How similar these two novelists must have been! Yet one of them was George Eliot and the other Dostoevsky.
It will be said that Dostoevsky had vision. Still, so had George Eliot. To classify them apart—and they must be parted—is not so easy. But the difference between them will define itself at once exactly if I read two passages from their works. To the classifier the passages will seem similar: to anyone who has an ear for song they come out of different worlds.
I will begin with a passage—fifty years ago it was a very famous passage—out of Adam Bede. Hetty is in prison, condemned to die for the murder of her illegitimate child. She will not confess, she is hard and impenitent. Dinah, the Methodist, comes to visit her and tries to touch her heart.
Dinah began to doubt whether Hetty was conscious who it was that sat beside her. But she felt the Divine presence more and more—nay, as if she herself were a part of it, and it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart, and was willing the rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to speak, and find out how far Hetty was conscious of the present.
“Hetty,” she said gently, “do you know who it is that sits by your side?”
“Yes,” Hetty answered slowly, “it’s Dinah.” Then, after a pause, she added, “But you can do nothing for me. You can’t make ’em do anything. They’ll hang me o’ Monday—it’s Friday now.”
“But, Hetty, there is someone else in this cell besides me, someone close to you.”
Hetty said, in a frightened whisper, “Who?”
“Someone who has been with you through all your hours of sin and trouble—who has known every thought you have had—has seen where you went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can’t follow you, when my arms can’t reach you, when death has parted us, He who is with you now and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no difference—whether we live or die we are in the presence of God.”
“Oh, Dinah, won’t nobody do anything for me? Will they hang me for certain? … I wouldn’t mind if they’d let me live … help me. … I can’t feel anything like you … my heart is hard.”
Dinah held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice: “… Come, mighty Saviour! let the dead hear Thy voice; let the eyes of the blind be opened: let her see that God encompasses her; let her tremble at nothing but the sin that cuts her off from Him. Melt the hard heart; unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her whole soul, ‘Father, I have sinned.’ ”
“Dinah,” Hetty sobbed out, throwing her arms round Dinah’s neck, “I will speak … I will tell … I won’t hide it any more. I did do it, Dinah … I buried in the wood … the little baby … and it cried … I heard it cry … ever such a way off … all night … and I went back because it cried.”
She paused and then spoke hurriedly in a louder pleading tone.
“But I thought perhaps it wouldn’t die—there might somebody find it. I didn’t kill it—I didn’t kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone. … I don’t know what I felt until I found that the baby was gone. And when I put it there, I thought I should like somebody to find it and save it from dying, but when I saw it was gone, I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never thought o’ stirring, I felt so weak. I knew I couldn’t run away, and everybody as saw me ’ud know about the baby. My heart went like stone; I couldn’t wish or try for anything; it seemed like as if I should stay there forever, and nothing ’ud ever change. But they came and took me away.”
Hetty was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still something behind: and Dinah waited, for her heart was so full that tears must come before words. At last Hetty burst out with a sob.
“Dinah, do you think God will take away that crying and the place in the wood, now I’ve told everything?”
“Let us pray, poor sinner: let us fall on our knees again, and pray to the God of all mercy.”
I have not done justice to this scene, because I have had to cut it, and it is on her massiveness that George Eliot depends—she has no nicety of style. The scene is sincere, solid, pathetic, and penetrated with Christianity. The god whom Dinah summons is a living force to the authoress also: he is not brought in to work up the reader’s feelings; he is the natural accompaniment of human error and suffering.
Now contrast with it the following scene from The Brothers Karamazov (Mitya is being accused of the murder of his father, of which he is indeed spiritually though not technically guilty).
They proceeded to a final revision of the protocol. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a large chest covered by a rug, and instantly fell asleep.
He had a strange dream,
