ENGLISH LITEEATUEE
 
 PRISTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE JiXD CO., NEW-STREET SQCATiE 
 
 LONDON

 
 ESSAYS 
 
 ON 
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMOND SCHEEEE 
 
 TRANSLATED BY GEOEGE SAINTSBUEY 
 
 LONDON 
 SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON & COMPANY 
 
 LIMITED 
 
 St. Sunstan's Ujousc 
 PETTER lANE, FLEET STREET, E.O. 
 
 1891 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 
 if OF - ' 1-OENU 
 
 PEEFAOB 
 
 When I was asked by Mr. Stuart Eeid — to whom 
 M. Scherer himself had some years ago indicated the 
 essays in which he would like to be presented to the 
 English public — whether I would undertake the pre- 
 sent book, I was pleased with the commission for 
 three reasons, two private and one public. In the 
 first place, translation, though there has been some 
 dispute as to its effect on the reader, is most un- 
 doubtedly good for the soul of the translator, especially 
 if he be a critic by profession. Nothing creates, and 
 nothing maintains, that sense of difference as between 
 language and language, which is one of the most 
 important points in criticism, so well as the effort to 
 transfer the effect of one into the other. In the second 
 place it had so happened that M. Scherer, not very 
 long before his own death, had written at some length 
 a criticism of a work of my own, which I think I may 
 describe at once naturally and sufficiently by saying 
 that it did not strike my perhaps prejudiced eyes as 
 the happiest instance of his critical powers. Now I
 
 Vi ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 should certainly have preferred that M. Scherer should 
 praise me. 'Every fellow,' as we know, 'likes a 
 hand.' And I do not know tliat I can plead guilty to 
 the charge of being pigeon-livered and lacking gall. 
 But I had understood, years before, the differences in 
 point of view, in taste, and so forth, which not only 
 made it impossible for M. Scherer to sympathise with 
 my criticism of the literature of his own language, but 
 made it even possible for him, a most accurate and 
 ^conscientious critic, to some extent to misrepresent it. 
 Tout comprcndre (as we also know) c'cst tout pardonner. 
 And consequently I was very glad to have an oppor- 
 tunity of raising a little pile of coals of fire on M. 
 Scherer's defunct head ; an occupation as interesting 
 to the man of humour as it is creditable in the eyes of 
 the philosopher and the divine. 
 
 But neither of these reasons would have induced 
 me to undertake a task which, however useful it may 
 -be as an exercise and agreeable as a revanche, is much 
 more troublesome than original composition, if I had 
 not also thought that such well-nourished and robust 
 criticism as M. Scherer's is particularly suited for 
 English readmg at the present day. This criticism 
 is not faultless, and I have in the Introduction thought 
 it the best compliment I could pay to point out its 
 faults as well as to acknowledge its merits. But these 
 merits are such as particularly suit our present con- 
 dition. There is a real interest, if not always an 
 interest according to knowledge, in literature among
 
 PREFACE Vii 
 
 US. The way in which almost anybody who will speak 
 as one having authority on literary questions is fol- 
 lowed, the audience given to lecturers on the subject, 
 even the somewhat comical institution of Societies, 
 and such like crutches for cripples, are evidences of 
 the fact. But the interest is too often divorced from 
 thorough knowledge — seems, indeed, sometimes as if 
 it would try to occupy the place of knowledge — and 
 the authoritative exponents are not always careful so 
 to qualify themselves as to make up for the short- 
 comings of their disciples. Dogmatism without read- 
 ing at the back of it, aesthetic eccentricities without 
 reading at the back of them, are not exactly unknown 
 among the critics of to-day in England. Now for 
 such things, M. Scherer's criticism is a very powerful 
 corrective. When Mr. Matthew Arnold praised it, I 
 think he was a little bribed, as we are all apt to be, by 
 the fact that it was so different in form and style from 
 his own that the two, to a certain extent, set off and set 
 out each other. But that it needs no illegitimate 
 or at least adventitious advantage of this kind the 
 examples which follow will show ; and I hope that the 
 introductory essay will at least not interfere with the 
 presentment. When M, Scherer was approached by 
 Mr. Eeid on the subject, he said, I am told, ' Why 
 should I pour my little pailful into the ocean of 
 English literature ? ' The metaphor was modest but 
 not exact. I think it will be found that the ' pail ' 
 was rather used in drawing, from no common depths,
 
 Vni ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 samples of that literature to be analj-sed with no 
 common science. 
 
 It may be well to say that the essays are here 
 taken from the volumes of M. Scherer's ' Etudes sur 
 la Litterature Contemporaine,' and are placed in the 
 order in which they occur in those volumes, refe- 
 rences to the original being given in the contents. 
 That they are sometimes dated, and sometimes not, 
 is in strict observance of the author's own practice. 
 His notes are given without any indication ; my own, 
 which I have made as few as possible, are bracketed 
 and signed * Trans.' I should, perhaps, add that I 
 have exercised a certain discretion in inserting or 
 omitting passages from his authors which AI. Scherer 
 gave sometimes in the origmal, sometimes translated. 
 They appear wherever they are necessary for the 
 comprehension of the text ; where they are merely 
 illustrative or exemplary I have economised space by 
 omitting them. Sometimes M. Scherer allowed him- 
 self a certain liberty of compression or paraphrase, 
 and in such cases I have generally restored the 
 origmal or omitted the citation, inasmuch as a literal 
 retranslation could serve no purpose for English 
 readers. But once or twice, where I could not hit 
 on the exact passage cited, I have so retranslated. I 
 have only to add that I have stuck as close to my 
 original as was possible. M. Scherer, though writing 
 strong, correct, and dignified French, very seldom 
 * sacrificed to the Graces ' — an aged phrase which
 
 PEEFACE It 
 
 has, I think, a new, a special, and a rather humorous 
 appHcation to critical fine-writing — and it was there- 
 fore deemed to he, not only unnecessary, hut in bad 
 taste to trick or frounce him in English. Nor have I 
 endeavoured entirely to obliterate the Gallic forms 
 and flavours of the original. Unless I am mistaken, 
 a translator, though he should never write what is 
 not the language into which he is translating, should, 
 in such a case as this, aim at conveying to those who 
 €x hyjjothesi cannot read the language from which he 
 translates some gust of its own savour.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGK 
 
 Introduction xiii 
 
 I. George Eliot — ' Silas Marner ' {Etudes sur la 
 
 Litterature Contemjwraine, vol. i.) . 
 
 II. John Stuart Mill {Tbid. vol. i.) . 
 
 III. Shakespeare {Ihid. vol. iii.) .... 
 
 IV. George Eliot — ' Daniel Deronda ' {Ibid. vol. v.) 
 
 V. Taine's History of English Literature {Ibid. 
 
 vol. vi.) 
 
 VI. Shakespeare and Criticism {Ibid. vol. vi.) 
 VII. Milton and ' Paradise Lost ' {Ibid, vol. vi.) 
 VIII. Laurence Sterne, or the Humourist {Ibid. 
 
 vol. vi.) 
 
 IX. Wordsworth and Modern Poetry in England 
 
 {Ibid. vol. vii.) 
 
 X. Thomas Carlyle {Ibid. vol. vii.) . 
 XI. ' Endymion ' {Ibid. vol. vii.) .... 
 XII. George Eliot {Ibid. vol. viii.) 
 
 1 
 
 12 
 
 32 
 
 45 
 
 G2 
 85 
 98 
 
 132 
 
 153 
 199 
 208 
 221
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 The life of Edmond Scherer, who was born in April 
 of the Waterloo year and died in March 1889, was a 
 pretty long one, and it was, as regards occupations 
 and interests, rather curiously divided into two widely 
 separated parts. During about thirty years — from the 
 age of fifteen to the age of forty-five — almost all 
 M. Scherer's thoughts and studies were directed to 
 theology : first of all in the mood of boyish doubt, then 
 for many years in that of fervent faith, then in that 
 of rationalising but still confident criticism, and lastly 
 in an active and rather painful polemic on what may 
 be called offensive-defensive lines in regard to his own 
 complete though gradual abandonment of definite 
 theological belief. After these jars ceased thirty 
 other years were occupied in literary and political 
 journalism, and (after the war of 1870) in active 
 participation in politics. The first period left an 
 ineffaceable impression on the last, but the last period 
 cannot be said to have been in any respect prophesied 
 by the first. And I do not think it superfluous 
 or uncritical to observe that, excellent judge as 
 M. Scherer was of literature, and, in the main, acute 
 and sensible as were his views on politics, criticism,
 
 xiv ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 both literary and political, was to him something of a 
 jyis alley. It was only when he was driven from his 
 theological studies that he resorted to these others — 
 to speak fancifully, they were a sort of reverse cloister 
 to which he turned weary of things divine, as others 
 have sought the real cloister weary of things worldly. 
 And though he certainly never indulged in, and has, 
 I think in one of the very essays here translated, 
 spoken scornfully of, the habit of whining over lost 
 faith, a kind of nostalgia of his first loves and first 
 studies always clung to him. We can trace the theo- 
 logian within the publicist, the preacher underneath 
 the historian of so unexpected a hero as 'Tyran le 
 Blanc,' and the critic of Fromentin or of Baudelaire. 
 The remarkable knowledge of English literature 
 and the English language which the contents of this 
 book display did not come to M. Scherer by accident, 
 nor can it be said to have been merely the result of 
 deliberate and personal fancy. He was on his father's 
 side descended from a Swiss family which had been 
 settled in France for about a century, but his mother 
 was an Englishwoman. Moreover, when he was 
 about sixteen, and was, as became a schoolboy of 
 sixteen in 1831, inclined to Deism, self-destruction, 
 and general despair, he was sent to England to 
 board with a certain Piev. Thomas Loader at Mon- 
 mouth. M. Greard's ^ perhaps pardonable ignor- 
 ance of English ecclesiastical matters makes his 
 account of this sojourn rather vague, but it seems 
 most probable (I have no positive information) that 
 the * Eev.' Mr. Loader belonged to some Dissent- 
 
 ' Every writer on M. Scherer must acknowledge indebtedness to 
 M. Octave Greard's Edmond Scherer (Paris, 1890).
 
 INTRODUCTION XV 
 
 ing sect. However this may be, it is certain that 
 he not only kept his pupil hard at work, but in- 
 duced in him a fervent and, notwithstanding the 
 final catastrophe, a solidly founded piety. When 
 Edmond returned to Paris he studied law to please 
 his family and philosophy to please himself. But he 
 was resolved to become a pastor, and in his twenty- 
 first year he obtained permission to study theology at 
 Strasburg. He took his degrees, married early, and 
 was ordained in April 1840, being then a pronounced 
 and thorough believer in * I'autorite de la Bible et de 
 la Croix.' He tarried, however, for several years longer 
 in Strasburg, and he does not seem to have undertaken 
 any directly pastoral work, though he preached and 
 wrote hymns with much unction. In 1845, I think, 
 he was appointed to a professorship in the Ecole Libre 
 de Theologie at Geneva and embarked, still in full 
 confidence, on a course of teaching designed to esta- 
 blish and defend a sort of orthodox Protestantism, 
 not admitting any ecclesiastical tradition, but solely 
 founded on the Bible. I have neither room nor 
 desire to trace at length what followed, nor does it 
 concern us much. I need only say that the result 
 was what it was, to any person having some tincture 
 of theological study and some knowledge of human 
 nature, certain to be in the case of a restless and 
 inquiring spirit, impatient of compromise, rejecting ah 
 initio the idea of the Church as the supernaturally 
 appointed depository of supernatural truth, and, in- 
 deed, insisting generally that the supernatural shall 
 allow itself to be treated as if it were not supernatural. 
 By degrees Scherer's theology grew more and more 
 * free,' less and less orthodox. But the ' complete
 
 Xvi ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 theological shipwreck,' as he has called it himself in 
 another case, was not reached in less than fifteen 
 years ; and it was not till 1860 or 1861 that he made, 
 as M. Greard says, his * profession de foi hegelienne,' 
 in which I should myself see less of Hegelianism 
 positive than of anti-supernaturalism negative. For 
 the rest of his life M. Scherer clung, indeed, to the 
 Hegelian doctrine of the relativity of all things, and 
 carried on a truceless war with the Ding an sich. 
 But he had nothing in his nature of the transcenden- 
 talism with which Hegel himself was still penetrated, 
 and which unites him to the great succession of critical 
 Pantheists. I am not here reviewing him from the 
 philosophical standpoint, though it might be inte- 
 resting to do so. The important thing for us is to 
 remember that we have in the literary critic whom we 
 are to survey a naufrage, a man who has distinctly 
 taken refuge in another employment from the employ- 
 ment to which he had at first given himself. Unless 
 this is remembered many points in M. Scherer's 
 attitude, both to politics and to literature — his two 
 interests thenceforward — will remain dark to us, 
 while if it be remembered these things will, I think, 
 become reasonably plain. 
 
 To return to the course of M. Scherer's ]ife, the 
 last thirty years, or nearly so, give us Paris for scene, 
 and literature and politics for subjects. The ' Eevue 
 des deux Mondes ' was not shut to M. Scherer, but 
 almost the whole of his work in both departments 
 was given to the ' Temps,' then under the direction of 
 M. Nefftzer, who was akin to him in race and general 
 sentiments. The character of this paper was very 
 mainly formed and settled by M. Scherer's coUabora-
 
 INTRODUCTION XVII 
 
 tion. He was a very active journalist, though he 
 was not, I beheve, obhged to write in order to hve ; 
 and it may very hkely be that his Hterary activity 
 was spurred as well by some domestic troubles (of 
 which we hear dimly) as by the necessity of making 
 good the lost ideals. He had, as it were, at once 
 simimed up and said good-bye to his interest in 
 religious subjects proper in his ' Melanges d'Histoire 
 Eeligieuse.' Later he contributed (I believe in Eng- 
 lish, which he wrote excellently) to the ' Daily News ' 
 on French politics. This matter, which again would 
 interest me very much, again does not concern us 
 directly here. He began as a moderate and rational 
 opponent of the Empire. Against this he carried on 
 a war at once vigorous and free from the mere fronde 
 to which men of purely French blood are so liable, and 
 which not uncommonly ends in such lamentable things 
 as the fate of his friend Prevost Paradol. But in 
 politics, as previously in religion, M. Scherer exhi- 
 bited certain weaknesses, for preservation from which 
 those who have escaped them should rather thank 
 their good fortune than their merits. During the 
 war he was called upon to play a most difficult part, 
 and played it in a manner which cannot be too 
 much admired, especially when we remember that he 
 was a literary recluse, fifty-iive years old, and with 
 very little experience of business. He, who never 
 feared anything, was the last man likely to be a 
 jxuitouflard, and to contemplate the agony of France 
 from the safe seclusion of Geneva or London. But 
 it could scarcely have been anticipated that he would 
 take up and discharge to admiration the hard and 
 hateful duty of administering the affairs of Versailles 
 
 a
 
 iviii ESSAYS ON EJSGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 (his place of residence) during the German occupation. 
 He seems to have done this necessary and odious 
 work with the most admirable good sense and fortitude, 
 standing between his countrymen and the invaders 
 and being proof alike against the unreasonable sensi- 
 tiveness of the former and the inconsiderate roughness 
 of the latter. Such work is not always rewarded, but 
 it speaks much for M. Scherer'a townsmen and the in- 
 habitants of the department of Seine-et-Oise generally 
 that when the peace came they at once selected him to 
 represent them. He very soon became a life Senator 
 and retained the position till his death. He was a 
 member of the Centre — rather of the Centre Gauche 
 than otherwise, but still centrical. And yet at the 
 same time, though universal suffrage is simply the 
 be-all and end-all of the Government which he sup- 
 ported, and of which, in a way, he formed part, he 
 ^rew more and more disgusted with it. Almost at 
 the opening of his literary career, in an article here 
 translated, he had — rather hastily, I think — given his 
 ■own case away by declaring the logical necessity of 
 this arrangement. But he had at the same time 
 manifested a strong objection to its practical results. 
 The acknowledgment weakened as time went on and 
 the objections strengthened tiU but a very few years 
 ago he published some positive jeremiads on the sub- 
 ject ; yet he always declared himself a Eepublican. 
 Here, too, we may observe some peculiarities which 
 wiU be of service to us in our investigation proper — 
 the investigation to which we must now turn — of M. 
 8cherer's position as a literary critic. As we noted 
 that his theological studies and his relinquishment 
 of them had given a colour to his work and pressed
 
 INTRODUCTION XIX 
 
 On it, what he would himself call * preoccui^ations ' — a 
 tendency to subordinate form to matter, a distinct 
 inclination to the heresy of enseignement, and a cer- 
 tain tone of bitterness— so it is observable that his 
 political disillusions reacted on his literary judg- 
 ments. He could not believe in progress, and he 
 would not believe in reaction, so that if it were worth 
 while a parcel of the most curiously contradictory 
 judgments on all subjects in which these two things 
 are concerned might be produced from him. 
 
 We must now go back a little, and imagine him a 
 man of forty-five, setting out in the year 1860, or 
 thereabouts, on his career of literary critic. He had 
 for thirty years been an omnivorous student, though 
 not in every direction. Eeaders of him must have 
 observed (what M. Greard, I think, admits) that either 
 his knowledge of or his inclination to classical and 
 mediaeval literature was somewhat lacking in width 
 and depth. He is said to have studied scholastic 
 philosophy, but I do not see many signs of it, and I 
 should imagine that it must have been exclusively from 
 the theological side. Even the earlier Renaissance 
 appears to have had few attractions for him, and it is 
 only from the seventeenth century onward that he is 
 really at home with literature. He knew— a very rare 
 thingwith Frenchmen even now, and much rarer then — 
 English and German, the literatures and the languages, 
 very nearly as well as he knew French, and was even 
 more thoroughly at liome with them. I have sometimes 
 thought, perhaps wickedly, that his declaration of love 
 for Racine and some other specially French authors, 
 though no doubt quite honest (M. Schercr was nothing 
 if not honest), had a certain unconscious touch of 
 
 a2
 
 XX ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 afficlie in it. But he knew Frencli literature of the 
 last three centuries thoroughly, and he had a most 
 pure and correct taste in it, while his familiarity with 
 the other literatures gave him that power of com- 
 parison which Frenchmen have so frequently lacked. 
 His knowledge was extremely exact and his acuteness 
 (where he did not go wrong for reasons presently to 
 be mentioned, in which case he never came right) was 
 extraordinary. Above all, he had the healthy mania 
 of always trying to bring his critical conclusions under 
 some general law : he was never satisfied with inform- 
 ing the world that he liked this, and did not like that. 
 He never (at any rate in important cases) concluded 
 from his ignorance to some one else's knowledge, and, 
 above all, and first of all, he never made criticism an 
 occasion for cracking epigrams or unfurlmg fine writing. 
 It is impossible to read a criticism of M. Scherer's, 
 even when one most disagrees with it, without being 
 informed, exercised, ' breathed,' as our fathers would 
 have said. It may not be amusing, it may be irri- 
 tating ; you may think that you could upset it beauti- 
 fully ; but if you know enough about the subject your- 
 self to be able to see knowledge where it exists you 
 never can pronounce it unimportant. And there is 
 so much criticism which crackles to deafening with 
 epigram, which blazes to dazzling with epithet, which 
 amuses even while irritating, and which yet is, alack ! 
 absolutely unimportant. 
 
 The drawbacks of M. Scherer's criticism were 
 summed up not long ago in a really brilliant mot by a 
 writer of the new French school, for whom, on the 
 whole, M. Scherer had a much greater admiration 
 than I have myself, and who was in many respects in
 
 INTRODUCTION XXI 
 
 sympathy with him. * II ne jngeait pas les ecrits,' says 
 M. Edouard Rod, ' avec son intelligence ; il les jngeait 
 avec son caractere.' I am not at all fond of critical 
 fireworks, but this is not a firework, it is a lamp. 
 Intelligence adapts itself, character does not ; intelli- 
 gence is charitable, character is apt to be a little 
 Pharisaic ; intelligence has no prejudice, character has 
 much. It was probably to some extent because he 
 did not take to literary criticism till so late in life that 
 M. Scherer manifested the raidcur with which he has 
 often been charged ; it was no doubt also partly because 
 of those vicissitudes and experiences of soul which have 
 been briefly noticed. But there must have been in it 
 much of personal idiosyncrasy. We hear early of the 
 * effet penible et angoissant que font sur cet aimable 
 Scherer les nouvelles connaissances,' and the amiable 
 lady who wrote this had cause to know it. She had 
 gone to meet him when he came on a preaching 
 errand and found him ' un jeune homme d'un abord 
 glacial' who got into the carriage 'sans repondre a 
 mon accueil ' (this, we may trust, was not set down to 
 the tenue hritannique with which he was also credited). 
 Many years afterwards most friendly critics have 
 expressed their regret that Scherer did not mix more 
 with younger men of letters. One of the few unpub- 
 lished personal stories I have ever heard of him was 
 to the effect that a very few years ago, when he was 
 in a London drawing-room, a fellow guest came up to 
 the host and said, * Who is that Scotch clergyman ? ' 
 All his life, except to a few very intimate friends, he 
 seems to have been more imposing than attractive, 
 and the same may be said of his criticism. M. Eod, 
 who is, as I have said, a witness above suspicion,
 
 XXU ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 records and deplores the sraall practical effect which 
 this criticism had, and the kind of resentment with 
 which it was received. One very amiable and ac- 
 complished French man of letters spoke of his Jiel 
 Protestant. I remember a legend set afloat by some 
 one of the opposite school that a practical joker once 
 went round to the booksellers saying that he was a 
 collector of second editions, and wished for copies of 
 M. Scherer's ' Etudes ' in that state, which nobody 
 could give him. It is certam that these ' Etudes,' 
 though containing by far the most valuable corpus of 
 criticism which France has produced since Samte- 
 Beuve's ' Causeries,' and superior, if bulk, range, and 
 value be taken together, to anything to be found in 
 English literature for many years past, have never 
 been widely popular. Probably the sale of the whole 
 nine volumes has not equalled that of a single one of 
 some of the collections of clever froth which, in M. 
 Scherer's own latter days and since, have caught the 
 taste of Frenchmen and of those Englishmen who 
 thmk that to admire the latest French thing is to be 
 dans Ic mourcmcnt, and not to admire that thing is to 
 be out of it. 
 
 As our chief business is with M. Scherer's essays 
 in English literature, it may be well to go through 
 the essays here translated before resummg their au- 
 thor's critical position in general. Some of them are 
 already well known in England by the eulogies of Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold ; all deserve, I think, to be very well 
 known indeed. Their excellence increases as they go 
 on both in writing and in matter. But they are all 
 good, and what may be especially praised in them is 
 the admirable critical summaries — much resembling
 
 INTEODUCTION xxiii 
 
 those of Jeffrey^ a critic who had many points of con- 
 tact with M. Scherer — of different periods of EngHsb 
 literature. 
 
 The apparent disproportion of the space given to 
 George Ehot is, now that the essays are collected,, 
 likely to strike most people, especially since the some- 
 what extravagant estimate of the author of ' Adam 
 Bede ' which was common some years ago among 
 ' thoughtful ' Englishmen and foreigners has subsided,, 
 as, indeed, is usual in such cases, to a point perhaps, 
 almost as far below the just level as the excess was. 
 above it. It is the very last secret of criticism, the- 
 degree which few critics reach, to be as indejiendent 
 of the charms of novelty as of those of antiquity, 
 and to look at things new and things old from the 
 combined standpoint which things old and new 
 together give. But it must always be counted to^. 
 M. Scherer that in the later essays — that on ' Deronda " 
 and the final one on the ' Biography ' — he retracted 
 not a little, or, to speak more justly, readjusted to 
 sounder standards, a good deal of the rather effusive 
 and uncritical laudation of the paper which opens, 
 this volume. It was, indeed, impossible that he should 
 not somewhat overvalue a writer whose mental his- 
 tory was in so many respects identical with hi& 
 own, and whose final standpoint (though he has in- 
 dicated the interval very subtly and accurately in the 
 last essay) was so near his. The weak point in both 
 (and this, naturally enough, he has not indicated) 
 was an insufficient devotion to the great god Nonsense, 
 whether in his Avatar of Frivolity or in his Avatar of 
 Passion. They could neither of them conjugate the 
 verb desipere ; the delights of hearing the chimes at
 
 XXIV ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 midnight in the full metaphorical sense were shut off 
 from them ; they had no fine madness. They were both 
 (it is needless to say it in George Eliot's case to an 
 English audience, but it may be confidently affirmed 
 of M. Scherer also) susceptible enough to certain 
 kinds of wit and to certain kinds of humour ; while 
 one of them, as we know, could create both humour 
 and wit of those kinds. But IM. Scherer has wonder- 
 ingly commented on the unlucid interval of this 
 susceptibility in which George Eliot wrote ' Daniel 
 Deronda,' and he has shown a similar eclipse in his 
 own case in the blind ferocity with which ho attacked 
 Baudelaire. Yet this very community of defects, 
 as of qualities, constitutes, of course, a security for 
 mutual understanding, and it is nearly impossible 
 that any better criticism of George Eliot — from the 
 sympathetic side, yet not idolatrous — shall be written 
 than that contained in this volume. There is much 
 to add, no doubt, from the unfavourable side, but that 
 can be easily done. 
 
 The second essay — that on Mill — is particularly 
 interesting, because it was written at a time and from 
 a point of view which are not recoverable except by a 
 tour deforce of critical translation of one's self into 
 other circumstances. There was no reason, political, 
 religious, or, to a certain extent, philosophical (for M. 
 Scheror's Hegehanism always had a touch of Scoto- 
 French experience-doctrine in it), why author and 
 critic should not be in touch with each other. But, 
 little of a Millite as I am myself, I should say that 
 M. Scherer is, if anything, rather less than more just 
 to Mill. It would be curious if, as I half think, this 
 falling short of justice is due to the fact that Mill had
 
 INTKODUCTION XXV 
 
 never gone through M. Scherer's own soul-history, 
 while George Eliot had. But it must also be remem- 
 bered that at this time the future Senator was only 
 beginning his purely political studies. He came much 
 nearer afterwards to some views of Mill's which he 
 here seems but half to relish. 
 
 Of the two Shakspeare essays the first is beyond 
 all question the weaker, though they must have been 
 written very much at the same time, considerable 
 as is the gap which it pleased M. Scherer to set 
 between them in the order of republication. It is 
 fair, however, to observe that it is in some sense a 
 preliminary dissertation, a sort of getting over of 
 the facts and history of the subject before tackling 
 the strictly critical work. The second, the ' peg ' of 
 which is the Shakspearophobia of the excellent Herr 
 Eiimelin, is one of the best examples of M. Scherer's 
 critical grasp. Its survey of the successive attitudes 
 of German Shakspeare-criticism may be vulnerable 
 in parts — it is the way of these surveys to be so, and 
 therefore, tempting as they are, both for display of 
 skill and for the pleasure there is in doing them, some 
 critics are rather shy of the indulgence. But this is 
 one of the best of the kind — full of knowledge easily 
 borne and well digested, and written with a maestria 
 which never becomes ostentation or virtuosity. It ends, 
 indeed, with a sort of false note, or, rather, an equi- 
 vocal use of terms. To make Goethe, while inferior to 
 Shakspeare on the whole, superior to him in univer- 
 sality may seem at first sight, m the literal sense, 
 preposterous. But a moment's thought will show that 
 M. Scherer was using * universal ' in a special sense, 
 was referring, not to nature, but to the encyclopaedia.
 
 XXVi ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 In the main no man has ever been sounder on 
 Shakspeare than he, and that is the articnltis stantis 
 out cadcntis criticismi. 
 
 The sixth vohime of the ' Etudes ' (we have spoken 
 of the essay on ' Daniel Deronda,' which, though 
 much later in date than those of which we are going 
 to speak, appeared in volume form earlier) is pecu- 
 liarly rich in papers on English subjects. Here is 
 the remarkable paper, written many years before, on 
 M. Taine's * History ; ' here that just discussed on 
 * Shakspeare and Criticism ; ' here the famous 
 ' Milton,' famous not merely by Mr. Arnold's praise 
 of it, but, with the possible exception of that on 
 Wordsworth, as the chief example of M. Scherer's 
 power in our own subjects ; here the less valuable but 
 interesting paper on * Sterne.' With the subject of 
 this last it might at first seem as if M. Scherer could 
 have been in but imperfect sympathy ; and I am not 
 prepared to deny that a desire to give a helping hand 
 to a young and very promising man of letters — a 
 member of the group of Swiss-French Protestant 
 men of letters, of which Vinet, M. Scherer himself, 
 the Monods, and others were pillars — may have had 
 something to do with the selection of it. But Sterne, 
 who loved the French nation, has always had an attrac- 
 tion for them, the causes of which it would not be diffi- 
 cult to work out, and a passage on humour here, 
 though oddly prefaced, is one of the best things in this 
 volume. The other two essays are of the very first 
 quality. It can scarcely be said that M. Scherer has 
 not done justice to M. Taine ; but nowhere have the 
 two great faults of a book which, brilliant as it is, 
 is almost more faulty than brilliant — its false air of
 
 INTRODUCTION XXVU 
 
 method and its tajmge — been more severely handled. 
 Indeed, M. Scherer, who, whatever the faults of his 
 own criticism, rarely saw things quite out of focus or 
 rendered them quite out of drawing, could not but be 
 scandalised at the prevalence of these two eccentri- 
 cities in M. Taine's work. As for the ' Milton ' it is 
 difficult to admire it too much. Inevitably, M. Scherer 
 is too severe on Milton's theological views and assumes 
 divers things which lie would have been hard put to 
 to prove against an active and well-armed antagonist. 
 Inevitably, likewise, he is too lenient to Milton's 
 character, which seems to have had a great many 
 points of contact with his own. As a criticism * of 
 art ' on * Paradise Lost ' (it touches other matters 
 only incidentally) it is nearly impeccable. The in- 
 eradicable differences of national taste may come in 
 a little, and may make us think that, for instance, 
 the poetic magnificence of the Sin and Death passage 
 should have saved it from M. Scherer's condemnation. 
 But these are details, and of the merest. As a 
 whole, I should include the essay in any collection 
 of the best dozen or sixteen critical exercises of 
 the last half-century in Europe. Enthusiasm, old 
 and new (for it is impossible in reading it to forget 
 the time when M. Scherer himself saw, as they say, eye 
 to eye with Milton in religious matters), has aroused 
 in the critic a more glowing style than his usual sober 
 medium, and though once or twice this is a little too 
 * purple,' the best examples of it are admirable. 
 
 The seventh volume also is pretty rich in our 
 material. The appearance of Lord Beaconsfield's 
 ' Endymion,' the death of Mr. Carlyle, and the publi- 
 cation of Mr. Matthew Arnold's * Selections from
 
 XXVlll ESSAYS ON EXGLTSH LITERATUEE 
 
 Wordsworth ' gave M. Scherer within a very few 
 months opportunities of speaking on EngHsh litera- 
 ture, and he took them to his and our very great 
 advantage. The paper on "Wordsworth is the longest 
 of his English, and one of the longest of all his essays, 
 and I do not know that he has anywhere examined a 
 subject more thoroughly or with greater gusto. Here, 
 again, the attraction of personal sympathy is manifest. 
 Wordsworth, like Milton, was both in literary and in 
 moral character thoroughly congenial to LI. Scherer. 
 He might from his later standpoint smile at the 
 religious views of both as childish, but he had gone 
 through them, and in Wordsworth's case there was, 
 "with all his orthodoxy, also a sort of vague undog- 
 matic theosophy which appealed directly to the critic. 
 Wordsworth's seriousness, his austerity, his perpetual 
 regard to conduct, were sure to conciliate M. Scherer ; 
 and though the latter as a Frenchman could not but 
 deplore the poet's lack of sense of the ridiculous, he 
 was probably more than consoled by his lack of 
 frivolity and by his total freedom from disorderly 
 passion. Indeed, if M. Scherer had been a poet (he 
 had in his youth, like most critics, considerable poetical 
 velleities), and if instead of a French Protestant he 
 had been an Anglican, I really do not know that it 
 would have taken much more to make him a Words- 
 worth. But as it was there could be none of the 
 jealousy which often arises between likes, and none 
 of the want of sympathy which is commoner still 
 between unlikes. Everything made for righteousness 
 and for unction combined in the criticism, and the com- 
 bination duly appears in it. It is interesting also for 
 its obiter dicta on Mr. Arnold, and on the i)oetic sue-
 
 INTKODUCTION XXIX 
 
 cession in England during this century — another of 
 M. Scherer's admirable surveys. This is, perhaps, 
 not the place to say much on the sympathy between 
 Mr. Arnold and M. Scherer, and it must be confessed 
 that, as we should expect, the French critic is not 
 quite sound upon Keats. It is, on the whole, rather 
 Wonderful that he does him as much justice as he 
 actually does. Yet here also we find more than one 
 of those notes of purely personal or national dissonance 
 which no transcendence of critical talent can ever 
 wholly reconcile, which perhaps none can ever even 
 thoroughly comprehend. M. Scherer says that La- 
 martine is * plus tragique, plus sublime, plus grand ' 
 than Wordsworth, and he produces these two lines 
 as an example ; 
 
 Adore ici le Dieu qu'adorait Pytliagore, 
 Prete avee lui I'oreille aux celestes concerts. 
 
 I have myself been upbraided with setting French 
 poetry too high ; I have thoroughly subdued my 
 ' German paste ; ' I honestly think that the reading of 
 millions of lines of French verse has attuned my ear 
 to any possible cadence of it from the Chanson de 
 Roland to Parallclement. But if there is anything 
 in this distich comparable to such Wordsworthian 
 passages as M. Scherer quotes, if it is not a mere 
 school exercise beside the great ode or the Tintern 
 Ahhey, I consent to be written down as other than a 
 two-legged creature. Here, however, we come once 
 more to the mystcrium, the ' This is this to me and 
 that to thee ' beyond which no criticism can get. 
 
 In the next essay, the necrology on Carlyle, we 
 find M. Scherer in part, though by no means wholly,
 
 XXX ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 in his worse vein as a critic, in a vein not otherwise 
 obvious to the reader of this volume merely, and less 
 disastrous even here than in regard to some French 
 authors, but still characteristic and not favourably 
 characteristic. Not only the date and circumstance 
 of the essay, but probably also a real growth of critical 
 faculty kept him from bluntly dismissing Carlyle, as 
 he had done twenty years before, with the words 
 ' insupportable jargon,' and there are excellent things 
 in the paper, short as it is. But we feel at once 
 that there is a thorough antagonism between author 
 and critic, and that the critic has not taken too 
 much pains to neutralise it. If there was one thing 
 which M. Scherer hated more than anything else 
 it was the bizarre. I am afraid that I excited his 
 indignation by describing him in the book which he 
 criticised so unfavourably as * an untrustworthy judge 
 of what is not commonplace,' and I can see now 
 that the words are susceptible of a disobliging inter- 
 pretation which I had not myself attached to them. 
 I did not mean by them that M. Scherer liked the 
 commonplace, much less that he was commonplace 
 himself; but that anything distinctly out of the 
 commonplace, anything bizarre, outre, fantastic, ex- 
 travagant, baroque, and so forth, excited in him a sort 
 of prejudice and mistrust which deprived him for the 
 time of his better critical faculty. He could pardon 
 a good deal of affectation if it was unassuming and 
 urbane ; he could even in this same essay make that 
 astonishing selection of Mr. Arnold as ' not affected,' as 
 * having the courage to remain simple and sincere.' 
 But he simply hated ostentatious paradox, neologism, 
 oddity of style and thought — in fact, almost everything 
 that was characteristic of the form, and much that was
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXI 
 
 characteristic of the matter of Carlyle. This dislike 
 had shown itself twenty years earlier in the unadvised 
 speaking with the lips of his first essay on George Eliot ; 
 it showed itself four years later in his last on her. It 
 gathers itself up here a little softened, as I have said, 
 in form by the occasion, but still evident in fact. 
 
 One is surprised, on the contrary, by the toler- 
 ance which M. Scherer shows to a very different 
 writer in the article on * Endymion.' We might have 
 expected that Lord Beaconsfield's literature and his 
 politics alike would be Anathema Maranatha to M. 
 Scherer, and that Mr. Gladstone would in his political, if 
 not in his literary, capacity be a man after M. Scherer' s 
 own heart. Can it be that the rigid orthodoxy of 
 the Liberal and the presumed freethinking of the 
 Tory had anything to do with the critic's judgment ? 
 Perhaps it was the spectacle, always dear to French 
 eyes, of a mere man of letters, a mere gentleman of 
 the press, forcing himself, with a minimum of assist- 
 ance from birth, education, wealth, or friendship, to 
 the very topmost height, which allured him. I know 
 not : but the fact remains that his judgment on Mr. 
 Gladstone is anything but enthusiastic, and on Lord 
 Beaconsfield is positively lenient. That he does not 
 speak very highly of ' Endymion ' itself is not sur- 
 prising. I know very enthusiastic admirers of Lord 
 Beaconsfield who are equally unkind to it. 
 
 And so we come to the last essay of all, that on Mr. 
 Cross's life of George Eliot, which has been already 
 discussed, and of which we need say no more than 
 that it is not merely an excellent appreciation and sum- 
 mary of the subject, but full of side lights on the author 
 himself. It exhibits in particular that kind of Nihilism 
 — of Nihilism not exasperated or aggressive, but blank^
 
 XXXU ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 hopeless, and with even a point of bitterness piercing 
 through the even surface of its would-be Stoicism — 
 which distinguished M. Scherer's later years and later 
 writings. Even George Eliot is a little too positive, a little 
 too credulous, for him, and he twitches that nymph's 
 last garment of childish faith off with a rather icy 
 gravity and apparently without the slightest pleasure. 
 Here, however, we return to a subject which, if 
 not exactly taboo, and, indeed, to some extent neces- 
 sary to be touched upon, is not our main concern. 
 It will be better to finish with a general summary 
 of the main characteristics of M. Scherer's literary 
 criticism. They are well and favourably, though 
 not quite exhaustively, illustrated in these essays on 
 English writers, in which his French friends some- 
 times thought that he showed an undue partiality — 
 a kind of xenomania. In the much larger body of 
 his work on French and other subjects, we shall find 
 nothing to alter, though something to supplement and 
 fill out, the estimate which may be formed from these 
 only. In contradistinction to those of his friend and 
 eulogist, Mr. Arnold,' his estimates never neglected 
 the historic element, and I cannot but think that this 
 gave him a decided advantage. We all know, of 
 course, what Mr. Arnold meant by his decryings of 
 the historic estimate ; and we know also that they 
 were compatible m his own case with much fine cri- 
 ticism and more delightful writing. They were also 
 exceedingly convenient as justifying the somewhat 
 eclectic character of Mr. Arnold's critical philosophy, 
 as enabling him to skip periods, authors, literatures, 
 that he did not care about, and as fortifying him in 
 those secure and extremely one-sided generalisations
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXlll 
 
 which he executed with such an incomparable mixture 
 of audacity and grace. To put the thing bhuitly 
 and briefly, too many parts of Mr. Arnold's stately 
 pleasure domes of aesthetic elegance would go down in 
 half an hour's battering from the historic estimate, 
 and he showed wisdom in ruling that estimate out. 
 M. Scherer, on the other hand, did not want to build 
 stately pleasure domes ; he never wanted, at least 
 knowingly, to do anything but comprehend ; and he 
 saw the immense advantage in comprehension which 
 the historical approach gives. Never abusing, never, 
 indeed, accepting without grave modifications the 
 product-of-the-circumstances theory, he always at- 
 tended to circumstances, to origins, to the filiation of 
 Avork and of talent in the great literary pedigree. 
 
 He had, on the other hand, or fancied that he had, 
 a rather singular repugnance to another great engine 
 of criticism, the comparative method. I say ' fancied 
 that he had,' for, as a matter of fact, he sometimes 
 uses it; but he seems to me to have confused two 
 different kinds of comparison — the one a kind as 
 bastard and as mischievous as possible, the other the 
 secret of all really lasting and satisfactory critical 
 judgment. The comparison which says, * What ! 
 yoii like that ? I like this,'' and justifies its dislike of 
 That because it does not possess the characteristics 
 of This, is as idle, as uncritical, as mischievous, as 
 M. Scherer or anyone else pleases. But the compa- 
 rison which takes This and That, puts them together, 
 notes what This has and That lacks, observes how This 
 excels That in one way, and That excels This in the 
 other, appears to me to be, on the contrary, the one 
 ; method by which you can get at really luminous results. 
 
 b
 
 XXXIV ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 These results will be not, as the private impressions 
 even of culture are often, mere will-o'-the-wisps, or, as 
 a priori and positive theories are, lights too remote and 
 easting too long shadows to be safely used, but honest 
 hand-lanterns which will lead you about the labyrinth of 
 the world's literature with as few chances as possible 
 of losing your way. I think that M. Scherer did use 
 these lanterns, though he affected to despise them ; 
 and I think that the careful reader of the following 
 pages will find traces of the use pretty frequentl3% 
 
 For the rest, that reader will certainlj^ find here 
 many other things which belong to good — to the 
 best — criticism. It was out of M. Scherer's way in 
 the present essays to indulge in many of those inte- 
 resting discussions on the more abstract and general 
 points which he has handled elsewhere, as, for instance, 
 in his capital discussion of the interest and value of 
 translations of poetry. Excellent English scholar as 
 he was, he had too keen a sense of the fitness of 
 things to descend into verbal criticism, of which he 
 was a great master, as witness another capital essay 
 of his on ' La Deformation de la Langue Francaise,' 
 an essay which has been sometimes echoed as to 
 English by those who do not or will not see that in 
 this respect the genius of the two tongues is diametri- 
 cally opposed. He could not, of course, in this bare 
 dozen of essays show anything like the range of 
 literary knowledge and literary interest displayed in 
 the entire collection of probably a dozen dozen, which 
 has still to be reinforced with his volumes on Diderot, 
 on Grimm, and others. But if he misses some op- 
 portunities he avoids some snares. I have spoken of 
 his greatest critical blunder, the unsparing damnation
 
 INTRODUCTION XXXV 
 
 of Baudelaire, not merely because of his faults, which 
 are great, but in spite of his merits, which are greater. 
 He was not likely, on any English writer, to fall into 
 the queer wrongheadedness of his attack on Moliere. 
 If his attitude towards Carlyle shows something of 
 the same mistake as his attitude towards Diderot, the 
 half-score pages which he has devoted to the one did 
 not admit anything like the development of the error 
 which was possible in the volume given to the other. 
 And here, as in all his work, the reader will find 
 certain qualities which are more rare than they ought 
 to be, or would seem at first sight likely to be, among 
 critics, that is to say, among persons who deliberately 
 set themselves to work to judge the writings of others, 
 and who publish their judgments. The first and fore- 
 most of these qualities is an ample preparation of 
 study. The ' facetious and rejoicing ignorance,' as 
 another great critic has said, which takes for granted, 
 first, that in this business an ounce of mother-wit is 
 worth more than a pound of clergy, and, secondly, 
 that so much more than an ounce of mother-wit has 
 fallen to its own lot that it could dispense with clergy 
 altogether, was not in M. Scherer's way ; indeed, 
 he hated few things so much. In the second place, 
 without giving himself any airs of saccrdoce, he knew 
 very well, and always acted on the principle, that to 
 make an avowedly critical stud}' a mere stalking 
 horse for shooting random shots of pleasantry, a mere 
 embroider}' frame for elaborating patches of fine 
 writing, is a gross offence against art and a gross 
 dereliction of literary duty. If he was less proof 
 against prejudices of various kinds, he at least never 
 consciously and deliberately indulged them ; and if his
 
 2 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 Hall. One man has climbed every peak in the Alps, 
 another has hunted in the Sahara. Here you meet 
 girls \Yho have travelled in India by themselves, and 
 they will be the lionesses of the season till Major 
 So-and-So comes to exhibit the rifle with \Yhich he 
 ' dropped ' so many Neapolitans in the Sicilian cam- 
 paign. This kind of thing has slipped even into religion. 
 Dissent is not becoming; but Puseyismis as comme-il- 
 /a»i as possible. I know ladies who, having lived at 
 Piome, have embraced Catholicism, and who make a 
 display of their confessor and their oratory : I know 
 others who pique themselves on being freethinkers, 
 and stand up for ' Essays and Eeviews.' 
 
 It will easily be understood that the region of 
 the arts has not escaped this invasion of deliberate 
 singularity. It was an English sculptor who con- 
 ceived the idea of tinting his statues, and it was 
 England that saw the birth of prse-Eaphaelitism, that 
 grotesque compound of Byzantine naivete and poetry 
 after the fashion of M. Courbet. As for English 
 literature, it is with that as with a handsome woman 
 who tries to hide the traces of age by the artifices of 
 the toilet. Writers set before themselves only one 
 aim ; their business is to revive jaded senses. Style, 
 arrangement, everything, testifies to the desire of 
 striking heavy blows. The reader's mind must be 
 kept in a perpetual state of expectation and surprise. 
 Hence comes the study of singularity, the study 
 which engenders pretentiousness, the pretentiousness 
 which leads to charlatanism. Eccentricity has become 
 a means of attracting customers, and even the most 
 eloquent, even the profoundest, are not free from 
 calculation. There is deliberation, scheme, set pur-
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 2h 
 
 pose, in the cunningly balanced antitheses of Macaulay, 
 in the artistic paradoxes of Euskin, in the intolerable 
 jargon of Carlyle ; but there is most of all in the 
 English novel. 
 
 Consequently English novelists, despite their great 
 talent, make me constantly think of Californian miners 
 in quest of some productive vein. They are not 
 obedient to a vocation. They are prospecting for 
 mannerism and for success. All roads which lead to 
 that end are good. We have the fashionable novel 
 and the theological novel, the didactic novel and the 
 ' fast ' novel, the imitation of Sterne and the imita- 
 tion of Smollett, Dickens's reforming mania and 
 Kingsley's heroic clergyman. There is indeed no lack 
 of verve in this literature, nor could we wish for less 
 fertility and variety of resource. What we could wish 
 for is merely a little less study of effect, a little more 
 simplicity and sanity. 
 
 I suspect that the weariness produced by so many 
 attempts at refining counted for much in the success 
 of the ' Scenes of Clerical Life,' George Eliot's first 
 work, and in that of 'Adam Bede,' which is still 
 her masterpiece. Readers passed from the heated 
 atmosphere of an opera-house to the freshness of a 
 country morning, and experienced in the presence of 
 this inspiration, at once deep and simple, an unaccus- 
 tomed kind of pleasure. It was felt that the author 
 had told her tale after the manner of the old bards, 
 without listening to her own voice, without self-con- 
 sciousness, and as it were yielding to the Muse who 
 presides over immortal creations. What a joy for 
 those who possessed taste and soul to find, at last, an 
 artist who was thoroughly sincere ! What a beneficent 
 
 B 2
 
 £ ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 impression was experienced at the sight of this virgin 
 genius, in the presence of this masterly execution, whicli 
 knew nothing of the tricks of the studio, nothing of 
 the devices of behind the scenes ! 
 
 It must be owned, too, that mere curiosity helped 
 the success of these works ; for it was soon seen that 
 the name they bore was a pseudonym. It was asked 
 what was the writer's sex. Not a few of the authors 
 in vogue had the honour of having attributed to them 
 a book which certainly none of them was capable of 
 writing. There were guesses and counter-guesses in 
 the columns of the newspapers. One critic — a French 
 critic, it is true — had just with elaborate induction 
 proved that the author of ' Adam Bede ' must be a 
 man, and what is more an English clergyman, when 
 the veil was rent. The enchanter was an enchantress 
 — Miss Evans by name. But there was something that 
 doubled the mystery at the very moment when it 
 seemed to vanish. Miss Evans was by no means 
 utterly unknown in the literary world. She had 
 worked on a very serious periodical, the ' Westminster 
 Review.' She had written theological articles in it. 
 A translation of Strauss's celebrated work on the Life 
 of Jesus was hers. What a mixture of contradictions 
 and surprises ! It was not enough to have to acknow- 
 ledge a woman as the first novelist of England ; more 
 than that, this woma.n combined faculties which had 
 never been associated in the memory of man. She 
 was at once a savant and a i)oet. There was in her the 
 critic who analyses and the artist who creates. Nay, 
 the pen which had interpreted Strauss — the most 
 pitiless adversary of Christian tradition that the world 
 has produced — this very pen had just drawn the
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 'S 
 
 charming portrait of Dinab, and had put on the Hps 
 of this young Methodist girl the inspired discourse at 
 Hayslope and the touching prayer in the prison. 
 
 It is impossible to read ' Adam Bede ' without 
 thinking of ' Jane Eyre,' and yet there are no points 
 of likeness between these two works save the mystery 
 in which they were at first wrapped, and the sex of 
 the authors to whom we owe them. Miss Bronte's 
 novel has more dash, more vigour, more eloquence ; 
 and I am not sure whether there is anything to be 
 found in Miss Evans's work equal to Jane Eyre's 
 flight when, after leaving Eochester's house, she 
 wanders at random, the victim of a conflict of feelings 
 dominated by the inexorable authority of duty. But 
 here Miss Bronte's superiority ceases. She soon 
 betrays her want of experience. She flies to melo- 
 dramatic devices ; her creations have more strength 
 than truth ; and, in short, what remains of her book 
 after a second reading is no great thing. It is quite 
 otherwise with Miss Evans ; in her novels everything 
 is simple, mature, finished, and it is scarcely possible 
 to re-read them without discovering fresh beauties. 
 
 Besides, after ' Jane Eyre ' Charlotte Bronte merely 
 repeated herself ; while her rival has as yet given no 
 sign of exhaustion. I have mentioned the surprises 
 which George Eliot sprang on the public, but the 
 public had not yet come to the end of them. After 
 recovering from the excitement caused by so great a 
 merit and so great a success, readers (who are soon 
 tired of admiration) said to themselves that it was 
 their turn. * Let us wait and see,' said they, * what 
 her next work will be like.' The next work was not 
 long delayed. ' The Mill on the Floss ' appeared a
 
 6 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 year after ' Adam Bede/ and the most fastidious 
 criticism was obliged to acknowledge that, if there 
 was a little less finish in the new-comer, the power 
 and talent which it showed were not less. Yet 
 another year — less than a year — has passed away, 
 and ' Silas Marner ' comes to show in its turn that 
 the author, among the other secrets of genius, possesses 
 that of fecundit}^ 
 
 ' Silas Marner ' is a story of village life. The 
 hero is a poor weaver, pious of heart and ingenious 
 of mind. But in his inner being an unjust sentence 
 has destroyed faith in the order of Providence. He 
 gives himself up thenceforth to the material cares of 
 life, becomes a miser, heaps up his gains, and sets his 
 affections on the contemplation of his hoard. The 
 hoard is stolen, and Silas falls into a kind of brute 
 despair, from which he is rescued by the interest with 
 which a little girl inspires him. Her mother has died 
 of want at his door, and he has been the first to be 
 called to assist her. He takes charge of the child, 
 nurses her, brings her up, and is himself born again 
 to happiness in thus once more finding some good 
 to do and some one to love. As great as the gloom 
 of the solitary days, when the weaver drudged for 
 the sake of hoarding, is the brightness of the old 
 man's last years in the company of his adopted 
 daughter. It is a second youth, a new life, the 
 solution of all the painful problems which had 
 formerly weighed this human soul down into the 
 dust. 
 
 Every novel is a mixture of three elements — 
 character, dialogue, and action. The action in a work 
 of fiction is a factor which is at once capital and
 
 GEOEGE ELIOT 7 
 
 subordinate. On the one hand, there is no interest in 
 a story where the plot is weak ; on the other, we have 
 seen memorable examples in which, though the action 
 may have been conducted with consummate skill, the 
 story has yet not taken rank as literature. It may 
 amuse, it may be popular, and yet at the end of a 
 year or two it will be nothing but a memory. 
 
 The real stuff of the novel lies in the characters ; 
 but at the same time the character-drawing is effected 
 by the dialogue. A great change in this respect has 
 passed over the literary kind of which we speak. 
 Formerly the novelist contented himself with ana- 
 lysis ; he was privileged to read the souls of his 
 personages, and it was his business to tell us wdiat he 
 found there. Nowadays (Walter Scott was the chief 
 author of this innovation), it is the business of each 
 personage to express his own feelings, and the dialogue 
 by means of which the personages make themselves 
 known has become the capital part, and in some sort 
 the whole, of the novel. The modern novel is a drama ; 
 description holds the place of scenery, narrative gives 
 a clue to the mise-en-schne ; but it is the talk which 
 constitutes the main substance and texture of the 
 work. 
 
 Now George Eliot's talent excellently suits the 
 requirements of the style which we have just de- 
 scribed. In her books the action is always ingeniously 
 simple, equidistant from the commonplaces of fiction 
 and from the affectation of romantic invention. Still 
 it is in character-drawing that our author's superiority 
 is especially manifest. Here we find the precision of 
 outline, the truth of colour, the infinite variety, the 
 sustained individuaUty, the moral unity which mark
 
 8 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 alike the works of Nature and those of genius. What 
 wonderful creations are Dinah and Hetty, Maggie 
 and Silas, old Lisbeth and the Dodson family ! Every 
 one of George Eliot's personages, however subordi- 
 nate the part, however j^assing the appearance, has a 
 special physiognomy and characteristic style of speak- 
 ing. But this brings us back to the dialogue. 
 
 I have said that in the novels of our day it is the 
 business of the dialogue to set forth the characters, 
 so that two different gifts — the talent for creating a 
 character, and that of making it speak— are now 
 indispensable the one to the other. And yet these two 
 talents are quite distinct. It is possible to outline a 
 character which is both original and true without 
 succeeding in putting in its mouth interesting and 
 natural language. On the other hand, dialogue in itself 
 either pointed and ingenious, or lofty and profound, 
 may lack that secret unity which, properly speaking, 
 constitutes character. The writings of Dickens ex- 
 emplify what I mean. That clever novelist excels at 
 modelling a laughable or a repulsive physiognomy, at 
 fixing the mask on a lay figure costumed with equal 
 oddity, and then at lending to the hero who is thus 
 built up some grotesque catchword, some humorous 
 repartee which, thrown in among scenes of great 
 variety, produces a sort of debased comedy. The 
 beings thus created are striking ; you know them 
 when you see them ; but they are not alive ; they 
 have not the consistency of an individuality which 
 remains faithful to itself, while ceaselessly revealed 
 under new aspects. It is quite otherwise with George 
 Eliot's books. Here the personages are not only 
 infinitely various, they are not only each provided
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 9 
 
 with a language proper to itself, but this language 
 is always at once alike and different, suitable to the 
 character it expresses, and animated by the unex- 
 pectedness which springs from the particular situa- 
 tion. More than this, the writer has sown broadcast 
 all over her work the salt of the best kind of pleas- 
 antry. Not one of her rustics, of her artisans, of 
 her lower middle-class folk — not an old maid or a 
 child in her pages — but has a special naive originality, 
 a special humour, jovial or sly, and a special and 
 delightful cast of drollery. I do not think that any 
 novelist has strewed over his work wit so abundant 
 or so varied, so fruitful in surprises, so full of sallies. 
 Mrs. Poyser in ' Adam Bede ' is in this respect one 
 of the most extraordinary creations of prose fiction. 
 The reader must imagine a good-tempered farmer's 
 wife, speaking much at every occasion and to every 
 comer, who says nothing without seasoning the speech 
 with some piquant phrase, who is ready with a repartee 
 for everyone, whose inexhaustible verve is independent 
 of catchwords, whose good sayings have all the raci- 
 ness and the strongly marked character of popular 
 proverbs. Mrs. Poyser is of the right lineage of 
 Sancho Panza. 
 
 For the rest, is it a paradox to say that dialogue 
 and character, invention and description, the wit that 
 amuses and the imagination that charms, all these 
 elements of the novel, all these gifts of genius, are but 
 secondary ? and that, if work which is to last cannot 
 do without them, it is still not they that make the 
 work immortal ? I leave out of count the circulating 
 library subscriber, for he is incapable of tasting 
 George Ehot ; I speak of the reader who reads a
 
 10 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 second time, who reflects upon and \Yho relishes what 
 he reads. What he consciously or unconsciously seeks 
 in a novel, w'hat attracts or repels him in it, is, if we 
 follow it home, the philosophy which is expressed 
 there. It is philosophy with which a novel can least 
 dispense. If there is no philosophy, there is no 
 meaning ; and if there is no meaning, what have we 
 to do with it ? Man is so made that he seeks for him- 
 self everywhere. In nature he hunts a mystery which 
 is merely his own, in history he questions his own 
 destiny. Art, in order to interest him, must talk of 
 himself. Novels themselves are nothing to us if they 
 are not an interpretation of the world and of life. Now 
 George Eliot's work is full of the lessons which the 
 work of the great artist always contains. The author, 
 it is true, has drawn hardly anything but ordinary 
 life ; her favourite heroes are children, artisans, 
 labourers — her favourite subjects the absurdities of 
 middle-class life, the prejudices of small towns, or the 
 superstitions of the country. But underneath these 
 externally prosaic existences the writer makes us be- 
 hold the eternal tragedy of the human heart. We 
 meet once more the failures of will, the calculations 
 of egotism, pride, coquetry, hatred, love — all our 
 passions and all our foibles, all our littlenesses and all 
 our errors. Nor is this all: somethmg rises from these 
 creations ; there emanates from them, as it were, a 
 perfume of wisdom ; there drops from them, as it 
 were, a lesson of experience. George Eliot looks at 
 men's faults with so much sympathy, mixed with so 
 much elevation ; the condemnation she passes on evil 
 is tempered with so much toleration and intelligence ; 
 the smile on her face is so near tears ; she is so clear-
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 11 
 
 eyed and so resigned ; she has our weaknesses so well 
 by heart ; she has suffered so much and lived so much 
 — that it is impossible to read her pages without feeling 
 ourselves won by this lofty charity. We are at once 
 moved and calmed ; it seems that she has enlarged 
 our ideas of the world and of God. We feel as we 
 shut the book that we are more at peace with ourselves, 
 calmer in face of the problems of destiny.
 
