New Books [pp. 286-288]

APPLETOzVS' JO URN,AL.
fame are just budding, for the most part bring better
prices than did the Titians and Murillos which Lord
Malmesbury offered an incredulous and unsympathetic
public; and there is no doubt that a fair Turner would
have called out four or five times as much on the first bid.
Has Mr. Ruskin really talked the English lovers of
art out of their veneration for the old masters? Or have
they only temporarily gone out of fashion amid the pro
fusion of artistic products which is now being lavished
on the English? Or is it that so many well-executed
frauds have lately been exposed? We prefer either of
the latter two suppositions to the suspicion that the old
masters are actually going out of date, and are destined
ere long to be relegated to the darkest corners and worst
lights of the fashionable London galleries, while the
latter schools take their places and filch their admiration.
SOME RECENT OVELS..
SOME RECENT NOVEL-S.
ERHAPS as difficult a task as any to which a critic
could address himself would be to deal satisfactorily
with one of George Eliot's novels in a brief paragraph
or two. Whatever their merits or defects, they utterly
refuse to yield their characteristics to the easy definitions
and commonplace phrases which ordinary novels almost
inevitably call to mind. Even in a long article the critic
usually finds himself unable to do more than survey her
work on different sides, and develop some few of its infinitely varied suggestions; and when his task is finished
he will almost certainly find himself in doubt whether
the points of view selected are most favorable to an accurate view, or the ideas insisted upon those which most
thoroughly elucidate the author's purpose. The truth is,
that George Eliot's survey of human life is at once broader and deeper than that of any other writer who has chosen the novel as a medium of expression. Ostensibly
she aims at the same objects and uses the same machinery
as fiction-writers in general; but the range of her vision
is never confined to the group of individuals who " play
their antics in the wide arena of her imagination "-extending beyond these to the larger life of the race, the
destiny of mankind, the complex interactions of the social forces, the philosophy of mind, of religion, of the
arts, and of scientific tendency. The reader finds himself confronted around the whole circle of his knowledge, however comprehensive it may be, and oftentimes
he would experience a difficulty in deciding in what department of the philosophy of life the studies through
which she leads him are most fruitful.
This is especially the case with "Daniel Deronda."
It is the best constructed of George Eliot's novels-being
a work of art in comparison with the discursive inconsequence and cumbrous machinery of "Middlemarch;"
but, while it concentrates the attention upon persons not
unmanageable in numbers, and having a genuine dramatic relation to each other, it is also more comprehensive in intellectual scope, and more searching and subtile
in its psychological analyses, departs more widely from
the lines of a mere story, than any other of her works.
The author-and this has always been a vice of George
Eliot's art-maintains herself more constantly and prominently on the stage of events than ever before, making
no pretense of disguising the fact that she is the deus ex
mzackzna; and her somewhat awful personality completely overshadows her characters-dwarfing even Gwvendolen and Deronda to something like insignificance before her serene conviction of the comparative pettiness
of all human creatures, her owvn creations included. This
aggressive self-assertion on the part of the author is per
1 Daniel Deronda. By George Eliot. In Two Volumes.
Vol. I. New York: Harper & Brothers.
haps the worst fault of "Daniel Deronda" from an artistic point of view. Her own mental atmosphere is so
rarefied that, aware that she cannot maintain her characters in it without at the same time sundering the
strongest chords of human interest, she paints them with
a certain fine scorn, all the more penetrative because it is
not only unconscious but resisted with continuous and
watchful care. Few intellects, without the stimulus of
keen sympathy, could devote themselves to constructing
in such wonderful detail the mental processes which furnish the main currents of the story-delineating with such
tireless precision the chemistry of causes and the complex
reaction of effects; yet behind the panorama in which
wve are shown the revenges which the whirligig of time
brought upon Gwendolen, the inspiring combination of
lofty ideals and noble deeds in Deronda, and the exalted
enthusiasm of Mordecai, wve are conscious of a presence
contemplating the scene from the point of view of one
who has thoroughly realized that we-the wisest and best
of mankind, as well as the most ignoble "... are such stuff as dreams are made of,
And our little lives are rounded with a sleep."
It is a curious illustration of the author's preference
for psychological analysis over dramatic characterization,
and of her tendency to estimate the importance of her
characters by the opportunity which they afford her for
exercising this faculty, that she has given the book the
name which it bears. Whatever the permanent place
which "Daniel Deronda" may secure for itself in literature, it is certain that the greater part of its enduring
fame and nearly all its present attractiveness will depend
upon the character of Gwendolen Harleth. The most
loyal reader finds it hard to detach his mind from her
person and fortunes sufficiently to share his suffrages in
equal degree with either Deronda, or Mirah, or Mordecai,
and probably no one has escaped the feeling that the
episodes in which the latter exclusively appear are a clog
upon the real interest of the story; yet the author is evidently sincere in her conviction that Gwendolen is on the
whole a subordinate figure, and that Deronda, in whose
person converge the two parallel movements of the
drama, is the one upon whom the attention is naturally
and inevitably concentrated. Not only so, but it is clear
that she also regards the obverse of the side which Deronda presents to Gwendolen as properly his most interesting side; and it must be confessed that if supremely
powerful writing could suffice, the chapters which she
devotes to the so-called Jewish episodes would easily
compel our allegiance.
Writing as we do without having had the opportunity
of reading the latter portion of the story, it would be premature to say more about the plot of "Daniel Deronda"
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