1894-01-30 to Edmund Gosse

Autograph letters signed, University of Leeds, 156 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

Tuesday [30 January 894]

My dear Gosse,

Thank you very much for the book you sent me. I read your preface with interest; it seemed to me far too good for the book.

Thank you for mentioning my name. But I hope no one will think that I said: "the Dresden Madonna is a piece of shoddy commercialism,” or will associate me in any way with the scribblers whose scribbling you so justly depreciate. Nor have I ever depreciated ideas in pictures; I merely ventured to affirm that pictorial ideas are preferable to literary ideas in pictures. But art criticism makes strange bedfellows.

Yours always

George Moore

I hope to send you Esther Waters next month. I am contemplating an outline that will take at least six years to fill in.