The English Novel and the Principle of its Development

  VII.

  Our custom, in these studies, of passing at the earliest possiblemoment from the abstract to the concrete, and of verifying theory byactual experiment, arrives at a sort of beautiful climax andapotheosis as we proceed from the abstract principles formulated inthe last six lectures, to their exquisite concrete and verification inGeorge Eliot.

  At our last meeting we saw that during a period of time which we fixto a point by sweeping the mind from the sixteenth century to themiddle of the eighteenth, the growing personality of man sent outthree new processes, which have remarkably changed and enlarged thewhole form of our individual and social structure.

  I have found it highly useful in more than one connection to acquire aclear notion of these three processes by referring them all to acommon physical _concept_ of direction. For example: we may withprofit construct a diagram in which it shall appear that at therenaissance period mentioned the three great and distinctive newpersonal relations which man established for himself were (1) arelation upward,

  unknown (Music)

  Personality ---->[**arrow right] Fellow-man. (The Novel)[**arrow up to "Music"]

  [**arrow down from "Personality"]Nature. (Physical Science.)

  towards the unknown, (2) a relation on our own level, a relationtowards our equal,--that is towards our fellow man, and (3) a relationtowards our inferior,--in the sense that the world is for man's use,is made for man,--that is, towards physical nature. We have seen howfrom the beginning of man's history these three relations did notacquire the vividness and energy of personal relations, nor any fixedor developable existence at all until the period mentioned.

  I cannot help expressing earnest regret that the limits of my presentsubject have not allowed me to give any development whatever to thisconception of the actual significance of the Renaissance as asignificance which crystallizing into Music, the Novel, and Science,has left us those as the solid residuum of that movement; and it isnot a mere sentimental generalization but a hard, scientific andunifiable fact that music is the distinctive form in which man's newrelation to what is above him has expressed itself; the novel is thedistinctive form in which man's new personal relation to hisfellow-man has expressed itself; and science is the distinctive formin which man's new personal relation to nature has expressed itself.

  I am perfectly well aware, for instance, that when one thinks of theItalian Opera with its banalities and fleshly frenzies; or when onethinks of the small, low, unmanly sensual lives which so manymusicians have led under our eyes; one may well feel inclined todispute this category to which I have assigned music, and to questionwhether music does belong to this wholly religious sphere. I long tobe able to remind such questioners of the historic fact that music hasbeen brought into the church as the mouthpiece of our worship, not bythe sentimental people but by the sternest reformers and the mostuntheoretical and hard-handed workers: I long to remind them now itis the same Luther who would meet his accusers though ten thousanddevils backed them, that cares most assiduously for the hymns of thechurch, makes them, sings them: how it is the same Puritan who fightswinter and hunger and the savage, that is noted for his sweet songs,and must have his periodic opening of the musical avenue up towardsthe great God: or, passing far back to the times before music wasmusic, and so making the case stronger, I long to remind them of asingle line in a letter from Pliny the younger to Trajan in the year110, which puts before me a dewy morning picture of music andChristian devotion that haunts my imagination--a line in which Plinymentions some people who were in the habit of "meeting on a certainday before daylight and singing a hymn to Christ as to a God": or howin the fourth century the very Ambrosian chant which preceded theGregorian chant is due to the fact that the good Ambrose, Bishop ofMilan, casting about for solace, collects a number of psalm tunes andhymns and appoints them to be sung for the express purpose ofconsoling his people in their afflictions: and coming down to thebirth of modern music, I long to remind these questioners of the nobleand simple devoutness which Palestrina brings into the church worshipwith his music; of the perfect calm creative life of John SebastianBach whose music is so compact of devotion as to have inspired thewell-known declaration that wherever it is played, it makes that placea church; and finally I long to remind them how essential a part ofevery modern church the organ-loft and the choir have come to be--andin full view of the terrible mistakes which these often make, of thescreechy Italian opera music which one hears floating from this orthat church on a Sunday, of the wholly undevout organ music withwhich the unfortunate flippant-minded organist often sends usforth--to declare that music is yet, as we have seen, a new art, thatwe have not really learned the uses of it, much less the scope of it;that indeed not all of us have even yet acquired the physical capacityor ear for it,--and that finally we are at the very threshold of thosesweet applications we may hereafter make of that awful and mysteriouspower in music to take up our yearnings towards the infinite at thepoint where words and all articulate utterance fail, and bear themonward often to something like a satisfactory nearness to their divineobject.

