r* f\ T* /* r* i i/'NTrV 1 EOR6E bbl 01 S AND UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES GELttS .IBBABY S* GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY AND OTHER STUDIES BY ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND Sltbtnittnfy fbttionr. FUNK & WAGNALLS NEW YORK x ggg LONDON IO AND 12 DEY STREET 44 FLEET STREET All Rightt Rtttrvtd 145833 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by FUNK & WAGNALLS, In the Office ot the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. [All Rights Reserved^ Registered at Stationers' Hall, London, England. CONTENTS. PAOB GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY, 7 RECIPROCITY, 25 ALTRUISTIC FAITH, 43 HISTORY, 61 Studies in the Middle Ages : a Series of Historical Essays. OLD ROME AND NEW FRANCE, 81 rt CHARLEMAGNE 105 f THE MONASTERY 127 ^ 7 CHIVALRY, 153 , - JOAN OF ARC, 171 Q GEOEGE ELIOT'S POETRY. GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY. I. A GENUINE poem is almost certain of recognition, as such, in the long run. If verse contains poetry, that poetry makes itself felt, whatever blemishes the verse, as verse, may have ; but if dint of argument alone brings us to acknowledge faultless verse a poem, like Galileo, in the moment of recantation, we shall mutter to ourselves our former and unrecanted conviction. Choose, for example, any Paris to arbitrate between " Aurora Leigh" and " The Spanish Gypsy," and which will win the golden apple ? If Paris is at all able to tell black from white, he will at once perceive the " points" of which the " Gypsy" is possessed and of which " Aurora" is destitute. He will discover in the pages of George Eliot superlatives enough. Their color and glow, their vigor, their passion, their nobility of senti ment, their perfection of pathos, the sustained movement of the story, its tragic and worthy denouement, its perfect prosody, its successful unities, and its everywhere-pervading atmosphere of ethical sublimity all these will compare with " Aurora" to " Aurora's" disadvantage. And yet, and yet how is it ? " Aurora" gets the apple I Perhaps poor Paris can only stammer forth, in answer to the ques tion, What in " Aurora" more excellent than in the " Gypsy" establishes her claim to the prize? the unan- 10 GEORGE ELIOT'8 POETRY, AND OTHER STUDIES. swering answer, "Je ne sais quoi." Paris knows that by the one he is impressed, stirred, uplifted ; and that the other, with its high morality, and rare knowledge, and brill iant diction, falls cold upon his ear ; in short, whether he comprehends it or not, it is the poetry in " Aurora" and the lack of it in the " Gypsy" which compels his decision. "What's in a name ? A rose by any other name might smell as sweet ; but a lily, if rechristened rose, would never diffuse the rose's odor, nor gain, in addition to its own spot less perfections, the deep-hearted sorcery of that enchant ing, crumpled wonder, which we thrill in touching, as if it, too, had nerves, and blood, and a human heart a rose ! So prose can never become poetry by bearing its name. Ad ventitious circumstances personal distinction, dazzling suc cess in other fields, the influence of sympathetic and power ful friends may cause something admirable as prose to pass, for the moment, as poetry. But the sure judgment of time reverses such opinions, and prose continues prose, and poetry remains forever uncounterfeited. II. 1 come at once to the consideration of George Eliot's verse in the mention of two qualities which it seems to me to lack, and which 1 hold to be essentials of poetry. The first of these two qualities has to do with form, and is a property, if not the whole, of the outside, that which affects and (if anything could do this) stops with the senses. Yet here, as elsewhere in this department of criticism, it is GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY. 11 difficult to be exact. I ask myself, Is it her prosody ? and am obliged to find it faultless as Pope's. There is never in her metres a syllable too much or too little. Mrs. Brown ing's metre is often slovenly, her rhymes are often false. Yet, explain it who will, Elizabeth Browning's verse has always poetry and music, which George Eliot's lacks. What was work to write is work to read. Ruskiifs dictum "No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort" I* suspect to be wholly true, and that it is pre-eminently true in the production of poetry. Poetry must be the natural manner of the poet, and can never be assumed. I drt not mean by this to ignore the aids which study gives to genius ; I only mean to say that no mere labor and culture can -simulate poetic fire, or atone for its absence. George Eliot puts her wealth of message into the mould of poetic form by continuous effort. No secret of hydraulics could cause a dewdrop to hang upon a rose-leaf in a cube. Her torrents of thought were predestined to a cubical deliverance. Never was the Calvinistic dilemma more intrusive. Her free will cannot squeeze them spherical. George Eliot's prose carries easily its enormous burdens of concentrated gift. It is like the incomparable trained . elephants of Eastern monarchs, which bear at once every k treasure the iron of agriculture, the