XII.

In the last lecture we obtained a view of George Eliot's _Daniel

Deronda_ as containing two distinct stories, one of which might have

been called _The Repentance of Gwendolen Harleth_, and the other, _The

Mission of Daniel Deronda_; and we generalized the principal

objections against the work into two: namely, that the main characters

were prigs, and that the artistic value of the book was spoiled by its

moral purpose. In discussing the first of these objections we found

that probably both of them might be referred to a common origin; for

examination of precisely what is meant by a prig revealed that he is a

person whose goodness is so downright, so unconforming and so reduced

that it makes the mass of us uncomfortable. Now there can be no

question that so far as the charge of being overloaded with moral

purposes is brought against _Daniel Deronda_, as distinguished from

George Eliot's other works, it is so palpably contrary to all facts in

the case that we may clearly refer it to some fact outside the case:

and I readily find this outside fact in that peculiar home-thrust of

the moral of _Daniel Deronda_ which has rendered it more tangible than

that of any preceding work which concerned time past. You will

remember we found that it was only in _Daniel Deronda_, written in

1876, after thirty years of study and of production, that George Eliot

allowed herself to treat current English society; you will remember

too, how we found that this first treatment revealed among other

things a picture of an unspeakable brute, Grandcourt, throned like an

Indian lama above the multitude, and receiving with a blase stare,

the special adoration of the most refined young English girls; a

picture which made the worship of the golden calf or the savage dance

around a merely impotent wooden idol, fade into tame blasphemy. No man

could deny the truth of the picture; the galled jade was obliged to

wince; this time it was _my_ withers that were wrung. Thus the moral

purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ which is certainly beyond all comparison

less obtrusive than that of any other book written by George Eliot,

grew by its very nearness, out of all perspective. Though a mere gnat,

it sat on the very eyelash of society and seemed a monster.

In speaking of George Eliot's earlier stories I was at pains to show

how explicitly she avowed their moral purpose; in _Amos Barton_, in

_Janet's Repentance_, in _Adam Bede_, everywhere there is the fullest

avowal of didacticism; on almost every other page one meets those

direct appeals from the author in her own person to the reader, in

which George Eliot indulged more freely than any novelist I know,

enforcing this or that moral view in plain terms of preaching. But it

curiously happens that even these moral 'asides' are conspicuously

absent in _Daniel Deronda_: the most cursory comparison of it in this

particular with _Adam Bede_, for example, reveals an enormous

disproportion in favor of _Deronda_ as to the weight of this

criticism. Yet people who had enthusiastically accepted and extolled

_Adam Bede_, with all its explicitly moralizing passages and its

professedly preaching characters, suddenly found that _Daniel Deronda_

was intolerably priggish and didactic. But resting then on the facts

in the case--easily possible by comparing _Daniel Deronda_ with any

previous work--as to show how this censure of didacticism loses all

momentum as against this particular book; let us advance to the more

interesting, because more general, fact that many people--some in

great sincerity--have preferred this censure against all of George

Eliot's work and against all didactic novels in general. The objection

involved many shades of opinion, and is urged with the most diverse

motives and manner. At one extreme we have the _Saturday Review_

growling that the office of the novelist is to amuse, never to

instruct, that George Eliot, in seeking the latter has even forfeited

the former, and that _Daniel Deronda_ neither amuses nor instructs;

whereupon George Eliot is derisively bid, in substance, to put on the

cap and bells again, and leave teaching to her betters; with a voice,

by the way, wondrously like that with which the _Edinburgh Review_

some years ago cried out to our adorable John Keats, "Back to your

gallipots, young man." From this extreme we have all shades of opinion

to that vague and moderate apprehension much current among young

persons influenced by a certain smart sound in the modern French

phrase _l'Art pour l'Art_, or by the German nickname of

"tendency-books," that a moral intention on the part of an artist is

apt to interfere with the naturalness or intrinsic beauty of his work;

that in art the controlling consideration must always be artistic

beauty; and that artistic beauty is not only distinct from, but often

opposed to moral beauty. Now, to discuss this question _a priori_: to

go forward and establish an aesthetic basis for beauty, involving an

examination which must range from Aristotle to Kant and Burke and Mr.

Grant Allen's physiological theories, would require another course of

lectures quite as long as that which is now ending; so that all I can

hope to do is but to throw, if I can, some light upon this question.

And, so to proceed immediately to that work with some system: permit

me to recall to you in the first place that the requirement has been

from time immemorial that wherever there is contest as between

artistic and moral beauty, unless the moral side prevail, all is lost.

