April 25, 1953.

Dear Jim,

I write because it's Saturday morning and there's a minute for it. There's not any news. Well, who cares about news? (The answer is, Most people.) Allen Hazen was out here last week, which is something. He looked cheerful, and should be pleased to see how many of his old friends here are delighted to see him. I didn't hear his lecture - having been lassoed to judge a Poetry Reading Contest at the same hour - but had a good talk with him late on his last evening. He seemed to have had a very good time in Texas, and found the trip a stimulation. He'd seen Oscar Maurer, who he says is about to erupt with a book. Do you know Oscar? I can't remember your ever mentioning him. He's going to be in New Haven this June. He was the son of the pastor of Center Church. He's rather shy and never made much impression on the lords of the Yale Graduate School. He and Tom Vance I thought were the two best-read and most civilized people there in my time.

Well, it's another reason for looking forward to the summer. But there are enough of those now for my needs. I'm hoping to get one editing job finished: the little one of the Burke-Boswell letters for Ted Hilles. Have you begun on the Boswell-Malone? I hear that one correspondence of the Boswell series is now done and can serve us as a model. I'll be interested to talk over the model with you.

I'm also eager to see Spence, though I can't imagine you'll get much competence out of my Scholarship in his period. For dangling participles or split infinitives I might be a help.

You ask about the responses here to Bill Wimsatt's review. No luck thus far. The only one of the Chicago Critics I see regularly is Norman Maclean (about the only one Bill let off easy). But thus far he hasn't read the review, and speaks of it rather distantly. I've told him what to expect, and he seems willing to take my report instead of getting the original. I think the people here are a little demoralized about that book. They didn't get as much attention as they hoped; I heard from the Press that they felt it hadn't been pushed hard enough by them. Perhaps because Ronald Crane isn't on the ground, it doesn't get talked of much when I'm around, or I think at all.

Delighted to hear Bill has a Ford Fellowship. I wish that would mean he was going to be in England next year. I can imagine his reasons for resisting travel; moving a family into a foreign community takes up a lot of one's working-time. But then he must remember that the Ford People don't believe in scholarly work anyway; he's supposed to be refreshing himself by change.

I hope that at least Bill DeVane is sure of a Senior Guggenheim, but as you say, they are going to find it hard thinking up reasons to refuse two other members of the same department. But I guess they have a certain amount of acquired skill by now, and will do what they want to for some sort of reasons.

Have you any fresh thoughts on Mrs. Backhouse's illusions? I'm afraid Hayes's more pessimistic guess (that if she was left to

herself too long she'd get impossible ideas)
was the right one. Do you see anything that
can still be done by the bystanders? It
sounds to me as if she would agree to break
the collection up. I have thought of the
possibility of making her an offer of, say,
fifty pounds, for a permission to publish
all letters from the microfilms we now have.
I doubt if for these letters that would
interfere with the sale, or lower prices. The
buyer would be guaranteed mention in the
forthcoming edition, etc. Does that sound
like a sensible thing to suggest to her?
At worst I believe we could go ahead without
permissions; there'll be very few changes indeed
to be made from Samuels's careful transcriptions
of most of the letters she has.

Well, we're getting on toward the
summer. I'm making a fairly quick get-away
this year, as I must if I go to the 1928
reunion. My, my, what has to be done between
now and then.

Love to Marie-Louise.

Yours,

May 5, 1953

Professor Thomas Copeland
1155 East Fifty Seventh Street
Chicago 37, Illinois

Dear Tom,

Many thanks for sending on the latest communications from Mrs. Backhouse. I think it is quite clear that the amount of money she hopes to receive from the sale at Sotheby's is of more importance to her than keeping the collection together. So, you can expect the big sale to come along any time now, but I should imagine in June.

In the meantime, there is your problem of permission to print. Considering that you have money for the edition, I think you probably would be wise to get some kind of a letter from her covering you. Perhaps twenty five pounds would do it, though that is a matter on which I am not very expert. You might ask one of your English correspondents what he thinks.

Basically, your approach should be that you want to be covered after the sale in case any of the new owners should raise a question. And all you need from her is a letter giving permission for you to print. In case she feels she would like a little something for it, you can suggest a sum. Possibly she wouldn't even accept that, but it would doubtless be good insurance money. You might mention to her, once the matter is all tied up, that you won't have to see the letters again, since the microfilms will be sufficient for reference purposes. The point of this would be to indicate to her that the documents are slightly in the semi-public order, due to their having been given the treatment of deposit at Sheffield.

You have time, however, to correspond with some of your advisers in England, and then write her accordingly.

There is not much other news to pass along from here. I have been pretty busy on Spence, and expect to be even more so. Close to a hundred thousand words are now typed up, and I trust that Sherburn will be able to look the thing over when he is here the week of May 19. He will be bringing with him Volume I of his edition, also. That is as far as his proofs have come in.

Enclosed is an item from a catalogue that was lodged in my files. Perhaps it is already known to you. But I couldn't find anything in the index to Hill-Powell on the subject, nor does the CREL show anything about Johnson under the Burke section. If it is all new to you the best procedure may be to write a letter to the bookseller asking if he will let you know the buyer, so that you can communicate with him. But if he prefers not to let you know the buyer's name perhaps he will forward your letter to the buyer. The way you couch the letter then will have a lot to do with whether the buyer comes forward with the material.

On looking over some of your other letters I am not sure whether I made several of the replies that you asked for. One of them concerns how much you should tell your

Professor Thomas Copeland

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5/5/55

editors about the amount of money you have received. Probably it would be well to be vague and play it down a bit, since, as you suspect, they may expect to live well if they know what it is available.

Concerning the Index Society, we are having a little session when Bentley is here next Saturday, according to plans. At that time we'll discuss the matter and hope we can get somewhere with it.

Regarding Oscar Maurer, I don't think I have ever met him, though I did meet his wife at one time. If he is going to be here this summer, perhaps we could have one of our luncheon sessions and get acquainted.

Concerning the Burke-Boswell letters, I shall look forward to hearing all of the details this summer. Certainly not much has been provided "as a model" so far. I haven't done any more than go over the material once, and make a few notes on the text. Once Spence is out of the way I shall give it the works.

The response to Bill Wimsatt's review is rather interesting, especially in its lack of substance. I was having lunch with Bill and Rene the day after your letter came, so read that paragraph to them. Bill was extremely interested in it, of course. He has had a number of letters from friends who have the same viewpoint, but I don't believe had heard anything from the other side.

A good letter came from Ditsy this week. Though it repeats a number of topics that were in his letter to you, I send it along anyway. Please return it so that I can answer it.

S. Inc.

THE QUADRANGLE CLUB
CHICAGO

March 7, 1953.

Dear Jim,

Delighted to hear from you, as always. I have taken your suggestions about my letter to Charavay, which goes off with this. Their letter is misdated, as you probably noticed. Mrs. Thrale wasn't Mrs. Thrale in 1794, and I find in the files that an exactly similar letter but dated 1774 was advertised by Sotheby in 1904. Ah, I suppose there are dozens of such letters lurking around here and there, which dealers have been selling to dealers since 1904. Well, maybe not more than two or three dozens, but doubtless there are several throbbing headaches for the Burke edition among them. I must say it's the one aspect of the whole enterprise I least enjoy looking forward to. But that may be wrong; it's full of adventure. But I hate to think of those vigilant wretches jacking up their prices as no doubt they'll do the second we publicize our existence.

No one here entertains even a speck of doubt that we've got our money now. Trustees are a formality. I hope and suppose so, but am not telling our English editors till the thing is in the bag - or indeed anybody else. Say, here's a question on which I'd be glad of your advice. How discreet can we be about the amount Carnegie is trusting us with? I don't want to be classified as paranoid, as maybe I will be if I am so insistent on withholding information; but as you know the British think of American money as mighty Easy Come

and it might actually do us harm to have it about
that we had $55,000 - nigh unto £20,000 - at our
disposal. My is to say just that we have enough
editorial funds to get under way and let it go at
that if they'll let us. Those who know best what's
got to be done think we'll have no difficulty
spending all we've got.

I had a very pleasant dinner with
Marshall a couple nights ago. At least, it was
enjoyable for me. We went to a near-by Italian
restaurant. He is in excellent health and good
spirits; indeed he always seems to be both of those.

to Ben. As you say, we can't be quite sure what
happens after that. If a letter from me to the
man at Ford, or even to the man at Bollingen,
seemed likely to do a scrap of good - let me know.
I'm getting bold as brass latterly (you know me,
Copeland the Bold).

You mention the pleasure we all had talking at the party. As always on the pleasantest occasions, everything was left open-at-the-end. I never did finish a topic that came up with Mr. Mosle: the Leadbeater Papers. I was really impressed to find a farmer, business-man, man-of-affairs or however he is classified who had heard of anything so out-of-the-way. If I remember rightly, he was hoping they'd be re-published.

Do you remember something about the
Eisenhower administration hoping to keep Russia guessing? Well, I guess we have got an answer to that one! We mustn't underestimate those people.

I hope Marie-Louise is back in good health.
Will you give her my love?

Yours,
Jann

1155 East 57th Street
Chicago 57, Illinois

May 24, 1953.

Dear Jim,

Heavens! how the time does sweep
by. I note that I received your last on
May 7th, and with the welcome enclosure of
a letter from Ditsy. What's to become of
your enviable reputation as one who bounces
them right back if I insist on holding the
ball out of the game for three weeks at a
time? Blame me in the reply to Ditsy. I'll
blame myself too, as I'm writing him today.
Not only slow myself, but the cause that
slowness is in other men...

Here's some more documentation
of Mrs. Backhouse's unhappy attitude toward
the responsibilities of owners of letters.
I agreed with you before that it was all
but certain that the letters would be
scattered. This supplies what certainty
was lacking. Well, we've done what could
be done. Professor Potter, when Bob Smith
sketched out the situation for him, favored
doing nothing about it. I've sent on copies
of the relevant passages of these letters,
hoping that Bob can get another opinion out
of him based on the deteriorated situation.
As I told you, the Press is getting a legal
opinion from its New York contacts as to what
our legal position is if the worst possible
happens. I haven't written to Mrs. B., nor
she to me, but I'd still be game at a last
minute emergency to put up a little money
of my own to "clear" things as well as one
still can.

How do you like the appearance of
our next-to-last sample pages? They only

Burke to William Jones

[20 Feb. 1779]

entertainment from this little work; as the approbation of such a reader is the highest reward that a writer can desire; and will give the greatest pleasure to,

Dear sir,

Your most obliged and faithful servant

W. JONES

To JAMES BOSWELL 21 February 1779

Source: MS at Yale. *Addressed* (on wrapper): To James Boswell Esqr. Edinburgh—
*Endorsed*: Reed Mar 4.

Burke's first letter to Boswell. In the year preceding it Boswell had written Burke three letters, whose chief purpose, as he said frankly, was to win the honor of a correspondence with him. The first two, dated 3 March 1778 and 6 November 1778, seemed to have little other purpose. The third, besides reproaching Burke for not answering the other two, spoke of some violent outbreaks of anti-Catholic feeling in Scotland, precipitated by Sir George Savile's bill in Parliament for repealing some of the penal laws against Catholics. Savile's bill did not actually apply to Scotland, but it had been promised that a bill similar to it and applicable to Scotland would be moved. Riots occurred in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Government disowned this promise. Boswell in his third letter, dated 22 February 1779, asked Burke to reassure him—anonymously if he chose—that no one in Parliament still intended to move a toleration bill for Scotland, which Boswell was sure would produce a rebellion.

My Dear Sir

Your goodness is indeed inexhaustible; but great as my faults are they do not make such a demand upon it as you imagine. I have had the misfortune of missing the third letter you speak of; and before your last, only one came to my hand. But as I am not so early as I ought to have been in acknowledging the honour of that one, my fault is greater than I fear I am able to attone for; and I tell you of the failure of the other, because I do not wish that my crime should have any aggravation.

I had heard some account of the subject of your letter before I received it from you. It would have been against the spirit of the Act of Union if Scotland did not, at some time or other partake of the disorders that prevail in the constitution of the British Family.¹ If do confess indeed, that I did not expect, that our dear Sister, who in the rigour of her Prudery, had shown outrageous Zeal, and decreed such severe penances against other frail and offending parts of the household, should make such a slip herself as to give her a fair title to the Stool and

1. The traditional punishment for a scoled was the ducking stool; fornicators and adulterers did penance in a white sheet.

[ 186 ]

21 Feb. 1779

James Boswell to Burke

White Sheet. But these things will happen as long as the very best of us are only made of mere rebellious flesh and blood² in when to the riot which has been perpetrated, and the rebellion which is threatned, they have at least the advantage of diversifying the scene of our modern contentions. A religious war was not exactly the thing I expected in my time. I thought it possible, that even at the other side of the Tweed, a man might be allowed to say his prayers in Latin without any gross violation of the native, inherent, essential privileges and immunities of the broad Scotch.

I dined with your friend Dr. Johnson on Saturday at Sir Joshua's. We had a very good day, as we had not a sentence, word, syllable, letter, comma, or tittle, of any of the elements that make politicks. Adieu and believe me wite great esteem and regard

Dear Sir

your most faithful
and obedient humble servant

EDM BURKE

Westminster, Monday, February 1, 1779

To PATRICK BOWIE 22 February 1779

Source: MS at Sheffield

Westminster, [22 February 1799]

Sir,

I am favoured with your letter from Edinburgh of 25th March last. The expressions in the newspapers to which you allude are (as usual) the news-writer's own. Very little that appears there has the smallest resemblance to my mode of expression, or to my manner of stating facts and arguments. I did indeed mean to express, in my place, my entire disapprobation of a pamphlet which it is natural that you should be very earnest to disown, as it contains sentiments which no being in the human form could, on reflection, be found of owning.

I did not state it as a certain fact, that this piece had its origin in your committee: I spoke of it only as a suspicion, the grounds of which I mentioned at the time. I am glad that you have undeceived me, and I have lost not a moment in doing you public justice, though I cannot think I was very rash in

2. Blotted in the MS; a more precise transcription of what appears would be "p⟨⟩p⟨⟩d."

[ 187 ]

May 26, 1953

Dear Tom,

What a reputation to live up to! Be sure you don't let it get whispered around that I am supposed to answer letters promptly, since I have a huge folder labeled "Answer immediately" that contains a waiting list from the time when Adlai was thought to be a biblical expression.

We are all looking forward greatly to your arrival in this part of the world. Be sure to let us know when you get here. By that time I shall have been through my twenty fifth reunion, so shall have sympathy for what you are having to experience.

I am afraid that the Backhouse matter is now too far down the path for any possible salvation. My interest in the collection was as a collection, and not in bidding for any separate lots. But I have written to my agent in England to inquire whether there is any likelihood that the stuff will be sold in two lots. That I doubt, and she would be very foolish to do so if she is looking for the high shilling.

If it were generally known that the stuff has already been microfilmed and exploited, prices would be very modest. But that shouldn't prevent you from doing whatever you can in advance to be sure of your publication rights. Your advisers can probably tell you whether it would be best to raise the issue at all. Perhaps you can just assume that you have rights, and what is anybody going to do about it? A fulsome acknowledgment might help the assumption along. We trust the New York attorney has the facilities for being up-to-date on British law.

It sounds silly, but there is a great deal of "slam" about this matter of literary property in ancient papers. A lawsuit would have a nuisance value, but unless it could be shown that someone made money out of it, I wonder how damages could be shown. That, however, is a matter for the legal eagles.

Your sample pages are very attractive. The footnotes, as you have undoubtedly noted, kick around the language a bit, and give us two new words. I think that "retranslation" is quite a coinage. I shall look forward to seeing the next "pool" when you arrive here.

Your report on the doings at Chicago makes very interesting reading. To the rest of us it seems quite recondite and the issues are tangential to our existence. But from Marshall's remarks we can understand how boiling and actual they are to you on the spot. When you are here, perhaps you can explain in words of one syllable what it is really all about.

Your friends here prosper. Rene is relieved that the year is over, and has gotten his manuscript in to the PMLA-Oxford contest. How would you like to be the author of a competing manuscript? Bill is very busy, and has already done a lot of the

Professor Thomas Copeland

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5/26/53

chapters on the volume with Cleanth that will be his main assignment during this
Ford year off. The Guggenheim awards were expected. Actually, the list this year
struck one as being a bit on the stuffy side.

Sherburn was here for three days this past week. I read over his proof as far as I could get through it, and he did the same for my manuscript of Spence. It was beneficial to both of us, but especially to me, of course. He went to New York for a wedding, a niece who works for Fortune magazine.

A couple of letters have come from Maynard. He has done several errands for me in the Bodleian, and has responded promptly to a barrage of Popeian queries. Everything seems to be going well with him, and I am sure this will be one of the high spots in his life, academic and otherwise.

Don't bother to answer this, except with a telephone call in New Haven when you are here and ready for a session at the Mermaid.

8

1 March 1779

Burke to James Boswell

Dear Sir,

W. JONES

To JAMES BOSWELL 1 March 1779

Source: MS at Yale. *Addressed* (on wrapper): To James Boswell Esqr. Edinburgh. *Endorsed*: Recd Mar 4.

My dear Sir

Your goodness is indeed inexhaustible; but great as my faults are they do not make such a demand upon it as you imagine. I have had the misfortune of missing the third letter you speak of; and before your last, only one came to my hands. But as I am not so early as I ought to have been in acknowledging the honour of that one, my fault is greater than I fear I am able to attone for; and I tell you of the failure of the other, because I do not wish that my crime should have any aggravation.

I had heard some account of the subject of your letter before I received it from you. It would have been against the spirit of the Act of Union if Scotland did not, at some time or other partake of the disorders that prevail in the constitution of the British Family. I do confess indeed, that I did not expect, that our dear Sister, who in the rigour of her Prudery, had shown outrageous Zeal, and decreed such severe penances against other frail and offending parts of the household, should make such a slip herself as to give her a fair title to the Stool and White Sheet.¹ But these

1. The traditional punishment for a scold was the ducking stool; fornicators and adulterers did penance in a white sheet.

