George Eliot; a Critical Study of Her Life, Writings and Philosophy Part 20

In order to give the most adequate expression to her ideas, and to show forth the power of the spiritual life as she conceived it, George Eliot made use of that race and religion which presents so remarkable an ill.u.s.tration of the influence of tradition and heredity. She saw in Judaism a striking confirmation of her theories, and a proof of what ideal interests can do to preserve a nation. To vindicate that race in the eyes of the world, to show what capacity there is in its national traditions, was also a part of her purpose. That this was her aim may be seen in what she said to a young Jew in whom she was much interested.

I wrote about the Jews because I consider them a fine old race who have done great things for humanity. I feel the same admiration for them as I do for the Florentines.

The same idea is to be seen very clearly in the last essay in the _Impressions of Theophrastus Such_. She regarded the great memories and traditions of this people as a priceless legacy which may and ought to draw all the scattered Israelites together and unite them again in a common national life.

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 labors and struggles, such as are still demanded of it in order that the freedom and well-being thus inherited may be transmitted unimpaired to children and children's children; when an appeal against the permission of injustice is made to great precedents in its history and to the better genius breathing in its inst.i.tutions. It is this living force of sentiment in common which makes a national consciousness. Nations so moved will resist conquest with the very b.r.e.a.s.t.s of their women, will pay their millions and their blood to abolish slavery, will share privation in famine and all calamity, will produce poets to sing "some great story of a man," and thinkers whose theories will bear the test of action. An individual man, to be harmoniously great, must belong to a nation of this order, if not in actual existence, yet existing in the past, in memory, as a departed, invisible, beloved ideal, once a reality, and perhaps to be restored. A common humanity is not yet enough to feed the rich blood of various activity which makes a complete man. The time is not come for cosmopolitanism to be highly virtuous, any more than for communism to suffice for social energy.

This was one of the favorite ideas of George Eliot, which she has again and again expressed. She was impressed with the conviction that such a national life is necessary to the world's growth and welfare, that the era of a common brotherhood, dissociated from national traditions and hopes, has not yet come. Hence her belief that Judaism ought to speak the voice of a united race, occupying the old home of this people, and sending forth its ideas as a national inheritance and inspiration. This belief inspires the concluding words of her essay, as well as the last chapters of the novel.

There is still a great function for the steadfastness of the Jew: not that he should shut out the utmost illumination which knowledge can throw on his national history, but that he should cherish the store of inheritance which that history has left him. Every Jew should be conscious that he is one of a mult.i.tude possessing common objects of piety in the immortal achievements and immortal sorrows of ancestors who have transmitted to them a physical and mental type strong enough, eminent enough in faculties, pregnant enough with peculiar promise, to const.i.tute a new beneficent individuality among the nations, and, by confuting the traditions of scorn, n.o.bly avenge the wrongs done to their fathers.

There is a sense which the worthy child of a nation that has brought forth industrious prophets, high and unique among the poets of the world, is bound by their visions.

Is bound?

Yes; for the effective bond of human action is feeling, and the worthy child of a people owning the triple name of Hebrew, Israelite and Jew, feels his kins.h.i.+p with the glories and the sorrows, the degradation and the possible renovation of his national family.

Will any one teach the nullification of this feeling and call his doctrine a philosophy? He will teach a blinding superst.i.tion--the superst.i.tion that a theory of human well-being can be constructed in disregard of the influences which have made us human.

The purpose of _Daniel Deronda_, however, is not merely to vindicate Judaism. This race and its religion are used as the vehicles for larger ideas, as an ill.u.s.tration of the supreme importance to mankind of spiritual aims concentrated into the form of national traditions and aspirations. Her own studies, and personal intercourse with the Jews, helped to attract her to this race; but the main cause of her use of them in this novel is their remarkable history. Their moral and spiritual persistence, their wonderful devotedness to their own race and its aims, admirably adapted them to develop for her the ideas she wished to express. What nation could she have taken that would have so clearly ill.u.s.trated her theory of national memories and traditions? In the forty-second chapter of _Daniel Deronda_ she has put into the month of Mordecai her own theories on this subject. He vindicates his right to call himself a _rational_ Jew, one who accepts what is reasonable and true.

"It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth--yea, consecrate it with kins.h.i.+p; the past becomes my parent, and the future stretches toward me the appealing arms of children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of special kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged wealth, and various as the forests are various with the glory of the cedar and the palm?"

