By Mrs. Lynn Linton
In this essay it is not intended to go into the vexed1 question of George Eliot’s private life and character. Death has resolved her individuality into nothingness, and the discrepancy2 between her lofty thoughts and doubtful action no longer troubles us. But her work still remains3 as common property for all men to appraise4 at its true value—to admire for its beauty, to reverence6 for its teaching, to honour for its grandeur7, yet at the same time to determine its weaknesses and to confess where it falls short of the absolute perfection claimed for it in her lifetime.
For that matter indeed, no one has suffered from unmeasured adulation more than has George Eliot. As a philosopher, once bracketed with Plato and Kant; as a novelist, ranked the highest the world has seen; as a woman, set above the law and, while living in open and admired
adultery, visited by bishops8 and judges as well as by the best of the laity9; her faults of style and method praised as genius—since her death she has been treated with some of that reactionary10 neglect which always follows on extravagant11 esteem12. The mud-born ephemerid? of literature have dispossessed her. For her profound learning, which ran like a golden thread through all she wrote till it became tarnished13 by pedantry14, we have the ignorance which misquotes Lemprière and thinks itself classic. For her outspoken15 language and forcible diction, wherein, however, she always preserved so much modesty16, and for her realism which described things and feelings as they are, but without going into revolting details, we have those lusciously17 suggestive epithets18 and those unveiled presentations of the sexual instinct which seem to make the world one large lupanar. For her accurate science and profound philosophy, we have those claptrap phrases which have passed into common speech and are glibly19 reproduced by facile parrots who do not understand and never could have created; and for her scholarly diction we have the tawdriness of a verbal ragbag where grammar is as defective21 as taste. Yet our modern tinselled dunces have taken the place of the one who, in her lifetime, was made almost oppressively great—almost too colossal22 in her supremacy23.
But when all this rubbish has been thrown into the abyss
of oblivion, George Eliot’s works will remain solid and alive, together with Thackeray’s, Scott’s and Fielding’s. Our Immortals24 will include in their company, as one of the “choir invisible” whose voice will never be stilled for man, the author of “Adam Bede” and “Romola,” of the “Mill on the Floss” and “Middlemarch.”
Her first essays in fiction, her “Scenes of Clerical Life,” show the germs of her future greatness as well as the persistency25 of her aim. In “Janet’s Repentance26,” which to our mind is the best of the three, those germs are already shaped to beauty. Nothing can be more delicately touched than the nascent27 love between Janet and Mr. Tryon. No more subtle sign of Janet’s besetting28 sin could be given than by that candlestick held “aslant;” while her character, compounded of pride, timidity, affectionateness, spiritual aspiration29 and moral degradation30, is as true to life as it was difficult to portray31. It would be impossible to note all the gems32 in these three stories. We can indicate only one or two. That splendid paragraph in “Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story,” beginning: “While this poor heart was being bruised”—the sharp summing up of Mr. Amos Barton’s “middling” character—Lady Cheverel’s silent criticisms contrasted with her husband’s iridescent33 optimism—the almost Shakesperean
humour of the men, the author’s keen appraisement34 of the commonplace women; such aphorisms35 as Mrs. Linnet’s “It’s right enough to be speritial—1’m no enemy to that—but I like my potatoes meally;"—these and a thousand more, eloquent36, tender, witty37, deep, make these three stories masterpieces in their way, despite the improbability of the Czerlaski episode in “Amos Barton” and the inherent weakness of the Gilfil plot. We, who can remember the enthusiasm they excited when they first appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine, on re-reading them in cooler blood can understand that enthusiasm, though we no longer share its pristine38 intensity39. It was emphatically a new departure in literature, and the noble note of that religious feeling which is independent of creed40 and which touches all hearts alike, woke an echo that even to this day reverberates41 though in but a poor, feeble and attenuated42 manner.
“Adam Bede,” the first novel proper of the long series, shows George Eliot at her best in her three most noteworthy qualities—lofty principles, lifelike delineation44 of character, and fine humour, both broad and subtle. The faults of the story are the all-pervading anachronism of thought and circumstance; the dragging of the plot in the earlier half of the book; and the occasional ugliness of style, where, as in that futile45 opening sentence the
author as 1 directly addresses the reader as You. The scene is laid in the year 1799—before the Trades unions had fixed46 a man’s hours of work so accurately47 as to make him leave off with a screw half driven in, so soon as the clock begins to strike—before too the hour of leaving off was fixed at six. We older people can remember when workmen wrought48 up to eight and were never too exact even then. Precision of the kind practised at the present day was not known then; and why were there no apprentices49 in Adam’s shop? Apprentices were a salient feature in all the working community, and no shop could have existed without them. Nor would the seduction by the young squire50 of a farmer’s niece or daughter have been the heinous51 crime George Eliot has made it. If women of the lower class held a somewhat better position than they did in King Arthur’s time, when, to be the mother of a knight’s bastard52, raised a churl’s wife or daughter far above her compeers and was assumed to honour not degrade her, they still retained some of the old sense of inferiority. Does any one remember that famous answer in the Yelverton trial not much more than a generation ago? In 1799 Hetty’s mishap53 would have been condoned54 by all concerned, save perhaps by Adam himself; and Arthur Donnithorne would have suffered no more for his escapade than did our well-known Tom Jones for his little diversions. And
—were there any night schools for illiterate55 men in 1799? And how was that reprieve56 got so quickly at a time when there were neither railroads nor telegraphs?—indeed, would it have been got at all in days when concealment57 of birth alone was felony and felony was death? Also, would Hetty have been alone in her cell? In 1799 all prisoners were herded58 together, young and old, untried and condemned59; and the separate system was not in existence. Save for Hetty’s weary journey on foot and in chance carts, the story might have been made as of present time with more vraisemblance and harmoniousness61.
These objections apart, how supreme62 the whole book is! The characters stand out fresh, firm and living. As in some paintings you feel as if you could put your hand round the body, so in George Eliot’s writings you feel that you have met those people in the flesh, and talked to them, holding them by the hand and looking into their eyes. There is not a line of loose drawing anywhere. From the four Bedes, with that inverted63 kind of heredity which Zola has so powerfully shown, to the stately egoism of Mrs. Irwine—from the marvellous portraiture65 of Hetty Sorrel with her soft, caressing66, lusciously-loving outside, and her heart “as hard as a cherry-stone” according to Mrs. Poyser—from the weak-willed yet not conscienceless Arthur Donnithorne to the exquisite67 purity of Dinah, the character-
drawing is simply perfect. Many were people personally known to George Eliot, and those who were at all behind the scenes recognised the portraits. Down at Wirksworth they knew the Bedes, Dinah, the Poysers, and some others. In London, among the intimates of George Lewes, Hetty needed no label. Mrs. Poyser’s good things were common property in the neighbourhood long before George Eliot crystallised them for all time, and embellished68 them by her matchless setting; and Dinah’s sermon was not all imaginary. But though in some sense her work was portraiture, it was portraiture passed through the alembic of her brilliant genius, from commonplace material distilled69 into the finest essence.
It is impossible here again to give adequate extracts of the wise, witty, tender and high-minded things scattered70 broadcast over this book—as, indeed, over all that George Eliot ever wrote. That paragraph beginning—“Family likeness71 has often a deep sadness in it”; the description of Hetty’s flower-like beauty, which fascinated even her sharp-tongued aunt; phrases like “John considered a young master as the natural enemy of an old servant,” and “young people in general as a poor contrivance for carrying on the world”; that sharp little bit of moral and intellectual antithesis72, with the learned man “meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while
with his right he inflicted73 the most lacerating sarcasms74 on an opponent who had betrayed a brutal75 ignorance of Hebrew”—forgiving human weaknesses and moral errors as is a Christian’s bounden duty, but treating as “the enemy of his race, the man who takes the wrong side on the momentous76 subject of the Hebrew points”; how masterly, how fine are these and a dozen other unnoted passages!
Hetty in her bedroom, parading in her concealed77 finery, reminds one too closely of Gretchen with her fatal jewels to be quite favourable78 to the English version; and we question the truth of Adam Bede’s hypothetical content with such a Dorothy Doolittle as his wife. Writers of love stories among the working classes in bygone days forget that notableness was then part of a woman’s virtue—part of her claims to love and consideration—and that mere79 flower-like kittenish prettiness did not count to her honour any more than graceful80 movements and ?sthetic taste would count to the honour of a Tommy in the trenches81 who could neither handle a spade nor load a rifle. Blackmore made the same mistake in his “Lorna Doone,” and George Eliot has repeated it in Adam’s love for Hetty solely82 for her beauty and without “faculty” as her dower. In his own way Bartle Massey, misogynist83, is as smart as Mrs. Poyser herself, as amusing
and as trenchant84; but the coming-of-age dance is fifty years and more too modern, and the long dissertation85 at the beginning of the second book is a blot86, because it is a clog87 and an interruption. Not so that glorious description of nature in August when “the sun was hidden for a moment and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy;"—nor that deep and tender bit of introspection, setting forth88 the spiritual good got from sorrow as well as its indestructible impress.
Yet for all the beauty of these philosophic89 passages there are too many of them in this as in all George Eliot’s works. They hamper90 the action and lend an air of pedantry and preaching with which a novel proper has nothing to do. It is bad style as well as bad art, and irritating to a critical, while depressing to a sympathetic reader. But summing up all the faults together, and giving full weight to each, we gladly own the masterly residuum that is left. The dawning love between Adam and Dinah alone is enough to claim for “Adam Bede” one of the highest places in literature, had not that place been already taken by the marvellous truth, diversity and power of the character-drawing. Mrs. Poyser’s epigrams, too, generally made when she was “knitting with fierce rapidity, as if her movements were a necessary function like the twittering of a crab’s antenn?,” both too numerous
and too well known to quote, would have redeemed91 the flimsiest framework and the silliest padding extant.
