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CRITICAL

MISCELLANIES

BY JOHN MORLEY

Essay 4: The Life of George Eliot

London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT

On Literary Biography 93

As a mere letter-writer will not rank among the famous masters 96

Mr. Myers's Essay 100

Letter to Mr. Harrison 107

Hebrew her favourite study 112

Limitless persistency in application 113

Romola 114

The period of her productions, 1856-1876 124

Mr. Browning 125

An aesthetic not a doctrinal teacher 126

Disliked vehemence 130

Conclusion 131

THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT.

Much biography, perhaps we might say most, is hardly above the level of that 'personal talk,' to which Wordsworth sagely preferred long barren silence, the flapping of the flame of his cottage fire, and the under-song of the kettle on the hob. It would not, then, have much surprised us if George Eliot had insisted that her works should remain the only commemoration of her life. There be some who think that those who have enriched the world with great thoughts and fine creations, might best be content to rest unmarked 'where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,' leaving as little work to the literary executor, except of the purely crematory sort, as did Aristotle, Plato, Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector may easily retort that if it had been sternly acted on, we should have known very very little about Dr. Johnson, and nothing about Socrates.

This is but an ungracious prelude to some remarks upon a book, which must be pronounced a striking success. There will be very little dispute as to the fact that the editor of these memorials of George Eliot has done his work with excellent taste, judgment, and sense. He found no autobiography nor fragment of one, but he has skilfully shaped a kind of autobiography by a plan which, so far as we know, he is justified in calling new, and which leaves her life to write itself in extracts from her letters and journals. With the least possible obtrusion from the biographer, the original pieces are formed into a connected whole 'that combines a narrative of day-to-day life with the play of light and shade which only letters written in serious moods can give.' The idea is a good one, and Mr. Cross deserves great credit for it. We may hope that its success will encourage imitators. Certainly there are drawbacks. We miss the animation of mixed narrative. There is, too, a touch of monotony in listening for so long to the voice of a single speaker addressing others who are silent behind a screen. But Mr. Cross could not, we think, have devised a better way of dealing with his material: it is simple, modest, and effective.

George Eliot, after all, led the life of a studious recluse, with none of the bustle, variety, motion, and large communication with the outer world, that justified Lockhart and Moore in making a long story of the lives of Scott and Byron. Even here, among men of letters, who were also men of action and of great sociability, are not all biographies too long? Let any sensible reader turn to the shelf where his Lives repose; we shall be surprised if he does not find that nearly every one of them, taking the present century alone, and including such splendid and attractive subjects as Goethe, Hume, Romilly, Mackintosh, Horner, Chalmers, Arnold, Southey, Cowper, would not have been all the better for judicious curtailment. Lockhart, who wrote the longest, wrote also the shortest, the Life of Burns; and the shortest is the best, in spite of defects which would only have been worse if the book had been bigger. It is to be feared that, conscientious and honourable as his self-denial has been, even Mr. Cross has not wholly resisted the natural and besetting error of the biographer. Most people will think that the hundred pages of the Italian tour , and some other not very remarkable impressions of travel, might as well or better have been left out.

As was inevitable in one whose mind was so habitually turned to the deeper elements of life, she lets fall the pearls of wise speech even in short notes. Here are one or two:--

'My own experience and development deepen every day my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathise with individual suffering and individual joy.'

'If there is one attitude more odious to me than any other of the many attitudes of "knowingness," it is that air of lofty superiority to the vulgar. She will soon find out that I am a very commonplace woman.'

'It so often happens that others are measuring us by our past self while we are looking back on that self with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.'

The following is one of the best examples, one of the few examples, of her best manner:--

Those who know Mr. Myers's essay on George Eliot will not have forgotten its most imposing passage:--

To many, the relation which was the most important event in George Eliot's life will seem one of those irretrievable errors which reduce all talk of duty to a mockery. It is inevitable that this should be so, and those who disregard a social law have little right to complain. Men and women whom in every other respect it would be monstrous to call bad, have taken this particular law into their own hands before now, and committed themselves to conduct of which 'magnanimity owes no account to prudence.' But if they had sense and knew what they were about, they have braced themselves to endure the disapproval of a majority fortunately more prudential than themselves. The world is busy, and its instruments are clumsy. It cannot know all the facts; it has neither time nor material for unravelling all the complexities of motive, or for distinguishing mere libertinage from grave and deliberate moral misjudgment; it is protecting itself as much as it is condemning the offenders. On all this, then, we need have neither sophistry nor cant. But those who seek something deeper than a verdict for the honest working purpose of leaving cards and inviting to dinner, may feel, as has been observed by a contemporary writer, that men and women are more fairly judged, if judge them we must, by the way in which they bear the burden of an error than by the decision that laid the burden on their lives. Some idea of this kind was in her own mind when she wrote to her most intimate friend in 1857, 'If I live five years longer, the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others' . This urgent desire to balance the moral account may have had something to do with that laborious sense of responsibility which weighed so heavily on her soul, and had so equivocal an effect upon her art. Whatever else is to be said of this particular union, nobody can deny that the picture on which it left a mark was an exhibition of extraordinary self-denial, energy, and persistency in the cultivation and the use of great gifts and powers for what their possessor believed to be the highest objects for society and mankind.

