Chapter III: Preface: I. Early Life (2)

Marian Evans did not become an admirer or disciple of Strauss, probably because she preferred Charles Hennell's interpretation of Christianity, It is certain, however, that she was greatly affected by Feuerbach, and that his influence was ever after strongly marked in her thinking. The teachings of Charles Bray and Charles Hennell had prepared her for the reception of those of Feuerbach, and he in turn made her mind responsive to the more systematic philosophy of Comte. Bray had taught her, along with Kant, to regard all knowledge as subjective, while Hennell and her other friends had shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary product of its own activity. The mind necessarily believes in God, which is man's way of conceiving his species and realizing to himself the perfect type of his own nature. God does not exist, and yet he is a true picture of man's soul, a necessary product of his feeling and consciousness. All religious ideas are true subjectively, and Christianity especially corresponds to the inward wants and aspirations of the soul. To Feuerbach it is true as a poetic interpretation of feeling and sentiment, and to him it gives the noblest and truest conception of what the soul needs for its inward satisfaction.

The influence of Feuerbach is to be seen in the profound interest which Marian Evans ever took in the subject of religion. That influence alone explains how it was possible for one who did not accept any religious doctrines as true, who did not believe in God or immortality, and who rejected Christianity as a historic or dogmatic faith, to accept so much as she did of the better spirit of religion and to be so keenly in sympathy with it. It was from the general scepticism and rationalism of the times she learned to reject all religion as false to truth and as not giving a just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed most thoroughly in religion, accepted its phenomena, was deeply moved by its spiritual aims, yearned after its perfect self-renunciation. Religion was to her, however, a purely subjective experience; it gave her a larger realization of the wants of humanity, it revealed to her the true nature of feeling. To Feuerbach she owed this capacity to appreciate Christianity, to rejoice in its spiritual aims, and even to accept it as a true interpretation of the soul's wants, at the same time that she totally rejected it as fact and dogma.

In the spring of 1851 she was invited to London by John Chapman, to assist him in the editorship of the _Westminster Review_, Chapman had been the publisher of her translations, and she had met him in London when on the way to the continent the year before. He was the publisher of a large number of idealistic and positivist works, representing the outspoken and radical sentiment of the time. The names of Fichte, Emerson, Parker, Francis Newnian, Cousin, Ewald, H. Martineau, and others of equal note, appeared on his list. The _Westminster Review_ was devoted to scientific and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the acquaintance of a distinguished and brilliant company of men and women. Under this influence her powers widened, and she quickly showed herself the peer of the ablest among them. Herbert Spencer has said that at this time she was "distinguished by that breadth of culture and universality of power which have since made her known to all the world." We are told by another that "her strength of intellect, her scholarship and varied accomplishments, and the personal charm of her manner and conversation, made a deep impression on all who wore thrown into her society."

Dr. Chapman then lived in the Strand, and Marian Evans became a member of his family, sharing in its interests as well as in its labors. She was extremely simple in her habits, went but very little into society, and gave herself almost exclusively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the _Review_ was held in Mr. Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the scientific and positivist thinkers of England at that time. Harriet Martineau invited her to Ambleside, and she was a frequent guest at the London residence of Sir James and Lady Clarke. She visited George Combe and his wife at Edinburgh in October, 1852, going to Ambleside on her return.

While assisting Mr. Chapman, Marian Evans contributed only one article, beyond her editorial work, to the pages of the _Westminster Review_. The work she did, almost wholly that of digesting and reviewing new books, could have been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of current English literature for January, 1852. she had Carlyle's _Life of Sterling_ in hand. Her notice of the book is highly appreciative of Carlyle's genius, and full of cordial praise. This passage gives her idea of a true biography:

We have often wished that genius would incline itself more frequently
to the task of the biographer,--that when some great or good personage
dies, instead of the dreary three or five volumed compilations of
letter, and diary, and detail, little to the purpose, which two-thirds
of the reading public have not the chance, nor the other third the
inclination, to read, we could have a real "Life," setting forth
briefly and vividly the man's inward and outward struggles, aims and
achievements, so as to make clear the meaning which his experience has
for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies)
the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on
the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the
conditions required for the perfection of life writing,--personal
intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the
depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes
characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,--are
seldom found in combination. _The Life of Sterling_ is an instance of
this rare conjunction. Its comparatively tame scenes and incidents
gather picturesqueness and interest under the rich lights of Carlyle's
mind. We are told neither too little nor too much; the facts noted, the
letters selected, are all such as serve to give the liveliest
conception of what Sterling was and what he did; and though the book
speaks much of other persons, this collateral matter is all a kind of
scene-painting, and is accessory to the main purpose.