The light that seemed to flash on the world when this glorious book was published will never be forgotten by those who were old enough at the time to read and appreciate. By the way, is that would-be famous Liggins still alive? When he sums it all up, how much did he get out of his bold attempt to don the giant’s robe?
If “Adam Bede” was partly reminiscent, “The Mill on the Floss” was partly autobiographical. There is no question that in the sensitive, turbulent, loving nature of Maggie Tulliver Marian Evans painted herself. Those who knew her when she first came to London knew her as a pronounced insurgent92. Never noisy and never coarse, always quiet in manner, sensitive, diffident and shrinking from unpleasantness, she yet had not put on that “made” and artificial pose which was her distinguishing characteristic in later years. She was still Maggie Tulliver, with a conscience and temperament93 at war together, and with a spiritual ideal in no way attained94 by her practical realisation. For indeed, the union between Marian Evans and George Lewes was far more incongruous in some of its details than was Maggie’s love for Philip or her passion for Stephen. Philip appealed to
her affection of old time, her pity and her love of art—Stephen to her hot blood and her sensuous96 love of beauty. But George Lewes’s total want of all religiousness of feeling, his brilliancy of wit, which was now coarse now mere persiflage97, his cleverness, which was more quickness of assimilation than the originality98 of genius, were all traits of character unlike the deeper, truer and more ponderous99 qualities of the woman who braved the world for his sake when first she linked her fate with his—the woman who did not, like Maggie, turn back when she came to the brink100 but who boldly crossed the Rubicon—and who, in her after efforts to cover up the conditions, showed that she smarted from the consequences.
Read in youth by the light of sympathy with insurgency101, Maggie is adorable, and her brother Tom is but a better-looking Jonas Chuzzlewit. Read in age by the light of respect for conformity102 and self-control, much of Maggie’s charm vanishes, while most of Tom’s hardness becomes both respectable and inevitable103. Maggie was truly a thorn in the side of a proud country family, not accustomed to its little daughters running off to join the gipsies, nor to its grown girls eloping with their cousin’s lover. Tom was right when he said no reliance could be placed on her; for where there is this unlucky divergence104 between principle and temperament, the will can never be firm nor the
walk steady. Sweet little Lucy had more of the true heroism105 of a woman in her patient acceptance of sorrow and her generous forgiveness of the cause thereof, than could be found in all Maggie’s struggles between passion and principle. The great duties of life lying at our feet and about our path cannot be done away with by the romantic picturesqueness106 of one character contrasted with the more prosaic107 because conventional limitations of the other; nor is it right to give all our sympathy to the one who spoilt so many lives and brought so much disgrace on her family name, merely because she did not mean, and did not wish, and had bitter remorse108 after terrible conflicts, which never ended in real self-control or steadfast109 pursuance of the right.
There is something in “The Mill on the Floss” akin110 to the gloomy fatalism of a Greek tragedy. In “Adam Bede” is more spontaneity of action, more liberty of choice; but, given the natures by which events were worked out to their final issues in “The Mill on the Floss,” it seems as if everything must have happened precisely111 as it did. An obstinate112, litigious and irascible man like Mr. Tulliver was bound to come to grief in the end. Fighting against long odds113 as he did, he could not win. Blind anger and as blind precipitancy, against cool tenacity114 and clear perceptions, must go under; and Mr. Tulliver was no match
against the laws of life as interpreted by Mr. Wakem and the decisions of the law courts. His choice of a fool for his wife—was not Mrs. Tulliver well known at Coventry?—was another step in the terrible March of Fate. She was of no help to him as a wife—with woman’s wit to assist his masculine decisions—nor as a mother was she capable of ruling her daughter or influencing her son. She was as a passive instrument in the hands of the gods—one of those unnoted and unsuspected agents by whose unconscious action such tremendous results are produced. George Eliot never did anything more remarkable115 than in the union she makes in this book between the most commonplace characters and the most majestic116 conception of tragic117 fate. There is not a stage hero among them all—not a pair of buskins for the whole company; but the conception is ?schylean, though the stage is no bigger than a doll’s house.
The humour in “The Mill on the Floss” is almost as rich as that of “Adam Bede,” though the special qualities of the four sisters are perhaps unduly118 exaggerated. Sister Pullet’s eternal tears become wearisome, and lose their effect by causeless and ceaseless repetition; and surely sister Grigg could not have been always such an unmitigated Gorgon119! Mrs. Tulliver’s helpless foolishness and tactless interference, moving with her soft white hands
the lever which set the whole crushing machinery120 in motion, are after George Eliot’s best manner; and the whole comedy circling round sister Pullet’s wonderful bonnet121 and the linen122 and the chaney—comedy at last linked on to tragedy—is of inimitable richness. The girlish bond of sympathy between sister Pullet and sister Tulliver, in that they both liked spots for their patterned linen, while sister Grigg—allays123 contrairy to Sophy Pullet, would have striped things—is repeated in that serio-comic scene of the ruin, when the Tullivers are sold up and the stalwart cause of their disaster is in bed, paralysed. By the way, would he have recovered so quickly and so thoroughly124 as he did from such a severe attack? Setting that aside, for novelists are not expected to be very accurate pathologists, the humour of this part of the book is all the more striking for the pathos125 mingled126 with it.
“The head miller127, a tall broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued128 by a general mealiness like an auricula”:—“They’re nash things, them lop-eared rabbits—they’d happen ha’ died if they’d been fed. Things out o’ natur never thrive. God Almighty129 doesn’t like ’em. He made the rabbit’s ears to lie back, and it’s nothing but contrariness to make ’em lie down like a mastiff dog’s”:—“Maggie’s tears began
to subside130, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other’s cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies”:—Is there anything better than these in Mrs. Poyser’s repertory?
Of acute psychological vision is that fine bit on “plotting contrivance and deliberate covetousness”; and the summing up of the religious and moral life of the Dodsons and Tullivers, beginning “Certainly the religious and moral ideas of the Dodsons and Tullivers,” is as good as anything in our language. No one theoretically knew human nature better than George Eliot. Practically, she was too thin-skinned to bear the slightest abrasion132, such as necessarily comes to us from extended intercourse133 or the give and take of equality. But theoretically she sounded the depths and shallows, and knew where the bitter springs rose and where the healing waters flowed; and when she translated what she knew into the conduct and analysis of her fictitious134 characters, she gave them a life and substance peculiarly her own.
Hitherto George Eliot has dealt with her own experiences, her reminiscences of old friends and well-known
places, of familiar acquaintances, and, in Maggie Tulliver, of her own childish frowardness and affectionateness—her girlish desire to do right and facile slipping into wrong. In “Silas Marner” she ventures into a more completely creative region; and, for all the exquisite beauty and poetry of the central idea, she has failed her former excellence135. The story is one of the not quite impossible but highly improbable kind, with a Deus ex machina as the ultimate setter-to-rights of all things wrong. As with “Adam Bede,” the date is thrown back a generation or two, without the smallest savour of the time indicated, save in the fashion of the dresses of the sisters Lammeter—a joseph substituted for a cloak, and riding on a pillion for a drive in a fly. Else there is not the least attempt to synchronise136 time, circumstances and sentiment, while the story is artificial in its plot and unlikely in its treatment. Yet it is both pretty and pathetic; and the little introduction of fairyland in the golden-haired child asleep by the fire, as the substitute for the stolen hoard137, is as lovely as fairy stories generally are. But we altogether question the probability of a marriage between the young squire and his drunken wife. Such a woman would not have been too rigorous, and was not; and such a man as Godfrey Cass would not have married a low-born mistress from “a movement of compunction.” As
we said before, in the story of Hetty and Arthur, young squires138 a century ago were not so tender-hearted towards the honour of a peasant girl. It was a pity, of course, when things went wrong; but then young men will be young men, and it behoved the lasses to keep themselves to themselves! If the young squire did the handsome thing in money, that was all that could be expected of him. The girl would be none the worse thought of for her slip; and the money got by her fault would help in her plenishing with some honest fellow who understood things. This is the sentiment still to be found in villages, where the love-children of the daughters out in service are to be found comfortably housed in the grandmother’s cottage, and where no one thinks any the worse of the unmarried mother; and certainly, a century ago, it was the universal rule of moral measurement. George Eliot undoubtedly139 made a chronological140 mistake in both stories by the amount of conscientious141 remorse felt by her young men, and the depth of social degradation implied in this slip of her young women.
The beginning of “Silas Marner” is much finer than that of either of her former books. It strikes the true note of a harmonious60 introduction, and is free from the irritating trivialities of the former openings. In those early days of which “Silas Marner” treats, a man from the next
parish was held as a “stranger”; and even now a Scotch142, Irish or Welsh man would be considered as much a foreigner as a “Frenchy” himself, were he to take up his abode143 in any of the more remote hamlets of the north or west. The state of isolation144 in which Silas Marner lived was true on all these counts—his being a “foreigner” to the autochthonous shepherds and farmers of Ravaloe—his half mazed145, half broken-hearted state owing to the false accusation146 brought against him and the criminal neglect of Providence147 to show his innocence—and his strange and uncongenial trade. Yet, for this last, were not the women of that time familiar with the weaving industry?—else what could they have done with the thread which they themselves had spun148? If it were disposed of to a travelling agent for the hand-loom weavers149, why not have indicated the fact? It would have been one touch more to the good of local colour and conditional151 accuracy. To be sure, the paints are laid on rather thickly throughout; but eccentricities152 and folks with bees in their bonnets153 were always to be found in remote places before the broom of steam and electricity came to sweep them into a more common conformity; and that line between oddity and insanity154, always narrow, was then almost invisible.
