Item 14 - Letter from G. C. Moore Smith to R. B. McKerrow

2 folded sheets, 1 envelope

Sheffield.—Offers to be a referee for McKerrow’s application for a lectureship at King’s College for Women. Adds further notes on Nashe. Is excited by the news of the Harvey books in the Denbigh Library.

(With an envelope.)

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Transcript

Sheffield. 12 Oct 1912

Dear McKerrow,

Many thanks for yr letter—I am sorry to have given you trouble about those two lines of Harvey through my carelessness in overlooking them.

The lectureship is, I understand, at King’s College for Women: so there is risk of their appointing a woman. Please give me as a reference, though good wine does not need such a very inferior bush.

Nashe {1}

II {2}

47. 31. I wonder if the form ‘by-os’ comes from some refrain
‘lullaby, lullaby oh’

121. 14. Cp. Hamlet IV. 5 119 for ‘overpeers’.

142. 9. Is wanze due to a misreading of wanʒe = wanien (wane).

155. 7. I suppose the original line must have been

Dives erat dudum, fecerunt me tria nudum

201. 1. Southampton was admitted at S. John’s 16 Oct 1585—so Nashe probably knew something of him there—Then when Nashe was in the Isle of Wight he was not far from Titchfield—as is seen in the first English letter of Tubbe. He perhaps renewed his acquaintance.

210. 4. quarters on London Bridge. Could this mean ‘quarters’ of traitors? or was only the head stuck on London Bridge?

225. 29. ‘pincht good mindes to Godward’ means, I think, ‘robbed souls well disposed to God of’. ‘good minds to Godward’ may have been a puritanical phrase.

230. 9. Paracelsus Spirit of the Buttery. May this contain an allusion to his drunkenness? I dont see why his familiar spirit shd otherwise be called a spirit of the buttery.

Your second envelope with the cutting about Harvey books in the Denbigh Library has just arrived. It is rather exciting—though Bullen I think wont welcome much more copy than he has got. It will require some page of Addenda—at any rate—& I wish I had known of the books, a little earlier.

Many thanks for sending the cutting.

Yours ever
G. C. Moore Smith

[Direction on envelope:] Dr McKerrow | 4 Phoenix Lodge Mansions | Brook Green | Hammer-smith | London W

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The envelope was postmarked at Sheffield S.D.O. at 4.45 p.m. on 12 October 1912.

{1} The succeeding notes refer to passages in Christ’s Teares over Jerusalem and The Unfortunate Traveller.

{2} This volume number appears only before the first entry, but the rest are indented to show that it relates to all of them.