John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 23 January 1860
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 23 January 1860
Title
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 23 January 1860
Sender
John Blackwood
Recipient
George Henry Lewes
Date(s)
- 1860-01-23
Place
Edinburgh
Letter Content
John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 23 January 1860
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh January 23/60.
My Dear Lewes
I inclose proof of Tom Jones which I have read twice with great amusement. You make out a most logical case. At page 2 I think "coarse drollery" is too low a quality to be put forward as Fielding's leading merit. It grated on me a bit in the M.S. and I still feel it in the proof. As it would turn aside his great admirers whom we wish to read the paper I think you should put some higher estimate first. Coarse drollery is too low a term for humour such as his which has made so many generations of us shout with laughter. At page 7 "shallow circumscribed nature" seems to me a phrase which should not be applied to a man who has done so much as Fielding. I think you would improve the paper by speaking of him throughout as an intensely clever fellow and making it more clear that it is only the very high rank given to him among the giants by modern critics that you utterly deny his right to. I hope I did not hurry you with this paper. I said I wanted it this month as at the time I wrote three or four had written to say they would not be ready, but within the last week various papers which will not keep have turned up and if you do not mind I will postpone you for a month. I hate doing this when I had asked a man to do a paper especially on the back of my stumble over Darwin but such things can hardly be avoided some times and I daresay they happen more rarely with me than any other editor.
Will you ask Mrs. Lewes to let me know if she thinks the other volumes of the Mill will be about the same length as the first. The printers calculate that the M.S. received will be about 50 or 60 pages more than the first volume of Adam and if the other volumes are to be of a like length we would put a little more into the page than we did in Adam.
Ever Yours Truly
John Blackwood.
G. H. Lewes Esq.
Return the proof. Thackeray's laudation of Fielding is most ludicrous. In fact throughout these Lectures on the humorists his tone is absurd or insincere. He had the lectures to do and I suppose he did them on the large hearted or the bitterly virtuous view according to his humour.
Text: Copy in Blackwood Letter Book. Hitherto unpublished.
Edinburgh January 23/60.
My Dear Lewes
I inclose proof of Tom Jones which I have read twice with great amusement. You make out a most logical case. At page 2 I think "coarse drollery" is too low a quality to be put forward as Fielding's leading merit. It grated on me a bit in the M.S. and I still feel it in the proof. As it would turn aside his great admirers whom we wish to read the paper I think you should put some higher estimate first. Coarse drollery is too low a term for humour such as his which has made so many generations of us shout with laughter. At page 7 "shallow circumscribed nature" seems to me a phrase which should not be applied to a man who has done so much as Fielding. I think you would improve the paper by speaking of him throughout as an intensely clever fellow and making it more clear that it is only the very high rank given to him among the giants by modern critics that you utterly deny his right to. I hope I did not hurry you with this paper. I said I wanted it this month as at the time I wrote three or four had written to say they would not be ready, but within the last week various papers which will not keep have turned up and if you do not mind I will postpone you for a month. I hate doing this when I had asked a man to do a paper especially on the back of my stumble over Darwin but such things can hardly be avoided some times and I daresay they happen more rarely with me than any other editor.
Will you ask Mrs. Lewes to let me know if she thinks the other volumes of the Mill will be about the same length as the first. The printers calculate that the M.S. received will be about 50 or 60 pages more than the first volume of Adam and if the other volumes are to be of a like length we would put a little more into the page than we did in Adam.
Ever Yours Truly
John Blackwood.
G. H. Lewes Esq.
Return the proof. Thackeray's laudation of Fielding is most ludicrous. In fact throughout these Lectures on the humorists his tone is absurd or insincere. He had the lectures to do and I suppose he did them on the large hearted or the bitterly virtuous view according to his humour.
Signature
John Blackwood.
Citation
John Blackwood, John Blackwood to GHL, Edinburgh, 23 January 1860, 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/95395