best, to give a full impress of her mind.
So far, I think, we have little reason for regret. When once a writer
has managed to express the best that was in him to say, the question
of absolute mass is trifling. Though some very great have also been
very voluminous writers, the immortal part of their achievement
bears a slight proportion to the whole. It is melancholy to look at
the 'complete works' of famous writers and compute the quantity of
comparative rubbish that has been piled over the jewels. Hardly any
great English writer has left a greater quantity of work representing
the highest level of the author's capacity than is equivalent to the
'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'Adam Bede,' the 'Mill on the Floss,'
'Silas Marner,' 'Romola,' and 'Middlemarch.' Certainly, she might
have done more. She did not begin to write novels till a period at
which many popular authors are already showing symptoms of exhaustion,
and indulging in the perilous practice of self-imitation. Why, it
may be said, did not George Eliot write immortal works in her youth,
instead of translating German authors of a heterodox tendency? If
we could arrange all such things to our taste, and could foresee a
writer's powers from the beginning, we might have ordered matters
differently. Yet one may observe that there is another side to the
question. Imaginative minds often ripen quickly; and much of the
finest poetry in the language derives its charm from the freshness of
youth. But writers of the contemplative order—those whose best works
represent the general experience of a rich and thoughtful nature—may
be expected to come later to their maturity. The phenomenon of early
exhaustion is too common in these days to allow us to regret an
occasional exception. If during her youth George Eliot was storing
the thoughts and emotions which afterwards shaped themselves into
the 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' we need not suppose that the time was
wasted. Certainly, I do not think that any one who has had a little
experience in such matters would regard it as otherwise than dangerous
for a powerful mind to be precipitated into public utterance. The
Pythagorean probation of silence may be protracted too long; but it
may afford a most useful discipline; and I think that there is nothing
preposterous in the supposition that George Eliot's work was all the
more powerful because it came from a novelist who had lain fallow
through a longer period than ordinary.
If it is rather idle to pursue such speculations, it is still more
idle to indulge in that kind of criticism which virtually comes to
saying that George Eliot ought to have been Walter Scott or Charlotte
Brontë. You may think her inferior to those writers; you may dislike
her philosophy or her character; and you are fully justified in
expressing your dislike. But it is only fair to ask whether the
qualities which you disapprove were mere external and adventitious
familiarities or the inseparable adjunct of those which you admire.
It is important to remember this in considering some of the common
criticisms. The poor woman was not content simply to write amusing
stories. She is convicted upon conclusive evidence of having indulged
in ideas; she ventured to speculate upon human life and its meaning,
and still worse, she endeavoured to embody her convictions in
imaginative shapes, and probably wished to infect her readers with
them. This was, according to some people, highly unbecoming in a woman
and very inartistic in a novelist. I confess that, for my part, I am
rather glad to find ideas anywhere. They are not very common; and
there are a vast number of excellent fictions which these sensitive
critics may study without the least danger of a shock to their
artistic sensibilities by anything of the kind. But if you will permit
a poor novelist to indulge in such awkward possessions, I cannot see
why he or she should not be allowed occasionally to interweave them
in her narrative, taking care of course to keep them in their proper
place. Some of that mannerism which offends many critics represents in
fact simply George Eliot's way of using this privilege. We are indeed
told dogmatically that a novelist should never indulge in little
asides to the reader. Why not? One main advantage of a novel, as it
seems to me, is precisely that it leaves room for a freedom in such
matters which is incompatible with the requirements, for example, of
dramatic writing. I can enjoy Scott's downright storytelling, which
never reminds you obtrusively of the presence of the author; but with
all respect for Scott, I do not see why his manner should be the
sole type and model for all his successors. I like to read about Tom
Jones or Colonel Newcome; but I am also very glad when Fielding or
Thackeray puts his puppets aside for the moment and talks to me in
his own person. A child, it is true, dislikes to have the illusion
broken, and is angry if you try to persuade him that Giant Despair
was not a real personage like his favourite Blunderbore. But the
attempt to produce such illusions is really unworthy of work intended
for full-grown readers. The humourist in particular knows that you
will not mistake his puppet-show for reality, nor does he wish you
to do so. He is rather of opinion that the world itself is a greater
puppet-show, not to be taken in too desperate earnest. It is congenial
to his whole mode of thought to act occasionally as chorus, and dwell
upon some incidental suggestion. The solemn critic may step forward,
like the physician who attended Sancho Panza's meal, and waive aside
the condiment which gives a peculiar relish to the feast. It is not
prepared according to his recipe. But till he gives me some better
reason for obedience than his _ipse dixit_, I shall refuse to respect
what would destroy many charming passages and obliterate touches which
clearly contribute to the general effect of George Eliot's work.
