George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 3 (of 3)

Letter to John Blackwood, 18th Nov. 1875.

Your enjoyment of the proofs cheers me greatly; and pray thank Mrs. Blackwood for her valuable hints on equine matters. I have not only the satisfaction of using those hints, I allow myself the inference that where there is no criticism on like points I have made no mistake.

I should be much obliged to Mr. Simpson – whom I am glad that Gwendolen has captivated – if he would rate the printers a little about their want of spacing. I am anxious that my poor heroes and heroines should have all the advantage that paper and print can give them.

It will perhaps be a little comfort to you to know that poor Gwen is spiritually saved, but "so as by fire." Don't you see the process already beginning? I have no doubt you do, for you are a wide-awake reader.

But what a climate to expect good writing in! Skating in the morning and splashy roads in the afternoon is just typical of the alternation from frigid to flaccid in the author's bodily system, likely to give a corresponding variety to the style.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 20th Nov. 1875.

I got my head from under the pressure of other matters, like a frog from under the water, to send you my November greeting. My silence through the rest of the months makes you esteem me the more, I hope, seeing that you yourself hate letter-writing – a remarkable exception to the rule that people like doing what they can do well, if one can call that a rule of which the reverse seems more frequent – namely, that they like doing what they do ill.

We stayed till nearly the end of September at the house we had taken in Hertfordshire. After that we went into Wales for a fortnight, and were under umbrellas nearly the whole time.

I wonder if you all remember an old governess of mine who used to visit me at Foleshill – a Miss Lewis? I have found her out. She is living at Leamington, very poor as well as old, but cheerful, and so delighted to be remembered with gratitude. How very old we are all getting! But I hope you don't mind it any more than I do. One sees so many contemporaries that one is well in the fashion. The approach of parting is the bitterness of age.

Letter to John Blackwood, 15th Dec. 1875.

Your letter is an agreeable tonic, very much needed, for that wretched hinderance of a cold last week has trailed after it a series of headaches worse than itself. An additional impression, like Mr. Langford's, of the two volumes is really valuable, as a sign that I have not so far failed in relation to a variety of readers. But you know that in one sense I count nothing done as long as anything remains to do; and it always seems to me that the worst difficulty is still to come. In the sanest, soberest judgment, however, I think the third volume (which I have not yet finished) would be regarded as the difficult bridge. I will not send you any more MS. until I can send the whole of vol. iii.

We think that Mr. Simpson has conducted our Australian business admirably. Remembering that but for his judgment and consequent activity we might have got no publication at all in that quarter, we may well be content with £200.

Mr. Lewes has not got the Life of Heine, and will be much pleased and obliged by your gift.

Major Lockhart's lively letter gives one a longing for the fresh, breezy life and fine scenery it conjures up. You must let me know when there is a book of his, because when I have done my own I shall like to read something else by him. I got much pleasure out of the two books I did read. But when I am writing, or only thinking of writing, fiction of my own, I cannot risk the reading of other English fiction. I was obliged to tell Anthony Trollope so when he sent me the first part of his "Prime Minister," though this must seem sadly ungracious to those who don't share my susceptibilities.

Apparently there are wild reports about the subject-matter of "Deronda" – among the rest, that it represents French life! But that is hardly more ridiculous than the supposition that after refusing to go to America, I should undertake to describe society there! It is wonderful how "Middlemarch" keeps afloat in people's minds. Somebody told me that Mr. Henry Sidgwick said it was a bold thing to write another book after "Middlemarch," and we must prepare ourselves for the incalculableness of the public reception in the first instance. I think I have heard you say that the chief result of your ample experience has been to convince you of that incalculableness.

What a blow for Miss Thackeray – the death of that sister to whom she was so closely bound in affection.

Journal, 1875.

Dec. 25.– After our return from Wales in October I grew better and wrote with some success. For the last three weeks, however, I have been suffering from a cold and its effects so as to be unable to make any progress. Meanwhile the two first volumes of "Daniel Deronda" are in print, and the first book is to be published on February 1st. I have thought very poorly of it myself throughout, but George and the Blackwoods are full of satisfaction in it. Each part as I see it before me im werden seems less likely to be anything else than a failure; but I see on looking back this morning – Christmas Day – that I really was in worse health and suffered equal depression about "Romola;" and, so far as I have recorded, the same thing seems to be true of "Middlemarch."