186

Burke to Patrick Bowie

30 March 1779

I dined with your friend Dr. Johnson on Saturday at Sir Joshua's. We had a very good day, as we had not a sentence, word, syllable, letter, comma, or tittle, of any of the elements that make politicks. Adieu and believe me with great esteem and regard

Dear Sir,

Your most faithful
and obedient humble servant

EDM BURKE

Westminster Monday March 1. 1779

To PATRICK BOWIE 30 March 1779

Source: MS at Sheffield.

Westminster, 30 March 1779

Sr,

I am favoured with your letter from Edinburgh of 25th March last.¹ The expressions in the newspapers to which you allude are (as usual) the news-writer's own. Very little that appears there has the smallest resemblance to my mode of expression, or to my manner of stating facts and arguments. I did indeed mean to express, in my place, my entire disapprobation of a pamphlet which it is natural that you should be very earnest to disown, as it contains sentiments which no being in the human form could, on reflection, be fond of owning.

I did not state it as a certain fact, that this piece had its origin in your committee: I spoke of it only as a suspicion, the grounds of which I mentioned at the time. I am glad that you have undeceived me, and I have lost not a moment in doing you public justice, though I cannot think I was very rash in my original conjecture. When any set of gentlemen are known to be active in the circulation of anonymous pieces, works of the same original temper and tendency with those which they circulate, will naturally be attributed to them. The pamphlet which you have sent me, and which you avow, has no more name of an author to it than that which you disclaim; and yet, if I had met that work, and attributed

1. Bowie, an Edinburgh merchant, had written Burke protesting against a passage in his speech to the House of Commons on the anti-Catholic riots in Scotland. According to an Edinburgh newspaper cited by Bowie, Burke had told the House that a particular anonymous pamphlet against the Catholics had been printed and circulated by the Committee of Correspondence for the Protestant Interest. As a member of that committee, Bowie denied the fact and asked Burke to withdraw his statement. Bowie's letter is printed entire in *Correspondence* (ii, 253-255).

187

EDITORIAL RULES - IN THE FORM OF COMMENTS ON TWO SAMPLE PAGES

These sample pages at least approximate the appearance of pages in our final volumes; page 186 shows the beginning, page 187 the close of a letter, whose middle portion is omitted. The following are rules which editors should follow in preparing the text and apparatus of such a letter for the printer.

A. Heading:

1. Edmund Burke's name need not be given in the heading. The "To" stands for "Edmund Burke to." But give the full name of any other member of Burke's family (e.g. "Jane Burke to" or "William Burke to"). The correspondent at the other end should be given his first and last name, preceded by "Sir," "Dr.," or military rank; or if a peer or churchman, he should be identified by the title he held at the time of the letter (e.g. "James Boswell," "Sir Joshua Reynolds," "Dr. Richard Brocklesby" [but not an honorary Doctor, as "Dr. Samuel Johnson"], "General John Burgoyne," "the Marquis of Rockingham," "the Bishop of Chester").

2. Whatever part of the date of a letter is editorial should be bracketed in the heading (e.g. "1 March [1779]" if the year-date has been inferred from the contents). Everything is to be regarded as editorial which is not on the face of the letter in the writer's hand.

3. When a letter's date is only established as being before or after the date of another letter in the Burke correspondence, it should be entered in the heading as *ante* or *post* that date (e.g. "ante 1 March 1779" or "post 22 February [1779]"). This seems more precise than to fix its date as only *circa* a certain month or year, or even *circa* a specific date which is merely guessed; it also tells the reader where to look for the letter - which we will place immediately before or immediately after the letter to which it is related.

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4. When a letter is itself undated and cannot be attached to any dated letter in the Burke correspondence, the editor may either use _circa_ with his closest guess at the time, or he may assign a precise date, merely bracketing all of its parts (he might be nearly certain of all of them if, say, a day of the week were mentioned and a clear postmark or endorsement fixed it). Any date which seems to require an explanation or defense may be accompanied by a footnote.

5. Citations of the dates of letters (as in notes elsewhere in the edition) should show which portions are bracketed, and use _post, ante, and ca_ for _circa_ where needed. They should be kept in the shortest form which gives full information (e.g. "1 Mar [79]," " post 12 Jan 80," "ca July 82").

B. Miscellaneous information about the text:

1. Source, MS or printed, will always be given, address always given when known; endorsements need not be recorded unless they establish the date a letter was received. Addresses and endorsements should be recorded exactly as they appear (except for raised letters, which are to be lowered). Preserve abbreviations.

2. Postmarks will perhaps not be recorded in the final printed volume, but as they have great value in fixing dubious dates, the editors are asked to note any clear postmarks they see.

C. Headnote:

1. A not very large number of Burke's letters will require brief headnotes to introduce them to the reader. Sometimes the need will be because Burke's letter is an answer to something from the other end of the correspondence which should be summarized for the reader; but other times there may be other reasons that a letter needs an introduction. A wide difference in the type of headnote used by the various

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editors would mar the edition; we should try to conform as nearly as we can to a uniform policy. It is suggested that headnotes be factual, avoiding opinion or interpretation. They should also avoid minute detail. They are not designed to do the work of footnotes - even though they will occasionally anticipate and obviate footnote entries. As their type-size suggests, headnotes should aim at something close to the narrative level of a well-written history, and definitely above the level of the notes or appendix-material of such a history.

2. The editors agreed that in ordinary cases a headnote should not be longer than half a double-spaced typed page; greater length than that should be felt to require some defense. In this limited space, most letters from the other end will probably be summarized rather than quoted, but of course some quotation is desirable. If a brief phrase or a passage of not more than a sentence or so is embedded in the headnote-narrative, it should be set off with double quotes. A longer quotation should begin on a new line.

3. The headnotes, as well as the footnotes, appendices, introductions, and apparatus in general, of all volumes will be given uniform "styling" according to the principles of the *Manual of Style* of the University of Chicago Press. Editors are asked to conform as closely as they can to that standard.

4. Any letters we print which are not by Burke himself - letters by his correspondents, or by members of his family - will be printed in the type-size of the headnotes. Their headings will be in the same type as the headings of Burke's letters. As explained above, the full names of members of the Burke family will be given. In-letters will be described as from the correspondent "to Burke" (e.g. "James Boswell to Burke"). Miscellaneous information about the text will follow the

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heading as in other letters. After that point, the whole treatment
will resemble a headnote, without of course the limitation of length.
Probably in most cases these "surrounding letters" will be represented
by more or less lengthy excerpts, but they may be quoted entire when
it is desirable.

D. Text:

1. As all text is to be typed double-space, there will be room for corrections and insertions in a transcription. These will sometimes be made by the volume-editor, sometimes by the general editor; it would be convenient if we could keep apart the changes from these two different sources. It is therefore suggested that the volume-editor when he has alterations to make should enter them _below_ the transcription line and in _red_ pen or pencil; the general editor will enter his alterations _above_ the transcription line and in _blue_ pen or pencil.

The chief use of the entries below the line - if the editors agree to this practice - will be to assert the accuracy of the transcription.

To enter any words or marks of punctuation below will amount to saying "This is exactly what I saw." It is often useful to be able to say this without an elaborate marginal note. Thus, if an editor comes upon a transcription problem not covered by the rules of this Style Book, he has an easy course. He can settle it according to his own ideas on the transcription line, but also, by recording the dubious spelling or punctuation in the space below, throw the question back to the general editor. Again, if an editor finds an error in a transcription, he may write the proper reading below without erasing or trying to crowd in corrections on the text as it stands. (The general editor will "digest" such corrections on the upper line before final copy goes to the printer.) I believe a good deal of time could be saved if every editor would habitually put a mark on the lower line when he

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was recording any odd or unexpected spelling of Burke's on the trans-
cription line. He would be saying, in effect, "this is Burke's
oddity, not a careless error of my own." When he came to proof-
reading, the editor would be much helped by finding all *intended*
oddities so marked. I suggest that the mark be a check with a red
pen or pencil.

2. The following are rules for transcription. They are intended to tell the editor what he is to enter on the transcription line. It is always understood that he may enter the MS reading on the lower line if the case is dubious.

a. Preserve spelling exactly.

b. Preserve punctuation exactly.

c. Modernize capitalization, leaning toward a *heavy* modern capitalization, as being closer to 18th-century practice.

d. Expand all routine abbreviations ("&" for "and," "w<sup>ch</sup>." for which, "y<sup>t</sup>." for "that," "y<sup>r</sup>. obed<sup>t</sup> serv<sup>t</sup> for "your obedient servant," etc.) which were in common use in the 18th century but are no longer normal. These changes should *not* be pointed out by marks on the lower line.

e. Abbreviations of names should not be expanded without indications.
A reference to the "K" or the "D of N" may be left as it is if no
doubt is possible, or written "the K [ing]" or the "D [uke] of
N [ewcastle]" if the reader should be assisted.

f. Abbreviations of dates and addresses - whether at the beginning or end of a letter or on the outside cover or in endorsements - should be retained exactly. These are so frequently hard to decipher, being written small, grimed in the mails, worn away because too close to a top or edge, and the like, that we should

-6-

tell the reader as accurately as possible what we _think_ we see.
He may have the additional fact which tells him that our "Mar" is
really "May" or our "Tues" really "Thur."

g. Lower raised letters. The Press wishes to avoid all special
typography.

h. Use angular brackets, ( ), for words supplied where the MS is
defective, square brackets, [ ], for editorial emendation, round
brackets, ( ), where brackets of any kind are used by the writer
of the MS.

3. Salutations and complimentary closes should be put on separate lines, or series of lines, exactly as they occur. Dates and addresses should not be moved to the beginning of a letter, but left where they are. Signatures should be reproduced exactly, except for the lowering of raised letters.

E. Footnotes:

1. Footnotes should be typed, double-space, on separate pages immediately following the letter to which they refer.

2. They should be keyed to the text by arabic numbers which run con-
secutively through each letter.

3. Reference to authorities should include: name of author, short title of book, date and place of publication. The author's name may of course be omitted if the short title supplies it (e.g. "*Letters of James Boswell*"). The short title should include the first word of the long title. (Thus, "*Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones*" should not be shortened to "*Life of Sir William Jones*," since in most libraries it will be filed as "*Memoirs of Sir William Jones*.")

4. References to authorities should appear in round brackets at the end

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of a footnote or quotation. The entry need not begin with "See" or "Cf." Volume and page references should use small roman for volume, arabic for page; if there should be a reference to prefatory material which is paged in small roman, precede that page number with "(pref)."

5. The footnotes of this edition should be aimed at an educated reader, assumed to have whatever general historical knowledge is common to educated readers on both sides of the Atlantic. Obviously the first aim is to supply whatever explanations, identifications, and comments may be necessary to make Burke's letters intelligible. This ought not to require profuse annotation; several of those who commented upon the sample treatment of a letter in the earlier version of this Style Manual felt that we had supplied more footnotes than were needed. On the other hand, most of our editors have declared that on one point - the identification of persons with whom Burke had dealings - they favor fullness. Persons mentioned in D.N.B. or other easily-accessible reference works we can dismiss rather briefly, but we should be generous with less-well-known figures, drawing as often as we can upon reference works familiar only to the specialist, and upon MS sources.

We have as yet too little experience to formulate a general policy of annotation. This must wait upon further discussions after the editors have had time to explore their materials.

-8-

PROPOSED FORM OF FINAL COPY FOR THE PRINTER

As is obvious, our printer will have to cope with a great deal of typographical variety. The materials which precede and follow the text of a letter - the heading, miscellaneous information, headnote or tailnote where used - will offer special difficulties, being in three different sizes of type. The printer says that the editors could make his task easier if they would consent to supply him this part of the copy on sheets of a distinctive color. If the editors agree to this, perhaps they will be willing to go a step farther and present footnotes too in a color of their own; this also would help the printer, and would have some conveniences for the editors themselves. If the idea is accepted, copy for each letter will fall into three parts, clearly distinguished from each other:

1. On a first sheet, say of pink, will be all preliminary matter, including the headnote, if any. If there is a tailnote it should be typed on a separate pink sheet to follow the text. "Surrounding letters" or portions of them will also be on pink sheets, as they are to be in the type-size of the headnote.

2. Texts of letters by Edmund Burke will be on white sheets. "Text" is here meant to include salutation, close, signature - all of the letter he wrote except addresses, etc., on the outside. If Edmund adds a postscript to, say, a letter by William Burke, that postscript will be on white.

3. Footnotes will be on, say, yellow Manila sheets.

The following three sheets are offered as samples of the three types of copy, as they might have been handed to the printer for our sample letter to Boswell: a pink preliminary sheet entire; the beginning of a white sheet of Burke text; the beginning of a yellow sheet of footnotes.

To James Boswell

1 March 1779

Source: MS at Yale.

Addressed (on wrapper): To James Boswell Esqr. Edinburgh

Endorsed: Recd Mar 4.

Burke's first letter to Boswell. In the year preceding it Boswell had written Burke three letters, whose chief purpose, as he said frankly, was to win the honor of a correspondence with him. The first two, dated 3 March 1778 and 6 November 1778, seemed to have little other purpose. The third, besides reproaching Burke for not answering the other two, spoke of some violent outbreaks of anti-Catholic feeling in Scotland, precipitated by Sir George Savile's bill in Parliament for repealing some of the penal laws against Catholics. Savile's bill did not actually apply to Scotland, but it had been promised that a bill similar to it and applicable to Scotland would be moved. Riots occurred in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Government disowned this promise. Boswell in his third letter, dated 22 February 1779, asked Burke to reassure him - anonymously if he chose - that no one in Parliament still intended to move a toleration bill for Scotland, which Boswell was sure would produce a rebellion.

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My dear Sir

Your goodness is indeed inexhaustible; but great as my faults
are they do not make such a demand upon it as you imagine. I have had the
misfortune of missing the third letter you speak of; and before your last,
only _one_ came to my hands. But as I was not so early as I ought to have
been in acknowledging the honor of that one, my fault is greater than I
fear I am able to attone for; and I tell you of the failure of the other,
because I do not wish that my crime should have any aggravation.

I had heard of the subject of your letter before I received it
from you. It would have been against the spirit of the Act of Union if
Scotland did not, at some time or other partake of the disorders that
prevail in the constitution of the British Family. I do confess indeed,
that I did not expect, that our dear Sister, who in the rigour of her
Prudery, had shown such outrageous Zeal, and decreed such severe penances
against other frail and offending parts of the household, should make such a
slip herself as to give her a fair title to the Stool and White Sheet. ¹
But these things will happen as long as the very best of us are only made
up of mere rebellious flesh and blood.

-11-

3. Or Calgacus; a Caledonian chieftain defeated in 84 A.D. by the Romans under Agricola.

4. George Hay (1729-1811), Roman Catholic Bishop of Daulis and Vicar-Apostolic of the Lowland District of Scotland. On 3 February an Edinburgh mob had plundered his chapel house and library. He went to London, where Burke took up his cause. (Letter to Patrick Bowie, 30 Mar 79. There are six letters of Hay to Burke preserved at Sheffield.)

October 13, 1953

Professor Thomas Copeland
21 Slayleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

Your letter of October 9 has just arrived, so I shall show how good a correspondent I can be when aroused. The stimulus in this case is the letters to be sold at Christy's on the nineteenth. By the time you receive this I trust you will have seen the letters, and there will still be time for any action, if necessary.

The present status is that I have placed a bid for forty pounds on the Burke letters. The description looked good enough, to me. In this case the bid is being handled by C. A. Stonehill, whose phone number is Bookham 2378. This is in Great Bookham, Surrey. So, if you want to buy the letters or see any reason why my bid should be withdrawn, please telephone Mr. Stonehill and tell him to do so. He estimated thirty pounds but I raised it to forty, because correspondents like Adam Smith don't grow on every bush. This may not get the letters. At least, you now know the situation in case any move on your part is called for. I trust your judgment in case you should wish to maneuver things in any way.

So much for that. I am bidding on a few other lots, including the Hume letters and the grangerized Spence's *Anecdotes* with letters of Pope, Dr. Johnson, etc. Actually, that bid may be pulled out if I find that Donald Hyde or anyone wants to cooperate on the thing. But so far no word from him.

Your expedition to Litchfield with Powell sounds like fun. If you have time, send me some news of him. Also, what you thought of Percy Laithwaite and the other doings at Litchfield. Did they make you give a talk? Any other news will be welcome about our English friends, or even those whom we don't know yet.

I shall look forward eagerly to hearing from you about the estimates on the Burke checklist. Once that happens, we can see what the next move may be.

Hal Bentley wrote to Ben that he was investigating the University of Utah press, to see whether something might not be possible there. So far no word has come from him. I'll drop him a line, and see if we can bring the matter to a head in any way. Hal is supposed to be in the East this month, but so far we haven't heard a word from him about when or where.

There isn't any other real news to report. Everything seems to be going along on an even keel. We have been extremely busy with one thing or another, and the schedule is quite crowded. Marie-Louise is fine, and sends her fond greetings to you.

I shall look forward to your next letter, which I hope can be written at leisure, with details of your less savant-like life.

8

# The Correspondence of Edmund Burke

Editor: THOMAS W. COPELAND, Associate Professor of English, University of Chicago

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

JULIAN P. BOYD, Editor, *The Papers of Thomas Jefferson* RONALD S. CRANE, Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Chicago

THE EARL FITZWILLIAM, Milton, Peterborough ALLEN T. HAZEN, Professor of English, Columbia University

CHARLES L. MOWAT, Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago SIR LEWIS NAMIER, Professor of Modern History, Emeritus, Manchester University

MICHAEL J. OAKESHOTT, Professor of Political Science, London School of Economics RICHARD PARES, Professor of History, University of Edinburgh

STANLEY PARGELLIS, Librarian, Newberry Library, Chicago GEORGE R. POTTER, Professor of Modern History, University of Sheffield

FREDERICK A. POTTLE, Professor of English, Yale University L. F. POWELL, Sometime Librarian of the Taylor Institution, Oxford

GEORGE SHERBURN, Professor of English, Emeritus, Harvard University ALAN SIMPSON, Assistant Professor of History, University of Chicago

LEO STRAUSS, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago JACOB VINER, Professor of Economics, Princeton University

October 20, 1953.

