But when I speak of Shakespeare the news of last Wednesday[[64]] comes back to me, and it seems as if the sun had gone out. You cannot think how much I owed her. Of eighteen or twenty writers by whom I am conscious that my mind has been formed, she was one. Of course I mean ways, not conclusions. In problems of life and thought, which baffled Shakespeare disgracefully, her touch was unfailing. No writer ever lived who had anything like her power of manifold, but disinterested and impartially observant sympathy. If Sophocles or Cervantes had lived in the light of our culture, if Dante had prospered like Manzoni, George Eliot might have had a rival.
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I do think that, of the three greatest Liberals, Burke is equally good in speaking and writing; Macaulay better in writing, and Mr. Gladstone better in speaking. I doubt whether he feels it; and if he does not feel it, then I should say that there is a want of perfect knowledge and judgment. That want I see clearly in his views as to other men. He hardly ever, I think, judges them too severely. Sometimes I am persuaded he judges with an exceeding generosity, and I fancy it is because he will not charge his mind with uncharitableness, because he does not allow for the wind, that he does not always make bull's eyes.
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Athenæum Jan. 14, 1881
It is impossible to leave England without emotion, when my last glimpse of your father was lying in bed and in the great doctor's hands. It will indeed be such a charity if you will send a line on a P.C. by to-morrow, Saturday's post, to me at Goschen's, Seacox Heath, Hawkhurst, Kent, that we may have Sunday's comfort in good news, and I say advisedly a P.C. that you may not suspect me of an artifice to obtain that other delight, of an early letter, such as those you write. Don't let the lesson of suspicion turn against the teacher. Don't even let it damage anybody much. I will not spoil my own ideal. That American book is too wicked![[65]]
Forgive me if there is one point, if only one, on which I do not agree with Ruskin, who never writes to any one what might hot be written to the world, on the fly-leaves of books.
Your mother must think me an ill-mannered wretch, even if she did not discover it before—for going away without thanking her for that beautiful photograph. I did not feel sure, at first, how much she was weighted with trouble, for I had never witnessed her serene courage. I will leave it to you, if you please, mindful of an exquisite proverb quoted this evening in the House as follows: Speech is silence, but silver is golden.
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