gifted with an imagination vigorous as hers. Her love of music, her keen
perception of the beauties of nature, her love of form and color, gave
added attraction and impetus in the same direction. That she did not
continue through many years to write poetry seems to have been partly the
result of her intense interest in severer studies. The speculative cast of
her mind predominated the poetical so nearly as to turn her away from the
poetic side of life to find a solution for its graver and more intricate
problems. Her return to the poetic form of expression may be accounted for
partly as the result of a greater confidence in her own powers which came
from success, and partly from a desire for a new and richer medium of
utterance.
So far as can be judged from the dates of her poems, as appended to many of
them, "How Lisa Loved the King" was the earliest written. This was written
in the year of the publication of _Romola_, and was followed the next year
by the first draft of _The Spanish Gypsy_. The poetical mottoes of _Felix
Holt_, however, were the first to be published; and not until these
appeared did the public know of her poetic gifts. _The Spanish Gypsy_ was
not published until 1868, and "How Lisa Loved the King" appeared the
following year.
The original mottoes in _Felix Holt_ gave good hint of George Eliot's
poetic gifts. They are solid with thought, pregnant with the ripe wisdom of
daily experience, significant for dramatic expression, or notable for their
humor. They are rather heavy and ponderous in style, though sonorous in
expression. A stately tread, a largeness of expression, an air of weighty
meaning, appear in nearly all these mottoes. As a specimen of the more
philosophic, the following will indicate the truthfulness of this
description:--
Truth is the precious harvest of the earth,
But once, when harvest waved upon a land,
The noisome cankerworm and caterpillar,
Locusts, and all the swarming, foul-born broods,
Fastened upon it with swift, greedy jaws,
And turned the harvest into pestilence,
Until men said, What profits it to sow?
Her capacity for dramatic expression, in which a rich comprehension of
life is included, may be seen in these lines:
1ST CITIZEN. Sir, there's a hurry in the veins of youth
That makes a vice of virtue by excess.
2D CITIZEN. What if the coolness of our tardier veins
Be loss of virtue?
1ST CITIZEN. All things cool with time--
The sun itself, they say, till heat shall find
A general level, nowhere in excess.
2D CITIZEN. 'Tis a poor climax, to my weaker thought,
That future middlingness.
Wisdom alloyed with humor appears in another motto:
"It is a good and soothfast saw;
Half-roasted never will be raw;
No dough is dried once more to meal.
No crock new-shapen by the wheel;
You can't turn curds to milk again
Nor Now, by wishing, back to Then;
And having tasted stolen honey,
You can't buy innocence for money."
Mr. Buxton Forman says, that "in the charming headings to the chapters of
_Felix Holt_ it seemed as though the strong hand which had, up to that
point, exercised masterly control over the restive tendency of high prose
to rear up into verse, had relaxed itself just for the sake of a holiday,
and no more. These headings did not bear the stamp of original poetry upon
them. Forcible as were some, admirable in thought and applicability to the
respective chapters as were all, none bore traces of that clearly defined
individuality of style betrayed by all great and accomplished practitioners
of verse, in even so small a compass as these headings. Some of them
possess the great distinctive technical mark of poetry,--condensation; but
this very condensation is compassed not in an original and individual
method, but in the method of some pre-existent model; and it is hardly
necessary to enforce that power of assimilation or reproduction, however
large, is no infallible index of self-existent poetical faculty." This
critic finds traces of Shakspere, Wordsworth and Mrs. Browning in these
mottoes, and thinks they are all imitative, even when they are best. It is
too easy, however, to dispose of a piece of literary work in this manner,
and such criticism is very apt to have little meaning in it. George Eliot
has proven herself far too original, both in prose and poetry, to make such
a criticism of much value. Even if the charge of imitation is a valid one,
it is far more probable that it was conscious and purposed, than that
George Eliot's poetic gifts could only be exercised when impelled by the
genius of some other. To give the impression of quotation may have been a
part of George Eliot's purpose in writing these mottoes, which are original
enough, and thoughtful enough, to have been attributed to any of the great
poets. The real defects of her poetry lie in quite another direction than
that of a lack of originality. She has enough to say that is fresh and
interesting, she has no need to consult others for what she is to utter;
but she has not the fervor of expression, the impressive touch, which
separates poetry from prose. There is intellectual power enough, thought
even in excess, but she does not soar and sing. She walks steadily,
majestically along on the ground, she has no wings for the clear ether.
Indeed, she is too much a realist to breathe in that upper air of pure
song; it is too fine and delicate for one who loves the solid facts of
earth so well as she.
