SPROUi
 
 <TTATUE OF GOETHE. Photogravure. From 
 photograph.
 
 The Complete Works 
 
 George Eliot 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF 
 THEOPHRASTUS SUCH 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
 PUBLISHERS
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPIIRASTUS SUCH. 
 
 LOOKING INWARD 1 
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD 16 
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH 34 
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY 51 
 
 A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN 61 
 
 ONLY TEMPER 70 
 
 A POLITICAL MOLECULE 79 
 
 THE WATCH-DOG or KNOWLEDGE 84 
 
 A HALF-BREED 93 
 
 DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY 102 
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH THE HONEY-COMB . . . 110 
 
 "So YOUNG!" 125 
 
 HOW WE COME TO GIVE OURSELVES FALSE TESTIMON- 
 IALS, AND BELIEVE IN THEM 132 
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER 143 
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP 154 
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS 165 
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE 176 
 
 THE MODERN HEP ! HEP ! HEP ! 184 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE 217 
 
 (Westminster Review, 1856.) 
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE : RIEHI, . . 272 
 
 (Westminster Review, 1856.) 
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR 318 
 
 (Frazer's Magazine, 1855.)
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 STATUE OF GOETHE Frontispiece 
 
 PORTRAIT OF HEINE Pa 9 e 21G 
 
 VENDS DE MILO 
 
 PORTRAIT OF GOETHE 33
 
 IMPRESSIONS OF THEOPHRASTUS SUCH. 
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 
 
 IT is my habit to give an account to myself of 
 the characters I meet with ; can I give any true 
 account of my own ? I am a bachelor, without 
 domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my 
 life been an attentive companion to myself, flatter- 
 ing my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, 
 reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me; 
 and in general remembering its doings and sufferings 
 with a tenacity which is too apt to raise surprise, 
 if not disgust, at the careless inaccuracy of my 
 acquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never 
 held, express their desire to convert me to my 
 favourite ideas, forget whether I have ever been to 
 the East, and are capable of being three several 
 times astonished at my never having told them 
 before of my accident in the Alps, causing me the 
 nervous shock which has ever since notably dimin- 
 ished my digestive powers. Surely I ought to 
 know myself better than these indifferent outsiders 
 can know me ; nay, better even than my intimate 
 friends, to whom I have never breathed those items 
 of my inward experience which have chiefly shaped 
 my life. 
 
 Yet I have often been forced into the reflection 
 that even the acquaintances who are as forgetful 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of my biography and tenets as they would be if I 
 were a dead philosopher, are probably aware of 
 certain points in me which may not be included 
 in my most active suspicion. We sing an exqui- 
 site passage out of tune, and innocently repeat it 
 for the greater pleasure of our hearers. Who can 
 be aware of what his foreign accent is in the ears 
 of a native ? And how can a man be conscious of 
 that dull perception which causes him to mistake 
 altogether what will make him agreeable to a par- 
 ticular woman, and to persevere eagerly in a be- 
 haviour which she is privately recording against 
 him ? I have had some confidences, from my female 
 friends, as to their opinion of other men, whom I 
 have observed trying to make themselves amiable ; 
 and it has occurred to me that, though I can hardly 
 be so blundering as Lippus, and the rest of those 
 mistaken candidates for favour whom I have seen 
 ruining their chance by a too elaborate personal can- 
 vass, I must still come under the common fatality 
 of mankind, and share the liability to be absurd 
 without knowing that I am absurd. It is in the 
 nature of foolish reasonings to seem good to the 
 foolish reasoner. Hence, with all possible study 
 of myself, with all possible effort to escape from 
 the pitiable illusion which makes men laugh, 
 shriek, or curl the lip at Folly's likeness, in total 
 unconsciousness that it resembles themselves, I 
 am obliged to recognize that, while there are secrets 
 in me unguessed by others, these others have cer- 
 tain items of knowledge about the extent of my 
 powers, and the figure I make with them, which in 
 turn are secrets unguessed by me. When I was a 
 lad I danced a hornpipe with arduous scrupulosity, 
 and while suffering pangs of pallid shyness, was yet
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 3 
 
 proud of my superiority as a dancing-pupil, imagin- 
 ing for myself a high place in the estimation of 
 beholders ; but I can now picture the amusement 
 they had in the incongruity of my solemn face and 
 ridiculous legs. What sort of hornpipe am I danc- 
 ing now ? 
 
 Thus, if I laugh at you, fellow-men ! if I trace 
 with curious interest your labyrinthine self-delu- 
 sions, note the inconsistencies in your zealous ad- 
 hesions, and smile at your helpless endeavours in a 
 rashly chosen part, it is not that I feel myself aloof 
 from you ; the more intimately I seem to discern 
 your weaknesses, the stronger to me is the proof 
 that I share them. How otherwise could I get the 
 discernment ? for even what we are averse to, 
 what we vow not to entertain, must have shaped or 
 shadowed itself within us as a possibility, before 
 we can think of exorcising it. No man can know 
 his brother simply as a spectator. Dear blunderers, 
 I am one of you. I wince at the fact, but I am 
 not ignorant of it, that I too am laughable on un- 
 suspected occasions ; nay, in the very tempest and 
 whirlwind of my anger, I include myself under my 
 own indignation. If the human race has a bad 
 reputation, I perceive that I cannot escape being 
 compromised. And thus, while I carry in myself 
 the key to other men's experience, it is only by 
 observing others that I can so far correct my self- 
 ignorance as to arrive at the certainty that I am 
 liable to commit myself unawares, and to manifest 
 some incompetency, which I know no more of 
 than the blind man knows of his image in the 
 glass. 
 
 Is it then possible to describe one's self at once 
 faithfully and fully ? In all autobiography there
 
 4 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may 
 have the effect of falsity. We are each of us hound 
 to reticence by the piety we owe to those who have 
 been nearest to us and have had a mingled influ- 
 ence over our lives, by the fellow-feeling which 
 should restrain us from turning our volunteered 
 and picked confessions into an act of accusation 
 against others, who have no chance of vindicating 
 themselves ; and most of all by that reverence for 
 the higher efforts of our common nature, which 
 commands us to bury its lowest fatalities, its in- 
 vincible remnants of the brute, its most agonizing 
 struggles with temptation, in unbroken silence. 
 But the incompleteness which comes of self-igno- 
 rance may be compensated by self-betrayal. A 
 man who is affected to tears in dwelling on the 
 generosity of his own sentiments makes me aware 
 of several things not included under those terms. 
 Who has sinned more against those three duteous 
 reticences than Jean Jacques ? Yet half our im- 
 pressions of his character come not from what he 
 means to convey, but from what he unconsciously 
 enables us to discern. 
 
 This na'ive veracity of self-presentation is attain- 
 able by the slenderest talent on the most trivial 
 occasions. The least lucid and impressive of orators 
 may be perfectly successful in showing us the 
 weak points of his grammar. Hence I too may be 
 so far like Jean Jacques as to communicate more 
 than I am aware of. I am not, indeed, writing an 
 autobiography, or pretending to give an unreserved 
 description of myself, but only offering some slight 
 confessions in an apologetic light, to indicate that 
 if in my absence you dealt as freely with my un- 
 consciouses weakness as I have dealt with the un-
 
 LOOKING INWARD 5 
 
 conscious weaknesses of others, I should not feel 
 myself warranted by common-sense in regarding 
 your freedom of observation as an exceptional case 
 of evil-speaking, or as malignant interpretation of 
 a character which really offers no handle to just 
 objection, or even as an unfair use, for your amuse- 
 ment, of disadvantages which, since they are mine, 
 should be regarded with more than ordinary ten- 
 derness. Let me at least try to feel myself in the 
 ranks with my fellow-men. It is true, that I 
 would rather not hear either your well-founded 
 ridicule or your judicious strictures. Though not 
 averse to finding fault with myself, and conscious 
 of deserving lashes, I like to keep the scourge in 
 my own discriminating hand. I never felt myself 
 sufficiently meritorious to like being hated, as a 
 proof of my superiority, or so thirsty for improve- 
 ment as to desire that all my acquaintances should 
 give me their candid opinion of me. I really do 
 not want to learn from my enemies ; I prefer hav- 
 ing none to learn from. Instead of being glad 
 when men use me despitefully, I wish they would 
 behave better, and find a more amiable occupation 
 for their intervals of business. In brief, after a 
 close intimacy with myself for a longer period 
 than I choose to mention, I find within me a per- 
 manent longing for approbation, sympathy, and 
 love. 
 
 Yet I am a bachelor, and the person I loved best 
 has never loved me, or known that I loved her. 
 Though continually in society, and caring about 
 the joys and sorrows of my neighbours, I feel my- 
 self, so far as my personal lot is concerned, uncared 
 for and alona " Your own fault, my dear fellow ! * 
 said Minutius Felix, one day that I had incau-
 
 6 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 tiously mentioned this uninteresting fact. And he 
 was right, in senses other than he intended. Why 
 should I expect to be admired, and have my 
 company doted on ? I have done no services to my 
 country beyond those of every peaceable, orderly 
 citizen ; and as to intellectual contribution, my 
 only published work was a failure, so that I am 
 spoken of to inquiring beholders as " the author of 
 a book you have probably not seen. " (The work 
 was a humorous romance, unique in its kind, and I 
 am told is much tasted in a Cherokee translation, 
 where the jokes are rendered with all the serious 
 eloquence characteristic of the red races.) This 
 sort of distinction, as a writer nobody is likely to 
 have read, can hardly counteract an indistinctness 
 in my articulation, which the best intentioned 
 loudness will not remedy. Then, in some quar- 
 ters, my awkward feet are against me, the length 
 of my upper lip, and an inveterate way I have of 
 walking with my head foremost and my chin pro- 
 jecting. One can become only too well aware of 
 such things by looking in the glass, or in that 
 other mirror, held up to nature in the frank opin- 
 ions of street-boys, or of our Free People travelling 
 by excursion-train ; and no doubt they account for 
 the half-suppressed smile which I have observed 
 on some fair faces when I have first been presented 
 before them. This direct-perspective judgment is 
 not to be argued against. But I am tempted to 
 remonstrate when the physical points I have men- 
 tioned are apparently taken to warrant unfavoura- 
 ble inferences concerning my mental quickness. 
 With all the increasing uncertainty which modern 
 progress has thrown over the relations of mind and 
 body, it seems tolerably clear that wit cannot be
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 7 
 
 seated in the upper lip, and that the balance of 
 the haunches in walking has nothing to do with 
 the subtle discrimination of ideas. Yet strangers 
 evidently do not expect me to make a clever obser- 
 vation, and my good things are as unnoticed as if 
 they were anonymous pictures. I have indeed had 
 the mixed satisfaction of finding that when they 
 were appropriated by some one else they were 
 found remarkable, and even brilliant. It is to be 
 borne in mind that I am not rich, have neither 
 stud nor cellar, and no very high connections such 
 as give to a look of imbecility a certain prestige of 
 inheritance through a titled line ; just as " the 
 Austrian lip " confers a grandeur of historical asso- 
 ciations on a kind of feature which might make us 
 reject an advertising footman. I have now and 
 then done harm to a good cause by speaking for it 
 in public, and have discovered too late that my 
 attitude on the occasion would more suitably have 
 been that of negative beneficence. Is it really to 
 the advantage of an opinion that I should be 
 known to hold it? And as to the force of my 
 arguments, that is a secondary consideration with 
 audiences who have given a new scope to the ex 
 pede Herculem principle, and from awkward Jieet 
 infer awkward fallacies. Once, when zeal lifted 
 me on my legs, I distinctly heard an enlightened 
 artisan remark, " Here's a rum cut ! " and doubt- 
 less he reasoned in the same way as the elegant 
 Glycera, when she politely puts on an air of listen- 
 ing to me, but elevates her eyebrows and chills 
 her glance in sign of predetermined neutrality ; 
 both have their reasons for judging the quality of 
 my speech beforehand. 
 
 This sort of reception to a man of affectionate
 
 8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 disposition, who has also the innocent vanity of 
 desiring to be agreeable, has naturally a depressing 
 if not embittering tendency; and in early life I 
 began to seek for some consoling point of view, 
 some warrantable method of softening the hard 
 peas I had to walk on, some comfortable fanaticism 
 which might supply the needed self-satisfaction. 
 At one time I dwelt much on the idea of compen- 
 sation, trying to believe that I was all the wiser 
 for my bruised vanity, that I had the higher place 
 in the true spiritual scale, and even that a day 
 might come when some visible triumph would 
 place me in the French heaven of having the 
 laughers on my side. But I presently perceived 
 that this was a very odious sort of self-cajolery. 
 Was it in the least true that I was wiser than 
 several of my friends who made an excellent figure, 
 and were perhaps praised a little beyond their 
 merit? Is the ugly, unready man in the corner, 
 outside the current of conversation, really likely 
 to have a fairer view of things than the agreeable 
 talker, whose success strikes the unsuccessful as 
 a repulsive example of forwardness and conceit ? 
 And as to compensation in future years, would the 
 fact that I myself got it reconcile me to an order 
 of things in which I could see a multitude with as 
 bad a share as mine, who, instead of getting their 
 corresponding compensation, were getting beyond 
 the reach of it in old age ? What could be more 
 contemptible than the mood of mind which makes 
 a man measure the justice of divine or human law 
 by the agreeableness of his own shadow and the 
 ample satisfaction of his own desires ? 
 
 I dropped a form of consolation which seemed 
 to be encouraging me in the persuasion that my
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 9 
 
 discontent was the chief evil in the world, and my 
 benefit the soul of good in that evil. May there 
 not be at least a partial release from the imprison- 
 ing verdict that a man's philosophy is the formula 
 of his personality ? In certain branches of science 
 we can ascertain our personal equation, the meas- 
 ure of difference between our own judgments and 
 an average standard : may there not be some corres- 
 ponding correction of our personal partialities in 
 moral theorizing ? If a squint, or other ocular 
 defect, disturbs my vision, I can get instructed in 
 the fact, be made aware that my condition is 
 abnormal, and either through' spectacles or diligent 
 imagination I can learn the average appearance of 
 things : is there no remedy or corrective for that 
 inward squint which consists in a dissatisfied ego- 
 ism, or other want of mental balance ? In my 
 conscience I saw that the bias of personal discon- 
 tent was just as misleading and odious as the bias 
 of self-satisfaction. Whether we look through the 
 rose-coloured glass or the indigo, we are equally 
 far from the hues which the healthy human eye 
 beholds in heaven above and earth below. I be- 
 gan to dread ways of consoling which were really 
 a flattering of native illusions, a feeding-up into 
 monstrosity of an inward growth already dis- 
 proportionate ; to get an especial scorn for that 
 scorn of mankind which is a transmuted disap- 
 pointment of preposterous claims ; to watch with 
 peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic 
 estimate of the human lot in- general, should be a 
 mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and con- 
 sequent bad temper. The standing-ground worth 
 striving after seemed to be some Delectable Moun- 
 tain whence I could see things in proportions as
 
 io ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 little as possible determined by that self-partiality 
 which certainly plays a necessary part in our 
 bodily sustenance, but has a starving effect on the 
 mind. 
 
 Thus I finally gave up any attempt to make out 
 that I preferred cutting a bad figure, and that I 
 liked to be despised, because in this way I was 
 getting more virtuous than my successful rivals ; 
 and I have long looked with suspicion on all views 
 which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory 
 to wounded vanity, or other personal disappoint- 
 ment. The consolations of egoism are simply a 
 change of attitude, or a resort to a new kind of 
 diet, which soothes and fattens it. Fed in this 
 way, it is apt to become a monstrous spiritual 
 pride, or a chuckling satisfaction that the final 
 balance will not be against those who now eclipse 
 us. Examining the world in order to find consola- 
 tion is very much like looking carefully over the 
 pages of a great book in order to find our own 
 name, if not in the text, at least in a laudatory 
 note ; whether we find what we want or not, our 
 preoccupation has hindered us from a true know- 
 ledge of the contents. But an attention fixed on 
 the main theme, or various matter of the book, 
 would deliver us from that slavish subjection to 
 our own self-importance. And I had the mighty 
 volume of the world before me. Nay, I had the 
 struggling action of a myriad lives around me, 
 each single life as dear to itself as mine to me. 
 Was there no escape here from this stupidity of 
 a murmuring self-occupation? Clearly enough, if 
 anything hindered my thought from rising to the 
 force of passionately interested contemplation, or 
 my poor pent-up pond of sensitiveness from widen-
 
 LOOKING INWARD. u 
 
 ing into a beneficent river of sympathy, it was my 
 own dulness ; and though I could not make myself 
 the reverse of shallow all at once, I had at least 
 learned where I had better turn my attention. 
 
 Something came of this alteration in my point 
 of view, though I admit that the result is of no 
 striking kind. It is unnecessary for me to utter 
 modest denials, since none have assured me that I 
 have a vast intellectual scope, or what is more 
 surprising, considering I have done so little that 
 I might, if I chose, surpass any distinguished man 
 whom they wish to depreciate. I have not at- 
 tained any lofty peak of magnanimity, nor would 
 I trust beforehand in my capability of meeting a 
 severe demand for moral heroism. But that I have 
 at least succeeded in establishing a habit of mind 
 which keeps watch against my self-partiality, and 
 promotes a fair consideration of what touches the 
 feelings or the fortunes of my neighbours, seems 
 to be proved by the ready confidence with which 
 men and women appeal to my interest in their 
 experience. It is gratifying to one, who would 
 above all things avoid the insanity of fancying 
 himself a more momentous or touching object than 
 he really is, to find that nobody expects from him 
 the least sign of such mental aberration, and that 
 he is evidently held capable of listening to all 
 kinds of personal outpouring, without the least 
 disposition to become communicative in the same 
 way. This confirmation of the hope that my bear- 
 ing is not that of the self -flattering lunatic is given 
 me in ample measure. My acquaintances tell me 
 unreservedly of their triumphs and their piques ; 
 explain their purposes at length, and reassure me 
 with cheerfulness as to their chances of success;
 
 iz ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 insist on their theories, and accept me as a dummy 
 with whom they rehearse their side of future dis- 
 cussions ; unwind their coiled-up griefs in relation 
 to their husbands, or recite to me examples of 
 feminine incomprehensibleness as typified in their 
 wives ; mention frequently the fair applause which 
 their merits have rung from some persons, and the 
 attacks to which certain oblique motives have 
 stimulated others. At the time when I was less 
 free from superstition about my own power of 
 charming, I occasionally, in the glow of sympathy 
 which embraced me and my confiding friend on 
 the subject of his satisfaction or resentment, was 
 urged to hint at a corresponding experience in my 
 own case : but the signs of a rapidly lowering 
 pulse and spreading nervous depression in my pre- 
 viously vivacious interlocutor warned me that I 
 was acting on that dangerous misreading, " Do as 
 you are done by. " Recalling the true version of 
 the Golden Rule, I could not wish that others 
 should lower my spirits as I was lowering my 
 friend's. After several times obtaining the same 
 result from a like experiment, in which all the cir- 
 cumstances were varied except my own personality, 
 I took it as an established inference that these 
 fitful signs of a lingering belief in my own impor- 
 tance were generally felt to be abnormal, and were 
 something short of that sanity which I aimed to 
 secure. Clearness on this point is not without its 
 gratifications, as I have said. While my desire to 
 explain myself in private ears has been quelled, 
 the habit of getting interested in the experience 
 of others has been continually gathering strength, 
 and I am really at the point of finding that this 
 world would be worth living in without any lot of
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 13 
 
 one's own. Is it not possible for me to enjoy the 
 scenery of the earth without saying to myself I 
 have a cabbage-garden in it ? But this sounds 
 like the lunacy of fancying one's self everybody 
 else, and being unable to play one's own part de- 
 cently, another form of the disloyal attempt to 
 be independent of the common lot, and to live 
 without a sharing of pain. 
 
 Perhaps I have made self-betrayals enough al- 
 ready, to show that I have not arrived at that 
 non-human independence. My conversational reti- 
 cences about myself turned into garrulousness on 
 paper ; as the sea-lion plunges and swims the more 
 energetically, because his limbs are of a sort to 
 make him shambling on land. The act of writing, 
 in spite of past experience, brings with it the 
 vague, delightful illusion of an audience nearer to 
 my idiom than the Cherokees, and more numerous 
 than the visionary One for whom many authors 
 have declared themselves willing to go through the 
 pleasing punishment of publication. My illusion 
 is of a more liberal kind, and I imagine a far-off, 
 hazy, multitudinous assemblage, as in a picture of 
 Paradise, making an approving chorus to the sen- 
 tences and paragraphs of which I myself particu- 
 larly enjoy the writing. The haze is a necessary 
 condition. If any physiognomy becomes distinct 
 in the foreground, it is fatal. The countenance is 
 sure to be one bent on discountenancing my inno- 
 cent intentions : it is pale-eyed, incapable of being 
 amused when I am amused, or indignant at what 
 makes me indignant ; it stares at my presumption, 
 pities my ignorance, or is manifestly preparing to ex- 
 pose the various instances in which I unconsciously 
 disgrace myself. I shudder at this too corporeal
 
 14 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 auditor, and turn toward another point of the com- 
 pass where the haze is unbroken. Why should I 
 not indulge this remaining illusion, since I do not 
 take my approving choral paradise as a warrant 
 for setting the press to work again and making 
 some thousand sheets of superior paper unsalable ? 
 I leave my manuscripts to a judgment outside my 
 imagination ; but I will not ask to hear it, or 
 request my friend to pronounce before I have been 
 buried decently, what he really thinks of my 
 parts, and to state candidly whether my papers 
 would be most usefully applied in lighting the 
 cheerful domestic fire. It is too probable that he 
 will be exasperated at the trouble I have given 
 him of reading them ; but the consequent clearness 
 and vivacity with which he could demonstrate to 
 me that the fault of my manuscripts, as of my one 
 published work, is simply flatness, and not that 
 surpassing subtilty which is the preferable ground 
 of popular neglect this verdict, however instruc- 
 tively expressed, is a portion of earthly discipline 
 of which I will not beseech my friend to be the 
 instrument Other persons, I am aware, have not 
 the same cowardly shrinking from a candid opin- 
 ion of their performances, and are even importu- 
 nately eager for it ; but I have convinced myself, 
 in numerous cases, that such exposers of their own 
 back to the smiter were of too hopeful a disposition 
 to believe in the scourge, and really trusted in a 
 pleasant anointing, an outpouring of balm without 
 any previous wounds. I am of a less trusting 
 disposition, and will only ask my friend to use 
 his judgment in insuring me against posthumous 
 mistake. 
 
 Thus I make myself a character to write, and
 
 LOOKING INWARD. 15 
 
 keep the pleasing, inspiring illusion of being lis- 
 tened to, though I may sometimes write about 
 myselfc What I have already said on this too 
 familiar theme has been meant only as a preface, 
 to show that in noting the weaknesses of my ac- 
 quaintances I am conscious of my fellowship with 
 them. That a gratified sense of superiority is at 
 the root of barbarous laughter may be at least half 
 the truth. But there is a loving laughter in 
 which the only recognized superiority is that of 
 the ideal self, the God within, holding the mirror 
 and the scourge for our own pettiness as well as 
 our neighbours'.
 
 LOOKING BACKWAED. 
 
 Most of us, who have had decent parents, would 
 shrink from wishing that our father and mother 
 had been somebody else whom we never knew; 
 yet it is held no impiety rather, a graceful mark 
 of instruction for a man to wail that he was 
 not the son of another age and another nation, 
 of which also he knows nothing except through 
 the easy process of an imperfect imagination and 
 a flattering fancy. 
 
 But the period thus looked back on with a purely 
 admiring regret, as perfect enough to suit a supe- 
 rior mind, is always a long way off; the desirable 
 contemporaries are hardly nearer than Leonardo 
 da Vinci, most likely they are the fellow-citizens 
 of Pericles, or, best of all, of the ^Eolic lyrists, 
 whose sparse remains suggest a comfortable con- 
 trast with our redundance. No impassioned per- 
 sonage wishes he had been born in the age of Pitt, 
 that his ardent youth might have eaten the dearest 
 bread, dressed itself with the longest coat-tails 
 and shortest waist, or heard the loudest grumbling 
 at the heaviest war-taxes ; and it would be really 
 something original in polished verse if one of our 
 young writers declared he would gladly be turned 
 eighty -five, that he might have known the joy and 
 pride of being an Englishman when there were 
 fewer reforms and plenty of highwaymen, fewer 
 discoveries and more faces pitted with the small-
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 17 
 
 pox, when laws were made to keep up the price of 
 corn, and the troublesome Irish were more misera- 
 ble. Three-quarters of a century ago is not a dis- 
 tance that lends much enchantment to the view. 
 We are familiar with the average men of that 
 period, and are still consciously encumbered with 
 its bad contrivances and mistaken acts. The lords 
 and gentlemen painted by young Lawrence talked 
 and wrote their nonsense in a tongue we thoroughly 
 understand ; hence their times are not much flat- 
 tered, not much glorified, by the yearnings of that 
 modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of 
 lashing not themselves, but all their neighbours. 
 To me, however, that parental time, the time of 
 my father's youth, never seemed prosaic, for it 
 came to my imagination first through his memories, 
 which made a wondrous perspective to my little 
 daily world of discovery. And, for my part, I can 
 call no age absolutely unpoetic : how should it be 
 so, since there are always children to whom the 
 acorns and the swallow's eggs are a wonder, 
 always these human passions and fatalities, through 
 which Garrick as Hamlet in bob-wig and knee- 
 breeches moved his audience, more than some have 
 since done in velvet tunic and plume ? But every 
 age since the golden may be made more or less 
 prosaic by minds that attend only to its vulgar 
 and sordid elements, of which there was always 
 an abundance, even in Greece and Italy, the 
 favourite realms of the retrospective optimists. 
 To be quite fair toward the ages, a little ugliness 
 as well as beauty must be allowed to each of them, 
 a little implicit poetry even to those which echoed 
 loudest with servile, pompous, and trivial prose. 
 Such impartiality is not in vogue at present. If 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 we acknowledge our obligation to the ancients, it 
 is hardly to be done without some flouting of our 
 contemporaries, who, with all their faults, must 
 be allowed the merit of keeping the world habit- 
 able for the refined eulogists of the blameless past. 
 One wonders whether the remarkable originators 
 who first had the notion of digging wells, or of 
 churning for butter, and who were certainly very 
 useful to their own time as well as ours, were left 
 quite free from invidious comparison with prede- 
 cessors who let the water and the milk alone ; or 
 whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched 
 himself on the grass with a good appetite for con- 
 temporary butter, became loud on the virtue of 
 ancestors who were uncorrupted by the produce 
 of the cow ; nay, whether, in a high flight of imagi- 
 native self-sacrifice (after swallowing the butter), 
 he even wished himself earlier born and already 
 eaten for the sustenance of a generation more naive 
 than his own. 
 
 I have often had the fool's hectic of wishing 
 about the unalterable ; but with me that useless 
 exercise has turned chiefly on the conception of a 
 different self, and not, as it usually does in litera- 
 ture, on the advantage of having been born in a 
 different age, and more especially in one where 
 life is imagined to have been altogether majestic 
 and graceful. With my present abilities, external 
 proportions, and generally small provision for 
 ecstatic enjoyment, where is the ground for confi- 
 dence that I should have had a preferable career 
 in such an epoch of society ? An age in which 
 every department has its awkward-squad seems in 
 my mind's eye to suit me better. I might have 
 wandered by the Strymon under Philip and Alex-
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 19 
 
 ander without throwing any new light on method 
 or organizing the sum of human knowledge ; on 
 the other hand, I might have objected to Aristotle 
 as too much of a systematizer, and have preferred 
 the freedom of a little self-contradiction as offering 
 more chances of truth. I gather, too, from the 
 undeniable testimony of his disciple Theophrastus, 
 that there were boors, ill-bred persons, and de- 
 tractors, even in Athens, of species remarkably 
 corresponding to the English, and not yet made 
 endurable by being classic; and altogether, with 
 my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the 
 better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an 
 inodorous fragment of antiquity. As to Sappho's 
 Mitylene, while I am convinced that the Lesbian 
 capital held some plain men of middle stature and 
 slow conversational powers, the addition of myself 
 to their number, though clad in the majestic 
 folds of the himation and without cravat, would 
 hardly have made a sensation among the accom- 
 plished fair ones who were so precise in adjusting 
 their own drapery about their delicate ankles. 
 Whereas, by being another sort of person in the 
 present age, I might have given it some needful 
 theoretic clew ; or I might have poured forth poetic 
 strains which would have anticipated theory, and 
 seemed a voice from " the prophetic soul of the 
 wide world dreaming of things to come ; " or I 
 might have been one of those benignant lovely 
 souls who, without astonishing the public and pos- 
 terity, make a happy difference in the lives close 
 around them, and in this way lift the average of 
 earthly joy : in some form or other I might have 
 been so filled from the store of universal existence, 
 that I should have been freed from that empty
 
 20 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 wishing which is like a child's cry to be inside a. 
 golden cloud, its imagination being too ignorant to 
 figure the lining of dimness and damp. 
 
 On the whole, though there is some rash boast- 
 ing about enlightenment, and an occasional insis- 
 tence on an originality which is that of the present 
 year's corn-crop, we seem too much disposed to in- 
 dulge, and to call by complimentary names, a 
 greater charity for other portions of the human 
 race than for our contemporaries. All reverence 
 and gratitude for the worthy dead on whose labours 
 we have entered, all care for the future generations 
 whose lot we are preparing ; but some affection and 
 fairness for those who are doing the actual work of 
 the world, some attempt to regard them with the 
 same freedom from ill -temper, whether on private 
 or public grounds, as we may hope will be felt by 
 those who will call us ancient! Otherwise, the 
 looking before and after, which is our grand human 
 privilege, is in danger of turning to a sort of other- 
 worldliness, breeding a more illogical indifference 
 or bitterness than was ever bred by the ascetic's 
 contemplation of heaven. Except on the ground 
 of a primitive golden age and continuous degen- 
 eracy, I see no rational footing for scorning the 
 whole present population of the globe; unless I 
 scorn every previous generation from whom they 
 have inherited their diseases of mind and body, 
 and by consequence scorn my own scorn, which is 
 equally an inheritance of mixed ideas and feelings, 
 concocted for me in the boiling caldron of this 
 universally contemptible life and so on, scorning 
 to infinity. This may represent some actual states 
 of mind, for it is a narrow prejudice of. mathe- 
 maticians to suppose that ways of thinking are to
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 21 
 
 be driven out of the field by being reduced to an 
 absurdity. The Absurd is taken as an excellent 
 juicy thistle by many constitutions. 
 
 Eeflections of this sort have gradually deter- 
 mined me not to grumble at the age in which I 
 happen to have been born a natural tendency 
 certainly older than Hesiod. Many ancient beau- 
 tiful things are lost, many ugly modern things 
 have arisen ; but invert the proposition, and it is 
 equally true. I at least am a modern, with some 
 interest in advocating tolerance ; and notwithstand- 
 ing an inborn beguilement which carries my atfec- 
 tion and regret continually into an imagined past, 
 I am aware that I must lose all sense of moral pro- 
 portion unless I keep alive a stronger attachment to 
 what is near, and a power of admiring what I best 
 know and understand. Hence this question of 
 wishing to be rid of one's contemporaries associates 
 itself with my filial feeling, and calls up the 
 thought that I might as justifiably wish that I had 
 had other parents than those whose loving tones 
 are my earliest memory, and whose last parting 
 first taught me the meaning of death. I feel bound 
 to quell such a wish, as blasphemy. 
 
 Besides, there are other reasons why I am con- 
 tented that my father was a country parson, born 
 much about the same time as Scott and Words- 
 worth ; notwithstanding certain qualms I have felt 
 at the fact that the property on which I am living 
 was saved out of tithe before the period of commu- 
 tation, and without the provisional transfiguration 
 into a modus. It has sometimes occurred to me, 
 when I have been taking a slice of excellent ham, 
 that, from a too tenable point of view, I was 
 breakfasting on a small, squealing, black pig which,
 
 32 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 more than half a century ago, was the unwilling 
 representative of spiritual advantages, not other- 
 wise acknowledged by the grudging farmer or 
 dairyman who parted with him. One enters on a 
 fearful labyrinth in tracing compound interest 
 backward, and such complications of thought have 
 reduced the flavour of the ham ; but since I have 
 nevertheless eaten it, the chief effect has been to 
 moderate the severity of my radicalism (which 
 was not part of my paternal inheritance) and to 
 raise the assuaging reflection, that if the pig and 
 the parishioner had been intelligent enough to 
 anticipate my historical point of view, they would 
 have seen themselves and the rector in a light that 
 would have made tithe voluntary. Notwithstand- 
 ing such drawbacks, I am rather fond of the men- 
 tal furniture I got by having a father who was 
 well acquainted with all ranks of his neighbours, 
 and am thankful that he was not one of those 
 aristocratic clerygmen who could not have sat 
 down to a meal with any family in the parish 
 except my lord's, still more, that he was not an 
 earl or a marquis. A chief misfortune of high 
 birth is that it usually shuts a man out from the 
 large sympathetic knowledge of human experience 
 which comes from contact with various classes on 
 their own level, and in my father's time that 
 entail of social ignorance had not been disturbed 
 as we see it now. To look always from overhead 
 at the crowd of one's fellow-men must be in many 
 ways incapacitating, even with the best will and 
 intelligence. The serious blunders it must lead to 
 in the effort to manage them for their good, one 
 may see clearly by the mistaken ways people take 
 of flattering and enticing those whose associations
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 23 
 
 are alike their own. Hence I have always thought 
 that the most fortunate Britons are those whose 
 experience has given them a practical share in 
 many aspects of the national lot, who have lived 
 long among the mixed commonalty, roughing it 
 with them under difficulties, knowing how their 
 food tastes to them, and getting acquainted with 
 their notions and motives, not by inference from 
 traditional types in literature or from philosophi- 
 cal theories, but from daily fellowship and obser- 
 vation. Of course such experience is apt to get 
 antiquated, and my father might find himself 
 much at a loss among a mixed rural population of 
 the present day; but he knew very well what 
 could be wisely expected from the miners, the 
 weavers, the field-labourers, and farmers of his 
 own time, yes, and from the aristocracy, for he 
 had been brought up in close contact with them, 
 and had been companion to a young nobleman who 
 was deaf and dumb. " A clergyman, lad, " he 
 used to say to me, " should feel in himself a bit 
 of every class ; " and this theory had a felicitous 
 agreement with his inclination and practice, which 
 certainly answered in making him beloved by his 
 parishioners. They grumbled at their obligation 
 towards him ; but what then ? It was natural to 
 grumble at any demand for payment, tithe in- 
 cluded, but also natural for a rector to desire his 
 tithe and look well after the levying. A Chris- 
 tian pastor who did not mind about his money was 
 not an ideal prevalent among the rural minds of 
 fat central England, and might have seemed to 
 introduce a dangerous laxity of supposition about 
 Christian laymen who happened to be creditors. 
 My father was none the less beloved because he
 
 24 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 was understood to be of a saving disposition ; and 
 how could he save without getting his tithe ? The 
 sight of him was not unwelcome at any door, and 
 he was remarkable among the clergy of his district 
 for having no lasting feud with rich or poor in 
 his parish. I profited by his popularity ; and for 
 months after my mother's death, when I was a 
 little fellow of nine, I was taken care of first at 
 one homestead, and then at another, a variety 
 which I enjoyed much more than my stay at the 
 Hall, where there was a tutor. Afterward, for 
 several years, I was my father's constant compan- 
 ion in his out-door business, riding by his side on 
 my little pony, and listening to the lengthy dia- 
 logues he held with Darby or Joan, the one on the 
 road or in the field, the other outside or inside her 
 door. In my earliest remembrance of him his 
 hair was already gray, for I was his youngest as 
 well as his only surviving child ; and it seemed to 
 me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, 
 as indeed in all respects I considered him a parent 
 so much to my honour, that the mention of my 
 relationship to him was likely to secure me regard 
 among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger, 
 my father's stories from his life including so 
 many names of distant persons, that my imagina- 
 tion placed no limit to his acquaintanceship. He 
 was a pithy talker, and his sermons bore marks of 
 his own composition. It is true, they must have 
 been already old when I began to listen to them, 
 and they were no more than a year's supply, so 
 that they recurred as regularly as the Collects. 
 But though this system has been much ridiculed, 
 I am prepared to defend it as equally sound with 
 that of a liturgy ; and even if my researches had
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 25 
 
 shown me that some of my father's early sermons 
 had been copied out from the works of elder divines, 
 this would only have been another proof of his 
 good judgment. One may prefer fresh eggs, though 
 laid by a fowl of the meanest understanding ; but 
 why fresh sermons ? 
 
 Nor can I be sorry, though myself given to 
 meditative if not active innovation, that my father 
 was a Tory who had not exactly a dislike to inno- 
 vators and dissenters, but a slight opinion of them 
 as persons of ill-founded self-confidence ; whence 
 my young ears gathered many details concerning 
 those who might perhaps have called themselves 
 the more advanced thinkers in our nearest market- 
 town, tending to convince me that their characters 
 were quite as mixed as those of the thinkers be- 
 hind them. This circumstance of my rearing has 
 at least delivered me from certain mistakes of 
 classification which I observe in many of my supe- 
 riors, who have apparently no affectionate memories 
 of a goodness mingled with what they now regard 
 as outworn prejudices. Indeed my philosophical 
 notions, such as they are, continually carry me 
 back to the time when the fitful gleams of a spring 
 day used to show me my own shadow as that of a 
 small boy on a small pony, riding by the side of a 
 larger cob-mounted shadow over the breezy uplands 
 which we used to dignify with the name of hills, 
 or along by-roads, with broad grassy borders and 
 hedgerows reckless of utility, on our way to outly- 
 ing hamlets, whose groups of inhabitants were as 
 distinctive to my imagination as if they had be- 
 longed to different regions of the globe. From 
 these we sometimes rode onward to the adjoining 
 parish, where also my father officiated, for he was
 
 26 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 a pluralist, but I hasten to add on the small- 
 est scale ; for his own extra living was a poor 
 vicarage, with hardly fifty parishioners, and its 
 church would have made a very shabby barn, 
 the gray, worm-eaten wood of its pews and pulpit, 
 with their doors only half-hanging on the hinges, 
 being exactly the colour of a lean mouse which I 
 once observed as an interesting member of the 
 scant congregation, and conjectured to be the iden- 
 tical Church-mouse I had heard referred to as an 
 example of extreme poverty ; for I was a precocious 
 boy, and often reasoned after the fashion of my 
 elders, arguing that Jack and Jill were real per- 
 sonages in our parish, and that if I could identify 
 Jack I should find on him the mark of a broken 
 crown. 
 
 Sometimes when I am in a crowded London 
 drawing-room (for I am a town-bird now, ac- 
 quainted with smoky eaves, and tasting Nature in 
 the parks), quick flights of memory take me back 
 among my father's parishioners, while I am still 
 conscious of elbowing men who wear the same 
 evening uniform as myself ; and I presently begin 
 to wonder what varieties of history lie hidden 
 under this monotony of aspect. Some of them, 
 perhaps, belong to families with many quarterings ; 
 but how many " quarterings " of diverse contact 
 with their fellow-countrymen enter into their 
 qualifications to be parliamentary leaders, pro- 
 fessors of social science, or journalistic guides of 
 the popular mind ? Not that I feel myself a person 
 made competent by experience ; on the contrary, I 
 argue that since an observation of different ranks 
 has still left me practically a poor creature, what 
 must be the condition of those who object even to
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 27 
 
 read about the life of other British classes than 
 their own ? But of my elbowing neighbours with 
 their crush-hats I usually imagine that the most 
 distinguished among them have probably had a far 
 more instructive journey into manhood than mine. 
 Here, perhaps, is a thought-worn physiognomy, 
 seeming at the present moment to be classed as a 
 mere species of white cravat and swallow-tail, 
 which may once, like Faraday's, have shown it- 
 self in curiously dubious embryonic form leaning 
 against a cottage-lintel, in small corduroys, and 
 hungrily eating a bit of brown bread and bacon; 
 there is a pair of eyes, now too much wearied by 
 the gas-light of public assemblies, that once per- 
 haps learned to read their native England through 
 the same alphabet as mine not within the boun- 
 daries of an ancestral park, never even being driven 
 through the country town five miles off, but 
 among the midland villages and markets, along by 
 the tree-studded hedgerows, and where the heavy 
 barges seem in the distance to float myteriously 
 among the rushes and the feathered grass. Our 
 vision, both real and ideal, has since then been 
 filled with far other scenes, among eternal snows 
 and stupendous sun -scorched monuments of de- 
 parted empires, within the scent of the long orange- 
 groves, and where the temple of Neptune looks out 
 over the siren-haunted sea. But my eyes at least 
 have kept their early affectionate joy in our native 
 landscape, which is one deep root of our national 
 life and language. 
 
 And I often smile at my consciousness that 
 certain conservative prepossessions have mingled 
 themselves for me with the influences of our mid- 
 land scenery, from the tops of the elms down to
 
 28 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the buttercups and the little wayside vetches. 
 Naturally enough ! That part of my father's prime 
 to which he oftenest referred had fallen on the 
 days when the great wave of political enthusiasm 
 and belief in a speedy regeneration of all things 
 had ebbed, and the supposed millennial initiative 
 of France was turning into a Napoleonic empire 
 the sway of an Attila, with a mouth speaking 
 proud things, in a jargon half-revolutionary, half- 
 Roman. Men were beginning to shrink timidly 
 from the memory of their own words, and from 
 the recognition of the fellowships they had formed 
 ten years before ; and even reforming Englishmen, 
 for the most part, were willing to wait for the 
 perfection of society, if only they could keep their 
 throats perfect, and help to drive away the chief 
 enemy of mankind from our coasts. To my father's 
 mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine 
 were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the 
 fool and the scoundrel ; the welfare of the nation 
 lay in a strong government which could maintain 
 order ; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the 
 word " government " in a tone that charged it with 
 awe, and made it part of my effective religion, 
 in contrast with the word " rebel, " which seemed 
 to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables, and, lit 
 by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an 
 argument dispensing with more detailed inquiry. 
 I gathered that our national troubles in the first 
 two decades of this century were not at all due to 
 the mistakes of our administrators, and that Eng- 
 land, with its fine Church and Constitution, would 
 have been exceedingly well off if every British 
 subject had been thankful for what was provided, 
 and had minded his own business if, for example,
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 29 
 
 numerous Catholics of that period had been aware 
 how very modest they ought to be, considering they 
 were Irish. The times, I heard, had often been 
 bad ; but I was constantly hearing of " bad times " 
 as a name for actual evenings and mornings, when 
 the godfathers who gave them that name appeared 
 to me remarkably comfortable. Altogether, my 
 father's England seemed to me lovable, laudable, 
 full of good men, and having good rulers, from Mr. 
 Pitt on to the Duke of Wellington, until he was 
 for emancipating the Catholics ; and it was so far 
 from prosaic to me, that I looked into it for a more 
 exciting romance than such as I could find in my 
 own adventures, which consisted mainly in fancied 
 crises calling for the resolute wielding of domestic 
 swords and fire-arms against unapparent robbers, 
 rioters, and invaders, who, it seemed, in my 
 father's prime, had more chance of being real. 
 The morris-dancers had not then dwindled to a 
 ragged and almost vanished rout (owing the tradi- 
 tional name probably to the historic fancy of our 
 superannuated groom) ; also the good old king was 
 alive and well, which made all the more difference, 
 because I had no notion what he was and did 
 only understanding in general that, if he had been 
 still on the throne, he would have hindered every- 
 thing that wise persons thought undesirable. 
 
 Certainly that elder England with its frankly 
 salable boroughs, so cheap compared with the seats 
 obtained under the reformed method, and its bor- 
 oughs kindly presented by noblemen desirous to 
 encourage gratitude ; its prisons, with a miscella- 
 neous company of felons and maniacs, and without 
 any supply of water; its bloated, idle charities; 
 its non-resident, jovial clergy; its militia-ballot-
 
 30 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ing ; and, above all, its blank ignorance of what 
 we, its posterity, should be thinking of it has 
 great differences from the England of to-day. Yet 
 we discern a strong family likeness. Is there any 
 country which shows at once as much stability 
 and as much susceptibility to change as ours ? Our 
 national life is like that scenery which I early 
 learned to love, not subject to great convulsions, 
 but easily showing more or less delicate (some- 
 times melancholy) effects from minor changes. 
 Hence our midland plains have never lost their 
 familiar expression and conservative spirit for me ; 
 yet at every other mile, since I first looked on 
 them, some sign of world-wide change, some new 
 direction of human labour, has wrought itself into 
 what one may call the speech of the landscape 
 in contrast with those grander and vaster regions 
 of the earth which keep an indifferent aspect in the 
 presence of men's toil and devices. What does it 
 signify that a liliputian train passes over a viaduct 
 amidst the abysses of the Apennines, or that a 
 caravan, laden with a nation's offerings, creeps 
 across the unresting sameness of the desert, or that 
 a petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over 
 the face of an Egyptian colossus, immovably sub- 
 mitting to its slow burial beneath the sand ? But 
 our woodlands and pastures, our hedge-parted corn- 
 fields and meadows, our bits of high common where 
 we used to plant the windmills, our quiet little 
 rivers here and there fit to turn a mill-wheel, our 
 villages along the old coach-roads, are all easily 
 alterable lineaments that seem to make the face of 
 our mother-land sympathetic with the laborious 
 lives of her children. She does not take their 
 ploughs and wagons contemptuously, but rather
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 31 
 
 makes every hovel and every sheepfold, every 
 railed bridge or fallen tree-trunk, an agreeably 
 noticeable incident ; not a mere speck in the midst 
 of unmeasured vastness, but a piece of our social 
 history in pictorial writing. 
 
 Our rural tracts, where no Babel-chimney scales 
 the heavens, are without mighty objects to fill the 
 soul with the sense of an outer world unconquera- 
 bly aloof from our efforts. The wastes are play- 
 grounds (and let us try to keep them such for the 
 children's children, who will inherit no other sort 
 of demesne) ; the grasses and reeds nod to each 
 other over the river, but we have cut a canal close 
 by ; the very heights laugh with corn in August, 
 or lift the plough-team against the sky in Septem- 
 ber. Then comes a crowd of burly navvies with 
 pickaxes and barrows ; and while hardly a wrinkle 
 is made in the fading mother's face, or a new curve 
 of health in the blooming girl's, the hills are cut 
 through or the breaches between them spanned, 
 we choose our level, and the white steam-pennon 
 flies along it. 
 
 But because our land shows this readiness to be 
 changed, all signs of permanence upon it raise a 
 tender attachment instead of awe : some of us, at 
 least, love the scanty relics of our forests, and are 
 thankful if a bush is left of the old hedgerow. A 
 crumbling bit of wall where the delicate ivy-leaved 
 toad-flax hangs its light branches, or a bit of gray 
 thatch with patches of dark moss on its shoulder 
 and a troop of grass-stems on its ridge, is a thing 
 to visit. And then the tiled roof of cottage and 
 homestead ; of the long cow-shed where generations 
 of the milky mothers have stood patiently ; of the 
 broad-shouldered barns, where the old-fashioned
 
 32 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 flail once made resonant music, while the watch- 
 dog barked at the timidly venturesome fowls, 
 making pecking raids on the out-flying grain, 
 the roofs that have looked out from among the 
 elms and walnut-trees, or beside the yearly group 
 of hay and corn-stacks, or below the square stone 
 steeple, gathering their gray or ochre-tinted lichens 
 and their olive-green mosses under all ministries, 
 let us praise the sober harmonies they give to our 
 landscape, helping to unite us pleasantly with the 
 elder generations, who tilled the soil for us before 
 we were born, and paid heavier and heavier taxes, 
 with much grumbling, but without that deepest 
 root of corruption the self-indulgent despair 
 which cuts down and consumes, and never plants. 
 
 But I check myself. Perhaps this England of 
 my affections is half-visionary, a dream in 
 which things are connected according to my well- 
 fed, lazy mood, and not at all by the multitudinous 
 links of graver, sadder fact, such as belong every- 
 where to the story of human labour. Well, well, 
 the illusions that began for us when we were less 
 acquainted with evil have not lost their value 
 when we discern them to be illusions. They feed 
 the ideal Better; and in loving them still, we 
 strengthen the precious habit of loving something 
 not visibly, tangibly existent, but a spiritual pro- 
 duct of our visible, tangible selves. 
 
 I cherish my childish loves, the memory of that 
 warm little nest where my affections were fledged. 
 Since then I have learned to care for foreign coun- 
 tries, for literatures foreign and ancient, for the 
 life of Continental towns dozing round old cathe- 
 drals, for the life of London, half-sleepless with 
 eager thought and strife, with indigestion, or with
 
 LOOKING BACKWARD. 33 
 
 hunger; and now my consciousness is chiefly of 
 the busy, anxious, metropolitan sort. My system 
 responds sensitively to the London weather-signs, 
 political, social, literary; and my bachelor's heart 
 is imbedded where, by much craning of head and 
 neck, I can catch sight of a sycamore in the Square 
 garden. I belong to the " Nation of London. " 
 Why ? There have been many voluntary exiles in 
 the world ; and probably in the very first exodus of 
 the patriarchal Aryans, for I am determined not 
 to fetch my examples from races whose talk is of 
 uncles and no fathers, some of those who sallied 
 forth went for the sake of a loved companionship, 
 when they would willingly have kept sight of the 
 familiar plains, and of the hills to which they had 
 first lifted up their eyes. 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 
 
 THE serene and beneficent goddess Truth, like 
 other deities whose disposition has been too has- 
 tily inferred from that of the men who have 
 invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with 
 much of the worship paid to her even in this 
 milder age, when the stake and the rack have 
 ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties 
 still pass for service done in her honour ; no 
 thumb- screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of 
 flesh, but plenty of controversial bruising, lacera- 
 tion, and even life-long maiming. Less than for- 
 merly; but so long as this sort of Truth -worship 
 has the sanction of a public that can often under- 
 stand nothing in a controversy except personal 
 sarcasm or slanderous ridicule, it is likely to con- 
 tinue. The sufferings of its victims are often as 
 little regarded as those of the sacrificial pig offered 
 in old time, with what we now regard as a sad 
 miscalculation of effects. 
 
 One such victim is my old acquaintance, 
 Merman. 
 
 Twenty years ago Merman was a young man of 
 promise, a conveyancer with a practice which had 
 certainly budded, but, like Aaron's rod, seemed 
 not destined to proceed further in that marvellous 
 activity. Meanwhile he occupied himself in mis- 
 cellaneous periodical-writing, and in a multifarious 
 study of moral and physical science. What chiefly
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCE. 35 
 
 attracted him in all subjects were the vexed ques- 
 tions, which have the advantage of not admitting 
 the decisive proof or disproof that renders many 
 ingenious arguments superannuated. Not that 
 Merman had a wrangling disposition; he put all 
 his doubts, queries, and paradoxes deferentially; 
 contended without unpleasant heat, and only with 
 a sonorous eagerness, against the personality of 
 Homer; expressed himself civilly though firmly 
 on the origin of language ; and had tact enough to 
 drop at the right moment such subjects as the ulti- 
 mate reduction of all the so-called elementary 
 substances, his own total scepticism concerning 
 Manetho's chronology, or even the relation be- 
 tween the magnetic condition of the earth and the 
 outbreak of revolutionary tendencies. Such flexi- 
 bility was naturally much helped by his amiable 
 feeling toward woman, whose nervous system, he 
 was convinced, would not bear the continuous 
 strain of difficult topics ; and also by his willing- 
 ness to contribute a song whenever the same 
 desultory charmer proposed music. Indeed, his 
 tastes were domestic enough to beguile him into 
 marriage when his resources were still very mod- 
 erate and partly uncertain. His friends wished 
 that so ingenious and agreeable a fellow might 
 have more prosperity than they ventured to hope 
 for him; their chief regret on his account being 
 that he did not concentrate his talent, and leave 
 off forming opinions on at least half a dozen of the 
 subjects over which he scattered his attention, 
 especially now that he had married " a nice little 
 woman " (the generic name for acquaintances' 
 wives when they are not markedly disagreeable). 
 He could not, they observed, want all his various
 
 36 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 knowledge and Laputan ideas for his periodical- 
 writing which brought him most of his bread, and 
 he would do well to use his talents in getting a 
 specialty that would fit him for a post. Perhaps 
 these well-disposed persons were a little rash in 
 presuming that fitness for a post would be the 
 surest ground for getting it ; and, on the whole, in 
 now looking back on their wishes for Merman, 
 their chief satisfaction must be that those wishes 
 did not contribute to the actual result. 
 
 For in an evil hour Merman did concentrate 
 himself. He had for many years taken into his 
 interest the comparative history of the ancient 
 civilizations, but it had not preoccupied him so as 
 to narrow his generous attention to everything else. 
 One sleepless night, however (his wife has more 
 than once narrated to me the details of an event 
 memorable to her as the beginning of sorrows), 
 after spending some hours over the epoch-making 
 work of Grampus, a new idea seized him with 
 regard to the possible connection of certain sym- 
 bolic monuments common to widely scattered races. 
 Merman started up in bed. The night was cold ; 
 and the sudden withdrawal of warmth made his 
 wife first dream of a snow-ball, and then cry, - 
 
 a What is the matter, Proteus ? " 
 
 " A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, 
 whose book is cried up as a revelation, is all wrong 
 about the Magicodumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and 
 I have got hold of the right clew. " 
 
 " Good gracious ! does it matter so much ? Don't 
 drag the clothes, dear. " 
 
 " It signifies this, Julia, that if I am right I 
 shall set the world right; I shall regenerate his- 
 tory; I shall win the mind of Europe to a new
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 37 
 
 view of social origins ; I shall bruise the head of 
 many superstitions. " 
 
 " Oh no, dear, don't go too far into things. Lie 
 down again. You have been dreaming. What are 
 the Madicoj umbras and Zuzitotzums ? I never 
 heard you talk of them before. What use can it 
 be, troubling yourself about such things ? " 
 
 " That is the way, Julia ! That is the way 
 wives alienate their husbands, and make any 
 hearth pleasanter to him than his own. " 
 
 " What do you mean, Proteus ? " 
 
 " Why, if a woman will not try to understand 
 her husband's ideas, or at least to believe that 
 they are of more value than she can understand, 
 if she is to join anybody who happens to be 
 against him, and suppose he is a fool because 
 others contradict him, there is an end of our 
 happiness. That is all I have to say. " 
 
 " Oh no, Proteus, dear. I do believe what you 
 say is right. That is my only guide. I am sure 
 I never have any opinions in any other way, I 
 mean about subjects. Of course there are many 
 little things that would tease you, that you like 
 me to judge of for myself. I know I said once that 
 I did not want you to sing ' Oh, ruddier than the 
 cherry, ' because it was not in your voice. But I 
 cannot remember ever differing from you about 
 subjects. I never in my life thought any one 
 cleverer than you. " 
 
 Julia Merman was really " a nice little woman, " 
 not one of the stately Dians sometimes spoken of 
 in those terms. Her black silhouette had a very 
 infantine aspect; but she had discernment and 
 wisdom enough to act on the strong hint of that 
 memorable conversation, never again giving her
 
 38 ESSAYS OE GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 husband the slightest ground for suspecting that 
 she thought treasonably of his ideas in relation 
 to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, or in the 
 least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because 
 Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well 
 for her that she did not increase her troubles in 
 this way ; but to do her justice, what she was 
 chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her 
 husband's troubles. 
 
 Not that these were great in the beginning. In 
 the first development and writing out of his scheme, 
 Merman had a more intense kind of intellectual 
 pleasure than he had ever known before. His face 
 became more radiant, his general view of human 
 prospects more cheerful. Foreseeing that truth as 
 presented by himself would win the recognition of 
 his contemporaries, he excused with much liberal- 
 ity their rather rough treatment of other theorists, 
 whose basis was less perfect. His own periodical- 
 criticisms had never before been so amiable; he 
 was sorry for that unlucky majority whom the 
 spirit of the age, or some other prompting more 
 definite and local, compelled to write without any 
 particular ideas. The possession of an original 
 theory, which has not yet been assailed, must cer- 
 tainly sweeten the temper of a man who is not 
 beforehand ill-natured. And Merman was the 
 reverse of ill-natured. 
 
 But the hour of publication came ; and to half a 
 dozen persons, described as the learned world of 
 two hemispheres, it became known that Grampus 
 was attacked. This might have been a small 
 matter ; for who or what on earth, that is good for 
 anything, is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity, 
 or malice, and sometimes even by just objection ?
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 39 
 
 But on examination it appeared that the attack 
 might possibly be held damaging, unless the ig- 
 norance of the author were well exposed, and 
 his pretended facts shown to be chimeras of that 
 remarkably hideous kind begotten by imperfect 
 learning on the more feminine element of original 
 incapacity. Grampus himself did not immediately 
 cut open the volume which Merman had been care- 
 ful to send him, not without a very lively and 
 shifting conception of the possible effects which 
 the explosive gift might produce on the too emi- 
 nent scholar, effects that must certainly have set 
 in on the third day from the despatch of the 
 parcel. But in point of fact Grampus knew noth- 
 ing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent 
 him an American newspaper containing a spirited 
 article by the well-known Professor Sperm N. Whale, 
 which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the 
 passages quoted from Merman being of rather a 
 telling sort, and the paragraphs which seemed to 
 blow defiance being unaccountably feeble, coming 
 from so distinguished a Cetacean. Then, by an- 
 other post, arrived letters from Butzkopf and 
 Dugong, both men whose signatures were familiar 
 to the Teutonic world, in the " Seltenerscheinender 
 Monat-schrift, " or Hyrick for the insertion of 
 Split Hairs, asking their Master whether he meant 
 to take up the combat, because, in the contrary 
 case, both were ready. 
 
 Thus America and Germany were roused, though 
 England was still drowsy ; and it seemed time 
 now for Grampus to find Merman's book under the 
 heap, and cut it open. For his own part, he was 
 perfectly at ease about his system ; but this is a 
 world in which the truth requires defence, and
 
 40 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 specious falsehood must be met with exposure. 
 Grampus, having once looked through the book, no 
 longer wanted any urging to write the most crush- 
 ing of replies. This, and nothing less than this, 
 was due from him to the cause of sound inquiry ; 
 and the punishment would cost him little pains. 
 In three weeks from that time the palpitating 
 Merman saw his book announced in the programme 
 of the leading Eeview. No need for Grampus to 
 put his signature. Who else had his vast yet 
 microscopic knowledge, who else his power of 
 epithet? This article in which Merman was 
 pilloried and as good as mutilated, for he was 
 shown to have neither ear nor nose for the subtle- 
 ties of philological and archaeological study was 
 much read and more talked of ; not because of any 
 interest in the system of Grampus, or any precise 
 conception of the danger attending lax views of 
 the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, but because 
 the sharp epigrams with which the victim was 
 lacerated, and the soaring fountains of acrid mud 
 which were shot upward and poured over the fresh 
 wounds, were found amusing in recital. A favour- 
 ite passage was one in which a certain kind of 
 socialist was described as a creature of the walrus 
 kind, having a phantasmal resemblance to higher 
 animals when seen by ignorant minds in the 
 twilight, dabbling or hobbling in first one element 
 and then the other, without parts or organs suited 
 to either; in fact, one of Nature's impostors, who 
 could not be said to have any artful pretences, 
 since a congenital incompetence to all precision of 
 aim and movement made their every action a pre- 
 tence just as a being born in doeskin gloves 
 would necessarily pass a judgment on surfaces, but
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 41 
 
 we all know what his judgment would be worth. In 
 drawing-room circles, and for the immediate hour, 
 this ingenious comparison was as damaging as the 
 showing-up of Merman's mistakes, and the mere 
 smattering of linguistic and historical knowledge 
 which he had presumed to be a sufficient basis for 
 theorizing ; but the more learned cited his blun- 
 ders aside to each other, and laughed the laugh of 
 the initiated. In fact, Merman's was a remarka- 
 ble case of sudden notoriety. In London drums 
 and clubs he was spoken of abundantly as one who 
 had written ridiculously about the Magicodum- 
 bras and Zuzumotzis : the leaders of conversation, 
 whether Christians, Jews, infidels, or of any other 
 confession, except the confession of ignorance, pro- 
 nouncing him shallow and indiscreet, if not pre- 
 sumptuous and absurd. He was heard of at Warsaw, 
 and even Paris took knowledge of him. M. Cachalot 
 had not read either Grampus or Merman, but heard 
 of their dispute in time to insert a paragraph upon 
 it in his brilliant work, " L' Orient au Point de 
 Vue Actuel, " in which he was dispassionate enough 
 to speak of Grampus as possessing a coup d'ceil 
 presque fran$ais in matters of historical interpre- 
 tation, and of Merman as nevertheless an objector 
 gui merite d'etre connu. M. Porpesse, also, avail- 
 ing himself of M. Cachalot's knowledge, reproduced 
 it in an article with certain additions, which it is 
 only fair to distinguish as his own, implying that 
 the vigorous English of Grampus was not always 
 as correct as a Frenchman could desire, while 
 Merman's objections were more sophistical than 
 solid. Presently, indeed, there appeared an able 
 extrait of Grampus's article in the valuable " Kap- 
 porteur Scientifique et Historique, " and Merman's
 
 42 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 mistakes were thus brought under the notice of 
 certain Frenchmen who are among the masters of 
 those who know on Oriental subjects. In a word, 
 Merman, though not extensively read, was exten- 
 sively read about. 
 
 Meanwhile, how did he like it ? Perhaps nobody, 
 except his wife, for a moment reflected on that. 
 An amused society considered that he was severely 
 punished, but did not take the trouble to imagine 
 his sensations ; indeed, this would have been a 
 difficulty for persons less sensitive and excitable 
 than Merman himself. Perhaps that popular com- 
 parison of the walrus had truth enough to bite and 
 blister on thorough application, even if exultant 
 ignorance had not applauded it. But it is well 
 known that the walrus, though not in the least a 
 malignant animal, if allowed to display its re- 
 markably plain person and blundering performances 
 at ease in any element it chooses, becomes desper- 
 ately savage, and musters alarming auxiliaries 
 when attacked or hurt. In this characteristic, at 
 least, Merman resembled the walrus. And now he 
 concentrated himself with a vengeance. That his 
 counter-theory was fundamentally the right one 
 he had a genuine conviction, whatever collateral 
 mistakes he might have committed ; and his bread 
 would not cease to be bitter to him until he had 
 convinced his contemporaries that Grampus had 
 used his minute learning as a dust-cloud to hide 
 sophistical evasions that, in fact, minute learn- 
 ing was an obstacle to clear-sighted judgment, 
 more especially with regard to the Magicodumbras 
 and Zuzumotzis, and that the best preparation in 
 this matter was a wide survey of history, and a 
 diversified observation of men. Still, Merman
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 43 
 
 was resolved to muster all the learning within his 
 reach, and he wandered day and night through 
 many wildernesses of German print ; he tried com- 
 pendious methods of learning Oriental tongues, 
 and, so to speak, getting at the marrow of lan- 
 guages independently of the bones, for the chance 
 of finding details to corroborate his own views, or 
 possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight 
 or textual tampering. All other work was ne- 
 glected ; rare clients were sent away, and amazed 
 editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance 
 of getting book -parcels from them. It was many 
 months before Merman had satisfied himself that 
 he was strong enough to face round upon his 
 adversary. But at last he had prepared N sixty 
 condensed pages of eager argument, which seemed 
 to him worthy to rank with the best models of 
 controversial writing. He had acknowledged his 
 mistakes, but had restated his theory, so as to 
 show that it was left intact in spite of them ; and 
 he had even found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, 
 Scrag Whale the explorer, and other Cetaceans of 
 unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue 
 with Grampus. Especially a passage cited by this 
 last from that greatest of fossils, Magalosaurus, was 
 demonstrated by Merman to be capable of three 
 different interpretations, all preferable to that 
 chosen by Grampus, who took the words in their 
 most literal sense ; for (1) the incomparable Sau- 
 rian, alike unequalled in close observation and 
 far-glancing comprehensiveness, might have meant 
 those words ironically ; (2) motzis was probably a 
 false reading for potzis, in which case its bearing 
 was reversed ; and (3) it is known that in the age 
 of the Saurians there were conceptions about tha
 
 44 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 motzis which entirely remove it from the category 
 of things comprehensible in an age when Saurians 
 run ridiculously small : all which views were 
 god-fathered by names quite fit to be ranked with 
 that of Grampus. In fine, Merman wound up his 
 rejoinder by sincerely thanking the eminent adver- 
 sary, without whose fierce assault he might not 
 have undertaken a revision, in the course of which 
 he had met with unexpected and striking confirma- 
 tions of his own fundamental views. Evidently 
 Merman's anger was at white heat. 
 
