Benjamin Jowett to GE, West Malvern, 30 December 1879
Title
Benjamin Jowett to GE, West Malvern, 30 December 1879
Title
Benjamin Jowett to GE, West Malvern, 30 December 1879
Sender
Benjamin Jowett
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1879-12-30
Place
West Malvern
Letter Content
Benjamin Jowett to GE, West Malvern, 30 December 1879
MS: Brotherton Library, Leeds.
West Malvern | December 30. 1879.
Dear Mrs. Lewes,
Will you think me forward if I send you good wishes on New Year's day?
The only good wish which I can offer is that you may have health and strength to make the most of life: my faith is that more may be done by us in our later than in our earlier years (if the faculties remain) because we have more experience and are more humanized by trials and sufferings of many kinds: I like your notion of the duty of [diffusing ourselves,] making the most of the one life for the good of many: -- that is a phrase of yours which often comes into my mind: and, especially in the case of a great sorrow the first thing is to bear it and to feel it; and the next thing is to convert the particular sorrow into a wider and deeper sympathy for men and women everywhere, and having suffered ourselves, to lighten the hearts and minds of others: I hardly think you are aware how great a good and comfort your writings have been to numberless persons; how they have really been made better by Dinah and Milly and Romola and the Garths and many of our other friends, and how much knowledge of life they have gained from your writings which is one of the best sorts of knowledge. I know that it is not the writer of fiction's direct business to preach morality and truth, but it is a great blessing to the world when he can teach this indirectly by his own natural sense of them pervading his creations. Therefore I was delighted to hear you say that you did not give up the idea of writing; and I would not ask you to hurry in this: It might be well to have rest and a time for study; and a good deal of thought may be required to fix upon the precise form which is most suited to your own genius -- I would have you sometimes think that you may yet attain better and higher things in writing (that is my New Year's wish for you and I believe it to be the true spirit in which to write)
For every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath. 522
(Do you remember quoting this to me?)
I have been reading through 1) Pattison's Milton 523 -- a good book with many interesting remarks, but written too much in the spirit of the literateur, who estimates all men and books by their purely literary merit. He is a man of genius but he is wanting in the sense of proportion and lets little things get the better of great ones. 2) Another book which I have been reading is M. Arnold's Selections from Wordsworth 524: I love and value Wordsworth more as I get older. He makes you better and he expresses your own best thoughts and wishes in the best words. Yet he is a warning against being didactic which has taken from more than half his writings the true value and grace. He also seems to me wanting in logic or coherence. Stories such as Ruth or Margaret or Michael though extremely beautiful have no point: I suppose that Wordsworth would have defended this by saying that [real life has no point.] But I think that in poetry it ought to have; for poetry or fiction is a selected piece of life, or like the composition of a picture.
I have also been reading more books about Homer lately and am more inclined than I used to be to give up Wolfe's 525 theory of the Homeric poems:
I. Wolfe's authorities if you examine them are really worthless. It may be truly said [that absolutely nothing is known about the history of the Homeric poems from tradition or scholia including the Venetus scholia.] And nothing more was known to the Alexandrian Critics than to ourselves.
II. If you examine the Iliad and Odyssey from within you will find that there is no possibility of breaking either poem up into lays, because every part refers to every other part and the separate lays such as Lachmann 526 imagined are quite motiveless and inconsistent.
III. The Iliad and Odyssey were not sound [?] books: But they were as carefully defined and preserved as if they had been. There are no traces of other readings, other versions. But is not this best accounted for by supposing a single genius who (of course out of preexisting materials and beliefs, and in a certain stage of the language and of poetry) composed both the Iliad and Odyssey? I do not believe in the Separatists when I see how closely the two poems hang together.
Wolfe and Niebuhr 527 have been two of the greatest influences on Criticism: And yet probably the theories of both are the failure of a vision.
I see that I am running on with my own thoughts and studies. Once more let me come back to the New Year. These divisions of time always produce an effect on my mind: "I will begin again" "I will resolve" and though this is illusion I think one does keep oneself at a somewhat higher mark by the help of them. We all of us need more strength than we have for the tasks of life -- we must go on, never hasting, never resting, to the end. We are often tired and discouraged, and we think of the days that are past and of those who are gone. We must journey alone and finish our work (something like Milton in his blindness if we may venture to appropriate so great an example). There is probably no one now living in England, who could do as much for literature and for the world as you could by writing, and you must not throw this precious trust away, or let yourself be overpowered by the thought of it, and give way to any paralyzing sensitiveness about the opinion of others: As I said before, I would not have you hurry. Great things of this kind are not realized in a day or in a year: they require health and strength and peace of mind: Believe me | Dear Mrs. Lewes,
Yours most truly
B. Jowett.
I shall be careful not to speak of your writing to any one.