He declares that each nation has its own work to do in the world, in the uplifting and maintenance of some special idea which is necessary to the welfare and development of humanity. The place he a.s.signs to Judaism is precisely that which made it dear to George Eliot, because it embodied her conception of religion and its social functions.

"Israel is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the core of affection which binds a race and its families in dutiful love, and the reverence for the human body which lifts the needs of our animal life into religion, and the tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak and to the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."

Again, he utters words which are simply an expression of George Eliot's own sentiments.

"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 were hunted with a hatred as fierce as the forest fires that chase the wild beast from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman that, swimming to save his life, he held the roll of his writings between his teeth and saved them from the waters. But how much more than that is true of our race?

They struggled to keep their place among the nations like heroes--yea, when the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but when the plow and the harrow had pa.s.sed over the last visible signs of their national covenant, and the fruitfulness of their land was stifled with the blood of the sowers and planters, they said, 'The spirit is alive, let us make it a lasting habitation--lasting because movable--so that it may be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a hope built on an unchangeable foundation.' They said it and they wrought it, though often breathing with scant life, as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain. Hooted and scared like the unowned 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."

Then Mordecai unfolds his theory of national unity and of a regenerated national life; and it is impossible to read his words attentively without accepting them as an expression of George Eliot's own personal convictions.

As an embodiment of her conception of the functions of national life they are full of interest aside from their place in the novel.

"In the mult.i.tudes of the ignorant on three continents who observe our rites and make the confession of the Divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Israel which has made the growth and form of its religion be an outward reality.

Looking toward a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West--which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, us of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come to pa.s.s, and the living warmth will spread to the weak extremities of Israel, and superst.i.tion will vanish, not in the lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as the young offspring of beloved memories.... The effect of our separateness will not be completed and have its highest transformation unless our race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the world. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably, or that mult.i.tudes of the children of Judah have mixed themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with rivers? Behold our people still! Their skirts spread afar; they are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled breast-plate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce, the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts, the speakers, the political counsellors, who carry in their veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigor in all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which difficulty means new device--let them say, 'We will lift up a standard, we will unite in a labor hard but glorious like that of Moses and Ezra, a labor which shall be a worthy fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained their separateness, refusing the ease of falsehood.' They have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian strife which the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of beasts to which he has lent an arena?

There is store of wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand, simple, just, like the old--a republic where there is equality of protection, an equality which shone like a star on the forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than the brightness of Western freedom amidst the despotisms of the East. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the outraged Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Israel gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great nation in its bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium is for the West. Difficulties? I know there are difficulties. But let the spirit of sublime achievement move in the great among our people, and the work will begin....

"What is needed is the leaven--what is needed is the seed of fire. The heritage of Israel is beating in the pulses of millions; it lives in their veins as a power without understanding, like the morning exultation of herds; it is the inborn half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into speech. Let the torch of visible community be lighted! Let the reason of Israel disclose itself in a great outward deed, and let there be another great migration, another choosing of Israel to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, but who still have a national hearth, and a tribunal of national opinion. Will any say, 'It cannot be'? Baruch Spinoza had not a faithful Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life of his intellect at the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's nakedness and said, 'They who scorn him have the higher wisdom.' Yet Baruch Spinoza confessed he saw not why Israel should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that the history and literature of our race are dead?

Are they not as living as the history and literature of Greece and Home, which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of Europe and made the unrighteous powers tremble? These were an inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never ceased to quiver in millions of human frames....

"I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek nothing for them, but the good which promises good to all the nations. The spirit of our religious life, which is one with our national life, is not hatred of aught but wrong. The masters have said an offence against man is worse than an offence against G.o.d. But what wonder if there is hatred in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Jews who are children of the ignorant and oppressed--what wonder, since there is hatred in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of Christians? Our national life was a growing light. Let the central fire be kindled again, and the light will reach afar. The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think of their sacred land not as a place for saintly beggary to await death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic where the Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the old, purified, enriched by the experience our greatest sons have gathered from the life of the ages. How long is it?--only two centuries since a vessel earned over the ocean the beginning of the great North American nation. The people grew like meeting waters; they were various in habit and sect. There came a time, a century ago, when they needed a polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe, corrected by the vision of a better? Let our wise and wealthy show themselves heroes. They have the memories of the East and West, and they have the full vision of a better. A new Persia with a purified religion magnified itself in art and wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West--a covenant of reconciliation. Will any say the prophetic vision of your race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and bigotry; the angel of progress hag no message for Judaism--it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to lay open--the waters are rus.h.i.+ng by it as a forsaken field? I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons of Judah have to choose, that G.o.d may again choose them. The Messianic time is the time when Israel shall will the planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and rushed onward; the Egyptian could not choose the overflow, but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying waters, and Egypt became the land of corn. Shall man, whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and resolve, deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved memory. Let us contradict the blasphemy, and help to will our own better future and the better future of the world--not renounce our higher gift and say, 'Let us be as if we were not among the populations;' but choose our full heritage, claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a new brotherhood with the nations of the Gentiles. The vision is there: it will be fulfilled."