 12 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 IP 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 
 
 M.DupoNT "White is among the small number of writers 
 who still treat politics as a science, and we owe to him 
 both original and translated work on this science. He 
 has courageously grappled in his books with the ques- 
 tions which touch the destinies of France nearest — 
 that is to say, the relations between the individual 
 and the State, between liberty and centralisation. 
 He has brought to the settlement of these questions 
 views which are his own, and which are supported by 
 the study of facts and by ingenious reasoning. His 
 whole work is instructive, paradoxical, stimulative of 
 contradiction. Nor has M. Dupont White deserved 
 less well of the French public in making known to it 
 the political writings of one of the most eminent 
 thinkers of contemporary England, Mr. John Stuart 
 Mill. Mr. Mill's book on 'Kepresentative Government ' 
 is an important work on a great subject : the principles, 
 namely, and the conditions of government in democratic 
 States. It is on this book that I wish to discoui'se to 
 my readers to-day ; but it will not be useless t"o begin 
 by pointing out what the author's other works are, 
 what are their distinguishing tendencies, and what 
 
 ' Bepi-esentative Government. By J. Stuart Mill. Translated 
 and preceded by an introduction by Dupont White. 18G2.
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 13 
 
 place they hold in the intellectual movement of our 
 time. 
 
 Mr. Mill's mind and his views have heen developed 
 under the action of several successive influences. Our 
 author hegan with Bentham ; he passed later under 
 the sway of Auguste Comte, nor did he finally escape 
 the fascinations of the French Socialist systems. His 
 father (well known hy his ' History of British India ' 
 and hy divers philosophical and political works) was 
 one of Bentham's most devoted disciples. Our author 
 was brought up in the lap of the Utilitarian school, 
 and he began his career as a publicist under the eyes 
 of its founder. But the utilitarian doctrines have both 
 their sources and their issues in a definite group of 
 ideas ; and these ideas are exactly those which found 
 their expression in the Positive philosophy. When he 
 passed from the school of Bentham to that of Comte, 
 Mr. Mill did not change his direction. He merely 
 followed the course of utilitarian ideas to the point 
 where they debouch and lose themselves in a vaster 
 system. The Positive philosophy, if I am not mis- 
 taken, has done little more than mark the tendency of 
 all modern science to become 'positive' — that is to say, 
 to exclude everything which lies outside of experience. 
 Comte gave formal expression to the eagerness of our 
 time to free itself from metaphysical ideas. He as- 
 signed to this movement its place in the evolution of 
 the human mind. This is all he did, but this is itself 
 a service rendered to thought. To connect facts, to 
 unite ideas, to lay down a law is to make science ad- 
 vance ; and this is why the name of Comte has hence- 
 forward its place in the history of philosophy. 
 
 It is worth noticing that the Positive doctrine has
 
 14 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 been more successful among our neighbours than 
 among ourselves. In France it hardly numbers, among 
 strictly orthodox disciples, more than one name ^ which 
 has other titles to distinction. It is not so in Eng- 
 land. Comte's formless volumes have been there 
 abridged by the elegant pen of Miss Martineau. 
 More than one periodical — the ' Leader,' the * West- 
 minster Eeview ' — has served as an organ of the party 
 ideas. Several men of ability or of learning have 
 constituted themselves its interpreters. Mr. Mill has 
 •written the Positivist ' Logic' The work of Mr. Lewes 
 on the History of Philosophy, that of Mr. Buckle on 
 the Philosophy of History, are connected with the 
 same school. Even political Positivism has found in 
 Mr. Congreve a disciple enthusiastic enough and naif 
 enough to request his countrymen to give up India and 
 Gibraltar. The teachings of Comte have everywhere 
 taken root in the country of Locke, as though in their 
 native soil : and if the English have sometimes done 
 us the honour of regarding Mr. Mill as possessed of 
 specially French qualities, we might almost make 
 them a present of the founder of the school as one of 
 themselves. 2 It is customary to set the two nations 
 against each other as totally opposite : ought we not 
 to modify such a judgment when we see France adopt- 
 ing Locke and Pieid, and England returning the com- 
 pliment by borrowing the books of M. Cousin ^ and 
 the ideas of M. Comte ? 
 
 ' [That of M. Littre, no doubt.— Trans.] 
 
 - [For this kind present I fear Englishmen will not be duly 
 thankful ; at least I am not. — Trans.] 
 
 ^ [If this is an innuendo against Sir W. Hamilton and his school, 
 it is not quite worthy of M. Scherer. But he was at this time in the 
 ardour of Hegelian ' conversion.' — Trans.]
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 15 
 
 Mr. Mill's first great work was his ' Logic,' which 
 appeared in 1843. This is an exposition of the 
 essential principles of the Positive philosophy, and it 
 is easily to be understood how this philosophy reduces 
 itself to logic. Positivism is philosophy minus meta- 
 physics — that is to say, philosophy minus philosophy, 
 purely formal, wholly methodical. Nor do I know in 
 the history of ideas a closer connection than that 
 which binds Mill's teaching to the teaching of his 
 predecessors of the English school. From the moment 
 when sensation becomes the sole source of our know- 
 ledge, it is clear that phenomena are the only objects 
 of it, and that the phenomenon itself is only an 
 individual or, as they say, subjective impression. 
 From this to Hume and to Berkeley there is but a step. 
 If we know nothing of things but the impression 
 produced on us, we can neither know nor affirm any- 
 thing of things considered in themselves — not even 
 their real existence. Such is the ground on which our 
 author takes his stand. The aim of his book is to 
 eliminate from science the transcendent element — that 
 is to say, everything which lies beyond experience. 
 If we take his word, a thing is but a bundle of attri- 
 butes, and essence is but a word. ' Cause ' in the same 
 way is but the constant succession of two phenomena : 
 ' law ' itself has no necessity, and is only a probability 
 founded on the frequent repetition of facts. Thus 
 the Infinite, the Absolute, everything that is universal 
 and necessary, vanishes from nature and from science. 
 There remains nothing but man and his perceptions, 
 but facts and their relations. I make not the least 
 pretence of refuting Mr. Mill's system : I prefer simply 
 to seek in it for indications of the tenden-cy of his
 
 16 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 mind. Besides, to tell the truth, I do not think it 
 possible to refute phenomenalism : the task would be 
 self-contradictory. If a man confines himself to the 
 regions of personal impression, you never can per- 
 suade him that there is anything further, for the very 
 conditions of his knowledge oppose themselves thereto, 
 and the man cannot go out of himself to penetrate 
 the nature of things. It is impossible for him to see 
 them otherwise than as they api^ear, or to assure him- 
 self that this appearance is not their whole contents. 
 At the most one can but remind him that the partisans 
 of Positivism do not take into account all the elements 
 of the problem as it states itself in human conscious- 
 ness. It is true that our senses do not attain to any- 
 thing in the object save attributes : but it is equally 
 certain that we have a notion of some substance dis- 
 tinct from these attributes — that we cannot get rid of 
 this notion, and that the very word ' attribute ' implies 
 it. So is it, too, with Cause. We cannot actually take 
 hold of anything but the sequence of two phenomena. 
 Yet in using the word ' cause ' we mean something 
 much more than that — we mean that one of the facts 
 is contained in the other, and that they are inseparable 
 by thought. And, lastly, it is true that when we see 
 phenomena accomplishing themselves in a constantly 
 uniform manner, we know really but one thing — that 
 the sequence has not as yet failed. But it is equally 
 true that we have an invincible belief in the eternal 
 constancy, the absolute validity of the rule. Thus our 
 judgments carry into things a datum which is not 
 furnished by experience — one of which we cannot con- 
 sequently say that it is supplied by reality, but which 
 is none the less inherent in our minds, and of which
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 17 
 
 we are absolutely unable to get rid. This is what 
 Kant comprehended so admirably and what he tried 
 to explain : and this is why Positivism, which does 
 not see it or does not take account of it, falls short of 
 philosophy proper. 
 
 Five years after his ' Logic,' Mr. Mill published a 
 not less monumental work on Political Economy, in 
 which he attacked every question, and showed on all 
 points at once a profound knowledge of all theories, 
 and that independence of mind which enslaves itself 
 to none. Yet this work, which in England has ranked 
 the author by the side of Adam Smith and of Eicardo, 
 had less originality than thoroughness. The author 
 showed more sense and information than freshness : 
 and gave us an encyclopaedia of the science rather 
 than a system of his own. It differed in this respect 
 from the * Logic : ' and if it could not but increase 
 the repute of the author by showing all the extent of 
 his study and his qualifications, it was certain also to 
 arouse less surprise and start fewer discussions. 
 
 The newest part of the book was that in which 
 Mr. Mill enlarged his subject by including in it some 
 political problems. After treating matters purely 
 economical under the three heads of Production, Dis- 
 tribution, and Exchange, the author sets forth certain 
 considerations on the progress of society and the in- 
 fluence of government. In this last part he examines 
 the possible and desirable limits of the action of the 
 State. And it is here that we find, amid the most 
 jealous fears on the subject of centralisation and the 
 encroachments- of power, and in company with the 
 expression of the most enlightened love for liberty, 
 certain assertions which seem contrary to these 
 

 
 18 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 principles, and wliicli have not failed to cause some 
 astonishment. Our author, ^Yhile handling State 
 intervention, comes across the various sj^stems of 
 Socialism, or, to speak more exactly, Communism, 
 since the question is of a state of things in which 
 collective is to take the place of individual property. 
 Mr. Mill calls a halt at this suhject and discusses it. 
 Nay, he does more, he declares that, if the choice 
 between Communism and the suffering and injustice 
 which private property involves at the present time 
 were necessary, it could not be doubtful. Indeed he is 
 not quite sure that Communism is not the best form, 
 and the final form, of society. And so, as I have 
 said, the influence of yet another French school has 
 added itself in Mr. Mill's case to the influence which 
 Auguste Comte had already exercised over him. 
 
 There is a real analogy between these two doctrines 
 as well as between both and our author's cast of mind. 
 He is as a thinker bold rather than profound : he 
 possesses ingenuity, sagacity, precision, but no great 
 suppleness. With all his cleverness in analysing and 
 expounding, discussing and surveying a subject at its 
 origins, and in pursuing its ax)plications with all his 
 logical and investigating strength, he is lacking in the 
 gift of original creation, and even in that of intuitive 
 perception. He isiils in finesse. He does not entirely 
 understand anything but what is measured and 
 numbered. Imponderable elements, spiritual influ- 
 ences, escape him. He ignores the play of passion, 
 the i^art borne by moral forces. In short, look at 
 Mr. Mill from what side you like, and you will always 
 recognise the Positive philosopher. 
 
 This should make it clear how he was of necessity
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 19 
 
 exposed to the blandisliments of which I have spoken, 
 for Sociahst theories naturally serve as the politics of 
 Positivism ; and there is a kinship between the two 
 systems. We must take good care, moreover, to recog- 
 nise that in itself, and as a mere theory, Communism is 
 invulnerable. The society which it offers us is perfectly 
 organised, regular, logical, symmetrical. It has but 
 one fault, and that is that it is ideal, or, in other 
 words, impossible. It does not take man as he is, 
 with his foibles, his tendencies, his caprices. It sees 
 in him only a fixed quantity, a product, a machine. 
 And for this same reason it takes no account of his 
 needs of development and of liberty. I know, of 
 course, that there are very liberal Communists ; but I 
 cannot help thinking that they are so only by virtue 
 of a contradiction. Laissez-faire has no real place in 
 their conception of society. 
 
 Now Mr. Mill must needs have fallen more easily 
 than another into this contradiction. There are in- 
 deed two men in him. There is the systematic thinker, 
 and the Englishman accustomed to the exercise of 
 liberty and the enjoyment of the advantages resulting 
 from it. There is the savant for whom individual and 
 society both are the results of certain forces, the action 
 of certain machinery ; and there is the manly spirit 
 which cannot endure the placing of fetters on indepen- 
 dence of opinion. There is the Benthamite who looks 
 at institutions from the point of view of utility (that is 
 to say, as a result or quotient), the ' scientist ' who con- 
 templates the fated laws followed by humanity ; and 
 there is the citizen who has learnt to esteem these same 
 institutions in accordance with their iniluence on the 
 ck'vclopment of man and the formation of character.
 
 20 ESSAYS 0:N ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 This last aim is that which dominates in the little 
 book ' On Liberty,' while both are found in the volume 
 on * Eepresentative Government.' I cannot here dwell 
 on the elder of these two works, but I must express 
 my admiration of the inspiration under which it was 
 written. Nowhere is there to be read a more eloquent 
 defence of the rights of individualism, a more generous 
 protest against the tyranny of governments, and still 
 more against that of custom and opinion. It is in 
 this religious respect for the liberty of all, this tolerance 
 for every idea, this confidence in the final results of 
 the struggle, that we recognise true Liberalism. The 
 author's notions have not always equal solidity, but his 
 instincts are always lofty. We see on every page the 
 man whose own independence has set him at odds with 
 prejudice. * Despotism itself does not produce its worst 
 effects so long as individuality subsists by its side ; 
 and everything that crushes individuality is despotism 
 by whatever name it is called, and with whatever dis- 
 guise it adorns itself.' These words of the author 
 might serve as a motto for the volume. 
 
 In his work on 'Eepresentative Government,' 
 Mr. Mill begins by determining what the end of all 
 government is. It is a double end. A government has 
 functions, it exists for the management of interests, 
 and it ought to manage them as well as possible ; but 
 it must at the same time contribute to the people's 
 moral progress, and help to raise the national 
 character. This last task is, indeed, the more im- 
 portant of the two ; and if it could be separated from 
 the other, it would have to be attended to first. "Who 
 has not heard the benefits of a wise despotism ex- 
 tolled anong ourselves '? "Who has not heard set
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 21 
 
 against the inconveniences of free governments the 
 sujoerior manner in which absolute governments ac- 
 compHsh the material part of their task, the success 
 with which they make war, the secrecy with which 
 they negotiate, the swiftness with which they hurry 
 on public works ? This is the talk that we are con- 
 demned to listen to every day ; and the answer, alas ! 
 is but too easy. The machine works admirably, but 
 it is only a machine. And what good is the greatness 
 of a State if society goes from bad to worse ? What 
 good is administrative perfection if this perfection is 
 compatible with the moral degradation of the people ? 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Mill is by no means disposed to 
 allow to absolute power the privilege of discharging 
 the special functions of government. Self-government 
 has in his eyes two advantages, not merely that of 
 accustoming citizens to the exercise of civic virtues, but 
 also that of assuring the well-being of the people by a 
 thorough control. For no one is ignorant that rights 
 and interests are never better secured than when those 
 interested in them are responsible for their defence. 
 
 So, then, popular government is that which best 
 attains the divers ends of governing. Yet it can only 
 be directly exercised in very small States, such as the 
 Greek republics, or certain Swiss cantons, where the 
 whole assembly of the people can find room in the 
 market-place. In our great modern States it is un- 
 workable. Hence came a device, familiar to us, but 
 unknown to antiquity — the device by which the people 
 delegates its powers to deputies, by which the nation 
 governs itself through representatives elected for that 
 purpose. 
 
 Yet we must not deceive ourselves as to the
 
 22 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 aptitudes of representative governraent. Bring the 
 numbers of a chamber of deputies as low as you will, 
 it will always be unfit for the direct management of 
 public affairs. It cannot administer, it cannot even, 
 in Mr. Mill's judgment, draft the laws which it discusses. 
 Its business is to be not so much a government as 
 the check and overseer of a government. Its principal 
 function, in our author's phrase, is to be a committee 
 of grievances and a congress of opinion. 
 
 Nor does Mr. Mill deceive himself any the more 
 as to the conditions which are indispensable to the 
 establishment and the prosperity of the government 
 of which we speak. That it may work, the people must 
 have at once an independence which cannot endure 
 tyranny, and a respect for law without which all free 
 governments end by succumbing to disorder. There 
 must be in the nation neither the ambition of com- 
 mand, which urges the individual to enterprises 
 against the liberty of his fellow-citizens, nor the 
 reluctance to obey which cannot bring itself to yield 
 to the yoke of law. I hasten to add that in my 
 opinion the benefits of representative government are 
 so great that it remains the best — I will go further, 
 the only one desirable — even when the national 
 character seems least to endure it. The school of 
 liberty is liberty itself. 
 
 If we pass from general considerations on repre- 
 sentative government to the application of them, we 
 shall meet, first of all, two capital questions to which 
 Mr. Mill has the merit of having invited our utmost 
 attention. I refer to the distribution of the suffrage 
 among the electors, and the distribution of votes 
 among the deputies to be elected.
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 23 
 
 Mr. IMill is a partisan of universal suffrage. With- 
 out exactly relying on the abstract rights of man, he 
 regards as false and dangerous all arbitrary limitation 
 applied to the exercise of civic functions. In a full- 
 grown and civilised nation there should be no pariahs. 
 The only exclusions which he proposes are drawn 
 from the nature of the duty to be fulfilled. Thus he 
 would have the electors possess elementary instruc- 
 tion ; and universal education in his view ought to 
 precede universal suffrage. He is also of opinion that 
 only the man who pays a certain proportion of taxes 
 can be admitted to the nomination of an assembly 
 by which taxes will be voted. On the other hand, our 
 author demands the extension of electoral rights to 
 w^omen — the difference of sex in such a matter seems 
 to him to weigh no more than difference in height or 
 different-coloured hair. Mr. Mill does not seem to 
 have reflected that from the woman-voter to the 
 woman-candidate there is but a step, or rather that 
 there is not even that. However, these are things 
 not to be argued about ; for the question becomes too 
 delicate. But was I not thoroughly right in saying 
 above that Mr. Mill is lacking in finesse ? 
 
 I prefer, I must say, another notion of our author's 
 on the suffrage— a notion which he has worked out 
 under the title of the ' plural vote.' When the in- 
 stitution of universal suffrage is subjected to un- 
 prejudiced examination, objections of incontestable 
 gravity present themselves ; for universal suffrage 
 reposes first of all on a right, and if France has 
 adopted it, it is, no doubt, a result of that care for 
 natural right which forms one of the features of our 
 national spirit. Enamoured of simple ideas, and
 
 24 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 especially of the ideas of equality and of justice, we 
 thought that the generic character of mankind is its 
 predominating feature, that one man is literally as 
 good as another : that the fundamental likeness out- 
 weighs all differences in talent, in culture, and in 
 social position. "We thought so ; and this led us to 
 equal and universal suffrage. 
 
 The argument would he as invulnerable as it is 
 simple if the suffrage were merely a right. Now it 
 certainly is this ; but it is also a trust. When he 
 gives his vote to a representative; the elector takes an 
 influential part in public affairs. Now from this point of 
 view, which is that of personal qualification, it is clear 
 that equality no longer exists. One human being, as 
 a general thesis, may be the equal of another man ; 
 the ignorant of the learned, the vicious of the virtuous, 
 the negro of the white, the woman of her husband. 
 We may, on the strength of an ideal principle, abstract 
 all differences so as to leave nothing but the identity of 
 species remaining. But so soon as there is any function 
 to discharge, we shall be obliged to put these abstrac- 
 tions on one side and inquire into capacity ; and as 
 soon as capacity comes to the fore, all the natural in- 
 equalities which had been held so cheap will reaj^pear. 
 
 How are we to get out of this difficulty ? How 
 reconcile the rights which are equal and the capacities 
 which are not ? This is the true statement of the 
 problem, and I do not think anyone can deny that it 
 is a pressing one, or that the future of democracy is 
 directly concerned in it. 
 
 The solution which Mr. Mill proposes has the 
 advantage of simplicity. Starting from the distinc- 
 tion we have just drawn, we may thus express it.
 
 JOHN STUAET MILL 25 
 
 Eights being equal, each citizen shall have a vote; but 
 capacities being at the same time unequal, one elector 
 may have more votes than another. As to the way 
 of settling the number to which each is entitled, we 
 must lay stress on the nature of their occupations, 
 and on the social distinctions which carry with them, 
 or suppose, superior intelligence and information. 
 Thus, if a workman has one vote, his master will have 
 two, and the practitioner of a liberal profession three. 
 The important thing is that the proportion shall be 
 clearly enough founded on facts to be accepted by 
 the public conscience. Such is the system which Mr. 
 Mill calls the plural vote. He is not afraid to add 
 that, with this organisation of voting excluded, universal 
 suffrage may perhaps be preferable to other forms of 
 government ; but that it remains false in princijile, 
 and that the evils by which it is accompanied will 
 always get the better of its advantages. 
 
 The criticism is just, and the remedy is ingenious. 
 We have still to discover whether it is practicable. 
 Universal suffrage is not only, as I have said, a right 
 and a trust : it is something more, or (if anyone 
 likes) something less ; in plain words, it is a pis-aller. 
 It has its roots in the principle of equality ; but the 
 force with which it thrusts itself on modern societies 
 comes still more perhaps from the difficulty experienced 
 by the mind in finding a middle term between the 
 narrowest oligarchy and the most unbridled democracy. 
 Electoral qualifications, wherever they exist, have a 
 tendency to be lowered ; and they seem likely to be 
 abolished everywhere for want of a sufficient raison 
 d'etre. Nobody can deny that the Haves have more at 
 stake in the commonweal than the Have-nots; nor
 
 26 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 can anyone deny that distinctions of fortune do, in a 
 general way, correspond to differences of education 
 and intelligence. But at the same time it is impossible 
 to settle exactly the relations betv\'eeu these differences 
 and political capacity. This is what helps to make 
 classification odious b}' making it arbitrary. Now I 
 ask myself whether it would not be the same with Mr. 
 Mill's plan. Theoretically irreproachable, specious in 
 general appearance, it could hardly fail to meet with 
 difficulties in execution. Public opinion might no 
 doubt acquiesce in giving more votes to a Marshal of 
 France, a judge of the Court of Appeal, or a member 
 of the Institute, than to an ordinary person — even 
 in giving more to a master than to a man. But the 
 system could not be applied as a whole. The different 
 categories could not be drawn up without the re- 
 appearance of the struggles of the prmciple of equality 
 against distinctions which do not rest with sufficient 
 evidence on the nature of things. 
 
 The system set forth by Mr. Mill is, however, none 
 the less worthy of attention. If the need of organis- 
 ing universal suffrage is ever felt, it is assuredly in 
 this direction that the solution of a singularly thorny 
 problem must be sought. The plural vote seems at 
 all events preferable to the expedient of indirect 
 election, and the reader will find in the work under 
 notice some very just remarks on the faults of this 
 latter kind of suffrage. 
 
 The second question raised by representative 
 government and suffrage-organisation is that of the 
 manner of electing. Nor let anyone think that nothing 
 but a mere working detail is here at stake. Now or 
 never we may say that the way of doing the thing is
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 27 
 
 more important than the doing of it. ' Two very 
 different ideas,' says Mr. Mill excellently, ' are usually 
 confomided mider the name democracy. The pnre 
 idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the 
 government of the whole people by the whole people 
 equally represented. Democracy as commonly con- 
 ceived and hitherto practised is the government of 
 the whole people by a mere majority of the people 
 exclusively represented. The former is synonymous 
 with the equality of all citizens ; in the second 
 (strangely confounded with it) is a government of 
 privilege in favour of the numerical majority, who 
 alone possess practically any voice in the State. This 
 is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which 
 votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchise- 
 ment of minorities.' 
 
 And further : * In a representative body the 
 minority must of course be overruled : and in an 
 equal democracy the majority of the people, through 
 their representatives, will out-vote and prevail over 
 the minority and their representatives. But does it 
 follow that the minority should have no representatives 
 at all ? Because the majority ought to prevail, must 
 the majority have all the votes, the minority none ? 
 The injustice and the violation of principle,' adds our 
 author, ' are not less flagrant because it is a minority 
 which suffers from them. For there is not equal 
 suffrage where each individual does not count for as 
 much as any other single individual in the com- 
 munity.' 
 
 I shall also quote the following reflection, which 
 adds the last touch to the full picture of the danger 
 which democracy should try to avert : ' The great difli-
 
 28 ESSAYS 0}^ ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 culty of democratic government has hitherto seemed 
 to be how to provide in a democratic society what 
 eircmnstances have hitherto provided in all societies 
 which have maintained themselves ahead of others — 
 a social support — ^ point d'appui for individual resist- 
 ance to the tendencies of the ruling power, a protection 
 and a rallying point for the opinions and the interests 
 which the ascendent public opinion views with dis- 
 favour. For want of such a point cVappui, ancient 
 societies, and all but a few modern ones, either fell 
 into dissolution or became stationary (which means 
 slow deterioration) because of the exclusive predomi- 
 nance of a part only of the conditions of social and 
 mental well-being.' 
 
 There is but one means of curing these vices of 
 democracy, which is to organise minorities. But how 
 are we to set about doing this ? Here our author 
 adopts and warmly defends a plan proposed in 1829 
 by Mr. Hare,^ the chief features of which I may sum 
 up as follows : 
 
 (1) Representation is no longer linked to a town, 
 an arrondisscmcnt, or any territorial circumscrij^tion. 
 It ceases to be local. All the deputies are elected by 
 votes collected throughout the country. Every repre- 
 
 ' [It was not quite so earlj', I think (1829 is either a slip of 
 memory or a misprint for 1859). M. Scherer is not entirely just 
 to the plan of Mr. Hare, who died recently, with less public notice 
 than might have been expected. His scheme, which was favoured by 
 many able men of all political parties, had, as far as general elections 
 go, perhaps only the drawback of apparent complexity. A party list 
 cannot be more dangerous to electoral independence than a single 
 party candidate : and M. Scherer does not seem to have realised that 
 no party could possibly be over-represented except bv falsification of 
 the tickets.^ Trans.]
 
 JOHN STtJART MILL 29 
 
 seiitative represents all the citizens who at any place 
 have voted for him ; in other words, the people votes 
 by scrutin de liste and for candidates who stand for the 
 whole nation. 
 
 (2) Each elector's voting-ticket is a graduated list, 
 on which the candidates he chooses figure in the order 
 of his preference for them. 
 
 (3) Each elector shares in the nomination of one 
 candidate only ; but if the candidate he has put first 
 fails, his second vote, his third, and so on may rank 
 for another. 
 
 (4) The number of votes necessary to seat a deputy 
 is determined by the number of voters divided by that 
 of the seats to be filled. However, that no votes may 
 be lost, those which are obtained by any candidate 
 over and above the necessary proportion are no longer 
 set to his credit, and are on each ticket carried to the 
 credit of the candidate who comes next. 
 
 (5) The complete examination of the votes lodged 
 thus supplies a list from which are taken the number 
 of members required to make up the chamber of re- 
 presentatives. 
 
 I must refer the reader for more details to Mr. 
 Mill, who himself refers to Mr. Hare's own book. 
 But I confess that I feel some surprise at the eager 
 welcome with which our author greets these proposals, 
 for the objections they arouse are evident. Thus one 
 does not see how the desired number of representa- 
 tives can be assured, unless each ticket bears a number 
 of names equal to the total number of deputies— which 
 in the case of a large assembly would lead us straight 
 to the absurd. Besides, if the number of names to be 
 inscribed were reduced to a much smaller figure —
 
 30 ESSAYS ON EKGLISII LlTEHATUrxE 
 
 lifty, thirty, even twenty — it would bo impossiblo for 
 the electors, especially those of tlie lower classes, to 
 know the titles and deserts of so great a number of 
 candidates. They would therefore be driven, in order 
 to fill up their tickets, to follow party directions ; 
 and this brings us to a still more serious objection. 
 Mr. Hare's plan would not prevent the country from 
 splitting up into several great parties, as happens in 
 the United States ; nor would it prevent these parties 
 from drawing up lists, and from getting them adopted 
 by their adherents. Far from attaining the end it pro- 
 poses, I incline to think that the project in question 
 would give to party a still more powerful organisation, 
 and would thus tend to diminish instead of to increase 
 the actual part played by minorities. In this discus- 
 sion, as in many others, Mr. Mill's merit will be seen 
 to lie less in having solved the problem than in having 
 stated it — stated it, I may add, with the clearness of 
 a thought W'hich is always exact, of a logic which is 
 always rigorous. 
 
 It is no small advantage to survey a subject under 
 the conduct of a guide who knows its byeways, who 
 is acquainted with what has been said on every point, 
 who has perfect information and direction ready for 
 the reader, who presents questions under all their 
 aspects, who discusses them with sagacity and good 
 faith, who brings to the argument no prejudice and 
 no passion. Led by such a guide, we feel ourselves 
 advancing with a steadier step ; and we find that we 
 have explored not a few scantily known regions. True, 
 there is something higher, something more precious 
 still. There are writers who have the eye of the diviner ; 
 who surprise us by unforeseen discoveries and striking
 
 JOHN STUART MILL 31 
 
 remarks ; who unite originality with exactness, depth 
 with sagacity, genius with talent. These men we 
 meet, few and far between in history ; and they mark 
 eras in the annals of the human mind. Mr. Mill, 
 doubtless, is not of this number, but he ranks imme- 
 diately below them, among those who, taking to be 
 their province the whole knowledge of a period, and 
 carrying into it complete probity of criticism, them- 
 selves shed on many points an unexpected illumina- 
 tion.
 
 32 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 III 
 
 SHAKESPEABE ^ 
 
 Most of the books written on Shakespeare belong to 
 one or other of two classes : they are either panegyrics 
 which do not tell us much that is new, or commen- 
 taries which are certainly useful, but which do not 
 suffice for the understanding of the poet. There is no 
 reader of the great dramatist who must not have 
 wished to have at hand some substantive work in which 
 he might find information on the life of Shakespeare, 
 on the date and order of his pieces, on the condition in 
 which they have been preserved, on the interpretation 
 which has been put upon them, and on the distinctive 
 characteristics of their writer's genius. Such a book 
 would make use of the labours of scholars without 
 losing itself in detail, and would endeavour to please 
 men of taste without plunging into vague aesthetic 
 speculation. But I am wrong in speaking of this 
 desire as if nothing had been done to satisfy it. Long 
 ago M. Mezieres conceived the plan of such a book as 
 that whose programme I have been sketching, and 
 carried it out with much erudition and much taste. 
 His volume on Shakespeare is certainly the best hand- 
 
 ' PrikUcesseiirs et contempor-ains de Shalispeare. Shakspcare, 
 ses ceuvres et ses critiques. Contcmporains et siiccesseiirs de Shak- 
 spcare, Par A. Mezieres. 2'^ edition. 3 vols.
 
 SHAIiEB:PEARE 83 
 
 book that one can recommend to readers who wish 
 to devote to the Enghsh poet that serious study to 
 which alone he yields the whole secret of his power. 
 Moreover, M. Mezieres has not confined himself to 
 this. As soon as he had resolved to introduce 
 precision of historical information in handling his 
 subject, it became impossible for him to omit the sur- 
 roundings of Shakespeare — that is to say, the models 
 imitated by the poet, the influence he exercised, and, 
 in short, the whole of the literary and social conditions 
 amongst which he was produced, and amongst which 
 we must place him once more, if we wish really to 
 comprehend him. This is what M. Mezieres very 
 clearly saw, and this is what gives so much value to 
 his volumes on the predecessors and contempora- 
 ries of Shakespeare — the completest history that we 
 have of the English theatre up to the seventeenth 
 century. 
 
 It is exactly 250 years since Shakespeare died ; 
 and he thus belongs to an age of full historical light. 
 Nor was he one of those whose merit is unrecognised 
 till long after their own day. His contemporaries did 
 homage to his genius, and the well-known verses of 
 Milton are enough to show what place the great 
 dramatist held in the estimation of the next age. And 
 yet we know next to nothing of the life of this extra- 
 ordinary man. Most of the items which compose his 
 traditional biography, such as the poaching affair which 
 forced him to quit his native town and his humble 
 occupations in London, before he trod the boards, rest, 
 I say, on no foundation of evidence. The history of 
 his work in drama is to a great extent conjectural. 
 It has even been doubted whether he was a Protestant
 
 3-4 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LiTEEATURE 
 
 or a Catholic. The rather uncertain information 
 which we have in regard to him reduces itself to what 
 follows. Shakespeare helonged to a middle-class family, 
 in easy circumstances, and was born at Stratford- 
 on-Avon, in April 1564. He married at the age of 
 eighteen, and was only twenty-two when he left his 
 wife and children at Stratford to go and seek his for- 
 tune in London. There he joined a troup of actors, of 
 whom Burbage was manager, and was not long in 
 distinguishing himself, if not as an actor, as a drama- 
 tist. He cultivated other styles of poetry at the same 
 time : published ' Yenus and Adonis ' in 1593, and 
 * Lucrece ' in 1594. He made money by the theatre. 
 We find him buying a house and lands at Stratford, 
 which he liked to revisit, and whither he finally 
 retired about 1G04, at the age of forty. But if he left 
 the actual theatre, he did not renounce the dramatic 
 art, and many of his works are posterior to the date 
 I have just mentioned. He died on April 23, 1G16, 
 in the same year as Cervantes, twenty-four years after 
 the author of the ' Essays,' and twenty years before the 
 production of the * Cid.' These dates indicate sufficiently 
 the stage of formation of Shakespeare's language, which 
 is a kind of English less archaic than the French of 
 Montaigne is to us, and yet less finally settled than is 
 that of Corneille. The authenticity of the famous 
 portrait known as the Chandos Shakespeare, and now 
 belonging to the London National [Portrait] Gallery, 
 is not certain enough for us to flatter ourselves with 
 the idea that we know the poet's features. His direct 
 descendants have long been extinct. He left two 
 married daughters, who in their turn had issue : but 
 these children died childless.
 
 SHAKESPEAEE 35 
 
 The strangest thing in Shakespeare's hfe is the in- 
 difference which he seems to have felt in regard to his 
 reputation as a dramatist. He pnhhshed his poems 
 and his sonnets with the greatest care ; and yet he 
 neither himself caused any of his plays to he printed 
 nor left his heirs any directions to that effect. It 
 might seem that in writing them he had no other care 
 than for theatrical success and its contingent profits. 
 And it must not be supposed that this indifference was 
 common to all the dramatic writers of the time. Ben 
 Jonson, for his part, took as much pains in correcting 
 his work as in composing it. But what complicates 
 the problem still further, is that Shakespeare's plays 
 were in his lifetime eagerly sought after by readers. The 
 proof of this is that some fifteen of them were printed 
 and reprinted then and there, though without his 
 I connivance or acknowledgment, and in the most in- 
 i correct fashion. They were, in fact, simple piracies 
 ' intended to satisfy the public curiosity anyhow. In- 
 I deed, there were published under the poet's name 
 I plays that were not his; and Shakespeare did not in- 
 ! terfere in any way with these publications. He died : 
 I and it was not till seven years after his death, in 1623, 
 I that a collection of his dramatic works at last appeared. 
 . This collection announced itself as printed from the 
 j originals ; but nothing could be less well founded than 
 I this assertion, as the errors of all sorts with which 
 [ the volume swarms show. The editors had simply 
 ; followed the earlier editions, and where these failed 
 I them, they had used copies made for the purposes of 
 I the theatre. 
 
 I It will, after this, be understood that the study 
 ^of Shakespeare meets, as a first difficulty, with the
 
 30 Essays on English Literature 
 
 absence of a sufficiently correct and authentic text. 
 There are numerous passages where we have simply 
 the choice of readings equally doubtful, just as 
 hai")pens in the study of Greek and Latin authors. 
 It is true that the comparison of variants, as they 
 are called, is sometimes curious or instructive. There 
 is one work especially in which by this means we can 
 catch the poet's genius, as it were, in the act and fact 
 of creation : and this is ' Hamlet.' We have an 
 edition of this play in which it is hard not to recog- 
 nise the first draft of the author's thought. Polonius 
 is called Corambis. The progress of the piece is not 
 that which was adopted later ; and towards the end 
 a scene between the Queen and Horatio has dis- 
 appeared. Still, though the early version contains 
 some fine lines which have vanished in the latter, it 
 gives, in a curiously abridged and imperfect form, the 
 most celebrated passages of the drama, such as 
 Hamlet's soliloquy and that of the King on prayer. 
 In the same way we possess rehandlings of ' Eomeo 
 and Juliet.' It is clear that Shakespeare went back 
 on his works, that he elaborated and perfected them. 
 No one will begin the study of Shakespeare with- 
 out inquiring what is the order of succession in his 
 pieces. We feel a desire to know what were his first 
 attempts, at what epoch of his life he produced his 
 masterpieces, and whether his genius maintained 
 itself to the last. Fortunately these questions are 
 not so insoluble as they might be supposed to be, con- 
 sidermg the obscurity in which the author's life is 
 still plunged. Information of various kinds comes to 
 help us here, and we may regard the chronology of 
 Shakespeare's theatre as fairly settled. The poet
 
 8HAKESPEAKE 3? 
 
 began by reshaping for acting purposes plays already 
 existing and of unknown authorship. Such was the 
 origin of ' Titus Andronicus,' of ' Pericles,' and of 
 the three parts of ' Henry YL' These pieces thus 
 but half belong to Shakespeare, and it is impossible 
 nowadays to determine what part he had in them. 
 The second period of his dramatic life begins about 
 1594, when he was thirty years old. It was then 
 that he wrote the plays drawn from the history of 
 England, and most of his comedies. His final period 
 lasted from 1600 to his death, and saw the birth of 
 his greatest work — the four great dramas * Hamlet,' 
 * Othello,' * Macbeth,' and ' Lear ; ' the Eoman tra- 
 gedies ; and those delightful romantic comedies 
 'Cymbeline,' 'The Winter's Tale,' and 'The Tem- 
 pest.' It is taken as agreed that Shakespeare 
 continued to write for the stage even after he had 
 left London and returned to Stratford, and that ' The 
 Tempest ' was the last of his works, and a kind of 
 farewell to the art which he had made illustrious. 
 
 A farewell to art : we might let this expression 
 pass, on the understanding that it is merely to be 
 taken as figurative. But some have gone further, and 
 have tried to find in * The Tempest ' an actual adieu 
 addressed by Shakespeare to the public, or, as it has 
 been said elsewhere, the dramatic testament of the poet, 
 the epilogue of his work and of his life. M. Mezieres 
 has lent to this hypothesis the authority of his 
 excellent wit, and quite recently M. Montegut,^ the 
 subtlest and most ingenious of our critics, has 
 reproduced it with a fulness of confidence which may 
 
 ' [M. Emile Montegut, still (1891) alive, and still deserving the 
 descriptioi; of him which M. Scherer gives, — Ti'c^ns,]
 
 38 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 cause some misapprehension as to the strength of the 
 arguments he uses. It is indeed by no means the 
 first time that the spectacle of Shakespeare, given up 
 as a prey to contradictory interpreters, has been seen. 
 All have made him out as being on their own side ; 
 all have sought and have found in him just what 
 they "wanted. It has been thought to exalt him by 
 attributing to him all sorts of profound intentions ; 
 and Herr Gervinus has made of him a moralist 
 exclusively concerned with delivering lectures to 
 society. The attempt is truly unlucky. For never 
 did any genius give itself up to art with a more 
 supreme indifference to anything but art itself. In 
 Shakespeare's eyes, as he himself has told us, the 
 drama is simply a mirror held up to Nature, in which 
 Nature reflects herself under her most diverse aspects. 
 Indeed the impersonality of our poet's theatre is so 
 great that it is impossible to draw from it the least 
 information as to his ideas, his passions, his character. 
 But if Herr Gervinus has failed to perceive this 
 capital feature of Shakespeare's work, what are we 
 to say of M. Eio,^ who regards it as thick-sown 
 throughout with allusions to the events of the time 
 and the special situation of the poet ? M. Eio has a 
 thesis : for him Shakespeare is a Catholic, who is 
 obliged to hide his faith, and who makes up for it by 
 slipping into his scenes as many orthodox allusions 
 as he can. ' Julius Cffisar ' becomes a glorification of 
 
 ' [Eio, one of the Montalembert-Laeordaire group of Neo-Catbolics, 
 was a very amiable person, and something of an authority on Chris- 
 tian art, but not a man of much mental power. Any folly, however, 
 that he may have committed in interpreting Shakespeare has long 
 been eclipsed and outstripped. — Trails.]
 
 SHAIiESPEAEE 39 
 
 Essex's plot; 'Measure for Measure ' is intencled to 
 rehabilitate the ascetic ideal of cloistered virginity ; 
 * Othello ' had been a crusader — all evident proofs of 
 the author's secret sympathies. But M. Eio should 
 have explained to us how a writer so attached as 
 Shakespeare to a prescribed form of worship has 
 brought himself in ' Eomeo and Juliet ' to talk of an 
 ' evening mass.' However, it is fair to recognise that 
 M. Eio has but exaggerated a proceeding employed 
 by many others, both before and after him. It is a 
 received doctrine that the vestal of whom Oberon 
 speaks in ' A Midsummer Night's Dream ' (act ii. 
 scene ii.) is no other than Queen Elizabeth, as if the 
 very context of the passage did not show that the 
 chaste Phoebe is referred to.^ The learned War- 
 burton went further still when, in the same passage, 
 he applied to the marriage of Mary Stuart with the 
 King of France's son the image of the siren on a 
 dolphin's back. But let us return to M. Montegut. 
 His hypothesis on ' The Tempest ' has not more 
 solidity than those which I have just mentioned. It 
 will not stand a moment's examination. It shatters 
 itself at once against literary feeling and against the 
 facts ; and M. Montegut does not even seem to have 
 formed a clear conception of what he wanted to 
 prove. Shakespeare, in his view, has in ' The 
 Tempest ' taken leave of the public on the eve of 
 his retirement — it is his farewell to the stage. Now 
 
 ' [Disinclined as I am to the school of comment which M. Scherer 
 is denouncing, I cannot go with him here. There is certainly no 
 reference to the chaste Phoebe : M. Scherer has misinterpreted the 
 ' watery moon,' and the reference to Elizabeth is of the highest pro- 
 bability. — Trans.]
 
 40 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 \Ybat are ^Ye to understand by this ? That the poet 
 was on the pomt of quitting London to return to his 
 native town ? But he had already resumed his 
 residence at Stratford for some seven or eight years. 
 That he was unwiUing to write any more for the 
 stage, out of fear of not keeping up to his own 
 standard ? What ! Shakespeare feel fears of this 
 kind at forty-seven or forty-eight, in the vigour of 
 his age, at the very moment when he had finished 
 ' The Tempest,' one of his masterpieces ? Indeed, it 
 is enough, in order to refute such suppositions, to state 
 them in the terms in which they appear. Who can 
 believe that Sycorax is literary barbarism ; that 
 Caliban stands for the poet Marlowe ; that the 
 history of the Enchanted Isle is, ' stroke for stroke,' 
 the history of the English stage — in a word, that 
 the whole piece is a * synthetic allegory ' in which 
 Shakespeare sums up his work ; a picture of what he 
 has undertaken and executed ' in the poetical solitude 
 of his life ' ? Nor is this all. If you venture to 
 suggest that the dramatic interest of the work allies 
 itself but ill with allegoric intentions, if you risk 
 the remark that the poet may very well, after all, 
 have obeyed the simple inspirations of his creative 
 fancy, the critic replies that ' these pretended rights 
 of poetic fancy are among the most idle notions of 
 our time.' This, at any rate, is intelligible enough : it 
 means that the poet is only a teacher, and art only a 
 veil for instruction. 
 
 M. Mezieres has discussed the genius of Shake- 
 speare very well, seeking what constitutes the true 
 greatness of the poet, and not conceiving himself 
 bound to share either the concern of German criticism
 
 SHAKESPEAEE 41 
 
 for system, or the superstitious reverence of the critics 
 of England. What makes Shakespeare's greatness is 
 his equal excellence in every portion of his art — in 
 style, in character, and in dramatic invention. No 
 one has ever been more skilful in the playwright's 
 craft. The interest begins at the first scene ; it never 
 slackens, and you cannot possibly put down the book 
 before finishing it. This does not mean that the 
 action is always single. * King John ' is the chronicle 
 of an entire reign. There are two pieces in ' King 
 Lear,' the story of the King and that of Edgar ; but 
 the reader is carried along by the rapidity with which 
 one event follows another. Hence it is that Shake- 
 speare's pieces are so effective on the stage ; they were 
 intended for it, and it is as acted plays that we must 
 judge them. They are often played in Germany, and 
 always applauded by the public. They might succeed 
 better still if the conditions of representation had not 
 changed so much in the last century. We demand to- 
 day a kind of scenic illusion to which Shakespeare's 
 theatre does not lend itself. The action shifts too 
 often; you have to represent battles, castles, ramparts. 
 The fifth act of ' Julius Caesar ' sets before us all 
 the vicissitudes of the battle of Philippi ; the fifth act 
 of ' Eichard the Third ' shows us the two rivals en- 
 camped and asleep, so near each other that the ghosts 
 are able to speak to each of them by turns. There 
 is no modern stage management which can over- 
 come such difficulties. Thus it would appear that 
 Shakespeare is destined to be played less and less ; 
 but the playwright's cleverness which he displays is 
 not more wasted for that. From it comes the life, 
 the incompar^blQ activity, with which his pieces are
 
 42 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 endo^Yed, and which is felt in the reading no less than 
 in the representation. 
 
 If there is no drama without action, neither is 
 there any without character. It may be that the 
 creation of character is the highest function of art. 
 There is nothing which more resembles divine power 
 than the exploit by which the poet evokes from 
 the depths of his imagination personages who have 
 never lived, but who thenceforward live for ever, and 
 who will take ' a place in our memories, in our 
 affections, in the realities of our world, exactly as if 
 they had been formed by the hand of the Most 
 High. And if a single creation of this kind suf- 
 fices to immortalise a writer, what shall we say 
 of a poet who, like Shakespeare, has drawn crowds 
 of characters, all different, all alive, uniting the 
 most distinct physiognomy and the intensest reality 
 to the highest quality of idealism and poetry ? 
 The English dramatist is in nothing so marvel- 
 lous as in this. He is the magician who can give 
 life to anj'thing by his wand ; or rather, he is 
 Nature herself, capricious, prodigal, always new, al- 
 ways full of surprises and of profundity. His per- 
 sonages are not what are called heroes ; there is no 
 posmg in them ; there is no abstraction ; the idea has 
 become incarnate, and develops itself as a whole, with 
 all the logic of passion, with all the spontaneity of 
 life. The only thing which can be brought against 
 the author is at times a too sharjp change — one, so to 
 speak, effected on the stage — in the sentiments of his 
 characters. Aufidius, for example, passes too quickly 
 from hatred to sorrow when he sees Coriolanus fall ; 
 and in ' Eichard III.' Anne accepts with too great
 
 SHAKESPEARE 43 
 
 ease the ring of the man on whom she has just spit 
 in contempt ; while Ehzaheth is too quick in giving 
 her daughter to the man who has just massacred 
 her sons. This is certainly turning the corner too 
 sharply, and there is a want of truth in it. 
 
 I think that something of the same kind may be 
 said of Shakespeare's style. The language which he 
 puts in the mouths of his characters is not always ap- 
 propriate — is sometimes far from being appropriate — to 
 the circumstances, even to the characters themselves. 
 The poet delights too much in the expression for itself 
 and its own sake. He dwells on it, he lingers over it, 
 he plays with equivalents and synonyms. Menenius 
 thus complains of the change which has occurred in 
 Coriolanus's humour : ' The tartness of his face sours 
 ripe grapes : when he walks he moves like an engine, 
 and the ground shrinks before his treading : he is able 
 to pierce a corslet with his eye : talks like a knell, and 
 his hum is a battery. He sits in his state as a thing 
 made for Alexander. What he bids be done is finished 
 with his bidding. He wants nothing of a god but 
 eternity and a heaven to throne in ' — I take this quota- 
 tion at random to exemplify what I mean. The form 
 in this poet sometimes overruns in this fashion ; 
 the expression is redundant and out of proportion 
 to the situation. This remark applies still better 
 to the conceits and the word-plays which Shake- 
 speare, without troubling himself about the occasion, 
 puts in everybody's mouth. The most pathetic 
 speeches are not free from them. It is not that the 
 author is not conscious of the incongruity of these 
 quips. 
 
 Do sick men play so nicely with their names ?
 
 44 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 asks Piicbard III. of the Duke of Lancaster, and it 
 is certain that his last works have much fewer of 
 these blots than his first. But if there is sometimes 
 ill-placed wit in our poet, what verve is there in this 
 wit, what gaiety, what exuberance ! With what freedom 
 and caprice does fancy develop itself ! How well (to 
 employ an expression of Madame de Stael's) do excess 
 and license of talent suit this unbounded invention ! 
 And we must also say at once that this wit is but one 
 of Shakespeare's qualities. He possesses imagination 
 and feeling in at least equal measure. He has felt 
 ever3'thing, has understood everything. No man has 
 lived more, has observed more, has better reproduced 
 the outward world. And yet he is at the same time 
 the most lyrical of poets ; he expresses in finished 
 form, in inimitable poetry, all the emotions of the 
 heart. He says things as no one else says them, 
 in a manner at once strange and striking. He has 
 unbehevable depths, subtlenesses of intuition as un- 
 believable. There rises from his writings a kind of 
 emanation of supreme wisdom ; and it seems that 
 their very discords melt into some transcendent 
 harmony. Shakespeare has enlarged the domain of 
 the mind, and, take him all in all, I do not believe that 
 any man has added more than he has to the patrimony 
 of mankind.
 
 45 
 
 IV 
 
 DANIEL DEJRONDA ^ 
 
 Facilitating communications does no good. AVe are 
 still as far from England as if she were at the Anti- 
 podes. The differences which part us have their 
 origin in race, in historical development, in religion ; 
 and they betray themselves every moment in the 
 spirit which animates institutions, governs manners, 
 and presides over literature. English literature in 
 particular, lending itself to what may be called a 
 verification of fact, daily gives us palpable proofs of 
 the extent to which England is still a foreign country 
 to us. "Which of us has any notion of the intellectual 
 activity that occupies our neighbours '? "Who has even 
 a superficial knowledge— a knowledge even of the 
 names — of the schools of poetry which follow each 
 other on the other side of the Channel, and divide 
 the interest and the admiration of the public there ? 
 But the most striking example, in my eyes, of the 
 ignorance of the concerns of English literature in 
 which we live is as follows. There lives in England 
 to-day, in the full vigour of her talent, a woman- 
 writer inferior to no one of the sex, except Madame 
 de Stael, in depth, brilliancy, and flexibility of genius. 
 This lady has published half a dozen novels, each one 
 
 • By George Eliot. 187G. 4 vols.
 
 46 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 of which is a masterpiece. Every work that comes 
 from her pen becomes at once the event of the diiy, 
 holds the attention of the nation, is the subject of all 
 talk, sets all critics at defiance, interests the thinker 
 almost as much as it delights the artist and strikes 
 the fancy of the man of the world. Well, this writer 
 is almost unknown in France ; the translations of 
 some of her books which have been risked have found 
 no public ; her name is lacking in the ' Dictionnaire 
 des Contemporains,' and when our reviews have 
 spoken of Mrs. Lewes, ^ it has been oftenest in the 
 most superficially superior manner, and with absolute 
 incompetence to judge. 
 
 Miss Evans, now Mrs. Lewes, who has published 
 the whole of her imaginative work under the pseudo- 
 nym of George Eliot, was born about 1820. Up to 
 the age of thirty-six she had only employed her 
 talents and knowledge in publications dealing with 
 philosophy and theology ; at this epoch she sought 
 another career, and wrote her first story, 'Amos 
 Barton,' which was quickly followed by two others, 
 and forms with them the ' Scenes of Clerical Life,' 
 published originally in 1857 in 'Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine.' The success of this experiment determined 
 the author's vocation, and she successively enriched 
 the literature of her country with those incomparable 
 masterpieces, 'Adam Bede,' 'The Mill on the Floss,' 
 and ' Middlemarch.' I purposely leave on one side 
 * Eomola,' an Italian story of the fifteenth century, 
 because general opinion has not ratified the admira- 
 
 ' [As a faithful translator I keep my author's form. It is needless 
 to say that George Eliot was not Mrs. Le^Yes ; and M. Sclierei*, as a 
 later essay {vide infra) shows, was aware of the i&ct.— Trans,']
 
 DANIEL DERONDA 47 
 
 tlon of some and the evident partiality of the author 
 herself for this work, and especially because I have 
 never been able to overcome the aversion, bordering on 
 disgust, with which the chief character inspires me. 
 We have here, if I mistake not, a first trace of the 
 moralising or didactic tendencies to which George 
 Eliot leans, and which go near to dim the purity of 
 her esthetic sense. It would seem, too, that this 
 great writer is completely at home, and has the full 
 use of all her resources, in pictures of English life 
 only. * Felix Holt the Radical ' was another mistake, 
 though in a different style, and was the only one of 
 George Eliot's novels which public opinion let pass 
 with something like indifference. * Silas Marner,' on 
 the other hand, a short story which appeared in 1861, 
 and which I then reviewed, remains one of the most 
 delicate and perfect works of this great novelist. 
 
 What marks George Eliot off from her fellows is 
 her possession, in a higher degree, of all the qualities 
 that make the novelist. Her inventive power is shown 
 by stories where the unexpectedness of the situation 
 is not obtained at any sacrifice of probability, and 
 where the development of events always proceeds from 
 that of the characters. Besides, George Eliot does 
 not merely imagine situations ; she works them out, 
 and the reader's greatest surprise is to see the writer 
 constantly rising to the height of the catastrophe 
 which she has brought about. She throws her 
 characters into tragic or delicate adventures, she 
 makes explanations imperative, she provokes a supreme 
 crisis, and she gets herself out of the difficulty with 
 so much ease, so much power, and so much nature, 
 that the reader is divided between the emotion pro-
 
 48 ESSAYS 0^ English literature 
 
 duced by the story and the admiration challenged 
 by the writer's success. But this is not her only 
 superiority. In George Eliot description is never 
 there for its own sake, as happens in the produce of 
 inferior art. It is subordinate to the action, which it 
 frames and surrounds, and is none the less full of 
 traits which show an eye as well trained to the 
 observation of nature as to that of the human heart. 
 The dialogue, which in some very great novelists is 
 the weak place, which in their hands so often misses 
 truth and precision of shade, which they make rather 
 an occasion of putting forth ideas and showing wit 
 than a means of dramatic development, is in George 
 Eliot's novels always in its right place. It is fitted to 
 the characters ; it varies with them ; it is now witty, 
 now pathetic, it expresses the most oj^posite senti- 
 ments, and renders the most diverse individualities. 
 And it does all this without effort, without ever 
 striking a false note, and as if this lady, who has 
 actually lived a life of retirement and work, had felt 
 and understood and gone through everything. It is 
 not too much to say that there is something Shake- 
 spearian in this. And yet we have not come to the 
 end of the qualities which make our author the first 
 of contemporary novelists ; for it is in creating her 
 characters that she especially shows her genius. There 
 is not one of her works which has not bestowed upon 
 the literature of her country some of those figures 
 which, once seen, abide in the memory of men, more 
 real, more living, than the actual heroes of history. 
 Her sketches of women, as one might expect, are es- 
 pecially wonderful ; and yet do the characters of Tito 
 and of Grandcourt come much short of Maggie and
 
 DANIEL DERONDA 49 
 
 of Eosamond ? Is there not the same psychological 
 profundity in them ? Do we not perceive throughout 
 the glance \Yhich divines all motives, which lays bare all 
 feelings, and which would be more pitiless than remorse 
 itself if the author's penetration were not equalled 
 by her tenderness for human weakness and human 
 suffering ? George Eliot has created a kind in which 
 she will have no successor, because we shall never 
 again see the qualities of the thinker so combined 
 with those of the artist. Hers is the novel of moral 
 analysis. There is her speciality, there her triumph. 
 Story, description, reflection, dialogue — all in her 
 writings is ancillary to the painting of the secret 
 movements of the mind, to the study of the human 
 conscience ; while the minuteness of her observation 
 never hurts either the vigorous realism of her writing, 
 the personality of her creations, or the passionate 
 interest of her drama. 
 
 I have as yet said nothing of George Eliot's fashion 
 of writing. Indeed, it is possible to question whether 
 this author has what we call a style. Her narrative 
 manner is so simple, and her dialogue so natural, 
 that we hardly notice in her the writer properly so 
 called. Even the wit and humour which she scatters 
 broadcast, the acuteness of her reflections, the felicity 
 of her comparisons, the unexpectedness of her re- 
 marks, the tenderness or the strength of her senti- 
 ment, never in any case sink, with George Eliot, 
 into passages written for effect. In other words, you 
 must not look, in her writings, for the eloquent pages, 
 the passages finished and, so to speak, * hit off,* that 
 are met in, for instance, George Sand. Her talent is 
 more restrained, her art more severe. On the other
 
 50 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITErxATUEE 
 
 hand, we here approach a fault ^Yhic•h is obvious in 
 George EUot's later \Yritings. Possessing great quali- 
 ties of diction, and with uncommon and happy phrases 
 at will, this writer has for some time past taken to 
 the habit of condensing her thought and her expression 
 to the point of obscurity. This happens especially at 
 the end of her chapters, when she speaks in her own 
 person and sums up her own reflections. Her pen 
 then falls into a mixture of abstract ideas and 
 minutely detailed images in which it is hard to seize 
 the thought. This fault of taste, unaccountable in so 
 great a writer, had appeared already as a blot on 
 ' Middlemarch ; ' it seems to me a little less promi- 
 nent in ' Daniel Deronda.' But I cannot understand 
 how there is no adviser of sufficient authority at the 
 writer's elbow to point out to her boldly that she is 
 in danger of entering on a mistaken course. One 
 would gladly cry out to her, 'Pray, what on earth 
 are you thinking of ? Why so many efforts when 
 what is wanted is just the contrary — straightforward 
 language ? Why close your ranks at mere cost of 
 labour when you ought rather to deploy? Break 
 the phrases you are linking so painfully ! Divide the 
 periods you are so scientifically building up ! Let 
 yourself float, accomplished artist ! on the limpid 
 and copious style which only asks permission to flow 
 from your pen.' 
 
