A FRAGMENT ON GEORGE ELIOT 173 



work we feel the broad sympathy with all true human nature 

 which she proclaims in her letters, but which those letters hardly 

 show. Her artistic birth seems to have been a regeneration. 

 The more she achieved the more humble she became. There is 

 indeed no trace of self-abasement in the ' Life ' ; she knew that she 

 meant to do good work and had great powers, but her mind was 

 clearer, her sympathies larger, than most even of the ablest 

 men she met. But yet, in relation to the possibilities of art and 

 of life, the journal shows a fine simple humility. The reluctance 

 to read criticism was not a fear of wounds to her self-love, but 

 a dread lest to see her efforts misunderstood might render her 

 incapable of further effort. She cherished a hearty faith in the 

 great public ; contact with petty criticism tended to destroy that 

 faith. She did well to pass it by. 



The necessity for religion as an artistic element impressed 

 her strongly ; what she most cared to teach and to show was best 

 set forth in the words of men and women with deep religious 

 feelings. This seems to have shocked the little sect which had 

 the honour of destroying her dogmatic faith, and the good hard 

 raps she administers to those who would have kept her to the 

 narrow way of orthodox atheism are among the few amusing 

 things in the book. She endeavoured with much success to 

 present a profoundly religious aspect of things and men while 

 rejecting all dogmatic faith. In this she represents the gene- 

 ration, and represents it nobly. But while the ' Life ' confirms us 

 in this view of her character it would do little to exhibit the 

 nobility of her conceptions unless read by the light of those 

 works and the works acquire no new or deeper significance by 

 the light shown in the ' Life.' On the contrary, a feeling is pro- 

 duced that she was hampered in her life by the set among whom 

 she lived men and women of narrow minds setting up science 

 and logic as better than religion and fatal to it. There is no- 

 thing in the ' Life ' to show that she had any real sympathy with 

 scientific research, or even knew what it meant. She loved 

 Lewes faithfully, and physiology for his sake, as she might have 

 loved his dog because it was his. There is not a brace of living 

 interest in the pursuit, either for the pleasure of the chase or 

 for the hope of booty in the form of scientific spoils won from 

 the dark country of the unknown. 



