Burlington weekly free press. [volume] (Burlington, Vt.) 1866-1928, 1877-05-11

If all this be really true; if, in some re.
spects, George Eliot is so unapproachably
great, why is she not the peer Of the few
greatest ones of the earth,-of Homer, OF
Dante, of Shakespeare, or even of Goeth? II
is largely because she is not, as they each
were, before everything else, an artist. She
lacks the artistic sense, and SO she never
knows when to stop Her ideas are so many,
and her facility OF expression SO great, that
she cannot resist writing down everything
| that comes to her. Singular omission in a
woman-the Beautiful is not supreme with
her. She has no feeling for form, no instinct
| for proportion. Hence her work is not sculp-
| turesque; it is panoramic rather, and IN a
hundred years from now it is probable that
people Will have no time to read her. Haw-
thorne, on the contrary, was an artist In the
highest sense of the word. Compare his
notebooks with his finished work, and see
how severe he was with himself, how disci-
plined. His conceptions stand out like the
chiselled marble. There is not a superhuous
detail, not a stroke too much. And so the
world will never forget him. Not for a day,
but for all time will he be read, and by an
overwhelming circle of adorers
In the second place, from the feminine
standpoint George Eliot is not a thorough
woman, for she shares the foible which be-
longs peculiarly to English women, of being
obliged to feel they are initiating men before
they can have any self-respect. In England,
the fashionable women go into dogs and
horses, into hunting and betting, because
men do, and the intellectual women lean to
radicalism and scepticism for the same reason.
George Eliots nom de plume is a mans name,
and since she made her reputation she seems
to be aiming not SO much TO be loved by the
common heart of humanity as to be admired
by its intellectual heads. She strides along,
the easy peer of the distinguished thinkers
of the time as if TO show them how much
farther and freer she can step than other wo-
men. And she is indeed colossal, but by that
very fact she is deprived of the subtle femi-
nine charm. Instead of being captivating
she is formidable. She does not 'bear her
weight of learning lightly like a flower One
has TO take her books by the daily dose, as
one does Hallam's Constitutional Histories.
There is nothing like them. They are an
education in themselves, but they are abso-
lutely exhausting. Yet woman is very wo-
man not only as she is true, but also as she is
fascinating, and thing is perfect as a work
of art in proportion 1t is thing of delight
and not of labor. When one takes up n tale
of Jane Austen's, one cannot lay 1t down
until it is finished but book of George
Eliot's is such demand upon the strength
that one must lay it down in order to recuper-
ate. In short, George Eliot has made the
mistake of the woman suffragists in thinking
there is no way OF being equal except by do
ing the same things equally well; whereas,
there is a more triumphant equality in doing
other things better.
Another non-womanly thing about George
Eliot is her coldness her Lldse dispassionate-
ness. Hers is not the vital warmth which
comes from living feeling. Never were there
such amazing powers of observation, of men,
ory, of re-combination. She is a mirror in
full daylight which reflects back with abso-
lutte truth all the personages that pass before
it But how gray and uncompromising a
mirror in daylight often is! 1t is too real to
be picturesque. And so George Eliot. She
filings over nothing that eight that never
WAS on sea or land. the Transforming glow
of ardent genius She is not of the seraph-
i'm who "burn and sing" but of the cheru-
BIN who shine and sing" Unless, perhaps,
in the most splendid and also the most ap-
pealing of her creations, Maggie Tulliver,
she lives herself in none of her characters.
Consequently neither do her readers live in
them. They remain external to us as they
are to her. This lack of intensity, moreover,
prevents her:from exercising the highest func-
ton of the imagination. She cannot project
upon her canvas an ideal figure. Mirah is
intended to be such figure, but she is sim
ply maiSe. Compare her with either of the
two heroines in Charles Auchester, if you
would see the difference between poetic and
a Photographic genius. George Eliot never
gets beyond terra firma. She is never IRA
tional, and never musical.
Finally, George Eliot from the moral stand
point. The moral inculcated i'll all her books
Is the faithful fulfilling of inherited or i'm
POSED responsibility, the necessity of high
loyalty to ones own traditions, to ones own
rnce, 10 ones own class.
But never was there II more conspicuous
example of disloyalty to her own rage and to
her own class than George Eliot herself. This
is the age of the awakening of womanhood
to self-consciousness through education.
Whether wisely in their methods or the re-
verse, women are struggling to find out what
they are, what they want and of what they
are capable. And they are doing it on the
grand scale. The ferment is universal. They
are making their experiments, their mistakes,
their successes, all the time, and in every
civilized land Now George Eliot belongs to
the class which is doing nll this, To the
class of educated women, and she is herself
the most magnificent success of that class.
But throughout her books she never gives II
helping hand to the aspirations and effort of
her fellows 10y an intimaton. She merely
paints, in nearly every one, some splendid
woman almost MS exceptionally endowed as
herself, and then makes her, ms regards any
achievement whatever, II failure. | think
that no woman who is trying to do anything
can draw aught but despair tor herself out of
George Eliot's novels. They only echo what,
probably, her own sad heart IL always telling
her, that if she has not found the domestic
happiness she wants she had better live out
q. bod
for nothing else is really worth striving for.
But do gifted women owe nothing to their
Maker or to each other, Would the world
have lost nothing had George Eliot devoted
herself to economy and housekeeping sure
ly she has not lived for the affections alone,
and her own glorious trIumphs might have
impelled her to give women. IN some one OF
her characters, the generous hope that they
too might succeed in some noble ann outside
the intimate delights and PAINS OF the family
circle | insist that Gwendolen,iu for instance,
po,ld have made a most exquisite and iascIu-
ating actress, and Herr klesmer was simply
an arrogant German egotlst not TO see 1t, and
30 ruin her life for her
But George Eliot is not only an educated
woman. She is an Englishwomnn, and,
therefore, according to herself, she is bound
by the traditions of her own race. Now If
the English as nation, have been true TO
ANYTHING, both in word and deed, ii is to the
Christian religion. They have not, indeed,
been idly trne to it. No race ever has been
idly true to its religion. The Jews never
have. The Mohanmedans never have. But
as much truth and fidelity to II great scheme
of religious faith as nation Is capable oi,
England has displayed; and her statesmen
display it to this day, as the political leaders
of no other intellectual nation dare to do.
And yet, strangest anomaly of all, George
Eliot is a scepticl Her later novels never
mention the name Of Christ AS "A Living