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GEORGE ELIOT
9

to create a personality which she deliberately asserted to be on a level with the great spiritual leaders of mankind. We have reasons for saying that the identification of the Jewish prophet of Daniel Deronda with a philosophic Jew described by Mr. G. H. Lewes in the Fortnightly Review is erroneous. The Jews give the greatest example in modern times of fidelity to the claims of race, and it was natural that George Eliot should have sympathised with Jewish aspirations. In The Spanish Gypsy she had already portrayed a fine figure in the Jew Sephardo. In Mordecai Cohen she attempted to idealise the history of this remarkable race, and by so doing destroyed the chances of success for her most elaborate production. Want of knowledge and want of sympathy with the Jewish ideal will probably always be an effectual bar to the appreciation of Daniel Deronda, and the hero plays the difficult part of irradiating sympathy instead of doing noble deeds. Yet it would be rash to assert that, if the Jewish race again became prominent as a nationality, Daniel Deronda may not ultimately figure as one of the favourite books of the Chosen People. Even as it is, it must be recognised that the conception of such a character as the principal Jew of the book shows singular artistic daring.