Priscilla, the Helper: a Memoir of Mrs. Rowton, of Coventry

Priscilla, the Helper: a Memoir of Mrs. Rowton, of Coventry

Hewlett, John Grigg

London: Ward & Co., 1841

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1841

George Eliot to Martha Jackson, October 1841. "I have been reading the little memoir of Mrs. Rowton, a person not probably unknown to you, and am shamestricken in having brought to my remembrance my own opportunities of benefitting others by conversation, writing, and the powerful eloquence of tacit obedience to the Divine precepts, and contrasting my use of them with that she made of every similar occasion. Much is said about the love of the beautiful, and the idea of perfection as a characteristic of the refined mind, and as being the spring of all high attainment in the triple sisterhood, painting, poetry, and music. But there is a more important application of the terms, a moral one, which I trust we shall ever have before our mind's eye -- the love of the beauty of holiness, and a continual yearning after a conformity to it, an habitual contemplation of Moral Perfection, and a dissatisfaction with all that falls short of that standard. These are sentiments that will issue in high attainments, in the best mode of exercising our imitative faculties; they will make us in some degree exemplars of whatsoever things are honest, pure, lovely, and of good report. Let us never hear of or behold what is virtuous and holy without being stirred to new energy in its imitation; let us not be satisfied with a negative character, but seek to double the talents our Master has given us, remembering the great love wherewith He hath loved us, and the honour He has conferred on us by making us recipients of His treasures, that we may advance his glory in freely communicating what we have so freely received. . . ." GEL 1: 118-9

Hewlett, John Grigg, Priscilla, the Helper: a Memoir of Mrs. Rowton, of Coventry, 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/57507

https://georgeeliotarchive.org/files/original/a9c28636c17a971aaa6b27eaa2f4ddc5.pdf