GE to Miss Charlotte Carmichael, London, 26 December 1877
Title
GE to Miss Charlotte Carmichael, London, 26 December 1877
Title
GE to Miss Charlotte Carmichael, London, 26 December 1877
Sender
George Eliot
Recipient
Miss Charlotte Carmichael
Date(s)
- 1877-12-26
Place
London
Letter Content
GE to Miss Charlotte Carmichael, London, 26 December 1877
Text: Cross, New Edition, p. 571.
I thank you most gratefully for your kind greeting and pretty Christmas gifts, and am sympathetically touched by your care for your poor Islanders and Coastmen. The analogy you find between the Celt and the Hebrew seems to me also not fanciful but real. Both have a literature which has been a fount of religious feeling and imagination to other races. But I hardly see how I can do anything, as an author, to further that appreciation of the Celts which is now interesting many highly instructed writers. A sincere author, before he undertakes to handle any subject, must have not only the outward appeal, but the inward vocation which consists in special fitness.
I am delighted to see from your little paper, which gives an affecting picture of the men that must "win the bairnies' bread" by going forth into deep waters, how we are agreed in loving our incomparable Wordsworth.
Text: Cross, New Edition, p. 571.
I thank you most gratefully for your kind greeting and pretty Christmas gifts, and am sympathetically touched by your care for your poor Islanders and Coastmen. The analogy you find between the Celt and the Hebrew seems to me also not fanciful but real. Both have a literature which has been a fount of religious feeling and imagination to other races. But I hardly see how I can do anything, as an author, to further that appreciation of the Celts which is now interesting many highly instructed writers. A sincere author, before he undertakes to handle any subject, must have not only the outward appeal, but the inward vocation which consists in special fitness.
I am delighted to see from your little paper, which gives an affecting picture of the men that must "win the bairnies' bread" by going forth into deep waters, how we are agreed in loving our incomparable Wordsworth.
Citation
George Eliot, GE to Miss Charlotte Carmichael, London, 26 December 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/92967