Let any sculptor hew us out the most ravishing combination of tender

curves and spheric softness that ever stood for woman; yet if the lip

have a certain fulness that hints of the flesh, if the brow be

insincere, if in the minutest particular the physical beauty suggest a

moral ugliness, that sculptor--unless he be portraying a moral

ugliness for a moral purpose--may as well give over his marble for

paving-stones. Time, whose judgments are inexorably moral, will not

accept his work. For indeed we may say that he who has not yet

perceived how artistic beauty and moral beauty are convergent lines

which run back into a common ideal origin, and who therefore is not

afire with moral beauty just as with artistic beauty--that he, in

short, who has not come to that stage of quiet and eternal frenzy in

which the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty mean one

thing, burn as one fire, shine as one light, within him;--he is not

yet the great artist. Here it is most instructive to note how fine and

beautiful souls of time appear after awhile to lose all sense of

distinction between these terms, Beauty, Truth, Love, Wisdom,

Goodness, and the like. Hear some testimony upon this point: this is a

case for witnesses. Let us call first Keats. Keats does not hesitate

to draw a moral even from his Grecian Urn, and even in the very

climacteric of his most "high sorrowful" song; and that moral effaces

the distinction between truth and beauty. "Cold pastoral" he cries, at

the end of the Ode on a Grecian Urn.

"When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man to whom thou say'st

Beauty is truth, truth, beauty,--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Again, bearing in mind this identity of truth and beauty in Keats'

view, observe how Emerson, by strange turns of thought, subtly refers

both truth and beauty to a common principle of the essential relation

of each thing to all things in the universe. Here are the beginning

and end of Emerson's poem called _Each and All_:

"Little thinks in the field yon red-cloaked clown

Of thee from the hill-top looking down;

The sexton tolling his bell at noon

Deems not that great Napoleon

Stops his horse and lists with delight

While his files sweep 'round Alpine height;

Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent.

All are needed by each one;

Nothing is fair or good alone."

Nothing is fair or good alone: that is to say fairness or beauty, and

goodness depend upon relations between creatures; and so, in the end

of the poem, after telling us how he learned this lesson by finding

that the bird-song was not beautiful when away from its proper

relation to the sky and the river and so on, we have this:--

"Then I said 'I covet truth;

Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat;

I leave it behind with the games of youth,'

As I spoke, beneath my feet

The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,

Running over the club-moss burs;

I inhaled the violet's breath;

Around me stood the oaks and firs;

Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;

Over me soared the eternal sky,

Full of light and of deity;

Again I saw, again I heard

The rolling river, the morning bird;

Beauty through my senses stole,

I yielded myself to the perfect whole."

But again, here Mrs. Browning, speaking by the mouth of Adam in _The

Drama of Exile_, so far identifies _beauty_ and _love_ as to make the

former depend on the latter; insomuch that Satan, created the most

beautiful of all angels, becomes the most repulsive of all angels from

lack of _love_, though retaining all his original outfit of beauty. In

_The Drama of Exile_, after Adam and Eve have become wise with the

great lessons of grief, love and forgiveness, to them comes Satan,

with such talk as if he would mock them back into their misery; but it

is fine to see how the father of men now instructs the prince of the

angels upon this matter of love and beauty.

_Eve._--Speak no more with him,

Beloved! it is not good to speak with him.

Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more!

We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn,

Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting,

Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft,

We would be alone. Go.

_Luc._--Ah! ye talk the same,

All of you--spirits and clay--go, and depart!

In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,--

And here, reiterant, in the wilderness.

None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair!

None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet!

And yet I was not fashioned out of clay.

Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?

_Eve._--Thou hast a glorious darkness.

_Luc._--Nothing more?

_Eve._--I think, no more.

_Luc._--False Heart--thou thinkest more!

Thou canst not choose but think it, that I stand

Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves

Were fashioned very good at best, so we

Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word

Which thrilled behind us, God Himself being moved

When that august mark of a perfect shape,--

His dignities of sovran angel-hood,--

Swept out into the universe,--divine

With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods,

And silver-solemn clash of cymbal-wings!

Whereof was I, in motion, and in form,

A part not poorest. And yet,--yet, perhaps,

This beauty which I speak of is not here,

As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown

I do not know. What is this thought or thing

Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing?

Is it a thought accepted for a thing?

Or both? or neither?--a pretext--a word?

Its meaning flutters in me like a flame

Under my own breath: my perceptions reel

For evermore around it, and fall off,

As if, it, too, were holy.

_Eve._--Which it is.

_Adam._--The essence of all beauty, I call love.

The attribute, the evidence, the end,

The consummation to the inward sense,

Of beauty apprehended from without,

I still call love. As form, when colorless,

Is nothing to the eye,--that pine-tree there,

Without its black and green, being all a blank,--

So, without love, is beauty undiscerned,

In man or angel. Angel! rather ask

What love is in thee, what love moves to thee,

And what collateral love moves on with thee;

Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

_Luc._--Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love

I darken to the image. Beauty--love!

Let us now carry forward this connection between love and beauty in

listening to a further testimony of Emerson's in a poem called _The

Celestial Love_, where, instead of identifying _beauty_ and _truth_

with Keats, we find him making _love_ and _truth_ to be one.

"Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond,

Bound for the just but not beyond;

Not glad, as the low-loving herd,

Of self in other still preferred

But they have heartily designed

The benefit of broad mankind

And they serve men austerely,

After their own genius, clearly.

Without a false humility;

For this is love's nobility,--

Not to scatter bread and gold,

Goods and raiment bought and sold;

But to hold fast his simple sense,

And speak the speech of innocence,

And with hand, and body, and blood,

To make his bosom-counsel good.

For he that feeds men serveth few;

He serves all that dares be true."