The Mysterious Affair at Styles (Hercule Poirot #1), by Agatha Christie.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Mysterious Affair at Styles 

(Hercule Poirot #1), 

by Agatha Christie. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

For a first book, it's already well formed in most ways including the style and weapons used by Agatha Christie in her works. There's a slight whiff of the duo - Poirot and Hastings - being a takeoff, but the characters are so different from those of Holmes and his companion, the whiff remains that. There's some device necessary, after all, so the author explains the workings of the detection. 

Quite a complicated mystery, as usual with Agatha Christie.  

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................

................................................

November 09, 2020 - April 14, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

And Now Goodbye, by James Hilton.

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

And Now Goodbye, by James Hilton.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A while ago - specifically, February 05, 2016 - attempting to write about books I'd read over half a century and loved, but uncertain of titles, I'd written, recording my memories of this work but on page of another one - Time And Time Again - by Hilton:- 

"I wonder if this is the story I remembered for its gentle wafting of music through a tale that begins with a train accident, and a man from first class compartment who goes repeatedly into lower class compartments that are worst hit with fire, saving many people in the process, and not stopping even when he was repeatedly told to care about his own safety.

"Love and music wafts gently through the story of two ill fated souls that met too late, and all they had was a mutual realisation that they loved each other.

"When later I found that a piece of music I had been listening to stayed on in my head like a fragrance that I could not identify - and it turned out to be the composer mentioned in this story, even if perhaps not the exact same piece, it was not a surprise, but a confirmation - I had begun to listen to the music because of reading this amongst others and had been listening to various composers for a couple of years, and then found this music remaining with me, subconsciously.

"But I am only guessing that this is the title - that it was this writer, I am sure."

Now, I know this is the one. 

................................................................................................

This edition has a prologue missing, one that describes the newspapers account of the priest despetarately attempting to rescue people over and over from a train crash, even though he was reportedly travelling alone and his frenzy couldn't be seen as personal. 

................................................................................................

Reading much loved works one after another this time, rather than as and when one found them as one did almost half a century ago, or a few years more than four decades ago to be more precise, one finds it strange one is noticing much more details than then. Was it because one was then stressed over life, career, future? Or is it age, experience of world, and more? 

For instance, that this work is set again in the familiar Browdley, as was So Well Remembered. Wonder if Higgs, the counsellor, in this was later the germ that blossomed into Boswell, a very different character. 

As evident from the first few paragraphs above, when read a few decades ago, the lasting impression this left was of a tragic love found too late, before an accident destroyed one life and every hope of a life for the other - and a Brahms air wafting through, connecting them via their higher aspirations. 

This time one is noticing things brushed aside, somehow, last time - such as the details of difficulties of work of a parson who isn't a religious zealot but instead, not only reasonable and honest, but someone with much more aspiration of a spiritual nature that finds a sky to soar in music, in literature and art, and in contact with human minds where a light is not stamped out by convention. 

................................................................................................

Hilton does give a clue with the local doctor Ringwood advising the protagonist, but it's only with the Harley street specialist's diagnosis that one realises how skilfully Hilton has been describing a man close to nervous breakdown - because one has been experiencing it as one has been with the poor beleaguered guy! And therein the subtlety of Hilton's calibre as an author. 

And one is close to halfway through by this point, before he meets Elizabeth. But hours after they've been together, one is reminded far more of My Dinner With Andre, on this second reading - seen circa 1981 - 1982 or so - than of any love story, however atypical. The first time one read being late seventies, it was different, but nevertheless, this being far from any love story one comes across was quite clear. 

So on this second reading, it's not just disappointing but seems like a treachery to art, when it suddenly does turn to a conventional tale of unconventional love, long before the horrific end a la Anna Karenina, which always seemed to be forced for sake of satisfying demands of convention after all. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................

................................................

April 26, 2021 - April 29, 2021.

Publication Date:- December 23, 2020. 

ASIN: B08R98TKXP

................................................

................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Knight Without Armour, by James Hilton.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Knight Without Armour, by James Hilton. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This is one of those rare books we, as a couple, both read almost simultaneously, enjoyed, loved and remembered, and it was soon after we married - within a couple of years or so - but well over a decade, nearly two decades, after I had read and loved most works of Hilton. 

Most serious intellectuals and authors of the era were not only unable to ignore events in Russia but fascinated with them, and mostly sympathetic with the revolution. One finds a mention in their work, however oblique or slight, and this work of Hilton is his acknowledgement, to say the least, of the events. 

Largely, it was the extensive descriptions of Siberia that fascinated us, remaining thereafter as a longing to traverse the land. But it was just as strongly off-putting, to put it extremely mildly, to go through some of the descriptions, not limited to Siberia. 

Beginning it a second time, one notices Hilton mentions Carigole again, but this time he's set it in county Cork, not near Galway uphill beset by Atlantic gales as it was in his So Well Remembered. 

No such name exists on Google maps. Why was Carigole such a favourite name for him to give an Irish town? 

................................................................................................

Hilton has a - by now well recognised by a reader - prototype of Englishman for a protagonist, usually, with few rare exceptions. Its someone who went through a not too closeknit family life, with a - middling level - public school and a Cambridge graduation before a middling career as a diplomat or something thereabouts, serving the empire faithfully. He manages to dress this protagonist in different enough careers, in different works of his, so that not only the very different lives but the huge variety of adventures seems not incredible , despite being so. It all fits in the nineteenth century and twentieth with British empire straddling the globe, and the men pieces of the vast puzzle. 

But with all his deep sympathy that brings his characters alive to the reader, he still retains his - or rather the West brand - racism, whereby he sympthises with the Russian workers but is superciliously aloof in excluding India and anything related from his sphere of consideration, and explicitly so, while retaining a modest to high regard for most other cultures far more alien - Chinese, Japanese, (but not Tibetan!), and more. 

He seems to despise Asian contingent of Russia, too, and - rather surprisingly - blames not only the revolution but much more on Jews, with most small unpleasant characters depicted in this work explicitly labelled "Jew". Dangerous ones, however, are Ukrainian - and in this, most memoirs of WWII holocaust concur. 

................................................................................................

In this work, the protagonist isn't a civil servant or a diplomat, but after short stints as a journalist, a war correspondent at the Russo-Japan war, and an English teacher in Rostov-on-the-Don, he's offered his career at the last hour before he's forced to leave St. Petersburg, which he's very unwilling to do, having acquired fluent Russian and liked not only St. Petersburg but Russian people as well. 

"Briefly, Stanfield's suggestion was that A.J. should become attached to the British Secret Service. That sounded simple enough, but an examination of all that it implied revealed a network of complication and detail."

""The danger, my friend, would be twofold, and I'm not going to try to minimise it in the least. There would be, of course, the danger you mention, but there would be the even greater danger that the Russian police would take you for a genuine revolutionary and deal with you accordingly. And you know what 'accordingly' means." 

""But in that case I suppose I should have to tell them the real truth?" 

""Not at all—that is just what you would not have to do. You would have to keep up your pretence and accept whatever punishment they gave you. If you did tell them the truth, the British authorities would merely arch their eyebrows with great loftiness and disown you. I want you to be quite clear about that. We should, in the beginning, provide you with passport and papers proving you to be a Russian subject, and after that, if anything ever went wrong, you would have to become that Russian subject—completely. Do you see? We could not risk trouble with the Russian Government by having anything to do with you.""

"Stanfield smiled. "Forrester's a thorough fellow," he commented. "He doesn't intend to have the Russian police wondering what's happened to you. To–night, my friend, though it may startle you to know it, Mr. A.J. Fothergill will leave Russia. He will collect his luggage at the Warsaw station, he will board the night express for Germany, his passport will be stamped in the usual way at Wierjbolovo and Eydkuhnen, but in Berlin, curiously enough if anyone bothered to make enquiries, all trace of him would be lost. How fortunate that your height and features are reasonably normal and that passport photographs are always so dreadfully bad!""

Hilton documents a common episode of the era:- 

"One afternoon he was walking with Maronin through a factory district during a lock–out; crowds of factory workers—men, women, and girls—were strolling or loitering about quite peaceably. Suddenly, with loud shouts and the clatter of hoofs, a troop of Cossacks swept round the street–corner, their lithe bodies swaying rhythmically from side to side as they laid about them with their short, leaden–tipped whips. The crowd screamed and stampeded for safety, but most were hemmed in between the Cossacks and the closed factory–gates. A.J. and Maronin pressed themselves against the wall and trusted to luck; several horsemen flashed past; whips cracked and there were terrifying screams; then all was over, almost as sharply as it had begun. A girl standing next to Maronin had been struck; the whip had laid open her cheek from lip to ear. A.J. and Maronin helped to carry her into a neighbouring shop, which was already full of bleeding victims. Maronin said: "My mother was blinded like that—by a Cossack whip,"—and A.J. suddenly felt as he had done years before when he had decided to fight Smalljohn's system at Barrowhurst, and when he had seen the policeman in Trafalgar Square twisting the suffragette's arm—only a thousand times more intensely."

................................................................................................

The transformation comes with his arrest and exile to furthest corner of Siberia, close to Arctic Northeast, Arctic ocean easily arrived at by small boat in summer on river. There are only four Russians imprisoned there, and by the time a group of Cossacks arrived to inform them of freedom due to revolution, the four were dead. 

"Two days later eight men set out for the south. There was need to hurry, as the warmer season was approaching and the streams would soon melt and overflow. 

"As they covered mile after mile it was as if the earth warmed and blossomed to meet them; each day was longer and brighter than the one before; the stunted willows became taller, and at last there were trees with green buds on them; the sun shone higher in the sky, melting the snows and releasing every stream into bursting, bubbling life, till the ice in the rivers gave a thunderous shiver from bank to bank; and the soldiers threw off their fur jackets and shouted for joy and sang songs all the day long. At Verkhoiansk there was a junction with other parties of released exiles, and later on, when they had crossed the mountains, more exiles met them from Ust Viluisk, Kolymsk, and places that even the map ignores. 

"Yakutsk, which was reached at the end of July, was already full of soldiers and exiles, as well as knee–deep in thick black mud and riddled with pestilence. Every day the exiles waited on the banks of the Lena for the boat that was to take them further south, and every hour fresh groups arrived from the north and north–east. ... every morning dead bodies were pushed quietly into the Lena and sent northwards on their icy journey. Yet beyond all the misery and famine and pestilence, Yakutsk was a city of hope."

"By August the exiles were in Irkutsk. The city was in chaos; its population had been increased threefold; it was the neck of the channel through which Siberia was emptying herself of the accumulated suffering of generations. From all directions poured in an unceasing flood of returning exiles and refugees—not only from Yakutsk and the Arctic, but from Chita and the Manchurian border, from the Baikal mines and the mountain–prisons of the Yablonoi. In addition, there were German, Austrian, and Hungarian war–prisoners, drifting slowly westward as the watch upon them dissolved under the distant rays of Petrograd revolution; and nomad traders from the Gobi, scraping profit out of the pains and desires of so many strangers; and Buriat farmers, rich after years of war–profiteering; and Cossack officers, still secretly loyal to the old régime: Irkutsk was a magnet drawing together the whole assortment, and drawing also influenza and dysentery, scurvy and typhus, so that the hospitals were choked with sick, and bodies were thrown, uncoffined and by scores, into huge open graves dug by patient Chinese."

................................................................................................


Descriptions here of the Russian civil war, of the madness of red and white armies and their proceedings and more, are quite vivid in bringing it home to a reader several decades or a century later, across thousands of miles and in very different cultures. Why it wasn't ranked with the far better known and most famous work of Pasternak can perhaps only be explained as bias of certain cliques. 

................................................................................................

"The most to be done is to make sure of what one loves and never to let it go."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................

................................................

April 23, 2021 - April 26, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Time and Time Again, by James Hilton.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Time and Time Again, by James Hilton. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Another work of a much beloved author that sounds as if one must have read it, due to the title, but leaving one without a clue as to truth of that. Begins enjoyable enough, with humour and more. 

And one discovers the genesis of Hilton's perhaps most well known work here, accidentally:- 

"The school was then in charge of old ‘Chips’, who had been summoned from retirement to plug a hole in the wartime shortage of masters. Chips ran things with a benignity that made Brookfield more than tolerable to several boys who might otherwise have found it unpleasant."

"Goodbye, Mr. Chips" is arguably more famous than Hilton's iconic Lost Horizon, if only because of its being shown to schoolchildren. 

................................................................................................

Hilton this time delves into world of a junior level diplomat and his memories, Cambridge and London and Gloucestershire, WWI and post WWI. In 'So Well Remembered' Hilton had a mill worker's son marry the mill owner's daughter, who left him to marry second son of a Lord; here, it sort of mirrors the set-up, in thst a second son of a knighted man, with some landed property and gentry status, is courting a London suburban lower middle-class daughter of a park superintendent, in the flashback. 

"‘Good God,’ Weigall interrupted, ‘who cares about class nowadays except smart fellows like Bill Peters? He’s a snob in reverse—one of these days he’s going to make that miner’s cottage business pay off like a bonanza. Whereas you and I, Andy, are stuck in between—we weren’t born at Blenheim or Chatsworth on the one hand, and on the other hand we didn’t starve in tenements or pick crusts out of gutters...We just come from country homes with bits of land and families that go back a few centuries without having collected any titles or riches on the way...Well, that’s not quite true in your case, your father has a knighthood, but I gather he earned it, which is bad...I tell you, Andy, in the world I see coming our background—yours and mine—is going to be a pretty fair handicap. We’ll be the excluded middle—if you’ll pardon a logician’s term. So prepare to defend yourself, not Lily. She’s all right. She’ll sleep well tonight—she hasn’t our worries. You look worn out, by the way. Why don’t you get to bed?’"

................................................................................................

A while ago - specifically, February 05, 2016 - attempting to write about books I'd read over half a century and loved, but uncertain of titles, I'd written:- 

"I wonder if this is the story I remembered for its gentle wafting of music through a tale that begins with a train accident, and a man from first class compartment who goes repeatedly into lower class compartments that are worst hit with fire, saving many people in the process, and not stopping even when he was repeatedly told to care about his own safety.

"Love and music wafts gently through the story of two ill fated souls that met too late, and all they had was a mutual realisation that they loved each other.

"When later I found that a piece of music I had been listening to stayed on in my head like a fragrance that I could not identify - and it turned out to be the composer mentioned in this story, even if perhaps not the exact same piece, it was not a surprise, but a confirmation - I had begun to listen to the music because of reading this amongst others and had been listening to various composers for a couple of years, and then found this music remaining with me, subconsciously.

"But I am only guessing that this is the title - that it was this writer, I am sure."

Now, I'm certain this isn't the one, but am unsure if I did read this decades ago. And before the turn, one feels almost certain one didn't - but then comes the unexpected turn that is still a horror, but somehow not as unforeseen as it ought to have been if this were the first time one were reading this, and one almost knows the next turn one expects. 

And when it comes, one knows it's another work of Hilton, read and forgotten, except like a faint perfume that lingers. 

"Charles felt rather sick. ‘All right...so you pulled it off. You’ve been clever, I admit that. It’s an odd thing to prove to me on the day I’m supposed to become a man—that life’s full of wormholes and that you know how to find them...never mind, though, I’ll admit that also. But now I’ve got a disillusionment for you. This career of mine you talk of—this career—this—this...’ 

"His eyes were riveted by something else on the table before him. It was a telegram, addressed to Charles at Beeching, from his college tutor. 

"HEARTIEST CONGRATULATIONS ON OBTAINING NOT ONLY FIRST IN TRIPOS BUT YOUR THESIS ALSO CONSIDERED SO GOOD STRONGLY RECOMMEND SUBMISSION FOR THE COURTENAY PRIZE..."

................................................................................................

About this point, one is reminded also of another work of the author, but here the protagonist is innocent and more, in the separation he suffers from his early young love - unlike in the other work, one involving a medical student. 

And there are bits such as - 

" ... He sometimes found things he agreed with in the unlikeliest quarters—a remark, for instance, by D. H. Lawrence—’Let there be a parliament of men and women for the careful and gradual unmaking of laws.’"

Which, added to other details such as the fire drill and letters to Times, make one wonder if the author was sketching someone he knew well, even if not long. This impression grows as Hilton gets deeper into WWII years, which he brings a vividness despite his keeping it between diplomats, generally upper strata and so on; London blitz was suffered by most residents, after all, even if specifics weren't identical. 

" ... She found a job with the local authority, arranging shelter for bombed-out families; in this she became an instant success and (to Charles’s dismay) quite invaluable. Sometimes when they both returned to the flat, she from the Town Hall and he from his varied duties in Whitehall, it was long past midnight. Then if there was no raid they could have a meal of sorts and a few hours’ sleep before morning took them to work again. It was hard, and amidst these compulsions, to remember that they were financially well off—hard, and also, as a rule, irrelevant. Money was still the lubricant, but it was not the driving power of this new kind of life; it conferred a few small privileges, but no large immunities. ... "

This universality of experience, of travails and tragedies of WWII years is further brought home, subtly, but nevertheless with a strong identification for the reader, subsequently, and one wonders just how much of it all was autobiographical for Hilton - for, with all the wonder of similar strongly bringing the protagonist home to the reader in his much better known works, they still remain a tad remote. 

The final twist brings another well remembered turn and helps one sum up the work, if one wished, as story of a bright but truly modest man who missed his generally expected chances to rise due to no fault of his, but achieved sudden limelight due to being chosen by a defector as someone 'simpatico' to come to when surrendering. 

"He felt that so many things had happened before, even though far differently, and the thing to do was perhaps just to sit by the window for a few minutes and remember how."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................

................................................

April 19, 2021 - April 23, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton.

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

SO WELL REMEMBERED, by James Hilton. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

What a pleasure this is, revisiting Hilton, even if - to begin with - one has forgotten if one read this one amongst the various loved ones by Hilton. It isn't until the revelation to the protagonist that one knows one has, definitely, read this half a century ago, because that sentence is unique :  "I hope I haven't been so damned tactful that you're going to ask me what all this has got to do with you. . . ."".

Perhaps it's obvious to everyone else, but one didn't quite ask until now, and so sees only now what could be said to be a common factor, a key, so to say, that connects very diverse works of Hilton. Apart from a sense of a vast, lofty space of consciousness, it's a point of earthly loss for the protagonist that stands as a key point. 

As normal with Hilton, the reader is all with the men he begins with, without a negative for the missing wife of Boswell, until one turns the page and it's her story; and then one's with her, wondering - when finally Hilton turns to Boswell again - why the inhabitants of their small town found her story not credible. 

It isn't until much later in the story that a succession of revelations, made amongst conversations between relative strangers, begin to give a very different perspective. One then wonders if the work began with sympathy for a character, and thereafter changed, because the author knew someone. 

As one progresses reading, one is continuously amazed at how beautifully Hilton writes, and how imperceptibly gentle his empathy with such diverse characters whom he lets the reader get close to, as not only the Boswell couple but most of everyone else as well. George Boswell with his seemingly solid persona is yet idealistic, naive, and more - Livia with her sharp sensitivity is nevertheless much less empathetic to everyone than George but capable of managing quietly, and so on. 

But it's descriptions of earlier stages of WWII where Hilton excels, even for a reader who's read considerably extensively on the topic, including dozens of holocaust memoirs and the thoroughly exhaustive Shirer. 

As one finishes, though, one wonders if the two main characters represent the opposing forces of WWII, not so much in political sense as in a primal one - George, naive and dedicated to making things better while he thinks well of everyone; Livia, a force that stops at nothing for its own aims?

................................................................................................


"Altogether the scene was typical of many a quietly happy English occasion during those distant years when Englishmen could be quietly happy."

""You were better off than my father, then, because he had a lifetime in it. From the age of ten to the day he died—fifty years, and for half of every year, except on Sundays, he only saw daylight through the mill windows." 

""Ah, terrible—terrible," murmured the Bishop. George chuckled. 

""Maybe, but he didn't feel that way. I don't believe it ever occurred to him. He was quite content all week looking forward to Sunday." 

""When he enjoyed his preaching, no doubt." 

""You bet he did, and he was a dab hand at it too. I've heard him last a couple of hours, without a note, and fluent all the time." 

"The Bishop sighed. "Ah, that's a wonderful thing—to possess the gift of tongues, so that one never has to think for a word—" 

""Maybe that's it," said George. "It's the thinking that spoils it." His eyes twinkled and his voice, as nearly as a voice can, nudged the Bishop in the ribs. "Once I remember my father started off a prayer with 'Oh God, if there be a God'—but he said it in such a grand booming voice that nobody noticed it any more than he had.""

"Winslow, of course, was a much better speaker by any erudite standards. To the acceptable accent of English aristocracy and officialdom he added an air of slightly bored accomplishment that often goes with it, and the chiefly working-class audience gave him respectful attention throughout an address that was considerably above their heads. Had he been of their own class they might have shouted a few ribald interruptions, but they would not do this to a stranger so clearly of rank; indeed their patient silence implied a half-affectionate tolerance for 'one of the nobs' who eccentrically chose to interest himself in Browdley affairs instead of in the far more glamorous ones they imagined must be his own—the sort of tolerance that had evoked an audible exclamation of "Poor little bugger!" from some unknown citizen when, a few years back, a royal prince had passed through the town on an official tour. To Browdley folk, as they looked and listened now, it seemed that Lord Winslow was all the time thinking of something else (as indeed he was), but they did not blame him for it; on the contrary, the cheers when he finished were a friendly concession that he had doubtless done his best and that it was pretty decent of him to have bothered to do anything at all."

" ... George then confessed that during the first six years of his life he was rarely if ever told to do anything without being threatened with what would happen if he didn't or couldn't; and the fact that these threats were mostly empty did not prevent the main effect—which was to give him a first impression of the world as a piece of adult property in which children were trespassers. "Only they weren't prosecuted," he added, with a laugh. "They were mostly just yelled at. . . . D'you know, one of the biggest shocks of my life was after my parents died and I was sent to live with an uncle I'd never met before—to find out then that grown-ups could actually talk to me in a cheerful, casual sort of way, even though I was only a boy!""

" ... One of George's numerous prides was in having the finest personal library in Browdley, and probably he had; it was a genuine collection, anyhow, not an accumulation of sets for the sake of their binding, such as could be seen in the mansions of rich local manufacturers. ... "

................................................................................................

""Why don't you go out and talk to him personally as soon as you have the time?" 

""Yes, I shall do that—I wired him today about it. But somehow I'm not sure that I can do much on my own—that last telephone talk was simply shattering—the most I could get was a promise that he'd think it over, but he can't think, that's the trouble—he's in a world utterly beyond logic and argument—you can't prove anything to him—he just believes this woman's a sort of martyr-heroine and her husband's an impossible brute and—" 

""How do you know he isn't?" 

"Winslow got up suddenly, walked to the window, then came back and touched George on the shoulder with a queerly intimate gesture. "I didn't know—definitely—until today. But I'm a bit positive at this moment. . . ." And after a second pause, standing in front of George, he stammered unsurely: "I hope I haven't been so damned tactful that you're going to ask me what all this has got to do with you. . . .""

"George's face was haggard as he replied: "I wouldn't call my own knowledge so very reliable—not after this.""

"Then he took Winslow to the train, and only in the final minutes before its departure did they refer to the personal matter again. Winslow muttered, leaning out of a first-class compartment: "I—I must say it, Boswell—I—I really don't know how to thank you for—for taking all this in the way you have. . . ." 

""What other way was there to take it?""

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................

................................................

April 15, 2021 - April 19,  2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE NATIVE DOCTOR, by A. J. Cronin.

 

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE NATIVE DOCTOR, by A. J. Cronin. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Cronin stays this time with world of medicine, hospitals and more, but in a sudden departure from his beloved Scottish country and small or larger towns and cities, mentions an elevator to thirty first floor, within first few lines. Elevator? Thirty first floor? Couldn't possibly be English, any of those, not in his time, could it? The latter, possibly, but surely not the former? It's lift in English. 

But of course, he's mentioned the views of Hudson! And he drops the name soon enough - it's New York this time he's setting his story in; is he writing of U.S. then? He promptly mentions the Old Royal Infirmary, setting his protagonist in context, and we're anchored at the Cronin world setting, just a little further out across the pond. To secure the anchor, he mentions the antagonism of the protagonist at the contrast, and the reader is all set. 

But Cronin has no intention of letting the reader get comfy, and keeps throwing one off until one settles to reading something very unlike usual Cronin fare. So we are off to South Caribbean at Brazil coast, and that's just the tip of the iceberg so to speak. 

Wonder if this work was an experiment for Cronin, to see if he could write off his usual world of U.K. , Scottish countryside, world of medicine, et al? If so, he tried his best to be spectacular, but wasn't that good with details of the plot. 

Or did he actually go through some of this, and wrote it up adding a few details, such as the romance with the Vermont nurse, sketchily? 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 12, 2021 - April 14, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

WOMAN OF THE EARTH, by A. J. Cronin.

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

WOMAN OF THE EARTH, by A. J. Cronin. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Cronin stays with Scottish countryside, with his Levenford, but deviates from the world of medicine this time, and opens with small village schoolteacher who'd rather farm if he could. 

This time Cronin is dealing with raw humanity, rather than ideals of world of medicine. He deals with love of land and those that are deprived, bullied, but have a courage of defying falsehood at all costs, with those that seem strong but are subject to every base passion, and more. 

And it's a very satisfactory ending too. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 11, 2021 - April 12, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

VIGIL IN THE NIGHT, By A. J. Cronin.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

VIGIL IN THE NIGHT, By A. J. Cronin. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Cronin begins by jumping directly into what is usually, perversely, labelled a sacrifice, for personal and sentimental reasons of loyalty, but is an ethical horror - a clean person taking the blame for someone guilty, not by mistake, but due to fault of character. Horror is this faulty character being allowed to continue in position of responsibility that the person doesn't quite appreciate. 

Fortunately the narrative snaps out of it sending the protagonist to a better situation in a larger place with much to attend to, much to learn, and much to face in life. 

Cronin deals this time, too, with the world of medical profession and hospitaks, surgeries and patients, but the protagonist is a nurse, istead of his usual doctors; and he deals with the travails they faced for years - neglect of their needs and more. 

A couple of twists past, it all ends satisfactorily, in almost every way. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 07, 2021 - April 10, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE VALOROUS YEARS by A. J. Cronin.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE VALOROUS YEARS by A. J. Cronin. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Quintessential Cronin, this grabs one at heart immediately, with hard work of an aspiring medical student and poverty of good Scottish people, countered by a few villains, being at heart of the work. Cronin manages here to include an awareness about state of affairs in central Europe, in the form of a refugee who happens to be a brilliant surgeon, her texts read by aspiring students. 

As gripping as this work is, there is an unpolished quality that belongs to his earlier work, perhaps, especially noticeable in later part, after the protagonist is already a successful and respected professional, about to attempt the top rung of the ladder to success in his professional career. It keeps showing, too, as the old cliche of a dilemma is brought up, related to a worthy country practice vs the top rung. This continues with escalation, too. And while the end is quite satisfying, the not quite true opposition set up between a country practice vs a hospital chair with use of modern technology for diagnosis is, while common in literature and films, still remains a thorn. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 05, 2021 - April 07, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Country Doctor, by A.J. Cronin.

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Country Doctor, by A.J. Cronin. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A collection of stories dealing with a young doctor arriving to join a country practice as an assistant. 

................................................................................................

THE BAPTISM OF THE BAG

Quintessential Cronin. 

................................................................................................

MARY-MIND-THE-BABY 

Heartbreaking. 

................................................................................................

COUGH MIXTURE

Superb. 

................................................................................................

GERANIUMS BLOOM AGAIN

Another superb. 

................................................................................................

PANTOMIME

Another heartbreaking one.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 03, 2021 - April 04, 2021.

...............................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot : The Complete Works (A to Z Classics) by George Eliot.

 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

George Eliot : The Complete Works 

(A to Z Classics) 

by 

George Eliot. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3848743057

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

CONTENTS (from book)

Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858) 

Adam Bede. (1859) 

The Lifted Veil. (1859) 

The Mill on the Floss. (1860) 

Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe. (1861) 

Romola. (1863) 

Brother Jacob. (1864) 

Felix Holt, the Radical. (1866) 

The Spanish Gypsy. (1868) 

Middlemarch. (1871/72) 

The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874) 

Daniel Deronda. (1876) 

Impressions of Theophrastus Such. (1879) 

The Essays. 

Miscellaneous Poems.

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Reviews

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
............................... ................................................................

Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Scenes of Clerical Life 

(Scenes of Clerical Life #1-3): 

by 

George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858): 

The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton, 

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story, 

Janet's Repentance.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Amos Barton

For an early work this story has amazing insight into human nature and behaviour, along with a detailed description of the place and time, and also usage of the language far more extensive than what one is used to during 20th century even before the sms era. 

Even if one knows nothing of the author it is easy to suspect post finishing the book that this is an autobiographical tale, and it mainly at heart is a very deeply loving daughter's heartbreaking tribute to her very beautiful and universally loved mother who was also a very good person, along with the outward story that is a factual exoneration of her father of a false blame and suspicion harboured by silly neighbours of the parish who could not imagine a beautiful woman taking an extensive stay with a family of a man of cloth even if his own wife was beautiful, much loved by all including himself, and very much present on premises. 

Why the author could not show details of the family post the departure of the mother is what one immediately questions after finishing this abruptly ending tale - along with such questions as what happened to other children (only two are mentioned, did the rest die as children did of decease and starvation in poverty in Europe those days?) and why Patty did not marry. That can be only explained by the surmise that this is the story of Mary Ann Evans who took the pen name of George Eliot in order to be able to write in peace and publish at all (- misogyny was not so violent then as now what with crimes against women being more violent and explicit by the day, but women were not seen as people who could think and were certainly not allowed to write and publish, and being an exception was a harsh struggle, so Bronte sisters had male names to publish too as did Madam Sand -) and that she did not marry due to the horror and pathos of the marriage of her mother who died so early in her life, compounded by the fact that there was no dowry for Patty or Mary Ann Evans to help her marry with security of a middle class life, since her father was a poor man of cloth with several children to feed and clothe and shelter. 

One cannot but help compare here, since it is very pertinent and relevant - Barton in all his poverty and ordinary Englishman's life and persona of someone who has been to university and is involved day to day in matters intellectual and religious (for Barton approaches religion and sermons within strictly the intellectual realm and bores his parish stiff, enabling them to distance themselves until they sympathise with his loss of his wife) and little or none of the luxuries or power in his life or riches for that matter, is nonetheless no different from the Mongol (Mughal is Persian for Mongol, and the close relatives of Kublai Khan that settled in India routed via Persia bringing that nomenclature) emperor Shah Jahan who built that extravagant mausoleum for his wife on top of the revered temple of the majority religion of the country, achieving two shots in one; both the women were worn out by extensive childbearing beyond their health capability and died due to this "excessive love from the husband", a husband who was incapable of forbearing his sexual appetite even when the consequences endangered the wife's health to the point of death. 

Perhaps the only difference is that Barton (or Evans) had no harem to satisfy his needs elsewhere while preserving the loved wife's health and life, and Shah Jahan did but wore out the one loved nevertheless. Amelia Barton died after giving birth to seven children (or is it eight?) and Mumtaj Mahal to fourteen, but then the latter had servants galore to do all her work and take care of her as well, and no lack of physicians or food or remedies of any sort available around in half the known world. 

Milly Barton was poor, overworked, starving, worrying about her children being fed and clothed, and paying the bills in all honour. 

This says two separate and related things to any aware reader - one, those involved in intellectual and spiritual line of work are likely to be poor as a rule, whether vicars and curates of England or Brahmans of India or rabbis of Jewish diaspora anywhere for that matter, and especially more so when they have families of their own to support and are not allowed to make money by using any skills since they are men of cloth or are Brahmans as indeed they are not by tradition allowed in most of these cases. And two, the only difference in the various traditions mentioned here is that in the older ones the Brahman or the rabbi is at least nominally most respected member of the society while a curate or a vicar is not accorded that social respect without backing of independent wealth, which in fact gets him a better living too. 

Positions of vicar, curate, etc might be obtained by anybody and are not hereditary, but that in practice merely means that the positions are either bought by someone for the person appointed or are doled out as a favour to someone for some reason for the favour; as a consequence those richer get higher positions and those from poor background get less paid ones if at all, in church as well in trade or military or any other sphere of work. 

On thinking it over, men inheriting their father's trade is not so far off this buying of positions, since most poor in the world are limited to what knowledge their parents can provide them as heritage; and women all over the world are limited even now with everyone seeing them as reproductive functionaries and food preparing and other services providers, to be browbeaten and blackmailed and threatened into it irrespective of time, place, relationship, occasion, whatever. 

Indeed the only women that escape it might be born princesses and queens regina of Europe, if any. Others may fight back, but this merely makes life unpleasant, and this is the choice offered them socially as a weapon to force them to submit - until they do submit they are constantly attacked. I have heard a supposedly educated scientist from space agency of Europe questioning sexual capacity of a very famous high profile chief of a computer firm only because he heard about her being appointed in that position, and he went worse from that point. Till date I suspect most people hold him innocent in the huge quarrel we had and of course he probably does not mention his wrongs if indeed he is aware of them, but then even if he did they would not seem wrong to most people but only humour, not to be taken seriously or pointed out the wrongs of seriously. He in fact said it was different if he made racist jokes, which he would not, and was very angry when informed it was not different at all. 

His wife wanted to discuss caste system of India, and was nonplussed when pointed out that her not requiring her sons or husband to help her in the kitchen but requiring or expecting any woman around irrespective of age, including any casual visitor or invited guests or new acquaintances, was caste system. 

Most men and probably most women too would think this is harsh against Barton and against someone who spent twenty years and millions of public fund to build the most famous mausoleum in the world, since men's sexual needs are held not only incontrollable but sacrosanct, with rape considered natural and of no consequence and in fact the woman's fault for being raped (why was she there, what did she were, did she not encourage it and want it and if so how does anyone prove it, what difference does it make unless it is a damage to her husband or father's honour) through most of the world even now when law is changing and some lip service to a woman's right to be not assaulted is paid at some places around the world. 

But fact is, these women died of their husbands "love" for them, thoughtless as it was and driven by the physical needs of the husbands, and what difference does a tombstone or a mausoleum make to the one that is dead? 

If that is not convincing, consider what a man - any man anywhere in the world - would say offered the same alternative, of repeated usage and death in youth with a handsome mausoleum as a memento to the "love". It is a no brainer - men would club anyone suggesting this to death, with no memorial.

March 10, 2011. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

February 07, 2021 - February 09, 2021. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Mr. Gilfil's Love Story

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The first part had begun after departure of the earlier pastor, Mr Gilfil; the second retreats to begin the story of the earlier pastor by recounting his parish's feelings about wearing black in honour of his departure. 

................................................................................................

" ... To be sure, Mrs. Jennings was a new-comer, and town-bred, so that she could hardly be expected to have very clear notions of what was proper; but, as Mrs. Higgins observed in an undertone to Mrs. Parrot when they were coming out of church, 'Her husband, who'd been born i' the parish, might ha' told her better.' An unreadiness to put on black on all available occasions, or too great an alacrity in putting it off, argued, in Mrs. Higgins's opinion, a dangerous levity of character, and an unnatural insensibility to the essential fitness of things. 

"'Some folks can't a-bear to put off their colours,' she remarked; 'but that was never the way i' my family. Why, Mrs. Parrot, from the time I was married, till Mr. Higgins died, nine years ago come Candlemas, I niver was out o' black two year together!' 

"'Ah,' said Mrs. Parrot, who was conscious of inferiority in this respect, 'there isn't many families as have had so many deaths as yours, Mrs. Higgins.' 

"Mrs. Higgins, who was an elderly widow, 'well left', reflected with complacency that Mrs. Parrot's observation was no more than just, and that Mrs. Jennings very likely belonged to a family which had had no funerals to speak of."

................................................................................................

"Nevertheless, with all these notorious sources of income, the shameless old woman constantly pleaded poverty, and begged for scraps at Mrs. Hackit's, who, though she always said Mrs. Fripp was 'as false as two folks', and no better than a miser and a heathen, had yet a leaning towards her as an old neighbour. 

"'There's that case-hardened old Judy a-coming after the tea-leaves again,' Mrs. Hackit would say; 'an' I'm fool enough to give 'em her, though Sally wants 'em all the while to sweep the floors with!'"

................................................................................................

"'Why, he'll eat his head off, and yours too. How can you go on keeping a pig, and making nothing by him?' 

"'O, he picks a bit hisself wi' rootin', and I dooant mind doing wi'out to gi' him summat. A bit o' company's meat an' drink too, an' he follers me about, and grunts when I spake to'm, just like a Christian.'"

................................................................................................

" ... Alas, alas! we poor mortals are often little better than wood-ashes—there is small sign of the sap, and the leafy freshness, and the bursting buds that were once there; but wherever we see wood-ashes, we know that all that early fullness of life must have been. I, at least, hardly ever look at a bent old man, or a wizened old woman, but I see also, with my mind's eye, that Past of which they are the shrunken remnant, and the unfinished romance of rosy cheeks and bright eyes seems sometimes of feeble interest and significance, compared with that drama of hope and love which has long ago reached its catastrophe, and left the poor soul, like a dim and dusty stage, with all its sweet garden-scenes and fair perspectives overturned and thrust out of sight."

................................................................................................

"And a charming picture Cheverel Manor would have made that evening, if some English Watteau had been there to paint it: the castellated house of grey-tinted stone, with the flickering sunbeams sending dashes of golden light across the many-shaped panes in the mullioned windows, and a great beech leaning athwart one of the flanking towers, and breaking, with its dark flattened boughs, the too formal symmetry of the front; the broad gravel-walk winding on the right, by a row of tall pines, alongside the pool—on the left branching out among swelling grassy mounds, surmounted by clumps of trees, where the red trunk of the Scotch fir glows in the descending sunlight against the bright green of limes and acacias; the great pool, where a pair of swans are swimming lazily with one leg tucked under a wing, and where the open water-lilies lie calmly accepting the kisses of the fluttering light-sparkles; the lawn, with its smooth emerald greenness, sloping down to the rougher and browner herbage of the park, from which it is invisibly fenced by a little stream that winds away from the pool, and disappears under a wooden bridge in the distant pleasure-ground; and on this lawn our two ladies, whose part in the landscape the painter, standing at a favourable point of view in the park, would represent with a few little dabs of red and white and blue."

................................................................................................

" ... But neither he nor Lady Cheverel had any idea of adopting her as their daughter, and giving her their own rank in life. They were much too English and aristocratic to think of anything so romantic. No! the child would be brought up at Cheverel Manor as a protegee, to be ultimately useful, perhaps, in sorting worsteds, keeping accounts, reading aloud, and otherwise supplying the place of spectacles when her ladyship's eyes should wax dim."

" ... After those first years in which little girls are petted like puppies and kittens, there comes a time when it seems less obvious what they can be good for, especially when, like Caterina, they give no particular promise of cleverness or beauty; and it is not surprising that in that uninteresting period there was no particular plan formed as to her future position. She could always help Mrs. Sharp, supposing she were fit for nothing else, as she grew up; but now, this rare gift of song endeared her to Lady Cheverel, who loved music above all things, and it associated her at once with the pleasures of the drawing-room. Insensibly she came to be regarded as one of the family, and the servants began to understand that Miss Sarti was to be a lady after all."

................................................................................................

"This was Mr. Gilfil's love-story, which lay far back from the time when he sat, worn and grey, by his lonely fireside in Shepperton Vicarage. Rich brown locks, passionate love, and deep early sorrow, strangely different as they seem from the scanty white hairs, the apathetic content, and the unexpectant quiescence of old age, are but part of the same life's journey; as the bright Italian plains, with the sweet Addio of their beckoning maidens, are part of the same day's travel that brings us to the other side of the mountain, between the sombre rocky walls and among the guttural voices of the Valais."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

February 09, 2021 - February 11, 2021. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Janet's Repentance.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Janet's Repentance 

(Scenes of Clerical Life #3) 

by George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This work combines two vital concerns, one that belongs to its time and space, other far more extensive. 

George Eliot deals here with social and more concerns regarding religion, morals, new branches of church sprouting due to rot in older established ones, and more. 

And the timeless concern of humanity, generally pushed under the rug and covered with pretty furniture and decorations, is that of domestic abuse; specifically, that about bullies and cruel men assaulting the women in their power, with weapons that include physical, verbal, emotional and of course financial ones, and of course those of social, legal and religion variety as well. As she states clearly at one point, this isn't about temper, and such males are almost completely capable of control when loss thereof would adversely affect them - such as when dealing with men they need to keep on the right side of, for their own self interest. 

George Eliot begins this one in a pub, describing men discussing various branches of church over drinks, and objecting to those other than their own, with her sharp wit sheathed so one would miss when she's cut them, as when she describes guys mistaking force and argument for wit and information. 

It's a while before Janet is introduced, obliquely, in the course of conversation between women conducting a library; one almost misses it, and even then being unsure after noticing the name, if this wife of the bully of the first scene is indeed the one that author titled the book after! And one wonders if the repentance is about religion, or an entirely different question, if - having read some of the works of the author - one is familiar with the author's deep delving in moral dilemma, complexities of ethical questions, and intricate characters she portrays painstakingly. 

And it's probably just the protagonist that's male, but one wonders, did the author use it as a camouflage along with her pen name? 

................................................................................................

"Old lawyer Pittman had once been a very important person indeed, having in his earlier days managed the affairs of several gentlemen in those parts, who had subsequently been obliged to sell everything and leave the country, in which crisis Mr. Pittman accommodatingly stepped in as a purchaser of their estates, taking on himself the risk and trouble of a more leisurely sale; which, however, happened to turn out very much to his advantage. ... No one in Milby considered old Pittman a virtuous man, and the elder townspeople were not at all backward in narrating the least advantageous portions of his biography in a very round unvarnished manner. Yet I could never observe that they trusted him any the less, or liked him any the worse. Indeed, Pittman and Dempster were the popular lawyers of Milby and its neighbourhood, and Mr. Benjamin Landor, whom no one had anything particular to say against, had a very meagre business in comparison. ... "

"The standard of morality at Milby, you perceive, was not inconveniently high in those good old times, and an ingenuous vice or two was what every man expected of his neighbour. Old Mr. Crewe, the curate, for example, was allowed to enjoy his avarice in comfort, without fear of sarcastic parish demagogues; and his flock liked him all the better for having scraped together a large fortune out of his school and curacy, and the proceeds of the three thousand pounds he had with his little deaf wife. ... The parishioners saw no reason at all why it should be desirable to venerate the parson or any one else; they were much more comfortable to look down a little on their fellow-creatures.

"Even the Dissent in Milby was then of a lax and indifferent kind. The doctrine of adult baptism, struggling under a heavy load of debt, had let off half its chapel area as a ribbon-shop; and Methodism was only to be detected, as you detect curious larvae, by diligent search in dirty corners. The Independents were the only Dissenters of whose existence Milby gentility was at all conscious, and it had a vague idea that the salient points of their creed were prayer without book, red brick, and hypocrisy. The Independent chapel, known as Salem, stood red and conspicuous in a broad street; more than one pew-holder kept a brass-bound gig; and Mr. Jerome, a retired corn-factor, and the most eminent member of the congregation, was one of the richest men in the parish. But in spite of this apparent prosperity, together with the usual amount of extemporaneous preaching mitigated by furtive notes, Salem belied its name, and was not always the abode of peace. ... Rev. Mr. Smith, a distinguished minister much sought after in the iron districts, with a talent for poetry, became objectionable from an inclination to exchange verses with the young ladies of his congregation. It was reasonably argued that such verses as Mr. Smith's must take a long time for their composition, and the habit alluded to might intrench seriously on his pastoral duties. ... and many Church people there were of opinion that Dissent might be a weakness, but, after all, had no great harm in it. These lax Episcopalians were, I believe, chiefly tradespeople, who held that, inasmuch as Congregationalism consumed candles, it ought to be supported, and accordingly made a point of presenting themselves at Salem for the afternoon charity sermon, with the expectation of being asked to hold a plate. Mr. Pilgrim, too, was always there with his half-sovereign; for as there was no Dissenting doctor in Milby, Mr. Pilgrim looked with great tolerance on all shades of religious opinion that did not include a belief in cures by miracle."

" ... There was the most perfect unanimity between Pratt and Pilgrim in the determination to drive away the obnoxious and too probably unqualified intruder as soon as possible. Whether the first wonderful cure he effected was on a patient of Pratt's or of Pilgrim's, one was as ready as the other to pull the interloper by the nose, and both alike directed their remarkable powers of conversation towards making the town too hot for him. But by their respective patients these two distinguished men were pitted against each other with great virulence. Mrs. Lowme could not conceal her amazement that Mrs. Phipps should trust her life in the hands of Pratt, who let her feed herself up to that degree, it was really shocking to hear how short her breath was; and Mrs. Phipps had no patience with Mrs. Lowme, living, as she did, on tea and broth, and looking as yellow as any crow-flower, and yet letting Pilgrim bleed and blister her and give her lowering medicine till her clothes hung on her like a scarecrow's. On the whole, perhaps, Mr. Pilgrim's reputation was at the higher pitch, and when any lady under Mr. Pratt's care was doing ill, she was half disposed to think that a little more active treatment' might suit her better. But without very definite provocation no one would take so serious a step as to part with the family doctor, for in those remote days there were few varieties of human hatred more formidable than the medical. The doctor's estimate, even of a confiding patient, was apt to rise and fall with the entries in the day-book; and I have known Mr. Pilgrim discover the most unexpected virtues in a patient seized with a promising illness. At such times you might have been glad to perceive that there were some of Mr. Pilgrim's fellow-creatures of whom he entertained a high opinion, and that he was liable to the amiable weakness of a too admiring estimate. A good inflammation fired his enthusiasm, and a lingering dropsy dissolved him into charity. Doubtless this crescendo of benevolence was partly due to feelings not at all represented by the entries in the day-book; for in Mr. Pilgrim's heart, too, there was a latent store of tenderness and pity which flowed forth at the sight of suffering. Gradually, however, as his patients became convalescent, his view of their characters became more dispassionate; when they could relish mutton-chops, he began to admit that they had foibles, and by the time they had swallowed their last dose of tonic, he was alive to their most inexcusable faults. After this, the thermometer of his regard rested at the moderate point of friendly back-biting, which sufficed to make him agreeable in his morning visits to the amiable and worthy persons who were yet far from convalescent.

"Pratt's patients were profoundly uninteresting to Pilgrim: their very diseases were despicable, and he would hardly have thought their bodies worth dissecting. But of all Pratt's patients, Mr. Jerome was the one on whom Mr. Pilgrim heaped the most unmitigated contempt. In spite of the surgeon's wise tolerance, Dissent became odious to him in the person of Mr. Jerome. Perhaps it was because that old gentleman, being rich, and having very large yearly bills for medical attendance on himself and his wife, nevertheless employed Pratt—neglected all the advantages of 'active treatment', and paid away his money without getting his system lowered. On any other ground it is hard to explain a feeling of hostility to Mr. Jerome, who was an excellent old gentleman, expressing a great deal of goodwill towards his neighbours, not only in imperfect English, but in loans of money to the ostensibly rich, and in sacks of potatoes to the obviously poor."

" ... Little deaf Mrs. Crewe would often carry half her own spare dinner to the sick and hungry; Miss Phipps, with her cockade of red feathers, had a filial heart, and lighted her father's pipe with a pleasant smile; and there were grey-haired men in drab gaiters, not at all noticeable as you passed them in the street, whose integrity had been the basis of their rich neighbour's wealth."

................................................................................................

"'Poor Mrs. Raynor! she's glad to do anything for the sake of peace and quietness,' said Mrs. Pettifer; 'but it's no trifle at her time of life to part with a doctor who knows her constitution.' 

"'What trouble that poor woman has to bear in her old age!' said Mary Linnet, 'to see her daughter leading such a life!—an only daughter, too, that she doats on.' 

"'Yes, indeed,' said Miss Pratt. 'We, of course, know more about it than most people, my brother having attended the family so many years. For my part, I never thought well of the marriage; and I endeavoured to dissuade my brother when Mrs. Raynor asked him to give Janet away at the wedding. 'If you will take my advice, Richard,' I said, 'you will have nothing to do with that marriage.' And he has seen the justice of my opinion since. Mrs. Raynor herself was against the connection at first; but she always spoiled Janet, and I fear, too, she was won over by a foolish pride in having her daughter marry a professional man. I fear it was so. No one but myself, I think, foresaw the extent of the evil.' 

"'Well,' said Mrs. Pettifer, 'Janet had nothing to look forward to but being a governess; and it was hard for Mrs. Raynor to have to work at millinering—a woman well brought up, and her husband a man who held his head as high as any man in Thurston. And it isn't everybody that sees everything fifteen years beforehand. Robert Dempster was the cleverest man in Milby; and there weren't many young men fit to talk to Janet.'

"'It is a thousand pities,' said Miss Pratt, choosing to ignore Mrs. Pettifer's slight sarcasm, 'for I certainly did consider Janet Raynor the most promising young woman of my acquaintance;—a little too much lifted up, perhaps, by her superior education, and too much given to satire, but able to express herself very well indeed about any book I recommended to her perusal. There is no young woman in Milby now who can be compared with what Janet was when she was married, either in mind or person. I consider Miss Landor far, far below her. Indeed, I cannot say much for the mental superiority of the young ladies in our first families. They are superficial—very superficial.'"

"'But she is just as bitter against Mr. Tryan as her husband is, I understand,' said Rebecca. 'Her heart is very much set against the truth, for I understand she bought Mr. Tryan's sermons on purpose to ridicule them to Mrs. Crewe.' 

"'Well, poor thing,' said Mrs. Pettifer, 'you know she stands up for everything her husband says and does. She never will admit to anybody that he is not a good husband.' 

"'That is her pride,' said Miss Pratt. 'She married him in opposition to the advice of her best friends, and now she is not willing to admit that she was wrong. Why, even to my brother—and a medical attendant, you know, can hardly fail to be acquainted with family secrets—she has always pretended to have the highest respect for her husband's qualities. Poor Mrs. Raynor, however, is very well aware that every one knows the real state of things. Latterly, she has not even avoided the subject with me. The very last time I called on her she said, "Have you been to see my poor daughter?" and burst into tears.' 

"'Pride or no pride,' said Mrs. Pettifer, 'I shall always stand up for Janet Dempster. She sat up with me night after night when I had that attack of rheumatic fever six years ago. There's great excuses for her. When a woman can't think of her husband coming home without trembling, it's enough to make her drink something to blunt her feelings—and no children either, to keep her from it. You and me might do the same, if we were in her place.' 

"'Speak for yourself, Mrs. Pettifer,' said Miss Pratt. 'Under no circumstances can I imagine myself resorting to a practice so degrading. A woman should find support in her own strength of mind.' 

"'I think,' said Rebecca, who considered Miss Pratt still very blind in spiritual things, notwithstanding her assumption of enlightenment, 'she will find poor support if she trusts only to her own strength. She must seek aid elsewhere than in herself.' 

"Happily the removal of the tea-things just then created a little confusion, which aided Miss Pratt to repress her resentment at Rebecca's presumption in correcting her—a person like Rebecca Linnet! who six months ago was as flighty and vain a woman as Miss Pratt had ever known —so very unconscious of her unfortunate person!

"The ladies had scarcely been seated at their work another hour, when the sun was sinking, and the clouds that flecked the sky to the very zenith were every moment taking on a brighter gold. The gate of the little garden opened, and Miss Linnet, seated at her small table near the window, saw Mr. Tryan enter. 

"'There is Mr. Tryan,' she said, and her pale cheek was lighted up with a little blush that would have made her look more attractive to almost any one except Miss Eliza Pratt, whose fine grey eyes allowed few things to escape her silent observation. 'Mary Linnet gets more and more in love with Mr. Tryan,' thought Miss Eliza; 'it is really pitiable to see such feelings in a woman of her age, with those old-maidish little ringlets. I daresay she flatters herself Mr. Tryan may fall in love with her, because he makes her useful among the poor.' At the same time, Miss Eliza, as she bent her handsome head and large cannon curls with apparent calmness over her work, felt a considerable internal flutter when she heard the knock at the door. Rebecca had less self-command. She felt too much agitated to go on with her pasting, and clutched the leg of the table to counteract the trembling in her hands. 

"Poor women's hearts! Heaven forbid that I should laugh at you, and make cheap jests on your susceptibility towards the clerical sex, as if it had nothing deeper or more lovely in it than the mere vulgar angling for a husband. Even in these enlightened days, many a curate who, considered abstractedly, is nothing more than a sleek bimanous animal in a white neck-cloth, with views more or less Anglican, and furtively addicted to the flute, is adored by a girl who has coarse brothers, or by a solitary woman who would like to be a helpmate in good works beyond her own means, simply because he seems to them the model of refinement and of public usefulness. What wonder, then, that in Milby society, such as I have told you it was a very long while ago, a zealous evangelical clergyman, aged thirty-three, called forth all the little agitations that belong to the divine necessity of loving, implanted in the Miss Linnets, with their seven or eight lustrums and their unfashionable ringlets, no less than in Miss Eliza Pratt, with her youthful bloom and her ample cannon curls."

................................................................................................

"He laid his hand with a firm grip on her shoulder, turned her round, and pushed her slowly before him along the passage and through the dining-room door, which stood open on their left hand. 

"There was a portrait of Janet's mother, a grey-haired, dark-eyed old woman, in a neatly fluted cap, hanging over the mantelpiece. Surely the aged eyes take on a look of anguish as they see Janet—not trembling, no! it would be better if she trembled—standing stupidly unmoved in her great beauty while the heavy arm is lifted to strike her. The blow falls —another—and another. Surely the mother hears that cry—'O Robert! pity! pity!'"

................................................................................................

"The only other candidate for confirmation at Miss Townley's was Mary Dunn, a draper's daughter in Milby and a distant relation of the Miss Linnets. Her pale lanky hair could never be coaxed into permanent curl, and this morning the heat had brought it down to its natural condition of lankiness earlier than usual. But that was not what made her sit melancholy and apart at the lower end of the form. Her parents were admirers of Mr. Tryan, and had been persuaded, by the Miss Linnets' influence, to insist that their daughter should be prepared for confirmation by him, over and above the preparation given to Miss Townley's pupils by Mr. Crewe. Poor Mary Dunn! I am afraid she thought it too heavy a price to pay for these spiritual advantages, to be excluded from every game at ball to be obliged to walk with none but little girls—in fact, to be the object of an aversion that nothing short of an incessant supply of plumcakes would have neutralized. And Mrs. Dunn was of opinion that plumcake was unwholesome. The anti-Tryanite spirit, you perceive, was very strong at Miss Townley's, imported probably by day scholars, as well as encouraged by the fact that that clever woman was herself strongly opposed to innovation, and remarked every Sunday that Mr. Crewe had preached an 'excellent discourse'. Poor Mary Dunn dreaded the moment when school-hours would be over, for then she was sure to be the butt of those very explicit remarks which, in young ladies' as well as young gentlemen's seminaries, constitute the most subtle and delicate form of the innuendo. 'I'd never be a Tryanite, would you?' 'O here comes the lady that knows so much more about religion than we do!' 'Some people think themselves so very pious!'"

" ... Several of us had just assumed coat-tails, and the assumption of new responsibilities apparently following as a matter of course, we were among the candidates for confirmation. I wish I could say that the solemnity of our feelings was on a level with the solemnity of the occasion; but unimaginative boys find it difficult to recognize apostolical institutions in their developed form, and I fear our chief emotion concerning the ceremony was a sense of sheepishness, and our chief opinion, the speculative and heretical position, that it ought to be confined to the girls. It was a pity, you will say; but it is the way with us men in other crises, that come a long while after confirmation. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone."

................................................................................................

" ... Dear tiny woman! You should have seen her lift up her hands yesterday, and pray heaven to take her before ever she should have another collation to get ready for the Bishop. She said, "It's bad enough to have the Archdeacon, though he doesn't want half so many jelly-glasses. I wouldn't mind, Janet, if it was to feed all the old hungry cripples in Milby; but so much trouble and expense for people who eat too much every day of their lives!" ... "

................................................................................................

"The mother leaned back in her chair when Janet was gone, and sank into a painful reverie. When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering: the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the water drops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst. Janet looked glad and tender now—but what scene of misery was coming next? She was too like the cistus flowers in the little garden before the window, that, with the shades of evening, might lie with the delicate white and glossy dark of their petals trampled in the roadside dust. When the sun had sunk, and the twilight was deepening, Janet might be sitting there, heated, maddened, sobbing out her griefs with selfish passion, and wildly wishing herself dead."

................................................................................................

"'So you're done, eh, Dempster?' was Mr. Pilgrim's observation, uttered with some gusto. He was not glad Mr. Tryan had gained his point, but he was not sorry Dempster was disappointed. 

"'Done, sir? Not at all. It is what I anticipated. I knew we had nothing else to expect in these days, when the Church is infested by a set of men who are only fit to give out hymns from an empty cask, to tunes set by a journeyman cobbler. But I was not the less to exert myself in the cause of sound Churchmanship for the good of the town. Any coward can fight a battle when he's sure of winning; but give me the man who has pluck to fight when he's sure of losing. That's my way, sir; and there are many victories worse than a defeat, as Mr. Tryan shall learn to his cost.' 

"'He must be a poor shuperannyated sort of a bishop, that's my opinion,' said Mr. Tomlinson, 'to go along with a sneaking Methodist like Tryan. And, for my part, I think we should be as well wi'out bishops, if they're no wiser than that. Where's the use o' havin' thousands a-year an' livin' in a pallis, if they don't stick to the Church?' 

"'No. There you're going out of your depth, Tomlinson,' said Mr. Dempster. 'No one shall hear me say a word against Episcopacy—it is a safeguard of the Church; we must have ranks and dignities there as well as everywhere else. No, sir! Episcopacy is a good thing; but it may happen that a bishop is not a good thing. Just as brandy is a good thing, though this particular brandy is British, and tastes like sugared rain-water caught down the chimney. Here, Ratcliffe, let me have something to drink, a little less like a decoction of sugar and soot.'"

................................................................................................

" ... A very little old lady she was, with a pale, scarcely wrinkled face, hair of that peculiar white which tells that the locks have once been blond, a natty pure white cap on her head, and a white shawl pinned over her shoulders. You saw at a glance that she had been a mignonne blonde, strangely unlike her tall, ugly, dingy-complexioned son; unlike her daughter-in-law, too, whose large-featured brunette beauty seemed always thrown into higher relief by the white presence of little Mamsey. The unlikeness between Janet and her mother-in-law went deeper than outline and complexion, and indeed there was little sympathy between them, for old Mrs. Dempster had not yet learned to believe that her son, Robert, would have gone wrong if he had married the right woman—a meek woman like herself, who would have borne him children, and been a deft, orderly housekeeper. In spite of Janet's tenderness and attention to her, she had had little love for her daughter-in-law from the first, and had witnessed the sad growth of home-misery through long years, always with a disposition to lay the blame on the wife rather than on the husband, and to reproach Mrs. Raynor for encouraging her daughter's faults by a too exclusive sympathy. But old Mrs. Dempster had that rare gift of silence and passivity which often supplies the absence of mental strength; and, whatever were her thoughts, she said no word to aggravate the domestic discord. Patient and mute she sat at her knitting through many a scene of quarrel and anguish; resolutely she appeared unconscious of the sounds that reached her ears, and the facts she divined after she had retired to her bed; mutely she witnessed poor Janet's faults, only registering them as a balance of excuse on the side of her son. The hard, astute, domineering attorney was still that little old woman's pet, as he had been when she watched with triumphant pride his first tumbling effort to march alone across the nursery floor. 'See what a good son he is to me!' she often thought. 'Never gave me a harsh word. And so he might have been a good husband.'"

................................................................................................

" ... Mr. Jerome knew nothing of this theoretic basis for Dissent, and in the utmost extent of his polemical discussion he had not gone further than to question whether a Christian man was bound in conscience to distinguish Christmas and Easter by any peculiar observance beyond the eating of mince-pies and cheese-cakes. It seemed to him that all seasons were alike good for thanking God, departing from evil and doing well, whereas it might be desirable to restrict the period for indulging in unwholesome forms of pastry. Mr. Jerome's dissent being of this simple, non-polemical kind, it is easy to understand that the report he heard of Mr. Tryan as a good man and a powerful preacher, who was stirring the hearts of the people, had been enough to attract him to the Paddiford Church, and that having felt himself more edified there than he had of late been under Mr. Stickney's discourses at Salem, he had driven thither repeatedly in the Sunday afternoons, and had sought an opportunity of making Mr. Tryan's acquaintance. ... "

"'What a nice place you have here, Mr. Jerome! I've not seen anything so quiet and pretty since I came to Milby. On Paddiford Common, where I live, you know, the bushes are all sprinkled with soot, and there's never any quiet except in the dead of night.' 

"'Dear heart! dear heart! That's very bad—and for you, too, as hev to study. Wouldn't it be better for you to be somewhere more out i' the country like?' 

"'O no! I should lose so much time in going to and fro, and besides I like to be among the people. I've no face to go and preach resignation to those poor things in their smoky air and comfortless homes, when I come straight from every luxury myself. There are many things quite lawful for other men, which a clergyman must forego if he would do any good in a manufacturing population like this.' 

"Here the preparations for tea were crowned by the simultaneous appearance of Lizzie and the crumpet. It is a pretty surprise, when one visits an elderly couple, to see a little figure enter in a white frock with a blond head as smooth as satin, round blue eyes, and a cheek like an apple blossom. A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other; and Mr. Tryan looked at Lizzie with that quiet pleasure which is always genuine."

"The sympathy of this simple-minded old man was more precious to Mr. Tryan than any mere onlooker could have imagined. To persons possessing a great deal of that facile psychology which prejudges individuals by means of formulae, and casts them, without further trouble, into duly lettered pigeon-holes, the Evangelical curate might seem to be doing simply what all other men like to do—carrying out objects which were identified not only with his theory, which is but a kind of secondary egoism, but also with the primary egoism of his feelings. Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution: a self-obtrusive, over-hasty reformer complacently disclaiming all merit, while his friends call him a martyr, has not in reality a career the most arduous to the fleshly mind. But Mr. Tryan was not cast in the mould of the gratuitous martyr. With a power of persistence which had been often blamed as obstinacy, he had an acute sensibility to the very hatred or ridicule he did not flinch from provoking. Every form of disapproval jarred him painfully; and, though he fronted his opponents manfully, and often with considerable warmth of temper, he had no pugnacious pleasure in the contest. It was one of the weaknesses of his nature to be too keenly alive to every harsh wind of opinion; to wince under the frowns of the foolish; to be irritated by the injustice of those who could not possibly have the elements indispensable for judging him rightly; and with all this acute sensibility to blame, this dependence on sympathy, he had for years been constrained into a position of antagonism. No wonder, then, that good old Mr. Jerome's cordial words were balm to him. He had often been thankful to an old woman for saying 'God bless you'; to a little child for smiling at him; to a dog for submitting to be patted by him."

................................................................................................

"Mr. Tryan declared he would have no precautions taken, but would simply trust in God and his good cause. Some of his more timid friends thought this conduct rather defiant than wise, and reflecting that a mob has great talents for impromptu, and that legal redress is imperfect satisfaction for having one's head broken with a brickbat, were beginning to question their consciences very closely as to whether it was not a duty they owed to their families to stay at home on Sunday evening. These timorous persons, however, were in a small minority, and the generality of Mr. Tryan's friends and hearers rather exulted in an opportunity of braving insult for the sake of a preacher to whom they were attached on personal as well as doctrinal grounds. Miss Pratt spoke of Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, and observed that the present crisis afforded an occasion for emulating their heroism even in these degenerate times; while less highly instructed persons, whose memories were not well stored with precedents, simply expressed their determination, as Mr. Jerome had done, to 'stan' by' the preacher and his cause, believing it to be the 'cause of God'."

" ... But hatred is like fire—it makes even light rubbish deadly. And Mr. Dempster's sarcasms were not merely visible on the walls; they were reflected in the derisive glances, and audible in the jeering voices of the crowd. Through this pelting shower of nicknames and bad puns, with an ad libitum accompaniment of groans, howls, hisses, and hee-haws, but of no heavier missiles, Mr. Tryan walked pale and composed, giving his arm to old Mr. Landor, whose step was feeble. On the other side of him was Mr. Jerome, who still walked firmly, though his shoulders were slightly bowed."

"Once more only did the Evangelical curate pass up Orchard Street followed by a train of friends; once more only was there a crowd assembled to witness his entrance through the church gates. But that second time no voice was heard above a whisper, and the whispers were words of sorrow and blessing. That second time, Janet Dempster was not looking on in scorn and merriment; her eyes were worn with grief and watching, and she was following her beloved friend and pastor to the grave."

................................................................................................

"In her occasional visits to her near neighbour Mrs. Pettifer, too old a friend to be shunned because she was a Tryanite, Janet was obliged sometimes to hear allusions to Mr. Tryan, and even to listen to his praises, which she usually met with playful incredulity."

"There is a power in the direct glance of a sincere and loving human soul, which will do more to dissipate prejudice and kindle charity than the most elaborate arguments. The fullest exposition of Mr. Tryan's doctrine might not have sufficed to convince Janet that he had not an odious self-complacency in believing himself a peculiar child of God; but one direct, pathetic look of his had dissociated him with that conception for ever. 

"This happened late in the autumn, not long before Sally Martin died. Janet mentioned her new impression to no one, for she was afraid of arriving at a still more complete contradiction of her former ideas. We have all of us considerable regard for our past self, and are not fond of casting reflections on that respected individual by a total negation of his opinions. Janet could no longer think of Mr. Tryan without sympathy. but she still shrank from the idea of becoming his hearer and admirer. That was a reversal of the past which was as little accordant with her inclination as her circumstances."

................................................................................................

"But do not believe that it was anything either present or wanting in poor Janet that formed the motive of her husband's cruelty. Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside itself—it only requires opportunity. You do not suppose Dempster had any motive for drinking beyond the craving for drink; the presence of brandy was the only necessary condition. And an unloving, tyrannous, brutal man needs no motive to prompt his cruelty; he needs only the perpetual presence of a woman he can call his own. A whole park full of tame or timid-eyed animals to torment at his will would not serve him so well to glut his lust of torture; they could not feel as one woman does; they could not throw out the keen retort which whets the edge of hatred. 

"Janet's bitterness would overflow in ready words; she was not to be made meek by cruelty; she would repent of nothing in the face of injustice, though she was subdued in a moment by a word or a look that recalled the old days of fondness; and in times of comparative calm would often recover her sweet woman's habit of caressing playful affection. But such days were become rare, and poor Janet's soul was kept like a vexed sea, tossed by a new storm before the old waves have fallen. Proud, angry resistance and sullen endurance were now almost the only alternations she knew. She would bear it all proudly to the world, but proudly towards him too; her woman's weakness might shriek a cry for pity under a heavy blow, but voluntarily she would do nothing to mollify him, unless he first relented. What had she ever done to him but love him too well—but believe in him too foolishly? He had no pity on her tender flesh; he could strike the soft neck he had once asked to kiss. Yet she would not admit her wretchedness; she had married him blindly, and she would bear it out to the terrible end, whatever that might be. Better this misery than the blank that lay for her outside her married home. 

"But there was one person who heard all the plaints and all the outbursts of bitterness and despair which Janet was never tempted to pour into any other ear; and alas! in her worst moments, Janet would throw out wild reproaches against that patient listener. For the wrong that rouses our angry passions finds only a medium in us; it passes through us like a vibration, and we inflict what we have suffered."

"Nemesis is lame, but she is of colossal stature, like the gods; and sometimes, while her sword is not yet unsheathed, she stretches out her huge left arm and grasps her victim. The mighty hand is invisible, but the victim totters under the dire clutch."

"When the earth was thrown on Mamsey's coffin, and the son, in crape scarf and hatband, turned away homeward, his good angel, lingering with outstretched wing on the edge of the grave, cast one despairing look after him, and took flight for ever."

................................................................................................

"During dinner, she kept up her assumed air of indifference, and tried to seem in high spirits, laughing and talking more than usual. In reality, she felt as if she had defied a wild beast within the four walls of his den, and he was crouching backward in preparation for his deadly spring. Dempster affected to take no notice of her, talked obstreperously, and drank steadily."

"He pushed her on to the entrance, and held her firmly in his grasp while he lifted the latch of the door. Then he opened the door a little way, thrust her out, and slammed it behind her. 

"For a short space, it seemed like a deliverance to Janet. The harsh north-east wind, that blew through her thin night-dress, and sent her long heavy black hair streaming, seemed like the breath of pity after the grasp of that threatening monster. But soon the sense of release from an overpowering terror gave way before the sense of the fate that had really come upon her. 

"This, then, was what she had been travelling towards through her long years of misery! Not yet death. O! if she had been brave enough for it, death would have been better. The servants slept at the back of the house; it was impossible to make them hear, so that they might let her in again quietly, without her husband's knowledge. And she would not have tried. He had thrust her out, and it should be for ever. 

"There would have been dead silence in Orchard Street but for the whistling of the wind and the swirling of the March dust on the pavement. Thick clouds covered the sky; every door was closed; every window was dark. No ray of light fell on the tall white figure that stood in lonely misery on the doorstep; no eye rested on Janet as she sank down on the cold stone, and looked into the dismal night. She seemed to be looking into her own blank future."

................................................................................................

"Janet trod slowly with her naked feet on the rough pavement, trembling at the fitful gleams of starlight, and supporting herself by the wall, as the gusts of wind drove right against her. The very wind was cruel: it tried to push her back from the door where she wanted to go and knock and ask for pity. 

"Mrs. Pettifer's house did not look into Orchard Street: it stood a little way up a wide passage which opened into the street through an archway. Janet turned up the archway, and saw a faint light coming from Mrs. Pettifer's bedroom window. The glimmer of a rushlight from a room where a friend was lying, was like a ray of mercy to Janet, after that long, long time of darkness and loneliness; it would not be so dreadful to awake Mrs. Pettifer as she had thought. Yet she lingered some minutes at the door before she gathered courage to knock; she felt as if the sound must betray her to others besides Mrs. Pettifer, though there was no other dwelling that opened into the passage—only warehouses and outbuildings. There was no gravel for her to throw up at the window, nothing but heavy pavement; there was no door-bell; she must knock. Her first rap was very timid—one feeble fall of the knocker; and then she stood still again for many minutes; but presently she rallied her courage and knocked several times together, not loudly, but rapidly, so that Mrs. Pettifer, if she only heard the sound, could not mistake it. And she had heard it, for by and by the casement of her window was opened, and Janet perceived that she was bending out to try and discern who it was at the door. 

"'It is I, Mrs. Pettifer; it is Janet Dempster. Take me in, for pity's sake.' 

"'Merciful God! what has happened?' 

"'Robert has turned me out. I have been in the cold a long while.'"

................................................................................................

"The daylight changes the aspect of misery to us, as of everything else. In the night it presses on our imagination—the forms it takes are false, fitful, exaggerated; in broad day it sickens our sense with the dreary persistence of definite measurable reality. The man who looks with ghastly horror on all his property aflame in the dead of night, has not half the sense of destitution he will have in the morning, when he walks over the ruins lying blackened in the pitiless sunshine. That moment of intensest depression was come to Janet, when the daylight which showed her the walls, and chairs, and tables, and all the commonplace reality that surrounded her, seemed to lay bare the future too, and bring out into oppressive distinctness all the details of a weary life to be lived from day to day, with no hope to strengthen her against that evil habit, which she loathed in retrospect and yet was powerless to resist. Her husband would never consent to her living away from him: she was become necessary to his tyranny; he would never willingly loosen his grasp on her. She had a vague notion of some protection the law might give her, if she could prove her life in danger from him; but she shrank utterly, as she had always done, from any active, public resistance or vengeance: she felt too crushed, too faulty, too liable to reproach, to have the courage, even if she had had the wish to put herself openly in the position of a wronged woman seeking redress. She had no strength to sustain her in a course of self-defence and independence: there was a darker shadow over her life than the dread of her husband—it was the shadow of self-despair. The easiest thing would be to go away and hide herself from him. But then there was her mother: Robert had all her little property in his hands, and that little was scarcely enough to keep her in comfort without his aid. If Janet went away alone he would be sure to persecute her mother; and if she did go away—what then? She must work to maintain herself; she must exert herself, weary and hopeless as she was, to begin life afresh. How hard that seemed to her! ... "

................................................................................................

"Dempster, on his return home the evening before, had ordered his man, who lived away from the house, to bring up his horse and gig from the stables at ten. After breakfast he said to the housemaid, 'No one need sit up for me to-night; I shall not be at home till tomorrow evening;' and then he walked to the office to give some orders, expecting, as he returned, to see the man waiting with his gig. But though the church clock had struck ten, no gig was there. In Dempster's mood this was more than enough to exasperate him. He went in to take his accustomed glass of brandy before setting out, promising himself the satisfaction of presently thundering at Dawes for being a few minutes behind his time. An outbreak of temper towards his man was not common with him; for Dempster, like most tyrannous people, had that dastardly kind of self-restraint which enabled him to control his temper where it suited his own convenience to do so; and feeling the value of Dawes, a steady punctual fellow, he not only gave him high wages, but usually treated him with exceptional civility. This morning, however, ill-humour got the better of prudence, and Dempster was determined to rate him soundly; a resolution for which Dawes gave him much better ground than he expected. ... "

"Dawe's blood was now fairly up. 'I'll look out for a master as has got a better charicter nor a lyin', bletherin' drunkard, an' I shouldn't hev to go fur.'"

................................................................................................

"Janet, wrapped up in a large white shawl which threw her dark face into startling relief, was seated with her eyes turned anxiously towards the door when Mr. Tryan entered. He had not seen her since their interview at Sally Martin's long months ago; and he felt a strong movement of compassion at the sight of the pain-stricken face which seemed to bear written on it the signs of all Janet's intervening misery. Her heart gave a great leap, as her eyes met his once more. No! she had not deceived herself: there was all the sincerity, all the sadness, all the deep pity in them her memory had told her of; more than it had told her, for in proportion as his face had become thinner and more worn, his eyes appeared to have gathered intensity. 

"He came forward, and, putting out his hand, said, 'I am so glad you sent for me—I am so thankful you thought I could be any comfort to you.' Janet took his hand in silence. She was unable to utter any words of mere politeness, or even of gratitude; her heart was too full of other words that had welled up the moment she met his pitying glance, and felt her doubts fall away. 

"They sat down opposite each other, and she said in a low voice, while slow difficult tears gathered in her aching eyes,—'I want to tell you how unhappy I am—how weak and wicked. I feel no strength to live or die. I thought you could tell me something that would help me.' She paused. 

"'Perhaps I can,' Mr. Tryan said, 'for in speaking to me you are speaking to a fellow-sinner who has needed just the comfort and help you are needing.' 

"'And you did find it?' 

"'Yes; and I trust you will find it.'"

................................................................................................

" ... Mrs. Phipps was a woman of decided opinions, though of wheezy utterance. 

"'For my part,' she remarked, 'I'm glad to hear there's any likelihood of improvement in Mrs. Dempster, but I think the way things have turned out seems to show that she was more to blame than people thought she was; else, why should she feel so much about her husband? And Dempster, I understand, has left his wife pretty nearly all his property to do as she likes with; that isn't behaving like such a very bad husband. I don't believe Mrs. Dempster can have had so much provocation as they pretended."

"Perhaps this ground of respect to widows might not be entirely without its influence on the Milby mind, and might do something towards conciliating those more aristocratic acquaintances of Janet's, who would otherwise have been inclined to take the severest view of her apostasy towards Evangelicalism. Errors look so very ugly in persons of small means—one feels they are taking quite a liberty in going astray; whereas people of fortune may naturally indulge in a few delinquencies. 'They've got the money for it,' as the girl said of her mistress who had made herself ill with pickled salmon. However it may have been, there was not an acquaintance of Janet's, in Milby, that did not offer her civilities in the early days of her widowhood. Even the severe Mrs. Phipps was not an exception; for heaven knows what would become of our sociality if we never visited people we speak ill of: we should live, like Egyptian hermits, in crowded solitude."

................................................................................................

"And Janet just now was very happy. As she walked along the rough lane with a buoyant step, a half smile of innocent, kindly triumph played about her mouth. She was delighting beforehand in the anticipated success of her persuasive power, and for the time her painful anxiety about Mr. Tryan's health was thrown into abeyance. But she had not gone far along the lane before she heard the sound of a horse advancing at a walking pace behind her. Without looking back, she turned aside to make way for it between the ruts, and did not notice that for a moment it had stopped, and had then come on with a slightly quickened pace. In less than a minute she heard a well-known voice say, 'Mrs. Dempster'; and, turning, saw Mr. Tryan close to her, holding his horse by the bridle. It seemed very natural to her that he should be there. Her mind was so full of his presence at that moment, that the actual sight of him was only like a more vivid thought, and she behaved, as we are apt to do when feeling obliges us to be genuine, with a total forgetfulness of polite forms. She only looked at him with a slight deepening of the smile that was already on her face. He said gently, 'Take my arm'; and they walked on a little way in silence."

"Mr. Tryan saw it all in a moment—he saw that it had all been done for his sake. He could not be sorry; he could not say no; he could not resist the sense that life had a new sweetness for him, and that he should like it to be prolonged a little—only a little, for the sake of feeling a stronger security about Janet. When she had finished speaking, she looked at him with a doubtful, inquiring glance. He was not looking at her; his eyes were cast downwards; but the expression of his face encouraged her, and she said, in a half-playful tone of entreaty,—'You will go and live with her? I know you will. You will come back with me now and see the house.' 

"He looked at her then, and smiled. There is an unspeakable blending of sadness and sweetness in the smile of a face sharpened and paled by slow consumption. That smile of Mr. Tryan's pierced poor Janet's heart: she felt in it at once the assurance of grateful affection and the prophecy of coming death. Her tears rose; they turned round without speaking, and went back again along the lane."

................................................................................................

"He was conscious that he did not wish for prolonged life solely that he might reclaim the wanderers and sustain the feeble: he was conscious of a new yearning for those pure human joys which he had voluntarily and determinedly banished from his life—for a draught of that deep affection from which he had been cut off by a dark chasm of remorse. For now, that affection was within his reach; he saw it there, like a palm-shadowed well in the desert; he could not desire to die in sight of it. 

"And so the autumn rolled gently by in its 'calm decay'. Until November. ... Janet was with him a great deal now, for she saw that he liked her to read to him in the lengthening evenings, and it became the rule for her and her mother to have tea at Holly Mount, where, with Mrs. Pettifer, and sometimes another friend or two, they brought Mr. Tryan the unaccustomed enjoyment of companionship by his own fireside."

"She felt no rebellion under this prospect of bereavement, but rather a quiet submissive sorrow. Gratitude that his influence and guidance had been given her, even if only for a little while—gratitude that she was permitted to be with him, to take a deeper and deeper impress from daily communion with him, to be something to him in these last months of his life, was so strong in her that it almost silenced regret. ... The thought of Mr. Tryan was associated for her with repose from that conflict of emotion, with trust in the unchangeable, with the influx of a power to subdue self. To have been assured of his sympathy, his teaching, his help, all through her life, would have been to her like a heaven already begun—a deliverance from fear and danger; but the time was not yet come for her to be conscious that the hold he had on her heart was any other than that of the heaven-sent friend who had come to her like the angel in the prison, and loosed her bonds, and led her by the hand till she could look back on the dreadful doors that had once closed her in."

................................................................................................

"There is a simple gravestone in Milby Churchyard, telling that in this spot lie the remains of Edgar Tryan, for two years officiating curate at the Paddiford Chapel-of-Ease, in this parish. It is a meagre memorial, and tells you simply that the man who lies there took upon him, faithfully or unfaithfully, the office of guide and instructor to his fellowmen."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

February 12, 2021 - February 15, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Adam Bede. (1859) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Adam Bede

A bit of a tough going for those not quite facile with old dialects of northern country England, especially from a century or so ago, this starts slow and takes time to grip one, what with the extensive description of religion and Methodists of the fledgling times. Then before one quite knows the characters grip one, with a familiar tale of temptation and lack of resolution and foresight made more than worth reading and in fact a must due to the excellent descriptions of characters and variety thereof. 

As to the story, surprises await one around every corner, almost. And before one knows there is the wolf in the woods dressed up in a deceptively attractive form. (The wolf is only the temptation leading to disaster, though, and not presented here quite as a personified human as another author would present it.) And before one knows one is deep into one third, then half, and then two thirds of the tale, all the while wondering why Eliot has not been allowed the same high pedestal as Austen, Hardy, and so on. Adam Bede has the same character of a story where little happens page after page and yet one is unable to leave it behind, most of the time. 

The explanation comes soon enough with the - as Maugham described it of the most popular Tolstoy work of literature - barely or not even barely disguised nature of the moral lesson presented as a story. Hardy's Tess, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and then Eliot's poor Hetty Sorrel who is a barely mid-teen country girl with no knowledge and experience to keep her out of danger that presents itself disguised as love of a beautiful man, the lord of the land, all are innocent women that suffer consequences of their being unprotected as Tess was or not well guided as Hetty or falling in love as Anna Karenina does, and one is left to wonder if the author or the readers of those days were quite aware that these women, indeed very young women at that, were only human. They are punished, every one of them, with ruin of life and love, and death coming as the only escape for their ruined lives. Meanwhile Tess's rapist or seducer must be murdered by her as the only possible punishment he could find in the social set up, and the various other men of the stories depend on the authors for their just due, with Anna's brother habitually straying and nevertheless maintaining a social respectable position, and Arthur Donnithorne suffering on par with Hetty Sorrel (although not physically or socially but only at heart and less so socially) since Eliot would not let the guilty male go scot free. 

As an aside, Eliot is rather less realistic about the time frames - Hetty's travails seem to be sprung on not only the reader but all of her family and other people as a complete surprise all of a sudden, and at that the reader is better prepared with a couple of hints but then lulled into comfort with the passing of time until the troubles suddenly pile up (a bit like the several miles long pile up of the vehicles on highway some years ago in Virginia due to paper mill and fog). This confusion of time factor leads one to wonder if Eliot is quite unaware of facts of life or was dressing those days so very aiding and abetting in hiding them from people - but no, even then, the women around Hetty being unaware for so long of the state she is in is inexplicable. And this must be the reason for the otherwise excellent work being not so very popular or held high in esteem in comparison with works of Austen.

March 6, 2011. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Lifted Veil. (1859) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Lifted Veil; by George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

If one has just read Brother Jacob by the author, a harder contrast would be almost impossible to find. Not that one expects another Brother Jacob, at that - it's George Eliot, and her usual oeuvre is moral dilemma, characters that tread the fine line between ethical choice and plausible escape, and variety of contrasting choices of various characters at such moments. 

But this one begins with a desolate soul expecting a lonely death after a life of neglect and grief not come to terms with, and the only brightness is in the expression thereof, in how well the author has expressed the state of heart of such a grief. The only comparison one can think of, of this level of grief, is Letter From An Unknown Woman by Stefan Zweig, but it's not a deliberate thought, and is instead rather that it's evoked - but that is apparent only about halfway through the story. Or perhaps even W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage a tad later, as the author describes Bertha (who, by the way, seems also to be an extreme version of Rosamond of Middlemarch, at that) playing with Latimer and fooling him, despite his knowing better. 

But that's only the beginning. Then the protagonist, Latimer, speaks of a vision, and as he goes on, it reminds one of The Philosopher's Stone. 

But Colin Wilson lived much later, just as the others - Stefan Zweig, W. Somerset Maugham, and P. G. Wodehouse, did. Were they, each, inspired or influenced so deeply, perhaps subconsciously, by these very different works? For they are, were, excellent writers, not known to or suspected of plagiarism, and their works are excellent, not imitations, certainly not copies. 

One vaguely suspects that Colin Wilson wasn't being merely intellectually speculative, that he perhaps shared the experiences of his protagonist; did George Eliot, of hers, Latimer? At that, it is less surprising than her sudden humour in Brother Jacob, since she doesn't indulge in thst often; except, she's so very rational, so very keen at describing every emotion and every moral dilemma of her characters, rationally at length, that it surprises one she can describe emotions of such despair, such grief and desolation, as she does here, and so to imagine she had visions, that simply stumps one. 

................................................................................................

" ... While the heart beats, bruise it—it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition—make haste—oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations. The heart will by and by be still—“ubi saeva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit”; the eye will cease to entreat; the ear will be deaf; the brain will have ceased from all wants as well as from all work. Then your charitable speeches may find vent; then you may remember and pity the toil and the struggle and the failure; then you may give due honour to the work achieved; then you may find extenuation for errors, and may consent to bury them."

" ... I have no near relatives who will make up, by weeping over my grave, for the wounds they inflicted on me when I was among them. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... I held him in great awe, and appeared more timid and sensitive in his presence than at other times; a circumstance which, perhaps, helped to confirm him in the intention to educate me on a different plan from the prescriptive one with which he had complied in the case of my elder brother, already a tall youth at Eton. My brother was to be his representative and successor; he must go to Eton and Oxford, for the sake of making connexions, of course: my father was not a man to underrate the bearing of Latin satirists or Greek dramatists on the attainment of an aristocratic position. But, intrinsically, he had slight esteem for “those dead but sceptred spirits”; having qualified himself for forming an independent opinion by reading Potter’s Æschylus, and dipping into Francis’s Horace. To this negative view he added a positive one, derived from a recent connexion with mining speculations; namely, that a scientific education was the really useful training for a younger son. Moreover, it was clear that a shy, sensitive boy like me was not fit to encounter the rough experience of a public school. ... "

" ... I was very stupid about machines, so I was to be greatly occupied with them; I had no memory for classification, so it was particularly necessary that I should study systematic zoology and botany; I was hungry for human deeds and humane motions, so I was to be plentifully crammed with the mechanical powers, the elementary bodies, and the phenomena of electricity and magnetism. A better-constituted boy would certainly have profited under my intelligent tutors, with their scientific apparatus; and would, doubtless, have found the phenomena of electricity and magnetism as fascinating as I was, every Thursday, assured they were. As it was, I could have paired off, for ignorance of whatever was taught me, with the worst Latin scholar that was ever turned out of a classical academy. I read Plutarch, and Shakespeare, and Don Quixote by the sly, and supplied myself in that way with wandering thoughts, while my tutor was assuring me that “an improved man, as distinguished from an ignorant one, was a man who knew the reason why water ran downhill.” I had no desire to be this improved man; I was glad of the running water; I could watch it and listen to it gurgling among the pebbles, and bathing the bright green water-plants, by the hour together. I did not want to know why it ran; I had perfect confidence that there were good reasons for what was so very beautiful."

" ... When I was sixteen I was sent to Geneva to complete my course of education; and the change was a very happy one to me, for the first sight of the Alps, with the setting sun on them, as we descended the Jura, seemed to me like an entrance into heaven; and the three years of my life there were spent in a perpetual sense of exaltation, as if from a draught of delicious wine, at the presence of Nature in all her awful loveliness. You will think, perhaps, that I must have been a poet, from this early sensibility to Nature.  But my lot was not so happy as that. A poet pours forth his song and believes in the listening ear and answering soul, to which his song will be floated sooner or later. But the poet’s sensibility without his voice—the poet’s sensibility that finds no vent but in silent tears on the sunny bank, when the noonday light sparkles on the water, or in an inward shudder at the sound of harsh human tones, the sight of a cold human eye—this dumb passion brings with it a fatal solitude of soul in the society of one’s fellow-men. My least solitary moments were those in which I pushed off in my boat, at evening, towards the centre of the lake; it seemed to me that the sky, and the glowing mountain-tops, and the wide blue water, surrounded me with a cherishing love such as no human face had shed on me since my mother’s love had vanished out of my life. I used to do as Jean Jacques did—lie down in my boat and let it glide where it would, while I looked up at the departing glow leaving one mountain-top after the other, as if the prophet’s chariot of fire were passing over them on its way to the home of light. Then, when the white summits were all sad and corpse-like, I had to push homeward, for I was under careful surveillance, and was allowed no late wanderings. ... "

................................................................................................

"“When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by Prague” . . . 

"My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague, with a strange sense that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were the summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course—unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold-inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth of morning."

"As soon as I was alone again, I began to ask myself whether I had been sleeping. Was this a dream—this wonderfully distinct vision—minute in its distinctness down to a patch of rainbow light on the pavement, transmitted through a coloured lamp in the shape of a star—of a strange city, quite unfamiliar to my imagination? I had seen no picture of Prague: it lay in my mind as a mere name, with vaguely-remembered historical associations—ill-defined memories of imperial grandeur and religious wars."

" ... No, it was not a dream; was it—the thought was full of tremulous exultation—was it the poet’s nature in me, hitherto only a troubled yearning sensibility, now manifesting itself suddenly as spontaneous creation? Surely it was in this way that Homer saw the plain of Troy, that Dante saw the abodes of the departed, that Milton saw the earthward flight of the Tempter."

" ... Suppose I were to fix my mind on some other place—Venice, for example, which was far more familiar to my imagination than Prague: perhaps the same sort of result would follow. I concentrated my thoughts on Venice; I stimulated my imagination with poetic memories, and strove to feel myself present in Venice, as I had felt myself present in Prague. But in vain. I was only colouring the Canaletto engravings that hung in my old bedroom at home; the picture was a shifting one, my mind wandering uncertainly in search of more vivid images; I could see no accident of form or shadow without conscious labour after the necessary conditions. It was all prosaic effort, not rapt passivity, such as I had experienced half an hour before."

................................................................................................

" ... Doubtless there was another sort of fascination at work—that subtle physical attraction which delights in cheating our psychological predictions, and in compelling the men who paint sylphs, to fall in love with some bonne et brave femme, heavy-heeled and freckled. 

"Bertha’s behaviour towards me was such as to encourage all my illusions, to heighten my boyish passion, and make me more and more dependent on her smiles. Looking back with my present wretched knowledge, I conclude that her vanity and love of power were intensely gratified by the belief that I had fainted on first seeing her purely from the strong impression her person had produced on me. The most prosaic woman likes to believe herself the object of a violent, a poetic passion; and without a grain of romance in her, Bertha had that spirit of intrigue which gave piquancy to the idea that the brother of the man she meant to marry was dying with love and jealousy for her sake. That she meant to marry my brother, was what at that time I did not believe; for though he was assiduous in his attentions to her, and I knew well enough that both he and my father had made up their minds to this result, there was not yet an understood engagement—there had been no explicit declaration; and Bertha habitually, while she flirted with my brother, and accepted his homage in a way that implied to him a thorough recognition of its intention, made me believe, by the subtlest looks and phrases—feminine nothings which could never be quoted against her—that he was really the object of her secret ridicule; that she thought him, as I did, a coxcomb, whom she would have pleasure in disappointing. Me she openly petted in my brother’s presence, as if I were too young and sickly ever to be thought of as a lover; and that was the view he took of me. But I believe she must inwardly have delighted in the tremors into which she threw me by the coaxing way in which she patted my curls, while she laughed at my quotations. Such caresses were always given in the presence of our friends; for when we were alone together, she affected a much greater distance towards me, and now and then took the opportunity, by words or slight actions, to stimulate my foolish timid hope that she really preferred me. And why should she not follow her inclination? I was not in so advantageous a position as my brother, but I had fortune, I was not a year younger than she was, and she was an heiress, who would soon be of age to decide for herself."

................................................................................................

" ... There is no short cut, no patent tram-road, to wisdom: after all the centuries of invention, the soul’s path lies through the thorny wilderness which must be still trodden in solitude, with bleeding feet, with sobs for help, as it was trodden by them of old time."

" ... We try to believe that the egoism within us would have easily been melted, and that it was only the narrowness of our knowledge which hemmed in our generosity, our awe, our human piety, and hindered them from submerging our hard indifference to the sensations and emotions of our fellows.  Our tenderness and self-renunciation seem strong when our egoism has had its day—when, after our mean striving for a triumph that is to be another’s loss, the triumph comes suddenly, and we shudder at it, because it is held out by the chill hand of death."

................................................................................................

" ... The terrible moment of complete illumination had come to me, and I saw that the darkness had hidden no landscape from me, but only a blank prosaic wall: from that evening forth, through the sickening years which followed, I saw all round the narrow room of this woman’s soul—saw petty artifice and mere negation where I had delighted to believe in coy sensibilities and in wit at war with latent feeling—saw the light floating vanities of the girl defining themselves into the systematic coquetry, the scheming selfishness, of the woman—saw repulsion and antipathy harden into cruel hatred, giving pain only for the sake of wreaking itself. 

"For Bertha too, after her kind, felt the bitterness of disillusion.  She had believed that my wild poet’s passion for her would make me her slave; and that, being her slave, I should execute her will in all things. With the essential shallowness of a negative, unimaginative nature, she was unable to conceive the fact that sensibilities were anything else than weaknesses. She had thought my weaknesses would put me in her power, and she found them unmanageable forces. Our positions were reversed. Before marriage she had completely mastered my imagination, for she was a secret to me; and I created the unknown thought before which I trembled as if it were hers. But now that her soul was laid open to me, now that I was compelled to share the privacy of her motives, to follow all the petty devices that preceded her words and acts, she found herself powerless with me, except to produce in me the chill shudder of repulsion—powerless, because I could be acted on by no lever within her reach. I was dead to worldly ambitions, to social vanities, to all the incentives within the compass of her narrow imagination, and I lived under influences utterly invisible to her."

................................................................................................

" ... We learn words by rote, but not their meaning; that must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed in the subtle fibres of our nerves."

................................................................................................

" ... I remember well the look and the smile with which she one day said, after a mistake of this kind on my part: “I used to think you were a clairvoyant, and that was the reason why you were so bitter against other clairvoyants, wanting to keep your monopoly; but I see now you have become rather duller than the rest of the world.” 

"I said nothing in reply.  It occurred to me that her recent obtrusion of herself upon me might have been prompted by the wish to test my power of detecting some of her secrets; but I let the thought drop again at once: her motives and her deeds had no interest for me, and whatever pleasures she might be seeking, I had no wish to baulk her.  There was still pity in my soul for every living thing, and Bertha was living—was surrounded with possibilities of misery."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

February 07, 2021 - February 07, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Mill on the Floss. (1860) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Mill on the Floss

Human nature, the author's era, and in particular a corner of the veil over caste system of Europe lifted with the casual reference to the separate churches or chapels for the poor and the gentry - all in all, good. 

Friday, February 11, 2011
...............................................

Amazingly this is one of the few works of literature where a film or a television serial gives more, not less, than the original work in some ways. The social contexts of the time and the general setup is described in the book by the author as much as the author saw necessary, but times change and perhaps social set up across the world in another land, another time is different. At any rate, what comes across as a very personal story of a young woman in particular and her family in general, with the society as the frame thereof, changes when one takes into account the context of the time and the society, which is brought to view far more clearly on film in the film or television series. 

The central character Maggie is very endearing in her persona full of life and aspiring for a life of mind and spirit while in turmoil of heart and conscience. Eliot seems to be a follower of Aquinas, and at any rate finds it necessary to make the poor young girl give up her one chance of finding life of happiness when she and a young man are inexorably drawn in spite of all obstacles, with little quarter given to his very valid arguments about the others they are engaged to being merely cheated if these two pretended no love existed between them. 

The author seems to make little of the young woman's quest for independence by on one hand making her insist she won't depend on her relatives if she can make her own living and on the other hand give far more importance to the claims of various relatives and others when weighed in against her own mind and heart. 

As for others, the society then clearly had its caste system with money and power playing top roles (which one doubts has changed much) and more, society including most women (author mentions them towards the end as the wives whom the rector cannot bring to see reason or truth where a poor young woman without powerful connections when compared to others is concerned - what else is new? -) consider a young woman as not quite proper except as someone belonging to, property of, under protection of a relative with some money, prestige, power, preferably male. If the male is merely a slightly older brother, nevertheless he has the power of righteous indignation and wrath if the young woman has any emotions much less actions or thoughts that are not explicitly approved prior to having them by the said male, and same is true of other relatives. The young man in question gets far more latitude in comparison. 

In short the life and society of Europe was not that different regarding the feudal structure especially regarding women from what is now protested about as the restricted version in lands other than those of richer western nations (which is not a geographical term, since it includes Australia and NZ generally) with lifestyles of plenty and so forth. 

One wishes the author had made Maggie's society see common sense and have a heart and allow her and Stephen Guest to be happy, but Eliot seems to think it is necessary to go tragic to deprive Maggie of everything that can possibly be taken from her including life, merely for the sin of having a young man of rich class fallen in love with her - he has been courting her cousin, but is really not bound by promise to her - and the only relief in all this is that the four young people concerned, the two in love and the other two who thought they belonged to them, understand all perfectly with no rancour. Which makes it all the more senseless that the tragedy is forced merely for sake of punishing a flouting of conventional bindings due to truth of hearts. 

But then again, the author is a prisoner of her times, and perhaps she meant to bring about change in social attitudes by forcing this tragedy to attention of her readers and making them see sense.

July 27, 2012. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe. (1861) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Silas Marner

The story of two men, and a little girl, and rectitude and values, ethics and right choices, loss and redemption, love and caring and the joy they bring to life. 

The wealthy young man married in what moment of temptation is left unsaid, but he did wish to not only keep his family hidden for fear of his society, he was in love with a good young woman, and did not wish to lose her. When the wife turned up in the village and was found dead - due to starvation and cold, having been neglected by the husband - he took the opportunity to say nothing about his connection. 

The little child had wandered into the home of a stranger to the village society who had left a traumatic past behind him in the city, where he was persecuted due to his epileptic fits being mislabeled as dealings with devil and he had been thrown out of his work and his life. He had lived for years in the village, but connected with humanity only when he found the child in his home shortly after being robbed of all his money, all his saving, and insisted the child was his to protect and care for. 

The father of the child let that be - and so lost the only child he was ever going to have, as it turned out. 

Silas Marner gained a life by his act, his choice and his heart's truth in giving love and care to an orphan as he thought the child was. The father of the child lost all but his wealth by deliberately not acclaiming the child he knew was his, and while he married the good woman he loved, he knew he was not good enough for either her or her love, since he was an untruthful unworthy man by virtue of having denied his wife and his child, having neglected one until she died of starvation and cold, and having not claimed the child so she was taken and raised as an orphan by another man, who found the whole village gather round him in the process. 

One of the most touching tales about human relationships, mistakes and redemption, crime and sin, fate and choices. 

Silas Marner found life, and love of a daughter, with the little girl wandering in and falling asleep at his hearth; it was not his duty but a choice he made to keep the little one he could ill afford. Meanwhile her natural and legal father has refrained from admitting his family, falsified his identity in relation to the family he would not own, for sake of the good young woman he loved, and he lost much in the process of fall from rectitude.

March 6, 2011. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Romola. (1863) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Romola: By George Eliot

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Quoted from blurb:-

"This historical novel is set in the fifteenth century, and is “a deep study of life in the city of Florence from an intellectual, artistic, religious, and social point of view”. It first appeared in fourteen parts published in Cornhill Magazine from July 1862 to August.  The story takes place amidst actual historical events during the Italian Renaissance, and includes in its plot several notable figures from Florentine history.  The content of this novel is distinctly different from the rest of Eliot’s oeuvre."

................................................................................................

The book opens, deliberately dated explicitly at 1492, in Florence, with locals guiding a Greek youth to a home of a local scholar of renown who might use his assistance. There is much conversation along the way, and much exposition in prologue before, that makes one wonder if the author was deeply immersed in a scholastic study, or acquired it via travel, or both; but she does drop names of the era, now little kniwn, a great deal. That, however, isn't all - she already discusses the views of Romans, Italians in general and Florentine in particular, regarding scholastic quality of Greece versus their own - and vice versa, the disdain of Greece for Romans and Italians, unaffected by the reversal of fortunes, supported by the Greek familiarity with antiquity as opposed to what they almost call idolatry of Italians, in that Greece thinks Italian thought is unable to grasp anything prior to their religion. 

To a reader not deeply into scholastic study of that era or of antiquity, of Greece and Italy, and particularly with regard to thinkers of the two lands over millennia, it's a tad unclear if the author us mentioning names strictly historical, and presenting their views accurately - or mixing it up a little with imaginary ones, since it's a novel, after all. 

At that, a short way into the story, a small similarity with Silas Marner becomes apparent, that about an attractive youth who isn't a bad sort but isn't firm in his virtues, divided between a woman far above that he aspires to and another not quite that class whom he might love contentedly but for his aiming for the one higher. 

But the chief similarity is the moral dilemma, which here isn't a choice between the two; it's rather a choice between the duty towards an adoptive father who needs to be rescued from slavery, which might involve a journey and search that might prove fruitless after all, but in any case be a certain loss of his years of youth, and most likely of the woman aspired to, apart from the life and status of a scholar established in society of Florence. 

Another slight similarity is, of course, that of the two scholars - here a blind old father of the beautiful Romola, and the old Mr Casaubon of Middlemarch whom the beautiful Dorothea chose to marry; come to think, Romola is not very dissimilar to Dorothea, except she's a daughter, her scholarly father isn't described as working fruitlessly, and her destiny is more likely akin to Nancy of Silas Marner. 

But the book is quite slow until about somewhere between a quarter and one third of the way, where it pickets up pace; until then it's heavy reading for those not well acquainted and enamoured about Florence circa 1492. And it's a bit further before one begins to realise that Eliot really intended to write of Savonarola.

At the end, after one has read it through puzzled, suddenly the whole structure emerges, and one sees the various characters that the author has painted, each a distinct type. Each has their own greatness and faults that go with it, not dissonant but making them human. And Savonarola merely fits in, as a historic persona seen rather dim in background, despite being portrayed not always in background. 

................................................................................................

"More than three centuries and a half ago, in the mid spring-time of 1492, we are sure that the angel of the dawn, as he travelled with broad slow wing from the Levant to the Pillars of Hercules, and from the summits of the Caucasus across all the snowy Alpine ridges to the dark nakedness of the Western isles, saw nearly the same outline of firm land and unstable sea — saw the same great mountain shadows on the same valleys as he has seen to-day — saw olive mounts, and pine forests, and the broad plains green with young corn or rain-freshened grass — saw the domes and spires of cities rising by the river-sides or mingled with the sedge-like masts on the many-curved sea-coast, in the same spots where they rise to-day. ... "

" ... And doubtless, if the spirit of a Florentine citizen, whose eyes were closed for the last time while Columbus was still waiting and arguing for the three poor vessels with which he was to set sail from the port of Palos, could return from the shades and pause where our thought is pausing, he would believe that there must still be fellowship and understanding for him among the inheritors of his birthplace. 

"Let us suppose that such a Shade has been permitted to revisit the glimpses of the golden morning, and is standing once more on the famous hill of San Miniato, which overlooks Florence from the south." 

" ...For it is not only the mountains and the westward-bending river that he recognises; not only the dark sides of Mount Morello opposite to him, and the long valley of the Arno that seems to stretch its grey low-tufted luxuriance to the far-off ridges of Carrara; and the steep height of Fiesole, with its crown of monastic walls and cypresses; and all the green and grey slopes sprinkled with villas which he can name as he looks at them. He sees other familiar objects much closer to his daily walks. For though he misses the seventy or more towers that once surmounted the walls, and encircled the city as with a regal diadem, his eyes will not dwell on that blank; they are drawn irresistibly to the unique tower springing, like a tall flower-stem drawn towards the sun, from the square turreted mass of the Old Palace in the very heart of the city--the tower that looks none the worse for the four centuries that have passed since he used to walk under it. The great dome, too, greatest in the world, which, in his early boyhood, had been only a daring thought in the mind of a small, quick-eyed man--there it raises its large curves still, eclipsing the hills. ... "

" ... Why have five out of the eleven convenient gates been closed? And why, above all, should the towers have been levelled that were once a glory and defence? ... "

................................................................................................

"To the ear of Dante, the same streets rang with the shout and clash of fierce battle between rival families; but in the fifteenth century, they were only noisy with the unhistorical quarrels and broad jests of woolcarders in the cloth-producing quarters of San Martino and Garbo. 

"Under this loggia, in the early morning of the 9th of April 1492, two men had their eyes fixed on each other: one was stooping slightly, and looking downward with the scrutiny of curiosity; the other, lying on the pavement, was looking upward with the startled gaze of a suddenly-awakened dreamer."

"“Ah! young man,” said Bratti, with a sideway glance of some admiration, “you were not born of a Sunday—the salt-shops were open when you came into the world. You’re not a Hebrew, eh?—come from Spain or Naples, eh? Let me tell you the Frati Minori are trying to make Florence as hot as Spain for those dogs of hell that want to get all the profit of usury to themselves and leave none for Christians; and when you walk the Calimara with a piece of yellow cloth in your cap, it will spoil your beauty more than a sword-cut across that smooth olive cheek of yours.—Abbaratta, baratta—chi abbaratta?—I tell you, young man, grey cloth is against yellow cloth; and there’s as much grey cloth in Florence as would make a gown and cowl for the Duomo, and there’s not so much yellow cloth as would make hose for Saint Christopher—blessed be his name, and send me a sight of him this day!—Abbaratta, baratta, b’ratta—chi abbaratta?”"

"“I tell you I saw it myself,” said a fat man, with a bunch of newly-purchased leeks in his hand. “I was in Santa Maria Novella, and saw it myself. The woman started up and threw out her arms, and cried out and said she saw a big bull with fiery horns coming down on the church to crush it. I saw it myself.”"

"“Ebbene, Nello,” said Bratti, skirting the group till he was within hearing of the barber. “It appears the Magnifico is dead—rest his soul!—and the price of wax will rise?” 

"“Even as you say,” answered Nello; and then added, with an air of extra gravity, but with marvellous rapidity, “and his waxen image in the Nunziata fell at the same moment, they say; or at some other time, whenever it pleases the Frati Serviti, who know best. And several cows and women have had still-born calves this Quaresima; and for the bad eggs that have been broken since the Carnival, nobody has counted them. Ah! a great man—a great politician—a greater poet than Dante. And yet the cupola didn’t fall, only the lantern. Che miracolo!”"

"“ ... But God pardon me,” added Nello, changing his tone, and crossing himself, “this light talk ill beseems a morning when Lorenzo lies dead, and the Muses are tearing their hair—always a painful thought to a barber; and you yourself, Messere, are probably under a cloud, for when a man of your speech and presence takes up with so sorry a night’s lodging, it argues some misfortune to have befallen him.” 

"“What Lorenzo is that whose death you speak of?” said the stranger, appearing to have dwelt with too anxious an interest on this point to have noticed the indirect inquiry that followed it. 

"“What Lorenzo? There is but one Lorenzo, I imagine, whose death could throw the Mercato into an uproar, set the lantern of the Duomo leaping in desperation, and cause the lions of the Republic to feel under an immediate necessity to devour one another. I mean Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Pericles of our Athens—if I may make such a comparison in the ear of a Greek.”"

"“ ... Certain of our scholars hold that your Greek learning is but a wayside degenerate plant until it has been transplanted into Italian brains, and that now there is such a plentiful crop of the superior quality, your native teachers are mere propagators of degeneracy. ... ”"

"“Pian piano—not so fast,” said Nello, sticking his thumbs into his belt and nodding to Sandro to restore order. “I will not conceal from you that there is a prejudice against Greeks among us; and though, as a barber unsnared by authorship, I share no prejudices, I must admit that the Greeks are not always such pretty youngsters as yourself: their erudition is often of an uncombed, unmannerly aspect, and encrusted with a barbarous utterance of Italian, that makes their converse hardly more euphonious than that of a Tedesco in a state of vinous loquacity. And then, again, excuse me—we Florentines have liberal ideas about speech, and consider that an instrument which can flatter and promise so cleverly as the tongue, must have been partly made for those purposes; and that truth is a riddle for eyes and wit to discover, which it were a mere spoiling of sport for the tongue to betray. Still we have our limits beyond which we call dissimulation treachery. But it is said of the Greeks that their honesty begins at what is the hanging point with us, and that since the old Furies went to sleep, your Christian Greek is of so easy a conscience that he would make a stepping-stone of his father’s corpse.”"

................................................................................................

" ... The Bardi, who had made themselves fast in their street between the two bridges, kept these narrow inlets, like panthers at bay, against the oncoming gonfalons of the people, and were only made to give way by an assault from the hill behind them. Their houses by the river, to the number of twenty-two (palagi e case grandi), were sacked and burnt, and many among the chief of those who bore the Bardi name were driven from the city. But an old Florentine family was many-rooted, and we find the Bardi maintaining importance and rising again and again to the surface of Florentine affairs in a more or less creditable manner, implying an untold family history that would have included even more vicissitudes and contrasts of dignity and disgrace, of wealth and poverty, than are usually seen on the background of wide kinship. (Note 1.) But the Bardi never resumed their proprietorship in the old street on the banks of the river, which in 1492 had long been associated with other names of mark, and especially with the Neri, who possessed a considerable range of houses on the side towards the hill."

................................................................................................

"Seating herself on a low stool, close to her father’s knee, Romola took the book on her lap and read the four verses containing the exclamation of Actreon. 

"“It is true, Romola,” said Bardo, when she had finished; “it is a true conception of the poet; for what is that grosser, narrower light by which men behold merely the petty scene around them, compared with that far-stretching, lasting light which spreads over centuries of thought, and over the life of nations, and makes clear to us the minds of the immortals who have reaped the great harvest and left us to glean in their furrows?"

"“Yes,” he went on, “with my son to aid me, I might have had my due share in the triumphs of this century: the names of the Bardi, father and son, might have been held reverently on the lips of scholars in the ages to come; not on account of frivolous verses or philosophical treatises, which are superfluous and presumptuous attempts to imitate the inimitable, such as allure vain men like Panhormita, and from which even the admirable Poggio did not keep himself sufficiently free; but because we should have given a lamp whereby men might have studied the supreme productions of the past. For why is a young man like Poliziano (who was not yet born when I was already held worthy to maintain a discussion with Thomas of Sarzana) to have a glorious memory as a commentator on the Pandects—why is Ficino, whose Latin is an offence to me, and who wanders purblind among the superstitious fancies that marked the decline at once of art, literature, and philosophy, to descend to posterity as the very high priest of Platonism, while I, who am more than their equal, have not effected anything but scattered work, which will be appropriated by other men? Why? but because my son, whom I had brought up to replenish my ripe learning with young enterprise, left me and all liberal pursuits that he might lash himself and howl at midnight with besotted friars—that he might go wandering on pilgrimages befitting men who know of no past older than the missal and the crucifix?—left me when the night was already beginning to fall on me.”"

" ... And thou hast a man’s nobility of soul: thou hast never fretted me with thy petty desires as thy mother did. It is true, I have been careful to keep thee aloof from the debasing influence of thy own sex, with their sparrow-like frivolity and their enslaving superstition, except, indeed, from that of our cousin Brigida, who may well serve as a scarecrow and a warning. ... "

................................................................................................

"“I have had much practice in transcription,” he said; “but in the case of inscriptions copied in memorable scenes, rendered doubly impressive by the sense of risk and adventure, it may have happened that my retention of written characters has been weakened. On the plain of the Eurotas, or among the gigantic stones of Mycenae and Tyrins—especially when the fear of the Turk hovers over one like a vulture—the mind wanders, even though the hand writes faithfully what the eye dictates. But something doubtless I have retained,” added Tito, with a modesty which was not false, though he was conscious that it was politic, “something that might be of service if illustrated and corrected by a wider learning than my own.” 

"“That is well spoken, young man,” said Bardo, delighted. “And I will not withhold from you such aid as I can give, if you like to communicate with me concerning your recollections. I foresee a work which will be a useful supplement to the ‘Isolario’ of Christoforo Buondelmonte, and which may take rank with the ‘Itineraria’ of Ciriaco and the admirable Ambrogio Traversari. But we must prepare ourselves for calumny, young man,” Bardo went on with energy, as if the work were already growing so fast that the time of trial was near; “if your book contains novelties you will be charged with forgery; if my elucidations should clash with any principles of interpretation adopted by another scholar, our personal characters will be attacked, we shall be impeached with foul actions; you must prepare yourself to be told that your mother was a fish-woman, and that your father was a renegade priest or a hanged malefactor. I myself, for having shown error in a single preposition, had an invective written against me wherein I was taxed with treachery, fraud, indecency, and even hideous crimes. Such, my young friend—such are the flowers with which the glorious path of scholarship is strewed!"

................................................................................................

"“Talk not of monks and their legends, young man!” said Bardo, interrupting Tito impetuously. “It is enough to overlay human hope and enterprise with an eternal frost to think that the ground which was trodden by philosophers and poets is crawled over by those insect-swarms of besotted fanatics or howling hypocrites.”

"“Perdio, I have no affection for them,” said Tito, with a shrug; “servitude agrees well with a religion like theirs, which lies in the renunciation of all that makes life precious to other men. And they carry the yoke that befits them: their matin chant is drowned by the voice of the muezzin, who, from the gallery of the high tower on the Acropolis, calls every Mussulman to his prayers. That tower springs from the Parthenon itself; and every time we paused and directed our eyes towards it, our guide set up a wail, that a temple which had once been won from the diabolical uses of the pagans to become the temple of another virgin than Pallas—the Virgin Mother of God—was now again perverted to the accursed ends of the Moslem. It was the sight of those walls of the Acropolis, which disclosed themselves in the distance as we leaned over the side of our galley when it was forced by contrary winds to anchor in the Piraeus, that fired my father’s mind with the determination to see Athens at all risks, and in spite of the sailors’ warnings that if we lingered till a change of wind, they would depart without us: but, after all, it was impossible for us to venture near the Acropolis, for the sight of men eager in examining ‘old stones’ raised the suspicion that we were Venetian spies, and we had to hurry back to the harbour.”"

" ... There will be much to tell; for you have travelled, you said, in the Peloponnesus?” 

"“Yes; and in Boeotia also: I have rested in the groves of Helicon, and tasted of the fountain Hippocrene. But on every memorable spot in Greece conquest after conquest has set its seal, till there is a confusion of ownership even in ruins, that only close study and comparison could unravel. High over every fastness, from the plains of Lacedaemon to the straits of Thermopylae, there towers some huge Frankish fortress, once inhabited by a French or Italian marquis, now either abandoned or held by Turkish bands.”"

................................................................................................

"“Remember, Bardo, thou hast a rare gem of thy own; take care no one gets it who is not likely to pay a worthy price. That pretty Greek has a lithe sleekness about him, that seems marvellously fitted for slipping easily into any nest he fixes his mind on.” 

"Bardo was startled: the association of Tito with the image of his lost son had excluded instead of suggesting the thought of Romola. But almost immediately there seemed to be a reaction which made him grasp the warning as if it had been a hope. 

"“But why not, Bernardo? If the young man approved himself worthy—he is a scholar—and—and there would be no difficulty about the dowry, which always makes thee gloomy.”"

................................................................................................

"San Giovanni had been the patron saint of Florence for at least eight hundred years—ever since the time when the Lombard Queen Theodolinda had commanded her subjects to do him peculiar honour; nay, says old Villani, to the best of his knowledge, ever since the days of Constantino the Great and Pope Sylvester, when the Florentines deposed their idol Mars, whom they were nevertheless careful not to treat with contumely; for while they consecrated their beautiful and noble temple to the honour of God and of the “Beato Messere Santo Giovanni,” they placed old Mars respectfully on a high tower near the River Arno, finding in certain ancient memorials that he had been elected as their tutelar deity under such astral influences that if he were broken, or otherwise treated with indignity, the city would suffer great damage and mutation. But in the fifteenth century that discreet regard to the feelings of the Man-destroyer had long vanished: the god of the spear and shield had ceased to frown by the side of the Arno, and the defences of the Republic were held to lie in its craft and its coffers. For spear and shield could be hired by gold florins, and on the gold florins there had always been the image of San Giovanni. 

"Much good had come to Florence since the dim time of struggle between the old patron and the new: some quarrelling and bloodshed, doubtless, between Guelf and Ghibelline, between Black and White, between orthodox sons of the Church and heretic Paterini; some floods, famine, and pestilence; but still much wealth and glory. Florence had achieved conquests over walled cities once mightier than itself, and especially over hated Pisa, whose marble buildings were too high and beautiful, whose masts were too much honoured on Greek and Italian coasts. The name of Florence had been growing prouder and prouder in all the courts of Europe, nay, in Africa itself, on the strength of purest gold coinage, finest dyes and textures, pre-eminent scholarship and poetic genius, and wits of the most serviceable sort for statesmanship and banking: it was a name so omnipresent that a Pope with a turn for epigram had called Florentines “the fifth element.” And for this high destiny, though it might partly depend on the stars and Madonna dell’ Impruneta, and certainly depended on other higher Powers less often named, the praise was greatly due to San Giovanni, whose image was on the fair gold florins."

................................................................................................

" ... The clouds were made of good woven stuff, the saints and cherubs were unglorified mortals supported by firm bars, and those mysterious giants were really men of very steady brain, balancing themselves on stilts, and enlarged, like Greek tragedians, by huge masks and stuffed shoulders; but he was a miserably unimaginative Florentine who thought only of that—nay, somewhat impious, for in the images of sacred things was there not some of the virtue of sacred things themselves? And if, after that, there came a company of merry black demons well armed with claws and thongs, and other implements of sport, ready to perform impromptu farces of bastinadoing and clothes-tearing, why, that was the demons’ way of keeping a vigil, and they, too, might have descended from the domes and the tribunes. The Tuscan mind slipped from the devout to the burlesque, as readily as water round an angle; and the saints had already had their turn, had gone their way, and made their due pause before the gates of San Giovanni, to do him honour on the eve of his festa. ... "

"And thereafter followed more dancing; nay, through the whole day, says an old chronicler at the beginning of that century, there were weddings and the grandest gatherings, with so much piping, music and song, with balls and feasts and gladness and ornament, that this earth might have been mistaken for Paradise! 

"In this year of 1492, it was, perhaps, a little less easy to make that mistake. Lorenzo the magnificent and subtle was dead, and an arrogant, incautious Piero was come in his room, an evil change for Florence, unless, indeed, the wise horse prefers the bad rider, as more easily thrown from the saddle, and already the regrets for Lorenzo were getting less predominant over the murmured desire for government on a broader basis, in which corruption might be arrested, and there might be that free play for everybody’s jealousy and ambition, which made the ideal liberty of the good old quarrelsome, struggling times, when Florence raised her great buildings, reared her own soldiers, drove out would-be tyrants at the sword’s point, and was proud to keep faith at her own loss. Lorenzo was dead, Pope Innocent was dying, and a troublesome Neapolitan succession, with an intriguing, ambitious Milan, might set Italy by the ears before long: the times were likely to be difficult. Still, there was all the more reason that the Republic should keep its religious festivals."

"“That is a goodly show of cavaliers,” said Tito, who had learned by this time the best way to please Florentines; “but are there not strangers among them? I see foreign costumes.” 

"“Assuredly,” said Cennini; “you see there the Orators from France, Milan, and Venice, and behind them are English and German nobles; for it is customary that all foreign visitors of distinction pay their tribute to San Giovanni in the train of that gonfalon. For my part, I think our Florentine cavaliers sit their horses as well as any of those cut-and-thrust northerners, whose wits lie in their heels and saddles; and for yon Venetian, I fancy he would feel himself more at ease on the back of a dolphin. We ought to know something of horsemanship, for we excel all Italy in the sports of the Giostra, and the money we spend on them. But you will see a finer show of our chief men by-and-by, Melema; my brother himself will be among the officers of the Zecca.”"

................................................................................................

"For where could a handsome young scholar not be welcome when he could touch the lute and troll a gay song? That bright face, that easy smile, that liquid voice, seemed to give life a holiday aspect; just as a strain of gay music and the hoisting of colours make the work-worn and the sad rather ashamed of showing themselves. Here was a professor likely to render the Greek classics amiable to the sons of great houses. 

"And that was not the whole of Tito’s good fortune; for he had sold all his jewels, except the ring he did not choose to part with, and he was master of full five hundred gold florins."

"Tito had a clearer vision of that result than of the possible moment when he might find his father again, and carry him deliverance. It would surely be an unfairness that he, in his full ripe youth, to whom life had hitherto had some of the stint and subjection of a school, should turn his back on promised love and distinction, and perhaps never be visited by that promise again. “And yet,” he said to himself, “if I were certain that Baldassarre Calvo was alive, and that I could free him, by whatever exertions or perils, I would go now—now I have the money: it was useless to debate the matter before. I would go now to Bardo and Bartolommeo Scala, and tell them the whole truth.” Tito did not say to himself so distinctly that if those two men had known the whole truth he was aware there would have been no alternative for him but to go in search of his benefactor, who, if alive, was the rightful owner of the gems, and whom he had always equivocally spoken of as “lost;” he did not say to himself—what he was not ignorant of—that Greeks of distinction had made sacrifices, taken voyages again and again, and sought help from crowned and mitred heads for the sake of freeing relatives from slavery to the Turks. Public opinion did not regard this as exceptional virtue."

................................................................................................

"“Welcome, Tito mio,” said the old man’s voice, before Tito had spoken. There was a new vigour in the voice, a new cheerfulness in the blind face, since that first interview more than two months ago. “You have brought fresh manuscript, doubtless; but since we were talking last night I have had new ideas: we must take a wider scope—we must go back upon our footsteps.”"

"“Yes,” he said, in his gentle way; “I have brought the new manuscript, but that can wait your pleasure. I have young limbs, you know, and can walk back up the hill without any difficulty.”"

"“That is well said, my son.” Bardo had already addressed Tito in this way once or twice of late. “And I perceive with gladness that you do not shrink from labour, without which, the poet has wisely said, life has given nothing to mortals. It is too often the ‘palma sine pulvere,’ the prize of glory without the dust of the race, that attracts young ambition. But what says the Greek? ‘In the morning of life, work; in the mid-day, give counsel; in the evening, pray.’ It is true, I might be thought to have reached that helpless evening; but not so, while I have counsel within me which is yet unspoken. For my mind, as I have often said, was shut up as by a dam; the plenteous waters lay dark and motionless; but you, my Tito, have opened a duct for them, and they rush forward with a force that surprises myself. And now, what I want is, that we should go over our preliminary ground again, with a wider scheme of comment and illustration: otherwise I may lose opportunities which I now see retrospectively, and which may never occur again. You mark what I am saying, Tito?”"

"Tito might have been excused for shrugging his shoulders at the prospect before him, but he was not naturally impatient; moreover, he had been bred up in that laborious erudition, at once minute and copious, which was the chief intellectual task of the age; and with Romola near, he was floated along by waves of agreeable sensation that made everything seem easy."

" ... Romola’s deep calm happiness encompassed Tito like the rich but quiet evening light which dissipates all unrest."

................................................................................................

" ... I couldn’t stand in my clothes, it seemed, without giving offence; for there was Monna Berta, who has had worse secrets in her time than any I could tell of myself, looking askance at me from under her hood like a pinzochera, (a Sister of the Third Order of Saint Francis: an uncloistered nun) and telling me to read the Frate’s book about widows, from which she had found great guidance. Holy Madonna! it seems as if widows had nothing to do now but to buy their coffins, and think it a thousand years till they get into them, instead of enjoying themselves a little when they’ve got their hands free for the first time."

" ... But it is true, Tito, that our manners have degenerated somewhat from that noble frugality which, as has been well seen in the public acts of our citizens, is the parent of true magnificence. For men, as I hear, will now spend on the transient show of a Giostra sums which would suffice to found a library, and confer a lasting possession on mankind. Still, I conceive, it remains true of us Florentines that we have more of that magnanimous sobriety which abhors a trivial lavishness that it may be grandly open-handed on grand occasions, than can be found in any other city of Italy; for I understand that the Neapolitan and Milanese courtiers laugh at the scarcity of our plate, and think scorn of our great families for borrowing from each other that furniture of the table at their entertainments. But in the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.” 

“Laughter, indeed!” burst forth Monna Brigida again, the moment, Bardo paused. “If anybody wanted to hear laughter at the wedding to-day they were disappointed, for when young Niccolò Macchiavelli tried to make a joke, and told stories out of Franco Sacchetti’s book, how it was no use for the Signoria to make rules for us women, because we were cleverer than all the painters, and architects, and doctors of logic in the world, for we could make black look white, and yellow look pink, and crooked look straight, and, if anything was forbidden, we could find a new name for it—Holy Virgin! the Piagnoni looked more dismal than before, and somebody said Sacchetti’s book was wicked. Well, I don’t read it—they can’t accuse me of reading anything. ... take off my jewels, this very clasp, and everything, and to make them into a packet, fù tutt’uno; and I was within a hair of sending them to the Good Men of Saint Martin to give to the poor, but, by heaven’s mercy, I bethought me of going first to my confessor, Fra Cristoforo, at Santa Croce, and he told me how it was all the work of the devil, this preaching and prophesying of their Fra Girolamo, and the Dominicans were trying to turn the world upside down, and I was never to go and hear him again, else I must do penance for it; for the great preachers Fra Mariano and Fra Menico had shown how Fra Girolamo preached lies—and that was true, for I heard them both in the Duomo—and how the Pope’s dream of San Francesco propping up the Church with his arms was being fulfilled still, and the Dominicans were beginning to pull it down. Well and good: I went away con Dio, and made myself easy. I am not going to be frightened by a Frate Predicatore again. And all I say is, I wish it hadn’t been the Dominicans that poor Dino joined years ago, for then I should have been glad when I heard them say he was come back—”"

"Tito’s quick mind had been combining ideas with lightning-like rapidity. Bardo’s son was not really dead, then, as he had supposed: he was a monk; he was “come back:” and Fra Luca—yes! it was the likeness to Bardo and Romola that had made the face seem half-known to him. If he were only dead at Fiesole at that moment! This importunate selfish wish inevitably thrust itself before every other thought. It was true that Bardo’s rigid will was a sufficient safeguard against any intercourse between Romola and her brother; but not against the betrayal of what he knew to others, especially when the subject was suggested by the coupling of Romola’s name with that of the very Tito Melema whose description he had carried round his neck as an index. No! nothing but Fra Luca’s death could remove all danger; but his death was highly probable, and after the momentary shock of the discovery, Tito let his mind fall back in repose on that confident hope."

................................................................................................

" ... I am almost sure you will think I have chosen rightly, Tito, because I have noticed that your nature is less rigid than mine, and nothing makes you angry: it would cost, you less to be forgiving; though, if you had seen your father forsaken by one to whom he had given his chief love—by one in whom he had planted his labour and his hopes—forsaken when his need was becoming greatest—even you, Tito, would find it hard to forgive.”"

"What could he say? He was not equal to the hypocrisy of telling Romola that such offences ought not to be pardoned; and he had not the courage to utter any words of dissuasion. 

"“You are right, my Romola; you are always right, except in thinking too well of me.”"

"He was half glad of the dismissal, half disposed to cling to Romola to the last moment in which she would love him without suspicion. For it seemed to him certain that this brother would before all things want to know, and that Romola would before all things confide to him, what was her father’s position and her own after the years which must have brought so much change. She would tell him that she was soon to be publicly betrothed to a young scholar, who was to fill up the place left vacant long ago by a wandering son. He foresaw the impulse that would prompt Romola to dwell on that prospect, and what would follow on the mention of the future husband’s name. Fra Luca would tell all he knew and conjectured, and Tito saw no possible falsity by which he could now ward off the worst consequences of his former dissimulation. It was all over with his prospects in Florence. There was Messer Bernardo del Nero, who would be delighted at seeing confirmed the wisdom of his advice about deferring the betrothal until Tito’s character and position had been established by a longer residence; and the history of the young Greek professor, whose benefactor was in slavery, would be the talk under every loggia. For the first time in his life he felt too fevered and agitated to trust his power of self-command; he gave up his intended visit to Bardo, and walked up and down under the walls until the yellow light in the west had quite faded, when, without any distinct purpose, he took the first turning, which happened to be the Via San Sebastiano, leading him directly towards the Piazza dell’ Annunziata. 

"He was at one of those lawless moments which come to us all if we have no guide but desire, and if the pathway where desire leads us seems suddenly closed; he was ready to follow any beckoning that offered him an immediate purpose."

................................................................................................

" ... Why should he keep the ring? It had been a mere sentiment, a mere fancy, that had prevented him from selling it with the other gems; if he had been wiser and had sold it, he might perhaps have escaped that identification by Fra Luca. It was true that it had been taken from Baldassarre’s finger and put on his own as soon as his young hand had grown to the needful size; but there was really no valid good to anybody in those superstitious scruples about inanimate objects. The ring had helped towards the recognition of him. Tito had begun to dislike recognition, which was a claim from the past. This foreigner’s offer, if he would really give a good price, was an opportunity for getting rid of the ring without the trouble of seeking a purchaser."

"Tito’s glance wandered over the wild multitude in search of something. He had already thought of Tessa, and the white hoods suggested the possibility that he might detect her face under one of them. It was at least a thought to be courted, rather than the vision of Romola looking at him with changed eyes. But he searched in vain; and he was leaving the church, weary of a scene which had no variety, when, just against the doorway, he caught sight of Tessa, only two yards off him. She was kneeling with her back against the wall, behind a group of peasant-women, who were standing and looking for a spot nearer to the sacred image. Her head hung a little aside with a look of weariness, and her blue eyes were directed rather absently towards an altar-piece where the Archangel Michael stood in his armour, with young face and floating hair, amongst bearded and tonsured saints. Her right-hand, holding a bunch of cocoons, fell by her side listlessly, and her round cheek was paled, either by the light or by the weariness that was expressed in her attitude: her lips were pressed poutingly together, and every now and then her eyelids half fell: she was a large image of a sweet sleepy child. Tito felt an irresistible desire to go up to her and get her pretty trusting looks and prattle: this creature who was without moral judgment that could condemn him, whose little loving ignorant soul made a world apart, where he might feel in freedom from suspicions and exacting demands, had a new attraction for him now. She seemed a refuge from the threatened isolation that would come with disgrace. He glanced cautiously round, to assure himself that Monna Ghita was not near, and then, slipping quietly to her side, kneeled on one knee, and said, in the softest voice, “Tessa!”"

"“Should you like to be married to me, Tessa?” said Tito, softly, half enjoying the comedy, as he saw the pretty childish seriousness on her face, half prompted by hazy previsions which belonged to the intoxication of despair. 

"He felt her vibrating before she looked up at him and said, timidly, “Will you let me?” 

"He answered only by a smile, and by leading her forward in front of the cerretano, who, seeing an excellent jest in Tessa’s evident delusion, assumed a surpassing sacerdotal solemnity, and went through the mimic ceremony with a liberal expenditure of lingua furbesca or thieves’ Latin. But some symptoms of a new movement in the crowd urged him to bring it to a speedy conclusion and dismiss them with hands outstretched in a benedictory attitude over their kneeling figures. Tito, disposed always to cultivate goodwill, though it might be the least select, put a piece of four grossi into his hand as he moved away, and was thanked by a look which, the conjuror felt sure, conveyed a perfect understanding of the whole affair. 

"But Tito himself was very far from that understanding, and did not, in fact, know whether, the next moment, he should tell Tessa of the joke and laugh at her for a little goose, or whether he should let her delusion last, and see what would come of it—see what she would say and do next."

................................................................................................

" ... There was an unconquerable repulsion for her in that monkish aspect; it seemed to her the brand of the dastardly undutifulness which had left her father desolate—of the grovelling superstition which could give such undutifulness the name of piety. Her father, whose proud sincerity and simplicity of life had made him one of the few frank pagans of his time, had brought her up with a silent ignoring of any claims the Church could have to regulate the belief and action of beings with a cultivated reason. The Church, in her mind, belonged to that actual life of the mixed multitude from which they had always lived apart, and she had no ideas that could render her brother’s course an object of any other feeling than incurious, indignant contempt. Yet the lovingness of Romola’s soul had clung to that image in the past, and while she stood rigidly aloof, there was a yearning search in her eyes for something too faintly discernible. 

"But there was no corresponding emotion in the face of the monk. He looked at the little sister returned to him in her full womanly beauty, with the far-off gaze of a revisiting spirit. 

"“My sister!” he said, with a feeble and interrupted but yet distinct utterance, “it is well thou hast not longer delayed to come, for I have a message to deliver to thee, and my time is short.”"

"Thrice I have had that vision, Romola. I believe it is a revelation meant for thee: to warn thee against marriage as a temptation of the enemy; it calls upon thee to dedicate thyself—”"

"Fra Girolamo moved towards the door, and called in a lay Brother who was waiting outside. Then he went up to Romola and said in a tone of gentle command, “Rise, my daughter, and be comforted. Our brother is with the blessed. He has left you the crucifix, in remembrance of the heavenly warning—that it may be a beacon to you in the darkness.”"

"Romola was dimly conscious of footsteps and rustling forms moving aside: she heard the voice of Fra Girolamo saying, in a low tone, “Our brother is departed;” she felt a hand laid on her arm. The next moment the door was opened, and she was out in the wide piazza of San Marco, with no one but Monna Brigida, and the servant carrying the lantern."

"And the lips that could have conveyed that knowledge were for ever closed. The prevision that Fra Luca’s words had imparted to Romola had been such as comes from the shadowy region where human souls seek wisdom apart from the human sympathies which are the very life and substance of our wisdom; the revelation that might have come from the simple questions of filial and brotherly affection had been carried into irrevocable silence."

................................................................................................

"“He is satisfied with the pleasant lust of arrogance,” Cei burst out, bitterly. “I can see it in that proud lip and satisfied eye of his. He hears the air filled with his own name—Fra Girolamo Savonarola, of Ferrara; the prophet, the saint, the mighty preacher, who frightens the very babies of Florence into laying down their wicked baubles.”"

"“ ... Frate lays hold of the people by some power over and above his prophetic visions. Monks and nuns who prophesy are not of that rareness. ...Paternosters may shave clean, but they must be said over a good razor.”"

"Tito, who had roused himself from his abstraction, and was listening to the dialogue, felt a new rush of the vague half-formed ideas about Tessa, which had passed through his mind the evening before: if Monna Ghita were really taken out of the way, it would be easier for him to see Tessa again—whenever he wanted to see her."

................................................................................................

" ... Proud and self-controlled to all the world beside, Romola was as simple and unreserved as a child in her love for Tito. She had been quite contented with the days when they had only looked at each other; but now, when she felt the need of clinging to him, there was no thought that hindered her."

"“ ... It is strange,” she went on meditatively, “this life of men possessed with fervid beliefs that seem like madness to their fellow-beings. Dino was not a vulgar fanatic; and that Fra Girolamo—his very voice seems to have penetrated me with a sense that there is some truth in what moves them: some truth of which I know nothing.” 

"“It was only because your feelings were highly wrought, my Romola. Your brother’s state of mind was no more than a form of that theosophy which has been the common disease of excitable dreamy minds in all ages; the same ideas that your father’s old antagonist, Marsilio Ficino, pores over in the New Platonists; only your brother’s passionate nature drove him to act out what other men write and talk about. And for Fra Girolamo, he is simply a narrow-minded monk, with a gift of preaching and infusing terror into the multitude. Any words or any voice would have shaken you at that moment. When your mind has had a little repose, you will judge of such things as you have always done before.”"

"Tito’s touch and beseeching voice recalled her; and now in the warm sunlight she saw that rich dark beauty which seemed to gather round it all images of joy—purple vines festooned between the elms, the strong corn perfecting itself under the vibrating heat, bright winged creatures hurrying and resting among the flowers, round limbs beating the earth in gladness with cymbals held aloft, light melodies chanted to the thrilling rhythm of strings—all objects and all sounds that tell of Nature revelling in her force. Strange, bewildering transition from those pale images of sorrow and death to this bright youthfulness, as of a sun-god who knew nothing of night! What thought could reconcile that worn anguish in her brother’s face—that straining after something invisible—with this satisfied strength and beauty, and make it intelligible that they belonged to the same world? Or was there never any reconciling of them, but only a blind worship of clashing deities, first in mad joy and then in wailing? Romola for the first time felt this questioning need like a sudden uneasy dizziness and want of something to grasp; it was an experience hardly longer than a sigh, for the eager theorising of ages is compressed, as in a seed, in the momentary want of a single mind. But there was no answer to meet the need, and it vanished before the returning rush of young sympathy with the glad loving beauty that beamed upon her in new radiance, like the dawn after we have looked away from it to the grey west."

"“There is something grim and grave to me always about Florence,” said Tito, as they paused in the front of the house, where they could see over the opposite roofs to the other side of the river, “and even in its merriment there is something shrill and hard—biting rather than gay. I wish we lived in Southern Italy, where thought is broken, not by weariness, but by delicious languors such as never seem to come over the ‘ingenia acerrima Florentina.’ I should like to see you under that southern sun, lying among the flowers, subdued into mere enjoyment, while I bent over you and touched the lute and sang to you some little unconscious strain that seemed all one with the light and the warmth. You have never known that happiness of the nymphs, my Romola.” 

"“No; but I have dreamed of it often since you came. I am very thirsty for a deep draught of joy—for a life all bright like you. But we will not think of it now, Tito; it seems to me as if there would always be pale sad faces among the flowers, and eyes that look in vain. Let us go.”"

"When Tito left the Via de’ Bardi that day in exultant satisfaction at finding himself thoroughly free from the threatened peril, his thoughts, no longer claimed by the immediate presence of Romola and her father, recurred to those futile hours of dread in which he was conscious of having not only felt but acted as he would not have done if he had had a truer foresight. He would not have parted with his ring; for Romola, and others to whom it was a familiar object, would be a little struck with the apparent sordidness of parting with a gem he had professedly cherished, unless he feigned as a reason the desire to make some special gift with the purchase-money; and Tito had at that moment a nauseating weariness of simulation. He was well out of the possible consequences that might have fallen on him from that initial deception, and it was no longer a load on his mind; kind fortune had brought him immunity, and he thought it was only fair that she should. Who was hurt by it? The results to Baldassarre were too problematical to be taken into account. But he wanted now to be free from any hidden shackles that would gall him, though ever so little, under his ties to Romola. He was not aware that that very delight in immunity which prompted resolutions not to entangle himself again, was deadening the sensibilities which alone could save him from entanglement. 

"But, after all, the sale of the ring was a slight matter. Was it also a slight matter that little Tessa was under a delusion which would doubtless fill her small head with expectations doomed to disappointment? Should he try to see the little thing alone again and undeceive her at once, or should he leave the disclosure to time and chance? Happy dreams are pleasant, and they easily come to an end with daylight and the stir of life. The sweet, pouting, innocent, round thing! It was impossible not to think of her. Tito thought he should like some time to take her a present that would please her, and just learn if her step-father treated her more cruelly now her mother was dead. Or, should he at once undeceive Tessa, and then tell Romola about her, so that they might find some happier lot for the poor thing? No: that unfortunate little incident of the cerretano and the marriage, and his allowing Tessa to part from him in delusion, must never be known to Romola, and since no enlightenment could expel it from Tessa’s mind, there would always be a risk of betrayal; besides even little Tessa might have some gall in her when she found herself disappointed in her love—yes, she must be a little in love with him, and that might make it well that he should not see her again. Yet it was a trifling adventure such as a country girl would perhaps ponder on till some ruddy contadino made acceptable love to her, when she would break her resolution of secrecy and get at the truth that she was free."

................................................................................................

" ... Tito Melema was walking at a brisk pace on the way to the Via de’ Bardi. Young Bernardo Dovizi, who now looks at us out of Raphael’s portrait as the keen-eyed Cardinal da Bibbiena, was with him; ... "

"Tito entered a room which had been fitted up in the utmost contrast with the half-pallid, half-sombre tints of the library. The walls were brightly frescoed with “caprices” of nymphs and loves sporting under the blue among flowers and birds. The only furniture besides the red leather seats and the central table were two tall white vases, and a young faun playing the flute, modelled by a promising youth named Michelangelo Buonarotti. It was a room that gave a sense of being in the sunny open air."

................................................................................................

"It was the 17th of November 1494 ..."

"In this very November, little more than a week ago, the spirit of the old centuries seemed to have re-entered the breasts of Florentines. The great bell in the palace tower had rung out the hammer-sound of alarm, and the people had mustered with their rusty arms, their tools and impromptu cudgels, to drive out the Medici. The gate of San Gallo had been fairly shut on the arrogant, exasperating Piero, galloping away towards Bologna with his hired horsemen frightened behind him, and shut on his keener young brother, the cardinal, escaping in the disguise of a Franciscan monk: a price had been set on both their heads. After that, there had been some sacking of houses, according to old precedent; the ignominious images, painted on the public buildings, of the men who had conspired against the Medici in days gone by, were effaced; the exiled enemies of the Medici were invited home. The half-fledged tyrants were fairly out of their splendid nest in the Via Larga, and the Republic had recovered the use of its will again."

" ... Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Prior of the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence. ... "

" ... For this man had a power rarely paralleled, of impressing his beliefs on others, and of swaying very various minds. And as long as four years ago he had proclaimed from the chief pulpit of Florence that a scourge was about to descend on Italy, and that by this scourge the Church was to be purified. Savonarola appeared to believe, and his hearers more or less waveringly believed, that he had a mission like that of the Hebrew prophets, and that the Florentines amongst whom his message was delivered were in some sense a second chosen people. ... "

"At the close of 1492, the year in which Lorenzo de’ Medici died and Tito Melema came as a wanderer to Florence, Italy was enjoying a peace and prosperity unthreatened by any near and definite danger. ... "

" ... He believed that God had committed to the Church the sacred lamp of truth for the guidance and salvation of men, and he saw that the Church, in its corruption, had become a sepulchre to hide the lamp. ... "

"But the real force of demonstration for Girolamo Savonarola lay in his own burning indignation at the sight of wrong; in his fervent belief in an Unseen Justice that would put an end to the wrong, and in an Unseen Purity to which lying and uncleanness were an abomination. ... "

"Ludovico Sforza—copious in gallantry, splendid patron of an incomparable Leonardo da Vinci—holding the ducal crown of Milan in his grasp, and wanting to put it on his own head rather than let it rest on that of a feeble nephew who would take very little to poison him, was much afraid of the Spanish-born old King Ferdinand and the Crown Prince Alfonso of Naples, who, not liking cruelty and treachery which were useless to themselves, objected to the poisoning of a near relative for the advantage of a Lombard usurper; the royalties of Naples again were afraid of their suzerain, Pope Alexander Borgia; all three were anxiously watching Florence, lest with its midway territory it should determine the game by underhand backing; and all four, with every small state in Italy, were afraid of Venice—Venice the cautious, the stable, and the strong, that wanted to stretch its arms not only along both sides of the Adriatic but across to the ports of the western coast, Lorenzo de’ Medici, it was thought, did much to prevent the fatal outbreak of such jealousies, keeping up the old Florentine alliance with Naples and the Pope, and yet persuading Milan that the alliance was for the general advantage. But young Piero de’ Medici’s rash vanity had quickly nullified the effect of his father’s wary policy, and Ludovico Sforza, roused to suspicion of a league against him, thought of a move which would checkmate his adversaries: he determined to invite the French king to march into Italy, and, as heir of the house of Anjou, take possession of Naples. ... So that in 1493 the rumour spread and became louder and louder that Charles the Eighth of France was about to cross the Alps with a mighty army; and the Italian populations, accustomed, since Italy had ceased to be the heart of the Roman empire, to look for an arbitrator from afar, began vaguely to regard his coming as a means of avenging their wrongs and redressing their grievances.

"And in that rumour Savonarola had heard the assurance that his prophecy was being verified. What was it that filled the ears of the prophets of old but the distant tread of foreign armies, coming to do the work of justice? He no longer looked vaguely to the horizon for the coming storm: he pointed to the rising cloud. The French army was that new deluge which was to purify the earth from iniquity; the French king, Charles the Eighth, was the instrument elected by God, as Cyrus had been of old, and all men who desired good rather than evil were to rejoice in his coming. For the scourge would fall destructively on the impenitent alone. Let any city of Italy, let Florence above all—Florence beloved of God, since to its ear the warning voice had been specially sent—repent and turn from its ways, like Nineveh of old, and the storm-cloud would roll over it and leave only refreshing raindrops."

"The preparations for the equivocal guest were not entirely those of a city resigned to submission. Behind the bright drapery and banners symbolical of joy, there were preparations of another sort made with common accord by government and people. Well hidden within walls there were hired soldiers of the Republic, hastily called in from the surrounding districts; there were old arms duly furbished, and sharp tools and heavy cudgels laid carefully at hand, to be snatched up on short notice; there were excellent boards and stakes to form barricades upon occasion, and a good supply of stones to make a surprising hail from the upper windows. Above all, there were people very strongly in the humour for fighting any personage who might be supposed to have designs of hectoring over them, they having lately tasted that new pleasure with much relish. This humour was not diminished by the sight of occasional parties of Frenchmen, coming beforehand to choose their quarters, with a hawk, perhaps, on their left wrist, and, metaphorically speaking, a piece of chalk in their right-hand to mark Italian doors withal; especially as creditable historians imply that many sons of France were at that time characterised by something approaching to a swagger, which must have whetted the Florentine appetite for a little stone-throwing. 

"And this was the temper of Florence on the morning of the 17th of November 1494."

................................................................................................

" ... At the corner, looking towards the Via de’ Cerretani—just where the artificial rainbow light of the Piazza ceased, and the grey morning fell on the sombre stone houses—there was a remarkable cluster of the working people, most of them bearing on their dress or persons the signs of their daily labour, and almost all of them carrying some weapon, or some tool which might serve as a weapon upon occasion."

"“Never talk to me,” he was saying, in his incisive voice, “never talk to me of bloodthirsty Swiss or fierce French infantry: they might as well be in the narrow passes of the mountains as in our streets; and peasants have destroyed the finest armies of our condottieri in time past, when they had once got them between steep precipices. I tell you, Florentines need be afraid of no army in their own streets.”"

" ... He wore nothing but black, for he was in mourning; but the black was presently to be covered by a red mantle, for he too was to walk in procession as Latin Secretary to the Ten. Tito Melema had become conspicuously serviceable in the intercourse with the French guests, from his familiarity with Southern Italy, and his readiness in the French tongue, which he had spoken in his early youth; and he had paid more than one visit to the French camp at Signa. The lustre of good fortune was upon him; he was smiling, listening, and explaining, with his usual graceful unpretentious ease, and only a very keen eye bent on studying him could have marked a certain amount of change in him which was not to be accounted for by the lapse of eighteen months. It was that change which comes from the final departure of moral youthfulness—from the distinct self-conscious adoption of a part in life. The lines of the face were as soft as ever, the eyes as pellucid; but something was gone—something as indefinable as the changes in the morning twilight."

" ... Tito, besides his natural disposition to overcome ill-will by good-humour, had the unimpassioned feeling of the alien towards names and details that move the deepest passions of the native."

" ... It was a delightful moment for Tito, for he was the only one of the party who could have made so amusing an interpreter, and without any disposition to triumphant self-gratulation he revelled in the sense that he was an object of liking—he basked in approving glances. The rainbow light fell about the laughing group, and the grave church-goers had all disappeared within the walls. It seemed as if the piazza had been decorated for a real Florentine holiday."

................................................................................................

" ... The men who held the ropes were French soldiers, and by broken Italian phrases and strokes from the knotted end of the rope, they from time to time stimulated their prisoners to beg. Two of them were obedient, and to every Florentine they had encountered had held out their bound hands and said in piteous tones— 

"“For the love of God and the Holy Madonna, give us something towards our ransom! We are Tuscans: we were made prisoners in Lunigiana.” 

"But the third man remained obstinately silent under all the strokes from the knotted cord. He was very different in aspect from his two fellow-prisoners. They were young and hardy, and, in the scant clothing which the avarice of their captors had left them, looked like vulgar, sturdy mendicants. But he had passed the boundary of old age, and could hardly be less than four or five and sixty. His beard, which had grown long in neglect, and the hair which fell thick and straight round his baldness, were nearly white. His thickset figure was still firm and upright, though emaciated, and seemed to express energy in spite of age—an expression that was partly carried out in the dark eyes and strong dark eyebrows, which had a strangely isolated intensity of colour in the midst of his yellow, bloodless, deep-wrinkled face with its lank grey hairs. And yet there was something fitful in the eyes which contradicted the occasional flash of energy: after looking round with quick fierceness at windows and faces, they fell again with a lost and wandering look. But his lips were motionless, and he held his hands resolutely down. He would not beg."

"Lollo felt that his moment was come—he was close to the eldest prisoner: in an instant he had cut the cord. 

"“Run, old one!” he piped in the prisoner’s ear, as soon as the cord was in two; and himself set the example of running as if he were helped along with wings, like a scared fowl. 

"The prisoner’s sensations were not too slow for him to seize the opportunity: the idea of escape had been continually present with him, and he had gathered fresh hope from the temper of the crowd. He ran at once; but his speed would hardly have sufficed for him if the Florentines had not instantaneously rushed between him and his captor. He ran on into the piazza, but he quickly heard the tramp of feet behind him, for the other two prisoners had been released, and the soldiers were struggling and fighting their way after them, in such tardigrade fashion as their hoof-shaped shoes would allow—impeded, but not very resolutely attacked, by the people."

"The soldier he saw was struggling along on the north side of the piazza, but the object of his pursuit had taken the other direction. That object was the eldest prisoner, who had wheeled round the Baptistery and was running towards the Duomo, determined to take refuge in that sanctuary rather than trust to his speed. But in mounting the steps, his foot received a shock; he was precipitated towards the group of signori, whose backs were turned to him, and was only able to recover his balance as he clutched one of them by the arm. 

"It was Tito Melema who felt that clutch. He turned his head, and saw the face of his adoptive father, Baldassarre Calvo, close to his own."

................................................................................................

" ... French soldier was interrogated. He and his companions had simply brought their prisoners into the city that they might beg money for their ransom: two of the prisoners were Tuscan soldiers taken in Lunigiana; the other, an elderly man, was with a party of Genoese, with whom the French foragers had come to blows near Fivizzano. He might be mad, but he was harmless. The soldier knew no more, being unable to understand a word the old man said. Tito heard so far, but he was deaf to everything else till he was specially addressed. ... "

"Tito took his way to the Palazzo Vecchio, where he was to find Bartolommeo Scala. ... Baldassarre living, and in Florence, was a living revenge, which would no more rest than a winding serpent would rest until it had crushed its prey. It was not in the nature of that man to let an injury pass unavenged: his love and his hatred were of that passionate fervour which subjugates all the rest of the being, and makes a man sacrifice himself to his passion as if it were a deity to be worshipped with self-destruction. Baldassarre had relaxed his hold, and had disappeared. Tito knew well how to interpret that: it meant that the vengeance was to be studied that it might be sure. ... "

"There was still one resource open to Tito. He might have turned back, sought Baldassarre again, confessed everything to him—to Romola—to all the world. But he never thought of that. The repentance which cuts off all moorings to evil, demands something more than selfish fear. He had no sense that there was strength and safety in truth; the only strength he trusted to lay in his ingenuity and his dissimulation. ... "

"It was a characteristic fact in Tito’s experience at this crisis, that no direct measures for ridding himself of Baldassarre ever occurred to him. All other possibilities passed through his mind, even to his own flight from Florence; but he never thought of any scheme for removing his enemy. His dread generated no active malignity, and he would still have been glad not to give pain to any mortal. He had simply chosen to make life easy to himself—to carry his human lot, if possible, in such a way that it should pinch him nowhere; and the choice had, at various times, landed him in unexpected positions. The question now was, not whether he should divide the common pressure of destiny with his suffering fellow-men; it was whether all the resources of lying would save him from being crushed by the consequences of that habitual choice."

" ... When Piero re-entered the Piazza del Duomo the multitude who had been listening to Fra Girolamo were pouring out from all the doors, and the haste they made to go on their several ways was a proof how important they held the preaching which had detained them from the other occupations of the day. The artist leaned against an angle of the Baptistery and watched the departing crowd, delighting in the variety of the garb and of the keen characteristic faces—faces such as Masaccio had painted more than fifty years before: such as Domenico Ghirlandajo had not yet quite left off painting."

"This morning was a peculiar occasion, and the Frate’s audience, always multifarious, had represented even more completely than usual the various classes and political parties of Florence. There were men of high birth, accustomed to public charges at home and abroad, who had become newly conspicuous not only as enemies of the Medici and friends of popular government, but as thorough Piagnoni, espousing to the utmost the doctrines and practical teaching of the Frate, and frequenting San Marco ... There were men, also of family, like Piero Capponi, simply brave undoctrinal lovers of a sober republican liberty, who preferred fighting to arguing, and had no particular reasons for thinking any ideas false that kept out the Medici and made room for public spirit. At their elbows were doctors of law whose studies of Accursius and his brethren had not so entirely consumed their ardour as to prevent them from becoming enthusiastic Piagnoni: Messer Luca Corsini himself, for example, who on a memorable occasion yet to come was to raise his learned arms in street stone-throwing for the cause of religion, freedom, and the Frate. ... scholars inheriting such high names as Strozzi and Acciajoli, who were already minded to take the cowl and join the community of San Marco; artists, wrought to a new and higher ambition by the teaching of Savonarola, like that young painter who had lately surpassed himself in his fresco of the divine child on the wall of the Frate’s bare cell—unconscious yet that he would one day himself wear the tonsure and the cowl, and be called Fra Bartolommeo. ...There were well-born women attired with such scrupulous plainness that their more refined grace was the chief distinction between them and their less aristocratic sisters. ... there was the long stream of poorer tradesmen and artisans, whose faith and hope in his Divine message varied from the rude and undiscriminating trust in him as the friend of the poor and the enemy of the luxurious oppressive rich, ..."

"But among these various disciples of the Frate were scattered many who were not in the least his disciples. Some were Mediceans who had already, from motives of fear and policy, begun to show the presiding spirit of the popular party a feigned deference. Others were sincere advocates of a free government, but regarded Savonarola simply as an ambitious monk—half sagacious, half fanatical—who had made himself a powerful instrument with the people, and must be accepted as an important social fact. There were even some of his bitter enemies: members of the old aristocratic anti-Medicean party—determined to try and get the reins once more tight in the hands of certain chief families; or else licentious young men, who detested him as the killjoy of Florence. For the sermons in the Duomo had already become political incidents, attracting the ears of curiosity and malice, as well as of faith. The men of ideas, like young Niccolò Macchiavelli, went to observe and write reports to friends away in country villas; the men of appetites, like Dolfo Spini, bent on hunting down the Frate, as a public nuisance who made game scarce, went to feed their hatred and lie in wait for grounds of accusation."

" ... In Savonarola’s preaching there were strains that appealed to the very finest susceptibilities of men’s natures, and there were elements that gratified low egoism, tickled gossiping curiosity, and fascinated timorous superstition. His need of personal predominance, his labyrinthine allegorical interpretations of the Scriptures, his enigmatic visions, and his false certitude about the Divine intentions, never ceased, in his own large soul, to be ennobled by that fervid piety, that passionate sense of the infinite, that active sympathy, that clear-sighted demand for the subjection of selfish interests to the general good, which he had in common with the greatest of mankind. But for the mass of his audience all the pregnancy of his preaching lay in his strong assertion of supernatural claims, in his denunciatory visions, in the false certitude which gave his sermons the interest of a political bulletin; and having once held that audience in his mastery, it was necessary to his nature—it was necessary for their welfare—that he should keep the mastery. The effect was inevitable. No man ever struggled to retain power over a mixed multitude without suffering vitiation; his standard must be their lower needs and not his own best insight."

"It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out for sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots, and give the offering a false show of unblemished whiteness. Let us fling away the chalk, and boldly say,—the victim is spotted, but it is not therefore in vain that his mighty heart is laid on the altar of men’s highest hopes."

................................................................................................

"It might have been wished that the scourge of Italian wickedness and “Champion of the honour of women” had had a less miserable leg, and only the normal sum of toes; that his mouth had been of a less reptilian width of slit, his nose and head of a less exorbitant outline. But the thin leg rested on cloth of gold and pearls, and the face was only an interruption of a few square inches in the midst of black velvet and gold, and the blaze of rubies, and the brilliant tints of the embroidered and bepearled canopy,—“fù gran magnificenza.” 

"And the people had cried Francia, Francia! with an enthusiasm proportioned to the splendour of the canopy which they had torn to pieces as their spoil, according to immemorial custom; royal lips had duly kissed the altar; and after all mischances the royal person and retinue were lodged in the Palace of the Via Larga, the rest of the nobles and gentry were dispersed among the great houses of Florence, and the terrible soldiery were encamped in the Prato and other open quarters. The business of the day was ended. 

"But the streets still presented a surprising aspect, such as Florentines had not seen before under the November stars. Instead of a gloom unbroken except by a lamp burning feebly here and there before a saintly image at the street-corners, or by a stream of redder light from an open doorway, there were lamps suspended at the windows of all houses, so that men could walk along no less securely and commodiously than by day,—fù gran magnificenza."

................................................................................................

"The precious relic was safe from creditors, for when the deficit towards their payment had been ascertained, Bernardo del Nero, though he was far from being among the wealthiest Florentines, had advanced the necessary sum of about a thousand florins—a large sum in those days—accepting a lien on the collection as a security.

"“The State will repay me,” he had said to Romola, making light of the service, which had really cost him some inconvenience. “If the cardinal finds a building, as he seems to say he will, our Signoria may consent to do the rest. I have no children, I can afford the risk.” 

"But within the last ten days all hopes in the Medici had come to an end: and the famous Medicean collections in the Via Larga were themselves in danger of dispersion. French agents had already begun to see that such very fine antique gems as Lorenzo had collected belonged by right to the first nation in Europe; and the Florentine State, which had got possession of the Medicean library, was likely to be glad of a customer for it. With a war to recover Pisa hanging over it, and with the certainty of having to pay large subsidies to the French king, the State was likely to prefer money to manuscripts."

" ... All Romola’s ardour had been concentrated in her affections. Her share in her father’s learned pursuits had been for her little more than a toil which was borne for his sake; and Tito’s airy brilliant faculty had no attraction for her that was not merged in the deeper sympathies that belong to young love and trust. Romola had had contact with no mind that could stir the larger possibilities of her nature; they lay folded and crushed like embryonic wings, making no element in her consciousness beyond an occasional vague uneasiness."

" ... She remembered the effect of Fra Girolamo’s voice and presence on her as a ground for expecting that his sermon might move her in spite of his being a narrow-minded monk. But the sermon did no more than slightly deepen her previous impression, that this fanatical preacher of tribulations was after all a man towards whom it might be possible for her to feel personal regard and reverence. The denunciations and exhortations simply arrested her attention. She felt no terror, no pangs of conscience: it was the roll of distant thunder, that seemed grand, but could not shake her. But when she heard Savonarola invoke martyrdom, she sobbed with the rest: she felt herself penetrated with a new sensation—a strange sympathy with something apart from all the definable interests of her life. It was not altogether unlike the thrill which had accompanied certain rare heroic touches in history and poetry; but the resemblance was as that between the memory of music, and the sense of being possessed by actual vibrating harmonies."

................................................................................................

"“But, Tito, is it a fear of some particular person, or only a vague sense of danger, that has made you think of wearing this?” Romola was unable to repel the idea of a degrading fear in Tito, which mingled itself with her anxiety.

"“I have had special threats,” said Tito, “but I must beg you to be silent on the subject, my Romola. I shall consider that you have broken my confidence, if you mention it to your godfather.” 

"“Assuredly I will not mention it,” said Romola, blushing, “if you wish it to be a secret. But, dearest Tito,” she added, after a moment’s pause, in a tone of loving anxiety, “it will make you very wretched.”

"“What will make me wretched?” he said, with a scarcely perceptible movement across his face, as from some darting sensation. 

"“This fear—this heavy armour. I can’t help shuddering as I feel it under my arm. I could fancy it a story of enchantment—that some malignant fiend had changed your sensitive human skin into a hard shell. It seems so unlike my bright, light-hearted Tito!” 

"“Then you would rather have your husband exposed to danger, when he leaves you?” said Tito, smiling. “If you don’t mind my being poniarded or shot, why need I mind? I will give up the armour—shall I?” 

"“No, Tito, no. I am fanciful. Do not heed what I have said. But such crimes are surely not common in Florence? I have always heard my father and godfather say so. Have they become frequent lately?” “It is not unlikely they will become frequent, with the bitter hatreds that are being bred continually.”"

"“You would not guess where I went to-day, Tito. I went to the Duomo, to hear Fra Girolamo.” 

"Tito looked startled; he had immediately thought of Baldassarre’s entrance into the Duomo; but Romola gave his look another meaning."

"“Well, and what did you think of the prophet?” 

"“He certainly has a very mysterious power, that man. A great deal of his sermon was what I expected; but once I was strangely moved—I sobbed with the rest.”"

" ... The horrible sense that he must live in continual dread of what Baldassarre had said or done pressed upon him like a cold weight."

................................................................................................

" ... Florence was determined not to submit. The determination was being expressed very strongly in consultations of citizens inside the Old Palace, and it was beginning to show itself on the broad flags of the streets and piazza wherever there was an opportunity of flouting an insolent Frenchman. Under these circumstances the streets were not altogether a pleasant promenade for well-born women; but Romola, shrouded in her black veil and mantle, and with old Maso by her side, felt secure enough from impertinent observation."

"Piero was too sanguine, as open-hearted men are apt to be when they attempt a little clever simulation. The thought of the picture pressed more and more on Romola as she walked homeward. She could not help putting together the two facts of the chain-armour and the encounter mentioned by Piero between her husband and the prisoner, which had happened on the morning of the day when the armour was adopted. That look of terror which the painter had given Tito, had he seen it? What could it all mean? 

"“It means nothing,” she tried to assure herself. “It was a mere coincidence. Shall I ask Tito about it?” Her mind said at last, “No: I will not question him about anything he did not tell me spontaneously. It is an offence against the trust I owe him.” Her heart said, “I dare not ask him.” 

"There was a terrible flaw in the trust: she was afraid of any hasty movement, as men are who hold something precious and want to believe that it is not broken."

................................................................................................

"“Yes, you ought to have been there,” said Piero, in his biting way, “just to see your favourite Greek look as frightened as if Satanasso had laid hold of him. I like to see your ready-smiling Messeri caught in a sudden wind and obliged to show their lining in spite of themselves. What colour do you think a man’s liver is, who looks like a bleached deer as soon as a chance stranger lays hold of him suddenly?” 

"“Piero, keep that vinegar of thine as sauce to thine own eggs! What is it against my bel erudito that he looked startled when he felt a pair of claws upon him and saw an unchained madman at his elbow? Your scholar is not like those beastly Swiss and Germans, whose heads are only fit for battering-rams, and who have such large appetites that they think nothing of taking a cannon-ball before breakfast. We Florentines count some other qualities in a man besides that vulgar stuff called bravery, which is to be got by hiring dunderheads at so much per dozen. I tell you, as soon as men found out that they had more brains than oxen, they set the oxen to draw for them; and when we Florentines found out that we had more brains than other men we set them to fight for us.”"

"“It is well, Francesco,” said Nello. “Florence has a few thicker skulls that may do to bombard Pisa with; there will still be the finer spirits left at home to do the thinking and the shaving. And as for our Piero here, if he makes such a point of valour, let him carry his biggest brush for a weapon and his palette for a shield, and challenge the widest-mouthed Swiss he can see in the Prato to a single combat.” 

"“Va, Nello,” growled Piero, “thy tongue runs on as usual, like a mill when the Arno’s full—whether there’s grist or not.” 

"“Excellent grist, I tell thee. For it would be as reasonable to expect a grizzled painter like thee to be fond of getting a javelin inside thee as to expect a man whose wits have been sharpened on the classics to like having his handsome face clawed by a wild beast.” 

"“There you go, supposing you’ll get people to put their legs into a sack because you call it a pair of hosen,” said Piero. “Who said anything about a wild beast, or about an unarmed man rushing on battle? Fighting is a trade, and it’s not my trade. I should be a fool to run after danger, but I could face it if it came to me.” 

"“How is it you’re so afraid of the thunder, then, my Piero?” said Nello, determined to chase down the accuser. “You ought to be able to understand why one man is shaken by a thing that seems a trifle to others—you who hide yourself with the rats as soon as a storm comes on.” 

"“That is because I have a particular sensibility to loud sounds; it has nothing to do with my courage or my conscience.” 

"“Well, and Tito Melema may have a peculiar sensibility to being laid hold of unexpectedly by prisoners who have run away from French soldiers. Men are born with antipathies; I myself can’t abide the smell of mint. Tito was born with an antipathy to old prisoners who stumble and clutch. Ecco!”"

................................................................................................

"It was very easy, very pleasant, this exercise of speaking to the general satisfaction: a man who knew how to persuade need never be in danger from any party; he could convince each that he was feigning with all the others. The gestures and faces of weavers and dyers were certainly amusing when looked at from above in this way. 

"Tito was beginning to get easier in his armour, and at this moment was quite unconscious of it. He stood with one hand holding his recovered cap, and with the other at his belt, the light of a complacent smile in his long lustrous eyes, as he made a parting reverence to his audience, before springing down from the bales—when suddenly his glance met that of a man who had not at all the amusing aspect of the exulting weavers, dyers, and woolcarders. The face of this man was clean-shaven, his hair close-clipped, and he wore a decent felt hat. A single glance would hardly have sufficed to assure any one but Tito that this was the face of the escaped prisoner who had laid hold of him on the steps. But to Tito it came not simply as the face of the escaped prisoner, but as a face with which he had been familiar long years before."

................................................................................................

"Poor Romola! There was one thing that would have made the pang of disappointment in her husband harder to bear; it was, that any one should know he gave her cause for disappointment. This might be a woman’s weakness, but it is closely allied to a woman’s nobleness. She who willingly lifts up the veil of her married life has profaned it from a sanctuary into a vulgar place."

................................................................................................

"Tessa took up her bowl and lantern, and closed the door behind her. The pretty loving apparition had been no more to Baldassarre than a faint rainbow on the blackness to the man who is wrestling in deep waters. He hardly thought of her again till his dreamy waking passed into the more vivid images of disturbed sleep. 

"But Tessa thought much of him. She had no sooner entered the house than she told Monna Lisa what she had done, and insisted that the stranger should be allowed to come and rest in the outhouse when he liked. The old woman, who had had her notions of making him a useful tenant, made a great show of reluctance, shook her head, and urged that Messer Naldo would be angry if she let any one come about the house. Tessa did not believe that. Naldo had said nothing against strangers who lived nowhere; and this old man knew nobody except one person, who was not Nofri."

................................................................................................

"When Tito had first found this home for Tessa, on his return from Rome, more than a year and a half ago, he had acted, he persuaded himself, simply under the constraint imposed on him by his own kindliness after the unlucky incident which had made foolish little Tessa imagine him to be her husband. ... for he was not in love with Tessa—he was in love for the first time in his life with an entirely different woman, whom he was not simply inclined to shower caresses on, but whose presence possessed him so that the simple sweep of her long tresses across his cheek seemed to vibrato through the hours. All the young ideal passion he had in him had been stirred by Romola, and his fibre was too fine, his intellect too bright, for him to be tempted into the habits of a gross pleasure-seeker. ... The elements of kindness and self-indulgence are hard to distinguish in a soft nature like Tito’s; and the annoyance he had felt under Tessa’s pursuit of him on the day of his betrothal, the thorough intention of revealing the truth to her with which he set out to fulfil his promise of seeing her again, were a sufficiently strong argument to him that in ultimately leaving Tessa under her illusion and providing a home for her, he had been overcome by his own kindness. ... "

"But he was all the more careful in taking precautions to preserve the secrecy of the offence. ... "

"But the moment when he had first felt a real hunger for Tessa’s ignorant lovingness and belief in him had not come till quite lately, and it was distinctly marked out by circumstances as little to be forgotten as the oncoming of a malady that has permanently vitiated the sight and hearing. It was the day when he had first seen Baldassarre, and had bought the armour. Returning across the bridge that night, with the coat of mail in his hands, he had felt an unconquerable shrinking from an immediate encounter with Romola. She, too, knew little of the actual world; she, too, trusted him; but he had an uneasy consciousness that behind her frank eyes there was a nature that could judge him, and that any ill-founded trust of hers sprang not from pretty brute-like incapacity, but from a nobleness which might prove an alarming touchstone. He wanted a little ease, a little repose from self-control, after the agitation and exertions of the day; he wanted to be where he could adjust his mind to the morrow, without caring how he behaved at the present moment. And there was a sweet adoring creature within reach whose presence was as safe and unconstraining as that of her own kids,—who would believe any fable, and remain quite unimpressed by public opinion. And so on that evening, when Romola was waiting and listening for him, he turned his steps up the hill. 

"No wonder, then, that the steps took the same course on this evening, eleven days later, when he had had to recoil under Romola’s first outburst of scorn. He could not wish Tessa in his wife’s place, or refrain from wishing that his wife should be thoroughly reconciled to him; for it was Romola, and not Tessa, that belonged to the world where all the larger desires of a man who had ambition and effective faculties must necessarily lie. But he wanted a refuge from a standard disagreeably rigorous, of which he could not make himself independent simply by thinking it folly; and Tessa’s little soul was that inviting refuge."

................................................................................................

"For several days Tito saw little of Romola. He told her gently, the next morning, that it would be better for her to remove any small articles of her own from the library, as there would be agents coming to pack up the antiquities. Then, leaning to kiss her on the brow, he suggested that she should keep in her own room where the little painted tabernacle was, and where she was then sitting, so that she might be away from the noise of strange footsteps, Romola assented quietly, making no sign of emotion: the night had been one long waking to her, and, in spite of her healthy frame, sensation had become a dull continuous pain, as if she had been stunned and bruised. Tito divined that she felt ill, but he dared say no more; he only dared, perceiving that her hand and brow were stone cold, to fetch a furred mantle and throw it lightly round her. And in every brief interval that he returned to her, the scene was nearly the same: he tried to propitiate her by some unobtrusive act or word of tenderness, and she seemed to have lost the power of speaking to him, or of looking at him. “Patience!” he said to himself. “She will recover it, and forgive at last. The tie to me must still remain the strongest.” When the stricken person is slow to recover and look as if nothing had happened, the striker easily glides into the position of the aggrieved party; he feels no bruise himself, and is strongly conscious of his own amiable behaviour since he inflicted the blow. But Tito was not naturally disposed to feel himself aggrieved; the constant bent of his mind was towards propitiation, and he would have submitted to much for the sake of feeling Romola’s hand resting on his head again, as it did that morning when he first shrank from looking at her."

" ... But the fresh dread of Baldassarre, waked in the same moment, had lain like an immovable rocky obstruction across that path, and had urged him into the sale of the library, as a preparation for the possible necessity of leaving Florence, at the very time when he was beginning to feel that it had a new attraction for him. That dread was nearly removed now: he must wear his armour still, he must prepare himself for possible demands on his coolness and ingenuity, but he did not feel obliged to take the inconvenient step of leaving Florence and seeking new fortunes. His father had refused the offered atonement—had forced him into defiance; and an old man in a strange place, with his memory gone, was weak enough to be defied."

................................................................................................

" ... The majority of the men inside the palace, having power already in their hands, agreed with Vespucci, and thought change should be moderate; the majority outside the palace, conscious of little power and many grievances, were less afraid of change.

"And there was a force outside the palace which was gradually tending to give the vague desires of that majority the character of a determinate will. That force was the preaching of Savonarola. Impelled partly by the spiritual necessity that was laid upon him to guide the people, and partly by the prompting of public-men who could get no measures carried without his aid, he was rapidly passing in his daily sermons from the general to the special—from telling his hearers that they must postpone their private passions and interests to the public good, to telling them precisely what sort of government they must have in order to promote that good—from “Choose whatever is best for all” to “Choose the Great Council,” and “the Great Council is the will of God.”"

................................................................................................

" ... It was not any retributive payment or recognition of himself for his own behoof, on which Baldassarre’s whole soul was bent: it was to find the sharpest edge of disgrace and shame by which a selfish smiler could be pierced; it was to send through his marrow the most sudden shock of dread. He was content to lie hard, and live stintedly—he had spent the greater part of his remaining money in buying another poniard: his hunger and his thirst were after nothing exquisite but an exquisite vengeance. ... "

" ... Once he had attempted to enter the Palazzo Vecchio and make his way into a council-chamber where Tito was, and had failed. But now, on this evening, he felt that his occasion was come."

"In fact, very little peacock was eaten; but there was the satisfaction of sitting at a table where peacock was served up in a remarkable manner, and of knowing that such caprices were not within reach of any but those who supped with the very wealthiest men. And it would have been rashness to speak slightingly of peacock’s flesh, or any other venerable institution, at a time when Fra Girolamo was teaching the disturbing doctrine that it was not the duty of the rich to be luxurious for the sake of the poor. 

"Meanwhile, in the chill obscurity that surrounded this centre of warmth, and light, and savoury odours, the lonely disowned man was walking in gradually narrowing circuits. He paused among the trees, and looked in at the windows, which made brilliant pictures against the gloom. He could hear the laughter; he could see Tito gesticulating with careless grace, and hear his voice, now alone, now mingling in the merry confusion of interlacing speeches. Baldassarre’s mind was highly strung. He was preparing himself for the moment when he could win his entrance into this brilliant company; and he had a savage satisfaction in the sight of Tito’s easy gaiety, which seemed to be preparing the unconscious victim for more effective torture. 

"But the men seated among the branching tapers and the flashing cups could know nothing of the pale fierce face that watched them from without. The light can be a curtain as well as the darkness."

"“ ... I agree with my more experienced friends, who are allowing me to speak for them in their presence, that the only lasting and peaceful state of things for Florence is the predominance of some single family interest. This theory of the Frate’s, that we are to have a popular government, in which every man is to strive only for the general good, and know no party names, is a theory that may do for some isle of Cristoforo Colombo’s finding, but will never do for our fine old quarrelsome Florence. A change must come before long, and with patience and caution we have every chance of determining the change in our favour. Meanwhile, the best thing we can do will be to keep the Frate’s flag flying, for if any other were to be hoisted just now it would be a black flag for us.”"

" ... Hitherto he had seen success only in the form of favour; it now flashed on him in the shape of power—of such power as is possible to talent without traditional ties, and without beliefs. Each party that thought of him as a tool might become dependent on him. His position as an alien, his indifference to the ideas or prejudices of the men amongst whom he moved, were suddenly transformed into advantages; he became newly conscious of his own adroitness in the presence of a game that he was called on to play. And all the motives which might have made Tito shrink from the triple deceit that came before him as a tempting game, had been slowly strangled in him by the successive falsities of his life. 

"Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have once acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble. But Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had won no memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could have a sense of falling."

................................................................................................

"If the seeds of conjecture unfavourable to Tito had been planted in the mind of any one present, they were hardly strong enough to grow without the aid of much daylight and ill-will. The common-looking, wild-eyed old man, clad in serge, might have won belief without very strong evidence, if he had accused a man who was envied and disliked. As it was, the only congruous and probable view of the case seemed to be the one that sent the unpleasant accuser safely out of sight, and left the pleasant serviceable Tito just where he was before. 

"The subject gradually floated away, and gave place to others, till a heavy tramp, and something like the struggling of a man who was being dragged away, were heard outside. The sounds soon died out, and the interruption seemed to make the last hour’s conviviality more resolute and vigorous. Every one was willing to forget a disagreeable incident. 

"Tito’s heart was palpitating, and the wine tasted no better to him than if it had been blood. 

"To-night he had paid a heavier price than ever to make himself safe. He did not like the price, and yet it was inevitable that he should be glad of the purchase."

................................................................................................

"Romola’s mind was still torn by conflict. She foresaw that she should obey Savonarola and go back: his words had come to her as if they were an interpretation of that revulsion from self-satisfied ease, and of that new fellowship with suffering, which had already been awakened in her. His arresting voice had brought a new condition into her life, which made it seem impossible to her 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!”"

"“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 for ever. Come, my daughter, come back to your place!”"

" ... She bowed reverently to Fra Salvestro before looking directly at him; but when she raised her head and saw him fully, her reluctance became a palpitating doubt. There are men whose presence infuses trust and reverence; there are others to whom we have need to carry our trust and reverence ready-made; and that difference flashed on Romola as she ceased to have Savonarola before her, and saw in his stead Fra Salvestro Maruffi. It was not that there was anything manifestly repulsive in Fra Salvestro’s face and manner, any air of hypocrisy, any tinge of coarseness; his face was handsomer than Fra Girolamo’s, his person a little taller. He was the long-accepted confessor of many among the chief personages in Florence, and had therefore had large experience as a spiritual director. But his face had the vacillating expression of a mind unable to concentrate itself strongly in the channel of one great emotion or belief—an expression which is fatal to influence over an ardent nature like Romola’s."

"She went up to her room, threw off her serge, destroyed the parting letters, replaced all her precious trifles, unbound her hair, and put on her usual black dress. Instead of taking a long exciting journey, she was to sit down in her usual place. The snow fell against the windows, and she was alone. 

"She felt the dreariness, yet her courage was high, like that of a seeker who has come on new signs of gold. She was going to thread life by a fresh clue. She had thrown all the energy of her will into renunciation. The empty tabernacle remained locked, and she placed Dino’s crucifix outside it. 

"Nothing broke the outward monotony of her solitary home, till the night came like a white ghost at the windows. Yet it was the most memorable Christmas-eve in her life to Romola, this of 1494."

................................................................................................

"It was the thirtieth of October 1496. The sky that morning was clear enough, and there was a pleasant autumnal breeze. But the Florentines just then thought very little about the land breezes: they were thinking of the gales at sea, which seemed to be uniting with all other powers to disprove the Frate’s declaration that Heaven took special care of Florence. 

"For those terrible gales had driven away from the coast of Leghorn certain ships from Marseilles, freighted with soldiery and corn; and Florence was in the direst need, first of food, and secondly of fighting men. Pale Famine was in her streets, and her territory was threatened on all its borders.

"For the French king, that new Charlemagne, who had entered Italy in anticipatory triumph, and had conquered Naples without the least trouble, had gone away again fifteen months ago, and was even, it was feared, in his grief for the loss of a new-born son, losing the languid intention of coming back again to redress grievances and set the Church in order. A league had been formed against him—a Holy League, with Pope Borgia at its head—to “drive out the barbarians,” who still garrisoned the fortress of Naples. That had a patriotic sound; but, looked at more closely, the Holy League seemed very much like an agreement among certain wolves to drive away all other wolves, and then to see which among themselves could snatch the largest share of the prey. And there was a general disposition to regard Florence not as a fellow-wolf, but rather as a desirable carcass. Florence, therefore, of all the chief Italian States, had alone declined to join the League, adhering still to the French alliance. 

"She had declined at her peril. At this moment Pisa, still righting savagely for liberty, was being encouraged not only by strong forces from Venice and Milan, but by the presence of the German Emperor Maximilian, who had been invited by the League, and was joining the Pisans with such troops as he had in the attempt to get possession of Leghorn, while the coast was invested by Venetian and Genoese ships. And if Leghorn should fall into the hands of the enemy, woe to Florence! For if that one outlet towards the sea were closed, hedged in as she was on the land by the bitter ill-will of the Pope and the jealousy of smaller States, how could succours reach her?

"The government of Florence had shown a great heart in this urgent need, meeting losses and defeats with vigorous effort, raising fresh money, raising fresh soldiers, but not neglecting the good old method of Italian defence—conciliatory embassies. And while the scarcity of food was every day becoming greater, they had resolved, in opposition to old precedent, not to shut out the starving country people, and the mendicants driven from the gates of other cities, who came flocking to Florence like birds from a land of snow.

"These acts of a government in which the disciples of Savonarola made the strongest element were not allowed to pass without criticism. The disaffected were plentiful, and they saw clearly that the government took the worst course for the public welfare. Florence ought to join the League and make common cause with the other great Italian States, instead of drawing down their hostility by a futile adherence to a foreign ally. Florence ought to take care of her own citizens, instead of opening her gates to famine and pestilence in the shape of starving contadini and alien mendicants.

"Every day the distress became sharper: every day the murmurs became louder. And, to crown the difficulties of the government, for a month and more—in obedience to a mandate from Rome—Fra Girolamo had ceased to preach. But on the arrival of the terrible news that the ships from Marseilles had been driven back, and that no corn was coming, the need for the voice that could infuse faith and patience into the people became too imperative to be resisted. In defiance of the Papal mandate the Signoria requested Savonarola to preach. ... "

"Yet at present, on this morning of the thirtieth, there were no signs of rescue. Perhaps if the precious Tabernacle of the Madonna dell’ Impruneta were brought into Florence and carried in devout procession to the Duomo, that Mother, rich in sorrows and therefore in mercy, would plead for the suffering city? For a century and a half there were records how the Florentines, suffering from drought, or flood, or famine, or pestilence, or the threat of wars, had fetched the potent image within their walls, and had found deliverance. ... "

"When were they in more need of her pleading pity than now? And already, the evening before, the tabernacle containing the miraculous hidden image had been brought with high and reverend escort from L’Impruneta, the privileged spot six miles beyond the gate of San Piero that looks towards Rome, and had been deposited in the church of San Gaggio, outside the gate, whence it was to be fetched in solemn procession by all the fraternities, trades, and authorities of Florence.

"But the Pitying Mother had not yet entered within the walls, and the morning arose on unchanged misery and despondency. Pestilence was hovering in the track of famine. Not only the hospitals were full, but the courtyards of private houses had been turned into refuges and infirmaries; and still there was unsheltered want. And early this morning, as usual, members of the various fraternities who made it part of their duty to bury the unfriended dead, were bearing away the corpses that had sunk by the wayside. As usual, sweet womanly forms, with the refined air and carriage of the well-born, but in the plainest garb, were moving about the streets on their daily errands of tending the sick and relieving the hungry."

................................................................................................

" ... First came a white stream of reformed Benedictines; and then a much longer stream of the Frati Minori, or Franciscans, in that age all clad in grey, with the knotted cord round their waists, and some of them with the zoccoli, or wooden sandals, below their bare feet;—perhaps the most numerous order in Florence, owning many zealous members who loved mankind and hated the Dominicans. And after the grey came the black of the Augustinians of San Spirito with more cultured human faces above it—men who had inherited the library of Boccaccio, and had made the most learned company in Florence when learning was rarer; then the white over dark of the Carmelites; and then again the unmixed black of the Servites, that famous Florentine order founded by seven merchants who forsook their gains to adore the Divine Mother. 

"And now the hearts of all onlookers began to beat a little faster, either with hatred or with love, for there was a stream of black and white coming over the bridge—of black mantles over white scapularies; and every one knew that the Dominicans were coming. Those of Fiesole passed first. One black mantle parted by white after another, one tonsured head after another, and still expectation was suspended. They were very coarse mantles, all of them, and many were threadbare, if not ragged; for the Prior of San Marco had reduced the fraternities under his rule to the strictest poverty and discipline. But in the long line of black and white there was at last singled out a mantle only a little more worn than the rest, with a tonsured head above it which might not have appeared supremely remarkable to a stranger who had not seen it on bronze medals, with the sword of God as its obverse; or surrounded by an armed guard on the way to the Duomo; or transfigured by the inward flame of the orator as it looked round on a rapt multitude. 

"As the approach of Savonarola was discerned, none dared conspicuously to break the stillness by a sound which would rise above the solemn tramp of footsteps and the faint sweep of garments; nevertheless his ear, as well as other ears, caught a mingled sound of slow hissing that longed to be curses, and murmurs that longed to be blessings. Perhaps it was the sense that the hissing predominated which made two or three of his disciples in the foreground of the crowd, at the meeting of the roads, fall on their knees as if something divine were passing. The movement of silent homage spread: it went along the sides of the streets like a subtle shock, leaving some unmoved, while it made the most bend the knee and bow the head. But the hatred, too, gathered a more intense expression; and as Savonarola passed up the Por’ Santa Maria, Romola could see that some one at an upper window spat upon him."

"Here was the nucleus of the procession. Behind the relic came the archbishop in gorgeous cope, with canopy held above him; and after him the mysterious hidden Image—hidden first by rich curtains of brocade enclosing an outer painted tabernacle, but within this, by the more ancient tabernacle which had never been opened in the memory of living men, or the fathers of living men. In that inner shrine was the image of the Pitying Mother, found ages ago in the soil of L’Impruneta, uttering a cry as the spade struck it. Hitherto the unseen Image had hardly ever been carried to the Duomo without having rich gifts borne before it. There was no reciting the list of precious offerings made by emulous men and communities, especially of veils and curtains and mantles. But the richest of all these, it was said, had been given by a poor abbess and her nuns, who, having no money to buy materials, wove a mantle of gold brocade with their prayers, embroidered it and adorned it with their prayers, and, finally, saw their work presented to the Blessed Virgin in the great Piazza by two beautiful youths who spread out white wings and vanished in the blue."

................................................................................................

"No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence. Romola’s trust in Savonarola was something like a rope suspended securely by her path, making her step elastic while she grasped it; if it were suddenly removed, no firmness of the ground she trod could save her from staggering, or perhaps from falling."

"A slight shock passed through Tito’s frame as he felt himself face to face with his wife. She was haggard with her anxious watching, but there was a flash of something else than anxiety in her eyes as she said— 

"“Is the Frate gone beyond the gates?” 

"“No,” said Tito, feeling completely helpless before this woman, and needing all the self-command he possessed to preserve a countenance in which there should seem to be nothing stronger than surprise. 

"“And you are certain that he is not going?” she insisted. 

"“I am certain that he is not going.” 

"“That is enough,” said Romola, and she turned up the steps, to take refuge in the Duomo, till she could recover from her agitation. 

"Tito never had a feeling so near hatred as that with which his eyes followed Romola retreating up the steps. 

"There were present not only genuine followers of the Frate, but Ser Ceccone, the notary, who at that time, like Tito himself, was secretly an agent of the Mediceans.

"Ser Francesco di Ser Barone, more briefly known to infamy as Ser Ceccone, was not learned, not handsome, not successful, and the reverse of generous. He was a traitor without charm. It followed that he was not fond of Tito Melema."

................................................................................................

"Tito himself felt that a crisis was come in his married life. The husband’s determination to mastery, which lay deep below all blandness and beseechingness, had risen permanently to the surface now, and seemed to alter his face, as a face is altered by a hidden muscular tension with which a man is secretly throttling or stamping out the life from something feeble, yet dangerous. 

"“Romola,” he began, in the cool liquid tone that made her shiver, “it is time that we should understand each other.” He paused."

"“I am too rash,” she said. “I will try not to be rash.” 

"“Remember,” said Tito, with unsparing insistance, “that your act of distrust towards me this morning might, for aught you knew, have had more fatal effects than that sacrifice of your husband which you have learned to contemplate without flinching.”"

"Yet Tito was not at ease. The world was not yet quite cushioned with velvet, and, if it had been, he could not have abandoned himself to that softness with thorough enjoyment; for before he went out again this evening he put on his coat of chain-armour."

................................................................................................

"The wintry days passed for Romola as the white ships pass one who is standing lonely on the shore—passing in silence and sameness, yet each bearing a hidden burden of coming change. ... "

"She chose to go through the great Piazza that she might take a first survey of the unparalleled sight there while she was still alone. Entering it from the south, she saw something monstrous and many-coloured in the shape of a pyramid, or, rather, like a huge fir-tree, sixty feet high, with shelves on the branches, widening and widening towards the base till they reached a circumference of eighty yards. ... "

"This was the preparation for a new sort of bonfire—the Burning of Vanities. Hidden in the interior of the pyramid was a plentiful store of dry fuel and gunpowder; and on this last day of the festival, at evening, the pile of vanities was to be set ablaze to the sound of trumpets, and the ugly old Carnival was to tumble into the flames amid the songs of reforming triumph."

................................................................................................

"Bernardo del Nero had been elected Gonfaloniere. By great exertions the Medicean party had so far triumphed, and that triumph had deepened Romola’s presentiment of some secretly-prepared scheme likely to ripen either into success or betrayal during these two months of her godfather’s authority. Every morning the dim daybreak as it peered into her room seemed to be that haunting fear coming back to her. Every morning the fear went with her as she passed through the streets on her way to the early sermon in the Duomo: but there she gradually lost the sense of its chill presence, as men lose the dread of death in the clash of battle. 

"In the Duomo she felt herself sharing in a passionate conflict which had wider relations than any enclosed within the walls of Florence. For Savonarola was preaching—preaching the last course of Lenten sermons he was ever allowed to finish in the Duomo: he knew that excommunication was imminent, and he had reached the point of defying it. He held up the condition of the Church in the terrible mirror of his unflinching speech, which called things by their right names and dealt in no polite periphrases; he proclaimed with heightening confidence the advent of renovation—of a moment when there would be a general revolt against corruption. As to his own destiny, he seemed to have a double and alternating prevision: sometimes he saw himself taking a glorious part in that revolt, sending forth a voice that would be heard through all Christendom, and making the dead body of the Church tremble into new life, as the body of Lazarus trembled when the Divine voice pierced the sepulchre; sometimes he saw no prospect for himself but persecution and martyrdom:—this life for him was only a vigil, and only after death would come the dawn."

" ... To Romola, whose kindred ardour gave her a firm belief in Savonarola’s genuine greatness of purpose, the crisis was as stirring as if it had been part of her personal lot. It blent itself as an exalting memory with all her daily labours; and those labours were calling not only for difficult perseverance, but for new courage. Famine had never yet taken its flight from Florence, and all distress, by its long continuance, was getting harder to bear; disease was spreading in the crowded city, and the Plague was expected. As Romola walked, often in weariness, among the sick, the hungry, and the murmuring, she felt it good to be inspired by something more than her pity—by the belief in a heroism struggling for sublime ends, towards which the daily action of her pity could only tend feebly, as the dews that freshen the weedy ground to-day tend to prepare an unseen harvest in the years to come."

" ... And continually, in the rapid transitions of excited feeling, as the vision of triumphant good receded behind the actual predominance of evil, the threats of coming vengeance against vicious tyrants and corrupt priests gathered some impetus from personal exasperation, as well as from indignant zeal."

"But if the tones of exasperation jarred on Romola, there was often another member of Fra Girolamo’s audience to whom they were the only thrilling tones, like the vibration of deep bass notes to the deaf. Baldassarre had found out that the wonderful Frate was preaching again, and as often as he could, he went to hear the Lenten sermon, that he might drink in the threats of a voice which seemed like a power on the side of justice. ... "

"Camilla had a vision to communicate—a vision in which it had been revealed to her by Romola’s Angel, that Romola knew certain secrets concerning her godfather, Bernardo del Nero, which, if disclosed, might save the Republic from peril. Camilla’s voice rose louder and higher as she narrated her vision, and ended by exhorting Romola to obey the command of her Angel, and separate herself from the enemy of God."

" ... The prophetess kept her hold like a crab, and, only incited to more eager exhortation by Romola’s resistance, was carried beyond her own intention into a shrill statement of other visions which were to corroborate this. Christ himself had appeared to her and ordered her to send his commands to certain citizens in office that they should throw Bernardo del Nero from the window of the Palazzo Vecchio. Fra Girolamo himself knew of it, and had not dared this time to say that the vision was not of Divine authority."

"“Let me go!” said Romola, in a deep voice of anger. “God grant you are mad! else you are detestably wicked!”

"Romola, kneeling with buried face on the altar-step, was enduring one of those sickening moments, when the enthusiasm which had come to her as the only energy strong enough to make life worthy, seemed to be inevitably bound up with vain dreams and wilful eye-shutting. Her mind rushed back with a new attraction towards the strong worldly sense, the dignified prudence, the untheoretic virtues of her godfather, who was to be treated as a sort of Agag because he held that a more restricted form of government was better than the Great Council, and because he would not pretend to forget old ties to the banished family.

"But with this last thought rose the presentiment of some plot to restore the Medici; and then again she felt that the popular party was half justified in its fierce suspicion. Again she felt that to keep the Government of Florence pure, and to keep out a vicious rule, was a sacred cause; the Frate was right there, and had carried her understanding irrevocably with him. But at this moment the assent of her understanding went alone; it was given unwillingly. Her heart was recoiling from a right allied to so much narrowness; a right apparently entailing that hard systematic judgment of men which measures them by assents and denials quite superficial to the manhood within them. Her affection and respect were clinging with new tenacity to her godfather, and with him to those memories of her father which were in the same opposition to the division of men into sheep and goats by the easy mark of some political or religious symbol."

................................................................................................

"When Romola fell asleep that night, she slept deep. Agitation had reached its limits; she must gather strength before she could suffer more; and, in spite of rigid habit, she slept on far beyond sunrise. 

"When she awoke, it was to the sound of guns. Piero de’ Medici, with thirteen hundred men at his back, was before the gate that looks towards Rome."

" ... The guns were firing again, but the sound only provoked laughter. She soon knew the cause of the change. Piero de’ Medici and his horsemen had turned their backs on Florence, and were galloping as fast as they could along the Siena road. She learned this from a substantial shop-keeping Piagnone, who had not yet laid down his pike. 

"“It is true,” he ended, with a certain bitterness in his emphasis. “Piero is gone, but there are those left behind who were in the secret of his coming—we all know that; and if the new Signoria does its duty we shall soon know who they are.” 

"The words darted through Romola like a sharp spasm; but the evil they foreshadowed was not yet close upon her, and as she entered her home again, her most pressing anxiety was the possibility that she had lost sight for a long while of Baldassarre."

"The lengthening sunny days went on without bringing either what Romola most desired or what she most dreaded. They brought no sign from Baldassarre, and, in spite of special watch on the part of the Government, no revelation of the suspected conspiracy. But they brought other things which touched her closely, and bridged the phantom-crowded space of anxiety with active sympathy in immediate trial. They brought the spreading Plague and the Excommunication of Savonarola."

" ... The question where the duty of obedience ends, and the duty of resistance begins, could in no case be an easy one; but it was made overwhelmingly difficult by the belief that the Church was—not a compromise of parties to secure a more or less approximate justice in the appropriation of funds, but—a living organism, instinct with Divine power to bless and to curse. To most of the pious Florentines, who had hitherto felt no doubt in their adherence to the Frate, that belief in the Divine potency of the Church was not an embraced opinion, it was an inalienable impression, like the concavity of the blue firmament; and the boldness of Savonarola’s written arguments that the Excommunication was unjust, and that, being unjust, it was not valid, only made them tremble the more, as a defiance cast at a mystic image, against whose subtle immeasurable power there was neither weapon nor defence.

"But Romola, whose mind had not been allowed to draw its early nourishment from the traditional associations of the Christian community in which her father had lived a life apart, felt her relation to the Church only through Savonarola; his moral force had been the only authority to which she had bowed; and in his excommunication she only saw the menace of hostile vice: on one side she saw a man whose life was devoted to the ends of public virtue and spiritual purity, and on the other the assault of alarmed selfishness, headed by a lustful, greedy, lying, and murderous old man, once called Rodrigo Borgia, and now lifted to the pinnacle of infamy as Pope Alexander the Sixth. ... "

" ... The one effect of her marriage-tie seemed to be the stifling predominance over her of a nature that she despised. All her efforts at union had only made its impossibility more palpable, and the relation had become for her simply a degrading servitude. The law was sacred. Yes, but rebellion might be sacred too. It flashed upon her mind that the problem before her was essentially the same as that which had lain before Savonarola—the problem where the sacredness of obedience ended, and where the sacredness of rebellion began. To her, as to him, there had come one of those moments in life when the soul must dare to act on its own warrant, not only without external law to appeal to, but in the face of a law which is not unarmed with Divine lightnings—lightnings that may yet fall if the warrant has been false."

................................................................................................

"“Do you, then, know so well what will further the coming of God’s kingdom, father, that you will dare to despise the plea of mercy—of justice—of faithfulness to your own teaching? Has the French king, then, brought renovation to Italy? Take care, father, lest your enemies have some reason when they say, that in your visions of what will further God’s kingdom you see only what will strengthen your own party.” 

"“And that is true!” said Savonarola, with flashing eyes. Romola’s voice had seemed to him in that moment the voice of his enemies. “The cause of my party is the cause of God’s kingdom.” 

"“I do not believe it!” said Romola, her whole frame shaken with passionate repugnance. “God’s kingdom is something wider—else, let me stand outside it with the beings that I love.”"

................................................................................................

" ... Only within the last hour had the question been decided: the Signoria had remained divided, four of them standing out resolutely for the Appeal in spite of the strong argument that if they did not give way their houses should be sacked, until Francesco Valori, in brief and furious speech, made the determination of his party more ominously distinct by declaring that if the Signoria would not defend the liberties of the Florentine people by executing those five perfidious citizens, there would not be wanting others who would take that cause in hand to the peril of all who opposed it. The Florentine Cato triumphed. When the votes were counted again, the four obstinate white beans no longer appeared; the whole nine were of the fatal affirmative black, deciding the death of the five prisoners without delay—deciding also, only tacitly and with much more delay, the death of Francesco Valori."

"“It is excusable in a woman, who is doubtless beautiful, since she is the wife of Messer Tito,” said a young French envoy, smiling and bowing to Tito, “to think that her affections must overrule the good of the State, and that nobody is to be beheaded who is anybody’s cousin; but such a view is not to be encouraged in the male population. It seems to me your Florentine polity is much weakened by it.” 

"“That is true,” said Niccolò Macchiavelli; “but where personal ties are strong, the hostilities they raise must be taken due account of. Many of these half-way severities are mere hot-headed blundering. The only safe blows to be inflicted on men and parties are the blows that are too heavy to be avenged.” 

"“Niccolò,” said Cennini, “there is a clever wickedness in thy talk sometimes that makes me mistrust thy pleasant young face as if it were a mask of Satan.” 

"“Not at all, my good Domenico,” said Macchiavelli, smiling, and laying his hand on the elder’s shoulder. “Satan was a blunderer, an introducer of novita, who made a stupendous failure. If he had succeeded, we should all have been worshipping him, and his portrait would have been more flattered.” 

"“Well, well,” said Cennini, “I say not thy doctrine is not too clever for Satan: I only say it is wicked enough for him.”"

................................................................................................

" ... Romola had lost her trust in Savonarola, had lost that fervour of admiration which had made her unmindful of his aberrations, and attentive only to the grand curve of his orbit. And now that her keen feeling for her godfather had thrown her into antagonism with the Frate, she saw all the repulsive and inconsistent details in his teaching with a painful lucidity which exaggerated their proportions. In the bitterness of her disappointment she said that his striving after the renovation of the Church and the world was a striving after a mere name which told no more than the title of a book: a name that had come to mean practically the measures that would strengthen his own position in Florence; nay, often questionable deeds and words, for the sake of saving his influence from suffering by his own errors. ... "

"It was inevitable that she should judge the Frate unfairly on a question of individual suffering, at which she looked with the eyes of personal tenderness, and he with the eyes of theoretic conviction. In that declaration of his, that the cause of his party was the cause of God’s kingdom, she heard only the ring of egoism. Perhaps such words have rarely been uttered without that meaner ring in them; yet they are the implicit formula of all energetic belief. And if such energetic belief, pursuing a grand and remote end, is often in danger of becoming a demon-worship, in which the votary lets his son and daughter pass through the fire with a readiness that hardly looks like sacrifice; ... "

................................................................................................

"Now it was the crucifix which Fra Domenico wanted to carry into the fire and must not be allowed to profane in that manner. After some little resistance Savonarola gave way to this objection, and thus had the advantage of making one more concession; but he immediately placed in Fra Domenico’s hands the vessel containing the consecrated Host. The idea that the presence of the sacred Mystery might in the worst extremity avert the ordinary effects of fire hovered in his mind as a possibility; but the issue on which he counted was of a more positive kind. In taking up the Host he said quietly, as if he were only doing what had been presupposed from the first— 

"“Since they are not willing that you should enter with the crucifix, my brother, enter simply with the Sacrament.” 

"New horror in the Franciscans; new firmness in Savonarola. “It was impious presumption to carry the Sacrament into the fire: if it were burned the scandal would be great in the minds of the weak and ignorant.” 

"“Not at all: even if it were burned, the Accidents only would be consumed, the Substance would remain.” Here was a question that might be argued till set of sun and remain as elastic as ever; and no one could propose settling it by proceeding to the trial, since it was essentially a preliminary question. It was only necessary that both sides should remain firm—that the Franciscans should persist in not permitting the Host to be carried into the fire, and that Fra Domenico should persist in refusing to enter without it. 

"Meanwhile the clouds were getting darker, the air chiller. Even the chanting was missed now it had given way to inaudible argument; and the confused sounds of talk from all points of the Piazza, showing that expectation was everywhere relaxing, contributed to the irritating presentiment that nothing decisive would be done. Here and there a dropping shout was heard; then, more frequent shouts in a rising scale of scorn. “Light the fire and drive them in!” 

"“Let us have a smell of roast—we want our dinner!” 

"“Come Prophet, let us know whether anything is to happen before the twenty-four hours are over!” 

"“Yes, yes, what’s your last vision?” 

"“Oh, he’s got a dozen in his inside; they’re the small change for a miracle!” “Ola, Frate, where are you? Never mind wasting the fuel!”"

"Soon the shouts ceased to be distinguishable, and were lost in an uproar not simply of voices, but of clashing metal and trampling feet. ... "

"But the Loggia was well guarded by the band under the brave Salviati; the soldiers of the Signoria assisted in the repulse; and the trampling and rushing were all backward again towards the Tetto de’ Pisani, when the blackness of the heavens seemed to intensify in this moment of utter confusion; and the rain, which had already been felt in scattered drops, began to fall with rapidly growing violence, wetting the fuel, and running in streams off the platform, wetting the weary hungry people to the skin, and driving every man’s disgust and rage inwards to ferment there in the damp darkness. 

"Everybody knew now that the Trial by Fire was not to happen. The Signoria was doubtless glad of the rain, as an obvious reason, better than any pretext, for declaring that both parties might go home. It was the issue which Savonarola had expected and desired; yet it would be an ill description of what he felt to say that he was glad. As that rain fell, and plashed on the edge of the Loggia, and sent spray over the altar and all garments and faces, the Frate knew that the demand for him to enter the fire was at an end. But he knew too, with a certainty as irresistible as the damp chill that had taken possession of his frame, that the design of his enemies was fulfilled, and that his honour was not saved. He knew that he should have to make his way to San Marco again through the enraged crowd, and that the hearts of many friends who would once have defended him with their lives would now be turned against him."

"“Well parried, Frate!” said Tito, as Savonarola descended the steps of the Loggia. “But I fear your career at Florence is ended. What say you, my Niccolò?”"

................................................................................................

"The next day was Palm Sunday, or Olive Sunday, as it was chiefly called in the olive-growing Valdarno; and the morning sun shone with a more delicious clearness for the yesterday’s rain. Once more Savonarola mounted the pulpit in San Marco, and saw a flock around him whose faith in him was still unshaken; and this morning in calm and sad sincerity he declared himself ready to die: in front of all visions he saw his own doom. ... "

"And long before the daylight had died, both the church and convent were being besieged by an enraged and continually increasing multitude. Not without resistance. For the monks, long conscious of growing hostility without, had arms within their walls, and some of them fought as vigorously in their long white tunics as if they had been Knights Templars. Even the command of Savonarola could not prevail against the impulse to self-defence in arms that were still muscular under the Dominican serge. There were laymen too who had not chosen to depart, and some of them fought fiercely: there was firing from the high altar close by the great crucifix, there was pouring of stones and hot embers from the convent roof, there was close fighting with swords in the cloisters. Notwithstanding the force of the assailants, the attack lasted till deep night. 

"The demonstrations of the Government had all been against the convent; early in the attack guards had been sent for, not to disperse the assailants, but to command all within the convent to lay down their arms, all laymen to depart from it, and Savonarola himself to quit the Florentine territory within twelve hours. Had Savonarola quitted the convent then, he could hardly have escaped being torn to pieces; he was willing to go, but his friends hindered him. It was felt to be a great risk even for some laymen of high name to depart by the garden wall, but among those who had chosen to do so was Francesco Valori, who hoped to raise rescue from without. 

"And now when it was deep night—when the struggle could hardly have lasted much longer, and the Compagnacci might soon have carried their swords into the library, where Savonarola was praying with the Brethren who had either not taken up arms or had laid them down at his command—there came a second body of guards, commissioned by the Signoria to demand the persons of Fra Girolamo and his two coadjutors, Fra Domenico and Fra Salvestro."

"But that brief imperfect triumph of insulting the Frate, who had soon disappeared under the doorway of the Old Palace, was only like the taste of blood to the tiger. Were there not the houses of the hypocrite’s friends to be sacked? Already one-half of the armed multitude, too much in the rear to share greatly in the siege of the convent, had been employed in the more profitable work of attacking rich houses, not with planless desire for plunder, but with that discriminating selection of such as belonged to chief Piagnoni, which showed that the riot was under guidance, and that the rabble with clubs and staves was well officered by sword-girt Compagnacci. ... "

................................................................................................

"On the fourteenth of April Romola was once more within the walls of Florence. Unable to rest at Pistoja, where contradictory reports reached her about the Trial by Fire, she had gone on to Prato; and was beginning to think that she should be drawn on to Florence in spite of dread, when she encountered that monk of San Spirito who had been her godfather’s confessor. From him she learned the full story of Savonarola’s arrest, and of her husband’s death. This Augustinian monk had been in the stream of people who had followed the waggon with its awful burthen into the Piazza, and he could tell her what was generally known in Florence—that Tito had escaped from an assaulting mob by leaping into the Arno, but had been murdered on the bank by an old man who had long had an enmity against him. But Romola understood the catastrophe as no one else did. Of Savonarola the monk told her, in that tone of unfavourable prejudice which was usual in the Black Brethren (Frati Neri) towards the brother who showed white under his black, that he had confessed himself a deceiver of the people."

"When Romola brought home Tessa and the children, April was already near its close, and the other great anxiety on her mind had been wrought to its highest pitch by the publication in print of Fra Girolamo’s Trial, or rather of the confessions drawn from him by the sixteen Florentine citizens commissioned to interrogate him. The appearance of this document, issued by order of the Signoria, had called forth such strong expressions of public suspicion and discontent, that severe measures were immediately taken for recalling it. Of course there were copies accidentally mislaid, and a second edition, not by order of the Signoria, was soon in the hands of eager readers."

" ... It was but a murder with slow formalities that was being transacted in the Old Palace. The Signoria had resolved to drive a good bargain with the Pope and the Duke of Milan, by extinguishing the man who was as great a molestation to vicious citizens and greedy foreign tyrants as to a corrupt clergy. The Frate had been doomed beforehand, and the only question that was pretended to exist now was, whether the Republic, in return for a permission to lay a tax on ecclesiastical property, should deliver him alive into the hands of the Pope, or whether the Pope should further concede to the Republic what its dignity demanded—the privilege of hanging and burning its own prophet on its own piazza."

" ... It must be clear to all impartial men that if this examination represented the only evidence against the Frate, he would die, not for any crime, but because he had made himself inconvenient to the Pope, to the rapacious Italian States that wanted to dismember their Tuscan neighbour, and to those unworthy citizens who sought to gratify their private ambition in opposition to the common weal."

"Not a shadow of political crime had been proved against him. Not one stain had been detected on his private conduct: his fellow-monks, including one who had formerly been his secretary for several years, and who, with more than the average culture of his companions, had a disposition to criticise Fra Girolamo’s rule as Prior, bore testimony, even after the shock of his retraction, to an unimpeachable purity and consistency in his life, which had commanded their unsuspecting veneration. The Pope himself had not been able to raise a charge of heresy against the Frate, except on the ground of disobedience to a mandate, and disregard of the sentence of excommunication. It was difficult to justify that breach of discipline by argument, but there was a moral insurgence in the minds of grave men against the Court of Rome, which tended to confound the theoretic distinction between the Church and churchmen, and to lighten the scandal of disobedience."

" ... There was no denying that towards Alexander the Sixth Savonarola was a rebel, and, what was much more, a dangerous rebel. Florence had heard him say, and had well understood what he meant, that he would not obey the devil. It was inevitably a life and death struggle between the Frate and the Pope; but it was less inevitable that Florence should make itself the Pope’s executioner."

................................................................................................

"Looking at the printed confessions, she saw many sentences which bore the stamp of bungling fabrication: they had that emphasis and repetition in self-accusation which none but very low hypocrites use to their fellow-men. But the fact that these sentences were in striking opposition, not only to the character of Savonarola, but also to the general tone of the confessions, strengthened the impression that the rest of the text represented in the main what had really fallen from his lips. Hardly a word was dishonourable to him except what turned on his prophetic annunciations. He was unvarying in his statement of the ends he had pursued for Florence, the Church, and the world; and, apart from the mixture of falsity in that claim to special inspiration by which he sought to gain hold of men’s minds, there was no admission of having used unworthy means. Even in this confession, and without expurgation of the notary’s malign phrases, Fra Girolamo shone forth as a man who had sought his own glory indeed, but sought it by labouring for the very highest end—the moral welfare of men—not by vague exhortations, but by striving to turn beliefs into energies that would work in all the details of life."

"There is no jot of worthy evidence that from the time of his imprisonment to the supreme moment, Savonarola thought or spoke of himself as a martyr. The idea of martyrdom had been to him a passion dividing the dream of the future with the triumph of beholding his work achieved. And now, in place of both, had come a resignation which he called by no glorifying name. 

"But therefore he may the more fitly be called a martyr by his fellow-men to all time. For power rose against him not because of his sins, but because of his greatness—not because he sought to deceive the world, but because he sought to make it noble. And through that greatness of his he endured a double agony: not only the reviling, and the torture, and the death-throe, but the agony of sinking from the vision of glorious achievement into that deep shadow where he could only say, “I count as nothing: darkness encompasses me: yet the light I saw was the true light.”"

"The nineteenth of May had come, and by that day’s sunshine there had entered into Florence the two Papal Commissaries, charged with the completion of Savonarola’s trial. They entered amid the acclamations of the people, calling for the death of the Frate. For now the popular cry was, “It is the Frate’s deception that has brought on all our misfortunes; let him be burned, and all things right will be done, and our evils will cease.” 

"The next day it is well certified that there was fresh and fresh torture of the shattered sensitive frame; and now, at the first sight of the horrible implements, Savonarola, in convulsed agitation, fell on his knees, and in brief passionate words retracted his confession, declared that he had spoken falsely in denying his prophetic gift, and that if he suffered, he would suffer for the truth—“The things that I have spoken, I had them from God.”"

"Three days after, on the 23rd of May 1498, there was again a long narrow platform stretching across the great piazza, from the Palazzo Vecchio towards the Tetta de’ Pisani. But there was no grove of fuel as before: instead of that, there was one great heap of fuel placed on the circular area which made the termination of the long narrow platform. And above this heap of fuel rose a gibbet with three halters on it; a gibbet which, having two arms, still looked so much like a cross as to make some beholders uncomfortable, though one arm had been truncated to avoid the resemblance."

"The baser part of the multitude delight in degradations, apart from any hatred; it is the satire they best understand. There was a fresh hoot of triumph as the three degraded brethren passed on to the tribunal of the Papal Commissaries, who were to pronounce them schismatics and heretics. Did not the prophet look like a schismatic and heretic now? It is easy to believe in the damnable state of a man who stands stripped and degraded."

"“Cover your eyes, Madonna,” said Jacopo Nardi; “Fra Girolamo will be the last.” 

"It was not long before she had to uncover them again. Savonarola was there. He was not far off her now. He had mounted the steps; she could see him look round on the multitude. 

"But in the same moment expectation died, and she only saw what he was seeing—torches waving to kindle the fuel beneath his dead body, faces glaring with a yet worse light; she only heard what he was hearing—gross jests, taunts, and curses. 

"The moment was past. Her face was covered again, and she only knew that Savonarola’s voice had passed into eternal silence."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

January 19, 2021 - February 05, 2021.

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Brother Jacob. (1864) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Brother Jacob: by George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Amazing. Who Knew George Eliot could write like this! 

Normally,  having read a couple of other works by the author, or half a dozen, one begins to expect a tale of moral conflict, set in Midlands and dealing with Yemen and squires. And this book begins with all of that. But! 

It's apparent within a paragraph that this author could very well have been an inspiration for not only serious authors of generations to follow, but others as well. This book, in particular, reminds one so much of P. G. Wodehouse, one wonders if he read it, loved it, and said "Well, most people haven't noticed it quite as much, so perhaps one could do a take off on the style, and write very different stories about very different sorts of people - sort of keep the side-splitting humour and do a turnabout twist on the ethical dilemma!" 

And he made a stupendous success of it, too! 

................................................................................................

" ... Say what you will about the identity of the reasoning process in all branches of thought, or about the advantage of coming to subjects with a fresh mind, the adjustment of butter to flour, and of heat to pastry, is not the best preparation for the office of prime minister; besides, in the present imperfectly-organized state of society, there are social barriers. ... "

" ... Having a general idea of America as a country where the population was chiefly black, it appeared to him the most propitious destination for an emigrant who, to begin with, had the broad and easily recognizable merit of whiteness; and this idea gradually took such strong possession of him that Satan seized the opportunity of suggesting to him that he might emigrate under easier circumstances, if he supplied himself with a little money from his master’s till. But that evil spirit, whose understanding, I am convinced, has been much overrated, quite wasted his time on this occasion. David would certainly have liked well to have some of his master’s money in his pocket, if he had been sure his master would have been the only man to suffer for it; but he was a cautious youth, and quite determined to run no risks on his own account. ... Besides, it is not robbery to take property belonging to your mother: she doesn’t prosecute you. And David was very well behaved to his mother; he comforted her by speaking highly of himself to her, and assuring her that he never fell into the vices he saw practised by other youths of his own age, and that he was particularly fond of honesty. If his mother would have given him her twenty guineas as a reward of this noble disposition, he really would not have stolen them from her, and it would have been more agreeable to his feelings. ... "

" ... Not one of these delicacies had he ever offered to poor Jacob, for David was not a young man to waste his jujubes and barley-sugar in giving pleasure to people from whom he expected nothing. But an idiot with equivocal intentions and a pitchfork is as well worth flattering and cajoling as if he were Louis Napoleon. ... "

" ... This ingenious young man, Mr. David Faux, thought he had achieved a triumph of cunning when he had associated himself in his brother’s rudimentary mind with the flavour of yellow lozenges. But he had yet to learn that it is a dreadful thing to make an idiot fond of you, when you yourself are not of an affectionate disposition: especially an idiot with a pitchfork—obviously a difficult friend to shake off by rough usage."

................................................................................................

"Grimworth, to a discerning eye, was a good place to set up shopkeeping in. ... And it was likely to be a growing place, for the trustees of Mr. Zephaniah Crypt’s Charity, under the stimulus of a late visitation by commissioners, were beginning to apply long-accumulating funds to the rebuilding of the Yellow Coat School, which was henceforth to be carried forward on a greatly-extended scale, the testator having left no restrictions concerning the curriculum, but only concerning the coat."

" ... What a sight to dawn upon the eyes of Grimworth children! They almost forgot to go to their dinner that day, their appetites being preoccupied with imaginary sugar-plums; and I think even Punch, setting up his tabernacle in the market-place, would not have succeeded in drawing them away from those shop-windows, where they stood according to gradations of size and strength, the biggest and strongest being nearest the window, and the little ones in the outermost rows lifting wide-open eyes and mouths towards the upper tier of jars, like small birds at meal-time."

"I am not ignorant that this sort of thing is called the inevitable course of civilization, division of labour, and so forth, and that the maids and matrons may be said to have had their hands set free from cookery to add to the wealth of society in some other way. Only it happened at Grimworth, which, to be sure, was a low place, that the maids and matrons could do nothing with their hands at all better than cooking: not even those who had always made heavy cakes and leathery pastry. And so it came to pass, that the progress of civilization at Grimworth was not otherwise apparent than in the impoverishment of men, the gossiping idleness of women, and the heightening prosperity of Mr. Edward Freely."

" ... The greatest people, even kings and queens, must visit with somebody, and the equals of the great are scarce.  They were especially scarce at Grimworth, which, as I have before observed, was a low parish, mentioned with the most scornful brevity in gazetteers.  Even the great people there were far behind those of their own standing in other parts of this realm. ... "

"A man who had been to the Indies, and knew the sea so well, seemed to her a sort of public character, almost like Robinson Crusoe or Captain Cook; and Penny had always wished her husband to be a remarkable personage, likely to be put in Mangnall’s Questions, with which register of the immortals she had become acquainted during her one year at a boarding-school. Only it seemed strange that a remarkable man should be a confectioner and pastry-cook, and this anomaly quite disturbed Penny’s dreams.  Her brothers, she knew, laughed at men who couldn’t sit on horseback well, and called them tailors; but her brothers were very rough, and were quite without that power of anecdote which made Mr. Freely such a delightful companion. He was a very good man, she thought, for she had heard him say at Mr. Luff’s, one day, that he always wished to do his duty in whatever state of life he might be placed; and he knew a great deal of poetry, for one day he had repeated a verse of a song. She wondered if he had made the words of the valentine!—it ended in this way:— 

"“Without thee, it is pain to live, 

"But with thee, it were sweet to die.” 

"Poor Mr. Freely! her father would very likely object—she felt sure he would, for he always called Mr. Freely “that sugar-plum fellow.” Oh, it was very cruel, when true love was crossed in that way, and all because Mr. Freely was a confectioner: well, Penny would be true to him, for all that, and since his being a confectioner gave her an opportunity of showing her faithfulness, she was glad of it. Edward Freely was a pretty name, much better than John Towers. Young Towers had offered her a rose out of his button-hole the other day, blushing very much; but she refused it, and thought with delight how much Mr. Freely would be comforted if he knew her firmness of mind."

................................................................................................

"It soon appeared that Jacob could not be made to quit his dear brother David except by force.  He understood, with a clearness equal to that of the most intelligent mind, that Jonathan would take him back to skimmed milk, apple-dumpling, broad beans, and pork.  And he had found a paradise in his brother’s shop.  It was a difficult matter to use force with Jacob, for he wore heavy nailed boots; and if his pitchfork had been mastered, he would have resorted without hesitation to kicks.  Nothing short of using guile to bind him hand and foot would have made all parties safe."

................................................................................................

"You will further, I hope, be glad to bear, that some purchases of drapery made by pretty Penny, in preparation for her marriage with Mr. Freely, came in quite as well for her wedding with young Towers as if they had been made expressly for the latter occasion.  For Penny’s complexion had not altered, and blue always became it best."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

February 06, 2021 - February 07, 2021.

...............................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Felix Holt, the Radical. (1866) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Felix Holt, the Radical (1866)

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Felix Holt: The Radical by George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

About changing political panorama of the author's times, compounded by various dissenting offshoots of church. 

................................................................................................

"The poets have told us of a dolorous enchanted forest in the under world. The thorn-bushes there, and the thick-barked stems, have human histories hidden in them; the power of unuttered cries dwells in the passionless-seeming branches, and the red warm blood is darkly feeding the quivering nerves of a sleepless memory that watches through all dreams. These things are a parable."

................................................................................................

" ... An hour seemed to have changed everything for her. A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them. ... "

................................................................................................

"Denner had still strong eyes of that short-sighted kind which sees through the narrowest chink between the eyelashes. The physical contrast between the tall, eagle-faced, dark-eyed lady, and the little peering waiting woman, who had been round-featured and of pale mealy complexion from her youth up, had doubtless had a strong influence in determining Denner's feeling toward her mistress, which was of that worshipful sort paid to a goddess in ages when it was not thought necessary or likely that a goddess should be very moral. There were different orders of beings—so ran Denner's creed—and she belonged to another order than that to which her mistress belonged. She had a mind as sharp as a needle, and would have seen through and through the ridiculous pretensions of a born servant who did not submissively accept the rigid fate which had given her born superiors. She would have called such pretensions the wrigglings of a worm that tried to walk on its tail. There was a tacit understanding that Denner knew all her mistress's secrets, and her speech was plain and unflattering; yet with wonderful subtlety of instinct she never said anything which Mrs. Transome could feel humiliated by, as by familiarity from a servant who knew too much. Denner identified her own dignity with that of her mistress. She was a hard-headed godless little woman, but with a character to be reckoned on as you reckon on the qualities of iron."

................................................................................................

" ... And the church was one of those fine old English structures worth travelling to see, standing in a broad churchyard with a line of solemn yew-trees beside it, and lifting a majestic tower and spire far above the red-and-purple roofs of the town. It was not large enough to hold all the parishioners of a parish which stretched over distant villages and hamlets; but then they were never so unreasonable as to wish to be all in at once, and had never complained that the space of a large side-chapel was taken up by the tombs of the Debarrys, and shut in by a handsome iron screen. For when the black Benedictines ceased to pray and chant in this church, when the Blessed Virgin and St. Gregory were expelled, the Debarrys, as lords of the manor, naturally came next to Providence and took the place of the saints. ... and in no country town of the same small size as Treby was there a larger proportion of families who had handsome sets of china without handles, hereditary punch-bowls, and large silver ladles with a Queen Anne's guinea in the centre. Such people naturally took tea and supped together frequently; and as there was no professional man or tradesman in Treby who was not connected by business, if not by blood, with the farmers of the district, the richer sort of these were much invited, and gave invitations in their turn. They played at whist, ate and drank generously, praised Mr. Pitt and the war as keeping up prices and religion, and were very humorous about each other's property, having much the same coy pleasure in allusions to their secret ability to purchase, as blushing lasses sometimes have in jokes about their secret preferences. The rector was always of the Debarry family, associated only with county people, and was much respected for his affability; a clergyman who would have taken tea with the townspeople would have given a dangerous shock to the mind of a Treby churchman.

"Such was the old-fashioned, grazing, brewing, wool-packing, cheese-loading life of Treby Magna, until there befell new conditions, complicating its relation with the rest of the world, and gradually awakening in it that higher consciousness which is known to bring higher pains. First came the canal; next, the working of the coal-mines at Sproxton, two miles off the town; and thirdly, the discovery of a saline spring, which suggested to a too constructive brain the possibility of turning Treby Magna into a fashionable watering-place. So daring an idea was not originated by a native Trebian, but by a young lawyer who came from a distance, knew the dictionary by heart, and was probably an illegitimate son of somebody or other. The idea, although it promised an increase of wealth to the town, was not well received at first; ladies objected to seeing "objects" drawn about in hand-carriages, the doctor foresaw the advent of unsound practitioners, and most retail tradesmen concurred with him that new doings were usually for the advantage of new people. The more unanswerable reasoners urged that Treby had prospered without baths, and it was yet to be seen how it would prosper with them; while a report that the proposed name for them was Bethesda Spa, threatened to give the whole affair a blasphemous aspect. Even Sir Maximus Debarry, who was to have an unprecedented return for the thousands he would lay out on a pump-room and hotel, regarded the thing as a little too new, and held back for some time. But the persuasive powers of the young lawyer, Mr. Matthew Jermyn, together with the opportune opening of a stone-quarry, triumphed at last; the handsome buildings were erected, an excellent guide-book and descriptive cards, surmounted by vignettes, were printed, and Treby Magna became conscious of certain facts in its own history of which it had previously been in contented ignorance. 

"But it was all in vain. The Spa, for some mysterious reason, did not succeed. Some attributed the failure to the coal-mines and the canal; others to the peace, which had had ruinous effects on the country; and others, who disliked Jermyn, to the original folly of the plan. Among these last was Sir Maximus himself, who never forgave the too persuasive attorney: it was Jermyn's fault not only that a useless hotel had been built, but that he, Sir Maximus, being straitened for money, had at last let the building, with the adjacent land lying on the river, on a long lease, on the supposition that it was to be turned into a tape manufactory—a bitter thing to any gentleman, and especially to the representative of one of the oldest families in England."

" ... and in this way it was that Trebian Dissent gradually altered its character. Formerly it had been of a quiescent, well-to-do kind, represented architecturally by a small, venerable, dark-pewed chapel, built by Presbyterians, but long occupied by a sparse congregation of Independents, who were as little moved by doctrinal zeal as their church-going neighbors, and did not feel themselves deficient in religious liberty, inasmuch as they were not hindered from occasionally slumbering in their pews, and were not obliged to go regularly to the weekly prayer-meeting. But when stone-pits and coal-pits made new hamlets that threatened to spread up to the very town, when the tape-weavers came with their news-reading inspectors and book-keepers, the Independent chapel began to be filled with eager men and women, to whom the exceptional possession of religious truth was the condition which reconciled them to a meagre existence, and made them feel in secure alliance with the unseen but supreme rule of a world in which their own visible part was small. There were Dissenters in Treby now who could not be regarded by the Church people in the light of old neighbors to whom the habit of going to chapel was an innocent, unenviable inheritance along with a particular house and garden, a tan-yard, or a grocery business—Dissenters who, in their turn, without meaning to be in the least abusive, spoke of the high-bred rector as a blind leader of the blind. ... The rector, the Reverend Augustus Debarry, really a fine specimen of the old-fashioned aristocratic clergyman, preaching short sermons, understanding business, and acting liberally about his tithe, had never before found himself in collision with Dissenters; but now he began to feel that these people were a nuisance in the parish, that his brother Sir Maximus must take care lest they should get land to build more chapels, and that it might not have been a bad thing if the law had furnished him as a magistrate with a power of putting a stop to the political sermons of the Independent preacher, which, in their way, were as pernicious sources of intoxication as the beerhouses. The Dissenters, on their side, were not disposed to sacrifice the cause of truth and freedom to a temporizing mildness of language; but they defended themselves from the charge of religious indifference, and solemnly disclaimed any lax expectations that Catholics were likely to be saved—urging, on the contrary, that they were not too hopeful about Protestants who adhered to a bloated and worldly Prelacy. Thus Treby Magna, which had lived quietly through the great earthquakes of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, which had remained unmoved by the "Rights of Man," and saw little in Mr. Cobbett's "Weekly Register" except that he held eccentric views about potatoes, began at last to know the higher pains of a dim political consciousness; and the development had been greatly helped by the recent agitation about the Reform Bill. Tory, Whig, and Radical did not perhaps become clearer in their definition of each other; but the names seemed to acquire so strong a stamp of honor or infamy, that definitions would only have weakened the impression. As to the short and easy method of judging opinions by the personal character of those who held them, it was liable to be much frustrated in Treby. It so happened in that particular town that the Reformers were not all of them large-hearted patriots or ardent lovers of justice; indeed, one of them, in the very midst of the agitation, was detected in using unequal scales—a fact to which many Tories pointed with disgust as showing plainly enough, without further argument, that the cry for a change in the representative system was hollow trickery."

................................................................................................


"For example, it was through these conditions that a young man named Felix Holt made a considerable difference in the life of Harold Transome, though nature and fortune seemed to have done what they could to keep the lots of the two men quite aloof from each other. Felix was heir to nothing better than a quack medicine; his mother lived up a back street in Treby Magna, and her sitting-room was ornamented with her best tea-tray and several framed testimonials to the virtues of Holt's Cathartic Lozenges and Holt's Restorative Elixir. There could hardly have been a lot less like Harold Transome's than this of the quack doctor's son, except in the superficial facts that he called himself a Radical, that he was the only son of his mother, and that he had lately returned to his home with ideas and resolves not a little disturbing to that mother's mind. 

"But Mrs. Holt, unlike Mrs. Transome, was much disposed to reveal her troubles, and was not without a counsellor into whose ear she could pour them. On this second of September, when Mr. Harold Transome had had his first interview with Jermyn, and when the attorney went back to his office with new views of canvassing in his mind, Mrs. Holt had put on her bonnet as early as nine o'clock in the morning, and had gone to see the Reverend Rufus Lyon, minister of the Independent Chapel usually spoken of as "Malthouse Yard.""

................................................................................................

"Hardly any one in Treby who thought at all of Mr. Lyon and his daughter had not felt the same sort of wonder about Esther as Felix felt. She was not much liked by her father's church and congregation. The less serious observed that she had too many airs and graces and held her head much too high; the stricter sort feared greatly that Mr. Lyon had not been sufficiently careful in placing his daughter among God-fearing people, and that, being led astray by the melancholy vanity of giving her exceptional accomplishments, he had sent her to a French school, and allowed her to take situations where she had contracted notions not only above her own rank, but of too worldly a kind to be safe in any rank. But no one knew what sort of woman her mother had been, for Mr. Lyon never spoke of his past domesticities. When he was chosen as pastor at Treby in 1825, it was understood that he had been a widower many years, and he had no companion but the tearful and much-exercised Lyddy, his daughter being still at school. It was only two years ago that Esther had come home to live permanently with her father, and take pupils in the town. Within that time she had excited a passion in two young Dissenting breasts that were clad in the best style of Treby waistcoat—a garment which at that period displayed much design both in the stuff and the wearer; and she had secured an astonished admiration of her cleverness from the girls of various ages who were her pupils; indeed, her knowledge of French was generally held to give a distinction to Treby itself as compared with other market-towns. But she had won little regard of any other kind. Wise Dissenting matrons were divided between fear lest their sons should want to marry her and resentment that she should treat those "undeniable" young men with a distant scorn which was hardly to be tolerated in a minister's daughter; not only because that parentage appeared to entail an obligation to show an exceptional degree of Christian humility, but because, looked at from a secular point of view, a poor minister must be below the substantial householders who keep him. For at that time the preacher who was paid under the Voluntary system was regarded by his flock with feelings not less mixed than the spiritual person who still took his tithe-pig or his modus. His gifts were admired, and tears were shed under best bonnets at his sermons; but the weaker tea was thought good enough for him; and even when he went to preach a charity sermon in a strange town, he was treated with home-made wine and the smaller bedroom. As the good Churchman's reverence was often mixed with growling, and was apt to be given chiefly to an abstract parson who was what a parson ought to be, so the good Dissenter sometimes mixed his approval of ministerial gifts with considerable criticism and cheapening of the human vessel which contained those treasures. Mrs. Muscat and Mrs. Nuttwood applied the principle of Christian equality by remarking that Mr. Lyon had his oddities, and that he ought not to allow his daughter to indulge in such unbecoming expenditure on her gloves, shoes, and hosiery, even if she did pay for them out of her earnings. As for the Church people who engaged Miss Lyon to give lessons in their families, their imaginations were altogether prostrated by the incongruity between accomplishments and Dissent, between weekly prayer-meetings and a conversance with so lively and altogether worldly a language as the French. Esther's own mind was not free from a sense of irreconcilableness between the objects of her taste and the conditions of her lot. She knew that Dissenters were looked down upon by those whom she regarded as the most refined classes; her favorite companions, both in France and at an English school where she had been a junior teacher, had thought it quite ridiculous to have a father who was a Dissenting preacher; and when an ardently admiring school-fellow induced her parents to take Esther as a governess to the younger children, all her native tendencies toward luxury, fastidiousness, and scorn of mock gentility, were strengthened by witnessing the habits of a well-born and wealthy family. Yet the position of servitude was irksome to her, and she was glad at last to live at home with her father, for though, throughout her girlhood, she had wished to avoid this lot, a little experience had taught her to prefer its comparative independence. But she was not contented with her life; she seemed to herself to be surrounded with ignoble, uninteresting conditions, from which there was no issue; for even if she had been unamiable enough to give her father pain deliberately, it would have been no satisfaction to her to go to Treby church, and visibly turn her back on Dissent. It was not religious differences, but social differences, that Esther was concerned about, and her ambitious taste would have been no more gratified in the society of the Waces than in that of the Muscats. ... And she was well satisfied with herself for her fastidious taste, never doubting that hers was the highest standard. She was proud that the best-born and handsomest girls at school had always said that she might be taken for a born lady. Her own pretty instep, clad in a silk stocking, her little heel, just rising from a kid slipper, her irreproachable nails and delicate wrist, were the objects of delighted consciousness to her; and she felt that it was her superiority which made her unable to use without disgust any but the finest cambric handkerchiefs and freshest gloves. Her money all went in the gratification of these nice tastes, and she saved nothing from her earnings. I can not say that she had pangs of conscience on this score; for she felt sure that she was generous: she hated all meanness, would empty her purse impulsively on some sudden appeal to her pity, and if she found out that her father had a want, she would supply it with some pretty device of a surprise. But then the good man so seldom had a want—except the perpetual desire, which she could never gratify, of seeing her under convictions, and fit to become a member of the church."

" ... She knew that her mother was a Frenchwoman, that she had been in want and distress, and that her maiden name was Annette Ledru. Her father had told her no more than this; and once, he had said, "My Esther, until you are a woman, we will only think of your mother: when you are about to be married and leave me, we will speak of her, and I will deliver to you her ring and all that was hers; but, without a great command laid upon me, I cannot pierce my heart by speaking of that which was and is not." Esther had never forgotten these words, and the older she became, the more impossible she felt it that she should urge her father with questions about the past. 

"His inability to speak of that past to her depended on manifold causes. Partly it came from an initial concealment. He had not the courage to tell Esther that he was not really her father: he had not the courage to renounce that hold on her tenderness which the belief in his natural fatherhood must help to give him, or to incur any resentment that her quick spirit might feel at having been brought up under a false supposition. But there were other things yet more difficult for him to be quite open about—deep sorrows of his life as a Christian minister that were hardly to be told to a girl."

................................................................................................

"The news that the rich heir of the Transomes was actually come back, and had been seen at Treby, was carried to some one else who had more reasons for being interested in it than the Reverend Rufus Lyon was yet conscious of having. It was owing to this that at three o'clock, two days afterward, a carriage and pair, with coachman and footman in crimson and drab, passed through the lodge gates at Transome Court. Inside there was a hale, good-natured-looking man of sixty, whose hands rested on a knotted stick held between his knees; and a blue-eyed, well-featured lady, fat and middle-aged—a mountain of satin, lace, and exquisite muslin embroidery."

""She is so thin that she makes me shudder." 

""Pooh! she's slim and active; women are not bid for by the pound." 

""Pray don't be so coarse." 

"Sir Maximus laughed and showed his good teeth, which made his laughter very becoming. The carriage stopped, and they were soon ushered to Mrs. Transome's sitting-room, where she was working at her worsted embroidery. A little daily embroidery had been a constant element in Mrs. Transome's life; but that soothing occupation of taking stitches to produce what neither she nor any one else wanted, was then the resource of many a well-born and unhappy woman. 

"She received much warm congratulation and pressure of her hand with perfect composure of manner; but she became paler than usual, and her hands turned quite cold. The Debarrys did not yet know what Harold's politics were."

................................................................................................

"Perhaps Sir Maximus would not have been so sanguine as to Mr. Christian's economical virtues if he had seen that gentleman relaxing himself the same evening among the other distinguished dependents of the family and frequenters of the steward's room. But a man of Sir Maximus's rank is like those antediluvian animals whom the system of things condemned to carry such a huge bulk that they really could not inspect their bodily appurtenance, and had no conception of their own tails: their parasites doubtless had a merry time of it, and often did extremely well when the high-bred saurian himself was ill at ease. Treby Manor, measured from the front saloon to the remotest shed, was as large as a moderate-sized village, and there were certainly more lights burning in it every evening, more wine, spirits, and ale drunk, more waste and more folly, than could be found in some large villages. There was fast revelry in the steward's room, and slow revelry in the Scotch bailiff's room; short whist, costume, and flirtation in the housekeeper's room, and the same at a lower price in the servants' hall; a select Olympian feast in the private apartment of the cook, who was a much grander person than her ladyship, and wore gold and jewelry to a vast amount of suet; a gambling group in the stables, and the coachman, perhaps the most innocent member of the establishment, tippling in majestic solitude by a fire in the harness-room. For Sir Maximus, as every one said, was a gentleman of the right sort, condescended to no mean enquiries, greeted his head-servants with a "good-evening, gentlemen," when he met them in the park, and only snarled in a subdued way when he looked over the accounts, willing to endure some personal inconvenience in order to keep up the institutions of the country, to maintain his hereditary establishment, and do his duty in that station of life—the station of the long-tailed saurian—to which it had pleased Providence to call him."

................................................................................................

"It took no long time for Harold Transome to discover this state of things, and to see, moreover, that, except on the demesne immediately around the house, the timber had been mismanaged. The woods had been recklessly thinned, and there had been insufficient planting. He had not yet thoroughly investigated the various accounts kept by his mother, by Jermyn, and by Banks the bailiff; but what had been done with the large sums which had been received for timber was a suspicious mystery to him. He observed that the farm held by Jermyn was in first-rate order, that a good deal had been spent on the buildings, and that the rent had stood unpaid. Mrs. Transome had taken an opportunity of saying that Jermyn had had some of the mortgage deeds transferred to him, and that his rent was set against so much interest. Harold had only said, in his careless yet decisive way, "Oh, Jermyn be hanged! It seems to me if Durfey hadn't died and made room for me, Jermyn would have ended by coming to live here, and you would have had to keep the lodge and open the gate for his carriage. But I shall pay him off—mortgages and all—by-and-by. I'll owe him nothing—not even a curse!" Mrs. Transome said no more. Harold did not care to enter fully into the subject with his mother. The fact that she had been active in the management of the estate—had ridden about it continually, had busied herself with accounts, had been head-bailiff of the vacant farms, and had yet allowed things to go wrong—was set down by him simply to the general futility of women's attempts to transact men's business. He did not want to say anything to annoy her: he was only determined to let her understand, as quietly as possible, that she had better cease all interference. 

"Mrs. Transome did understand this; and it was very little that she dared to say on business, though there was a fierce struggle of her anger and pride with a dread which was nevertheless supreme. As to the old tenants, she only observed, on hearing Harold burst forth about their wretched condition, "that with the estate so burdened, the yearly loss by arrears could better be borne than the outlay and sacrifice necessary in order to let the farms anew." 

""I was really capable of calculating, Harold," she ended, with a touch of bitterness. "It seems easy to deal with farmers and their affairs when you only see them in print, I dare say; but it's not quite so easy when you live among them. You have only to look at Sir Maximus's estate: you will see plenty of the same thing. The times have been dreadful and old families like to keep their old tenants. But I dare say that is Toryism." 

""It's a hash of odds and ends, if that is Toryism, my dear mother. However, I wish you had kept three more old tenants; for then I should have had three more fifty-pound voters. And, in a hard run, one may be beaten by a head. But," Harold added, smiling and handing her a ball of worsted which had fallen, "a woman ought to be a Tory, and graceful, and handsome, like you. I should hate a woman who took up my opinions and talked for me. I'm an Oriental, you know. I say, mother, shall we have this room furnished with rose-color? I notice that it suits your bright gray hair." 

"Harold thought it was only natural that his mother should have been in a sort of subjection to Jermyn throughout the awkward circumstances of the family. It was the way of women, and all weak minds, to think that what they had been used to was unalterable, and any quarrel with a man who managed private affairs was necessarily a formidable thing. He himself was proceeding very cautiously, and preferred not even to know too much just at present, lest a certain personal antipathy he was conscious of toward Jermyn, and an occasional liability to exasperation, should get the better of a calm and clear-sighted resolve not to quarrel with the man while he could be of use. Harold would have been disgusted with himself if he had helped to frustrate his own purpose. And his strongest purpose now was to get returned for Parliament, to make a figure there as a Liberal member, and to become on all grounds a personage of weight in North Loamshire."

................................................................................................

" ... Some men's kindness and love-making are more exasperating, more humiliating than others' derision; but the pitiable woman who has once made herself secretly dependent on a man who is beneath her in feeling, must bear that humiliation for fear of worse. Coarse kindness is at least better than coarse anger; and in all private quarrels the duller nature is triumphant by reason of its dullness. Mrs. Transome knew in her inmost soul that those relations which had sealed her lips on Jermyn's conduct in business matters, had been with him a ground for presuming that he should have impunity in any lax dealing into which circumstances had led him. She knew that she herself had endured all the more privation because of his dishonest selfishness. And now, Harold's long-deferred heirship, and his return with startlingly unexpected penetration, activity, and assertion of mastery, had placed them both in the full presence of a difficulty which had been prepared by the years of vague uncertainty as to issues. In this position, with a great dread hanging over her, which Jermyn knew, and ought to have felt that he had caused her, she was inclined to lash him with indignation, to scorch him with the words that were just the fit names for his doings—inclined all the more when he spoke with an insolent blandness, ignoring all that was truly in her heart. But no sooner did the words "You have brought it on me" rise within her than she heard within also the retort, "You brought it on yourself." Not for all the world beside could she bear to hear that retort uttered from without. ..."

"This woman, who loved rule, dared not speak another word of attempted persuasion. They were both silent, taking the nearest way into the sunshine again. There was a half-formed wish in both their minds—even in the mother's—that Harold Transome had never been born."

................................................................................................


" ... Perhaps the most delightful friendships are those in which there is much agreement, much disputation, and yet more personal liking; and the advent of the public-spirited, contradictory, yet affectionate Felix, into Treby life, had made a welcome epoch to the minister. To talk with this young man, who, though hopeful, had a singularity which some might at once have pronounced heresy, but which Mr. Lyon persisted in regarding as orthodoxy "in the making," was like a good bite to strong teeth after a too plentiful allowance of spoon meat. To cultivate his society with a view to checking his erratic tendencies was a laudable purpose; but perhaps if Felix had been rapidly subdued and reduced to conformity, little Mr. Lyon would have found the conversation much flatter. 

"Esther had not seen so much of their new acquaintance as her father had. But she had begun to find him amusing, and also rather irritating to her woman's love of conquest. He always opposed and criticised her; and besides that, he looked at her as if he never saw a single detail about her person—quite as if she were a middle-aged woman in a cap. She did not believe that he had ever admired her hands, or her long neck, or her graceful movements, which had made all the girls at school call her Calypso (doubtless from their familiarity with "Telémaque"). Felix ought properly to have been a little in love with her—never mentioning it, of course, because that would have been disagreeable, and his being a regular lover was out of the question. But it was quite clear that, instead of feeling any disadvantage on his own side, he held himself to be immeasurably her superior: and, what was worse, Esther had a secret consciousness that he was her superior. She was all the more vexed at the suspicion that he thought slightly of her; and wished in her vexation that she could have found more fault with him—that she had not been obliged to admire more and more the varying expressions of his open face and his deliciously good-humored laugh, always loud at a joke against himself. Besides, she could not help having her curiosity roused by the unusual combinations both in his mind and in his outward position, and she had surprised herself as well as her father one day by suddenly starting up and proposing to walk with him when he was going to pay an afternoon visit to Mrs. Holt, to try and soothe her concerning Felix. "What a mother he has!" she said to herself when they came away again; "but, rude and queer as he is, I cannot say there is anything vulgar about him. Yet—I don't know—if I saw him by the side of a finished gentleman." Esther wished that finished gentleman were among her acquaintances: he would certainly admire her, and make her aware of Felix's inferiority."

................................................................................................

" ... Mr. Chubb's reasons for becoming landlord of the Sugar Loaf, were founded on the severest calculation. Having an active mind, and being averse to bodily labor, he had thoroughly considered what calling would yield him the best livelihood with the least possible exertion, and in that sort of line he had seen that a "public" amongst miners who earned high wages was a fine opening. ... He called himself a straight-forward man, and at suitable moments expressed his views freely; in fact, he was known to have one fundamental division for all opinion—"my idee" and "humbug.""

" ... the colliers, of course, had no votes, and did not need political conversion; ... "

" ... If any one had observed that you must draw a line somewhere, Mr. Chubb would have concurred at once, and would have given permission to draw it at a radius of two miles from his own tap."

"We mortals sometimes cut a pitiable figure in our attempts at display. We may be sure of our own merits, yet fatally ignorant of the point of view from which we are regarded by our neighbor. Our fine patterns in tattooing may be far from throwing him into a swoon of admiration, though we turn ourselves all round to show them. Thus it was with Mr. Chubb. 

""Yes," said Felix, dryly; "I should think there are some sorts of work for which you are just fitted.""

"The mounted man of broadcloth had followers: several shabby-looking men, and Sproxton boys of all sizes, whose curiosity had been stimulated by unexpected largesse. A stranger on horseback scattering half-pence on a Sunday was so unprecedented that there was no knowing what he might do next; and the smallest hindmost fellows in sealskin caps were not without hope that an entirely new order of things had set in."

"Mr. Chubb threw open the parlor door, and then stepping back, took the opportunity of saying, in a low tone, to Felix, "Do you know this gentleman?" 

""Not I; no." 

"Mr. Chubb's opinion of Felix Holt sank from that moment. The parlor door was closed, but no one sat down or ordered beer."

""Sit you down here, Mr. Johnson," said Chubb, moving an arm-chair. "This gentleman is kind enough to treat the company," he added, looking round, "and what's more, he'll take a cup with 'em; and I think there's no man but what'll say that's a honor." 

"The company had nothing equivalent to a "hear, hear," at command, but they perhaps felt the more, as they seated themselves with an expectation unvented by utterance. There was a general satisfactory sense that the hitherto shadowy Reform had at length come to Sproxton in a good round shape, with broadcloth and pockets. Felix did not intend to accept the treating, but he chose to stay and hear, taking his pint as usual."

................................................................................................


""Before I oblige you there, sir," he said, laying down the pen, and looking straight at Mr. Lyon, "I must know exactly the reasons you have for putting these questions to me. You are a stranger to me—an excellent person, I dare say—but I have no concern about you farther than to get from you those small articles. Do you still doubt that they are mine? You wished, I think, that I should tell you what the locket is like. It has a pair of hands and blue flowers on one side and the name Annette round the hair on the other side. That is all I have to say. If you wish for anything more from me, you will be good enough to tell me why you wish it. Now then, sir, what is your concern with me?" 

"The cool stare, the hard challenging voice, with which these words were uttered, made them fall like the beating cutting chill of heavy hail on Mr. Lyon. He sank back in his chair in utter irresolution and helplessness. How was it possible to lay bare the sad and sacred past in answer to such a call as this? The dread with which he had thought of this man's coming, the strongly-confirmed suspicion that he was really Annette's husband, intensified the antipathy created by his gestures and glances. The sensitive little minister knew instinctively that words which would cost him efforts as painful as the obedient footsteps of a wounded bleeding hound that wills a foreseen throe, would fall on this man as the pressure of tender fingers falls on a brazen glove. And Esther—if this man was her father, every additional word might help to bring down irrevocable, perhaps cruel consequences on her. A thick mist seemed to have fallen where Mr. Lyon was looking for the track of duty: the difficult question, how far he was to care for consequences in seeking and avowing the truth, seemed anew obscured. All these things, like the vision of a coming calamity, were compressed into a moment of consciousness. Nothing could be done to-day; everything must be deferred. He answered Christian in a low apologetic tone. 

""It is true, sir; you have told me all I can demand. I have no sufficient reason for detaining your property further." 

"He handed the note-book and chain to Christian, who had been observing him narrowly, and now said, in a tone of indifference, as he pocketed the articles— 

""Very good, sir. I wish you a good-morning." 

""Good-morning," said Mr. Lyon, feeling, while the door closed behind his guest, that mixture of uneasiness and relief which all procrastination of difficulty produces in minds capable of strong forecast. The work was still to be done. He had still before him the task of learning everything that could be learned about this man's relation to himself and Esther. 

"Christian, as he made his way back along Malthouse Lane, was thinking, "This old fellow has got some secret in his head. It's not likely he can know anything about me: it must be about Bycliffe. But Bycliffe was a gentleman: how should he ever have had anything to do with such a seedy old ranter as that?""

................................................................................................

"Esther felt a pleasure quite new to her as she saw his finely-embrowned face and full bright eyes turned toward her with an air of deference by which gallantry must commend itself to a refined woman who is not absolutely free from vanity. Harold Transome regarded women as slight things, but he was fond of slight things in the intervals of business; and he held it among the chief arts of life to keep these pleasant diversions within such bounds that they should never interfere with the course of his serious ambition. Esther was perfectly aware, as he took a chair near her, that he was under some admiring surprise at her appearance and manner. How could it be otherwise? She believed that in the eyes of a well-bred man no young lady in Treby could equal her: she felt a glow of delight at the sense that she was being looked at. 

""My father expected you," she said to Mr. Jermyn. "I delivered your letter to him yesterday. He will be down immediately.""

................................................................................................


""Ah! it's a thousand pities you're not on our side, else we might have dined together at the Marquis," said Christian. "Eh, could you manage it?" he added, languidly, knowing there was no chance of a yes. 

""No—much obliged—couldn't leave the leetle boy. Ahi! Arry, Arry, pinch not poor Moro." 

"While Dominic was answering, Christian had stared about him, as his manner was when he was being spoken to, and had had his eyes arrested by Esther, who was leaning forward to look at Mr. Harold Transome's extraordinary little gypsy of a son. But, happening to meet Christian's stare, she felt annoyed, drew back, and turned away her head, coloring. 

""Who are those ladies?" said Christian, in a low tone, to Dominic, as if he had been startled into a sudden wish for this information. 

""They are Meester Jermyn's daughters," said Dominic, who knew nothing either of the lawyer's family or of Esther. 

"Christian looked puzzled a moment or two, and was silent. 

""Oh, well—au revoir," he said, kissing the tips of his fingers as the coachman, having had Jermyn's order, began to urge on the horses. 

""Does he see some likeness in the girl?" thought Jermyn, as he turned away. "I wish I hadn't invited her to come in the carriage, as it happens.""

................................................................................................

""Now, Mr. Harold, I shall shut up this affair in a private drawer till you choose to take any extreme measures which will force me to bring it out. I have the matter entirely in my own power. No one but old Lyon knows about the girl's birth. No one but Scaddon can clench the evidence about Bycliffe, and I've got Scaddon under my thumb. No soul except myself and Johnson, who is a limb of myself, knows that there is one half-dead life which may presently leave the girl a new claim to the Bycliffe heirship. I shall learn through Methurst whether Batt & Cowley knew, through Bycliffe, of this woman having come to England. I shall hold all the threads between my thumb and finger. I can use the evidence or I can nullify it. 

""And so, if Mr. Harold pushes me to extremity, and threatens me with chancery and ruin, I have an opposing threat, which will either save me or turn into a punishment for him.""

"With regard to the Transome affairs, the family had been in pressing need of money, and it had lain with him to get it for them: was it to be expected that he would not consider his own advantage where he had rendered services such as are never fully paid? If it came to a question of right and wrong instead of law, the least justifiable things he had ever done had been done on behalf of the Transomes. It had been a deucedly unpleasant thing for him to get Bycliffe arrested and thrown into prison as Henry Scaddon—perhaps hastening the man's death in that way. But if it had not been done by dint of his (Jermyn's) exertions and tact, he would like to know where the Durfey-Transomes might have been by this time. As for right or wrong, if the truth were known, the very possession of the estate by the Durfey-Transomes was owing to law-tricks that took place nearly a century ago, when the original old Durfey got his base fee. 

"But inward argument of this sort now, as always, was merged in anger, in exasperation, that Harold, precisely Harold Transome, should have turned out to be the probable instrument of a visitation which would be bad luck, not justice; for is there any justice where ninety-nine out of every hundred escape? He felt himself beginning to hate Harold as he had never— 

"Just then Jermyn's third daughter, a tall slim girl, wrapped in a white woollen shawl, which she had hung over her blanket-wise, skipped across the lawn toward the greenhouse to get a flower. Jermyn was startled, and did not identify the figure, or rather he identified it falsely with another tall white-wrapped figure which had sometimes set his heart beating quickly more than thirty years before. For a moment he was fully back in those distant years when he and another bright-eyed person had seen no reason why they should not indulge their passion and their vanity, and determine for themselves how their lives should be made delightful in spite of unalterable external conditions. The reasons had been unfolding themselves gradually ever since through all the years which had converted the handsome, soft-eyed, slim young Jermyn (with a touch of sentiment) into a portly lawyer of sixty, for whom life had resolved itself into the means of keeping up his head among his professional brethren and maintaining an establishment—into a gray-haired husband and father, whose third affectionate and expensive daughter now rapped at the window and called to him, "Papa, papa, get ready for dinner; don't you remember that the Lukyns are coming?""

................................................................................................

"Esther was rather melancholy as she went home, yet happier withal than she had been for many days before. She thought, "I need not mind having shown so much anxiety about his opinion. He is too clear-sighted to mistake our mutual position; he is quite above putting a false interpretation on what I have done. Besides, he had not thought of me at all—I saw that plainly enough. Yet he was very kind. There is something greater and better in him than I had imagined. His behavior to-day—to his mother and me too—I should call it the highest gentlemanliness, only it seems in him to be something deeper. But he has chosen an intolerable life; though I suppose, if I had a mind equal to his, and if he loved me very dearly, I should choose the same life.""

" ... Behind all Esther's thoughts, like an unacknowledged yet constraining presence, there was the sense, that if Felix Holt were to love her, her life would be exalted into something quite new—into a sort of difficult blessedness, such as one may imagine in beings who are conscious of painfully growing into possession of higher powers. 

"It was quite true that Felix had not thought the more of Esther because of that Sunday afternoon's interview which had shaken her mind to the very roots. He had avoided intruding on Mr. Lyon without special reason, because he believed the minister to be preoccupied with some private care. He had thought a great deal of Esther with a mixture of strong disapproval and strong liking, which both together made a feeling the reverse of indifference; but he was not going to let her have any influence on his life. Even if his determination had not been fixed, he would have believed that she would utterly scorn him in any other light than that of an acquaintance, and the emotion she had shown to-day did not change that belief. But he was deeply touched by this manifestation of her better qualities, and felt that there was a new tie of friendship between them. That was the brief history Felix would have given of his relation to Esther. And he was accustomed to observe himself. But very close and diligent looking at living creatures, even through the best microscope, will leave room for new and contradictory discoveries."

................................................................................................


"The rectory was on the other side of the river, close to the church of which it was the fitting companion: a fine old brick-and-stone house, with a great bow-window opening from the library on to the deep-turfed lawn, one fat dog sleeping on the door-stone, another fat dog waddling on the gravel, the autumn leaves duly swept away, the lingering chrysanthemums cherished, tall trees stooping or soaring in the most picturesque variety, and a Virginian creeper turning a little rustic hut into a scarlet pavilion. It was one of those rectories which are among the bulwarks of our venerable institutions—which arrest disintegrating doubt, serve as a double embankment against Popery and Dissent, and rally feminine instinct and affection to reinforce the decisions of masculine thought."

""Let me tell you, Phil, he's a crazy little firefly, that does a great deal of harm in my parish. He inflames the Dissenters' minds on politics. There's no end to the mischief done by these busy, prating men. They make the ignorant multitude the judges of the largest questions, both political and religious, till we shall soon have no institution left that is not on a level with the comprehension of a huckster or a drayman. There can be nothing more retrograde—losing all the results of civilization, all the lessons of Providence—letting the windlass run down after men have been turning at it painfully for generations. If the instructed are not to judge for the uninstructed, why, let us set Dick Stubbs to make our almanacs, and have a President of the Royal Society elected by universal suffrage.""

""Well, I shall cut a still worse figure, and so will you, in the Dissenting magazines and newspapers. It will go the round of the kingdom. There will be a paragraph headed, 'Tory Falsehood and Clerical Cowardice,' or else, 'The Meanness of the Aristocracy and the Incompetence of the Beneficed Clergy.'""
................................................................................................

" ... A panting man thinks of himself as a clever swimmer; but a fish swims much better, and takes his performance as a matter of course."

................................................................................................

"When Christian quitted the Free School with the discovery that the young lady whose appearance had first startled him with an indefinable impression in the market-place was the daughter of the old Dissenting preacher who had shown so much agitated curiosity about his name, he felt very much like an uninitiated chess-player, who sees that the pieces are in a peculiar position on the board, and might open the way for him to give checkmate, if he only knew how. Ever since his interview with Jermyn, his mind had been occupied with the charade it offered to his ingenuity. What was the real meaning of the lawyer's interest in him, and in his relations with Maurice Christian Bycliffe? Here was a secret; and secrets were often a source of profit, of that agreeable kind which involved little labor. Jermyn had hinted at profit which might possibly come through him; but Christian said inwardly, with well-satisfied self-esteem, that he was not so pitiable a nincompoop as to trust Jermyn. On the contrary, the only problem before him was to find out by what combination of independent knowledge he could outwit Jermyn, elude any purchase the attorney had on him through his past history, and get a handsome bonus, by which a somewhat shattered man of pleasure might live well without a master. Christian, having early exhausted the more impulsive delights of life, had become a sober calculator; and he had made up his mind that, for a man who had long ago run through his own money, servitude in a great family was the best kind of retirement after that of a pensioner; but if a better chance offered, a person of talent must not let it slip through his fingers. He held various ends of threads, but there was danger of pulling at them too impatiently. He had not forgotten the surprise which had made him drop the punch-ladle, when Mr. Crowder, talking in the steward's room, had said that a scamp named Henry Scaddon had been concerned in a lawsuit about the Transome estate. Again, Jermyn was the family lawyer of the Transomes; he knew of the exchange of names between Scaddon and Bycliffe; he clearly wanted to know as much as he could about Bycliffe's history. The conclusion was not remote that Bycliffe had had some claim on the Transome property, and that a difficulty had arisen from his being confounded with Henry Scaddon. But hitherto the other incident which had been apparently connected with the interchange of names—Mr. Lyon's demand that he should write down the name Maurice Christian, accompanied with the question whether that were his whole name—had had no visible link with the inferences arrived at through Crowder and Jermyn. 

"The discovery made this morning at the Free School that Esther was the daughter of the Dissenting preacher at last suggested a possible link. Until then, Christian had not known why Esther's face had impressed him so peculiarly; but the minister's chief association for him was with Bycliffe, and that association served as a flash to show him that Esther's features and expression, and still more her bearing, now she stood and walked, revived Bycliffe's image. Daughter? There were various ways of being a daughter. Suppose this were a case of adoption; suppose Bycliffe were known to be dead, or thought to be dead. "Begad, if the old parson had fancied the original father was come to life again, it was enough to frighten him a little. Slow and steady," Christian said to himself; "I'll get some talk with the old man again. He's safe enough: one can handle him without cutting one's self. I'll tell him I knew Bycliffe, and was his fellow-prisoner. I'll worm out the truth about this daughter. Could pretty Annette have married again, and married this little scare-crow? There's no knowing what a woman will not do.""

................................................................................................


""It is such a beautiful day," he said, "it would do you good to go into the air. Let me take you along the river toward Little Treby, will you?" 

""I will put my bonnet on," said Esther, unhesitatingly, though they had never walked out together before. 

"It is true that to get into the fields they had to pass through the street; and when Esther saw some acquaintances, she reflected that her walking alone with Felix might be a subject of remark—all the more because of his cap, patched boots, no cravat, and thick stick. Esther was a little amazed herself at what she had come to. So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and there is no more jumping ashore."

""It was simple enough," continued Felix, as they walked on. "If I meant to put a stop to the sale of those drugs, I must keep my mother, and of course at her age she would not leave the place she had been used to. And I had made up my mind against what they call genteel business." 

""But suppose every one did as you do? Please to forgive me for saying so; but I cannot see why you could not have lived as honorably with some employment that presupposes education and refinement." 

""Because you can't see my history or my nature," said Felix, bluntly. "I have to determine for myself, and not for other men. I don't blame them, or think I am better than they; their circumstances are different. I would never choose to withdraw myself from the labor and common burden of the world; but I do choose to withdraw myself from the push and the scramble for money and position. Any man is at liberty to call me a fool, and say that mankind are benefited by the push and the scramble in the long-run. But I care for the people who live now and will not be living when the long-run comes. As it is, I prefer going shares with the unlucky.""

""I wish I felt more as you do," she said, looking at the point of her foot, which was playing with a tuft of moss. "I can't help caring very much what happens to me. And you seem to care so little about yourself." 

""You are thoroughly mistaken," said Felix. "It is just because I'm a very ambitious fellow, with very hungry passions, wanting a great deal to satisfy me, that I have chosen to give up what people call worldly good. At least that has been one determining reason. It all depends on what a man gets into his consciousness—what life thrusts into his mind, so that it becomes present to him as remorse is present to the guilty, or a mechanical problem to an inventive genius. There are two things I've got present in that way: one of them is the picture of what I should hate to be. I'm determined never to go about making my face simpering or solemn, and telling professional lies for profit; or to get tangled in affairs where I must wink at dishonesty and pocket the proceeds, and justify that knavery as part of a system that I can't alter. If I once went into that sort of struggle for success I should want to win—I should defend the wrong that I had once identified myself with. I should become everything that I see now beforehand to be detestable. And what's more, I should do this, as men are doing it every day, for a ridiculously small prize—perhaps for none at all—perhaps for the sake of two parlors, a rank eligible for the churchwardenship, a discontented wife, and several unhopeful children.""

"Again there was silence. Esther's cheeks were hot in spite of the breeze that sent her hair floating backward. She felt an inward strain, a demand on her to see things in a light that was not easy or soothing. When Felix had asked her to walk he seemed so kind, so alive to what might be her feelings, that she had thought herself nearer to him than she had ever been before; but since they had come out he had appeared to forget all that. And yet she was conscious that this impatience of hers was very petty. Battling in this way with her own little impulses, and looking at the birch-stems opposite till her gaze was too wide for her to see anything distinctly, she was unaware how long they had remained without speaking. She did not know that Felix had changed his attitude a little, and was resting his elbow on the tree-trunk, while he supported his head, which was turned toward her. Suddenly he said, in a lower tone than was habitual to him: 

""You are very beautiful.""

""Would nothing ever make it seem right to you to change your mind?" said Esther (she had rapidly woven some possibilities out of the new uncertainties in her own lot, though she would not for the world have had Felix know of her weaving). "Suppose, by some means or other, a fortune might come to you honorably—by marriage, or in any other unexpected way—would you see no change in your course?" 

""No," said Felix, peremptorily; "I will never be rich. I don't count that as any peculiar virtue. Some men do well to accept riches, but that is not my inward vocation: I have no fellow-feeling with the rich as a class; the habits of their lives are odious to me. Thousands of men have wedded poverty because they expect to go to heaven for it; I don't expect to go to heaven for it, but I wed it because it enables me to do what I most want to do on earth. Whatever the hopes for the world may be—whether great or small—I am a man of this generation; I will try to make life less bitter for a few within my reach. It is held reasonable enough to toil for the fortunes of a family, though it may turn to imbecility in the third generation. I choose a family with more chances in it.""

""A woman can hardly ever choose in that way; she is dependent on what happens to her. She must take meaner things, because only meaner things are within her reach."

""Why, can you imagine yourself choosing hardship as the better lot?" said Felix, looking at her with a sudden question in his eyes. 

""Yes, I can," she said, flushing over neck and brow. 

"Their words were charged with a meaning dependent entirely on the secret consciousness of each. Nothing had been said which was necessarily personal. They walked a few yards along the road by which they had come, without further speech, till Felix said gently, "Take my arm." She took it, and they walked home so, entirely without conversation. Felix was struggling as a firm man struggles with a temptation, seeing beyond it and disbelieving its lying promise. Esther was struggling as a woman struggles with the yearning for some expression of love, and with vexation under that subjection to a yearning which is not likely to be satisfied. Each was conscious of a silence which each was unable to break, till they entered Malthouse Lane, and were within a few yards of the minister's door."

................................................................................................

"Esther had been so long used to hear the formulas of her father's belief without feeling or understanding them, that they had lost all power to touch her. The first religious experience of her life—the first self-questioning, the first voluntary subjection, the first longing to acquire the strength of greater motives and obey the more strenuous rule—had come to her through Felix Holt. No wonder that she felt as if the loss of him were inevitable backsliding. 

"But was it certain that she should lose him? She did not believe that he was really indifferent to her."

................................................................................................


" ... Jermyn was aware of Johnson's weaknesses, and thought he had flattered them sufficiently. But on the point of knowing when we are disagreeable, our human nature is fallible. Our lavender-water, our smiles, our compliments, and other polite falsities, are constantly offensive, when in the very nature of them they can only be meant to attract admiration and regard. Jermyn had often been unconsciously disagreeable to Johnson, over and above the constant offence of being an ostentatious patron. He would never let Johnson dine with his wife and daughters; he would not himself dine at Johnson's house when he was in town. He often did what was equivalent to poohpoohing his conversation by not even appearing to listen, and by suddenly cutting it short with a query on a new subject. Jermyn was able and politic enough to have commanded a great deal of success in his life, but he could not help being handsome, arrogant, fond of being heard, indisposed to any kind of comradeship, amorous and bland toward women, cold and self-contained toward men. You will hear very strong denials that an attorney's being handsome could enter into the dislike he excited; but conversation consists a good deal in the denial of what is true. From the British point of view masculine beauty is regarded very much as it is in the drapery business:—as good solely for the fancy department—for young noblemen, artists, poets, and the clergy. Some one who, like Mr. Lingon, was disposed to revile Jermyn (perhaps it was Sir Maximus), had called him "a cursed, sleek, handsome, long-winded, overbearing sycophant"; epithets which expressed, rather confusedly, the mingled character of the dislike he excited. And serviceable John Johnson, himself sleek, and mindful about his broadcloth and his cambric fronts, had what he considered "spirit" enough within him to feel that dislike of Jermyn gradually gathering force through years of obligation and subjection, till it had become an actuating motive disposed to use an opportunity; if it did not watch for one."

"By such causes it came to pass that Christian held in his hands a bill in which Jermyn was playfully alluded to as Mr. German Cozen, who won games by clever shuffling and odd tricks without any honor, and backed Durfey's crib against Bycliffe—in which it was adroitly implied that the so-called head of the Transomes was only the tail of the Durfeys—and that some said the Durfeys would have died out and left their nest empty if it had not been for their German Cozen."

"Johnson's legal imagination, being very differently furnished from Christian's, was at no loss to conceive conditions under which there might arise a new claim on the Transome estates. He had before him the whole history of the settlement of those estates made a hundred years ago by John Justus Transome, entailing them, whilst in his possession, on his son Thomas and his heirs-male, with remainder to the Bycliffes in fee. He knew that Thomas, son of John Justus, proving a prodigal, had, without the knowledge of his father, the tenant in possession, sold his own and his descendants' rights to a lawyer-cousin named Durfey; that, therefore, the title of the Durfey-Transomes, in spite of that old Durfey's tricks to show the contrary, depended solely on the purchase of the "base fee" thus created by Thomas Transome; and that the Bycliffes were the "remainder men" who might fairly oust the Durfey-Transomes if ever the issue of the prodigal Thomas went clean out of existence, and ceased to represent a right which he had bargained away from them.

"Johnson, as Jermyn's subordinate, had been closely cognizant of the details concerning the suit instituted by successive Bycliffes, of whom Maurice Christian Bycliffe was the last, on the plea that the extinction of Thomas Transome's line had actually come to pass—a weary suit, which had eaten into the fortunes of two families, and had only made the cankerworms fat. The suit had closed with the death of Maurice Christian Bycliffe in prison; but before his death, Jermyn's exertions to get evidence that there was still issue of Thomas Transome's line surviving, as a security of the Durfey title, had issued in the discovery of a Thomas Transome at Littleshaw, in Stonyshire, who was the representative of the pawned inheritance. The death of Maurice had made this discovery useless—had made it seem the wiser part to say nothing about it; and the fact had remained a secret known only to Jermyn and Johnson. No other Bycliffe was known or believed to exist, and the Durfey-Transomes might be considered safe, unless—yes, there was an "unless" which Johnson could conceive: an heir or heiress of the Bycliffes—if such a personage turned out to be in existence—might sometime raise a new and valid claim when once informed that wretched old Tommy Trounsem the bill-sticker, tottering drunkenly on the edge of the grave, was the last issue remaining above-ground from that dissolute Thomas who played his Esau part a century before. While the poor old bill-sticker breathed, the Durfey-Transomes could legally keep their possession in spite of a possible Bycliffe proved real; but not when the parish had buried the bill-sticker.

"Still, it is one thing to conceive conditions, and another to see any chance of proving their existence. Johnson at present had no glimpse of such a chance; and even if he ever gained the glimpse, he was not sure that he should ever make any use of it. His enquiries of Medwin, in obedience to Jermyn's letter, had extracted only a negative as to any information possessed by the lawyers of Bycliffe concerning a marriage, or expectation of offspring on his part. But Johnson felt not the less stung by curiosity to know what Jermyn had found out: that he had found something in relation to a possible Bycliffe, Johnson felt pretty sure. And he thought with satisfaction that Jermyn could not hinder him from knowing what he already knew about Thomas Transome's issue. Many things might occur to alter his policy and give a new value to facts. Was it certain that Jermyn would always be fortunate?"

"But with meaner diplomats, who might be mutually useful, such ignorance is often obstructive. Mr. John Johnson and Mr. Christian, otherwise Mr. Scaddon, might have had a concentration of purpose and an ingenuity of device fitting them to make a figure in the parcelling of Europe, and yet they might never have met, simply because Johnson knew nothing of Christian, and because Christian did not know where to find Johnson."

"Christian and Johnson did meet, however, by means that were quite incalculable. The incident which brought them into communication was due to Felix Holt, who of all men in the world had the least affinity either for the industrious or the idle parasite."

................................................................................................

""Who is this Johnson?" said Christian to a young man who had been standing near him, and had been one of the first to laugh. Christian's curiosity had naturally been awakened by what might prove a golden opportunity. 

""Oh—a London attorney. He acts for Transome. That tremendous fellow at the corner there is some red-hot Radical demagogue, and Johnson has offended him, I suppose; else he wouldn't have turned in that way on a man of their own party." 

""I had heard there was a Johnson who was an understrapper of Jermyn's," said Christian. 

""Well, so this man may have been for what I know. But he's a London man now—a very busy fellow—on his own legs in Bedford Row. Ha, ha! it's capital, though, when these Liberals get a slap in the face from the workingmen they're so very fond of." 

"Another turn along the street enabled Christian to come to a resolution. Having seen Jermyn drive away an hour before, he was in no fear: he walked at once to the Fox and Hounds and asked to speak to Mr. Johnson. A brief interview, in which Christian ascertained that he had before him the Johnson mentioned by the bill-sticker, issued in the appointment of a longer one at a later hour; and before they left Duffield they had come not exactly to a mutual understanding, but to an exchange of information mutually welcome.

"Christian had been very cautious in the commencement, only intimating that he knew something important which some chance hints had induced him to think might be interesting to Mr. Johnson, but that this entirely depended on how far he had a common interest with Mr. Jermyn. Johnson replied that he had much business in which that gentleman was not concerned, but that to a certain extent they had a common interest. Probably then, Christian observed, the affairs of the Transome estate were part of the business in which Mr. Jermyn and Mr. Johnson might be understood to represent each other, in which case he need not detain Mr. Johnson? At this hint Johnson could not conceal that he was becoming eager. He had no idea what Christian's information was, but there were many grounds on which Johnson desired to know as much as he could about the Transome affairs independently of Jermyn. By little and little an understanding was arrived at. Christian told of his interview with Tommy Trounsem, and stated that if Johnson could show him whether the knowledge could have any legal value, he could bring evidence that a legitimate child of Bycliffe's existed: he felt certain of his fact, and of his proof. Johnson explained, that in this case the death of the old bill-sticker would give the child the first valid claim to the Bycliffe heirship; that for his own part he should be glad to further a true claim, but that caution would have to be observed. How did Christian know that Jermyn, was informed on this subject? Christian, more and more convinced that Johnson would be glad to counteract Jermyn at length became explicit about Esther, but still withheld his own real name, and the nature of his relations with Bycliffe. He said he would bring the rest of his information when Mr. Johnson took the case up seriously, and place it in the hands of Bycliffe's old lawyers—of course he would do that? Johnson replied that he would certainly do that; but that there were legal niceties which Mr. Christian was probably not acquainted with; that Esther's claim had not yet accrued, and that hurry was useless. 

"The two men parted, each in distrust of the other, but each well pleased to have learned something. Johnson was not at all sure how he should act, but thought it likely that events would soon guide him. Christian was beginning to meditate a way of securing his own ends without depending in the least on Johnson's procedure. It was enough for him that he was now assured of Esther's legal claim on the Transome estates."

................................................................................................


"A slight drizzling rain which was observed by some Tories who looked out of their bedroom windows before six o'clock, made them hope that, after all, the day might pass off better than alarmists had expected. The rain was felt to be somehow on the side of quiet and Conservatism; but soon the breaking of the clouds and the mild gleams of a December sun brought back previous apprehensions. As there were already precedents for riot at a Reformed election, and as the Trebian district had had its confidence in the natural course of things somewhat shaken by a landed proprietor with an old name offering himself as a Radical candidate, the election had been looked forward to by many with a vague sense that it would be an occasion something like a fighting match, when bad characters would probably assemble, and there might be struggles and alarms for respectable men, which would make it expedient for them to take a little neat brandy as a precaution beforehand and a restorative afterward. The tenants on the Transome estate were comparatively fearless: poor Mr. Goffe, of Rabbit's End, considered that "one thing was as mauling as the other," and that an election was no worse than the sheep-rot; while Mr. Dibbs, taking the more cheerful view of a prosperous man, reflected that if the Radicals were dangerous, it was safer to be on their side. It was the voters for Debarry and Garstin who considered that they alone had the right to regard themselves as targets for evil-minded men; and Mr. Crowder, if he could have got his ideas countenanced, would have recommended a muster of farm-servants with defensive pitchforks on the side of Church and king. But the bolder men were rather gratified by the prospect of being groaned at, so that they might face about and groan in return."

"Thus the way up to the polling-booths was variously lined, and those who walked it, to whatever side they belonged, had the advantage of hearing from the opposite side what were the most marked defects or excesses in their personal appearance; for the Trebians of that day held, without being aware that they had Cicero's authority for it, that the bodily blemishes of an opponent were a legitimate ground for ridicule; but if the voter frustrated wit by being handsome, he was groaned at and satirized according to a formula, in which the adjective was Tory, Whig, or Radical, as the case might be, and the substantive a blank to be filled up after the taste of the speaker."

" ... "Come in and see Mrs. Nolan?" 

""No, no, thankye. Mrs. Rose expects me back. But, as I was saying, I'm a independent man, and I consider it's not my part to show favor to one more than another, but to make things as even as I can. If I'd been a tenant to anybody, well, in course I must have voted for my landlord—that stands to sense. But I wish everybody well; and if one's returned to Parliament more than another, nobody can say it's my doing; for when you can vote for two, you can make things even. So I gave one to Debarry and one to Transome; and I wish Garstin no ill, but I can't help the odd number, and he hangs on to Debarry, they say.""

"At the time that Mr. Timothy Rose left the town, the crowd in King Street and in the market-place, where the polling-booths stood, was fluctuating. Voters as yet were scanty, and brave fellows who had come from any distance this morning, or who had sat up late drinking the night before, required some reinforcement of their strength and spirits. Every public house in Treby, not excepting the venerable and sombre Cross-Keys, was lively with changing and numerous company. Not, of course, that there was any treating: treating necessarily had stopped, from moral scruples, when once "the wits were out;" but there was drinking, which did equally well under any name. 

"Poor Tommy Trounsem, breakfasting here on Falstaff's proportion of bread, and something which, for gentility's sake, I will call sack, was more than usually victorious over the ills of life, and felt himself one of the heroes of the day. He had an immense light-blue cockade in his hat, and an amount of silver in a dirty little canvas bag which astonished himself. For some reason, at first inscrutable to him, he had been paid for his bill-sticking with great liberality at Mr. Jermyn's office, in spite of his having been the victim of a trick by which he had once lost his own bills and pasted up Debarry's; but he soon saw that this was simply a recognition of his merit as "an old family kept out of its rights," and also of his peculiar share in an occasion when the family was to get into Parliament. Under these circumstances, it was due from him that he should show himself prominently where business was going forward, and give additional value by his presence to every vote for Transome. With this view he got a half-pint bottle filled with his peculiar kind of "sack," and hastened back to the market-place, feeling good-natured and patronizing toward all political parties, and only so far partial as his family bound him to be."

................................................................................................

"Felix had been thinking of Esther and her probable alarm at the noises that must have reached her more distinctly than they had reached him, for Malthouse Yard was removed but a little way from the main street. Mr. Lyon was away from home, having been called to preach charity sermons and attend meetings in a distant town; and Esther, with the plaintive Lyddy for her sole companion, was not cheerfully circumstanced. Felix had not been to see her yet since her father's departure, but to-day he gave way to new reasons."

""May I stay here a little while?" he said, after a moment, which seemed long. 

""Pray do," said Esther, coloring. To relieve herself she took some work and bowed her head over her stitching. It was in reality a little heaven to her that Felix was there, but she saw beyond it—saw that by-and-by he would be gone, and that they should be farther on their way, not toward meeting, but parting. His will was impregnable. He was a rock, and she was no more to him than the white clinging mist-cloud."

""I want you to tell me—once—that you know it would be easier to me to give myself up to loving and being loved, as other men do, when they can, than to——" 

"This breaking-off in speech was something quite new in Felix. ... "

""Good-bye," he said, very gently, not daring to put out his hand. But Esther put up hers instead of speaking. He just pressed it and then went away. 

"She heard the doors close behind him, and felt free to be miserable. She cried bitterly. If she might have married Felix Holt, she could have been a good woman. She felt no trust that she could ever be good without him."

................................................................................................


"It was a weary night; and the next day, Felix, whose wound was declared trivial, was lodged in Loamford Jail. There were three charges against him: that he had assaulted a constable, that he had committed manslaughter (Tucker was dead from spinal concussion), and that he had led a riotous onslaught on a dwelling-house."

"That morning Treby town was no longer in terror; but it was in much sadness. Other men, more innocent than the hated Spratt, were groaning under severe bodily injuries. And poor Tucker's corpse was not the only one that had been lifted from the pavement. It is true that none grieved much for the other dead man, unless it be grief to say, "Poor old fellow!" He had been trampled upon, doubtless, where he fell drunkenly, near the entrance of the Seven Stars. This second corpse was old Tommy Trounsem, the bill-sticker—otherwise Thomas Transome, the last of a very old family-line."

................................................................................................

" ... Harold's conscience was active enough to be very unpleasantly affected by what had befallen Felix Holt. His memory, always good, was particularly vivid in its retention of Felix Holt's complaint to him about the treating of the Sproxton men, and of the subsequent irritating scene in Jermyn's office, when the personage with the inauspicious name of Johnson had expounded to him the impossibility of revising an electioneering scheme once begun, and of turning your vehicle back when it had already begun to roll downhill. Remembering Felix Holt's words of indignant warning about hiring men with drink in them to make a noise, Harold could not resist the urgent impression that the offences for which Felix was committed were fatalities, not brought about by any willing co-operation of his with the noisy rioters, but arising probably from some rather ill-judged efforts to counteract their violence. And this urgent impression, which insisted on growing into a conviction, became in one of its phases an uneasy sense that he held evidence which would at once tend to exonerate Felix and to place himself and his agents in anything but a desirable light. It was likely that some one else could give equivalent evidence in favor of Felix—the little talkative Dissenting preacher, for example: but, anyhow, the affair with the Sproxton men would be ripped open and made the worst of by the opposite parties. ... "

" ... Jermyn, with his John Johnson, had added this ugly, dirty business of the Treby election to all the long-accumulating list of offences, which Harold was resolved to visit on him to the utmost. He had seen some handbills carrying the insinuation that there was a discreditable indebtedness to Jermyn on the part of the Transomes. If any such notions existed apart from electioneering slander, there was all the more reason for letting the world see Jermyn severely punished for abusing his power over the family affairs, and tampering with the family property. And the world certainly should see this with as little delay as possible. The cool, confident, assuming fellow should be bled to the last drop in compensation, and all connection with him be finally got rid of. Now that the election was done with, Harold meant to devote himself to private affairs, till everything lay in complete order under his supervision."

"This morning he was seated as usual in his private room, which had now been handsomely fitted up for him. It was but the third morning after the first Christmas he had spent in his English home for fifteen years, and the home looked like an eminently desirable one. The white frost was now lying on the broad lawn, on the many-formed leaves of the evergreens and on the giant trees at a distance. Logs of dry oak blazed on the hearth; the carpet was like warm moss under his feet; he had breakfasted just according to his taste, and he had the interesting occupations of a large proprietor to fill the morning. All through the house now steps were noiseless on carpets or on fine matting; there was warmth in hall and corridors; there were servants enough to do everything, and to do it at the right time. Skilful Dominic was always at hand to meet his master's demands, and his bland presence diffused itself like a smile over the household, infecting the gloomy English mind with the belief that life was easy, and making his real predominance seem as soft and light as a down quilt. Old Mr. Transome had gathered new courage and strength since little Harry and Dominic had come, and since Harold had insisted on his taking drives. Mrs. Transome herself was seen on a fresh background with a gown of rich new stuff. And if, in spite of this, she did not seem happy, Harold either did not observe it, or kindly ignored it as the necessary frailty of elderly women whose lives have had too much of dullness and privation. ... "

"And certainly Transome Court was now such a home as many women would covet. Yet even Harold's own satisfaction in the midst of its elegant comfort needed at present to be sustained by the expectation of gratified resentment. He was obviously less bright and enjoying than usual, and his mother, who watched him closely without daring to ask questions, had gathered hints and drawn inferences enough to make her feel sure that there was some storm gathering between him and Jermyn. She did not dare to ask questions, and yet she had not resisted the temptation to say something bitter about Harold's failure to get returned as a Radical, helping, with feminine self-defeat, to exclude herself more completely from any consultation by him. In this way poor women, whose power lies solely in their influence, make themselves like music out of tune, and only move men to run away."

"When Jermyn entered the room, Harold, who was seated at his library table examining papers, with his back toward the light and his face toward the door, moved his head coldly. Jermyn said an ungracious "Good-morning,"—as little as possible like a salutation to one who might regard himself as a patron. On the attorney's handsome face there was a black cloud of defiant determination slightly startling to Harold, who had expected to feel that the overpowering weight of temper in the interview was on his own side. Nobody was ever prepared beforehand for this expression of Jermyn's face, which seemed as strongly contrasted with the cold impenetrableness which he preserved under the ordinary annoyance of business as with the bland radiance of his lighter moments."

................................................................................................

"But we have seen that the attorney was much too confident in his calculations. And while Harold was being gulled by his subjection to Jermyn's knowledge, independent information was on its way to him. The messenger was Christian, who, after as complete a survey of probabilities as he was capable of, had come to the conclusion that the most profitable investment he could make of his peculiar experience and testimony in relation to Bycliffe and Bycliffe's daughter, was to place them at the disposal of Harold Transome. He was afraid of Jermyn; he utterly distrusted Johnson; but he thought he was secure in relying on Harold Transome's care for his own interest; and he preferred above all issues the prospect of forthwith leaving the country with a sum that at least for a good while would put him at his ease."

................................................................................................


