XI.

The fullness of George Eliot's mind at this time may be gathered from

the rapidity with which one work followed another. A book from her pen

had been appearing regularly each year. The _Scenes from Clerical

Life_ had appeared in book form in 1858, _Adam Bede_ was printed in

1859, _The Mill on the Floss_ came out in 1860, and now, in 1861,

followed _Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe_. It is with the

greatest reluctance that I find myself obliged to pass this book

without comment. In some particulars _Silas Marner_ is the most

remarkable novel in our language. On the one hand, when I read the

immortal scene at the Rainbow Inn where the village functionaries, the

butcher, the farrier, the parish clerk and so on are discussing

ghosts, bullocks and other matters over their evening ale, my mind

runs to Dogberry and Verges and the air feels as if Shakspeare were

sitting somewhere not far off. On the other hand, the downright

ghastliness of the young Squire's punishment for stealing the

long-hoarded gold of Silas Marner the weaver, always carries me

straight to that pitiless _Pardoner's Tale_ of Chaucer in which gold

is so cunningly identified with death. I am sure you will pardon me if

I spend a single moment in recalling the plots of these two stories so

far as concerns this point of contact. In Chaucer's _Pardoner's Tale_

three riotous young men of Flanders are drinking one day at a tavern.

In the midst of their merriment they hear the clink of a bell before a

dead body which is borne past the door on its way to burial. They

learn that it is an old companion who is dead; all three become

suddenly inflamed with mortal anger against Death; and they rush forth

resolved to slay him wherever they may find him. Presently they meet

an old man. "Why do you live so long?" they mockingly inquire of him.

"Because," says he,

"Deth, alas, ne will not han my lif;

Thus walke I like a resteles caitif,

And on the ground, which is my modres gate,

I knocke with my staf erlich and late

And say to hire 'Leve moder, let me in.'"

"Where is this Death of whom you have spoken?" furiously demand the

three young men. The old man replied, "You will find him under an oak

tree in yonder grove." The three rush forward; and upon arriving at

the oak find three bags full of gold coin. Overjoyed at their good

fortune they are afraid to carry the treasure into town by day lest

they be suspected of robbery. They therefore resolve to wait until

night and in the meantime to make merry. For the latter purpose one of

the three goes to town after food and drink. As soon as he is out of

hearing, the two who remain under the tree resolve to murder their

companion on his return so that they may be the richer by his portion

of the treasure; he, on the other hand, whilst buying his victual in

town, shrewdly drops a great lump of poison into the bottle of drink

he is to carry back so that his companions may perish and he take all.

To make a long story short, the whole plot is carried out. As soon as

he who was sent to town returns, his companions fall upon him and

murder him; they then proceed merrily to eat and drink what he has

brought; the poison does its work; presently all three lie dead under

the oak tree by the side of the gold, and the old man's direction has

come true, and they _have_ found death under that tree. In George

Eliot's story the young English Squire also finds death in finding

gold. You will all remember how Dunstan Cass in returning late at

night from a fox-hunt on foot--for he had killed his horse in the

chase--finds himself near the stone hut where Silas Marner the weaver

has long plied his trade, and where he is known to have concealed a

large sum in gold. The young man is extraordinarily pressed for money;

he resolves to take Marner's gold; the night is dark and misty; he

makes his way through the mud and darkness to the cottage and finds

the door open, Marner being, by the rarest of accidents, away from the

hut. The young man quickly discovers the spot in the floor where the

weaver kept his gold; he seizes the two heavy leathern bags filled

with guineas; and the chapter ends. "So he stepped forward into the

darkness." All this occurs in Chapter IV. The story then proceeds;

nothing more is heard of Dunstan Cass in the village for many years;

the noise of the robbery has long ago died away; Silas Marner has one

day found a golden head of hair lying on the very spot of his floor

where he used to finger his own gold; the little outcast who had

fallen asleep with her head in this position, after having wandered

into Marner's cottage, has been brought up by him to womanhood; when

one day, at a critical period in Silas Marner's existence, it happens

that in draining some lower grounds the pit of an old stone quarry,

which had for years stood filled with rain-water near his house,

becomes dry, and on the bottom is revealed a skeleton with a leathern

bag of gold in each hand. The young man plunging out into the dark,

laden with his treasure, had fallen in and lain for all these years to

be afterwards brought to light as another phase of the frequent

identity between death and gold. Here, too, one is obliged to remember

those doubly dreadful words in _Romeo and Juliet_, where Romeo having

with difficulty bought poison from the apothecary, cries:

"There is thy gold; worse poison to men's souls,

Doing more murder in this loathsome world

Than these poor compounds which thou mayst not sell.

