characters. He had
(rather perhaps one should say), the quality which is _nascitur non
fit_--Imagination. It is the great defect, _I think_, of some of our
best modern writers. They are marvellously FIT and terribly
little NASCITUR. It is why I can never concede the highest
palm in her craft to G. Eliot. Her writing is glorious--Imagination
limited--Dramatism--nil!

She draws people she has seen (Mrs. Poyser) like a photograph--she
imagines a Daniel Deronda, and he is about "as natural as waxworks."

"I've been reading Jean Ingelow's _Fated to be Free_ lately, and it is
a marvellous mixture of beauty and failure. But _lovely_ passages.
Incisive as G. Eliot, and from the point of view of a tenderer mind
and experience. This is beautiful, isn't it?

"Nature before it has been touched by man is almost always beautiful,
strong, and cheerful in man's eyes; but nature, when he has once given
it his culture and then forsaken it, has usually an air of sorrow and
helplessness. He has made it live the more by laying his hand upon it
and touching it with his life. It has come to relish of his humanity,
and it is so flavoured with his thoughts, and ordered and permeated by
his spirit, that if the stimulus of his presence is withdrawn it
cannot for a long while do without him, and live for itself as fully
and as well as it did before."

The double edge of the sentiment is very exquisite, and the truth of
the natural fact very perfect as observation, and the book is full of
such writing. But oh, dear! the confusion of plot is so maddening you
have a delirious feeling that everybody is getting engaged to his
half-sister or widowed stepmother, and keep turning back to make sure!
But the dramatism is very good and leads you on....

March 22, 1880.

... I am getting you a curious little present. It is Thos. A Kempis's
_De Imitatione Christi_ in Latin _and Arabic_. A scarce edition
printed in Rome. I think you will like to have it. That old Thomas was
much more than a mere monk. A man for all time, his monasticism being
but a fringe upon the robe of his wisdom and _honest_ Love of God. It
will be curious to see how it lends itself to Arabic. Well, I fancy.
Being in very proverbial mould. Such verses as this (I quote roughly
from memory):

"That which thou dost not understand when thou readest thou shalt
understand in the day of thy visitation: for there be secrets of
religion which are not known till they be felt and are not