2110-4-10-28

[A.J. Balfour]

4, Carlton Gardens, Pall Mall, S.W.1

December 17th, 1926.

Dear John Buchan,

I have scandalously delayed writing to thank you for your volume of Essays, which arrived just before I left the calm of Scotland for the whirlpool of politics at Westminster. I wanted to read your book before thanking you for it; and I have not found it easy to read anything during the last few weeks more instructive and interesting than official documents!

This omission I have now remedied, and have thereby strengthened the conviction I have long entertained, namely that collected Essays are among the most pleasure-giving forms of literature. The reader not only gets the knowledge which the Essays

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are intended to convey, but he gets into a closer touch with their author than is, I think, possible by the perusal of any treatise dealing with a single subject. This is not, I believe, the common view; and I have always been told that collected Essays do not make good "sellers". But the buying public are wrong in this as in many other matters.

As regards the Essay devoted to my poor self, I hardly venture to offer an opinion. Who can judge of his own portrait? I should dearly like to think it true, but I fear it is far too favourable. One observation I should like to make upon it. You comment in the most flattering terms upon my style, and in terms much less flattering (but I fear only too true) upon my grammar. I make no apology for its

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many defects, except to say that, like countless other products of public school education, I was taught Latin gr.ammar though I never learned it, whilst as regards English grammar I neither learned it nor was taught it! The results no doubt are much to be deplored. But that is not what I wanted particularly to tell you. Years ago (I think before the war) I happened to see in the Times Literary Supplement a comment upon my misuse of "and which". I was much impressed, and have tried ever since to avoid this error. I think that if anybody were to take the trouble to search my writings before and after that date they would find, broadly speaking, that this habit, however much it may have prevailed before the review was written, has not since made

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its appearance. I now think that you must have been the author of the article; and, if so, I have much to thank you for above and beyond your kindly emphasis on what you are good enough to think my merits. Let me add that I have always found English horribly difficult to write; and that it becomes no easier by practice!

With many thanks, Believe me, Yours sincerely, Belfor