I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none.

Farewell; buy food and get thyself in flesh."

I must also instance one little passing picture in _Silas Marner_

which though extremely fanciful, is yet, a charming type of some of

the greatest and most characteristic work that George Eliot has done.

Silas Marner had been a religious enthusiast of an obscure sect of a

small manufacturing town of England; suddenly a false accusation of

theft in which the circumstantial evidence was strong against him

brings him into disgrace among his fellow-disciples. With his whole

faith in God and man shattered he leaves his town, wanders over to the

village of Raveloe, begins aimlessly to pursue his trade of weaving,

presently is paid for some work in gold; in handling the coin he is

smit with the fascination of its yellow radiance, and presently we

find him pouring out all the prodigious intensity of his nature, which

had previously found a fitter field in religion, in the miser's

passion. Working day and night while yet a young man he fills his two

leathern bags with gold; and George Eliot gives us some vivid pictures

of how, when his day's work would be done, he would brighten up the

fire in his stone hut which stood at the edge of the village, eagerly

lift up the particular brick of the stone floor under which he kept

his treasure concealed, pour out the bright yellow heaps of coin and

run his long white fingers through them with all the miser's ecstasy.

But after he is robbed the utter blank in his soul--and one can

imagine such a blank in such a soul, for he was essentially

religious--becomes strangely filled. One day a poor woman leading her

little golden-haired child is making her way along the road past

Marner's cottage; she is the wife, by private marriage, of the

Squire's eldest son, and after having been cruelly treated by him for

years has now desperately resolved to appear with her child at a great

merry-making which goes on at the Squire's to-day, there to expose all

and demand justice. It so happens however that in her troubles she has

become an opium-taker; just as she is passing Marner's cottage the

effect of an unusually large dose becomes overpowering; she lies down

and falls off into a stupor which this time ends in death. Meantime

the little golden-haired girl innocently totters into the open door of

Marner's cottage during his absence; presently lies down, places her

head with all its golden wealth upon the very brick which Marner used

to lift up in order to bring his gold to light, and so falls asleep,

while a ray of sunlight strikes through the window and illuminates the

little one's head. Marner now returns; he is dazed at beholding what

seems almost to be another pile of gold at the familiar spot on the

floor. He takes this new treasure into his hungry heart and brings up

the little girl who becomes a beautiful woman and faithful daughter to

him. His whole character now changes and the hardness of his previous

brutal misanthropy softens into something at least approaching

humanity. Now, it is fairly characteristic of George Eliot that she

constantly places before us lives which change in a manner of which

this is typical: that is to say, she is constantly showing us intense

and hungry spirits first wasting their intensity and hunger upon that

which is unworthy, often from pure ignorance of anything worthier,

then finding where love _is_ worthy, and thereafter loving larger

loves, and living larger lives.

Is not this substantially the experience of Janet Dempster, of Adam

Bede, replacing the love of Hetty with that of Dinah Morris; of

Romola, of Dorothea, of Gwendolen Harleth?