Dear Jim,

How right you are, referring to my "less savant-like life," which is now breaking out in strength. Sure insight. Perceptive phrase. I am just this moment returned from a six-day junket in London and Oxford. As it's past ten o'clock at night I bet part of this letter gets put off till tomorrow morning. But I'm as it were rushing to my desk to give you a report on the business transactions you mention in your last.

I didn't interfere with your bid - a very generous one, and I should think likely to get the three Burke letters. I think the two Smith items are well worth shooting at. The earlier is Burke's first letter to Smith, before he had met him. It has a very interesting criticism of his *Theory of Moral Sentiments*, more elaborate and a great deal better done than the criticism in the *Annual Register*; I wouldn't say that there was anything though to show it was by the same writer. The second letter is a fine document to illustrate how far Burke would go to help his friends. He is pleading with Adam Smith to say something really handsome about William Burke when he writes to his friend Colonel Ross. I'll have to consult my notes, but I believe there's a letter of Smith to Colonel Ross in which he complied with the request, and said a lot more than one could say (honestly) in Will Burke's praise. I'm afraid we see two great men putting friendship above the truth. The third letter is a reasonably good one - written on the occasion of Burke's sister's death, though it's to a man Burke didn't know personally: a neighbor of the sister. It has been printed, as the Smith letters have not. I certainly hope you got them. Miss Myers promised to attend the sale and tell me who got them. (I was in her office parts of two days, listing the copies - no originals - she got in the Backhouse sale.) She's extremely friendly. The lot she got was something the same kind of bargain that you got. No original Burkes, in her case, but she makes it up in bulk and in references to Burke in the correspondence of his friends. She's pricing it low now - would have let me have it for £50, and I understood her to say she paid £35 for it.

(I collapsed sooner than I should have last night. Here it is Wednesday morning.) I've just had a note from Miss Myers, saying that Stonehill got the letters for £40, so all is well! You won't regret these, I am sure. Say, would it be possible for me to get reproductions of them before they leave this country? I don't believe it need delay things more than about two days. If Miss Myers could send them to us by registered post, we could either ourselves mail them to you, or if there are export licenses that are outside our ken, mail them back to her almost at once.

I had two good talks at the Cambridge Press while I was in London. The first was about our edition in general, with Mr. David. He had a good many questions to ask. I don't know whether Cambridge is itself considering being our British publisher or whether that's entirely out of the question. Perhaps the latter, for he referred to Nelson's strong interest in the printing job, and seemed to take it for granted that Chicago was likely to give it to them. I asked him about the checklist. He phoned Mr. Crutchley at the Cambridge end, and made an appointment for me to see him. I did, on the evening before I left London. I explained the requirements of the job in a good deal of detail, showing him the sample pages Columbia did for us, etc. He wanted a week to consider before giving us a careful estimate. I pressed him though for an estimate that would give us a proper idea of our range. He considered that pretty carefully and gave a figure of £1500 for an edition of 1500 copies! That's quite a difference, isn't it, from Columbia's figure! It would be extremely convenient to us to have printing done over here, and Mr. Crutchley looked like a perfect man to do business with. A good friend of mine in Chicago, Professor Middendorf, who was a real connoisseur of these things, said he thought Crutchley the best designer now working in England or America. I'll certainly put this problem to Thomas Nelson too, two weeks from now, but as far as I'm concerned, Cambridge would be an ideal publisher. Will you try this out on the Index Society? I think the figure speaks for itself, but if you would like me to make out a full case, I'll write a review of the arguments as I see them now, or wait till I've had Mr. Crutchley's careful estimate as well as Nelson's. It would make an enormous difference to our whole project to have it finally fixed when the checklist was to be done. Mr. Crutchley seemed to think the whole job would take nine months. He would allow us a 20 per cent ratio for corrections (twice what Chicago promises for the edition itself).

I had tea and a good talk with Professor Namier, who is still in a very benevolent mood toward us. I would have seen him on my other London trip, but he was off hunting letters. He says I must help him out on this hunting, and do one of these trips for him. I certainly will if he gives me the chance. He asked me to try to find out what had become of William Gerand Hamilton's papers. I'll go after Hamilton's will at Somerset House the next time I'm in London. You don't know of Malone's being his literary executor, do you? It's not at all improbable. You remember Malone's job on (hence having Hamilton's papers among his own)

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

JULIAN P. BOYD, Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson

Parliamentary Logick, with a Memoir. Also the Hamilton scraps I found in the Malone papers in the Bodleian. If we can run this one down, Jim Clifford may find out who wrote the Single Speech, which he would like to have by Samuel Johnson.

I didn't see Powell on this trip. He was to be in London on the day I was in Oxford. I had a letter from him - referring, by the way, to your paper on Johnson, which he liked immensely. He has had some trouble in the Woodstock Road menage, as you know: his sister-in-law having a fatal accident. He was in splendid condition when I saw him in Lichfield, which was before this occurred. He walked me all over the place, visiting the shrines, and we went together to the banquet. No, I didn't make any speeches. I did sit at the high table, and was announced (like everybody else at the high table) when we trooped into the room. This was my first view of a Guildhall banquet. I enjoyed meeting Mr. Laithwaite, with whom I had a good talk. His speech was sound but not To Remember. Indeed the speeches, as Powell also remarked, weren't the best feature of this banquet. Alas, the British Johnsonians are getting on in years.

I had a lunch in London with DeBeer. He took me to the Garrick Club - certainly a fascinating place. He has been wonderfully helpful about the editorial problems of our edition. Did I tell you he had sent me on pages of the Evelyn - the parts embodying his own discussion of style? He's in good health; looks exactly the same as on previous occasions I've seen him.

London theatre disappointed me for once. With great difficulty I got a single seat to the Hamlet, and didn't really enjoy it. As far as I'm concerned, the director of it is a fool. His theory, which rides the whole production, is that modern actors ought to do what we believe the Elizabethan actors did: that is, read the lines at a gallop and rant. Well, I suppose it's worth trying once. Richard Burton yelled, and threw his Ophelia (Claire Bloom) to the ground, and though he allowed himself an occasional slow-down - what we critics call Change of Pace - he delivered the major part of his lines at a clip which no modern audience could cope with. I got so discouraged I left before the end.

Another play I thought over-rated was Graham Greene's *The Living Room*. He had a good enough situation, and certainly an

enchanting young girl for his heroine, but there was such a tiresome crippled priest who was forever giving us the Catholic Viewpoint, and an equally tiresome psychological Professor, who was always countering with the Modern Viewpoint. The Viewpoints never touched at any point, so there wasn't really any dramatic struggle, and I thought the whole thing very wasteful of the audience's time. One weakness of British audiences, to my mind, is that they are too polite about people like Graham Greene. They absorb the idea from critics in the newspapers that here is a presentation of the Catholic Viewpoint (or whatever) and since that's obviously important, they allow themselves to be bored in the good cause. I think a Broadway audience would make short work of this play.

One play did delight me: the new Eliot. It's a little thin - I'd say even in comparison to The Cocktail Party. But thoroughly interesting, what there is of it, and brilliantly performed. As usual you take away a major problem for reflection in the next few days. It's a very serious play, though disguised under a good deal of farcical complication. Only two characters are left completely artificial (as against half the cast of *Cocktail Party*), and even those two are delightfully amusing. The main character, the father, is serious and moving.

If I don't break this off, Bob Smith will beat me to the Library and sit around with nothing to do. I'll write you again soon, probably after I've had the Edinburgh visit. Love to Marie Louise.

Yours,
Tom

Professor Thomas Copeland

-2-

10/27/53

Concerning the Burke letters from the Earl of Derby's sale, I have asked Stonehill to send them to you in Sheffield. Your correspondence with him will make clear whether they should be returned to him for ultimate dispatch across the Atlantic, or whether you should do it directly. I may be tempted to try to write a little article about them, in which case I shall be in touch with you. Incidentally, probably you saw my piece on Dr. Johnson in the TLS for October 9.

Next about Miss Myers and the lot of stuff that she has. Tell me about it in a little more detail, especially if you think I should try to get it from her. That is only if you have no designs on it yourself. But I should like to know what all it includes, at least in general terms.

It is good news that Sir Louis Namier is still feeling very benevolent toward Burke and the great undertaking. Incidentally, I have a letter from him still unanswered. When Peter Lasette from Trinity College, Cambridge, was here, he looked over some parliamentary manuscripts in my collection, and mentioned them to Namier. The latter wrote and asked whether I had anything in the eighteenth century, so sometime I shall have to check over the list for him. There are a dozen other things I should do first, so I hope he won't mind the delay.

Concerning W. G. Hamilton's papers, I haven't any idea what may have happened to them. He and Malone were very close friends, but I don't believe that Malone was his literary executor. If I find such evidence, I shall let you know. There is a superstition that everyone's papers must exist somewhere. Certainly, enough turn up to raise a question. But there are also a good many that have gone up the chimney, or have been used to wrap pastry or other parcels.

Your reports on mutual friends are most welcome. I am glad to hear that Powell is well, and hope that this domestic difficulty will not interrupt the even tenor of his living arrangements. Did Leithwaite make the speech at Litchfield this year? I thought the new president always did.

It is also good to hear news of Esmond deBeer. Yes, the Garrick Club is an odd place. It's surprising the number of those portraits on the walls, however, that have little to offer, being echoes of echoes of the originals. I wonder when we shall see his Evelyn - dozens of good men have died while it is still in proof.

The comment on the plays you have seen interested everyone here. We all commented that the *Hamlet* must have been sour to cause you to leave before the end. We have had only two good ones here so far this year, *Tea and Sympathy* and *The Teahouse of the August Moon*, (an odd concatenation of titles). In a couple of weeks we see *Catherine Cornell* in her newest endeavor, but don't expect much. I believe I wrote you about how much we enjoyed the two tea items.

Plans have now been made for our trip to England, and I am sorry to say we shall not be able to go to Ireland with you. We expect to arrive in London on February 6 and be there for a week. After that we'll go to Italy and Sicily, coming back to London for a week or so before returning home about the twentieth of March. But we hope that you'll have occasion to be in London sometime during our sojourn.

Yours cordially,

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

October 31, 1953.

Dear Jim,

Hurrah for your news, and a thousand thanks for your part in bringing it about. I see complications to be worked out, of course, but from now I regard it as a certainty that the Index Society will bring us out. I'm sure we can raise the ready money as fast as Cambridge will demand it. Your guarantee of half of the possible losses is magnificient. To make sure the thing is set up, I guarantee the other half. But at this price I can't believe either of us is going to lose - certainly not if the Society knows where to sell 500 copies at $10 apiece. I'll keep these guarantees entirely to myself of course. I won't go into any details now, for I'm practically on the train for Edinburgh, and still have to write the good news to Milton! When I've talked with Nelson, I hope with Professor Pares in Edinburgh, and when I've had time to go over it all carefully myself, I'll write you a much fuller letter (in which I'll make no mention of our personal guarantees, so that you can show it if you wish).

Sorry, though, to hear you have to change the Irish plans. But I'll make sure of seeing you in London in February. By the way, I have a new play to recommend, which I'm pretty sure will be one of the big successes of this season: Peter Ustinov's *No Sign of the Dove*. I saw it here last night. Full of life and with an incredible cast of comic actors. I say it'll run to June, let alone February. He isn't in it himself, which is my only reservation about it.

I'm off on the noon train for that old Athens of the North. I'll write again soon.

Yours,
Tom

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

November 8, 1953.

Dear Jim,

Back from Edinburgh. Quite aside from its business part, which I think went off well, what a delightful trip! I'd never seen the city at all before. What a proud capital it is! Except for Paris I've never seen a city so intelligently laid out - and it's far luckier even than Paris in the advantages of its site. Weather was good, so I rambled all about it: went again and again to the Castle for the views. I didn't do the amount of Poking About in the closes and alleys off Royal Mile that I suppose one could, but of course there's no limit to that. The 18th-century parts of the city around George Street, Charlotte Square, etc., gave me more pleasure than most of the older parts. The Scots had a real feeling for the classic style, don't you think? The Doric especially they seem able to make their own. When one thinks how artificial and dull classical imitations usually are, it's reviving to find them so well done. Alas, it makes a place like Washington, D.C., all the more reprehensible.

Thomas Nelson & Son (who are taking a most commendable interest in publishing us over here) got me a ticket to the ceremonies at the installation of the Duke of Edinburgh as Chancellor of the University. A magnificent show, as you might imagine. I never expect to see academic glory carried farther. Practically the whole stalls-section of McEwan Hall was paved with various types of glory-robe. Apparently at Edinburgh even the Bachelors wear red robes, but by the time you had crowded in all the Doctors' hoods and ducal ermine and the rest that they had, a mere red robe would not be noticed; the ushers were in red robes. The Duke of Edinburgh is made for this kind of gorgeousness, I must say. His robes - black and gold braid, like those of a legal Lord Chancellor - managed to look the most splendid of the lot. He read a speech which in itself was conventional enough but which he really knew how to render; he has a most delightful way of easing up in scattered passages and making it sound quite intimate and personal; I've been told that he writes his own speeches, and this would lead me to believe it.

As I say, the business part seemed to go well. I'm
not the world's ace negotiator, naturally, but fortunately I
wasn't called on to do much but see their plant and hear the
proposition they were going to make to Chicago. The plant is
certainly imposing. It's out near Holyrood Palace, and its
outside is turreted and fancied in the best Walter-Scott tradition.
But it's a great manufacturing outfit. They took me through every
process of bookmaking, on a field trip of about two hours. The
great point though is the business proposal. They are going to
offer to share all risks with Chicago as co-publishers. I think
that's very good news for Chicago. After they had been forced by
the Carnegie people to agree to guarantee publication, I think
they found that all other British publishers would offer no more
than to take sheets; no one would offer to put up any money.
Nelson has shown me the letter they're writing to Mr. Hemens of
Chicago, and my guess is that he won't let their offer get away.

The only negotiating I did on my own account was to
give them an account of the checklist, and ask them whether they
would have an interest in that, or whether they thought it could
be better managed as a semi-independent project by Cambridge.
Dr. Morrison, who is the chief power in Nelson, said he thought
that if they could reach an agreement with Chicago for the edition,
they would like to take on the checklist too. I explained that
this was not Chicago's decision but the Index Society's. He
said that they would be willing to share expenses - which I believe
your colleagues may be glad to hear - if Nelson and the Index
Society could share the project. How does this appeal to you?
My guess is that Nelson can really help out with finances if this
decision can be made quickly enough. They are writing to Hemens
now, pressing him for action. Is it worth our waiting on the
result of that - meantime consulting about to see how we would
like to set it up if Nelson does make an offer to the Society?
A certain number of details have to be thrashed out anyway, so
that it represents very little delay. If Nelson were our British
publisher, wouldn't we still need an American, to substitute for
Columbia? How do you see the relation between the checklist and
the edition? I'd like to give the checklist the title The Correspond-
ence of Edmund Burke (with some subtitle indicating that it was
a descriptive list, and with a preface indicating its relation to
our later volumes). I can't see how it could have the same page-
size as the edition, but it could be fairly close to it, and of
course have a uniform binding and typography; one might be quarto,
one octavo. Well, let me have your ideas on this. I am writing
Mr. Crutchley at Cambridge, as it seems to me I ought to, to say
that Nelson is making this present offer to Chicago, and has asked
if the decision on the checklist could be suspended until they know
whether they can collaborate with Chicago on the edition - in which
case they think they would like to collaborate with the Society on
the checklist. I don't believe Cambridge will be worried by a
short delay; I also have an idea that Nelson won't put up with a
long one. My guess is that what they might spend on us they might
have to spend on this year's taxes if no agreement is reached before
December 31.

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

FREDERICK A. POTTER, Professor of English, Yale University L. F. POWELL, Sometime Librarian of the Taylor Institution, Oxford

(Dear me, this is running to length.)

Thanks for the arrangement with Stonehill to let us see
the new letters. We'll get reproductions here and correct our
transcripts and then send them either to you or to him, whichever
is more convenient. I believe you could score beautifully on a
short article on the Smith letters. You could score on the late
Dixon Wecter at least: when he wrote a piece in *Notes and queries*
on Burke and Adam Smith he knew of only a couple letters, but
rather recklessly assumed that there were no more; he ended most
dramatically by saying "The rest is silence." We have other letters
since that time, and now you have two real beauties. A survey of
the whole relation of the two men would make a very tidy short essay.

I think I probably told you of Powell's being much
pleased with your piece on Johnson. Say, I hear in a note I just
had from Jim Clifford that the death of Powell's sister-in-law
will force him to give up his house! That's certainly bad news.

I can't remember how much I told you about the Ballitore
manuscripts Miss Myers got. I thought them pretty good, and would
buy them if I could afford £50, but I can't. There are no Burke
originals, I'm sure I said, but much discussion of Burke and of
life at Trinity in the correspondence of Shackleton and his daughter.
I believe there are 2000 letters in all. The most likely to be
"items" are some letters from Maria Edgeworth to the daughter, but
I believe the real interest is in the completeness with which the
letters document Irish life, and particularly Trinity College life,
in the period of the mid-18th-century. These would dovetail
beautifully with the Ballitore items you got. They have a good deal
the same character of scholarly grab-bag. I'm afraid this isn't
as complete a report as I should give you. When I was there, an
afternoon and the next morning, I was paying attention almost
exclusively to checking items against the Checklist. I'll be in
London again before the end of this month, and if you want, I'll go
back and get a more detailed report. This would be very easy to
do.

