Litchfield enquirer., 1876-09-21
DANIEL DERoNDA, By George Eliot, Pub


 ished by Harper & Brothers. N. Y. Since the death of Charles Dickens no one disputes the first rank among living English novelists with George Eliot. l Those who are old enough to have looked for the forthcoming of the monthly install meets of David Copperfeld and Penden- his may have seen as general an interest manifested in the advent of the magazine lucky enough to print those masterpieces 'as has accompanied the progress of Daniel Deronda through the pages of Harper. Whether this work will prove as popular taken as whole as it has proved taken piece-meal. is question not yet answered by any booksellers return of sales. That it is great work seems generally conced- ed; whether one of the greatest, remains to be settled by those second, third and fourth readings which are the increasing. ly severe tests of the great work of fiction.
 The plot of this book is not in the least sensational. A brilliant, ambitious, sell fish young girl suddenly becomes desti- tute and marr1es middle-aged gentleman as the best means of escape from a very disagreeable position. She soon feds that she has sold herself, and leads life of hateful servitude and intense misery till his death. Her only friend in this distress had been Daniel Deronda, 8 mir l acle of wisdom and unselfshness whom she learned to love, getting nothing but, compassion and the best of advice in re. turn. Deronda, in the meantime, saves the life of young Jewess attempting su1- eide; comes to take peculiar interest in the Jewish race, finds that he is himself A Jew; marries the pretty Jewess; and be- comes so infected with the Jewish fanati- cism of consumptive brother-in-law as to devote his life to the carrying out of wonderfully vague scheme of Jewish Res toration.
 The center of attraction in Daniel De- ronda is Gwendolen Harleth; it's moral, the Discipline of Defeat. In the begin ming Gwendolen is pretty hateful young woman. The spoiled child of. weak mother, beautiful, ambitious, able, she had all the arrogance of career that had never known defeat. Her harsh repulsion of fine young fellow who leased her with love.making, preiudices the reader against her strongly at the outset. Her marriage with Grandcourt, knowing his evil life. and breaking her promise to the unwedded mother of his children, is 80 utterly detestable that nothing short of the genius of George Elliot could have made her endurable after it. Then comes punishment in proportion to her crime. Grandcourt is human lizard selfish, ,ob- stinate, indolent, with wonderful talent for mastery. The subjugation of his high spirited young wife is keen enjoy ment to this creature born and educated to tyranny. He is indeed a wonderful creation. Though unmitigatedly hateful, his character has nothing actively de- monic about it; under the manners of 8 gentleman he hides as hard @ heart as was ever the product of life of selfish indulgence that had smothered whatever germs of nobleness and generosity nature might originally have planted there. So loathsome became the mans person, and so hateful his calculating tyranny, that thoughts of suicide and murder actually began to float through Gwendolen's mind, though her will had become utterly bro- ken before the calm power of her terrible master. The only person who gave her help was Deronda. and of him Grand court soon grew suspicious. Finally, by a lucky accident, Grandcourt was drown ed, Gwendolen looking on passively, and failing to render assistance she afterwards remorsefully thought might have saved his life. Just at this crisis, Deronda was he- sole resource in her first paroxysms of shame and remorse, and aroused an ab- sorbing passion in her beart. Here comes Gwendolen's second great defeat in one momentous year. Deronda takes the Jewess and leaves Gwendolen, though the sympathizing heart of the reader goes out to her, full of confidence in noble, and unselfsh future that will more than re- deem the sad errors of her written history.
 In fact the denouement of Daniel Deron- da IS complete set of against the denoue- ment of Ivanhoe. There, the hero was a ''stick" and left the grand woman of the book for that other stick, Rowena. Here it is the Jew that is the stick, and the Saxon that is the deserted heroine. Gwendolen's letter is even a nobler we'd ding present than the jewels of Rebecca. Still Scott and Mrs. Lewes are both true to nature. Ivanhoe conld no more have married Rebecca in A. D. 1900 than could a Southern planter have married '.lady of color" six centuries later.
 Neither is Deronda at all the man for Gwendolen; and an artist like George FL tot could not allow a connection out of mere weakness of heart that involved something worse than false combination of colors. Furthermore, Gwendolen's dis cipline of defeat was imperfect without that second great disaster. A rather worldly-wise match with Deronda within a short time of Grandcourt's death would have checked that growth of unselfshness in which lay the only hope of developing a fine character from the unpromising ma- terial with which the novelist began. The discipline of defeat is often the one thing needed to complete great charac- ter. Talent in man and beauty in woman often develop into extreme unloveliness, because this discipline comes too late. The belle in early life proverbially sours into the spiteful old maid. Great powers and great success united, breed selfish