 However, the fault of which I have just spoken is 
 but a blot which is easy to avoid or to efface ; one 
 feels that a mere warnmg would be enough to make 
 the author correct herself of it. It is not quite the 
 same, I fear, with a peculiarity of George Eliot's in- 
 tellectual and moral nature, which, after having been
 
 DANIEL DEEONDA 51 
 
 one of the elements of her strength and one of the 
 causes of her success, threatens at the present moment 
 to damage her art and her work. It is a curious 
 thing, a paradox which we reject even when it forces 
 itself on us with resistless proof, hut the writer's own 
 superiority here turns against her, and she is hurt hy 
 the strength of her individuality. In saying this I 
 am thinking more particularly of George Eliot's new 
 novel ; so I must hegin hy giving the reader some 
 notion of it. 
 
 In * Middlemarch ' there were three stories, some- 
 what laboriously, but on the whole ingeniously, 
 welded together. In ' Daniel Deronda ' there are two 
 — two narratives which are simply placed side by side ; 
 two works differing in the kind of interest which they 
 are intended to arouse ; two novels, in short, one of 
 which is a failure, while the other takes rank among 
 George Eliot's finest creations. The second of these 
 novels, the one we should like to separate from the 
 other, is the history of Gwendolen and Grandcourt. 
 Some inconsistencies have been detected in the out- 
 lining of these characters ; hut, on the whole, the 
 author has certainly added two original figures to the 
 list of her masterpieces. If she has elsewhere drawn 
 others more complete, stronger, more striking from 
 their moral unity, she has created none of such science 
 and of such depth. Here are two names henceforward 
 familiar to all those who read ; two beings whose life 
 is inextricably mingled with ours ; two types to which 
 we shall involuntarily refer this personage and that 
 with whom we rub shoulders on the world's stage. 
 
 I can see Grandcourt before me as I write. I 
 recognise his pale face, his placid and disdainful 
 
 E 2
 
 52 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 demeanoui'. Between his fingers is the eternal cigar, 
 on his Hps the oath of ill-temper or the yawn of 
 ennui. A stranger to all moral life, he knows nothing 
 of men hut their foibles and their follies ; and if he 
 is at any time in danger of being deceived, it will be 
 merely for want of understanding disinterested feel- 
 ings. A thorough blase, he has no pleasure left but 
 oppressing others ; the last enjoj^ment left to this 
 connoisseur is in ill-treating his dogs, giving pain to 
 his inferiors, tyrannising over his wife, provoking 
 rebellion in order to crush it. There is meanness 
 under the elegant manners that are never 'out,' 
 cruelty beneath this well-bred coldness, a monster in- 
 side the correct and polished gentleman. Hatred never 
 was so self-restrained, ill-nature so well-mannered. 
 His impassibility as a tormentor, the indifference of 
 his persecution, the phlegm with which he crushes a 
 victim, give an impression of power for evil such as 
 literature did not before contain. It is scarcely 
 possible to lose our temper with a man who never 
 loses his own ; we feel that it would give him an 
 advantage ; his calm drives one frantic, he is above 
 the very horror which he inspires. A terrible and 
 an astonishing creation ! 
 
 The portrait of Gwendolen is still more carefully 
 studied, and if it does not strike the reader so much, 
 it is because this character, as George Eliot con- 
 ceived it, involves a transformation so thorough aa 
 to seem like an inconsistency. Gwendolen possesses 
 the formidable power of beauty : she knows it : and 
 she has early acquired the egotism which often accom- 
 panies the consciousness of recognised superiority. 
 Accustomed from her infancy to see her mother and
 
 Mniel Beronda 58 
 
 sisters the slaves of her caprices, she will carry with 
 her into society the assurance of victory, which is one of 
 its guarantees, the haughty grace which is made more 
 piquant by her spoilt-child's fancies, her impatience, 
 her very imprudence itself. She is wilful, but pur- 
 poselessly so ; ambitious, but with no passionate de- 
 gires : she asks nothing of life but excitement, brilliant 
 success, the intoxication of flattery, the exercise of 
 despotic power. And yet Gwendolen's nature is not 
 corrupt. Ignorant, frivolous, worldly as she is, living 
 and breathing as she does for nothing but pleasure, 
 she still possesses a kind of innocence. There is in 
 her the germ of a higher life which only waits for 
 the contact of some influence to shoot. It is this 
 germination of the ideal in the heart of a woman 
 given up to society that George Eliot has tried to 
 paint. With a thoroughly feminine intuition, she has 
 represented her heroine as needing some attachment 
 to quit commonplace life, and needing a man to serve 
 her as a conscience. She only begins to be dissatisfied 
 with herself when she recognises the arbiter of her 
 existence in a strong and pure being. Alas ! this 
 moral revelation is not enough for our poor Gwendolen ; 
 she needs, in addition, the hard school of suffering. 
 She marries Grandcourt to escape the mediocrity of 
 her fortune, and becomes the victim of a hateful 
 tyrant. The picture of this hidden agony is terrible 
 How powerfully does the author show us the beauty, 
 lately envied and worshipped, as she is tamed, little by 
 little, by the cold-blooded ferocity of her husband ! 
 She swallows her humiliations, she hates the wealth 
 for which she has bartered her soul ; she soon gives up 
 a resistance which she knows to be vain. Overcome by
 
 54 ESSAYS OK EiVGLISII LITER ATUEE 
 
 the resentment wliicli springs from forced hj-pocrisy 
 and by the hatred which springs from habitual fear, 
 aghast at this very hatred against whose promptings 
 she feels herself powerless, urged to despair, and taking 
 temporary refuge in the hope of accidents that may 
 free her, and so open a door of escape from the 
 promptings of revenge, she thus in thought draws 
 near to crime. Then, at last, when Grandcourt one 
 day falls overboard, she hesitates to give him her 
 hand or the rope that might have saved him — hesi- 
 tates for a second only, but long enough for it to be 
 too late, and then flings herself after him in an 
 agony of despair, remorse, and horror. Even in the 
 work of George Eliot there are few things so powerful 
 as this moral tragedy. A little further, we shall find 
 the author trying (very much in vain to my thinking) 
 to show us a Gwendolen consoled, raised from the 
 dust, ready to seek the expiation of her faults and the 
 business of her life in good works. The Gwendolen 
 who is a sister of charity and the Lady Bountiful 
 of the neighbouring schools is not the Gwendolen 
 we have known. Her conversion almost necessarily 
 strikes a false note in the story, inasmuch as it 
 violates the logical consistency of human character. 
 Conversion means the introduction of the supernatural 
 and the ascetic : elements which have their place m 
 moral therapeutics, but which are rebellious towards 
 art. 
 
 I repeat that the story of Gwendolen and Grand- 
 court takes its place beside the author's best work : 
 and that, if the character-drawing is not stronger, it 
 is at any rate subtler and more scientific. Gwendo- 
 len's conversation with Klesmer on her vocation as an
 
 DANIEL DEEONDA 55 
 
 actress, her interview with Mirah when she wishes to 
 ascertain the truth of the rumours she has heard 
 ahout Deronda, the tragedy on board the boat in the 
 Gulf of Genoa, the good-byes and the confessions at 
 the moment of final separation, are among the scenes, 
 hard to manage, or even unmanageable, where the 
 genius of George Eliot, compact at once of tact and 
 power, breaks out hi all its supremacy. There is, 
 I am sorry to say, a lack (save in some secondary 
 characters, such as little Jacob, Hans Meyrick, and 
 Sir Hugo Mallinger) of humour. We are in this 
 respect far from the inimitable creations of the early 
 novels — Mrs. Poyser, poor Mr. Tulliver, the Dodson 
 sisters. We do not feel in ' Daniel Deronda ' what 
 the author herself has so happily called ' the pure 
 enjoyment of comicality,' the amusement which is 
 produced by the sight of innocent foibles, of candid 
 vanity, of things absurd but not evil. The morbid 
 anatomy of conscience, in which the author seems to 
 take more and more pleasure, has in this instance 
 saddened her pencil. But once more, after allowing 
 for all this, and after reducing it to the persons 
 and the things which I have just mentioned, George 
 Eliot's new novel remains a very great and very strong 
 thing. Unluckily, it is mixed up with a secondary 
 story, which is, indeed, clearly distinguished and 
 easily separable from it, but which is its inferior in 
 every way, and the dead weight of which has dragged 
 both itself and its fello^y to shipwreck. For a ship- 
 wreck I fear there has b6en. The admiring par- 
 tiality of the English for their great novelist indeed 
 refuses to recognise any lessening of talent in ' Daniel 
 Deronda ; ' but it cannot help confessing that the
 
 56 ESSAYS ON EKGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 author has not succeeded in interesting the public in 
 ' her Jews,' that all the Israelitish part of the book is 
 wearisome — in short, that there is in it an inexplicable 
 error of taste and of judgment. 
 
 The Jewish romance which George Eliot has cobbled 
 on to the history of Gwendolen is composed of cer- 
 tain historical and philosophical theories personified 
 in some half-dozen Hebrews ; but the theories are 
 vague, and the personages have no individuality. I 
 cannot recall in the preceding works of George Eliot 
 anything like the featurelessness of the characters she 
 has drawn here. It is evident that the author has 
 taken every care, has used every exertion, to interest 
 us in Daniel Deronda, in Mirah, and in Mordecai, and 
 it is painful to see that her pains have been so entirely 
 wasted. Mordecai is a mere visionary, who fails to 
 win us over to his schemes, because he never explains 
 them, and because the little we can divine is childish. 
 Mirah may be charming; but we have to take the 
 author's word for it, inasmuch as, though she tells us so, 
 she never gives proof of the fact, and has not been 
 able to make anything of the character but a kind of 
 wax doll which will say ' papa ' and ' mamma ' if bidden. 
 As for Deronda, who gives his name to the book, and 
 clearly ought to be its hero, he is an intolerable kind 
 of Grandison, with a moral always on his lips, a 
 humanitarian crotchet always in his head, one of those 
 beings who are doubtless required for the accomplish- 
 ment of all sorts of useful tasks, but whom we should 
 be very sorry to meet in the world — beings as tedious 
 as they are estimable, as teasing as they are blameless. 
 Besides, how describe the mental state of a man who 
 cannot hide his delight when he learns that, instead of
 
 DANIEL LEEONDA 57 
 
 being an Englishman, as he has hitherto believed, he 
 is of Jewish birth ! As lief a Jew as anything else, if 
 you like. The wise man attaches but relative impor- 
 tance to matters which do not depend on ourselves. 
 But why this particular rapture at finding oneself a 
 member of a scattered nation, a descendant of a race 
 doomed to be merged in others, as many nobler nations 
 have been doomed also? One thing ought to have 
 warned the author that her ideas on Judaism were 
 false — to wit, that she herself has not managed or has 
 not dared to give clear expression to them anywhere. 
 She has left them in the hopeless vagueness of 
 Mordecai's rhapsodies. The only clue to be found on 
 this point is in a passage where it is said that every 
 Jewish family ought to regard itself as fated to give 
 birth to the Liberator ; and in another, according to 
 which the people of God are to be reassembled and 
 reconstituted in the ancient Promised Land. But 
 what ground has an author for risking views or 
 nourishing hopes like these ? Can it be the Old 
 Testament prophecies? Does George Eliot share the 
 belief of those fanatical and narrow-minded mille- 
 narians to be met with now and then among Protes- 
 tants, who, on the strength of certain texts, imagine 
 that Jerusalem will become the queen of all nations 
 and the centre of the world ? Nothing of the kind, 
 for George Eliot is one of the freest thinkers of our 
 time, one of those most disembarrassed of all theo- 
 logical hypothesis. So that we have here before us 
 the interesting contradiction of a writer who rejects the 
 supernatural element in the belief of the Jews, and yet 
 pleads for the re-establishment of a people whose 
 nationality consists precisely in this belief. We cannot
 
 58 ESSAYS OX ENaLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 help asking one another what she means — whether 
 Judaism Eestored will re-establish the temple of 
 Jehovah and renew the sacrifice of bulls and sheep, 
 or whether it is to be a rationalised Judaism, the 
 Chosen People without its sacred books, without its 
 institution, without its faith — in short, without every- 
 thing which has given it existence and character. 
 These reflections suppl}^ at the same time an answer 
 to an argument by which George Eliot's mind has 
 evidently been haunted. Struck by certain great 
 facts of recent history, astonished at the force which 
 the sentiment of nationality has suddenly exerted as 
 an historical influence, broodmg over the instances of 
 Germany and of Italy, she asked herself why the 
 principle in question should not avail the scattered 
 children of Israel, and failed to perceive that the case 
 of the Jews is altogether peculiar. Of the four 
 elements of nationalit}^ — community of race, com- 
 munity of religion, community of language, and 
 community of territory — they lack the two last wholly, 
 and the second itself is at this moment much more a 
 memory than an effectual and living belief. 
 
 It is well said by Sir Hugh Mallinger, one cf the 
 characters of the novel, when he cries out as Deronda 
 l)egins to set forth his views on Judaism, ' For heaven's 
 sake, don't be eccentric ! I can put up with differences 
 of opinion : all I ask is that people will inform me of 
 them without giving themselves lunatic airs.' But 
 this is the exact charge I bring against Deronda. This 
 young fellow, who is set before us as at once a model 
 of self-devotion and of good sense, is the slave of a 
 chimera, and of the most uninteresting chimera that 
 imagination ever created. I must dwell on this absence
 
 DANIEL DERONDA 59 
 
 of interest; for, in fact, it is the root of the matter. 
 If these visions on the destinies of the Jewish people 
 are to interest ns, they must present either Hvely 
 strokes of manners, or else some genial conception. 
 The writer would have been entitled to give them a 
 place in her story if the beliefs in question were deeply 
 and distinctively characteristic of Jewish life in the 
 nineteenth century ; but we all know that they are 
 nothing of the kind. That being so, she should have 
 confined herself to giving her views on the subject in 
 the piquant shape of a personal paradox. In its actual 
 form, the Jewish episode of * Daniel Deronda ' re- 
 mains one of the most inexplicable mistakes into which 
 a great writer has ever fallen. 
 
 In consequence, no admirer of George Eliot has 
 failed, as he read her new novel, to ask himself the 
 question, 'Must we note here a beginning of deca- 
 dence ? Can it be that the vein, hitherto so abundant 
 and well-sustained, is beginning to dry up ? Can the 
 talent of this incomparable lady be in its decline ? ' 
 For my part, I do not formulate the problem quite 
 thus : for there might be a failure here, and yet it 
 need not be a proof of lessened strength. Besides, as 
 I have said, there are to be found in ' Daniel Deronda ' 
 characters, scenes, strokes, which yield in no respect 
 to those which made the reputation of the earlier work. 
 But one thing seems to me undeniable : that certain 
 distinctive elements in George Eliot's genius have at 
 last got the upper hand, and have disturbed the 
 balance of her faculties. She has, as constantly 
 happens, qualities which have become defects. The 
 charm of her work springs in great part from a certain 
 depth of thought ; a resigned and patient sense of the
 
 GO ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 conditions of human life ; a morality which is at once 
 lofty and kindly, at once implacable in analysis and 
 pardoning much because it comprehends all. George 
 Eliot is an idealist enamoured of good, a philosopher 
 interested in ideas, and a consummate artist all in 
 one — an artist unequalled in creative genius and in 
 plastic force. This co-existence, in the same writer, 
 of the artist and the savant is not so rare as may be 
 thought. The work and life of Goethe exhibit the 
 two forces engaged in a singularly interesting conflict, 
 and our own literature gives us at this very moment 
 more than one similar example. The misfortune is 
 that one of the two tendencies almost always ends by 
 dominating and stifling the other. The writer leans 
 more and more to the side to which his inclination 
 tends. Here is an historian and a philologer, devoted, 
 as it seemed, to bare learning, who, nevertheless, 
 breaks, when no one expects it, the bonds of his busi- 
 ness and his appointed task, and lets us hear the mar- 
 vellous accents of fantasy which were thought to be 
 dead within him. There is another who on the-other 
 hand, had early gained the public ear by the boldness 
 of his paradoxes and the vigour of his style, but in 
 whom a taste for formulas has little b}^ little destroyed 
 all attraction of form.' Such is also, I fear, the ex- 
 planation of 'Daniel Deronda.' The author's taste 
 for ideas carries her into theorising ; her attention to 
 morality turns into purposed didacticism ; she intro- 
 duces political and social views into her novels without 
 restraint, and, finally, the desire of exactitude in her 
 mind produces in her style an intensity of expression 
 
 ' [I think, but am not certain, that M. Scherer is here referring to 
 MM. Eenan and Taine. — Trans.]
 
 DANIEL DEEONDA 61 
 
 which passes into obscurity. And all this turns to the 
 great injury of her art. For art lives not by ideas, but 
 by sentiments, I had almost said by sensations : it is 
 instinctive, it is naif, and it is by direct and uncon- 
 sidered expression that it communicates with reality. 
 Among all the contradictions of which life is made up, 
 there is none more constant than this — that there is 
 no great art without philosophy, and that yet there is 
 no more dangerous enemy of art than reflection. 
 
 January 1877.
 
 62 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 V 
 
 TAINE'S HISTOBY OF ENGLISH LITEEATUEE^ 
 
 This is a book the like of which is not oftenseen 
 nowadaj'S : a book boldly conceived, slowly ripened, 
 patiently worked out — a mighty work in which there 
 are to be at once recognised the thought which 
 dominates facts, the inspiration which animates stjde, 
 the will which accomplishes great undertakings. I could 
 not feel that I had set myself right with M. Taine if, 
 before all discussion, I did not j)ay homage at once to 
 the value of his work and to the power of his talent. 
 No doubt M. Taine is of those writers who provoke 
 one to contradict them ; but no contradiction will 
 hinder the ' History of English Literature ' from being, 
 when all is said, one of the most considerable books 
 which have appeared for the last ten years. 
 
 Moreover, there are in this book two things very 
 distinct from each other. There is not only a history, 
 but also, and first of all, a certain fashion of looking 
 at history : the author has brought to the study of his 
 subject a mind positively made up on matters of 
 system. It is lucky that he has also brought to it 
 conscientious erudition and a feeling for literary 
 beauty. The result is that, if his system and his 
 story have not fully succeeded in permeating each 
 
 ' Paris : Hachette. 3 vols. 8vo. 1863.
 
 TMNE'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITEKATURE 63 
 
 other, the reader will at worst still find in M. Taine a 
 scries of critical studies in a very great style. 
 
 As for his views on the nature of the historian's 
 task, M. Taine, after setting them forth often before, 
 has reproduced them now in his introduction with 
 a precision which makes it easy to master them 
 thoroughly, and to make a definite estimate of their 
 value. Behind the actions of a man there is the man ; 
 and behind the visible man who acts, there is the inner 
 man who thinks and wills. By going back, then, from 
 facts to causes, we arrive promptly at the human soul. 
 For what is man in reality ? A living being in whose 
 mind there is produced a representation of things. 
 This representation works itself out and becomes an 
 idea, or determines the will and becomes a resolve. 
 Let us add that this transforming of sensation is 
 carried out in manners more or less clear, vivid, 
 and simple, from which difference arise all the other 
 differences between men. But on what does this first 
 difference itself depend ? On a general disposition, 
 on an initial moral state which may be referred to 
 the action of three causes : the race — that is to say, the 
 hereditary temperament, which varies in different 
 peoples ; the circumstances — for instance, climate, 
 social conditions, political surroundings ; and, lastly, 
 the point which the development, the progress of 
 which is under study, has reached. These ultimate 
 causes, these forces being once recognised, there is 
 nothing left before us but a question of mechanics. 
 No doubt the directions which are taken and the 
 values which are reached cannot be stated as rigidly 
 as in the exact sciences, and consequently the system 
 of notation will not be the same. But we have still
 
 64 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 in our hands, none the less, the explanation of the 
 characteristics which separate one civilisation from 
 another. And when we use the word civilisation, we 
 mean religion, philosoph}^ institutions, arts : every- 
 thing that goes to make up social life. The whole of 
 it is the result of a moral state which it is our busi- 
 ness to discover and formally to describe. Now that 
 is the task of history. History seeks out the laws 
 which govern the life of societies, and all the 
 manifestations of that life. ' History at bottom is a 
 psychological problem.' It will be understood from this 
 what literary history will be like. A literature is one 
 of the documents which put before our eyes the senti- 
 ments of preceding generations. It is the outward 
 sign of a mental stage, the manifestation of the inner 
 and hidden world, which is the proper subject of the 
 historian. To write history is to work from facts up to 
 their psj'chological causes ; but, as the study of a lite- 
 rature is the best means of discovering these causes, 
 literary history will become the principal instrument of 
 history proper ; or, still better, it will be history jwr 
 excellence, the real history. 
 
 This argument appears to me faulty in two points : 
 it adulterates the notion of history, and it does not 
 completely answer to literary history as M. Taine 
 himself has written it. For history in the sense which 
 the word at once suggests to the mind, and such as it 
 has been at all times conceived to be, is first of all a 
 narrative. Its purpose is to make the actions of men 
 known to inquirers into the causes of these actions, 
 because that is a means of producing a better under- 
 standing of them. But its researches are limited to 
 those causes which are matter of documentary evi-
 
 TAlNE'S HISTOEY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE 65 
 
 dence. There History stops. We cannot see in virtue 
 of what principle she can be asked to go back to the 
 ultimate causes of events, to consider facts in the light 
 of a problem proposed for solution, to refer them to 
 psychological or mechanical considerations. Besides, 
 what is to become of the story in the midst of these 
 researches, and what have science and literature to 
 gain by such a confusion of kinds ? The studies which 
 M. Taine sketches out for us belong not to history but 
 to philosophy. They even constitute a social depart- 
 ment of this latter called the philosophy of history — a 
 useful, I will say an important, science, and one which 
 men like Montesquieu, like Herder, like Guizot, like 
 Buckle, have made illustrious ; but which cannot be con- 
 founded with the art of the great historical narrators 
 without doing violence alike to the interests of philo- 
 sophy and of letters. 
 
 What I have said of history in general is equally 
 true of literary history in particular. Former students 
 of this subject had subordinated general considerations 
 to the special study of authors ; and if at any time 
 they thought fit to draw from the state of letters in a 
 country conclusions relating to the political or social 
 condition of that country, it was, so to speak, but a 
 work of supererogation. With M. Taine it is quite the 
 contrary ; what was secondary has become principal 
 with him. His book is in essence a history of the 
 English race and of civilisation in England. The 
 writer habitually starts from the moral fact, from 
 primary aptitudes, from instinctive dispositions. He 
 shows us conquerors and conquered blending and 
 forming a new nationality, richer and more complex 
 than the old. Then he puts us in presence of the
 
 00 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 great events, such as the Eenaissance and the Eeforma- 
 tion, ^Yllich affected England as they affected Europe. 
 Tl]is is the thread of the story, the substance of the 
 book. The works of his authors, whether they be 
 famous or obscure, whether they be forgotten fabhanx 
 or immortal masterpieces, are merely evidence used 
 to support theories of the writer. Their literary 
 worth is far less in question than the light that they can 
 throw on the manners of an epoch. They are treated, 
 not as products of the art of writing, but as historical 
 documents. There is in this something very novel 
 and very instructive ; but, it must also be clear, there 
 is a way of looking at literary history which is utterly 
 unlike what has hitherto been understood by it. 
 
 A ' question of title ' it may be said — ' perhaps 
 the mere demand of a publisher ! ' Besides, has not 
 M. Taiue clearly declared his purpose ? Has he not 
 said that he undertakes an inquiry into the psychology 
 of a people by means of the history of its literature ? 
 Has he not succeeded in this? and if he has succeeded, 
 why quibble with him about the precise use of a 
 word, or the possibility of a misunderstanding ? 
 
 I should be the first to yield to these arguments if 
 it were a mere question of title. But there is some- 
 thing more at stake here : there is the confusion of 
 two methods. 
 
 For M. Taine, in fact, has not been so faithful 
 to his first idea as not frequently to have slipped 
 into literary history in the common sense of the term. 
 In vain is his head full of peoples and races. He is 
 alive also to the greatness of individuals. His strong 
 and lively imagination is not less struck by the 
 physiognomy of a writer than by that of an epoch, and
 
 TAiNE'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 67 
 
 liG loves to render the one as well as the other. He 
 excels at sketchmg a character, at definmg a talent. 
 He delights in laying hold of a mighty or strange 
 personality — a Shakespeare, a Milton, a Byron — in 
 magnifying it as though to ascertain its nature better, 
 in observing it in the isolation which comes of genius, 
 in discovering its strength and its weakness, in seeking 
 for the secret tie which unites its different parts. At 
 such times he hits upon phrases, vividly picturesque 
 or sculptural, to express the peculiar nature of each 
 mind and of each work. Now all this biographical 
 and critical part of the work is at bottom but a 
 hors cVonivrc ; it does not enter into the primary plan, 
 it cannot be referred to the idee iiicre. The individual, 
 considered in his proper genius — that is to say, strictly 
 as an individual — has no place in a book which aims 
 at being a philosophy of history. One of two things 
 must be true. Either the race explains all, even 
 individual character (and in that case the product of 
 general causes in these characters ought to have been 
 pointed out), or else a man's genius is a fact which we 
 are powerless to explain, which we must accept with- 
 out attempting to determine its laws (and in that case 
 it is proper to neglect it in a treatise which underneath 
 works of literature proposes solely ' to seek the physio- 
 logy of a people '). Besides, it must not be thought 
 that when M. Taine betakes himself to the study of the 
 individual he gives up his fixed ideas of system. He 
 makes a change in them, that is all. He has at one 
 moment been busy in identifying the instincts of a race 
 in the general characters of a literature. He will at the 
 next try to discover, in the genius of a man, the domi- 
 nant feature whence he thinks he can deduce the others. 
 
 F 2
 
 68 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 It is well known with what resourceful paradox 
 M. Taine once upheld a similar thesis on the subject of 
 Livy. Now, the leaders of English literature are sub- 
 jected to the same process. Is the subject Shakespeare? 
 ' Let us seek the man,' says our author, * and let us 
 seek him in his style. The style explains the work, 
 and by showing the chief features of the genius, it 
 announces the others. When you have once seized 
 the master faculty, you can see the whole artist de- 
 veloping himself like a flower.' A little further on it 
 is Milton's turn. ' His emotions and his reasonings, 
 all the forces and all the actions of his soul, draw 
 together and array themselves under one single 
 sentiment, that of the sublime ; and the mighty 
 flood of lyric poesy runs from him, impetuous, 
 unbroken, in splendour like a sheet of gold.' Ob- 
 viously this process has nothing to do with that of 
 which I was speaking above. The one consists in work- 
 ing back from the poetical creations of a people to the 
 natural dispositions characterising that people ; the 
 other consists, on the contrary, in a logical deduction 
 of the qualities of a writer from his predominant 
 aptitude. To speak frankly, these are two methods 
 opposed to each other, connected only by the author's 
 fancy for abstract reasoning, and possessing the 
 special fault of being heaped on one another here 
 without interdependence and without mutual sub- 
 ordination. 
 
 Let me be understood. I do not reproach M. 
 Taine with the scientific airs which his thought gives 
 herself. He was entitled to give us a philosophic 
 treatise, even if we might perhaps have preferred a 
 book with its edification better disguised, with its
 
 T-AINE'S HlSTOEY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 69 
 
 solidity more adapted to the task of pleasing. Never- 
 theless, and even if we place ourselves at his own 
 point of view, we may think that he might have done 
 more to win his readers' confidence. He betrays his 
 fixed ideas of system too naively and too uniformly. 
 Instead of consulting the writings of a period so as to 
 gather from them the strokes with which he is to 
 draw the picture of the epoch, he begins by explana- 
 tions, narratives, descriptions, so that when literary 
 history at last comes up, it is only to supply examples 
 in support of the theory. The effect is that facts 
 seem to bend to what is asked of them ; that the 
 author is (even against one's will) suspected now of 
 having invented the general rule to explain the par- 
 ticular phenomenon, now of having twisted historic 
 fact to suit the exigencies of general views. Let us 
 not mistake. The human mind and fact are two 
 matters which have a necessary tendency to draw 
 together, but which never entirely coincide. Eeality 
 always exceeds our conceptions, and we cannot shut 
 it up in our private formula? except by mutilating it. 
 Hence comes a kind of dissembled war, which his- 
 tory and philosophy have in all times waged against 
 each other — the war between the man who tries to ad- 
 just facts to laws, and the man who, on the other 
 hand, busies himself with following men and things 
 across the eternal surprises of chance. M. Taine has 
 set himself to be at once philosopher and historian ; 
 he has shown in his work qualities which are very 
 rarely found in union. But he has not succeeded in 
 disguising that feature of his undertaking which was 
 necessarily doubtful, some would say radically im- 
 possible. Nay, his methods do not only excite doubt,
 
 70 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 they sometimes proceed to open violence. Here are 
 two sufficiently amusing examples. 
 
 England in the ethnological theories of our au- 
 thor is essentially ' the moist country.' There earth 
 and air are saturated with water, which explains 
 everything ; yes, everything, even to ' the enormous 
 whiskers ' of the men ; everything, even to their ' huge 
 feet like those of wading birds, solidly booted, admirable 
 for walking in mud.' It will be admitted that this 
 picture of an Englishman obliged to cross marshes, 
 and acquiring the feet of web in the process, pushes 
 the doctrine of the influence of milieux a little far. 
 
 A few pages later the author brings out in ener- 
 getic outline the combined habits of independence 
 and order which distinguish the English people. Un- 
 luckily, when he is once 'off,' M. Taine lets himself go, 
 and ends by throwing more than one doubtful touch 
 into the picture. Thus he attributes to paternal 
 authority in England ' a degree of authority and of 
 dignity which is unknown to us.' He should have 
 said exactly the contrary ; paternal authority is with 
 us much severer and much more jealous ; but even 
 this is not all. Among the evidence which M. Taine 
 brings in support of his assertions, there is one item 
 which cannot be read without a smile. ' The father,' 
 he says, is called ' the governor.' Now this so- 
 called title of authority is, on the contrary, a piece 
 of familiar slang, a nickname which, without being 
 exactly disrespectful, is not easy to reconcile with our 
 notions of fihal respect.^ 
 
 ' M. Taine, in his Notes siir V Angletcrre (p. 120), insists on trying 
 to find a social meaning in this familiar esi^ression, and deducing 
 serious conclusions from it.
 
 TAIKE\S IIISTOKY OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 71 
 
 I am not certain whether I have made the objec- 
 tions which the idea and the method of M. Taine 
 raise in my mind entirely clear. They may be all 
 summed up thus. The author wished to set before 
 us the formation and the transformations of the 
 English national spirit. He sought out the expres- 
 sions of this spirit, the documents of this history, in 
 the literature of the people to whom he wished to 
 introduce us. On the other hand, such a literature 
 cannot be reduced altogether to the rather secondary 
 j)art of witness in support of a thesis, of testimony 
 in favour of an ethnological law. A literature has a 
 life proper to itself : it moves independently, it obeys 
 special influences. It furnishes, I admit, important 
 data to history : but that cannot prevent it from 
 being a literature first of all : that is to say, art, 
 the expression of the sense of beauty. That is its 
 essence : all the rest is, so to speak, but accidental and 
 indirect. Now M. Taine has felt this. He has been 
 unable to remain so faithful to his first ideas as to 
 study Englisli literature solely as the monument of a 
 civilisation. He has undergone the charm of those 
 mighty geniuses in whom he would at first have seen 
 nothing but mere samples of a race ; he has allowed 
 himself to consider them as writers and as poets, to 
 question them on the secret of their conceptions, to 
 describe their methods, to characterise their style. 
 In short, he has frequently slipped in his own despite 
 into literary history, such as it is commonly under- 
 stood and written. And this creates two works with- 
 in his work, two plans which mutually cross and 
 entangle, two methods which by no means combine, 
 but on the contrary oppose each other. Obviously
 
 72 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 this is no mere question of title. M. Taiue, despite 
 the vigour with ^Yhich he has reahsed the master- 
 thought of his work, has not arrived at an entire 
 unity of execution. There is something too much in 
 him and something too Httle. Had he heen nothing 
 if not philosophical, we should not have thought of 
 demanding from him a complete view of the history 
 of letters in England : while, on the other hand, when 
 he permits himself so many excursions into the field 
 of pure art, we feel obliged to reproach him with 
 omissions. 
 
 Shakespeare is a product of the Renaissance ; 
 Milton a representation of Puritanism; the comic 
 authors of Charles II. 's time the expression of a 
 licentious reaction against absurd austerities. All 
 this is solidly deduced and set in strong relief. Yet 
 it was inevitable that M. Taine, in thus treating his 
 subject, should mix with it a crowd of views and 
 appreciations which run outside his first intention ; 
 and so in these pages one often loses sight of that 
 which was our starting point. We catch ourselves 
 forgetting that what we had to discover was a country 
 and an epoch under the features of individual genius. 
 Then, our taste once whetted for literary discussion, 
 we begin to ask M. Taine for notice of many things 
 which he has not told us, of which his plan did not 
 oblige him to tell us, but which we should have liked 
 to find in these volumes, if only as a kind of half 
 concession and kindly inconsistency. We are sur- 
 prised, unreasonably I grant, but still we are surprised, 
 not to be put in the way of tracing certain great 
 schools and profound influences. We do not learn what 
 has been the action of the chief English writers on
 
 MAINE'S HISTOEY 01* ENGLISH LITERATUEE 73 
 
 that English Hterature which, however, forms after 
 all the substance and canvas of the book. And what 
 is the result when M. Taine finds himself in presence 
 of an author who has no very marked ethnological 
 signification — of Johnson, for instance ? Johnson is 
 an original figure : he published numerous works : 
 he founded a school: his style— half- forcible, half- 
 pedantic — long set the fashion. It is true that Johnson 
 represents nothing, is the formula of nothing : and so 
 M. Taine gives not two pages to his writings, and not a 
 word to the traces he has left. He is less generous 
 still to Young and to Macpherson, to Hume, to 
 Gibbon, to Eobertson. Poetic influence, philosophical 
 action itself, innovations in thought or style, all the 
 capital facts of literary history, our author neglects 
 them when he does not find in them the expression 
 of a moral state of society. 
 
 We might indeed excuse mere gaps ; but the system 
 itself, as M. Taine applies it, sometimes runs the risk 
 of falsifying historic fact. I need no further proof of 
 this than his picture of modern poetry in England. 
 At the end of the last century appears the English 
 Romantic school, ' wholly similar to ours by its doc- 
 trines, its origins, and its relation ; by the truths it 
 discovered, the exaggerations it committed, the scan- 
 dal it aroused.' From this school issue two kinds 
 of poetry : historical poetry, illustrated by Lamb, 
 Campbell, Coleridge, Thomas Moore, Southey, and 
 Walter Scott ; and philosophical poetry, to which belong 
 the works of Wordsworth, of Shelley, and of Byron. 
 Here assuredly we have great names. Walter Scott, 
 not to mention others, occupied a considerable place 
 in the literature of his country and his time ; but
 
 74 ESSAYS ON EKGLLSII LITEEATUEE 
 
 "Walter Scott is a man of letters pure and simple, 
 and will not long occupy M. Taine. Indeed fifty pages 
 will suffice for all this great period of modern poetry 
 in England. The author is in a hurry : he has found 
 his ' man-formula,' he stre^YS all the other reputations 
 before his feet. One ^Yriter only counts in his eyes, 
 and that is Byron. Why Byron? Because Byron 
 personifies something. ' If Goethe was the poet of 
 the universe, Byron was the poet of personality : and 
 if the German spirit has found its interpreter in the 
 one, the English spirit has found its interpreter in 
 the other.' 
 
 One thing is certain : the English spirit has not 
 been at all ready to acknovvledge its interpreter. But, 
 setting this observation aside, how thoroughly does 
 such a manner of writing history disguise the mean- 
 ing and the march of facts ! I do not think it is at all 
 exact to speak of a 'Romantic' school in England. 
 The English have had neither the word nor the thing, 
 neither the discussions which the term recalls nor the 
 innovations which hold so great a place in the French 
 and German literature of this century. Besides, 
 what connexion can be established in this respect 
 between the two countries separated by the Channel ? 
 English literature started by independence, and it is 
 in independence that we have ended. Innovation in 
 France has inclined most of all to the theatrical side, 
 while modern Enghsh has made its principal eflbrt in 
 narrative poems. And, to come to particular names, 
 who are to be the Lamartines, the Hugos, the Mussets 
 of our neighbours ? Who are to be our Scotts and 
 our Byrons, our Shelleys and our Wordsworths ? I 
 have said that M. Taine divides the recent poets of
 
 TAliSIE'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATUEE 75 
 
 England into two classes — philosophers and historians. 
 The division is more convenient than accurate. A 
 little arbitrary in itself, it becomes still more so when 
 all writers are forced to enter one or other category. 
 Is it ' Gertrude ' to which Campbell owes the privilege 
 of figuring among historians ? Is it giving a very 
 exact or a very full idea of Thomas Moore, of that 
 light and elegant muse, of that inspiration at once 
 sensual, sentimental, and satirical, to make of him a 
 traveller or an antiquary masquerading as a poet ? 
 And Coleridge ? I have found it impossible even 
 to guess what procured him the honour of being 
 labelled historian. However, all this is nothing beside 
 the verdict passed a little later on Carlyle. Carlylc 
 classed among the Puritans, 'the real Puritans,' by 
 the side of Pascal and Cowper ! Shade of Teufels- 
 drocckh ! I think I see a very curious smile flitting 
 over your cynical lips. 
 
 But, after all, these a^rc only details. I attach far 
 more importance to the idea which the author has 
 formed of the development of modern poetry in 
 England, to the manner in which he describes this 
 mighty evolution of the national genius. M. Taine, I 
 have said, passes rapidly over other names to get to 
 Byron. Byron in his eyes is the last word of English 
 literature : his contemporaries are but at most the 
 d'l minores who follow in his train. Now, has he not, in 
 setting things forth after this fashion, put his own 
 literary predilections in the place of facts ? Has he 
 not rather interpreted history than told it ? 
 
 For the moment the merits of Byron arc not in 
 question. We shall return to them presently. What 
 we are looking for is the succession of ideas and the
 
 76 Essays on English literature! 
 
 linking together of influences. Now, it is an established 
 fact that the action of Byron on his contemporaries 
 was lively, but not durable — indeed, it hardly outlasted 
 his own life. ' Don Juan ' — his last work— never has 
 had on the other side of the Channel the kind of sym- 
 bolical importance which it pleases us to attribute to it. 
 Besides, men were quick to be disgusted with the mis- 
 anthropic dandyism, the airs of a hlase aristocrat, 
 which the author of ' Childe Harold ' was never tired of 
 ostentatiously affecting. The English genius is much 
 more active, and as a consequence much more supple, 
 than we suppose it to be. It passes rapidly from one 
 hobby to another, and unceasmgly seeks to find its 
 way through contrasts. And so Byron, hailed in his 
 day as the personification of the noblest melancholy, 
 ended by seeming artificial and shallow. Tired of 
 grand — and false — sentiments, men turned with delight 
 to a writer whose simplicity was not free from study, 
 but whose very study had often enabled him to reach 
 profound thoughts and a delicate interpretation of 
 nature. Wordsworth was in his turn proclaimed 
 the greatest poet of the time. And then, in his turn, 
 he again w^as found wanting. Coleridge — a logical 
 enthusiast who united speculative views to mystical 
 intuitions, a poet and a theologian — had given his 
 fellow-countrymen many new lights from the German 
 side. The wind of philosophical systems had made its 
 breath felt. Emotion was found insufficient ; ideas 
 were called for. And so Shelley, poor Shelley! so dis- 
 dained and cried down in his lifetime, succeeded 
 Wordsworth in vogue. The amende honoralle was 
 made to him : he was proclaimed one of the glories of 
 England. Men became passionately enamoured of his
 
 TAINE'S HISTOEY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 77 
 
 ethereal, subtle, intangible poetry, and the hollowness 
 of his humanitarian dreams was forgiven him in virtue 
 of the sublimity and beauty of his imagination. 
 After which he shared the fate of his predecessors. 
 As time went on his defects became more apparent. 
 There was not enough human heart-beat, not enough 
 life, not enough of the dramatic within him. There 
 came a new poet who, to the science of rhythm, the 
 resources of expression, the gift of epic narration, the 
 deep feeling for nature, to all the caprices of a 
 delightful fancy, to all the favourite ideas, noble or 
 morbid, of modern thought, knew how to join the 
 language of manly passion. Thus, as it were summing 
 up in himself all his forerunners, he touched all hearts ; 
 he linked together all admirations ; he has remained 
 the true representative, the last expression and final, 
 of the poetic period to which he belongs. Tennyson 
 reigns to-day almost alone in increasing and uncon- 
 tested glory.i Such, at least, is the movement of 
 modern poetry in England as I understand it. As for 
 M. Taine, he finds nothing in Wordsworth but limit- 
 less boredom, and nothing in Tennyson but an amiable 
 dilettantism. It will be seen that an understanding 
 between us is not immediately likely. 
 
 But, if M. Taine's systematic views sometimes lead 
 him to misjudge the interconnexion of literary facts, 
 they also lead him at times to exaggeration and 
 caricature. He must needs, to make his historical 
 deductions effective, hit upon individual characters 
 which represent an age. And then he permits himself 
 
 ' The evolution of taste and of thought has continued since these 
 lines were written, and the supremacy of Tennyson has received (1875 
 more than one attack.
 
 78 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 to cudowhis figures in a very curious fashion with heroic 
 attitudes, with gigantic stature, with mystical under- 
 meaning. So he did long ago with Dickens, with 
 Thackeray, with Carlyle ; but I know no more notable 
 example of this kind of hallucination than the chapter 
 in his book which treats of Lord Byron. 
 
 Byron is one of our French superstitions. Thanks 
 to distance and to the obstacles which translation sets 
 in the way of familiar knowledge, we are still, on this 
 head, in the fashion of 1820. We insist upon taking 
 the noble poet seriously. His name excites in us an 
 idea of luxury on the great scale, of brilliant debauchery, 
 of chivalrous character, the whole mingled with im- 
 mortal poesy. Byron is to us a Don Juan of genius, 
 a splendid and mysterious Lara, or, as M. de Lamar- 
 tme sang of old, something between an archangel and 
 a demon. 
 
 M. Taine could not but find his account in accept- 
 ing the popular legend ; for such a figure must put a 
 magnificent crown to the edifice which he had just 
 been constructing. Here was the English genius, after 
 five centuries of history, on the point of finding its 
 last expression, its incomparable emblem. Accord- 
 ingly, see with what expense of metaphors, of contrasts, 
 of hyperboles our author tries to invest his hero with 
 superhuman significance. 
 
 * The passion of the moment, be it great or small, 
 swooped down on his soul like a tempest, aroused it, 
 excited it to the pitch of folly or to the pitch of genius. 
 His journal, his familiar letters, all his unpremeditated 
 prose writings, quiver as it were with wit, anger, 
 enthusiasm. The cry of feeling vibrates in the very 
 least words. Since Saint- Simon nothing has been so
 
 TAINE'S IIISTOKY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 79 
 
 Vividly confidential. All styles seem dull and all souls 
 seem sluggish beside bis.' Furtber on we have a 
 picture ' of tbat splendid impetuosity of faculties, 
 unbridled and let loose, rusbing wbere cbance may 
 lead tbem, and seeming to hurry him without choice 
 on bis part to the four corners of the horizon.' Again : 
 Byron ruined himself by despising public opinion ; but, 
 singularly enough, this contempt of opinion, which 
 clearly could have done him no harm save in a public 
 which was slave to opinion, this very disdain of the 
 conventional, is one of the characteristics of the 
 English. * This instinct of revolt is in the race. It is 
 nourished by a whole bundle of savage passions born 
 of the climate — a gloomy humour, a violent imagina- 
 tion, an indomitable pride, the taste for danger, the 
 desire of battle, the thirst for excitement which is 
 only glutted by destruction, and the sombre madness 
 which used to urge the Scandinavian Berserkers when, 
 in an open boat, under a sky riven by lightning, they 
 abandoned themselves to the tempest whose fury they 
 had breathed.' 
 
 And so the features of the child are still visible in 
 the maturity of the adult. The Englishman may 
 measure cotton as he pleases, but he is still the de- 
 scendant of the ancient sea-kings, and the finished 
 ideal of an Englishman will be neither more nor 
 less than Byron. ' Strange and thoroughly northern 
 poetry,' cries M. Taine, ' with its root in the Edda 
 and its flower in Shakespeare, born long ago under 
 an inclement sky, beside a stormy sea, wrought by a 
 race only too self-willed, too strong, and too sombre — 
 a poetry which, after lavishing images of desolation 
 and of heroism, ends by spreading over the whole
 
 80 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 life of nature, like a sable veil, the vision of uuiversal 
 destruction.' 
 
 According to M. Taine, the poet in Byron is not 
 less great than the man. He is the only one of his 
 contemporaries who has ' reached the summit.' Man- 
 fred is a twin brother of Faust. As for his st^'le, 
 none has ever better expressed the soul, ' its labour, 
 its expansion, are things visible. Ideas have boiled 
 in it long and stormily, like the lumps of metal piled 
 up in the furnace. They have melted under the 
 stress of fervent heat, they have blended then* lava 
 with quiverings and explosions, and now at last the 
 door opens, a heavy stream of fire falls into the furrow 
 prepared beforehand, setting the shivering air on 
 fire, while its blazing hues scorch the eyes that too 
 obstinately gaze at it.' 
 
 Such is M. Taine's Byron. No phrase seems too 
 strong to express his greatness, no image too vivid to 
 indicate the splendour of his genius. But it remams 
 to inquire whether the portrait is as exactly like as it 
 is brilliantly painted. For my part, I own that I can 
 hardly recognise the real Byron in it at all, and that 
 M. Taine seems to me at once to have magnified the 
 man and overrated the poet. 
 
 Byron, doubtless, is no ordinary bard. He 
 possesses fecundity, eloquence, wit. Yet these very 
 quaUties are confined within pretty narrow limits. 
 The wit of ' Beppo ' and of ' Don Juan ' is of the 
 kind that consists in dissonance ; that is to say, in 
 the serio-comic, in an apparent gravity which is 
 contradicted every moment by drollery of phrase. 
 In the same way Byron's fecundity is more appa- 
 rent than real. He wrote a great deal— poems
 
 5'AINfi'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITEEATURE 61 
 
 serious and poems comic, epics and dramas, visions 
 and satires ; but, speaking strictly, he never had 
 more than a single subject — himself. No man has 
 ever pushed egotism further than he. Childe Harold, 
 Lara, Don Juan, Manfred, the Deformed Transformed, 
 all the poet's heroes, are but so many copies of the 
 same original. Nor is it only his own character that 
 he reproduces continually. It is his domestic mis- 
 fortunes, his mother and the education she gave him, 
 his wife and tlie faults which he thinks himself 
 entitled to reproach her with. Now there is in this 
 obstinate determination to acquaint the public with 
 his private life, not only a want of taste and dignity, 
 but also a singular inability to rise to great art, to 
 art which is impersonal and disinterested. 
 
 Yet on this point, on the poetical genius of Byron, 
 M. Taine has glimpses of the truth. He begins by 
 extolling him as a giant, but he ends by reducing him 
 to the proportions of an ordinary mortal. At one 
 moment he is a volcano vomiting lava ; a little 
 further we shall find him a merely logical and spirited 
 orator. We shall even find acknowledgments that 
 there are some glass beads among the Orient jewel- 
 lery, some opera choruses among his sombre poetry. 
 There is a confession that it was time for ' Don Juan ' 
 to come to an end, inasmuch as it was beginning to 
 be a bore. The truth is that Byron's talent is less 
 poetical than oratorical ; he has less of imagination 
 than of rhetoric. He always reminds me of the 
 judgment which Schiller passed on Mme. de Stael 
 when he wrote to Goethe : ' The sense of poetry as 
 we understand it is utterly absent in her ; she can 
 only assimilate in works of this kind the side which is 
 
 G
 
 82 Essays on English literature 
 
 passionate, oratorical, and general.' Exactly so. It 
 is, indeed, a mistake to confound eloquence ^Yith 
 l^oetry. Eloquence is that kind of discourse ^Ybicll 
 serves as an expression for personal emotion ; poetry, 
 an infinitely more varied and less interested thing, 
 is the making manifest by means of language of that 
 element of beauty which is in all things and -which 
 it is its business to feel and to disengage. We in 
 France are wont to distinguish insufficiently between 
 the two arts. We find it hard to forget ourselves, 
 and give ourselves up to the proper power of the 
 object. We remain the slaves of lyrical declamation. 
 It is the same with Byron, who is of the school of 
 Pope, who himself is of our school. The author of 
 the ' Corsair ' was not ignorant of the fact ; he makes 
 no mystery of his tastes ; his admiration for Pope is 
 the fundamental article of his poetical creed, and he 
 is never tired of extolling, as the final effort of genius, 
 the smooth and balanced verses of that artificial 
 writer. 
 
 The man in Byron is of a nature even less sincere 
 than that of the poet. Underneath this Beltenebros 
 there is hidden a coxcomb. He posed all through 
 his life. He had every affectation — the writer's, 
 the roue's, the dandy's, the consph-ator's. He was 
 constantly writing, and he pretends to despise his 
 writings. To beheve himself, he was proud of nothing 
 but his skill in bodily exercises. An Enghshman, he 
 affects Bonapartism ; a peer of the realm, he speaks 
 of the Universal EepubHc with the enthusiasm of a 
 schoolboy of fifteen. He plays at misanthropy, at 
 disillusion : he parades his vices ; he even tries to make 
 us believe that he has committed a crime or two.
 
 TAINE'S HISTORY OP ENGLISH LITERATURE 83 
 
 Bead liis letters — his letters written nominally to 
 friends, but handed about from hand to hand in 
 London. Bead his journal — a journal kept ostensibly 
 for himself, but handed over afterwards by him to 
 Moore with authority to publish it. The littleness 
 which these things show is amazing. You find things 
 purely silly, hke this definition : * Poetry is the sense 
 of a world past and a world to come.' Women, he 
 holds, should only read prayer-books or cookery-books. 
 He will tell you how he met a friend, but would not ask 
 him to dinner because he wanted to eat a whole turbot 
 by himself. He makes entries of his feeding his cats 
 and his raven. He observes that he has torn a 
 button off his coat. He wih bewail the death of a 
 barber or a dentist, and put them high above the 
 Duke of Wellington. All this might be excused if it 
 were sincere — I mean sincere trifling, or sincere folly. 
 But no : it was all an affectation of trifling, a variety 
 of pose and of mystification. Now this is what M. 
 Taine has not seen sufficiently or reckoned with 
 enough. A score of times as I read his eloquent 
 pages on Byron's stormy soul, I have felt tempted to 
 whisper in his ear Chamfort's saying, ' The great art 
 is the art of not being taken in.' 
 
 I have scarcely space to say a few words concern- 
 ing M. Taine's style, and yet I should have liked to 
 study his fashion of writing— so full of vigour, I had 
 almost said of violence. I think that by considering 
 its processes closely, one might again trace the effect 
 of the author's ideas of system. M. Taine is an artist 
 beyond doubt, and a very powerful one : but he is an 
 artist bound apprentice to a savant. He is a man of 
 thought first of all ; he demonstrates, he describes 
 
 o 2
 
 84 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 because description is another way of demonstrating, 
 but he docs not tell a story. The picture which 
 he constructs by means of innumerable strokes, in- 
 geniously combined, is only the visible image of his 
 thesis itself. His multiplied descriptions, his accu- 
 mulated details, his masses of words are but so many 
 arguments which he urges upon j'ou. His very 
 imagery smells of logic. I can never read him with- 
 out thinking of those gigantic steam-hammers which 
 strike redoubled and resounding blows, which send out 
 myriads of sparks, and under the ceaseless blows 
 of which the solid steel is fashioned and wrought. 
 Everj-thmg gives an idea of power, a sensation of 
 force ; but it must be added that so much noise is 
 deafening, and that after all, if the style is as solid 
 and as flashing as metal, it is also sometimes as heavy 
 and as hard.
 
 85 
 
 VI 
 
 SHAKESPEAIiE AND CEITICISM 
 
 I HAVE just received three new volumes of M. Emile 
 Montegut's translation of Shakespeare's works, con- 
 taining the English history-plays. The earlier vo- 
 lumes gave us the Comedies, and, with three or four 
 volumes more for the great dramas, the pieces with 
 ancient subjects, and the Poems, the book will be 
 finished. I have subjected M. Montegut's work to a 
 rigorous examination. I have not been satisfied with 
 turning it over, but have re-read some of the original 
 plays, comparing the translation in all difficult places. 
 And I have been struck with the care and the success of 
 the rendering of these passages. It is no small task 
 to reproduce the good and bad jokes, the inexhaustible 
 plays on words, which the dramatist allows him- 
 self even in the most pathetic situations. But M. 
 Montegut has, in the great majority of cases, come out 
 successful. I should add that in the translation each 
 piece is preceded by an introduction, and followed 
 by notes, in both of which I have found the best- 
 established results of criticism. I need hardly say 
 that I do not invariably agree with M. Montegut ; for 
 instance, I could not give him my adhesion on the 
 meaning of 'The Tempest;' for I cannot recognise 
 in it the poet's last will and testament, his farewell
 
 86 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 to the public, the summing up of his dramatic work. 
 But these are disagreements of detail. As a rule, M. 
 Montegut's judgments are as solid as they are ingeni- 
 ously supported. It is to be hoped that the translator 
 will not finish his work without adding to it a general 
 essay on the English poet's genius : and I take plea- 
 sure in the anticipation of seeing so subtle and so 
 attractive a mind employed in the analysis of one of 
 the most complex geniuses which have ever existed.' 
 
 I am glad that Shakespeare supplies me with an 
 occasion for speaking of M, Courdaveaux, Professor in 
 the Faculty of Letters at Douai, and author of a 
 volume ^ of literary studies. Most of these studies 
 are devoted to Latin poets, and among them to the 
 Latin poets of love. But Shakespeare also has two 
 articles as his share. In all these pieces the author 
 gives evidence of an elegant scholarship, shows know- 
 ledge of his texts, and frames his presentation of them 
 with observations which show good taste and ingenuity. 
 Unfortunately M. Courdaveaux has a thesis. Accord- 
 ing to him there is a close connexion between a man's 
 talent and his moral character. If Theocritus was 
 not a poet of the first class, it is because he was de- 
 ficient, not in intellectual, but in moral, qualities. If 
 Chenier is superior to Propertius, it is because Chenier 
 was a much better man. If Virgil and Horace ex- 
 celled the other flatterers of Augustus, it is because 
 they knew how, even in flattermg, to preserve a certain 
 
 ' (Euvres Completes da Shakespeare. Translated by Emile Mon- 
 t^gut. The translation is now completed in ten volumes ; but the 
 author has not included the Introduction for which I wished. 
 
 ^ Caractercs et Talents: Etudes stir la Litterature Ancienne ct 
 Moderns, Par V. Courdaveaux,
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND CEITICISM 87 
 
 dignity. If, to conclude, Shakespeare deserves to be set 
 above all his contemporaries, it is first of all because 
 he excelled them in nobility of sentiment, in rectitude 
 and elevation of ideas. Even the enigmatical character 
 of Hamlet is explained in the most natural manner in 
 the world by the virtues of the poet. Shakespeare would 
 have been incapable of committing a murder in cold 
 blood, however much circumstances might have seemed 
 to him to make vengeance a duty. He would have 
 hesitated and drawn back. Well, then, Shakespeare 
 has lent his own feelings to Hamlet, and thence comes 
 the irresolution of which that personage has become 
 the never-to-be-forgotten type. Goethe, Schlegel, and 
 all the rest have given themselves much useless trouble 
 because they forgot that a great poet is a worthy man, 
 and that a worthy man necessaril}^ portrays himself 
 in his works. 
 
 I cannot stop to discuss a question which would 
 take me too far, and which does not seem to be well 
 formulated by M. Courdaveaux. There is on this head 
 a confusion of things which ought to be kept distinct. 
 I incline to think that a poet in the most exalted sense 
 of the word could not be a knave or a fribble. The very 
 cultivation of the art, the direction of mind which it 
 implies, the ideal cast of thought imply a sort of moral 
 life. The conception of the beautiful is a pure thing, 
 and all impurity is damage done to the aesthetic per- 
 fection of the work. Great poets are healthy by 
 nature. But this is a very different thing from saying 
 that the poet is a good man endowed with talent, or 
 that genius consists in worthily expressing noble senti- 
 ments. It is still less equivalent to saying that the 
 end of art is to disseminate good principles or furnish
 
 88 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 fine examples. It must be clear how many distinc- 
 tions have to be made to settle comiDletely the old 
 problem of the relations of the beautiful and the good, 
 of art and of morality. But I cannot dwell on this, 
 and I must pass to a book on Shakespeare W'hich 
 seems to me to mark a new epoch in criticism. 
 
