The collision in the drama is not at all between "bigoted churchmanship" and evangelicalism, but between irreligion and religion. Religion in this case happens to be represented by evangelicalism; and the story, so far as regards the persecution, is a real bit in the religious history of England, that happened about eight-and-twenty years ago. I thought I had made it apparent in my sketch of Milby feelings, on the advent of Mr. Tryan, that the conflict lay between immorality and morality—irreligion and religion. Mr. Tryan will carry the reader's sympathy. It is through him that Janet is brought to repentance. Dempster's vices have their natural evolution in deeper and deeper moral deterioration (though not without softening touches), and death from intemperance. Everything is softened from the fact, so far as art is permitted to soften and yet to remain essentially true.
My sketches, both of Churchmen and Dissenters, with whom I am almost equally acquainted, are drawn from close observation of them in real life, and not at all from hearsay or from the descriptions of novelists. If I were to undertake to alter language or character. I should be attempting to represent some vague conception of what may possibly exist in other people's minds, but has no existence in my own. Such of your marginal objections as relate to a mere detail I can meet without difficulty by alteration; but as an artist I should be utterly powerless if I departed from my own conceptions of life and character. There is nothing to be done with the story, but either to let Dempster and Janet and the rest be as I see them, or to renounce it as too painful. I am keenly alive at once to the scruples and alarms an editor may feel, and to my own utter inability to write under cramping influence, and on this double ground I should like you to consider whether it will not be better to close the series for the Magazine now. I dare say you will feel no difficulty about publishing a volume containing the story of "Janet's Repentance," and I shall accept that plan with no other feeling than that you have been to me the most liberal and agreeable of editors, and are the man of all others I would choose for a publisher.
My irony, so far as I understand myself, is not directed against opinions—against any class of religious views—but against the vices and weaknesses that belong to human nature in every sort of clothing. But it is possible that I may not affect other minds as I intend and wish to affect them, and you are a better judge than I can be of the degree in which I may occasionally be offensive. I should like not to be offensive—I should like to touch every heart among my readers with nothing but loving humor, with tenderness, with belief in goodness. But I may have failed in this case of "Janet," at least so far as to have made you feel its publication in the Magazine a disagreeable risk. If so, there will be no harm done by closing the series with No. 2, as I have suggested. If, however, I take your objections to be deeper than they really are—if you prefer inserting the story in spite of your partial dissatisfaction, I shall, of course, be happy to appear under "Maga's" wing still.
When I remember what have been the successes in fiction, even as republications from "Maga," I can hardly believe that the public will regard my pictures as exceptionally coarse. But in any case there are too many prolific writers who devote themselves to the production of pleasing pictures, to the exclusion of all disagreeable truths, for me to desire to add to their number. In this respect, at least, I may have some resemblance to Thackeray, though I am not conscious of being in any way a disciple of his, unless it constitute discipleship to think him, as I suppose the majority of people with any intellect do, on the whole the most powerful of living novelists.
Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 8th June, 1857.
I feel every day a greater disinclination for theories and arguments about the origin of things in the presence of all this mystery and beauty and pain and ugliness that floods one with conflicting emotions.
We are reading "Aurora Leigh" for the third time, with more enjoyment than ever. I know no book that gives me a deeper sense of communion with a large as well as beautiful mind. It is in process of appearing in a third edition, and no wonder.
If I live five years longer the positive result of my existence on the side of truth and goodness will outweigh the small negative good that would have consisted in my not doing anything to shock others, and I can conceive no consequences that will make me repent the past. Do not misunderstand me, and suppose that I think myself heroic or great in any way. Far enough from that! Faulty, miserably faulty I am—but least of all faulty where others most blame.
On the 24th July the pleasant sojourn at Jersey came to an end. The travellers returned to 8 Park Shot, Richmond, where Miss Sara Hennell paid them a visit at the end of the month, and Dr. and Mrs. Bodichon (née Miss Barbara L. Smith) came on the 4th of August. On the 12th August there is an entry in the Journal, "Finished the 'Electra' of Sophocles, and began Æschylus's 'Agamemnon,'" and then come the following letters:
Letter to John Blackwood, Tuesday, 17th Aug. 1857.