The earliest of the regular articles, and the only one printed while she was the associate editor of the _Review_, is on "The Lady Novelists." It appeared in the number for July, 1852, and contained a striking discussion of woman's place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her treatment of Jane Austen and George Sand, praising as well as criticising with insight and fine discrimination. At the outset she defines literature as an expression of the emotions, and gives a remarkably clear and original description of its functions.

Her editorial connection with the _Westminster Review_ continued for about two years, until the end of 1853. For the next three years she was a contributor to its pages, where there appeared "Woman in France: Madame de Sablé," in October, 1854; "Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," October, 1855; "German Wit: Heinrich Heine," January, 1856; "The Natural History of German Life," July, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these articles are still as great as when they were first published. This will justify the publication here of numerous extracts from their most salient and important paragraphs. As indicating her literary judgment, and her capacity for incisive characterization and clear, trenchant criticism, reference may be made to the essay on Heine, which is one of the finest pieces of critical writing the century has produced.

Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age; no echo, but a
real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth
studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us
in delicious song; a humorist, who touches leaden folly with the magic
wand of his fancy, and transmutes it into the fine gold of art--who
sheds his sunny smile on human tears, and makes them a beauteous
rainbow on the cloudy background of life; a wit, who holds in his
mighty hand the most scorching lightnings of satire; an artist in prose
literature, who has shown even more completely than Goethe the
possibilities of German prose; and--in spite of all charges against
him, true as well as false--a lover of freedom, who has spoken wise and
brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering
man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to
endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an
intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight
in the other scale--that Heine's magnificent powers have often served
only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so
that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but
have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the
precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and
personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly
been exceeded by the license of former days. Yet, when all coarseness,
all scurrility, all Mephistophelean contempt for the reverent feelings
of other men, is removed, there will be a plenteous remainder of
exquisite poetry, of wit, humor and just thought. It is apparently too
often a congenial task to write severe words about the transgressions
committed by men of genius, especially when the censor has the
advantage of being himself a man of _no_ genius, so that those
transgressions seem to him quite gratuitous; _he_, forsooth, never
lacerated any one by his wit, or gave irresistible piquancy to a coarse
allusion, and his indignation is not mitigated by any knowledge of the
temptation that lies in transcendent power....

In Heine's hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull,
becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic,
brilliant; it is German in an _allotropic_ condition. No dreary,
labyrinthine sentences in which you find "no end in wandering mazes
lost;" no chains of adjectives in linked harshness long drawn out; no
digressions thrown in as parentheses; but crystalline definiteness and
clearness, fine and varied rhythm, and all that delicate precision,
all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest
order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty
in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was
pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant
does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in
prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm
development which belongs to Goethe's style, for they are foreign
to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to
the manifold qualities of prose, and in mastery over its effects.
Heine is full of variety, of light and shadow: he alternates
between epigrammatic pith, imaginative grace, sly allusion, and
daring piquancy; and athwart all those there runs a vein of sadness,
tenderness and grandeur which reveals the poet.

The introduction to this article contains a wise comparison of wit and humor, and makes a subtle discrimination between them. German wit she finds is heavy and lacking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor" previous to the present century. In Heine she found both in a marked degree, so that he is unlike the other writers of Germany, having a flavor and a spirit quite his own.

