GEORGE ELIOT'S HUM0UR.

Waikato Times, Volume III, Issue 110, 18 January 1873, Page 3

GEORGE ELIOT'S HUMOUR.

An Ohio Teuton, foil ml guilty of Bi'llm* liquor contrary to law, and sentenced to be imprisoned in tlio country gnol for thirty days, protested as follows :—": — " Cliail ! Me go to chail ! jiut 1 can't go ' Pcro's my pimess — my pakery ' Who imkes my pread when I ben gone.'''' Then cabling his eyes about the court-room appealing, they fell upon the good-natured face of jolly Chris. Ellwanrr, a fellowcountryman, who luul no "pi/ncs->," and forthwith a brilliant idea occurred lo him. Turnma; to the Court, lie said iv sobor earnest, " Dores Chris Ellwaucr ! He's got nothing to do ; send him !" Ilero is a fresh anecdote about Dickens • Somewhere about tho middle of the serial publication of "lXiud Coppcrlield," happening to be out of writing paper, he sallied forth one morning to get a fresh supply at tlie stationer's, lie was living tben at his favourite haunt at Fault House, in Broadstairs. As be was about to enter the stationer's shop, with the intention of buying the needful writing paper, for the purpose of returning homo with it, and at once setting to work upon his next number, not one word of which was ,\et written ; he stood aside a moment at the threshold to allow a lady to pass in before him. lie then went on to relate — with a vivid sense still upon him of mingled enjoyment and dismay in the mere recollection— how the next instant he had overheard this strange lady asking tho person behind the counter for tho new green, number. When it was handed to her '' Oh, this," she said, " I have read. I want the next one." The next one, she was thereupon told, would be out by the end of the month. " Listening to this, unrecognised," ho added in conclusion, "knowing the purpose for which I was theic, and remembering that not one word of the number w as written, for the first and only time in my life I lelL — frightened ! "

Gekogk Etjot's humour allies itself with her intellect on one hand, ami w ith lier sympathies and moral perceptions on the other. The grotesque in human character is reclaimed irom the province of the humorous by her affections when that is possible, and is shown to be a pathetic form of beauty. The pale, brown-eyed wea\cr, gazing out from his cottage door with blurred vision, or poring with miserly devotion o\er his golden hoard, touches us, but does not make us smile. The comedy of incident, the farcical, lies outside her province ; once or twice, for reasons that appear adequate, the t omedj of incident was attempted and the result was not successful. The humour of George Eliot usually belongs to her conception of a character, and cannot be separated from it. Her humorous effects are secured by letting her mind drop sympathetically into a level of lower intelligence, or duller "moral perception, and by the conscious presence at the same time of the higher self. The humourous impression exists only in the qualified organs of perception which remain at the higher, the normal point of view. What had been merely an undulation of matter, when it touches tho prepared surface of the retina breaks into light. By the fire of the Kainbowvlnn, tho butcher and the farrier, the parish clerk and the deputy clerk, puff their pipes with on air of severity, " staring at one another as if a bet were depending on the first man who winked," while the humbbr beer-drinkers " keep their eyelids down, as if the draughts of beer were a funcraal duty, attended with embarrassing sadness." Tho slow talk about the red Durham is conducted with a sense of graTC responsibility on botli sides. It is we who are looking on unobscned who experience a rippling over of our moral nature with manifold laughter ; it is to our lips the smile ri<ei — a smile which (isexpressive, not of any acute access of risibility, but of a voluminous enjoyment, a mass of mingled feeling, partly tender, partly pathetic, partly humorous. The dramatic appropriateness of the Ji amorous utterances of George Eliot's characters renders them unpresentable by way of extract. Each is like the expression of a face, which cannot be detached from the face it self. The unresentful complacency w ith which Dolly Wmlliorp speaks of the frailties of masculine human creatures is l>.irt of the general absence of severity and of high views with rosp >ct to others which belongs to her character, and receives illustration from her like complacent forbearance with the natural infirmities of the pups. " They will worry and gnaw — worn and gnaw the} will, if it was one's Sunday cup as hung anywhere so they could drag it. They know no diffei once, God help 'em ; it's the pushing o' the teeth as sets them on, that's what it is." Contrast Dolly's indulgent allowances in men's favour, tempered by undeniable expenences of their scarcely excusable failings, with the keen and hostile perceptions of Denner, Mrs Transomc's waiting w oman, w ith mind as sharp as a needle, whose neat, clean-cut, mull personality is jarred by the rude power, and coarse, incoherent manners of men. "It mayn't be good luck to be a woman," Denner said, " but one begins with it from a bab\ - -one gets used to it. And I shouldn't like to be a man— to cough ao loud, and stand straddling about on a wet day, and be so wasteful of meat and drink. They're a course lot, I Hunk " " Eh, to be sure," said Dolly, gently f w hile instructing Silas in the mysteries of Eppie's wardrobe), " l'\c scon men as arc wonderfully handy wi children. The men are awkard and contrary mostly, God help 'em; but when the drink's out of 'em they aren't insensible, though they're bad for leeching and bandaging— so fiery and impatient." — George liltot, by Professor Edward Dow den, in the Contemporary Sectew.

