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

the translation of the Leben Jesu of David Strauss. A book so daring in its interpretations of the origin of Christianity excited much attention, and especially

nds of one who has not only effective command of both languages, but a familiarity with the subject-matter of theological criticism, and an initiation into its technical phraseology." Another critic said that "whoever reads these volumes without any reference to the German, must be pleased with the easy, perspicuous, idiomatic 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 sm

unds for this labor. It was published in 1854, but the sale was small, and it proved a heavy loss to the publisher. While translating Strauss she aided a friend interested in philosophical studies (probably Charles Bray) by the trans

hip; in the first place to complete what some one else was unable to continue, and in the second to make the philosopher she admired accessible to a friendly phrenologist who did not read Latin. At all times she regarded translation as a work that should be undertaken as a duty, to make accessible any book that required to be read; and though undoubtedly she was satisfied that the Leben Jesu required

and her other friends had shown her the objective falsity of Christianity. Thus her mind was made ready for Feuerbach's leading principle, that all religion is a product of the mind and has no outward reality corresponding to its doctrines. According to Feuerbach, the mind creates for itself objective images corresponding to its subjective states, reproduces its feelings in the outward world. In reality there is no objective fact corresponding to these subjective ideas, but what the mind conceives to exist is a necessary product of its own activity. The mind n

ligion as false to truth and as not giving a just interpretation of life and its facts. It was from Feuerbach she learned how great is the influence of religion, how necessary it is to man's welfare, and how profoundly it answers to the wants of the soul. Like so many keen minds of the century, she rejected, with a sweeping scepticism, all on which a spiritual religion rests, all its facts, arguments and reasons. She knew only nature and man; inspiration, revelation, a spiritual world, had no existence for her. Yet she believed

ific and positivist views, and was the organ of such writers as Mill, Spencer, Lewes and Miss Martineau. It was carefully edited, had an able list of contributors, but its advanced philosophical position did not give it a wide circle of readers. It gave careful reviews of books, and had able departments devoted to the literature of each of the leading countries. Marian Evans did much of the labor in preparing these departments and in writing special book reviews. Her work was thoroughly done, and shows wide reading and patient effort. Her position brought her the

sively to her duties and to metaphysical studies. A fortnightly gathering of the contributors to the Review was held in Mr. Chapman's house, and on these occasions she came to know most of the scientific and positivist thinkers of England at

ve been little to her taste. It must have been a drudgery, except in so far as it aided her in the pursuit of her studies. Occasionally, however, she must have found a task to her mind, as when, in the summary of current E

meaning which his experience has for his fellows. A few such lives (chiefly, indeed, autobiographies) the world possesses, and they have, perhaps, been more influential on the formation of character than any other kind of reading. But the conditions required for the perfection of life writing,-personal intimacy, a loving and poetic nature which sees the beauty and the depth of familiar things, and the artistic power which seizes characteristic points and renders them with life-like effect,-are seldom found in

place in literature, a defence of woman's right to occupy that field she can best cultivate, with a clear and just criticism of several of the most prominent among lady novelists. She was quite full in her treatment of Jane Austen

uly, 1856; "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists," October, 1856; and "Worldliness and other-Worldliness: the Poet Young," January, 1857. Two other articles have been attributed to her pen, but they are of little value. These are "George Forster," October, 1856, and "Weimar and its Celebrities," April, 1859. The interest and value of nearly all these articles are still as great as w

eedom, who has spoken wise and brave words on behalf of his fellow-men. He is, moreover, a suffering man, who, with all the highly wrought sensibility of genius, has to endure terrible physical ills; and as such he calls forth more than an intellectual interest. It is true, alas! that there is a heavy weight in the other scale-that Heine's magnificent powers have often served only to give electric force to the expression of debased feeling, so that his works are no Phidian statue of gold, and ivory, and gems, but have not a little brass, and iron, and miry clay mingled with the precious metal. The audacity of his occasional coarseness and personality is unparalleled in contemporary literature, and has hardly been

and all that delicate precision, all those felicities of word and cadence, which belong to the highest order of prose. And Heine has proved that it is possible to be witty in German; indeed, in reading him, you might imagine that German was pre-eminently the language of wit, so flexible, so subtle, so piquant does it become under his management. He is far more an artist in prose than Goethe. He has not the breadth and repose, and the cal

acking in nicety of perception; and the German is the only nation that "had contributed nothing classic to the common stock of European wit and humor" previous t