 There is no country where Shakespeare-worship 
 has been more fervently professed than in Germany. 
 All schools of philosophy and literature pay equal 
 homage to the mighty dramatist ; all have selected 
 his personality as the representative of the highest 
 poetry : and they differ only in the point of view at 
 which they place themselves for the purpose of better 
 exalting the genius of the poet. Thus the different 
 forms of admiration for Shakespeare beyond the 
 Ehine give us a kind of abstract of the vicissitudes of 
 criticism in what is the classic land of theor}^ 
 
 The Piomantic School w^as the first to write the 
 name of Shakespeare on its banners. Lessing had 
 already set the example of the English drama in oppo- 
 sition to the artificial rules of the French tragedy. But 
 the Eomantics went further. They put Shakespeare 
 forward as the representative of the Middle Ages, to 
 which they had taken a fancy. They sought and 
 found in him all the elements of art as they under- 
 stood it. They acquitted him of all the defects with 
 which he was reproached — slips in history and geo- 
 graphy as well as mere faults of taste. Their sun 
 must have no spots ; their Bible must remain infallible. 
 Shakespeare had been regarded as an unconscious 
 poet. They claimed for him the full and clear convic- 
 tion of his own genius and his own work. In short, 
 the author of ' Hamlet ' was proclaimed the universal
 
 SHAKESPEAEE AND CRITICISM 89 
 
 poet, the giant of the ages, the supreme exponent of 
 his age, of humanity, of the world. 
 
 Philosophical speculation succeeded Eom antic 
 mysticism : yet without affecting the new cult, to 
 which it was satisfied with giving a different meaning. 
 Hegel in his ' iEsthetic ' followed the development of 
 the idea through the different phases of art — the 
 symbolic art of Asia, the classical art of the Greeks, 
 and finally the romantic art of the Moderns. This 
 latter, in obedience to the ternary arrangement of the 
 system, passed from painting to music, then from 
 music to poetry, and went through the three successive 
 phases of epic, lyric, and drama. Thus drama repre- 
 sented the highest and completest form of art, and 
 Shakespeare, it will be understood, came in at this 
 final term of the demonstration as a personification of 
 the dramatic class. The English poet thus had still 
 to play pretty much the same part, and continued to 
 hide himself from vulgar eyes in uncontested and in- 
 accessible supremacy. 
 
 Time brought with it a fresh reaction : the apparent 
 rigour of the Hegelian dialectic had succeeded the 
 fantasies of Eomanticism ; but a day came when this 
 dialectic seemed hollow. The Germans were suddenly 
 seized with a great disgust for formulas. They turned 
 eagerly towards active life : they stimulated them- 
 selves to become men of action. Public and private 
 virtues recovered in their eyes the place too long 
 usurped by contemplation. Thenceforward nothing 
 was fine unless it was moral. Lucky Shakespeare to 
 find the means of preserving his royalty even in this 
 third evolution! An eminent critic, Herr Gervinus, 
 hp-stened to prove (in four volumes) that Shakespeare
 
 90 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 was the greatest of moralists, the most eloquent 
 defcniler of the waj's of Providence, the surest guide 
 of mankind in the paths of virtue. Not a play of his 
 but, under the commentator's pen, ended by showing 
 some intention of high teaching. 
 
 Never had more ability been put at the service of 
 an unluckier thesis. It so happens that Shakespeare 
 is of all the great poets the furthest removed, not 
 merely from any thought of didactics, but from all 
 fixed ideas of the moral kind. A poet pure and 
 simple, he treats good and evil as impartially as 
 Nature herself. But Germany had a fit of utility and 
 didactics upon her ; and it was necessary to confirm 
 her in this way of wisdom without disturbing her 
 faith in Shakespeare. This was the origin of Herr 
 Gervinus's book ; he gave a new opening to the need 
 for cngouement which characterises our ingenious 
 neighbours. 
 
 Up to this point, and through all these revolutions 
 of taste and thought, enthusiasm had remained un- 
 affected ; the unconscious poet and the learned poet, 
 the unrestrained fantasist and the exalted sage, had 
 been admired by turns ; but the genius had been un- 
 ceasingly declared unique and incomparable. Each 
 vied with other in extravagance of praise; there were 
 no reserves. It would have seemed indecent to pick 
 out faults or even to set degrees between beauties. 
 Men were ready to say with Victor Hugo, * The oak 
 has an eccentric fashion of growing — knotty boughs, 
 sombre foliage, rough and coarse bark — but he is the 
 oak. And it is because of all this that he is the oak.' 
 It would have been thought a want of filial piety to 
 treat the master's works like those of any other
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND CEITICISM 91 
 
 mortal. But, alas ! no faith is so deeply rooted in the 
 human soul that it is not shaken at last. There is 
 no movement so unanimous that it does not sooner or 
 later provoke a reaction, and the more blind and ex- 
 cessive the tide has been the more certain is the 
 reflux. In no other way than this can the balance to 
 which all human affairs tends be established ; though, 
 more properly speaking, it is never established at all, 
 but consists in this very fluctuation of the mind 
 between opinions which are always partly true and 
 partly false. 
 
 Shakespeare-worship is an example of this. Un- 
 doubtedly the religion had become a superstition, and 
 the very fanaticism of the believers was sure to end 
 in arousing the objections of sceptics. At the very 
 least independent spirits were sure to claim the right 
 of free examination : and this is what has actually 
 happened. Some two years ago there appeared in 
 Germany a little book which dares to discuss Shake- 
 speare, to distinguish the strong from the weak points 
 in him, to bring him back under the common law of 
 criticism. It is clear that a new era announces itself 
 in the history of the poet's destiny.' 
 
 The ground-idea of Herr Riimelin's book is the 
 necessity, if we wish to understand Shakespeare, of 
 transporting ourselves into the circumstances in the 
 midst of which he lived and wrote. We make, he 
 thinks, a false estimate of the rank which Shakespeare 
 enjoyed in the esteem of his contemporaries — -of the 
 reputation in which his works were held by court and 
 public ; and we thus surround his image with a halo 
 by which we proceed to let ourselves be dazzled. He 
 
 ' SJiakcspearestudien. Von Gustav Riiniclin. Stuttgart. 18GG.
 
 92 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 would have the truth to be that the theatre was m 
 very evil odour during those Puritanic times ; that it 
 was attended only by the populace on the one hand, 
 and by a few young men of fashion on the other ; 
 that the vocation of an actor was universally despised; 
 that Shakespeare does not seem to have enjoyed any 
 extraordinary vogue during his own life ; that, in 
 short, the unequalled glory with which his name is 
 now for ever surrounded dates no further back than 
 some hundred years ago. 
 
 We shall see in a moment the consequences which 
 Herr Eilmelin thinks he can deduce from these facts. 
 But I must begin by requesting the reader not to 
 accept the facts themselves too hastily. The verses 
 in which Ben Jonson equals Shakespeare to the 
 greatest tragedians of antiquity suffice to show what 
 the contemporaries of the poet thought of him. The 
 epitaph in which Milton not merely expresses his 
 admiration for the dead poet, but calls him 
 
 Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
 
 proves that the succeeding generation were no more 
 insensible than we are to the beauties of Shakespeare. 
 But Herr Eiimelin has been unlucky throughout this 
 part of his book. He has summoned to support his 
 thesis certain sixteenth-century documents, and it so 
 happens that these documents are part of a pretty 
 considerable collection of forged autographs. The 
 EngUsh are not less active than we are m this kind of 
 fabrication ; it may be added that they are not more 
 skilful, and that the most cursory reading ought to 
 have been enough to put M. Eiimelin on his guard. 
 Our author's starting point is indeed in itself in-
 
 SHAKESPEARfi AKD CRITICISM 9^ 
 
 contestable. It is certain that we appreciate the work 
 of a writer much better when we strip him of the halo 
 with which fate has surrounded him and restore him 
 to the company of the circumstances in which he lived* 
 And it is good, in order to understand Shakespeare, to 
 remember that he was an actor and the manager of a 
 theatre. His plays were not merely pieces of literature, 
 but also, and first of all, things forced upon him by his 
 business. He did not write for posterity, but for a 
 special public which he had to please. This is all 
 true ; but it is not less true at the same time that it is 
 possible to abuse such considerations, andHerr Kiimelin 
 gives an example of it when he hints that Shakespeare 
 portrayed his friend the Earl of Southampton under 
 the features of young Harry the Fifth. When he 
 guesses that the plays taken from Eoman history were 
 meant to serve as a warning to the same Southampton 
 — ' Coriolanus ' exhibiting to him the dangers of aris- 
 tocratic insolence, ' Antony and Cleopatra ' those of 
 amorous intrigue, * Julius Cfesar ' those of ambition — 
 when, in short, criticism plunges thus headlong into 
 conjecture, we can only remember that things like 
 these are pure hypotheses, as incapable of proof as 
 of disproof. It is the same with this whole class of 
 historical considerations. We may grant that Shake- 
 speare, working according to the needs of the theatre, 
 did not always subject his work to very severe dis- 
 cipline. He wrote scene after scene, developing first 
 one situation, then another, and ending by losing sight 
 of the unity of the whole work. It is certain that 
 there are two distinct dramas in ' King Lear,' and 
 that most of the pieces drawn from English history 
 are mere chronicles thrown into dialogue. But Herr
 
 94 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LlTERATlTRE 
 
 Eiimelin goes much further. "We know in what a 
 questionable shape the part of Hamlet presents itself, 
 in how many ways commentators have sought to 
 explain this mysterious mixture of irresolution and 
 enterprise, of hidden designs and capricious sallies. 
 For Herr Eiimelin there is no mystery at all. The 
 character of Hamlet is simply incoherent ; and it is in- 
 coherent because the poet worked in bits and scraps, 
 because he did not know how to bind the scenes 
 together, to run the shades into one. In a word, we 
 are to see no problem here, but the actual imperfec- 
 tion of the work. Perhaps so ; but it will be granted 
 that this is to cut the knot rather than to untie it. 
 
 Herr Eiimelin explains the great features of 
 Shakespeare's genius in the same way as the defects 
 of his dramas, by the circumstances of his life. We 
 must, he holds, always come back to the one point : the 
 poet was a manager. Everything follows from this. 
 Shakespeare's profession has its inconveniences as 
 well as its advantages. If it assists the knowledge of 
 mankind, it is not favourable to experience of the world. 
 Hence, Shakespeare is distinguished for the creation 
 of a multitude of characters, all living and individual; 
 his theatre is a gallery of portraits which, once seen, 
 can never be forgotten. No writer has ever shown such 
 a faculty of creation. On the other hand (still according 
 to Herr Eiimelin) , the action in the English dramatist's 
 works is weak. You see that he is ignorant of society 
 and of the secret sprmgs of events ; in particular he 
 errs by makmg situations too much the result of 
 personal character. Experience teUs us that thmgs do 
 not happen thus in real life. We must remember, too, 
 that a manager's career is full of asitations. It allows
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND CElTlClSM 95 
 
 of no rest. And so, assuming that the manager be an 
 actor as well, it makes the most feverish existence 
 that can be imagined. Herr Eiimelin has no hesi- 
 tation in thus explaining the touch of excess and 
 morbidity which he finds in most of Shakespeare's 
 creations. 
 
 On the whole, and in spite of many just and strik- 
 ing observations in detail, it is impossible to say that 
 Herr Eiimelin has succeeded in his attempt. He has 
 done a service to criticism in protesting against an 
 enthusiasm which refused to argue under pretext of 
 admiring better without argument, but he has not 
 produced any considerable result from the new method 
 which he professed to apply to the works of Shake- 
 speare. The reason is that history never explains a 
 man ; that circumstances modify but do not create a 
 living personality. They can at most help us to under- 
 stand the turn which his genius took, the obstacles 
 which he had to surmount, the limits which were im- 
 posed upon him. And so Herr Piiimelin's criticism, 
 doubtless altogether miintentionally, has become al- 
 most entirely negative ; he has principally told us 
 what Shakespeare was not. 
 
 And then, since humanity can never do without 
 superstitions, he hurries, in the very process of upset- 
 ting one idol, to set up another in its place. What 
 hurts Herr Eiimelin most in German Shakespeare- 
 worship is, it seems, its preference of Shakespeare to 
 German poets, Goethe in particular. The last chapter 
 of the book draws a parallel between the two writers in 
 which the German is naturally allowed to have the best 
 of it. I do not care to follow M. Eiimelin in this kind of 
 comparison, neither the use nor the interest of which
 
 96 ESSAYS OX en:glisii literatube 
 
 have I ever understood : not to mention that here 
 the terms of juxtaposition are ahnost wholly points of 
 contrast. What can there bo in common between two 
 authors of whom one lived fifty, the other eighty-four 
 years ; of whom the first gave himself up almost 
 wholly to drama, while the second attempted every 
 style, busied himself with all science, exercised him- 
 self in every path ; of whom, finally, the latter carried 
 into art every resource of erudition, while the former 
 still belongs to art which is simply creative ? 
 
 Strange to say, Herr Eiimelin has no sooner 
 arrived at Goethe, than he loses all the faculties of 
 measure and discretion which he had shown in speak- 
 ing of the English poet. This is the way of the 
 Germans ; they will end by spoiling Goethe for us by 
 mere dint of exaggeration. I, for my part, know few 
 "writers for whom I feel a greater admiration, to whom 
 I owe deeper and more lasting delight ; but I am 
 bound to say that neither do I know one in whose 
 case I am more convinced of the necessity of allow- 
 ances and reserves. The day of reasoned criticism 
 must surely come for Goethe, as it seems to have 
 come for Shakespeare at last ; and then men will 
 wonder at the complaisance with which we now shut 
 our eyes to his faults. We are too prone to forget 
 how much littleness is compatible with greatness, 
 and how many parts of weakness and dulness the 
 highest genius may contain. Goethe is one of the 
 most striking examples of this truth. He is the 
 author of some of the most perfect work that any 
 literature has produced, and of some of the most 
 tiresome books that have been written in any language. 
 Side by side with profound and admirably expressed
 
 SHAKEStEAEE AND CElTICtSM 97 
 
 thoughts, there are to be found in his books a multi- 
 tude of pompously enunciated commonplaces. He is 
 wanting both in critical precision and in creative 
 power. Exquisite, accomplished, and extensive as 
 was his culture, he lacked more than one of the 
 principal elements of thought. History was a 
 stranger to his meditations. He was acquainted 
 neither with the society of great cities, nor with the 
 policy of great states. His genius at first showed an 
 admirable combination of sentiment and reflection ; 
 but in the long run reflection got the better and cast 
 a chill over the whole. His finest works belong to that 
 period of his life when the consummate science of 
 the artist was balanced by passionate ardour. But 
 afterwards the intention of teaching and the calcula- 
 tion of effect got the upper hand so much that, he 
 revelled mere and more in symbols, in ideas, in dis- 
 sertation. Let us say it boldly, the second part of 
 'Faust' is insupportable, the second part of ' Wilhehn 
 Meister ' is painful, and the last half of the * Memoirs ' 
 simply presents us with the portfolio of an old man who 
 wishes to make the very utmost of his former studies. 
 Goethe, who is assuredly not so mighty a genius as 
 Shakespeare, is a genius of greater extent and uni- 
 versality : but Shakespeare at least did not outlive 
 himself.
 
 98 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 VII 
 
 MILTON AND ' PABADISE LOST' 
 
 "Who knows not the visit which CandicTe and Martin 
 paid to Signor Pococurante, a noble Venetian ? ^ 
 When they had talked of painting and music they 
 went into the library, and Candide, perceiving a 
 Milton, could not prevent himself from asking his 
 host whether he did not look upon this writer as a 
 great man. ' What ? ' said Pococurante, ' the bar- 
 barian who constructed a long commentary on the 
 first chapter of Genesis in ten books of harsh verse ? 
 The clumsy imitator of the Greeks who caricatures 
 creation and who, while Moses represents the Eternal 
 Being as creating the world by his word, makes the 
 Messiah take a big compass out of a cupboard in 
 heaven to trace out the work ? What ? I admire the 
 man who has spoilt Tasso's hell and Tasso's devil ; 
 who makes Lucifer masquerade, now as a toad, now as 
 a pigmj^ ; who puts the same speech in his mouth a 
 hundred times over ; who represents him as arguing 
 on di\dnity ; who, in attempting a serious imitation 
 of Ariosto's comic invention of fire-arms, makes the 
 devils fire cannon in heaven ? Neither I, nor any- 
 
 ' [Candide, chap. sxv. — Trans.]
 
 . Milton and 'paradise lost' 93 
 
 body in Italy, have ever been able to take pleasure in 
 all these dismal extravagances. His marriage of Sin 
 and Death, and the snakes of which Sin is delivered, 
 make any man of tolerably delicate taste sick, and 
 his long description of a hospital is only good for a 
 grave-digger. This obscure, eccentric, and disgusting 
 poem was despised at its birth : and I treat it to-day 
 as it was treated in its own country by its own con- 
 temporaries. Anyhow, I say what I think, and I 
 really care very little whether others agree vdth me 
 or not.' 
 
 A mere fling, you will say, and not of any 
 consequence. Wait : here is another bright spirit of 
 the eighteenth century, who takes the fling quite 
 seriously and eagerly endorses it. ' I hate devils 
 mortally,' writes Mme. du Deffand to Voltaire, ' I 
 cannot tell you the pleasure I have had in finding in 
 " Candide " all the evil you have spoken of Milton. It 
 seemed to me that the whole was my own thought : 
 for I always detested him.' Thus we see that once 
 upon a time French taste found itself face to face with 
 ' Paradise Lost ' and straightforwardly expressed its 
 repugnance for a poem which is, it must be frankly 
 confessed, very foreign to the habits and traditions 
 of our literature. It is the way of taste to deliver 
 judgments like these — judgments which are all the 
 more positive from the very fact that they merely 
 render an impression. Admiration, when things are 
 regarded in this way, is not more reasonable than 
 aversion ; or, if either reasons, it starts equally from 
 a personal sentiment. 
 
 But let us go from Franco to England, from the 
 detractors of Milton to his panegyrists. Addison does 
 
 H 2
 
 100 ESSAi'S ON teNGTLISH tlTEItAfUUfi 
 
 not deign to ask ^Yllethel• ' Paradise Lost ' merits 
 the name of a heroic poem* ' Let iis call it a divine 
 one,' he says, * and say no more about it.' It lacks 
 none of the beauties of the highest poetry, and if 
 there are also spots in it we must remember that 
 there are spots in the sun. But perhaps it will be 
 said that Addison is obsolete. With all my heart. 
 Let us, then, open our Macaula}', a modern surely, 
 and one who has read and compared everything. 
 One of his essays — indeed, the first that he wrote for 
 the * Edinburgh Eeview ' — has Milton for its subject. 
 Good heavens, what enthusiasm ! The whole English 
 language is ransacked to supply the Whig critic with 
 admiring epithets. Even ' Paradise Piegained ' re- 
 ceives his homage. The superiority of * Paradise 
 Lost ' over ' Paradise Piegained ' is not more certain 
 than the superiority of ' Paradise Eegained ' over 
 any poem that has appeared since. Well done ! that 
 is something like having an opinion. One recognises 
 in this dogmatic judgment the writer of whom Lord 
 Lansdowne ^ said once, ' I wish I was as cocksure of 
 anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything.' Still 
 the writer's assurance is here reasonable enough : he 
 is expressing his tastes, translating his impressions, 
 and, so long as we keep to this region of personal 
 literary sentiment, Macaulay has as much right to 
 admire as Pococurante to depreciate. 
 
 Of this, criticism has now convinced itself. It has 
 perceived the barrenness of these positive tastes, of 
 these contradictory judgments. It has felt that there 
 is a method at once more decisive and fairer : the 
 
 1 [It -was Lord Melbourne, vras it not ? It is certainly more in his 
 vray. — Traris.]
 
 • MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 101 
 
 method ^Yllich sets to work to comprehend rather than 
 to class, to explam rather than to judge. Such criticism 
 seeks to give account of the work by means of the 
 genius of the workman and of the form which this 
 genius has taken under pressure of the circumstances 
 among which it has been developed. Yet, therewithal, 
 it denies not the eternal poetic substance, the creative 
 power in face of which we find ourselves, when all is 
 said, in the case of any masterpiece. But, by the side of 
 this element, which is, so to speak, irreducible, it makes 
 allowance for date, for country, for education, for do- 
 minant ideas, for the general course of events. From 
 these two things — the analysis of the writer's character 
 and the study of his age — there arises spontaneously 
 an understanding of his work, instead of a personal 
 and arbitrary estimate made by the first comer. We 
 see that work, after a fashion, pronouncing judgment 
 on itself, and taking the rank which belongs to it 
 among the productions of the human mind. This 
 rank it occupies — I repeat the fact and shall take good 
 care not to forget it — thanks to poetical beauties ap- 
 preciated by the reader's emotion. But that very 
 emotion, it must equally be remembered, depends on 
 the point of view at which we place ourselves, on the 
 allowances which we make for the author and his 
 epoch, on the secret transposition by which we adjust 
 his music to our own voices. All this is the business 
 of the historic intelligence. The * Iliad ' has gained 
 more than it has lost by being regarded as a national 
 saga, and the representation of a still barbarous 
 society. The exquisite poetry of the * ^neid ' is enjoyed 
 better when we have given up demanding originality 
 of epic conception in it ; and Racine exercises his power 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVER.^TTYOFr^TTFORNlA 
 SANTA BARBARA
 
 102 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 over our emotions more certainly -when ^Ye have once 
 allowed for the artificial ars poctica, the conventional 
 language of the period, in ' Andromaque ' and in 
 ' Pliedre.' 
 
 II 
 
 Milton was born in 1608, ten years after the death 
 of Spenser and eight years before that of Shakespeare. 
 He died in 1G74, fourteen years after the Eestoration. 
 He thus went back nearly "to the reign of Elizabeth, 
 and he saw the beginning, the triumph, and the fall 
 of the Commonwealth. Thus, also, he belongs at once 
 to the Eenaissance and to Puritanism. The whole 
 character of his genius and of his work is explained 
 by this double filiation. He is a poet, not of the great 
 creative age, but of that age's morrow, a morrow still 
 possessed of spontaneity and conviction. Yet he is a 
 didactic and theological poet, that is to say, the only 
 kind of poet which it was possible for an English 
 republican of the seventeenth century to be. 
 
 The Pienaissance and Puritanism were two power- 
 ful movements, at once in alliance and in opposition 
 — two epochs diversely memorable. I can hardly 
 understand why the history of the Pienaissance has 
 not yet employed some eminent writer. There is no 
 greater theme, no more varied subject. There comes 
 a day when humanity re-discovers its patents of 
 nobility. It finds antiquity in the dust of libraries as 
 Pompeii has since been found under the ashes. A 
 whole new world issues from these tattered parchments, 
 a new ideal arises in the soul of man. Forms of mar- 
 vellous beauty rise like an apparition. There had
 
 . MILTON AND ' PARADISE LOST ' 103 
 
 been no idea earlier of such clear wisdoii!, of such 
 fascinating speculations, of such a consummate art of 
 poetry. Men came little short of adoring as divine 
 immortal writers like the great Plato, like the sweet 
 Virgil. But the worship of beauty is contagious. 
 These masterpieces naturally became models ; or, 
 rather, in this commerce with the ancients there was 
 kindled an inspiration which in turn produced its own 
 poets, and gave new examples for the succeeding 
 centuries. Nor was this all. To the enchantments 
 of taste were promptly added the satisfactions of 
 reason and the conquests of science. Scholarship was 
 born from the use of ancient tongues and the fami- 
 liarity with texts. Men taught themselves to compare 
 opinions, to distinguish epochs, to subject traditions 
 to doubt. The historic sense of things was aroused. 
 A breach was made in authority. Finally, and as 
 though the rediscovery of this old world were not 
 enough, a new world disclosed itself. Sailors trans- 
 formed the prevalent idea of the terrestrial globe, and 
 astronomers the prevalent idea of the universe. Add 
 to all this the great industrial inventions, with, at 
 their head, that of printing, which stands to writing 
 as writing does to speech, which gives the means of 
 fixing the acquisitions of the human mind, which thus 
 constitutes the instrument of instruments for what is 
 called progress. And now put on the crown and, as it 
 were, the aureole of this marvellous time, in the shape 
 of the produce of its own special art, of the master- 
 pieces of its architects, its sculptors, its painters most 
 of all. Picture in this way all the restorations, all the 
 conquests, all the glories of the time, and say if there 
 was ever in the history of humanity a stranger spec-
 
 101 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 
 
 taelo or a more exciting surprise. Mankind made a 
 backward leap of fifteen centuries to recover its true 
 traditions. It freed itself at last from the Semitic 
 spirit. It said goodbye to scholasticism and ascetic- 
 ism, it cast off the monkish go\Yn in which its limbs 
 had been prisoned. It left the cloister — long and 
 damp and sombre — to bask once more in God's sun- 
 light. Weary of striving and struggling, of tragical 
 repentance, of funereal meditation, men opened their 
 breasts to the breath of the spring. After long being 
 in leading-strings to priests, they tried to walk alone, 
 and bathed deliciously in truth, in beauty, in nature 
 and its simplicity. Oh, jDeriod truly incomparable ! 
 Lasting enchantment ! Excusable intoxication ! 
 Second and unspeakable youth of the world ! 
 
 But also what a transition was that from the 
 Eenaissance to Puritanism ! And yet the one sprang 
 from the other, for Puritanism is but Protestantism 
 in an acute form, and Protestantism itself is but the 
 Pienaissance carried into the sphere of religion and 
 theology. 
 
 Yet again, what a difference ! The Puritans are 
 men to whom the curtains of the heavens are opened, 
 and to whose eyes the realities of the invisible world 
 have been revealed. They have seen Jehovah on His 
 throne, the Son on His right hand, and the angels 
 prostrate before them. Thenceforward, they live as 
 if in the presence of this terrible God and in the ex- 
 pectation of judgment. They have but one care, the 
 salvation of their immortal souls. Life for them is 
 but the service of the Lord, who has predestinated 
 them to destroy idols, to establish the true faith, to 
 bring a rebellious world into conformity with the
 
 MILTON AND ' PAEADISE LOST' 105 
 
 Divine Will. Such is the mission of the faithful here 
 below. He is equally ready to suffer pillory or prison, 
 and to gird on the sword like Gideon to slay the 
 impious. Like all men who are the slaves of a single 
 idea, he is at once heroic and ridiculous. Observe 
 these long faces, these mourning garments, these 
 shaven heads. Listen to this Biblical jargon, these 
 hymns droned through the nose, these endless jorayers, 
 wiredrawn discussions, curses of the world and its 
 amusements. You will turn away your head with a 
 smile of pity or of disgust. Agreed : but these same 
 men are stout soldiers and zealous citizens. There 
 are generals and statesmen among the fanatics who 
 kneel there smiting their breasts and seeking the 
 Lord. It is impossible not to admire their sagacity 
 in counsel, their constancy in undertakings, their 
 valour and their discipline in the field. It would seem 
 that, certain of the reward which awaits them, they 
 carry into mundane affairs all the freer spirit and all 
 the more entire devotion. 
 
 The Puritans are the Jacobins of Protestantism. 
 In both there is the same abstract conception of 
 things, the same tyranny of the idea, the same craving 
 to realise half-seen visions. In both you find the twin 
 tendencies, radicalism and idealism. In both there is an 
 equal faith in the Absolute, the source of all fanaticism. 
 Both invoke the name of Liberty, but both also in- 
 voke her rather as a means than as an end, and truth 
 is set by both above her. Nay, the very Hebrew 
 names with which the Puritans deck themselves recall 
 our Brutuses and our Aristides. The two Utopias, 
 classical democracy and the theocracy of the Bible, 
 p^re face to face. For the Bible is the Koran of
 
 106 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 Puritanism. The Bible is to the Puritan a religion, 
 a prophecy, and a code. It is the rule absolute for 
 the individual and for the State, It foresees all, 
 provides for all, has a text for ever}^ use and every 
 circumstance. It is no more lawful to supplement it 
 where it is silent, than to act against its spoken com- 
 mands. Imagine, if it be possible, this venerable col- 
 lection of prophets and apostles, this sublime Hebrew 
 Book with its histories, its poems, and its precepts, 
 raised as a whole to the importance of a revelation 
 from the Almighty, imposed as a law upon society, 
 applied to the life of a modern people, and supplying 
 the tj'pe of its institutions, the rule of its morals, the 
 guidance of its State. The object is to establish a 
 Christian republic, and, with that end, to pass the level 
 of the Bible over all existing things. The Church and 
 the Monarchy alike must go down before it, and then, 
 on the ground that has been cleared, there shall be 
 built the city of the saints, the town where the 
 Eternal, though unseen, shall dwell ! 
 
 And now, can the reader imagine a contrast more 
 complete than that between the Pienaissance and 
 Puritanism ? On one side every curiosity of intelli- 
 gence, every research of language, every refinement 
 of taste ; poetry, with its mythology, its sports, its 
 license ; the cultus of pagan antiquity ; a false wis- 
 dom and false gods ; madrigals, novels, the theatre. 
 On the other ardent fanatics, sombre anchorites, 
 fanatic levellers, full of hatred for Satan and his 
 pomps, caring for nothing but long sermons and 
 excited prayers, broken in to the dogmas of Predesti- 
 nation, of the Fall and of Justification, burning to 
 make of Englishmen a new people of Israel. Such
 
 MILTON AND ' PAEADISE LOST' 107 
 
 are the powers which are to fight for Milton ; or, rather, 
 such are the different inspirations to which he aban- 
 dons himself simultaneously and without a struggle. 
 He is an elegant poet and a passionate controversialist, 
 an accomplished humanist and a narrow sectary, an 
 admirer of Petrarch and Shakespeare and a cunning 
 exegote of Biblical texts, a lover of pagan antiquity 
 and devoted to the Hebrew spirit. He is all this at 
 once, naturally, and without an effort — a problem in 
 history, an enigma in literature ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Milton passed ten years of his life in study, in travel, 
 in brilliant literary experiments. He spent ten more in 
 the fiercest struggles and the most technical contro- 
 versies of Puritanism. Yet he was never exactly a 
 Prynne or exactly a Petrarch ; if there was something 
 of the theologian in the poet there was also som.e- 
 thing of the poet in the theologian, and the two in- 
 spirations blended in him after the closest and most 
 natural fashion in the world. And when old age 
 draws near, when the drama of the Piepublic is played 
 out, when the Eestoration has put an end to Utopias, 
 Milton will at once satisfy art and faith, the two 
 passions of his life, in one grand epic. 
 
 That life is well known. We are not in his case, 
 as we are in Shakespeare's, reduced to a few insigni- 
 ficant facts and a few doubtful traditions. We might 
 say that he has written his own biography. His poetry 
 is full of personal memories, and his polemical works 
 become at times memoirs of his life, passionate and
 
 108 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 naif memoirs, Avlicrc the writer reveals himself with- 
 out any disguise. 
 
 Milton, I have said, was born in 1608. His father 
 was a notary, or something like it, and affluent. Him- 
 self a man of letters, he put his son through an ex- 
 cellent course of study. There is extant a Latin 
 letter in which the young man thanks his father for 
 not having forced him to read law or to enter a lucra- 
 tive profession, but for letting him learn not merely 
 Greek and Latin, but French, Italian, Hebrew and 
 even the sciences. Nor is this the only passage where 
 Milton has taken pleasure in recalling his early and 
 vigorous education.^ 
 
 In one of his tracts against episcopacy he dwells 
 with even more complacency on these fair years of 
 study. He went, he says, from historians to poets, 
 from poets to philosophers, and in this long commerce 
 with ancient and modern writers, he was able to 
 preserve the native purity of his soul ; nay, more, to 
 form a subhme ideal blent of purity, poetry, and fame. 
 It is a memorable passage ^ where we seem to see the 
 bard of the ' Paradise ' preparing himself by mystic 
 washings for the work to which the Most High has 
 charged him. 
 
 Yet let us hasten to say that the innocence of 
 Milton's morals was not the result of excessive occu- 
 pation in study nor of an extravagant severity. His 
 youthful poems show traces of more than one affair 
 
 ' [M. Scherer here and afterwards quotes and translates long pas- 
 sages from the Defcnsio Sccunda, the Areopagitica, the Apology for 
 Smectymnuiis, and other works of Milton. As these are well known 
 to English readers, it has not seemed necessary to encumber the text 
 with them. — Trans.] 
 
 ? [The famous one from the Apology for Smectymninis,—Tra7is.']
 
 Milton and 'paradise Lost' 100 
 
 of the heart. In a Latin elegy addressed to his friend 
 Diodati he descrihes the young girls whom he has seen 
 passing. Their eyes are torches, their necks of ivory, 
 their fair hair is a net spread by love : Jove himself 
 would feel young at the sight of so many charms, * To 
 the virgins of Britain,' cries the poet, ' belongs the 
 palm of beauty,' and he was caught by this beauty. 
 Another elegy tells us how. He despised Love and his 
 arrows ; but Love avenged himself. One spring as he 
 was walking, he did not watch his own glances enough, 
 and the sight of a girl set his heart on fire, 
 
 Protinus insoliti subierunt corda furores 
 Uror amans intus, flammaque totus eram.' 
 
 Unluckily the beauty vanished, and he could not dis- 
 cover her. What would he not give to see her again 
 and speak to her ! Perhaps she might not be deaf to 
 his prayers. But there, his vexation is already for- 
 gotten. He is at the University, under the groves of 
 Academe, and thenceforward his heart wears a corselet 
 of ice. 
 
 Milton left Cambridge in 1632 after having spent 
 seven j^ears there. He withdrew to his father's, 
 accompanied, he says, by the regret of most of the 
 fellows of his college, who showed him much friend- 
 ship and esteem. He often returns to this subject, 
 stung to the quick by the taunts of his enemies, 
 who accused him of having been expelled from the 
 University. So far from this, he says, they wished to 
 keep him there, and he long continued in affectional e 
 correspondence with his Cambridge friends. But let 
 
 ' [My heart forthwith unwonted passions tame, 
 Love burns my soul within, and all was Hume.-— Trans.]
 
 110 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 US follow our poet, who is now thrcc-and-twenty years 
 old.' 
 
 Let us halt hero for a moment and endeavour to 
 put the separate traits together, and construct an idea 
 of the poet. Milton,, at his return from Italy, was 
 exactly thirty years old. He was short, his height 
 being below the middle stature, and also very thin ; but 
 strong, dexterous and courageous. He was a practised 
 fencer, and sword in hand feared nobody. Such, at 
 least, is the portrait he drew later of himself. Tradi- 
 tion adds that he was remarkably handsome. He 
 has also described his manner of life, for the fury of 
 his enemies, by attacking his person and his private 
 life, obliged him to enter into the most minute details 
 of refutation. He rose, so he tells us, early — in summer 
 with the lark, in winter with the bells that called men 
 to work or prayer. He read or listened to reading 
 till attention and memory failed. Then he betook 
 himself to exercises suited to maintain the health of 
 the body, and by that means the strength and inde- 
 pendence of the mind. We must, as I have said, take 
 care not to look on Milton as a gloomy fanatic or an 
 ascetic. At Cambridge he had written tender Latin 
 elegies ; he had, when in Italy, no scruple in rhyming 
 madrigals after Petrarch, and celebrating in them real 
 or fictitious loves. At Eome, in the very city where 
 he prided himself on holding high the banner of his 
 
 ' [A cento from the above-named sources, part actual quotation, 
 part paraphrase, part summary, follows in the original. As it is very 
 difficult to find a satisfactory rendering for this blending of Milton and 
 Scherer, and as the facts about Milton's Hortou period and his travels 
 are well known to the English reader, it seemed simpler to omit it.— 
 Trayis.]
 
 MILTOX AKD ' PAH.VDlSE LOST' 111 
 
 faith, he had listened with transport to the singer 
 Leonora Baroni. His epitaph on Shakespeare, * My 
 Shakespeare ' as he calls him, is well known, with 
 its passionate expression of the emotions he owed 
 to the reading of this ' dear son of memory.' Nor 
 was this all ; Milton on occasion- shows himself quite 
 ready to put on one side deep study and serious 
 occupations in order, with his friends, to give himself 
 up to * mirth that, after, no repenting draws ' — a light 
 repast, good wine, some Italian music, that is the 
 programme. ' Mild heaven,' says he, ' disapproves the 
 care. That with superfluous burden loads the day, And 
 when God sends a cheerful hour refrains.' So there is 
 nothing in him repulsive or morose. He is pure with- 
 out too much severity, grave without fanaticism : full 
 of original sanity, of gracious strength. He is a son 
 of the north who has felt the Italian influence : an 
 after-growth of the Kenaissance, but a growth full 
 of strange and novel flavour.^ 
 
 IV 
 
 Milton returned to his country at the very moment 
 when the Monarchy was about to begin a death- 
 struggle with the Parliament, and in the midst of the 
 
 ' Milton allows his taste and admiration for Shakespeare to appear 
 in L' Allegro, i^ublished in 1645, but doubtless written some years 
 earlier (see v. 135). The same poem exhibits him in his least austere 
 light. Our author makes Joy, daughter of Bacchus and Venus, 
 mother of the Graces. He bids her bring with her ' Sport that 
 wrinkled Care derides ' and even ' Laughter holding both his sides.' 
 It is true that_the pleasures he expects from Joy and Freedom are 
 ' unreproved pleasures.' Cf. Paradise Lost, iv. 293, 294.
 
 112 E.^SAYS ON ENCrLISli LITEEATUEE 
 
 ecclesiastical controversies by ^Yllicb that struggle was 
 embittered. He could have no hesitation as to the side 
 which he was to join : but he had to ask himself with 
 some embarrassment what he was going to do now 
 that the day of preparatory studies and of travel 
 was i3assed, and tliat it was time to fix an object for 
 his life. 
 
 At any other time his choice would have appeared 
 easy. He seemed destined for one or other of the 
 learned professions, more especially for the service of 
 the Church. But at that day this career was closed to 
 him. * None could take orders without devoting him- 
 self to slavery.' But he had cherished dreams dearer 
 still. The most curious passage of the memoirs of 
 which I am here piecing the fragments together, that 
 in which he recalls the poetic aspirations of his youth, 
 lets us see what it cost him in effort to renounce them, 
 and betrays the hope of still some day paying the 
 debt of genius to his country and his God.^ 
 
 We may believe Milton when he expresses the 
 regret with which he renounced immortal songs for 
 the polemics of the moment. But he thought he 
 heard the call of the Church and of his country. He 
 postponed to another season the accomplishment of 
 his poetic mission, and plunged headlong into the 
 struggle of the Parliament against King Charles and 
 Archbishop Laud. Others had drawn the sword : his 
 weapon was the pen. His learning and his practice 
 in writing marked him out for the part of contro- 
 versialist : and he poured forth a crowd of pamphlets 
 
 ' [II. Scherer here translated the long passage in the Reasons of 
 Church Government, about the vulgar amorists and ^parasites, com- 
 paring with it the exordium of canto is. Paradise Lost.— Trans.]
 
 • MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST" 113 
 
 on every subject which events made actual. He 
 began by Church questions, attacking ceremonies, the 
 episcopate, tradition, and striving to bring the Church 
 back to its primitive simplicity. A few years later 
 he married, and, as is well known, was soon deserted 
 by his wife. The cause of this separation is not 
 known, but is it rash to seek it in the very character 
 of the poet ? Serious, living on the heights, given up 
 to long work and sublime meditations, he was likely 
 to make a rather poor husband. Moreover, he had 
 drawn from Holy Writ quite Oriental and very decided 
 notions on the inferiority of woman and her subjection 
 to man. At any rate, the young bride did actually 
 desert her husband's house, and did not return till 
 two or three years later. Then something happened 
 to Milton which has often been seen in similar cases : 
 his personal grievances were raised in his own eyes 
 to the height of a question of public interest, and he 
 set himself to write on marriage and divorce as he 
 had written before on episcopacy and formal worship. 
 It seemed to him, as he explained later, that men 
 must begin by being free at home before being so in 
 the market-place, and that the vilest of slaveries is 
 that of a man bound without remedy to an inferior 
 being.^ 
 
 The last debate which Milton maintained in his 
 fifteen years of polemic, was that in which he engaged 
 
 ' ' Frustra enim libertatem in comitiis et foro crepat qui clomi 
 servitutem vero indignissimam inferiori etiam servit,' Defcnsio 
 Sccunda. As for Milton's ideas on marriage, see Samson, 1. 1055, 
 and Paradise Lost, i. 635 sq., vii. 539 sq., 565 sq. ; but note at the same 
 time vii. 546 sq. for his deep sense of feminine seductions. Adam 
 becomes so eloquent on this subject that Eaphael ' contracts his 
 brow,' and thinks it necessary to remonstrate with him.
 
 114 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 with Salmasius on the subject of the death of Charles I. 
 To the scandal of the whole of monarchical Europe he 
 was seen defending, with cold-blooded erudition, the 
 right of peoples to punish tyrants. For the rest, the 
 style of all these writings of his is the same. The 
 author unfolds the treasures of his learnmg, heaping 
 up the testimony of Scripture, passages from the 
 fathers, and quotations from the poets, laying sacred 
 and profane antiquity alike under contribution, and 
 subtly discussing the sense of this and that Greek or 
 Hebrew term. But it is not only in the crudity of his 
 erudition and in his religious prejudices that Milton is 
 of his age. He belongs to it also by the personal tone 
 of his polemic. Morus and Salmasius had attacked 
 his morals, gibed at his short stature, made odious 
 references to his loss of sight : Milton retorts on them 
 the money they have pocketed and the servant gh'ls 
 they have debauched, seasoning the mess wdth coarse 
 epigrams, with vulgar terms of abuse. Luther and 
 Calvin themselves, experts as they were in insult, had 
 never done better. 
 
 And yet with all this Milton, I must repeat, is by 
 no means a fanatic pure and simple, like most of the 
 Puritans. He is not, as they were, impelled by a base 
 and blind desire of levelling. He is an iconoclast, but 
 one with his wits about him : a Eadical, but fully con- 
 scious of the principle from which he starts, and of 
 the end for which he is making. The very worship of 
 the letter which shocks us in his books, his Biblical 
 narrowness, his childish attempt to reform Church 
 and State by dint of a few texts laboriously marshalled 
 ■ — all these weaknesses are in him but, as it were, the 
 form, the accidental clothing, of a most lofty concep-
 
 MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 115 
 
 tion of things. At bottom Milton is an absolute 
 spiritualist, and this is the essence of his thought. 
 He idealises and abstracts everything. A stranger to 
 the world, he does not trouble himself about the dis- 
 tance which separates his visions from reality. He 
 allows nothing for human weakness or for political 
 necessity. He never understands that societies can 
 only subsist by a perpetual declension from the prin- 
 ciples of right and truth. He sees all things, so to 
 speak, in God, and the earthly State confounds itself 
 in his mind with Jerusalem which is on high. 
 
 But we should give an incomplete idea of Milton's 
 prose writings if, after having spoken of the tempera- 
 ment of his mind and his i)olemical excesses, we did 
 not say a word of the magnificence of his style. For 
 magnificence is not too strong a word. There are 
 moments when, shaking the dust of argument from off 
 him, the poet suddenly bursts forth and carries us off 
 on the torrent of an incomparable eloquence. It is 
 not rhetorical phrase-making, it is poetic enthusiasm, 
 a flood of images shed over the dull and arid theme, 
 a wing-stroke which sweeps us high above peddling 
 controversy. The polemical writings of Milton are 
 full of such beauties. The prayer which ends the 
 ' Treatise of Eeformation in England,' the encomium 
 on zeal in the * Apology for Smectymnuus,' the portrait 
 of Cromwell in the * Second Defence of the English 
 People,' and, lastly, the whole treatise on the liberty 
 of the press, are counted among the most memorable 
 pages of English literature and among the most 
 characteristic exam]:)les of the genius of Milton.^ The 
 
 ' [M. Scherer here gives the immortal ' mewing her mighty 
 youth ' passage from the Areopagitica. — Trans.'] 
 
 I 2
 
 110 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 ilryest of Milton's writings are thus constantly illumi- 
 nated with Hashes of poetry. 
 
 And so we come back to our conclusion, that Milton 
 was born a poet, and one of the greatest of poets. He 
 had long before written some short pieces which would 
 have been enough to make him immortal, *L' Allegro' for 
 instance, and ' II Penseroso.' He was now approaching 
 a green old age ; but he preserved his inner fire and 
 a kind of heroic and magnifical spirit, which breaks 
 out in the midst of the wretchedest wr anglings. Yet 
 none the less he is a polemic and a theologian m his 
 heart. Some years ago there was discovered a stout 
 treatise on ' Christian Doctrme,' on which he worked 
 throughout his life ; and it is not certain that this 
 was not his favourite work. For he was before all 
 things a Protestant scholastic. He rejoices in the pet 
 dogmas of Puritanism, in Original Sin, Predestination, 
 Free Will. Not that he does not carry even into this 
 region a kind of natural independence. Thus, he 
 dared to follow St. Paul and Arius in making Christ 
 a sort of secondary or intermediary God, and he was 
 not afraid to push his views on divorce to the point of 
 apologising for polygam3\ But his theology is none 
 the less that of the time — bound to the letter of the 
 sacred writings, without grandeur, without horizons, 
 without philosophy. He never quits the written word ; 
 and he will cut the knot of the most exalted problems by 
 the authority of a single obscure or isolated passage. 
 In short, Milton is a great poet, doubled with a 
 Saumaise, or a Grotius ; a genius, nourished on the 
 marrow of Kons, on Homer, Isaiah, Virgil, Dante, but 
 also, like the serpent in Eden, chewing the dust of dull 
 polemic. He is a doctor, a preacher, a pedagogue,
 
 MILTON AND ' PAHADISE LOST' 117 
 
 and when the day comes for him to be able at last to 
 realise the dreams of his youth, and endow his country 
 with an epic, he will construct it of two matters, of 
 gold and of clay, of sublimity and of scholasticism, and 
 will leave us a poem which is at once the most extra- 
 ordinary and at the same time the most intolerable in 
 existence. 
 
 I shall not follow the life of Milton any further. It 
 grew more and more sombre with age and circumstance, 
 and everything seemed to combine to overwhelm that 
 mighty heart. He lost his sight in 1G51 as a conse- 
 quence of the obstinate labour which his 'Defence of the 
 English People' cost him. The doctors had warned him 
 of the consequences in vain. ' Their warnings,' he says, 
 * caused me neither fear nor hesitation. Urged by the 
 heavenly Counsellor Who dwells in conscience, I would 
 have shut my ears to iEsculapius himself speaking in 
 his Epidaurian temple.' A year afterwards, Milton's 
 wife died. He married twice again : but he had by his 
 first marriage three daughters, who did not get on 
 well with their stepmothers, and disturbed the house- 
 hold by their domestic dissensions. And we may sup- 
 pose that the coiq) cVetat by which Cromwell substituted 
 the Protectorate for the government of Parliament 
 could not but sadden the soul of Milton. It was the 
 first blow dealt to the republican ideal which he had 
 cherished. Alas ! his generous dreams were to be still 
 more rudely dissipated. A eoiip (Vetat can only es- 
 tablish a government l)y setting this government at 
 variance with its own first principle : it can only form
 
 118 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEKATUEE 
 
 a regular civil order by condemning the violence which 
 gave its own success. What is certain is that Crom- 
 well's son ruled but a moment after his father. At 
 the date of the Restoration Milton was fifty-two, and 
 it is reasonably enough supposed that about that 
 time he began the composition of the poem which he 
 had projected twenty years earlier. His friends had 
 disappeared, his dreams had vanished, his sight was 
 quenched, old age made itself felt. But he had kept 
 the faith ; and, turning his eyes towards the heavenly 
 light, he dictated songs which he knew were fated to 
 be immortal.^ 
 
 Such was Milton ; himself a poem, to use his own 
 expression. Grave, serene, wholly given up to the 
 contemplation of heavenly things, slowly maturing the 
 work of his life, isolated in his generation by the 
 very force of his genius. His soul, as Wordsworth 
 has said in a fine sonnet, was ' like a star, and dwelt 
 apart.' 
 
 VI 
 
 * Paradise Lost ' is a work of the Eenaissance, full 
 of imitation of the ancients. The plan is modelled 
 upon the consecrated patterns, especially on that of 
 the ' iEneid.' There is an exposition, there is an invo- 
 cation ; after which the author plunges in mcdias res. 
 Satan and his accomplices are discovered stranded on 
 the floor of hell, like iEneas on the coast of Carthage. 
 At this point the action begins. It is and will be very 
 simple throughout. As ^neas triumphs over Turnus, 
 so Satan will ruin humanity in the person of our first 
 
 ' Eead the Introductions to books iii. and iv. of Paradise Lost.
 
 . MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 119 
 
 parents. This unity of action is demanded by the 
 rules ; but it is necessary, on the other hand, that the 
 poet should tell us what has gone before, and what 
 will come after, otherwise there would not be material 
 enough. So recourse is had to narratives. .Eneas tells 
 Dido of the Fall of Troy : Eaphael narrates to Adam 
 the revolt of the angels and the creation of the world. 
 Thus we are posted up as to the past : but the future 
 remains. The poet cannot leave us with the death of 
 Turnus or the Fall of the first human beings, because 
 the true interest of the two poems lies in the relations 
 of ^neas with the destinies of the Eoman people and 
 in the relations of Adam's sin with the lot of all man- 
 kind. Patience ! a new device will get us out of the 
 difficulty, ^neas descends to Hades, and there finds 
 Anchises, who shows him the procession of his pos- 
 terity. The archangel Michael leads Adam to a hill 
 and delivers a complete course of lectures to him on 
 sacred history, from the death of Abel to the coming 
 of Christ, and even to the Last Judgment. 
 
 Such is the plan of ' Paradise Lost : ' there is 
 nothing more regular or more classical. We recognise 
 the superstitions of the Renaissance in this faithfulness 
 to models. But the result is that Milton's poem 
 presents a sort of tertiary formation, the copy of a 
 copy. It is to the Latin epics what these are to 
 Homer. We shall see presently what Milton has suc- 
 ceeded in throwing into the traditional mould ; but 
 as for the form of his poem he did not create it for 
 himself, he received it. It is a legacy of antiquity.
 
 lllO ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 YII 
 
 If the form of ' Paradise Ijost ' was supplied by the 
 Renaissance the substance was furnished by Puritanism. 
 * Paradise Lost ' is an epic, but it is a theological epic, 
 and the theology of the poem is made up of the 
 favourite dogmas of the Puritans — the Fall, Justifica- 
 tion, the sovereign laws of God. Moreover, Milton 
 makes no secret of the fact that he is defending a 
 thesis : his end, he says in the first lines, is to * assert 
 eternal providence And justify the ways of God to 
 man.' 
 
 There are, therefore, in ' Paradise Lost ' two things 
 which must be kept distinct : an epic poem and a 
 theodicy. Unluckily, these two elements — answering 
 to the two men of which Milton was himself made 
 up, and to the two tendencies which his age obeyed — 
 these two elements, I say, were incapable of thorough 
 fusion. Nay, they are at complete variance, and from 
 their juxtaposition there results an undertone of con- 
 tradiction which runs through the whole work, affects 
 its solidity, and endangers its value. It would be 
 vain to plead the example of the classical epic. The 
 Gods no doubt hold a great place both in the ' Iliad ' 
 and the'.<Eneid;' but Christianity is in this respect very 
 •differently situated from Paganism. Christianity is 
 a religion which has been formally ' redacted ' and 
 settled ; and it is impossible, without doing it violence, 
 to add anything to it or subtract anything from it. 
 Moreover, Christianity is a religion serious in itself 
 and insisting upon being taken seriously, devoted to 
 ideas the gravest, not to say the saddest, that imagi-
 
 MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 121 
 
 nation can form : those of sin, redemption, self-denial, 
 good works — all of them things which, as Boileau says, 
 are not fitted for being smartened up by ornament. 
 
 L'evangile a I'esprit n'offre de tous cotes 
 Que penitence a, faire et tourments merites, 
 Et de vos fictions le melange coupable 
 Meme a ses veritcs donne I'air de la fable. ^ 
 
 But this is not all. Christianity is a religion of 
 dogma : in place of the fantastic and intangible myths 
 of which the Aryan religions were made up, it has 
 abstruse distinctions, paradoxical mysteries, subtle 
 teachings. In short, it amounts to a metaphysic, or, 
 to return to the expression I used at first, a theology. 
 And theology has never had the reputation of being 
 favourable to poetry. Lastly, and as a climax, this 
 theology is still alive. It is for thousands an object 
 of faith and hope : it is not ' to let,' if I may so speak, 
 there is no vacancy in it ; and the poet who carries 
 into it the creations of his fantasy has all the appear- 
 ance of committing sacrilege. 
 
 This, as it is, looks ill for Milton's poem ; but we 
 have not yet said all. ' Paradise Lost ' .is not only a 
 theological poem — two words which cry out at finding 
 themselves united — but it is at the same time a com- 
 mentary on texts of Scripture. The author has chosen 
 for his subject the first chapters of Genesis, that is to 
 say a story, which the stoutest or the simplest faith 
 hesitates to take quite literally, a story in which 
 
 ' [In Gospel truth nought's by the mind discerned 
 But penance due and punishments well-earned ; 
 And when your art a blameful blend supplies 
 You give its very truths the air of lies. — Trcms.]
 
 122 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 
 
 serpents are heard speaking, and the ruin of the 
 human race is seen to be hound up with a fault 
 merely childish in appearance. In fixing on such a 
 subject, Milton was obhged to treat the whole story 
 as a literal and authentic history; and, worse still, 
 to take a side on the questions which it starts. Now, 
 these questions are the very thorniest m theology ; 
 and so it comes about that Milton, who intended to 
 histruct us, merely launches us on a sea of difficulties. 
 AVhat are we to understand by the Son of the Most 
 High, who, one fine day, is begotten and raised to the 
 rank of viceroy of creation ? How are we to compre- 
 hend an angel who enters on a conflict with God, 
 that is to say, with a being whom he knows to be 
 omnipotent ? What kind of mnocence is it which 
 does not prevent a man from eating forbidden fruit? 
 How, again, can this fault extend its effects to our- 
 selves ? By what effort of imagination or of faith can 
 we regard the history of Adam as part of our own 
 history, and acknowledge solidarity with his crime 
 in ourselves ? And if Milton does not succeed in 
 arousing this feeling in us, what becomes of his poem ? 
 What is its value, what its interest ? It becomes 
 equally impossible to take it seriously as a profession of 
 faith (since this faith escapes us) p.nd even to regard 
 it as the poetical expression of a theodicy which is 
 out of date, because that theodicy could only become 
 poetic on the terms of being intelligible. 
 
 ' Paradise Lost ' has shared the fate of its hero, 
 that is to say of the devil. The idea of Satan is a 
 contradictory idea : for it is contradictory to know God 
 and yet attempt rivalry with Him. Accordingly, the 
 flourishmg time of belief in the devil was a time of
 
 • MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 123 
 
 logical impotence. The devil at this time of day has 
 been riddled through and through, he has become a 
 comic character, he supplies us with our little jokes. ^ 
 As for ' Paradise Lost ' it lives still, but it is none the 
 less true that its fundamental conceptions have become 
 strange to us, and that if the work survives, it is in 
 spite of the subject which it celebrates. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Nor is this the only trick which Milton's theology 
 has played upon his poetry. The marvellous is an 
 essential part of classical poetry, and this is intelligible 
 enough. In a certain sense Paganism is more re- 
 ligious than Christianity, and associates the Deity 
 with every act of human life more naturally and 
 more of necessity. From the very fact that it has 
 Gods for everything — for the domestic hearth, for love, 
 for marriage, for fighting — there is not a circum- 
 stance in which these Gods have not a locus standi. 
 Much more is this so when the subject is a hero 
 whose valour is inconceivable without divine protec- 
 tion, or a great historical event, whereof the decrees 
 of Zeus supply the sovereign explanation. It is by 
 no means the same with the moderns, in whom the 
 much more exalted, but much vaguer idea of divine 
 Providence has replaced the crowd of special deities. 
 If there is in this a metaphysical progress, there is at 
 
 ' [There is, however, a proverb in M. Scherer's language, Rira 
 bien qtd rira le dernier ; and one may also think of Sandy Mackaye's 
 very pregnant and luminous protest against the premature interment 
 
 of this personage.— Trans.]
 
 124 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 the same time a poetical impoverishment. It is 
 not that Christianity also has not produced its own 
 mythology : ^YC have a whole Catholic Olympus, pretty 
 well populated. But the attributes are uncertain, 
 the parts ill distributed : and, in spite of everything, 
 there clings to these creations a sort of inborn 
 spiritualism, which is proof against the materialism 
 of popular beliefs. Christianity, I have said, is a 
 religion wanting in ductility. Since it damns those 
 who do not believe it, it perceives the necessity of 
 offering them clearly defined doctrines. Everythmg 
 in it is more or less settled and agreed upon. Imagi- 
 nation, therefore, can only assign very narrow limits, 
 or, so to say, a circle drawn beforehand, to the utter- 
 ances of God or the actions of angels. Hence the 
 awkwardness of poets who have tried to draw from 
 the Christian theology the marvels of which they had 
 need. They satisfy .the demands neither of piety nor 
 of poetry. They are hampered by the fear of gomg too 
 far ; and, however timid they show themselves, they 
 still have an air of temeritj'. The ' Gerusalemme 
 Liberata,' the ' Henriade,' the ' Messiade,' ' Les 
 Martyrs,' show the faults of the kind palpably. 
 Dante alone escapes, because with admirable tact or, if 
 anyone pleases, art, he has brought into play only the 
 sinners and the saved. 
 
 Yet Milton has been more fortunate than most of 
 the epic poets of the Christian period. Indeed, there 
 was no necessity for him to make a shift to supply his 
 epic with the element of the marvellous, since the 
 whole was already placed straight off in the region 
 of the supernatural. God and his Son, the devils 
 and the angels, were not kept in the background and
 
 • MILTON AND ' PAEADISE LOST' 125 
 
 reserved for the denouement. They themselves filled 
 the principal parts. Even our first parents, placed 
 as they were in the garden of Eden and in a state 
 of innocence, shared in a kind of superior existence. 
 Thus there was from the first no need to introduce 
 the divinity arbitrarily. The author of * Paradise 
 Lost ' had but to remain within the conditions of his 
 subject and to extend a little the outlines of the 
 sacred history. 
 
