Part 22

"Then I said 'I covet truth; Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth,' As I spoke, beneath my feet The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath, Running over the club-moss burs; I inhaled the violet's breath; Around me stood the oaks and firs; Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground; Over me soared the eternal sky, Full of light and of deity; Again I saw, again I heard The rolling river, the morning bird; Beauty through my senses stole, I yielded myself to the perfect whole."

But again, here Mrs. Browning, speaking by the mouth of Adam in _The Drama of Exile_, so far identifies _beauty_ and _love_ as to make the former depend on the latter; insomuch that Satan, created the most beautiful of all angels, becomes the most repulsive of all angels from lack of _love_, though retaining all his original outfit of beauty. In _The Drama of Exile_, after Adam and Eve have become wise with the great lessons of grief, love and forgiveness, to them comes Satan, with such talk as if he would mock them back into their misery; but it is fine to see how the father of men now instructs the prince of the angels upon this matter of love and beauty.

_Eve._--Speak no more with him, Beloved! it is not good to speak with him. Go from us, Lucifer, and speak no more! We have no pardon which thou dost not scorn, Nor any bliss, thou seest, for coveting, Nor innocence for staining. Being bereft, We would be alone. Go.

_Luc._--Ah! ye talk the same, All of you--spirits and clay--go, and depart! In Heaven they said so; and at Eden's gate,-- And here, reiterant, in the wilderness. None saith, stay with me, for thy face is fair! None saith, stay with me, for thy voice is sweet! And yet I was not fashioned out of clay. Look on me, woman! Am I beautiful?

_Eve._--Thou hast a glorious darkness.

_Luc._--Nothing more?

_Eve._--I think, no more.

_Luc._--False Heart--thou thinkest more! Thou canst not choose but think it, that I stand Most absolute in beauty. As yourselves Were fashioned very good at best, so we Sprang very beauteous from the creant Word Which thrilled behind us, God Himself being moved When that august mark of a perfect shape,-- His dignities of sovran angel-hood,-- Swept out into the universe,--divine With thunderous movements, earnest looks of gods, And silver-solemn clash of cymbal-wings! Whereof was I, in motion, and in form, A part not poorest. And yet,--yet, perhaps, This beauty which I speak of is not here, As God's voice is not here, nor even my crown I do not know. What is this thought or thing Which I call beauty? is it thought or thing? Is it a thought accepted for a thing? Or both? or neither?--a pretext--a word? Its meaning flutters in me like a flame Under my own breath: my perceptions reel For evermore around it, and fall off, As if, it, too, were holy.

_Eve._--Which it is.

_Adam._--The essence of all beauty, I call love. The attribute, the evidence, the end, The consummation to the inward sense, Of beauty apprehended from without, I still call love. As form, when colorless, Is nothing to the eye,--that pine-tree there, Without its black and green, being all a blank,-- So, without love, is beauty undiscerned, In man or angel. Angel! rather ask What love is in thee, what love moves to thee, And what collateral love moves on with thee; Then shalt thou know if thou art beautiful.

_Luc._--Love! what is love? I lose it. Beauty and love I darken to the image. Beauty--love!

Let us now carry forward this connection between love and beauty in listening to a further testimony of Emerson's in a poem called _The Celestial Love_, where, instead of identifying _beauty_ and _truth_ with Keats, we find him making _love_ and _truth_ to be one.

"Love's hearts are faithful, but not fond, Bound for the just but not beyond; Not glad, as the low-loving herd, Of self in other still preferred But they have heartily designed The benefit of broad mankind And they serve men austerely, After their own genius, clearly. Without a false humility; For this is love's nobility,-- Not to scatter bread and gold, Goods and raiment bought and sold; But to hold fast his simple sense, And speak the speech of innocence, And with hand, and body, and blood, To make his bosom-counsel good. For he that feeds men serveth few; He serves all that dares be true."

