GE to Alexander Main, Shottermill, 3 August 1871
Title
GE to Alexander Main, Shottermill, 3 August 1871
Title
GE to Alexander Main, Shottermill, 3 August 1871
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Alexander Main
Date(s)
- 1871-08-03
Place
Shottermill
Letter Content
GE to Alexander Main, Shottermill, 3 August 1871
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, p. 475.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
August 3. 71.
Dear Sir
You have been rightly inspired in pronouncing Romola, and in conceiving Romolo as the Italian equivalent of Romulus. I can assure you that the Italians say Romolo, and consequently Romola. The music of the name is quite lost in the painful quantity Romola. So pray go on defying an evil custom -- if custom it be.
I am touched by the sympathy you express with a book ([Romola]) which was an intense occupation of my feeling as well as thought for three years before it was completed in print.
The general ignorance of old Florentine literature, and the false conceptions of Italy bred by idle travelling (with the sort of culture which combines Shakspeare and the musical glasses), have caused many parts of [Romola] to be entirely misunderstood -- the scene of the quack doctor and the monkey, 343 for example, which is a specimen, not of humour as I relish it, but of the practical joking which was the amusement of the gravest old Florentines, and without which no conception of them would be historical. The whole piquancy of the scene in question was intended to lie in the antithesis between the puerility which stood for wit and humour in the old Republic, and the majesty of its front in graver matters.
I suppose that our beloved Walter Scott's imagination was under the influence of a like historical need when he represented the chase of the false herald in [Quentin Durward] as a joke which made Louis
XI. and Charles of Burgundy laugh even to tears, and turned their new political amity into a genuine fellowship of buffoonery. 344
But I perceive from the remarks in your letter that you have had reason to reflect on the small insight and comparison that go to form the ordinary chit-chat judgments on literature. I remain
Yours sincerely
M. E. Lewes.
Alexander Main Esq.
Text: Main's copy owned by Mr. John R. Sprunt. Mostly published: Cross, New Edition, p. 475.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
August 3. 71.
Dear Sir
You have been rightly inspired in pronouncing Romola, and in conceiving Romolo as the Italian equivalent of Romulus. I can assure you that the Italians say Romolo, and consequently Romola. The music of the name is quite lost in the painful quantity Romola. So pray go on defying an evil custom -- if custom it be.
I am touched by the sympathy you express with a book ([Romola]) which was an intense occupation of my feeling as well as thought for three years before it was completed in print.
The general ignorance of old Florentine literature, and the false conceptions of Italy bred by idle travelling (with the sort of culture which combines Shakspeare and the musical glasses), have caused many parts of [Romola] to be entirely misunderstood -- the scene of the quack doctor and the monkey, 343 for example, which is a specimen, not of humour as I relish it, but of the practical joking which was the amusement of the gravest old Florentines, and without which no conception of them would be historical. The whole piquancy of the scene in question was intended to lie in the antithesis between the puerility which stood for wit and humour in the old Republic, and the majesty of its front in graver matters.
I suppose that our beloved Walter Scott's imagination was under the influence of a like historical need when he represented the chase of the false herald in [Quentin Durward] as a joke which made Louis
XI. and Charles of Burgundy laugh even to tears, and turned their new political amity into a genuine fellowship of buffoonery. 344
But I perceive from the remarks in your letter that you have had reason to reflect on the small insight and comparison that go to form the ordinary chit-chat judgments on literature. I remain
Yours sincerely
M. E. Lewes.
Alexander Main Esq.
Signature
M. E. Lewes.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Alexander Main, Shottermill, 3 August 1871, 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/92002