If George Eliot often wrote prose which is almost poetry, she also wrote
poetry which is almost prose. The concentrated, image-bearing phrases of
poetry are wanting oftentimes in her verse. There is meter but no other
quality of poetry, and not a few passages could be printed as prose with
scarce a suspicion to the reader that they were intended for poetry. Mr.
Buxton Forman has given a passage from _The Spanish Gypsy_ in this way,
adding only six insignificant words, and restoring _i_ to _is_ in two
instances. He rightly says that the passage printed in prose "would surely
be read by any one who saw it for the first time, without any suspicion
that it merely required the excision of six little words and two letters to
transform it to verse; no single expression betraying the secret that the
passage is from a poem."
_Do_ you hear the trumpet! There _is_ old Eamon's
blast. No bray but his can shake the air so well. He takes his
trumpeting as solemnly as _an_ angel charged to wake the
dead; thinks war was made for trumpeters, and _that_ their
great art _was_ made solely for themselves who understand
it. His features have all shaped themselves to blowing, and when
his trumpet _is either_ bagged or left at home he seems
_like_ a chattel in a broker's booth, a spoutless
watering-can, a promise to pay no sum particular!
George Eliot had not full command of poetic expression. This frequently
appears, not only in the fact that many lines are simply prose in thought,
but in the defects of the poetic form. Some lines are too short and others
too long, some having four and some six feet. An instance of the former is
to be found in these words between Don Silva and the Prior, forming one
line:
Strong reasons, father.
Ay, but good?
Of the latter:
And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion.
Still more suggestive are the expedients she resorts to in order to
complete the line. Lopez is made to say,--
Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please.
I speak not for my own delighting, I.
I can be silent, I.
Very near this, Lopez is spoken of in this line:
That was not what he drew his sword at--he!
Such defects as these are not, certainly, of vital importance, and may
doubtless be found in even the greatest poets; but they are noticeable here
because of one texture with that which limits the quality of her poetic
art. The principal criticism to be made on her poetry is that it was
composed and did not create itself out of a full poetic mind. It was
wrought out, was the result of study and composition, is wanting in
spontaneity and enthusiasm. The most serious defect of her poetry is also
the most marked defect of her prose, and this is a want of the ideal
element. She was a realist by nature, and could not free herself from the
tendency to look at the world on its surface only.
In her poetry George Eliot is much more a _doctrinaire_ than in her novels.
All her poems, except a few of the shorter ones, are devoted to the
inculcation of some moral or philosophic teaching. The very effort she was
obliged to make to give herself utterance in poetry predisposed her to
intellectual subjects and those of a controversial nature. For this reason
her verse has a special interest for those who are attracted to her
teachings. Her pen was freer, more creative, in her great novels than in
her poems. In fact, her novels, especially _Adam Bede_ and _The Mill on the
Floss_, are much more poetical than much she did in verse. In her verse she
tried to present the more spiritual side of life, to make living and
effective her own conceptions of the unseen and eternal. Yet she was
burdened constantly in this effort by the fact that she had a new theory of
the spiritual and ideal side of life to interpret. The poets who win the
homage of mankind, and conquer all hearts to themselves, take the accepted
interpretations of the great spiritual problems of life as the basis of
their work and give those a larger, loftier meaning through their poetic
and ideal insight and capacity of interpretation. They shun theories which
must be expounded and interpretations for which no one is prepared. It is
here George Eliot is seriously at fault as a poet, however much she may be
commended as a teacher and reformer. Perhaps the truest piece of poetic
work she did was _Agatha_, in which, however, there is a greater reliance
than in most of her poems, on the accepted interpretations of spiritual
beliefs. In portraying the trust, childlike and simple, of an old woman,
and in endeavoring to realize the poetic elements of that trust and
simplicity, she was very effective. In such work as this she would have
been much more successful, from the strictly poetic point of view, than she
has been, if she had not attempted to give her theories a clothing in
verse. In her "Brother and Sister" she was also very successful, but
especially so in the "Two Lovers." There is an exquisite charm and power in
some of these minor poems. Where the heart was free, and the intellect was
not dominant and insistent on the importance of its theories, there was
secured a genuine poetic beauty. There is true poetry in these lines:
Two lovers by a moss-grown spring:
They lean soft cheeks together there,
Mingled the dark and sunny hair,
And heard the wooing thrushes sing.
Oh budding time!
Oh love's blest prime!
Two wedded from the portal stept:
The bells made happy carrollings,
The air was soft as passing wings,
White petals on the pathway slept.
Oh pure-eyed bride!
Oh tender pride!
