Middlemarch_, and expressed a hope that even a
greater work might follow, she replied, "As to the 'great novel' which
remains to be written, I must tell you that I never believe in future
books." Again, she wrote of the depression which succeeded the completion
of each of her works,--

Always after finishing a book I have a period of despair that I
can ever again produce anything worth giving to the world. The
responsibility of writing grows heavier and heavier--does it not?--as
the world grows older and the voices of the dead more numerous. It is
difficult to believe, until the germ of some new work grows into
imperious activity within one, that it is possible to make a really
needed contribution to the poetry of the world--I mean possible to
one's self to do it.

Owing probably somewhat to this tendency to take a despondent view
concerning her own work, and to distrust of the leadings of her own
genius, was her habit of never reading the criticisms made on her books.
She adopted this rule, she tells one correspondent, "as a necessary
preservative against influences that would have ended by nullifying her
power of writing." To another, who had written her in appreciation of her
books, she wrote this note, in which she alludes to the same habit of
shunning criticism:

MY DEAR MISS WELLINGTON,--The signs of your sympathy sent to me across the
wide water have touched me with the more effect because you imply that you
are young. I care supremely that my writing should be some help and
stimulus to those who have probably a long life before them.

Mr. Lewes does not let me read criticisms on my writings. He always reads
them himself, and gives me occasional quotations, when be thinks that they
show a spirit and mode of appreciation which will win my gratitude. He has
carefully read through the articles which were accompanied by your kind
letter, and he has a high opinion of the feeling and discernment exhibited
in them. Some concluding passages which he read aloud to me are such as I
register among the grounds of any encouragement in looking backward on what
I have written, if not in looking forward to my future writing.

Thank you, my dear young friend, whom I shall probably never know otherwise
than in this spiritual way. And certainly, apart from those relations in
life which bring daily duties and opportunities of lovingness, the most
satisfactory of all ties is this effective invisi