riticisms on my writings. For years I have found this abstinence necessary
to preserve me from that discouragement as an artist which ill-judged
praise, no less than ill-judged blame, tends to produce in me. For far
worse than any verdict as to the proportion of good and evil in our work,
is the painful impression that we write for a public which has no
discernment of good and evil.

My husband reads any notices of me that come before him, and reports to me
(or else refrains from reporting) the general character of the notice, or
something in particular which strikes him as showing either an exceptional
insight or an obtuseness that is gross enough to be amusing. Very rarely,
when he has read a critique of me, he has handed it to me, saying, "_You_
must read this." And your estimate of _Daniel Deronda_ made one of these
rare instances.

Certainly, if I had been asked to choose _what_ should be written about my
book and _who_ should write it, I should have sketched--well, not anything
so good as what you have written, but an article which must be written by a
Jew who showed not merely sympathy with the best aspirations of his race,
but a remarkable insight into the nature of art and the processes of the
artistic mind. Believe me, I should not have cared to devour even ardent
praise if it had not come from one who showed the discriminating
sensibility, the perfect response to the artist's intention, which must
make the fullest, rarest joy to one who works from inward conviction and
not in compliance with current fashions. Such a response holds for an
author not only what is best in "the life that now is," but the promise of
"that which is to come." I mean that the usual approximative, narrow
perception of what one has been intending and professedly feeling in one's
work, impresses one with the sense that it must be poor perishable stuff
without roots to hike any lasting hold in the minds of men; while any
instance of complete comprehension encourages one to hope that the creative
prompting has foreshadowed, and will continue to satisfy, a need in other
minds.

Excuse me that I write but imperfectly, and perhaps dimly, what I have felt
in reading your article. It has affected me deeply, and though the
prejudice and ignorant obtuseness which has met my effort to contribute
something to the ennobling of Judaism in the conception of the Christian
community and in the consciousness of the Jewish community, has never for a
mo