Her essays on Dr. Cumming and the poet Young were largely of a theological character. They are keen in their thrusts at dogmatic religion, sparkling with witty hits at a make-believe piety, and full of biting sarcasm. Her entire want of sympathy with the men she dissects, makes her sometimes unjust to them, and she makes them worse than they really were. The terrible vigor of her criticism may be seen in her description of Dr. Cumming and his teaching. She brings three charges against him, and defends each with ample quotation, wit, sarcasm, argument and eloquence. She finds in his books unscrupulosity of statement, absence of genuine charity, and a perverted moral judgment. These essays much resemble Thackeray's dissection of Swift for their terrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or 1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with those who were blinded, as these men were, by all their surroundings and by whatever of culture they received; but she did see into the secret places of their lives, and laid bare the inner motives of their conduct. It was because these men came before the world as its teachers, holding up before it a special ideal and motive for its guidance, that she criticised them. In reality they were selfish, narrow, worldly; their teaching came from no deep convictions, nor from a high moral purpose; and hence her criticism. She laid bare the shallowness of their thoughts, the selfishness of their purposes, and the spiritual unfruitfulness of their teachings. Criticism so unsparing and so just, because based on the most searching insight into character and conduct, it would be difficult to find elsewhere.

Dr. Cumming's mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is
not the slightest leaning towards mysticism in his Christianity--no
indication of religious raptures, of delight in God, of spiritual
communion with the Father. He is most at home in the forensic view of
justification, and dwells on salvation as a scheme rather than as an
experience. He insists on good works as the sign of justifying faith,
as labors to be achieved to the glory of God, but he rarely represents
them as the spontaneous, necessary outflow of a soul filled with divine
love. He is at home in the external, the polemical, the historical, the
circumstantial, and is only episodically devout and practical. The
great majority of his published sermons are occupied with argument or
philippic against Romanists and unbelievers, with vindications of the
Bible, with the political interpretation of prophecy, or the criticism
of public events; and the devout aspiration, or the spiritual and
practical exhortation, is tacked to them as a sort of fringe in a
hurried sentence or two at the end. He revels in the demonstration that
the Pope is the Man of Sin; he is copious on the downfall of the
Ottoman empire; he appears to glow with satisfaction in turning a story
which tends to show how he abashed an "infidel;" it is a favorite
exercise with him to form conjectures of the process by which the earth
is to be burned up, and to picture Dr. Chalmers and Mr. Wilberforce
being caught up to meet Christ in the air, while Romanists, Puseyites
and infidels are given over to gnashing of teeth. But of really
spiritual joys and sorrows, of the life and death of Christ as a
manifestation of love that constrains the soul, of sympathy with that
yearning over the lost and erring which made Jesus weep over Jerusalem,
and prompted the sublime prayer, "Father, forgive them," of the gentler
fruits of the Spirit, and the peace of God which passeth
understanding--of all this, we find little trace in Dr. Cumming's
discourses.

Even more severe is her account of the poet Young. She speaks of him as "a remarkable individual of the species _divine_." This is her account of his life:

He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his
metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if
you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a
psalmist, a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last
Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuate between rhapsodic
applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After
spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a
hanger-on of the profligate Duke of Wharton, after aiming in vain at a
parliamentary career, and angling for pensions and preferment with
fulsome dedications and fustian odes, he is a little disgusted with his
imperfect success, and has determined to retire from the general
mendicancy business to a particular branch; in other words, he has
determined on that renunciation of the world implied in "taking
orders," with the prospect of a good living and an advantageous
matrimonial connection. And no man can be better fitted for an
Established Church. He personifies completely her nice balance of
temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the
momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for
immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons
in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with
something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly
things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his
meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are
not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man
believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire
for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never
forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the
King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar
than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among
the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes,
and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it
were not for the prospect of immortality, he considers it would be wise
and agreeable to be indecent or to murder one's father; and, heaven
apart, it would be extremely irrational in any man not to be a knave.
Man, he thinks, is a compound of the angel and the brute; the brute is
to be humbled by being reminded of its "relation to the stalls," and
frightened into moderation by the contemplation of death-beds and
skulls; the angel is to be developed by vituperating this world and
exalting the next; and by this double process you get the
Christian--"the highest style of man." With all this, our new-made
divine is an unmistakable poet. To a clay compounded chiefly of the
worldling and the rhetorician, there is added a real spark of
Promethean fire. He will one day clothe his apostrophes and
objurgations, his astronomical religion and his charnel-house morality,
in lasting verse, which will stand, like a Juggernaut made of gold and
jewels, at once magnificent and repulsive; for this divine is Edward
Young, the future author of _Night Thoughts_.

She says, "One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his _radical insincerity as a poetic artist_."

