Lord Lytton to GHL, Knebworth, 8 June [1874]
Title
Lord Lytton to GHL, Knebworth, 8 June [1874]
Title
Lord Lytton to GHL, Knebworth, 8 June [1874]
Sender
Lord Lytton
Recipient
M
Date(s)
- 1874-06-08
Place
Knebworth
Letter Content
Lord Lytton to GHL, Knebworth, 8 June [1874]
MS: Yale.
Knebworth, | Stevenage, Herts | 8 June.
My dear Lewes,
I have long been wishing to write you a line, but there have been intervening if not extenuating circumstances.
I know not whether it is to "George Eliot" or to Blackwood that I owe the welcome receipt of a copy of the new volume of Poems 239, (which reached me just before we left Paris), but "without being personal" I wish to express my most grateful thanks for it. There are some notes sounded by this little book (which is worth all the big books of modern verse put together) in a key which I had not associated with the writer's masters' touch. In such a key is the whole stream of that most exquisite poem [Brother and Sister.] To me this poem presents in one harmonious effect all the aspects of poetic beauty -- genuine and sincere human sentiment of a high order, wrought to a high lyric utterance, and yet in sympathy with what is common to universal experience, sustained melody in union with a sustained strain of emotion, both the sense and the purest delicacy of thought and word. The Minor Prophet is a masterpiece like one of those antique cameos which, within the narrow compass of a finger ring, is so wrought as, by the sharpness of its cutting and the largeness of the sentiment, to affect one with a sense of colossal size.
I think that G. Elliot's greatest effects are generally most appreciable when presented on a large canvass, on which she has had plenty of room to develop the spaciousness of her genius, and the poems in this volume which I like least are the purely lyrical ones. But from these Arion stands out on a promontory of his own with all the essentials of grandeur. All my old favourites I like more and more; of the more elaborate pieces the one I appreciate most coldly, recognizing its great merits but without enthusiasm, is Agatha. [Stradivarius] is delightful in every detail, and a grand poem altogether.
What I have seen of the reviews, laudatory and respectful though they be, exasperates me to the highest degree of disgust. The British Public, as represented and educated by the critical press, is always burying alive in their own reputations its greatest literary benefactors, by walling them round forever with materials taken from their own books. The development of every original genius is ever, as it seems to me, in our Country, impeded and obstructed by the Public's hasty classification of it, for the public having an uncomfortable consciousness that such classifications are premature and imperfect, is always disinclined to acknowledge the necessity of abandoning them. Tennyson has been stunted and atrophied like a Chinese oak by the fear of ever outgrowing the small flower-pot of an established success. I hope that the author of Jubal and the Spanish Gypsy will not listen, and that you will not allow her to listen to those oafs who exhort her not to write Poetry because she can write such great prose. Her Poetry is, in its own sphere, quite as great as her prose, and just as much a genuine part of her. Her genius will miss its own completion if she neglects this side of it. If I may venture to say it without appearing to you presumptuous, what has particularly struck me in this last volume is the encreased spontaneity of the purely lyric note, the bird note which chirps in the soul of every poet, but which intellectual poets sometimes deaden by building too elaborate a nest for the bird, and choosing too high a tree for the nest.
I got your book 240 just as I was leaving Paris, but have not yet been able to begin it. My mind is at sixes and sevens just now, and incapable of grappling with any problem of life of more general importance than the personal one which is now pressing on it, whether or not to resign my post abroad and settle in England. To be or not to be. 241 The pros and cons of this personal problem are so nicely adjusted that I cannot yet succeed in making one scale outweigh the other, though I lie awake all night turning the balance and shifting the weights. Chapters on Free Will and Necessity might be illustrated from my present mental condition if a philosopher could analyse it.
I returned only a week ago from Yorkshire, where I have been speechifying to Mechanics 242 (an experimentum in corpore vile) and am now settled for two months at Knebworth; the place itself being altogether unsettled. The new bedrooms I have been building here for nearly twelve months are still unfinished and we live en bivouac, surrounded by bricklayers dust and through draughts. My poor wife is still very seedy, and indeed has never rallied at all from the effects of that last great blow. We hope to be in England till the 1st of August. Between this and then how are you and I to meet? I earnestly desire your practical assistance in the solution of this problem, which is one of life and mind in which I am directly interested.
