It is a source of great gratification to the friends of the author that
his little volume has already been so well received that the second
edition has been out of print for some time. In now publishing a third,
they have been influenced by two considerations,--the continued demand
for the book, and the favourable opinion expressed of it by "George
Eliot" herself, which, since her lamented death, delicacy no longer
forbids them to make public.
In a letter to her friend and publisher, the late Mr John Blackwood,
received soon after the appearance of the first edition, she writes, with
reference to certain passages: "They seemed to me more penetrating and
finely felt than almost anything I have read in the way of printed
comments on my own writings." Again, in a letter to a friend of the
author, she says: "When I read the volume in the summer, I felt as if I
had been deprived of something that should have fallen to my share in
never having made his personal acquaintance. And it would have been a
great benefit,--a great stimulus to me to have known some years earlier
that my work was being sanctioned by the sympathy of a mind endowed with
so much insight and delicate sensibility. It is difficult for me to
speak of what others may regard as an excessive estimate of my own work,
but I will venture to mention the keen perception shown in the note on
page 29, as something that gave me peculiar satisfaction."
Once more. In an article in the 'Contemporary Review' of last month, on
"The Moral Influence of George Eliot," by "One who knew her," the writer
says: "It happens that the only criticism which we have heard mentioned
as giving her pleasure, was a little posthumous volume published by
Messrs Blackwood."
With such testimony in its favour, it is hoped a third edition will not
be thought uncalled for.
_March_ 1881.