Still, I know well that in many respects it was impossible for you to
treat this story merely as a work of literary art. There must have
been many facts which you could not dwell upon, and which no one may
judge by common rules.
"It is also true, as you say once or twice in the course of the work,
that we have not among us here the peculiar religious earnestness you
have mainly to describe.
"We have little earnest formalism, and our formalists are for the most
part hollow, feeble, uninteresting, mere stumbling-blocks. We have the
Simeon Brown species, indeed; and among readers even of his kind the
book may do some good, and more among the weaker, truer people, whom
it will shake like mattresses,--making the dust fly, and perhaps with
it some of the sticks and quill-ends, which often make that kind of
person an objectionable mattress. I write too lightly of the book,--
far too lightly,--but your letter made me gay, and I have been
lighter-hearted ever since; only I kept this after beginning it,
because I was ashamed to send it without a line to Mrs. Browning as
well. I do not understand why you should apprehend (or rather
anticipate without apprehension) any absurd criticism on it. It is
sure to be a popular book,--not as 'Uncle Tom' was, for that owed part
of its popularity to its dramatic effect (the flight on the ice,
etc.), which I did not like; but as a true picture of human life is
always popular.
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