 But if Milton avoided factitious marvels it was at the 
 cost of inconvenience elsewhere, of baldness in story, 
 of poverty in ethical quality. Not only is the reader 
 lifted into the sphere of religious abstractions, where 
 the eye of man cannot see or his breast draw breath ; 
 but the whole action and actors alike are too destitute of 
 complexity. In strictness there is but one ^lersonage in 
 possession of the stage — God the Father ; since God 
 cannot show Himself without eclipsing all the rest, 
 nor speak without His will being done. The Son is 
 but a double of the Father. The angels and arch- 
 angels are but his messengers ; nay, they are even 
 less — personifications of his decrees, supers in a 
 drama which would have gone on equally well without 
 them. 
 
 Milton did not yield without a struggle to the 
 conditions of his chosen subject. He tried to evade 
 them, and only made the defect more sensible. The 
 long discourses with which he fills the gaps between 
 the action are only sermons, and do but make evident 
 the absence of dramatic matter. Then, since after 
 all some sort of action, some sort of contest was 
 necessary, the poet had recourse to the revolt of the 
 angels. But, unluckily, the fundamental defects of
 
 126 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 tlio sul)ject were such that this expedient turned in a 
 fashion against him. What the drama gains in 
 movement, it loses in verisimiKtude. We see a 
 battle, but ^Ye cannot take either the fight or the 
 fighters seriously. A God who can be resisted is not a 
 God. A struggle with Omnipotence is not only rash, 
 but sill3% Belial saw that very well when, in the 
 Infernal Council, he rejected the idea of a contest, either 
 open or concealed, with Him who is all-seeing and all- 
 powerful. Nor can one, indeed, comprehend how his 
 colleagues did not at once give way to so self-evident a 
 consideration. But, I repeat, the poem only became 
 possible at the cost of this impossibility; and so 
 Milton bravely made up his mind to it. He urged 
 to the last, he accepted, even in its uttermost conse- 
 quences, the most inadmissible of fictions. He presents 
 to us Jehovah anxious for his omnipotence, afraid of 
 seeing His position turned, His palace surprised, His 
 throne usurped.' He sketches for us angels throwing 
 mountains, and firing cannon, at each other's heads. 
 He shows us victory evenly balanced till the Son 
 arrives armed with thunder and mounted on a car 
 with four cherubs harnessed to it. 
 
 We have still to inquire whether Milton had an 
 epic imagination, or wdiether his subject did not do 
 him good service by dispensing him from drawing more 
 largely on his own resources. As a matter of fact, he 
 scarcely ever strays from this subject without falling 
 
 ' Paradise Lost, v. 719 et seq. In fact and in fine Satan has won 
 something, and has succeeded. His own lot is made no worse, and, 
 on the other hand, a great many men will be damned, x. 375. It is 
 useless, therefore, to represent Evil as merely passing, or even as a 
 means to good, x. 629.
 
 MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST' 127 
 
 into burlesque. His prince of the rebel angels, who 
 changes himself into a toad and a cormorant ; his 
 demons, who become dwarfs in order to be less 
 crowded in their Parliament house ; the punishment 
 inflicted on them, which consists of being changed 
 once a year into serpents ; the Paradise of Fools ; the 
 famous, but extravagant allegory of Sin and Death — 
 all these fictions give us but a feeble notion of Milton's 
 inventive genius, and make it permissible to think 
 that he would not have succeeded in a subject where 
 he had to create his heroes and imagine his situa- 
 tions. 
 
 IX 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I do not reproach 
 Milton, because, with his sixteenth century Calvinism, 
 he is found out of harmony with nineteenth century 
 thought. I care very little about his believing in 
 witches and in astrology. Where would Homer be, 
 where Dante, if, refusing to place ourselves at their 
 point of view, we judged them from the level of our 
 modern criticism ? Not a single work of art could 
 support such a trial. But the position of Milton is not 
 exactly this. Milton wants to prove something, he is 
 sustaining a thesis, he means to do the work of a 
 theologian as well as of a poet. In a word, whether 
 intentionally or merely as a fact, ' Paradise Lost ' is a 
 didactic work, and, as a consequence, its form cannot 
 be separated from its matter. Now, it so happens 
 that the idea of the poem does not bear examination ; 
 that its explanation of the problem of evil verges on 
 the burlesque ; that the characters of its heroes,
 
 128 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITErxATUEE 
 
 Jehovah and Satan, are incoherent ; that the fate of 
 Adam touches us little ; and finally, that the action 
 passes in regions where the interests and the passions 
 of our common humanity have nothing to do. I have 
 already pointed out this contradiction in Milton's 
 epic. The story on which it rests has neither mean- 
 ing nor value unless it retains its dogmatic import, 
 and at the same time it cannot retain this import 
 ^Yithout falling into theology, that is to say, into a 
 domain foreign to art. The subject of the poem is 
 nothing unless it is real, unless it touches us as the 
 secret of our destinies ; and the more the poet tries 
 to grasp this reality the more it escapes him. 
 
 So intangible in character are these conceptions, 
 that Milton knew not even where to pitch the scene of 
 his drama. He is obliged to forge a system of the 
 world on purpose, a system in which he himself only 
 half believes. He is hampered by the science of his 
 time. Men are no longer in the fourteenth century, 
 when Dante could image hell as a great hole burrow- 
 ing beneath the surface of our globe. Coi^ernicus and 
 Galileo have intervened. So the cosmology of the 
 Scriptures must be modified and accommodated to 
 the enlightenment of the day. There is nothing more 
 cm'ious than to read ' Paradise Lost ' from this point 
 of view, and to note the modifications imposed by 
 science on tradition. Milton regards space as infinite, 
 but divided into two regions, that of light or creation, 
 and that of darkness or of chaos. On earth, in the 
 country of Eden, is the Earthly Paradise, communi- 
 cating by a staircase with the abode of the Most High. 
 Chaos surrounds the whole of this created world, but 
 on the edge of chaos, in the twilight, is the Limbo of
 
 • MILTON AND 'PARADISE LOST* 129 
 
 vanity, and beyond chaos, in the depths of inicreated 
 space, is found Hell, with a gate and a bridge con- 
 structed by Sin and Death, over which is the road 
 from earth to the abyss. ^ 
 
 A vague conception, half literal, half symbolic, 
 whereof the author had need as a scene for his 
 personages, but in which he himself has no entire 
 confidence — a striking example of the kind of anti- 
 nomy with which I charge the whole poem, of the 
 combined necessity and impossibility of taking things 
 at the foot of the letter. 
 
 Let us sum up. ' Paradise Lost ' is an unreal poem, 
 a grotesque poem^ a tiresome poem. There is not one 
 reader in a hundred who can read Books Nine and Ten 
 without a smile, or Books Eleven and Twelve without 
 a yawn. The thing does not hold together : it is a 
 pyramid balanced on its apex, the most terrible of 
 problems solved by the most childish of means. And 
 yet ' Paradise Lost ' is immortal. It lives by virtue 
 of some episodes which will be for ever famous. In 
 contrast with Dante, who must be read as a whole if 
 we wish really to grasp his beauties, Milton ought not 
 to be read except in fragments ; but these fragments 
 form a part of the poetic patrimony of the human 
 race. The invocation to Light, the character of Eve, 
 the description of the earthly Paradise, of the morning 
 of the world, of its first love, are all masterpieces. 
 The discourses of the Prince of Hell are incomparably 
 
 ' Milton introduced not merely his cosmology but also his politics 
 into his poem. See on republicanism and tyranny, xii. 04-101. 
 
 K
 
 130 ESSAYS oX ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 eloquent. Lord Brougham used to cite them as 
 worth}' to he set side hy side with the greatest models 
 of antiquity, and another orator of our time, Mr. Bright, 
 is said to he a constant reader of Milton. * Paradise 
 Lost ' is, moreover, strewn with incomparahle lines. 
 The poetry of Milton is the very essence of poetry. 
 The author seems to think hut in images, and these 
 images are grand and proud as his own soul — a mar- 
 vellous mingling of the suhlime and the picturesque. 
 Every word of his vocabulary of expression is a 
 discovery and unique. ' Darkness visible ' is well 
 known. If he would paint night he shows us the 
 fairies dancing hy the woodside : 
 
 while overhead the moon 
 Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth 
 "Wheels her pale course. 
 
 The sun shines on the expanse of the deluge waters 
 and begins to evaporate them : 
 
 And the clear sun on his wide watery glass 
 Gaz'd hot, and of the fresh wave largely drew, 
 As after thirst. 
 
 Peace follows fighting : 
 
 The brazen throat of war had ceased to roar. 
 
 The chaste happiness of the wedded pair is drawn in 
 a word : 
 
 Imparadised in one another's arms. 
 
 Verses of this kmd, always as exact as they are 
 beautiful, are innumerable in Milton, and one is 
 almost ashamed to cite them, so caiDricious does 
 choice seem in the midst of such riches. 
 
 Besides, all is not said when some verses of Milton
 
 MILTON AND 'PaHADISE LOST' ISI 
 
 have been quoted. He has not only imagery and 
 vocabulary, but the period, the great musical phrase, 
 a little long, a little loaded with ornament and con- 
 volved with inversions, but swaying all with it in its 
 superb undulation. After all, and above all, he has an 
 indefinable serenity and victoriousness, a sustained 
 equality, an indomitable power ; one might almost say 
 that he wraps us in the skirt of his robe and wafts us 
 with him to the eternal regions where he himself 
 dwells.' 
 
 November 1808. 
 
 ' Milton himself has given the rule of poetry. According to him, 
 it must be ' simple, sensuous, and impassioned,' which comes to the 
 three conditions of simplicity, fulness of imagery, and movement. 
 
 K 2
 
 13'2 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATtlKE 
 
 Ylli 
 LATJRENCB STEBNE,' OB THE HUMOURIST 
 
 The name of Sterne suggests not merely the memory 
 of a talent, but also the idea of a class : Sterne is the 
 representative of something definite. Now, it is this 
 representative value which in literature constitutes 
 fame. The merits of Sterne may be discussed as 
 much as anyone likes, but he has a substantive 
 existence : he is there, with his own character, and 
 with a certain rank and prestige as a founder. 
 
 Everything about him is odd — his life, his per- 
 sonality, his work. He was born in Ireland, of an 
 Irish mother, and, as far as concerns blood, the 
 Englishman m him is crossed with another race, a 
 careless race, and a light one. His father was merely 
 an ensign, had gone through the war in Flanders, 
 and when peace was made carried his wife and his 
 children from garrison to garrison. He died from 
 the results of a duel. Havmg picked a quarrel with a 
 certain Captain Philips, the fight came off at once in 
 the room where they were, and a story if; told on the 
 subject. The adversaries had engaged so furiously 
 that Philips's sword, piercing Eoger Sterne's body, 
 
 ' Laurence Sterne : his Person and his Writings. By Paul 
 Stapfer. 1870.
 
 LAURENCE STERNE, OR THE HUMOURIST 133 
 
 actually stuck in the wall. Thus pinned to it, the 
 luckless wounded man lost neither his presence of 
 mind nor even a certain humorous pleasantry ; for 
 he begged his conqueror to be so kind as to wipe the 
 point of his sword and take the plaster off before 
 drawing it out of his body. 
 
 Young Sterne had been put to school in Yorkshire 
 at eleven years old, and after his father's death he 
 was taken charge of by a relation, who sent him to 
 finish his studies at the University of Cambridge. As 
 soon as he had graduated, he was provided with a 
 benefice ; for his uncle, the archdeacon, an uncle well 
 to pass in the world, and able to serve his nephew if 
 his nephew would let him, had destined him for the 
 Church. Once provided for, Sterne lost no time in 
 marrying, falling in love, like a sentimental person as 
 he was, with a girl in the neighbourhood, and so finding 
 himself tied for life to an insignificant and unattrac- 
 tive woman. Let us run over these facts, for we have 
 already got the whole Sterne before us : middle-class 
 extraction ; garrison memories ; means, those of a 
 fairly well-off man of letters ; a rather narrow domestic 
 circle ; the career of a country parson. We ought to 
 add the neighbourship of Hall Stevenson, a college 
 friend, at whose house Sterne met very lively, not to 
 say very unreverend, companions ; with, a little later, 
 some travels in France and Italy ; and we shall have 
 almost all the elements of ' Tristram Shandy ' and the 
 ' Sentimental Journey ' before us. M. Montegut has 
 very neatly analysed these influences in his study on 
 Sterne : ' The best passages of his story, its most inge- 
 nious episodes, its most sympathetic personages, are 
 due to these reminiscences and emotions of childhood,
 
 134 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 It was in the life of the regiment, by the side of his 
 father and his father's comrades, that he succeeded 
 in securing those singular and touching growths of 
 honour and humanity \Yhich the military career more 
 than any other fosters in souls well born.' 
 
 And again: 'At least a good half of "Tristram 
 Shandy " is incomprehensible, unless it is considered 
 as the direct chronicle of an old English family of the 
 upper middle class, concerned for some generations with 
 the political disputes of the country, and with sufficient 
 experience of life to have more than once known the 
 vicissitudes of fortune. Old family stories handed 
 down from father to son, relics pathetic or comical, old 
 receipts for the cure of disease, treasured scraps of paper 
 yellowed by time, quaint and original opinions founded 
 on some immemorial adventure or some distant ex- 
 perience— all these oddities fill "Tristram Shandy," 
 and constitute one of the principal charms of the book.' 
 
 Sterne long remained the obscure parson of an 
 obscure Yorkshire parish. It must be confessed that 
 a stranger minister of religion never climbed a pulpit. 
 With a flighty temperament, an ill-regulated imagina- 
 tion, an invincible inclination to drollery, few prin- 
 ciples, and less dignity of behaviour, it is hard to 
 imagine such a preacher at his task. As a matter of 
 fact, Sterne's sermons are not out of harmony with 
 their author's eccentricity. He published them : so 
 that we know what we are about. He is still the 
 buffoon of genius, restrained, no doubt, a little by the 
 gown he wears, but indemnifying himself by the very 
 strangeness of the contrast between the tone of a 
 rehgious harangue and the liberties he takes. He has 
 digressions on polygamy, digressions on travel. The
 
 LAUEENCE BTEENE, OR THE IIUMOUELST 135 
 
 preacher amuses himself by full descriptions of the 
 disorders and disappointments of the Prodigal Son. 
 One day he takes for his text this passage of Eccle- 
 siastes : ' It is better to go to the house of mourning 
 than to the house of mirth,' and starts his subject by 
 crying, ' That I deny ! ' At the same time he has real 
 merits, if they are not exactly the merits of a sacred 
 orator. * He knew,' says M. Stapfer, 'how to be in- 
 teresting without making people laugh : he could even 
 be serious and profound. He never, it is true, has 
 any Christian unction ; but he has a delicacy of moral 
 analysis, and a talent for putting things before his 
 audience, which show no common knowledge of the 
 human heart, together with dramatic aptitudes still less 
 common.' For the rest — still according to M. Stapfer 
 — Sterne as a preacher was only ' an amateur in sacred 
 literature, studying in the Bible stories the motives 
 of the wicked and the just with the disinterested 
 curiosity of a philosopher, and drawing little pictures 
 of their good and bad actions with the passionate 
 imagination of an artist.' 
 
 But with all this we must not fancy that Sterne 
 was a freethinker who preached only from the lips 
 outwards, and as a matter of business. On the con- 
 trary, M. Stapfer insists on the sincerity of his 
 preaching. He believed what he taught. ' I do not 
 say,' continues our critic, ' that he practised what he 
 preached — that is quite another matter : but he believed 
 it. Hypocrisy never entered into his nature, and 
 however odd such a minister of religion may seem, 
 nothing would be falser than to represent him as a 
 Tartufe, nor would it be much more exact to imagine 
 him simply as a joker. Sterne in his pulpit, clad in
 
 l;U) ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 ilu> black gown of the Protestant preacher, was still 
 an artist and a philosopher, a wit and a sentimentalist, 
 an cnem}^ of quacks and pedants, of superannuated 
 methods and commonplace ideas. He was also an 
 enemy of gravity, because it is nine times out of ten 
 affected, interested, and false : and a friend of plea- 
 santry in season and out of season. Yet, again, he 
 was an irregular personality, liable to sudden changes 
 of humour, gay one moment and the next serious or 
 even sad ; an optimist now, and anon a misanthrope ; 
 the most whimsical of writers and of men in his ways 
 of thinking, feeling, and writing.' 
 
 I may interrupt myself here to remark that while 
 we make acc[uaintance with Sterne we also make 
 acquaintance with M. Paul Stapfer, his critic and 
 biographer, and that this young author's book has 
 already commended itself to me by more than one trait 
 of exact and delicate observation.' 
 
 Rousseau became an author at thirty-seven : 
 Sterne was forty-seven when he published the two 
 Ih-st volumes of ' Tristram Shandy.' It is difficult to 
 understand inspiration so late in the day, but it was 
 W'ritten that everything about our author should be 
 unique. Anjdiow, his success was immediate and 
 very great. Though the volumes appeared modestly 
 enough at York, two hundred copies were sold in two 
 days, and when, a short time afterwards, Sterne went 
 to London, he found himself famous. Everybody 
 
 ' [I hope it is not impertinent to add another interruption. 
 M. Stapfer, who, at the time M. Schererwrote these words, was a friend 
 and colleague of my own, and whose doctoral thesis is the subject of 
 this essay, has since held Professorships in Letters at Grenoble and 
 Bordeaux, and has produced capital work on Shakespeare, Eabelais 
 and other subjects. — Trans.]
 
 LAURENCE STERNE, OR THE HUMOURIST 137 
 
 wanted to see him : he was invited everywhere, and 
 to secure him it was necessary to take steps two 
 months beforehand. The name of ' Tristram Shandy ' 
 was given to a new salad, to a new game of cards, to 
 several racehorses. The book lay on all tables : it 
 was pirated and imitated, attacked and defended. A 
 peer, Lord Falconberg, thought he could not show 
 his admiration for the author better than by bestowing 
 on him a benefice worth a hundred guineas a year ; 
 a bookseller for his part offered him 650L for two new 
 volumes. 
 
 From this time Sterne passed a considerable part 
 of his time in London — in the drawing-rooms that 
 pulled caps for him, with the wits of the time, in the 
 gardens of Eanelagh, and behind the scenes of Drury 
 Lane. Nor was he less well received in Paris, whither 
 Englishmen were then fond of coming to have their 
 renown ratified. I do not know how it happened that 
 our eighteenth century letters and memoirs preserve 
 hardly any trace of his passages there. Garat, how- 
 ever, has drawn him in a few lines, and shows him to 
 us as we already know him, ' always and everywhere 
 the same : never influenced by plans, and always 
 carried away by impressions ; at the theatre, in the 
 drawing-room, on the bridge, always somewhat at 
 the mercy of things and persons ; always ready to 
 be amorous or pious, burlesque or sublime.' He was 
 at Paris when he burst a blood-vessel in his chest, 
 and his health, already delicate, was henceforth wholly 
 precarious. In vain he sought a cure in the south of 
 France and in Italy; consumption, without vanquish- 
 ing his levity or his gaiety, held him between life 
 and death. The ' Sentimental Journey ' appeared in
 
 138 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 February 1708, and three weeks afterwards its author 
 died at London in furnislicd lodgings. It has been 
 asserted that his corpse was stolen by resurrection 
 men, that he was dissected, and that one of his friends 
 coming in during the demonstration recognised the 
 body, and swooned with a shriek of horror. 
 
 No one can have a complete or even a sufficient 
 idea of Sterne who does not know what a pitch, both of 
 jiassion and fickleness, he had reached. Never was there 
 a more inflammable heart. * I must,' he wrote, ' posi- 
 tively have some Dulcinea in my head. It is a con- 
 dition of moral harmony for me. I am firmly persuaded 
 that, if ever I do a base thing, it can only be in the 
 interval between one passion and another.' As a 
 matter of fact he went from one Dulcinea to another, 
 without taking any trouble to engineer the transitions. 
 It is said that he included the whole sex in his passion. 
 'After all the weaknesses I have seen in women, and 
 all the satires I have read against them,' wrote Sterne 
 towards the end of his life, 'I love them still, persuaded 
 that the man who has not a kind of affection for the 
 entire sex is incapable of loving a single woman as he 
 ought.' His very marriage was nothing but a love 
 passage, and he dealt with it no otherwise. We 
 possess the letters which he wrote to ' his Lumley,' 
 as he called his betrothed, full of sentimental assur- 
 ances and of tears ; but we possess also a letter in dog 
 Latin which he wrote twenty years later to his friend 
 Stevenson ' Sum fatigatus et aegrotus de mea uxore 
 plus quam unquam.' His second passion was for 
 Catherine Beranger de Fourmentelle, a girl of French 
 extraction, who lived at York with her mother. For 
 her Sterne does not in the least beat about the bush ;
 
 LAUKENCE STEENE, OK THE HUMOUEIST 139 
 
 he ardently desires that God may soon reheve him of 
 his wife, so that * his Ivitty ' may at last be wholly 
 his. ' There is only one hindrance to our happiness,' 
 he writes to Kitty, ' and what that is you know as well 
 as I. God will open a gate which will allow us to be 
 one day much nearer each other.' This attachment, 
 which was to be eternal, lasted but a year. The 
 success of * Tristram Shandy ' put everything out of 
 Sterne's head, and when the poor woman left York to 
 join him in London, he could not find time even to 
 see her. 
 
 I fancy that M. Stapfer does not pretend to be 
 exhaustive on this subject. It is impossible to 
 enumerate all the conflagrations which successively 
 devoured this celebrated humourist. ' 'Tis like the 
 stars in the sky,' said Sainte-Beuve to me once, 
 speaking of Chateaubriand's attachments ; • the 
 more you look at them, the more you discover.' So 
 it is with poor Yorick. In 1764, Sterne was at Paris 
 on his return from a two years' stay in the south of 
 France, and it is easy to guess what kept him there 
 for eight weeks ; he writes to Stevenson, ' I have been 
 under the yoke of the tenderest passion whose empire 
 heart ever underwent.' But the most famous of his 
 affairs of the heart was that which made Eliza Draper 
 immortal. Eliza had been born in India. As she 
 was consumptive, her husband had sent her to 
 England for medical care, and though she had not 
 been cured, she was on the point of returning to 
 Bombay when Sterne made her acquaintance. She 
 was a young woman who seems to have possessed in 
 the highest degree the grace and indefinable charm 
 of languor. Eaynal celebrated her in one of those
 
 110 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 pompons apostrophes which we cannot read nowadays 
 without a lit of laughter. ' territory of Ajinga ! 
 thou art naught, but thou hast given birth to Eliza ! 
 A day will come when the marts of commerce founded 
 by Europeans on the Asian coasts will exist no longer. 
 Grass will hide them, or the Indian, at last avenged, 
 will build upon their ruins. But if my writings have 
 any life, the name of Ajinga will abide in the memory 
 of man,' and so forth. Sterne's own letters to Eliza 
 are less burlesque, but not less enthusiastic. Alas ! 
 they had at last to separate; Eliza went to join 
 Mr. Draper, and Sterne remained at London. It 
 is impossible, is it not, to refrain from pitying 
 them ? We imagine the immense and lasting deso- 
 lation : 
 
 Que le deuil de mon ame etait lugubre et sombre ! 
 
 Que de uuits sans pavots ! Que de jours sans soleil ! 
 
 Why, to think so would be to know nothing at all 
 of Yorick's nature ! Eliza had not been three weeks 
 gone when Sterne wrote another declaration to another 
 beauty : ' Beloved fair ! "What a dishclout hast thou 
 made of my soul ! Less than an hour ago I fell on 
 my knees. I swore never to come near thee again, 
 and after saying the Lord's Prayer for the sake of the 
 end, "Lead us not into temptation," I rose up Hke a 
 Christian soldier, ready to tight the world, the flesh, 
 and the devil, and assured of trampling all these foes 
 beneath my feet. Bat now that I am so near jou, 
 a mere stone's throw from your house, I feel myself 
 seized with a giddiness which turns my brain upside 
 down.' Diamond cut diamond ! It is but too clear 
 that Sterne, as Warburton said, was an incorrigible
 
 Latjre^^ce stur^e, or The imMoiirjsT 141 
 
 blackguard. But Eliza Draper, for her part, was 
 nothing but a coquette, for she had kept Sterne's 
 letters, and it was she who published them. 
 
 It 
 
 It is time to come to the works of an author who 
 has been depicted to us as so bizarre and capricious. 
 We have already seen that he did not take i3en in 
 hand till very late, when he was forty-seven years old. 
 He died nine years afterwards, and within this short 
 space of time he published the nine volumes of 
 * Tristram Shandy,' the ' Sentimental Journey,' and 
 the ' Sermons.' Both the novel and the ' Journey ' 
 were left unfinished ; but had their completion ever 
 been intended ? For taking your hero, as the author 
 does, so many months before his birth, for halting so 
 long on the steps of a staircase, for discussing so 
 learnedly noses, knots, and moustaches, would even 
 the forty volumes that the biographer promised have 
 sufficed ? Is not the sudden dropping of the story 
 and the reader the necessary climax of all the practical 
 jokes which the writer has arranged for us ? We 
 have no right to complain of anything when we go 
 on board with such a shipmate unless he happens to 
 bore us, for the buffoon is condemned to be always 
 amusing. It must be confessed that Sterne has not 
 paid quite attention enough to this law of the style. He 
 is tedious, lengthy, wearisome, obscure, repellent, to 
 such an extent that his books, * Tristram Shandy ' 
 especially, are little read nowadays. And yet * Tristram ' 
 is a masterpiece : the characters of my Uncle Toby 
 and of Corporal Trim are real creations. There is
 
 11-2 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 nothing more original, nothing more thoroughly 
 worked out, in any literature ; but nothing less than 
 these admirable portraits and some charming passages 
 could have succeeded in saving Sterne's books. The 
 mere style which he created, and to which his name 
 remains in some sort attached, the style of humorous 
 fantasy, would not have sufficed to do it. 
 
 There are three things to distinguish in Sterne — 
 his sentiment, his humour, and his method ; for there 
 is deliberate method in this writer. Sentiment and 
 pleasantry flow freely and at first hand from him ; but 
 mannerism mixes with them at the last, and hurts the 
 first inspiration. 
 
 Sterne is a sentimentalist : in the same way as 
 the whole eighteenth century was, as Diderot is in 
 his passionate apostrophes, as the whole of France 
 became in the following of Eousseau. Men talked 
 of virtue and sentiment just as they wore powder 
 and matches. Virtue, for her part, held her ground 
 till far into the Eevolution, and supplied the mate- 
 rial of endless harangues, those of Robespierre in 
 particular. Sensibility was not so long lived ; ' she 
 gave place to the heroism of Brutus and his kind. 
 Yet Madame Eoland was still a * sensible ' woman, 
 and Olympe de Gouges, when she wrote to the Con- 
 vention asking for permission to defend Louis XVI., 
 spoke of examples which had ' excited her heroism and 
 aroused her sensibility.' Sterne is at once tender- 
 hearted and sentimental ; that is to say, naturally 
 
 ' [I think M. Scherer brings the abhorred shears to Sensibility 
 too early : but as I could only refer to an essay of my own on the 
 subject, it is, perhaps, better to confine myself to this simple remark. 
 — Trans.}
 
 tAtliiENCE STEENE, Oil THE fiUMOURLST 143 
 
 susceptible of sympathetic emotions, and inclined at 
 the same time to invite them for the ploasm-e that he 
 feels in them, and the credit they gain him. He was 
 very early familiar with the tone of tenderness. See 
 how he describes the solitude in which ' his Lumley ' 
 has left him. ' A solitary plate,' he writes to her, 
 ' only one knife, one fork, one glass ! I bestowed a thou- 
 sand pensive and penetrating glances on the chair that 
 you have so often adorned with your graceful person 
 in our tranquil and sentimental repasts.' He insists 
 that when his time comes, he will die alone, far 
 from home, in some inn.^ If you will believe him, 
 the suffering of friends at such a moment, nay, the 
 last offices of affection, would torment his soul and 
 suffice to kill him. ' Thank God ! ' he cries, ' for 
 my sensibility ; though it has often caused me suffer- 
 ing, I would not give it for all the pleasures of coarse 
 sensualists.' We can now understand what Sterne 
 means by a 'Sentimental Journey.' ^ The traveller 
 a la Sterne is a man who troubles himself but little 
 about the goal for which he is making, or the regions 
 which he traverses. He hardly visits remarkable 
 monuments, he says nothing of the beauty of places; 
 his objects of search are sweet and affectionate 
 emotions. Everything becomes to him matter for 
 sympathy : a caged bird, a donkey sinking under ill 
 treatment, a poor child, an old monk. A sort of 
 universal benevolence makes him take his share of all 
 
 ' [It is fair to observe that he did. Few persons of sensibility 
 thus kept their word. — Trans.'] 
 
 - [Here M. Scherer quotes, in a note, the well-known passages 
 from the Journey as to ' the man who goes from Dan to Bcersheba ' 
 and the ' quiet journey of the heart.' — Trans.']
 
 Ill ESSAYS ON English LiTERATtJEE 
 
 small sorrows, not exactly for the purpose of consola- 
 tion, but to enter into them, to taste their savour, and, 
 if I may say so, to extract the picturesque from them. 
 Sentimentalism is perfectly compatible with a certain 
 strain of egotism, and the sentimental traveller is at 
 bottom much more his own master than is thought. 
 It is for this reason that he paints so excellently, for 
 this also that he so often exaggerates and strikes into 
 falsetto. The history of Father Lorenzo is an example 
 of these exaggerations. Lorenzo had given Sterne 
 his snuff-box, and some months afterwards our tra- 
 veller, revisiting Calais, learns that the poor monk is 
 dead. He ' burst into tears ' ^ at the tomb. Well and 
 good, but there are too many of these tears in Sterne. 
 I like him better when his tenderness keeps better 
 measure, or when he contents himself with a simple 
 humane im^Dulse. In this style of touching simplicity 
 he has told stories which are, and deserve to be, 
 famous, being pure masterpieces, such as the story 
 of Le Fevre, the death of Yorick, the two donkej'S, 
 the dead donkey of Naimpont, and him of the pastry- 
 cook. Did Sterne ever write anything more exquisite 
 than Uncle Toby's fly ? Is not the hero of the siege 
 of Namur all in this trait ? ^ 
 
 To sum up, Sterne is a tale-teller of the first order 
 and excellent in sentimental scenes. But he has the 
 faults of his style : he abuses the trick of interest- 
 ing the heart in trifles : he enlarges little things too 
 much : he scarcely ever declaims, but he sometimes 
 whimpers. 
 
 Let us go on to the form of his pleasantry. Sterne 
 
 ' [These celebrated passages are translated in the original. — 
 T)-ans.]
 
 LAURENCE STERNE, OR THE HUMOURIST 145 
 
 is a hnmoiirist. Humour is so distinctly the charac- 
 teristic of his writings that they have been useful in 
 fixing the sense of the word. But if Sterne remains 
 the type of humour, ho is, notwithstanding, by no 
 means the sole representative of it : antiquity, it has 
 been observed, knew it not : the Latin peoples appear 
 less capable of the feelings which it implies than the 
 Germanic nations. Yet Spain has Cervantes and 
 France Eabelais. Germany possesses Jean Paul ; in 
 England Shakespeare is full of this kind of wit, and 
 Carlyle has taken great trouble to inoculate himself 
 with it. 
 
 What, then, is humour ? In other words, what 
 have the writers whom we have just mentioned in 
 common ? M. Stapfer has devoted the whole of an 
 excellent chapter to the subject. He fixes for his own 
 part on a definition according to which the humourist 
 is the tragi-comic painter of humanity and of human 
 absurdity. That is pretty exact, save that it is subject 
 to the drawback of not telling us very much. I think 
 it is possible to go somewhat deeper ; for humour 
 seems to be an idea in ffisthetics which admits, as well 
 as another, of analysis and definition. Let us start 
 from laughter, since laughter is a thing familiar to us. 
 It is excited by a sense of the ridiculous, and the 
 ridiculous arises from the contradiction between the 
 use of a thing and its intention. A man falls on his 
 back : we cannot help laughing unless it so happens 
 that his fall is dangerous, and so one sentiment is 
 driven out by another. The terrors of Sancho, the 
 brags of Falstaff, the rascalities of Scapin, amuse us 
 because of their disproportion with the circumstances, 
 or their disagreement with facts. Such is the law as
 
 1-lG ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 well of the finest wit as of the coarsest punning : at 
 bottom of the pleasure we experience whenever we 
 laugh there is the surprise produced by a disparity. 
 As for the physical effect determined by this surprise, 
 it is sufficiently well known for there to be no need 
 of describing it : in our amazement and amusement 
 we experience a slight spasm of the muscles of the 
 face and the vocal organs. That is the analysis 
 of laughter ; it is complete ; w^e have the whole pheno- 
 menon before us. 
 
 Let us now take matters on a larger scale, and 
 extend our terms. The disparity lies no longer in the 
 double sense of a word, between an attitude and our 
 usual decorum, between the madness of a moment 
 and the rational conduct which forms the main sub- 
 stance of life. It is between the man himself and 
 his destiny, between the whole of reality and the 
 ideal which, rightly or wrongly, imposes itself on our 
 minds as the law of things. The contrast is glaring 
 on all sides. We hold ourselves formed for happi- 
 ness and virtue, destined for everything that is true, 
 noble, and sublime ; and if we have the least touch 
 of sincerity, we are obliged to recognise that we are 
 weak, vacillating, limited, prosaic, fickle. No one is 
 hero to his ralct de chamhre, because the valet de 
 chamhre knows what is beneath and behind the hero. 
 Whence comes a great and all-pervading comedy, the 
 human comedy, * Vanity Fair.' 
 
 Now, let us suppose that an artist has grasped this 
 irony of fate in all its lively qualities. Yet the 
 result must not be irritation or indignation. He has 
 learnt to be tolerant. He has no special grudge at 
 nature for corresponding so little to an ideal which
 
 LAUEENCE STEENE, OE THE HUMOUEIST U7 
 
 is perhaps, after all, arbitrary. He is even able to 
 bestow compassion on the strange shortcomings of 
 our poor species. He puts up, pitifully and even 
 sympathetically after a fashion, ^Yitll all these ex- 
 amples of the mean, the base, the small, the poor. 
 At bottom he discovers thfit everything is not so bad, 
 that humanity is not altogether so much to be com- 
 plained of, that there are other persons here below 
 besides rascals and ruffians. Nay, more, he takes 
 pleasure in discovering everywhere vestiges of an 
 original and indefeasible nobility. Still he knows at 
 the same time that all of it has a seamy side, and he 
 delights in turning that side out : in showing the 
 tribe of narrownesses and absurdities that accompany 
 virtue, the grotesque that pushes its way among 
 things venerable and venerated. The views of our 
 artist are tempered by a kind of melancholy : he laughs 
 at humanity, but with no bitterness. The perception 
 of the contrasts of human destiny by a man who 
 does not sever himself from humanity, but who takes 
 his own shortcomings and those of his dear fellow- 
 creatures cheerfully — that is the essence of humour. 
 Tt is easy to understand the kind of pleasantry 
 which results from it— a kind of gall-less satire, a 
 mixture of things touching and things merry, a 
 mutual permeation of the comic and the sentimental. 
 But this is not all. The humourist, if he be analysed 
 to the end, is a sceptic. The tolerance of the wretched- 
 nesses of humanity by which he is characterised can 
 only come from a certain weakening of idealism in 
 him. He sees perfectly well that our absurdities are 
 often excusal)le or even the cloaks of virtue ; but he 
 sees also that our virtues have their absurd sides, and
 
 1 18 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 this is luxrdly compatil)lo Avith a vigorous moral con- 
 viction. For him the fact eclipses the ideal to which 
 the fact corresponds so imperfectly and so awkwardly. 
 AVhonce it comes that our humourist is very apt to 
 play with his subject : he does not take very seriously 
 a spectacle which to him is only a spectacle, hollow 
 enough, and petty enough after all. His heart is but 
 half in his business as a moraliser : his sincerity is 
 not unmixed : his first object is to amuse himself 
 and other people. And this is why he is so very 
 likely to exaggerate the kind of pleasantry to which 
 he gives himself up. He will pile on the contrasts 
 and the dissonances, seek oddity for oddity's sake — 
 find it necessary to be droll at any price, invent 
 what is burlesque, fall into what is equivocal and even 
 merely buffoonish. Yet this does not prevent the 
 temperament of the humourist from being, on the whole, 
 the happiest that a man can bring with him into this 
 world, and the humourist's point of view the justest 
 from which it can be judged. The satirist grows 
 wroth : the cynic banters : the humourist, for his part, 
 by turns laughs and sympathises. 
 
 He has neither the fault of the pessimist, who 
 refers everything to a ]mrely personal conception, and 
 is angry with reality for not being such as he con- 
 ceives it ; nor that of the optimist, who shuts his eyes 
 to everything missing in the real world, that he may 
 comply with the demands of his heart and his reason. 
 The humourist feels the imperfections of reality and 
 resigns himself to them with the good humour which 
 knows that our own satisfaction is not the rule of 
 things ; that the formula of the universe is necessarily 
 larger than the preferences of a single one of the
 
 LAUEENCE STEENE, OE THE HUMOUElST 149 
 
 accidental beings of whom the universe is composed. 
 The humourist is beyond all doubt the true philo- 
 sopher — always providing that he is a philosopher. 
 
 Without going about to do so, we have just drawn 
 the portrait of Sterne. He had neither ill nature nor 
 egotism ; but (which is much more human) he had 
 weakness and levity. His, says M. Stapfer, was a 
 kind of optimism which believed in the good of human 
 nature and the moral government of the world, with- 
 out denying the evil and the disorders in both — I 
 should add, especially without taking either tragically 
 or troubling himself much about them. He writes, 
 * 'Tis a good little world, the world in which we live. 
 I take Heaven to witness, after all my jesting, my 
 heart is innocent, and the sports of my pen just 
 like those of my infancy when I rode cock-horse on a 
 stick.' And elsewhere : ' Vive la bagatelle ! my 
 humour, never hast thou painted in black the objects 
 I met in my way. In danger thou hast gilt my horizon 
 with hope, and when death itself knocked at my door, 
 thou didst tell him to call again with so gay an air 
 of careless indifference that he doubted his mission.' 
 
 There we have him — a light and easy humour, a 
 man who looks at once with amusement and sympathy 
 at human affairs, who loves the world without forming 
 too high an idea of it. And we have, as the result, 
 a kindly satire, where bitterness is replaced by good 
 humour, contempt by affection, the spirit of detraction 
 by sensibility, a satire which inspires us with interest 
 and even affection for the very persons of whom it 
 makes fun. 
 
 Besides this fundamental characteristic, which is 
 the property of humour, and which constitutes Sterne's
 
 150 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 oi-ii:;inality, he has a notable talent as a moralist 
 and a talc- teller. * He possessed ' (I am still quoting 
 M. Stapfer) ' a delicate psychological faculty ; the 
 power of creating character and arranging situation ; 
 the talent of drawing personages and of making them 
 speak ; a knack of sentiment, noble, touching, or 
 absurd ; pathos, colour, truth, nature, style.' Indeed, 
 M. Stapfer is never tired of returning to Sterne's 
 creative genius, and especially its finest instance, the 
 two brothers Shandy.^ For Sterne does not merely 
 outline characters ; he sets them at work, as I have 
 already said, in delightful scenes ; or rather his manner 
 of showing them is by making them speak or act. I 
 have mentioned my Uncle Toby and the fly ; but how 
 many little pictures of the same kind there are ! How 
 charming a thing, for instance, is the history of the 
 adventure by the roadside between Nimes and Lunel ! 
 The traveller hears music, alights from his mule, finds 
 peasants dancing to the music of the tambourine ; 
 mixes with them, skips with Nanette. ' Why,' cries 
 he, ' could I not live and end my days thus ? Just 
 Disposer of our joys and sorrows, wdiy could not a 
 man sit down in the lap of content here, and dance, 
 and sing, and say his prayers, and go to Heaven with 
 this nut-brown maid?' Elsewhere there are dialogues 
 inimitable in their droll spirit. Thus, the hero of the 
 book has been called Tristram instead of Trismegistus ; 
 it is the result of a mistake, and Tristram's father, 
 who attaches a superstitious importance to proper 
 names, takes the thing tragically. My Uncle Toby, 
 for his part, cannot share this feeling, and relieves 
 
 ' [Here M. Scherer inserted a long passage, or rather cento, from 
 M. Stapfer. — Trans.']
 
 lAUEENCE STERNE, OR THE HUMOURIST 151 
 
 himself on the subject to his honest servant, who is 
 of his master's opinion.' 
 
 To all these qualities we must add those of style. 
 Sterne is no ordinary writer ; in his best passages he 
 has a fashion of writing — straightforward and natural, 
 and at the same time exact and picturesque — which 
 implies either very true instinct or very great art. 
 There is within his smahest detail * a certain grace 
 of originality, which makes things unexpected and 
 delightful blossom in the midst of exact pictures of 
 reality.' '^ Unluckily Sterne is never natural for long ; 
 if he possesses a style of his own, a substratum of real 
 originality, he possesses also affectations, a method, 
 and a great deal of both. He is a mannerist. He tries 
 to be odd, which is the worst way of attaining oddity. 
 He lays himself out to astonish us, which is the worst 
 way of succeeding in doing so. He begins his story 
 by the first end he can catch hold of, and then goes 
 on anyhow, dropping the clue every moment, piling 
 up interruptions, digressions, discussions ; affecting 
 not to know what he is going to write next sentence ; 
 
 ' [The passage is well known. — Trans.] 
 
 - As I am speaking of Sterne's style, I will say a word of the un- 
 published fragment which M. Stapferhas given us, and which seems to 
 him to be due to the author of the SentimcntalJourncy. The hand- 
 writing of the original is said to be like that of Sterne, but the piece is 
 imsigned, and there is no sufficient information as to its origin and 
 its history. The manner and the style are yet to be dealt with. I must 
 say that I have difficulty in recognising therein the humorous writer 
 we all know. It might, at a pinch, be Sterne's ; nothing makes the 
 sui^position impossible : but I must add that nothing obliges us to 
 accejDt it, for nothing recalls the thought or the manner of the sup- 
 posed author. 
 
 [This note referred to a fragment which had been supplied to M. 
 Stapfer by a Yorkshire friend in whose family the MS. had long 
 been.— Trans.']
 
 152 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LiTERATUEE 
 
 building his theatre before us, and insisting that w6 
 shall see its tricks and dodges ; appearing in person 
 on the scene with fool's cap on head, and warning us 
 that he is going to do so ; jmgling his bells, pirouet- 
 ting, shouting words of double meaning at us, play- 
 ing tricks on the audience. These devices are by no 
 means invariably amusing — very far from it. How 
 is one to be amused by chapters in reverse order, 
 blank pages, blacked pages, haphazard diagrams ? 
 Can Sterne possibly have thought all this quaint and 
 witty ? Can the exquisite author of the story of Le 
 Fevre have mistaken, as so often happens, the strength 
 and the weakness of his genius, holding as its true ori- 
 ginality what was only slag and dross ? "What is certain 
 is that Sterne keeps afloat to-day on the current of 
 literature with some difficulty, and that it is the fault of 
 the very eccentricities on which he plumed himself. 
 For he does plume himself on them, and this is what 
 sets us against him ; his drolleries are sought for, his 
 caprices deliberate. There is affectation in his letting 
 himself go ; he is the most learned of buffoons, the 
 most sophisticated of simpletons, so much so that you 
 are sure of nothing in him, neither of his tears nor 
 of his laughter. But why seek to grasp a personality 
 so mobile, to define so subtle a talent ? M. Stapfer 
 has collected in more than one fine passage the result 
 of his study on Sterne, and has really left nothing to 
 be done after him. It would be impossible to put in 
 a judgment a nobler conception of humanity, more 
 reason, or more grace. 
 
 May 1 70.
 
 153 
 
 IX 
 
 WOBDSWORTH AND MODERN POETBY IN 
 ENGLAND 
 
 I HAVE need of all the interest with which the subject 
 of this article inspires me to enable me to surmount 
 the difficulties which I foresee in it. It is always 
 hard to speak of a foreign poet, even though he be a 
 Shakespeare, a Goethe, or a Bj'ron ; for one cannot 
 suppose all readers familiar with the work which is to 
 be the subject of discussion, and yet it is impossible 
 to discuss this work without supposing it known 
 already. How much greater does the difficulty be- 
 come when the writer to whom it is desired to call 
 attention has no European reputation, when he has 
 not been translated, and when as a consequence his 
 name carries no meaning with it to the reader ! We 
 must quote him to give any idea of his genius, and to 
 quote him we must translate him, unless we wish 
 merely to address the small number of persons who 
 understand his language. Now, how are we to trans- 
 late a poet ? In verse ? My opinion on this point is 
 known ; ^ it is only a Marc Monnier ^ who can allow 
 
 ' [One of M. Scherer's very best critical essays (' De la Traduction 
 en Vers,'£'<iifZt's, V. 319-341) is a vigorous defence of the opinion here 
 expressed. — Trans.'] 
 
 - [A Genevese litUrateur of great ability, erudition, and elegance, 
 {b. 1829), who had died since M. Scherer's own death. His translated 
 Faust had pointed some remarks in the essay noted above. — Trans.
 
 IT)! ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 himself experiments of this kind, and even then this 
 prince of translators inspires us rather with admira- 
 tion for his skill as a virtuoso than with a feeling 
 that we really grasp the authors he has rendered. 
 Shall we have recourse to a prose version as more 
 Mitliin our reach, and at the same time able to keep 
 closer to the original ? Yes ; but if we then keep the 
 sense, we voluntarily give up the form ; and is not the 
 form in poetry the very essence of the thing ? "We 
 sacrifice the colour to keep the outline ; but what 
 becomes of a painting when the colour has vanished "? 
 In such straits does the critic find himself when he 
 tries to serve as interpreter between two languages ; 
 and yet we must give him license to attem^Dt it some- 
 times. It is really not admissible that names which 
 are illustrious but a few leagues bej'ond our frontiers 
 should never be uttered in France, or should be uttered 
 without carrying with them even a tolerably precise 
 connotation. Now the name of Wordsworth is incon- 
 testably one of the great names of English literature. 
 
 II 
 
 I confess that my pleasure in speaking of Words- 
 worth is increased by the pleasure of mentioning the 
 eminent writer to whom we owe the recent publication 
 of the poet's selected works. Mr. Matthew Arnold 
 himself occupies a high place in, the contemporary 
 literature of his country. He presents a singular 
 example of that modern curiosity which explores all 
 paths, touches all subjects, and tries all ways of ex- 
 pression. He has been by turns a theologian, a poet,
 
 • WORDSWORTH AND MODERN POETRY 155 
 
 and a critic, and (a rarer thing) he has attempted 
 nothing in which he has not excelled. His religious 
 conceptions are distinguished by a combination of 
 freedom of thought, historical intelligence of fact, and 
 lively sentiment of moral beauty. Christianity is for 
 him only a form of what he calls Hebraism ; but 
 Hebraism itself is one of humanity's titles of honour. 
 Mr. Arnold's theological essays have often made me 
 think of that most original enterprise of the German 
 Schleiermacher. With very different methods, with 
 less science and dialectical apparatus, but on the other 
 hand with far more lightness of touch, fineness of 
 perception, and sympathy for the needs of the age, 
 they present the same effort to disengage from religious 
 beliefs their divine and permanent substratum, and to 
 raise religious thought to a height where it becomes 
 equally independent of critical investigation and spe- 
 culative philosophy. 
 
 We have accustomed ourselves to paradoxes in 
 modern culture ; and the same writer, the same theo- 
 logian, who lias discussed «o pertinently God and the 
 Bible, the authenticity of St. John's Gospel and the 
 teaching of St. Paul, is also a poet. Indeed he began as 
 such, and in this guise he has quite recently showed 
 himself again by publishing a complete edition of his 
 poetical works. Here, as everywhere, for the matter of 
 that, his position is at once high and peculiar. Mr. 
 Arnold is neither the disciple of a school nor the slave of 
 his own mannerism ; he possesses the originality which 
 sincerity gives when it is helped by natural and divine 
 gifts. I may add that in Mr. Arnold the poet has the 
 same elasticity as the thinker ; he takes all manners 
 and leaves them by turns, by turns he tries all instru-
 
 150 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 mcnts. We have from him epic stories and attempts 
 in drama, elegies of no common savom% great philo- 
 sophical pieces. And in every style he has a certain 
 absolutely personal accent and note of distinction. 
 The language of verse has seldom clothed thought at 
 once so ample and so easy. 
 
 Have we done with him ? Not yet. From the 
 marriage of such a thinker and such a poet sprang a 
 critic — the liveliest, the most delicate, the most elegant 
 of critics, the critic who has given out most ideas, has 
 conferred upon them the most piquant expression, 
 and has most thoroughly shocked the sluggishness 
 of British thought by wholesome audacities. There 
 is one other point on which everybody is agreed. 
 Mr. Arnold is a delightful writer ; full of limpid 
 clearness and unaffected grace. We never catch him 
 in the act of trying set attitudes or ambitious tricks. 
 It is refreshing to open his books when one has just 
 been reading the great mannerists on whom the 
 literature of our neighbours so falsely prides itself 
 — Carlyle, with his conscious deliberate, calculated 
 jargon : Euskin, with his affectations of jn'ofundity, 
 with his laborious quest after expression, with all the 
 studied poses of a quackery saddening to see in con- 
 junction with merit which is often great, and consti- 
 tuting a sin against true sincerity and lofty taste. 
 
 There is a kind of ingratitude in the way in which 
 we in France ignore the works of Mr. Arnold. For 
 there is no foreign writer who is better acquainted 
 with the literature of our country, or who has on the 
 whole such a sympathy (I had nearly said such a 
 weakness) for our ways of thinking, our manners, our 
 institutions. He envies us our political equality, and
 
 WOEDSWOETir AND MODEKN POETRY 157 
 
 he even extols the services rendered by the French 
 Academy. His reading is not Kmited to our classics ; 
 he enjoys our intermediate' writers, and has introduced 
 to his countrymen Senancour, Joubert, Maurice de 
 Guerin and his sister. I fear it is true that he is less 
 orthodox on the subject of our poetry ; he has some- 
 where in one of his articles an awkward phrase about 
 Lamartine, and I should not be surprised if Eacine 
 did not appeal to him. But far be it from me to owe 
 him a grudge for this. I have long laid my account 
 with such matters, and have seen without disgust the 
 indifference of foreigners to beauties which, from the 
 very fact that they are not generally perceived, are 
 only dearer and more sacred to their true adorers. 
 
 There is one idea — that of culture — which recurs 
 frequently in Mr. Matthew Arnold's works. He has 
 defined what he means by it. The man of culture in 
 his sense is not the man who possesses a mass of 
 erudition, nor the man who is distinguished by more 
 or less intellectual strength. Culture, as he under- 
 stands it, is that fineness, that delicacy, that sureness 
 of perception which is given by familiarity with the 
 great thinkers of all times, which is produced by the 
 knowledge of the best things which have been said in 
 the world. It is easy to understand how at this level 
 of thought literature connects itself with morality ; 
 how poetry finally blends with religion ; and it is easy 
 also to discern the higher meaning of certain of the 
 writer's assertions, which seemed at the first blush to 
 be mere genial eccentricities. Mr. Arnold, who is far 
 from endowing himself with any kind of mission, who 
 
 ' [Intermediate, that is to say, between the Classical school and the 
 Romantic revival. — Trans.]
 
 158 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEKATUEE 
 
 is the siinplost and least affected of men, has none the 
 less become in his own country the representative of 
 the higher function of letters. No one has recognised 
 their humanising inllucnce as he has, and no one was 
 so fit as he to become the apostle of what I may call 
 intellectual civilisation. At the present moment Mr. 
 Arnold is the most seductive product that English 
 literature has to offer, by reason of his union of thought 
 and fancy, of solidity and grace, of self-respect and 
 liberty of mind. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the graceful preface which he has set in front 
 of his selection from Wordsworth's works Mr, Arnold 
 endeavours to fix the poet's place. This to his thinking 
 is a very high one. Wordsworth seems to him to have 
 the marks of poetical greaincss ; and these marks Mr. 
 Arnold accordingly defines. 
 
 The fjrcat poet, in our critic's sense, is the poet 
 who expresses the noblest and profoundest ideas on 
 the nature of man, who has a philosophy of life, and 
 who impresses it powerfully on the subjects he treats. 
 The definition is obviously rather vague. It is true 
 that Mr. Arnold adds that the philosoi^hical concep- 
 tion of things ought, in the poet's work, to be produced 
 within the eternal conditions of poetical beauty and 
 truth. Only, he does not tell us what these conditions 
 are, and it is exactly this that we ought to know, in 
 order to determine whether Wordsworth is an artist 
 as well as a thinker. 
 
 What is poetry? And what do we mean when 
 we say that a site, a picture, a book is poetical ? We
 
 WOEDSWOETII AND MODERN POETRY 159 
 
 must, indeed, observe that the word fits things very 
 different. It is ^Yith it as ^Yith another aesthetic 
 category, that of beauty. We apply the term beautiful 
 to the most diverse objects — a tree, a horse, a thought, 
 a speech, an action, a character. There must clearly 
 be something in common between the uses, different 
 as they are, of the same term ; but in what does this 
 element of resemblance lie ? Is it not that we call a 
 thing beautiful when it approaches the typical notion 
 that we form by spontaneous abstraction of individual 
 traits ? 
 
 By proceeding in a similar manner we may, I think, 
 reach the conclusion that the poetical element of things 
 is the property they have of setting the imagination 
 in motion, of stimulating it, of suggesting to it much 
 more than is actually perceived or expressed. The 
 poet is he who sees through his imagination, and the 
 special quality of imagination is to increase everything 
 that it sees, everything that it touches, to expand or 
 to abolish limits, and so to idealise. Yet we must not 
 say that it embellishes ; nor must we generally lend 
 ourselves to the confusion of the ideas of poetry and 
 of beauty. A cathedral, for instance, is more poetical 
 than beautiful ; and the Parthenon, on the other hand, 
 is more beautiful than poetical. Indeed, imagination 
 can increase horror as well as charm. 
 
 To speak shortly, then, and taking it by itself, 
 poetry is the sight of things through the eyes of ima- 
 gination ; and poetical expression is the reproduction 
 of them under the form most capable of arousing the 
 imaginative powers of the reader. And so imagery is 
 the special language of poetry. Let the reader try to 
 recall the finest passages of his favourite poets, and
 
 lt',0 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITER ATUEE 
 
 ho will see that it is hy the choice and the charm of 
 metaphors and comparisons that they delight him. 
 Why is the exclamation of Antiochns, in Eacine, a 
 favourite quotation ? 
 
 Dans I'orient desert quel devint mon ennui ! 
 
 What is it that makes this verse of Lamartine one 
 of the finest in the language ? 
 
 Dans I'horizon desert Phebe monte sans bruit ? 
 
 Whence comes the admirable melancholy of this 
 passage of Victor Hugo ? 
 
 Qui peut savoir combien toute douleur s'emousse 
 
 Et combien dans nos coeurs un jour d'herbe qui pousse 
 
 Efface des tombeaux ? 
 
 Join to the imaginative conception of things the 
 expression proper to arouse this conception in others, 
 submit this expression to the laws of rhythm, give 
 it the cadence which by a secret connection puts 
 nervous sensation in accord with the movement of 
 thought, and you will have poetry in the complete 
 and concrete sense of the word. 
 
 IV 
 
 To enjoy a poet, there is no need to do more than 
 take his works and read them ; to judge and to compre- 
 hend him (which is the proper task of the critic) we 
 must also place ourselves at the time when he wrote, 
 must explore the influences under which he was formed, 
 and those which in his turn he exercised. We must, 
 in short, assign him his place in literary history.
 
 . WOKDSWOKTH AND MODERN rOETRY IGl 
 
 One thing is clear at the first reading of Words- 
 worth, and this is that he belongs to the reaction 
 against the Classical school, the school personified l)y 
 the great names of Dryden and Pope, represented also 
 honourably by Thomson, Goldsmith, and Gray — the 
 school which, with Campbell, Rogers, and Byron himself, 
 threw up suckers even in the very hej^day of the Eoman- 
 tic period. The characteristics of the Classical school 
 in England were pretty much the same as among our- 
 selves — in point of matter, more rhetoric and eloquence 
 than feeling or fancy ; in point of form, the sonorous- 
 ness of skilful periods and the surprises of a pei'petual 
 antithesis. But if Wordsworth was the most indus- 
 trious and noteworthy of the innovators he was by 
 no means the earliest. That place should rather be 
 given to Cowper, whose chief poem, ' The Task,' dates 
 from 1785, and really marks an epoch in the destinies 
 of English poetry by setting the example of simplicity 
 and nature, by choosing very simple subjects, by 
 adopting a fluent and familiar versification. A curious 
 thing, indeed, that this hermit, with his sorrowful 
 soul, his morbid piety, his reason always struggling 
 with madness, should have left so unquestionable a 
 mark on the literature of his country ! There can be 
 no hesitation in connecting, if not with Cowper's ex- 
 ample yet with the same yearning for innovation and 
 the same general and hidden tendencies, the tales of 
 a poet, George Crabbe, whose numerous works had 
 immense popularity at the beginning of this century, 
 but who for his part sinned by excess of simplicity. 
 In his hands, the natural style became merely and 
 placidly prosaic, and so we only make mention of the 
 author of the * Parish Register ' as a matter of history. 
 
 u
 
 102 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 On the other hand, wc must take Burns as of the first 
 iuiportanec in respect of the influences which acted 
 on Wordsworth and helped to explain him. Not that 
 this admirable lyric poet takes rank in the pedigree 
 whicli we arc trjang to draw up. He had nothing to 
 learn and nothing to unlearn ; he shot up as spon- 
 taneously as the daisy of his own mountains. Yet it 
 is to the breath which was then blowing on English 
 letters that Burns owed the welcome given to his 
 poems, and being thus naturalised on the south of the 
 Tweed, he himself became one of the authors of the 
 revolution which Wordsworth completed. 
 
