I wish we could get the book out in May—why not? I suppose the binding could not be all got through—the printing and writing I should think might be managed in time. Shouldn't I like to fleet the time away with thee as they did in the Golden Age—after all our toils to lie reclined on the hills (spiritually), like gods together, careless of mankind. Sooth to speak, idleness, and idleness with thee, is just the most tempting mirage you could raise before my mind's eye—I say mirage, because I am determined from henceforth to believe in no substantiality for future time, but to live in and love the present—of which I have done too little. Still, the thought of being with you in your own home will attract me to that future; for without all controversy I love thee and miss thee.
My soul kisses thee, dear Sara, in gratitude for those dewy thoughts of thine in this morning's note. My poor adust soul wants such refreshment. Continue to do me good—hoping for nothing again. I have had my sister with me all day—an interruption, alas! I cannot write more, but I should not be happy to let the day pass without saying one word to thee.
The last hundred pages have certainly been totally uninteresting to me, considered as matter for translation. Strauss has inevitably anticipated in the earlier part of his work all the principles and many of the details of his criticism, and he seems fagged himself. Mais courage! the neck of the difficulty is broken, and there is really very little to be done now. If one's head would but keep in anything like thinking and writing order! Mine has robbed me of half the last fortnight; but I am a little better now, and am saying to myself Frisch zu! The Crucifixion and the Resurrection are, at all events, better than the bursting asunder of Judas. I am afraid I have not made this dull part of Strauss even as tolerable as it might be, for both body and mind have recoiled from it. Thank you, dearest, for all your love and patience for me and with me. I have nothing on earth to complain of but subjective maladies. Father is pretty well, and I have not a single excuse for discontent through the livelong day.
As I believe that even your kindness cannot overcome your sincerity, I will cast aside my fear that your wish to see me in your own home is rather a plan for my enjoyment than for yours. I believe it would be an unmixed pleasure to me to be your visitor, and one that I would choose among a whole bouquet of agreeable possibilities; so I will indulge myself, and accept the good that the heavens and you offer me. I am miserably in want of you to stir up my soul and make it shake its wings, and begin some kind of flight after something good and noble, for I am in a grovelling, slothful condition, and you are the only friend I possess who has an animating influence over me. I have written to Mr. Hennell anent the titlepage, and have voted for critically examined, from an entire conviction of its preferableness.
See what it is to have a person en rapport with you, that knows all your thoughts without the trouble of communication! I am especially grateful to you for restoring the "therefore" to its right place. I was about to write to you to get you to remonstrate about this and the "dispassionate calmness," which I did not at all like; but I thought you had corrected the prefaces, as the marks against the Latin looked like yours, so I determined to indulge my laissez-faire inclinations, for I hate stickling and debating unless it be for something really important. I do really like reading our Strauss—he is so klar und ideenvoll; but I do not know one person who is likely to read the book through—do you? Next week we will be merry and sad, wise and nonsensical, devout and wicked, together.
On 19th April, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans is "as happy as you may imagine at her work being done. She means to come and read Shakespeare through to us as her first enjoyment." And again, on 27th April, that she "is delighted beyond measure with Strauss's elegant preface. It is just what she likes. And what a nice letter too! The Latin is quite beyond me, but the letter shows how neatly he can express himself."
SUMMARY.
MARCH, 1841, TO APRIL, 1846.