There is a beauty and majesty in the poem on subjective immortality which
is likely to make it, as it has already become, the one popular poem among
all she wrote. There is a stimulus, enthusiasm and abandon about it which
is attained but seldom in her other verses. The love of humanity, its
passionate longing to sacrifice self for the good of all, is acceptable to
much of the thought and purpose of the present time; and its spirit of
sacrifice is one which may commend it to all earnest souls. In the more
extended poems there is genuine accomplishment just in proportion as the
leading purpose was artistic rather than philosophic or moral.
Difficult as it was for a successful novelist to secure applause as a poet,
George Eliot overcame the distrust of her admirers and gained also a not
unmerited place as a poet. Her verse has been a real addition to her work,
and is likely to command an increasing interest in the future. That it is
not always successful from the merely artistic point of view, that it is
not to be placed by the side of the best poetry of the time, is no reason
why it will not appeal to many minds and enlist its own company of
admirers. Next after the universal poets are those who appeal to a select
circle and charm a particular class of minds. Among these George Eliot will
stand as one of the foremost and one of those most worthy of homage. As the
poet of positivism, she will long delight those in sympathy with her
teachings. It would be extravagant praise to call her a second Lucretius,
and yet that which has given the Roman author his place among poets will
also give George Eliot rank in the same company. With all his merits as a
poet, it has not been his poetic power, or his love of nature, or his worth
as an interpreter of human nature, which has given Lucretius his reputation
as a poet. With real poetic power,--for he would have been a much smaller
man without this,--he combined a philosophic mind and a daring genius for
speculation. The poetry gave charm and ideal grandeur to the speculations,
and the philosophy made the poetry full of meaning and earnest intellectual
purpose. He read life and nature with a keener eye and a more profound
penetration than others of his time; he tried to grasp the secret of the
universe, and because of it he left behind the touch of a strong mind. In
some such way as this, George Eliot's poetry is likely to be read in the
future. As poetry merely, it cannot take high rank; but for the sake of its
philosophy, which is conceived as a poet would conceive it, there is
promise that its future is to be one that is lasting. Even for poetry there
must be thought, and the larger, profounder it is the better for the
poetry, if it is imaginatively conceived and expressed. It is not thought,
or even philosophy, which annuls poetry, but want of ideal and creative
insight. To Goethe, Wordsworth or Browning there was a gain by enlargement
of intellectual materials, but these were suffused in true poetic fire, and
came forth a new creation. In so far as George Eliot has attained this
result is she a poet, and is she sure of the future suffrages of those who
accept her philosophy. At the least, her admirers must rejoice at the
enlarged range of expression she secured by the use of the poetic form.
IX.
PHILOSOPHIC ATTITUDE.
George Eliot was pre-eminently a novelist and a poet; but she is also the
truest literary representative the nineteenth century has yet afforded of
its positivist and scientific tendencies. What Comte and Spencer have
taught in the name of philosophy, Tyndall and Haeckel in the name of
science, she has applied to life and its problems. Their aims, spirit and
tendencies have found in her a living embodiment, and re-appear in her
pages as forms of genius, as artistic creations. They have experimented,
speculated, elaborated theories of the universe, drawn out systems of
philosophy; but she has reconstructed the social life of man through her
creative insight. What they mean, whither they lead, is not to be
discovered nearly so plainly in their books as in hers. She is their
interpreter through that wonderful insight, genius and creative power which
enabled her to see what they could not themselves discover,--the effect of
their teachings on man as an individual and as a social being.
Whoever would know what the agnostic and evolution philosophy of the time
has to teach about man, his social life, his moral responsibilities, his
religious aspirations, should go to the pages of George Eliot in preference
to those of any other. The scientific spirit, the evolution philosophy,
live in her pages, reveal themselves there in all their strength and in all
their weakness. She was a thinker equal to any of those whose names stand
forth as the representatives of the philosophy she accepted, she was as
competent, as they to think out the problems of life and to interpret
social existence in accordance with their theories of man and nature.
Competent to grasp and to interpret the positive philosophy in all its
details and in all its applications, she also had that artistic spirit of
reconstruction which enabled her to apply to life what she held in theory.
Along with the calm philosophic spirit which thinks out "the painful riddle
of the earth," she had the creative spirit of the artist which delights in
portraying life in all its endeavors, complexities and consequences. She
not only accepted the theory of hereditary transmission as science has
recently developed it, and as it has been enlarged by positivism into a
shaping influence of the past upon the present, but she made this law vital
with meaning as she developed its consequences in the lives of her
characters. To her it was not merely a theory, but a principle so pregnant
with meaning as to have its applications in every phase of human
experience. Life could not be explained without it; the thoughts, deeds and
aspirations of men could be understood only with reference to it; much that
enters into human life of weal and woe is to be comprehended only with
reference to this law. In regard to all the other evolution problems and
principles her knowledge was as great, her insight as clear, and her
constructive use of them as original.
