CHARLES READE V. GEORGE ELIOT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1648, 30 September 1903, Page 35 (Supplement)

CHARLES READE V. GEORGE ELIOT.

A correspondent sends us the following most entertaining letter, taken from the “Army and Navy Journal” of New York. The editor, to whom it was addressed thirty-five years ago, says he came upon it in looking through some old letters. Mr Reade, who was really . a kindly disposed and a most generous hearted man. seems to have become possessed with fury at the mere suggestion that George Eliot was entitled to a higher place as a novelist than he. Writing with reference to a critical article, in which this opinion was expres- . sed, Mi' Reade said:— “2, Albert terrace, Knightsbi idge, “June 8, 1869. “Dear Sir, —You side with fools and liars against me. You have published without a word of disclaimer, a diatribe . in which George Eliot is described as the first of English novelists, and her style, which is in reality a mediocre, mono . tonous style, with no music and no beauty in it, described as perfect, and my style, which, on proper occasions, is polished beyond the conception of v George Eliot, or any such writer, icondemned wholesale as sadly rugged, . etc. And this in a monthly which con- . tains a story by me. It does appear strange to me that you, who have got the cock salmon, should allow this ass . . , to tell your readers that the - ti out is a bigger fish than the cock salmon. “Now hear the real truth. George Eliot is a writer of the second-class, who has the advantage of being better read . than most novelists. She has also keen powers of observation and reasoning. “She has no imagination of the higher kind, and no power of construction nor dramatic power. She has a little humour, whereas most women have none ; and a little pathos. But she has neither pathos nor humour enough to make anybody laugh nor anybody cry. “Her style is grave, sober and thoughtful; hut it lacks fire, tune and variety. “She -as been adroit enough to disavow the sensational, yet to use it as far as her feeble powers would let her Her greatest quality of all is living witb an anonymous writer, who has bought the English press for a time, and puffed her into a condition she_ cannot maintain, and gradually losing. “Why'lend yourself to a venal English lie? This George Eliot is all very well as long as she confines herself to the life and character she saw with her own eyes down in Warwickshire, when she was

BITS OF NEW ZEALAND SCENERY.

young. But til© moment ima.gin3.tio 1 required she is done. Let any man read true books about the Middle Ages, and then read ‘Romola’—be will at once be struck with two things: that the re cords of the Middle Ages are a grand romance, full of noble material, ana character, and situation, and that this unhappy scribbler of novels has so dealt with that gigantic theme as to dwarf it to her own size. When you have waded through the watery waste of •Romola/ what remains upon the mind V “A little Florence, a faint description 01 petty politics not worth mentioning. A little Savonarola depicted, not sculptured. A young lady called Romola, who is not mediaeval at all, but a deli-cate-minded young woman of the nineteenth century, and no other. And a hero who is—Mr George Lewes. “Now read a mediaeval novel by Scott, or even ‘The Cloister and the Hearth/ by Charles Reade. Do these works miss all the grand features of the Middle Ages, as this poor unimaginative scribbler has done : or do they transport you out of this ignorant present into a ruder and more romantic age? Veibum sapienti. “I will only add that in all her best novels the best idea is stolen from me, and her thefts are not confined to ideas and situations: they go as far as similes, descriptions, and lines of text. Believe me, the pupil is never above her master, “This last fact, coupled with the persistent detraction I meet from my fair pupil’s satellites in the English press, will, I hope, excuse this burst of bile. “Seriously, however, and setting mv personal feelings out of the question, do not you underrate the judgment of the American public in this case, nor overrate the judgment of the English pres* “The public is an incorruptible judge; the press is a corruptible judge : and peculiar facilities were offered in G. Eliot's case for buying the English press, and they have been purchased and re-purchased accordingly. “I am. yours very truly, “CHARLES READE.”