Foleshill—New friends—Mrs. Pears—Coventry life and engagements—Letters to Miss Lewis—Brother's marriage—Mental depression—Reading Nichol's "Architecture of the Heavens and Phenomena of the Solar System"—Makes acquaintance with Mr. and Mrs. Bray—Reads Charles Hennell's book, "An Inquiry Concerning the Origin of Christianity"—Effect of this book—Gives up going to church—Family difficulties—Letters to Mrs. Pears—Visit to Griff—Returns to Foleshill and resumes going to church—Acquaintance with Miss Sara Hennell, and development of friendship with her and Mr. and Mrs. Bray—Letters to Miss Sara Hennell describing mental characteristics—Attitude towards immortality—Death of Miss Mary Hennell—Excursion with the Brays, Mr. Charles Hennell, and Miss Hennell to Stratford and Malvern, and to Tenby with same party and Miss Brabant—Meets Robert Owen—Studies German and music with Mrs. Bray—Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, with important declaration of opinion in regard to conformity—Mr. Charles Hennell's marriage—Stay with Dr. Brabant at Devizes—Arrangement for translation of Strauss's "Leben Jesu"—Excursion with Brays to the Cumberland lakes, returning by Manchester and Liverpool—Weary of Strauss—Letter to Mrs. Bray—Poetry of Christianity—Admiration of Harriet Martineau's "The Crofton Boys"—Trip to London—Despair about publication of Strauss—Subscription of £300 for the work—In better heart—Minutiæ of Strauss translation—Pains taken with the Schluss Abhandlung—Opinion of Strauss's work—The book in print—Trip to the Highlands—Strauss difficulties—Miss Hennell reads the translation and makes suggestions—Suffering from headaches and "Strauss-sick"—The last MS. of the translation sent to Miss Hennell—Joy at finishing—Delighted with Strauss's Preface.
CHAPTER III.
The completion of the translation of Strauss is another milestone passed in the life journey of George Eliot, and the comparatively buoyant tone of the letters immediately following makes us feel that the galled neck is out of the yoke for a time. In May, Mrs. Bray had gone away from home for a visit, and the next letter is addressed to her.
Do not stay any longer than is necessary to do you good, lest I should lose the pleasure of loving you, for my affections are always the warmest when my friends are within an attainable distance. I think I can manage to keep respectably warm towards you for three weeks without seeing you, but I cannot promise more. Tell Mr. Bray I am getting too amiable for this world, and Mr. Donovan's wizard hand would detect a slight corrugation of the skin on my organs 5 and 6;[20] they are so totally without exercise. I had a lecture from Mr. Pears on Friday, as well as a sermon this morning, so you need be in no alarm for my moral health. Do you never think of those Caribs who, by dint of flattening their foreheads, can manage to see perpendicularly above them without so much as lifting their heads? There are some good people who remind me of them. They see everything so clearly and with so little trouble, but at the price of sad self-mutilation.
I cannot deny that I am very happy without you, but perhaps I shall be happier with you, so do not fail to try the experiment. We have been to town only once, and are saving all our strength to "rake" with you; but we are as ignorant as Primitive Methodists about any of the amusements that are going. Please to come in a very mischievous, unconscientious, theatre-loving humor. Everybody I see is very kind to me, and therefore I think them all very charming; and, having everything I want, I feel very humble and self-denying. It is only rather too great a bore to have to write to my friends when I am half asleep, and I have not yet reached that pitch of amiability that makes such magnanimity easy. Don't bring us any bad news or any pains, but only nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.
They stayed in London till the 5th June, and on the 15th of that month the translation of Strauss was published. On the 2d July Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "is going to Dover with her father, for a fortnight." In passing through Dover on our way to the Continent, in 1880, after our marriage, we visited the house they stayed at in 1846, and my wife then told me that she had suffered a great deal there, as her father's health began to show signs of breaking up. On returning to Coventry there is the following letter referring to Wicksteed's review of the translation of Strauss, which was advertised for the forthcoming number of the Prospective Review.
Do you think it worth my while to buy the Prospective for the sake of Wicksteed's review—is there anything new in it? Do you know if Mr. Chapman has any unusual facilities for obtaining cheap classics? Such things are to be got handsome and second-hand in London—if one knew but the way. I want to complete Xenophon's works. I have the "Anabasis," and I might, perhaps, get a nice edition of the "Memorabilia" and "Cyropædia" in a cheaper way than by ordering them directly from our own bookseller. I have been reading the "Fawn of Sertorius."[21] I think you would like it, though the many would not. It is pure, chaste, and classic, beyond any attempt at fiction I ever read. If it be Bulwer's, he has been undergoing a gradual transfiguration, and is now ready to be exalted into the assembly of the saints. The professor's (Strauss's) letter, transmitted through you, gave me infinite consolation, more especially the apt and pregnant quotation from Berosus. Precious those little hidden lakelets of knowledge in the high mountains, far removed from the vulgar eye, only visited by the soaring birds of love.