Indeed, we remember no mind in poetic literature that seems to have
absorbed less of the beauty and the healthy breath of the common
landscape than Young's. His images, often grand and finely presented,
lie almost entirely within that circle of observation which would be
familiar to a man who lived in town, hung about the theatres, read the
newspaper, and went home often by moon and star light. There is no
natural object nearer than the moon that seems to have any strong
attraction for him, and even to the moon he chiefly appeals for
patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well
as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more
familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the
stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of
abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the _want of genuine
emotion_. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists
and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies, with
this world in her left hand and the other world in her right; but we
never find him dwelling on virtue or religion as it really exists--in
the emotions of a man dressed in an ordinary coat, and seated by his
fireside of an evening, with his hand resting on the head of his little
daughter, in courageous effort for unselfish ends, in the internal
triumph of justice and pity over personal resentment, in all the
sublime self-renunciation and sweet charities which are found in the
details of ordinary life.

In these essays there are various indications of her religious opinions, and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she has this word to say of the rationalistic conception of the Bible:

He seems to be ignorant, or he chooses to ignore the fact, that there
is a large body of eminently instructed and earnest men who regard the
Hebrew and Christian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to
be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that
an equally large number of men, who are not historical critics, find
the dogmatic scheme built on the letter of the scriptures, opposed to
their profoundest moral convictions.

This statement is suggestive of her position on religious subjects:

The best minds that accept Christianity as a divinely inspired system,
believe that the great end of the Gospel is not merely the saving but
the educating of men's souls, the creating within them of holy
dispositions, the subduing of egoistical pretensions, and the perpetual
enhancing of the desire that the will of God--a will synonymous with
goodness and truth--may be done on earth. But what relation to all this
has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Christian in
the position of a spectator at a gladiatorial show, of which Satan is
the wild beast in the shape of a great red dragon, and two thirds of
mankind the victims--the whole provided and got up by God for the
edification of the saints?

She calls Dr. Cumming's teachings "the natural crop of a human mind where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs." Then she deals with that belief in this trenchant fashion:

Happily, the constitution of human nature forbids the complete
prevalence of such a theory. Fatally powerful as religious systems have
been, human nature is stronger and wider than religious systems, and
though dogmas may hamper, they cannot absolutely repress its growth:
build walls around the living tree as you will, the bricks and mortar
have by and by to give way before the slow and sure operation of the
sap. But next to the hatred of the enemies of God which is the
principle of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more
obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a
reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the
sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in
proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by
their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly
impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that
speaks through the eyes when we soothe, and moves the arm when we
succor, is a deed strictly benevolent. If the soothing or the succor be
given because another being wishes or approves it, the deed ceases to
be one of benevolence, and becomes one of deference, of obedience, of
self-interest, or vanity. Accessory motives may aid in producing an
action, but they presuppose the weakness of the direct motive; and
conversely, when the direct motive is strong, the actions of accessory
motives will be excluded.

In writing of Young she says,--

The God of the _Night Thoughts_ is simply Young himself "writ large"--a
didactic poet, who "lectures" mankind in the antithetic hyperbole of
mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and
expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young has no conception
of religion as anything else than egoism turned heavenward; and he does
not merely imply this, he insists on it.

She contrasts Young with Cowper, preferring the latter because he dwells more on the things of a common and simple life.

In Young we have the type of that deficient human sympathy, that
impiety toward the present and the visible, which flies for its
motives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and
unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love which
cherishes things in proportion to their nearness, and feels its
reverence grow in proportion to the intimacy of its knowledge.

This warm human sympathy is all she cares for in religion.

See how a lovely, sympathetic nature manifests itself in spite of creed
and circumstance! Where is the poem that surpasses the _Task_ in the
genuine love it breathes, at once toward inanimate and animate
existence--in truthfulness of perception and sincerity of
presentation--in the calm gladness that springs from a delight in
objects for their own sake, without self-reference--in divine sympathy
with the lowliest pleasures, with the most shortlived capacity for
pain? Here is no railing at the earth's "melancholy map," but the
happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond
minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the
inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against
man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness
from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery
and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular
deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How
Cowper's exquisite mind falls with the mild warmth of morning sunlight
on the commonest objects, at once disclosing every detail and investing
every detail with beauty! No object is too small to prompt his song--
not the sooty film on the bars, or the spoutless teapot holding a bit
of mignonette that serves to cheer the dingy town lodging with a "hint
that nature lives;" and yet his song is never trivial, for he is alive
to small objects, not because his mind is narrow, but because his
glance is clear and his heart is large.