I have finished the fifth book, but am not far on in the sixth, as I hoped to have been; the oppression under which I have been laboring having positively suspended my power of writing anything that I could feel satisfaction in.

SUMMARY

JANUARY, 1873, TO DECEMBER, 1875

Reception of "Middlemarch" – Letter to John Blackwood – Mr. Anthony Trollope – Dutch translation of George Eliot's novels – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Evening drives at Weybridge – Letter to John Blackwood – German reprint of "Spanish Gypsy" – "The Lifted Veil" – "Kenelm Chillingly" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on her Memoir of her husband – Pleasure in young life – Letter to John Blackwood – Want of a Conservative leader – Letter to Mr. Burne-Jones – The function of art – Purpose in art – "Iphigenia in Aulis" – Letter to Mrs. Congreve – Welcoming her home – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on women at Cambridge – Visit to Mr. Frederic Myers at Cambridge – Meets Mr. Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Jebb, Mr. Edmund Gurney, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Lyttelton, and Mrs. and Miss Huth – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Death of Miss Rebecca Franklin – Visit to the Master of Balliol – Meets Mr. and Mrs. Charles Roundell – Professor Green – Max Müller – Thomson, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge – Nine-weeks' trip to the Continent – Letter to Mrs. Congreve from Homburg – Fontainebleau, Plombières, and Luxeuil – Two months' stay at Bickley – Letter to Mrs. Cross on journey abroad and Blackbrook – Letter to John Blackwood – New edition of "Middlemarch" – A real Lowick in a Midland county – Cheap editions – Letter to Mrs. Cross on the pleasures of the country and on Mr. Henry Sidgwick – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – House in the country – Letter to J. W. Cross on conformity – Letter to John Blackwood – Interruptions of town life – Simmering towards another book – Berlin reading "Middlemarch" – Ashantee war – Letter to Madame Bodichon – The George Howards – John Stuart Mill's Autobiography – Letter to Mrs. Cross on Christmas invitation – Dr. Andrew Clark – Letter to Mrs. Bray on stupidity of readers – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Retrospect of 1873 – Sales of "Middlemarch" and "Spanish Gypsy" – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – "Plain living and high thinking" – Letter to John Blackwood – Conservative reaction – Cheaper edition of novels – Lord Lytton's "Fables" – Dickens's Life and biography in general – Letter to John Blackwood – Volume of poems – Letter to Mrs. Bray – Motives for children – Letter to Miss Hennell – Francis Newman – George Dawson – "The Legend of Jubal and other Poems" published – "Symposium" written – Letter to Miss Mary Cross thanking her for a vase – Letter to Mrs. Cross – Delight in country – Letter to John Blackwood – Threatened restoration of the empire in France – "Brewing" "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor on Mrs. Nassau Senior's report – Letter to Mrs. William Smith on consolations in loss – Letter to Madame Bodichon – No disposition to melancholy – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The serious view of life – Letter to John Blackwood – Justifications for writing – Dean Liddell – Letter to Mrs. Stowe – Goethe's mysticism – Letter to Miss Hennell – Visit to Six-Mile Bottom – Paris and the Ardennes – Bank of England and Woolwich Arsenal – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The idea of God an exaltation of human goodness – Vision of others' needs – Ground of moral action – Need of altruism – The power of the will – Difficulties of thought – Sales of books – Retrospect of 1874 – Letter to Francis Otter on his engagement – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Note-writing – Home for girls – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Value of early religious experience – Limitations of scientists – Letter to John Blackwood – Kinglake's "Crimea" – Discipline of war – "Rasselas" – Miss Thackeray – Anthony Trollope – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – Desire to know the difficulties of others – Companion in the struggle of thought – Mr. Spencer's teaching – The value of poets – Emotion blending with thought – Letter to Mrs. William Smith – Her memoir – Letter to Mrs. Burne-Jones – The world of light and speech – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Rickmansworth – Letter to F. Harrison asking for consultation – Letter to J. W. Cross – "The Elms" – Depression – Letter to Mrs. Ponsonby – The Brewing interest – Conciliation of necessitarianism with will – Innate ideas – Death of Herbert Lewes – Trip to Wales – Letter to John Blackwood – Not satisfied with "Deronda" – Letter to Mrs. Peter Taylor – Mode of publication of books – Letter to John Blackwood – Gwendolen – Letter to Miss Hennell – Miss Lewis – Letter to John Blackwood – Impressions of "Deronda" – Major Lockhart – Depression about "Deronda."