On 25th September, 1846, Mrs. Bray writes to Miss Hennell that Miss Evans "looks very brilliant just now. We fancy she must be writing her novel;" and then come the following letters, written in October and November:
All the world is bathed in glory and beauty to me now, and thou sharest in the radiance. Tell me whether I live for you as you do for me, and tell me how gods and men are treating you. You must send me a scrap every month—only a scrap with a dozen words in it, just to prevent me from starving on faith alone—of which you know I have the minimum of endowment. I am sinning against my daddy by yielding to the strong impulse I felt to write to you, for he looks at me as if he wanted me to read to him.
I do not know whether I can get up any steam again on the subject of Quinet; but I will try—when Cara comes back, however, for she has run away with "Christianity" into Devonshire, and I must have the book as a springing-board. When does the Prospective come out?
The review of Strauss contains some very just remarks, though, on the whole, I think it shallow, and in many cases unfair. The praise it gives to the translation is just what I should have wished; indeed, I cannot imagine anything more gratifying in the way of laudation. Is it not droll that Wicksteed should have chosen one of my interpolations, or rather paraphrases, to dilate on. The expression "granite," applied to the sayings of Jesus, is nowhere used by Strauss, but is an impudent addition of mine to eke out his metaphor. Did you notice the review of Foster's Life?[22] I am reading the Life, and thinking all the time how you would like it. It is deeply interesting to study the life of a genius under circumstances amid which genius is so seldom to be found. Some of the thoughts in his journal are perfect gems.
The words of the reviewer of the Strauss translation in the Prospective are worth preserving: "A faithful, elegant, and scholarlike translation. Whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic, and harmonious force of the English style. But he will be still more satisfied when, on turning to the original, he finds that the rendering is word for word, thought for thought, and sentence for sentence. In preparing so beautiful a rendering as the present, the difficulties can have been neither few nor small in the way of preserving, in various parts of the work, the exactness of the translation, combined with that uniform harmony and clearness of style which imparts to the volumes before us the air and spirit of an original. Though the translator never obtrudes himself upon the reader with any notes or comments of his own, yet he is evidently a man who has a familiar knowledge of the whole subject; and if the work be the joint production of several hands, moving in concert, the passages of a specially scholastic character, at least, have received their version from a discerning and well-informed theologian. Indeed, Strauss may well say, as he does in the notice which he writes for the English edition, that, as far as he has examined it, the translation is 'et accurata et perspicua.'"
Many things, both outward and inward, have concurred to make this November far happier than the last. One's thoughts
"Are widened with the process of the suns;"
and if one is rather doubtful whether one is really wiser or better, it is some comfort to know that the desire to be so is more pure and dominant. I have been thinking of that most beautiful passage in Luke's Gospel—the appearance of Jesus to the disciples at Emmaus. How universal in its significance! The soul that has hopelessly followed its Jesus—its impersonation of the highest and best—all in despondency; its thoughts all refuted, its dreams all dissipated. Then comes another Jesus—another, but the same—the same highest and best, only chastened—crucified instead of triumphant—and the soul learns that this is the true way to conquest and glory. And then there is the burning of the heart, which assures that "this was the Lord!"—that this is the inspiration from above, the true comforter that leads unto truth. But I am not become a Methodist, dear Sara; on the contrary, if I am pious one day, you may be sure I was very wicked the day before, and shall be so again the next.
I have been at Griff for the last week, or I should have written before. I thank you most heartily for sending me "Heliados"—first, because I admire it greatly in itself; and, secondly, because it is a pretty proof that I am not dissociated from your most hallowed thoughts. As yet I have read it only once, but I promise myself to read it again and again. I shall not show it to any one, for I hate "friendly criticism," as much for you as for myself; but you have a better spirit than I, and when you come I will render "Heliados" up to you, that others may have the pleasure of reading it.
Lying in bed this morning, grievously tormented, your "Heliados" visited me and revealed itself to me more completely than it had ever done before. How true that "it is only when all portions of an individual nature, or all members of society, move forward harmoniously together that religious progress is calm and beneficial!" I imagine the sorrowful amaze of a child who had been dwelling with delight on the idea that the stars were the pavement of heaven's court, and that there above them sat the kind but holy God, looking like a venerable Father who would smile on his good little ones—when it was cruelly told, before its mind had substance enough to bear such tension, that the sky was not real, that the stars were worlds, and that even the sun could not be God's dwelling, because there were many, many suns. These ideas would introduce atheism into the child's mind, instead of assisting it to form a nobler conception of God (of course I am supposing the bare information given, and left to the child to work upon); whereas the idea it previously had of God was perfectly adapted to its intellectual condition, and formed to the child as perfect an embodiment of the all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful as the most enlightened philosopher ever formed to himself.