 We now know Wordsworth's origins, the family 
 of which he sprang. His first poems, the ' Lyrical 
 Ballads,' date from the end of the eighteenth century ; 
 but he was not thirty when they appeared, and he 
 definitely belongs to the movement of poetic renovation 
 which has left glorious traces on the literature of his 
 country during the first quarter of the nineteenth. It 
 is true that he continued, long after this period, to be 
 prolific without any notable change of style, and with- 
 out any sensible weakening of his genius. In his life of 
 eighty years, he sav\^ many a revolution in the concep- 
 tions of art, and in the admiration of the public. His 
 own career, let me repeat, offers no appreciable dis- 
 tinction between the works of his youth and those 
 of his maturity, nor any of the transformations which 
 are observable in the life of some artists. His poetic 
 fame, on the other hand, had its phases and its 
 vicissitudes. Wordsworth first appears to us as one 
 of the most noted champions in the struggle wherein 
 his friends, the other Lakers, Coleridge, Southey, 
 John Wilson, fought in a bwer rank than his ; but in
 
 ' WOEDSWOETH AND MODERN POETRY 163 
 
 wliicli he also met noisier and more brilliant competi- 
 tors who eclipsed him for a while. From this time 
 forward he had his admirers, even his devotees ; but 
 he had also his contemners. One side held him up 
 as the prophet of a new poetical religion, the other 
 mocked at his style. But these very controversies 
 prove that he had already excited and arrested public 
 opinion ; that is to say, that he was already famous. 
 As for fashion, which is a different thing, that was 
 for the moment entirely on the side of two writers, 
 one of whom, in a series of poems full of brilliancy 
 and music, poured forth an inexhaustible vein of 
 chivalry; while the other dressed up the gloomy ca- 
 prices of a hlase in the turban and the caftan. We in 
 France are now too wont to forget, or, to speak more 
 exactly, we never quite knew, the enthusiasm excited 
 by Walter Scott's legendary epics until their popu- 
 larity was shadowed by the stronger and more roman- 
 tic conceptions of Lord Byron, and by the prodigious 
 success of Scott's own prose stories. 
 
 The progress of literature, a subject hitherto in- 
 sufficiently studied, is dominated by three great laws. 
 The first turns on the modifications which are pro- 
 duced in the moral and intellectual state of the public. 
 The point of view, especially in our modern societies, 
 changes incessantly, and with the point of view in 
 general everything changes likewise — taste as well as 
 ideas, the starting points of art as well as those of 
 thought. Yet it sometimes happens, and here we 
 come to the second of the laws of which I speak, that 
 progress is brought about, not by simple develop- 
 ment of ideas, but, on the contrary, by more or less 
 pronounced reaction, the human mind eagerly and
 
 1(V1 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 willingly running in the opposite direction to that 
 which it had formerl}' foUowed. The third and last 
 law— one which applies no less frequently than the 
 others — consists in the satiety produced hy custom, 
 and the yearning for innovation which comes of 
 satiety. The human mind wants to be interested, 
 and there is no interest, or at least no forcible stimu- 
 lant, except in surprise. The intelligence demands 
 novelty as the body demands action : or else the 
 man fahs into ennui — the most terrible of evils, the 
 evil which all seek to avoid, and do avoid at all 
 hazards. I must ask pardon for going back so far in 
 order to explain a thing simple enough in itself, but 
 it is precisely because it is simple that sufficient 
 attention has not been paid to it. But, however this 
 may be, my readers will easily guess the application 
 I wish to make of these principles to literature. A 
 great poet cannot escape imitators. He has opened a 
 way into which everybody is sure to rush ; some to 
 profit by the public taste, others because their talent 
 naturally and spontaneously takes the shape which 
 genius has just consecrated. And so come secon- 
 dary, even tertiary, formations. After Homer comes 
 Yirgil ; after Virgil, the modern epics from Tasso to 
 the ' Henriade.' After Sophocles comes Eacine ; after 
 Eacine, Voltaire and the whole classical tragedy up to 
 1830. But the imitators are so busy, that at last 
 readers are sick of them, cry ' Hold ! ' and insist on 
 something nevf. It is impossible that something new 
 should not come — something grandly and really new 
 if the national genius is strong enough ; some affected 
 and puerile imitation in wording, costume, local colour, 
 if genius refuses to revive an exhausted literature.
 
 • WORDSWORTH AND MODERN ROETRY 165 
 
 There is no country of our time where the succes- 
 sion of poetical masters, and with them of poetical 
 influences, tastes, schools and methods, has been so 
 rapid as it has in England. The reason is that (con- 
 trary to the notions of our Continental ignorance) the 
 English are the most poetical nation in Europe, and, 
 what is more, that Englishmen, reading much more 
 than we do, are much more subject to the needs of 
 change of which I spoke just now. In France we have 
 not got beyond Byron. For us modern poetry is still 
 embodied in the works — brilliant enough and easily 
 understood — of a man whose disorderly life, whose 
 ostentation of misanthropy, whose pretentious dandy- 
 ism — in a word, whose littleness and affectation, have 
 never succeeded in diminishing his ancient vogue 
 with our countrymen. But the English are long past 
 Byronism. As Byron succeeded Scott, so in his turn 
 he was himself succeeded by other inspirations. The 
 author of ' The Lady of the Lake ' and ' Marmion,' 
 after enchanting one generation, ended by seeming 
 insufficient to a society which was still excited and 
 moved by the Eevolution and the wars of the Empire. 
 However superficial Byron's passion may seem to us 
 now, its tone of intimate appeal answered the prevalent 
 demand better than the exterior and objective poetry 
 of the Scotch chansons de geste. Men were drawn 
 back, with a power which could not be denied, to the 
 inner world, to the hidden drama, to restless aspira- 
 tions. Only, this too wore itself out, and that quickly. 
 The factitiousness of this ostentation of boredom and 
 despair was felt before long ; Byronism was too vio- 
 lent, and for that reason not true enough, to answer 
 the lasting needs of the soul. The abuse, as always,
 
 IGG ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 invited the reaction. After such a debauch of ex- 
 aggerated sentiment, men were seized with a thirst 
 for sincerity and simphcity. Besides, they had not 
 the inconvenience of waiting for the epiphany of a 
 preacher of the new gospel. He was there at hand; 
 he had been writing for thirty years ; he had ah'eady 
 a share of influence and renown ; a part}^ had actuahy 
 formed round him. And it was from this moment, 
 about 1825, that the second epoch of Wordsworth's 
 influence dates — the epoch which was at once that of 
 his uncontested popularity and of his acknowledged 
 supremacy in literature. 
 
 Then, as alwa^ys happens in these cases, men 
 thought they had discovered the last word of art in 
 him. Philosophj'- of the most exalted kind had met 
 its final form in the most perfect poetry ; and the 
 result was full of simplicity, sincerity, beneficence. 
 For some fifteen years Wordsworth, in his remote re- 
 treat of Eydal Mount, enjoyed glory whieli, though it 
 has certainly grown less bright since then, was after all 
 deserved, and admirably free from alloy. 
 
 Yet he was not the less bound to be in his turn the 
 victim of a new evolution of taste and thought. As 
 Byron had succeeded Scott by working with more 
 energetic stimulants on men's minds ; as Wordsworth 
 later had attracted, by his contrast of healthy 
 simplicity, imaginations jaded by Byronism ; so 
 Wordsworth himself in the long run began to seem 
 unsatisfying. His defects were more clearly seen. 
 The need of a wider thought, of a more brilliant fancy, 
 was felt. This was the moment for the rehabilitation 
 of two poets who had both died in the flower of their 
 age, unknown or disdained, some twenty years earlier.
 
 • WOEDSWORTII AND MODERN roETRY lG7 
 
 Shelley and Keats in their turn became prophets 
 and leaders of schools. The first and greater of the 
 two had been drowned in 1822, at the age of thirty, in 
 the Gulf of Spezzia ; but his genius had been of a rare 
 precocity, and he left a great number of poems in very 
 different styles. The dominant — unluckily by far the 
 dominant — note in them was that of a social Uto^Dia. 
 Shelley's naive and generous soul was possessed with 
 the idea of a world governed by justice and by reason. 
 He had conceived an immense pity for all suffering, 
 and in consequence an implacable wrath against the 
 creeds and the institutions which he took to be the 
 causes of such suffering. He was still an under- 
 graduate when he bade defiance to the orthodoxies of his 
 country : the results were a quarrel with his family, 
 an ill-starred marriage, exile, poverty, persecution — 
 altogether a state of aftairs in which it was difficult for 
 the public to separate the poetical genius from the 
 revolutionary Utopist. Moreover his earlier works, 
 and even some of his later, were penetrated to the 
 core of their substance with the fault of didactic inten- 
 tion, and hardly permitted their readers to enjoy their 
 exquisite poetical beauty, smothered as it was under 
 the apparatus of visions, personifications, and alle- 
 gories. At least half of Shelley's work is spoilt by 
 intolerable humanitarian ' purpose.' 
 
 It was only at intervals, when the sentiment of 
 nature overpowered him, or when, hero and there, some 
 earthly love mingled with Platonic dreams in his 
 heart, that pure poetry got the upper hand in this 
 •writer's mind. Yet, on the whole, after saying all this, 
 after making all these allowances, Shelley is a poet of 
 the first order, and it is no wonder that his star when
 
 1G8 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LIXEEATrRE 
 
 it once rose in the heaven of English poetry dimmed 
 that of Wordsworth. It was, w^e must allow, the 
 stronger of the two. It was not more various, for 
 Shehey, like "Wordsworth, is not free from monotony. 
 There was not much more vibration of the string of 
 human passion ; for, if Shelley is sometimes what 
 Wordsworth never is, in love, his loves are of a very 
 ethereal kind. But Shelley had more freedom, his 
 thought was more daring, he touched higher questions, 
 he expressed deeper anxieties, more actual needs of 
 contemporary humanity. And he did all this in a 
 poetical tongue of wider range, of deeper resonance, of 
 greater imaginativeness, of a melody simply marvellous 
 — a thrilling and subtle melody, now like the slow and 
 solemn murmur of the wind in the pine forest, now like 
 the liquid and pearly notes of the lark soaring in the 
 sunbeams. 
 
 A resemblance in fate rather than in talent is the 
 reason of the fact that one involuntarily thinks of Keats 
 and Shelley together. Keats, a little younger than 
 Shelley, died before him, when not yet six-and-twenty, 
 and leaving but two substantive poems (one of them 
 unfinished) and a small number of exquisite Ij^rics. 
 His faults are numerous and glaring. The mytho- 
 logy which supplied him with his mise en scene is 
 elementary and almost puerile. His stories are lack- 
 ing in human interest. In fact, he does hardly any- 
 thing but describe, and he describes with an exuberance 
 which is unluckily not incompatible with the most 
 painful monotony. The enthusiasm for nature which 
 is the soul of his verse is certainly sincere, and yet 
 Keats writes with effort. His naivete is not feigned, 
 but there is something in it of deliberation, and there-
 
 W0EDS\YORni AND MODERN POETRY 169 
 
 fore of exaggeration. In short, there is affectation in 
 him, and I cannot regard as wholly unjust the reproach 
 of cockneyism which critics used to throw at this poet 
 and his friends. Yet, with all these faults, Keats is 
 very far from being an ordinary person ; his posthu- 
 mous popularity is very far from being inexplicable, 
 and the influence which he still exercises is very far 
 from being a mere matter of coterie and eiujoue- 
 ment. He has a special feeling, a feeling of extra- 
 ordinary intensity, for nature and for beauty. It seems 
 as though he saw woods, streams, fields for the first 
 time, so full of novelty and of the marvellous is the 
 spectacle to him. There is at once sensuousness 
 and religion in his communion with the life of all 
 things. There would seem to be a perfume which gets 
 in his head, an intoxication to which he gives himself 
 up, a ritual into whose mysteries he is trying to break, 
 a baptism, a whelming in the eternal natiira natiirans. 
 Wordsworth himself, as we shall see, can lay claim to 
 a deeper understanding of nature : but it is easy to 
 understand that his idyllic piety, his patriarchal 
 philosophising, must have at last seemed terribly 
 grovelling to a generation which had drunk the heady 
 philtres of Keats's descriptive poetry. 
 
 Do I mean that modern poetry in England has stop- 
 ped at Keats and Shelley ? Not at all ; for, once again, 
 there is no finality in art, and no man has ever been able 
 to boast of having said the last word on anything. Great 
 writers, as they enlarge the fields of the human soul, 
 only create new needs and excite to new experiments. 
 Keats and Shelley have certainly not been thrown into 
 the shade by Tennyson ; but it is equally certain that 
 Tennyson has climbed on their shoulders, and has, in
 
 170 ESSAY.^ OX ENGLL^ir LITEEATUEE 
 
 some respects, reached a biglier level. If he is not 
 superior in strength or grandeur to Shelley, the metal 
 of his poetry is purer, its workmanship is more in- 
 genious and more exquisite, the work taken as a whole 
 is of a more surprising variety. Tennyson possesses 
 a consummate science of rhj-thm, the rarest resources 
 of phrase, taste, grace, distinction, every sort of clever- 
 ness, of research, of refinement. He is the author 
 of lyric pieces unequalled in any language, some of 
 infinite delicacy, some of engrossing pathos, some 
 quivering like the blast of a knightly horn. He lacks 
 only one thing, one supreme gift, the pinion-stroke 
 which sweeps Ganymede mto the empyrean, and casts 
 him panting at Jupiter's feet. He sins by his very 
 elegance ; he is too civilised, too polished. He has tried 
 every style — grave, gay, and passionate — the idyl, 
 the ode, and the elegy, mock-heroics, epics, drama. 
 There is no style in which he has not had brilliant 
 success, and yet it may be said that he has explored 
 nothing thoroughly. There are ardours m passion, 
 troubles m thought, bankruptcies of the ideal in life, 
 which Tennyson's note is not equal to expressing. His 
 poetry (whether as matter of inspiration or of deter- 
 mination I do not know) keeps too strictly to the region 
 of decencies and conventions. And so we must not be 
 surprised if an adoring public came at last to doubt 
 its idol ; in some cases, indeed, to c?a-ry its devotions 
 elsewhere. For these persons, when they were once in 
 the mood to be faithless, the thickets and obscurities 
 of Browning were sure to be only an additional attrac- 
 tion. Are not the most fashionable cults those which 
 can only be reached after a process of initiation ? 
 But it is not our business to follow the development
 
 • WOEDSWORTII AND MODERN POETRY 171 
 
 of modern poetry in England further. What we 
 have said is intended solely to mark out Wordsworth's 
 place in this great and splendid movement. He was 
 one of its chiefs, one of its illustrations ; and, even 
 putting this aside, he abides in the literature of his 
 country as one of its chosen authors, relished and 
 read for the sake of his own peculiar beauties. 
 
 It may seem at first sight that life is necessarily 
 modelled on each man's inborn tendencies ; but as a 
 fact it is made up of two things. It is, as I think I 
 have remarked elsewhere, as it were the confluence 
 of two currents, the point of intersection between the 
 trajectories of two forces, those of nature and of 
 destiny. No matter what we are ; what we shall be 
 depends on the accidents of education, the chance 
 meetings of life. There are even moments when this 
 thought is a troublesome one, ' AVhat will the future 
 bring ? ' ' How shall I come out of the trial I cannot 
 avoid ? ' For, in fact, Destiny is the stronger, and in 
 the case of most men she seldcm allows Nature to 
 exercise her rights fully. How rare^ for instance, is a 
 poetical life, even with the sincerest poets ! In this 
 respect Wordsworth is altogether an exception. It is 
 impossible to imagine either a life better suited than his 
 to his genius or a soul better adapted to relish the charm 
 of this life, to gather up its inspirations, to tell its 
 inner joys. He was born and he spent the greater part 
 of his days in the Lake District of the north of England, 
 where nature is graceful and charming, not violent
 
 17 '2 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATURE 
 
 enoujj;li to crush the imagination, but bold enough and 
 varied cnougli to give it gates of escape to the infinite. 
 Ke had travelled, and seen other skies besides those of 
 England ; but without going far enough to bring back 
 with him the regrets which sometimes pursue the 
 traveller who has walked under the palms. He was 
 born in a middle condition, and some friends pro- 
 cured him independence and leisure. To conclude, 
 he was early notorious and later famous, and if his 
 star paled a little before his death, we may believe 
 that he had confidence enough in himself not to per- 
 ceive it, or, at least, not to trouble himself about it. 
 
 His works — very numerous and sufficiently dis- 
 similar — present a certain difficulty to those who 
 try to class them according to the kinds to which 
 they belong. I think, however, that I am neglecting 
 nothing, and at the same time observing a natural 
 order, in making three classes : narrative poems, 
 lyrics, and sonnets. Wordsworth's predilection for the 
 sonnet, and the success wherewith he has cultivated 
 a kind which might seem somewhat artificial for a poet 
 of nature and of the fields, are things to be observed, 
 and important to take account of in the final estimate. 
 He has really excelled in it, and many of his sonnets 
 approach perfection. Although English literature is 
 singularly rich in poetical jewels of this kind, Words- 
 worth, to my taste, has in this respect rivals, but 
 no superiors. The piece on the sonnet itself, that 
 composed on Westminster Bridge, that addressed to 
 Milton, and half a hundred others (he wrote four 
 hundred), show that combination of ingenious turn 
 and victorious final touch which is the triumph of the 
 kind.
 
 * WOEDSWOETir AND MODERN POETRY 173 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, who loved the sonnet in his character 
 of ' reflective ' poet, and who loved Wordsworth for 
 that vein of poetry at once familiar and full of feeling, 
 which he would have liked himself to acclimatise in 
 France, translated or imitated several of our author's 
 sonnets. He returned to the practice at all times of 
 his life, inserting one or two in each of his collections. 
 Such a windfall is lucky for me, and I make the most 
 of it hy citing one of these free translations : ^ 
 
 Je ne suis pas de ceux pour qui les causeries, 
 Au coin du feu, riiiver, ont de grandes douceurs ; 
 Car j'ai pour tous voisins d'intrepides chasseurs, 
 Kevant de cliiens dresses, de meutes aguerries, 
 
 Et des fermiers causant jacheres et prairies, 
 Et le juge de paix avec ses vieilles soeurs, 
 Deux reveclies beautes parlant de ravisseurs, 
 Portraits comme on en voit sur ]es tapisseries. 
 
 Oh ! combien je prefers a ce caquet si vain, 
 Tout le soir, du silence, un silence sans fin ; 
 Etre assis sans penser, sans desir, sans memoire, 
 
 Et, seul, sur mes chenets, m'eclairant aux tisons, 
 Ecouter le vent battre, et gemir les cloisons, 
 Et le fagot flamber, et chanter la bouilloire. 
 
 We might also take from the ' Consolations ' the piece 
 beginning 
 
 Les passions, la guerre, una ame en frenesie. 
 
 ' [To re-translate this translation would, of course, defeat the 
 object of citing it. It represents, it need hardly be said, the famous 
 ' Personal Talk,' and the translation is ' free ' in more senses than 
 one. Neither the gratuitous introduction of and aspersion on the 
 ' deux reveches beautes,' nor the omission of the beautiful image of the 
 ' forms with chalk,' is the best possible instance of Sainte-Beuve's taste 
 as a translator. — Trans.]
 
 17i ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 But we must allow that the sonnets translated by 
 Sainte-BeuYB are chosen m a rather narrow circle of 
 subjects, and that the comparison brings out the 
 diflfcrence set between two poets, who in sincerity, and 
 even in depth of thought, approach each other, by the 
 want of that commanding plastic spirit with which 
 Sainte-Beuve, to his bitter regret, knew himself to be 
 insufficiently endowed. 
 
 Wordsworth's narrative poems include large com- 
 positions such as ' Peter Bell,' ' The Waggoner,' ' The 
 Prelude,' and, chief of all, ' The Excursion,' a long 
 story in several books, which is itself a fragment of a 
 still vaster whole, a kind of philosophical epic. To 
 the same class belong a great number of shorter tales, 
 idyls, eclogues, ballads, or mere anecdotes in verse, 
 among which are many of the author's most charac- 
 teristic and best known poems. 
 
 We must also draw a subdistinction among his 
 lyrics, Wordsworth's chief title to admiration. Our 
 poet wrote some odes of a character more classical and 
 (if I may venture to say so) more ambitious than seems 
 consistent w'ith his usual manner. They are, how- 
 ever, much and justly admired ; as, for instance, 
 * Laodamia,' the religious symphony on a Platonic 
 theme, and the ode to ' Duty.' The other lyrics, much 
 more numerous, are in kind purely subjective, and 
 disengage themselves in all sorts of forms— elegies, in- 
 spirations, invocations, memories, landscapes. There 
 is not an aspect of the country, not an object in the 
 fields or in the woods, which does not evoke enthusiasm 
 in this melodious soul. Wordsworth is as much 
 ravished at the sight of a buttercup or daisy beneath 
 his feet as at the rainbow on the horizon : and all his
 
 . WORDSWORTH AND MODERN POETRY 175 
 
 work is shot through ^Yith a deep note of meditation, 
 the comment of the sage on the teachings of life. 
 
 This work, as I have said, is considerable. There 
 are seven volmnes of his poems, many of which are 
 mediocre. But there are few poets who have left so 
 many precious pieces. And he has, besides, his own 
 incontestable originality. He created the class of the 
 childish ballad, the rustic pastoral, the idyl of the 
 poor : and he drew from the contemplation of Nature 
 tones of sweet and grave fervour, the secret of which 
 he kept. No poet puts the reader so thoroughly in 
 communion with Nature, because none has felt a more 
 religious love for her. 
 
 VI 
 
 I shall point out at once what is wanting and 
 what is faulty in Wordsworth, the qualities which he 
 lacks, and the imperfections which disfigure his poetry. 
 Let us begin with the qualities lacking. No one ac- 
 knowledges more fully than I do the injustice, not to 
 say the absurdity, of asking a man for something 
 else than he has chosen to give, or, worse still, re- 
 proaching him with not being somebody else, and not 
 what Nature has made him. Therefore, it is not as 
 a reproach, nor even as a regret, that I examine what 
 is wanting in Wordsworth ; it is merely to characterise 
 his genius better, to set his poetical physiognomy in 
 stronger relief. 
 
 To great troubles of mind he was a stranger, and 
 his nearest approaches to tender sentiment are the 
 pieces to the memory of tliat Lucy whom he has 
 himself described. As for political emotions, he had,
 
 176 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 like many others, hailed in the French Revolution the 
 (l;nvn of a new era for humanity. His sonnets bear 
 witness to his wrath against the conqueror who dis- 
 pelled his dreams, who put an end to the Venetian 
 Eepublic and the independence of Switzerland, and 
 who menaced England with invasion. There is 
 nothing in all this which goes beyond respectable 
 Liberalism and patriotism. 
 
 Let us then make up our minds not to expect 
 from "Wordsworth either that knowledge of the human 
 heart which is given by life in the world, or that 
 inner and dramatic working of passion which no 
 man describes well unless he has been its victim, or 
 those general views on history and society which are 
 formed partly by study, partly by experience in public 
 affairs. Our poet was as much a stranger to the 
 harassings of thought as to those of ambition, to 
 the pangs of love and of hatred as to the resignation 
 at which men arrive when they have seen how small 
 are the great things of this world. He has nothing 
 of the sublime melancholy, the ardent inquiry, the 
 audacious revolt in which the poetr}- of half a century 
 ago delighted. Still less has he the mocking scepti- 
 cism, the raillery now gay now bitter, which followed 
 the ' songs of despair.' He will never rank with those 
 who, like Byron, disturb the soul ; who, like Heine, arm 
 it with irony ; or who, like Goethe, calm it with the 
 virtues of knowledge. "Wordsworth is simply a hermit 
 who has studied nature much, and has constantly 
 analysed his own feelings. W^e could hardly call him 
 a philosopher ; his mind is too devoid of the element of 
 reasoning and speculation. Even the name of thinker 
 but half suits him : he is the contemplative man.
 
 • "WORDSWORTH AND MODERN POETRY 177 
 
 I have thus made a list of the quaUties which 
 Wordsworth has not, with all the less intention of 
 casting them up against him that the qualities which 
 a writer lacks are usually the conditions of those which 
 distinguish him. It is otherwise with the positive 
 defects which disfigure work, and in regard to which 
 it is equally impossible not to suppose that they could 
 have been avoided and not to wish that they had 
 been. 
 
 Mr. Arnold cites a remarkable expression of Words- 
 worth's. He remembers having heard him say that 
 Goethe's poetry does not possess the supreme cha- 
 racter of being ' inevitable.' By this Wordsworth 
 meant that poetry ought to have in it something 
 spontaneous, that one ought to feel in it sentiment 
 rather than reflection, the spurt from the inner fount 
 rather than will and design. The saying was admir- 
 ably just in relation to Goethe, whose ' Lieder,' perfect 
 as they are, and perhaps by reason of this very per- 
 fection, give us the effect of something crystallised. 
 It is learned, correct, brilliant ; the things, I grant, 
 are diamonds, but I see not in them the shapes 
 of life.^ Besides, the distinction which Wordsworth's 
 mot suggests is of very wide application. It does not 
 merely divide poets into two classes ; it serves to mark 
 off, even in the works of the same poet, many things 
 which must be scored to the account of deliberate 
 purpose, not to say of business. Our three great 
 contemporary French poets have all, though in dif- 
 ferent degrees, the note of inevitableness ; yet all is 
 far from being equally true in them. As for Words- 
 
 ' [And the Konig in TUulc ? and Frctulvull unci leidvoll ? and a 
 dozen others l—Trans-l 
 
 N
 
 178 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEHATURE 
 
 worth, he has by no means escaped the effect of his 
 own remark. 
 
 In this there is something strange enough. If ever 
 a "writer had a claim to be held sincere, it was this 
 man of genius, whose heart was at once austere and 
 simple. Yet, beyond all doubt, not everything in his 
 writings is genuine. Wordsworth gives himself cer- 
 tain airs ; he has manufactured a mannerism ; he 
 exaggerates what he feels ; he is too liberal of his own 
 fashions of thought and of speech ; he appears in a 
 guise which is certainly his own, but of which he has, 
 nevertheless, made up the outlines and studied the 
 expression. He is naif; but his naivete often looks 
 calculated. His enthusiasm for nature, however deep 
 and real it be, becomes now and then declamatory. 
 For instance, take the ode which I have mentioned, 
 and in which the author assumes with Plato that the 
 child brings into the world the memory of an anterior 
 existence. This piece, noble, magnificent as it is, has 
 always seemed to me to ring a little false. We can 
 hardly help seeing in it a thesis adopted with a con- 
 sciousness of the poetic developments of which it is 
 capable, rather than a serious belief of the author's. 
 I may say as much of his ecstasies over a fawn, of 
 his tenderness a projjos of a girl he has met in the 
 mountains : 
 
 Thee neither know I, nor thy peers, 
 And yet my eyes are filled with tears. 
 
 All W^ordsworth's faults have the same source, and 
 are of the same kind. He has an ideal of life, and 
 involuntarily adjusts his moral attitude to it ; he 
 has an ideal of art, and exaggerates the style he
 
 woudswohtii and modehn ioetry 179 
 
 admires. His habit of seeking and finding lessons in 
 the smallest incidents of his walks passes into didactic 
 mania. He draws morals from everything, delivers 
 sermons on every text he meets. Nor is this preach- 
 ing vein by any means always a poetical one. "We 
 seem sometimes to hear the psalmody of the con- 
 venticle : 
 
 Oh ! there is never sorrow of heart 
 That shall lack a timely end, 
 
 If but to God we turn and ask 
 Of Ilim to be our friend. 
 
 That is like one of Watts's hymns.' 
 
 The titles of Wordsworth's poems often bear a 
 trace of his moralising tendency. There is one called 
 ' Anecdote for Fathers, Showing how the Practice of 
 Lying may be Taught ; ' another — an admirable piece, 
 by the way — bears the stupid title, ' Influence of 
 Natural Objects in Calling forth and Strengthening the 
 Imagination in Boyhood and early Youth.' Words- 
 worth is not exactly lacking in wit ; he has sometimes 
 touches of gaiety and of acuteness, but he has no sense 
 of the ridiculous. 
 
 The contradiction which lies at the bottom of his 
 work is, that while he shows in it the truth and 
 spontaneity which befit a poet of nature, he is at the 
 same time conscious of his part. He has a system, 
 
 ' [And not very unlike these verses : 
 
 Sur cette terre on tu veux que j'habite, 
 mon Sauveur, mon Dieu, je suis a toi ; 
 Et dans le Ciel ou ta grace m'invite 
 
 Encore a toi, toujours a toi. 
 The author of which, M. Gr6ard tells us, was Edmond Schcrer. — 
 Tra7is.] 
 
 N 2
 
 IMO ESSAYS 0^ ENGLISH LltERATrRl! 
 
 and deliberately takes up the position of an apostle ; 
 his prefaces are filled with an ostentatious purpose of 
 bringing men's minds back to simplicity in subject 
 and language. He is the professor of a Poetic which 
 consists in discovering beauties in the commonest 
 objects of nature, lessons in the humblest beings, 
 and in clothing these subjects with a new interest, in 
 restoring them to the domain of art by dint of intense 
 observation and forcible expression. And it is certain 
 that Wordsworth, as far as he is concerned, has 
 actually realised this programme. But, unluckily, he 
 has not only reached his end, he has gone beyond it. 
 The simplicity of his subjects and of his manner too 
 often passes into triviality, the simplicity of his style 
 into poverty. He showers puerile anecdotes on us ; he 
 tells us stories of dogs, he narrates what a little girl 
 said to her sheep. He affects not merely an enthu- 
 siasm for flowers and birds, but a predilection for 
 beggars, idiots, and cripples. The lower a being is in 
 the scale, the more he labours to awake our sympathy 
 in its favour. There is no detail so minute, so insig- 
 nificant, that he does not delight in taking note of it. 
 If he tells of a summer walk, he must needs speak of 
 the cloud of insects which surround his face and 
 follow him as he advances. 
 
 It is easy to understand that, with all his efforts, 
 he does not always succeed in making such themes 
 poetical. Prose breaks in against his will. He has 
 passages where matter and form vie in commonplace, 
 as this on the career of a mauvais sujet : 
 
 His genius and bis moral fame 
 Were thus impaired, and he became 
 The slave of low desires ;
 
 WOEDSWOETII AND MODEEN POETBY 181 
 
 A man who, without self-control, 
 Would seek what the degraded soul 
 Unworthily admires. 
 
 What a pity to find verses like these (and they are 
 not rare in Wordsw^orth) in a great poet ! The 
 exaggeration and the affectation with which I reproach 
 him have, moreover, done him infinite harm. We are 
 able now to distinguish the lasting beauties of his 
 work from the parts of it where his system of view 
 has hurt the sincerity of his inspiration ; but for a 
 great many years he was chiefly famous by the 
 absurder sides of his pastorals, and by the parodies 
 to which they lent themselves. It happened to 
 Wordsworth in England as with us to the poet who 
 had already long since written the ' Nuits,' while men 
 still obstinately refused to see in him aught but the 
 author of the ' Ballade a la Lune.' 
 
 YII 
 
 Let us leave these imperfections and faults alone, 
 and seek nothing in Wordsworth but what, in sum, 
 he is — one of the poets who have best loved, felt, and 
 rendered Nature. Now there are many ways of loving 
 her. There is that of youth. The young man loves 
 Nature as a field open to the exercise of his energies. 
 To grasp the world, the great world, to succeed to the 
 inheritance of oneself in the consciousness of one's own 
 strength, is the highest delight at this tim-e of life. 
 And so country pleasures stand, then, in the ratio of 
 the play they offer to activity, of the excitement into 
 which they throw the animal spirits. ]{lxerciGcon foot,
 
 182 ESSAYS ON EXGLISn LITERATUEE 
 
 galloping a horse, hunting, swimming, are so many 
 joys into which sun, greenery, the tints of wood and 
 field, no douht enter to some extent, and contribute 
 to the intoxication of days of deHcious fatigue ; but 
 nevertheless they remain as but the background of 
 the picture. It is the opportunity of asserting him- 
 self that the young man seeks in Nature. When he 
 comes to the serious part of life, when he is absorbed 
 in his task, and in the struggle for existence which is 
 now carried on at such close quarters, man does not yet 
 necessarily lose his taste for Nature, but what he now 
 asks of her is repose. He loves her for the contrast 
 which she makes with the noisy town, with absorption in 
 material interests, with the meanness of rivalries, the 
 disturbance of passion. If only the soul is not world- 
 worn in the great game of hazard which each man 
 plays against society, there is no wandering in the 
 alleys of a great park, no sitting on the brink of a 
 quiet pond, or in sight of a vast champaign, without 
 the sudden feeling of a kind of refreshment. The 
 calm of things communicates itself to the spirit ; we 
 fall insensibly into unison with the universe which 
 cares so little for what agitates us so much. Universal 
 order brings us back to a juster sentiment of realit}'. 
 Over our obstinate preoccupations, our harassmg 
 regrets, our stubborn anxieties, our disgusts, our 
 jealousies, our hatreds, over all the workings of a 
 brain on fire, the contemplation of Nature drops an 
 appeasement which belongs to nothing else. As hap- 
 pened of old with the ]\Iaster's touch, there comes 
 forth from it a virtue which heals. 
 
 For the old man himself, or for him in similar 
 plight, the sick man w^hose days are numbered, Nature
 
 WORDSWOETII AND MODERN POETRY 183 
 
 still has her charm, a sadness of special savour, a 
 sweetness dashed with bitter : 
 
 Aux regards d'un niourant le soleil est si beau ! 
 
 There is a strange pathos in the contrast between 
 the imchangeableness of things and the feebleness of 
 the thinking being who contemplates them. There is 
 perceived at such times, in the aspects of the country, 
 as it were a bitter pleasure mingled with resignation 
 and disdain. A melancholy triumph is felt in the 
 inequality of the fight in which we are succumbing, 
 in the paradox of the defeat, in the simultaneous 
 superiority over what is lasting which is given us by 
 the consciousness of our own caducity. We taste 
 the strange and horrid joy of having gauged the 
 worth of life, and of feeling ourselves and the world 
 of thought and passion we carry in our breasts as 
 vain as the ripple which forms on the surface of the 
 lake, and vanishes with the same puff of air that 
 caused it. 
 
 Young men see in Nature an empire to be overrun ; 
 men of mature years seek in her a truce to inner 
 troubles; old men find in her a funereal consolation. 
 But the artist ? Is it not for herself that he loves 
 her ? Is it not on her alone that he lives ? Is he 
 not solely enamoured of her beauty ? Does he not 
 set his whole ambition in comprehending and express- 
 ing her, in feeling and translating her, in entering 
 into all her moods, seizing all her aspects, penetrating 
 all her secrets ? Who, if it be not the artist, can 
 flatter himself with being initiated in the mysteries of 
 the great Goddess ? 
 
 And yet it is not so. What the artist pursues is
 
 184 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 not SO much Nature as the effects to which she lends 
 hevself, as the picturesque, as art. If he throws him- 
 self at her feet, it is hut to hasten elsewhere and 
 hoast of the favours he has received. The artist is a 
 man who has the rare and fatal gift of doubling him- 
 self, of feeling with half his soul and employing the 
 other half in telling what he' feels ; a man who 
 has experienced emotion, but who has afterwards 
 slain it in his bosom in order the better to take it as 
 a model, and sketch it at his leisure in strokes which 
 are a transfiguration. 
 
 Is there not something of a similar kind in many 
 a religious conception of Nature ? Does not, for in- 
 stance, the theist also look at her from the outside, 
 as at an object which is exterior and foreign to 
 himself '? He thinks to exalt her dignity by making 
 her come from the hands of the Supreme Artificer, 
 and he does but strip her of her proper life. The 
 watchmaker is skilful, a wonder-worker, omnipotent ; 
 but the watch is, after all, only a masterpiece of 
 mechanism. Eeligious anthropomorphism carries 
 within it a contradiction which secretly gnaws it, a 
 soulless Universe and an unsubstantial God, a dead 
 Universe and a God of abstraction. 
 
 The sentiment of Nature in Wordsworth docs not 
 exactly resemble any of the kinds which I have de- 
 scribed. ' Wordsworth's poetry,' says Matthew Arnold, 
 ' is great because of the extraordinary power with 
 which Wordsworth feels the joy offered us in Nature, 
 the joy offered to us in the simple elementar}^ affec- 
 tions and duties, and because of the extraordinary 
 power with which, in case after case, he shows us this 
 joy and renders it so as to make us share it.' This
 
 WORDSWOETH AND MODERN POETRY 185 
 
 definition suits the Wordsworth of the pastorals ; it is 
 not enough to characterise the poet's highest inspira- 
 tions, those of the verses composed on the hanks of the 
 Wye, of the Platonic ode, or of the admirable piece 
 beginning 
 
 Wisdom and spirit of the Universe. 
 
 I should myself rather say that Wordsworth is the 
 poet who has most profoundly felt and most power- 
 fully expressed the commerce of the soul with Nature, 
 the dialogue of the human mind with the spirit of 
 things, the ' obstinate questionings ' of which he him- 
 self speaks, the vague disquietudes of a creature 
 moving in * worlds not realised,' the high instincts 
 which surprise ourselves. If the view of the humblest 
 flower at his feet softens his mood, it is because it 
 suggests to him 
 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 Wordsworth's love for Nature, then, is not that of 
 the man of culture who admires a landscape ; nor is 
 it that of the man of speculation who lets himself 
 float on the universal current. He brings to it some- 
 thing more intimate than the one, something more 
 personal than the other. True, Nature is for him the 
 great mystery, but she is a living mystery ; not an 
 abstraction or a concept, but a being, a soul. 
 
 The being that is in the clouds and air, 
 That is in the green leaves among the groves. 
 
 He never generalises her, never allows her to be 
 attenuated into a mere idea ; on the contrary, he 
 jndividuaHses her in every one of her manifestations,
 
 180 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 the ^Y00(1, the rock, the torrent. And he recognises 
 her sovereignty ; he interrogates her as an oracle ; 
 he gathers up her inspirations Hke the accents of a 
 higher wisdom. Science for him consists in endea- 
 vouring to decipher her enigmas, virtue and happi- 
 ness in placing oneself under her influence and setting 
 oneself at unison with her. I know no one but 
 Iiousseau and La^martine to compare with him in 
 point of this submissive and passionate adoration. 
 Onh', Eousseau introduces into it something morbid, 
 and Lamartine fully intends to get some fine melodious 
 verses out of it. Wordsworth, for his part, has a 
 healthy soul, and never listens to himself as he sings. 
 It is true that as a compensation Lamartine has more 
 tragedy of sentiment, and a greater sublimity of ex- 
 pression. He has an element of interior drama which 
 is wanting to Wordsworth. Lamartine is the greater 
 when, with finger raised to heaven, he bids us at- 
 tend to the voices from on high : 
 
 Adore ici le Dieu qu'adorait Pythagore, 
 Prete avec lui I'Dreille aux celestes concerts. 
 
 He is more pathetic when he retraces the vain revolts 
 of the Childe : 
 
 Triompbe, disait-il, immortelle nature ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 The whole of Wordsworth's life was spent in the 
 worship of Nature, and his works are nothing else 
 than the celebration of the mysteries of this religion. 
 He must not, therefore, be confused with the descrip-
 
 * WORDSWORTH AND MODERN POETRY 187 
 
 tive poets, even though his works abound in descrip- 
 tions, and though these descriptions are fine and often 
 picturesque. He had an observing eye ; he seizes the 
 aspect of objects, the distinctive character of things, 
 and he marks them off with precise and personal 
 strokes. In especial he has admirable sketches of his 
 own country — Westmoreland. All the same, we are, 
 with him, a hundred leagues away from the descriptive 
 school, -whether of the older or the newer variety. De- 
 scription in Wordsworth is not there for its own sake, 
 intended to show the artist's craftsmanship, but is 
 bound up with the impression which objects make upon 
 him as a man, with the emotions that they arouse, 
 the sentiments they inspire, the influence they exer- 
 cise. For Wordsworth, once more, does not love 
 Nature as a painter occupied with line and colour, 
 but as a devotee. He approaches her with a pious 
 intention ; his love for her is a charm with which he 
 saturates himself, a power to which he gives himself 
 up, a life which he aspires to live. 
 
 Wordsworth is a hermit who listens to the heavenly 
 voices. Instead of seeking an intellectual solution of 
 the great problem of the Universe, he trusts to the 
 intuitions opened by Nature, or, better still, to the 
 moral disposition she produces, the serenity she com- 
 municates, the harmony she sheds in the heart. The 
 intensity of the sentiments she arouses is an all- 
 sufficing revelation. Intimate emotion, secret ravish- 
 ment, silent enthusiasm, have need neither of proofs 
 nor of reasoning. We must also note that Words- 
 worth makes man fall back into Nature as one of the 
 elements of which she is composed. The peasant, the 
 mountaineer, the poor and their ways of life, form
 
 188 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 part of the total effect of the scenes he draws and the 
 feelings he evokes. They are, so to say, the figures 
 of his landscape, and are only there to play their part 
 in the general impression. Such is the meaning of 
 Wordsworth's narrative poetry. His rustic idyls set 
 before themselves not so much the interesting of the 
 reader in a scene as the acquainting him with the hidden 
 aspects of universal existence, with the manifestations 
 of wisdom and goodness, which make, in the poet's 
 eyes, the true meaning of the world. The unity of 
 his work lies in the tender interest which he takes in 
 everything that lives, from the shrub in the hedges 
 to the blind and the lame on the highways. As for 
 towns, he would fain ignore them. He holds them as 
 a jarring note which it is specially necessary to merge 
 and disperse in the general harmony of creation. 
 
 Wordsworth adored Nature from his youth up, and 
 he loves to recall the intoxication of his first impres- 
 sions, the joy which the rainbow made him feel, the 
 solemn beauty of the country in the midst of which 
 he and his companions disported themselves, the con- 
 trast between the noisy games and shouts of youth 
 re-echoed by the rocks, and the approaching silence of 
 the night : 
 
 While the distant hills 
 Into the tumult sent an alien sound, tic. 
 
 He described these emotions of childhood with still 
 more fondness in the admirable verses, composed in 
 1798, on the banks of the Wye. All the poet is in 
 this piece, where depth of sentiment has found perfect 
 expression, and which is almost sufficient when trans- 
 lated to give a knowledge of Wordsworth and of his
 
 • WORDSWOliTU AND MODEEN POETRY 189 
 
 genius. • Later, his love for Nature took a different, 
 but not a stronger, form ; and he deHghts in connect- 
 ing his present joys with those of his infancy, in 
 linking, as he says, his days each to each by natural 
 piety. If things had once a freshness and a splendour 
 which he feels no more, the glory of a dream which 
 vanished at the waking, they have in compensation 
 an attraction which was not known to youth. The 
 experience of life opens the heart to a kind of affection 
 for all created things, even to * the meanest flower 
 that blows.' - Thus Nature acts by secret but bene- 
 ficent sensations, by a physical calm which is always 
 ready to translate itself into universal benevolence. 
 Wordsworth owes to his rural reminiscences 
 
 In hours of weariness sensations sweet 
 
 Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart, &c. 
 
 That is fine, but I half think that I prefer the 
 hymn to the Spring which the poet addresses to his 
 sister, to bid her join him in a country excursion : 
 
 It is the first mild day of March, &c. 
 
 Such ideas are fundamental ones with Wordsworth. 
 Nature is holy and she sanctifies. She attuues the 
 soul to herself, and thus she heals, she consoles, she 
 elevates. She breathes indulgence and tenderness. 
 We have but to give ourselves up, ' in a wise passive- 
 ness,' to her influence, to approach her with a humble 
 and receptive heart, to regard her * with a superstitious 
 
 ' [The famous passage telling how ' the sounding cataract 
 Haunted me like a passion.' — Travis.] 
 
 2 [That from ' The Old Cumberland Beggar ' about the ' spirit 
 and pulse of good.'— Trans.]
 
 I'JO Essays on eNglisii literature 
 
 eye of love.' There is in the first book of the ' Excur- 
 sion ' a fine jDassage on the property, possessed by the 
 beauties of creation, of humanising man, by trans- 
 porting him into a cahner and loftier region, whither 
 comes neither dislike nor disdain, and where the only 
 form of blame is compassion. But I will rather cite 
 another as less didactic : 
 
 Nature never did betray 
 The heart that loved her, &c. 
 
 Yet the religion of Nature has still profounder secrets. 
 If she is wisdom and goodness, Nature is also under- 
 standing and revelation. She brings, besides soul- 
 health, knowledge ; a higher knowledge, a gnosis 
 which mere reasoning cannot reach. She helps us to 
 penetrate the laws of the Universe's being. It was 
 not often that Wordsworth permitted himself to hint 
 at these utmost heights of his thought, at 
 
 that blessed mood 
 In which the burthen of the mystery, &c. 
 
 A little farther, after recalling the emotions of child- 
 hood in the verses I have quoted above, he says : 
 
 I have learned 
 To look on nature not as in the hour, &c.^ 
 
 Here we have what is highest in Wordsworth's thought, 
 as well as sublimest in his poetry. 
 
 IX 
 
 I have still to speak of Wordsworth's poetical 
 expression. Not that, to my thinking, the diction of 
 
 ' [All these latter quotations are from The Wrjc—Trans.']
 
 . WOEDS WORTH AND MODERN fOETEY 191 
 
 a poet is separable from his thought ; it would be 
 more exact to say, on the other hand, that the one is 
 the soul of the other, and constitutes its personality. 
 Here, more than anywhere else, the boundary between 
 matter and form is a mere abstraction. Let rhyme 
 be the proof of this. English poetry admits blank 
 or unrhymed verse ; but the difference between the 
 poetry which is rhymed and the poetry which is not 
 is as far as possible from being a secondary one. I 
 would almost aflirm that it is a difference of kind, and 
 I do not want any other example of this than Words- 
 worth's own. 
 
 Eh^'me— and the same may be said of the stanza 
 or the strophe — is the natural expression of lyrical 
 inspiration. As often as there is in the poet's soul a 
 livelier movement or a more profound emotion he has 
 involuntary recourse to musical language, to assonance 
 and to cadence. * There is so much analogy,' says 
 Madame de Staul, ' between physical and moral 
 nature, that all the affections of the soul have an 
 inflection of voice which is proper to them — a melody 
 in words which is in accord with the meaning of the 
 words themselves.' Take away these melodic ele- 
 ments on the pretext that they are not essential to 
 the thought, and you will see that the thought itself 
 will have lost its characteristic quality. All Words- 
 worth's readers know his fine verses in honour of 
 Lord Clifford, the shepherd to whom a royal decree 
 in 1485 restored the titles and the rank of his 
 ancestors : 
 
 His daily tcacliers lia,tl been woods and rills, 
 Tlie silence that is in the starry sky. 
 The sleep that is among the lonely bills.
 
 102 ESSAYS ON ENTxLISlt LITEliATCRE 
 
 Why does the hteral translation ^ whicli I give of 
 these verses in no degree render their striking beauty? 
 No doubt because a translation always alters the 
 physiognomy of the original by making use of words 
 wliicli cannot possibly be the equivalents of those 
 which they replace ; but it is also because the trans- 
 lation at the same time tampers with the musical value 
 and relation of the words, because it preserves neither 
 rhythm nor rhyme, because the sonorous quality is 
 no longer there. This is so true that Wordsworth 
 himself could not have written the passage which I 
 just cited in blank verse. The effect would have been 
 completely different. A very curious thing is rhyme, 
 and very complex is the pleasure which it procures 
 us. Men do not like to acknowledge how great a part 
 is played in the arts by the mere fact of a conquered 
 difficulty. Yet it is the conquered difficulty which 
 produces the impression of surprise, and it is surprise 
 which produces interest. It is the unexpected which 
 gives the feeling of the writer's power. The expecta- 
 tion of the reader of poetry is perpetually kept on the 
 alert by the risks of the enterprise which he is 
 contemplating. He asks himself (unconsciously, of 
 course) at each verse how the author will manage to 
 give a good account of the phrase within the condi- 
 tions of the versification, to keep the natural line of the 
 discourse and the beauty of the thought, while at the 
 
 ' [In this case a literal retranslation of M. Scherer's ' literal trans- 
 lation ' seems suitable and indeed necessary. It runs thus : ' His 
 only masters had been the woods and the streams, the silence which 
 reigns in the starry skies, the sleep which reigns among the lonely 
 hills.' Of course, however, even this has not the full inequality to 
 which M. Scherer refers, because some of the ' musical values ' re- 
 appear in the English.]
 
 • 'Wordsworth and modern poetry IDS 
 
 same time observing certain despotic rules ; how lie 
 will keep up the supply of rhyme, full of beauty, 
 richness, and sonority, without sacrificing reason in 
 the slightest degree. If the poet wins this kind of 
 wager, if his verse still flows freely, if his turn of 
 words is happy and his imagery striking, if the 
 assonance ends the verse as though of its own accord, 
 without an effort, adding to the idea instead of sub- 
 tracting aught from it, why then the reader's pleasure 
 continually increases. His expectation, each moment 
 fulfilled and exceeded, becomes enthusiasm — an en- 
 thusiasm, we must boldly acknowledge, which is not 
 free from analogy with that excited by a tour deforce. 
 The difference is, that here an intellectual tour deforce 
 is in question, and that the joy experienced is, when 
 all is said, an intellectual emotion. The poet is not 
 merely an acrobat. Still the paradox is none the less 
 there ; and the sublimcst art, the profoundest emo- 
 tions, rest on conditions which, when analysed, seem 
 a little puerile. 
 
 All this leads me to draw a distinction between 
 the rhymed and the unrhymed poems of Wordsworth, 
 a distinction, moreover, coinciding with that which I 
 have already set up between his narrative and his 
 lyrical pieces, and especially between his long poems, 
 such as the 'Excursion ' and the ' Prelude,' and the 
 little pieces which are in all men's memory. Un- 
 questionably, the first are not as popular as the 
 second, and this has to do not merely with their 
 length. They are a little heavy, a little mono- 
 tonous, and, despite their incontestable beauties, it is 
 hard to read them without ennui. Something of this 
 same ennui has finally clung to the name of Words- 
 
 o
 
 194 ESSAYS ON EXGLLSII LITErxATUEE 
 
 worth, and has injured his glory. The fact is that 
 our poet, when he writes without the help or the 
 restraints of rhyme, is subject to a drawback which is 
 connected with his system, and, one might almost say, 
 with his genius. Blank verse, which is, when rightly 
 considered, only cadenced prose — which lacks what I 
 should call the dramatic interest of the poet's struggle 
 with rhyme — needs to be relieved by the greatest 
 intensity of thought and expression. The creative 
 power of the author must reinforce the poverty of the 
 instrument he uses. This is the case, for instance, 
 with Milton, whose imagination triumphs so victori- 
 ously both over the ungrateful character of his subject 
 and over the monotony inherent in the versification 
 he has chosen. As for Wordsworth, he cuts himself 
 off from this resource. He possesses, at a pinch, as 
 we have seen, sublimity of sentiment and of language ; 
 but it is onl}^ as an exception, and by a kind of infrac- 
 tion of his principles. For he has a theory, and, what 
 is more, is the head of a school. He undertook the 
 mission of rehabilitating simplicity, as well in tone as 
 in feeling. He renounced the artificial diction of the 
 classics, their antitheses, their abundance of epithet ; 
 attempting to make up for the nakedness of his form 
 by the charm of an absolutely sincere emotion, and 
 by the originality of an absolutely natural language. 
 Unluckily, his success is not invariable. His stories 
 of country incidents and his description of rustic 
 scenes did not always admit the beauties or the orna- 
 ments which might have relieved their monotony, and 
 the consequence is that Wordsworth's poetry, with 
 the tendency which it already had to the prosaic, 
 sometimes falls bodily into it, and that chiefly in the 
 unrhymed poems.
 
 WOIiDSWORTH AND MODERN POETEY 195 
 
 Having made this distinction between the work of 
 our author in his prosaic and in his poetical st^'le, we 
 can come to his poetic diction in the narrow sense of 
 the word. It is well known that in this respect there 
 are two schools among contemporary poets. The one 
 class has sincere and genuine feehng, which expresses 
 itself in a fashion appropriate, and consequently ori- 
 ginal. Poetry, with them, goes from within to with- 
 out, from thought to expression. With others, on the 
 contrary, the first business is not profundity of senti- 
 ment or truth of idea, but rather the picturesque 
 effect possible to extract from the subject. This is so 
 true that the latter class does not even recoil from 
 the vulgar or the ignoble, provided that they find in 
 either material for descriptive novelty. Poetry in 
 their work goes from without to within ; it is the 
 expression which has to give value to the thought. 
 I need hardly say that the first of these two manners 
 is Wordsworth's. His feeling is always genuine, and 
 his expression always subordinated to his idea. He 
 never sacrifices anything to the desire of showing his 
 skill. His affectations — for, as we have seen, he has 
 such — are in the other direction ; they come from the 
 desire of remaining simple and humble, not from the 
 wish to appear a clever craftsman. 
 
 I have just distinguished between legitimate art, 
 which only speaks because it has something to say, 
 and art become ostentatious, which says nothing 
 except to show how well it can speak. There is a 
 final distinction to draw, this time between desires 
 which are equally legitimate, between ancient or 
 classic art, which attaches itself to the beauty and 
 nobility of things, and so even indulges in abstraction 
 
 o 2
 
 lOG ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 of individual traits, and modern art, which, on the 
 other hand, dehghts in throwing up the particular 
 physiognomy, the characteristic feature, of the model 
 furnished to it by nature. There is this remarkable 
 thing about '\Vords^Yorth, that he unites the two 
 methods. His poetry is distinguished, and that to a 
 rare degree, by the interpenetration of the two ele- 
 ments which are mingled in different proportions 
 in the temperament of all true artists, the perception 
 of the personal and real life of things, and the sense 
 of the general signification which idealises them. 
 
 Such contradictions are proper to rich natures. 
 Wordsworth,- the prolific and discursive poet who 
 expands himself in slow and boundless strides, is the 
 same poet who condenses his thought in admirable 
 sonnets. We shall find the dreamer, who seems to 
 have no eye but for natural objects, able to define the 
 genius of a Burns or a Milton in a few' words of rare 
 felicity. The first verse of his magnificent sonnet 
 addressed to the author of ' Paradise Lost ' — 
 
 Thy soul was like a star and dwelt apart — 
 
 has always seemed to me admirable at once for exact- 
 ness and for majesty. There is something very 
 special in the delicacy of the characterisation joined 
 to the sublimity of the image. 
 
 Wordsworth is inexhaustible in passages which 
 depict now the scenes of nature, now the emotions to 
 which those scenes give rise. And the proof of the 
 fidelity with which he translates his feeling, the proof 
 that his fashion of speech has something indefinably 
 definite which forces itself on the reader, is that many 
 of his verses have passed into current and, so to
 
 • WOEDSWOETH AND MODEEN POETEY 197 
 
 speak, proverbial quotation. He is an attentive 
 observer, his emotion is sincere, and, finally, he has 
 the faculty of expression, the divine part of the art of 
 writing. And so there comes about in him the per- 
 fect fusion of the landscape, of the feeling inspired by 
 this landscape, and of the trait by which the whole is 
 expressed : 
 
 At length towards the cottage I returned 
 
 Fondly, and traced with interest more mild 
 
 That secret spirit of humanity 
 
 Which, 'mid the calm oblivious tendencies 
 
 Of Nature, 'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers, 
 
 And silent overgrowiugs still survived. 
 
 The Excursion. 
 
 Never has there been expressed as a whole, with such 
 puissant simplicity, and with plasticity so sovereign, 
 the whole gamut of sentiments which ature Nawakes, 
 from the thoughts 
 
 whose very sweetness yieldeth proof 
 That they were born for immortality, 
 
 to the inner ravishment, the secret enthusiasm, expe- 
 rienced by man 
 
 when wedded to this goodly universe 
 In love and holy passion. 
 
 I hope I have given some idea of Wordsworth's 
 merits. Taking him where he is pure and without 
 blemish — that is to say, somewhere halfway between 
 his deliberate simplicity, between his propensities of a 
 somewhat didactic kind, and between the lyrism, also 
 too conscious and slightly declamatory, of the great odes 
 — you find something of altogether superior f|uality.
 
 198 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 Wordsworth is a very great poet, and at the same 
 time one of those who lend themselves best to everyday 
 intercourse — a puissant and beneficent writer who 
 elevates us and makes us happy. We must not be 
 astonished if his renown has passed through vicis- 
 situdes of admiration and disdain, for his work is 
 certainly unequal. But we must also not be astonished 
 if, after these vicissitudes, he is in the way of taking 
 rank among the classics of his country ; for his beau- 
 ties are of those which time consecrates instead of 
 ageing them. I should not 'be surprised if the selec- 
 tion of his poems published by Mr. Matthew Arnold, 
 and the attention thus recalled to him, serve to fix 
 his place definitely in the heaven of British glories. 
 If Shakespeare, as I hold, remains absolutely and for 
 ever peerless, Wordsworth seems to me to come after 
 Milton ; decidedly, I think, below him, but still first 
 after him. He is of the stuff whereof the immortals 
 are made.
 
 199 
 
 X 
 
 THOMAS CABLYLE 
 
 Carlyle has written a great deal, and in very 
 different styles. There are some among his works 
 which belong to pure literature : and these are the 
 earliest in date, the ' Life of Schiller,' and the critical 
 articles which the author contributed to reviews and 
 collected later. Then come the great historical com- 
 positions on the 'French Eevolution,' on 'Cromwell, 
 and on ' Frederick the Great.' The fixed ideas which 
 are customary with the writer, and which appear in 
 all these works, found political and social application 
 in the volume on ' Chartism,' in ' Past and Present,' 
 and in the ' Latter-day Pamphlets.' As for the 
 director expression of Carlyle' s philosophy, we must 
 go to ' Heroes and Hero-worship ' for that, adding, if 
 we please, ' Sartor Piesartus,' which is a philosophical 
 sally, as well as a literary fantasy, and the ' Life of 
 John Sterling,' in which the author has put much of 
 himself. 
 
