Kitabı oku: «Beacon Lights of History, Volume 07: Great Women», sayfa 17

Hence, as a teacher of morals and philosophy George Eliot is not of much account. We question the richness of any moral wisdom which is not in harmony with the truths that Christian people regard as fundamental, and which they believe will save the world. In some respects she has taught important lessons. She has illustrated the power of conscience and the sacredness of duty. She was a great preacher of the doctrine that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." She showed that those who do not check and control the first departure from virtue will, in nine cases out of ten, hopelessly fall.

These are great certitudes. But there are others which console and encourage as well as intimidate. The Te Domine Speravi of the dying Xavier on the desolate island of Sancian, pierced through the clouds of dreary blackness which enveloped the nations he sought to save. Christianity is full of promises of exultant joy, and its firmest believers are those whose lives are gilded with its divine radiance. Surely, it is not intellectual or religious narrowness which causes us to regret that so gifted a woman as George Eliot–so justly regarded as one of the greatest ornaments of modern literature–should have drifted away from the Rock which has resisted the storms and tempests of nearly two thousand years, and abandoned, if she did not scorn, the faith which has animated the great masters of thought from Augustine to Bossuet. "The stern mournfulness which is produced by most of her novels gives us the idea of one who does not know, or who has forgotten, that the stone was rolled away from the heart of the world on the morning when Christ arose from the tomb."

AUTHORITIES

Miss Blind's Life of George Eliot. Mr. Cross's Life of George Eliot, I regret to say, did not reach me until after the foregoing pages had gone to press. But as this lecture is criticism rather than history, the few additional facts that might have been gained would not be important; while, after tracing in that quasi-autobiography the development of her mental and moral nature, I see no reason to change my conclusions based on the outward facts of her life and on her works. The Nineteenth Century, ix.; London Quarterly Review, lvii. 40; Contemporary Review, xx. 29, 39; The National Review, xxxi. 23, 16; Blackwood's Magazine, cxxix. 85-100, 112, 116, 103; Edinburgh Review, ex. 144, 124, 137, 150; Westminster Review, lxxi. 110, lxxxvi. 74, 80, 90, 112; Dublin Review, xlvii. 88, 89; Cornhill Magazine, xliii.; Atlantic Monthly, xxxviii. 18; Fortnightly Review, xxvi. 19; British Quarterly Review, lxiv. 57, 48, 45; International Review, iv. 10; Temple Bar Magazine, 49; Littell's Living Age, cxlviii.; The North American Review, ciii. 116, 107; Quarterly Review, cxxxiv. 108; Macmillan's Magazine, iii. 4; North British Review, xiv.