On 21st April Miss Evans went to London with the Brays, and, among other things, heard "Elijah" at Exeter Hall. On returning to Coventry she writes:
I did so long to see you after hearing "Elijah," just to exchange an exclamation of delight. Last night I had a perfect treat, too, in "I Puritani." Castellar was admirable as Elvira, and Gardoni as a seraph. N.B.—I liked the Babel less—another sign of age.
Mention has already been made of Miss Mary Sibree (now Mrs. John Cash of Coventry), and as the following genial letter is addressed to her, it gives an opportunity for mentioning here that Miss Evans had a high regard for all the members of the Sibree family. At the end of this year (1847) and the beginning of 1848 there will be found an interesting correspondence with Miss Sibree's brother, Mr. John Sibree, who, in 1849, published a translation of Hegel's "Lectures on the Philosophy of History," and in 1880 a volume of poems entitled "Fancy, and other Rhymes." The subjoined extract from a communication from Mrs. Cash will show upon what terms Miss Evans was with the family:
"It was in the early part of the year 1841 that Miss Franklin came to see my mother at our house on the Foleshill road—about a mile and a half from Coventry—to tell her, as a piece of most interesting news, that an old pupil, of whom she herself and her sister Rebecca had always been very proud, was coming at the Lady-Day quarter to live at a house on the same road—within five minutes' walk of ours. This was Miss Evans, then twenty-one years of age. Miss Franklin dwelt with much pride on Miss Evans's mental power, on her skill in music, etc.; but the great recommendation to my mother's interest was the zeal for others which had marked her earnest piety at school, where she had induced the girls to come together for prayer, and which had led her to visit the poor most diligently in the cottages round her own home. Many years after, an old nurse of mine told me that these poor people had said, after her removal, 'We shall never have another Mary Ann Evans.'
"My mother was asked to second and help her in work of this kind. 'She will be sure to get something up very soon,' was the last remark I can recall; and on her first visit to us I well remember she told us of a club for clothing, set going by herself and her neighbor Mrs. Pears, in a district to which she said 'the euphonious name of the Pudding-Pits had been given.' It was not until the winter of 1841, or early in 1842, that my mother first received (not from Miss Evans's own lips, but through a mutual friend) the information that a total change had taken place in this gifted woman's mind with respect to the evangelical religion, which she had evidently believed in up to the time of her coming to Coventry, and for which, she once told me, she had at one time sacrificed the cultivation of her intellect, and a proper regard to personal appearance. 'I used,' she said, 'to go about like an owl, to the great disgust of my brother; and I would have denied him what I now see to have been quite lawful amusements.' My mother's grief, on hearing of this change in one whom she had begun to love, was very great; but she thought argument and expostulation might do much, and I well remember a long evening devoted to it, but no more of the subject-matter than her indignant refusal to blame the Jews for not seeing in a merely spiritual Deliverer a fulfilment of promises of a temporal one; and a still more emphatic protest against my father's assertion that we had no claim on God. To Miss Evans's affectionate and pathetic speech to my mother, 'Now, Mrs. Sibree, you won't care to have anything more to do with me,' my mother rejoined, 'On the contrary, I shall feel more interested in you than ever.' But it was very evident at this time that she stood in no need of sympathizing friends; that the desire for congenial society, as well as for books and larger opportunities for culture, which had led her most eagerly to seek a removal from Griff to a home near Coventry, had been met beyond her highest expectations. In Mr. and Mrs. Bray, and in the Hennell family, she had found friends who called forth her interest and stimulated her powers in no common degree. This was traceable even in externals—in the changed tone of voice and manner—from formality to a geniality which opened my heart to her, and made the next five years the most important epoch in my life. She gave me (as yet in my teens) weekly lessons in German, speaking freely on all subjects, but with no attempt to directly unsettle my evangelical beliefs, confining herself in these matters to a steady protest against the claim of the Evangelicals to an exclusive possession of higher motives to morality—or even to religion. Speaking to my mother of her dearest friend, Mrs. Bray, she said, 'She is the most religious person I know.' Of Mr. Charles Hennell, in whose writings she had great interest, she said, 'He is a perfect model of manly excellence.'