 The rejoinder being complete, all that remained 
 was to find a suitable medium for its publication. 
 This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums 
 would not lend themselves to contradictions of 
 Grampus ; or if they would, Merman's article was 
 too long and too abstruse, while he would not con- 
 sent to leave anything out of an article which had 
 no superfluities, for all this happened years ago, 
 when the world was a different stage. At last, 
 however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not on 
 hard terms, since the medium, in every sense 
 modest, did not ask him to pay for its insertion. 
 
 But if Merman expected to call out Grampus 
 again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too 
 absurd that Merman should undertake to correct 
 Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent 
 man has something else to do than to refute a 
 petty objector twice over. What was essential 
 had been done : the public had been enabled to 
 form a true judgment of Merman's incapacity. 
 The Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but sub- 
 sidiary elements in Grampus's system, and Merman 
 might now be dealt with by younger members of 
 the Master's school. But he had at least the sat'
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 45 
 
 isfaction of finding that he had raised a discussion 
 which would not be let die. The followers of 
 Grampus took it up with an ardour and industry 
 of research worthy of their exemplar. Butzkopf 
 made it the subject of an elaborate Einleitung to 
 his important work " Die Bedeutung des ^Egyptis- 
 chen Labyrinthes ; " and Dugong, in a remarkable 
 address which he delivered to a learned society 
 in Central Europe, introduced Merman's theory 
 with so much power of sarcasm that it became a 
 theme of more or less derisive allusion to men of 
 many tongues, Merman with his Magicodumbras 
 and Zuzumotzis was on the way to become a prov- 
 erb, being used illustratively by many able jour- 
 nalists, who took those names of questionable 
 things to be Merman's own invention "than 
 which, " said one of the graver guides, " we can 
 recall few more melancholy examples of specula- 
 tive aberration. " Naturally, the subject passed 
 into popular literature, and figured very commonly 
 in advertised programmes. The fluent Loligo, the 
 formidable Shark, and a younger member of his 
 remarkable family, known as S. Catulus, made a 
 special reputation by their numerous articles, 
 eloquent, lively, or abusive, all on the same 
 theme, under titles ingeniously varied, alliterative, 
 sonorous, or boldly fanciful such as, " Moments 
 with Mr. Merman," " Mr. Merman and the Magi- 
 codumbras, " " Greenland Grampus and Proteus 
 Merman," " Grampian Heights and their Climbers, 
 or the New Excelsior. " They tossed him on short 
 sentences ; they swathed him in paragraphs of 
 winding imagery ; they found him at once a mere 
 plagiarist and a theorizer of unexampled perversity 
 ridiculously wrong about potzis and ignorant of
 
 46 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Pali ; they hinted, indeed, at certain things which 
 to their knowledge he had silently brooded over 
 in his boyhood, and seemed tolerably well assured 
 that this preposterous attempt to gainsay an in- 
 comparable Cetacean of world-wide fame had its 
 origin in a peculiar mixture of bitterness and 
 eccentricity which, rightly estimated and seen in 
 its definite proportions, would furnish the best key 
 to his argumentation. All alike were sorry for 
 Merman's lack of sound learning; but how could 
 their readers be sorry ? Sound learning would not 
 have been amusing; and as it was, Merman was 
 made to furnish these readers with amusement at 
 no expense of trouble on their part. Even burlesque- 
 writers looked into his book to see where it could 
 be made use of ; and those who did not know him 
 were desirous of meeting him at dinner as one 
 likely to feed their comic vein. 
 
 On the other hand, he made a serious figure in 
 sermons under the name of " Some " or " Others, " 
 who had attempted presumptuously to scale emi- 
 nences too high and arduous for human ability, 
 and had given an example of ignominious failure, 
 edifying to the humble Christian. 
 
 All this might be very advantageous for able 
 persons, whose superfluous fund of expression 
 needed a paying investment; but the effect on 
 Merman himself was unhappily not so transient as 
 the busy writing and speaking of which he had 
 become the occasion. His certainty that he was 
 right naturally got stronger in proportion as the 
 spirit of resistance was stimulated. The scorn and 
 unfairness with which he felt himself to have been 
 treated, by those really competent to appropriate 
 his ideas, had galled him and made a chronic sore ;
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 47 
 
 and the exultant chorus of the incompetent seemed 
 a pouring of vinegar on his wound. His brain 
 became a registry of the foolish and ignorant 
 objections made against him, and of continually 
 amplified answers to these objections. Unable 
 to get his answers printed, he had recourse to that 
 more primitive mode of publication, oral trans- 
 mission, or button-holding, now generally regarded 
 as a troublesome survival ; and the once pleasant, 
 flexible Merman was on the way to be shunned as a 
 bore. His interest in new acquaintances turned 
 chiefly on the possibility that they would care 
 about the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis; that 
 they would listen to his complaints and exposures 
 of unfairness, and not only accept copies of what he 
 had written on the subject, but send him appre- 
 ciative letters in acknowledgment. Eepeated disap- 
 pointment of such hopes tended to embitter him ; 
 and not the less because after awhile the fashion of 
 mentioning him died out, allusions to his theory 
 were less understood, and people could only pretend 
 to remember it. And all the while Merman was 
 perfectly sure that his very opponents, who had 
 knowledge enough to be capable judges, were aware 
 that his book, whatever errors of statement they 
 might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining- 
 rod pointing out hidden sources of historical inter- 
 pretation ; nay, his jealous examination discerned in 
 a new work by Grampus himself a certain shifting of 
 ground, which so poor Merman declared was the 
 sign of an intention gradually to appropriate the 
 views of the man he had attempted to brand as 
 an ignorant impostor. 
 
 And Julia ? And the housekeeping, the rent, 
 food, and clothing, which controversy can hardly
 
 48 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 supply, unless it be of the kind that serves as a 
 recommendation to certain posts ? Controversial 
 pamphlets have been known to earn large plums; 
 but nothing of the sort could be expected from 
 unpractical heresies about the Magicodumbras and 
 Zuzumotzis, painfully the contrary. Merman's 
 reputation as a sober thinker, a safe writer, a sound 
 lawyer, was irretrievably injured ; the distractions 
 of controversy had caused him to neglect useful 
 editorial connections, and indeed his dwindling care 
 for miscellaneous subjects made his contributions 
 too dull to be desirable. Even if he could now 
 have given a new turn to his concentration, and 
 applied his talents so as to be ready to show him- 
 self an exceptionally qualified lawyer, he would 
 only have been like an architect in competition, 
 too late with his superior plans : he would not have 
 had an opportunity of showing his qualification. 
 He was thrown out of the course. The small capi- 
 tal which had filled up deficiencies of income was 
 almost exhausted, and Julia, in the effort to make 
 supplies equal to wants, had to use much ingenuity 
 in diminishing the wants. The brave and affection- 
 ate woman, whose small outline, so unimpressive 
 against an illuminated background, held within it 
 a good share of feminine heroism, did her best to 
 keep up the charm of home and soothe her hus- 
 band's excitement, parting with the best jewel 
 among her wedding presents in order to pay rent, 
 without ever hinting to her husband that this sad 
 result had come of his undertaking to convince 
 people who only laughed at him. She was a re- 
 signed little creature, and reflected that some hus- 
 bands took to drinking and others to forgery ; hers 
 had only taken to the Magicodumbras and Zuzu-
 
 HOW WE ENCOURAGE RESEARCH. 49 
 
 rnotzis, and was not unkind only a little more 
 indifferent to her and the two children than she 
 had ever expected he would be ; his mind was eaten 
 up with " subjects," and constantly a little angry, 
 not with her, but with everybody else, especially 
 those who were celebrated. 
 
 This was the sad truth. Merman felt himself 
 ill-used by the world, and thought very much worse 
 of the world in consequence. The gall of his adver- 
 saries' ink had been sucked into his system and ran 
 in his blood. He was still in the prime of life, but 
 his mind was aged by that eager, monotonous con- 
 struction which comes of feverish excitement on a 
 single topic, and uses up the intellectual strength. 
 
 Merman had never been a rich man, but he was 
 now conspicuously poor, and in need of the friends 
 who had power or interest which he believed they 
 could exert on his behalf. Their omitting or declin- 
 ing to give this help could not seem to him so clearly 
 as to them an inevitable consequence of his having 
 become impracticable, or at least of his passing for 
 a man whose views were not likely to be safe and 
 sober. Each friend in turn offended him, though 
 unwillingly, and was suspected of wishing to shake 
 him off. It was not altogether so ; but poor Mer- 
 man's society had undeniably ceased to be attractive, 
 and it was difficult to help him. At last the pres- 
 sure of want urged him to try for a post far beneath 
 his earlier prospects, and he gained it. He holds it 
 still, for he has no vices, and his domestic life has 
 kept up a sweetening current of motive around and 
 within him. Nevertheless, the bitter flavour ming- 
 ling itself with all topics, the premature weariness 
 and withering, are irrevocably there. It is as if he 
 had gone through a disease which alters what we
 
 50 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 call the constitution. He has long ceased to talk 
 eagerly of the ideas which possess him, or to at- 
 tempt making proselytes. The dial has moved 
 onward, and he himself sees many of his former 
 guesses in a new light. On the other hand, he has 
 seen what he foreboded, that the main idea which 
 was at the root of his too rash theorizing has been 
 adopted by Grampus and received with general 
 respect, no reference being heard to the ridiculous 
 figure this important conception made when ushered 
 in by the incompetent " Others." 
 
 Now and then, on rare occasions, when a sympa- 
 thetic Ute-a-t&te has restored some of his old 
 expansiveness, he will tell a companion in a railway- 
 carriage, or other place of meeting favourable to 
 autobiographical confidences, what has been the 
 course of things in his particular case, as an example 
 of the justice to be expected of the world. The 
 companion usually allows for the bitterness of a 
 disappointed man, and is secretly disinclined to 
 believe that Grampus was to blame,
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 
 
 AMONG the many acute sayings of La Rochefoucauld, 
 there is hardly one more acute than this : " La plus 
 grande ambition n'en a pas la moindre apparence 
 lorsqu'elle se rencontre dans ime impossibility abso- 
 lue d'arriver ou elle aspire." Some of us might do 
 well to use this hint in our treatment of acquain- 
 tances and friends, from whom we are expecting 
 gratitude because we are so very kind in thinking 
 of them, inviting them, and even listening to what 
 they say considering how insignificant they must 
 feel themselves to be. We are often fallaciously 
 confident in supposing that our friend's state of 
 mind is appropriate to our moderate estimate of his 
 importance, almost as if we imagined the humble 
 mollusk (so useful as an illustration) to have a sense 
 of his own exceeding softness and low place in the 
 scale of being. Your mollusk, on the contrary, is 
 inwardly objecting to every other grade of solid, 
 rather than to himself. Accustomed to observe 
 what we think an unwarrantable conceit exhibiting 
 itself in ridiculous pretensions and forwardness to 
 play the lion's part, in obvious self-complacency 
 and loud peremptoriness, we are not on the alert 
 to detect the egoistic claims of a more exorbitant 
 kind, often hidden under an apparent neutrality 
 or an acquiescence in being put out of the question. 
 Thoughts of this kind occurred to me yesterday, 
 when I saw the name of Lentulus in the obituary.
 
 52 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 The majority of his acquaintances, I imagine, have 
 always thought of him as a man justly unpretend- 
 ing and as nobody's rival ; but some of them have 
 perhaps been struck with surprise at his reserve in 
 praising the works of his contemporaries, and have 
 now and then felt themselves in need of a key to 
 his remarks on men of celebrity in various depart- 
 ments. He was a man of fair position, deriving his 
 income from a business in which he did nothing, 
 at leisure to frequent clubs and at ease in giving 
 dinners, well-looking, polite, and generally accept- 
 able in society as a part of what we may call its 
 bread-crumb, the neutral basis needful for the plums 
 and spice. Why, then, did he speak of the modern 
 Maro or the modern Flaccus with a peculiarity in 
 his tone of assent to other people's praise which 
 might almost have led you to suppose that the 
 eminent poet had borrowed money of him and 
 showed an indisposition to repay ? He had no 
 criticism to offer, no sign of objection more specific 
 than a slight cough, a scarcely perceptible pause 
 before assenting, and an air of self-control in his 
 utterance as if certain considerations had deter- 
 mined him not to inform against the so-called poet, 
 who, to his knowledge, was a mere versifier. If you 
 had questioned him closely, he would perhaps have 
 confessed that he did think something better might 
 be done in the way of Eclogues and Georgics, or of 
 Odes and Epodes, and that to his mind poetry was 
 something very different from what had hitherto 
 been known under that name. 
 
 For my own part, being of a superstitious nature, 
 given readily to imagine alarming causes, I imme- 
 diately, on first getting these mystic hints from 
 Leutulus, concluded that he held a number of
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 53 
 
 entirely original poems, or at the very least a revo- 
 lutionary treatise on poetics, in that melancholy 
 manuscript state to which works excelling all that 
 is ever printed are necessarily condemned; and I 
 was long timid in speaking of the poets when he 
 was present. For what might not Lentulus have 
 done, or be profoundly aware of, that would make 
 my ignorant impressions ridiculous? One cannot 
 well be sure of the negative in such a case, except 
 through certain positives that bear witness to it; 
 and those witnesses are not always to be got hold 
 of. But time wearing on, I perceived that the 
 attitude of Lentulus toward the philosophers was 
 essentially the same as his attitude toward the 
 poets ; nay, there was something so much more 
 decided in his mode of closing his mouth after 
 brief speech on the former, there was such an air 
 of rapt consciousness in his private hints as to 
 his conviction that all thinking hitherto had been 
 an elaborate mistake, and as to his own power of 
 conceiving a sound basis for a lasting superstruc- 
 ture, that I began to believe less in the poetical 
 stores, and to infer that the line of Lentulus lay 
 rather in the rational criticism of our beliefs and 
 in systematic construction. In this case I did not 
 figure to myself the existence of formidable manu- 
 scripts ready for the press ; for great thinkers are 
 known to carry their theories growing within their 
 minds long before committing them to paper, and 
 the ideas which made a new passion for them when 
 their locks were jet or auburn, remain perilously 
 unwritten, an inwardly developing condition of 
 their successive selves, until the locks are gray or 
 scanty. I only meditated improvingly on the way 
 in which a man of exceptional faculties, and even
 
 54 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 carrying within him some of that fierce refiner's fire 
 which is to purge away the dross of human error, 
 may move about in society totally unrecognized, 
 regarded as a person whose opinion is superfluous, 
 and only rising into a power in emergencies of 
 threatened black-balling. Imagine a Descartes or 
 a Locke being recognized for nothing more than a 
 good fellow and a perfect gentleman ; what a pain- 
 ful view does such a picture suggest of impene- 
 trable dulness in the society around them ! 
 
 I would at all times rather be reduced to a 
 cheaper estimate of a particular person, if by that 
 means I can get a more cheerful view of my fellow- 
 men generally ; and I confess that, in a certain 
 curiosity which led me to cultivate Lentulus's 
 acquaintance, my hope leaned to the discovery that 
 he was a less remarkable man than he had seemed to 
 imply. It would have been a grief to discover that 
 he was bitter or malicious; but by finding him to 
 be neither a mighty poet, nor a revolutionary poeti- 
 cal critic, nor an epoch-making philosopher, my 
 admiration for the poets and thinkers whom he 
 rated so low would recover all its buoyancy, and 
 I should not be left to trust to that very suspicious 
 sort of merit which constitutes an exception in the 
 history of mankind, and recommends itself as the 
 total abolitionist of all previous claims on our con- 
 fidence. You are not greatly surprised at the infirm 
 logic of the coachman who would persuade you to 
 engage him by insisting that any other would be 
 sure to rob you in the matter of hay and corn, thus 
 demanding a difficult belief in him as the sole 
 exception from the frailties of his calling; but it 
 as rather astonishing that the wholesale decriers 
 of mankind and its performances should be even
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 55 
 
 more unwary in their reasoning than the coach- 
 man, since each of them not merely confides in 
 your regarding himself as an exception, but over- 
 looks the almost certain fact that you are wondering 
 whether he inwardly excepts you. Now, conscious 
 of entertaining some common opinions which seemed 
 to fall under the mildly intimated but sweeping 
 ban of Lentulus, my self-complacency was a little 
 concerned. 
 
 Hence I deliberately attempted to draw out 
 Lentulus in private dialogue, for it is the reverse 
 of injury to a man to offer him that hearing which 
 he seems to have found nowhere else. And for 
 whatever purposes silence may be equal to gold, 
 it cannot be safely taken as an indication of specific 
 ideas. I sought to know why Lentulus was more 
 than indifferent to the poets, and what was that 
 new poetry which he had either written or, as to 
 its principles, distinctly conceived. But I presently 
 found that he knew very little of any particular 
 poet, and had a general notion of poetry as the 
 use of artificial language to express unreal senti- 
 ments; he instanced "The Giaour," "Lalla Rookh," 
 "The Pleasures of Hope," and "Ruin seize thee, 
 ruthless King," adding, " and plenty more." On 
 my observing that he probably preferred a larger, 
 simpler style, he emphatically assented. " Have 
 you not," said I, " written something of that order ? " 
 " ISTo, but I often compose as I go along. I see how 
 things might be written as fine as Ossian, only with 
 true ideas. The world has no notion what poetry 
 will be." 
 
 It was impossible to disprove this, and I am 
 always glad to believe that the poverty of our 
 imagination is no measure of the world's resources
 
 56 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Our posterity will no doubt get fuel in ways that 
 we are unable to devise for them. But what this 
 conversation persuaded me of was, that the birth 
 with which the mind of Lentulus was pregnant 
 could not be poetry, though I did not question that 
 he composed as he went along, and that the 
 exercise was accompanied with a great sense of 
 power. This is a frequent experience in dreams, 
 and much of our waking experience is but a dream 
 in the daylight. Nay, for what I saw, the compo- 
 sitions might be fairly classed as Ossianic. But I 
 was satisfied that Lentulus could not disturb my 
 grateful admiration for the poets of all ages by 
 eclipsing them, or by putting them under a new 
 electric light of criticism. 
 
 Still, he had himself thrown the chief emphasis 
 of his protest and his consciousness of corrective 
 illumination on the philosophic thinking of our 
 race ; and his tone in assuring me that everything 
 which had been done in that way was wrong, that 
 Plato, Eobert Owen, and Dr. Tuffle, who wrote in 
 the " Eegulator," were all equally mistaken, gave my 
 superstitious nature a thrill of anxiety. After what 
 had passed about the poets, it did not seem likely 
 that Lentulus had all systems by heart ; but who 
 could say he had not seized that thread which may 
 somewhere hang out loosely from the web of things, 
 and be the clew of unravel tnent ? We need not go 
 far to learn that a prophet is not made by erudition. 
 Lentulus at least had not the bias of a school ; and 
 if it turned out that he was in agreement with any 
 celebrated thinker, ancient or modern, the agreement 
 would have the value of an undesigned coincidence 
 not due to forgotten reading. It was therefore with 
 renewed curiosity that I engaged him on this large.
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 5? 
 
 subject, the universal erroneousness of thinking up 
 to the period when Lentulus began that process. 
 And here I found him more copious than on the 
 theme of poetry. He admitted that he did contem- 
 plate writing down his thoughts, but his difficulty 
 was their abundance. Apparently he was like the 
 wood-cutter entering the thick forest, and saying, 
 " Where shall I begin ? " The same obstacle 
 appeared in a minor degree to cling about his ver- 
 bal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather 
 helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the num- 
 ber of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office ; on 
 what logic really is, as tending to support the buoy- 
 ancy of human mediums and mahogany tables ; on 
 the probability of all miracles under all religions 
 when explained by hidden laws, and my unreason- 
 ableness in supposing that their profuse occurrence 
 at half a guinea an hour in recent times was any- 
 thing more than a coincidence ; on the hap-hazard 
 way in which marriages are determined showing 
 the baselessness of social and moral schemes ; and 
 on his expectation that he should offend the scien- 
 tific world when he told them what he thought of 
 electricity as an agent. 
 
 No man's appearance could be graver or more 
 gentlemanlike than that of Lentulus as we walked 
 along the Mall, while he delivered these observa- 
 tions, understood by himself to have a regenerative 
 bearing on human society. His wristbands and 
 black gloves, his hat and nicely clipped hair, his 
 laudable moderation in beard, and his evident dis- 
 crimination in choosing his tailor, all seemed to 
 excuse the prevalent estimate of him as a man 
 untainted with heterodoxy, and likely to be so 
 unencumbered with opinions that he would always
 
 58 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 be useful as an assenting and admiring listener. 
 Men of science, seeing him at their lectures, doubt- 
 less nattered themselves that he came to learn from 
 them ; the philosophic ornaments of our time, 
 expounding some of their luminous ideas in the 
 social circle, took the meditative gaze of Lentulus 
 for one of surprise, not unmixed with a just rever- 
 ence at such close reasoning toward so novel a 
 conclusion ; and those who are called men of the 
 world considered him a good fellow, who might be 
 asked to vote for a friend of their own, and would 
 have no troublesome notion to make him unaccom- 
 modating. You perceive how very much they were 
 all mistaken, except in qualifying him as a good 
 fellow. 
 
 This Lentulus certainly was, in the sense of being 
 free from envy, hatred, and malice ; and such free- 
 dom was all the more remarkable an indication of 
 native benignity, because of his gaseous, inimitably 
 expansive conceit. Yes, conceit ; for that his enor- 
 mous and contentedly ignorant confidence in his 
 own rambling thoughts was usually clad in a decent 
 silence, is no reason why it should be less strictly 
 called by the name directly implying a complacent 
 self-estimate unwarranted by performance. Nay, 
 the total privacy in which he enjoyed his conscious- 
 ness of inspiration was the very condition of its 
 undisturbed, placid nourishment and gigantic growth. 
 Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to 
 tests ; in attempting to make an impression on 
 others, he may possibly (not always) be made to 
 feel his own lack of definiteness ; and the demand 
 for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on 
 vague depreciation of what others do, and vague 
 ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But
 
 A MAN SURPRISED AT HIS ORIGINALITY. 59 
 
 Lentulus was at once so unreceptive, and so little 
 gifted with the power of displaying his miscellaneous 
 deficiency of information, that there was really 
 nothing to hinder his astonishment at the sponta- 
 neous crop of ideas which his mind secretly yielded. 
 If it occurred to him that there were more meanings 
 than one for the word " motive," since it sometimes 
 meant the end aimed at, and sometimes the feeling 
 that prompted the aiming, and that the word 
 " cause " was also of changeable import, he was 
 naturally struck with the truth of his own percep- 
 tion, and was convinced that if this vein were well 
 followed out much might be made of it. Men were 
 evidently in the wrong about cause and effect ; else 
 why was society in the confused state we behold ? 
 And as to motive, Lentulus felt that when he came 
 to write down his views he should look deeply into 
 this kind of subject, and show up thereby the 
 anomalies of our social institutions ; meanwhile the 
 various aspects of " motive " and " cause " flitted 
 about among the motley crowd of ideas which he 
 regarded as original, and pregnant with reformative 
 efficacy. For his unaffected good-will made him 
 regard all his insight as only valuable because it 
 tended toward reform. 
 
 The respectable man had got into his illusory maze 
 of discoveries, by letting go that clew of conformity 
 in his thinking which he had kept fast hold of in 
 his tailoring and manners. He regarded heterodoxy 
 as a power in itself, and took his inacquaintance 
 with doctrines for a creative dissidence. But his 
 epitaph needs not to be a melancholy one. His 
 benevolent disposition was more effective for good, 
 than his silent presumption for harm. He might 
 have been mischievous but for the lack of words ;
 
 60 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 instead of being astonished at his inspirations in 
 private, he might have clad his addled originali- 
 ties, disjointed commonplaces, blind denials, and 
 balloon-like conclusions in that mighty sort of 
 language which would have made a new Koran 
 for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to 
 the ancient Koran, but one would not desire the 
 roc to lay more eggs, and give us a whole wing- 
 flapping brood to soar and make twilight. 
 
 Peace be with Lentulus, for he has left us in 
 peace. Blessed is the man who, having nothing to 
 say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the 
 fact, from calling on us to look through a heap 
 of millet-seed, in order to be sure that there is no 
 pearl in it.
 
 A TOO DEFEEENTIAL MAN. 
 
 A LITTLE unpremeditated insincerity must be in- 
 dulged under the stress of social intercourse. The 
 talk even of an honest man must often represent 
 merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable, rather 
 than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter 
 in hand. His thought, if uttered, might be wound- 
 ing ; or he has not the ability to utter it with exact- 
 ness, and snatches at a loose paraphrase ; or he 
 has really no genuine thought on the question, and 
 is driven to fill up the vacancy by borrowing the 
 remarks in vogue. These are the winds and cur- 
 rents we have all to steer among, and they are often 
 too strong for our truthfulness or our wit. Let us 
 not bear too hardly on each other for this common 
 incidental frailty, or think that we rise superior to 
 it by dropping all considerateness and deference. 
 
 But there are studious, deliberate forms of insincer- 
 ity which it is fair to be impatient with Hinze's, 
 for example. From his name you might suppose 
 him to be German ; in fact, his family is Alsatian, 
 but has been settled in England for more than one 
 generation. He is the superlatively deferential man, 
 and walks about with murmured wonder at the wis- 
 dom and discernment of everybody who talks to him. 
 He cultivates the- low toned tete-a-tete, keeping his 
 hat carefully in his hand, often stroking it, while he 
 smiles with downcast eyes, as if to relieve his feel- 
 ings under the pressure of the remarkable conver- 
 sation which it is his honour to enjoy at the present
 
 62 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 moment. I confess to some rage on hearing him 
 yesterday talking to Felicia, who is certainly a clever 
 woman, and without any unusual desire to show her 
 cleverness, occasionally says something of her own, 
 or makes an allusion which is not quite common. 
 Still, it must happen to her, as to every one else, to 
 speak of many subjects on which the best things 
 were said long ago ; and in conversation with a per- 
 son who has been newly introduced, those well-worn 
 themes naturally recur as a further development of 
 salutations and preliminary media of understanding, 
 such as pipes, chocolate, or mastic-chewing, which 
 serve to confirm the impression that our new ac- 
 quaintance is on a civilized footing, and has enough 
 regard for formulas to save us from shocking out- 
 bursts of individualism, to which we are always 
 exposed with the tamest bear or baboon. Consid- 
 ered purely as a matter of information, it cannot any 
 longer be important for us to learn that a British 
 subject, included in the last census, holds Shak- 
 speare to be supreme in the presentation of charac- 
 ter ; still, it is as admissible for any one to make 
 this statement about himself as to rub his hands 
 and tell you that the air is brisk, if only he will let 
 it fall as a matter of course, with a parenthetic light- 
 ness, and not announce his adhesion to a common- 
 place with an emphatic insistence, as if it were a 
 proof of singular insight. We mortals should chiefly 
 like to talk to each other out of good-will and fel- 
 lowship, not for the sake of hearing revelations or 
 being stimulated by witticisms ; and I have usually 
 found that it is the rather dull person who appears 
 to be disgusted with his contemporaries because they 
 are not always strikingly original, and to satisfy 
 whom the party at a country-house should have
 
 A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 63 
 
 included the prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis Bacon, 
 and Voltaire. It is always your heaviest bore who 
 is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities ; 
 naturally, for a little of his company has reduced 
 them to a state of flaccid fatigue. It is right and 
 meet that there should be an abundant utterance 
 of good sound commonplaces. Part of an agreeable 
 talker's charm is that he lets them fall continually 
 with no more than their due emphasis. Giving a 
 pleasant voice to what we are all well assured of, 
 makes a sort of wholesome air for more special and 
 dubious remark to move in. 
 
 Hence it seemed to me far from unbecoming in 
 Felicia that in her first dialogue with Hinze, previ- 
 ously quite a stranger to her, her observations were 
 those of an ordinarily refined and well-educated 
 woman on standard subjects, and might have been 
 printed in a manual of polite topics and creditable 
 opinions. She had no desire to astonish a man of 
 whom she had heard nothing particular. It was 
 all the more exasperating to see and hear Hinze's 
 reception of her well-bred conformities. Felicia's 
 acquaintances knew her as the suitable wife of a 
 distinguished man, a sensible, vivacious, kindly dis- 
 posed woman, helping her husband with graceful 
 apologies written and spoken, and making her re- 
 ceptions agreeable to all comers. But you would 
 have imagined that Hinze had been prepared by 
 general report to regard this introduction to her as 
 an opportunity comparable to an audience of the 
 Delphic Sibyl. When she had delivered herself on 
 the changes in Italian travel, on the difficulty of 
 reading Ariosto in these busy times, on the want of 
 equilibrium in French political affairs, and on the 
 pre-eminence of German music, he would know what
 
 64 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 to think. Felicia was evidently embarrassed by his 
 reverent wonder, and, in dread lest she should seem 
 to be playing the oracle, became somewhat confused, 
 stumbling on her answers rather than choosing them. 
 But this made no difference to Hinze's rapt atten- 
 tion and subdued eagerness of inquiry. He contin- 
 ued to put large questions, bending his head slightly, 
 that his eyes might be a little lifted in awaiting her 
 reply. 
 
 " What, may I ask, is your opinion as to the state 
 of Art in England ? " 
 
 " Oh," said Felicia, with a light deprecatory laugh, 
 " I think it suffers from two diseases bad taste in 
 the patrons, and want of inspiration in the artists." 
 
 " That is true indeed," said Hinze, in an undertone 
 of deep conviction. " You have put your finger with 
 strict accuracy on the causes of decline. To a cul- 
 tivated taste like yours this must be particularly 
 painful." 
 
 "I did not say there was actual decline," said 
 Felicia, with a touch of brusquerie. "I don't set 
 myself up as the great personage whom nothing can 
 pleasa" 
 
 " That would be too severe a misfortune for 
 others," says my complimentary ape. " You approve, 
 perhaps, of Rosemary's ' Babes in the Wood,' as some- 
 thing fresh and naive in sculpture ? " 
 
 " I think it enchanting." 
 
 " Does he know that ? Or will you permit me to 
 tell him ? " 
 
 "Heaven forbid! It would be an impertinence 
 in me to praise a work of his, to pronounce on its 
 quality ; and that I happen to like it can be of no 
 consequence to him." 
 
 Here was an occasion for Hinze to smile down on
 
 A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 65 
 
 his hat and stroke it Felicia's ignorance that her 
 praise was inestimable being peculiarly noteworthy 
 . to an observer of mankind. Presently he was quite 
 sure that her favourite author was Shakspeare, and 
 wished to know what she thought of Hamlet's mad- 
 ness. When she had quoted Wilhelm Meister on 
 this point, and had afterward testified that " Lear " 
 was beyond adequate presentation, that " Julius 
 Csesar" was an effective acting play, and that a 
 poet may know a good deal about human nature 
 while knowing little of geography, Hinze appeared 
 so impressed with the plenitude of these revela- 
 tions that he recapitulated them, weaving them 
 together with threads of compliment : " As you very 
 justly observed ; " and " It is most true, as you 
 say;" and "It were well if others noted what you 
 have remarked." 
 
 Some listeners, incautious in their epithets, would 
 have called Hinze an " ass." For my part, I would 
 never insult that intelligent and unpretending ani- 
 mal, who no doubt brays with perfect simplicity 
 and substantial meaning to those acquainted with 
 his idiom, and if he feigns more submission than he 
 feels, has weighty reasons for doing so; I would 
 never, I say, insult that historic and ill-appreciated 
 animal, the ass, by giving his name to a man whose 
 continuous pretence is so shallow in its motive, so 
 unexcused by any sharp appetite, as this of Hinze's. 
 
 But perhaps you would say that his adulatory 
 manner was originally adopted under strong prompt- 
 ings of self-interest, and that his absurdly over- 
 acted deference to persons from whom he expects 
 no patronage is the unreflecting persistence of habit 
 just as those who live with the deaf will shout 
 to everybody else. 
 
 TOL. I. 6
 
 66 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 And you might indeed imagine that in talking to 
 Tulpian, who has considerable interest at his dis- 
 posal, Hinze had a desired appointment in his mind. 
 Tulpian is appealed to on innumerable subjects, and 
 if he is unwilling to express himself on any one of 
 them, says so with instructive copiousness; he is 
 much listened to, and his utterances are registered 
 and reported with more or less exactitude. But I 
 think he has no other listener who comports him- 
 self as Hinze does who, figuratively speaking, 
 carries about a small spoon, ready to pick up any 
 dusty crumb of opinion that the eloquent man may 
 have let drop. Tulpian, with reverence be it said, 
 has some rather absurd notions, such as a mind of 
 large discourse often finds room for. They slip 
 about among his higher conceptions and multitu- 
 dinous acquirements, like disreputable characters at 
 a national celebration in some vast cathedral, where 
 to the ardent soul all is glorified by rainbow-light 
 and grand associations ; any vulgar detective knows 
 them for what they are. But Hinze is especially 
 fervid in his desire to hear Tulpian dilate on his 
 crotchets, and is rather troublesome to bystanders 
 in asking them whether they have read the various 
 fugitive writings in which these crotchets have been 
 published. If an expert is explaining some matter 
 on which you desire to know the evidence, Hinze 
 teases you with Tulpian's guesses, and asks the 
 expert what he thinks of them. 
 
 In general, Hinze delights in the citation of 
 opinions, and would hardly remark that the sun 
 shone, without an air of respectful appeal or fervid 
 adhesion. The "Iliad," one sees, would impress 
 him little, if it were not for what Mr. Fugleman has 
 lately said about it ; and if you mention an image
 
 A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 67 
 
 or sentiment in Chaucer, he seems not to heed the 
 bearing of your reference, but immediately tells you 
 that Mr. Hautboy, too, regards Chaucer as a poet of 
 the first order, and he is delighted to find that two 
 such judges, as you and Hautboy, are at one. 
 
 What is the reason of all this subdued ecstasy, 
 moving about, hat in hand, with well-dressed hair, 
 and attitudes of unimpeachable correctness ? Some 
 persons, conscious of sagacity, decide at once that 
 Hinze knows what he is about in flattering Tulpian, 
 and has a carefully appraised end to serve, though 
 they may not see it. They are misled by the com- 
 mon mistake of supposing that men's behaviour, 
 whether habitual or occasional, is chiefly determined 
 by a distinctly conceived motive, a definite object 
 to be gained or a definite evil to be avoided. The 
 truth is that, the primitive wants of nature once 
 tolerably satisfied, the majority of mankind, even in 
 a civilized life full of solicitations, are with difficulty 
 aroused to the distinct conception of an object 
 toward which they will direct their actions with 
 careful adaptation ; and it is yet rarer to .find one 
 who can persist in the systematic pursuit of such an 
 end. Few lives are shaped, few characters formed, 
 by the contemplation of definite consequences seen 
 from a distance, and made the goal of continuous 
 effort or the beacon of a constantly avoided danger. 
 Such control by foresight, such vivid picturing and 
 practical logic, are the distinction of exceptionally 
 strong natures; but society is chiefly made up of 
 human beings whose daily acts are all performed 
 either in unreflecting obedience to custom and rou- 
 tine, or from immediate promptings of thought or 
 feeling to execute an immediate purpose. They pay 
 their poor-rates, give their vote in affairs political or
 
 68 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 parochial, wear a certain amount of starch, hinder 
 boys from tormenting the helpless, and spend money 
 on tedious observances called pleasures, without 
 mentally adjusting these practices to their own 
 well-understood interest, or to the general, ultimate 
 welfare of the human race ; and when they fall into 
 ungraceful compliment, excessive smiling, or other 
 luckless efforts of complaisant behaviour, these are 
 but the tricks or habits gradually formed under the 
 successive promptings of a wish to be agreeable, 
 stimulated day by day without any widening re- 
 sources for gratifying the wish. It does not in the 
 least follow that they are seeking by studied hypo- 
 crisy to get something for themselves. And so with 
 Hinze's deferential bearing, complimentary paren- 
 theses, and worshipful tones, which seem to some 
 like the over acting of a part in a comedy. He ex- 
 pects no appointment or other appreciable gain 
 through Tulpian's favour; he has no doubleness 
 toward Felicia ; there is no sneering or backbiting 
 obverse to his ecstatic admiration. He is very well 
 off in the world, and cherishes no unsatisfied ambi- 
 tion that could feed design and direct flattery. As 
 you perceive, he has had the education and other 
 advantages of a gentleman, without being conscious 
 of marked result, such as a decided preference for 
 any particular ideas or functions ; his mind is furn- 
 ished as hotels are, with everything for occasional 
 and transient use. But one cannot be an English- 
 man and gentleman in general ; it is in the nature 
 of things that one must have an individuality, 
 though it may be of an often repeated typa As 
 Hinze in growing to maturity had grown into a 
 particular form and expression of person, so he 
 necessarily gathered a manner and frame of speech
 
 A TOO DEFERENTIAL MAN. 69 
 
 which made him additionally recognizable. His 
 nature is not tuned to the pitch of a genuine direct 
 admiration, only to an attitudinizing deference 
 which does not fatigue itself with the formation of 
 real judgments. All human achievement must be 
 wrought down to this spoon-meat, this mixture of 
 other persons' washy opinions and his own flux of 
 reverence for what is third-hand, before Hinze can 
 find a relish for it. 
 
 He has no more leading characteristic than the 
 desire to stand well with those who are justly dis- 
 tinguished; he has no base admirations; and you 
 may know by his entire presentation of himself, 
 from the management of his hat to the angle at 
 which he keeps his right foot, that he aspires to 
 correctness. Desiring to behave becomingly, and 
 also to make a figure in dialogue, he is only like the 
 bad artist, whose picture is a failure. We may pity 
 these ill-gifted strivers, but not pretend that their 
 works are pleasant to behold. A man is bound to 
 know something of his own weight and muscular 
 dexterity, and the puny athlete is called foolish 
 before he is seen to be thrown. Hinze has not the 
 stuff in him to be at once agreeably conversational 
 and sincere, and he has got himself up to be at all 
 events agreeably conversational. Notwithstanding 
 this deliberateness of intention in his talk, he is 
 unconscious of falsity ; for he has not enough of 
 deep and lasting impression to find a contrast or 
 diversity between his words and his thoughts. He 
 is not fairly to be called a hypocrite ; but I have 
 already confessed to the more exasperation at his 
 make-believe reverence, because it has no deep 
 hunger to excuse it.
 
 ONLY TEMPEE. 
 
 WHAT is temper? Its primary meaning, the pro- 
 portion and mode in which qualities are mingled, is 
 much neglected in popular speech, yet even here 
 the word often carries a reference to an habitual 
 state or general tendency of the organism, in dis- 
 tinction from what are held to be specific virtues 
 and vices. As people confess to bad memory with- 
 out expecting to sink in mental reputation, so we 
 hear a man declared to have a bad temper, and yet 
 glorified as the possessor of every high quality. 
 When he errs, or in any way commits himself, his 
 temper is accused, not his character ; and it is under- 
 stood that, but for a brutal, bearish mood, he is 
 kindness itself. If he kicks small animals, swears 
 violently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is 
 grossly rude to his wife, it is remarked apologeti- 
 cally that these things mean nothing they are all 
 temper. 
 
 Certainly there is a limit to this form of apology, 
 and the forgery of a bill, or the ordering of goods 
 without any prospect of paying for them, has never 
 been set down to an unfortunate habit of sulkiness 
 or of irascibility. But, on the whole, there is a 
 peculiar exercise of indulgence toward the mani- 
 festations of bad temper, which tends to encourage 
 them, so that we are in danger of having among us 
 a number of virtuous persons who conduct them- 
 selves detestably, just as we have hysterical patients
 
 ONLY TEMPER. 71 
 
 who, with sound organs, are apparently labouring 
 under many sorts of organic disease. Let it be 
 admitted, however, that a man may be "a good 
 fellow " and yet have a bad temper, so bad that 
 we recognize his merits with reluctance, and are 
 inclined to resent his occasionally amiable behaviour 
 as an unfair demand on our admiration. 
 
 Touchwood is that kind of good fellow. He is 
 by turns insolent, quarrelsome, repulsively haughty 
 to innocent people who approach him with respect, 
 neglectful of his friends, angry in face of legitimate 
 demands, procrastinating in the fulfilment of such 
 demands, prompted to rude words and harsh looks 
 by a moody disgust with his fellow-men in gene- 
 eral and yet, as everybody will assure you, the 
 soul of honour, a steadfast friend, a defender of the 
 oppressed, an affectionate-hearted creature. Pity 
 that, after a certain experience of his moods, his 
 intimacy becomes insupportable ! A man who uses 
 his balraorals to tread on your toes with much fre- 
 quency, and an unmistakable emphasis, may prove 
 a fast friend in adversity; but meanwhile your 
 adversity has not arrived, and your toes are tender. 
 The daily sneer or growl at your remarks is not to 
 be made amends for by a possible eulogy, or defence 
 of your understanding against depreciators who 
 may not present themselves, and on an occasion 
 which may never arise. I cannot submit to a 
 chronic state of blue and green bruise as a form of 
 insurance against an accident. 
 
 Touchwood's bad temper is of the contradicting, 
 pugnacious sort. He is the honourable gentleman 
 in opposition, whatever proposal or proposition may 
 be broached ; and when others join him, he secretly 
 damns their superfluous agreement, quickly discov-
 
 72 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ering that his way of stating the case is not exactly 
 theirs. An invitation, or any sign of expectation, 
 throws him into an attitude of refusal. Ask his 
 concurrence in a benevolent measure ; he will not 
 decline to give it, because he has a real sympathy 
 with good aims, but he complies resentfully ; though 
 where he is let alone, he will do much more than 
 any one would have thought of asking for. No 
 man would shrink with greater sensitiveness from 
 the imputation of not paying his debts ; yet when a 
 bill is sent in with any promptitude, he is inclined 
 to make the tradesman wait for the money he is in 
 such a hurry to get. One sees that this antagonis- 
 tic temper must be much relieved by finding a par- 
 ticular object, and that its worst moments must be 
 those where the mood is that of vague resistance, 
 there being nothing specific to oppose. Touchwood 
 is never so little engaging as when he comes down 
 to breakfast with a cloud on his brow, after parting 
 from you the night before with an affectionate effu- 
 siveness, at the end of a confidential conversation, 
 which has assured you of mutual understanding. 
 Impossible that you can have committed any 
 offence ! If mice have disturbed him, that is not 
 your fault ; but, nevertheless, your cheerful greeting 
 had better not convey any reference to the weather ; 
 else it will be met by a sneer which, taking you 
 unawares, may give you a crushing sense that you 
 make a poor figure with your cheerfulness, which 
 was not asked for. Some daring person perhaps 
 introduces another topic, and uses the delicate 
 flattery of appealing to Touchwood for his opinion, 
 the topic being included in his favourite studies. An 
 indistinct muttering, with a look at the carving- 
 knife, in reply, teaches that daring person how ill
 
 ONLY TEMPER. 73 
 
 he has chosen a market for his deference. If Touch- 
 wood's behaviour affects you very closely, you had 
 better break your leg in the course of the day : his 
 bad temper will then vanish at once ; he will take a 
 painful journey on your behalf ; he will sit up with 
 you night after night ; he will do all the work of 
 your department, so as to save you from any loss in 
 consequence of your accident ; he will be even uni- 
 formly tender to you till you are well on your legs 
 again, when he will some fine morning insult you 
 without provocation, and make you wish that his 
 generous goodness to you had not closed your lips 
 against retort. 
 
 It is not always necessary that a friend should 
 break his leg for Touchwood to feel compunction, 
 and endeavour to make amends for his bearishness 
 or insolence. He becomes spontaneously conscious 
 that he has misbehaved, and he is not only ashamed 
 of himself, but has the better prompting to try and 
 heal any wound he has inflicted. Unhappily, the 
 habit of being offensive " without meaning it " leads 
 usually to a way of making amends which the 
 injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable 
 without meaning it. The kindnesses, the compli- 
 mentary indications or assurances, are apt to appear 
 in the light of a penance adjusted to the foregoing 
 lapses, and, by the very contrast they offer, call up 
 a keener memory of the wrong they atone for. 
 They are not a spontaneous prompting of good-will, 
 but an elaborate compensation. And, in fact, Dion's 
 atoning friendliness has a ring of artificiality. Be- 
 cause he formerly disguised his good feeling toward 
 you, he now expresses' more than he quite feels. 
 It is in vain. Having made you extremely uncom- 
 fortable last week, he has absolutely diminished
 
 74 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 his power of making you happy to-day. He strug- 
 gles against the result by excessive effort ; but he 
 has taught you to observe his fitfulness, rather than 
 to be warmed by his episodic show of regard. 
 
 I suspect that many persons who have an uncer- 
 tain, incalculable temper flatter themselves that it 
 enhances their fascination; but perhaps they are 
 under the prior mistake of exaggerating the charm 
 which they suppose to be thus strengthened ; in 
 any case, they will do well not to trust in the 
 attractions of caprice and moodiness for a long con- 
 tinuance or for close intercourse. A pretty woman 
 may fan the flame of distant adorers by harassing 
 them ; but if she lets one of them make her his 
 wife, the point of view from which he will look at 
 her poutings and tossings, and mysterious inability 
 to be pleased, will be seriously altered. And if 
 slavery to a pretty woman, which seems among the 
 least conditional forms of abject service, will not 
 bear too great a strain from her bad temper, even 
 though her beauty remain the same, it is clear that 
 a man whose claims lie in his high character, or 
 high performances, had need impress us very con- 
 stantly with his peculiar value and indispensableness, 
 if he is to test our patience by an uncertainty of 
 temper which leaves us absolutely without grounds 
 for guessing how he will receive our persons or 
 humbly advanced opinions, or what line he will 
 take on any but the most momentous occasions. 
 
 For it is among the repulsive effects of this bad 
 temper, which is supposed to be compatible with 
 shining virtues, that it is apt to determine a man's 
 sudden adhesion to an opinion, whether on a per- 
 sonal or impersonal matter, without leaving him 
 time to consider his grounds. The adhesion is sud-
 
 ONLY TEMPER. 7S 
 
 den and momentary, but it either forms a precedent 
 for his line of thought and action, or it is presently 
 seen to have been inconsistent with his true mind. 
 This determination of partisanship by temper has 
 its worst effects in the career of the public man, who 
 is always in danger of getting so enthralled by bis 
 own words that he looks into facts and questions, 
 not to get rectifying knowledge, but to get evidence 
 that will justify his actual attitude, which was 
 assumed under an impulse dependent on something 
 else than knowledge. There has been plenty of 
 insistence on the evil of swearing by the words of a 
 master, and having the judgment uniformly con- 
 trolled by a " He said it ; " but a much worse woe to 
 befall a man is to have every judgment controlled 
 by an " I said it " to make a divinity of his own 
 short-sightedness or passion-led aberration, and ex- 
 plain the world in its honour. There is hardly a 
 more pitiable degradation than this, for a man of high 
 gifts. Hence I cannot join with those who wish 
 that Touchwood, being young enough to enter on 
 public life, should get elected for Parliament, and 
 use his excellent abilities to serve his country in 
 that conspicuous manner. For hitherto, in the less 
 momentous incidents of private life, his capricious 
 temper has only produced the minor evil of inconsis- 
 tency, and he is even greatly at ease in contradicting 
 himself, provided he can contradict you, and disap- 
 point any smiling expectation you may have shown 
 that the impressions you are uttering are likely to 
 meet with his sympathy, considering that the day 
 before he himself gave you the example which your 
 mind is following. He is at least free from those 
 fetters of self-justification which are the curse of 
 parliamentary speaking; and what I rather desire
 
 76 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 for him is that he should produce the great book 
 which he is generally pronounced capable of writing, 
 and put his best self imperturbably on record for 
 the advantage of society; because I should then 
 have steady ground for bearing with his diurnal 
 incalculableness, and could fix my gratitude as by 
 strong staple to that unvarying monumental service. 
 Unhappily, Touchwood's great powers have been 
 only so far manifested as to be believed in, not 
 demonstrated. Everybody rates them highly, and 
 thinks that whatever he chose to do would be done 
 in a firstrate manner. Is it his love of disappoint- 
 ing complacent expectancy, which has gone so far 
 as to keep up this lamentable negation, and made 
 him resolve not to write the comprehensive work 
 which he would have written if nobody had expected 
 it of him ? 
 
 One can see that if Touchwood were to become a 
 public man, and take to frequent speaking on plat- 
 forms or from his seat in the House, it would hardly 
 be possible for him to maintain much integrity of 
 opinion, or to avoid courses of partisanship which a 
 healthy public sentiment would stamp with discredit. 
 Say that he were endowed with the purest honesty, 
 it would inevitably be dragged captive by this mys- 
 terious, Protean, bad temper. There would be the 
 fatal public necessity of justifying oratorical temper, 
 which had got on its legs in its bitter mood and 
 made insulting imputations, or of keeping up some 
 decent show of consistency with opinions vented out 
 of temper's contradictoriness. And words would 
 have to be followed up by acts of adhesion. 
 
 Certainly, if a bad-tempered man can be admirably 
 virtuous, he must be so under extreme difficulties. 
 I doubt the possibility that a high order of character
 
 can coexist with a temper like Touchwood's. For it 
 is of the nature of such temper to interrupt the for- 
 mation of healthy mental habits, which depend on 
 a growing harmony between perception, conviction, 
 and impulse. There may be good feelings, good 
 deeds, for a human nature may pack endless 
 varieties and blessed inconsistencies in its windings, 
 but it is essential to what is worthy to be called 
 high character, that it may be safely calculated on, 
 and that its qualities shall have taken the form of 
 principles or laws, habitually, if not perfectly 
 obeyed. 
 
 If a man frequently passes unjust judgments, takes 
 up false attitudes, intermits his acts of kindness 
 with rude behaviour or cruel words, and falls into the 
 consequent vulgar error of supposing that he can 
 make amends by laboured agreeableness, I cannot 
 consider such courses any the less ugly because they 
 are ascribed to "temper." Especially I object to 
 the assumption, that his having a fundamentally 
 good disposition is either an apology or a compensa- 
 tion for his bad behaviour. If his temper yesterday 
 made him lash the horses, upset the curricle, and 
 cause a breakage in my rib, I feel it no compensation 
 that to-day he vows he will drive me anywhere, in 
 the gentlest manner, any day, as long as he lives. 
 Yesterday was what it was, my rib is paining me ; 
 it is not a main object of my life to be driven by 
 Touchwood, and I have no confidence in his life-long 
 gentleness. The utmost form of placability I am 
 capable of is to try and remember his better deeds 
 already performed, and, mindful of my own offence, 
 to bear him no malice. But I cannot accept his 
 amends. 
 
 If the bad-tempered man wants to apologize, he
 
 78 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 had need to do it on a large public scale, make 
 some beneficent discovery, produce some stimulating 
 work of genius, invent some powerful process, 
 prove himself such a good to contemporary multi- 
 tudes and future generations as to make the 
 discomfort he causes his friends and acquaintances 
 a vanishing quality, a trifle even in their own 
 estimate.
 
 A POLITICAL MOLECULE. 
 
 THE most arrant denier must admit that a man 
 often furthers larger ends than he is conscious of, 
 and that while he is transacting his particular 
 affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable 
 ant, he subserves an economy larger than any pur- 
 pose of his own. Society is happily not dependent 
 for the growth of fellowship on the small minority 
 already endowed with comprehensive sympathy. 
 Any molecule of the body politic, working toward 
 his own interest in an orderly way, gets his under- 
 standing more or less penetrated with the fact that 
 his interest is included in that of a large number. 
 I have watched several political molecules being 
 educated in this way, by the nature of things, into 
 a faint feeling of fraternity. But at this moment 
 I am thinking of Spike, an elector who voted on 
 the side of Progress, though he was not inwardly 
 attached to it under that name. For abstractions 
 are deities having many specific names, local habita- 
 tions, and forms of activity, and so get a multitude of 
 devout servants, who care no more for them under 
 their highest titles than the celebrated person who, 
 putting with forcible brevity a view of human 
 motives now much insisted on, asked what Poster- 
 ity had done for him that he should care for 
 Posterity ? To many minds, even among the 
 ancients (thought by some to have been invariably 
 poetical), the goddess of wisdom was doubtless
 
 8o ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 worshipped simply as the patroness of spinning and 
 weaving. Now spinning and weaving, from a man- 
 ufacturing, wholesale point of view, was the chief 
 form under which Spike from early years had uncon- 
 sciously been a devotee of Progress. 
 
 He was a political molecule of the most gentle- 
 man-like appearance, not less than six feet high, 
 and showing the utmost nicety in the care of his 
 person and equipment. His umbrella was especially 
 remarkable for its neatness, though perhaps he 
 swung it unduly in walking. His complexion was 
 fresh, his eyes small, bright, and twinkling. He 
 was seen to great advantage in a hat and great-coat 
 garments frequently fatal to the impressiveness 
 of shorter figures ; but when he was uncovered in the 
 drawing-room, it was impossible not to observe that 
 his head shelved off too rapidly from the eyebrows 
 toward the crown, and that his length of limb 
 seemed to have used up his mind so as to cause an 
 air of abstraction from conversational topics. He 
 appeared, indeed, to be preoccupied with a sense of 
 his exquisite cleanliness, clapped his hands together 
 and rubbed them, frequently straightened his back, 
 and even opened his mouth and closed it again with 
 a slight snap, apparently for no other purpose than 
 the confirmation to himself of his own powers in 
 that line. These are innocent exercises, but they 
 are not such as give weight to a man's personality. 
 Sometimes Spike's mind, emerging from its preoc- 
 cupation, burst forth in a remark delivered with 
 smiling zest as, that he did like to see gravel- 
 walks well rolled, or that a lady should always 
 wear the best jewelry, or that a bride was a most 
 interesting object ; but finding these ideas received 
 rather coldly, he would relapse into abstraction,
 
 A POLITICAL MOLECULE. 81 
 
 draw up his back, wrinkle his brows longitudinally, 
 and seem to regard society, even including gravel- 
 walks, jewelry, and brides, as essentially a poor 
 affair. Indeed, his habit of mind was desponding, 
 and he took melancholy views as to the possible 
 extent of human pleasure and the value of existence ; 
 especially after he had made his fortune in the cot- 
 ton manufacture, and had thus attained the chief 
 object of his ambition the object which had 
 engaged his talent for order and persevering appli- 
 cation for his easy leisure caused him much 
 ennui. He was abstemious, and had none of those 
 temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's 
 time, first with indulgence, and then with the pro- 
 cess of getting well from its effects. He had not, 
 indeed, exhausted the sources of knowledge, but 
 here again his notions of human pleasure were nar- 
 rowed by his want of appetite ; for, though he seemed 
 rather surprised at the consideration that Alfred 
 the Great was a Catholic, or that, apart from the 
 Ten Commandments, any conception of moral con- 
 duct had occurred to mankind, he was not stimulated 
 to further inquiries on these remote matters. Yet 
 he aspired to what he regarded as intellectual 
 society, willingly entertained beneficed clergymen, 
 and bought the books he heard spoken of, arranging 
 them carefully on the shelves of what he called his 
 library, and occasionally sitting alone in the same 
 room with them. But some minds seem well glaced 
 by nature against the admission of knowledge, and 
 Spike's was one of them. It was not, however, 
 entirely so with regard to politics. He had had a 
 strong opinion about the Eeform Bill, and saw 
 clearly that the large trading-towns ought to send 
 members. Portraits of the Keform heroes hung 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 framed and glazed in his library ; he prided himself 
 on being a Liberal. In this last particular, as well 
 as in not giving benefactions, and not making loans 
 without interest, he showed unquestionable firm- 
 ness. On the Repeal of the Corn Laws, again, he 
 was thoroughly convinced. His mind was expan- 
 sive toward foreign markets, and his imagination 
 could see that the people from whom we took corn 
 might be able to take the cotton goods which they 
 had hitherto dispensed with. On his conduct in 
 these political concerns, his wife, otherwise influen- 
 tial as a woman who belonged to a family with a 
 title in it, and who had condescended in marrying 
 him, could gain no hold ; she had to blush a little 
 at what was called her husband's " radicalism," 
 an epithet which was a very unfair impeachment of 
 Spike, who never went to the root of anything. 
 But he understood his own trading affairs, and in 
 this way became a genuine, constant political ele- 
 ment. If he had been born a little later he could 
 have been accepted as an eligible member of Par- 
 liament, and if he had belonged to a high family he 
 might have done for a member of the Government. 
 Perhaps his indifference to " views " would have 
 passed for administrative judiciousness, and he 
 would have been so generally silent that he must 
 often have been silent in the right place. But this 
 is empty speculation ; there is no warrant for saying 
 what Spike would have been and known, so as to 
 have made a calculable political element, if he had 
 not been educated by having to manage his trade. 
 A small mind, trained to useful occupation for the 
 satisfying of private need, becomes a representative 
 of genuine class-needs. Spike objected to certain 
 items of legislation, because they hampered his own
 
 A POLITICAL MOLECULE. 83 
 
 trade, but his neighbour's trade was hampered by the 
 same causes ; and though he would have been simply 
 selfish, in a question of light or water between him- 
 self and a fellow-townsman, his need for a change 
 in legislation, being shared by all his neighbours in 
 trade, ceased to be simply selfish, and raised him to 
 a sense of common injury and common benefit. 
 True, if the law could have been changed for the 
 benefit of his particular business, leaving the cotton 
 trade in general in a sorry condition while he pros- 
 pered, Spike might not have thought that result 
 intolerably unjust ; but the nature of things did not 
 allow of such a result being contemplated as possi- 
 ble ; it allowed of an enlarged market for Spike, 
 only through the enlargement of his neighbours' 
 market, and the Possible is always the ultimate 
 master of our efforts and desires. Spike was obliged 
 to contemplate a general benefit, and thus became 
 public-spirited in spite of himself. Or rather, the 
 nature of things transmuted his active egoism into 
 a demand for a public benefit. 
 
 ( Certainly, if Spike had been born a marquis he 
 could not have had the same chance of being useful 
 as a political element. But he might have had the 
 same appearance, have been equally null in conver- 
 sation, sceptical as to the reality of pleasure, and 
 destitute of historical knowledge, perhaps even 
 dimly disliking Jesuitism as a quality in Catholic 
 minds, or regarding Bacon as the inventor of physi- 
 cal science. The depths of middle-aged gentlemen's 
 ignorance will never be known, for want of public 
 examinations in this branch.
 
 THE WATCH-DOa OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 MORDAX is an admirable man, ardent in intellectual 
 work, public-spirited, affectionate, and able to find 
 the right words in conveying ingenious ideas or 
 elevated feeling. Pity that to all these graces he 
 cannot add what would give them the utmost 
 finish, the occasional admission that he has been 
 in the wrong, the occasional frank welcome of a 
 new idea as something not before present to his 
 mind I But no ; Mordax's self-respect seems to be 
 of that fiery quality which demands that none but 
 the monarchs of thought shall have an advantage 
 over him, and in the presence of contradiction, or 
 the threat of having his notions corrected, he 
 becomes astonishingly unscrupulous and cruel for 
 so kindly and conscientious a man. 
 
 " You are fond of attributing those fine qualities 
 to Mordax," said Acer, the other day, "but I have 
 not much belief in virtues that are always requiring 
 to be asserted, in spite of appearances against them. 
 True fairness and good-will show themselves pre- 
 cisely where his are conspicuously absent I mean 
 in recognizing claims which the rest of the world 
 are not likely to stand up for. It does not need 
 much love of truth and justice in me to say that 
 Aldebaran is a bright star, or Isaac Newton the 
 greatest of discoverers ; or much kindliness in me 
 to want my notes to be heard above the rest in a 
 chorus of hallelujahs to one already crowned. It
 
 THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 85 
 
 is my way to apply tests. Does the man who has 
 the ear of the public use his advantage tenderly 
 toward poor fellows who may be hindered of their 
 due if he treats their pretensions with scorn ? That 
 is my test of his justice and benevolence." 
 
 My answer was, that his system of moral tests 
 might be as delusive as what ignorant people take 
 to be tests of intellect and learning. If the scholar 
 or savant cannot answer their haphazard questions 
 on the shortest notice, their belief in his capacity 
 is shaken. But the better-informed have given 
 up the Johnsonian theory of mind as a pair of legs 
 able to walk east or west according to choice. Intel- 
 lect is no longer taken to be a ready-made dose of 
 ability to attain eminence (or mediocrity) in all 
 departments ; it is even admitted that application 
 in one line of study or practice has often a laming 
 effect in other directions, and that an intellectual 
 quality or special facility which is a furtherance 
 in one medium of effort is a drag in another. We 
 have convinced ourselves by this time that a man 
 may be a sage in celestial physics, and a poor 
 creature in the purchase of seed-corn, or even in 
 theorizing about the affections ; that he may be 
 a mere fumbler in physiology, and yet show a 
 keen insight into human motives ; that he may 
 seem the " poor Poll " of the company in conversa- 
 tion, and yet write with some humorous vigor. 
 It is not true that a man's intellectual power is, 
 like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured 
 by its weakest point. 
 
 Why should we any more apply that fallacious 
 standard of what is called consistency to a man's 
 moral nature; and argue against the existence of 
 fine impulses or habits of feeling in relation to his
 
 86 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 actions generally, because those better movements 
 are absent in a class of cases which act peculiarly 
 on an irritable form of his egoism? The mistake 
 might be corrected by our taking notice that the 
 ungenerous words or acts which seem to us the 
 most utterly incompatible with good dispositions 
 in the offender, are those which offend ourselves. 
 All other persons are able to draw a milder con- 
 clusion. Laniger, who has a temper but no talent 
 for repartee, having been run down in a fierce way 
 by Mordax, is inwardly persuaded that the highly 
 lauded man is a wolf at heart ; he is much tried 
 by perceiving that his own friends seem to think 
 no worse of the reckless assailant than they did 
 before ; and Corvus, who has lately been flattered 
 by some kindness from Mordax, is unmindful 
 enough of Laniger's feeling to dwell on this instance 
 of good-nature with admiring gratitude. There is 
 a fable that when the badger had been stung all 
 over by bees, a bear consoled him by a rhapsodic 
 account of how he himself had just breakfasted on 
 their honey. The badger replied, peevishly, " The 
 stings are in my flesh, and the sweetness is on your 
 muzzle." The bear, it is said, was surprised at the 
 badger's want of altruism. 
 