"From the first, after his interview with Jermyn, the recoil of Harold's mind from the idea of strangling a legal right threw him on the alternative of attempting a compromise. Some middle course might be possible, which would be a less evil than a costly lawsuit, or than the total renunciation of the estates. And now he had learned that the new claimant was a woman—a young woman, brought up under circumstances that would make the fourth of the Transome property seem to her an immense fortune. Both the sex and the social condition were of the sort that lies open to many softening influences. And having seen Esther, it was inevitable that, amongst the various issues, agreeable and disagreeable, depicted by Harold's imagination, there should present itself a possibility that would unite the two claims—his own, which he felt to be the rational, and Esther's, which apparently was the legal claim."

"Therefore Harold did not care to be married until or unless some surprising chance presented itself; and now that such a chance had occurred to suggest marriage to him, he would not admit to himself that he contemplated marrying Esther as a plan; he was only obliged to see that such an issue was not inconceivable. He was not going to take any step expressly directed toward that end: what he had made up his mind to, as the course most satisfactory to his nature under present urgencies, was to behave to Esther with a frank gentle manliness, which must win her good will, and incline her to save his family interest as much as possible. He was helped to this determination by the pleasure of frustrating Jermyn's contrivance to shield himself from punishment, and his most distinct and cheering prospect was that within a very short space of time he should not only have effected a satisfactory compromise with Esther, but should have made Jermyn aware by a very disagreeable form of announcement, that Harold Transome was no longer afraid of him. Jermyn should bite the dust."

................................................................................................

" ... An elderly woman, whose beauty, position, and graceful kindness toward herself, made deference to her spontaneous, was a new figure in Esther's experience. Her quick light movement was always ready to anticipate what Mrs. Transome wanted; her bright apprehension and silvery speech were always ready to cap Mrs. Transome's narratives or instructions even about doses and liniments, with some lively commentary. She must have behaved charmingly; for one day when she had tripped across the room to put the screen just in the right place, Mrs. Transome said, taking her hand, "My dear, you make me wish I had a daughter!" 

"That was pleasant; and so it was to be decked by Mrs. Transome's own hands in a set of turquoise ornaments, which became her wonderfully, worn with a white Cashmere dress, which was also insisted on. Esther never reflected that there was a double intention in these pretty ways toward her; with young generosity, she was rather preoccupied by the desire to prove that she herself entertained no low triumph in the fact that she had rights prejudicial to this family whose life she was learning. And besides, through all Mrs. Transome's perfect manners, there pierced some undefinable indications of a hidden anxiety much deeper than anything she could feel about this affair of the estate—to which she often alluded slightly as a reason for informing Esther of something. It was impossible to mistake her for a happy woman; and young speculation is always stirred by discontent for which there is no obvious cause. When we are older, we take the uneasy eyes and the bitter lips more as a matter of course. 

"But Harold Transome was more communicative about recent years than his mother was. He thought it well that Esther should know how the fortune of his family had been drained by law expenses, owing to suits mistakenly urged by her family; he spoke of his mother's lonely life and pinched circumstances, of her lack of comfort in her elder son, and of the habit she had consequently acquired of looking at the gloomy side of things. He hinted that she had been accustomed to dictate, and that, as he had left her when he was a boy, she had perhaps indulged the dream that he would come back a boy. She was still sore on the point of his politics. These things could not be helped, but so far as he could, he wished to make the rest of her life as cheerful as possible. 

"Esther listened eagerly, and took these things to heart. The claim to an inheritance, the sudden discovery of a right to a fortune held by others, was acquiring a very distinct and unexpected meaning for her. Every day she was getting more clearly into her imagination what it would be to abandon her own past, and what she would enter into in exchange for it; what it would be to disturb a long possession, and how difficult it was to fix a point at which the disturbance might begin, so as to be contemplated without pain."

"A woman was likely to be credulous about adoration, and to find no difficulty in referring it to her intrinsic attractions; but Esther was too dangerously quick and critical not to discern the least awkwardness that looked like offering her marriage as a convenient compromise for himself. Beforehand, he might have said that such characteristics as hers were not loveable in a woman; but, as it was, he found that the hope of pleasing her had a piquancy quite new to him."

"Harold, on his side, was conscious that the interest of his wooing was not standing still. He was beginning to think it a conquest, in which it would be disappointing to fail, even if this fair nymph had no claim to the estate. He would have liked—and yet he would not have liked—that just a slight shadow of doubt as to his success should be removed. There was something about Esther that he did not altogether understand. She was clearly a woman that could be governed: she was too charming for him to fear that she would ever be obstinate or interfering. Yet there was a lightning that shot out of her now and then, which seemed the sign of a dangerous judgment; as if she inwardly saw something more admirable than Harold Transome. Now, to be perfectly charming, a woman should not see this."

................................................................................................

"Before the trial commenced, Sir Maximus had naturally been one of those who had observed Esther with curiosity, owing to the report of her inheritance, and her probable marriage to his once welcome but now exasperating neighbor, Harold Transome; and he had made the emphatic comment—"A fine girl! something thoroughbred in the look of her. Too good for a Radical; that's all I have to say." But during the trial Sir Maximus was wrought into a state of sympathetic ardor that needed no fanning. As soon as he could take his brother by the buttonhole, he said— 

""I tell you what, Gus! we must exert ourselves to get a pardon for this young fellow. Confound it! what's the use of mewing him up for four years? Example? Nonsense. Will there be a man knocked down the less for it? That girl made me cry. Depend upon it, whether she's going to marry Transome or not, she's been fond of Holt—in her poverty, you know. She's a modest, brave, beautiful woman. I'd ride a steeple-chase, old as I am, to gratify her feelings. Hang it! the fellow's a good fellow if she thinks so. And he threw out a fine sneer, I thought, at the Radical candidate. Depend upon it, he's a good fellow at bottom.""

"Since Harold would not give Jermyn access to him, that vigorous attorney was resolved to take it. He knew all about the meeting at the White Hart, and he was going thither with the determination of accosting Harold. He thought he knew what he should say, and the tone in which he should say it. It would be a vague intimation, carrying the effect of a threat, which should compel Harold to give him a private interview. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Since she and Felix had kissed each other in the prison, she felt as if she had vowed herself away, as if memory lay on her lips like a seal of possession. Yet what had happened that very evening had strengthened her liking for Harold, and her care for all that regarded him: it had increased her repugnance to turning him out of anything he had expected to be his, or to snatching anything from him on the ground of an arbitrary claim. It had even made her dread, as a coming pain, the task of saying anything to him that was not a promise of the utmost comfort under this newly-disclosed trouble of his."

" ... Harold heard from Esther's lips that she loved some one else, and that she resigned all claim to the Transome estates. She wished to go back to her father."

................................................................................................


"There is a young Felix, who has a great deal more science than his father, but not much more money."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

January 25, 2021 - 

March 15,  2021 - April 01, 2021.

BOSTON 

DE WOLFE, FISKE & COMPANY 

361 and 365 Washington Street

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Spanish Gypsy. (1868) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

In a page or two, one gets a clue; George Eliot sets out to write about a time of great upheavals in life of Europe and of Spain. She begins by painting beautiful portrayal of Spain, and of the struggle between two religions, before she mentions Columbus. Is that what it's about? Doesn't explain the title though. It takes a while, some dozen or so pages, before one begins to guess - when a soldier reports that it isn't his opinion that the duke is marrying beneath him, it's the padre who says she won't confess - it is about inquisition, and a young bride caught between her heritage and the force of church, apart from racism. 

The epic is divided in five books, and the story, the tragedy is not only budding, it's already set, unfolding, by the end of book I. 

Book I is the beautiful introduction- of the story, and before that, of the time and space throat the story is set in; it takes us through the characters, main or others, and having established a love story, reveals a secret, and leaves us at a turn at once filled with suspense, sadness, and also relief. Book II takes it from there, a prior intent on breaking up a marriage and burning the bride alive, if she's found; a bridegroom aware of this, yet intent on defying the prior, finding and marrying her, although subconsciously fearing if the friar is right. 

Book III is, in more than one sense, heart of the story, with surprise twists; the scene of confrontation between the three representing different elements - proud Gypsy chieftain, Spanish nobility, and she who is young womanhood that's love, life and joy, but is asked to sacrifice for her people. 

An interesting detail, is that a poem titled "Roses", included in the Delphi collection of complete works of George Eliot, is an excerpt from Book III.

Book IV brings, not scenes of battle, but aftermath thereof, grief. 

Book V is farewell, almost silent - after words of repentance and forgiveness - that makes one wish the author hadn't ended it thus, that it was turned to an embrace of love and a new life. But the two represent their people, and the author is portraying history through them.  

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Book I. 

Book II 

Book III 

Book IV 

Book V

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Book I

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"’T is the warm South, where Europe spreads her lands 

"Like fretted leaflets, breathing on the deep: 

"Broad-breasted Spain, leaning with equal love 

"(A calm earth-goddess crowned with corn and vines) 

"On the Mid Sea that moans with memories 

"And on the untravelled Ocean whose vast tides 

"Pant dumbly passionate with dreams of youth 

"This river, shadowed by the battlements 

"And gleaming silvery towards the northern sky, 

"Feeds the famed stream that waters 

"Andalus And loiters, amorous of the fragrant air, 

"By Córdova and Seville to the bay 

"Fronting Algarva and the wandering flood 

"Of Guadiana. This deep mountain gorge 

"Slopes widening on the olive-plumed plains 

"Of fair Granáda: one far-stretching arm 

"Points to Elvira, one to eastward heights 

"Of Alpujarras where the new-bathed Day 

"With oriflamme uplifted o’er the peaks 

"Saddens the breasts of northward-looking snows 

"That loved the night, and soared with soaring stars; 

"Flashing the signals of his nearing swiftness 

"From Almeria’s purple-shadowed bay 

"On to the far-off rooks that gaze and glow— 

"On to Alhambra, strong and ruddy heart 

"Of glorious Morisma, gasping now, 

"A maimed giant in his agony. 

"This town that dips its feet within the stream, 

"And seems to sit a tower-crowned Cybele, 

"Spreading her ample robe adown the rocks. 

"Is rich Bedmár: ’t was Moorish long ago, 

"But now the Cross is sparkling on the Mosque, 

"And bells make Catholic the trembling air. 

"The fortress gleams in Spanish sunshine now 

"(’T is south a mile before the rays are Moorish),— 

"Hereditary jewel, agraffe bright 

"On all the many-titled privilege 

"Of young Duke Silva. No Castilian knight 

"That serves Queen Isabel has higher charge; 

"For near this frontier sits the Moorish king,

"Not Boabdil the waverer, who usurps 

"A throne he trembles in, and fawning licks 

"The feet of conquerors, but that fierce lion 

"Grisly El Zagal, who has made his lair 

"In Guadix’ fort, and rushing thence with strength, 

"Half his own fierceness, half the untainted heart 

"Of mountain bands that fight for holiday, 

"Wastes the fair lands that lie by Alcala, 

"Wreathing his horse’s neck with Christian heads."

................................................................................................

"To keep the Christian frontier—such high trust 

"Is young Duke Silva’s; and the time is great. 

"(What times are little? To the sentinel 

"That hour is regal when he mounts on guard)

"The fifteenth century since the Man Divine 

"Taught and was hated in Capernaum 

"Is near its end—is falling as a husk 

"Away from all the fruit its years have ripened. 

"The Moslem faith, now flickering like a torch 

"In a night struggle on this shore of Spain, 

"Glares, a broad column of advancing flame, 

"Along the Danube and the Illyrian shore 

"Far into Italy, where eager monks, 

"Who watch in dreams and dream the while they watch, 

"See Christ grow paler in the baleful light, 

"Crying again the cry of the forsaken. 

"But faith, the stronger for extremity, 

"Becomes prophetic, hears the far-off tread 

"Of western chivalry, sees downward sweep 

"The archangel Michael with the gleaming sword, 

"And listens for the shriek of hurrying fiends 

"Chased from their revels in God’s sanctuary. 

"So trusts the monk, and lifts appealing eyes 

"To the high dome, the Church’s firmament, 

"Where the blue light-pierced curtain, rolled away, 

"Reveals the throne and Him who sits thereon. 

"So trust the men whose best hope for the world 

"Is ever that, the world is near its end: 

"Impatient of the stars that keep their course 

"And make ho pathway for the coming Judge."

................................................................................................

"But other futures stir the world’s great heart 

"Europe is come to her majority, 

"And enters on the vast inheritance 

"Won from the tombs of mighty ancestors, 

"The seeds, the gold, the gems, the silent harps 

"That lay deep buried with the memories 

"Of old renown. No more, as once in sunny Avignon, 

"The poet-scholar spreads the Homeric page, 

"And gazes sadly, like the deaf at song; 

"For now the old epic voices ring again 

"And vibrate with the beat and melody 

"Stirred by the warmth of old Ionian days. 

"The martyred sage, the Attic orator, 

"Immortally incarnate, like the gods, 

"In spiritual bodies, winged words 

"Holding a universe impalpable, 

"Find a new audience. Forevermore, 

"With gander resurrection than was feigned 

Gander seems like a mistake; didn't she mean grander? 

Now, is this racist?

"Of Attila’s fierce Huns, the soul of Greece 

"Conquers the bulk of Persia. 

So it's soul of Greece vs bulk of Persia? George Eliot couldn't imagine Persia had a civilisation, a spirit, a soul? 

Moreover, she's talking about Islamic forces at war against those of europe; but then, it's Arabic, not Persian! For Persian civilisation and culture, population and language suffered atrocious onslaught from Islamic invasion from Arabs, who massacred people and burnt hundreds of thousands of manuscripts; Persian script was lost and population illiterate in a century. 

Which is why India is hated by them - butchering went on for over a millennium, and yet, India's civilisation lives, unlike Persia and Egypt and other lands that were completely converted within a century. 

"The maimed form 

"Of calmly joyous beauty, marble-limbed, 

"Yet breathing with the thought that shaped its lips, 

"Looks mild reproach from out its open grave 

"At creeds of terror; and the vine-wreathed god 

"Fronts the pierced Image with the crown of thorns. 

"The soul of man is widening towards the past: 

"No longer hanging at the breast of life 

"Feeding in blindness to bin parentage,— 

"Quenching all wonder with Omnipotence, 

"Praising a name with indolent piety— 

"He spells the record of his long descent, 

"More largely conscious of the life that was."

................................................................................................

"And from the height that shows where morning shone 

"On far-off summits pale and gloomy now, 

"The horizon widens round him, and the west 

"Looks vast with untracked waves whereon his gaze 

"Follows the flight of the swift-vanished bird 

"That like the sunken sun is mirrored still 

"Upon the yearning soul within the eye."

................................................................................................

"And so in Córdova through patient nights 

"Columbus watches, or he sails in dreams 

"Between the setting stars and finds new day; 

"Then wakes again to the old weary days, 

"Girds on the cord and frock of pale Saint Francis, 

"And like him zealous pleads with foolish men. 

"“I ask but for a million maravedis: 

"Give me three caravels to find a world."

George Eliot here speaks of Columbus asking to win more worlds for the cross. Were they then unaware about his Jewish roots, and his attempting to find India so as to help several hundred Jews to escape the persecution thereby? 

India was, has always been, a refuge from religious persecution that various people experienced elsewhere, with freedom of thought and freedom of worship, and more; until Israel came into being again in 1948, Jews of India, who had been in India for centuries, had had no reason to leave, and many made the choice even then to stay. One of the first acts of the Knesset of Israel was to pass an official resolution thanking India. 

................................................................................................

"The sacred places shall be purged again, 

"The Turk converted, and the Holy Church, 

"Like the mild Virgin with the outspread robe, 

"Shall fold all tongues and nations lovingly 

"But since God works by armies, who shall be 

"The modern Cyrus?"

No purge as such, nor conversion of Turk took place, but Turkey did get carved. George Eliot, however, doesn't see the contradictions there, or did she? When she says "Like the mild Virgin with the outspread robe, Shall fold all tongues and nations lovingly, But since God works by armies" - is she being devout and matter-of-fact, in the way church adherents do when dealing with colonial imperialism or slavery? Or had she discovered her son of God was, in fact, a warrior for freedom of Jews, against Romans? 

................................................................................................

"The silver cross Glitters o’er Malaga and streams dread light 

"On Moslem galleys, turning all their stores 

"From threats to gifts. What Spanish knight is he 

"Who, living now, holds it not shame to live 

"Apart from that hereditary battle 

"Which needs his sword? Castilian gentlemen 

"Choose not their task—they choose to do it well."

It's rare indeed for adherents of church to admit openly that the cross is intended as a threat! 

................................................................................................

"See now with soldiers in his front and rear 

"He winds at evening through the narrow streets 

"That toward the Castle gate climb devious: 

"His charger, of fine Andalusian stock, 

"An Indian beauty black but delicate, 

"Is conscious of the herald trumpet note, 

"The gathering glances, and familiar ways 

"That lead fast homeward: she forgets fatigue, 

"And at the light touch of the master’s spur 

"Thrills with the zeal to bear him royally, 

"Arches her neck and clambers up the stones 

"As if disdainful of the difficult steep.

"Night-black the charger, black the rider’s plume, 

"But all between is bright with morning hues— 

"Seems ivory and gold and deep blue gems, 

"And starry flashing steel and pale vermilion, 

"All set in jasper: on his surcoat white 

"Glitter the sword-belt and the jewelled hilt, 

"Red on the back and breast the holy cross, 

"And ’twixt the helmet and the soft-spun white 

"Thick tawny wavelets like the lion’s mane 

"Turn backward from his brow, pale, wide, erect. 

"Shadowing blue eyes,—blue as the rain-washed sky 

"That braced the early stem of Gothic kings 

"He claims for ancestry. A goodly knight, 

"A noble caballero, broad of chest 

"And long of limb. So much the August sun, 

"Now in the west but shooting half its beams 

"Past a dark rocky profile toward thy plain, 

"At winding opportunities across the slope 

"Makes suddenly luminous for all who see: 

"For women smiling from the terraced roofs; 

"For boys that prone on trucks with head up-propped, 

"Lazy and curious, stare irreverent; 

For men who make obeisance with degrees 

"Of good-will shading towards servility, 

Where good-will ends and secret fear begins 

"And curses, too, low-muttered through the teeth, 

"Explanatory to the God of Shem.

"Five, grouped within a whitened tavern court 

"Of Moorish fashion, where the trellised vines 

"Purpling above their heads make odorous shade, 

"Note through the open door the passers-by, 

"Getting some rills of novelty to speed 

"The lagging stream of talk and help the wine. 

"’T is Christian to drink wine: whoso denies 

"His flesh at bidding save of Holy Church, 

"Let him beware and take to Christian sins 

"Lest he be taxed with Moslem sanctity."

Was it as simple? "’T is Christian to drink wine: whoso denies His flesh at bidding save of Holy Church, Let him beware and take to Christian sins Lest he be taxed with Moslem sanctity."?

................................................................................................

Author describes five men at the tavern, whose conversation carries the tale forward. George Eliot is really good here in that she's writing this epic as play in verse, but the conversation is natural, not stilted, and for this to be achieved when it's not conversation between learned poets, just ordinary men, is no mean feat. 

"Like Juan there, the spare man with the lute, 

"Who makes you dizzy with his rapid tongue, 

"Whirring athwart your mind with comment swift 

"On speech you would have finished by and by, 

"Shooting your bird for you while you are loading, 

"Cheapening your wisdom as a pattern known 

"And spun by any shuttle on demand."

"Most like the Fauns that roamed in days of old 

"About the listening whispering woods, and shared 

"The subtler sense of sylvan ears and eyes 

"Undulled by scheming thought, yet joined the rout 

"Of men and women on the festal days, 

"And played the syrinx too, and knew love’s pains, 

"Turning their anguish into melody. 

"For Juan was a minstrel still, in times 

"When minstrelsy was held a thing outworn. 

"Spirits seem buried and their epitaph 

"Is writ in Latin by severest pens, 

"Yet still they flit above the trodden grave 

"And find new bodies, animating them 

"In quaint and ghostly way with antique souls. 

"So Juan was a troubadour revived, 

"Freshening life’s dusty road with babbling rills 

"Of wit and song, living ’mid harnessed men 

"With limbs ungalled by armour, ready so 

"To soothe them weary, and to cheer them sad. 

"Guest at the board, companion in the camp, 

"A crystal mirror to the life around, 

"Flashing the comment keen of simple fact 

"Defined in words; lending brief lyric voice 

"To grief and sadness; hardly taking note 

"Of difference betwixt his own and others’; 

"But rather singing as a listener 

"To the deep moans, the cries, the wild strong joys 

"Of universal Nature, old yet young. 

"Such Juan, the third talker, shimmering bright 

"As butterfly or bird with quickest life."

................................................................................................

"Host. 

"Best treat your wasp with delicate regard; 

"When the right moment comes say, “By your leave,’ 

"Use your heel—so! and make an end of him. 

"That’s if we talked of wasps; but our young Duke,— 

"Spain holds not a more gallant gentleman. 

"Live, live, Duke Silva! ’T is a rare smile he has, 

"But seldom seen. 

"Juan. 

"A true hidalgo’s smile, 

"That gives much favor, but beseeches none. 

"His smile is sweetened by his gravity: 

"It comes like dawn upon Sierra snows, 

"Seeming more generous for the coldness gone; 

"Breaks from the calm—a sudden opening flower 

"On dark deep waters: one moment shrouded close, 

"A mystic shrine, the next a full-rayed star, 

"Thrilling, pulse-quickening as a living word. 

"I’ll make a song of that. Host. Prithee, not now. 

"You’ll fall to staring like a wooden saint, 

"And wag your head as it were set on wires. 

"Here’s fresh sherbet Sit, be good company. 

"(To Blasco) You are a stranger, sir, and cannot know 

"How our Duke’s nature suits his princely frame. 

"Blasco. 

"Nay, but I marked his spurs—chased cunningly! 

"A duke should know good gold and silver plate; 

"Then he will know the quality of mine. 

"I’ve ware for tables and for altars too, 

"Our Lady in all sizes, crosses, bells: 

"He’ll need such weapons full as much as swords 

"If he would capture any Moorish town. 

"For, let me tell you, when a mosque is cleansed . . . 

"Juan. 

"The demons fly so thick from sound of bells 

"And smell of incense, you may see the air 

"Streaked as with smoke. Why, they are spirits: 

"You may well think how crowded they must be 

"To make a sort of haze."

"Blasco. 

"I knew not that. 

"Still, they’re of smoky nature, demons are; 

"And since you say so—well, it proves the more 

"The need of bells and censers. Ay, your Duke 

"Sat well: a true hidalgo. I can judge— 

"Of harness specially. I saw the camp, 

"The royal camp at Velez Malaga. 

"’T was like the court of heaven,—such liveries! 

"And torches carried by the score at night 

"Before the nobles. Sirs, I made a dish 

"To set an emerald in would fit a crown, 

"For Don Alonzo, lord of Aguilar. 

"Your Duke’s no whit behind him in his mien 

"Or harness either. But you seem to say 

"The people love him not."

"Host. 

"They’ve naught against him. 

"But certain winds will make men’s temper bad. 

"When the Solano blows hot venomed breath, 

"It acts upon men’s knives: steel takes to stabbing 

"Which else, with cooler winds, were honest steel, 

"Cutting but garlick. There’s a wind just now 

"Blows right from Seville—"

"Blasco. 

"Ay, you mean the wind…. 

"Yes, yes, a wind that’s rather hot…."

"Juan. 

"A wind that suits not with oar townsmen’s blood 

"Abram, ’t is said, objected to be scorched, 

"And, as the learned Arabs vouch, he gave 

"The antipathy, in full to Ishmael. 

"’T is true, these patriarchs had their oddities."

This reference to Abraham and Ishmael might be significant, indicating that we are to infer that thereby Arabs have had the secret of keeping cool, which Europe lacks. 

Now cones George Eliot's exposing the attitude of general crass public regarding persecution during inquisition. 

"Blasco. 

"Oddities? I’m of their mind, I know. 

"Though, as to Abraham and Ishmael, 

"I'm an old Christian, and owe naught to them 

"Or any Jew among them. But I know 

"We made a stir in Saragossa—we: 

"The men of Aragon ring hard,—ttrue metal. 

"Sirs, I’m no friend to heresy, but then 

"A Christian’s money is not safe. As how? 

"A lapsing Jew or any heretic 

"May owe me twenty ounces: suddenly 

"He’s prisoned, suffers penalties,—’t is well: 

"If men will not believe, ’t is good to make them, 

"But let the penalties fall on them alone. 

"The Jew is stripped, his goods are confiscate; 

"Now, where, I pray you, go my twenty ounces? 

"God knows, and perhaps the King may, but not I. 

"And more, my son may lose his young wife’s dower 

"Because ’t was promised since her father’s soul 

"Fell to wrong thinking. How was I to know? 

"I could but use my sense and cross myself. 

"Christian is Christian—I give in,—but still 

"Taxing is taxing, though you call it holy. 

"We Saragossans liked not this new tax 

"They call the—nonsense, I’m from Aragon! 

"I speak too bluntly. But, for Holy Church, 

"No man believes more."

There was no sympathy for those persecuted, only an annoyance about not getting ones dues! Hence the power amassed by those who would persecute, torture and kill - no opposition. And heres clearer depiction of the onlookers, not averse to watching such procedures, and asserting their sympathy with the inquisitors. 

"I speak my mind about the penalties, But, look you, 

"I’m against assassination. You know my meaning—

"Master Arbuès, The grand Inquisitor in Aragon. 

"I knew naught,—paid no copper towards the deed. 

"But I was there, at prayers, within the church. 

"How could I help it? Why, the saints were there, 

"And looked straight on above the altars. I . . . . 

"Juan. 

"Looked carefully another way. 

"Blasco. Why, at my beads. 

"’T was after midnight, and the canons all 

"Were chanting matins. I was not in church 

"To gape and stare. I saw the martyr kneel: 

"I never liked the look of him alive,— 

"He was no martyr then. I thought he made 

"An ugly shadow as he crept athwart 

"The bands of light, then passed within the gloom 

"By the broad pillar. ’T was in our great Seo, 

"At Saragossa. The pillars tower so large 

"You cross yourself to see them, lest white 

"Death Should hide behind their dark. 

"And so it was. I looked away again and told my beads 

"Unthinkingly; but still a man has ears; 

"And right across the chanting came a sound 

"As if a tree had crashed above the roar 

"Of some great torrent. So it seemed to me; 

"For when yon listen long and shut your eyes 

"Small sounds get thunderous. And he’d a shell 

"Like any lobster: a good iron suit 

"From top to toe beneath the innocent serge. 

"That made the telltale sound. But then came shrieks. 

"The chanting stopped and tamed to rushing feet, 

"And in the midst lay Master Arbuès, 

"Felled like an ox. ’T was wicked butchery. 

"Some honest men had hoped it would have scared 

"The Inquisition out of Aragon. 

"’T was money thrown away,—I would say, crime,— 

"Clean thrown away. 

"Host. 

"That was a pity now. 

"Next to a missing thrust, what irks me most 

"Is a neat well-aimed stroke that kills your man, 

"Yet ends in mischief,—as in Aragon. 

"It was a lesson to our people here. 

"Else there’s a monk within our city walls, 

"A holy, high-born, stern Dominican, 

"They might have made the great mistake to kill. 

"Blasco. 

"What! Is he?…. 

"Host. 

"Yes; a Master Arbuès Of finer quality. 

"The Prior here And uncle to our Duke. 

"Blasco. 

"He will want plate: A holy pillar or a crucifix. 

"But, did you say, he was like Arbuès? 

"Juan. 

"As a black eagle with gold beak and claws 

"Is like a raven. Even in his cowl, 

"Covered from head to foot, the Prior is known 

"From all the black herd round. When he uncovers 

"And stands white-frocked, with ivory face, his eyes 

"Black-gleaming, black his crown of hair 

"Like shredded jasper, he seems less a man 

"With struggling aims than pure incarnate 

"Will, Fit to subdue rebellious nations, nay, 

"That human flesh he breathes in, charged with passion 

"Which quivers in his nostril and his lip, 

"But disciplined by long in-dwelling will 

"To silent labor in the yoke of law. 

"A truce to thy comparisons, Lorenzo! 

"Thine is no subtle nose for difference; 

"’T is dulled by feigning and civility."

................................................................................................

Blasco clarifies further, in case someone didn't get it. 

"Look you, I’m dutiful, obey the Church 

"When there’s no help for it: I mean to say, 

"When Pope and Bishop and all customers 

"Order alike. But there be bishops now, 

"And were aforetime, who have held it wrong, 

"This hurry to convert the Jews. As, how? 

"Your Jew pays tribute to the bishop, say. 

"That’s good, and must please God, to see the Church 

"Maintained in ways that ease the Christian’s purse. 

"Convert the Jew, and where’s the tribute, pray? 

"He lapses, too: ’t is slippery work, conversion: 

"And then the holy taxing carries off 

"His money at one sweep. No tribute more! 

"He’s penitent or burnt, and there’s an end. 

"Now guess which pleases God…. 

"Juan. 

"Whether he likes 

"A well-burnt Jew or well-fed bishop best. 

"[While Juan put this problem theologic 

"Entered, with resonant step, another, guest,— 

"A soldier: all his keenness in his sword, 

"His eloquence in scars upon his cheek, 

"His virtue in much slaying of the Moor: 

"With brow well-creased in horizontal folds 

"To save the space, as having naught to do: 

"Lips prone to whistle whisperingly,—no tune, 

"But trotting rhythm: meditative eyes, 

"Most often fixed upon his legs and spurs: 

"Invited much and held good company: 

"Styled Captain Lopez.]"

"Lopez. 

"’T is bad. We make no sally: 

"We sit still here and wait whate’er the 

"Moor Shall please to do. 

"Host. 

"Some townsmen will be glad. 

"Lopez. 

"Glad, will they be? But I’m not glad, not I, 

"Nor any Spanish soldier of clean blood. 

"But the Duke’s wisdom is to wait a siege 

"Instead of laying one. Therefore—meantime— 

"He will be married straightway."

....

"Some say, ’t was letters’ changed the Duke’s intent: 

"From Malaga, says Blas. From Rome, says Quintin. 

"From spies at Guadix, says Sebastian. 

"Some say, ’t is all a pretext,—say, the 

"Duke Is but a lapdog hanging on a skirt, 

"Turning his eyeballs upward like a monk: 

"’T was Don Diego said that,—so says Blas; 

"Last week, he said…."

"Juan. 

"O do without the “said”! 

"Open thy mouth and pause in lieu of it. 

"1 had as lief be pelted with a pea 

"Irregularly in the selfsame spot 

"As hear such iteration without rule, 

"Such torture of uncertain certainty. 

"Lopez. 

"Santiago! Juan, thou art hard to please. 

"I speak not for my own delighting, I. 

"I can be silent, I. 

"Blasco. 

"Nay, sir, speak on! 

"I like your matter well; I deal in plate. 

"This wedding touches me. Who is the bride? 

And here's a fine distinction of who's the real knight, of mind and heart and spirit. 

"Lopez. 

"One that some say the Duke does ill to wed; 

"One that his mother reared—God rest her soul!— 

"Duchess Diana,—she who died last year. 

"A bird picked up away from any nest. 

"Her name—the Duchess gave it—is Fedalma. 

"No harm in that. But the Duke stoops, they say, 

"In wedding her. And that’s the simple truth. 

"Juan. 

"Thy simple truth is but a false opinion: 

"The simple truth of asses who believe 

"Their thistle is the very best of food. 

"Fie, Lopez, thou a Spaniard with a sword 

"Dreamest a Spanish noble ever stoops 

"By doing honour to the maid he loves! 

"He stoops alone when he dishonors her. 

"Lopez. 

"Nay, I said naught against her. 

"Juan. 

"Better not. 

"Else I would challenge thee to fight with wits, 

"And spear thee through and through ere thou couldst draw 

"The bluntest word. Yes, yes, consult thy spurs: 

"Spurs are a sign of knighthood, and should tell thee 

"That knightly love is blent with reverence 

"As heavenly air is blent with heavenly blue, 

"Don Silva’s heart beats to a loyal tune; 

"He wills no highest-born Castilian dame, 

"Betrothed to highest noble, should be held 

"More sacred than Fedalma. He enshrines 

"Her virgin image for the general worship 

"And for his own,—will guard her from the world, 

"Nay, his profaner self, lest he should lose, 

"The place of his religion. He does well. 

"Naught can come closer to the poet’s strain."

Ah, here's a clue to the heart of the epic poem. 

"Lopez. 

"By making ditties, singing with round mouth 

"Likest a crowing cock? Thou meanest that? 

"Juan. 

"Lopez, take physic, thou art getting ill, 

"Growing descriptive; ’t is unnatural. 

"I mean, Don Silva’s love expects reward, 

"Kneels with a heaven to come; but the poor poet 

"Worships without reward, nor hopes to find 

"A heaven save in his worship. He adores 

"The sweetest woman for her sweetness’ sake, 

"Joys in the love that was not born for him, 

"Because ’t is lovingness, as beggars joy, 

"Warming their naked limbs on wayside walls, 

"To hear a tale of princes and their glory. 

"There’s a poor poet (poor, I mean, in coin) 

"Worships Fedalma with so true a love 

"That if her silken robe were changed for rags, 

"And she were driven out to stony wilds 

"Barefoot, a scorned wanderer, he would kiss 

"Her ragged garment’s edge, and only ask 

"For leave to be her slave. Digest that, friend, 

"Or let it lie upon thee as a weight 

"To check light thinking of Fedalma."

"Lopez. 

"I? I think no harm of her; I thank the saints 

"I wear a sword and peddle not in thinking. 

"’T is Father Marcos says she’ll not confess 

"And loves not holy water; says her blood 

"Is infidel; says the Duke’s wedding her 

Is union of light with darkness."

Oh, one hears distinct thunder of a tragedy coming on! And here it comes. 

"Host. 

"I’ll get this juggler, if he quits him well, 

"An audience here as choice as can be lured. 

"For me, when a poor devil does his best, 

"’T is my delight to soothe his soul with praise. 

"What though the best be bad? remains the good 

"Of throwing food to a lean hungry dog. 

"I’d give up the best jugglery in life 

"To see a miserable juggler pleased. 

"But that’s my humour. Crowds are malcontent, 

"And cruel as the Holy…. Shall we go? 

"All of us now together? 

"Lopez. 

"Well, not I. 

"I may be there anon, but first I go 

"To the lower prison. There is strict command 

"That all our gypsy prisoners shall to-night 

"Be lodged within the fort. They’ve forged enough 

"Of balls and bullets,—used up all the metal. 

"At morn to-morrow they must carry stones 

"Up the south tower. ’T is a fine stalwart band, 

"Fit for the hardest tasks. Some say, the queen 

"Would have the Gypsies banished with the Jews. 

"Some say, ’t were better harness them for work. 

"They’d feed on any filth and save the Spaniard. 

"Some say—but I must go. ’T will soon be time 

"To head the escort. We shall meet again."

................................................................................................

One can see the roots of final solution and the crass argument - in the dialogues of the plate trader - against it, here. 

Where did George Eliot get it all ? Was this argued in England too in her time? Or is it historic and she read most of it? 

"Blasco. 

"Go sir, with God (exit Lopez). 

"A very popular man, And soldierly. 

"But, for this banishment 

"Some men are hot on, it ill pleases me. 

"The Jews, now (sirs, if any Christian here 

"Had Jews, for ancestors, I blame him not; 

"We cannot all be Goths of Aragon),— 

"Jews are not fit heaven, but on earth 

"They are most useful. ’T is the same with mules, 

"Horses, or oxen, or with any pig 

"Except Saint Anthony’s. They are useful here 

"(The Jews, I mean) though they may go to hell. 

"And, look you, useful sins,—why Providence 

"Sends Jews to do ‘em, saving Christian souls. 

"The very Gypsies, curbed and harnessed well, 

"Would make draught cattle, feed on vermin too, 

"Cost less than grazing brutes, and turn bad food 

"To handsome carcasses; sweat at the forge 

"For little wages, and well drilled and flogged 

"Might work like slaves, some Spaniards looking on. 

"I deal in plate, and am no priest to say 

"What God may mean, save when he means plain sense; 

"But when he sent the Gypsies wandering 

"In punishment because they sheltered not 

"Our Lady and Saint Joseph (and no doubt 

"Stole the small ass they fled with into Egypt), 

"Why send them here? ’T is plain he saw the use 

"They’d be to Spaniards. Shall we banish them, 

"And tell God we know better? ’T is a sin. 

"They talk of vermin; but, sirs, vermin large 

"Were made to eat the small, or else to eat 

"The noxious rubbish, and picked Gypsy men 

"Might serve in war to climb, be killed, and fall, 

"To make an easy ladder. Once I saw 

"A Gypsy sorcerer, at a spring and grasp 

"Kill one who came to seize him: talk of strength! 

"Nay, Swiftness too, for while we crossed ourselves 

"He vanished like,—say, like .. 

"Juan. 

"A swift black snake, Or like a living arrow fledged with will. 

"Blasco. 

"Why, did you see him, pray? 

"Juan. 

"Not then, but now, 

"As painters see the many in the one. 

"We have a Gypsy in Bedmár whose frame 

"Nature compacted with such fine selection, 

"’T would yield a dozen types: all Spanish knights, 

"From him who slew Rolando at the pass 

"Up to the mighty Cid; all deities, 

"Thronging Olympus in fine attitudes; 

"Or all hell’s heroes whom the poet saw 

"Tremble like lions, writhe like demigods. 

"Host. 

"Pause not yet, Juan,—more hyperbole! 

"Shoot upward still and flare -in meteors 

"Before thou sink to earth in dull brown fact. 

"Blasco. 

"Nay, give me fact, high shooting suits not me. 

"I never stare to look for soaring larks. What is this Gypsy? 

"Host. 

"Chieftain of a band, 

"The Moor’s allies, whom full a month ago, 

"Our Duke surprised and brought as captives home. 

"He needed smiths, and doubtless the brave Moor 

"Has missed some useful scouts and archers too. 

"Juan’s fantastic pleasure is to watch 

"These Gypsies forging, and to hold discourse 

"With this great chief, whom he transforms at will 

"To sage or warrior, and like the sun 

"Plays daily at fallacious alchemy, 

"Turns sand to gold and dewy spider-webs 

"To myriad rainbows. Still the sand is sand, 

"And still in sober shade you see the web. 

"’T is so, I’ll wager, with his Gypsy chief,— 

"A piece of stalwart cunning, nothing more."

................................................................................................

Is this the explanation of the title?

"Juan. 

"No! My invention had been all too poor 

"To frame this Zarca as I saw him first. 

"’T was when they stripped him. In his chieftain’s gear, 

"Amidst his men he seemed a royal barb 

"Followed by. Wild-maned Andalusion colts. 

"He had a necklace of a strange device 

"In finest gold of unknown workmanship, 

"But delicate as Moorish, fit to kiss 

"Fedalma’s neck, and play in shadows there. 

"He wore fine mail, a rich-wrought sword and belt, 

"And on surcoat black a broidered torch, 

"A pine-branch flaming, grasped by two dark hands. 

"But when they stripped him of his ornaments 

"It was the bawbles lost their grace, not he. 

"His eyes, his mouth, his nostril, all inspired 

"With scorn that mastered utterance of scorn, 

"With power to check all rage until it turned 

"To ordered force, unleashed on chosen prey,— 

"It seemed the soul within him made his limbs 

"And made them grand. The bawbles were well gone. 

"He stood the more a king, when bared to man."

"Blasco. 

"Maybe. But nakedness is bad for trade, 

"And is not decent. Well-wrought metal, sir, 

"Is not a bawble. Had you seen the camp, 

"The royal camp at Velez Malaga, 

"Ponce de Leon and the other dukes. 

"The king himself and all his thousand knights 

"For body-guard, ’t would not have left you breath 

"To praise a Gypsy thus. A man’s a man; 

"But when you see a king, you see the work 

"Of many, thousand men. King Ferdinand 

"Bears a fine presence, and hath proper limbs; 

"But what though he were shrunken as a relic? 

"You’d see the gold and gems that cased him o’er, 

"And all the pages round him in brocade, 

"And all the lords, themselves a sort of kings, 

"Doing him reverence. That strikes an awe 

"Into a common man,—especially A judge of plate. 

"Host. 

"Faith very wisely said. 

"Purge thy speech, Juan. It is over-full 

"Of this same Gypsy. Praise the Catholic King. 

"And come now, let us see the juggler’s skill."

................................................................................................

"’T is daylight still, but now the golden cross 

"Uplifted by the angel on the dome 

"Stands rayless in calm color clear-defined 

"Against the northern blue; from turrets high 

"The flitting splendor sinks with folded wing 

"Dark-hid till morning, and the battlements 

"Wear soft relenting whiteness mellowed o’er 

"By summers generous and winters bland. 

"Now in the east the distance casts its veil, 

"And gazes with a deepening earnestness. 

"The old rain-fretted mountains in their robes 

"Of shadow-broken gray; the rounded hills 

"Reddened with blood of Titans, whose huge limbs 

"Entombed within, feed full the hardy flesh 

"Of cactus1 green and blue, broad-sworded aloes; 

"The cypress soaring black above the lines 

"Of white court-walls; the jointed sugar-canes 

"Pale-golden with their feathers motionless 

"In the warm quiet;—all thought-teaching form 

"Utters itself in firm unshimmering hues. 

"For the great rock has screened the westering sun 

"That still on plains beyond streams vaporous gold 

"Among their branches; and within Bedmár 

"Has come the time of sweet serenity 

"When colour glows unglittering, and the soul 

"Of visible things shows silent happiness, 

"As that of lovers trusting though apart. 

"The ripe-cheeked fruits, the crimson-petalled flowers; 

"The winged life that pausing seems a gem 

"Cunningly carven on the dark green leaf;"

....

"The Plaça widens in the passive air,— 

"The Plaça Santiago, where the church, 

"A mosque converted, shows an eyeless face 

"Red-checkered, faded, doing penance still,— 

"Bearing with Moorish arch the imaged saint, 

"Apostle, baron, Spanish warrior, 

"Whose charger’s hoofs trample the turbaned dead, 

"Whose banner with the Cross, the bloody sword, 

"Flashes athwart the Moslem’s glazing eye, 

"And mocks his trust in Allah who forsakes."

....

"Maids with arched eyebrows, delicate-pencilled, dark, 

"Fold their round arms below the kerchief full; 

"Men shoulder little girls; and grandames gray, 

"But muscular still, hold babies on their arms; 

"While mothers keep the stout-legged boys in front 

"Against their skirts, as the Greek pictures old 

"Show the Chief Mother with the Boy divine. 

"Youths keep the places for themselves, and roll 

"Large lazy eyes, and call recumbent dogs 

"(For reasons deep below the reach of thought). 

"The old men cough with purpose, wish to hint 

"Wisdom within that cheapens jugglery, 

"Maintain a neutral air, and knit their brows 

"In observation. None are quarrelsome, 

"Noisy, or very merry; for their blood 

"Moves, slowly into fervor,—they rejoice 

"Like those dark birds that sweep with heavy wing, 

"Cheering their mates with melancholy cries."

....

"Lorenzo knits the crowd 

"Into one family by showing all 

"Good-will and recognition. Juan casts 

"His large and rapid-measuring glance around; 

"But—with faint quivering, transient as a breath 

"Shaking a flame—his eyes make sudden pause 

"Where by the jutting angle of a street 

"Castle-ward leading, stands a female form, 

"A kerchief pale square-drooping o’er the brow, 

"About her shoulders dim brown serge,—in garb 

"Most like a peasant woman from the vale, 

"Who might have lingered after marketing 

"To see the show. What thrill mysterious, 

"Ray-borne from orb to orb of conscious eyes, 

"The swift observing sweep of Juan’s glance 

"Arrests an instant, then with prompting fresh 

"Diverts it lastingly? He turns at once 

"To watch the gilded balls, and nod and smile 

"At little round Pepíta, blondest maid 

"In all Bedmár,—Pepíta, fair yet flecked, 

"Saucy of lip and nose, of hair as red 

"As breasts of robins stepping on the snow,— 

"Who stands in front with little tapping feet, 

"And baby-dimpled hands that hide enclosed 

"Those sleeping crickets, the dark castanets."

....

"The long notes linger on the trembling air, 

"With subtle penetration enter all 

"The myriad corridors of the passionate soul, 

"Message-like spread, and answering action rouse. 

"Not angular jigs that warm the chilly limbs 

"In hoary northern mists, but action curved 

"To soft andante strains pitched plaintively."

"Vibrations sympathetic stir all limbs: 

"Old men live backward in their dancing prime, 

"And move in memory; small legs and arms 

"With pleasant agitation purposeless 

"Go up and down like pretty fruits in gales. 

"All long in common for the expressive act 

"Yet wait for it; as in the olden time 

"Men waited for the bard to tell their thought. 

"“The dance! the dance!” is shouted all around. 

"Now Pablo lifts the bow, Pepíta now, 

"Ready as bird that sees the sprinkled corn, 

"When Juan nods and smiles, puts forth her foot 

"And lifted her arm to wake the castanets. 

"Juan advances, too, from out the ring 

"And bends to quit his lute; for now the scene 

"Is empty; Roldan, weary, gathers pence, 

"Followed by Annibal with purse and stick. 

"The carpet lies a colored isle untrod, 

"Inviting feet: “The dance, the dance,” resounds, 

"The bow entreats with slow melodic strain, 

"And all the air with expectation yearns. 

"Sudden, with gliding motion like a flame 

"That through dim vapor makes a path of glory, 

"A figure lithe, all white and saffron-robed, 

"Flashed right across the circle, and now stood 

"With ripened arms uplift and regal head, 

"Like some tall flower whose dark and intense heart 

"Lies half within a tulip-tinted cup. 

"Juan stood fixed and pale; Pepíta stepped 

"Backward within the ring: the voices fell 

"From shouts insistent to more passive tones 

"Half meaning welcome, half astonishment. 

"“Lady Fedalma!—will she dance for us?”"

................................................................................................

"The exquisite hour, the ardor of the crowd, 

"The strains more plenteous, and the gathering might 

"Of action passionate where no effort is, 

"But self’s poor gates open to rushing power 

"That blends the inward ebb and outward vast,— 

"All gathering influences culminate 

"And urge Fedalma. Earth and heaven seem one,"

................................................................................................

"But sudden, at one point, the exultant throng 

"Is pushed and hustled, and then thrust apart: 

"Something approaches,—something cuts the ring 

"Of jubilant idlers,—startling as a streak 

"From alien wounds across the blooming flesh 

"Of careless sporting childhood, 

"’T is the band Of Gypsy prisoners. Soldiers lead the van 

"And make sparse flanking guard, aloof surveyed 

"By gallant Lopez, stringent in command. 

"The Gypsies chained in couples, all save one, 

"Walk in dark file with grand bare legs and arms 

"And savage melancholy in their eyes 

"That star-like gleam from out black clouds of hair; 

"Now they are full in sight, now stretch 

"Right to the centre of the open space. 

"Fedalma now, with gentle wheeling sweep 

"Returning, like the loveliest of the Hours 

"Strayed from her sisters, truant lingering, 

"Faces again the centre, swings again 

"The uplifted tambourine…. When lo! with sound 

"Stupendous throbbing, solemn as a voice 

"Sent by the invisible choir of all the dead, 

"Tolls the great passing bell that calls to prayer 

"For souls departed: at the mighty beat 

"It seems the light sinks awe-struck,—’t is the note 

"Of the sun’s burial; speech and action pause;"

....

"The soldiers pray; the Gypsies stand unmoved 

"As pagan statues with proud level gaze. 

"But he who wears a solitary chain 

"Heading the file, has turned to face Fedalma. 

"She motionless, with arm uplifted, guards 

"The tambourine aloft (lest, sudden-lowered, 

"Its trivial jingle mar the duteous pause),"

"Reveres the general prayer, but prays not, stands 

"With level glance meeting that Gypsy’s eyes, 

"That seem to her the sadness of the world 

"Rebuking her, the great bell’s hidden thought 

"Now first unveiled,—the sorrows unredeemed 

"Of races outcast, scorned, and wandering.

"Why does he look at her? why she at him? 

"As if the meeting light between their eyes 

"Made permanent union? Hist deep-knit brow, 

"Inflated nostril, scornful lip compressed, 

"Seem a dark hieroglyph of coming fate 

"Written before her. Father Isidor 

"Had terrible eyes and was her enemy; 

"She knew it and defied him; all her soul 

"Rounded and hardened in its separateness 

"When they encountered. But this prisoner,— 

"This Gypsy, passing, gazing casually,— 

"Was he her enemy too? She stood all quelled, 

"The impetuous joy that hurried in her veins 

"Seemed backward rushing turned to chillest awe, 

"Uneasy wonder, and a vague self-doubt. 

"The minute brief stretched measureless, dream-filled 

"By a dilated new-fraught consciousness. 

"Now it was gone; the pious murmur ceased, 

"The Gypsy band moved onward at command 

"And careless noises blent confusedly. 

"But the ring closed again, and many ears 

"Waited for Pablo’s music, many eyes 

"Turned towards the carpet: it lay bare and dim, 

"Twilight was there,—the bright Fedalma gone."

................................................................................................

The priest here plays almost exactly the role of the villain in Othello, except for the Frank arrogance that differed from the play character, and the open attempt to terrorise the knight. 

"Don Silva. 

"Perhaps. I seek to justify my public acts 

"And not my private joy. Before the world 

"Enough if I am faithful in command, 

"Betray not by my deeds, swerve from no task 

"My knightly vows constrain me to: herein 

"I ask all men to test me. 

"Prior. 

"Knightly vows? 

"Is it by their constraint that you must marry? 

"Don Silva. 

"Marriage is not a breach of them. 

"I use A sanctioned liberty…. your pardon, father, 

"I need not teach you what the Church decrees. 

"But facts may weaken texts, and so dry up 

"The fount of eloquence. The Church relaxed 

"Our Order’s rule before I took the vows.

"Prior. 

"Ignoble liberty! you snatch your rule 

"From what God tolerates, not what he loves?— 

"Inquire what lowest offering may suffice, 

"Cheapen it meanly to an obolus, 

"Then buy and count the coin left in your purse 

"For your debauch?—Measure obedience 

"By scantest powers of feeble brethren 

"Whom Holy Church indulges?—Ask great Law, 

"The rightful Sovereign of the human soul, 

"For what it pardons, not what it commands? 

"O fallen knighthood, penitent of high vows, 

"Asking a charter to degrade itself! 

"Such poor apology of rules relaxed 

"Blunts not suspicion of that doubleness 

"Your enemies tax you with."

"Don Silva. 

"Pause there! Leave unsaid 

"Aught that will match that text. 

"More were too much, 

"Even from holy lips. I own no love 

"But such as guards my honor, since it guards 

"Hers whom I love! I suffer no foul words 

"To stain the gift I lay before her feet; 

"And, being hers, my honor is more safe."

"Prior. 

"Verse-makers’ talk! fit for a world of rhymes, 

"Where facts are feigned to tickle idle ears, 

"Where good and evil play at tournament 

"And end in amity,—a world of lies,— 

"A carnival of words where every year 

"Stale falsehoods serve fresh men. Your honor safe? 

"What honor has a man with double bonds? 

"Honor is shifting as the shadows are 

"To souls that turn their passions into laws. 

"A Christian knight who weds an infidel…. 

"Don Silva 

"(fiercely). An Infidel! 

Prior. 

"May one day spurn the Cross, 

"And call that honor!—one day find his sword 

"Stained with his brother’s blood, and call that honor! 

"Apostates’ honour?—harlots’ chastity! 

"Renegades’ faithfulness?—Iscariot’s! 

"Don Silva. 

"Strong words and burning; but they scorch not me. 

"Fedalma is a daughter of the Church,— 

"Has been baptised and nurtured in the faith. 

"Prior. 

"Ay, as a thousand Jewesses, who yet 

"Are brides of Satan in a robe of flames. 

"Don Silva. 

"Fedalma is no Jewess, bears no marks 

"That tell of Hebrew blood. 

"Prior. 

"She bears the marks 

"Of races unbaptized, that never bowed 

"Before the holy signs, were never moved 

"By stirrings of the sacramental gifts. 

"Don Silva (scornfully). 

"Holy accusers practise palmistry, 

"And, other witness lacking, read the skin. 

"Prior. 

"I read a record deeper than the skin. 

"What! Shall the trick of nostrils and of lips 

"Descend through generations, and the soul 

"That moves within our frame like God in worlds- 

"Convulsing, urging, melting, withering— 

"Imprint no record, leave no documents, 

"Of her great history? Shall men bequeath 

"The fancies of their palate to their sons, 

"And shall the shudder of restraining awe, 

"The slow-wept tears of contrite memory, 

"Faith’s prayerful labor, and the food divine 

"Of fasts ecstatic,—shall these pass away 

"Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly? 

"Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain 

"And god-enshrining symbols leave no trace 

"Of tremors reverent?—That maiden’s blood 

"Is as unchristian as the leopard’s. 

"Don Silva. 

"Say, Unchristian as the Blessed Virgin’s blood 

"Before the angel spoke the word, “All hail!” 

"Prior 

"(smiling bitterly) Said I not truly? See, your passion weaves 

"Already blasphemies! 

"Don Silva. 

"’T is you provoke them. 

"Prior. 

"I strive, as still the Holy Spirit strives, 

"To move the will perverse. But failing this, 

"God commands other means to save our blood, 

"To save Castilian glory,—nay, to save 

"The name of Christ from blot of traitorous deeds. 

"Don Silva. 

"Of traitorous deeds! Age, kindred, and your cowl, 

"Give an ignoble licence to your tongue. 

"As for your threats, fulfil them at your peril. 

"’T is you, not I, will gibbet our great name 

"To rot in infamy. If I am strong 

"In patience now, trust me, I can be strong 

"Then in defiance. 

"Prior. 

"Miserable man! 

"Your strength will turn to anguish, like the strength 

"Of fallen angels. Can you change your blood? 

"You are a Christian, with the Christian awe 

"In every vein. A Spanish noble, born 

"To serve your people and your people’s faith. 

"Strong, are you? Turn your back upon the Cross,— 

"Its shadow is before you. Leave your place: 

"Quit the great ranks of knighthood: you will walk 

"Forever with a tortured double self, 

"A self that will be hungry while yon feast, 

"Will blush with shame while you are glorified, 

"Will feel the ache and chill of desolation, 

"Even in the very bosom of your love. 

"Mate yourself with this woman, fit for what? 

"To make the sport of Moorish palaces, 

"A lewd Herodias…. 

"Don Silva. 

"Stop! no other man, 

"Priest though he were had had his throat left free 

"For passage of those words. I would have clutched 

"His serpent’s neck, and flung him out to hell! 

"A monk must needs defile the name of love: 

"He knows it but as tempting devils paint it. 

"You think to scare my love from its resolve 

"With arbitrary consequences, strained 

"By rancorous effort from the thinnest motes 

"Of possibility?—cite hideous lists 

"Of sins irrelevant, to frighten me 

"With bugbears’ names, as women fright a child? 

"Poor pallid wisdom, taught by inference 

"From blood-drained life, where phantom terrors rule, 

"And all achievement is to leave undone! 

"Paint the day dark, make sunshine cold to me, 

"Abolish the earth’s fairness, prove it all 

"A fiction of my eyes,—then, after that, Profane Fedalma. 

"Prior. 

"O, there is no need: 

"She has profaned herself. Go, raving man, 

"And see her dancing now. Go, see your bride 

"Flaunting her beauties grossly in the gaze 

"Of vulgar idlers,—eking out the show 

"Made in the Plaça by a mountebank. 

"I hinder you no farther. 

"Don Silva. 

"It is false! 

"Prior. Go, prove it false, then."

................................................................................................

"If he spoke truth! 

"To know were wound enough,—to see the truth 

"Were fire upon the wound. It must be false! 

"His hatred saw amiss, or snatched mistake 

"In other men’s report. I am a fool! 

"But where can she be gone? gone secretly? 

"And in my absence? O, she meant no wrong! 

"I am a fool!—But, where can she be gone? 

"With only Inez? O, she meant no wrong! 

"I swear she never meant it. There’s no wrong 

"But she would make it momentary right 

"By innocence in doing it…. And yet, 

"What is our certainty? Why, knowing all 

"That is not secret. Mighty confidence!"

....

"[As Perez oped the door, 

"Then moved aside for passage of the Duke, 

"Fedalma entered, cast away the cloud 

"Of serge and linen, and outbeaming bright, 

"Advanced a pace towards Silva,—but then paused, 

"For he had started and retreated; she, 

"Quick and responsive as the subtle air 

"To change in him, divined that she must wait 

"Until they were alone: they stood and looked. 

"Within the Duke was struggling confluence 

"Of feelings manifold,—pride, anger, dread, 

"Meeting in stormy rush with sense secure 

"That she was present, with the satisfied thirst 

"Of gazing love, with trust inevitable 

"As in beneficent virtues of the light 

"And all earth’s sweetness, that Fedalma’s soul 

"Was free from blemishing purpose. Yet proud wrath 

"Leaped in dark flood above the purer stream 

"That strove to drown it: Anger seeks its prey,— 

"Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, 

"Likes not to go off hungry, leaving Love 

"To feast on milk and honeycomb at will."

"Fedalma 

"(advancing a step towards him with a sudden look of anxiety). 

"Are you angry? 

"Don Silva 

"(smiling bitterly). Angry? 

"A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain 

"To feel much anger. 

"Fedalma 

"(still more anxiously). 

"You—deep-wounded? 

"Don Silva. 

"Yes! Have I not made your place and dignity 

"The very heart of my ambition? You,— 

"No enemy could do it,—you alone 

"Can strike it mortally. 

"Fedalma. 

"Nay, Silva, nay. Has some one told you false? I only went 

"To see the world with Inez,—see the town, 

"The people, everything. It was no harm. 

"I did not mean to dance: it happened so 

"At last . . . . 

"Don Silva. 

"O God, it’s true then!—true that you, 

"A maiden nurtured as rare flowers are, 

"The very air of heaven sifted fine 

"Lest motes should mar your purity, 

"Have flung yourself out on the dusty way 

"For common eyes to see your beauty soiled! 

"You own it true,—you danced upon the Plaça? 

"Fedalma 

"(proudly). Yes, it is true. I was not wrong to dance. 

"The air was filled with music, with a song 

"That seemed the voice of the sweet eventide,— 

"The glowing light entering through eye and ear,— 

"That seemed our love,—mine, yours—they are but one,— 

"Trembling through all my limbs, as fervent words 

"Tremble within my soul and must be spoken. 

"And all the people felt a common joy 

"And shouted for the dance. A brightness soft 

"As of the angels moving down to see 

"Illumined the broad space. The joy, the life 

"Around, within me, were one heaven: I longed 

"To blend them visibly: I longed to dance 

"Before the people,—be as mounting flame 

"To all that burned within them! Nay, I danced; 

"There was no longing: I but did the deed 

"Being moved to do it. 

(As Fedalma speaks she and Don Silva are gradually drawn nearer to each other.) 

"O, I seemed new-waked 

"To life in unison with a multitude,— 

"Feeling my soul upborne by all their souls, 

"Floating within their gladness! Soon I lost 

"All sense of separateness: Fedalma died 

"As a star dies, and melts into the light. 

"I was not, but joy was, and love and triumph. 

"Nay, my dear lord, I never could do aught 

"But I must feel you present. And once done, 

"Why, you must love it better than your wish. 

"I pray you, say so,—say, it was not wrong! 

(While Fedalma has been making this last appeal, they have gradually come close together, and at last embrace.) 

"Don Silva 

:(holding her hands). Dangerous rebel! if the world without 

"Were pure as that within . .. . but ’t is a book 

"Wherein you only read the poesy 

"And miss all wicked meanings. Hence the need 

"For trust—obedience,—call it what you will,— 

"Towards him whose life will be your guard,—towards me 

"Who now am soon to be your husband. 

"Fedalma. 

"Yes! That very thing that when I am your wife 

"I shall be something different,—shall be 

"I know not what, a Duchess with new thoughts,— 

"For nobles never think like common men, 

"Nor wives like maidens (O, you wot not yet 

"How much I note, with all my ignorance),— 

"That very thing has made me more resolve 

"To have my will before I am your wife. 

"How can the Duchess ever satisfy 

"Fedalma’s unwed eyes? and so to-day 

"I scolded Inez till she cried and went."

....

"Don Silva. 

"It will be different when this war has ceased. 

"You, wedding me, will make it different, 

"Making one life more perfect. 

"Fedalma. 

"That is true! And I shall beg much kindness at your hands 

"For those who are less happy than ourselves.— 

"(Brightening.) O, I shall rule you! ask for many things 

"Before the world, which you will not deny 

"For very pride, lest men should say, 

"“The Duke Holds lightly by his Duchess; he repents 

"His humble choice.”"

....

"Don Silva. 

"Fear not, my Duchess! 

"Some knight who loves may say his lady-love 

"Is fairer, being fairest. None can say 

"Don Silva’s bride might better fit her rank. 

"You will make rank seem natural as kind, 

"As eagle’s plumage or the lion’s might. 

"A crown upon your brow would seem God-made."

....

"Fedalma. 

"Do you worship me? 

"Don Silva. 

"Ay, with that best of worship which adores Goodness adorable. 

"Fedalma 

"(archly). Goodness obedient, Doing your will, devoutest worshipper? 

"Don Silva. 

"Yes,—listening to this prayer. 

This very night I shall go forth. And you will rise with day 

"And wait for me? 

"Fedalma. 

"Yes. 

"Don Silva. 

"I shall surely come. And then we shall be married. Now I go 

"To audience fixed in Abderahman’s tower. 

"Farewell, love! 

(They embrace.) 

"Fedalma. 

"Some chill dread possesses me! 

"Don Silva. 

"O, confidence has oft been evil augury, 

"So dread may hold a promise. Sweet, farewell! 

"I shall send tendance as I pass, to bear 

"This casket to your chamber.—One more kiss. 

(Exit.)

................................................................................................

"The saints were cowards who stood by to see

" Christ crucified: they should have flung themselves 

"Upon the Roman spears, and died in vain,— 

"The grandest death, to die in vain,—for love 

"Greater than sways the forces of the world."

"Silva, sole love,—he came,—my father came. 

"I am the daughter of the Gypsy chief 

"Who means to be the Savior of our tribe. 

"He calls on me to live for his great end. 

"To live? Nay, die for it. Fedalma dies 

"In leaving Silva: all that lives henceforth Is the Zincala."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 05, 2021 - October 06, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Book II. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Book II proceeds from where Book I left off, with Dule Silva informed by his friend of the prior intent on inquisition of the bride, who's left a note to Silva before her flight. Silva, grieving yet not giving up, makes plans. 

Here George Eliot introduces the chief element of inquisition, the Jews persecuted and intent on saving, not only their own selves, but the race. However, she has them describe themselves in terms one cannot imagine them even thinking of! 

"Conceive, with all the vulgar, that we Jews 

"Must hold ourselves God’s outlaws, and defy 

"All good with blasphemy, because we hold 

"Your good is evil; think we must turn pale 

"To see our portraits painted in your hell, 

"And sin the more for knowing we. are lost."

Now why would anyone accept themselves God's outlaws, or that they hold the other God evil, just because their enemies accuse them thereof? This isn't true characterisation, it's silly! Jews are more likey to hold gentiles ridiculous for imagining that one of their own sons was - not only a God, but - the only one, and then proceeding to kill his blood relatives in his name. They are far more likely to keep silent, if not exposing this hypocrisy outright, as racist persecution of Jews by Rome, cloaking itself as holy for the purpose. 

But it's not all - George Eliot has Book II end in yet a few more twists, delivered swift one upon another, after the exquisite descriptions of grieving Silva and his plans set in motion for rescue of his love, from both, the Gypsy father of the bride as well as, subsequently, the prior. 

And here, she gives way to yet another prejudice - that of a gypsy being treacherous, of his being in cahoots against Christendom and selling them out to their enemies in crusades, for his own gains. 

................................................................................................

"Sephardo. 

"The Unnamable made not the search for truth 

"To suit hidalgos’ temper. I abide 

"By that wise spirit of listening reverence 

"Which marks the boldest doctors of our race. 

"For truth, to us, is like a living child 

"Born of two parents: if the parents part 

"And will divide the child, how shall it live? 

"Or, I will rather say: Two angels guide 

"The path of man, both aged and yet young, 

"As angels are, ripening through endless years. 

"On one he leans: some call her Memory, 

"And some, Tradition; and her voice is sweet, 

"With deep mysterious accords: the other, 

"Floating above, holds down a lamp which streams 

"A light divine and searching on the earth, 

"Compelling eyes and footsteps. Memory yields, 

"Yet clings with loving check, and shines anew 

"Reflecting all the rays of that bright lamp 

"Our angel Reason holds. We had not walked 

"But for Tradition; we walk evermore 

"To higher paths, by brightening Reason’s lamp. 

"Still we are purblind, tottering. I hold less 

"Than Aben-Ezra, of that aged lore 

"Brought by long centuries from Chaldæan plains; 

"The Jew-taught Florentine rejects it all."

....

"I weary your sick soul. Go now with me 

"Into the turret. We will watch the spheres, 

"And see the constellations bend and plunge 

"Into a depth of being where our eyes 

"Hold them no more. We’ll quit ourselves and be 

"Red Aldebaran or bright Sirius, 

"And sail as in a solemn voyage, bound 

"On some great quest we know not. 

"Don Silva. 

"Let us go. She may be watching too, and thought of her 

"Sways me, as if she knew, to every act 

"Of pure allegiance. 

"Sephardo. 

"That is love’s perfection,— 

"Tuning the soul to all her harmonies 

"So that no chord can jar. Now we will mount."

................................................................................................

"Lorenzo. 

"Well met, friend. 

"Blasco. 

"Ay, for we are soon to part, 

:And I would see you at the hostelry, 

"To take my reckoning. I go forth to-day. 

"Lorenzo. 

"’T is grievous parting with good company. 

"I would I had the gold to pay such guests 

"For all my pleasure in their talk. 

"Blasco. 

"Why, yes; A solid-headed man of Aragon 

"Has matter in him that you Southerners lack. 

"You like my company,—’t is natural. 

"But, look you, I have done my business well, 

"Have sold and ta’en commissions. I come straight 

"From—you know who—I like not naming him. 

"I’m a thick man: you reach not my backbone 

"With any tooth-pick. But I tell you this: 

"He reached it with his eye, right to the marrow! 

"It gave me heart that I had plate to sell, 

"For, saint or no saint, a good silversmith 

"Is wanted for God’s service; and my plate— 

"He judged it well—bought nobly. 

"Lorenzo. 

"A great man, And holy! Blasco. Yes, I’m glad I leave to-day. 

"For there are stories give a sort of smell,— 

"One’s nose has fancies. A good trader, sir, 

"Likes not this plague of lapsing in the air, 

"Most caught by men with funds. And they do say 

"There’s a great terror here in Moors and Jews, 

"I would say., Christians of unhappy blood. 

"’T is monstrous, sure, that men of substance lapse, 

"And risk their property. I know I’m sound. 

"No heresy was ever bait to me. 

"Whate’er Is the right faith, that I believe,—naught else. 

"Lorenzo. 

"Ay, truly, for the flavor of true faith 

"Once known must sure be sweetest to the taste. 

"But an uneasy mood is now abroad 

"Within the town; partly, for that the Duke 

"Being sorely sick, has yielded the command 

"To Don Diego, a most valiant man, 

"More Catholic than the Holy Father’s self, 

"Half chiding God that he will tolerate 

"A Jew or Arab; though ’t is plain they’re made 

"For profit of good Christians. And weak heads— 

"Panic will knit all disconnected facts— 

"Draw hence belief in evil auguries, 

"Rumors of accusation and arrest, 

"All air-begotten. Sir, you need not go. 

"But if it must be so, I’ll follow you 

"In fifteen minutes,—finish marketing, 

"Then be at home to speed you on your way. 

"Blasco. 

"Do so. I’ll back to Saragossa straight. 

"The court and nobles are retiring now 

"And wending northward. There’ll be fresh demand 

"For bells and images against the Spring, 

"When doubtless our great Catholic sovereigns 

"Will move to conquest of these eastern part, 

"And cleanse Granáda from the infidel. 

"Stay, sir, with God, until we meet again!"

................................................................................................

"Lorenzo. 

"Good day, my mistress. How’s your merchandise? 

"Fit for a host to buy? Your apples now, 

"They have fair cheeks; how are they at the core? 

"Market-Woman. 

"Good, good, sir! Taste and try. 

"See, here is one Weighs a man’s head. 

"The best are bound with tow: 

"They’re worth the pains, to keep the peel from splits. 

"(She takes out an apple bound with tow, and, as she puts it into Lorenzo’s hand, speaks in a lower tone.) 

"’T is called the Miracle. You open it. And find it full of speech." 

"Lorenzo. 

"Ay, give it me, I’ll take it to the Doctor in the tower. 

"He feeds on fruit, and if he likes the sort 

"I’ll buy them for him. Meanwhile, drive your ass 

"Round to my hostelry. I’ll straight be there. 

"You’ll not refuse some barter? 

"Market-Woman. 

"No, not I. Feathers and skins. 

"Lorenzo. 

"Good, till we meet again.

................................................................................................

"A Letter. 

“Zarca, the chieftain of the Zincali, greets 

"The King El Zagal. Let the force be sent 

"With utmost swiftness to the Pass of Luz. 

"A good five hundred added to my bands 

"Will master all the garrison: the town 

"Is half with us, and will not lift an arm 

"Save on our side. My scouts have found a way 

"Where once we thought the fortress most secure: 

"Spying a man upon the height, they traced, 

"By keen conjecture piecing broken sight, 

"His downward path, and found its issue. 

"There A file of us can mount, surprise the fort 

"And give the signal to our friends within 

"To ope the gates for our confederate bands, 

"Who will lie eastward ambushed by the rocks, 

"Waiting the night. Enough; give me command, 

"Bedmár is yours. Chief Zarca will redeem 

"His pledge of highest service to the Moor: 

"Let the Moor too be faithful and repay 

"The Gypsy with the furtherance he needs 

"To lead his people over Bahr el Scham 

"And plant them on the shore of Africa. 

"So may the King El Zagal live as one 

"Who, trusting Allah will be true to him, 

"Maketh himself as Allah true to friends.”"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 06, 2021 - October 07, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Book III. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot begins with a description of the journey into Moorish controlled parts of Spain, but errs when she describes gypsy lives, in saying "little swarthy tents Such as of old perhaps on Asian plains,"! 

Asian plains? Tents are common to all nomadic life, which naturally includes shepherds of central Asia, but they characterise mainly Arab and Mongolian landscapes - and, contiguously, Siberian and Lapland nomadic life. Asia is far from dominated by plains, or by tents. It isn't only Himaalayan ranges that belong to Asia, but many, many more. And architecture such as that of India has boggled minds of all invaders, who sought chiefly to destroy it and wipe out all possible signs thereof, so as to lie about it and insist that it was they who brought building to India. 

George Eliot moreover, consciously or otherwise, goes with the biblical, abrahmic, culminating in islamic prejudice about soul and spirit being exclusively male, while females contributing only the body of progeny, in saying "father’s light Flashing in coal-black eyes, the mother’s blood With bounteous elements feeding their young limbs."! Shouldn't she have known better? What with being not only not brought up as a Muslim- and thereby escaping being taught she had no soul - she was herself, not only an intediligent woman, but an intellectual one; did she believe she'd received everything only from her male ancestry, while females gave only body? Did she believe she'd give nothing of her mind, spirit and soul, to her children? Did she really buy into this flesh and blood oven theory of womanhood? 

An interesting detail, is that a poem titled "Roses", included in the Delphi collection of complete works of George Eliot, is an excerpt from Book III.

................................................................................................

"Quit now the town, and with a journeying dream 

"Swift as the wings of sound yet seeming slow 

"Through multitudinous compression of stored sense 

"And spiritual space, see walls and towers 

"Lie in the silent whiteness of a trance, 

"Giving no sign of that warm life within 

"That moves and murmurs through their hidden heart. 

"Pass o’er the mountain, wind in sombre shade, 

"Then wind into the light and see the town 

"Shrunk to white crust upon the darker rock. 

"Turn east and south, descend, then rise again 

"’Mid smaller mountains ebbing towards the plain: 

"Scent the fresh breath of the height-loving herbs 

"That, trodden by the pretty parted hoofs 

"Of nimble goats, sigh at the innocent bruise, 

"And with a mingled difference exquisite 

"Pour a sweet burden on the buoyant air. 

"Pause now and be all ear. Far from the south, 

"Seeking the listening silence of the heights, 

"Comes a slow-dying sound,—the Moslems’ call 

"To prayer in afternoon. Bright in the sun 

"Like tall white sails on a green shadowy sea 

"Stand Moorish watch-towers: ‘neath that eastern sky 

"Couches unseen the strength of Moorish Baza; 

"Where the meridian bends lies Guadix, hold 

"Of brave El Zagal. This is Moorish land, 

"Where Allah lives unconquered in dark breasts 

"And blesses still the many-nourishing earth 

"With dark-armed industry. See from the steep 

"The scattered olives hurry in grey throngs 

"Down towards the valley, where the little stream 

"Parts a green hollow ’twixt the gentler slopes; 

"And in that hollow, dwellings: not white homes 

"Of building Moors, but little swarthy tents 

"Such as of old perhaps on Asian plains, 

"Or wending westward past the Caucasus, 

"Our fathers raised to rest in."

....

"These are the brood of Zarca’s Gypsy tribe; 

"Most like an earth-born race bred by the Sun 

"On some rich tropic soil, the father’s light 

"Flashing in coal-black eyes, the mother’s blood 

"With bounteous elements feeding their young limbs. 

"The stalwart men and youths are at the wars 

"Following their chief, all save a trusty band 

"Who keep strict watch along the northern heights."

................................................................................................

"Hinda. 

"Queen, a branch of roses,— So sweet, you’ll love to smell them. 

"’T was the last. I climbed the bank to get it before Tralla, 

"And slipped and scratched my arm. 

"But I don’t mind. You love the roses,—so do I. 

"I wish The sky would rain down roses, as they rain 

"From off the shaken bush. Why will it not? 

"Then all the valley would be pink and white 

"And soft to tread on. They would fall as light 

"As feathers, smelling sweet; and it would be 

"Like sleeping and yet waking, all at once! 

"Over the sea, Queen, where we soon shall go, 

"Will it rain roses? 

"Fedalma. 

"No, my prattler, no! 

"It never will rain roses: when we want 

"To have more roses we must plant more trees. 

"But you want nothing, little one,—the world 

"Just suits you as it suits the tawny squirrels. 

"Come, you want nothing. 

"Hinda. 

"Yes, I want more berries,— 

"Red ones,—to wind about my neck and arms 

"When I am married,—on my ankles too 

"I want to wind red berries, and on my head. 

"Fedalma. 

"Who is it you are fond of? Tell me, now. 

"Hinda. 

"O Queen, yon know! It could be no one else 

"But Ismaël. He catches birds,—no end! 

"Knows where the speckled fish are, scales the rocks, 

"And sings and dances with me when I like. 

"How should I marry and not marry him? 

"Fedalma. 

"Should you have loved him, had he been a Moor, 

"Or white Castilian? 

"Hinda 

"(starting to her feet, then kneeling again). 

"Are you angry, Queen? 

"Say why you will think shame of your poor Hinda? 

"She’d sooner be a rat and hang on thorns 

"To parch until the wind had scattered her, 

"Than be an outcast, spit at by her tribe. 

"Fedalma. 

"Hinda, I know you are a good Zincala. 

"But would you part from Ismaël? leave him now 

"If your chief bade you,—said it was for good 

"To all your tribe that you must part from him? 

"Hinda 

"(giving a sharp cry). Ah, will he say so? 

"Fedalma 

"(almost fierce in her earnestness). Nay, child, answer me. 

"Could you leave Ismaël? get into a boat 

"And see the waters widen ’twixt you two 

"Till all was water and you saw him not, 

"And knew that you would never see him more? 

"If ’t was your chiefs command, and if he said 

"Your tribe would all be slaughtered, die of plague. 

"Of famine,—madly drink each other’s blood…. 

"Hinda 

"(trembling). O Queen, if it is so, tell Ismaël. 

"Fedalma. 

"You would obey, then? part from him for ever? 

"Hinda. 

"How could we live else? With our brethren lost?— 

"No marriage feast? The day would turn to dark. 

"Zincala cannot live without their tribe. 

"I must obey! Poor Ismaël—poor Hinda! 

"But will it ever be so cold and dark? 

"O, I would sit upon the rocks and cry, 

"And cry so long that I could cry no more: 

"Then I should go to sleep. 

"Fedalma. 

"No, Hinda. no! 

"Thou never shalt be called to part from him. 

"I will have berries for thee, red and black, 

"And I will be so glad to see thee glad, 

"That earth will seem to hold enough of joy 

"To outweigh all the pangs of those who part. 

"Be comforted, bright eyes. See, I will tie 

"These roses in a crown, for thee to wear."

................................................................................................

"Fedalma (alone). 

"She has the strength I lack. Within her world 

"The dial has not stirred since first she woke: 

"No changing light has made the shadows die, 

"And taught her trusting soul sad difference. 

"For her, good, right, and law are all summed up 

"In what is possible; life is one web 

"Where love, joy, kindred, and obedience 

"Lie fast and even, in one warp and woof 

"With thirst and drinking, hunger, food, and sleep. 

"She knows no struggles, sees no double path: 

"Her fate is freedom, for her will is one 

"With the Zincalo’s law, the only law 

"She ever knew. For me—O, I have fire within, 

"But on my will there falls the chilling snow 

"Of thoughts that come as subtly as soft flakes, 

"Yet press at last with hard and icy weight. 

"I could be firm, could give myself the wrench 

"And walk erect, hiding my life-long wound, 

"If I but saw the fruit of all my pain 

"With that strong vision which commands the soul, 

"And makes great awe the monarch of desire. 

"But now I totter, seeing no far goal: 

"I tread the rocky pass, and pause and grasp, 

"Guided by flashes. When my father comes, 

"And breathes into my soul his generous hope,— 

"By his own greatness making life seem great, 

"As the clear heavens bring sublimity. 

"And show earth larger, spanned by that blue vast,— 

"Resolve is strong: I can embrace my sorrow, 

"Nor nicely weigh the fruit; possessed with need 

"Solely to do the noblest, though it failed,— 

"Though lava streamed upon my breathing deed 

"And buried it in night and barrenness. 

"But soon the glow dies out, the warriors music 

"That vibrated as strength through all my limbs 

"Is heard no longer; over the wide scene 

"There’s naught but chill grey silence, or the hum 

"And fitful discord of a vulgar world. 

"Then I sink helpless,—sink into the arms 

"Of all sweet memories, and dream of bliss: 

"See looks that penetrate like tones; hear tones 

"That flash looks with them. Even now I feel 

"Soft airs enwrap me, as if yearning rays 

"Of some far presence touched me with their warmth 

"And brought a tender murmuring 

"[While she mused, A figure came from out the olive trees 

"That bent close-whispering ’twixt the parted hills 

"Beyond the crescent of thick cactus: paused 

"At sight of her; then slowly forward moved 

"With careful footsteps, saying in softest tones, “Fedalma!” 

"Fearing lest fancy had enslaved her sense, 

"She quivered, rose, but turned not. 

"Soon again: “Fedalma, it is Silva!” Then she turned. 

"He, with bared head and arms entreating, beamed 

"Like morning on her. Vision held her still 

"One moment, then with gliding motion swift, 

"Inevitable as the melting stream’s, 

"She found her rest within his circling arms.] 

"Fedalma. 

"O love, you are living, and believe in me! 

"Don Silva. 

"Once more we are together. Wishing dies,— Stifled with bliss. 

"Fedalma. 

"You did not hate me, then,— 

"Think me an ingrate,—think my love was small 

"That I forsook you? 

"Don Silva. 

"Dear, I trusted you 

"As holy men trust God. You could do naught 

"That was not pure and loving,—though the deed 

"Might pierce me unto death. You had less trust, 

"Since you suspected mine. ’T was wicked doubt. 

"Fedalma. 

"Nay, when I saw you hating me the blame 

"Seemed in my lot alone,—the poor Zincala’s,—her 

"On whom you lavished all your wealth of love 

"As price of naught but sorrow. Then I said, 

"“’T is better so. He will be Happier!” 

"But soon that thought, struggling to be a hope, 

"Would end in tears. 

"Don Silva. 

"It was a cruel thought. Happier! True misery is not begun 

"Until I cease to love thee."

................................................................................................

"Fedalma 

(retreating a little, but keeping his hand). 

"Silva, if now between us came a sword, 

"Severed my arm, and left our two hands clasped. 

"This poor maimed arm would feel the clasp till death. 

"What parts us is a sword…. 

"(Zarca has been advancing in the background. He has drawn his sword and now thrusts the naked blade between them. Silva lets go Fedalma’s hand, and grasps his sword. Fedalma, startled at first, stands firmly, as if prepared to interpose between her Father and the Duke.) 

"Zarca. 

"Ay, ’t is a sword 

"That parts the Spaniard and the Zincala: 

"A sword that was baptised in Christian blood, 

"When once a band, cloaking with Spanish law 

"Their brutal rapine, would have butchered us, 

"And then outraged our women. 

(Resting the point of his sword on the ground.) 

"My lord Duke, I was a guest within your fortress once 

"Against my will; had entertainment too,— 

"Much like a galley-slave’s. Pray, have you sought 

"The poor Zincalo’s camp, to find a fit return 

"For that Castilian courtesy? or rather 

"To make amends for all our prisoned toil 

"By this great honor of your unasked presence? 

"Don Silva. 

"Chief I have brought no scorn to meet your scorn. 

"I came because love urged me,—that deep love 

"I bear to her whom you call daughter,—her W

"hom I reclaim as my betrothed bride. 

"Zarca. 

"Doubtless yon bring for final argument 

"Your men-at-arms who will escort your bride? 

"Don Silva. 

"I came alone. The only force I bring 

"Is tenderness. Nay, I will trust besides 

"In all the pleadings of a father’s care 

"To wed his daughter as her nurture bids. 

"And for your tribe,—whatever purposed good 

"Your thoughts may cherish, I will make secure 

"With the strong surety of a noble’s power: 

"My wealth shall be your treasury. 

"Zarca 

"(with irony). 

"My thanks! To me you offer liberal price; for her 

"Your love’s beseeching will be force supreme. 

"She will go with you as a willing slave, 

"Will give a word of parting to her father, 

"Wave farewells to her tribe, then turn and say: 

"“Now, my lord, I am nothing but your bride; 

"I am quite culled, have neither root nor trunk, 

"Now wear me with your plume!” 

"Don Silva. 

"Yours is the wrong 

"Feigning in me one thought of her below 

"The highest homage. I would make my rank 

"The pedestal of her worth; a noble’s sword, 

"A noble’s honor, her defence; his love 

"The life-long sanctuary of her womanhood. 

"Zarca. 

"I tell you, were you King of Aragon, 

"And won my daughter’s hand, your higher rank 

"Would blacken her dishonor. ’T were excuse 

"If you were beggared, homeless, spit upon, 

"And so made even with her people’s lot; 

"For then she would be lured by want, not wealth, 

"To be a wife amongst an alien race 

"To whom her tribe owes curses. 

"Don Silva. 

"Such blind hate Is fit for beasts of prey, but not for men. 

"My hostile acts against you, should but count 

"As ignorant strokes against a friend unknown; 

"And for the wrongs inflicted on your tribe 

"By Spanish edicts or the cruelty 

"Of Spanish vassals, am I criminal? 

"Love comes to cancel all ancestral hate, 

"Subdues all heritage, proves that in mankind 

"There is a union deeper than division. 

"Zarca. 

"Ay, Such love is common: I have seen it oft,— 

"Seen many women rend the sacred ties 

"That bind them in high fellowship with men, 

"Making them mothers of a people’s virtue: 

"Seen them so levelled to a handsome steed 

"That yesterday was Moorish property, 

"To-day is Christian,—wears new-fashioned gear 

"Neighs to new feeders, and will prance alike 

"Under all banners, so the banner be 

"A master’s who caresses. Such light change 

"You call conversion; but we Zincali call 

"Conversion infamy. Our people’s faith 

"Is faithfulness; not the rote-learned belief 

"That we are heaven’s highest favorites, 

"But the resolve that, being most forsaken 

"Among the sons of men, we will be true 

"Each to the other, and our common lot. 

"You Christians burn men for their heresy: 

"Our vilest heretic is that Zincala 

"Who, choosing ease, forsakes her people’s woes. 

"The dowry of my daughter is to be 

"Chief woman of her tribe, and rescue it. 

"A bride with such a dowrv has no match 

"Among the subjects of that Catholic Queen 

"Who would have Gypsies swept into the sea 

"Or else would have them gibbeted. 

"Don Silva. 

"And you, Fedalma’s father ,—you who claim the dues 

"Of fatherhood,—will offer up her youth 

"To mere grim idols of your fantasy! 

"Worse than all Pagans, with no oracle 

"To bid you, no sure good to win, 

"Will sacrifice your daughter,—to no god, 

"But to a hungry fire within your soul, 

"Mad hopes, blind hate, that like possessing fiends 

"Shriek at a name! This sweetest virgin, reared 

"As garden flowers, to give the sordid world 

"Glimpses of perfectness, you snatch and thrust 

"On dreary wilds; in visions mad, proclaim 

"Semiramis of Gypsy wanderers; 

"Doom, with a broken arrow in her heart, 

"To wait for death ’mid squalid savages: 

"For what? You would be savior of your tribe; 

"So said Fedalma’s letter; rather say, 

"You have the will to save by ruling men. 

"But first to rule; and with that flinty will 

"You cut your way, though the first cut you give 

"Gash your child’s bosom. 

"(While Silva has been speaking, with growing passion, Fedalma has placed herself between him and her father.) 

"Zarca 

"(with calm irony). 

"You are loud, my lord! 

"You only are the reasonable man; 

"You have a heart, I none. Fedalma’s’ good 

"Is what you see, you care for; while I seek 

"No good, not even my own, urged on by naught 

"But hellish hunger, which must still be fed 

"Though in the feeding it I suffer throes. 

"Fume at your own opinion, as you will: 

"I speak not now to you, but to my daughter. 

"If she still calls it good to mate with you, 

"To be a Spanish duchess, kneel at court, 

"And hope her beauty is excuse to men 

"When women whisper, “She was a Zincala”; 

"If she still calls it good to take a lot 

"That measures joy for her as she forgets 

"Her kindred and her kindred’s misery, 

"Nor feel the softness of her downy couch 

"Marred by remembrance that she once forsook 

"The place that she was born to,—let her go! 

"If life for her still lies in alien love, 

"That forces her to shut her soul from truth 

"As men in shameful pleasures shut out day; 

"And death, for her, is to do rarest deeds, 

"Which, even failing, leave new faith to men, 

"The faith in human hearts,—then, let her go! 

"She is my only offspring; in her veins 

"She bears the blood her tribe has trusted in; 

"Her heritage is their obedience, 

"And if I died, she might still lead them forth 

"To plant the race her lover now reviles 

"Where they may make a nation, and may rise 

"To grander manhood than his race can show; 

"Then live a goddess, sanctifying oaths, 

"Enforcing right, and ruling consciences, 

"By law deep-graven in exalting deeds, 

"Through the long ages of her people’s life. 

"If she can leave that lot for silken shame, 

"For kisses honeyed by oblivion,— 

"The bliss of drunkards or the blank of fools,— 

"Then let her go! You Spanish Catholics, 

"When you are cruel, base, and treacherous, 

"For ends not pious, tender gifts to God, 

"And for men’s wounds offer much oil to churches: 

"We have no altars for such healing gifts 

"As soothe the heavens for outrage done on earth. 

"We have no priesthood and no creed to teach 

"That the Zincala who might save her race 

"And yet abandons it, may cleanse that blot, 

"And mend the curse her life has been to men, 

"By saving her own soul. Her one base choice 

"Is wrong unchangeable, is poison shed 

"Where men must drink, shed by her poisoning will. 

"Now choose, Fedalma! 

"[But her choice was made. 

"Slowly, while yet her father spoke, she moved 

"From where oblique with deprecating arms 

"She stood between the two who swayed her heart: 

"Slowly she moved to choose sublimer pain; 

"Yearning, yet shrinking; wrought upon by awe, 

"Her own brief life seeming a little isle 

"Remote through visions of a wider world 

"With fates close-crowded; firm to slay her joy 

"That cut her heart with smiles beneath the knife, 

"Like a sweet babe foredoomed by prophecy. 

"She stood apart, yet near her father: stood 

"Hand clutching hand, her limbs all tense with will 

"That strove against her anguish, eyes that seemed a soul 

"Yearning in death towards him she loved and left. 

"He faced her, pale with passion and a will 

"Fierce to resist whatever might seem strong 

"And ask him to submit: he saw one end,— 

"He must be conqueror; monarch of his lot 

"And not its tributary. But she spoke 

"Tenderly, pleadingly.] 

"Fedalma. 

"My lord, farewell! 

"’T was well we met once more; now we must part. 

"I think we had the chief of all love’s joys 

"Only in knowing that we loved each other. 

"Silva. 

"I thought we loved with love that clings till death, 

"Clings as brute mothers bleeding to their young, 

"Still sheltering, clutching it, though it were dead; 

"Taking the death-wound sooner than divide. 

"I thought we loved so. 

"Fedalma. 

"Silva, it is fate. 

"Great Fate has made me heiress of this woe. 

"You must forgive Fedalma all her debt: 

"She is quite beggared: if she gave herself, 

"’T would be a self corrupt with stifled thoughts 

"Of a forsaken better. It is truth 

"My father speaks: the Spanish noble’s wife 

"Would be false Zincala. I will bear 

"The heavy trust of my inheritance. 

"See, ’t was my people’s life that throbbed in me; 

"An unknown need stirred darkly in my soul, 

"And made me restless even in my bliss. 

"O, all my bliss was in our love; but now 

"I may not taste it: some deep energy 

"Compels me to choose hunger. 

"Dear, farewell! I must go with my people. 

"[She stretched forth 

"Her tender hands, that oft had lain in his, 

"The hands he knew so well, that sight of them 

"Seemed like their touch. But he stood still as death; 

"Locked motionless by forces opposite: 

"His frustrate hopes still battled with despair; 

"His will was prisoner to the double grasp 

"Of rage and hesitancy. All the travelled way 

"Behind him, he had trodden confident, 

"Ruling munificently in his thought 

"This Gypsy father. Now the father stood 

"Present and silent and unchangeable 

"As a celestial portent. Backward lay 

"The traversed road, the town’s forsaken wall, 

"The risk, the daring; all around him now 

"Was obstacle, save where the rising flood 

"Of love close pressed by anguish of denial 

"Was sweeping him resistless; save where she 

"Gazing stretched forth her tender hands, that hurt 

"Like parting kisses. Then at last he spoke.] 

"Don Silva. 

"No, I can never take those hands in mine, 

"Then let them go for ever! 

"Fedalma. 

"It must be. 

"We may not make this world a paradise 

"By walking it together hand in hand, 

"With eyes that meeting feed a double strength. 

"We must be only joined by pains divine 

"Of spirits blent in mutual memories. 

"Silva, our joy is dead. 

"Don Silva. 

"But love still lives, 

"And has a safer guard in wretchedness. 

"Fedalma, women know no perfect love: 

"Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong; 

"Man clings because the being whom he loves 

"Is weak and needs him. I can never turn 

"And leave you to your difficult wandering; 

"Know that you tread the desert, bear the storm, 

"Shed tears, see terrors, faint with weariness, 

"Yet live away from you, I should feel naught 

"But your imagined pains: in my own steps 

"See your feet bleeding, taste your silent tears, 

"And feel no presence but your loneliness. 

"No, I will never leave you! 

"Zarca. 

"My lord Duke, I have been patient, given room for speech, 

"Bent not to move my daughter by command, 

"Save that of her own faithfulness. But now, 

"All further words are idle elegies 

"Unfitting times of action. You are here 

"With the safe-conduct of that trust you showed 

"Coming alone to the Zincolo camp. 

"I would fain meet all trust with courtesy 

"As well as honor; but my utmost power 

"Is to afford you Gypsy guard to-night 

"Within the tents that keep the northward lines, 

"And for the morrow, escort on your way 

"Back to the Moorish bounds. 

"Don Silva. 

"What if my words 

"Were meant for deeds, decisive as a leap 

"Into the current? It is not my wont 

"To utter hollow words, and speak resolves 

"Like verses bandied in a madrigal. 

"I spoke in action first: I faced all risks 

"To find Fedalma. Action speaks again 

"When I, a Spanish noble, here declare 

"That I abide with her, adopt her lot, 

"Claiming alone fulfilment of her vows 

"As my betrothed wife. 

"Fedalma 

(wresting herself from him and standing opposite with a look of terror). 

"Nay, Silva, nay! 

"You could not live so; spring from your high place…. 

"Don Silva. 

"Yes, I have said it. And you, chief, are bound 

"By her strict vows, no stronger fealty 

"Being left to cancel them."

"Zarca. 

"Strong words, my lord! 

"Sounds fatal as the hammer-strokes that shape 

"The glowing metal: they must shape your life. 

"That you will claim my daughter is to say 

"That you will leave your Spanish dignities, 

"Your home, your wealth, your people, to become 

"A true Zincalo: share your wanderings, 

"And be a match meet for my daughter’s dower 

"By living for her tribe; take the deep oath 

"That binds you to us; rest within our camp, 

"Show yourself no more in the Spanish ranks, 

"And keep my orders. See, my lord, you lock 

"A chain of many links,—a heavy chain. 

"Don Silva. 

"I have but one resolve: let the rest follow. 

"What is my rank? To-morrow it will be filled 

"By one who eyes it like a carrion bird, 

"Waiting for death. I shall be no more missed 

"Than waves are missed that leaping on the rock 

"Find there a bed and rest? Life’s a vast sea 

"That does its mighty errand without fail, 

"Panting in unchanged strength though waves are changing. 

"And I have said it. She shall be my people, 

"And where she gives her life I will give mine. 

"She shall not live alone, nor die alone. 

"I will elect my deeds, and be the liege, 

"Not of my birth, but of that good alone 

"I have discerned and chosen. 

"Zarca. 

"Our poor faith 

"Allows not rightful choice, save of the right 

"Our birth has made for us. And you, my lord, 

"Can still defer your choice, for some day’s space. 

"I march perforce to-night; you, if you will, 

"Under Zincalo guard, can keep the heights 

"With silent Time that slowly opes the scroll 

"Of change inevitable; can reserve your oath 

"Till my accomplished task leave me at large 

"To see you keep your purpose or renounce it. 

"Don Silva. 

"Chief, do I hear amiss, or does your speech 

"Ring with a doubleness which I had held 

"Most alien to you? You would put me off, 

"And cloak evasion with allowance? 

"No! We will complete our pledges. 

"I will take That oath which binds not me alone, but you, 

"To join my life for ever with Fedalma’s. 

"Zarca. Enough. I wrangle not,—time presses. 

"But the oath Will leave you that same post upon the heights; 

"Pledged to remain there while my absence lasts. 

"You are agreed, my lord? Don Silva. Agreed to all. 

"Zarca. 

"Then I will give the summons to our camp. 

"We will adopt you as a brother now, 

"In the Zincalo’s fashion. 

"[Exit Zarca. (Silva takes Fedalma’s hands.) 

"Fedalma. 

"O my lord! 1 think the earth is trembling: naught is firm. 

"Some terror chills me with a shadowy grasp. 

"Am I about to wake, or do you breathe 

"Here in this valley? Did the outer air 

"Vibrate to fatal words, or did they shake 

"Only my dreaming soul? You a Zincalo? 

"Don Silva. 

"Is then your love too faint to raise belief Up to that height? 

"Fedalma. 

"Silva, had you but said 

"That you would die,—that were an easy task 

"For you who oft have fronted death in war. 

"But so to live for me,—you, used to rule,— 

"You could not breathe the air my father breathes: 

"His presence is subjection. Go, my lord! 

"Fly, while there yet is time. Wait not to speak. 

"I will declare that I refused your love,— 

"Would keep no vows to you 

"Don Silva. 

"It is too late. 

"You shall not thrust me back to seek a good 

"Apart from you. And what good? Why, to face 

"Your absence,—all the want that drove me forth 

"To work the will of a more tyrannous friend 

"Than any uncowled father. Life at least 

"Gives choice of ills; forces me to defy, 

"But shall not force me to a weak defiance. 

"The power that threatened you, to master me, 

"That scorches like a cave-hid dragon’s breath, 

"Sure of its victory in spite of hate, 

"Is what I last will bend to,—most defy. 

"Your father has a chieftain’s ends, befitting 

"A soldier’s eye and arm: were he as strong 

"As the Moors’ prophet, yet the prophet too 

"Had younger captains of illustrious fame 

"Among the infidels. Let him command, 

"For when your father speaks, I shall hear you. 

"Life were no gain if you were lost to me: 

"I would straight go and seek the Moorish walls, 

"Challenge their bravest, and embrace swift death. 

"The Glorious Mother and her pitying 

"Son Are not Inquisitors, else their heaven were hell. 

"Perhaps they hate their cruel worshippers, 

"And let them feed on lies. I’ll rather trust 

"They love you and have sent me to defend you. 

"Fedalma. 

"I made my creed so, just to suit my mood 

"And smooth all hardship, till my father came 

"And taught my soul by ruling it. Since then 

"I cannot weave a dreaming happy creed 

"Where our love’s happiness is not accursed. 

"My father shook my soul awake. And you,— 

"What the Zincala may not quit for you, 

"I cannot joy that you should quit for her. 

"Don Silva. 

"O, Spanish men are not a petty band 

"Where one deserter makes a fatal breach. 

"Men, even nobles, are more plenteous 

"Than steeds and armor; and my weapons left 

"Will find new hands to wield them. Arrogance 

"Makes itself champion of mankind, and holds 

"God’s purpose maimed for one hidalgo lost. 

"See where your father comes and brings a crowd 

"Of witnesses to hear my oath of love; 

"The low red sun glows on them like a fire; 

"This seems a valley in some strange new world, 

"Where we have found each other, my Fedalma."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 07, 2021 - October 07, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Book IV. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Now twice the day bad sunk from off the hills 

"While Silva kept his watch there, with the band 

"Of strong Zincali. When the sun was high 

"He slept, then, waking, strained impatient eyes 

"To catch the promise of some moving form 

"That might be Juan,—Juan who went and came 

"To soothe two hearts, and claimed naught for his own: 

"Friend more divine than all divinities, 

"Quenching his human thirst in others’ joy."

.... 

"But the third day, though Silva southward gazed 

"Till all the shadows slanted towards him, gazed 

"Till all the shadows died, no Juan came. 

"Now in his stead came loneliness, and thought 

"Inexorable, fastening with firm chain 

"What is to what hath been. Now awful Night, 

"Ancestral mystery of mysteries, came down 

"Past all the generations of the stars, 

"And visited his soul with touch more close 

"Than when he kept that younger, briefer watch 

"Under the church’s roof beside his arms, 

"And won his knighthood."

....

"Thought played him double; seemed to wear the yoke 

"Of sovereign passion in the noon-day height 

"Of passion’s prevalence; but served anon 

"As tribune to the larger soul which brought 

"Loud-mingled cries from every human need 

"That ages had instructed into life. He could not grasp 

"Night’s black blank mystery 

"And wear it for a spiritual garb 

"Creed-proof: he shuddered at its passionless touch 

"On solitary souls, the universe 

"Looks down inhospitable; the human heart 

"Finds nowhere shelter but in human kind."

....

"Now the former life 

"Of close-linked fellowship, the life that made 

"His full-formed self, as the impregnant sap 

"Of years successive frames the full-branched tree,— 

"Was present in one whole; and that great trust 

"His deed had broken turned reproach on him 

"From faces of all witnesses who heard 

"His uttered pledges; saw him take high place 

"Centring reliance; use rich privilege 

"That bound him like a victim-nourished god 

"To bless; assume the Cross and take his knightly oath 

"Mature, deliberate: faces human all, 

"And some divine as well as human: His 

"Who hung supreme, the suffering Man divine 

"Above the altar; Hers, the Mother pure 

"Whose glance informed his masculine tenderness 

"With deepest reverence; the Archangel armed, 

"Trampling man’s enemy: all heroic forms 

"That fill the world of faith with voices, hearts, 

"And high companionship, to Silva now 

"Made but one inward and insistent world 

"With faces of his peers, with court and hall 

"And deference, and reverent vassalage 

"And filial pieties,—one current strong, 

"The warmly mingled life-blood of his mind, 

"Sustaining him even when he idly played 

"With rules, beliefs, charges, and ceremonies 

"As arbitrary fooling. Such revenge 

"Is wrought by the long travail of mankind 

"On him who scorns it, and would shape his life 

"Without obedience. 

"But his warrior’s pride 

"Would take no wounds save on the breast. 

"He faced The fatal crowd: ‘“I never shall repent! 

"If I have sinned my sin was made for me 

"By men’s perverseness. There’s no blameless life 

"Save for the passionless, no sanctities 

"But have the selfsame roof and props with crime, 

"Or have their roots close interlaced with vileness. 

"If I had loved her less, been more a craven, 

"I had kept my place and had the easy praise 

"Of a true Spanish noble. But I loved, 

"And, loving, dared,—not Death the warrior 

"But Infamy that binds and strips and holds 

"The brand and lash. I have dared all for her. 

"She was my good,—what other men call heaven. 

"And for the sake of it bear penances; 

"Nay, some of old were baited, tortured, flayed 

"To win their heaven. Heaven was their good, 

"She, mine. And I have braved for her all fires 

"Certain or threatened; for I go away 

"Beyond the reach of expiation,—far away 

"From sacramental blessing. Does God bless 

"No outlaw? Shut his absolution fast In human breath? 

"Is there no God for me Save Him whose cross 

"I have forsaken?—Well, I am forever exiled,—but with her."

................................................................................................

"With these new comrades of his future,—he 

"Who had been wont to have his wishes feared 

"And guessed at as a hidden law for men. 

"Even the passive silence of the night. 

"That left these howlers mastery, even the moon, 

"Rising and staring with a helpless face; 

"Angered him. He was ready now to fly 

"At some loud throat, and give the signal so 

"For butchery of himself. But suddenly 

"The sounds that travelled towards no foreseen close 

"Were torn right off and fringed into the night; 

"Sharp Gypsy ears had caught the onward strain 

"Of kindred voices joining in the chant.’ 

"All started to their feet and mustered close, 

"Auguring long-waited summons. It was come: 

"The summons to set forth and join their chief. 

"Fedalma had been called already, and was gone 

"Under safe escort, Juan following her: 

"The camp—the women, children, and old men— 

"Were moving slowly southward on the way 

"To Almeria. Silva learned no more. 

"He marched perforce; what other goal was his 

"Than where Fedalma was? And so he marched 

"Through the dim passes and o’er rising hills, 

"Not knowing whither, till the morning came."

................................................................................................

"Zarca. 

"Welcome, Doctor; see 

"With that small task I did but beckon you 

"To graver work. You know these corpses? 

"Sephardo. 

"Yes. I would they were not corpses. Storms will lay 

"The fairest trees and leave the withered stumps. 

"This Alvar and the Duke were of one age, 

"And very loving friends. I minded not 

"The sight of Don Diego’s corpse, for death 

"Gave him some gentleness, and had he lived 

"I had still hated him. But this young Alvar 

"Was doubly noble, as a gem that holds 

"Rare virtues in its lustre, and his death 

"Will pierce Don Silva with a poisoned dart. 

"This fair and curly youth was Arias, 

"A son of the Pachecos; this dark face— 

"Zarca. 

"Enough! you know their names. I had divined 

"That they were near the Duke, most like had served 

"My daughter, were her friends. So rescued them 

"From being flung upon the heap of slain. 

"Beseech you, Doctor, if you owe me aught 

"As having served your people, take the pains 

"To see these bodied buried decently. 

"And let their names be writ above their graves, 

"As those of brave young Spaniards who died well. 

"I needs must bear this womanhood in my heart,— 

"Bearing my daughter there. For once she prayed,— 

"’T was at our parting,—“When you see fair hair 

"Be pitiful.” And I am forced to look 

"On fair heads living and be pitiless. 

"Your service, Doctor, will be done to her.

"Sephardo. 

"A service doubly dear. For these young dead, 

"And one less happy Spaniard who still lives, 

"Are offering which I wrenched from out my heart, 

"Constraint by cries of Israel: while my hands 

"Rendered the victims at command, my eyes 

"Closed themselves vainly, as if vision lay 

"Through those poor loopholes only. I will go 

"And see the graves dug by some cypresses. 

"Zarca. Meanwhile the bodies shall rest here. 

"Farewell. 

"(Exit Sephardo.) 

"Nay, ’t is no mockery. She keeps me so 

"From hardening with the hardness of my acts. 

"This Spaniard shrouded in her love,—I would 

"He lay here too that I might pity him.."

................................................................................................

"Don Silva. 

"Chief, you are treacherous, cruel, devilish,— 

"Relentless as a curse that once let loose 

"From lips of’ wrath, lives bodiless to destroy, 

"And darkly traps a man in nets of guilt 

"Which could not weave themselves in open day 

"Before his eyes. ‘O, it was bitter wrong 

"To hold this knowledge locked within your mind, 

"To stand with waking eyes in broadest light, 

"And see me, dreaming, shed my kindred’s blood. 

"’T is’ horrible that men with hearts and hands 

"Should smile in silence like the firmament 

"And see a fellow-mortal draw a lot 

"On which themselves have written agony! 

"Such injury has no redress, no healing 

"Save what may lie in stemming further ill. 

"Poor balm for maiming! Yet I come to claim it. 

"Zarca. 

"First prove your wrongs, and I will hear your claim. 

"Mind, you are not commander of Bedmár, 

"Nor duke, nor knight, nor anything for me, 

"Save one Zincalo, one of my subject tribe, 

"Over whose deeds my will is absolute.

"You chose that lot, and would have railed at me 

"Had I refused it you: I warned you first 

"What oaths you had to take … 

"Don Silva. 

"You never warned me 

"That you had linked yourself with Moorish men 

"To take this town and fortress of Bedmár,— 

"Slay my near kinsman, him who held my place, 

"Our house’s heir and guardian,—slay my friend, . . 

"My chosen brother,—desecrate the church 

"Where once my mother held me in her arms, . 

"Making the holy chrism holier 

"With tears of joy that fell upon my brow! 

"You never warned…. 

"Zarca. 

"I warned you of your oath. 

"You shrank not, we’re resolved, were sure your place 

"Would never miss you, and you had your will. 

"I am no priest, and keep no consciences: 

"I keep my own place and my own command. 

"Don Silva. 

"I said my place would never miss me—yes! 

"A thousand Spaniards died on that same day 

"And were not missed; their garments clothed the backs 

"That else were bear 

"Zarca. 

"But you were just the one 

"Above the thousand, had you known the die 

"That fate was throwing then. 

"Don Silva. 

"You knew it,—you! 

"With fiendish knowledge, smiling at the end. 

"You knew what snares had made my flying steps 

"Murderous; you let me lock my soul with oaths 

"Which your acts made a hellish sacrament. 

"I say, you knew this as a fiend would know it, 

"And let me damn myself. 

"Zarca. 

"The deed was done 

"Before you took your oath, or reached our camp,— 

"Done when you slipped in secret from the post 

"’T was yours to keep, and not to meditate 

"If others might not fill it. For your oath, 

"What man is he who brandishes a sword 

"In darkness, kills his friends, and rages then 

"Against the night that kept him ignorant? 

"Should I, for one unstable Spaniard, quit 

"My steadfast ends as father and as chief; 

"Renounce my daughter and my people’s hope, 

"Lest a deserter should be made ashamed? 

"Don Silva. 

"Your daughter,—O great God! I vent but madness. 

"The past will never change. I come to stem 

"Harm that may yet be hindered. Chief—this stake— 

"Tell me who is to die! Are you not bound 

"Yourself to him you took in fellowship? 

"The town is yours; let me but save the blood 

"That still is warm in men who were my…. 

"Zarca. 

"Peace! They bring the prisoner"

....

"The prisoner was Father Isidor: 

"The man whom once he fiercely had accused 

"As author of his misdeeds,—whose designs 

"Had forced him into fatal secrecy. 

"The imperious and inexorable Will 

"Was yoked, and he who had been pitiless 

"To Silva’s love, was led to pitiless death. 

"O hateful victory of blind wishes,—prayers 

"Which hell had overheard and swift fulfilled! 

"The triumph was a torture, turning all 

"The strength of passion into strength of pain. 

"Remorse was born within him, that dire birth 

"Which robs all else of nurture,—cancerous, 

"Forcing each pulse to feed its anguish, changing 

"All sweetest residues of a healthy life 

"To fibrous clutches of slow misery. 

"Silva had but rebelled,—he was not free; 

"And all the subtle cords that bound his soul 

"Were tightened by the strain of one rash leap 

"Made in defiance. He accused no more, 

"But dumbly shrank before accusing throngs 

"Of thoughts, the impetuous recurrent rush 

"Of all his past-created, unchanged self."

................................................................................................

"The young bright morning cast athwart white walls 

"Her shadows blue, and with their clear-cut line, 

"Mildly inexorable as the dial-hand’s 

"Measured the shrinking future of an hour 

"Which held a. shrinking hope. And all the while 

"The silent beat of time in each man’s soul 

"Made aching pulses. But the cry, “She comes!” 

"Parted the crowd like waters: and she came. 

"Swiftly as once before, inspired with joy, 

"She flashed across the space and made new light, 

"Glowing upon the glow of evening, 

"So swiftly now she came, inspired with woe, 

"Strong with the strength of all her father’s pain, 

"Thrilling her as with fire of rage divine 

"And battling energy. She knew,—saw all: 

"The stake with Silva bound,—her father pierced,— 

"To this she had been born: the second time 

"Her father called her to the task of life. 

"She knelt beside him. Then he raised himself, 

"And on her face there flashed from his the light 

"As of a star that waned and flames anew 

"In mighty dissolution: ’t was the flame 

"Of a surviving trust, in agony. 

"He spoke the parting prayer that was command, 

"Must sway her will, and reign invisibly.] 

"Zarca. 

"My daughter, you have promised,—you will live 

"To save our people. In my garments here 

"I carry written pledges from the Moor: 

"He will keep faith in Spain and Africa. 

"Your weakness may be stronger than my strength, 

"Winning more love. I cannot tell the end. 

"I held my people’s good within my breast. 

"Behold, now, I deliver it to you. 

"See, it still breathes unstrangled,—if it dies, 

"Let not your failing will be murderer. 

"Rise, And tell our people now I wait in pain,— 

"I cannot die until I hear them say 

"They will obey you."

....

"Zarca. 

"Let loose the Spaniard! give him back his sword; 

"He cannot move to any vengeance more,— 

"His soul is locked ’twixt two opposing crimes. 

"I charge you let him go unharmed and free 

"Now through your midst"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 07, 2021 - October 08, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Book V. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"The eastward rooks of Almeria’s bay 

"Answer long farewells of the travelling sun 

"With softest glow as from an inward pulse 

"Changing and flushing: all the Moorish ships 

"Seem conscious too, and shoot out sudden shadows; 

"Their black hulls snatch a glory, and their sails 

"Show variegated radiance, gently stirred 

"Like broad wings poised."

....

"Motionless she stood, 

"Black-crowned with wreaths of many-shadowed hair; 

"Black-robed, but bearing wide upon her breast 

"Her father’s golden necklace and his badge. 

"Her limbs were motionless but in her eyes 

"And in her breathing lip’s soft tremulous curve 

"Was intense motion as of prisoned fire 

"Escaping subtly in outleaping thought. 

"She watches anxiously, and yet she dreams: 

"The busy moments now expand, now shrink 

"To narrowing swarms within the refluent space 

"Of changeful consciousness. For in her thought 

"Already she has left the fading shore, 

"Sails with her people, seeks an unknown land, 

"And bears the burning length of of weary days 

"That parching fall upon her father’s hope, 

"Which she must plant and see it wither only,— 

"Wither and die. She saw the end begun. 

"Zincali hearts were not unfaithful: she 

"Was centre to the savage loyalty 

"Which vowed obedience to Zarca dead. 

"But soon their natures missed the constant stress 

"Of his command, that, while it fired, restrained 

"By urgency supreme, and left no play 

"To fickle impulse scattering desire. 

"They loved their Queen, trusted in Zarca’s child, 

"Would bear her o’er the desert on their arms 

"And think the weight a gladsome victory; 

"But that great force which knit them into one, 

"The invisible passion of her father’s soul, 

"That wrought them visibly into its will, 

"And would have bound their lives with permanence, 

"Was gone."

....

"In a little while, the tribe 

"That was to be the ensign of the race, 

"And draw it into conscious union, 

"Itself would break in small and scattered bands 

"That, living on scant prey, would still disperse 

"And propagate forgetfulness. Brief years, 

"And that great purpose fed with vital fire 

"That might have glowed for half a century, 

"Subduing, quickening, shaping, like a sun,— 

"Would be a faint tradition, flickering low 

"In dying memories, fringing with dim light 

"The nearer dark. 

"Far, far the future stretched 

"Beyond the busy present on the quay, 

"Far her straight path beyond it. Yet she watched 

"To mark the growing hour, and yet in dream 

"Alternate she beheld another track, 

"And felt herself unseen pursuing it 

"Close to a wanderer, who with haggard gaze 

"Looked out on loneliness. The backward years— 

"O she would not forget them—would not drink 

"Of waters that brought rest, while he far off 

"Remembered “Father, I renounced the joy,— 

"You must forgive the sorrow.” 

"So she stood, 

"Her struggling life compressed into that hour, 

"Yearning, resolving, conquering; though she seemed 

Still as a tutelary image sent 

"To guard her people and to be the strength 

"Of some rock citadel."

"But emerging now 

"From eastward fringing lines of idling men 

"Quick Juan lightly sought the upward steps 

"Behind Fedalma, and two paces off, 

"With head uncovered, said in gentle tones, 

"“Lady Fedalma!”—(Juan’s password now 

"Used by no other,) and Fedalma turned, 

"Knowing who sought her. He advanced a step, 

"And meeting straight her large calm questioning gaze, 

"Warned her of some grave purport by a face 

"That told of trouble. Lower still he spoke."

"Juan. 

"Look from me, lady, towards a moving form 

"That quits the crowd and seeks the lonelier strand,— 

"A tall and gray-clad pilgrim…. 

"[Solemnly His low tones fell on her, as if she passed 

"Into religious dimness among tombs 

"And trod on names in everlasting rest. 

"Lingeringly she looked, and then with with voice 

"Deep and yet soft, like notes from some long chord 

"Responsive to thrilled air, said:]"

"Fedalma. 

"It is he! 

"[Juan kept silence for a little space, 

"With reverent caution, lest his lighter grief 

"Might seem a wanton touch upon her pain. 

"But time was urging him with visible flight, 

"Changing the shadows: he must, utter all.] 

"Juan. 

"That man was young when last I pressed his hand,— 

"In that dread moment when he left Bedmár. 

"He has aged since: the week has made him gray. 

"And yet I knew him,—knew the white-streaked hair 

"Before I saw his face, as I should know 

"The tear-dimmed writing of a friend. See now,— 

"Does he not linger,—pause?—perhaps except…. 

"[Juan plead timidly: Fedalma’s eyes 

"Flashed; and through all her frame there ran the shock 

"Of some sharp-wounding joy, like his who hastes 

"And dreads to come too late, and comes in time 

"To press a loved hand dying. She was mute 

"And made no gesture: all her being paused 

"In resolution, as some leonine wave 

"That makes a moment’s silence ere it leaps.] 

"Juan. 

"He came from Cathagena, in a boat 

"Too slight for safety; yon small two-oared boat 

"Below the rock; the fisher-boy within 

"Awaits his signal. But the pilgrim waits…. 

"Fedalma. 

"Yes, I will go!—Father, I owe him this, 

"For loving he made all his misery. 

"And we will look once more,—will say farewell 

"As in a solemn rite to strengthen us 

"For our eternal parting. Juan, stay 

"Here in my place, to warn me were there need. 

"And, Hinda, follow me!"

................................................................................................

"[He did not say “Farewell.” 

"But neither knew that he was silent. She, 

"For one long moment, moved not. They knew naught 

"Save that they parted.; for their mutual gaze 

"As with their soul’s full speech forbade their hands 

"To seek each other,—those oft-clasping hands 

"Which had a memory of their own, and went."

................................................................................................

"It was night 

"Before the ships weighed anchor and gave sail: 

"Fresh Night emergent in her clearness, lit 

"By the large crescent moon, with Hesperus, 

"And those great stars that lead the eager host. 

"Fedalma stood and watched the little bark 

"Lying jet-black upon moon-whitened waves. 

"Silva was standing too. He too divined 

"A steadfast form that held him with its thought, 

"And eyes that sought him vanishing: he saw 

"The waters widen slowly, till at last 

"Straining he gazed, and knew not if he gazed 

"On aught but blackness overhung by stars. ]"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 05, 2021 - October 08, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Middlemarch. (1871/72) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Middlemarch

Exquisite beginning, sketching out the three characters, from the dresses to the thinking to lifestyles to status and expectations of Brooke girls and their uncle. 

Why does it seem that this particular satisfaction is peculiar to women authors who were independent thinkers and wrote to their own satisfaction, despite seeming limitations of an era when women were not supposed to indulge themselves beyond domesticity? Whether Jane Austen or George Eliot, Agatha Christie or Bronte sisters, or Margaret Mitchell for that matter - and Marilyn French comes to mind, in the context - they all did as they chose, when it came to thinking and writing. 

But the part that might surprise a reader is that, having spent detailed chapters of descriptions on the Brooke family and engagement of Dorothea, author then swiftly dispatches her off to Rome on her wedding tour, and moves on, not to the sister as expected, but to an entirely different clan, mentioned very little until then. One begins to realise that this work is about society of England in general, Midlands in particular, of the times of the author, and perhaps not about particular one or two or handful of persons, as one might expect from novels in general, and author of Silas Marner in particular. 

The author takes her time in developing characters, with several sets of young lovers and their elders, their inclinations and characters and destinies, all developing at a rate that's at first trying, because it takes time to catch on, and then trying because reader would like a beloved character or couple to find happiness already. One would like Dorothea to be united with her love and be secure, the pretty Rosamond to have some sense knocked into her head, Dr Lydgate to find security enough to allow him to work, and more. But in Silas Marner, too, author solved everything only at the end, albeit in favour of those deserving. One hopes. 

But Middlemarch was written a little later than Silas Marner, and justice is not as completely satisfactory here, although nor is is as non-existent either - and neither are things as neat as they could and should have been. 

It's not that Dorothea giving up her husband's wealth for her love jars one, as unjust as it is; it's that thereby her being able to do good is marred too, quite unnecessarily. For if she's not to keep it, it ought to have gone to his next of kin, which would be Will Ladislaw who was wronged in first place; and so they together could help Dr Lydgate, instead of his life and talent ruined and his early demise, while Rosamond flourished and was satisfied. This really jars. 

It's to credit of the author, the sketches of Celia and Rosamond that she portrays, who are so very common in a the world and held respectable too, while the Dorothea and Lydgate and Will Ladislaw are held lower, but the reality of souls is the very opposite as the author shows. Her determined expose on the caste system of England, of West in general, remains scathing to the end.  

................................................................................................

Author, even in taking a dig, is delightful.

"In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid."

And shortly thereafter, 

"Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?"

And a superb 

"This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible,—or from one of our elder poets,—in a paragraph of to-day's newspaper. She was usually spoken of as being remarkably clever, but with the addition that her sister Celia had more common-sense. Nevertheless, Celia wore scarcely more trimmings; and it was only to close observers that her dress differed from her sister's, and had a shade of coquetry in its arrangements; for Miss Brooke's plain dressing was due to mixed conditions, in most of which her sister shared. The pride of being ladies had something to do with it: the Brooke connections, though not exactly aristocratic, were unquestionably "good:" if you inquired backward for a generation or two, you would not find any yard-measuring or parcel-tying forefathers—anything lower than an admiral or a clergyman; and there was even an ancestor discernible as a Puritan gentleman who served under Cromwell, but afterwards conformed, and managed to come out of all political troubles as the proprietor of a respectable family estate. Young women of such birth, living in a quiet country-house, and attending a village church hardly larger than a parlor, naturally regarded frippery as the ambition of a huckster's daughter. Then there was well-bred economy, which in those days made show in dress the first item to be deducted from, when any margin was required for expenses more distinctive of rank. Such reasons would have been enough to account for plain dress, quite apart from religious feeling; but in Miss Brooke's case, religion alone would have determined it; and Celia mildly acquiesced in all her sister's sentiments, only infusing them with that common-sense which is able to accept momentous doctrines without any eccentric agitation. Dorothea knew many passages of Pascal's Pensees and of Jeremy Taylor by heart; and to her the destinies of mankind, seen by the light of Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, to make retractations, and then to incur martyrdom after all in a quarter where she had not sought it. ... With all this, she, the elder of the sisters, was not yet twenty, and they had both been educated, since they were about twelve years old and had lost their parents, on plans at once narrow and promiscuous, first in an English family and afterwards in a Swiss family at Lausanne, their bachelor uncle and guardian trying in this way to remedy the disadvantages of their orphaned condition. 

"It was hardly a year since they had come to live at Tipton Grange with their uncle, a man nearly sixty, of acquiescent temper, miscellaneous opinions, and uncertain vote. He had travelled in his younger years, and was held in this part of the county to have contracted a too rambling habit of mind. Mr. Brooke's conclusions were as difficult to predict as the weather: it was only safe to say that he would act with benevolent intentions, and that he would spend as little money as possible in carrying them out. ... "

"In Mr. Brooke the hereditary strain of Puritan energy was clearly in abeyance; but in his niece Dorothea it glowed alike through faults and virtues, turning sometimes into impatience of her uncle's talk or his way of "letting things be" on his estate, and making her long all the more for the time when she would be of age and have some command of money for generous schemes. She was regarded as an heiress; for not only had the sisters seven hundred a-year each from their parents, but if Dorothea married and had a son, that son would inherit Mr. Brooke's estate, presumably worth about three thousand a-year—a rental which seemed wealth to provincial families, still discussing Mr. Peel's late conduct on the Catholic question, innocent of future gold-fields, and of that gorgeous plutocracy which has so nobly exalted the necessities of genteel life."

"The rural opinion about the new young ladies, even among the cottagers, was generally in favor of Celia, as being so amiable and innocent-looking, while Miss Brooke's large eyes seemed, like her religion, too unusual and striking. Poor Dorothea! compared with her, the innocent-looking Celia was knowing and worldly-wise; so much subtler is a human mind than the outside tissues which make a sort of blazonry or clock-face for it."

................................................................................................


Contrast is further brought out as Celia asks that they see and divide the departed mother's jewels, and Dorothea finds the suggestion surprising, preferring giving it all to Celia.

""But how can I wear ornaments if you, who are the elder sister, will never wear them?" 

""Nay, Celia, that is too much to ask, that I should wear trinkets to keep you in countenance. If I were to put on such a necklace as that, I should feel as if I had been pirouetting. The world would go round with me, and I should not know how to walk.""

But it's not a false or drab sacrificing character either. 

""How very beautiful these gems are!" said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as sudden as the gleam. "It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of them." 

""And there is a bracelet to match it," said Celia. "We did not notice this at first." 

""They are lovely," said Dorothea, slipping the ring and bracelet on her finely turned finger and wrist, and holding them towards the window on a level with her eyes. All the while her thought was trying to justify her delight in the colors by merging them in her mystic religious joy. 

""You would like those, Dorothea," said Celia, rather falteringly, beginning to think with wonder that her sister showed some weakness, and also that emeralds would suit her own complexion even better than purple amethysts. "You must keep that ring and bracelet—if nothing else. But see, these agates are very pretty and quiet." 

""Yes! I will keep these—this ring and bracelet," said Dorothea. Then, letting her hand fall on the table, she said in another tone—"Yet what miserable men find such things, and work at them, and sell them!" She paused again, and Celia thought that her sister was going to renounce the ornaments, as in consistency she ought to do. 

""Yes, dear, I will keep these," said Dorothea, decidedly. "But take all the rest away, and the casket." 

"She took up her pencil without removing the jewels, and still looking at them. She thought of often having them by her, to feed her eye at these little fountains of pure color. 

""Shall you wear them in company?" said Celia, who was watching her with real curiosity as to what she would do. 

"Dorothea glanced quickly at her sister. Across all her imaginative adornment of those whom she loved, there darted now and then a keen discernment, which was not without a scorching quality. If Miss Brooke ever attained perfect meekness, it would not be for lack of inward fire. 

""Perhaps," she said, rather haughtily. "I cannot tell to what level I may sink."

"Celia blushed, and was unhappy: she saw that she had offended her sister, and dared not say even anything pretty about the gift of the ornaments which she put back into the box and carried away. Dorothea too was unhappy, as she went on with her plan-drawing, questioning the purity of her own feeling and speech in the scene which had ended with that little explosion. 

"Celia's consciousness told her that she had not been at all in the wrong: it was quite natural and justifiable that she should have asked that question, and she repeated to herself that Dorothea was inconsistent: either she should have taken her full share of the jewels, or, after what she had said, she should have renounced them altogether."

................................................................................................

Author isn't above a not too subtle caricature of how gentlemen treated women if they spoke and not like dim-witted, fainting creatures. 

""Young ladies don't understand political economy, you know," said Mr. Brooke, smiling towards Mr. Casaubon. "I remember when we were all reading Adam Smith. There is a book, now. I took in all the new ideas at one time—human perfectibility, now. But some say, history moves in circles; and that may be very well argued; I have argued it myself. The fact is, human reason may carry you a little too far—over the hedge, in fact. ... "

And nor is Dorothea above rejecting the aggravating squire, especially when she's caught by the young and serious clergyman.

""But you are fond of riding, Miss Brooke," Sir James presently took an opportunity of saying. "I should have thought you would enter a little into the pleasures of hunting. I wish you would let me send over a chestnut horse for you to try. It has been trained for a lady. I saw you on Saturday cantering over the hill on a nag not worthy of you. My groom shall bring Corydon for you every day, if you will only mention the time." 

""Thank you, you are very good. I mean to give up riding. I shall not ride any more," said Dorothea, urged to this brusque resolution by a little annoyance that Sir James would be soliciting her attention when she wanted to give it all to Mr. Casaubon."

Of course, Celia is realistic, more so than Dorothea. 

"Celia thought privately, "Dorothea quite despises Sir James Chettam; I believe she would not accept him." Celia felt that this was a pity. She had never been deceived as to the object of the baronet's interest. Sometimes, indeed, she had reflected that Dodo would perhaps not make a husband happy who had not her way of looking at things; and stifled in the depths of her heart was the feeling that her sister was too religious for family comfort. Notions and scruples were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading, or sitting down, or even eating."

And the squire definitely pursued Dorothea, oblivious of her feelings. 

" ... As to the excessive religiousness alleged against Miss Brooke, he had a very indefinite notion of what it consisted in, and thought that it would die out with marriage. In short, he felt himself to be in love in the right place, and was ready to endure a great deal of predominance, which, after all, a man could always put down when he liked. Sir James had no idea that he should ever like to put down the predominance of this handsome girl, in whose cleverness he delighted. Why not? A man's mind—what there is of it—has always the advantage of being masculine,—as the smallest birch-tree is of a higher kind than the most soaring palm,—and even his ignorance is of a sounder quality. Sir James might not have originated this estimate; but a kind Providence furnishes the limpest personality with a little gunk or starch in the form of tradition."

Dorothea did her best to put him off.

"He was not in the least jealous of the interest with which Dorothea had looked up at Mr. Casaubon: it never occurred to him that a girl to whom he was meditating an offer of marriage could care for a dried bookworm towards fifty, except, indeed, in a religious sort of way, as for a clergyman of some distinction. 

"However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a house in town, and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London. Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it."

Dorothea continued being blind about it. 

" ... But her uncle had been invited to go to Lowick to stay a couple of days: was it reasonable to suppose that Mr. Casaubon delighted in Mr. Brooke's society for its own sake, either with or without documents? 

"Meanwhile that little disappointment made her delight the more in Sir James Chettam's readiness to set on foot the desired improvements. He came much oftener than Mr. Casaubon, and Dorothea ceased to find him disagreeable since he showed himself so entirely in earnest; for he had already entered with much practical ability into Lovegood's estimates, and was charmingly docile. She proposed to build a couple of cottages, and transfer two families from their old cabins, which could then be pulled down, so that new ones could be built on the old sites. Sir James said "Exactly," and she bore the word remarkably well. 

"Certainly these men who had so few spontaneous ideas might be very useful members of society under good feminine direction, if they were fortunate in choosing their sisters-in-law! It is difficult to say whether there was or was not a little wilfulness in her continuing blind to the possibility that another sort of choice was in question in relation to her. But her life was just now full of hope and action: she was not only thinking of her plans, but getting down learned books from the library and reading many things hastily (that she might be a little less ignorant in talking to Mr. Casaubon), all the while being visited with conscientious questionings whether she were not exalting these poor doings above measure and contemplating them with that self-satisfaction which was the last doom of ignorance and folly."

................................................................................................

Author, even in taking a dig, is delightful.

"In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke's mind felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid."

................................................................................................

"Celia had no disposition to recur to disagreeable subjects. It had been her nature when a child never to quarrel with any one—only to observe with wonder that they quarrelled with her, and looked like turkey-cocks; whereupon she was ready to play at cat's cradle with them whenever they recovered themselves."

"It could not seem remarkable to Celia that a dinner guest should be announced to her sister beforehand, but, her eyes following the same direction as her uncle's, she was struck with the peculiar effect of the announcement on Dorothea. It seemed as if something like the reflection of a white sunlit wing had passed across her features, ending in one of her rare blushes. ... "

................................................................................................


Mrs Cadwallader responding to Celia having imparted news of Dorothea being engaged to Casaubon -

" ... Young people should think of their families in marrying. I set a bad example—married a poor clergyman, and made myself a pitiable object among the De Bracys—obliged to get my coals by stratagem, and pray to heaven for my salad oil. However, Casaubon has money enough; I must do him that justice. ..."

Mrs Cadwallader in course of informing James Chettam about Dorothea's engagement, talking about her own husband -

" ... He will even speak well of the bishop, though I tell him it is unnatural in a beneficed clergyman; what can one do with a husband who attends so little to the decencies? I hide it as well as I can by abusing everybody myself. Come, come, cheer up! you are well rid of Miss Brooke, a girl who would have been requiring you to see the stars by daylight. ..."

................................................................................................

Author on Mrs Cadwallader -

" ...Even with a microscope directed on a water-drop we find ourselves making interpretations which turn out to be rather coarse; for whereas under a weak lens you may seem to see a creature exhibiting an active voracity into which other smaller creatures actively play as if they were so many animated tax-pennies, a stronger lens reveals to you certain tiniest hairlets which make vortices for these victims while the swallower waits passively at his receipt of custom. ... She would never have disowned any one on the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God's design in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. ... "

" ...From the first arrival of the young ladies in Tipton she had prearranged Dorothea's marriage with Sir James, and if it had taken place would have been quite sure that it was her doing: that it should not take place after she had preconceived it, caused her an irritation which every thinker will sympathize with. She was the diplomatist of Tipton and Freshitt, and for anything to happen in spite of her was an offensive irregularity. ..."

" ... It followed that Mrs. Cadwallader must decide on another match for Sir James, and having made up her mind that it was to be the younger Miss Brooke, there could not have been a more skilful move towards the success of her plan than her hint to the baronet that he had made an impression on Celia's heart. For he was not one of those gentlemen who languish after the unattainable Sappho's apple that laughs from the topmost bough—the charms which 

""Smile like the knot of cowslips on the cliff, 

"Not to be come at by the willing hand.""

"Pride helps us; and pride is not a bad thing when it only urges us to hide our own hurts—not to hurt others."

................................................................................................


"Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact?"

................................................................................................

Here's the author giving a very succinct expose on not only the generally acceptable attitude about women, but also the English caste system - not that different from that prevalent through Britain generally, or even most of the continent for that matter. 

""Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr. Chichely, whose study of the fair sex seemed to have been detrimental to his theology. "And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a swan neck. Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I were a marrying man I should choose Miss Vincy before either of them." 

""Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the middle-aged fellows early the day." 

"Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose. 

"The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion. The feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all, strengthening medicines."

And another one, about where professionals stood in the said caste system:- 

"Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave whatever nonsense was talked to him, and his dark steady eyes gave him impressiveness as a listener. He was as little as possible like the lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless refinement about his toilet and utterance. Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in him. He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar, by admitting that all constitutions might be called peculiar, and he did not deny that hers might be more peculiar than others. He did not approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor, on the other hand, of incessant port wine and bark. He said "I think so" with an air of so much deference accompanying the insight of agreement, that she formed the most cordial opinion of his talents."

................................................................................................


Mrs Waule, nee Featherstone, is only introduced after Dorothea Brooke has married Casaubon and left for the tour of Rome. Here begins Rosamund Vincy who's preferred by young Dr Lydgate who isn't wealthy enough to go after her. 

The author is going into the social caste system strata in a major way here, explaining or describing the various levels that would go only thus far and no further in acknowledging someone. And with introduction of Mrs Waule, with her gossip never vague or general but intended pointedly at condemnation of those that might get money from her brother, it's quite ghastly for a while. The brother, Featherstone, is satisfied he's more cunning than those trying to get his money, and accosts Fred, who's come with Rosamond to visit. Following is a good succinct expose on general social, and particularly male, attitudes regarding women. 

""What did missy want with more books? What must you be bringing her more books for?" 

""They amuse her, sir. She is very fond of reading." 

""A little too fond," said Mr. Featherstone, captiously. "She was for reading when she sat with me. But I put a stop to that. She's got the newspaper to read out loud. That's enough for one day, I should think. I can't abide to see her reading to herself. You mind and not bring her any more books, do you hear?" 

""Yes, sir, I hear." Fred had received this order before, and had secretly disobeyed it. He intended to disobey it again. 

""Ring the bell," said Mr. Featherstone; "I want missy to come down." 

"Rosamond and Mary had been talking faster than their male friends. They did not think of sitting down, but stood at the toilet-table near the window while Rosamond took off her hat, adjusted her veil, and applied little touches of her finger-tips to her hair—hair of infantine fairness, neither flaxen nor yellow. Mary Garth seemed all the plainer standing at an angle between the two nymphs—the one in the glass, and the one out of it, who looked at each other with eyes of heavenly blue, deep enough to hold the most exquisite meanings an ingenious beholder could put into them, and deep enough to hide the meanings of the owner if these should happen to be less exquisite. Only a few children in Middlemarch looked blond by the side of Rosamond, and the slim figure displayed by her riding-habit had delicate undulations. In fact, most men in Middlemarch, except her brothers, held that Miss Vincy was the best girl in the world, and some called her an angel. Mary Garth, on the contrary, had the aspect of an ordinary sinner: she was brown; her curly dark hair was rough and stubborn; her stature was low; and it would not be true to declare, in satisfactory antithesis, that she had all the virtues. Plainness has its peculiar temptations and vices quite as much as beauty; it is apt either to feign amiability, or, not feigning it, to show all the repulsiveness of discontent: at any rate, to be called an ugly thing in contrast with that lovely creature your companion, is apt to produce some effect beyond a sense of fine veracity and fitness in the phrase. At the age of two-and-twenty Mary had certainly not attained that perfect good sense and good principle which are usually recommended to the less fortunate girl, as if they were to be obtained in quantities ready mixed, with a flavor of resignation as required."

................................................................................................

" ... Mr. Bulstrode had also a deferential bending attitude in listening, and an apparently fixed attentiveness in his eyes which made those persons who thought themselves worth hearing infer that he was seeking the utmost improvement from their discourse. Others, who expected to make no great figure, disliked this kind of moral lantern turned on them. If you are not proud of your cellar, there is no thrill of satisfaction in seeing your guest hold up his wine-glass to the light and look judicial. Such joys are reserved for conscious merit. Hence Mr. Bulstrode's close attention was not agreeable to the publicans and sinners in Middlemarch; it was attributed by some to his being a Pharisee, and by others to his being Evangelical."

"One of Lydgate's gifts was a voice habitually deep and sonorous, yet capable of becoming very low and gentle at the right moment. About his ordinary bearing there was a certain fling, a fearless expectation of success, a confidence in his own powers and integrity much fortified by contempt for petty obstacles or seductions of which he had had no experience. But this proud openness was made lovable by an expression of unaffected good-will. ... "

""The standard of that profession is low in Middlemarch, my dear sir," said the banker. "I mean in knowledge and skill; not in social status, for our medical men are most of them connected with respectable townspeople here. ... "

""Yes;—with our present medical rules and education, one must be satisfied now and then to meet with a fair practitioner. As to all the higher questions which determine the starting-point of a diagnosis—as to the philosophy of medial evidence—any glimmering of these can only come from a scientific culture of which country practitioners have usually no more notion than the man in the moon." 

"Mr. Bulstrode, bending and looking intently, found the form which Lydgate had given to his agreement not quite suited to his comprehension. Under such circumstances a judicious man changes the topic and enters on ground where his own gifts may be more useful."

""There we certainly differ," said Lydgate. But he was not sorry that the door was now opened, and Mr. Vincy was announced. That florid sociable personage was become more interesting to him since he had seen Rosamond. Not that, like her, he had been weaving any future in which their lots were united; but a man naturally remembers a charming girl with pleasure, and is willing to dine where he may see her again. Before he took leave, Mr. Vincy had given that invitation which he had been "in no hurry about," for Rosamond at breakfast had mentioned that she thought her uncle Featherstone had taken the new doctor into great favor."

................................................................................................

"Mary's eyes looked rather red, as if she had been crying. It was clear that Mr. Featherstone was in one of his most snappish humors this morning, and though Fred had now the prospect of receiving the much-needed present of money, he would have preferred being free to turn round on the old tyrant and tell him that Mary Garth was too good to be at his beck. Though Fred had risen as she entered the room, she had barely noticed him, and looked as if her nerves were quivering with the expectation that something would be thrown at her. But she never had anything worse than words to dread. When she went to reach the waistcoat from a peg, Fred went up to her and said, "Allow me." 

""Let it alone! You bring it, missy, and lay it down here," said Mr. Featherstone. "Now you go away again till I call you," he added, when the waistcoat was laid down by him. It was usual with him to season his pleasure in showing favor to one person by being especially disagreeable to another, and Mary was always at hand to furnish the condiment. When his own relatives came she was treated better. ... "

" ... When Fred got into debt, it always seemed to him highly probable that something or other—he did not necessarily conceive what—would come to pass enabling him to pay in due time. And now that the providential occurrence was apparently close at hand, it would have been sheer absurdity to think that the supply would be short of the need: as absurd as a faith that believed in half a miracle for want of strength to believe in a whole one."

""I assure you, sir, I am very grateful," said Fred, who had had time to recover his cheerful air. 

""So you ought to be. You want to cut a figure in the world, and I reckon Peter Featherstone is the only one you've got to trust to." Here the old man's eyes gleamed with a curiously mingled satisfaction in the consciousness that this smart young fellow relied upon him, and that the smart young fellow was rather a fool for doing so."

"Fred thought that Mr. Featherstone had never been so disagreeable before. True, he had never before given him quite so much money at once."

""May I stay here a little, Mary, or shall I bore you?" 

""Pray sit down," said Mary; "you will not be so heavy a bore as Mr. John Waule, who was here yesterday, and he sat down without asking my leave." 

""Poor fellow! I think he is in love with you." 

""I am not aware of it. And to me it is one of the most odious things in a girl's life, that there must always be some supposition of falling in love coming between her and any man who is kind to her, and to whom she is grateful. I should have thought that I, at least, might have been safe from all that. I have no ground for the nonsensical vanity of fancying everybody who comes near me is in love with me.""

................................................................................................


And more about caste system of England, or U.K. or Europe, or West, in general all of those - not only then, but ever - 

"He had been left an orphan when he was fresh from a public school. His father, a military man, had made but little provision for three children, and when the boy Tertius asked to have a medical education, it seemed easier to his guardians to grant his request by apprenticing him to a country practitioner than to make any objections on the score of family dignity."
................................................................................................

But then, it's exquisite when the author finally describes the exceptional individual -

"He had been left an orphan when he was fresh from a public school. His father, a military man, had made but little provision for three children, and when the boy Tertius asked to have a medical education, it seemed easier to his guardians to grant his request by apprenticing him to a country practitioner than to make any objections on the score of family dignity. ... He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through "Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea," which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid. ... He was a vigorous animal with a ready understanding, but no spark had yet kindled in him an intellectual passion; knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversation of his elders, he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life. ... But the moment of vocation had come, and before he got down from his chair, the world was made new to him by a presentiment of endless processes filling the vast spaces planked out of his sight by that wordy ignorance which he had supposed to be knowledge. From that hour Lydgate felt the growth of an intellectual passion. 

