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Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.—Transmits Nichol Smith’s reply.

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Transcript

Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.
9 Jan. 1924

Dear McKerrow

I enclose Nicol† Smith’s reply. {1} I have written to him that I was forwarding it to you with the suggestion that you should write direct if you saw fit.

I expect to be home again about Tuesday. {2}

Yrs
W.W.G.

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{1} MCKW A3/11b.

{2} 15th. Cf. MCKW A3/12.

† Sic.

86 Banbury Road, Oxford.—Declines to join the advisory panel, but expresses his support. Objects to a passage in the prospectus contrasting English and German scholarship.

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Transcript

86 Banbury Road,
Merton College, Oxford {1}
6 Jan. 1924.

Dear Greg,

I fear I mustn’t. The invitation has pleased me greatly. But in view of the number of my odd jobs here, and above all of my obligations to the Press—all of which eat up too much of my time for my own work—I dare not take on any new responsibility. I cannot promise to give the Review the active support of contributing to it, and I doubt if in any capacity I should be likely to do enough to justify the presence of my name on the panel. Of course I am all in favour of the Review, & I mean to push it here, and of course I am prepared—should you ask me—to offer my opinion now and then for what it may be worth. But I shan’t be playing fair if I appear to promise more.

May I even now as a token of my good will offer an opinion on the first sentence of the prospectus? It would be much improved if it stopped at the word ‘country’. The reference to Germany is unfortunate. I for one do not feel it ‘something of a disgrace’ that we have not had an Anglia and an Englische Studien. All the vital, productive movements in English scholarship during my time have started in this country, and have been carried on most efficiently in this country. What has Germany given us since 1900, or 1890? Why is it a disgrace not to have had the German machinery if our output is better than what Germany has given us with her vaunted equipment? I am afraid that the writer of the sentence whoever he was (I am sure it wasn’t you) was unconsciously administering to the further swelling of the German head, and indulging quite unnecessarily, and perhaps inopportunely, in the English pastime of self-abasement.

My best wishes for the New Year.

Yours sincerely
D. Nichol Smith.

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{1} This printed address presumably ought to have been struck through.

Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.—Rejects Nichol Smith’s criticism of the prospectus, and discusses the composition of the panel.

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Transcript

Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.
14 Jan. 1924

Dear McKerrow

We got home this afternoon & your letter arrived an hour later. I found one from Grierson accepting & wishing success.

I dont think Nichol Smith is in any way essential & as he was declining I thought his criticism unnecessary. {1} I told him I agreed generally that the most fruitful work of the last gener-ation had been English & not German but that that did not seem to me any objection to the sentence in the circular. I also said that while I had no desire to minister to German swelled head still less did I wish to pander to smug English selfcomplacency. So I expect he felt his knuckles rapped but being a nice fellow I hope he wont bear a grudge.

I am glad the appeal has been a success. I am not sure what representation we have from Cambridge—except on that score Chadwick is not the least essential. A. C. Bradley—except as an advertisement—would be no use at all me judice. {2}

Ever yours
W. W. Greg

I hope to be lunching on Thursday. {3}

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{1} See MCKW A3/11b.

{2} ‘In my judgement.’

{3} 17th.

Oriel College, Oxford.—Supports his idea of issuing a scholarly English journal. Refers to his own unsuccessful attempt in that direction, and makes some suggestions.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

Oriel College, Oxford
1 Dec. 1923

Dear Dr. McKerrow

Dover Wilson writes to me of your project of issuing a scholarly English Journal. I sympathize fully with you. Some years ago I mooted here the question of an ‘Oxford Journal of English Studies’, to be conducted by the English School, the staff of the Dictionary, & the Clarendon Press. I also tried to get the English Association to move, but I failed.

I shall be glad to give any help I can, but—frankly—I dread just now taking on more work.

Wilson asks about a scholar for Middle English: R. W. Chambers, if you can get him—a scholar & a literary critic in one, as his Beowulf book & his writings on Piers Plowman show.

I have one suggestion. Undertakings of this kind always seem to me to get water-logged by the review part. Need every damned thing anybody prints—if you don’t mind my violent way of putting it—get reviewed? Could you without invidiousness select the works {1} you would review, or from time to time print short surveys of study in a particular author or a particular subject. R. W. Chambers some time wrote an excellent report of the stage which the Piers Plowman controversy had reached. {2}

Your paper would, I suppose, be quarterly; or even three times a year, leaving the summer holiday free. I should suggest for its working motto not only Ne quid nimis, but Ne quid saepius. {3}

Yours sincerely
Percy Simpson {4}

Twelve years ago Henry Bradley said of Kenneth Sisam (now at the Clarendon Press) that he was far the first of the young men working at Old & Middle English. Enlist him. I can help if you don’t know him.

Nichol Smith for the eighteenth century if you can get him: he is difficult to get hold of. And, for an occasional article, R. W. Chapman.

On Elizabethan English F. P. Wilson.

From time to time I come across some very able young men. I should like to introduce them to you occasionally.

This is a disjointed letter, but I am in bed with a cold.

PS

[Direction on envelope:] Dr. R. B. McKerrow. | Enderley | Great Missenden | Bucks.

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The envelope was postmarked at Headington, Oxford, at 2.30 p.m. on 3 December 1923.

{1} Reading uncertain.

{2} ‘The Authorship of “Piers Plowman”’, MLR, v (1910). 1–32.

{3} i.e. not only ‘nothing in excess’, but ‘nothing too often’.

{4} Followed by ‘PTO’. A page ends here.

20 Merton Street, Oxford.—Praises Greg’s ‘McKerrow’s Prolegomena Reconsidered’.

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Transcript

20 Merton Street, Oxford {1}
29 June ’41

Dear Greg,

McKerrow’s ‘Prolegomena’ Reconsidered is admirable. The time had come for some one in authority to speak of the abdication of the editorial function and to point out that the reaction against eclectic methods may be carried too far. The editors who ‘seek refuge’ (excellent!) in the rigour of a mechanical rule are no better than printer’s readers,—indeed they only try to do what a printer’s reader can usually do better. It is particularly fortunate that this warning should have been uttered by you. The ‘Prolegomena’ called for it. The trouble about that book to my mind is that it is in the main a summing up of what has been going on for some time, with insufficient recognition of what more has to be done and in what directions advances can be made.

Yours ever
D. Nichol Smith.

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{1} The first line of the printed address has been altered by hand from ‘Merton College' to ‘20 Merton Street’.