Dowring Lodge
Aug 8 - 38
My Dear Talbot
Many thanks for the packet of your philological lucubrations, which albeit not yet properly consumed & digested I pronounce Ex cathedra to be good - in themselves, - on exemplifying a good principle, & as being in a more readable form than many of their other brethren - You have thrown the rhapsodies overboard & only kept the needle {loca acu &c}
A persistant fellow interrupts me about ale licenses & scatters all classics to the winds - Thus far it appears I wrote on the 8th & today is positively the 24th an hiatus greatly deplored on my part & which may be facilitated by the fact of two main onslaughts in the shape of a huge ale licensing day with all its preliminary & postliminary investigations & to the residuary products of a lawsuit which threatens to be of an explosive character
I am glad to see that your Influences are mainly etymological in which field there is much to be done & that you still hold to Micali's <1> very interesting subject Your etymologies <2> I hold to be many of them Sound & all ingenious - by the way (Aug 30!!!) I do not observe Catalepsy among them though our old friend vermeiden has a niche
I really am ashamed of this letter nevertheless it shall go especially under [illegible] that you may see how brokenly a V.C. lives even in Vacation & perfect your complex idea of the maniére d'être of so important a functionary
Harmonies I believe in - but the rigorists will cry out for independent historical proof of such a [g?ing] dialect prevailing then & there & show how Druides came by it
Poetry & Drama I cannot give up, εδ ι βατον, not by no manner of means - for if the Common etymologies are not true they ought to be
You know with a people of such lively imaginations as the Greeks, the ideal was more real than the real itself hence a play poem &c was a thing not a semblance & the Creator of that thing be he Starpsoid[?] Rhapsoid or Tragatoid was to say the least of him - A Maker Feœtrius is to be applauded & I fraternize with your therom
I hold you must ferret out a sufficient number of such words to prove your "Ancient Greek" theory independently or you must give a more historical proof of the theory itself
Medusa is very good & it accounts well for the ugly Cerva on the Thoran of the Minerva Medica which a Greek Sculptor of a very good though some what late age has put there gladly justifying himself. For by the Etruscan tradition a head of Mantasa in making one of a head uglier far & courser (it has the broad stamp of vulgarity) than Greek taste would originate but yet furnishing him with an admirable contrast to heighten the beauty & purity of the Minerva herself
I must not at present inflict more cruditus on you: but come Octob we will talk about them & have a shot at the partridges
Hares address which I recall am very much shamed at not having sent sooner
Rev Julius C Hare <3>
Herstmonceux
Battle
Sussex
P.S. You really deserve infinite credit for driving two such pegasean teams both sufficiently & one single handed pray include the third & let me have a Kunstalterthumundwissenschaftslehrezeitschrift <4> You positively only want this to rival Goethe - Do you know a problem or rather theorem of yrs was set last time to the Smiths Prize Men
The Mater of Xtr & Donaldson [Fel Trin?] <5> the only people here have your work. I am thankful when term begins I may call for more
Macte virtute <6>
[envelope:]
William H. Fox Talbot Esqre.
[annotated by WHFT:]
Worsley. Aug. 8./38
Notes:
1. Giuseppe Micali (1769-1844), scholar on the Etruscans.
2. WHFT, 'Etymologi of Γύλιππος; Conjecture on a passage of Aeschylus'; Correction of a passage of Euripides', The Philological Museum, v. 1 no. 3, May 1832, pp. 687-689. He would later expand his studies in English Etymologies (London: J. Murray, 1847).
3. Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855), Chaplain to the Queen (1853-1855).
4. Art of antiquity and scientific magazine, the three themes of art, antiquity and scientific investigation refer to his attempts to do so much in his Etymologies obviously, but honestly, which of the three subjects Worsley thinks WHFT hasn't tackled isn't very clear.
5. Exeter & Fellow Trinity.
6. To be honoured in your virtue or valour.