 

CHAPTER XVIII

Letter to John Blackwood, 17th March, 1876.

We have just come in from Weybridge, but are going to take refuge there again on Monday for a few days more of fresh air and long, breezy afternoon walks. Many thanks for your thoughtfulness in sending me the cheering account of sales.

Mr. Lewes has not heard any complaints of not understanding Gwendolen, but a strong partisanship for and against her. My correspondence about the misquotation of Tennyson has quieted itself since the fifth letter. But one gentleman has written me a very pretty note, taxing me with having wanted insight into the technicalities of Newmarket, when I made Lush say, "I will take odds." He judges that I should have written, "I will lay odds." On the other hand, another expert contends that the case is one in which Lush would be more likely to say, "I will take odds." What do you think? I told my correspondent that I had a dread of being righteously pelted with mistakes that would make a cairn above me – a monument and a warning to people who write novels without being omniscient and infallible.

Mr. Lewes is agitating himself over a fifth reading of revise, Book VI., and says he finds it more interesting than on any former reading. It is agreeable to have a home criticism of this kind! But I am deep in the fourth volume, and cannot any longer care about what is past and done for – the passion of the moment is as much as I can live in.

We had beautiful skies with our cold, and only now and then a snow shower. It is grievous to read of the suffering elsewhere from floods.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 30th March, 1876.

I am well pleased that "Deronda" touches you. I wanted you to prefer the chapter about Mirah's finding, and I hope you will also like her history in Part III., which has just been published.

We want very much to get away, but I fear we shall hardly be able to start till the end of May. At present we think of the Maritime Alps as a destination for the warm summer – if we have such a season this year; but we shall wander a little on our way thither, and not feel bound to accomplish anything in particular. Meanwhile we are hearing some nice music occasionally, and we are going to see Tennyson's play, which is to be given on the 15th. The occasion will be very interesting, and I should be very sorry to miss it.

We have been getting a little refreshment from two flights between Sundays to Weybridge. But we have had the good a little drained from us by going out to dinner two days in succession. At Sir James Paget's I was much interested to find that a gentle-looking, clear-eyed, neatly-made man was Sir Garnet Wolseley; and I had some talk with him, which quite confirmed the impression of him as one of those men who have a power of command by dint of their sweet temper, calm demeanor, and unswerving resolution. The next subject that has filled our chat lately has been the Blue Book on Vivisection, which you would like to look into. There is a great deal of matter for reflection in the evidence on the subject, and some good points have been lately put in print, and conversation that I should like to tell you of if I had time. Professor Clifford told us the other Sunday that Huxley complained of his sufferings from "the profligate lying of virtuous women."

Journal, 1876.

April 12.– On February 1st began the publication of "Deronda," and the interest of the public, strong from the first, appears to have increased with Book III. The day before yesterday I sent off Book VII. The success of the work at present is greater than that of "Middlemarch" up to the corresponding point of publication. What will be the feeling of the public as the story advances I am entirely doubtful. The Jewish element seems to me likely to satisfy nobody. I am in rather better health – having, perhaps, profited by some eight days' change at Weybridge.

Letter to John Blackwood, 18th April, 1876.

Your sympathetic letter is a welcome support to me in the rather depressed condition which has come upon me from the effect, I imagine, of a chill taken in the sudden change from mildness to renewed winter. You can understand how trying it is to have a week of incompetence at the present stage of affairs. I am rather concerned to see that the part is nearly a sheet smaller than any of the other parts. But Books V. and VI. are proportionately thick. It seemed inadmissible to add anything after the scene with Gwendolen; and to stick anything in not necessary to development between the foregoing chapters is a form of "matter in the wrong place" particularly repulsive to my authorship's sensibility.

