GE to Edward Burne-Jones, London, 20 March 1873
Title
GE to Edward Burne-Jones, London, 20 March 1873
Title
GE to Edward Burne-Jones, London, 20 March 1873
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Edward Burne-Jones
Date(s)
- 1873-03-20
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Edward Burne-Jones, London, 20 March 1873
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, III, 199-201.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 73.
Dear Mr. Burne Jones
I suppose my hesitation about writing to you to tell you of a debt I feel towards you is all vanity. If you did not know me you might think a great deal more of my judgment than it is worth and I should feel bold in that possibility. But when judgment is understood to mean simply one's own impression of delight, one ought not to shrink from making one's small offering of burnt clay because others can give gold statues.
It would be narrowness to suppose that an artist can only care for the impressions of those who know the methods of his art as well as feel its effects. Art works for all whom it can touch. And I want in gratitude to tell you that your work makes life larger and more beautiful to us -- I mean that historical life of all the world in which our little personal share of her seems a mere standing room from which we can look all round, and chiefly backward. Perhaps the work has a strain of special sadness in it -- perhaps a deeper sense of the tremendous outer forces which urge us than of the inner impulse towards heroic struggle and achievement -- but the sadness is so inwrought with pure elevating sensibility to all that is sweet and beautiful in the story of man and in the face of the earth, that it can no more be found fault with than the sadness of midday when Pan is touchy like the rest of us. Don't you agree with me that much superfluous stuff is written on all sides about purpose in art? A nasty mind makes nasty art, whether for art or any other sake. And a meagre mind will bring forth what is meagre. And some effect in determining other minds there must be according to the degree of nobleness or meanness in the selection made by the artist's soul.
Your work impresses me with the happy sense of noble selection and of power determined by refined sympathy. That is why I wanted to thank you in writing, since lip-homage has fallen into disrepute. I can't help liking to tell you a sign that my delight must have taken a little bit of the same curve as yours. Looking, 'e0propos of your picture, 756 into the Iphigenia in Aulis to read the chorus you know of, I found my blue pencil marks made seven years ago (and gone into that forgetfulness which makes my mind seem very large and empty) -- blue pencil marks made against the dance-loving Kithara and the footsteps of the Muses and the Nereids dancing on the shining sands. 757 I was pleased to see that my mind had been touched in a dumb way by what has touched yours to fine utterance.
Always yours faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
Please tell your wife that I found her out the other day in attributing to me a degree of old womanish imbecility which I have not yet reached.
She must come the sooner and be confounded by the demonstration that I have a fine feminine memory for useless things.
MS: Yale. Mostly published: Cross, III, 199-201.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
March 20. 73.
Dear Mr. Burne Jones
I suppose my hesitation about writing to you to tell you of a debt I feel towards you is all vanity. If you did not know me you might think a great deal more of my judgment than it is worth and I should feel bold in that possibility. But when judgment is understood to mean simply one's own impression of delight, one ought not to shrink from making one's small offering of burnt clay because others can give gold statues.
It would be narrowness to suppose that an artist can only care for the impressions of those who know the methods of his art as well as feel its effects. Art works for all whom it can touch. And I want in gratitude to tell you that your work makes life larger and more beautiful to us -- I mean that historical life of all the world in which our little personal share of her seems a mere standing room from which we can look all round, and chiefly backward. Perhaps the work has a strain of special sadness in it -- perhaps a deeper sense of the tremendous outer forces which urge us than of the inner impulse towards heroic struggle and achievement -- but the sadness is so inwrought with pure elevating sensibility to all that is sweet and beautiful in the story of man and in the face of the earth, that it can no more be found fault with than the sadness of midday when Pan is touchy like the rest of us. Don't you agree with me that much superfluous stuff is written on all sides about purpose in art? A nasty mind makes nasty art, whether for art or any other sake. And a meagre mind will bring forth what is meagre. And some effect in determining other minds there must be according to the degree of nobleness or meanness in the selection made by the artist's soul.
Your work impresses me with the happy sense of noble selection and of power determined by refined sympathy. That is why I wanted to thank you in writing, since lip-homage has fallen into disrepute. I can't help liking to tell you a sign that my delight must have taken a little bit of the same curve as yours. Looking, 'e0propos of your picture, 756 into the Iphigenia in Aulis to read the chorus you know of, I found my blue pencil marks made seven years ago (and gone into that forgetfulness which makes my mind seem very large and empty) -- blue pencil marks made against the dance-loving Kithara and the footsteps of the Muses and the Nereids dancing on the shining sands. 757 I was pleased to see that my mind had been touched in a dumb way by what has touched yours to fine utterance.
Always yours faithfully
M. E. Lewes.
Please tell your wife that I found her out the other day in attributing to me a degree of old womanish imbecility which I have not yet reached.
She must come the sooner and be confounded by the demonstration that I have a fine feminine memory for useless things.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Edward Burne-Jones, London, 20 March 1873, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://www.georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/92277