And in connection with these lines:--

"Not glad, as the low-loving herd, Of self in other still preferred,"

I must here beg you to observe the quite incalculable advance in the ideal of love here presented by Emerson, and the ideal which was thought to be the crown and boast of the classic novel a hundred years ago, and which is still pointed to with exultation by thoughtless people. This ideal, by universal voice was held to have been consummated by Fielding in his character of Squire Allworthy, in the famous novel, _Tom Jones_. And here it is: we have a dramatic presentation of Squire Allworthy early on a May morning, pacing the terrace before his mansion which commanded a noble stretch of country, and then Fielding glows thus: "In the full blaze of his majesty up rose the sun, than which one object alone in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. Allworthy himself presented--a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to his creatures." Here Mr. Allworthy's benevolence has for its object to render himself most acceptable to his Creator; his love, in other words, is only another term for increasing his account in the Bank of Heaven; a perfect example, in short, of that love of the low-loving herd which is self in other still preferred.

But now let me once more turn the tube and gain another radiant arrangement of these kaleidoscopic elements, beauty and love and the like. In Emerson's poem called "Beauty," which must be distinguished from the "Ode to Beauty," the relation between love and beauty takes this turn: "Seyd," he says, "chased beauty

"Everywhere, In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. He smote the lake to feed his eye With the beryl beam of the broken wave; He flung in pebbles well to hear The moment's music which they gave. Oft pealed for him a lofty tone From nodding pole and belting zone.

He heard a voice none else could hear From centred and from errant sphere. The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime, In dens of passion, pits of woe, He saw strong Eros struggling through, To sum the doubt and solve the curse And beam to the bounds of the universe. While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise,"

(where, you observe, love is substituted for beauty, as that to which he gave his days, in the most naive _assumption_ that the one involved the other.)

"While thus to love he gave his days In loyal worship, scorning praise, How spread their lures for him in vain Thieving ambition and paltering gain! He thought it happier to be dead, To die for Beauty,--than live for bread."

George Eliot has somewhere called this word love a word-of-all-work. If with another turn I add to these testimonies one from Swedenborg, in which this same love--which we have just seen to be beauty--which beauty we just before saw to be truth--is now identified with _wisdom_: we prove the justice of George Eliot's phrase. In Section X of his work on the Divine Providence Swedenborg says: "The good of love is not good any further than it is united to the truth of wisdom; and the truth of wisdom is not truth any further than it is united to the good of love;" and he continues in section XIII: "Now because truth is from good, as wisdom is from love, therefore both taken together are called love or good; for love in its form is wisdom, and good in its form is truth."

And finally does not David practically confirm this view where, in Psalm CXIX. he involves the love of the law of God with wisdom in the verse: "I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts?"

But I grieve that there is no time to call more witnesses; for I love to assemble these lofty spirits and hear them speak upon one topic. Is it not clear that in the minds of these serious thinkers truth, beauty, wisdom, goodness, love, appear as if they were but orators of one and the same essential God?

And if this be true cannot one say with authority to the young artist,--whether working in stone, in color, in tones or in character-forms of the novel: so far from dreading that your moral purpose will interfere with your beautiful creation, go forward in the clear conviction that unless you are suffused--soul and body, one might say--with that moral purpose which finds its largest expression in love--that is, the love of all things in their proper relation--unless you are suffused with this love do not dare to meddle with beauty, unless you are suffused with beauty, do not dare to meddle with love, unless you are suffused with truth, do not dare to meddle with goodness,--in a word, unless you are suffused with beauty, truth, wisdom, goodness _and_ love, abandon the hope that the ages will accept you as an artist.

Of course I leave out of view here all that field of artistic activity which is merely neutral, which is--not immoral but--merely _un_moral. The situations in Scott's novels for instance do not in general put us upon any moral question as between man and man. Or when our own Mr. Way paints his luminous bunches of grapes, one of which will feed the palates of a thousand souls though it is never eaten, and thus shows us how Art repeats the miracle of the loaves and fishes, feeding the multitude and leaving more of the original provision than was at first; we have most delightful unmoral art. This is not only legitimate, but I think among the most beneficent energies of art; it rests our hearts, it gives us holiday from the Eternal Debate, it re-creates us for all work.

