Autograph letter signed : [London], to Anna Jameson, "Thursday morning" [1846 May 14] | WorldCat.org (original) (raw)

Summary:Returning proofs and offering her critical comments; saying "Let me say how I have been charmed with it - It seems to be in your best manner ... I am at Venice with you while I read - & (which is still better) at one with you in every thought nearly..the sympathy is so alive & close - The single exception is in the observation you make about Art - about Art generally being not the medium of expression of the present Age - You said so in this room, I remember - - & wherever you say it, I feel myself set fixedly against you - because I hold that wherever man is man, 'to unfold the human into beauty', which is Art, (as you have adopted that truth by your motto) is an aim natural to him - If I could believe in an age without souls, .. of a lopped, straightened humanity, ..I might believe in an Age to which Art in the high sense is not an adapted medium - That is the only thought in your essay which I fall off from - All the rest I love & live by;" explaining some corrections she has made in pencil on the manuscript and suggesting some changes in text; adding, in a postscript, "I doubtfully ask you whether THOUGHT would be more correctly opposed to 'life' than 'soul'? You will see my pencil sign on the early page? I only doubt, understand, & meant to ask it as a question of you yesterday - Then in the motto - would it be better if you wrote simply 'That also is Art'. Not 'his Art' - you see what I mean."