These words put into the mouth of Mordecai, indicate how thoroughly George Eliot entered into the spirit of Judaism. She read Hebrew with ease, and had delved extensively in Jewish literature, besides being familiar with the monumental works in German devoted to Jewish history and opinions. The religious customs, the home life, the peculiar social habits of the race, she carefully studied. The accuracy of her information has been pointed out by her Jewish critics, by whom the book has been praised with the utmost enthusiasm. One of these, Prof. David Kaufmann, of Buda-Pesth, in an excellent notice of _Daniel Deronda_, bears testimony to the author's learning and to the faithfulness of her Jewish portraitures. He says that, "led by cordial and loving inclination to the profound study of Jewish national and family life, she has set herself to create Jewish characters, and to recognize and give presentment to the influences which Jewish education is wont to exercise--to prove by types that Judaism is an intellectual and spiritual force, still misapprehended and readily overlooked, but not the less an effective power, for the future of which it is good a.s.surance that it possesses in the body of its adherents a n.o.ble, susceptible and pliant material which only awaits its final casting to appear in a glorious form." He also says of the author's learning, that it is loving and exact, that her descriptions of Jewish life are always faithful and her characters true to nature.

"Leader of the present so-called realistic school, our author keeps up in this work the reputation she has won of possessing the most minute knowledge of the subjects she handles, by the manner in which she has described the Jews--the great unknown of humanity. She has penetrated into their history and literature affectionately and thoroughly; and her knowledge in a field where ignorance is still venial if not expressly authorized, has astonished even experts. In her selection of almost always unfamiliar quotations, she shows a taste and a facility of reference really amazing. When shall we see a German writer exhibiting the courteous kindliness of George Eliot, who makes Deronda study Zunz's _Synagogale Poesie_, and places the monumental words which open his chapter ent.i.tled 'Leiden,' at the head of the pa.s.sage in which she introduces us to Ezra Cohen's family, and at the club-meeting at which Mordecai gives utterance to his ideas concerning the future of Israel? She is familiar with the views of Jehuda-ha-Levi as with the dreams and longings of the cabalists, and as conversant with the splendid names of our Hispano--Arabian epoch as with the moral aphorisms of the Talmud and the subtle meaning contained in Jewish legends.... It is by the piety and tenderness with which she treats Jewish customs that the author shows how supreme her cultivation and refinement are; and the small number of mistakes which can be detected in her descriptions of Jewish life and ritual may put to blush even writers who belong to that race." Again this critic says of the visionary Mordecai, who has been p.r.o.nounced a mere dreamer and untrue to nature, that he is an altogether probable character and portrayed with a true realistic touch."

Mordecai is carved of the wood from which prophets are made, and so far as the supersensuous can be rendered intelligible, it may even be said that in studying him we are introduced into a studio or workshop of the prophetic mind. He is one of the most difficult as well as one of the most successful essays in psychological a.n.a.lysis ever attempted by an author; and in his wonderful portrait, which must be closely studied, and not epitomized or reproduced in extracts, we see glowing enthusiasm united to cabalistic profundity, and the most morbid tension of the intellectual powers united to clear and well-defined hopes. How has the author succeeded in making Mordecai so human and so true to nature? By mixing the gold with an alloy of commoner metal, and by giving the angelic likeness features which are familiar to us all."

Another Jew has borne equally hearty testimony to the faithfulness with which George Eliot has described Jewish life and the spirit of the Jewish religion. "She has acquired," this writer says, "an extended and profound knowledge of the rites, aspirations, hopes, fears and desires of the Israelites of the day. She has read their books, inquired into their modes of thought, searched their traditions, accompanied them to the synagogue; nay, she has taken their very words from their lips, and, like Asmodeus, has unroofed their houses. To say that some slight errors have crept into _Daniel Deronda_ is to say that no human work is perfect; and these inaccuracies are singularly few and unimportant." [Footnote: James Picciotto, author of "sketches of Anglo-Jewish History," in the Gentleman's Magazine for November, 1876.] Still another Jewish critic says that in her gallery of portraits she "gives in a marvellously full and accurate way all the many sides of the Jewish complex national character." He also says that Mordecai is a true successor of the prophets and moral leaders of the race, that the national spirit and temper are truly represented in him.