A new theory of life and the universe may be intellectually accepted as
soon as its teachings are comprehended; but the absorption of that theory
into the moral tissues, so that it becomes an active and constant impulse
and motive in feeling and conduct, is a long and difficult process. It
takes generations before it can associate itself with the instinctive
impulses of the mind. It is one thing to accept the theory of universal law
as an intellectual explanation of the sequences of phenomena, but it is
quite another to be guided by that theory in all the most spontaneous
movements of feeling, conscience and thought. A few minds are able to make
such a theory at once their own by virtue of genius of a very instinctive
and subtle order; but for the great majority of mankind this result can
only be reached after generations of instruction. The use made of such
theories by the poets and novelists is a sure test of their popular
acceptance. When the poets accept such a theory, and naturally express
themselves in accordance with its spirit, the people may soon feel and
think according to its meaning.
The theory of evolution will not easily adjust the human mind to its
conclusions and methods. It is therefore very remarkable that George Eliot,
the contemporary of Comte, Spencer, Darwin, Lewes and Tyndall, should be
able to give a true literary expression to their speculations. She has not
only been able to follow these men, to accept their theories and to
understand them in all their implications and tendencies, but she has so
absorbed these theories into her mind, and so made them a part of all its
processes, that she has painted life thoroughly in accordance with their
spirit. Should the teachings of the evolutionists of to-day be finally
accepted, and after a few generations become the universally received
explanations of life and the universe, it is not likely any poet or
novelist will more genuinely and entirely express their spirit than George
Eliot has done. The evolutionary spirit and ways of looking at life became
instinctive to her; she saw life and read its deepest experiences wholly in
the light shed by this philosophy. For this reason her writings are of
great value to those who would understand the evolution philosophy in its
higher phases.
George Eliot accepted the intellectual conclusions of evolution, and the
outline thus afforded she filled in with feeling and poetry. She
interpreted the pathos, the tragedy, the aspirations of life in the light
of this philosophy. Accepting with a bold and undismayed intellect the
implications and consequences of evolution, rejecting or abating no least
portion of it, she found in it a place for art, poetry and religion; and
she tried to show how it touches and moulds and uplifts man. She shrank
from nothing which would enable her to reveal how man is to live in such a
universe as she believed in; she saw all its hardness, cruelty, anguish and
mystery, and resolutely endeavored to show how these enter into and help to
form his destiny. In doing this she followed the lead of the positivists in
the acceptance of feeling as the basis and the true expression of man's
inner life. The emotional life is made the essential life; and all its
phases of manifestation in art, poetry and religion are regarded as of
great importance. George Eliot viewed the higher problems of life from this
point of view, giving to the forms in which the emotional side of man's
nature is expressed a supreme importance. Religion, as the response of
feeling to the mystery of existence, occupied a most important place in her
philosophy. That her interpretation of the emotional elements of life is
the true one, that she has discovered their source or their real ideal
significance, may well be doubted; but there is every reason for believing
that she realized their great value, and she certainly tried in an earnest
spirit to make them helpful in the life of ideal beauty and truthfulness.
All that agnostic science and the evolution philosophy had to teach, George
Eliot accepted, its doctrine of descent, its new psychology, and its
theories of society and human destiny. Its doctrine of experience, its
ethical theories, were equally hers. Yet into her interpretation of
existence went a woman's heart, the widest and tenderest sympathy, and a
quick yearning purpose to do what good she could in the world. She saw with
the lover's eyes, motherhood revealed itself in her soul, the child's trust
was in her heart. The new philosophy she applied to life, revealed its
relations to duty, love, sorrow, trial and death. To her it had a deep
social meaning, a vital connection with the heart, its hopes and its
burdens, and for her it touched the spiritual content of life with reality.
It was in this way she became the truest interpreter of the evolution
philosophy, the best apostle of the ethics taught by agnostic science. She
not only speculated, she also felt and lived. Philosophy was to her more
than an abstract theory of the universe; into it entered a tender sympathy
for all human weakness, a profound sense of the mystery of existence, and a
holy purpose to make life pure and true to all she could reach. This larger
comprehension gives a new significance to her interpretation of evolution.
It makes it impossible that this philosophy should be fully understood
without a study of her books.