I yesterday ordered a 'Fors' to be sent you containing in its close the most important piece of a religious character in the book—this I hope you will also allow to stay on your shelves. The two that I sent with this note contain so much that is saucy that I only send them in case you want to look at the challenge referred to in the Letters to the Bishop of Manchester, see October, 1877, pp. 322, 323, and January 1875, p. 11. You can keep as long as you like, but please take care of them, as my index is not yet done. The next letter will come before the week end, but it's a difficult one.
[26] Grosart, "Poems of Christopher Harvey."
12.
The Vicarage,
Broughton-in-Furness,
September 4th, 1879.
My dear Mr. Ruskin,—These parish engagements having been discharged which have taken up my time very closely since I came back from Brighton, I am returning to your letters, and I think you would like to know what I am doing. I am copying them down, first, as I can read them aloud better in my own handwriting, and secondly, because I shall not place the originals in the printer's hands.
Then many thoughts arise in my mind as I re-peruse them, and I must needs (and I think I am allowed) give expression to my thoughts. Hence each letter is followed by my own comments or reflections upon it. But this need not make you feel nervous. On the whole there is much agreement between your modes of thought on religious subjects and my own.
If this is thought a piece of cool assurance, I may reply in the words or sense of Euclid, That similar triangles may have the most various areas. I am not equal to you, but I claim to be similar. These comments I sometimes think I ought to show to you before publication; but perhaps you will agree with me that if I am fit to be trusted at all, I had better be left unconstrained. I shall certainly come to you first, if I find myself seriously at variance with you, which has not happened yet as far as the first clause of the Lord's Prayer. Then it is likely that I shall read the letters before two or three Clerical Societies,[27] including my own, the Furness.
The opinions delivered by those clergy it will be my duty, and I hope it will be my pleasure, to collect and to record. I propose also to invite the clergy who have not time or opportunity to speak in the meeting to write to me, and I will use my best judgment in selecting from their correspondence all that seems worth preserving.
I am very sensible that this is a most delicate and responsible task that is laid upon me, and I wonder to find myself so engaged. It will need tact, discretion, and kindness of heart, and I trust I may be endued with the necessary qualifications to a much larger extent than I think I naturally possess.
I find no small comfort at the foot of the first page of the Preface to "Sesame and Lilies." There I feel I am at one with you.