 But this difference of sensibility between Laniger 
 and his friends only mirrors in a faint way the dif- 
 ference between his own point of view and that 
 of the man who has injured him. If those neutral, 
 perhaps even affectionate persons, form no lively 
 conception of what Laniger suffers, how should 
 Mordax have any such sympathetic imagination 
 to check him in what he persuades himself is a 
 scourging administered by the qualified man to the 
 unqualified ? Depend upon it, his conscience, though
 
 THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 87 
 
 active enough in some relations, has never given 
 him a twinge because of his polemical rudeness 
 and even brutality. He would go from the room 
 where he has been tiring himself through the 
 watches of the night, in lifting and turning a sick 
 friend, and straightway write a reply or rejoinder 
 in which he mercilessly pilloried a Laniger who 
 had supposed that he could tell the world some- 
 thing else or more than had been sanctioned by 
 the eminent Mordax and, what was worse, had 
 sometimes really done so. Does this nullify the 
 genuineness of motive which made him tender to 
 his suffering friend ? Not at all. It only proves 
 that his arrogant egoism, set on fire, sends up smoke 
 and flame where just before there had been the dews 
 of fellowship and pity. He is angry, and equips him- 
 self accordingly with a penknife to give the offen- 
 der a comprachico countenance, a mirror to show him 
 the effect, and a pair of nailed boots to give him his 
 dismissal All this to teach him who the Eomans 
 really were, and to purge Inquiry of incompetent 
 intrusion, so rendering an important service to 
 mankind. 
 
 When a man is in a rage, and wants to hurt an- 
 other in consequence, he can always regard himself 
 as the civil arm of a spiritual power, and all the more 
 easily because there is real need to assert the right- 
 eous efficacy of indignation. I for my part feel with 
 the Lanigers, and should object all the more to their 
 or my being lacerated and dressed with salt, if the 
 administrator of such torture alleged as a motive 
 his care for truth and posterity, and got himself 
 pictured with a halo in consequence. In transac- 
 tions between fellow-men it is well to consider a 
 little, in the first place, what is fair and kind toward
 
 88 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the persoii immediately concerned, before we spit 
 and roast him on behalf of the next century but 
 one. Wide-reaching motives, blessed and glorious 
 as they are, and of the highest sacramental virtue, 
 have their dangers, like all else that touches the 
 mixed life of the earth. They are archangels with 
 awful brow and naming sword, summoning and 
 encouraging us to do the right and the divinely 
 heroic, and we feel a beneficent tremor in their pres- 
 ence ; but to learn what it is they thus summon us 
 to do, we have to consider the mortals we are elbow- 
 ing, who are of our own stature and our own appe- 
 tites. I cannot feel sure how my voting will affect 
 the condition of Central Asia in the coming ages, 
 but I have good reason to believe that the future 
 populations there will be none the worse off because 
 I abstain from conjectural vilification of my oppo- 
 nents during the present parliamentary session, and 
 I am very sure that I shall be less injurious to my 
 contemporaries. On the whole, and in the vast 
 majority of instances, the action by which we can 
 do the best for future ages is of the sort which has 
 a certain beneficence and grace for contemporaries. 
 A sour father may reform prisons, but considered in 
 his sourness he does harm. The deed of Judas has 
 been attributed to far-reaching views, and the wish 
 to hasten his Master's declaration of himself as the 
 Messiah. Perhaps I will not maintain the con- 
 trary Judas represented his motive in this way, 
 and felt justified in his traitorous kiss ; but my be- 
 lief that he deserved, metaphorically speaking, to be 
 where Dante saw him, at the bottom of the Male- 
 bolge, would not be the less strong because he was 
 not convinced that his action was detestable. I 
 refuse to accept a man, who has the stomach for such
 
 THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. s$ 
 
 treachery, as a hero impatient for the redemption of 
 mankind, and for the beginning of a reign when the 
 kisses shall be those of peace and righteousness. 
 
 All this is by the way, to show that my apology 
 for Mordax was not found on his persuasion of supe- 
 riority in his own motives, but on the compatibility 
 of unfair, equivocal, and even cruel actions with a 
 nature which, apart from special temptations, is 
 kindly and generous ; and also to enforce the need 
 of checks, from a fellow-feeling with those whom 
 our acts immediately (not distantly) concern. Will 
 any one be so hardy as to maintain that an other- 
 wise worthy man cannot be vain and arrogant ? I 
 think most of us have some interest in arguing the 
 contrary. And it is of the nature of vanity and 
 arrogance, if unchecked, to become cruel and self- 
 justifying. There are fierce beasts within; chain 
 them, chain them, and let them learn to cower be- 
 fore the creature with wider reason. This is what 
 one wishes for Mordax that his heart and brain 
 should restrain the outleap of roar and talons. 
 
 As to his unwillingness to admit that an idea 
 which he has not discovered is novel to him, one 
 is surprised that quick intellect and shrewd obser- 
 vation do not early gather reasons for being ashamed 
 of a mental trick which makes one among the comic 
 parts of that various actor, Conceited Ignorance. 
 
 I have a sort of valet and factotum, an excellent, 
 respectable servant, whose spelling is so unvitiated 
 by non-phonetic superfluities that he writes night 
 as nit. One day, looking over his accounts, I said 
 to him jocosely : " You are in the latest fashion 
 with your spelling, Pummel ; most people spell 
 ' night ' with a gh between the i and the t, but the 
 greatest scholars now spell it as you do." "So I
 
 90 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 suppose, sir," says Pummel ; " I Ve seen it with a gh, 
 but I 've noways give in to that myself." You 
 would never catch Pummel in an interjection of sur- 
 prise. I have sometimes laid traps for his astonish- 
 ment ; but he has escaped them all, either by a 
 respectful neutrality, as of one who would not ap- 
 pear to notice that his master had been taking too 
 much wine, or else by that strong persuasion of his 
 all-knowingness, which makes it simply impossible 
 for him to feel himself newly informed. If I tell 
 him that the world is spinning round and along like 
 a top, and that he is spinning with it, he says, " Yes, 
 I 've heard a deal of that in my time, sir," and lifts 
 the horizontal lines of his brow a little higher, bal- 
 ancing his head from side to side as if it were too 
 painfully full. Whether I tell him that they cook 
 puppies in China, that there are ducks with fur 
 coats in Australia, or that in some parts of the world 
 it is the pink of politeness to put your tongue out 
 on introduction to a respectable stranger, Pummel 
 replies, " So I suppose, sir," with an air of resigna- 
 tion to hearing my poor version of well-known things, 
 such as elders use in listening to lively boys lately 
 presented with an anecdote-book. His utmost con- 
 cession is that what you state is what he would 
 have supplied if you had given him carte blanche 
 instead of your needless instruction, and in this 
 sense his favourite answer is, "I should say." 
 
 "Pummel," I observed, a little irritated at not 
 getting my coffee, " if you were to carry your kettle 
 and spirits of wine up a mountain of a morning, 
 your water would boil there sooner." " I should say, 
 sir." Or, " There are boiling springs in Iceland. 
 Better go to Iceland." "That's what I've been 
 thinking, sir."
 
 THE WATCH-DOG OF KNOWLEDGE. 91 
 
 I have taken to asking him hard questions, and, 
 as I expected, he never admits his own inability to 
 answer them, without representing it as common to 
 the human race. " What is the cause of the tides, 
 Pummel ? " " Well, sir, nobody rightly knows. 
 Many gives their opinion, but if I was to give mine, 
 it 'ud be different." 
 
 But while he is never surprised himself, he is con- 
 stantly imagining situations of surprise for others. 
 His own consciousness is that of one so thoroughly 
 soaked in knowledge that further absorption is 
 impossible ; but his neighbours appear to him to be 
 in the state of thirsty sponges, which it is a charity 
 to besprinkle. His great interest in thinking of 
 foreigners is that they must be surprised at what 
 they see in England, and especially at the beef. He 
 is often occupied with the surprise Adam must have 
 felt at the sight of the assembled animals " for he 
 was not like us, sir, used from a b'y to Wombwell's 
 shows." He is fond of discoursing to the lad who 
 acts as shoeblack and general subaltern, and I have 
 overheard him saying to that small upstart, with 
 some severity, " Now don't you pretend to know, 
 because the more you pretend the more I see your 
 ignirance " a lucidity on his part which has con- 
 firmed my impression that the thoroughly self-satis- 
 fied person is the only one fully to appreciate the 
 charm of humility in others. 
 
 Your diffident, self-suspecting mortal is not very 
 angry that others should feel more comfortable 
 about themselves, provided they are not otherwise 
 offensive : he is rather like the chilly person, glad 
 to sit next a warmer neighbour ; or the timid, glad 
 to have a courageous fellow-traveller. It cheers 
 him to observe the store of small comforts that his
 
 92 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOt 
 
 fellow-creatures may find in their self-complacency, 
 just as one is pleased to see poor old souls soothed 
 by the tobacco and snuff for which one has neither 
 nose nor stomach one's self. 
 
 But your arrogant man will not tolerate a pre- 
 sumption which he sees to be ill-founded. The ser- 
 vice he regards society as most in need of, is to put 
 down the conceit which is so particularly rife around 
 him that he is inclined to believe it the growing 
 characteristic of the present age. In the schools of 
 Magna Grsecia, or in the sixth century of our era, 
 or even under Kublai Khan, he finds a comparative 
 freedom from that presumption by which his con- 
 temporaries are stirring his able gall. The way 
 people will now flaunt notions which are not his, 
 without appearing to mind that they are not his, 
 strikes him as especially disgusting. It might seem 
 surprising to us that one strongly convinced of his 
 own value should prefer to exalt an age in which he 
 did not flourish, if it were not for the reflection that 
 the present age is the only one in which anybody 
 has appeared to undervalue him.
 
 A HALF-BKEED. 
 
 AN early, deep-seated love to which we become 
 faithless has its unfailing Nemesis, if only in that 
 division of soul which narrows all newer joys by 
 the intrusion of regret and the established presenti- 
 ment of change. I refer not merely to the love of 
 a person, but to the love of ideas, practical beliefs, 
 and social habits. And faithlessness here means 
 not a gradual conversion, dependent on enlarged 
 knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circum- 
 stance ; not a conviction that the original choice 
 was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that 
 flatter a growing desire. In this sort of love it is 
 the forsaker who has the melancholy lot; for an 
 abandoned belief may be more effectively vengeful 
 than Dido. The child of a wandering tribe, caught 
 young and trained to polite life, if he feels a he- 
 reditary yearning, can run away to the old wilds 
 and get his nature into tune. But there is no 
 such recovery possible to the man who remembers 
 what he once believed, without being convinced 
 that he was in error; who feels within himself 
 unsatisfied stirrings toward old beloved habits, 
 and intimacies from which he has far receded, 
 without conscious justification or unwavering sense 
 of superior attractiveness in the new. This invol- 
 untary renegade has his character hopelessly jan- 
 gled and out of tune. He is like an organ with 
 its stops in the lawless condition of obtruding
 
 94 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 themselves without method, so that hearers are 
 amazed by the most unexpected transitions the 
 trumpet breaking in on the flute, and the oboe 
 confounding both. 
 
 Hence the lot of Mixtus affects me pathetically, 
 notwithstanding that he spends his growing wealth 
 with liberality and manifest enjoyment. To most 
 observers he appears to be simply one of the for- 
 tunate and also sharp commercial men, who began 
 with meaning to be rich, and have become what 
 they meant to be a man never taken to be well- 
 born, but surprisingly better informed than the 
 well-born usually are, and distinguished among 
 ordinary commercial magnates by a personal kind- 
 ness which prompts him not only to help the 
 suffering in a material way through his wealth, 
 but also by direct ministration of his own ; yet 
 with all this, diffusing, as it were, the odor of a 
 man delightedly conscious of his wealth, as an 
 equivalent for the other social distinctions of rank 
 and intellect, which he can thus admire without 
 envying. Hardly one among those superficial 
 observers can suspect that he aims or has ever 
 aimed at being a writer : still less can they imagine 
 that his mind is often moved by strong currents 
 of regret, and of the most unworldly sympathies, 
 from the memories of a youthful time when his 
 chosen associates were men and women whose only 
 distinction was a religious, a philanthropic, or an 
 intellectual enthusiasm ; when the lady, on whose 
 words his attention most hung, was a writer of 
 minor religious literature ; when he was a visitor 
 and exhorter of the poor in the alleys of a great 
 provincial town, and when he attended the lec- 
 tures given especially to young men by Mr.
 
 A HALF-BREED. 95 
 
 Apollos, the eloquent Congregational preacher, 
 who had studied in Germany, and had liberal 
 advanced views, then far beyond the ordinary 
 teaching of his sect. At that time Mixtus thought 
 himself a young man of socially reforming ideas, 
 of religious principles and religious yearnings. It 
 was within his prospects also to be rich, but he 
 looked forward to a use of his riches chiefly for 
 reforming and religious purposes. His opinions 
 were of a strongly democratic stamp ; except that 
 even then, belonging to the class of employers, 
 he was opposed to all demands in the employed 
 that would restrict the expansiveness of trade. He 
 was the most democratic in relation to the unrea- 
 sonable privileges of the aristocracy and landed 
 interest, and he had also a religious sense of 
 brotherhood with the poor. Altogether he was 
 a sincerely benevolent young man, interested in 
 ideas, and renouncing personal ease for the sake 
 of study, religious communion, and good works. 
 If you had known him then, you would have 
 expected him to marry a highly serious and per- 
 haps literary woman, sharing his benevolent and 
 religious habits, and likely to encourage his studies 
 a woman who, along with himself, would play 
 a distinguished part in one of the most enlight- 
 ened religious circle of a great provincial capital. 
 
 How is it that Mixtus finds himself in a London 
 mansion, and in society totally unlike that which 
 made the ideal of his younger years ? And whom 
 did he marry ? 
 
 Why, he married Scintilla, who fascinated him, 
 as she had fascinated others, by her prettiness, her 
 liveliness, and her music. It is a common enough 
 case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by
 
 96 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal; or, if 
 not wholly captivated, at least effectively captured, 
 by a combination of circumstances, along with an 
 nn warily manifested inclination which might other- 
 wise have been transient. Mixtus was captivated 
 and then captured on the worldly side of his dispo- 
 sition, which had been always growing and flour- 
 ishing side by side with his philanthropic and 
 religious tastes. He had ability in business, and 
 he had early meant to be rich ; also, he was getting 
 rich, and the taste for such success was naturally 
 growing with the pleasure of rewarded exertion. It 
 was during a business sojourn in London that he 
 met Scintilla, who, though without fortune, asso- 
 ciated with families of Greek merchants living in 
 a style of splendour, and with artists patronized 
 by such wealthy entertainers. Mixtus on this 
 occasion became familiar with a world in which 
 wealth seemed the key to a more brilliant sort of 
 dominance than that of a religious patron in the 
 provincial circles of X. Would it not be possible to 
 unite the two kinds of sway ? A man bent on the 
 most useful ends might, with a fortune large enough, 
 make morality magnificent, and recommend reli- 
 gious principle by showing it in combination with 
 the best kind of house and the most liberal of 
 tables; also with a wife whose graces, wit, and 
 accomplishments gave a finish sometimes lack- 
 ing, even to establishments got up with that 
 unhesitating worldliness to which high cost is a 
 sufficient reason. Enough. 
 
 Mixtus married Scintilla. Now this lively lady 
 knew nothing of Non-conformists, except that they 
 were unfashionable ; she did not distinguish one 
 conventicle from another; and Mr. Apollos, with
 
 A HALF-BREED. 97 
 
 his enlightened interpretations, seemed to her as 
 heavy a bore, if not quite so ridiculous, as Mr. 
 Johns could have been, with his solemn twang, at 
 the Baptist chapel in the lowest suburbs, or as a 
 local preacher among the Methodists. In general, 
 people who appeared seriously to believe in any 
 sort of doctrine, whether religious, social, or philo- 
 sophical, seemed rather absurd to Scintilla. Ten 
 to one these theoretic people pronounced oddly, 
 had some reason or other for saying that the most 
 agreeable things were wrong, wore objectionable 
 clothes, and wanted you to subscribe to something. 
 They were probably ignorant of art and music, did 
 not understand badinage, and, in fact, could talk 
 of nothing amusing. In Scintilla's eyes the ma- 
 jority of persons were ridiculous, and deplorably 
 wanting in that keen perception of what was good 
 taste with which she herself was blessed by nature 
 and education ; but the people understood to be 
 religious, or otherwise theoretic, were the most 
 ridiculous of all, without being proportionately 
 amusing and invitable. 
 
 Did Mixtus not discover this view of Scintilla's 
 before their marriage ? Or did he allow her to 
 remain in ignorance of habits and opinions which 
 had made half the occupation of his youth ? 
 
 When a man is inclined to marry a particular 
 woman, and has made any committal of himself, 
 this woman's opinions, however different from his 
 own, are readily regarded as part of her pretty 
 ways, especially if they are merely negative; as, 
 for example, that she does not insist on the Trin- 
 ity, or on the rightfulness or expediency of Church 
 rates, but simply regards her lover's troubling 
 himself in disputation on these heads as stuff and 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 nonsense. The man feels his own superior strength, 
 and is sure that marriage will make no difference 
 to him on the subjects about which he is in ear- 
 nest. And to laugh at men's affairs is a woman's 
 privilege, tending to enliven the domestic hearth. 
 If Scintilla had no liking for the best sort of 
 Non- conformity, she was without any troublesome 
 bias toward Episcopacy, Anglicanism, and early 
 sacraments, and was quite contented not to go to 
 church. 
 
 As to Scintilla's acquaintance with her lover's 
 tastes on these subjects, she was equally convinced 
 on her side that a husband's queer ways, while he 
 was a bachelor, would be easily laughed out of 
 him when he had married an adroit woman. Mix- 
 tus, she felt, was an excellent creature, quite 
 likable, who was getting rich ; and Scintilla meant 
 to have all the advantages of a rich. man's wife. 
 She was not in the least a wicked woman ; she was 
 simply a pretty animal of the ape kind, with an 
 aptitude for certain accomplishments, which edu- 
 cation had made the most of. 
 
 But we have seen what has been the result 
 to poor Mixtus. He has become richer even 
 than he dreamed of being, has a little palace in 
 London, and entertains with splendour the half- 
 aristocratic, professional, and artistic society which 
 he is proud to think select. This society regards 
 him as a clever fellow in his particular branch, 
 seeing that he has become a considerable capitalist, 
 and as a man desirable to have on the list of one's 
 acquaintance. But from every other point of view 
 Mixtus finds himself personally submerged : what 
 he happens to think is not felt by his esteemed 
 guests to be of any consequence ; and what he used
 
 A HALF-BREED. 99 
 
 to think, with the ardour of conviction, he now 
 hardly ever expresses. He is transplanted, and 
 the sap within him has long been diverted into 
 other than the old lines of vigorous growth. How 
 could he speak to the artist Crespi, or to Sir Hong 
 Kong Bantam, about the enlarged doctrine of Mr. 
 Apollos ? How could he mention to them his former 
 efforts toward evangelizing the inhabitants of the 
 X. alleys ? And his references to his historical and 
 geographical studies, toward a survey of possible 
 markets for English products, are received with an 
 air of ironical suspicion by many of his political 
 friends, who take his pretension to give advice 
 concerning the Amazon, the Euphrates, and the 
 Niger, as equivalent to the currier's wide views on 
 the applicability of leather. He can only make a 
 figure through his genial hospitality. It is in vain 
 that he buys the best pictures and statues of the 
 best artists. Nobody will call him a judge in art. 
 If his pictures and statues are well chosen, it is 
 generally thought that Scintilla told him what to 
 buy; and yet Scintilla, in other connections, is 
 spoken of as having only a superficial and often 
 questionable taste. Mixtus, it is decided, is a 
 good fellow, not ignorant, no really having a 
 good deal of knowledge as well as sense, but not 
 easy to classify otherwise than as a rich man. He 
 has, consequently, become a little uncertain as to 
 his own point of view ; and in his most unreserved 
 moments of friendly intercourse, even when speak- 
 ing to listeners whom he thinks likely to sympa- 
 thize with the earlier part of his career, he presents 
 himself in all his various aspects, and feels himself 
 in turn what he has been; what he is, and what 
 others take him to be (for this last status is what
 
 ioo ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 we must all more or less accept). He will recover 
 with some glow of enthusiasm the vision of his old 
 associates, the particular limit he was once accus- 
 tomed to trace of freedom in religious speculation, 
 and his old ideal of a worthy life; but he will 
 presently pass to the argument that money is the 
 only means by which you can get what is best 
 worth having in the world, and will arrive at the 
 exclamation, " Give me money ! " with the tone and 
 gesture of a man who both feels and knows. Then 
 if one of his audience, not having money, remarks 
 that a man may have made up his mind to do without 
 money, because he prefers something else, Mixtus 
 is with him immediately, cordially concurring in 
 the supreme value of mind and genius, which in- 
 deed make his own chief delight, in that he is able 
 to entertain the admirable possessors of these attri- 
 butes at his own table though not himself reckoned 
 among them. Yet he will proceed to observe there 
 was a time when he sacrificed his sleep to study ; 
 and even now, amidst the press of business, he 
 from time to time thinks of taking up the manu- 
 scripts which he hopes some day to complete, and 
 is always increasing his collection of valuable 
 works bearing on his favourite topics. And it is 
 true that he has read much in certain directions, 
 and can remember what he has read, he knows the 
 history and theories of colonization, and the social 
 condition of countries that do not at present con- 
 sume a sufficiently large share of our products and 
 manufactures. He continues his early habit of 
 regarding the spread of Christianity as a great 
 result of our commercial intercourse with black, 
 brown, and yellow populations ; but this is an idea 
 not spoken of in the sort of fashionable society
 
 A HALF-BTIEED. 101 
 
 that Scintilla collects round her husband's table; 
 and Mixtus now philosophically reflects that the 
 cause must come before the effect, and that the 
 thing to be directly striven for is the commercial 
 intercourse not excluding a little war, if that 
 also should prove needful as a pioneer of Chris- 
 tianity. He has long been wont to feel bashful 
 about his former religion, as if it were an old 
 attachment, having consequences which he did not 
 abandon but kept in decent privacy, his avowed 
 objects and actual position being incompatible 
 with their public acknowledgment. 
 
 There is the same kind of fluctuation in his 
 aspect toward social questions and duties. He has 
 not lost the kindness that used to make him a 
 benefactor and succourer of the needy, and he is 
 still liberal in helping forward the clever and in- 
 dustrious; but in his active superintendence of 
 commercial undertakings he has contracted more 
 and more of the bitterness which capitalists and 
 employers often feel to be a reasonable mood toward 
 obstructive proletaries. Hence many who have 
 occasionally met him when trade questions were 
 being discussed, conclude him to be indistinguish- 
 able from the ordinary run of moneyed and money- 
 getting men. Indeed, hardly any of his acquaint- 
 ances know what Mixtus really is, considered as a 
 whole nor does Mixtus himself know it
 
 DEBASING THE MOEAL CUEKENCY. 
 
 " IL ne faut pas mettre un ridicule ou il n'y en 
 a point : c'est se gater le gout, c'est corrompre son 
 jugement et celui des autres. Mais le ridicule qui 
 est quelque part, il faut 1'y voir, Ten tirer avec 
 gr&ce et d'une maniere qui plaise et qui instruise. " 
 I am fond of quoting this passage from La Bruyere, 
 because the subject is one where I like to show a 
 Frenchman on my side, to save my sentiments 
 from being set down to my peculiar dulness and 
 deficient sense of the ludicrous ; and also that they 
 may profit by that enhancement of ideas when 
 presented in a foreign tongue, that glamour of 
 unfamiliarity conferring a dignity on the foreign 
 names of very common things, of which even a 
 philosopher like Dugald Stewart confesses the 
 influence. I remember hearing a fervid woman 
 attempt to recite in English the narrative of a 
 begging Frenchman, who described the violent 
 death of his father in the July days. The narra- 
 tive had impressed her, through the mists of her 
 flushed anxiety to understand it, as something 
 quite grandly pathetic ; but finding the facts turn 
 out meagre, and her audience cold, she broke off, 
 saying, " It sounded so much finer in French 
 J'ai vu le sang de mon pere and so on, I wish I 
 could repeat it in French. " This was a pardonable 
 illusion in an old-fashioned lady, who had not 
 received the polyglot education of the present
 
 DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 103 
 
 day ; but I observe that even now much nonsense 
 and bad taste win admiring acceptance solely by 
 virtue of the French language, and one may fairly 
 desire that what seems just discrimination should 
 profit by the fashionable prejudice in favour of La 
 Bruyere's idiom. But I wish he had added that 
 the habit of dragging the ludicrous into topics 
 where the chief interest is of a different or even 
 opposite kind, is a sign not of endowment but of 
 deficiency. The art of spoiling is within reach of 
 the dullest faculty : the coarsest clown, with a 
 hammer in his hand, might chip the nose off every 
 statue and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning 
 at the effect of his work. Because wit is an ex- 
 quisite product of high powers, we are not there- 
 fore forced to admit the sadly confused inference 
 of the monotonous jester, that he is establishing 
 his superiority over every less facetious person, 
 and over every topic on which he is ignorant or 
 insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted 
 it in the small cracked mirror which he carries 
 about with him as a joking apparatus. Some high 
 authority is needed to give many worthy and timid 
 persons the freedom of muscular repose, under the 
 growing demand on them to laugh when they have 
 no other reason than the peril of being taken for 
 dullards; still more, to inspire them with the 
 courage to say that they object to the theatrical 
 spoiling, for themselves and their children, of all 
 affecting themes, all the grander deeds and aims of 
 men, by burlesque associations, adapted to the 
 taste of rich fishmongers in the stalls and their 
 assistants in the gallery. The English people in 
 the present generation are falsely reputed to know 
 Shakspeare (as by some innocent persons the Flor- 
 entine mule-drivers are believed to have known
 
 104 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the " Divina Commedia, " not, perhaps, excluding 
 all the subtle discourses in the Purgatorio and 
 Paradiso) ; but there seems a clear prospect that 
 in the coming generation he will be known to 
 them through burlesques, and that his plays will 
 find a new life as pantomimes. A bottle-nosed 
 Lear will come on with a monstrous corpulence, 
 from which he will frantically dance himself free 
 during the midnight storm ; Kosalind and Celia 
 will join in a grotesque ballet with shepherds and 
 shepherdesses ; Ophelia, in fleshings and a volu- 
 minous brevity of grenadine, will dance through 
 the mad scene, finishing with the famous " attitude 
 of the scissors " in the arms of Laertes ; and all 
 the speeches in " Harnlet " will be so ingeniously 
 parodied that the orginals will be reduced to a 
 mere memoria technica of the improver's puns 
 premonitory signs of a hideous millennium, in 
 which the lion will have to lie down with the 
 lascivious monkeys, whom (if we may trust Pliny) 
 his soul naturally abhors. 
 
 I have been amazed to find that some artists, 
 whose own works have the ideal stamp, are quite 
 insensible to the damaging tendency of the bur- 
 lesquing spirit which ranges to and fro, and up 
 and down, on the earth, seeing no reason (except 
 a precarious censorship) why it should not appro- 
 priate every sacred, heroic, and pathetic theme 
 which serves to make up the treasure of human 
 admiration, hope, and love. One would have 
 thought that their own half-despairing efforts to 
 invest in worthy outward shape the vague inward 
 impressions of sublimity, and the consciousness of 
 an implicit ideal in the commonest scenes, might 
 have made them susceptible of some disgust or 
 alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to
 
 DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 105 
 
 render their compositions no better than a dissolv- 
 ing view, where every noble form is seen melting 
 into its preposterous caricature. It used to be 
 imagined of the unhappy mediaeval Jews that they 
 parodied Calvary by crucifying dogs ; if they had 
 been guilty, they would at least have had the 
 excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecu- 
 tion. Are we on the way to a parody which shall 
 have no other excuse than the reckless search after 
 fodder for degraded appetites after the pay to 
 be earned by pasturing Circe's herd where they 
 may defile every monument of that growing life 
 which should have kept them human? 
 
 The world seems to me well supplied with what 
 is genuinely ridiculous ; wit and humour may play 
 as harmlessly or beneficently round the changing 
 facets of egoism, absurdity, and vice, as the sun- 
 shine over the rippling sea or the dewy meadows. 
 Why should we make our delicious sense of the 
 ludicrous with its invigorating shocks of laugh- 
 ter, and its irrepressible smiles, which are the out- 
 glow of an inward radiation as gentle and cheering 
 as the warmth of morning flourish like a brigand 
 on the robbery of our mental wealth ? or let it take 
 its exercise as a madman might, if allowed a free 
 nightly promenade, by drawing the populace with 
 bonfires which leave some venerable structure a 
 blackened ruin, or send a scorching smoke across 
 the portraits of the past, at which we once looked 
 with a loving recognition of fellowship, and dis- 
 figure them into butts of mockery ? nay, worse, 
 use it to degrade the healthy appetites and affec- 
 tions of our nature, as they are seen to be degraded 
 in insane patients, whose system, all out of joint, 
 finds matter for screaming laughter in mere topsy-
 
 106 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 turvy, makes every passion preposterous or obscene, 
 and turns the hard-won order of life into a second 
 chaos, hideous enough to make one wail that the 
 first was ever thrilled with light ? 
 
 This is what I call debasing the moral currency : 
 lowering the value of every inspiring fact and 
 tradition, so that it will command less and less of 
 the spiritual products, the generous motives, which 
 sustain the charm and elevation of our social ex- 
 istence, the something besides bread by which 
 man saves his soul alive. The bread-winner of 
 the family may demand more and more coppery 
 shillings or assignats or greenbacks for his day's 
 work, and so get the needful quantum of food ; but 
 let that moral currency be emptied of its value, let 
 a greedy buffoonery debase all historic beauty, 
 majesty, and pathos, and the more you heap up 
 the desecrated symbols, the greater will be the 
 lack of the ennobling emotions which subdue the 
 tyranny of suffering, and make ambition one with 
 social virtue. 
 
 And yet, it seems, parents will put into the 
 hands of their children ridiculous parodies (per- 
 haps with more ridiculous illustrations) of the 
 poems which stirred their own tenderness or filial 
 piety, and carry them to make their first acquain- 
 tance with great men, great works, or solemn 
 crises, through the medium of some miscellaneous 
 burlesque, which, with its idiotic puns and farci- 
 cal attitudes, will remain among their primary 
 associations, and reduce them, throughout their 
 time of studious preparation for life, to the moral 
 imbecility of an inward giggle at what might have 
 stimulated their high emulation, or fed the foun- 
 tains of compassion, trust, and constancy. One
 
 DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY- 107 
 
 wonders where these parents have deposited that 
 stock of morally educating stimuli which is to be 
 independent of poetic tradition, and to subsist, in 
 spite of the finest images being degraded, and the 
 finest works of genius being poisoned as with some 
 befooling drug. 
 
 Will fine wit, will exquisite humour, prosper 
 the more through this turning of all things indis- 
 criminately into food for a gluttonous laughter, 
 an idle craving, without sense of flavours ? On 
 the contrary. That delightful power which La 
 Bruyere points to " le ridicule qui est quelque 
 part, il faut 1'y voir, Ten tirer avec grace et d'une 
 maniere qui plaise et qui instruise " depends on 
 a discrimination only compatible with the varied 
 sensibilities which give sympathetic insight, and 
 with the justice of perception which is another 
 name for grave knowledge. Such a result is no 
 more to be expected from faculties on the strain to 
 find some small hook by which they may attach 
 the lowest incongruity to the most momentous 
 subject, than it is to be expected of a sharper, 
 watching for gulls in a great political assemblage, 
 that he will notice the blundering logic of parti- 
 san speakers, or season his observation with the 
 salt of historical parallels. But after all our 
 psychological teaching, and in .the midst of our 
 zeal for education, we are still, most of us, at the 
 stage of believing that mental powers and habits 
 have somehow, not perhaps in the general state- 
 ment but in any particular case, a kind of spiritual 
 glaze against conditions which we are continually 
 applying to them. We soak our children in habits 
 of contempt and exultant gibing, and yet are con- 
 fident that, as Clarissa one day said to me, " We 
 can always teach them to be reverent in the right
 
 io8 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 place, you know. " And doubtless if she were to 
 take her boys to see a burlesque Socrates, with 
 swollen legs, dying in the utterance of cockney 
 puns, and were to hang up a sketch of this comic 
 scene among their bedroom prints, she would think 
 this preparation not at all to the prejudice of their 
 emotions on hearing their tutor read that narrative 
 of the " Apology, " which has been consecrated by 
 the reverent gratitude of ages. This is the impov- 
 erishment that threatens our posterity : a new 
 Famine, a meagre fiend, with lewd grin and clumsy 
 hoof, is breathing a moral mildew over the harvest 
 of our human sentiments. These are the most 
 delicate elements of our too easily perishable civi- 
 lization. And here again I like to quote a French 
 testimony. Sainte-Beuve, referring to a time of 
 insurrectionary disturbance, says : " Kien de plus 
 prompt a baisser que la civilisation dans les crises 
 comme celle-ci ; on perd en trois semaines le 
 rdsultat de plusieurs siecles. La civilisation, la 
 vie, est tine chose apprise et invente'e, qu'on le sache 
 bien : ' Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes. ' 
 Les hommes apres quelques anne"es de paix oublient 
 trop cette vdrit^ : ils arrivent a croire que la culture 
 est chose inn^e, qu'elle est la meme chose que la 
 nature. La sauvagerie est tou jours la a deux 
 pas, et, des qu'on lache pied, elle recommence. " 
 We have been severely enough taught (if we were 
 willing to learn) that our civilization, considered 
 as a splendid material fabric, is helplessly in peril 
 without the, spiritual police of sentiments or ideal 
 feelings. And it is this invisible police which we 
 had need, as a community, strive to maintain in 
 efficient force. How if a dangerous " Swing " were 
 sometimes disguised in a versatile entertainer, 
 devoted to the amusement of mixed audiences ?
 
 DEBASING THE MORAL CURRENCY. 109 
 
 And I confess that sometimes when I see a certain 
 style of a young lady, who checks our tender 
 admiration with rouge and henna and all the 
 blazonry of an extravagant expenditure, with slang 
 and bold brusquerie intended to signify her eman- 
 cipated view of things, and the cynical mockery 
 which she mistakes for penetration, I am sorely 
 tempted to hiss out " Petroleuse / " It is a small 
 matter to have our palaces set aflame, compared 
 with the misery of having our sense of a noble 
 womanhood, which is the inspiration of a purify- 
 ing shame, the promise of life -penetrating affection, 
 stained and blotted out by images of repulsiveness. 
 These things come not of higher education but of 
 dull ignorance, fostered into pertness by the greedy 
 vulgarity which reverses Peter's visionary lesson, 
 and learns to call all things common and unclean. 
 It comes of debasing the moral currency. 
 
 The Tirynthians, according to an ancient story 
 reported by Athenseus, becoming conscious that 
 their trick of laughter at everything and nothing 
 was making them unfit for the conduct of serious 
 affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some 
 means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar 
 form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they 
 could carry it through without laughing. They 
 did their best ; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset 
 their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the 
 oracle taught them that even the gods could not 
 prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give 
 power and dignity to a people who, in a crisis of 
 the public well-being, were at the mercy of a poor 
 jest.
 
 THE WASP CKEDITED WITH THE 
 HONEY-COMB. 
 
 No man, I imagine, would object more strongly 
 than Euphorion to communistic principles in re- 
 lation to material property, but with regard to 
 property in ideas he entertains such principles 
 willingly, and is disposed to treat the distinction 
 between Mine and Thine in original authorship as 
 egoistic, narrowing, and low. I have known him, 
 indeed, insist, at some expense of erudition, on 
 the prior right of an ancient, a mediaeval, or an 
 eighteenth-century writer to be credited with a 
 view or statement lately advanced with some show 
 of originality ; and this championship seems to im- 
 ply a nicety of conscience toward the dead. He is 
 evidently unwilling that his neighbours should get 
 more credit than is due to them, and in this way he 
 appears to recognize a certain proprietorship even in 
 spiritual production. But perhaps it is no real in- 
 consistency that, with regard to many instances of 
 modern origination, it is his habit to talk with a 
 Gallic largeness and refer to the universe : he 
 expatiates on the diffusive nature of intellecutal 
 products, free and all-embracing as the liberal air ; 
 on the infinitesimal smallness of individual origi- 
 nation compared with the massive inheritance of 
 thought on which every new generation enters ; on 
 that growing preparation for every epoch through 
 which certain ideas or modes of view are said to
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB, in 
 
 be in the air, and, still more metaphorically speak- 
 ing, to be inevitably absorbed, so that every one 
 may be excused for not knowing how he got them. 
 Above all, he insists on the proper subordination 
 of the irritable self, the mere vehicle of an idea or 
 combination which, being produced by the sum 
 total of the human race, must belong to that mul- 
 tiple entity, from the accomplished lecturer or popu- 
 larizer who transmits it, to the remotest generation 
 of Fuegians or Hottentots, however indifferent these 
 may be to the superiority of their right above 
 that of the eminently perishable dyspeptic author. 
 
 One may admit that such considerations carry a 
 profound truth, to be even religiously contemplated, 
 and yet object all the more to the mode in which 
 Euphorion seems to apply them. I protest against 
 the use of these majestic conceptions to do the 
 dirty work of unscrupulosity, and justify the non- 
 payment of conscious debts, which cannot be 
 defined or enforced by the law ; especially since it 
 is observable that the large views as to intellectual 
 property, which can apparently reconcile an able 
 person to the use of lately borrowed ideas as if 
 they were his own, when this spoliation is favoured 
 by the public darkness, never hinder him from 
 joining in the zealous tribute of recognition and 
 applause to those warriors of truth whose triumphal 
 arches are seen in the public ways, those conquerors 
 whose battles and " annexations " even the carpen- 
 ters and bricklayers know by name. Surely the 
 acknowledgment of a mental debt which will not 
 be immediately detected, and may never be as- 
 serted, is a case to which the traditional suscepti- 
 bility to " debts of honour " would be suitably 
 transferred. There is no massive public opinion
 
 us ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 that can be expected to tell on these relations of 
 thinkers and investigators, relations to be thor- 
 oughly understood and felt only by those who are 
 interested in the life of ideas and acquainted with 
 their history. To lay false claim to an invention 
 or discovery which has an immediate market value ; 
 to vamp up a professedly new book of reference by 
 stealing from the pages of one already produced 
 at the cost of much labour and material ; to copy 
 somebody else's poem and send the manuscript to 
 a magazine, or hand it about among friends as an 
 original " effusion ; " to deliver an elegant extract 
 from a known writer as a piece of improvised elo- 
 quence, these are the limits within which the 
 dishonest pretence of originality is likely to get 
 hissed or hooted, and bring more or less shame on 
 the culprit. It is not necessary to understand the 
 merit of a performance, or even to spell with any 
 comfortable confidence, in order to perceive at once 
 that such pretences are not respectable. But the 
 difference between these vulgar frauds these 
 devices of ridiculous jays, whose ill-secured plumes 
 are seen falling ofi them as they run and the 
 quiet appropriation of other people's philosophic 
 or scientific ideas, can hardly be held to lie in 
 their moral quality, unless we take impunity as 
 our criterion. The pitiable jays had no presump- 
 tion in their favour, and foolishly fronted an alert 
 incredulity ; but Euphorion, the accomplished theo- 
 rist, has an audience who expect much of him, 
 and take it as the most natural thing in the world 
 that every unusual view which he presents anony- 
 mously should be due solely to his ingenuity. 
 His borrowings are no incongruous feathers, awk- 
 wardly stuck on; they have an appropriateness
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 113 
 
 which makes them seem an answer to anticipation, 
 like the return phrases of a melody. Certainly 
 one cannot help the ignorant conclusions of polite 
 society ; and there are, perhaps, fashionable per- 
 sons who, if a speaker has occasion to explain 
 what the occiput is, will consider that he has 
 lately discovered that curiously named portion of 
 the animal frame. One cannot give a genealogical 
 introduction to every long -stored item of fact or 
 conjecture that may happen to be a revelation for 
 the large class of persons who are understood to 
 judge soundly on a small basis of knowledge ; but 
 Euphoriou would be very sorry to have it supposed 
 that he is unacquainted with the history of ideas, 
 and sometimes carries even into minutiae the evi- 
 dence of his exact registration of names in connec- 
 tion with quotable phrases or suggestions. I can 
 therefore only explain the apparent infirmity of 
 his memory in cases of larger " conveyance " by 
 supposing that he is accustomed, by the very asso- 
 ciation of largeness, to range them at once under 
 those grand laws of the universe in the light of 
 which Mine and Thine disappear and are resolved 
 into Everybody's or Nobody's; and one man's 
 particular obligations to another melt untraceably 
 into the obligations of the earth to the solar sys- 
 tem in general. 
 
 Euphorion himself, if a particular omission of 
 acknowledgment were brought home to him, would 
 probably take a narrower ground of explanation. 
 It was a lapse of memory ; or it did not occur to 
 him as necessary in this case to mention a name, 
 the source being well known ; or (since this seems 
 usually to act as a strong reason for mention) he 
 rather abstained from adducing the name because 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 ii4 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 it might injure the excellent matter advanced, just 
 as an obscure trade-mark casts discredit on a good 
 commodity, and even on the retailer who has fur- 
 nished himself from a quarter not likely to be 
 esteemed firstrate. No doubt this last is a genu- 
 ine and frequent reason for the non-acknowledgment 
 of indebtedness to what one may call impersonal 
 as well as personal sources ; even an American 
 editor of school classics, whose own English could 
 not pass for more than a syntactical shoddy of the 
 cheapest sort, felt it unfavourable to his reputation 
 for sound learning that he should be obliged to the 
 " Penny Cyclopaedia, " and disguised his references 
 to it under contractions in which Us. Knowl. took 
 the place of the low word Penny. Works of this 
 convenient stamp, easily obtained and well nour- 
 ished with matter, are felt to be like rich but 
 unfashionable relations, who are visited and re- 
 ceived in privacy, and whose capital is used or 
 inherited without any ostentatious insistence on 
 their names and places of abode. As to memory, 
 it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop 
 the facts which are less flattering to our self-love 
 when it does not retain them carefully as sub- 
 jects not to be approached, marshy spots with a 
 warning flag over them. But it is always inter- 
 esting to bring forward eminent names, such as 
 Patricius or Scaliger, Euler or Lagrange, Bopp or 
 Humboldt. To know exactly what has been drawn 
 from them is erudition, and heightens our own 
 influence, which seems advantageous to mankind ; 
 whereas to cite an author whose ideas may pass as 
 higher currency under our own signature, can have 
 no object except the contradictory one of throwing 
 the illumination over his figure, when it is impor-
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 115 
 
 tant to be seen one's self. All these reasons must 
 weigh considerably with those speculative persons 
 who have to ask themselves whether or not Uni- 
 versal Utilitarianism requires that in the particu- 
 lar instance before them they should injure a man 
 who has been of service to them, and rob a fellow- 
 workman of the credit which is due to him. 
 
 After all, however, it must be admitted that 
 hardly any accusation is more difficult to prove, 
 and more liable to be false, than that of a plagia- 
 rism which is the conscious theft of ideas and 
 deliberate reproduction of them as original. The 
 arguments on the side of acquittal are obvious and 
 strong, the inevitable coincidences of contem- 
 porary thinking, and our continual experience of 
 finding notions turning up in our minds without 
 any label on them to tell us whence they came ; so 
 that if we are in the habit of expecting much from 
 our own capacity we accept them at once as a new 
 inspiration. Then, in relation to the elder authors, 
 there is the difficulty first of learning and then of 
 remembering exactly what has been wrought into 
 the backward tapestry of the world's history, to- 
 gether with the fact that ideas acquired long ago 
 reappear as the sequence of an awakened interest 
 or a line of inquiry which is really new in us; 
 whence it is conceivable that if we were ancients 
 some of us might be offering grateful hecatombs by 
 mistake, and proving our honesty in a ruinously 
 expensive manner. On the other hand, the evi- 
 dence on which plagiarism is concluded is often 
 of a kind which, though much trusted in questions 
 of erudition and historical criticism, is apt to lead 
 us injuriously astray in our daily judgments, espe- 
 cially of the resentful, condemnatory sort. How
 
 n6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Pythagoras came by his ideas, whether St. Paul 
 was acquainted with all the Greek poets, what 
 Tacitus must have known by hearsay and syste- 
 matically ignored, are points on which a false 
 persuasion of knowledge is less damaging to jus- 
 tice and charity than an erroneous confidence, 
 supported by reasoning fundamentally similar, of 
 my neighbour's blameworthy behaviour in a case 
 where I am personally concerned. No premises 
 require closer scrutiny than those which lead to 
 the constantly echoed conclusion, " He must have 
 known, " or " He must have read. " I marvel that 
 this facility of belief on the side of knowledge can 
 subsist under the daily demonstration that the 
 easiest of all things to the human mind is not to 
 know and not to read. To praise, to blame, to 
 shout, grin, or hiss, where others shout, grin, or 
 hiss these are native tendencies ; but to know 
 and to read are artificial, hard accomplishments, 
 concerning which the only safe supposition is, that 
 as little of them has been done as the case admits. 
 An author, keenly conscious of having written, 
 can hardly help imagining his condition of lively 
 interest to be shared by others ; just as we are all 
 apt to suppose that the chill or heat we are con- 
 scious of must be general, or even to think that 
 our sons and daughters, our pet schemes, and our 
 quarrelling correspondence, are themes to which 
 intelligent persons will listen long without weari- 
 ness. But if the ardent author happen to be alive 
 to practical teaching, he will soon learn to divide 
 the larger part of the enlightened public into those 
 who have not read him, and think it necessary to 
 tell him so when they meet him in polite society, 
 and those who have equally abstained from read-
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 117 
 
 ing him, but wish to conceal this negation, and 
 speak of his " incomparable works " with that trust 
 in testimony which always has its cheering side. 
 
 Hence it is worse than foolish to entertain silent 
 suspicious of plagiarism, still more to give them 
 voice, when they are founded on a construction of 
 probabilities which a little more attention to every- 
 day occurrences, as a guide in reasoning, would 
 show iis to be really worthless, considered as proof. 
 The length to which one man's memory can go in 
 letting drop associations that are vital to another 
 can hardly find a limit. It is not to be supposed 
 that a person desirous to make an agreeable im- 
 pression on you would deliberately choose to insist 
 to you, with some rhetorical sharpness, on an 
 argument which you were the first to elaborate in 
 public ; yet any who listens may overhear such 
 instances of obliviousness. You naturally remem- 
 ber your peculiar connection with your acquain- 
 tance's judicious views; but why should he? 
 Your fatherhood, which is an intense feeling to 
 you, is only an additional fact of meagre interest 
 for him to remember; and a sense of obligation to 
 the particular living fellow-struggler who has 
 helped us in our thinking, is not yet a form of 
 memory the want of which is felt to be disgraceful 
 or derogatory, unless it is taken to be a want of 
 polite instruction, or causes the missing of a 
 cockade on a day of celebration. In our suspi- 
 cions of plagiarism we must recognize, as the first 
 weighty probability, that what we, who feel in- 
 jured, remember best is precisely what is least 
 likely to enter lastingly into the memory of our 
 neighbours. But it is fair to maintain that the 
 neighbour who borrows your property, loses it for
 
 n8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 awhile, and when it turns up again forgets your 
 connection with it and counts it his own, shows 
 himself so much the feebler in grasp and rectitude 
 of mind. Some absent persons cannot remember 
 the state of wear in their own hats and umbrellas, 
 and have no mental check to tell them that they 
 have carried home a fellow-visitor's more recent 
 purchase. They may be excellent householders, 
 far removed from the suspicion of low devices, but 
 one wishes them a more correct perception, and a 
 more wary sense that a neighbour's umbrella may 
 be newer than their own. . 
 
 True, some persons are so constituted that the 
 very excellence of an idea seems to them a convin- 
 cing reason that it must be, if not solely, yet espe- 
 cially theirs. It fits in so beautifully with their 
 general wisdom, it lies implicitly in so many of 
 their manifested opinions, that, if they have not 
 yet expressed it (because of preoccupation), it is 
 clearly a part of their indigenous produce, and is 
 proved by their immediate eloquent promulgation 
 of it to belong more naturally and appropriately to 
 them than to the person who seemed first to have 
 alighted on it, and who sinks in their all-originat- 
 ing consciousness to that low kind of entity, a 
 second cause. This is not lunacy, or pretence, but a 
 genuine state of mind very effective in practice, and 
 often carrying the public with it, so that the poor 
 Columbus is found to be a very faulty adventurer, 
 and the continent is named after Amerigo. Lighter 
 examples of this instinctive appropriation are con- 
 stantly met with among brilliant talkers. Aquila 
 is too agreeable and amusing for any one, who is 
 not himself bent on display, to be angry at his 
 conversational rapine, his habit of darting down
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 119 
 
 on every morsel of booty that other birds may hold 
 in their beaks, with an innocent air, as if it were 
 all intended for his use, and honestly counted on 
 by him as a tribute in kind. Hardly any man, I 
 imagine, can have had less trouble in gathering a 
 showy stock of information than Aquila. On close 
 inquiry you would probably find that he had not 
 read one epoch-making book of modern times, for he 
 has a career which obliges him to much correspond- 
 ence and other official work, and he is too fond of 
 being in company to spend his leisure moments in 
 study ; but to his quick eye, ear, and tongue, a few 
 predatory excursions in conversation, where there 
 are instructed persons, gradually furnish surpris- 
 ingly clever modes of statement and allusion on the 
 dominant topic. When he first adopts a subject 
 he necessarily falls into mistakes, and it is inter- 
 esting to watch his gradual progress into fuller 
 information and better nourished irony, without 
 his ever needing to admit that he has made a 
 blunder or to appear conscious of correction. Sup- 
 pose, for example, he had incautiously founded 
 some ingenious remarks on a hasty reckoning that 
 nine thirteens made a hundred and two, and the 
 insignificant Bantam, hitherto silent, seemed to 
 spoil the flow of ideas by stating that the product 
 could not be taken as less than a hundred and 
 seventeen. Aquila would glide on in the most 
 graceful manner, from a repetition of his previous 
 remark to the continuation " All this is on the 
 supposition that a hundred and two were all that 
 could be got out of nine thirteens, but as all the 
 world knows that nine thirteens will yield, " 
 etc. proceeding straightway into a new train of 
 ingenious consequences, and causing Bantam to be
 
 120 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 regarded by all present as one of those slow per- 
 sons who take irony for ignorance, and who would 
 warn the weasel to keep awake. How should a 
 small-eyed, feebly crowing mortal like him be 
 quicker in arithmetic than the keen-faced, forcible 
 Aquila, in whom universal knowledge is easily 
 credible ? Looked into closely, the conclusion, 
 from a man's profile, voice, and fluency, to his cer- 
 tainty in multiplication beyond the twelves, seems 
 to show a confused notion of the way in which 
 very common things are connected ; but it is on 
 such false correlations that men found half their 
 inferences about each other, and high places of trust 
 may sometimes be held on no better foundation. 
 
 It is a commonplace that words, writings, meas- 
 ures, and performances in general, have qualities 
 assigned them, not by a direct judgment on the 
 performances themselves, but by a presumption of 
 what they are likely to be, considering who is the 
 performer. We all notice in our neighbours this 
 reference to names as guides in criticism, and all 
 furnish illustrations of it in our own practice ; for 
 check ourselves as we will, the first impression from 
 any sort of work must depend on a previous atti- 
 tude of mind, and this will constantly be deter- 
 mined by the influences of a name. But that our 
 prior confidence or want of confidence in given 
 names is made up of judgments just as hollow as 
 the consequent praise or blame they are taken to 
 warrant, is less commonly perceived, though there 
 is a conspicuous indication of it in the surprise or 
 disappointment often manifested in the disclosure 
 of an authorship about which everybody has been 
 making wrong guesses. No doubt if it had been 
 discovered who wrote the " Vestiges, " many an
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 121 
 
 ingenious structure of probabilities would have 
 been spoiled, and some disgust might have been 
 felt for a real author who made comparatively BO 
 shabby an appearance of likelihood. It is this 
 foolish trust in prepossessions, founded on spurious 
 evidence, which makes a medium of encouragement 
 for those who, happening to have the ear of the 
 public, give other people's ideas the advantage of 
 appearing under their own well-received name ; 
 while any remonstrance from the real producer 
 becomes an unwelcome disturbance of complacency 
 with each person who has paid complimentary 
 tributes in the wrong place. 
 
 Hardly any kind of false reasoning is more ludi- 
 crous than this on the probabilities of origination, 
 It would be amusing to catechise the guessers as 
 to their exact reasons for thinking their guess 
 "likely;" why Hoopoe of John's has fixed on 
 Toucan of Magdalen ; why Shrike attributes its 
 peculiar style to Buzzard, who has not hitherto 
 been known as a writer; why the fair Columbia 
 thinks it must belong to the Eeverend Merula; 
 and why they are all alike disturbed in their pre- 
 vious judgment of its value by finding that it really 
 came from Skunk, whom they had either not 
 thought of at all, or thought of as belonging to a 
 species excluded by the nature of the case. Clearly 
 they were all wrong in their notion of the specific 
 conditions, which lay unexpectedly in the small 
 Skunk, and in him alone in spite of his educa- 
 tion nobody knows where, in spite of somebody's 
 knowing his uncles and cousins, and in spite of 
 nobody's knowing that he was cleverer than they 
 thought him. 
 
 Such guesses remind one of a fabulist's imagi-
 
 122 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 nary council of animals assembled to consider 
 what sort of creature had constructed a honey- 
 comb, found and much tasted by Bruin and other 
 epicures. The speakers all started from the proba- 
 bility that the maker was a bird, because this was 
 the quarter from which a wondrous nest might be 
 expected ; for the animals at that time, knowing 
 little of their own history, would have rejected as 
 inconceivable the notion that the nest could be 
 made by a fish ; and as to the insects, they were 
 not willingly received in society and their ways 
 were little known. Several complimentary pre- 
 sumptions were expressed that the honey-comb 
 was due to one or the other admired and popular 
 bird, and there was much fluttering on the part of 
 the Nightingale and Swallow, neither of whom 
 gave a positive denial, their confusion perhaps ex- 
 tending to their sense of identity; but the Owl 
 hissed at this folly, arguing from his particular 
 knowledge that the animal which produced honey 
 must be the Musk-rat, the wondrous nature of 
 whose secretions required no proof ; and, in the 
 powerful logical procedure of the Owl, from musk 
 to honey was but a step. Some disturbance arose 
 hereupon, for the Musk-rat began to make himself 
 obtrusive, believing in the Owl's opinion of his 
 powers, and feeling that he could have produced 
 the honey if he had thought of it, until an experi- 
 mental Butcher-bird proposed to anatomize him as 
 a help to decision. The hubbub increased, the 
 opponents of the Musk-rat inquiring who his an- 
 cestors were, until a diversion was created by an 
 able discourse of the Macaw on structures generally, 
 which he classified so as to include the honey -comb, 
 entering into so much admirable exposition that
 
 THE WASP CREDITED WITH HONEY-COMB. 123 
 
 there was a prevalent sense of the honey-comb 
 having probably been produced by one who under- 
 stood it so well. But Bruin, who had probably 
 eaten too much to listen with edification, grum- 
 bled, in his low kind of language, that " Fine 
 words butter no parsnips ; " by which he meant to 
 say that there was no new honey forthcoming. 
 
 Perhaps the audience generally was beginning 
 to tire, when the Fox entered with his snout dread- 
 fully swollen, and reported that the beneficent 
 originator in question was the Wasp, which he 
 had found much smeared with undoubted honey, 
 having applied his nose to it ; whence, indeed, the 
 able insect, perhaps justifiably irritated at what 
 might seem a sign of scepticism, had stung him 
 with some severity, an infliction Eeynard could 
 hardly regret, since the swelling of a snout nor- 
 mally so delicate would corroborate his statement, 
 and satisfy the assembly that he had really found 
 the honey-creating genius. 
 
 The Fox's admitted acuteness, combined with 
 the visible swelling, were taken as undeniable 
 evidence, and the revelation undoubtedly met a 
 general desire for information on a point of inter- 
 est. Nevertheless, there was a murmur the reverse 
 of delighted, and the feelings of some eminent 
 animals were too strong for them : the Orang- 
 outang's jaw dropped so as seriously to impair the 
 vigour of his expression, the edifying Pelican 
 screamed and flapped her wings, the Owl hissed 
 again, the Macaw became loudly incoherent, and 
 the Gibbon gave his hysterical laugh ; while the 
 Hyena, after indulging in a more splenetic guffaw, 
 agitated the question whether it would not be 
 better to hush up the whole affair, instead of giv-
 
 124 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ing public recognition to an insect whose produce, 
 it was now plain, had been much over-estimated, 
 But this narrow-spirited motion was negatived by 
 the sweet'toothed majority. A complimentary 
 deputation to the Wasp was resolved on, and there 
 was a confident hope that this diplomatic measure 
 would tell on the production of honey.
 
 "SO YOUNG!" 
 
 GANYMEDE was once a girlishly handsome, preco- 
 cious youth. That one cannot, for any considerable 
 number of years, go on being youthful, girlishly 
 handsome, and precocious, seems, on consideration, 
 to be a statement as worthy of credit as the famous 
 syllogistic conclusion, " Socrates was mortal. " But 
 many circumstances have conspired to keep up in 
 Ganymede the illusion that he is surprisingly 
 young. He was the last born of his family, and 
 from his earliest memory was accustomed to be 
 commended as such to the care of his elder brothers 
 and sisters ; he heard his mother speak of him as 
 her youngest darling with a loving pathos in her 
 tone, which naturally suffused his own view of 
 himself, and gave him the habitual consciousness 
 of being at once very young and very interesting. 
 Then, the disclosure of his tender years was a con- 
 stant matter of astonishment to strangers who had 
 had proof of his precocious talents ; and the aston- 
 ishment extended to what is called the world at 
 large, when he produced " A Comparative Estimate 
 of European Nations " before he was well out of 
 his teens. All comers, on a first interview, told 
 him that he was marvellously young, and some 
 repeated the statement each time they saw him ; 
 all critics who wrote about him called attention to 
 the same ground for wonder; his deficiencies and 
 excesses were alike to be accounted for by the
 
 126 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 flattering fact of his youth, and his youth was the 
 golden background which set off his many-hued 
 endowments. Here was already enough to estab- 
 lish a strong association between his sense of iden- 
 tity and his sense of being unusually young. But 
 after this he devised and founded an ingenious 
 organization for consolidating the literary inter- 
 ests of all the four continents (subsequently includ- 
 ing Australasia and Polynesia), he himself presiding 
 in the central office, which thus became a new 
 theatre for the constantly repeated situation of an 
 astonished stranger in the presence of a boldly 
 scheming administrator found to be remarkably 
 young. If we imagine with due charity the effect 
 on Ganymede, we shall think it greatly to his 
 credit that he 'continued to feel the necessity of 
 being something more than young, and did not 
 sink by rapid degrees into a parallel of that melan- 
 choly object, a superannuated youthful phenome- 
 non. Happily he had enough of valid, active 
 faculty to save him from that tragic fate. He had 
 not exhausted his fountain of eloquent opinion in 
 his " Comparative Estimate, " so as to feel himself 
 like some other juvenile celebrities, the sad sur- 
 vivor of his own manifest destiny, or like one who 
 has risen too early in the morning, and finds all 
 the solid day turned into a fatigued afternoon. 
 He has continued to be productive both of schemes 
 and writings, being perhaps helped by the fact that 
 his " Comparative Estimate " did not greatly affect 
 the currents of European thought, and left him 
 with the stimulating hope that he had not done 
 his best, but might yet produce what would make 
 his youth more surprising than ever. 
 
 I saw something of him through his Antinoiis
 
 "SO YOUNG!" 127 
 
 period, the time of rich chestnut locks, parted not 
 by a visible white line, but by a shadowed furrow 
 from which they fell in massive ripples to right 
 and left. In these slim days he looked the 
 younger for being rather below the middle size ; 
 and though at last one perceived him contracting 
 an indefinable air of self-consciousness, a slight 
 exaggeration of the facial movements, the atti- 
 tudes, the little tricks, and the romance in shirt 
 collars, which must be expected from one who, in 
 spite of his knowledge, was so exceedingly young, 
 it was impossible to say that he was making any 
 great mistake about himself. He was only under- 
 going one form of a common moral disease ; being 
 strongly mirrored for himself in the remark of 
 others, he was getting to see his real characteris- 
 tics as a dramatic part, a type to which his doings 
 were always in correspondence. Owing to my 
 absence on travel, and to other causes, I had lost 
 sight of him for several years ; but such a separa- 
 tion, between two who have not missed each other, 
 seems in this busy century only a pleasant reason, 
 when they happen to meet again in some old 
 accustomed haunt, for the one who has stayed at 
 home to be more communicative about himself 
 than he can well be to those who have all along 
 been in his neighbourhood. He had married in 
 the interval, and as if to keep up his surprising 
 youthfulness in all relations, he had taken a wife 
 considerably older than himself. It would prob- 
 ably have seemed to him a disturbing inversion of 
 the natural order that any one very near to him 
 should have been younger than he, except his own 
 children, who, however young, would not neces- 
 sarily hinder the normal surprise at the youth-
 
 128 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 fulness of their father. And if my glance had 
 revealed my impression on first seeing him again, 
 he might have received a rather disagreeable shock, 
 which was far from my intention. My mind, 
 having retained a very exact image of his former 
 appearance, took note of unmistakable changes, 
 such as a painter would certainly not have made 
 by way of flattering his subject. He had lost his 
 slimness, and that curved solidity, which might 
 have adorned a taller man, was a rather sarcastic 
 threat to his short figure. The English branch of 
 the Teutonic race does not produce many fat 
 youths, and I have even heard an American lady 
 say, that she was much " disappointed " at the 
 moderate number and size of our fat men, consid- 
 ering their reputation in the United States ; hence 
 a stranger would now have been apt to remark 
 that Ganymede was unusually plump for a distin- 
 guished writer, rather than unusually young. But 
 how was he to know this ? Many long-standing 
 prepossessions are as hard to be corrected as a long- 
 standing mispronunciation, against which the direct 
 experience of eye and ear is often powerless. And 
 I could perceive that Ganymede's inwrought sense 
 of his surprising youthfulness had been stronger 
 than the superficial reckoning of his years and the 
 merely optical phenomena of the looking-glass. 
 He now held a post under government, and not 
 only saw, like most subordinate functionaries, how 
 ill everything was managed, but also what were 
 the changes that a high constructive ability would 
 dictate ; and in mentioning to me his own speeches, 
 and other efforts toward propagating reformatory 
 views in his department, he concluded by changing 
 his tone to a sentimental head-voice and saying :
 
 "SO YOUNG!" 129 
 
 " But I am so young, people object to any promi- 
 nence on my part; I can only get myself heard 
 anonymously, and when some attention has been 
 drawn the name is sure to creep out. The writer 
 is known to be young, and things are none the 
 forwarder. " 
 
 " Well, " said I, " youth seems the only draw- 
 back that is sure to diminish. You and I have 
 seven years less of it than when we last met. " 
 
 " Ah, " returned Ganymede, as lightly as possi- 
 ble, at the same time casting an observant glance 
 over me, as if he were marking the effect of seven 
 years on a person who had probably begun life 
 with an old look, and even as an infant had given 
 his countenance to that significant doctrine, the 
 transmigration of ancient souls into modern bodies. 
 
