Saturday night.
My dear Pollock
I sometimes try to cultivate a little Stoicism with regard to the effect of lectures upon the audience, but I usually find that my nature is too strong for my volition. I must own to the great gratification which I experience from the approval of a mind like yours. I did not hope that the views I ventured to bring forward2 would take sudden root, and among geologists especially I calculate upon encountering a good deal of inertia; but the more I thought of the matter, the more I felt persuaded that time and further testing would justify me. Expecting opposition, I confess your note3 has had a cheering and encouraging effect upon me—and I take it very kind of you to have written it. Many thanks for the reference to Dante4—it will invest the term with great authority and interest.
I wish I could attribute my confusion about Tuesday5 to a lady; my blundering brain and nothing else is to blame—You can hardly imagine how ludicrous my forgetfulness is sometimes. But now, thank the gods, my heaviest work is past, and a few days quiet will cause the mental molecules to take up their normal positions.
Believe me | Ever yours | John Tyndall
RI MS JT/1/T/1257
RI MS JT/1/TYP/6/1894
[24 January 1857]: the date is given by the relation to letter 1322.
the views I ventured to bring forward: the topic of Tyndall’s lecture at the RI on 23 January 1857; see letter 1306, n. 8 and n. 10.
your note: see letter 1322.
reference to Dante: in letter 1322, Pollock shared with Tyndall that Dante might have coined the term regelation.
my confusion about Tuesday: this reads as if Tyndall forgot to join Pollock for dinner (perhaps on Tuesday 20 January), yet in letter 1322 Pollock had written ‘I am sorry that we are not to see you on Tuesday at dinner’, indicating that dinner would be the following Tuesday, 27 January. Tyndall’s journal is incomplete for this time and provides no clarification.
Please cite as “Tyndall1323,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on