Robert Lytton to GHL, Vienna, 23 March 1872
Title
Robert Lytton to GHL, Vienna, 23 March 1872
Title
Robert Lytton to GHL, Vienna, 23 March 1872
Sender
Robert Lytton
Recipient
M
Date(s)
- 1872-03-23
Place
Vienna
Letter Content
Robert Lytton to GHL, Vienna, 23 March 1872
MS: Yale.
Saturday 23 March 1872 | Vienna.
My dear Lewes
Edith charges me to inform the Prior and Prioress that yesterday at 2. 20 a.m. she gave birth to a little boy, 86 and that our young Astyanax as well as his dear Mother are going on famously. The February number of the Fortnightly only reached me yesterday, and I have read in it with the greatest interest your admirable paper on Dickens. 87 It is delighful reading and appears to me a very masterly piece of criticism. Fully recognizing the justice of your specification of the qualities which Dickens had and had not, I shall perhaps shock you however by the avowal that I rate higher the qualities he had, than those he had not. It appears to me that the reflective tendency, analytical faculty, aesthetic judgement and taste, culture, accurate drawing, accurate style, even in combination with other intellectual powers of a high order, do not of themselves constitute genius, though they are invaluable adjuncts to it, -- as zeros are to units, -- and greatly elevate the order of the genius to which they are joined. But a prolific imagination of unequalled intensity "furnished with the elements of universal power" able to create a whole world of fictitious images which it is impossible to contemplate without immediate involuntary and inevitable emotion is so undoubtedly genius that whatever the defects of art or intellect with which we find it combined, it stands for all time in a higher order than any combination of faultless talents standing alone.
That is why I can never, in my own view of them both, put Thackeray on a level with Dickens, though the critics seem to put him higher. I can see nothing in Thackeray but well trained talent of a very high order. Dickens is the Poet of the Bourgeoisie all the world over. He has poeticised the bourgeois virtues and vices. What is Thackeray the poet of? There is not a single touch in all his writings which affects me poetically, and he seems to me as immeasurably inferior to Dickens as talent is to genius, although he is as undoubtedly free from the defects of Dickens as Dickens is destitute of the merits of Thackeray. Those merits are certainly great. But have they not been overrated by his Eulogists? You couple him incidentally with Fielding. 88 But I don't know whether you classify them together. My impressions put Fielding very high above him. Comparing the masterpieces of each, there is a cosmical fullness about Tom Jones, which I cannot find in Vanity Fair. One is the whole orbis veteribus notus in a focus, the other only May Fair under a magnifying glass. Thackeray's keen perception, and careful picturing of a certain section of society is put forward with a mighty flourish of trumpets by himself and his ep'edgonoi as knowledge and portraiture of human nature. If one of Balzac's little fingers could have been cut off and planted in the social soil of London, it might have sprouted into a Thackeray. And even the vividness of vision with which he saw the society he describes I suspect to be largely owing to the fact that he was a parvenu in it. The commonest phenomena impressed him as vividly as common things impress children to whom they are new and unhacknied, and like children he was always inclined to see in such phenomena a volition which had no existence except in his own imagination. This struck me greatly in his conversation. He was incessantly referring the most trival actions to the most recondite motives. I think his influence on the literature of English Fiction has been unfortunate. His imitators are eternally painting in minute strokes, the characters and doings of a number of commonplace and vulgar persons, whom I, for one, would shun like the pest if I met them in real life, and then pausing at every chapter to say "See how sobre is our colouring, how accurate our drawing, how true to nature we are!"
Your illustration of the child's spotted horse on wheels is a master stroke. 89 It is one of those rare explanatory images which attain the perfect ideal of demonstration, giving concrete form to the result of a long train of the subtlest analytical thinking, and is worth folios of argument. It strikes me as eminently just and unanswerably cogent. But after all, how superlative is the merit of any imaginative writer who can reduce his readers involuntarily to the sensational condition of a child or a savage! And what matters it whether the subject we contemplate be a wooden horse, or a waxwork figure, if we contemplate it with such na'efvet'e9 of sensation as to laugh or cry heartily at the sight of it? I suspect that with many, perhaps most of us, as regards works of imagination our appreciation of an author is greatly dependent on accident. Do we ever appreciate the poet we read for the first time in later life as heartily as we appreciated the Poet we read at eighteen when we were first in love? We may grow out of him in after life, but can we ever grow into any other poet as entirely? Imaginative writers appeal to our emotions. The response to their appeal depends more upon ourselves than upon them, and we ourselves depend so much on circumstance!
If you ever want to give me a great treat, you will write me a letter. My thoughts are more constantly with you and yours than I have any means of letting you know. The Baby is thin but healthy. He reminds me strangely of his poor brother -- whom I think him very like -- for I have now sufficient paternal experience to distinguish between the ugliness of one baby and that of another.
Edith and I are much excited by a letter, which I have just been reading to her, from Lizy 90 who says [I am just going to call on Mrs Lewes]: and much disappointed by finding at the end of the letter that Mrs Lewes was out when she called. Vale et seu memor mei. Nobody can admire and love you and your dear wife more than you are loved and admired by your affectionate
R. Lytton.
The Kladdersdatsch says -- The Pope is ready to burn the Old Catholics for denying that 2 + 2 = 6 and D'f6linger 91 is ready to go to the stake for the assertion that 2 + 2 only = 5!