[Footnote: Joseph Jacobs, in Macmillian's Magazine for 1877.]

That the main purpose of _Daniel Deronda_ is not that of defending Judaism, must be apparent to every attentive reader. The Jewish race is made use of for purposes of ill.u.s.tration, as a notable example in proof of her theories. There is a deeper purpose conspicuous throughout the hook, which rests on her conceptions of the spiritual life as a development of tradition. This larger purpose also jests on her altruistic conception of the moral and spiritual life. As Professor Kaufmann has pointed out, the story falls into two widely separated portions, in one of which the Jewish element appears, in the other the English. Jewish life and its religious spirit are contrasted with English life and a common type of its religion.

This is not a contrast, however, which is introduced for the purpose of disparaging Christianity or English social life, but with the object of comparing those whose life is anch.o.r.ed in the spiritual traditions of a great people, with those who find the centre of their life in egotism and an individualistic spirit. Grandcourt is a type of pure egotism; Gwendolen is a creature who lives for self and with no law outside of her own happiness. This is the spirit of the society in which they both move. On the other hand, Mordecai lives in his race, Deronda gives his life constantly away for others, and Mirah is unselfishness and simplicity itself. So distinctly is this contrast drawn, so clearly are these two phases of life brought over against each other, that the book seems to be divided in the middle, and to be two separate works joined by a slender thread. This artistic arrangement has been severely criticised, but its higher purpose is only understood when this comparison and antagonism is recognized. Then the true artistic arrangement vindicates itself, and the unity of the book becomes apparent. Deronda moves in both these worlds, and their influence on him is finely conceived. He finds no spiritual aim and motive for his life until he is led into the charmed circle of a traditional environment, and learns to live in and for his race. Living for self, the life of Gwendolen is blasted, her hopes crushed, and she finds no peace or promise except in the steadfast spiritual strength yielded her by Deronda. That such a contrasting of the two great phases of life was a part of George Eliot's purpose she has herself acknowledged. A comparison of the spiritual histories of Gwendolen and Deronda will show how earnest was this purpose of the author. Gwendolen is a type of those souls who have no spiritual anchorage in the religious life and traditions of their people.

At the opening of chapter third we are told she had no home memories, that "this blessed persistence in which affection can take root had been wanting in Gwendolen's life." At the end of the sixth chapter we are also told that she had no insight into spiritual realities, that the bonds of spiritual power and moral retribution had not been made apparent to her mind.

Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless in braving dangers, both moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness of circ.u.mstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else than a lady, or as in any position which would lack the tribute of respect. She had no permanent consciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual restraints, having always disliked whatever was presented to her under the name of religion, in the same way that some people dislike arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in her, no alarm, no longing; so that the question whether she believed it, had not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to her to inquire into the conditions of colonial property and banking, on which, as she had had many opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been ready to admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state. What she unwillingly recognized, and would have been glad for others to be unaware of, was that liability of hers to fits of spiritual dread, though this fountain of awe within her had not found its way into connection with the religion taught her, or with any human relations.

She was ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, for example, she was walking without companions.h.i.+p and there came some rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was helplessly incapable of a.s.serting herself.

The little astronomy taught her at school used sometimes to set her imagination at work in a way that made her tremble; but always when some one joined her she recovered her indifference to the vastness in which she seemed an exile; she found again her usual world, in which her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature belonging to this world was no more identified for her with those uneasy impressions of awe than her uncle's surplices seen out of use at the rectory. With human ears and eyes about her, she had always. .h.i.therto recovered her confidence, and felt the possibility of winning empire.

Her difficulties all came out of this egoistic spirit, this want of spiritual anchorage and religious faith. Gradually her bitter experiences awakened in her a desire for a purer life, and the influence of Deronda worked powerfully in the same direction. She is to be regarded, however, as simply a representative of that social, moral and spiritual life bred in our century by the disintegrating forces everywhere at work. No moral ideal, no awe of the divine Nemesis, no spiritual sympathy with the larger life of the race, is to be found in her thought. The radicalism of the time, which neglects religious training, which scorns the life of the past, which lives for self and culture, is destroying all that is best in modern society. Gwendolen is one of the results of these processes, an example of that impoverished life which is so common, arising from religious rebellion and egotism.