  But all this must be left aside, and we must now pass on to considerthat remarkable writer who for something more than twenty years pasthas been chaining the attention of our English world purely by virtueof her extraordinary endowment as to all three of these relationswhich I have here sketched in diagram--these relations to the growingpersonality of man to that which is above him, or the unknown--to thatwhich is in his level, or his fellow-man; and to that which is beneathhim, or nature--which have resulted respectively in music, the novel,and science.

  If I could be allowed to construct a final text and summary of all theprinciples which have been announced in the preceding lectures, Icould make none more complete than is furnished me by two Englishwomen who have recently been among us, and who, in the quietest wayhave each made an epoch, not only in literature but in life. These twowomen are Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot; and althoughour studies now lie more immediately with the latter, I shall find afrequent delight as we go on in comparing her printed words with thoseof Mrs. Browning, and in showing through what diverse forms ofpersonality--so diverse as to be often really complementary to eachother--these two have illustrated the doctrines I have hithertoexpounded.

  In beginning to get some clear view of the actual living personalitywhich I have hitherto designated as George Eliot, one is immediatelystruck with the fact that it has enjoyed more of what Jack Falstaffwould call a commodity of good names than falls to the lot of mostmortals. As one rehearses these names it is curious also to reflectwhat a different train of associations each one suggests. It is hardto believe that Marian Evans, Amos Barton (for when the editor ofBlackwood's was corresponding with her about her first unsignedmanuscript, which was entitled, _The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. AmosBarton_, I find him addressing her as "My dear Amos"), George Eliot,Mrs. Lewes, and Mrs. Cross are one and the same person. Amid all theseappellations I find myself most strongly attracted towards that ofGeorge Eliot. This was the name which she chose for herself; it wasunder this name that she made her great successes; it was by this namethat she endeared herself to all who love great and faithful work; andsurely--if one may paraphrase Poe--the angels call her George Eliot.Since therefore we are mainly interested in Marian Evans, or Mrs.Lewes, or Mrs. Cross, just in so far as they bear intimate relationsto George Eliot, I find myself drawn, in placing before you suchsketch as I have been able to make of this remarkable personage, tobegin with some account of the birth of the specific George Eliot, andhaving acquired a view of the circumstances attending that event, tolook backward and forward from that as a central point at the originand life of Marian Evans on the one hand, and of Mrs. Lewes and Mrs.Cross on the other.

  On a certain night in the autumn of 1856, the editor of _Blackwood'sMagazine_, was seated in an apartment of his own house, reading amanuscript which he had lately received from
London, called _The SadFortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton_. About 11 o'clock in the eveningThackeray, who had been staying with him and had been out to dinner,entered the room, and the editor remarked, "Do you know I think I havelighted upon a new author who is uncommonly like a first-classpassenger?"

  Hereupon he read to Thackeray a passage from the manuscript which heheld in his hand. We are able to identify this passage, and it seemsinteresting to reproduce it here, not only as a specimen of the kindof matter which was particularly striking to the editor of a greatmagazine twenty-five years ago, but as about the first tangibleutterance of the real George Eliot. The passage occurs early in thesecond chapter of the story. In the first chapter we have had somedescription of the old church and the existing society in Shepperton"twenty-five years ago," which dating from 1856 would show us thatvillage about the year 1830-31. In the second chapter we areimmediately introduced to the Rev. Amos Barton, and the page or twowhich our editor read to Thackeray was this:

