GHL to Sir Arthur Helps, London, [December 1874]
Title
GHL to Sir Arthur Helps, London, [December 1874]
Title
GHL to Sir Arthur Helps, London, [December 1874]
Sender
George Henry Lewes
Recipient
Sir Arthur Helps
Date(s)
- 1874-12
Place
London
Letter Content
GHL to Sir Arthur Helps, London, [December 1874]
Text: Correspondence of Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B., ed. E. A. Helps, 1917, pp. 387-388.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Wednesday.
My dear Helps
I have been solacing myself the last four nights with the conversations of your Friends in Council 262 which remind me so vividly of the many delightful conversations at Vernon Hill -- only more delightful than those of the Milverton group because I sometimes had the satisfaction of hearing the sound of my own voice! What a characteristic -- and delicious -- touch, for instance, is that at p. 148, where Ellesmere remarks that "Milverton says very good when I answer his secretary's objection. He did not say so when I answered his own." But the book is full of good things.
Query: wasn't the unknown sayer of that saying at p. 84 Goethe? 263 I have a dim sense that he was. But I am quite certain that Carlyle is not the author of the Valet de Chambre appreciation of the hero. 264 He got it from Goethe who got it from Hegel (it occurs in the Philos. der Geschichte); correct this in your next edition and also modify that passage at p. 392 about the rapidity of nerve transmission. 265 You must have read a very inaccurate account of the experiments, for the impressions do not travel much quicker in one man than in another -- there are individual variations, but these all lie within very narrow limits, 29 to 33 metres in a second. (You see I can't move from my last, like a virtuous cobbler!)
I could go on scribbling for some pages, but the cloth is being laid for lunch, and you are spared further remarks.
Ever yours affectionately,
G. H. Lewes.
Text: Correspondence of Sir Arthur Helps, K.C.B., ed. E. A. Helps, 1917, pp. 387-388.
The Priory, | 21. North Bank, | Regents Park.
Wednesday.
My dear Helps
I have been solacing myself the last four nights with the conversations of your Friends in Council 262 which remind me so vividly of the many delightful conversations at Vernon Hill -- only more delightful than those of the Milverton group because I sometimes had the satisfaction of hearing the sound of my own voice! What a characteristic -- and delicious -- touch, for instance, is that at p. 148, where Ellesmere remarks that "Milverton says very good when I answer his secretary's objection. He did not say so when I answered his own." But the book is full of good things.
Query: wasn't the unknown sayer of that saying at p. 84 Goethe? 263 I have a dim sense that he was. But I am quite certain that Carlyle is not the author of the Valet de Chambre appreciation of the hero. 264 He got it from Goethe who got it from Hegel (it occurs in the Philos. der Geschichte); correct this in your next edition and also modify that passage at p. 392 about the rapidity of nerve transmission. 265 You must have read a very inaccurate account of the experiments, for the impressions do not travel much quicker in one man than in another -- there are individual variations, but these all lie within very narrow limits, 29 to 33 metres in a second. (You see I can't move from my last, like a virtuous cobbler!)
I could go on scribbling for some pages, but the cloth is being laid for lunch, and you are spared further remarks.
Ever yours affectionately,
G. H. Lewes.
Signature
G. H. Lewes.
Citation
George Henry Lewes, GHL to Sir Arthur Helps, London, [December 1874], 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/95023