Were it not indeed that some critics in authority have dwelt upon
this supposed defect, I should be disposed simply to plead 'not
guilty,' for I think that any one who reads the earlier books with
the criticism in his mind, and notes the passages which are really
obnoxious upon this ground, will be surprised at the rarity of the
passages to which it applies. One cannot help suspecting that what is
really offensive is not so much the method itself as the substance of
the reflections introduced, and occasionally the cumbrous style in
which they are expressed. And upon these points there is more to be
said. But it is more desirable, if one can do it, to say what George
Eliot was than what she was not; and to try to catch the secret of her
unique power rather than to dwell upon shortcomings, some of which, to
say the truth, are so obvious that it requires little critical acumen
to discover them, and a decided tinge of antipathy to dwell upon them
at length.
What is it, in fact, which makes us conscious that George Eliot had
a position apart; that, in a field where she had so many competitors
of no mean capacity, she stands out as superior to all her rivals; or
that, whilst we can easily imagine that many other reputations will
fade with a change of fashion, there is something in George Eliot
which we are confident will give delight to our grandchildren as it
has to ourselves? To such questions there is one obvious answer at
hand. There is one part of her writings upon which every competent
reader has dwelt with delight, and which seems fresher and more
charming whenever we come back to it. There is no danger of arousing
any controversy in saying that the works of her first period, the
'Scenes of Clerical Life,' 'Adam Bede,' 'Silas Marner,' and the
'Mill on the Floss,' have the unmistakable mark of high genius. They
are something for which it is simply out of the question to find
any substitute. Strike them out of English literature, and we feel
that there would be a gap not to be filled up; a distinct vein of
thought and feeling unrepresented; a characteristic and delightful
type of social development left without any adequate interpreter. A
second-rate writer can be more or less replaced. When you have read
Shakespeare, you can do very well without Beaumont and Fletcher, and
a study of the satires of Pope makes it unnecessary to plod through
the many volumes filled by his imitators. But we feel that, however
much we may admire the other great English novelists, there is none
who would make the study of George Eliot superfluous. The sphere which
she has made specially her own is that quiet English country life
which she knew in early youth. It has been described with more or
less vivacity and sympathy by many observers. Nobody has approached
George Eliot in the power of seizing its essential characteristics
and exhibiting its real charm. She has done for it what Scott did
for the Scotch peasantry, or Fielding for the eighteenth-century
Englishman, or Thackeray for the higher social stratum of his time.
