GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [13 February 1840]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [13 February 1840]
Title
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [13 February 1840]
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Maria Lewis
Date(s)
- 1840-02-13
Place
GRIFF
Letter Content
GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [13 February 1840]
MS: Yale. On inside of envelope. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering | Northamptonshire. Postmark: COVENTRY | FE 13 | 1840. Published: Cross, I, 81.
I have been reading the 3 volumes of the Life and Times of Louis the Fourteenth 161 and am as eagerly waiting for the 4th and last as any voracious novel reader for Bulwer's last. I am afraid I am getting quite martial in my spirit, and in the warmth of my sympathy for Turenne and Condé losing my hatred of war. Such a conflict between individual and moral influence is no novelty. But certainly war though the heaviest scourge with which the Divine wrath against sin is manifested in Time, has been a necessary vent for impurities and a channel for tempestuous passions that must have otherwise made the whole earth like the land of the devoted Canaanites to vomit forth the inhabitants thereof; 162 awful as such a sentiment appears it seems to me that in the present condition of man, and I do not mean this in the sense that Cowper does, such a purgation of the body politic is very likely essential to its health. 163 A foreign war would soon put an end to our national humours that are growing to so alarming a head. -- What do you think of the Progress of Architecture as a subject for Poetry?
MS: Yale. On inside of envelope. Address: Miss Lewis | The Revd L. Harper's | Burton Latimer | near Kettering | Northamptonshire. Postmark: COVENTRY | FE 13 | 1840. Published: Cross, I, 81.
I have been reading the 3 volumes of the Life and Times of Louis the Fourteenth 161 and am as eagerly waiting for the 4th and last as any voracious novel reader for Bulwer's last. I am afraid I am getting quite martial in my spirit, and in the warmth of my sympathy for Turenne and Condé losing my hatred of war. Such a conflict between individual and moral influence is no novelty. But certainly war though the heaviest scourge with which the Divine wrath against sin is manifested in Time, has been a necessary vent for impurities and a channel for tempestuous passions that must have otherwise made the whole earth like the land of the devoted Canaanites to vomit forth the inhabitants thereof; 162 awful as such a sentiment appears it seems to me that in the present condition of man, and I do not mean this in the sense that Cowper does, such a purgation of the body politic is very likely essential to its health. 163 A foreign war would soon put an end to our national humours that are growing to so alarming a head. -- What do you think of the Progress of Architecture as a subject for Poetry?
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Maria Lewis, Griff, [13 February 1840], 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/92888