[This transcription has been taken from an undated typescript copy in Beaumont Newhall’s archives, headed with his note: “In Brewster’s article ‘A Treatise on the Microscope’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7th edition, 1842, v. 15, pp. 27–57. Copy sent by H. Guttmann, Kinch Grove, Wembley”. The letter was not published in the Encyclopedia Britannica article, so the original manuscript letter must have been inserted into a particular copy. This has not been traced, but the Wembley address was destroyed by bombing in 1940 and it might have perished then. The bulk of photohistorian Henry Guttman’s collection was later sold to the Hulton Picture Library, which has been unable to trace any record of it.]
My dear Sir,
Having been requested to draw up a short and popular Treatise on the Microscope, for the Encyclopædia Britannica, <1> I have endeavoured to give an account of the most important modern improvements upon that valuable instrument, and of the most interesting observations which have been recently made with it.
I could have wished to have enriched it with some account of the very curious discoveries which you have made with the Polarising Microscope, and which I had the advantage of seeing when enjoying your hospitality at Lacock Abbey; <2> but as these required to be illustrated with finely coloured drawings, <3> I trust that you will speedily communicate them to the public in a separate form.
In placing your name at the head of this very little volume, <4> I express very imperfectly the admiration which I feel for your scientific acquirements, and for the zeal with which you devote your fortune and talents to the noblest purposes to which they can be applied.
I am, my Dear Sir, ever most faithfully yours,
D. Brewster
Allerly,
Nov. 16, 1837.
Notes:
1. Sir David Brewster, ‘A Treatise on the Microscope’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7th edition, 1842, v. 15, pp. 27–57.
2. Brewster visited WHFT at Lacock immediately before the Bristol meeting of the British Association in August 1836. [See Doc. No: 03431].
3. See Doc. No: 03506.
4. D. Brewster, A treatise on the microscope: forming an article under that head in the seventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (Edinburgh: A. & C. Black, 1836).