he literary exclusiveness which of set purpose she imposed upon
herself. 'The less an author hears about himself,' she says, in one
place, 'the better.' 'It is my rule, very strictly observed, not to
read the criticisms on my writings. For years I have found this
abstinence necessary to preserve me from that discouragement as an
artist, which ill-judged praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to
produce in us.' George Eliot pushed this repugnance to criticism beyond
the personal reaction of it upon the artist, and more than disparaged
its utility, even in the most competent and highly trained hands. She
finds that the diseased spot in the literary culture of our time is
touched with the finest point by the saying of La Bruyere, that 'the
pleasure of criticism robs us of the pleasure of being keenly moved by
very fine things' (iii. 327). 'It seems to me,' she writes (ii. 412),
'much better to read a man's own writings than to read what others say
about him, especially when the man is first-rate and the others
third-rate. As Goethe said long ago about Spinoza, "I always preferred
to learn from the man himself what _he_ thought, rather than to hear
from some one else what he ought to have thought."' As if the scholar
will not always be glad to do both, to study his author and not to
refuse the help of the rightly prepared commentator; as if even Goethe
himself would not have been all the better acquainted with Spinoza if he
could have read Mr. Pollock's book upon him. But on this question Mr.
Arnold has fought a brilliant battle, and to him George Eliot's heresies
may well be left.

On the personal point whether an author should ever hear of himself,
George Eliot oddly enough contradicts herself in a casual remark upon
Bulwer. 'I have a great respect,' she says, 'for the energetic industry
which has made the most of his powers. He has been writing diligently
for more than thirty years, constantly improving his position, and
profiting by the lessons of public opinion and of other writers' (ii.
322). But if it is true that the less an author hears about himself the
better, how are these salutary 'lessons of public opinion' to penetrate
to him? 'Rubens,' she says, writing from Munich in 1858 (ii. 28), 'gives
me more pleasure than any other painter whether right or wrong. More
than any one else he makes me feel that painting is a great art, and
that he was a great artist. His are such real breathing men and women,
moved b