Some Notes on George Eliot

Abstract

It will be found true, I think, of the works of every mastermind that there is in them some recurring note, some theme, some refrain, that stamps the author’s personality upon them, and forms a principle of unity throughout them all.1 It may be simply by some distinctive line of thought, it may be merely by a prevailing mental tone, that nature thus reveals how one-sided are the broadest minds, and proves how narrow, after all, are the best and the greatest of mankind. For a great truth paralyzes as well as inspires. It limits as well as exalts. Minds that have felt its full influence are, as Mr. Lowell would have said, possessed by it; they do not possess it. They are in its power; it is not in theirs. And so it comes to pass that, in many cases, at least, a tendency toward repetition in an author is a token, not of sterility, but of strength. It marks the sincerity, the truth of his convictions; it shows that his writings stand for thoughts that have become imbedded in his being; and thus we can judge him, if not more favorably, at least with a keener sympathy. Thoughts, as Emerson so clearly saw, are rarer possessions than most of us seem to fancy; and only by stress and toil and wear of spirit can one of them be made our own. The rest that receive the name are, in fact, mere outgrowths of these central ideas of our being; and we ought hardly to quarrel with those who have the frankness to show us these ideas, running through all their works, colouring all their conceptions, and yielding them an infallible test of truth and beauty.