But now secondly, as to the influence of moral purpose in art: we have been in the habit, as you will remember, of passing at the earliest possible moment from abstract discussion to the concrete instance; and if we now follow that course and inquire,--not whether moral purpose _may_ interfere with artistic creation,--but whether moral purpose _has_ interfered with artistic creation, as matter of fact, in the works of those whom the ages have set in the highest heaven of art, we get a verdict which seems to leave little room for question. At the beginning we are met with the fact that the greatest work has always gone hand in hand with the most fervent moral purpose. For example, the most poetical poetry of which we know anything is that of the author of Job, and of David and his fellow psalm-writers. I have used the expression "most poetical" here with design; for regarded as pure literature these poems in this particular of poeticalness, of pure spirituality, lift themselves into a plane not reached by any others. A single fact in proof of this exceeding poeticalness will suffice: it is the fact that these poems alone, of all ever written, bear translation from one language into another without hurt. Surely this can be said of no other poetic work. If we strike away all allowances of amateurishness and good fellowship and judge with the uncompromising truth of the pious artist; how pitiful is Homer as he appears in even Pope's English; or how subtly does the simplicity of Dante sink into childishness even with Mr. Longfellow interpreting; or how tedious and flat fall the cultured sentences of Goethe even in Taylor's version, which has by many been declared the most successful translation ever made, not only of _Faust_ but of any foreign poem; nay, how completely the charm of Chaucer exhales away even when redacted merely from an older dialect into a later one, by hands so skillful as those of Dryden and Wordsworth.

Now, it is words and their associations which are untranslatable, not ideas; there is no _idea_, whether originating in a Hebrew, Greek or other mind, which cannot be adequately produced as idea in English words; the reason why Shakspeare and Dante are practically untranslatable is that recognizing how every word means more than itself to its native users,--how every word is like the bright head of a comet drawing behind it a less luminous train of vague associations which are associations only to those who have used such words from infancy,--Shakspeare and Dante, I say, have used this fact, and have constructed poems which necessarily mean more to native hearers than they can possibly mean to any foreign ear.

But this Hebrew poetry which I have mentioned is so purely composed of ideas which are universal, essential, fundamental to the personality of man, instantly recognizable by every soul of every race,--that they remain absolutely great, absolutely artistic, in whatever language they are couched.

For example: if one climbs up for a moment out of that vagueness with which Biblical expressions, for various reasons, are apt to fall upon many ears, so that one may consider the clean and virgin quality of ideas clarified from all factitious charm of word and of association,--what could be more nearly perfect as pure literature than this:

"The entrance of Thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple. I opened my mouth and panted; for I longed for Thy commandments. Deliver me from the oppression of man: so will I keep Thy precepts. Order my steps in Thy word, and let not any iniquity have dominion over me. Make Thy face to shine upon Thy servant; and teach me Thy statutes. Rivers of waters run down my eyes because they kept not Thy law."

Or this:

"I will lift up mine eyes to the hills whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: He shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth even for evermore."

Or this, of Isaiah's:

"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.

Then the lame shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb _shall_ sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water.

In the habitations of dragons where each lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes.... No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there;

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with songs of everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."

Or this, from the author of _Job_:

"Surely there is a vein for the silver and a place for gold where they fine it....

As for the earth, out of it cometh bread: and under it is turned up as it were fire.

But where shall wisdom be found?

And where is the place of understanding?

... The depth saith, it is not in me: and the sea saith, it is not with me.

... Destruction and death say, we have heard the fame thereof with our ears; God understandeth the ways thereof and he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the _whole_ heaven;

... When He made a decree for the rain and a way for the lightning of the thunder:

Then did He see it and declare it; He prepared it, yea, and searched it out. And unto man He said: "Behold the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding."

Here it is apparent enough that the moral purpose with which these writers were beyond all question surcharged, instead of interfering with the artistic value of their product, has spiritualized the art of it into an intensity which burns away all limitations of language and sets their poems as indestructible monuments in the hearts of the whole human race.