I'm glad you have materials to send on to Namier. He is
a man to be in contact with. Right now he's becoming a controversial
figure all over again, I think; I notice the way in which reviewers
in T. L. S., etc., either throw him a bouquet or a brick while
treating almost any historical work. We are very much in his debt,
so I'm much on his side.

I've seen one really good play since I last wrote: Peter Ustinov's *No Sign of the Dove* when it was given here in Sheffield. Well, I shouldn't say good play, for it doesn't get much above the level of charade, but still, absolutely first-rate evening. It's wonderfully cast, and everybody - chiefly the actors - can indulge in a dramatic picnic. It is (more or less) a satire on the Intellectuals, with gifted comic actors doing the Osbert Sitwell, the Freudian Professor, the deluded Angel, etc., who are the obvious targets. Ustinov never fails to be obvious, I must admit, but henceforth I'm going to all of his plays I can. I'm sorry he wasn't in a part in this one, but that's my only real complaint.

I'll give you further word from Chicago and from Nelson as soon as there is any. Will you let me know what would best suit the Index Society if it's willing to consider this idea of a shared-enterprise with Nelson? I gather that they might take the thing over, with the edition, merely selling the Society the number of sheets they could manage; or they could share the whole enterprise, as I hope they'll be doing with Chicago. I'm sorry that anything is still an if or still involves a moment's further delay. But I thought this possibility might be one you would welcome.

Will you give my love to Marie-Louise?

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

December 15, 1955.

Dear Jim,

No news yet as to who will be our British publisher. I duly note what you say in yours of the 4th as to how we could share with him on the checklist, when we know who he is. If Nelson is the choice, I'll try to negotiate with them on that basis. If it's Cambridge, there isn't yet any proposal, at least from them, of sharing. I'll find out whether the idea appeals to them, but if it shouldn't, I suppose I can go ahead on the basis of the letter I had from you on October 30 (before Nelson had come into the picture).

I'm just back from another trip south, which was again great fun. I attended the Johnson Society dinner with DeBeer. Powell read the paper, rather a miscellaneous one but very interesting, on the problems of editing Boswell's *Life*. Chapman was in the chair, very witty and occasionally sarcastic. When he brought in a couple edged remarks about the length of time it had taken Powell to finish his volumes, I certainly admired Powell's restraint. Sir Philip Magnus-Allcroft was there; Ketton-Cremer, Sir Harold Williams (who had a lot to say about editing problems, as he is at work on Swift's letters). Chapman pressed hard for a discussion, but usually got members correcting other members on small points of fact, rather than more sweeping disagreements. At the end of the evening someone went off with Chapman's overcoat, mistaking it for his own; I don't see how he could have mistaken it; when Chapman wore his sleeves were about two inches too short.

Saturday night we had our second editors' meeting, this time at Oxford. I got rooms for the night for four of us at the Golden Cross Hotel; Miss Sutherland and Steven Watson merely came in for dinner and the meeting. We had an interesting disaster. A couple thieves (I say a couple because I saw them, though before having any reason to suspect

December 21, 1953

Prof. Thomas Copeland
21 Slayleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

Your letter was most welcome. The misadventure at the Golden Cross Hotel filled us all with sympathy. I am writing to Bently to be sure that the manuscript goes to you promptly, if it is not already on the way. Bently is a somewhat erratic correspondent, so I don't know how promptly I shall hear from him. Moreover, he is going to be at the MLA meeting in Chicago, and I suspect may visit his daughter in Cleveland for the holidays before the MLA meeting.

The other items in your letter made equally interesting reading. I'm sure that the meeting of the Johnson society was quite an experience, as always. Indeed, I imagine you will never forget the sight of Chapman wearing that left-over coat. Somehow, he lends himself to visual memories. For example, once when we made a trip in the car on a hot day he pulled his trousers up over his knees. I've also heard about a dinner at Oxford where by mistake he was the only one to wear a dinner jacket; yet, all evening he kept on his bicycle clips!

It is amusing that Chapman was occasionally sarcastic toward Powell about the time took to finish index. It must have made deBeer feel fine! As you probably know, deBeer has been taking years to complete the index for his monumental work.

We shall look forward eagerly to any news about the Cambridge University Press and the situation of the chief list. I have no furthur suggestions to make at this time. My previous suggestions stand, and I trust that you will be able to tie the matter up in a satisfactory fashion as you have heard from the Cambridge people.

The chief item of news here to interest you concerns the plan to publish the paper of Benjamin Franklin. The official announcement is expected on January 16, so be sure to get it to yourself until that time. It is a joint undertaking of the Yale Press, and the American Philosophical Society, with most of the money coming from Henry Luce. They have about ten times the sum that we have received from the Carnegie people, so you can see what a scale it is expected to achieve. Leonard Labaree is to be the editor, working at it full time from now on. The Donelly Press of Chicago is going to print the thing, at a figure which represents some contribution on their part. How all of these various parties are going to be happy/happy is a matter that only the future can tell.

The Yule season is now upon us, so I send the appropriate greeting. Marshall arrived home last night, in fine settled, but after a long sleep he has now gone to New York for a reunion with several friends. It is a great pleasure to have him here, and he was interested in the news of you, and sends his greetings. Tom is also home, so we are having a reunion broad but smooth.

Spence moves along with a regular pace, broad but smooth. He constantly introduces me to fascinating new subjects, of which Cromwell's head is among the latest. Not many people of this side of the Atlantic know about that historical mystery, so any time from now on that anyone mentions the Kensington stone I will be able to answer with an airudight account of the modified head of Cromwell, still on a pike, in the possession of Canon Wilkeson.

The season at the Schubert theater has been fairly busy recently, though nothing very exciting.

January 22, 1954

Professor Thomas Copeland
21 Syleleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

Your letter of January 16 is most welcome. I answer at once, since we have
to make some plans for England, if we expect to see you there.

The trouble is that we are getting dated up for the few nights we are going
to be in London. Hence, it seems worth trying to see if we can pin you
down to a definite date. What about Sunday, the seventh of February? That
will be our first day in London, so we shall be a bit in the mood for re-
laxing.

I realize that you have your other obligations, and perhaps aren't planning
to come down to London at all. But I do mention this in case you wish it.
If you are not coming, I can send up the manuscript for your checklist.(as-
assuming that it reaches me from Bentley, as it should).

I'll try to get photostats of the letters for you. If it doesn't get done
before I come over, then it can be done afterward. Indeed, I may bring
them right along with me. But that will have to depend. My first job will
be to lay my hand on them! So much stuff has come in lately that, shocking
as it may be to anyone else, I really have to shuffle around to find
things. You should see a description of Louis XIV written by Mat Pryor:
when he would spit in the Hall of Mirrors, you could see a thousand images
of him!

All of your experiences at the Historical Association, etc., sound grand.
We are delighted that you are having such a wonderful time, and look for-
ward to hearing about it in person.

Marie-Louise sends cordial greetings, and we do hope that it may be possi-
ble for us to meet in London on February 7.

a

We occupied rooms in St. John's College, ate our meals in hall, and rustled around talking to historians for about three days. Not all of us had all History to talk about, but it was highly enjoyable. We saw Cambridge more from the inside than I have done previously.

I'm breaking this off, I'm afraid. Oh, it just comes back to me, I haven't asked you about the three new Burke letters. I wrote to Stonehill almost as soon as I heard you had got them at the sale, but alas! they were already in the mail. Is there any chance we could get photostats, negative quite sufficient, of them? It doesn't have to be in the time before you leave, when I don't doubt there's much too much to do, but some time. If you leave them in the photography dept at Yale Library, they already have my address to bill me. Sorry to be again bothersome.

I'll miss that bus if I don't stop. I'll write you again within the week.

Yours,
JAN

January 27, 1954

Dear Tom,

Your very welcome letter is just received. How wonderfully thoughtful of you to go
ahead and order theatre tickets for Friday evening! But alas and slack, the
Sutherlands had already written us that they have tickets for the same play on
Tuesday evening. You can imagine how terribly disappointed we are, especially af-
ter your thoughtfulness.

Under the circumstances, there are several alternatives. The first would be to see
you on Friday anyway, with your going to the theatre with someone else you might
choose to take. In other words, though you went off to the theatre afterward, we
could have a session earlier in the day.

The second alternative would be for you to exchange the tickets for some other
night, and for us to be together on the seventh, Sunday, as suggested in my earlier
letter. And a third alternative would be for us to get together somehow on
Thursday evening.

Naturally, being in therefore such a short time, our schedule is going to be pretty
tight. Hence, I hope you can let me know what alternative you choose as soon as
you can do so. That will leave me free to schedule the other times with other
people. So, I shall look forward to a prompt reply, even if only a post card or
one of the handy blue air mail letters.

All the details in your letter sound very interesting. You certainly see all of
the friends of America on your rounds. When we meet I shall look forward to the
latest news and schuttle-butt. We shall be in Oxford on Wednesday, where I expect
to see Powell, the Batesons and a few other people.

Concerning the checklist, I had no idea it is likely to be so bulky. In any case,
Bentley sent it on to me sometime ago, and I am awaiting its arrival. Once it
gets here I shall then decide on the next course of action. But, I realize how
anxious you are to receive it.

There is no other news at the moment, except that we are so busy I can scarcely
see straight. I believe I mentioned the pleasant luncheon last week at Farmington
with the Lewis's. Yesterday we met Helen Gardner of St. Hilda's, Oxford, at a
cocktail party here.

Enough for now. Marie-Louise joins in thanking you for your very sweet thought
about the theatre, and saying how much we look forward to seeing you in London.

8

January 30, 1954.

Dear Jim,

Sorry I hadn't that Second Sight the 18th
century talked about, to know which play had already
been picked for you! But it's no inconvenience to exchange
the tickets, or better perhaps to take my old roommate
Emerson ("Tommy the Commie" of the Yale Law School) and his
wife to see that play.

You give me the alternative of meeting you and
Marie Louise on Thursday, the 11th. That would be fine.
I may make another effort at a play, probably beginning with
*A Question of Fact* (or some such name). I don't know anything
about conditions at its box office yet, but some of the reviews
made it sound interesting. I'll *take my chances* that you
are already booked for it - in which case we'll try something
else, or dine all evening.

I'll probably not get to London before the afternoon
of the 11th, but will call your hotel at once. I'll be at
my usual London settling place: Rutland House Hotel, 14
Bedford Place, W. C. 1. As the Burkes always said, "I long
to see you." I hope the trip is pleasant.

January 31, 1954

Dear Tom,

We have been playing this game of criss-cross better than it could be written in
the script. But at least we are getting our plans straight, and shall look forward
to seeing you a week from today, Sunday the seventh.

If you care to drop a note to the hotel, we shall know when your train comes in and when to expect you. I mention this because if the weather permits, we may take quite a walk that morning, early enough to meet you whenever you come in. So, if you have a chance to find out about what train you may take, we shall be back at the hotel in time to meet you, and look forward to spending a full and rewarding day reunioning with you!

We are so sorry about the twelfth, and your generous thought in getting tickets for "A Day By The Sea." But, like a lot of generous ideas, it could not come to fruition. We can weep on your shoulder concerning the subject next Sunday.

I haven't yet begun to pack, or scarcely to plan, except to acquire two new deacon shirts. Soon I shall have to pay attention, or else I may cross the Atlantic with nothing but a toothbrush and a change of loincloths. Somehow, that is just about as casual as I feel about this jaunt.

Your manuscript for the checklist has finally arrived. I certainly underestimated its bulk and weight! But I shall have it packaged and sent to you this week. I shall address it to you in Sheffield, since you suggest no other destination. But it occurred to me you would prefer perhaps having it sent directly to the "Burke factory" or to the Cambridge press. In that case please send me a telegram immediately on receipt of this letter, since the manuscript won't go off until Wednesday, which should give you time. I mean by that Wednesday at the earliest.

There is no news to report, except that the rush is even more last minute than usual. Smithers' **Addison** has just arrived, so I shall try to make a few last minute cross references in my Addison section. It is not a very impressive piece of work.

Looking forward to seeing you a week from today, we both are

8

P. S. (If you show the other page to the members of the Index Society, maybe they don't have to see this.) As to the Cambridge Press's no-doubt-justifiable demand for full payment within three months of delivery, don't let any hesitations over that be an obstruction to arrangements. I'm quite sure of being able to manage that payment out of either Carnegie or Copeland funds.

Actually I agree with your assumption that the early sale would cover that amount, but even if it wouldn't, they can be covered.

—Tom

Now for some other Burke news. Undoubtedly I sent you before a list of the follow-
ing theses being done by people in England on Burke. But I want to make assurance
doubly sure: C. W. Parkin of Cambridge is writing on the constitutional thought
of Edmund Burke, under Professor Butterfield. At London, P. T. Underdown is writ-
ing on Edmund Burke as a member of Parliament for Bristol, 1774-80. Undoubtedly
you have already been in touch with these people, but if not, there might be some
benefit to either or both of you in knowing about their work.

I have just acquired two new Burke letters, the details of which I shall put at the
end of this letter. And if I can think of any other Burke news, I shall try to
scribble it in long hand, also.

There is not much to report from here. Yesterday was the annual English Department
picnic, held out at Ben Nangle's place in Woodbridge. The Sewalls, Grace Case, and
several other people wished to be remembered to you. There was nothing special that
happened, except the baseball game, in which Ditsy, Bill Wimsatt and I all romped on
the winning side! It is a pleasure to find that one's batting eye is still un-
dimmed, and that one can bend over at the proper time to pick up a ground ball. But
the star of the game was Rickey Sewall, as you can imagine.

All your news about the "Burke factory" with its visiting scholars sounds most bus-
inesslike. I hope that the place will be humming smoothly when you return. By
that time, doubtless you will be free from required talks on "more roots of
McCarthyism".

By the way, this reminds me of a couple jokes that are going around. One has it:
"The Army-McCarthy mess would never have reached such a stage if Eisenhower had been
alive." The other is along the same line, but concerns the old question in give-
away radio programs, namely, "Who was buried in Grant's tomb?" The new answer:
"Eisenhower is."

Also, there are a whole group of stories about Jimmy Roosevelt going around, now
that he is running for Congress, despite his admission of specific indiscretions.
The motto he is supposed to run on is: "Vote for Jimmy Roosevelt - the wife you
saved may be your own."

Marshall and Tom both arrive home on Monday, Marshall to be here most of the summer
to work up his German. Tom will be at the Norfolk Music School for the first term,
namely until August. It will be a pleasure to have them here.

The only other big news from this end is that Marie-Louise and I have purchased the
Linton collection of African sculpture, which is considered the finest complete col-
lection in private hands. They had a very exciting show at the Yale Art Gallery in
March and April. But we are leaving it right at the Gallery, and giving it to them,
year by year depending on tax elbow room. We have a few pieces around the house.
"on loan" from ourselves. You can imagine how effectively they work in with modern
decoration.

Another person who talked about you yesterday was René Wellek. He wanted his greet-
ings sent especially. His History of Modern Criticism is being done by the Yale
Press, and they are going right at it, hoping to bring out both volumes next year.
René's brother, a psychologist from Germany, was here recently, on his way to
Montreal where he is giving a paper at some convention. He is a very interesting
chap, and René had quite a time showing him around.

Marie-Louise joins in fond greetings as always.

Yours ever,

James M. Osborn

8

July 19, 1954

Dear Tom,

Your letter was very welcome indeed, giving such a sweep of your adventures around
the eastern end of the Mediterranean. How it filled us with nostalgia for a return
visit! We are delighted that you were able to squeeze so much juice from this first
expedition there.

Your four day trip around Greece must have been quite satisfactory. We got to all of the places you mention except Olympia, since we took a trip down to Sparta (nothing at all to see there) and nearby Mistra, which is quite thrilling. That gives us both something to add to our experience the next time we are back. Your warm feelings toward Delphi and Daphni, concur strongly with ours. Like you, we had a grand time prowling around the Acropolis, and even the Agora. As you may remember, we also got to Crete, which leaves Cyprus for another time.

The experiences you had in Istanbul go far beyond ours, since we didn't really get
out of the city. And what you say about the primitive conditions of travel along
the mainland of Asia Minor chill our enthusiasm a bit, but we want to tackle it
some time.

Incidentally, we agreed with you about liking the Blue Mosque, but liked a lot of
them. The very favorite was the Chora Church, not very big, but superb mosaics and
frescoes. Did you get in there? It isn't open to the public, since the Byzantine
Institute is working on the things, but I am sure Herbie Muller took you there and
every other worthwhile place. Be sure to tell about some of your other adventures,
when you have more leisure.

Now for various bits of news here. I have seen the Sewalls several times lately,
and they send tender greetings. Both of them are well and having a wonderful sum-
mer. In particular, this last year they have been trying to reform the school sys-
tem in Woodbridge, and one consequence is the enclosed clipping. Til was shocked
when the local teacher told her that, "Boredom is one of our disciplines" for the
children. We hope to make a trip to Music Mountain with the Sewalls one of these
Sundays.

Jim Clifford was here for two days this week. He was quite busy in the Library, as
you can imagine, and we were busy on the social end, too. Jim had the dust jacket
for *Young Sam Johnson*, which is scheduled for January publication by McGraw Hill.
It is going to be on the popular side, but he was very full of the subject, as you
can imagine at this stage. He had little else to report.

Rene is fine, and sends greetings. I showed him your letter, which he read with
great interest. Today I lunched with him end Mark Schorer, who is here doing a

(over)

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

THE RIGHT HONORABLE THE EARL FITZWILLIAM, Milton, Peterborough ALLEN T. HAZEN, Professor of English, Columbia University

CHARLES L. MOWAT, Associate Professor of History, University of Chicago SIR LEWIS B. NAMIER, Professor of Modern History, Emeritus, Manchester University

August 8, 1954.