 I left him on that occasion without any melan- 
 choly forecast that his illusion would be suddenly 
 or painfully broken up. I saw that he was well 
 victualled and defended against a ten years' siege 
 from ruthless facts ; and in the course of time ob- 
 servation convinced me that his resistance received 
 considerable aid from without. Each of his writ- 
 ten productions, as it came out, was still com- 
 mented on as the work of a very young man. One 
 critic, finding that he wanted solidity, charitably 
 referred to his youth as an excuse. Another, 
 dazzled by his brilliancy, seemed to regard his 
 youth as so wondrous that all other authors ap- 
 peared decrepit by comparison, and their style 
 such as might be looked for from gentlemen of the 
 old school. Able pens (according to a familiar 
 metaphor) appeared to shake their heads good- 
 humouredly, implying that Ganymede's crudities 
 were pardonable in one so exceedingly young. 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Such unanimity amidst diversity, which a distant 
 posterity might take for evidence that on the point 
 of age at least there could have been no mistake, 
 was not really more difficult to account for than 
 the prevalence of cotton in our fabrics. Ganymede 
 had been first introduced into the writing World as 
 remarkably young, and it was no exceptional con- 
 sequence that the first deposit of information about 
 him held its ground against facts which, however 
 open to observation, were not necessarily thought 
 of. It is not so easy, with our rates and taxes and 
 need for economy in all directions, to cast away an 
 epithet or remark that turns up cheaply, and to go 
 in expensive search after more genuine substitutes. 
 There is high Homeric precedent for keeping fast 
 hold of an epithet under all changes of circum- 
 stance, and so the precocious author of the " Com- 
 parative Estimate " heard the echoes repeating 
 " Young Ganymede, " when an illiterate beholder 
 at a railway station would have given him forty 
 years at least. Besides, important elders, sachems 
 of the clubs and public meetings, had a genuine 
 opinion of him as young enough to be checked for 
 speech on subjects which they had spoken mis- 
 takenly about when he was in his cradle ; and 
 then, the midway parting of his crisp hair, not 
 common among English committee-men, formed a 
 presumption against the ripeness of his judgment 
 which nothing but a speedy baldness could have 
 removed. 
 
 It is but fair to mention all these outward confir- 
 mations of Ganymede's illusion, which shows no 
 signs of leaving him. It is true that he no longer 
 hears expressions of surprise at his youthfulness, on 
 a first introduction to an admiring reader ; but this
 
 "SO YOUNG!" 131 
 
 sort of external evidence has become an unneces- 
 sary crutch to his habitual inward persuasion. 
 His manners, his costume, his suppositions of the 
 impression he makes on others, have all their for- 
 mer correspondence with the dramatic part of the 
 young genius. As to the incongruity of his con- 
 tour, and other little accidents of physique, he is 
 probably no more aware that they will affect others 
 as incongruities, than Armida is conscious how 
 much her rouge provokes our notice of her wrin- 
 kles, and causes us to mention sarcastically that 
 motherly age which we should otherwise regard 
 with affectionate reverence. 
 
 But let us be just enough to admit that there 
 may be old-young coxcombs as well as old-young 
 coquettes.
 
 HOW WE COME TO GIVE OUESELVES FALSE 
 TESTIMONIALS, AND BELIEVE IN THEM. 
 
 IT is my way, when I observe any instance 
 of folly, any queer habit, any absurd illusion, 
 straightway to look for something of the same type 
 in myself, feeling sure that, amidst all differences, 
 there will be a certain correspondence ; just as 
 there is more or less correspondence in the natural 
 history even of continents widely apart, and of 
 islands in opposite zones. No doubt men's minds 
 differ in what we may call their climate, or share 
 of solar energy, and a feeling or tendency which 
 is comparable to a panther in one may have no 
 more imposing aspect than that of a weasel in an- 
 other ; some are like a tropical habitat, in which 
 the very ferns cast a mighty shadow, and the 
 grasses are a dry ocean in which a hunter may be 
 submerged ; others like the chilly latitudes in 
 which your forest-tree, fit elsewhere to prop a 
 mine, is a pretty miniature suitable for fancy pot- 
 ting. The eccentric man might be typified by the 
 Australian fauna, refuting half our judicious as- 
 sumptions of what nature allows. Still, whether 
 fate commanded us to thatch our persons among 
 the Eskimos or to choose the latest thing in tattoo- 
 ing among the Polynesian isles, our precious guide, 
 Comparison, would teach us in the first place by 
 likeness, and our clew to further knowledge would 
 be resemblance to what we already know. Hence,
 
 FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 133 
 
 having a keen interest in the natural history of my 
 inward self, I pursue this plan I have mentioned, 
 of using my observation as a clew or lantern by 
 which I detect small herbage or lurking life ; or I 
 take my neighbour, in his least becoming tricks or 
 efforts, as an opportunity for luminous deduction 
 concerning the figure the human genus makes in 
 the specimen which I myself furnish. 
 
 Introspection which starts with the purpose of 
 finding out one's own absurdities is not likely to 
 be very mischievous, yet of course it is not free 
 from dangers, any more than breathing is, or the 
 other functions that keep us alive and active. To 
 judge of others by one's self is, in its most inno- 
 cent meaning, the briefest expression for our only 
 method of knowing mankind; yet, we perceive, it 
 has come to mean in many cases either the vulgar 
 mistake which reduces every man's value to the 
 very low figure at which the valuer himself hap- 
 pens to stand, or else the amiable illusion of the 
 higher nature misled by a too generous construc- 
 tion of the lower. One cannot give a recipe for 
 wise judgment ; it resembles appropriate muscular 
 action, which is attained by the myriad lessons in 
 nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can 
 give. The danger of the inverse procedure, judg- 
 ing of self by what one observes in others, if it is 
 carried on with much impartiality and keenness of 
 discernment, is that it has a laming effect, enfee- 
 bling the energies of indignation and scorn, which 
 are the proper scourges of wrongdoing and mean- 
 ness, and which should continually feed the whole- 
 some restraining power of public opinion. I respect 
 the horsewhip when applied to the back of cruelty, 
 and think that he who applies it is a more perfect
 
 134 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 human being because his outleap of indignation is 
 not checked by a too curious reflection on the na- 
 ture of guilt a more perfect human being because 
 he more completely incorporates the best social 
 life of the race, which can never be constituted by 
 ideas that nullify action. This is the essence of 
 Dante's sentiment (it is painful to think that he 
 applies it very cruelly), 
 
 " E cortesia fu, lui esser villano " * 
 
 and it is undeniable that a too intense consciousness 
 of one's kinship with all frailties and vices under- 
 mines the active heroism which battles against 
 wrong. 
 
 But certainly nature has taken care that this 
 danger should not at present be very threatening. 
 One could not fairly describe the generality of 
 one's neighbours as too lucidly aware of manifest- 
 ing in their own persons the weaknesses which 
 they observe in the rest of her Majesty's sub- 
 jects; on the contrary, a hasty conclusion as to 
 schemes of Providence might lead to the supposition 
 that one man was intended to correct another by 
 being most intolerant of the ugly quality or trick 
 which he himself possesses. Doubtless philoso- 
 phers will be able to explain how it must neces- 
 sarily be so, but pending the full extension of the 
 a priori method, which will show that only block- 
 heads could expect anything to be otherwise, it 
 does seem surprising that Heloisa should be dis- 
 gusted at Laura's attempts to disguise her age 
 attempts which she recognizes so thoroughly be- 
 cause they enter into her own practice; that 
 Semper, who often responds at public dinners and 
 
 1 Inferuo, xxxii. 150.
 
 FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 135 
 
 proposes resolutions on platforms, though he has 
 a trying gestation of every speech and a bad time 
 for himself and others at every delivery, should 
 yet remark pitilessly on the folly of precisely the 
 same course of action in Ubique ; that Aliquis, 
 who lets no attack on himself pass unnoticed, and 
 for every handful of gravel against his windows 
 sends a stone in reply, should deplore the ill- 
 advised retorts of Quispiam, who does not perceive 
 that to show one's self angry with an adversary is 
 to gratify him. To be unaware of our own little 
 tricks of manner or our own mental blemishes and 
 excesses is a comprehensible unconsciousness; the 
 puzzling fact is that people should apparently take 
 no account of their deliberate actions, and should 
 expect them to be equally ignored by others. It is 
 an inversion of the accepted order : there it is the 
 phrases that are official, and the conduct or pri- 
 vately manifested sentiment that is taken to be 
 real ; here it seems that the practice is taken to be 
 official and entirely nullified by the verbal repre- 
 sentation which contradicts it. The thief making 
 a vow to Heaven of full restitution and whispering 
 some reservations, expecting to cheat Omniscience 
 by an " aside, " is hardly more ludicrous than the 
 many ladies and gentlemen who have more belief, 
 and expect others to have it, in their own state- 
 ment about their habitual doings than in the con- 
 tradictory fact which is patent in the daylight. 
 One reason of the absurdity is that we are led by 
 a tradition about ourselves, so that long after a 
 man has practically departed from a rule or prin- 
 ciple, he continues innocently to state it as a true 
 description of his practice just as he has a long 
 tradition that he is not an old gentleman, and is
 
 136 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 startled when he is seventy at overhearing himself 
 called by an epithet which he has only applied to 
 others. 
 
 " A person with your tendency of constitution 
 should take as little sugar as possible, " said Pilulus 
 to Bovis, somewhere in the darker decades of this 
 century. " It has made a great difference to Avis 
 since he took my advice in that matter; he used 
 to consume half a pound a day. " 
 
 " God bless me ! " cries Bovis. " I take very little 
 sugar myself. " 
 
 " Twenty-six large lumps every day of your life, 
 Mr. Bovis," says his wife. 
 
 " No such thing ! " exclaims Bovis. 
 
 " You drop them into your tea, coffee, and whis- 
 key yourself, my dear, and I count them. " 
 
 " Nonsense ! " laughs Bovis, turning to Pilulus, 
 that they may exchange a glance of mutual amuse- 
 ment at a woman's inaccuracy. 
 
 But she happened to be right. Bovis had never 
 said inwardly that he would take a large allowance 
 of sugar, and he had the tradition about himself 
 that he was a man of the most moderate habits ; 
 hence, with this conviction, he was naturally dis- 
 gusted at the saccharine excesses of Avis. 
 
 I have sometimes thought that this facility of 
 men in believing that they are still what they once 
 meant to be this undisturbed appropriation of a 
 traditional character which is often but a melan- 
 choly relic of early resolutions, like the worn and 
 soiled testimonial to soberness and honesty carried 
 in the pocket of a tippler whom the need of a 
 dram has driven into peculation may sometimes 
 diminish \\ie turpitude of what seems a flat, bare- 
 faced falsehood. It is notorious that a man may
 
 FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 137 
 
 go on uttering false assertions about his own acts 
 till he at last believes in them. Is it not possible 
 that sometimes, in the very first utterance, there 
 may be a shape of creed-reciting belief, a reproduc- 
 tion of a traditional self which is clung to against 
 all evidence ? There is no knowing all the dis- 
 guises of the lying serpent. 
 
 When we come to examine in detail what is the 
 sane mind in sane body, the final test of complete- 
 ness seems to be a security of distinction between 
 what we have professed and what we have done, 
 what we have aimed at and what we have achieved, 
 what we have invented and what we have wit- 
 nessed or had evidenced to us, what we think and 
 feel in the present and what we thought and felt 
 in the past. 
 
 I know that there is a common prejudice which 
 regards the habitual confusion of now and then, of 
 it was and it is, of it seemed so, and / should like it 
 to be so, as a mark of high imaginative endowment, 
 while the power of precise statement and descrip- 
 tion is rated lower, as the attitude of an every-day 
 prosaic mind. High imagination is often assigned 
 or claimed as if it were a ready activity in fab- 
 ricating extravagances such as are presented by 
 fevered dreams, or as if its possessors were in that 
 state of inability to give credible testimony which 
 would warrant their exclusion from the class of 
 acceptable witnesses in a court of justice ; so that 
 a creative genius might fairly be subjected to 
 the disability which some laws have stamped 
 on dicers, slaves, and other classes whose posi- 
 tion was held perverting to their sense of social 
 responsibility. 
 
 This endowment of mental confusion is often
 
 138 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 boasted of by persons whose imaginativeness would 
 not otherwise be known, unless it were by the 
 slow process of detecting that their descriptions 
 and narratives were not to be trusted. Callista is 
 always ready to testify of herself that she is an 
 imaginative person ; and sometimes adds, in illus- 
 tration, that if she had taken a walk and seen an 
 old heap of stones on her way, the account she 
 would give on returning would include many 
 pleasing particulars of her own invention, trans- 
 forming the simple heap into an interesting castel- 
 lated ruin. This creative freedom is all very well 
 in the right place ; but before I can grant it to be 
 a sign of unusual mental power, I must inquire 
 whether, on being requested to give a precise de- 
 scription of what she saw, she would be able to 
 cast aside her arbitrary combinations and recover 
 the objects she really perceived, so as to make 
 them recognizable by another person who passed 
 the same way. Otherwise her glorifying imagina- 
 tion is not an addition to the fundamental power 
 of strong, discerning perception, but a cheaper 
 substitute. And in fact, I find, on listening to 
 Callista 's conversation, that she has a very lax 
 conception even of common objects, and an equally 
 lax memory of events. It seems of no consequence 
 to her whether she shall say that a stone is over- 
 grown with moss or with lichen ; that a building 
 is of sandstone or of granite ; that Melibosus once 
 forgot to put on his cravat or that he always 
 appears without it; that everybody says so, or 
 that one stock -broker's wife said so yesterday; 
 that Philemon praised Euphemia up to the skies, 
 or that he denied knowing any particular evil of 
 her. She is one of those respectable witnesses who
 
 FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 139 
 
 would testify to the exact moment of an apparition, 
 because any desirable moment will be as exact as 
 another to her remembrance ; or who would be the 
 most worthy to witness the action of spirits on 
 slates and tables, because the action of limbs 
 would not probably arrest her attention. She 
 would describe the surprising phenomena exhibited 
 by the powerful Medium, with the same freedom 
 that she vaunted in relation to the old heap of 
 stones. Her supposed imaginativeness is simply 
 a very usual lack of discriminating perception, 
 accompanied with a less usual activity of misrep- 
 resentation, which, if it had been a little more 
 intense, or had been stimulated by circumstance, 
 might have made her a profuse writer, unchecked 
 by the troublesome need of veracity. 
 
 These characteristics are the very opposite of 
 such as yield a fine imagination, which is always 
 based on a keen vision, a keen consciousness of 
 what is, and carries the store of definite knowledge 
 as material for the construction of its inward 
 visions. Witness Dante, who is at once the most 
 precise and homely in his reproduction of actual 
 objects, and the most soaringly at large in his 
 imaginative combinations. On a much lower level 
 we distinguish the hyperbole, and rapid develop- 
 ment in descriptions of persons and events, which 
 are lit up by humorous intention in the speaker 
 we distinguish this charming play of intelli- 
 gence, which resembles musical improvisation on a 
 given motive, where the farthest sweep of curve is 
 looped into relevancy by an instinctive method, 
 from the florid inaccuracy or helpless exaggeration, 
 which is really something commoner than the 
 correct simplicity often depreciated as prosaic.
 
 140 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Even if high imagination were to be identified 
 with illusion, there would be the same sort of 
 difference between the imperial wealth of illusion 
 which is informed by industrious observation, and 
 the trumpery stage-property illusion which de- 
 pends on the ill-defined impressions gathered by 
 capricious inclination, as there is between a good 
 and a bad picture of the Last Judgment. In both 
 these the subject is a combination never actually 
 witnessed, and in the good picture the general 
 combination may be of surpassing boldness; but 
 on examination it is seen that the separate ele- 
 ments have been closely studied from real objects. 
 And even where we find the charm of ideal eleva- 
 tion with wrong drawing and fantastic colour, the 
 charm is dependent on the selective sensibility of 
 the painter to certain real delicacies of form which 
 confer the expression he longed to render; for 
 apart from this basis of an effect perceived in com- 
 mon, there could be no conveyance of aesthetic 
 meaning by the painter to the beholder. In this 
 sense it is as true to say of Fra Angelico's Corona- 
 tion of the Virgin, that it has a strain of reality, 
 as to say so of a portrait by Eembrandt which also 
 has its strain of ideal elevation to Eembrandt 's 
 virile selective sensibility. 
 
 To correct such self-flatterers as Callista, it is 
 worth repeating that powerful imagination is not 
 false outward vision, but intense inward represen- 
 tation, and a creative energy constantly fed by 
 susceptibility to the veriest minutias of experience, 
 which it reproduces and constructs in fresh and 
 fresh wholes, not the habitual confusion of 
 provable fact with the fictions of fancy and tran- 
 sient inclination, but a breadth of ideal association
 
 FALSE TESTIMONIALS. 141 
 
 which informs every material object, every inci- 
 dental fact, with far-reaching memories and storied 
 residues of passion, bringing into new light the 
 less obvious relations of human existence. The 
 illusion to which it is liable is not that of habit- 
 ually taking duck-ponds for lilied pools, but of 
 being more or less transiently and in varying degrees 
 so absorbed in ideal vision as to lose the conscious- 
 ness of surrounding objects or occurrences ; and when 
 that rapt condition is past, the sane genius discrimi- 
 nates clearly between what has been given in this 
 parenthetic state of excitement, and what he has 
 known, and may count on, in the ordinary world 
 of experience. Dante seems to have expressed 
 these conditions perfectly in that passage of the 
 Purgatorio where, after a triple vision which has 
 made him forget his surroundings, he says : 
 
 " Quando 1'anima mia torn6 di fuori 
 Alle cose che son fuor di lei vere, 
 lo riconobbi i miei non falsi errori." 
 
 CANTO xv. 
 
 He distinguishes the ideal truth of his entranced 
 vision from the series of external facts to which 
 his consciousness had returned. Isaiah gives us 
 the date of his vision in the Temple, " the year that 
 King Uzziah died ; " and if afterward the mighty- 
 winged seraphim were present with him as he trod 
 the street, he doubtless knew them for images of 
 memory, and did not cry, " Look, " to the passers-by. 
 
 Certainly the seer, whether prophet, philosopher, 
 scientific discoverer, or poet, may happen to be 
 rather mad ; his powers may have been used up, 
 like Don Quixote's, in their visionary or theoretic 
 constructions, so that the reports of common-sense
 
 142 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 fail to affect him, or the continuous strain of ex- 
 citement may have robbed his mind of its elas- 
 ticity. It is hard for our frail mortality to carry 
 the burden of greatness with steady gait and full 
 alacrity of perception. But he is the strongest 
 seer who can support the stress of creative energy, 
 and yet keep that sanity of expectation which con- 
 sists in distinguishing, as Dante does, between the 
 cose che son vere outside the individual mind, and 
 the non falsi errori which are the revelations of 
 true imaginative power.
 
 THE TOO KEADY WETTER 
 
 ONE who talks too much, hindering the rest of the 
 company from taking their turn, and apparently 
 seeing no reason why they should not rather desire 
 to know his opinion or experience in relation to all 
 subjects, or at least to renounce the discussion of 
 any topic where he can make no figure, has never 
 been praised for this industrious monopoly of work 
 which others would willingly have shared in. 
 However various and brilliant his talk may be, we 
 suspect him of impoverishing us by excluding the 
 contributions of other minds, which attract our 
 curiosity the more because he has shut them up in 
 silence. Besides, we get tired of a " manner " in 
 conversation as in painting, when one theme after 
 another is treated with the same lines and touches. 
 I begin with a liking for an estimable master, but 
 by the time he has stretched his interpretation of 
 the world unbrokenly along a palatial gallery, I 
 have had what the cautious Scotch mind would 
 call " enough " of him. There is monotony and 
 narrowness already to spare in my own identity ; 
 what comes to me from without should be larger 
 and more impartial than the judgment of any 
 single interpreter. On this ground even a modest 
 person, without power or will to shine in the con- 
 versation, may easily find the predominating talker 
 a nuisance ; while those who are full of matter on 
 special topics are continually detecting miserably
 
 144 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 thin places in the web of that information which 
 he will not desist from imparting. Nobody that I 
 know of ever proposed a testimonial to a man for thus 
 volunteering the whole expense of the conversation. 
 
 Why is there a different standard of judgment 
 with regard to a writer who plays much the same 
 part in literature as the excessive talker plays in 
 what is traditionally called conversation ? The busy 
 Adrastus, whose professional engagements might 
 seem more than enough for the nervous energy of 
 one man, and who yet finds time to print essays on 
 the chief current subjects, from the tri-lingual in- 
 scriptions, or the idea of the infinite among the 
 prehistoric Lapps, to the Colorado beetle and the 
 grape disease in the south of France, is generally 
 praised, if not admired, for the breadth of his mental 
 range and his gigantic powers of work. Poor Theron, 
 who has some original ideas on a subject to which 
 he has given years of research and meditation, has 
 been waiting anxiously from month to month to see 
 whether his condensed exposition will find a place 
 in the next advertised programme, but sees it, on the 
 contrary, regularly excluded, and twice the space 
 he asked for filled with the copious brew of Adrastus, 
 whose name carries custom like a celebrated trade- 
 mark. Why should the eager haste to tell what he 
 thinks on the shortest notice, as if his opinion were 
 a needed preliminary to discussion, get a man the 
 reputation of being a conceited bore in conversation, 
 when nobody blames the same tendency if it shows 
 itself in print ? The excessive talker can only be in 
 one gathering at a time, and there is the comfort of 
 thinking that everywhere else other fellow-citizens 
 who have something to say may get a chance of 
 delivering themselves ; but the exorbitant writer can
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER. 145 
 
 occupy space and spread over it the more or less 
 agreeable flavour of his mind in four "mediums" at 
 once, and on subjects taken from the four winds. 
 Such restless and versatile occupants of literary 
 space and time should have lived earlier, when the 
 world wanted summaries of all extant knowledge, 
 and this knowledge being small, there was the more 
 room for commentary and conjecture. They might 
 have played the part of an Isidor of Seville or a 
 Vincent of Beauvais brilliantly, and the willingness 
 to write everything themselves would have been 
 strictly in place. In the present day, the busy re- 
 tailer of other people's knowledge, which he has 
 spoiled in the handling, the restless guesser and 
 commentator, the importunate hawker of undesirable 
 superfluities, the everlasting word-compeller, who 
 rises early in the morning to praise what the world 
 has already glorified, or makes himself haggard at 
 night in writing out his dissent from what nobody 
 ever believed, is not simply " gratis, anhelans, multa 
 agendo nihil agens ; " he is an obstruction. Like an 
 incompetent architect, with too much interest at 
 his back, he obtrudes his ill-considered work where 
 place ought to have been left to better men. 
 
 Is it out of the question that we should entertain 
 some scruple about mixing our own flavour, as of the 
 too cheap and insistent nutmeg, with that of every 
 great writer and every great subject especially 
 when our flavour is all we have to give, the matter 
 or knowledge having been already given by some- 
 body else ? What if we were only like the Spanish 
 wine-skins which impress the innocent stranger with 
 the notion that the Spanish grape has naturally a 
 taste of leather. One could wish that even the 
 greatest minds should leave some themes unhandled, 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 or at least leave us no more than a paragraph or 
 two on them, to show how well they did in not 
 being more lengthy. 
 
 Such entertainment of scruple can hardly be ex- 
 pected from the young ; but happily their readiness 
 to mirror the universe anew for the rest of mankind 
 is not encouraged by easy publicity. In the viva- 
 cious Pepin I have often seen the image of my early 
 youth, when it seemed to me astonishing that the 
 philosophers had left so many difficulties unsolved, 
 and that so many great themes had raised no great 
 poet to treat them. I had an elated sense that I 
 should find my brain full of theoretic clews when I 
 looked for them, and that wherever a poet had not 
 done what I expected, it was for want of my insight. 
 Not knowing what had been said about the play of 
 Borneo and Juliet, I felt myself capable of writing 
 something original on its blemishes and beauties. 
 In relation to all subjects I had a joyous conscious- 
 ness of that ability which is prior to knowledge, 
 and of only needing to apply myself in order to 
 master any task to conciliate philosophers whose 
 systems were at present but dimly known to me, to 
 estimate foreign poets whom I had not yet read, to 
 show up mistakes in a historical monograph that 
 roused my interest in an epoch which I had been 
 hitherto ignorant of when I should once have 
 had time to verify my views of probability by look- 
 ing into an encyclopaedia. So Pepin ; save only that 
 he is industrious while I was idle. Like the astron- 
 omer in Rasselas, I swayed the universe in my 
 consciousness, without making any difference out- 
 side me; whereas Pepin, while feeling himself 
 powerful with the stars in their courses, really 
 raises some dust here below. He is no longer in
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER. 147 
 
 his spring-tide ; but having been always busy, he 
 has been obliged to use his first impressions as if 
 they were deliberate opinions, and to range himself 
 on the corresponding side in ignorance of much 
 that he commits himself to; so that he retains 
 some characteristics of a comparatively tender age, 
 and among them ft certain surprise that there have 
 not been more persons equal to himself. Perhaps 
 it is unfortunate for him that he early gained a 
 hearing, or at least a place in print, and was thus en- 
 couraged in acquiring a fixed habit of Writing, to the 
 exclusion of any other bread-winning pursuit. He 
 is already to be classed as a " general writer," cor- 
 responding to the comprehensive wants of the 
 "general reader," and with this industry on his 
 hands it is not enough for him to keep up the in- 
 genuous self-reliance of youth : he finds himself 
 under an obligation to be skilled in various methods 
 of seeming to know; and having habitually ex- 
 pressed himself before he was convinced, his interest 
 in all subjects is chiefly to ascertain that he has not 
 made a mistake, and to feel his infallibility con- 
 firmed. That impulse to decide, that vague sense of 
 being able to achieve the unattempted, that dream 
 of aerial unlimited movement at will without feet 
 or wings, which were once but the joyous mounting 
 of young sap, are already taking shape as unalterable 
 woody fibre ; the impulse has hardened into " style," 
 and into a pattern of peremptory sentences; the 
 sense of ability in the presence of other men's 
 failures is turning into the official arrogance of one 
 who habitually issues directions which he has never 
 himself been called on to execute ; the dreamy buoy- 
 ancy of the stripling has taken on a fatal sort of 
 reality in written pretensions which carry conse-
 
 143 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 quences. He is on the way to become like the loud- 
 buzzing, bouncing Bombus, who combines conceited 
 illusions enough to supply several patients in a 
 lunatic asylum, with the freedom to show himself 
 at large in various forms of print. If one who takes 
 himself for the telegraphic centre of all American 
 wires is to be confined as unfit to transact affairs, 
 what shall we say to the man who believes himself 
 in possession of the unexpressed motives and designs 
 dwelling in the breasts of all sovereigns and all 
 politicians ? And I grieve to think that poor Pepin, 
 though less political, may by and by manifest a 
 persuasion hardly more sane, for he is beginning 
 to explain people's writings by what he does not 
 know about them. Yet he was once at the com- 
 paratively innocent stage, which I have confessed 
 to be that of my own early astonishment at my 
 powerful originality; and copying the just humil- 
 ity of the old Puritan, I may say, " But for the 
 grace of discouragement, this coxcombry might have 
 been mine." 
 
 Pepin made for himself a necessity of writing (and 
 getting printed) before he had considered whether 
 he had the knowledge or belief that would furnish 
 eligible matter. At first, perhaps, the necessity 
 galled him a little, but it is now as easily borne, 
 nay, is as irrepressible a habit as the outpouring of in- 
 considerate talk. He is gradually being condemned 
 to have no genuine impressions, no direct conscious- 
 ness of enjoyment, or the reverse, from the quality 
 of what is before him : his perceptions are continually 
 arranging themselves in forms suitable to a printed 
 judgment ; and hence they will often turn out to be 
 as much to the purpose if they are written without 
 any direct contemplation of the object, and are
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER. 149 
 
 guided by a few external conditions which serve to 
 classify it for him. In this way he is irrevocably 
 losing the faculty of accurate mental vision : having 
 bound himself to express judgments which will 
 satisfy some other demands than that of veracity, 
 he has blunted his perceptions by continual pre- 
 occupation. We cannot command veracity at will ; 
 the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of 
 health that has to be delicately guarded, and as an 
 ancient Rabbi has solemnly said, " The penalty of 
 untruth is untruth." But Pepin is only a mild 
 example of the fact that incessant writing with a 
 view to printing carries internal consequences which 
 have often the nature of disease. And however un- 
 practical it may be held to consider whether we 
 have anything to print which it is good for the 
 world to read, or which has not been better said 
 before, it will perhaps be allowed to be worth con- 
 sidering what effect the printing may have on our- 
 selves. Clearly there is a sort of writing which 
 helps to keep the writer in a ridiculously contented 
 ignorance, raising in him continually the sense 
 of having delivered himself effectively, so that the 
 acquirement of more thorough knowledge seems as 
 superfluous as the purchase of costume for a past 
 occasion. He has invested his vanity (perhaps his 
 hope of income) in his own shallownesses and mis- 
 takes, and must desire their prosperity. Like the 
 professional prophet, he learns to be glad of the 
 harm that keeps up his credit, and to be sorry for 
 the good that contradicts him. It is hard enough 
 for any of us, amidst the changing winds of fortune 
 and the hurly-burly of events, to keep quite clear of 
 a gladness which is another's calamity; but one
 
 150 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 may choose not to enter on a course which will turn 
 such gladness into a fixed habit of mind, committing 
 ourselves to he continually pleased that others should 
 appear to be wrong, in order that we may have the 
 air of being right. 
 
 In some cases, perhaps, it might he urged that 
 Pepin has remained the more self -contented because 
 he has not written everything he believed himself 
 capable of, He once asked me to read a sort of 
 programme of the species of romance which he 
 should think it worth while to write a species 
 which he contrasted in strong terms with the pro- 
 ductions of illustrious but overrated authors in this 
 branch. Pepin's romance was to present the splen- 
 dours of the Boinan Empire at the culmination of its 
 grandeur, when decadence was spiritually but not 
 visibly imminent ; it was to show the workings of 
 human passion in the most pregnant and exalted of 
 human circumstances, the designs of statesmen, the 
 interfusion of philosophies, the rural relaxation and 
 converse of immortal poets, the majestic triumphs 
 of warriors, the mingling of a quaint and sublime 
 in religious ceremony, the gorgeous delirium of 
 gladiatorial shows, and under all the secretly work- 
 ing leaven of Christianity. Such a romance would 
 not call the attention of society to the dialect of 
 stable-boys, the ]ow habits of rustics, the vulgarity 
 of small schoolmasters, the manners of men in livery, 
 or to any other form of uneducated talk and senti- 
 ments ; its characters would have virtues and vices 
 alike on the grand scale, and would express them- 
 selves in an English representing the discourse of 
 the most powerful minds, in the best Latin, or pos- 
 ibly Greek, when there occurred a scene with a
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER. 151 
 
 Greek philosopher on a visit to Home, or resident 
 there as a teacher. In this way Pepin would do ia 
 fiction what had never been done before ; something 
 not at all like " Bienzi " or " Notre Dame de Paris," 
 or any other attempt of that kind, but something at 
 once more penetrating and more magnificent, more 
 passionate and more philosophical, more panoramic 
 yet more select; something that would present a 
 conception of a gigantic period ; in short, something 
 truly Roman and world-historical. 
 
 When Pepin gave me this programme to read he 
 was much younger than at present. Some slight 
 success in another vein diverted him from the pro- 
 duction of panoramic and select romance ; and the 
 experience of not having tried to carry out his pro- 
 gramme has naturally made him more biting and 
 sarcastic on the failures of those who have actually 
 written romances without apparently having had a 
 glimpse of a conception equal to his. Indeed, I am 
 often comparing his rather touchingly inflated nai- 
 vete, as of a small young person walking on tiptoe 
 while he is talking of elevated things, at the time 
 when he felt himself the author of that unwritten 
 romance, with his present epigrammatic curtness 
 and affectation of power kept strictly in reserve. 
 His paragraphs now seem to have a bitter smile in 
 them, from the consciousness of a mind too pene- 
 trating to accept any other man's ideas, and too 
 equally competent in all directions to seclude his 
 power in any one form of creation, but rather fitted 
 to hang over them all as a lamp of guidance to the 
 stumblers below. You perceive how proud he is of 
 not being indebted to any writer ; even with the 
 dead he is on the creditor's side, for he is doing 
 them the service of letting the world know what
 
 152 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 they meant better than those poor pre-Pepinians 
 themselves had any means of doing ; and he treats 
 the mighty shades very cavalierly. 
 
 Is this fellow-citizen of ours, considered simply 
 in the light of a baptized Christian and tax-paying 
 Englishman, really as madly conceited, as empty of 
 reverential feeling, as unveracious and careless of 
 justice, as full of catch-penny devices and stagey 
 attitudinizing, as on examination his writing shows 
 itself to be ? By no means. He has arrived at the 
 present pass in " the literary calling " through the 
 self-imposed obligation to give himself a manner 
 which would convey the impression of superior 
 knowledge and ability. He is much worthier and 
 more admirable than his written productions, be- 
 cause the moral aspects exhibited in his writing are 
 felt to be ridiculous or disgraceful in the personal 
 relations of life. In blaming Pepin's writing, we 
 are accusing the public conscience, which is so lax 
 and ill-formed on the momentous bearings of author- 
 ship, that it sanctions the total absence of scruple 
 in undertaking and prosecuting what should be the 
 best warranted of vocations. 
 
 Hence I still accept friendly relations with Pepin, 
 for he has much private amiability ; and though he 
 probably thinks of me as a man of slender talents, 
 without rapidity of coup d'ceil, and with no com- 
 pensatory penetration, he meets me very cordially, 
 and would not, I am sure, willingly pain me in 
 conversation by crudely declaring his low estimate 
 of my capacity. Yet I have often known him to 
 insult my betters, and contribute (perhaps unre- 
 flectingly) to encourage injurious conceptions of 
 them ; but that is done in the course of his profes- 
 sional writing, and the public conscience still
 
 THE TOO READY WRITER. 153 
 
 leaves such writing nearly on a level of the Merry- 
 Andrew's dress, which permits an impudent deport- 
 ment and extraordinary gambols to one who, in his 
 ordinary clothing, shows himself the decent father 
 of a family.
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 
 
 PAETICULAE callings, it is known, encourage par- 
 ticular diseases. There is a painter's colic; the 
 Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the inhalation of 
 steel-dust ; clergymen so often have a kind of sore 
 throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets 
 named after them. And perhaps, if we were to 
 inquire, we should find a similar relation between 
 certain moral ailments and these various occupa- 
 tions, though here in the case of clergymen there 
 would be specific differences ; the poor curate, 
 equally with the rector, is liable to clergyman's 
 sore throat, but he would probably be found free 
 from the chronic moral ailments encouraged by the 
 possession of glebe and those higher chances of pre- 
 ferment which follow on having a good position 
 already. On the other hand, the poor curate might 
 have severe attacks of calculating expectancy con- 
 cerning parishioners' turkeys, cheeses, and fat geese, 
 or of uneasy rivalry for the donations of clerical 
 charities. 
 
 Authors are so miscellaneous a class that their 
 personified diseases, physical and moral, might 
 include the whole procession of human disorders, 
 led by dyspepsia and ending in madness the 
 awful dumb-show of a world-historic tragedy. 
 Take a large enough area of human life, and all 
 comedy melts into tragedy, like the Fool's part of 
 the side of Lear. The chief scenes get filled with
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 155 
 
 erring heroes, guileful usurpers, persecuted discov- 
 erers, dying deliverers : everywhere the protagonist 
 has a part pregnant with doom. The comedy sinks 
 to an accessory, and if there are loud laughs they 
 seem a convulsive transition from sobs ; or if the 
 comedy is touched with a gentle lovingness, the 
 panoramic scene is one where 
 
 " Sadness is a kind of mirth, 
 So mingled as if mirth did make us sad 
 And sadness merry." * 
 
 But I did not set out on the wide survey that 
 would carry me into tragedy, and, in fact, had noth- 
 ing more serious in my mind than certain small 
 chronic ailments that come of small authorship. I 
 was thinking principally of Vorticella, who flourished 
 in my youth, not only as a portly lady walking in 
 silk attire, but also as the authoress of a book 
 entitled " The Channel Islands, with Notes and an 
 Appendix." I would by no means make it a re- 
 proach to her that she wrote no more than one 
 book j on the contrary, her stopping there seems to 
 me a laudable example. What one would have 
 wished, after experience, was that she had refrained 
 from producing even that single volume, and thus 
 from giving her self-importance a troublesome kind 
 of double incorporation which became oppressive to 
 her acquaintances, and set up in herself one of those 
 slight chronic forms of disease to which I have just 
 referred. She lived in the considerable provincial 
 town of Pumpiter, which had its own newspaper 
 press, with the usual divisions of political partisan- 
 ship and the usual varieties of literary criticism 
 the florid and allusive, the staccato and peremptory, 
 1 The Two Noble Kinsmen.
 
 1 56 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the clairvoyant and prophetic, the safe and pattern- 
 phrased, or what one might call " the many-a-long- 
 day-style." 
 
 Vorticella, being the wife of an important towns- 
 man, had naturally the satisfaction of seeing " The 
 Channel Islands " reviewed by all the organs of 
 Pumpiter opinion, and their articles or paragraphs 
 held as naturally the opening pages in the elegantly 
 bound album prepared by her for the reception of 
 "critical opinions." This ornamental volume lay 
 on a special table in her drawing-room, close to the 
 still more gorgeously bound work of which it was 
 the significant effect, and every guest was allowed 
 the privilege of reading what had been said of the 
 authoress and her work in the " Pumpiter Gazette 
 and Literary Watchman," the " Pumpshire Post," 
 the " Church Clock," the " Independent Monitor," 
 and the lively but judicious publication known as 
 the " Medley Pie ; " to be followed up, if he chose, by 
 the instructive perusal of the strikingly confirma- 
 tory judgments, sometimes concurrent in the very 
 phrases, of journals from the most distant countries, 
 as the " Latchgate Argus," the " Penllwy Universe," 
 the " Cockaleekie Advertiser," the " Goodwin Sands 
 Opinion," and the " Laud's End Times." 
 
 I had friends in Pumpiter, and occasionally paid 
 a long visit there. When I called on Vorticella, 
 who had a cousmship with my hosts, she had to 
 excuse herself because a message claimed her atten- 
 tion for eight or ten minutes ; and handing me the 
 album, of critical opinions, said, with a certain 
 emphasis which, considering my youth, was highly 
 complimentary, that she would really like me to 
 read what I should find there. This seemed a per- 
 missive politeness which I could not feel to be an
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 157 
 
 oppression ; and I ran my eyes over the dozen pages, 
 each with a strip or islet of newspaper in the centre, 
 with that freedom of mind (in my case meaning 
 freedom to forget) which would be a perilous way 
 of preparing for examination. This ad libitum 
 perusal had its interest for me. The private truth 
 being that I had not read " The Channel Islands," 
 I was amazed at the variety of matter which the 
 volume must contain, to have impressed these dif- 
 ferent judges with the writer's surpassing capacity 
 to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all 
 forms of presentation. In Jersey she had shown 
 herself a historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alder- 
 ney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist. 
 There were sketches of character scattered through 
 the pages which might put our " fictionists " to 
 the blush ; the style was eloquent and racy, studded 
 with gems of felicitous remark ; and the moral spirit 
 throughout was so superior that, said one, "the 
 recording angel " (who is not supposed to take 
 account of literature as such) " would assuredly set 
 down the work as a deed of religion." The force 
 of this eulogy on the part of several reviewers was 
 much heightened by the incidental evidence of their 
 fastidious and severe taste, which seemed to suffer 
 considerably from the imperfections of our chief 
 writers, even the dead and canonized : one afflicted 
 them with the smell of oil ; another lacked erudi- 
 tion, and attempted (though vainly) to dazzle them 
 with trivial conceits ; one wanted to be more philo- 
 sophical than nature had made him ; another, in 
 attempting to be comic, produced the melancholy 
 effect of a half-starved Merry-Andrew ; while one 
 and all, from the author of the " Areopagitica " 
 downward, had faults of style which must have
 
 158 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 made an able hand in the " Latchgate Argus " shake 
 the many-glanced head belonging thereto with a 
 smile of compassionate disapproval. Not so the 
 authoress of " The Channel Islands ; " Vorticella 
 and Shakspeare were allowed to be faultless. I 
 gathered that no blemishes were observable in the 
 work of this accomplished writer, and the repeated 
 information that she was " second to none " seemed 
 after this superfluous. Her thick octavo notes, 
 appendix, and all was unflagging from beginning 
 to end ; and the " Land's End Times," using a rather 
 dangerous rhetorical figure, recommended you not 
 to take up the volume unless you had leisure to 
 finish it at a sitting. It had given one writer more 
 pleasure than he had had for many a long day 
 a sentence which had a melancholy resonance, sug- 
 gesting a life of studious languor such as all previous 
 achievements of the human mind failed to stimulate 
 into enjoyment. I think the collection of critical 
 opinions wound up with this sentence, and I had 
 turned back to look at the lithographed sketch of 
 the authoress which fronted the first page of the 
 album, when the fair original re-entered, and I laid 
 down the volume on its appropriate table. 
 
 " Well, what do you think of them ? " said Vorti- 
 cella, with an emphasis which had some significance 
 unperceived by me. "I know you are a great 
 student. Give me your opinion of these opinions." 
 
 " They must be very gratifying to you," I answered, 
 with a little confusion ; for I perceived that I might 
 easily mistake my footing, and I began to have a 
 presentiment of an examination for which I was by 
 no means crammed. 
 
 " On the whole yes," said Vorticella, in a tone 
 of concession "A few of the notices are written
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 159 
 
 with some pains, but not one of them has really 
 grappled with the chief idea in the appendix. I 
 don't know whether you have studied political econ- 
 omy, but you saw what I said on page 398 about 
 the Jersey fisheries ? " 
 
 I bowed I confess it with the mean hope that 
 this movement in the nape of my neck would be 
 taken as sufficient proof that I had read, marked, 
 and learned. I do not forgive myself for this panto- 
 mimic falsehood; but I was young and morally 
 timorous, and Vorticella's personality had an effect 
 on me something like that of a powerful mesmerizer, 
 when he directs all his ten fingers toward your eyes, 
 as unpleasantly visible ducts for the invisible stream. 
 I felt a great power of contempt in her if I did not 
 come up to her expectations. 
 
 " Well," she resumed, " you observe that not one 
 of them has taken up that argument ; but I hope I 
 convinced you about the drag-nets ? " 
 
 Here was a judgment on me. Orientally speak- 
 ing, I had lifted up my foot on the steep descent of 
 falsity, and was compelled to set it down on a lower 
 level. " I should think you must be right," said I, 
 inwardly resolving that on the next topic I would 
 tell the truth. 
 
 " I know that I am right," said Vorticella. " The 
 fact is that no critic in this town is fit to meddle 
 with such subjects unless it beVolvox, and he, with 
 all his command of language, is very superficial. It 
 is Volvox who writes in the ' Monitor.' I hope you 
 noticed how he contradicts himself ? " 
 
 My resolution, helped by the equivalence of dan- 
 gers, stoutly prevailed, and I said " No." 
 
 " No ! I am surprised. He is the only one who 
 finds fault with me. He is a Dissenter, you know.
 
 160 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 The ' Monitor ' is the Dissenters' organ, but my hus- 
 band has been so useful to them in municipal affairs 
 that they would not venture to run my book down ; 
 they feel obliged to tell the truth about me. Still, 
 Volvox betrays himself. After praising me for my 
 penetration and accuracy, he presently says I have 
 allowed myself to be imposed upon, and have let my 
 active imagination run away with me. That is like 
 his Dissenting impertinence. Active my imagination 
 may be, but I have it under control. Little Vibrio, 
 who writes the playful notice in the ' Medley Pie,' 
 has a clever hit at Volvox in that passage about the 
 steeple-chase of imagination, where the loser wants 
 to make it appear that the winner was only run 
 away with. But if you did not notice Volvox's 
 self-contradiction you would not see the point," 
 added Vorticella, with rather a chilling intonation. 
 "Or perhaps you did not read the 'Medley Pie' 
 notice ? That is a pity. Do take up the book 
 again. Vibrio is a poor little tippling creature ; 
 but, as Mr. Carlyle would say, he has an eye, and 
 he is always lively." 
 
 I did take up the book again, and read as 
 demanded. 
 
 " It is very ingenious," said I, really appreciating 
 the difficulty of being lively in this connection ; it 
 seemed even more wonderful than that a Vibrio 
 should have an eye. 
 
 " You are probably surprised to see no notices 
 from the London press," said Vorticella. " I have 
 one, a very remarkable one, but I reserve it 
 until the others have spoken, and then I shall intro- 
 duce it to wind up. I shall have them reprinted, of 
 course, and inserted in future copies. This from the 
 'Candelabrum' is only eight lines in length, but
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 161 
 
 full of venom. It calls my style dull and pompous. 
 I think that will tell its own tale, placed after the 
 other critiques" 
 
 "People's impressions are so different," said I. J 
 " Some persons find ' Don Quixote ' dull." 
 
 "Yes," said Vorticella, in emphatic chest-tones, 
 " dulness is a matter of opinion ; but pompous ! 
 That I never was and never could be. Perhaps he 
 means that my matter is too important for his 
 taste ; and I have no objection to that. I did not 
 intend to be trivial. I should just like to read you 
 that passage about the drag-nets, because I could 
 make it clearer to you." 
 
 A second (less ornamental) copy was at her elbow 
 and was already opened, when to my great relief 
 another guest was announced, and I was able to take 
 my leave without seeming to run away from " The 
 Channel Islands," though not without being com- 
 pelled to carry with me the loan of " the marked 
 copy," which I was to find advantageous in a repe- 
 rusal of the appendix, and was only requested to 
 return before my departure from Pumpiter. Look- 
 ing into the volume now with some curiosity, I 
 found it a very ordinary combination of the common- 
 place and ambitious one of those books which one 
 might imagine to have been written under the old 
 Grub Street coercion of hunger and thirst, if they 
 were not known beforehand to be the gratuitous 
 productions of ladies and gentlemen, whose circum- 
 stances might be called altogether easy, but for an 
 uneasy vanity that happened to have been directed 
 toward authorship. Its importance was that of a 
 polypus, tumor, fungus, or other erratic outgrowth, 
 noxious and disfiguring in its effect on the individ- 
 ual organism which nourishes it. Poor Vorticella 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i6a ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 might not have been more wearisome on a visit than 
 the majority of her neighbours, but for this disease of 
 magnified self-importance belonging to small author- 
 ship. I understand that the chronic complaint of 
 "The Channel Islands" never left her. As the 
 years went on, and the publication tended to vanish 
 in the distance for her neighbours' memory, she was 
 still bent on dragging it to the foreground ; and her 
 chief interest in new acquaintances was the possi- 
 bility of lending them her book, entering into all 
 details concerning it, and requesting them to read 
 her album of " critical opinions." This really made 
 her more tiresome than Gregarina, whose distinction 
 was that she had had cholera, and who did not feel 
 herself in her true position with strangers until they 
 knew it. 
 
 My experience with Vorticella led me for a time 
 into the false supposition that this sort of fungous 
 disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, 
 was most common to the female sex ; but I presently 
 found that here too the male could assert his superi- 
 ority and show a more vigorous boredom. I have 
 known a man with a single pamphlet containing an 
 assurance that somebody else was wrong, together 
 with a few approved quotations, produce a more 
 powerful effect of shuddering at his approach than 
 ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume, 
 including notes and appendix. Males of more than 
 one nation recur to my memory who produced from 
 their pocket on the slightest encouragement a small 
 pink or buff duodecimo pamphlet, wrapped in silver 
 paper, as a present held ready for an intelligent 
 reader. " A mode of propagandising you remark in 
 excuse ; " they wished to spread some useful correc- 
 tive doctrine." Not necessarily ; the indoctrination
 
 DISEASES OF SMALL AUTHORSHIP. 163 
 
 aimed at was perhaps to convince you of their own 
 talents by the sample of an " Ode on Shakspeare's 
 Birthday," or a translation from Horace. 
 
 Vorticella may pair off with Monas, who had also 
 written his one book, " Here and There ; or, a Trip 
 from Truro to Transylvania," and not only carried 
 it in his portmanteau when he went on visits, but took 
 the earliest opportunity of depositing it in the draw- 
 ing-room, and afterward would enter to look for it, 
 as if under pressure of a need for reference, begging 
 the lady of the house to tell him whether she had 
 seen " a small volume bound in red." One hostess 
 at last ordered it to be carried into his bedroom to 
 save his time; but it presently reappeared in his 
 hands, and was again left, with inserted slips of 
 paper, on the drawing-room table. 
 
 Depend upon it, vanity is human native alike 
 to men and women ; only in the male it is of denser 
 texture, less volatile, so that it less immediately 
 informs you of its presence, but is more massive 
 and capable of knocking you down if you come into 
 collision with it ; while in woman vanity lays by its 
 small revenges as in a needle-case always at hand. 
 The difference is in muscle and finger-tips, in tradi- 
 tional habits and mental perspective, rather than in 
 the original appetite of vanity. It is an approved 
 method now to explain ourselves by a reference to 
 the races as little like us as possible ; which leads 
 me to observe that in Fiji the men use the most 
 elaborate hairdressing, and that wherever tattooing 
 is in vogue the male expects to carry off the prize of 
 admiration for pattern and workmanship. Arguing 
 analogically, and looking for this tendency of the 
 Fijian or Hawaian male in the eminent European, 
 we must suppose that it exhibits itself under the
 
 164 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 forms of civilized apparel ; and it would be a great 
 mistake to estimate passionate effort by the effect it 
 produces on our perception or understanding. It is 
 conceivable that a man may have concentrated no 
 less will and expectation on his wristbands, gaiters, 
 and the shape of his hat-brim, or an appearance 
 which impresses you as that of the modern " swell," 
 than the Ojibbeway on an ornamentation which 
 seems to us much more elaborate. In what concerns 
 the search for admiration, at least, it is not true that 
 the effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. 
 The cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, 
 such as might be seen when George the Fourth was 
 king, must have been widely different in quality and 
 intensity from the impression made by that small 
 scroll of hair on the organ of the beholder. Merely 
 to maintain an attitude and gait which I notice in 
 certain club men, and especially an inflation of the 
 chest accompanying very small remarks, there goes, 
 I am convinced, an expenditure of psychical energy 
 little appreciated by the multitude a mental vision 
 of Self and deeply impressed beholders, which is 
 quite without antitype in what we call the effect 
 produced by that hidden process. 
 
 No! there is no need to admit that women would 
 carry away the prize of vanity in a competition 
 where differences of custom were fairly considered. 
 A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt 
 which forces him to walk sideways down the stair- 
 case ; but let the match be between the respective 
 vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and 
 here too the battle would be to the strong.
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 
 
 IT is a familiar example of irony in the degradation 
 of words that " what a man is worth " has come to 
 mean how much money he possesses ; but there 
 seems a deeper and more melancholy irony in the 
 shrunken meaning that popular or polite speech 
 assigns to " morality " and " morals." The poor 
 part these words are made to play recalls the fate 
 of those pagan divinities who, after being under- 
 stood to rule the powers of the air and the destinies 
 of men, came down to the level of insignificant 
 demons, or were even made a farcical show for 
 the amusement of the multitude. 
 
 Talking to Melissa in a time of commercial trouble, 
 I found her disposed to speak pathetically of the 
 disgrace which had fallen on Sir Gavial Mantrap, be- 
 cause of his conduct in relation to the Eocene Mines, 
 and to other companies ingeniously devised by him 
 for the punishment of ignorance in people of small 
 means : a disgrace by which the poor titled gentle- 
 man was actually reduced to live in comparative 
 obscurity on his wife's settlement of one or two 
 hundred thousand in the consols. 
 
 " Surely your pity is misapplied," said I, rather 
 dubiously ; for I like the comfort of trusting that 
 a correct moral judgment is the strong point in 
 woman (seeing that she has a majority of about a 
 million in our island), and I imagined that Melissa 
 might have some unexpressed grounds for her
 
 166 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 opinion. " I should have thought you would rathei 
 be sorry for Mantrap's victims the widows, spin- 
 sters, and hard-working fathers, whom his unscru- 
 pulous haste to make himself rich has cheated of 
 all their savings, while he is eating well, lying softly, 
 and, after impudently justifying himself before the 
 public, is perhaps joining in the General Confession, 
 with a sense that he is an acceptable object in the 
 sight of God, though decent men refuse to meet 
 him." 
 
 " Oh, all that about the Companies, I know, was 
 most unfortunate. In commerce people are led to 
 do so many things, and he might not know exactly 
 how everything would turn out. But Sir Gavial 
 made a good use of his money, and he is a thoroughly 
 moral man." 
 
 " What do you mean by a thoroughly moral man ? " 
 said I. 
 
 " Oh, I suppose every one means the same by that," 
 said Melissa, with a slight air of rebuke. " Sir Gavial 
 is an excellent family man quite blameless there ; 
 and so charitable round his place at Tip-top. Very 
 different from Mr. Barabbas, whose life, my husband 
 tells me, is most objectionable, with actresses and 
 that sort of thing. I think a man's morals should 
 make a difference to us. I'm not sorry for Mr. 
 Barabbas, but I am sorry for Sir Gavial Mantrap." 
 
 I will not repeat my answer to Melissa, for I 
 fear it was offensively brusque, my opinion being 
 that Sir Gavial was the more pernicious scoundrel 
 of the two, since his name for virtue served as an 
 effective part of a swindling apparatus, and perhaps 
 I hinted that to call such a man " moral " showed 
 rather a silly notion of human affairs. In fact, I had 
 an angry wish to be instructive, and Melissa, as will
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 167 
 
 sometimes happen, noticed my anger without appro- 
 priating my instruction ; for I have since heard that 
 she speaks of me as rather violent-tempered, and not 
 over-strict in my views of morality. 
 
 I wish that this narrow use of words which are 
 wanted in their full meaning were confined to 
 women like Melissa. Seeing that " morality " and 
 " morals," under their alias of Ethics, are the sub- 
 ject of voluminous discussion, and their true basis 
 a pressing matter of dispute seeing that the most 
 famous book ever written on Ethics, and forming 
 a chief study in our colleges, allies ethical with 
 political science, or that which treats of the con- 
 stitution and prosperity of states, one might expect 
 that educated men would find reason to avoid a 
 perversion of language which lends itself to no 
 wider view of life than that of village gossips. Yet 
 I find even respectable historians of our own. and 
 of foreign countries, after showing that a king was 
 treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction gross 
 breaches in the administration of justice, end by 
 praising him for his pure moral character ; by 
 which one must suppose them to mean that he was 
 not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin 
 of the typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay 
 describes as passing his life in chewing bang and 
 fondling dancing-girls. And since we are some- 
 times told of such maleficent kings that they were 
 religious, we arrive at the curious result, that the 
 most serious wide-reaching duties of man lie quite 
 outside both morality and religion the one of 
 these consisting in not keeping mistresses (and 
 perhaps not drinking too much), and the other in 
 certain ritual and spiritual transactions with God, 
 which can be carried on equally well side by side
 
 168 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 with the basest conduct toward men. With such 
 a classification as this it is no wonder, considering 
 the strong reaction of language on thought, that 
 many minds, dizzy with indigestion of recent 
 science and philosophy, are far to seek for the 
 grounds of social duty, and without entertaining 
 any private intention of committing a perjury 
 which would ruin an innocent man, or seeking 
 gain by supplying bad preserved meats to our navy, 
 feel themselves speculatively obliged to inquire why 
 they should not do so, and are inclined to measure 
 their intellectual subtlety by their dissatisfaction 
 with all answers to this " Why ? " It is of little 
 use to theorize in ethics while our habitual phrase- 
 ology stamps the larger part of our social duties 
 as something that lies aloof from the deepest needs 
 and affections of our nature. The informal defini- 
 tions of popular language are the only medium 
 through which theory really affects the mass of 
 minds, even among the nominally educated ; and 
 when a man whose business hours, the solid part 
 of every day, are spent in an unscrupulous course 
 of public or private action which has every calcu- 
 lable chance of causing wide-spread injury and 
 misery, can be called moral because he comes home 
 to dine with his wife and children and cherishes 
 the happiness of his own hearth, the augury is not 
 good for the use of high ethical and theological 
 disputation. 
 
 Not for one moment would one willingly lose 
 sight of the truth that the relation of the sexes and 
 the primary ties of kinship are the deepest roots 
 of human well-being, but to make them by them- 
 selves the equivalent of morality is verbally to cut 
 off the channels of feeling through which they are
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 169 
 
 the feeders of that well-being. They are the origi- 
 nal fountains of a sensibility to the claims of others, 
 which is the bond of societies ; but being neces- 
 sarily in the first instance a private good, there is 
 always the danger that individual selfishness will 
 see in them only the best part of its own gain ; just 
 as knowledge, navigation, commerce, and all the 
 conditions which are of a nature to awaken men's 
 consciousness of their mutual dependence and to 
 make the world one great society, are the occasions 
 of selfish, unfair action, of war and oppression, so 
 long as the public conscience or chief force of feel- 
 ing and opinion is not uniform and strong enough 
 in its insistence on what is demanded by the general 
 welfare. And among the influences that must retard 
 a right public judgment, the degradation of words 
 which involve praise and blame will be reckoned 
 worth protesting against by every mature observer. 
 To rob words of half their meaning, while they retain 
 their dignity as qualifications, is like allowing to 
 men who have lost half their faculties the same 
 high and perilous command which they won in 
 their time of vigor, or like selling food and seeds 
 after fraudulently abstracting their best virtues ; in 
 each case what ought to be beneficently strong is 
 fatally enfeebled, if not empoisoned. Until we have 
 altered our dictionaries and have found some other 
 word than " morality " to stand in popular use for 
 the duties of man to man, let us refuse to accept as 
 moral the contractor who enriches himself by using 
 large machinery to make pasteboard soles pass as 
 leather for the feet of unhappy conscripts fighting 
 at miserable odds against invaders; let us rather 
 call him a miscreant, though he were the tenderest, 
 most faithful of husbands, and contend that his own
 
 170 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 experience of home happiness makes his reckless 
 infliction of suffering on others all the more atro- 
 cious. Let us refuse to accept as moral any politi- 
 cal leader who should allow his conduct in relation 
 to great issues to be determined by egoistic passion, 
 and boldly say that he would be less immoral, even 
 though he were as lax in his personal habits as Sir 
 Robert Walpole, if at the same time his sense of the 
 public welfare were supreme in his mind, quelling 
 all pettier impulses beneath a magnanimous impar- 
 tiality. And though we were to find among that 
 class of journalists who live by recklessly reporting 
 injurious rumors, insinuating the blackest motives 
 in opponents, descanting at large and with an air of 
 infallibility on dreams which they both find and inter- 
 pret, and stimulating bad feeling between nations 
 by abusive writing which is as empty of real con- 
 viction as the rage of a pantomime-king, and would 
 be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear 
 diabolical though we were to find among these 
 a, man who was benignancy itself in his own circle, 
 a healer of private differences, a soother in private 
 calamities, let us pronounce him nevertheless fla- 
 grantly immoral, a root of hideous cancer in the 
 commonwealth, turning the channels of instruction 
 into feeders of social and political disease. 
 
 In opposite ways one sees bad effects likely to be 
 encouraged by this narrow use of the .word " morals," 
 shutting out from its meaning half those actions of 
 a man's life which tell momentously on the well- 
 being of his fellow-citizens, and on the preparation 
 of a future for the children growing up around him. 
 Thoroughness of workmanship, care in the exe- 
 cution of every task undertaken, as if it were the 
 acceptance of a trust which it would be a breach of
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 171 
 
 faith not to discharge well, is a form of duty so 
 momentous that if it were to die out from the feel- 
 ing and practice of a people, all reforms of institu- 
 tions would be helpless to create national prosperity 
 and national happiness. Do we desire to see pub- 
 lic spirit penetrating all classes of the community 
 and affecting every man's conduct, so that he shall 
 make neither the saving of his soul nor any other 
 private saving an excuse for indifference to the gen- 
 eral welfare ? Well and good. But the sort of 
 public spirit that scamps its bread-winning work, 
 whether with the trowel, the pen, or the overseeing 
 brain, that it may hurry to scenes of political or 
 social agitation, would be as baleful a gift to our 
 people as any malignant demon could devise. One 
 best part of educational training is that which comes 
 through special knowledge and manipulative or other 
 skill, with its usual accompaniment of delight, 
 in relation to work which is the daily bread-win- 
 ning occupation, which is a man's contribution 
 to the effective wealth of society in return for what 
 he takes as his own share. But this duty of doing 
 one's proper work well, and taking care that every 
 product of one's labour shall be genuinely what it 
 pretends to be, is not only left out of morals in pop- 
 ular speech ; it is very little insisted on by public 
 teachers, at least in the only effective way by 
 tracing the continuous effects of ill-done work. 
 Some of them seem to be still hopeful that it will 
 follow as a necessary consequence from week-day 
 services, ecclesiastical decoration, and improved 
 hymn-books ; others apparently trust to descanting 
 on self-culture in general, or to raising a general 
 sense of faulty circumstances ; and meanwhile lax, 
 makeshift work, from the high conspicuous kind to
 
 172 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the average and obscure, is allowed to pass un- 
 stamped with the disgrace of immorality, though 
 there is not a member of society who is not daily 
 suffering from it materially and spiritually, and 
 though it is the fatal cause that must degrade our 
 national rank and our commerce, in spite of all open 
 markets and discovery of available coal-seams. 
 
 I suppose one may take the popular misuse of the 
 words " morality " and " morals " as some excuse for 
 certain absurdities which are occasional fashions in 
 speech and writing certain old lay-figures, as ugly 
 as the queerest Asiatic idol, which at different 
 periods get propped into loftiness, and attired in 
 magnificent Venetian drapery, so that whether they 
 have a human face or not is of little consequence. 
 One is, the notion that there is a radical, irreconcil- 
 able opposition between intellect and morality. I 
 do not mean the simple statement of fact, which 
 everybody knows, that remarkably able men have 
 had very faulty morals, and have outraged public 
 feeling even at its ordinary standard ; but the sup- 
 position that the ablest intellect, the highest genius, 
 will see through morality as a sort of twaddle for 
 bibs and tuckers, a doctrine of dulness, a mere inci- 
 dent in human stupidity. We begin to understand 
 the acceptance of this foolishness by considering 
 that we live in a society where we may hear a 
 treacherous monarch, or a malignant and lying poli- 
 tician, or a man who uses either official or literary 
 power as an instrument of his private partiality or 
 hatred, or a manufacturer who devises the falsifica- 
 tion of wares, or a trader who deals in virtueless 
 seed-grains, praised or compassionated because of his 
 excellent morals. Clearly, if morality meant no 
 more than such decencies as are practised by these
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 173 
 
 poisonous members of society, it would be possible 
 to say, without suspicion of light-headedness, that 
 morality lay aloof from the grand stream of human 
 affairs, as a small channel fed by the stream and 
 not missed from it. While this form of nonsense 
 is conveyed in the popular use of words, there must 
 be plenty of well-dressed ignorance at leisure to run 
 through a box of books, which will feel itself initi- 
 ated in the freemasonry of intellect by a view of 
 life which might take for a Shakspearian motto, 
 
 *' Fair is foul and foul is fair, 
 Hover through the fog and filthy air," 
 
 and will find itself easily provided with striking 
 conversation by the rule of reversing all the judg- 
 ments on good and evil which have come to be the 
 calendar and clock-work of society. But let our 
 habitual talk give morals their full meaning as the 
 conduct which, in every human relation, would fol- 
 low from the fullest knowledge and the fullest 
 sympathy, a meaning perpetually corrected and 
 enriched by a more thorough appreciation of depen- 
 dence in things, and a finer sensibility to both 
 physical and spiritual fact, - and this ridiculous 
 ascription of superlative power to minds which 
 have no effective awe-inspiring vision of the human 
 lot, no response of understanding to the connection 
 between duty and the material processes by which 
 the world is kept habitable for cultivated man, will 
 be tacitly discredited without any need to cite the 
 immortal names that all are obliged to take as the 
 measure of intellectual rank and highly charged 
 genius. 
 
