and habits of thought, up to the gates of existence, as it were, where she took him simply as God created him, and clave to him."
Thackeray and Trollope also apologize for some of the
people they ridicule, but with this characteristic difference,
that Thackeray bespeaks your indulgence for a Pendennis
or a Philip on the Horatian ground,
"Nam vitiis nemo sine nascitur; optimus ille est
Qui minimis urgetur."
But Trollope conscientiously reminds the reader that his picture of an Archdeacon Grantly, a George Bertram, even a Mrs. Proudie, is one-sided; that their dramatic and amusing faults have been allowed to overshadow their less entertaining but existent virtues; and that to know all would be, not to forgive all, but to forgive judiciously. His story of the childish lapse and manly recovery of the vicar Robarts concludes with the reflection, "A man may be very imperfect and yet worth a great deal."[1] This is a clear, cool discrimination far more difficult to attain than Thackeray's nebulous implication that though this man is certainly very imperfect and not worth a great deal yet his dear womenkind excuse him and we adore them for it.
George Eliot is too stern to do much excusing, but she always gives due weight to "the terrible coercion of our deeds." If she insists on the baleful effect of yielding to temptation, she insists also on an appreciation of the tempting force. She analyzes the culprit:[2]
- ↑ Framley Parsonage, 306.
- ↑ Adam Bede, II, 37. Cf. Lord Fleetwood's complaint to Carinthia that she has hit him hard and justly, followed by his acknowledgment,—"Not you. Our deeds are the hard hitters. We learn when they begin to flagellate, stroke upon stroke! Suppose we hold a costly thing in the hand and dash it to the ground—no recovery of it, none!" An Amazing Marriage, 439.
