George Eliot no doubt met with it in some
of those old chroniclers who wrote exactly as not only the lower
orders, but the generality of their fellow citizens, were speaking
around them. And her use of it testifies to the minuteness of her
care to reproduce the form and pressure of the time of which she was
writing.]
"Once more thank you, though my gratitude is in danger of looking too
much like a lively sense of anticipated favours, for I mean to ask you
to take other trouble yet.
"Yours very truly,
"MARION E. LEWES."
* * * * *
The following letter, written from Blandford Square on the 5th July,
1861, is, as regards the first three pages, from him, and the last
from her.
* * * * *
"MY DEAR TROLLOPE,--We have now read _La Beata_ [my first novel], and
must tell you how charmed we have been with it. _Nina_ herself is
perfectly exquisite and individual, and her story is full of poetry
and pathos. Also one feels a breath from the Val d'Arno rustling amid
the pages, and a sense of Florentine life, such as one rarely gets out
of books. The critical objection I should make to it, apart from minor
points, is that often you spoil the artistic attitude by adopting
a critical antagonistic attitude, by which I mean that instead of
painting the thing objectively, you present it critically, _with an
eye to the opinions_ likely to be formed by certain readers; thus,
instead of relying on the simple presentation of the fact of Nina's
innocence you _call up_ the objection you desire to anticipate by side
glances at the worldly and 'knowing' reader's opinions.
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