Another motive and spirit is represented in the character of Deronda. As a boy, his mind was full of ideal aspirations, he was chivalrous and eager to help and comfort others. He would take no mean advantages in his own behalf, he loved the comrades.h.i.+p of those whom he could help, he was always ready with his sympathy.

He was early impa.s.sioned by ideas, and burned his fire on those heights.

He would not regard his studies as instruments of success, but as the means whereby to feed motive and opinion. He had a strong craving for comprehensiveness of opinion, and was not content to store up knowledge that demanded a mere act of memory in its acquisition. He had a craving after a larger life, an ideal aim of the most winning attractiveness.

Though Deronda was educated amidst surroundings almost identical with those which helped to form Gwendolen's character, yet a very different result was produced in him because of his _inherited_ tendencies of mind. After he had seen his mother, learned that he was a Jew, he said to Mordecai,--

"It is you who have given shape to what I believe was an inherited yearning--the effect of brooding, pa.s.sionate thoughts in my ancestors-- thoughts that seem to have been intensely present in my grandfather.

Suppose the stolen offspring of some mountain tribe brought up in a city of the plain, or one with an inherited genius for painting, and born blind--the ancestral life would be within them as a dim longing for unknown objects and sensations, and the spell-bound habit of their inherited frames would be like a cunningly wrought musical instrument never played on, but quivering throughout in uneasy, mysterious moanings of its intricate structure that, under the right touch, gives music. Something like that, I think, has been my experience. Since I began to read and know, I have always longed for some ideal task in which I might feel myself the heart and brain of a mult.i.tude--some social captains.h.i.+p which would come to me as a duty, and not be striven for as a personal prize. You have raised the image of such a task for me--to bind our race together in spite of heresy."

This inherited sense of a larger life made Deronda what he was, and developed in him qualities absent in Gwendolen. This inherited power made him a new Mazzini, a born leader of men, a new saviour of society, a personal magnet to attract and inspire other souls. A magnetic power of influence drew Gwendolen to him from the first time they met, he shamed her narrow life by his silent presence, and he quickened to life in her a desire for a purer and n.o.bler existence. George Eliot probably meant to indicate in his character her conception of the true social reformation which is needed to-day, and how it is to be brought about. The basis on which it is to be built is the traditional and inherited life of the past, inspired with new energies and meanings by the gifted souls who have inherited a large and pure personality, and who are inspired by a quickened sense of what life ought to be. On the one side a life of altruism, on the other a life of egotism, teach that the liner social and moral qualities come out of an inheritance in the national ideals and conquests of a worthy people, while the coa.r.s.er qualities come of the neglect of this source of spiritual power and sustenance. Two letters written to Professor David Kaufmann indicate that this was the purpose of the hook. At the same time, they show George Eliot's mind on other sides, and give added insights into her character. As an indication of her att.i.tude towards Judaism, and her faith in the work she had done in Daniel Deronda, they are of great value.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, May 31, '77.

MY DEAR SIR,--Hardly, since I became an author, have I had a deeper satisfaction, I may say a more heartfelt joy, than you have given me in your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_. [Footnote: George Eliot and Judaism: an Attempt to Appreciate Daniel Deronda. By Prof. David Kaufmann, of the Jewish Theological Seminary, Buda-Pesth.]

I must tell you that it is my rule, very strictly observed, not to read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work, is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no discernment of good and evil.

My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me (or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely, when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_ must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these rare instances.

Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race, but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and not in compliance with current fas.h.i.+ons. Such a response holds for an author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of "that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other minds.

Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute something to the enn.o.bling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a moment made me repent my choice, but rather has been added proof to me that the effort has been needed,--yet I confess that I had an unsatisfied hanger for certain signs of sympathetic discernment, which you only have given. I may mention as one instance your clear perception of the relation between the presentation of the Jewish element and those of English social life.

I work under the pressure of small hurries; for we are just moving into the country for the summer, and all things are in a vagrant condition around me. But I wished not to defer answering your letter to an uncertain opportunity....

My husband has said more than once that he feels grateful to you. For he is more sensitive on my behalf than on his own.

Hence he unites with me in the a.s.surance of the high regard with which I remain

Always yours faithfully, M.E. LEWES.

This first letter was followed a few months later by a second.

THE PRIORY, 21 NORTH BANK, REGENT'S PAKE, Oct. 12, '77.