The loss of the hoarded155 treasure and the poor dazed weaver150’s terrified flight to the Rainbow introduces us to
one of George Eliot’s most masterly of her many scenes of rustic156 humour.
“The more important customers, who drank spirits and sat nearest the fire, staring at each other as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked157; while the beer drinkers, chiefly men in fustian158 jackets and smock-frocks, kept their eyelids159 down and rubbed their hands across their mouths, as if their draughts160 of beer were a funereal161 duty attended with embarrassing sadness”—these, as well as Mr. Snell, the landlord, “a man of a neutral disposition162, accustomed to stand aloof163 from human differences, as those of beings who were all alike in need of liquor”—do their fooling admirably. From the cautious discussion on the red Durham with a star on her forehead, to the authoritative164 dictum of Mr. Macey, tailor and parish clerk (were men of his social stamp called Mr. in those days?) when he asserts that “there’s allays two ‘pinions; there’s the ‘pinion a man has of himsen, and there’s the ‘pinion other folks have on him. There’d be two ‘pinions about a cracked bell, if the bell could hear itself”—from the gossip about the Lammeter land to the ghos’es in the Lammeter stables, it is all excellent—rich, racy and to the manner born. And the sudden appearance of poor, scared, weazen-faced Silas in the midst of the discussion on ghos’es, gives occasion for
another fytte of humour quite as good as what has gone before.
Worthy43 of Mrs. Poyser, too, was sweet and patient Dolly Winthrop’s estimate of men. “It seemed surprising that Ben Winthrop, who loved his quart-pot and his joke, got along so well with Dolly; but she took her husband’s jokes and joviality165 as patiently as everything else, considering that ‘men would be so’ and viewing the stronger sex in the light of animals whom it had pleased Heaven to make naturally troublesome, like bulls and turkey-cocks.” Good, too, when speaking of his wife, is Mr. Macey’s version of the “mum” and “budget” of the fairies’ dance. “Before I said ‘sniff’ I took care to know as she’d say ‘snaff,’ and pretty quick too. I wasn’t a-going to open my mouth like a dog at a fly, and snap it to again, wi’ nothing to swaller.”
But in spite of all this literary value of “Silas Marner” we come back to our first opinion of its being unreal and almost impossible in plot. The marriage of Godfrey to an opium-eating(?) drab, and the robbery of Silas Marner’s hoard by the squire’s son were pretty hard nuts to crack in the way of probability; but the timely death of the wife just at the right moment and in the right place—the adoption166 of a little girl of two by an old man as nearly “nesh” as was consistent with his power of living free
from the restraint of care—the discovery of Dunsay’s body and the restoration to the weaver of his long-lost gold—the impasse167 of Eppie, the squire’s lawfully168 born daughter and his only legal inheritor, married to a peasant and living as a peasant at her father’s gates: all these things make “Silas Marner” a beautiful unreality, taking it out of the ranks of human history and placing it in those of fairy tale and romance.
In “Felix Holt” we come back to a more actual kind of life, such as it was in the early thirties when the “democratic wave,” which has swept away so much of the old parcelling out of things social and political, was first beginning to make itself felt. But here again George Eliot gives us the sense of anachronism in dealing169 too familiarly with those new conditions of the Reform Bill which gave Treby Magna for the first time a member, and which also for the first time created the Revising Barrister—while Trades unions were still unrecognised by the law, and did their work mainly by rattening and violence. Any one who was an intelligent and wide-awake child at that time, and who can remember the talk of the excited elders, must remember things somewhat differently from what George Eliot has set down. Radical170 was in those days a term of reproach, carrying
with it moral obloquy171 and condemnation172. The Tories might call the Whigs Radicals173 when they wanted to overwhelm them with shame, as we might now say Anarchists174 and Dynamiters. But the most advanced Gentleman would never have stood for Parliament as a Radical. Felix Holt himself, and the upper fringe of the working class, as also the lower sediment175, might be Radicals, but scarcely such a man as Harold Transome, who would have been a Whig of a broad pattern. And as for the Revising Barrister, he was looked on as something akin to Frankenstein’s Monster. No one knew where his power began nor where it ended; and on each side alike he was dreaded176 as an unknown piece of machinery which, once set a-going, no one could say what it would do or where it would stop.
In its construction “Felix Holt” is perhaps the most unsatisfactory of all George Eliot’s books. The ins and outs of Transome and Durfey and Scaddon and Bycliffe were all too intricate in the weaving and too confused in the telling to be either intelligible177 or interesting. In trying on the garment of Miss Braddon the author of “Felix Holt” showed both want of perception and a deplorable misfit. Also she repeats the situation of Eppie and her adopted father Silas in that of Esther and Rufus Lyon. But where it was natural enough for the contentedly178
rustic Eppie to refuse to leave her beloved old father for one new and unknown—her old habits of cottage simplicity179, including a suitable lover, for the unwelcome luxuries of an unfamiliar180 state—natural in her though eminently181 unnatural182 in the drama of life—it was altogether inharmonious with Esther’s character and tastes to prefer poverty to luxury, Felix to Harold, Malhouse Yard to Transome Court. George Eliot’s usually firm grip on character wavers into strange self-contradiction in her delineations of Esther Lyon. Even the situation of which she is so fond—the evolution of a soul from spiritual deadness to keen spiritual intensity, and the conversion183 of a mind from folly184 to seriousness—even in this we miss the masterly drawing of her better manner. The humour too is thinner. Mrs. Holt is a bad Mrs. Nickleby; and the comic chorus of rustic clowns, which George Eliot always introduces where she can, is comparatively poor. She is guilty of one distinct coarseness, in her own character as the author, when she speaks of the cook at Treby Manor—“a much grander person than her ladyship”—“as wearing gold and jewelry185 to a vast amount of suet.”
When Esther has been taken up by the Transomes, George Eliot misses what would have been absolutely certain—these fine little points of difference between
the high-bred lady of Transome Court and the half-bred Esther of Malhouse Yard; and yet, quite unintentionally, she makes Esther as vulgar as a barmaid in her conversations and flirtatious186 coquetries with Harold Transome. Nor, we venture to think, as going too far on the other side, would a girl of Esther’s upbringing and surroundings have used such a delightfully187 literary phrase as “importunate scents188.” On the whole we do not think it can be denied that, so far as she had gone in her literary career when she wrote “Felix Holt,” it is undeniably her least successful work.
And yet, how many and how beautiful are the good things in it! If Homer nods at times, when he is awake who can come near him? The opening of the book is beyond measure fine, and abounds189 in felicitous190 phrases. “His sheep-dog following with heedless unofficial air as of a beadle in undress:"—“The higher pains of a dim political consciousness:"—“The younger farmers who had almost a sense of dissipation in talking to a man of his questionable191 station and unknown experience:"—“Her life would be exalted192 into something quite new—into a sort of difficult blessedness such as one may imagine in beings who are conscious of painfully growing into the possession of higher powers” (true for George Eliot herself but not for such a girl as Esther Lyon):—These are
instances of literary supremacy taken at random193, with many more behind.
Then how exquisite is that first love-scene between Felix and Esther! It is in these grave and tender indications of love that George Eliot is at her best. Gentle as “sleeping flowers”—delicately wrought, like the most perfect cameos—graceful and suggestive, subtle and yet strong—they are always the very gems of her work. And in “Felix Holt” especially they stand out with more perfectness because of the inferior quality of so much that surrounds them.
Felix himself is one of George Eliot’s masterpieces in the way of nobleness of ideal and firmness of drawing. Whether he would have won such a girl as Esther, or have allowed himself to be won by her, may be doubtful; but for all the rugged194 and disagreeable honesty of his nature—for all his high ideals of life and hideous195 taste in costume—for all his intrinsic tendency and external bearishness196, he is supreme. And with one of George Eliot’s best aphorisms, made in his intention, we close the book with that kind of mingled disappointment and delight which must needs be produced by the inferior work of a great master. “Blows are sarcasms turned stupid; wit is a form of force that leaves the limbs at rest.”
The last three books of the series are the most ponderous. Still beautiful and ever noble, they are like over-cultivated fruits and flowers of which the girth is inconvenient197; and in one, at least, certain defects already discernible in the earlier issues attain95 a prominence198 fatal to perfect work.
Never spontaneous, as time went on George Eliot became painfully laboured. Her scholarship degenerated199 into pedantry, and what had been stately and dignified200 accuracy in her terms grew to be harsh and inartistic technicality. The artificial pose she had adopted in her life and bearing reacted on her work; and the contradiction between her social circumstances and literary position coloured more than her manners. All her teaching went to the side of self-sacrifice for the general good, of conformity with established moral standards, while her life was in direct opposition202 to her words; for though she did no other woman personal injustice203, she did set an example of disobedience to the public law which wrought more mischief204 than was counteracted205 by even the noblest of her exhortations206 to submit to the restraints of righteousness, however irksome they might be. And it was this endeavour to co-ordinate insurgency and conformity, self-will and self-sacrifice, that made the discord207 of which every candid208 student of her work, who knew her history,
was conscious from the beginning. Nowhere do we find this contradiction more markedly shown than in “Romola,” the first of the ponderous last three.