Her contributions to the _Westminster Review_ indicate that Marian Evans had read much and well, and that she was possessed of a thoroughly cultivated mind and much learning. To their preparation she gave herself diligently, writing slowly, after a careful study of her subject and much thought devoted to a faithful thinking out of all its parts. It has been many times suggested that these articles gave indication only of learning and studious effort. They certainly give strong hint of these, but also of much more. That on human life shows how much she had thought, and how thoroughly and philosophically, on one of the largest problems; while the one on Heine indicates her penetrating literary judgment and her capacity for analysis and interpretation. These essays are not mere compilations, mere digests of learned information; they are studies of large subjects done in a large and inspiring manner. Her essays on the poet Young and Dr. Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very title of her essay one of her main theories, and her conception of man as a social being was brought out in it. These essays fully indicate that her opinions were already formed, that the leading ideas she was to give expression to in her novels had been arrived at by diligent study and thought, and that she had equipped herself with ample reasons for the acceptance of the opinions she held. Their chief defect is in their occasional arrogance of expression, as if the writer had not yet wholly escaped the superior airs of the young woman elated with the greatness of her knowledge, and a certain rudeness and vehemence of statement not seen later. It is a defect that is not very prominent, but one that is apparent enough to mar some of the best of these pages. It was one she never wholly outgrew, though in her novels her large information was usually so managed and subordinated as to give little annoyance to the intelligent reader.

It must be quite evident to any reader of her _Westminster Review_ contributions, that Marian Evans would never have attained to any such high literary eminence as an essayist as that which she has secured as a novelist. Readable as are her essays,--and the five just named are certainly worthy of a place in her complete works,--yet they are not of the highest order. She could attain the highest range of her power only when something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but her genius demanded also the opportunity to create, to build up a life of high beauty and purpose from materials of its own construction. Her _Review_ articles gave her a high place in the eyes of her friends, and their chief value seems to have been, that they caused these friends to see that she could do other and better work, and led them to induce her to apply her genius in a direction more congenial to its capacity.

III.

MARRIAGE.

In 1853 Marian Evans became the wife of George Henry Lewes. He had married at an early ago a woman possessed of many charms of person. They went to live in a large house at Kensington with five other young couples, keeping house on a co-operative arrangement, with many attractions of social entertainment therewith. One result was the desertion of her home by Mrs. Lewes in connection with one of the men into whose company she was constantly thrown by this manner of life. She soon repented, and Lewes forgave her, receiving her back to his home. A second time, however, she left him. His having condoned her fault made it impossible for him to secure a divorce according to the laws of England at that time. He seems to have done what he could to retain her faithful devotion to her marriage relations, so long as that seemed possible.

When Lewes and Marian Evans met, on her going to live in London, and after his wife had deserted him, there sprang up a strong attachment between them, As they could not be legally married, she agreed to live with him without that formality.

It is to be said of this affair that George Eliot was very far from looking at such a problem as Goethe or, George Sand would have looked at it, from the position of personal inclination. Yet we are told by Miss Blind that she early entertained liberal views in regard to divorce, believing that greater freedom in this respect is desirable. There could have been no passionate individualistic defiance of law in her case, however. No one has insisted more strongly than she on the importance and the sanctity of the social regulations in regard to the union of the sexes. That her marriage was a true one in all but the legal form, that she was faithful to its every social obligation, has been abundantly shown. She was a most faithful wife to Lewes, and the devoted mother of his three children by the previous marriage, while she found in him that strong, self-reliant helpmate she needed.