This last name brings us directly to the work which we were specially

to study to-day. George Eliot's novels have all striking relationships

among themselves which cause them to fall into various groups

according to various points of view. There is one point however from

which her entire work divides itself into two groups, of which one

includes the whole body of her writings up to 1876: the other group

consists solely of _Daniel Deronda_. This classification is based on

the fact that all the works in the first group concern the life of a

time which is past. It is only in _Daniel Deronda_, after she has been

writing for more than twenty years, that George Eliot first ventures

to deal with English society of the present day. To this important

claim upon our interest may be added a further circumstance which will

in the sequel develop into great significance. _Daniel Deronda_ has

had the singular fate of being completely misunderstood to such a

degree that the greatest admirers of George Eliot have even ventured

to call it a failure, while the Philistines have rioted in abusing

Gwendolen Harleth as a weak and rather disagreeable personage, Mirah

and Daniel as unmitigated prigs, and the plot as an absurd attempt to

awaken interest in what is called the religious patriotism of the

Jews. This comparative failure of _Daniel Deronda_ to please current

criticism and even the ardent admirers of George Eliot, so clearly

opens up what is to my view a singular and lamentable weakness in

certain vital portions of the structure of our society that I have

thought I could not render better service than by conducting our

analysis of _Daniel Deronda_ so as to make it embrace some of the most

common of the objections urged against that work. Let us recall in

largest possible outline the movement of _Daniel Deronda_. This can be

done in a surprisingly brief statement. The book really concerns two

people--one is Gwendolen Harleth, a beautiful English girl, brought up

with all those delicate tastes and accomplishments which we understand

when we think of the highest English refinement, wayward--mainly

because she has seen as yet no way that seemed better to follow than

her own--and ambitious, but evidently with that sacred discontent

which desires the best and which will only be small when its horizon

contains but small objects. The other main personage is Daniel

Deronda, who has been brought up as an Englishman of rank, has a

striking face and person, a natural love for all that is beautiful and

noble, a good sense that enables him to see through the banalities of

English political life and to shrink from involving his own existence

in such littleness, and who, after some preliminary account of his

youth in the earlier chapters, is placed before us early in the first

book as a young man of twenty who is seriously asking himself whether

life is worth living.

It so happens however that presently Gwendolen Harleth is found asking

herself the same question. Tempted by a sudden reverse of fortune, by

the chance to take care of her mother, and one must add by her own

desire--guilty enough in such a connection--for plenty of horses to

ride, and for all the other luxurious accompaniments which form so

integral a portion of modern English life; driven, too, by what one

must not hesitate to call the cowardliest shrinking from the name and

position of a governess; conciliated by a certain infinite appearance

of lordliness which in Grandcourt is mainly nothing more than a blase

brutality which has exhausted desire, Gwendolen accepts the hand of

Grandcourt, quickly discovers him to be an unspeakable brute, suffers

a thousand deaths from remorse and is soon found--as is just

said--wringing her hands and asking if life is worth living.

Now the sole purpose and outcome of the book lie in its answers to the

questions of these two young people. It does answer them, and answers

them satisfactorily. On the one hand, Gwendolen Harleth, in the course

of her married life, is several times thrown with Daniel Deronda; his

loftiness, his straightforwardness, his fervor, his frankness, his

general passion for whatsoever things are large and fine,--in a word,

his goodness--form a complete revelation to her. She suddenly

discovers that life is not only worth living, but that the possibility

of making one's life a good life invests it with a romantic interest

whose depth is infinitely beyond that of all the society-pleasures

which had hitherto formed her horizon. On the other hand, Daniel

Deronda discovers that he is a Jew by birth, and fired by the visions

of a fervent Hebrew friend, he resolves to devote his life and the

wealth that has fallen to him from various sources to the cause of

reestablishing his people in their former Eastern home. Thus also for

him, instead of presenting the dreary doubt whether it is worth

living, life opens up a boundless and fascinating field for energies

of the loftiest kind.

Place then, clearly before your minds these two distinct strands of

story. One of these might be called _The Repentance of Gwendolen

Harleth_, and this occupies much the larger portion of the work. The

other might be called _The Mission of Daniel Deronda_. These two

strands are, as we have just seen, united into one artistic thread by

the organic purpose of the book which is to furnish a fair and

satisfactory answer to the common question over which these two young

protagonists struggle: "Is life worth living?"

