Item 166 - Letter from D. C. Tovey to Henry Sidgwick

Identity area

Reference code

Add. MS c/95/166

Title

Letter from D. C. Tovey to Henry Sidgwick

Date(s)

  • 14 June 1895 (Creation)

Level of description

Item

Extent and medium

1 doc

Context area

Archival history

Immediate source of acquisition or transfer

Content and structure area

Scope and content

Refers to their meeting on the previous Wednesday, and their discussion in relation to James Macpherson's The Poems of Ossian. Reports that on returning home he fetched out a duplicate proof of a paper he wrote on the subject a year previously, and now sends to Sidgwick [not included]. Refers to the paper as 'the conclusion arrived at by a man who had read just Macpherson's Ossian and the last apologist for Macpherson and "combined his information".' Reports that when the man he reviewed replied to him, Tovey discovered that he had not studied 'the thing he wrote about'. Discusses the work, and the reaction of Tovey and Sidgwick to it, and to 'the passages reproduced in [Goethe's] Werther'. Suggest that Macpherson 'might have developed into a poet of high rank on his own account'. Confesses that it is very seldom that he has an opportunity of talking to anyone about such things, and that Sidgwick's nephew Arthur Benson is the only friend to whom he has written 'about books etc. for many months.'

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling

Accruals

System of arrangement

Conditions of access and use area

Conditions governing access

Conditions governing reproduction

Language of material

Script of material

Language and script notes

Physical characteristics and technical requirements

Finding aids

Allied materials area

Existence and location of originals

Existence and location of copies

Related units of description

Related descriptions

Notes area

Alternative identifier(s)

Access points

Subject access points

Place access points

Genre access points

Description identifier

Institution identifier

Rules and/or conventions used

Status

Level of detail

Dates of creation revision deletion

Language(s)

Script(s)

Sources

Accession area