In a letter to Mr. Harrison, which is printed here , George Eliot describes her own method as 'the severe effort of trying to make certain ideas thoroughly incarnate, as if they had revealed themselves to me first in the flesh and not in the spirit.' The passage recalls a discussion one day at the Priory in 1877. She was speaking of the different methods of the poetic or creative art, and said that she began with moods, thoughts, passions, and then invented the story for their sake, and fitted it to them; Shakespeare, on the other hand, picked up a story that struck him, and then proceeded to work in the moods, thoughts, passions, as they came to him in the course of meditation on the story. We hardly need the result to convince us that Shakespeare chose the better part.

On the personal point whether an author should ever hear of himself, George Eliot oddly enough contradicts herself in a casual remark upon Bulwer. 'I have a great respect,' she says, 'for the energetic industry which has made the most of his powers. He has been writing diligently for more than thirty years, constantly improving his position, and profiting by the lessons of public opinion and of other writers' . But if it is true that the less an author hears about himself the better, how are these salutary 'lessons of public opinion' to penetrate to him? 'Rubens,' she says, writing from Munich in 1858 , 'gives me more pleasure than any other painter whether right or wrong. More than any one else he makes me feel that painting is a great art, and that he was a great artist. His are such real breathing men and women, moved by passions, not mincing, and grimacing, and posing in mere imitation of passion.' But Rubens did not concentrate his intellect on his own ponderings, nor shut out the wholesome chastenings of praise and blame, lest they should discourage his inspiration. Beethoven, another of the chief objects of George Eliot's veneration, bore all the rough stress of an active and troublesome calling, though of the musician, if of any, we may say, that his is the art of self-absorption.

Neither of these took any pains to defend their old school fellow; for in childhood's days, according to backwoods custom, he had been the school companion of both. Neither ever attempted to speak a word in his favor. Walter even indorsed the sentiments of his father, while Miss Woodley was silent; but once or twice I fancied I could perceive in that silence some trace of embarrassment, and a desire on her part to escape from discussing the question. Could it be that there was some untold and secret history between this beautiful girl and that bold blackguard, Bradley? The thought pained me as a stranger--it pained me still more as my acquaintance with Miss Woodley assumed the familiarity of friendship.

True, it was only my own imagining; but this was strengthened by an incident that occurred previous to my leaving the plantation, and which in my mind had a sinister signification.

I had been several times down to the creek where the flat-boat was being built--that craft that was to carry the cotton crop more than a thousand miles to market. I could not help taking an interest in this native specimen of naval architecture--a sort of Noah's ark of the Western waters. It was being constructed under the superintendence of a white man, a flat-boat builder by profession.

This person--whose name I had ascertained to be Bill Black--was assisted by a second individual, a white man like himself, who was a regular "Mississippi boatman."

The other "builders" were all black, the carpenters and common hands of the plantation, some of whom were afterward to act as "hands," in the navigation of the craft.

I had taken considerable interest in this ark's construction, though the Tennessee Noah, Mr. Bill Black, seemed anything but inclined to initiate me into the mysteries of his ship-yard. Several times that I had visited it alone, he had treated me with scant civility; and I had set him down as a morose brute. His acolyte, Stinger, was equally uncivil.

The demeanor of these men would have given me a very low opinion of what are called the "white trash" of Tennessee, but I learnt incidentally that neither belonged to the place.

They were, in fact, "boatmen," whose home was here to-day, there to-morrow--wherever a chance of employment might turn up.

One evening Walter Woodley was absent when wanted by his sister for some purpose that required his presence upon the premises. Several messengers had been sent forth to find him.

Fancying he might be down at the creek, where the flat-builders were employed, and having nothing better to do, I sauntered in that direction to summon him. The place was half a mile from the house, and on the land formerly possessed by the Bradleys.

On reaching it, I found no one in the "ship-yard." It was after sunset, and the workmen, both white and black, were gone away for the night. I could see their tools stored in the shed.

As I had come on the wrong track to find the missing man, there was no reason for my hurrying home.

"He has got there by this time," was my reflection; and lighting a cigar, I strolled slowly back toward the house.

I had not gone far before discovering that speed would have been impossible had I wished making it. The path for the most part ran through a tract of woodland--huge trees thickly set--the heavy bottom timber of the creek. The twilight I had left behind me in the cleared space about the boat-yard, was no longer visible. Under the trees it was dark as the inside of a cave, only a little illuminated by the phosphorescent coruscation of the fire-flies, or "lightning-bugs," as the Tennesseeans term them.

Instead of guiding me, these animated torches, with their fitful, unsteady sparkle, only rendered the track more deceptive, and I was compelled to proceed with circumspection, now groping my way among the tree-trunks, and now stooping to make sure of the path, by the glow of my cigar.

TWO STRANGE TALKERS.

I had got about half-way to the plantation-house, and nearly clear of the timber, when I heard voices, as of two men engaged in conversation. This it turned out to be--two men upon the same path I myself trod, but coming from the opposite direction.

They appeared to be making way faster than I--no doubt from being more familiar with the track. Though within less than a score of yards, I could not distinguish their figures, nor they mine, so deep was the obscurity of the place.

I was about to call out, so that we might not run foul of one another, when I recognized one of their voices. It was that of the uncivil boat-builder, Black. The other should be his assistant, Stinger?

Not caring for an encounter with these men--even so much as to saluting them--I stepped aside, intending to let them pass without making my presence known. It was easily done in the darkness, by gliding behind a tree.

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