Item 49 - Letter from Austin Smyth to R. C. Trevelyan

Red House, Hursley, Winchester. - Has just finished reading Lucretius though not with the Latin text, as he plans to one day. Bob's translation, 'in loyalty to the Latin... in purity of English, and in freedom from translator's slang' seems a 'firstrate performance'. It has also brought him to 'a much heartier acceptance' of something he has previously found it hard to accept, with 'the twiddles you play on the traditional blank verse of the sequence Shakespeare - Milton - Wordsworth'. Of course has some reservations, but these are 'mostly anticipated' in the preface.