Her noblest work, “Romola” is yet one of George Eliot’s most defective in what we may call the scaffolding of the building. The loftiness of sentiment, the masterly delineation of character, the grand grasp of the political and religious movement of the time, the evidences of deep study and conscientious painstaking209 visible on every page, are combined with what seems to us to be the most extraordinary indifference210 to—for it cannot be ignorance of—the social and domestic conditions of the time. The whole story is surely impossible in view of the long arm of the Church—the personal restraints necessarily imposed on women during the turbulent unrest of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries—the proud exclusiveness of the well-born citizens of any state.
Take the last first. Grant all the honour paid by Cosmo and Lorenzo to the learned men of all nations, especially to Greek scholars who, in the first fervour of the Renaissance211, were as sons of the gods to those thirsting for the waters of the divine spring. Grant, too, the example set by Bartolommeo Scala, who had given his beautiful daughter Alessandra in marriage to the “soldier-poet” Marullo; was it likely that even an
eccentric old scholar like the blind Bardo de’ Bardi should have so unreservedly adopted a nameless Greek adventurer, flung up like a second Ulysses from the waves, unvouched for by any sponsor and unidentified by any document? We allow that Bardo might have taken Tito as his scribe and secretary, seeing that the Cennini had already employed him, waif and stray as he was; but that he should have consented to his daughter’s marriage with this stranger, and that her more conservative and more suspicious godfather, Bernado del Nero, should have consented, even if reluctantly, was just about as likely as that an English country gentleman should allow his daughter to marry a handsome gipsy.
If we think for a moment of what citizenship212 meant in olden times, the improbability of the whole of Tito’s career becomes still more striking. As, in Athens, the Sojourner213 never stood on the same plane with the autochthon, so in Rome the Peregrinus was ineligible214 for public office or the higher kind of marriage; and though the stricter part of the law was subsequently relaxed in favour of a wider civic215 hospitality, the sentiment of exclusiveness remained, and indeed does yet remain in Italy. It seems more than improbable that Tito, a Greek adventurer, should have been employed in any political service, save perhaps as a base kind of scout216 and unhonoured spy.
That he should ever have taken the position of an accredited217 public orator218 was so contrary to all the old traditions and habits of thought as to be of the same substance as a fairy tale.
The character of Bardo, too, is non-Italian; and his modes of life and thought were as impossible as are some other things to be hereafter spoken of. The Church had a long arm, as we said, and a firm grip; and while it blinked indulgently enough at certain aberrations219, it demanded the show of conformity in essentials. Lorenzo was a pagan, but he died receiving the Sacraments. The Borgias were criminals, but their professions of faith were loud-voiced and in true earnest. Men might inveigh220 against the evil lives of the clergy221 and the excesses of monks222 and nuns224, but they had to confess God and the Church; and their diatribes225 had to be carefully worded—as witness Rabelais—or a plea would certainly be found for the fire and faggot—as with Fra Dolcino and Savonarola. So with conformity to the usages of life which, then and now, are considered integral to morality. It could not have been possible for Bardo to bring up his daughter “aloof from the debasing influence” of her own sex, and in a household with only one old man for a servant. The times did not allow it; no more than we should allow it now in this freer day. This womanless home for an
Italian girl at any time, more especially in the Middle Ages, when even young wives were bound to have their companions and duennas, is a serious blot in workmanship. So, indeed, is the whole of Romola’s life, being anachronism and simply nineteenth-century English from start to finish.
The things which both she and Tessa did, and were allowed to do, are on a par20 with “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Peter Wilkins.” It was as impossible for Tessa, a pretty young unmarried girl, contadina as she was, to come into Florence alone, as for a peasant child of three years old to be sent with a message on business into the City of London alone. To this day well-conducted women of any class do not wander about the streets of Italian cities unaccompanied; and maidenhood226 is, as it always was, sacredly and jealously guarded. Nor could Romola have gone out and come in at her desire, as she is allowed by the author. With streets filled by the turbulent factions228 of the Bianchi and Neri, always ready for a fight or for a love-adventure, what would have happened to, and been thought of, a beautiful young woman slipping about within the city and outside the gates at all hours of the day and night? She is said to be either quite alone (!), as when she goes to Tessa’s house, or merely accompanied by Monna Brigida, as when she goes to the convent to see
her dying brother—which also, by the way, was impossible—or attended, at a distance, by old Maso when she attempts her flight as a solitary229 nun223. She would have lost name and state had she committed these eccentricities; and had she persisted in them, she would have been sent to a convent—that refuge for sorrow, that shelter from danger, that prison for contumacy—and her godfather would have been the first to consign230 her to what was then the only safe asylum231 for women. The scene she has with Tito before Nello’s shop is ludicrously impossible—as is their English-like return home together, without retinue232 or lights, just like a man and wife of to-day when she has been to fetch him from the public-house, or, if she be of the better class, from his club. English, too, is Romola’s sitting up for her husband in her queer womanless establishment, and opening the door to him when he comes home late at night. For the matter of that, indeed, Tito’s solitary rambles233 are as much out of line with the time, and the circumstances of that time, as is Romola’s strange daring. No man of any note whatever appeared alone in the streets when out on a midnight expedition, either to commit murder or break the seventh commandment. He took some one with him, friend or servant, armed; and to this day you will not find Italians willingly walk alone at night. The whole of
this kind of life, if necessary for the story, is dead against truth and probability. So is Romola’s flight, disguised as a nun. Splendid as is the scene between her and Savonarola, the vraisemblance is spoilt by this impossibility of condition. Nor could any woman of that time, brought up in a city, have felt a sense of freedom when fairly outside the walls by herself on a strange road, going to meet an unknown fate and bound to an unknown bourne. She would have felt as a purdah woman of India suddenly turned loose in the streets and environs of Delhi—as felt all those women whose evidence we read of in matters of crime and murder, when they came face to face with the desolation of unprotectedness. Modern women call it freedom, but in the Middle Ages such a feeling did not exist. All these things are anachronisms; as much so as if a novelist of the twentieth century, writing of English life in the eighteenth, should clothe his women in knickerbockers, mount them on bicycles, and turn them into the football field and cricket-ground.
These exceptions taken to the scaffolding of the book, we are free to admire its glorious nobility of sentiment, its lofty purpose, its perfection of character-drawing, and the dramatic power of its various scenes. Nothing can excel the power with which Tito’s character is shown in its gradual slipping from simple selfishness to positive crimi
nality. The whole action may be summed up in George Eliot’s own words.
“When, the next morning, Tito put this determination into act, he had chosen his colour in the game, and had given an inevitable bent234 to his wishes. He had made it impossible that he should not from henceforth desire it to be the truth that his father was dead; impossible that he should not be tempted235 to baseness rather than that the precise facts of his conduct should not remain for ever concealed. Under every guilty secret there is hidden a brood of guilty wishes, whose unwholesome infecting life is cherished by the darkness. The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than in the consequent adjustment of our desires—the enlistment236 of our self-interest on the side of falsity; as, on the other hand, the purifying influence of public confession237 springs from the fact that by it the hope in lies is for ever swept away, and the soul recovers its noble attitude of sincerity238.”
But, giving every weight to the natural weakness, sweetness and affectionateness, as well as to the latent falsity of Tito’s character, we cannot accept the Tessa episode as true to life in general, while it is eminently untrue to Italian life, especially of those times. Tessa herself, too, is wearisome with her tears and her kisses, her blue eyes and baby face, so incessantly239 repeated and
harped240 on. She is as nauseating241 as she is impossible; and the whole story from first to last is an ugly blot on the book.
In Romola and in Savonarola we touch the heights. The “tall lily” is an exquisite conception and is supreme in human loveliness. Her two interviews with Savonarola are superbly done, and the gradual crushing down of her proud self-will under the passionate242 fervour of the priest is beyond praise both for style and psychology243. So, too, are the changes in the great preacher himself—the first, when his simple earnestness of belief in his mission degenerates244 into self-consciousness and personal assumption, as is the way with all reformers—the second, when he abandons his later attitude, and the dross245 is burnt away as the hour of trial comes on him, and the World no longer stands between God and his soul. The final scenes of the Frate’s public life are powerfully wrought, with all George Eliot’s mastery and eloquence246 and deep religious fervour; but it is in scenes and circumstances of this kind that she is ever at her best. In humour and psychologic insight she is greater than any English woman writer we have had; in aphorisms she is unrivalled; but in playfulness she is clumsy, and in catching247 the moral, intellectual and social tone of the times of which she writes, she is nowhere.
Contrast Romola’s character and manner of life—above all those two thoroughly English letters of hers—with all that we know of Vittoria Colonna, the purest and noblest woman of her day—which was Romola’s—and at once we see the difference between them—the difference wrought by four centuries—Vittoria being essentially248 a woman of the time, though a head and shoulders above the ruck; while Romola is as essentially a product of the nineteenth century. In spite of the local colour—which, after all, is only a wash—given by the descriptions of pageants249 and processions, and by the history of which George Eliot so ably mastered the details, the whole book is nineteenth century, from Monna Brigida’s characteristically English speech about Tessa’s place in the house and the children’s sweets, to Romola’s as characteristically English attitude and hygienic objections—from a little maiden227, without a caretaker, carrying eggs to Piero, to Romola’s solitary visit to the studio and night perambulations about the city.
