The Life of George Eliot

Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 3

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Title: Critical Miscellanies (Vol 3 of 3) The Life of George Eliot
Author: John Morley
Release Date: March 9, 2006 [EBook #17954]
Language: English
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CRITICAL
MISCELLANIES
BY JOHN MORLEY

VOL. III.
Essay 4: The Life of George Eliot
London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE
MACMILLAN COMPANY
1904

THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT
On Literary Biography 93
As a mere letter-writer will not rank among the famous masters 96
Mr. Myers's Essay 100
Letter to Mr. Harrison 107
Hebrew her favourite study 112
Limitless persistency in application 113
Romola 114
Mr. R.W. Mackay's Progress of the Intellect 120
The period of her productions, 1856-1876 124
Mr. Browning 125
An æsthetic not a doctrinal teacher 126
Disliked vehemence 130
Conclusion 131

THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT.[1]
The illustrious woman who is the subject of these volumes makes a
remark to her publisher which is at least as relevant now as it was then.
Can nothing be done, she asks, by dispassionate criticism towards the
reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography? 'Is it
anything short of odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk should
be raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant
for the public be printed for the gossiping amusement of people too idle
to reread his books?' Autobiography, she says, at least saves a man or a
woman that the world is curious about, from the publication of a string
of mistakes called Memoirs. Even to autobiography, however, she
confesses her deep repugnance unless it can be written so as to involve
neither self-glorification nor impeachment of others--a condition, by
the way, with which hardly any, save Mill's, can be said to comply. 'I
like,' she proceeds, 'that He being dead yet speaketh should have quite
another meaning than that' (iii. 226, 297, 307). She shows the same
fastidious apprehension still more clearly in another way. 'I have
destroyed almost all my friends' letters to me,' she says, 'because they
were only intended for my eyes, and could only fall into the hands of
persons who knew little of the writers if I allowed them to remain till
after my death. In proportion as I love every form of piety--which is
venerating love--I hate hard curiosity; and, unhappily, my experience
has impressed me with the sense that hard curiosity is the more
common temper of mind' (ii. 286). There is probably little difference
among us in respect of such experience as that.
[Footnote 1: George Eliot's Life. By J.W. Cross. Three volumes.
Blackwood and Sons. 1885.]
Much biography, perhaps we might say most, is hardly above the level
of that 'personal talk,' to which Wordsworth sagely preferred long
barren silence, the flapping of the flame of his cottage fire, and the
under-song of the kettle on the hob. It would not, then, have much
surprised us if George Eliot had insisted that her works should remain
the only commemoration of her life. There be some who think that
those who have enriched the world with great thoughts and fine

creations, might best be content to rest unmarked 'where heaves the turf
in many a mouldering heap,' leaving as little work to the literary
executor, except of the purely crematory sort, as did Aristotle, Plato,
Shakespeare, and some others whose names the world will not
willingly let die. But this is a stoic's doctrine; the objector may easily
retort that if it had been sternly acted on, we should have known very
very little about Dr. Johnson, and nothing about Socrates.
This is but an ungracious prelude to some remarks upon a book, which
must be pronounced a striking success. There will be very little dispute
as to the fact that the editor of these memorials of George Eliot has
done his work with excellent taste, judgment, and sense. He found no
autobiography nor fragment of one, but he has skilfully shaped a kind
of autobiography by a plan which, so far as we know, he is justified in
calling new, and which leaves her life to write itself in extracts from
her letters and journals. With the least possible obtrusion from the
biographer, the original pieces are formed into a connected whole 'that
combines a narrative