Frederic Harrison to GE, London, 12 June 1877
Title
Frederic Harrison to GE, London, 12 June 1877
Title
Frederic Harrison to GE, London, 12 June 1877
Sender
Frederic Harrison
Recipient
George Eliot
Date(s)
- 1877-06-12
Place
London
Letter Content
Frederic Harrison to GE, London, 12 June 1877
MS: Brotherton Library, Leeds. Extract published: Haight, George Eliot, p. 506.
Southwick Place W. | June 12. 1877.
Dear Mrs Lewes,
Now that you are in the quiet of the Surrey Hills, I renew a petition which I once began to make at your house. If you cannot accord it, I will not ask for your reasons; and the matter will end with no more than your trouble in reading this.
I told you that at the address at the Positivist School on the newyear's day, Dr. Congreve had used -- "Oh may I join the choir invisible" -- as his conclusion without comment, and before this Llewellyn Davies 369 had spoken of it as the germ of a new Hymnology.
I now ask you -- if you can give us anything further, either in prose or in verse, for public or for private use, by way of collect, hymn, or litany -- something I mean to give form to our ideas of sympathy and confidence in Humanity. Positive emotions, whether of the more defined or of the more unsystematic kind, are at present shapeless and rudimentary -- cavent quia vate sacro. What effusions there are, are of so dogmatic and pedantic a kind, that they tend to narrow and harden, rather than to enlarge the healthy feeling. As yet it has no poet. You alone can supply this.
Indeed I have often longed that we could have your full estimate of the scheme of the Polity, now it is complete in its English form. 370 I mean especially your judgment of a Religion of Humanity as a possible rallying point for mankind in the future. That you differ very much from the form which Comte has given it in such sharp lines, I know, or suppose that I know. But where you differ, wherein, how far; when you agree, how far -- this is what we all want to know, those who accept Comte's ritual in different degrees, and those who reject it but converge to the general idea of Humanity, as the ultimate centre of life and of thought. Your readers are perpetually asking themselves the question -- what is your real mind on this subject, and they answer it in different ways. Why, I keep asking myself, should you not quickly answer them, not by way of poetry, but by philosophy; and having asked myself the question so often, I now ask you -- though I have no right to expect an answer.
There are some things that Art cannot do, and one is, to tell us what to believe; and there are many who will never be satisfied till they know what you have to say. I am
Yours sincerely
Frederic Harrison.
MS: Brotherton Library, Leeds. Extract published: Haight, George Eliot, p. 506.
Southwick Place W. | June 12. 1877.
Dear Mrs Lewes,
Now that you are in the quiet of the Surrey Hills, I renew a petition which I once began to make at your house. If you cannot accord it, I will not ask for your reasons; and the matter will end with no more than your trouble in reading this.
I told you that at the address at the Positivist School on the newyear's day, Dr. Congreve had used -- "Oh may I join the choir invisible" -- as his conclusion without comment, and before this Llewellyn Davies 369 had spoken of it as the germ of a new Hymnology.
I now ask you -- if you can give us anything further, either in prose or in verse, for public or for private use, by way of collect, hymn, or litany -- something I mean to give form to our ideas of sympathy and confidence in Humanity. Positive emotions, whether of the more defined or of the more unsystematic kind, are at present shapeless and rudimentary -- cavent quia vate sacro. What effusions there are, are of so dogmatic and pedantic a kind, that they tend to narrow and harden, rather than to enlarge the healthy feeling. As yet it has no poet. You alone can supply this.
Indeed I have often longed that we could have your full estimate of the scheme of the Polity, now it is complete in its English form. 370 I mean especially your judgment of a Religion of Humanity as a possible rallying point for mankind in the future. That you differ very much from the form which Comte has given it in such sharp lines, I know, or suppose that I know. But where you differ, wherein, how far; when you agree, how far -- this is what we all want to know, those who accept Comte's ritual in different degrees, and those who reject it but converge to the general idea of Humanity, as the ultimate centre of life and of thought. Your readers are perpetually asking themselves the question -- what is your real mind on this subject, and they answer it in different ways. Why, I keep asking myself, should you not quickly answer them, not by way of poetry, but by philosophy; and having asked myself the question so often, I now ask you -- though I have no right to expect an answer.
There are some things that Art cannot do, and one is, to tell us what to believe; and there are many who will never be satisfied till they know what you have to say. I am
Yours sincerely
Frederic Harrison.
Signature
Frederic Harrison.
Citation
Frederic Harrison, Frederic Harrison to GE, London, 12 June 1877, 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/91838