All these shortcomings notwithstanding, “Romola” will ever remain one of the noblest works of our noblest author; and, after all, did not Shakspere make Hector quote Aristotle, and show all his Greeks and Romans and outlandish nondescripts from countries unknown to himself, as nothing but sturdy Englishmen, such as lived
and loved in the times of the great Eliza? Where we have so much to admire—nay, to venerate—we may let the smaller mistakes pass. Yet they must be spoken of by those who would be candid and not fulsome—just and not flattering. By the way, did George Eliot know that “Baldassare” is the name of one of the devils invoked250 to this day by Sicilian witches?
The longest of all the novels, “Middlemarch,” is the most interesting in its characters, its isolated251 scenes, its moral meaning and philosophic extension; but it is also the most inartistic and the most encumbered252 with subordinate interests and personages. The canvas is as crowded as one of George Cruikshank’s etchings; and the work would have gained by what George Eliot would have called fission253—a division into two. The stories of Dorothea and Casaubon and of Rosamond and Lydgate are essentially separate entities254; and though they are brought together at the last by an intermingled interest, the result is no more true unification than the Siamese twins or the Double-headed Nightingale represented one true human being. The contrast between the two beautiful young wives is well preserved, and the nicer shades of difference are as clearly marked as are the more essential; for George Eliot was far too good a workman to scamp
in any direction, and the backs of her stories are as well wrought as the fronts. But if one-third of the book had been cut out—failing that fission, which would have been still better—the work would have gained in proportion to its compression.
The character of Dorothea marks the last stage in the development of the personality which begins with Maggie Tulliver, and is in reality Marian Evans’s own self. Maggie, Romola and Dorothea are the same person in progressive stages of moral evolution. All are at cross corners with life and fate—all are rebellious255 against things as they find them. Maggie’s state of insurgency is the crudest and simplest; Romola’s is the most passionate in its moral reprobation256 of accepted unworthiness; Dorothea’s is the widest in its mental horizon, and the most womanly in the whole-hearted indifference to aught but love, which ends the story and gives the conclusive257 echo. In its own way, her action in taking Will Ladislaw is like Esther’s in marrying Felix Holt; but it has not the unlikelihood of Esther’s choice. It is all for love, if one will, but it runs more harmoniously258 with the broad lines of her character, and gives us no sense of that dislocation which we get from Esther’s decision. And in its own way it is at once a parallel and an apology.
The most masterly bits of work in “Middlemarch” are
the characters of Rosamond and Casaubon. Rosamond’s unconscious selfishness, her moral thinness, and the superficial quality of her love are all portrayed259 without a flaw in the drawing; while Casaubon’s dryness, his literary indecision following on his indefatigable260 research, and his total inability to adjust himself to his new conditions, together with his scrupulous261 formality of politeness combined with real cruelty of temper, make a picture of supreme psychologic merit. They who think that Casaubon was meant for the late Rector of Lincoln know nothing about George Eliot’s early life. They who do know some of those obscurer details, are well aware of the origin whence she drew her masterly portrait, as they know who was Mrs. Poyser, who Tom Tulliver, and who Hetty Sorrel. Hetty, indeed, is somewhat repeated in that amazingly idiotic262 Tessa, who is neither English nor Italian, nor, indeed, quite human in her molluscous silliness; but there are lines of relation which show themselves to experts, and the absence of the “cherry stone” does not count for more than the dissimilarity always to be found between two copies.
No finer bit of work was ever done than the deep and subtle but true and most pathetic tragedy of Lydgate’s married life. The character of Rosamond was a difficult one to paint, and one false touch could have been fatal.
To show her intense selfishness and shallowness and yet not to make her revolting, was what only such a consummate263 psychologist as George Eliot could have done. And to show how Lydgate, strong man as he was and full of noble ambition and splendid aims, was necessarily subdued, mastered and ruined by the tenacious264 weakness and moral unworthiness of such a wife, yet not to make him contemptible265, was also a task beyond the power of any but the few Masters of our literature. All the scenes between this 1-assorted pair are in George Eliot’s best manner and up to her highest mark; and the gradual declination of Rosamond’s love, together with Lydgate’s gradual awakening266 to the truth of things as they were, are portrayed with a touch as firm as it is tender.
That scene on the receipt of Sir Godwin’s letter is as tragic in its own way as Othello or a Greek drama. It has in it the same sense of human helplessness in the presence of an overmastering fate. Rosamond was Lydgate’s Fate. Her weakness, tenacity and duplicity—his stronger manhood, which could not crush the weaker woman—his love, which could not coerce267, nor punish, nor yet control the thing he loved—all made the threads of that terrible net in which he was entangled268, and by which the whole worth of his life was destroyed. It is a story that
goes home to the consciousness of many men, who know, as Lydgate knew, that they have been mastered by the one who to them is “as an animal of another and feebler species”—who know, as Lydgate knew, that their energies have been stunted270, their ambition has been frustrated271, and their horizon narrowed and darkened because of that tyranny which the weaker woman so well knows how to exercise over the stronger man.
Casaubon is as masterly in drawing as is Rosamond or Lydgate. We confess to a sadly imperfect sympathy with Dorothea in her queer enthusiasm for this dry stick of a man. Learned or not, he was scarcely one to whom a young woman, full of life’s strong and sweet emotions, would care to give herself as a wife. One can understand the more impersonal272 impulse which threw Marian Evans into an attitude of adoration273 before the original of her dry stick; but when it comes to the question of marriage, the thing is simply revolting as done by the girl, not only of her own free-will but against the advice and prayers of her friends. Tom was to be excused for his harshness and irritation274 against Maggie; and Celia’s commonplaces of wisdom for the benefit of that self-willed and recalcitrant275 Dodo, if not very profound nor very stimulating276, nor yet sympathetic, were worth more in the daily life and ordering of sane277 folk than Dorothea’s blind and obstinate determina
tion. Beautiful and high-minded as she is, she is also one of those irritating saints whose virtues278 one cannot but revere5, whose personal charms one loves and acknowledges, and whose wrongheadedness makes one long to punish them—or at least restrain them by main force from social suicide. And to think that to her first mistake she adds that second of marrying Will Ladislaw—the utter snob279 that he is! Where were George Eliot’s perceptions? Or was it that in Ladislaw she had a model near at hand, whom she saw through coloured glasses, which also shed their rosy280 light on her reproduction, so that her copy was to her as idealised as the original, and she was ignorant of the effect produced on the clear-sighted? Yet over all the mistakes made by her through defective taste and obstinate unwisdom, the beauty of Dorothea’s character stands out as did Romola’s—like a “white lily” in the garden. She is a superb creature in her own way, and her disillusionment is of the nature of a tragedy. But what could any woman expect from a man who could write such a love-letter as that of Mr. Casaubon’s?
The canvas of “Middlemarch” is overcrowded, as we said; yet how good some of the characters are! The sturdy uprightness, tempered with such loving sweetness, of Cabel Garth; the commonplace negation281 of all great and all
unworthy qualities of the Vincys—Celia and Sir James—Mr. Farebrother and Mr. and Mrs. Cadwallader—all are supreme. We confess we do not care much for the portraiture of Mr. Bulstrode and his spiteful delator Raffles—George Eliot is not good at melodrama282; also the whole episode of Mr. Featherstone’s illness, with his watching family and Mary Garth, too vividly283 recalls old Anthony Chuzzlewit and all that took place round his death-bed and about his will, to give a sense of truth or novelty. George Eliot’s power did not lie in the same direction as that of Charles Dickens, and the contrast is not to her advantage. Great humorists as both were, their humour was essentially different, and will not bear comparison.
No book that George Eliot ever wrote is without its wise and pithy284 aphorisms, its brilliant flashes of wit, its innumerable good things. Space will not permit our quoting one-tenth part of the good things scattered about these fascinating pages. Celia’s feeling, which she stifled285 in the depths of her heart, that “her sister was too religious for family comfort. Notions and scruples286 were like spilt needles, making one afraid of treading or sitting down, or even eating:"—(But, farther on, what an unnecessary bit of pedantry!—“In short, woman was a problem which, since Mr. Brooke’s mind
felt blank before it, could be hardly less complicated than the revolutions of an irregular solid.”)—Mrs. Cadwallader’s sense of birth, so that a “De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating; and 1 fear his aristocratic vices287 would not have horrified288 her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred289:"—“Indeed, she (Mrs. Waule) herself was accustomed to think that entire freedom from the necessity of behaving agreeably was included in the Almighty’s intentions about families:"—“Strangers, whether wrecked290 and clinging to a raft, or duly escorted and accompanied by portmanteaus, have always had a circumstantial fascination291 for the virgin292 mind, against which native merit has urged itself in vain:"—“Ladislaw, a sort of Burke with a leaven293 of Shelley:"—“But it is one thing to like defiance294, and another thing to like its consequences”—an observation wrung295 out of her own disturbed and inharmonious experience:—“That controlled self-consciousness of manner which is the expensive substitute for simplicity:"—These are a few picked out at random, but the wealth that remains behind is but inadequately296 represented by stray nuggets.
Before we close the volume we would like to note the one redeeming297 little flash of human tenderness
in Mr. Casaubon when he had received his death-warrant from Lydgate, and Dorothea waits for him to come up to bed. It is the only tender and spontaneous moment in his life as George Eliot has painted it, and its strangeness makes its pathos as well as its truth.