 Thus Carlyle touches on very different subjects, 
 and yet in hardly any writer is there more unity. 
 In every work I have mentioned there is the same 
 special manner of feeling and of expression. I am 
 very far from denying that this originality is sought 
 for, is deliberate both in matter and form. On the
 
 200 ESSAYS ON ENGLISn LITEEATURE 
 
 contrai'}', I shall have to insist on the feature of 
 parti j)/v's, which ^YC cannot fail to recognise in 
 Carlyle without deceiving ourselves. But the fact 
 remains, all the same, that the writer is a thinker, 
 and that his teaching has founded a school. As for 
 bringing his ideas under any precise formula, we must 
 not think of it. The very property of Carlyle's ideas 
 is to set at defiance definitions, distinctions, all the 
 logical and critical apparatus in use with common folk, 
 in order to take refuge in the regions of imagination 
 and sentiment. Carlyle is a mystic. The world 
 appears to him as clothed in obscurity and bristling 
 with problems. He can see nothing but abysses. 
 Nature, history, man, everything gives him matter 
 for wonder. His customary mental attitude is vene- 
 ration : and to adore is necessary to him. This 
 taste for the mysterious and the sublime lends itself 
 necessarily to exaggeration. Humanity is engaged 
 in a titanic struggle between good and evil. The 
 littlenesses of real life become a spectacle at once 
 grotesque and hateful. Modern society is abandoned 
 in the lump to platitude and lying. The nations 
 seek their welfare in constitutions, in balancings of 
 power, in parliamentary talk, in the devices of so- 
 called liberalism and so-called progress, while there 
 is nothing real and true in the way of government 
 but the supremacy of the strong man. The hero and 
 the hero's right — that is the sum of Carlyle's thought 
 of human things. He must have Mahomets, Crom- 
 wells, Fredericks, Napoleons, the men who force their 
 way because they are the genuine and direct products 
 of nature. It will be seen here what is the link 
 between Carlyle's theory of heroism and his general
 
 THOMAS CAELYLE 201 
 
 views of the ^YO^k^. The man destined by providence, 
 ^Yitll the superior gifts which marli him out for 
 sovereignty, is a natural reality set against social 
 fictions, and at the same time one of the mysterious 
 forces of the universe into the contemplation of which 
 our author loves to plunge. 
 
 If it is natural to refer Carlyle's work to the 
 thought by which it is inspired, it would be unjust 
 to the author to insinuate that the whole merit of 
 his books lies in the mystical preaching which we 
 have just described. There is in him, speaking of 
 him as a man of letters, an historian, and there is 
 also a satirist. The historian is remarkable for con- 
 scientious research, and for the lively manner in 
 which he seizes and renders the physiognomy of 
 events. His power is beyond dispute. Through all 
 his oddities there appears the gift of evoking the past, 
 of making it live, of making out of it a drama which 
 cannot be seen without emotion. The truth is that 
 Carlyle, in spite of his would-be philosophy, possesses 
 a talent which is essentially dramatic and picturesque. 
 In the midst of all his moralising sallies, of his habit 
 of denouncing, adjuring, and objurgating, we see that 
 his object in his histories was but to tell his story, and 
 to tell it so as to please. He is an artist, and has done 
 artist's work. His airs of grandeur and solemnity 
 are but part of his style as a painter. They are but 
 a refinement — I had almost said a set-off or seasoning. 
 
 In two or three of his works Carlyle is a historian ; 
 he is a satirist in all. His idealist prepossessions, as 
 I showed just now, peep through everywhere, in the 
 shape of perpetual and bitter denunciation flung on the 
 men and the things of our time, He is inexhaustible
 
 202 ESSAYS ox ENTiLISII LITERATURE 
 
 in denouncing the lack of manliness and sincerity, 
 the meanness and the slavishness, of the world which 
 surrounds him. There is a word which is always recur- 
 ring from his pen, as summing up the character of the 
 age — the word ' sham,' an untranslatable expression, 
 but one which designates at once false appearances,' 
 vain pretensions, lying conventions, and social hypo- 
 crisies. Carlyle has taken up a mission ; he is a 
 prophet, the prophet of sincerity. This sincerity or 
 earnestness he would have ajiplied everywhere ; he 
 makes it the law, the healthy and holy law, of art, of 
 morals, of politics. The exaltation of force into some- 
 thing divine, whereof we spoke above, is nothing but 
 a result of the need which the writer feels of going 
 back in every case to the first and natural conditions. 
 What is there, as a fact, more real than power ? What 
 more certain than that action which makes itself felt 
 whether we will or no — than the personal authority, 
 it may be of the man of genius, it may be of the 
 sword ? 
 
 Carlyle, however, never understood or tried to 
 understand his time. He is like women and children 
 who know no other form of expressing judgment 
 except ' I like it 'or '1 hate it.' He is hurt in his 
 sympathies (which are secret, and what is more very 
 narrow), and he avenges himself by wrath or ridicule. 
 Carlyle, who has been put forward as a sage, is the very 
 reverse of one. * What is the good,' as a witty woman 
 once said, ' of losing your temper with things in gene- 
 ral, when you know that it produces not the sHghtest 
 effect on them ? ' But Carlyle does not feel the in- 
 evitableness of the general transformation which we 
 are witnessing, of that raising of the social level which
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE 203 
 
 indeed implies the lowering of the heights, which sends 
 mediocrity to the surface, which hands over the world 
 and the government of the world to everybody — that 
 is to say, to somebody ignorant enough and vulgar 
 enough — but which after all has the one pretty suffi- 
 cient justification that it is fated. Let us grant that 
 great art is no longer possible ; that literature is con- 
 demned to decadence ; that the time for fine things, 
 things distinguished, exquisite things, is past beyond 
 recall ; that the guidance of society henceforward be- 
 longs to heads so coarse and to minds so uncultivated 
 that oiu' traditional sentiments feel a sort of conster- 
 nation. Let us admit that we are on the way to an 
 equality at once quite rational and hopelessly un- 
 interesting. No doubt this is disagreeable enough to 
 the man whose roots, in virtue of his early education, 
 dive down to a different civilisation. But is it not a 
 little childish to celebrate the obsequies of the past so 
 noisily ? The wheel of history has crushed many a 
 past before. 
 
 One of the numerous minor services which the 
 Hegelian philosophy has done is to have suppressed the 
 distinction between matter and form. Every matter has 
 its special form, and every form supposes its appropri- 
 ate matter. But the two things have never been in more 
 obvious relation than in the case of Carlyle's thought 
 and his style. I am unable when I read him to get rid of 
 the idea that he has a settled attitude — to put it more 
 bluntly, an affectation. There is something histrionic 
 in his incessant declamation against the cant of the 
 age. His vast mystical views on the unknown that 
 wraps us round, and the universe which lies beyond 
 our sight, on the reverential spirit in which we must
 
 204 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 contemplate the problems of existence, have to me (I 
 hope his devotees ^Yill pardon me ! ) an air of posing. 
 If it is not the result of reflection and calculation, it 
 at least looks like it. Now it is exactly the same with 
 the style in which these thoughts are rendered. It is 
 a dialect which the writer has fashioned on purpose, 
 and not without knowing what he was about. For he 
 owed a great part of his success to it. Carlyle's 
 vocabulary is made up of long compounds in the 
 German style, of unusual forms, of comparatives and 
 superlatives of his own invention. He rejoices in odd 
 phrases, m recurring epithets, in nicknames, in catch- 
 words. His phraseology is broken and hammered 
 out ; it has been said to resemble repousse metal-work. 
 He makes it, of set purpose, unmusical, unbalanced, 
 with sharp turns, with weak endings or mere lapses. 
 Add to this exclamations, interrogations, apostrophes 
 to the characters, to the reader, to heaven and earth, 
 to things in general. It is impossible to convey an 
 idea of the way in which our author abuses the words 
 God, Infinite, Eternit}^ Profundity. It is true that he 
 freshens them up by putting them in the plural, and 
 saying * the Immensities,' ' the Silences,' ' the Eternal 
 Veracities.' 
 
 Needless to say that this jumbled part of prophet 
 and btffojn, with its laborious eccentricities, produces 
 the effect less of conviction and of something natural 
 than of a craving for attracting attention ; not to 
 mention that this view has historical justification. 
 Carlyle did not originally write in the manner of which 
 I have just spoken. His ' Life of Schiller ' is ordinary 
 English. If his first articles of literary criticism in 
 1S27 and the years following, perhaps, let us guess
 
 Thomas carlyle 205 
 
 what is coming, they are still not sharply parted off 
 from common speech. * Sartor Resartus,' which is 
 nearly of the same date, already affects oddity, hut it 
 may he said that there it was dictated hy the suhject. 
 At any rate, from that time forward the author takes 
 increasing delight in a manner which has the douhle 
 advantage of heing easier than simplicity and of 
 tempting the curiosity of the puhlic. As we follow him, 
 we can see him giving himself up more and more to the 
 style which he has created. His ' French Eevolution,' 
 published in 1837, is entirely cast in this mould. 
 Unluckily it is the nature of mannerism to fix and 
 stereotype itself always more and more, and it is 
 not too much to say that Carlyle' s diction ended by 
 becoming gibberish. 
 
 Aless direct, but very curious, proof of the part which 
 we must acknowledge that purpose played in forming 
 Carlyle's manner is an article which he contributed in 
 1 827 to the 'Edinburgh Eeview ' on Jean Paul Friedrich 
 Eichter. The article begins by a long and remark- 
 able characterisation of the writer's genius ; but the 
 odd thing is that one would swear Carlyle himself had 
 sat for the portrait. I regret that space does not allow 
 me to translate these pages. There is not a line which 
 would not apply to the English author — nay, there 
 is not a line in which he has not the air of having 
 tried to paint himself, or at least has not betrayed the 
 figure which he was ambitious of making in the world 
 of letters. The influence of Carlyle's mannerism has 
 been considerable. He has given birth to a whole 
 generation of writers, disdainful of that manliness of 
 style which consists in saying things worth saying in the 
 best way possible, and set above all on the refinements
 
 20(j ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 of the virtuoso or even the tricks of the charlatan. 
 Some great talents in England have been ruined in 
 this deplorable school. Mr. Euskin ended like Carlyle 
 himself by passing from the recherche to the bizarre, 
 and from affectation to mere mystifying. Yet there 
 are still some who feel themselves strong enough to be 
 sincere and simple, and they are worth all the more 
 for it. Mr. Matthew Arnold has, I should think, as 
 many ideas in his head as Carlyle, and as much poetry 
 in his soul as Mr. Euskin, and yet he does not think 
 himself obliged to speak like a mystagogue. 
 
 The philosophical influence of Carlyle has not 
 been less than his literary influence, and it has been 
 wholesomer. His name will remain in the history of 
 English thought. He gave check to the supremacy 
 of the commonplace. Just as, for all the faults of his 
 style, he is an artist at bottom ; so, despite the too 
 great pretentiousness of his formulas, there is in him, 
 if not a philosopher, at least a ' midwife of minds.' ' 
 He introduced thought to more than one of those 
 truths which are lost under logical apparatus or hid- 
 den by social conventions. His declamations against 
 jargon, pretension, and charlatanism may be tainted 
 themselves with charlatanism and jargon. But all 
 the same they helped to put sincerity back in the place 
 of honour. 
 
 To sum up, if I had to characterise the moral and 
 intellectual influence exercised by Carlyle, I should 
 say that he seems to me to have, above all things, 
 
 ' [Socrates's well-known descrijjtion of himself. It looks awk- 
 warl in English, and despite the m-ath of precisians, I think the ad- 
 jective maicutic justifiable and even necessary. But, as M. Scherer 
 renders it literally, so do I. — Tra7is.]
 
 THOMAS CAELYLE 207 
 
 helped to loosen the fetters of positive creed in -which 
 thought was imprisoned among his countrymen. 
 Carlyle was a mystic, and mysticism here, as else- 
 where, discharged the function which helongs to it in 
 the chain of systems: to wit, that of dissolving dogma 
 under pretence of spiritualising it, of shattering faith 
 under pretence of enlarging it. When men heard 
 Carlyle speak so much of divinity and eternity, of 
 mystery and adoration, they hailed him as the 
 preacher of a religion higher and wider than current 
 belief. In vain did orthodoxy, more keen-sighted, 
 point out the negations which lay hid under the 
 writer's formulas. It is so pleasant to free oneself 
 without appearing to break too sharply with conse- 
 crated words and institutions ! Since then specula- 
 lation has made much way in England. The universal 
 mysteries of our author have been exchanged for exact 
 research, precise definitions, rigorous ascertainments. 
 I do not know whether Carlyle was aware of it, but 
 he lived long enough to see his influence exhausted, 
 his teaching out of date. It is true that, as consola- 
 tion, he could take himself to witness that he had 
 served as the transition between the past and the 
 present, and that this is in the long run the best 
 glory to which a thinker can pretend here below. 
 
 February 1881.
 
 208 ESSAYS ON ENGLISll LltERATtRE 
 
 XI 
 
 ' ENDYMION ' 
 
 • " Endymion," by the author of " Lothair." ' "VVliy 
 of ' Lothair ' ? I can understand \\hj Lord Beacons- 
 field did not choose to sign his novel either by the name 
 of Disraeli, which he does not now bear, or by the 
 newer name which he has not yet made illustrious 
 in letters. But I ask myself what made him prefer 
 ' Lothair ' among the memories of his literary career. 
 It would have been more natural to put his latest 
 work under the patronage of * Vivian Grey,' his 
 earliest, or that of ' Coningsby,' the prototype of the 
 political novels wherein the author has made a style 
 of his own. Unless, indeed, Lord Beaconsfield desired 
 to point out a nearer relationship, a special resemblance 
 of kind, between 'Lothair' and 'Endymion' — are- 
 semblance which is, I grant, striking, but which is 
 not exactly a recommendation for the newcomer. 
 
 Indeed, everything in the title-page of this novel 
 is a riddle. The name given to the chief jjersonage 
 makes it impossible to help looking for a symbolic 
 sense in it, and yet nobody has yet been able to dis- 
 cover an analogy between the career of Mr. Endymion 
 Ferrers and the love passages in the cave of Latmos. 
 The choice of the particular name is, then, a whim on 
 the author's part, and a whim which looks like a trap
 
 ' ENDYMION ' 209 
 
 for the reader. Nor is the motto of the l)ook more appro- 
 priate. ' Quidquid agunt homines ' seems to promise 
 a great composition in which all ranks were to mingle, 
 all careers to cross, all the greatness and all the 
 meanness, all the public efforts, the private intrigues, 
 the diverse passions of which the human tragi-comedy 
 is composed, to blend. The whole work of Balzac or of 
 Dickens would not be too much to justify the quotation 
 with which Lord Beaconsfield has adorned his novel's 
 forefront. And yet even these great connoisseurs in 
 reality have left many a gap in their galleries of society. 
 As for ' Endymion,' it is simply a picture of political life 
 in England — indeed only one corner of such a picture. 
 Now, however great a place politics may hold in the 
 life of nations, they are yet but one scene in the 
 social drama, but a single episode in the medley of 
 ambition and interests. 
 
 Since I am in the way of noting the weak sides of 
 Lord Beaconsfield's book, I will at once point out 
 another fault. A novel, when well done, is a biography. 
 You are present at the development of a principal 
 character which the revolutions of the story serve to 
 set in relief, which by turns dominates and submits to 
 the course of things, and round which the other per- 
 sonages group themselves in order to contribute their 
 contingent to that destiny the history of which is 
 presented to interest us. Art, in this kind of writing, 
 consists in putting as much diversity as is compatible 
 with biographical unity in the devising of the facts 
 and the tracing of the characters. The more varied 
 and interesting the details are in themselves — thus 
 showing the author's inventive resources and his 
 'exactness of observation— the more noteworthy tlie
 
 210 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 ^YOl•lv will be ; but on one condition only, that these 
 details shall be subordinate to the main end, which is, 
 I repeat, the dramatic setting forth of a masterful 
 personality. Now, the author of ' Endymion ' has 
 neglected these conditions of his art. His hero is a 
 rather insipid bundle of talents and virtues, the 
 commonplace spoilt-child of a marvellous fortune. 
 We are told what happens to him, but he is not made 
 to live before us, nor is he shown to us acting upon 
 others, counting for something in the direction of 
 events. He has no power, he has not even a special 
 physiognomy of his own. Endymion is nothing in 
 the story but a thread somehow or other connecting 
 together incidents w^iich are themselves without any 
 great romantic consequence, and personages whose 
 traits are not more marked than his own. 
 
 ' Endj'mion ' belongs to the class of historical 
 novels, and to a sub-variety of this class, that of the 
 historico-political novel. It is clear that the attraction 
 of this kind of fiction becomes lively enough when 
 the work is written by a man who has himself played 
 a great part, and when the events he tells of and 
 the personages he introduces are contemporary. Such 
 is the case in * Endymion,' the action of which passes 
 between the death of Canning and the Crimean war ; 
 and in the pages of which we meet Sir Eobert Peel, 
 Lord Palmerston, and Napoleon the Third. On the 
 other hand, the class has a drawback — the personages 
 are too near us for it to be permissible to keep their 
 names, or even to put them on the stage, in a strictly 
 historical manner. It is clearly impossible to make 
 dead men like Lord Melbourne and Mr. Cobdeu, still 
 more living men like Prince Bismarck and Cardinal
 
 'ENDYMION' 211 
 
 Manning, act and talk with the freedom which Walter 
 Scott used in regard to Louis XL, to Mary Stuart, 
 and to Charles 11. The novelist is obliged to weaken 
 their personality, to modify their character, to dis- 
 figure their physiognomy — in a word, to falsify the 
 history which frames the novel. Lord Beaconsfield 
 has got himself out of his difficulty by mingling traits, 
 confusing characters, creating personages who are at 
 once real and fictitious, historical and imaginary, who 
 escape the reader at the moment when he thinks he 
 recognises them, and only excite his curiosity to baffle 
 it immediately afterwards. The pretender who after- 
 guards became Emperor of the French is here a 
 handsome man, of a good figure, and witty. He mar- 
 ries the widow of an English peer, and recovers his 
 dominions by a triumphant expedition. It is difficult 
 to imagine how irritating this trick becomes in the 
 long run. 
 
 A man's talent — an orator's, for instance — is not 
 always in the exact ratio of his personal value ; and 
 in the same way the interest excited by a book may 
 be out of proportion to its intrinsic merit. Lord 
 Beaconsfield's new novel is an instance of this. As a 
 novel it is hardly distinguished from the run of those 
 which the English press turns out every year. It 
 permits itself to be, rather than insists on being, read. 
 It amuses the reader without enthralling him. And 
 yet it has been in everybody's hand, and for the 
 moment has been the theme of everybody's talk. 
 People were anxious to see the present state of the 
 talent and the opinions of a man who has for so long 
 a time both held the political stage and plied the pen 
 of the novelist. They were curious once more to meet
 
 212 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 this puzzling personage on whose score public opinion 
 has not yet made itself up. I venture to think that 
 it is Lord Beaconsfield's personality ^Yhich gives the 
 interest to his books, and even to his policy. One 
 cannot help, in the absorption of so remarkable a 
 physiognomy, putting aside the question what both 
 are really worth. With Lord Beaconsfield everything 
 is in keeping ; the novelist is part of the man, and 
 the Prime Minister of the novelist. I can never read 
 his books or see him at work on the world's stage 
 without recalling the Mr. Disraeli of fifty years ago, 
 as a contemporary depicts him, dressed in velvet and 
 satin, his wrists encircled by ruffles, his hair cunningly 
 curled, his fingers loaded with rings, an ivory cane in 
 his hand : with all the exterior of a dandy — a dandy 
 of genius ; a bundle of contradictions, ambition allied 
 to scepticism, determination hiding itself under sallies 
 and paradoxes. So much for his person : his life has 
 followed suit. A foreigner, a Jew, he raised himself 
 from an attorney's office to the peerage of England, 
 and the headship of his country's government. The 
 character of his policy — full of theatrical strokes, of 
 new departures, whimsical or bold as the case may be — 
 is well known. Li everything that he has done, you 
 feel the Oriental's taste for the brilliant, the adven- 
 turer's taste for the turns of Fortune's wheel, the 
 parvenu's taste for pomp. But it is in his writings 
 more than anywhere else that he shows himself as he is : 
 because Lord Beaconsfield is at bottom an artist first 
 of all. His old dandyism was already literary ; and 
 his modern policy is still romantic. * Endymion ' is 
 in this respect really characteristic. The chief per- 
 sonages are all parvenus or adventurers — the hero
 
 'ENDYMION' 213 
 
 (to begin with him), as well as his sister, Ferroll 
 as well as Florestan, Nigel Penrucldock the future 
 cardinal as well as Imogene the future duchess. Job 
 Thornberry the manufacturer as well as Vigo the tailor. 
 And what is most remarkable of all is that these ad- 
 venturous lives seem to have, at the bottom of them, 
 the love not so much of power as of the pomp that 
 surrounds it. In ' Endymion,' as in ' Lothair,' the 
 author takes pleasure in nothing so much as in the 
 splendour of the life of Society : he rubs shoulders 
 with none but ministers and ambassadors, dukes and 
 duchesses ; he dreams only of princely establishments, 
 enchanted castles, magnificent horses, gold plate, 
 sparkling crystal, porcelain beyond price. At every 
 line one sees the Jew and the rings on his fingers. 
 The talent of Lord Beaconsfield is, if I may use the 
 expression, all on the street frontage. Do not ask 
 him for heartfelt descriptions of nature, for profound 
 analysis of motives, even for dramatic play of passion. 
 Do not look in his books for any sincerity, any expe- 
 rience, any startling view, any philosophy of any 
 kind. Be content with finding a certain vivacious 
 wit, a kind of brio and * go,' thanks to which the 
 reader gets to the end of the three volumes without 
 too much trouble. If the metal has not the resonance 
 that one might wish for, we are obliged to confess 
 that the tinsel is prettily worked, and does not fail to 
 produce a certain effect of dazzling. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield has velleities of creation, rather 
 than the faculty of it. We see that at the outset 
 of his novel he meant to sketch the epoch at which 
 the story begins, the England of the first half of this 
 century, in the infancy of railways, when Grosvcnor
 
 '21-1 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 Square was not even lighted by gas, and when the 
 development of manufactures had not yet raised up, 
 in the persons of the new rich men, a political influence 
 rivalling that of the aristocracy. But it is all told 
 rather than shown. "What a difference, for instance, 
 is there between this kind of statistical information 
 and the description of England at exactly the same 
 time by which George Eliot's ' Felix Holt ' opens. She, 
 by patient study and by force of imagination, has 
 evoked the past in a far more lively manner than 
 the author of ' Endymion,' though he had the ad- 
 vantage of personal acquaintance with the times 
 concerned. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield is hardly more happy in the 
 drawing of character. His personages lack originality, 
 they are wanting in the real ; they leave on us the kind 
 of impression which we receive in passing through a 
 drawing-room. "We elbow men in full dress, we notice 
 women richly costumed, we catch as we pass a few 
 words on the events of the day ; but we leave without 
 having learnt anything of the world through which 
 we have brushed. The men and women are strangers 
 yet for us. We have been the audience at a play, and 
 that is all. A more remarkable thing still is that Lord 
 Beaconslield's characters are not even very witty.^ I 
 must except some sallies of Waldershare's, some amus- 
 ing political paradoxes put in the mouth of a certain 
 Bertie Trcmaine. But the dialogue lacks the vivacity 
 
 ' [It is odd that M. Scherer should have missed in the opening a 
 phrase of political wit worthy of the most brilliant of his own 
 countrymen. I remember that in reviewing it ' the transient and 
 embarrassed phantom of Lord Goderich ' put me in good humour 
 for the whole book. — Trans.]
 
 ' ENDYMtON ' 215 
 
 which we might have expected from a writer whose 
 pubHc speech is notable for its mordancy. And what 
 happens when we get to sentimental scenes '? There 
 is a declaration in which the lover thus expresses him- 
 self : * All seasons of the year would be a delight to 
 me if I were only at your side. No ; I can no longer 
 refrain from avowing my love. I am here only because 
 I love you. I left Oxford and all its glories to have 
 the happiness of your society now and then. My 
 thoughts were not presumptuous — I thought this would 
 suffice me. But I can no longer resist the prodigious 
 charm, and I offer you my heart and my life.' Elsewhere 
 a lady, speaking of herself, says, ' My pride, my intense 
 pride, has never allowed me any slip of the heart.' 
 
 The most interesting thing, as I have said, in the 
 book is the author himself. It is always piquant to 
 surprise the secrets of a man who has become part of 
 history ; and is not the publication of a book, espe- 
 cially of a novel, a fashion of surrendering oneself ? 
 The hero comes down from his pedestal, the orator 
 from his tribune, and gives us the chance of catching 
 him in the act, of taking his measure as best we 
 can. Lord Beaconsfield could not write a political 
 novel without betraying himself somewhere, without 
 letting escape some of those words in which a career 
 is summed up and inner feelings are revealed. Endy- 
 mion says somewhere, * Whether it is a question of 
 temperament or the result of the vicissitudes of my 
 life, I have a great power of waiting.' He numbers 
 among the advantages of wealth to a politician that it 
 * gives him time to breathe and to expect.' Else- 
 where, again, we read that never a State perished 
 for lack of money, ' nor a private man either, if he
 
 210 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 had pluck.' Do we not seem to hear Mr. Disraeli 
 spealdng of his yout|i ? But he will grow up, he will 
 become a statesman, and we shall recognise him hy 
 other strokes. It is will that has made him what he 
 is, and so he believes in will above everything. ' Any 
 man in the world can succeed in doing what he has 
 a mind to, if onlj he makes up his mind to it.' On the 
 other hand, we find a profound distrust of sentiment. 
 * Sentiment without an object is sickness or drunken- 
 ness.' He has enemies, but what then ? ' I can't 
 help it, everybody is hated by somebody.' Besides, he 
 loves fighting, and he sometimes thinks that, if he has 
 found 60 much pleasure in ministerial life, ' it is that it 
 has been a constant fight for life.' Certain reflections, 
 even if they do not admit such personal explanation, 
 nevertheless exhibit the experience acquired in the prac- 
 tice of public affairs. Such is the remark that judgment 
 of character is the capital element in the management 
 of men and things. Nor is exact information less im- 
 portant. ' As a general rule the man who succeeds 
 best in life is he who has the best information.' 
 ' You will see that there is nothing more important in 
 pubhc life,' says the Count of FerroU, ' than to know 
 personally all those who direct the affairs of this world. 
 Everything depends on the character of the individual, 
 his ways of thought, his prejudices, his superstitions, 
 his little foibles, his health. Politics without this 
 advantage is a mere matter of stationery ; pens and 
 paper are in communication, not human beings.' 
 
 If there is not exactly great novelty or depth in 
 these sallies, they are certainly not without neatness. 
 Sometimes, too, the pomt is whetted sharper : ' All 
 men of intelligence are of the same religion,' says "\Yal-
 
 ' ENDYMION ' 217 
 
 dershare. * And what is that religion ? ' asked the Prince. 
 * Men of intelligence never tell.' ^ 
 
 Mr. Gladstone would not have permitted himself 
 a gibe of this kind ; but what a difference there is in 
 everything between these two rivals, what a contrast 
 in their characters, in their political careers, in their 
 writings ! Mr. Gladstone's nature is essentially moral ; 
 the categories to which he refers all things are those 
 of good and evil. And his extreme seriousness, 
 though it excludes extravagance, does not exclude 
 enthusiasm. Mr. Gladstone brings the fervour of 
 faith into every cause that he espouses. He is also 
 essentially a believer ; he has the noble sides of the 
 character — its sincerity, its straightforwardness, its 
 ardour. He has also its defects ; his gravity lacks 
 humour, his solidity becomes stiffness, his intelligence 
 —gifted as it is with the most varied aptitudes, served 
 by prodigious activity and capacity for work, able to 
 descend from the general direction of an empire to the 
 technical details of a bill or the complicated schedules 
 of a budget — his intelligence has more breadth than 
 suppleness. His reasonings are abstract because he 
 occupies himself rather with principles than with 
 facts ; his judgments absolute because he takes every 
 truth at the same valuation — that of an article of 
 religion. This explains his tendency, daily more pro- 
 nounced, towards Eadical ideas, Eadicalism being 
 nothing but the application of the absolute to politics. 
 Unluckily politics are the most relative things in the 
 world, so that Eadicalism is good for nothing but to 
 
 ' [It is very curious that M. Scherer should not have known that 
 this is a borrowed jest, familiar long before the days of Endijviion, 
 and usually fathered on Chesterfield. — Trans.]
 
 218 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUHE 
 
 bring about revolutions, and in ordinary times runs 
 a perpetual risk of letting institutions get ahead of 
 moral and social conditions. In his books Mr, 
 Gladstone shows himself the same man as in public 
 affairs. His solidity and sincerity are here translated 
 into conscientiousness of study and exactitude of erudi- 
 tion ; but the lack of suppleness and of delicacy betrays 
 itself at the same time by his weakness in criticism. 
 Mr. Gladstone, in his craving for ready-made theses, 
 carries his submission of spirit into the study of 
 Homer as into the study of the Bible. He has no 
 more doubts about Homer and the siege of Troy than 
 about Moses and the passage of the Eed Sea. He 
 even delights in combining the two things in a single 
 belief, in making Homeric mythology an echo of 
 Christian revelation. Mr. Gladstone, rightly taken, is 
 a survival of scholasticism. He still belongs to those 
 ages of human thought when intellectual strength 
 applied itself to data furnished by tradition, when 
 men discussed tenets ad infinitum without dreaming 
 of examining their value, when the most keenly 
 whetted subtlety kept on good terms with a super- 
 stitious respect for authority. 
 
 Take in every respect the exact opposite to Mr. 
 Gladstone's character, and you will have the character 
 of Lord Beaconsiield. The latter 's bottom is scepticism. 
 He believes in success and that nothing succeeds like it, 
 and he is consequently inclined not to pr}^ too narrowly 
 into the ethics of the means of succeeding. His worth 
 is less than his rival's, but his savoirfaire is greater. He 
 is less austere but more genial ; he has less substance, 
 l)ut more man-of-the-worldliness. Very inferior to Mr. 
 Gladstone in studying the details of a matter, he is
 
 ' ENDYMION ' 219 
 
 not so in courage when a resolution has to be taken, 
 especially when there is something adventurous about 
 this resolution. I should not venture to call Lord 
 Beaconsfield the cleverer of the two in the knowledge 
 and the handling of men ; for if Mr. Gladstone makes 
 the mistake of believing them all as sincere and as 
 impassioned as he is himself, Lord Beaconsfield de- 
 ceives himself equally in supposing them to be his 
 equals in freedom from prejudice. Sceptic as he is, 
 and as I have called him, he is too prone to consult 
 men's foibles rather than their virtues. Li the same 
 way, instead of going to the bottom of things, he 
 contents himself with appearances and with the 
 surface. Why, indeed, resolve problems, search 
 questions out, if you can reach the end with a 
 trumpet-blast or two and a co»j; de theatre ? The 
 doubter becomes a manager willingly enough, and 
 the manager easily has a dash of the charlatan. We 
 saw in the history of the Berlin Congress, and in all 
 the foreign policy of the late Cabinet, that Lord 
 Beaconsfield thinks he has done enough if he has 
 appealed to the imagination. I may add that he is 
 just the same in his books : he shows in them as a 
 writer brilliant, amusing, but superficial ; he rouses the 
 -curiosity of the public for a foxtnight, but he has 
 not started a single profound sentiment or a single 
 new idea. His last novel leaves the impression of 
 talent which would be promising in a young man, but 
 which in a veteran of literature denotes, on the con- 
 trary, the saddening close of a career that has been, 
 on the whole, a failure. 
 
 Such are the two men who in turn attract the 
 attention of the literary public by their writings and
 
 2-20 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 that of Europe by their policy. To complete their 
 portraits I ought to be able to add a more precise 
 characterisation of the eloquence of the two orators 
 than it would beseem a foreigner to attempt. I have 
 no doubt that there, too, one would again discover 
 traces of the fundamental qualities I have pointed 
 out : in Mr. Gladstone a mixture of subtle dialectic 
 and passionate conviction ; in Lord Beaconsfield the 
 sarcasm which floors an adversary, and so saves the 
 trouble of refuting him, the smart saying which 
 sounds like an idea, the cleverness of a party chief 
 more busied about success than about truth. I ought, 
 too, to complete the parallel, to consider the two 
 antagonists as statesmen in their actual administration 
 of their country. But it is the event which decides 
 here — one cannot speak in full assurance till facts have 
 definitely jn'onounced. All that I may say is that 
 Lord Beaconsfield is to Lord Chatham pretty much 
 what Mr. Gladstone is to Pitt, and the ancient 
 European role of England to the dwarfed and 
 uncertain policy which now satisfies that country's 
 ambition.^ 
 
 December 1880. 
 
 ' [This is an odd antithesis, and I find it rather difficult to work 
 out its parts ; but it is as M. Scherer wrote it.— Trans.]
 
 221 
 
 XII 
 
 GEOBGE ELIOT 
 
 The name of George Eliot might serve as a measure 
 of the distance which separates France from England. 
 The fact that there is an English author whose Jife 
 has heen published in three volumes, and that this 
 voluminous biography has been greedily read by all 
 Englishmen, discussed and commented on by all their 
 newspapers, distracting their attention from painful 
 political preoccupations ; and the other fact that the 
 very name of this writer, whom our neighbours regard 
 with so much admiration, is hardly known among 
 ourselves, and arouses neither memory nor interest 
 ■ — are not these things great matter for wonder ? 
 And this wonder might even turn to vexation and 
 incredulity if we were to add that this George Eliot, 
 so utterly ignored in France, was one of the finest 
 geniuses of our time, and that for the woman wdio 
 adopted this pseudonym was reserved the honour of 
 writing the most perfect novels as yet known. 
 
 Thus the life of George Eliot which Mr. Cross has 
 just published, was a real event to our neighbours. 
 But did it satisfy the expectation which it had 
 aroused ? Does it merit the interest with which it 
 was received '? I hardly know what to answer. If I 
 myself set about the reading with a curiosity too
 
 222 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUKE 
 
 greedy to find anything tedious in it, it has certainly, 
 on the whole, left on me the impression that in these 
 three volumes we must look rather for the materials of 
 a book still to he written than for the book itself. The 
 reasons lie in tlie plan follo^Yed by Mr. Cross — a new 
 plan, but no doubt the onl}' one which is seemly in the 
 case of a husband who is sketching the life of his 
 wife. Except a very few explanatory passages, the 
 work is entirely composed of letters, written by George 
 Eliot to her friends, and of fragments of a private 
 journal in which she kept a record of incidents and 
 of thoughts. From these manuscripts the editor has 
 extracted the passages which seemed to him of such 
 a nature as to be fitly set before the public eye. And 
 as a fact these passages constitute a continuous his- 
 tory — the history of a very fine talent and a very 
 beautiful soul. 
 
 We must then understand that this is neither a 
 biography in the ordinary sense of the word — that is 
 to say, the complete relation of an existence ; nor a 
 correspondence such as we possess many, and some 
 of them precious — that is to say, letters printed as 
 they were written and revealing the strong and weak 
 sides of a character alike. Mr. Cross confines him- 
 self to letting the letters speak, and he takes good 
 care not to give these letters themselves as wholes. 
 Indeed, he warns us that he takes from them nothing 
 that does not suit his plan, and we may be sure 
 beforehand that he has not let slip any of those in- 
 voluntary revelations, of those blessed indiscretions, 
 which rejoice the reader and edify the psj'chologist. 
 Yet from this we must certainly not conclude that 
 Mr. Cross, despite his own reticences and those which
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 223 
 
 he has imposed on George Eliot, has published any- 
 thing but a book of the highest value. How could it 
 be otherwise when George Eliot holds the pen and 
 speaks to us of herself ? 
 
 Mary Ann Evans was born in 1819. Her father, 
 a carpenter by trade, but of education superior to 
 his class, had made his way little by little and had 
 become the agent of a man of large property in 
 Warwickshire. He lived in the country, with an 
 establishment at once easy and rustic, in a part of 
 England which is not excessively picturesque. Mary 
 Ann had a brother three years older than herself, with 
 whom she played, and for whom she felt the affection 
 and the deference which she afterwards described in 
 some charming sonnets. We cannot help recognising 
 in this passionate submissiveness the need of affection 
 and of support which always distinguished George 
 Eliot, and which explains more than one incident of 
 her life. From the day when Isaac had a horse, his 
 sister could no longer follow him across country ; 
 besides, the time had come to send her to school. 
 She carried thither delicate health, a timid disj)osi- 
 tion, a vivacious intelligence, a passion for reading, 
 a taste for taking trouble, and the gift of making 
 herself beloved. She found in return certain religious 
 influences to which she abandoned herself with the 
 eagerness of a nature at once affectionate and idealist. 
 Mary Ann became a model of piety, and later when 
 she had left school a model of good works — starting 
 jjrayer-meetings, working for the poor, visiting the 
 sick. Her biographer has preserved for us a certain 
 number of letters of this period of faith and fervour, 
 and he has done well precisely because of their
 
 224 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 insignificance — I had all but said of their platitudinous- 
 ness. It is not more interesting to see the girl occupied 
 in the spiritual combats wherein the soul forms itself, 
 pushingher conscientiousness to the point of scruple and 
 her sense of duty to the point of asceticism, than it is 
 curious to hear her talking that conventional language 
 of Protestant piety which a witty lady once called 
 ' the patois of Canaan.' There is not a touch of genius 
 to be met with in these pages of devout exhortations — 
 not even, I am bound to say, an accent of personal 
 emotion. Here and there, on the other hand, are 
 symptoms which, in the eyes of an enlightened spiritual 
 director, would probably have justified fears as to the 
 lasting of this fine devotional ardour. Mary Ann 
 reads too much and too many kinds of things. She 
 has already learnt French, German, and Italian, and 
 she reads in all these languages — prose and verse, 
 books of science and books of fiction. She is 
 ambitious and pained at the thought that she will 
 never do anything of moment. Her mother is dead, 
 and she has succeeded her in the cares of housekeep- 
 ing; she acquits herself brilliantly therein, but her 
 thoughts are at work while she is cooking or sewing, 
 and many questions begin to present themselves to 
 her mind. Worst of all, she brings to the considera- 
 tion of these questions a perfect sincerity and a crav- 
 ing for complete satisfaction ; whence it happens that 
 doubts often occur to her. Let us add that her nature 
 is a rich, a mobile, and a complex one, and that by 
 lending itself in turn to every aspect of things it is 
 preparing her for the vexatious discovery that our 
 knowledge is relative. Let her meet on her way some 
 outspoken passage, and in such dispositions it is im-
 
 GEOEGE ELIOT 225 
 
 possible to foresee how far her straightforwardness 
 will lead her. What is certain, on the other hand, is 
 that this beautiful soul will never rise up in offensive 
 rebellion against the beliefs of her youth ; that while 
 not affecting, as some do, to regret the faith she no 
 longer possesses, and while feeling the happiness 
 of being henceforward at unity with herself, she 
 will preserve a certain tenderness for the memory 
 of old struggles, of simple enthusiasm. George 
 Eliot is an example of the religious sentiment as 
 well as of a tender conscience surviving a theo- 
 logical shipwreck as complete as it is possible to 
 imagine. 
 
 ' All creatures about to moult, or to cast off an old 
 skin, or enter on any new metamorphosis, have sickly 
 feelings. It was so with me. But now I am set free 
 from the irritating worn-out integument. I am 
 entering on a new period of my life, which makes me 
 look back on the past as something incredibly poor 
 and contemptible. I am enjoying repose, strength 
 and ardour in a greater degree than I have ever 
 known, and yet I never felt my own insignificance 
 and imperfection so completely.' Here there is 
 nothing but the joy of the deliverance ; soon, I repeat, 
 she will show herself more tender towards her past. 
 
 Mary Ann had been helped in * casting her skin ' 
 not only by the books which had fallen into her hands, 
 but by the acquaintance she had made with some 
 freethinkers of both sexes in the town of Coventry, 
 near which her father had retired. These consisted 
 of a Mr. Bray, a ribbon manufacturer and a phreno- 
 logist, of his brother-in-law, Charles Hennell, the 
 author of 'Enquiries into the Origin of Cbristianity,'
 
 '22G ESSAYS ox ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 aiul of the wives and sisters of these gentlemen, who 
 all united honourable sentiments to a boldness of 
 view- then pretty rare in England. Miss Evans spent 
 eight years of happiness in the society of these friends. 
 She found in it what she so ardently desired — study 
 in common, discussions which clear up and whet 
 thought, and the satisfaction of that feminine craving 
 for intimate intercourse which characterised a nature 
 in other respects so virile, and which she recognised 
 by comparing herself to the ivy. To balance this 
 there was friction at home. Her old father — Tory in 
 politics and orthodox in religion — was horrified to see 
 his favourite daughter going astray. He became 
 seriously angry when, in a first fit of heretical 
 fervour, she left off going to church. There was a 
 temporary rupture which Mary Ann contrived to heal 
 by force of affectionate assiduity, yet without sur- 
 rendering her liberty. I cannot help asking myself 
 w^hat the excellent old man must have thought when 
 he learnt that his daughter was translating Strauss's 
 ' Life of Jesus.' This was her literary debut. She took 
 two years over it, and acquitted herself of the task to 
 the satisfaction of the author ; but, though in under- 
 taking the work she had obeyed her conviction that 
 no kind of test ought to be shirked, she was still far 
 from accepting all the critic's judgments. * It is all 
 very well,' says she, * when I think Strauss right ; 
 but I think he is often wrong — wdiich is indeed in- 
 evitable when a man insists on following up a general 
 idea in detail and making a complete theory of what 
 is only one element of truth.' To the very end of the 
 task the translator remained thus divided between the 
 attraction of an author whom she found ' so clear
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 227 
 
 and so full of ideas ' and her dislike of the pitiless 
 dissection which attacked the most beautiful legends, 
 the most sacred memories. One of her friends tells 
 how, when she came to the history of the Crucifixion, 
 the young woman could only console herself for the 
 want of sympathy in the treatment by looking at 
 an ivory crucifix which hung over her desk. The 
 story is slightly doubtful, but may be regarded as 
 symbolising a life in which intellectual honesty 
 of the strictest kind never shut out religious sensi- 
 bility. 
 
 The following passages will show at once the depth 
 of the impression which certain readings made on 
 Mary Ann's mind and the freedom of spirit with 
 which she judged the writers who had moved her 
 most. One of them appears to confirm an anecdote 
 which I read two or three years ago in a volume of 
 reminiscences on Emerson. He, during his visit 
 to England in 1848, had met Miss Evans at Coventry, 
 and had been struck by her conversation. ' She has,' 
 he said, ' a calm and serious mind.' When he one 
 day asked her suddenly what was the book she liked 
 best, Mary Ann replied, without hesitation, Eousseau's 
 * Confessions.' Emerson could not hide his surprise, 
 for it was the same with him. In his case we can 
 understand it, but a woman — almost a girl ? Mr. 
 Cross's volumes supply the explanation which I con- 
 fess I had thought was wanted. 
 
 I wish you thoroughly to understand that the writers 
 who have most profoundly influenced me — who have rolled 
 away the waters from their bed, raised new mountains and 
 spread delicious valleys for nie — are not in the least 
 oracles to me. It is just possible that I may not embrace 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 one of their opinions — that I may wish my Hfe to be 
 shaped quite differently from theirs. For instance, it 
 would signify nothing to me if a very wise person were to 
 stun me with proofs that Rousseau's views of life, religion, 
 and government are miserably erroneous — that he was 
 guilty of some of the worst bassesses that have degraded 
 civilised man. I might admit all this : and it would be 
 not the less true that Rousseau's genius has sent that 
 electric thrill through my intellectual and moral frame 
 which has awakened me to new perceptions — which 
 has made man and nature a fresh world of thought and 
 feeling to me ; and this not by teaching me any new belief. 
 It is simply that the rushing mighty wind of his inspiration 
 has so quickened my faculties, that I have been able to 
 shape more definitely for myself ideas which had previously 
 dwelt as dim Ahnungen in my soul ; the fire of his genius 
 has so fused together old thoughts and prejudices, that I 
 have been ready to make new combinations. 
 
 Miss Evans's judgment of the author of the 
 ' Lettres d'un Voyageur,' of ' Lelia,' and of ' Jacques ' 
 is not less remarkable. She had just read the last- 
 named novel. 
 
 I should never dream of going to her writings as a 
 moral code or text-book. I don't care whether I agree 
 with her about marriage or not — whether I think the 
 design of her plot correct, or that she had no precise 
 design at all, but began to write as the spirit moved her, 
 and trusted to Providence for the catastrophe, which I 
 think the more probable case. It is sufficient for me, as a 
 reason for bowing before her in eternal gratitude to that 
 ' great power of God manifested in her,' that I cannot read 
 six pages of hers without feeling that it is given to her to 
 delineate human passion and its results and (I must say, in 
 spile of ycur judgment) some of the moral instincts and
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 229 
 
 their tendencies, with such truthfulness, such nicety of dis- 
 crimination, such tragic power, and withal, such loving, 
 gentle humour, that one might live a century with nothing 
 but one's own dull faculties, and not know so much as 
 those six pages will suggest. 
 
 The same letter in which we read the apology of 
 ' Jacques ' and of the ' Confessions ' ends by an ex- 
 pression of the happiness Mary Ann feels in possessing 
 the ' Imitation.' She has just bought it in Latin, with 
 old and characteristic woodcuts. ' One breathes,' she 
 says, * a cool air as of cloisters in the book ; it makes 
 one long to be a saint for a few months. Verily its 
 piety has its foundations in the depths of the divine 
 human soul.' 
 
 We should not have a complete idea of the work- 
 ings of Miss Evans's mind — a mind at once virile 
 and feminine — about this age of twenty-eight, when 
 she was translating ' Strauss,' reading ' Lelia,' and 
 being charmed with the ' Imitation,' if we did not 
 take account of her enthusiasm for the French 
 Kevolution of 1848. She is very amusing about it. 
 We are ' the great nation.' Away with those who 
 cannot recognise what is noble and splendid without 
 making reserves and insinuating doubts ! She would 
 willingly have given a year of her life to see the men 
 of the barricades uncovering before the image of the 
 Christ who first taught the world fraternity. The 
 actions of Lamartine are worthy of a poet. In 
 Louis Blanc Miss Evans reveres the man who 
 wrote that sublime phrase, * the inequality of talents 
 should result, not in the inequality of rewards, but in 
 the inequality of duties.' And Albert * the workman.' 
 What a pity one cannot procure his portrait ! As for
 
 2o0 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 Louis Philippe, it will be time to pity him when there 
 are no longer famished and ignorant millions on 
 the earth. As for England, there is no hope of her 
 having her revolution in her turn ; troops in that 
 country do not fraternise with citizens. 
 
 Three months pass ; the days of June have come ; 
 and the sweet enthusiast can only sigh, * Paris ! poor 
 Paris ! Alas ! alas ! ' We are not likely to be wrong 
 in thinking that the lesson was not lost on a nature 
 in which reason trod very hard on the heels of 
 impulse. Politics, indeed, have hardly any place in 
 Mary Ann's letters. She took no interest in the 
 play of the parliamentary machine, none in the strife 
 of parties. Charlatanism and violence, the weapons 
 of this strife, were repugnant to her. Her thoughts 
 shot beyond them to the great social revolutions 
 which her optimism could not help expecting. But 
 even in this respect she had learnt to count less on 
 the disorderly movements of the multitude than on 
 slow moral reforms, on the advance of characters in 
 seriousness and of souls in sympathy. 
 
 Miss Evans lost her father in the month of May 
 1849, after an illness in which she had nursed him 
 with the most entire devotion. She found herself, at 
 the age of thirt}^, her own mistress, but homeless and 
 obliged to work for her living, for a small annuity of 
 about a hundred a year which came to her could 
 hardly have sufficed her wants. She did not, how- 
 ever, at once make up her mind to anything ; and 
 either to give herself time for reflection, or to re- 
 establish her health which had been much shaken 
 and always remained delicate, or perhaps from the 
 necessity of economising, she went to pass the
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 231 
 
 following summer and winter at Geneva. There she 
 boarded with a family of simple manners and culti- 
 vated minds, where she found the calm of which she 
 had need. ' I have become,' she wrote, ' passionately 
 attached to the mountains, to the lake, to the streets 
 of the town, even to my room, and above all to my 
 dear hosts. . . . Everything here is so thoroughly 
 in harmony with my moral state that I might almost 
 say I have never felt more completely at home.' She 
 wants nothing except a little more money, so as not 
 to need to be niggardly in fires, for the winter this 
 year is unusually cold. And she adds : ' I cannot 
 think without trembling of returning to England. 
 It is to me the country of sadness, of boredom, of 
 commonplace. It is true that it is also the country 
 of my duty and of my affections. The only ardent 
 desire I feel about the future is to find some feminine 
 task to discharge, some possibility of devoting myself 
 to some one, and making them purely and calmly 
 happy.' Observe this craving for an existence to 
 share and to make happy. Still no project is as yet 
 formed. Miss Evans rests ;' that is to say, she rests 
 after her own fashion ; takes a dose of mathematics 
 every day ; ' to prevent the l}rain from softening,' 
 attends De la Rive's course of experimental physics, 
 reads Voltaire. She hesitates about resuming a 
 translation of Spinoza which she had begun during 
 her father's illness, and which she finished later : she 
 feels clearly enough that such books are untranslat- 
 able. ' Those who read Spinoza in his own text 
 find in his style the same kind of interest which is 
 found in the conversation of a person of vast intelli- 
 gence who has lived alone, and who expresses, drawing
 
 2:V2 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 it from the bottom of bi:^ heart, what others repeat 
 by rote.' 
 
 When she returned from Switzerland Miss Evans 
 passed several months ^Yith her friends at Eosehill, near 
 Coventry, staying from time to time in London, and 
 at last, it would seem, occupied in earnest at finding a 
 career for herself. It was now that she wrote her 
 first article for the ' Westminster Eeview,' a periodi- 
 cal which, after having been the representative of 
 Bentham and of utilitarianism, was in the way to become 
 more especially the organ of Positivism. Miss Evans's 
 article, which had for its text a book of intellectual 
 progress, was characteristic, for although it held up the 
 vanity of the efforts made to retain the beliefs and the 
 institutions of the past, it recognised the fact that these 
 forms were once living, that they presented symbols 
 which were appropriate to a certain period of develop- 
 ment, and that they still remain fast bound to what- 
 soever is best in men. At Eosehill, too. Miss Evans 
 made the acquaintance of the freethinking publisher 
 Chapman, who was just about to buy the ' Westminster 
 Eeview,' to renew its editorial staff, and to endeavour 
 to increase its influence. He wanted an editor, or 
 perhaps I should say a sub-editor, for this business, 
 and he easily convinced himself that Mary Ann was 
 just what he wanted. His offers were accepted — 
 indeed, she went to board in his family — and for two 
 years (1852 and 1853) she exercised the functions — 
 unusual for a woman — of directress of an important 
 periodical armed at all points of philosophy and 
 sociology, and possessing considerable ability, but at 
 once heavy and brilliant, doctrinaire and revolutionary, 
 aggi-essive and starched.
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 233 
 
 Miss Evans had a good deal to do as editress-in- 
 chief. She corrected the proofs, sometimes Uterahy 
 from morn to eve. Her tahle groaned under the 
 weight of accumulating books. She was specially 
 entrusted with the notices of new books, which still 
 form one of the most interesting parts of the ' West- 
 minster,' but which inflicted on our poor directress 
 huge and hasty reading. ' I have done nothing since 
 Monday,' she writes, ' and now I must work, work, work.' 
 She did not contribute to Mr. Chapman's ' Eeview ' 
 more than some ten substantive critical articles, and 
 with one exception they all date from later years, when 
 she was freed from the heavy work of proof revision 
 and correspondence. The exception I have mentioned 
 has other and special claims to interest, inasmuch as 
 the article treats of lady novelists. Naturally George 
 Sand holds the first place in it. ' No man comes near 
 her for elegance and depth of sentiment.' And of her 
 style : ' The ideas shine through the diction as light 
 through an alabaster vase. Such is the rhythmical 
 melody of her phrase that Beethoven, one would fain 
 believe, would have written so if he had expressed in 
 words the musical passion which possessed him.' We 
 know from Mr. Cross's volumes that Miss Evans was 
 more struck by the faults than by the beauties of 
 ' Jane Eyre,' and the article of which we speak con- 
 firms the impression, but the Germans come off worst 
 — ' the palm of bad novel writing belongs to them.' 
 
 The Chapmans' house was the meeting-place, not 
 merely of the staff of the 'Westminster,' of the 
 disciples of the Positivist school and of freethinkers, 
 but generally speaking of the new literary generation 
 on its way to notoriety. All sorts of society were
 
 234 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEKATURE 
 
 received there, and soirees were given. Mary Ann 
 sometimes regretted the country and would have hked 
 to go to recruit by the sea side. ' But do not think,' 
 she says, ' that I do not enjoy my stay here. I hke to 
 see new faces, and I am afraid after this the country 
 might seem a httle monotonous.' She made many 
 acquaintances — Carlyle, Miss Martineau, Grote, Mill, 
 Huxley, Mazzini, Louis Blanc. She once received a 
 two hours' call from Pierre Leroux, w'ho had come to 
 London with his wife and children on a errand of 
 lecturing to keep off starvation. The talk was amus- 
 ing. ' He set before me all his ideas. He belongs 
 neither to the school of Proudhon, who represents no- 
 thmg but liberty ; nor to that of Louis Blanc, who re- 
 presents only equality ; nor to that of Cabot, who re- 
 presents fraternity. The system of Pierre Leroux is 
 a synthesis of the three principles. He has found the 
 bridge which is to unite self-love to the love of our 
 neighbour. As for the origin of Christianity, he thinks 
 Strauss insufficient because he has not succeeded in 
 showing the identity of the teaching of Jesas with that 
 of the Essenes. This is Leroux's pet notion. Essenism 
 leads him to Egypt, Egypt to Lidia, the cradle of all 
 religions, &c. All this was delivered with amusing 
 unction. He had already come to London once, when 
 he was twenty-five, in search of work as a printer. 
 Everybody was then in mourning for the Princess 
 Charlotte. ' And I,' he cried, * happened to have an 
 apple- green coat ! ' 
 
 Among the friends whom Miss Evans made in 
 London there were two men who exercised a profound 
 influence — the one on her thought, the other on her 
 life. Herbert Spencer met her at the Chapmans' and
 
 GEOEGE ELIOT 235 
 
 at once became a friend of hers. He was about her 
 age ; he had just pubHshed his first great work on 
 Social Statics. He had noticed the superiority of 
 Mary Ann's intelhgence, while she on her side dehghted 
 in intercourse with a man of so much learning and of 
 undoubted speculative faculty. In the very abstract 
 regions where they met the two thinkers had no need 
 of paying a too servile respect to convention. ' We 
 agreed that there was no reason why we should not 
 see each other as often as we liked,' writes Miss Evans. 
 * He is kind, he is delightful, and I always feel better 
 after being with him.' And in another letter, also of 
 1852 : ' The bright side of my life, after my affection 
 for my old friends, is the new and delightfully calm 
 friendship which I have found in Herbert Spencer. 
 We see each other every day, and in everything we 
 enjoy a delightful comradeship. If it were not for 
 him my life would be singularly arid.' A few months 
 later Spencer had not become less dear, but another 
 affection had been born of this one, and was about to 
 take a far greater place in Mary Ann's destiny. She 
 had already met George Lewes more than once in 
 literary society, when Spencer brought him to see her 
 one day in the winter of 1851. The acquaintance for 
 a long time went no farther ; the two met with pleasure, 
 with interest, but nothing more. ' We had a pleasant 
 evening on Wednesday,' says Mary Ann at the end of 
 March 1853. ' Lewes was as original and as amusing 
 as ever.' And a fortnight later : ' Everybody here is 
 very kind to me. Mr. Lewes in particular is amiable 
 and attentive, and has quite won me over, though at 
 first I was strongly prejudiced against him. He is one 
 of the small number of persons in this world who are
 
 236 ESSAYS ox ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 imu'h better than they seem. He is a man of heart 
 and conscience under a mask of coxcombry and 
 facondc ' ' (the Enghsh word ' flippancy ' is untrans- 
 latable) . As from prejudice she went to esteem, so 
 she did from acquaintance to intimacy. Lewes was 
 editor of a journal called the ' Leader.' But he was 
 lazy and Miss Evans corrected his proofs for him, or 
 he was ill and took a holiday when she acted as his 
 substitute and worked double tides. True, her plea- 
 sures disappeared with him ; and once when he had 
 gone to recruit in the country ' no more operas and no 
 more amusement for a month to come,' cries she. 
 * Luckily I have no time to regret him.' Soon, other 
 indications are added. She cancels her engagements 
 with Chapman, she speaks of travelling on the Con- 
 tinent. Li short the reader is only half surprised 
 when in July 1854 he finds her starting for Weimar 
 w^ith Lewes, after announcing to her friends that she 
 considers herself, and wishes to be thenceforth con- 
 sidered, as his wife. 
 