"On one occasion, at Mr. Bray's house at Rosehill, roused by a remark of his on the beneficial influence exercised by evangelical beliefs on the moral feelings, she said energetically, 'I say it now, and I say it once for all, that I am influenced in my own conduct at the present time by far higher considerations, and by a nobler idea of duty, than I ever was while I held the evangelical beliefs.' When, at length, after my brother's year's residence at the Hallé University (in 1842-43), my own mind having been much exercised in the matter of religion, I felt the moral difficulties press heavily on my conscience, and my whole heart was necessarily poured out to my 'guide, philosopher, and friend,' the steady turning of my attention from theoretical questions to a confession of my own want of thoroughness in arithmetic, which I pretended to teach; and the request that I would specially give attention to this study and get my conscience clear about it, and that I would not come to her again until my views of religion were also clear, is too characteristic of Miss Evans, as I knew her during those years, and too much in harmony with the moral teaching of George Eliot, to be omitted in reminiscences by one to whom that wholesome advice proved a turning-point in life. Two things more I cannot omit to mention: one, the heightened sense given to me by her of the duty of making conversation profitable, and, in general, of using time for serious purposes—of the positive immorality of frittering it away in ill-natured or in poor, profitless talk; another, the debt (so frequently acknowledged by Miss Evans to me) which she owed, during the years of her life with her father, to the intercourse she enjoyed with her friends at Rosehill. Mr. and Mrs. Bray and Miss Hennell, with their friends, were her world; and on my saying to her once, as we closed the garden-door together, that we seemed to be entering a paradise, she said, 'I do indeed feel that I shut the world out when I shut that door.' It is consoling to me now to feel that in her terrible suffering through her father's illness and death, which were most trying to witness, she had such alleviations."
It is worth while to forget a friend for a week or ten days, just for the sake of the agreeable kind of startle it gives one to be reminded that one has such a treasure in reserve—the same sort of pleasure, I suppose, that a poor body feels who happens to lay his hand on an undreamed-of sixpence which had sunk to a corner of his pocket. When Mr. Sibree brought me your parcel, I had been to London for a week; and having been full of Mendelssohn oratorios and Italian operas, I had just this kind of delightful surprise when I saw your note and the beautiful purse. Not that I mean to compare you to a sixpence; you are a bright, golden sovereign to me, with edges all unrubbed, fit to remind a poor, tarnished, bruised piece, like me, that there are ever fresh and more perfect coinages of human nature forthcoming. I am very proud of my purse—first, because I have long had to be ashamed of drawing my old one out of my pocket; and, secondly, because it is a sort of symbol of your love for me—and who is not proud to be loved? For there is a beautiful kind of pride at which no one need frown—I may call it a sort of impersonal pride—a thrill of exultation at all that is good and lovely and joyous as a possession of our human nature.
I am glad to think of all your pleasure among friends new and old. Mrs. D——'s mother is, I dare say, a valuable person; but do not, I beseech thee, go to old people as oracles on matters which date any later than their thirty-fifth year. Only trust them, if they are good, in those practical rules which are the common property of long experience. If they are governed by one special idea which circumstances or their own mental bias have caused them to grasp with peculiar firmness, and to work up into original forms, make yourself master of their thoughts and convictions, the residuum of all that long travail which poor mortals have to encounter in their threescore years and ten, but do not trust their application of their gathered wisdom; for however just old people may be their principles of judgment, they are often wrong in their application of them, from an imperfect or unjust conception of the matter to be judged. Love and cherish and venerate the old; but never imagine that a worn-out, dried-up organization can be so rich in inspiration as one which is full fraught with life and energy. I am not talking like one who is superlatively jealous for the rights of the old; yet such I am, I assure thee. I heard Mendelssohn's new oratorio, "Elijah," when I was in London. It has been performed four times in Exeter Hall to as large an audience as the building would hold—Mendelssohn himself the conductor. It is a glorious production, and altogether I look upon it as a kind of sacramental purification of Exeter Hall, and a proclamation of indulgence for all that is to be perpetrated there during this month of May. This is a piece of impiety which you may expect from a lady who has been guanoing her mind with French novels. This is the impertinent expression of D'Israeli, who, writing himself much more detestable stuff than ever came from a French pen, can do nothing better to bamboozle the unfortunates who are seduced into reading his "Tancred" than speak superciliously of all other men and things—an expedient much more successful in some quarters than one would expect. But au fond, dear Mary, I have no impiety in my mind at this moment, and my soul heartily responds to your rejoicing that society is attaining a more perfect idea and exhibition of Paul's exhortation—"Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." I believe the Amen to this will be uttered more and more fervently, "Among all posterities for evermore."