The last of the lengthy298 three, and the last novel she wrote, “Daniel Deronda” is the most wearisome, the least artistic201, and the most unnatural of all George Eliot’s books. Of course it has the masterly touch, and, for all its comparative inferiority, has also its supreme excellence. But in plot, treatment and character it is far below its predecessors299. Some of the characters are strangely unnatural. Grandcourt, for instance, is more like the French caricature of an English milord than like a possible English gentleman depicted300 by a compatriot. Deronda himself is a prig of the first water; while Gwendolen is self-contradictory all through—like a tangled269 skein of which you cannot find the end, and therefore cannot bring it into order and intelligibility301. Begun on apparently302 clear lines of self-will, pride, worldly ambition and personal self-indulgence—without either conscience or deep affections—self-contained and self-controlled—she wavers off into a condition of moral weakness, of vagrant303 impulses and
humiliating self-abandonment for which nothing that went before has prepared us.
That she should ever have loved, or even fancied she loved, such a frozen fish as Grandcourt was impossible to a girl so full of energy as Gwendolen is shown to be. Clear in her desires of what she wanted, she would have accepted him, as she did, to escape from the hateful life to which else she would have been condemned. But she would have accepted him without even that amount of self-deception which is portrayed in the decisive interview. She knew his cruel secret, and she deliberately304 chose to ignore it. So far good. It is what she would have done. But where is the logic131 of making her “carry on” as she did when she received the diamonds on her wedding-day? It was a painful thing, sure enough, and the mad letter that came with them was disagreeable enough; but it could not have been the shock it is described, nor could it have made Gwendolen turn against her husband in such sudden hatred, seeing that she already knew the whole shameful305 story. These are faults in psychology; and the conduct of the plot is also imperfect. George Eliot’s plots are always bad when she attempts intricacy, attaining306 instead confusion and unintelligibility307; but surely nothing can be much sillier than the whole story of Deronda’s birth and upbringing, nor can anything be more unnatural than the
character and conduct of his mother. What English gentleman would have brought up a legitimately-born Jewish child under conditions which made the whole world believe him to be his own illegitimate son? And what young man, brought up in the belief that he was an English gentleman by birth—leaving out on which side of the blanket—would have rejoiced to find himself a Jew instead? The whole story is improbable and far-fetched; as also is Deronda’s rescue of Mirah and her unquestioning adoption by the Meyricks. It is all distortion, and in no wise like real life; and some of the characters are as much twisted out of shape as is the story. Sir Hugo Mallinger and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne are the most natural of the whole gallery—the defect of exaggeration or caricature spoiling most of the others.
Of these others, Gwendolen herself is far and away the most unsatisfactory. Her sudden hatred of her husband is strained; so is her love for Deronda; so is her repentance for her constructive308 act of murder. That she should have failed to throw the rope to Grandcourt, drowning in the sea, was perhaps natural enough. That she should have felt such abject309 remorse and have betrayed herself in such humiliating unreserve to Deronda was not. All through the story her action with regard to Deronda is dead
against the base lines of her character, and is compatible only with such an overwhelming amount of physical passion as does sometimes make women mad. We have no hint of this. On the contrary, all that Gwendolen says is founded on spiritual longing310 for spiritual improvement—spiritual direction with no hint of sexual impulse. Yet she acts as one overpowered by that impulse—throwing to the winds pride, reserve, womanly dignity and common sense. Esther was not harmonious with herself in her choice of Felix Holt over Harold Transome, but Esther was naturalness incarnate311 compared with Gwendolen as towards Daniel Deronda. And the evolution of Esther’s soul, and the glimpse given of Rosamond’s tardy312 sense of some kind of morality, difficult to be believed as each was, were easy sums in moral arithmetic contrasted with the birth and sudden growth of what had been Gwendolen’s very rudimentary soul—springing into maturity313 in a moment, like a fully64-armed Athene, without the need of the more gradual process. Add to all these defects, an amount of disquisition and mental dissection314 which impedes315 the story till it drags on as slowly as a heavily laden316 wain—add the fatal blunder of making long scenes which do not help on the action nor elucidate317 the plot, and the yet more fatal blunder of causeless pedantry, and we have to confess that our great master’s last novel is also her
worst. But then the one immediately preceding was incomparably her best.
We come now to the beauties of the work—to the inimitable force of some phrases—to the noble aim and meaning of the story—to the lofty spirit informing all those interrupting disquisitions, which are really interpolated moral essays, and must not be confounded with padding. Take this little shaft318 aimed at that Gr?culus esuriens Lush, that “half-caste among gentlemen” and the ame damnée of Grandcourt. “Lush’s love of ease was well satisfied at present, and if his puddings were rolled towards him in the dust he took the inside bits and found them relishing319.” Again: “We sit up at night to read about Cakya-Mouni, Saint Francis and Oliver Cromwell, but whether we should be glad for any one at all like them to call on us the next morning, still more to reveal himself as a new relation, is quite another matter:"—“A man of refined pride shrinks from making a lover’s approaches to a woman whose wealth or rank might make them appear presumptuous320 or low-motived; but Deronda was finding a more delicate difficulty in a position which, superficially taken, was the reverse of that—though, to an ardent321 reverential love, the loved woman has always a kind of wealth which makes a man keenly susceptible322 about the aspect of his addresses.” (We
extract this sentence as an instance of George Eliot’s fine feeling and delicate perception expressed in her worst and clumsiest manner.) “A blush is no language, only a dubious323 flag-signal, which may mean either of two contradictions.”
“Grandcourt held that the Jamaican negro was a beastly sort of baptist Caliban; Deronda said he had always felt a little with Caliban, who naturally had his own point of view and could sing a good song;” “Mrs. Davilow observed that her father had an estate in Barbadoes, but that she herself had never been in the West Indies; Mrs. Torrington was sure she should never sleep in her bed if she lived among blacks; her husband corrected her by saying that the blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for the half-breeds; and Deronda remarked that the whites had to thank themselves for the half-breeds.”
It is in such “polite pea-shooting” as this that George Eliot shows her inimitable humour—the quick give-and-take of her conversations being always in harmony with her characters. But, indeed, unsatisfactory as a novel though “Daniel Deronda” is, it is full of beauties of all kinds, from verbal wit to the grandly colossal sublimity324 of Mordecai, and Deronda’s outburst of passionate desire to weld the scattered Jews
into one nation of which he should be the heart and brain.
Whatever George Eliot did bears this impress of massive sincerity—of deep and earnest feeling—of lofty purpose and noble teaching. She was not a fine artist, and she spoilt her later work by pedantry and overlay, but she stands out as the finest woman writer we have had or probably shall have—stands a head and shoulders above the best of the rest. She touched the darker parts of life and passion, but she touched them with clean hands and a pure mind, and with that spirit of philosophic truth which can touch pitch and not be defiled325. Yet prolific326 as she was, and the creator of more than one living character, she was not a flexible writer and her range was limited. She repeated situations and motives327 with a curious narrowness of scope, and in almost all her heroines, save Dinah and Dorothea, who are evoluted from the beginning, paints the gradual evolution of a soul by the ennobling influence of a higher mind and a religious love.
We come now to a curious little crop of errors. Though so profound a scholar—being indeed too learned for perfect artistry—she makes strange mistakes for a master of the language such as she was. She spells “insistence” with an “a,” and she gives a superfluous328 “c” to “Machiavelli.”
She sometimes permits herself to slip into the literary misdemeanour of no nominative to her sentence, and into the graver sin of making a singular verb govern the plural329 noun of a series. She says “frightened at” and “under circumstances”; “by the sly” and “down upon”; and she follows “neither” with “or,” as also “never” and “not.” She is “averse to”; she has even been known to split her infinitive330, and to say “and which” without remorse. Once she condescends331 to the iniquity332 of “proceeding to take,” than which “commencing” is only one stage lower in literary vulgarity; and many of her sentences are as clumsy as a clown’s dancing-steps. As no one can accuse her of either ignorance or indifference, still less of haste and slap-dash, these small flaws in the great jewel of her genius are instructive instances of the clinging effect of our carelessness in daily speech; so that grammatical inaccuracy becomes as a second nature to us, and has to be unlearned by all who write.
Nevertheless, with all her faults fully acknowledged and honestly shown, we ever return as to an inexhaustible fountain, to her greatness of thought, her supreme power, her nobility of aim, her matchless humour, her magnificent drawing, her wise philosophy, her accurate learning—as profound as it was accurate. Though we do not bracket her with Plato and Kant, as did one of her
panegyrists, nor hold her equal to Fielding for naturalness, nor to Scott for picturesqueness, nor as able as was Thackeray to project herself into the conditions of thought and society of times other than her own, we do hold her as the sceptred queen of our English Victorian authoresses—superior even to Charlotte Bront?, to Mrs. Gaskell, to Harriet Martineau—formidable rivals as these are to all others, living or dead.
If she had not crossed that Rubicon, or, having crossed it, had been content with more complete insurgency than she was, she would have been a happier woman and a yet more finished novelist. As things were, her life and principles were at cross-corners; and when her literary success had roused up her social ambition, and fame had lifted her far above the place where her birth had set her, she realised the mistake she had made. Then the sense of inharmoniousness between what she was and what she would have been did, to some degree, react on her work, to the extent at least of killing333 in it all passion and spontaneity. Her whole life and being were moulded to an artificial pose, and the “made” woman could not possibly be the spontaneous artist. Her yet more fatal blunder of marrying an obscure individual many years younger than herself, and so destroying the poetry of her first union by destroying its sense of continuity and constancy, would have
still more disastrously334 reacted on her work had she lived. She died in time, for anything below “Theophrastus Such” would have seriously endangered her fame and lessened335 her greatness—culminating as this did in “Middlemarch,” the best and grandest of her novels, from the zenith of which “Daniel Deronda,” her last, is a sensible decline.