Its last traces are vanishing so rapidly amidst the changes of
modern revolution that its picture could hardly be drawn again, even
if there were an artist of equal skill and penetration. And thus,
when the name of George Eliot is mentioned, it calls up, to me at
least, and, I suspect, to most readers, not so much her later and
more ambitious works, as the exquisite series of scenes so lovingly
and vividly presented in the earlier stage: snuffy old Mr. Gilfil,
drinking his gin-and-water in his lonely parlour and dreaming of the
early romance of his life, with his faithful Ponto snoring on the rug;
and the inimitable Mrs. Poyser in her exquisite dairy, delivering
her soul in a series of pithy aphorisms, bright as the little flames
in Mr. Biglow's pastoral, that 'danced about the chaney on the
dresser;' and the party in the parlour of the 'Rainbow' discussing
the evidences for 'ghos'es;' or the family conclaves in which the
affairs of the Tulliver family were discussed from so many and such
admirably contrasted points of view. Where shall we find a more
delightful circle, or quainter manifestations of human character,
in beings grotesque, misshapen, and swathed in old prejudices, like
the mossy trees in an old fashioned orchard, which, for all their
vagaries of growth, are yet full of sap and capable of bearing mellow
and toothsome fruit? 'It was pleasant to Mr. Tryan,' as we are told
in 'Janet's Repentance,' 'to listen to the simple chat of the old
man—to walk in the shade of the incomparable orchard and hear the
story of the crops yielded by the red-streaked apple-tree, and the
quite embarrassing plentifulness of the summer pears—to drink in
the sweet evening breath of the garden as they sat in the alcove—and
so, for a short interval, to feel the strain of his pastoral task
relaxed.' Our enjoyment is analogous to Mr. Tryan's. We are soothed
by the atmosphere of the old-world country life, where people, no
doubt, had as many troubles as ours, but troubles which, because they
were different, seem more bearable to our imagination. We half wish
that we could go back to the old days of stage-coaches and waggons
and shambling old curates in 'Brutus wigs' preaching to slumbrous
congregations enshrouded in high-backed pews, contemplating as little
the advent of railways as of a race of clergymen capable of going to
prison upon a question of ritual.
So far, indeed, it can hardly be said that George Eliot is unique.
She has been approached, if she has not been surpassed, by other
writers in her idyllic effects. But there is something less easily
paralleled in the peculiar vein of humour which is the essential
complement of the more tender passages. Mrs. Poyser is necessary to
balance the solemnity of Dinah Morris. Silas Marner would lose half
his impressiveness if he were not in contrast with the inimitable
party in the 'Rainbow' parlour. Omit the few pages in which their
admirable conversation is reported, and the whole harmony of the
book would be altered. The change would be as fatal as to strike
out a figure in some perfect composition, where the most trifling
accessory may really be an essential part of the whole design. It
might throw some light upon George Eliot's peculiar power if we could
fairly analyse the charm of that little masterpiece. Psychologists
are very fond of attempting to define the nature of wit and humour.
Hitherto they have not been very successful, though of course, their
failure cannot be due to any want of personal appreciation of those
qualities. But I should certainly despair of giving any account of
the pleasure which one receives from that famous conflict of rustic
wits. Why are we charmed by Ben Winthorp's retort to the parish clerk:
'It's your inside as isn't right made for music; it's no better nor
a hollow stalk;' and the statement that this 'unflinching frankness
was regarded by the company as the most piquant form of joke;' or by
the landlord's ingenious remarks upon the analogy between a power
of smelling cheeses and perceiving the supernatural; or by that
quaint stumble into something surprising to the speaker himself by
its apparent resemblance to witty repartee, when the same person
says to the farrier: 'You're a doctor, I reckon, though you're only
a cow-doctor; for a fly's a fly, though it may be a horse-fly'? One
can understand at a proper distance how a clever man comes to say a
brilliant thing, and it is still more easy to understand how he can
say a thoroughly silly thing, and, therefore, how he can simulate
stupidity. But there is something mysterious in the power possessed
by a few great humourists of converting themselves for the nonce into
that peculiar condition of muddle-headedness dashed with grotesque
flashes of common-sense which is natural to a half-educated mind.
It is less difficult to draw either a perfect circle or a purely
arbitrary line than to see what will be the projection of the regular
figure on some queer, lop-sided, and imperfectly-reflecting surface.
And these quaint freaks of rustic intelligence seem to be rags and
tatters of what would make wit and reason in a cultivated mind, but
when put together in this grotesque kaleidoscopic confusion suggests,
not simple nonsense, but a ludicrous parody of sense. To reproduce the
effect, you have not simply to lower the activity of the reasoning
machine, but to put it together on some essential plan, so as to bring
out a new set of combinations distantly recalling the correct order.
We require not a new defect of logic, but a new logical structure.