 Suppose a Frenchman I mean no disrespect to 
 the great French nation, for all nations are afflicted
 
 174 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 with their peculiar parasitic growths, which are 
 lazy, hungry forms, usually characterized by a dis- 
 proportionate swallowing apparatus suppose a 
 Parisian who should shuffle down the Boulevard with 
 a soul ignorant of the gravest cases and the deepest 
 tenderness of manhood,- and a frame more or less 
 fevered by debauchery, mentally polishing into 
 utmost refinement of phrase and rhythm verses 
 which were an enlargement on that Shakspearian 
 motto, and worthy of the most expensive title to 
 be furnished by the venders of such antithetic ware 
 as " Les Marguerites de 1'Enfer," or " Les devices de 
 Beelzebuth." This supposed personage might prob- 
 ably enough regard his negation of those moral 
 sensibilities which make half the warp and woof of 
 human history his indifference to the hard think- 
 ing and hard handiwork of life, to which he owed 
 even his own gauzy mental garments, with their 
 spangles of poor paradox '- as the royalty of genius, 
 for we are used to witness such self-crowning in 
 many forms of mental alienation ; but he would not, 
 I think, be taken, even by his own generation, as a 
 living proof that there can exist such a combination 
 as that of moral stupidity and trivial emphasis of 
 personal indulgence, with the large yet finely dis- 
 criminating vision which marks the intellectual 
 masters of our kind. Doubtless there are many 
 sorts of transfiguration, and a man who has come to 
 be worthy of all gratitude and reverence may have 
 had his swinish period, wallowing in ugly places ; but 
 suppose it had been handed down to us that Sophocles 
 or Virgil had at one time made himself scandalous in 
 this way ; the works which have consecrated their 
 memory for our admiration and gratitude are not 
 a glorifying of swinishness, but an artistic incor-
 
 MORAL SWINDLERS. 175 
 
 poration of the highest sentiment known to their 
 age. 
 
 All these may seem to be wide reasons for object- 
 ing to Melissa's pity for Sir Gavial Mantrap, on the 
 ground of his good morals ; but their connection 
 will not be obscure to any one who has taken pains 
 to observe the links uniting the scattered signs of 
 our social development.
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING EACE. 
 
 MY friend Trost, who is no optimist as to the state 
 of the universe hitherto, but is confident that at 
 some future period within the duration of the solar 
 system, ours will be the best of all possible worlds, 
 a hope which I always honour as a sign of beneficent 
 qualities, my friend Trost always tries to keep 
 up my spirits, under the sight of the extremely 
 unpleasant and disfiguring work by which many of 
 our fellow-creatures have to get their bread, with 
 the assurance that " all this will soon be done by 
 machinery." But he sometimes neutralizes the con- 
 solation by extending it over so large an area of 
 human labour, and insisting so impressively on the 
 quantity of energy which will thus be set free for 
 loftier purposes, that I am tempted to desire an 
 occasional famine of invention in the coming ages, 
 lest the humbler kinds of work should be entirely 
 nullified while there are still left some men and 
 women who are not fit for the highest. 
 
 Especially, when one considers the perfunctory 
 way in which some of the most exalted tasks are 
 already executed by those who are understood to be 
 educated for them, there rises a fearful vision of the 
 human race evolving machinery which will by- 
 and-by throw itself fatally out of work. When, 
 in the Bank of England, I see a wondrously delicate 
 machine for testing sovereigns, a shrewd implacable 
 little steel Rhadamanthus that, once the coins are
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 177 
 
 delivered up to it, lifts and balances each in turn 
 for the fraction of an instant, finds it wanting or 
 sufficient, and dismisses it to right or left with 
 rigorous justice ; when I am told of micrometers 
 and thermopiles and tasimeters, which deal physi- 
 cally with the invisible, the impalpable, and the 
 unimaginable ; of cunning wires and wheels and 
 pointing needles which will register your and my 
 quickness so as to exclude flattering opinion ; of a 
 machine for drawing the right conclusion, which 
 will doubtless by-and-by be improved into an auto- 
 maton for finding true premises ; of a microphone 
 which detects the cadence of a fly's foot on the 
 ceiling, and may be expected presently to discrimi- 
 nate the noises of our various follies as they 
 soliloquize or converse in our .brains, my mind 
 seeming too small for these things, I get a little 
 out of it, like an unfortunate savage too suddenly 
 brought face to face with civilization, and I ex- 
 claim : 
 
 "Am I already in the shadow of the Coming 
 Kace ? and will the creatures who are to transcend 
 and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving 
 out the effluvia of the laboratory, and performing, 
 with infallible exactness, more than everything 
 that we have performed, with a slovenly approxi- 
 mativeness, and self-defeating inaccuracy ? " 
 
 " But," says Trost, treating me with cautious mild- 
 ness on hearing me vent this raving notion, "you 
 forget that these wonder-workers are the slaves of 
 our race, need our tendance and regulation, obey the 
 mandates of our consciousness, and are only deaf 
 and dumb bringers of reports which we decipher 
 and make use of. They are simply extensions of 
 the human organism, so to speak, limbs jmmeas- 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 i;8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 urably more powerful, ever more subtle finger-tips, 
 ever more mastery over the invisibly great and the 
 invisibly small. Each new machine needs a new 
 appliance of human skill to construct it, new 
 devices to feed it with material, and often keener- 
 edged faculties to note its registrations or perform- 
 ances. How, then, can machines supersede us ? 
 They depend upon us. When we cease, they 
 cease." 
 
 " I am not so sure of that," said I, getting back 
 into my mind, and becoming rather wilful in conse- 
 quence. " If, as I have heard you contend, machines 
 as they are more and more perfected will require 
 less and less of tendance, how do I know that they 
 may not be ultimately made to carry, or may not 
 in themselves evolve, conditions of self-supply, self- 
 repair, and reproduction, and not only do all the 
 mighty and subtle work possible on this planet 
 better than we could do it, but with the immense 
 advantage of banishing from the earth's atmosphere 
 screaming consciousnesses which, in our compara- 
 tively clumsy race, make an intolerable noise and 
 fuss to each other about every petty ant-like perform- 
 ance, looking on at all work only as it were to 
 spring a rattle here or blow a trumpet there, with a 
 ridiculous sense of being effective ? I for my part 
 cannot see any reason why a sufficiently penetrat- 
 ing thinker, who can see his way through a thousand 
 years or so, should not conceive a parliament of 
 machines, in which the manners were excellent 
 and the motions infallible in logic ; one honourable 
 instrument, a remote descendant of the Voltaic 
 family, might discharge a powerful current (entirely 
 without animosity) on an honourable instrument 
 opposite, of more upstart origin, but belonging to
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 179 
 
 the ancient edge-tool race, which we already at 
 Sheffield see paring thick iron as if it were mellow 
 cheese by this unerringly directed discharge oper- 
 ating on movements corresponding to what we call 
 Estimates, and by necessary mechanical consequence 
 on movements corresponding to what we call the 
 Funds, which, with a vain analogy, we sometimes 
 speak of as ' sensitive.' For every machine would 
 be perfectly educated, that is to say, would have 
 the suitable molecular adjustments, which would act 
 not the less infallibly for being free from the fussy 
 accompaniment of that consciousness to which our 
 prejudice gives a supreme governing rank, when in 
 truth it is an idle parasite on the grand sequence 
 of things." 
 
 " Nothing of the sort ! " returned Trost, getting 
 angry, and judging it kind to treat me with 
 some severity; "what you have heard me say is, 
 that our race will and must act as a nervous centre 
 to the utmost development of mechanical processes : 
 the subtly refined powers of machines will react in 
 producing more subtly refined thinking processes, 
 which will occupy the minds set free from grosser 
 labour. Say, for example, that all the scavengers' 
 work in London were done, so far as human atten- 
 tion is concerned, by the occasional pressure of a 
 brass button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), 
 you will then have a multitude of brains set free for 
 the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact 
 sequences and high speculations supplied and 
 prompted by the delicate machines which yield a 
 response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the 
 spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the pro- 
 duction of epic poems or great judicial harangues. 
 So far from mankind being thrown out of work,
 
 i8o ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 according to your notion," concluded Trost, with a 
 peculiar nasal note of scorn, " if it were not for your 
 incurable dilettanteism in science as in all other 
 things if you had once understood the action of 
 any delicate machine you would perceive that 
 the sequences it carries throughout the realm of 
 phenomena would require many generations, per- 
 haps eons of understandings considerably stronger 
 than yours, to exhaust the store of work it lays 
 open." 
 
 " Precisely," said I, with a meekness which I felt 
 was praiseworthy ; " it is the feebleness of my 
 capacity, bringing me nearer than you to the human 
 average, that perhaps enables me to imagine certain 
 results better than you can. Doubtless the very 
 fishes of your rivers, gullible as they look, and slow 
 as they are to be rightly convinced in another 
 order of facts, form fewer false expectations about 
 each other than we should form about them if we were 
 in a position of somewhat fuller intercourse with their 
 species j for even as it is, we have continually to be 
 surprised that they do not rise to our carefully 
 selected bait. Take me then as a sort of reflective 
 and experienced carp, but do not estimate the justice 
 of my ideas by my facial expression," 
 
 " Pooh ! " says Trost. (We are on very intimate 
 terms.) 
 
 " Naturally," I persisted, " it is less easy to you 
 than to me to imagine our race transcended and 
 superseded, since the more energy a being is pos- 
 sessed of, the harder it must be for him to conceive 
 his own death. But I, from the point of view of a 
 reflective carp, can easily imagine myself and my 
 congeners dispensed with in the frame of things, 
 and giving way not only to a superior but a vastly
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 181 
 
 different kind of entity. What I would ask you is, 
 to show me why, since each new invention casts a 
 a new light along the pathway of discovery, and 
 each new combination or structure brings into play 
 more conditions than its inventor foresaw, there 
 should not at length be a machine of such high 
 mechanical powers that it would find and assimilate 
 the material to supply its own waste, and then, by 
 a further evolution of internal molecular movements, 
 reproduce itself by some process of fission or bud- 
 ding. This last stage having been reached, either 
 by man's contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one 
 sees that the process of natural selection must drive 
 men altogether out of the field ; for they will long 
 before then have begun to sink into the miserable 
 condition of those unhappy characters in fable, who 
 having demons or djinns at their beck, and being 
 obliged to supply them with work, found too much 
 of everything done in too short a time. What 
 demons so potent as molecular movements, none 
 the less tremendously potent for not carrying the 
 futile cargo of a consciousness screeching irrele- 
 vantly, like a fowl tied head downmost to the sad- 
 dle of a swift horseman ? Under such uncomfortable 
 circumstances, our race will have diminished with 
 the diminishing call on their energies ; and by the 
 time that the self-repairing and reproducing machines 
 arise, all but a few of the rare inventors, calcula- 
 tors, and speculators will have become pale, pulpy, 
 and cretinous from fatty or other degeneration, and 
 behold around them a scanty hydrocephalous off- 
 spring. As to the breed of the ingenious and 
 intellectual, their nervous systems will at last 
 have been overwrought in following the molecular 
 revelations of the immensely more powerful uncon-
 
 1 82 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 scious race, and they will naturally, as the less 
 energetic combinations of movement, subside like 
 the flame of a candle in the sunlight. Thus the 
 feebler race, whose corporeal adjustments happened 
 to be accompanied with a maniacal consciousness 
 which imagined itself moving its mover, will have 
 vanished, as all less adapted existences do before 
 the fittest i.e., the existence composed of the 
 most persistent groups of movements and the most 
 capable of incorporating new groups in harmonious 
 relation. Who, if our consciousness is, as I have 
 been given to understand, a mere stumbling of our 
 organisms on their way to unconscious perfection, 
 who shall say that those fittest existences will 
 not be found along the track of what we call inor- 
 ganic combinations, which will carry on the most 
 elaborate processes as mutely and painlessly as we 
 are now told that the minerals are metamorphosing 
 themselves continually in the dark laboratory of the 
 earth's crust ? Thus this planet may be filled with 
 beings who will be blind and deaf as the inmost 
 rock, yet will execute changes as delicate and com- 
 plicated as those of human language, and all the 
 intricate web of what we call its effects, without sen- 
 sitive impression, without sensitive impulse ; there 
 may be, let us say, mute orations, mute rhapsodies, 
 mute discussions, and no consciousness there even 
 to enjoy the silence." 
 
 " Absurd ! " grumbled Trost. 
 
 "'The supposition is logical," said I. " It is well 
 argued from the premises." 
 
 " Whose premises ? " cried Trost, turning on me 
 with some fierceness. " You don't mean to call 
 them mine, I hope ?" 
 
 " Heaven forbid. They seem to be flying about;
 
 SHADOWS OF THE COMING RACE. 183 
 
 in the air with other germs, and have found a sort 
 of nidus among my melancholy fancies. Nobody 
 really holds them. They bear the same relation to 
 real belief, as walking on the head for a show does 
 to running away from an explosion or walking fast 
 to catch the train."
 
 THE MODEEN HEP! HEP! HEP! 
 
 To discern likeness amidst diversity, it is well 
 known, does not require so fine a mental edge as 
 the discerning of diversity amidst general sameness. 
 The primary rough classification depends on the 
 prominent resemblances of things : the progress is 
 toward finer and finer discrimination according to 
 minute differences. 
 
 Yet even at this stage of European culture, one's 
 attention is continually drawn to the prevalence of 
 that grosser mental sloth which makes people dull 
 to the most ordinary prompting of comparison, 
 the bringing things together because of their like- 
 ness. The same motives, the same ideas, the same 
 practices, are alternately admired and abhorred, 
 lauded and denounced, according to their association 
 with superficial differences, historical or actually 
 social. Even learned writers, treating of great sub- 
 jects, often show an attitude of mind not greatly 
 superior in its logic to that of the frivolous fine 
 lady who is indignant at the frivolity of her maid. 
 
 To take only the subject of the Jews : it would be 
 difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about them 
 which has not been heard in conversation or been 
 admitted to the dignity of print; but the neglect 
 of resemblances is a common property of dulness 
 which unites all the various points of view the 
 prejudiced, the puerile, the spiteful, and the abys- 
 mally ignorant.
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 185 
 
 That the preservation of national memories is an 
 element and a means of national greatness; that 
 their revival is a sign of reviving nationality ; that 
 every heroic defender, every patriotic restorer, has 
 been inspired by such memories and has made them 
 his watchword ; that even such a corporate exist- 
 ence as that of a Roman legion or an English 
 regiment has been made valorous by memorial 
 standards, these are the glorious commonplaces of 
 historic teaching at our public schools and univer- 
 sities, being happily ingrained in Greek and Latin 
 classics. They have also been impressed on the 
 world by conspicuous modern instances. That there 
 is a free modern Greece is due through all infil- 
 tration of other than Greek blood to the presence 
 of ancient Greece in the consciousness of European 
 men ; and every speaker would feel his point safe if 
 he were to praise Byron's devotion to a cause made 
 glorious by ideal identification with the past ; hardly 
 so, if he were to insist that the Greeks were not to 
 be helped further because their history shows that 
 they were anciently unsurpassed in treachery and 
 lying, and that many modern Greeks are highly 
 disreputable characters, while others are disposed to 
 grasp too large a share of our commerce. The same 
 with Italy; the pathos of his country's lot pierced 
 the youthful soul of Mazzini, because, like Dante's, 
 his blood was fraught into the kinship of Italian 
 greatness, his imagination filled into a majestic 
 past that wrought itself into a majestic future. 
 Half a century ago, what was Italy? An idling- 
 place of dilettanteism or of itinerant motiveless 
 wealth, a territory parcelled out for papal suste- 
 nance, dynastic convenience, and the profit of an 
 alien Government. What were the Italians ? No
 
 1 86 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 people, no voice in European counsels, no massive 
 power in European affairs: a race thought of in 
 English and French society as chiefly adapted to 
 the operatic stage, or to secure as models for paint- 
 ers ; disposed to smile gratefully at the reception of 
 half-pence ; and by the more historical remembered 
 to be rather polite than truthful in all proba- 
 bility, a combination of Machiavelli, Kubini, and 
 Masaniello. Thanks chiefly to the divine gift of a 
 memory which inspires the moments with a past, a 
 present, and a future, and gives the sense of corpo- 
 rate existence that raises man above the otherwise 
 more respectable and innocent brute, all that, or 
 most of it, is changed. 
 
 Again, one of our living historians finds just sym- 
 pathy in his vigorous insistence on our true ancestry, 
 on our being the strongly marked heritors, in lan- 
 guage and genius, of those old English seamen, who, 
 beholding a rich country with a most convenient 
 seaboard, came, doubtless with a sense of divine 
 warrant, and settled themselves on this or the other 
 side of fertilizing streams, gradually conquering more 
 and more of the pleasant land from the natives who 
 knew nothing of Odin, and finally making unusually 
 clean work in ridding themselves of those prior 
 occupants. "Let us," he virtually says "let us 
 know who were our forefathers, who it was that won 
 the soil for us, and brought the good seed of those 
 institutions through which we should not arrogantly 
 but gratefully feel ourselves distinguished among 
 the nations as possessors of long-inherited freedom; 
 let us not keep up an ignorant kind of naming which 
 disguises our true affinities of blood and language, 
 but let us see thoroughly what sort of notions and 
 traditions our forefathers had, and what sort of
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 187 
 
 song inspired them. Let the poetic fragments 
 which breath forth their fierce bravery in battle, 
 and their trust in fierce gods who helped them, 
 be treasured with affectionate reverence. These 
 seafaring, invading, self-asserting men were the 
 English of old time, and were our fathers, who did 
 rough work by which we are profiting. They had 
 virtues which incorporated themselves in whole- 
 some usages, to which we trace our own political 
 blessings. Let us know and acknowledge our 
 common relationship to them, and be thankful that, 
 over and above the affections and duties which 
 spring from our manhood, we have the closer and 
 more constantly guiding duties which belong to us 
 as Englishmen." 
 
 To this view of our nationality most persons, 
 who have feeling and understanding enough to be 
 conscious of the connection between the patriotic 
 affection and every other affection which lifts us 
 above emigrating rats and free-loving baboons, will 
 be disposed to say Amen. True, we are not indebted 
 to those ancestors for our religion ; we are rather 
 proud of having got that illumination from else- 
 where. The men who planted our nation were 
 not Christians, though they began their work 
 centuries after Christ, and they had a decided 
 objection to Christianity when it was first proposed 
 to them ; they were not monotheists, and their 
 religion was the reverse of spiritual. But since 
 we have been fortunate enough to keep the island 
 home they won for us, and have been on the whole 
 a prosperous people, rather continuing the plan of 
 invading and spoiling other lands than being forced 
 to beg for shelter in them, nobody has reproached 
 us because our fathers, thirteen hundred years ago,
 
 1 88 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 worshipped Odin, massacred Britons, and were with 
 difficulty persuaded to accept Christianity, knowing 
 nothing of Hebrew history and the reasons why 
 Christ should be received as the Saviour of mankind. 
 The Red Indians, not liking us when we settled 
 among them, might have been willing to fling such 
 facts in our faces, but they were too ignorant ; and, 
 besides, their opinions did not signify, because we 
 were able, if we liked, to exterminate them. The 
 Hindoos also have doubtless had their rancours 
 against us, and still entertain enough ill-will to 
 make unfavourable remarks on our character, espe- 
 cially as to our historic capacity and arrogant notions 
 of our own superiority. They perhaps do not admire 
 the usual English profile, and they are not converted 
 to our way of feeding ; but though we are a small 
 number of an alien race, profiting by the territory 
 and produce of these prejudiced people, they are un- 
 able to turn us out ; at least when they tried, we 
 showed them their mistake. We do not call ourselves 
 a dispersed and a punished people ; we are a coloniz- 
 ing people, and it is we who have punished others. 
 
 Still, the historian guides us rightly in urging 
 us to dwell on the virtues of our ancestors with 
 emulation, and to cherish our sense of a common 
 descent as a bond of obligation. The eminence, 
 the nobleness of a people, depends on its capability 
 of being stirred by memories, and for striving for 
 what we call spiritual ends ends which consist 
 not in an immediate material possession, but in 
 the satisfaction of a great feeling that animates 
 the collective body as with one soul. A people 
 having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an 
 answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths 
 of its heroes who died to preserve its national
 
 THE MODERN HEP! 11E1M HEP! 189 
 
 existence ; when it is reminded of its small begin- 
 nings and gradual growth through past labours and 
 struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order 
 that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may 
 be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's 
 children ; when an appeal against the permission 
 of injustice is made to great precedents in its his- 
 tory, and to the better genius breathing in its 
 institutions. It is this living force of sentiment 
 in common which makes a national consciousness. 
 Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very 
 breasts of their women, will pay their millions and 
 their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation 
 in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to 
 sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers 
 whose theories will bear the test of action. An 
 individual man, to be harmoniously great, must 
 belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual 
 existence, yet existing in the past in memory, as 
 a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, 
 and perhaps to be restored. A common humanity 
 is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various 
 activity which makes a complete man. The time 
 is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly vir- 
 tuous, any more than of communism to suffice for 
 social energy. I am not bound to feel for a China- 
 man as I feel for my fellow-countryman : I am 
 bound not to demoralize him with opium, not to 
 compel him to my will by destroying or plundering 
 the fruits of his labour, on the alleged ground that 
 he is not cosmopolitan enough, and not to insult 
 him for his want of my tailoring and religion when 
 he appears as a peaceable visitor on the London 
 pavement. It is admirable in a Briton with a good 
 purpose to learn Chinese ; but it would not be a proof
 
 190 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in 
 the original more than he tastes the poetry of his 
 own tongue. Affection, intelligence, duty, radiate 
 from a centre, and nature has decided that for us 
 English folk that centre can be neither China nor 
 Peru. Most of us feel this unreflectingly, for the 
 affectation of undervaluing everything native, and 
 being too fine for one's own country, belongs only 
 to a few minds of no dangerous leverage. What is 
 wanting is that we should recognize a corresponding 
 attachment to nationality as legitimate in every 
 other people, and understand that its absence is a 
 privation of the greatest good. 
 
 For, to repeat, not only the nobleness of a nation 
 depends on the presence of this national conscious- 
 ness, but also the nobleness of each individual 
 citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned 
 to our sense of relationship with something great, 
 admirable, pregnant with high possibilities, worthy 
 of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to self-repression 
 and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and 
 more attractive to our generous part than the secur- 
 ing of personal ease or prosperity. And a people 
 possessing this good should surely feel not only a 
 ready sympathy with the effort of those who, 
 having lost the good, strive to regain it, but a pro- 
 found pity for any degradation resulting from its 
 loss, nay, something more than pity when happier 
 nationalities have made victims of the unfortunate 
 whose memories, nevertheless, are the very fountain 
 to which the persecutors trace their most vaunted 
 blessings. 
 
 These notions are familiar; few will deny them in 
 the abstract, and many are found loudly asserting 
 them in relation to this or the other particular case.
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 191 
 
 But here as elsewhere, in the ardent application 
 of ideas, there is a notable lack of simple compari- 
 son or sensibility to resemblance. The European 
 world has long been used to consider the Jews as 
 altogether exceptional, and it has followed naturally 
 enough that they have been excepted from the rules 
 of justice and mercy, which are based on human 
 likeness. But to consider a people whose ideas 
 have determined the religion of half the world, and 
 that the more cultivated half, and who made the 
 most eminent struggle against the power of Rome, 
 as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralizing 
 offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying 
 inconsistency in historical interpretation. Every 
 nation of forcible character, i. e., of strongly marked 
 characteristics, is so far exceptional. The distinc- 
 tive note of each -bird-species is in this sense 
 exceptional, but the necessary ground of such dis- 
 tinction is a deeper likeness. The superlative 
 peculiarity in the Jews admitted, our affinity 
 with them is only the more apparent when the 
 elements of their peculiarity are discerned. 
 
 From whatever point of view the writings of the 
 Old Testament may be regarded, the picture they 
 present of a national development is of high interest 
 and speciality ; nor can their historic momentous- 
 ness be much affected by any varieties of theory as 
 to the relation they bear to the New Testament or 
 to the rise and constitution of Christianity. Whether 
 we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revela- 
 tion, or simply as a part of an ancient literature, 
 makes no difference to the fact that we find there 
 the strongly characterized portraiture of a people 
 educated from an earlier or later period to a sense 
 of separateness unique in its intensity a people
 
 192 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 taught by many concurrent influences to identify 
 faithfulness to its national traditions with the high- 
 est social and religious blessings. Our too scanty 
 sources of Jewish history, from the return under 
 Ezra to the beginning of the desperate resistance 
 against Rome, show us the heroic and triumphant 
 struggle of the Maccabees, which rescued the religion 
 and independence of the nation from the corrupting 
 sway of the Syrian Greeks, adding to the glorious 
 sum of its memorials, and stimulating continuous 
 efforts of a more peaceful sort to maintain and de- 
 velop that national life which the heroes had fought 
 and died for, by internal measures of legal admin- 
 istration and public teaching. Thenceforth the 
 virtuous elements of the Jewish life were engaged, 
 as they had been with varying aspects during the 
 long and changeful prophetic period and the resto- 
 ration under Ezra, on the side of preserving the 
 specific national character against a demoralizing 
 fusion with that of foreigners whose religion and 
 ritual were idolatrous and often obscene. There 
 was always a Foreign party reviling the National 
 party as narrow, and sometimes manifesting their 
 own breadth in extensive views of advancement or 
 profit to themselves by flattery of a foreign power. 
 Such internal conflict naturally tightened the bands 
 of conservatism, which needed to be strong if it 
 were to rescue the sacred Ark, the vital spirit of a 
 small nation " the smallest of the nations " 
 whose territory lay on the highway between three 
 continents ; and when the dread and hatred of 
 foreign sway had condensed itself into dread and 
 hatred of the Romans, many Conservatives became 
 Zealots, whose chief mark was that they advo- 
 cated resistance to the death against the submergence
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 193 
 
 of their nationality. Much might be said on this 
 point toward distinguishing the desperate struggle 
 against a conquest which is regarded as degradation 
 and corruption, from rash, hopeless insurrection 
 against an established native government ; and for 
 my part (if that were of any consequence) I share 
 the spirit of the Zealots. I take the spectacle of 
 the Jewish people defying the Roman edict, and pre- 
 ferring death by starvation or the sword to the 
 introduction of Caligula's deified statue into the 
 temple, as a sublime type of steadfastness. But 
 all that need be noticed here is the continuity of 
 that national education (by outward and inward cir- 
 cumstance) which created in the Jews a feeling of 
 race, a sense of corporate existence, unique in its 
 intensity. 
 
 But not, before the dispersion, unique in essential 
 qualities. There is more likeness than contrast 
 between the way we English got our island and the 
 way the Israelites got Canaan. We have not been 
 noted for forming a low estimate of ourselves in 
 comparison with foreigners, or for admitting that 
 our institutions are equalled by those of any other 
 people under the sun. Many of us have thought 
 that our sea-wall is a specially divine arrangement 
 to make and keep us a nation of sea-kings after the 
 manner of our forefathers, secure against invasion, 
 and able to invade other lands when we need them, 
 though they may lie on the other side of the ocean. 
 Again, it has been held that we have a peculiar 
 destiny as a Protestant people, not only able to 
 bruise the head of an idolatrous Christianity in the 
 midst of us, but fitted, as possessors of the most 
 truth and the most tonnage, to carry our purer 
 religion over the world and convert mankind to out 
 
 VOL. I 13
 
 194 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 way of thinking. The Puritans, asserting their lib- 
 erty to restrain tyrants, found the Hehrew history 
 closely symbolical of their feelings and purpose; 
 and it can hardly be correct to cast the blame of 
 their less laudable doings on the writings they 
 invoked, since their opponents made use of the same 
 writings for different ends, finding there a strong 
 warrant for the divine right of kings and the de- 
 nunciation of those who, like Korah, Dathan, and 
 Abiram, took on themselves the office of the priest- 
 hood, which belonged of right solely to Aaron and 
 his sons, or, in other words, to men ordained by 
 the English bishops. We must rather refer the pas- 
 sionate use of the Hebrew writings to affinities of 
 disposition between our own race and the Jewish. 
 Is it true that the arrogance of a Jew was so 
 immeasurably beyond that of a Calvinist ? And 
 the just sympathy and admiration which we give 
 to the ancestors who resisted the oppressive acts of 
 our native kings, and by resisting rescued or won 
 for us the best part- of our civil and religious liber- 
 ties is it justly to be withheld from those brave 
 and steadfast men of Jewish race who fought and 
 died, or strove by wise administration to resist, the 
 oppression and corrupting influences of foreign 
 tyrants, and by resisting, rescued the nationality 
 which was the very hearth of our own religion ? 
 At any rate, seeing that the Jews were more speci- 
 fically than any other nation educated into a sense 
 of their supreme moral value, the chief matter of 
 surprise is that any other nation is found to rival 
 them in this form of self-confidence. 
 
 More exceptional less like the course of our own 
 history has been their dispersion and their sub- 
 sistence as a separate people through ages in which,
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 195 
 
 for the most part, they were regarded and treated 
 very much as beasts hunted for the sake of their 
 skins, or of a valuable secretion peculiar to their 
 species. The Jews showed a talent for accumulat- 
 ing what was an object of more immediate desire to 
 Christians than animal oils or well-furred skins, 
 and their cupidity and avarice were found at once 
 particularly hateful and particularly useful : hate- 
 ful when seen as a reason for punishing them by 
 mulcting or robbery ; useful when this retributive 
 process could be successfully carried forward. 
 Kings and emperors naturally were more alive to 
 the usefulness of subjects who could gather and 
 yield money ; but edicts issued to protect " the 
 King's Jews " equally with the King's game from 
 being harassed and hunted by the commonalty, 
 were only slight mitigations to the deplorable lot 
 of a race held to be under the divine curse, and had 
 little force after the Crusades began. As the' slave- 
 holders in the United States counted the curse on 
 Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse 
 on the Jews was counted a justification for hinder- 
 ing them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts ; 
 for marking them out as execrable figures by a 
 peculiar dress ; for torturing them to make them 
 part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spit- 
 ting at them and pelting them ; for taking it as 
 certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned 
 the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; 
 for putting it to them whether they would be bap- 
 tized or burned, and not failing to burn and massacre 
 them when they were obstinate ; but also for sus- 
 pecting them of disliking the baptism when they 
 had got it, and then burning them in punishment 
 of their insincerity ; finally, for hounding them by
 
 196 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 tens on tens of thousands from the homes where 
 they had found shelter for centuries, and inflicting 
 on them the horrors of a new exile and a new dis- 
 persion. All this to avenge the Saviour of mankind, 
 or else to compel these stiff-necked people to 
 acknowledge a Master whose servants showed such 
 beneficent effects of his teaching. 
 
 With a people so treated, one of two issues was 
 possible : either from being of feebler nature than 
 their persecutors, and caring more for ease than for 
 the sentiments and ideas which constituted their 
 distinctive character, they would everywhere give 
 way to pressure and get rapidly merged in the pop- 
 ulations around them ; or being endowed with 
 uncommon tenacity, physical and mental, feeling 
 peculiarly the ties of inheritance both in blood and 
 faith, remembering national glories, trusting in their 
 recovery, abhorring apostasy, able to bear all things 
 and hope all things with the consciousness of being 
 steadfast to spiritual obligations, the kernel of their 
 number would harden into an inflexibility more and 
 more insured by motive and habit. They would 
 cherish all differences that marked them off from 
 their hated oppressors, all memories that consoled 
 them with a sense of virtual though unrecognized 
 superiority ; and the separateness which was made 
 their badge of ignominy would be their inward 
 pride, their source of fortifying defiance. Doubtless 
 such a people would get confirmed in vices. An 
 oppressive government and a persecuting religion, 
 while breeding vices in those who hold power, are 
 well known to breed answering vices in those who 
 are powerless and suffering. What more direct 
 plan than the course presented by European history 
 could have been pursued in order to give the Jews
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 197 
 
 a spirit of bitter isolation, and scorn for the wolfish 
 hypocrisy that made victims of them, of triumph in 
 prospering at the expense of the blunderers who 
 stoned them away from the open paths of industry ; 
 or, on the other hand, to encourage in the less 
 defiant a lying conformity, a pretence of conversion 
 for the sake of the social advantages attached to 
 baptism, an outward renunciation of their heredi- 
 tary ties, with the lack of real love toward the 
 society and creed which exacted this galling tribute ; 
 or again, in the most unhappy specimens of the 
 race, to rear transcendent examples of odious vice, 
 reckless instruments of rich men with bad propen- 
 sities, unscrupulous grinders of alien people who 
 wanted to grind them ? 
 
 No wonder the Jews have their vices ; no wonder 
 if it were proved (which it has not hitherto appeared 
 to be) that some of them have a bad pre-eminence 
 in evil, an unrivalled superfluity of naughtiness. It 
 would be more plausible to make a wonder of the 
 virtues which have prospered among them under 
 the shadow of oppression. But instead of dwelling 
 on these, or treating as admitted what any hardy or 
 ignorant person may deny, let us found simply on 
 the loud assertions of the hostile. The Jews, it is 
 said, resisted the expansion of their own religion into 
 Christianity ; they were in the habit of spitting on 
 the cross ; they have held the name of Christ to be 
 Anathema. Who taught them that ? The men who 
 made Christianity a curse to them ; the men who 
 made the name of Christ a symbol for the spirit of 
 vengeance, and, what was worse, made the execution 
 of the vengeance a pretext for satisfying their own 
 savageness, greed, and envy ; the men who sanctioned 
 with the name of Christ a barbaric and blundering
 
 198 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 copy of Pagan fatalism, in taking the words " His 
 blood be upon us and on our children " as a divinely 
 appointed verbal warrant for wreaking cruelty, from 
 generation to generation, on the people from whose 
 sacred writings Christ drew his teaching. Strange 
 retrogression in the professors of an expanded religion, 
 boasting an illumination beyond the spiritual doctrine 
 of Hebrew prophets ! For Hebrew prophets pro- 
 claimed a God who demanded mercy rather than 
 sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God 
 delighted not in the blood of rams and of bulls, but 
 they apparently conceived him as requiring for his 
 satisfaction the sighs and groans, the blood and 
 roasted flesh, of men whose forefathers had misunder- 
 stood the metaphorical character of prophecies which 
 spoke of spiritual pre-eminence under the figure of a 
 material kingdom. Was this the method by which 
 Christ desired his title to the Messiahship to be 
 commended to the nation in which he was born ? 
 Many of his sayings bear the stamp of that patriot- 
 ism which places fellow-countrymen in the inner 
 circle of affection and duty. And did the words 
 "Father, forgive them, they know not what they 
 do," refer only to the centurion and his band, a tacit 
 exception being made of every Hebrew there present 
 from the mercy of the Father and the compassion 
 of the Son,' nay, more, of every Hebrew yet to 
 come, who remained unconverted after hearing of 
 his claim to the Messiahship, not from his own lips 
 or those of his native apostles, but from the lips of 
 alien men, whom cross, creed, and baptism had left 
 cruel, rapacioiis, and debauched ? It is more reverent 
 to Christ to believe that he must have approved the 
 Jewish martyrs who deliberately chose to be burned 
 or massacred rather than be guilty of a blaspheming
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 199 
 
 lie, more than he approved the rabble of Crusaders 
 who robbed and murdered them in his name. 
 
 But these remonstrances seem to have no direct 
 application to personages who take up the attitude 
 of philosophic thinkers and discriminating critics, 
 professedly accepting Christianity from a rational 
 point of view, as a vehicle of the highest religious 
 and moral truth, and condemning the Jews on the 
 ground that they are obstinate adherents of an out- 
 worn creed, maintain themselves in moral alienation 
 from the peoples with whom they share citizenship, 
 and are destitute of real interest in the welfare of 
 the community and state with which they are thus 
 identified. These anti-Judaic advocates usually 
 belong to a party which has felt itself glorified in 
 winning for Jews, as well as Dissenters and Catholics, 
 the full privileges of citizenship, laying open to them 
 every path to distinction. At one time the voice of 
 this party urged that differences of creed were made 
 dangerous only by the denial of citizenship, that 
 you must make a man a citizen before he could feel 
 like one. At present, apparently, this confidence 
 has been succeeded by a sense of mistake ; there is 
 a regret that no limiting clauses were insisted on, 
 such as would have hindered the Jaws from coming 
 too far and in too large proportion along those 
 opened pathways ; and the Roumanians are thought 
 to have shown an enviable wisdom in giving them 
 as little chance as possible. But then the reflection 
 occurring that some of the most objectionable Jews 
 are baptized Christians, it is obvious that such 
 clauses would have been insufficient, and the doc- 
 trine that you can turn a Jew into a good Christian 
 is emphatically retracted. But, clearly, these liberal 
 gentlemen, too late enlightened by disagreeable
 
 200 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 events, must yield the palm of wise foresight to 
 those who argued against them long ago ; and it is a 
 striking spectacle to witness minds so panting for 
 advancement in some directions that they are ready 
 to force it on an unwilling society, in this instance 
 despairingly recurring to mediaeval types of think- 
 ing insisting that the Jews are made viciously 
 cosmopolitan by holding the world's money-bag; 
 that for them all national interests are resolved into 
 the algebra of loans; that they have suffered an 
 inward degradation stamping them as morally 
 inferior, and "serve them right," since they re- 
 jected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an 
 analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a servile 
 race, who have rejected Protestantism, though it has 
 been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword 
 and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale 
 may be judged by our advertisements, where the 
 clause, " No Irish need apply," parallels the sentence 
 which for many polite persons sums up the question 
 of Judaism, " I never did like the Jews." 
 
 It is certainly worth considering whether an ex- 
 patriated, denationalized race, used for ages to live 
 among antipathetic populations, must not inevitably 
 lack some conditions of nobleness. If they drop 
 that separateness which is made their reproach, 
 they may be in danger of lapsing into a cosmopolitan 
 indifference equivalent to cynicism, and of missing 
 that inward identification with the nationality im- 
 mediately around them which might make some 
 amends for their inherited privation. No dispas- 
 sionate observer can deny this danger. Why, our 
 own countrymen who take to living abroad, without 
 purpose or function to keep up their sense of fellow- 
 ship in the affairs of their own land, are rarely good
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 201 
 
 specimens of moral healthiness ; still, the conscious- 
 ness of having a native country, the birthplace of 
 common memories and habits of mind, existing like 
 a parental hearth quitted but beloved ; the dignity 
 of being included in a people which has a part in the 
 comity of nations and the growing federation of the 
 world ; that sense of special belonging which is the 
 root of human virtues, both public and private, 
 all these spiritual links may preserve migratory 
 Englishmen from the woist consequences of their 
 voluntary dispersion. Unquestionably the Jews, 
 having been more than any other race exposed to the 
 adverse moral influences of alienism, must, both in 
 individuals and in groups, have suffered some cor- 
 responding moral degradation ; but in fact they 
 have escaped with less of abjectness, and less of 
 hard hostility toward the nations whose hand has 
 been against them, than could have happened in the 
 case of a people who had neither their adhesion to 
 a separate religion founded on historic memories, nor 
 their characteristic family affectionateness. Tor- 
 tured, flogged, spit upon, the corpus vile on which 
 rage or wantonness vented themselves with impun- 
 ity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by 
 superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have re- 
 mained proud of their origin. Does any one call 
 this an evil pride? Perhaps he belongs to that 
 order of man who, while he has a democratic dislike 
 to dukes and earls, wants to make believe that his 
 father was an idle gentleman, when in fact he was 
 an honourable artisan, or who would feel flattered 
 to be taken for other than an Englishman. It is 
 possible to be too arrogant about our blood or our 
 calling, but that arrogance is virtue compared with 
 such mean pretence. The pride which identifies us
 
 202 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 with a great historic body is a humanizing, elevat- 
 ing habit of mind, inspiring sacrifices of individual 
 comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake 
 of that ideal whole ; and no man swayed by such 
 a sentiment can become completely abject. That 
 a Jew of Smyrna, where a whip is carried by 
 passengers ready to flog off the too officious speci- 
 mens of his race, can still be proud to say " I am a 
 Jew," is surely a fact to awaken admiration in a 
 mind capable of understanding what we may call 
 the ideal forces in human history. And again, a 
 varied, impartial observation of the Jews in different 
 countries tends to the impression that they have a 
 predominant kindliness which must have been deeply 
 ingrained in the constitution of their race to have 
 outlasted the ages of persecution and oppression. 
 The concentration of their joys in domestic life has 
 kept up in them the capacity of tenderness ; the pity 
 for the fatherless and the widow, the care for the 
 women and the little ones, blent intimately with 
 their religion, is a well of mercy that cannot long or 
 widely be pent up by exclusiveness. And the kind- 
 liness of the Jew overflows the line of division 
 between him and the Gentile. On the whole, one 
 of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of 
 this scattered people, made for ages "a scorn and a 
 hissing," is, that after being subjected to this pro- 
 cess, which might have been expected to be in every 
 sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come 
 out of it (in any estimate which allows for numer- 
 ical proportion) rivalling the nations of all European 
 countries in healthiness and beauty of physique, in 
 practical ability, in scientific and artistic aptitude, 
 and in some forms of ethical value. A significant 
 indication of their natural rank is seen in the fact
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 203 
 
 that at this moment the leader of the Liberal party 
 in Germany is a Jew, the leader of the Eepublican 
 party in France is a Jew, and the head of the Con- 
 servative ministry in England is a Jew. 
 
 And here it is that we find the ground for the 
 obvious jealousy which is now stimulating the 
 revived expression of old antipathies. " The Jews," 
 it is felt, " have a dangerous tendency to get the 
 uppermost places, not only in commerce but in 
 political life. Their monetary hold on governments 
 is tending to perpetuate in leading Jews a spirit of 
 universal alienism (euphemistically called cosmo- 
 politanism), even where the West has given them 
 a full share in civil and political rights. A people 
 with Oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable 
 of being everywhere acclimatized, they have a force 
 and toughness which enables them to carry off the 
 best prizes ; and their wealth is likely to put half the 
 seats in Parliament at their disposal." 
 
 There is truth in these views of Jewish social 
 and political relations ; but it is rather too late for 
 Liberal pleaders to urge them in a merely vituper- 
 ative sense. Do they propose, as a remedy for the 
 impending danger of our healthier national influences 
 getting overridden by Jewish predominance, that 
 we should repeal our emancipatory laws ? Not all 
 the Germanic immigrants who have been settling 
 among us for generations, and are still pouring in to 
 settle, are Jews, but thoroughly Teutonic and more 
 or less Christian craftsmen, mechanicians, or skilled 
 and erudite functionaries ; and the Semitic Christi- 
 ans who swarm among us are dangerously like their 
 unconverted brethren in complexion, persistence, 
 and wealth. Then there are the Greeks, who, by 
 the help of Phoenician blood or otherwise, are objec-
 
 204 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 tionably strong in the city. Some judges think that 
 the Scotch are more numerous and prosperous here 
 in the South than is quite for the good of us South- 
 erners ; and the early inconvenience felt under 
 the Stuarts, of being quartered upon by a hungry, 
 hard-working people, with a distinctive accent and 
 form of religion, and higher cheek-bones than 
 English taste requires, has not yet been quite neu- 
 tralized. As for the Irish, it is felt in high quar- 
 ters that we have always been too lenient toward 
 them ; at least if they had been harried a little 
 more, there might not have been so many of them 
 on the English press, of which they divide the 
 power with the Scotch, thus driving many English- 
 men to honest and ineloquent labour. 
 
 So far shall we be carried if we go in search 
 of devices to hinder people of other blood than 
 our own from getting the advantage of dwelling 
 among us. 
 
 Let it be admitted that it is a calamity to the 
 English, as to any other great historic people, to 
 undergo a premature fusion with immigrants of 
 alien blood, that its distinctive national charac- 
 teristics should be in danger of obliteration by the 
 predominating quality of foreign settlers. I not 
 only admit this ; I am ready to unite in groaning 
 over the threatened danger. To one who loves his 
 native language, who would delight to keep our 
 rich and harmonious English undefiled by foreign 
 accent, and those foreign tinctures of verbal mean- 
 ing which tend to confuse all writing and discourse, 
 it is an affliction as harassing as the climate, that 
 on our stage, in our studies, at our public and pri- 
 vate gatherings, in our offices, warehouses, and 
 workshops, we must expect to hear our beloved
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 20$ 
 
 English, with its words clipped, its vowels stretched 
 and twisted, its phrases of acquiescence and polite- 
 ness, of cordiality, dissidence, or argument, delivered 
 always in the wrong tones, like ill-rendered melo- 
 dies, marred beyond recognition, that there should 
 be a general ambition to speak every language 
 except our mother English, which persons " of 
 style " are not ashamed of corrupting with slang, 
 false foreign equivalents, and a pronunciation that 
 crushes out all colour from the vowels and jams 
 them between jostling consonants. An ancient 
 Greek might not like to be resuscitated for the sake 
 of hearing Homer read in our universities ; still he 
 would at least find more instructive marvels in 
 other developments to be witnessed at those insti- 
 tutions ; but a modern Englishman is invited from 
 his after-dinner repose to hear Shakspeare delivered 
 under circumstances which offer no other novelty 
 than some novelty of false intonation, some new 
 distribution of strong emphasis on prepositions, 
 some new misconception of a familiar idiom. Well, 
 it is our inertness that is in fault, our carelessness 
 of excellence, our willing ignorance of the treasures 
 that lie in our national heritage, while we are 
 agape after what is foreign, though it may be only 
 a vile imitation of what is native. 
 
 This marring of our speech, however, is a minor 
 evil compared with what must follow from the 
 predominance of wealth-acquiring immigrants, whose 
 appreciation of our political and social life must 
 often be as approximative or fatally erroneous as 
 their delivery of our language. But take the worst 
 issues, what can we do to hinder them ? Are we to 
 adopt the exclusiveness for which we have pun- 
 ished the Chinese ? Are we to tear the glorious
 
 ao6 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 flag of hospitality which has made our freedom the 
 world-wide blessing of the oppressed ? It is not 
 agreeable to find foreign accents and stumbling 
 locutions passing from the piquant exception to the 
 general rule of discourse. But to urge on that 
 account that we should spike away the peaceful 
 foreigner, would be a view of international relations 
 not in the long run favourable to the interests of 
 our fellow-countrymen ; for we are at least equal to 
 the races we call obtrusive in the disposition to set- 
 tle wherever money is to be made and cheaply idle 
 living to be found. In meeting the national evils 
 which are brought upon us by the onward course 
 of the world, there is often no more immediate hope 
 or resource than that of striving after fuller national 
 excellence, which must consist in the moulding of 
 more excellent individual natives. The tendency 
 of things is toward the quicker or slower fusion of 
 races. It is impossible to arrest this tendency : all 
 we can do is to moderate its course, so as to hinder 
 it from degrading the moral status of societies by a 
 too rapid effacement of those national traditions 
 and customs which are the language of the national 
 genius, the deep suckers of healthy sentiment. 
 Such moderating and guidance of inevitable move- 
 ment is worthy of all effort. And it is in this sense 
 that the modern insistence on the idea of nationali- 
 ties has value. That any people, at once distinct 
 and coherent enough to form a state, should be held 
 in subjection by an alien antipathetic government, 
 has been becoming more and more a ground of 
 sympathetic indignation ; and, in virtue of this, at 
 least one great state has been added to European 
 councils. Nobody now complains of the result in 
 this case, though far-sighted persons see the need to
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 207 
 
 limit analogy by discrimination. We have to con- 
 sider who are the stifled people and who the stiflers, 
 before we can be sure of our ground. The only 
 point in this connection on which Englishmen are 
 agreed is, that England itself shall not be subject 
 to foreign rule. The fiery resolve to resist invasion, 
 though with an improvised array of pitchforks, is 
 felt to be virtuous, and to be worthy of a historic 
 people. Why ? Because there is a national life in 
 our veins. Because there is something specifically 
 English which we feel to be supremely worth 
 striving for, worth dying for, rather than living to 
 renounce it. Because we too have our share 
 perhaps a principal share in that spirit of sepa- 
 rateness which has not yet done its work in the 
 education of mankind, which has created the vary- 
 ing genius of nations, and, like the Muses, is the 
 offspring of memory. 
 
 Here, as everywhere else, the human task seems 
 to be the discerning and adjustment of opposite 
 claims. But the end can hardly be achieved by 
 urging contradictory reproaches, and instead of 
 labouring after discernment as a preliminary to 
 intervention, letting our zeal burst forth according 
 to a capricious selection, first determined accident- 
 ally, and afterward justified by personal predilection. 
 Not only John Gilpin and his wife, or Edwin and 
 Angelina, seem to be of opinion that their pre- 
 ference or dislike of Eussians, Servians, or Greeks, 
 consequent, perhaps, on hotel adventures, has some- 
 thing to do with the merits of the Eastern Question ; 
 even in a higher range of intellect and enthusiasm 
 we find a distribution of sympathy or pity for 
 sufferers of different blood or votaries of different 
 religions, strangely unaccountable on any other
 
 208 ESSAYS 01 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ground than a fortuitous direction of study or trivial 
 circumstances of travel. With some even admir- 
 able persons one is never quite sure of any particular 
 being included under a general term. A provincial 
 physician, it is said, once ordering a lady patient 
 not to eat salad, was asked pleadingly by the affec- 
 tionate husband whether she might eat lettuce, or 
 cresses, or radishes. The physician had too rashly 
 believed in the comprehensiveness of the word 
 " salad," just as we, if not enlightened by experience, 
 might believe in the all-embracing breadth of " sym- 
 pathy with the injured and oppressed." What 
 mind can exhaust the grounds of exception which 
 lie in each particular case ? There is understood 
 to be a peculiar odour from the negro body, and we 
 know that some persons, too rationalistic to feel 
 bound by the curse on Ham, used to hint very 
 strongly that this odour determined the question on 
 the side of negro slavery. 
 
 And this is the usual level of thinking in polite 
 society concerning the Jews. Apart from theologi- 
 cal purposes, it seems to be held surprising that 
 anybody should take an interest in the history of a 
 people whose literature has furnished all our devo- 
 tional language; and if any reference is made to 
 their past or future destinies, some hearer is sure to 
 state, as a relevant fact which may assist our judg- 
 ment, that she, for her part, is not fond of them, 
 having known a Mr. Jacobson who was very un- 
 pleasant, or that he, for his part, thinks meanly of 
 them as a race, though, on inquiry, you find that 
 he is so little acquainted with their characteristics 
 that he is astonished to learn how many persons 
 whom he has blindly admired and applauded are 
 Jews to the backbone. Again, men who consider
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 209 
 
 themselves in the very van of modern advancement, 
 knowing history and the latest philosophies of his- 
 tory, indicate their contemptuous surprise that any 
 one should entertain the destiny of the Jews as a 
 worthy subject, by referring to Moloch, and their 
 own agreement with the theory that the religion of 
 Jehovah was merely a transformed Moloch-worship, 
 while in the same breath they are glorifying " civil- 
 ization " as a transformed tribal existence of which 
 some lineaments are traceable in grim marriage 
 customs of the native Australians. Are these eru- 
 dite persons prepared to insist that the name 
 " Father " should no longer have any sanctity for 
 us because in their view of likelihood our Aryan 
 ancestors were mere improvers on a state of things 
 in which nobody knew his own father ? 
 
 For less theoretic men, ambitious to be regarded 
 as practical politicians, the value of the Hebrew 
 race has been measured by their unfavourable opin- 
 ion of a prime minister who is a Jew by lineage. 
 But it is possible to form a very ugly opinion as to 
 the scrupulousness of Walpole or of Chatham : and 
 in any case I think Englishmen would refuse to 
 accept the character and doings of those eighteenth- 
 century statesmen as the standard of value for the 
 English people and the part they have to play in 
 the fortunes of mankind. 
 
 If we are to consider the future of the Jews at 
 all, it seems reasonable to take, as a preliminary 
 question, Are they destined to complete fusion with 
 the peoples among whom they are dispersed, losing 
 every remnant of a distinctive consciousness as 
 Jews ? or, Are there, in the breadth and intensity 
 with which the feeling of separateness, or what we 
 may call the organized memory of a national con- 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2io ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. ^ 
 
 sciousness, actually exists in the world-wide Jewish 
 communities the seven millions scattered from the 
 east to west ; and again, are there, in the political 
 relations of the world, the conditions present or 
 approaching for the restoration of a Jewish State 
 planted on the old ground as a centre of national 
 feeling, a source of dignifying protection, a special 
 channel for special energies, which may contribute 
 some added form of national genius, and an added 
 voice in the councils of the world ? 
 
 They are among us everywhere ; it is useless to 
 say we are not fond of them. Perhaps we are not 
 fond of proletaries and their tendency to form Unions, 
 but the world is not therefore to be rid of them. If 
 we wish to free ourselves from the inconveniences 
 that we have to complain of, whether in proletaries 
 or in Jews, our best course is to encourage all means 
 of improving these neighbours who elbow us in a 
 thickening crowd, and of sending their incommo- 
 dious energies into beneficent channels. Why are 
 we so eager for the dignity of certain populations of 
 whom, perhaps, we have never seen a single speci- 
 men, and of whose history, legend, or literature we 
 have been contentedly ignorant for ages, while we 
 sneer at the notion of a renovated national dignity 
 for the Jews, whose ways of thinking and whose 
 very verbal forms are on our lips in every prayer 
 which we end with an Amen ? Some of us consider 
 this question dismissed when they have said the 
 wealthiest Jews have no desire to forsake their 
 European palaces and go to live in Jerusalem. But 
 in a return from exile, in the restoration of a people, 
 the question is not whether certain rich men will 
 choose to remain behind, but whether there will be 
 found worthy men who will choose to lead the re-
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 211 
 
 turn. Plenty of prosperous Jews remained in Baby- 
 lon when Ezra marshalled his band of forty thousand 
 and began a new glorious epoch in the history 
 of his race, making the preparation for that epoch 
 in the history of the world which has been held 
 glorious enough to be dated from forevermore. The 
 hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an 
 adequate community of feeling, as well as wide- 
 spread need, in the Jewish race, and the hope that 
 among its finer specimens there may arise some men 
 of instruction and ardent public spirit, some new 
 Ezras, modern Maccabees, who will know how to 
 use all favouring outward conditions, how to tri- 
 umph by heroic example over the indifference of 
 their fellows and the scorn of their foes, and will 
 steadfastly set their faces toward'making their people 
 once more one among the nations. 
 
 Formerly, Evangelical Orthodoxy was prone to 
 dwell on the fulfilment of prophecy in the " restor- 
 ation of the Jews." Such interpretation of the 
 prophets is less in vogue now. The dominant mode 
 is to insist on a Christianity that disowns its origin, 
 that is not a substantial growth, having a geneal- 
 ogy, but is a vaporous reflex of modern notions. The 
 Christ of Matthew had the heart of a Jew : " Go ye 
 first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" The 
 Apostle of the Gentiles had the heart of a Jew : 
 " For I could wish that myself were accursed from 
 Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to 
 the flesh : who are Israelites ; to whom pertaineth 
 the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, 
 and the giving of the law, and the service of God, 
 and the promises ; whose are the fathers, and of 
 whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came." Mod- 
 ern apostles, extolling Christianity, are found using
 
 212 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 a different tone ; they prefer the mediaeval cry trans- 
 lated into modern phrase. But the medieval cry, 
 too, was in substance very ancient more ancient 
 than the days of Augustus. Pagans in successive 
 ages said, " These people are unlike us, and refuse to 
 be made like us ; let us punish them." The Jews 
 were steadfast in their separateness, and through 
 that separateness Christianity was born. A modern 
 book on Liberty has maintained that from the free- 
 dom of individual men to persist in idiosyncrasies 
 the world may be enriched. Why should we not 
 apply this argument to the idiosyncrasy of a nation, 
 and pause in our haste to hoot it down ? There is 
 still a great function for the steadfastness of the 
 Jew : not that he should shut out the utmost illum- 
 ination which knowledge can throw on his national 
 history, but that he should cherish the store of in- 
 heritance which that history has left him. Every 
 Jew should be conscious that he is one of a mul- 
 titude possessing common objects of piety, in the 
 immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of 
 ancestors who have transmitted to them a physical 
 and mental type strong enough, eminent enough 
 in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar prom- 
 ise, to constitute a new beneficent individuality 
 among the nations, and, by confuting the traditions 
 of scorn, nobly avenge the wrongs done to their 
 fathers. 
 
 There is a sense in which the worthy child of a 
 nation that has brought forth illustrious prophets, 
 high and unique among the poets of the world, is 
 bound by their visions. 
 
 Is bound ? 
 
 Yes, for the effective bond of human action is 
 feeling; and the worthy child of a people owning
 
 THE MODERN HEP! HEP! HEP! 213 
 
 the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite, and Jew, feels 
 his kinship with the glories and the sorrows, the 
 degradation and the possible renovation, of his na- 
 tional family. 
 
 Will any one teach the nullification of this feel- 
 ing, and call his doctrine a philosophy ? He will 
 teach a blinding superstition, the superstition that a 
 theory of human well-being can be constructed in 
 disregard of the influences which have made us 
 human. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 \
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.
 
 PORTRAIT OF HEINE.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 
 
 GEEMAN WIT: HEINEICH HEINE. 
 
 "NOTHING," says Goethe, "is more significant of 
 men's character than what they find laughable." 
 The truth of this observation would perhaps have 
 been more apparent if he had said culture instead of 
 character. The last thing in which the cultivated 
 man can have community with the vulgar is their 
 jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more strik- 
 ingly the wide gulf which separates him from them, 
 than by comparing the object which shakes the 
 diaphragm of a coal-heaver, with the highly complex 
 pleasure derived from a real witticism. That any 
 high order of wit is exceedingly complex, and de- 
 mands a ripe and strong mental development, has 
 one evidence in the fact that we do not find it in 
 boys at all in proportion to their manifestation of 
 other powers. Clever boys generally aspire to the 
 heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and the 
 crudest of all their efforts are their jokes. Many a 
 witty man will remember how in his school-days 
 a practical joke, more or less Eabelaisian, was for 
 him the ne plus ultra of the ludicrous. It seems to 
 have been the same with the boyhood of the human 
 race. The history and literature of the ancient 
 Hebrews give the idea of a people who went about 
 their business and their pleasure as gravely as a
 
 218 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 society of beavers ; the smile and the laugh are 
 often mentioned metaphorically, but the smile is 
 one of complacency, the laugh is one of scorn. Nor 
 can we imagine that the facetious element was very 
 strong in the Egyptians ; no laughter lurks in the 
 wondering eyes and the broad calm lips of their 
 statues. Still less can the Assyrians have had any 
 genius for the comic ; the round eyes and simpering 
 satisfaction of their ideal faces belong to a type 
 which is not witty, but the cause of wit in others. 
 The fun of these early races was, we fancy, of the 
 after-dinner kind loud-throated laughter over the 
 wine-cup, taken too little account of in sober mo- 
 ments to enter as an element into their Art, and 
 differing as much from the laughter of a Chamfort 
 or a Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an 
 ancient Briton, whose dinner had no other removes 
 than from acorns to beechmast and back again to 
 acorns, differed from the subtle pleasures of the 
 palate experienced by his turtle-eating descendant. 
 In fact they had to live seriously through the 
 stages which to subsequent races were to become 
 comedy, as those amiable-looking preadamite amphi- 
 bia, which Professor Owen has restored for us in 
 effigy at Sydenham, took perfectly au sfaieux the 
 grotesque physiognomies of their kindred. Heavy 
 experience in their case, as in every other, was the 
 base from which the salt of future wit was to be 
 made. 
 
 Humour is of earlier growth than wit, and it is in 
 accordance with this earlier growth that it has 
 more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while wit 
 is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. 
 Humour draws its materials from situations and 
 characteristics; wit seizes on unexpected and com-
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 219 
 
 plex relations. Humour is chiefly representative 
 and descriptive ; it is diffuse, and flows along with- 
 out any other law than its own fantastic will ; or it 
 flits about like a will-of-the-wisp, amazing us by its 
 whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sudden, 
 and sharply defined as a crystal ; it does not make 
 pictures, it is not fantastic; but it detects an 
 unsuspected analogy or suggests a startling or con- 
 founding inference. Every one who has had the 
 opportunity of making the comparison will remem- 
 ber that the effect produced on him by some 
 witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on 
 him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy 
 or absurdity, and there are persons whose delight in 
 such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter. 
 This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more 
 obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher, 
 and deals less with words and with superficialities 
 than with the essential qualities of things. Some 
 of Johnson's most admirable witticisms consist in 
 the suggestion of an analogy which immediately 
 exposes the absurdity of an action or proposition, 
 and it is only their ingenuity, condensation, and 
 instantaneousness which lift them from reasoning 
 into wit; they are reasoning raised to a higher 
 power. On the other hand, humour, in its higher 
 forms, and in proportion as it associates itself with 
 the sympathetic emotions, continually passes into 
 poetry ; nearly all great modern humorists may be 
 called prose poets. 
 
 Some confusion as to the nature of humour has 
 been created by the fact, that those who have 
 written most eloquently on it have dwelt almost 
 exclusively on its higher forms, and have defined 
 humour in general as the sympathetic presentation
 
 220 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 of incongruous elements in human nature and life ; 
 a definition which only applies to its later devel- 
 opment. A great deal of humour may coexist 
 with a great deal of barbarism, as we see in the 
 Middle Ages ; but the strongest flavour of the 
 humour in such cases will come, not from sympa- 
 thy, but more probably from triumphant egoism or 
 intolerance ; at best it will be the love of the ludi- 
 crous exhibiting itself in illustrations of successful 
 cunning and of the lex talionis, as in " Eeineke 
 Fuchs, " or shaking off in a holiday mood the yoke 
 of a too exacting faith, as in the old Mysteries. 
 Again, it is impossible to deny a high degree of 
 humour to many practical jokes, but no sympa- 
 thetic nature can enjoy them. Strange as the 
 genealogy may seem, the original parentage of that 
 wonderful and delicious mixture of fun, fancy, 
 philosophy, and feeling, which constitutes modern 
 humour, was probably the cruel mockery of a 
 savage at the writhings of a suffering enemy, 
 such is the tendency of things towards the good 
 and beautiful on this earth ! Probably the reason 
 why high culture demands more complete harmony 
 with its moral sympathies in humour than in wit, 
 is that humour is in its nature more prolix that 
 it has not the direct and irresistible force of wit. 
 Wit is an electric shock, which takes us by 
 violence, quite independently of our predominant 
 mental disposition ; but humour approaches us 
 more deliberately and leaves us masters of our- 
 selves. Hence it is, that while coarse and cruel 
 humour has almost disappeared from contemporary 
 literature, coarse and cruel wit abounds ; even re- 
 fined men cannot help laughing at a coarse bon mot 
 or a lacerating personality, if the " shock " of the
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 221 
 
 witticism is a powerful one ; while mere fun will 
 have no power over them if it jar on their moral 
 taste. Hence, too, it is, that while wit is peren- 
 nial, humour is liable to become superannuated. 
 
 As is usual with definitions and classifications, 
 however, this distinction between wit and humour 
 does not exactly represent the actual fnct. Like 
 all other species, wit and humour overlap and 
 blend with each other. There are bon mots, like 
 many of Charles Lamb's, which are a sort of face- 
 tious hybrids ; we hardly know whether to call 
 them witty or humorous ; there are rather lengthy 
 descriptions or narratives, which, like Voltaire's 
 " Microme'gas, " would be more humorous, if they 
 were not so sparkling and antithetic, so pregnant 
 with suggestion and satire, that we are obliged to 
 call them witty. We rarely find wit unteinpered 
 by humour, or humour without a spice of wit; 
 and sometimes we find them both united in the 
 highest degree in the same mind, as in Shakspeare 
 and Moliere. A happy conjunction this, for wit 
 is apt to be cold and thin-lipped and Mephistophe- 
 lean in men who have no relish for humour, whose 
 lungs do never crow like Chanticleer at fun and 
 drollery ; and broad-faced, rollicking humour needs 
 the refining influence of wit. Indeed, it may be 
 said that there is no really fine writing in which 
 wit has not an implicit, if not an explicit, action. 
 The wit may never rise to the surface, it may 
 never flame out into a witticism ; but it helps to 
 give brightness and transparency, it warns off from 
 flights and exaggerations which verge on the ridic- 
 ulous ; in every genre of writing it preserves a 
 man from sinking into the genre ennuyeux. And 
 it is eminently needed for this office in humorous
 
 222 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 writing ; for as humour has no limits imposed on 
 it by its material, no law but its own exuberance, 
 it is apt to become preposterous and wearisome 
 unless checked by wit, which is the enemy of all 
 monotony, of all lengthiness, of all exaggeration. 
 