  Look at him as he winds through the little churchyard! The silver light that falls aslant on church and tomb, enables you to see his slim black figure, made all the slimmer by tight pantaloons. He walks with a quick step, and is now rapping with sharp decision at the vicarage door. It is opened without delay by the nurse, cook, and housemaid, all at once--that is to say, by the robust maid-of-all work, Nanny; and as Mr. Barton hangs up his hat in the passage, you see that a narrow face of no particular complexion--even the small-pox that has attacked it seems to have been of a mongrel, indefinite kind--with features of no particular shape, and an eye of no particular expression, is surmounted by a slope of baldness gently rising from brow to crown. You judge him, rightly, to be about forty. The house is quiet, for it is half-past ten, and the children have long been gone to bed. He opens the sitting-room door, but instead of seeing his wife, as he expected, stitching with the nimblest of fingers by the light of one candle, he finds her dispensing with the light of a candle altogether. She is softly pacing up and down by the red fire-light, holding in her arms little Walter, the year-old baby, who looks over her shoulder with large wide-open eyes, while the patient mother pats his back with her soft hand, and glances with a sigh at the heap of large and small stockings lying unmended on the table.

  She was a lovely woman--Mrs. Amos Barton; a large, fair, gentle Madonna, with thick, close chestnut curls beside her well rounded cheeks, and with large, tender, short-sighted eyes. The flowing line of her tall figure made the limpest dress look graceful, and her old frayed black silk seemed to repose on her bust and limbs with a placid elegance and sense of distinction, in strong contrast with the uneasy sense of being no fit, that seemed to express itself in the rustling of Mrs. Farquhar's _gros de Naples_. The caps she wore would have been pronounced, when off her head, utterly heavy and hideous--for in those days even fashionable caps were large and floppy; but surmounting her long, arched neck, and mingling their borders of cheap lace and ribbon with her chestnut curls, they seemed miracles of successful millinery. Among strangers she was shy and tremulous as a girl of fifteen; she blushed crimson if any one appealed to her opinion; yet that tall, graceful, substantial presence was so imposing in its mildness, that men spoke to her with an agreeable sensation of timidity.... I venture to say Mrs. Barton would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps have had in your eye for her--a man with sufficient income and abundant personal eclat. Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.

  * * * * *

  "I wish we could do without borrowing money, and yet I don't see how we can. Poor Fred must have some new shoes; I couldn't let him go to Mrs. Bond's yesterday because his toes were peeping out, dear child; and I can't let him walk anywhere except in the garden. He must have a pair before Sunday. Really, boots and shoes are the greatest trouble of my life. Everything else one can turn and turn about, and make old look like new; but there's no coaxing boots and shoes to look better than they are."

  Mrs. Barton was playfully undervaluing her skill in metamorphosing boots and shoes. She had at that moment on her feet a pair of slippers which had long ago lived through the prunella phase of their existence, and were now running a respectable career as black silk slippers, having been neatly covered with that material by Mrs. Barton's own neat fingers.

  Wonderful fingers those! they were never empty; for if she went to spend a few hours with a friendly parishioner, out came her thimble and a piece of calico or muslin, which before she left, had become a mysterious little garment with all sorts of hemmed ins and outs. She was even trying to persuade her husband to leave off tight pantaloons; because if he would wear the ordinary gun-cases, she knew she could make them so well that no one would suspect the tailor.

  But by this time Mr. Barton has finished his pipe, the candle begins to burn low, and Mrs. Barton goes to see if Nanny has succeeded in lulling Walter to sleep. Nanny is that moment putting him in the little cot by his mother's bedside; the head with its thin wavelets of brown hair, indents the little pillow; and a tiny, waxen, dimpled fist hides the rosy lips, for baby is given to the infantine peccadillo of thumb-sucking. So Nanny could now join in the short evening prayer, and all go to bed. Mrs. Barton carried up stairs the remainder of her heap of stockings, and laid them on a table close to her bedside, where also she placed a warm shawl, removing her candle, before she put it out, to a tin socket fixed at the head of her bed. Her body was weary, but her heart was not heavy, in spite of Mr. Woods the butcher, and the transitory nature of shoe-leather; for her heart so overflowed with love, she felt sure she was near a fountain of love that would care for her husband and babes better than she could foresee; so she was soon asleep. But about half-past five o'clock in the morning, if there were any angels watching round her bed--and angels might be glad of such an office--they saw Mrs. Barton rise up quietly, careful not to disturb the slumbering Amos, who was snoring the snore of the just; light her candle, prop herself upright with the pillows, throw the warm shawl round her shoulders, and renew her attack on the heap of undarned stockings. She darned away until she heard Nanny stirring, and then drowsiness came with the dawn; the candle was put out, and she sank into a doze. But at nine o'clock she was at the breakfast-table busy cutting bread and butter for five hungry mouths, while Nanny, baby on one arm, in rosy cheeks, fat neck, and night-gown, brought in a jug of hot milk and water.

