Letter from George Eliot, Richmond, London, to John Chapman, 1858 January 26 : autograph manuscript signed.

Returning books by (F.W.) Newman to him (evidently lent to her to assist her with an article she has declined to write for the Westminster Review) as he might decide to get someone else to write an article on Newman, and explaining that her inability (to write the desired article) "is simply an inability to do two things at once, for you do not suppose I am turning fine lady and doing nothing."; expressing her hope that, as (Henry Bristow) Wilson has agreed to contribute to the April number, he may "forget the present sources of repulsion & continue to be a contributor."; commenting on the difficulties of procuring satisfactory writers (for the Westminster Review), "For example, you had good reason to believe that the Belles Lettres would be well done by the present writer (Meredith, is it not?); yet he turns out to be unfit for that sort of work. And entre nous, I don't think you have hooked a very valuable fish in the writer of the article on Shelley [i.e. John Richard de Capel Wise]."; adding that she prefers "a man of illiberal ideas who writes well" to "a man of liberal ideas who deals in feeble sarcasm, loose reasoning, and sprawling tawdry rhetoric.", and concluding that "The worst service ... that anyone can do for truth, is to set silly people writing on its behalf. And the next worst service ia a parole [sic], crude, unsympathetic antagonism towards well-intentioned error."