Now the painting of this repentance of Gwendolen Harleth, the

development of this beautiful young aristocrat Daniel Deronda into a

great and strong man consecrated to a holy purpose: all this is done

with such skillful reproduction of contemporary English life, with

such a wealth of flesh-and-blood character, with an art altogether so

subtile, so analytic, yet so warm and so loving withal, that if I were

asked for the most significant, the most tender, the most pious and

altogether the most uplifting of modern books, it seems to me I should

specify _Daniel Deronda_.

It was remarked two lectures ago that Shakspeare had never drawn a

repentance; and if we consider for a single moment what is required in

order to paint such a long and intricate struggle as that through

which our poor, beautiful Gwendolen passed, we are helped towards a

clear view of some reasons at least why this is so. For upon examining

the instances of repentance alleged by those who disagree with me on

this point--as mentioned in my last lecture--I find that the real

difference of opinion between us is, not as to whether Shakspeare ever

drew a repentance, but as to what is a repentance. There certainly are

in Shakspeare pictures of regret for injuries done to loved ones under

mistake or under passion, and sometimes this regret is long-drawn. But

surely such reversal of feeling is only that which would be felt by

any man of ordinarily manful make upon discovering that he had greatly

wronged anyone, particularly a loved one. It is to this complexion

that all the alleged instances of repentances in Shakspeare come at

last. Nowhere do we find any special portrayal of a character engaged

to its utmost depths in that complete subversion of the old by the

new,--that total substitution of some higher motive for the whole

existing body of emotions and desires,--that emergence out of the

twilight world of selfishness into the large and sunlit plains of a

love which does not turn upon self,

"Which bends not with the remover to remove"

Nor "alters when it alteration finds."

For example, Leontes, in _Winter's Tale_, who is cited as a chief

instance of Shakspeare's repentances, quite clearly shows by word and

act that his regret is mainly a sense of personal loss, not a change

of character. He is sorrowful not so much because he has sinned as

because he has hurt himself. In Act V. just before the catastrophe

which restores him his wife and daughter, we find him exclaiming:

"Good Pauline

O that ever I

Had squared me to thy counsel! Then even now

I might have looked upon my queen's full eyes

Have taken treasure from her lips--&c,"

And again in the same scene, where Florizel and Perdita have been

brought before him, he cries:

"What might I have been,

Might I a son and daughter now have looked on

Such goodly things as you!"

In these it is clear that Leontes is speaking from personal regret;

there is no thought here of that total expansion of an ego into a

burning love of all other egos, implied in the term repentance, as I

have used it. Similarly, King Lear, who has also been cited as an

example of Shakspeare's repentances is simply an example of regret for

the foulest of wrongs done in a moment of silly passion. After the

poor old man, upon regaining his consciousness under Cordelia's tender

ministrations, is captured together with Cordelia, in Scene III of Act

V, Cordelia says, as if to comfort him:

"We are not the first

Who with best meaning have incurred the worst.

For thee, oppressed king, am I cast down.

Shall we not see these daughters and these sisters?"

_Lear._--No, no, no, no! Come let's away to prison;

We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage;

When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down

And ask of thee forgiveness."

Here, clearly enough, is regret for his injury to Cordelia, but quite

as clearly, no general state of repentance; and in the very few other

words uttered by the old king before the play ends surely nothing

indicating such a state appears. Of all the instances suggested only

one involves anything like the process of character-change which I

have called a repentance, such as Gwendolen Harleth's for example; but

this one, unfortunately, is not drawn by Shakspeare: it is only

mentioned as having occurred. This is the repentance of Duke Frederick

in _As you Like it_. Just at the end of that play, when Orlando and

Rosalind, Oliver, and Celia and all the rest have unraveled all their

complications, and when everything that can be called plot in the play

is finished, the son of old Sir Rowland appears before the company in

the wood and calls out:

"Let me have audience for a word or two.

* * * *

Duke Frederick hearing how that every day

Men of great worth resorted to this forest

Addressed a mighty power

purposely to take

His brother here and put him to the sword,

And to the skirts of this wild wood he came,

Where meeting with an old religious man,

After some questions with him was converted

Both from his enterprise and from the world;

His crown bequeathing to his banished brother,

And all their lands restored to them again

That were with him exiled."