gem of royalty ; and in its cumbrous momentum it out-distances all competitors. But poesy should betray no burdens. Its rider should sit lightly, with no hint of spur. It should sport along its course and reach its goal unwearied. The born poet has no agony in the deliverance of his song. The uttering is to him that soothing balm which 12 GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY, AND OTHER STUDIES. the utterance is to his reader. Burns said, " My passions when once lighted raged like so many devils till they got vent in rhyme ; and then the conning over my verses, like a spell, soothed all into quiet." But where will one find a lullaby in George Eliot's verses ? Poets do, indeed, learn in suffering what they teach in song ; but the singing quiets the suffering. It is the weep ing, not the tear wept, that gives relief. Mrs. Browning makes no secret of the headache. " If heads that hold a rhythmic thought must ache perforce, Then I, for one, choose headaches." In a private letter she writes : " I have not shrunk from any amount of labor where labor could do anything." Where labor could do anything ! There it is ! George Eliot has been said to possess Shakespearian qualities. Perhaps just here, in the relation of manner to matter, is seen her greatest resemblance and greatest differ ence. No writer, all concede, ever carried and delivered so much as Shakespeare. Never was human utterance so packed with wealthy meaning, so loaded with all things that can be thought or felt, inferred or dreamed, as his. And it all comes with gush and rush, or with gentle, mur muring flow, just as it can come, just as it must come. He takes no trouble, and he gives none. From one of his plays, replete with his incomparable wit, wisdom, and conceit, you emerge as from an ocean bath, exhilarated by the tossing of billows whose rough embrace dissolves to tenderest caress, yet carries in itself hints of central fire, of utmost horizon, of contact with things in heaven and earth undreamt of in our philosophy. You come from one of George Eliot's GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY. 13 poems as from a Turkish batli of latest science and refine ment, appreciative of benefit, but so battered, beaten, and disjointed as to need repose before you can be conscious of refreshment. The irony of fate spares not one shining mark. George Eliot cared most to have the name of poet. But her gait betrays her in the borrowed robe. It is as if the parish priest should insist on wearing in his desk my lady's evening costume. It is too much and not enough. He cannot achieve my lady's trick which causes the queenly train to float behind her like the smoke-plume of a gliding engine. He steps on it and stumbles. You step on it and fall. On my lady it is never in the way ; on His Rever ence it is always so. Yet he will preach in it ! " There are," writes Mrs. Browning to II. H. Home, "Mr. , Mr. , Lord , and one or two others who have education and natural ability enough to be anything in the world except poets, and who choose to be poets in spite of nature and their stars, to say nothing of gods, men, and critical columns.'* III. A second quality which George Eliot's poetry lacks is internal and intrinsic, pertaining to matter rather than manner, though, as will be suggested later on, standing, perhaps, in the relation to manner of cause to effect. It is that, indeed, which all her works lack, but which prose, as prose, can get along without ; call it what you will, faith or 14 GEOKGE ELIOT'S POETRY, AND OTHER STUDIES. transcendentalism ; I prefer to define it negatively as the antipode of agnosticism. No capable student of her works but must admit the existence of this deficiency. Everywhere and in all things it is apparent. Between all her lines is written the stern, self-imposed thus far and no farther. Her noblest charac ters move, majestic and sad, up to a stone- wall ! There is no need that argument be brought to establish this propo sition. It demands nay, admits of, no proof, for it is self- evident. The question which concerns us here is simply, What has this fact to do with George Eliot's poetry ? I answer, Much, every way. Herein, indeed, is matter. But my suspicions must not be disclosed in their full heterodoxy. I venture, however, to affirm that agnosticism can nev^er exist in true poetry. Let verse have every quality which delights sense, captivates intellect, and stirs the heart, yet lack that ray which, coming from a sun beyond our system, reaches, blends with, vivifies, and assures the intimation of and longing for immortality in man lacking this, you have not poetry. It is the necessity of the poet, his raison d'etre, to meet and join the moving of men's minds toward the hereafter. For all minds tend thither. The dullest mortal spirit must at times grope restlessly and expectantly in the outer dark ness for something beyond ; and this something must exist, will exist, in a true poem. It need not be defined as Heaven, or Paradise, or Hades, or Nirvana ; but we must not be confronted with silence ; there must be in some way recognition of and sympathy with this deepest yearning of the soul. Many a one, not knowing what, not seeing GEORGE ELIOT'S POETRY. 15