Her marriage under these circumstances required no little individualism of purpose, and some defiance of social obligations. Her intimate friends were unable to comprehend her conduct, and she was alienated from most of them. Especially her friends in Coventry were annoyed at such a marriage, and were not reconciled with her for a long time, and not until they saw that she had acted with a conscientious purpose. She was excluded from society by this act, and her marriage was interpreted as a gross violation of social morality. To a sensitive nature, as hers assuredly was, and to one who so much valued the confidence of her friends as she did, such exclusion must have been a serious cross. She freely elected her own course in life, however, and she never seems to have complained at the results it brought her. That it saddened her mind seems probable, but there is no outward evidence that she accepted her lot in a bitter or complaining spirit. No one could have written of love and marriage in so high and pure a spirit as everywhere appears in her books with whom passion was in any degree a controlling influence. In _Adam Bede_ her own conception of wedded love is expressed out of the innermost convictions and impulses of her own heart, when she exclaims,--

What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they
are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on
each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be
one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the
last parting.

In _Felix Holt_ there is a passage on this subject which must have come directly from her own experience, and it gives us a true insight into the spirit in which she accepted the distrust of friends and the coldness of the world which her marriage brought her.

A supreme love, a motive that gives a sublime rhythm to a woman's life,
and exalts habit into partnership with the soul's highest needs, is not
to be had when and how she will: to know that high initiation, she must
often tread where it is hard to tread, and feel the chill air, and
watch through darkness. It is not true that love makes all things easy;
it makes us choose what is difficult.

Throughout her novels she exalts marriage, never casts any slur upon it, treats it as one of the most sacred of all human relations. She makes it appear as a sacrament, not of the Church, but of the sublime fellowship of humanity. It is pure, holy, a binding tie, a sacred obligation, as it appears in her books. When Romola is leaving Florence and her husband, her love dead and all that made her life seem worthy gone with it, she meets Savonarola, who bids her return to her home and its duties. What the great prophet-priest says on this occasion we have every reason to believe expressed the true sentiments of George Eliot herself. He proclaims, what she doubtless thoroughly believed, that marriage is something far more than mere affection, more than love; that its obligation holds when all love is gone; that its obligation is so sacred and binding as to call for the fullest measure of renunciation and personal humiliation. As throwing light on George Eliot's manner of looking at this subject, the whole chapter which describes the meeting of Romola and Savonarola deserves to be read. That portion of it in which Savonarola gives his views of marriage may here be reproduced, not as giving the doctrine of the Church, but as presenting the positivist conception of marriage as interpreted by George Eliot.

His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which
made it seem impossible toiler that she could go on her way as if she
had not heard it; yet she shrank as one who sees the path she must
take, but sees, too, that the hot lava lies there. And the instinctive
shrinking from a return to her husband brought doubts. She turned away
her eyes from Fra Girolamo, and stood for a minute or two with her
hands hanging clasped before her, like a statue. At last she spoke, as
if the words were being wrung from her, still looking on the ground.

"My husband--he is not--my love is gone!"

"My daughter, there is the bond of a higher love. Marriage is not
carnal only, made for selfish delight. See what that thought leads you
to! It leads you to wander away in a false garb from all the
obligations of your place and name. That would not have been if you had
learned that it is a sacramental vow, from which none but God can
release you. My daughter, your life is not as a grain of sand, to be
blown by the winds; it is as flesh and blood, that dies if it be
sundered. Your husband is not a malefactor?"

Romola flushed and started. "Heaven forbid! No; I accuse him of
nothing."

"I did not suppose he was a malefactor. I meant that if he were a
malefactor your place would be in the prison beside him. My daughter,
if the cross comes to you as a wife, you must carry it as a wife. You
may say, 'I will forsake my husband,' but you cannot cease to be a
wife."

"Yet if--oh, how could I bear--" Romola had involuntarily begun to say
something which she sought to banish from her mind again.

"Make your marriage sorrows an offering, too, my daughter: an offering
to the great work by which sin and sorrow are being made to cease.
The end is sure, and is already beginning. Here in Florence it is
beginning, and the eyes of faith behold it. And it may be our
blessedness to die for it: to die daily by the crucifixion of our
selfish will--to die at last by laying our bodies on the altar. My
daughter, you are a child of Florence; fulfil the duties of that great
inheritance. Live for Florence--for your own people, whom God is
preparing to bless the earth. Bear the anguish and the smart. The iron
is sharp--I know, I know--it rends the tender flesh. The draught is
bitterness on the lips. But there is rapture in the cup--there is the
vision which makes all life below it dross forever. Come, my daughter,
come back to your place!" [Footnote: Chapter XL.]