Here we have indeed a true repentance, but this is all we have of it;

the passage I have read contains the whole picture.

If we now go on and ask ourselves why these fascinating phenomena of

repentance, which George Eliot has treated with such success, never

engaged Shakspeare's energy, we come at the very first step upon a

limitation of the drama as opposed to the novel which, in the

strongest way, confirms the view I was at such pains to set forth in

my earlier lectures of that necessity for a freer form than the

dramatic, which arises from the more complete relations between modern

personalities and which has really developed the novel out of the

drama.

How, for instance, could Shakspeare paint the yeas and nays, the

twists, the turns, the intricacies of Gwendolen Harleth's thought

during the long weeks while she was debating whether she should accept

Grandcourt? The whole action of this drama, you observe, is confined

within the small round head of the girl herself. How could such action

be brought before the audience of a play? The only hope would be in a

prolonged soliloquy, for these are thoughts which no young woman would

naturally communicate to any one; but what audience could stand so

prolonged a soliloquy, even if any character could be found in whom it

would be natural? And sometimes, too, the situation is so subtly

complex that Gwendolen is soliloquizing in such a manner that we, the

audience, hear her while Grandcourt, who is standing by, does not.

"I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt began. He

spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain broken drawl, as of

a distinguished personage with a distinguished cold in his chest.

"Are you converted to-day?" said Gwendolen.

(Pause, during which she imagined various degrees and modes of

opinion about herself that might be entertained by Grandcourt.)

"Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one

generally sees people missing and simpering."

"And do you care about the turf? or is that among the things you

have left off?"

(Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a man of extremely

calm cold manners might be less disagreeable as a husband than

other men, and not likely to interfere with his wife's

preferences.)

"You would perhaps like tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I saw some

of that for a season or two in the East. Everything here is poor

stuff after that."

"You are fond of danger then?"

(Pause, during which Gwendolen speculated on the probability that

the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous, and felt

the strength of her own insight, supposing the question had to be

decided.)

"One must have something or other. But one gets used to it."

"I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything is new

to me; it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am not used to

anything except being dull, which I should like to leave off as

you have left off shooting."

(Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man of cold

and distinguished manners might possibly be a dull companion; but

on the whole, the thought that most persons were dull, and that

she had not observed husbands to be companions.)

"Why are you dull?"

"This is a dreadful neighborhood, there is nothing to be done in

it. That is why I practised my archery."

(Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an

unmarried woman who could not go about and had no command of

anything, must necessarily be dull through all the degrees of

comparison as time went on.)

"You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will carry the

first prize."

"I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not observe how

well Miss Arrowpoint shot?"

(Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been known to

choose some one else than the woman they most admired, and

recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.)

At this point we come upon an element of difference between the novel

and the drama which has not hitherto been fairly appreciated, so far

as I know. Consider for a moment the wholly supernatural power which

is necessarily involved in the project of thus showing the most secret

workings of the mind and heart of this young girl Gwendolen Harleth!

In real life what power less than God's can make me see the deepest

thought and feeling of a fellow-creature? But since the novel is

always a transcript of real, or at any rate of possible, life, you

observe that wherever these workings of heart and brain are thus laid

bare, the tacit supposition is, in plain terms, that God is the

writer, or that the writer is a god. In the drama no supposition is

necessary because here we become acquainted with only such matters as

are shown us in the ordinary way, by scenery or by the speech or

gesture of the actor. This consideration seems to me to lift the novel

to the very highest and holiest plane of creative effort; he who

takes up the pen of the novelist assumes, as to that novel, to take up

along with it the omniscience of God. He proposes, in effect, to bring

about the revelations of Judgment Day long before the trumpet has

sounded. George Eliot shows us the play of Gwendolen Harleth's soul

with the same uncompromising fulness with which the most literal

believer expects to give account of the deeds done in the body at the

last day.

In contemplating this vast ascent from the attitude of the dramatist

to that of the novelist--the dramatist is a man; the novelist--as to

that novel, is a god--we are contemplating simply another phase of the

growth of man from Shakspeare to George Eliot.

