The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870

Name: The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870
Author: Dickens, Charles

Dickens, Charles

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence

Concerning Eliot, I sat down, as I told you, and read the book through
with the strangest interest and the highest admiration. I believe it to
be as honest, spirited, patient, reliable, and gallant a piece of
biography as ever was written, the care and pains of it astonishing, the
completeness of it masterly; and what I particularly feel about it is
that the dignity of the man, and the dignity of the book that tells
about the man, always go together, and fit each other. This same quality
has always impressed me as the great leading speciality of the
Goldsmith, and enjoins sympathy with the subject, knowledge of it, and
pursuit of it in its own spirit; but I think it even more remarkable
here. I declare that apart from the interest of having been so put into
the time, and enabled to understand it, I personally feel quite as much
the credit and honour done to literature by such a book. It quite clears
out of the remembrance a thousand pitiful things, and sets one up in
heart again. I am not surprised in the least by Bulwer's enthusiasm. I
was as confident about the effect of the book when I closed the first
volume, as I was when I closed the second with a full heart. No man less
in earnest than Eliot himself could have done it, and I make bold to add
that it never could have been done by a man who was so distinctly born
to do the work as Eliot was to do his.

Saturday at Hastings I must give up. I have wavered and considered, and
considered and wavered, but if I take that sort of holiday, I must have
a day to spare after it, and at this critical time I have not. If I were
to lose a page of the five numbers I have purposed to myself to be
ready by the publication day, I should feel that I had fallen short. I
have grown hard to satisfy, and write very slowly, and I have so much
bad fiction, that _will_ be thought of when I don't want to think of it,
that I am forced to take more care than I ever took.

                                                  Ever affectionately.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Storrar.]

                    GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
                                     _Sunday Morning, May 15th, 1864._

MY DEAR MRS. STORRAR,

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Opening the text

The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870Dickens, Charles

General

The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870

Dickens, Charles

Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Correspondence; Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence

Concerning Eliot, I sat down, as I told you, and read the book through
with the strangest interest and the highest admiration. I believe it to
be as honest, spirited, patient, reliable, and gallant a piece of
biography as ever was written, the care and pains of it astonishing, the
completeness of it masterly; and what I particularly feel about it is
that the dignity of the man, and the dignity of the book that tells
about the man, always go together, and fit each other. This same quality
has always impressed me as the great leading speciality of the
Goldsmith, and enjoins sympathy with the subject, knowledge of it, and
pursuit of it in its own spirit; but I think it even more remarkable
here. I declare that apart from the interest of having been so put into
the time, and enabled to understand it, I personally feel quite as much
the credit and honour done to literature by such a book. It quite clears
out of the remembrance a thousand pitiful things, and sets one up in
heart again. I am not surprised in the least by Bulwer's enthusiasm. I
was as confident about the effect of the book when I closed the first
volume, as I was when I closed the second with a full heart. No man less
in earnest than Eliot himself could have done it, and I make bold to add
that it never could have been done by a man who was so distinctly born
to do the work as Eliot was to do his.

Saturday at Hastings I must give up. I have wavered and considered, and
considered and wavered, but if I take that sort of holiday, I must have
a day to spare after it, and at this critical time I have not. If I were
to lose a page of the five numbers I have purposed to myself to be
ready by the publication day, I should feel that I had fallen short. I
have grown hard to satisfy, and write very slowly, and I have so much
bad fiction, that _will_ be thought of when I don't want to think of it,
that I am forced to take more care than I ever took.

                                                  Ever affectionately.


[Sidenote: Mrs. Storrar.]

                    GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
                                     _Sunday Morning, May 15th, 1864._

MY DEAR MRS. STORRAR,

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870

The Letters of Charles Dickens. Vol. 2, 1857-1870

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