Again, when Dorothea goes to see Rosamond to intercede in Dr. Lydgate's behalf with his wife, we have an expression of the sacredness of marriage, and the renunciation it demands of all that is opposed to its trust and helpfulness. Dorothea says,--

"Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful
in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved some one else better
than--than those we were married to, it would be of no use"--poor
Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language
brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or
getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very
dear--but it murders our marriage--and then the marriage stays with us
like a murder--and everything else is gone. And then our husband--if he
loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in
his life--"

If Marian Evans rejected the sanctions which society has imposed on the love of man and woman in the legal forms of marriage, it was not in a wilful and passionate spirit. There are reasons for believing that she was somewhat touched in her youth with the individualistic theories of the time, which made so many men and women of genius reject the restraints imposed by society, as in the case of Goethe, Heine, George Sand, Shelley and many another; yet she does not appear to have been to more than a very limited extent influenced by such considerations in regard to her own marriage. The matter for surprise is, that one who regarded all human traditions, ceremonies and social obligations as sacred, should have consented to act in so individualistic a manner. She makes Rufus Lyon say--and it is her own opinion--that "the right to rebellion is the right to seek a higher rule, and not to wander in mere lawlessness." Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the _Westminster Review_, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the tone of his books was not "immaculate," and that it was "strangely at variance, with that sound and lofty morality which ought to form the basis of every education." She also speaks of the philosophy of that day as "the delusive though plausible theory that no license of tone, or warmth of coloring, could injure any really healthy and high-toned mind." In the article on "Woman in France," she touches on similar theories. As this article was written just at the time of her marriage, one passage in it may have a personal interest, and shows her conception of a marriage such as her own, based on intellectual interest rather than on passionate love. She is speaking of

the laxity of opinion and practice with regard to the marriage tie.
Heaven forbid [she adds] that we should enter on a defence of French
morals, most of all in relation to marriage! But it is undeniable that
unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, grounded only on
inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring women into more
intelligent sympathy with men, and to heighten and complicate their
share in the political drama. The quiescence and security of the
conjugal relation are, doubtless, favorable to the manifestation of the
highest qualities by persons who have already attained a high standard
of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient to rouse all the
faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved object--to convert
indolence into activity, indifference into ardent partisanship, dulness
into perspicuity.

Her conception of marriage may have been affected by that presented by Feuerbach in his _Essence of Christianity_. In words translated into English by herself, Feuerbach says, "that alone is a religious marriage which is a true marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage--love." Again, he says that marriage is only sacred when it is an inward attraction confirmed by social and personal obligations; "for a marriage the bond of which is merely an external restriction, not the voluntary, contented self-restriction of love--in short, a marriage which is not spontaneously concluded, spontaneously willed, self-sufficing--is not a true marriage, and therefore not a truly moral marriage." As a moral and social obligation, marriage is to be held sacred; its sacredness grows out of its profound human elements of helpfulness, nurture and emotional satisfaction, while its obligation rises from its primary social functions. It does not consist in any legal form, but in compliance with deep moral and social responsibilities. Some such conception of marriage as this she seems to have accepted, which found its obligation in the satisfaction it gives to the inner nature, and in the fulfilment of social responsibilities. The influence of Compte may also have been felt in the case of both Lewes and Marian Evans; they saw in the marriage form a fulfilment of human, not of legal, requirements.

While there is no doubt they would both gladly have accepted the legal form had that been possible, yet they were sufficiently out of sympathy with the conventionalities of society to cause them to disregard that form when it could not be complied with. They regarded themselves, however, as married, and bound by all the ties and requirements which marriage imposes. They proclaimed themselves to their friends as husband and wife, and they were so accepted by those who knew them. In her letters to literary correspondents she always mentioned Lewes as "my husband." The laws of most civilized nations recognize these very conditions, and regard the acceptance of the marriage relation before the world as a sufficient form.

