read it again, I find it impossible to abandon it: the conceptions move me deeply, and they have never been wrought out before. There is not a thought or symbol that I do not long to use; but the whole requires recasting, and as I never recast anything before, I think of the issue very doubtfully. When one has to work out the dramatic action for one's self, under the inspiration of an idea, instead of having a grand myth or an Italian novel ready to one's hand, one feels anything but omnipotent. Not that I should have done any better if I had had the myth or the novel, for I am not a good user of opportunities. I think I have the right locus and historic conditions, but much else is wanting." On October 15th the diary says:—" Recommenced The Spanish Gipsy, intending to give it a new form." The next item in the preparation of The Spanish Gipsy was a journey to Spain, undertaken at the beginning of 1867. "We are both heartily rejoiced that we came to Spain," she writes from Granada to Mr. John Blackwood. "It was a great longing of mine, for three years ago I began to interest myself in Spanish history and literature, and have had a work lying by me, partly written, the subject of which is connected with Spain. Whether I shall ever bring it to maturity so as to satisfy myself sufficiently to print it, is a question not settled, but it is a work very near my heart." Four acts out of five had been finished under her first conception of the work, and she now speaks deprecatingly of it as "partly written," showing what immense pains she was prepared to spend upon it, and how completely she was recasting its form. She writes again to Mr. Blackwood in March, 1867 :-"The Work connected with Spain is not a romance. It is prepare your fortitude-it is a poem. I conceived the plot and wrote nearly the whole as a drama in 1864. . . . Of course, if it is ever finished to my satisfaction, it is not a work for us to get money by, but Mr. Lewes urges and insists that it shall be done." On June 1, the diary is resumed:- "Wrote up to the moment when Fedalma appears in the Plaça.-June 5. Blackwood dined with us, and I read to him my poem down to page 56. He showed - great delight.-July 29. We went to Dover this evening as a start on a journey into Germany.-Oct. 1. We returned home after revisiting the scenes of cherished memories. . . At Ilmenau I wrote Fedalma's soliloquy after her scene with Silva, and the following dialogue between her and Juan. At Dresden I rewrote the whole scene between her and Zarca.-Oct. 31. I have now inserted all that I think of for the first part of The Spanish Gipsy. On Monday I wrote three new lyrics. I have also rewritten the first scenes in the gypsy camp, to the end of the dialogue between Juan and Fedalma. But I have determined to make the commencement of the second part continue the picture of what goes forward in Bedmar.-Nov. 1. Began this morning Part II. -Silva was marching homeward, etc."" In December she is able to tell her publishers that " Mr. Lewes is in an unprecedented state of delight with the poem, now that he is reading it with close care. He says he is astonished that he can't find more faults." At Easter George Eliot and Lewes went for a fortnight to Torquay, and on April 16th" returned home, bringing Book IV. finished." On April 18th, says the diary,—" went with Mr. Pigott to see Holman Hunt's great picture, Isabella and the Pot of Basil.'-April 25th. Finished the last dialogue between Silva and Fedalma. Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones dined with us.-April 29th. Finished The Spanish Gipsy." In sending off the last sheets she writes to Mr. Blackwood: "The poem will be less tragic than I threatened: Mr. Lewes has prevailed on me to return to my original conception, and give up the additional development (making the catastrophe turn on the death of Silva) which I determined on subsequently. . . . I chose the title The Spanish Gipsy a long time ago, because it is a little in the fashion of the elder dramatists, with whom I have perhaps more cousinship than with recent poets." The following account of the poem,-an undated fragment headed "Notes on the Spanish Gipsy and Tragedy in General"—was found among George Eliot's papers after her death : "The subject of The Spanish Gipsy was originally suggested to me by a picture which hangs in the Scuola di San Rocco at Venice, over the door of the large Sala containing Tintoretto's frescoes. It is an Annunciation, said to be by Titian. Of course, I had seen numerous pictures of this subject before, and the subject had always attracted me. But in this my second visit to the Scuola di San Rocco, this small picture of Titian's, pointed out to me for the first time, brought a new train of thought. It occurred to me that here was a great dramatic motive of the same class as those used by the Greek dramatists, yet specifically differing from them. A young maiden, believing herself to be on the eve of the chief event of her life-marriage-about to share in the ordinary lot of womanhood, full of young hope, has suddenly announced to her that she is chosen to fulfil a great destiny, entailing a terribly different experience from that of ordinary womanhood. She is chosen, not by any momentary arbitrariness, but as a result of foregoing hereditary conditions: she obeys. 