Ami-mew Toviusts in Itvly.— ln the letter winch Mr Ruskin lias lately addressed to the working classes, lie sketches some people whom he met when going from Venice to Verona by nn afternoon tram, lie writes — " In the carnage with me were two American girls with their father and mother, people of the class w Inch lias lately made so much money suddenly, and doei not know what to do with it ; and these two girls about 15 and 18, had c> idently been indulged in everything (since they had had the means) which Western civilisation could imagine. And here they wero, specimens of the utmost which the money and invention of the nineteenth century could produce in maidenhood— children of its most progressive raee — enjoying the full advantages of political liberty, of enlightened philosophical education, of cheap pilfered literature, and of luxury at any cost. AVhatevcr money, machinery, or freedom of thought coi Id do for these two children had been done. No superstition had deceived, no restraint degraded them ; types, they could not but be of maidenly wisdom and felicity, as conceived by the forwardest intellects of our time. And they were travelling through a district which, if any in the world, should touch the hearts and delight the eyes of young girls. Between Venice and Verona ! Portia's villa perhaps in sight upon the Brenta— Juliet's tomb to be visited in the evening — blue against the southern sky the hills of Petrarch's home Exquisito midsummer sunshine, with low rays, glanced through tho vine leaves ; all the Alps were clear, from the Lake of Garcia to Cadore, and to farthest Tyrol. What a princess' chamber, this, if those are princesses, and what dreams might they not dream therein ! But the two American girls were neither princesses, nor seers, nor dreamers. Bv infinite self-indulgence they had reduced themselves •imply to two pieces of white putty that could feel pain. The flies and the dust stuck to them, as to clay, and they perceived between Venice and Verona, nothing but the flies juul the dust. They pulled down the blinds the moment the_> entered the carriage, and then sprawled, and writhed, and tossed among the cushions of it, in vain contest during the whole 50 miles, with every miserable sensation of bodily affliction that could make time intolerable. They were dressed in thin white frock*, coming vaguely open at the hacks as they stretched or wriggled ; they had French novels, lemon-<, and lumps of sHgar to beguile their state with ; the novels hanging together by the ends of string that had ouoe stitched them, or adhering it the corners in densely-bruised do"'s-ears, out of which the girls, welting their fingers, occasionally extricated a gluey leaf. From timo to time they cut a lemon open, ground a lump of sugar backwards and forw sirds over it till every fibre was in a treacloy pulp ; then sucked the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery struts, for the sake of its bitter. Only one sentence was uttered m the 50 miles on the subject of things outside the carriage (the Alps being once visible from a station where they liad drawn up the blinds)— ' Don't those snow-caps make j ou cool?" ' No ; I wish they did. 1 And so they went their wav, with scaled eyes and tormented limbs, their numbered miles of pain. PitAiSß and Cknsure. — It is not a subtle conceit, but it U consistent with observed fact, that men who are prone to pi-iiise and commend others are mostly men of melancholy o'mractcr. At any rate, they are men who take a very high icw of the difficulties and troubles of this life. Hence the) think much of small successes. Considering the faultiness of education, the strength of passion, the hardness of the world, the difficulty of making any impression upon it, and t he many embarrassments which beset a man s progress in life persons of tho character I have described are rather sururii'd at anybody's behaving well, or doing anything right lj. T lit laudation which, when uttered by other in mi, is merely nrusc of an ordinary kind, is, when uttered by these men, a lirrro appreciation of trials and difficulties overcome-perhaps BnVojMoratcd appreciation, by reason of an excess m t lie Jid and desponding view they take of human life. Follow nig a,, so-new hat of the same train of thought, we may obviTO that the censure which men pronounce upon the conduct ot others is mostly a censure proceeding from lofty pxprcta 1 ions The young especially ahound in censure of this kind, lhey Wamo severely, because they look forward so hopefully both for themselves and others; and have as jet so little apprcIwiision of the trials, htriigglei, nud difficulties iv thia confined and troubled world.