My dear Archdeacon,
I have little else to send you in reply to your letter (which I believe however was in reply to one of mine) except the enclosed from Notes and Queries: which I think you will like to read, and to return to me.
I think I will send you (when I can lay hand on it) two volumes of some one’s Memorials of Wesley’s Family: which you can look over, if you do not read, and return to me also. I wonder at your writing to me that I gave you his Journal so long as thirty years ago. I scarce knew that I was so constant in my Affections: and yet I think I do not change in
literary cases. Pray read Southey’s Life of him again: it does not tell all, I think, which might be told of Wesley’s own character from his own Mouth: but then it errs on the right side: it does not presumptuously guess at Qualities and Motives which are not to be found in Wesley: unlike Carlyle and the modern Historians, Southey, I think, cannot be wrong by keeping so much within the bounds of Conjecture: Conjecture about any other Man’s Soul and Motives!
To FitzEdward Hall. [220a]
Woodbridge: June 24 [1877].
My dear Sir,
I have run through your Ability [220b] again, since I sent it to Wright: but as I before said (I believe) am not a competent Critic. I know that I coincide (unless I misconstrue) with your Canons laid down at pp. 162, etc. I am for all words that are smooth, or strong, (as the meaning requires) which have proved their worth by general admission into the Language. ‘Reliable’ is, what ‘trustworthy’ is not, good current coin for general use, though ‘trustworthy’ may be good too for occasional emphasis.
I remember old Hudson Gurney cavilling a little at ‘realize’ as I innocently used the word in a Memoir
of my old Bernard Barton near thirty years ago: this word I have also seen branded as American; let America furnish us with more such words; better than what our ‘old English’ pedants supply, with their ‘Fore-word’ for ‘Preface,’ ‘Folk-lore,’ and other such conglomerate consonants. Odd, that a Lawyer (Sugden) should have lubricated ‘Hand-book’ by a sort of Persian process into ‘Handy-book’!