Dear Jim,

I really ought to have cabled you a paean of triumph last Saturday when I delivered the checklist to the Cambridge Press. What a moment of joy and relief! Hoc erat in votis, as the poet says. Cambridge can now launch itself into the problems of design. I don't doubt they'll take a few weeks or months. The great object of the game now is to get the page and volume size of the checklist to match the page and volume size of the edition. If they can do it, more power to them. I'm a trifle skeptical; Mr. Luce's admirable page was itself pretty well sweated down, but was still large compared to the octavo size they are trying to match.

All went very harmoniously at our interview, except for one curious matter. In the letter the Press had had from Ben Nangle, all he proposed sounded entirely normal but for one payment which was too high! Though it was a minor matter, but Crutchley and Kingsford had been worried about it, and I gather had written Ben about it some weeks back. They had heard nothing from him in reply. If you ever see Ben at a lunch, will you ask him if the matter is cleared up? I'm not now speaking on oath, for I only saw Ben's letter for a minute, but I think the complication was this: in the remote future, when the Index Society perhaps would be writing Cambridge instructions to send out individual copies to this or that address of a new purchaser, they were to pay them a ten-per-cent commission for this service. Why ten per cent? Mr. Crutchley couldn't see that Cambridge would be doing anything but put an address on a book and mail it; for that a normal charge would be postage and at most an extra shilling or so. Did the ten per cent refer to something else in the agreement, which maybe they had failed to understand?

Well, business misunderstandings are endless, and thank heaven they are usually not my business. But I hope this one hasn't any power to delay us at what's otherwise the happy moment.

I looked into the question you asked about the
Burney letter. It's written up in Fanny Burney's *Memoirs
of Dr. Burney*, iii, 123, though I'm sorry to say I didn't
look it up there, as no copy is available in Sheffield. But
I'm pretty clear what happened. Burney wrote Burke at some
time before August 1, 1788, a letter which seems not to have
survived, but which apologized for his casting his vote in a
Westminster election to a candidate Burke was opposing.
Burney was embarrassed to oppose Burke's man, as in 1783 he
had received his appointment as organist at Chelsea Hospital
through Burke's hands. As one might imagine, Burke responded
with a generous disclaimer of any right to dictate Burney's
choice. This is a noble-type letter in Burke's best style.
Ted Hilles owns the original, which is dated August 1. Your
copy is presumably Burney's answer to that. I say presumably,
for there is a slight problem. Yours is dated August 4, you
say. But a reply, clearly an original and dated August 8,
is here among the Burke papers. In the latter part of it
Burney mentions the fact that he had written the letter a few
days before sending it; in the middle of it he speaks of the
"late struggle" which you quote from your copy. Do you
suppose there's any chance yours is a draft, or a copy of a
draft, Burney had made before he sent the Sheffield letter?
If you think this should be run down, I'll be glad to collate
yours and the one here. When we get the reproductions of your
letters we can add this one in. I'll ask Bob Smith, by the
way, if he can help, as you suggest, in getting those reproductions.
From his last to me I believe he's not yet back in New Haven.

Summer is going pleasantly with you, I hope, with at
least a few tranquil lunches down town. Please give my best to
René, Bill Wimsatt, and the Sewalls. Thanks for sending me on
the report of Ditsy's radio talk. He was hitting the right line,
no question, and it sounds as if the newspaper thought so too,
for it's a mighty coherent piece. I don't quite share Til's
sense of scandal, though, at the remark about boredom being one
of the disciplines. It really is. I thought that often in my
first year of teaching when I had a class that was too lively,
and always threatening to get out of hand. I used to wonder how
I would get them back into control, and then realize it wasn't so
very difficult: I'd do all the talking for a while and bore them
back into quiet.

How did you like the grand write-up of Chapman in the
latest T. L. S.? Most people don't get such tributes till
they are no longer around to read them.

Apropos of nothing, I did get to the Chora Church in
Istanbul, as you guess. It was full of scaffolding and being
worked on intensively, but as we could get right up to the
mosaics and see them under strong electric light, it was
almost better than it will be in the future when the whole job
is completed. It's really astonishing how accurately mosaics
can render expression, didn't you think? Modern critics, who
in general seem to resent pictures that tell a story, ought to
be put out by this kind of success!

Well, I'm in great need of a second vacation already.
Alas, I'm writing Ray Short this very morning to say that I can't
possibly join the two of them in Paris. Oh, how I'd like to!

Will you give Marie-Louise, Marshall, and Tom my love?

Yours,

September 7, 1954

Professor Thomas W. Copeland
21 Slayleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

Your letter of just about a month ago has been unanswered because I wanted to be
sure of the next step concerning the Cambridge Press. In the meantime, I was in
touch with Ben Nangle, and Bentley was also here.

By now, perhaps you have heard from Bentley, since he flew to England last Monday
to attend a conference of some sort at Oxford (he is American secretary of the
Modern Humanities Research Association, and they are trying to get him to release
the bank balance for use in England!). He was going to get in touch with you and
hopes that it might be possible for you to meet with him at Cambridge. Not that
the matter is so important, but it would be an advantage perhaps to all parties
concerned. Thus, he will take the matter up directly with the Cambridge Press,
which will save a lot of corresponding.

There is no issue involved, merely that for the ten percent we should expect them
to do more than they probably realize. In other words, to keep a stock of the vol-
umes, certain accounts, to mail them out under specified conditions, etc. But
Bentley will see if they would be satisfied with a lower figure, which we certainly
hope would be true. After all, if it costs fifty cents to package and mail such a
book, that would be ten percent of $5.00, or five percent of $10.00! If you see
him, this can all be arranged very easily and neatly, I am sure. Actually, it can
be arranged if you are not able to go, though I think it would be to your advantage.

Another point about your seeing Bentley: I gather that the University of Utah is
looking for a man who will bring them a lot of prestige. I immediately suggested
your name, so don't be backward about raising the subject with him, saying, "Jim
suggested that I inquire further about a subject you raised with him, etc.", or
something of that order. The nature of the place and all such details you would
have to inquire about from him or elsewhere. I understand the salary is about
$8,000, and from your point of view the object would be to get the maximum in time
off, a light schedule of course work, an editorial office with plenty of facilities,
and other such extras. Thanks to air travel, no place is very distant any more,
provided the income is great enough to pay for the tickets.

Here is a second possibility. Joyce Hemlow, an Associate Professor at McGill in
Montreal, has been here all week, reading through Burney papers. There is an open-
ing there as Molson Professor, their top job, which also pays about eight. The
present incumbent, George Duthie, leaves in February to go to Aberdeen where he will
be the Regis Professor. As you may know, he is the editor of the Oxford edition of
Shakespeare.

Here is the procedure on that situation: First of all, you should forget Miss
Hemlow's name, since as far as you are concerned, you heard about the matter in
England. The point is they are very much impressed by the prestige of people who

(over)

Professor Thomas Copeland

-2-

9/7/54

Since Duthie is leaving in February, and the fact that you could be available, I believe you would be in a very strong position, if you were attracted to the possibility. That would mean you could be there from the end of January until about the first of May, and then go back to England again. And it would give you a good base of operation from which to look the country over. Montreal is just an hour from Boston, New Haven or New York by air, much nearer than most places. They have very few graduate students. Also, they have had little international prestige, so the Burke project would be a great thing in their eyes.

Joyce Hemlow, as I have mentioned, wants to stay in the background. If you went there she could give you a great deal of low-down, since she is a very friendly and straightforward person. She teaches the old English and Chaucer courses, but her heart belongs to Fanny! As you may know, she did her degree under Sherburn at Harvard, and has turned up a tremendous amount of Burney material on her own. I am sure that you would find her a wonderful help, if you did look into the situation. Incidentally, your letter might indicate whether you would expect McGill to pay part or all of your fare if you came over to be interviewed. No! Miss Hemlow says that you should say nothing on this subject in the first letter, but see how they respond and what they may suggest. In other words, your point is that you could take the time from Burke and the supervising of your staff, but the flying over, etc., would have to be their suggestion.

The main point is that have lost several good people lately, and have no big project in which they can take pride. Several of the committee who will make the choice are actually historians, so they should be impressed by your sheet on the nature and importance of the Burke project. Hence, your inquiry should stress your concern over the nature of the facilities that would be available for carrying on the great work.

So much for that subject, which I hope may lead to something. This is written at a very busy time, since I am whipping together my remarks for the edification of the Johnsonians. This year I am the principal speaker, as I think you know, and in fact, the only one who isn't just reporting on something or other. That meant writing the keepsake, which I trust you will enjoy when it reaches you. Also the talk. My subject is "Johnsoniana Collectiono Non-Johnsoniano". Fortunately, I am able to describe a number of new anecdotes, etc., about Johnson, most of them from the Burney papers. I wish you were to be there, since by watching your reactions, I could tell whether my stuff was going over, or whether it was proving to be a little on the tedious side. But a lot of the stuff in the past has been tedious enough, so that I don't believe that I shall suffer by comparison.

In the meantime, Spence has been going along quite well. Maynard went over my Pope section with a fine toothed comb, equipped with Xray and radar. You can imagine what an advantage it is at this stage. But during the last couple of weeks, Dr. Johnson has more or less shoved Pope and Spence to one side, though I am still a bit ahead of Slava.

Reading through the Burney papers has been great fun. What personalities a lot of those people had! That applies particularly to a number of the relatively unknown people. I am more and more entranced with the Great Doctor, and fear that I may have to do a book on him some day. But don't start to "make books" on the chances, until you have a medical report on the state of my arteries, since the list of prior projects is already so long.

(over)

September 24, 1954

Dear Tom,

This is a brief but interim reply to your wonderful letter of September 18th. More
will be coming later.

First of all, about the McGill situation. Last night at Midsummer Night's Dream I happened to encounter Joyce Hemlow, quite by chance. I told her about your letter, and she responded that (a) she was very disappointed and (b) it would be quite possible that McGill might be willing to wait for you, and (c) she would see what the news is once she gets back there and has a chance to plug into the grapevine. So,

In the meantime, please be assured that I understand the reasoning behind your letter. It is very fortunate that you have someone like Professor Potter with whom you can consult so intimately. The next step, whether tippy-toe or a stride, will depend on what we next hear from McGill. I shall write you as soon as I know anything.

Now to report on the Johnsonian jamboree. It proved to be quite a good party, despite the fact that a number of the pillars of the society were absent. That included the Hydes, who took a boat for Europe three days earlier. Naturally tongues are wagging that they were offended over something last year, but there are stout denials from their intimates. As Jim Clifford says, "The important thing is that people who wish celebrate Johnson's dinner get together and do it, instead of thinking about those who may not choose to be present". The location at the Men's Faculty Club in Columbia apparently cooled off some of the socialites, also.

Actually the setting worked out very well, the dinner was good, and the forty or so present seemed to have a good time. Fortunately, I had too much material and so just hit the high spots, and cut it a bit shorter than most people wished (so they said). Also, the "keepsake" was well received, and I hope you like yours when it reaches you.

There was no news at the dinner, of special importance. The announcement of the so-called "Yale Edition" is still being held up in the air. I fear it will be a flopperoo, for who is going to pay for a bald text of Johnson, however pure? A few of the top writings, yes, but not the bulk of his corpus. Or should I say corpse? I am afraid the undertakers consider that I am wearing crepe covered glasses, but they may find that "esco perpetua" is more effective in embalming the old boy's memory than it is in stimulating the buying public. So much for this attempt to sustain a metaphor!

The performance of Midsummer Night's Dream was quite a bit of fun, but I am just a pushover for Shakespeare when I can hear the words. Actually, it was completely out of scale, being put on at the Metropolitan Opera with Mendelssohn's music, etc.

(over)

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

JULIAN P. BOYD, Editor, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson RONALD S. CRANE, Professor of English, Emeritus, University of Chicago

October 15, 1954.

Dear Jim,

Thanks for the magnificent keepsake, which has just reached me. Gosh but you're setting a standard for those who come after you! To tell the truth I had the same thought last year, and you have topped the Hydes every way. But who's the next weight-lifter around, who can toss off something still more solid and handsome? One of the things I liked most about this one was that it was completely good-natured and showed Dr. Johnson the same; the Hydes' piece, besides raveling off into to many conjectures, was an exposure of something morbid in Johnson and also of a seamy side of Boswell. I like the way Malone comes into your story: just right to get your public into line for what's to come. And what an elegant format you got! I'm specially impressed by the inset letter. Do your accounts enable you to say what that sort of thing costs by itself? You guess why I ask. If it were anything like reasonable I'd consider giving a little Christmas present to our own Grand Old Project. But please don't quote me on this ambitious thought yet. I could be put off all too easily, alas, by the expense.

The checklist will itself be elegant, if present plans all go through. I was down in London last Friday conferring with the Cambridge people. On the chance they haven't sent you on their latest sample, I enclose you one. Mighty fine. I think they've got the line arrangement almost as it should be; you note that the page is narrow enough to make the proposed checklist volume and the proposed edition volume a pretty good match (not a perfect match; the checklist goes a little deeper on the shelf; but they would be the same height). We haven't yet made all the necessary experiments with the heading material; that's for the next samples, which are due this week. Mr. Dreyfus described his interview with Mr. Bentley. I gather it was harmonious, and Bentley's chief concern was to keep Cambridge up to Columbia's standard. Hurrah for such noble policies! Dreyfus seemed perfectly satisfied with the idea of having Melvin Loos as a consultant (as Bentley proposed); obviously Milton and I are delighted. Dreyfus seemed confident that the Society would get the order formally placed some time in November, and said that Cambridge was willing to promise delivery within nine months of the formal order.

Mr. Dreyfus showed me a fine little booklet entitled got out in honor of Carl Rollins - containing several excellent photographs of him as well as some noble letter-press. Were you present on the jaunt which the booklet commemorated?

My visit to London was the first since the early part of July. Besides seeing Mr. Dreyfus, I went to a Johnson Club meeting. DeBeer on indexing; an excellent survey of problems, useful as well as terrifying to me just at present. In the discussion afterwards Chapman spoke boldly for Chapman's ideas on the multiple index; Powell and others were so polite as practically to be tongue-tied about their disagreement with the Chapman program. Professor Sutherland in the chair was beautifully dry and irreverend about the modern index. Some publishers in the group spoke up, but without saying what I bet they really felt about indexes as an item of expense. I'm going to talk to this group on December 13: the Letters of Edmund Burke, as you might have guessed.

December 13 is my last engagement here; I expect to get a flight for New York (or Boston if cheaper) on the following day. I never knew I was so sold on plane travel, but as I think of these great distances I'm more and more tempted to go the whole way to Chicago by plane. Maybe not the whole way back. The waste of money will worry me more and the waste of energy less once that M.L.A. meeting is over. My paper for that is done, thanks be, at least in a penultimate form; it isn't what one would call juicy. (By the way, curse this typewriter; I had it thoroughly gone over recently; its new competence seems largely to consist in a tendency to tighten up and hit one letter on top of the previous.)

Thanks for being so understanding about my timidity as to the McGill job. I certainly want badly enough to jump off onto dry land at the earliest moment, but the minimum commitment to the Burke enterprise still seems to swell every time I look at it, and I don't think it would be decent to make the jump just yet.

Milton and Marie are in full career - transcribing away like the proverbial well-oiled machines. They are having a wonderful time in England. Off every weekend on some new and still more athletic jaunt. I've been with them to York, to Lincoln, to Rennishaw Hall, to various steel and cutlery works; we're going tomorrow to Hardwick Hall. A great life. Usual proviso. They send you their best. Will you give my love to Marie-Louise, Marshall, and Tom?

Yours,

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

September 18, 1954.

Dear Jim,

You entertained, but chiefly instructed, the Johnsonians last night. I certainly wish I had been there to let you know how much I was enjoying it. This time I wasn't esto-perpetua-ing in Lichfield or anywhere else, but only struggling with the extraordinary man. I'm getting quite a feeling for one saying of Johnson - a day when he wasn't quite bursting with energy and someone mentioned Burke: "If I saw Burke now it would kill me." He is so deucedly continuous! But as long as I stay in the game at all, I have no complaints; one doesn't run out of things to know and do.

It was wonderful of you to take time out at the height of your strains and preparations to brief me on the McGill job. I've wept and fasted over that, wept and preyed, as Prufrock says, and owe you a long explanation. When I first read your letter I was almost perfectly sure that I had to say No and immediately. But gosh, what a temptation a job like that offers! To make it a little worse, Professor Potter here saw all the advantages of the opening, and insisted - what I know is perfectly true - that it was the kind of break that only comes a couple times in a lifetime. I'm sure it's much-better-than-even that an all-out effort couldn't land it, but it's a distracting thought that it might, and that I might go on with the Burke job with some solid ground under my feet. Well, I apologize for having let the temptation keep me irresolute for this many days. I'm really sure now that the first feeling was right. I won't give you every reason or you'd think me over the line. The chief is that I simply don't dare to double my present commitments, and if I should land the job I couldn't do less than that. I've been finding it harder and harder to believe that I can be ready to go back to teaching next October. That was the original plan, but the mere Preliminary Operations - ordering, filing, writing the hundreds of letters it's going to take to get in all the Burke letters outstanding - still offer me months of work, and that's before we count the additional months it will take me to do my own volume. My deadline to have the final copy in is February 1, 1956; I'm going to have to hold seven other editors to deadlines, and I'd better not be too cavalier about my own.

Our last excursion was to Renishaw Hall. No Sitwells
were on hand to greet us, but a kind of estate manager did a
beautiful job of showing us around. I can't deny that I've
always been allergic to those Publicity Hounds, who I dare say
are also gifted poets, etc.; but seeing the place gave me a
great deal of sympathy with them. It's wonderful, really,
to keep as much life in a Great House as they have succeeded
in doing. Most of them are glorious shells with no life
whatever left in them. It was also a great pleasure to see
how loyal this wonderful old fellow that showed us around was
to Sir Osbert and the house. He wasn't faking; his face shone
when he talked about either one of them. He'd been living by
the whims of Sir Osbert and his father Sir George for some
seventy years, but it didn't seem to have impaired him. He
didn't - perhaps it was chance - exude anything I thought was
enthusiasm for Miss Edith or Mr. Sacheveral.