 Perhaps the nearest approach Nature has given 
 us to a complete analysis, in which wit is as 
 thoroughly exhausted of humour as possible, and 
 humour as bare as possible of wit, is in the typi- 
 cal Frenchman and the typical German. Voltaire, 
 the intensest example of pure wit, fails in most of 
 his fictions from his lack of humour. " Micro- 
 megas " is a perfect tale, because, as it deals 
 chiefly with philosophic ideas and does not touch 
 the marrow of human feeling and life, the writer's 
 wit and wisdom were all-sufficient for his purpose. 
 Not so with " Candide. " Here Voltaire had to 
 give pictures of life as well as to convey philo- 
 sophic truth and satire, and here we feel the want 
 of humour. The sense of the ludicrous is contin- 
 ually defeated by disgust, and the scenes, instead 
 of presenting us with an amusing or agreeable 
 picture, are only the frame for a witticism. On 
 the other hand, German humour generally shows 
 no sense of measure, no instinctive tact; it is 
 either floundering and clumsy as the antics of a 
 leviathan, or laborious and interminable as a Lap- 
 land day, in which one loses all hope that the 
 stars and quiet will ever come. For this reason, 
 Jean Paul, the greatest of German humorists, is 
 unendurable to many readers, and frequently tire- 
 some to all. Here, as elsewhere, the German 
 shows the absence of that delicate perception, that 
 sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of 
 tact and taste, and the necessary concomitant of
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICLI HEINE. 223 
 
 wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region 
 of metaphysics. For Identit&t in the abstract, no 
 one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete 
 he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. 
 He has the finest nose for Empirismus in philo- 
 sophical doctrine, but the presence of more or 
 less tobacco-smoke in the air he breathes is imper- 
 ceptible to him. To the typical German Vetter 
 Michel it is indifferent whether his door-lock 
 will catch ; whether his tea-cup be more or less 
 than an inch thick ; whether or not his book have 
 every other leaf unstitched ; whether his neigh- 
 bour's conversation be more or less of a shout; 
 whether he pronounce b or p, t or d; whether or 
 not his adored one's teeth be few and far between. 
 He has the same sort of insensibility to grada- 
 tions in time. A German comedy is like a German 
 sentence ; you see no reason in its structure why it 
 should ever come to an end, and you accept the 
 conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather 
 than of the author. We have heard Germans use 
 the word Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and 
 we have secretly wondered what it can be that 
 produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of 
 long tragedies, for we have known him to pro- 
 nounce that hochst fesselnd (so enchaining ! ) ; not 
 the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in 
 that as grundlich (deep, sir, deep ! ) ; not the slow 
 est of journeys in a Post-wagen, for the slower the 
 horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he 
 reaches his journey's end. German ennui must be 
 something as superlative as Barclay's treble X, 
 which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown 
 quantity of stupefaction. 
 
 It is easy to see that this national deficiency in
 
 224 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 nicety of perception must have its effect on the 
 national appreciation and exhibition of humour. 
 You find in Germany ardent admirers of Shak- 
 speare, who tell you that what they think most 
 admirable in him is his Wortspiel, his verbal quib- 
 bles ; and one of these, a man of no slight culture 
 and refinement, once cited to a friend of ours Pro- 
 teus's joke in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," 
 " Nod, I ? why that 's Noddy, " as a transcendent 
 specimen of Shakspearian wit. German facetious- 
 ness is seldom comic to foreigners, and an Eng- 
 lishman with a swelled cheek might take up 
 " Kladderadatsch, " the German " Punch, " without 
 any danger of agitating his facial muscles. In- 
 deed, it is a remarkable fact, that, among the five 
 great races concerned in modern civilization, the 
 German race is the only one which, up to the 
 present century, had contributed nothing classic 
 to the common stock of European wit and humour ; 
 for " Eeineke Fuchs " cannot be regarded as a 
 peculiarly Teutonic product. Italy was the birth- 
 place of Pantomime and the immortal Pulcinello; 
 Spain had produced Cervantes ; France had pro- 
 duced Eabelais and Moliere, and classic wits in- 
 numerable ; England had yielded Shakspeare and 
 a host of humorists. But Germany had borne 
 no great comic dramatist, no great satirist, and 
 she has not yet repaired the omission ; she had 
 not even produced any humorist of a high order. 
 Among her great writers, Lessing is the one who 
 is the most specifically witty. We feel the im- 
 plicit influence of wit, the " flavour of mind, " 
 throughout his writings ; and it is often concen- 
 trated into pungent satire, as every reader of the 
 " Hamburgische Dramaturgic " remembers. Still,
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 225 
 
 Lessing's name has not become European through 
 his wit, and his charming comedy, " Minna von 
 Barnhelm, " has won no place on a foreign stage. 
 Of course, we do not pretend to an exhaustive 
 acquaintance with German literature ; we not only 
 admit, we are sure, that it includes much comic 
 writing of which we know nothing. We simply 
 state the fact, that no German production of 
 that kind, before the present century, ranked as 
 European ; a fact which does not, indeed, deter- 
 mine the amount of the national facetiousness, but 
 which is quite decisive as to its quality. What- 
 ever may be the stock of fun which Germany 
 yields for home-consumption, she has provided 
 little for the palate of other lands. All honour to 
 her for the still greater things she has done for us ! 
 She has fought the hardest fight for freedom of 
 thought, has produced the grandest inventions, has 
 made magnificent contributions to science, has 
 given us some of the divinest poetry, and quite 
 the divinest music, in the world. No one reveres 
 and treasures the products of the German mind 
 more than we do. To say that that mind is not 
 fertile in wit, is only like saying that excellent 
 wheat-land is not rich pasture ; to say that we do 
 not enjoy German facetiousness, is no more than to 
 say that, though the horse is the finest of quadru- 
 peds, we do not like him to lay his hoof playfully 
 on our shoulder. Still, as we have noticed that 
 the pointless puns and stupid jocularity of the boy 
 may ultimately be developed into the epigrammatic 
 brilliancy and polished playfulness of the man, as 
 we believe that racy wit and chastened delicate 
 humour are inevitably the results of invigorated 
 and refined mental activity, we can also believe 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 226 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 that Germany will, one day, yield a crop of wits 
 and humorists. 
 
 Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future 
 crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, a German 
 born with the present century, who, to Teutonic 
 imagination, sensibility, and humour, adds an 
 amount of esprit that would make him brilliant 
 among the most brilliant of Frenchmen. True, 
 this unique German wit is half a Hebrew ; but he 
 and his ancestors spent their youth in German air, 
 and were reared on Wurst and Sauerkraut, so that 
 he is as much a German as a pheasant is an 
 English bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But 
 whatever else he may be, Heine is one of the most 
 remarkable men of this age : no echo, but a real 
 voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in 
 this world, worth studying ; a surpassing lyric 
 poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in deli- 
 cious song ; a humorist, who touches leaden folly 
 with the magic wand of his fancy, and transmutes 
 it into the fine gold of art, who sheds his sunny 
 smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous 
 rainbow on the cloudy background of life ; a wit, 
 who holds in his mighty hand the most scorching 
 lightnings of satire; an artist in prose literature, 
 who has shown even more completely than Goethe 
 the possibilities of German prose ; and in spite of 
 all charges against him, true as well as false a lover 
 of freedom, who has spoken wise and brave words 
 on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a 
 suffering man, who, with all the highly wrought 
 sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical 
 ills ; and as such he calls forth more than an intel- 
 lectual interest. It is true, alas ! that there is a 
 heavy weight in the other scale that Heine's
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 227 
 
 magnificent powers have often served only to give 
 electric force to the expression of debased feeling, 
 so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold and 
 ivory and gems, but have not a little brass and iron 
 and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. 
 The audacity of his occasional coarseness and per- 
 sonality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, 
 and has hardly been exceeded by the license of 
 former days. Hence, before his volumes are put 
 within the reach of immature minds, there is need 
 of a friendly penknife to exercise a strict censor- 
 ship. Yet, when all coarseness, all scurrility, all 
 Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings 
 of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous 
 remainder of exquisite poetry, of wit, humour, and 
 just thought. It is apparently too often a congen- 
 ial task to write severe words about the transgres- 
 sions committed by men of genius, especially when 
 the censor has the advantage of being himself a 
 man of no genius, so that those transgressions seem 
 to him quite gratuitous ; he, forsooth, never lacer- 
 ated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piq- 
 uancy to a coarse allusion, and his indignation is 
 not mitigated by any knowledge of the temptation 
 that lies in transcendent power. We are also apt 
 to measure what a gifted man has done by our 
 arbitrary conception of what he might have done, 
 rather than by a comparison of his actual doings 
 with our own or those of other ordinary men. We 
 make ourselves over-zealous agents of Heaven, and 
 demand that our brother should bring usurious 
 interest for his five Talents, forgetting that it is 
 less easy to manage five Talents than two. What- 
 ever benefit there may be in denouncing the evil, 
 it is after all more edifying, and certainly more
 
 228 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 cheering, to appreciate the good. Hence, in en- 
 deavouring to give our readers some account of 
 Heine and his works, we shall not dwell lengthily 
 on his failings ; we shall not hold the candle up 
 to dusty, vermin -haunted corners, but let the light 
 fall as much as possible on the nobler and more 
 attractive details. Our sketch of Heine's life, 
 which has been drawn from various sources, will 
 be free from everything like intrusive gossip, 
 and will derive its colouring chiefly from the 
 autobiographical hints and descriptions scattered 
 through his own writings. Those of our readers 
 who happen to know nothing of Heine, will in 
 this way be making their acquaintance with the 
 writer while they are learning the outline of his 
 career. 
 
 We have said that Heine was born with the 
 present century ; but this statement is not precise, 
 for we learn that, according to his certificate of 
 baptism, he was born December 12, 1799. How- 
 ever, as he himself says, the important point is, 
 that he was born, and born on the banks of the 
 Rhine at Diisseldorf, where his father was a mer- 
 chant. In his " Reisebilder " he gives us some 
 recollections, in his wild poetic way, of the dear 
 old town where he spent his childhood, and of his 
 school-boy troubles there. We shall quote from 
 these in butterfly fashion, sipping a little nectar 
 here and there, without regard to any strict 
 order : 
 
 " I fijst saw the light on the banks of that lovely 
 stream, where folly grows on the green hills, and in 
 autumn is plucked, pressed, poured into casks, and 
 sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yesterday heard 
 some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 229 
 
 bunch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannis- 
 berg. . . . Mon Dieu! if I had only such faith in me 
 that I could remove mountains, the Johannisberg would 
 be the very mountain I should send for wherever I might 
 be; but as my faith is not so strong, imagination must 
 help me, and it transports me at once to the lovely 
 Rhine. . . . I am again a child, and playing with other 
 children on the Schlossplatz, at Dilsseldorf on the Rhine. 
 Yes, madam, there was I born; and I note this ex- 
 pressly, in case, after my death, seven cities Schilda, 
 Krahwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Diilkeu, Gottingeu, 
 and Schoppenstadt should contend for the honour 
 of being my birthplace. Diisseldorf is a town on the 
 Rhine; sixteen thousand men live there, and many 
 hundred thousand men besides lie buried there. . . , 
 Among them, many of whom my mother says that it 
 would be better if they were still living, for example, 
 my grandfather and my uncle, the old Herr von Gel- 
 dern, and the young Herr von Geldern, both such cele- 
 brated doctors, who saved so many men from death, and 
 yet must die themselves. And the pious Ursula, who 
 carried me in her arms when I was a child, also lies 
 buried there, and a rosebush grows on her grave; she 
 loved the scent of roses so well in life, and her heart 
 was pure rose-incense and goodness. The knowing old 
 Canon, too, lies buried there. Heavens, what an object 
 he looked when I last saw him! He was made up of 
 nothing but mind and plasters, and nevertheless studied 
 day and night, as if he were alarmed lest the worms 
 should find an idea too little in his head. And the 
 little William lies there, and for this I am to blame. 
 We were schoolfellows in the Franciscan monastery, 
 and were playing on that side of it where the Diissel 
 flows between stone walls ; and I said, ' William, fetch 
 out the kitten that has just fallen in; ' and merrily he 
 went down on to the plank which lay across the brook, 
 snatched the kitten out of the water, but fell in him- 
 self, and was dragged out dripping and dead. The
 
 2 3 o ESSAYS OE GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 kitten lived to a good old age. . . . Princes in that 
 day were not the tormented race as they are now; the 
 crown grew firmly on their heads, and at night they 
 drew a nightcap over it, and slept peacefully, and peace- 
 fully slept the people at their feet; and when the people 
 waked in the morning, they said, { Good-morning, 
 father! ' and the princes answered, ' Good-morning, dear 
 children!' But it was suddenly quite otherwise; for 
 when we awoke one morning at Dusseldorf, and were 
 ready to say, ' Good-morning, father! ' lo! the father 
 was gone away; and in the whole town there was 
 nothing but dumb sorrow, everywhere a sort of funeral 
 disposition; and people glided along silently to the 
 market, and read the long placard placed on the door 
 of the Town Hall. It was dismal weather; yet the 
 lean tailor, Kilian, stood in his nankeen jacket, which 
 he usually wore only in the house, and his blue worsted 
 stockings hung down so that his naked legs peeped out 
 mournfully, and his thin lips trembled while he mut- 
 tered the announcement to himself. And an old soldier 
 read rather louder, and at many a word a crystal tear 
 trickled down to his brave old mustache. I stood near 
 him and wept in company, and asked him why we wept ? 
 He answered, ' The Elector has abdicated.' And then 
 he read again ; and at the words, ' for the long-mani- 
 fested fidelity of my subjects, ' and ' hereby set you 
 free from your allegiance,' he wept more than ever. It 
 is strangely touching to see an old man like that, with 
 faded uniform and scarred face, weep so bitterly all of 
 a sudden. While we were reading, the Electoral arms 
 were taken down from the Town Hall; everything had 
 such a desolate air, that it was as if an eclipse of the 
 sun were expected. ... I went home and wept, and 
 wailed out, 'The Elector has abdicated! ' In vain my 
 mother took a world of trouble to explain the thing to 
 me. I knew what I knew ; I was not to be persuaded, 
 but went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that 
 the world was at an end."
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 231 
 
 The next morning, however, the sun rises aa 
 usual, and Joachim Murat is proclaimed Grand 
 Duke, whereupon there is a holiday at the public 
 school, and Heinrich (or Harry, for that was his 
 baptismal name, which he afterwards had the good 
 taste to change), perched on the bronze horse of 
 the Electoral statue, sees quite a different scene 
 from yesterday's: 
 
 "The next day the world was again all in order, and 
 we had school as before, and things were got by heart 
 as before; the Roman emperors, chronology, the nouns 
 inim, the verba irregular ia, Greek, Hebrew, geography, 
 mental arithmetic! heavens! my head is still dizzy 
 with it all must be learned by heart! And a great 
 deal of this came very conveniently for me in after life. 
 For if I had not known the Roman kings by heart, it 
 would subsequently have been quite indifferent to me 
 whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that 
 they never really existed. . . . But oh! the trouble I 
 bad at school with the endless dates. And with arith- 
 metic it was still worse. What I understood best was 
 subtraction, for that has a very practical rule : 'Four 
 can't be taken from three, therefore I must borrow 
 one.' But I advise every one in such a case to borrow 
 a few extra pence, for no one can tell what may bap- 
 pen. ... As for Latin, you have no idea, madam, 
 what a complicated affair it is. The Romans would 
 never have found time to conquer the world if they had 
 first had to learn Latin. Luckily for them, they already 
 knew in their cradles what nouns have their accusative 
 in im. I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart 
 in the sweat of my brow; nevertheless, it is fortunate 
 for me that I know them ; . . . and the fact that I have 
 them at my finger-ends if I should ever happen to want 
 tbem suddenly, affords me much inward repose and con- 
 solation in many troubled hours of life. ... Of Greek 
 I will not say a word, I should get too much irritated.
 
 232 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 The monks in the Middle Ages were not so far wrong 
 when they maintained that Greek was an invention of 
 the devil. God knows the suffering I endured over 
 it. ... With Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I 
 had always a great liking for the Jews, though to this 
 very hour they crucify my good name; but I could never 
 get on so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much 
 familiar intercourse with pawnbrokers, and in this 
 way contracted many Jewish habits, for example, it 
 wouldn't go on Saturdays." 
 
 Heine's parents were apparently not wealthy, 
 but his education was cared for by his uncle, Solo- 
 mon Heine, a great banker in Hamburg, so that he 
 had no early pecuniary disadvantages to struggle 
 with. He seems to have been very happy in his 
 mother, who was not of Hebrew, but of Teutonic 
 blood ; he often mentions her with reverence and 
 affection and in the " Buch der Lieder " there are 
 two exquisite- sonnets addressed to her, which tell 
 how his proud spirit was always subdued by the 
 charm of her presence, and how her love was the 
 home of his heart after restless weary ramblings : 
 
 " Wie machtig auch mein stolzer Muth sich blahe, 
 In deiner selig siissen, trauten Nahe 
 Ergreift mich oft ein demuthvolles Zagen. 
 
 Und immer irrte ich nach Liebe, immer 
 Nach Liebe, cloch die Liebe fand ich nimmer, 
 Und kehrte um nach Hause, krank und triibe. 
 Doch da bist du entgegen mir gekommen, 
 Und ach ! wae da in deinem Aug' geschwommen, 
 Das war die siisse, langgesuchte Liebe." 
 
 He was at first destined for a mercantile life, 
 but nature declared too strongly against this plan. 
 " God knows, " he has lately said in conversation
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 233 
 
 with his brother, " I would willingly have become 
 a banker, but I could never bring myself to that 
 pass. I very early discerned that bankers would 
 one day be the rulers of the world. " So commerce 
 was at length given up for law, the study of which 
 he began in 1819 at the University of Bonn. He 
 had already published some poems in the corner of 
 a newspaper, and among them was one on Napo- 
 leon, the object of his youthful enthusiasm. This 
 po'em, he says in a letter to St. Rene' Taillandier, 
 was written when he was only sixteen. It is still 
 to be found in the " Buch der Lieder " under the 
 title " Die Grenadiere, " and it proves that even in 
 its earliest efforts his genius showed a strongly 
 specific character. 
 
 It will be easily imagined that the germs of 
 poetry sprouted too vigorously in Heine's brain 
 for jurisprudence to find much room there. Lec- 
 tures on history and literature, we are told, were 
 more diligently attended than lectures on law. 
 He had taken care, too, to furnish his trunk with 
 abundant editions of the poets, and the poet he 
 especially studied at that time was Byron. At a 
 later period we find his taste taking another di- 
 rection, for he writes : " Of all authors, Byron is 
 precisely the one who excites in me the most intol- 
 erable emotion ; whereas Scott, in every one of his 
 works gladdens my heart, soothes and invigorates 
 me. " Another indication of his bent in these Bonn 
 days was a newspaper essay, in which he attacked 
 the Romantic School ; and here also he went through 
 that chicken-pox of authorship, the production of 
 a tragedy. Heine's tragedy, " Almansor, " is, as 
 might be expected, better than the majority of these 
 youthful mistakes. The tragic collision lies in
 
 234 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the conflict between natural affection and the 
 deadly hatred of religion and of race, in the sacri- 
 fice of youthful lovers to the strife between Moor 
 and Spaniard, Moslem and Christian. Some of the 
 situations are striking, and there are passages of 
 considerable poetic merit ; but the characters are 
 little more than shadowy vehicles for the poetry, 
 and there is a want of clearness and probability in 
 the structure. It was published two years later, 
 in company with another tragedy in one act, called 
 " William Batcliffe, " in which there is rather a 
 feeble use of the Scotch second-sight after the 
 manner of the Fate in the Greek tragedy. We 
 smile to find Heine saying of his tragedies, in a 
 letter to a friend soon after their publication : " I 
 know they will be terribly cut up, but I will con- 
 fess to you in confidence that they are very good, 
 better than my collection of poems, which are 
 not worth a shot. " Elsewhere he tells us, that 
 when, after one of Paganini's concerts, he was 
 passionately complimenting the great master 
 on his violin playing, Paganini interrupted him 
 thus : " But how were you pleased with my 
 lows ? " 
 
 In 1820 Heine left Bonn for Gottingen. He 
 there pursued his omission of law studies ; and at 
 the end of three months he was rusticated for a 
 breach of the laws against duelling. Whilst there 
 he had attempted a negotiation with Brockhaus for 
 the printing of a volume of poems, and had en- 
 dured the first ordeal of lovers and poets, a refusal. 
 It was not until a year after, that he found a Berlin 
 publisher for his first volume of poems, subsequently 
 transformed, with additions, into the " Buch der 
 Lieder. " He remained between two and three
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 235 
 
 years at Berlin, and the society he found there 
 seems to have made these years an important epoch 
 in his culture. He was one of the youngest mem- 
 bers of a circle which assembled at the house of 
 the poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the translator 
 of Byron, a circle which included Chamisso, Varn- 
 hagen, and Eahel (Varnhagen's wife). For Eahel, 
 Heine had a profound admiration and regard; he 
 afterwards dedicated to her the poems included 
 under the title " Heimkehr ; " and he frequently 
 refers to her or quotes her in a way that indicates 
 how he valued her influence. According to his 
 friend, F. von Hohenhausen, the opinions concern- 
 ing Heine's talent were very various among his 
 Berlin friends, and it was only a small minority 
 that had any presentiment of his future fame. In 
 this minority was Elise von Hohenhausen, who 
 proclaimed Heine as the Byron of Germany ; but 
 her opinion was met with much head-shaking and 
 opposition. We can imagine how precious was 
 such a recognition as hers to the young poet, then 
 only two or three and twenty, and with by no 
 means an impressive personality for superficial 
 eyes. Perhaps even the deep-sighted were far from 
 detecting in that small, blonde, pale young man, 
 with quiet, gentle manners, the latent powers of 
 ridicule and sarcasm, the terrible talons that 
 were one day to be thrust out from the velvet paw 
 of the young leopard. 
 
 It was apparently during this residence in Berlin 
 that Heine united himself with the Lutheran 
 church. He would willingly, like many of his 
 friends, he tells us, have remained free from all 
 ecclesiastical ties, if the authorities there had not 
 forbidden residence in Prussia, and especially in
 
 236 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Berlin, to every one who did not belong to one of 
 the positive religions recognized by the State. 
 
 "As Henry IV. once laughingly said, 'Paris vaut 
 bien une messe,' so I might with reason say, Berlin 
 vaut bien une preche ; and I could afterwards, as be- 
 fore, accommodate myself to the very enlightened 
 Christianity, filtrated from all superstition, which 
 could then he had in the churches of Berlin, and which 
 was even free from the divinity of Christ, like turtle- 
 soup without turtle." 
 
 At the same period, too, Heine became ac- 
 quainted with Hegel. In his lately published 
 " Gestandnisse " (Confessions), he throws on Hegel's 
 influence over him the blue light of demoniacal 
 wit, and confounds us by the most bewildering 
 double-edged sarcasms ; but that influence seems 
 to have been at least more wholesome than the 
 one which produced the mocking retractations of the 
 " Gestandnisse. " Through all his self-satire, we 
 discern that in those days he had something like 
 real earnestness and enthusiasm, which are cer- 
 tainly not apparent in his present theistic confes- 
 sion of faith. 
 
 "On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for 
 this philosophy, and conviction on the subject was out 
 of question. I never was an abstract thinker, and I 
 accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doctrine with- 
 out demanding any proof, since its consequences flattered 
 my vanity. I was young and proud; and it pleased 
 my vainglory when I learned from Hegel that the true 
 God was not, as my grandmother believed, the God 
 who lives in heaven, but myself here upon earth. This 
 foolish pride had not in the least a pernicious influence 
 on my feelings; on the contrary, it heightened these to 
 the pitch of heroism. I was at that time so lavish in
 
 GERMAN WIT; HEINRICH HEINE. 237 
 
 generosity and self-sacrifice, that I must assuredly have 
 eclipsed the most brilliant deeds of those good bourgeois 
 of virtue who acted merely from a sense of duty, and 
 simply obeyed the laws of morality," 
 
 His sketch of Hegel is irresistibly amusing ; but 
 we must warn the reader that Heine's anecdotes 
 are often mere devices of style by which he con- 
 veys his satire or opinions. The reader will see 
 that he does not neglect $n opportunity of giving 
 a sarcastic lash or two, in passing, to Meyerbeer, 
 for whose music he had a great contempt. The 
 sarcasm conveyed in the substitution of reputation 
 for music, and journalists for musicians, might per- 
 haps escape any one unfamiliar with the sly and, 
 unexpected turns of Heine's ridicule. 
 
 ' ' To speak frankly, I seldom understood him, and 
 only arrived at the meaning of his words by subsequent 
 reflection. I believe he wished not to he understood; 
 and hence hjs practice of sprinkling his discourse with 
 modifying parentheses; hence, perhaps, his preference 
 for persons of whom he knew that they did not under- 
 stand him, and to whom he all the more willingly granted 
 the honour of his familiar acquaintance. Thus every 
 one in Berlin wondered at the intimate companionship 
 of the profound Hegel with the late Hejnrich Beer, a 
 brother of GHacomo Meyerbeer, who is universally 
 known by his reputation, and who has been celebrated 
 by the cleverest journalists, This Beer, namely IJein- 
 rich, was a thoroughly stupid fellow, and indeed, was 
 afterwards actually declared imbecile by his family? and 
 placed under guardianship; because instead of making 
 a name for himself in art or in science by means of his 
 great fortune, he squandered his money on childish 
 trifles, and, for example, one day bought six thou- 
 sand thalers' worth of walking-sticks. This poor man,
 
 238 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 who had no wish to pass either for a great tragic 
 dramatist, or for a great stargazer, or for a laurel- 
 crowned musical genius, a rival of Mozart and Rossini, 
 and preferred giving his money for walking-sticks 
 this degenerate Beer enjoyed Hegel's most confidential 
 society; he was the philosopher's hosom-friend, his 
 Pylades, and accompanied him everywhere like his 
 shadow. The equally witty and gifted Felix Mendels- 
 sohn once sought to explain this phenomenon, by main- 
 taining that Hegel did not understand Heinrich Beer. 
 I now believe, however, that the real ground of that 
 intimacy consisted in this : Hegel was convinced that 
 no word of what he said was understood by Hein- 
 rich Beer; and he could therefore, in his presence, give 
 himself up to all the intellectual outpourings of the 
 moment. In general, Hegel's conversation was a sort 
 of monologue, sighed forth by starts in a noiseless 
 voice; the odd roughness of his expressions often struck 
 me, and many of them have remained in my memory. 
 One beautiful starlight evening we stood together at 
 the window, and I, a young man of one-and-twenty, 
 having just had a good dinner and finished my coffee, 
 spoke with enthusiasm of the stars, and called them 
 the habitations of the departed. But the master mut- 
 tered to himself: 'The stars! hum! hum! The stars 
 are only a brilliant leprosy on the face of the heavens.' 
 'For God's sake,' I cried, ( is there, then, no happy 
 place above, where virtue is rewarded after death? ' 
 But he, staring at me with his pale eyes, said cuttingly : 
 ' So you want a bonus for having taken care of your sick 
 mother, and refrained from poisoning your worthy 
 brother?' At these words he looked anxiously round, 
 but appeared immediately set at rest when he observed 
 that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached 
 to invite him to a game at whist." 
 
 In 1823 Heine returned to Gottingen to com- 
 plete his career as a law-student, and this time he
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 239 
 
 gave evidence of advanced mental maturity, not 
 only by producing many of the charming poems 
 subsequently included in the " Eeisebilder, " but 
 also by prosecuting his professional studies dili- 
 gently enough to leave Gottingen, in 1825, as 
 Doctor juris. Hereupon he settled at Hamburg as 
 an advocate, but his profession seems to have been 
 the least pressing of his occupations. In those 
 days a small blond young man, with the brim of 
 his hat drawn over his nose, his coat flying open, 
 and his hands stuck in his trouser-pockets, might 
 have been seen stumbling along the streets of 
 Hamburg, staring from side to side, and appear- 
 ing to have small regard to the figure he made in 
 the eyes of the good citizens. Occasionally an 
 inhabitant, more literary than usual, would point 
 out this young man to his companion as Heinrich 
 Heine ; but in general the young poet had not to 
 endure the inconveniences of being a lion. His 
 poems were devoured, but he was not asked to 
 devour flattery in return. Whether because the 
 fair Hamburgers acted in the spirit of Johnson's 
 advice to Hannah More, to " consider what her 
 flattery was worth before she choked him with it, " 
 or for some other reason, Heine, according to 
 the testimony of August Lewald, to whom we owe 
 these particulars of his Hamburg life, was left free 
 from the persecution of tea-parties. Not, however, 
 from another persecution of genius, nervous head- 
 aches, which some persons, we are told, regarded 
 as an improbable fiction, intended as a pretext for 
 raising a delicate white hand to his forehead. It 
 is probable that the sceptical persons alluded to 
 were themselves untroubled with nervous head- 
 ache, and that their hands were not delicate.
 
 240 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Slight details these, hut worth telling about a man 
 of genius, because they help us to keep in. mind 
 that he is, after all, our brother, having to endure 
 the petty every *day ills of life as we have ; with 
 this difference, that his heightened sensibility, con- 
 verts what are mere insect-stings for us into scor* 
 pi on stings for him. 
 
 It was, perhaps, in these Hamburg days that 
 Heine paid the visit to Goethe, of which he gives 
 us this charming little picture: 
 
 " When I visited him in Weimar, and stood before 
 him, I involuntarily glanced at his side, to see whether 
 the eagle was not there with the lightning in his beak. 
 I was nearly speaking Greek to him ; but, as I observed 
 that he understood German, I stated to him in German, 
 that the plums on the road between Jena and Weimar 
 were very good. I had for so many long winter-nights 
 thought over what lofty and profound things I would 
 say to Goethe, if ever I saw him! And when I saw 
 him at last, I gaid to him, that the Saxon plums were 
 very good! Aud Goethe smiled." 
 
 During the next few years Heine produced the 
 most popular of all his works, those which have 
 won him his place as the greatest of living Ger- 
 man poets and humorists. Between 1826 and 
 1829 appeared the four volumes of the " Reise- 
 bilder " (Pictures of Travel), and the " Buch der 
 Lieder " (Book of Songs), a volume of lyrics, of 
 which it is hard to say whether their greatest 
 charm is the lightness and finish of their style, 
 their vivid and original Imaginativeness, or their 
 simple, pure sensibility. In his " Reisebilder, " 
 Heine carries us with him to the Harz, to the isle 
 of Norderney, to his native town, Diisseldorf, to
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 241 
 
 Italy, and to England, sketching scenery and 
 character, now with the wildest, most fantastic 
 humour, now with the finest idyllic sensibility, 
 letting his thoughts wander from poetry to politics, 
 from criticism to dreamy reverie, and blending 
 fun, imagination, reflection, and satire in a sort of 
 exquisite, ever-varying shimmer, like the hues of 
 the opal. 
 
 Heine's journey to England did not at all 
 heighten his regard for the English. He calls our 
 language the " hiss of egoism " (Zischlaute des 
 JSgoismus } ; and his ridicule of English awkward- 
 ness is as merciless as English ridicule of German 
 awkwardness. His antipathy towards us seems to 
 have grown in intensity, like many of his other 
 antipathies ; and in his " Vermischte Schriften " 
 he is more bitter than ever. Let us quote one of 
 his philippics, since bitters are understood to be 
 wholesome. 
 
 "It is certainly a frightful injustice to pronounce 
 sentence of condemnation on an entire people. But 
 with regard to the English, momentary disgust might 
 betray me into this injustice; and on looking at the 
 mass, I easily forget the many brave and noble men 
 who distinguished themselves by intellect and love of 
 freedom. But these, especially the British poets, were 
 always all the more glaringly in contrast with the rest 
 of the nation; they were isolated martyrs to their 
 national relations; and, besides, great geniuses do not 
 belong to the particular land of their birth ; they scarcely 
 belong to this earth, the Golgotha of their sufferings. 
 The mass the English blockheads, God forgive me! 
 are hateful to me in my inmost soul; and I often re- 
 gard them not at all as my fellow-men, but as miserable 
 automata machines, whose motive power is egoism. 
 In these moods it seems to me as if I heard the whizzing 
 VOL. i. 16
 
 242 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 wheelwork by which they think, feel, reckon, digest, 
 and pray; their praying, their mechanical Anglican 
 church-going, with the gilt pra} r er-book under their 
 arms, their stupid, tiresome Sunday, their awkward 
 piety, are most of all odious to me. I am firmly con- 
 vinced that a blaspheming Frenchman is a more pleas- 
 ing sight for the Divinity than a praying Englishman." 
 
 On his return from England, Heine was em- 
 ployed at Munich in editing the " Allgemeinen 
 Politischen Annalen, " but in 1830 he was again 
 in the North, and the news of the July Revolution 
 surprised him on the island of Heligoland. He 
 has given us a graphic picture of his democratic 
 enthusiasm in those days, in some letters, appar- 
 ently written from Heligoland, which he had in- 
 serted in his book on Borne. We quote some 
 passages, not only for their biographic interest as 
 showing a phase of Heine's mental history, but 
 because they are a specimen of his power in that 
 kind of dithyrambic writing which, in less mas- 
 terly hands, easily becomes ridiculous. 
 
 " The thick packet of newspapers arrived from the 
 Continent with these warm, glowing-hot tidings. They 
 were sunbeams wrapped up in packing-paper, and they 
 inflamed my soul till it burst into the wildest confla- 
 gration. ... It is all like a dream to me; especially 
 the name, Lafayette, sounds to me like a legend out of 
 my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on 
 horseback, commanding the National Guard? I almost 
 fear it may not be true, for it is in print. I will my- 
 self go to Paris, to be convinced of it with my bodily 
 eyes. ... It must be splendid, when he rides through 
 the streets, the citizen of two worlds, the godlike old 
 man, with his silver locks streaming down his sacred 
 shoulder. . . . He greets, with his dear old eyes, the
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 243 
 
 grandchildren of those who once fought with him for 
 freedom and equality. . . . It is now sixty years since 
 he returned from America with the Declaration of 
 Human Eights, the Decalogue of the world's new creed, 
 which was revealed to him amid the thunders and light- 
 nings of cannon. . . . And the tri-coloured flag waves 
 again on the towers of Paris, and its streets resound 
 with the Marseillaise! ... It is all over with my 
 yearning for repose. I now know again what I will 
 do, what I ought to do, what I must do. ... I am 
 the son of the Revolution, and seize again the hal- 
 lowed weapons on which my mother pronounced her 
 magic benediction. . . . Flowers, flowers ! I will crown 
 my head for the death-fight. And the lyre, too; 
 reach me the lyre, that I may sing a battle-song. . . . 
 Words like flaming stars, that shoot down from the 
 heavens, and burn up the palaces, and illuminate the 
 huts. . . . Words like bright javelins, that whirr up 
 to the seventh heaven and strike the pious hypocrites 
 who have skulked into the Holy of Holies. ... I am 
 all joy and song, all sword and flame ! Perhaps, too, 
 all delirium. . . . One of those sunbeams wrapped in 
 brown paper has flown to my brain, and set my thoughts 
 aglow. In vain I dip my head into the sea. No water 
 extinguishes this Greek fire. . . . Even the poor Heli- 
 golanders shout for joy, although they have only a sort 
 of dim instinct of what has occurred. The fisherman 
 who yesterday took me over to the little sand-island, 
 which is the bathing-place here, said to me smilingly, 
 'The poor people have won! ' Yes, instinctively the 
 people comprehend such events, perhaps, better than 
 we, with all our means of knowledge. Thus Frau von 
 Varnhagen once told me that when the issue of the 
 battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the maid-servant 
 suddenly rushed into the room with the sorrowful cry, 
 'The nobles have won!' . . . This morning another 
 packet of newspapers is come. I devour them like 
 manna. Child that I am, affecting details touch me
 
 244 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 yet more than the momentous whole. Oh, if I coula 
 but isee the dog Medor, , . . The dog Medor brought 
 his master his gun and cartridge-box, and when his 
 master" fellj and was buried with his fellow-heroes in 
 the Court of the Louvre, there stayed the poor dog like 
 a monument of faithfulness, sitting motionless on the 
 grave, day and night, eating but little of the food that 
 was offered him, burying the greater part of it in the 
 earth, perhaps as nourishment for his buried master." 
 
 The enthusiasm which Was kept thus at boiling 
 heat by imagination, cooled down rapidly when 
 brought into contact with reality. In the same 
 book he indicates, in his caustic way, the com- 
 mencement of that change in his political tempera- 
 ture> for it cannot be called a change in opinion, 
 which has drawn down on him immense vitupera- 
 tion from some of the Patriotic party, but which 
 seems to have resulted simply from the essential 
 antagonism between keen wit and fanaticism. 
 
 1 ' On the very first days of my arrival in Paris, I observed 
 that things wore, in reality, quite different colours from 
 those which had been shed on them, when in perspec- 
 tive, by the light of my enthusiasm* The silver locks 
 which I saw fluttering so majestically on the shoulders 
 of Lafayette, the hero of two worlds, were metamor- 
 phosed into a brown peruke, which made a pitiable 
 covering for a narrow skull. And even the dog Medor, 
 which I visited in the Court of the Louvre, and which, 
 encamped under tri-coloured flags and trophies, very 
 quietly allowed himself to be fed, he was not at all 
 the right dog, but quite an ordinary brute, who assumed 
 to himself merits not his own, as often happens with 
 the French; and, like many others, he made a profit 
 out of the glory of the Revolution. . . . He was pam- 
 pered and patronized, perhaps promoted to the highest
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINHICH HEINE. 245 
 
 posts, while the true Medor, some days after the battle, 
 modestly slunk out of sight, like the true people who 
 created the Revolution." 
 
 That it was not merely interest in French poli- 
 tics which sent Heine to Paris in 1831, but also a 
 perception that German air was not friendly to 
 sympathizers in July Revolutions, is humorously 
 intimated in the " Gestandnisse. " 
 
 *' I had done much and suffered much, and when the 
 sun of the July Revolution arose in France, I had 
 become very weary and needed some recreation. Also 
 my native air was every day more unhealthy for me, 
 and it was time I should seriously think of a change of 
 climate. I had visions; the clouds terrified me, and 
 made all sorts of ugly faces at me. It often seemed to 
 me as if the sun were a Prussian cockade; at night I 
 dreamed of a hideous black eagle, which gnawed my 
 liver ; and I was very melancholy. Add to this, I had 
 become acquainted with an old Berlin Justizrath, who 
 had spent many years in the fortress of Spandau, and 
 he related to me how unpleasant it is when one is 
 obliged to wear irons in winter. For myself I thought 
 it very unchristian that the irons were not warmed a 
 trifle. If the irons were warmed a little for us, they 
 would not make so unpleasant an impression, and even 
 chilly natures might then bear them very well; it 
 would be only proper consideration, too, if the fetters 
 were perfumed with essence of roses and laurels, as is 
 the case in this country [France]. I asked my Justiz- 
 rath whether he often got oysters to eat at Spandau. 
 He said, * No, Spandau was too far from the sea. ' 
 Moreover, he said meat was very scarce there, and 
 there was no kind of volatile except flies, which fell 
 into one's soup. . , . Now, as I really needed some 
 recreation, and, as Spandau is too far from the sea for 
 oysters to be got there, and the Spandau fly-soup did
 
 246 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 not seem very appetizing to me; as, besides all this, the 
 Prussian chains are very cold in winter, and could not 
 be conducive to my health, I resolved to visit Paris." 
 
 Since this time Paris has been Heine's home, 
 and his best prose works have been written either 
 to inform the Germans on French affairs, or to 
 inform the French on German philosophy and 
 literature. He became a correspondent of the 
 " Allgemeine Zeitung, " and his correspondence, 
 which extends, with an interruption of several 
 years, from 1831 to 1844, forms the volume entitled 
 " Franzbsische Zustande " (French Affairs), and the 
 second and third volume of his " Vermischte Schrif- 
 ten. " It is a witty and often wise commentary on 
 public men and public events. Louis Philippe, 
 Casimir Pe"rier, Thiers, Guizot, Eothschild, the 
 Catholic party, the Socialist party, have their turn 
 of satire and appreciation ; for Heine deals out 
 both with an impartiality which made his less 
 favourable critics Borne, for example charge 
 him with the rather incompatible sins of reckless 
 caprice and venality. Literature and art alternate 
 with politics ; we have now a sketch of George 
 Sand, or a description of one of Horace Vernet's 
 pictures ; now a criticism of Victor Hugo, or of 
 Liszt ; now an irresistible caricature of Spontini or 
 Kalkbrenner; and occasionally the predominant 
 satire is relieved by a fine saying, or a genial word 
 of admiration. And all is done with that airy 
 lightness, yet precision of touch, which distin- 
 guishes Heine beyond any living writer. The 
 charge of venality was loudly made against Heine 
 in Germany : first, it was said that he was paid to 
 write ; then, that he was paid to abstain from
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 247 
 
 writing; and the accusations were supposed to 
 have an irrefragable basis in the fact that he ac- 
 cepted a stipend from the French government. He 
 has never attempted to conceal the reception of 
 that stipend, and we think his statement (in the 
 " Vermischte Schriften ") of the circumstances under 
 which it was offered and received, is a sufficient 
 vindication of himself and M. Guizot from any 
 dishonour in the matter. 
 
 It may be readily imagined that Heine, with so 
 large a share of the Gallic element as he has in his 
 composition, was soon at his ease in Parisian soci- 
 ety, and the years here were bright with intellec- 
 tual activity and social enjoyment. " His wit, " 
 wrote August Lewald, " is a perpetual gushing 
 fountain ; he throws off the most delicious descrip- 
 tions with amazing facility, and sketches the most 
 comic characters in conversations. " Such a man 
 could not be neglected in Paris, and Heine was 
 sought on all sides, as a guest in distinguished 
 salons, as a possible proselyte in the circle of the 
 Saint Simonians. His literary productiveness seems 
 to have been furthered by this congenial life, 
 which, however, was soon to some extent embit- 
 tered by the sense of exile ; for since 1835 both his 
 works and his person have been the object of de- 
 nunciation by the German governments. Between 
 1833 and 1845 appeared the four volumes of the 
 " Salon " " Die Eomantische Schule " (both written, 
 in the first instance, in French) ; the book on 
 Borne ; " Atta Troll, " a romantic poem , " Deutsch- 
 land, " an exquisitely humorous poem, describing 
 his last visit to Germany, and containing some 
 grand passages of serious writing ; and the " Neue 
 Gedichte, " a collection of lyrical poems. Among
 
 248 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT, 
 
 the most interesting of his prose works are the 
 second volume of the "Salon," which contains a 
 survey of religion and philosophy in Germany, 
 and the " Komantische Schule, " a delightful intro- 
 duction to that phase of German literature known 
 as the Romantic School. The book on Borne, 
 which appeared in 1840, two years after the death 
 of that Writer, excited great indignation in Ger- 
 many, as a wreaking of vengeance on the dead, 
 an insult to the memory of a man who had 
 worked and suffered in the cause of freedom a 
 cause which was Heine's own. Borne we may 
 observe parenthetically, for the information of 
 those who are not familiar with recent German 
 literature was a remarkable political writer of 
 the ultra-liberal party in Germany, who resided in 
 Paris at the same time with Heine, a man of stern, 
 uncompromising partisanship and bitter humour. 
 Without justifying Heine's production of this 
 book, we see excuses for him which should temper 
 the condemnation passed on it. There was a radi- 
 cal opposition of nature between him and Borne ; 
 to use his own distinction, Heine is a Hellene 
 sensuous, realistic, exquisitely alive to the beau- 
 tiful, while Borne was a Nazarene ascetic, spir- 
 itualistic, despising the pure artist as destitute 
 of earnestness. Heine has too keen a perception 
 of practical absurdities and damaging exaggera- 
 tions ever to become a thoroughgoing partisan ; 
 and with a love of freedom, a faith in the ultimate 
 triumph of democratic principles, of which we see 
 no just reason to doubt the genuineness and con- 
 sistency, he has been unable to satisfy more zeal- 
 ous and one-sided liberals by giving his adhesion 
 to their views and measures, or by adopting a
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICfl HEINE. 249 
 
 denunciatory tone against those in the opposite 
 ranks. Borne oould not forgive what he regarded 
 as Heine's epicurean indifference and artistic dal- 
 liance, and he at length gave vent to his antipathy 
 in savage attacks on him through the press, accus- 
 ing him of utterly lacking character and principle, 
 and even of writing under the influence of venal 
 motives. To these attacks Heine remained abso- 
 lutely mute from contempt, according to his 
 own account; but the retort, which he resolutely 
 refrained from making during Borne'a life, comes 
 in this volume published after his death, with the 
 concentrated force of longrgathering thunder. The 
 utterly inexcusable part of the book is the cari- 
 cature of Borne 1 s friend, Madame Wohl, and the 
 scurrilous insinuations concerning Borne 's domes- 
 tic life. It is said, we know not with how much 
 truth, that Heine had to answer for these in a duel 
 with Madame Word's husband, and that, after 
 receiving a serious wound, he promised to with- 
 draw the offensive matter from a future edition. 
 That edition, however, has not been called for. 
 Whatever else we may think of the book, it is 
 impossible to deny its transcendent talent, the 
 dramatic vigour with which Borne is made present 
 to us, the critical acumen with which he is char- 
 acterized, and the wonderful play of wit, pathos, 
 and thought which runs through the whole. But 
 we will let Heine speak for himself, and first we 
 will give part of his graphic description of the 
 way in which Borne's mind and manners grated 
 on his taste : 
 
 " To the disgust which, In intercourse with Borne, 
 I was in danger of feeling towards those who surrounded 
 him, was added the annoyance I felt from hia perpet-
 
 250 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 ual talk about politics. Nothing but political argument, 
 and again political argument, even at table, where he 
 managed to hunt me out. At dinner, when I so gladly 
 forget all the vexations of the world, he spoiled the 
 best dishes for me by his patriotic gall, which he 
 poured as a bitter sauce over everything. Calf's feet 
 a la maitre d'hotel, then my innocent bonne bouche, he 
 completely spoiled for me by Job's tidings from Ger- 
 many, which he scraped together out of the most 
 unreliable newspapers. And then his accursed remarks, 
 which spoiled one's appetite! . . . This was a sort of 
 table-talk which did not greatly exhilarate me, and I 
 avenged myself by affecting an excessive, almost impas- 
 sioned indifference for the object of Borne's enthusiasm. 
 For example, Borne was indignant that immediately on 
 my arrival in Paris, I had nothing better to do than to 
 write for German papers a long account of the Exhibi- 
 tion of Pictures. I omit all discussion as to whether 
 that interest in Art which induced me to undertake 
 this work was so utterly irreconcilable with the Rev- 
 olutionary interests of the day ; but Borne saw in it a 
 proof of my indifference towards the sacred cause of 
 humanity, and I could in my turn spoil the taste of his 
 patriotic sauerkraut for him by talking all dinner- 
 time of nothing but pictures, of Robert's 'Reapers,' 
 Horace Vernet's 'Judith,' and Scheffer's 'Faust.' . . . 
 That I never thought it worth while to discuss my 
 political principles with him it is needless to say ; and 
 once when he declared that he had found a contradiction 
 in my writings, I satisfied myself with the ironical 
 answer, 'You are mistaken, mon cher ; such contradic- 
 tions never occur in my works, for always before I 
 begin to write, I read over the statement of my politi- 
 cal principles in my previous writings, that I may not 
 contradict myself, and that no one may be able to 
 reproach me with apostasy from my liberal principles.' " 
 
 And here is his own account of the spirit in 
 which the book was written :
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 251 
 
 "I was never Bb'rne's friend, nor was I ever his 
 enemy. The displeasure which he could often excite 
 in me was never very important, and he atoned for it 
 sufficiently by the cold silence which I opposed to all 
 his accusations and raillery. While he lived I wrote 
 not a line against him, I never thoiight about him, I 
 ignored him completely ; and that enraged him beyond 
 measure. If I now speak of him, I do so neither out 
 of enthusiasm nor out of uneasiness; I am conscious of 
 the coolest impartiality. I write here neither an apol- 
 ogy nor a critique; and, as in painting the man I go on 
 my own observation, the image I present of him ought 
 perhaps to be regarded as a real portrait. And such a 
 monument is due to him to the great wrestler who, 
 in the arena of ouv political games, wrestled so courage- 
 ously, and earned, if not the laurel, certainly the crown 
 of oak-leaves. I give an image with his true features, 
 without idealization the more like him, the more 
 honourable for his memory. He was neither a genius 
 nor a hero ; he was no Olympian god. He was a man, 
 a denizen of this earth; he was a good writer and a 
 great patriot. . . . Beautiful, delicious peace, which I 
 feel at this moment in the depths of my soul! Thou 
 rewardest me sufficiently for everything I have done and 
 for everything I have despised. ... I shall defend 
 myself neither from the reproach of indifference nor 
 from the suspicion of venality. I have for years, dur- 
 ing the life of the insinuator, held such self-justification 
 unworthy of me; now even decency demands silence. 
 That would be a frightful spectacle, polemics between 
 Death and Exile! Dost thou stretch out to me a 
 beseeching hand from the grave? Without rancour I 
 reach mine towards thee. . . . See how noble it is, and 
 pure! It was never soiled by pressing the hands of 
 the mob, any more than by the impure gold of the 
 people's enemy. In reality thou hast never injured 
 me. ... In all thy insinuations there is not a louis 
 d'or's worth of truth."
 
 252 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 In one of these years Heine was married, and, 
 in deference to the sentiments of his wife, married 
 according to the rites of the Catholic Church. On 
 this fact busy rumour afterwards founded the story 
 of his conversion to Catholicism, and could of 
 course name the day and the spot on which he 
 abjured Protestantism, In his " Gestandnisse 
 Heine publishes a denial of this rumour ; less, he 
 says, for the sake of depriving the Catholics of the 
 solace they may derive from their belief in a new 
 convert, than in order to cut off from another party 
 the more spiteful satisfaction of bewailing his 
 instability : 
 
 "That statement of time and place was entirely cor- 
 rect. I was actually on the specified day in the 
 specified church, which was, moreover, a Jesuit church, 
 namely, St. Sulpice ; and I then went through a religious 
 act. But this act was no odious abjuration, but a very 
 innocent conjugation; that is to say, my marriage, 
 already performed according to the civil law, there 
 received the ecclesiastical consecration, because my 
 wife, whose family are stanch. Catholics, would not 
 have thought her marriage sacred enough without such 
 a ceremony. And I would on no account cause this 
 beloved being any uneasiness or disturbance in her 
 religious views." 
 
 For sixteen years, from 1831 to 1847, Heine 
 lived that rapid, concentrated life which is known 
 only in Paris ; but then, alas ! stole on the " days 
 of darkness," and they were to be many. In 1847 
 he felt the approach of the terrible spinal disease 
 which has for seven years chained him to his bed 
 in acute suffering. The last time he went out of 
 doors, he tells us, was in May, 1848:-^-
 
 VENUS DE MILO
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 253 
 
 " With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and 
 I almost sank down as I entered the magnificent hall 
 where the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved 
 lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I 
 lay long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have 
 pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on 
 me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if she 
 would say : Dost thou not see, then, that I have no 
 arms, and thus cannot help thee? " 
 
 Since 1848, then, this poet, whom the lovely 
 objects of nature have always " haunted like a 
 passion, " has not descended from the second story 
 of a Parisian house ; this man of hungry intellect 
 has been shut out from all direct observation of 
 life, all contact with society, except such as is 
 derived from visitors to his sick-room. The terri- 
 ble nervous disease has affected his eyes ; the sight 
 of one is utterly gone, and he can only raise the 
 lid of the other by lifting it with his finger. 
 Opium alone is the beneficent genius that stills 
 his pain. We hardly know whether to call it an 
 alleviation or an intensification of the torture that 
 Heine retains his mental vigour, his poetic imagi- 
 nation, and his incisive wit ; for if this intellectual 
 activity fills up a blank, it widens the sphere of 
 suffering. His brother described him in 1851 as 
 still, in moments when the hand of pain was not 
 too heavy on him, the same Heinrich Heine, poet 
 and satirist by turns. In such moments, he would 
 narrate the strangest things in the gravest manner. 
 But when he came to an end, he would roguishly 
 lift up the lid of his right eye with his finger, to 
 see the impression he had produced ; and if his 
 audience had been listening with a serious face, he 
 would break into Homeric laughter. We have
 
 254 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 other proof than personal testimony, that Heine's 
 disease allows his genius to retain much of its 
 energy, in the " Eomanzero, " a volume of poems 
 published in 1851, and written chiefly during the 
 three first years of his illness ; and in the first 
 volume of the " Vermischte Schriften, " also the 
 product of recent years. Very plaintive is the 
 poet's own description of his condition, in the epi- 
 logue to the " Eomanzero : " 
 
 ''Do I really exist? My body is so shrunken that 
 I am hardly anything but a voice; and my bed reminds 
 me of the singing grave of the magician Merlin, \vbich 
 lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under tall 
 oaks whose tops soar like green flames towards heaven. 
 Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that 
 moves tbeir branches, brother Merlin, for no green 
 leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, where 
 early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of vehi- 
 cles, hammering, quarreling, and piano-strumming. 
 A grave without repose, death without the privileges of 
 the dead, wbo bave no debts to pay, and need write 
 neither letters nor books that is a piteous condition. 
 Long ago tbe measure has been taken for my coffin and 
 for my necrology, but I die so slowly, that the process 
 is tedious for me as well as my friends. But patience; 
 everything has an end. You will one day find the booth 
 closed where the puppet-show of my humour has so often 
 delighted you." 
 
 As early as 1850, it was rumoured, that since 
 Heine's illness a change had taken place in his 
 religious views ; and as rumour seldom stops short 
 of extremes, it was soon said that he had become 
 a thorough pietist, Catholics and Protestants by 
 turns claiming him as a convert. Such a change 
 in so uncompromising an iconoclast, in a man
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 255 
 
 who had been so zealous in his negations as Heine, 
 naturally excited considerable sensation in the camp 
 he was supposed to have quitted, as well as in that 
 he was supposed to have joined. In the second 
 volume of the " Salon " and in the " Bomantischc 
 Schule, " written in 1834 and 1835, the doctrine of 
 Pantheism is dwelt on with a fervour and unmixed 
 seriousness which show that Pantheism was then an 
 animating faith to Heine, and he attacks what he 
 considers the false spiritualism and asceticism of 
 Christianity as the enemy of true beauty in Art, 
 and of social well-being. Now, however, -it was 
 said that Heine had recanted all his heresies; but 
 from the fact that visitors to his sick-room brought 
 away very various impressions as to his actual 
 religious views, it seemed probable that his love of 
 mystification had found a tempting opportunity for 
 exercise on this subject, and that, as one of his 
 friends said, he was not inclined to pour out un- 
 mixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of 
 mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the 
 "Romanzero, " dated 1851, there appeared, amidst 
 much mystifying banter, a declaration that he had 
 embraced Theism and the belief in a future life, 
 and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and 
 reliability to this affirmation, was the fact that he 
 took care to accompany it with certain negations : 
 
 "As concerns myself, I can boast of no particular 
 progress in politics; I adhered (after 1848) to the same 
 democratic principles which had the homage of my 
 youth, and for which I have ever since glowed with 
 increasing fervour. In theology, on the contrary, I 
 must accuse myself of retrogression, since, as I have 
 already confessed, I returned to the old superstition 
 to a personal God. This fact is, once for all, not to be
 
 256 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 stifled, as many enlightened and well-meaning friends 
 would fain have had it. But I must expressly contra- 
 dict the report that my retrograde movement has carried 
 me as far as to the threshold of a Church, and that I have 
 even been received into her lap. No : my religious con- 
 victions and views have remained free from any tincture 
 of ecclesiasticism; no chiming of hells has allured me, 
 no altar-candles have dazzled me. I have dallied with 
 no dogmas, and have not utterly renounced my reason." 
 
 This sounds like a serious statement. But what 
 shall we say to a convert who plays with his newly 
 acquired belief in a future life, as Heine does in 
 the very next page? He says to his reader: 
 
 " Console thyself; we shall meet again in a better 
 world, where I also mean to write thee better books. 
 I take for granted that my health will there be improved, 
 and that Swedenborg has not deceived me. He relates, 
 namely, with great confidence, that we shall peacefully 
 carry on our old occupations in the other world, just as 
 we have done in this; that we shall there preserve our 
 individuality unaltered, and that death will produce no 
 particular change in our organic development. Sweden- 
 borg is a thoroughly honourable fellow, and quite worthy 
 of credit in what he tells us about the other world, where 
 he saw with his own eyes the persons who had played 
 a great part on our earth. Most of them, he says, 
 remained unchanged, and busied themselves with the 
 same things as formerly; they remained stationary, 
 were old-fashioned, rococo which now and then pro- 
 duced a ludicrous effect. For example, our dear Dr. 
 Martin Luther kept fast by his doctrine of Grace, about 
 which he had for three hundred years daily written down 
 the same mouldy arguments ; just in the same way as the 
 late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed 
 in the " Allgemeine Zeitung " one and the same article, 
 perpetually chewing over again the old cud of Jesuiti-
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 257 
 
 cal doctrine. But, as we have said, all persons who 
 once figured here below were not found by Swedenborg 
 in such a state of fossil immutability; many had con- 
 siderably developed their character, both for good and 
 evil, in the other world, and this gave rise to some 
 singular results. Some who had been heroes and saints 
 on earth had there sunk into scamps and good-for-noth- 
 ings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary 
 transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-con- 
 ceit mounted to Saint Anthony's head when he learned 
 what immense veneration and adoration had been paid 
 to him by all Christendom; and he who here below 
 withstood the most terrible temptations, was now quite 
 an impertinent rascal and dissolute gallows-bird, who 
 vied with his pig in rolling himself in the mud. The 
 chaste Susanna, from having been excessively vain of 
 her virtue, which she thought indomitable, came to a 
 shameful fall, and she who once so gloriously resisted 
 the two old men, was a victim to the seductions of the 
 young Absalom, the son of David. On the contrary, 
 Lot's daughters had in the lapse of time become very 
 virtuous, and passed in the other world for models of 
 propriety; the old man, alas! had stuck to the wine- 
 flask." 
 
 In his " Gestandnisse " the retraction of former 
 opinions and profession of Theism are renewed, but 
 in a strain of irony that repels our sympathy and 
 baffles our psychology. Yet what strange, deep 
 pathos is mingled with the audacity of the follow- 
 ing passage : 
 
 "What avails it me, that enthusiastic youths and 
 maidens crown my marble bust with laurel, when the 
 withered hands of an aged nurse are pressing Spanish 
 fiies behind my ears? What avails it me, that all the 
 roses of Shiraz glow and waft incense for me? Alas! 
 Shiraz is two thousand miles from the Rue d'Amster- 
 VOL. i. 17
 
 258 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 dam, where, in the wearisome loneliness of my sick- 
 room, I get no scent, except it be, perhaps, the perfume 
 of warmed towels. Alas ! God's satire weighs heavily 
 on me. The great Author of the universe, the Aris- 
 tophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating, with 
 crushing force, to me, the little, earthly German 
 Aristophanes, how my wittiest sarcasms are only piti- 
 ful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and 
 how miserably I am beneath him in humour, in colossal 
 mockery." 
 
 For our own part, we regard the paradoxical 
 irreverence with which Heine professes his theo- 
 retical reverence as pathological, as the diseased 
 exhibition of a predominant tendency, urged into 
 anomalous action by the pressure of pain and men- 
 tal privation, as the delirium of wit starved of its 
 proper nourishment. It is not for us to condemn, 
 who have never had the same burden laid on us ; 
 it is not for pygmies at their ease to criticise the 
 writhings of the Titan chained to the rock. 
 
 On one other point we must touch before quit- 
 ting Heine's personal history. There is a standing 
 accusation against him, in some quarters, of want- 
 ing political principle, of wishing to denationalize 
 himself, and of indulging in insults against his 
 native country. Whatever ground may exist for 
 these accusations, that ground is not, so far as we 
 see, to be found in his writings. He may not 
 have much, faith in German revolutions and revo- 
 lutionists ; experience, in his case as in that of 
 others, may have thrown his millennial anticipa- 
 tions into more distant perspective ; but we see no 
 evidence that he has ever swerved from his attach- 
 ment to the principles of freedom, or written any- 
 thing which to a philosophic mind is incompatible
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICII HEINE. 259 
 
 with true patriotism. He has expressly denied 
 the report that he wished to become naturalized in 
 France ; and his yearning towards his native land 
 and the accents of his native language is expressed 
 with a pathos the more reliable from the fact that 
 he is sparing in such effusions. We do not see 
 why Heine's satire of the blunders and foibles of 
 his fellow-countrymen should be denounced as the 
 crime of lese-patrie, any more than the political 
 caricatures of any other satirist. The real offences 
 of Heine are his occasional coarseness and his 
 unscrupulous personalities, which are reprehensi- 
 ble, not because they are directed against his 
 fellow-countrymen, but because they are person- 
 alities. That these offences have their precedents 
 in men whose memory the world delights to hon- 
 our does not remove their turpitude, but it is a 
 fact which should modify our condemnation in a 
 particular case ; unless, indeed, we are to deliver 
 our judgments on a principle of compensation, 
 making up for our indulgence in one direction 
 by our severity in another. On this ground of 
 coarseness and personality, a true bill may be 
 found against Heine ; not, we think, on the ground 
 that he has laughed at what is laughable in his 
 compatriots. Here is a specimen of the satire 
 under which we suppose German patriots wince : 
 
 "Rhenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of 
 the German Revolution. Zweibriicken was the Beth- 
 lehem in which the infant Saviour Freedom lay in 
 the cradle, and gave whimpering promise of redeeming 
 the world. Xear his cradle bellowed many an ox, who 
 afterwards, when his horns were reckoned on, showed 
 himself a very harmless brute. It was confidently 
 believed that the German Revolution would begin in
 
 2<5o ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Zweibriicken, and everything was there ripe for an out- 
 break. But, as has been hinted, the tender-heartedness 
 of some persons frustrated that illegal undertaking. 
 For example, among the Bipontine conspirators there 
 was a tremendous braggart, who was always loudest in 
 his rage, who boiled over with the hatred of tyranny; 
 and this man was fixed on to strike the first blow, by 
 cutting down a sentinel who kept an important post. 
 . . . ' What ! ' cried the man, when this order was given 
 him ' What ! me ! Can you expect so horrible, so 
 bloodthirsty an act of me ? I /, kill an innocent sen- 
 tinel ? I, who am the father of a family! And this 
 sentinel is perhaps also father of a family. One 
 father of a family kill another father of a family ? 
 Yes! Kill murder! 5 " 
 
 In political matters, Heine, like all men whose 
 intellect and taste predominate too far over their 
 impulses to allow of their becoming partisans, is 
 offensive alike to the aristocrat and the democrat. 
 By the one he is denounced as a man who holds 
 incendiary principles; by the other as a half- 
 hearted " trimmer. " He has no sympathy, as he 
 says, with " that vague, barren pathos, that use- 
 less effervescence of enthusiasm, which plunges, 
 with the spirit of a martyr, into an ocean of gener- 
 alities, and which always reminds me of the 
 American sailor, who had so fervent an enthusiasm 
 for General Jackson, that he at last sprang from 
 the top of a mast into the sea, crying, ' / die for 
 General Jackson ! ' 
 
 "But thou liest, Brutus, thou liest, Cassius, and 
 thou, too, liest, Asinius, in maintaining that my ridi- 
 cule attacks those ideas which are the precious acqui- 
 sition of Humanity, and for which I myself have so 
 striven and suffered. No! for the very reason that
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 261 
 
 those ideas constantly hover before the poet in glorious 
 splendour and majesty, he is the more irresistibly over- 
 come by laughter when he sees how rudely, awkwardly, 
 and clumsily those ideas are seized and mirrored in 
 the contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There are 
 mirrors which have so rough a surface that even an 
 Apollo reflected in them becomes a caricature and 
 excites our laughter. But we laugh then only at the 
 caricature, not at the god." 
 
