Avenue Lodge
Brixton Hill
Surrey.
30 October 1848.
Sir
I beg to return you many very sincere thanks for your valuable & interesting work on English Etymologies.<1> I had read it, & I am particularly glad to have it hand [sic] to refer to, as I shall have occasion to quote it in a work for which I am collecting materials.
I remember at the time of its appearance being in correspondence with Mr Vernon.<2> on the book. It was he who reviewed it in the Literary Gazette.<3> He was very fond of etymology & always spoke in the highest terms of your work.
I am, Sir, with a reiteration of my thanks for your obliging present, Your obliged Servant
J. O. Halliwell.
H. Fox Talbot Esqre
&c. &c. &c.
Notes:
1. WHFT, English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847).
2. Edward Johnstone Vernon (1814-1848), author of A Guide to the Anglo-Saxon Tongue: A Grammar, after Erasmus Rusk, Extracts in Prose and Verse, with Notes etc. for the use of Learners, and an Appendix (London: John Russell Smith, 1846).
3. [unsigned], "Reviews of New Books: 'English Etymologies', by H. Fox Talbot, Esq.", Literary Gazette, no. 1566, 23 January 1849, pp. 57-58. In contrast, John Wilson Croker wrote an extremely negative review of WHFT's book in the Quarterly Review, v. 81, September 1847, pp. 500–525. WHFT replied to this review in ‘The Reviewer Reviewed’, The Literary Gazette and Journal of belles lettres, science and art, no. 1615, 1 January 1848, p. 1-6. [Doc. No: 06078]. John Wilson Croker (1780-1857), Irish-born, was a Tory MP from1807 to 1832 and Secretary of the Admiralty from 1810 to 1830. As an author, he was noted for his virulent reviews in The Quarterly Review as much as for his 1831 edition of Boswell's Live of Johnson.