I can't remember whether I mentioned our little
flurry of publicity when I wrote you last. The Librarian here,
who needs a lot of publicity to do his own job, got the idea
that the Lord Mayor of Sheffield ought to show an interest in
all the Library's visiting Burke scholars. The Lord Mayor,
quite a scholarly fellow fortunately, bit on this and asked those of
us who were on hand that week - eight in all - to come over
for sherry in the Lord Mayor's Parlour one morning. The
Sheffield papers gave us photographs and wholly accurate accounts;
the *Times* and *Guardian* got the story right and gave us a good
deal of space considering. Within a week the B.B.C. came over
and interviewed me, giving it four to five minutes on the Light
Program the same evening. Heaven knows whether these things
help us with anyone but the Librarian himself, but they are an
excitement while they are happening.

No plays recently. Actually I haven't been in London
since early July. I see by the papers that there's a wonderful
*Hedda Gabler* with Peggy Ashcroft; I hope not to miss it. I'll
be down that way next month when DeBeer gives his talk on
Indexing at the Johnson Club. Perhaps earlier if I hear from
Mr. Bentley. Sheffield's Repertory Theatre itself is quite good;
I've seen *Deep Blue Sea* and *Dial M for Murder* there - both well
acted but just not very valuable plays. Repertories in such
places as Sheffield are a little like summer theaters; they
hate to venture on anything more austere than *Springtime for
Henry*. Having this passionate resolve to keep *gay*, they run
into the fact that the number of gay plays that are also worth
putting on well is mighty small. When they venture out of the
charmed circle I always hope it will be for something really
good, a *Shakespeare* or a *Chekhom*, and not a mere Ratigan.
I suppose you are now in the rich period of the New Haven
season. Let me know what looks good. Another I've still to
see in London - from your last year's recommend - is *Tea House
of the Agust Moon*. It's having a roaring success, or was when
I was last there.

Will you give my best to all? Write when you can.

Yours,
Tom

Professor Thomas Copeland
Slayleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

Your last two letters have been very full and very welcome. I only regret that I
have not had a chance to answer before.

First of all, many thanks for your kind words about my little Johnson brochure. It
was fun writing, though it was more or less tossed off in a hurry, so now I see
words I would change, etc. Fortunately it has had a very good reception, especially
from the people who know most about Johnson. They realize how it will change a page
or two in the biography of the old boy, once it comes to be written again.

You ask about the price of the facsimile, in case it might be possible for you to
get out something for Christmas. The bill for 250 copies for the facsimiles, which
meant the four page letter as well as the face of Dr. J. (they already had this neg-
ative, from my Dryden book) was $84.00. Thus, the expense is not one to take on
without some pondering. But, that is four pages, and one page might be quite a dif-
ferent matter. In case you want an estimate, I suggest you write to Mr. Harold Hugo,
The Meriden Gravure Company, Meriden, Connecticut. Please be free to say that I
suggested it, if that would be a help. I know you would have a prompt reply. You
could say it is just a maggot in the back of your cerebellum, and he wouldn't mind
if you didn't place an order after the estimate, I am sure.

Now about the checklist. The only news we have had from Bentley is the echo of his conversation, as you picked it up with Mr. Dreyfus. But we expect to have a session next Monday, November 1st. He is coming to Columbia to watch the Queen of England receive her accolade. His letter to Ben said that, "Since the discussion at Cambridge was so successful", or words to that effect, indicating that everything should be ready to go. I shall write you after we have had this session together.

The sample pages certainly show a great deal of improvement. It is surprising what a little thought will do, but it does take the black and white evidence before one to use as a springboard. I'd be a little inclined to think that the double rule at the top would require some kind of a balancing rule or other device below. The type and the typographical devices, however, seem admirably designed.

Now to hit the high spots of a few other subjects. I have heard no further news from McGill, but Miss Hemlow said she was going to write as soon as she had been on the job long enough to have her ear properly to the ground. When there is some news from that quarter, I shall send it along.

The unexpected news in your letter, albeit the cause for tossing of hats in the air,
is that you are going to be back for a visit in December. Be sure to let us know
when we can get together. If you are coming to New Haven, please name the days. We
shall be in New York for the MLA, and shall hope to see you here also, under the
elms.

(over)

December 3, 1954

Professor Thomas Copeland

Dear Tom,

The time is so rapidly approaching for your return that I must hasten if I am to
answer your very fine and fat letter. Perhaps a word to welcome you is most properly
in order.

If you are coming to New Haven before going to New York for the MLA, be sure to let us know. We shall look forward eagerly to seeing you. As I believe you remember, we shall be in New York for the 27th, 28th and the early part of the 29th. But those will be crowded days for you, as well as for us. I believe my Pope paper comes on Tuesday afternoon.

All the news in your letters is most welcome. Bentley was in New Haven for a few hours, and so we were interested to hear the results of his conversations at Cambridge. Everything seems to be in order, and if any of us have any questions they probably can be raised with Bentley in New York. He did not have a copy of your new type specimen page, so I turned my copy over to him. Doubtless you will have a supply with you when you are here. I am pleased to hear that you are well and that my best wishes for a happy new year are duly observed.

I am pleased that you like the booklet on Dr. Johnson and the Contrary Converts. It was fun to write, since all the information fell into place so neatly once I sat down to it. But it had to be done in somewhat of a rush, since Bob Metzdorf called me about the middle of August after his return from Europe. I think you would have enjoyed my talk, since there were a number of fairly juicy tidbits about Johnson, all new and most of them from the Burney papers.

When you receive this you will be preparing your talk for the Johnson Club. Please make my greetings to Powell, Esmond deBeer, and the others. Surprisingly, I have not yet had any acknowledgment from deBeer about my little paper, indicating that perhaps he didn't receive it. Possibly you can find out tactfully. Please make greetings also to James Sutherland and any other likely friends.

Incidentally, did you recognize the fine hand of David Nichol Smith in the review of the Ault-Butt volume? I am as sure of it as I am of anything. It was the writing on Pope that's been in the TLS for a long time, a qualified remark, but intended as a high compliment.

Spence continues to march along. I decided to include a lot of contemporary remarks about gardening theory, most of it from Spence himself. He was quite an important factor in the development of "modern taste" in gardening, as you may know. Hence, this seemed the thing to do. But it has taken a lot of digging to write the notes properly, as you can imagine.

We are now making plans for our trip to Europe in February. We expect to land in London about February 5th, and be around for about two weeks before going to Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, namely Rhodes and probably Cyprus, as well as a few

(over)

January 20, 1955

Dear Tom,

A very brief note to tell you that we are now girding our loins and preparing for the expedition to England. We are looking forward greatly to seeing you on February twelfth at the Stafford Hotel. The week end should be a lot of fun together.

Incidentally, I am writing to James Sutherland about going to the theatre with them, also. So if it isn't too much trouble, I wish you would drop him a note telling the play that you have selected for February twelfth, so that there will be no conflict. His address is: Sutton Courtenay, Berks.

If you haven't seen the eighteenth century show at the Royal Academy, we can go there on Sunday. We have invited Sir Harold and Lady Williams for dinner on Sunday evening, with the expectation that you can stay over for the occasion. It will be quite informal. I know they are very fond of you, so hope that it will fit in with your schedule.

Our plans are fairly simple. We arrive on the fifth, and leave on the eighteenth of February for Egypt. After about sixteen days there, we spend a few days in Rhodes and Cyprus before a week in Athens, a few days in Rome, another few days in London and back home at the end of March. Let us keep our fingers crossed and hope there will be a chance to relax somewhere along the route!

Now for a bit of Burke news. Bob Smith called today, and we expect to clear up the matter of the Burke letters next week. I trust that your dentist's assistant gave you the information about the Burke letter being sold at Sotheby's. Probably she doesn't realize that this is the first time a dental assistant has ever carried such a message!

Today I ordered from a dealer a letter of Burke dated 6 March 1780 to no known addressee. It is one and a half pages quarto, and concerns the county of Middlesex asserting the rights of the people, etc. Length: one and a half pages quarto. If I get it, it won't arrive until March or so, but I thought you might want to know about it now.

From the same dealer (in Holland) I have ordered "seven letters concerning the exact date of the birth of Edmund Burke, written about 1842". When they arrive I can let you know what they are all about. Perhaps you already have a record of such a backwater eddy.

No other news at the moment, except that I have never been so busy in my life, the details of various responsibilities shooting around my ears like the arrows of the Lilliputians around those of Gulliver. And I feel equally tied down. So, I am

(over)

Copy for Mr. Loos
Mr. Dreyfus
Mr. Nangle

21 January 1955.

Mr. Harold W. Bentley,
101 Library Building,
University of Utah,
Salt Lake City 1, Utah.

Dear Mr. Bentley:

Mr. Loos's pages reached us here last Monday morning. Mr. Smith and I studied them with great care of course and conferred with Mr. Dreyfus in London yesterday afternoon.

You were right in predicting that Mr. Loos would satisfy us. Our reservations are now so very minor that I assume they do not constitute obstacles; they did not seem worth a transatlantic phone call, though we all appreciated your offering us that final resort.

The only definite request we have is that the single line which now runs across the page under the name of each correspondent be moved up above his name, so that it is in effect the separation between the correspondence and that which precedes it. (E.g., the line which runs under the name of Foley on page 206 of our specimen be placed above his name; it is then the separation between the whole Foley correspondence and the whole Blood correspondence.) I believe this is an essential change on editorial grounds, but on esthetic grounds it ought to make very little difference, there would still be only one line across the page per correspondence, though we think it would be better placed to clarify the page for the reader.

A subsidiary gain from this change would be that we could avoid something which has troubled Mr. Smith and me, as I know it has Mr. Dreyfus. When the single line is placed under the correspondent's name, an unfortunate thing happens to

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS

2960 Broadway, New York 27, N. Y.

12 January 1955

C
O
P
Y

Mr. John C. Dreyfus
Assistant University Printer
Cambridge University Press
Cambridge, England

Dear John:

With this air mail letter you will find the revised pages of
the Burke Correspondence Check List. This revision shows the
result of the conference held at the Hotel Statler with Messrs.
Bentley, Copeland, Nangle and Osborn.

I do not believe that it is necessary to go into details as to
what changes were made. I am sure that when you compare it
with the specimen forwarded under date of December 29, the ma-
terial that has been affected will be apparent. You will see I used
pages 204, 205 and 206. I believe that all the problems are on
these three pages.

In eliminating the arrows I might not have used the proper
designation. So this will have to be worked out from the manu-
script before the composition is started.

By now you will have received Dr. Bentley's letter of the
3rd, and if you are in disagreement with the new sample pages,
then I think we should try to resolve the differences by telephone
so as not to delay the composition any further.

I hope you will not take offense at any suggestions that I
make and that you will appreciate that my only desire is to try to
produce a page that is completely free of any kind of hindrances to
a quick reading. I am sure that you are trying for the same kind
of effect.

With kindest regards,

ML:jeh

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF
CORRESPONDENCES

IN this list each of the correspondences is treated separately under the name of the correspondent. For each we have attempted to supply an identification of the correspondent, a list of sources where the letters of the particular correspondence are to be found, and a list of the letters, with certain basic facts about each.

Identification of correspondents is not elaborate. Normally it extends to giving the full name, the most important titles or offices held at the time of the relation with Burke, and the dates of birth and death. Members of Parliament are identified as such, with the years of their attendance if known to us. Peers and ecclesiastical dignitaries are sometimes given titles they bore later than the period of their correspondence with Burke, if they are well-known by those titles. A few correspondents, especially those least accessible in ordinary reference works, are briefly described: 'painter', 'Lancashire merchant', 'Bristol dissenter', and so forth. There are of course many cases where no certain identification has been attained. For these we have either given in brackets our most plausible guess, or merely offered our readers the name as we found it in a signature or an endorsement. All letters which cannot be listed under any specific surname are grouped together under Unknown Correspondents at the end of this list.

The sources which are listed in smaller type immediately below the correspondent's name, are of two kinds. Manuscript collections containing letters are preceded by bold-faced capitals, A, B, C, etc., and are identified by short titles (e.g. 'Fitzwilliam MSS (Sheffield)') explained more fully in the list of Short Titles for Manuscript Sources (above, pp. , ). Printed works in which letters have been wholly or partly published, or merely mentioned or abstracted, are listed after bold-faced figures, 1, 2, 3, etc.; they are identified by short titles (e.g. 'Pellew, Life of Sidmouth') which are explained more fully in the list of Short Titles for Printed Sources (pp. , ).

The list of letters, which is the third and main part of the presentation of each correspondence, reviews all known letters between the particular

ALPHABETICAL LIST

2

correspondent and Burke or any member of Burke's immediate family. For each letter we attempt to supply five kinds of information:

(1) *Information about the date.* If the manuscript of a letter has survived, the entries in our date-column embody a report on the authenticity of its date. If the whole date is as certain as it can be—that is, if the year, month, and day are on the face of the letter in the writer's hand—the date-entry for that letter will contain no brackets around month or day and no asterisk after the year. If on the other hand any one of the three parts has been supplied editorially, however conclusive the reasons, that part will be marked with brackets or the asterisk. The asterisk in the year-column has precisely the same meaning as the brackets in the columns for month and day; it indicates what has been supplied editorially. This arbitrary use is justified, we hope, by the neater, more lucid appearance it gives to the year-column. Other symbols (e.g. aJan 24 for *ante* January 24, or pMar 5 for *post* March 5) are perhaps self-explanatory.

(2) *Information about the address from which the letter was written.* In the column for addresses we follow a principle analagous to that in the column for dates. That is, if the manuscript of the letter is accessible for inspection, we make our entry a report on what it contains. If the address from which it was written appears on the letter in the writer's hand, it is entered without brackets. If on the other hand it was supplied editorially, as from an endorsement, postmark, or by inference from the text, our entry will be bracketed.

Our spelling of addresses will normally follow the writer exactly; attempted corrections might merely introduce errors. There are, however, two exceptions to the universality of this principle. Where an address has been abbreviated without producing any real uncertainty, as by writing 'Trin: Coll:' for 'Trinity College', or 'Edin:' for 'Edinburgh', we have silently expanded the abbreviation, using no brackets. We have also normaliized Burke's spelling of his own addresses since here there is relative certainty.

(3) *Information about the direction of the letters.* The column containing entries 'to EB' and 'fr EB' is always understood to be followed by the name of the correspondent whose letters are being listed. Thus under Stephen Thurston Adey the entry 'to EB' stands for 'to Edmund Burke from Adey'; 'fr EB' stands for 'from Edmund Burke to Adey'.

3

ALPHABETICAL LIST

As our list includes correspondences of all members of Burke's immediate family, their initials will often appear in this column, as follows:

'JB' stands for Jane Burke, Edmund's wife.

'RBsr' stands for Richard Burke, Edmund's brother.

'RBjr' stands for Richard Burke, Edmund's son.

'WB' stands for William Burke, Edmund's 'cousin'.

All entries for members of Burke's family are printed in italics.

(4) *Information about the manuscript.* The entries in the fourth column from the left give facts about the location, length, nature, and condition of the manuscript.

The key letters, A, B, C, etc., which begin the entries, correspond to the A, B, C, etc., in the list of Manuscript Sources above. Thus they stand for the short titles there given and for the manuscript collections more fully described in the list of Short Titles for Manuscript Sources (pp. , ).

Immediately after the key letters is a figure for a number of pages ('4pp', '½p(fol)', etc.). This is the number of manuscript pages covered by the text of the letter. Where it is given without adding '(fol)' or '(8vo)' or '(12mo)' it is to be understood as the ordinary quarto page on which most eighteenth-century letters were written. This and the other terms for size are used with no attempt at absolute precision: '(fol)' stands for a variety of outsized sheets, from one not very much larger than quarto to the largest foolscap size; '(8vo)' stands for a sheet roughly half the size of the quarto; '(12mo)' stands for anything much smaller than that. As our purpose in giving sheet-sizes at all is only to furnish readers with a rough measure of the length of letters, we decided it was far too great a labour to give measurements in inches or centimetres, or even to refine our descriptions to 'small folio', 'large quarto', and the like. Different correspondents vary so widely in the number of words they write on a page that nothing but a very rough measurement is possible anyway.

We have recorded drafts and contemporary copies of letters, as well as photostats and modern copies when any interest was served by recording them. A few verse letters are entered if they kept close to the epistolary form or were unquestionably sent through the mails.

The condition of the manuscript is described only in extreme cases of damage. If a letter is badly torn, or is no more than a fragment, we record such facts. Where only a portion (not damaged) survives, as the first quarto sheet of a longer letter, we describe it as 'incomplete'.

ALPHABETICAL LIST

4

(5) *Information about publication or printed notice of the letter.* The final column, beginning with a bold-faced figure, contains facts about printed records of the letter in books, periodicals, or dealers' catalogues. The bold-faced figure corresponds to the similar figure above under 'Printed Sources'; the short title there given is more fully explained in the list of Short Titles for Printed Sources (pp. , ). Following the bold-faced figure is the volume and page reference in the indicated printed source. Abstracts or extracts are identified by the abbreviations 'abs' and 'ext'. Missing letters known to us only by reference are recorded in the hope that some of our readers may be able to tell us of their whereabouts.

If in comparing the printed version of a letter with the manuscript we noted any deletions, even so minor as the omission of a postscript, we marked them with the phrase 'part omitted' after the printed reference. We have not made these comparisons exhaustively, however, so that the mere absence of the phrase cannot be taken as an assurance that the printed version does correspond with the manuscript.

5

ABDY

ABDY, SIR ANTHONY THOMAS (ca. 1720-1775); 5th Baronet; M.P.

