Note 24 to Chapter 3 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in a 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
Wordsworth expressed a similar anxiety during his tour of the Alps: "Ten thousand times in the course of this tour have I regretted the inability of my memory to retain a more strong impression of the beautiful forms before me, and again and again in quitting a fortunate station have I returned to it with the most eager avidity, with the hope of bearing away a more lively picture. At this moment, when many of these landscapes are floating before my mind, I feel a high [enjoyment] in reflecting that perhaps scarce a day in my life will pass [in which] I shall not derive some happiness from these images." See The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 2d ed. rev. by Chester L. Shaver (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), I, 35-36.
Last modified 20 September 2000