  Although Thackeray was not enthusiastic, the editor maintained hisopinion and wrote the author that the manuscript was "worthy thehonors of print and pay," addressing the author as "My dear Amos."Considerable correspondence followed in which the editor was free inventuring criticisms. The author had offered this as the first of aseries to be called "_Scenes from Clerical Life_;" but no others ofthe series were yet written and the editor was naturally desirous tosee more of them before printing the first. This appears to have madethe author extremely timid, and for a time there was doubt whether itwas worth while to write the remaining stories. For the author'sencouragement, therefore, it was determined to print the first storywithout waiting to see the others; and accordingly in _Blackwood'sMagazine_ for January, 1857, the story of _Amos Barton_ was printed.

  This stimulus appears to have had its effect; and after the Januarynumber, each succeeding issue of _Blackwood's Magazine_ contained aninstalment of the series known as _Scenes of Clerical Life_, until itwas concluded in the number for November, 1857; the whole seriesembracing the three stories of _Amos Barton_, _Mr. Gilfil'sLove-Story_ and _Janet's Repentance_. It was only while the second ofthese--_Mr. Gilfil's Love-Story_--was appearing in the Magazine th
atour George Eliot was born; for it was at this time that the editor ofthe Magazine was instructed to call the author by that name.

  The hold which these three stories immediately took upon all thinkingpeople was remarkable. In January, 1858, that is two months after thelast instalment of _Janet's Repentance_--I find Charles Dickenswriting this letter:

  "MY DEAR LONGFORD--

  "Will you--by such roundabout ways and methods as may present themselves--convey this note of thanks to the author of 'Scenes of Clerical Life,' whose two first stories I can never say enough of, I think them so truly admirable. But, if those two volumes or a part of them, were not written by a woman--then should I begin to believe that I am a woman myself.

  Faithfully Yours Always,

  CHARLES DICKENS."

  It is especially notable to find that the editor of the Magazinehimself completely abandoned all those conservative habits of theprudent editor which have arisen from a thousand experiences of therapid failures of this and that new contributor who seemed at firstsure to sweep the world, and which always teach every conductor of agreat magazine at an early stage of his career to be extremely guardedin his expressions to new writers however promising they may appear.This traditional guardedness seems to have been completely swept awayby these stories; Mr. Blackwood writes letter after letter to GeorgeEliot, full of expressions that the hackneyed editor would ordinarilyconsider extravagant: and finally in a letter concerning thepublication in book-form of the magazine-stories: "You will recollect... my impression was that the series had not lasted long enough inthe Magazine to give you a hold on the general public, although longenough to make your literary reputation. Unless in exceptional cases,a very long time often elapses between the two stages ofreputation--the literary and the public. Your progress will be _sure_,if not so quick as we could wish."