People tell us that the book is enormously discussed, and I must share with you rather a neat coincidence which pleased us last week. Perhaps you saw what Mr. Lewes told me of – namely, that [a critic] opined that the scenes between Lush and Grandcourt were not vraisemblable– were of the imperious feminine, not the masculine, character. Just afterwards Mr. Lewes was chatting with a friend who, without having read the [criticism] or having the subject in the least led up to by Mr. Lewes, said that he had been at Lady Waldegraves', where the subject of discussion had been "Deronda;" and Bernal Osborne, delivering himself on the book, said that the very best parts were the scenes between Grandcourt and Lush. Don't you think that Bernal Osborne has seen more of the Grandcourt and Lush life than that critic has seen? But several men of experience have put their fingers on those scenes as having surprising verisimilitude; and I naturally was peculiarly anxious about such testimony, where my construction was founded on a less direct knowledge.

We are rather vexed, now it is too late, that I did not carry out a sort of incipient intention to expunge a motto from Walt Whitman which I inserted in Book IV. Of course the whole is irrevocable by this time; but I should have otherwise thought it worth while to have a new page, not because the motto itself is objectionable to me – it was one of the finer things which had clung to me from among his writings – but because, since I quote so few poets, my selection of a motto from Walt Whitman might be taken as a sign of a special admiration, which I am very far from feeling. How imperfectly one's mind acts in proof-reading! Mr. Lewes had taken up Book IV. yesterday to re-read it for his pleasure merely; and though he had read it several times before, he never till yesterday made a remark against taking a motto from Walt Whitman. I, again, had continually had an appetency towards removing the motto, and had never carried it out – perhaps from that sort of flaccidity which comes over me about what has been done, when I am occupied with what is being done.

People in their eagerness about my characters are quite angry, it appears, when their own expectations are not fulfilled – angry, for example, that Gwendolen accepts Grandcourt, etc., etc.

One reader is sure that Mirah is going to die very soon, and, I suppose, will be disgusted at her remaining alive. Such are the reproaches to which I make myself liable. However, that you seem to share Mr. Lewes's strong feeling of Book VII. being no falling off in intensity makes me brave. Only endings are inevitably the least satisfactory part of any work in which there is any merit of development.

I forgot to say that the "tephillin" are the small leather bands or phylacteries, inscribed with supremely sacred words, which the Jew binds on his arms and head during prayer.

Any periphrasis which would be generally intelligible would be undramatic; and I don't much like explanatory foot-notes in a poem or story. But I must consider what I can do to remedy the unintelligibility.

The printers have sadly spoiled the beautiful Greek name Kalonymos, which was the name of a celebrated family of scholarly Jews, transplanted from Italy into Germany in mediæval times. But my writing was in fault.

Letter to Mrs. H. B. Stowe, 6th May, 1876.

Your letter was one of the best cordials I could have. Is there anything that cheers and strengthens more than the sense of another's worth and tenderness? And it was that sense that your letter stirred in me, not only by the words of fellowship and encouragement you give directly to me, but by all you tell me of your own feeling under your late painful experience. I had felt it long since I had heard of your and the Professor's well being; but I need not say one word to you of the reasons why I am not active towards my distant friends except in thought. I do think of them, and have a tenacious memory of every little sign they have given me. Please offer my reverential love to the Professor, and tell him I am ruthlessly proud that I kept him out of his bed. I hope that both you and he will continue to be interested in my spiritual children. My cares for them are nearly at an end, and in a few weeks we expect to set out on a Continental journey, as the sort of relaxation which carries one most thoroughly away from studies and social claims. You rightly divine that I am a little overdone, but my fatigue is due not to any excess of work so much as to the vicissitudes of our long winter, which have affected me severely as they have done all delicate people. It is true that some nervous wear, such as you know well, from the excitement of writing, may have made me more susceptible to knife-like winds and sudden chills.

Though you tenderly forbade me to write in answer to your letter, I like to do it in these minutes when I happen to be free, lest hinderances should come in the indefinite future. I am the happier for thinking that you will have had this little bit of a letter to assure you that the sweet rain of your affection did not fall on a sandy place.