Ask me not why I have never written all this weary time. I can only answer, "All things are full of labor—man cannot utter it"—et seq. See the first chapter of Ecclesiastes for my experience.
I have read the "Inquiry" again with more than interest—with delight and high admiration. My present impression from it far surpasses the one I had retained from my two readings about five years ago. With the exception of a few expressions which seem too little discriminating in the introductory sketch, there is nothing in its whole tone, from beginning to end, that jars on my moral sense; and apart from any opinion of the book as an explanation of the existence of Christianity and the Christian documents, I am sure that no one, fit to read it at all, could read it without being intellectually and morally stronger—the reasoning is so close, the induction so clever, the style so clear, vigorous, and pointed, and the animus so candid and even generous. Mr. Hennell ought to be one of the happiest of men that he has done such a life's work. I am sure if I had written such a book I should be invulnerable to all the arrows of all spiteful gods and goddesses. I should say, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself," seeing that I have delivered such a message of God to men. The book is full of wit, to me. It gives me that exquisite kind of laughter which comes from the gratification of the reasoning faculties. For instance: "If some of those who were actually at the mountain doubted whether they saw Jesus or not, we may reasonably doubt whether he was to be seen at all there: especially as the words attributed to him do not seem at all likely to have been said, from the disciples paying no attention to them." "The disciples considered her (Mary Magdalene's) words idle tales, and believed them not." We have thus their example for considering her testimony alone as insufficient, and for seeking further evidence. To say "Jewish philosopher" seems almost like saying a round square; yet those two words appear to me the truest description of Jesus. I think the "Inquiry" furnishes the utmost that can be done towards obtaining a real view of the life and character of Jesus, by rejecting as little as possible from the Gospels. I confess that I should call many things "shining ether," to which Mr. Hennell allows the solid angularity of facts; but I think he has thoroughly worked out the problem—subtract from the New Testament the miraculous and highly improbable, and what will be the remainder?
At the end of September Miss Evans and her father went for a little trip to the Isle of Wight, and on their return there is the following letter:
I heartily wish you had been with me to see all the beauties which have gladdened my soul and made me feel that this earth is as good a heaven as I ought to dream of. I have a much greater respect for the Isle of Wight, now I have seen it, than when I knew it only by report—a compliment which one can seldom very sincerely pay to things and people that one has heard puffed and bepraised. I do long for you to see Alum Bay. Fancy a very high precipice, the strata upheaved perpendicularly in rainbow-like streaks of the brightest maize, violet, pink, blue, red, brown, and brilliant white, worn by the weather into fantastic fretwork, the deep blue sky above, and the glorious sea below. It seems an enchanted land, where the earth is of more delicate, refined materials than this dingy planet of ours is wrought out of. You might fancy the strata formed of the compressed pollen of flowers, or powder from bright insects. You can think of nothing but Calypsos, or Prosperos and Ariels, and such-like beings.
I find one very great spiritual good attendant on a quiet, meditative journey among fresh scenes. I seem to have removed to a distance from myself when I am away from the petty circumstances that make up my ordinary environment. I can take myself up by the ears and inspect myself, like any other queer monster on a small scale. I have had many thoughts, especially on a subject that I should like to work out—"The superiority of the consolations of philosophy to those of (so-called) religion." Do you stare?
Thank you for putting me on reading Sir Charles Grandison. I have read five volumes, and am only vexed that I have not the two last on my table at this moment, that I might have them for my convives. I had no idea that Richardson was worth so much. I have had more pleasure from him than from all the Swedish novels together. The morality is perfect—there is nothing for the new lights to correct.