  Before examining these stories, it seems a pleasant method of pursuingour account of the George Eliot thus introduced, to go forward alittle to the time when a curious and amusing circumstance resulted inrevealing her actual name and sex. Thus we seem to be making thislovely star rise before us historically as it rose before the world. Ihave just spoken of the literary interest which the stories excited inMr. Blackwood. The personal interest appears to have been as great,and he was at first very anxious to make the acquaintance of his newcontributor in the flesh. He was given to understand, however, thatthe contributor wished to remain obscure, for the present, and heforbore further inquiries with scrupulous delicacy. It happened,however, that presently the authorship of _Scenes of Clerical Life_was claimed for another person, and the claim soon assumedconsiderable proportions. Certain residents about Nuneaton, inWarwickshire--where in point of fact George Eliot had been born andbrought up--felt sure they recognized in the stories of Amos Bartonand Mr. Gilfil portraits of people who had actually lived in thatcountry, and began to inquire what member of their community couldhave painted these portraits. Presently, while the stories wererunning in the magazine, a newspaper published in the Isle of Manboldly announced that a certain Mr. Liggins, of Nuneaton, was theirauthor. The only claim to literary power Mr. Liggins had, it seems,lay in the circumstance that he had run through a fortune atCambridge; and in fact he himself denied the charge at first. Butimmediately upon the heels of _Scenes of Clerical Life_ appeared _AdamBede_, and the honor of that great work was so seductive that for somereason or other--whether because the reiteration of his friends hadpersuaded him that he actually did write the works, in some such wayas it is said that a man may tell a lie so often and long that he willfinally come to believe it himself, or for whatever other reason--itseems that Mr. Liggins so far compromised himself that, without activedenial by him, a friendly clergyman down in Warwickshire sent a letterto the _Times_, formally announcing Liggins as the author of _Scenesof Clerical Life_ and of _Adam Bede_. Hereupon appeared a challengefrom the still mythical George Eliot, inviting Mr. Liggins to make afair test of his capacity by writing a chapter or two in the style ofthe disputed works. The Blackwoods were thickly besieged with lettersfrom various persons earnestly assuring them that Liggins was theauthor. To add to the complications, it was given out that Liggins waspoor, so that many earnest persons wrote to the Blackwoods declaringthat so great a genius ought not to be hampered by want, and liberallyoffering their purses to place him in such condition that he mightwrite without being handicapped by care. It seems to have beenparticularly troublesome to the Blackwoods to prevent money from beingmisapplied in this way--for they were satisfied that Liggins was notthe author; and they were made all the more careful by some previousexperiences of a similar kind; and in one of Blackwood's letters toGeorge Eliot he comically exclaims that "some years ago a rascalnearly succeeded in marrying a girl with money on the strength ofbeing the author of a series of articles in the Magazine."

  Thus what with the public controversy between the Liggins andanti-Liggins parties--for many persons appear to have remained firmlypersuaded that Liggins was the true author--and what with the morelegitimate stimulus excited by the confirmatory excellence of _AdamBede_, the public curiosity was thoroughly aroused, so that evenbefore _The Mill on the Floss_ appeared in 1860, it had become prettygenerally known who "George Eliot" was.

  Here, then, would seem to be a fitting point for us to pause a momentand endeavor to construct for ourselves some definite figure of thereal flesh-and-blood creature who, up to this time, had remained themere literary abstraction called George Eliot.

  It appeared that her real name was Marian Evans, and that she was thedaughter of a respectable land surveyor, who had married and settledat Nuneaton, in Warwickshire. Here she was born in November, 1820; andit seems pleasant to reflect that but a few miles off in the samecounty of Warwickshire was the birthplace of Shakspeare, whose placeamong male writers seems more nearly filled by Marian Evans or GeorgeEliot among female writers than by any other woman, so that we havethe greatest English man and the greatest English woman born, thoughtwo centuries and a half apart in time, but a few miles apart inspace.

  Here, among the same thick hedges and green fields of the fair EnglishMidlands with which Shakspeare was familiar, Marian Evans lived forthe first large part of her life. Perhaps a more quiet, uneventfulexistence as to external happenings could hardly be imagined; and thatMarian Evans was among the quietest of the quiet residents there seemscunningly enough indicated if we remember that when the good people ofNuneaton first began to suspect that some resident of that region hadbeen taking their portraits in _Scenes of Clerical Life_, none seemedto think for a moment of a certain Marian Evans as possibly connectedwith the matter; and popular suspicion, after canvassing the wholeground, was able to find only one person--to wit, the Mr. Ligginsjust referred to--who seemed at all competent to such work.