And we reach still another view of that growth when we reflect that

even if Shakspeare could have overcome the merely mechanical

difficulty of presenting a repentance without overmuch soliloquy, he

would probably have found but poorly-paying houses at the Globe

Theatre to witness any drama so purely spiritual as that which George

Eliot has shown us going on upon the little ill-lighted stage of a

young girl's consciousness. Just as we found that the prodigious

advance in the nearness of man to his fellow from the time of Aeschylus

to that of George Eliot was implied in the fact that the latter could

gather an interested audience about a couple of commonplace children

(as in _The Mill on the Floss_), whilst the former required the larger

stimulus of Titanic quarrel and angry Jove; so here we have reached an

evidence of still more subtle advance as between the times of

Shakspeare and of George Eliot when we find the latter gathering a

great audience about this little inward, actionless, complex drama of

Gwendolen Harleth, while we reflect that Shakspeare must have his

stimulant passion, his crime, his patriotism, and the like, as the

only attracting motives. In truth I find what seems to be a cunning

indication that George Eliot herself did not feel quite sure of her

audience for this same little play. At the end of Chapter XI., she

breaks off from a description of one of Gwendolen's capricious turns,

and as if in apologetic defense says:

"Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in human

history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her small

inferences of the way in which she could make her life

pleasant?--in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor

making armies of themselves and the universal kinship was

declaring itself fiercely; ... a time when the soul of man was

waking to pulses which had for centuries been beating in him

unheard.... What, in the midst of that mighty drama, are girls

and their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good for

which men are enduring or fighting. In these delicate vessels is

borne onward through the ages the treasure of human affections."

Thus it appears that for Shakspeare to draw such repentances as

Gwendolen Harleth's was not only difficult from the playwright's point

of view, but premature from the point of view of the world's growth.

In truth, I suspect, if we had time to pursue this matter, that we

should find it leading us into some very instructive views of certain

rugged breaking-off places in Shakspeare. I suppose we must consider

the limitations of his time; though it is just possible there may be

limitations of his genius, also. We should presently find ourselves

asking further how it is that Shakspeare not only never drew a great

reformation, but never painted a great reformer? It seems a natural

question: How is it, that it is Milton, and not Shakspeare, who has

treated the subject of Paradise Lost and Regained; how is it, that

the first-class subject was left for the second-class genius? We all

know how Milton has failed in what he intended with his poem, and how

astonished he would be at finding that the only one of his characters

which has taken any real hold upon the world is his Satan. It seems

irresistible to ask ourselves why might not our most eloquent tongue

have treated our most lofty theme? Or, if we should find special

reasons in the temper of his time why Shakspeare could not or should

not have treated this theme, we may still ask, why did he never paint

for us one of those men who seem too large to be bounded in their

affections merely by limits of country, but who loved and worked for

the whole world, Buddha, Zoroaster, Mahomet, Socrates, Luther; nay,

why may not the master have given us a master's picture of Christopher

Columbus, or even of John Vanini, the scientific martyr; even of the

fantastic Giordano Bruno, who against all warnings boldly wandered

from town to town defending his doctrines until he was burned, in

1600? And if any of the academicians now in my audience should incline

to pursue this strange psychologic literary problem, I make no doubt

that useful light would be cast upon the search if you should consider

along with these questions the further inquiries why Shakspeare never

mentions either of the two topics which must have been foremost in the

talk of his time: namely, America and tobacco. Among all the allusions

to contemporary matter in his plays the nearest he ever comes to

America is the single instance in _The Tempest_, where Ariel is

mentioned as "fetching dew from the still-vexed Bermoothes"

(Bermudas). As for tobacco; although pretty much all London must have

been smoking vigorously about the time Shakspeare was writing _Much

Ado About Nothing_ and _The Merry Wives of Windsor_; although

certainly to a countryman not a great while out of the woods of

Warwickshire it must have been the oddest of sights to see people

sucking at hollow tubes and puffing smoke from their mouths and

nostrils; although, too, the comedies of his contemporaries are often

cloudy with tobacco smoke: nevertheless there is not, so far as my

recollection goes, the faintest allusion to the drinking of tobacco

(as it was then called), in the whole body of his writings. Now all

these omissions are significant because conspicuous; always, in

studying genius, we learn as much from what it has not done, as from

what it has done; and if research should succeed in arranging these

neglects from any common point of view, it is possible that something

new might still be said about Shakspeare.

