GE to John Blackwood, London, 21 April 1873
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 21 April 1873
Title
GE to John Blackwood, London, 21 April 1873
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Blackwood
Date(s)
- 1873-04-21
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to John Blackwood, London, 21 April 1873
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: John Blackwood, p. 383.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
April 21. 73.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
This letter is not to be answered -- a fact which I put in the first place in order to make the rest agreeable.
I only want to say that I have been very sorry to hear of your illness, now happily past, and then, to thank you for sending me "Kenelm Chillingly." I was guilty of allowing a friend to run away with my copy when I had only finished the first volume so that my reading of the other two was delayed. I have had great pleasure in the purity and elevation of its tone -- its catholic view of life, free from all snobbishness or bitterness of partisanship. Of all the author's writings that I know, there is not one that we could have felt to be more harmonious with the closing epoch of a long career. The last sentence touched me deeply. 771
That pic-nic of the young ones to Strathtyrum was very pretty, and a good enough subject for a poem. I hope that the brother and sister love each other very dearly: life might be so enriched if that relation were made the most of, as one of the highest forms of friendship. A good while ago 772 I made a poem, in the form of eleven sonnets after the Shakspeare type, on the childhood of a brother and sister -- little descriptive bits on the mutual influences in their small lives. This was always one of my best loved subjects. And I was proportionately enraged about that execrable discussion raised in relation to Byron. The deliberate insistance on the subject was a worse crime against Society than the imputed fact.
We had a great, great mathematician 773 with us on Sunday, who affirmed the constant use of "insoluble" and "solution," in relation to problems: "insolvable" is a formation contrary to rule, the verb being "solvere," yet curiously enough, insolvable is found in Craig's Dictionary and insolvible not.
Mr. Murray has been so courteous as to send us a copy of the Quarterly, containing the review of me. 774 Mr. Lewes thinks the writer is a highly instructed man, whose too ready credence of external information has not hindered him from forming his judgment chiefly on the direct impressions made on him by the books intrinsically. But the scraps I gather of this and other expressions of opinion give me an amused sense of what -- speaking as if I were a member of Parliament -- I may call the "tot homines, tot sententiae."
Yours always truly
M. E. Lewes.
MS: National Library of Scotland. Extracts published: John Blackwood, p. 383.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
April 21. 73.
My dear Mr. Blackwood
This letter is not to be answered -- a fact which I put in the first place in order to make the rest agreeable.
I only want to say that I have been very sorry to hear of your illness, now happily past, and then, to thank you for sending me "Kenelm Chillingly." I was guilty of allowing a friend to run away with my copy when I had only finished the first volume so that my reading of the other two was delayed. I have had great pleasure in the purity and elevation of its tone -- its catholic view of life, free from all snobbishness or bitterness of partisanship. Of all the author's writings that I know, there is not one that we could have felt to be more harmonious with the closing epoch of a long career. The last sentence touched me deeply. 771
That pic-nic of the young ones to Strathtyrum was very pretty, and a good enough subject for a poem. I hope that the brother and sister love each other very dearly: life might be so enriched if that relation were made the most of, as one of the highest forms of friendship. A good while ago 772 I made a poem, in the form of eleven sonnets after the Shakspeare type, on the childhood of a brother and sister -- little descriptive bits on the mutual influences in their small lives. This was always one of my best loved subjects. And I was proportionately enraged about that execrable discussion raised in relation to Byron. The deliberate insistance on the subject was a worse crime against Society than the imputed fact.
We had a great, great mathematician 773 with us on Sunday, who affirmed the constant use of "insoluble" and "solution," in relation to problems: "insolvable" is a formation contrary to rule, the verb being "solvere," yet curiously enough, insolvable is found in Craig's Dictionary and insolvible not.
Mr. Murray has been so courteous as to send us a copy of the Quarterly, containing the review of me. 774 Mr. Lewes thinks the writer is a highly instructed man, whose too ready credence of external information has not hindered him from forming his judgment chiefly on the direct impressions made on him by the books intrinsically. But the scraps I gather of this and other expressions of opinion give me an amused sense of what -- speaking as if I were a member of Parliament -- I may call the "tot homines, tot sententiae."
Yours always truly
M. E. Lewes.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Blackwood, London, 21 April 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/92638