  Of these demure, reserved, uneventful years of country existence itis, of course, impossible to lay before you any record; no life ofGeorge Eliot has yet been given to the public. Sometime ago, however,I happened upon a letter of Marian Evans published in an Englishpaper, in which she refers with so much particularity to this portionof her life, that I do not know how we could gain a more vivid andauthentic view thereof than by quoting it here. Specifically, theletter relates to a controversy that had sprung up as to who was theoriginal of the character of Dinah Morris--that beautiful DinahMorris, you will remember in _Adam Bede_--solemn, fragile, strongDinah Morris, the woman-preacher whom I find haunting my imaginationin strange but entrancing unions of the most diverse forms, as if, forinstance, a snow-drop could also be St. Paul, as if a kiss could be agospel, as if a lovely phrase of Chopin's most inward music shouldbecome suddenly an Apocalypse--that rare, pure and strange DinahMorris who would alone consecrate English literature if it had yieldedno other gift to man. It would seem that possibly a dim suggestion ofsuch a character may have been due to a certain aunt of hers,Elizabeth Evans, whom Marian had met in her girlhood; but thissuggestion w
as all; and the letter shows us clearly that the characterof Dinah Morris was almost an entire creation. The letter is asfollows:

  HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1859.

  DEAR SARA:

  I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, what I knew of my aunt, Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six or seven years before he married my mother. There was hardly any intercourse between my father's family, resident in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and our family--few and far between visits of (to my childish feelings) strange uncles and aunts and cousins from my father's far-off native county, and once a journey of my own, as a little child, with my father and mother, to see my uncle William, a rich builder, in Staffordshire--but not my uncle and aunt Samuel, so far as I can recall the dim outline of things--are what I remember of northerly relations in my childhood.

  But when I was seventeen or more--after my sister was married and I was mistress of the house--my father took a journey into Derbyshire, in which, visiting my uncle and aunt Samuel, who were very poor, and lived in a humble cottage at Wirksworth, he found my aunt in a very delicate state of health after a serious illness, and, to do her bodily good, he persuaded her to return with him, telling her that I should be very, very happy to have her with me for a few weeks. I was then strongly under the influence of Evangelical belief, and earnestly endeavoring to shape this anomalous English-Christian life of ours into some consistency with the spirit and simple verbal tenor of the New Testament.

  I was delighted to see my aunt. Although I had only heard her spoken of as a strange person, given to a fanatical vehemence of exhortation in private as well as public, I believed that we should find sympathy between us. She was then an old woman--above sixty--and, I believe, had for a good many years given up preaching. A tiny little woman, with bright, small dark eyes, and hair that had been black, I imagine, but was now gray--a pretty woman in her youth, but of a totally different physical type from Dinah. The difference--as you will believe--was not simply physical; no difference is. She was a woman of strong natural excitability, which, I know, from the description I have heard my father and half-sister give, prevented her from the exercise of discretion under the promptings of her zeal. But this vehemence was now subdued by age and sickness; she was very gentle and quiet in her manners--very loving--and (what she must have been from the very first) a truly religious soul, in whom the love of God and love of man were fused together. There was nothing highly distinctive in her religious conversation. I had had much intercourse with pious Dissenters before. The only freshness I found in our talk, came from the fact that she had been the greater part of her life a Wesleyan; and though she left the society when women were no longer allowed to preach, and joined the new Wesleyans, she retained the character of thought that belongs to the genuine old Wesleyan. I had never talked with a Wesleyan before, and we used to have little debates about predestination, for I was then a strong Calvinist. Here her superiority came out, and I remember now, with loving admiration, one thing which at the time I disapproved. It was not strictly a consequence of her Arminian belief, and at first sight might seem opposed to it,--yet it came from the spirit of love which clings to the bad logic of Arminianism. When my uncle came to fetch her, after she had been with us a fortnight or three weeks, he was speaking of a deceased minister, once greatly respected, who from the action of trouble upon him had taken to small tippling, though otherwise not culpable. "But I hope the good man's in heaven for all that," said my uncle. "Oh, yes," said my aunt, with a deep inward groan of joyful conviction, "Mr. A.'s in heaven--that's sure." This was at the time an offence to my stern, ascetic, hard views--how beautiful it is to me now!

  As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution; and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among the rest, the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass. In her account of the prison scenes, I remember no word she uttered--I only remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital. Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my mind for years on years, as a dead germ, apparently--till time had placed in my mind a nidus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ of "Adam Bede."

  I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and night with my father in the Wirksworth cottage sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to see me--when my father and I were living at Foleshill; then there was some pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not possible you should see as I do how entirely her individuality differed from Dinah's. How curious it seemed to me that people should think Dinah's sermon, prayers and speeches were copied--when they were written with hot tears, as they surged up in my own mind!