MS: Brotherton Library, Leeds.
West Malvern | December 30. 1879.
Dear Mrs. Lewes,
Will you think me forward if I send you good wishes on New Year's day?
The only good wish which I can offer is that you may have health and strength to make the most of life: my faith is that more may be done by us in our later than in our earlier years (if the faculties remain) because we have more experience and are more humanized by trials and sufferings of many kinds: I like your notion of the duty of [diffusing ourselves,] making the most of the one life for the good of many: -- that is a phrase of yours which often comes into my mind: and, especially in the case of a great sorrow the first thing is to bear it and to feel it; and the next thing is to convert the particular sorrow into a wider and deeper sympathy for men and women everywhere, and having suffered ourselves, to lighten the hearts and minds of others: I hardly think you are aware how great a good and comfort your writings have been to numberless persons; how they have really been made better by Dinah and Milly and Romola and the Garths and many of our other friends, and how much knowledge of life they have gained from your writings which is one of the best sorts of knowledge. I know that it is not the writer of fiction's direct business to preach morality and truth, but it is a great blessing to the world when he can teach this indirectly by his own natural sense of them pervading his creations. Therefore I was delighted to hear you say that you did not give up the idea of writing; and I would not ask you to hurry in this: It might be well to have rest and a time for study; and a good deal of thought may be required to fix upon the precise form which is most suited to your own genius -- I would have you sometimes think that you may yet attain better and higher things in writing (that is my New Year's wish for you and I believe it to be the true spirit in which to write)
For every gift of noble origin Is breathed upon by hope's perpetual breath. 522
(Do you remember quoting this to me?)
I have been reading through 1) Pattison's Milton 523 -- a good book with many interesting remarks, but written too much in the spirit of the literateur, who estimates all men and books by their purely literary merit. He is a man of genius but he is wanting in the sense of proportion and lets little things get the better of great ones. 2) Another book which I have been reading is M. Arnold's Selections from Wordsworth 524: I love and value Wordsworth more as I get older. He makes you better and he expresses your own best thoughts and wishes in the best words. Yet he is a warning against being didactic which has taken from more than half his writings the true value and grace. He also seems to me wanting in logic or coherence. Stories such as Ruth or Margaret or Michael though extremely beautiful have no point: I suppose that Wordsworth would have defended this by saying that [real life has no point.] But I think that in poetry it ought to have; for poetry or fiction is a selected piece of life, or like the composition of a picture.
I have also been reading more books about Homer lately and am more inclined than I used to be to give up Wolfe's 525 theory of the Homeric poems:
I. Wolfe's authorities if you examine them are really worthless. It may be truly said [that absolutely nothing is known about the history of the Homeric poems from tradition or scholia including the Venetus scholia.] And nothing more was known to the Alexandrian Critics than to ourselves.
II. If you examine the Iliad and Odyssey from within you will find that there is no possibility of breaking either poem up into lays, because every part refers to every other part and the separate lays such as Lachmann 526 imagined are quite motiveless and inconsistent.
III. The Iliad and Odyssey were not sound [?] books: But they were as carefully defined and preserved as if they had been. There are no traces of other readings, other versions. But is not this best accounted for by supposing a single genius who (of course out of preexisting materials and beliefs, and in a certain stage of the language and of poetry) composed both the Iliad and Odyssey? I do not believe in the Separatists when I see how closely the two poems hang together.
Wolfe and Niebuhr 527 have been two of the greatest influences on Criticism: And yet probably the theories of both are the failure of a vision.
I see that I am running on with my own thoughts and studies. Once more let me come back to the New Year. These divisions of time always produce an effect on my mind: "I will begin again" "I will resolve" and though this is illusion I think one does keep oneself at a somewhat higher mark by the help of them. We all of us need more strength than we have for the tasks of life -- we must go on, never hasting, never resting, to the end. We are often tired and discouraged, and we think of the days that are past and of those who are gone. We must journey alone and finish our work (something like Milton in his blindness if we may venture to appropriate so great an example). There is probably no one now living in England, who could do as much for literature and for the world as you could by writing, and you must not throw this precious trust away, or let yourself be overpowered by the thought of it, and give way to any paralyzing sensitiveness about the opinion of others: As I said before, I would not have you hurry. Great things of this kind are not realized in a day or in a year: they require health and strength and peace of mind: Believe me | Dear Mrs. Lewes,
Yours most truly
B. Jowett.
I shall be careful not to speak of your writing to any one.
Signature
B. Jowett.
Citation
Benjamin Jowett, Benjamin Jowett to GE, West Malvern, 30 December 1879, Complete George Eliot Letters(2026), George Eliot Archive, edited by Beverley Park Rilett. https://GeorgeEliotArchive.org, Accessed September 7, 2026. https://georgeeliotarchive.org/items/show/91724