Item 12 - Letter from G. C. Moore Smith to R. B. McKerrow

2 folded sheets

31 Endcliffe Rise Road, Sheffield.—Discusses a passage in Nashe’s Preface to Menaphon and the progress of his own editions of Tubbe and Harvey.

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Transcript

31 Endcliffe Rise Road | Sheffield
28 Sep 1912

Dear McKerrow,

With regard to that much-discussed passage in Nashe’s Preface to Menaphon—

p. 316. l. 9. as those who are neither &c. {1}

Can this means†,

like men who are neither born in Provence (to whom Latin or Italian might be supposed to come as a second nature) nor able to distinguish between articles (in the grammatical sense).
If so, there must be some particular allusion to a mistake in translation—probably in the title,—turning on some mistranslation of an article. I should have expected ‘as those that are’ to mean ‘considering that they are’—but if so, it is hard to get anything out of the latter part of the clause. However this is very stale to you, & one gets no further.

With regard to the phrase lower down however

‘have not learned the just measure of the Horizon without an Hexameter.’

I dont think it struck me before but I now think ‘without’ means ‘encompassing.’ [There follows a diagram of a circle divided in two by a horizontal line from which five very short vertical lines depend at regular intervals.] This clause might then be an attack on verse of 7 feet where there should be 6. I wonder if this sense of ‘without’ ever occurred to you in your wrestlings with this passage? I feel little doubt about it.

I suppose you have been back from Bonchurch for some time. I have not heard anything from Sidgwick about Tubbe, but I have no doubt he wd wish to have your opinion. His verse is very poor stuff—but it has its interest, I think, especially in his satirical pieces—and in those in which he introduces far-fetched comparisons & learning. So, I hope, that you will find that you are able to print 100 pp. of it to go with the Introduction presented you for nothing without the prospect of losing money over yr enterprise. I should be extremely sorry for you to lose over it. If you cannot undertake it—is it worth while to have the Introduction printed off by itself? Or would it be better first to submit the larger plan to the Cambridge Press?

I am at present a little disappointed in Secker—as he seems in one point not to have acted quite straightforwardly. He agreed that I should ask Mr Almack to lend us his (apparently) unique copy of Tubbe’s Meditations {2} (2nd titlepage) for the titlepage to be photographed. The book was sent to Secker for this purpose—& now he says he did not have a photograph taken—but he had a drawing made which he has mislaid. He never told me at the time that he was not having a photo. taken.

Bullen is sending in Harvey proofs almost faster than I want, as I am getting very busy. He was knocked down by a bicycle on Monday week {3}—but appears to have recovered.

Yours ever
G. C. Moore Smith

F. W. Clarke is hoping to get a lectureship at Bangor. {4} Till now, he has not got a berth.

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{1} The phrase runs in full, ‘as those that are neither prouenzall men, nor are able to distin-guish of Articles’ (Works of Nashe, iii. 316).

{2} Meditations Divine and Morall (1659) (Wing 3208). Wing lists six copies, and there is another at St John’s College, Cambridge.

{3} 16 September.

{4} Clarke had previously been Assistant Lecturer in English at Victoria University, Manchester, a post he held till this year. His application to Bangor appears to have been successful, for he was said to be of the University College, Bangor, in 1934 (Alumni Cantabrigienses).

† Sic.