 For the rest, why should we demand of Heine 
 that he should be a hero, a patriot, a solemn 
 prophet, any more than we should demand of a 
 gazelle that it should draw well in harness ? Na- 
 ture has not made him of her sterner stuff not of 
 iron and adamant, but of pollen of flowers, the juice 
 of the grape, and Puck's mischievous brain, plen- 
 teously .mixing also the dews of kindly affection 
 and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is, after 
 all, a tribute which his enemies pay him when 
 they utter their bitterest dictum, namely, that he 
 is " nur Dichter " only a poet. Let us accept 
 this point of view for the present, and, leaving all 
 consideration of him as a man, look at him simply 
 as a poet and literary artist. 
 
 Heine is essentially a lyric poet. The finest 
 products of his genius are 
 
 " Short swallow-flights of song, that dip 
 Their wings in tears, and skim away ; " 
 
 and they are so emphatically songs that, in read- 
 ing them, we feel as if each must have a twin 
 melody born in the same moment and by the same 
 inspiration. Heine is too impressible and mercu- 
 rial for any sustained production ; even in his 
 short lyrics his tears sometimes pass into laughter,
 
 262 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 and his laughter into tears ; and his longer poems, 
 " Atta Troll " and " Deutschland, " are full of 
 Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a wide 
 compass of notes ; he can take us to the shores of 
 the Northern Sea and thrill us by the sombre sub- 
 limity of his pictures and dreamy fancies ; he can 
 draw forth our tears by the voice he gives to our 
 own sorrows, or to the sorrows of " Poor Peter ; " 
 he can throw a cold shudder over us by a myste- 
 rious legend, a ghost story, or a still more ghastly 
 rendering of hard reality ; he can charm us by a 
 quiet idyl, shake us with laughter at his overflow- 
 ing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise 
 by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty 
 to the ludicrous. This last power is not, indeed, 
 essentially poetical ; but only a poet can use it 
 with the same success as Heine, for only a poet 
 can poise our emotion and expectation at such a 
 height as to give effect to the sudden fall. Heine's 
 greatest power as a poet lies in his simple pathos, 
 in the ever-varied but always natural expression 
 he has given to the tender emotions. We may 
 perhaps indicate this phase of his genius by re- 
 ferring to Wordsworth's beautiful little poem, 
 " She dwelt among the untrodden ways ; " the 
 conclusion : 
 
 "She dwelt alone, and few could know 
 
 When Lucy ceased to be; 
 
 But she is in her grave, and, oh! 
 
 The difference to me " 
 
 is entirely in Heine's manner; and so is Tenny- 
 son's poem of a dozen lines called " Circumstance. " 
 Both these poems have Heine's pregnant simpli- 
 city. But, lest this comparison should mislead, 
 we must say that there is no general resemblance
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 263 
 
 between either Wordsworth, or Tennyson, and 
 Heine. Their greatest qualities lie quite away 
 from the light, delicate lucidity, the easy, rippling 
 music, of Heine's style. The distinctive charm 
 of his lyrics may best be seen by comparing them 
 with Goethe's. Both have the same masterly, 
 finished simplicity and rhythmic grace ; but there 
 is more thought mingled with Goethe's feeling. 
 His lyrical genius is a vessel that draws more 
 water than Heine's, and, though it seems to glide 
 along with equal ease, we have a sense of greater 
 weight and force accompanying the grace of its 
 movement. 
 
 But, for this very reason, Heine touches our 
 hearts more strongly ; his songs are all music and 
 feeling ; they are like birds, that not only enchant 
 us with their delicious notes, but nestle against us 
 with their soft breasts, and make us feel the agi- 
 tated beating of their hearts. He indicates a whole 
 sad history in a single quatrain ; there is not an 
 image in it, not a thought; but it is beautiful, 
 simple, and perfect as a " big round tear ; " it is 
 pure feeling breathed in pure music : 
 
 " Anfangs wollt' ich fast verzagen 
 Und ich glaubt' ich trug es nie, 
 Und ich hab' es doch getragen, 
 Aber fragt mich nur nicht, wie." * 
 
 He excels equally in the more imaginative ex- 
 pression of feeling ; he represents it by a brief 
 image, like a finely cut cameo ; he expands it into 
 a mysterious dream, or dramatizes it in a little 
 story, half-ballad, half-idyl ; and in all these forms 
 his art is so perfect that we never have a sense of 
 
 1 At first I was almost in despair, and I thought I could neve* 
 bear it ; and yet I have borne it, only do not ask me how ?
 
 264 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 artificiality or of unsuccessful effort, but all seems 
 to have developed itself by the same beautiful 
 necessity that brings forth vine-leaves and grapes 
 and the natural curls of childhood. Of Heine's 
 humorous poetry, " Deutschland " is the most 
 charming specimen charming, especially, be- 
 cause its wit and humour grow out of a rich loam 
 of thought. " Atta Troll " is more original, more 
 various, more fantastic ; but it is too great a strain 
 on the imagination to be a general favourite. 
 We have said that feeling is the element in which 
 Heine's poetic genius habitually floats; but he can 
 occasionally soar to a higher region, and impart 
 deep significance to picturesque symbolism ; he 
 can flash a sublime thought over the past and into' 
 the future ; he can pour forth a lofty strain of 
 hope or indignation. Few could forget, after once 
 hearing them, the stanzas at the close of " Deutsch- 
 land, " in which he warns the King of Prussia not 
 to incur the irredeemable hell which the injured 
 poet can create for him, the singing flames of a 
 Dante's terza rima! 
 
 " Kennst du die Holle des Dante nicht, 
 Die schrecklicheii Terzetten ? 
 Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt 
 Den kann kein Gott mehr retten. 
 
 " Kein Gott, kein Heiland, erlost ihn je 
 Aus diesen singenden flammen ! 
 Nimm dich in Acht, dass wir dich nicht 
 Zu solcher Holle. verdaramen." 1 
 
 1 It is not fair to the English reader to indulge in German 
 quotations, but in our opinion poetical translations are usually 
 worse than valueless. For those who think differently, however, 
 we may mention that Mr. Stores Smith has published a modest 
 little book, containing " Selections from the Poetry of Heinrich 
 Heine," and that a meritorious (American) translation of Heine's 
 complete works, by Charles Leland, is now appearing in shilling 
 i umbers.
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 265 
 
 As a prosaist, Heine is, in one point of view, 
 even more distinguished than as a poet. The 
 German language easily lends itself to all the pur- 
 poses of poetry ; like the ladies of the Middle Ages, 
 it is gracious and compliant to the Troubadours. 
 But as these same ladies were often crusty and 
 repulsive to their unmusical mates, so the German 
 language generally appears awkward and unman- 
 ageable in the hands of prose-writers. Indeed, 
 the number of really fine German prosaists before 
 Heine would hardly have exceeded the numerating 
 powers of a New Hollander, who can count three 
 and no more. Persons the most familiar with 
 German prose testify that there is an extra fatigue 
 in reading it, just as we feel an extra fatigue from 
 our walk when it takes us over ploughed clay. 
 But in Heine's hands German prose, usually so 
 heavy, so clumsy, so dull, becomes like clay in 
 the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, bril- 
 liant; it is German in an allotropic condition. 
 No dreary labyrinthine sentences in which you 
 find " no end in wandering mazes lost ; " no chains 
 of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; 
 no digressions thrown in as parentheses ; but crys- 
 talline definiteness and clearness, fine and varied 
 rhythm, and all that delicate precision, all those 
 felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the 
 highest order of prose. And Heine has proved 
 what Madame de Stael seems to have doubted 
 that it is possible to be witty in German ; indeed, 
 in reading him, you might imagine that German 
 was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, 
 so subtle, so piquant does it become under his 
 management. He is far more an artist in prose than 
 Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and
 
 266 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the calm development which belong to Goethe's 
 style, for they are foreign to his mental character ; 
 but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the mani- 
 fold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its 
 effects. Heine is full of variety, of light and 
 shadow ; he alternates between epigrammatic pith, 
 imaginative grace, sly allusion, and daring piq- 
 uancy ; and athwart all these there runs a vein of 
 sadness, tenderness, and grandeur, which reveals 
 the poet. He continually throws out those finely 
 chiselled sayings which stamp themselves on the 
 memory, and become familiar by quotation. For 
 example : " The people have time enough, they are 
 immortal ; kings only are mortal. " " Wherever a 
 great soul utters its thoughts, there is Golgotha. " 
 " Nature wanted to see how she looked, and she 
 created Goethe. " " Only the man who has known 
 bodily suffering is truly a man ; his limbs have 
 their Passion history, they are spiritualized. " He 
 calls Rubens " this Flemish Titan, the wings of 
 whose genius were so strong that he soared as high 
 as the sun, in spite of the hundred-weight of 
 Dutch cheeses that hung on his legs. " Speaking 
 of Borne' s dislike to the calm creations of the true 
 artist, he says : " He was like a child which, in- 
 sensible to the glowing significance of a Greek 
 statue, only touches the marble and complains of 
 cold. " 
 
 The most poetic and specifically humorous of 
 Heine's prose writings are the " Eeisebilder. " 
 The comparison with Sterne is inevitable here ; 
 but Heine does not suffer from it, for if he falls 
 below Sterne in raciness of humour, he is far 
 above him in poetic sensibility and in reach and 
 variety of thought. Heine's humour is never per-
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 267 
 
 sistent, it never flows on long in easy gayety and 
 drollery; where it is not swelled by the tide of 
 poetic feeling, it is continually dashing down the 
 precipice of a witticism. It is not broad and 
 unctuous; it is aerial and sprite-like, a momen- 
 tary resting-place between his poetry and his wit. 
 In the " Eeisebilder " he runs through the whole 
 gamut of his powers, and gives us every hue of 
 thought, from the wildly droll and fantastic to the 
 sombre and the terrible. Here is a passage almost 
 Dantesque in conception : 
 
 "Alas! one ought in truth to write against no one 
 in this world. Each of us is sick enough in this great 
 lazaretto, and many a polemical writing reminds me 
 involuntarily of a revolting quarrel, in a little hospital 
 at Cracow, of which I chanced to be a witness, and 
 where it was horrible to hear how the patients mockingly 
 reproached each other with their infirmities; how one 
 who was wasted by consumption jeered at another who 
 was bloated by dropsy; bow one laughed at another's 
 cancer in the nose, and this one again at his neighbour's 
 locked jaw or squint; until at last the delirious fever- 
 patient sprang out of bed and tore away the coverings 
 from the wounded bodies of his companions, and nothing 
 was to be seen but hideous misery and mutilation." 
 
 And how fine is the transition in the very next 
 chapter, where, after quoting the Homeric descrip- 
 tion of the feasting gods, he says : 
 
 ' ' Then suddenly approached, panting, a pale Jew, 
 with drops of blood on his brow, with a crown of thorns 
 on his head, and a great cross laid on his shoulders; 
 and be threw tbe cross on the high table of the gods, 
 so that the golden cups tottered, and tbe gods became 
 dumb and pale, and grew even paler, till they at last 
 melted away into vapour."
 
 268 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 The richest specimens of Heine's wit are perhaps 
 to be found in the works which have appeared 
 since the " Eeisebilder. " The years, if they have 
 intensified his satirical bitterness, have also given 
 his wit a finer edge and polish. His sarcasms are 
 so subtly prepared and so slyly allusive, that they 
 may often escape readers whose sense of wit is not 
 very acute ; but for those who delight in the subtle 
 and delicate flavours of style, there can hardly be 
 any wit more irresistible than Heine's. We may 
 measure its force by the degree in which it has 
 subdued the German language to its purposes, and 
 made that language brilliant in spite of a long 
 hereditary transmission of dulness. As one of 
 the most harmless examples of his satire, take this 
 on a man who has certainly had his share of 
 adulation : 
 
 " Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate 
 M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated phi- 
 losopher even lay me under an obligation to praise him. 
 He belongs to that living pantheon of France, which 
 we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the 
 velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed 
 sternly repress all private feelings which might seduce 
 me into an excessive enthusiasm. Otherwise I might 
 be suspected of servility; for M. Cousin is very influ- 
 ential in the state by means of his position and his 
 tongue. This consideration might even move me to 
 speak of his faults as frankly as of his virtues, Will 
 he himself disapprove of this ? Assuredly not. I 
 know that we cannot do higher honour to great minds 
 than when we throw as strong a light on their demerits 
 as on their merits. When we sing the praises of a 
 Hercules, we must also mention that he once laid aside 
 the lion's skin and sat down to the distaff: what then? 
 he remains notwithstanding a Hercules! So when we
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINKICH HEINE. 269 
 
 relate similar circumstances concerning M. Cousin, we 
 must nevertheless add, with discriminating eulogy: 
 M. Cousin, if he has sometimes sat twaddling at the 
 distaff, has never laid aside the lion's skin. ... It is 
 true that, having been suspected of demagogy, he spent 
 some time in a German prison, just as Lafayette and 
 Richard Coeur de Lion. But that M. Cousin there in 
 his leisure hours studied Kant's 'Critique of Pure 
 Reason ' is to be doubted on three grounds. First, this 
 book is written in German. Secondly, in order to read 
 this book, a man must understand German. Thirdly, 
 M. Cousin does not understand German. ... I fear I 
 am passing unawares from the sweet waters of praise 
 into the bitter ocean of blame. Yes, on one account 
 I cannot refrain from bitterly blaming M. Cousin, 
 namely, that he who loves truth far more than he loves 
 Plato and Tenneman, is unjust to himself when he 
 wants to persuade us that he has borrowed something 
 from the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. Against 
 this self-accusation, I must take M. Cousin under my 
 protection. On my word and conscience, this honour- 
 able man has not stolen a jot from Schelling and Hegel, 
 and if he brought home anything of theirs, it was merely 
 their friendship. That does honour to his heart. But 
 there are many instances of such false self-accusation 
 in psychology. I knew a man who declared that he 
 had stolen silver spoons at the king's table; and yet 
 we all knew that the poor devil had never been pre- 
 sented at court, and accused himself of stealing these 
 spoons to make us believe that he had been a guest at 
 the palace. No! In German philosophy M. Cousin 
 has always kept the sixth commandment; here he has 
 never pocketed a single idea, not so much as a salt- 
 spoon of an idea. All witnesses agree in attesting that 
 in this respect M. Cousin is honour itself. ... I 
 prophesy to you that the renown of M. Cousin, like the 
 French Revolution, will go round the world! I hear 
 some one wickedly add: Undeniably the renown of
 
 270 ESSAYS OE GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 M. Cousin is going round the world, and it has already 
 taken its departure from France." 
 
 The following " symbolical myth " about Louis 
 Philippe is very characteristic of Heine's manner 
 
 "I remember very well that immediately on my 
 arrival [in Paris] I hastened to the Palais Royal to see 
 Louis Philippe. The friend who conducted me told 
 me that the king now appeared on the terrace only at 
 stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at any 
 time for five francs. ' For five francs ! ' I cried with 
 amazement; 'does he then show himself for money?' 
 'No; but he is shown for money, and it happens in 
 this way: There is a society of claqueurs, marchands 
 de contremarques, and such riff-raff, who offered every 
 foreigner to show him the king for five francs; if he 
 would give ten francs, he might see the king raise his 
 eyes to heaven, and lay his hand protestingly on his 
 heart; if he would give twenty francs, the king would 
 sing the Marseillaise. If the foreigner gave five francs, 
 they raised a loud cheering under the king's windows, 
 and His Majesty appeared on the terrace, bowed, and 
 retired. If ten francs, they shouted still louder, and 
 gesticulated as if they had been possessed, when the 
 king appeared, who then, as a sign of silent emotion, 
 raised his eyes to heaven, and laid his hand on his 
 heart. English visitors, however, would sometimes 
 spend as much as twenty francs, and then the enthusi- 
 asm mounted to the highest pitch; no sooner did the 
 king appear on the terrace, than the Marseillaise was 
 struck up and roared out frightfully, until Louis 
 Philippe, perhaps only for the sake of putting an end 
 to the singing, bowed, laid his hand on his heart, and 
 joined in the Marseillaise. Whether, as is asserted, 
 he beat time with his foot, I cannot say.' " 
 
 One more quotation and it must be our last
 
 GERMAN WIT: HEINRICH HEINE. 271 
 
 "Oh the women! We must forgive them much, for 
 they love much, and many. Their hate is properly only 
 love turned inside out. Sometimes they attribute some 
 delinquency to us, because they think they can in this 
 M'ay gratify another man. When they write, they have 
 always one eye on the paper and the other on a man 
 and this is true of all authoresses, except the Coun- 
 tess Hahn-Hahn, who has only one eye."
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 
 
 IT is an interesting branch of psychological obser- 
 vation to note the images that are habitually asso- 
 ciated with abstract or collective terms, what may 
 be called the picture-writing of the mind, which 
 it carries on concurrently with the more subtle sym- 
 bolism of language. Perhaps the fixity or variety 
 of these associated images would furnish a tolerably 
 fair test of the amount of concrete knowledge and 
 experience which a given word represents in the 
 minds of two persons who use it with equal famili- 
 arity. The word railways, for example, will probably 
 call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly 
 locomotive, the image either of a Bradshaw, or 
 of the station with which he is most familiar, or of 
 an indefinite length of tram-road ; he will alternate 
 between these three images which represent his stock 
 of concrete acquaintance with railways. But sup- 
 pose a man to have had successively the experience 
 of a navvy, an engineer, a traveller, a railway director 
 and shareholder, and a landed proprietor in treaty 
 with a railway company, and it is probable that the 
 range of images which would by turns present them- 
 selves to his mind at the mention of the word rail- 
 ways would include all the essential facts in the 
 existence and relations of the thing. Now it is possi- 
 ble for the firsc-mentioned personage to entertain 
 very expanded views as to the multiplication of rail- 
 ways in the abstract, and their ultimate function in
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 273 
 
 civilization. He may talk of a vast network of rail- 
 ways stretching over the globe, of future lines in 
 Madagascar, and elegant refreshment-rooms in the 
 Sandwich Islands, with none the less glibness because 
 his distinct conceptions on the subject do not extend 
 beyond his one station and his indefinite length of 
 tram-road. But it is evident that if we want a rail- 
 way to be made, or its affairs to be managed, this 
 man of wide views and narrow observation will 
 not serve our purpose. 
 
 Probably, if we could ascertain the images called 
 up by the terms " the people," " the masses," " the 
 proletariat," " the peasantry," by many who theorize 
 on those bodies with eloquence, or who legislate 
 without eloquence, we should find that they indicate 
 almost as small an amount of concrete knowledge, 
 that they are as far from completely representing 
 the complex facts summed up in the collective term, 
 as the railway images of our non-locomotive gentle- 
 man. How little the real characteristics of the 
 working-classes are known to those who are outside 
 them, how little their natural history has been 
 studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our art as well as 
 by our political and social theories. Where, in our 
 picture-exhibitions, shall we find a group of true 
 peasantry ? What English artist even attempts to 
 rival in truthfulness such studies of popular life as 
 the pictures of Teniers or the ragged boys of Murillo ? 
 Even one of the greatest painters of the pre-emi- 
 nently realistic school, while, in his picture of " The 
 Hireling Shepherd," he gave us a landscape of mar- 
 vellous truthfulness, placed a pair of peasants in the 
 foreground who were not much more real than the 
 idyllic swains and damsels of our chimney-ornaments. 
 Only a total absence of acquaintance and sympathy 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 with our peasantry could give a moment's popularity 
 to such a picture as " Cross-Purposes," where we 
 have a peasant-girl who looks as if she, knew L. E. 
 L.'s poems by heart, and English rustics, whose cos- 
 tume seems to indicate that they are meant for 
 ploughmen, with exotic features that remind us of a 
 handsome primo tenor e. Rather than such cockney 
 sentimentality as this, as an education for the taste 
 and sympathies, we prefer the most crapulous group 
 of boors that Teniers ever painted. But even those 
 among our painters, who aim at giving the rustic 
 type of features, who are far above the effeminate 
 feebleness of the "Keepsake" style, treat their 
 subjects under the influence of traditions and pre- 
 possessions rather than of direct observation. The 
 notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical 
 moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is 
 when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of 
 sound teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom 
 and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are 
 prejudices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind, 
 which looks for its subjects into literature instead 
 of life. The painter is still under the influence of 
 idyllic literature, which has always expressed the 
 imagination of the cultivated and town-bred, rather 
 than the truth of rustic life. Idyllic ploughmen are 
 jocund when they drive their team afield; idyllic 
 shepherds make bashful love under hawthorn bushes ; 
 idyllic villagers dance in the checkered shade, 
 and refresh themselves, not immoderately, with 
 spicy nut-brown ale. But no one who has seen 
 much of actual ploughmen thinks them jocund ; no 
 one who is well acquainted with the English peasan- 
 try can pronounce them merry. The slow gaze, in 
 which no sense of beauty beams, no humour twin-
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 275 
 
 kles, the slow utterance, and the heavy slouching 
 walk, remind one rather of that melancholy animal 
 the camel, than of the sturdy countryman, with 
 striped stockings, red waistcoat, and hat aside, who 
 represents the traditional English peasant. Observe 
 a company of haymakers. When you see them at 
 a distance, tossing up the forkfuls of hay in the 
 golden light, while the wagon creeps slowly with 
 its increasing burden over the meadow, and the 
 bright-green space, which tells of work done, gets 
 larger and larger, you pronounce the scene " smiling," 
 and you think these companions in labour must be 
 as bright and cheerful as the picture to which they 
 give animation. Approach nearer, and you will cer- 
 tainly find that haymaking time is a time for joking, 
 especially if there are women among the labourers : 
 but the coarse laugh that bursts out every now and 
 then and expresses the triumphant taunt, is as far 
 as possible from your conception of idyllic merri- 
 ment. That delicious effervescence of the mind 
 which we call fun, has no equivalent for the north- 
 ern peasant, except tipsy revelry ; the only realm 
 of fancy and imagination for the English clown 
 exists at the bottom of the third quart-pot. 
 
 The conventional countryman of the stage who 
 picks up pocket-books and never looks into them, 
 and who is too simple even to know that honesty 
 has its opposite, represents the still lingering mis- 
 take, that an unintelligible dialect is a guarantee 
 for ingenuousness, and that slouching shoulders indi- 
 cate an upright disposition. It is quite true that a 
 thresher is likely to be innocent of any adroit arith- 
 metical cheating, but he is not the less likely to 
 carry home his master's corn in his shoes and pocket ; 
 a reaper is not given to writing begging-letters, but
 
 276 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 he is quite capable of cajoling the dairymaid into 
 filling his small-beer bottle with ale. The selfish 
 instincts are not subdued by the sight of buttercups, 
 nor is integrity in the least established by that clas- 
 sic rural occupation, sheep-washing. To make men 
 moral, something more is requisite than to turn 
 them out to grass. 
 
 Opera peasants, whose unreality excites Mr- 
 Buskin's indignation, are surely too frank an ideali- 
 zation to be misleading ; and since popular chorus 
 is one of the most effective elements of the opera, 
 we can hardly object to lyric rustics in elegant lace 
 bodices and picturesque motley, unless we are pre- 
 pared to advocate a chorus of colliers in their pit 
 costume, or a ballet of char-women and stocking- 
 weavers. But our social novels profess to represent 
 the people as they are, and the unreality of their 
 representations is a grave evil The greatest benefit 
 we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novel- 
 ist, is the extension of our sympathies. Appeals 
 founded on generalizations and statistics require a 
 sympathy ready-made, a moral sentiment already in 
 activity ; but a picture of human life such as a great 
 artist can give, surprises even the trivial and the 
 selfish into that attention to what is apart from 
 themselves, which may be called the raw material 
 of moral sentiment. When Scott takes us into 
 Luckie Mucklebackit's cottage, or tells the story of 
 " The Two Drovers ; " when Wordsworth sings to us 
 the reverie of " Poor Susan ; " when Kingsley shows 
 us Alton Locke gazing yearningly over the gate 
 which leads from the highway into the first wood 
 he ever saw ; when Hornung paints a group of chim- 
 ney-sweepers, more is done towards linking the 
 higher classes with the lower, towards obliterating
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 277 
 
 the vulgarity of exclusiveness, than by hundreds of 
 sermons and philosophical dissertations. Art is the 
 nearest thing to life ; it is a mode of amplifying 
 experience and extending our contact with our fel- 
 low-men beyond the bounds of our personal lot. All 
 the more sacred is the task of the artist when he 
 undertakes to paint the life of the people. Falsifi- 
 cation here is far more pernicious than in the more 
 artificial aspects of life. It is not so very serious 
 that we should have false ideas about evanescent 
 fashions, about the manners and conversation of 
 beaux and duchesses ; but it is serious that our sym- 
 pathy with the perennial joys and struggles, the toil, 
 the tragedy, and the humour in the life of our more 
 heavily-laden fellow-men, should be perverted, and 
 turned towards a false object instead of the true 
 one. 
 
 This perversion is not the less fatal because the 
 misrepresentation which gives rise to it has what 
 the artist considers a moral end. The thing for 
 mankind to know is, not what are the motives and 
 influences which the moralist thinks ought to act on 
 the labourer or the artisan, but what are the motives 
 and influences which do act on him. We want to 
 be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the 
 sentimental peasant, but for the peasant in all his 
 coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his suspicious 
 selfishness. 
 
 We have one great novelist who is gifted with the 
 utmost power of rendering the external traits of our 
 town population ; and if he could give us their psy- 
 chological character their conception of life, and 
 their emotions with the same truth as their idiom 
 and manners, his books would be the greatest contri- 
 bution Art has ever made to the awakening of social
 
 278 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 sympathies. But while he can copy Mrs. Flemish's 
 colloquial style with the delicate accuracy of a sun- 
 picture, while there is the same startling inspiration 
 in his description of the gestures and phrases of 
 Boots, as in the speeches of Shakspeare's mobs or 
 numskulls, he scarcely ever passes from the humor- 
 ous and external to the emotional and tragic, without 
 becoming as transcendent in his unreality as he was 
 a moment before in his artistic truthfulness. But 
 for the precious salt of his humour, which compels 
 him to reproduce external traits that serve in some 
 degree as a corrective to his frequently false psy- 
 chology, his preternaturally virtuous poor children 
 and artisans, his melodramatic boatmen and cour- 
 tesans would be as obnoxious as Eugene Sue's 
 idealized proletaires, in encouraging the miserable 
 fallacy, that high morality and refined sentiment 
 can grow out of harsh social relations, ignorance, 
 and want ; or that the working-classes are in a 
 condition to enter at once into a millennial state of 
 altruism, wherein every one is caring for every one 
 else, and no one for himself. 
 
 If we need a true conception of the popular char- 
 acter to guide our sympathies rightly, we need it 
 equally to check our theories, and direct us in their 
 application. The tendency created by the splendid 
 conquests of modern generalization, to believe that 
 all social questions are merged in economical science, 
 and that the relations of men to their neighbours 
 may be settled by algebraic equations ; the dream 
 that the uncultured classes are prepared for a con- 
 dition which appeals principally to their moral 
 sensibilities ; the aristocratic dilettanteism which 
 attempts to restore the " good old times " by a sort 
 of idyllic masquerading, and to grow feudal fidelity
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 279 
 
 and veneration as we grow prize turnips, by an 
 artificial system of culture, none of these diver- 
 ging mistakes can co-exist with a real knowledge of 
 the people, with a thorough study of their habits, 
 their ideas, their motives. The landholder, the 
 clergyman, the mill-owner, the mining-agent, have 
 each an opportunity for making precious observa- 
 tions on different sections of the working-classes, 
 but unfortunately their experience is too often not 
 registered at all, or its results are too scattered to be 
 available as a source of information and stimulus 
 to the public mind generally. If any man of suffi- 
 cient moral and intellectual breadth, whose observa- 
 tions would not be vitiated by a foregone conclusion 
 or by a professional point of view, would devote 
 himself to studying the natural history of our social 
 classes, especially of the small shopkeepers, artisans, 
 and peasantry, the degree in which they are 
 influenced by local conditions, their maxims and 
 habits, the points of view from which they regard 
 their religious teachers, and the degree in which 
 they are influenced by religious doctrines, the inter- 
 action of the various classes on each other, and 
 what are the tendencies in their position towards 
 disintegration or towards development, and if, 
 after all this study, he would give us the result of 
 his observations in a book well nourished with 
 specific facts, his work would be a valuable aid to 
 the social and political reformer. 
 
 What we are desiring for ourselves has been in 
 some degree done for the Germans by Eiehl ; and 
 we wish to make his books known to our readers, 
 not only for the sake of the interesting matter they 
 contain, and the important reflections they suggest, 
 but also as a model for some future or actua]
 
 280 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 student of our own people. By way of introducing 
 Eiehl to those who are unacquainted with his writ- 
 ings, we will give a rapid sketch from his picture of 
 the German peasantry ; and perhaps this indication 
 of the mode in which he treats a particular branch 
 of his subject, may prepare them to follow us with 
 more interest when we enter on the general purpose 
 and contents of his works. 
 
 In England, at present, when we speak of the 
 peasantry, we mean scarcely more than the class of 
 farm-servants and farm-labourers ; and it is only in 
 the most primitive districts, as in "Wales, for example, 
 that farmers are included under the term. In order 
 to appreciate what Eiehl says of the German peas- 
 antry, we must remember what the tenant-farmers 
 and small proprietors were in England half a cen- 
 tury ago, when the master helped to milk his own 
 cows, and the daughters got up at one o'clock in the 
 morning to brew, when the family dined in the 
 kitchen with the servants, and sat with them round 
 the kitchen-fire in the evening. In those days the 
 quarried parlor was innocent of a carpet, and its 
 only specimens of art were a framed sampler and 
 the best tea-board ; the daughters, even of substan- 
 tial farmers, had often no greater accomplishment 
 in writing and spelling than they could procure at 
 a dame-school ; and, instead of carrying on senti- 
 mental correspondence, they were spinning their 
 future table-linen, and looking after every saving in 
 butter and eggs that might enable them to add to 
 the little stock of plate and china which they were 
 laying in against their marriage. In our own day, 
 setting aside the superior order of farmers, whose 
 style of living and mental culture are often equal 
 to that of the professional class in provincial towns,
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 281 
 
 we can hardly enter the least imposing farmhouse 
 without finding a bad piano in the " drawing-room," 
 and some old annuals, disposed with a symmetrical 
 imitation of negligence, on the table; though the 
 daughters may still drop their h's, their vowels are 
 studiously narrow ; and it is only in very primitive 
 regions that they will consent to sit in a covered 
 vehicle without springs, which was once thought an 
 advance in luxury on the pillion, 
 
 The condition of the tenant-farmers and small 
 proprietors in Germany is, we imagine, about on a 
 par, not, certainly, in material prosperity, but in 
 mental culture and habits, with that of the English 
 farmers who were beginning to be thought old- 
 fashioned nearly fifty years ago ; and if we add to 
 these the farm servants and labourers, we shall 
 have a class approximating in its characteristics to 
 the Bauerntlium, or peasantry, described by Blehl. 
 
 In Germany, perhaps more than in any other coun- 
 try it is among the peasantry that we must look for 
 the historical type of the national physique. In the 
 towns this type has become so modified to express 
 the personality of the individual, that even family 
 likeness is often but faintly marked. But the 
 peasants may still be distinguished into groups, 
 by their physical peculiarities. In one part of the 
 country we find a longer-legged, in another a broader- 
 shouldered race, which has inherited these pecu- 
 liarities for centuries. For example, in certain 
 districts of Hesse are seen long faces, with high 
 foreheads, long, straight noses, and small eyes, with 
 arched eyebrows and large eyelids. On comparing 
 these physiognomies with the sculptures in the 
 church of St. Elizabeth, at Marburg, executed in 
 the thirteenth century, it will be found that the
 
 282 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 same old Hessian type of face has subsisted 
 unchanged; with this distinction only, that the 
 sculptures represent princes and nobles, whose 
 features then bore the stamp of their race, while 
 that stamp is now to be found only among the 
 peasants. A painter who wants to draw mediaeval 
 characters with historic truth, must seek his models 
 among the peasantry. This explains why the old 
 German painters gave the heads of their subjects a 
 greater uniformity of type than the painters of our 
 day ; the race had not attained to a high degree of 
 individualization in features and expression. It 
 indicates, too, that the cultured man acts more as an 
 individual, the peasant more as one of a group. Hans 
 drives the plough, lives, and thinks just as Kunz 
 does ; and it is this fact, that many thousands of 
 men are as like each other in thoughts and habits 
 as so many sheep or oysters, which constitutes the 
 weight of the peasantry in the social and political 
 scale. 
 
 In the cultivated world each individual has his 
 style of speaking and writing ; but among the 
 peasantry it is the race, the district, the province, 
 that has its style, namely, its dialect, its phrase- 
 ology, its proverbs, and its songs, which belong 
 alike to the entire body of the people. This provin- 
 cial style of the peasant is again, like his physique, 
 a remnant of history, to which he clings with the 
 utmost tenacity. In certain parts of Hungary there 
 are still descendants of German colonists of the 
 twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who go about the 
 country as reapers, retaining their old Saxon songs 
 and manners, while the more cultivated German 
 emigrants in a very short time forget their own 
 language, and speak Hungarian. Another remark-
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 283 
 
 able case of the same kind is that of the Wends, a 
 Sclavonic race settled in Lusatia, whose numbers 
 amount to two hundred thousand, living either 
 scattered among the German population, or in sepa- 
 rate parishes. They have their own schools and 
 churches, and are taught in the Sclavonic tongue. 
 The Catholics among them are rigid adherents of 
 the Pope ; the Protestants, not less rigid adherents 
 of Luther, or Doctor Luther, as they are particular 
 in calling him a custom which, a hundred years 
 ago, was universal in Protestant Germany. The 
 Wend clings tenaciously to the usages of his Church, 
 and perhaps this may contribute not a little to the 
 purity in which he maintains the specific character- 
 istics of his race. German education, German law 
 and government, service in the standing army, 
 and many other agencies, are in antagonism to his 
 national exclusiveness ; but the wives and mothers 
 here, as elsewhere, are a conservative influence, and 
 the habits temporarily laid aside in the outer world 
 are recovered by the fireside. The Wends form 
 several stout regiments in the Saxon army ; they 
 are sought far and wide, as diligent and honest 
 servants; and many a weakly Dresden or Leipzig 
 child becomes thriving under the care of a Wendish 
 nurse. In their villages they have the air and 
 habits of genuine, sturdy peasants, and all their 
 customs indicate that they have been, from the first, 
 an agricultural people. For example, they have tra- 
 ditional modes of treating their domestic animals. 
 Each cow has its own name, generally chosen care- 
 fully, so as to express the special qualities of 
 the animal; and all important family events are 
 narrated to the bees, a custom which is found also 
 in Westphalia. Whether by the help of the bee*
 
 2*4 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOl 
 
 or not, the Wend farming is especially prosperous ; 
 and when a poor Bohemian peasant has a son born 
 to him, he binds him to the end of a long pole and 
 turns his face towards Lusatia, that he may be as 
 lucky as the Wends, who live there. 
 
 The peculiarity of the peasant's language consists 
 chiefly in his retention of historical peculiarities, 
 which gradually disappear under the friction of cul- 
 tivated circles. He prefers any proper name that may 
 be given to a day in the calendar, rather than the 
 abstract date, by which he very rarely reckons. In 
 the baptismal names of his children he is guided 
 by the old custom of the country, not at all by whim 
 and fancy. Many old baptismal names, formerly 
 common in Germany, would have become extinct but 
 for their preservation among the peasantry, espe- 
 cially in North Germany ; and so firmly have they 
 adhered to local tradition in this matter, that it 
 would be possible to give a sort of topographical 
 statistics of proper names, and distinguish a district 
 by its rustic names, as we do by its Flora and 
 Fauna. The continuous inheritance of certain 
 favourite proper names in a family, in some dis- 
 tricts, forces the peasant to adopt the princely 
 custom of attaching a numeral to the name, and 
 saying, when three generations are living at once, 
 Hans I., II., and III. ; or in the more antique 
 fashion Hans the elder, the middle, and the 
 younger. In some of our English counties there 
 is a similar adherence to a narrow range of proper 
 names ; and, as a mode of distinguishing collateral 
 branches in the same family, you will hear of 
 Jonathan's Bess, Thomas's Bess, and Samuel's 
 Bess the three Bessies being cousins. 
 
 The peasant's adherence to the traditional has
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 285 
 
 much greater inconvenience than that entailed by 
 a paucity of proper names. In the Black Forest 
 and in Hiittenberg you will see him in the dog- 
 days wearing a thick fur cap because it is an 
 historical fur cap, a cap worn by his grandfather. 
 In the Wetterau, that peasant-girl is considered 
 the handsomest who wears the most petticoats. To 
 go to field-labour in seven petticoats can be anything 
 but convenient or agreeable, but it is the tradi- 
 tionally correct thing ; and a German peasant-girl 
 would think herself as unfavourably conspicuous in 
 an untraditional costume, as an English servant-girl 
 would now think herself in a linsey-woolsey apron 
 or a thick muslin cap. In many districts no medical 
 advice would induce the rustic to renounce the 
 tight leather belt with which he injures his diges- 
 tive functions ; you could more easily persuade him 
 to smile on a new communal system than on the 
 unhistorical invention of braces. In the eighteenth 
 century, in spite of the philanthropic preachers of 
 potatoes, the peasant for years threw his potatoes 
 to the pigs and the dogs, before he could be per- 
 suaded to put them on his own table. However, 
 the unwillingness of the peasant to adopt innova- 
 tions has a not unreasonable foundation in the 
 fact, that for him experiments are practical, not 
 theoretical, and must be made with expense of 
 money instead of brains ; a fact that is not, perhaps, 
 sufficiently taken into account by agricultural theo- 
 rists, who complain of the farmer's obstinacy. The 
 peasant has the smallest possible faith in theoretic 
 knowledge ; he thinks it rather dangerous than 
 otherwise, as is well indicated by a Lower Rhenish 
 proverb : " One is never too old to learn, said an old 
 woman ; so she learned to be a witch."
 
 286 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Between many villages an historical feud, once 
 perhaps the occasion of much bloodshed, is still 
 kept up under the milder form of an occasional 
 round of cudgelling, and the launching of tradi- 
 tional nicknames. An historical feud of this kind 
 still exists, for example, among many villages on 
 the Ehine and more inland places in the neighbour- 
 hood. Rheinsclmacke (of which the equivalent is 
 perhaps " water-snake " ) is the standing term of 
 ignominy for the inhabitant of the Ehine village, 
 who repays it in kind by the epithet karst (mattock) 
 or Jcukuk (cuckoo), according as the object of his 
 hereditary hatred belongs to the field or the forest. 
 If any Komeo among the " mattocks " were to marry 
 a Juliet among the " water-snakes," there would be 
 no lack of Tybalts and Mercutios to carry the 
 conflict from words to blows, though neither side 
 knows a reason for the enmity. 
 
 A droll instance of peasant conservatism is told 
 of a village on the Taunus, whose inhabitants, from 
 time immemorial, had been famous for impromptu 
 cudgelling. For this historical offence the magis- 
 trates of the district had always inflicted the equally 
 historical punishment of shutting up the most in- 
 corrigible offenders, not in prison, but in their own 
 pigsty. In recent times, however, the government, 
 wishing to correct the rudeness of these peasants, 
 appointed an " enlightened " man as a magistrate, 
 who at once abolished the original penalty above 
 mentioned. But this relaxation of punishment was 
 so far from being welcome to the villagers, that they 
 presented a petition praying that a more energetic 
 man might be given them as a magistrate, who 
 would have the courage to punish according to law 
 and justice, "as had been beforetinie." And the
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 287 
 
 magistrate who abolished incarceration in the pig- 
 sty could never obtain the respect of the neigh- 
 bourhood. This happened no longer ago than the 
 beginning of the present century. 
 
 But it must not be supposed that the historical 
 piety of the German peasant extends to anything 
 not immediately connected with himself. He has 
 the warmest piety towards the old tumble-down 
 house which his grandfather built, and which nothing 
 will induce him to improve ; but towards the vener- 
 able ruins of the old castle that overlooks his village, 
 he has no piety at all, and carries off its stones to 
 make a fence for his garden, or tears down the 
 gothic carving of the old monastic church, which is 
 " nothing to him," to mark off a foot-path through 
 his field. It is the same with historical traditions. 
 The peasant has them fresh in his memory, so far 
 as they relate to himself. In districts where the 
 peasantry are unadulterated, you discern the rem- 
 nants of the feudal relations in innumerable customs 
 and phrases, but you will ask in vain for historical 
 traditions concerning the empire, or even concern- 
 ing the particular princely house to which the 
 peasant is subject. He can tell you what "half 
 people and whole people " mean ; in Hesse you will 
 still hear of " four horses making a whole peasant," 
 or of " four-day and three-day peasants ; " but you 
 will ask in vain about Charlemagne and Frederic 
 Barbarossa. 
 
 Kiehl well observes that the feudal system, which 
 made the peasant the bondman of his lord, was an 
 immense benefit in a country, the greater part of 
 which had still to be colonized, rescued the peas- 
 ant from vagabondage, and laid the foundation of 
 persistency and endurance in future generations.
 
 288 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 If a free German peasantry belongs only to modern 
 times, it is to his ancestor who was a serf and 
 even, in the earliest times, a slave that the peas- 
 ant owes the foundation of his independence, namely, 
 his capability of a settled existence, nay, his 
 unreasoning persistency, which has its important 
 function in the development of the race. 
 
 Perhaps the very worst result of that unreason- 
 ing persistency is the peasant's inveterate habit of 
 litigation. Every one remembers the immortal 
 description of Dandie Dinmont's importunate ap- 
 plication to Lawyer Pleydell to manage his " bit 
 lawsuit," till at length Pleydell consents to help 
 him to ruin himself, on the ground that Dandie 
 may fall into worse hands. It seems this is a scene 
 which has many parallels in Germany. The farmer's 
 lawsuit is his point of honour ; and he will carry it 
 through, though he knows from the very first day 
 that he shall get nothing by it. The litigious peas- 
 ant piques himself, like Mr. Saddletree, on his 
 knowledge of the law, and this vanity is the chief 
 impulse to many a lawsuit. To the mind of the 
 peasant, law presents itself as the " custom of the 
 country," and it is his pride to be versed in all cus- 
 toms. Custom with him holds the place of senti- 
 ment, of theory, and, in many cases, of affection. 
 Biehl justly urges the importance of simplifying 
 law proceedings, so as to cut off this vanity at its 
 source, and also of encouraging, by every possible 
 means, the practice of arbitration. 
 
 The peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, 
 for the same reason that he does not make love and 
 marry in summer,: because he has no time for 
 that sort of thing. Anything is easier to him than 
 to move out of his habitual course, and he is
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 289 
 
 attached even to his privations. Some years ago 
 a peasant youth, out of the poorest and remotest 
 region of the Westerwald, was enlisted as a recruit, 
 at Weilburg in Nassau. The lad, having never in 
 his life slept in a bed, when he had got into one for 
 the first time began to cry like a child; and he 
 deserted twice because he could not reconcile him- 
 self to sleeping in a bed, and to the " fine " life of 
 the barracks ; he was homesick at the thought of 
 his accustomed poverty and his thatched hut. A 
 strong contrast, this, with the feeling of the poor in 
 towns, who would be far enough from deserting 
 because their condition was too much improved ! 
 The genuine peasant is never ashamed of his rank 
 and calling ; he is rather inclined to look down on 
 every one who does not wear a smock frock, and 
 thinks a man who has the manners of the gentry is 
 likely to be rather windy and unsubstantial. In 
 some places, even in French districts, this feeling is 
 strongly symbolized by the practice of the peasantry, 
 on certain festival days, to dress the images of the 
 saints in peasant's clothing. History tells us of all 
 kinds of peasant insurrections, the object of which 
 was to obtain relief for the peasants from some of 
 their many oppressions ; but of an effort on their 
 part to step out of their hereditary rank and calling, 
 to become gentry, to leave the plough and carry on 
 the easier business of capitalists or government- 
 functionaries, there is no example. 
 
 The German novelists who undertake to give 
 pictures of peasant-life, fall into the same mistake 
 as our English novelists; they transfer their own 
 feelings to ploughmen and woodcutters, and give 
 them both joys and sorrows of which they know 
 nothing. The peasant never questions the obliga- 
 
 VOL. I. 19
 
 290 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 tion of family ties, he questions no custom, but 
 tender affection, as it exists amongst the refined 
 part of mankind, is almost as foreign to him as 
 white hands and filbert-shaped nails. That the 
 aged father who has given up his property to his 
 children on condition of their maintaining him for 
 the remainder of his life, is very far from meeting 
 with delicate attentions, is indicated by the proverb 
 current among the peasantry, " Don't take your 
 clothes off before you go to bed." Among rustic 
 moral tales and parables, not one is more universal 
 than the story of the ungrateful children, who made 
 their gray-headed father, dependent on them for a 
 maintenance, eat at a wooden trough, because he 
 shook the food out of his trembling hands. Then 
 these same ungrateful children observed one day 
 that their own little boy was making a tiny wooden 
 trough ; and when they asked him what it was 
 for, he answered, that his father and mother might 
 eat out of it, when he was a man and had to keep 
 them. 
 
 Marriage is a very prudential affair, especially 
 among the peasants who have the largest share of 
 property. Politic marriages are as common among 
 them as among princes ; and when a peasant-heiress 
 in Westphalia marries, her husband adopts her 
 name, and places his own after it with the prefix 
 yeborner (nee). The girls marry young, and the 
 rapidity with which they get old and ugly is one 
 among the many proofs that the early years of 
 marriage are fuller of hardships than of conjugal 
 tenderness. " When our writers of village stories," 
 says Eiehl, " transferred their own emotional life to 
 the peasant, they obliterated what is precisely his 
 most predominant characteristic, namely, that with
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 291 
 
 him general custom holds .the place of individual 
 feeling." 
 
 We pay for greater emotional susceptibility too 
 often by nervous diseases of which the peasant 
 knows nothing. To him headache is the least of 
 physical evils, because he thinks headwork the 
 easiest and least indispensable of all labour. Hap- 
 pily, many of the younger sons in peasant families, 
 by going to seek their living in the towns, carry 
 their hardy nervous system to amalgamate with the 
 overwrought nerves of our town population, and re- 
 fresh them with a little rude vigour. And a return 
 to the habits of peasant life is the best remedy for 
 many moral as well as physical diseases induced by 
 perverted civilization. Riehl points to colonization 
 as presenting the true field for this regenerative 
 process. On the other side of the ocean, a man 
 will have the courage to begin life again as a peas- 
 ant, while at home, perhaps, opportunity as well as 
 courage will fail him. Apropos of this subject of 
 emigration, he remarks the striking fact, that the 
 native shrewdness and mother-wit of the German 
 peasant seem to forsake him entirely when he has 
 to apply them under new circumstances, and on 
 relations foreign to his experience. Hence it is that 
 the German peasant who emigrates, so constantly 
 falls a victim to unprincipled adventurers in the 
 preliminaries to emigration ; but if once he gets his 
 foot on the American soil, he exhibits all the first- 
 rate qualities of an agricultural colonist ; and among 
 all German emigrants, the peasant class are the 
 most successful. 
 
 But many disintegrating forces have been at work 
 on the peasant character, and degeneration is unhap- 
 pily going on at a greater pace than development
 
 292 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 In the wine districts especially, the inability of the 
 small proprietors to bear up under the vicissitudes 
 of the market, or to insure a high quality of wine 
 by running the risks of a late vintage, and the com- 
 petition of beer and cider with the inferior wines, 
 have tended to produce that uncertainty of gain 
 which, with the peasant, is the inevitable cause of 
 demoralization. The small peasant proprietors are 
 not a new class in Germany, but many of the evils 
 of their position are new. They are more depend- 
 ent on ready money than formerly : thus, where a 
 peasant used to get his wood for building and firing 
 from the common forest, he has now to pay for it 
 with hard cash ; he used to thatch his own house, 
 with the help perhaps of a neighbour, but now he 
 pays a man to do it for him ; he used to pay taxes 
 in kind, he now pays them in money. The chances 
 of the market have to be discounted, and the peas- 
 ant falls into the hands of money-lenders. Here is 
 one of the cases in which social policy clashes with 
 a purely economical policy. 
 
 Political vicissitudes have added their influence 
 to that of economical changes in disturbing that 
 dim instinct, that reverence for traditional custom, 
 which is the peasant's principle of action. He is 
 in the midst of novelties for which he knows no 
 reason changes in political geography, changes of 
 the government to which he owes fealty, changes 
 in bureaucratic management and police regulations. 
 He finds himself in a new element, before an appar- 
 atus for breathing in it is developed in him. His 
 only knowledge of modern history is in some of its 
 results for instance, that he has to pay heavier 
 taxes from year to year. His chief idea of a gov- 
 ernment is of a power that raises his taxes, opposes
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 293 
 
 his harmless customs, and torments him with new 
 formalities. The source of all this is the false 
 system of " enlightening " the peasant which has 
 been adopted by the bureaucratic governments. A 
 system which disregards the traditions and heredi- 
 tary attachments of the peasant, and appeals only to 
 a logical understanding which is not yet developed 
 in him, is simply disintegrating and ruinous to the 
 peasant character. The interference with the com- 
 munal regulations has been of this fatal character. 
 Instead of endeavouring to promote to the utmost 
 the healthy life of the Commune, as an organism 
 the conditions of which are bound up with the his- 
 torical characteristics of the peasant, the bureau- 
 cratic plan of government is bent on improvement 
 by its patent machinery of state-appointed function- 
 aries and off-hand regulations in accordance with 
 modern enlightenment. The spirit of communal 
 exclusiveness, the resistance to the indiscriminate 
 establishment of strangers, is an intense traditional 
 feeling in the peasant. " This gallows is for us and 
 our children," is the typical motto of this spirit. 
 But such exclusiveness is highly irrational, and 
 repugnant to modern liberalism ; therefore a bureau- 
 cratic government at once opposes it, and encourages 
 to the utmost the introduction of new inhabitants 
 in the provincial communes. Instead of allowing 
 the peasants to manage their own affairs, and, if 
 they happen to believe that five and four make 
 eleven, to unlearn the prejudice by their own expe- 
 rience in calculation, so that they may gradually 
 understand processes, and not merely see results, 
 bureaucracy comes with its "Eeady Keck oner" 
 and works all the peasant's sums for him the 
 surest way of maintaining him in his stupidity, 
 however it may shake his prejudice.
 
 294 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 Another questionable plan for elevating the peas- 
 ant is the supposed elevation of the clerical char- 
 acter, by preventing the clergyman from cultivating 
 more than a trifling part of the land attached to his 
 benefice, that he may be as much as possible of 
 a scientific theologian, and as little as possible of 
 a peasant. In this, Kiehl observes, lies one great 
 source of weakness to the Protestant Church as 
 compared with the Catholic, which finds the great 
 majority of its priests among the lower orders ; and 
 we have had the opportunity of making an analo- 
 gous comparison in England, where many of us can 
 remember country districts in which the great mass 
 of the people were Christianized by illiterate Meth- 
 odist and Independent ministers, while the influence 
 of the parish clergyman among the poor did not 
 extend much beyond a few old women in scarlet 
 cloaks, and a few exceptional church-going labourers. 
 
 Bearing in mind the general characteristics of 
 the German peasant, it is easy to understand his 
 relation to the revolutionary ideas and revolution* 
 ary movements of modern times. The peasant, in 
 Germany as elsewhere, is a born grumbler. He has 
 always plenty of grievances in his pocket, but he 
 does not generalize those grievances ; he does not 
 complain of government or society, probably because 
 he has good reason to complain of the burgomaster. 
 When a few sparks from the first French Revolu- 
 tion fell among the German peasantry, and in certain 
 villages of Saxony the country-people assembled 
 together to write down their demands, there was no 
 glimpse in their petition of the universal rights of 
 man, but simply of their own particular affairs as 
 Saxon peasants. Again, after the July Revolution 
 of 1830, there were many insignificant peasant insur- 
 rections ; but the object of almost all was the removal
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 295 
 
 of local grievances. Toll-houses were pulled down ; 
 stamped paper was destroyed ; in some places there 
 was a persecution of wild boars ; in others, of that 
 plentiful tame animal, the German Hath, or coun- 
 cillor who is never called into council. But in 1848 
 it seemed as if the movements of the peasants had 
 taken a new character ; in the small western states 
 of Germany it seemed as if the whole class of peas- 
 antry was in insurrection. But, in fact, the peasant 
 did not know the meaning of the part he was play- 
 ing. He had heard that everything was being set 
 right in the towns, and that wonderful things were 
 happening there ; so he tied up his bundle and set 
 off. Without any distinct object or resolution, the 
 country-people presented themselves on the scene 
 of commotion, and were warmly received by the 
 party leaders. But, seen from the windows of 
 ducal palaces and ministerial hotels, these swarms 
 of peasants had quite another aspect, and it was 
 imagined that they had a common plan of co-oper- 
 ation. This, however, the peasants have never had. 
 Systematic co-operation implies general conceptions, 
 and a provisional subordination of egoism, to which 
 even the artisans of towns have rarely shown them- 
 selves equal, and which are as foreign to the mind 
 of the peasant as logarithms or the doctrine of 
 chemical proportions. And the revolutionary fer- 
 vour of the peasant was soon cooled. The old 
 mistrust of the towns was reawakened on the spot. 
 The Tyrolese peasants saw no great good in the 
 freedom of the press, and the constitution, because 
 these changes "seemed to please the gentry so 
 much." Peasants who had given their voices storm- 
 ily for a German parliament, asked afterwards, with 
 a doubtful look, whether it were to consist of infan-
 
 296 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 try or cavalry. When royal domains were declared 
 the property of the state, the peasants in some 
 small principalities rejoiced over this, because they 
 interpreted it to mean that every one would have 
 his share in them, after the manner of the old 
 common and forest rights. 
 
 The very practical views of the peasants, with 
 regard to the demands of the people, were in amus- 
 ing contrast with the abstract theorizing of the 
 educated townsmen. The peasant continually with- 
 held all state payments until he saw how matters 
 would turn out, and was disposed to reckon up the 
 solid benefit, in the form of land or money, that 
 might come to him from the changes obtained. 
 While the townsman was heating his brains about 
 representation on the broadest basis, the peasant 
 asked if the relation between tenant and landlord 
 would continue as before, and whether the removal 
 of the feudal obligations meant that the farmer 
 should become owner of the land. 
 
 It is in the same naive way that Communism is 
 interpreted by the German peasantry. The wide 
 spread among them of communistic doctrines, the 
 eagerness with which they listened to a plan for 
 the partition of property, seemed to countenance 
 the notion that it was a delusion to suppose the 
 peasant would be secured from this intoxication by 
 his love of secure possession and peaceful earnings. 
 But, in fact, the peasant contemplated partition by 
 the light of an historical reminiscence rather than 
 of novel theory. The golden age, in the imagina- 
 tion of the peasant, was the time when every 
 member of the commune had a right to as much 
 wood from the forest as would enable him to sell 
 some, after using what he wanted in firing, in
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 297 
 
 which the communal possessions were so profitable 
 that, instead of his having to pay rates at the end 
 of the year, each member of the commune was 
 something in pocket. Hence the peasants in gen- 
 eral understood by " partition " that the state lands, 
 especially the forests, would be divided among the 
 communes, and that, by some political legerdemain 
 or other, everybody would have free firewood, free 
 grazing for his cattle, and over and above that, a 
 piece of gold without working for it. That he 
 should give up a single clod of his own to further 
 the general partition had never entered the mind 
 of the peasant communist ; and the perception that 
 this was an essential preliminary to partition, was 
 often a sufficient cure for his Communism. 
 
 In villages lying in the neighbourhood of large 
 towns, however, where the circumstances of the 
 peasantry are very different, quite another inter- 
 pretation of Communism is prevalent. Here the 
 peasant is generally sunk to the position of the pro- 
 letaire, living from hand to mouth ; he has nothing 
 to lose, but everything to gain by partition. The 
 coarse nature of the peasant has here been corrupted 
 into bestiality by the disturbance of his instincts, 
 while he is as yet incapable of principles ; and in this 
 type of the degenerate peasant is seen the worst 
 example of ignorance intoxicated by theory. 
 
 A significant hint as to the interpretation the 
 peasants put on revolutionary theories may be 
 drawn from the way they employed the few weeks 
 in which their movements were unchecked. They 
 felled the forest trees and shot the game ; they 
 withheld taxes ; they shook off the imaginary or 
 real burdens imposed on them by their mediatized 
 princes, by presenting their demands in a very rough
 
 298 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 way before the ducal or princely Schloss ; they set 
 their faces against the bureaucratic management of 
 the communes, deposed the government function- 
 aries who had been placed over ' them as burgo- 
 masters and magistrates, and abolished the whole 
 bureaucratic system of procedure, simply by taking 
 no notice of its regulations, and recurring to some 
 tradition, some old order or disorder of things. In 
 all this it is clear that they were animated not in the 
 least by the spirit of modern revolution, but by a 
 purely narrow and personal impulse towards reaction. 
 
 The idea of constitutional government lies quite 
 beyond the range of the German peasant's concep- 
 tions. His only notion of representation is that of 
 a representation of ranks, of classes ; his only notion 
 of a deputy is of one who takes care, not of the 
 national welfare, but of the interests of his own 
 order. Herein lay the great mistake of the demo- 
 cratic party, in common with the bureaucratic gov- 
 ernments, that they entirely omitted the peculiar 
 character of the peasant from their political calcu- 
 lations. They talked of the people, and forgot that 
 the peasants were included in the term. Only a 
 baseless misconception of the peasant's character 
 could induce the supposition that he would feel the 
 slightest enthusiasm about the principles involved 
 in the reconstitution of the Empire, or even about 
 the reconstitution itself. He has no zeal for a 
 written law, as such, but only so far as it takes the 
 form of a living law, a tradition. It was the external 
 authority which the revolutionary party had won in 
 Baden that attracted the peasants into a participa- 
 tion of the struggle. 
 
 Such, Kiehl tells us, are the general characteristics 
 of the German peasantry, characteristics which sub-
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 299 
 
 sist amidst a wide variety of circumstances. In 
 Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, the peas- 
 ant lives on extensive estates ; in Westphalia he lives 
 in large isolated homesteads; in the Westerwald 
 and in Sauerland, in little groups of villages and 
 hamlets ; on the Khine, land is for the most part 
 parcelled out among small proprietors, who live 
 together in large villages. Then, of course, the 
 diversified physical geography of Germany gives 
 rise to equally diversified methods of land-culture ; 
 and out of these various circumstances grow nu- 
 merous specific differences in manner and character. 
 But the generic character of the German peasant is 
 everywhere the same, in the clean mountain- 
 hamlet and in the dirty fishing-village on the coast, 
 in the plains of North Germany and in the back- 
 woods of America. " Everywhere he has the same 
 historical character, everywhere custom is his 
 supreme law. Where religion and patriotism are 
 still a naive instinct, are still a sacred custom, there 
 begins the class of the German Peasantry." 
 
 Our readers will perhaps already have gathered 
 from the foregoing portrait of the German peasant, 
 that Eiehl is not a man who looks at objects 
 through the spectacles either of the doctrinaire 
 or the dreamer; and they will be ready to believe 
 what he tells us in his Preface, namely, that years 
 ago he began his wanderings over the hills and 
 plains of Germany for the sake of obtaining, in 
 immediate intercourse with the people, that com- 
 pletion of his historical, political, and economical 
 studies which he was unable to find in books. He 
 began his investigations with no party preposses- 
 sions, and his present views were evolved entirely 
 from his own gradually amassed observations. He
 
 300 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 was, first of all, a pedestrian, and only in the second 
 place a political author. The views at which he 
 has arrived by this inductive process he sums up 
 in the term, social-political-conservatism; but his 
 conservatism is, we conceive, of a thoroughly philo- 
 sophical kind. He sees in European society incar- 
 nate history, and any attempt to disengage it from 
 its historical elements must, he believes, be simply 
 destructive of social vitality. 1 What has grown up 
 historically can only die out historically, by the 
 gradual operation of necessary laws. The external 
 conditions which society has inherited from the 
 past are but the manifestation of inherited internal 
 conditions in the human beings who compose it; 
 the internal conditions and the external are related 
 to each other as the organism and its medium, and 
 development can take place only by the gradual 
 consentaneous development of both. Take the fa- 
 miliar example of attempts to abolish titles, which 
 have been about as effective as the process of cutting 
 off poppy-heads in a cornfield. Jedem Mensciien, 
 says Biehl, ist sein Zopf angeboren, warum soil denn 
 der sociale Sprachgebrauch nicht auch sein Zopf ha- 
 ben ? which we may render: " As long as snobbism 
 runs in the blood, why should it not run in our 
 speech ? " As a necessary preliminary to a purely 
 rational society, you must obtain purely rational 
 men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of 
 hereditary affection and antipathy ; which is as easy 
 as to get running streams without springs, or the 
 leafy shade of the forest without the secular growth 
 of trunk and branch. 
 
