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Gresley, who had not read it. "It is dreadfully coarse in places," continued Mr. Gresley, who had the same opinion of George Eliot's works. "And I warned Hester most solemnly on that point when I found she had begun another book.
This was a different kind of labour, and destined to have immeasurably greater significance. George Eliot's maiden literary labour was the translation into English of Strauss' first edition. But the results of that criticism were only slowly appropriated by the English. The ostensible results were at first radical and subversive in the extreme.
He possessed an easy gift of adapting scientific theories and deductions to popular interest and comprehension, and his "Curiosities in Natural History" and other writings undoubtedly gave a strong impulse to the tastes of this generation, of which the many out-of-doors papers on birds, game, and the habits of all living creatures are the result. "George Eliot's Poetry, and Other Studies."
To many, the relation which was the most important event in George Eliot's life will seem one of those irretrievable errors which reduce all talk of duty to a mockery. It is inevitable that this should be so, and those who disregard a social law have little right to complain.
Roger Williams, and the "apostle," John Eliot, were their friends, and won their regard; but neither Williams' influence nor Eliot's Bible left any lasting trace upon them. The Indian is irreclaimable; disappointment is the very mildest result that awaits the effort to reclaim him. He is wild to the marrow; no bird or beast is so wild as he.
Nor does President Eliot's advocacy of class schools stand as an isolated phenomenon. Already in America the development of free secondary schools has been checked by the far more rapid growth of private institutions.
"I have a weakness for polymathists of the old school," the bishop remarked, harking back to his guest's confession of narrower interests, "of which class I may say that Professor Cardington is almost the only example within my range of observation. I have noticed that Latin is becoming as strange to the average graduate as Eliot's Indian Bible."
But, deep within her, she had hoped that Eliot's savage bitterness towards her might have softened with the passage of time that perhaps he had learned to tincture his contempt for her with a little understanding and compassion, allowing something in excuse for youth and for the long, grinding years of poverty which had ground the courage out of her and driven her into making that one ghastly mistake for which life had exacted such a heavy penalty.
Of George Eliot's types of adolescent character, this may best be seen in Maggie Tulliver, with her enthusiastic self-renunciation, with "her volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions," with her "wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth," and in Gwendolen, who, from the moment she caught Deronda's eye, was "totally swayed in feeling and action by the presence of a person of the other sex whom she had never seen before."
Love had taught her all there was to know of love. "Eliot's love for me died ten years ago," she said simply. "And yours?" asked Ann painfully. "Not yours. Or you wouldn't you couldn't have done this for him." For an instant Cara closed her eyes. Then she spoke, with white lips, but with a quiet, steadfast decision that carried absolute conviction. "I know what you are thinking," she said.
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