<table><tr><td>1769 Sept 7</td><td>Albyns</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 1p</td></tr><tr><td>Nov 4</td><td>Albyns, near Ongar, Essex</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 1pp</td></tr></table>

ABINGDON, Earl of

See BERTIE

ADAIR, WILLIAM (17 -17 )

A Fitzwilliam MSS (Sheffield)

<table><tr><td>1786 June 27</td><td>Lincoln's Inn, New Square, No. 2</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 3pp</td></tr></table>

ADAM, WILLIAM (1751-1839); M.P. 1774-

A Fitzwilliam MSS (Lamport)

B Fitzwilliam MSS (Sheffield)

<table><tr><td>1783 Apr 27</td><td>Brighthelmston</td><td>to EB</td><td>B 2pp</td></tr><tr><td>1788 Dec 29</td><td>Burlington House</td><td>to EB</td><td>B 4pp</td></tr><tr><td>1791 Jan 2</td><td>Lincoln's Inn F[iel]ds</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 6pp</td></tr></table>

ADDINGTON, HENRY (1757-1844); later (1805) 1st Viscount Sidmouth
Speaker of the House of Commons 1789-

A Fitzwilliam MSS (Sheffield)

I Pellew, LIFE OF SIDMOUTH

<table><tr><td>1790 [Dec]</td><td>fr EB</td><td></td><td>I i, 80</td></tr><tr><td>1795 Jan 8</td><td>fr EB</td><td></td><td>I i, 135-8</td></tr><tr><td>Jan 20</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 5pp</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Jan 21</td><td>fr EB</td><td></td><td>I i, 138-40</td></tr><tr><td>Jan 21</td><td>to EB</td><td>A 3pp</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Mar 5</td><td>fr EB</td><td></td><td>I i, 140-1</td></tr><tr><td>[Apr]</td><td>fr EB</td><td></td><td>I i, 141-2</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>76 Pall Mall</td><td>fr EB</td><td>I i, 144-5</td></tr></table>

Why Work
on Burke?

(Editor's Note: Professor Copeland was solicited and solicited again to give the readers of "Spellbound" a brief but sensible explanation of what he is now doing. "Why are you taking up space in the Special Collections Room of the Central Library?" he was asked. "You say that you and your collaborators are transcribing and annotating some ten volumes of Edmund Burke's letters, and that it may take you six or eight years to complete the job. Then why not give up the job now, and save yourself a lot of years? It's only too evident that this enterprise is costing money as well as sweat and tears. Granting that some of this is American money and hence can be disregarded, isn't some real coinage involved? Surely this whole project ought to be carefully studied, to put it mildly, before you go ahead with it."

In response to these timely challenges Professor Copeland wrote us the following piece, pretty rhetorical, but not without interest.)

"Has the proposed edition of Edmund Burke's letters any other purpose than to pile burdens on the library staff?" This is the question I read in the eyes of practically everybody on the first floor of the Central Library. They don't (normally) put it in words, but I'm pretty sure I've read it correctly - surer than I am of dozens of our readings from the Burke manuscripts.

There are three answers to the question:

1. The first is so obvious that I really shouldn't have to mention it. Isn't everyone supposed to pile burdens on a library staff? I would have said it was the main trend. The Burke group is merely conforming to universal practice, since what they really want is to be inconspicuous.

2. The second answer might be a little less obvious though even it one wouldn't feel justified in mentioning to anyone above a reporter on a newspaper. The Burke project is carried on by both American and English workers, and therefore a valuable means of cementing Anglo-American relations. Some people say they don't get any meaning out of this metaphor. Well, that's the best part of it. As we don't understand it, we can work it out together. It is by working together - and suffering together, for what is work but a lot of suffering? - that we cement relations.

3. The third answer is the heart of the matter. No one

-6-

- 7 -

WHY WORK ON BURKE? (Cont'd.)

should ask whether big scholarly projects have any immediate
usefulness. They are high adventure - that sort of thing. You
feel this in the atmosphere of the Special Collections Room
We're pioneers, brave spits, sailing off into the sunset -
who knows to what end? As one of the modern poets has put it:

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles
And see the great Achilles whom we knew ... X
Though much is taken, much abides, and though XX
We are not of that strength which in old days
Moved heaven and earth, that which we are we are ... XXX

X This is inaccurate. There is no evidence that Professor Copeland or any member of his group ever made the acquaintance of Achilles. ED.

XX This is thought to refer to the innumerable volumes
which the Burke workers get out of the stacks of the General
Reference Room - some of which they are mighty slow in
returning. ED.

XXX As if by accident, Professor Copeland here gives us a
very useful thought. The simple words "that which we are we
are" contain the principal secret of international relations.
Don't they also state the only terms on which library staffs
and visiting scholars have ever been known to co-operate? ED.

(There is more to Professor Copeland's piece, but we're
really doing our readers a favour by breaking it off at this
point. From here on it's all downhill. ED.)

NO FLOWERS BY REQUEST, NO. 2.

A certain well known librarian had just given a speech at
Chaucer House on "Mechanisation in Libraries", (those who know
the peculiarities of librarians will have no difficulty in
supplying the correct name) and the first speaker rose ...

"Mr. Chairman, sir; Mr. Almanac's (see above) speech reminded me of a steer; there was a point here, and a point there, and a lot of bull in between... "

I can vouch for the truth of this, I was there.

P.S. It wasn't me.

Derek Hawksworth.

Odd Ode

Our Reference Librarian, Jim Ollé
Is sometimes addicted to folly;
One day in the stack
He fell on his back
Whilst trying to ride on the trolley.

## WHAT'S IN A HEADLINE?

Three people in Cataloguing Department each wrote an imaginary report which was suggested by a recent headline in the "Times":-

### "Result of Test Encouraging"

Test carried out on 100 librarians shows the old idea of dry-as-dust antiquarians and wispy spinsters is fast dying out. Compared with other professions the suicide rate is rather high but since 1920 the proportion of married librarians has increased by 34%. Murders are infrequent but confidential questioning reveals that potential murderer reach a high percentage. It is interesting to note that Senior librarians are most often the potential victims.

The modern librarian's love life reflects recent trends. Especially among the younger people flirtation is by no means unknown, and frank discussion of Freudian theories and chances of marriage is noted as a feature of feminine conversation.

Perhaps a reflex from their sedentary occupation, is the absorption of male librarians in sport. Interests range from a knowledgeable backing of horses to games of chess with considerable sums of money staked on the result. An outstanding feature is the enthusiasm for cricket, tennis and table-tennis. The discussion of their prowess in such games forms 30% of librarians' off-duty conversation. A few other conversation percentages are: television 30%; sex (including jokes) 20%; gossip about other members of staff 13%; politics 5%; books 2%.

At 10 a.m. today the examiner of the Everfayle Driving School told a regretful pupil that he had again failed. This made an all-time record for the firm, the 12th successive time this pupil had failed. Unfortunately for the School the result of the test had been most encouraging for the examinee. The examiner later told our reporter that he was most dis-hearted and was confident that next time the pupil would pass as his results were very encouraging. It was understood that the pupil was a member of the Local Government Service.

Here is some good news for those busy girls who find travelling to town for a hair-do just too, too terribly tedious. Girls, we have just made tests with Whizzy-Friz, the last word in home permanents, and found the results most encouraging, to say the least. Indeed, we expect our business to flourish as a result of these revolutionary tests, for straight hair vanishes completely as soon as it meets up with a single application of Whizzy-Friz.

### "The Cats"

Please send future contributions to the Editor, "Spellbound", Civic Information Service, Central Library, Sheffield 1.

- 16 -

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

16 February 1955

Dear Jim,

Here are two items I promised to send you: the *Times* notice and the semi-humorous piece I did for the Library magazine here (*Why Work on Burke*, p.6). Also here's the latest set of checklist specimens, which arrived the day I left for London; you'll see they embody Melvin Loos's changes.

There are still a few minor changes to make in the latter, but on the whole, this is our page. It's possible - and I regret to say it gets *more* possible as we pile up experience on it - that we'll have to go back from Mr. Bentley's "fr EB", in the central column, to the "EB to" of our cards. We won't do it without overwhelming conviction that it saves us both labor and error. We need more experiments before we do decide and are making the experiments now.

Mr. Dreyfus had arrived here almost as soon as the specimens. We had a good confab with him after a good dinner at the Smiths last night. By the way, one of the points discussed was of course the suggested change from "pp" to "pages" in the source-column. It looked to all of us as if it involved one serious difficulty. We are going to have a fairly large number of entries (like those at the top of p.6 in the specimen) where we have to give the number of pages plus "draft incomplete" or some other phrase of explanation (e.g. "signature cut off" on p.12). The full word "pages" would be just long enough to run the whole entry beyond its column in such cases, and none of us felt sure it was enough of a gain to justify the difficulties. After all, the scholarly world is accustomed to "pp" almost more than to "pages", so it isn't a very clear case of avoiding an unfamiliar symbol. Our tentative decision was to leave "pp", but we're all game to hear more reasons for the other.

I had a good visit in Oxford, seeing Miss Sutherland Monday evening and Powell for lunch yesterday. I called on Herbert Davis yesterday morning, but unluckily found him out. I'll try him again when I'm in Oxford next, which is only a week hence.

September 14, 1955

Dear Tom,

Well, I see that Milton Smith's deep feelings have boiled over in public. In other words, I refer to the copy of the letter to you which he distributed copies of to me and other people listed at the bottom of it. "'Tis true, 'tis pitty, and pitty 'tis, 'tis true".

Quarrels can be contained when they are left as intermural sport, and it is too bad when they have to be spilled over in public. I explained a bit verbally to Ben Nangle, and have written Melvin Loos. As you can realize, none of them care much about other people's quarrels, as long as it doesn't interfere with the quality of the product. I don't see that it does. At least, we are prepared to go ahead on schedule and hope that this doesn't interfere with the volume coming out on time.

While I was in New York I had hoped to see Melvin Loos, but he was in Bermuda on holiday. Thus I have had to write him a letter to await his return two days hence. He has received the original copy of Ben's letter to you, of which a copy is enclosed. On it he can write any changes, if he doesn't need to go into length about any of them. But the matter seemed fairly simple to me. In any case, this gives you a chance to think about them awaiting the letter from him with any amendments.

Melvin also has the text of Ben's brief introduction. This is designed to go in one page. It has the purpose of praising your job in a way that you could not do. Also, it reports the function of the Index Society. I doubt if you would have any question on that score, but Melvin will send it on to you directly. You can turn it over to the press then.

Otherwise, I trust there are not likely to be any more problems with this volume. The more I look at the proofs, the more it seems to me a most valuable tool book. Incidentally, Jim Clifford is going to give it a puff in the next *Johnsonian NewsLetter*. This may help getting people thinking about it. And Bentley will also be sending out a letter advertising it to the members of the Index Society so that they can form a line of eager purchasers (we hope!).

By now I trust you are being quite philosophical about the Smith-Copeland intestine broil. Philosophy is about all that one can call on sometimes. It is too bad you don't have the Potter family to serve as a shock absorber, but undoubtedly some other is available.

There is little personal news to report. The English Institute was a great success. A lot of the papers were fine, but some of the others were a bit on the feeble side (this includes a couple of old Yales - Bottkol and Wanning, as well as their teammate, Harry Levin). The Institute is really on very solid ground now.

In New York we saw *Bus Stop*, a great disappointment. Just a melodrama with different

(over)

November 14, 1955

Dear Tom,

I am somewhat behind on our correspondence. But that is no indication that we haven't been thinking of you frequently.

First of all, about the good news that you will be coming over to this country for the holidays and to attend the MLA meeting. We shall look forward to seeing you, even though it will not be at the MLA, since Chicago is just too far away at my advanced age. From now on I expect to go to the ones in the East, but omit those in the middle West.

Why don't you stop in New Haven at one end of your trip, and spend a few days with us? It will give you a chance to get up-to-date on your friends here, and for us to learn the latest news from you. So, please be quite free to suggest it. I don't know of anything that would prevent it on any date, so just make an early suggestion, to get in ahead of the calendar. We shall look for an early reply.

All of the matters concerning the checklist seem to have worked out. You have shown a good deal of patience and forbearance on the subject. Everyone here recognizes the problem you have been up against. Bob Smith told me a lot more about it. It is very good news that you have an able assistant now working with you.

The report of your trip to Germany was read with great interest here. So too, with your visit to the London theatre. We have had several fairly good shows open in New Haven, but I won't go into detail about them at this time. We shall hope to see you in just a few weeks, at which time we can compare notes.

This has been an extremely busy fall. Indeed, I can't remember any time to compare with it. That is one difficulty with having too many irons in the fire. And it has been busy socially, also. In fact, I don't see how I am ever going to get away in February, as we plan to go abroad then as usual. But we shall see what time produces in the way of solution.

There is little news about your New Haven friends. The Sewalls thrive, and nearly every time we are together talk of you. Rene is very busy, as always. The second edition of his book is now called for. I saw Grace Case the other day, and she said she expects to go to England and see you while there. The Waiths are due back from Florence soon. Maggie was sick there, so it interrupted their sightseeing a bit. Doubtless you have seen the review of the Yale folio facsimile, in the TLS. Do you know who wrote it? We suspect someone at Oxford.

Incidentally, if there is anything that your friends can do in anticipation of your

(over)

December 7, 1955

Professor Thomas Copeland
24 Slayleigh Lane
Sheffield 10, England

Dear Tom,

This is a very prompt reply to your letter of December 3rd to let you know that we are looking forward to having a visit from you a month from now.

Recently I had a chat with Bob Smith, and he told me a bit of your itinerary. But I am glad to have it out of the traveler's mouth. Our time early in January is quite unengaged at present, so just write your own ticket. If you happen to be here on New Year's Eve, we shall take you along with us to a party at Maggie and Gene Waith's. So see if you can arrange that. You could go to New York from here, suiting yourself.

Concerning the McGill situation, I shall go to work on it at once. Surprisingly, I have several good friends there. I think you know that Slava Klima, my former research assistant, is there as an instructor. He has been kept very busy with papers, but they are going to give him a comparative literature course next year.

All the news about your Burke activities is most welcome. I am delighted to hear that Namier's secretary is being so helpful to you. The checklist has not yet arrived, but we are looking forward to it eagerly.

As Bob Smith may have written you, I have come up with a new Burke letter. But I gave him the details and he will take care of getting it photostated.

I have acquired a lot of very exciting things lately. Among them, I have come up with two new bits of information about Ben Jonson! They are from contemporary marginalia, and are not very important. But it's rather fun to hit that kind of "pay dirt".

The most exciting, actually, is the autobiography of Thomas Whythorne, which you may have heard that I gave to the Bodleian. But I have gone over the transcription of it, and it is most interesting. He was an important song writer, from the historical point of view, who lived 1528-1590. This autobiography is the earliest one in English of anybody connected with the arts. About a third of it is in verse form. And it is all in his own system of orthography, which is quite important as indicating the pronunciation of the day. Besides that it has a good deal of incidental information about the state of music. I estimate that he wrote this fairly fat volume (180 pages folio in close handwriting) about 1576. Among other things, he lived in a house of John Haywood. There are also interesting sociological items about the life in great houses, etc.

My new assistant, thanks to having had training in paleography, has done a beautiful job of transcribing it. I shall take my time, relatively speaking, about getting it out, though I hope to have it ready for the press in a year. But I must finish up

(over)

Spence first. However, I am giving a talk on it before the New England Society of Musicologists, since they are very eager to hear about it.

Speaking of Spence, I gave a talk on "Editing Pope's Boswell" before the Dodsley Club last week. As you know, this is a club of senior eighteenth century people that Lefty Lewis started. Judging from the response, they found the subject matter quite interesting. Looking around the table, it was as if one had all the big guns in the fleet pointed in one direction. But that is one of the great advantages of being in this nest of singing Augustans.

Your friends here prosper. Lou Martz is going to be the new chairman of the English Department, a decision that makes everyone very happy. He will be coming to England in April for about eight weeks. Incidentally, he just won the Gauss prize of $1,000 for the best book of literary scholarship published by the University Press this last year, a Phi Beta Kappa award of some sort.

Rene has no particular news, but is glad to hear that of you. Bill Wimett is busy as ever, and Cleenth Brooks is working hard to finish up their joint volume by the first of April. Jim Clifford is delighted over the reviews for the English edition of his book.

When you are at the Johnson meeting, find out who wrote the review of the Yale folio. It is generally considered it is by "the upstart Crowe". Most of the points were properly made, but he used phrases "returns doglike" and some others that no gentleman would use. Prouty and Kokeritz certainly made the wrong claims, but Bowers is not coming out of this very well, either. It is really something to see the way that he wrote around asking people to damn the book. Gregg's confession is rather touching, considering his age, for it shows he didn't realize what he was letting slip. It shows that he has been "had".

On looking at your letter again I see that the Johnson meeting is in London. Tell deBeer how much we are looking forward to receiving his great work. And tell Powell that we think of him often. Also greetings to Sir Harold Williams, and actually to any of the others who you think may remember us.

While talking to friends, you may mention that we shall be in London for a very brief time this year, in anticipation of a long visit next year. (They may think this is the old refrain.) Our plan is to leave early in February and go to Lisbon, Beirut, where we shall be for about three weeks, then to Istanbul, Izmir, and via Athens and Rome to London. The idea is to see those parts, while they are still available.

I should have mentioned James Sutherland in this list. And the same for John Butt, if he is at the meeting. I had a letter from him recently, and he mentioned that the October issue of *RES* is not yet out; it contains my article on "Pope, The Byzantine Empress and Walpole's Whore", which I believe you heard at the MLA last year.

This is an attempt to welcome you home, as well as to send greetings to the friends you will see at the Johnson dinner. When you are here we can talk about Burke and other matters that are perhaps more central. Marie-Louise joins in best greetings and to saying how much we are looking forward to seeing you at the beginning of the New Year.

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

January 17, 1956.

