Autograph Letter Signed ('W. Rhys Roberts') to Sir Frederick George Kenyon (1863-1952), Director of the British Museum.

William Rhys Roberts (1858-1929), Professor of Classics at Leeds University, and associate of J. R. R. Tolkien

Published by 28 January ; on letterhead of the University Leeds, 1918

About this Item

Three pages, octavo. Very good on lightly aged paper. Kenyon's paper was 'much enjoyed' when read on Saturday, and there was 'a good attendance'. '[T]he pleasantries were not missed': '1. the confusion of the inexhaustible emender; 2. the thrift of the canny Odysseus in his role of wooer; 3. Burne Jones's Law.' 'At the end some interesting questiosns were asked', for example, 'why second-rate Greek annalists shd. seemingly have been preferred to Herodotus & Thucydides'. In reply Roberts suggests that 'in order fully to appreciate big historians, you needed big men in contact with big affairs & found such men in the great Romans [.] & not among simple Egyptian Greeks cut off from the main stream of the world's movement'. Roberts makes a few more remarks on Kenyon's paper before turning to 'the Business Meeting': 'Our present membership is 170, - & a particularly pleasant thing is that there is so large a proportion of full members, viz. 120, this number exceeding [.] the combined full & associate members whether at Manch[este]r., London, Liverpool, or elsewhere. More cd. be done if I had more leisure. But I find every moment taken up, as I do the secretarial as well as the teaching work of our two Classical Lecturers, Captain P. W. Dodd & Lieut. A. M. Woodward'.

Seller Inventory # 5408

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Autograph Letter Signed ('W. Rhys Roberts') to Sir Frederick George Kenyon (1863-1952), Director of the British Museum.
• Publisher: 28 January ; on letterhead of the University Leeds
• Publication Date: 1918