 1 Throughout this article, in our statement of Riehl's opinions, 
 we must be understood not as quoting Riehl, but as interpreting 
 and illustrating him.
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 301 
 
 The historical conditions of society may be com- 
 pared with those of language. It must be admitted 
 that the language of cultivated nations is in any- 
 thing but a rational state ; the great sections of the 
 civilized world are only approximatively intelligible 
 to each other, and even that, only at the cost of 
 long study ; one word stands for many things, and 
 many words for one thing ; the subtle shades of 
 meaning, and still subtler echoes of association, 
 make language an instrument which scarcely any- 
 thing short of genius can wield with defmiteness 
 and certainty. Suppose, then, that the effect which 
 has been again and again made to construct a uni- 
 versal language on a rational basis has at length 
 succeeded, and that you have a language which has 
 no uncertainty, no whims of idiom, no cumbrous 
 forms, no fitful simmer of many-hued significance, 
 no hoary archaisms " familiar with forgotten years," 
 a patent deodorized and non-resonant language, 
 which effects the purpose of communication as per- 
 fectly and rapidly as algebraic signs. Your language 
 may be a perfect medium of expression to science, 
 but will never express life, which is a great deal 
 more than science. With the anomalies and incon- 
 veniences of historical language, you will have parted 
 with its music and its passions, and its vital quali- 
 ties as an expression of individual character, with 
 its subtle capabilities of wit, with everything that 
 gives it power over the imagination ; and the next 
 step in simplification will be the invention of a talk- 
 ing watch, which will achieve the utmost facility 
 and despatch in the communication of ideas by a 
 graduated adjustment of ticks, to be represented in 
 writing by a corresponding arrangement of dots. A 
 melancholy " language of the future ! " The sensory
 
 302 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 and motor nerves, that run in the same sheath, are 
 scarcely bound together by a more necessary and 
 delicate union than that which binds men's affec- 
 tions, imagination, wit, and humour, with the subtle 
 ramifications of historical language. Language must 
 be left to grow in precision, completeness, and unity, 
 as minds grow in clearness, comprehensiveness, and 
 sympathy. And there is an analogous relation 
 between the moral tendencies of men and the so- 
 cial conditions they have inherited. The nature of 
 European men has its roots intertwined with the 
 past, and can only be developed by allowing those 
 roots to remain undisturbed while the process of 
 development is going on, until that perfect ripeness 
 of the seed which carries with it a life independent 
 of the root. This vital connection with the past is 
 much more vividly felt on the Continent than in 
 England, where we have to recall it by an effort 
 of memory and reflection ; for though our English 
 life is in its core intensely traditional, Protestan- 
 tism and commerce have modernized the face of the 
 land and the aspects of society in a far greater 
 degree than in any Continental country : 
 
 " Abroad, " says Ruskiri, " a building of the eighth 
 or tenth century stands ruinous in the open streets ; the 
 children play round it, the peasants heap their corn in 
 it. The buildings of yesterday nestle about it, and fit 
 their new stones in its rents, and tremble in sympathy 
 as it trembles. No one wonders at it, or thinks of it 
 as separate, and of another time; we feel the ancient 
 world to be a real thing, and one with the new; anti- 
 quity is no dream; it is rather the children playing 
 about the old stones that are the dream. But all is 
 continuous, and the words ' from generation to genera- 
 tion,' understandable here."
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OP GERMAN LIFE. 303 
 
 This conception of European society as incarnate 
 history, is the fundamental idea of Riehl's books. 
 After the notable failure of revolutionary attempts 
 conducted from the point of view of abstract dem- 
 ocratic and socialistic theories, after the practical 
 demonstration of the evils resulting from a bureau- 
 cratic system, which governs by an undiscriminating, 
 dead mechanism, Riehl wishes to urge on the con- 
 sideration of his countrymen a social policy founded 
 on the special study of the people as they are, 
 on the natural history of the various social ranks. 
 He thinks it wise to pause a little from theoriz- 
 ing, and see what is the material actually present 
 for theory to work upon. It is the glory of the 
 socialists in contrast with the democratic doc- 
 trinaires who have been too much occupied with 
 the general idea of " the people " to inquire particu- 
 larly into the actual life of the people that they 
 have thrown themselves with enthusiastic zeal into 
 the study at least of one social group, namely, the 
 factory operatives ; and here lies the secret of their 
 partial success. But unfortunately they have made 
 this special study of a single fragment of society 
 the basis of a theory which quietly substitutes for 
 the small group of Parisian proletaires or English 
 factory-workers, the society of all Europe, nay, 
 of the whole world. And in this way they have 
 lost the best fruit of their investigations. For, 
 says Riehl, the more deeply we penetrate into 
 the knowledge of society in its details, the more 
 thoroughly we shall be convinced that a universal 
 social policy has no validity except on paper, and can 
 never be carried into successful practice. The con- 
 ditions of German society are altogether different 
 from those of French, of English, or of Italian
 
 304 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 society ; and to apply the same social theory to 
 these nations indiscriminately, is about as wise a 
 procedure as Triptolemus Yellowley's application of 
 the agricultural directions in Virgil's ' Georgics ' to 
 his farm in the Shetland Isles. 
 
 It is the clear and strong light in which Riehl 
 places this important position, that in our opinion 
 constitutes the suggestive value of his books for 
 foreign as well as German readers. It has not been 
 sufficiently insisted on, that in the various branches 
 of Social Science there is an advance from the 
 general to the special, from the simple to the com- 
 plex, analogous with that which is found in the 
 series of the sciences, from mathematics to biology. 
 To the laws of quantity, comprised in mathematics 
 and physics, are superadded, in chemistry, laws of 
 quality ; to these again are added, in biology, laws 
 of life ; and lastly, the conditions of life in general 
 branch out into its special conditions, or natural 
 history, on the one hand, and into its abnormal 
 conditions, or pathology, on the other. And in 
 this series or ramification of the sciences, the 
 more general science will not suffice to solve the 
 problems of the more special. Chemistry embraces 
 phenomena which are not explicable by physics ; 
 biology embraces phenomena which are not expli- 
 cable by chemistry ; and no biological generalization 
 will enable us to predict the infinite specialities 
 produced by the complexity of vital conditions. So 
 Social Science, while it has departments which in 
 their fundamental generality correspond to mathe- 
 matics and physics, namely, those grand and 
 simple generalizations which trace out the inevitable 
 march of the human race as a whole, and, as a ramifi- 
 cation of these, the laws of economical science, has
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 305 
 
 also, in the departments of government and jurispru- 
 dence, which embrace the conditions of social life 
 in all their complexity, what may be called its 
 biology, carrying us on to innumerable special phe- 
 nomena which outlie the sphere of science, and 
 belong to natural history. And just as the most 
 thorough acquaintance with physics or chemistry 
 or general physiology will not ehable you at once 
 to establish the balance of life in your private 
 vivarium, so that your particular society of zoo- 
 phytes, molluscs, and echinoderms may feel them- 
 selves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skin ; 
 so the most complete equipment of theory will not 
 enable a statesman or a political and social reformer 
 to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a 
 special acquaintance with the section of society for 
 which he legislates, with the peculiar characteristics 
 of the nation, the province, the class whose well- 
 being he has to consult. In other words, a wise 
 social policy must be based not simply on abstract 
 social science, but on the natural history of social 
 bodies. 
 
 Eiehl's books are not dedicated merely to the 
 argumentative maintenance of this or of any other 
 position ; they are intended chiefly as a contribution 
 to that knowledge of the German people on the 
 importance of which he insists. He is less occu- 
 pied with urging his own conclusions, than with 
 impressing on his readers the facts which have led 
 him to those conclusions. In the volume entitled 
 " Land und Leute/' which, though published last, is 
 properly an introduction to the volume entitled 
 "Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft," he considers the 
 German people in their physical-geographical rela- 
 tions; he compares the natural divisions of the 
 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 306 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 race, as determined by land and climate and social 
 traditions, with the artificial divisions which are 
 based on diplomacy; and he traces the genesis and 
 influences of what we may call the ecclesiasti- 
 cal geography of Germany, its partition between 
 Catholicism and Protestantism. He shows that the 
 ordinary antithesis of North and South Germany 
 represents no real ethnographical distinction, and 
 that the natural divisions of Germany, founded on 
 its physical geography, are threefold, namely, 
 the low plains, the middle mountain region, and the 
 high mountain region, or Lower, Middle, and Upper 
 Germany ; and on this primary natural division all 
 the other broad ethnographical distinctions of Ger- 
 many will be found to rest. The plains of North 
 or Lower Germany include all the seaboard the 
 nation possesses ; and this, together with the fact 
 that they are traversed to the depth of six hundred 
 miles by navigable rivers, makes them the natural 
 seat of a trading race. Quite different is the geo- 
 graphical character of Middle Germany. While the 
 northern plains are marked off into great divisions, 
 by such rivers as the Lower Ehine, the Weser, and 
 the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this 
 central region is cut up like a mosaic by the capri- 
 cious lines of valleys and rivers. Here is the 
 region in which you find those famous roofs from 
 which the rain-water runs towards two different seas, 
 and the mountain-tops from which you may look 
 into eight or ten German States. The abundance of 
 water-power and the presence of extensive coal-mines 
 allow of a very diversified industrial development 
 in Middle Germany. In Upper Germany, or the 
 high mountain region, we find the same symmetry 
 iu the lines of the rivers as in the north ; almost
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 307 
 
 all the great Alpine streams flow parallel with the 
 Danube. But the majority of these rivers are 
 neither navigable nor available for industrial 
 objects, and instead of serving for communication, 
 they shut off one great tract from another. The 
 slow development, the simple peasant life of many 
 districts, is here determined by the mountain and 
 the river. In the southeast, however, industrial 
 activity spreads through Bohemia towards Austria, 
 and forms a sort of balance to the industrial dis- 
 tricts of the Lower Rhine. Of course, the bounda- 
 ries of these three regions cannot be very strictly 
 defined ; but an approximation to the limits of 
 Middle Germany may be obtained by regarding it 
 as a triangle, of which one angle lies in Silesia, 
 another in Aix-la-Chapelle, and a third at Lake 
 Constance. 
 
 This triple division corresponds with the broad 
 distinctions of climate. In the northern plains the 
 atmosphere is damp and heavy ; in the southern 
 mountain region it is dry and rare, and there are 
 abrupt changes of temperature, sharp contrasts 
 between the seasons, and devastating storms ; but in 
 both these zones men are hardened by conflict with 
 the roughnesses of the climate. In Middle Germany, 
 on the contrary, there is little of this struggle ; the 
 seasons are more equable, and the mild, soft air of 
 the valleys tends to make the inhabitants luxurious 
 and sensitive to hardships. It is only in exceptional 
 mountain districts that one is here reminded of the 
 rough, bracing air on the heights of Southern Ger- 
 many. It is a curious fact that, as the air becomes 
 gradually lighter and rarer, from the North Ger- 
 man coast towards Upper Germany, the average of 
 suicides regularly decreases. Mecklenburg has the
 
 3o8 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 highest number, then Prussia, while the fewest 
 suicides occur in Bavaria and Austria. 
 
 Both the northern and southern regions have still 
 a large extent of waste lands, downs, morasses, 
 and heaths ; and to these are added, in the south, 
 abundance of snow-fields and naked rock ; while 
 in Middle Germany culture has almost overspread 
 the face of the land, and there are no large tracts 
 of waste. There is the same proportion in the 
 distribution of forests. Again, in the north we 
 see a monotonous continuity of wheat-fields, potato- 
 grounds, meadow-lands, and vast heaths, and there 
 is the same uniformity of culture over large surfaces 
 in the southern table-lands, and the Alpine pastures. 
 In Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is a per- 
 petual variety of crops within a short space ; the 
 diversity of land surface, and the corresponding 
 variety in the species of plants, are an invitation to 
 the splitting up of estates^ and this again encourages 
 to the utmost the motley character of the cultivation. 
 
 According to this threefold division, it appears 
 that there are certain features common to North 
 and South Germany, in which they differ from Cen- 
 tral Germany, and the nature of this difference 
 Eiehl indicates by distinguishing the former as Cen- 
 tralized Land, and the latter as Individualized Land ; 
 a distinction which is well symbolized by the fact 
 that North and South Germany possess the great 
 lines of railway which are the medium for the traf- 
 fic of the world, while Middle Germany is far richer 
 in lines for local communication, and possesses the 
 greatest length of railway within the smallest spaca 
 Disregarding superficialities, the East Frieslanders, 
 the Schleswig-Holsteiners, the Mecklenburghers, and 
 the Pomeranians are much more nearly allied to the
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 309 
 
 / 
 
 old Bavarians, the Tyrolese, and the Styrians, than 
 any of these are allied to the Saxons, the Thuringi- 
 ans, or the Rhmelanders. Both in North and South 
 Germany original races are still found in large 
 masses, and popular dialects are spoken ; you still 
 find there thoroughly peasant districts, thorough vil- 
 lages, and also, at great intervals, thorough cities ; 
 you still find there a sense of rank. In Middle Ger- 
 many, on the contrary, the original races are fused 
 together, or sprinkled hither and thither ; the pecu- 
 liarities of the popular dialects are worn down or 
 confused ; there is no very strict line of demarcation 
 between the country and the town population, hun- 
 dreds of small towns and large villages being hardly 
 distinguishable in their characteristics ; and the 
 sense of rank, as part of the organic structure of 
 society, is almost extinguished. Again, both in the 
 north and south there is still a strong ecclesiastical 
 spirit in the people, and the Pomeranian sees Anti- 
 christ in the Pope as clearly as the Tyrolese sees 
 him in Doctor Luther ; while in Middle Germany 
 the confessions are mingled, they exist peaceably 
 side by side in very narrow space, and tolerance or 
 indifference has spread itself widely, even in the 
 popular mind. And the analogy, or rather the 
 causal relation between the physical geography of 
 the three regions and the development of the 
 population, goes still further. 
 
 "For," observes Riehl, "the striking connection 
 which has been pointed out between the local geological 
 formations in Germany, and the revolutionary disposi- 
 tion of the people, has more than a metaphorical sig- 
 nificance. Where the primeval physical revolutions of 
 the globe have been the wildest in their effects, and 
 the most multiform strata have been tossed togetha*
 
 3io ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 or thrown one upon the other, it is a very intelligible 
 consequence that on a land surface thus broken up the 
 population should sooner develop itself into small com- 
 munities, and that the more intense life generated in 
 these smaller communities should become the most 
 favourable nidus for the reception of modern culture, 
 and with this a susceptibility for its revolutionary 
 ideas ; while a people settled in a region where its groups 
 are spread over a large space will persist much more 
 obstinately in the retention of its original character. 
 The people of Middle Germany have none of that exclu- 
 sive one-sidedness which determines the peculiar genius 
 of great national groups, just as this one-sidedness, or 
 uniformity, is wanting to the geological and geographi- 
 cal character of their land." 
 
 This ethnographical outline Rielil fills up with 
 special and typical descriptions, and then makes it 
 the starting-point for a criticism of the actual poli- 
 tical condition of Germany. The volume is full of 
 vivid pictures, as well as penetrating glances into 
 the maladies and tendencies of modern society. 
 It would be fascinating as literature, if it were not 
 important for its facts and philosophy. But we can 
 only commend it to our readers, and pass on to the 
 volume entitled "Die Biirgerliche Gesellschaft," 
 from which we have drawn our sketch of the Ger- 
 man peasantry. Here Riehl gives us a series of 
 studies in that natural history of the people, which 
 he jegards as the proper basis of social policy. He 
 holds that, in European society, there are three nat- 
 ural ranks, or estates : the hereditary landed 
 aristocracy, the citizens or commercial class, and the 
 peasantry, or agricultural class. By natural ranks 
 he means ranks which have their roots deep in the 
 historical structure of society, and are still, in the
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 311 
 
 present, showing vitality above ground; he means 
 those great social groups which are not only distin- 
 guished externally by their vocation, but essentially 
 by their mental character, their habits, their mode 
 of life, by the principle they represent in the his- 
 torical development of society. In his conception 
 of the Fourth Estate, he differs from the usual inter- 
 pretation, according to which it is simply equivalent 
 to the proletariat, or those who are dependent on 
 daily wages, whose only capital is their skill or 
 bodily strength factory operatives, artisans, agri- 
 cultural labourers, to whom might be added, 
 especially in Germany, the day-labourers with the 
 quill, the literary proletariat. This, Eiehl observes, 
 is a valid basis of economical classification, but not 
 of social classification. In his view, the Fourth 
 Estate is a stratum produced by the perpetual abra- 
 sion of the other great social groups ; it is the sign 
 and result of the decomposition which is commen- 
 cing in the organic constitution of society. Its 
 elements are derived alike from the aristocracy, the 
 bourgeoisie, and the peasantry. It assembles under 
 its banner the deserters of historical society, and 
 forms them into a terrible army, which is only just 
 awaking to the consciousness of its corporate power. 
 The tendency of this Fourth Estate, by the very 
 process of its formation, is to do away with the dis- 
 tinctive historical character of the other estates, and 
 to resolve their peculiar rank and vocation into a 
 uniform social relation, founded on an abstract 
 conception of society. According to Eiehl's classi- 
 fication, the day-labourers, whom the political 
 economist designates as the Fourth Estate, belong 
 partly to the peasantry, or agricultural class, and 
 partly to the citizen's or commercial class.
 
 312 ESSA.YS OF GEOHGE ELIOT. 
 
 Eiehl considers, in the first place, the peasantry 
 and aristocracy as the " forces of social persistence," 
 and* in the second, the bourgeoisie and the Fourth 
 Estate as the " forces of social movement." 
 
 The aristocracy, he observes, is the only one 
 among these four groups which is denied by others 
 besides Socialists to have any natural basis as a 
 separate rank. It is admitted that there was once 
 an aristocracy which had an intrinsic ground of 
 existence ; but now, it is alleged, this is an histori- 
 cal fossil, an antiquarian relic, venerable because 
 gray with age. In what, it is asked, can consist 
 the peculiar vocation of the aristocracy, since it 
 has no longer the monopoly of the land, of the 
 higher military functions, and of government offices, 
 and since the service of the Court has no longer any 
 political importance ? To this Biehl replies, that 
 in great revolutionary crises, the " men of progress " 
 have more than once abolished the aristocracy. But, 
 remarkably enough, the aristocracy has always re- 
 appeared. This measure of abolition showed that 
 the nobility were no longer regarded as a real class, 
 for to abolish a real class would be an absurdity. 
 It is quite possible to contemplate a voluntary 
 breaking up of the peasant or citizen class in 
 the socialistic sense, but no man in his senses 
 would think of straightway abolishing citizens and 
 peasants. The aristocracy, then, was regarded as 
 a sort of cancer, or excrescence of society. Never- 
 theless, not only has it been found impossible to 
 annihilate an hereditary nobility by decree, but, 
 also, the aristocracy of the eighteenth century out- 
 lived even the self-destructive acts of its own 
 perversity. A life which was entirely without 
 object, entirely destitute of functions, would not,
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 313 
 
 says Eiehl, be so persistent. He has an acute criti- 
 cism of those who conduct a polemic against the 
 idea of an hereditary aristocracy, while they are 
 proposing an l( aristocracy of talent," which, after 
 all, is based on the principle of inheritance. The 
 Socialists are, therefore, only consistent in declaring 
 against an aristocracy of talent. " But when they 
 have turned the world into a great foundling hos- 
 pital, they will still be unable to eradicate the 
 ' privileges of birth.' " We must not follow him 
 in his criticism, however ; nor can we afford to do 
 more than mention hastily his interesting sketch 
 of the mediaeval aristocracy, and his admonition to 
 the German aristocracy of the present day, that 
 the vitality of their class is not to be sustained by 
 romantic attempts to revive mediaeval forms and 
 sentiments, but only by the exercise of functions 
 as real and salutary for actual society as those of 
 the mediaeval aristocracy were for the feudal age. 
 " In modern society the divisions of rank indicate 
 division of labour, according to that distribution 
 of functions in the social organism which the his- 
 torical constitution of society has determined. In 
 this way the principle of differentiation and the 
 principle of unity are identical." 
 
 The elaborate study of the German bourgeoisie, 
 which forms the next division of the volume, must 
 be passed over; but we may pause a moment to 
 note Eiehl's definition of the social Philister (Phil- 
 istine), an epithet for which we have no equivalent, 
 not at all, however, for want of the object it 
 represents. Most people, who read a little German, 
 know that the epithet Philister originated in the 
 Burschen-leben, or student-life of Germany, and 
 that the antithesis of Bursch and Philister was
 
 3H ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 equivalent to the antithesis of " gown and town ; " 
 but since the word has passed into ordinary lan- 
 guage, it has assumed several shades of significance 
 which have not yet been merged in a single, absolute 
 meaning ; and one of the questions which an English 
 visitor in Germany will probably take an opportu- 
 nity of asking is, "What is the strict meaning of 
 the word Philister ? " Riehl's answer is, that the 
 Philister is one who is indifferent to all social 
 interests, all public life, as distinguished from 
 selfish and private interests ; he has no sympathy 
 with political and social events except as they 
 affect his own comfort and prosperity, as they offer 
 him material for amusement or opportunity for 
 gratifying his vanity. He has no social or politi- 
 cal creed, but is always of the opinion which is 
 most convenient for the moment. He is always in 
 the majority, and is the main element of unreason 
 and stupidity in the judgment of a "discerning 
 public." It seems presumptuous in us to dispute 
 Riehl's interpretation of a German word, but we 
 must think that, in literature, the epithet Philister 
 has usually a wider meaning than this includes 
 his definition and something more. We imagine the 
 Philister is the personification of the spirit which 
 judges everything from a lower point of view than 
 the subject demands, which judges the affairs of 
 the parish from the egotistic or purely personal 
 point of view, which judges the affairs of the nation 
 from the parochial point of view, and does not hesi- 
 tate to measure the merits of the universe from the 
 human point of view. At least this must surely be 
 the spirit to which Goethe alludes in a passage cited 
 by Riehl himself, where he says that the Germans 
 need not be ashamed of erecting a monument to
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 315 
 
 him as well as to Blucher ; for if Bliicher had freed 
 them from the French, he (Goethe) had freed them 
 from the nets of the Philister : 
 
 " Ihr mogt mir immer imgescheut 
 Gleich Bliichern Denkmal setzen ! 
 Von Franzosen hat er euch befreit, 
 Ich von Philister-netzen." 
 
 Goethe could hardly claim to be the apostle of 
 public spirit; but he is eminently the man who 
 helps us to rise to a lofty point of observation, so 
 that we may see things in their relative proportions. 
 
 The most interesting chapters in the description 
 of the Fourth Estate, which concludes the volume, 
 are those on the Aristocratic Proletariat and the 
 Intellectual Proletariat. The Fourth Estate in Ger- 
 many, says Kiehl, has its centre of gravity not, as 
 in England and France, in the day-labourers and 
 factory operatives, and still less in the degenerate 
 peasantry. In Germany, the educated proletariat is 
 the leaven that sets the mass in fermentation ; the 
 dangerous classes there go about, not in blouses, 
 but in frock-coats ; they begin with the impover- 
 ished prince and end in the hungriest litterateur. 
 The custom that all the sons of a nobleman shall 
 inherit their father's title, necessarily goes on mul- 
 tiplying that class of aristocrats who are not only 
 without function but without adequate provision, 
 and who shrink from entering the ranks of the 
 citizens by adopting some honest calling. The 
 younger son of a prince, says Eiehl, is usually 
 obliged 'to remain without any vocation ; and how- 
 ever zealously he may study music, painting, 
 literature, or science, he can never be a regular 
 musician, painter, or man of science ; his pursuit 
 will be called a " passion," not a " calling," and to
 
 316 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 the end of his days he remains a dilettante " But 
 the ardent pursuit of a fixed practical calling can 
 alone satisfy the active man." Direct legislation 
 cannot remedy this evil. The inheritance of titles 
 by younger sons is the universal custom, and cus- 
 tom is stronger than law. But if all government 
 preference for the " aristocratic proletariat " were 
 withdrawn, the sensible men among them would 
 prefer emigration, or the pursuit of some profession, 
 to the hungry distinction of a title without rents. 
 
 The intellectual proletaires Eiehl calls the " church 
 militant " of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no 
 other country are they so numerous ; in no other 
 country is the trade in material and industrial cap- 
 ital so far exceeded by the wholesale and retail 
 trade, the traffic and the usury, in the intellectual 
 capital of the nation. Germany yields more intel- 
 lectual produce than it can use and pay for. 
 
 " This over-production, which is not transient but 
 permanent, nay, is constantly on the increase, evidences 
 a diseased state of the national industry, a perverted 
 application of industrial powers, and is a far more 
 pungent satire on the national condition than all the 
 poverty of operatives and peasants. . . . Other nations 
 need not envy us the preponderance of the intellectual 
 proletariat over the proletaires of manual labour. For 
 man more easily becomes diseased from over-study than 
 from the labour of the bands ; and it is precisely in 
 the intellectual proletariat that tbere are the most dan- 
 gerous seeds of disease. This is the group in which 
 the opposition between earnings and wants, between 
 the ideal social position and the real, is the most hope- 
 lessly irreconcilable." 
 
 We must unwillingly leave our readers to make 
 acquaintance for themselves with the graphic details
 
 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF GERMAN LIFE. 317 
 
 with which Riehl follows up this general statement ; 
 but before quitting these admirable volumes, let us 
 say, lest our inevitable omissions should have left 
 room for a different conclusion, that Riehl's con- 
 servatism is not in the least tinged with the 
 partisanship of a class, with a poetic fanaticism for 
 the past, or with the prejudice of a mind incapable 
 of discerning the grander evolution of things to 
 which all social forms are but temporarily subser- 
 vient. It is the conservatism of a clear-eyed, 
 practical, but withal large-minded man a little 
 caustic, perhaps, now and then, in his epigrams on 
 democratic doctrinaires who have their nostrum for 
 all political and social diseases, and on communistic 
 theories which he regards as "the despair of the 
 individual in his own manhood, reduced to a sys- 
 tem," but nevertheless able and willing to do justice 
 to the elements of fact and reason in every shade of 
 opinion and every form of effort. He is as far as 
 possible from the folly of supposing that the sun 
 will go backward on the dial, because we put the 
 hands of our clock backward ; he only contends 
 against the opposite folly of decreeing that it shall 
 be mid-day, while in fact the sun is only just touch- 
 ing the mountain-tops, and all along the valley 
 men are stumbling in the twilight.
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR 
 
 IT was between three and four o'clock on a fine 
 morning in August, that after a ten hours' journey 
 from Frankfort, I awoke at the Weimar station. 
 No tipsiness can be more dead to all appeals than 
 that which comes from fitful draughts of sleep on 
 a railway journey by night. To the disgust of 
 your wakeful companions, you are totally insensi- 
 ble to the existence of your umbrella, and to the 
 fact that your carpet-bag is stowed under your 
 seat, or that you have borrowed books and tucked 
 them behind the cushion. " What 's the odds, so 
 long as one can sleep ? " is your philosophic for- 
 mula ; and it is not until you have begun to shiver 
 on the platform in the early morning air that you 
 become alive to property and its duties, that is, 
 to the necessity of keeping a fast grip upon it. 
 Such was my condition when I reached the station 
 at Weimar. The ride to the town thoroughly 
 roused me, all the more because the glimpses I 
 caught from the carriage window were in startling 
 contrast with my preconceptions. The lines of 
 houses looked rough and straggling, and were often 
 interrupted by trees peeping out from the gardens 
 behind. At last we stopped before the Erbprinz, 
 an inn of long standing, in the heart of the town, 
 and were ushered along heavy-looking in-and-out 
 corridors, such as are found only in German inns,
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 319 
 
 into rooms which overlooked a garden just like one 
 you may see at the back of a farmhouse in many 
 an English village. 
 
 A walk in the morning in search of lodgings 
 confirmed the impression that Weimar was more 
 like a market-town than the precinct of a court. 
 " And this is the Athens of the North ! " we said. 
 Materially speaking, it is more like Sparta. The 
 blending of rustic and civic life, the indications 
 of a central government in the midst of very primi- 
 tive-looking objects, has some distant analogy with 
 the condition of old Lacedsemon. The shops are 
 most of them such as you would see in the back 
 streets of an English provincial town, and the 
 commodities on sale are often chalked on the door- 
 posts. A loud rumbling of vehicles may indeed 
 be heard now and then ; but the rumbling is loud, 
 not because the vehicles are many, but because the 
 springs are few. The inhabitants seemed to us to 
 have more than the usual heaviness of Germanity ; 
 even their stare was slow, like that of herbivorous 
 quadrupeds. We set out with the intention of 
 exploring the town, and at every other turn we 
 came into a street which took us out of the town, 
 or else into one that led us back to the market 
 from which we set out. One's first feeling was, 
 How could Goethe live here in this dull, lifeless 
 village ? The reproaches cast on him for his world- 
 liness and attachment to court splendour seemed 
 ludicrous enough ; and it was inconceivable that 
 the stately Jupiter, in a frock-coat, so familiar to 
 us all through Eauch's statuette, could have habit- 
 ually walked along these rude streets and among 
 these slouching mortals. Not a picturesque bit of 
 building was to be seen ; there was no quaintness,
 
 320 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 nothing to remind one of historical associations, 
 nothing but the most arid prosaism. 
 
 This was the impression produced by a first morn- 
 ing's walk in Weimar, an impression which very 
 imperfectly represents what Weimar is, but which 
 is worth recording, because it is true as a sort of back 
 view. Our ideas were considerably modified when 
 in the evening we found our way to the Belvedere 
 chaussee, a splendid avenue of chestnut-trees, two 
 miles in length, reaching from the town to the 
 summer residence of Belvedere ; when we saw the 
 Schloss, and discovered the labyrinthine beauties 
 of the Park ; indeed, every day opened to us fresh 
 charms in this quiet little valley and its environs. 
 To any one who loves Nature in her gentle aspects, 
 who delights in the checkered shade on a summer 
 morning, and in a walk on the corn-clad upland at 
 sunset, within sight of a little town nestled among 
 the trees below, I say come to Weimar. And if 
 you are weary of English unrest, of that society of 
 " eels in a jar, " where each is trying to get his 
 head above the other, the somewhat stupid well- 
 being of the Weimarians will not be an unwelcome 
 contrast, for a short time at least. If you care 
 nothing about Goethe and Schiller and Herder and 
 Wieland, why, so much the worse for you, you 
 will miss many interesting thoughts and associa- 
 tions ; still, Weimar has a charm independent of 
 these great names. 
 
 First among all its attractions is the Park, which 
 would be remarkably beautiful even among English 
 parks ; and it has one advantage over all these, 
 namely, that it is without a fence. It runs up to 
 the houses and far out into the cornfields and 
 meadows, as if it had a " sweet will " of its own,
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 321 
 
 like a river or a lake, and had not been planned 
 and planted by human will. Through it flows the 
 Ilm, not a clear stream, it must be confessed, 
 but, like all water, as Novalis says, " an eye to 
 the landscape. " Before we came to Weimar we 
 had had dreams of boating on the Ilm, and we 
 were not a little amused at the difference between 
 this vision of our own and the reality. A few 
 water-fowl are the only navigators of the river; 
 and even they seem to confine themselves to one 
 spot, as if they were there purely in the interest 
 of the picturesque. The real extent of the Park is 
 small ; but the walks are so ingeniously arranged, 
 and the trees are so luxuriant and various, that it 
 takes weeks to learn the turnings and windings by 
 heart, so as no longer to have the sense of novelty. 
 In the warm weather our great delight was the 
 walk which follows the course of the Ilm, and is 
 overarched by tall trees with patches of dark moss 
 on their trunks, in rich contrast with the transpar- 
 ent green of the delicate leaves, through which the 
 golden sunlight played and checkered the walk 
 before us. On one side of this walk the rocky 
 ground rises to the height of twenty feet or more, 
 and is clothed with mosses and rock-plants. On 
 the other side there are, every now and then, open- 
 ings, breaks in the continuity of shade, which 
 show you a piece of meadow-land with fine groups 
 of trees ; and at every such opening a seat is placed 
 under the rock, where you may sit and chat away 
 the sunny hours, or listen to those delicate sounds 
 which one might fancy came from tiny bells worn 
 on the garment of Silence to make us aware of her 
 invisible presence. It is along this walk that you 
 come upon a truncated column, with a serpent 
 
 VOL. I. 21
 
 322 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 twined round it, devouring cakes, placed on the 
 column as offerings, a bit of rude sculpture in 
 stone. The inscription G-enio loci enlightens 
 the learned as to the significance of this symbol j 
 but the people of Weimar, unedified by classical 
 allusions, have explained the sculpture by a story 
 which is an excellent example of a modern myth. 
 Once on a time, say they, a huge serpent infested 
 the Park, and evaded all attempts to exterminate 
 him, until at last a cunning baker made some 
 appetizing cakes which contained an effectual 
 poison, and placed them in the serpent's reach, 
 thus meriting a place with Hercules, Theseus, 
 and other monster-slayers. Weimar, in gratitude, 
 erected this column as a memorial of the baker's feat 
 and its own deliverance. A little farther on is the 
 Borkenhaus, where Carl August used to play the 
 hermit for days together, and from which he used 
 to telegraph to Goethe in his Gartenhaus. Some- 
 times we took our shady walk in the Stern, the 
 oldest part of the Park plantations, on the opposite 
 side of the river, lingering on our way to watch 
 the crystal brook which hurries on, like a foolish 
 young maiden, to wed itself with the muddy Ilm. 
 The Stern (Star), a large circular opening among 
 the trees, with walks radiating from it, has been 
 thought of as the place for the projected statues of 
 Goethe and Schiller. In Eauch's model for these 
 statues the poets are draped in togas, Goethe, who 
 was considerably the shorter of the two, resting 
 his hand on Schiller's shoulder; but it has been 
 wisely determined to represent them in their 
 "habit as they lived," so Eauch's design is re- 
 jected. Against classical idealizing in portrait 
 sculpture, Weimar has already a sufficient warning
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 323 
 
 in the colossal statue of Goethe, executed after 
 Bettina's design, which the readers of the " Cor- 
 respondence with a Child " may see engraved as a 
 frontispiece to the second volume. This statue is 
 locked up in an odd structure, standing in the 
 Park, and looking like a compromise between a 
 church and a summer-house. (Weimar does not 
 shine in its buildings ! ) How little real knowl- 
 edge of Goethe must the mind have that could 
 wish to see him represented as a naked Apollo, 
 with a Psyche at his knee ! The execution is as 
 feeble as the sentiment is false ; the Apollo-Goethe 
 is a caricature, and the Psyche is simply vulgar. 
 The statue was executed under Bettina's encour- 
 agement, in the hope that it would be bought by 
 the King of Prussia ; but a breach having taken 
 place between her and her royal friend, a pur- 
 chaser was sought in the Grand Duke of Weimar, 
 who, after transporting it at enormous expense 
 from Italy, wisely shut it up where it is seen 
 only by the curious. 
 
 As autumn advanced and the sunshine became 
 precious, we preferred the broad walk on the 
 higher grounds of the Park, where the masses of 
 trees are finely disposed, leaving wide spaces of 
 meadow which extend on one side to the Belvedere 
 allee with its avenue of chestnut trees, and on the 
 other to the little cliffs which I have already de- 
 scribed as forming a wall by the walk along the 
 Ilm. Exquisitely beautiful were the graceful forms 
 of the plane-trees, thrown in golden relief on a 
 background of dark pines. Here we used to turn 
 and turn again in the autumn afternoons, at first 
 bright and warm, then sombre with low-lying, 
 purple clouds, and chill with winds that sent the
 
 324 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 leaves raining from the branches. The eye here 
 welcomes, as a contrast, the white facade of a 
 building looking like a small Greek temple, placed 
 on the edge of a cliff, and you at once conclude it 
 to be a bit of pure ornament, a device to set off the 
 landscape ; but you presently see a porter seated 
 near the door of the basement story, beguiling the 
 ennui of his sinecure by a book and a pipe, and 
 you learn with surprise that this is another retreat 
 for ducal dignity to unbend and philosophize in. 
 Singularly ill-adapted to such a purpose it seems 
 to beings not ducal. On the other side of the Ilm 
 the Park is bordered by the road leading to the 
 little village of Ober Weimar, another sunny 
 walk, which has the special attraction of taking 
 one by Goethe's Gartenhaus, his first residence at 
 Weimar. Inside, this Gartenhaus is a homely sort 
 of cottage, such as many an English nobleman's 
 gardener lives in; no furniture is left in it, and 
 the family wish to sell it. Outside, its aspect 
 became to us like that of a dear friend, whose 
 irregular features and rusty clothes have a peculiar 
 charm. It stands, with its bit of garden and 
 orchard, on a pleasant slope, fronting the west; 
 before it the Park stretches one of its meadowy 
 openings to the trees which fringe the Ilm, and 
 between this meadow and the garden hedge lies 
 the said road to Ober Weimar. A grove of weep- 
 ing birches sometimes tempted us to turn out of 
 this road up to the fields at the top of the slope, 
 on which not only the Gartenhaus, but several 
 other modest villas are placed. From this little 
 height one sees to advantage the plantations of the 
 Park in their autumnal colouring ; the town, with 
 its steep-roofed church, and castle clock-tower,
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 325 
 
 painted a gay green ; the bushy line of the Belve- 
 dere chaussee, and Belvedere itself peeping on an 
 eminence from its nest of trees. Here, too, was the 
 place for seeing a lovely sunset, such a sunset as 
 September sometimes gives us, when the western 
 horizon is like a rippled sea of gold, sending over 
 the whole hemisphere golden vapours, which, as 
 they near the east, are subdued to a deep rose- 
 colour. 
 
 The Schloss is rather a stately, ducal-looking 
 building, forming three sides of a quadrangle. 
 Strangers are admitted to see a suite of rooms called 
 the Dichter-Zimmer (Poet's Booms), dedicated to 
 Goethe, Schiller, and Wieland. The idea of these 
 rooms is really a pretty one : in each of them there 
 is a bust of the poet who is its presiding genius, 
 and the walls of the Schiller and Goethe rooms 
 are covered with frescoes representing scenes from 
 their works. The Wieland room is much smaller 
 than the other two, and serves as an antechamber 
 to them ; it is also decorated more sparingly, but 
 the arabesques on the walls are very tastefully 
 designed, and satisfy one better than the ambi- 
 tious compositions from Goethe and Schiller. 
 
 A more interesting place to visitors is the 
 library, which occupies a large building not far 
 from the Schloss. The principal Saal, surrounded 
 by a broad gallery, is ornamented with some very 
 excellent busts and some very bad portraits. Of 
 the busts, the most remarkable is that of Gliick, 
 by Houden, a striking specimen of the real in 
 art. The sculptor has given every scar made by the 
 small-pox ; he has left the nose as pug and insig- 
 nificant, and the mouth as common, as Nature 
 made them ; but then he has done what, doubtless,
 
 326 ESSAYS OP GEORGE ELTOT. 
 
 Nature also did, he has spread over those coarsely 
 cut features the irradiation of genius. A specimen 
 of the opposite style in art is Trippel's bust of 
 Goethe as the young Apollo, also fine in its way. 
 It was taken when Goethe was in Italy; and in 
 the " Italianische Eeise, " mentioning the progress 
 of the bust, he says that he sees little likeness to 
 himself, but is not discontented that he should 
 go forth to the world as such a good-looking fel- 
 low, hubscher Bursch. This bust, however, is a 
 frank idealization ; when an artist tells us that the 
 ideal of a Greek god divides his attention with his 
 immediate subject, we are warned. But one gets 
 rather irritated with idealization in portrait when, 
 as in Dannecker's bust of Schiller, one has been 
 misled into supposing that Schiller's brow was 
 square and massive, while, in fact, it was reced- 
 ing. We say this partly on the evidence of his 
 skull, a cast of which is kept in the library, so 
 that we could place it in juxtaposition with the 
 bust. The story of this skull is curious. When 
 it was determined to disinter Schiller's remains, 
 that they might repose in company with those of 
 Carl August and Goethe, the question of identifi- 
 cation was found to be a difficult one, for his 
 bones were mingled with those of ten insignificant 
 fellow-mortals. When, however, the eleven skulls 
 were placed in juxtaposition, a large number of 
 persons who had known Schiller separately and 
 successively fixed upon the same skull as his, and 
 their evidence was clenched by the discovery that 
 the teeth of this skull corresponded to the state- 
 ment of Schiller's servant, that his master had 
 lost no teeth, except one, which he specified. 
 Accordingly it was decided that this was Schiller's
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 327 
 
 skull, and the comparative anatomist Loder was 
 sent for from Jena to select the bones which com- 
 pleted the skeleton. l The evidence certainly leaves 
 room for a doubt ; but the receding forehead of the 
 skull agrees with the testimony of persons who 
 knew Schiller, that he had, as Kauch said to us, 
 a " miserable forehead ; " it agrees, also, with a 
 beautiful miniature of Schiller, taken when he was 
 about twenty. This miniature is deeply interest- 
 ing ; it shows us a youth whose clearly cut features, 
 with the mingled fire and melancholy of their 
 expression, could hardly have been passed with 
 indifference; it has the langer Gdnsehals (long 
 goose-neck) which he gives to his Karl Moor ; but 
 instead of the black, sparkling eyes, and the 
 gloomy, overhanging, bushy eyebrows he chose for 
 his robber hero, it has the fine wavy auburn locks 
 and the light-blue eyes which belong to our idea 
 of pure German race. We may be satisfied that 
 we know at least the form of Schiller's features, 
 for in this particular his busts and portraits are in 
 striking accordance ; unlike the busts and portraits 
 of Goethe, which are a proof, if any were wanted, 
 how inevitably subjective art is, even when it 
 professes to be purely imitative, how the most 
 active perception gives us rather a reflex of what 
 we think and feel, than the real sum of objects 
 before us. The Goethe of Eauch or of Schwan- 
 thaler is widely different in form, as well as 
 expression, from the Goethe of Stieler; and Win- 
 terberger, the actor, who knew Goethe intimately, 
 
 1 I tell this story from my recollection of Stahr's account in his 
 " Weimar und Jena," an account which was confirmed to me by 
 residents in Weimar ; but as I have not the book by me, I cannot 
 test the accuracy of my memory.
 
 328 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 told us that to him not one of all the likenesses, 
 sculptured or painted, seemed to have more than a 
 faint resemblance to their original. There is, in- 
 deed, one likeness, taken in his old age, and pre- 
 served in the library, which is startling from the 
 conviction it produces of close resemblance, and 
 Winterberger admitted it to be the best he had 
 seen. It is a tiny miniature painted on a small 
 cup, of Dresden china, and is so wonderfully exe- 
 cuted that a magnifying-glass exhibits the per- 
 fection of its texture as if it were a flower or a 
 butterfly's wing. It is more like Stieler's portrait 
 than any other ; the massive neck, unbent though 
 withered, rises out of his dressing-gown, and sup- 
 ports majestically a head from which one might 
 imagine (though, alas ! it never is so in reality) 
 that the discipline of seventy years had purged 
 away all meaner elments than those of the sage 
 and the poet, a head which might serve as a 
 type of sublime old age. Among the collection of 
 toys and trash, melancholy records of the late 
 Grand Duke's eccentricity, which occupy the 
 upper rooms of the library, there are some precious 
 relics hanging together in a glass case, which 
 almost betray one into sympathy with " holy coat " 
 worship. They are, Luther's gown, the coat in 
 which Gustavus Adolphus was shot, and Goethe's 
 court coat and Schlafrock. What a rush of thoughts 
 from the mingled memories of the passionate re- 
 former, the heroic warrior, and the wise singer! 
 
 The only one of its great men to whom Weimar 
 has at present erected a statue in the open air is 
 Herder. His statue, erected in 1850, stands in 
 what is called the Herder Platz, with its back to 
 the church in which he preached; in the right
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 329 
 
 hand is a roll bearing his favourite motto, Licht, 
 Liebc, Leben (Light, Love, Life), and on the pedes- 
 tal is the inscription Von Dcutschen alter Lander 
 (from Germans of all lands). This statue, which 
 is by Schaller of Munich, is very much admired ; 
 but, remembering the immortal description in the 
 " Dichtung und Wahrheit, " of Herder's appearance 
 when Goethe saw him for the first time at Stras- 
 burg, I was disappointed with the parsonic appear- 
 ance of the statue, as well as of the bust in the 
 library. The part of the town which imprints 
 itself on the memory, next to the Herder Platz, is 
 the Markt, a cheerful square made smart by a 
 new Eath-haus. Twice a week it is crowded with 
 stalls and country people ; and it is the very pretty 
 custom for the band to play in the balcony of the 
 Rath-haus about twenty minutes every market-day 
 to delight the ears of the peasantry. A head-dress 
 worn by many of the old women, and here and 
 there by a young one, is, I think, peculiar to 
 Thuringia. Let the fair reader imagine half a 
 dozen of her broadest French sashes dyed black, 
 and attached as streamers to the back of a stiff 
 black skull-cap, ornamented in front with a large 
 bow, which stands out like a pair of donkey's 
 ears; let her further imagine, mingled with the 
 streamers of ribbon, equally broad pendants of a 
 thick woollen texture, something like the fringe of 
 an urn-rug, and she will have an idea of the head- 
 dress in which I have seen a Thuringian damsel 
 figure on a hot summer's day. Two houses in the 
 Markt are pointed out as those from which Tetzel 
 published his indulgences and Luther thundered 
 against them; but it is difficult to one's imagina- 
 tion to conjure up scenes of theological controversy
 
 330 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 in Weimar, where, from princes down to pastry- 
 cooks, rationalism is taken as a matter of course. 
 Passing along the Schiller-strasse, a broad, pleas- 
 ant street, one is thrilled by the inscription, Hier 
 wohnte Schiller, over the door of a small house 
 with casts in its bow-window. Mount up to the 
 second story, and you will see Schiller's study 
 very nearly as it was when he worked in it. It 
 is a cheerful room with three windows, two 
 towards the street and one looking on a little 
 garden which divides his house from the neigh- 
 bouring one. The writing-table, which he notes 
 as an important purchase in one of his letters to 
 Kb'rner, and in one of the drawers of which he 
 used to keep rotten apples for the sake of their 
 scent, stands near the last-named window, so that 
 its light would fall on his left hand. On another 
 side of the room is his piano, with his guitar lying 
 upon it ; and above these hangs an ugly print of 
 an Italian scene, which has a companion equally 
 ugly on another wall. Strange feelings it awak- 
 ened in me to run my fingers over the keys of the 
 little piano and call forth its tones, now so queer 
 and feeble, like those of an invalided old woman 
 whose voice could once make a heart beat with 
 fond passion or soothe its angry pulses into calm. 
 The bedstead on which Schiller died has been 
 removed into the study, from the small bedroom 
 behind, which is now empty. A little table is 
 placed close to the head of the bed, with his 
 drinking-glass upon it, and on the wall above the 
 bedstead there is a beautiful sketch of him lying 
 dead. He used to occupy the whole of the second 
 floor. It contains, besides the study and bedroom, 
 an antechamber, now furnished with casts and
 
 OOETHE.
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 331 
 
 prints on sale, in order to remunerate the custo- 
 diers of the house, and a salon tricked out, since 
 his death, with a symbolical cornice, statues, and 
 a carpet worked by the ladies of Weimar. 
 
 Goethe's house is much more important-looking, 
 but, to English eyes, far from being the palatial 
 residence which might be expected, from the de- 
 scriptions of German writers. The entrance hall 
 is indeed rather imposing, with its statues in 
 niches, and its broad staircase, but the rest of the 
 house is not proportionately spacious and elegant. 
 The only part of the house open to the public 
 and this only on a Friday is the principal suite 
 of rooms which contain his collection of casts, 
 pictures, cameos, etc. This collection is utterly 
 insignificant, except as having belonged to him; 
 and one turns away from bad pictures and familiar 
 casts, to linger over the manuscript of the wonder- 
 ful " Ebmische Elegein, " written by himself in 
 the Italian character. It is to be regretted that a 
 large sum offered for this house by the German 
 Diet was refused by the Goethe family, in the 
 hope, it is said, of obtaining a still larger sum 
 from that mythical English Croesus always ready 
 to turn fabulous sums into dead capital, who 
 haunts the imagination of Continental people. 
 One of the most fitting tributes a nation can pay 
 to its great dead is to make their habitation, like 
 their works, a public possession, a shrine where 
 affectionate reverence may be more vividly re- 
 minded that the being who has bequeathed to us 
 immortal thoughts or immortal deeds had to endure 
 the daily struggle with the petty details, perhaps 
 with the sordid cares of this working-day world; 
 and it is a sad pity that Goethe's study, bedroom,
 
 332 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 and library, so fitted to call up that kind of sym- 
 pathy, because they are preserved just as he left 
 them, should be shut out from all but the specially 
 privileged. We were happy enough to be among 
 these, to look through the mist of rising tears at 
 the dull study with its two small windows, and 
 without a single object chosen for the sake of 
 luxury or beauty ; at the dark little bedroom with 
 the bed on which he died, and the arm-chair where 
 he took his morning coffee as he read ; at the 
 library with its common deal shelves, and books 
 containing his own paper-marks. In the presence 
 of this hardy simplicity, the contrast suggests it- 
 self of the study at Abbotsford, with its elegant 
 Gothic fittings, its delicious easy-chair, and its 
 oratory of painted glass. 
 
 We were very much amused at the privacy with 
 which people keep their shops at Weimar. Some 
 of them have not so much as their names written 
 up; and there is so much indifference of manner 
 towards customers that one might suppose every 
 shopkeeper was a salaried functionary employed 
 by government The distribution of commodities, 
 too, is carried on according to a peculiar Weimar- 
 ian logic ; we bought our lemons at a ropemaker's, 
 and should not have felt ourselves very unreasona- 
 ble if we had asked for shoes at a stationer's. As 
 to competition, I should think a clever tradesman 
 or artificer is almost as free from it at Weimar as 
 ^Esculapius or Vulcan in the days of old Olympus. 
 Here is an illustration. Our landlady's husband 
 was called the " susser Eabenhorst, " by way of dis- 
 tinguishing him from a brother of his who was the 
 reverse of sweet. This Eabenhorst, who was not 
 sweet, but who nevertheless dealt in sweets, for he
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 333 
 
 was a confectioner, was so utter a rogue that any 
 transaction with him was avoided almost as much 
 as if he had been the Evil One himself, yet so clever 
 a rogue that he always managed to keep on the windy 
 side of the law. Nevertheless, he had so many 
 dainties in the confectionary line so viel Sussig- 
 keiten und LecJcerbissen that people bent on giving 
 a fine entertainment were at last constrained to 
 say, " After all, I must go to Eabenhorst ; " and so 
 he got abundant custom, in spite of general 
 detestation. 
 
 A very fair dinner is to be had at several tables 
 d'hdte in Weimar for ten or twelve groschen (a 
 shilling or fifteen pence). The Germans certainly 
 excel us in their Mehlspeise, or farinaceous pud- 
 dings, and in their mode of cooking vegetables ; 
 they are bolder and more imaginative in their 
 combination of sauces, fruits, and vegetables with 
 animal food, and they are faithful to at least one 
 principle of dietetics, variety. The only thing 
 at table we have any pretext for being supercilious 
 about is the quality and dressing of animal food. 
 The meat at a table d'hote in Thuringia, and even 
 Berlin, except in the very first hotels, bears about 
 the same relation to ours as horseflesh probably 
 bears to German beef and mutton ; and an English- 
 man with a bandage over his eyes would often be 
 sorely puzzled to guess the kind of flesh he was 
 eating. For example, the only flavour we could 
 ever discern in hare, which is a very frequent dish, 
 was that of the more or less disagreeable fat which 
 predominated in the dressing; and roast meat 
 seems to be considered an extravagance rarely 
 admissible. A melancholy sight is a flock of 
 Weimarian sheep, followed or led by their shep-
 
 334 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 herd. They are as dingy as London sheep, and far 
 more skinny; indeed, an Englishman who dined 
 with us said the sight of the sheep had set him 
 against mutton. Still, the variety of dishes you 
 get for ten groschen is something marvellous to 
 those who have been accustomed to English charges ; 
 and among the six courses it is not a great evil 
 to find a dish or two the reverse of appetizing. I 
 suppose, however, that the living at tables d'hote 
 gives one no correct idea of the mode in which the 
 people live at home. The basis of the national 
 food seems to be raw ham and sausage, with a copi- 
 ous superstratum of Blaukraut, Sauerkraut, and 
 black bread. Sausage seems to be to the German 
 what potatoes were to the Irish, the sine qua 
 non of bodily sustenance. Goethe asks the Frau 
 von Stein to send him so eine Wurst when he 
 wants to have a make-shift dinner away from 
 home ; and in his letters to Kestner he is enthusi- 
 astic about the delights of dining on Blaukraut 
 and Leberwurst (blue cabbage and liver sausage). 
 If Kraut and Wurst may be called the solid prose 
 of Thuringian diet, fish and Kuchen (generally a 
 heavy kind of fruit tart) are the poetry : the Ger- 
 man appetite disports itself with these as the 
 English appetite does with ices and whipped 
 creams. 
 
 At the beginning of August, when we arrived in 
 Weimar, almost every one was away "at the 
 Baths," of course except the tradespeople. As 
 birds nidify in the spring, so Germans wash them- 
 selves in the summer; their Waschungstrieb acts 
 strongly only at a particular time of the year ; during 
 all the rest, apparently, a decanter and a sugar-basin 
 or pie-dish are an ample toilet-service for them. We
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 335 
 
 were quite contented, however, that it was not yet 
 the Weimar " season," fashionably speaking, since it 
 was the very best time for enjoying something far 
 better than Weimar gayeties, the lovely Park and 
 environs. It was pleasant, too, to see the good 
 bovine citizens enjoying life in their quiet fashion. 
 Unlike our English people, they take pleasure into 
 their calculations, and seem regularly to set aside 
 part of their time for recreation. It is understood 
 that something is to be done in life besides business 
 and housewifery: the women take their children 
 and their knitting to the Erholung, or walk with 
 their husbands to Belvedere, or in some other 
 direction where a cup of coffee is to be had. The 
 Erholung, by the way, is a pretty garden, with 
 shady walks, abundant seats, an orchestra, a ball- 
 room, and a place for refreshments. The higher 
 classes are subscribers and visitors here as well as 
 the bourgeoisie; but there are several resorts of a 
 similar kind frequented by the latter exclusively. 
 The reader of Goethe will remember his little poem, 
 " Die Lustigen von Weimar," which still indicates the 
 round of amusements in this simple capital: the 
 walk to Belvedere or Tiefurt ; the excursion to Jena, 
 or some other trip, not made expensive by distance ; 
 the round game at cards ; the dance ; the theatre ; 
 and so many other enjoyments to be had by a 
 people not bound to give dinner-parties and " keep 
 up a position." 
 
 It is charming to see how real an amusement 
 the theatre is to the Weimar people. The greater 
 number of places are occupied by subscribers, and 
 there is no fuss about toilet or escort. The ladies 
 come alone, and slip quietly into their places with- 
 out need of " protection," a proof of civilization
 
 336 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 perhaps more than equivalent to our pre-eminence 
 in patent locks and carriage springs ; and after the 
 performance is over you may see the same ladies 
 following their servants, with lanterns, through 
 streets innocent of gas, in which an oil-lamp, 
 suspended from a rope slung across from house to 
 house, occasionally reveals to you the shafts of a 
 cart or omnibus, conveniently placed for you to run 
 upon them. 
 
 A yearly autumn festival at Weimar is the Vogel- 
 schiessen, or Bird-shooting ; but the reader must not 
 let his imagination wander at this word into fields 
 and brakes. The bird here concerned is of wood, 
 and the shooters, instead of wandering over breezy 
 down and common, are shut up, day- after day, in a 
 room clouded with tobacco-smoke, that they may 
 take their turn at shooting with the rifle from the 
 window of a closet about the size of a sentinel's 
 box. However, this is a mighty enjoyment to the 
 Thuringian yeomanry, and an occasion of profit to 
 our friend Punch, and other itinerant performers ; 
 for while the Vogelschiessen lasts, a sort of fair is 
 held in the field where the marksmen assemble. 
 
 Among the quieter every-day pleasures of the 
 Weimarians, perhaps the most delightful is the 
 stroll on a bright afternoon or evening to the 
 Duke's summer residence of Belvedere, about two 
 miles from Weimar. As I have said, a glorious 
 avenue of chestnut- trees leads all the way from the 
 town to the entrance of the grounds, which are open 
 to all the world as much as to the Duke himself. 
 Close to the palace and its subsidiary buildings 
 there is an inn, for the accommodation of the good 
 people who come to take dinner or any other meal 
 here, by way of holiday-making. A sort of pavilion
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 337 
 
 stands on a spot commanding a lovely view of 
 Weimar and its valley, and here the Weimarians 
 constantly come on summer and autumn evenings 
 to smoke a cigar or drink a cup of coffee. In one 
 wing of the little palace, which is made smart by 
 wooden cupolas, with gilt pinnacles, there is a 
 saloon, which I recommend to the imitation of 
 tasteful people in their country-houses. It has no 
 decoration but that of natural foliage : ivy is trained 
 at regular intervals up the pure white walls, and all 
 round the edge of the ceiling, so as to form pilasters 
 and a cornice; ivy again, trained on trellis-work, 
 forms a blind to the window, which looks towards 
 the entrance court; and beautiful ferns, arranged 
 in tall baskets, are placed here and there against 
 the walls. The furniture is of light cane-work. 
 Another pretty thing here is the Natur-Theater, 
 a theatre constructed with living trees, trimmed 
 into walls and side scenes. We pleased ourselves 
 for a little while with thinking that this was one of 
 the places where Goethe acted in his own dramas, 
 but we afterwards learned that it was not made 
 until his acting days were over. The inexhaustible 
 charm of Belvedere, however, is the grounds, which 
 are laid out with a taste worthy of a first-rate land- 
 scape gardener. The tall and graceful limes, plane- 
 trees, and weeping birches, the little basins of water 
 here and there, with fountains playing in the middle 
 of them, and with a fringe of broad-leaved plants, or 
 other tasteful bordering round them, the gradual de- 
 scent towards the river, and the hill clothed with firs 
 and pines on the. opposite side, forming a fine dark 
 background for the various and light foliage of the 
 trees that ornament the gardens, all this we went 
 again and again to enjoy, from the time when every- 
 VOL. i. 22
 
 338 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 thing was of a vivid green until the Virginian 
 creepers which festooned the silver stems of the 
 birches wero bright scarlet, and the touch of 
 autumn had turned all the green to gold. One of 
 the spots to linger in is at a semicircular seat 
 against an artificial rock, on which are placed large 
 glass globes of different colours. It is wonderful 
 to see with what minute perfection the scenery 
 around is painted in these globes. Each is like a 
 pre-Raphaelite picture, with every little detail of 
 gravelly walk, mossy bank, and delicately leaved, 
 interlacing boughs presented in accurate miniature. 
 In the opposite direction to Belvedere lies 
 Tiefurt, with its small park and tiny chateau, 
 formerly the residence of the Duchess Amalia, the 
 mother of Carl August, and the friend and patron- 
 ess of Wieland, but now apparently serving as 
 little else than a receptacle for the late Duke Carl 
 Friedrich s rather childish collections. In the 
 second story there is a suite of rooms, so small 
 that the largest of them does not take up as much 
 space as a good dining-table, and each of these 
 doll-house rooms is crowded with prints, old china, 
 and all sorts of knick-knacks and rococo wares. The 
 park is a little paradise. The Ilm is seen here to 
 the best advantage : it is clearer than at Weimar, 
 and winds about gracefully between the banks, on 
 one side steep, and curtained with turf and shrubs, 
 or fine trees. It was here, at a point where the 
 bank forms a promontory into the river, that 
 Goethe and his Court friends got up the perform- 
 ance of an operetta," Die Fischerin, " by torchlight. 
 On the way to Tiefurt lies the Webicht, a beauti- 
 ful wood, through which run excellent carriage- 
 roads. and grassy footpaths. It was a rich enjoyment
 
 TH11EE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 339 
 
 to skirt this wood along the Jena road, and see the 
 sky arching grandly down over the open fields on 
 the other side of us, the evening red flushing the 
 west over the town, and the stars coming out as if 
 to relieve the sun in its watch ; or to take the 
 winding road through the wood, under its tall, 
 overarching trees, now bending their mossy trunks 
 forward, now standing with the stately erectness 
 of lofty pillars ; or to saunter along the grassy 
 footpaths where the sunlight streamed through the 
 fairy-like foliage of the silvery-barked birches. 
 
 Stout pedestrians who go to Weimar will do 
 well to make a walking excursion, as we did, to 
 Ettersburg, a more distant summer residence of 
 the Grand Duke, interesting to us beforehand as 
 the scene of private theatricals and sprees in the 
 Goethe days. We set out on one of the brightest 
 and hottest mornings that August ever bestowed, 
 and it required some resolution to trudge along 
 the shadeless chaussee, which formed the first two 
 or three miles of our way. One compensating 
 pleasure was the sight of the beautiful mountain- 
 ash trees in full berry, which, alternately with 
 cherry-trees, border the road for a considerable 
 distance. At last we rested from our broiling 
 walk on the borders of a glorious pine wood, so 
 extensive that the trees in the distance form a 
 complete wall with their trunks, and so give one a 
 twilight very welcome on a summer's noon. Under 
 these pines you tread on a carpet of the softest 
 moss, so that you hear no sound of a footstep, and 
 all is as solemn and still as in the crypt of a cathe- 
 dral. Presently we passed out of the pine wood 
 into one of limes, beeches, and other trees of trans- 
 parent and light foliage ; and from this again we
 
 340 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 emerged into the open space of the Ettersburg Park 
 in front of the Schloss, which is finely placed on 
 an eminence commanding a magnificent view of 
 the far-reaching woods. Prince Piickler Muskau 
 has been of service here by recommending openings 
 to be made in the woods, in the taste of the English 
 parks. The Schloss, which is a favourite residence 
 of the Grand Duke, is a house of very moderate 
 size, and no pretension of any kind. Its stuccoed 
 walls, and doors long unacquainted with fresh 
 paint, would look distressingly shabby to the 
 owner of a villa at Eichmond or Twickenham ; but 
 much beauty is procured here at slight expense, by 
 the tasteful disposition of creepers on the balus- 
 trades, and pretty vases full of plants ranged along 
 the steps, or suspended in the little piazza be- 
 neath them. A walk through a beech-wood took 
 us to the Mooshutte, in front of which stands the 
 famous beech from whence Goethe denounced 
 Jacobi's " Woldemar. " The bark is covered with 
 initials cut by him and his friends. 
 
 People who only allow themselves to be idle 
 under the pretext of hydropathizing, may find all 
 the apparatus necessary to satisfy their conscience 
 at Bercka, a village seated in a lovely valley about 
 six miles from Weimar. Now and then a Weimar 
 family takes lodgings here for the summer, retir- 
 ing from the quiet of the capital to the deeper 
 quiet of Bercka ; but generally the place seems not 
 much frequented. It would be difficult to imagine 
 a more peace-inspiring scene than this little valley. 
 The hanging woods ; the soft colouring and grace- 
 ful outline of the uplands; the village, with its 
 roofs and spire of a reddish-violet hue, muffled in 
 luxuriant trees ; the white Kurhaus glittering on a
 
 THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR. 341 
 
 grassy slope ; the avenue of poplars contrasting its 
 pretty primness with the wild, bushy outline of 
 the wood-covered hill, which rises abruptly from 
 the smooth, green meadows ; the clear, winding 
 stream, now sparkling in the sun, now hiding it- 
 self under soft gray willows, all this makes an 
 enchanting picture. The walk to Bercka and back 
 was a favourite expedition with us and a few 
 Weimar friends ; for the road thither is a pleas- 
 ant one, leading at first through open, cultivated 
 fields, dotted here and there with villages, and 
 then through wooded hills, the outskirts of the 
 Thuringian Forest. We used not to despise the 
 fine plums which hung in tempting abundance by 
 the roadside ; but we afterwards found that we had 
 been deceived in supposing ourselves free to pluck 
 them, as if it were the golden age, and that we 
 were liable to a penalty of ten groschen for our 
 depredations. 
 
 But I must not allow myself to be exhaustive 
 on pleasures which seem monotonous when told, 
 though in enjoying them one is as far from wish- 
 ing them to be more various as from wishing for 
 any change in the sweet sameness of successive 
 summer days. I will only advise the reader who 
 has yet to make excursions in Thuringia to visit 
 Jena, less for its traditions than for its fine scenery, 
 which makes it, as Goethe says, a delicious place 
 in spite of its dull, ugly streets ; and exhort him, 
 above all, to brave the discomforts of a Postwagen 
 for the sake of getting to Ilmenau. Here he will 
 find the grandest pine-clad hills, with endless 
 walks under their solemn shades ; beech-woods 
 where every tree is a picture ; an air that he will 
 breathe with as conscious a pleasure as if he were
 
 342 ESSAYS OF GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 taking iced water on a hot day ; baths ad libitum, 
 with a douche lofty and tremendous enough to 
 invigorate the giant Cormoran ; and more than all, 
 one of the most interesting relics of Goethe, who 
 had a great love for Ilmenau. This is the small 
 wooden house, on the height called the Kickel- 
 hahn, where he often lived in his long retirements 
 here, and where you may see written by his own 
 hand, near the window-frame, those wonderful 
 lines, perhaps the finest expression yet given to 
 the sense of resignation inspired by the sublime 
 calm of Nature, 
 
 " Ueber alien Gipi'eln 
 1st Ruh, 
 
 In alien Wipfeln. 
 Sparest du 
 Kauin einen Hauch ; 
 Die Vogelein echweigeu im Walde, 
 Warte nur, balde 
 Ruhest du auch." 
 
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