How do you like "Lelia," of which you have never spoken one word? I am provoked with you for being in the least pleased with "Tancred;" but if you have found out any lofty meaning in it, or any true picturing of life, tell it me, and I will recant. I have found two new readers of Strauss. One, a lady at Leamington, who is also reading the "Inquiry," but likes Strauss better! The other is a gentleman here in Coventry; he says "it is most clever and ingenious, and that no one whose faith rests only on the common foundation can withstand it." I think he may safely say that his faith rests on an uncommon foundation. The book will certainly give him a lift in the right direction, from its critical, logical character—just the opposite of his own. I was interested the other day in talking to a young lady who lives in a nest of clergymen, her brothers, but not of the evangelical school. She had been reading Blanco White's life, and seems to have had her spirit stirred within her, as every one's must be who reads the book with any power of appreciation. She is unable to account to herself for the results at which Blanco White arrived with his earnestness and love of truth; and she asked me if I had come to the same conclusions.
I think "Live and teach" should be a proverb as well as "Live and learn." We must teach either for good or evil; and if we use our inward light as the Quaker tells us, always taking care to feed and trim it well, our teaching must, in the end, be for good. We are growing old together—are we not? I am growing happier too. I am amusing myself with thinking of the prophecy of Daniel as a sort of allegory. All those monstrous, "rombustical" beasts with their horns—the horn with eyes and a mouth speaking proud things, and the little horn that waxed rebellious and stamped on the stars, seem like my passions and vain fancies, which are to be knocked down one after the other, until all is subdued into a universal kingdom over which the Ancient of Days presides—the spirit of love—the Catholicism of the Universe—if you can attach any meaning to such a phrase. It has a meaning for my sage noddle.
I am reading George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur" with great delight, and hoping that they will some time do you as much good as they do me. In the meantime, I think the short letter about "Lelia" will interest you. It has a very deep meaning to my apprehension. You can send back the pages when you have duly digested them. I once said of you that yours was a sort of alkali nature which would detect the slightest acid of falsehood. You began to phiz-z-z directly it approached you. I want you as a test. I now begin to see the necessity of the arrangement (a bad word) that love should determine people's fate while they are young. It is so impossible to admire—"s'enthousiasmer" of—an individual as one gets older.
Here follows the interesting correspondence, referred to before, with Mr. John Sibree:
Begin your letter by abusing me, according to my example. There is nothing like a little gunpowder for a damp chimney; and an explosion of that sort will set the fire of your ideas burning to admiration. I hate bashfulness and modesties, as Sir Hugh Evans would say; and I warn you that I shall make no apologies, though, from my habit of writing only to people who, rather than have nothing from me, will tolerate nothings, I shall be very apt to forget that you are not one of those amiably silly individuals. I must write to you more meo, without taking pains or laboring to be spirituelle when Heaven never meant me to be so; and it is your own fault if you bear with my letters a moment after they become an infliction. I am glad you detest Mrs. Hannah More's letters. I like neither her letters, nor her books, nor her character. She was that most disagreeable of all monsters, a blue-stocking—a monster that can only exist in a miserably false state of society, in which a woman with but a smattering of learning or philosophy is classed along with singing mice and card-playing pigs. It is some time since I read "Tancred," so that I have no very vivid recollection of its details; but I thought it very "thin," and inferior in the working up to "Coningsby" and "Sybil." Young Englandism is almost as remote from my sympathies as Jacobitism, as far as its force is concerned, though I love and respect it as an effort on behalf of the people. D'Israeli is unquestionably an able man, and I always enjoy his tirades against liberal principles as opposed to popular principles—the name by which he distinguishes his own. As to his theory of races, it has not a leg to stand on, and can only be buoyed up by such windy eloquence as—You chubby-faced, squabby-nosed Europeans owe your commerce, your arts, your religion, to the Hebrews—nay, the Hebrews lead your armies: in proof of which he can tell us that Massena, a second-rate general of Napoleon's, was a Jew, whose real name was Manasseh. Extermination up to a certain point seems to be the law for the inferior races—for the rest fusion, both for physical and moral ends. It appears to me that the law by which privileged classes degenerate, from