"We are not afraid of telling over and over again how a man comes to fall in love with a woman and be wedded to her, or else be fatally parted from her. Is it due to excess of poetry or of stupidity that we are never weary of describing what King James called a woman's "makdom and her fairnesse," never weary of listening to the twanging of the old Troubadour strings, and are comparatively uninterested in that other kind of "makdom and fairnesse" which must be wooed with industrious thought and patient renunciation of small desires? ... "

"Lydgate did not mean to be one of those failures, and there was the better hope of him because his scientific interest soon took the form of a professional enthusiasm: he had a youthful belief in his bread-winning work, not to be stifled by that initiation in makeshift called his 'prentice days; and he carried to his studies in London, Edinburgh, and Paris, the conviction that the medical profession as it might be was the finest in the world; presenting the most perfect interchange between science and art; offering the most direct alliance between intellectual conquest and the social good. Lydgate's nature demanded this combination: he was an emotional creature, with a flesh-and-blood sense of fellowship which withstood all the abstractions of special study. He cared not only for "cases," but for John and Elizabeth, especially Elizabeth. 

"There was another attraction in his profession: it wanted reform, and gave a man an opportunity for some indignant resolve to reject its venal decorations and other humbug, and to be the possessor of genuine though undemanded qualifications. He went to study in Paris with the determination that when he came home again he would settle in some provincial town as a general practitioner, and resist the irrational severance between medical and surgical knowledge in the interest of his own scientific pursuits, as well as of the general advance: he would keep away from the range of London intrigues, jealousies, and social truckling, and win celebrity, however slowly, as Jenner had done, by the independent value of his work. For it must be remembered that this was a dark period; and in spite of venerable colleges which used great efforts to secure purity of knowledge by making it scarce, and to exclude error by a rigid exclusiveness in relation to fees and appointments, it happened that very ignorant young gentlemen were promoted in town, and many more got a legal right to practise over large areas in the country. Also, the high standard held up to the public mind by the College of Physicians, which gave its peculiar sanction to the expensive and highly rarefied medical instruction obtained by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge, did not hinder quackery from having an excellent time of it; for since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if they could only be got cheaply, and hence swallowed large cubic measures of physic prescribed by unscrupulous ignorance which had taken no degrees. Considering that statistics had not yet embraced a calculation as to the number of ignorant or canting doctors which absolutely must exist in the teeth of all changes, it seemed to Lydgate that a change in the units was the most direct mode of changing the numbers. He meant to be a unit who would make a certain amount of difference towards that spreading change which would one day tell appreciably upon the averages, and in the mean time have the pleasure of making an advantageous difference to the viscera of his own patients. But he did not simply aim at a more genuine kind of practice than was common. He was ambitious of a wider effect: he was fired with the possibility that he might work out the proof of an anatomical conception and make a link in the chain of discovery. 

"Does it seem incongruous to you that a Middlemarch surgeon should dream of himself as a discoverer? Most of us, indeed, know little of the great originators until they have been lifted up among the constellations and already rule our fates. But that Herschel, for example, who "broke the barriers of the heavens"—did he not once play a provincial church-organ, and give music-lessons to stumbling pianists? Each of those Shining Ones had to walk on the earth among neighbors who perhaps thought much more of his gait and his garments than of anything which was to give him a title to everlasting fame: each of them had his little local personal history sprinkled with small temptations and sordid cares, which made the retarding friction of his course towards final companionship with the immortals. Lydgate was not blind to the dangers of such friction, but he had plenty of confidence in his resolution to avoid it as far as possible: being seven-and-twenty, he felt himself experienced. And he was not going to have his vanities provoked by contact with the showy worldly successes of the capital, but to live among people who could hold no rivalry with that pursuit of a great idea which was to be a twin object with the assiduous practice of his profession. There was fascination in the hope that the two purposes would illuminate each other: the careful observation and inference which was his daily work, the use of the lens to further his judgment in special cases, would further his thought as an instrument of larger inquiry. Was not this the typical pre-eminence of his profession? He would be a good Middlemarch doctor, and by that very means keep himself in the track of far-reaching investigation."

"Perhaps that was a more cheerful time for observers and theorizers than the present; we are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom; and about 1829 the dark territories of Pathology were a fine America for a spirited young adventurer. Lydgate was ambitious above all to contribute towards enlarging the scientific, rational basis of his profession. The more he became interested in special questions of disease, such as the nature of fever or fevers, the more keenly he felt the need for that fundamental knowledge of structure which just at the beginning of the century had been illuminated by the brief and glorious career of Bichat, who died when he was only one-and-thirty, but, like another Alexander, left a realm large enough for many heirs. That great Frenchman first carried out the conception that living bodies, fundamentally considered, are not associations of organs which can be understood by studying them first apart, and then as it were federally; but must be regarded as consisting of certain primary webs or tissues, out of which the various organs—brain, heart, lungs, and so on—are compacted, as the various accommodations of a house are built up in various proportions of wood, iron, stone, brick, zinc, and the rest, each material having its peculiar composition and proportions. No man, one sees, can understand and estimate the entire structure or its parts—what are its frailties and what its repairs, without knowing the nature of the materials. And the conception wrought out by Bichat, with his detailed study of the different tissues, acted necessarily on medical questions as the turning of gas-light would act on a dim, oil-lit street, showing new connections and hitherto hidden facts of structure which must be taken into account in considering the symptoms of maladies and the action of medicaments. But results which depend on human conscience and intelligence work slowly, and now at the end of 1829, most medical practice was still strutting or shambling along the old paths, and there was still scientific work to be done which might have seemed to be a direct sequence of Bichat's. This great seer did not go beyond the consideration of the tissues as ultimate facts in the living organism, marking the limit of anatomical analysis; but it was open to another mind to say, have not these structures some common basis from which they have all started, as your sarsnet, gauze, net, satin, and velvet from the raw cocoon? Here would be another light, as of oxy-hydrogen, showing the very grain of things, and revising all former explanations. Of this sequence to Bichat's work, already vibrating along many currents of the European mind, Lydgate was enamoured; he longed to demonstrate the more intimate relations of living structure, and help to define men's thought more accurately after the true order. ... "

" ... Our vanities differ as our noses do: all conceit is not the same conceit, but varies in correspondence with the minutiae of mental make in which one of us differs from another. Lydgate's conceit was of the arrogant sort, never simpering, never impertinent, but massive in its claims and benevolently contemptuous. He would do a great deal for noodles, being sorry for them, and feeling quite sure that they could have no power over him: he had thought of joining the Saint Simonians when he was in Paris, in order to turn them against some of their own doctrines. All his faults were marked by kindred traits, and were those of a man who had a fine baritone, whose clothes hung well upon him, and who even in his ordinary gestures had an air of inbred distinction. Where then lay the spots of commonness? says a young lady enamoured of that careless grace. How could there be any commonness in a man so well-bred, so ambitious of social distinction, so generous and unusual in his views of social duty? As easily as there may be stupidity in a man of genius if you take him unawares on the wrong subject, or as many a man who has the best will to advance the social millennium might be ill-inspired in imagining its lighter pleasures; unable to go beyond Offenbach's music, or the brilliant punning in the last burlesque. Lydgate's spots of commonness lay in the complexion of his prejudices, which, in spite of noble intention and sympathy, were half of them such as are found in ordinary men of the world: that distinction of mind which belonged to his intellectual ardor, did not penetrate his feeling and judgment about furniture, or women, or the desirability of its being known (without his telling) that he was better born than other country surgeons. He did not mean to think of furniture at present; but whenever he did so it was to be feared that neither biology nor schemes of reform would lift him above the vulgarity of feeling that there would be an incompatibility in his furniture not being of the best."

................................................................................................


"This was one of the difficulties of moving in good Middlemarch society: it was dangerous to insist on knowledge as a qualification for any salaried office."

................................................................................................


"Poor Lydgate! or shall I say, Poor Rosamond! Each lived in a world of which the other knew nothing. It had not occurred to Lydgate that he had been a subject of eager meditation to Rosamond, who had neither any reason for throwing her marriage into distant perspective, nor any pathological studies to divert her mind from that ruminating habit, that inward repetition of looks, words, and phrases, which makes a large part in the lives of most girls. He had not meant to look at her or speak to her with more than the inevitable amount of admiration and compliment which a man must give to a beautiful girl; indeed, it seemed to him that his enjoyment of her music had remained almost silent, for he feared falling into the rudeness of telling her his great surprise at her possession of such accomplishment. But Rosamond had registered every look and word, and estimated them as the opening incidents of a preconceived romance—incidents which gather value from the foreseen development and climax. In Rosamond's romance it was not necessary to imagine much about the inward life of the hero, or of his serious business in the world: of course, he had a profession and was clever, as well as sufficiently handsome; but the piquant fact about Lydgate was his good birth, which distinguished him from all Middlemarch admirers, and presented marriage as a prospect of rising in rank and getting a little nearer to that celestial condition on earth in which she would have nothing to do with vulgar people, and perhaps at last associate with relatives quite equal to the county people who looked down on the Middlemarchers. It was part of Rosamond's cleverness to discern very subtly the faintest aroma of rank, and once when she had seen the Miss Brookes accompanying their uncle at the county assizes, and seated among the aristocracy, she had envied them, notwithstanding their plain dress. 

"If you think it incredible that to imagine Lydgate as a man of family could cause thrills of satisfaction which had anything to do with the sense that she was in love with him, I will ask you to use your power of comparison a little more effectively, and consider whether red cloth and epaulets have never had an influence of that sort. Our passions do not live apart in locked chambers, but, dressed in their small wardrobe of notions, bring their provisions to a common table and mess together, feeding out of the common store according to their appetite."
................................................................................................

""That must be a hint for me to take Mr. Lydgate away to my study, mother," said the Vicar, laughing. "I promised to show you my collection," he added, turning to Lydgate; "shall we go?" 

"All three ladies remonstrated. Mr. Lydgate ought not to be hurried away without being allowed to accept another cup of tea: Miss Winifred had abundance of good tea in the pot. Why was Camden in such haste to take a visitor to his den? There was nothing but pickled vermin, and drawers full of blue-bottles and moths, with no carpet on the floor. Mr. Lydgate must excuse it. A game at cribbage would be far better. In short, it was plain that a vicar might be adored by his womankind as the king of men and preachers, and yet be held by them to stand in much need of their direction. ... "

""My mother is not used to my having visitors who can take any interest in my hobbies," said the Vicar, as he opened the door of his study, which was indeed as bare of luxuries for the body as the ladies had implied, unless a short porcelain pipe and a tobacco-box were to be excepted. 

""Men of your profession don't generally smoke," he said. Lydgate smiled and shook his head. "Nor of mine either, properly, I suppose. You will hear that pipe alleged against me by Bulstrode and Company. They don't know how pleased the devil would be if I gave it up." 

""I understand. You are of an excitable temper and want a sedative. I am heavier, and should get idle with it. I should rush into idleness, and stagnate there with all my might.""

Here's someone, author through medical professional, demonstrating a comprehension of a kind that's far more common to ancient India and her tradition of knowledge. 

" ... As to his religious notions—why, as Voltaire said, incantations will destroy a flock of sheep if administered with a certain quantity of arsenic. I look for the man who will bring the arsenic, and don't mind about his incantations." 

""Very good. But then you must not offend your arsenic-man."

"But his liking for the Vicar of St. Botolph's grew with growing acquaintanceship. That, entering into Lydgate's position as a new-comer who had his own professional objects to secure, Mr. Farebrother should have taken pains rather to warn off than to obtain his interest, showed an unusual delicacy and generosity, which Lydgate's nature was keenly alive to. It went along with other points of conduct in Mr. Farebrother which were exceptionally fine, and made his character resemble those southern landscapes which seem divided between natural grandeur and social slovenliness. ... In these matters he was conscious that his life would bear the closest scrutiny; and perhaps the consciousness encouraged a little defiance towards the critical strictness of persons whose celestial intimacies seemed not to improve their domestic manners, and whose lofty aims were not needed to account for their actions. Then, his preaching was ingenious and pithy, like the preaching of the English Church in its robust age, and his sermons were delivered without book. People outside his parish went to hear him; and, since to fill the church was always the most difficult part of a clergyman's function, here was another ground for a careless sense of superiority. Besides, he was a likable man: sweet-tempered, ready-witted, frank, without grins of suppressed bitterness or other conversational flavors which make half of us an affliction to our friends. Lydgate liked him heartily, and wished for his friendship."

" ... Dr. Sprague, the rugged and weighty, was, as every one had foreseen, an adherent of Mr. Farebrother. The Doctor was more than suspected of having no religion, but somehow Middlemarch tolerated this deficiency in him as if he had been a Lord Chancellor; indeed it is probable that his professional weight was the more believed in, the world-old association of cleverness with the evil principle being still potent in the minds even of lady-patients who had the strictest ideas of frilling and sentiment. It was perhaps this negation in the Doctor which made his neighbors call him hard-headed and dry-witted; conditions of texture which were also held favorable to the storing of judgments connected with drugs. At all events, it is certain that if any medical man had come to Middlemarch with the reputation of having very definite religious views, of being given to prayer, and of otherwise showing an active piety, there would have been a general presumption against his medical skill."

" ... But the Vicar of St. Botolph's had certainly escaped the slightest tincture of the Pharisee, and by dint of admitting to himself that he was too much as other men were, he had become remarkably unlike them in this—that he could excuse others for thinking slightly of him, and could judge impartially of their conduct even when it told against him."

................................................................................................

" ... The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday."hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. ... "

" ... Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity."

" ... but whatever else remained the same, the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday."

................................................................................................


" ... Even when Caleb Garth was prosperous, the Vincys were on condescending terms with him and his wife, for there were nice distinctions of rank in Middlemarch; and though old manufacturers could not any more than dukes be connected with none but equals, they were conscious of an inherent social superiority which was defined with great nicety in practice, though hardly expressible theoretically. ... his honorable exertions had won him due esteem; but in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service. Mrs. Vincy had never been at her ease with Mrs. Garth, and frequently spoke of her as a woman who had had to work for her bread—meaning that Mrs. Garth had been a teacher before her marriage; in which case an intimacy with Lindley Murray and Mangnall's Questions was something like a draper's discrimination of calico trademarks, or a courier's acquaintance with foreign countries: no woman who was better off needed that sort of thing. ... "

................................................................................................

"However, Lydgate was installed as medical attendant on the Vincys, and the event was a subject of general conversation in Middlemarch. Some said, that the Vincys had behaved scandalously, that Mr. Vincy had threatened Wrench, and that Mrs. Vincy had accused him of poisoning her son. Others were of opinion that Mr. Lydgate's passing by was providential, that he was wonderfully clever in fevers, and that Bulstrode was in the right to bring him forward. Many people believed that Lydgate's coming to the town at all was really due to Bulstrode; and Mrs. Taft, who was always counting stitches and gathered her information in misleading fragments caught between the rows of her knitting, had got it into her head that Mr. Lydgate was a natural son of Bulstrode's, a fact which seemed to justify her suspicions of evangelical laymen. 

"She one day communicated this piece of knowledge to Mrs. Farebrother, who did not fail to tell her son of it, observing— 

""I should not be surprised at anything in Bulstrode, but I should be sorry to think it of Mr. Lydgate." 

""Why, mother," said Mr. Farebrother, after an explosive laugh, "you know very well that Lydgate is of a good family in the North. He never heard of Bulstrode before he came here." 

""That is satisfactory so far as Mr. Lydgate is concerned, Camden," said the old lady, with an air of precision.—"But as to Bulstrode—the report may be true of some other son.""

"Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian: 

"We are but mortals, and must sing of man. 

"An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent—of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity. It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless. Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma."

" ... There was a constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters. He almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to him as to what she could do for mamma. Her presence of mind and adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with his interest in the case. Especially when the critical stage was passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery. In the more doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could, would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account); but after two consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there was every reason to make him assiduous. Morning and evening he was at Mr. Vincy's, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness had made a festival for her tenderness. 

"Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do without him, and missed his visits sadly. The old man himself was getting bedridden. Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face, from which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about Mary—wondering what she felt about his illness. No word passed his lips; but "to hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit," and the mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him. 

""If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly; "and who knows?—perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry anybody he likes then." 

""Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred. The illness had made him childish, and tears came as he spoke. 

""Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, secretly incredulous of any such refusal."

"She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone. Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness. They were obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet. But this turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more conscious than before. There was no help for this in science, and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone were very much reduced. 

"But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination—which of course need not mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively again. Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her captive—meaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee against danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all, was not necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped would by-and-by be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in her favorite house with various styles of furniture."

" ... Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think about them. Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense that she was the object of enviable homage. ..."

" ... In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time? Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation? He was often invited to the Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs. Bulstrode's naive way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness. The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond—sweet to look at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for the refined amusement of man."

................................................................................................


"And when he had seen Dorothea he believed that he had found even more than he demanded: she might really be such a helpmate to him as would enable him to dispense with a hired secretary, an aid which Mr. Casaubon had never yet employed and had a suspicious dread of. (Mr. Casaubon was nervously conscious that he was expected to manifest a powerful mind.) Providence, in its kindness, had supplied him with the wife he needed. A wife, a modest young lady, with the purely appreciative, unambitious abilities of her sex, is sure to think her husband's mind powerful. Whether Providence had taken equal care of Miss Brooke in presenting her with Mr. Casaubon was an idea which could hardly occur to him. Society never made the preposterous demand that a man should think as much about his own qualifications for making a charming girl happy as he thinks of hers for making himself happy."

................................................................................................

"There are many wonderful mixtures in the world which are all alike called love, and claim the privileges of a sublime rage which is an apology for everything (in literature and the drama). Happily Rosamond did not think of committing any desperate act: she plaited her fair hair as beautifully as usual, and kept herself proudly calm. Her most cheerful supposition was that her aunt Bulstrode had interfered in some way to hinder Lydgate's visits: everything was better than a spontaneous indifference in him. Any one who imagines ten days too short a time—not for falling into leanness, lightness, or other measurable effects of passion, but—for the whole spiritual circuit of alarmed conjecture and disappointment, is ignorant of what can go on in the elegant leisure of a young lady's mind."

" ... Lydgate rose to go, and Rosamond, made nervous by her struggle between mortification and the wish not to betray it, dropped her chain as if startled, and rose too, mechanically. Lydgate instantaneously stooped to pick up the chain. When he rose he was very near to a lovely little face set on a fair long neck which he had been used to see turning about under the most perfect management of self-contented grace. But as he raised his eyes now he saw a certain helpless quivering which touched him quite newly, and made him look at Rosamond with a questioning flash. At this moment she was as natural as she had ever been when she was five years old: she felt that her tears had risen, and it was no use to try to do anything else than let them stay like water on a blue flower or let them fall over her cheeks, even as they would.

"That moment of naturalness was the crystallizing feather-touch: it shook flirtation into love. Remember that the ambitious man who was looking at those Forget-me-nots under the water was very warm-hearted and rash. ... "

"In half an hour he left the house an engaged man, whose soul was not his own, but the woman's to whom he had bound himself."

................................................................................................


"The triumphant confidence of the Mayor founded on Mr. Featherstone's insistent demand that Fred and his mother should not leave him, was a feeble emotion compared with all that was agitating the breasts of the old man's blood-relations, who naturally manifested more their sense of the family tie and were more visibly numerous now that he had become bedridden. ... "

" ... To the poorer and least favored it seemed likely that since Peter had done nothing for them in his life, he would remember them at the last. ... At any rate some blood-relations should be on the premises and on the watch against those who were hardly relations at all. Such things had been known as forged wills and disputed wills, which seemed to have the golden-hazy advantage of somehow enabling non-legatees to live out of them. ... "

"Thus Stone Court continually saw one or other blood-relation alighting or departing, and Mary Garth had the unpleasant task of carrying their messages to Mr. Featherstone, who would see none of them, and sent her down with the still more unpleasant task of telling them so. As manager of the household she felt bound to ask them in good provincial fashion to stay and eat; but she chose to consult Mrs. Vincy on the point of extra down-stairs consumption now that Mr. Featherstone was laid up. 

""Oh, my dear, you must do things handsomely where there's last illness and a property. God knows, I don't grudge them every ham in the house—only, save the best for the funeral. Have some stuffed veal always, and a fine cheese in cut. You must expect to keep open house in these last illnesses," said liberal Mrs. Vincy, once more of cheerful note and bright plumage."

"In the large wainscoted parlor too there were constantly pairs of eyes on the watch, and own relatives eager to be "sitters-up." Many came, lunched, and departed, but Brother Solomon and the lady who had been Jane Featherstone for twenty-five years before she was Mrs. Waule found it good to be there every day for hours, without other calculable occupation than that of observing the cunning Mary Garth (who was so deep that she could be found out in nothing) and giving occasional dry wrinkly indications of crying—as if capable of torrents in a wetter season—at the thought that they were not allowed to go into Mr. Featherstone's room. For the old man's dislike of his own family seemed to get stronger as he got less able to amuse himself by saying biting things to them. Too languid to sting, he had the more venom refluent in his blood."

................................................................................................

"When the animals entered the Ark in pairs, one may imagine that allied species made much private remark on each other, and were tempted to think that so many forms feeding on the same store of fodder were eminently superfluous, as tending to diminish the rations. (I fear the part played by the vultures on that occasion would be too painful for art to represent, those birds being disadvantageously naked about the gullet, and apparently without rites and ceremonies.) 

"The same sort of temptation befell the Christian Carnivora who formed Peter Featherstone's funeral procession; most of them having their minds bent on a limited store which each would have liked to get the most of. ... Jealousy of the Vincys had created a fellowship in hostility among all persons of the Featherstone blood, so that in the absence of any decided indication that one of themselves was to have more than the rest, the dread lest that long-legged Fred Vincy should have the land was necessarily dominant, though it left abundant feeling and leisure for vaguer jealousies, such as were entertained towards Mary Garth. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... As for Rosamond, she was in the water-lily's expanding wonderment at its own fuller life, and she too was spinning industriously at the mutual web. All this went on in the corner of the drawing-room where the piano stood, and subtle as it was, the light made it a sort of rainbow visible to many observers besides Mr. Farebrother. The certainty that Miss Vincy and Mr. Lydgate were engaged became general in Middlemarch without the aid of formal announcement."

"As to Lydgate himself, having been accepted, he was prepared to accept all the consequences which he believed himself to foresee with perfect clearness. Of course he must be married in a year—perhaps even in half a year. This was not what he had intended; but other schemes would not be hindered: they would simply adjust themselves anew. Marriage, of course, must be prepared for in the usual way. A house must be taken instead of the rooms he at present occupied; and Lydgate, having heard Rosamond speak with admiration of old Mrs. Bretton's house (situated in Lowick Gate), took notice when it fell vacant after the old lady's death, and immediately entered into treaty for it."

................................................................................................

"The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"—which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress—because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet," which—since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)—had become feeble in its blowing."

................................................................................................

" ... The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover. 

"The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater even than he had anticipated. For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to quotation and general effectiveness of treatment."

"He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help. That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him—rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. Now Mr. Casaubon had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner. His antipathy to Will did not spring from the common jealousy of a winter-worn husband: it was something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but Dorothea, now that she was present—Dorothea, as a young wife who herself had shown an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague. 

"Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the expense of his gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying the dislike. Casaubon hated him—he knew that very well; on his first entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past benefits. He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation. It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another. And Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her—if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had—to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase—a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others. The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the presence of Dorothea."

"Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him, especially as a husband. To let any one suppose that he was jealous would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval. It would be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward he was in organizing the matter for his "Key to all Mythologies." All through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy. And on the most delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious reticence told doubly. Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent. But he had forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing other measures of frustration."

................................................................................................


""Oh, he's a dangerous young sprig, that Mr. Ladislaw," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "with his opera songs and his ready tongue. A sort of Byronic hero—an amorous conspirator, it strikes me. And Thomas Aquinas is not fond of him. I could see that, the day the picture was brought." 

""I don't like to begin on the subject with Casaubon," said Sir James. "He has more right to interfere than I. But it's a disagreeable affair all round. What a character for anybody with decent connections to show himself in!—one of those newspaper fellows! You have only to look at Keck, who manages the 'Trumpet.' I saw him the other day with Hawley. His writing is sound enough, I believe, but he's such a low fellow, that I wished he had been on the wrong side." 

""What can you expect with these peddling Middlemarch papers?" said the Rector. "I don't suppose you could get a high style of man anywhere to be writing up interests he doesn't really care about, and for pay that hardly keeps him in at elbows." 

""Exactly: that makes it so annoying that Brooke should have put a man who has a sort of connection with the family in a position of that kind. For my part, I think Ladislaw is rather a fool for accepting." 

""It is Aquinas's fault," said Mrs. Cadwallader. "Why didn't he use his interest to get Ladislaw made an attache or sent to India? That is how families get rid of troublesome sprigs.""

""Oh my dear Sir James," said the Rector, "don't let us make too much of all this. It is likely enough to end in mere smoke. After a month or two Brooke and this Master Ladislaw will get tired of each other; Ladislaw will take wing; Brooke will sell the 'Pioneer,' and everything will settle down again as usual.""

""I want him to have a proper man to look after things—I want him to take on Garth again," said Sir James. "He got rid of Garth twelve years ago, and everything has been going wrong since. I think of getting Garth to manage for me—he has made such a capital plan for my buildings; and Lovegood is hardly up to the mark. But Garth would not undertake the Tipton estate again unless Brooke left it entirely to him." 

""In the right of it too," said the Rector. "Garth is an independent fellow: an original, simple-minded fellow. One day, when he was doing some valuation for me, he told me point-blank that clergymen seldom understood anything about business, and did mischief when they meddled; but he said it as quietly and respectfully as if he had been talking to me about sailors. He would make a different parish of Tipton, if Brooke would let him manage. I wish, by the help of the 'Trumpet,' you could bring that round.""

................................................................................................


" ... Mary admired the keen-faced handsome little Vicar in his well-brushed threadbare clothes more than any man she had had the opportunity of knowing. She had never heard him say a foolish thing, though she knew that he did unwise ones; and perhaps foolish sayings were more objectionable to her than any of Mr. Farebrother's unwise doings. At least, it was remarkable that the actual imperfections of the Vicar's clerical character never seemed to call forth the same scorn and dislike which she showed beforehand for the predicted imperfections of the clerical character sustained by Fred Vincy. These irregularities of judgment, I imagine, are found even in riper minds than Mary Garth's: our impartiality is kept for abstract merit and demerit, which none of us ever saw. Will any one guess towards which of those widely different men Mary had the peculiar woman's tenderness?—the one she was most inclined to be severe on, or the contrary?"

" .. The Vicar was holding an inward dialogue in which he told himself that there was probably something more between Fred and Mary Garth than the regard of old playfellows, and replied with a question whether that bit of womanhood were not a great deal too choice for that crude young gentleman. The rejoinder to this was the first shrug. Then he laughed at himself for being likely to have felt jealous, as if he had been a man able to marry, which, added he, it is as clear as any balance-sheet that I am not. Whereupon followed the second shrug."

" ... Caleb said, "Susan, guess what I'm thinking of." 

""The rotation of crops," said Mrs. Garth, smiling at him, above her knitting, "or else the back-doors of the Tipton cottages." 

""No," said Caleb, gravely; "I am thinking that I could do a great turn for Fred Vincy. Christy's gone, Alfred will be gone soon, and it will be five years before Jim is ready to take to business. I shall want help, and Fred might come in and learn the nature of things and act under me, and it might be the making of him into a useful man, if he gives up being a parson. What do you think?" 

""I think, there is hardly anything honest that his family would object to more," said Mrs. Garth, decidedly."

""What care I about their objecting?" said Caleb, with a sturdiness which he was apt to show when he had an opinion. "The lad is of age and must get his bread. He has sense enough and quickness enough; he likes being on the land, and it's my belief that he could learn business well if he gave his mind to it.""

""I will not oppose any plan you have set your mind on, Caleb," said Mrs. Garth, who was a firm woman, but knew that there were some points on which her mild husband was yet firmer. "Still, it seems to be fixed that Fred is to go back to college: will it not be better to wait and see what he will choose to do after that? It is not easy to keep people against their will. And you are not yet quite sure enough of your own position, or what you will want.""
................................................................................................


"Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self."

"Suspicion and jealousy of Will Ladislaw's intentions, suspicion and jealousy of Dorothea's impressions, were constantly at their weaving work. It would be quite unjust to him to suppose that he could have entered into any coarse misinterpretation of Dorothea: his own habits of mind and conduct, quite as much as the open elevation of her nature, saved him from any such mistake. What he was jealous of was her opinion, the sway that might be given to her ardent mind in its judgments, and the future possibilities to which these might lead her. As to Will, though until his last defiant letter he had nothing definite which he would choose formally to allege against him, he felt himself warranted in believing that he was capable of any design which could fascinate a rebellious temper and an undisciplined impulsiveness. He was quite sure that Dorothea was the cause of Will's return from Rome, and his determination to settle in the neighborhood; and he was penetrating enough to imagine that Dorothea had innocently encouraged this course."

................................................................................................


" ... But one man can't do everything in a scheme of this sort. Of course he looked forward to help. And now there's a mean, petty feud set up against the thing in the town, by certain persons who want to make it a failure.""

" ... Half the town would almost take trouble for the sake of thwarting him. In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set."

"He distrusted her affection; and what loneliness is more lonely than distrust?"

"Mrs. Dollop became more and more convinced by her own asseveration, that Dr. Lydgate meant to let the people die in the Hospital, if not to poison them, for the sake of cutting them up without saying by your leave or with your leave; for it was a known "fac" that he had wanted to cut up Mrs. Goby, as respectable a woman as any in Parley Street, who had money in trust before her marriage—a poor tale for a doctor, who if he was good for anything should know what was the matter with you before you died, and not want to pry into your inside after you were gone. If that was not reason, Mrs. Dollop wished to know what was; but there was a prevalent feeling in her audience that her opinion was a bulwark, and that if it were overthrown there would be no limits to the cutting-up of bodies, as had been well seen in Burke and Hare with their pitch-plaisters—such a hanging business as that was not wanted in Middlemarch!"

" ... Patients who had chronic diseases or whose lives had long been worn threadbare, like old Featherstone's, had been at once inclined to try him; also, many who did not like paying their doctor's bills, thought agreeably of opening an account with a new doctor and sending for him without stint if the children's temper wanted a dose, occasions when the old practitioners were often crusty; and all persons thus inclined to employ Lydgate held it likely that he was clever. ... "

" ... But let the wise be warned against too great readiness at explanation: it multiplies the sources of mistake, lengthening the sum for reckoners sure to go wrong."

................................................................................................

" ... But even his proud outspokenness was checked by the discernment that it was as useless to fight against the interpretations of ignorance as to whip the fog; and "good fortune" insisted on using those interpretations."

"His practice had spread in one or two quarters, and from the first the report of his high family had led to his being pretty generally invited, so that the other medical men had to meet him at dinner in the best houses; and having to meet a man whom you dislike is not observed always to end in a mutual attachment. There was hardly ever so much unanimity among them as in the opinion that Lydgate was an arrogant young fellow, and yet ready for the sake of ultimately predominating to show a crawling subservience to Bulstrode. That Mr. Farebrother, whose name was a chief flag of the anti-Bulstrode party, always defended Lydgate and made a friend of him, was referred to Farebrother's unaccountable way of fighting on both sides."

................................................................................................


"Pues no podemos haber aquello que queremos, queramos aquello que podremos. 

"Since we cannot get what we like, let us like what we can get.—Spanish Proverb."

................................................................................................

""Things will grow and ripen as if it were a comet year," said Will. "The public temper will soon get to a cometary heat, now the question of Reform has set in. There is likely to be another election before long, and by that time Middlemarch will have got more ideas into its head. What we have to work at now is the 'Pioneer' and political meetings.""

" ... in the general dearth of admiration for the right thing, even a chance bray of applause falling exactly in time is rather fortifying. ... It is undeniable that but for the desire to be where Dorothea was, and perhaps the want of knowing what else to do, Will would not at this time have been meditating on the needs of the English people or criticising English statesmanship: he would probably have been rambling in Italy sketching plans for several dramas, trying prose and finding it too jejune, trying verse and finding it too artificial, beginning to copy "bits" from old pictures, leaving off because they were "no good," and observing that, after all, self-culture was the principal point; while in politics he would have been sympathizing warmly with liberty and progress in general. Our sense of duty must often wait for some work which shall take the place of dilettanteism and make us feel that the quality of our action is not a matter of indifference."

"As Lydgate had said of him, he was a sort of gypsy, rather enjoying the sense of belonging to no class; he had a feeling of romance in his position, and a pleasant consciousness of creating a little surprise wherever he went. That sort of enjoyment had been disturbed when he had felt some new distance between himself and Dorothea in their accidental meeting at Lydgate's, and his irritation had gone out towards Mr. Casaubon, who had declared beforehand that Will would lose caste. "I never had any caste," he would have said, if that prophecy had been uttered to him, and the quick blood would have come and gone like breath in his transparent skin. But it is one thing to like defiance, and another thing to like its consequences."

................................................................................................


" ... It was another or rather a fuller sort of companionship that poor Dorothea was hungering for, and the hunger had grown from the perpetual effort demanded by her married life. She was always trying to be what her husband wished, and never able to repose on his delight in what she was. The thing that she liked, that she spontaneously cared to have, seemed to be always excluded from her life; for if it was only granted and not shared by her husband it might as well have been denied. About Will Ladislaw there had been a difference between them from the first, and it had ended, since Mr. Casaubon had so severely repulsed Dorothea's strong feeling about his claims on the family property, by her being convinced that she was in the right and her husband in the wrong, but that she was helpless. This afternoon the helplessness was more wretchedly benumbing than ever: she longed for objects who could be dear to her, and to whom she could be dear. She longed for work which would be directly beneficent like the sunshine and the rain, and now it appeared that she was to live more and more in a virtual tomb, where there was the apparatus of a ghastly labor producing what would never see the light. Today she had stood at the door of the tomb and seen Will Ladislaw receding into the distant world of warm activity and fellowship—turning his face towards her as he went. 

"Books were of no use. Thinking was of no use. It was Sunday, and she could not have the carriage to go to Celia, who had lately had a baby. There was no refuge now from spiritual emptiness and discontent, and Dorothea had to bear her bad mood, as she would have borne a headache."

"She had no presentiment that the power which her husband wished to establish over her future action had relation to anything else than his work. But it was clear enough to her that he would expect her to devote herself to sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful. The poor child had become altogether unbelieving as to the trustworthiness of that Key which had made the ambition and the labor of her husband's life. It was not wonderful that, in spite of her small instruction, her judgment in this matter was truer than his: for she looked with unbiassed comparison and healthy sense at probabilities on which he had risked all his egoism. And now she pictured to herself the days, and months, and years which she must spend in sorting what might be called shattered mummies, and fragments of a tradition which was itself a mosaic wrought from crushed ruins—sorting them as food for a theory which was already withered in the birth like an elfin child. ... And Dorothea had so often had to check her weariness and impatience over this questionable riddle-guessing, as it revealed itself to her instead of the fellowship in high knowledge which was to make life worthier! She could understand well enough now why her husband had come to cling to her, as possibly the only hope left that his labors would ever take a shape in which they could be given to the world. At first it had seemed that he wished to keep even her aloof from any close knowledge of what he was doing; but gradually the terrible stringency of human need—the prospect of a too speedy death—"

" ... Neither law nor the world's opinion compelled her to this—only her husband's nature and her own compassion, only the ideal and not the real yoke of marriage. She saw clearly enough the whole situation, yet she was fettered: she could not smite the stricken soul that entreated hers. If that were weakness, Dorothea was weak. ... "

................................................................................................

""But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir James—then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect Ladislaw." 

""I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him off—send him to Norfolk Island—that sort of thing—it would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her—distrusted her, you know." 

"That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to soothe Sir James. He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat— 

""Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends were too careless. I shall do what I can, as her brother, to protect her now." 

""You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well pleased that he had won the argument. It would have been highly inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of the course by which the interests of the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the nation."

"But Mr. Brooke had been right in predicting that Dorothea would not long remain passive where action had been assigned to her; she knew the purport of her husband's will made at the time of their marriage, and her mind, as soon as she was clearly conscious of her position, was silently occupied with what she ought to do as the owner of Lowick Manor with the patronage of the living attached to it."

" ... Celia felt her advantage, and was determined to use it. None of them knew Dodo as well as she did, or knew how to manage her. Since Celia's baby was born, she had had a new sense of her mental solidity and calm wisdom. It seemed clear that where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that error, in general, was a mere lack of that central poising force."

................................................................................................


" ... One change terrified her as if it had been a sin; it was a violent shock of repulsion from her departed husband, who had had hidden thoughts, perhaps perverting everything she said and did. Then again she was conscious of another change which also made her tremulous; it was a sudden strange yearning of heart towards Will Ladislaw. It had never before entered her mind that he could, under any circumstances, be her lover: conceive the effect of the sudden revelation that another had thought of him in that light—that perhaps he himself had been conscious of such a possibility,—and this with the hurrying, crowding vision of unfitting conditions, and questions not soon to be solved."

" ... Yet she did wish that Sir James could know what had passed between her and her husband about Will Ladislaw's moral claim on the property: it would then, she thought, be apparent to him as it was to her, that her husband's strange indelicate proviso had been chiefly urged by his bitter resistance to that idea of claim, and not merely by personal feelings more difficult to talk about. Also, it must be admitted, Dorothea wished that this could be known for Will's sake, since her friends seemed to think of him as simply an object of Mr. Casaubon's charity. Why should he be compared with an Italian carrying white mice? That word quoted from Mrs. Cadwallader seemed like a mocking travesty wrought in the dark by an impish finger."

" ... But now her judgment, instead of being controlled by duteous devotion, was made active by the imbittering discovery that in her past union there had lurked the hidden alienation of secrecy and suspicion. The living, suffering man was no longer before her to awaken her pity: there remained only the retrospect of painful subjection to a husband whose thoughts had been lower than she had believed, whose exorbitant claims for himself had even blinded his scrupulous care for his own character, and made him defeat his own pride by shocking men of ordinary honor. As for the property which was the sign of that broken tie, she would have been glad to be free from it and have nothing more than her original fortune which had been settled on her, if there had not been duties attached to ownership, which she ought not to flinch from. About this property many troublous questions insisted on rising: had she not been right in thinking that the half of it ought to go to Will Ladislaw?—but was it not impossible now for her to do that act of justice? Mr. Casaubon had taken a cruelly effective means of hindering her: even with indignation against him in her heart, any act that seemed a triumphant eluding of his purpose revolted her."

" ... What was Will Ladislaw thinking about her? Would he hear of that fact which made her cheeks burn as they never used to do? And how would he feel when he heard it?—But she could see as well as possible how he smiled down at the little old maid. An Italian with white mice!—on the contrary, he was a creature who entered into every one's feelings, and could take the pressure of their thought instead of urging his own with iron resistance."

................................................................................................

"Party is Nature too, and you shall see 

"By force of Logic how they both agree: 

"The Many in the One, the One in Many; 

"All is not Some, nor Some the same as Any: 

"Genus holds species, both are great or small; 

"One genus highest, one not high at all; 

"Each species has its differentia too, 

"This is not That, and He was never You, 

"Though this and that are ayes, and you and he 

"Are like as one to one, or three to three."

................................................................................................


"Mr. Brooke always ended by agreeing with Ladislaw, who still appeared to him a sort of Burke with a leaven of Shelley; but after an interval the wisdom of his own methods reasserted itself, and he was again drawn into using them with much hopefulness. At this stage of affairs he was in excellent spirits, which even supported him under large advances of money; for his powers of convincing and persuading had not yet been tested by anything more difficult than a chairman's speech introducing other orators, or a dialogue with a Middlemarch voter, from which he came away with a sense that he was a tactician by nature, and that it was a pity he had not gone earlier into this kind of thing. ... "

" ... He had written out various speeches and memoranda for speeches, but he had begun to perceive that Mr. Brooke's mind, if it had the burthen of remembering any train of thought, would let it drop, run away in search of it, and not easily come back again. To collect documents is one mode of serving your country, and to remember the contents of a document is another. ..."

................................................................................................

""I did talk to your father about it, Fred, but I made little way with him. He said it was too late. But you have got over one bridge now: what are your other difficulties?" 

""Merely that I don't like it. I don't like divinity, and preaching, and feeling obliged to look serious. I like riding across country, and doing as other men do. I don't mean that I want to be a bad fellow in any way; but I've no taste for the sort of thing people expect of a clergyman. And yet what else am I to do? My father can't spare me any capital, else I might go into farming. And he has no room for me in his trade. And of course I can't begin to study for law or physic now, when my father wants me to earn something. It's all very well to say I'm wrong to go into the Church; but those who say so might as well tell me to go into the backwoods.""

" ... Mr. Farebrother might have been inclined to smile if his mind had not been too busy in imagining more than Fred told him."

................................................................................................


"It is but a shallow haste which concludeth insincerity from what outsiders call inconsistency—putting a dead mechanism of "ifs" and "therefores" for the living myriad of hidden suckers whereby the belief and the conduct are wrought into mutual sustainment."

" ... For the egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief."

"Mr. Bulstrode had not yet fully learned that even the desire for cognac was not stronger in Raffles than the desire to torment, and that a hint of annoyance always served him as a fresh cue. ... "

" ... But even while we are talking and meditating about the earth's orbit and the solar system, what we feel and adjust our movements to is the stable earth and the changing day. ... "

................................................................................................

"Mrs. Cadwallader said, privately, "You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane, and call things by the same names as other people call them by. To be sure, for younger sons and women who have no money, it is a sort of provision to go mad: they are taken care of then. But you must not run into that. I dare say you are a little bored here with our good dowager; but think what a bore you might become yourself to your fellow-creatures if you were always playing tragedy queen and taking things sublimely. Sitting alone in that library at Lowick you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine." 

""I never called everything by the same name that all the people about me did," said Dorothea, stoutly. 

""But I suppose you have found out your mistake, my dear," said Mrs. Cadwallader, "and that is a proof of sanity." 

"Dorothea was aware of the sting, but it did not hurt her. "No," she said, "I still think that the greater part of the world is mistaken about many things. Surely one may be sane and yet think so, since the greater part of the world has often had to come round from its opinion." 

"Mrs. Cadwallader said no more on that point to Dorothea, but to her husband she remarked, "It will be well for her to marry again as soon as it is proper, if one could get her among the right people. Of course the Chettams would not wish it. But I see clearly a husband is the best thing to keep her in order. If we were not so poor I would invite Lord Triton. He will be marquis some day, and there is no denying that she would make a good marchioness: she looks handsomer than ever in her mourning." 

""My dear Elinor, do let the poor woman alone. Such contrivances are of no use," said the easy Rector. 

""No use? How are matches made, except by bringing men and women together? And it is a shame that her uncle should have run away and shut up the Grange just now. There ought to be plenty of eligible matches invited to Freshitt and the Grange. Lord Triton is precisely the man: full of plans for making the people happy in a soft-headed sort of way. That would just suit Mrs. Casaubon." 

""Let Mrs. Casaubon choose for herself, Elinor." 

""That is the nonsense you wise men talk! How can she choose if she has no variety to choose from? A woman's choice usually means taking the only man she can get. Mark my words, Humphrey. If her friends don't exert themselves, there will be a worse business than the Casaubon business yet." 

""For heaven's sake don't touch on that topic, Elinor! It is a very sore point with Sir James. He would be deeply offended if you entered on it to him unnecessarily." 

""I have never entered on it," said Mrs Cadwallader, opening her hands. "Celia told me all about the will at the beginning, without any asking of mine." 

""Yes, yes; but they want the thing hushed up, and I understand that the young fellow is going out of the neighborhood." 

"Mrs. Cadwallader said nothing, but gave her husband three significant nods, with a very sarcastic expression in her dark eyes."

................................................................................................

"Dorothea quietly persisted in spite of remonstrance and persuasion. So by the end of June the shutters were all opened at Lowick Manor, and the morning gazed calmly into the library, shining on the rows of note-books as it shines on the weary waste planted with huge stones, the mute memorial of a forgotten faith; and the evening laden with roses entered silently into the blue-green boudoir where Dorothea chose oftenest to sit. ... "
" ... underneath and through it all there was always the deep longing which had really determined her to come to Lowick. The longing was to see Will Ladislaw. She did not know any good that could come of their meeting: she was helpless; her hands had been tied from making up to him for any unfairness in his lot. But her soul thirsted to see him. How could it be otherwise? If a princess in the days of enchantment had seen a four-footed creature from among those which live in herds come to her once and again with a human gaze which rested upon her with choice and beseeching, what would she think of in her journeying, what would she look for when the herds passed her? Surely for the gaze which had found her, and which she would know again. Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. It was true that Dorothea wanted to know the Farebrothers better, and especially to talk to the new rector, but also true that remembering what Lydgate had told her about Will Ladislaw and little Miss Noble, she counted on Will's coming to Lowick to see the Farebrother family. The very first Sunday, before she entered the church, she saw him as she had seen him the last time she was there, alone in the clergyman's pew; but when she entered his figure was gone. 

"In the week-days when she went to see the ladies at the Rectory, she listened in vain for some word that they might let fall about Will; but it seemed to her that Mrs. Farebrother talked of every one else in the 

neighborhood and out of it."

" ... Perhaps Will Ladislaw, having heard of that strange ban against him left by Mr. Casaubon, had felt it better that he and she should not meet again, and perhaps she was wrong to wish for a meeting that others might find many good reasons against. Still "I do wish it" came at the end of those wise reflections as naturally as a sob after holding the breath. And the meeting did happen, but in a formal way quite unexpected by her."

""I am only come to say good-by, Pratt," said Will, who wished even the butler to know that he was too proud to hang about Mrs. Casaubon now she was a rich widow. 

""Very sorry to hear it, sir," said Pratt, retiring. Of course, as a servant who was to be told nothing, he knew the fact of which Ladislaw was still ignorant, and had drawn his inferences; indeed, had not differed from his betrothed Tantripp when she said, "Your master was as jealous as a fiend—and no reason. Madam would look higher than Mr. Ladislaw, else I don't know her. Mrs. Cadwallader's maid says there's a lord coming who is to marry her when the mourning's over.""

................................................................................................

" She did not know then that it was Love who had come to her briefly, as in a dream before awaking, with the hues of morning on his wings—that it was Love to whom she was sobbing her farewell as his image was banished by the blameless rigor of irresistible day. She only felt that there was something irrevocably amiss and lost in her lot, and her thoughts about the future were the more readily shapen into resolve. Ardent souls, ready to construct their coming lives, are apt to commit themselves to the fulfilment of their own visions."

................................................................................................


""Most uncommon!" repeated Caleb. "She said a thing I often used to think myself when I was a lad:—'Mr. Garth, I should like to feel, if I lived to be old, that I had improved a great piece of land and built a great many good cottages, because the work is of a healthy kind while it is being done, and after it is done, men are the better for it.' Those were the very words: she sees into things in that way." 

""But womanly, I hope," said Mrs. Garth, half suspecting that Mrs. Casaubon might not hold the true principle of subordination. 

""Oh, you can't think!" said Caleb, shaking his head. "You would like to hear her speak, Susan. She speaks in such plain words, and a voice like music. Bless me! it reminds me of bits in the 'Messiah'—'and straightway there appeared a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying;' it has a tone with it that satisfies your ear." 

"Caleb was very fond of music, and when he could afford it went to hear an oratorio that came within his reach, returning from it with a profound reverence for this mighty structure of tones, which made him sit meditatively, looking on the floor and throwing much unutterable language into his outstretched hands."

" ... The men of Frick were not ill-fed, and were less given to fanaticism than to a strong muscular suspicion; less inclined to believe that they were peculiarly cared for by heaven, than to regard heaven itself as rather disposed to take them in—a disposition observable in the weather."

"On ninety-nine points Mrs. Garth decided, but on the hundredth she was often aware that she would have to perform the singularly difficult task of carrying out her own principle, and to make herself subordinate."

................................................................................................

"News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar. This fine comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long before his death."

""You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects. 

"No!" he returned, impatiently. 

""Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs. Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all her property?""

"When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily. She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action as well as speech. "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly, thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he came home would tease her about expenses. She had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself.""

................................................................................................


" ... But indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable; and we all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle: impossible to conceive how our wish could be fulfilled, still—very wonderful things have happened! Will did not confess this weakness to himself, but he lingered. ... "

"Will was in a defiant mood, his consciousness being deeply stung with the thought that the people who looked at him probably knew a fact tantamount to an accusation against him as a fellow with low designs which were to be frustrated by a disposal of property. Like most people who assert their freedom with regard to conventional distinction, he was prepared to be sudden and quick at quarrel with any one who might hint that he had personal reasons for that assertion—that there was anything in his blood, his bearing, or his character to which he gave the mask of an opinion. ... "

"He walked a long while on the Lowick road away from the town, glad of the starlit darkness when it came. He felt as if he had had dirt cast on him amidst shouts of scorn. There was this to confirm the fellow's statement—that his mother never would tell him the reason why she had run away from her family. 

"Well! what was he, Will Ladislaw, the worse, supposing the truth about that family to be the ugliest? His mother had braved hardship in order to separate herself from it. ..."

................................................................................................

"Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality. Night and day, without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. ... "

"He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread, but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win protection. At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the "Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness, he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the picture bought for her."

""It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which befell your mother. I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother's existence and been able to find her.""

""I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she might have been found.""

................................................................................................


"Will's certainty as the carriage grew smaller in the distance, had much more bitterness in it. Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood, and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted, made his conduct seem a mere matter of necessity, and took away the sustainment of resolve. After all, he had no assurance that she loved him: could any man pretend that he was simply glad in such a case to have the suffering all on his own side? 

"That evening Will spent with the Lydgates; the next evening he was gone."

................................................................................................

"It was because Lydgate writhed under the idea of getting his neck beneath this vile yoke that he had fallen into a bitter moody state which was continually widening Rosamond's alienation from him. After the first disclosure about the bill of sale, he had made many efforts to draw her into sympathy with him about possible measures for narrowing their expenses, and with the threatening approach of Christmas his propositions grew more and more definite. "We two can do with only one servant, and live on very little," he said, "and I shall manage with one horse." For Lydgate, as we have seen, had begun to reason, with a more distinct vision, about the expenses of living, and any share of pride he had given to appearances of that sort was meagre compared with the pride which made him revolt from exposure as a debtor, or from asking men to help him with their money. 

""Of course you can dismiss the other two servants, if you like," said Rosamond; "but I should have thought it would be very injurious to your position for us to live in a poor way. You must expect your practice to be lowered.""

""I think I see one resource which would free us from a good deal of the present difficulty. I hear that young Ned Plymdale is going to be married to Miss Sophy Toller. They are rich, and it is not often that a good house is vacant in Middlemarch. I feel sure that they would be glad to take this house from us with most of our furniture, and they would be willing to pay handsomely for the lease. I can employ Trumbull to speak to Plymdale about it.""

" ...But for all that, his will was not a whit stronger than hers. She immediately walked out of the room in silence, but with an intense determination to hinder what Lydgate liked to do."

" ... It was as if a fracture in delicate crystal had begun, and he was afraid of any movement that might make it fatal. His marriage would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving each other. He had long ago made up his mind to what he thought was her negative character—her want of sensibility, which showed itself in disregard both of his specific wishes and of his general aims. The first great disappointment had been borne: the tender devotedness and docile adoration of the ideal wife must be renounced, and life must be taken up on a lower stage of expectation, as it is by men who have lost their limbs. But the real wife had not only her claims, she had still a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, "She will never love me much," is easier to bear than the fear, "I shall love her no more.""

................................................................................................

"For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment. In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind of residence."

................................................................................................

"Mr. Hawley rode home without thinking of Lydgate's attendance on Raffles in any other light than as a piece of evidence on the side of Bulstrode. But the news that Lydgate had all at once become able not only to get rid of the execution in his house but to pay all his debts in Middlemarch was spreading fast, gathering round it conjectures and comments which gave it new body and impetus, and soon filling the ears of other persons besides Mr. Hawley, who were not slow to see a significant relation between this sudden command of money and Bulstrode's desire to stifle the scandal of Raffles. That the money came from Bulstrode would infallibly have been guessed even if there had been no direct evidence of it; for it had beforehand entered into the gossip about Lydgate's affairs, that neither his father-in-law nor his own family would do anything for him, and direct evidence was furnished not only by a clerk at the Bank, but by innocent Mrs. Bulstrode herself, who mentioned the loan to Mrs. Plymdale, who mentioned it to her daughter-in-law of the house of Toller, who mentioned it generally. The business was felt to be so public and important that it required dinners to feed it, and many invitations were just then issued and accepted on the strength of this scandal concerning Bulstrode and Lydgate; wives, widows, and single ladies took their work and went out to tea oftener than usual; and all public conviviality, from the Green Dragon to Dollop's, gathered a zest which could not be won from the question whether the Lords would throw out the Reform Bill. 

"For hardly anybody doubted that some scandalous reason or other was at the bottom of Bulstrode's liberality to Lydgate. ... "

""Oh, my dear," said Mr. Brooke, "we have been hearing bad news—bad news, you know." 

"They walked through the garden towards the churchyard gate, Mr. Farebrother wanting to go on to the parsonage; and Dorothea heard the whole sad story. 

"She listened with deep interest, and begged to hear twice over the facts and impressions concerning Lydgate. After a short silence, pausing at the churchyard gate, and addressing Mr. Farebrother, she said energetically— 

""You don't believe that Mr. Lydgate is guilty of anything base? I will not believe it. Let us find out the truth and clear him!""

"Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life—the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it—can understand the grief of one who falls from that serene activity into the absorbing soul-wasting struggle with worldly annoyances. 

"How was he to live on without vindicating himself among people who suspected him of baseness? How could he go silently away from Middlemarch as if he were retreating before a just condemnation? And yet how was he to set about vindicating himself?"

"Already there had been abundant signs which had hitherto puzzled him, that just when he had been paying off his debts and getting cheerfully on his feet, the townsmen were avoiding him or looking strangely at him, and in two instances it came to his knowledge that patients of his had called in another practitioner. The reasons were too plain now. The general black-balling had begun."

................................................................................................

"As Lydgate rode away, he thought, "This young creature has a heart large enough for the Virgin Mary. She evidently thinks nothing of her own future, and would pledge away half her income at once, as if she wanted nothing for herself but a chair to sit in from which she can look down with those clear eyes at the poor mortals who pray to her. She seems to have what I never saw in any woman before—a fountain of friendship towards men—a man can make a friend of her. Casaubon must have raised some heroic hallucination in her. I wonder if she could have any other sort of passion for a man? Ladislaw?—there was certainly an unusual feeling between them. And Casaubon must have had a notion of it. Well—her love might help a man more than her money." 

"Dorothea on her side had immediately formed a plan of relieving Lydgate from his obligation to Bulstrode, which she felt sure was a part, though small, of the galling pressure he had to bear. She sat down at once under the inspiration of their interview, and wrote a brief note, in which she pleaded that she had more claim than Mr. Bulstrode had to the satisfaction of providing the money which had been serviceable to Lydgate—that it would be unkind in Lydgate not to grant her the position of being his helper in this small matter, the favor being entirely to her who had so little that was plainly marked out for her to do with her superfluous money. He might call her a creditor or by any other name if it did but imply that he granted her request. She enclosed a check for a thousand pounds, and determined to take the letter with her the next day when she went to see Rosamond."

""Young Ladislaw the grandson of a thieving Jew pawnbroker" was a phrase which had entered emphatically into the dialogues about the Bulstrode business, at Lowick, Tipton, and Freshitt, and was a worse kind of placard on poor Will's back than the "Italian with white mice." Upright Sir James Chettam was convinced that his own satisfaction was righteous when he thought with some complacency that here was an added league to that mountainous distance between Ladislaw and Dorothea, which enabled him to dismiss any anxiety in that direction as too absurd. ... "

................................................................................................

"Rosamond and Will stood motionless—they did not know how long—he looking towards the spot where Dorothea had stood, and she looking towards him with doubt. It seemed an endless time to Rosamond, in whose inmost soul there was hardly so much annoyance as gratification from what had just happened. Shallow natures dream of an easy sway over the emotions of others, trusting implicitly in their own petty magic to turn the deepest streams, and confident, by pretty gestures and remarks, of making the thing that is not as though it were. 

"She knew that Will had received a severe blow, but she had been little used to imagining other people's states of mind except as a material cut into shape by her own wishes; and she believed in her own power to soothe or subdue. Even Tertius, that most perverse of men, was always subdued in the long-run: events had been obstinate, but still Rosamond would have said now, as she did before her marriage, that she never gave up what she had set her mind on. She put out her arm and laid the tips of her fingers on Will's coat-sleeve. 

""Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash, darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again, as if his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting. He wheeled round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her, with the tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back, looking fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away from her. 

"She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such as only Lydgate was used to interpret. She became suddenly quiet and seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with her shawl. Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold."

""Explain! Tell a man to explain how he dropped into hell! Explain my preference! I never had a preference for her, any more than I have a preference for breathing. No other woman exists by the side of her. I would rather touch her hand if it were dead, than I would touch any other woman's living." 

"Rosamond, while these poisoned weapons were being hurled at her, was almost losing the sense of her identity, and seemed to be waking into some new terrible existence. She had no sense of chill resolute repulsion, of reticent self-justification such as she had known under Lydgate's most stormy displeasure: all her sensibility was turned into a bewildering novelty of pain; she felt a new terrified recoil under a lash never experienced before. What another nature felt in opposition to her own was being burnt and bitten into her consciousness. When Will had ceased to speak she had become an image of sickened misery: her lips were pale, and her eyes had a tearless dismay in them. If it had been Tertius who stood opposite to her, that look of misery would have been a pang to him, and he would have sunk by her side to comfort her, with that strong-armed comfort which, she had often held very cheap."

................................................................................................

"She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young mistress—that just the morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before. Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an active life before her because she had buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy. 

"Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch, having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond."

"It was a newer crisis in Rosamond's experience than even Dorothea could imagine: she was under the first great shock that had shattered her dream-world in which she had been easily confident of herself and critical of others; and this strange unexpected manifestation of feeling in a woman whom she had approached with a shrinking aversion and dread, as one who must necessarily have a jealous hatred towards her, made her soul totter all the more with a sense that she had been walking in an unknown world which had just broken in upon her."

""You are thinking what is not true," said Rosamond, in an eager half-whisper, while she was still feeling Dorothea's arms round her—urged by a mysterious necessity to free herself from something that oppressed her as if it were blood guiltiness. 

"They moved apart, looking at each other. 

""When you came in yesterday—it was not as you thought," said Rosamond in the same tone. There was a movement of surprised attention in Dorothea. She expected a vindication of Rosamond herself. 

""He was telling me how he loved another woman, that I might know he could never love me," said Rosamond, getting more and more hurried as she went on. "And now I think he hates me because—because you mistook him yesterday. He says it is through me that you will think ill of him—think that he is a false person. But it shall not be through me. He has never had any love for me—I know he has not—he has always thought slightly of me. He said yesterday that no other woman existed for him beside you. The blame of what happened is entirely mine. He said he could never explain to you—because of me. He said you could never think well of him again. But now I have told you, and he cannot reproach me any more.""

................................................................................................

""—I—should not make any fuss about it. If she likes to be poor, that is her affair. Nobody would have said anything if she had married the young fellow because he was rich. Plenty of beneficed clergy are poorer than they will be. Here is Elinor," continued the provoking husband; "she vexed her friends by me: I had hardly a thousand a-year—I was a lout—nobody could see anything in me—my shoes were not the right cut—all the men wondered how a woman could like me. Upon my word, I must take Ladislaw's part until I hear more harm of him." 

""Humphrey, that is all sophistry, and you know it," said his wife. "Everything is all one—that is the beginning and end with you. As if you had not been a Cadwallader! Does any one suppose that I would have taken such a monster as you by any other name?" 

""And a clergyman too," observed Lady Chettam with approbation. "Elinor cannot be said to have descended below her rank. It is difficult to say what Mr. Ladislaw is, eh, James?""

"Celia thought it was of great use, if not to say that, at least to take a journey to Lowick in order to influence Dorothea's mind. All through their girlhood she had felt that she could act on her sister by a word judiciously placed—by opening a little window for the daylight of her own understanding to enter among the strange colored lamps by which Dodo habitually saw. And Celia the matron naturally felt more able to advise her childless sister. How could any one understand Dodo so well as Celia did or love her so tenderly?"

................................................................................................

" ... But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas, some of which may present a far sadder sacrifice than that of the Dorothea whose story we know. 

"Her finely touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature, like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 12, 2020 - 

December 25, 2020 - January 19, 2021.

...............................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Legend of Jubal 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

When one has finished, one grows aware of the story George Eliot wished to tell (- that of the worshipped son of God who, if he were to return, could very well find himself not only ignored, but very likely persecuted, again, by the very ones who swear faith and call themselves in his name; of Europe that, seemingly converted to a creed of brotherhood and kindness, of meek inheriting heaven and of doing unto others as you would have them do into you, yet follows hypocrisy of paying obeisance to the creed, weekly, and goes to war for looting others lands -) yet finds the conflict in herself too great, having been outspoken about pride of an ancestry of invaders, and of righteousness of England in punishing India and China for resisting the domination of England - and so she dared not, but instead tells here the story of Jubal who discovered music and gave this great gift to humanity. 

She combines it with his sojourn to find greatest mountains South, and having discovered great ocean thereafter, returning home, only to be beaten in his own name. 

Which is the greater story, that of followers of a God assaulting him if he appears? Or the sojourner who cannot return home to recognition and love and peace, but is assaulted and humiliated instead? 

................................................................................................

Interesting, that usually there's a pretence in abrahmic faiths about non existence of Gods, other than one admitted and demanded faith to; but in history and mythology of Greece, Rome, Egypt and even of West Asia, other Gods are not only mentioned, they are well described and characterised. 

George Eliot begins with mention of them, and quickly covers up with ascribing them only to imagination of Cain, but bible itself is a matter of faith according to church dogma and not admitted as history of the region; and yet, she then goes on to indicate Cain possibly going yo India. 

This last is merely another infliction of contempt on India, of course, by someone of colonial empire rulers; India has very rich treasure of knowledge, branded mythology by West, but since much proven true history by science of West - including, for example, history of rising of Himaalayan ranges from ocean, and too,  evolution theory that parallels Dashaavataara of India's traditional lore.  

But India has no memory, no tradition of any tale, whatsoever, of even a Cain (or anyone arriving from West across what was prehistorically an ocean - hence the name, Sindhu, literally meaning ocean, for the river called Indus by west), much less of a whole Aaryan race that is foundation of civilisation of India. Tradition of India reaches prehistory of Indian subcontinent, and has no whiff of arriving from across Sindhu. It has, instead, memories of Himaalayan ranges rising out of the ocean, and of Gangaa being brought down to earth by efforts of a single man, Bhagieratha. 

So Cain going East, of Eden - presumably from West Asia - might have reached, say, western borders of the region known as Central Asia.  

................................................................................................

It isn't just that George Eliot- daughter of a clergyman - mentions other Gods, before covering it up as his lack of doubt in their existence, and seeing them mirrored there - so church could easily brand it all as thinking of a fallen one who murdered hus brother, even though history really point at flesh consumers and monotheist conversionists as perpetrators of massacres on humongous scale, not vegetarians of a happy land inhabited by Gods. 

It also that the author says, "When Cain was driven from Jehovah’s land ", so, not only he did not leave of his own volition, not only he was ordered to leave, but was "driven out"; what's more, "driven from Jehovah’s land", and "He wandered eastward, seeking some far strand, Ruled by kind gods who asked no offerings"! So concept within Eden is of a god who "owns" that land, whik e others are "ruled" by other Gods; moreover, the owner of Eden asked for offerings, which, Cain hoped, those other Gods elsewhere were kind enough not to ask! 

And yet, church fraudulently demands exclusive faith in one who so demands, and more, denial of all others, not denial of offerings, but of their very existence! 

"When Cain was driven from Jehovah’s land 

"He wandered eastward, seeking some far strand 

"Ruled by kind gods who asked no offerings 

"Save pure field-fruits, as aromatic things, 

"To feed the subtler sense of frames divine 

"That lived on fragrance for their food and wine: 

"Wild joyous gods, who winked at faults and folly, 

"And could be pitiful and melancholy. 

"He never had a doubt that such gods were; 

"He looked within, and saw them mirrored there. 

"Some think he came at last to Tartary, 

"And some to Ind; but, howsoe’er it be, 

"His staff he planted where sweet waters ran, 

"And in that home of Cain the Arts began."

................................................................................................

Beautiful content and beautifully flow the verses - 

"Man’s life was spacious in the early world: 

"It paused, like some slow ship with sail unfurled 

"Waiting in seas by scarce a wavelet curled; 

"Beheld the slow star-paces of the skies, 

"And grew from strength to strength through centuries; 

"Saw infant trees fill out their giant limbs, 

"And heard a thousand times the sweet birds’ marriage hymns."

................................................................................................

And it reverts to memory of terror - 

"In Cain’s young city none had heard of 

"Death Save him, the founder; and it was his faith 

"That here, away from harsh Jehovah’s law, 

"Man was immortal, since no halt or flaw 

"In Cain’s own frame betrayed six hundred years, 

"But dark as pines that autumn never sears 

"His locks thronged backward as he ran, his frame 

"Rose like the orbed sun each morn the same, 

"Lake-mirrored to his gaze; and that red brand, 

"The scorching impress of Jehovah’s hand, 

"Was still clear-edged to his unwearied eye, 

"Its secret firm in time-fraught memory."

................................................................................................

Here's a clue to location of Eden- 

"He said, “My happy offspring shall not know 

"That the red life from out a man may flow 

"When smitten by his brother.” True, his race 

"Bore each one stamped upon his new-born face 

"A copy of the brand no whit less clear; 

"But every mother held that little copy dear. 

"Thus generations in glad idlesse throve, 

"Nor hunted prey, nor with each other strove; 

"For clearest springs were plenteous in the land, 

"And gourds for cups; the ripe fruits sought the hand, 

"Bending the laden boughs with fragrant gold; 

"And for their roofs and garments wealth untold 

"Lay everywhere in grasses and broad leaves: 

"They labored gently, as a maid who weaves 

"Her hair in mimic mats, and pauses oft 

"And strokes across her hand the tresses soft, 

"Then peeps to watch the poised butterfly, 

"Or little burthened ants that homeward hie."

That "maid who weaves Her hair in mimic mats" evokes Africa, where braiding of hair isn't the simple one or two braids the rest of the world is content with; so if thus is the subconscious memory, Eden must gave been therein, or an island off African coast, if not Africa itself. The continent still bears innocence of an Eden with species wild abounding and humans living in harmony, except where spoiled by colonial rulers from Europe, and their heritage. 

Recent discoveries under ocean speak of another continent off East coast of Africa, now mostly submerged, that smaller islands of Seychelles and Madagascar and so on are a clue to; and Tamil lore speaks of a continent (that they originated from, migrating to India some time as continents travelled, submerged, and more?), named Kumaarikhanda. Was this Eden? 

................................................................................................

Then it changes, and again, there's the motif of connection of an angry god of Cain's past land, evoked by death that was unknown to his descendents, bringing memories of a curse! 

"Time was but leisure to their lingering thought, 

"There was no’ need for haste to finish aught; 

"But sweet beginnings were repeated still 

"Like infant babblings that no task fulfil; 

"For love, that loved not change, constrained the simple will. 

"Till, hurling stones in mere athletic joy, 

"Strong Lamech struck and killed his fairest boy, 

"And tried to wake him with the tenderest cries, 

"And fetched and held before the glazed eyes 

"The things they best had loved to look upon; 

"But never glance or smile or sigh he won. 

"The generations stood around those twain 

"Helplessly gazing, till their father 

"Cain Parted the press, and said, “He will not wake; 

"This is the endless sleep, and we must make 

"A bed deep down for him beneath the sod; 

"For know, my sons, there is a mighty God 

"Angry with all man’s race, but most with me."

This is the memory carried by Cain, of "a mighty God, Angry with all man’s race, but most with me." Nothing godly about this one, unless he's merely one of the Gods, and not one of the greater ones. 

................................................................................................

And more - it isn't merely memory, or fear, but a certainty, of persecution, and of wrath, but more, of extermination - 

"I fled from out His land in vain!—’tis 

"He Who came and slew the lad; for 

"He has found This home of ours, and we shall all be bound 

"By the harsh bands of His most cruel will, 

"Which any moment may some dear one kill. 

"Nay, though we live for countless moons, at last 

"We and all ours shall die like summers past. 

"This is Jehovah’s will, and He is strong; 

"I thought the way I travelled was too long 

"For Him to follow me: my thought was vain! 

"He walks unseen, but leaves a track of pain, 

"Pale Death His footprint is, and He will come again!”"

What is mirrored here seems far more a memory of a persecution of a race, that has gone on for well over centuries before two millennia that they were driven from their homeland. So one wonders, did George Eliot write this based on bible, and therefore was the twentieth century culminating in genocide something that mirrored a past memory that's recorded in the bible, with what's called a god only a mighty and terrible Lord of a land? 

The flight of Cain from Eden, is that really the migration East that's visible in the obvious connection between populations of Africa, Australia, Fiji, Andaman and Nicobar, and , not all, but a large section of, Tamil people of India?

................................................................................................

"And a new spirit from that hour came o’er 

"The race of Cain: soft idlesse was no more, 

"But even the sunshine had a heart of care, 

"Smiling with hidden dread-a mother fair 

"Who folding to her breast a dying child 

"Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. 

"Death was now lord of Life, and at his word 

"Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred, 

"With measured wing now audibly arose 

"Throbbing through all things to some unknown close."

................................................................................................

"Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn, 

"And Work grew eager, and Device was born. 

"It seemed the light was never loved before, 

"Now each man said, “Twill go and come no more.” 

"No budding branch, no pebble from the brook, 

"No form, no shadow, but new dearness took 

"From the one thought that life must have an end; 

"And the last parting now began to send 

"Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss, 

"Thrilling them into finer tenderness. 

"Then Memory disclosed her face divine, 

"That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine 

"Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves, 

"And shows the presence that no sunlight craves, 

"No space, no warmth, but moves among them all; 

"Gone and yet here, and coming at each call, 

"With ready voice and eyes that understand, 

"And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand.

"Such granite as the plunging torrent wears 

"And roaring rolls around through countless years. 

"But strength that still on movement must be fed, 

"Inspiring thought of change, devices bred, 

"And urged his mind through earth and air to rove 

"For force that he could conquer if he strove, 

"For lurking forms that might new tasks fulfil 

"And yield unwilling to his stronger-will."

................................................................................................

George Eliot describes each brother by turn - Jabal the shepherd with magic handling of all animals, till he reared canines domesticated from wild wolves, and Tubal-Cain the handler of tools who crafted things from earth. 

"Such Tubal-Cain. But Jubal had a frame 

"Fashioned to finer senses, which became 

"A yearning for some hidden soul of things, 

"Some outward touch complete on inner springs 

"That vaguely moving bred a lonely pain, 

"A want that did but stronger grow with gain 

"Of all good else, as spirits might be sad 

"For lack of speech to tell us they are glad."

....

"Jubal, too, watched the hammer, till his eyes, 

"No longer following its fall or rise, 

"Seemed glad with something that they could not see, 

"But only listened to—some melody, 

"Wherein dumb longings inward speech had found, 

"Won from the common store of struggling sound. 

"Then, as the metal shapes more various grew, 

"And, hurled upon each other, resonance drew, 

"Each gave new tones, the revelations dim 

"Of some external soul that spoke for him: 

"The hollow vessel’s clang, the clash, the boom, 

"Like light that makes wide spiritual room 

"And skyey spaces in the spaceless thought, 

"To Jubal such enlarged passion brought, 

"That love, hope, rage, and all experience, 

"Were fused in vaster being, fetching thence 

"Concords and discords, cadences and cries 

"That seemed from some world-shrouded soul to rise, 

"Some rapture more intense, some mightier rage, 

"Some living sea that burst the bounds of man’s brief age."

Story of Jubal is that of discovery of an inner realm, that of music, as told by George Eliot.  

"Then with such blissful trouble and glad care 

"For growth. within unborn as mothers bear, 

"To the far woods he wandered, listening, 

"And heard the birds their little stories sing 

"In notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech— 

"Melted with tears, smiles, glances—that can reach 

"More quickly through our frame’s deep-winding night, 

"And without thought raise thought’s best fruit, delight.

"Pondering, he sought his home again and heard 

"The fluctuant changes of the spoken word: 

"The deep remonstrance and the argued want, 

"Insistent first in close monotonous chant, 

"Next leaping upward to defiant stand 

"Or downward beating like the resolute hand; 

"The mother’s call, the children’s answering cry, 

"The laugh’s light cataract tumbling from on high; 

"The suasive repetitions Jabal taught, 

"That timid browsing cattle homeward brought: 

"The clear-winged fugue of echoes vanishing; 

"And through them all the hammer’s rhythmic ring.

"Jubal sat lonely, all around was dim, 

"Yet his face glowed with light revealed to him: 

"For as the delicate stream of odor wakes 

"The thought-wed sentience, and some image makes 

"From out the mingled fragments of the past, 

"Finely compact in wholeness that will last, 

"So streamed as from the body of each sound 

"Subtler pulsations, swift as warmth, which found 

"All prisoned germs and all their powers unbound, 

"Till thought self-luminous flamed from memory, 

"And in creative vision wandered free. 

"Then Jubal, standing, rapturous arms upraised, 

"And on the dark with eager eyes he gazed, 

"As had some manifested god been there."

"Such patience have the heroes who begin, 

"Sailing the first toward lands which others win. 

"Jubal must dare as great beginners dare, 

"Strike form’s first way in matter rude and bare, 

"And, yearning vaguely toward the plenteous choir 

"Of the world’s harvest, make one poor small lyre. 

"He made it, and from out its measured frame 

"Drew the harmonic soul, whose answers came 

"With guidance sweet and lessons of delight 

"Teaching to ear and hand the blissful Right, 

"Where strictest law is gladness to-the sense, 

"And all desire bends toward obedience. 

"Then Jubal poured his triumph in a song— 

"The rapturous word that rapturous notes prolong 

"As radiance streams from smallest things that burn, 

"Or thought of loving into love doth turn. 

"And still his lyre gave companionship 

"In sense-taught concert as of lip with lip."

................................................................................................

Here shows bias of West, again - literally, for West. This is strange, considering Nordic latitudes hunger for the light and warmth they need, and it's brought by sun sun that rises East- but this glory of West viewed each evening, however beautiful, only brings the dreaded darkness and cold, especially dreadful for the dark Nordic latitudes. 

"He who had lived through twice three centuries, 

"Whose months monotonous, like trees on trees 

"In hoary forests, stretched a backward maze, 

"Dreamed himself dimly through the travelled days 

"Till in clear light he paused, and felt the sun 

"That warmed him when he was a little one; 

"Knew that true heaven, the recovered past, 

"The dear small Known amid the Unknown vast, 

"And in that heaven wept. But younger limbs 

"Thrilled toward the future, that bright land which swims 

"In western glory, isles and streams and bays, 

"Where hidden pleasures float in golden haze."

No, it's not primitive natural instinct, this glorification of West - it has to be about a prehistoric migration East and a nostalgic memory if West, thus recounted in Cain being driven East of Eden. 

................................................................................................

"The sun had sunk, but music still was there, 

"And when this ceased, still triumph filled the air: 

"It seemed the stars were shining with delight 

"And that no night was ever like this night."

"“Hearing myself,” he said, “I hems in my life, 

"And I will get me to some far-off land, 

"Where higher mountains under heaven stand 

"And touch the blue at rising of the stars, 

"Whose song they hear where no rough mingling mars 

"The great clear voices. Such lands there must be, 

"Where varying forms make varying symphony 

"Where other thunders roll amid the hills, 

"Some mightier wind a mightier forest fills 

"With other strains through other-shapen boughs; 

"Where bees and birds and beasts that hunt or browse 

"Will teach me songs I know not. Listening there, 

"My life shall grow like trees both tall and fair 

"That rise and spread and bloom toward fuller fruit each year.” 

"He took a raft, and travelled with the stream 

"Southward for many a league, till he might deem 

"He saw at last the pillars of the sky, 

"Beholding mountains whose white majesty 

"Rushed through him as new awe, and made new song 

"That swept with fuller wave the chords along, 

"Weighting his voice with deep religious chime,. 

"The iteration of slow chant sublime. 

"It was the region long inhabited 

"By all the race of Seth; and Jubal said, 

"“Here have I found my thirsty soul’s desire, 

"Eastward the hills touch heaven, and evening’s fire 

"Flames through deep waters, I will take my rest, 

"And feed anew from my great mother’s breast, 

"The sky-clasped Earth, whose voices nurture me 

"As the flowers’ sweetness doth the honey-bee.” 

"He lingered wandering for many an age, 

"And, sowing music, made high heritage 

"For generations far beyond the Flood 

"For the poor late-begotten human brood 

"Born to life’s weary brevity and perilous good. 

"And ever as he travelled he would climb 

"The farthest mountain, yet the heavenly chime, 

"The mighty tolling of the far-off spheres 

"Beating their pathway, never touched his ears. 

"But wheresoe’er he rose, the heavens rose, 

"And the far-gazing mountain could disclose 

"Nought but a wider earth; until one height 

"Showed him the ocean stretched in liquid light, 

"And he could hear its multitudinous roar, 

"Its plunge and hiss upon the pebbled shore: 

"Then Jubal silent sat, and touched his lyre no more. 

"He thought, “The world is great, but I am weak, 

"And where the sky bends is no solid peak 

"To give me footing, but instead, this main 

"Like myriad maddened horses thundering o’er the plain."

................................................................................................

"The way was weary. Many a date-palm grew, 

"And shook out clustered gold against the blue, 

"While Jubal, guided by the steadfast spheres, 

"Sought the dear home of those first eager years, 

"When, with fresh vision fed, the fuller will 

"Took living outward shape in pliant skill; 

"For still he hoped to find the former things, 

"And the warm gladness recognition brings. 

"His footsteps erred among the mazy woods 

"And long illusive sameness of the floods, 

"Winding and wandering. Through far regions, strange 

"With Gentile homes and faces, did he range, 

"And left his music in their memory, 

"And left at last, when nought besides would free 

"His homeward steps from clinging hands and cries, 

"The ancient lyre. And now in ignorant eyes 

"No sign remained of Jubal, Lamech’s son, 

"That mortal frame wherein was first begun 

"The immortal life of song. His withered brow 

"Pressed over eyes that held no lightning now, 

"His locks streamed whiteness on the hurrying air, 

"The unresting soul had worn itself quite bare 

"Of beauteous token, as the outworn might 

"Of oaks slow dying, gaunt in summer’s light. 

"His full deep voice toward thinnest treble ran: 

"He was the rune-writ story of a man."

"And so at last he neared the well-known land, 

"Could see the hills in ancient order stand 

"With friendly faces whose familiar gaze 

"Looked through the sunshine of his childish days; 

"Knew the deep-shadowed folds of hanging woods, 

"And seemed to see the selfsame insect broods 

"Whirling and quivering o’er the flowers—to hear 

"The selfsame cuckoo making distance near. 

"Yea, the dear Earth, with mother’s constancy, 

"Met and embraced him, and said, “Thou art he! 

"This was thy cradle, here my breast was thine, 

"Where feeding, thou didst all thy life intwine 

"With my skly-wedded life in heritage divine.”"

................................................................................................

"The word was “Jubal!”.. “Jubal” filled the air, 

"And seemed to ride aloft, a spirit there, 

"Creator of the choir, the full-fraught strain 

"That grateful rolled itself to him again. 

"The aged man adust upon the bank— 

"Whom no eye saw—at first with rapture drank 

"The bliss of music, then, with swelling heart, 

"Felt, this was his own being’s greater part, 

"The universal joy once born in him."

................................................................................................

"His voice’s penury of tones long spent, 

"He felt not; all his being leaped in flame 

"To meet his kindred as they onward came 

"Slackening and wheeling toward the temple’s face: 

"He rushed before them to the glittering space, 

"And, with a strength that was but strong desire, 

"Cried, “I am Jubal, I! . . . I made the lyre!”"

"The tones amid a lake of silence fell 

"Broken and strained, as if a feeble bell 

"Had tuneless pealed the triumph of a land 

"To listening crowds in expectation spanned. 

"Sudden came showers of laughter on that lake; 

"They spread along the train from front to wake 

"In one great storm of merriment, while he 

"Shrank doubting whether he could Jubal be, 

"And not a dream of Jubal, whose rich vein 

"Of passionate music came with that dream-pain, 

"Wherein the sense slips off from each loved thing, 

"And all appearance is mere vanishing."

.... 

"Two rushed upon him: two, the most devout 

"In honor of great Jubal, thrust him out, 

"And beat him with their flutes. ’Twas little need; 

"He strove not, cried not, but with tottering speed, 

"As if the scorn and howls were driving wind 

"That urged his body, serving so the mind 

"Which could but shrink and yearn, he sought the screen 

"Of thorny thickets, and there fell unseen. 

"The immortal name of Jubal filled the sky, 

"While Jubal lonely laid him down to die. 

"He said within his soul, “This is the end: 

"O’er all the earth to where the heavens bend 

"And hem men’s travel, I have breathed my soul: 

"I lie here now the remnant of that whole, 

"The embers of a life, a lonely pain; 

"As far-off rivers to my thirst were vain, 

"So of my mighty years nought comes to me again."

................................................................................................

"Because thou shinest in man’s soul, a god, 

"Who found and gave new passion and new joy 

"That nought but Earth’s destruction can destroy. 

"Thy gifts to give was thine of men alone: 

"’Twas but in giving that thou couldst atone 

"For too much wealth amid their poverty.”—"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 05, 2021 - October 05, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Other Poems  

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Agatha. 

Armgart. : I. II. III. IV. V. 

How Lisa Loved the King. 

A Minor Prophet. 

Brother and Sister. 

Stradivarius. 

A College Breakfast-Party. 

Two Lovers. 

Self and Life. 

“Sweet Endings Come and Go, Love.” 

The Death of Moses. 

Arion. 

“O May I Join the Choir Invisible.”

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Agatha, 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This poem would be sweet for anyone familiar with the region, and as reverent about catholicism as needed. Or one could just enjoy the local colour provided. 

Did George Eliot write this when visiting the region? 

................................................................................................

"Come with me to the mountain, not where rocks 

"Soar harsh above the troops of hurrying pines, 

"But where the earth spreads soft and rounded breasts 

"To feed her children; where the generous hills 

"Lift a green isle betwixt the sky and plain 

"To keep some Old World things aloof from change."

Is she talking of hills when she says mountains? She speaks of earth spreading soft and hills being a green isle, but mountains are so labeled or defined only above a certain height, and in Nordic latitudes, that's alpine, unless it's in U.K. warmed by the gulf stream. Or tropics, where alpine scenery is at a far higher altitude than in Europe. 

But the next few lines clear up one part- the location isn't tropical. 

"Here too ’t is hill and hollow: new-born streams 

"With sweet enforcement, joyously compelled 

"Like laughing children, hurry down the steeps, 

"And make a dimpled chase athwart the stones; 

"Pine woods are black upon the heights, the slopes 

"Are green with pasture, and the bearded corn 

"Fringes the blue above the sudden ridge: 

"A little world whose round horizon cuts 

"This isle of hills with heaven for a sea,"

So, pines, and sea, in close proximity. And then she writes - 

"Save in clear moments when south westward gleams 

"France by the Rhine, melting anon to haze."

There are mountains where France can be seen westward across Rhine, but close to sea? That should be easily located! 

Here is the heart of George Eliot that never left her breeding, as a clergyman's daughter, behind, even though her intellectual growth did so - so she was distanced from her family, not just father who partially reconciled upon her acceptance of his condition of outward compliance, but siblings too. 

"The monks of old chose here their still retreat, 

"And called it by the Blessed Virgin’s name, 

"Sancta Maria, which the peasant’s tongue, 

"Speaking from out the parent’s heart that turns 

"All loved things into little things, has made 

"Sanct Margen—Holy little Mary, dear 

"As all the sweet home things she smiles upon, 

"The children and the cows, the apple-trees, 

"The cart, the plough, all named with that caress 

"Which feigns them little, easy to be held, 

"Familiar to the eyes and hand and heart. 

"What though a Queen? She puts her crown away 

"And with her little Boy wears common clothes, 

"Caring for common wants, remembering 

"That day when good Saint Joseph left his work 

"To marry her with humble trust sublime."

When they thus wax poetic, do they not realise that it was West Asia, where the persona of two millennia past whom they worship, lived - if it were indeed history and not stories made up about them by church for power - and they had lived among orange groves and pines of a warm desert of Asia, with dark eyed and dark haired people, not Apple orchards with blue eyed, blond children frolicking? 

"The monks are gone, their shadows fall no more 

"Tall-frocked and cowled athwart the evening fields 

"At milking-time; their silent corridors 

"Are turned to homes of bare-armed, aproned men, 

"Who toil for wife and children. But the bells, 

"Pealing on high from two quaint convent towers, 

"Still ring the Catholic signals, summoning 

"To grave remembrance of the larger life 

"That bears our own, like perishable fruit 

"Upon its heaven-wide branches. ... "

Spiritual life, perishable fruit? What was she thinking? Spiritual life, persons devoted to it, aren't they all far more akin to the non-deciduous evergreens that grow taller than all else around, survive alpine heights, and live long unless cut down by humans or struck by calamities such as lightening or meteors? Fruits and perishable vegetation is of earthly life, delighting in flowering and scents, fruits and seeds, all symbolising youth, change of life that parallels change if seasons, reproduction. 

"At their sound 

"The shepherd boy far off upon the hill, 

"The workers with the saw and at the forge, 

"The triple generation round the hearth— 

"Grandames and mothers and the flute-voiced girls— 

"Fall on their knees, and send forth prayerful cries 

"To the kind Mother with the little Boy, 

"Who pleads for helpless men against the storm, 

"Lightning and plagues and all terrific shapes Of power supreme."

The last two lines explain much about the superstition imposed by Rome being accepted by those then powerless against much, but George Eliot did live in Germany, did she never hear about maultascen and how they were invented, even if she never lived in Switzerland and so never heard of  history of cheese, of second milking, or more along the line? 

................................................................................................

And now, for the not so generic - 

"Within the prettiest hollow of these hills, 

"Just as you enter it, upon the slope 

"Stands a low cottage neighboured cheerily 

"By running water, which, at farthest end 

"Of the same hollow, turns a heavy mill, 

"And feeds the pasture for the miller’s cows, 

"Blanchi and Nageli, Veilchen and the rest, 

"Matrons with faces as Griselda mild, 

"Coming at call. And on the farthest height 

"A little tower looks out above the pines 

"Where mounting you will find a sanctuary 

"Open and still; without, the silent crowd 

"Of heaven-planted, incense-mingling flowers; 

"Within, the altar where the Mother sits 

"’Mid votive tablets hung from far-off years 

"By peasants succored in the peril of fire, 

"Fever, or floods who thought that Mary’s love, 

"Willing but not omnipotent, had stood 

"Between their lives and that dread power which slew 

"Their neighbor at their side. The chapel bell 

"Will melt to gentlest music ere it reach 

"That cottage on the slope, whose garden gate 

"Has caught the rose-tree boughs and stands ajar; 

"So does the door, to let the sunbeams in; 

"For in the slanting sunbeams angels come 

"And visit Agatha who dwells within— 

"Old Agatha, whose cousins Kate and Nell 

"Are housed by her in Love and Duty’s name, 

"They being feeble, with small withered wits, 

"And she believing that the higher gift 

"Was given to be shared. So Agatha 

"Shares her one room, all neat on afternoons, 

"As if same memory were sacred there 

"And everything within the-four low waIls 

"An honored relic."

................................................................................................

Here's far more of quintessential George Eliot -

"One long summer’s day 

"An angel entered at the rose-hung gate, 

"With skirts pale blue, a brow to quench the pearl, 

"Hair soft and blonde as infants’, plenteous 

"As hers who made the wavy lengths once speak 

"The grateful worship of a rescued soul. 

"The angel paused before the open door 

"To give good day. “Come in,” said Agatha. 

"I followed close, and watched and listened there. 

"The angel was a lady, noble, young, 

"Taught in all the seemliness that fits the court, 

"All lore that shapes the mind to delicate use, 

"Yet quiet, lowly, as a meek white dove 

"That with its presence teaches gentleness. 

"Men called her Countess Linda; little girls 

"In Freiburg town, orphans whom she caressed, 

"Said Mamma Linda: yet her years were few, 

"Her outward beauties all in budding time, 

"Her virtues the aroma of the plant 

"That dwells in all its being, root, stem, leaf. 

"And waits not ripeness."

Oh, Freiburg! 

That's nowhere close to ocean, though! 

But notice how angels of George Eliot always gave red-gold or blond hair, and of course a higher breeding, even though they don't escape travails, but only must deal with them as best as they possibly could - Dorothea, Romola, even Gwendolyn - while the lesser mortal have blue eyes - Tessa, Rosamond - and the exalted virtuous have dark eyes and hair, shared by the not so exalted - Mirah, Lisa? 

................................................................................................

Turns out, Countess Linda is visiting from Freiburg, for reasons not explained. 

"Fair Countess Linda sat upon the bench, 

"Close fronting the old knitter, and they talked 

"With sweet antiphony of young and old. 

"Agatha. 

"You like our valley, lady? I am glad 

"You thought it well to come again. But rest— 

"The walk is long from Master Michael’s inn. 

"Countess Linda. 

"Yes, but no walk is prettier. 

"Agatha. 

"It is true: 

"There lacks no blessing here, the waters all 

"Have virtues like the garments of the Lord, 

"And heal much sickness; then, the crops and cows 

"Flourish past speaking, and the garden flowers, 

"Pink, blue, and purple, ’t is a joy to see 

"How they yield honey for the singing bees. 

"I would the whole world were as good a home. 

"Countess Linda. 

"And you are well off, Agatha?—your friends 

"Left you a certain bread: is it not so? 

"Agatha. 

"Not so at all, dear lady. I had naught, 

"Was a poor orphan; but I came to tend 

"Here in this house, an old afflicted pair, 

"Who wore out slowly; and the last who died, 

"Full thirty years ago, left me this roof 

"And all the household stuff. It was great wealth; 

"And so I had a home for Kate and Nell. 

"Countess Linda. 

"But how, then, have you earned your daily bread 

"These thirty years? 

"Agatha. 

"O, that is easy earning. 

"We help the neighbors, and our bit and sup. 

"Is never failing; they have work for us 

"In house and field, all sorts of odds and ends, 

"Patching and mending, turning o’er the hay, 

"Holding sick children,—there is always work; 

"And they are very good,—the neighbors are: 

"Weigh not our bits of work with weight and scale, 

"But glad themselves with giving us good shares 

"Of meat and drink; and in the big farm-house 

"When cloth comes home from weaving, the good wife 

"Cuts me a piece,—this very gown,—and says: 

"“Here, Agatha, you old maid, you have time 

"To pray for Hans who is gone soldiering: 

"The saints might help him, and they have much to do, 

"’T were well they were besought to think of him.” 

"She spoke half jesting, but I pray, 

"I pray For poor young Hans. I take it much to heart 

"That other people are worse off than I,— 

"I ease my soul with praying for them all. 

"Countess Linda. 

"That is your way of singing, Agatha; 

"Just as the nightingales pour forth sad songs, 

"And when they reach men’s ears they make men’s hearts 

"Feel the more kindly."

................................................................................................

"Countess Linda. 

"When you go southward in your pilgrimage, 

"Come to see me in Freiburg, Agatha. 

"Where you have friends you should not go to inns. 

"Agatha. 

"Yes, I will gladly come to see you, lady. 

"And you will give me sweet hay for a bed, 

"And in the morning I shall wake betimes 

"And start when all the birds begin to sing. 

"Countess Linda. 

"You wear your smart clothes on the pilgrimage, 

"Such pretty clothes as all the women here 

"Keep by them for their best: a velvet cap 

"And collar golden-broidered? They look well 

"On old and young alike, 

"Agatha. 

"Nay, I have none,— 

"Never had better clothes than those you see. 

"Good clothes are pretty, but one sees them best 

"When others wear them, and I somehow thought 

"’T was not worth while. I had so many things 

"More than some neighbors, I was partly shy 

"Of wearing better clothes than they, and now 

"I am so old and custom is so strong 

"’T would hurt me sore to put on finery. 

"Countess Linda. 

"Your gray hair is a crown, dear Agatha. 

"Shake hands; good-by. The sun is going down 

"And I must see the glory from the hill."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 04, 2021 - October 04, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Armgart 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

An idle curiosity to begin with - prompted by the startling realisation that Armgart is supposed to be a name of a young woman, not a castle or village or a post in military! Apart from the fact that one never heard of it, despite being familiar with Germany after residence of years and several visits - Hildegard, yes, but Armgart, no - one has to wonder why George Eliot picks these weird names for her characters. Casaubon, Bulstrode, Lydgate, and now Armgart?! 

But coming to the soul and substance of this play in verse, one has to wonder if Ingmar Bergman conceived his Autumn Sonata inspired by this. The dialogue in scene two, between the Graf and Armgart, seem to have inspired the tacit condemnation, almost crucifixion that Bergman had the senior woman go through, confronted by her daughter. 

I recall the argument between three students after watching the film, where two argued and one stayed quiet, able to comprehend other two. The younger male repeated his plea about the film being good because it was artistic; the young woman, older than other two, denounced it for the treatment of any woman with a superlative capability, as a bad wife and mother who neglects a home, husband and children. 

In a country where a mom calling is a joke, understood in the sense of her being a bore tolerated reluctantly by the males, there is no winning for any females - there's only the ever racing for popularity until one is "pinned", can flash a ring - bigger the stone, better, even if the guy is idiot insufferable - and and proceeds post a white wedding to a career of housekeeping, children, and keeping oneself in latest fadhion, always fearing the straying of glances of the male owner. 

And if she does dare to excel at anything - other than Apple pies, of course - she must, at all costs, be stopped; girls are told - not only in U.S., but Europe too - that science is unfeminine, one can't be good at it if one is not a dyke, and final word, one won't be 'popular', i.e.,  won't find a mate; next, there's harassment of every kind, by male colleagues and female sisterhood left behind, to bend one to their will, in every way possible, with lies if necessary. 

Final condemnation is in the form it takes in this play, of course, in scene three - adapted in some form or another in most films and t.v. serials of U.S. and even Indian films - whereby a successful woman is depicted either as a terrible person, or merely ambitious but incapable, crashing in her career, and of course, weeping! 

Yes, careers can and do fail; but it's only made into a moral lesson inflicted on females; males can crash and fail too, but are depicted - if not just to turn round and succeed, to be applauded - with sympathy, and often enough to be seen as victims of some woman's fault, if not worse. 

Some of the Indian adaptations of Autumn Sonata - one in Hindi, and before that, Unique April in Bengali - are better, in softening the condemnation if any, to a personal grievance by the daughter(s), with the maternal response in the latter bonding the two, and in the former, a discussion in the former awakening the daughter in to understanding, with the mother niw abke to accept responsibility and care of the younger daughter, freeing the elder to her own life. 

George Eliot here avoids the condemnation, but scene three has the confrontation between the two women - which Ingmar Bergman turned into accusation spree by daughter against mother - much more real, sympathetic, and focused on a crash suffered by one flying high, rather than heaping on her sins of omission, of not having been perfect in caring for everyone around. George Eliot, to begin with, has her refrain from marrying, and giving up the security of being a Grafina, rather than give up a career - while Ingmar Bergman turned it into a saga about a wife (of an accountant and a mother of two daughters) and a brilliant concert pianist who neglects the home, husband and children, throughout life. 

Armgart ends well, with the Graf going to India, leaving the question about a future together postponed, while Armgart decides to rake up teaching as her own teacher did to devote himself to her talent, and going to Freiburg for the purpose. Author explains it for the play, but what was George Eliot's fascination for Freiburg, used in two of the poems, Agatha and Armgart, in this collection, The Legend of Jubal? 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 04, 2021 - October 04, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

How Lisa Loved the King, 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Really sweet story, and for another rare instance, told sweetly by George Eliot, whose lines flow much better than her norm. 

................................................................................................

"Six hundred years ago, in Dante’s time, 

"Before his cheek was furrowed by deep rhyme; 

"When Europe, fed afresh from Eastern story, 

"Was like a garden tangled with the glory 

"Of flowers hand-planted and of flowers air-sown, 

"Climbing and trailing, budding and full-blown, 

"Where purple bells are tossed amid pink stars,"

....

"Six hundred years ago, Palermo town Kept holiday. 

"A deed of great renown, A high revenge, had freed it from the yoke 

"Of hated Frenchmen; and from Calpe’s rock 

"To where the Bosporus caught the earlier sun, 

"’Twas told that Pedro, King of Aragon, 

"Was welcomed master of all Sicily,— 

"A royal knight, supreme as kings should be 

"In strength and gentleness that make high chivalry. 

"Spain was the favorite home of knightly grace, 

"Where generous men rode steeds of generous race; 

"Both Spanish, yet half Arab; both inspired 

"By mutual spirit, that each motion fired 

"With beauteous response, like minstrelsy 

"Afresh fulfilling fresh expectancy."

.... 

"And in all eyes King Pedro was the king 

"Of cavaliers; as in a full-gemmed ring 

"The largest ruby, or as that bright star 

"Whose shining shows us where the Hyads are. 

"His the best genet, and he sat it best; 

"His weapon, whether tilting or in rest, 

"Was worthiest watching; and his face, once seen, 

"Gave to the promise of his royal mien 

"Such rich fulfilment as the opened eyes 

"Of a loved sleeper, or the long-watched rise 

"Of vernal day, whose joy o’er stream and meadow flies."

....

"Whose passion is but worship of that Best 

"Taught by the many-mingled creed of each young breast? 

"’Twas gentle Lisa, of no noble line, 

"Child of Bernardo, a rich Florentine, 

"Who from his merchant-city hither came 

"To trade in drugs; yet kept an honest fame, 

"And had the virtue not to try and sell 

"Drugs that had none. He loved his riches well, 

"But loved them chiefly for his Lisa’s sake, 

"Whom with a father’s care he sought to make 

"The bride of some true honorable man,— 

"Of Perdicone (so the rumor ran), 

"Whose birth was higher than his fortunes were, 

"For still your trader likes a mixture fair 

"Of blood that hurries to some higher strain 

"Than reckoning money’s loss and money’s gain. 

"And of such mixture good may surely come: 

"Lord’s scions so may learn to cast a sum, 

"A trader’s grandson bear a well-set head, 

"And have less conscious manners, better bred; 

"Nor, when he tries to be polite, be rude instead. 

"’Twas Perdicone’s friends made overtures 

"To good Bernardo; so one dame assures 

"Her neighbor dame, who notices the youth 

"Fixing his eyes on Lisa; and, in truth, 

"Eyes that could see her on this summer day 

"Might find it hard to turn another way.

"She had a pensive beauty, yet not sad; 

"Rather like minor cadences that glad 

"The hearts of little birds amid spring boughs: 

"And oft the trumpet or the joust would rouse 

"Pulses that gave her cheek a finer glow, 

"Parting her lips that seemed a mimic bow 

"By chiselling Love for play in coral wrought, 

"Then quickened by him with the passionate thought, 

"The soul that trembled in the lustrous night 

"Of slow long eyes. Her body was so slight, 

"It seemed she could have floated in the sky, 

"And with the angelic choir made symphony; 

"But in her cheek’s rich tinge, and in the dark 

"Of darkest hair and eyes, she bore a mark 

"Of kinship to her generous mother-earth, 

"The fervid land that gives the plumy palm-trees birth. 

"She saw not Perdicone; her young mind 

"Dreamed not that any man had ever pined 

"For such a little simple maid as she: 

"She had but dreamed how heavenly it would be 

"To love some hero noble, beauteous, great, 

"Who would live stories worthy to narrate,"

....

"Who conquered every thing beneath the sun, 

"And somehow, some time, died at Babylon 

"Fighting the Moors. For heroes all were good 

"And fair as that archangel who withstood 

"The Evil One, the author of all wrong,— 

"That Evil One who made the French so strong; 

"And now the flower of heroes must he be 

"Who drove those tyrants from dear Sicily, 

"So that her maids might walk to vespers tranquilly. 

"Young Lisa saw this hero in the king; 

"And as wood-lilies that sweet odors bring 

"Might dream the light that opes their modest eyne 

"Was lily-odored; and as rites divine, 

"Round turf-laid altars, or ’neath roofs of stone, 

"Draw sanctity from out the heart alone 

"That loves and worships: so the miniature 

"Perplexed of her soul’s world, all virgin pure, 

"Filled with heroic virtues that bright form, 

"Raona’s royalty, the finished norm 

"Of horsemanship, the half of chivalry; 

"For how could generous men avengers be, 

"Save as God’s messengers on coursers fleet?— 

"These, scouring earth, made Spain with Syria meet 

"In one self-world where the same right had sway, 

"And good must grow as grew the blessed day. 

"No more: great Love his essence had endued 

"With Pedro’s form, and, entering, subdued 

"The soul of Lisa, fervid and intense, 

"Proud in its choice of proud obedience 

"To hardship glorified by perfect reverence. 

"Sweet Lisa homeward carried that dire guest, 

"And in her chamber, through the hours of rest, 

"The darkness was alight for her with sheen 

"Of arms, and plumèd helm; and bright between 

"Their commoner gloss, like the pure living spring 

"’Twixt porphyry lips, or living bird’s bright wing 

"’Twixt golden wires, the glances of the king 

"Flashed on her soul, and waked vibrations there 

"Of known delights love-mixed to new and rare: 

"The impalpable dream was turned to breathing flesh, 

"Chill thought of summer to the warm close mesh 

"Of sunbeams held between the citron-leaves, 

"Clothing her life of life. Oh! she believes 

"That she could be content if he but knew 

"(Her poor small self could claim no other due) 

"How Lisa’s lowly love had highest reach 

"Of wingèd passion, whereto wingèd speech 

"Would be scorched remnants left by mounting flame."

.... 

"She watched all day that she might see him pass 

"With knights and ladies; but she said, “Alas! 

"Though he should see me, it were all as one 

"He saw a pigeon sitting on the stone 

"Of wall or balcony: some colored spot 

"His eye just sees, his mind regardeth not. 

"I have no music-touch that could bring nigh 

"My love to his soul’s hearing. I shall die, 

"And he will never know who Lisa was,— 

"The trader’s child, whose soaring spirit rose 

"As hedge-born aloe-flowers that rarest years disclose. 

"“For were I now a fair deep-breasted queen 

"A-horseback, with blonde hair, and tunic green, 

"Gold-bordered, like Costanza, I should need 

"No change within to make me queenly there: 

"For they the royal-hearted women are 

"Who nobly love the noblest, yet have grace; 

"For needy suffering lives in lowliest place, 

"Carrying a choicer sunlight in their smile, 

"The heavenliest ray that pitieth the vile. 

"My love is such, it cannot choose but soar 

"Up to the highest; yet forevermore, 

"Though I were happy, throned beside the king, 

"I should be tender to each little thing 

"With hurt warm breast, that had no speech to tell 

"Its inward pang; and I would soothe it well 

"With tender touch, and with a low soft moan 

"For company: my dumb love-pang is lone, 

"Prisoned as topaz-beam within a rough-garbed stone.” 

"So, inward-wailing, Lisa passed her days. 

"Each night the August moon with changing phase 

"Looked broader, harder, on her unchanged pain; 

"Each noon the heat lay heavier again 

"On her despair, until her body frail 

"Shrank like the snow that watchers in the vale 

"See narrowed on the height each summer morn; 

"While her dark glance burnt larger, more forlorn,"

................................................................................................

"Father and mother saw with sad dismay 

"The meaning of their riches melt away; 

"For without Lisa what would sequins buy? 

"What wish were left if Lisa were to die? 

"Through her they cared for summers still to come, 

"Else they would be as ghosts without a home 

"In any flesh that could feel glad desire. 

"They pay the best physicians, never tire 

"Of seeking what will soothe her, promising 

"That aught she longed for, though it were a thing 

"Hard to be come at as the Indian snow, 

"Or roses that on Alpine summits blow, 

"It should be hers. She answers with low voice, 

"She longs for death alone—death is her choice; 

"Death is the king who never did think scorn, 

"But rescues every meanest soul to sorrow born."

................................................................................................

"“What is it, Lisa?”—“Father, I would see 

"Minuccio, the great singer; bring him me.” 

"For always, night and day, her unstilled thought, 

"Wandering all o’er its little world, had sought 

"How she could reach, by some soft pleading touch, 

"King Pedro’s soul, that she who loved so much,"

....

"Minuccio, entreated, gladly came. 

"(He was a singer of most gentle fame, 

"A noble, kindly spirit, not elate 

"That he was famous, but that song was great; 

"Would sing as finely to this suffering child 

"As at the court where princes on him smiled.) 

"Gently he entered and sat down by her, 

"Asking what sort of strain she would prefer,— 

"The voice alone, or voice with viol wed; 

"Then, when she chose the last, he preluded 

"With magic hand, that summoned from the strings 

"Ærial spirits, rare yet palpable wings 

"That fanned the pulses of his listener, 

"And waked each sleeping sense with blissful stir. 

"Her cheek already showed a slow, faint blush; 

"But soon the voice, in pure, full, liquid rush, 

"Made all the passion, that till now she felt, 

"Seem but as cooler waters that in warmer melt. 

"Finished the song, she prayed to be alone 

"With kind Minuccio; for her faith had grown 

"To trust him as if missioned like a priest 

"With some high grace, that, when his singing ceased, 

"Still made him wiser, more magnanimous, 

"Than common men who had no genius. 

"So, laying her small hand within his palm, 

"She told him how that secret, glorious harm 

"Of loftiest loving had befallen her; 

"That death, her only hope, most bitter were, 

"If, when she died, her love must perish too 

"As songs unsung, and thoughts unspoken do, 

"Which else might live within another breast."

.... 

"He sought a poet-friend, a Siennese, 

"And “Mico, mine,” he said, “full oft to please 

"Thy whim of sadness I have sung thee strains 

"To make thee weep in verse: now pay my pains, 

"And write me a canzòn divinely sad, 

"Sinlessly passionate, and meekly mad 

"With young despair, speaking a maiden’s heart 

"Of fifteen summers, who would fain depart 

"From ripening life’s new-urgent mystery,— 

"Love-choice of one too high her love to be,— 

"But cannot yield her breath till she has poured 

"Her strength away in this hot-bleeding word, 

"Telling the secret of her soul to her soul’s lord.” 

"Said Mico, “Nay, that thought is poesy, 

"I need but listen as it sings to me. 

"Come thou again to-morrow.” The third day, 

"When linked notes had perfected the lay, 

"Minuccio had his summons to the court, 

"To make, as he was wont, the moments short 

"Of ceremonious dinner to the king. 

"This was the time when he had meant to bring 

"Melodious message of young Lisa’s love; 

"He waited till the air had ceased to move 

"To ringing silver, till Falernian wine 

"Made quickened sense with quietude combine; 

"And then with passionate descant made each ear incline."

..... 

"Love, thou didst see me, light as morning’s breath, 

"Roaming a garden in a joyous error, 

"Laughing at chases vain, a happy child, 

"Till of thy countenance the alluring terror 

"In majesty from out the blossoms smiled,"

.... 

"Tell him, O Love, I am a lowly maid, 

"No more than any little knot of thyme 

"That he with careless foot may often tread; 

"Yet lowest fragrance oft will mount sublime 

"And cleave to things most high and hallowèd, 

"As doth the fragrance of my life’s springtime, 

"My lowly love, that, soaring, seeks to climb 

"Within his thought, and make a gentle bliss, 

"More blissful than if mine, in being his: 

"So shall I live in him, and rest in Death."

"The strain was new. It seemed a pleading cry, 

"And yet a rounded, perfect melody, 

"Making grief beauteous as the tear-filled eyes 

"Of little child at little miseries. 

"Trembling at first, then swelling as it rose, 

"Like rising light that broad and broader grows, 

"It filled the hall, and so possessed the air, 

"That not one living, breathing soul was there, 

"Though dullest, slowest, but was quivering 

"In Music’s grasp, and forced to hear her sing. 

"But most such sweet compulsion took the mood 

"Of Pedro (tired of doing what he would)."

.... 

"He called Minuccio, and bade him tell 

"What poet of the day had writ so well; 

"For, though they came behind all former rhymes, 

"The verses were not bad for these poor times. 

"“Monsignor, they are only three days old,” 

"Minuccio said; “but it must not be told 

"How this song grew, save to your royal ear.” 

"Eager, the king withdrew where none was near, 

"And gave close audience to Minuccio, 

"Who meetly told that love-tale meet to know."

.... 

"He answered without pause, “So sweet a maid, 

"In Nature’s own insignia arrayed, 

"Though she were come of unmixed trading blood 

"That sold and bartered ever since the flood, 

"Would have the self-contained and single worth 

"Of radiant jewels born in darksome earth. 

"Raona were a shame to Sicily, 

"Letting such love and tears unhonored be: 

"Hasten, Minuccio, tell her that the king 

"To-day will surely visit her when vespers ring.” 

"Joyful, Minuccio bore the joyous word, 

"And told at full, while none but Lisa heard,"

................................................................................................

"She listened till the draughts of pure content 

"Through all her limbs like some new being went— 

"Life, not recovered, but untried before, 

"From out the growing world’s unmeasured store 

"Of fuller, better, more divinely mixed."

.... 

"She asked to have her soft white robe and band 

"And coral ornaments; and with her hand 

"She gave her long dark locks a backward fall, 

"Then looked intently in a mirror small, 

"And feared her face might, perhaps, displease the king: 

"“In truth,” she said, “I am a tiny thing: 

"I was too bold to tell what could such visit bring.” 

"Meanwhile the king, revolving in his thought 

"That innocent passion, was more deeply wrought 

"To chivalrous pity; and at vesper-bell, 

"With careless mien which hid his purpose well, 

"Went forth on horseback, and, as if by chance 

"Passing Bernardo’s house, he paused to glance 

"At the fine garden of this wealthy man, 

"This Tuscan trader turned Palermitan; 

"But, presently dismounting, chose to walk 

"Amid the trellises, in gracious talk 

"With this same trader, deigning even to ask 

"If he had yet fulfilled the father’s task 

"Of marrying that daughter, whose young charms 

"Himself, betwixt the passages of arms, 

"Noted admiringly. “Monsignor, no, 

"She is not married: that were little woe, 

"Since she has counted barely fifteen years; 

"But all such hopes of late have turned to fears; 

"She droops and fades, though, for a space quite brief,— 

"Scarce three hours past,—she finds some strange relief.”

................................................................................................

"And that same day, ere the sun lay too warm 

"On southern terraces, a messenger 

"Informed Bernardo that the royal pair 

"Would straightway visit him, and celebrate 

"Their gladness at his daughter’s happier state, 

"Which they were fain to see. Soon came the king 

"On horseback, with his barons, heralding 

"The advent of the queen in courtly state; 

"And all, descending at the garden gate, 

"Streamed with their feathers, velvet, and brocade, 

"Through the pleached alleys, till they, pausing, made 

"A lake of splendor ’mid the aloes gray; 

"When, meekly facing all their proud array, 

"The white-robed Lisa with her parents stood, 

"As some white dove before the gorgeous brood 

"Of dapple-breasted birds born by the Colchian flood. 

"The king and queen, by gracious looks and speech, 

"Encourage her, and thus their courtiers teach 

"How, this fair morning, they may courtliest be, 

"By making Lisa pass it happily. 

"And soon the ladies and the barons all 

"Draw her by turns, as at a festival 

"Made for her sake, to easy, gay discourse, 

"And compliment with looks and smiles enforce; 

"A joyous hum is heard the gardens round; 

"Soon there is Spanish dancing, and the sound 

"Of minstrel’s song, and autumn fruits are pluckt; 

"Till mindfully the king and queen conduct 

"Lisa apart to where a trellised shade 

"Made pleasant resting. Then King Pedro said,— 

"“Excellent maiden, that rich gift of love 

"Your heart hath made us hath a worth above 

"All royal treasures, nor is fitly met 

"Save when the grateful memory of deep debt 

"Lies still behind the outward honors done: 

"And as a sign that no oblivion 

"Shall overflood that faithful memory, 

"We while we live your cavalier will be;"

.... 

"But there still rests the outward honor meet 

"To mark your worthiness; and we entreat 

"That you will turn your ear to proffered vows 

"Of one who loves you, and would be your spouse 

"We must not wrong yourself and Sicily 

"By letting all your blooming years pass by 

"Unmated: you will give the world its due 

"From beauteous maiden, and become a matron true.”

"Then Lisa, wrapt in virgin wonderment 

"At her ambitious love’s complete content, 

"Which left no further good for her to seek 

"Than love’s obedience, said, with accent meek,— 

"“Monsignor, I know well that were it known 

"To all the world how high my love had flown, 

"There would be few who would not deem me mad, 

"Or say my mind the falsest image had 

"Of my condition and your loftiness. 

"But Heaven has seen that for no moment’s space 

"Have I forgotten you to be the king, 

"Or me myself to be a lowly thing— 

"A little lark, enamoured of the sky, 

"That soared to sing, to break its breast, and die. 

"But, as you better know than I, the heart 

"In choosing chooseth not its own desert, 

"But that great merit which attracteth it: 

"’Tis law, I struggled, but I must submit, 

"And having seen a worth all worth above, 

"I loved you, love you, and shall always love."

"But that doth mean, my will is ever yours, 

"Not only when your will my good insures, 

"But if it wrought me what the world calls harm: 

"Fire, wounds, would wear from your dear will a charm. 

"That you will be my knight is full content, 

"And for that kiss,—I pray, first, for the queen’s consent.” 

"Her answer, given with such firm gentleness, 

"Pleased the queen well, and made her hold no less 

"Of Lisa’s merit than the king had held. 

"And so, all cloudy threats of grief dispelled, 

"There was betrothal made that very morn 

"’Twixt Perdicone, youthful, brave, well-born, 

"And Lisa whom he loved; she loving well 

"The lot that from obedience befell. 

"The queen a rare betrothal ring on each 

"Bestowed, and other gems, with gracious speech. 

"And, that no joy might lack, the king, who knew 

"The youth was poor, gave him rich Ceffalù 

"And Cataletta,—large and fruitful lands,— 

"Adding much promise when he joined their hands. 

"At last he said to Lisa, with an air 

"Gallant yet noble, “Now we claim our share 

"From your sweet love, a share which is not small; 

"For in the sacrament one crumb is all.” 

"Then, taking her small face his hands between, 

"He kissed her on the brow with kiss serene,— 

"Fit seal to that pure vision her young soul had seen. 

"And many witnessed that King Pedro kept 

"His royal promise. Perdicone stept 

"To many honors honorably won, 

"Living with Lisa in true union. 

"Throughout his life, the king still took delight 

"To call himself fair Lisa’s faithful knight; 

"And never wore in field or tournament 

"A scarf or emblem, save by Lisa sent. 

"Such deeds made subjects loyal in that land; 

"They joyed that one so worthy to command, 

"So chivalrous and gentle, had become 

"The king of Sicily, and filled the room 

"Of Frenchmen, who abused the Church’s trust, 

"Till, in a righteous vengeance on their lust, 

"Messina rose, with God, and with the dagger’s thrust."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 03, 2021 - October 03, 2021. 

Purchased January 21, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 58 pages

Published March 24th 2011 

(first published 1869)

Original Title 

How Lisa Loved The King

ASIN:- B004TRGU5E

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A Minor Prophet

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Where and how would George Eliot even hear of a vegetarian?

................................................................................................

One doesn't know if George Eliot is trying to be outlandish, satirical, or just trying to write humour, but it isn't funny in the opening line. 

"I have a friend, a vegetarian seer,  

"By name Elias Baptist Butterworth, 

 A harmless, bland, disinterested man,  

"Whose ancestors in Cromwell’s day believed  

"The Second Advent certain in five years,  

"But when King Charles the Second came instead,  

"Revised their date and sought another world:  

"I mean—not heaven but—America.  

"A fervid stock, whose generous hope embraced  

"The fortunes of mankind, not stopping short  

"At rise of leather, or the fall of gold,  

"Nor listening to the voices of the time  

"As housewives listen to a cackling hen,  

"With wonder whether she has laid her egg  

"On their own nest-egg. Still they did insist  

"Somewhat too wearisomely on the joys  

"Of their Millennium, when coats and hats  

"Would all be of one pattern, books and songs  

"All fit for Sundays, and the casual talk  

"As good as sermons preached extempore."

Nowhere could a European have even heard of anyone vegetarian, except in India, during the lifetime of George Eliot or before - it's Beatles who made India and yoga fashionable, and until then attitude towards India varied from fraud a la Macaulay to contempt a la most racist colonial invaders to reverence a la some evolved souls including a few of the great German authors - so her opening line is nothing but contempt of an ignorant racist for an ancient culture far more evolved, and rich in treasure of knowledge, than she and her nation could have imagined. And until central heating, hot water and greater ease of shipping came in, which wasn't until middle of twentieth century, a vegetarian diet wasn't possible in Europe; it would have been very difficult in most parts of U.S., too. 

................................................................................................

And she continues ridiculing things far beyond grasp of most of West- 

"So the Thought-atmosphere is everywhere:  

"High truths that glimmered under other names  

"To ancient sages, whence good scholarship  

"Applied to Eleusinian mysteries—  

"The Vedas—Tripitaka—Vendidad—  

"Might furnish weaker proof for weaker minds  

"That Thought was rapping in the hoary past,  

"And might have edified the Greeks by raps  

"At the greater Dionysia, if their ears  

"Had not been filled with Sophoclean verse.  

"And when all Earth is vegetarian—  

"When, lacking butchers, quadrupeds die out,  

"And less Thought-atmosphere is reabsorbed  

"By nerves of insects parasitical,  

"Those higher truths, seized now by higher minds  

"But not expressed (the insects hindering),  

"Will either flash out into eloquence,  

"Or better still, be comprehensible  

"By rappings simply, without need of roots."

................................................................................................

Funny how things reverse, and what she thought once funny has now come to be dead serious, but in a very different way. 

"’T is on this theme—the vegetarian world—  

"That good Elias willingly expands:  

"He loves to tell in mildly nasal tones  

"And vowels stretched to suit the widest views,  

"The future fortunes of our infant Earth—  

"When it will be too full of human kind  

"To have the room for wilder animals.  

"Saith he, Sahara will be populous  

"With families of gentlemen retired  

"From commerce in more Central Africa,  

"Who order coolness as we order coal,  

"And have a lobe anterior strong enough  

"To think away the sand-storms. Science thus  

"Will leave no spot on this terraqueous globe  

"Unfit to be inhabited by man,  

"The chief of animals: all meaner brutes  

"Will have been smoked or elbowed out of life."

Well, ordering cool in Sahara isn't that different from routinely air conditioned homes, offices and cars, across Southern U.S.- especially Texas. And feeding humans, environmental science tells us, will be better and cheaper with a more vegetarian diet, if not completely vegetarian one. Meat industry is laying oceans waste, apart from other concerns. 

"No lions then shall lap Caffrarian pools,  

"Or shake the Atlas with their midnight roar:  

"Even the slow, slime-loving crocodile,  

"The last of animals to take a hint,  

"Will then retire forever from a scene  

"Where public feeling strongly sets against him.  

"Fishes may lead carnivorous lives obscure,"

Well, several species have gone extinct, beginning during era of colonial expansion, from Dodo onwards; concern about this turned matters around for whales, but thanks to British, lions of India are in fact on verge of extinction. 

................................................................................................

"Imagination in that distant age,  

"Aiming at fiction called historical,  

"Will vainly try to reconstruct the times  

"When it was man’s preposterous delight  

"To sit astride live horses, which consumed  

"Materials for incalculable cakes;  

"When there were milkmaids who drew milk from cows  

"With udders kept abnormal for that end  

"Since the rude mythopoeic period  

"Of Aryan dairymen who did not blush  

"To call their milkmaid and their daughter one—  

"Helplessly gazing at the Milky Way,  

"Nor dreaming of the astral cocoa-nuts  

"Quite at the service of posterity."

Well, it isn't quite fable yet, but it's almost there. Riding horses is far more expensive than driving, especially in U.S.; dairies In most of industrial world use machines for milking. And what she meant by astral cocoa-nuts, who knows! 

"By dint of diet vegetarian  

"All will be harmony of hue and line,  

"Bodies and minds all perfect, limbs well-turned,  

"And talk quite free from aught erroneous.  

"Thus far Elias in his seer’s mantle:  

"But at this climax in his prophecy  

"My sinking spirits, fearing to be swamped,  

"Urge me to speak. 

“High prospects, these, my friend,  

"Setting the weak carnivorous brain astretch;  

"We will resume the thread another day.”  

"“To-morrow,” cries Ellas, “at this hour?”  

"“No, not to-morrow—I shall have a cold—  

"At least I feel some soreness—this endemic—  

"Good-by.”"

After this, George Eliot's verses flow. 

"For purest pity is the eye of love  

"Melting at sight of sorrow; and to grieve  

"Because it sees no sorrow, shows a love  

"Warped from its truer nature, turned to love  

"Of merest habit, like the miser’s greed.  

"But I am Colin still: my prejudice  

"Is for the flavour of my daily food.  

"Not that I doubt the world is growing still  

"As once it grew from Chaos and from Night;  

"Or have a soul too shrunken for the hope  

"Which dawned in human breasts, a double morn,  

"With earliest watchings of the rising light  

"Chasing the darkness; and through many an age  

"Has raised the vision of a future time  

"That stands an Angel with a face all mild  

"Spearing the demon. I too rest in faith  

"That man’s perfection is the crowning flower,  

"Toward which the urgent sap in life’s great tree  

"Is pressing—seen in puny blossoms now,  

"But in the world’s great morrows to expand  

"With broadest petal and with deepest glow."

................................................................................................

"Yet, see the patched and plodding citizen  

"Waiting upon the pavement with the throng  

"While some victorious world-hero makes  

"Triumphal entry, and the peal of shouts  

"And flush of faces ‘neath uplifted hats  

"Run like a storm of joy along the streets!  

"He says, “God bless him!” almost with a sob,  

"As the great hero passes; he is glad  

"The world holds mighty men and mighty deeds;  

"The music stirs his pulses like strong wine,  

"The moving splendour touches him with awe—  

"’T is glory shed around the common weal,  

"And he will pay his tribute willingly,  

"Though with the pennies earned by sordid toil.  

"Perhaps the hero’s deeds have helped to bring  

"A time when every honest citizen  

"Shall wear a coat unpatched. And yet he feels  

"More easy fellowship with neighbours there  

"Who look on too; and he will soon relapse  

"From noticing the banners and the steeds  

"To think with pleasure there is just one bun  

"Left in his pocket, that may serve to tempt  

"The wide-eyed lad, whose weight is all too much  

"For that young mother’s arms: and then he falls  

"To dreamy picturing of sunny days  

"When he himself was a small big-cheeked lad  

"In some far village where no heroes came,  

"And stood a listener ’twixt his father’s legs  

"In the warm fire-light while the old folk talked  

"And shook their heads and looked upon the floor;  

"And he was puzzled, thinking life was fine—  

"The bread and cheese so nice all through the year  

"And Christmas sure to come! Oh that good time!  

"He, could he choose, would have those days again  

"And see the dear old-fashioned things once more.  

"But soon the wheels and drums have all passed by  

"And tramping feet are heard like sudden rain:  

"The quiet startles our good citizen;  

"He feels the child upon his arms, and knows  

"He is with the people making holiday  

"Because of hopes for better days to come.  

"But Hope to him was like the brilliant west  

"Telling of sunrise in a world unknown.  

"And from that dazzling curtain of bright hues  

"He turned to the familiar face of fields  

"Lying all clear in the calm morning land.  

"Maybe ’t is wiser not to fix a lens  

"Too scrutinizing on the glorious times  

"When Barbarossa shall arise and shake  

"His mountain, good King Arthur come again.  

"And all the heroes of such giant soul  

"That, living once to cheer mankind with hope,  

"They had to sleep until the time was ripe  

"For greater deeds to match their greater thought.  

"Yet no! the earth yields nothing more Divine  

"Than high prophetic vision—than the Seer  

"Who fasting from man’s meaner joy beholds  

"The paths of beauteous order, and constructs  

"A fairer type to shame our low content.  

"But prophecy is like potential sound  

"Which turned to music seems a voice sublime  

"From out the soul of light; but turns to noise  

"In scrannel pipes, and makes all ears averse."

................................................................................................

"Presentiment of better things on earth  

"Sweeps in with every force that stirs our souls  

"To admiration, self-renouncing love,  

"Or thoughts, like light, that bind the world in one,—  

"Sweeps like the sense of vastness, when at night  

"We hear the roll and dash of waves that break  

"Nearer and nearer with the rushing tide,  

"Which rises to the level of the cliff  

"Because the wide Atlantic rolls behind,  

"Throbbing respondent to the far-off orbs."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 04, 2021 - October 04, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Brother and Sister

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Even right at the beginning, one cannot help marvelling about how much better these verses are, compared to most of her work, poetry or prose - for once, she's writing from her heart, not caring about impressing anyone, and her verses flow so very smooth, as a brook would in a bed of its own, undisturbed! 

"I cannot choose but think upon the time 

"When our two lives grew like two buds that kiss 

"At lightest thrill from the bee’s swinging chime, 

"Because the one so near the other is. 

"He was the elder and a little man 

"Of forty inches, bound to show no dread, 

"And I the girl that puppy-like now ran, 

"Now lagged behind my brother’s larger tread. 

"I held him wise, and when he talked to me 

"Of snakes and birds, and which God loved the best, 

"I thought his knowledge marked the boundary 

"Where men grew blind, though angels knew the rest. 

"If he said Hush! I tried to hold my breath; 

"Wherever he said Come! I stepped in faith."

................................................................................................

"Long years have left their writing on my brow, 

"But yet the freshness and the dew-fed beam 

"Of those young mornings are about me now, 

"When we two wandered toward the far-off stream 

"With rod and line. Our basket held a store 

"Baked for us only, and I thought with joy 

"That I should have my share, though he had more, 

"Because he was the elder and a boy. 

"The firmaments of daisies since to me 

"Have had those mornings in their opening eyes, 

"The bunchèd cowslip’s pale transparency 

"Carries that sunshine of sweet memories, 

"And wild-rose branches take their finest scent 

"From those blest hours of infantine content."

................................................................................................

"Our mother bade us keep the trodden ways, 

"Stroked down my tippet, set my brother’s frill, 

"Then with the benediction of her gaze 

"Clung to us lessening, and pursued us still 

"Across the homestead to the rookery elms, 

"Whose tall old trunks had each a grassy mound, 

"So rich for us, we counted them as realms 

"With varied products: here were earth-nuts found, 

"And here the Lady-fingers in deep shade; 

"Here sloping toward the Moat the rushes grew, 

"The large to split for pith, the small to braid; 

"While over all the dark rooks cawing flew, 

"And made a happy strange solemnity, 

"A deep-toned chant from life unknown to me."

................................................................................................

"Our meadow-path had memorable spots: 

"One where it bridged a tiny rivulet, 

"Deep hid by tangled blue Forget-me-nots; 

"And all along the waving grasses met 

"My little palm, or nodded to my cheek, 

"When flowers with upturned faces gazing drew 

"My wonder downward, seeming all to speak 

"With eyes of souls that dumbly heard and knew. 

"Then came the copse, where wild things rushed unseen, 

"And black-scathed grass betrayed the past abode 

"Of mystic gypsies, who still lurked between 

"Me and each hidden distance of the road. 

"A gypsy once had startled me at play, 

"Blotting with her dark smile my sunny day."

................................................................................................

Here she's suddenly old, wise, especially at the ending line of this verse. 

"Thus rambling we were schooled in deepest lore, 

"And learned the meanings that give words a soul, 

"The fear, the love, the primal passionate store, 

"Whose shaping impulses make manhood whole. 

"Those hours were seed to all my after good; 

"My infant gladness, through eye, ear, and touch, 

"Took easily as warmth a various food 

"To nourish the sweet skill of loving much. 

"For who in age shall roam the earth and find 

"Reasons for loving that will strike out love 

"With sudden rod from the hard year-pressed mind? 

"Were reasons sown as thick as stars above, 

"’Tis love must see them, as the eye sees light: 

"Day is but Number to the darkened sight."

................................................................................................

What a serene portrayal here, bringing her depiction alive along with ones own hours of youth, however little the two had in common. 

"Our brown canal was endless to my thought; 

"And on its banks I sat in dreamy peace, 

"Unknowing how the good I loved was wrought, 

"Untroubled by the fear that it would cease. 

"Slowly the barges floated into view 

"Rounding a grassy hill to me sublime 

"With some Unknown beyond it, whither flew 

"The parting cuckoo toward a fresh spring time. 

"The wide-arched bridge, the scented elder-flowers, 

"The wondrous watery rings that died too soon, 

"The echoes of the quarry, the still hours 

"With white robe sweeping-on the shadeless noon, 

"Were but my growing self, are part of me, 

"My present Past, my root of piety."

................................................................................................

And here, a moment of young years captured, where vision of a child suddenly widens to a vast, taking in universe, for ever remembered. 

"Those long days measured by my little feet 

"Had chronicles which yield me many a text; 

"Where irony still finds an image meet 

"Of full-grown judgments in this world perplext. 

"One day my brother left me in high charge, 

"To mind the rod, while he went seeking bait, 

"And bade me, when I saw a nearing barge, 

"Snatch out the line lest he should come too late. 

"Proud of the task, I watched with all my might 

"For one whole minute, till my eyes grew wide, 

"Till sky and earth took on a strange new light 

"And seemed a dream-world floating on some tide— 

"A fair pavilioned boat for me alone 

"Bearing me onward through the vast unknown."

................................................................................................

Typical, of sisters who grow up with a brother slightly older. The last line, again, is from that vast vision capturing the child of one's past being, and widening view to the universal. 

"His sorrow was my sorrow, and his joy 

"Sent little leaps and laughs through all my frame; 

"My doll seemed lifeless and no girlish toy 

"Had any reason when my brother came. 

"I knelt with him at marbles, marked his fling 

"Cut the ringed stem and make the apple drop, 

"Or watched him winding close the spiral string 

"That looped the orbits of the humming top. 

"Grasped by such fellowship my vagrant thought 

"Ceased with dream-fruit dream-wishes to fulfil; 

"My aëry-picturing fantasy was taught 

"Subjection to the harder, truer skill 

"That seeks with deeds to grave a thought-tracked line, 

"And by What is, What will be to define."

................................................................................................

"School parted us; we never found again 

"That childish world where our two spirits mingled 

"Like scents from varying roses that remain 

"One sweetness, nor can evermore be singled. 

"Yet the twin habit of that early time 

"Lingered for long about the heart and tongue: 

"We had been natives of one happy clime 

"And its dear accent to our utterance clung. 

"Till the dire years whose awful name is 

"Change Had grasped our souls still yearning in divorce, 

"And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range 

"Two elements which sever their life’s course. 

"But were another childhood-world my share, 

"I would be born a little sister there.”"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 04, 2021 - October 04, 2021. 

Kindle Edition, 11 pages

Published October 15th 2014 

by The Perfect Library

ASIN:- B00OL0RAMQ

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4271768989

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Stradivarius.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

STRADIVARIUS.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The two separate poems, STRADIVARIUS and GOD NEEDS ANTONIO, have the same thene; it isn't clear if George Eliot was unsatisfied with an earlier version, and wrote the other. Neither is as belaboured as most of her work, they both flow well, although the concept is of a dialogue between two very different artistes of which one is much less known. West, though, might not label Stradivarius an artist. Still, it's a poem where honesty of one's application to ones vocation is lauded as highest spiritual, and as such, it's more India in spirit than abrahmic or West. 

In a later generation, Galsworthy wrote eulogies to this unity, between an artist or craftsman, and his work, where the man or woman gives one's best to the work; his short story about a poor bootmaker, unknown but for those using his boots, was a eulogy to the worker and to the era, as was the piece about old hansom cabs. But his Man of Property (titled so later after the first title - Forsyte Saga, later extended to Forsyte Chronicles - was extended to the series of books) was a subtle eulogy to the highest offered by the poor young architect to his work, forever immortalised subtly by the tale, the saga. 

"Your soul was lifted by the wings to-day  

"Hearing the master of the violin:  

"You praised him, praised the great Sebastian too  

"Who made that fine Chaconne; but did you think  

"Of old Antonio Stradivari ?—him  

"Who a good century and half ago  

"Put his true work in that brown instrument  

"And by the nice adjustment of its frame  

"Gave it responsive life, continuous  

"With the master’s finger-tips and perfected  

"Like them by delicate rectitude of use.  

"Not Bach alone, helped by fine precedent  

"Of genius alone before, nor Joachim  

"Who holds the strain afresh incorporate  

"By inward hearing and notation strict  

"Of nerve and muscle, made our joy to-day:  

"Another soul was living in the air  

"And swaying it to true deliverance  

"Of high invention and responsive skill:—  

"That plain white-aproned man who stood at work  

"Patient and accurate full fourscore years,  

"Cherished his sight and touch by temperance,  

"And since keen sense is love of perfectness  

"Made perfect violins, the needed paths  

"For inspiration and high mastery.  

"No simpler man than he: he never cried,  

"“Why was I born to this monotonous task  

"Of making violins ?” or flung them down  

"To suit with hurling act a well-hurled curse  

"At labour on such perishable stuff.  

"Hence neighbours in Cremona held him dull,  

"Called him a slave, a mill-horse, a machine,  

"Begged him to tell his motives or to lend  

"A few gold pieces to a loftier mind.  

"Yet he had pithy words full fed by fact;  

"For fact, well-trusted, reasons and persuades,  

"Is gnomic, cutting, or ironical,  

"Draws tears, or is a tocsin to arouse—  

"Can hold all figures of the orator  

"In one plain sentence; has her pauses too—  

"Eloquent silence at the chasm abrupt  

"Where knowledge ceases. Thus Antonio  

"Made answers as Fact willed, and made them strong"

"“I like the gold—well, yes—but not for meals.  

"And as my stomach, so my eye and hand,  

"And inward sense that works along with both,  

"Have hunger that can never feed on coin.  

"Who draws a line and satisfies his soul,  

"Making it crooked where it should be straight? An idiot with an oyster-shell may draw  

"His lines along the sand, all wavering,  

"Fixing no point or pathway to a point;  

"An idiot one remove may choose his line,  

"Straggle and be content; but God be praised,  

"Antonio Stradivari has an eye  

"That winces at false work and loves the true,  

"With hand and arm that play upon the tool  

"As willingly as any singing bird  

"Sets him to sing his morning roundelay,  

"Because he likes to sing and likes the song.”"

"“’Twere purgatory here to make them ill;  

"And for my fame—when any master holds  

"’Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,  

"He will be glad that Stradivari lived,  

"The masters only know whose work is good:  

"They will choose mine, and while God gives them skill  

"I give them instruments to play upon,  

"God choosing me to help Him.”"

"“Why, many hold Giuseppi’s violins  

"As good as thine.”  

"“May be: they are different.  

"His quality declines: he spoils his hand  

"With over-drinking. But were his the best,  

"He could not work for two. My work is mine,  

"And, heresy or not, if my hand slacked  

"I should rob God—since He is fullest good—  

"Leaving a blank instead of violins.  

"I say, not God Himself can make man’s best  

"Without best men to help Him. I am one best  

"Here in Cremona, using sunlight well  

"To fashion finest maple till it serves  

"More cunningly than throats, for harmony.  

"’Tis rare delight: I would not change my skill  

"To be the Emperor with bungling hands,  

"And lose my work, which comes as natural  

"As self at waking.”  

"“Thou art little more  

"Than a deft potter’s wheel, Antonio;  

"Turning out work by mere necessity  

"And lack of varied function. Higher arts  

"Subsist on freedom—eccentricity—  

"Uncounted aspirations—influence  

"That comes with drinking, gambling, talk turned wild,  

"Then moody misery and lack of food—  

"With every dithyrambic fine excess:  

"These make at last a storm which flashes out  

"In lightning revelations. Steady work  

"Turns genius to a loom; the soul must lie  

"Like grapes beneath the sun till ripeness comes  

"And mellow vintage. I could paint you now  

"The finest Crucifixion; yesternight  

"Returning home I saw it on a sky  

"Blue-black, thick-starred. 

"I want two louis d’ors  

"To buy the canvas and the costly blues—  

"Trust me for a fortnight.”  

"“Where are those last two  

"I lent thee for thy Judith?—her thou saw’st  

"In saffron gown, with Holofernes’ head  

"And beauty all complete ?”  

"“She is but sketched:  

"I lack the proper model—and the mood.  

"A great idea is an eagle’s egg,  

"Craves time for hatching; while the eagle sits  

"Feed her.”  

"“If thou wilt call thy pictures eggs  

"I call the hatching, Work. ’Tis God gives skill, 

"But not without men’s hands; He could not make  

"Antonio Stradivari’s violins  

"Without Antonio. Get thee to thy easel.”"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 01, 2021 - October 02, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A College Breakfast-Party.

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A COLLEGE BREAKFAST-PARTY 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The idea is certainly amusing, Hamlet and Horatio and others at a college breakfast. Anybody else would mark a hilarious skit, whether prose or verse. George Eliot makes it a long discussion of philosophy, eighteen pages long, daunting enough to anyone unfamiliar with her long, twisted, convoluted sentences that can only get more difficult. To those finished with her prose and also with a massive heart attack in midst thereof, it requires extra courage to proceed. But kindle has mistakenly branded all those collections of her works "read", and attempt to undo that has resulted in listing one - Delphi  - as not to be counted, but still read! So one is going to plod through and delay pleasure of reading other, lighter stuff. 

Characters here may borrow their names from literature, but one may wonder if this group discussing philosophy at breakfast was modeled on her own groups, either friends and visitors at home of the Bray family, or later that of the Lewes family.  

Hamlet's dialogue after departure of the priest pinpoints precisely what's wrong with church, if the priest's own didn't make it clear already - it's the imposition of church ordering faith as alternative to thought, and the only choice when faced with mystery. 

................................................................................................

"Young Hamlet, not the hesitating Dane, 

"But one named after him, who lately strove 

"For honours at our English Wittenberg,— 

"Blonde, metaphysical, and sensuous, 

"Questioning all things and yet half convinced 

"Credulity were better; held inert 

"’Twixt fascinations of all opposites, 

"And half suspecting that the mightiest soul 

"(Perhaps his own?) was union of extremes, 

"Having no choice but choice of everything: 

"As, drinking deep to-day for love of wine, 

And here's the racist, ignorant author, familiar from the last offering in Impressions of Theophrastus Such - 

"To-morrow half a Brahmin, scorning life 

"As mere illusion, yearning for that 

"True Which has no qualities; another day 

"Finding the fount of grace in sacraments. 

"And purest reflex of the light divine 

"In gem-bossed pyx and broidered chasuble, 

She's mixing what little she's heard about India - from likes of Macaulay who were derisive and contemptuous as colonising invaders would be to those they looted, just as males are towards females not protected by males more powerful - but without thinking, with concepts from abrahmic faiths, and making a Complete mess, of course! Fortunately that is that, and she proceeds with what she knows - 

"Resolved to wear no stockings and to fast 

"With arms extended, waiting ecstasy; 

"But getting cramps instead, and needing change, 

"A would-be pagan next: 

"Young Hamlet sat 

"A guest with five of somewhat riper age 

"At breakfast with Horatio, a friend 

"With few opinions, but of faithful heart, 

"Quick to detect the fibrous spreading roots 

"Of character that feed men’s theories, 

"Yet cloaking weaknesses with charity 

"And ready in all service save rebuke."

"With ebb of breakfast and the cider-cup 

"Came high debate: the others seated there 

"Were Osric, spinner of fine sentences, 

"A delicate insect creeping over life 

"Feeding on molecules of floral breath, 

"And weaving gossamer to trap the sun; 

"Laertes ardent, rash, and radical; 

"Discursive Rosencranz, grave Guildenstern,

"And he for whom the social meal was made— 

"The polished priest, a tolerant listener, 

"Disposed to give a hearing to the lost, 

"And breakfast with them ere they went below.

"From alpine metaphysic glaciers first 

"The talk sprang copious; the themes were old, 

"But so is human breath, so infant eyes, 

"The daily nurslings of creative light. 

"Small words held mighty meanings: 

"Matter, Force, Self, Not-self, 

"Being, Seeming, Space and Time— 

"Plebeian toilers on the dusty road 

"Of daily traffic, turned to Genii 

"And cloudy giants darkening sun and moon. 

"Creation was reversed in human talk: 

"None said, “Let Darkness be,” but Darkness was; 

"And in it weltered with Teutonic ease, 

"An argumentative Leviathan, 

"Blowing cascades from out his element, 

"The thunderous Rosencranz, till 

"“Truce, I beg!” 

"Said Osric, with nice accent. “I abhor 

"That battling of the ghosts, that strife of terms 

"For utmost lack of colour, form, and breath. 

"That tasteless squabbling called 

"Philosophy As if a blue-winged butterfly afloat 

"For just three days above the Italian fields, 

"Poising in sunshine, fluttering toward its bride, 

"Should fast and speculate, considering 

"What were if it were not?” or what now is 

"Instead of that which seems to be itself? 

"Its deepest wisdom surely were to be 

"A sipping, marrying, blue-winged butterfly; 

"Since utmost speculation on itself 

"Were but a three days’ living of worse sort— 

"A bruising struggle all within the bounds 

"Of butterfly existence.” 

