"If she had more religion she would have less morals": WB Yeats on George Eliot

My favourite 20th century poet, W.B. Yeats, was not a fan of my favourite 19th century novelist, George Eliot. He wrote about her in damning terms in a letter to his friend, FJ Gregg, late in the summer of 1886. A scrofula of literature, no less. It's interesting because Yeats, a master of the lyric poem, was not an accomplished novelist. He struggled with fiction as a young writer, and abandoned it for poetry and plays. The post below retains the idiosyncratic punctuation and spelling used in his letter. Although Yeats never received a formal diagnosis of dyslexia, evidence suggests that he had literacy differences that stayed with him from childhood (he was very late to reading) through to the end of his life.

W.B. Yeats on George Eliot

I have only read four books of George Eliott – Silas Marner – Ramallah – Spanish gypsy – and a volume of selections. I don't mean to read a fifth. Reasons why: Firstly: Tito, her most famous character, is as interesting as a cat on the vivisection table. In him there is none of that beauty that Hugo gave to everything he touched not only to Esmeralda but to the hunchback. In literature nothing that is not beautiful has any right to exist. Tito 1s created out of anger not love. Secondly: She understands only the conscious nature of man. His intellect, his morals,-- she knows nothing of the dim unconscious nature the world of instinct which (if there is any truth in Darwen) is the accumulated wisdom of all living things from the monera to man, while the other is at the very most the wisdom gathered during four score years and ten. Thirdly: her beloved analysis is a scrofula of literature. All the greatest books of the world are synthetic, homeric-- Fourthly: She has morals but no religion-- If she had more religion she would have less morals. The moral impulse and the religious destroy each other in most cases. fifthly: I never met a George Eliotite who had either imagination or spirit enough for a good lie. sixthly: In the "spanish gypsy" there are seven arguments of about fifty pages each. This is the way she describes passion. seventhly: she is too reasonable. I hate reasonable people the activity of their brains sucks up all the blood out of their hearts. I was once afraid of turning out reasonable myself. The only buisness of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart. Yours sincerely W.B. Yeats