BOOKS.
GEORGE ELIOT'S NEW BOOK.* WE conclude that the " Impressions of Theophrastus Such" are,.
in general, meant to represent the impressions of George Eliot,. with such slight change of costume as may have been necessary to give that great author the requisite ease of movement and presentation. Nevertheless, we regret the artificial framework thus invented for a volume of essays which, to our minds,. would have flowed much more easily and naturally directly from the pen of a writer who has gained for herself a well justified authority in English literature. The two essays devoted to the sketch of the imaginary essay-writer would have lost nothing by losing their fictitious elements, and all the rest would have gained in simplicity and ease. We do not know whether it is the imaginary change of personal identity which has caused George Eliot to indulge in the old- fashioned habit of attributing to all the characters she discusses significant classical or English names, like Glycera, Lauiger,
Corvus, Mixtus, Scintilla, Euphorion, Aquila, Bantam, Skunk,
Man-trap, Ganymede, &c,—but whether it were due to this semi-dramatic motive or not, the result is to be regretted.
It produces the effect of a ponderous playfulness, not, perhaps, unsuitable to the imaginary author, but decidedly un- suitable to most of the subjects discussed ; and it has a vexatious- effect on the mind of the reader, which is greatly to be regretted
when the writer is such a one as George Eliot. The book is studded with fine thoughts and fine expressions, but the medium in which they are distributed is sometimes so stiff that the effect is injured. The semi-dramatic form has not suited the writer. She moves in it with a laboriousness of gait not usual with her ; and even the finest of her touches are frequently clogged by the mental awkwardness appro- priate, we suppose, to her imaginary and very super- fluous Loudon bachelor. Certainly George Eliot did not need anything to give her fresh inducement for that over-emphatic use of a slightly pedantic phraseology which was gaining on her in both her last books. But the fictitious Theophrastus Such does apparently give her fresh motive for slightly pe- dantic forms of speech, and we groan under them. Thus we are told in language almost pompous of a man who fan- cies himself original because he knows little, and has a mind which is apt to criticise and carp from the point of view of his little knowledge,—" He regarded heterodoxy as a power in itself, and took his inacquaintaince with doc- trines for a creative dissidence." Or again, of parents who let their children see burlesques of great works before they have learned to love the great literary works themselves :- " One wonders where these parents have deposited that stock of morally-educating stimuli which is to be independent of poetic tradition, and to subsist in spite of the finest images being degraded and the finest words of genius being poisoned as with some befooling drug." Indeed, more or less, a greatly increased laboriousness of style—attributable, no doubt, in part to its imaginary authorship—pervades the book. We cannot but doubt whether the very cumbersome fable concerning the discussion of the beasts as to the origin of the honeycomb could ever have been written by George Eliot directly in her own name. Has not Theophrastus Such [why " Such," by the way, unless it is a name intended as the contrary of Nonsuch Pl —been an Old Man of the Sea to her reflective imagination P But let us hasten to give our readers some idea how many are- the fine thoughts and expressions distributed through this rather laboured volume. How admirable, for instance, is this, on the mistake men are apt to make in attributing any error of taste or conduct, such as a habit of excessive deference or flattery, to- a deliberate motive ;—
" Some persons conscious of sagacity decide at once that Hinze knows what he is about in flattering Talpian, and has a carefully ap- praised 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 satis- fied, the majority of mankind, even in a civilised life full of solicita- tions, 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 pur- suit of such an end. Few lives are shaped, few characters formed, by the contemplation of definite consequences seen from a distance, and • Impressions of Theophrastus Such. By George Elio. London : William Blackwood, 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. They pay their poor-rates, give their vote in affairs political or parochial, wear a certain amount of starch, hinder boys from tormenting the helpless, and spend money on tedious ob- servances called pleasures, without mentally adjusting these prac- tices to their own well-understood interest or to the general, ultimate welfare of the human race ; and when they fall into ungraceful com- pliment, excessive smiling, or other luckless efforts of complaisant behaviour, these are but the tricks or habits gradually formed under the successive promptings of a wish to be agreeable, stimulated day by day without any widening resources for gratifying the wish. It does not in the least follow that they are seeking, by studied hypo- crisy, to get something for themselves. And so with Hinze's defer- ential 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 con- scious of marked result, such as a decided preference for any par- ticular ideas or functions ; his mind is furnished as hotels are, with everything for occasional and transient use."
Again, the essay on " Only Temper" is full of subtle and graphic observation. It would hardly be possible to give us the case of those who are not willing to submit to the perpetual inflictions of a bad temper, for the sake of the equivalents which the good-feeling behind it will often try to lavish on them, more powerfully than in the following passage :-
" Touchweed 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 in- timacy becomes insupportable ! A man who uses his balmorals to tread on your toes with much frequency and an unmistakeable em- phasis 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 depreciators 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."
And there are very fine humorous touches in the volume, as
when, in the essay on the Philistine politician who, without any real taste for politics, is yet made by his interests a useful member of the body politic, George Eliot says, " Some minds seem well glazed by nature against the admission of knowledge, and Spike's was one of these." Again, what can be happier than this, on the a priori analyses of literary or political character by hack-writers,—" He is beginning to explain people's writing by what he does not know about them"? But perhaps the finest passage in the volume is that on the comparative effects produced by human civilisation on the greater and more
homely scenes in nature :—
" Is there any country which shows at once as much stability and as much susceptibility to change as ours ? Our national life is like that scenery which I early learned to love, not subject to great con- vulsions, but easily showing more or less delicate (sometimes melan- choly) effects from minor changes. Hence our Midland plains have never lost their familiar expression and conservative spirit for me ; yet at every other mile, since I first looked on them, some sign of world-wide change, some new direction of human labour has wrought itself into what one may call the speech of the landscape—in contrast with those grander and vaster regions of the earth which keep an indifferent aspect in the presence of men's toil and devices. What do es it signify that a lillipntian train passes over a viaduct amidst the abysses of the Apennines, or that a caravan laden with a nation's offerings creeps across the onresting sameness of the desert, or that a petty cloud of steam sweeps for an instant over the face of an Egyptian colossus immovably submitting to its slow burial beneath the sand ? Bat our woodlands and pastures, our hedge-parted corn- fields and meadows, our bits of high common where we used to plant the windmills, our quiet little rivers here and there fit to turn a mill- wheel, our villages along the old coach-roads, are all easily alterable lineaments, that seem to make the face of our Motherland sympathetic with the laborious lives of her children. She does not take their ploughs and waggons contemptuously, but rather makes every hovel and every sheepfold, every railed bridge or fallen tree-trunk, an agreeable, noticeable incident ; not a mere speck in the midst of unmeasured vastness, but a piece of our social history in pictorial writing."
On the whole, we admit that this book has greatly disappointed us. But in few books that disappoint us is there so much which would have delighted ns, had it but been freed from the some- what clumsy setting which deprives it of its charm.
Previous page