 II 
 
 We are now at the critical point of George Eliot's life, 
 at a crisis the immediate effect of which was to throw 
 her into an equivocal position and almost to make her 
 a dcdassee, but which was at the same time not with- 
 out effect on her ha^Dpiness and her literary career, 
 inasmuch as it gave her a home life and a judicious 
 adviser. The astonishment into which this step of hers 
 
 ' [Faconde, deserves almost the same description as ' flippancy.' 
 But I should have thought it the equivalent, not so much of this 
 latter, as of 'glibness,' 'gift of the g&h:— Trans.]
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 237 
 
 threw those who had not of late years followed her 
 career closely was boundless, and this astonishment 
 survives in a sort for us at the present day. It would 
 seem that few men were less suited than Lewes to 
 captivate such a woman as Mary Ann. If his age was 
 fairly matched with hers (he was two years older) his 
 exterior was anything but attractive —unkempt hair 
 and beard, his whole person neglected, and the air, if 
 not exactly of a Bohemian, certainly of anything but a 
 gentleman. Gifted with great curiosity of mind and 
 with much facility, Lewes had learnt everything and 
 tried every craft ; he had written novels, biogra- 
 phies, philosophical works, a play. He had been a 
 journalist, a lecturer, even an actor. The only thing 
 that he did not know how to do, said somebody, was 
 to paint, and it would not have taken him more than 
 a week to learn that. Thackeray asserted that he 
 should not be surprised if he saw Lewes in Piccadilly 
 astride on a white elephant. With this he had 
 inexhaustible conversation, great store of fact and 
 anecdote, a knowledge alike how to please and how to 
 amuse, a good stock of gaiety despite his bad health, 
 of probity despite his vagabond life, and to crown all 
 good humour and that evenness of disposition which 
 excuses so many faults. A singular contrast, on the 
 whole, with a timid and reserved woman eminently 
 serious and inspired with a particular aversion for 
 that literary species which is called the amateur ! 
 
 But there was in the marriage^ of which we speak 
 something more surprising than the heterogeneousness 
 of the characters : there was the fact that Lewes was 
 
 ' [On the words ' marriage,' ' husband,' ' Mrs. Lewes ' &c, see note 
 ante, p. ii').— Trans,]
 
 238 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 already married, that his wife was still alive, that he 
 could offer Miss Evans nothing better than a left- 
 handed union, and that she was about to change her 
 name only to usurp that which belonged to another. 
 Let us add, to cap the climax of strangeness, that 
 Miss Evans, in contracting this union with Lewes, 
 does not seem to have yielded to any irresistible at- 
 traction. She was, it would seem, if not a stranger 
 to all passion, at least too much under the control of 
 reason and of reasoning to be capable of a coup de 
 tete ; besides, she as well as Lewes was of mature 
 years. "We must therefore content ourselves with 
 supposing that with her craving for intimate affection, 
 with the happiness she felt at being an object of 
 devotion and of care, touched also by the attentions 
 and by the misfortunes of her friend, having recognised 
 in him solid qualities under a fantastic exterior, and 
 promising herself to complete the task of polishing 
 and moralising him. Miss Evans thought she need 
 not refuse herself happiness, however unexpected and 
 equivocal the shape in which it presented itself. 
 Besides, who knows whether the effort which she 
 made to conquer her hesitation did not help to 
 strengthen her to do so ? She may have said to herself 
 that she was going to perform an act of self-sacrifice 
 to the man whose life she was about to rejmir by 
 risking her own, and an act of fidelity to her own 
 convictions by following them in despite of the 
 opinions of the world. 
 
 As for scruples, properly so called, for protests of 
 conscience, there could hardly be any in Miss Evans. 
 Lewes had been deserted by his wife ; his first marriage 
 was virtually dissolved ; and if it could not be so
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 239 
 
 legally, there was nothing in this, as it were, accidental 
 circumstance which could touch the moral sense. 
 It is true that the legal impediment simultaneously 
 made any religious celebration impossible, that the 
 connection whereof we speak was thus condemned to 
 dispense with any sanction whatever, to remain, so to 
 speak, anonymous,' a mere matter of mutual consent. 
 But after all is not this the essence of marriage — is it 
 not even the canonical definition of it ? The hesita- 
 tions which Miss Evans certainly had to surmount, 
 the doubts which she had to conquer, were of another 
 kind, and everything shows us that she experienced 
 these in all their force. She was going to expose 
 herself to unpleasant remarks, to offend many of her 
 friends, to put herself for life in a false position. 
 She was breaking social laws, the importance of 
 which she well knew, and she must have felt that in 
 breaking them she was setting a deploraJjle example 
 to others who neither had the same excuses nor 
 were held back on the downward slope by the same 
 principles. The notion that her action might be 
 interpreted as a whim, after the fashion of George 
 Sand, as an adhesion to the doctrine of free-love, must 
 have been hideous to this pure soul. If she dis- 
 regarded it, it was because she promised herself to 
 refute by her life the criticisms which her conduct 
 was about to invite. This promise, let us hasten to 
 say, she kept, and with the help of her literary glory 
 she finally shut the mouth of scandal. England, 
 
 ■ [In using the word anonyme, I think M. Scherer may have 
 thought of its use with societe, which we only partially render By 
 identifying it with ' limited liability.' Strictly, it is a partnership 
 where the partners are not known to be such by the public. — Trans.]
 
 240 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 when she died, had long excused or forgotten ; but how 
 much courage must it not have needed to hold the 
 lists to the end ! 
 
 In a letter written a year later, in explanation of 
 her conduct, Miss Evans thus expresses herself: 
 
 If there is any one action or relation of my life which 
 is and always has been profoundly serious, it is my relation 
 to Mr. Lewes. It is, however, natural enough that you 
 should mistake me in many ways, for not only are you 
 unacquainted with Mr. Lewes' s real character and the 
 course of his actions, but also it is several years now since 
 you and I were much together, and it is possible that the 
 modifications my mind has undergone may be quite in the 
 opposite direction of what you imagine. No one can be 
 better aware than yourself that it is possible for two 
 people to hold diflerent opinions on momentous subjects 
 wdth equal sincerity, and an equally earnest conviction 
 that their respective opinions are alone the truly moral 
 ones. If we difier on the subject of the marriage laws, I 
 at least can believe of you that you cleave to what you 
 believe to be good ; and I don't know of anything in the 
 nature of your views that should prevent you from believing 
 the same of me. How far we differ, I think we neither of 
 us know, for I am ignorant of your precise views ; and 
 apparently you attribute to me both feelings and opinions 
 which are not mine. We cannot set each other quite 
 right in this matter in letters, but one thing I can tell you 
 in few words. Light and easily broken ties are what I 
 neither desire theoretically nor could live for practically. 
 Women who are satisfied with such ties do not act as I 
 have done. That any unworldly, unsuperstitious person 
 who is sufficiently acquainted with the realities of life can 
 pronounce my relation to Mr. Lewes immoral, I can only 
 understand by remembering how subtle and complex are 
 the influences that mould opinion. But I do remember
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 241 
 
 tins : and I indulge in no arrogant or uncharitable 
 thoughts about those who condemn us, even though we 
 might have expected a somewhat different verdict. From 
 the majority of persons, of course, we never looked for 
 anything but condemnation. We are leading no life of 
 self-indulgence, except indeed that, being happy in each 
 other, we find everything easy. We are working hard to 
 provide for others better than we provide for ourselves, 
 and to fulfil every responsibility that lies upon us. Levity 
 and pride would not be a sufficient basis for that. 
 
 And later in 1857 : 
 
 If I live five years longer, the positive result of my 
 existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh 
 the small negative good that would have consisted in my 
 not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no 
 consequences that will make me repent the past. 
 
 Lord Acton, in a very remarkable article in the 
 * Nineteenth Century,' thinks that George Eliot was 
 wrong when she thought she knew the price she paid 
 for her happiness with Lewes. What she really 
 sacrificed, according to him, was freedom of speech, 
 the first place among the women of her time, and a 
 tomb in Westminster Abbey. 
 
 I am surprised that no more attention has been 
 paid to the light which George Eliot's second marriage 
 throws on her first. Less than eighteen months after 
 Lewes's death, and at the age of sixty, she married a 
 man, worthy of her in sentiment, as the ' Life ' before 
 us proves, but very much younger than herself, so 
 that she had not, indeed, a second time to dare public 
 opinion, but to astonish it afresh. Once more George 
 Eliot had been unable to refuse herself the pleasures 
 of life with another. 
 
 R
 
 212 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LlTErvATURE 
 
 Let us lastly note, before quitting the subject, the 
 influence ^Yhicll was later exercised on her novels by 
 the crisis through which she had gone in uniting 
 herself to Lewes. So far from the false position in 
 which she had placed herself having for consequence 
 the lowering of the moral tone of her works, exactly 
 the contrary happened. One might almost say that 
 she became constantly more eager to set duty above 
 passion and to recall to notice the danger of entering 
 into conflict with public order, were it only of a con- 
 ventional kmd. And in the same way, as far as she 
 is personally concerned, there is not a situation or 
 even a word in her writings which can be interpreted 
 as an apology for her own conduct. We feel that 
 she pays special attention to this — that she has a 
 punctilio about it. 
 
 Lewes and Miss Evans disappeared after announc- 
 ing their connection. They set out for Germany 
 towards the end of July 1854, gave three months to 
 Weimar, and spent the winter in Berlin. The choice 
 of these two towns was not a matter of liking nor yet 
 one of caprice. In one Lew'es hoped to collect im- 
 pressions and materials for a * Life of Goethe,' and 
 in the other he was sure to find help for the physio- 
 logical studies to which he was beginning to turn his 
 attention. The stay at Weimar was very agreeable — 
 famous men, easy intimacies, plenty of good music, 
 and above all great literary memories. It was not 
 without emotion that our traveller visited the houses 
 of the two famous poets. ' Among such memoria-ls,' 
 she wrote, ' one breathes deeply and the tears rush 
 to one's eyes.' She learnt with regret that no portrait 
 of Schiller is like him. Eauch said that he had a
 
 GEOUGE ELIOT 243 
 
 wretched forehead, and Tieck, the sculptor, declared 
 that his whole person made one think of a camel. 
 The Leweses heard much Wagner at Weimar, but 
 without succeeding in relishing him. On the other 
 hand, they made great friends with Liszt, who con- 
 ducted the orchestra at the Opera, and whose talk was 
 as amusing as his play was extraordinary. He told 
 them that when he met Madame d'Agoult after the 
 publication of ' Nelida,' he asked her, ' Why were you 
 so unkind to that poor Lehmann ? ' ^ 
 
 Berlin seemed to our travellers cold and prosaic 
 after Weimar. They set to work again, Lewes finish- 
 ing his biography and his friend writing articles 
 for the * Westminster ' or continuing her translation 
 of Spinoza's ' Ethics,' not to mention a mass of 
 reading, especially in German. She particularly re- 
 lished Lessing — her dear Lessing, as she calls him. 
 Goethe does not always charm her : she is chiefly 
 amused at the want of point in the ' Xenien ; ' the 
 ' Wanderjahre ' draw from her the cry, ' ti mourir 
 d'ennui.' '^ Among the acquaintances she made in 
 Berlin, the sculptor Baucli seemed to her in all 
 respects the most distinguished, and Gruppe the 
 oddest. Gruppe ought to have suited Lewes, for, if 
 he was not a Jack of all trades, he had tried every 
 kind of literature : he left lyrics, five epics, a play, 
 works in literary history and criticism, learned 
 studies of antiquity, and books of philosophy. He 
 was university professor to boot, and an enthusiastic 
 
 ' Lehmann, the representative of Liszt himself, who had been on 
 the most intimate terms with the author. George Eliot thought the 
 remark ' felicitous and characteristic' This was cliaritablc. — Tixnis.] 
 
 ■ [The French is George Eliot's.— Tm^s.] 
 
 n 2
 
 '21 1 Essays ox English liteeature 
 
 boar-hunter. Mary Ann describes him clothed In a 
 dressing-gown which had once been a winter great- 
 coat/ his velvet cap on his grey hair, reading aloud 
 his own works with enthusiasm, but simple and kind- 
 hearted, and (oddly enough), despite his prodigious 
 fertility, rather slow of apprehension and delighting 
 in poor plays on words. ' A propos of jokes,' she adds, 
 * we noticed that during the whole seven months of 
 our stay in Germany, we never heard one witticism 
 or even one felicitous idea or expression from a 
 German.' 
 
 After German heaviness came French feather- 
 headedness. The travellers met, in a Berlin salon, a 
 countryman of ours, who marvelled at the talent with 
 which Meyerbeer in the ' Huguenots ' had grasped the 
 spirit of the epoch of Charles the Ninth. ' Eead the 
 chronicles ! ' cried he. ' What ! Froissart's '? ' slipped 
 in a malicious voice. ' Yes, something of that kind, 
 or else the chronicles of Brantome, of Merimee, and 
 you will find that Meyerbeer has expressed all that 
 perfectly — at least, I think so.' * But perhaps, mon- 
 sieur, it is your own genius which put these ideas 
 into the music ? ' Whereat the agreeable rattle 
 modestly disclaimed. Yarnhagen, to whose house the 
 Leweses constantly went, continually recurred to the 
 antipathy with which Carlyle had inspu-ed him when, 
 after long correspondence, they came to meet. Yarn- 
 hagen, though not without admiration for some of the 
 English humourist's work, had been shocked by his 
 taste for despotism and by his rough, paradoxical talk 
 in general. Yet we have a neat saying of his.^ At a 
 
 ' [She only says that she ' fancies ' it had.— Trans.] 
 ^ [Not fvom Yarnhagen. — Trans.l
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 245 
 
 dinner given to him in Berlin the talk was of Goethe, 
 and some of the guests affected to deplore that the 
 great poet had so little religion.^ During this talk 
 Carlyle was visibly uneasy, fumbling with his dinner- 
 napkin. At last he broke out thus, ' Gentlemen, do 
 you know the story of the man who railed at the sun 
 because it would not light his cigar ? ' 
 
 Mrs. Lewes's final judgment at her departure does 
 honour to her impartiality. She had become very 
 weary of the heavy finery, the noise, the indiscriminate 
 smoking.^ ' But, after all,' she says, ' Germany is no 
 bad place to live in, and the Germans, to counter- 
 balance their w^ant of taste and politeness, are at least 
 free from the bigotry and exclusiveness ' of the English. 
 
 On their return to England the couple set to work 
 seriously on the life which they had deliberately fore- 
 seen and chosen. They hired at Eichmond, near 
 London, a modest house ^ where the drawing-room 
 was the only study, and this had to do for both of 
 them. Lewes had to provide for the needs of his 
 first wife, now fallen very low, as well as for the 
 education of his three boys at school. This made a 
 good many mouths for which to find meat, and that, 
 too, with no very profitable craft. Mary Ann had 
 published the translation of Feuerbach's ' Wesen des 
 Christenthums ' before her departure for Germany, 
 but she could not expect much profit from a book 
 which was already rather out of date, and in any case 
 
 ' [In original ' evangelical sentiment,' which is not quite the 
 same. — Trans.] 
 
 2 [It is fair to say that George Eliot limits this to German inns.— 
 Trans.] 
 
 3 [Lodgings i-athev.— Trans.]
 
 2-l'3 ES3AYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 ill-adjusted to the intellectual meridian of Great 
 Britain. The translation of Spinoza which she had 
 finished at Berlin was still less promising, and, in- 
 deed, has never been printed. So she went back to 
 periodical hterature. Her health, unluckily, was weak, 
 and caused frequent interruptions, but to make up for 
 this she enjoyed domestic happiness and the success of 
 the union she had contracted. She feels, she says, 
 her esteem and affection for Lewes increase every day. 
 ' I am very happy,' she wrote after three years' expe- 
 rience, ' happy with the greatest happiness that life 
 can give, the complete sympathy and affection of a 
 man whose mind stimulates mine and keeps up in me 
 a wholesome activity.' But it was not only activity, it 
 was talent as well which developed itself in our author 
 through this beneficent contact. Like most strong and 
 deep natures, Mrs. Lewes arrived but late at the con- 
 sciousness and the exercise of her gifts. She was 
 thirty-six years old when her ' Westminster ' articles 
 began to rise from the level (high enough, to be sure) 
 which they had hitherto kept, and to attract attention 
 more vividly. Lewes used to say that it was in 
 reading one of these pieces, a biting satire on the 
 apocalyptic dreams of a popular preacher,' that he 
 first gained insight into his wife's genius. Two other 
 fine articles — one on Young of the ' Nights,' the other 
 on Heine and German wit — must have strengthened 
 this impression. Moreover, as it happened, Mrs. 
 Lewes was at this very moment entering on a path in 
 which she was to give rise to far different astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 ■ [Poor Dr. Cumminp;, if not -witty, yet a great whetstone of 
 Vfit.— Trans.]
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 247 
 
 The history of her dehut in novel-writing is 
 memorable enough for us to hear the telling of it by 
 herself : 
 
 September 185G made a new era in my life, for it waa 
 then I began to write fiction. It had always been a vague 
 dream of mine that some time or other I might write a 
 novel ; and my shadowy conception of what the novel was 
 to be, varied, of course, from one epoch of my life to another. 
 But I never went further towards the actual writing of the 
 novel than an introductory chapter describing a Stafford- 
 shire village and the life of the neighbouring farmhouses ; 
 and as the years passed on I lost any hope that I should 
 ever be able to write a novel, just as I desponded about 
 everything else in my future life. I always thought I was 
 deficient in dramatic power, both of construction and 
 dialogue, but I felt I should be at my ease in the descriptive 
 parts of a novel. My ' introductory chapter ' was pure 
 description, though there were good materials in it for 
 dramatic presentation. It happened to be among the 
 papers I had with me in Germany, and one evening at 
 Berlin something led me to read it to George. He was 
 struck with it as a bit of concrete description, and it 
 suggested to him the possibility of my being able to write 
 a novel, though he distrusted — indeed disbelieved in — my 
 possession of any dramatic power. Still, he began to 
 think that I might as well try some time what I could do 
 in fiction ; and by-and-by, when we came back to England, 
 and I had greater success than he ever expected in other 
 kinds of writing, his impression that it was worth while to 
 see how far my mental power would go, towards the pro- 
 duction of a novel, was strengthened. Ho began to say 
 very positively, ' You must try and write a story,' and 
 when we were at Tenby he urged me to begin at once. I 
 deferred it, however, after my usual fashion with work 
 that does not present itself as an absolute duty. But one
 
 2i8 ESSAYS OX ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 morning as I was thinking wliat sliould be tlie subject of 
 my first story, my thoughts merged themselves into a 
 dreamy doze, and I imagined myself writing a story, of 
 which the title was ' The Sad Fortunes of the Eeverend 
 Amos Barton.' I was soon wide awake again and told G. 
 He said, ' Oh, what a capital title ! ' and from that time 
 I had settled in my mind that this should be my first story. 
 George used to say, ' It may be a failure — it may be that 
 you are unable to write fiction. Or perhaps it may be just 
 good enough to warrant you trying again.' Again, ' You 
 may write a chef-cVceuvre at once — there's no telling.' 
 But his prevalent impression was, that though I could 
 hardly write a 2^oor novel, my effort would want the 
 highest quality of fiction — dramatic presentation. He 
 used to say, ' You have wit, description, and philosophy — 
 those go a good way towards the production of a novel. 
 It is worth while for you to try the experiment.' 
 
 ^Ye determined that if my story turned out good 
 enough, we would send it to Blackwood. 
 
 When she returned to Eichmond Mrs. Lewes set to 
 work, and at the end of a week was able to read the 
 first part of * Amos Barton ' to her husband. Lewes's 
 fears were at once dispelled. 
 
 The scene at Cross Farm, he said, satisfied him that 
 I had the very element he had been doubtful about — it 
 was clear I could write good dialogue. There still 
 remained the question whether I could command any 
 pathos ; and that was to be decided by the mode in which 
 I treated Milly's death. One night G. went to town on 
 purpose to leave me a quiet evening for writing it. I 
 wrote the chapter from the news brought by the shepherd 
 to Mrs. Hackit, to the moment when Amos is dragged 
 from the bedside, and I read it to G. when he came home. 
 We both cried over it, and then he came up to me and
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 249 
 
 kissed me, saying, ' I tliink your pathos is better than 
 your fun.' ^ 
 
 The tale finished, the next thing was to get it 
 pubhshecl without, of course, betraying the author's 
 sex and name. Anonymity was sure to add the 
 attraction of curiosity to the merit of the story, 
 and, besides, Mrs. Lewes's position made secrecy 
 desirable. Her husband undertook the transaction. 
 He sent the MS. of * Amos Barton ' to Blackwood as 
 the work of one of his friends, and making no secret 
 of the admiration with which the story had inspired 
 him. Others were to follow under the general title of 
 * Scenes of Clerical Life,' a phrase which at once 
 warns us of the difficulty of translating into French 
 writings such as those of George Eliot, inasmuch as the 
 very words ' church ' and ' clergy ' have for us a sense 
 quite opposite to that which they carry with them in 
 a country where ministers of religion have the right 
 to feel and to suffer, to love and to marry, like other 
 men. Blackwood at once recognised the worth of the 
 story sent him. ' It is long,' said he, ' since I read 
 anything so novel, so amusing, and at the same time 
 so pathetic' The first part of ' Amos ' appeared in 
 his magazine for January 1857, and success en- 
 couraging the author, she produced two other stories, 
 after which the whole was reprinted in volume form 
 under the name of George Eliot. For Mrs. Lewes, 
 
 ' [According to a practice of M. Scherer's, which I have before 
 referred to, this iiassage, though given in the first person and in in- 
 verted commas, is much shortened and paraphrased, probably because 
 the original contains references to the actual story, which French 
 readers might not understand, It seemed better to restore the actual 
 text.— Trans.]
 
 250 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 wishing still to preserve her incognito, thought she 
 had better adopt a pseudonym. The secret was kept 
 to admiration, and it was many months before Black- 
 wood himself knew with whom he was dealing. The 
 author's most intimate friends of her own sex (with 
 the exception of one who guessed at first sight) felt the 
 deepest astonishment when they learnt the truth. As 
 for the public, conjecture ran riot, and still went 
 astray when another work, ' Adam Bede,' had already 
 followed the * Scenes.' In particular, endless discus- 
 sions were held on the sex of the new author. In 
 France M. Montegut made a long exammation of the 
 question, weighed the pros and cons, and finally 
 inclined to the masculine. ' In fact,' said he, * the 
 author seems to have something of both sexes ; and as 
 only ecclesiastics, by a special favour of circumstances, 
 enjoy this epicene privilege, we shall take it on our- 
 selves to say that we think the author a minister of the 
 Established Church.' An English journal (the ' Satur- 
 day Eeview'^) was still minuter in its conclusions, 
 and decided that the name of George Eliot must hide 
 some scholarly clergyman, who had taken his degree 
 at Cambridge, who lived or had passed the greater 
 part of his life in the country, who was the father of 
 a numerous family, of pronounced High Church ten- 
 dencies, and very fond of children, the Greek tragedians, 
 and dogs. The care with which George Eliot kept 
 her secret for two years and more had unexpected 
 consequences. An inhabitant of Nuneaton, where 
 Mary Ann had been at school, availing himself of the 
 local memories which had slipped into the tales, gave 
 
 ' [I have looked up this article with some interest. The intention 
 is pretty evidently ironical. — Trans.]
 
 GEOECtE ELIOT 251 
 
 it to be understood that he was the author, and so 
 interested the neighbourhood in his poverty and 
 hidden genius that a subscription was got up for him. 
 Dickens was keener-sighted than most critics. 
 Having received a copy of the ' Scenes,' he thanked 
 the unknown author in a letter breathing the frankest 
 admiration, but not hiding the conchision to which 
 his hterary tact ^ had led him. 
 
 Tavistock House, London, 
 
 Monday, 17th Jan. 1858. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I have been so strongly affected by the 
 two first. tales in the book you have had the kindness to 
 send me, through Messrs. Blackwood, that I hope you 
 will excuse my writing to you to express my admiration 
 of their extraordinary merit. The exquisite truth and 
 delicacy, both of the humour and the pathos of these 
 stories, I have never seen the like of; and they have 
 impressed me in a manner that I should find it very 
 difficult to describe to you, if I had the impertinence 
 to try. 
 
 In addressing these few words of thankfulness to the 
 creator of the Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, 
 and the sad love story of Mr. Gilfil, I am (I presume) 
 bound to adopt the name that it pleases that excellent 
 writer to assume. I can suggest no better one : but I 
 should have been strongly disposed, if I had been left to 
 my own devices, to address the said writer as a woman. 
 I have observed what seemed to me such womanly touches 
 in those moving fictions, that the assurance on the title- 
 page is insufficient to satisfy me even now. If they 
 originated with no woman, I believe that no man ever 
 before had the art of making himself mentally so like a 
 woman since the world began. 
 
 ' [Perhaps it would be more correct to say 'his experience as an 
 editor.'— Trans.]
 
 252 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITEEATUEE 
 
 You will not suppose that I have any vulgar wish to 
 
 fathom your secret. I mention the point as one of great 
 
 interest to me — not of mere curiosity. If it should ever 
 
 suit your convenience and inclination to show me the face 
 
 of the man, or woman, who has written so charmmgly, it 
 
 will be a very memorable occasion to me. If otherwise, 
 
 I shall always hold that impalpable personage in loving 
 
 attachment and respect, and shall yield myself up to all 
 
 future utterances from the same source, with a perfect 
 
 confidence in their making me wiser and better. 
 
 Your obliged and faithful servant and admirer, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 George Eliot, Esq. 
 
 Having come to the consciousness of lier genius, 
 having received an unanimous vote of encouragement, 
 and having, at the same time, hit upon a vein of 
 literary production which promised to bring her 
 modest home into easy circumstances, George Eliot 
 began work on a larger scale almost before she had 
 finished the novel, ' Scenes of Clerical Life.' ' Adam 
 Bede ' was already begun by the end of 1857 : its 
 second volume was written at Munich and at Dresden. 
 The Leweses were passionately fond of travelling, and 
 the sale of the previous book had been sufficiently 
 profitable, the reception given to these stories by the 
 j)ublic sufficiently promising for the future, to let 
 them give themselves the pleasure of making ac- 
 quaintance with new countries. Besides, they resolved 
 to work and kept their resolve. ' Munich,' she writes, 
 ' swarms with professors of all sorts, a,Yl griindlich, of 
 course, and one or two of them great. There is 
 no one we are more charmed with than Liebig.' 
 Bodenstedt made our travellers think of their friend 
 Gruppe, at Berlin, by the multitude of his acquire-
 
 GEORGE ELIOt 9S^ 
 
 ments and the variety of his productions. In fact, 
 Bodenstedt was a traveller, a journalist, a professor, 
 and the manager of a theatre. He translated from 
 Persian, from Eussian, and from English ; he wrote 
 a great work on the peoples of the Caucasus ; he paid 
 special attention to Shakspeare. He was the author 
 of plays, of novels, of a volume of verses which went 
 through nearly a hundred editions, and he crowned the 
 whole by a history of his own life. ' Enormously in- 
 structed after the fashion of the Germans,' writes 
 George Eliot, * and not at all stupid with it.' The 
 translator of the ' Lehen Jesu ' had the pleasure of 
 meeting Strauss at Munich, and was very agreeably 
 impressed by him. ' He speaks with very choice 
 words, like a man strictly truthful in the use of 
 language.' George Eliot loved the arts, music most 
 of all, but painting also, and she naturally be- 
 stowed part of her time on the galleries. She had 
 little admiration for the modern German school. 
 'Kaulbach's great compositions are huge charades.' 
 
 * His "Destruction of Jerusalem " is a regular child's 
 puzzle of symbolism.' 
 
 He is certainly a man of great faculty, but is, I imagine, 
 carried out of bis true path by the ambition to produce 
 ' Weltgeschicbtliclie Bilder,' which the German critics 
 may go into raptures about. His ' Battle of the Huns,' 
 which is the most impressive of all bis great pictvu'es, was 
 the first of the series. He painted it simply under the 
 inspiration of the grand myth about the spirits of the dead 
 warriors rising and carrying on the battle in the air. 
 Straightway the German critics began to smoke furiously 
 that vile tobacco which they call (isthelik, declared it a 
 
 • Weltgeschichtliches Bild,' and ever since Kaulbach has
 
 254 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LiTEKATrRE 
 
 been concocting these pictures in which, instead of taking 
 a single moment of reahty and trusting to the infinite sym- 
 bolism that belongs to all nature, he attempts to give you 
 at one view a succession of events— each represented by 
 some group which may mean ' Whichever you please, my 
 little- dear.' 
 
 Our author might have added that it is the same 
 with the other arts ; that the Germans, loving them 
 only ill an intellectual manner, insist on thrusting 
 scientific elements into them ; that even poetiy pleases 
 Germans better when they find in it matter for 
 comment and interpretation. The worship paid to 
 Goethe by his countrymen is due less to his really 
 perfect works, to his really immortal creations, than 
 to the endless field which he has opened to the 
 pedantry of scholiasts. Is there a single German 
 savant who is not more attracted by the second 
 * Faust ' than by the first ? 
 
 At Dresden our travellers resolved to make no 
 acquaintances, and to work with no other distraction 
 than the picture-gallery, the open-air concerts, and 
 excursions on foot. ' We have been as happy as 
 princes — are not, George writing at the far corner 
 of the great salon, I at my Schrank [desk] in my 
 own private room with closed doors. Here 1 wrote 
 the latter half of the second volume of " Adam Bede " 
 in the long mornings that our early hours, rising at 
 six o'clock, procure us.' The third volume was written 
 in England, after returning from the journey, and 
 straight off: this was the author's way, as I remember 
 hearing her say herself. As soon as ever she had a 
 thorough grasp of her subject, or rather it of her, 
 she did her writing with great speed. The first
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 255 
 
 Volume of ' Adam Bede ' was hardly revised at all ; 
 and her husband's advice, to which George Eliot 
 always attached great value, was occupied with no- 
 thing hut verbal alterations. The MS. of the book 
 bears a dedication which attests not merely the 
 gratitude due for useful collaboration. ' To my dear 
 husband, George Henry Lewes, I give the MS. of a 
 work which would never have been writtea but for 
 the happiness which his love has conferred on my 
 life.' She did the same with all her books, and 
 inscribed on the autograph of each of them the 
 touching expression of her gratitude and her tender- 
 ness for the companion of her life. 
 
 George Eliot's readers are, I believe, agreed that 
 the ' Scenes of Clerical Life ' contain the germs of the 
 beauties of all the author's later works ; but ' Adam 
 Bede ' is a real novel, and in this more extended form 
 it fulfilled and surpassed the expectation which the 
 author's early work had excited. Moreover, it is to 
 the second attempt that it is usual to remand new- 
 comers in letters to convince one's self that the first 
 success has been something more than a luchy 
 accident. In this case no doubt was possible, and 
 men had an indisputable power before them. It was 
 not easy to know which to admire more — the pathetic 
 interest of Hetty Sorrel's fortunes or the rustic 
 salt of the sallies of Mrs. Peyser, one of those crea- 
 tions which, from the first moment, take th-eir place 
 in the literature of a nation. It was but a few weeks 
 after the appearance of ' Adam Bede ' that a speaker 
 in the House of Commons quoted one of the genial 
 farmer's wife's sayings like a man who was sure tliat 
 his hearers would understand liim. The noise which
 
 25 G ESSAYS 0^ ENGLISH LltEBATURE 
 
 George Eliot's name made echoed even in Fi'ailce. 
 M. ]\Iontegut spoke of * Adam Bede ' to the readers of 
 the * Kevue des deux Mondes,' and in this article, 
 which George Eliot thought the best of all that had 
 been devoted to her novel, our colleague made no 
 secret of his enthusiasm. ' Oh ! what delightful and 
 refined reading,' said he, referring to the ' Scenes of 
 Clerical Life.' ' One's soul was filled with it as with a 
 perfume of sweetness and piety ; one was not seduced 
 mto admiration, one was taken by storm ; it was not 
 merely moving, it was affecting.' Then, passing 
 to ' Adam Bede,' and after extolling the combined 
 delicacy and precision of the observation, the often 
 exquisite style, the sympathetic, and, so to say, lumin- 
 ous impartiality which sheds itself on all the occupants 
 of the stage, he said : ' Twelve hundred pages occupied 
 in telling of the seduction of a girl at a farm by a 
 youthful squire, the ill luck in love and the happiness 
 in marriage of a poor country carpenter ! 'tis much, 
 you will sa3^ Well, I can assure you that when I 
 had read them I wanted more. What the author 
 offers us is a huge nosegay of wild flowers, full of 
 wealth in scent and colour, one of those nosegays that 
 we have often brought home in youth after a country 
 excursion and delighted in preserving for several 
 days after in a large vase as a souvenir of a few 
 hours of reckless activity — thorny branches of wild 
 eglantine torn from the living hedges, flowering 
 brambles, great tufts of lilac, hand-broken from the 
 favourite tree of spring, huge bearded grasses, rushes 
 in golden bloom.' 
 
 I am the more glad to recall M. Montegut's study 
 that it remained pretty much without a companion,
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 257 
 
 in French criticism. It is with few exceptions ' the 
 only piece of cordial praise that this illustrious lady 
 has received in our country. Most of the judgments 
 of her works which at long intervals have appeared 
 in our reviews have shown either the disdain of a 
 jaded taste, or (which is worse) the reluctance of envy, 
 especially feminine envy, to recognise a superiority 
 by the side of which, it is true, the commonplaces 
 of the day seem more commonplace than ever. 
 
 Dickens was again one of the first to express his 
 admiration. The reading of 'Adam Bede,' he wrote to 
 the author, w^as an event in his life. Herbert Spencer 
 was enthusiastic, declaring that he felt a better man 
 for having read the book ; but George Eliot's head 
 was not turned. ' I sing my Magnificat under my 
 breath,' she said, ' and I feel great delight, deep and 
 silent. But few writers, I think, have known less than 
 I have of the transports and the feelings of triumph 
 which they describe as the result of success.' It was 
 from this time that she contracted the repugnance to 
 speaking and hearing speak about her books which 
 became a note of her literary life, and which had 
 already made her entrust Lewes with the duty of in- 
 tercepting reviews in newspapers, whether laudatory 
 or the reverse. ' If people were to hum their remarks 
 or their comments round me, I should lose the calm 
 mind and the honest labour without which nothing good 
 and wholesome can be written. To talk about my 
 
 • [Among the exceptions, of course, are the two earher articles 
 of M. Scherer's own, which appear in this book. I do not know 
 whose was the 'feminine' jealousy glanced at below. The above 
 sample of M. Mont^gut is a good deal more flowery than is his 
 wont.— Trans.] 
 
 S
 
 258 ESSAYS ox ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 works is to me as though I were to talk of my private 
 thoughts or my rehgioii.' Moreover she felt the 
 obligations of success, and was nervous about a new 
 novel just begun. ' " Adam's " good fortune,' she said to 
 her publisher, ' makes me write more anxiously than 
 ever. I fancy it is a kind of feelmg of responsibility 
 joined to a good deal of pride.' 
 
 We need not follow out the history of George 
 Eliot's works. Quite contrary to the ordinary fate of 
 the works of a writer who has at once gained the public 
 vote, and to the fate of novelists more especiaUy, 
 because they draw more and more deeply on their 
 fund of experience and observation — the public at 
 each new book of George Eliot's, even while regret- 
 ting, so to say, its infidelity to the earher ones, could 
 not keep proclaiming the superiority of the new- 
 comer. ' The Mill on the Floss,' which appeared m 
 1860, might be looked upon as the author's master- 
 piece if ' Middlemarch,' ten years later, had not 
 contested that title with it, and if there had not 
 appeared in the interval ' Silas Marner,' an admirable 
 rustic id}^!, and the historical romance of ' Eomola,' 
 which was destined t) show George Eliot equal to 
 herself in all the styles she tried. Even ' Deronda,' 
 her last story, spoilt as it is by inexplicable preoccu- 
 pations, includes passages equal in power to anything 
 that the author has done. 
 
 The scene of ' Eomola ' is the Florence of the fif- 
 teenth century, and the plan of it came to George Eliot 
 m the course of an Italian journey, 'one of those 
 journeys which seem to divide one's life in half, 
 so many new ideas do they suggest, so many new 
 sources of interest do they open to the mmd.' Having
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 259 
 
 fixed on her sclieme, she returned to Florence, visit- 
 ing the old streets, rummaging ancient books, seeking 
 to impregnate herself with the spirit of the venerable 
 city. But she was still far from her goal. When, 
 on her return home, she at last set to her work, 
 she saw all its difficulties rising before her. Would 
 not her genius desert her when she left the familiar 
 scenes of rustic life in the England of to-day for 
 foreign countries and past ages ? Would she succeed 
 in reviving in their true physiognomy the town, the 
 epoch, and the figure of Savonarola ? She despaired 
 more than once, gave up her task, then took to it 
 again, plunged (conscientiously as she did everything) 
 into historical studies, and brought forth in sorrow a 
 kind of moral tragedy which even the reader cannot 
 behold without emotion. It seemed as if a weight 
 were crushing her down. Each phrase, she said, had 
 been written in her heart's blood. ' I began the novel 
 a young woman,' she added ; * I was an old one when 
 I finished it.' Yet it had only taken her eighteen 
 months to write. Either owing to the pains she had 
 taken in the writing of it, or to the moral importance 
 which she attached to the drawing of the characters 
 whereof she composed her picture, George Eliot seems 
 to have had for ' Romola ' a partiality which I find 
 some difficulty in sharing. 
 
 I only mention the two volumes of George Eliot's 
 poetry for the sake of not omitting them ; because, 
 fine as some passages are in their pathos or in their 
 wit, and deeply interesting as they all are regarded as 
 experiments, these poems add nothing to the author's 
 reputation save by completing the proof of the variety 
 of her gifts. 
 
 s 2
 
 260 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 An author's works, it has often been said, are the 
 true events of his Hfe. Putting aside the books I have 
 just named, there is nothing to note in George Ehot's 
 later years except a continually increasing fame, the 
 respect which a blameless life won her, affluence 
 which became riches, frequent travels both abroad and 
 in England ; and lastly, what is not given necessarily 
 either by glor}^ or by fortune, a happiness of which she 
 herself said in a letter, ' Altogether we are dangerously 
 happy.' It seemed to her that she had a ransom to 
 pay to fate, and she well knew also that old age, sooner 
 or later, takes on itself the duty of levying this tax by 
 parting those who love. Lewes died in 1878. As we 
 have already remarked, she married again less than 
 eighteen months later, her husband being a man who 
 was much younger than herself, but whose affection 
 had touched her, and the delicacy of whose sentiments 
 made Imn worthy of her. The happiness she found 
 in this new miion was of no long duration, and she 
 died within the je?iv from the result of a chill. She 
 was sixty-one, but had as yet shown none of the 
 infirmities of age. She loved life, she had said to one 
 of her friends a little before ; she was full of plans, 
 and then the world was so interesting. 
 
 The engraved portrait which Mr. Cross has placed 
 as a frontispiece to his wife's biography is as like 
 as the reproduction of a singularly expressive face 
 can be. George Eliot's 'features, a little heavy and 
 strongly marked in their frame of abundant hair, ex- 
 pressed a soul which is in command of itself, a great 
 intelligence which has remamed kindly. One felt in 
 them the union of timidity, which is driven back into 
 itself, with an affectionate need of sympathy. The
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 261 
 
 entire personality was gentle, distinguished, suited to 
 gain confidence and inspire respect. 
 
 The moral unity of George Eliot's character is not 
 easy to fix. Not that"! take her literally when she 
 calls herself a chameleon, and says she is in danger of 
 losing her personality. My difficulty comes from her 
 very depth. What we see in George Eliot's maturity 
 is a great and beautiful soul, clear and calm, which 
 has known or guessed, felt or anticipated, the feeling 
 of everything. But at what price has she bought 
 this dominion of reason over passion, this ascendency 
 of reflection over spontaneity ? Is it not probable 
 that the ' Life ' was not allowed to tell us everything ? 
 Is it not permissible to believe that the history of 
 Maggie in ' The Mill on the Floss ' was an inspiration 
 of memory ? And is it not natural to suppose that 
 personal experience counted for something in the final 
 self-possession, and in such an intimate knowledge of 
 life? 
 
 In studying such a character as that of George 
 Eliot the danger is lest we should mistake this acquired 
 empire over impulse for a natural want of warmth. 
 Indeed, more peojjle than one have been the dupes of 
 this mistake, and have wondered at the absence of 
 fire and ' go ' in the letters which have been given to 
 us. This was to forget the conditions of Mr. Cross's 
 publication, but it was also to misjudge the intel- 
 lectual and moral history of George Eliot. She had 
 known what impetuosity is. ' I love,' she wrote at 
 thirty, ' souls which hurry towards their end, carried 
 on the springtide of sentiment, and not harassed by 
 perpetual negations.' Twenty years later, and we 
 find her fearing to come to a conclusion too quickly.
 
 '262 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 and to show herself more positive than inner Hght 
 allows. * I dread all positive assertion on matters of 
 great importance, through fear of committing myself 
 hy my own words, and of degenerating into a mere 
 echo of myself. A horrible destiny, yet one of which, 
 it must be confessed, many and great men have been 
 the victims.' Here we have the two things, the carrying 
 away and the reaction. Serenity spreads itself over 
 this life, but the hidden emotion, the throb below, do 
 not fail to betray themselves still. A book, the sight 
 of a picture, will often bring tears to her eyes. Or it 
 may be gaiety which breaks out ; for, grave as we 
 fancy her, she was none the less capable, her biographer 
 tells us, of the frankest hilarity, of joyous, catching, 
 irresistible laughter. 
 
 Literary predilections are telltales of character, 
 and for this reason we may collect George Eliot's. 
 She calls Milton her demigod, and we see in this a 
 soul inclined towards things serious and sublime. In 
 the same way, Wordsworth ranks high in her affec- 
 tions. Yet this does not prevent her from adoring 
 Moliere, ' our great favourite,' she writes. ' We are not 
 reading him just now, but we are constantly talking 
 of him. The " Misanthrope " seems to me the greatest 
 and most complete production of its kind in existence.' 
 On the other hand, she holds Byron 'the most vulgar- 
 minded genius who has ever produced a great effect in 
 literature.' Nor let us forget her admiration for the 
 works of Comte, which was sincere, though the expres- 
 sion of it was perhaps exaggerated by the desire of 
 pleasing her friends Mr. Congreve and Mr. Harrison, 
 who evidently wished to make a convert of her. In 
 writing to others, she confessed that Positivism seemed
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 263 
 
 to her narrow and exclusive ; while, as for the reli- 
 gion which was grafted on Comte's philosophy, she 
 subscribed to the scheme, but avoided becoming a 
 member. 
 
 We have already seen that one distinguishing 
 point of George Eliot's mind was a very rare com- 
 bination of intellectual boldness and religious sensi- 
 bility. She was absolutely honest in examination, 
 and to her all questions were open questions. ' You 
 ask if I am ready to allow myself to be convinced. 
 Most certainly ; I admit discussion on every matter 
 except dinner and debts. I hold that the first must 
 be eaten and the second must be paid : these are my 
 only prejudices.' But this rationalising temperament 
 did not exclude a certain mysticism of the kind which, 
 according to herself, belongs to all poetic souls, ' the 
 delight with which the soul bathes in emotions ex- 
 ceeding the precision of thought.' 
 
 She felt sympathy for all the great historical reli- 
 gions, especially Judaism and Christianity, as monu- 
 ments of struggles similar to our own. If she had 
 followed her inclination she would often have gone into 
 those religious assemblies, the essence of which is the 
 recognition of a spiritual law, appealing to our voluntary 
 obedience and ready to deliver us from the tyranny of 
 capricious impulses and untamed passions. It is true 
 that when she has got as far as this rationalism re- 
 appears and resumes the upper hand. What is it 
 that these believers who meet to worship God worship 
 under that name ? What but the loftiest possible con- 
 ception of good ? So far is it, according to our author, 
 from being true that morality derives from religion, 
 that the religious idea jwr excellence, the idea of God,
 
 26-1 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 merely personifies the moral idea of some nation or 
 some time. This is why theology transforms itself, 
 why religions succeed each other in proportion as 
 humanity perfects itself. And this perfectibility of 
 religions is a thesis big with consequences. For if 
 we give to the notion of the Supreme Being a con- 
 notation so variable and so extensive as that of moral 
 emotion, we come to the identification of God with 
 humanity, to making piety consist in reflecting ten- 
 derly on the mystery of mortal fate, to reducing the 
 science of life to two elements onl}^, commiseration for 
 the fate of other men, and for ourselves, * that consent 
 to the inevitable which submits to it without bitterness 
 and is called resignation.' 
 
 Unsubstantial as George Eliot's religion may seem, 
 nothing made further breach in it. She remained 
 persuaded that if human actions do not escape the 
 universal chain of cause and eftect, this character of 
 necessity does not aftect their moral quality, does not 
 diminish their ugliness or their beauty, and conse- 
 quently cannot weaken our motives for preferring one 
 to another. Besides, one last link continued to attach 
 George Eliot to mystical tradition, and to that idealist 
 and romantic period of humanity which contemporary 
 naturalism is at work to destroy. She had read 
 Darwin's works with interest ; but she does not seem 
 to have grasped or to have accepted their whole 
 bearing. She saw in them only the idea of evolution. 
 * Now,' says she, ' this theor}^ like all the other ex- 
 planations of the way in which things have come 
 into existence, afi'ects me little as compared with the 
 mystery which is at the bottom of existence itself.' 
 And so behind the fact she looks for something else
 
 GEOKGE ELIOT 265 
 
 than the fact ; she raises the questions which cannot 
 be answered ; she is of those who, as Schiller says/ 
 want to know why ten is not twelve. 
 
 George Eliot cannot be ranked among modern 
 adejDts in pessimism. She does not look on life as bad 
 in itself — she is only, as it were, oppressed with the 
 difficulties of the struggle, with the uglinesses and the 
 sufferings of humanity. She was disposed to believe 
 with the ansients that those are happiest who die 
 young ; and, as we have just seen, she brought herself 
 to place the highest virtue in resignation, or, as she also 
 calls it, ' the courage which can do without narcotics, 
 the fortitude which supports evils with full conscious- 
 ness of them, and with eyes wide open.' This want 
 of trust in human destiny is such that George Eliot 
 will not yield to the ideas of social progress which 
 have seized so tyrannously on the modern spirit ; she 
 is too thoroughly persuaded that happiness is above 
 all a moral state to expect much of institutions ; and 
 improvement seems to her likely to be less the neces- 
 sary effect of intellectual culture than the fruit of a 
 slow contagion of good. 
 
 If I insist on the kind of pitifulness with which 
 George Eliot considers our earthly state, it is 
 because this disposition is what in reality constitutes 
 the main principle of her art. All great wit draws 
 inspiration from some philosophy or other, and 
 the philosophy of George Eliot is a gently sad 
 one. There reigns in it what Wordsworth, in a 
 beautiful line, calls 
 
 The still, sad music of humanity, 
 ' Die Weltiveisen.
 
 266 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 the melancholy note which human clestinj^ gives out. 
 She does not aspire to paint irreproachable characters, 
 but characters in which good and evil are mixed, 
 which call for indulgence, for which w^e feel attach- 
 ment even while we condemn them. To speak more 
 correctly, she does not aspire to anything ; she does 
 not pursue an}^ end ; she is too great an artist for 
 that.- "With her serious and moral nature she ran 
 the risk of becoming a moraliser ; with her sympathy 
 for the faults and the foibles of her kind, inclination 
 must have carried her towards the didactic. But she 
 knows the danger, and remains on her guard against 
 it. If art, she thinks, has its lessons, they are the 
 lessons of life itself, which art reproduces in its truth 
 and its complexity. ' When it ceases to be purely 
 aesthetic, when it tries to prove instead of painting, 
 it becomes the most disgusting of all teachings.' And 
 in a remarkable letter written to the painter Burne- 
 Jones : 
 
 Don't you agree with me that much superfluous stuff is 
 written on all sides about purpose in art ? A nasty mind 
 makes nasty art, whether for art or any other sake ; and a 
 meagre mind will bring forth what is meagre. And some 
 effect in determining other minds there must be, according 
 to the degree of nobleness or meanness ia the selection 
 made by the artist's soul. 
 
 It was not with her ethics that George Eliot wrote 
 her novels, it was with her psychology ; and in this 
 lies the secret of her power. This woman, who lived 
 an exemplary life in a narrow world, had entered 
 into all things, had felt all things. Nothing astonished 
 her, accustomed as she was to read her own heart, and 
 gifted with the faculty of observation, which helps
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 267 
 
 one to read the hearts of others. She is at home 
 with the most secret and the subtlest entanglements 
 of motives. She knows that ' a natm^e incapable by 
 virtue of its whole moral constitution of committing 
 a crime may yet experience criminal motives.' I find 
 this striking expression from her pen : ' In the most 
 absolute confidence of man and wife there is always 
 a residue of secrecy, an unsuspected lower depth : it 
 may be of the worst, it may be, on the other hand, 
 of the loftiest and most disinterested.' George Eliot 
 possesses the clairvoyance which divines the interior 
 play of passion, the experience which knows that the 
 human being is capable of all contradictions, the 
 indulgence which tolerates because it understands ; 
 and lastly, the gift of measure and the taste for truth 
 which prevent an author from rushing into extremes, 
 from idealising either the beautiful or the ugly, from 
 making figures which are heroes or monsters in block. 
 If we add to psychological divination the faculty 
 of creating living characters, we shall have George 
 Eliot's novel. When she was still very young — in 
 1848 — she defined the talent of which she was later to 
 give such memorable examples. ' Artistic power,' she 
 said, ' seems to me to resemble dramatic power ; it 
 is the intuition of the different states of which the 
 human mind is capable of taking, accompanied by 
 the faculty of reproducing them with a certain in- 
 tensity of expression.' 
 
 The dramatic art in George Eliot's works comes 
 from her living conception of personages. The 
 strength with which the moral coherence of the beings 
 she has called into existence and the conduct of a story 
 determined by the development of these characters im-
 
 268 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUEE 
 
 pose themselves on her is so great that she forfeits the 
 freedom with which authors usually control their work. 
 She was unable to make any change in it. The intui- 
 tion to which she sought to give body and life took such 
 complete possession of her that she seemed to become 
 a mere instrument and to obey a superior force. There 
 is in * Middlemarch ' a famous scene — an explana- 
 tion between two women — which forms one of the 
 turning points of the novel. George Eliot used to 
 tell how the scene was done. She knew that the two 
 characters must meet sooner or later, and that there 
 would then be an explosion ; but she had avoided 
 thinking of it up to the moment when she had to 
 bring them face to face. And then, giving herself 
 up to the inspiration of the moment, she wrote the 
 narrative as we have it now, without a change, with- 
 out a cancel, in an extraordinary state of agitation, 
 and, as it were, entirely dominated by the sentiments 
 which she had to express. Her pen galloped, not as a 
 result of haste or desire to have done, but because 
 the hand which held it obeyed an emotion. ' Writing,' 
 said George Eliot, ' is to me a kind of religion, and I 
 cannot trace a word unless it comes from within.' 
 Yet she did not wish to hold herself out as a j^attern, 
 for she added, ' But I think that the best books in 
 existence have all been written simply to make 
 money.' 
 
 The truth is that the inspiration under the sway 
 of which George Eliot worked must not be confused 
 with the purely subjective and personal ardour of the 
 novelist who lends to his characters the passions 
 which he himself feels. She was rather of the 
 opinion of Diderot, who asserted that the great actor
 
 GEOKCtE ELIOT 269 
 
 remains master of himself, and calculates by reflection 
 the manner in which he ought to read a character 
 or a situation. The emotion which she felt when 
 writing was that of the very personages whom she 
 put on the stage, and into whom she transformed 
 herself. Her soul was engaged in the game ; she 
 palpitated, yet not on her own account, if I may 
 say so ; she palpitated in harmony with the diverse 
 sentiments which the situation brought about. The 
 author, by dint of her psychological penetration and 
 her power of sympathy, identified herself by turns 
 with the most diverse situations, with the most con- 
 trary passions. And it is in this sense only — it is 
 because she thus blended herself with her creations, 
 and devoted all the warmth of her nature to their 
 complete realisation, that she may be said to have 
 written with her soul. 
 
 It seems to me that we have now before us almost 
 all the elements of George Eliot's talent — conscien- 
 tious research and mature reflection in the preparation 
 of work ; the depth of moral intuition which creates 
 true and coherent character ; the interest of an action 
 which starts from these i^rimary conceptions ; the 
 dramatic force which results from the combined 
 suppleness and vivacity of sentiment with which the 
 author takes up the part of her different characters ; 
 and, lastly, the sincerity of an artist passionately in 
 love with truth. But I am wrong, for, indeed, to 
 make this analysis complete, we must add dramatic 
 incident, picturesque description, and those two great 
 faculties which seem mutually exclusive, and which 
 are here at once combined and carried to an extra- 
 
 ' [In his famous Paradoxc siir le Com('dicn. — Trans.']
 
 270 ESSAYS ON ENGLISH LITERATUKE 
 
 ordinaiy pitch of power —the pathos which draws tears 
 from the driest eyes, and the most abmidant, the most 
 amusing, the most original comedy. 
 
 It is the union of these two conditions of art, the 
 fusion of the elements in the flame of the sacred fire, 
 which assures to George Eliot so high a place as a 
 novelist, and among the highest class of novelists. 
 There are illustrious types in the telling of tales, such 
 as Defoe, Alexandre Dumas, and Dickens ; in the 
 painting of manners, such as Balzac and Thackeray ; in 
 the eloquent delineation of j)assions, such as Eousseau 
 and George Sand ; while there has been founded in 
 our days, not without some success, a new school, 
 which subordinates everything else to elaborate skill 
 of description. But is it not true that the highest 
 jDower in smj art is that which creates personages so 
 livel}', true, and individual that we carrj^ away with 
 us an indelible memory of them just as if we had met 
 them in the paths of daity life ? Is it not true that 
 here lies the chief gift of superior genius, the most 
 substantial enrichment of a literature ? I only know 
 one of the novelist's gifts which is wanting to George 
 Eliot. You must not look in her pages for the trou- 
 bles, the excitements, the disorders of love. She-^ 
 could neither have written the ' Nouvelle Heloise ' nor- 
 ' Dominique.' A woman cannot sketch a man's pas 
 sions, because she cannot feel them; and as for paint 
 ing those of her own sex, she would have to begin by 
 unsexing herself to dare to take the public into con- 
 fidence as to the last secrets of the feminine heart. 
 Women may write novels — novels better than those 
 of men, but not the same. Genius in their hands meets 
 with, ' Thus far and no farther.'
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 271 
 
 A good deal has been said about realism in con- 
 nexion with George Eliot's novels. Indeed, M. Mon- 
 tegut's article, which has been referred to above, bore 
 as its general title, ' On the Realist Novel in England.' 
 And it is true enough that our author's talent is dis- 
 tinguished by a certain fancy for painting common 
 life, even commonplace life, and by the truth with 
 which the details of this painting are followed out. 
 ' The Mill on the Floss ' could, in this respect, but 
 strengthen the impressions which ' Adam Bede ' had 
 left. * Eomola,' on the other hand, and • Middlemarch '' 
 are there to show that the author was not absolutely 
 condemned to the minutiae of Dutch painting. Besides 
 it is but an awkward word, this term of realism, which 
 gives those who use it the air of setting against each 
 other things which are different, but not contrary — 
 the admiration inspired by the beautiful and the 
 interest aroused by the true. The beautiful is nature 
 selected, magnified, generalised ; the true is the same 
 nature seen as close as possible, with every feature of 
 its physiognomy, every detail of character, revealed 
 by an observation which has set its heart on being 
 exact. Hence the human mind has two simultaneous 
 "^nd legitimate enjoyments — the delight which the 
 - 'Ul feels in suppressing time, extending space, open- 
 •g glimpses of the infinite, and the kind of fascination 
 -lich is exercised on us by Nature, thanks to her un- 
 xpectedness, her sovereignty, her very unreason, the 
 impossibility which we feel in the attempt to bring 
 her all under the law of our thoughts. There is 
 nothing here that is great or small, beautiful or ugly. 
 It is the fact qua fact which disturbs or attracts us, 
 and we are grateful to the artist who, by dint of
 
 27'2 ESSAYS ox ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 his truthfulness, acquamts us with new aspects of 
 things. 
 
 George EHot's style is not irreproachable. It 
 becomes, as has been observed, artificial by dint of 
 wish to avoid the commonplace, and stiff by dint of 
 condensation of thought. Happily she has divided 
 herself in her novels, 'ng clearness in her narrative 
 
 and naturalness in her dialogue, and reserving loaded 
 phrase and abstract terminology for her reflections. 
 The faults of her didactic style are, as it were, 
 aggravated and crowded together in the last work she 
 published, certain ' Characters,' after the fashion of 
 Theophrastus and La Bruj-ere, a volume without grace 
 and without taste, absolutely out of place in the total 
 of her work. The finest and most perfect genius not 
 only has its limits, but its hidden vices ; the purest 
 metal has its alloy. ' Felix Holt ' is weak, the Jewish 
 story in ' Daniel Deronda ' spoilt a novel which gave 
 promise of 3'ielding to none of its forerunners, and 
 * Theophrastus Such ' is simply unreadable. Every- 
 thing else, novel or short story, is a pure masterpiece, 
 and, as is proper to masterpieces, leaves nothing to 
 desire, and nothing to regret. 
 
 The name of Shakespeare has sometimes been 
 uttered in speaking of George Eliot, an hyperbole 
 which ceases to be shocking if we limit the terms of 
 comparison to the creation of characters. But 1 had 
 rather indorse, though here also with the necessary 
 distinctions, the judgment of Lord Acton, that George 
 Eliot is the most considerable literary personality that 
 has appeared since the death of Goethe. ^ 
 
 March 1885. A /<^ ^^3 l/f^ 
 
 Spottisiroode it Co. Printers, Xeic-slreel Square, London
 
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