rrible sarcasm, their unmerciful criticism, and their minute unveiling of human weakness and hypocrisy. It is possible that Thackeray was her model, as his lecture was first delivered in 1851 or 1852; but, at least, she is not at all his inferior in power to lay bare the character and tendencies of the men she selected for analysis. Her keen psychological insight was shown here in a manner as brilliant and as accurate as in any of her novels. She may have done injustice to the circumstances under which these men were placed, their religious education, the social conditions which aided them in the pursuit of the lives they lived; and she may not have been quite ready enough to deal charitably with those who were blinded, as these men were, by all

y 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 t

She speaks of him as "a remarkable individual of th

r nice balance of temporalities and spiritualities. He is equally impressed with the momentousness of death and of burial fees; he languishes at once for immortal life and for "livings;" he has a vivid attachment to patrons in general, but on the whole prefers the Almighty. He will teach, with something more than official conviction, the nothingness of earthly things; and he will feel something more than private disgust if his meritorious efforts in directing man's attention to another world are not rewarded by substantial preferment in this. His secular man believes in cambric bands and silk stockings as characteristic attire for "an ornament of religion and virtue;" hopes courtiers will never forgot to copy Sir Robert Walpole; and writes begging letters to the King's mistress. His spiritual man recognizes no motives more familiar than Golgotha and the skies; it walks in graveyards, or it soars among the stars. His religion exhausts itself in ejaculations and rebukes, and knows no medium between the ecstatic and the sententious. If it

characteristics of Young is his radi

moon he chiefly appeals for patronage, and "pays his court" to her.... He describes nothing so well as a comet, and is tempted to linger with fond detail over nothing more familiar than the day of judgment and an imaginary journey among the stars.... The adherence to abstractions, or to the personification of abstractions, is closely allied in Young to the want of genuine emotion. He sees Virtue sitting on a mount serene, far above the mists and storms of earth: he sees Religion coming down from the skies

ions, and those of a decided character. In that on Dr. Cumming, she

hristian scriptures as a series of historical documents, to be dealt with according to the rules of historical criticism, and that an equally large numbe

estive of her position

tical pretensions, and the perpetual enhancing of the desire that the will of God-a will synonymous with goodness and truth-may be done on earth. But what relation to all this has a system of interpretation which keeps the mind of the Chri

where the soil is chiefly made up of egoistic passions and dogmatic

of persecution, there perhaps has been no perversion more obstructive of true moral development than this substitution of a reference to the glory of God for the direct promptings of the sympathetic feelings. Benevolence and justice are strong only in proportion as they are directly and inevitably called into activity by their proper objects; pity is strong only because we are strongly impressed by suffering; and only in proportion as it is compassion that speaks through the eyes

of Young

rbole of mortal and immortal joys, earth and the stars, hell and heaven, and expects the tribute of inexhaustible applause. Young

ing the latter because he dwells more on

otives, its sanctities, and its religion, to the remote, the vague and unknown: in Cowper we have the type of that genuine love wh

pathy is all she ca

oly map," but the happiest lingering over her simplest scenes with all the fond minuteness that belongs to love; no pompous rhetoric about the inferiority of the brutes, but a warm plea on their behalf against man's inconsiderateness and cruelty, and a sense of enlarged happiness from their companionship in enjoyment; no vague rant about human misery and human virtue, but that close and vivid presentation of particular deeds and misdeeds, which is the direct road to the emotions. How Cowper's exquisite m

Dr. Cumming, and the two on lady novelists, as well as that on Heine, show many indications of that subtle power and that true genius which were displayed in her later work. There was genius displayed in these articles, without doubt, and genius of a high order. It was genius not as yet aware of itself, and not yet at the height of its power and capable of its truest expression, but genius nevertheless. Many of the most striking characteristics of her novel-writing were shown in these essays. Here was the same love of common human life; the same interest in its humbler forms and expressions; the like penetrating analysis and subtle portrayal of character; a psychological method of the same probing and comprehensive nature. Her main philosophical ideas were indicated here, though not given that clear and incisive expression they afterwards received. When she wrote of the natural history of German life she indicated in the very t

n the highest range of her power only when something far more subtile and intrinsic was concerned. That this is true may be seen in these essays; for even here she writes the best only when she has human motives, feelings and aspirations to weigh and explain. That she could dissect and explain the inner man they made apparent enough; but her genius demanded also the opportunity