TALBOT3711

Dowring Lodge
Aug 8 - 38

My Dear Talbot

Many thanks for the packet of your philological lucubrations, which albeit not yet properly consumed & digested I pronounce Ex cathedra to be good - in themselves, - on exemplifying a good principle, & as being in a more readable form than many of their other brethren - You have thrown the rhapsodies overboard & only kept the needle {loca acu &c}

A persistant fellow interrupts me about ale licenses & scatters all classics to the winds - Thus far it appears I wrote on the 8^th & today is positively the 24^th an hiatus greatly deplored on my part & which may be facilitated by the fact of two main onslaughts in the shape of a huge ale licensing day with all its preliminary & postliminary investigations & to the residuary products of a lawsuit which threatens to be of an explosive character

I am glad to see that your Influences are mainly etymological in which field there is much to be done & that you still hold to Micali's ¹ very interesting subject Your etymologies ² I hold to be many of them Sound & all ingenious - by the way (Aug 30!!!) I do not observe Catalepsy among them though our old friend vermeiden has a niche

I really am ashamed of this letter nevertheless it shall go especially under [illegible] that you may see how brokenly a V.C. lives even in Vacation & perfect your complex idea of the maniére d'être of so important a functionary

Harmonies I believe in - but the rigorists will cry out for independent historical proof of such a [g?ing] dialect prevailing then & there & show how Druides came by it

Poetry & Drama I cannot give up, εδ ι βατον, not by no manner of means - for if the Common etymologies are not true they ought to be

You know with a people of such lively imaginations as the Greeks, the ideal was more real than the real itself hence a play poem &c was a thing not a semblance & the Creator of that thing be he Starpsoid[?] Rhapsoid or Tragatoid was to say the least of him - A Maker Feœtrius is to be applauded & I fraternize with your therom

I hold you must ferret out a sufficient number of such words to prove your "Ancient Greek" theory independently or you must give a more historical proof of the theory itself

Medusa is very good & it accounts well for the ugly Cerva on the Thoran of the Minerva Medica which a Greek Sculptor of a very good though some what late age has put there gladly justifying himself. For by the Etruscan tradition a head of Mantasa in making one of a head uglier far & courser (it has the broad stamp of vulgarity) than Greek taste would originate but yet furnishing him with an admirable contrast to heighten the beauty & purity of the Minerva herself

I must not at present inflict more cruditus on you: but come Octob we will talk about them & have a shot at the partridges

Hares address which I recall am very much shamed at not having sent sooner

Rev Julius C Hare ³
Herstmonceux
Battle
Sussex

P.S. You really deserve infinite credit for driving two such pegasean teams both sufficiently & one single handed pray include the third & let me have a Kunstalterthumundwissenschaftslehrezeitschrift ⁴ You positively only want this to rival Goethe - Do you know a problem or rather theorem of y^rs was set last time to the Smiths Prize Men

The Mater of Xtr & Donaldson [Fel Trin?] ⁵ the only people here have your work. I am thankful when term begins I may call for more

Macte virtute ⁶

[envelope:]
William H. Fox Talbot Esq^re.
[annotated by WHFT:]
Worsley. Aug. 8./38