"“I protest,” 

"Burst in Laertes, “against arguments 

"That start with calling me a butterfly, 

"A bubble, spark, or other metaphor 

"Which carries your conclusions as a phrase 

"In quibbling law will carry property."

................................................................................................

"Why, rhetoric brings within your easy reach 

"Conclusions worthy of—a butterfly. 

"The universe, I hold, is no charade, 

"No acted pun unriddled by a word, 

"Nor pain a decimal diminishing 

"With hocus-pocus of a dot or nought. 

"For those who know it, pain is solely pain: 

"Not any letters of the alphabet 

"Wrought syllogistically pattern-wise, 

"Nor any cluster of fine images, 

"Nor any missing of their figured dance 

"By blundering molecules. Analysis 

"May show you the right physic for the ill, 

"Teaching the molecules to find their dance, 

"Instead of sipping at the heart of flowers. 

"But spare me your analogies, that hold 

"Such insight as the figure of a crow 

"And bar of music put to signify A crowbar.”

................................................................................................

"Said the Priest, “There I agree—"

....

"I—nay, the Church objects nought, is content: 

"Reason has reached its utmost negative, 

"Physic and metaphysic meet in the inane 

"And backward shrink to intense prejudice, 

"Making their absolute and homogene 

"A loaded relative, a choice to be 

"Whatever is—supposed, a What is not."

................................................................................................

"Though fed and clad by dissoluble waves 

"Has antecedent quality, and rules 

"By veto or consent the strife of thought, 

"Making arbitrament that we call faith.”"

................................................................................................

"Laertes granting, I will put your case 

"In analogic form: the doctors hold 

"Hunger which gives no relish—save caprice 

"That tasting venison fancies mellow pears— 

"A symptom of disorder, and prescribe 

"Strict discipline. Were I physician here 

"I would prescribe that exercise of soul 

"Which lies in full obedience: you ask, 

"Obedience to what? The answer lies 

"Within the word itself; for how obey 

"What has no rule, asserts no absolute claim? 

"Take inclination, taste—why that is you, 

"No rule above you. Science, reasoning 

"On nature’s order—they exist and move 

"Solely by disputation, hold no pledge 

"Of final consequence, but push the swing 

"Where Epicurus and the Stoic sit 

"In endless see-saw. One authority, 

"And only one, says simply this. 

"Obey: Place yourself in that current (test it so!) 

"Of spiritual order where at least 

"Lies promise of a high communion,"

"A Head informing members, Life that breathes 

"With gift of forces over and above 

"The plus of arithmetic interchange. 

"‘The Church too has a body,’ you object, 

"‘Can be dissected, put beneath the lens 

"And shown the merest continuity 

"Of all existence else beneath the sun.’ 

"I grant you; but the lens will not disprove 

"A presence which eludes it. Take your wit, 

"Your highest passion, widest-reaching thought: 

"Show their conditions if you will or can, 

"But though you saw the final atom-dance 

"Making each molecule that stands for sign 

"Of love being present, where is still your love? 

"How measure that, how certify its weight? 

"And so I say, the body of the Church 

"Carries a Presence, promises and gifts 

"Never disproved—whose argument is found 

"In lasting failure of the search elsewhere 

"For what it holds to satisfy man’s need. 

"But I grow lengthy: my excuse must be 

"Your question, Hamlet, which has probed right through 

"To the pith of our belief. And I have robbed 

"Myself of pleasure as a listener. 

"’T is noon, I see; and my appointment stands 

"For half-past twelve with Voltimand. Good-by.”"

"Brief parting, brief regret—sincere, but quenched 

"In fumes of best Havana, which consoles 

"For lack of other certitude. Then said, 

"Mildly sarcastic, quiet Guildenstern: 

"“I marvel how the Father gave new charm 

"To weak conclusions: I was half convinced 

"The poorest reasoner made the finest man, 

"And held his logic lovelier for its limp.”"

"“I fain would hear,” said Hamlet, “how you find 

"A stronger footing than the Father gave. 

"How base your self-resistance save on faith 

"In some invisible Order, higher Right 

"Than changing impulse. What does Reason bid? 

"To take a fullest rationality 

"What offers best solution: so the Church. 

"Science, detecting hydrogen aflame 

"Outside our firmament, leaves mystery 

"Whole and untouched beyond; nay, in our blood 

"And in the potent atoms of each germ 

"The Secret lives—envelops, penetrates 

"Whatever sense perceives or thought divines. 

"Science, whose soul is explanation, halts 

"With hostile front at mystery. The Church 

"Takes mystery as her empire, brings its wealth 

"Of possibility to fill the void 

"’Twixt contradictions—warrants so a faith 

"Defying sense and all its ruthless train 

"Of arrogant ‘Therefores.’ Science with her lens 

"Dissolves the Forms that made the other half 

"Of all our love, which thenceforth widowed lives 

"To gaze with maniac stare at what is not. 

"The Church explains not, governs—feeds resolve 

"By vision fraught with heart-experience 

"And human yearning.”"

"“Ay,” said Guildenstern, 

"With friendly nod, “the Father, I can see, 

"Has caught you up in his air-chariot. 

"His thought takes rainbow-bridges, out of reach 

"By solid obstacles, evaporates 

"The coarse and common into subtilties. 

"Insists that what is real in the Church 

"Is something out of evidence, and begs 

"(Just in parenthesis) you’ll never mind 

"What stares you in the face and bruises you. 

"Why, by his method I could justify 

"Each superstition and each tyranny 

"That ever rode upon the back of man, 

"Pretending fitness for his sole defence 

"Against life’s evil. How can aught subsist 

"That holds no theory of gain or good? 

"Despots with terror in their red right hand 

"Must argue good to helpers and themselves, 

"Must let submission hold a core of gain 

"To make their slaves choose life. 

"Their theory, Abstracting inconvenience of racks, 

"Whip-lashes, dragonnades and all things coarse 

"Inherent in the fact or concrete mass, 

"Presents the pure idea—utmost good 

"Secured by Order only to be found 

"In strict subordination, hierarchy 

"Of forces where, by nature’s law, the strong 

"Has rightful empire, rule of weaker proved 

"Mere dissolution. What can you object? 

"The Inquisition—if you turn away 

"From narrow notice how the scent of gold 

"Has guided sense of damning heresy— 

"The Inquisition is sublime, is love 

"Hindering the spread of poison in men’s souls: 

"The flames are nothing: only smaller pain 

"Te hinder greater, or the pain of one 

"To save the many, such as throbs at heart 

"Of every system born into the world. 

"So of the Church as high communion 

"Of Head with members, fount of spirit force 

"Beyond the calculus, and carrying proof 

"In her sole power to satisfy man’s need: 

"That seems ideal truth as clear as lines 

"That, necessary though invisible, trace 

"The balance of the planets and the sun— 

"Until I find a hitch in that last claim."

....

"I argue not against yon. Who can prove 

"Wit to be witty when the deeper ground 

"Dullness intuitive declares wit dull? 

"If life is worthless to you—why, it is."

....

"I am no optimist whose fate must hang 

"On hard pretence that pain is beautiful 

"And agony explained for men at ease 

"By virtue’s exercise in pitying it. 

"But this I hold: that he who takes one gift 

"Made for him by the hopeful work of man, 

"Who tastes sweet bread, walks where he will unarmed, 

"His shield and warrant the invisible law, 

"Who owns a hearth and household charities, 

"Who clothes his body and his sentient soul 

"With skill and thoughts of men, and yet denies 

"A human good worth toiling for, is cursed 

"With worse negation than the poet feigned 

"In Mephistopheles. The Devil spins 

"His wire-drawn argument against all good 

"With sense of brimstone as his private lot, 

"And never drew a solace from the Earth.”"

"Laertes fuming paused, and Guildenstern 

"Took up with cooler skill the fusillade: 

"“I meet your deadliest challenge, Rosencranz—"

....

"Do Boards and dirty-handed millionaires 

"Govern the planetary system?—sway 

"The pressure of the Universe?—decide 

"That man henceforth shall retrogress to ape, 

"Emptied of every sympathetic thrill 

"The All has wrought up in him? dam up henceforth 

"The flood of human claims as private force 

"To turn their wheels and make a private hell 

"For fish-pond to their mercantile domain? 

"What are they but a parasitic growth 

"On the vast real and ideal world 

"Of man and nature blent in one divine? 

"Why, take your closing dirge—say evil grows 

"And good is dwindling; science mere decay, 

"Mere dissolution of ideal wholes 

"Which through the ages past alone have made 

"The earth and firmament of human faith; 

"Say, the small arc of Being we call man 

"Is near its mergence, what seems growing life 

"Nought but a hurrying change toward lower types, 

"The ready rankness of degeneracy. 

"Well, they who mourn for the world’s dying good 

"May take their common sorrows for a rock, 

"On it erect religion and a church, 

"A worship, rites, and passionate piety— 

"The worship of the Rest though crucified 

"And God-forsaken in its dying pangs; 

"The sacramental rites of fellowship 

"In common woe; visions that purify 

"Through admiration and despairing love 

"Which keep their spiritual life intact 

"Beneath the murderous clutches of disproof 

"And feed a martyr-strength.” 

"“Religion high!” 

"(Rosencranz here) “but with communicants 

"Few as the cedars upon Lebanon— 

"A child might count them. 

"What the world demands 

"Is faith coercive of the multitude.” 

"“Tush, Guildenstern, you granted him too much,” 

"Burst in Laertes; “I will never grant 

"One inch of law to feeble blasphemies 

"Which hold no higher ratio to life— 

"Full vigorous human life that peopled earth 

"And wrought and fought and loved and bravely died— 

"Than the sick morning glooms of debauchees."

................................................................................................

"Each now said “Good-by.” 

"Such breakfast, such beginning of the day 

"Is more than half the whole. The sun was hot 

"On southward branches of the meadow elms, 

"The shadows slowly farther crept and veered 

"Like changing memories, and 

"Hamlet strolled Alone and dubious on the empurpled path 

"Between the waving grasses of new June 

"Close by the stream where well-compacted boats 

"Were moored or moving with a lazy creak 

"To the soft dip of oars. All sounds were light 

"As tiny silver bells upon the robes 

"Of hovering silence. Birds made twitterings 

"That seemed but Silence self o’erfull of love. 

’T was invitation all to sweet repose; 

"And Hamlet, drowsy with the mingled draughts 

"Of cider and conflicting sentiments, 

"Chose a green couch and watched with half-closed eyes 

"The meadow-road, the stream and dreamy lights, 

"Until they merged themselves in sequence strange 

"With undulating ether, time, the soul, 

"The will supreme, the individual claim, 

"The social Ought, the lyrist’s liberty, 

"Democritus, Pythagoras, in talk 

"With Anselm, Darwin, Comte, and Schopenhauer, 

"The poets rising slow from out their tombs 

"Summoned as arbiters—that border-world 

"Of dozing, ere the sense is fully locked. 

"And then he dreamed a dream so luminous 

"He woke (he says) convinced; but what it taught 

"Withholds as yet. Perhaps those graver shades 

"Admonished him that visions told in haste 

"Part with their virtues to the squandering lips 

"And leave the soul in wider emptiness."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 02, 2021 - October 03, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Two Lovers.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot paints a life of togetherness of two lovers, wedding, home, children and then alone together in old age. But again, it's laboured. She lacks the facility of ease, and the words aren't in a flow through her as much as gathered and nailed together to construct a verse. 

"Two wedded from the portal stept: 

The bells made happy carolings, 

"The air was soft as fanning wings, 

"White petals on the pathway slept. 

"O pure-eyed bride! 

"O tender pride!"

White petals "slept" on their path, not strewn? 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 01, 2021 - October 01, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Self and Life.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Could have been better, for it does have flashes - but, over and over, George Eliot returns to plodding instead of flight. 

"Self.  

"Changeful comrade, Life of mine,  

"Before we two must part, 

" I will tell thee, thou shalt say,  

"What thou hast been and art.  

"Ere I lose my hold of thee  

"Justify thyself to me."

And her first, instinctive, response is all too right, completely good. 

"Life.  

I was thy warmth upon thy mother’s knee  

"When light and love within her eyes were one;  

"We laughed together by the laurel-tree,"

.... 

"Where the trellised woodbines grew,  

"And all the summer afternoon  

"Mystic gladness o’er thee threw.  

"Was it person? Was it thing?  

"Was it touch or whispering?  

"It was bliss and it was I:  

"Bliss was what thou knew’st me by."

But then she has to digress; for formality of her philosophy? She returns, though, over and over, to good and correct response. 

"Life.  

"But all thy anguish and thy discontent  

"Was growth of mine, the elemental strife  

"Toward feeling manifold with vision blent  

"To wider thought: I was no vulgar life"

....

"Life.  

"But then I brought a love that wrote within  

"The law of gratitude, and made thy heart  

"Beat to the heavenly tune of seraphin  

"Whose only joy in having is, to impart:"

.... 

"Self.  

"Yea, I embrace thee, changeful Life!  

"Far-sent, unchosen mate!  

"Self and thou, no more at strife,  

"Shall wed in hallowed state.  

"Willing spousals now shall prove  

"Life is justified by love."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 02, 2021 - October 02, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“Sweet Endings Come and Go, Love.”

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

SWEET ENDINGS COME AND GO, LOVE

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A theme not unfamiliar, about evening of life together.

"Sweet evenings come and go, love, 

"They came and went of yore: 

"This evening of our life, love, 

"Shall go and come no more.   

"When we have passed away, love, 

"All things will keep their name; 

"But yet no life on earth, love, 

"With ours will be the same.   

"The daisies will be there, love, 

"The stars in heaven will shine: 

"I shall not feel thy wish, love, 

"Nor thou my hand in thine. 

But the last one is unclear.

"A better time will come, love, 

"And better souls be born: 

"I would not be the best, love, 

"To leave thee now forlorn."

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 01, 2021 - October 01, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Death of Moses.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THE DEATH OF MOSES. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Suddenly, here, George Eliot is home, and her language easy, her verse flows. 

"Moses, who spake with God as with his friend,  

"And ruled his people with the twofold power  

"Of wisdom that can dare and still be meek,  

"Was writing his last word, the sacred name  

"Unutterable. of that Eternal Will ... "

Here's a huge, major characteristic chasm between abrahmic vs India - naming, calling God - in any form of ones choice or preference, or without; any God or Godess oe The ultimate Divine - is not only permitted, name utterable, but is done so any time, by anyone, and children named after too, routinely. Concept of fear of god doesn't exist, it's ridiculous to India unaffected by invaders conversion drives over a millennium and half; and God, whether image or thought, may inspire reverence, but it is just as often Love. Fear is from ones own deeds, ones own possible turning to wrong; but Gods aren't stooping to meeting out punishment, they are at most amused, as might be a parent at a baby.  

"Which was and is and evermore shall be.  

"Yet was his task not finished, for the flock  

"Needed its shepherd and the life-taught sage  

"Leaves no successor; but to chosen men,  

"The rescuers and guides of Israel,  

"A death was given called the Death of Grace,  

"Which freed them. from the burden of the flesh  

"But left them rulers of the multitude  

"And loved companions of the lonely. This  

"Was God’s last gift to Moses, this the hour  

"When soul must part from self and be but soul."

Now, George Eliot is at once gentle, loving, maternal - but racist. 

"God spake to Gabriel, the messenger  

"Of mildest death that draws the parting life  

"Gently, as when a little rosy child  

"Lifts up its lips from off the bowl of milk  

"And so draws forth a curl that dipped its gold  

And then, she's back to being earthbound, making an Archangel sound like a human! 

"In the soft white—thus Gabriel draws the soul.  

"“Go bring the soul of Moses unto me!”  

"And the awe-stricken ung’el answered, “Lord,  

"How shall I dare to take his life who lives  

"Sole of his kind, not to be likened once  

"In all the generations of the earth?”"

For heaven's sake! It's a conversation between an archangel and his boss, not a kings minion fearing separation of a great man's body from soul! 

And she repeats it too, with other archangel. 

"Then God called Michael, him of pensive brow  

"Snow-vest and flaming sword, who knows and acts:  

"“Go bring the spirit of Moses unto me!”  

"But Michael with such grief as angels feel,  

"Loving the mortals whom they succour, pled:  

“Almighty, spare me; it was I who taught  

"Thy servant Moses; he is part of me  

"As I of thy deep secrets, knowing them.”  

"Then God called Zamael, the terrible,  

"The angel of fierce death, of agony  

"That comes in battle and in pestilence  

"Remorseless, sudden or with lingering throes.  

"And Zamael, his raiment and broad wings  

"Blood-tinctured, the dark lustre of his eyes  

"Shrouding the red, fell like the gathering night  

"Before the prophet. But that radiance  

"Won from the heavenly presence in the mount  

"Gleamed on the prophet’s brow and dazzling pierced  

"Its conscious opposite: the angel turned  

"His murky gaze aloof and inly said:  

"“An angel this, deathless to angel’s stroke.”"

Greeks knew better, informing us that those loved by Gods die young! India of course knew better - for example, amongst the heavenly creatures, who are sent to earth as humans, for a sin committed up there, those who live longer do so to expiate their sins and work out their repentance before retuning back above. 

The poem, though, proceeds in the strain, imposing human thought and emotion on creatures of non physical material, instead of opening a human consciousness to Light. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 02, 2021 - October 02, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Arion.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Arion.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Amazing, and yet, as always, George Eliot must choose tragic for the brilliant, the good! 

"Arion, whose melodic soul  

"Taught the dithyramb to roll  

"Like forest fires, and sing  

"Olympian suffering, 

"Had carried his diviner lore  

"From Corinth to the sister shore  

"Where Greece could largelier be,  

"Branching o’er Italy. 

"Then weighted with his glorious name  

"And bags of gold, aboard he came  

"’Mid harsh seafaring men  

"To Corinth bound again. 

"The sailors eyed the bags and thought:  

"“The gold is good, the man is naught—  

"And who shall track the wave  

"That opens for his grave?” 

"With brawny arms and cruel eyes  

"They press around him where he lies  

"In sleep beside his lyre,  

"Hearing the Muses quire, 

"He waked and saw this wolf-faced Death  

"Breaking the dream that filled his breath  

"With inspiration strong  

"Of yet unchanted song. 

"“Take, take my gold and let me live!”  

"He prayed, as kings do when they give  

"Their all with royal will,  

"Holding born kingship still. 

"To rob the living they refuse,  

"One death or other he must choose,  

"Either the watery pall  

"Or wounds and burial.  

"“My solemn robe then let me don,  

"Give me high space to stand upon,  

"That dying I may pour  

"A song unsung before.”  

"It pleased them well to grant this prayer,  

"To hear for naught how it might fare  . 

"With men who paid their gold  

"For what a poet sold.  

"In flowing stole, his eyes aglow  

"With inward fire, he neared the prow  

"And took his god-like stand,  

"The cithara in hand.  

"The wolfish men all shrank aloof,  

"And feared this singer might be proof  

"Against their murderous power,  

"After his lyric hour. 

But he, in liberty of song,  

"Fearless of death or other wrong,  

"With full spondaic toll  

"Poured forth his mighty soul:  

"Poured forth the strain his dream had taught,  

A nome with lofty passion fraught  

"Such as makes battles won  

"On fields of Marathon.  

"The last long vowels trembled then  

"As awe within those wolfish men:  

"They said, with mutual stare,  

"Some god was present there.  

"But lo! Arion leaped on high,  

"Ready, his descant done, to die  

"Not asking, “Is it well?”  

"Like a pierced eagle fell."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 02, 2021 - October 02, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“O May I Join the Choir Invisible.”

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

O MAY I JOIN THE CHOIR INVISIBLE!

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

She begins well, 

"O may I join the choir invisible 

"Of those immortal dead who live again 

"In minds made better by their presence; live 

"In pulses stirred to generosity, 

"In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 

"Of miserable aims that end with self, 

"In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 

"And with their mild persistence urge men’s minds 

"To vaster issues."

- but then gets belaboured after the first stanza. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................
................................................

October 01, 2021 - October 01, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

October 01, 2021 - October 05, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Daniel Deronda. (1876) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot seems to always surprise one, and this work is no exception. Here, one is thrown at the beginning with a scene that promises a romance so typical, one wonders if it's going to be the prototype for the novels teenage girls in convent schools devour by dozens. Soon, of course, it changes to something closer to what a reader of George Eliot expects, with character of the female protagonist - far from a noble, admirable one, such as a Dorothea of Middlemarch, or even a Romola - sketched out in detail, with more faults than usually sketched in such detail in most novels describing a beauty, but of so natural a kind one cannot say its a strange character, merely that it's not necessarily typical, but only likely. 

George Eliot is more than adequate at writing a romance, despite keeping her own style - of analysing the characters, their motives, ethical and moral questions, in long complex sentences that need reading more than once. The title, for instance, is a character that appears, fleetingly, at the beginning, as the female protagonist Gwendolyn takes over, and the story stays with her, leaving the reader to anticipate Daniel Deronda's reentering the story, while the author describes Gwendolyn's new home of a few years ago, Offendene, her family and her relatives, and after an interval during which she's rejected a cousin reducing him to desperation, the author introces the neighbouring aristocrats nephew and incumbent heir, Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt. 

As this part develops, one is left uncertain if it gets towards an engagement, even, since it's in flashback from the opening scene where, now one realises, one saw Gwendolyn single, but didn't definitely know if she was unmarried. But resolution of the uncertainty is swift when it comes, although the author leaves a final resolution still further, with a chase that can only be compared to that of a swift flying crane by a crocodile, or something as slow and unreadable. 

Meanwhile George Eliot tackles antisemitism at its most primitive, with Daniel Deronda having in past rescued a young Jewish girl in act of attempting suicide. Author is unaware, though, of how very ignorant racism of West was in her time, as were most of West - those of ancestry from Europe. 

But she hasn't given up her pet central theme pervading all her work, that of moral hard choices faced by at least one central character; only, here its Gwendolyn who faces tough choice at early age, and Daniel Deronda is the noble soul, unlike most other works where the male protagonist makes choices and a woman is the angel. Here, however, it comes across as an unjust burden faced by the naive young girl, with a horror of an extremely unfair punishment, in a world already unfair to women. 

The relationship between Daniel Deronda and his friend-cum-protege Hans Meyrick is a tad reminiscent of that between two men in love with the same young woman in a Thomas Hardy work (Pair Of Blue Eyes?), and one hopes that Mirah here survives this pair. 

And the kaleidoscopic interactions between various characters reflecting and contrasting off one another is yet one more favourite play of the author, whose portrayals remain rich. 

But the surprising factor is her use of a river in this work, as a subtle allegory for Life and even more for Time, which belongs to thought and emotion far more of India than that of West. Coming largely in background while there is a small but very slighting reference to thought, philosophy and treasure of knowledge of ancient India, it is all the more startling. Was the author familiar with Indian philosophy, with India? 

................................................................................................

"Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is at Nought. His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle; but on reflection it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his; since Science, too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and with his clock-finger at Nought really sets off in medias res. No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out."

................................................................................................

"The first sign of the unimagined snow-storm was like the transparent white cloud that seems to set off the blue."

................................................................................................

"There was a considerable pause before Grandcourt said, looking toward her, "I should like to have the right always to take care of you." 

"Gwendolen did not turn her eyes on him; it seemed to her a long while that she was first blushing, and then turning pale, but to Grandcourt's rate of judgment she answered soon enough, with the lightest flute-tone and a careless movement of the head, "Oh, I am not sure that I want to be taken care of: if I chose to risk breaking my neck, I should like to be at liberty to do it." 

"She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her saddle, looking toward the advancing carriage. Her eyes swept across Grandcourt as she made this movement, but there was no language in them to correct the carelessness of her reply. At that very moment she was aware that she was risking something—not her neck, but the possibility of finally checking Grandcourt's advances, and she did not feel contented with the possibility. 

""Damn her!" thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his horse. He was not a wordy thinker, and this explosive phrase stood for mixed impressions which eloquent interpreters might have expanded into some sentences full of an irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a determination that this girl should not make a fool of him. Did she want him to throw himself at her feet and declare that he was dying for her? It was not by that gate that she could enter on the privileges he could give her. Or did she expect him to write his proposals? Equally a delusion. He would not make his offer in any way that could place him definitely in the position of being rejected. But as to her accepting him, she had done it already in accepting his marked attentions: and anything which happened to break them off would be understood to her disadvantage. She was merely coquetting, then?"

................................................................................................


""What sort of a place do you prefer?" said Grandcourt. 

""Different places are agreeable in their way. On the whole, I think, I prefer places that are open and cheerful. I am not fond of anything sombre." 

""Your place of Offendene is too sombre." 

""It is, rather." 

""You will not remain there long, I hope." 

""Oh, yes, I think so. Mamma likes to be near her sister." 

"Silence for a short space. 

""It is not to be supposed that you will always live there, though Mrs. Davilow may."  

""I don't know. We women can't go in search of adventures—to find out the North-West Passage or the source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we grow, or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is my notion about the plants; they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them have got poisonous. What do you think?" Gwendolen had run on rather nervously, lightly whipping the rhododendron bush in front of her."

................................................................................................

"How was it that he caused her unusual constraint now?—that she was less daring and playful in her talk with him than with any other admirer she had known? That absence of demonstrativeness which she was glad of, acted as a charm in more senses than one, and was slightly benumbing. Grandcourt after all was formidable—a handsome lizard of a hitherto unknown species, not of the lively, darting kind. But Gwendolen knew hardly anything about lizards, and ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities. This splendid specimen was probably gentle, suitable as a boudoir pet: what may not a lizard be, if you know nothing to the contrary? Her acquaintance with Grandcourt was such that no accomplishment suddenly revealed in him would have surprised her. And he was so little suggestive of drama, that it hardly occurred to her to think with any detail how his life of thirty-six years had been passed: in general, she imagined him always cold and dignified, not likely ever to have committed himself. He had hunted the tiger—had he ever been in love or made love? The one experience and the other seemed alike remote in Gwendolen's fancy from the Mr. Grandcourt who had come to Diplow in order apparently to make a chief epoch in her destiny—perhaps by introducing her to that state of marriage which she had resolved to make a state of greater freedom than her girlhood. And on the whole she wished to marry him; he suited her purpose; her prevailing, deliberate intention was, to accept him. 

"But was she going to fulfill her deliberate intention? She began to be afraid of herself, and to find out a certain difficulty in doing as she liked. Already her assertion of independence in evading his advances had been carried farther than was necessary, and she was thinking with some anxiety what she might do on the next occasion."

" ... The probability that her uncle would hear what had passed did not trouble her. She was convinced that whatever he might say would be on the side of her accepting Grandcourt, and she wished to accept him if she could. At this moment she would willingly have had weights hung on her own caprice."

................................................................................................


""My name is Lydia Glasher. Mr. Grandcourt ought not to marry any one but me. I left my husband and child for him nine years ago. Those two children are his, and we have two others—girls—who are older. My husband is dead now, and Mr. Grandcourt ought to marry me. He ought to make that boy his heir.""

................................................................................................

"The mother and daughter drove for five minutes in silence. Then Gwendolen said, "I intend to join the Langens at Dover, mamma. I shall pack up immediately on getting home, and set off by the early train. I shall be at Dover almost as soon as they are; we can let them know by telegraph.""

""What can I say to your uncle, Gwendolen? Consider the position you place me in. You led him to believe only last night that you had made up your mind in favor of Mr. Grandcourt." 

""I am very sorry to cause you annoyance, mamma, dear, but I can't help it," said Gwendolen, with still harder resistance in her tone. "Whatever you or my uncle may think or do, I shall not alter my resolve, and I shall not tell my reason. I don't care what comes of it. I don't care if I never marry any one. There is nothing worth caring for. I believe all men are bad, and I hate them.""

................................................................................................


"Grandcourt had not been altogether displeased by Gwendolen's running away from the splendid chance he was holding out to her. The act had some piquancy for him. He liked to think that it was due to resentment of his careless behavior in Cardell Chase, which, when he came to consider it, did appear rather cool. To have brought her so near a tender admission, and then to have walked headlong away from further opportunities of winning the consent which he had made her understand him to be asking for, was enough to provoke a girl of spirit; and to be worth his mastering it was proper that she should have some spirit. Doubtless she meant him to follow her, and it was what he meant too. But for a whole week he took no measures toward starting, and did not even inquire where Miss Harleth was gone. Mr. Lush felt a triumph that was mingled with much distrust; for Grandcourt had said no word to him about her, and looked as neutral as an alligator; there was no telling what might turn up in the slowly-churning chances of his mind. Still, to have put off a decision was to have made room for the waste of Grandcourt's energy."

" ... The rector's mind, indeed, entertained the possibility that the marriage was only a little deferred, for Mrs. Davilow had not dared to tell him of the bitter determination with which Gwendolen had spoken. And in spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations. Amaryllis fleeing desired that her hiding-place should be known; and that love will find out the way "over the mountain and over the wave" may be said without hyperbole in this age of steam. Gwendolen, he conceived, was an Amaryllis of excellent sense but coquettish daring; the question was whether she had dared too much."

" ... Lush needed no clearer announcement that Grandcourt was going to Leubronn; but he might go after the manner of a creeping billiard-ball and stick on the way. What Mr. Lush intended was to make himself indispensable so that he might go too, and he succeeded; Gwendolen's repulsion for him being a fact that only amused his patron, and made him none the less willing to have Lush always at hand. 

"This was how it happened that Grandcourt arrived at the Czarina on the fifth day after Gwendolen had left Leubronn, and found there his uncle, Sir Hugo Mallinger, with his family, including Deronda. It is not necessarily a pleasure either to the reigning power or the heir presumptive when their separate affairs—a—touch of gout, say, in the one, and a touch of willfulness in the other—happen to bring them to the same spot. Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered man, tolerant both of differences and defects; but a point of view different from his own concerning the settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more than if it had concerned Church discipline or the ballot, and faults were the less venial for belonging to a person whose existence was inconvenient to him. In no case could Grandcourt have been a nephew after his own heart; but as the presumptive heir to the Mallinger estates he was the sign and embodiment of a chief grievance in the baronet's life—the want of a son to inherit the lands, in no portion of which had he himself more than a life-interest. For in the ill-advised settlement which his father, Sir Francis, had chosen to make by will, even Diplow with its modicum of land had been left under the same conditions as the ancient and wide inheritance of the two Toppings—Diplow, where Sir Hugo had lived and hunted through many a season in his younger years, and where his wife and daughters ought to have been able to retire after his death. 

"This grievance had naturally gathered emphasis as the years advanced, and Lady Mallinger, after having had three daughters in quick succession, had remained for eight years till now that she was over forty without producing so much as another girl; while Sir Hugo, almost twenty years older, was at a time of life when, notwithstanding the fashionable retardation of most things from dinners to marriages, a man's hopefulness is apt to show signs of wear, until restored by second childhood."

" ... It led him to dwell on a plan which had grown up side by side with his disappointment of an heir; namely, to try and secure Diplow as a future residence for Lady Mallinger and her daughters, and keep this pretty bit of the family inheritance for his own offspring in spite of that disappointment. Such knowledge as he had of his nephew's disposition and affairs encouraged the belief that Grandcourt might consent to a transaction by which he would get a good sum of ready money, as an equivalent for his prospective interest in the domain of Diplow and the moderate amount of land attached to it. If, after all, the unhoped-for son should be born, the money would have been thrown away, and Grandcourt would have been paid for giving up interests that had turned out good for nothing; but Sir Hugo set down this risk as nil, and of late years he had husbanded his fortune so well by the working of mines and the sale of leases that he was prepared for an outlay."

................................................................................................

" ... One day, when I was looking at the sea and nobody took notice of me, I overheard a gentleman say, 'Oh, he is one of those clever Jews—a rascal, I shouldn't wonder. There's no race like them for cunning in the men and beauty in the women. I wonder what market he means that daughter for.' When I heard this it darted into my mind that the unhappiness in my life came from my being a Jewess, and that always to the end the world would think slightly of me and that I must bear it, for I should be judged by that name; and it comforted me to believe that my suffering was part of the affliction of my people, my part in the long song of mourning that has been going on through ages and ages. ..."

................................................................................................


"It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly Considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge, through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work; comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and a match and an easy "Let there not be," and the many-colored creation is shriveled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon. And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced vision may not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled —like that falsity of eyesight which overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar off as if it were within a step or a grasp—precipitates the mistaken soul on destruction?"
................................................................................................

"There were as usual many guests in the house, and among them one in whom Miss Arrowpoint foresaw a new pretender to her hand: a political man of good family who confidently expected a peerage, and felt on public grounds that he required a larger fortune to support the title properly. Heiresses vary, and persons interested in one of them beforehand are prepared to find that she is too yellow or too red, tall and toppling or short and square, violent and capricious or moony and insipid; but in every case it is taken for granted that she will consider herself an appendage to her fortune, and marry where others think her fortunes ought to go. Nature, however, not only accommodates herself ill to our favorite practices by making "only children" daughters, but also now and then endows the misplaced daughter with a clear head and a strong will. The Arrowpoints had already felt some anxiety owing to these endowments of their Catherine. She would not accept the view of her social duty which required her to marry a needy nobleman or a commoner on the ladder toward nobility; and they were not without uneasiness concerning her persistence in declining suitable offers. As to the possibility of her being in love with Klesmer they were not at all uneasy—a very common sort of blindness. For in general mortals have a great power of being astonished at the presence of an effect toward which they have done everything, and at the absence of an effect toward which they had done nothing but desire it. Parents are astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the most time-honored and expensive means of securing it; husbands and wives are mutually astonished at the loss of affection which they have taken no pains to keep; and all of us in our turn are apt to be astonished that our neighbors do not admire us. In this way it happens that the truth seems highly improbable. The truth is something different from the habitual lazy combinations begotten by our wishes. The Arrowpoints' hour of astonishment was come. 

"When there is a passion between an heiress and a proud independent-spirited man, it is difficult for them to come to an understanding; but the difficulties are likely to be overcome unless the proud man secures himself by a constant alibi. Brief meetings after studied absence are potent in disclosure: but more potent still is frequent companionship, with full sympathy in taste and admirable qualities on both sides; especially where the one is in the position of teacher and the other is delightedly conscious of receptive ability which also gives the teacher delight. The situation is famous in history, and has no less charm now than it had in the days of Abelard. 

"But this kind of comparison had not occurred to the Arrowpoints when they first engaged Klesmer to come down to Quetcham. To have a first-rate musician in your house is a privilege of wealth; Catherine's musical talent demanded every advantage; and she particularly desired to use her quieter time in the country for more thorough study. Klesmer was not yet a Liszt, understood to be adored by ladies of all European countries with the exception of Lapland: and even with that understanding it did not follow that he would make proposals to an heiress. No musician of honor would do so. Still less was it conceivable that Catherine would give him the slightest pretext for such daring. The large check that Mr. Arrowpoint was to draw in Klesmer's name seemed to make him as safe an inmate as a footman. Where marriage is inconceivable, a girl's sentiments are safe. 

"Klesmer was eminently a man of honor, but marriages rarely begin with formal proposals, and moreover, Catherine's limit of the conceivable did not exactly correspond with her mother's. 

"Outsiders might have been more apt to think that Klesmer's position was dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint had been an acknowledged beauty; not taking into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it. There is a charm of eye and lip which comes with every little phrase that certifies delicate perception or fine judgment, with every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart awake to others; and no sweep of garment or turn of figure is more satisfying than that which enters as a restoration of confidence that one person is present on whom no intention will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on gathering in frowns and laughs which are never observed in the wrong place; what suffused adorableness in a human frame where there is a mind that can flash out comprehension and hands that can execute finely! ... "

................................................................................................

" ... We object less to be taxed with the enslaving excess of our passions than with our deficiency in wider passion; but if the truth were known, our reputed intensity is often the dullness of not knowing what else to do with ourselves. ... "

"Klesmer was as versatile and fascinating as a young Ulysses on a sufficient acquaintance—one whom nature seemed to have first made generously and then to have added music as a dominant power using all the abundant rest, and, as in Mendelssohn, finding expression for itself not only in the highest finish of execution, but in that fervor of creative work and theoretic belief which pierces devoted purpose. His foibles of arrogance and vanity did not exceed such as may be found in the best English families; and Catherine Arrowpoint had no corresponding restlessness to clash with his: notwithstanding her native kindliness she was perhaps too coolly firm and self-sustained. But she was one of those satisfactory creatures whose intercourse has the charm of discovery; whose integrity of faculty and expression begets a wish to know what they will say on all subjects or how they will perform whatever they undertake; so that they end by raising not only a continual expectation but a continual sense of fulfillment—the systole and diastole of blissful companionship. In such cases the outward presentment easily becomes what the image is to the worshipper. It was not long before the two became aware that each was interesting to the other; but the "how far" remained a matter of doubt. Klesmer did not conceive that Miss Arrowpoint was likely to think of him as a possible lover, and she was not accustomed to think of herself as likely to stir more than a friendly regard, or to fear the expression of more from any man who was not enamored of her fortune. Each was content to suffer some unshared sense of denial for the sake of loving the other's society a little too well; and under these conditions no need had been felt to restrict Klesmer's visits for the last year either in country or in town. He knew very well that if Miss Arrowpoint had been poor he would have made ardent love to her instead of sending a storm through the piano, or folding his arms and pouring out a hyperbolical tirade about something as impersonal as the north pole; and she was not less aware that if it had been possible for Klesmer to wish for her hand she would have found overmastering reasons for giving it to him. Here was the safety of full cups, which are as secure from overflow as the half-empty, always supposing no disturbance. Naturally, silent feeling had not remained at the same point any more than the stealthly dial-hand, and in the present visit to Quetcham, Klesmer had begun to think that he would not come again; while Catherine was more sensitive to his frequent brusquerie, which she rather resented as a needless effort to assert his footing of superior in every sense except the conventional.

"Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr. Bult, an esteemed party man who, rather neutral in private life, had strong opinions concerning the districts of the Niger, was much at home also in Brazils, spoke with decision of affairs in the South Seas, was studious of his Parliamentary and itinerant speeches, and had the general solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding that he was an undeniable husband for an heiress, had nothing to say against him but that he was thoroughly tiresome to her. ... "

"... It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy dining. Besides, it has long been understood that the proprieties of literature are not those of practical life. Mrs. Arrowpoint naturally wished for the best of everything. She not only liked to feel herself at a higher level of literary sentiment than the ladies with whom she associated; she wished not to be behind them in any point of social consideration. While Klesmer was seen in the light of a patronized musician, his peculiarities were picturesque and acceptable: but to see him by a sudden flash in the light of her son-in-law gave her a burning sense of what the world would say. And the poor lady had been used to represent her Catherine as a model of excellence."

""I am quite sane and serious, mamma, and Herr Klesmer is not to blame. He never thought of my marrying him. I found out that he loved me, and loving him, I told him I would marry him." 

""Leave that unsaid, Catherine," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, bitterly. "Every one else will say that for you. You will be a public fable. Every one will say that you must have made an offer to a man who has been paid to come to the house—who is nobody knows what—a gypsy, a Jew, a mere bubble of the earth.""

""It will never do to argue about marriage, Cath," said Mr. Arrowpoint. "It's no use getting up the subject like a parliamentary question. We must do as other people do. We must think of the nation and the public good." 

""I can't see any public good concerned here, papa," said Catherine. "Why is it to be expected of any heiress that she should carry the property gained in trade into the hands of a certain class? That seems to be a ridiculous mishmash of superannuated customs and false ambition. I should call it a public evil. People had better make a new sort of public good by changing their ambitions.""

................................................................................................


" ... Mr. Gascoigne's worth of character, a little obscured by worldly opportunities—as the poetic beauty of women is obscured by the demands of fashionable dressing—showed itself to great advantage under this sudden reduction of fortune. Prompt and methodical, he had set himself not only to put down his carriage, but to reconsider his worn suits of clothes, to leave off meat for breakfast, to do without periodicals, to get Edwy from school and arrange hours of study for all the boys under himself, and to order the whole establishment on the sparest footing possible. For all healthy people economy has its pleasures; and the rector's spirit had spread through the household. Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna, who always made papa their model, really did not miss anything they cared about for themselves, and in all sincerity felt that the saddest part of the family losses was the change for Mrs. Davilow and her children."

" ... Gwendolen, lately used to the social successes of a handsome girl, whose lively venturesomeness of talk has the effect of wit, and who six weeks before would have pitied the dullness of the bishop rather than have been embarrassed by him, saw the life before her as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild thoughts of running away to be an actress, in spite of Klesmer, came to her with the lure of freedom; but his words still hung heavily on her soul; they had alarmed her pride and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived herself getting amongst vulgar people who would treat her with rude familiarity—odious men, whose grins and smirks would not be seen through the strong grating of polite society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the adventuress; the demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow; and when she had dreamed that she might be the heroine of the gaming-table, it was with the understanding that no one should treat her with the less consideration, or presume to look at her with irony as Deronda had done. To be protected and petted, and to have her susceptibilities consulted in every detail, had gone along with her food and clothing as matters of course in her life: even without any such warning as Klesmer's she could not have thought it an attractive freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence on the doubtful civility of strangers. The endurance of the episcopal penitentiary was less repulsive than that; though here too she would certainly never be petted or have her susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this hard necessity which had come just to her of all people in the world—to her whom all circumstances had concurred in preparing for something quite different—was exaggerated instead of diminished as one hour followed another, with the imagination of what she might have expected in her lot and what it was actually to be. The family troubles, she thought, were easier for every one than for her—even for poor dear mamma, because she had always used herself to not enjoying. ... Some beautiful girls who, like her, had read romances where even plain governesses are centres of attraction and are sought in marriage, might have solaced themselves a little by transporting such pictures into their own future; but even if Gwendolen's experience had led her to dwell on love-making and marriage as her elysium, her heart was too much oppressed by what was near to her, in both the past and the future, for her to project her anticipations very far off. She had a world-nausea upon her, and saw no reason all through her life why she should wish to live. No religious view of trouble helped her: her troubles had in her opinion all been caused by other people's disagreeable or wicked conduct; and there was really nothing pleasant to be counted on in the world: that was her feeling; everything else she had heard said about trouble was mere phrase-making not attractive enough for her to have caught it up and repeated it. ... the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable observation that for a lady to become a governess—to "take a situation"—was to descend in life and to be treated at best with a compassionate patronage. And poor Gwendolen had never dissociated happiness from personal pre-eminence and éclat. ... "

................................................................................................

"One day when she was in the black and yellow bedroom and her mother was lingering there under the pretext of considering and arranging Gwendolen's articles of dress, she suddenly roused herself to fetch the casket which contained the ornaments. 

""Mamma," she began, glancing over the upper layer, "I had forgotten these things. Why didn't you remind me of them? Do see about getting them sold. You will not mind about parting with them. You gave them all to me long ago." 

"She lifted the upper tray and looked below. 

""If we can do without them, darling, I would rather keep them for you," said Mrs. Davilow, seating herself beside Gwendolen with a feeling of relief that she was beginning to talk about something. The usual relation between them had become reversed. It was now the mother who tried to cheer the daughter. "Why, how came you to put that pocket handkerchief in here?" 

"It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which Gwendolen had thrust in with the turquoise necklace. 

""It happened to be with the necklace—I was in a hurry." said Gwendolen, taking the handkerchief away and putting it in her pocket. "Don't sell the necklace, mamma," she added, a new feeling having come over her about that rescue of it which had formerly been so offensive."

""Don't despair because there are clouds now. You are so young. There may be great happiness in store for you yet." 

""I don't see any reason for expecting it, mamma," said Gwendolen, in a hard tone; and Mrs. Davilow was silent, thinking as she had often thought before—"What did happen between her and Mr. Grandcourt?" 

""I will keep this necklace, mamma," said Gwendolen, laying it apart and then closing the casket. "But do get the other things sold, even if they will not bring much. Ask my uncle what to do with them. I shall certainly not use them again. I am going to take the veil. I wonder if all the poor wretches who have ever taken it felt as I do.""

"She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, and wrapped it deliberately round the necklace. Mrs. Davilow observed the action with some surprise, but the tone of her last words discouraged her from asking any question."

" ... Why she should suddenly determine not to part with the necklace was not much clearer to her than why she should sometimes have been frightened to find herself in the fields alone: she had a confused state of emotion about Deronda—was it wounded pride and resentment, or a certain awe and exceptional trust? It was something vague and yet mastering, which impelled her to this action about the necklace. There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms."

................................................................................................


" ... But Lush had some general certainties about Grandcourt, and one was that of all inward movements those of generosity were least likely to occur in him. ... Thus Lush was much at fault as to the probable issue between Grandcourt and Gwendolen, when what he desired was a perfect confidence that they would never be married. He would have consented willingly that Grandcourt should marry an heiress, or that he should marry Mrs. Glasher: in the one match there would have been the immediate abundance that prospective heirship could not supply, in the other there would have been the security of the wife's gratitude, for Lush had always been Mrs. Glasher's friend; and that the future Mrs. Grandcourt should not be socially received could not affect his private comfort. He would not have minded, either, that there should be no marriage in question at all; but he felt himself justified in doing his utmost to hinder a marriage with a girl who was likely to bring nothing but trouble to her husband—not to speak of annoyance if not ultimate injury to her husband's old companion, whose future Mr. Lush earnestly wished to make as easy as possible, considering that he had well deserved such compensation for leading a dog's life, though that of a dog who enjoyed many tastes undisturbed, and who profited by a large establishment. He wished for himself what he felt to be good, and was not conscious of wishing harm to any one else; unless perhaps it were just now a little harm to the inconvenient and impertinent Gwendolen. But the easiest-humored of luxury and music, the toad-eater the least liable to nausea, must be expected to have his susceptibilities. And Mr. Lush was accustomed to be treated by the world in general as an apt, agreeable fellow: he had not made up his mind to be insulted by more than one person."

................................................................................................

"Mr. Grandcourt presents his compliments to Miss Harleth, and begs to know whether he may be permitted to call at Offendene tomorrow after two and to see her alone. Mr. Grandcourt has just returned from Leubronn, where he had hoped to find Miss Harleth. 

"Mrs. Davilow read, and then looked at her daughter inquiringly, leaving the note in her hand. Gwendolen let it fall to the floor, and turned away. 

""It must be answered, darling," said Mrs. Davilow, timidly. "The man waits." 

"Gwendolen sank on the settee, clasped her hands, and looked straight before her, not at her mother. She had the expression of one who had been startled by a sound and was listening to know what would come of it. The sudden change of the situation was bewildering. ... "

................................................................................................


""The last thing I would do, is to importune you. I should not hope to win you by making myself a bore. If there were no hope for me, I would ask you to tell me so at once, that I might just ride away to—no matter where.""

""I fear you are not aware of what has happened to us. I have lately had to think so much of my mamma's troubles, that other subjects have been quite thrown into the background. She has lost all her fortune, and we are going to leave this place. I must ask you to excuse my seeming preoccupied.""

" ... The word of all work, Love, will no more express the myriad modes of mutual attraction, than the word Thought can inform you what is passing through your neighbor's mind. ... "

""You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs. Davilow's loss of fortune will not trouble you further. You will trust me to prevent it from weighing upon her. You will give me the claim to provide against that.""

""You are very generous," she said, not moving her eyes, and speaking with a gentle intonation. 

""You accept what will make such things a matter of course?" said Grandcourt, without any new eagerness. "You consent to become my wife?"  

"This time Gwendolen remained quite pale. Something made her rise from her seat in spite of herself and walk to a little distance. Then she turned and with her hands folded before her stood in silence. 

"Grandcourt immediately rose too, resting his hat on the chair, but still keeping hold of it. The evident hesitation of this destitute girl to take his splendid offer stung him into a keenness of interest such as he had not known for years. None the less because he attributed her hesitation entirely to her knowledge about Mrs. Glasher. In that attitude of preparation, he said— 

""Do you command me to go?" 

"No familiar spirit could have suggested to him more effective words. "No," said Gwendolen. She could not let him go: that negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, only drifted toward the tremendous decision—but drifting depends on something besides the currents when the sails have been set beforehand."

"Mrs. Davilow was waiting anxiously in her bed-room when Gwendolen entered, stepped toward her quickly, and kissing her on both cheeks said in a low tone, "Come down, mamma, and see Mr. Grandcourt. I am engaged to him.""

................................................................................................

" ... Poor Gwendolen had no awe of unmanageable forces in the state of matrimony, but regarded it as altogether a matter of management, in which she would know how to act. ... "

................................................................................................


"It was full ten years since the elopement of an Irish officer's beautiful wife with young Grandcourt, and a consequent duel where the bullets wounded the air only, had made some little noise. Most of those who remembered the affair now wondered what had become of that Mrs. Glasher, whose beauty and brilliancy had made her rather conspicuous to them in foreign places, where she was known to be living with young Grandcourt. 

"That he should have disentangled himself from that connection seemed only natural and desirable. As to her, it was thought that a woman who was understood to have forsaken her child along with her husband had probably sunk lower. Grandcourt had of course got weary of her. He was much given to the pursuit of women: but a man in his position would by this time desire to make a suitable marriage with the fair young daughter of a noble house. No one talked of Mrs. Glasher now, any more than they talked of the victim in a trial for manslaughter ten years before: she was a lost vessel after whom nobody would send out an expedition of search; but Grandcourt was seen in harbor with his colors flying, registered as seaworthy as ever.

"Yet, in fact, Grandcourt had never disentangled himself from Mrs. Glasher. His passion for her had been the strongest and most lasting he had ever known; and though it was now as dead as the music of a cracked flute, it had left a certain dull disposedness, which, on the death of her husband three years before, had prompted in him a vacillating notion of marrying her, in accordance with the understanding often expressed between them during the days of his first ardor. At that early time Grandcourt would willingly have paid for the freedom to be won by a divorce; but the husband would not oblige him, not wanting to be married again himself, and not wishing to have his domestic habits printed in evidence.

"The altered poise which the years had brought in Mrs. Glasher was just the reverse. At first she was comparatively careless about the possibility of marriage. It was enough that she had escaped from a disagreeable husband and found a sort of bliss with a lover who had completely fascinated her—young, handsome, amorous, and living in the best style, with equipage and conversation of the kind to be expected in young men of fortune who have seen everything. She was an impassioned, vivacious woman, fond of adoration, exasperated by five years of marital rudeness; and the sense of release was so strong upon her that it stilled anxiety for more than she actually enjoyed. An equivocal position was of no importance to her then; she had no envy for the honors of a dull, disregarded wife: the one spot which spoiled her vision of her new pleasant world, was the sense that she left her three-year-old boy, who died two years afterward, and whose first tones saying "mamma" retained a difference from those of the children that came after. But now the years had brought many changes besides those in the contour of her cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her had become her dominant desire. The equivocal position which she had not minded about for herself was now telling upon her through her children, whom she loved with a devotion charged with the added passion of atonement. She had no repentance except in this direction. If Grandcourt married her, the children would be none the worse off for what had passed: they would see their mother in a dignified position, and they would be at no disadvantage with the world: her son could be made his father's heir. It was the yearning for this result which gave the supreme importance to Grandcourt's feeling for her; her love for him had long resolved itself into anxiety that he should give her the unique, permanent claim of a wife, and she expected no other happiness in marriage than the satisfaction of her maternal love and pride—including her pride for herself in the presence of her children. For the sake of that result she was prepared even with a tragic firmness to endure anything quietly in marriage; and she had acuteness enough to cherish Grandcourt's flickering purpose negatively, by not molesting him with passionate appeals and with scene-making. In her, as in every one else who wanted anything of him, his incalculable turns, and his tendency to harden under beseeching, had created a reasonable dread:—a slow discovery, of which no presentiment had been given in the bearing of a youthful lover with a fine line of face and the softest manners. But reticence had necessarily cost something to this impassioned woman, and she was the bitterer for it. There is no quailing—even that forced on the helpless and injured—which has not an ugly obverse: the withheld sting was gathering venom. ... "

................................................................................................

""She says herself she is a very bad Jewess, and does not half know her people's religion," said Amy, when Mirah was gone to bed. "Perhaps it would gradually melt away from her, and she would pass into Christianity like the rest of the world, if she got to love us very much, and never found her mother. It is so strange to be of the Jews' religion now." 

""Oh, oh, oh!" cried Mab. "I wish I were not such a hideous Christian. How can an ugly Christian, who is always dropping her work, convert a beautiful Jewess, who has not a fault?" 

""It may be wicked of me," said shrewd Kate, "but I cannot help wishing that her mother may not be found. There might be something unpleasant.""

"Not only the Meyricks, whose various knowledge had been acquired by the irregular foraging to which clever girls have usually been reduced, but Deronda himself, with all his masculine instruction, had been roused by this apparition of Mirah to the consciousness of knowing hardly anything about modern Judaism or the inner Jewish history. ... "

" ...Turning into an old book-shop to ask the exact time of service at the synagogue, he was affectionately directed by a precocious Jewish youth, who entered cordially into his wanting, not the fine new building of the Reformed but the old Rabbinical school of the orthodox; and then cheated him like a pure Teuton, only with more amenity, in his charge for a book quite out of request as one "nicht so leicht zu bekommen." ... In fact, Deronda saw various queer-looking Israelites not altogether without guile, and just distinguishable from queer-looking Christians of the same mixed morale. ... "

" ... he felt a hand on his arm, and turning with the rather unpleasant sensation which this abrupt sort of claim is apt to bring, he saw close to him the white-bearded face of that neighbor, who said to him in German, "Excuse me, young gentleman—allow me—what is your parentage—your mother's family—her maiden name?" 

"Deronda had a strongly resistant feeling: he was inclined to shake off hastily the touch on his arm; but he managed to slip it away and said coldly, "I am an Englishman." 

"The questioner looked at him dubiously still for an instant, then just lifted his hat and turned away; whether under a sense of having made a mistake or of having been repulsed, Deronda was uncertain. In his walk back to the hotel he tried to still any uneasiness on the subject by reflecting that he could not have acted differently. How could he say that he did not know the name of his mother's family to that total stranger?—who indeed had taken an unwarrantable liberty in the abruptness of his question, dictated probably by some fancy of likeness such as often occurs without real significance. The incident, he said to himself, was trivial; but whatever import it might have, his inward shrinking on the occasion was too strong for him to be sorry that he had cut it short. ... "

"This halt at Frankfort was taken on their way home, and its impressions were kept the more actively vibrating in him by the duty of caring for Mirah's welfare. ... "

................................................................................................

""Like what you were saying about the influence of voices," said Deronda, looking at Mirah. "I don't think your hymn would have had more expression for me if I had known the words. I went to the synagogue at Frankfort before I came home, and the service impressed me just as much as if I had followed the words—perhaps more." 

""Oh, was it great to you? Did it go to your heart?" said Mirah, eagerly. "I thought none but our people would feel that. I thought it was all shut away like a river in a deep valley, where only heaven saw—I mean—-" she hesitated feeling that she could not disentangle her thought from its imagery.

""I understand," said Deronda. "But there is not really such a separation—deeper down, as Mrs. Meyrick says. Our religion is chiefly a Hebrew religion; and since Jews are men, their religious feelings must have much in common with those of other men—just as their poetry, though in one sense peculiar, has a great deal in common with the poetry of other nations. Still it is to be expected that a Jew would feel the forms of his people's religion more than one of another race—and yet"—here Deronda hesitated in his turn—"that is perhaps not always so.""

................................................................................................


""Whichever way we take it, we have to tolerate each other; for if we all went in opposition to our teaching, we must end in difference, just the same.""

""But I could not make myself not a Jewess," said Mirah, insistently, "even if I changed my belief." 

""No, my dear. But if Jews and Jewesses went on changing their religion, and making no difference between themselves and Christians, there would come a time when there would be no Jews to be seen," said Mrs. Meyrick, taking that consummation very cheerfully. 

""Oh, please not to say that," said Mirah, the tears gathering. "It is the first unkind thing you ever said. I will not begin that. I will never separate myself from my mother's people. ... "
................................................................................................

"As to the search for Mirah's mother and brother, Deronda took what she had said to-day as a warrant for deferring any immediate measures. His conscience was not quite easy in this desire for delay, any more than it was quite easy in his not attempting to learn the truth about his own mother: in both cases he felt that there might be an unfulfilled duty to a parent, but in both cases there was an overpowering repugnance to the possible truth, which threw a turning weight into the scale of argument. 

""At least, I will look about," was his final determination. "I may find some special Jewish machinery. I will wait till after Christmas." 

"What should we all do without the calendar, when we want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements of the solar system, by which our time is measured, always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set about anything we are disinclined to."

................................................................................................

" ... It is naturally a Christian feeling that a Jew ought not to be conceited. ... "

................................................................................................

"Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda's mind because he had never had a confidant to whom he could open himself on these delicate subjects. He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly unfold his experience: a young man like himself who sustained a private grief and was not too confident about his own career; speculative enough to understand every moral difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as he himself was, and having every outward sign of equality either in bodily or spiritual wrestling;—for he had found it impossible to reciprocate confidences with one who looked up to him. But he had no expectation of meeting the friend he imagined. Deronda's was not one of those quiveringly-poised natures that lend themselves to second-sight."

................................................................................................


"Before Mordecai could answer, Mr. Ram re-entered to take his place behind the counter. He was an elderly son of Abraham, whose childhood had fallen on the evil times at the beginning of this century, and who remained amid this smart and instructed generation as a preserved specimen, soaked through and through with the effect of the poverty and contempt which were the common heritage of most English Jews seventy years ago. He had none of the oily cheerfulness observable in Mr. Cohen's aspect: his very features—broad and chubby—showed that tendency to look mongrel without due cause, which, in a miscellaneous London neighborhood, may perhaps be compared with the marvels of imitation in insects, and may have been nature's imperfect effort on behalf of the pure Caucasian to shield him from the shame and spitting to which purer features would have been exposed in the times of zeal."

""Can you tell me why Mrs. Cohen, the mother, must not be spoken to about her daughter?" 

"There was no immediate answer, and he thought that he should have to repeat the question. The fact was that Mordecai had heard the words, but had to drag his mind to a new subject away from his passionate preoccupation. After a few moments, he replied with a careful effort such as he would have used if he had been asked the road to Holborn—- 

""I know the reason. But I will not speak even of trivial family affairs which I have heard in the privacy of the family. I dwell in their tent as in a sanctuary. Their history, so far as they injure none other, is their own possession.""

""I will part from you now," he said, just before they could reach Cohen's door; and Mordecai paused, looking up at him with an anxious fatigued face under the gaslight. 

""When will you come back?" he said, with slow emphasis. 

""May I leave that unfixed? May I ask for you at the Cohens' any evening after your hour at the book-shop? There is no objection, I suppose, to their knowing that you and I meet in private?" 

""None," said Mordecai. "But the days I wait now are longer than the years of my strength. Life shrinks: what was but a tithe is now the half. My hope abides in you." 

""I will be faithful," said Deronda—he could not have left those words unuttered. "I will come the first evening I can after seven: on Saturday or Monday, if possible. Trust me." 

"He put out his ungloved hand. Mordecai, clasping it eagerly, seemed to feel a new instreaming of confidence, and he said with some recovered energy—"This is come to pass, and the rest will come." 

"That was their good-bye."

" ... The instance was perhaps odd, exceptional in its form, but substantially it was not rare. Fanaticism was not so common as bankruptcy, but taken in all its aspects it was abundant enough. While Mordecai was waiting on the bridge for the fulfillment of his visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical key of the universe which would supersede Newton, and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had the metaphysical key, with just that hair's-breadth of difference from the old wards which would make it fit exactly. ... It would be only right and kind to indulge him a little, to comfort him with such help as was practicable; but what likelihood was there that his notions had the sort of value he ascribed to them? ... "

................................................................................................

" ... So I mean no offence when I say I don't think any great things of the part the Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I think they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose we don't want any men to be maltreated, white, black, brown, or yellow—I know I've just given my half-crown to the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious old German book—I can't read it myself, but a friend of mine was reading out of it to me the other day—about the prejudicies against the Jews, and the stories used to be told against 'em, and what do you think one was? Why, that they're punished with a bad odor in their bodies; and that, says the author, date 1715 (I've just been pricing and marking the book this very morning)—that is true, for the ancients spoke of it. But then, he says, the other things are fables, such as that the odor goes away all at once when they're baptized, and that every one of the ten tribes, mind you, all the ten being concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particular punishment over and above the smell:—Asher, I remember, has the right arm a handbreadth shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pig's ears and a smell of live pork. What do you think of that? There's been a good deal of fun made of rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is, that all over the world it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the other. However, as I said before, I hold with the philosophers of the last century that the Jews have played no great part as a people, though Pash will have it they're clever enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I ask, why haven't they done it?""

""They're not behind any nation in arrogance," said Lily; "and if they have got in the rear, it has not been because they were over-modest." 

""Oh, every nation brags in its turn," said Miller. 

""Yes," said Pash, "and some of them in the Hebrew text." 

""Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are a stand-still people," said Lily. "They are the type of obstinate adherence to the superannuated. They may show good abilities when they take up liberal ideas, but as a race they have no development in them.""

" ... Where else is there a nation of whom it may be as truly said that their religion and law and moral life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made one growth—where else a people who kept and enlarged their spiritual store at the very time when they are hated with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast from his covert? ... Hooted and scared like the unknown dog, the Hebrew made himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge, he diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Phoenicia working the mines of Greece and carrying their products to the world. The native spirit of our tradition was not to stand still, but to use records as a seed and draw out the compressed virtues of law and prophecy; and while the Gentile, who had said, 'What is yours is ours, and no longer yours,' was reading the letter of our law as a dark inscription, or was turning its parchments into shoe-soles for an army rabid with lust and cruelty, our Masters were still enlarging and illuminating with fresh-fed interpretation. ... "

................................................................................................


""My spirit is too weak; mortality  

"Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,  

"And each imagined pinnacle and steep  

"Of godlike hardship tells me I must die  

"Like a sick eagle looking at the sky."  

—KEATS.

................................................................................................

" ... On all accounts he wished to give Mordecai surroundings not only more suited to his frail bodily condition, but less of a hindrance to easy intercourse, even apart from the decisive prospect of Mirah's taking up her abode with her brother, and tending him through the precious remnant of his life. In the heroic drama, great recognitions are not encumbered with these details; and certainly Deronda had as reverential an interest in Mordecai and Mirah as he could have had in the offspring of Agamemnon; but he was caring for destinies still moving in the dim streets of our earthly life, not yet lifted among the constellations, and his task presented itself to him as difficult and delicate, especially in persuading Mordecai to change his abode and habits. Concerning Mirah's feeling and resolve he had no doubt: there would be a complete union of sentiment toward the departed mother, and Mirah would understand her brother's greatness. Yes, greatness: that was the word which Deronda now deliberately chose to signify the impression that Mordecai had made on him. He said to himself, perhaps rather defiantly toward the more negative spirit within him, that this man, however erratic some of his interpretations might be—this consumptive Jewish workman in threadbare clothing, lodged by charity, delivering himself to hearers who took his thoughts without attaching more consequences to them than the Flemings to the ethereal chimes ringing above their market-places—had the chief elements of greatness; a mind consciously, energetically moving with the larger march of human destinies, but not the less full of conscience and tender heart for the footsteps that tread near and need a leaning-place; capable of conceiving and choosing a life's task with far-off issues, yet capable of the unapplauded heroism which turns off the road of achievement at the call of the nearer duty whose effect lies within the beatings of the hearts that are close to us, as the hunger of the unfledged bird to the breast of its parent."

" ... In this way it came that he set about his new task ungrudgingly; and again he thought of Mrs. Meyrick as his chief helper. To her first he must make known the discovery of Mirah's brother, and with her he must consult on all preliminaries of bringing the mutually lost together. Happily the best quarter for a consumptive patient did not lie too far off the small house at Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform for this Hebrew prophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor, was to get him a healthy lodging. Such is the irony of earthly mixtures, that the heroes have not always had carpets and teacups of their own; and, seen through the open window by the mackerel-vender, may have been invited with some hopefulness to pay three hundred per cent, in the form of fourpence. However, Deronda's mind was busy with a prospective arrangement for giving a furnished lodging some faint likeness to a refined home by dismantling his own chambers of his best old books in vellum, his easiest chair, and the bas-reliefs of Milton and Dante."

................................................................................................


"Fairy folk a-listening 

"Hear the seed sprout in the spring. 

"And for music to their dance  

"Hear the hedgerows wake from trance,  

"Sap that trembles into buds 

"Sending little rhythmic floods 

"Of fairy sound in fairy ears.  

"Thus all beauty that appears 

"Has birth as sound to finer sense 

"And lighter-clad intelligence."

................................................................................................

""And the bondage I hated for myself I wanted to keep you from. What better could the most loving mother have done? I relieved you from the bondage of having been born a Jew." 

""Then I am a Jew?" Deronda burst out with a deep-voiced energy that made his mother shrink a little backward against her cushions. "My father was a Jew, and you are a Jewess?" 

""Yes, your father was my cousin," said the mother, watching him with a change in her look, as if she saw something that she might have to be afraid of. 

""I am glad of it," said Deronda, impetuously, in the veiled voice of passion."

................................................................................................


"And Gwendolen, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She could not excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of the contract on her side—namely, that she meant to rule and have her own way. With all her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate, she was not one of the narrow-brained women who through life regard all their own selfish demands as rights, and every claim upon themselves as an injury. She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of purgatory had begun for her on the green earth: she knew that she had been wrong.

"But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found herself, with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on the tiny plank-island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she felt that she had sold herself, and had been paid the strict price—nay, paid more than she had dared to ask in the handsome maintenance of her mother:—the husband to whom she had sold her truthfulness and sense of justice, so that he held them throttled into silence, collared and dragged behind him to witness what he would, without remonstrance.

"What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest; the cabin fitted up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft-cushioned, hung with silk, expanded with mirrors; the crew such as suited an elegant toy, one of them having even ringlets, as well as a bronze complexion and fine teeth; and Mr. Lush was not there, for he had taken his way back to England as soon as he had seen all and everything on board. Moreover, Gwendolen herself liked the sea: it did not make her ill; and to observe the rigging of the vessel and forecast the necessary adjustments was a sort of amusement that might have gratified her activity and enjoyment of imaginary rule; the weather was fine, and they were coasting southward, where even the rain-furrowed, heat-cracked clay becomes gem-like with purple shadows, and where one may float between blue and blue in an open-eyed dream that the world has done with sorrow."

" ... Some men bring themselves to believe, and not merely maintain, the non-existence of an external world; a few others believe themselves objects of repulsion to a woman without being told so in plain language. But Grandcourt did not belong to this eccentric body of thinkers. He had all his life had reason to take a flattering view of his own attractiveness, and to place himself in fine antithesis to the men who, he saw at once, must be revolting to a woman of taste. He had no idea of moral repulsion, and could not have believed, if he had been told it, that there may be a resentment and disgust which will gradually make beauty more detestable than ugliness, through exasperation at that outward virtue in which hateful things can flaunt themselves or find a supercilious advantage. 

"How, then, could Grandcourt divine what was going on in Gwendolen's breast?"

" ... At dinner he would remark that the fruit was getting stale, and they must put in somewhere for more; or, observing that she did not drink the wine, he asked her if she would like any other kind better. A lady was obliged to respond to these things suitably; and even if she had not shrunk from quarrelling on other grounds, quarreling with Grandcourt was impossible; she might as well have made angry remarks to a dangerous serpent ornamentally coiled in her cabin without invitation. And what sort of dispute could a woman of any pride and dignity begin on a yacht?

"Grandcourt had intense satisfaction in leading his wife captive after this fashion; it gave their life on a small scale a royal representation and publicity in which every thing familiar was got rid of, and every body must do what was expected of them whatever might be their private protest—the protest (kept strictly private) adding to the piquancy of despotism."

" ... In the irritable, fluctuating stages of despair, gleams of hope came in the form of some possible accident. To dwell on the benignity of accident was a refuge from worse temptation."

" ... And the intensest form of hatred is that rooted in fear, which compels to silence and drives vehemence into a constructive vindictiveness, an imaginary annihilation of the detested object, something like the hidden rites of vengeance with which the persecuted have made a dark vent for their rage, and soothed their suffering into dumbness. Such hidden rites went on in the secrecy of Gwendolen's mind, but not with soothing effect—rather with the effect of a struggling terror. Side by side with the dread of her husband had grown the self-dread, which urged her to flee from the pursuing images wrought by her pent-up impulse. The vision of her past wrong-doing, and what it had brought on her, came with a pale ghastly illumination over every imagined deed that was a rash effort at freedom, such as she had made in her marriage. Moreover, she had learned to see all her acts through the impression they would make on Deronda: whatever relief might come to her, she could not sever it from the judgment of her that would be created in his mind. Not one word of flattery, of indulgence, of dependence on her favor, could be fastened on by her in all their intercourse, to weaken his restraining power over her (in this way Deronda's effort over himself was repaid); and amid the dreary uncertainties of her spoiled life the possible remedies that lay in his mind, nay, the remedy that lay in her feeling for him, made her only hope. He seemed to her a terrible-browed angel, from whom she could not think of concealing any deed so as to win an ignorant regard from him: it belonged to the nature of their relation that she should be truthful, for his power over her had begun in the raising of a self-discontent which could be satisfied only by genuine change. ... "

" ... In Gwendolen's consciousness temptation and dread met and stared like two pale phantoms, each seeing itself in the other—each obstructed by its own image; and all the while her fuller self beheld the apparitions and sobbed for deliverance from them."

"So the days passed, taking with them light breezes beyond and about the Balearic Isles, and then to Sardinia, and then with gentle change persuading them northward again toward Corsica. But this floating, gentle-wafted existence, with its apparently peaceful influences, was becoming as bad as a nightmare to Gwendolen."

"She made up her mind to a length of yatching that she could not see beyond; but the next day, after a squall which had made her rather ill for the first time, he came down to her and said— 

""There's been the devil's own work in the night. The skipper says we shall have to stay at Genoa for a week while things are set right.""

"And when they came down again at five o'clock, equipped for their boating, the scene was as good as a theatrical representation for all beholders. This handsome, fair-skinned English couple, manifesting the usual eccentricity of their nation, both of them proud, pale, and calm, without a smile on their faces, moving like creatures who were fulfilling a supernatural destiny—it was a thing to go out and see, a thing to paint. The husband's chest, back, and arms, showed very well in his close-fitting dress, and the wife was declared to be a statue. 

"Some suggestions were proffered concerning a possible change in the breeze, and the necessary care in putting about, but Grandcourt's manner made the speakers understand that they were too officious, and that he knew better than they."

................................................................................................

" ... Bertha could not imagine what Jews believed now; and she had a dim idea that they rejected the Old Testament since it proved the New; Miss Merry thought that Mirah and her brother could "never have been properly argued with," and the amiable Alice did not mind what the Jews believed, she was sure she "couldn't bear them." Mrs. Davilow corrected her by saying that the great Jewish families who were in society were quite what they ought to be both in London and Paris, but admitted that the commoner unconverted Jews were objectionable; and Isabel asked whether Mirah talked just as they did, or whether you might be with her and not find out that she was a Jewess."

"A messenger had run with it in great haste from the rectory. It enclosed a telegram, and as Mrs. Davilow read and re-read it in silence and agitation, all eyes were turned on her with anxiety, but no one dared to speak. Looking up at last and seeing the young faces "painted with fear," she remembered that they might be imagining something worse than the truth, something like her own first dread which made her unable to understand what was written, and she said, with a sob which was half relief— 

""My dears, Mr. Grandcourt—" She paused an instant, and then began again, "Mr. Grandcourt is drowned.""

................................................................................................


""I must go first to Mainz to get away a chest of my grandfather's, and perhaps to see a friend of his," said Deronda. "Although the chest has been lying there these twenty years, I have an unreasonable sort of nervous eagerness to get it away under my care, as if it were more likely now than before that something might happen to it. And perhaps I am the more uneasy, because I lingered after my mother left, instead of setting out immediately. Yet I can't regret that I was here—else Mrs. Grandcourt would have had none but servants to act for her." 

""Yes, yes," said Sir Hugo, with a flippancy which was an escape of some vexation hidden under his more serious speech; "I hope you are not going to set a dead Jew above a living Christian." 

"Deronda colored, and repressed a retort. They were just turning into the Italia."

................................................................................................

""Good! Me you will hardly find, for I am beyond my threescore years and ten, and I am a wanderer, carrying my shroud with me. But my sons and their children dwell here in wealth and unity. The days are changed for us since Karl the Great fetched my ancestors from Italy to bring some tincture of knowledge to our rough German brethren. I and my contemporaries have had to fight for it too. Our youth fell on evil days; but this we have won; we increase our wealth in safety, and the learning of all Germany is fed and fattened by Jewish brains—though they keep not always their Jewish hearts. Have you been left altogether ignorant of your people's life, young man?""

................................................................................................


"'Burn, burn indiscernibly into that which shall be, which is my love and not me.' Dost thou understand, Mirah?" 

""A little," said Mirah, faintly, "but my mind is too poor to have felt it." 

""And yet," said Mordecai, rather insistently, "women are specially framed for the love which feels possession in renouncing, and is thus a fit image of what I mean. Somewhere in the later Midrash, I think, is the story of a Jewish maiden who loved a Gentile king so well, that this was what she did:—she entered into prison and changed clothes with the woman who was beloved by the king, that she might deliver that woman from death by dying in her stead, and leave the king to be happy in his love which was not for her. This is the surpassing love, that loses self in the object of love." 

""No, Ezra, no," said Mirah, with low-toned intensity, "that was not it. She wanted the king when she was dead to know what she had done, and feel that she was better than the other. It was her strong self, wanting to conquer, that made her die.""

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

January 25, 2021 - February 15, 2021.

February 15, 2021 - March 15, 2021.

Penguin Random House

ISBN: 978-0-141-92701-5

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

1970 - April 01, 2021.

Kindle Edition

Published March 27th 2018 

by ATOZ Classics

ASIN B07BQRBVF2

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

Impressions of Theophrastus Such. (1879) 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

In the midst of reading a collection of works of George Eliot, if one has a "massive heart attack" that one doesn't know of until informed by medical authorities, and subsequently resumes the reading after return home post surgical procedure, one can be forgiven for being exasperated with George Eliot, by the time - after one finishes Daniel Deronda - one is brave enough to get through Felix Holt The Radical. Next, one opens Impressions of Theophrastus Such, and is too exhausted to see it, and gives up bitterly, not liking one bit the defeat against the very German style writing - where one has to read, reread, and repeat, before it faintly dawns what the long sentence says. 

In German writing, so the joke goes amongst English speaking readers of German, there are frequently sentences two pages long, with a single word changing the whole meaning after one turns the page, due to a split verb. George Eliot, of course, is easier than that. She wrote in English. 

But half a year later, having read a collection of works of Jane Austen, to one's great amazement - one has been familiar with her major works for half a century, but didn't know the rest! Or anything at all about her, either. - one returns to thus, and is quite amazed. 

Who knew! 

Who knew George Eliot could be other than ponderous, plodding through long sentences of ethical discussions about moral dilemma, and good heavens, so humorous! Who knew! 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Contents  

I. Looking Inward. 

II. Looking Backward. 

III. How We Encourage Research. 

IV. A Man Surprised at his Originality. 

V. A too Deferential Man. 

VI. Only Temper. 

VII. A Political Molecule. 

VIII. The Watch-Dog of Knowledge. 

IX. A Half-Breed. 

X. Debasing the Moral Currency. 

XI. The Wasp Credited with the Honeycomb. 

XII. “So Young!” 

XIII. How We Come to Give Ourselves False Testimonials, and Believe in Them. 

XIV. The too Ready Writer. 

XV. Diseases of Small Authorship. 

XVI. Moral Swindlers. 

XVII. Shadows of the Coming Race. 

XVIII. The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Reviews 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

I. Looking Inward. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot opens with something familiar - friends, acquaintances, relatives, tend to assume they know you, everything about yourself, better than you do yourself; and if you contradict or differ, you are liable to be accused of prevarication. 

Was this written and published before her identity was known to public? " I am a bachelor" she writes, not used for women until much later. 

................................................................................................

"It is my habit to give an account to myself of the characters I meet with: can I give any true account of my own? I am a bachelor, without domestic distractions of any sort, and have all my life been an attentive companion to myself, flattering my nature agreeably on plausible occasions, reviling it rather bitterly when it mortified me, and in general remembering its doings and sufferings with a tenacity which is too apt to raise surprise if not disgust at the careless inaccuracy of my acquaintances, who impute to me opinions I never held, express their desire to convert me to my favourite ideas, forget whether I have ever been to the East, and are capable of being three several times astonished at my never having told them before of my accident in the Alps, causing me the nervous shock which has ever since notably diminished my digestive powers. Surely I ought to know myself better than these indifferent outsiders can know me; nay, better even than my intimate friends, to whom I have never breathed those items of my inward experience which have chiefly shaped my life. 

"Yet I have often been forced into the reflection that even the acquaintances who are as forgetful of my biography and tenets as they would be if I were a dead philosopher, are probably aware of certain points in me which may not be included in my most active suspicion. We sing an exquisite passage out of tune and innocently repeat it for the greater pleasure of our hearers. Who can be aware of what his foreign accent is in the ears of a native? And how can a man be conscious of that dull perception which causes him to mistake altogether what will make him agreeable to a particular woman, and to persevere eagerly in a behaviour which she is privately recording against him? I have had some confidences from my female friends as to their opinion of other men whom I have observed trying to make themselves amiable, and it has occurred to me that though I can hardly be so blundering as Lippus and the rest of those mistaken candidates for favour whom I have seen ruining their chance by a too elaborate personal canvass, I must still come under the common fatality of mankind and share the liability to be absurd without knowing that I am absurd. ... "

True! And then she brings a smile with 

"It is in the nature of foolish reasoning to seem good to the foolish reasoner."

Whether she knows, much less intends, or otherwise.  Latter, one suspects. 

"Hence with all possible study of myself, with all possible effort to escape from the pitiable illusion which makes men laugh, shriek, or curl the lip at Folly's likeness, in total unconsciousness that it resembles themselves, I am obliged to recognise that while there are secrets in me unguessed by others, these others have certain items of knowledge about the extent of my powers and the figure I make with them, which in turn are secrets unguessed by me. When I was a lad I danced a hornpipe with arduous scrupulosity, and while suffering pangs of pallid shyness was yet proud of my superiority as a dancing pupil, imagining for myself a high place in the estimation of beholders; but I can now picture the amusement they had in the incongruity of my solemn face and ridiculous legs. What sort of hornpipe am I dancing now?"

................................................................................................


" ... No man can know his brother simply as a spectator. ... And thus while I carry in myself the key to other men's experience, it is only by observing others that I can so far correct my self-ignorance as to arrive at the certainty that I am liable to commit myself unawares and to manifest some incompetency which I know no more of than the blind man knows of his image in the glass."

" ... In all autobiography there is, nay, ought to be, an incompleteness which may have the effect of falsity. We are each of us bound to reticence by the piety we owe to those who have been nearest to us and have had a mingled influence over our lives; by the fellow-feeling which should restrain us from turning our volunteered and picked confessions into an act of accusation against others, who have no chance of vindicating themselves; and most of all by that reverence for the higher efforts of our common nature, which commands us to bury its lowest fatalities, its invincible remnants of the brute, its most agonising struggles with temptation, in unbroken silence. ... Yet half our impressions of his character come not from what he means to convey, but from what he unconsciously enables us to discern."

" ... I am not indeed writing an autobiography, or pretending to give an unreserved description of myself, but only offering some slight confessions in an apologetic light, to indicate that if in my absence you dealt as freely with my unconscious weaknesses as I have dealt with the unconscious weaknesses of others, I should not feel myself warranted by common-sense in regarding your freedom of observation as an exceptional case of evil-speaking; or as malignant interpretation of a character which really offers no handle to just objection; or even as an unfair use for your amusement of disadvantages which, since they are mine, should be regarded with more than ordinary tenderness. ... " 

And again, it brings a smile - how true! One feels - when she says - 

" ... It is true, that I would rather not hear either your well-founded ridicule or your judicious strictures. Though not averse to finding fault with myself, and conscious of deserving lashes, I like to keep the scourge in my own discriminating hand. I never felt myself sufficiently meritorious to like being hated as a proof of my superiority, or so thirsty for improvement as to desire that all my acquaintances should give me their candid opinion of me. I really do not want to learn from my enemies: I prefer having none to learn from. Instead of being glad when men use me despitefully, I wish they would behave better and find a more amiable occupation for their intervals of business. In brief, after a close intimacy with myself for a longer period than I choose to mention, I find within me a permanent longing for approbation, sympathy, and love."

................................................................................................

Seriously, who ever knew, or expected, even suspected, George Eliot was a humorist? 

" ... I am spoken of to inquiring beholders as "the author of a book you have probably not seen." (The work was a humorous romance, unique in its kind, and I am told is much tasted in a Cherokee translation, where the jokes are rendered with all the serious eloquence characteristic of the Red races.) ... " 

And just in case the reader didn't get it, she drops subtlety - 

" ... This sort of distinction, as a writer nobody is likely to have read, can hardly counteract an indistinctness in my articulation, which the best-intentioned loudness will not remedy. Then, in some quarters my awkward feet are against me, the length of my upper lip, and an inveterate way I have of walking with my head foremost and my chin projecting. One can become only too well aware of such things by looking in the glass, or in that other mirror held up to nature in the frank opinions of street-boys, or of our Free People travelling by excursion train; and no doubt they account for the half-suppressed smile which I have observed on some fair faces when I have first been presented before them. This direct perceptive judgment is not to be argued against. But I am tempted to remonstrate when the physical points I have mentioned are apparently taken to warrant unfavourable inferences concerning my mental quickness. ... "

Wonder if this was where P. G. Wodehouse found inspiration? 

" ... With all the increasing uncertainty which modern progress has thrown over the relations of mind and body, it seems tolerably clear that wit cannot be seated in the upper lip, and that the balance of the haunches in walking has nothing to do with the subtle discrimination of ideas. ... "

And after that has threatened the reader with serious pain due to laughter, she returns with the Oh, so true, don't we know it! - 

" ... Yet strangers evidently do not expect me to make a clever observation, and my good things are as unnoticed as if they were anonymous pictures. I have indeed had the mixed satisfaction of finding that when they were appropriated by some one else they were found remarkable and even brilliant. ... "

And then comes the unexpected googly, a frank and unconcealed reference to the caste system of England in particular and West in general, which intelligentsia of England was not unlikely to make, until Macaulay policy of lies against India was so deeply rooted as to hide truth in plain sight - 

" ... It is to be borne in mind that I am not rich, have neither stud nor cellar, and no very high connections such as give to a look of imbecility a certain prestige of inheritance through a titled line; just as "the Austrian lip" confers a grandeur of historical associations on a kind of feature which might make us reject an advertising footman. ... "

And back to a flash of humour, like a feint at a punch in the solar plexus - 

" ... I have now and then done harm to a good cause by speaking for it in public, and have discovered too late that my attitude on the occasion would more suitably have been that of negative beneficence. ..."

Before the return to Serious Thought - 

" ... Is it really to the advantage of an opinion that I should be known to hold it? ..."

Before a bitter draught that most of us are only too familiar with - 

" ... And as to the force of my arguments, that is a secondary consideration with audiences who have given a new scope to the ex pede Herculem principle, and from awkward feet infer awkward fallacies. Once, when zeal lifted me on my legs, I distinctly heard an enlightened artisan remark, "Here's a rum cut!"—and doubtless he reasoned in the same way as the elegant Glycera when she politely puts on an air of listening to me, but elevates her eyebrows and chills her glance in sign of predetermined neutrality: both have their reasons for judging the quality of my speech beforehand."

And she continues the one-two-three style, feint, punch, serious - 

"This sort of reception to a man of affectionate disposition, who has also the innocent vanity of desiring to be agreeable, has naturally a depressing if not embittering tendency; and in early life I began to seek for some consoling point of view, some warrantable method of softening the hard peas I had to walk on, some comfortable fanaticism which might supply the needed self-satisfaction. At one time I dwelt much on the idea of compensation; trying to believe that I was all the wiser for my bruised vanity, that I had the higher place in the true spiritual scale, and even that a day might come when some visible triumph would place me in the French heaven of having the laughers on my side. But I presently perceived that this was a very odious sort of self-cajolery. Was it in the least true that I was wiser than several of my friends who made an excellent figure, and were perhaps praised a little beyond their merit? Is the ugly unready man in the corner, outside the current of conversation, really likely to have a fairer view of things than the agreeable talker, whose success strikes the unsuccessful as a repulsive example of forwardness and conceit? And as to compensation in future years, would the fact that I myself got it reconcile me to an order of things in which I could see a multitude with as bad a share as mine, who, instead of getting their corresponding compensation, were getting beyond the reach of it in old age? What could be more contemptible than the mood of mind which makes a man measure the justice of divine or human law by the agreeableness of his own shadow and the ample satisfaction of his own desires?"

- before proceeding with the ethical and moral discussion one has come to expect from George Eliot. 

But not before another punch. 

"I dropped a form of consolation which seemed to be encouraging me in the persuasion that my discontent was the chief evil in the world, and my benefit the soul of good in that evil. ... In my conscience I saw that the bias of personal discontent was just as misleading and odious as the bias of self-satisfaction. Whether we look through the rose-coloured glass or the indigo, we are equally far from the hues which the healthy human eye beholds in heaven above and earth below. I began to dread ways of consoling which were really a flattering of native illusions, a feeding-up into monstrosity of an inward growth already disproportionate; to get an especial scorn for that scorn of mankind which is a transmuted disappointment of preposterous claims; to watch with peculiar alarm lest what I called my philosophic estimate of the human lot in general, should be a mere prose lyric expressing my own pain and consequent bad temper. The standing-ground worth striving after seemed to be some Delectable Mountain, whence I could see things in proportions as little as possible determined by that self-partiality which certainly plays a necessary part in our bodily sustenance, but has a starving effect on the mind."

" ... I have long looked with suspicion on all views which are recommended as peculiarly consolatory to wounded vanity or other personal disappointment. The consolations of egoism are simply a change of attitude or a resort to a new kind of diet which soothes and fattens it. Fed in this way it is apt to become a monstrous spiritual pride, or a chuckling satisfaction that the final balance will not be against us but against those who now eclipse us. Examining the world in order to find consolation is very much like looking carefully over the pages of a great book in order to find our own name, if not in the text, at least in a laudatory note: whether we find what we want or not, our preoccupation has hindered us from a true knowledge of the contents. But an attention fixed on the main theme or various matter of the book would deliver us from that slavish subjection to our own self-importance. And I had the mighty volume of the world before me. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 01, 2021 - 

September 18, 2021 - September 18, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

II. Looking Backward. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot is nostalgic about her father, and begins by hiding the personal by questioning idealisation of antiquity. She was still hiding her own identity, and not merely in anonymity. 

................................................................................................

"Most of us who have had decent parents would shrink from wishing that our father and mother had been somebody else whom we never knew; yet it is held no impiety, rather, a graceful mark of instruction, for a man to wail that he was not the son of another age and another nation, of which also he knows nothing except through the easy process of an imperfect imagination and a flattering fancy. 

"But the period thus looked back on with a purely admiring regret, as perfect enough to suit a superior mind, is always a long way off; the desirable contemporaries are hardly nearer than Leonardo da Vinci, most likely they are the fellow-citizens of Pericles, or, best of all, of the Aeolic lyrists whose sparse remains suggest a comfortable contrast with our redundance. ... it would be really something original in polished verse if one of our young writers declared he would gladly be turned eighty-five that he might have known the joy and pride of being an Englishman when there were fewer reforms and plenty of highwaymen, fewer discoveries and more faces pitted with the small-pox, when laws were made to keep up the price of corn, and the troublesome Irish were more miserable. Three-quarters of a century ago is not a distance that lends much enchantment to the view. We are familiar with the average men of that period, and are still consciously encumbered with its bad contrivances and mistaken acts. ... their times are not much flattered, not much glorified by the yearnings of that modern sect of Flagellants who make a ritual of lashing—not themselves but—all their neighbours. ... To be quite fair towards the ages, a little ugliness as well as beauty must be allowed to each of them, a little implicit poetry even to those which echoed loudest with servile, pompous, and trivial prose."

" ... One wonders whether the remarkable originators who first had the notion of digging wells, or of churning for butter, and who were certainly very useful to their own time as well as ours, were left quite free from invidious comparison with predecessors who let the water and the milk alone, or whether some rhetorical nomad, as he stretched himself on the grass with a good appetite for contemporary butter, became loud on the virtue of ancestors who were uncorrupted by the produce of the cow; nay, whether in a high flight of imaginative self-sacrifice (after swallowing the butter) he even wished himself earlier born and already eaten for the sustenance of a generation more naove than his own."

And here comes a clue to the title. 

"I have often had the fool's hectic of wishing about the unalterable, but with me that useless exercise has turned chiefly on the conception of a different self, and not, as it usually does in literature, on the advantage of having been born in a different age, and more especially in one where life is imagined to have been altogether majestic and graceful. With my present abilities, external proportions, and generally small provision for ecstatic enjoyment, where is the ground for confidence that I should have had a preferable career in such an epoch of society? An age in which every department has its awkward-squad seems in my mind's eye to suit me better. I might have wandered by the Strymon under Philip and Alexander without throwing any new light on method or organising the sum of human knowledge; on the other hand, I might have objected to Aristotle as too much of a systematiser, and have preferred the freedom of a little self-contradiction as offering more chances of truth. I gather, too, from the undeniable testimony of his disciple Theophrastus that there were bores, ill-bred persons, and detractors even in Athens, of species remarkably corresponding to the English, and not yet made endurable by being classic; and altogether, with my present fastidious nostril, I feel that I am the better off for possessing Athenian life solely as an inodorous fragment of antiquity."

................................................................................................

" ... Except on the ground of a primitive golden age and continuous degeneracy, I see no rational footing for scorning the whole present population of the globe, unless I scorn every previous generation from whom they have inherited their diseases of mind and body, and by consequence scorn my own scorn, which is equally an inheritance of mixed ideas and feelings concocted for me in the boiling caldron of this universally contemptible life, and so on—scorning to infinity. ... "

That much seems obvious, although few realise that explicitly. But then she goes against it, and is twisted into a pretzel. 

" ... This may represent some actual states of mind, for it is a narrow prejudice of mathematicians to suppose that ways of thinking are to be driven out of the field by being reduced to an absurdity. The Absurd is taken as an excellent juicy thistle by many constitutions."

Did she realise it was she, who had been showing the absurdity of the then prevalent nostalgia for antiquity?

................................................................................................

"Besides, there are other reasons why I am contented that my father was a country parson, born much about the same time as Scott and Wordsworth; notwithstanding certain qualms I have felt at the fact that the property on which I am living was saved out of tithe before the period of commutation, and without the provisional transfiguration into a modus. It has sometimes occurred to me when I have been taking a slice of excellent ham that, from a too tenable point of view, I was breakfasting on a small squealing black pig which, more than half a century ago, was the unwilling representative of spiritual advantages not otherwise acknowledged by the grudging farmer or dairyman who parted with him. ... Notwithstanding such drawbacks I am rather fond of the mental furniture I got by having a father who was well acquainted with all ranks of his neighbours, and am thankful that he was not one of those aristocratic clergymen who could not have sat down to a meal with any family in the parish except my lord's—still more that he was not an earl or a marquis. A chief misfortune of high birth is that it usually shuts a man out from the large sympathetic knowledge of human experience which comes from contact with various classes on their own level, and in my father's time that entail of social ignorance had not been disturbed as we see it now. To look always from overhead at the crowd of one's fellow-men must be in many ways incapacitating, even with the best will and intelligence. The serious blunders it must lead to in the effort to manage them for their good, one may see clearly by the mistaken ways people take of flattering and enticing those whose associations are unlike their own. Hence I have always thought that the most fortunate Britons are those whose experience has given them a practical share in many aspects of the national lot, who have lived long among the mixed commonalty, roughing it with them under difficulties, knowing how their food tastes to them, and getting acquainted with their notions and motives not by inference from traditional types in literature or from philosophical theories, but from daily fellowship and observation. Of course such experience is apt to get antiquated, and my father might find himself much at a loss amongst a mixed rural population of the present day; but he knew very well what could be wisely expected from the miners, the weavers, the field-labourers, and farmers of his own time—yes, and from the aristocracy, for he had been brought up in close contact with them and had been companion to a young nobleman who was deaf and dumb. "A clergyman, lad," he used to say to me, "should feel in himself a bit of every class;" and this theory had a felicitous agreement with his inclination and practice, which certainly answered in making him beloved by his parishioners. They grumbled at their obligations towards him; but what then? It was natural to grumble at any demand for payment, tithe included, but also natural for a rector to desire his tithe and look well after the levying. A Christian pastor who did not mind about his money was not an ideal prevalent among the rural minds of fat central England, and might have seemed to introduce a dangerous laxity of supposition about Christian laymen who happened to be creditors. My father was none the less beloved because he was understood to be of a saving disposition, and how could he save without getting his tithe? ... I profited by his popularity, and for months after my mother's death, when I was a little fellow of nine, I was taken care of first at one homestead and then at another; a variety which I enjoyed much more than my stay at the Hall, where there was a tutor. ... In my earliest remembrance of him his hair was already grey, for I was his youngest as well as his only surviving child; and it seemed to me that advanced age was appropriate to a father, as indeed in all respects I considered him a parent so much to my honour, that the mention of my relationship to him was likely to secure me regard among those to whom I was otherwise a stranger—my father's stories from his life including so many names of distant persons that my imagination placed no limit to his acquaintanceship. ... "

" ... To my father's mind the noisy teachers of revolutionary doctrine were, to speak mildly, a variable mixture of the fool and the scoundrel; the welfare of the nation lay in a strong Government which could maintain order; and I was accustomed to hear him utter the word "Government" in a tone that charged it with awe, and made it part of my effective religion, in contrast with the word "rebel," which seemed to carry the stamp of evil in its syllables, and, lit by the fact that Satan was the first rebel, made an argument dispensing with more detailed inquiry. I gathered that our national troubles in the first two decades of this century were not at all due to the mistakes of our administrators; and that England, with its fine Church and Constitution, would have been exceedingly well off if every British subject had been thankful for what was provided, and had minded his own business—if, for example, numerous Catholics of that period had been aware how very modest they ought to be considering they were Irish. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 18, 2021 - September 18, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

III. How We Encourage Research. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot begins with a falsehood rooted in fraud spread by church, without looking at it, due to her own upbringing as a clergyman's daughter, which goes over and rooted deeper into her consciousness, than if she were born of ancestry sufficiently away from church, and brought up with grounding more into thought. 

"The serene and beneficent goddess Truth, like other deities whose disposition has been too hastily inferred from that of the men who have invoked them, can hardly be well pleased with much of the worship paid to her even in this milder age, when the stake and the rack have ceased to form part of her ritual. Some cruelties still pass for service done in her honour: no thumb-screw is used, no iron boot, no scorching of flesh; but plenty of controversial bruising, laceration, and even lifelong maiming. Less than formerly; but so long as this sort of truth-worship has the sanction of a public that can often understand nothing in a controversy except personal sarcasm or slanderous ridicule, it is likely to continue. The sufferings of its victims are often as little regarded as those of the sacrificial pig offered in old time, with what we now regard as a sad miscalculation of effects."

She's not looking at the fraud perpetrated by church, when the horror of inquisition, which in reality was a quest of complete domination and power - not only over lands and kingdoms, but over very souls of people - in order to establish the lies and fraud at roots of teachings of Rome, was covered with a false label of name of Truth. 

So George Eliot uses a false equating of Truth with inquisition, instead of questioning church, and its frauds of its whole history and teachings, which would strike at very roots of her being. 

................................................................................................

Whether all that was preamble to the real point, the story of her friend Herman, is a moot point. 

"One such victim is my old acquaintance Merman. Twenty years ago Merman was a young man of promise, a conveyancer with a practice which had certainly budded, but, like Aaron's rod, seemed not destined to proceed further in that marvellous activity. Meanwhile he occupied himself in miscellaneous periodical writing and in a multifarious study of moral and physical science. What chiefly attracted him in all subjects were the vexed questions which have the advantage of not admitting the decisive proof or disproof that renders many ingenious arguments superannuated. ... "

But it would seem she based the character of Dr Lydgate, of her Middlemarch, partly on this friend. 

" ... Such flexibility was naturally much helped by his amiable feeling towards woman, whose nervous system, he was convinced, would not bear the continuous strain of difficult topics; and also by his willingness to contribute a song whenever the same desultory charmer proposed music. Indeed his tastes were domestic enough to beguile him into marriage when his resources were still very moderate and partly uncertain."

Next part might, unlike Lydgate's quest, be satirical, in the specific names. 

""What is the matter, Proteus?" 

""A great matter, Julia. That fellow Grampus, whose book is cried up as a revelation, is all wrong about the Magicodumbras and the Zuzumotzis, and I have got hold of the right clue.""

And then the wife is Rosamond, but Merman much more assertive than Lydgate was. 

""Oh no, dear, don't go too far into things. Lie down again. You have been dreaming. What are the Madicojumbras and Zuzitotzums? I never heard you talk of them before. What use can it be troubling yourself about such things?" 

""That is the way, Julia—that is the way wives alienate their husbands, and make any hearth pleasanter to him than his own!" 

""What do you mean, Proteus?" 

""Why, if a woman will not try to understand her husband's ideas, or at least to believe that they are of more value than she can understand—if she is to join anybody who happens to be against him, and suppose he is a fool because others contradict him—there is an end of our happiness. That is all I have to say.""

And wife changes from Rosamond - who remained assertive (in a passive-aggressive way) about anyone not in accord with her being not merely incorrect, not merely wrong, but was deliberately out to make her miserable - to a supposedly ideal wife. 

""Oh no, Proteus, dear. I do believe what you say is right That is my only guide. I am sure I never have any opinions in any other way: I mean about subjects. Of course there are many little things that would tease you, that you like me to judge of for myself. I know I said once that I did not want you to sing 'Oh ruddier than the cherry,' because it was not in your voice. But I cannot remember ever differing from you about subjects. I never in my life thought any one cleverer than you."

"Julia Merman was really a "nice little woman," not one of the stately Dians sometimes spoken of in those terms. Her black silhouette had a very infantine aspect, but she had discernment and wisdom enough to act on the strong hint of that memorable conversation, never again giving her husband the slightest ground for suspecting that she thought treasonably of his ideas in relation to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, or in the least relaxed her faith in his infallibility because Europe was not also convinced of it. It was well for her that she did not increase her troubles in this way; but to do her justice, what she was chiefly anxious about was to avoid increasing her husband's troubles."

................................................................................................

Eliot returns to satire, or at least humour - which was missing from the second piece, Looking Backward. 

"But the hour of publication came; and to half-a-dozen persons, described as the learned world of two hemispheres, it became known that Grampus was attacked. This might have been a small matter; for who or what on earth that is good for anything is not assailed by ignorance, stupidity, or malice—and sometimes even by just objection? But on examination it appeared that the attack might possibly be held damaging, unless the ignorance of the author were well exposed and his pretended facts shown to be chimeras of that remarkably hideous kind begotten by imperfect learning on the more feminine element of original incapacity. ... But in point of fact Grampus knew nothing of the book until his friend Lord Narwhal sent him an American newspaper containing a spirited article by the well-known Professor Sperm N. Whale which was rather equivocal in its bearing, the passages quoted from Merman being of rather a telling sort, and the paragraphs which seemed to blow defiance being unaccountably feeble, coming from so distinguished a Cetacean. Then, by another post, arrived letters from Butzkopf and Dugong, both men whose signatures were familiar to the Teutonic world in the Selten-erscheinende Monat-schrift or Hayrick for the insertion of Split Hairs, asking their Master whether he meant to take up the combat, because, in the contrary case, both were ready.

"Thus America and Germany were roused, though England was still drowsy, and it seemed time now for Grampus to find Merman's book under the heap and cut it open. For his own part he was perfectly at ease about his system; but this is a world in which the truth requires defence, and specious falsehood must be met with exposure. Grampus having once looked through the book, no longer wanted any urging to write the most crushing of replies. This, and nothing less than this, was due from him to the cause of sound inquiry; and the punishment would cost him little pains. In three weeks from that time the palpitating Merman saw his book announced in the programme of the leading Review. No need for Grampus to put his signature. Who else had his vast yet microscopic knowledge, who else his power of epithet? This article in which Merman was pilloried and as good as mutilated—for he was shown to have neither ear nor nose for the subtleties of philological and archaeological study—was much read and more talked of, not because of any interest in the system of Grampus, or any precise conception of the danger attending lax views of the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, but because the sharp epigrams with which the victim was lacerated, and the soaring fountains of acrid mud which were shot upward and poured over the fresh wounds, were found amusing in recital. ... "

................................................................................................

The names might be satire, spoof or humour, but the battle described is all too real. 

"Perhaps that popular comparison of the Walrus had truth enough to bite and blister on thorough application, even if exultant ignorance had not applauded it. But it is well known that the walrus, though not in the least a malignant animal, if allowed to display its remarkably plain person and blundering performances at ease in any element it chooses, becomes desperately savage and musters alarming auxiliaries when attacked or hurt. In this characteristic, at least, Merman resembled the walrus. And now he concentrated himself with a vengeance. That his counter-theory was fundamentally the right one he had a genuine conviction, whatever collateral mistakes he might have committed; and his bread would not cease to be bitter to him until he had convinced his contemporaries that Grampus had used his minute learning as a dust-cloud to hide sophistical evasions—that, in fact, minute learning was an obstacle to clear-sighted judgment, more especially with regard to the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis, and that the best preparation in this matter was a wide survey of history and a diversified observation of men. Still, Merman was resolved to muster all the learning within his reach, and he wandered day and night through many wildernesses of German print, he tried compendious methods of learning oriental tongues, and, so to speak, getting at the marrow of languages independently of the bones, for the chance of finding details to corroborate his own views, or possibly even to detect Grampus in some oversight or textual tampering. All other work was neglected: rare clients were sent away and amazed editors found this maniac indifferent to his chance of getting book-parcels from them. It was many months before Merman had satisfied himself that he was strong enough to face round upon his adversary. But at last he had prepared sixty condensed pages of eager argument which seemed to him worthy to rank with the best models of controversial writing. He had acknowledged his mistakes, but had restated his theory so as to show that it was left intact in spite of them; and he had even found cases in which Ziphius, Microps, Scrag Whale the explorer, and other Cetaceans of unanswerable authority, were decidedly at issue with Grampus. ... In fine, Merman wound up his rejoinder by sincerely thanking the eminent adversary without whose fierce assault he might not have undertaken a revision in the course of which he had met with unexpected and striking confirmations of his own fundamental views. Evidently Merman's anger was at white heat."

................................................................................................

"The rejoinder being complete, all that remained was to find a suitable medium for its publication. This was not so easy. Distinguished mediums would not lend themselves to contradictions of Grampus, or if they would, Merman's article was too long and too abstruse, while he would not consent to leave anything out of an article which had no superfluities; for all this happened years ago when the world was at a different stage. At last, however, he got his rejoinder printed, and not on hard terms, since the medium, in every sense modest, did not ask him to pay for its insertion. 

"But if Merman expected to call out Grampus again, he was mistaken. Everybody felt it too absurd that Merman should undertake to correct Grampus in matters of erudition, and an eminent man has something else to do than to refute a petty objector twice over. What was essential had been done: the public had been enabled to form a true judgment of Merman's incapacity, the Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis were but subsidiary elements in Grampus's system, and Merman might now be dealt with by younger members of the master's school. But he had at least the satisfaction of finding that he had raised a discussion which would not be let die. The followers of Grampus took it up with an ardour and industry of research worthy of their exemplar. Butzkopf made it the subject of an elaborate Einleitung to his important work, Die Bedeutung des Aegyptischen Labyrinthes; and Dugong, in a remarkable address which he delivered to a learned society in Central Europe, introduced Merman's theory with so much power of sarcasm that it became a theme of more or less derisive allusion to men of many tongues. Merman with his Magicodumbras and Zuzumotzis was on the way to become a proverb, being used illustratively by many able journalists who took those names of questionable things to be Merman's own invention, "than which," said one of the graver guides, "we can recall few more melancholy examples of speculative aberration." Naturally the subject passed into popular literature, and figured very commonly in advertised programmes. ... "

" ... And all the while Merman was perfectly sure that his very opponents who had knowledge enough to be capable judges were aware that his book, whatever errors of statement they might detect in it, had served as a sort of divining rod, pointing out hidden sources of historical interpretation; nay, his jealous examination discerned in a new work by Grampus himself a certain shifting of ground which—so poor Merman declared—was the sign of an intention gradually to appropriate the views of the man he had attempted to brand as an ignorant impostor."

................................................................................................

Return to Lydgate and Rosamond, but with an inverse of the result - in Middlemarch, it was Rosamond who triumphed, and Lydgate withered to an early death via fashionable practice treating rich. 

" ... Merman's reputation as a sober thinker, a safe writer, a sound lawyer, was irretrievably injured: the distractions of controversy had caused him to neglect useful editorial connections, and indeed his dwindling care for miscellaneous subjects made his contributions too dull to be desirable. Even if he could now have given a new turn to his concentration, and applied his talents so as to be ready to show himself an exceptionally qualified lawyer, he would only have been like an architect in competition, too late with his superior plans; he would not have had an opportunity of showing his qualification. He was thrown out of the course. The small capital which had filled up deficiencies of income was almost exhausted, and Julia, in the effort to make supplies equal to wants, had to use much ingenuity in diminishing the wants. ... "

"Now and then, on rare occasions, when a sympathetic tjte-`-tjte has restored some of his old expansiveness, he will tell a companion in a railway carriage, or other place of meeting favourable to autobiographical confidences, what has been the course of things in his particular case, as an example of the justice to be expected of the world. The companion usually allows for the bitterness of a disappointed man, and is secretly disinclined to believe that Grampus was to blame."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

IV. A Man Surprised at his Originality. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

It's not an uncommon experience, with variations only in detail - but trust George Eliot to write it as a phenomenon. 

"Among the many acute sayings of La Rochefoucauld, there is hardly one more acute than this: "La plus grande ambition n'en a pas la moindre apparence lorsqu'elle se rencontre dans une impossibiliti absolue d'arriver oy elle aspire." Some of us might do well to use this hint in our treatment of acquaintances and friends from whom we are expecting gratitude because we are so very kind in thinking of them, inviting them, and even listening to what they say—considering how insignificant they must feel themselves to be. We are often fallaciously confident in supposing that our friend's state of mind is appropriate to our moderate estimate of his importance: almost as if we imagined the humble mollusc (so useful as an illustration) to have a sense of his own exceeding softness and low place in the scale of being. Your mollusc, on the contrary, is inwardly objecting to every other grade of solid rather than to himself. Accustomed to observe what we think an unwarrantable conceit exhibiting itself in ridiculous pretensions and forwardness to play the lion's part, in obvious self-complacency and loud peremptoriness, we are not on the alert to detect the egoistic claims of a more exorbitant kind often hidden under an apparent neutrality or an acquiescence in being put out of the question."

................................................................................................

" ... He was a man of fair position, deriving his income from a business in which he did nothing, at leisure to frequent clubs and at ease in giving dinners; well-looking, polite, and generally acceptable in society as a part of what we may call its bread-crumb—the neutral basis needful for the plums and spice. Why, then, did he speak of the modern Maro or the modern Flaccus with a peculiarity in his tone of assent to other people's praise which might almost have led you to suppose that the eminent poet had borrowed money of him and showed an indisposition to repay? ... "

"For my own part, being of a superstitious nature, given readily to imagine alarming causes, I immediately, on first getting these mystic hints from Lentulus, concluded that he held a number of entirely original poems, or at the very least a revolutionary treatise on poetics, in that melancholy manuscript state to which works excelling all that is ever printed are necessarily condemned; and I was long timid in speaking of the poets when he was present. ... But time wearing on, I perceived that the attitude of Lentulus towards the philosophers was essentially the same as his attitude towards the poets; nay, there was something so much more decided in his mode of closing his mouth after brief speech on the former, there was such an air of rapt consciousness in his private hints as to his conviction that all thinking hitherto had been an elaborate mistake, and as to his own power of conceiving a sound basis for a lasting superstructure, that I began to believe less in the poetical stores, and to infer that the line of Lentulus lay rather in the rational criticism of our beliefs and in systematic construction. In this case I did not figure to myself the existence of formidable manuscripts ready for the press; for great thinkers are known to carry their theories growing within their minds long before committing them to paper, and the ideas which made a new passion for them when their locks were jet or auburn, remain perilously unwritten, an inwardly developing condition of their successive selves, until the locks are grey or scanty. ... "

" ... It was therefore with renewed curiosity that I engaged him on this large subject—the universal erroneousness of thinking up to the period when Lentulus began that process. And here I found him more copious than on the theme of poetry. He admitted that he did contemplate writing down his thoughts, but his difficulty was their abundance. Apparently he was like the woodcutter entering the thick forest and saying, "Where shall I begin?" The same obstacle appeared in a minor degree to cling about his verbal exposition, and accounted perhaps for his rather helter-skelter choice of remarks bearing on the number of unaddressed letters sent to the post-office; on what logic really is, as tending to support the buoyancy of human mediums and mahogany tables; on the probability of all miracles under all religions when explained by hidden laws, and my unreasonableness in supposing that their profuse occurrence at half a guinea an hour in recent times was anything more than a coincidence; on the haphazard way in which marriages are determined—showing the baselessness of social and moral schemes; and on his expectation that he should offend the scientific world when he told them what he thought of electricity as an agent."

" ... His wristbands and black gloves, his hat and nicely clipped hair, his laudable moderation in beard, and his evident discrimination in choosing his tailor, all seemed to excuse the prevalent estimate of him as a man untainted with heterodoxy, and likely to be so unencumbered with opinions that he would always be useful as an assenting and admiring listener. Men of science seeing him at their lectures doubtless flattered themselves that he came to learn from them; the philosophic ornaments of our time, expounding some of their luminous ideas in the social circle, took the meditative gaze of Lentulus for one of surprise not unmixed with a just reverence at such close reasoning towards so novel a conclusion; and those who are called men of the world considered him a good fellow who might be asked to vote for a friend of their own and would have no troublesome notions to make him unaccommodating. You perceive how very much they were all mistaken, except in qualifying him as a good fellow. 

"This Lentulus certainly was, in the sense of being free from envy, hatred, and malice; and such freedom was all the more remarkable an indication of native benignity, because of his gaseous, illimitably expansive conceit. Yes, conceit; for that his enormous and contentedly ignorant confidence in his own rambling thoughts was usually clad in a decent silence, is no reason why it should be less strictly called by the name directly implying a complacent self-estimate unwarranted by performance. Nay, the total privacy in which he enjoyed his consciousness of inspiration was the very condition of its undisturbed placid nourishment and gigantic growth. Your audibly arrogant man exposes himself to tests: in attempting to make an impression on others he may possibly (not always) be made to feel his own lack of definiteness; and the demand for definiteness is to all of us a needful check on vague depreciation of what others do, and vague ecstatic trust in our own superior ability. But Lentulus was at once so unreceptive, and so little gifted with the power of displaying his miscellaneous deficiency of information, that there was really nothing to hinder his astonishment at the spontaneous crop of ideas which his mind secretly yielded. ... "

................................................................................................

"The respectable man had got into his illusory maze of discoveries by letting go that clue of conformity in his thinking which he had kept fast hold of in his tailoring and manners. He regarded heterodoxy as a power in itself, and took his inacquaintance with doctrines for a creative dissidence. ... His benevolent disposition was more effective for good than his silent presumption for harm. He might have been mischievous but for the lack of words: instead of being astonished at his inspirations in private, he might have clad his addled originalities, disjointed commonplaces, blind denials, and balloon-like conclusions, in that mighty sort of language which would have made a new Koran for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to the ancient Koran, but one would not desire the roc to lay more eggs and give us a whole wing-flapping brood to soar and make twilight. 

"Peace be with Lentulus, for he has left us in peace. Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact—from calling on us to look through a heap of millet-seed in order to be sure that there is no pearl in it."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

V. A too Deferential Man. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"A little unpremeditated insincerity must be indulged under the stress of social intercourse. The talk even of an honest man must often represent merely his wish to be inoffensive or agreeable rather than his genuine opinion or feeling on the matter in hand. His thought, if uttered, might be wounding; or he has not the ability to utter it with exactness and snatches at a loose paraphrase; or he has really no genuine thought on the question and is driven to fill up the vacancy by borrowing the remarks in vogue. These are the winds and currents we have all to steer amongst, and they are often too strong for our truthfulness or our wit. Let us not bear too hardly on each other for this common incidental frailty, or think that we rise superior to it by dropping all considerateness and deference. 

"But there are studious, deliberate forms of insincerity which it is fair to be impatient with: Hinze's, for example. From his name you might suppose him to be German: in fact, his family is Alsatian, but has been settled in England for more than one generation. He is the superlatively deferential man, and walks about with murmured wonder at the wisdom and discernment of everybody who talks to him. ... Still, it must happen to her as to every one else to speak of many subjects on which the best things were said long ago, and in conversation with a person who has been newly introduced those well-worn themes naturally recur as a further development of salutations and preliminary media of understanding, such as pipes, chocolate, or mastic-chewing, which serve to confirm the impression that our new acquaintance is on a civilised footing and has enough regard for formulas to save us from shocking outbursts of individualism, to which we are always exposed with the tamest bear or baboon. Considered purely as a matter of information, it cannot any longer be important for us to learn that a British subject included in the last census holds Shakspere to be supreme in the presentation of character; still, it is as admissible for any one to make this statement about himself as to rub his hands and tell you that the air is brisk, if only he will let it fall as a matter of course, with a parenthetic lightness, and not announce his adhesion to a commonplace with an emphatic insistance, as if it were a proof of singular insight. We mortals should chiefly like to talk to each other out of goodwill and fellowship, not for the sake of hearing revelations or being stimulated by witticisms; and I have usually found that it is the rather dull person who appears to be disgusted with his contemporaries because they are not always strikingly original, and to satisfy whom the party at a country house should have included the prophet Isaiah, Plato, Francis Bacon, and Voltaire. It is always your heaviest bore who is astonished at the tameness of modern celebrities: naturally; for a little of his company has reduced them to a state of flaccid fatigue. It is right and meet that there should be an abundant utterance of good sound commonplaces. Part of an agreeable talker's charm is that he lets them fall continually with no more than their due emphasis. Giving a pleasant voice to what we are all well assured of, makes a sort of wholesome air for more special and dubious remark to move in. 

"Hence it seemed to me far from unbecoming in Felicia that in her first dialogue with Hinze, previously quite a stranger to her, her observations were those of an ordinarily refined and well-educated woman on standard subjects, and might have been printed in a manual of polite topics and creditable opinions. She had no desire to astonish a man of whom she had heard nothing particular. It was all the more exasperating to see and hear Hinze's reception of her well-bred conformities. Felicia's acquaintances know her as the suitable wife of a distinguished man, a sensible, vivacious, kindly-disposed woman, helping her husband with graceful apologies written and spoken, and making her receptions agreeable to all comers. But you would have imagined that Hinze had been prepared by general report to regard this introduction to her as an opportunity comparable to an audience of the Delphic Sibyl. When she had delivered herself on the changes in Italian travel, on the difficulty of reading Ariosto in these busy times, on the want of equilibrium in French political affairs, and on the pre-eminence of German music, he would know what to think. Felicia was evidently embarrassed by his reverent wonder, and, in dread lest she should seem to be playing the oracle, became somewhat confused, stumbling on her answers rather than choosing them. But this made no difference to Hinze's rapt attention and subdued eagerness of inquiry. He continued to put large questions, bending his head slightly that his eyes might be a little lifted in awaiting her reply."

" ... Presently he was quite sure that her favourite author was Shakspere, and wished to know what she thought of Hamlet's madness. When she had quoted Wilhelm Meister on this point, and had afterwards testified that "Lear" was beyond adequate presentation, that "Julius Caesar" was an effective acting play, and that a poet may know a good deal about human nature while knowing little of geography, Hinze appeared so impressed with the plenitude of these revelations that he recapitulated them, weaving them together with threads of compliment—"As you very justly observed;" and—"It is most true, as you say;" and—"It were well if others noted what you have remarked."

"Some listeners incautious in their epithets would have called Hinze an "ass." For my part I would never insult that intelligent and unpretending animal who no doubt brays with perfect simplicity and substantial meaning to those acquainted with his idiom, and if he feigns more submission than he feels, has weighty reasons for doing so—I would never, I say, insult that historic and ill-appreciated animal, the ass, by giving his name to a man whose continuous pretence is so shallow in its motive, so unexcused by any sharp appetite as this of Hinze's."

................................................................................................

" ... Some persons conscious of sagacity decide at once that Hinze knows what he is about in flattering Tulpian, and has a carefully appraised end to serve though they may not see it They are misled by the common mistake of supposing that men's behaviour, whether habitual or occasional, is chiefly determined by a distinctly conceived motive, a definite object to be gained or a definite evil to be avoided. The truth is, that, the primitive wants of nature once tolerably satisfied, the majority of mankind, even in a civilised life full of solicitations, are with difficulty aroused to the distinct conception of an object towards which they will direct their actions with careful adaptation, and it is yet rarer to find one who can persist in the systematic pursuit of such an end. Few lives are shaped, few characters formed, by the contemplation of definite consequences seen from a distance and made the goal of continuous effort or the beacon of a constantly avoided danger: such control by foresight, such vivid picturing and practical logic are the distinction of exceptionally strong natures; but society is chiefly made up of human beings whose daily acts are all performed either in unreflecting obedience to custom and routine or from immediate promptings of thought or feeling to execute an immediate purpose. ... It does not in the least follow that they are seeking by studied hypocrisy to get something for themselves. And so with Hinze's deferential bearing, complimentary parentheses, and worshipful tones, which seem to some like the over-acting of a part in a comedy. He expects no appointment or other appreciable gain through Tulpian's favour; he has no doubleness towards Felicia; there is no sneering or backbiting obverse to his ecstatic admiration. He is very well off in the world, and cherishes no unsatisfied ambition that could feed design and direct flattery. As you perceive, he has had the education and other advantages of a gentleman without being conscious of marked result, such as a decided preference for any particular ideas or functions: his mind is furnished as hotels are, with everything for occasional and transient use. ... His nature is not tuned to the pitch of a genuine direct admiration, only to an attitudinising deference which does not fatigue itself with the formation of real judgments. All human achievement must be wrought down to this spoon-meat—this mixture of other persons' washy opinions and his own flux of reverence for what is third-hand, before Hinze can find a relish for it.

"He has no more leading characteristic than the desire to stand well with those who are justly distinguished; he has no base admirations, and you may know by his entire presentation of himself, from the management of his hat to the angle at which he keeps his right foot, that he aspires to correctness. Desiring to behave becomingly and also to make a figure in dialogue, he is only like the bad artist whose picture is a failure. ... He is not fairly to be called a hypocrite, but I have already confessed to the more exasperation at his make-believe reverence, because it has no deep hunger to excuse it."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

VI. Only Temper. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot begins admirably, in recognition of a common phenomenon and a common mistake in forgiving it, and thereby encouraging it - that of a man's bad temper. 

"What is temper? Its primary meaning, the proportion and mode in which qualities are mingled, is much neglected in popular speech, yet even here the word often carries a reference to an habitual state or general tendency of the organism in distinction from what are held to be specific virtues and vices. As people confess to bad memory without expecting to sink in mental reputation, so we hear a man declared to have a bad temper and yet glorified as the possessor of every high quality. When he errs or in any way commits himself, his temper is accused, not his character, and it is understood that but for a brutal bearish mood he is kindness itself. If he kicks small animals, swears violently at a servant who mistakes orders, or is grossly rude to his wife, it is remarked apologetically that these things mean nothing—they are all temper. 

"Certainly there is a limit to this form of apology, and the forgery of a bill, or the ordering of goods without any prospect of paying for them, has never been set down to an unfortunate habit of sulkiness or of irascibility. But on the whole there is a peculiar exercise of indulgence towards the manifestations of bad temper which tends to encourage them, so that we are in danger of having among us a number of virtuous persons who conduct themselves detestably, just as we have hysterical patients who, with sound organs, are apparently labouring under many sorts of organic disease. Let it be admitted, however, that a man may be "a good fellow" and yet have a bad temper, so bad that we recognise his merits with reluctance, and are inclined to resent his occasionally amiable behaviour as an unfair demand on our admiration."

But she makes a mistake, through negligence, of using a word inappropriately, in that it has roots in contempt prevalent in west since antiquity for women, and has been, is, thus used commonly by males in west - hysterical. The word simply means, like someone has "hyster", which is literally a womb. 

................................................................................................

She proceeds admirably, even though it's in generality so far. 

"Touchwood is that kind of good fellow. He is by turns insolent, quarrelsome, repulsively haughty to innocent people who approach him with respect, neglectful of his friends, angry in face of legitimate demands, procrastinating in the fulfilment of such demands, prompted to rude words and harsh looks by a moody disgust with his fellow-men in general—and yet, as everybody will assure you, the soul of honour, a steadfast friend, a defender of the oppressed, an affectionate-hearted creature. Pity that, after a certain experience of his moods, his intimacy becomes insupportable! A man who uses his balmorals to tread on your toes with much frequency and an unmistakeable emphasis may prove a fast friend in adversity, but meanwhile your adversity has not arrived and your toes are tender. The daily sneer or growl at your remarks is not to be made amends for by a possible eulogy or defence of your understanding against depredators who may not present themselves, and on an occasion which may never arise. I cannot submit to a chronic state of blue and green bruise as a form of insurance against an accident."

What she hasn't said so far, is that, such males usually take the temper out on those calculated not to swat them down - he may come home and beat up his wife, children, or old mother-in-law, but he will control his temper if a man of power takes a swipe at his face with his cane, and won't express his opinion to his boss if it's adverse. 

................................................................................................


" ... If Touchwood's behaviour affects you very closely you had better break your leg in the course of the day: his bad temper will then vanish at once; he will take a painful journey on your behalf; he will sit up with you night after night; he will do all the work of your department so as to save you from any loss in consequence of your accident; he will be even uniformly tender to you till you are well on your legs again, when he will some fine morning insult you without provocation, and make you wish that his generous goodness to you had not closed your lips against retort. 

"It is not always necessary that a friend should break his leg for Touchwood to feel compunction and endeavour to make amends for his bearishness or insolence. He becomes spontaneously conscious that he has misbehaved, and he is not only ashamed of himself, but has the better prompting to try and heal any wound he has inflicted. Unhappily the habit of being offensive "without meaning it" leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it. The kindnesses, the complimentary indications or assurances, are apt to appear in the light of a penance adjusted to the foregoing lapses, and by the very contrast they offer call up a keener memory of the wrong they atone for. They are not a spontaneous prompting of goodwill, but an elaborate compensation. And, in fact, Dion's atoning friendliness has a ring of artificiality. Because he formerly disguised his good feeling towards you he now expresses more than he quite feels. It is in vain. Having made you extremely uncomfortable last week he has absolutely diminished his power of making you happy to-day: he struggles against this result by excessive effort, but he has taught you to observe his fitfulness rather than to be warmed by his episodic show of regard."

" ... This determination of partisanship by temper has its worst effects in the career of the public man, who is always in danger of getting so enthralled by his own words that he looks into facts and questions not to get rectifying knowledge, but to get evidence that will justify his actual attitude which was assumed under an impulse dependent on something else than knowledge. ... "
................................................................................................

Few have the courage and honesty to state thus, so unequivocally, even though most might feel it about themselves; most, however, are not only hypocritical enough to profess virtue of forgiveness, but attempt to force such an attitude on the helpless, those injured and offended but without power, and in fact take unbrage at the very thought that such powerless creatures are not overwhelmed by gratitude by the very thought of someone who injured them is magnanimous enough to apologise at all. 

"If a man frequently passes unjust judgments, takes up false attitudes, intermits his acts of kindness with rude behaviour or cruel words, and falls into the consequent vulgar error of supposing that he can make amends by laboured agreeableness, I cannot consider such courses any the less ugly because they are ascribed to "temper." Especially I object to the assumption that his having a fundamentally good disposition is either an apology or a compensation for his bad behaviour. If his temper yesterday made him lash the horses, upset the curricle and cause a breakage in my rib, I feel it no compensation that to-day he vows he will drive me anywhere in the gentlest manner any day as long as he lives. Yesterday was what it was, my rib is paining me, it is not a main object of my life to be driven by Touchwood—and I have no confidence in his lifelong gentleness. The utmost form of placability I am capable of is to try and remember his better deeds already performed, and, mindful of my own offences, to bear him no malice. But I cannot accept his amends. 

"If the bad-tempered man wants to apologise he had need to do it on a large public scale, make some beneficent discovery, produce some stimulating work of genius, invent some powerful process—prove himself such a good to contemporary multitudes and future generations, as to make the discomfort he causes his friends and acquaintances a vanishing quality, a trifle even in their own estimate."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

VII. A Political Molecule. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"The most arrant denier must admit that a man often furthers larger ends than he is conscious of, and that while he is transacting his particular affairs with the narrow pertinacity of a respectable ant, he subserves an economy larger than any purpose of his own. Society is happily not dependent for the growth of fellowship on the small minority already endowed with comprehensive sympathy: any molecule of the body politic working towards his own interest in an orderly way gets his understanding more or less penetrated with the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of things into a faint feeling of fraternity. ... "

................................................................................................


" ... He was abstemious, and had none of those temptations to sensual excess which fill up a man's time first with indulgence and then with the process of getting well from its effects. He had not, indeed, exhausted the sources of knowledge, but here again his notions of human pleasure were narrowed by his want of appetite; for though he seemed rather surprised at the consideration that Alfred the Great was a Catholic, or that apart from the Ten Commandments any conception of moral conduct had occurred to mankind, he was not stimulated to further inquiries on these remote matters. Yet he aspired to what he regarded as intellectual society, willingly entertained beneficed clergymen, and bought the books he heard spoken of, arranging them carefully on the shelves of what he called his library, and occasionally sitting alone in the same room with them. ... If he had been born a little later he could have been accepted as an eligible member of Parliament, and if he had belonged to a high family he might have done for a member of the Government. Perhaps his indifference to "views" would have passed for administrative judiciousness, and he would have been so generally silent that he must often have been silent in the right place. But this is empty speculation: there is no warrant for saying what Spike would have been and known so as to have made a calculable political element, if he had not been educated by having to manage his trade. A small mind trained to useful occupation for the satisfying of private need becomes a representative of genuine class-needs. Spike objected to certain items of legislation because they hampered his own trade, but his neighbours' trade was hampered by the same causes; and though he would have been simply selfish in a question of light or water between himself and a fellow-townsman, his need for a change in legislation, being shared by all his neighbours in trade, ceased to be simply selfish, and raised him to a sense of common injury and common benefit. ... Certainly if Spike had been born a marquis he could not have had the same chance of being useful as a political element. But he might have had the same appearance, have been equally null in conversation, sceptical as to the reality of pleasure, and destitute of historical knowledge; perhaps even dimly disliking Jesuitism as a quality in Catholic minds, or regarding Bacon as the inventor of physical science. The depths of middle-aged gentlemen's ignorance will never be known, for want of public examinations in this branch."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

VIII. The Watch-Dog of Knowledge. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Mordax is an admirable man, ardent in intellectual work, public-spirited, affectionate, and able to find the right words in conveying ingenious ideas or elevated feeling. Pity that to all these graces he cannot add what would give them the utmost finish—the occasional admission that he has been in the wrong, the occasional frank welcome of a new idea as something not before present to his mind! But no: Mordax's self-respect seems to be of that fiery quality which demands that none but the monarchs of thought shall have an advantage over him, and in the presence of contradiction or the threat of having his notions corrected, he becomes astonishingly unscrupulous and cruel for so kindly and conscientious a man."

" ... It does not need much love of truth and justice in me to say that Aldebaran is a bright star, or Isaac Newton the greatest of discoverers; nor much kindliness in me to want my notes to be heard above the rest in a chorus of hallelujahs to one already crowned. It is my way to apply tests. Does the man who has the ear of the public use his advantage tenderly towards poor fellows who may be hindered of their due if he treats their pretensions with scorn? That is my test of his justice and benevolence." 

"My answer was, that his system of moral tests might be as delusive as what ignorant people take to be tests of intellect and learning. If the scholar or savant cannot answer their haphazard questions on the shortest notice, their belief in his capacity is shaken. But the better-informed have given up the Johnsonian theory of mind as a pair of legs able to walk east or west according to choice. Intellect is no longer taken to be a ready-made dose of ability to attain eminence (or mediocrity) in all departments; it is even admitted that application in one line of study or practice has often a laming effect in other directions, and that an intellectual quality or special facility which is a furtherance in one medium of effort is a drag in another. We have convinced ourselves by this time that a man may be a sage in celestial physics and a poor creature in the purchase of seed-corn, or even in theorising about the affections; that he may be a mere fumbler in physiology and yet show a keen insight into human motives; that he may seem the "poor Poll" of the company in conversation and yet write with some humorous vigour. It is not true that a man's intellectual power is like the strength of a timber beam, to be measured by its weakest point."

................................................................................................


" ... There is a fable that when the badger had been stung all over by bees, a bear consoled him by a rhapsodic account of how he himself had just breakfasted on their honey. The badger replied, peevishly, "The stings are in my flesh, and the sweetness is on your muzzle." The bear, it is said, was surprised at the badger's want of altruism."

" ... Depend upon it, his conscience, though active enough in some relations, has never given him a twinge because of his polemical rudeness and even brutality. He would go from the room where he has been tiring himself through the watches of the night in lifting and turning a sick friend, and straightway write a reply or rejoinder in which he mercilessly pilloried a Laniger who had supposed that he could tell the world something else or more than had been sanctioned by the eminent Mordax—and what was worse, had sometimes really done so. Does this nullify the genuineness of motive which made him tender to his suffering friend? Not at all. It only proves that his arrogant egoism, set on fire, sends up smoke and flame where just before there had been the dews of fellowship and pity. He is angry and equips himself accordingly—with a penknife to give the offender a comprachico countenance, a mirror to show him the effect, and a pair of nailed boots to give him his dismissal. All this to teach him who the Romans really were, and to purge Inquiry of incompetent intrusion, so rendering an important service to mankind."

................................................................................................

""Pummel," I observed, a little irritated at not getting my coffee, "if you were to carry your kettle and spirits of wine up a mountain of a morning, your water would boil there sooner." "I should say, sir." "Or, there are boiling springs in Iceland. Better go to Iceland." "That's what I've been thinking, sir."

"I have taken to asking him hard questions, and as I expected, he never admits his own inability to answer them without representing it as common to the human race. "What is the cause of the tides, Pummel?" "Well, sir, nobody rightly knows. Many gives their opinion, but if I was to give mine, it 'ud be different."

"But while he is never surprised himself, he is constantly imagining situations of surprise for others. His own consciousness is that of one so thoroughly soaked in knowledge that further absorption is impossible, but his neighbours appear to him to be in the state of thirsty sponges which it is a charity to besprinkle. His great interest in thinking of foreigners is that they must be surprised at what they see in England, and especially at the beef. He is often occupied with the surprise Adam must have felt at the sight of the assembled animals—"for he was not like us, sir, used from a b'y to Wombwell's shows." He is fond of discoursing to the lad who acts as shoe-black and general subaltern, and I have overheard him saying to that small upstart, with some severity, "Now don't you pretend to know, because the more you pretend the more I see your ignirance"—a lucidity on his part which has confirmed my impression that the thoroughly self-satisfied person is the only one fully to appreciate the charm of humility in others."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

IX. A Half-Breed. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"An early deep-seated love to which we become faithless has its unfailing Nemesis, if only in that division of soul which narrows all newer joys by the intrusion of regret and the established presentiment of change. I refer not merely to the love of a person, but to the love of ideas, practical beliefs, and social habits. And faithlessness here means not a gradual conversion dependent on enlarged knowledge, but a yielding to seductive circumstance; not a conviction that the original choice was a mistake, but a subjection to incidents that flatter a growing desire. ... "

................................................................................................

Here's another root of the tragedy of Lydgate, married to Rosamond, in George Eliot's Middlemarch 

" ... he married Scintilla, who fascinated him as she had fascinated others, by her prettiness, her liveliness, and her music. It is a common enough case, that of a man being suddenly captivated by a woman nearly the opposite of his ideal; or if not wholly captivated, at least effectively captured by a combination of circumstances along with an unwarily manifested inclination which might otherwise have been transient. Mixtus was captivated and then captured on the worldly side of his disposition, which had been always growing and flourishing side by side with his philanthropic and religious tastes. He had ability in business, and he had early meant to be rich; also, he was getting rich, and the taste for such success was naturally growing with the pleasure of rewarded exertion. It was during a business sojourn in London that he met Scintilla, who, though without fortune, associated with families of Greek merchants living in a style of splendour, and with artists patronised by such wealthy entertainers. Mixtus on this occasion became familiar with a world in which wealth seemed the key to a more brilliant sort of dominance than that of a religious patron in the provincial circles of X. Would it not be possible to unite the two kinds of sway? A man bent on the most useful ends might, with a fortune large enough, make morality magnificent, and recommend religious principle by showing it in combination with the best kind of house and the most liberal of tables; also with a wife whose graces, wit, and accomplishments gave a finish sometimes lacking even to establishments got up with that unhesitating worldliness to which high cost is a sufficient reason. Enough. 

"Mixtus married Scintilla. ... In general, people who appeared seriously to believe in any sort of doctrine, whether religious, social, or philosophical, seemed rather absurd to Scintilla. Ten to one these theoretic people pronounced oddly, had some reason or other for saying that the most agreeable things were wrong, wore objectionable clothes, and wanted you to subscribe to something. They were probably ignorant of art and music, did not understand badinage, and, in fact, could talk of nothing amusing. In Scintilla's eyes the majority of persons were ridiculous and deplorably wanting in that keen perception of what was good taste, with which she herself was blest by nature and education; but the people understood to be religious or otherwise theoretic, were the most ridiculous of all, without being proportionately amusing and invitable. 

"Did Mixtus not discover this view of Scintilla's before their marriage? Or did he allow her to remain in ignorance of habits and opinions which had made half the occupation of his youth? 

"When a man is inclined to marry a particular woman, and has made any committal of himself, this woman's opinions, however different from his own, are readily regarded as part of her pretty ways, especially if they are merely negative; as, for example, that she does not insist on the Trinity or on the rightfulness or expediency of church rates, but simply regards her lover's troubling himself in disputation on these heads as stuff and nonsense. The man feels his own superior strength, and is sure that marriage will make no difference to him on the subjects about which he is in earnest. And to laugh at men's affairs is a woman's privilege, tending to enliven the domestic hearth. If Scintilla had no liking for the best sort of nonconformity, she was without any troublesome bias towards Episcopacy, Anglicanism, and early sacraments, and was quite contented not to go to church. 

"As to Scintilla's acquaintance with her lover's tastes on these subjects, she was equally convinced on her side that a husband's queer ways while he was a bachelor would be easily laughed out of him when he had married an adroit woman. Mixtus, she felt, was an excellent creature, quite likable, who was getting rich; and Scintilla meant to have all the advantages of a rich man's wife. She was not in the least a wicked woman; she was simply a pretty animal of the ape kind, with an aptitude for certain accomplishments which education had made the most of."

" ... He has become richer even than he dreamed of being, has a little palace in London, and entertains with splendour the half-aristocratic, professional, and artistic society which he is proud to think select. This society regards him as a clever fellow in his particular branch, seeing that he has become a considerable capitalist, and as a man desirable to have on the list of one's acquaintance. But from every other point of view Mixtus finds himself personally submerged: what he happens to think is not felt by his esteemed guests to be of any consequence, and what he used to think with the ardour of conviction he now hardly ever expresses. He is transplanted, and the sap within him has long been diverted into other than the old lines of vigorous growth. ... And his references to his historical and geographical studies towards a survey of possible markets for English products are received with an air of ironical suspicion by many of his political friends, who take his pretension to give advice concerning the Amazon, the Euphrates, and the Niger as equivalent to the currier's wide views on the applicability of leather. He can only make a figure through his genial hospitality. It is in vain that he buys the best pictures and statues of the best artists. Nobody will call him a judge in art. If his pictures and statues are well chosen it is generally thought that Scintilla told him what to buy; and yet Scintilla in other connections is spoken of as having only a superficial and often questionable taste. Mixtus, it is decided, is a good fellow, not ignorant—no, really having a good deal of knowledge as well as sense, but not easy to classify otherwise than as a rich man. He has consequently become a little uncertain as to his own point of view, and in his most unreserved moments of friendly intercourse, even when speaking to listeners whom he thinks likely to sympathise with the earlier part of his career, he presents himself in all his various aspects and feels himself in turn what he has been, what he is, and what others take him to be (for this last status is what we must all more or less accept). ... He has long been wont to feel bashful about his former religion; as if it were an old attachment having consequences which he did not abandon but kept in decent privacy, his avowed objects and actual position being incompatible with their public acknowledgment."

................................................................................................


" ... Indeed, hardly any of his acquaintances know what Mixtus really is, considered as a whole—nor does Mixtus himself know it."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 19, 2021 - September 19, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

X. Debasing the Moral Currency. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Again, George Eliot observes something we've all experienced, and sets out to dissect the negative. 

" ... I observe that even now much nonsense and bad taste win admiring acceptance solely by virtue of the French language, and one may fairly desire that what seems a just discrimination should profit by the fashionable prejudice in favour of La Bruyhre's idiom. But I wish he had added that the habit of dragging the ludicrous into topics where the chief interest is of a different or even opposite kind is a sign not of endowment, but of deficiency. The art of spoiling is within reach of the dullest faculty: the coarsest clown with a hammer in his hand might chip the nose off every statue and bust in the Vatican, and stand grinning at the effect of his work."

But here she could have stopped a moment, to pay a little attention to what she wrote, and consider it "every statue and bust in the Vatican". Obviously those are considered holy, by their association with the place, by those that worship it. They do not realise the contradictions therein, of indulging, in what amounts to idol worship, whether of the statues or of the place, while they disparage such practices elsewhere. 

It has been, moreover, monotheistic conversionism that caused most damage around the world, invading and colonising, looting, besmirching and attempting to destroy cultures other than ones own, and giving them names that aren't bad to begin with but begin to seem so after the contempt and horror heaped on them. Words and phrases such as idol, idol worship, pagan, even the word grotesque, belong to this category. 

But why do abrahmic get to define them? After all, erecting any statue, or putting up a poster with an image, is no different from idol; and worship cannot be defined by flowers and incense alone, it's in the reverence that accompanies such putting up if statues and posters. For that matter, calling a book or a male holy, and indulging in mayhem taking lives when there's an act by anyone ridiculing either, isn't that idol worship? If an image in matter is merely matter, a book after is all is merely squiggles on treated wood pulp, or on stone; a name is merely a sound, one amongst others. 

But Cortez destroying exquisite emerald statues wasn't seen as a horror by the "faithful" of Europe, any more than destruction of temples in India was, or robbing the world by all these invaders colonizing and enslaving others. Why is destruction of statues in Vatican the only example George Eliot could come up with as an example of such horror? 

................................................................................................

" ... Because wit is an exquisite product of high powers, we are not therefore forced to admit the sadly confused inference of the monotonous jester that he is establishing his superiority over every less facetious person, and over every topic on which he is ignorant or insensible, by being uneasy until he has distorted it in the small cracked mirror which he carries about with him as a joking apparatus. ... "

Indeed! And how often have we observed those that considered themselves above, indulging at cost of those considered below? And the coterie around, in between, enjoying laughter in chorus? 

" ... Some high authority is needed to give many worthy and timid persons the freedom of muscular repose under the growing demand on them to laugh when they have no other reason than the peril of being taken for dullards; still more to inspire them with the courage to say that they object to the theatrical spoiling for themselves and their children of all affecting themes, all the grander deeds and aims of men, by burlesque associations adapted to the taste of rich fishmongers in the stalls and their assistants in the gallery. ... "

Again, indeed! 

"I have been amazed to find that some artists whose own works have the ideal stamp, are quite insensible to the damaging tendency of the burlesquing spirit which ranges to and fro and up and down on the earth, seeing no reason (except a precarious censorship) why it should not appropriate every sacred, heroic, and pathetic theme which serves to make up the treasure of human admiration, hope, and love. One would have thought that their own half-despairing efforts to invest in worthy outward shape the vague inward impressions of sublimity, and the consciousness of an implicit ideal in the commonest scenes, might have made them susceptible of some disgust or alarm at a species of burlesque which is likely to render their compositions no better than a dissolving view, where every noble form is seen melting into its preposterous caricature. It used to be imagined of the unhappy medieval Jews that they parodied Calvary by crucifying dogs; if they had been guilty they would at least have had the excuse of the hatred and rage begotten by persecution. Are we on the way to a parody which shall have no other excuse than the reckless search after fodder for degraded appetites—after the pay to be earned by pasturing Circe's herd where they may defile every monument of that growing life which should have kept them human?"

That applies, to every disparagement, of everything outside Europe and West Asia, by every conquistadors and all their spreaders of their own faiths, from Arabs and Cortez to Macaulay and more. wreaking havoc through the world. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XI. The Wasp Credited with the Honeycomb. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This makes one smile, especially with West attempting to patent and copyright all human knowledge even when openly stolen from elsewhere! 