MS: Yale.
Saturday 23 March 1872 | Vienna.
My dear Lewes
Edith charges me to inform the Prior and Prioress that yesterday at 2. 20 a.m. she gave birth to a little boy, 86 and that our young Astyanax as well as his dear Mother are going on famously. The February number of the Fortnightly only reached me yesterday, and I have read in it with the greatest interest your admirable paper on Dickens. 87 It is delighful reading and appears to me a very masterly piece of criticism. Fully recognizing the justice of your specification of the qualities which Dickens had and had not, I shall perhaps shock you however by the avowal that I rate higher the qualities he had, than those he had not. It appears to me that the reflective tendency, analytical faculty, aesthetic judgement and taste, culture, accurate drawing, accurate style, even in combination with other intellectual powers of a high order, do not of themselves constitute genius, though they are invaluable adjuncts to it, -- as zeros are to units, -- and greatly elevate the order of the genius to which they are joined. But a prolific imagination of unequalled intensity "furnished with the elements of universal power" able to create a whole world of fictitious images which it is impossible to contemplate without immediate involuntary and inevitable emotion is so undoubtedly genius that whatever the defects of art or intellect with which we find it combined, it stands for all time in a higher order than any combination of faultless talents standing alone.
That is why I can never, in my own view of them both, put Thackeray on a level with Dickens, though the critics seem to put him higher. I can see nothing in Thackeray but well trained talent of a very high order. Dickens is the Poet of the Bourgeoisie all the world over. He has poeticised the bourgeois virtues and vices. What is Thackeray the poet of? There is not a single touch in all his writings which affects me poetically, and he seems to me as immeasurably inferior to Dickens as talent is to genius, although he is as undoubtedly free from the defects of Dickens as Dickens is destitute of the merits of Thackeray. Those merits are certainly great. But have they not been overrated by his Eulogists? You couple him incidentally with Fielding. 88 But I don't know whether you classify them together. My impressions put Fielding very high above him. Comparing the masterpieces of each, there is a cosmical fullness about Tom Jones, which I cannot find in Vanity Fair. One is the whole orbis veteribus notus in a focus, the other only May Fair under a magnifying glass. Thackeray's keen perception, and careful picturing of a certain section of society is put forward with a mighty flourish of trumpets by himself and his ep'edgonoi as knowledge and portraiture of human nature. If one of Balzac's little fingers could have been cut off and planted in the social soil of London, it might have sprouted into a Thackeray. And even the vividness of vision with which he saw the society he describes I suspect to be largely owing to the fact that he was a parvenu in it. The commonest phenomena impressed him as vividly as common things impress children to whom they are new and unhacknied, and like children he was always inclined to see in such phenomena a volition which had no existence except in his own imagination. This struck me greatly in his conversation. He was incessantly referring the most trival actions to the most recondite motives. I think his influence on the literature of English Fiction has been unfortunate. His imitators are eternally painting in minute strokes, the characters and doings of a number of commonplace and vulgar persons, whom I, for one, would shun like the pest if I met them in real life, and then pausing at every chapter to say "See how sobre is our colouring, how accurate our drawing, how true to nature we are!"
Your illustration of the child's spotted horse on wheels is a master stroke. 89 It is one of those rare explanatory images which attain the perfect ideal of demonstration, giving concrete form to the result of a long train of the subtlest analytical thinking, and is worth folios of argument. It strikes me as eminently just and unanswerably cogent. But after all, how superlative is the merit of any imaginative writer who can reduce his readers involuntarily to the sensational condition of a child or a savage! And what matters it whether the subject we contemplate be a wooden horse, or a waxwork figure, if we contemplate it with such na'efvet'e9 of sensation as to laugh or cry heartily at the sight of it? I suspect that with many, perhaps most of us, as regards works of imagination our appreciation of an author is greatly dependent on accident. Do we ever appreciate the poet we read for the first time in later life as heartily as we appreciated the Poet we read at eighteen when we were first in love? We may grow out of him in after life, but can we ever grow into any other poet as entirely? Imaginative writers appeal to our emotions. The response to their appeal depends more upon ourselves than upon them, and we ourselves depend so much on circumstance!
If you ever want to give me a great treat, you will write me a letter. My thoughts are more constantly with you and yours than I have any means of letting you know. The Baby is thin but healthy. He reminds me strangely of his poor brother -- whom I think him very like -- for I have now sufficient paternal experience to distinguish between the ugliness of one baby and that of another.
Edith and I are much excited by a letter, which I have just been reading to her, from Lizy 90 who says [I am just going to call on Mrs Lewes]: and much disappointed by finding at the end of the letter that Mrs Lewes was out when she called. Vale et seu memor mei. Nobody can admire and love you and your dear wife more than you are loved and admired by your affectionate
R. Lytton.
The Kladdersdatsch says -- The Pope is ready to burn the Old Catholics for denying that 2 + 2 = 6 and D'f6linger 91 is ready to go to the stake for the assertion that 2 + 2 only = 5!
Signature
R. Lytton.
Citation
Robert Lytton, Robert Lytton to GHL, Vienna, 23 March 1872, 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/95591