But, to return to _Daniel Deronda_. A day or two after George Eliot's

death the _Saturday Review_ contained an elaborate editorial summary

of her work. For some special ends, permit me to read so much of it as

relates to the book now under consideration. "_Daniel Deronda_ is

devoted to the whimsical object of glorifying real or imaginary Jewish

aspirations. It cannot be doubted that so fantastic a form of

enthusiasm was suggested by some personal predilection or association.

A devotion to the Jewish cause unaccompanied by any kind of interest

in the Jewish religion is not likely to command general sympathy; but

even if the purpose of the story had been as useful as it is

chimerical and absurd, the inherent fault of didactic fiction would

scarcely have been diminished.... It is significant that when George

Eliot deliberately preferred the function of teaching to her proper

office of amusing she sacrificed her power of instruction as well as

her creative faculty."

Of course, in general, no man in his senses thinks of taking in

serious earnest every proposition in the _Saturday Review_. It is an

odd character which long ago assumed the role of teasing English

society by gravely advancing any monstrous assertions at random and

laughing in its sleeve at the elaborate replies with which these

assertions would be honored by weak and unsuspecting people. But its

position upon this particular point of _Daniel Deronda_ happens to be

supported by similar views among her professed admirers.

Even _The Spectator_ in its obituary notice completely mistakes the

main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_; in declaring that "she takes

religious patriotism for the subject," though as I have just

indicated, surely the final aim of the book is to furnish to two young

modern people a motive sufficient to make life not only worth living

but fascinating; and of the two distinct plots in the book one--and

the one to which most attention is paid--hinges upon Gwendolen

Harleth's repentance, while it is only the other and slighter which is

concerned with what these papers call religious patriotism, and here

the phrase "religious patriotism" if we examine it is not only

meaningless--what is religious patriotism?--but has the effect of

dwarfing the two grand motives which are given to _Daniel Deronda_;

namely religion and patriotism.

Upon bringing together, however, all the objections which have been

urged against _Daniel Deronda_, I think they may be classified and

discussed under two main heads. First it is urged that Daniel Deronda

and Mirah--and even Gwendolen Harleth, after her change of spirit--are

all prigs; secondly, it is urged that the moral purpose of the book

has overweighted the art of it, that what should have been pure nature

and beauty have been obscured by didacticism, thus raising the whole

question of Art for Art's sake which has so mournfully divided the

modern artistic world. This last objection, opening, as it does, the

whole question of how far fervent moral purpose injures the work of

the true artist, is a matter of such living importance in the present

state of our art,--particularly of our literary art; it so completely

sums up all these contributory items of thought which have been

gradually emerging in these lectures regarding the growth of human

personality together with the correlative development of the novel:

and the discussions concerning it are conducted upon such small planes

and from such low and confusing points of view that I will ask to

devote my next lecture to a faithful endeavor to get all the light

possible upon the vexed matter of Art for Art's sake, and to showing

how triumphantly George Eliot's _Daniel Deronda_ seems to settle that

entire debate with the most practical of answers.

Meantime in discussing the other class of objections which we managed

to generalize, to wit that the three main characters in _Daniel

Deronda_ are prigs, a serious difficulty lies in the impossibility of

learning from these objectors exactly what _is_ a prig. And I confess

I should be warned off from any attempt at discussion by this initial

difficulty if I did not find great light thrown on the subject by

discovering that the two objections of prig-ism and that of

didacticism already formulated are really founded upon the same

cunning weakness in our current culture. The truth is George Eliot's

book _Daniel Deronda_, is so sharp a sermon that it has made the whole

English contemporary society uncomfortable. It is curious and

instructive to see how unable all the objectors have been to put their

fingers upon the exact source of this discomfort; so that in their

bewilderment one lays it to prig-ism, another to didacticism, and so

on. That a state of society should exist in which such a piece of

corruption as Grandcourt should be not only the leader but the

crazing fascination and ideal of the most delicate and fastidious

young women in that society; that a state of society should exist in

which those pure young girls whom George Eliot describes as "the

delicate vessels in which man's affections are hoarded through the

ages," should be found manoeuvring for this Grandcourt infamy,

plotting to be Grandcourt's wife instead of flying from him in horror;

