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- 29 Jan. 1912 (Production)
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Étendue matérielle et support
1 single sheet
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Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.—Quotes from Duff’s English Provincial Painters, in illustration of a phrase in Nashe.
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Transcript
Park Lodge, Wimbledon, S.W.
29 Jan 12
Dear McKerrow
Concerning tittle tittle est amen {1} cf. “The signatures of this book are curious, for the printer, having come to the end of his first alphabet, continued with contractions and then signed two more sheets one with ‘est’ the other with ‘amen’.” Gordon Duff, Eng. Prov. Printers, p. 37. {2} Of course this only shows that est was commonly regarded as part of the criss cross row. I imagine that it must have originally been one of the contractions (first ÷ later ē) & that when this grew obsolete the word est still retained its place.
Yrs
W.W.G.
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Formerly inserted between pp. 174 and 175 of McKerrow’s own copy of the Works of Nashe, vol. iv (Adv. c. 25. 75) , though the note it refers to is on a different page (see below).
{1} The reference is to the sentence beginning ‘I cannot explain what “tittle” means’ in the Works of Nashe, vol. iv, p. 205 (a note on a phrase in The Terrors of the Night, vol. i, p. 267, line 28). In the copy from which this letter was removed McKerrow has written in the margin at this point: ‘Cf also Duff. Eng. Prov. Printers p. 37 (W.W.G.)’. A similar phrase occurs in Have with You to Saffron-Walden (vol. iii, p. 45, line 36).
{2} E. Gordon Duff, The English Provincial Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders to 1557 (1912). The sentence is slightly misquoted.