7 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, 11 November.
My dear Mrs Lewes,
I THINK you know how it comes that all these months I have never seen you or written to you though having so much to say. The gift of your poem, and your letter to me when you left, have not indeed been thought lightly of. But they have imposed a task on me that I have never yet been able and am not yet ready to fulfil. I want very much to tell you fully all that I feel able; but I cannot gather up my ideas. Nor do I yet know very clearly what they are. And I have been in no condition of repose to make this very easy. I have indeed read your poem many many times to myself and to others, and thought over it and talked of it constantly. But I am little nearer the telling you how I feel when I rise from it than I was, yet it seems somewhat unnatural to write to you and say nothing. But this I must do even now. Nothing that is but this – That I read it still and see better continually what is required of one who would do it justice, and who desires to learn how to rise up to the level on which it stands.
During your tour abroad I was often about to write to you. And still the consciousness of the crude state of my own mind held me back. Since July I have been quite immersed in my Trades-Union work. I felt it essential to make up and put forth my ideas. Accordingly I went down into the country, where I shut myself out from professional, literary, political, and all other distractions, and seeing no one and never coming into London I thought of nothing but my 20,000 questions in the Evidence. It has been the most continuous kind of effort I have ever had to make, but I think I now am well saturated with the 20,000 answers (!), understand the law and am ready for the trumpet to sound. ‘J’ai dit mon dernier mot’ – which ‘mot’ unluckily consists of fifty pages of a bluebook, and finally left the printer only yesterday.5
I tell you all this, to show you how much my mind has been absorbed in work, except for a few weeks when I went to the Alps, and very nearly managed to get drowned.
After this interval I am returned to my work here. I shall read The Spanish Gypsy again, which I am conscious that I have not half mastered. I need not say I am sure what pleasure it gives me to recognize the profound truths and sacred principles which [that which] we call the Faith of the Future is preparing, for the first time truly idealized. I see in it the first fruits of the movement to the development of which we hope everything.
But as I say I have all this to learn and to understand. The purpose, the 
θος,6 the very form of the work holds out to us something that we are invited to learn from. I have my lesson yet to study, and I am trying to do so rightly. I know no worse instance of the monkey-like criticism of the day, than the way in which the hedge-sparrows of the reviews (forgive this ‘happy family’ of metaphors) chirrup out their blame or praise on Saturday of a book which left the printer on Monday. I wonder if sprightly contributors dashed off a notice of the first performance of King Lear between the closing of the Theatre that night and the appearance of the Daily Papers next morning.
Well I am neither a hedge-sparrow critic, nor a critic at all. And will not let myself stray into anything which looks like criticism at all. There can be little need for me to tell you that I do recognize how deeply planned are the foundations and lines of the structure which we have contemplated, how subtly one must seek who desires to see into the thoughts beneath and behind, how untiring and self-restrained is the art and the work. But I shall say no more of this; for I know that you will give me credit, when I say that I am honestly studying a great work, of doing my best to study it aright.
This is far too serious a matter, and one which involves social interests so far higher than any personal, for me to say anything which does not fairly represent the state of my mind. And I should be doing wrong if I were to let you think that I was of any clear and resolved mind about it. On the contrary, I am not. I am far from clear that I at all apprehend, or even that I do not misconceive what are the real human traits of character in the principal personages, nor at all clear what is the sum or moral of the whole; nor am I at all sure that even if I knew these aright that the same view would force itself on my convictions. For instance I hesitate, and the more I think the more I hesitate, how Zarca and Fedalma stand in a true ethical judgement. I am not sure that I like the problem. I am not sure that there is any definite problem to be solved. I am not sure that either are real types of human nature. I am not sure if the conduct of both of them, or of one of them is not treason to human life. Nor am I at all clearly resolved whether the new poetic resource which mingles narrative and drama gains more than it sacrifices. Nor can I feel quite sure that the form equals the conception and does it full justice; in a word whether equally great ends might not be realized in prose rather than in verse.
I honestly and literally mean that my mind is not clear on these questions – not that it is made up in an adverse sense. No! these are the things which I am meditating. I wish simply to tell you the problems before my mind. For I cannot bear to leave you to suppose that they are not there. There they are: and I pass through revulsions of mind like a man in a religious crisis of scepticism and faith. For the most part I believe I shall solve them in the sense in which you would yourself – (except by the way the union of drama with epos). I am ashamed of my own paralytic state of mind. Everyone with whom I would most trust my judgement, is clear and triumphant. I stand like Thomas fingering the very nail-prints and yet striving to believe. Yet Thomas did not afterwards lack zeal.
However, of one thing I do not doubt – that I have before me to make the most of something profound, noble, and beautiful which must speak to every worthy intellect and every pure heart. Nor do I doubt that the same kindness with which you wrote to me when you went away last will be shown to this letter, this weak exhibition of a weak mind.
I am still living in the country, and now am very busy. But I shall return to London in a week or ten days and then I hope to come and see you. Believe me to be
Your sincerely
Frederic Harrison.