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1
vexed
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| adj.争论不休的；（指问题等）棘手的；争论不休的问题；烦恼的v.使烦恼( vex的过去式和过去分词 )；使苦恼；使生气；详细讨论 | |
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2
discrepancy
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| n.不同；不符；差异；矛盾 | |
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3
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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4
appraise
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| v.估价，评价，鉴定 | |
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revere
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| vt.尊崇，崇敬，敬畏 | |
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reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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7
grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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8
bishops
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| （基督教某些教派管辖大教区的）主教( bishop的名词复数 )； （国际象棋的）象 | |
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laity
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| n.俗人；门外汉 | |
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reactionary
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| n.反动者，反动主义者；adj.反动的，反动主义的，反对改革的 | |
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extravagant
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| adj.奢侈的；过分的；(言行等)放肆的 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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tarnished
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| （通常指金属）（使）失去光泽，（使）变灰暗( tarnish的过去式和过去分词 )； 玷污，败坏 | |
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pedantry
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| n.迂腐，卖弄学问 | |
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outspoken
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| adj.直言无讳的，坦率的，坦白无隐的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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lusciously
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epithets
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| n.（表示性质、特征等的）词语( epithet的名词复数 ) | |
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glibly
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| adv.流利地，流畅地；满口 | |
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par
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| n.标准，票面价值，平均数量；adj.票面的，平常的，标准的 | |
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21
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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supremacy
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| n.至上；至高权力 | |
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24
immortals
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| 不朽的人物( immortal的名词复数 )； 永生不朽者 | |
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persistency
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| n. 坚持(余辉, 时间常数) | |
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26
repentance
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| n.懊悔 | |
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nascent
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| adj.初生的，发生中的 | |
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besetting
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| adj.不断攻击的v.困扰( beset的现在分词 )；不断围攻；镶；嵌 | |
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29
aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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30
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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31
portray
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| v.描写，描述；画(人物、景象等) | |
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32
gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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33
iridescent
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| adj.彩虹色的，闪色的 | |
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34
appraisement
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| n.评价，估价；估值 | |
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aphorisms
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| 格言，警句( aphorism的名词复数 ) | |
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36
eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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37
witty
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| adj.机智的，风趣的 | |
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38
pristine
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| adj.原来的，古时的，原始的，纯净的，无垢的 | |
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39
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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40
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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41
reverberates
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| 回响，回荡( reverberate的第三人称单数 )； 使反响，使回荡，使反射 | |
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42
attenuated
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| v.（使）变细( attenuate的过去式和过去分词 )；（使）变薄；（使）变小；减弱 | |
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43
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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44
delineation
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| n.记述；描写 | |
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45
futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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46
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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47
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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48
wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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49
apprentices
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| 学徒，徒弟( apprentice的名词复数 ) | |
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50
squire
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| n.护卫, 侍从, 乡绅 | |
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51
heinous
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| adj.可憎的，十恶不赦的 | |
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52
bastard
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| n.坏蛋，混蛋；私生子 | |
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53
mishap
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| n.不幸的事，不幸；灾祸 | |
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54
condoned
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| v.容忍，宽恕，原谅( condone的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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55
illiterate
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| adj.文盲的；无知的；n.文盲 | |
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56
reprieve
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| n.暂缓执行（死刑）；v.缓期执行；给…带来缓解 | |
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57
concealment
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| n.隐藏, 掩盖，隐瞒 | |
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58
herded
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| 群集，纠结( herd的过去式和过去分词 )； 放牧； （使）向…移动 | |
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59
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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60
harmonious
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| adj.和睦的，调和的，和谐的，协调的 | |
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61
harmoniousness
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| 和谐 | |
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62
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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63
inverted
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| adj.反向的，倒转的v.使倒置，使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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64
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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65
portraiture
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| n.肖像画法 | |
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66
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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67
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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68
embellished
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| v.美化( embellish的过去式和过去分词 )；装饰；修饰；润色 | |
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69
distilled
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| adj.由蒸馏得来的v.蒸馏( distil的过去式和过去分词 )；从…提取精华 | |
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70
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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71
likeness
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| n.相像，相似（之处） | |
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72
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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73
inflicted
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| 把…强加给，使承受，遭受( inflict的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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74
sarcasms
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| n.讥讽，讽刺，挖苦( sarcasm的名词复数 ) | |
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75
brutal
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| adj.残忍的，野蛮的，不讲理的 | |
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76
momentous
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| adj.重要的，重大的 | |
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77
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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78
favourable
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| adj.赞成的，称赞的，有利的，良好的，顺利的 | |
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79
mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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80
graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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81
trenches
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| 深沟，地沟( trench的名词复数 )； 战壕 | |
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82
solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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83
misogynist
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| n.厌恶女人的人 | |
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84
trenchant
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| adj.尖刻的，清晰的 | |
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85
dissertation
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| n.（博士学位）论文，学术演讲，专题论文 | |
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86
blot
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| vt.弄脏（用吸墨纸）吸干；n.污点，污渍 | |
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87
clog
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| vt.塞满，阻塞；n.[常pl.]木屐 | |
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88
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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89
philosophic
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| adj.哲学的，贤明的 | |
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90
hamper
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| vt.妨碍，束缚，限制；n.(有盖的)大篮子 | |
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91
redeemed
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| adj. 可赎回的，可救赎的 动词redeem的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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92
insurgent
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| adj.叛乱的，起事的；n.叛乱分子 | |
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93
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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94
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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95
attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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96
sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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97
persiflage
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| n.戏弄；挖苦 | |
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98
originality
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| n.创造力，独创性；新颖 | |
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99
ponderous
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| adj.沉重的，笨重的，(文章)冗长的 | |
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100
brink
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| n.(悬崖、河流等的)边缘，边沿 | |
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101
insurgency
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| n.起义；暴动；叛变 | |
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102
conformity
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| n.一致，遵从，顺从 | |
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103
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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104
divergence
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| n.分歧，岔开 | |
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105
heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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106
picturesqueness
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107
prosaic
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| adj.单调的，无趣的 | |
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108
remorse
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| n.痛恨，悔恨，自责 | |
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109
steadfast
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| adj.固定的，不变的，不动摇的；忠实的；坚贞不移的 | |
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110
akin
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| adj.同族的，类似的 | |
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111
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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112
obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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113
odds
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| n.让步，机率，可能性，比率；胜败优劣之别 | |
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114
tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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115
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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116
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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117
tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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118
unduly
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| adv.过度地，不适当地 | |
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119
gorgon
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| n.丑陋女人，蛇发女怪 | |
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120
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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121
bonnet
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| n.无边女帽；童帽 | |
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122
linen
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| n.亚麻布，亚麻线，亚麻制品；adj.亚麻布制的，亚麻的 | |
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123
allays
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| v.减轻，缓和( allay的第三人称单数 ) | |
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124
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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125
pathos
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| n.哀婉，悲怆 | |
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126
mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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127
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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128
subdued
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| adj. 屈服的，柔和的，减弱的 动词subdue的过去式和过去分词 | |
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129
almighty
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| adj.全能的，万能的；很大的，很强的 | |
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130
subside
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| vi.平静，平息；下沉，塌陷，沉降 | |
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131
logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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132
abrasion
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| n.磨（擦）破，表面磨损 | |
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133
intercourse
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| n.性交；交流，交往，交际 | |
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134
fictitious
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| adj.虚构的，假设的；空头的 | |
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135
excellence
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| n.优秀，杰出，(pl.)优点，美德 | |
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136
synchronise
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| n.同步器；v.使同时发生；使同步 | |
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137
hoard
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| n./v.窖藏，贮存，囤积 | |
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138
squires
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| n.地主，乡绅( squire的名词复数 ) | |
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139
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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140
chronological
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| adj.按年月顺序排列的，年代学的 | |
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141
conscientious
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| adj.审慎正直的，认真的，本着良心的 | |
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142
scotch
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|
| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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143
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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144
isolation
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| n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离 | |
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145
mazed
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| 迷惘的，困惑的 | |
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146
accusation
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| n.控告，指责，谴责 | |
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147
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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148
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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149
weavers
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| 织工，编织者( weaver的名词复数 ) | |
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150
weaver
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| n.织布工；编织者 | |
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151
conditional
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| adj.条件的，带有条件的 | |
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152
eccentricities
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| n.古怪行为( eccentricity的名词复数 )；反常；怪癖 | |
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153
bonnets
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| n.童帽( bonnet的名词复数 )；（烟囱等的）覆盖物；（苏格兰男子的）无边呢帽；（女子戴的）任何一种帽子 | |
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154
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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155
hoarded
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| v.积蓄并储藏（某物）( hoard的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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156
rustic
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| adj.乡村的，有乡村特色的；n.乡下人，乡巴佬 | |
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157
winked
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| v.使眼色( wink的过去式和过去分词 )；递眼色（表示友好或高兴等）；（指光）闪烁；闪亮 | |
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158
fustian
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| n.浮夸的；厚粗棉布 | |
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159
eyelids
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|
| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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160
draughts
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| n. <英>国际跳棋 | |
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161
funereal
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|
| adj.悲哀的；送葬的 | |
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162
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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163
aloof
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| adj.远离的；冷淡的，漠不关心的 | |
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164
authoritative
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| adj.有权威的，可相信的；命令式的；官方的 | |
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165
joviality
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| n.快活 | |
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166
adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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167
impasse
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| n.僵局；死路 | |
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168
lawfully
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|
| adv.守法地，合法地；合理地 | |
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169
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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170
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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171
obloquy
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| n.斥责，大骂 | |
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172
condemnation
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| n.谴责; 定罪 | |
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173
radicals
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|
