2110-4-4-15

[HM Government stamp]

28 July 24

My dear John - my eyes have been rather overdrawn lately so that I haven't yet read the whole of your book: but it has given me great pleasure, & of a new kind. The Introd. is to me an education - it is much of it a surprise, & makes me feel that I have hitherto failed to realise what an immense past Scots poetry has, & how little future. I wonder if you are certain of that: to me it seems almost incredible that a nation which has produced the stuff you have drawn upon here, should ever cease to sing of its own life, in its own way. The language may be dying, as you think: but the expression of Scots feeling can never be anything but Scots - one way or another it will effectively differentiate itself from English expression?

Your 200 poems are a delightful choice. Burns & Dunbar stand out like Empires among little Principalities or single beauty spots: but R.L.S. & Violet Jacob are fine descendants of the Great, & the latter especially

seems to me finer than her reputation.

I could do with more of the Ballads, though I perfectly understand why you contented yourself with so few. But I doubt if many people, even now, have any idea of their vast & ancient power. No one reads Child, naturally, & I never see the Oxford Book anywhere. The current Readers & Anthologies ring the changes on about half a dozen. There ought to be a modest volume on the Ballads only - a good selection, with Commentary in the form of Essays, or Sectional Introductions.

Your Commentary is the right thing - I feel confident that the books of the future are sure to follow that line: it isn't enough to go into a picture gallery alone. You want someone to talk over the pictures with you, or at the least to comment in passing. Lectures are not conversation: but they are going back in that direction I think, by way of the Essay, as Johnson & Addison wrote it.

I shall see you on Wed. morning, I hope.

Yours H.N.