The Life of Spinoza, within The Oxford and Cambridge Review, vol. 5 [x]

The Life of Spinoza, within The Oxford and Cambridge Review, vol. 5 [x]

Froude, James Anthony

London: John Ollivier, 1847. The Oxford and Cambridge Review, vol. 5, pp. 387-427

Not Applicable

1847

George Eliot to Herbert Spencer, [8] July 1852. “I am ashamed to give a report of myself, for I have done nothing but dream away my time since I came. I think of retiring from the world, like old Weller, if my good landlady will accept me as a tenant all the year round. I fancy I should soon be on an equality, in point of sensibility, with the star-fish and sea-egg -- perhaps you will wickedly say, I certainly want little of being a Medusa. I have had a loathing for books -- for all tagging together of sentences since I came, and have liked everything as indefinite as the sounds of an AEolian harp. You see I am sinking fast towards "homogeneity," and my brain will soon be a mere pulp unless you come to arrest the downward process. I have read Deerbrook, and am surprized at the depths of feeling it reveals. Rose, Blanche and Violet, too -- at least the two first volumes -- the third I left behind and (damaging fact, either for me or the novel!) I don't care to have it. I have read a good deal of "In Memoriam" -- which, believe it or not, has great beauties -- though the artificiality of the form is unforgiveable. Froude's much talked of article on Spinoza too I have read at last, and find it a mere sketch of his life -- picturesquely done but with the usual Froudian sentimentality and false veneration. This morning I determined to reform and plunged into Warburton. Henceforth I mean to live laborious days -- that is to say until I have made up my mind to fraternize with the star-fish.” GEL 8: 51-2. Source: Avrom Fleischman. George Eliot - George Henry Lewes Studies, September 2008, No. 54/55 (September 2008), p. 14

Froude, James Anthony, The Life of Spinoza, within The Oxford and Cambridge Review, vol. 5 [x], George Eliot's Reading, George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/57832