GE to John Chapman, Richmond, 26 January 1858
Title
GE to John Chapman, Richmond, 26 January 1858
Title
GE to John Chapman, Richmond, 26 January 1858
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
John Chapman
Date(s)
- 1858-01-26
Place
Richmond
Letter Content
GE to John Chapman, Richmond, 26 January 1858
Text: Maggs Bros. Catalogue 326 (May-June 1914), item 1423.
I sent back the Newman books because I thought you would perhaps make up your mind to get someone else as the writer of an article on Newman, if not precisely the article you had contemplated. 1069
My inability is simply an inability to do two things at once, for you do not suppose I am turning fine lady and doing nothing. . . .
It is so difficult to get a satisfactory writer! One can never judge 'e0 priori. For example, you had good reason to believe that the Belles Lettres would be well done by the present writer (Meredith, 1070 is it not?); yet he turns out to be unfit for that sort of work. And entre nous, I don't think you have hooked a very valuable fish in the writer of the article on Shelley. 1071 My mind is so constituted that I immensely prefer a man of illiberal ideas who writes well and says what he has to say vigorously, to a man of liberal ideas who deals in feeble sarcasm, loose reasoning, and sprawling tawdry rhetoric. The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf. And the next worst service is a parole [puerile?] crude, unsympathetic antagonism towards well-intentioned error.
M. L.
Text: Maggs Bros. Catalogue 326 (May-June 1914), item 1423.
I sent back the Newman books because I thought you would perhaps make up your mind to get someone else as the writer of an article on Newman, if not precisely the article you had contemplated. 1069
My inability is simply an inability to do two things at once, for you do not suppose I am turning fine lady and doing nothing. . . .
It is so difficult to get a satisfactory writer! One can never judge 'e0 priori. For example, you had good reason to believe that the Belles Lettres would be well done by the present writer (Meredith, 1070 is it not?); yet he turns out to be unfit for that sort of work. And entre nous, I don't think you have hooked a very valuable fish in the writer of the article on Shelley. 1071 My mind is so constituted that I immensely prefer a man of illiberal ideas who writes well and says what he has to say vigorously, to a man of liberal ideas who deals in feeble sarcasm, loose reasoning, and sprawling tawdry rhetoric. The worst service, I fancy, that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf. And the next worst service is a parole [puerile?] crude, unsympathetic antagonism towards well-intentioned error.
M. L.
Signature
M. L.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to John Chapman, Richmond, 26 January 1858, 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/92796