I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of yesterday’s date requesting me to inform you whether a certain project of yours of building in the inner quadrangle of the Museum, and which, as you state, you laid before Lord Ellesmere’s Commission in 1848, and communicated to the Trustees in 1849 (as I have just now ascertained for the first time) had been seen by me before I designed the present work, that is the Reading-Room and Libraries recently built on that site.

I beg in answer to state that I had never seen your project or the scheme to which you allude before I suggested the work which is now completed.

I saw, when published, in the Builder, a separately printed copy of it which was sent to me, I suppose by you, without any accompanying note or letter, long after the works for carrying out my suggestion had been commenced.

The concluding part of your letter must mean, of course, that that publication took place two years before the scheme lately carried out had been made known, not that you sent me the copy of your plan two years before my suggestion had been made known to the public. It is desirable that there should be no ambiguity on this point.

Permit me to add that the schemes for covering over, or building in the quadrangle were numberless. My colleague, Mr. Hawkins, had often suggested, long before 1850 a communication by corridors across the quadrangle, from the front entrance to the several departments, with a central building for the Trustees’ Meeting-Room and officers standing round it.

You suggested a great Central Hall with one floor of 120 feet in diameter, two inscribing octagonal corridors presenting niches to receive statues, and extensive wall surface fit to receive reliefs and inscriptions with connecting galleries, etc.

The Hall was intended by you for the exhibition of the finer and more important works of sculpture, besides a quadrilateral hall to contain ample staircases, etc.

I, on the other hand, have suggested and have seen built a circular Reading-Room, 140 feet in diameter, with amazing shelf room for books of a totally novel construction. No central hall, no quadrilateral hall nor ample staircases, no space, niches, or wall-surface for the exhibition of works of sculpture, statues, or inscriptions as you suggested. How your scheme can be designated as being to the same effect as mine, and how, had I seen it, it can take the merit of originality from mine, others will say.

Yours was the scheme of an architect; thick walls, ample staircases, etc. Mine the humble suggestion of a Librarian, who wanted to find, at a small cost of time, space, and money, ample room for books and comfortable accommodation for readers, neither of which purposes you contemplated.

Yours, &c., &c.,