'Behold the handmaid of the Lord.' Here, I thought, is a subject grander than that of Iphigenia, and it has never been used. I came home with this in my mind, meaning to give the motive a clothing in some suitable set of historical and local conditions. My reflections brought me nothing that would serve me except that moment in Spanish history when the struggle with the Moors was attaining its climax, and when there was the gypsy race present under such conditions as would enable me to get my heroine and the hereditary claim on her among the gypsies. I required the opposition of race to give the need for renouncing the expectation of marriage. I could not use the Jews or the Moors, because the facts of their history were too conspicuously opposed to the working out of my catastrophe. Meanwhile, the subject had become more and more pregnant to me. I saw it might be taken as a symbol of the part which is played in the general human lot by hereditary conditions in the largest sense, and of the fact that what we call duty is entirely made up of such conditions; for even in cases of just antagonism to the narrow view of hereditary claims, the whole background of the particular struggle is made up of our inherited nature. Suppose for a moment that our conduct at great epochs was determined entirely by reflection, without the immediate intervention of feeling which supersedes reflection, our determination as to the right would consist in an adjustment of our individual needs to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to our natural constitution, partly as sharers of life with our fellow-beings. Tragedy consists in the terrible difficulty of this adjustment 'the dire strife Of poor Humanity's afflicted will, Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny.' Looking at individual lots, I seemed to see in each the same story, wrought out with more or less of tragedy, and I determined the elements of my drama under the influence of these ideas. In order to judge properly of the dramatic structure, it must not be considered first in the light of doctrinal symbolism, but in the light of a tragedy representing some grand collision in the human lot. A good tragic subject must represent a possible, sufficiently probable, but not a common, action, and to be really tragic, it must represent irreparable collision between the individual and the general. It is the individual with whom we sympathize, and the general of which we recognize the irresistible power. The truth of this test will be seen by applying it to the greatest tragedies." The writer goes on to illustrate this idea of collision between the individual will and the force of heredity or social conditions, by reference to the Greek tragedies and to Shakespeare. Returning to The Spanish Gipsy she goes on:-" A tragedy has not to expound why the individual must give way to the general: it has to show that it is compelled to give way, the tragedy consisting in the struggle involved, and often in the entirely calamitous issue in spite of a grand submission. Silva presents the tragedy of entire rebellion Fedalma of a grand submission, which is rendered vain by the effects of Silva's rebellion: Zarca, the struggle for a great end, rendered vain by the surrounding conditions of life. . . . There is really no 'moral sanction' but the inward impulse. The will of God is the same thing as the will of other men, compelling us to work and avoid what they have seen to be harmful to social existence. Any other notion comes from the supposition of arbitrary revelation. . . . In Silva is presented the claim of fidelity to social pledges; in Fedalma the claim constituted by an hereditary lot less consciously shared." The Spanish Gipsy holds the chief place in George Eliot's volume of poems, and in her own thought of her work in poetry. The little drama of Armgart, slight as it is, will appeal to many readers more strongly, through the modern. human interest with which it deals. Both this and The Legend of Jubal are founded on a musical subject, and it is surprising that with her ardent love and keen judgment of music George Eliot should have had so little ear for beauty of rhythm and quality of sound and verse. Of Armgart we read in the journal for August 4, 1870-To-day, under much depression, I begin a little dramatic poem, the subject of which engaged my interest at Harrowgate." In October she mentions it again:-"On Monday the 8th August we went to our favorite Surrey retreat, Limpsfield, and enjoyed three weeks there reading and talking together. During our stay at Limpsfield, I wrote the greater part of Armgart, and finished it at intervals during September." Agatha was written (she afterwards said) "after a visit to that St. Margen described at the beginning of the poem. There was really an aged woman among those green hills who suggested the picture of Agatha.'" This poem was sold to Messrs. Fields & Osgood for the Atlantic Monthly for £300. How Lisa loved the King belongs to 1869, and was finished and sent to press on February 15th. On May 19, 1874, her journal says: -"This month has been published a volume of my poemsThe Legend of Jubal and other Poems." By the beginning of the following year the fifth edition of The Spanish Gipsy |