Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1880-12-24
GEORGE ELIOT.

100 ~CN~ - HO~~~~~-N--
of the world Il cannot in her case, as in
that of several authors who have died in
the maturity of their powers, be assumed
that literature has sustained an irreparable
loss, for her latest novels gave evidence
that the style and quality which achieved
her reputation had been SO overlaid with
the deductions of subtle philosophy as to
have lost their chief interest for the pub
lc In this connection it is in order to
express the opinion that her association
with George Lewes seriously injured her
literary character. He was born meta
physician, and the researches to which his
latter years were devoted, and which
find expression in his unfinished work
entitled Problems of Life and Mind, :"
appear to have been so fully absorbed
by his companion that in writing
Daniel Deronda, and still more in her
last work, 'sTbeophrastus Such, " the vein
of speculative thought quite frequently
clogged the flow of the story to the extinc.
ton of interest. 1t was the fashion TO
praise everything George Eliot wrote, and
! so ''Daniel Deronda met with suffi-
GENTLY cordial reception both from the
critics and the public. But it may be
doubted whether many readers ever laid
down the book without feeling that they
had been inveigled into the study of meta
physics under the guise of fiction, and
that both the fiction and the philosophy
would have been better had they been kept
apart. To understand the reputation of
George Eliot, and to appreciate her real
power, we must set aside these later crea-
tions of her wearying brain, and turn to
her earlerworks. Its here, in the charming
'Scenes from Clerical Life" in "Adam
Bede, The Mill on the Floss, and &C Rom
ola, that we find her at her best. Middle
march " is no doubt an excellently written
novel, but even here are to be traced the
indications of that new and more pro.
found line of thought which, however
precious to the few, will still for a long
time to come be "caviare to the gen
eral." In the whole range of English lit
erature We can think OF but one short story
worthy to be compared with George Eliot's
"Silas Mariner" and "Janet's Repent
ance :" and that one story is the "Vicar of
Wakefield" In "Silas Mariner" how
ever, there is a pathos, a tenderness, a
subtle grace and a suggestiveness, which
are by no means so strongly displayed in
Goldsmith masterpiece. In 'Adam Bede"
the author ventured upon a wider field,
and here she exhibited that wonderful
insight into the springs of character, that
rare faculty of vivifying her impersona-
ticns, which at once marks her work as
that of original genius. 1t was not until
she had published '' Romola, however
one Of the most exquisite and at the same
time powerful novels extant-that the Pc
culiar sadness of her philosophy began to
be recognized. She was a Necessitarian of
the sternest and most Incorporating
type, and he who reads her books with
awakened insight viii perceive how faith
fully yet artistically they illustrate her be-
lief that we are all but puppets driven here
and there by the consequences of constitu-
tional defects which we cannot master, and
that our most thoughtless acts are as likely
as not to lead up to the most tremendous
results.
With the pitiless precision of an snato.
mist, yet with the instructive grace of a
true artist, she portrays human frailty in
all its complex manifestations. She deals
with every passion which sways us, and
exhibits her characters, not as the common
ethics of fiction would represent them,
but as, given such and such traits, they
must have been. a striking illustration
of this occurs in the g Mill on the Floss"
and another in ''Romola" In the catas-
trophe of Maggie and Tom Tulliver, and
in the tragedy of Tito, we feel that if the
sentiment and prejudices of the reader are
deied, yet we are introduced to the neces-
sary end of what has gone before. An
ordinary novelist would have saved Maggie
Tulliver, and perhaps have spared Tito,
but if we desire to know how true was
the artistic judgment of George Eliot in
these cases we have only to turn to
Shakespeare's treatment of Cordelia and
Lear. Some thickwitted adapter OF
Shakespeare to the stage once committed
the enormity of saving these characters,
and closing the play with the happy resto-
ration of Cordelia to her fathers arms.
It was the blunder of tyro. Shakespeare
understood his art, and however our
hearts may bleed at the awful tragedy OF
the old kings death. we are compelled to
echo the touching words of Edgar
Oh, let him pass He hates him
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longerr
The genius of George Eliot, like that OF
Shakespeare, was far above the petty de.
vices of the common novelist. Her aim
was to depict life, not as it might be if all
things were as men wish them, but as il
is. She. was constantly expressing the
mournful conclusion of the Psalmist, that
all is vanity and vexation of spirit. In
her stories weakness was as fatal as crime,
just as it is in life. Her characters stand
or fall by their own deserts, and she al.
lows them no advantage. It is because OF
this stern realism that her plots strike us
as being SO terribly genuine. Her descrip-
tive powers, her brilliant wit, her mastery
of provincial manners and ways of thought,
all lend fascination to her pages. We are
not concerned with her private life, which
we may be sure had its suficiency of sor-
row, for true genius never yet was happy,
and George Eliot seems to have scorned
conventions almost too fercely for her
own comfort But she has had no peer in
literature, and she leaves no equal behind