What an amazing and unpleasant story this of Browning's matrimonial engagement to the widow Benzon! 243
Adieu my dear old friend,
Your ever affect[ionate]
Lytton.
MS: Yale.
Knebworth, | Stevenage, Herts | 8 June.
My dear Lewes,
I have long been wishing to write you a line, but there have been intervening if not extenuating circumstances.
I know not whether it is to "George Eliot" or to Blackwood that I owe the welcome receipt of a copy of the new volume of Poems 239, (which reached me just before we left Paris), but "without being personal" I wish to express my most grateful thanks for it. There are some notes sounded by this little book (which is worth all the big books of modern verse put together) in a key which I had not associated with the writer's masters' touch. In such a key is the whole stream of that most exquisite poem [Brother and Sister.] To me this poem presents in one harmonious effect all the aspects of poetic beauty -- genuine and sincere human sentiment of a high order, wrought to a high lyric utterance, and yet in sympathy with what is common to universal experience, sustained melody in union with a sustained strain of emotion, both the sense and the purest delicacy of thought and word. The Minor Prophet is a masterpiece like one of those antique cameos which, within the narrow compass of a finger ring, is so wrought as, by the sharpness of its cutting and the largeness of the sentiment, to affect one with a sense of colossal size.
I think that G. Elliot's greatest effects are generally most appreciable when presented on a large canvass, on which she has had plenty of room to develop the spaciousness of her genius, and the poems in this volume which I like least are the purely lyrical ones. But from these Arion stands out on a promontory of his own with all the essentials of grandeur. All my old favourites I like more and more; of the more elaborate pieces the one I appreciate most coldly, recognizing its great merits but without enthusiasm, is Agatha. [Stradivarius] is delightful in every detail, and a grand poem altogether.
What I have seen of the reviews, laudatory and respectful though they be, exasperates me to the highest degree of disgust. The British Public, as represented and educated by the critical press, is always burying alive in their own reputations its greatest literary benefactors, by walling them round forever with materials taken from their own books. The development of every original genius is ever, as it seems to me, in our Country, impeded and obstructed by the Public's hasty classification of it, for the public having an uncomfortable consciousness that such classifications are premature and imperfect, is always disinclined to acknowledge the necessity of abandoning them. Tennyson has been stunted and atrophied like a Chinese oak by the fear of ever outgrowing the small flower-pot of an established success. I hope that the author of Jubal and the Spanish Gypsy will not listen, and that you will not allow her to listen to those oafs who exhort her not to write Poetry because she can write such great prose. Her Poetry is, in its own sphere, quite as great as her prose, and just as much a genuine part of her. Her genius will miss its own completion if she neglects this side of it. If I may venture to say it without appearing to you presumptuous, what has particularly struck me in this last volume is the encreased spontaneity of the purely lyric note, the bird note which chirps in the soul of every poet, but which intellectual poets sometimes deaden by building too elaborate a nest for the bird, and choosing too high a tree for the nest.
I got your book 240 just as I was leaving Paris, but have not yet been able to begin it. My mind is at sixes and sevens just now, and incapable of grappling with any problem of life of more general importance than the personal one which is now pressing on it, whether or not to resign my post abroad and settle in England. To be or not to be. 241 The pros and cons of this personal problem are so nicely adjusted that I cannot yet succeed in making one scale outweigh the other, though I lie awake all night turning the balance and shifting the weights. Chapters on Free Will and Necessity might be illustrated from my present mental condition if a philosopher could analyse it.
I returned only a week ago from Yorkshire, where I have been speechifying to Mechanics 242 (an experimentum in corpore vile) and am now settled for two months at Knebworth; the place itself being altogether unsettled. The new bedrooms I have been building here for nearly twelve months are still unfinished and we live en bivouac, surrounded by bricklayers dust and through draughts. My poor wife is still very seedy, and indeed has never rallied at all from the effects of that last great blow. We hope to be in England till the 1st of August. Between this and then how are you and I to meet? I earnestly desire your practical assistance in the solution of this problem, which is one of life and mind in which I am directly interested.
What an amazing and unpleasant story this of Browning's matrimonial engagement to the widow Benzon! 243
Adieu my dear old friend,
Your ever affect[ionate]
Lytton.
Signature
Lytton.
Citation
Lord Lytton, Lord Lytton to GHL, Knebworth, 8 June [1874], 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/95530