If we descend to the next rank of poetry I have only to ask you to observe how, in Shakspeare, just as the moral purpose becomes loftier the artistic creations become lovelier. Compare, for example, the forgiveness and reconciliation group of plays as they have been called, _Winter's Tale_, _Henry VIII_, and _The Tempest_, (which must have been written late in Shakspeare's life when the moral beauty of large forgiveness seems to have taken full possession of his fancy, and when the moral purpose of displaying that beauty to his fellow-men seemed to have reigned over his creative energy): compare, I say, these plays with earlier ones, and it seems to me that all the main creations are more distinctly artistic, more spiritually beautiful, lifted up into a plane of holy ravishment which is far above that of all the earlier plays. Think of the dignity and endless womanly patience of Hermione, of the heavenly freshness and morning quality of Perdita, of the captivating roguery of Autolycus, in _Winter's Tale_; of the colossal forgiveness of Queen Katherine in _Henry VIII_, of the equally colossal pardon of Prospero, of the dewy innocence of Miranda, of the gracious and graceful ministrations of Ariel, of the grotesqueries of Caliban and Trinculo, of the play of ever-fresh delights and surprises which make the drama of _The Tempest_ a lone and music-haunted island among dramas! Everywhere in these latter plays I seem to feel the brooding of a certain sanctity which breathes out of the larger moral purpose of the period.

Leaving these illustrations, for which time fails, it seems to me that we have fairly made out our case against these objections if, after this review of the connection between moral purpose and artistic creation we advance thirdly to the fact--of which these objectors seem profoundly oblivious--that the English novel at its very beginning announces itself as the vehicle of moral purposes. You will remember that when discussing Richardson and Fielding, the first English novelists, I was at pains to show how carefully they sheltered their works behind the claim of this very didacticism. Everywhere in _Pamela_, _Clarissa Harlowe_, _Tom Jones_, in the preface, sometimes in the very title-page, it is ostentatiously set up that the object of the book is to improve men's _moral_ condition by setting before them plain examples of vice and virtue.

Passing by, therefore, the absurdity of the statement that the proper office of the novelist is to amuse, and that when George Eliot pretended to do more, and to instruct, she necessarily failed to do either; it is almost as odd to find that the very objectors who urge the injurious effect of George Eliot's moral purpose upon her work are people who swear by Richardson and Fielding, utterly forgetting that if moral purpose is a detriment to _Daniel Deronda_, it is simply destruction to _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Tom Jones_.

And lastly upon this point, when I think of the crude and hasty criticism which confines this moral purpose in _Daniel Deronda_ to the pushing forward of Deronda's so-called religious patriotism in endeavoring to re-establish his people in the ancient seat of the Hebrews,--a view which I call crude and hasty because it completely loses sight of the much more prominent and important moral purpose of the book, namely, the setting forth of Gwendolen Harleth's repentance; when, I say, I hear these critics not only assume that Deronda's mission is _the_ moral purpose of this book, but even belittle that by declaring that George Eliot's enthusiasm for the rehabilitation of the Jews must have been due to a chance personal acquaintance of hers with some fervid Jew who led her off into these chimerical fancies; and when, I find this tone prevailing not only with the Philistines, but among a great part of George Eliot's otherwise friends and lovers: then I am in a state of amazement which precludes anything like critical judgment on my part. As for me, no Jew--not even the poorest shambling clothes-dealer in Harrison street--but startles me effectually out of this work-a-day world: when I look upon the face of a Jew, I seem to receive a message which has come under the whole sea of time from the further shore of it: this wandering person, who without a home in any nation has yet made a literature which is at home in every nation, carries me in one direction to my mysterious brethren, the cavemen and the lake dwellers, in the other direction to the carpenter of Bethlehem, climax of our race. And now, to gather together these people from the four ends of the earth, to rehabilitate them in their thousand-fold consecrated home after so many ages of wandering, to re-make them into a homologous nation at once the newest and the oldest upon the earth, to endow the 19th Century with that prodigious momentum which all the old Jewish fervor and spirituality and tenacity would acquire in the backward spring from such long ages of restraint and oppression, and with the mighty accumulation of cosmopolitan experiences; the bare suggestion would seem enough to stir the blood of the most ungentle Gentile.

But I must hasten to complete the account of George Eliot's personal existence which we suspended at the point where she had come to London in 1851.