I get confirmed in my impression that the criticism of any new writing
is shifting and untrustworthy. I hardly think that any critic can have
so keen a sense of the shortcomings in my works as that I groan under
in the course of writing them, and I cannot imagine any edification
coming to an author from a sort of reviewing which consists in
attributing to him or her unexpressed opinions, and in imagining
circumstances which may be alleged as petty private motives for the
treatment of subjects which ought to be of general human interest.

To the same correspondent she used even stronger words concerning her
dislike of ordinary criticism.

Do not expect "criticism" from me. I hate "sitting in the seat of
judgment," and I would rather try to impress the public generally with
the sense that they may get the best result from a book without
necessarily forming an "opinion" about it, than I would rush into
stating opinions of my own. The floods of nonsense printed in the form
of critical opinions seem to me a chief curse of our times--a chief
obstacle to true culture.

It is not to be forgotten, however, that George Eliot had done much
critical work before she became a novelist, and that much of it was of a
keen and cutting nature. Severely as she was handled by the critics, no one
of them was more vigorous than was her treatment of Young and Cumming. Even
in later years, when she took up the critical pen, the effect was felt. Mr.
Lecky did not pass gently through her hands when she reviewed his
_Rationalism in Europe_. Her criticisms in _Theophrastus Such_ were
penetrating and severe.