"No man, I imagine, would object more strongly than Euphorion to communistic principles in relation to material property, but with regard to property in ideas he entertains such principles willingly, and is disposed to treat the distinction between Mine and Thine in original authorship as egoistic, narrowing, and low. I have known him, indeed, insist at some expense of erudition on the prior right of an ancient, a medieval, or an eighteenth century writer to be credited with a view or statement lately advanced with some show of originality; and this championship seems to imply a nicety of conscience towards the dead. He is evidently unwilling that his neighbours should get more credit than is due to them, and in this way he appears to recognise a certain proprietorship even in spiritual production. But perhaps it is no real inconsistency that, with regard to many instances of modern origination, it is his habit to talk with a Gallic largeness and refer to the universe: he expatiates on the diffusive nature of intellectual products, free and all-embracing as the liberal air; on the infinitesimal smallness of individual origination compared with the massive inheritance of thought on which every new generation enters; on that growing preparation for every epoch through which certain ideas or modes of view are said to be in the air, and, still more metaphorically speaking, to be inevitably absorbed, so that every one may be excused for not knowing how he got them. Above all, he insists on the proper subordination of the irritable self, the mere vehicle of an idea or combination which, being produced by the sum total of the human race, must belong to that multiple entity, from the accomplished lecturer or populariser who transmits it, to the remotest generation of Fuegians or Hottentots, however indifferent these may be to the superiority of their right above that of the eminently perishable dyspeptic author."

India has been now, for decades, fighting U.S. and other multinational corporations who have habitually gone and patented everything India has known for millennia, and not just lying dusty in a corner, but used in practice in every household, taught by older women to their young, as necessities of life everyone must know. 

And yet there is every attempt, largely in U.S. surprisingly, of throwing mud at India and her culture of antiquity, attempting to butcher it by such means as heaping contempt on some aspects of culture of India, while denying that other parts- which West cannot heap even discredit, much less contempt, on, are just as much part of eternal ancient culture of India. The former category they include India's worship, religion and social systems; the latter, Yoga, Ayurveda and more. And the ridiculousness of it all is the extreme length they go to - some have "patented" some "yoga" they "invented", while others, indignant at the confrontation of fact of Yoga having originated from India, and not only known but practiced in India for millennia until now, ask if they must pay India a fee for practicing it! 

" ... I protest against the use of these majestic conceptions to do the dirty work of unscrupulosity and justify the non-payment of conscious debts which cannot be defined or enforced by the law. Especially since it is observable that the large views as to intellectual property which can apparently reconcile an able person to the use of lately borrowed ideas as if they were his own, when this spoliation is favoured by the public darkness, never hinder him from joining in the zealous tribute of recognition and applause to those warriors of Truth whose triumphal arches are seen in the public ways, those conquerors whose battles and "annexations" even the carpenters and bricklayers know by name. Surely the acknowledgment of a mental debt which will not be immediately detected, and may never be asserted, is a case to which the traditional susceptibility to "debts of honour" would be suitably transferred. There is no massive public opinion that can be expected to tell on these relations of thinkers and investigators—relations to be thoroughly understood and felt only by those who are interested in the life of ideas and acquainted with their history. To lay false claim to an invention or discovery which has an immediate market value; to vamp up a professedly new book of reference by stealing from the pages of one already produced at the cost of much labour and material; to copy somebody else's poem and send the manuscript to a magazine, or hand it about among; friends as an original "effusion;" to deliver an elegant extract from a known writer as a piece of improvised eloquence:—these are the limits within which the dishonest pretence of originality is likely to get hissed or hooted and bring more or less shame on the culprit. ... "

Except, of course, when west steals from india - then combination of Macaulay policy with colonisation and loot that culminated in genocide twice in a decade, leads to an attitude in west whereby its respectable to steal from India and deny India. George Eliot explains. 

"I can therefore only explain the apparent infirmity of his memory in cases of larger "conveyance" by supposing that he is accustomed by the very association of largeness to range them at once under those grand laws of the universe in the light of which Mine and Thine disappear and are resolved into Everybody's or Nobody's, and one man's particular obligations to another melt untraceably into the obligations of the earth to the solar system in general. 

" ... Euphorion himself, if a particular omission of acknowledgment were brought home to him, would probably take a narrower ground of explanation. It was a lapse of memory; or it did not occur to him as necessary in this case to mention a name, the source being well known—or (since this seems usually to act as a strong reason for mention) he rather abstained from adducing the name because it might injure the excellent matter advanced, just as an obscure trade-mark casts discredit on a good commodity, and even on the retailer who has furnished himself from a quarter not likely to be esteemed first-rate. No doubt this last is a genuine and frequent reason for the non-acknowledgment of indebtedness to what one may call impersonal as well as personal sources: even an American editor of school classics whose own English could not pass for more than a syntactical shoddy of the cheapest sort, felt it unfavourable to his reputation for sound learning that he should be obliged to the Penny Cyclopaedia, and disguised his references to it under contractions in which Us. Knowl.. took the place of the low word Penny. Works of this convenient stamp, easily obtained and well nourished with matter, are felt to be like rich but unfashionable relations who are visited and received in privacy, and whose capital is used or inherited without any ostentatious insistance on their names and places of abode. As to memory, it is known that this frail faculty naturally lets drop the facts which are less flattering to our self-love—when it does not retain them carefully as subjects not to be approached, marshy spots with a warning flag over them. But it is always interesting to bring forward eminent names, such as Patricius or Scaliger, Euler or Lagrange, Bopp or Humboldt. To know exactly what has been drawn from them is erudition and heightens our own influence, which seems advantageous to mankind; whereas to cite an author whose ideas may pass as higher currency under our own signature can have no object except the contradictory one of throwing the illumination over his figure when it is important to be seen oneself. All these reasons must weigh considerably with those speculative persons who have to ask themselves whether or not Universal Utilitarianism requires that in the particular instance before them they should injure a man who has been of service to them, and rob a fellow-workman of the credit which is due to him."

................................................................................................

"True, some persons are so constituted that the very excellence of an idea seems to them a convincing reason that it must be, if not solely, yet especially theirs. It fits in so beautifully with their general wisdom, it lies implicitly in so many of their manifested opinions, that if they have not yet expressed it (because of preoccupation) it is clearly a part of their indigenous produce, and is proved by their immediate eloquent promulgation of it to belong more naturally and appropriately to them than to the person who seemed first to have alighted on it, and who sinks in their all-originating consciousness to that low kind of entity, a second cause. This is not lunacy, nor pretence, but a genuine state of mind very effective in practice, and often carrying the public with it, so that the poor Columbus is found to be a very faulty adventurer, and the continent is named after Amerigo. ... "

Europe had no business naming the continent, in the first place - it wasn't empty! Not bothering to ask what the natives called their land and naming it after a forgotten sailor has chutzpah peculiar to the continent of dark latitudes (- yes, summer isn't dark, but people aren't bears, and humans sleep in summer the same amount as in winters, so on the whole if you live in Europe, you live in dark -) that would be equivalent of, say, India naming U.S. after the first migrant from India landing on the continent. 

Or 'Kamala' will do just as well. 

But fact is, George Eliot forgets, or was unaware, of the Vikings having not only known the continent across Atlantic, and having travelled there, but having settled there as well, for centuries, before giving up and returning due to lack of a n mass migration. They lived in harmony with local people, and had stations as far south as Massachusetts. This was a couple of centuries prior to Columbus. 

And the reason Amerigo, not Columbus, was who the continent was named after - was it antisemitism? 

................................................................................................

"It is a commonplace that words, writings, measures, and performances in general, have qualities assigned them not by a direct judgment on the performances themselves, but by a presumption of what they are likely to be, considering who is the performer. ... "

And here West uses caste system of West to determine thus issue, whereby wealth, colour and above all, gender, are the criteria - a tall WASP male is obviously considered superior to a dark poor female, no matter how wrong his pronouncements and his correct her observations; and antisemitism is included here.  

George Eliot ends with the lovely satire of a fable related to discovery of a honeycomb and an animal council thanking wasp for the sweet produce because a wasp had stung the fox when he questioned the wasp's claim. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XII. “So Young!” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

" ... If we imagine with due charity the effect on Ganymede, we shall think it greatly to his credit that he continued to feel the necessity of being something more than young, and did not sink by rapid degrees into a parallel of that melancholy object, a superannuated youthful phenomenon. ... He has continued to be productive both of schemes and writings, being perhaps helped by the fact that his 'Comparative Estimate' did not greatly affect the currents of European thought, and left him with the stimulating hope that he had not done his best, but might yet produce what would make his youth more surprising than ever."

................................................................................................


" ... Owing to my absence on travel and to other causes I had lost sight of him for several years, but such a separation between two who have not missed each other seems in this busy century only a pleasant reason, when they happen to meet again in some old accustomed haunt, for the one who has stayed at home to be more communicative about himself than he can well be to those who have all along been in his neighbourhood. He had married in the interval, and as if to keep up his surprising youthfulness in all relations, he had taken a wife considerably older than himself. It would probably have seemed to him a disturbing inversion of the natural order that any one very near to him should have been younger than he, except his own children who, however young, would not necessarily hinder the normal surprise at the youthfulness of their father. ... "

"I left him on that occasion without any melancholy forecast that his illusion would be suddenly or painfully broken up. I saw that he was well victualled and defended against a ten years' siege from ruthless facts; and in the course of time observation convinced me that his resistance received considerable aid from without. Each of his written productions, as it came out, was still commented on as the work of a very young man. One critic, finding that he wanted solidity, charitably referred to his youth as an excuse. Another, dazzled by his brilliancy, seemed to regard his youth as so wondrous that all other authors appeared decrepit by comparison, and their style such as might be looked for from gentlemen of the old school. Able pens (according to a familiar metaphor) appeared to shake their heads good-humouredly, implying that Ganymede's crudities were pardonable in one so exceedingly young. Such unanimity amid diversity, which a distant posterity might take for evidence that on the point of age at least there could have been no mistake, was not really more difficult to account for than the prevalence of cotton in our fabrics. Ganymede had been first introduced into the writing world as remarkably young, and it was no exceptional consequence that the first deposit of information about him held its ground against facts which, however open to observation, were not necessarily thought of. ... the precocious author of the 'Comparative Estimate' heard the echoes repeating "Young Ganymede" when an illiterate beholder at a railway station would have given him forty years at least. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XIII. How We Come to Give Ourselves False Testimonials, and Believe in Them. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Introspection which starts with the purpose of finding out one's own absurdities is not likely to be very mischievous, yet of course it is not free from dangers any more than breathing is, or the other functions that keep us alive and active. ... One cannot give a recipe for wise judgment: it resembles appropriate muscular action, which is attained by the myriad lessons in nicety of balance and of aim that only practice can give. ... and it is undeniable that a too intense consciousness of one's kinship with all frailties and vices undermines the active heroism which battles against wrong."

................................................................................................

" ... To be unaware of our own little tricks of manner or our own mental blemishes and excesses is a comprehensible unconsciousness; the puzzling fact is that people should apparently take no account of their deliberate actions, and should expect them to be equally ignored by others. It is an inversion of the accepted order: there it is the phrases that are official and the conduct or privately manifested sentiment that is taken to be real; here it seems that the practice is taken to be official and entirely nullified by the verbal representation which contradicts it. The thief making a vow to heaven of full restitution and whispering some reservations, expecting to cheat Omniscience by an "aside," is hardly more ludicrous than the many ladies and gentlemen who have more belief, and expect others to have it, in their own statement about their habitual doings than in the contradictory fact which is patent in the daylight. One reason of the absurdity is that we are led by a tradition about ourselves, so that long after a man has practically departed from a rule or principle, he continues innocently to state it as a true description of his practice—just as he has a long tradition that he is not an old gentleman, and is startled when he is seventy at overhearing himself called by an epithet which he has only applied to others."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XIV. The too Ready Writer. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"One who talks too much, hindering the rest of the company from taking their turn, and apparently seeing no reason why they should not rather desire to know his opinion or experience in relation to all subjects, or at least to renounce the discussion of any topic where he can make no figure, has never been praised for this industrious monopoly of work which others would willingly have shared in. However various and brilliant his talk may be, we suspect him of impoverishing us by excluding the contributions of other minds, which attract our curiosity the more because he has shut them up in silence. Besides, we get tired of a "manner" in conversation as in painting, when one theme after another is treated with the same lines and touches. I begin with a liking for an estimable master, but by the time he has stretched his interpretation of the world unbrokenly along a palatial gallery, I have had what the cautious Scotch mind would call "enough" of him. There is monotony and narrowness already to spare in my own identity; what comes to me from without should be larger and more impartial than the judgment of any single interpreter. ... "

"Why is there a different standard of judgment with regard to a writer who plays much the same part in literature as the excessive talker plays in what is traditionally called conversation? ... The excessive talker can only be in one gathering at a time, and there is the comfort of thinking that everywhere else other fellow-citizens who have something to say may get a chance of delivering themselves; but the exorbitant writer can occupy space and spread over it the more or less agreeable flavour of his mind in four "mediums" at once, and on subjects taken from the four winds. ... "

"Such entertainment of scruple can hardly be expected from the young; but happily their readiness to mirror the universe anew for the rest of mankind is not encouraged by easy publicity. ... In relation to all subjects I had a joyous consciousness of that ability which is prior to knowledge, and of only needing to apply myself in order to master any task—to conciliate philosophers whose systems were at present but dimly known to me, to estimate foreign poets whom I had not yet read, to show up mistakes in an historical monograph that roused my interest in an epoch which I had been hitherto ignorant of, when I should once have had time to verify my views of probability by looking into an encyclopaedia. ... That impulse to decide, that vague sense of being able to achieve the unattempted, that dream of aerial unlimited movement at will without feet or wings, which were once but the joyous mounting of young sap, are already taking shape as unalterable woody fibre: the impulse has hardened into "style," and into a pattern of peremptory sentences; the sense of ability in the presence of other men's failures is turning into the official arrogance of one who habitually issues directions which he has never himself been called on to execute; the dreamy buoyancy of the stripling has taken on a fatal sort of reality in written pretensions which carry consequences. ... copying the just humility of the old Puritan, I may say, "But for the grace of discouragement, this coxcombry might have been mine.""

................................................................................................


" ... having bound himself to express judgments which will satisfy some other demands than that of veracity, he has blunted his perceptions by continual preoccupation. We cannot command veracity at will: the power of seeing and reporting truly is a form of health that has to be delicately guarded, and as an ancient Rabbi has solemnly said, "The penalty of untruth is untruth." But Pepin is only a mild example of the fact that incessant writing with a view to printing carries internal consequences which have often the nature of disease. And however unpractical it may be held to consider whether we have anything to print which it is good for the world to read, or which has not been better said before, it will perhaps be allowed to be worth considering what effect the printing may have on ourselves. Clearly there is a sort of writing which helps to keep the writer in a ridiculously contented ignorance; raising in him continually the sense of having delivered himself effectively, so that the acquirement of more thorough knowledge seems as superfluous as the purchase of costume for a past occasion. He has invested his vanity (perhaps his hope of income) in his own shallownesses and mistakes, and must desire their prosperity. Like the professional prophet, he learns to be glad of the harm that keeps up his credit, and to be sorry for the good that contradicts him. It is hard enough for any of us, amid the changing winds of fortune and the hurly-burly of events, to keep quite clear of a gladness which is another's calamity; but one may choose not to enter on a course which will turn such gladness into a fixed habit of mind, committing ourselves to be continually pleased that others should appear to be wrong in order that we may have the air of being right."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XV. Diseases of Small Authorship. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

" ... I was thinking principally of Vorticella, who flourished in my youth not only as a portly lady walking in silk attire, but also as the authoress of a book entitled 'The Channel Islands, with Notes and an Appendix.' ... What one would have wished, after experience, was that she had refrained from producing even that single volume, and thus from giving her self-importance a troublesome kind of double incorporation which became oppressive to her acquaintances, and set up in herself one of those slight chronic forms of disease to which I have just referred. ... "

"Vorticella being the wife of an important townsman had naturally the satisfaction of seeing 'The Channel Islands' reviewed by all the organs of Pumpiter opinion, and their articles or paragraphs held as naturally the opening pages in the elegantly bound album prepared by her for the reception of " critical opinions." This ornamental volume lay on a special table in her drawing-room close to the still more gorgeously bound work of which it was the significant effect, and every guest was allowed the privilege of reading what had been said of the authoress and her work in the 'Pumpiter Gazette and Literary Watchman,' the 'Pumpshire Post,' the 'Church Clock,' the 'Independent Monitor,' and the lively but judicious publication known as the 'Medley Pie;' to be followed up, if he chose, by the instructive perusal of the strikingly confirmatory judgments, sometimes concurrent in the very phrases, of journals from the most distant counties; as the 'Latchgate Argus,' the Penllwy Universe,' the 'Cockaleekie Advertiser,' the 'Goodwin Sands Opinion,' and the 'Land's End Times.'"

" ... This ad libitum perusal had its interest for me. The private truth being that I had not read 'The Channel Islands,' I was amazed at the variety of matter which the volume must contain to have impressed these different judges with the writer's surpassing capacity to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all forms of presentation. In Jersey she had shown herself an historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist: there were sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our "fictionists" to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so superior that, said one, "the recording angel" (who is not supposed to take account of literature as such) "would assuredly set down the work as a deed of religion." The force of this eulogy on the part of several reviewers was much heightened by the incidental evidence of their fastidious and severe taste, which seemed to suffer considerably from the imperfections of our chief writers, even the dead and canonised: one afflicted them with the smell of oil, another lacked erudition and attempted (though vainly) to dazzle them with trivial conceits, one wanted to be more philosophical than nature had made him, another in attempting to be comic produced the melancholy effect of a half-starved Merry-Andrew; while one and all, from the author of the 'Areopagitica' downwards, had faults of style which must have made an able hand in the 'Latchgate Argus' shake the many-glanced head belonging thereto with a smile of compassionate disapproval. Not so the authoress of 'The Channel Islands:' Vorticella and Shakspere were allowed to be faultless. I gathered that no blemishes were observable in the work of this accomplished writer, and the repeated information that she was "second to none" seemed after this superfluous. Her thick octavo—notes, appendix and all—was unflagging from beginning to end; and the 'Land's End Times,' using a rather dangerous rhetorical figure, recommended you not to take up the volume unless you had leisure to finish it at a sitting. It had given one writer more pleasure than he had had for many a long day—a sentence which had a melancholy resonance, suggesting a life of studious languor such as all previous achievements of the human mind failed to stimulate into enjoyment. ... "

""You are probably surprised to see no notices from the London press," said Vorticella. "I have one—a very remarkable one. But I reserve it until the others have spoken, and then I shall introduce it to wind up. I shall have them reprinted, of course, and inserted in future copies. This from the 'Candelabrum' is only eight lines in length, but full of venom. It calls my style dull and pompous. I think that will tell its own tale, placed after the other critiques." 

""People's impressions are so different," said I. "Some persons find 'Don Quixote' dull." 

""Yes," said Vorticella, in emphatic chest tones, "dulness is a matter of opinion; but pompous! That I never was and never could be. Perhaps he means that my matter is too important for his taste; and I have no objection to that. I did not intend to be trivial. I should just like to read you that passage about the drag-nets, because I could make it clearer to you." 

"A second (less ornamental) copy was at her elbow and was already opened, when to my great relief another guest was announced, and I was able to take my leave without seeming to run away from 'The Channel Islands,' though not without being compelled to carry with me the loan of "the marked copy," which I was to find advantageous in a re-perusal of the appendix, and was only requested to return before my departure from Pumpiter. Looking into the volume now with some curiosity, I found it a very ordinary combination of the commonplace and ambitious, one of those books which one might imagine to have been written under the old Grub Street coercion of hunger and thirst, if they were not known beforehand to be the gratuitous productions of ladies and gentlemen whose circumstances might be called altogether easy, but for an uneasy vanity that happened to have been directed towards authorship. ... I understand that the chronic complaint of 'The Channel Islands' never left her. As the years went on and the publication tended to vanish in the distance for her neighbours' memory, she was still bent on dragging it to the foreground, and her chief interest in new acquaintances was the possibility of lending them her book, entering into all details concerning it, and requesting them to read her album of "critical opinions." This really made her more tiresome than Gregarina, whose distinction was that she had had cholera, and who did not feel herself in her true position with strangers until they knew it."

................................................................................................

"My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self disagreeably larger, was most common to the female sex; but I presently found that here too the male could assert his superiority and show a more vigorous boredom. I have known a man with a single pamphlet containing an assurance that somebody else was wrong, together with a few approved quotations, produce a more powerful effect of shuddering at his approach than ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume, including notes and appendix. Males of more than one nation recur to my memory who produced from their pocket on the slightest encouragement a small pink or buff duodecimo pamphlet, wrapped in silver paper, as a present held ready for an intelligent reader. "A mode of propagandism," you remark in excuse; "they wished to spread some useful corrective doctrine." Not necessarily: the indoctrination aimed at was perhaps to convince you of their own talents by the sample of an "Ode on Shakspere's Birthday," or a translation from Horace.

"Vorticella may pair off with Monas, who had also written his one book—'Here and There; or, a Trip from Truro to Transylvania'—and not only carried it in his portmanteau when he went on visits, but took the earliest opportunity of depositing it in the drawing-room, and afterwards would enter to look for it, as if under pressure of a need for reference, begging the lady of the house to tell him whether she, had seen "a small volume bound in red." One hostess at last ordered it to be carried into his bedroom to save his time; but it presently reappeared in his hands, and was again left with inserted slips of paper on the drawing-room table.

"Depend upon it, vanity is human, native alike to men and women; only in the male it is of denser texture, less volatile, so that it less immediately informs you of its presence, but is more massive and capable of knocking you down if you come into collision with it; while in women vanity lays by its small revenges as in a needle-case always at hand. The difference is in muscle and finger-tips, in traditional habits and mental perspective, rather than in the original appetite of vanity. ... "

"No! there is no need to admit that women would carry away the prize of vanity in a competition where differences of custom were fairly considered. A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt which forces him to walk sideways down the staircase; but let the match be between the respective vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and here too the battle would be to the strong."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XVI. Moral Swindlers. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

One hadn't thought of George Eliot being a colonial racist, ignorant person, 

"It is a familiar example of irony in the degradation of words that "what a man is worth" has come to mean how much money he possesses; but there seems a deeper and more melancholy irony in the shrunken meaning that popular or polite speech assigns to "morality" and "morals." The poor part these words are made to play recalls the fate of those pagan divinities who, after being understood to rule the powers of the air and the destinies of men, came down to the level of insignificant demons, or were even made a farcical show for the amusement of the multitude."

No, one hadn't thought of George Eliot being a colonial racist, ignorant person, 

................................................................................................

One hadn't thought of George Eliot being a colonial racist, ignorant person, much less siding with a butcher like Macaulay, who she mentions with casual respect. 

Interesting, though, that she begins an essay on moral swindlers by invoking name of Macaulay, even if it's in a twisted way. But who could fit the title better! 

"Yet I find even respectable historians of our own and of foreign countries, after showing that a king was treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls."

Wasn't England's own history replete with males, including kings, of dubious morals in this regard, or why was mention of India necessary in this reference? Wasn't Henry the VIIth bad enough? 

As for Macaulay, he set up the policy to destroy India by lying about everything good about India, badmouthing India fraudulently, until her spirit and her spine was broken, so as to enslave people of India and loot wealth of India without any obstruction. 

Was George Eliot in accord with all this policy of butchering, looting, enslaving???  

................................................................................................

"The informal definitions of popular language are the only medium through which theory really affects the mass of minds even among the nominally educated; and when a man whose business hours, the solid part of every day, are spent in an unscrupulous course of public or private action which has every calculable chance of causing widespread injury and misery, can be called moral because he comes home to dine with his wife and children and cherishes the happiness of his own hearth, the augury is not good for the use of high ethical and theological disputation."

Doesn't that describe Brit ish in India, looting and enslaving Indians causing famines by stealing harvests and ignoring deaths of millions that resulted thereby, massacring unarmed civilians by using tanks and machine guns, and calling themselves civilised? 

................................................................................................

" ... To rob words of half their meaning, while they retain their dignity as qualifications, is like allowing to men who have lost half their faculties the same high and perilous command which they won in their time of vigour; or like selling food and seeds after fraudulently abstracting their best virtues: in each case what ought to be beneficently strong is fatally enfeebled, if not empoisoned. Until we have altered our dictionaries and have found some other word than morality to stand in popular use for the duties of man to man, let us refuse to accept as moral the contractor who enriches himself by using large machinery to make pasteboard soles pass as leather for the feet of unhappy conscripts fighting at miserable odds against invaders: let us rather call him a miscreant, though he were the tenderest, most faithful of husbands, and contend that his own experience of home happiness makes his reckless infliction of suffering on others all the more atrocious. ... "

Agreed - and considering how British looted, chiefly India, and then created a terrorist factory (because they wanted a free use of military bases for west for use against USSR), causing deaths of thousands- in India, in U.S. chiefly in 2001, and everywhere since - what does that say about England, about British, about anyone of British ancestry? 

Thieves, killers, thugs, frauds, ...??? All of that, and worse? 

................................................................................................

" ... And though we were to find among that class of journalists who live by recklessly reporting injurious rumours, insinuating the blackest motives in opponents, descanting at large and with an air of infallibility on dreams which they both find and interpret, and stimulating bad feeling between nations by abusive writing which is as empty of real conviction as the rage of a pantomime king, and would be ludicrous if its effects did not make it appear diabolical—though we were to find among these a man who was benignancy itself in his own circle, a healer of private differences, a soother in private calamities, let us pronounce him nevertheless flagrantly immoral, a root of hideous cancer in the commonwealth, turning the channels of instruction into feeders of social and political disease."

And guess who fit right in? BBC, NYT, ... all those lying against India, against Hindus, against Hinduism, ... All those who refused to admit, much less mention, that pakis were supporting terrorists, despite being advertised as 'partners in war on terror', which they emphatically never were, never had been, never have intentions of being; all those who knew that pakis defrauded U.S. of hundreds of billions that were supposedly aid, but poor of pal remained poor, forced to send their sons to terrorist factory schools, just to feed them (and then provide their daughters to terrorists as and when demanded!); And, too, all those who knew that Daniel Pearl wasn't killed without knowledge of authorities, and the trucks filled with U.S. ammunition were changed into potatoes because the ammunition was handed over to terrorists who used it to kill U.S. forces and other personnel. Was it worth lying against India, destroying India, raising this demon that turned and bit? Hid terrorists and denied it, and denied it even now, despite marines having killed him in Abbottabad, equivalent of paki West Point? 

................................................................................................

" ... meanwhile lax, make-shift work, from the high conspicuous kind to the average and obscure, is allowed to pass unstamped with the disgrace of immorality, though there is not a member of society who is not daily suffering from it materially and spiritually, and though it is the fatal cause that must degrade our national rank and our commerce in spite of all open markets and discovery of available coal-seams."

Open market nothing! As long as markets were even slightly fair, England used India muslin, better than any; when English factory manufactured cheap cloth coukdnt be forced on India, British chopped off Indian weavers' hands, to force a shutdown of Indian cloth industry. 

""I suppose one may take the popular misuse of the words Morality and Morals as some excuse for certain absurdities which are occasional fashions in speech and writing—certain old lay-figures, as ugly as the queerest Asiatic idol, which at different periods get propped into loftiness, and attired in magnificent Venetian drapery, so that whether they have a human face or not is of little consequence. ... "

Yes, definitely racist, apart from ignorant and lying, blind and more. Venetian drapery? Best fabric was Indian! "

................................................................................................


" ... One is, the notion that there is a radical, irreconcilable opposition between intellect and morality. I do not mean the simple statement of fact, which everybody knows, that remarkably able men have had very faulty morals, and have outraged public feeling even at its ordinary standard; but the supposition that the ablest intellect, the highest genius, will see through morality as a sort of twaddle for bibs and tuckers, a doctrine of dulness, a mere incident in human stupidity. We begin to understand the acceptance of this foolishness by considering that we live in a society where we may hear a treacherous monarch, or a malignant and lying politician, or a man who uses either official or literary power as an instrument of his private partiality or hatred, or a manufacturer who devises the falsification of wares, or a trader who deals in virtueless seed-grains, praised or compassionated because of his excellent morals."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 20, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XVII. Shadows of the Coming Race. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"My friend Trost, who is no optimist as to the state of the universe hitherto, but is confident that at some future period within the duration of the solar system, ours will be the best of all possible worlds—a hope which I always honour as a sign of beneficent qualities—my friend Trost always tries to keep up my spirits under the sight of the extremely unpleasant and disfiguring work by which many of our fellow-creatures have to get their bread, with the assurance that "all this will soon be done by machinery." But he sometimes neutralises the consolation by extending it over so large an area of human labour, and insisting so impressively on the quantity of energy which will thus be set free for loftier purposes, that I am tempted to desire an occasional famine of invention in the coming ages, lest the humbler kinds of work should be entirely nullified while there are still left some men and women who are not fit for the highest. 

"Especially, when one considers the perfunctory way in which some of the most exalted tasks are already executed by those who are understood to be educated for them, there rises a fearful vision of the human race evolving machinery which will by-and-by throw itself fatally out of work. ... "

British couldn't do that in India, attempting to reverse the flow of trade - Indian goods were superior, Manchester cloth wasn't likely to sell in India. So British chopped off hands of Indian weavers, to force india to buy the low quality british products flooding the market. 

................................................................................................


""Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race? and will the creatures who are to transcend and finally supersede us be steely organisms, giving out the effluvia of the laboratory, and performing with infallible exactness more than everything that we have performed with a slovenly approximativeness and self-defeating inaccuracy?"

India's pre-mechanisation products were superior, because they weren't inaccurate or slovenly, India was known for quality products. Scientists have been unable to decipher secrets of several marvels thereof, list because invaders massacred indigenous people of India over a millennium and half, to reduce India to slavery. 

George Eliot's diatribe at this point, questioning mechanisation, sounds so very familiar - its flavour and tone is so very like Bengali similar expressions, familiar from Bengali literature and films! 

................................................................................................

But her flight of fancy, about industry and machines on one hand, and what humans could do, on the other, are equally funny, and not intentionally either - 

"Say, for example, that all the scavengers work of London were done, so far as human attention is concerned, by the occasional pressure of a brass button (as in the ringing of an electric bell), you will then have a multitude of brains set free for the exquisite enjoyment of dealing with the exact sequences and high speculations supplied and prompted by the delicate machines which yield a response to the fixed stars, and give readings of the spiral vortices fundamentally concerned in the production of epic poems or great judicial harangues."

How, those that were not in tune with mechanisation, and were baffled, or terrorised, at machines supplanting human labour of future, we're unable to comprehend reality! Although they were quite insensitive to the current reality of their times, of what atrocities were perpetrated by their nation, looting the world and worse. 

................................................................................................


""Naturally," I persisted, "it is less easy to you than to me to imagine our race transcended and superseded, since the more energy a being is possessed of, the harder it must be for him to conceive his own death. But I, from the point of view of a reflective carp, can easily imagine myself and my congeners dispensed with in the frame of things and giving way not only to a superior but a vastly different kind of Entity. What I would ask you is, to show me why, since each new invention casts a new light along the pathway of discovery, and each new combination or structure brings into play more conditions than its inventor foresaw, there should not at length be a machine of such high mechanical and chemical powers that it would find and assimilate the material to supply its own waste, and then by a further evolution of internal molecular movements reproduce itself by some process of fission or budding. This last stage having been reached, either by man's contrivance or as an unforeseen result, one sees that the process of natural selection must drive men altogether out of the field; for they will long before have begun to sink into the miserable condition of those unhappy characters in fable who, having demons or djinns at their beck, and being obliged to supply them with work, found too much of everything done in too short a time. ... Under such uncomfortable circumstances our race will have diminished with the diminishing call on their energies, and by the time that the self-repairing and reproducing machines arise, all but a few of the rare inventors, calculators, and speculators will have become pale, pulpy, and cretinous from fatty or other degeneration, and behold around them a scanty hydrocephalous offspring. As to the breed of the ingenious and intellectual, their nervous systems will at last have been overwrought in following the molecular revelations of the immensely more powerful unconscious race, and they will naturally, as the less energetic combinations of movement, subside like the flame of a candle in the sunlight Thus the feebler race, whose corporeal adjustments happened to be accompanied with a maniacal consciousness which imagined itself moving its mover, will have vanished, as all less adapted existences do before the fittest ... "

U.S., a nation founded on colonial invaders replacing the indigenous almost entirely, indeed, does proliferate with what they call couch potatoes, having begin with pioneers who built their own log cabins and tilled earth, until mechanisation took over. But the couch potatoes are unlikely to be extinct, except individually - the very existence of several industries, from processed food to medicine to slimming and more, depend on them not only existing, but being in dire trouble. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 20, 2021 - September 21, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

XVIII. The Modern Hep! Hep! Hep!

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This author, familiar for decades - her Silas Marner was read when one was in mid to late teens, and it was so obviously different, with a quality bordering on spiritual; later, her Mill On The Floss was Frank about admission and depiction of caste system of England, which was startling (most in West pretend, following Macaulay policy of equating everything bad with India and denying or falsifying everything good about her, so much so they don't realise it - not so different from what MS Clinton observed about Pakistan as she dealt with it while part of Obama administration); and then one read more, recently, when time was as much available, as were her works due to internet. 

But reading the earlier essays, especially bit of this as one reads through, and the last one more than any other, is not just starting, it's shocking,  leaving one aghast - this woman is so racist, it is Nazi in all but name. 

She couldn't be unique in this, of course - this is probably true of most of West. 

................................................................................................

"To take only the subject of the Jews: it would be difficult to find a form of bad reasoning about them which has not been heard in conversation or been admitted to the dignity of print; but the neglect of resemblances is a common property of dulness which unites all the various points of view—the prejudiced, the puerile, the spiteful, and the abysmally ignorant."

Why do most, in West Asia as well as in West  - Europe and lands settled or colonised by Europe to almost exclusion of earlier residents - forget the most important part, even as they profess their faith weekly? Namely, that their faiths are abrahmic, rooted therefore chiefly in Judaism? That not only their son of God (or a major prophet) was Jewish, as were his parents, siblings, and whole clan, inclu6all the disciples, but the two major books are a history of Jews too, even though the latter was falsified largely when written after church compromised with Rome for sake of power, turning and blaming crucifixion on Jews, even though it's easy to see the lie (Rome had occupied Judea and israel; as for crucifixion, those was carried out every day, by roman soldiers; victims, not conductors, were Jewish; and Roman authority, while it coukdnt always blame Jews - as masters in U.S. or English in Australia would blame slaves or native Australians for every whipping or other torture, including rapes, perpetrated by the masters, invaders, colonial occupiers), it would be a lie to say Romans were forced to act according to any wish expressed by any Jew. 

In short, antisemitism is revenge by racists against the faith they are forced to profess weekly, whether on Sunday or a couple of days before - or three to five times a day, depending on the particular later abrahmic faith. 

................................................................................................

Brilliant discourse by George Eliot, simultaneously defending a Jewish identity and destroying arguments for antisemitism. 

"That the preservation of national memories is an element and a means of national greatness, that their revival is a sign of reviving nationality, that every heroic defender, every patriotic restorer, has been inspired by such memories and has made them his watchword, that even such a corporate existence as that of a Roman legion or an English regiment has been made valorous by memorial standards,—these are the glorious commonplaces of historic teaching at our public schools and universities, being happily ingrained in Greek and Latin classics. They have also been impressed on the world by conspicuous modern instances. That there is a free modern Greece is due—through all infiltration of other than Greek blood—to the presence of ancient Greece in the consciousness of European men; and every speaker would feel his point safe if he were to praise Byron's devotion to a cause made glorious by ideal identification with the past; hardly so, if he were to insist that the Greeks were not to be helped further because their history shows that they were anciently unsurpassed in treachery and lying, and that many modern Greeks are highly disreputable characters, while others are disposed to grasp too large a share of our commerce. The same with Italy: the pathos of his country's lot pierced the youthful soul of Mazzini, because, like Dante's, his blood was fraught with the kinship of Italian greatness, his imagination filled with a majestic past that wrought itself into a majestic future. Half a century ago, what was Italy? An idling-place of dilettanteism or of itinerant motiveless wealth, a territory parcelled out for papal sustenance, dynastic convenience, and the profit of an alien Government. What were the Italians? No people, no voice in European counsels, no massive power in European affairs: a race thought of in English and French society as chiefly adapted to the operatic stage, or to serve as models for painters; disposed to smile gratefully at the reception of halfpence; and by the more historical remembered to be rather polite than truthful, in all probability a combination of Machiavelli, Rubini, and Masaniello. Thanks chiefly to the divine gift of a memory which inspires the moments with a past, a present, and a future, and gives the sense of corporate existence that raises man above the otherwise more respectable and innocent brute, all that, or most of it, is changed."

................................................................................................

Here's why British made up a fraudulent theory of Aryan invasion and war against Dravidian whom they fraudulently termed races (- they were never races, much less separate as people) - 

"Again, one of our living historians finds just sympathy in his vigorous insistance on our true ancestry, on our being the strongly marked heritors in language and genius of those old English seamen who, beholding a rich country with a most convenient seaboard, came, doubtless with a sense of divine warrant, and settled themselves on this or the other side of fertilising streams, gradually conquering more and more of the pleasant land from the natives who knew nothing of Odin, and finally making unusually clean work in ridding themselves of those prior occupants. ... "

But times change, and now, not only Welsh but Scots too have debated independence to extent they find comfortable; while former have resurrected their language, once forbidden even at home, latter have cited on independence from U.K.. 

................................................................................................

"True, we are not indebted to those ancestors for our religion: we are rather proud of having got that illumination from elsewhere. ... "

Why not admit it? Religion came from Jews, via Rome because Rome had occupied Judea, just as algebra came from India - as did numerals, and concept of zero - via arabs, who were traders travelling the silk route, trading, collecting manuscripts, and thus, along with Jews, preserved and transmitted knowledge (renaissance was only possible due to the manuscripts copied and preserved by Arabs and jews). 

" ... The men who planted our nation were not Christians, though they began their work centuries after Christ; and they had a decided objection to Christianity when it was first proposed to them: they were not monotheists, and their religion was the reverse of spiritual. ... "

Equating monotheism with virtue is as false as a firm beluef that pole star is "above", or holding up Sun as the only, unique, source of light; and it's not even a great concept unless perception of Reality is admitted, which a male trinity makes a mockery of in every way. Holding your own, limited, faith above those of others, is no different from racism, just as holding males above females - as abrahmic cultures do - is merely animal law where physical force is above all else. 

Racism is rampant in "religion was the reverse of spiritual.", and while nobody has yet openly admitted either that building tall structures is not superior achievement, nor admitted that modern Europe is inferior, nor have they understood just what ancient stupendous structures throughout the world were, much less how they were built - Stonehenge, pyramids, and much more. If they arent evidence of inferiority of subsequent cultures, cathedrals are positively stupid. 

................................................................................................

"The Red Indians, not liking us when we settled among them, might have been willing to fling such facts in our faces, but they were too ignorant, and besides, their opinions did not signify, because we were able, if we liked, to exterminate them."

If? " ... because we were able, if we liked, to exterminate them.""??? Wasnt it proved in action? They are now penned like animals in a zoo without a fence, but penned they are, if they choose not to assimilate and convert; that is, wghat remains of them. And in South of Panama, they are slaves in all but name. 

................................................................................................

This is not merely false, it's abusive too. 

And, of course, rabidly racist, almost Nazi in it's ignorance and pugnacious attitude. 

" ... The Hindoos also have doubtless had their rancours against us and still entertain enough ill-will to make unfavourable remarks on our character, especially as to our historic rapacity and arrogant notions of our own superiority; they perhaps do not admire the usual English profile, and they are not converted to our way of feeding: but though we are a small number of an alien race profiting by the territory and produce of these prejudiced people, they are unable to turn us out; at least, when they tried we showed them their mistake. We do not call ourselves a dispersed and a punished people: we are a colonising people, and it is we who have punished others."

How times change! She coukdnt have foreseen that her philosophy would be taken by nazis, perfected, and used right there in Europe; that triumph over them cost colonial expansionism; that by the time Brits left, they couldn't possibly be fraudulently portrayed as merely humans dealing with animals, but were exposed as killers of innocent, in hundreds, thousands, millions; and they caused deaths of tens of millions by leaving India after dividing it, so they were cowards exposed as such. Shameful Flight, anyone? 

Virtues of British?!!! Go just ask Irish, if you are racist and don't think India deserves a fair treatment. They too suffered most of what India did. 

................................................................................................

" ... A people having the seed of worthiness in it must feel an answering thrill when it is adjured by the deaths of its heroes who died to preserve its national existence; when it is reminded of its small beginnings and gradual growth through past labours and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and wellbeing thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its institutions. ... "

And yet she respects Macaulay, who put in place an explicitly stated policy of fraudulent propaganda against India, badmouthing every good or great thing about India, so as to kill the spirit of India and to enslave people. Nazis indeed, until Germany perfected and turned it against them, conquering far more of Europe than anyone else. 

" ... It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very breasts of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. ... "

As India did, before, during and after George Eliot lived, while she is here glorifying her nation behaving like hyenas tearing up other people, whether during her times or in history. 

" ... An individual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence yet existing in the past, in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to suffice for social energy. ... "

Why carp about India disliking English, which was due to the misbehaviour of the British, and why pretend it was about unreasonable reaction to "profile" rather than arrogant, beastly behaviour indulged in by British in India?

................................................................................................

" ... I am not bound to feel for a Chinaman as I feel for my fellow-countryman: I am bound not to demoralise him with opium, not to compel him to my will by destroying or plundering the fruits of his labour on the alleged ground that he is not cosmopolitan enough, and not to insult him for his want of my tailoring and religion when he appears as a peaceable visitor on the London pavement. ... "

Opium wars were, in fact, about West asserting right to sell opium to China (legally prohibited in China), which Brits forced India to grow, empoverishing India in every way. U.S. did the same to Afghanistan in recent decades, discouraged planting food grains and encouraging opium planting. 

No wonder they - China, Afghanistan, West Asia, .... - hate West. 

And the Vidambanaa - is there an approximately sufficient word in English? - is, that West fails to see, fails completely to see, the benevolence, the love, the complete lack of s servility (and consequent hatred), that emanates from india - in a way that a stupid male teenager fails to value hus mother, but gives importance to the gangsters out there. 

................................................................................................

" ... It is admirable in a Briton with a good purpose to learn Chinese, but it would not be a proof of fine intellect in him to taste Chinese poetry in the original more than he tastes the poetry of his own tongue. ... "

If it's true, that truth must be universal; and yet, English speakers not only are racist against those of rest of the world, but fail to comprehend why other Europeans dislike them for not learning other languages and behaving as if it's a favour to others if they do (however imcompetently), hate their English speakers' - arrogance in expecting everyone to speak and understand English, despise them for their presumptuous conduct when not at home. 

................................................................................................

" ... Affection, intelligence, duty, radiate from a centre, and nature has decided that for us English folk that centre can be neither China nor Peru. Most of us feel this unreflectingly; for the affectation of undervaluing everything native, and being too fine for one's own country, belongs only to a few minds of no dangerous leverage. What is wanting is, that we should recognise a corresponding attachment to nationality as legitimate in every other people, and understand that its absence is a privation of the greatest good."

Again, if it's true, it must be universal; so if you can't be willing to see others as equal humans, stay home. 

................................................................................................

"For, to repeat, not only the nobleness of a nation depends on the presence of this national consciousness, but also the nobleness of each individual citizen. Our dignity and rectitude are proportioned to our sense of relationship with something great, admirable, pregnant with high possibilities, worthy of sacrifice, a continual inspiration to self-repression and discipline by the presentation of aims larger and more attractive to our generous part than the securing of personal ease or prosperity. And a people possessing this good should surely feel not only a ready sympathy with the effort of those who, having lost the good, strive to regain it, but a profound pity for any degradation resulting from its loss; nay, something more than pity when happier nationalities have made victims of the unfortunate whose memories nevertheless are the very fountain to which the persecutors trace their most vaunted blessings."

This is so close to the Nazi sentiment that one wouldn't be surprised if this had, in fact, inspired them, however indirectly. 

................................................................................................

" ... The European world has long been used to consider the Jews as altogether exceptional, and it has followed naturally enough that they have been excepted from the rules of justice and mercy, which are based on human likeness. But to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half, and who made the most eminent struggle against the power of Rome, as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralising offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying inconsistency in historical interpretation. Every nation of forcible character—i.e., of strongly marked characteristics, is so far exceptional. The distinctive note of each bird-species is in this sense exceptional, but the necessary ground of such distinction is a deeper likeness. The superlative peculiarity in the Jews admitted, our affinity with them is only the more apparent when the elements of their peculiarity are discerned."

Read this bit again - 

" ... But to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half, and who made the most eminent struggle against the power of Rome, as a purely exceptional race, is a demoralising offence against rational knowledge, a stultifying inconsistency in historical interpretation. ... "

And here's both racism and antisemitism - even though shes admitting the roman occu6,Jewish struggle, and Judaic roots of her faith, to which she admits ascribing her civilisation, which she considers superior to all others. Nevertheless, it's "a demoralising offence against rational knowledge" "to consider a people whose ideas have determined the religion of half the world, and that the more cultivated half" "as a purely exceptional race" - but George Eliot stating superiority of English is not "a demoralising offence against rational knowledge"????!!!!!

If that wasn't irrational, what is? How else does one categorise irrational, for ordinary definition for use of normal discourse, or even philosophy? (Obviously she's not speaking mathematics!)

................................................................................................

"From whatever point of view the writings of the Old Testament may be regarded, the picture they present of a national development is of high interest and speciality, nor can their historic momentousness be much affected by any varieties of theory as to the relation they bear to the New Testament or to the rise and constitution of Christianity. Whether we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revelation or simply as part of an ancient literature, makes no difference to the fact that we find there the strongly characterised portraiture of a people educated from an earlier or later period to a sense of separateness unique in its intensity, a people taught by many concurrent influences to identify faithfulness to its national traditions with the highest social and religious blessings. Our too scanty sources of Jewish history, from the return under Ezra to the beginning of the desperate resistance against Rome, show us the heroic and triumphant struggle of the Maccabees, which rescued the religion and independence of the nation from the corrupting sway of the Syrian Greeks, adding to the glorious sum of its memorials, and stimulating continuous efforts of a more peaceful sort to maintain and develop that national life which the heroes had fought and died for, by internal measures of legal administration and public teaching. ... "

Right, now think India where she writes Jews or Israel- all but migration - and English where she says Syrian Greeks. It fits. For bible, there are far greater treasures of India, but if those she's ignorant. West, in general, is ignorant. 

................................................................................................

" ... Thenceforth the virtuous elements of the Jewish life were engaged, as they had been with varying aspects during the long and changeful prophetic period and the restoration under Ezra, on the side of preserving the specific national character against a demoralising fusion with that of foreigners whose religion and ritual were idolatrous and often obscene. ... "

And yet she fails to understand how obscene their own religion and rituals are, even when they partake of a Jewish man's blood and flesh - every Sunday, even if symbolically. Did Romans indulge in cannibalism while occupying other lands? 

................................................................................................

" ... There was always a Foreign party reviling the National party as narrow, and sometimes manifesting their own breadth in extensive views of advancement or profit to themselves by flattery of a foreign power. ... "

Familiar! And the Brits in India set up their caste system, comprising of layers added to the British caste system, whereby this "Foreign party" including all non-Hindu Indians was set up above all majority of India, exceptions being those who were willing to side with Brits and treat India abominably. It was quite complex, too, this British caste system for India, based on caste system of England. 

................................................................................................

" ... Such internal conflict naturally tightened the bands of conservatism, which needed to be strong if it were to rescue the sacred ark, the vital spirit of a small nation—"the smallest of the nations"—whose territory lay on the highway between three continents; and when the dread and hatred of foreign sway had condensed itself into dread and hatred of the Romans, many Conservatives became Zealots, whose chief mark was that they advocated resistance to the death against the submergence of their nationality. Much might be said on this point towards distinguishing the desperate struggle against a conquest which is regarded as degradation and corruption, from rash, hopeless insurrection against an established native government; and for my part (if that were of any consequence) I share the spirit of the Zealots. ... "

And she still fails to see it all mirrored in India subjugated by British, resisting, fighting back - there she turns Pontius Pilate, favouring crucifixion of Indians, "teaching them" who was superior. Why then fight nazis? Wasn't theirs the identical principle, with victor and subject changed? 

................................................................................................

George Eliot doesn't mind convoluted, twisted logic to suit her purpose - 

"We have not been noted for forming a low estimate of ourselves in comparison with foreigners, or for admitting that our institutions are equalled by those of any other people under the sun. Many of us have thought that our sea-wall is a specially divine arrangement to make and keep us a nation of sea-kings after the manner of our forefathers, secure against invasion and able to invade other lands when we need them, though they may lie on the other side of the ocean. Again, it has been held that we have a peculiar destiny as a Protestant people, not only able to bruise the head of an idolatrous Christianity in the midst of us, but fitted as possessors of the most truth and the most tonnage to carry our purer religion over the world and convert mankind to our way of thinking. The Puritans, asserting their liberty to restrain tyrants, found the Hebrew history closely symbolical of their feelings and purpose; and it can hardly be correct to cast the blame of their less laudable doings on the writings they invoked, since their opponents made use of the same writings for different ends, finding there a strong warrant for the divine right of kings and the denunciation of those who, like Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, took on themselves the office of the priesthood which belonged of right solely to Aaron and his sons, or, in other words, to men ordained by the English bishops. We must rather refer the passionate use of the Hebrew writings to affinities of disposition between our own race and the Jewish. Is it true that the arrogance of a Jew was so immeasurably beyond that of a Calvinist? And the just sympathy and admiration which we give to the ancestors who resisted the oppressive acts of our native kings, and by resisting rescued or won for us the best part of our civil and religious liberties—is it justly to be withheld from those brave and steadfast men of Jewish race who fought and died, or strove by wise administration to resist, the oppression and corrupting influences of foreign tyrants, and by resisting rescued the nationality which was the very hearth of our own religion? At any rate, seeing that the Jews were more specifically than any other nation educated into a sense of their supreme moral value, the chief matter of surprise is that any other nation is found to rival them in this form of self-confidence."

How does she negate the relationship of home and land with native, equating what she sees as rights invaders in case of English, with rights of Jews against Rome? Only to suit her purpose, establishing equivalence between Jewish and protestant as two superior races! 

................................................................................................

" ... As the slave-holders in the United States counted the curse on Ham a justification of negro slavery, so the curse on the Jews was counted a justification for hindering them from pursuing agriculture and handicrafts; for marking them out as execrable figures by a peculiar dress; for torturing them to make them part with their gains, or for more gratuitously spitting at them and pelting them; for taking it as certain that they killed and ate babies, poisoned the wells, and took pains to spread the plague; for putting it to them whether they would be baptised or burned, and not failing to burn and massacre them when they were obstinate; but also for suspecting them of disliking the baptism when they had got it, and then burning them in punishment of their insincerity; finally, for hounding them by tens on tens of thousands from the homes where they had found shelter for centuries, and inflicting on them the horrors of a new exile and a new dispersion. All this to avenge the Saviour of mankind, or else to compel these stiff-necked people to acknowledge a Master whose servants showed such beneficent effects of His teaching."

Is she totally obtuse? "avenge the Saviour"? Wasnt he crucified by Rome, as were thousands of other Jews? For the struggle against Rome? Never mind the official lie spread by Rome! Persecution of Jews by Europe is merely continuation of that by Rome, coupled with racism. Unless one labels it correctly as persecution of superior by inferior. 

................................................................................................

" ... An oppressive government and a persecuting religion, while breeding vices in those who hold power, are well known to breed answering vices in those who are powerless and suffering. ... "

How does she fail to see India oppressed by Brits in this sentence? How does she presume stating India hates English for their profiles? Blind! Blinded by colour of skin, or need of robbing India? 

................................................................................................


" ... The Jews, it is said, resisted the expansion of their own religion into Christianity; they were in the habit of spitting on the cross; they have held the name of Christ to be Anathema. Who taught them that? The men who made Christianity a curse to them: the men who made the name of Christ a symbol for the spirit of vengeance, and, what was worse, made the execution of the vengeance a pretext for satisfying their own savageness, greed, and envy: the men who sanctioned with the name of Christ a barbaric and blundering copy of pagan fatalism in taking the words "His blood be upon us and on our children" as a divinely appointed verbal warrant for wreaking cruelty from generation to generation on the people from whose sacred writings Christ drew His teaching. Strange retrogression in the professors of an expanded religion, boasting an illumination beyond the spiritual doctrine of Hebrew prophets! For Hebrew prophets proclaimed a God who demanded mercy rather than sacrifices. The Christians also believed that God delighted not in the blood of rams and of bulls, but they apparently conceived Him as requiring for His satisfaction the sighs and groans, the blood and roasted flesh of men whose forefathers had misunderstood the metaphorical character of prophecies which spoke of spiritual pre-eminence under the figure of a material kingdom. Was this the method by which Christ desired His title to the Messiahship to be commended to the hearts and understandings of the nation in which He was born? Many of His sayings bear the stamp of that patriotism which places fellow-countrymen in the inner circle of affection and duty. And did the words "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do," refer only to the centurion and his band, a tacit exception being made of every Hebrew there present from the mercy of the Father and the compassion of the Son?—nay, more, of every Hebrew yet to come who remained unconverted after hearing of His claim to the Messiahship, not from His own lips or those of His native apostles, but from the lips of alien men whom cross, creed, and baptism had left cruel, rapacious, and debauched? It is more reverent to Christ to believe that He must have approved the Jewish martyrs who deliberately chose to be burned or massacred rather than be guilty of a blaspheming lie, more than He approved the rabble of crusaders who robbed and murdered them in His name. But these remonstrances seem to have no direct application to personages who take up the attitude of philosophic thinkers and discriminating critics, professedly accepting Christianity from a rational point of view as a vehicle of the highest religious and moral truth, and condemning the Jews on the ground that they are obstinate adherents of an outworn creed, maintain themselves in moral alienation from the peoples with whom they share citizenship, and are destitute of real interest in the welfare of the community and state with which they are thus identified. These anti-Judaic advocates usually belong to a party which has felt itself glorified in winning for Jews, as well as Dissenters and Catholics, the full privileges of citizenship, laying open to them every path to distinction. At one time the voice of this party urged that differences of creed were made dangerous only by the denial of citizenship—that you must make a man a citizen before he could feel like one. At present, apparently, this confidence has been succeeded by a sense of mistake: there is a regret that no limiting clauses were insisted on, such as would have hindered the Jews from coming too far and in too large proportion along those opened pathways; and the Roumanians are thought to have shown an enviable wisdom in giving them as little chance as possible. But then, the reflection occurring that some of the most objectionable Jews are baptised Christians, it is obvious that such clauses would have been insufficient, and the doctrine that you can turn a Jew into a good Christian is emphatically retracted. ... that they have suffered an inward degradation stamping them as morally inferior, and—"serve them right," since they rejected Christianity. All which is mirrored in an analogy, namely, that of the Irish, also a servile race, who have rejected Protestantism though it has been repeatedly urged on them by fire and sword and penal laws, and whose place in the moral scale may be judged by our advertisements, where the clause, "No Irish need apply," parallels the sentence which for many polite persons sums up the question of Judaism—"I never did like the Jews.""
................................................................................................

" ... If they drop that separateness which is made their reproach, they may be in danger of lapsing into a cosmopolitan indifference equivalent to cynicism, and of missing that inward identification with the nationality immediately around them which might make some amends for their inherited privation. No dispassionate observer can deny this danger. Why, our own countrymen who take to living abroad without purpose or function to keep up their sense of fellowship in the affairs of their own land are rarely good specimens of moral healthiness; still, the consciousness of having a native country, the birthplace of common memories and habits of mind, existing like a parental hearth quitted but beloved; the dignity of being included in a people which has a part in the comity of nations and the growing federation of the world; that sense of special belonging which is the root of human virtues, both public and private,—all these spiritual links may preserve migratory Englishmen from the worst consequences of their voluntary dispersion. ... Tortured, flogged, spit upon, the corpus vile on which rage or wantonness vented themselves with impunity, their name flung at them as an opprobrium by superstition, hatred, and contempt, they have remained proud of their origin. Does any one call this an evil pride? Perhaps he belongs to that order of man who, while he has a democratic dislike to dukes and earls, wants to make believe that his father was an idle gentleman, when in fact he was an honourable artisan, or who would feel flattered to be taken for other than an Englishman. It is possible to be too arrogant about our blood or our calling, but that arrogance is virtue compared with such mean pretence. The pride which identifies us with a great historic body is a humanising, elevating habit of mind, inspiring sacrifices of individual comfort, gain, or other selfish ambition, for the sake of that ideal whole; and no man swayed by such a sentiment can become completely abject. That a Jew of Smyrna, where a whip is carried by passengers ready to flog off the too officious specimens of his race, can still be proud to say, "I am a Jew," is surely a fact to awaken admiration in a mind capable of understanding what we may call the ideal forces in human history. And again, a varied, impartial observation of the Jews in different countries tends to the impression that they have a predominant kindliness which must have been deeply ingrained in the constitution of their race to have outlasted the ages of persecution and oppression. The concentration of their joys in domestic life has kept up in them the capacity of tenderness: the pity for the fatherless and the widow, the care for the women and the little ones, blent intimately with their religion, is a well of mercy that cannot long or widely be pent up by exclusiveness. And the kindliness of the Jew overflows the line of division between him and the Gentile. On the whole, one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of this scattered people, made for ages "a scorn and a hissing" is, that after being subjected to this process, which might have been expected to be in every sense deteriorating and vitiating, they have come out of it (in any estimate which allows for numerical proportion) rivalling the nations of all European countries in healthiness and beauty of physique, in practical ability, in scientific and artistic aptitude, and in some forms of ethical value. A significant indication of their natural rank is seen in the fact that at this moment, the leader of the Liberal party in Germany is a Jew, the leader of the Republican party in France is a Jew, and the head of the Conservative ministry in England is a Jew. And here it is that we find the ground for the obvious jealousy which is now stimulating the revived expression of old antipathies. "The Jews," it is felt, "have a dangerous tendency to get the uppermost places not only in commerce but in political life. Their monetary hold on governments is tending to perpetuate in leading Jews a spirit of universal alienism (euphemistically called cosmopolitanism), even where the West has given them a full share in civil and political rights. A people with oriental sunlight in their blood, yet capable of being everywhere acclimatised, they have a force and toughness which enables them to carry off the best prizes; and their wealth is likely to put half the seats in Parliament at their disposal.""

................................................................................................

"Do they propose as a remedy for the impending danger of our healthier national influences getting overridden by Jewish predominance, that we should repeal our emancipatory laws? Not all the Germanic immigrants who have been settling among us for generations, and are still pouring in to settle, are Jews, but thoroughly Teutonic and more or less Christian craftsmen, mechanicians, or skilled and erudite functionaries; and the Semitic Christians who swarm among us are dangerously like their unconverted brethren in complexion, persistence, and wealth. Then there are the Greeks who, by the help of Phoenician blood or otherwise, are objectionably strong in the city. Some judges think that the Scotch are more numerous and prosperous here in the South than is quite for the good of us Southerners; and the early inconvenience felt under the Stuarts of being quartered upon by a hungry, hard-working people with a distinctive accent and form of religion, and higher cheek-bones than English taste requires, has not yet been quite neutralised. As for the Irish, it is felt in high quarters that we have always been too lenient towards them;—at least, if they had been harried a little more there might not have been so many of them on the English press, of which they divide the power with the Scotch, thus driving many Englishmen to honest and ineloquent labour. 

"So far shall we be carried if we go in search of devices to hinder people of other blood than our own from getting the advantage of dwelling among us. 

"Let it be admitted that it is a calamity to the English, as to any other great historic people, to undergo a premature fusion with immigrants of alien blood; that its distinctive national characteristics should be in danger of obliteration by the predominating quality of foreign settlers. I not only admit this, I am ready to unite in groaning over the threatened danger. To one who loves his native language, who would delight to keep our rich and harmonious English undefiled by foreign accent, foreign intonation, and those foreign tinctures of verbal meaning which tend to confuse all writing and discourse, it is an affliction as harassing as the climate, that on our stage, in our studios, at our public and private gatherings, in our offices, warehouses, and workshops, we must expect to hear our beloved English with its words clipped, its vowels stretched and twisted, its phrases of acquiescence and politeness, of cordiality, dissidence or argument, delivered always in the wrong tones, like ill-rendered melodies, marred beyond recognition; that there should be a general ambition to speak every language except our mother English, which persons "of style" are not ashamed of corrupting with slang, false foreign equivalents, and a pronunciation that crushes out all colour from the vowels and jams them between jostling consonants. ... "

Why be blind to India disliking invaders for the same reason? Because if she were to admit this, or that they had no right to loot India, they'd have to return amounts stolen and compensate for lives lost? 

................................................................................................

Coming closer to truth, and flitting away - 

" ... Are we to adopt the exclusiveness for which we have punished the Chinese? Are we to tear the glorious flag of hospitality which has made our freedom the world-wide blessing of the oppressed? It is not agreeable to find foreign accents and stumbling locutions passing from the piquant exception to the general rule of discourse. But to urge on that account that we should spike away the peaceful foreigner, would be a view of international relations not in the long-run favourable to the interests of our fellow-countrymen; for we are at least equal to the races we call obtrusive in the disposition to settle wherever money is to be made and cheaply idle living to be found. ... "

................................................................................................

"The only point in this connection on which Englishmen are agreed is, that England itself shall not be subject to foreign rule. The fiery resolve to resist invasion, though with an improvised array of pitchforks, is felt to be virtuous, and to be worthy of a historic people. Why? Because there is a national life in our veins. Because there is something specifically English which we feel to be supremely worth striving for, worth dying for, rather than living to renounce it. Because we too have our share—perhaps a principal share—in that spirit of separateness which has not yet done its work in the education of mankind, which has created the varying genius of nations, and, like the Muses, is the offspring of memory."

Over and over, she fails to see that India fighting British occupation was just as correct, and not about any profile! So was China resisting West forcing opium on China, and calling the opium wars "punish China" is arrogance indeed. Victory in one war or battle isn't about moral right, and if it were so, males would be justified looking at every female as an object for usage as and when required, unless occupied by someone stronger! There would be no sanctity of either the person or anybody's marriage. 

But then, this can't be foreign to George Eliot, she's after all declaring pride in English history from invasion of British Isles onward, and is familiar with droit de seigneur. Why else mention Macaulay's disgusting reference to India, instead of simply mentioning Henry the VIIth?!!! 

................................................................................................

" ... There is understood to be a peculiar odour from the negro body, and we know that some persons, too rationalistic to feel bound by the curse on Ham, used to hint very strongly that this odour determined the question on the side of negro slavery."

Now why didn't it occur to George Eliot that it might be the odour, not profile, of the English that couldn't be offensive? After all the English are proud to state they don't shower every day, just as Bavarian are - and Indians, especially Hindus, not only must bathe every morning before intake of any food, but also wear fresh, washed clothes. (A Bavarian stated that India must be very dirty, because he didn't wash every day, and didn't change into fresh clothes more than once a month; Han Suyin makes the same observation about Chinese reluctance to bathe more than once a year, so China must be much cleaner than Germany, I had informed him.)

Did it never occur to her that odour, even objectionable odour, is - just possibly, very likely, more than average - mutual? 

................................................................................................

"And this is the usual level of thinking in polite society concerning the Jews. Apart from theological purposes, it seems to be held surprising that anybody should take an interest in the history of a people whose literature has furnished all our devotional language; and if any reference is made to their past or future destinies some hearer is sure to state as a relevant fact which may assist our judgment, that she, for her part, is not fond of them, having known a Mr Jacobson who was very unpleasant, or that he, for his part, thinks meanly of them as a race, though on inquiry you find that he is so little acquainted with their characteristics that he is astonished to learn how many persons whom he has blindly admired and applauded are Jews to the backbone. Again, men who consider themselves in the very van of modern advancement, knowing history and the latest philosophies of history, indicate their contemptuous surprise that any one should entertain the destiny of the Jews as a worthy subject, by referring to Moloch and their own agreement with the theory that the religion of Jehovah was merely a transformed Moloch-worship, while in the same breath they are glorifying "civilisation" as a transformed tribal existence of which some lineaments are traceable in grim marriage customs of the native Australians. Are these erudite persons prepared to insist that the name "Father" should no longer have any sanctity for us, because in their view of likelihood our Aryan ancestors were mere improvers on a state of things in which nobody knew his own father?"

................................................................................................


"Some of us consider this question dismissed when they have said that the wealthiest Jews have no desire to forsake their European palaces, and go to live in Jerusalem. But in a return from exile, in the restoration of a people, the question is not whether certain rich men will choose to remain behind, but whether there will be found worthy men who will choose to lead the return. Plenty of prosperous Jews remained in Babylon when Ezra marshalled his band of forty thousand and began a new glorious epoch in the history of his race, making the preparation for that epoch in the history of the world which has been held glorious enough to be dated from for evermore. The hinge of possibility is simply the existence of an adequate community of feeling as well as widespread need in the Jewish race, and the hope that among its finer specimens there may arise some men of instruction and ardent public spirit, some new Ezras, some modern Maccabees, who will know how to use all favouring outward conditions, how to triumph by heroic example, over the indifference of their fellows and the scorn of their foes, and will steadfastly set their faces towards making their people once more one among the nations."

................................................................................................

"Formerly, evangelical orthodoxy was prone to dwell on the fulfilment of prophecy in the "restoration of the Jews," Such interpretation of the prophets is less in vogue now. The dominant mode is to insist on a Christianity that disowns its origin, that is not a substantial growth having a genealogy, but is a vaporous reflex of modern notions. The Christ of Matthew had the heart of a Jew—"Go ye first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." The Apostle of the Gentiles had the heart of a Jew: "For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh: who are Israelites; to whom pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came." Modern apostles, extolling Christianity, are found using a different tone: they prefer the mediaeval cry translated into modern phrase. But the mediaeval cry too was in substance very ancient—more ancient than the days of Augustus. Pagans in successive ages said, "These people are unlike us, and refuse to be made like us: let us punish them." The Jews were steadfast in their separateness, and through that separateness Christianity was born. A modern book on Liberty has maintained that from the freedom of individual men to persist in idiosyncrasies the world may be enriched. Why should we not apply this argument to the idiosyncrasy of a nation, and pause in our haste to hoot it down? ... "

................................................................................................


And herein the genesis of Daniel Deronda. 

................................................................................................

But both George Eliot and Upton Sinclair, with all the professing of sympathy and regard, nevertheless profess, too, a separation. Daniel with all interaction with Gwendolyn nevertheless does not love her or respect her, and can only marry the Jewish girl he rescued. And Lanny Budd might encourage a half sister Bess to marry Hansi, but arranges his own daughter to meet a son of Eric Pomeroy-Nelson, before she can meet her childhood playmate, son of the brother of Hansi who was murdered by nazis. As for Bess, she must come to grief, although it's shown as her fault, not Hansi's, and hand I can only find happiness with another, of his own. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 01, 2021 - 

September 18, 2021 - September 21, 2021. 

Purchased January 21, 2021 

Kindle Edition, 137 pages

Published May 17th 2012 

(first published 1879)

Original Title 

Impressions of Theophrastus Such

ASIN:- B0084CDKHQ

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

The Essays. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

From the Note-Book of an Eccentric. 

How to Avoid Disappointment. 

The Wisdom of the Child. 

A Little Fable with a Great Moral. 

Hints on Snubbing. 

Carlyle’s Life of Sterling. 

Margaret Fuller. 

Woman in France: Madame de Sablé. 

Three Months in Weimar. 

Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming. 

German Wit: Henry Heine. 

The Natural History of German Life. 

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. 

George Forster. 

Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young. 

The Influence of Rationalism. 

The Grammar of Ornament. 

Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt. 

Leaves from a Note-Book.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

 From the Note-Book of an Eccentric. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

When one begins to read this, it's a tad startling. 

"A week ago, I stood sole mourner at the grave of my friend Macarthy. He lies in a village churchyard;—not one of those peaceful green plots which seem to speak well for the influence of the bishop’s blessing, in which there is some spreading chestnut or yew of age immemorial, that seems to say to the world-weary, “Come and rest under my shadow.” No. The churchyard in which Macarthy lies looks not like a Gottes-acker, but a vicar’s acre, the profits of which (including the grazing of half-a-dozen sheep) go to eke out the curate’s yearly hundred, upon which he supports, or rather diets, the gentility of his wife and ten children. It is a thoroughfare for a materialized population, too entirely preoccupied with the needs of the living to retain an Old Mortality’s affectionate care for tomb-stones and epitaphs, or to offer to the graves that terrified veneration which hurries past them after sunset. They are in the strong grasp of giant Hunger, and fear no shadows. Not one of this plodding generation will long remember Macarthy, “the sick gentleman that lodged at widow Crowe’s,” and when the grass is green and long upon his grave, it will seem to say of him as truly as of others—“I cover the forgotten.” But it is not so, Macarthy. With me thou wilt still live: my thoughts will seem to be all spoken to thee, my actions all performed in thy presence; for ours was a love passing the love of women."

Is it possible, burials on land that's rented out for grazing, for benefit of poor curates? But one, of course, reads on, rather than go on a quest of an answer. 

................................................................................................

"My friend was one of whom the world proved itself not worthy, for it never made a true estimate of him. His soul was a lyre of exquisite structure, but men knew not how to play on it: it was a bird endowed with rich and varied notes, which it was ready to bestow on human hearers; but their coarse fondling or brutal harshness scared it away, and the poor bird ceased to sing, save in the depths of the forest or the silence of night. To those who saw only the splendour of his genius, and the nobility of his sentiments, his childhood and youth seemed to promise a brilliant career; but any who were capable of a more discriminating estimate and refined analysis of his character, must have had a foreboding that it contained elements which would too probably operate as non-conductors, interposed between his highly charged mind and the negatively electrified souls around him. The quality on which a good prophet would have pronounced my friend’s fate to hang, was one which will be held to have placed him not above, but simply out of, the sphere of his fellow men. It was a morbid sensitiveness in his feeling of the beautiful, which I can compare to nothing but those alleged states of mesmeric lucidity, in which the patient obtains an unenviable cognizance of irregularities, happily imperceptible to us in the ordinary state of our consciousness."

" ... He moved among the things of this earth like a lapidarian among false gems, which fetch high prices and admiration from others, but to him are mere counterfeits. He seemed to have a preternaturally sharpened vision, which saw knots and blemishes, where all was smoothness to others. The unsightly condition of the masses—their dreary ignorance, the conventional distortion of human nature in upper classes—the absence of artistic harmony and beauty in the details of outward existence, were with him not merely themes for cold philosophy, indignant philippics, or pointed satire; but positively painful elements in his experience, sharp iron entering into his soul. Had his nature been less noble, his benevolence less God-like, he would have been a misanthropist, all compact of bitter sarcasm, and therefore no poet. As it was, he was a humourist—one who sported with all the forms of human life, as if they were so many May-day mummings, uncouth, monstrous disguises of poor human nature, which has not discovered its dignity. While he laughed at the follies of men, he wept over their sorrows; and while his wit lashed them as with a whip of scorpions, there was a stream of feeling in the deep caverns of his soul, which was all the time murmuring, “Would that I could die for thee, thou poor humanity!”

"From the age of twenty, I never knew him to form a particular predilection for any individual, or admit any new intimacy. He seemed to have learned by experience that his sensibility was too acute for special friendship—that his sympathy with mankind was that of a being of analogous, rather than of identical race."

" ... He seemed, indeed, to shrink from all organized existences. He was an ardent lover of Nature, but it was in her grand inorganic forms—the blue sky, the stars, the clouds, the sea, mountains, rocks, and rivers—in which she seems pregnant with some sublimer birth than the living races of this globe. He would lie on the grass gazing at the setting sun with a look of intense yearning which might have belonged to a banished Uriel. The roaring of the wind would produce in him an enthusiastic excitement, a spiritual intoxication. He felt a delight in the destructive power of the elements, which seemed to be in singular conflict with his angelic pity: had he been a witness of an earthquake, a city on fire, or the eruption of a volcano, I know not which would have predominated in him, bleeding compassion for the sufferers, or wild ecstacy at the triumphant fury of the forces of nature."

................................................................................................

One doesn't suspect George Eliot of beginning to write a satire or a spoof, however, until one has finished reading this piece, heartbreaking as it is so far, from the word go. 

" ... When we had talked long and earnestly together, he pointed to a large trunk filled with manuscripts. “When I am dead,” he said, “take these as the only memorial I have to give, and use them as you will.” I refused to leave my friend until he was committed to his mother earth; and it then became my most interesting employment to examine the papers which contained the best history and image of his mind. I have found the results of profound thought and widely extended research-productions, some of which have been carefully meditated, others apparently thrown off with the rapidity of inspiration; but in all of them there is a strange mixture of wisdom and whimsicality, of sublime conception and stinging caricature, of deep melancholy and wild merriment. No publisher would venture to offer such caviare to the general; and my friend’s writings are not old and musty enough to fall within the scheme of any publishing club, so that the bulk of them will probably be their own tomb. 

"Meanwhile, among his other manuscripts, I have discovered three thick little volumes, which were successively carried in his pocket for the purpose of noting down casual thoughts, sketches of character, and scenes out of the common; in short, as receptacles of what would probably have evaporated in conversation had my friend been in the habit of companionship. From these fragmentary stores I shall now and then give a selection in some modest nook of an unpretending journal—not to the world, far be so ambitious an aspiration from me—but to the half-dozen readers who can be attracted by unsophisticated thought and feeling, even though it be presented to them in the corner of the weekly newspaper of their own petty town."

Then it dawns - other pieces, their titles suggesting satires or spoofs, are a part of this. 

Did she write this, spoofing such descriptions of persons by other authors, defyingobscure people for reasons not commonly given for exacting, as a satire on sentiments, even a pungent attack against fraud?

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 26, 2021 - September 26, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

How to Avoid Disappointment. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Inappropriate, (- or deliberately unassuming, low-key? -), title. 

................................................................................................

One suspected the previous piece of being a satire or a spoof, and the rest of essays to follow the theme - but this opens differently - 

"One of my favourite lounges in Paris is the studio of an artist, who tolerates my presence on the score of a slight service which I happened to render him some years ago, and which he magnifies into a lasting claim on his gratitude. I soon acquire an almost passionate interest in the progress of a noble picture. I love to think how the perfect whole exists in the imagination of the artist before his pencil has marked the canvas—to observe how every minute stroke, every dismal-looking layer of colour conduces to the ultimate effect, and how completely the creative genius which has conceived the result can calculate the necessary means. I love to watch the artist’s eye, so wrapt and unworldly in its glance, scrupulously attentive to the details of his actual labour, yet keeping ever in view the idea which that labour is to fulfil. I say to myself—this is an image of what our life should be—a series of efforts directed to the production of a contemplated whole, just as every stroke of the artist’s pencil has a purpose bearing on the conception which he retains in his mind’s eye. We should all be painting our picture, whether it be a home scene after Wilkie, a Paul preaching at Athens, or a Brutus passing sentence on his son. We should all have a purpose in life as perfectly recognised and definite as the painter’s idea of his subject. ... "

and after a - not unexpected - swift swoop down of a sharp beak of satire, taking a bite off the head of the worldly - 

" ... “Indisputably,” says your man of the world, “I have never for a moment swerved from the determination to make myself rich and respectable. I chose my wife with that object; I send my sons to the University, I give dinners, I go to balls, I go to church—all that I may be ‘respectable.’ Am not I a man of purpose?” Then there is the man of public spirit, who has devoted his life to some pet project, which is to be the grand catholicon for all the diseases of society. He has travelled, he has lectured, he has canvassed, he has moved heaven and earth, has become the victim of a fixed idea, and died disappointed."

- soars very unexpectedly into a purely spiritual realm - 

"Doubtless such men as these have a distinct purpose in life, but they are not the men of whom my artist reminds me—who seem to me to be painting a picture. The kind of purpose which makes life resemble a work of art in its isolated majesty or loveliness is not the attempt to satisfy that inconvenient troop of wants which metamorphose themselves like the sprites of an enchantress, so that no sooner have we provided food for the linnet’s beak than a huge lion’s maw gapes upon us. It is to live, not for our friends, not for those hostages to fortune, wives and children; not for any individual, any specific form; but for something which, while it dwells in these, has an existence beyond them. It is to live for the good, the true, the beautiful, which outlive every generation and are all-pervading as the light which vibrates from the remotest nebula to our own sun. The spirit which has ascertained its true relation to these can never be an orphan: it has its home in the eternal mind, from which neither things present nor to come can separate it. You may infallibly discern the man who lives thus. His eye has not that restless, irresolute glance which tells of no purpose beyond the present hour: it looks as you might imagine the eye of Numa to have looked after an interview with Egeria; the earnest attention and veneration with which it gazed on the divine instructress still lingering in its expression."

- way higher than expected from anyone who was normally so bound to her roots, of a religion so dominated by institutions, as this author. 

It ends flat, way down - 

"I said one day to my artist, when he was ardently engaged on a favourite picture, “Adolphe, has your love of art ever been tested by any great misfortune?” He replied, “I have suffered—I am suffering under a great calamity; not the blighting of ambition, not the loss of any loved one, but a far more withering sorrow; I have ceased to love the being whom I once believed that I must love while life lasted. I have cherished what I thought was a bright amethyst, and I have seen it losing its lustre day by day till I can no longer delude myself into a belief that it is not valueless. But you see,” said he, turning to me and smiling, “I love my pictures still; I should not like to die till I have worked up my chosen subjects.” 

"Who would not have some purpose in life as independent in its value as art is to the artist?"

- but it's less disappointing than it could have been from a higher consciousness, and a culture that could nourish it. 

Few can assure of that. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 27, 2021 - September 27, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Wisdom of the Child. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot soars again to another spiritual height, or better, opens to a spiritual truth of simplicity - 

"It may not be an original idea, but never mind, if it be a true one, that the proper result of intellectual cultivation is to restore the mind to that state of wonder and interest with which it looks on everything in childhood. Thus Jean Jacques Rousseau, couched on the grass by the side of a plant that he might examine its structure and appearance at his ease, would have seemed to a little child so like itself in taste and feeling that it would have lain down by him, in full confidence of entire sympathy between them in spite of his wizard-like, Armenian attire."

but again, relapses, and now this time, seriously - 

" ... while the wonder of the wise man is the result of knowledge disclosing mystery, the simplicity and purity of his moral principles, the result of wide experience and hardly-attained self-conflict. A truce to your philosophers whose elevation above their fellow-beings consists in their ability to laugh at the ties which bind women and children, who have looked just so far into the principles of ethics as to be able to disconcert a simple soul that talks of vice and virtue as realities. The child which abstains from eating plums because grandmamma forbade is their superior in wisdom: it exercises faith and obedience to law—two of the most ennobling attributes of humanity which these philosophers have cast off. ... "

from the spiritual heights, just as she did after she soared to heights in the middle of the previous article, and this time it's not just flat. 

" ... Self-renunciation, submission to law, trust, benignity, ingenuousness, rectitude—these are the qualities we delight most to witness in the child, and these are the qualities which most dignify the man."

It was almost a reaction of fear of soaring ingrained in a soul that had suffered inquisition not too long ago, in an immediately prior life. 

" ... If he were to admit that all things were lawful to him, he would add, “I will not be thought under the power of any; I will not circumscribe or bring into bondage the action of any one of my highest endowments.” He feels that in submitting to the restraint of a self-imposed law, he would be presenting humanity in its grandest aspect. But it is only the highest human state at which he aims—not anything superhuman. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 27, 2021 - September 27, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A Little Fable with a Great Moral. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot begins a lovely fable - 

"In very early times indeed, when no maidens had looking-glasses, except the mermaidens, there lived in a deep valley two beautiful hamadryads. Now, the hamadryads are a race of nymphs that inhabit the forests. Whenever a little acorn, or a beech nut, or any other seed of a forest tree begins to sprout, a little hamadryad is born, and grows up and lives and dies with the tree. ... " 

- but introduces ugliness in it for sake of a lesson - reminding one that a soul and mind and spirit warped early by fear, as church does to people in its quest of grip over them - despite its mask of benevolence - cannot take flight of beauty without a crash of horror into ugliness. 

" ... So you see the hamadryads, the daughters of trees, live far longer than the daughters of men—some of them even a thousand years; still they do at last get old, and faded, and shrivelled." 

And the ugliness begins before one can be steeped in the enchantment of the beauty, with the ugly name of hamdryad for a nymph that lives in a tree. Moreover, if thats insufficient to make one recoil in horror, one is reminded - more than once, which is overkill, surely, for so short a story? - that the hamdryad, living in her tree, gets old, and therefore ugly, before she dies! 

"Now, the two hamadryads of whom I spoke lived in a forest by the side of a clear lake, and they loved better than anything to go down to the brink of the lake and look into the mirror of waters; but not for the same reason. Idione loved to look into the lake because she saw herself there; she would sit on the bank, weaving leaves and flowers in her silken hair, and smiling at her own image all the day long, and if the pretty water-lilies or any other plants began to spread themselves on the surface below her, and spoil her mirror, she would tear them up in anger. But Hieria cared not to look at herself in the lake; she only cared about watching the heavens as they were reflected in its bosom—the foamy clouds on the clear blue by day, and the moon and the stars by night. She did not mind that the water-lilies grew below her, for she was always looking farther off, into the deep part of the lake; she only thought the lilies pretty, and loved them. 

"So, in the course of time, these two hamadryads grew old, and Idione began to be angry with the lake, and to hate it because it no longer gave back a pleasant image of herself, and she would carry little stones to the margin and dash them into the lake for vengeance; but she only tired herself, and did not hurt the lake. And as she was frowning and looking spiteful all the day, the lake only went on giving her an uglier and uglier picture of herself, till at last she ran away from it into the hollow of her tree, and sat there lonely and sad till she died. But Hieria grew old without finding it out, for she never looked for herself in the lake—only as, in the centuries she had lived, some of the thick forests had been cleared away from the earth, and men had begun to build and to plough, the sky was less often obscured by vapours, so that the lake was more and more beautiful to her, and she loved better and better the water-lilies that grew below her. Until one morning, after she had been watching the stars in the lake, she went home to her tree, and lying down, she fell into a gentle sleep, and dreamed that she had left her mouldering tree, and had been carried up to live in a star, from which she could still look down on her lake that she had loved so long. And while she was dreaming this, men came and cut down her tree, and Hieria died without knowing that she had become old."

What ugliness of a power-hungry institution is this, equating age with ugliness, and awarding death to fairies? Aren't fairies And nymphs immortal? And being creatures of not flesh, why tell lies about them ageing, much less getting ugly? Lies by misogynistic institutions, of course! 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 27, 2021 - September 27, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Hints on Snubbing. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

If anything, it's a British - more specifically, English - specialisation, along with hypocrisy. One could include caste system, but all West has them. Brits just had more complex ones for colonies, extended from one back home, but not without inverting that of unconverted natives. 

George Eliot discourse here reminds one of How To Be An Alien, by Mikes, whom she preceded. 

................................................................................................

"It has been sagely said that men reasoned before Aristotle was born; that animals used their limbs before anatomy was heard of; and that fingers were very efficient prehensile instruments long before the invention of forks; which ingenious observations are meant to illustrate the fact that nature is beforehand with art and science. So the faculty of snubbing has been in exercise ever since the days of Cain and Abel, though the great intellect which is to trace out the laws by which its phenomena are governed, and lay down rules for the development of all its hidden resources, has not yet arisen. There have, indeed, been examples of snubbing genius, and it is in the nature of genius to transcend all rules—rather, to furnish the type on which all rules are framed; nevertheless, it is undeniable that for snubbing to attain its complete scope and potency as a moral agent it must be reduced to an art accessible to the less intuitive mind of the many. A few crude suggestions towards this important end may not be unfruitful in the soil of some active intellect. 

"Hobbes defined laughter to be the product of a triumphant feeling of superiority: substitute snubbing for laughter and you have a more just definition. The idea of snubbing presupposes inferiority in the snubbed. You can no more snub your betters than you can patronize them; on the contrary, toadyism towards superiors is the invariable attendant on a large endowment of the snubbing faculty. Toadyism, in fact, is the beautiful concavity which corresponds to the snubbing convexity: the angular posture of Baillie MacWheeble’s body is a perfect illustration."

................................................................................................

Did the famous incident, of Queen Victoria saying "We are not amused", take place before George Eliot wrote this? 

" ... The monarchical species of snubbing is doubtless an interesting subject of investigation, but the urgent wants of society point rather to the social, political, religious, and domestic species. We throw out a few hints on these, as mere finger-posts to the rich mines below:"

................................................................................................

"1. All men of a thousand a year, who can occasionally afford to give champagne at their dinner parties, may feel authorized to snub any poorer genius of less magnitude than Dickens, especially if he live in the same town or neighbourhood, as in that case he can by no means be made available as a lion to be served up to the company with the soups and venison. 

"2. Men of great or small wit who have established a reputation as diners-out, may give additional zest to their condiments and wine by snubbing any humbler aspirant to the applause of the company. Let them take Johnson as their model in this department.

"3. Editors of country newspapers who feel themselves and their cause in a precarious condition, and who, therefore, as Paley said of himself, cannot afford to keep a conscience, may find a forlorn hope in snubbing. Let them choose for a victim any individual who presumes to avow an opinion in opposition to their own—and, what is more, to act upon it. We assure the dullest poor fellow of an editor that he may put down such an upstart, and utterly ruin him in the esteem of the majority by keeping a stock of epithets, like so many little missies, to be hurled at him on every favourable occasion: such, for instance, as pseudo-philosopher, man of crotchets, infantine dreamer, etc. No matter how stale the epithets may be, paucity of invention is no disadvantage here, since the oftener a nickname is repeated the better it will tell. Do we not know that two-thirds of mankind are influenced, not by facts or principles, but by associations about as appropriate as the connection between a bright summer’s day and roast pig in the mind of the ingenious Mrs. Nickleby?"

................................................................................................

"5. Ladies who go to parties with the hope of being the belles of the evening, must on no account venture to snub any whose pretensions threaten to eclipse their own. This would look like envy. They must rather behave to such with a sweet, condescending blandness, as if unconscious of the danger of rivalry. They may, however, repay themselves by snubbing the plain and ill-dressed; nay, if they can manage to secure a brisk flirtation for the evening with any one of the gentlemen tolerably well to pass, they may even produce a very good effect by snubbing the remainder.

6. But the chief empire of feminine talent lies in the snub religious. Anacreon tells us that nature has given weapons of defence to all creatures—horns to bulls, hoofs to horses, etc., understanding to man, and to woman beauty. But this is mere poet’s flummery; he should have said bigotry, which is the far more generic attribute. All ladies of decidedly orthodox sentiments and serious habits, who, in short, form the public for whom young clergymen print volumes of sermons which may be compared to that popular specific, treacle and brimstone—all such ladies, we say, may snub any man not marriageable, and any woman not an heiress, though as full of talents or of good works as a Sir Philip Sidney or a John Howard, if he or she be suspected of diverging in opinion from that standard of truth which is lodged in the brain of the Rev. Amylatus Stultus, who keeps the key of these same ladies’ consciences. But let everyone beware of snubbing on religious grounds in quarters where there is wealth, or fashion, or influence. In such cases all aberrations from the standard are to be regarded as amiable eccentricities, which do not warrant an uncharitable construction. On the whole it must be admitted that the snub religious is a most valuable agent in society, resembling those compensating contrivances by which nature makes up for the loss of one organ by an extraordinary development of the functions of another. Now that we have no Star-Chamber, Pillory, Test Act, etc., what would become of society without this admirable refinement on the rougher measures of our ancestors? Do we not appeal to a stronger element in the minds of suspected heretics by silently putting a chalk hieroglyphic on their backs, than by hauling them off to prison or to Smithfield? 

"7. As regards the snub domestic, gentlemen should by no means neglect one of the grand privileges of conjugal life, an unlimited power of snubbing their wives. Indeed, this may be said to be a sort of safety-valve for the masculine faculty of snubbing which, as men are somewhat amenable for its exercise and cannot, like women and priests, snub with impunity, might lead to no end of duels and horse-whippings, and thus reduce society to a horribly internecine state. 

"8. Ladies may take reprisals for their endurance in this matter on such small deer as their governesses, servants, and such old maids of their acquaintance as are not useful in sewing or taking care of the children." 

................................................................................................

"9. The servants, again, may snub the shoe-black or the vendor of hareskins. The shoe-black may snub the dog and cat in a variety of ingenious ways, and doubtless the beautiful chain, if we could trace it, descends to the lowest grades of existence. We have no warrant, however, to suppose that a faculty for snubbing is given to any other races than the terrestrial, since we have express authority for the fact that the archangel Michael, on a very remarkable occasion, abstained from snubbing the devil."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 27, 2021 - September 27, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Carlyle’s Life of Sterling. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"As soon as the closing of the Great Exhibition afforded a reasonable hope that there would once more be a reading public, “The Life of Sterling” appeared.  A new work by Carlyle must always be among the literary births eagerly chronicled by the journals and greeted by the public.  In a book of such parentage we care less about the subject than about its treatment, just as we think the “Portrait of a Lord” worth studying if it come from the pencil of a Vandyck.  The life of John Sterling, however, has intrinsic interest, even if it be viewed simply as the struggle of a restless aspiring soul, yearning to leave a distinct impress of itself on the spiritual development of humanity, with that fell disease which, with a refinement of torture, heightens the susceptibility and activity of the faculties, while it undermines their creative force.  Sterling, moreover, was a man thoroughly in earnest, to whom poetry and philosophy were not merely another form of paper currency or a ladder to fame, but an end in themselves—one of those finer spirits with whom, amid the jar and hubbub of our daily life, 

“The melodies abide 

"Of the everlasting chime.” 

"But his intellect was active and rapid, rather than powerful, and in all his writings we feel the want of a stronger electric current to give that vigor of conception and felicity of expression, by which we distinguish the undefinable something called genius; while his moral nature, though refined and elevated, seems to have been subordinate to his intellectual tendencies and social qualities, and to have had itself little determining influence on his life."

" ... 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 lifelike effect—are seldom found in combination.  “The Life of Sterling” is an instance of this rare conjunction. ... "

"From the period when Carlyle’s own acquaintance with Sterling commenced, the Life has a double interest, from the glimpses it gives us of the writer, as well as of his hero.  We are made present at their first introduction to each other; we get a lively idea of their colloquies and walks together, and in this easy way, without any heavy disquisition or narrative, we obtain a clear insight into Sterling’s character and mental progress.  Above all, we are gladdened with a perception of the affinity that exists between noble souls, in spite of diversity in ideas—in what Carlyle calls “the logical outcome” of the faculties. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 21, 2021 - September 21, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Margaret Fuller. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Rare, praise from George Eliot. 

"Our prediction as to the rich harvest of American biography that is now ripening finds a beautiful fulfilment in the “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli.” Reading this book after Carlyle’s “Life of Sterling,” we are reminded, by their similarity of subject and authorship, as well as by their simultaneous preparation, that it is “the same spirit which worketh all in all.” There is a noticeable resemblance between these two gifted beings: their studies, aspirations, endeavors, and influence were of a similar nature; they had the same unsettled career and the same premature end. But Margaret Fuller had a deeper, stronger, richer life, and wielded a mightier power over her companions and contemporaries. ... "

So she qualifies it promptly. 

" ... If her aim was not higher, it was clearer; and what she aimed at she accomplished. It is not, however, in contrast with Sterling, but in the midst of her friends, that we must view her. Considering the remarkable influence she exercised over the circle which ultimately acknowledged her as its ruling spirit, we are at a loss whether to regard her as the parent or child of New England transcendentalism. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... It seems to have been a movement on the part of different minds, as spontaneous and independent in each as it was simultaneous in all,—a movement flowing from the undying vernal impulse of nature. It was essentially an intellectual, moral, and spiritual regeneration; a renewing of the whole man; a kindling of his aspirations after full development of faculty and perfect symmetry of being. Then followed the fruits of this spirit,—faith, hope, and love; self-sacrifice, mutual sympathy, fellowship, and earnest endeavor. ... "

Was this the movement that Emerson and others, of Wellesley neighbourhood, of the On Walden Pond fame, were part of? 

" ... “Thus, by mere attraction of affinity,” says Mr. Channing, “grew together the brotherhood of the ‘like-minded,’ as they were pleasantly nicknamed by outsiders and by themselves, on the ground that no two were of the same opinion.” ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Of this sect Margaret Fuller was the priestess. In conversation she was as copious and oracular as Coleridge, brilliant as Sterling, pungent and paradoxical as Carlyle; gifted with the inspired powers of a pythoness, she saw into the hearts and over the heads of all who came near her; and, but for a sympathy as boundless as her self-esteem, she would have despised the whole human race! ... so right royally did she carry herself that her arrogance became a virtue, worshipful as the majesty of the gods! Yet along with all this there was much self-scrutiny; and underneath it all much womanly tenderness, which ripened and mellowed till, after all, few women were more womanly than Margaret Fuller. ... The two sides of her more mature character—the tender and the strong—were harmonized and tested by the peculiar position into which she was thrown during her sojourn at Rome, at the time of the Revolution. We have not space to explain our allusions to those who have not read, or do not intend to read, these Memoirs for themselves; but in indicating our general opinion of her character, we must say that from the time she became a mother till the final tragedy when she perished with her husband and child within sight of her native shore, she was an altered woman, and evinced a greatness of soul and heroism of character so grand and subduing that we feel disposed to extend to her whole career the admiration and sympathy inspired by the closing scenes. While her reputation was at its height in the literary circles of Boston and New York, she was so self-conscious that her life seemed to be a studied act, rather than a spontaneous growth; but this was the mere flutter on the surface. The well was deep, and the spring genuine; and it is creditable to her friends, as well as to herself, that such at all times was their belief."

................................................................................................

George Eliot criticises the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson and others. 

"We have already spoken of her in connection with Sterling. Both have found kindred spirits to write their biographies; but Emerson and his colleagues must yield to Carlyle in mastery of the pencil. The “Life of Sterling,” though made up of fragments and reminiscences, is a finished portrait. But the “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller” is a book of reminiscences merely. No attempt is made at symmetry of form or color; nor are even the outward events of her life presented in their consecutive order. Something like an appropriation of periods and localities seems to have been prearranged, but not attended to; and according to the caprice of the writer’s memory you are carried hither and thither, backwards and forwards, over the scenes of her history. A little more attention to chronology and geography would have mended the matter considerably, and made the mechanism of the narrative as good as the material. “Memoirs,” then,—memoranda,—not a life, yet full of life and full of thought,—these volumes will be read and prized by all truth-loving, sympathetic souls."

But perhaps it was never their intention to produce a work of art? Perhaps they only wished to record memories of one they cared about! 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 27, 2021 - September 28, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Woman in France: Madame de Sablé. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Was George Eliot unaware of other good women authors in English literature who were her contemporary or a little prior? 

"In 1847, a certain Count Leopold Ferri died at Padua, leaving a library entirely composed of works written by women, in various languages, and this library amounted to nearly 32,000 volumes.  We will not hazard any conjecture as to the proportion of these volumes which a severe judge, like the priest in Don Quixote, would deliver to the flames, but for our own part, most of these we should care to rescue would be the works of French women.  With a few remarkable exceptions, our own feminine literature is made up of books which could have been better written by men—books which have the same relation to literature is general, as academic prize poems have to poetry: when not a feeble imitation, they are usually an absurd exaggeration of the masculine style, like the swaggering gait of a bad actress in male attire. ... "

Was she unaware of Jane Austen, Bronte sisters? 

" ... And to this day, Madame de Sévigné remains the single instance of a woman who is supreme in a class of literature which has engaged the ambition of men; Madame Dacier still reigns the queen of blue stockings, though women have long studied Greek without shame; [33] Madame de Staël’s name still rises first to the lips when we are asked to mention a woman of great intellectual power; Madame Roland is still the unrivalled type of the sagacious and sternly heroic, yet lovable woman; George Sand is the unapproached artist who, to Jean Jacques’ eloquence and deep sense of external nature, unites the clear delineation of character and the tragic depth of passion. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... No wise person, we imagine, wishes to restore the social condition of France in the seventeenth century, or considers the ideal programme of woman’s life to be a marriage de convenance at fifteen, a career of gallantry from twenty to eight-and-thirty, and penitence and piety for the rest of her days.  Nevertheless, that social condition has its good results, as much as the madly superstitious Crusades had theirs.

"But the most indisputable source of feminine culture and development in France was the influence of the salons, which, as all the world knows, were réunions of both sexes, where conversation ran along the whole gamut of subjects, from the frothiest vers de société to the philosophy of Descartes.  Richelieu had set the fashion of uniting a taste for letters with the habits of polite society and the pursuits of ambition; and in the first quarter of the seventeenth century there were already several hôtels in Paris, varying in social position from the closest proximity of the Court to the debatable ground of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, which served as a rendezvous for different circles of people, bent on entertaining themselves either by showing talent or admiring it.  The most celebrated of these rendezvous was the Hôtel de Rambouillet, which was at the culmination of its glory in 1630, and did not become quite extinct until 1648, when the troubles of the Fronde commencing, its habitués were dispersed or absorbed by political interests.  The presiding genius of this salon, the Marquise de Rambouillet, was the very model of the woman who can act as anamalgam to the most incongruous elements; beautiful, but not preoccupied by coquetry, or passion; an enthusiastic admirer of talent, but with no pretensions to talent on her own part; exquisitely refined in language and manners, but warm and generous withal; not given to entertain her guests with her own compositions, or to paralyze them by her universal knowledge.  She had once meant to learn Latin, but had been prevented by an illness; perhaps she was all the better acquainted with Italian and Spanish productions, which, in default of a national literature, were then the intellectual pabulum of all cultivated persons in France who are unable to read the classics.  In her mild, agreeable presence was accomplished that blending of the high-toned chivalry of Spain with the caustic wit and refined irony of Italy, which issued in the creation of a new standard of taste—the combination of the utmost exaltation in sentiment with the utmost simplicity of language.  Women are peculiarly fitted to further such a combination—first, from their greater tendency to mingle affection and imagination with passion, and thus subtilize it into sentiment; and next, from that dread of what overtaxes their intellectual energies, either by difficulty, or monotony, which gives them an instinctive fondness for lightness of treatment and airiness of expression, thus making them cut short all prolixity and reject all heaviness.  When these womanly characteristics were brought into conversational contact with the materials furnished by such minds as those of Richelieu, Corneille, the Great Condé, Balzac, and Bossuet, it is no wonder that the result was something piquant and charming.  Those famous habitués of the Hôtel de Rambouillet did not, apparently, first lay themselves out to entertain the ladies with grimacing “small-talk,” and then take each other by the sword-knot to discuss matters of real interest in a corner; they rather sought to present their best ideas in the guise most acceptable to intelligent and accomplished women.  And the conversation was not of literature only: war, politics, religion, the lightest details of daily news—everything was admissible, if only it were treated with refinement and intelligence. ... "

................................................................................................

"Another centre from which feminine influence radiated into the national literature was the Palais du Luxembourg, where Mademoiselle d’Orleans, in disgrace at court on account of her share in the Fronde, held a little court of her own, and for want of anything else to employ her active spirit busied herself with literature.  One fine morning it occurred to this princess to ask all the persons who frequented her court, among whom were Madame de Sévigné, Madame de la Fayette, and La Rochefoucauld, to write their own portraits, and she at once set the example.  It was understood that defects and virtues were to be spoken of with like candor.  The idea was carried out; those who were not clever or bold enough to write for themselves employing the pen of a friend. 

"“Such,” says M. Cousin, “was the pastime of Mademoiselle and her friends during the years 1657 and 1658: from this pastime proceeded a complete literature.  In 1659 Ségrais revised these portraits, added a considerable number in prose and even in verse, and published the whole in a handsome quarto volume, admirably printed, and now become very rare, under the title, ‘Divers Portraits.’  Only thirty copies were printed, not for sale, but to be given as presents by Mademoiselle.  The work had a prodigious success.  That which had made the fortune of Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s romances—the pleasure of seeing one’s portrait a little flattered, curiosity to see that of others, the passion which the middle class always have had and will have for knowing what goes on in the aristocratic world (at that time not very easy of access), the names of the illustrious persons who were here for the first time described physically and morally with the utmost detail, great ladies transformed all at once into writers, and unconsciously inventing a new manner of writing, of which no book gave the slightest idea, and which was the ordinary manner of speaking of the aristocracy; this undefinable mixture of the natural, the easy, and at the same time of the agreeable, and supremely distinguished—all this charmed the court and the town, and very early in the year 1659 permission was asked of Mademoiselle to give a new edition of the privileged book for the use of the public in general.”"

................................................................................................

"In proportion as the literature of a country is enriched and culture becomes more generally diffused, personal influence is less effective in the formation of taste and in the furtherance of social advancement.  It is no longer the coterie which acts on literature, but literature which acts on the coterie; the circle represented by the word public is ever widening, and ambition, poising itself in order to hit a more distant mark, neglects the successes of the salon.  What was once lavished prodigally in conversation is reserved for the volume or the “article,” and the effort is not to betray originality rather than to communicate it.  As the old coach-roads have sunk into disuse through the creation of railways, so journalism tends more and more to divert information from the channel of conversation into the channel of the Press; no one is satisfied with a more circumscribed audience than that very indeterminate abstraction “the public,” and men find a vent for their opinions not in talk, but in “copy.”  We read the Athenæum askance at the tea-table, and take notes from the Philosophical Journal at a soirée; we invite our friends that we may thrust a book into their hands, and presuppose an exclusive desire in the “ladies” to discuss their own matters, “that we may crackle the Times” at our ease.  In fact, the evident tendency of things to contract personal communication within the narrowest limits makes us tremble lest some further development of the electric telegraph should reduce us to a society of mutes, or to a sort of insects communicating by ingenious antenna of our own invention."

Television did that!

................................................................................................

"Madeline de Souvré, daughter of the Marquis of Courtenvaux, a nobleman distinguished enough to be chosen as governor of Louis XIII., was born in 1599, on the threshold of that seventeenth century, the brilliant genius of which is mildly reflected in her mind and history.  Thus, when in 1635 her more celebrated friend, Mademoiselle de Bourbon, afterward the Duchess de Longueville, made her appearance at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, Madame de Sablé had nearly crossed that tableland of maturity which precedes a woman’s descent toward old age.  She had been married in 1614, to Philippe Emanuel de Laval-Montmorency, Seigneur de Bois-Dauphin, and Marquis de Sablé, of whom nothing further is known than that he died in 1640, leaving her the richer by four children, but with a fortune considerably embarrassed.  With beauty and high rank added to the mental attractions of which we have abundant evidence, we may well believe that Madame de Sablé’s youth was brilliant.  For her beauty, we have the testimony of sober Madame de Motteville, who also speaks of her as having “beaucoup de lumière et de sincérité;” and in the following passage very graphically indicates one phase of Madame de Sablé’s character: 

"“The Marquise de Sablé was one of those whose beauty made the most noise when the Queen came into France.  But if she was amiable, she was still more desirous of appearing so; this lady’s self-love rendered her too sensitive to the regard which men exhibited toward her.  There yet existed in France some remains of the politeness which Catherine de Medici had introduced from Italy, and the new dramas, with all the other works in prose and verse, which page 43 came from Madrid, were thought to have such great delicacy, that she (Madame de Sablé) had conceived a high idea of the gallantry which the Spaniards had learned from the Moors."

"Here is the grand element of the original femme précieuse, and it appears farther, in a detail also reported by Madame de Motteville, that Madame de Sablé had a passionate admirer in the accomplished Duc de Montmorency, and apparently reciprocated his regard; but discovering (at what period of their attachment is unknown) that he was raising a lover’s eyes toward the queen, she broke with him at once.  “I have heard her say,” tells Madame de Motteville, “that her pride was such with regard to the Duc de Montmorency, that at the first demonstrations which he gave of his change, she refused to see him any more, being unable to receive with satisfaction attentions which she had to share with the greatest princess in the world.”  There is no evidence except the untrustworthy assertion of Tallement de Réaux, that Madame de Sablé had any other liaison than this; and the probability of the negative is increased by the ardor of her friendships.  The strongest of these was formed early in life with Mademoiselle Dona d’Attichy, afterward Comtesse de Maure; it survived the effervescence of youth, and the closest intimacy of middle age, and was only terminated by the death of the latter in 1663.  A little incident in this friendship is so characteristic in the transcendentalism which was then carried into all the affections, that it is worth relating at length.  Mademoiselle d’Attichy, in her grief and indignation at Richelieu’s treatment of her relative, quitted Paris, and was about to join her friend at Sablé, when she suddenly discovered that Madame de Sablé, in a letter to Madame de Rambouillet, had said that her greatest happiness would be to pass her life with Julie de Rambouillet, afterward Madame de Montausier.  To Anne d’Attichy this appears nothing less than the crime of lèse-amitié.  No explanations will appease her: she refuses to accept the assurance that the offensive expression was used simply out of unreflecting conformity to the style of the Hôtel de Rambouillet—that it was mere “galimatias.”  She gives up her journey, and writes a letter, which is the only one Madame de Sablé chose to preserve, when, in her period of devotion, she sacrificed the records of her youth."

................................................................................................

"Peculiarities like this always deepen with age, and accordingly, fifteen years later, we find Madame D’Orleans in her “Princesse de Paphlagonia”—a romance in which she describes her court, with the little quarrels and other affairs that agitated it—giving the following amusing picture, or rather caricature, of the extent to which Madame de Sablé carried her pathological mania, which seems to have been shared by her friend the Countess de Maure (Mademoiselle d’Attichy).  In the romance, these two ladies appear under the names of Princesse Parthénie and the Reine de Mionie. 

"“There was not an hour in the day in which they did not confer together on the means of avoiding death, and on the art of rendering themselves immortal.  Their conferences did not take place like those of other people; the fear of breathing an air which was too cold or top warm, the dread lest the wind should be too dry or too moist—in short, the imagination that the weather might not be as temperate as they thought necessary for the preservation of their health, caused them to write letters from one room to the other. ... If these letters were discovered, great advantages of all kinds might be derived from them, for they were princesses who had nothing mortal about them but the knowledge that they were mortal. ... The Princess Parthénie (Mme. de Sablé) had a palate as delicate as her mind; nothing could equal the magnificence of the entertainments she gave; all the dishes were exquisite, and her cleanliness was beyond all that could be imagined.  It was in their time that writing came into use; previously nothing was written but marriage contracts, and letters were never heard of; thus it is to them that we owe a practice so convenient in intercourse.”"

................................................................................................

" ... La Rochefoucauld writes: “You cannot do me a greater charity than to permit the bearer of this letter to enter into the mysteries of your marmalade and your genuine preserves, and I humbly entreat you to do everything you can in his favor.  If I could hope for two dishes of those preserves, which I did not deserve to eat before, I should be indebted to you all my life.”  For our own part, being as far as possible from fraternizing with those spiritual people who convert a deficiency into a principle, and pique themselves on an obtuse palate as a point of superiority, we are not inclined to number Madame de Sablé’s friandise among her defects. ... "

"“ ... Mme. de Sablé is represented in her first youth at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, maintaining that woman is born to be an ornament to the world, and to receive the adoration of men.  The woman worthy of the name ought always to appear above material wants, and retain, even in the most vulgar details of life, something distinguished and purified.  Eating is a very necessary operation, but one which is not agreeable to the eye.  Mme. de Sablé insisted on its being conducted with a peculiar cleanliness.  According to her it was not every woman who could with impunity be at table in the presence of a lover; the first distortion of the face, she said, would be enough to spoil all.  Gross meals made for the body merely ought to be abandoned to bourgeoises, and the refined woman should appear to take a little nourishment merely to sustain her, and even to divert her, as one takes refreshments and ices.  Wealth did not suffice for this: a particular talent was required.  Mme. de Sablé was a mistress in this art.  She had transported the aristocratic spirit, and the genre précieux, good breeding and good taste, even into cookery.  Her dinners, without any opulence, were celebrated and sought after.”

"It is quite in accordance with all this that Madame de Sablé should delight in fine scents, and we find that she did; for being threatened, in her Port Royal days, when she was at an advanced age, with the loss of smell, and writing for sympathy and information to Mère Agnès, who had lost that sense early in life, she receives this admonition from the stern saint: “You would gain by this loss, my very dear sister, if you made use of it as a satisfaction to God, for having had too much pleasure in delicious scents.” ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Soon after followed the commotions of the Fronde, which put a stop to social intercourse, and threw the closest friends into opposite ranks.  According to Lenet, who relies on the authority of Gourville, Madame de Sablé was under strong obligations to the court, being in the receipt of a pension of 2000 crowns; at all events, she adhered throughout to the Queen and Mazarin, but being as far as possible from a fierce partisan, and given both by disposition and judgment to hear both sides of the question, she acted as a conciliator, and retained her friends of both parties.  The Countess de Maure, whose husband was the most obstinate of frondeurs, remained throughout her most cherished friend, and she kept up a constant correspondence with the lovely and intrepid heroine of the Fronde, Madame de Longueville.  Her activity was directed to the extinction of animosities, by bringing about marriages between the Montagues and Capulets of the Fronde—between the Prince de Condé, or his brother, and the niece of Mazarin, or between the three nieces of Mazarin and the sons of three noblemen who were distinguished leaders of the Fronde.  Though her projects were not realized, her conciliatory position enabled her to preserve all her friendships intact, and when the political tempest was over, she could assemble around her in her residence, in the Place Royal, the same society as before.  Madame de Sablé was now approaching her twelfth lustrum, and though the charms of her mind and character made her more sought after than most younger women, it is not surprising that, sharing as she did in the religious ideas of her time, the concerns of “salvation” seemed to become pressing.  A religious retirement, which did not exclude the reception of literary friends or the care for personal comforts, made the most becoming frame for age and diminished fortune.  Jansenism was then to ordinary Catholicism what Puseyism is to ordinary Church of Englandism in these days—it was a récherché form of piety unshared by the vulgar; and one sees at once that it must have special attractions for the précieuse.  Madame de Sablé, then, probably about 1655 or ’56, determined to retire to Port Royal, not because she was already devout, but because she hoped to become so; as, however, she wished to retain the pleasure of intercourse with friends who were still worldly, she built for herself a set of apartments at once distinct from the monastery and attached to it. ... "

" ... But she was much more than this: she was the valuable, trusted friend of noble women and distinguished men; she was the animating spirit of a society, whence issued a new form of French literature; she was the woman of large capacity and large heart, whom Pascal sought to please, to whom Arnauld submitted the Discourse prefixed to his “Logic,” and to whom La Rochefoucauld writes: “Vous savez que je ne crois que vous êtes sur de certains chapitres, et surtout sur les replis da cœur.”  The papers preserved by her secretary, Valant, show that she maintained an extensive correspondence with persons of various rank and character; that her pen was untiring in the interest of others; that men made her the depositary of their thoughts, women of their sorrows; that her friends were as impatient, when she secluded herself, as if they had been rival lovers and she a youthful beauty.  It is into her ear that Madame de Longueville pours her troubles and difficulties, and that Madame de la Fayette communicates her little alarms, lest young Count de St. Paul should have detected her intimacy with La Rochefoucauld. ... "

................................................................................................

"Was not the woman, who could unite the ease and grace indicated by this letter, with an intellect that men thought worth consulting on matters of reasoning and philosophy, with warm affections, untiring activity for others, no ambition as an authoress, and an insight into confitures and ragoûts, a rare combination?  No wonder that her salon at Port Royal was the favorite resort of such women as Madame de la Fayette, Madame de Montausier, Madame de Longueville, and Madame de Hautefort; and of such men as Pascal, La Rochefoucauld, Nicole, and Domat.  The collections of Valant contain papers which show what were the habitual subjects of conversation in this salon.  Theology, of course, was a chief topic; but physics and metaphysics had their turn, and still more frequently morals, taken in their widest sense.  There were “Conferences on Calvinism,” of which an abstract is preserved.  When Rohault invented his glass tubes to serve for the barometrical experiments in which Pascal had roused a strong interest, the Marquis de Sourdis entertained the society with a paper entitled “Why Water Mounts in a Glass Tube.”  Cartesianism was an exciting topic here, as well as everywhere else in France; it had its partisans and opponents, and papers were read containing “Thoughts on the Opinions of M. Descartes.”  These lofty matters were varied by discussions on love and friendship, on the drama, and on most of the things in heaven and earth which the philosophy of that day dreamt of.  Morals—generalizations on human affections, sentiments, and conduct—seem to have been the favorite theme; and the aim was to reduce these generalizations to their briefest form of expression, to give them the epigrammatic turn which made them portable in the memory.  This was the specialty of Madame de Sablé’s circle, and was, probably, due to her own tendency.  As the Hôtel de Rambouillet was the nursery of graceful letter-writing, and the Luxembourg of “portraits” and “characters,” so Madame de Sablé’s salon fostered that taste for the sententious style, to which we owe, probably, some of the best Pensées of Pascal, and certainly, the “Maxims” of La Rochefoucauld.  Madame de Sablé herself wrote maxims, which were circulated among her friends; and, after her death, were published by the Abbé d’Ailly.  They have the excellent sense and nobility of feeling which we should expect in everything of hers; but they have no stamp of genius or individual character: they are, to the “Maxims” of La Rochefoucauld, what the vase moulded in dull, heavy clay is to the vase which the action of fire has made light, brittle, and transparent.  She also wrote a treatise on Education, which is much praised by La Rochefoucauld and M. d’Andilly; but which seems no longer to be found: probably it was not much more elaborate than her so-called “Treatise on Friendship,” which is but a short string of maxims.  Madame de Sablé’s forte was evidently not to write herself, but to stimulate others to write; to show that sympathy and appreciation which are as genial and encouraging as the morning sunbeams.  She seconded a man’s wit with understanding—one of the best offices which womanly intellect has rendered to the advancement of culture; and the absence of originality made her all the more receptive toward the originality of others. 

"The manuscripts of Pascal show that many of the Pensées, which are commonly supposed to be raw materials for a great work on religion, were remodelled again and again, in order to bring them to the highest degree of terseness and finish, which would hardly have been the case if they had only been part of a quarry for a greater production.  Thoughts, which are merely collected as materials, as stones out of which a building is to be erected, are not cut into facets, and polished like amethysts or emeralds.  Since Pascal was from the first in the habit of visiting Madame de Sablé, at Port Royal, with his sister, Madame Périer (who was one of Madame de Sablé’s dearest friends), we may well suppose that he would throw some of his jewels among the large and small coin of maxims, which were a sort of subscription money there.  Many of them have an epigrammatical piquancy, which was just the thing to charm a circle of vivacious and intelligent women: they seem to come from a La Rochefoucauld who has been dipped over again in philosophy and wit, and received a new layer. ... "

"It is curious to see La Rochefoucauld’s nervous anxiety about presenting himself before the public as an author; far from rushing into print, he stole into it, and felt his way by asking private opinions.  Through Madame de Sablé he sent manuscript copies to various persons of taste and talent, both men and women, and many of the written opinions which he received in reply are still in existence.  The women generally find the maxims distasteful, but the men write approvingly.  These men, however, are for the most part ecclesiastics, who decry human nature that they may exalt divine grace.  The coincidence between Augustinianism or Calvinism, with its doctrine of human corruption, and the hard cynicism of the maxims, presents itself in quite a piquant form in some of the laudatory opinions on La Rochefoucauld. ... She not only assisted him, as we have seen, in getting criticisms, and carrying out the improvements suggested by them, but when the book was actually published she prepared a notice of it for the only journal then existing—the Journal des Savants.  This notice was originally a brief statement of the nature of the work, and the opinions which had been formed for and against it, with a moderate eulogy, in conclusion, on its good sense, wit, and insight into human nature.  But when she submitted it to La Rochefoucauld he objected to the paragraph which stated the adverse opinion, and requested her to alter it. ... "

" ... We have mentioned that Arnauld asked her opinion on the “Discourse” prefixed to his “Logic,” and we may conclude from this that he had found her judgment valuable in many other cases.  Moreover, the persecution of the Port Royalists had commenced, and she was uniting with Madame de Longueville in aiding and protecting her pious friends.  Moderate in her Jansenism, as in everything else, she held that the famous formulary denouncing the Augustinian doctrine, and declaring it to have been originated by Jansenius, should be signed without reserve, and, as usual, she had faith in conciliatory measures; but her moderation was no excuse for inaction.  She was at one time herself threatened with the necessity of abandoning her residence at Port Royal, and had thought of retiring to a religions house at Auteuil, a village near Paris.  She did, in fact, pass some summers there, and she sometimes took refuge with her brother, the Commandeur de Souvré, with Madame de Montausier, or Madame de Longueville.  The last was much bolder in her partisanship than her friend, and her superior wealth and position enabled her to give the Port Royalists more efficient aid.  Arnauld and Nicole resided five years in her house; it was under her protection that the translation of the New Testament was carried on and completed, and it was chiefly through her efforts that, in 1669, the persecution was brought to an end.  Madame de Sablé co-operated with all her talent and interest in the same direction; but here, as elsewhere, her influence was chiefly valuable in what she stimulated others to do, rather than in what she did herself.  It was by her that Madame de Longueville was first won to the cause of Port Royal; and we find this ardent brave woman constantly seeking the advice and sympathy of her more timid and self-indulgent, but sincere and judicious friend."

"It is worth while to notice, that with Madame de Sablé, as with some other remarkable French women, the part of her life which is richest in interest and results is that which is looked forward to by most of her sex with melancholy as the period of decline.  When between fifty and sixty, she had philosophers, wits, beauties, and saints clustering around her; and one naturally cares to know what was the elixir which gave her this enduring and general attraction.  We think it was, in a great degree, that well-balanced development of mental powers which gave her a comprehension of varied intellectual processes, and a tolerance for varied forms of character, which is still rarer in women than in men.  Here was one point of distinction between her and Madame de Longueville; and an amusing passage, which Sainte-Beuve has disinterred from the writings of the Abbé St. Pierre, so well serves to indicate, by contrast, what we regard as the great charm of Madame de Sablé’s mind, that we shall not be wandering from our subject in quoting it. 

"“I one day asked M. Nicole what was the character of Mme. de Longueville’s intellect; he told me it was very subtle and delicate in the penetration of character; but very small, very feeble, and that her comprehension was extremely narrow in matters of science and reasoning, and on all speculations that did not concern matters of sentiment.  For example, he added, I one day said to her that I could wager and demonstrate that there were in Paris at least two inhabitants who had the same number of hairs, although I could not point out who these two men were.  She told me I could never be sure of it until I had counted the hairs of these two men.  Here is my demonstration, I said: I take it for granted that the head which is most amply supplied with hairs has not more than 200,000, and the head which is least so has but one hair.  Now, if you suppose that 200,000 heads have each a different number of hairs, it necessarily follows that they have each one of the numbers of hairs which form the series from one to 200,000; for if it were supposed that there were two among these 200,000 who had the same number of hairs, I should have gained my wager.  Supposing, then, that these 200,000 inhabitants have all a different number of hairs, if I add a single inhabitant who has hairs, and who has not more than 200,000, it necessarily follows that this number of hairs, whatever it may be, will be contained in the series from one to 200,000, and consequently will be equal to the number of hairs on one of the previous 200,000 inhabitants.  Now as, instead of one inhabitant more than 200,000, there an nearly 800,000 inhabitants in Paris, you see clearly that there must be many heads which have an equal number of hairs, though I have not counted them.  Still Mme. de Longueville could never comprehend that this equality of hairs could be demonstrated, and always maintained that the only way of proving it was to count them.”"

It is interesting that George Eliot comprehended this, but her own work shows no clarity of thinking that must result from understanding mathematics; on the contrary, her writing is seldom graced with simplicity, and a sentence is most often convoluted. 

"Surely, the meet ardent admirer of feminine shallowness must have felt some irritation when he found himself arrested by this dead wall of stupidity, and have turned with relief to the larger intelligence of Madame de Sablé, who was not the less graceful, delicate, and feminine because she could follow a train of reasoning, or interest herself in a question of science.  In this combination consisted her pre-eminent charm: she was not a genius, not a heroine, but a woman whom men could more than love—whom they could make their friend, confidante, and counsellor; the sharer, not of their joys and sorrows only, but of their ideas and aims."

................................................................................................

"Such was Madame de Sablé, whose name is, perhaps, new to some of our readers, so far does it lie from the surface of literature and history.  We have seen, too, that she was only one among a crowd—one in a firmament of feminine stars which, when once the biographical telescope is turned upon them, appear scarcely less remarkable and interesting.  Now, if the reader recollects what was the position and average intellectual character of women in the high society of England during the reigns of James the First and the two Charleses—the period through which Madame de Sablé’s career extends—we think he will admit our position as to the early superiority of womanly development in France, and this fact, with its causes, has not merely an historical interest: it has an important bearing on the culture of women in the present day.  Women become superior in France by being admitted to a common fund of ideas, to common objects of interest with men; and this must ever be the essential condition at once of true womanly culture and of true social well-being.  We have no faith in feminine conversazioni, where ladies are eloquent on Apollo and Mars; though we sympathize with the yearning activity of faculties which, deprived of their proper material, waste themselves in weaving fabrics out of cobwebs.  Let the whole field of reality be laid open to woman as well as to man, and then that which is peculiar in her mental modification, instead of being, as it is now, a source of discord and repulsion between the sexes, will be found to be a necessary complement to the truth and beauty of life.  Then we shall have that marriage of minds which alone can blend all the hues of thought and feeling in one lovely rainbow of promise for the harvest of human happiness."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 21, 2021 - September 22, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Three Months in Weimar. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR

by George Eliot. 

Frasers Magazine for Town and Country, 

51: 306 (1855:June)

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

A very charming description of Weimar from travels of George Eliot, but impossible to find as a publication except in a collection of her works. It's not even included amongst what's published as a complete collection of her essays, for some reason. 

One tends to trust a name, and Delphi is such a name, but then one realises the trust was misplaced. Not only at least one work of George Eliot is missing from this supposedly complete collection of her works, but even in such a small essay as THREE MONTHS IN WEIMAR, several paragraphs are missing. Here quotes below are from two separate sources for this piece, namely, this work,

The Complete Works of George Eliot: 

Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays 

& Biography by George Eliot. 

Kindle Edition, 6581 pages

Published by e-artnow, 

July 2nd 2020, 

ASIN:- B08C8NLXQB

apart from Delphi. 

................................................................................................

To begin with, one is startled as one reads the opening. 

"IT was between three and four o’clock on a fine morning in August that, after a ten hours’ journey from Frankfort, I awoke at the Weimar station. No tipsiness can be more dead to all appeals than that, which comes from fitful draughts of sleep on a railway journey by night. To the disgust of your wakeful companions, you are totally insensible to the existence of your umbrella, and to the fact that your carpet bag is stowed under your seat, or that you have borrowed books and tucked them behind the cushion. ‘What’s the odds, so long as one can sleep?’ is your formule de la vie, and it is not until you have begun to shiver on the platform, in the early morning air that you become alive to property and its duties, i.e., to the necessity of keeping a fast grip upon it. Such was my condition when I reached the station at Weimar. ... "

If one has read George Eliot's works, one doesn't expect the touch of humour that seems more of a Jerome K Jerome than her! But the picture is familiar in the arriving at unearthly hours at a train station in Germany. And further, too. 

"The ride to the town thoroughly roused me, all the more because the glimpses I caught from the carriage window were in startling contrast with my preconceptions. The lines of houses looked rough and straggling, and were often interrupted by trees peeping out from the gardens behind. At last we stopped before the, Erbprinz, an inn of long standing in the heart of the town, and were ushered along heavy-looking in-and-out corridors, such as are found only in German inns, into rooms which overlooked a garden just like one you may see at the back of a farm-house in many an English village."

" ... A loud rumbling of vehicles may indeed be heard now and then; but the rumbling is loud not because the vehicles are many, but because the springs are few. ... "

" ... Our ideas were considerably modified when, in the evening, we found our way to the Belvedere chaussee, a splendid avenue of chesnut trees, two miles in length, reaching from the town to the summer residence of Belvedere; when we saw the Schloss, and discovered the labyrinthine beauties of the park; indeed, every day opened to us fresh charms in this quiet little valley and its environs. ... "

................................................................................................

Authors of her era didn't begin to use paragraph break when changing  topics, and simply ran on until the page was exhausted, didn't they! 

"First among all its attractions is the Park, which would be remarkably beautiful even among English parks, and it has one advantage over all these—namely, that it is without a fence. It runs up to the houses, and far out into the corn-fields and meadows, as if it had a “sweet will” of its own, like a river or a lake, and had not been planned and planted by human will. Through it flows the Ilm, not a clear stream, it must be confessed, but, like all water, as Novalis says, “an eye to the landscape.” Before we came to Weimar we had had dreams of boating on the Ilm, and we were not a little amused at the difference between this vision of our own and the reality. A few water-fowl are the only navigators of the river, and even they seem to confine themselves to one spot, as if they were there purely in the interest of the picturesque. The real extent of the park is small, but the walks are so ingeniously arranged, and the trees are so luxuriant and various, that it takes weeks to learn the turnings and windings by heart, so as no longer to have the sense of novelty. In the warm weather our great delight was the walk which follows the course of the Ilm, and is overarched by tall trees with patches of dark moss on their trunks, in rich contrast with the transparent green of the delicate leaves, through which the golden sunlight played, and chequered the walk before us. On one side of this walk the rocky ground rises to the height of twenty feet or more, and is clothed with mosses and rock-plants. On the other side there are, every now and then, openings, breaks in the continuity of shade, which show you a piece of meadow-land, with fine groups of trees; and at every such opening a seat is placed under the rock, where you may sit and chat away the sunny hours, or listen to those delicate sounds which one might fancy came from tiny bells worn on the garment of Silence to make us aware of her invisible presence. ... Sometimes we took our shady walk in the Stern, the oldest part of the park plantations, on the opposite side of the river, lingering on our way to watch the crystal brook which hurries on, like a foolish young maiden, to wed itself with the muddy Ilm. ... How little real knowledge of Goethe must the mind have that could wish to see him represented as a naked Apollo, with a Psyche at his knee! The execution is as feeble as the sentiment is false; the Apollo-Goethe is a caricature, and the Psyche is simply vulgar. The statue was executed under Bettina’s encouragement, in the hope that it would be bought by the King of Prussia; but a breach having taken place between her and her royal friend, a purchaser was sought in the Grand Duke of Weimar, who, after transporting it at enormous expense from Italy, wisely shut it up where it is seen only by the curious." 

And the paragraph is quoted just about over a half. 

................................................................................................

Another surprise is the description of beauty, not what a reader expects from George Eliot after reading several of her works. 

" ... Exquisitely beautiful were the graceful forms of the plane-trees, thrown in golden relief on a background of dark pines. Here we used to turn and turn again in the autumn afternoons, at first bright and warm, then sombre with low-lying purple clouds, and chill with winds that sent the leaves raining from the branches. The eye here welcomes, as a contrast, the white façade of a building looking like a small Greek temple, placed on the edge of a cliff, and you at once conclude it to be a bit of pure ornament, a device to set off the landscape; but you presently see a porter seated near the door of the basement story, beguiling the ennui of his sinecure by a book and a pipe, and you learn with surprise that this is another retreat for ducal dignity to unbend and philosophize in. Singularly ill-adapted to such a purpose it seems to beings not ducal. On the other side of the Ilm the park is bordered by the road leading to the little village of Ober Weimar, another sunny walk, which has the special attraction of taking one by Goethe’s Gartenhaus, his first residence at Weimar. Inside, this Gartenhaus is a homely sort of cottage, such as many an English nobleman’s gardener lives in; no furniture is left in it, and the family wish to sell it. Outside, its aspect became to us like that of a dear friend, whose irregular features and rusty clothes have a peculiar charm. It stands, with its bit of garden and orchard, on a pleasant slope, fronting the west; before it the park stretches one of its meadowy openings to the trees which fringe the Ilm, and between this meadow and the garden hedge lies the said road to Ober Weimar. A grove of weeping birches sometimes tempted us to turn out of this road up to the fields at the top of the slope, on which not only the Gartenhaus, but several other modest villas are placed. From this little height one sees to advantage the plantations of the park in their autumnal coloring; the town, with its steep-roofed church, and castle clock-tower, painted a gay green; the bushy line of the Belvedere chaussée, and Belvedere itself peeping on an eminence from its nest of trees. Here, too, was the place for seeing a lovely sunset, such a sunset as September sometimes gives us, when the western horizon is like a rippled sea of gold, sending over the whole hemisphere golden vapors, which, as they near the east, are subdued to a deep rose-color."

................................................................................................

"A more interesting place to visitors is the library, which occupies a large building not far from the Schloss. The principal Saal, surrounded by a broad gallery, is ornamented with some very excellent busts and some very bad portraits. Of the busts, the most remarkable is that of Glück, by Houdon—a striking specimen of the real in art. The sculptor has given every scar made by the small-pox; he has left the nose as pug and insignificant, and the mouth as common, as Nature made them; but then he has done what, doubtless, Nature also did—he has spread over those coarsely cut features the irradiation of genius. A specimen of the opposite style in art is Trippel’s bust of Goethe as the young Apollo, also fine in its way. It was taken when Goethe was in Italy; and in the “Italiänische Reise,” mentioning the progress of the bust, he says that he sees little likeness to himself, but is not discontented that he should go forth to the world as such a good-looking fellow—hübscher Bursch. ... "

................................................................................................

Funny how associations differ. 

" ... Markt, a cheerful square, made smart by a new Rath-haus. Twice a week it is crowded with stalls and country people; and it is the very pretty custom for the band to play in the balcony of the Rath-haus about twenty minutes every market-day to delight the ears of the peasantry. A head-dress worn by many of the old women, and here and there by a young one, is, I think, peculiar to Thuringia. ... Two houses in the Markt are pointed out as those from which Tetzel published his indulgences and Luther thundered against them; but it is difficult to one’s imagination to conjure up scenes of theological controversy in Weimar, where, from princes down to pastry-cooks, rationalism is taken as a matter of course."

And now, post WWII, Weimar is associated with the very short and fragile Weimar republic period. 

"Passing along the Schiller-strasse, a broad, pleasant street, one is thrilled by the inscription, Hier wohnte Schiller, over the door of a small house with casts in its bow-window. Mount up to the second story and you will see Schiller’s study very nearly as it was when he worked in it. It is a cheerful room with three windows, two towards the street and one looking on a little garden which divides his house from the neighboring one. The writing-table, which he notes as an important purchase in one of his letters to Körner, and in one of the drawers of which he used to keep rotten apples for the sake of their scent, stands near the last-named window, so that its light would fall on his left hand. ... The bedstead on which Schiller died has been removed into the study, from the small bedroom behind, which is now empty. A little table is placed close to the head of the bed, with his drinking-glass upon it, and on the wall above the bedstead there is a beautiful sketch of him lying dead. He used to occupy the whole of the second floor. It contains, besides the study and bedroom, an antechamber, now furnished with casts and prints on sale, in order to remunerate the custodiers of the house, and a salon tricked out, since his death, with a symbolical cornice, statues, and a carpet worked by the ladies of Weimar."

"Goethe’s house is much more important looking, but, to English eyes, far from being the palatial residence which might be expected, from the descriptions of German writers. The entrance hall is indeed rather imposing, with its statues in niches, and its broad staircase, but the rest of the house is not proportionately spacious and elegant. The only part of the house open to the public — and this only on a Friday — is the principal suite of rooms which contain his collection of casts, pictures, cameos, &c. This collection is utterly insignificant, except as having belonged to him, and one turns away from bad pictures and familiar casts, to linger over the manuscript of the wonderful Romische Elegien, written by himself in the Italian character. It is to be regretted that a large sum offered for this house by the German Diet, was refused by the Goethe family in the hope, it is said, of obtaining a still larger sum from that mythical English Croesus always ready to turn fabulous sums into dead capital, who haunts the imagination of continental people. One of the most fitting tributes a nation can pay to its great dead, is to make their habitation, like their works, a public possession, a shrine where affectionate reverence may be more vividly reminded that the being who has bequeathed to us immortal thoughts or immortal deeds, had to endure the daily struggle with the petty details, perhaps with the sordid cares, of this working-day world; and it is a sad pity that Goethe’s study, bedroom, and library, so fitted to call up that kind of sympathy, because they are preserved just as he left them, should be shut out from all but the specially privileged. We were happy enough to be amongst these — to look through the mist of rising tears at the dull study with its two small windows, and without a single object chosen for the sake of luxury or beauty; at the dark little bedroom with the bed on which he died, and the arm-chair where he took his morning coffee as he read; at the library with its common deal shelves, and books containing his own paper marks. In the presence of this hardy simplicity, the contrast suggests itself of the study at Abbotsford, with its elegant gothic fittings, its delicious easy chair, and its oratory of painted glass."

................................................................................................

With the exception of boards and personal description, thus sounds familiar. 

"We were very much amused at the privacy with which people keep their shops at Weimar. Some of them have no kind of enseigne — not so much as their names written up; and there is so much nonchalance towards customers, that one might suppose every shopkeeper was a salaried functionary employed by government. The distribution of commodities, too, is carried on according to a peculiar Weimarian logic: we bought our lemons at a seiler’s, or ropemaker’s, and should not have felt ourselves very unreasonable if we had asked for shoes at a stationer’s. As to competition, I should think a clever tradesman or artificer is almost as free from it at Weimar as Aesculapius or Vulcan in the days of old Olympus. Here is an illustration. Our landladv’s husband was called the ‘susser Rabenhorst,’ by way of distinguishing him from a brother of his who was the reverse of sweet. This Rabenhorst, who was not sweet, but who nevertheless dealt in sweets, for he was a confectioner, was so utter a rogue that any transaction with him was avoided almost as much as if he had been the Evil One himself, yet so clever a rogue that he always managed to keep on the windy side of the law. Nevertheless, he had so many dainties in the confectionery line — so viel Sussigkeiten und Leckerbissen — that people bent on giving a fine entertainment were at last constrained to say, ‘After all, I must go to Rabenhorst;’ and so he got abundant custom, in spite of general detestation."

................................................................................................

And her description of Germans, and of difference between the two societies is accurate, too. 

"At the beginning of August, when we arrived in Weimar, almost everyone was away —‘at the Baths,’ of course — except the tradespeople. As birds nidify in the spring, so Germans wash themselves in the summer; their waschungstrieb acts strongly only at a particular time of the year; during all the rest, apparently, a decanter and a sugar-basin or pie-dish, are an ample toilette service for them: We were quite contented, however, that it was not yet the Weimar season, fashionably speaking, since it was the very best time for enjoying something far better than Weimar gaieties — the lovely park and environs. It was pleasant, too, to see the good bovine bourgeoisie enjoying life in their quiet fashion. Unlike our English people, they take pleasure into their calculations, and seem regularly to set aside part of their time for recreation. It is understood that something is to be done in life besides business and housewifery: the women take their children and their knitting to the Erholung, or walk with their husbands to Belvedere, or in some other direction, where a cup of coffee is to be had. The Erholung, by the way, is a pretty garden, with shady walks, abundant seats, an orchestra, a ball-room, and a place for refreshments. The higher classes are subscribers and visitors here as well as the bourgeoisie; but there are several resorts of a similar kind frequented by the latter exclusively. The reader of Goethe will remember his little poem, Die Lustigen von Weimar, which still indicates the round of amusements in this simple capital: the walk to Belvedere or Tiefurt, the excursion to Jena, or some other trip, not made expensive by distance; the round game at cards; the dance; the theatre; and so many other enjoyments to be had by a people not bound to give dinner parties and ‘keep up a position.’ 

"It is charming to see how real an amusement the theatre is to the Weimar people. The greater number of places are occupied by subscribers, and there is no fuss about toilet or escort. The ladies come alone, and slip quietly into their places without need of “protection”—a proof of civilization perhaps more than equivalent to our preeminence in patent locks and carriage springs; and after the performance is over you may see the same ladies following their servants, with lanterns, through streets innocent of gas, in which an oil-lamp, suspended from a rope slung across from house to house, occasionally reveals to you the shafts of a cart or omnibus, conveniently placed for you to run upon them.  

"A yearly autumn festival at Weimar is the Vogelschiessen, or Bird-shooting; but the reader must not let his imagination wander at this word into fields and brakes. The bird here concerned is of wood, and the shooters, instead of wandering over breezy down and common, are shut up, day after day, in a room clouded with tobacco-smoke, that they may take their turn at shooting with the rifle from the window of a closet about the size of a sentinel’s box. However, this is a mighty enjoyment to the Thuringian yeomanry, and an occasion of profit to our friend Punch, and other itinerant performers; for while the Vogelschiessen lasts, a sort of fair is held in the field where the marksmen assemble.

"Among the quieter every-day pleasures of the Weimarians, perhaps the most delightful is the stroll on a bright afternoon or evening to the Duke’s summer residence of Belvedere, about two miles from Weimar. As I have said, a glorious avenue of chestnut-trees leads all the way from the town to the entrance of the grounds, which are open to all the world as much as to the Duke himself. Close to the palace and its subsidiary buildings there is an inn, for the accommodation of the good people who come to take dinner or any other meal here, by way of holiday-making. A sort of pavilion stands on a spot commanding a lovely view of Weimar and its valley, and here the Weimarians constantly come on summer and autumn evenings to smoke a cigar or drink a cup of coffee. In one wing of the little palace, which is made smart by wooden cupolas, with gilt pinnacles, there is a saloon, which I recommend to the imitation of tasteful people in their country-houses. It has no decoration but that of natural foliage: ivy is trained at regular intervals up the pure white walls, and all round the edge of the ceiling, so as to form pilasters and a cornice; ivy again, trained on trellis-work, forms a blind to the window, which looks towards the entrance-court; and beautiful ferns, arranged in tall baskets, are placed here and there against the walls. The furniture is of light cane-work. Another pretty thing here is the Natur-Theater—a theatre constructed with living trees, trimmed into walls and side scenes. We pleased ourselves for a little while with thinking that this was one of the places where Goethe acted in his own dramas, but we afterwards learned that it was not made until his acting days were over. The inexhaustible charm of Belvedere, however, is the grounds, which are laid out with a taste worthy of a first-rate landscape-gardener. The tall and graceful limes, plane-trees, and weeping birches, the little basins of water here and there, with fountains playing in the middle of them, and with a fringe of broad-leaved plants, or other tasteful bordering round them, the gradual descent towards the river, and the hill clothed with firs and pines on the opposite side, forming a fine dark background for the various and light foliage of the trees that ornament the gardens—all this we went again and again to enjoy, from the time when everything was of a vivid green until the Virginian creepers which festooned the silver stems of the birches were bright scarlet, and the touch of autumn had turned all the green to gold. One of the spots to linger in is at a semicircular seat against an artificial rock, on which are placed large glass globes of different colors. It is wonderful to see with what minute perfection the scenery around is painted in these globes. Each is like a pre-Raphaelite picture, with every little detail of gravelly walk, mossy bank, and delicately leaved, interlacing boughs presented in accurate miniature."

" ... We set out on one of the brightest and hottest mornings that August ever bestowed, and it required some resolution to trudge along the shadeless chaussée, which formed the first two or three miles of our way. One compensating pleasure was the sight of the beautiful mountain-ash-trees in full berry, which, alternately with cherry-trees, border the road for a considerable distance. At last we rested from our broiling walk on the borders of a glorious pine-wood, so extensive that the trees in the distance form a complete wall with their trunks, and so give one a twilight very welcome on a summer’s noon. ... Presently we passed out of the pine-wood into one of limes, beeches, and other trees of transparent and light foliage, and from this again we emerged into the open space of the Ettersburg Park in front of the Schloss, which is finely placed on an eminence commanding a magnificent view of the far-reaching woods. ... The Schloss, which is a favorite residence of the Grand Duke, is a house of very moderate size, and no pretension of any kind. Its stuccoed walls, and doors long unacquainted with fresh paint, would look distressingly shabby to the owner of a villa at Richmond or Twickenham; but much beauty is procured here at slight expense, by the tasteful disposition of creepers on the balustrades, and pretty vases full of plants ranged along the steps, or suspended in the little piazza beneath them. ... "

Another time I will tell what we saw of these recreations, rural and theatrical; of lovely walks along chaussees bordered by plum-trees laden with purple fruit, or by the mountain ash, lifting its bunches of coral against the sky, to country seats where no gate or padlock obstructs your entrance, and no gardener haunts you, expectant of a fee, and to happy-looking villages —"

"Each with its little patch of fields 

"And little lot of hills; 

"of excursions to the classic 

"Jena and the romantic 

"Ilmenau; and, for a variety, 

"of Weimar fairs and target-shooting,  

"and Wagner operas 

"presided over by Liszt."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 17, 2021 - September 17, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Most amusing, until it turns disgusting. 

As George Eliot remarks, 

"" ... Imbecility that is not even meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes simply odious.""

................................................................................................

"Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity. Let him shun practical extremes and be ultra only in what is purely theoretic; let him be stringent on predestination, but latitudinarian on fasting; unflinching in insisting on the Eternity of punishment, but diffident of curtailing the substantial comforts of Time; ardent and imaginative on the pro-millennial advent of Christ, but cold and cautious toward every other infringement of the status quo. Let him fish for souls not with the bait of inconvenient singularity, but with the drag-net of comfortable conformity. Let him be hard and literal in his interpretation only when he wants to hurl texts at the heads of unbelievers and adversaries, but when the letter of the Scriptures presses too closely on the genteel Christianity of the nineteenth century, let him use his spiritualizing alembic and disperse it into impalpable ether. Let him preach less of Christ than of Antichrist; let him be less definite in showing what sin is than in showing who is the Man of Sin, less expansive on the blessedness of faith than on the accursedness of infidelity. Above all, let him set up as an interpreter of prophecy, and rival Moore’s Almanack in the prediction of political events, tickling the interest of hearers who are but moderately spiritual by showing how the Holy Spirit has dictated problems and charades for their benefit, and how, if they are ingenious enough to solve these, they may have their Christian graces nourished by learning precisely to whom they may point as the “horn that had eyes,” “the lying prophet,” and the “unclean spirits.” In this way he will draw men to him by the strong cords of their passions, made reason-proof by being baptized with the name of piety. In this way he may gain a metropolitan pulpit; the avenues to his church will be as crowded as the passages to the opera; he has but to print his prophetic sermons and bind them in lilac and gold, and they will adorn the drawing-room table of all evangelical ladies, who will regard as a sort of pious “light reading” the demonstration that the prophecy of the locusts whose sting is in their tail, is fulfilled in the fact of the Turkish commander’s having taken a horse’s tail for his standard, and that the French are the very frogs predicted in the Revelations."

Amusing, because one is likely to assume that all this came to pass in U.S. soon post '80s, not realising it was going on well before George Eliot wrote - and of course, it was not restricted to either side of Atlantic. What television did was merely to provide some charlatans with an instrument to instant millionairehood, via the same tools that others before them had used along with speech and printed pamphlets, thus with only a moderate comfortable life based on fraud. 

And she explains their success. 

"Pleasant to the clerical flesh under such circumstances is the arrival of Sunday!  Somewhat at a disadvantage during the week, in the presence of working-day interests and lay splendors, on Sunday the preacher becomes the cynosure of a thousand eyes, and predominates at once over the Amphitryon with whom he dines, and the most captious member of his church or vestry. He has an immense advantage over all other public speakers.  The platform orator is subject to the criticism of hisses and groans. Counsel for the plaintiff expects the retort of counsel for the defendant. The honorable gentleman on one side of the House is liable to have his facts and figures shown up by his honorable friend on the opposite side.  Even the scientific or literary lecturer, if he is dull or incompetent, may see the best part of his audience quietly slip out one by one.  But the preacher is completely master of the situation: no one may hiss, no one may depart. Like the writer of imaginary conversations, he may put what imbecilities he pleases into the mouths of his antagonists, and swell with triumph when he has refuted them. He may riot in gratuitous assertions, confident that no man will contradict him; he may exercise perfect free-will in logic, and invent illustrative experience; he may give an evangelical edition of history with the inconvenient facts omitted:—all this he may do with impunity, certain that those of his hearers who are not sympathizing are not listening.  For the Press has no band of critics who go the round of the churches and chapels, and are on the watch for a slip or defect in the preacher, to make a “feature” in their article: the clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers. For this reason, at least, it is well that they do not always allow their discourses to be merely fugitive, but are often induced to fix them in that black and white in which they are open to the criticism of any man who has the courage and patience to treat them with thorough freedom of speech and pen."

................................................................................................

"It is because we think this criticism of clerical teaching desirable for the public good that we devote some pages to Dr. Cumming. He is, as every one knows, a preacher of immense popularity, and of the numerous publications in which he perpetuates his pulpit labors, all circulate widely, and some, according to their title-page, have reached the sixteenth thousand. Now our opinion of these publications is the very opposite of that given by a newspaper eulogist: we do not “believe that the repeated issues of Dr. Cumming’s thoughts are having a beneficial effect on society,” but the reverse; and hence, little inclined as we are to dwell on his pages, we think it worth while to do so, for the sake of pointing out in them what we believe to be profoundly mistaken and pernicious. Of Dr. Cumming personally we know absolutely nothing: our acquaintance with him is confined to a perusal of his works, our judgment of him is founded solely on the manner in which he has written himself down on his pages. We know neither how he looks nor how he lives. ... "

"Dr. Cumming’s mind is evidently not of the pietistic order. There is not the slightest leaning toward 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.

"His style is in perfect correspondence with this habit of mind. Though diffuse, as that of all preachers must be, it has rapidity of movement, perfect clearness, and some aptness of illustration.  He has much of that literary talent which makes a good journalist—the power of beating out an idea over a large space, and of introducing far-fetched à propos. His writings have, indeed, no high merit: they have no originality or force of thought, no striking felicity of presentation, no depth of emotion. ... Everywhere there is commonplace cleverness, nowhere a spark of rare thought, of lofty sentiment, or pathetic tenderness. We feel ourselves in company with a voluble retail talker, whose language is exuberant but not exact, and to whom we should never think of referring for precise information or for well-digested thought and experience.  His argument continually slides into wholesale assertion and vague declamation, and in his love of ornament he frequently becomes tawdry. For example, he tells us (“Apoc. Sketches,” p. 265) that “Botany weaves around the cross her amaranthine garlands; and Newton comes from his starry home—Linnæus from his flowery resting-place—and Werner and Hutton from their subterranean graves at the voice of Chalmers, to acknowledge that all they learned and elicited in their respective provinces has only served to show more clearly that Jesus of Nazareth is enthroned on the riches of the universe:”—and so prosaic an injunction to his hearers as that they should choose a residence within an easy distance of church, is magnificently draped by him as an exportation to prefer a house “that basks in the sunshine of the countenance of God.” ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts, as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. They become accustomed to reject the more direct evidence in favor of the less direct, and where adverse evidence reaches demonstration they must resort to devices and expedients in order to explain away contradiction. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood. 

"We have entered into this digression for the sake of mitigating the inference that is likely to be drawn from that characteristic of Dr. Cumming’s works to which we have pointed. He is much in the same intellectual condition as that professor of Padua; who, in order to disprove Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s satellites, urged that as there were only seven metals there could not be more than seven planets—a mental condition scarcely compatible with candor. And we may well suppose that if the professor had held the belief in seven planets, and no more, to be a necessary condition of salvation, his mental condition would have been so dazed that even if he had consented to look through Galileo’s telescope, his eyes would have reported in accordance with his inward alarms rather than with the external fact. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... We quote from the “Manual of Christian Evidences,” p. 62. 

"“Some of the gods which the heathen worshipped were among the greatest monsters that ever walked the earth. Mercury was a thief; and because he was an expert thief he was enrolled among the gods. Bacchus was a mere sensualist and drunkard, and therefore he was enrolled among the gods. Venus was a dissipated and abandoned courtesan, and therefore she was enrolled among the goddesses. Mars was a savage, that gloried in battle and in blood, and therefore he was deified and enrolled among the gods.” 

"Does Dr. Cumming believe the purport of these sentences? If so, this passage is worth handing down as his theory of the Greek myth—as a specimen of the astounding ignorance which was possible in a metropolitan preacher, a.d. 1854. And if he does not believe them . . . The inference must then be, that he thinks delicate veracity about the ancient Greeks is not a Christian virtue, but only a “splendid sin” of the unregenerate. ... "

Disgusting guy, indeed!

................................................................................................

" ... For example, on the question of the genuineness and authenticity of the New Testament writing’s, he says: “If, therefore, at a period long subsequent to the death of Christ, a number of men had appeared in the world, drawn up a book which they christened by the name of the Holy Scripture, and recorded these things which appear in it as facts when they were only the fancies of their own imagination, surely the Jews would have instantly reclaimed that no such events transpired, that no such person as Jesus Christ appeared in their capital, and that their crucifixion of Him, and their alleged evil treatment of his apostles, were mere fictions.” ... "

It was Roman empire who was in charge, and disciples were as Jewish as their teacher. 

" ... 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. Dr. Cumming’s infidel is a man who, because his life is vicious, tries to convince himself that there is no God, and that Christianity is an imposture, but who is all the while secretly conscious that he is opposing the truth, and cannot help “letting out” admissions “that the Bible is the Book of God.” We are favored with the following “Creed of the Infidel:” 

"“I believe that there is no God, but that matter is God, and God is matter; and that it is no matter whether there is any God or not. I believe also that the world was not made, but that the world made itself, or that it had no beginning, and that it will last forever. I believe that man is a beast; that the soul is the body, and that the body is the soul; and that after death there is neither body nor soul.  I believe there is no religion, that natural religion is the only religion, and all religion unnatural. I believe not in Moses; I believe in the first philosophers.  I believe not in the evangelists; I believe in Chubb, Collins, Toland, Tindal, and Hobbes. I believe in Lord Bolingbroke, and I believe not in St. Paul. I believe not in revelation; I believe in tradition; I believe in the Talmud; I believe in the Koran; I believe not in the Bible. I believe in Socrates; I believe in Confucius; I believe in Mahomet; I believe not in Christ. And lastly, I believe in all unbelief.”"

" ... Like the Catholic preacher who, after throwing down his cap and apostrophizing it as Luther, turned to his audience and said, “You see this heretical fellow has not a word to say for himself,” Dr. Cumming, having drawn his ugly portrait of the infidel, and put arguments of a convenient quality into his mouth, finds a “short and easy method” of confounding this “croaking frog.”"

................................................................................................

" ... And why should Dr. Cumming suppose, as we shall presently find him supposing, that men of science hesitate to accept the Bible, because it appears to contradict their discoveries? By his own statement, that appearance of contradiction does not exist; on the contrary, it has been demonstrated that the Bible precisely agrees with their discoveries. Perhaps, however, in saying of the Bible that its “slightest intimations of scientific principles or natural phenomena have in every instance been demonstrated to be exactly and strictly true,” Dr. Cumming merely means to imply that theologians have found out a way of explaining the biblical text so that it no longer, in their opinion, appears to be in contradiction with the discoveries of science. One of two things, therefore: either he uses language without the slightest appreciation of its real meaning, or the assertions he makes on one page are directly contradicted by the arguments he urges on another.

"Dr. Cumming’s principles—or, we should rather say, confused notions—of biblical interpretation, as exhibited in this volume, are particularly significant of his mental calibre.  He says (“Church before the Flood,” p. 93): “Men of science, who are full of scientific investigation and enamored of scientific discovery, will hesitate before they accept a book which, they think, contradicts the plainest and the most unequivocal disclosures they have made in the bowels of the earth, or among the stars of the sky.  To all these we answer, as we have already indicated, there is not the least dissonance between God’s written book and the most mature discoveries of geological science.  One thing, however, there may be: there may be a contradiction between the discoveries of geology and our preconceived interpretations of the Bible.  But this is not because the Bible is wrong, but because our interpretation is wrong.”  (The italics in all cases are our own.)"

................................................................................................

" ... Imbecility that is not even meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes simply odious."

................................................................................................

" ... Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan; but reassure yourselves! Dr. Cumming has been created.  Antichrist is enthroned in the Vatican; but he is stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown-court. The personality of Satan, as might be expected, is a very prominent tenet in Dr. Cumming’s discourses; those who doubt it are, he thinks, “generally specimens of the victims of Satan as a triumphant seducer;” and it is through the medium of this doctrine that he habitually contemplates Roman Catholics. They are the puppets of which the devil holds the strings. It is only exceptionally that he speaks of them as fellow-men, acted on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as himself; his rule is to hold them up to his hearers as foredoomed instruments of Satan and vessels of wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are “no shams,” that they are “thoroughly in earnest”—that is because they are inspired by hell, because they are under an “infra-natural” influence. If their missionaries are found wherever Protestant missionaries go, this zeal in propagating their faith is not in them a consistent virtue, as it is in Protestants, but a “melancholy fact,” affording additional evidence that they are instigated and assisted by the devil. And Dr. Cumming is inclined to think that they work miracles, because that is no more than might be expected from the known ability of Satan who inspires them. ... "

................................................................................................

"This leads us to mention another conspicuous characteristic of Dr. Cumming’s teaching—the absence of genuine charity.  It is true that he makes large profession of tolerance and liberality within a certain circle; he exhorts Christians to unity; he would have Churchmen fraternize with Dissenters, and exhorts these two branches of God’s family to defer the settlement of their differences till the millennium.  But the love thus taught is the love of the clan, which is the correlative of antagonism to the rest of mankind.  It is not sympathy and helpfulness toward men as men, but toward men as Christians, and as Christians in the sense of a small minority.  Dr. Cumming’s religion may demand a tribute of love, but it gives a charter to hatred; it may enjoin charity, but it fosters all uncharitableness.  If I believe that God tells me to love my enemies, but at the same time hates His own enemies and requires me to have one will with Him, which has the larger scope, love or hatred?  And we refer to those pages of Dr. Cumming’s in which he opposes Roman Catholics, Puseyites, and infidels—pages which form the larger proportion of what he has published—for proof that the idea of God which both the logic and spirit of his discourses keep present to his hearers, is that of a God who hates his enemies, a God who teaches love by fierce denunciations of wrath—a God who encourages obedience to his precepts by elaborately revealing to us that his own government is in precise opposition to those precepts.  We know the usual evasions on this subject.  We know Dr. Cumming would say that even Roman Catholics are to be loved and succored as men; that he would help even that “unclean spirit,” Cardinal Wiseman, out of a ditch.  But who that is in the slightest degree acquainted with the action of the human mind will believe that any genuine and large charity can grow out of an exercise of love which is always to have an arrière-pensée of hatred?  Of what quality would be the conjugal love of a husband who loved his spouse as a wife, but hated her as a woman? ... "

................................................................................................

" ... He assures us that he does not “delight to dwell on the misery of the lost:” and we believe him.  That misery does not seem to be a question of feeling with him, either one way or the other. He does not merely resign himself to the awful mystery of eternal punishment; he contends for it. Do we object, he asks, [90] to everlasting happiness? then why object to everlasting misery?—reasoning which is perhaps felt to be cogent by theologians who anticipate the everlasting happiness for themselves, and the everlasting misery for their neighbors.

"The compassion of some Christians has been glad to take refuge in the opinion that the Bible allows the supposition of annihilation for the impenitent; but the rigid sequence of Dr. Cumming’s reasoning will not admit of this idea. He sees that flax is made into linen, and linen into paper; that paper, when burned, partly ascends as smoke and then again descends in rain, or in dust and carbon. “Not one particle of the original flax is lost, although there may be not one particle that has not undergone an entire change: annihilation is not, but change of form is. It will be thus with our bodies at the resurrection. The death of the body means not annihilation. Not one feature of the face will be annihilated.” Having established the perpetuity of the body by this close and clear analogy, namely, that as there is a total change in the particles of flax in consequence of which they no longer appear as flax, so there will not be a total change in the particles of the human body, but they will reappear as the human body, he does not seem to consider that the perpetuity of the body involves the perpetuity of the soul, but requires separate evidence for this, and finds such evidence by begging the very question at issue—namely, by asserting that the text of the Scripture implies “the perpetuity of the punishment of the lost, and the consciousness of the punishment which they endure.” Yet it is drivelling like this which is listened to and lauded as eloquence by hundreds, and which a Doctor of Divinity can believe that he has his “reward as a saint” for preaching and publishing!"

................................................................................................

" ... Now, Dr. Cumming invariably assumes that, in fulminating against those who differ from him, he is standing on a moral elevation to which they are compelled reluctantly to look up; that his theory of motives and conduct is in its loftiness and purity a perpetual rebuke to their low and vicious desires and practice.  It is time he should be told that the reverse is the fact; that there are men who do not merely cast a superficial glance at his doctrine, and fail to see its beauty or justice, but who, after a close consideration of that doctrine, pronounce it to be subversive of true moral development, and therefore positively noxious.  Dr. Cumming is fond of showing up the teaching of Romanism, and accusing it of undermining true morality: it is time he should be told that there is a large body, both of thinkers and practical men, who hold precisely the same opinion of his own teaching—with this difference, that they do not regard it as the inspiration of Satan, but as the natural crop of a human mind where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic beliefs."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 21, 2021 - September 22, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

German Wit: Henry Heine. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"“Nothing,” says Goethe, “is more significant of men’s character than what they find laughable.” The truth of this observation would perhaps have been more apparent if he had said culture instead of character. The last thing in which the cultivated man can have community with the vulgar is their jocularity; and we can hardly exhibit more strikingly the wide gulf which separates him from them, than by comparing the object which shakes the diaphragm of a coal-heaver with the highly complex pleasure derived from a real witticism. That any high order of wit is exceedingly complex, and demands a ripe and strong mental development, has one evidence in the fact that we do not find it in boys at all in proportion to their manifestation of other powers.  Clever boys generally aspire to the heroic and poetic rather than the comic, and the crudest of all their efforts are their jokes. ... "

So far, true; but then George Eliot says - 

" ... It seems to have been the same with the boyhood of the human race. The history and literature of the ancient Hebrews gives the idea of a people who went about their business and their pleasure as gravely as a society of beavers; the smile and the laugh are often mentioned metaphorically, but the smile is one of complacency, the laugh is one of scorn. Nor can we imagine that the facetious element was very strong in the Egyptians; no laughter lurks in the wondering eyes and the broad calm lips of their statues. Still less can the Assyrians have had any genius for the comic: the round eyes and simpering satisfaction of their ideal faces belong to a type which is not witty, but the cause of wit in others. The fun of these early races was, we fancy, of the after-dinner kind—loud-throated laughter over the wine-cup, taken too little account of in sober moments to enter as an element into their Art, and differing as much from the laughter of a Chamfort or a Sheridan as the gastronomic enjoyment of an ancient Briton, whose dinner had no other “removes” than from acorns to beech-mast and back again to acorns, differed from the subtle pleasures of the palate experienced by his turtle-eating descendant. ... "

And even if she were correct in all of that, which is unlikely, she's definitely incorrect in using blinders to not look at other, far more ancient civilisations, from India and China to those who built various megalithic structures around the globe, and more. Indian ancient literature is certainly far richer, and is far from devoid of humour. 

 ................................................................................................

"Humor is of earlier growth than Wit, and it is in accordance with this earlier growth that it has more affinity with the poetic tendencies, while Wit is more nearly allied to the ratiocinative intellect. Humor draws its materials from situations and characteristics; Wit seizes on unexpected and complex relations. Humor is chiefly representative and descriptive; it is diffuse, and flows along without any other law than its own fantastic will; or it flits about like a will-of-the-wisp, amazing us by its whimsical transitions. Wit is brief and sudden, and sharply defined as a crystal; it does not make pictures, it is not fantastic; but it detects an unsuspected analogy or suggests a startling or confounding inference. Every one who has had the opportunity of making the comparison will remember that the effect produced on him by some witticisms is closely akin to the effect produced on him by subtle reasoning which lays open a fallacy or absurdity, and there are persons whose delight in such reasoning always manifests itself in laughter. This affinity of wit with ratiocination is the more obvious in proportion as the species of wit is higher and deals less with less words and with superficialities than with the essential qualities of things. Some of Johnson’s most admirable witticisms consist in the suggestion of an analogy which immediately exposes the absurdity of an action or proposition; and it is only their ingenuity, condensation, and instantaneousness which lift them from reasoning into Wit—they are reasoning raised to a higher power. On the other hand, Humor, in its higher forms, and in proportion as it associates itself with the sympathetic emotions, continually passes into poetry: nearly all great modern humorists may be called prose poets."

................................................................................................

" ... Here, as elsewhere, the German shows the absence of that delicate perception, that sensibility to gradation, which is the essence of tact and taste, and the necessary concomitant of wit. All his subtlety is reserved for the region of metaphysics. For Identität in the abstract no one can have an acuter vision, but in the concrete he is satisfied with a very loose approximation. He has the finest nose for Empirismus in philosophical doctrine, but the presence of more or less tobacco smoke in the air he breathes is imperceptible to him. To the typical German—Vetter Michel—it is indifferent whether his door-lock will catch, whether his teacup be more or less than an inch thick; whether or not his book have every other leaf unstitched; whether his neighbor’s conversation be more or less of a shout; whether he pronounce b or p, t or d; whether or not his adored one’s teeth be few and far between.  He has the same sort of insensibility to gradations in time. A German comedy is like a German sentence: you see no reason in its structure why it should ever come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrangement of Providence rather than of the author.  We have heard Germans use the word Langeweile, the equivalent for ennui, and we have secretly wondered what it can be that produces ennui in a German. Not the longest of long tragedies, for we have known him to pronounce that höchst fesselnd (so enchaining!); not the heaviest of heavy books, for he delights in that as gründlich (deep, Sir, deep!); not the slowest of journeys in a Postwagen, for the slower the horses, the more cigars he can smoke before he reaches his journey’s end. German ennui must be something as superlative as Barclay’s treble X, which, we suppose, implies an extremely unknown quantity of stupefaction."

" ... we can also believe that Germany will, one day, yield a crop of wits and humorists. 

"Perhaps there is already an earnest of that future crop in the existence of Heinrich Heine, a German born with the present century, who, to Teutonic imagination, sensibility, and humor, adds an amount of esprit that would make him brilliant among the most brilliant of Frenchmen. True, this unique German wit is half a Hebrew; but he and his ancestors spent their youth in German air, and were reared on Wurst and Sauerkraut, so that he is as much a German as a pheasant is an English bird, or a potato an Irish vegetable. But whatever else he may be, Heine is one of the most remarkable men of this age: no echo, but a real voice, and therefore, like all genuine things in this world, worth studying; a surpassing lyric poet, who has uttered our feelings for us in 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. ... "

................................................................................................

"“I first saw the light on the banks of that lovely stream, where Folly grows on the green hills, and in autumn is plucked, pressed, poured into casks, and sent into foreign lands. Believe me, I yesterday heard some one utter folly which, in anno 1811, lay in a bunch of grapes I then saw growing on the Johannisberg. . . . Mon Dieu! if I had only such faith in me that I could remove mountains, the Johannisberg would be the very mountain I should send for wherever I might be; but as my faith is not so strong, imagination must help me, and it transports me at once to the lovely Rhine. . . . I am again a child, and playing with other children on the Schlossplatz, at Düsseldorf on the Rhine. Yes, madam, there was I born; and I note this expressly, in case, after my death, seven cities—Schilda, Krähwinkel, Polkwitz, Bockum, Dülken, Göttingen, and Schöppenstädt—should contend for the honor of being my birthplace. ... I went home and wept, and wailed out, ‘The Elector has abdicated!’ In vain my mother took a world of trouble to explain the thing to me. I knew what I knew; I was not to be persuaded, but went crying to bed, and in the night dreamed that the world was at an end.”

"“The next day the world was again all in order, and we had school as before, and things were got by heart as before—the Roman emperors, chronology, the nouns in im, the verba irregularia, Greek, Hebrew, geography, mental arithmetic!—heavens! my head is still dizzy with it—all must be learned by heart! And a great deal of this came very conveniently for me in after life. For if I had not known the Roman kings by heart, it would subsequently have been quite indifferent to me whether Niebuhr had proved or had not proved that they never really existed. . . . But oh! the trouble I had at school with the endless dates. And with arithmetic it was still worse. What I understood best was subtraction, for that has a very practical rule: ‘Four can’t be taken from three, therefore I must borrow one.’ But I advise every one in such a case to borrow a few extra pence, for no one can tell what may happen. . . . As for Latin, you have no idea, madam, what a complicated affair it is. The Romans would never have found time to conquer the world if they had first had to learn Latin. Luckily for them, they already knew in their cradles what nouns have their accusative in im. I, on the contrary, had to learn them by heart in the sweat of my brow; nevertheless, it is fortunate for me that I know them . . . and the fact that I have them at my finger-ends if I should ever happen to want them suddenly, affords me much inward repose and consolation in many troubled hours of life. . . . Of Greek I will not say a word, I should get too much irritated. The monks in the Middle Ages were not so far wrong when they maintained that Greek was an invention of the devil. God knows the suffering I endured over it. . . . With Hebrew it went somewhat better, for I had always a great liking for the Jews, though to this very hour they crucify my good name; but I could never get on so far in Hebrew as my watch, which had much familiar intercourse with pawnbrokers, and in this way contracted many Jewish habits—for example, it wouldn’t go on Saturdays.”"

................................................................................................

" ...So commerce was at length given up for law, the study of which he began in 1819 at the University of Bonn. He had already published some poems in the corner of a newspaper, and among them was one on Napoleon, the object of his youthful enthusiasm. This poem, he says in a letter to St. Réné Taillandier, was written when he was only sixteen. It is still to be found in the “Buch der Lieder” under the title “Die Grenadiere,” and it proves that even in its earliest efforts his genius showed a strongly specific character. ..."

"In 1820 Heine left Bonn for Göttingen. ... He remained between two and three years at Berlin, and the society he found there seems to have made these years an important epoch in his culture. He was one of the youngest members of a circle which assembled at the house of the poetess Elise von Hohenhausen, the translator of Byron—a circle which included Chamisso, Varnhagen, and Rahel (Varnhagen’s wife). ... "

"It was apparently during this residence in Berlin that Heine united himself with the Lutheran Church. He would willingly, like many of his friends, he tells us, have remained free from all ecclesiastical ties if the authorities there had not forbidden residence in Prussia, and especially in Berlin, to every one who did not belong to one of the positive religions recognized by the State."

"At the same period, too, Heine became acquainted with Hegel.  In his lately published “Geständnisse” (Confessions) he throws on Hegel’s influence over him the blue light of demoniacal wit, and confounds us by the most bewildering double-edged sarcasms; but that influence seems to have been at least more wholesome than the one which produced the mocking retractations of the “Geständnisse.” Through all his self-satire, we discern that in those days he had something like real earnestness and enthusiasm, which are certainly not apparent in his present theistic confession of faith. 

"“On the whole, I never felt a strong enthusiasm for this philosophy, and conviction on the subject was out of question. I never was an abstract thinker, and I accepted the synthesis of the Hegelian doctrine without demanding any proof; since its consequences flattered my vanity. ... "

"“To speak frankly, I seldom understood him, and only arrived at the meaning of his words by subsequent reflection. I believe he wished not to be understood; and hence his practice of sprinkling his discourse with modifying parentheses; hence, perhaps, his preference for persons of whom he knew that they did not understand him, and to whom he all the more willingly granted the honor of his familiar acquaintance. Thus every one in Berlin wondered at the intimate companionship of the profound Hegel with the late Heinrich Beer, a brother of Giacomo Meyerbeer, who is universally known by his reputation, and who has been celebrated by the cleverest journalists. This Beer, namely Heinrich, was a thoroughly stupid fellow, and indeed was afterward actually declared imbecile by his family, and placed under guardianship, because instead of making a name for himself in art or in science by means of his great fortune, he squandered his money on childish trifles; and, for example, one day bought six thousand thalers’ worth of walking-sticks. ... ‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘is there, then, no happy place above, where virtue is rewarded after death?’  But he, staring at me with his pale eyes, said, cuttingly, ‘So you want a bonus for having taken care of your sick mother, and refrained from poisoning your worthy brother?’ At these words he looked anxiously round, but appeared immediately set at rest when he observed that it was only Heinrich Beer, who had approached to invite him to a game at whist.”

"In 1823 Heine returned to Göttingen to complete his career as a law-student, and this time he gave evidence of advanced mental maturity, not only by producing many of the charming poems subsequently included in the “Reisebilder,” but also by prosecuting his professional studies diligently enough to leave Göttingen, in 1825, as Doctor juris. ... Occasionally an inhabitant more literary than usual would point out this young man to his companion as Heinrich Heine; but in general the young poet had not to endure the inconveniences of being a lion. His poems were devoured, but he was not asked to devour flattery in return. ... Not, however, from another persecution of Genius—nervous headaches, which some persons, we are told, regarded as an improbable fiction, intended as a pretext for raising a delicate white hand to his forehead. It is probable that the sceptical persons alluded to were themselves untroubled with nervous headaches, and that their hands were not delicate. ... "

"It was, perhaps, in these Hamburg days that Heine paid the visit to Goethe, of which he gives us this charming little picture: 

"“When I visited him in Weimar, and stood before him, I involuntarily glanced at his side to see whether the eagle was not there with the lightning in his beak. I was nearly speaking Greek to him; but, as I observed that he understood German, I stated to him in German that the plums on the road between Jena and Weimar were very good. I had for so many long winter nights thought over what lofty and profound things I would say to Goethe, if ever I saw him. And when I saw him at last, I said to him, that the Saxon plums were very good!  And Goethe smiled.”

"During the next few years Heine produced the most popular of all his works—those which have won him his place as the greatest of living German poets and humorists. Between 1826 and 1829 appeared the four volumes of the “Reisebilder” (Pictures of Travel) and the “Buch der Lieder” (Book of Songs), a volume of lyrics, of which it is hard to say whether their greatest charm is the lightness and finish of their style, their vivid and original imaginativeness, or their simple, pure sensibility. In his “Reisebilder” Heine carries us with him to the Hartz, to the isle of Norderney, to his native town Düsseldorf, to Italy, and to England, sketching scenery and character, now with the wildest, most fantastic humor, now with the finest idyllic sensibility—letting his thoughts wander from poetry to politics, from criticism to dreamy reverie, and blending fun, imagination, reflection, and satire in a sort of exquisite, ever-varying shimmer, like the hues of the opal."

"“It is certainly a frightful injustice to pronounce sentence of condemnation on an entire people. But with regard to the English, momentary disgust might betray me into this injustice; and on looking at the mass I easily forget the many brave and noble men who distinguished themselves by intellect and love of freedom.  But these, especially the British poets, were always all the more glaringly in contrast with the rest of the nation; they were isolated martyrs to their national relations; and, besides, great geniuses do not belong to the particular land of their birth: they scarcely belong to this earth, the Golgotha of their sufferings. The mass—the English blockheads, God forgive me!—are hateful to me in my inmost soul; and I often regard them not at all as my fellow-men, but as miserable automata—machines, whose motive power is egoism. In these moods, it seems to me as if I heard the whizzing wheelwork by which they think, feel, reckon, digest, and pray: their praying, their mechanical Anglican church-going, with the gilt Prayer-book under their arms, their stupid, tiresome Sunday, their awkward piety, is most of all odious to me. I am firmly convinced that a blaspheming Frenchman is a more pleasing sight for the Divinity than a praying Englishman.”"

................................................................................................

"It is all like a dream to me; especially the name Lafayette sounds to me like a legend out of my earliest childhood. Does he really sit again on horseback, commanding the National Guard? I almost fear it may not be true, for it is in print. I will myself go to Paris, to be convinced of it with my bodily eyes. . . . It must be splendid, when he rides through the street, the citizen of two worlds, the godlike old man, with his silver locks streaming down his sacred shoulder. . . . He greets, with his dear old eyes, the grandchildren of those who once fought with him for freedom and equality. . . . It is now sixty years since he returned from America with the Declaration of Human Rights, the decalogue of the world’s new creed, which was revealed to him amid the thunders and lightnings of cannon. . . . And the tricolored flag waves again on the towers of Paris, and its streets resound with the Marseillaise! ... Even the poor Heligolanders shout for joy, although they have only a sort of dim instinct of what has occurred. The fisherman who yesterday took me over to the little sand island, which is the bathing-place here, said to me smilingly, ‘The poor people have won!’ Yes; instinctively the people comprehend such events, perhaps, better than we, with all our means of knowledge. Thus Frau von Varnhagen once told me that when the issue of the Battle of Leipzig was not yet known, the maid-servant suddenly rushed into the room with the sorrowful cry, ‘The nobles have won!’ ... "

................................................................................................

"That it was not merely interest in French politics which sent Heine to Paris in 1831, but also a perception that German air was not friendly to sympathizers in July revolutions, is humorously intimated in the “Geständnisse.” 

"“I had done much and suffered much, and when the sun of the July Revolution arose in France, I had become very weary, and needed some recreation. Also, my native air was every day more unhealthy for me, and it was time I should seriously think of a change of climate. I had visions: the clouds terrified me, and made all sorts of ugly faces at me. It often seemed to me as if the sun were a Prussian cockade; at night I dreamed of a hideous black eagle, which gnawed my liver; and I was very melancholy. Add to this, I had become acquainted with an old Berlin Justizrath, who had spent many years in the fortress of Spandau, and he related to me how unpleasant it is when one is obliged to wear irons in winter. For myself I thought it very unchristian that the irons were not warmed a trifle. If the irons were warmed a little for us they would not make so unpleasant an impression, and even chilly natures might then bear them very well; it would be only proper consideration, too, if the fetters were perfumed with essence of roses and laurels, as is the case in this country (France). I asked my Justizrath whether he often got oysters to eat at Spandau? He said, No; Spandau was too far from the sea.  Moreover, he said meat was very scarce there, and there was no kind of volaille except flies, which fell into one’s soup. . . . Now, as I really needed some recreation, and as Spandau is too far from the sea for oysters to be got there, and the Spandau fly-soup did not seem very appetizing to me, as, besides all this, the Prussian chains are very cold in winter, and could not be conducive to my health, I resolved to visit Paris.”

"Since this time Paris has been Heine’s home, and his best prose works have been written either to inform the Germans on French affairs or to inform the French on German philosophy and literature. He became a correspondent of the Allgemeine Zeitung, and his correspondence, which extends, with an interruption of several years, from 1831 to 1844, forms the volume entitled “Französische Zustände” (French Affairs), and the second and third volume of his “Vermischte Schriften.” It is a witty and often wise commentary on public men and public events: Louis Philippe, Casimir Périer, Thiers, Guizot, Rothschild, the Catholic party, the Socialist party, have their turn of satire and appreciation, for Heine deals out both with an impartiality which made his less favorable critics—Börne, for example—charge him with the rather incompatible sins of reckless caprice and venality. Literature and art alternate with politics: we have now a sketch of George Sand or a description of one of Horace Vernet’s pictures; now a criticism of Victor Hugo or of Liszt; now an irresistible caricature of Spontini or Kalkbrenner; and occasionally the predominant satire is relieved by a fine saying or a genial word of admiration. And all is done with that airy lightness, yet precision of touch, which distinguishes Heine beyond any living writer. The charge of venality was loudly made against Heine in Germany: first, it was said that he was paid to write; then, that he was paid to abstain from writing; page 122 and the accusations were supposed to have an irrefragable basis in the fact that he accepted a stipend from the French government. He has never attempted to conceal the reception of that stipend, and we think his statement (in the “Vermischte Schriften”) of the circumstances under which it was offered and received, is a sufficient vindication of himself and M. Guizot from any dishonor in the matter."

................................................................................................

" ... Such a man could not be neglected in Paris, and Heine was sought on all sides—as a guest in distinguished salons, as a possible proselyte in the circle of the Saint Simonians.  His literary productiveness seems to have been furthered by his congenial life, which, however, was soon to some extent embittered by the sense of exile; for since 1835 both his works and his person have been the object of denunciation by the German governments.  Between 1833 and 1845 appeared the four volumes of the “Salon,” “Die Romantische Schule” (both written, in the first instance, in French), the book on Börne, “Atta Troll,” a romantic poem, “Deutschland,” an exquisitely humorous poem, describing his last visit to Germany, and containing some grand passages of serious writing; and the “Neue Gedichte,” a collection of lyrical poems.  Among the most interesting of his prose works are the second volume of the “Salon,” which contains a survey of religion and philosophy in Germany, and the “Romantische Schule,” a delightful introduction to that phase of German literature known as the Romantic school.  The book on Börne, which appeared in 1840, two years after the death of that writer, excited great indignation in Germany, as a wreaking of vengeance on the dead, an insult to the memory of a man who had worked and suffered in the cause of freedom—a cause which was Heine’s own.  Börne, we may observe parenthetically for the information of those who are not familiar with recent German literature, was a remarkable political writer of the ultra-liberal party in Germany, who resided in Paris at the same time with Heine: a man of stern, uncompromising partisanship and bitter humor.  Without justifying Heine’s production of this book, we see excuses for him which should temper the condemnation passed on it.  There was a radical opposition of nature between him and Börne; to use his own distinction, Heine is a Hellene—sensuous, realistic, exquisitely alive to the beautiful; while Börne was a Nazarene—ascetic, spiritualistic, despising the pure artist as destitute of earnestness.  Heine has too keen a perception of practical absurdities and damaging exaggerations ever to become a thoroughgoing partisan; and with a love of freedom, a faith in the ultimate triumph of democratic principles, of which we see no just reason to doubt the genuineness and consistency, he has been unable to satisfy more zealous and one-sided liberals by giving his adhesion to their views and measures, or by adopting a denunciatory tone against those in the opposite ranks.  Börne could not forgive what he regarded as Heine’s epicurean indifference and artistic dalliance, and he at length gave vent to his antipathy in savage attacks on him through the press, accusing him of utterly lacking character and principle, and even of writing under the influence of venal motives.  To these attacks Heine remained absolutely mute—from contempt according to his own account; but the retort, which he resolutely refrained from making during Börne’s life, comes in this volume published after his death with the concentrated force of long-gathering thunder. ... "

"“To the disgust which, in intercourse with Börne, I was in danger of feeling toward those who surrounded him, was added the annoyance I felt from his perpetual talk about politics. ... For example, Börne was indignant that immediately on my arrival in Paris I had nothing better to do than to write for German papers a long account of the Exhibition of Pictures.  I omit all discussion as to whether that interest in Art which induced me to undertake this work was so utterly irreconcilable with the revolutionary interests of the day; but Börne saw in it a proof of my indifference toward the sacred cause of humanity, and I could in my turn spoil the taste of his patriotic sauerkraut for him by talking all dinner-time of nothing but pictures, of Robert’s ‘Reapers,’ Horace Vernet’s ‘Judith,’ and Scheffer’s ‘Faust.’ . . . That I never thought it worth while to discuss my political principles with him it is needless to say; and once when he declared that he had found a contradiction in my writings, I satisfied myself with the ironical answer, ‘You are mistaken, mon cher; such contradictions never occur in my works, for always before I begin to write, I read over the statement of my political principles in my previous writings, that I may not contradict myself, and that no one may be able to reproach me with apostasy from my liberal principles.’”

................................................................................................

"In one of these years Heine was married, and, in deference to the sentiments of his wife, married according to the rites of the Catholic Church. On this fact busy rumor afterward founded the story of his conversion to Catholicism, and could of course name the day and spot on which he abjured Protestanism. In his “Geständnisse” Heine publishes a denial of this rumor; less, he says, for the sake of depriving the Catholics of the solace they may derive from their belief in a new convert, than in order to cut off from another party the more spiteful satisfaction of bewailing his instability:

"“That statement of time and place was entirely correct. I was actually on the specified day in the specified church, which was, moreover, a Jesuit church, namely, St. Sulpice; and I then went through a religious act. But this act was no odious abjuration, but a very innocent conjugation; that is to say, my marriage, already performed, according to the civil law there received the ecclesiastical consecration, because my wife, whose family are staunch Catholics, would not have thought her marriage sacred enough without such a ceremony.  And I would on no account cause this beloved being any uneasiness or disturbance in her religious views.”

"For sixteen years—from 1831 to 1847—Heine lived that rapid concentrated life which is known only in Paris; but then, alas! stole on the “days of darkness,” and they were to be many. In 1847 he felt the approach of the terrible spinal disease which has for seven years chained him to his bed in acute suffering. The last time he went out of doors, he tells us, was in May, 1848: 

"“With difficulty I dragged myself to the Louvre, and I almost sank down as I entered the magnificent hall where the ever-blessed goddess of beauty, our beloved Lady of Milo, stands on her pedestal. At her feet I lay long, and wept so bitterly that a stone must have pitied me. The goddess looked compassionately on me, but at the same time disconsolately, as if she would say, Dost thou not see, then, that I have no arms, and thus cannot help thee?”

"Since 1848, then, this poet, whom the lovely objects of Nature have always “haunted like a passion,” has not descended from the second story of a Parisian house; this man of hungry intellect has been shut out from all direct observation of life, all contact with society, except such as is derived from visitors to his sick-room. The terrible nervous disease has affected his eyes; the sight of one is utterly gone, and he can only raise the lid of the other by lifting it with his finger. Opium alone is the beneficent genius that stills his pain. We hardly know whether to call it an alleviation or an intensification of the torture that Heine retains his mental vigor, his poetic imagination, and his incisive wit; for if this intellectual activity fills up a blank, it widens the sphere of suffering. His brother described him in 1851 as still, in moments when the hand of pain was not too heavy on him, the same Heinrich Heine, poet and satirist by turns. ... Very plaintive is the poet’s own description of his condition, in the epilogue to the “Romanzero:” 

"“Do I really exist? My body is so shrunken that I am hardly anything but a voice; and my bed reminds me of the singing grave of the magician Merlin, which lies in the forest of Brozeliand, in Brittany, under tall oaks whose tops soar like green flames toward heaven. Alas! I envy thee those trees and the fresh breeze that moves their branches, brother Merlin, for no green leaf rustles about my mattress-grave in Paris, where early and late I hear nothing but the rolling of vehicles, hammering, quarrelling, and piano-strumming. ... But patience: everything has an end. You will one day find the booth closed where the puppet-show of my humor has so often delighted you.”

"As early as 1850 it was rumored that since Heine’s illness a change had taken place in his religious views; and as rumor seldom stops short of extremes, it was soon said that he had become a thorough pietist. Catholics and Protestants by turns claiming him as a convert. Such a change in so uncompromising an iconoclast, in a man who had been so zealous in his negations as Heine, naturally excited considerable sensation in the camp he was supposed to have quitted, as well as in that he was supposed to have joined.  In the second volume of the “Salon,” and in the “Romantische Schule,” written in 1834 and ’35, the doctrine of Pantheism is dwelt on with a fervor and unmixed seriousness which show that Pantheism was then an animating faith to Heine, and he attacks what he considers the false spiritualism and asceticism of Christianity as the enemy of true beauty in Art, and of social well-being. Now, however, it was said that Heine had recanted all his heresies; but from the fact that visitors to his sick-room brought away very various impressions as to his actual religious views, it seemed probable that his love of mystification had found a tempting opportunity for exercise on this subject, and that, as one of his friends said, he was not inclined to pour out unmixed wine to those who asked for a sample out of mere curiosity. At length, in the epilogue to the “Romanzero,” dated 1851, there appeared, amid much mystifying banter, a declaration that he had embraced Theism and the belief in a future life, and what chiefly lent an air of seriousness and reliability to this affirmation was the fact that he took care to accompany it with certain negations:

"“ ... But I must expressly contradict the report that my retrograde movement has carried me as far as to the threshold of a Church, and that I have even been received into her lap. No: my religions convictions and views have remained free from any tincture of ecclesiasticism; no chiming of bells has allured me, no page 129 altar candles have dazzled me. I have dallied with no dogmas, and have not utterly renounced my reason.”

" ...For example, our dear Dr. Martin Luther kept fast by his doctrine of Grace, about which he had for three hundred years daily written down the same mouldy arguments—just in the same way as the late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed in the Allgemeine Zeitung one and the same article, perpetually chewing over again the old cud of Jesuitical doctrine. But, as we have said, all persons who once figured here below were not found by Swedenborg in such a state of fossil immutability: many had considerably developed their character, both for good and evil, in the other world; and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had been heroes and saints on earth had there sunk into scamps and good-for-nothings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to Saint Anthony’s head when he learned what immense veneration and adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here below withstood the most terrible temptations was now quite an impertinent rascal and dissolute gallows-bird, who vied with his pig in rolling himself in the mud. The chaste Susanna, from having been excessively vain of her virtue, which she thought indomitable, came to a shameful fall, and she who once so gloriously resisted the two old men, was a victim to the seductions of the young Absalom, the son of David.  On the contrary, Lot’s daughters had in the lapse of time become very virtuous, and passed in the other world for models of propriety: the old man, alas! had stuck to the wine-flask.”"

" ... It is not for us to condemn, who have never had the same burden laid on us; it is not for pigmies at their ease to criticise the writhings of the Titan chained to the rock."

................................................................................................

" ... There is a standing accusation against him in some quarters of wanting political principle, of wishing to denationalize himself, and of indulging in insults against his native country. Whatever ground may exist for these accusations, that ground is not, so far as we see, to be found in his writings. He may not have much faith in German revolutions and revolutionists; experience, in his case as in that of others, may have thrown his millennial anticipations into more distant perspective; but we see no evidence that he has ever swerved from his attachment to the principles of freedom, or written anything which to a philosophic mind is incompatible with true patriotism. He has expressly denied the report that he wished to become naturalized in France; and his yearning toward his native land and the accents of his native language is expressed with a pathos the more reliable from the fact that he is sparing in such effusions. We do not see why Heine’s satire of the blunders and foibles of his fellow-countrymen should be denounced as a crime of lèse-patrie, any more than the political caricatures of any other satirist. ... "

"“Rhenish Bavaria was to be the starting-point of the German revolution. Zweibrücken was the Bethlehem in which the infant Saviour—Freedom—lay in the cradle, and gave whimpering promise of redeeming the world. Near his cradle bellowed many an ox, who afterward, when his horns were reckoned on, showed himself a very harmless brute. It was confidently believed that the German revolution would begin in Zweibrücken, and everything was there ripe for an outbreak. But, as has been hinted, the tender-heartedness of some persons frustrated that illegal undertaking. For example, among the Bipontine conspirators there was a tremendous braggart, who was always loudest in his rage, who boiled over with the hatred of tyranny, and this man was fixed on to strike the first blow, by cutting down a sentinel who kept an important post. . . . . ‘What!’ cried the man, when this order was given him—‘What!—me! Can you expect so horrible, so bloodthirsty an act of me? I—I, kill an innocent sentinel? I, who am the father of a family! And this sentinel is perhaps also father of a family.  One father of a family kill another father of a family? Yes.  Kill—murder!’”"

................................................................................................

"In political matters Heine, like all men whose intellect and taste predominate too far over their impulses to allow of their becoming partisans, is offensive alike to the aristocrat and the democrat. By the one he is denounced as a man who holds incendiary principles, by the other as a half-hearted “trimmer.” He has no sympathy, as he says, with “that vague, barren pathos, that useless effervescence of enthusiasm, which plunges, with the spirit of a martyr, into an ocean of generalities, and which always reminds me of the American sailor, who had so fervent an enthusiasm for General Jackson, that he at last sprang from the top of a mast into the sea, crying, “I die for General Jackson!” 

"“But thou liest, Brutus, thou liest, Cassius, and thou, too, liest, Asinius, in maintaining that my ridicule attacks those ideas which are the precious acquisition of Humanity, and for which I myself have so striven and suffered. No! for the very reason that those ideas constantly hover before the poet in glorious splendor and majesty, he is the more irresistibly overcome by laughter when he sees how rudely, awkwardly, and clumsily those ideas are seized and mirrored in the contracted minds of contemporaries. . . . There are mirrors which have so rough a surface that even an Apollo reflected in them becomes a caricature, and excites our laughter.  But we laugh then only at the caricature, not at the god.” 

"For the rest, why should we demand of Heine that he should be a hero, a patriot, a solemn prophet, any more than we should demand of a gazelle that it should draw well in harness? Nature has not made him of her sterner stuff—not of iron and adamant, but of pollen of flowers, the juice of the grape, and Puck’s mischievous brain, plenteously mixing also the dews of kindly affection and the gold-dust of noble thoughts. It is, after all, a tribute which his enemies pay him when they utter their bitterest dictum, namely, that he is “nur Dichter”—only a poet. Let us accept this point of view for the present, and, leaving all consideration of him as a man, look at him simply as a poet and literary artist."

................................................................................................

"Heine is essentially a lyric poet.  The finest products of his genius are 

"“Short swallow flights of song that dip 

"Their wings in tears, and skim away;” 

"and they are so emphatically songs that, in reading them, we feel as if each must have a twin melody born in the same moment and by the same inspiration. Heine is too impressible and mercurial for any sustained production; even in his short lyrics his tears sometimes pass into laughter and his laughter into tears; and his longer poems, “Atta Troll” and “Deutschland,” are full of Ariosto-like transitions. His song has a wide compass of notes; he can take us to the shores of the Northern Sea and thrill us by the sombre sublimity of his pictures and dreamy fancies; he can draw forth our tears by the voice he gives to our own sorrows, or to the sorrows of “Poor Peter;” he can throw a cold shudder over us by a mysterious legend, a ghost story, or a still more ghastly rendering of hard reality; he can charm us by a quiet idyl, shake us with laughter at his overflowing fun, or give us a piquant sensation of surprise by the ingenuity of his transitions from the lofty to the ludicrous. This last power is not, indeed, essentially poetical; but only a poet can use it with the same success as Heine, for only a poet can poise our emotion and expectation at such a height as to give effect to the sudden fall. Heine’s greatest power as a poet lies in his simple pathos, in the ever-varied but always natural expression he has given to the tender emotions. We may perhaps indicate this phase of his genius by referring to Wordsworth’s beautiful little poem, “She dwelt among the untrodden ways;” the conclusion— 

“She dwelt alone, and few could know

"When Lucy ceased to be;

"But she is in her grave, and, oh!

"The difference to me”—

"is entirely in Heine’s manner; and so is Tennyson’s poem of a dozen lines, called “Circumstance.” Both these poems have Heine’s pregnant simplicity.  But, lest this comparison should mislead, we must say that there is no general resemblance between either Wordsworth, or Tennyson, and Heine. Their greatest qualities lie quite a way from the light, delicate lucidity, the easy, rippling music, of Heine’s style. The distinctive charm of his lyrics may best be seen by comparing them with Goethe’s. Both have the same masterly, finished simplicity and rhythmic grace; but there is more thought mingled with Goethe’s feeling—his lyrical genius is a vessel that draws more water than Heine’s, and, though it seems to glide along with equal ease, we have a sense of greater weight and force, accompanying the grace of its movements.

"But for this very reason Heine touches our hearts more strongly; his songs are all music and feeling—they are like birds that not only enchant us with their delicious notes, but nestle against us with their soft breasts, and make us feel the agitated beating of their hearts. He indicates a whole sad history in a single quatrain; there is not an image in it, not a thought; but it is beautiful, simple, and perfect as a “big round tear”—it is pure feeling, breathed in pure music: 

"“Anfangs wollt’ ich fast verzagen 

"Und ich glaubt’ ich trug es nie, 

"Und ich hab’ es doch getragen— 

"Aber fragt mich nur nicht, wie.”

"He excels equally in the more imaginative expression of feeling: he represents it by a brief image, like a finely cut cameo; he expands it into a mysterious dream, or dramatizes it in a little story, half ballad, half idyl; and in all these forms his art is so perfect that we never have a sense of artificiality or of unsuccessful effort; but all seems to have developed itself by the same beautiful necessity that brings forth vine-leaves and grapes and the natural curls of childhood. ... Few could forget, after once hearing them, the stanzas at the close of “Deutschland,” in which he warns the King of Prussia not to incur the irredeemable hell which the injured poet can create for him—the singing flames of a Dante’s terza rima!

"“Kennst du die Hölle des Dante nicht, 

"Die schrecklichen Terzetten? 

"Wen da der Dichter hineingesperrt 

"Den kann kein Gott mehr retten. 

"“Kein Gott, kein Heiland, erlöst ihn je 

"Aus diesen singenden Flammen! 

"Nimm dich in Acht, das wir dich nicht 

"Zu solcher Hölle verdammen.”"

................................................................................................

"Persons the most familiar with German prose testify that there is an extra fatigue in reading it, just as we feel an extra fatigue from our walk when it takes us over ploughed clay. But in Heine’s hands German prose, usually so heavy, so clumsy, so dull, becomes, like clay in the hands of the chemist, compact, metallic, 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. ... "

George Eliot has, on the other hand, compensated for the loss to German literature due to Heine, by importing all those "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", or most thereof, into English literature, via her own writing - as a solo hero! 

" ... And Heine has proved—what Madame de Stäel seems to have doubted—that it is possible to be witty in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the calm development which belong to Goethe’s style, for they are foreign to his mental character; but he excels Goethe in susceptibility to the 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 these there runs a vein of sadness, tenderness, and grandeur which reveals the poet. He continually throws out those finely chiselled sayings which stamp themselves on the memory, and become familiar by quotation. For example: “The People have time enough, they are immortal; kings only are mortal.”—“Wherever a great soul utters its thoughts, there is Golgotha.”—“Nature wanted to see how she looked, and she created Goethe.”—“Only the man who has known bodily suffering is truly a man; his limbs have their Passion history, they are spiritualized.” He calls Rubens “this Flemish Titan, the wings of whose genius were so strong that he soared as high as the sun, in spite of the hundred-weight of Dutch cheeses that hung on his legs.” Speaking of Börne’s dislike to the calm creations of the true artist, he says, “He was like a child which, insensible to the glowing significance of a Greek statue, only touches the marble and complains of cold.”"

................................................................................................

"The years, if they have intensified his satirical bitterness, have also given his wit a finer edge and polish. His sarcasms are so subtly prepared and so slily allusive, that they may often escape readers whose sense of wit is not very acute; but for those who delight in the subtle and delicate flavors of style, there can hardly be any wit more irresistible than Heine’s. We may measure its force by the degree in which it has subdued the German language to its purposes, and made that language brilliant in spite of a long hereditary transmission of dulness. As one of the most harmless examples of his satire, take this on a man who has certainly had his share of adulation: 

"“Assuredly it is far from my purpose to depreciate M. Victor Cousin. The titles of this celebrated philosopher even lay me under an obligation to praise him.  He belongs to that living pantheon of France which we call the peerage, and his intelligent legs rest on the velvet benches of the Luxembourg. I must indeed sternly repress all private feelings which might seduce me into an excessive enthusiasm. Otherwise I might be suspected of servility; for M. Cousin is very influential in the State by means of his position and his tongue. This consideration might even move me to speak of his faults as frankly as of his virtues. Will he himself disapprove of this? Assuredly not. I know that we cannot do higher honor to great minds than when we throw as strong a light on their demerits as on their merits. When we sing the praises of a Hercules, we must also mention that he once laid aside the lion’s skin and sat down to the distaff: what then? he remains notwithstanding a Hercules! So when we relate similar circumstances concerning M. Cousin, we must nevertheless add, with discriminating eulogy: M. Cousin, if he has sometimes sat twaddling at the distaff, has never laid aside the lion’s skin. . . . It is true that, having been suspected of demagogy, he spent some time in a German prison, just as Lafayette and Richard Cœur de Lion. But that M. Cousin there in his leisure hours studied Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ is to be doubted on three grounds. First, this book is written in German. Secondly, in order to read this book, a man must understand German. Thirdly, M. Cousin does not understand German. . . . I fear I am passing unawares from the sweet waters of praise into the bitter ocean of blame. Yes, on one account I cannot refrain from bitterly blaming M. Cousin—namely, that he who loves truth far more than he loves Plato and Tenneman is unjust to himself when he wants to persuade us that he has borrowed something from the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel. Against this self-accusation I must take M. Cousin under my protection. On my word and conscience! this honorable man has not stolen a jot from Schelling and Hegel, and if he brought home anything of theirs, it was merely their friendship. That does honor to his heart. But there are many instances of such false self-accusation in psychology. I knew a man who declared that he had stolen silver spoons at the king’s table; and yet we all knew that the poor devil had never been presented at court, and accused himself of stealing these spoons to make us believe that he had been a guest at the palace. No!  In German philosophy M. Cousin has always kept the sixth commandment; here he has never pocketed a single idea, not so much as a salt-spoon of an idea. All witnesses agree in attesting that in this respect M. Cousin is honor itself. . . .  I prophesy to you that the renown of M. Cousin, like the French Revolution, will go round the world! I hear some one wickedly add: Undeniably the renown of M. Cousin is going round the world, and it has already taken its departure from France.”"

................................................................................................

"The following “symbolical myth” about Louis Philippe is very characteristic of Heine’s manner: 

"“I remember very well that immediately on my arrival (in Paris) I hastened to the Palais Royal to see Louis Philippe. The friend who conducted me told me that the king now appeared on the terrace only at stated hours, but that formerly he was to be seen at any time for five francs. ‘For five francs!’ I cried with amazement; ‘does he then show himself for money?’ ‘No, but he is shown for money, and it happens in this way: There is a society of claqueurs, marchands de contremarques, and such riff-raff, who offered every page 140 foreigner to show him the king for five francs: if he would give ten francs, he might see the king raise his eyes to heaven, and lay his hand protestingly on his heart; if he would give twenty francs, the king would sing the Marseillaise. If the foreigner gave five francs, they raised a loud cheering under the king’s windows, and His Majesty appeared on the terrace, bowed, and retired. If ten francs, they shouted still louder, and gesticulated as if they had been possessed, when the king appeared, who then, as a sign of silent emotion, raised his eyes to heaven and laid his hand on his heart. English visitors, however, would sometimes spend as much as twenty francs, and then the enthusiasm mounted to the highest pitch; no sooner did the king appear on the terrace than the Marseillaise was struck up and roared out frightfully, until Louis Philippe, perhaps only for the sake of putting an end to the singing, bowed, laid his hand on his heart, and joined in the Marseillaise. Whether, as is asserted, he beat time with his foot, I cannot say.’”"

................................................................................................

Why did George Eliot find such a joy in running down fellow women authors? 

"One more quotation, and it must be our last: 

"“Oh the women! We must forgive them much, for they love much—and many. Their hate is properly only love turned inside out. Sometimes they attribute some delinquency to us, because they think they can in this way gratify another man. When they write, they have always one eye on the paper and the other on a man; and this is true of all authoresses, except the Countess Hahn-Hahn, who has only one eye.”"

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 22, 2021 - September 23, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Natural History of German Life. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot surprises, as she often does, at the width of horizons of her knowledge - or, better termed (since calling it knowledge might be going too far), variety of information her mind grasped and dealt with and wove together. 

"It is an interesting branch of psychological observation to note the images that are habitually associated with abstract or collective terms—what may be called the picture-writing of the mind, which it carries on concurrently with the more subtle symbolism of language. Perhaps the fixity or variety of these associated images would furnish a tolerably fair test of the amount of concrete knowledge and experience which a given word represents, in the minds of two persons who use it with equal familiarity. The word railways, for example, will probably call up, in the mind of a man who is not highly locomotive, the image either of a “Bradshaw,” or of the station with which he is most familiar, or of an indefinite length of tram-road; he will alternate between these three images, which represent his stock of concrete acquaintance with railways. But suppose a man to have had successively the experience of a “navvy,” an engineer, a traveller, a railway director and shareholder, and a landed proprietor in treaty with a railway company, and it is probable that the range of images which would by turns present themselves to his mind at the mention of the word “railways,” would include all the essential facts in the existence and relations of the thing. Now it is possible for the first-mentioned personage to entertain very expanded views as to the multiplication of railways in the abstract, and their ultimate function in civilization. He may talk of a vast network of railways stretching over the globe, of future “lines” in Madagascar, and elegant refreshment-rooms in the Sandwich Islands, with none the less glibness because his distinct conceptions on the subject do not extend beyond his one station and his indefinite length of tram-road. But it is evident that if we want a railway to be made, or its affairs to be managed, this man of wide views and narrow observation will not serve our purpose."

The conclusion isn't clear, except it seems facile to concur - and if one grants it, isn't it obvious that George Eliot should oppose colonial empires, especially British colonial rule of India? They knew nothing but England, ocean faring, and looting others. 

"Probably, if we could ascertain the images called up by the terms “the people,” “the masses,” “the proletariat,” “the peasantry,” by many who theorize on those bodies with eloquence, or who legislate without eloquence, we should find that they indicate almost as small an amount of concrete knowledge—that they are as far from completely representing the complex facts summed up in the collective term, as the railway images of our non-locomotive gentleman. How little the real characteristics of the working-classes are known to those who are outside them, how little their natural history has been studied, is sufficiently disclosed by our Art as well as by our political and social theories. ... "

So she, and anyone in agreement with the above argument, ought to either oppose all rule by rich over poor, including and especially, monarchy, landlords, colonial empires, and non-participation of labour in decision making of industry. This last factor must be turned completely around, by the logic she presents, if one agrees with it and opposes government or speeches by those whose information is not from actual labour. 

This must naturally include any statement, decision or dictum from any male about motherhood or pregnancy and related matters, unless he is the consulting medical professional in a particular case. 

................................................................................................

Suddenly it becomes very interesting. 

"In Germany, perhaps more than in any other country, it is among the peasantry that we must look for the historical type of the national physique.  In the towns this type has become so modified to express the personality of the individual that even “family likeness” is often but faintly marked. But the peasants may still be distinguished into groups, by their physical peculiarities.  In one part of the country we find a longer-legged, in another a broader-shouldered race, which has inherited these peculiarities for centuries. For example, in certain districts of Hesse are seen long faces, with high foreheads, long, straight noses, and small eyes, with arched eyebrows and large eyelids. On comparing these physiognomies with the sculptures in the church of St. Elizabeth, at Marburg, executed in the thirteenth century, it will be found that the same old Hessian type of face has subsisted unchanged, with this distinction only, that the sculptures represent princes and nobles, whose features then bore the stamp of their race, while that stamp is now to be found only among the peasants. A painter who wants to draw mediæval characters with historic truth must seek his models among the peasantry. This explains why the old German painters gave the heads of their subjects a greater uniformity of type than the painters of our day; the race had not attained to a high degree of individualization in features and expression. It indicates, too, that the cultured man acts more as an individual, the peasant more as one of a group. Hans drives the plough, lives, and thinks, just as Kunz does; and it is this fact that many thousands of men are as like each other in thoughts and habits as so many sheep or oysters, which constitutes the weight of the peasantry in the social and political scale.

"In the cultivated world each individual has his style of speaking and writing.  But among the peasantry it is the race, the district, the province, that has its style—namely, its dialect, its phraseology, its proverbs, and its songs, which belong alike to the entire body of the people. This provincial style of the peasant is again, like his physique, a remnant of history, to which he clings with the utmost tenacity.  In certain parts of Hungary there are still descendants of German colonists of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who go about the country as reapers, retaining their old Saxon songs and manners, while the more cultivated German emigrants in a very short time forget their own language, and speak Hungarian. Another remarkable case of the same kind is that of the Wends, a Slavonic race settled in Lusatia, whose numbers amount to 200,000, living either scattered among the German population or in separate parishes. They have their own schools and churches, and are taught in the Slavonic tongue. The Catholics among them are rigid adherents of the Pope; the Protestants not less rigid adherents of Luther, or Doctor Luther, as they are particular in calling him—a custom which a hundred years ago was universal in Protestant Germany. The Wend clings tenaciously to the usages of his Church, and perhaps this may contribute not a little to the purity in which he maintains the specific characteristics of his race. German education, German law and government, service in the standing army, and many other agencies, are in antagonism to his national exclusiveness; but the wives and mothers here, as elsewhere, are a conservative influence, and the habits temporarily laid aside in the outer world are recovered by the fireside. The Wends form several stout regiments in the Saxon army; they are sought far and wide, as diligent and honest servants; and many a weakly Dresden or Leipzig child becomes thriving under the care of a Wendish nurse. In their villages they have the air and habits of genuine sturdy peasants, and all their customs indicate that they have been from the first an agricultural people. For example, they have traditional modes of treating their domestic animals. Each cow has its own name, generally chosen carefully, so as to express the special qualities of the animal; and all important family events are narrated to the bees—a custom which is found also in Westphalia. Whether by the help of the bees or not, the Wend farming is especially prosperous; and when a poor Bohemian peasant has a son born to him he binds him to the end of a long pole and turns his face toward Lusatia, that he may be as lucky as the Wends, who live there."

Do these differences, individual tribes, still exist?

"The peasant’s adherence to the traditional has much greater inconvenience than that entailed by a paucity of proper names.  In the Black Forest and in Hüttenberg you will see him in the dog-days wearing a thick fur cap, because it is an historical fur cap—a cap worn by his grandfather.  In the Wetterau, that peasant girl is considered the handsomest who wears the most petticoats. To go to field-labor in seven petticoats can be anything but convenient or agreeable, but it is the traditionally correct thing, and a German peasant girl would think herself as unfavorably conspicuous in an untraditional costume as an English servant-girl would now think herself in a “linsey-wolsey” apron or a thick muslin cap. In many districts no medical advice would induce the rustic to renounce the tight leather belt with which he injures his digestive functions; you could more easily persuade him to smile on a new communal system than on the unhistorical invention of braces. In the eighteenth century, in spite of the philanthropic preachers of potatoes, the peasant for years threw his potatoes to the pigs and the dogs, before he could be persuaded to put them on his own table. However, the unwillingness of the peasant to adopt innovations has a not unreasonable foundation in the fact that for him experiments are practical, not theoretical, and must be made with expense of money instead of brains—a fact that is not, perhaps, sufficiently taken into account by agricultural theorists, who complain of the farmer’s obstinacy. ... "

"But it must not be supposed that the historical piety of the German peasant extends to anything not immediately connected with himself. He has the warmest piety toward the old tumble-down house which his grandfather built, and which nothing will induce him to improve, but toward the venerable ruins of the old castle that overlooks his village he has no piety at all, and carries off its stones to make a fence for his garden, or tears down the gothic carving of the old monastic church, which is “nothing to him,” to mark off a foot-path through his field. ... "

"The peasant never begins his lawsuit in summer, for the same reason that he does not make love and marry in summer—because he has no time for that sort of thing. Anything is easier to him than to move out of his habitual course, and he is attached even to his privations. Some years ago a peasant youth, out of the poorest and remotest region of the Westerwald, was enlisted as a recruit, at Weilburg in Nassau. The lad, having never in his life slept in a bed, when he had got into one for the first time began to cry like a child; and he deserted twice because he could not reconcile himself to sleeping in a bed, and to the “fine” life of the barracks: he was homesick at the thought of his accustomed poverty and his thatched hut. A strong contrast, this, with the feeling of the poor in towns, who would be far enough from deserting because their condition was too much improved! The genuine peasant is never ashamed of his rank and calling; he is rather inclined to look down on every one who does not wear a smock frock, and thinks a man who has the manners of the gentry is likely to be rather windy and unsubstantial. In some places, even in French districts, this feeling is strongly symbolized by the practice of the peasantry, on certain festival days, to dress the images of the saints in peasant’s clothing. History tells us of all kinds of peasant insurrections, the object of which was to obtain relief for the peasants from some of their many oppressions; but of an effort on their part to step out of their hereditary rank and calling, to become gentry, to leave the plough and carry on the easier business of capitalists or government functionaries, there is no example."

................................................................................................

"The German novelists who undertake to give pictures of peasant-life fall into the same mistake as our English novelists: they transfer their own feelings to ploughmen and woodcutters, and give them both joys and sorrows of which they know nothing. The peasant never questions the obligation of family ties—he questions no custom—but tender affection, as it exists among the refined part of mankind, is almost as foreign to him as white hands and filbert-shaped nails. ... "

"Marriage is a very prudential affair, especially among the peasants who have the largest share of property.  Politic marriages are as common among them as among princes; and when a peasant-heiress in Westphalia marries, her husband adopts her name, and places his own after it with the prefix geborner (née). The girls marry young, and the rapidity with which they get old and ugly is one among the many proofs that the early years of marriage are fuller of hardships than of conjugal tenderness. “When our writers of village stories,” says Riehl, “transferred their own emotional life to the peasant, they obliterated what is precisely his most predominant characteristic, namely, that with him general custom holds the place of individual feeling.”"

................................................................................................

"We pay for greater emotional susceptibility too often by nervous diseases of which the peasant knows nothing. To him headache is the least of physical evils, because he thinks head-work the easiest and least indispensable of all labor. Happily, many of the younger sons in peasant families, by going to seek their living in the towns, carry their hardy nervous system to amalgamate with the overwrought nerves of our town population, and refresh them with a little rude vigor. And a return to the habits of peasant life is the best remedy for many moral as well as physical diseases induced by perverted civilization. Riehl points to colonization as presenting the true field for this regenerative process. On the other side of the ocean a man will have the courage to begin life again as a peasant, while at home, perhaps, opportunity as well as courage will fail him. Apropos of this subject of emigration, he remarks the striking fact, that the native shrewdness and mother-wit of the German peasant seem to forsake him entirely when he has to apply them under new circumstances, and on relations foreign to his experience. Hence it is that the German peasant who emigrates, so constantly falls a victim to unprincipled adventurers in the preliminaries to emigration; but if once he gets his foot on the American soil he exhibits all the first-rate qualities of an agricultural colonist; and among all German emigrants the peasant class are the most successful."

That explains Ohio, Michigan and so on - Kansas, perhaps? - but it is used as a cover-up for war criminals who fled across South Atlantic to find, not only refuge, but welcome, in many countries. In Germany we were told a German migrates to those lands because he is happy to work; but factual conditions South of equator are different, with indigenous population being treated as bonded slaves, and European settlers in upper echelons of society. It's North, in U.S. and Canada, that they must work at manual labour,  as described in Germany by those that would lie about nazis flight across South Atlantic. But the same people lied also made statements about their fear of U.S. troops raping German young girls, which never took place! 

Their own, nazi, doctrine and regime, on the other hand, had not only exalted but made it mandatory, for unmarried German maidens and even married ones, to provide sexual services for nazis nazis and troops, as and when demanded or desired by them; any unwillingness was dealt with as unpatriotic. 

Russian troops, having gone through devastation wrought upon their lands by Germany, with villages burned and millions of Russian civilians murdered - quite deliberately, not only preplanned, but with an intention, an ideology behind it - was another story. 

But we were lied to, with U.S. troops blamed. This was chiefly racism, which we did not immediately understand. So they explained. When they said they feared U.S. troops raping German young girls, they meant those of visibly non-European ancestry, specifically African. Individually, German girls raped by others - nazis, Russian troops - had, of course, suffered; but none of this, actual suffering (through ideology and practice, of former, or events in latter case) was mentioned.

................................................................................................

" ... In the wine districts especially, the inability of the small proprietors to bear up under the vicissitudes of the market, or to insure a high quality of wine by running the risks of a late vintage and the competition of beer and cider with the inferior wines, have tended to produce that uncertainty of gain which, with the peasant, is the inevitable cause of demoralization. The small peasant proprietors are not a new class in Germany, but many of the evils of their position are new. They are more dependent on ready money than formerly; thus, where a peasant used to get his wood for building and firing from the common forest, he has now to pay for it with hard cash; he used to thatch his own house, with the help perhaps of a neighbor, but now he pays a man to do it for him; he used to pay taxes in kind, he now pays them in money. The chances of the market have to be discounted, and the peasant falls into the hands of money-lenders.  Here is one of the cases in which social policy clashes with a purely economical policy. ... The interference with the communal regulations has been of this fatal character. Instead of endeavoring to promote to the utmost the healthy life of the Commune, as an organism the conditions of which are bound up with the historical characteristics of the peasant, the bureaucratic plan of government is bent on improvement by its patent machinery of state-appointed functionaries and off-hand regulations in accordance with modern enlightenment.The spirit of communal exclusiveness—the resistance to the indiscriminate establishment of strangers, is an intense traditional feeling in the peasant. “This gallows is for us and our children,” is the typical motto of this spirit. But such exclusiveness is highly irrational and repugnant to modern liberalism; therefore a bureaucratic government at once opposes it, and encourages to the utmost the introduction of new inhabitants in the provincial communes. ... "

"Another questionable plan for elevating the peasant is the supposed elevation of the clerical character by preventing the clergyman from cultivating more than a trifling part of the land attached to his benefice; that he may be as much as possible of a scientific theologian, and as little as possible of a peasant. In this, Riehl observes, lies one great source of weakness to the Protestant Church as compared with the Catholic, which finds the great majority of its priests among the lower orders; and we have had the opportunity of making an analogous comparison in England, where many of us can remember country districts in which the great mass of the people were christianized by illiterate Methodist and Independent ministers, while the influence of the parish clergyman among the poor did not extend much beyond a few old women in scarlet cloaks and a few exceptional church-going laborers."

................................................................................................

" ... When a few sparks from the first French Revolution fell among the German peasantry, and in certain villages of Saxony the country people assembled together to write down their demands, there was no glimpse in their petition of the “universal rights of man,” but simply of their own particular affairs as Saxon peasants. Again, after the July revolution of 1830, there were many insignificant peasant insurrections; but the object of almost all was the removal of local grievances. Toll-houses were pulled down; stamped paper was destroyed; in some places there was a persecution of wild boars, in others, of that plentiful tame animal, the German Rath, or councillor who is never called into council. But in 1848 it seemed as if the movements of the peasants had taken a new character; in the small western states of Germany it seemed as if the whole class of peasantry was in insurrection. But, in fact, the peasant did not know the meaning of the part he was playing. He had heard that everything was being set right in the towns, and that wonderful things were happening there, so he tied up his bundle and set off. Without any distinct object or resolution, the country people presented themselves on the scene of commotion, and were warmly received by the party leaders. But, seen from the windows of ducal palaces and ministerial hotels, these swarms of peasants had quite another aspect, and it was imagined that they had a common plan of co-operation. This, however, the peasants have never had.  Systematic co-operation implies general conceptions, and a provisional subordination of egoism, to which even the artisans of towns have rarely shown themselves equal, and which are as foreign to the mind of the peasant as logarithms or the doctrine of chemical proportions. And the revolutionary fervor of the peasant was soon cooled. The old mistrust of the towns was reawakened on the spot. The Tyrolese peasants saw no great good in the freedom of the press and the constitution, because these changes “seemed to please the gentry so much.” Peasants who had given their voices stormily for a German parliament asked afterward, with a doubtful look, whether it were to consist of infantry or cavalry. When royal domains were declared the property of the State, the peasants in some small principalities rejoiced over this, because they interpreted it to mean that every one would have his share in them, after the manner of the old common and forest rights.

"The very practical views of the peasants with regard to the demands of the people were in amusing contrast with the abstract theorizing of the educated townsmen. The peasant continually withheld all State payments until he saw how matters would turn out, and was disposed to reckon up the solid benefit, in the form of land or money, that might come to him from the changes obtained. While the townsman was heating his brains about representation on the broadest basis, the peasant asked if the relation between tenant and landlord would continue as before, and whether the removal of the “feudal obligations” meant that the farmer should become owner of the land!"

................................................................................................

George Eliot describes a phenomenon that really is more universal than she thought. 

"It is in the same naïve way that Communism is interpreted by the German peasantry. The wide spread among them of communistic doctrines, the eagerness with which they listened to a plan for the partition of property, seemed to countenance the notion that it was a delusion to suppose the peasant would be secured from this intoxication by his love of secure possession and peaceful earnings. But, in fact, the peasant contemplated “partition” by the light of an historical reminiscence rather than of novel theory. The golden age, in the imagination of the peasant, was the time when every member of the commune had a right to as much wood from the forest as would enable him to sell some, after using what he wanted in firing—in which the communal possessions were so profitable that, instead of his having to pay rates at the end of the year, each member of the commune was something in pocket. Hence the peasants in general understood by “partition,” that the State lands, especially the forests, would be divided among the communes, and that, by some political legerdemain or other, everybody would have free fire-wood, free grazing for his cattle, and over and above that, a piece of gold without working for it. That he should give up a single clod of his own to further the general “partition” had never entered the mind of the peasant communist; and the perception that this was an essential preliminary to “partition” was often a sufficient cure for his Communism."

But in reality few are completely willing to give up their own possessions for common good, and most see themselves either sharing those of others, or, at the very least, take an administrator position with power of decision as to the distribution, with of course a goodly share of the lot and more of power, prestige, recognition, et al. One is reminded of a joke. 

"So you really believe in communism, distribution of wealth, and all that carp? 

"Of course!"

"So if you had two cars, you'd give me one?"

"Of course!"

"If you had two houses, you'd give me one?"

"Of course!" 

"If you had two shirts, you'd give me one?" 

"NO!"

"How come?"

"I have two shirts." 

................................................................................................

"In villages lying in the neighborhood of large towns, however, where the circumstances of the peasantry are very different, quite another interpretation of Communism is prevalent. Here the peasant is generally sunk to the position of the proletaire living from hand to mouth: he has nothing to lose, but everything to gain by “partition.” The coarse nature of the peasant has here been corrupted into bestiality by the disturbance of his instincts, while he is as yet incapable of principles; and in this type of the degenerate peasant is seen the worst example of ignorance intoxicated by theory. 

"A significant hint as to the interpretation the peasants put on revolutionary theories may be drawn from the way they employed the few weeks in which their movements were unchecked. They felled the forest trees and shot the game; they withheld taxes; they shook off the imaginary or real burdens imposed on them by their mediatized princes, by presenting their “demands” in a very rough way before the ducal or princely “Schloss;” they set their faces against the bureaucratic management of the communes, deposed the government functionaries who had been placed over them as burgomasters and magistrates, and abolished the whole bureaucratic system of procedure, simply by taking no notice of its regulations, and recurring to some tradition—some old order or disorder of things. In all this it is clear that they were animated not in the least by the spirit of modern revolution, but by a purely narrow and personal impulse toward reaction.

"The idea of constitutional government lies quite beyond the range of the German peasant’s conceptions.  His only notion of representation is that of a representation of ranks—of classes; his only notion of a deputy is of one who takes care, not of the national welfare, but of the interests of his own order. Herein lay the great mistake of the democratic party, in common with the bureaucratic governments, that they entirely omitted the peculiar character of the peasant from their political calculations. They talked of the “people” and forgot that the peasants were included in the term. Only a baseless misconception of the peasant’s character could induce the supposition that he would feel the slightest enthusiasm about the principles involved in the reconstitution of the Empire, or even about the reconstitution itself. He has no zeal for a written law, as such, but only so far as it takes the form of a living law—a tradition. ... "

"Such, Riehl tells us, are the general characteristics of the German peasantry—characteristics which subsist amid a wide variety of circumstances. In Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg the peasant lives on extensive estates; in Westphalia he lives in large isolated homesteads; in the Westerwald and in Sauerland, in little groups of villages and hamlets; on the Rhine land is for the most part parcelled out among small proprietors, who live together in large villages. ... "

"This conception of European society as incarnate history is the fundamental idea of Riehl’s books. ... He thinks it wise to pause a little from theorizing, and see what is the material actually present for theory to work upon. It is the glory of the Socialists—in contrast with the democratic doctrinaires who have been too much occupied with the general idea of “the people” to inquire particularly into the actual life of the people—that they have thrown themselves with enthusiastic zeal into the study at least of one social group, namely, the factory operatives; and here lies the secret of their partial success. But, unfortunately, they have made this special duty of a single fragment of society the basis of a theory which quietly substitutes for the small group of Parisian proletaires or English factory-workers the society of all Europe—nay, of the whole world.  And in this way they have lost the best fruit of their investigations. For, says Riehl, the more deeply we penetrate into the knowledge of society in its details, the more thoroughly we shall be convinced that a universal social policy has no validity except on paper, and can never be carried into successful practice. The conditions of German society are altogether different from those of French, of English, or of Italian society; and to apply the same social theory to these nations indiscriminately is about as wise a procedure as Triptolemus Yellowley’s application of the agricultural directions in Virgil’s “Georgics” to his farm in the Shetland Isles."

" ... And just as the most thorough acquaintance with physics, or chemistry, or general physiology, will not enable you at once to establish the balance of life in your private vivarium, so that your particular society of zoophytes, mollusks, and echinoderms may feel themselves, as the Germans say, at ease in their skin; so the most complete equipment of theory will not enable a statesman or a political and social reformer to adjust his measures wisely, in the absence of a special acquaintance with the section of society for which he legislates, with the peculiar characteristics of the nation, the province, the class whose well-being he has to consult. In other words, a wise social policy must be based not simply on abstract social science, but on the natural history of social bodies."

................................................................................................

"Riehl’s books are not dedicated merely to the argumentative maintenance of this or of any other position; they are intended chiefly as a contribution to that knowledge of the German people on the importance of which he insists. He is less occupied with urging his own conclusions than with impressing on his readers the facts which have led him to those conclusions. In the volume entitled “Land und Leute,” which, though published last, is properly an introduction to the volume entitled “Die Bürgerliche Gesellschaft,” he considers the German people in their physical geographical relations; he compares the natural divisions of the race, as determined by land and climate, and social traditions, with the artificial divisions which are based on diplomacy; and he traces the genesis and influences of what we may call the ecclesiastical geography of Germany—its partition between Catholicism and Protestantism. He shows that the ordinary antithesis of North and South Germany represents no real ethnographical distinction, and that the natural divisions of Germany, founded on its physical geography are threefold—namely, the low plains, the middle mountain region, and the high mountain region, or Lower, Middle, and Upper Germany; and on this primary natural division all the other broad ethnographical distinctions of Germany will be I found to rest. The plains of North or Lower Germany include all the seaboard the nation possesses; and this, together with the fact that they are traversed to the depth of 600 miles by navigable rivers, makes them the natural seat of a trading race. Quite different is the geographical character of page 169 Middle Germany. While the northern plains are marked off into great divisions, by such rivers as the Lower Rhine, the Weser, and the Oder, running almost in parallel lines, this central region is cut up like a mosaic by the capricious lines of valleys and rivers. Here is the region in which you find those famous roofs from which the rain-water runs toward two different seas, and the mountain-tops from which you may look into eight or ten German states. ... "

"This triple division corresponds with the broad distinctions of climate. In the northern plains the atmosphere is damp and heavy; in the southern mountain region it is dry and rare, and there are abrupt changes of temperature, sharp contrasts between the seasons, and devastating storms; but in both these zones men are hardened by conflict with the roughness of the climate. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is little of this struggle; the seasons are more equable, and the mild, soft air of the valleys tends to make the inhabitants luxurious and sensitive to hardships. It is only in exceptional mountain districts that one is here reminded of the rough, bracing air on the heights of Southern Germany. It is a curious fact that, as the air becomes gradually lighter and rarer from the North German coast toward Upper Germany, the average of suicides regularly decreases. Mecklenburg has the highest number, then Prussia, while the fewest suicides occur in Bavaria and Austria.

"Both the northern and southern regions have still a large extent of waste lands, downs, morasses, and heaths; and to these are added, in the south, abundance of snow-fields and naked rock; while in Middle Germany culture has almost over-spread the face of the land, and there are no large tracts of waste. There is the same proportion in the distribution of forests. Again, in the north we see a monotonous continuity of wheat-fields, potato-grounds, meadow-lands, and vast heaths, and there is the same uniformity of culture over large surfaces in the southern table-lands and the Alpine pastures. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, there is a perpetual variety of crops within a short space; the diversity of land surface and the corresponding variety in the species of plants are an invitation to the splitting up of estates, and this again encourages to the utmost the motley character of the cultivation.

"According to this threefold division, it appears that there are certain features common to North and South Germany in which they differ from Central Germany, and the nature of this difference Riehl indicates by distinguishing the former as Centralized Land and the latter as Individualized Land; a distinction which is well symbolized by the fact that North and South Germany possess the great lines of railway which are the medium for the traffic of the world, while Middle Germany is far richer in lines for local communication, and possesses the greatest length of railway within the smallest space. Disregarding superficialities, the East Frieslanders, the Schleswig-Holsteiners, the Mecklenburghers, and the Pomeranians are much more nearly allied to the old Bavarians, the Tyrolese, and the Styrians than any of these are allied to the Saxons, the Thuringians, or the Rhinelanders. Both in North and page 171 South Germany original races are still found in large masses, and popular dialects are spoken; you still find there thoroughly peasant districts, thorough villages, and also, at great intervals, thorough cities; you still find there a sense of rank. In Middle Germany, on the contrary, the original races are fused together or sprinkled hither and thither; the peculiarities of the popular dialects are worn down or confused; there is no very strict line of demarkation between the country and the town population, hundreds of small towns and large villages being hardly distinguishable in their characteristics; and the sense of rank, as part of the organic structure of society, is almost extinguished. Again, both in the north and south there is still a strong ecclesiastical spirit in the people, and the Pomeranian sees Antichrist in the Pope as clearly as the Tyrolese sees him in Doctor Luther; while in Middle Germany the confessions are mingled, they exist peaceably side by side in very narrow space, and tolerance or indifference has spread itself widely even in the popular mind. ... "

................................................................................................

And the explicitly defined caste system of West, especially so of Europe - 

"Riehl gives us a series of studies in that natural history of the people which he regards as the proper basis of social policy. He holds that, in European society, there are three natural ranks or estates: the hereditary landed aristocracy, the citizens or commercial class, and the peasantry or agricultural class. By natural ranks he means ranks which have their roots deep in the historical structure of society, and are still, in the present, showing vitality above ground; he means those great social groups which are not only distinguished externally by their vocation, but essentially by their mental character, their habits, their mode of life—by the principle they represent in the historical development of society. In his conception of the “Fourth Estate” he differs from the usual interpretation, according to which it is simply equivalent to the Proletariat, or those who are dependent on daily wages, whose only capital is their skill or bodily strength—factory operatives, artisans, agricultural laborers, to whom might be added, especially in Germany, the day-laborers with the quill, the literary proletariat. This, Riehl observes, is a valid basis of economical classification, but not of social classification. In his view, the Fourth Estate is a stratum produced by the perpetual abrasion of the other great social groups; it is the sign and result of the decomposition which is commencing in the organic constitution of society.  Its elements are derived alike from the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the peasantry. It assembles under its banner the deserters of historical society, and forms them into a terrible army, which is only just awaking to the consciousness of its corporate power. The tendency of this Fourth Estate, by the very process of its formation, is to do away with the distinctive historical character of the other estates, and to resolve their peculiar rank and vocation into a uniform social relation founded on an abstract conception of society. According to Riehl’s classification, the day-laborers, whom the political economist designates as the Fourth Estate, belong partly to the peasantry or agricultural class, and partly to the citizens or commercial class. ... "

By whatever name or label, that's the explicitly defined caste system of West, especially so of Europe.  

................................................................................................

Funny, George Eliot does not connect, perhaps due to a survival mechanism operating subconsciously - 

" ... English visitor in Germany will probably take an opportunity of asking is, “What is the strict meaning of the word Philister?” Riehl’s answer is, that the Philister “is one who is indifferent to all social interests, all public life, as distinguished from selfish and private interests; he has no sympathy with political and social events except as they affect his own comfort and prosperity, as they offer him material for amusement or opportunity for gratifying his vanity. He has no social or political creed, but is always of the opinion which is most convenient for the moment. He is always in the majority, and is the main element of unreason and stupidity in the judgment of a “discerning public.” It seems presumptuous in us to dispute Riehl’s interpretation of a German word, but we must think that, in literature, the epithet Philister has usually a wider meaning than this—includes his definition and something more. We imagine the Philister is the personification of the spirit which judges everything from a lower point of view than the subject demands; which judges the affairs of the parish from the egotistic or purely personal point of view; which judges the affairs of the nation from the parochial point of view, and does not hesitate to measure the merits of the universe from the human point of view. At least this must surely be the spirit to which Goethe alludes in a passage cited by Riehl himself, where he says that the Germans need not be ashamed of erecting a monument to him as well as to Blucher; for if Blucher had freed them from the French, he (Goethe) had freed them from the nets of the Philister ... "

Obviously the word is philistine in English and was, with all those connotations, Palestine in Latin, and that epithet was a label stuck by Romans to lands that belonged to Jews, long before they were forced to leave, for purpose of false insult and humiliation, a practice not invented by Macaulay but followed by British in various colonies, including Ireland, India and more. 

................................................................................................

"The Fourth Estate in Germany, says Riehl, has its centre of gravity not, as in England and France, in the day laborers and factory operatives, and still less in the degenerate peasantry.  In Germany the educated proletariat is the leaven that sets the mass in fermentation; the dangerous classes there go about, not in blouses, but in frock coats; they begin with the impoverished prince and end in the hungriest littérateur. The custom that all the sons of a nobleman shall inherit their father’s title necessarily goes on multiplying that class of aristocrats who are not only without function but without adequate provision, and who shrink from entering the ranks of the citizens by adopting some honest calling. The younger son of a prince, says Riehl, is usually obliged to remain without any vocation; and however zealously he may study music, painting, literature, or science, he can never be a regular musician, painter, or man of science; his pursuit will be called a “passion,” not a “calling,” and to the end of his days he remains a dilettante. “But the ardent pursuit of a fixed practical calling can alone satisfy the active man.” Direct legislation cannot remedy this evil.  The inheritance of titles by younger sons is the universal custom, and custom is stronger than law. But if all government preference for the “aristocratic proletariat” were withdrawn, the sensible men among them would prefer emigration, or the pursuit of some profession, to the hungry distinction of a title without rents."

Of course, Europe's grandma took care care of a good many - by arranging holidays together for her numerous grandchildren, creating matchmaking circumstances thereby, so the story goes; between her children and grandchildren, a sizable quantity of German, apart from other European, royals must have found - did find - suitable positions. Until, of course, WWI, which ended up with devastation amongst the royal mob. 

................................................................................................

Amazing how much disdain Riehl, and George Eliot, show for their own sort - 

"The intellectual proletaires Riehl calls the “church militant” of the Fourth Estate in Germany. In no other country are they so numerous; in no other country is the trade in material and industrial capital so far exceeded by the wholesale and retail trade, the traffic and the usury, in the intellectual capital of the nation.  Germany yields more intellectual produce than it can use and pay for. 

"“This over-production, which is not transient but permanent, nay, is constantly on the increase, evidences a diseased state of the national industry, a perverted application of industrial powers, and is a far more pungent satire on the national condition than all the poverty of operatives and peasants. . . . Other nations need not envy us the preponderance of the intellectual proletariat over the proletaires of manual labor. For man more easily becomes diseased from over-study than from the labor of the hands; and it is precisely in the intellectual proletariat that there are the most dangerous seeds of disease. This is the group in which the opposition between earnings and wants, between the ideal social position and the real, is the most hopelessly irreconcilable.”"

 ................................................................................................

" ... He is as far as possible from the folly of supposing that the sun will go backward on the dial because we put the hands of our clock backward; he only contends against the opposite folly of decreeing that it shall be mid-day while in fact the sun is only just touching the mountain-tops, and all along the valley men are stumbling in the twilight."

Funny, Germany has since gone quite opposite, and European countriesnever corrected that - since WWII while Germany occupied most of Europe, even Paris follows Berlin time, which is not suitable for Germany to begin with, Berlin being extremely northeast; his dislocated minds of most to the extent they do not realise clocks can be - and in their land are - set arbitrarily, and it shouldn't be so; if reminded that at midday, sun ought to be as close to aligned with North-South longitudinal line as possible, they - specifically, females in Germany in charge of teaching foreigners (specifically, the langyage; but, one suspects, secretly, charged with impressing them with glories of Germany, innocence of nazis, and very likely, guilt of Jews) respond by saying they will ask someone who (male, of course, of right colour) studies radio, hence knows better. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 23, 2021 - September 24, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Silly Novels by Lady Novelists. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Even before one begins reading, it's obvious the title is not only misogynistic and illogical, its as silly as it gets; for, there must be a great deal many silly things in the world, and some of them novels - but who guaranteed there were none written by males? Or is that so much an assumption, is why Mary Evans had to take the name George Eliot, just so she wasn't suspected of being silly before bring read? Nobody accused Jane Austen of being silly, and she never took a male name! Nor did most of women authirs who wrote novels, silly or not, before and during time of Jane Austen. 

Did public and publishers alike suddenly turn misogynistic? Why, because Jane Austen was so superlative? 

Or is it simply that, someone who knew George Eliot and wished to discourage women, a wife, some daughters, from writing, or at least from being expected to publish it, asked her - George Eliot - to write this, so that it's done without him looking guilty?

................................................................................................

George Eliot describes the subject elaborately. 

"Silly Novels by Lady Novelists are a genus with many species, determined by the particular quality of silliness that predominates in them—the frothy, the prosy, the pious, or the pedantic.  But it is a mixture of all these—a composite order of feminine fatuity—that produces the largest class of such novels, which we shall distinguish as the mind-and-millinery species. The heroine is usually an heiress, probably a peeress in her own right, with perhaps a vicious baronet, an amiable duke, and an irresistible younger son of a marquis as lovers in the foreground, a clergyman and a poet sighing for her in the middle distance, and a crowd of undefined adorers dimly indicated beyond. Her eyes and her wit are both dazzling; her nose and her morals are alike free from any tendency to irregularity; she has a superb contralto and a superb intellect; she is perfectly well dressed and perfectly religious; she dances like a sylph, and reads the Bible in the original tongues. Or it may be that the heroine is not an heiress—that rank and wealth are the only things in which she is deficient; but she infallibly gets into high society, she has the triumph of refusing many matches and securing the best, and she wears some family jewels or other as a sort of crown of righteousness at the end. Rakish men either bite their lips in impotent confusion at her repartees, or are touched to penitence by her reproofs, which, on appropriate occasions, rise to a lofty strain of rhetoric; indeed, there is a general propensity in her to make speeches, and to rhapsodize at some length when she retires to her bedroom. In her recorded conversations she is amazingly eloquent, and in her unrecorded conversations amazingly witty. She is understood to have a depth of insight that looks through and through the shallow theories of philosophers, and her superior instincts are a sort of dial by which men have only to set their clocks and watches, and all will go well. The men play a very subordinate part by her side. You are consoled now and then by a hint that they have affairs, which keeps you in mind that the working-day business of the world is somehow being carried on, but ostensibly the final cause of their existence is that they may accompany the heroine on her “starring” expedition through life. They see her at a ball, and they are dazzled; at a flower-show, and they are fascinated; on a riding excursion, and they are witched by her noble horsemanship; at church, and they are awed by the sweet solemnity of her demeanor. She is the ideal woman in feelings, faculties, and flounces.  For all this she as often as not marries the wrong person to begin with, and she suffers terribly from the plots and intrigues of the vicious baronet; but even death has a soft place in his heart for such a paragon, and remedies all mistakes for her just at the right moment. The vicious baronet is sure to be killed in a duel, and the tedious husband dies in his bed requesting his wife, as a particular favor to him, to marry the man she loves best, and having already dispatched a note to the lover informing him of the comfortable arrangement. Before matters arrive at this desirable issue our feelings are tried by seeing the noble, lovely, and gifted heroine pass through many mauvais moments, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that her sorrows are wept into embroidered pocket-handkerchiefs, that her fainting form reclines on the very best upholstery, and that whatever vicissitudes she may undergo, from being dashed out of her carriage to having her head shaved in a fever, she comes out of them all with a complexion more blooming and locks more redundant than ever."

That tells us why good, beautiful young heiresses of George Eliot world suffer, due to their husbands being neither dazzled by beauty nor virtue, while lesser women do very well - Dorothea, Romola vs Celia,  Rosamond - and why she felt bound to make it so. But the middle part, is that a snide hit at the almost most loved heroine, Elizabeth Bennet?

................................................................................................

"We may remark, by the way, that we have been relieved from a serious scruple by discovering that silly novels by lady page 180 novelists rarely introduce us into any other than very lofty and fashionable society.  We had imagined that destitute women turned novelists, as they turned governesses, because they had no other “ladylike” means of getting their bread. ... "

Hence Gwendolyn married Grandcourt, and suffered forever? Because being governess or novelist is infradig?

" ... On this supposition, vacillating syntax, and improbable incident had a certain pathos for us, like the extremely supererogatory pincushions and ill-devised nightcaps that are offered for sale by a blind man. ... "

How snide does George Eliot get! Really, women writers of novels compared with clothes tailored by blind men? 

Did she even read Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, even Charlotte Bronte? 

" ... We felt the commodity to be a nuisance, but we were glad to think that the money went to relieve the necessitous, and we pictured to ourselves lonely women struggling for a maintenance, or wives and daughters devoting themselves to the production of “copy” out of pure heroism—perhaps to pay their husband’s debts or to purchase luxuries for a sick father. ... "

If readers were so generous to women writers, why would Mary Evans not only write as George Eliot, but pretend explicitly to be male, in writing Looking Backward?

................................................................................................

" ... Under these impressions we shrank from criticising a lady’s novel: her English might be faulty, but we said to ourselves her motives are irreproachable; her imagination may be uninventive, but her patience is untiring. Empty writing was excused by an empty stomach, and twaddle was consecrated by tears.  But no!  This theory of ours, like many other pretty theories, has had to give way before observation.  Women’s silly novels, we are now convinced, are written under totally different circumstances. The fair writers have evidently never talked to a tradesman except from a carriage window; they have no notion of the working-classes except as “dependents;” they think five hundred a year a miserable pittance; Belgravia and “baronial halls” are their primary truths; and they have no idea of feeling interest in any man who is not at least a great landed proprietor, if not a prime minister. ... "

Funny, that description fits none of the four excellent women writers she ought to have heard of, even if she disdained reading them! All four - Jane Austen, and Bronte sisters - were clergymen's daughters, gentry and struggling to stay gentry, like George Eliot until she married. 

" ... It is clear that they write in elegant boudoirs, with violet-colored ink and a ruby pen; that they must be entirely indifferent to publishers’ accounts, and inexperienced in every form of poverty except poverty of brains. It is true that we are constantly struck with the want of verisimilitude in their representations of the high society in which they seem to live; but then they betray no closer acquaintance with any other form of life. If their peers and peeresses are improbable, their literary men, tradespeople, and cottagers are impossible; and their intellect seems to have the peculiar impartiality of reproducing both what they have seen and heard, and what they have not seen and heard, with equal unfaithfulness. ... "

................................................................................................

George Eliot goes on to shred a few novels she's been reading, beginning with one titled 'Compensation'. 

" ... There is a certain flavor of orthodoxy mixed with the parade of fortunes and fine carriages in “Laura Gay,” but it is an orthodoxy mitigated by study of “the humane Cicero,” and by an “intellectual disposition to analyze.” 

"“Compensation” is much more heavily dosed with doctrine, but then it has a treble amount of snobbish worldliness and absurd incident to tickle the palate of pious frivolity. ... "

Why she chose those for review, insted of an Austen or a Bronte work, is a puzzle. 

Just to justify this writing? 

"... Even Miss Susan Barton, the superior authoress, whose pen moves in a “quick, decided manner when she is composing,” declines the finest opportunities of marriage; and though old enough to be Linda’s mother (since we are told that she refused Linda’s father), has her hand sought by a young earl, the heroine’s rejected lover. Of course, genius and morality must be backed by eligible offers, or they would seem rather a dull affair; and piety, like other things, in order to be comme il faut, must be in “society,” and have admittance to the best circles. 

"“Rank and Beauty” is a more frothy and less religious variety of the mind-and-millinery species. ... "

" ... The authoress of “Laura Gay,” for example, having married her hero and heroine, improves the event by observing that “if those sceptics, whose eyes have so long gazed on matter that they can no longer see aught else in man, could once enter with heart and soul, into such bliss as this, they would come to say that the soul of man and the polypus are not of common origin, or of the same texture.” Lady novelists, it appears, can see something else besides matter; they are not limited to phenomena, but can relieve their eyesight by occasional glimpses of the noumenon, and are, therefore, naturally better able than any one else to confound sceptics, even of that remarkable but to us unknown school which maintains that the soul of man is of the same texture as the polypus."

" ... To judge from their writings, there are certain ladies who think that an amazing ignorance, both of science and of life, is the best possible qualification for forming an opinion on the knottiest moral and speculative questions. Apparently, their recipe for solving all such difficulties is something like this: Take a woman’s head, stuff it with a smattering of philosophy and literature chopped small, and with false notions of society baked hard, let it hang over a desk a few hours every day, and serve up hot in feeble English when not required. You will rarely meet with a lady novelist of the oracular class who is diffident of her ability to decide on theological questions—who has any suspicion that she is not capable of discriminating with the nicest accuracy between the good and evil in all church parties—who does not see precisely how it is that men have gone wrong hitherto—and pity philosophers in general that they have not had the opportunity of consulting her. ... "

"As typical a novel of the oracular kind as we can hope to meet with, is “The Enigma: a Leaf from the Chronicles of the Wolchorley House.” The “enigma” which this novel is to solve is certainly one that demands powers no less gigantic than those of a lady novelist, being neither more nor less than the existence of evil. ... "

"Such stories as this of “The Enigma” remind us of the pictures clever children sometimes draw “out of their own head,” where you will see a modern villa on the right, two knights in helmets fighting in the foreground, and a tiger grinning in a jungle on the left, the several objects being brought together because the artist thinks each pretty, and perhaps still more because he remembers seeing them in other pictures."

................................................................................................

"The epithet “silly” may seem impertinent, applied to a novel which indicates so much reading and intellectual activity as “The Enigma,” but we use this epithet advisedly. If, as the world has long agreed, a very great amount of instruction will not make a wise man, still less will a very mediocre amount of instruction make a wise woman. And the most mischievous form of feminine silliness is the literary form, because it tends to confirm the popular prejudice against the more solid education of women. 

"When men see girls wasting their time in consultations about bonnets and ball dresses, and in giggling or sentimental love-confidences, or middle-aged women mismanaging their children, and solacing themselves with acrid gossip, they can hardly help saying, “For Heaven’s sake, let girls be better educated; let them have some better objects of thought—some more solid occupations.” But after a few hours’ conversation with an oracular literary woman, or a few hours’ reading of her books, they are likely enough to say, “After all, when a woman gets some knowledge, see what use she makes of it! Her knowledge remains acquisition instead of passing into culture; instead of being subdued into modesty and simplicity by a larger acquaintance with thought and fact, she has a feverish consciousness of her attainments; she keeps a sort of mental pocket-mirror, and is continually looking in it at her own ‘intellectuality;’ she spoils the taste of one’s muffin by questions of metaphysics; ‘puts down’ men at a dinner-table with her superior information; and seizes the opportunity of a soirée to catechise us on the vital question of the relation between mind and matter. And then, look at her writings! She mistakes vagueness for depth, bombast for eloquence, and affectation for originality; she struts on one page, rolls her eyes on another, grimaces in a third, and is hysterical in a fourth.  She may have read many writings of great men, and a few writings of great women; but she is as unable to discern the difference between her own style and theirs as a Yorkshireman is to discern the difference between his own English and a Londoner’s: rhodomontade is the native accent of her intellect. No—the average nature of women is too shallow and feeble a soil to bear much tillage; it is only fit for the very lightest crops.” 

"It is true that the men who come to such a decision on such very superficial and imperfect observation may not be among the wisest in the world; but we have not now to contest their opinion—we are only pointing out how it is unconsciously encouraged by many women who have volunteered themselves as representatives of the feminine intellect. We do not believe that a man was ever strengthened in such an opinion by associating with a woman of true culture, whose mind had absorbed her knowledge instead of being absorbed by it. A really cultured woman, like a really cultured man, is all the simpler and the less obtrusive for her knowledge; it has made her see herself and her opinions in something like just proportions; she does not make it a pedestal from which she flatters herself that she commands a complete view of men and things, but makes it a point of observation from which to form a right estimate of herself. She neither spouts poetry nor quotes Cicero on slight provocation; not because she thinks that a sacrifice must be made to the prejudices of men, but because that mode of exhibiting her memory and Latinity does not present itself to her as edifying or graceful. She does not write books to confound philosophers, perhaps because she is able to write books that delight them. In conversation she is the least formidable of women, because she understands you, without wanting to make you aware that you can’t understand her. She does not give you information, which is the raw material of culture—she gives you sympathy, which is its subtlest essence."

................................................................................................

"The Orlando of Evangelical literature is the young curate, looked at from the point of view of the middle class, where cambric bands are understood to have as thrilling an effect on the hearts of young ladies as epaulettes have in the classes above and below it. In the ordinary type of these novels the hero is almost sure to be a young curate, frowned upon, perhaps by worldly mammas, but carrying captive the hearts of their daughters, who can “never forget that sermon;” tender glances are seized from the pulpit stairs instead of the opera-box; tête-à-têtes are seasoned with quotations from Scripture instead of quotations from the poets; and questions as to the state of the heroine’s affections are mingled with anxieties as to the state of her soul. The young curate always has a background of well-dressed and wealthy if not fashionable society—for Evangelical silliness is as snobbish as any other kind of silliness—and the Evangelical lady novelist, while she explains to you the type of the scapegoat on one page, is ambitious on another to represent the manners and conversations of aristocratic people. Her pictures of fashionable society are often curious studies, considered as efforts of the Evangelical imagination; but in one particular the novels of the White Neck-cloth School are meritoriously realistic—their favorite hero, the Evangelical young curate, is always rather an insipid personage."

Isn't that Daniel Deronda, all but the formality of curate living? Which is compensated amply throughout the book. 

................................................................................................

"It is less excusable in an Evangelical novelist than in any other, gratuitously to seek her subjects among titles and carriages. The real drama of Evangelicalism—and it has abundance of fine drama for any one who has genius enough to discern and reproduce it—lies among the middle and lower classes; and are not Evangelical opinions understood to give an especial interest in the weak things of the earth, rather than in the mighty? Why, then, cannot our Evangelical lady novelists show us the operation of their religious views among people (there really are many such in the world) who keep no carriage, “not so much as a brass-bound gig,” who even manage to eat their dinner without a silver fork, and in whose mouths the authoress’s questionable English would be strictly consistent? Why can we not have pictures of religious life among the industrial classes in England, as interesting as Mrs. Stowe’s pictures of religious life among the negroes? Instead of this pious ladies nauseate us with novels which remind us of what we sometimes see in a worldly woman recently “converted;”—she is as fond of a fine dinner-table as before, but she invites clergymen instead of beaux; she thinks as much of her dress as before, but she adopts a more sober choice of colors and patterns; her conversation is as trivial as before, but the triviality is flavored with gospel instead of gossip. In “The Old Grey Church” we have the same sort of Evangelical travesty of the fashionable novel, and of course the vicious, intriguing baronet is not wanting."

................................................................................................

" ...A recent example of this heavy imbecility is “Adonijah, a Tale of the Jewish Dispersion,” which forms part of a series, “uniting,” we are told, “taste, humor, and sound principles.” “Adonijah,” we presume, exemplifies the tale of “sound principles;” the taste and humor are to be found in other members of the series. We are told on the cover that the incidents of this tale are “fraught with unusual interest,” and the preface winds up thus: “To those who feel interested in the dispersed of Israel and Judea, these pages may afford, perhaps, information on an important subject, as well as amusement.” Since the “important subject” on which this book is to afford information is not specified, it may possibly lie in some esoteric meaning to which we have no key; but if it has relation to the dispersed of Israel and Judea at any period of their history, we believe a tolerably well-informed school-girl already knows much more of it than she will find in this “Tale of the Jewish Dispersion.” “Adonijah” is simply the feeblest kind of love story, supposed to be instructive, we presume, because the hero is a Jewish captive and the heroine a Roman vestal; because they and their friends are converted to Christianity after the shortest and easiest method approved by the “Society for Promoting the Conversion of the Jews;” and because, instead of being written in plain language, it is adorned with that peculiar style of grandiloquence which is held by some lady novelists to give an antique coloring, and which we recognize at once in such phrases as these:—“the splendid regnal talent, undoubtedly, possessed by the Emperor Nero”—“the expiring scion of a lofty stem”—“the virtuous partner of his couch”—“ah, by Vesta!”—and “I tell thee, Roman.” Among the quotations which serve at once for instruction and ornament on the cover of this volume, there is one from Miss Sinclair, which informs us that “Works of imagination are avowedly read by men of science, wisdom, and piety;” from which we suppose the reader is to gather the cheering inference that Dr. Daubeny, Mr. Mill, or Mr. Maurice may openly indulge himself with the perusal of “Adonijah,” without being obliged to secrete it among the sofa cushions, or read it by snatches under the dinner-table."

................................................................................................

"“Be not a baker if your head be made of butter,” says a homely proverb, which, being interpreted, may mean, let no woman rush into print who is not prepared for the consequences. We are aware that our remarks are in a very different tone from that of the reviewers who, with perennial recurrence of precisely similar emotions, only paralleled, we imagine, in the experience of monthly nurses, tell one lady novelist after another that they “hail” her productions “with delight.” We are aware that the ladies at whom our criticism is pointed are accustomed to be told, in the choicest phraseology of puffery, that their pictures of life are brilliant, their characters well drawn, their style fascinating, and their sentiments lofty. But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of speech, we ask them to reflect for a moment on the chary praise, and often captious blame, which their panegyrists give to writers whose works are on the way to become classics. No sooner does a woman show that she has genius or effective talent, than she receives the tribute of being moderately praised and severely criticised. By a peculiar thermometric adjustment, when a woman’s talent is at zero, journalistic approbation is at the boiling pitch; when she attains mediocrity, it is already at no more than summer heat; and if ever she reaches excellence, critical enthusiasm drops to the freezing point. Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell, and Mrs. Gaskell have been treated as cavalierly as if they had been men. ... The foolish vanity of wishing to appear in print, instead of being counterbalanced by any consciousness of the intellectual or moral derogation implied in futile authorship, seems to be encouraged by the extremely false impression that to write at all is a proof of superiority in a woman. On this ground we believe that the average intellect of women is unfairly represented by the mass of feminine literature, and that while the few women who write well are very far above the ordinary intellectual level of their sex, the many women who write ill are very far below it. So that, after all, the severer critics are fulfilling a chivalrous duty in depriving the mere fact of feminine authorship of any false prestige which may give it a delusive attraction, and in recommending women of mediocre faculties—as at least a negative service they can render their sex—to abstain from writing."

................................................................................................

"Happily, we are not dependent on argument to prove that Fiction is a department of literature in which women can, after their kind, fully equal men. A cluster of great names, both living and dead, rush to our memories in evidence that women can produce novels not only fine, but among the very finest—novels, too, that have a precious speciality, lying quite apart from masculine aptitudes and experience. No educational restrictions can shut women out from the materials of fiction, and there is no species of art which is so free from rigid requirements. Like crystalline masses, it may take any form, and yet be beautiful; we have only to pour in the right elements—genuine observation, humor, and passion. But it is precisely this absence of rigid requirement which constitutes the fatal seduction of novel-writing to incompetent women. Ladies are not wont to be very grossly deceived as to their power of playing on the piano; here certain positive difficulties of execution have to be conquered, and incompetence inevitably breaks down. Every art which had its absolute technique is, to a certain extent, guarded from the intrusions of mere left-handed imbecility. But in novel-writing there are no barriers for incapacity to stumble against, no external criteria to prevent a writer from mistaking foolish facility for mastery."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 24, 2021 - September 24, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Forster. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot writes about someone not so well known now as he was in her time, but does evidently not expect to be read over a century and a half later. 

"We do not know a more touchingly tragical history than that of George Forster, who closed in so lonely and wretched a manner that life which, as a boy, he began so dazzlingly; leaping, when yet in his teens, into startling fame, and winning the lively interest of all Europe as the companion of Cook, and the recounter of his second expedition to those blessed isles of the Southern Sea. Other lives have been more violently checkered, or rent by abrupter incidents; but the web of none has been so altogether spun with the threads of straitened penury and grinding distress. ... "

Having grasped the reader's attention, she doesn't say what did happen, expecting her readers knew all of details thereof, but digresses, with a German style sentence to begin with. 

" ... It is is curious to observe the course of lives: there are some whose very accidental adventures are pitched into such wondrous tune with their owners’ tempers, that fancy might stray to the thought of a moulding destiny designing their career from womb to death,—lives the turns and meetings of which strike so into their tendencies, that they foster them, whether for weal or woe, as it were out of necessity, and beyond any aid or power of repression of their own. ... "

................................................................................................

George Eliot explains away why some are brilliant achievers.   

" ... Doubtless, when closely viewed, the mystery proves to be only that such souls, endowed with lively quickness, seize on everything akin to their promptings, while dullards stumble blindly on their way, and mysterious destiny resolves itself into a goodly dose of enterprise. ..." 

More poetically, 

" ... There are other lives which offer analogies more worthy of consideration: the lives of the children of their age, showing its sum total in their thoughts and doings as the blood and type of family come out in its offspring; the chance adventurers, who are transformed and diverted to their own purposes and feelings, as deluges turn to flooded lakes or rivers, according to the nature of the country that takes them in. ... "

And now George Eliot returns to the subject, but not in a vertical swoop, that wouldn't be her! She's not only spiralling around, but determined to match her long sentences to those of German literature, even though English won't lend itself to the split verb changing meanings as one turns the page before a sentence ends!

" ... Such men exist at all times; for times are the work of men, and in the summary of the man we learn to know mankind. George Forster was one of these. All his thoughts and doings are the utterings of that strange eighteenth century; as a boy turned into a mighty traveller suiting his age’s spirit of inquiry, he remains his whole life long an eager, restless wanderer, an Ishmaelite on the face of his century, ever seeking and peering on to a brighter future; his temper is marked by that simple and undoubting trust in new perfections and coming certainties, with a credulous leaning to all novel and hidden truths, prevalent in his age, when man awoke to belief after centuries of slumber; his heart is honest and generous, his spirit eager, and freed from all he considers prejudice,—allowing itself to soar into regions, the subtle air of which is too rare to live in; a sufferer by his father’s unbridled humors, in married life not slightly tried, and if not wholly wrecked then, saved only by a lifeboat of most thorough eighteenth-century build; renowned as a sailor round the world, and as the man who had brought to Europe knowledge of friendly savages, and who could, from personal acquaintance, describe new realms of nature and mankind to the sickened age yearning for fancied archetypes of man and the world;—all these characteristics give a special zest to poor George Forster’s life. ... "

And another spiral, before a small clue as to the subject. 

" ... In short, we see mirrored in his history the whole painful lot and social shackling of a man of science of those days in Germany, and how a thinking and feeling mind became drifted athwart them into perilous rapids and breakneck eddies; we see a man gifted with the highest abilities and soundest learning, strong in spirit and heart, moreover privileged with a hold on the tastes of the public from the very nature of his fame,—we see this man, in spite of his advantages, doomed to toil his whole life long beneath a weight of trammels, unable to find the hand that might drag him out of the choking mud-sloughs of rotten petty courts, until at last he topples over the mighty chasm of the French Revolution. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... To the English public he is wholly unknown,—to that of his own country, by a freak of destiny, he was until lately only notorious; for while straitened circumstances deprived his fine intellect of that repose, as necessary to its nurture as light and space are to a tree to enable it to put forth perfect fruit, the peculiarities of his political adventures exposed him to an ill wind which blasted his memory. Almost all Forster’s writings partake of a fragmentary nature and hasty slightness of design, which were imparted to them of a necessity from the enforced circumstances of their production. They are mostly essays, contributed regularly to journals, or prefaces to translations of travels, undertaken at the bidding of publishers; but as soon as we look at them, we perceive a fund of learning, lively feeling, and suggestive thought set forth in wording so full of natural charm, that we at once guess a mind of no common power to be at work here. Twice only in the course of his hard-working life did he get respite enough to be able to undertake a connected production,—the first time, when, hardly past his boyhood, he wrote that account of his voyage with Cook, which at once made his name known all over the world; the second time, just before the close of his career, when he began, but did not finish, his journey through Brabant and England. The two volumes he accomplished are his most perfect literary work, and show what would have been the fulness of Forster. Here is a mass of thoughtful observation and rich suggestion. The whole tone and scope of his writing were wholly different from the abstractness and vagueness from which no German thinker of his day was free; it had the life of reality about it, and his truthful feeling and keen eye made him so lively an expounder of nature, that his method and style were the chosen model of Humboldt, as Forster’s example was his first incentive to scientific exploration."

And now another clue - 

"The youth he had spent in his country had accustomed his mind to the ways of public life, and imparted to it habits of practical thought, which impregnated his whole being, and distinguished him for readiness of bearing amidst the dim haziness of his countrymen. His turn of mind found in the study of natural science the only nurture which the arid social system of Germany left for it; but as soon as the great French Revolution loosened the stoniness in which he had been bound, the promptings of his nature made him strike at once into the genial soil of politics. In truth, the quickenings of his mind were those that stamp the citizen; he was public-spirited in the true sense of the word; and bred in self-governing England, accustomed to public enterprise and rule, he stood before his countrymen, in the delicately organized manifoldness of his constitution, in the sparkle of his renown, and in charm of writing, like a prophet whose words, passing their understanding, were coarsely maligned. Therefore people’s minds turned away from Forster until, when after near half a century the growth of enlightenment stirred up feelings of independence, men found that in him they had possessed one whose sound and patriotic aspirations had been altogether calumniated, and who combined the qualities of a noble intellect with the virtues of the citizen."

Before George Eliot would actually condescend to return to the subject, but not before another spiral - 

"It is the interesting history of this man that Heinrich König recounts in a book undertaken under the inspiration of times in many respects akin to those of his hero, and written with a most intimate knowledge of the scenery of the story’s plot. For many years he has studied every detail, however petty, of German history of the end of the last century; and before he entertained any thought of this book, he had already written a novel on the Revolution of Mayence, which is a wonderfully accurate picture of the times, and the close researches for which had made him intimately acquainted with many parts of Forster’s life."

................................................................................................

"George Forster was born on the 26th November, 1754, at the poor village of Nassenhuben, near Danzig, where his father, whose Christian names were John Reinhold, was the Calvinistic minister. He had been driven to this calling by his father, who had been highly displeased on learning that his son, while a student at Halle, had taken the liberty to desert the law for medicine and the natural sciences, in which he had made considerable progress. It thus happened that he was, as it were, turned off cramped from the very starting-post, and all through life’s race he limped. Though ever an honest Protestant, science was more his love than theology, and the straits of his position chafed his temper to that irascibility which afterwards so marred his good and sterling parts. His son, who amidst all his trials never laid aside a most dutiful bearing towards him, strikes off the following sketch of him once in a letter to Jacobi:— 

"“My father is, in every respect, a useful man for the sciences,—possessed of solid learning, choice reading, and book-lore, besides being a good naturalist, antiquary, and also theologian, although the last study does not occupy him any more, nor can it interest him scientifically, as I think. His warmth, hot temper, and eager battling for his ideas, have done him immeasurable harm, as it is also his misfortune that he does not know, and never will know, mankind,—always suspicious and credulous exactly there where he should not be so.”"

................................................................................................

And finally, as George Eliot designs to delve into the subject, it get not only really interesting, but mind-boggling. But not before she pours it all in a deluge of a paragraph longer than a page, which perhaps isn't as German as a sentence of that length - which would be difficult in English; English being, according to German scholars, "a crazy mixture of French and German ".

"We can fancy the quarrelsome divine plagued by his boorish parishioners in the midst of his study of Buffon, and flying into whims of wrongs under the friction of such daily worries. The living was not a fat one, while his family—for he early married a cousin—was the contrary of meagre; seven children required feeding, and the means to do so were not ready at hand. Under these circumstances the elder Forster, with his hankering for the sciences and his discontent with his parish, jumped at an offer made to him by the Russian Government to inspect and report on the new colonies founded on the banks of the Volga. Taking his son George, then eleven years old, with him, he spent the summer of 1765 in performing the journey and returning to St. Petersburg; in the autumn he handed in his report, the matter of which is said to have been so good as to have given the Empress suggestions for her great code of laws. His blustering temper, however, which often proved his worst enemy, closed his promising career in Russia; and he spent the winter in St. Petersburg, urging obstinate claims for recompense and imperturbably refusing to accept the offers made. During this time his wants drove him to the shifts of a translator, in which he called his boy to his aid, who was following the course of lessons at the high-school, and who thus early was broken in to his life-long drudgery of an overworked literary hack. At last the priest-sage gave vent to his anger with the Russian Government, and left St. Petersburg with the satisfaction of having at least had his will, if not the very sum of money, and none other than that which he had made his mind up to have. But if St. Petersburg and the Russias were well behind him and his son, it was not very clear what land lay ahead. The good Christians of Nassenhuben had provided themselves, during their high-priest’s gaddings about on the Volga, with some ghostly vice-regent, who seems to have been unwilling to give up his realm on his lord’s advent; and so John Reinhold, who perhaps rather liked the chance, conscious of his real acquirements and sphere of action, took the sudden resolve to seek his fortune in England, and, without even visiting his wife or family, sailed thither with his son. They sturdily fought off the dreariness of the voyage, lengthened by storms, with the study of English; and soon after their arrival, the father’s solid scientific knowledge having gained him the good-will of many distinguished men in London, he was appointed teacher of natural history at an educational institution for dissenting clergymen, at Warrington in Lancashire. George was apprenticed to a Russian merchant named Lewin; but the sedentary application of this life so pulled the youth down, that when, on his mother and sisters’ arrival, he escorted them to Warrington, his father became alarmed at his favorite child’s looks, and kept him by him. George was thus brought back to the study of the natural sciences under his father’s immediate influence; and as the latter soon embroiled himself, as usual, with his superiors, while the wants of his large family caused him to feel sorely pinched in his resources, the son had to put himself into the family traces, and help sturdily to keep the household van going. We find him, therefore, not only combining the parts of scholar and teacher, learning botany and zoology from his restless father, and teaching French and German in a neighboring school to those who ought to have been his playfellows, but the poor youth’s strength was still further strained by continual translations of foreign books of travels into English. ... "

But George Eliot has to get enigmatic now, leaving a reader to flounder for her meaning. 

" ... From this time of his life a story remains which is told by all his biographers, as foreshadowing in its small burden the haphazards which so often befell him, and the temper with which he took them. The pygmy professor’s road to his lecture-chair lay past a pastry-cook’s savory stall of sweet cakes, and the tale of this temptation ended as temptations will end when brought to bear on lively flesh and blood; the savor tingled through his veins, till, wholly rapt by its witchery, he swallowed as many cakes as he could cram. The cook, however, like a crafty worldly cook, only considered his pies’ sweetness as the means of barter; and before their taste was off poor George’s lips, the horror of dunnery and dismay of debt cut short his relish. Shame made him skulk along back ways; but the sharp cook’s twinkling eyes would flash on him still, until his little heart burst forth its bitter distress in a fervent prayer, when, lo! on crossing the next fence on his hiding by-path, his eye caught sight of a guinea embedded in a horse’s tread, and, having run to pay his debts, he bought with the remainder a gilt thimble for his sister. Painful troubles and dribbling windfalls of luck are indeed the tissue of his whole life; but if a lowness of spirit did come over him for a season in his gloomy times, one sunny ray was ever enough to lighten his heart and make it beat high and bold."

Pygmy professor, cakes, gold? 

Again, George Eliot condescends to return to Foster's life. 

"Under all these circumstances, and with the peculiar keen temper of Dr. John Reinhold Forster, it will be easily believed that he clutched at the sudden offer to accompany Cook as naturalist on his expedition. He only bargained to be allowed to take with him his son, then seventeen years of age; and so hurried was their departure that only nine days intervened between decision on the journey and embarkation. The history of this voyage is known to most persons. At that time all Europe eagerly watched its result; for since the discovery of America, no geographical riddles had so whetted its curiosity as those of the great Southern Sea. The fashionable idyllic sentimentalism of those times, so fostered by the hothouse breathings of B. de St. Pierre and Rousseau, was fascinated by the gentle savages and peaceful virgin isles of whose reality Cook’s first voyage had given the certainty; and all the smirking skirmishers of enlightenment were on the eager look-out for new and startling confirmation of their yearning dreams. How the many and large views of nature such a journey brought with it must have impressed the quick mind of young Forster, already so given to a wandering, shifting life, can be easily conceived. The driest man could not have met with such a chance at such an age of his life without learning from it somewhat which lasted for the remainder of it. George Forster bore away with him that largeness of views on nature and man which so nobly marked his thoughts in all stages of his life; he got his mind enriched with a tender, yet a large and manly sense of nature’s beauty, whose healthy freshness contrasted as vividly with the mawkish feeling of those times as a peasant girl’s ruddy cheek with a painted face; but he also bore away from these three roving years a hankering after travel which never left him, and to which, under the weight of trouble, he was too apt to give himself up, as the drinker grasps at his dram, while the seeds of lasting illness were laid in his body by an attack of scurvy."

................................................................................................

And now, finally, a reader unfamiliar with the subject of the article begins to comprehend the eulogistic opening paragraph. 

"The enjoyment of these pleasures was somewhat marred by painful embarrassments arising from fresh outbursts of his father’s wild temper, which chafed at the discipline of a man-of-war, entailing on the commander the necessity of severe measures to repress his mutinous freaks. The youth himself was, however, a favorite with Cook; and the language in which he speaks of him in a biographical sketch, written many years later, shows how thoroughly he knew the worth of that daring seaman’s character. But when, on the return of the expedition, the Doctor, with headstrong stubbornness, ran foul of the Admiralty itself, George was dragged into the quarrel, or from filial love rushed into it to a degree which had a lasting influence. It seems that the elder Forster had not fully understood the meaning of his engagement with the Government, according to which no account of the voyage was to be published before the official one: the Admiralty, therefore, stopped the publication of a work he was preparing; and in consequence of the fiery naturalist’s persistence in contesting its right to do so, it proceeded to an act which seems harsh, and might have maddened many a quieter man so laden with troubles, who saw his hopes of gain vanish, and nothing before him but poverty, debts, and a starving family,—it despoiled him of any share in the proposed Government publication. The blow was a desperate one. Yet even now the old man could not curb his temper ever so little, or matters would still have come to run more smoothly: George himself says as much in a letter of later date, although at all times he held his father to have been unjustly and most cruelly treated. As no mention of his own name had been made in the engagement with Government, he balked the Admiralty’s precautions (probably at his father’s desire) by writing himself an account of the voyage,—a proceeding which at the time exposed him to much abuse, and poisoned the quarrel beyond remedy. In this work the journey and the countries visited are described with simple truth, and a color which shows how thoroughly his soul had become impregnated with the sunny warmth of the tropics. The artlessness of the account has a charm which carries the reader away, and is sufficient proof that, although the father looked over the scientific description of animals and flowers, the bulk of the work is entirely George’s own. The success of the book was great; the author’s name became at once well known, and the poor family garrets in Percy Street were enlivened by the hail of many a foreigner, anxious to see the lucky travellers who had, beyond doubt, beheld and been in the happy South Sea Isles. It was on the occasion of such a pilgrimage that George was first brought together with a young German physician, whose name was Sömmering. He had come over to England to attend its medical schools; and that attraction which had drawn him unto his renowned countrymen grew quickly into the tightest bonds of friendship with the younger of them, fastened by kinship in studies, and probably also by ties of masonic brotherhood, which then, and for many years after, largely took hold of their minds in that alchemistic form under which it so mightily swayed the thought of Europe of that century."

Next part, already heartbreaking -

"The proceeds of the book were, unfortunately, small in money; starvation daily haunted the wretched dwelling, barely staved off: by petty gifts from a friend, or some German princeling, coaxed into dribbling forth scanty alms by a present of South Sea rarities; the sale of the latter also came to an absolute standstill, and the Admiralty was deaf to the roar of claims, till at last hard-hearted creditors came down on the forlorn family, and bore away its mainstay and pillar, and dreary King’s Bench shut on the chafing Doctor. It was indeed a bleak and starving future which George had then to look upon,—his father imprisoned and no prospect of relief, his mother sick and his sisters weak and helpless, while he himself was racked by continued ill-health maiming the sinews of his good-will to work. He soon had to yield to the conviction that in England there was no chance of obtaining aid; so, with the one thought of straining his utmost nerve for his parents, he turned himself to his native country, from which sundry cheers of fellow-feeling had at times gladdened the wretchedness of Percy Street. Making up, therefore, a bale of dried plants and other specimens of natural history, in the hope some continental museums might buy them, he, whose name was then trumpeted forth as the foremost of explorers, embarked at Harwich, to cross to Holland as an anxious pedler and seeker of alms. Nothing can be more touching than to read in his letters to his parents his grief at their sorrows, and his unflinching trust in Providence:— 

"“I am well and fresh” (he writes to his father), “resigned, and full of trust that God will not forsake us ; he has often proved his exceeding goodness, and will deliver us out of our present evil chances and hardships, which have weighed us down for these last years. I submit to all trials with the firm trust that they are meant for our best, and believe that, while I leave everything to the ordaining of the most perfect Being, I act neither unrighteously nor forwardly if I beseech him daily for the peace and earthly welfare of us all; for also here on earth we can reach to a certain pitch of happiness, and why, then, should we not pray for it?”"

................................................................................................

"Though he was received by the learned men of Holland with the most flattering kindness, and every sort of civil attention was paid him, he soon saw that he could have no hopes of bettering his family by any help from that country. ... "

"George hastened to Germany, reproaching himself with the slightest delay. At Düsseldorf, then renowned for its galleries of art, he was, however, waylaid by Jacobi, who, with enthusiastic kindness, as soon as he heard of the famed traveller’s arrival, wrote him before daybreak a pressing invitation to spend a whole day with him. Forster was fascinated by the society he was introduced to, and that spell in Jacobi’s bearing which had ravished Goethe with delight. One of the lords of the German commonwealth of letters, the bosom friend of Goethe and of its chief leaders, whom he loved to gather around him at his country-seat at Pempelfort, he enthralled the loving temper of young Forster by the welling forth of his speech, which he would let flow in the full stream of enthusiasm. Forster found himself transferred, as it were by a wizard’s wand, into the very midst of the choicest spirits of Germany, while the charm of Jacobi’s kindly hospitality soothed his aching heart like balm. The latest poems of Goethe; snatches from “Woldemar,” which Jacobi was then writing; freshly received letters from the stars of literature,—were the treats which, during four days, were thrust on Forster, spiced by the touching kindness of his host and his sisters; he tore himself from Düsseldorf, enraptured with his new friends. “Such people as these we shall not meet again on our whole journey,” was his exclamation to Alexander von Humboldt, when, twelve years later, on their trip to England, they turned out of their way to visit Jacobi.

"Cassel was the goal of his immediate expectations. He had hopes that the new Landgrave, Frederick II., who partook of the fashionable taste for dallying with enlightenment, provided it could be done cheaply, might be tempted to gain a man of his father’s fame for his new high-school. This sovereign, who, during his father’s lifetime, had forsaken his Protestant faith and ancestral views in politics, had, since his accession to his states, calmed the lively fears of the old servants of his house by steadily settling down into all the good old family ways. Although remaining a Catholic himself, he swore, as a true son of Hesse, to the maintenance of Protestantism in his country; and, quitting forthwith the Austrian Court, with which while heir apparent he had been unmindful enough of his blood to flirt, he left off all newfangled whims, to the delight of his gray-haired ministers, ruling as his father had ruled before him, to the comfort of himself and the fattening of his exchequer, which he shrewdly enriched by selling twenty-two thousand true Hessians to England for £7,000,000. If the sum seemed large, it also appears that the Landgrave had many calls for it. But George soon saw his hopes vanish afresh; the whole of the funds allotted for the mental enlightenment of such Hessians as were not gaining it in another way in America, had been sunk in a parcel of rubbishy marbles, which were their owner’s joy and pride. A sum that might have freed the starving traveller from King’s Bench, and have allowed him and his family to live at Cassel, could not possibly be made forthcoming; but, in its stead, his Highness deigned to admit George to a gracious audience in his statue gallery, and insisted on his delaying his filial researches till after the next sitting of his Academy of Antiquities, at which he accordingly held a discourse; and at last the Landgrave not only accepted a copy of the father’s books, but even strained his poverty to the disbursing of a gift of fifty louis, besides thrusting on the unwilling son the appointment of professor of natural history at the University of Cassel, with the dazzling salary of seventy pounds. It is touching to read how anxiously Forster debated with his conscience, whether he would be justified in accepting anything for himself as long as he had not achieved that relief for his parents which he had set out to seek; and when at last he did accept, it was with the express understanding that he should be allowed certain months of absence, wherein he might bring his endeavors to a satisfactory result. At Göttingen he made acquaintances which afterwards ripened into friendship,—especially that of Heyne; and he wrote a letter to his father—who he evidently feared might misinterpret his proceedings—in which he tried to enliven his gloom by the friendly greetings of the leading members of that University; but such kindly wishes were all he reaped, both here and at Berlin, with the exception of a pittance of one hundred louis from the Prince of Dessau, bestowed in a warm-hearted manner, and coupled with the promise to use his influence in England with the Admiralty, to obtain some recompense, which, however, proved vain. Such painful disappointments did not allow Forster to begin his stay at Cassel, in the spring of 1779, with a light heart; and his correspondence reveals his writhing efforts to burst his father’s prison bars, when, in the forlorn midnight of this gloom, a hidden hand all of a sudden thrust comfort and freedom on the wretched family. The masonic lodges of Germany, at the call of the Duke of Brunswick, their grand-master, paid the father’s debts, while the chair of natural history at Halle was to provide for his maintenance. True, however, to his self-willed temper, he nearly marred his own luck; for he could not for a long while be brought to give up the character of a victim, and insisted on his just claims, spurning what he deemed a dishonorable compromise, till the earnest entreaties of his family and the smarting reminiscences of imprisonment at last softened his resolve. ... Sömmering, the brother of his heart,—he to whom in the heyday of betrothal he wrote, “Love itself yields to the bond of soul which links me to thee,”—obtained the professorship of anatomy at Cassel, by dint of sundry diplomatic wiles which his eager friend suggested to him; for the Landgrave had snatched up the crotchet, that only Frenchmen knew the science, and it wanted no little knack to master his whims. ... Nor was the society of Cassel wanting in interest; besides many men of more or less distinction who were attached to its high-school, it counted the illustrious historian, Johannes von Müller, amongst its residents, between whom and Forster an intimacy sprang up; so that, had it not been for other discomforts, he might have contentedly endured the petty worries of Court attendance; for the Landgrave regarded his University, with its staff, as his toys, and Forster found, on promotion to the inspectorship of a most threadbare cabinet of natural history, that he shared with the statue gallery the honor of being his Highness’s chief entertainer. But the want of money, the canker of his life, soon made its gnawings felt. The pittance of his salary, and the loss by shipwreck of all his little property on its way from England, had made it impossible for the famished youth to start his establishment, however frugally, without a loan the cost of which shackled him like a galley-chain. ... “Fy! fy! I can’t get a book to look at here, unless I buy it,” he writes to Jacobi. “Cassel is a perfect wilderness, as regards new books, for the annual sum allotted for procuring such for the Prince’s library does not amount to £60.” ... "

"Freemasonry, in the garb of Illumination and Rosicrucian-ism, at that time had largely laid hold of the mind of Germany. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... He was offered the professorship of natural history at Wilna in Poland, and accepted it, not merely on his own hasty promptings, but by the counsel of such wary friends as Lichtenberg and Heyne. The conditions were, in fact, such as might have tempted many a literary man: besides a fair salary, a sum was settled for correspondence and the purchase of specimens of natural history, while the flattering language of the Primate Poniatowsky’s letter was backed by subscriptions which freed him from his liabilities at Cassel, and provided for his travelling outlay. Thus, at a moment when the atmosphere of Cassel choked his manly vigor, luck seemed to shower on him the very windfall befitting his wants; and with the good cheer with which he had formerly run to buy his sister a thimble with the chance sovereign that saved him from his boyish scrapes, he now leapt forward to snatch the happiness which seemed to be beckoning him. 

"Happiness this time appeared to him in the guise of a young girl of twenty. During his visits to Göttingen he had learnt to know Theresa Heyne ..."

" ... George, on his part, with his susceptibility and generous feeling, was strongly drawn to the lively girl; and although the kindly old father, with his wary forethought, would not allow himself to be edged into express sanction of the marriage, as long as Forster’s worldly means were so doubtful, the eager girl soon dragged his good-will into a tacit understanding that the wedding should come off as soon as Polish pledges proved trustworthy; and he started for his new home with the consciousness of being betrothed. ... He passed through Vienna on his way ... The Emperor Joseph received him in his closet, with his well-known friendliness, and on dismissing him, after much talk, foretold him laughingly that he would not long stay in the wilderness of Poland; while invitations from the mighty Kaunitz, and choice meetings at the house of the celebrated Countess Theresa Thum, whose pride and joy it was to gather together the picked spirits of Vienna, showed in what esteem the traveller was held by all."

................................................................................................

"At Grodno he found himself in the very heart of the life and Court of Poland. The first free diet which had met since many years, was then holding its sittings there; and the mean huts and filthy lanes of the so-called city were thronged by the motley crush of Polish aristocracy, from the King and magnificent magnates with their dazzling followings, down to the equally haughty peasant nobles swaggering about with their big swords (the badge of their rank), while they floundered through the mammoth sloughs of mire in huge boots lined with dirty straw, in their proud disdain of the effeminacy of stockings and linen. Amongst the higher classes, however, he found many persons possessed of much elegant culture, which was, moreover, set off by a lordly hospitality, in which they vied with each other to show how highly they valued the gain of so noteworthy a man to their country. The King’s sister, commonly called Madame de Cracovie, because her deceased husband, Marshal Branicki, had been Castellan of Cracow, received him with the most marked kindliness, and presented him herself to her brother, whom he often saw in the familiarity of her evening meetings. That worn-out lover of the great Catherine, by whose bounty he had been pensioned with the royalty of Poland, had a mind whose dainty and over-refined taste delighted in the society of literary men, and Forster experienced the courtesy of his bearing, while the assurances of good-will which he gathered from the King and Primate for himself and the University encouraged his hopes for the future. ... "

"That worn-out lover of the great Catherine"? Is George Eliot quoting from sources, or merely fact everyone - at the time - was aware of, just didn't usually mention in print?

"The first acquaintance with Wilna did not discourage him. It was true that “the cabinet of natural history proved not only a child in its cradle, but not even a fine child, while the library was most meagre;” but then he had the assurance that their wants were acknowledged, and would be made good. The University, as most of the schools in Poland, had been founded by the Jesuits, in consequence of whose suppression the whole system of education was being remodelled. His lodging was in the old palace of the Order, and, though wretchedly bleak and bare, he comforted himself by comparing it with those of his fellow-teachers, and by the readiness with which such changes as he asked for were granted. Many of the Jesuits remained attached to the high-school as laymen; and although he arrived by no means well disposed towards them,—having been fully warned by the great Jesuit-croaker, Nicolai, against their wiles,—his first letters speak the praise of their unselfish behavior, so that he even utters his conviction that the Jesuits of Wilna, at least, do not deserve the suspicion under which their brethren generally labor. The difficulties of his position showed themselves immediately on entering upon his duties, when he had to deliver his lectures in Latin; for though a master in German style, and able to write English and French with wonderful correctness, Latin composition was a labor which cost him “an everlasting time;” while the unwonted tongue hampered his speech, which was at all times highly embarrassed in the professor’s chair, although its flow in conversation was astounding. ... As all such bits of economy were, however, altogether insufficient to mend the hole made in his income, he restlessly sought means of repairing it, and at last decided on perfecting himself in the study of medicine. There was a great want of physicians in the country, and the skill of such as there were was eagerly sought and richly paid by noble Poles, who seemed to have pinned their faith in health on the multitude of doctors; for we are told that as soon as anything like ailing was felt, the sick man called all the leeches together he could lay hold of, when he himself would preside, and adjudge their debate. With feverish looking forward to spring and happiness, he thus fretted through the dreariness of his first Polish winter in utter loneliness and daily worry; for, as time wore on, he saw that none of the pledges made to him were kept, while painful rheumatisms and weakened eyesight, brought on by climate, racked his poor body, until, at the very moment of his start on his longed-for journey, a putrid fever laid him for several weeks on a sick-bed, and threatened to cut short his life in its bloom. Convalescence, like all other things, is helped by a stout heart; thus, as soon as the crisis was surmounted, his eagerness quickened his recovery, so that he reached Göttingen in August, 1785; and, having been married in the beginning of the following month, he hastened back with his wife to his bleak banishment.

"Henceforth Forster’s household was the sanctuary wherein alone, during the remaining two years of his stay in Poland, he found refuge from endless teasing and annoyance. If fancy rather than thorough love had made Theresa become his wife, acquaintance with her husband at all events at first confirmed and increased her good opinion of him. Forster always maintained in his daily bearing so chaste a delicacy that his widow declares never to have seen him guilty of an unseemly outburst; and this overwrought unwillingness to ruffle her peace of mind was such, that he never brought himself to unfold his many straits to her, until this very silence produced the misunderstanding which it had been meant to avoid. Thus, while in his generous fear lest she should not be fully aware of the lot she was encountering, he had always dwelt much on the privations awaiting her in Poland, this nice feeling had kept him from alluding to the pet home he had prepared; so that the young woman was quite rapt with joy to find so snug a dwelling on her arrival at Wilna. It was, in truth, not more than they wanted; for beyond it they found no comfort. If Cassel was loathsome, yet how grand was it when compared with the Polish University, which had not even one bookseller. Intercourse with the world was slow and difficult; he could not often even hear of new books, much less get a sight of them; so that his letters to Lichtenberg piteously beg for the crumbs which might be swept from the fulness of his literary table. The want of all congenial society was the bitterest hardship to him; for the revels of the Lithuanian nobles had no charms, and his Jesuit fellows, on closer knowledge, had come out in their true light. Having failed in their stealthy stalking for the father and mother’s souls, they hoped to net that of George’s first-born child; but their wiles were roughly torn by a gruff sally, “that, as baptism must be, it should be done according to Calvinism,” and henceforth their friendship was at an end. The turmoils of the State and the ill-will discovered to be borne to the University by the Primate, who even applied its funds to the one of Cracow, abashed his trust in promised improvements which would have enabled him to make himself practically useful; yet every time that in a fit of anguish he eagerly jumped at a chance of escape from this forlorn banishment, he was quickly dragged back by the feeling of its impossibility. By agreement he had bound himself to serve for eight years, in consideration of the payments whereby he had been freed from his Cassel debts; and no literary labor in his present wilderness, obliged as he was to buy at great expense every book he might require, could ever enable him to pay off this loan. ... "

................................................................................................