I make a delightful picture of your life in your orange-grove – taken care of by dear daughters. Climate enters into my life with an influence the reverse of what I like to think of in yours. Sunlight and sweet air make a new creature of me. But we cannot bear now to exile ourselves from our own country, which holds the roots of our moral and social life. One fears to become selfish and emotionally withered by living abroad, and giving up the numerous connections with fellow countrymen and women whom one can further a little towards both public and private good.

I wonder whether you ever suffered much from false writing (about your biography and motives) in the newspapers. I dare say that pro-slavery prints did not spare you. But I should be glad to think that there was less impudent romancing about you as a citoyenne of the States than there appears to be about me as a stranger. But it is difficult for us English, who have not spent any time in the United States, to know the rank that is given to the various newspapers; and we may make the mistake of giving emphasis to some American journalism which is with you as unknown to respectable minds as any low-class newspaper with us.

When we come back from our journeying, I shall be interesting myself in the MS. and proofs of my husband's third volume of his Problems, which will then go to press, and shall plunge myself into the mysteries of our nervous tissue as the Professor has been doing into the mysteries of the Middle Ages. I have a cousinship with him in that taste – but how to find space in one's life for all the subjects that solicit one? My studies have lately kept me away from the track of my husband's researches, and I feel behindhand in my wifely sympathies. You know the pleasure of such interchange – husband and wife each keeping to their own work, but loving to have cognizance of the other's course.

God bless you, dear friend. Beg the Professor to accept my affectionate respect, and believe me always yours with love.

Journal, 1876.

June 3.– Book V. published a week ago. Growing interest in the public, and growing sale, which has from the beginning exceeded that of "Middlemarch;" the Jewish part apparently creating strong interest.

Letter to J. W. Cross, 3d June, 1876.

The useful "companion," which your loving care has had marked with my initials, will go with me, and be a constant sign of the giver's precious affection, which you have expressed in words such as I most value.

Even success needs its consolations. Wide effects are rarely other than superficial, and would breed a miserable scepticism about one's work if it were not now and then for an earnest assurance such as you give me that there are lives in which the work has done something "to strengthen the good and mitigate the evil."

I am pursued to the last with some bodily trouble – this week it has been sore throat. But I am emerging, and you may think of me next week as raising my "Ebenezer."

Love and blessings to you all.

The manuscript of "Daniel Deronda" bears the following inscription:

"To my dear Husband, George Henry Lewes.

 
"Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
 

*****

 
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
Haply I think on thee – and then my state
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
 

Journal, 1876.

June 10.– We set off on our journey, intending to go to San Martino Lantosc in the Maritime Alps. But I was ill at Aix, where the heat had become oppressive, and we turned northwards after making a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes – stayed a few days at Lausanne, then at Vevey, where again I was ill; then by Berne and Zurich to Ragatz, where we were both set up sufficiently to enjoy our life. After Ragatz to Heidelberg, the Klönthal, Schaffhausen, St. Blasien in the Black Forest, and then home by Strasburg, Nancy, and Amiens, arriving September 1.

Letter to John Blackwood, 6th July, 1876, from Ragatz.

After much travelling we seem to have reached the right place for our health and comfort, and as we hope to stay here for at least a fortnight, I have begun to entertain selfish thoughts about you and the possibility of having news from you. Our month's absence seems long to us – filled with various scenes and various ailments – but to you, I dare say, the request for a letter to tell us what has happened will seem to have come before there is anything particular to tell.

On our arriving at Aix the effect of railway travelling and heat on me warned us to renounce our project of going to the Maritime Alps and to turn northward; so after resting at Aix we went to Chambéry, just to make a pilgrimage to Les Charmettes, and then set our faces northward, staying at beautiful Lausanne and Vevey for a week, and then coming on by easy stages to this nook in the mountains. In spite of illness we have had much enjoyment of the lovely scenery we have been dwelling in ever since we entered Savoy, where one gets what I most delight in – the combination of rich, well-cultivated land, friendly to man, and the grand outline and atmospheric effect of mountains near and distant.