Dear Jim,

I have been supposing for days now that I could get an hour or even a couple hours to sit down and write you at leisure. When will I grow up and stop supposing such things? I'm sitting down in a minute between breakfast and hurrying off to the Library, with a minimum hope of saying anything more than that I have got back safe to Sheffield - and enjoyed the time in New Haven heartily, and am looking forward to a day two months hence when we meet again.

Your long letter to Bentley reached me last night. An ideal go-over of the situation. I had written him myself, chiefly to apologize for not having looked him up in Chicago but partly to mention business. I enclose a copy; you'll see that I had said almost the same things, at least as far as I went. I'm sure it's important to put the stress on getting these books out and into use. They'll do us good I'm sure, and I should think they'd do the Index Society as much good as Burke.

There really is some interest here. Sunday night just after the 9 o'clock news the B.B.C. had a program of an hour's length called "Portrait of Edmund Burke". It was a disgraceful mish-mash of notes, comments, quotations, from somebody's card-file (at least that's the way it struck me), but the B.B.C.'s putting it there, in what several people have told me is considered the best spot of the week, shows that there is thought to be an audience. I get a similar feeling in reading the (not terribly interesting) book by Russell Kirk called *A Program for Conservatives*, which he sent me about a year ago and I've finally cracked. Burke appears twice on every page - not in a way to do him a hell of a lot of good but at least in a way to raise the question Who is this demi-god?

February 1, 1956

Dear Tom,

This last week has been so hectic that I haven't had a chance to write you earlier. I shall try to come to the point about various matters, and save the leisurely talk for our meeting in London on St. Patrick's Day.

First of all, the letter to Bentley covers most of the points about the Index Society. I hope you can schedule a talk with Blackwell, and I shall write to Bateson asking him to prepare the way and let you know that he has done so. It might be well for you to try to see Bateson when you are in Oxford, since you two should know each other better.

As you can see, I have tried to put Bentley on the spot a bit. He was very vague in his reply, as both Ben and I felt. Now we must wait to see what he actually does about the various points.

To change the subject, Richard Sewall and I both went to work on the Indiana situation. Richard had a very fine letter back from Jim Work, and I had one from Ronald. He says as follows:

"Jim Work happened to be here for dinner the day your letter came; so I made a point of talking eloquently about Tom to him, especially in terms of what I had seen of his remarkable competence and good sense -- to say nothing of energy -- when I was on the Press committee that set up the edition of Burke. I had no difficulty in convincing him either about Tom himself or the importance of the edition; but he was quite frank in saying that he could see no chance of making the appointment in the present state of affairs here. I don't altogether know what the obstacles are, apart from the fact that the real need is for men in other fields, but I gathered that, with the best will in the world, he thought they couldn't be overcome."

This last week and Brice Harris was here, and he and his wife stayed with us. It was a conference on the Political Poems. He said he had seen you at Chicago, and we had quite a chat about you. He has an appointment to a full professor coming up in 1957, but I gather that it would pay only about $7,500. I think he is very taken with the idea of trying to get you there. So, have this in mind. I understand from Richard Sewall that the students there aren't very exciting, and there may be other disadvantages. But, on the other hand it might be an anchor to windward.

Yesterday I had a talk with Ted Hilles on various subjects, and mentioned this situation. He immediately said that Duke University is looking for a senior eighteenth century man. Accordingly, I have written a long letter to my old pal, Chuck Ward, who is the Chairman at Duke. Whether anything will come of it, I don't know. But at least, be sure that we are anxious to do whatever we can to get the ball a-rolling.

(over)

Incidentally, Richard told me that he had been talking to Bill Wimsatt lately, and Bill feels that Yale should try to get you back. Maynard has expressed similar sentiments. But, as I told Richard, the budgetary situation is quite another matter. I mention this, however, to show how much some of the "better judges" feel that you deserve the best.

There is not much else to report at the moment. I am so darn busy that I can scarcely see straight. Then, at this very moment, I fall into a whole load of documents concerning the settlement of the estate of Sir William Temple, the majority of which are either in Swift's hand, or carry endorsements by Swift! I haven't seen them yet, but shall have to tell the Swiftians about them. That includes Sir Harold Williams and Davis, of course.

Marie-Louise joins in fond greetings. Our address in Beirut is in the carbon copy. And we shall look forward to seeing you in London on the seventeenth. Incidentally, there is a Johnson lecture that afternoon at three o'clock that we might consider going to.

Yours ever,

James M. Osborn

s

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

March 14, 1956.

Dear Jim,

Welcome! (I'm assuming this is in your box at the
Stafford by the time you arrive.) I won't say a lot besides
Welcome! as we'll all be together not later than Saturday.
May I phone you between 9 and 10 Saturday morning? Our tickets
are for the matinée, not the evening show that day. We can
make plans to eat before or after or both, depending on when
you are free. I'll be in London Sunday.

I made enquiries about Cassells and Desmond Flower.
Cassells are one of the half-a-dozen best of the publishers -
doubtless slightly below Faber & Faber or Jonathan Cape for
what you have in mind, but very good. More likely to do you
a popular job of printing and distributing than Clarendon - if
that's the assignment. I'm told they are getting more scholarly
than they used to be, and that may well be the influence of the
present Mr. Desmond Flower, who succeeds his father. He is about
our age, and described as both very charming and very dependable.
Good luck with him.

We'll have a talk Saturday or Sunday about Blackwell's.
From yours of a month back I gathered that Bateson was writing
me when an interview had been requested from Blackwell; so I
waited to hear from him, and haven't. Bentley, however, accepted
the idea, so we can go ahead now.

Ben Johnson doesn't show in this week's issue of the TLS.
You can leave this commission with me.

See you soon,

Yours,

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

March 21, 1956.

Dear Jim,

Here's the blurb, far enough along to
show to Blackwell, but still inviting changes.

I'll come Sunday on the best train there
is, but I'm afraid we'll have to give up the idea of
lunch. The train even when on time gets there at
1:20, and at this time of year they always have the
rails up (as I found coming back here this Sunday)
and it's all but inconceivable it would be exactly on
time. So if it's all right I'll get my meal en route
and come to the Mitre as soon as we arrive, which would
probably be 2:0 or slightly worse. See you then. What
a lovely time this last weekend was!

Yours,
J. Am

April 13, 1956

Dear Tom,

The enclosed carbon copies of correspondence concerning the Burke Checklist are self-explanatory. Now I hope we can get some action out of Bentley.

Did you have a chance to call on Blackwell the morning of March 26th? I hope so. He is really a very nice man, a fine example of one who has made a creative contribution in the bookselling business.

There is little news to report. We have been terribly busy since our return, and are just now beginning to see daylight. To top it all off, I have had a heavy cold this week, which has kept me in the house most of the time, with a turnip for a head. But at least I have caught up on a lot of magazine reading, including the instalments of Winston Churchill's new history of the British people. It is fascinating.

There isn't much other news to report. In New York last week at a meeting of the Grolier Club, I saw Jim Clifford. He was the one that told me about Bryant's inquiry for the Checklist. Clifford's Johnson book continues to sell well, and is now in the second edition in England. He showed me Plumb's review of deBeer, which must have annoyed Esmond a great deal! It was in the Spectator.

Waiting for Godot is due to open in New York soon. It will be great fun to see the reviews. Since my return I have seen all the remarks in back issues of the TLS, which have more interest than before I saw the play.

Marie-Louise sends best wishes, and we look forward to the next epistle from you.

s

enc.

16 January 1956.

Mr. Harold Bentley
101 Library Building
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah.

Dear Mr. Bentley,

Back in Sheffield after quite an orgy of air travel. I'm very sorry indeed that I did not spot you in the lobbies in Chicago. I was not aware (till I saw a letter of yours to Ben Nangle) that you and I had any business to transact, but I wanted to see you to renew acquaintance and to share some pride in the Checklist. Very unwisely I trusted to luck that we would run into each other. Too bad we didn't.

Let me know anything I can do from here to further sales. I did write to Shugg, as you know, and saw him while in Chicago; he'd heard nothing from you or Ben, but he struck me as open to ideas of taking over some Checklists for the Chicago Press's uses. If he has money for the purpose now, he may not have it a year or two hence! so I favor striking him if he looks interested.

Jim Osborn had an idea which he's probably discussed with you by now about trying to get Blackwells or Heffers to help us out in the English market. I'd say the potential market here was pretty good, for a lot of people care about Burke. Still, the number of people or institutions who must buy us at any price is really very small: I'd say not over a couple dozen. Much surely will depend on the price we fix on and the energy of our sales agent here. As I told Jim, it's very much in the interest of the Burke edition to have this admirable predecessor-volume widely known to scholars in the 18th-century field. I want to be sure we don't price ourselves too high. Even if we "got our money back" I think we'd be making a great mistake if we sold a lesser number of copies at a higher price. The Burke edition (and surely the Index Society) has too much to gain by the wider distribution! Jim agreed with me that a retail price of $10 and a dealers'-and-Members' price of $8 would be sensible in

America. I'd favor going under the rough-equivalent of that here if it's necessary to insure the widest possible sale.

A word about copies of the Checklist you have instructed Cambridge to release for my use here. There were two batches:

(a) The first were described by Mrs. Guilfoyle as free copies: ten of them, which Milton Smith and I were to share. I instructed Cambridge to send him his; mine I asked them to interleave for me, charging the cost of the interleaving to me.

(b) I ordered from you a second batch of twelve (12) copies, which have now been delivered. These are to be billed to me at whatever you decide is the price for the authors.

These two batches will do for my present needs. I considered another half dozen to be picked up in America, but none of the copies had arrived when I talked with Melvin Loos in New York, so may I abandon that part of the plan? Those I now have can be mailed from here to our American editors and I can ask for more as I need them. Thanks for the two batches in hand.

Yours,

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

April 22, 1956.

Dear Jim,

One gets about enough time to wave at the months as they pass. I must say it doesn't seem four weeks as it is since we saw you driving off from the Mitre. Hope the home trip was uneventful. I had lunch with Powell the next day, talked with Mr. Blackwell about the blurb, and got on back to Sheffield about the middle of the week. My assistant and I are now enjoying a spot of Dublin, checking Mr. O'Hara's letters and rooting around a little for Irish footnotes.

Were you satisfied - I was - with the proof of the blurb Blackwell sent out this week for our approval? I asked for the correction of Milton's middle name, and suggested but didn't out-and-out request a couple other small changes. Otherwise fine. Now the great point is to get the things sent out quickly. I feel as I imagine cooks must feel when food is hot and ready and there's a lot of delay about getting guests to the table. If Blackwells had sent out these things in January it seems to me the potential buyers I know of would have been caught just about right.

We had a highly satisfactory visit from Miss Sutherland a week ago in Sheffield. My editors are so learned it rather gives me the willies to see them coming, but when they've been and all is still well they're a great source of satisfaction. What a worker that woman is! But socially delightful and easy to entertain. Sheffield isn't much of a pleasure city. Aside from reasonably good eating and the Grand Hotel's watery martinis... It's probably quite a change for the Principle of Lady Margaret Hall to go to the Moom Pitchers; we went one afternoon to see *My Sister Eileen* which to my prejudiced judgment is one of the

April 26, 1956

Dear Tom,

I shall answer at once your letter of April twenty second. It is good to know
about your doings, both in Oxford and elsewhere. This will probably reach you af-
ter your return from Dublin, though I have no idea how long you are going to be
there.

Concerning the proof of the blurb from Blackwell's, I didn't see it. Perhaps he
didn't send me one. In any case, I trust you took care of anything that needed to
be done. I hope he is sending it out without waiting for more word from us.

I have written Bentley several times, and the only satisfaction I have had is that
he will be here on May twelfth for luncheon. Whether he is holding things up in
the meantime, goodness only knows. If you have had any indication of the status
with Blackwell, be sure to let me know right away.

Your visit from Miss Sutherland sounds most enjoyable. I shall look forward to
meeting her sometime. So too, I should enjoy seeing *My Sister Eileen*, both for
East Cleveland interests and others. The musical was a hilarious success, I thought.

Doubtless you have heard that *Godot* has opened in New York and has puzzled people as
much as in London. But apparently they are taking to it fairly well. Perhaps you
have seen the review in *Time*, as well as possibly some of those in the newspapers.

I have been so busy here that there isn't much else to report. Tonight we go to see
the new musical based on *Shangri-La*. According to the advance notices, it is a bit
slow moving and loaded with atmosphere. But they may have stepped it up a bit by
now.

Incidentally, I have just ordered a couple of new Burke letters. Since they are
from Maggs's proof sheets, I have a good chance of getting them. They will be in a
new catalogue, still in proof. Apparently both are two Dundas, according to your
Checklist. One is from Bath 26 October 1792, and the other from Beaconsfield
3 June, 1795. You list the former from a copy in the Fitzwilliam papers, and the
letter from a short excerpt in Maggs catalogue of 1927. If I get them, Bob Smith
can have photostats made.

There is no other news along the Rialto at the moment, oh yes, I have come up with
a 1743 reprint (but anonymous) of Rowe's *Life of Shakespeare*. The Folger Library
never heard of it, so you can imagine how happy I am to have it! Unfortunately, it
is only a curiosity, though in the Shakespeare line any unique item has its news
value, andCollectors value.

(over)

## ADVISORY COMMITTEE

May 6, 1956.

Dear Jim,

I rejoice to concur with the common reader, as Dr. Johnson says. I was all for the *Variety* review of Godot. But of course we could be wrong. When *Time* comes out on the side of the eggheads... One has to be so careful these days (one of the greatest lines in Eliot). But I'm going to be disappointed if Broadway really puts up with the play.

Mine crossed with your last-but-one, which reached me in Ireland. Time stops in that pleasant country. We got a most gratifying amount of checking done over there and not much more. Some investigating of Burke's less significant early acquaintances. We'll get little credit I fear for finding out the facts on some almost too forgettable people. My assistant is a natural-born Hound: if there's the faintest whiff of a scent, merely two hundred years old - he's off! and he usually gets it. Some of the 18th-century people must have seen 20th-century scholarship coming; they kept such astonishing records. Quakers especially. Any births, deaths, marriages, offspring you may crave to know about the Friends living in Ballitore, County Kildare, in 1744 - are pie. No trouble at all. Glad to do it. Fortunately they recorded their scandals too. A little scandal makes it Live.

I hope you got the Burke-Dundas letters. The Melville sale that dispursed that collection was one of the great scholarly crimes. You're undoing some of it. I'll alert Bob Smith to do the photostating, and thanks heartily. Glad to hear of your Shakespeare find.

I enclose the copy of our blurb that Mr. Blackwell sent me. I made one correction (Milton's middle name) and suggested a couple more but with submission to his judgment and an assurance that we'd rather have the thing *out* than any

other change whatever. I had a note back saying that he
would change Milton's name but didn't see that the other
matters were really essential. But not saying It's out,
which is the great point. If you could drop him a line
now, saying that I've sent you proofs and you hope that by
now the thing is out - so much the better. You are the
person who really placed the order, so you'd have authority.

Do I gather Bentley is in the east now? I hope
he got a letter from here before he left the west. I met a
gent in Ireland who I think could sell some copies for us:
Professor Edwards of University College, Dublin. He's a
well-placed historian who will have a lot of weight with the
Catholics. I asked Bentley to send him a reviewer's copy.
I showed Edwards my own copy and he's warmed up to give us a
good review. Of course a lot of people were warmed up here
four or five months ago who have been cooling off since. I
wonder whether Bentley lets that sort of thing worry him.
If we were back in 18th-century politicks I'd write you this
letter but also an Ostensible Letter which you could show to
Bentley. All very elegantly expressed but all intended to say
Why don't you get off that dime? It's now almost exactly
six months since the first copies were off the press. If there's
been one month's worth of selling done by anyone but yourself
I'd be much relieved to hear about it.

I'm hoping to see Lou Martz here the end of this
month or first of June. We can show him the Burke Factory
but also Chatsworth, York Minster, etc., as minor cultural
landmarks.

Love to Marie-Louise.

Yours,

May 11, 1956

Dear Tom,

Many thanks for your letter of May sixth. I shall answer at once, since Bentley
was here today and we had a meeting of the Editorial Committee.

Everything is in order, and we are doing what we can to push the book. Bentley
realized (I was very outspoken) that some of these things should have been done
long ago. But, we have turned over a new leaf, as much as it can be done.

First of all, we trust Blackwell is going ahead on getting the flier out in June.
I shall drop him a little note, and Bentley has already written him sometime ago.
But I want to make clear that he has an absolute green light.

Then, we even tried to get Shugg of the Chicago Press on the phone, but he was out
of town. We are printing up a sheet, using much of the material from the Blackwell
sheet, to go out to people in this country. We shall ask Shugg to mail it out to a
number of people on the eighteenth century list. And Bentley will mail it out to
anyone who has ever bought any of our books. That can probably be done fairly
promptly.

The last subject brought up was the financing. Because this has been such a mixup,
and because of the inconvenience it would cause you, I am sending a check to
Bentley to cover the other half, and thus we are extricated from temporary diffi-
culties. We shall probably want to use the Cambridge Press again for something
else, so it seemed well to do this. Bentley admitted that he should have made an
exact minute of the transaction. That seems to be cause of much of the difficulty.

I think you are going to find that Bentley will act much more promptly now. Even
Ben seemed aroused and anxious to get rolling. Onward and upward with the Society!

Now for some other points on other subjects. Rene is in the hospital, because he
had another blood clot in one of the veins in his legs. Hence, he has had to have
the vein operated on, but seems to be getting along well, despite the boredom and
inconvenience. I am afraid it is going to interfere with his plans for going to
Europe at the end of this month, but you don't need to say that if you write him.

One of the Burke-Dundas letters has arrived, but the other has not yet. I believe
I got it though. There were so many things in that catalogue that they are shipping
them by small packages.

Your experience in Ireland is most encouraging. Speaking of Ballitore, I think I
told you that in London I acquired the manuscript of the *Annals*, up to 1799. Where
the rest of the manuscript is I have no knowledge.

(over)