Item 87 - Letter from Edward Marsh to R. C. Trevelyan

1 item

Brooks's, St. James's Street, S.W.1; 'as from' Dene House, Boar's Hill, Oxford. - Has enjoyed Bob's "Windfalls" very much: it is 'a really beautiful book, & a joy for ever... the pure essence of you'. Regrets that the edition is so small, and 'rather a waste of Desmond [MacCarthy]'s for once 'selling' notice!'. Disagreed only with Bob counting the sight of a tree-felling amongst his "Pleasures", and wonders how someone who can write about trees as Bob can could feel so; adds that crystals are also straight lines which appear in nature; further to Bob's comment that 'Milton's simile's never forget their illustrative purposes', he suggests that the comparison of the angelic phalanxes to a field of corn at the end of the fourth book of "Paradise Lost" does this when the doubts of the ploughman as to whether the sheaves might 'prove chaff' could 'imply in Gabriel a want of confidence in his troops'. Has just left Cambridge, and is going next Saturday to live for a while at the Boar's Hill address he gives. Notes in a postscript that he has not yet seen [Bob's translation of Virgil's "Eclogues and] Georgics" announced.