To John Tyndall, Snr   April 25th, 1841.

Youghal, April 25th, 1841.

My dear Father

On Friday evening I received your letter.¹ By it I perceive you are an expert man of business. Your despatch in going to Dublin and coming back brings to my mind a picture I saw somewhere the title of it was ‘Travelling in the year 1900.’² It represents a fellow with a steam kettle under his arm taking a race from one end of Europe to the other every step or stride the fellow made would lead a person to imagine that he was possessed of 7 league boots³ or some other mode of conveyance like it, the truth was he went by steam. I see you have improved the hint I gave you relative to what prevented me from writing to you.⁴ I’ll not tell you the circumstances at present neither will I undeceive you, you may indulge in your speculations for a couple of months and then you shall hear the whole story from my own lips. Your advice respecting my acting on the defensive shall be strictly attended to. My motto is

‘I neither seek the combat nor shun it when it comes.’ I agree with you perfectly that a little sophistry is quite needful in order to meet, with success, a subtle opponent; the less of it that is used however the better. It should be the business of a man with truth on his side to expose sophistry but not to use it. In order to expose successfully I admit that it should be well understood by even the champion of truth. While you were in Dublin it appears that you did not forget me. I received the pamphlet you purchased last night. I believe old ‘Nullity’ is a very scarce work. I can however get a loan of Poole’s Dialogues⁵ here so that renders it unnecessary for you to send me yours.

Your last letter conveyed very cheering news to me. I don’t deserve one bit of praise for the sentiments which my last letter⁶ breathed. I would be a monster if I acted otherwise than I there professed.

I made Wm Heydon send his father five and sixpence⁷ last night. When I make use of the word made I don’t mean to intimate that he did it with reluctance. He would have sent a little more had he not been sick for two days last week, which prevented him from laying his usual instalment in my hands. It was he sugested the propriety of sending even that small sum, for fear his father might want it. I have by my side at present Challoner’s ‘Catholic Christian’⁸ I am after reading, marking and inwardly digesting 30 pages of the strangest arguments I ever saw brought forward in support of Transubstantiation.⁹ I have taken these arguments one by one and I humbly conceive that I am fully able to refute each and every one of them. I find logic of infinite use to me where he draws distinction between substance and accident.¹⁰ He’s the most knotty fellow I have met as yet on the subject.

I am glad to find that Mr Griffith is well, you have not told me this but I judge it from your taking the two tumblers together

Good bye | Your affectionate son | John Tyndall.

RI MS JT/1/10/3218

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