St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1885-07-26
MISS CLEVELAND'S BOOK.
Nym CrinkIe Discusses the Inherent
Vitality of Her Essays.
nat she Says of George Eliot Con-
Mnctng and Pleasing.

~, ne sale IS unprecedented in the trade.
Inc book will be read by bnndreJS nf
thousands OF people who would never have
nedru o! IL, or hearing would not have
oouSnC IL, mad 1t appeared in the ordinary
course OF publishing events unaided nv the
accidental social position of the author
Ihat lady occupying the place that
MISS Cleveland does should be able to coli
attention freshly to a few general Truths
ana make the great public read with avid
| lty what 1t would otherwise overlook. is
gratifying IN itself. She cannot be said to
| pose as feIOrmer or radical in her work.
III sruth the oook III literature is analogous
to Mr.. Cleveland's status in notifies II
represents the ultimate good sense and con-
servative thought of the people themselves
| In this respect it differs from literature
that forces itself by its aggressive origin
atty upon the attention of the world for
such literature must be little ahead of tbe
thought of the world
a great deal of what Miss Cleveland
says has been said before. We run across
Emerson, Goethe, Schlegel, Cousin. Car
lyle, IN it, digested and diluted. We feel
that the wisdom is not the result of ex-
penence but of reading.
Inc subjects of the nine ESSAYS are the
concrete excuse for great deal of abstract
anu necessarily hackneyed generalizing.
DuI Miss cleveland keeps so evenly and
% ullcoiiSclouSly within the safe lines of
conservatism and makes her circuit sO
easily around her anchorage of peneralIv
accepted premises that one. while robbed
OF the plquancy of danger in reading is
| Election. iAiOl' VI IT,
Inc proposition upon which the ESSAY on
george EI1ot Is based, and which is that
| George Eliot was not a poet but a milo
sophie writer of prose, is one of those COM
Portable foundations upon which it is not
dlihcult to rear the most elaborate rhetori-
cal architecture. The safety of the prop
OSltlOn gives something like an air of per-
Iiidhency 10 Whatever Is built upon it. The
Iact That George Eliot thought at one time
that she was poet and probably I'D to the
END OF that strange mental metempsv-
Ghosts which took place in her had poetic
longlngs and warnings, does not disturb or
weaken the proposition.
AT the threshold of this essay the reader
ana the writer shake hands. There will
not De any disagreement. They set out
WIN mutual condolences. George Eliot was
not poet in the sense that Mrs. Brown
ing was. AT the conclusion of the ESSAY
they are shaking hands vet
| II there exists anywhere a person who
conScientiOuSly believes that George Eliot
was poet-and the possibility of such a
person eXlSting cannot for a moment be
/ doubted when it is remembered DeOnle he
lieve far more incomprehensible things Of
George Elliott there is such a person.
the reading of Miss Cleveland's ESSAY will
not disturb that PERSONS convictions or his
| equanlmity. For while she has woman'a
instructive sense of what is wanting in
George Eliots imaginative work, she has
not the analysts gift to point it out.
Inc general assumption that poetry
must be grounded in belief, and not i'm
agnosticiSm, is truism not worth discuss
ing. But it is worth asking if George
Eliot was not endowed with many of the
gifts that go to make up poet, and to ask
III addition what was the cause of the re-
markabIe change in her mental condition
| that is to be traced by any critic who
reads her, from the Mill ON the Floss to
Daniel DerOnda.
The simple fact is that George EIiot's
intellectual development was at the expense
OF That amlable womanly weakness which
III her earliest imaginative work lent it one
OF It's greatest charms. Her creative fac
ulty waneS as her purely ratiocinatiye
faculty increases.
1t is the marriage of the sensibilities and
the will i'll the individual as in society that
prOcreateS.
The interesting question therefore is one
that relates to the processes through which
George Eliot passed.
mat sne did later in her career. under
the influence of Lewes, attempt to adopt
the llIusory abstraction of Comte and sub
sttute humanity for the definite cOncent
of her earlier life is unfortunately true.
What the influence of this intellectual
vagary was upon her life and conduct cam
not be discussed now, but it does fall within
the province of criticism to point out the
nature OF the influence upon her literary
work.
And what took place in George Eliot has
taken place time out of mind in other great
intellectual natures who substituted an alb
straction for a cOncreate idea. The imag-
nation has nothing to work with and be-
comes atrOphied.
The sum and substance of Miss Cleve-
lands essay on George Eliot, put terseIy. is
that agnOStlclsm cannot exist conformity
with a creative imagination. This and its
reverse are probably true. But she fails to
point out that agnOSticism in George Eliot. as
elsewhere, is not natural product. but an
abnormal intellectual development.
The essay on Altruistic Faith is in the
shape of an impulsive little sermon
founded on the remark of Mahomet about
his wife Cadijah-''She believed in me when
men despised me-"
1t IS long way round to Cadijah to get
that loyalty which nearly all wives exhibit.
but Miss Cleveland calls the faith in another
which this wife had-Cadijahi
use" says the author, 1.-The name of
CadlIah TO represent the character of an
efficient believer in somebody else. This
1alth, though not inconsistent with the
IS moi l.
upon that estate. Cadijah may or NAV not
have passionate personal love for her
Mahomet, but she will not be so in love
with him as to induce the blindness of that
undesirable condition. To all love that
rightfully eliminates in marriage there is.
doubtless, an Irrational phase. a normal
abnormality that may or may not outIast
the honeymoon, and then gives place to
something better. In this period no Cadi-
Jah can flourish, Indeed, the conditions of
concrete altruistic faith do not demand the
conditions OF courtship or of marriage.
CadlJahlSm is not necessarily cOnnubi-
atty"
This is priori reasoning. One detects
mere tue TatlonallSm which is somewhat in
Tolerant OF facts. Certainly the practical
faith which has worked the hest results
T. men in real life is that faith which has
Its roots mysteriously in the passion of the
soul. The Cadijahs of the working world
are the women whose love and not whose
reason believed and whose affection glori-
ned and lifted the basest material The
quality of altruistic faith which Miss
Cleveland endeavOrS to establish as work.
ing principles is, after all, proprietary
egotism. But the faith which in women is
operative upon men gains one-half its
efficacy from its blindness. Cadijah, as we