| n.激进分子( radical的名词复数 )；根基；基本原理；[数学]根数 | |
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174
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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175
sediment
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|
| n.沉淀，沉渣，沉积(物) | |
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176
dreaded
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|
| adj.令人畏惧的；害怕的v.害怕，恐惧，担心( dread的过去式和过去分词) | |
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177
intelligible
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|
| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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178
contentedly
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|
| adv.心满意足地 | |
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179
simplicity
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|
| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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180
unfamiliar
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|
| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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181
eminently
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|
| adv.突出地；显著地；不寻常地 | |
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182
unnatural
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|
| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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183
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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184
folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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185
jewelry
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| n.（jewllery）（总称）珠宝 | |
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186
flirtatious
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|
| adj.爱调情的，调情的，卖俏的 | |
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187
delightfully
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| 大喜，欣然 | |
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188
scents
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|
| n.香水( scent的名词复数 )；气味；（动物的）臭迹；（尤指狗的）嗅觉 | |
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189
abounds
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| v.大量存在，充满，富于( abound的第三人称单数 ) | |
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190
felicitous
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|
| adj.恰当的，巧妙的；n.恰当，贴切 | |
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191
questionable
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|
| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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192
exalted
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|
| adj.(地位等)高的，崇高的；尊贵的，高尚的 | |
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193
random
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|
| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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194
rugged
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|
| adj.高低不平的，粗糙的，粗壮的，强健的 | |
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195
hideous
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|
| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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196
bearishness
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| 粗鲁，笨拙 | |
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197
inconvenient
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|
| adj.不方便的，令人感到麻烦的 | |
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198
prominence
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| n.突出；显著；杰出；重要 | |
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199
degenerated
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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200
dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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201
artistic
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|
| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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202
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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203
injustice
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|
| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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204
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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205
counteracted
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| 对抗，抵消( counteract的过去式 ) | |
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206
exhortations
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|
| n.敦促( exhortation的名词复数 )；极力推荐；（正式的）演讲；（宗教仪式中的）劝诫 | |
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207
discord
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|
| n.不和，意见不合，争论，（音乐）不和谐 | |
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208
candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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209
painstaking
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|
| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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210
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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211
renaissance
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| n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴 | |
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212
citizenship
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| n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份) | |
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213
sojourner
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| n.旅居者，寄居者 | |
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214
ineligible
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| adj.无资格的，不适当的 | |
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215
civic
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| adj.城市的，都市的，市民的，公民的 | |
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216
scout
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| n.童子军，侦察员；v.侦察，搜索 | |
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217
accredited
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|
| adj.可接受的；可信任的；公认的；质量合格的v.相信( accredit的过去式和过去分词 )；委托；委任；把…归结于 | |
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218
orator
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| n.演说者，演讲者，雄辩家 | |
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219
aberrations
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|
| n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 )；差错；脱离常规；心理失常 | |
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220
inveigh
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| v.痛骂 | |
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221
clergy
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| n.[总称]牧师，神职人员 | |
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222
monks
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| n.修道士，僧侣( monk的名词复数 ) | |
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223
nun
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| n.修女，尼姑 | |
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224
nuns
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| n.（通常指基督教的）修女， （佛教的）尼姑( nun的名词复数 ) | |
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225
diatribes
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| n.谩骂，讽刺( diatribe的名词复数 ) | |
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226
maidenhood
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| n. 处女性, 处女时代 | |
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227
maiden
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| n.少女，处女；adj.未婚的，纯洁的，无经验的 | |
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228
factions
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| 组织中的小派别，派系( faction的名词复数 ) | |
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229
solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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230
consign
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| vt.寄售（货品），托运，交托，委托 | |
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231
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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232
retinue
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| n.侍从；随员 | |
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233
rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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234
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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235
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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236
enlistment
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|
| n.应征入伍，获得，取得 | |
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237
confession
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| n.自白，供认，承认 | |
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238
sincerity
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|
| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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239
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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240
harped
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|
| vi.弹竖琴（harp的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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241
nauseating
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|
| adj.令人恶心的，使人厌恶的v.使恶心，作呕( nauseate的现在分词 ) | |
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242
passionate
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|
| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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243
psychology
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|
| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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244
degenerates
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| 衰退，堕落，退化( degenerate的第三人称单数 ) | |
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245
dross
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| n.渣滓；无用之物 | |
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246
eloquence
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|
| n.雄辩；口才，修辞 | |
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247
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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248
essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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249
pageants
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|
| n.盛装的游行( pageant的名词复数 )；穿古代服装的游行；再现历史场景的娱乐活动；盛会 | |
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250
invoked
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|
| v.援引( invoke的过去式和过去分词 )；行使（权利等）；祈求救助；恳求 | |
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251
isolated
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|
| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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252
encumbered
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| v.妨碍，阻碍，拖累( encumber的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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253
fission
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| n.裂开；分裂生殖 | |
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254
entities
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| 实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 ) | |
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255
rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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256
reprobation
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| n.斥责 | |
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257
conclusive
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| adj.最后的，结论的；确凿的，消除怀疑的 | |
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258
harmoniously
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| 和谐地，调和地 | |
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259
portrayed
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| v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 )；描述；描绘；描画 | |
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260
indefatigable
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| adj.不知疲倦的，不屈不挠的 | |
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261
scrupulous
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| adj.审慎的，小心翼翼的，完全的，纯粹的 | |
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262
idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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263
consummate
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| adj.完美的；v.成婚；使完美 [反]baffle | |
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264
tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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265
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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266
awakening
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| n.觉醒，醒悟 adj.觉醒中的；唤醒的 | |
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267
coerce
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| v.强迫，压制 | |
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268
entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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269
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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270
stunted
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| adj.矮小的；发育迟缓的 | |
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271
frustrated
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| adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧 | |
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272
impersonal
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| adj.无个人感情的，与个人无关的，非人称的 | |
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273
adoration
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| n.爱慕，崇拜 | |
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274
irritation
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| n.激怒，恼怒，生气 | |
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275
recalcitrant
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| adj.倔强的 | |
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276
stimulating
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| adj.有启发性的，能激发人思考的 | |
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277
sane
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| adj.心智健全的，神志清醒的，明智的，稳健的 | |
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278
virtues
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| 美德( virtue的名词复数 )； 德行； 优点； 长处 | |
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279
snob
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| n.势利小人，自以为高雅、有学问的人 | |
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280
rosy
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| adj.美好的，乐观的，玫瑰色的 | |
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281
negation
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| n.否定；否认 | |
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282
melodrama
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| n.音乐剧；情节剧 | |
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283
vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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284
pithy
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| adj.(讲话或文章)简练的 | |
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285
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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286
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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287
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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288
horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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289
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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290
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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291
fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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292
virgin
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| n.处女，未婚女子；adj.未经使用的；未经开发的 | |
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293
leaven
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| v.使发酵；n.酵母；影响 | |
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294
defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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295
wrung
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| 绞( wring的过去式和过去分词 )； 握紧（尤指别人的手）； 把（湿衣服）拧干； 绞掉（水） | |
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296
inadequately
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| ad.不够地；不够好地 | |
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297
redeeming
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| 补偿的，弥补的 | |
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298
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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299
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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300
depicted
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| 描绘，描画( depict的过去式和过去分词 )； 描述 | |
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301
intelligibility
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| n.可理解性，可理解的事物 | |
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302
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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303
vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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304
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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305
shameful
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| adj.可耻的，不道德的 | |
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306
attaining
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的现在分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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307
unintelligibility
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| 不可懂度，不清晰性 | |
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308
constructive
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| adj.建设的，建设性的 | |
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309
abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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310
longing
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| n.（for）渴望 | |
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311
incarnate
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| adj.化身的，人体化的，肉色的 | |
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312
tardy
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| adj.缓慢的，迟缓的 | |
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313
maturity
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| n.成熟；完成；(支票、债券等)到期 | |
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314
dissection
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| n.分析；解剖 | |
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315
impedes
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的第三人称单数 ) | |
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316
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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317
elucidate
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| v.阐明，说明 | |
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318
shaft
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| n.(工具的)柄，杆状物 | |
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319
relishing
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| v.欣赏( relish的现在分词 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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320
presumptuous
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| adj.胆大妄为的，放肆的，冒昧的，冒失的 | |
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321
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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322
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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323
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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324
sublimity
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| 崇高，庄严，气质高尚 | |
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325
defiled
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| v.玷污( defile的过去式和过去分词 )；污染；弄脏；纵列行进 | |
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326
prolific
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| adj.丰富的，大量的；多产的，富有创造力的 | |
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327
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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328
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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329
plural
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| n.复数；复数形式；adj.复数的 | |
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330
infinitive
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| n.不定词；adj.不定词的 | |
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331
condescends
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| 屈尊，俯就( condescend的第三人称单数 )； 故意表示和蔼可亲 | |
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332
iniquity
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| n.邪恶；不公正 | |
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333
killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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334
disastrously
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| ad.灾难性地 | |
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335
lessened
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| 减少的，减弱的 | |
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