  As to my indebtedness to facts of local and personal history of a small kind, connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as facts, and have made use of for my picture, were gathered from such imperfect allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk about old times.

  As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they did say, that Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is the vague, easily satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with misrepresentations of life and character, which they accept as representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach to truth.

  Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you--but I am prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years "Adam Bede" and all that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you.

  Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving MARIAN.

  It is easy to gather from this letter that whilst the existence ofMarian Evans was calm enough externally, her inner life was full ofstirring events--of the most stirring events, in fact which canagitate the human soul for it is evident that she had passed alongsome quite opposite phases of religious belief. In 1851, after avisit to the continent, she goes--where all English writers seem todrift by some natural magic--to London, and fixes her residence there.It is curious enough that with all her clearness of judgment she workshere for five years, apparently without having perceived the vocationfor which her whole natural and acquired outfit had so remarkablyprepar
ed her. We find her translating Spinoza's _Ethics_; not onlytranslating but publishing Feuerbach's _Essence of Christianity_ andStrauss's _Life of Jesus_. She contributes learned essays to theWestminster Review; it is not until the year 1856, when she isthirty-six years old that her first slight magazine story is sent toBlackwood's; and even after his first commendations her timidity anduncertainty as to whether she could succeed in story-writing are sogreat that she almost resolved to give it up. I should regard it asmournful, if I could think it religious to regard anything as mournfulwhich has happened and is not revocable, that upon coming to LondonMarian Evans fell among a group of persons represented by George HenryLewes. If one could have been her spiritual physician at this time onecertainly would have prescribed for her some of those warm influenceswhich dissipate doubt by exposing it to the fierce elemental heats oflove, of active charity. One would have prescribed for her the veryremedy she herself has so wisely commended in _Janet's Repentance_.

  "No wonder the sick room and the lazaretto have so often been a refuge from the tossings of intellectual doubt--a place of repose for the worn and wounded spirit. Here is a duty about which all creeds and philosophers are of one mind; here, at least, the conscience will not be dogged by adverse theory; here you may begin to act without settling one preliminary question. To moisten the sufferer's parched lips through the night-watches, to bear up the drooping head, to lift the helpless limbs, to divine the want that can find no utterance beyond the feeble motion of the hand or beseeching glance of the eye--these are offices that demand no self-questionings, no casuistry, no assent to propositions, no weighing of consequences. Within the four walls where the stare and glare of the world are shut out, and every voice is subdued--where a human being lies prostrate, thrown on the tender mercies of his fellow, the moral relation of man to man is reduced to its utmost clearness and simplicity; bigotry cannot confuse it, theory cannot pervert it, passion, awed into quiescence, can neither pollute nor perturb it."

  Or one might have prescribed for her America where the knottiestsocial and moral problems disappear unaccountably before a certain newenergy of individual growth which is continually conquering new pointsof view from which to regard the world.

  At the time to which we have now brought her history, Marian Evanswould seem to have been a singularly engaging person. She was small instature and her face was what would be called plain here; but she waswidely read, master of several languages, a good talker and listener:and beyond all, every current of testimony runs towards a certainintensity and loving fire which pervaded her and which endowed herwith irresistible magnetic attraction for all sensitive souls thatcame near her. Her love for home matters, and for the spot of earthwhere she had been born, her gentle affection for animals; how theBible and Thomas a Kempis were her favorite books, these and athousand womanly traits I hope to bring out as we study some of hergreater works,--for with all her reputed reserve I find scarcely anywriter so sincerely communicative and so frankly desirous of sympathyon the part of her reader as George Eliot. In the next article I shallask leave to present you with some pictures of the stage at whichEnglish novel-writing has arrived under the recent hands of Scott,Thackeray and Dickens when George Eliot is timidly offering her firstmanuscript to Blackwood's; and I shall then offer some quotationsfrom these first three stories--particularly from _Janet's Repentance_which seems altogether the most important of the three--and shallattempt to show distinctly what were the main new features of wit, ofhumor, of doctrine, and of method which were thus introduced intoliterature, especially in connection with similar features which aboutthis same time were being imparted by Mrs. Browning.

