BR TO GEORGE MACAULEY TREVELYAN, 25 JAN. 1903
BRACERS 55517. ALS. Slater papers, Fisher Library, U. of Toronto
Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
14, Cheyne Walk,1
Chelsea, S. W.
Jan. 25, 1903

Dear George

I have read Masterman, and on the whole I think it a great book. There are certain trivial literary faults, and it would have been better not to bring in God at the end; but he gives most impressively the picture of plodding,a careful lives, without hope, without much fear, toiling slowly to the grave. By his self-restraint and avoidance of over-statement (both of which strike me as very admirable) he has avoided the literary failure which usually mars such writing, and has written in a way worthy of his subject. The intolerable irony and emptiness of it all is most terrible — the hooligans are really a bright spot in the picture. It is very strange, and still unintelligible to me, that such a picture should have beauty, but so it is. What an alchemist the mind is, when it contains the potent ingredients of deep and true feeling. Good writing, in prose especially, seems to me often a direct outcome of a good life; indeed many great themes, such as Masterman’s, have only failed to be adequately treated because men of leisure have not been willing to inflict upon themselves the knowledge that he has harboured. God knows what is to be become of this nation! Or indeed of the world, for the economic man cannot be isolated, but must spread his infectionb broadcast through the continents. Is it a dying world? Are we the last inheritors of all the treasure of the ages? Surely not: some way must be found. But for my part I see none.

Yours ever affly.
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a photocopy of the original letter.

Textual Notes

• a

  plodding after illegible short deletion

• b

  infection corrected from infestion, the O.E.D. not recognizing it as a word