"He even produced, besides sundry translations, two little works which deserve notice, to the writing of which he devoted himself so assiduously, that long before daybreak he sat at his desk, and his health began to suffer from the strain. The one was a dissertation on “The Human Race,” intended as an answer to an essay by Kant on the same subject, in which mistaken statements had been made about the South Sea Islanders. The dogmatic boldness with which the metaphysician laid down the law in matters of science displeased Forster, who in general had little liking for speculative philosophy, and even called Kant, in a private letter, “the archsophist and arch-scholastic of the age.” In this dissertation, which is written with great moderation, he maintained the existence of distinct races of men, though he did not deny their belonging to one kind. The other work was a “Life of Cook,” already alluded to, the dedication of which Was graciously acknowledged by the Emperor Joseph—a fact rendered highly remarkable by the broad freedom of thought running through the whole book, which contains, as in a summary, the political faith which guided Forster’s future conduct. It has often been noticed, that there is not a single passage in any of the French writers of the eighteenth century, which shows any foreknowledge of the revolution which was coming over their country, although many travellers (amongst them Goldsmith) foretold it; but there is no man whose prophecies can vie in clearness with those of Forster. As early as 1782, he exclaimed in a letter to his father, “Europe seems to be on the point of a fearful overthrow;” and in a remarkable fragment amongst his writings, the precise date of which is not known, the following striking words occur:— 

"“We stand at the close of the century; this universal longing for change in our present forms, for relief from our many defects, the searching hither and thither, this revolt of reason against political pressure, this supremacy of understanding over feeling, these educational institutions for the rearing of sensible machines, these convulsive clutchings of faith at miraculous powers beyond the realm of understanding, this struggle between enlightenment and religion, this universal leavening,—herald a new teacher and a new doctrine.”

"Yielding to his heart’s ever warm interest in his fellow-beings’ weal, he had been steadily growing in his age’s political thought, so that it was ever engrossing the better part of his mind; and while, therefore, it is not wonderful that in 1787 he should have arrived at writing as he then did, it is most wonderful that the head of the Holy Roman Empire should have nodded approbation to such words as these:—

"“Human infallibility is disappearing before the dawn of knowledge. Tolerance and freedom of conscience proclaim the victory of reason, and make the way for freedom of the press and free search into all those relations which, under the name of truth, are of value to man. Lastly, luxury and industry are giving new worth to life; the arts are attaining the height of perfection and simplicity; observation and experience are enlarging and combining all knowledge, and all political powers are tending to an equality; in short, it is, or is about to be, the season of flowering.”"

................................................................................................

"Early one morning in the month of June, 1787, Forster was disturbed at his desk by the entry of a Russian naval officer, who, presenting him with a letter from the ambassador, Stackelberg, made the startling announcement that he had full power to settle all terms, if he would agree to accompany a voyage of discovery in the Southern Ocean. What a leap for Forster from dreariest banishment into the very Eden of dreams! The open-handedness of the Russian Government removed all difficulties about the repayment of his loans, and an ample salary was assigned to him, as also a pension for his wife in the event of his death; while his delight with luck was raised in the highest pitch by the promised companionship of Sömmering, whom the Empress immediately appointed physician to the expedition, on Forster’s recommendation; and as soon as ever he had brought his affairs to a close, he hastened away, traversing with six post-horses the space between Poland and Göttingen, which he reached on the 16th September. His hopes were fated to meet with a sad dash: the outbreak of the Turkish war caused the voyage to be laid aside for the present; and as Forster would not accept an appointment at St. Petersburg just after his escape from Polish winters, he was turned adrift on the world with a year’s salary, but free from debt, so that, though pleasant visions had come to nought, he yet blessed the wondrous luck which alone had been able to snatch him from Poland and set him down in the heart of Europe. ... "

"While Forster was thus anxiously looking around him for some opening suitable to his wants, his attention was drawn to the electoral city of Mayence, where his old friend Johannes von Müller had just vacated the librarianship, on promotion to be the Elector’s private secretary, while the prospect of the society of Sömmering, who had for several years taught anatomy there, was a most powerful attraction. By the counsel of friends he went thither, that his presence might draw attention to him; and, having been presented to the Elector by Müller, his appointment was decided on with a speed unwonted for the lazy sluggishness of spiritual courts. The salary was small; but then there was the advantage of a central position, which the portly Elector, with sly shrewdness, pointed out to him when, throwing open the casement of his closet, he showed him the view over the Rhine and its rich banks, asked him to compare it with Poland, and went on to reckon the cheapness of provisions,—backing the whole with promise of regular payment. 

"It is as well shortly to describe the soil into which Forster was now transplanted; for it was owing to its nature that his life took the turn it did. The ancient German Empire was dying the death of corruption, and the very death-slumbers of its elders were being broken in upon by forward heirs; foremost among whom was Prussia, who, like a nightmare, bestrode and pinched them, even at the point of death. ... The time-honored See of Mayence, with whose spiritual electorate was coupled the arch-chancellorship of the empire, as it had ever been one of the chief pleasure-haunts of the lustiness of Rhenish prelacy, so was it in its decay the hotbed of corruption. The predecessors of the reigning Elector had, like the Emperor Joseph, partaken of the reforming fashion of his time, and had foolishly thought that the worn-out body might be quickened again into youth. The Elector—simple, good-natured man, the chief feature of whose temper was kindly trustful feeling, and a fondness for plain burgher-like life—forsook the wonted pomp of a high prince of the empire, to follow the bent of his homely likings. Instead of having courtly feasts, he not only mingled in the holiday gambols of the citizens, but he forfeited the indulgence of his courtiers, who with shrugs would have winked at these whims of a sovereign, by his harmful meddling in the olden habits of the State. Saints were curtailed of their dues, monkish trickery was checked; and when, in 1773, the Jesuits were suppressed by the Pope, Eusmerich Joseph seemed like a man who felt a load off his chest, and launched forth into plans for setting up sound schools in his lands. The Jesuit party was, however, not crushed, though beaten; and on the Elector’s suspicious death in the following year, before he had time to carry out all his plans, they carried by a push the election of Canon Erthal as his successor. Shrewd, ambitious, and thoroughly worldly, he had graduated in the schools of courtly diplomacy, where he had acquired that varnish whereby poor wits can for a time pass themselves off as minds of superior stuff. As the party had worked the strong Catholic feeling of the population, the new Elector began his reign with a mighty show of piety and devotion that edified the mob, but which were laid aside for more congenial pastimes, as soon as their need was less apparent; the banqueting halls of the archiepiscopal pleasure palaces rang with the revelry of feasts, the spice of whose cheer was set off by ribald wit."

George Eliot gives descriptions of the various corruptions prevailing, and proceeds to the caste system, which was in line with mist of Europe. 

" ... The throng was choicely noble; for the utmost that was given to a burgher in Mayence was the gift of a clerkship. The nobility was, however, far from being all on an equality within itself, and the highest class, whose string of ancestors enabled them to stand the tests required for canonries, looked down as haughtily on their lower fellows as those again on the mob of burghers at large; while besides, and above all hereditary rank, there was the consecration of holy orders, whereby, first, only even the highest-born nobility became entitled to share fully the fatness of the State. Gluttony, wassailing, and a greedy craving for rich prebends, were the main qualities of these servants of the Church; and it was well when, in the revelry of their drinking-bouts over flagons of old Rhenish, which in summer time they loved to hold in the pleasure-grounds of their lordly abbeys scattered along the stately river’s banks, their wanton humor would be content with such harmless freaks as wagering whether this or that lady’s calves could be encircled by the ribbons of their gold canon’s crosses."

................................................................................................

"Yet were there some men amongst them who, athwart all this overcoat of fashionable dross, were not without stuff ... Forster found here Stadion, who, from a gay and enterprising canon, became one of the leading ministers of Austria; while the master of modern statesmen, Prince Metternich, took his first lesson in cunning in this high school of human worthlessness. High above these in nobleness of nature, as in the splendor of his birth, but so hampered by the contradictions between his position and his likings, that he never mastered their difficulties, and thus through life had an awkward hesitation in his public conduct which looked almost like wilful trimming, was Dalberg, Bishop of Erfurt, coadjutor and expected successor of the Elector; but who afterwards, under Napoleon, became Duke of Frankfort, and died as Bishop of Ratisbon. His love of letters was great; and so zealously had he devoted his fine intelligence to study, especially of metaphysics, that his works ranked him amongst his country’s leading writers, while his position and prospects caused him to be looked to, by such men as Schiller, as the coming Lorenzo de’ Medici of Germany. Everything without the circle of nobility was held to be mob; and at most a sort of half recognition was now and then extended as a favor to the professors, though never so far as to admit them with their wives to the houses of the aristocracy. ... in Mayence itself there were a few citizens whose Rhenish light-mindedness had been unwittingly rapt by the political freethinking of the professors. These latter were, indeed, a body by themselves, whose opinions, probably whetted by daily grinding against the world around, were so wholly at variance with its whole creed, that in their compactness they looked like a set of pioneers thrust forward into the enemy’s country in advance of the coming revolution. This circle was the only one which offered Forster any chance of society. The old Jesuit party, which had already declaimed often against the Protestant Johannes von Müller, looked with no friendly eyes on the new librarian; and such was the bigoted feeling fomented against everything that came from him, that his bare proposal to sell the duplicate copies of books was met by the cry that desecration was threatening the work of the fathers, every single book gathered by whom deserved being treasured as a relique. In truth, as far as public enterprise was concerned, there was nothing gained by change from Poland; for the Elector and his Court, like a host of locusts, ate up the wealth of the land in their lavish luxury, while the jealous ill-will of the Jesuit swarms stifled every undertaking which smacked of enlightenment or free thought. Mayence, therefore, had no resources beyond the society of a few friends, foremost amongst whom was Sömmering, and its position in the heart of Germany. The neighborhood of Düsseldorf reawakened the intimacy with Jacobi, which had slacked in distant Poland, while the literary activity of Heyne spurred Forster to share it by becoming a regular contributor to the “Göttingen Advertiser,” and the kindly old man’s fatherly love filled that gap in his heart which had been made by his wilful sire’s estrangement. ... "

"The family-ghost, poverty, showed itself in the household as soon as its tent had been pitched on the banks of the Rhine. Although he had been urged by the Elector to give lessons in natural history, the best of reasons stayed his doing so—for no pupils were to be found; and his duties as librarian were easy, since the fifteen thousand works which formed the boasted fifty thousand volumes of the library, were stowed away in a lumber-room beyond reach or use. ... The family-ghost, poverty, showed itself in the household as soon as its tent had been pitched on the banks of the Rhine. Although he had been urged by the Elector to give lessons in natural history, the best of reasons stayed his doing so—for no pupils were to be found; and his duties as librarian were easy, since the fifteen thousand works which formed the boasted fifty thousand volumes of the library, were stowed away in a lumber-room beyond reach or use. A private pupil—a certain Mr. Thomas Brand—was the only pecuniary advantage brought by the journey, beyond a crowd of vivid impressions; for he had seen the two chief events on which the attention of Europe was fastened. In England he had attended Warren Hastings’s trial, where he had heard and beheld all the oratory and the genius of the country; while in Paris he had looked on the pageantry of its strange liberty, in the enthusiastic preparations for the great feast of the Champs de Mars. The result he gave to the world in his “Views of the Rhine and Brabant;” a work which, written in the gloomiest period of his life, is a masterpiece of racy writing, both as regards clearness of wording as well as the ease with which an array of deep thought is marshalled. “I tell you I hold your ‘Views’ to be one of the best books in our language,” is the opinion pronounced by Lichtenberg."

" ... Huber appeared, on the occasion of these embarrassments, as the beam that propped the tumbling homestead; for while his simpering feeling had a charm for Theresa under the circumstances of her situation, he not only actually helped Forster in the toils of translation, but, from his many connections with leading publishers and literary journals, was enabled to be in many ways of real service to him. It was, therefore, in that state of inner strife which is brought about by want of happiness, that during her husband’s absence the wife was, as it were, thrust to rest herself in Huber, who naturally redoubled his nursing care, sanctioned, as it was, by Forster’s knowledge thereof; while, on the other hand, Theresa’s undisturbed attention fastened itself more and more on his devotion until it came out to her sight in striking relief against the dim canvas of household disappointment. Thus Forster returned from England after failure in his hopes, while the irresistible temptations of books and charts had largely added to the heavy outlay of his journey, to find that he had lost the greatest blessing of his life,—the peace of a loving home. ... Forster shrouded the barrenness of his home from every one, fighting, with a brave heart, the throng of his painful disappointments and the ever-growing load of poverty and debt. ... "

................................................................................................

"The household was not the only thing which had changed: time had borne Mayence itself along with it. The great world-drama in France was progressing in its mighty working; and all Europe was watching it, some with hearty sympathy, others with hatred and fear. The Elector and his pampered courtiers, too rotten at heart to be quickened into a manly outburst of hate, kept shooting from over their cups a shower of wit-bolts at King Mob. Soon a throng of noble exiles began to crowd the neighborhood of the Rhine, who loved rather to eat goodly messes in other men’s homes than to try to save their own; and great was the soul’s delight of the Electoral Court that chance should allow them to fawn in daily intimacy on so high and illustrious a brood. The town and country were literally overrun by boastful runaways, in pandering to whose whims it was felt to be an honor to squander the exchequer; and the general ill-will at these newcomers, which was powerfully fomented in the first instance by the dearness of food, was heightened into exasperation by the swaggering effrontery of their behavior. While every branch of the administration was neglected and its hardworking servants were being starved, every fund and resource of the country was drained to its uttermost farthing that the Electoral Court might not be stinted in its pomp. The Prince de Condé was splendidly lodged, with his mistress, the Princesse de Monaco, in the Episcopal Palace of Worms, which belonged to the Elector; and on Comte d’Artois’ visit to Mayence, his private household was defrayed by the impoverished principality at a daily cost of £200. Wherever money could be found, it was laid hold of by the clutches of the pilfering Court; and thus about a million of florins, which belonged to the University, out of the sale of church lands, were swallowed up in gormandizing and riot. ... Meanwhile the tide of German politics was rising, and rapidly bearing away the little princes who were unguardedly disporting themselves in its heavy swell. There was a mighty plotting of statecraft going on between Austria and Prussia; and the Elector of Mayence was puffed up and full of importance, for he had been admitted to look on in that innermost closet where the secretest designs were being concocted by wily heads, too glad to buy with a little flattery a cat’s-paw willing to pick for them the burning brands out of the fire. As he found his old ministers too awkward to handle such nice devices, he procured from Vienna Baron Albini as a master in statesmanship, and bestowing on him the title of Grand Chancellor, with a salary befitting his high dignity, he trustfully had himself launched, under his steering, upon the sea of political machination. The first fruits of such superior guidance was the glorious honor of holding Liège at a cost of three millions of florins, as a conqueror, with the Mayence army, as soon as the two heads of the empire decided that German troops should quash the revolutionary movement in that bishopric. This army was of a piece with the whole fabric of the State; for while it barely counted three thousand ill-appointed and worse-fed soldiers, its army list counted no less than twelve noble and richly paid generals. But when the coronation of the new Emperor Francis had come off at Frankfort, which the Elector, of course, attended with the pomp and state befitting his high rank, then it was that the flock of princely brains there assembled and laboring in the birth-throes of subtlest State thought, accepted the invitation to the hospitable retreat of Mayence as best suited to their deep councillings; and its sovereign gloated with delight at seeing himself the pivot around which the princes of Europe moved. Never had anything been beheld like the endless changes of dazzling revelry which followed on each other during the stay of princes and statesmen, so that it was a wonder at what time they snatched bare minutes for those cunning designs which it was whispered were being woven in a poor hut, away from din and distraction, on the shrouded islet of Weissanau. At last the high-born wiseacres were delivered, and the printing-presses of the Court published the Duke of Brunswick’s famous manifesto. “These are the men whose measures one is told to approve of,” Forster exclaimed. “That man is happy who has found a nook whence he can quietly look on the mad turmoil.” 

"The French Revolution could not otherwise than powerfully interest one who was so alive to the welfare and doings of his fellow-beings. His letters to Heyne show how closely he watched its course, and that, keenly aware of its blemishes, he yet ever felt such sympathy for its struggles that he would become quite enraged at the fashion of overlooking its world-meaning in the flippant judgments currently passed upon it after flurried glances at some of its wild incidents. ... "

" ... Heyne, whose thoroughly humane feeling was being constantly shocked by the wanton temper of German aristocracy, but whose character partook of a certain painful caution, kept hovering about his outspoken son-in-law with timid hints and prudent counsels. ... Already, while Forster was writing his “Views,” Heyne had given vent to his fears as to how he would treat the political and religious considerations which would be suggested by the events of the countries he described, and Forster had felt so discouraged by his exceeding timidity, that he had given himself much trouble to explain away the meaning of his warnings. Soon after this, however, he was thrown into a mightier fit of alarm, on hearing that his son-in-law was translating a work of Brissot’s, of which he had written a review for the “Göttingen Advertiser,” in language which had attracted such attention that the name of its author had been repeatedly asked. In the trouble of his mind he posted off a letter of earnest warning as to the consequences likely to ensue from so rash an undertaking, when Forster answered as follows:— 

"“I am not translating Brissot, and never thought of doing so. There is as much aristocratizing going on in my house as there is spoken on the other side; and as for myself, I certainly belong as little to the enragés of the one party as of the other. It is this very fairness which is hateful to all the fools and rogues who have espoused a party…. How should I tumble on the thought of wishing to preach an overthrow which I myself do not desire, but rather hold to be so great a mishap for Germany, that I make every effort to ward it off, and on this account chiefly blame all the lying reviewers, who only embitter the public by their partiality, inasmuch as they give themselves the appearance as if it must needs trust them on their word…. I can remain silent, but I cannot write against my insight and conviction.”"

................................................................................................

"His literary labors at this period brought his latterly somewhat forgotten name with fresh vividness to the memory of the general public. Besides his “Views,” which he wrote in such sunny moments as he could snatch, he translated the Sanscrit drama, “Sacontala,” from Sir W. Jones’s English version. This glowing flower, picked from the tropical garden of Indian poetry, excited such intense interest in Germany, that Goethe, in an epigram, styled it the embodiment of all beauty. ... In vain he would recur to his proposed work on the “Botany of the South Sea,” for which, when last in England, he had launched into the outlay of having the drawings colored by skilled artists: there was no one who would pay for the work. “I could find a publisher in Germany, but none who would pay me. Fruitlessly do I look about me for a Mæcenas amongst our magnates and princes, who would pay with a couple of hundred louis for being paraded in a dedication as the protector of the work, and becoming immortal in the world of science.” Soon after these sad bewailings, in a letter written late in 1791, it was the mockery of his lot, that just when they were too late, two chances were thrown to him, which a little earlier might have proved the cables of his rescue from shipwreck. Prospects of enlarged activity were opened to him in Mayence by the sudden decision of the Elector to assign the Jesuit church to the library, while on the death of the Professor of Natural History, his salary was added to Forster’s pay. On the other hand, a man of the highest standing and name, unexpectedly put himself in friendly communication with him. Amongst his literary jobs, he had received from the well-known Berlin publisher, Voss, the commission to write an account of the events of 1790, with an especial view to the part played in them by the Prussian statesman, Herzberg, between whom and Pitt he wished a parallel to be drawn. Herzberg, the old minister of Frederick the Great, and at that moment pretty much out of favor at the Court of his successor, felt himself too much interested in this work not to wish that an account bearing the name of such an author and publisher should be trustworthy. He wrote Forster a letter, marked by honorable esteem, in which, after sending him some printed documents, he offered, if the manuscript were communicated to him, to look through it, and see that its statements were historically true, “as the King had positively forbidden him to make known a collection of State Papers he had prepared, and which would have thrown much light on these events.” Forster thankfully accepted the offer; and Herzberg expressed himself highly satisfied with his exposition of his ministry. Before this business had, however, gone thus far, Mayence had been occupied by the French, and Forster had embarked in the new state-vessel, as he thought, beyond possibility of an honorable return. Herzberg wrote him, through Voss, a letter in which he expressed his hope that Forster would continue a well-intentioned Prussian, and accompanied it not only with a batch of books having reference to the history of the said times, but also with the silver medal of the Berlin Academy (of which Forster was a member and Herzberg curator), and sent him a considerable sum of money. It is plain that the statesman, who knew of Forster’s embarrassed circumstances, thought that he might by these means save a man, whose worth and abilities he had learnt to know, from following a path which he believed would lead to his destruction. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... Custine had suddenly passed the Rhine at Spiers, and was in full march on Mayence, having thoroughly beaten the Electoral troops under Colonel Winkelmann, an officer of such excellent sentiments that the bare words of freedom and the rights of man were enough to send him into a fit of raving. It was as if a pack of wild beasts had been suddenly let loose on a tea-party; the whole nobility of Mayence thought of nothing but to snatch up as much of their wealth as they could carry, and betake themselves with it beyond the Rhine. It was an endless bustle and trooping by day and night across the bridge and through the town gates: laden skiffs covered the river, and the roads were blocked with every sort of cart and wagon; while runaways on foot and horse hurried along in selfish haste to their hiding-places, thoughtless of all but their own safety. It is said that two hundred thousand florins were spent in means of transport out of the town in these few days. The Elector scurried into the town, to take a glimpse at it, but left it again secretly, after dark, on the day of his arrival, in well-closed chariots, with his mistress and his jewels, having first seen that his arms were well erased from his carriage-panels, after which he bethought himself of duly naming Chancellor Albini as Regent. The treasures of the churches were also packed up and got safely out of the town; and then the High Chancellor called the burghers (in truth, the only inhabitants who remained) to a meeting, at which he urged them not to lose courage, but, abiding by the town, to defend it to the last, and, addressing them as his brethren, read a proclamation, forbidding flight and removal of goods, on pain of severest punishment. The fraternal title, we are told, so dumfoundered the burgher brains, that a rough journeyman unwittingly gave vent to his astonishment by a thundering rap of his big fist on the table, accompanied by a monstrous oath; when, just as brotherly affection was about to make them all strike into that stream of bravery let loose by the Chancellor, an ill-timed meddler dashed this flow of mind by the shout that their most gracious brother, the Chancellor, in his heavily laden chariot, had just safely passed the gates. His Excellency General von Gymnich, Master-General of the Ordnance, swore loudly he would defend the town to his last shirt; and truly endless was the clatter and the bustle of warlike preparations during the next few days. ... Now and then a bit of news would come how Custine had advanced another march; and once the sight of a cloud of dust sent such a thrill of fear through the town, that the garrison nearly crushed itself to atoms in scampering across the bridge on the Rhine; until, on the 19th of October, the French arrived bodily under the walls of Mayence, and summoned the town to surrender; when General von Gymnich gathered his splendidly clad brother generals about him, amongst them the Elector’s relative, Count Hatzfeldt, to consider in council whether they should desert or defend the town. To desert was the decision they quickly came to; so, having bargained that each officer should be allowed to take away a horse out of the Elector’s stable, while he himself received six famous cream-colored steeds, his Excellency-in-Chief rode over to the opposite bank with the proud bearing of one who had worthily taken care of his master’s dearest interests; and, having received each officer’s pledge to restore his animal to its owner, he hastened to present himself, his horses, and his report, at Erfurt, whither his sovereign had retired.

"It was no wish to abet French conquest which made Forster remain in Mayence. His post was there; the world without was all strange to him, and offered him no home which he could make for in these troubles; and while his duty and his interests both told him to stay, his generous mind was, moreover, deeply shocked at the selfishness of the higher classes, and of every one connected with the Government. The very last act of the Elector was to pilfer and bear away with him the saving fund of widows and orphans, so that Forster could well exclaim, “The last quivering of despotism is one more piece of unrighteousness, which calls to Heaven for vengeance.” He determined, therefore, to abide events,—a resolve in which he was strengthened at the time by Theresa’s good cheer and encouragement. ... from being his fellow-professors’ champion for their dues and rights, he came to have to do with the equitable allotment of the demands of the French Commissariat, until step by step he was drawn into being the heart and soul of the new administration, and, on the appointment of a provisional government, allowed himself to be named one of its nine members. ... "

"This step was final; it tore almost all his ties of friendship; and even Sömmering was so overcome with fear and horror, that, turning away from one who loved him so dearly, he henceforth would have no further knowledge of him. Traitor and low designer were the names showered upon him; and the Duke of Brunswick’s remark, on hearing of Forster’s doings, was astonishment that one who had so many means of earning a livelihood should have sought a rebel’s calling! Yet if Forster proved wrong in his political belief, he shared his mistake with many keen thinkers; for even the shrewd Johannes von Müller, initiated as he was into all the springs and workings of German statecraft, gave it as his opinion, on a hasty visit to Mayence for matters of private business (where he was beset by hundreds of doubtful burghers seeking to steady their minds by the wisdom of so deep an oracle), that under the circumstances they would do best to rally round the republican Government. In the midst of the bustle of convening the assembly which was to decide whether Mayence would become independent or not, affairs without the walls grew dark and threatening."

" ... It was in the turmoil of such troubled times, when every day the look-out became more and more threatening, that he determined Theresa should no longer encounter the risks of his lot. She had been entirely deprived of society by the universal emigration (Huber, as Saxon agent, had been forced to leave the town), and hardships which would formerly have excited her romantic temper, now only tended to depress it; so it was decided that Thomas Brand, the English pupil, should take her to Strasburg, where she was to reside with good Jacobin friends of her husband. Thus was the knot of Forster’s marriage noiselessly untied, although it is certain that neither husband nor wife was fully aware that they were then unloosening it so completely forever. Much deep and earnest thought had Forster held within himself as to what it was his honest duty to do for his wife’s happiness; that secret about Huber weighed upon him, in spite of his philosophy; yet, seeing himself and the ship of his household becoming more and more engulfed in an eddy, he wished to see his wife at least landed beyond its reach; and thus this severing was, in truth, a renunciation on his part. Huber soon after vowed that as long as he lived Theresa should never suffer want, and, forsaking his diplomatic calling,—advancement in which was barred by his well-known friendship for the Jacobins,—he went to Switzerland, whither she had gone from Strasburg with her children. Strange to say, a happier and a better understanding between all three was the immediate result of this unwonted settlement. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... he was made to travel through the country districts, as Government Commissioner, to watch the elections of deputies for the Constituent Assembly of Mayence,—an office which brought him into collision with the nobles on their estates. The Union was voted at once, when Forster, with two other citizens, was sent to bear to the Convention the decree which he himself had drawn up. So little did he foresee, in the eagerness of that hour, how events were upon the point of turning, that he expected to be back before the end of three weeks, and even neglected to take any care for his books and papers. On the 30th of March he was admitted to the bar of the Convention, where he was received with the enthusiastic cheers of that France to which he was sent as the spokesman of its new brethren, although one short week was sufficient to prove how unstable and tottering was the Union he heralded. 

"The allied armies had crossed the Rhine the day before Forster’s departure, and since then had advanced upon the town, so as to invest it completely. Under such circumstances, return was for the present out of the question; so to shift for himself as he best could in the heaving surf of Paris, on the pittance of eighteen assignat livres a day, was all the look-out left to him, and he tried to make it as cheery a one as good-will would allow. A large world suited Forster’s temper; the many shiftings of his early life had given him habits of largeness, and there was in the nature of Paris and its world-movement abundance to fasten and powerfully interest the peculiar tastes of his mind. Moreover, he came thither with a lively trust and belief in the great Revolution, which the excitement of partisanship had worked up into passionate liking; and yet the first impression of what he saw, when he began to sift and order the crush of sight which thronged on him, was disappointment, which, in spite of himself, stole with clammy chill over his boiling enthusiasm. He saw the ugly underworkings of parties and of party-chiefs, and his gossamer visions threatened absolutely to fade away at the strong glare of Paris light. “The only thing still wanting, after all I have suffered of late, is to have the conviction forced on me, that I have offered up my best strength to a monster, and have worked with honest zeal for a cause with which no one else will work honestly, and which is a cloak for the maddest passions.” Forster’s political faith, and keen glance into the workings of men and times, were, however, far too steady to be shaken or blinded by any sudden gust. He had become enamored of the Revolution for herself; and through the throng of low suitors who had jostled and dragged her along into the filth of their debaucheries, his eye, disregarding the harlotry of foisted fashion, dwelt ever lovingly on the beauty with which she had been born. Thus, while goaded to despair by the excesses and horrors of the violent party, he yet proclaimed himself a Jacobin, because he saw in extreme measures the State’s only safeguard against a return of old abuses. “I do not deny that the men of the Mountain often show themselves from a disadvantageous and impolitic side; but they seem withal to be freer from prejudice than the others, and, beyond doubt, they have more power and decision.” Thus Forster remained true to his convictions,—for with him they were the clear light of belief, which no chance storm could lastingly trouble, for he knew that, in the heaven of his world, certain seasons must have passing storms, and that the big darkness was but the shadow which must come along with the mighty lightning that would clear the firmament. ... "

" ... Affairs in Mayence grew daily worse; for not only were a hundred ducats put upon his outlawed head, about which he could afford to joke from his Paris garret, but what was infinitely more alarming, a thorough rain of shells and cannon-balls had been hurled upon the town, great part of which, and especially of his own neighborhood, had been burned; while, even if his house escaped destruction, there was small chance that he would be able to recover his papers, which he had so thoughtlessly forgotten to stow away. Without his papers he was like a palsied man pilfered of his crutches; for his hopes of active employment in the service of France did not wear a promising look. All France was then bustling about Paris and the office haunts of the ministers; and unless a man had big shoulders, and a strong will to make others afraid of him, there was small likelihood for his luck in picking up anything. Lebrun, Minister of Foreign Affairs, had indeed received him in a friendly manner, and he had the justest claims on the State for whose benefit he had risked and lost his all; yet, if such hopes were worth aught, their value was as yet to come, and so far not even in sight."

"He thought of studying Eastern languages, and of going to India for some years. 

"“If I could only scrape together £400 or £500, and were it only £300, I would learn Persian and Arabic, and go overland to India to gather new experience, and besides make my fortune as a physician in a few years. Wholly new objects, foreign sights, movement, occupation, discomfort, and even danger,—all this together, with the consciousness that I am busy in the enjoyment and pursuit of such human work as suits my powers, knowledge, and taste, must infallibly prove healing balm to my wounded feelings. I might stay away from four to six years, or still longer, and then return not yet too old to enjoy the end of my days in my children’s arms; while, finding them happy, I should bring back to you a friend thankful for the fulfilment of your motherly duties.”"

"At times Lebrun threw out a sign which buoyed up his hope, and made him look nearer home than India for a beam whereon to float from drowning; until at last, in October, he really was named a French envoy, and was sent to Cambrai to negotiate an exchange of prisoners with the allied generals. On the very day of his appointment, the Angel of Blood had passed close by him with his sword. Lux, one of his two fellow-deputies from Mayence, and who had been the comrade of all his Paris penury, had been arrested that morning to be dragged before the revolutionary tribunal. The poor youth, crazed with admiration of Charlotte Corday’s heroism, had loudly said that he would hold it as his highest honor to be doomed to share her death, and wrote an apotheosis of her, in which he proposed that a statue should be erected to her as greater than Brutus. ... "

" ... Theresa was staying at Neufchâtel, which, being under Prussian supremacy, was forbidden ground to the outlaw. Yet for her to come over into France was even more dangerous than for Forster to break the decree of the Convention, which forbade any one to cross the boundaries without the Government’s express permission. The first petty police-officer might cheaply show his zeal by laying hold of her as a skulking emigrant; while Huber, as an enemy’s subject, could never be admitted.

"About the middle of October, being at last relieved from his diplomatic functions, Forster moved heaven and earth in Paris to be able to obtain his wishes. It was resolved that Theresa should come with Huber to Travers, a poor village in the Jura, a few miles from the French frontier, whither Forster was to cross from Pontarlier. He obtained a loan of one thousand livres from an old Mayence friend. He reckoned on his official character to overcome any difficulties on the frontier, while he hoped to shield himself against the penalty of death which was attached to the transport of coin out of the country, by bringing back a paper in Huber’s possession, which, written by Clermont Tonnerre, contained matters of high importance about General Luckner’s supposed treason, and which, if subjected to inquiry, Forster would pretend to have been bought with the money he had, in truth, carried to his children. At last the arrangements were ready, and early in November he left Paris for Pontarlier. The chief of the frontier post proved a friendly man, who willingly agreed to help him as far as he could; so, riding across the snowy ridges of the Jura, he reached unobserved the appointed hamlet on a November morning. ... "

................................................................................................

"“But a few lines from my bed of pain, that my darlings be not without tidings. ... You will understand that I can do no work. I can only save myself. I cannot continue this scrawl,—therefore, only be without anxiety. I beg of you, dear Huber, take care that our Theresa does not create herself any fancies. It is true that I am very and painfully ill; but once more—there is no danger. Your letters, my dear child, which I have all received, have been a dear gift to me in my illness; be sure to continue writing assiduously! We have everywhere been victorious like lions; the Frankfort call has been full of augury. I am curious to learn how public spirit will express itself on the other side of the Rhine, now that the truth of the news is undoubted. Is it not true, my children—a few words are better than nothing? I have no more strength to write. Farewell! Guard yourselves against illness,—kiss my darlings.”"

" ... at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 12th January, 1794, the brave soul breathed its last."

................................................................................................

" ... So forsaken was the end of one who had begun life so dazzlingly. Hardly a word was spoken about his death; and if so, then was it mostly a curse, for pity was barely dared to be whispered. Sömmering, peevish and fretting at the chattels he had lost during the Mayence outbreak, started back from the very name of Forster as from the Evil One. Lichtenberg timidly bewailed that his married state imposed caution, so that all he could afford to do for his friend’s memory was to think freely of him. Jacobi’s delicate nature did not mingle in the low choir of hooters, but still he stood silently aloof; and, most shocking of all, the old father at Halle, in the mad frenzy of hoary age, belched forth a yell of outrage against his George, to have seen whom swing on the gallows he declared would have been the closing pleasure of his life. One man alone dared to weep openly for him, and tenderly he wept over his loss,—kindly old Heyne, who, in the fulness of his honest heart, cast aside all his caution and regard for consequences, to let its sorrow pour itself forth.

"“Since yesterday’s news, which has altogether confounded me” (he wrote to Huber on the 31st of January), “I cannot collect my thoughts. I cannot console myself for the loss of my Forster. Truly was he my Forster. I loved him beyond expression; so many feelings were mingled in him. His worth—ah! he will never be replaced for the world. The knowledge that was gathered in him will not soon again be found in one man. The noblest nature—the noblest heart; and for me ever the object of sorrow, of pity. I always thought of him with emotion; he deserved to be happy more than thousand others, and yet was never so,—was so deeply unhappy! It is as yet impossible for me to think that I am never to see him again! I shall never be able to forget him; always will he float before my eyes,—thou noblest, best man! What would I give for one hour which I might have conversed with him! Rest in peace, my dear, my cherished Forster!” 

"The man who had borne the name of Germany all over the world, whose writings were amongst the masterpieces of its language, whose feelings were so true and whose thought so national, that he first coined a thorough German word for public spirit (gemeingeist),—that man’s memory was tracked and hunted down as of the vilest traitor; so that, nearly forty years after his death, his wife did not dare to publish his letters without prefixing an apology. Four months after Forster’s death Theresa and Huber were married, and the remainder of their lives was at least happy and contented."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 28, 2021 - September 28, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Worldliness and Other-Worldliness: The Poet Young. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

If anyone thought that George Eliot only went after lady novelists for writing silly novels, here's refutation - but only individually.  

 ................................................................................................

"The study of men, as they have appeared in different ages and under various social conditions, may be considered as the natural history of the race. Let us, then, for a moment imagine ourselves, as students of this natural history, “dredging” the first half of the eighteenth century in search of specimens. About the year 1730 we have hauled up a remarkable individual of the species divine—a surprising name, considering the nature of the animal before us, but we are used to unsuitable names in natural history. Let us examine this individual at our leisure. 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 fluctuates 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 fervid 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 men’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 forget 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 the “Night Thoughts.”"

................................................................................................

"Judging from Young’s works, one might imagine that the preacher had been organized in him by hereditary transmission through a long line of clerical forefathers—that the diamonds of the “Night Thoughts” had been slowly condensed from the charcoal of ancestral sermons. Yet it was not so. His grandfather, apparently, wrote himself gentleman, not clerk; and there is no evidence that preaching had run in the family blood before it took that turn in the person of the poet’s father, who was quadruply clerical, being at once rector, prebendary, court chaplain, and dean. Young was born at his father’s rectory of Upham in 1681. ... "

"In due time the boy went to Winchester College, and subsequently, though not till he was twenty-two, to Oxford, where, for his father’s sake, he was befriended by the wardens of two colleges, and in 1708, three years after his father’s death, nominated by Archbishop Tenison to a law fellowship at All Souls. Of Young’s life at Oxford in these years, hardly anything is known. His biographer, Croft, has nothing to tell us but the vague report that, when “Young found himself independent and his own master at All Souls, he was not the ornament to religion and morality that he afterward became,” and the perhaps apocryphal anecdote, that Tindal, the atheist, confessed himself embarrassed by the originality of Young’s arguments. ... His career as an author did not commence till he was nearly thirty, even dating from the publication of a portion of the “Last Day,” in the Tatler; so that he could hardly have been absorbed in composition. But where the fully developed insect is parasitic, we believe the larva is usually parasitic also, and we shall probably not be far wrong in supposing that Young at Oxford, as elsewhere, spent a good deal of his time in hanging about possible and actual patrons, and accommodating himself to the habits with considerable flexibility of conscience and of tongue; being none the less ready, upon occasion, to present himself as the champion of theology and to rhapsodize at convenient moments in the company of the skies or of skulls. That brilliant profligate, the Duke of Wharton, to whom Young afterward clung as his chief patron, was at this time a mere boy; and, though it is probable that their intimacy had commenced, since the Duke’s father and mother were friends of the old dean, that intimacy ought not to aggravate any unfavorable inference as to Young’s Oxford life. ... " 

"There is some irony in the fact that the two first poetical productions of Young, published in the same year, were his “Epistles to Lord Lansdowne,” celebrating the recent creation of peers—Lord Lansdowne’s creation in particular; and the “Last Day.” Other poets besides Young found the device for obtaining a Tory majority by turning twelve insignificant commoners into insignificant lords, an irresistible stimulus to verse; but no other poet showed so versatile an enthusiasm—so nearly equal an ardor for the honor of the new baron and the honor of the Deity. But the twofold nature of the sycophant and the psalmist is not more strikingly shown in the contrasted themes of the two poems than in the transitions from bombast about monarchs to bombast about the resurrection, in the “Last Day” itself. The dedication of the poem to Queen Anne, Young afterward suppressed, for he was always ashamed of having flattered a dead patron. In this dedication, Croft tells us, “he gives her Majesty praise indeed for her victories, but says that the author is more pleased to see her rise from this lower world, soaring above the clouds, passing the first and second heavens, and leaving the fixed stars behind her; nor will he lose her there, he says, but keep her still in view through the boundless spaces on the other side of creation, in her journey toward eternal bliss, till he behold the heaven of heavens open, and angels receiving and conveying her still onward from the stretch of his imagination, which tires in her pursuit, and falls back again to earth.”"

"In 1717 it is probable that Young accompanied the Duke of Wharton to Ireland, though so slender are the materials for his biography that the chief basis for this supposition is a passage in his “Conjectures on Original Composition,” written when he was nearly eighty, in which he intimates that he had once been in that country. But there are many facts surviving to indicate that for the next eight or nine years Young was a sort of attaché of Wharton’s. In 1719, according to legal records, the Duke granted him an annuity, in consideration of his having relinquished the office of tutor to Lord Burleigh, with a life annuity of £100 a year, on his Grace’s assurances that he would provide for him in a much more ample manner. And again, from the same evidence, it appears that in 1721 Young received from Wharton a bond for £600, in compensation of expenses incurred in standing for Parliament at the Duke’s desire, and as an earnest of greater services which his Grace had promised him on his refraining from the spiritual and temporal advantages of taking orders, with a certainty of two livings in the gift of his college. It is clear, therefore, that lay advancement, as long as there was any chance of it, had more attractions for Young than clerical preferment; and that at this time he accepted the Duke of Wharton as the pilot of his career."

................................................................................................

"It is a coincidence worth noticing, that this seventh Satire was published in 1726, and that the warrant of George the First, granting Young a pension of £200 a year from Lady-day, 1725, is dated May 3d, 1726. The gratitude exhibited in this Satire may have been chiefly prospective, but the “Instalment,” a poem inspired by the thrilling event of Walpole’s installation as Knight of the Garter, was clearly written with the double ardor of a man who has got a pension and hopes for something more. His emotion about Walpole is precisely at the same pitch as his subsequent emotion about the Second Advent. In the “Instalment” he says: 

"“With invocations some their hearts inflame; 

"I need no muse, a Walpole is my theme.” 

"And of God coming to judgment, he says, in the “Night Thoughts:” 

“I find my inspiration is my theme; 

"The grandeur of my subject is my muse.”"

"Herbert Croft tells us that Young made more than three thousand pounds by his “Satires”—a surprising statement, taken in connection with the reasonable doubt he throws on the story related in Spence’s “Anecdotes,” that the Duke of Wharton gave Young £2000 for this work. Young, however, seems to have been tolerably fortunate in the pecuniary results of his publications; and, with his literary profits, his annuity from Wharton, his fellowship, and his pension, not to mention other bounties which may be inferred from the high merits he discovers in many men of wealth and position, we may fairly suppose that he now laid the foundation of the considerable fortune he left at his death.

"It is probable that the Duke of Wharton’s final departure for the Continent and disgrace at Court in 1726, and the consequent cessation of Young’s reliance on his patronage, tended not only to heighten the temperature of his poetical enthusiasm for Sir Robert Walpole, but also to turn his thoughts toward the Church again, as the second-best means of rising in the world. On the accession of George the Second, Young found the same transcendent merits in him as in his predecessor, and celebrated them in a style of poetry previously unattempted by him—the Pindaric ode, a poetic form which helped him to surpass himself in furious bombast. “Ocean, an Ode: concluding with a Wish,” was the title of this piece. He afterward pruned it, and cut off, among other things, the concluding Wish, expressing the yearning for humble retirement, which, of course, had prompted him to the effusion; but we may judge of the rejected stanzas by the quality of those he has allowed to remain."

"Soon after this notable production, which was written with the ripe folly of forty-seven, Young took orders, and was presently appointed chaplain to the King. “The Brothers,” his third and last tragedy, which was already in rehearsal, he now withdrew from the stage, and sought reputation in a way more accordant with the decorum of his new profession, by turning prose writer. But after publishing “A True Estimate of Human Life,” with a dedication to the Queen, as one of the “most shining representatives” of God on earth, and a sermon, entitled “An Apology for Princes; or, the Reverence due to Government,” preached before the House of Commons, his Pindaric ambition again seized him, and he matched his former ode by another, called “Imperium Pelagi, a Naval Lyric; written in imitation of Pindar’s spirit, occasioned by his Majesty’s return from Hanover, 1729, and the succeeding Peace.” Since he afterward suppressed this second ode, we must suppose that it was rather worse than the first. Next came his two “Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age,” remarkable for nothing but the audacity of affectation with which the most servile of poets professes to despise servility. 

"In 1730 Young was presented by his college with the rectory of Welwyn, in Hertfordshire, and, in the following year, when he was just fifty, he married Lady Elizabeth Lee, a widow with two children, who seems to have been in favor with Queen Caroline, and who probably had an income—two attractions which doubtless enhanced the power of her other charms. Pastoral duties and domesticity probably cured Young of some bad habits; but, unhappily, they did not cure him either of flattery or of fustian. Three more odes followed, quite as bad as those of his bachelorhood, except that in the third he announced the wise resolution of never writing another. It must have been about this time, since Young was now “turned of fifty,” that he wrote the letter to Mrs. Howard (afterward Lady Suffolk), George the Second’s mistress, which proves that he used other engines, besides Pindaric ones, in “besieging Court favor.”"

................................................................................................

"Young’s wife died in 1741, leaving him one son, born in 1733. That he had attached himself strongly to her two daughters by her former marriage, there is better evidence in the report, mentioned by Mrs. Montagu, of his practical kindness and liberality to the younger, than in his lamentations over the elder as the “Narcissa” of the “Night Thoughts.” “Narcissa” had died in 1735, shortly after marriage to Mr. Temple, the son of Lord Palmerston; and Mr. Temple himself, after a second marriage, died in 1740, a year before Lady Elizabeth Young. These, then, are the three deaths supposed to have inspired “The Complaint,” which forms the three first books of the “Night Thoughts:” 

"“Insatiate archer, could not one suffice? 

"Thy shaft flew thrice: and thrice my peace was slain: 

"And thrice, ere thrice yon moon had fill’d her horn.” 

"Since we find Young departing from the truth of dates, in order to heighten the effect of his calamity, or at least of his climax, we need not be surprised that he allowed his imagination great freedom in other matters besides chronology, and that the character of “Philander” can, by no process, be made to fit Mr. Temple. The supposition that the much-lectured “Lorenzo” of the “Night Thoughts” was Young’s own son is hardly rendered more absurd by the fact that the poem was written when that son was a boy, than by the obvious artificiality of the characters Young introduces as targets for his arguments and rebukes. Among all the trivial efforts of conjectured criticism, there can hardly be one more futile than the attempts to discover the original of those pitiable lay-figures, the “Lorenzos” and “Altamonts” of Young’s didactic prose and poetry. His muse never stood face to face with a genuine living human being; she would have been as much startled by such an encounter as a necromancer whose incantations and blue fire had actually conjured up a demon. 

"The “Night Thoughts” appeared between 1741 and 1745. Although he declares in them that he has chosen God for his “patron” henceforth, this is not at all to the prejudice of some half dozen lords, duchesses, and right honorables who have the privilege of sharing finely-turned compliments with their co-patron. ... his apostrophe to the moon as more likely to be favorable to his song if he calls her “fair Portland of the skies,” is worthy even of his Pindaric ravings. His ostentatious renunciation of worldly schemes, and especially of his twenty-years’ siege of Court favor, are in the tone of one who retains some hope in the midst of his querulousness. 

"He descended from the astronomical rhapsodies of his “Ninth Night,” published in 1745, to more terrestrial strains in his “Reflections on the Public Situation of the Kingdom,” dedicated to the Duke of Newcastle; but in this critical year we get a glimpse of him through a more prosaic and less refracting medium. He spent a part of the year at Tunbridge Wells; and Mrs. Montagu, who was there too, gives a very lively picture of the “divine Doctor” in her letters to the Duchess of Portland, on whom Young had bestowed the superlative bombast to which we have recently alluded. ... "

................................................................................................

" ... —Mrs. Montagu was not aware that Cibber, whom Young had named not disparagingly in his Satires, was the brother of his old school-fellow; but to return to our hero. ‘The waters,’ says Mrs. Montagu, ‘have raised his spirits to a fine pitch, as your grace will imagine, when I tell you how sublime an answer he made to a very vulgar question. I asked him how long he stayed at the Wells; he said, ‘As long as my rival stayed;—as long as the sun did.’ Among the visitors at the Wells were Lady Sunderland (wife of Sir Robert Sutton), and her sister, Mrs. Tichborne. ‘He did an admirable thing to Lady Sunderland: on her mentioning Sir Robert Sutton, he asked her where Sir Robert’s lady was; on which we all laughed very heartily, and I brought him off, half ashamed, to my lodgings, where, during breakfast, he assured me he had asked after Lady Sunderland, because he had a great honor for her; and that, having a respect for her sister, he designed to have inquired after her, if we had not put it out of his head by laughing at him. You must know, Mrs. Tichborne sat next to Lady Sunderland.  It would have been admirable to have had him finish his compliment in that manner.’ ... ‘The night silenced all but our divine doctor, who sometimes uttered things fit to be spoken in a season when all nature seems to be hushed and hearkening. I followed, gathering wisdom as I went, till I found, by my horse’s stumbling, that I was in a bad road, and that the blind was leading the blind. So I placed my servant between the doctor and myself; which he not perceiving, went on in a most philosophical strain, to the great admiration of my poor clown of a servant, who, not being wrought up to any pitch of enthusiasm, nor making any answer to all the fine things he heard, the doctor, wondering I was dumb, and grieving I was so stupid, looked round and declared his surprise.’”

"Young’s oddity and absence of mind are gathered from other sources besides these stories of Mrs. Montagu’s, and gave rise to the report that he was the original of Fielding’s “Parson Adams;” but this Croft denies, and mentions another Young, who really sat for the portrait, and who, we imagine, had both more Greek and more genuine simplicity than the poet. His love of chatting with Colley Cibber was an indication that the old predilection for the stage survived, in spite of his emphatic contempt for “all joys but joys that never can expire;” and the production of “The Brothers,” at Drury Lane in 1753, after a suppression of fifteen years, was perhaps not entirely due to the expressed desire to give the proceeds to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. The author’s profits were not more than £400—in those days a disappointing sum; and Young, as we learn from his friend Richardson, did not make this the limit of his donation, but gave a thousand guineas to the Society. ... "

................................................................................................

"The estrangement from his son, which must have embittered the later years of his life, appears to have begun not many years after the mother’s death. On the marriage of her second daughter, who had previously presided over Young’s household, a Mrs. Hallows, understood to be a woman of discreet age, and the daughter (a widow) of a clergyman who was an old friend of Young’s, became housekeeper at Welwyn. Opinions about ladies are apt to differ. “Mrs. Hallows was a woman of piety, improved by reading,” says one witness. “She was a very coarse woman,” says Dr. Johnson; and we shall presently find some indirect evidence that her temper was perhaps not quite so much improved as her piety. Servants, it seems, were not fond of remaining long in the house with her; a satirical curate, named Kidgell, hints at “drops of juniper” taken as a cordial (but perhaps he was spiteful, and a teetotaller); and Young’s son is said to have told his father that “an old man should not resign himself to the management of anybody.” The result was, that the son was banished from home for the rest of his father’s life-time, though Young seems never to have thought of disinheriting him."

"“Having mentioned this young gentleman (Dr. Young’s son), I would acquaint you next, that he came hither this morning, having been sent for, as I am told, by the direction of Mrs. Hallows. Indeed, she intimated to me as much herself. And if this be so, I must say, that it is one of the most prudent Acts she ever did, or could have done in such a case as this; as it may prove a means of preventing much confusion after the death of the Doctor. I have had some little discourse with the son: he seems much affected, and I believe really is so. He earnestly wishes his father might be pleased to ask after him; for you must know he has not yet done this, nor is, in my opinion, like to do it. And it has been said farther, that upon a late application made to him on the behalf of his son, he desired that no more might be said to him about it. How true this may be I cannot as yet be certain; all I shall say is, it seems not improbable . . . I heartily wish the ancient man’s heart may prove tender toward his son; though, knowing him so well, I can scarce hope to hear such desirable news.”"

"To Mrs. Hallows, Young left a legacy of £1000, with the request that she would destroy all his manuscripts.  This final request, from some unknown cause, was not complied with, and among the papers he left behind him was the following page 227 letter from Archbishop Secker, which probably marks the date of his latest effort after preferment: 

"“Deanery of St. Paul’s, July 8, 1758. 

"“Good Dr. Young: I have long wondered that more suitable notice of your great merit hath not been taken by persons in power. But how to remedy the omission I see not. No encouragement hath ever been given me to mention things of this nature to his Majesty. And therefore, in all likelihood, the only consequence of doing it would be weakening the little influence which else I may possibly have on some other occasions. Your fortune and your reputation set you above the need of advancement; and your sentiments above that concern for it, on your own account, which, on that of the public, is sincerely felt by 

"“Your loving Brother, 

"“Tho. Cant.” 

"The loving brother’s irony is severe!"

................................................................................................

" ... Young’s character is too distinctly traceable in the well-attested facts of his life, and yet more in the self-betrayal that runs through all his works, for us to fear that our general estimate of him may be false. For, while no poet seems less easy and spontaneous than Young, no poet discloses himself more completely. Men’s minds have no hiding-place out of themselves—their affectations do but betray another phase of their nature. And if, in the present view of Young, we seem to be more intent on laying bare unfavorable facts than on shrouding them in “charitable speeches,” it is not because we have any irreverential pleasure in turning men’s characters “the seamy side without,” but because we see no great advantage in considering a man as he was not. Young’s biographers and critics have usually set out from the position that he was a great religious teacher, and that his poetry is morally sublime; and they have toned down his failings into harmony with their conception of the divine and the poet. For our own part, we set out from precisely the opposite conviction—namely, that the religious and moral spirit of Young’s poetry is low and false, and we think it of some importance to show that the “Night Thoughts” are the reflex of the mind in which the higher human sympathies were inactive. This judgment is entirely opposed to our youthful predilections and enthusiasm.  The sweet garden-breath of early enjoyment lingers about many a page of the “Night Thoughts,” and even of the “Last Day,” giving an extrinsic charm to passages of stilted rhetoric and false sentiment; but the sober and repeated reading of maturer years has convinced us that it would hardly be possible to find a more typical instance than Young’s poetry, of the mistake which substitutes interested obedience for sympathetic emotion, and baptizes egoism as religion.

"Pope said of Young, that he had “much of a sublime genius without common-sense.”  The deficiency Pope meant to indicate was, we imagine, moral rather than intellectual: it was the want of that fine sense of what is fitting in speech and action, which is often eminently possessed by men and women whose intellect is of a very common order, but who have the sincerity and dignity which can never coexist with the selfish preoccupations of vanity or interest. This was the “common-sense” in which Young was conspicuously deficient; and it was partly owing to this deficiency that his genius, waiting to be determined by the highest prize, fluttered uncertainly from effort to effort, until, when he was more than sixty, it suddenly spread its broad wing, and soared so as to arrest the gaze of other generations besides his own. For he had no versatility of faculty to mislead him. The “Night Thoughts” only differ from his previous works in the degree and not in the kind of power they manifest. Whether he writes prose or poetry, rhyme or blank verse, dramas, satires, odes, or meditations, we see everywhere the same Young—the same narrow circle of thoughts, the same love of abstractions, the same telescopic view of human things, the same appetency toward antithetic apothegm and rhapsodic climax.  The passages that arrest us in his tragedies are those in which he anticipates some fine passage in the “Night Thoughts,” and where his characters are only transparent shadows through which we see the bewigged embonpoint of the didactic poet, excogitating epigrams or ecstatic page 230 soliloquies by the light of a candle fixed in a skull. ... "

"In a burst of prayer and homage to God, called forth by the contemplation of Christ coming to judgment, he asks, Who brings the change of the seasons? and answers: 

"“Not the great Ottoman, or Greater Czar; 

"Not Europe’s arbitress of peace and war!” 

"Conceive the soul in its most solemn moments, assuring God that it doesn’t place his power below that of Louis Napoleon or Queen Victoria!

"But in the midst of uneasy rhymes, inappropriate imagery, vaulting sublimity that o’erleaps itself, and vulgar emotions, we have in this poem an occasional flash of genius, a touch of simple grandeur, which promises as much as Young ever achieved. Describing the on-coming of the dissolution of all things, he says: 

"“No sun in radiant glory shines on high; 

"No light but from the terrors of the sky.” 

"And again, speaking of great armies: 

"“Whose rear lay wrapt in night, while breaking dawn 

"Rous’d the broad front, and call’d the battle on.”

"And this wail of the lost souls is fine: 

"“And this for sin? Could I offend if I had never been? 

"But still increas’d the senseless, happy mass, 

"Flow’d in the stream, or shiver’d in the grass? 

"Father of mercies!  Why from silent earth 

"Didst thou awake and curse me into birth? 

"Tear me from quiet, ravish me from night, 

"And make a thankless present of thy light? 

"Push into being a reverse of Thee, 

"And animate a clod with misery?”"

................................................................................................

" ... Satires, read seriatim, have a flatness to us, which, when we afterward read picked passages, we are inclined to disbelieve in, and to attribute to some deficiency in our own mood.  But there are deeper reasons for that dissatisfaction. Young is not a satirist of a high order. His satire has neither the terrible vigor, the lacerating energy of genuine indignation, nor the humor which owns loving fellowship with the poor human nature it laughs at; nor yet the personal bitterness which, as in Pope’s characters of Sporus and Atticus, insures those living touches by virtue of which the individual and particular in Art becomes the universal and immortal.  Young could never describe a real, complex human being; but what he could do with eminent success was to describe, with neat and finished point, obvious types, of manners rather than of character—to write cold and clever epigrams on personified vices and absurdities. There is no more emotion in his satire than if he were turning witty verses on a waxen image of Cupid or a lady’s glove.  He has none of these felicitious epithets, none of those pregnant lines, by which Pope’s Satires have enriched the ordinary speech of educated men. Young’s wit will be found in almost every instance to consist in that antithetic combination of ideas which, of all the forms of wit, is most within reach of a clever effort.  In his gravest arguments, as well as in his lightest satire, one might imagine that he had set himself to work out the problem, how much antithesis might be got out of a given subject. And there he completely succeeds. ... "

"Like Pope, whom he imitated, he sets out with a psychological mistake as the basis of his satire, attributing all forms of folly to one passion—the love of fame, or vanity—a much grosser mistake, indeed, than Pope’s, exaggeration of the extent to which the “ruling passion” determines conduct in the individual.  Not that Young is consistent in his mistake. He sometimes implies no more than what is the truth—that the love of fame is the cause, not of all follies, but of many.

"Young’s satires on women are superior to Pope’s, which is only saying that they are superior to Pope’s greatest failure. We can more frequently pick out a couplet as successful than an entire sketch. ... "

................................................................................................

"The outburst of genius in the earlier books of the “Night Thoughts” is the more remarkable, that in the interval between them and the Satires he had produced nothing but his Pindaric odes, in which he fell far below the level of his previous works. Two sources of this sudden strength were the freedom of blank verse and the presence of a genuine emotion. Most persons, in speaking of the “Night Thoughts,” have in their minds only the two or three first Nights, the majority of readers rarely getting beyond these, unless, as Wilson says, they “have but few books, are poor, and live in the country.” And in these earlier Nights there is enough genuine sublimity and genuine sadness to bribe us into too favorable a judgment of them as a whole. Young had only a very few things to say or sing—such as that life is vain, that death is imminent, that man is immortal, that virtue is wisdom, that friendship is sweet, and that the source of virtue is the contemplation of death and immortality—and even in his two first Nights he had said almost all he had to say in his finest manner. Through these first outpourings of “complaint” we feel that the poet is really sad, that the bird is singing over a rifled nest; and we bear with his morbid picture of the world and of life, as the Job-like lament of a man whom “the hand of God hath touched.” Death has carried away his best-beloved, and that “silent land” whither they are gone has more reality for the desolate one than this world which is empty of their love: 

"“This is the desert, this the solitude; 

"How populous, how vital is the grave!” 

"Joy died with the loved one: 

"“The disenchanted earth 

"Lost all her lustre. 

"Where her glitt’ring towers? 

"Her golden mountains, where? 

"All darkened down 

"To naked waste; a dreary vale of tears: 

"The great magician’s dead!”"

"In a man under the immediate pressure of a great sorrow, we tolerate morbid exaggerations; we are prepared to see him turn away a weary eye from sunlight and flowers and sweet human faces, as if this rich and glorious life had no significance but as a preliminary of death; we do not criticise his views, we compassionate his feelings. And so it is with Young in these earlier Nights. There is already some artificiality even in his grief, and feeling often slides into rhetoric, but through it all we are thrilled with the unmistakable cry of pain, which makes us tolerant of egoism and hyperbole ... "

"But when he becomes didactic, rather than complaining—when he ceases to sing his sorrows, and begins to insist on his opinions—when that distaste for life which we pity as a transient feeling is thrust upon us as a theory, we become perfectly cool and critical, and are not in the least inclined to be indulgent to false views and selfish sentiments."

"One of the most striking characteristics of Young is his radical insincerity as a poetic artist. This, added to the thin and artificial texture of his wit, is the true explanation of the paradox—that a poet who is often inopportunely witty has the opposite vice of bombastic absurdity. The source of all grandiloquence is the want of taking for a criterion the true qualities of the object described or the emotion expressed. The grandiloquent man is never bent on saying what he feels or what he sees, but on producing a certain effect on his audience; hence he may float away into utter inanity without meeting any criterion to arrest him. Here lies the distinction between grandiloquence and genuine fancy or bold imaginativeness. The fantastic or the boldly imaginative poet may be as sincere as the most realistic: he is true to his own sensibilities or inward vision, and in his wildest flights he never breaks loose from his criterion—the truth of his own mental state. Now, this disruption of language from genuine thought and feeling is what we are constantly detecting in Young; and his insincerity is the more likely to betray him into absurdity, because he habitually treats of abstractions, and not of concrete objects or specific emotions. He descants perpetually on virtue, religion, “the good man,” life, death, immortality, eternity—subjects which are apt to give a factitious grandeur to empty wordiness. When a poet floats in the empyrean, and only takes a bird’s-eye view of the earth, some people accept the mere fact of his soaring for sublimity, and mistake his dim vision of earth for proximity to heaven. Thus: 

"“His hand the good man fixes on the skies, 

"And bids earth roll, nor feels her idle whirl,” 

"may, perhaps, pass for sublime with some readers. But pause a moment to realize the image, and the monstrous absurdity of a man’s grasping the skies, and hanging habitually suspended there, while he contemptuously bids the earth roll, warns you that no genuine feeling could have suggested so unnatural a conception. Again, 

"“See the man immortal: him, I mean, 

"Who lives as such; whose heart, full bent on Heaven, 

"Leans all that way, his bias to the stars.” 

"This is worse than the previous example: for you can at least form some imperfect conception of a man hanging from the skies, though the position strikes you as uncomfortable and of no particular use; but you are utterly unable to imagine how his heart can lean toward the stars. Examples of such vicious imagery, resulting from insincerity, may be found, perhaps, in almost every page of the “Night Thoughts.” But simple assertions or aspirations, undisguised by imagery, are often equally false. No writer whose rhetoric was checked by the slightest truthful intentions could have said— 

"“An eye of awe and wonder let me roll, 

"And roll forever.” 

"Abstracting the more poetical associations with the eye, this is hardly less absurd than if he had wished to stand forever with his mouth open. 

"Again: 

"“Far beneath 

"A soul immortal is a mortal joy.”

"Happily for human nature, we are sure no man really believes that.  Which of us has the impiety not to feel that our souls are only too narrow for the joy of looking into the trusting eyes of our children, of reposing on the love of a husband or a wife—nay, of listening to the divine voice of music, or watching the calm brightness of autumnal afternoons? But Young could utter this falsity without detecting it, because, when he spoke of “mortal joys,” he rarely had in his mind any object to which he could attach sacredness. He was thinking of bishoprics, and benefices, of smiling monarchs, patronizing prime ministers, and a “much indebted muse.”  Of anything between these and eternal bliss he was but rarely and moderately conscious. Often, indeed, he sinks very much below even the bishopric, and seems to have no notion of earthly pleasure but such as breathes gaslight and the fumes of wine. ... "

"“Earth” means lords and levees, duchesses and Dalilahs, South-Sea dreams, and illegal percentage; and the only things distinctly preferable to these are eternity and the stars. Deprive Young of this antithesis, and more than half his eloquence would be shrivelled up. Place him on a breezy common, where the furze is in its golden bloom, where children are playing, and horses are standing in the sunshine with fondling necks, and he would have nothing to say. Here are neither depths of guilt nor heights of glory; and we doubt whether in such a scene he would be able to pay his usual compliment to the Creator ... "

"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. It is reckoned among the many deficiencies of “Lorenzo” that he “never asked the moon one question”—an omission which Young thinks eminently unbecoming a rational being. 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. Once on Saturn’s ring he feels at home, and his language becomes quite easy: 

"“What behold I now? 

"A wilderness of wonders burning round, 

"Where larger suns inhabit higher spheres; 

"Perhaps the villas of descending gods!”"

................................................................................................

"It is like a sudden relief from a strained posture when, in the “Night Thoughts,” we come on any allusion that carries us to the lanes, woods, or fields. Such allusions are amazingly rare, and we could almost count them on a single hand. That we may do him no injustice, we will quote the three best: 

“Like blossom’d trees o’erturned by vernal storm, 

"Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay. 

* * * * * 

“In the same brook none ever bathed him twice: 

"To the same life none ever twice awoke. 

"We call the brook the same—the same we think 

"Our life, though still more rapid in its flow; 

"Nor mark the much irrevocably lapsed 

"And mingled with the sea.” 

* * * * * 

“The crown of manhood is a winter joy; 

"An evergreen that stands the northern blast, 

"And blossoms in the rigor of our fate.”"

................................................................................................

"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 ..."

................................................................................................

George Eliot goes overboard in her criticism of a natural emotion, however justified her criticism otherwise, of Young and his works.

"And even in the “Narcissa” Night, Young repels us by the low moral tone of his exaggerated lament. This married step-daughter died at Lyons, and, being a Protestant, was denied burial, so that her friends had to bury her in secret—one of the many miserable results of superstition, but not a fact to throw an educated, still less a Christian man, into a fury of hatred and vengeance, in contemplating it after the lapse of five years."

And her diatribe on the next page is unbelievable! She recovers in the next long paragraph. 

" ...Do writers of sermons and religious novels prefer that men should be vicious in order that there may be a more evident political and social necessity for printed sermons and clerical fictions? Because learned gentlemen are theological, are we to have no more simple honesty and good-will? We can imagine that the proprietors of a patent water-supply have a dread of common springs; but, for our own part, we think there cannot be too great a security against a lack of fresh water or of pure morality. To us it is a matter of unmixed rejoicing that this latter necessary of healthful life is independent of theological ink, and that its evolution is insured in the interaction of human souls as certainly as the evolution of science or of art, with which, indeed, it is but a twin ray, melting into them with undefinable limits."

And further on Young - 

"This is one of the blessings for which Dr. Young thanks God “most:” 

"“For all I bless thee, most, for the severe; 

"Her death—my own at hand—the fiery gulf, 

"That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent! 

"It thunders;—but it thunders to preserve; 

". . . its wholesome dread 

"Averts the dreaded pain; its hideous groans 

"Join Heaven’s sweet Hallelujahs in 

"Thy praise, Great Source of good alone!  How kind in all! 

"In vengeance kind!  Pain, Death, Gehenna, save” . . . 

"i.e., save me, Dr. Young, who, in return for that favor, promise to give my divine patron the monopoly of that exuberance in laudatory epithet, of which specimens may be seen at any moment in a large number of dedications and odes to kings, queens, prime ministers, and other persons of distinction.  That, in Young’s conception, is what God delights in. His crowning aim in the “drama” of the ages, is to vindicate his own renown. 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. Religion, he tells us, in argumentative passages too long to quote, is “ambition, pleasure, and the love of gain,” directed toward the joys of the future life instead of the present. And his ethics correspond to his religion. He vacillates, indeed, in his ethical theory, and shifts his position in order to suit his immediate purpose in argument; but he never changes his level so as to see beyond the horizon of mere selfishness. Sometimes he insists, as we have seen, that the belief in a future life is the only basis of morality; but elsewhere he tells us— 

"“In self-applause is virtue’s golden prize.” 

"Virtue, with Young, must always squint—must never look straight toward the immediate object of its emotion and effort. Thus, if a man risks perishing in the snow himself rather than forsake a weaker comrade, he must either do this because his hopes and fears are directed to another world, or because he desires to applaud himself afterward! Young, if we may believe him, would despise the action as folly unless it had these motives. Let us hope he was not so bad as he pretended to be!"

................................................................................................

" ... As the tendency to see our own sadness reflected in the external world has been called by Mr. Ruskin the “pathetic fallacy,” page 252 so we may call Young’s disposition to see a rebuke or a warning in every natural object, the “pedagogic fallacy.” To his mind, the heavens are “forever scolding as they shine;” and the great function of the stars is to be a “lecture to mankind.” The conception of the Deity as a didactic author is not merely an implicit point of view with him; he works it out in elaborate imagery, and at length makes it the occasion of his most extraordinary achievement in the “art of sinking,” by exclaiming, à propos, we need hardly say, of the nocturnal heavens, 

"“Divine Instructor! Thy first volume this 

"For man’s perusal! all in capitals!” 

"It is this pedagogic tendency, this sermonizing attitude of Young’s mind, which produces the wearisome monotony of his pauses. After the first two or three nights he is rarely singing, rarely pouring forth any continuous melody inspired by the spontaneous flow of thought or feeling. He is rather occupied with argumentative insistence, with hammering in the proofs of his propositions by disconnected verses, which he puts down at intervals. The perpetual recurrence of the pause at the end of the line throughout long passages makes them as fatiguing to the ear as a monotonous chant, which consists of the endless repetition of one short musical phrase."

................................................................................................

George Eliot shares Jane Austen's appreciation of Cowper. 

" ...Indeed, it is hardly possible to criticise Young without being reminded at every step of the contrast presented to him by Cowper.  And this contrast urges itself upon us the more from the fact that there is, to a certain extent, a parallelism between the “Night Thoughts” and the “Task.” In both poems the author achieves his greatest in virtue of the new freedom conferred by blank verse; both poems are professionally didactic, and mingle much satire with their graver meditations; both poems are the productions of men whose estimate of this life was formed by the light of a belief in immortality, and who were intensely attached to Christianity. On some grounds we might have anticipated a more morbid view of things from Cowper than from Young.  Cowper’s religion was dogmatically the more gloomy, for he was a Calvinist; while Young was a “low” Arminian, believing that Christ died for all, and that the only obstacle to any man’s salvation lay in his will, which he could change if he chose. There was real and deep sadness involved in Cowper’s personal lot; while Young, apart from his ambitious and greedy discontent, seems to have had no great sorrow.

"Yet, 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 short-lived 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 of attention 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 sorrows and privations, of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper’s exquisite mind falls page 254 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. Instead of trying to edify us by supercilious allusions to the “brutes” and the “stalls,” he interests us in that tragedy of the hen-roost when the thief has wrenched the door, ... "

"Not, like Young, that the movements of the planets show a mutual dependence, and that 

"“Thus man his sovereign duty learns in this 

"Material picture of benevolence,” 

"or that— 

"“More generous sorrow, while it sinks, exalts, 

"And conscious virtue mitigates the pang.” 

"What is Cowper’s answer, when he imagines some “sage, erudite, profound,” asking him “What’s the world to you?” 

"“Much.  I was born of woman, and drew milk 

"As sweet as charity from human breasts. 

"I think, articulate, I laugh and weep, 

"And exercise all functions of a man. 

""How then should I and any man that lives 

"Be strangers to each other?”"

................................................................................................

"Young flies for his utmost consolation to the day of judgment, when 

"“Final Ruin fiercely drives Her ploughshare o’er creation;” 

"when earth, stars, and sun are swept aside, 

"“And now, all dross removed, Heaven’s own pure day, Full on the confines of our ether, flames: 

"While (dreadful contrast!) far (how far!) beneath, Hell, bursting, belches forth her blazing seas, 

"And storms suphureous; her voracious jaws 

"Expanding wide, and roaring for her prey,”"

He does seem to find solace in hell.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 24, 2021 - September 25, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Influence of Rationalism. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This article by George Eliot might have been read by Ayn Rand! 

"There is a valuable class of books on great subjects which have something of the character and functions of good popular lecturing. They are not original, not subtle, not of close logical texture, not exquisite either in thought or style; but by virtue of these negatives they are all the more fit to act on the average intelligence. They have enough of organizing purpose in them to make their facts illustrative, and to leave a distinct result in the mind even when most of the facts are forgotten; and they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in their theory to win them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness and vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the honest result of the writer’s own mental character, which adapts him to be the instructor and the favorite of “the general reader.” For the most part, the general reader of the present day does not exactly know what distance he goes; he only knows that he does not go “too far.” Of any remarkable thinker, whose writings have excited controversy, he likes to have it said that “his errors are to be deplored,” leaving it not too certain what those errors are; he is fond of what may be called disembodied opinions, that float in vapory phrases above all systems of thought or action; he likes an undefined Christianity which opposes itself to nothing in particular, an undefined education of the people, an undefined amelioration of all things: in fact, he likes sound views—nothing extreme, but something between the excesses of the past and the excesses of the present. This modern type of the general reader may be known in conversation by the cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say that black is black, he will shake his head and hardly think it; say that black is not so very black, he will reply, “Exactly.” ... "

And next part was genesis of two of the most known works of hers, Fountainhead, and Atlas Shrugged. 

" ... He has no hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and express his conviction that at times, and within certain limits, the radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal; but, on the other hand, he would urge that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little too far. His only bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion; not in the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of coherent thought—a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is, the utmost liberty of private haziness."

Genesis of the idiots and villains, that is!

................................................................................................

"Mr. Lecky’s “History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe” entitles him to a high place. He has prepared himself for its production by an unusual amount of well-directed reading; he has chosen his facts and quotations with much judgment; and he gives proof of those important moral qualifications, impartiality, seriousness, and modesty."

"The history of magic and witchcraft has been judiciously chosen by Mr. Lecky as the subject of his first section on the Declining Sense of the Miraculous, because it is strikingly illustrative of a position with the truth of which he is strongly impressed, though he does not always treat of it with desirable clearness and precision, namely, that certain beliefs become obsolete, not in consequence of direct arguments against them, but because of their incongruity with prevalent habits of thought. Here is his statement of the two “classes of influences” by which the mass of men, in what is called civilized society, get their beliefs gradually modified: 

"“If we ask why it is that the world has rejected what was once so universally and so intensely believed, why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have transformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured the flocks of her neighbors, is deemed so entirely incredible, most persons would probably be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it is difficult even to consider them with gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability was felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt simply on the two grounds I have mentioned.

"Here is his statement of the two “classes of influences” by which the mass of men, in what is called civilized society, get their beliefs gradually modified: “If we ask why it is that the world has rejected what was once so universally and so intensely believed, why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen riding on a broomstick, or who was proved to have transformed herself into a wolf, and to have devoured the flocks of her neighbors, is deemed so entirely incredible, most persons would probably be unable to give a very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have examined the evidence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always precedes, when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives, that it is difficult even to consider them with gravity. Yet at one time no such improbability was felt, and hundreds of persons have been burnt simply on the two grounds I have mentioned.

"Mr. Lecky proceeds to some questionable views concerning the evidences of witchcraft, which seem to be irreconcilable even with his own remarks later on; but they lead him to the page 260 statement, thoroughly made out by his historical survey, that “movement was mainly silent, unargumentative, and insensible; that men came gradually to disbelieve in witchcraft, because they came gradually to look upon it as absurd; and that this new tone of thought appeared, first of all, in those who were least subject to theological influences, and soon spread through the educated laity, and, last of all, took possession of the clergy.” 

"We have rather painful proof that this “second class of influences,” with a vast number go hardly deeper than Fashion, and that witchcraft to many of us is absurd only on the same ground that our grandfathers’ gigs are absurd. ... No séances at a guinea a head for the sake of being pinched by “Mary Jane” can annihilate railways, steamships, and electric telegraphs, which are demonstrating the interdependence of all human interests, and making self-interest a duct for sympathy. These things are part of the external Reason to which internal silliness has inevitably to accommodate itself."

................................................................................................

"Three points in the history of magic and witchcraft are well brought out by Mr. Lecky.  First, that the cruelties connected with it did not begin until men’s minds had ceased to repose implicitly in a sacramental system which made them feel well armed against evil spirits; that is, until the eleventh century, when there came a sort of morning dream of doubt and heresy, bringing on the one side the terror of timid consciences, and on the other the terrorism of authority or zeal bent on checking the rising struggle. ... "

"The Church was disposed to confound heretical opinion with sorcery; false doctrine was especially the devil’s work, and it was a ready conclusion that a denier or innovator had held consultation with the father of lies. ... "

Lecky and George Eliot both give more credit to church than due; it wasn't an error on side of safety, any more than the idea that church is opposed to lies or murder, on any scale, as long as it serves to keep power in hands of church. 

There are historical documents cited in Holy Blood, Holy Grail whereby church authority not only sanctions but insists on lies to promote the agenda of the church. 

Queen Elizabeth I would have been murdered by church of Rome, as woukdnt Galileo, but for Divine protection. 

Children victimised by catholic clergy around the world had no protection, until, beginning in Boston a couple of decades or so ago, the preying paedophile clergy were exposed; then church got even more busy attempting to protect the paedophile clergy. 

At the moment, a case of rape of more than one nun by a bishop is between court and press, with church throwing the victims out for having spoken, and the bishop badmouthing the said nuns in every way possible. He isn't claiming celibacy, innocence, or anything that would exculpate him. Church nevertheless is silent on his guilt, protecting him, and decreed against the raped nuns. 

There is no reason to give credit to an institution that burnt people alive for disagreement, to suppress any possible reduction in power over minds and spirits of populace, using terror and murders of thousands of its victims. 

"Mr. Lecky shows clearly that dogmatic Protestantism, holding the vivid belief in Satanic agency to be an essential of piety, would have felt it shame to be a whit behind Catholicism in severity against the devil’s servants. Luther’s sentiment was that he would not suffer a witch to live (he was not much more merciful to Jews); and, in spite of his fondness for children, believing a certain child to have been begotten by the devil, he recommended the parents to throw it into the river. The torch must be turned on the worst errors of heroic minds—not in irreverent ingratitude, but for the sake of measuring our vast and various debt to all the influences which have concurred, in the intervening ages, to make us recognize as detestable errors the honest convictions of men who, in mere individual capacity and moral force, were very much above us. Again, the Scotch Puritans, during the comparatively short period of their ascendency, surpassed all Christians before them in the elaborate ingenuity of the page 263 tortures they applied for the discovery of witchcraft and sorcery, and did their utmost to prove that if Scotch Calvinism was the true religion, the chief “note” of the true religion was cruelty.  It is hardly an endurable task to read the story of their doings; thoroughly to imagine them as a past reality is already a sort of torture. ... "

................................................................................................

Speaking of Bodin and Wier, George Eliot remarks - 

" ... We must remember that this was in 1581, when the great scientific movement of the Renaissance had hardly begun—when Galileo was a youth of seventeen, and Kepler a boy of ten.

"But directly afterward, on the other side, came Montaigne, whose sceptical acuteness could arrive at negatives without any apparatus of method. A certain keen narrowness of nature will secure a man from many absurd beliefs which the larger soul, vibrating to more manifold influences, would have a long struggle to part with. And so we find the charming, chatty Montaigne—in one of the brightest of his essays, “Des Boiteux,” where he declares that, from his own observation of witches and sorcerers, he should have recommended them to be treated with curative hellebore—stating in his own way a pregnant doctrine, since taught more gravely. It seems to him much less of a prodigy that men should lie, or that their imaginations should deceive them, than that a human body should be carried through the air on a broomstick, or up a chimney by some unknown spirit. He thinks it a sad business to persuade oneself that the test of truth lies in the multitude of believers—“en une prosse où les fols surpassent de tant les sages en nombre.” Ordinarily, he has observed, when men have something stated to them as a fact, they are more ready to explain it than to inquire whether it is real: “ils passent pardessus les propositions, mais ils examinent les conséquences; ils laissent les choses, et courent aux causes.” There is a sort of strong and generous ignorance which is as honorable and courageous as science—“ignorance pour laquelle concevoir il n’y a pas moins de science qu’à concevoir la science.” And à propos of the immense traditional evidence which weighed with such men as Bodin, he says—“As for the proofs and arguments founded on experience and facts, I do not pretend to unravel these.  What end of a thread is there to lay hold of? I often cut them as Alexander did his knot. Après tout, c’est mettre ses conjectures â bien haut prix, que d’en faire cuire un homme tout dif.” 

"Writing like this, when it finds eager readers, is a sign that the weather is changing; yet much later, namely, after 1665, when the Royal Society had been founded, our own Glanvil, the author of the “Scepsis Scientifica,” a work that was a remarkable advance toward the true definition of the limits of inquiry, and that won him his election as fellow of the society, published an energetic vindication of the belief in witchcraft, ... "

" ... In order to combat it, Glanvil proceeded to examine the general question of the credibility of the miraculous. He saw that the reason why witchcraft was ridiculed was, because it was a phase of the miraculous and the work of the devil; that the scepticism was chiefly due to those who disbelieved in miracles and the devil; and that the instances of witchcraft or possession in the Bible were invariably placed on a level with those that were tried in the law courts of England. That the evidence of the belief was overwhelming, he firmly believed; and this, indeed, was scarcely disputed; but, until the sense of à priori improbability was removed, no possible accumulation of facts would cause men to believe it. To that task he accordingly addressed himself. Anticipating the idea and almost the words of modern controversialists, he urged that there was such a thing as a credulity of unbelief; and that those who believed so strange a concurrence of delusions, as was necessary on the supposition of the unreality of witchcraft, were far more credulous than those who accepted the belief. He made his very scepticism his principal weapon; and, analyzing with much acuteness the à priori objections, he showed that they rested upon an unwarrantable confidence in our knowledge of the laws of the spirit world; that they implied the existence of some strict analogy between the faculties of men and of spirits; and that, as such analogy most probably did not exist, no reasoning based on the supposition could dispense men from examining the evidence.  He concluded with a large collection of cases, the evidence of which was, as he thought, incontestable.”"

" ... Glanvil, in combating an incredulity that does not happen to be his own, wielding that very argument of traditional evidence which he had made the subject of vigorous attack in his “Scepsis Scientifica.”  But perhaps large minds have been peculiarly liable to this fluctuation concerning the sphere of tradition, because, while they have attacked its misapplications, they have been the more solicited by the vague sense that tradition is really the basis of our best life. Our sentiments may be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather all their justification, all their attraction and aroma, from the memory of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born. In the absence of any profound research into psychological functions or into the mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of any comprehensive view of man’s historical development and the dependence of one age on another, a mind at all rich in sensibilities must always have had an indefinite uneasiness in an undistinguishing attack on the coercive influence of tradition. And this may be the apology for the apparent inconsistency of Glanvil’s acute criticism on the one side, and his indignation at the “looser gentry,” who laughed at the evidences for witchcraft on the other. ... "

................................................................................................

George Eliot praises Lecky. 

" ... Persecution, he shows, is not in any sense peculiar to the Catholic Church; it is a direct sequence of the doctrines that salvation is to be had only within the Church, and that erroneous belief is damnatory—doctrines held as fully by Protestant sects as by the Catholics; and in proportion to its power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism. He maintains, in opposition to the favorite modern notion of persecution defeating its own object, that the Church, holding the dogma of exclusive salvation, was perfectly consequent, and really achieved its end of spreading one belief and quenching another, by calling in the aid of the civil arm. Who will say that governments, by their power over institutions and patronage, as well as over punishment, have not power also over the interests and inclinations of men, and over most of those external conditions into which subjects are born, and which make them adopt the prevalent belief as a second nature? Hence, to a sincere believer in the doctrine of exclusive salvation, governments had it in their power to save men from perdition; and wherever the clergy were at the elbow of the civil arm, no matter whether they were Catholic or Protestant, persecution was the result."

................................................................................................

"In other parts of his work, where he attempts to trace the action of the same conditions on the acceptance of miracles and on other chief phases of our historical development, Mr. Lecky has laid himself open to considerable criticism. The chapters on the “Miracles of the Church,” the æsthetic, scientific, and moral development of Rationalism, the Secularization of Politics, and the Industrial History of Rationalism, embrace a wide range of diligently gathered facts; but they are nowhere illuminated by a sufficiently clear conception and statement of the agencies at work, or the mode of their action, in the gradual modification of opinion and of life. The writer frequently impresses us as being in a state of hesitation concerning his own standing-point, which may form a desirable stage in private meditation but not in published exposition. ... "

" ... The supremely important fact, that the gradual reduction of all phenomena within the sphere of established law, which carries as a consequence the rejection of the miraculous, has its determining current in the development of physical science, seems to have engaged comparatively little of his attention; at least, he gives it no prominence. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 25, 2021 - September 25, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

The Grammar of Ornament. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"The inventor of movable types, says the venerable Teufelsdröckh, was disbanding hired armies, cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world.  Has any one yet said what great things are being done by the men who are trying to banish ugliness from our streets and our homes, and to make both the outside and inside of our dwellings worthy of a world where there are forests and flower-tressed meadows, and the plumage of birds; where the insects carry lessons of color on their wings, and even the surface of a stagnant pool will show us the wonders of iridescence and the most delicate forms of leafage?  They, too, are modifying opinions, for they are modifying men’s moods and habits, which are the mothers of opinions, having quite as much to do with their formation as the responsible father—Reason.  Think of certain hideous manufacturing towns where the piety is chiefly a belief in copious perdition, and the pleasure is chiefly gin.  The dingy surface of wall pierced by the ugliest windows, the staring shop-fronts, paper-hangings, carpets, brass and gilt mouldings, and advertising placards, have an effect akin to that of malaria; it is easy to understand that with such surroundings there is more belief in cruelty than in beneficence, and that the best earthly bliss attainable is the dulling of the external senses.  For it is a fatal mistake to suppose that ugliness which is taken for beauty will answer all the purposes of beauty; the subtle relation between all kinds of truth and fitness in our life forbids that bad taste should ever be harmless to our moral sensibility or our intellectual discernment; and—more than that—as it is probable that fine musical harmonies have a sanative influence over our bodily organization, it is also probable that just coloring and lovely combinations of lines may be necessary to the complete well-being of our systems apart from any conscious delight in them. ... who shall say that the ugliness of our streets, the falsity of our ornamentation, the vulgarity of our upholstery, have not something to do with those bad tempers which breed false conclusions?

"On several grounds it is possible to make a more speedy and extensive application of artistic reform to our interior decoration than to our external architecture.  One of these grounds is that most of our ugly buildings must stand; we cannot afford to pull them down.  But every year we are decorating interiors afresh, and people of modest means may benefit by the introduction of beautiful designs into stucco ornaments, paper-hangings, draperies, and carpets.  Fine taste in the decoration of interiors is a benefit that spreads from the palace to the clerk’s house with one parlor."

 ................................................................................................

"All honor, then, to the architect who has zealously vindicated the claim of internal ornamentation to be a part of the architect’s function, and has labored to rescue that form of art which is most closely connected with the sanctities and pleasures of our hearths from the hands of uncultured tradesmen.  All the nation ought at present to know that this effort is peculiarly associated with the name of Mr. Owen Jones; and those who are most disposed to dispute with the architect about his coloring must at least recognize the high artistic principle which has directed his attention to colored ornamentation as a proper branch of architecture.  One monument of his effort in this way is his “Grammar of Ornament,” of which a new and cheaper edition has just been issued.  The one point in which it differs from the original and more expensive edition, viz., the reduction in the size of the pages (the amount of matter and number of plates are unaltered), is really an advantage; it is now a very manageable folio, and when the reader is in a lounging mood may be held easily on the knees.  It is a magnificent book; and those who know no more of it than the title should be told that they will find in it a pictorial history of ornamental design, from its rudimentary condition as seen in the productions of savage tribes, through all the other great types of art—the Egyptian, Assyrian, ancient Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Moresque, Mohammedan-Persian, Indian, Celtic, Mediæval, Renaissance, Elizabethan, and Italian. ... "

................................................................................................

"The title “Grammar of Ornament” is so far appropriate that it indicates what Mr. Owen Jones is most anxious to be understood concerning the object of his work, namely, that it is intended to illustrate historically the application of principles, and not to present a collection of models for mere copyists.  The plates correspond to examples in syntax, not to be repeated parrot-like, but to be studied as embodiments of syntactical principles.  There is a logic of form which cannot be departed from in ornamental design without a corresponding remoteness from perfection; unmeaning, irrelevant lines are as bad as irrelevant words or clauses, that tend no whither. ... "

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 25, 2021 - September 25, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Address to Working Men, by Felix Holt. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

This is supposed to be a speech by Felix Holt, to working men - not an article printed and distributed. If anyone spoke in this manner, what are the chances Felix Holt will be heard, rather than booed and pulled down? 

George Eliot ridicules "Silly Novels By Lady Novelists", and one of the points she makes is about authenticity of speech by any character. Here, she herself does not see how hifalutin she sounds, writing this as a speech given to working men by one of their own! He may be educated, but if they were all at a college, thus speech would have audience sneaking out. 

................................................................................................

" ... If it were true that we who work for wages had more of the wisdom and virtue necessary to the right use of power than has been shown by the aristocratic and mercantile classes, we should not glory much in that fact, or consider that it carried with it any near approach to infallibility."

" ... If we have the beginning of wisdom, which is, to know a little truth about ourselves, we know that as a body we are neither very wise nor very virtuous. And to prove this, I will not point specially to our own habits and doings, but to the general state of the country. Any nation that had within it a majority of men—and we are the majority—possessed of much wisdom and virtue, would not tolerate the bad practices, the commercial lying and swindling, the poisonous adulteration of goods, the retail cheating, and the political bribery which are carried on boldly in the midst of us. ... if we had discerned better between good and evil, if the multitude of us artisans, and factory hands, and miners, and laborers of all sorts, had been skilful, faithful, well-judging, industrious, sober—and I don’t see how there can be wisdom and virtue anywhere without these qualities—we should have made an audience that would have shamed the other classes out of their share in the national vices. We should have had better members of Parliament, better religious page 276 teachers, honester tradesmen, fewer foolish demagogues, less impudence in infamous and brutal men; and we should not have had among us the abomination of men calling themselves religious while living in splendor on ill-gotten gains. I say, it is not possible for any society in which there is a very large body of wise and virtuous men to be as vicious as our society is—to have as low a standard of right and wrong, to have so much belief in falsehood, or to have so degrading, barbarous a notion of what pleasure is, or of what justly raises a man above his fellows. Therefore, let us have none with this nonsense about our being much better than the rest of our countryman, or the pretence that that was a reason why we ought to have such an extension of the franchise as has been given to us. The reason for our having the franchise, as I want presently to show, lies somewhere else than in our personal good qualities, and does not in the least lie in any high betting chance that a delegate is a better man than a duke, or that a Sheffield grinder is a better man than any one of the firm he works for."

................................................................................................

Hissing would begin in a minute, now!

"However, we have got our franchise now. We have been sarcastically called in the House of Commons the future masters of the country; and if that sarcasm contains any truth, it seems to me that the first thing we had better think of is, our heavy responsibility; that is to say, the terrible risk we run of working mischief and missing good, as others have done before us. Suppose certain men, discontented with the irrigation of a country which depended for all its prosperity on the right direction being given to the waters of a great river, had got the management of the irrigation before they were quite sure how exactly it could be altered for the better, or whether they could command the necessary agency for such on alteration. Those men would have a difficult and dangerous business on their hands; and the more sense, feeling, and knowledge they had, the more they would be likely to tremble rather than to triumph. Our situation is not altogether unlike theirs. For general prosperity and well-being is a vast crop, that like the corn in Egypt can be come at, not at all by hurried snatching, but only by a well-judged patient process; and whether our political power will be any good to us now we have got it, must depend entirely on the means and materials—the knowledge, ability, and honesty we have at command. ... But the long-growing evils of a great nation are a tangled business, asking for a good deal more than indignation in order to be got rid of.  Indignation is a fine war-horse, but the war-horse must be ridden by a man: it must be ridden by rationality, skill, courage, armed with the right weapons, and taking definite aim."

................................................................................................

George Eliot switches from boring them by being merely long winded to seeming only slightly off, to worse, even as she's making Felix sound like a college professor talking down to preteen kids who might or might not be interested. 

" ... I suppose there is hardly anything more to be shuddered at than that part of the history of disease which shows how, when a man injures his constitution by a life of vicious excess, his children and grandchildren inherit diseased bodies and minds, and how the effects of that unhappy inheritance continue to spread beyond our calculation. This is only one example of the law by which human lives are linked together; another example of what we complain of when we point to our pauperism, to the brutal ignorance of multitudes among our fellow countrymen, to the weight of taxation laid on us by blamable wars, to the wasteful channels made for the public money, to the expense and trouble of getting justice, and call these the effects of bad rule.  This is the law that we all bear the yoke of, the law of no man’s making, and which no man can undo. Everybody now sees an example of it in the case of Ireland. We who are living now are sufferers by the wrong-doing of those who lived before us; we are the sufferers by each other’s wrong-doing; and the children who come after us are and will be sufferers from the same causes. Will any man say he doesn’t care for that law—it is nothing to him—what he wants is to better himself? With what face then will he complain of any injury? If he says that in politics or in any sort of social action he will not care to know what are likely to be the consequences to others besides himself, he is defending the very worst doings that have brought about his discontent. He might as well say that there is no better rule needful for men than that each should tug and drive for what will please him, without caring how that tugging will act on the fine widespread network of society in which he is fast meshed. If any man taught that as a doctrine, we should know him for a fool.  But there are men who act upon it; every scoundrel, for example, whether he is a rich religious scoundrel who lies and cheats on a large scale, and will perhaps come and ask you to send him to Parliament, or a poor pocket-picking scoundrel, who will steal your loose pence while you are listening round the platform. None of us are so ignorant as not to know that a society, a nation is held together by just the opposite doctrine and action—by the dependence of men on each other and the sense they have of a common interest in preventing injury. And we working men are, I think, of all classes the last that can afford to forget this; for if we did we should be much like sailors cutting away the timbers of our own ship to warm our grog with. For what else is the meaning of our trades-unions? What else is the meaning of every flag we carry, every procession we make, every crowd we collect for the sake of making some protest on behalf of our body as receivers of wages, if not this: that it is our interest to stand by each other, and that this being the common interest, no one of us will try to make a good bargain for himself without considering what will be good for his fellows? And every member of a union believes that the wider he can spread his union, the stronger and surer will be the effect of it. So I think I shall be borne out in saying that a working man who can put two and two together, or take three from four and see what will be the remainder, can understand that a society, to be well off, must be made up chiefly of men who consider the general good as well as their own."

Then she's more obtuse for a crowd with short attention span, who aren't used to long winded lectures. 

"Well, but taking the world as it is—and this is one way we must take it when we want to find out how it can be improved—no society is made up of a single class: society stands before us like that wonderful piece of life, the human body, with all its various parts depending on one another, and with a terrible liability to get wrong because of that delicate dependence. We all know how many diseases the human body is apt to suffer from, and how difficult it is even for the doctors to find out exactly where the seat or beginning of the disorder is. That is because the body is made up of so many various parts, all related to each other, or likely all to feel the effect if any one of them goes wrong.  It is somewhat the same with our old nations or societies.  No society ever stood long in the world without getting to be composed of different classes.  Now, it is all pretence to say that there is no such thing as class interest. It is clear that if any particular number of men get a particular benefit from any existing institution, they are likely to band together, in order to keep up that benefit and increase it, until it is perceived to be unfair and injurious to another large number, who get knowledge and strength enough to set up a resistance. And this, again, has been part of the history of every great society since history began. But the simple reason for this being, that any large body of men is likely to have more of stupidity, narrowness, and greed than of farsightedness and generosity, it is plain that the number who resist unfairness and injury are in danger of becoming injurious in their turn. And in this way a justifiable resistance has become a damaging convulsion, making everything worse instead of better. This has been seen so often that we ought to profit a little by the experience.  So long as there is selfishness in men; so long as they have not found out for themselves institutions which express and carry into practice the truth, that the highest interest of mankind must at last be a common and not a divided interest; so long as the gradual operation of steady causes has not made that truth a part of every man’s knowledge and feeling, just as we now not only know that it is good for our health to be cleanly, but feel that cleanliness is only another word for comfort, which is the under-side or lining of all pleasure; so long, I say as men wink at their own knowingness, or hold their heads high because they have got an advantage over their fellows; so long class interest will be in danger of making itself felt injuriously. No set of men will get any sort of power without being in danger of wanting more than their right share. But, on the other hand, it is just as certain that no set of men will get angry at having less than their right share, and set up a claim on that ground, without falling into just the same danger of exacting too much, and exacting it in wrong ways. It’s human nature we have got to work with all round, and nothing else. That seems like saying something very commonplace—nay, obvious; as if one should say that where there are hands there are mouths. Yet, to hear a good deal of the speechifying and to see a good deal of the action that go forward, one might suppose it was forgotten."

By this time, if they haven't thrown shoes at Felix, they've left. 

................................................................................................

But Felix Holt continues. 

"But I come back to this: that, in our old society, there are old institutions, and among them the various distinctions and inherited advantages of classes, which have shaped themselves along with all the wonderful slow-growing system of things made up of our laws, our commerce, and our stores of all sorts, whether in material objects, such as buildings and machinery, or in knowledge, such as scientific thought and professional skill. Just as in that case I spoke of before, the irrigation of a country, which must absolutely have its water distributed or it will bear no crop; there are the old channels, the old banks, and the old pumps, which must be used as they are until new and better have been prepared, or the structure of the old has been gradually altered. But it would be fool’s work to batter down a pump only because a better might be made, when you had no machinery ready for a new one: it would be wicked work, if villages lost their crops by it. Now the only safe way by which society can be steadily improved and our worst evils reduced, is not by any attempt to do away directly with the actually existing class distinctions and advantages, as if everybody could have the same sort of work, or lead the same sort of life (which none of my hearers are stupid enough to suppose), but by the turning of class interests into class functions or duties. What I mean is, that each class should be urged by the surrounding conditions to perform its particular work under the strong pressure of responsibility to the nation at large; that our public affairs should be got into a state in which there should be no impunity for foolish or faithless conduct. In this way the public judgment would sift out incapability and dishonesty from posts of high charge, and even personal ambition would necessarily become of a worthier sort, since the desires of the most selfish men must be a good deal shaped by the opinions of those around them; and for page 281 one person to put on a cap and bells, or to go about dishonest or paltry ways of getting rich that he may spend a vast sum of money in having more finery than his neighbors, he must be pretty sure of a crowd who will applaud him. Now, changes can only be good in proportion as they help to bring about this sort of result: in proportion as they put knowledge in the place of ignorance, and fellow-feeling in the place of selfishness. In the course of that substitution class distinctions must inevitably change their character, and represent the varying duties of men, not their varying interests. But this end will not come by impatience.  “Day will not break the sooner because we get up before the twilight.” Still less will it come by mere undoing, or change merely as change. And moreover, if we believed that it would be unconditionally hastened by our getting the franchise, we should be what I call superstitious men, believing in magic, or the production of a result by hocus-pocus. Our getting the franchise will greatly hasten that good end in proportion only as every one of us has the knowledge, the foresight, the conscience, that will make him well-judging and scrupulous in the use of it. The nature of things in this world has been determined for us beforehand, and in such a way that no ship can be expected to sail well on a difficult voyage, and reach the right port, unless it is well manned: the nature of the winds and the waves, of the timbers, the sails, and the cordage, will not accommodate itself to drunken, mutinous sailors."

But then she's positively blind, putting Felix in direct danger. He goes on -

"You will not suspect me of wanting to preach any cant to you, or of joining in the pretence that everything is in a fine way, and need not be made better. What I am striving to keep in our minds is the care, the precaution, with which we should go about making things better, so that the public order may not be destroyed, so that no fatal shock may be given to this society of ours, this living body in which our lives are bound up. After the Reform Bill of 1832 I was in an election riot, which showed me clearly, on a small scale, what public disorder must always be; and I have never forgotten that the riot was brought about chiefly by the agency of dishonest men who professed to be on the people’s side. Now, the danger hanging over change is great, just in proportion as it tends to produce such disorder by giving any large number of ignorant men, whose notions of what is good are of a low and brutal sort, the belief that they have got power into their hands, and may do pretty much as they like. If any one can look round us and say that he sees no signs of any such danger now, and that our national condition is running along like a clear broadening stream, safe not to get choked with mud, I call him a cheerful man: perhaps he does his own gardening, and seldom taken exercise far away from home. To us who have no gardens, and often walk abroad, it is plain that we can never get into a bit of a crowd but we must rub clothes with a set of roughs, who have the worst vices of the worst rich—who are gamblers, sots, libertines, knaves, or else mere sensual simpletons and victims. They are the ugly crop that has sprung up while the stewards have been sleeping; they are the multiplying brood begotten by parents who have been left without all teaching save that of a too craving body, without all well-being save the fading delusions of drugged beer and gin. They are the hideous margin of society, at one edge drawing toward it the undesigning ignorant poor, at the other darkening imperceptibly into the lowest criminal class. Here is one of the evils which cannot be got rid of quickly, and against which any of us who have got sense, decency, and instruction have need to watch. That these degraded fellow-men could really get the mastery in a persistent disobedience to the laws and in a struggle to subvert order, I do not believe; but wretched calamities must come from the very beginning of such a struggle, and the continuance of it would be a civil war, in which the inspiration on both sides might soon cease to be even a false notion of good, and might become the direct savage impulse of ferocity. We have all to see to it that we do not help to rouse what I may call the savage beast in the breasts of our generation—that we do not help to poison the nation’s blood, and make richer provision for bestiality to come. We know well enough that oppressors have sinned in this way—that oppression has notoriously made men mad; and we are determined to resist oppression.  But let us, if possible, show that we can keep sane in our resistance, and shape our means more and more reasonably toward the least harmful, and therefore the speediest, attainment of our end. Let us, I say, show that our spirits are too strong to be driven mad, but can keep that sober determination which alone gives mastery over the adaptation of means. And a first guarantee of this sanity will be to act as if we understood that the fundamental duty of a government is to preserve order, to enforce obedience of the laws.  It has been held hitherto that a man can be depended on as a guardian of order only when he has much money and comfort to lose. But a better state of things would be, that men who had little money and not much comfort page 283 should still be guardians of order, because they had sense to see that disorder would do no good, and had a heart of justice, pity, and fortitude, to keep them from making more misery only because they felt some misery themselves. There are thousands of artisans who have already shown this fine spirit, and have endured much with patient heroism. If such a spirit spread, and penetrated us all, we should soon become the masters of the country in the best sense and to the best ends. For, the public order being preserved, there can be no government in future that will not be determined by our insistance on our fair and practicable demands.  It is only by disorder that our demands will be choked, that we shall find ourselves lost among a brutal rabble, with all the intelligence of the country opposed to us, and see government in the shape of guns that will sweep us down in the ignoble martyrdom of fools."

Doesn't she get it? He's supposed to be talking to workers, and he's talking of rough guys being dangerous? 

................................................................................................

On and on, the speech is only good for a crowd with at least school level education, and only if they find it a usual entertainment to hear speeches like this. That's not often. She writes it suitable for a printed article, a pamphlet, a church sermon.

"It has been a too common notion that to insist much on the preservation of order is the part of a selfish aristocracy and a selfish commercial class, because among these, in the nature of things, have been found the opponents of change. I am a Radical; and, what is more, I am not a Radical with a title, or a French cook, or even an entrance into fine society. I expect great changes, and I desire them. But I don’t expect them to come in a hurry, by mere inconsiderate sweeping. A Hercules with a big besom is a fine thing for a filthy stable, but not for weeding a seed-bed, where his besom would soon make a barren floor. 

"That is old-fashioned talk, some one may say.  We know all that.

"Yes, when things are put in an extreme way, most people think they know them; but, after all, they are comparatively few who see the small degrees by which those extremes are arrived at, or have the resolution and self-control to resist the little impulses by which they creep on surely toward a fatal end. Does anybody set out meaning to ruin himself, or to drink himself to death, or to waste his life so that he becomes a despicable old man, a superannuated nuisance, like a fly in winter. Yet there are plenty, of whose lot this is the pitiable story. Well now, supposing us all to have the best intentions, we working men, as a body, run some risk of bringing evil on the nation in that unconscious manner—half hurrying, half pushed in a jostling march toward an end we are not thinking of. For just as there are many things which we know better and feel much more strongly than the richer, softer-handed classes can know or feel them; so there are many things—many precious benefits—which we, by the very fact of our privations, our lack of leisure and instruction, are not so likely to be aware of and take into our account. Those precious benefits form a chief part of what I may call the common estate of society: a wealth over and above buildings, machinery, produce, shipping, and so on, though closely connected with these; a wealth of a more delicate kind, that we may more unconsciously bring into danger, doing harm and not knowing that we do it. I mean that treasure of knowledge, science, poetry, refinement of thought, feeling, and manners, great memories and the interpretation of great records, which is carried on from the minds of one generation to the minds of another. This is something distinct from the indulgences of luxury and the pursuit of vain finery; and one of the hardships in the lot of working men is that they have been for the most part shut out from sharing in this treasure. It can make a man’s life very great, very full of delight, though he has no smart furniture and no horses: it also yields a great deal of discovery that corrects error, and of invention that lessens bodily pain, and must at least make life easier for all."

" ... Just as in the case of material wealth and its distribution we are obliged to take the selfishness and weaknesses of human nature into account, and however we insist that men might act better, are forced, unless we are fanatical simpletons, to consider how they are likely to act; so in this matter of the wealth that is carried in men’s minds, we have to reflect that the too absolute predominance of a class whose wants have been of a common sort, who are chiefly struggling to get better and more food, clothing, shelter, and bodily recreation, may lead to hasty measures for the sake of having things more fairly shared, which, even if they did not fail of their object, would at last debase the life of the nation. Do anything which will throw the classes who hold the treasures of knowledge—nay, I may say, the treasure of refined page 285 needs—into the background, cause them to withdraw from public affairs, stop too suddenly any of the sources by which their leisure and ease are furnished, rob them of the chances by which they may be influential and pre-eminent, and you do something as short-sighted as the acts of France and Spain when in jealousy and wrath, not altogether unprovoked, they drove from among them races and classes that held the traditions of handicraft and agriculture. You injure your own inheritance and the inheritance of your children. You may truly say that this which I call the common estate of society has been anything but common to you; but the same may be said, by many of us, of the sunlight and the air, of the sky and the fields, of parks and holiday games. Nevertheless that these blessings exist makes life worthier to us, and urges us the more to energetic, likely means of getting our share in them; and I say, let us watch carefully, lest we do anything to lessen this treasure which is held in the minds of men, while we exert ourselves, first of all, and to the very utmost, that we and our children may share in all its benefits. Yes; exert ourselves to the utmost, to break the yoke of ignorance.  If we demand more leisure, more ease in our lives, let us show that we don’t deserve the reproach of wanting to shirk that industry which, in some form or other, every man, whether rich or poor, should feel himself as much bound to as he is bound to decency. Let us show that we want to have some time and strength left to us, that we may use it, not for brutal indulgence, but for the rational exercise of the faculties which make us men. Without this no political measures can benefit us. No political institution will alter the nature of Ignorance, or hinder it from producing vice and misery. Let Ignorance start how it will, it must run the same round of low appetites, poverty, slavery, and superstition.  Some of us know this well—nay, I will say, feel it; for knowledge of this kind cuts deep; and to us it is one of the most painful facts belonging to our condition that there are numbers of our fellow-workmen who are so far from feeling in the same way, that they never use the imperfect opportunities already offered them for giving their children some schooling, but turn their little ones of tender age into bread-winners, often at cruel tasks, exposed to the horrible infection of childish vice. Of course, the causes of these hideous things go a long way back. Parents’ misery has made parents’ wickedness. But we, who are still blessed with the hearts of fathers and the consciences of men—we who have some knowledge of the curse entailed on broods of creatures in page 286 human shape, whose enfeebled bodies and dull perverted minds are mere centres of uneasiness in whom even appetite is feeble and joy impossible—I say we are bound to use all the means at our command to help in putting a stop to this horror.  Here, it seems to me, is a way in which we may use extended co-operation among us to the most momentous of all purposes, and make conditions of enrolment that would strengthen all educational measures.  It is true enough that there is a low sense of parental duties in the nation at large, and that numbers who have no excuse in bodily hardship seem to think it a light thing to beget children, to bring human beings with all their tremendous possibilities into this difficult world, and then take little heed how they are disciplined and furnished for the perilous journey they are sent on without any asking of their own. This is a sin shared in more or less by all classes; but there are sins which, like taxation, fall the heaviest on the poorest, and none have such galling reasons as we working men to try and rouse to the utmost the feeling of responsibility in fathers and mothers. We have been urged into co-operation by the pressure of common demands.  In war men need each other more; and where a given point has to be defended, fighters inevitably find themselves shoulder to shoulder. So fellowship grows, so grow the rules of fellowship, which gradually shape themselves to thoroughness as the idea of a common good becomes more complete. We feel a right to say, If you will be one of us, you must make such and such a contribution—you must renounce such and such a separate advantage—you must set your face against such and such an infringement. If we have any false ideas about our common good, our rules will be wrong, and we shall be co-operating to damage each other. But, now, here is a part of our good, without which everything else we strive for will be worthless—I mean the rescue of our children. Let us demand from the members of our unions that they fulfil their duty as parents in this definite matter, which rules can reach. Let us demand that they send their children to school, so as not to go on recklessly, breeding a moral pestilence among us, just as strictly as we demand that they pay their contributions to a common fund, understood to be for a common benefit. While we watch our public men, let us watch one another as to this duty, which is also public, and more momentous even than obedience to sanitary regulations. While we resolutely declare against the wickedness in high places, let us set ourselves also against the wickedness in low places, not quarrelling which came first, or which is the worse of the two—not trying to settle the miserable precedence of plague or famine, but insisting unflinchingly on remedies once ascertained, and summoning those who hold the treasure of knowledge to remember that they hold it in trust, and that with them lies the task of searching for new remedies, and finding the right methods of applying them."

................................................................................................

"To get the chief power into the hands of the wisest, which means to get our life regulated according to the truest principles mankind is in possession of, is a problem as old as the very notion of wisdom. The solution comes slowly, because men collectively can only be made to embrace principles, and to act on them, by the slow stupendous teaching of the world’s events. Men will go on planting potatoes, and nothing else but potatoes, till a potato disease comes and forces them to find out the advantage of a varied crop. Selfishness, stupidity, sloth, persist in trying to adapt the world to their desires, till a time comes when the world manifests itself as too decidedly inconvenient to them. Wisdom stands outside of man and urges itself upon him, like the marks of the changing seasons, before it finds a home within him, directs his actions, and from the precious effects of obedience begets a corresponding love."

................................................................................................

"But now, for our own part, we have seriously to consider this outside wisdom which lies in the supreme unalterable nature of things, and watch to give it a home within us and obey it. If the claims of the unendowed multitude of working men hold within them principles which must shape the future, it is not less true that the endowed classes, in their inheritance from the past, hold the precious material without which no worthy, noble future can be moulded. Many of the highest uses of life are in their keeping; and if privilege has often been abused, it has also been the nurse of excellence. Here again we have to submit ourselves to the great law of inheritance. If we quarrel with the way in which the labors and earnings of the past have been preserved and handed down, we are just as bigoted, just as narrow, just as wanting in that religion which keeps an open ear and an obedient mind to the teachings of fact, as we accuse those of being, who quarrel with the new truths and new needs which are disclosed in the present. The deeper insight we get into the causes of human trouble, and the ways by which men are made better and happier, the less we shall be inclined to the unprofitable spirit and practice of reproaching classes as such in a wholesale fashion. Not all the evils of our condition are such as we can justly blame others for; and, I repeat, many of them are such as no changes of institutions can quickly remedy. To discern between the evils that energy can remove and the evils that patience must bear, makes the difference between manliness and childishness, between good sense and folly. And more than that, without such discernment, seeing that we have grave duties toward our own body and the country at large, we can hardly escape acts of fatal rashness and injustice. 

"I am addressing a mixed assembly of workmen, and some of you may be as well or better fitted than I am to take up this office. But they will not think it amiss in me that I have tried to bring together the considerations most likely to be of service to us in preparing ourselves for the use of our new opportunities. I have avoided touching on special questions. The best help toward judging well on these is to approach them in the right temper without vain expectation, and with a resolution which is mixed with temperance."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................

................................................

September 25, 2021 - September 25, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Leaves from a Note-Book.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

One has to wonder if this was meant to be the second half of From the Note-Book of an Eccentric, and other pieces weren't really a part thereof; but it could be either way. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Authorship. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"To lay down in the shape of practical moral rules courses of conduct only to be made real by the rarest states of motive and disposition, tends not to elevate, but to degrade the general standard, by turning that rare attainment from an object of admiration into an impossible prescription, against which the average nature first rebels and then flings out ridicule. It is for art to present images of a lovelier order than the actual, gently winning the affections, and so determining the taste. But in any rational criticism of the time which is meant to guide a practical reform, it is idle to insist that action ought to be this or that, without considering how far the outward conditions of such change are present, even supposing the inward disposition towards it. Practically, we must be satisfied to aim at something short of perfection—and at something very much further off it in one case than in another. While the fundamental conceptions of morality seem as stationary through ages as the laws of life, so that a moral manual written eighteen centuries ago still admonishes us that we are low in our attainments, it is quite otherwise with the degree to which moral conceptions have penetrated the various forms of social activity, and made what may be called the special conscience of each calling, art, or industry. ... "

"moral manual written eighteen centuries ago"?? Wasn't crossing over from Egypt far older? Or does George Eliot consider her people perfect about following ten commandments?

................................................................................................

Seriously, was she German? 

"Among those callings which have not yet acquired anything near a full-grown conscience in the public mind is Authorship. Yet the changes brought about by the spread of instruction and the consequent struggles of an uneasy ambition, are, or at least might well be, forcing on many minds the need of some regulating principle with regard to the publication of intellectual products, which would override the rule of the market: a principle, that is, which should be derived from a fixing of the author’s vocation according to those characteristics in which it differs from the other bread-winning professions. Let this be done, if possible, without any cant, which would carry the subject into Utopia, away from existing needs. The guidance wanted is a clear notion of what should justify men and women in assuming public authorship, and of the way in which they should be determined by what is usually called success. But the forms of authorship must be distinguished; journalism, for example, carrying a necessity for that continuous production which in other kinds of writing is precisely the evil to be fought against, and judicious careful compilation, which is a great public service, holding in its modest diligence a guarantee against those deductions of vanity and idleness which draw many a young gentleman into reviewing, instead of the sorting and copying which his small talents could not rise to with any vigor and completeness."

It's not about the specific criteria she sets out, it's about the notion of society, state, setting out rules of authorship! 

In Germany, we were told we cannot call ourselves Dr without permission of the government. Our doctorates, from reputed universities in U.S., we're of no consequence whatsoever. We responded say I g those laws don't apply to non citizens. But then we found out that not only setting up any trade - baking bread at home for sale, tailoring, ... required a government licence in Germany, it required a vocational school course certificate; and as to flying a small plane, you needed such rigmarole to go through to ride in one, not just flying one. 

And here George Eliot suggests controlling authors! 

................................................................................................

"A manufacturer goes on producing calicoes as long and as fast as he can find a market for them; and in obeying this indication of demand he gives his factory its utmost usefulness to the world in general and to himself in particular. Another manufacturer buys a new invention of some light kind likely to attract the public fancy, is successful in finding a multitude who will give their testers for the transiently desirable commodity, and before the fashion is out, pockets a considerable sum: the commodity was colored with a green which had arsenic in it that damaged the factory workers and the purchasers. What then? These, he contends (or does not know or care to contend), are superficial effects, which it is folly to dwell upon while we have epidemic diseases and bad government. 

"The first manufacturer we will suppose blameless. Is an author simply on a par with him, as to the rules of production?"

When George Eliot prescribes control, she doesn't see the problems resulting, from authors - or anyone speaking against government- being sent to concentration camps by nazis, to their being sent to Siberia by another regime, to their being murdered and never heard of again, by yet others. Simplest was the complex network in U.S., "a free country", described by Upton Sinclair in his various works, including The Brass Check. 

................................................................................................

" ... The calico scarcely varies in appropriateness of quality, no consumer is in danger of getting too much of it, and neglecting his boots, hats, and flannel shirts in consequence. That there should be large quantities of the same sort in the calico manufacture is an advantage: the sameness is desirable, and nobody is likely to roll his person in so many folds of calico as to become a mere bale of cotton goods, and nullify his senses of hearing and touch, while his morbid passion for Manchester shirtings makes him still cry “More!” The wise manufacturer gets richer and richer, and the consumers he supplies have their real wants satisfied and no more."

George Eliot never thought of fashion industry, artificially raised prices of - not calico, but - synthetic fabrics, and bullying if female customers in West, to buy tons of "season's fashion" and discard them next season, all ruinous for pockets, especially of women; all this, before accessories and cosmetics! 

................................................................................................

"For a man who has a certain gift of writing to say, “I will make the most of it while the public likes my wares, as long as the market is open and I am able to supply it at a money profit—such profit being the sign of liking”—he should have a belief that his wares have nothing akin to the arsenic green in them, and also that his continuous supply is secure from a degradation in quality which the habit of consumption encouraged in the buyers may hinder them from marking their sense of by rejection; so that they complain, but pay, and read while they complain. Unless he has that belief, he is on a level with the manufacturer who gets rich by fancy-wares colored with arsenic green. He really cares for nothing but his income. He carries on authorship on the principle of the gin-palace."

Not only prohibition of alcohol has never succeeded, but even tobacco isn't banned yet, it's only smoking in public that's banned in most of West; one should see Westerners smoking arrogantly across Asia, even in airports, despite bans! Then there are cigarette sales outside schools, and police protecting them from protesters, in South East Asia - getting children of countrues other than U.S. addicted early. Afghanistan farmers were discouraged from sowing food crops, encouraged to sow opium crops, during two decades of Western occupation - just as British did to India. And we haven't discussed HFCS yet, which not only us addictive, but damages body; no legislation to ban it has even been thought of, it proliferated through U.S. almost unavoidable via all processed food including most bread, and of course, all "cola"s. Dieting industry benefits, as does medical industry. 

................................................................................................


"It is in the highest sense lawful for him to get as good a price as he honorably can for the best work he is capable of; but not for him to force or hurry his production, or even do over again what has already been done, either by himself or others, so as to render his work no real contribution, for the sake of bringing up his income to the fancy pitch. An author who would keep a pure and noble conscience, and with that a developing instead of degenerating intellect and taste, must cast out of his aims the aim to be rich. And therefore he must keep his expenditure low—he must make for himself no dire necessity to earn sums in order to pay bills."

So says George Eliot with a severe piety, and yet, she proclaims rights of Anglican invasions around the world in Impressions of Theophrastus Such, as a heaven sanctioned right, to loot and massacre others, to chop off hands of weavers in India so British can sell substandard manufactured cloth of Britain to India, to starve millions of Indians to death by stealing India's harvest, and yes, to war against China to force China to buy opium from Brits so Chinese can get addicted. And if India or China don't want any of it, George Eliot thumps her fist and glories with satisfaction about having punished them.

................................................................................................


"But after the restraints and rules which must guide the acknowledged author, whose power of making a real contribution is ascertained, comes the consideration, how or on what principle are we to find a check for that troublesome disposition to authorship arising from the spread of what is called Education, which turns a growing rush of vanity and ambition into this current? The well-taught, an increasing number, are almost all able to write essays on given themes, which demand new periodicals to save them from lying in cold obstruction. The ill-taught—also an increasing number—read many books, seem to themselves able to write others surprisingly like what they read, and probably superior, since the variations are such as please their own fancy, and such as they would have recommended to their favorite authors: these ill-taught persons are perhaps idle and want to give themselves “an object;” or they are short of money, and feel disinclined to get it by a commoner kind of work; or they find a facility in putting sentences together which gives them more than a suspicion that they have genius, which, if not very cordially believed in by private confidants, will be recognized by an impartial public; or, finally, they observe that writing is sometimes well paid, and sometimes a ground of fame or distinction, and without any use of punctilious logic, they conclude to become writers themselves."

Did she ever think of looking at a mirror, as she wrote that?

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Judgments on Authors.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"In endeavoring to estimate a remarkable writer who aimed at more than temporary influence, we have first to consider what was his individual contribution to the spiritual wealth of mankind? Had he a new conception? Did he animate long-known but neglected truths with new vigor, and cast fresh light on their relation to other admitted truths? Did he impregnate any ideas with a fresh store of emotion, and in this way enlarge the area of moral sentiment? Did he, by a wise emphasis here, and a wise disregard there, give a more useful or beautiful proportion to aims or motives? And even where his thinking was most mixed with the sort of mistake which is obvious to the majority, as well as that which can only be discerned by the instructed, or made manifest by the progress of things, has it that salt of a noble enthusiasm which should rebuke our critical discrimination if its correctness is inspired with a less admirable habit of feeling?"

Why not judge them, to begin with, as one would a baker? If it's healthy, attractive, tastes good, good enough. Modern art was born because painters found no takers for good work. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Story-Telling. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"What is the best way of telling a story? Since the standard must be the interest of the audience, there must be several or many good ways rather than one best. ... "

................................................................................................

"The modes of telling a story founded on these processes of outward and inward life derive their effectiveness from the superior mastery of images and pictures in grasping the attention—or, one might say with more fundamental accuracy, from the fact that our earliest, strongest impressions, our most intimate convictions, are simply images added to more or less of sensation. These are the primitive instruments of thought. Hence it is not surprising that early poetry took this way—telling a daring deed, a glorious achievement, without caring for what went before. The desire for orderly narration is a later, more reflective birth. The presence of the Jack in the box affects every child: it is the more reflective lad, the miniature philosopher, who wants to know how he got there."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Historic Imagination.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"What really took place in and around Constantine before, upon, and immediately after his declared conversion?"

Constantine had no intention of converting; he imposed his will, about monotheism, but the God was Sun, and church accepted - and when he died, they simply claimed he was converted. Such lies go on ever since. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Value in Originality. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"The supremacy given in European cultures to the literatures of Greece and Rome has had an effect almost equal to that of a common religion in binding the Western nations together. It is foolish to be forever complaining of the consequent uniformity, as if there were an endless power of originality in the human mind. Great and precious origination must always be comparatively rare, and can only exist on condition of a wide, massive uniformity. When a multitude of men have learned to use the same language in speech and writing, then and then only can the greatest masters of language arise. For in what does their mastery consist? They use words which are already a familiar medium of understanding and sympathy in such a way as greatly to enlarge the understanding and sympathy. Originality of this order changes the wild grasses into world-feeding grain. Idiosyncrasies are pepper and spices of questionable aroma."

Didn't the author pontificate exactly opposite, in 'Authorship'?

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

To the Prosaic all Things are Prosaic. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“Is the time we live in prosaic?” “That depends: it must certainly be prosaic to one whose mind takes a prosaic stand in contemplating it.” “But it is precisely the most poetic minds that most groan over the vulgarity of the present, its degenerate sensibility to beauty, eagerness for materialistic explanation, noisy triviality.” “Perhaps they would have had the same complaint to make about the age of Elizabeth, if, living then, they had fixed their attention on its more sordid elements, or had been subject to the grating influence of its everyday meannesses, and had sought refuge from them in the contemplation of whatever suited their taste in a former age.”

Wordplay?

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“Dear Religious Love” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"We get our knowledge of perfect Love by glimpses and in fragments chiefly—the rarest only among us knowing what it is to worship and caress, reverence and cherish, divide our bread and mingle our thoughts at one and the same time, under inspiration of the same object. Finest aromas will so often leave the fruits to which they are native and cling elsewhere, leaving the fruit empty of all but its coarser structure!"

That last sentence is telling. Come to think of it, there isn't a love story in all her work. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

We Make our Own Precedents. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"In the times of national mixture when modern Europe was, as one may say, a-brewing, it was open to a man who did not like to be judged by the Roman law to choose which of certain other codes he would be tried by. So, in our own times, they who openly adopt a higher rule than their neighbors do thereby make act of choice as to the laws and precedents by which they shall be approved or condemned, and thus it may happen that we see a man morally pilloried for a very customary deed, and yet having no right to complain, inasmuch as in his foregoing deliberative course of life he had referred himself to the tribunal of those higher conceptions, before which such a deed is without quetion condemnable."

What about the cheats?

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Birth of Tolerance. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Tolerance first comes through equality of struggle, as in the case of Arianism and Catholicism in the early times—Valens, Eastern and Arian, Valentinian, Western and Catholic, alike publishing edicts of tolerance; or it comes from a common need of relief from an oppressive predominance, as when James II. published his Act of Tolerance towards non-Anglicans, being forced into liberality towards the Dissenters by the need to get it for the Catholics. Community of interest is the root of justice; community of suffering, the root of pity; community of joy, the root of love."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Felix qui non potuit. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Many feel themselves very confidently on safe ground when they say: It must be good for man to know the Truth. But it is clearly not good for a particular man to know some particular truth, as irremediable treachery in one whom he cherishes—better that he should die without knowing it. 

"Of scientific truth, is it not conceivable that some facts as to the tendency of things affecting the final destination of the race might be more hurtful when they had entered into the human consciousness than they would have been if they had remained purely external in their activity?"

Such as? 

Darwin's realisation about evolution? 

Bible belt has gone from claiming equality to banning teaching evolution. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Divine Grace a Real Emanation.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"There is no such thing as an impotent or neutral deity, if the deity be really believed in, and contemplated either in prayer or meditation. Every object of thought reacts on the mind that conceives it, still more on that which habitually contemplates it. ... "

Reminds one of various internet debates - one, where a Jewish debater balked at importance of perception and claimed idea was important; another where a muslim female questioned why india nade up different Gods, why not just make up one for all purposes! 

Are those, or any other monotheistic, really different from atheists? "Idea", "make up gods"???? If that's all there is to it, why bother converting? 

As to faith, isn't Perception of Reality the real McCoy? 

And while it's widely assumed that monotheism is superior, there's no reason in its support, much less evidence of Reality, on any level. 

It's just domination by power of having conquered, massacred, looted. By which logic they can force people to chant "one is two", just as well.  

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“A Fine Excess.”

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Feeling is Energy. One can hardly insist too much, in the present stage of thinking, on the efficacy of feeling in stimulating to ardent co-operation, quite apart from the conviction that such co-operation is needed for the achievement of the end in view. Just as hatred will vent itself in private curses no longer believed to have any potency, and joy, in private singing far out among the woods and fields, so sympathetic feeling can only be satisfied by joining in the action which expresses it, though the added “Bravo!” the added push, the added penny is no more than a grain of dust on a rolling mass."

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 28, 2021 - September 28, 2021. 

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

April 01, 2021 - 

September 21, 2021 - September , 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Miscellaneous Poems.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

It's not written for a readership as much as for herself, most of it. This becomes clear within a few lines of the opening poem. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Contents  

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

On Being Called a Saint. 

Farewell. 

Sonnet. 

Question and Answer. 

“’Mid my Gold-Brown Curls.” 

“’Mid the Rich Store.” 

“As Tu Va la Lune se Lever.” 

In A London Drawing Room. 

Arms! To Arms! 

Ex Oriente Lux. 

In the South. 

Will Ladislaw’s Song. 

Erinna. 

“I Grant you Ample Leave.” 

Mordecai’s Hebrew Verses. 

Count that Day Lost.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

On Being Called a Saint. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

It's not written for a readership as much as for herself, most of it. This becomes clear within a few lines of the opening lines. 

"A Saint! O would that I could claim 

"The privileg’d, the honour’d name 

"And confidently take my stand 

"Though lowest in the saintly band! 

"Would though it were in scorn applied 

"That term the test of truth could bide 

"The kingly salutations given 

"In mockery to the King of Heaven."

Her religious fervour isn't unfamiliar after one has read Romola and Daniel Deronda.  Still, it's quite startling when she writes - 

"Oh for an interest in that name 

"When hell shall ope its jaws of flame 

"And sinners to their doom be hurl’d 

"While scorned saints ‘shall judge this world.’"

One thought she disdained those - such as the evangelical Cummins who she wrote critically of - who were gung ho about precisely this enthusiasm! 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 29, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Farewell. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Was this one of her last poems? From being only second in this collection, it woukdnt seem so. But when she writes 

"Thou sun, to whose parental beam 

"I owe All that has gladden’d me while here below— 

"Moon, stars, and covenant confirming bow, 

"Farewell! 

"Ye verdant meads, fair blossoms, stately trees, 

"Sweet song of birds, and soothing hum of bees— 

"Refreshing odours, wafted on the breeze,

"Farewell! "

It definitely isn't about saying goodnight, or a journey she expects to return from, however hazardous journeys were in her days. 

Its pretty, no doubt. And touching. 

"Books that have been to me as chest of gold, 

"Which, miser like, I secretly have told, 

"And for them love, health, friendship, peace have sold, 

"Farewell! "

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 29, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Sonnet. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Tad mysterious. 

"If, haply, conscious of the present scene, 

"I’ve marked before me some untraversed spot 

"The setting sunbeams had foresaken not, 

"Whose turf appeared more velvet-like and green

"Than that I walked and fitter for repose: 

"But ever, at the wished-for place arrived, 

"I’ve found it of those seeming charms deprived 

"Which from the mellowing power of distance rose: 

"To my poor thought, an apt though simple trope 

"Of life’s dull path and earth’s deceitful hope"

Unless it's about passage of time, and inability to return. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 29, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Question and Answer. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Religious more than essence of experience of life, one suspects, when she goes - 

"“Where blooms, O my Father, a thornless rose?” 

"“That can I not tell thee, my child; 

"Not one on the bosom of earth e’er grows, 

"But wounds whom its charms have beguiled.” 

"“Would I’d a rose on my bosom to lie! 

"But I shrink from the piercing thorn; 

"I long, but dare not its point defy, 

"I long, and I gaze forlorn.” 

"“Not so, O my child, round the stem again 

"Thy resolute fingers entwine--- 

"Forego not the joy for its sister pain, 

"Let the rose, the sweet rose, be thine!”"

After all, being a clergyman's daughter and later married to someone in trade, middle class at all times, her life couldn't be said to have been of strife against poverty, exactly, much less of battling against odds such as those faced by Irish, or other colonial subjects, or even the settlers in the new world who built log cabins and did everything else depending on no workers as such. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 29, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“’Mid my Gold-Brown Curls.” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

It's a rare admission of vanity from George Eliot! 

"’Mid my gold-brown curls 

"There twined a silver hair: 

"I plucked it idly out 

"And scarcely knew ’twas there. 

"Coiled in my velvet sleeve it lay 

"And like a serpent hissed: 

"“Me thou canst pluck & fling away, 

"One hair is lightly missed; 

"But how on that near day 

"When all the wintry army muster in array?”"

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 29, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“’Mid the Rich Store.” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"So man His miniature resemblance gives 

"To matter’s every form a speaking soul,"

She stops at the border of spiritual, unwilling to leave her bringing up behind, like an earthbound spirit afraid of flight and chained to its cage. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

“As Tu Va la Lune se Lever.” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"Have you seen the moon rise in an azure sky without a veil?" Begins this, and goes on to attempt a spiritual connection - but, alas, not freely, but only within framework of her background of restrictions by church! 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

In A London Drawing Room. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Facts of her description are not in dispute, but the overall effect is of a dull, dismal place. 

"The sky is cloudy, yellowed by the smoke. 

"For view there are the houses opposite 

"Cutting the sky with one long line of wall 

"Like solid fog: far as the eye can stretch 

"Monotony of surface & of form 

"Without a break to hang a guess upon. 

"No bird can make a shadow as it flies, 

"For all is shadow, as in ways o’erhung 

"By thickest canvass, where the golden rays 

"Are clothed in hemp. ... "

So far, it's dismal enough. But next, it's as if she's made up her mind to paint it negative. 

"No figure lingering 

"Pauses to feed the hunger of the eye 

"Or rest a little on the lap of life. 

"All hurry on & look upon the ground, 

"Or glance unmarking at the passers by ... "

We've all experienced the loneliness resulting from being in a strange place, especially a city that is in a hurry. But it's the city that is friendlier, too, than the small village that ignores strangers who are clearly waiting, politely, for a glance, a greeting before they can ask for an address and be on the way! 

But she gets worse. 

"The wheels are hurrying too, cabs, carriages 

"All closed, in multiplied identity. ... "

Why wouldn't the carriages be closed, what with dust flying to splash as it's driven? It isn't a stroll of a summer's afternoon in the cold Nordic latitudes. 

"The world seems one huge prison-house & court 

"Where men are punished at the slightest cost, 

"With lowest rate of colour, warmth & joy."

One moment, isn't the title A London Drawing Room? Not a lonely waiting at a bus stop?

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Arms! To Arms!  

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

It's mystifying when one reads 

" ... But at last the watchman posted 

"Darkly like the stars at noon ... "

One doesa double take - what? Watchman, like stars at noon? Is he invisible? Or did George Eliot see stars at noon, does anyone, except during an eclipse? Is it ever that dark below arctic circle latitudes?

But then it becomes clearer- she's being racist. 

"Now the gates of morn are open 

"And the Christians ope their gates; 

"Meet the Moor at half a league thence, 

"Clashing weapons, clashing hates."

Incidentally, it's those that live in the Nordic darkness that have no chance of allowing nature's heat to affect their skins, and so nature brings them out of wombs and keeps them at the rare level; as opposed to the tanned members of the same who move to, say, California. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Ex Oriente Lux. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

When she sees Asia as East, close to Sun at first dawn - 

"When first the earth broke from her parent ring 

"Trembling an instant ere her separate life 

"Had found the unfailing pulse of night and day, 

"Her inner half that met the effusive Sun 

"Had earlier largesse of his rays and thrilled 

"To the celestial music of the dawn 

"While yet the western half was cold and sad, 

"Shivering beneath the whisper of the stars. 

"So Asia was the earliest home of light: 

"The little seeds first germinated there, 

"Birds first made bridals, and the year first knew Autumnal ripeness. 

"Ever wandering sound 

"That dumbly throbbed within the homeless vast 

"Took sweet imprisonment in song and speech— 

"Like light more beauteous for shattering, 

"Parted melodious in the trembling throat 

"Of the first matin bird; made utterance 

"From the full-rounded lips of that young race 

"Who moved by the omnipresent Energy 

"Dividing towards sublimer union, 

"Clove sense & image subtilly in twain, 

"Then wedded them, till heavenly 

"Thought was born."

is she aware that Asia isn't just West Asia, that Asia includes the India and China that she wrote disdainfully of as "punished by England" for daring to oppose British domination? 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

In the South. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

If poet goes on a vacation in autumn sojourning South where its palms and ocean - Mediterranean? - then obviously, as happy as she's to paint olives and apples, 

"O gentle brightness of late Autumn morns! 

"The dear Earth like a patient matron left 

"By all she loved and reared, still smiles and loves. 

"The fields low-shorn gleam with a paler gold, 

"The olives stretch their shadows; on the vines 

"Forgotten bunches breathe out mellowness, 

"And little apples poised upon their stems 

"Laugh sparkling high above the mounting sun. 

"Each delicate blade and bossy arching leaf 

"Is silvered with the dew; the plough overturns 

"The redolent earth, and with slow-broadening belt 

"Of furrowed brownness, makes mute prophecy. 

"The far off rocks take breathing colours, bathed 

"In the aërial ocean of clear blue; 

"The palm soars in the silence, and the towers 

"And scattered villages seem still to sleep 

"In happy morning dreams."

- she's missing Autumn glory! 

Try New England!

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Will Ladislaw’s Song. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Frugal, indeed! 

"O me, O me, what frugal cheer 

"My love doth feed upon! 

"A touch, a ray, that is not here, 

"A shadow that is gone: 

"A dream of breath that might be near, 

"An inly-echoed tone, 

"The thought that one may think me dear, 

"The place where one was known, 

"The tremor of a banished fear, 

"An ill that was not done— 

"O me, O me, what frugal cheer 

"My love doth feed upon!"

George Eliot's prose in Middlemarch was much more poetic in portraying Will and Dorothea, individually and in their relationship. 

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Erinna. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

"“Erinna died in early youth when chained by her mother to the spinning-wheel. She had as yet known the charm of existence in imagination alone. Her poem called ‘The Spindle—Ηλακάτη—containing only 300 hexameter verses, in which she probably expressed the restless & aspiring thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind as she pursued her monotonous work, has been deemed by many of the ancients of such high poetic merit as to entitle it to a place beside the epics of Homer.” Muller, Hist. Gr. Lit} Four lines of the ηλακάτη are extant. The dialect is a mixture of Doric and Æolic spoken at Rhodes where Erinna was born; the date about B.C. 612:"

First few verses make one wonder if these are by Erinna, but then it's clear they are about her, by George Eliot. 

"’Twas in the isle that Helios saw 

"Uprising from the sea a flower-tressed bride 

"To meet his kisses—Rhodes, the filial pride 

"Of god-taught craftsmen who gave Art its law: 

"She held the spindle as she sat, 

"Erinna with the thick-coiled mat 

"Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes, 

"Gazing with a sad surprise 

"At surging visions of her destiny 

"To spin the byssus drearily 

"In insect labour, while the throng 

"Of gods and men wrought deeds that poets wrought in song."

And yet, has much changed, for an average woman, even one of middle class? Whatever her achievements, whatever vast space her mind, however vast soul, her being on earth is still subject to being asked if she spends her time housekeeping. 

If she's lucky! 

"Hark, the passion in her eyes 

"Changes to melodic cries 

"Lone she pours her lonely pain. 

"Song unheard is not in vain: 

"The god within us plies 

"His shaping power and moulds in speech 

"Harmonious a statue of our sorrow, 

"Till suffering turn beholding and we borrow, 

"Gazing on Self apart, the wider reach 

"Of solemn souls that contemplate 

"And slay with full-beamed thought the darkling 

"Dragon Hate."

Else, it isn't asking, it's being told, "if you aren't "working ", you must be a housekeeper!"!

And yet 

"But Pallas, thou dost choose and bless 

"The nobler cause, thy maiden height 

"And terrible beauty marshalling the fight 

"Inspire weak limbs with stedfastness. 

"Thy virgin breast uplifts 

"The direful aegis, but thy hand 

"Wielded its weapon with benign command 

"In rivalry of highest gifts 

"With strong Poseidon whose earth-shaking roll 

"Matched not the delicate tremors of thy spear 

"Piercing Athenian land and drawing thence 

"With conquering beneficence 

"Thy subtly chosen dole 

"The sacred olive fraught with light and plenteous cheer. 

"What, though thou pliest the distaff and the loom? 

"Counsel is thine, to sway the doubtful doom 

"Of cities with a leaguer at their gate; 

"Thine the device that snares the hulk elate 

"Of purblind force and saves the hero or the State."

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

...............................................................................................

“I Grant you Ample Leave.” 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

On verge of spiritual discovery, she steps back! 

"“I grant you ample leave To use the hoary formula ‘I am’ 

"Naming the emptiness where thought is not; 

"But fill the void with definition, ‘I’ 

"Will be no more a datum than the words 

"You link false inference with, the ‘Since’ & ‘so’ 

"That, true or not, make up the atom-whirl. 

"Resolve your ‘Ego’, it is all one web 

"With vibrant ether clotted into worlds: 

"Your subject, self, or self-assertive ‘I’ 

"Turns nought but object, melts to molecules, 

"Is stripped from naked Being with the rest 

"Of those rag-garments named the Universe. 

"Or if, in strife to keep your ‘Ego’ strong 

"You make it weaver of the etherial light, 

"Space, motion, solids & the dream of Time— 

"Why, still ’tis Being looking from the dark, 

"The core, the centre of your consciousness, 

"That notes your bubble-world: sense, pleasure, pain, 

"What are they but a shifting otherness, 

"Phantasmal flux of moments?—”"

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Mordecai’s Hebrew Verses. 

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

George Eliot's image of Judaism has no joy in it, no space for love; it's all sombre, denying love, laughter. And this, root of her own upbringing, defines spirituality for her, whereas one sees Fiddler On The Roof for another, joyous view of life thats jewish life through millennia, despite all the striving against poverty and much, much more! What isn't joy, cheer, is all forced and inflicted - from outsiders. 

"“Away from me the garment of forgetfulness, 

"Withering the heart; 

"The oil and wine from presses of the Goyim, 

"Poisoned with scorn. 

"Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo, 

"In its heart a tomb: 

"There the buried ark and golden cherubim 

"Make hidden light: 

"There the solemn faces gaze unchanged, 

"The wings are spread unbroken: 

"Shut beneath in silent awful speech 

"The Law lies graven. 

"Solitude and darkness are my covering, 

"And my heart a tomb; 

"Smite and shatter it, O Gabriel! 

"Shatter it as the clay of the founder 

"Around the golden image.”"

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Count that Day Lost.

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

Simple! 

"If you sit down at set of sun 

"And count the acts that you have done, 

"And, counting, find 

"One self-denying deed, one word 

"That eased the heart of him who heard, 

"One glance most kind 

"That fell like sunshine where it went— 

"Then you may count that day well spent. 

"But if, through all the livelong day, 

"You’ve cheered no heart, by yea or nay— 

"If, through it all 

"You’ve nothing done that you can trace 

"That brought the sunshine to one face— 

"No act most small 

"That helped some soul and nothing cost— 

"Then count that day as worse than lost."

And yet - if one does a reckoning, then it wasn't a good deed, it was an attempt to earn a good deed! 

................................................................................................

...............................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 30, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

September 29, 2021 - September 30, 2021. 

................................................
................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................

CONTENTS (from book)

Scenes of Clerical Life. (1858) 

Adam Bede. (1859) 

The Lifted Veil. (1859) 

The Mill on the Floss. (1860) 

Silas Marner, the Weaver of Raveloe. (1861) 

Romola. (1863) 

Brother Jacob. (1864) 

Felix Holt, the Radical. (1866) 

The Spanish Gypsy. (1868) 

Middlemarch. (1871/72) 

The Legend of Jubal, and Other Poems (1874) 

Daniel Deronda. (1876) 

Impressions of Theophrastus Such. (1879) 

The Essays. 

Miscellaneous Poems.

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................

................................................

June 1970 - April 01, 2021 - 

October 08, 2021.  

Purchased February 18, 2021. 

Kindle Edition

Published March 27th 2018 

by ATOZ Classics

ASIN B07BQRBVF2

................................................

................................................

................................................................................................
................................................................................................

................................................................................................

................................................................................................