This place seems to be one of the quietest baths possible. Such fashion as there is, is of a German, unimposing kind; and the King of Saxony, who is at the twin hotel with this, is, I imagine, a much quieter kind of eminence than a London stock-broker. At present the company seems to be almost exclusively Swiss and German, but all the appliances for living and carrying on the "cure" are thoroughly generous and agreeable. We rose at five this morning, drank our glasses of warm water, and walked till a quarter to seven, then breakfasted; and from half-past eight to eleven walked to Bad Pfeffers and back again, along a magnificent ravine where the Tamine boils down beneath a tremendous wall of rock, and where it is interesting to see the electric telegraph leaping from the summit, crossing the gulf, and then quietly running by the roadside till it leaps upward again to the opposite summit.

You may consider us as generally ill-informed, and as ready to make much of a little news as any old provincial folk in the days when the stage-coach brought a single London paper to the village Crown or Red Lion. We have known that Servia has declared war against Turkey, and that Harriet Martineau is dead as well as George Sand.

Our weather has been uniformly splendid since we left Paris, with the exception of some storms, which have conveniently laid the dust.

Letter to John Blackwood, 2d Sept. 1876.

We reached home only last night, and had scarcely taken our much-needed dinner before a parcel was brought in which proved to be "Daniel Deronda" in the four bound volumes, and various letters with other "missiles" – as an acquaintance of mine once quite naively called his own favors to his correspondents – which have at present only gone to swell a heap that I mean to make acquaintance with very slowly. Mr. Lewes, however, is more eager than I, and he has just brought up to me a letter which has certainly gratified me more than anything else of the sort I ever received. It is from Dr. Hermann Adler, the Chief Rabbi here, expressing his "warm appreciation of the fidelity with which some of the best traits of the Jewish character have been depicted by" etc., etc. I think this will gratify you.

We are both the better for our journey, and I consider myself in as good case as I can ever reasonably expect. We can't be made young again, and must not be surprised that infirmities recur in spite of mineral waters and air 3000 feet above the sea-level. After Ragatz, we stayed at Stachelberg and Klönthal – two lovely places, where an English face is seldom seen. Another delicious spot, where the air is fit for the gods of Epicurus, is St. Blasien, in the Schwarzwald, where also we saw no English or American visitors, except such as übernachten there and pass on. We have done exploits in walking, usually taking four or five hours of it daily.

I hope that you and yours have kept well and have enjoyed the heat rather than suffered from it. I confess myself glad to think that this planet has not become hopelessly chilly. Draughts and chills are my enemies, and but for them I should hardly ever be ailing.

The four volumes look very handsome on the outside. Please thank Mr. William Blackwood for many kind notes he wrote me in the days of MS. and proofs – not one of which I ever answered or took notice of except for my own behoof.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 6th Sept. 1876.

We got home again last Friday, much strengthened by our journey, notwithstanding vicissitudes. I suppose you will not be in town for ages to come, but I let you know that I am here in case you have anything to say to me by letter – about "objects."

After leaving Ragatz we still kept in eastern Switzerland, in high valleys unvisited by the English; and in our homeward line of travel we paused in the Schwarzwald at St. Blasien, which is a Luft-kur, all green hills and pines, with their tops as still as if it were the abode of the gods.

But imagine how we enjoy being at home again in our own chairs, with the familiar faces giving us smiles which are not expecting change in franc pieces!

We are both pretty well, but of course not cured of all infirmities. Death is the only physician, the shadow of his valley the only journeying that will cure us of age and the gathering fatigue of years. Still we are thoroughly lively and "spry."

I hope that the hot summer has passed agreeably for you and not been unfavorable to your health or comfort. Of course a little news of you will be welcome, even if you don't particularly want to say anything to me.

Letter to Madame Bodichon, 2d Oct. 1876.

My blessing on you for your sweet letter, which I count among the blessings given to me. Yes. Women can do much for the other women (and men) to come. My impression of the good there is in all unselfish efforts is continually strengthened. Doubtless many a ship is drowned on expeditions of discovery or rescue, and precious freights lie buried. But there was the good of manning and furnishing the ship with a great purpose before it set out.