Those who have written of this marriage, bear testimony to its devotion and beauty. The author of the account of her life and writings in the _Westminster Review_, an early and intimate friend, says the "union was from the first regarded by themselves as a true marriage, as an alliance of a sacred kind, having a binding and permanent character. When the fact of the union was first made known to a few intimate friends, it was accompanied with the assurance that its permanence was already irrevocably decreed. The marriage of true hearts for a quarter of a century has demonstrated the sincerity of the intention. 'The social sanction,' said Mr. Lewes once in our hearing, 'is always desirable.' There are cases in which it is not always to be had. Such a ratification of the sacrament of affection was regarded as a sufficient warrant, under the circumstances of the case, for entrance on the most sacred engagement of life. There was with her no misgiving, no hesitation, no looking back, no regret; but always the unostentatious assertion of quiet, matronly dignity, the most queenly expression and unconscious affirmation of the 'divine right' of the wedded wife. We have heard her own oral testimony to the enduring happiness of this union, and can, as privileged witnesses, corroborate it. As a necessary element in this happiness she practically included the enjoyment inseparable from the spontaneous reciprocation of home affection, meeting with an almost maternal love the filial devotion of Mr. Lewes's sons, proffering all tender service in illness, giving and receiving all friendly confidence in her own hour of sorrowful bereavement, and crowning with a final act of generous love and forethought the acceptance of parental responsibilities in the affectionate distribution of property, the visible result of years of the intellectual toil whose invisible issues are endless."

Their marriage helped both to a more perfect work and to a truer life. She gave poise and purpose to the "versatile, high-strung, somewhat wayward nature" of her husband, and she "restrained, raised, ennobled, and purified" his life and thought. He stimulated and directed her genius life into its true channel, cared for her business interests with untiring faithfulness, made it possible for her to pursue her work without burdens and distractions, and gave her the inspiration of a noble affection and a cheerful home. Miss Edith Simcox speaks of "the perfect union between these two," which, she says, "lent half its charm to all the worship paid at the shrine of George Eliot." She herself, Miss Simcox proceeds to say, "has spoken somewhere of the element of almost natural tenderness in a man's protecting love: this patient, unwearying care for which no trifles are too small, watched over her own life; he stood between her and the world, her relieved her from all those minor cares which chafe and fret the artist's soul; he wrote her letters; in a word, he so smoothed the course of her outer life as to leave all her powers free to do what she alone could do for the world and for the many who looked to her for help and guidance. No doubt this devotion brought its own reward; but we are exacting for our idols and do not care to have even a generous error to condone, and therefore we are glad to know that, great as his reward was, it was no greater than was merited by the most perfect love that ever crowned a woman's life." Mr. Kegan Paul also writes of the mutual helpfulness and harmony of purpose which grew out of this marriage. "Mr. Lewes's character attained a stability and pose in which it had been somewhat lacking, and the quiet of an orderly and beautiful home enabled him to concentrate himself more and more on works demanding sustained intellectual effort, while Mrs. Lewes's intensely feminine nature found the strong man on whom to lean in the daily business of life, for which she was physically and intellectually unfitted. Her own somewhat sombre cast of thought was cheered, enlivened and diversified by the vivacity and versatility which characterized Mr. Lewes, and made him seem less like an Englishman than a very agreeable foreigner."

This marriage presents one of the curious ethical problems of literature. In this case approval and condemnation are alike difficult. Her own teaching condemns it; her own life approves it. We could wish it had not been, for the sake of what is purest and best; and yet it is not difficult to see that its effects were in many ways beneficial to her. That it was ethically wrong there is no doubt. That it was condemned by her own teaching is so plain as to cause doubt about how she could herself approve it.

Lewes had a brilliant and versatile mind. He was not a profound thinker, but he had keen literary tastes, a vigorous interest in science, and a remarkable alertness of intellect. His gifts were varied rather than deep; literary rather than philosophical. As a companion, he had a wonderful charm and magnetism; he was a graceful talker, a marvellous story-teller, and a wit seldom rivalled. His intimate friend, Anthony Trollope, says, "There was never a man so pleasant as he with whom to sit and talk vague literary gossip over a cup of coffee and a cigar." By the same friend we are told that no man related a story as he did. "No one could say that he was handsome. The long bushy hair, and the thin cheeks, and the heavy mustache, joined as they were, alas! almost always to a look of sickness, were not attributes of beauty. But there was a brilliance in his eye which was not to be tamed by any sickness, by any suffering, which overcame all other feeling on looking at him."