awakening radicalism, that Marian Evans undertook her first literary labor.
This was the translation of the _Leben Jesu_ of David Strauss. A book so
daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much
attention, and especially among those who had broken away from the old
religious beliefs. The work of translation was at first undertaken by Miss
Brabant, who soon married Charles Hennell. Then the task was taken up by
Marian Evans, who gave three years to it, renewing her Hebrew studies for
the purpose, and the book was published in 1846. The work was thoroughly
done, so much so that Strauss complimented the translator on its accuracy
and correctness of spirit. Concerning the translation the _Westminster
Review_ had this word of praise to offer: "We can testify that the
translator has achieved a very tough work with remarkable spirit and
fidelity. The author, though indeed a good writer, could hardly have spoken
better had his country and language been English. The work has evidently
fallen into the hands of one who has not only effective command of both
languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological
criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another
critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the
German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic force of the
English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the
original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought
and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the
present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of
preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation,
combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which impart to
the volumes before us the air and the spirit of an original. A modest and
kindly care for his reader's convenience has induced the translator often
to supply the rendering into English of a Greek quotation when there was no
corresponding rendering into German in the original. Indeed, Strauss may
well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for this English
edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is _et
accurata et perspicua_."
The book had a successful sale, but Marian Evans received only twenty
pounds, and twenty-five copies of the book, for her share of the
translation. A little later she translated Feuerbach's _Essence of
Christianity_, receiving fifty pounds for this labor. It was published in
1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher.
While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical
studies (probably Charles Bray) by the translation, for his reading, of the
_De Deo_ of Spinoza. Some years later she completed a translation of the
more famous _Ethica_ of the same thinker. It was not published, probably
because there was at that time so little interest in Spinoza.
The execution of such work as this, and all of it done in the most
creditable and accurate manner, indicates the thoroughness of Marian Evans'
scholarship. Though she doubtless was somewhat inclined to accept the
opinions she thus helped to diffuse, yet Miss Simcox tells us that "the
translation of Strauss and the translation of Spinoza were undertaken, not
by her own choice but at the call of friendship; in the first place to
complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to
make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist
who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work
that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that
required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the
_Leben Jesu_ required to be read in England, it would be difficult to
imagine a temper more naturally antipathetic to her than that of its
author; and critics who talk about the 'Strauss and Feuerbach period'
should be careful to explain that the phrase covers no implication that
she was at anytime an admirer or a disciple of Strauss. There are extremes
not only too remote but too disparate to be included in the same life."
Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably
because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It
is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that
his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings
of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of
those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more
systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to
regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had
shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made
ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of
the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines.
According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images
corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the
outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these
subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary
product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is
man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect
type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of
man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All
religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially
corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach
it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him
it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its
inward satisfaction.
The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which
Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone
explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious
doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who
rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as
she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy
with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times
she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a
just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she
learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to
man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like
so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping
scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts,
arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration,
revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed
most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by
its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion
was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger
realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of
feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to
rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true
interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally
rejected it as fact and dogma.
In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist
him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the
publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the
way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large
number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and
radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker,
Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note,
appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific
and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer,
Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of
contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a
wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able
departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries.
Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in
writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide
reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of
a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this
influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of
the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was
"distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which
have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that
"her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and
the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression
on all who wore thrown into her society."
Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of
his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was
extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave
herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A
fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr.
Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the
scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet
Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the
London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and
his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return.
While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article,
beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The
work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books,
could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except
in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally,
however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of
current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of
Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of
Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea
of a true biography:
We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently
to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage
dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of
letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds
of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the
inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth
briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and
achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has
for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies)
the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on
the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the
conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal
intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the
depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes
characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are
seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of
this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents
gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's
mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the
letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest
conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book
speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of
scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose.
The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she
was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It
appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion
of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that
field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of
the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her
treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising
with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature
as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original
description of its functions.
Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about
two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a
contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de
Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October,
1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of
German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856;
and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two
other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little
value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its
Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these
articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will
justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient
and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her
capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism,
reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest
pieces of critical writing the century has produced.
Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a
real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth
studying; a surpassing 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 scorching 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 occasional coarseness and
personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly
been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness,
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
transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never
lacerated 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....
In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull,
becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic,
brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary,
labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes
lost;" no chains of adjectives 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 precision,
all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest
order of prose. And Heine has proved 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 belongs 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 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 those there runs a vein of sadness,
tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet.
The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and
humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds
is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only
nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of
European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found
both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany,
having a flavor and a spirit quite his own.
Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological
character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling
with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her
entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes
unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The
terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr.
Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends
each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds
in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a
perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection
of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their
minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that
Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or
1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare
the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen
psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as
accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the
circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education,
the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they
lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with
those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by
whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places
of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was
because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before
it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them.
In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no
deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism.
She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their
purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so
unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into
character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere.
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 polemical, the historical, the
circumstantial, and is only episodically 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 appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story
which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite
exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the 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 to 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.
Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a
remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his
life: