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Acknowledges the receipt of £10 10s. for Walthoe’s share in the copyright of Spenser’s Works, as last printed in folio.

Acknowledges the receipt of £10 10s. for Browne’s share in the copyright of Spenser’s Works, as last printed in folio.

Records the sale for 40s. of the copyright of Spenser’s Faerie Queene and other works by the same author, as printed in folio, which was previously purchased from Jon(athan) Edwin by John Leigh, and which D. M. in turn purchased from Leigh’s son Thomas.

A, as one of the representatives of Anne Moseley, daughter of Humphrey Moseley, late citizen and stationer of London, has an interest in the copyrights of ‘Priamus and Thisbe’, ‘Spencers Shepherds Calendar’, and other works, as recorded in the register of the Stationers’ Company and a transcript thereof; and also (formerly) claimed an interest in the copyright of ‘Cowleys Poems, Donns Poems, Davenants Works, Crashaws Poems, Carews Poems Ben Johnsons Works, 3d Vol, Pastor Fido, Sucklings Poems Denhams Poems Wallers Poems & Miltons Poems in Latin & English, with many others’, which all belong to B and C or one of them. For the consideration of £10 A assigns to C his interest in the copyrights of the books in the first group, and releases to B and C his claim to the copyrights of the books in the second group. Witnessed by Robert Knaplock, John Baker, and Marmaduke Horsley. (The witnesses to the receipt are the same.) Signed by ‘Dorman Newman Junior’.

6 Henrietta Street, Brunswick Square, W.C.—Discusses suggested emendations to the text of Shakespeare.

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Transcript

Selle, saddle, French—sella Latin & Italian.
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Quotations from Spenser’s Faerie Queene—
———
“He left his loftie steed with golden selle,
And goodlie gorgeous barbe.”
Book ii. Canto ii. Stanza xi.

“what mightie warrior that mote be,
That rode in golden selle with single spear.”
B. ii. C. iii. St. xii.

“They met, and low in dust was Guardi laid,
’Twixt either army, from his selle down rest.”
N.B. I cannot find the whereabouts. G.R.F.

“Nathless the prince would not forsake his selle,
(For well of yore he learnèd had to ride).”
B. ii. C. viii. St. xxxi.

“So sore he sous’d him on the compass’d crest,
That forcèd him to leave his loftie selle.”
B. ix. C. iv. St. xxx.

No doubt more may be found—especially in the noble Edition by Tyrwhitt.* {1} My sight is not good enough for such researches.

“The tyrant frown’d from his loftie selle,
And with his lookes made all his monsters tremble.”
Fairfax—Godfrey of Boulogne. B2. S. 7.

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Extracts from Sir Walter Scott’s Poems

“Returned Lord Marmion,
Down hastily he sprang from selle.”
Canto iii. Stanza 31.

“Where many a yeoman, bold and free,
Revelled as merrily and well,
As those that sat in lordly selle.”
Canto vi. St. 8.

“Fair was his seat in knightly selle.”
Lord of the Isles, Canto vi. St. 14.

alluding to Edward the Second at Bannockburn.

“From gory selle and reeling steed”
Cadyon Castle.

with a note. “Selle, saddle, a word used by Spenser and other ancient authors.”—

There is an instance in Chaucer, but I cannot put my hand on it.

Will not the above quoted passages justify you in putting “selle” for “selfe” in Macbeth. The suggestion by Singleton of “sell” is evidently right so far as sound goes—but there is no such noun in good English, and therefore is inadmissable. The word proposed by Bailey “its seat” is not near so good as selle. The early printers might easily mistake selle for selfe—hence the con-tinued error. “its-selle”—“its-selfe” {2}—I believe that the change would be most welcome to all true Shakspeareans.

For the reading in Hamlet the change advocated by me is fully discussed in a Note in my Book. There can hardly be a doubt on the proposed substitution being correct—hern-shaw (a young heron) for the stupid word, hand-saw—printer’s error again.

I strongly recommend you to retain, as given in many Editions—“Enter a gentle Astringer,” in “Alls Well” &c. In his Glossary, Harvey defines “astringer” as a “Gentleman Falconer” {2}. This is near the meaning—but “gentle” has nothing to do with a man, but means a bird—the French phrase “faucon gentil,” stands for “a tercel-gentle,” and Juliet exclaims—

“O for a falconer’s voice,
To hire this tassel-gentle back again.” R. & J. ii. 2.

“The falcon as the tercel,” Troilus & Cressida. Act III. 2.

The French word “tiercelet,” means “a tassel, tiercel, or tercel, the male of a hawk.” Fr. Dict.

“Achès”—noun & verb. The elder Disraeli, in his admirable “Curiosities of Literature,” tells us that the word was always written by our early authors as one of two syllables. There are more instances than the famous passage in the Tempest, for pronouncing achès as two syll. for which John Kemble was so brutally treated by the ignorant “groundlings.”

Thus in Coriolanus the metre requires the word to be divided.

“It makes the consuls base, and my soul achès
To know when two authorities are up.” Act III. Sc. 1.

So also in Timon of Athens—Act V. Sc. 2.

“Their fears of hostile strokes, their achès, losses.”

In Romeo & Juliet the Nurse exclaims—

“Lord, how my head achès, what a head have I.” Act II. 5.

In Butler’s Hudibras we have the couplet—Book II. 2.

“As no man of his own self catches
The itch, or amorous French achès.” line 455* {3}.

Do you agree with me and many authorities, that Perkin Warbeck was an impostor; “that Flemish counterfeit” as Sir W. Scott calls him in Marmion. Some years ago I read a paper, never published, on the Young Princes, before the Lond. & Midx Archæological Society {4}, of which I am now a V.P. I shall be happy to send it to you if it could be of service.

I remain
Yours very sincerely,
G. R. French

6 Henrietta St Brunswick Sqre W.C.
Augt 14, 1880

Wm Aldis Wright Esqre
Trinity Coll. Cambridge

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{1} Footnote: ‘*of Chaucer’.

{2} Opening inverted commas supplied.

{3} Footnote (inserted after the next paragraph): ‘*add. “Or ling’ringly his lungs consume, | Or meets with achès in the bone”. | Knight of the Burning Pestle. Act ii. Sc.’ (The number of the scene is wanting.)

{4} French read a paper to the Society on 11 April 1864 ‘On the localities connected with Shakespeare’s Plays in general, but especially the places in London and Westminster recorded in the Histories from King Richard II. to Henry VIII. inclusive.’ A discussion of this paper at the next meeting (9 May) was concluded by another paper by French on the death of the two young Princes in the Tower. (Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaelogical Society, vol. iii, p. 99.)

Has been reading the 'Demeter story' [the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter" in the latest "From the Shiffolds"], which is a favourite of hers; praises the telling and Bob's translation. When in Malta she remembers going for a walk, she supposes with her governess though does not remember, on which she 'found a root of flowering narcissus' which smelled beautiful; she was about to pick it when she remembered Persephone and feared 'that strange rocky country would open' and the black horses of Hades' chariot come forth. Discusses the concept that 'nothing can be told except obliquely... as a story'; links Persephone picking flowers to the nymphs doing the same in [Spenser's] "Prothalamion", a 'lovely pattern that flows like a river across time... like the way the music of a dance contains all the dancers who have ever danced to it'.

The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon.—Comments further on McKerrow’s editions of Weever and Greene.

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Transcript

The Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon
9.XI.1911.

My dear McKerrow,

I think the epigram Ad fatorum Dominum is intentional nonsense. {1} Have you noticed that it was included in Wit’s Recreations, 1640? See the Hotten reprint, p. 222, {2} where it is appropriately headed “Ad sesquipedales poetastros” (& may pair off with the Verses on p. 400 “When Neptunes blasts” &c which are headed “Pure Nonsence”).

Your note on “Guy & Guyon” struck me as doubtful. {3} Mustn’t Guyon be Spenser’s Guyon—the heroe† of the 2nd book of the Faerie Queene? ’Tis true that he was meant for Temperance and that Sir Calidore stood for Courtesy; but still (in 1599) nobody could take Guyon to be Gawain—his name must have been a household word.

I wish someone would give us a good reprint of Weever’s Funerals. {4} What a book it is!

In great haste.

Yours always
A. H. Bullen

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Formerly inserted in McKerrow’s copy of his own edition of John Weever’s Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut and Newest Fashion, 1599 (1911) (Adv. c. 25. 81). On p. 52 of this book, next to the epigram mentioned in this letter, McKerrow has written: ‘Included in Wits Recreations 1640, Hotten’s reprint p. 222 headed ‘Ad sesquipedales poetastros’ (A.H.B.)’.

{1} See Weever’s Epigrammes, ed. McKerrow, p. 52.

{2} The 1640 edition of Wits Recreations (STC 25870) was reprinted by John Camden Hotten in 1874 in a volume which also contained Facetiae, Musarum Deliciae, or The Muses Recreation (1656) and Wit Restor’d (1658).

{3} See Greenes Newes and Greenes Funeralls, ed. McKerrow, p. 92.

{4} Ancient Funerall Monuments within the United Monarchie of Great Britaine, Ireland, and the Islands Adjacent (1630) (STC 25223).

† Sic.

151 Woodstock Road, Oxford.—Has received the rest of 2 Henry VI. The explanatory notes are adequate for the sort of reader who will use an ‘old-spelling’ edition; she is sceptical of the OUP’s desire to make the edition suitable for the ‘general’ reader. Suggests how glosses of obsolete spellings might be made more interesting.

(Dated May by mistake.)

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Transcript

at 151 Woodstock Road, Oxford.
3 May 1936 {1}

Dear Dr. McKerrow,

The packet containing the final pages of 2 Henry VI reached me safely this morning. I am sorry I couldn’t acknowledge it before. I have been away all day and fear this won’t catch a post before tomorrow. I hope the things havn’t been in the post as long as the date on your letter suggests.

In general, I think the kind of note you are giving should adequately cover the needs of the average reader. I have generally noted points which I think you might have dealt with but there hasn’t been much about which I felt it necessary to quibble. Perhaps some of the more straightforward glosses such as ‘wood’ (mad), ‘sterve’ (starve) might be omitted. I think you ought to assume a knowledge of Chaucer and Spenser. I agree with you that, as everyone ought to own a classical dictionary of some sort, the explanation of classical allusions should not be necessary. What is wanted far more, I think, is explanation of obsolete constructions, changes of meaning in words etc. and discussion of problems which are evaded, in even the best available editions, by traditional departures from the original text (e.g. in stage directions). For instance, it wouldn’t worry me in the least not to be told who Absyrtus was because I should know exactly where I could find out, but it would irritate me not to be told what justification there was for retaining a form like “ha’s” because, although I should have some notion how to set about finding out how and when it arose, I can’t pick up a book of reference (so far as I know) which will infallibly give me the desired information. [I don’t, as a matter of fact, know anything about this spelling. As a guess, I should say it was an example of the illiterate use of the apostrophe. I don’t remember having seen it before and it is, therefore, the kind of thing on which I should want some information]. I think that some of your misgivings about the notes are due to the O.U.P.’s desire to make the edition suitable for the ‘general’ reader—whatever that is!—but I really can’t see that an edition of this kind is going to be used habitually by any but the expert. The ‘general’ reader wants a book that will go into his pocket and even the ‘honours’ student will want an edition in which the plays are obtainable separately. I don’t think that even the most optimistic publisher could expect the average student with, say, Richard III, Twelfth Night, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Othello and Cymbeline as ‘set’ books, to buy five hefty volumes containing a score of plays to satisfy his examiners. [Incidentally, does it cost a great deal more to issue the plays separately? I should have thought that if the O.U.P. had an eye on the general reader this kind of publication was the way to catch him! Although I know the Cambridge edition is more accurate and ultimately cheaper than the Arden, I have never bought a volume of the former but don’t mind in the least buying the latter for no better reasons than that the cost per volume is less and the book is easier to handle]. I think, therefore, that the kind of reader who is likely to use an ‘old spelling’ edition won’t need much more in the way of notes than you are giving. I don’t think there should be any necessity to add to the number of words you gloss. I should say that syntax and spelling problems needed far more explanation than vocabulary for which there are well-known and exhaustive works of reference. Anyone can look up a word in Onions {2} or the N.E.D. but it often takes a long time to solve a problem of syntax or pronunciation and orthography as there is no one standard work of reference on these subjects. I should be much more inclined to explain how a form like ‘duchesse’ for ‘duchies’ got into the text than to gloss a form like ‘gyrt’ or explain the meaning of ‘attainted’.—This is probably not very helpful. Probably the best advice is ‘Please yourself!’ as, in the notes, it is bound to be a case of ‘Tot homines …’. I think it is impossible to arrive at any principle of selection that will satisfy everyone’s needs.

I didn’t get to the Bodleian to look up the things I mentioned yesterday but hope to do so tomorrow. I shall be going home on Friday {3} and shall be in Southport (so far as I know) for some weeks.

Yours sincerely,
Alice Walker.

PS to my letter. A further suggestion.

Instead of adding to the number of words glossed, would it be possible to make the explanations (such as those of girt, wrack, denay’d, quill etc.) {4} more interesting by explaining exactly what relationship the obsolete forms of F1 bear to their modern equivalents? If you are reckoning on a reader not knowing what girt means, ought you not to explain it more fully? The reader unaccustomed to Elizabethan English would not know from a note such as girt, i.e. gird whether girt was a common Elizabethan word or the ancestor of N.E. gird or something verging on a misprint or merely an example of the Elizabethan ‘licence’ one hears so much about. If, however, you explained that there existed a verb girt side by side with gird (the older and surviving verb from the p.p. of which girt was originally formed) and that editors from X on read gird, the reader knows exactly what justification there is for F1 girt and the precise nature of the change made by X etc. In the same way the average reader wouldn’t know from wrack, i.e. wreck whether wrack was a spelling of wreck or the older form of N.E. wreck or an obsolete cognate. I think that fuller notes of this kind would allay the irritation of those who know what girt means at finding it glossed and they would be a boon to those who didn’t know the word’s meaning. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I find it annoying to find a mere gloss on girt, wrack, denay’d etc as although I know exactly what they mean I am not always sure what relationship they bear to the modern forms. For instance, concerning hoise (which, by the way you didn’t gloss) although I was fairly sure that it bore the same relationship to hoist as gird to girt, I had to look it up to make certain. In the same way I had to go to the N.E.D. to find what relationship denay’d bore to denied and to satisfy myself about the meaning of quill. In general, in fact, I find that a mere gloss tells me what I know and merely irritates me by awakening me to the fact that there is something behind it which I ought to know and either don’t know or can merely guess. I don’t press this point as (as I have said in my letter) there are accessible sources of information I can go to, but I think that this kind of thing is different from classical allusions etc. as dictionaries of the latter kind can be got for a few shillings but the N.E.D. cost over £20 (and on this kind of thing Onions is no use and often merely misleading). Even see O.E.D. isn’t as easy an order to comply with as you might think! If I am at 151 Woodstock Road I have to go to the Bodleian, if at the White House I have to go into college which involves getting the car out and probably wasting a great deal of time in transit and conversation when I get there and if I am at home I have nearly two miles to go to the nearest reference library and probably find that my desire to see O.E.D. is the signal for everyone else in the house to remember some small errand that I might do while I am out! As I imagine the fortunate possessors of the N.E.D. are few, I am sure the many unfortunates would be deeply grateful if you satisfied their curiosity and saved them the bother of going to a library!

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Typed, except signature. The postscript was typed on different paper, using a different typewriter, or least a different ribbon, from the rest of the letter. The square brackets are original.

{1} The letter is misdated; cf. MCKW A4/15, 20, and 24.

{2} A Shakespeare Glossary, by C. T. Onions, first published in 1911. A second edition was issued in 1919.

{2} 5th.

{3} Cf. 1 Henry VI, III. i. 171, I. i. 135; and 2 Henry VI, I. iii. 107, I. iii. 4.

Poem starting "One faire par-royall, hath our [is]land bred", with "R.C. 1596" at bottom, accompanied by a later transcript starting "One fair pair-royal hath our island bred / Whereof one is alive and two are dead - / Sydney the prince of prose and sweet conceit, Spenser of number and heroic rhyme - / ... Camden thou livst alone of all the three ...."

Prose note on 'religious and aesthetic emotions'. Verse, 'This love disease is a delicious/delightful trouble'. Translations by Trevelyan of the "Homeric Hymn to Demeter", fragments from tragedies by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, an extract from Virgil ["Aeneid"] Book VI, Leopardi's "To his Lady" and "Canticle of the Wild Cock", Simonides 37, an extract from [Homer's] "Iliad" Book 24. Draft essay on aging and desire. Notes, in the style of Trevelyan's "Simple Pleasures". Autobiographical piece about a reading party at Blackgang Chine almost fifty years ago, with Cambridge friends such as Lytton Strachey, Roger Fry, Desmond MacCarthy and George Moore. Draft of "On Inspiration", published in "Windfalls". Translations of Catullus 2, 7, 12, and 50, Tibullus I.1, and Montaigne III.11 and III.6. Dialogue between 'Child' and 'Father'. Note on Saint Augustine's "Confessions". List of contents for the 1948 "From the Shiffolds" pamphlet. Notes for topic 'What does England mean to me?' and on old age.

Notebook used from other end in: list of books including [Beerbohm's] "Zuleika Dobson" and Ransome's "Great Northern?". Draft letter regarding the [re?] printing of Trevelyan's "Collected Works". Passage headed 'p. 15'; since this is followed by a review of Judson's "Life of Spenser", it may be an extract from that book. List of titles of essays, prefaces for translations, biographical pieces (Donald Tovey and C[lifford] A[llen], etc; perhaps future projects for Trevelyan. Draft piece on poets and poetry. Dialogue on the subject of translating poetry; piece "On Translating Greek Poetry", with notes on individual authors and quotations of passages. Pieces on translating Lucretius and the Greek Anthology; notes on translating Homer and Catullus; observations on a 'friendly critic' pointing out that 'too many' of Trevelyan's poems and essays begin with a scene of someone, usually the poet, 'walking meditatively in a wood' or lying beneath a tree. Translation of Tibullus III.19. Draft essay on Trevelyan's feelings about spiders, insects and other small creatures, and snakes; includes mention of a 'great philosopher' [Bertrand Russell or G. E. Moore?] disliking ants immensely.

Haies [?: postmarked Bristol]. - Interested to learn from Robert's 'delightful essay in Books that the Blatant Beast [allegory for calumny and slander in Spenser's "Faerie Queene"] is still at large'. She and Daphne [her daughter] are 'not among the "very few & very weary"' so had thought the Beast had suffered the same fate as the 'other powers of Evil'. Wishes she had seen the ponds when George took her to tea at Wallington once, but it 'would have been torture... not to bathe'. His point about the 'romance as well as the sensuous pleasure of bathing' is quite true; an essay could be written in itself on the 'various flavours' of bathing in different types of water. Postscript on address side of card notes that she lent out the first edition he sent her [of "Windfalls"?] and does not know to whom, so is very glad to get this one.

Box 13, Department of English, University of Chicago.—Praises his book, and suggests arrangements for reviewing and promoting it in America. Thanks him for reading her manuscript on Spenser and Lipsius, and refers to her forthcoming article on the date of the Mutability cantos.

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Transcript

Box 13 The University of Chicago, Department of English
November 13. 1927

Dear Mr. McKerrow:

Your fine book, Introduction to Bibliography, came yesterday, and I am delighted with it. I have read it in part already, but lent it for a few days to Professor Tom Peete Cross, so that he could recommend it in a new manual on bibliographical method (a beginner’s book for first year graduate students) {1}. By the way, I think Professor Cross would be the best reviewer in America for your book and that it is the kind of book he would like to review. If your publishers have not already sent to Modern Philology a review copy, I would suggest designating Professor Cross as reviewer, & that the copy be sent to him directly. Professors Manly and Crane will help recommend to students, and so shall I. Modern Philology and Modern Language Notes seem to me the most important reviewing places to reach scholars & text editors in this country. Of course, if your publishers would insert paid advertisement†, the Publications of the Modern Language Association would be the best place, as it reaches more interested people than any other publication. I’m not a member of the American Bibliographical Association, and I don’t know how useful they would be in advertising foreign works; but their membership is much smaller than the M.L.A., anyway.

I have ordered several copies for Harper Library at the University of Chicago, and I think more will be ordered later. All the libraries ought to buy it. It would help to have it recommended by the American Library Association, which issues from Washington lists of books desirable for libraries to buy. I don’t know the details of how this is worked, but, if I hear, will drop you a note. You ought to get a good American sale to add to the English. It’s a fine book. I shall study it carefully and thoroughly, and it will help me greatly. Thank you for remembering me.

I received the manuscript on Spenser and Lipsius {2}, and thank you for your kindness in reading and criticising it. I am aware of the difficulty of proving that Lipsius’ Constancy was known to Englishmen before the edition printed in London in 1586. It was written in the 70’s, however. I shall pull in the horns of the argument and try to suggest no more than evidence warrants, and offer it to an American journal later. As to the date of the Mutability cantos, I am practically certain they were written 1579-80, and an article on that will appear in April Studies in Philology. {3}

I am sorry I wounded your feelings by calling you “Professor”. Our new President in a speech recently assured us that Professors are no longer branded as such by their poverty and eccentricity, etc., but that the best of them in a crowd could pass for merchants! So you see my hailing you as Professor isn’t quite so bad as it seemed.

The antics of Mayor Bill Thompson of Chicago keep us all amused. He is too funny to weep or fume over.

Thanking you cordially for the gift of your very attractive and useful book. I remain

Sincerely yours,
Evelyn May Albright

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{1} Presumably a revised edition of his List of Books and Articles designed to serve as an Introduction to the Bibliography and Methods of English Literary History, first published in 1919.

{2} Presumably Albright’s article on ‘Spenser’s Mutability and Lipsius’s Constancy’, which was still ‘not yet published’ in 1929 (see Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, vol. xliv, no. 3 (Sept. 1929), p. 722), and seems never to have seen print. Albright may have submitted it to McKerrow for possible inclusion in the Review of English Studies.

{3} ‘Spenser’s Reasons for Rejecting the Cantos of Mutability’, Studies in Philology, vol. xxv, no. 2 (Apr. 1928), pp. 93-127.