  Meantime, let me conclude by asking you to fix your attention for amoment on this figure of Milly, sweet wife of Amos Barton, going tobed with her unmended basket of stockings in great fatigue, yet ingreat love and trust, and contrast it with that figure of Prometheus,nailed to the Caucasian rock in pain and hate, which formed the firstobject of these studies. What prodigious spiritual distance we haveswept over from the Titan lying down, to unrest, thundering defianceagainst Jove's thunder, as if clashing shield against shield, and thetender-limbed woman whom the simple narrative puts before us in thesewords: "Her body was very weary, but her heart was not heavy ...; forher heart so overflowed with love," &c. Fixing your attention uponthis word "love," and reminding you how, at the close of the lastlecture, we found that the whole movement of the human spirit which wehave traced here as the growth of personality towards theunknown--towards fellow-man--towards nature,--resulting in music, inthe novel, in science--that this whole movement becomes a unity whenwe arrive at the fact that it really imparts a complete change inman's most ultimate conception of things--a change, namely, from theconception of Justice as the organic idea of moral order, a conceptionwhich we have seen Aeschylus and Plato vainly working out to theoutrageous conclusions of Prometheus, of the _Republic_; to theconception of Love as the organic idea of moral order, a conceptionwhich we are just now to see George Eliot working out to thedivinely-satisfactory conclusion of Milly Barton, who conquers withgentle love a world which proved refractory alike to the justice ofJove and the defiance of Prometheus; reminding you, I say, of thisconcurrent change from feeble personality and justice to strongpersonality and love, what an amazing arc of progress we havetraversed in coming from Aeschylus to George Eliot!

  And it is, finally, most interesting to find this change receivingclear expression, for the first time in English literature, in theworks of the two women I have mentioned, Mrs. Browning and GeorgeEliot. In this very autumn, when we have seen the editor of_Blackwood's Magazine_ reading the MS. of George Eliot's first storyto Thackeray, Mrs. Browning is sending _Aurora Leigh_ to print; and,as I shall have frequent occasion to point out, the burden of _AuroraLeigh_ as well as of George Eliot's whole cyclus of characters islove.

  There is a charming scene in the first Act of Bayard Taylor's _PrinceDeukalion_, which, though not extending to the height we have reached,yet very dramatically sums up a great number of ideas which convergetowards it. In this scene Gaea, the Earth, mother of men, isrepresented as tenderly meditating upon her son, man. Near her standsa rose-tree, from one bud of which Love is presently to emerge. Shesays:

  "I change with man, Mother, not more than partner, of his fate. Ere he was born I dreamed that he might be, And through long ages of imperfect life Waited for him. Then vexed with monstrous shapes, That spawned and wallowed in primeval ooze, I lay supine and slept, or dreamed to sleep; And dreamed, or waking felt as in a dream, Some touch of hands, some soft delivering help, And he was there! His faint new voice I heard; His eye that met the sun, his upright tread, Thenceforth were mine! And with him came the palm, The oak, the rose, the swan, the nightingale; The barren bough hung apples to the sun; Dry stalks made harvest: breezes in the woods Then first found music, and the turbid sea First rolled a crystal breaker to the shore. His foot was on the mountains, and the wave Upheld him: over all things huge and coarse There came the breathing of a regal sway, Which bent them into beauty. Order new Followed the march of new necessity, And what was useless, or unclaimed before, Took value from the seizure of his hands."

  In the midst of like thoughts, a bud on a rose which stands by Gaeabursts open, and Eros, the antique god of young love, appears from it.

  GAEA.

  Blithe, tricksome spirit! art thou left alone Of gods and all their intermediate kin The sweet survivor? Yet a single seed, When soil and seasons lend their alchemy, May clothe a barren continent in green.

  EROS.

  Was I born, that I should die? Stars that fringe the outer sky Know me: yonder sun were dim Save my torch enkindle him. Then, when first the primal pair Found me in the twilight air, I was older than their day, Yet to them as young as they. All decrees of fate I spurn; Banishmen
t is my return: Hate and force purvey for me, Death is shining victory.