continual intermarriage, must act on a larger scale in deteriorating whole races. The nations have been always kept apart until they have sufficiently developed their idiosyncrasies, and then some great revolutionary force has been called into action, by which the genius of a particular nation becomes a portion of the common mind of humanity. Looking at the matter æsthetically, our idea of beauty is never formed on the characteristics of a single race. I confess the types of the pure races, however handsome, always impress me disagreeably; there is an undefined feeling that I am looking not at man, but at a specimen of an order under Cuvier's class Bimana. The negroes certainly puzzle me. All the other races seem plainly destined to extermination, not excepting even the Hebrew Caucasian. But the negroes are too important, physiologically and geographically, for one to think of their extermination; while the repulsion between them and the other races seems too strong for fusion to take place to any great extent. On one point I heartily agree with D'Israeli as to the superiority of the Oriental races—their clothes are beautiful and their manners are agreeable. Did you not think the picture of the Barroni family interesting? I should like to know who are the originals. The fellowship of race, to which D'Israeli so exultingly refers the munificence of Sidonia, is so evidently an inferior impulse, which must ultimately be superseded, that I wonder even he, Jew as he is, dares to boast of it. My Gentile nature kicks most resolutely against any assumption of superiority in the Jews, and is almost ready to echo Voltaire's vituperation. I bow to the supremacy of Hebrew poetry, but much of their early mythology, and almost all their history, is utterly revolting. Their stock has produced a Moses and a Jesus; but Moses was impregnated with Egyptian philosophy, and Jesus is venerated and adored by us only for that wherein he transcended or resisted Judaism. The very exaltation of their idea of a national deity into a spiritual monotheism seems to have been borrowed from the other Oriental tribes. Everything specifically Jewish is of a low grade.
And do you really think that sculpture and painting are to die out of the world? If that be so, let another deluge come as quickly as possible, that a new race of Glums and Gowries may take possession of this melancholy earth. I agree with you as to the inherent superiority of music—as that questionable woman, the Countess Hahn-Hahn, says painting and sculpture are but an idealizing of our actual existence. Music arches over this existence with another and a diviner. Amen, too, to that ideenvoll observation of Hegel's. "We hardly know what it is to feel for human misery until we have heard a shriek; and a more perfect hell might be made out of sound than out of any preparation of fire and brimstone." When the tones of our voice have betrayed peevishness or harshness, we seem to be doubly haunted by the ghost of our sin; we are doubly conscious that we have been untrue to our part in the great Handel chorus. But I cannot assent to the notion that music is to supersede the other arts, or that the highest minds must necessarily aspire to a sort of Milton blindness, in which the tiefste der Sinne is to be a substitute for all the rest. I cannot recognize the truth of all that is said about the necessity of religious fervor to high art. I am sceptical as to the real existence of such fervor in any of the greatest artists. Artistic power seems to me to resemble dramatic power—to be an intimate perception of the varied states of which the human mind is susceptible, with ability to give them out anew in intensified expression. It is true that the older the world gets originality becomes less possible. Great subjects are used up, and civilization tends evermore to repress individual predominance, highly wrought agony, or ecstatic joy. But all the gentler emotions will be ever new, ever wrought up into more and more lovely combinations, and genius will probably take their direction.
Have you ever seen a head of Christ taken from a statue, by Thorwaldsen, of Christ scourged? If not, I think it would almost satisfy you. There is another work of his, said to be very sublime, of the Archangel waiting for the command to sound the last trumpet. Yet Thorwaldsen came at the fag end of time.
I am afraid you despise landscape painting; but to me even the works of our own Stanfield, and Roberts, and Creswick bring a whole world of thought and bliss—"a sense of something far more deeply interfused." The ocean and the sky and the everlasting hills are spirit to me, and they will never be robbed of their sublimity.
I have tired myself with trying to write cleverly, invitâ Minervâ, and having in vain endeavored to refresh myself by turning over Lavater's queer sketches of physiognomies, and still queerer judgments on them, it is a happy thought of mine that I have a virtuous reason for spending my ennui on you.
I send you a stanza I picked up the other day in George Sand's "Lettres d'un Voyageur," which is almost the ultimatum of human wisdom on the question of human sorrow.