'Thank you very much for the "Life of George Eliot," and for the kind and flattering inscription. I am very glad to have the book, which is as curious a book as any I ever saw. The personality of the great writer is as yet very confusing to me in the extreme flatness of the picture. I don't mean by flatness dulness [sic], though there is something of that, but only that it is like mural paintings or sculpture in very low relief. I have just run over your reviewer's article and think it very good.'