JUNE 357 



ought, as being in the atmosphere of Florence extra- 

 ordinarily increases the enjoyment of what is in many 

 ways a very wonderful book, full of fine things and 

 passionately sympathetic with women's trials. 



In a very old notebook of mine I find the following 

 sentence. I have no idea by whom it was written ; but it 

 so exactly describes why certain books, and indeed certain 

 people, appeal to me when others that are in many respects 

 better leave me cold and indifferent, that I repeat it now 

 in my old age, agreeing with it as I did at twenty : 



' We readily overlook all that is tasteless and ignorant 

 for the sake of that power which, in reminding us of the 

 misery of the world, translates it into something softening, 

 elevating, uniting. We should fully allow that some 

 immortal work and a great deal of the most popular 

 work is almost entirely without the feeling. There is 

 scarcely a touch of it in Homer ; there is not a touch of 

 it in many a novel much sought for at the libraries. 

 But to us it appears one of the greatest gifts of the writer 

 of fiction. It is not that we desire to be always com- 

 templating the misery of the world ; when we take up 

 a novel we often desire to forget it. But an author who 

 does not know it cannot make us forget it ; and a writer 

 who is to deliver us from its oppressive forms must be 

 able to translate the manifold troubles of life, with all 

 their bewildering entanglement, their distracting pettiness, 

 into something that releases such tears as the foreign 

 slaves shed on Hector's bier. " Their woes their own, a 

 hero's death the plea." ' 



No modern novelist that I know does this better than 

 George Eliot. 



In Florence, with the sky and the sunshine and the 

 whole mind in a receptive condition, no effort was neces- 

 sary fully to appreciate ' Eomola.' What a difference 

 that does make ! Reading some books at unfavourable 