that a state of society should exist in which such a thing was

possible as a marriage between a Gwendolen Harleth and a Grandcourt;

this was enough to irritate even the thickest-skinned Philistine, and

this George Eliot's book showed with a terrible conclusiveness. Yet

the showing was made so daintily and with so light a hand that, as I

have said, current society did not know, and has not yet recognized

where or how the wound was. We have all read of the miraculous sword

in the German fable whose blade was so keen that when, upon a certain

occasion, its owner smote a warrior with it from crown to saddle, the

warrior nevertheless rode home and was scarcely aware he had been

wounded until, upon his wife opening the door, he attempted to embrace

her and fell into two pieces. Now, as I said, just as _Daniel Deronda_

made people feel uncomfortable by even vaguely revealing a sharp

truth--so, a prig, so far as I can make out, is a person whose

goodness is so genuine, essential and ever-present that all ungenuine

people have a certain sense of discomfort when brought in contact with

it. If the prig-hater be questioned he will not deny the real goodness

of the _Daniel Deronda_ people; he dare not--no one in this age

dare--to wish explicitly that Mirah and Daniel Deronda might be less

good; but as nearly as anything definite can be obtained what he

desires is that the prig should be good in some oily and lubricative

way so as not to jar the nerves of those who are less good. Conform,

conform! seems to be the essential cry of the prig-haters; if you go

to an evening party you wear your dress coat and look like every other

man; but if your goodness amounts to a hump, a deformity, we do not

ask you to cut it off, but at least pad it; if every one grows as big

as you we shall have to enlarge all our drawing-rooms and society will

be disorganized. In short, the cry against the prig turns out to be

nothing more than the old claim for conformity and the conventional.

For one, I never hear these admonitions to conformity without

recalling a comical passage of Tom Hood's in which the fellows of a

Zoological society propose to remedy the natural defects of animal

morphology, such as the humps of dromedaries and the overgrowth of

hair upon lions so as to bring all the grotesqueness of the animal

creation into more conformity with conventional ideas of proportion.

The passage occurs in a pretended report from the keeper of the

animals to the President of the society. After describing the

condition of the various beasts the keeper proceeds:

Honnerd Sur,--Their is an aggitating skeem of witch I humbly

approve very hiley. The plan is owen to sum of the Femail

Fellers,-- ... For instances the Buffloo and Fallo dears and

cetra to have their horns Gilded and Sheaps is to hav Pink

ribbings round there nex. The Ostreaches is to have their plums

stuck in their heds, and the Pecox tales will be always spred out

on fraime wurks like the hispaliers. All the Bares is to be tort

to Dance to Wippert's Quadrils and the Lions manes is to be

subjective to pappers and the curling tongues. The gould and

silver Fesants is to be Polisht every day with Plait Powder and

the Cammils and Drumdearis and other defourmed anymills is to be

paddid to hide their Crukidnes. Mr. Howard is to file down the

tusks of the wild Bores, and the Spoons of the Spoonbills is to

maid as like the King's Patten as possible. The elifunt will be

himbelisht with a Sugger candid Castle maid by Gunter and the

Flaminggoes will be touched up with Frentch ruge. The Sloath is

proposed to have an illegant Stait Bed--and the Bever is to ware

one of Perren's lite Warter Proof Hats--and the Balld Vulters

baldness will be hided by a small Whig from Trewfits. The Crains

will be put into trousirs and the Hippotamus tite laced for a

waste. Experience will dictait menny more imbellishing modes,

with witch I conclud that I am

Your Honners,

Very obleeged and humbel former servant,