Letter, E. Harrow to an editor

Dear Dr. Levinge —

Thank you for the invitation, which I decline, and for the deadline, which I would have missed.

You ask for eight thousand words on the transmission of the compilation. I can give you eight thousand words on my transcriptions of it. Those are not the same subject and the second is of interest to about nine people, of whom you are, I think, three.

The position is this. I have four transcriptions. They agree in their words and differ in their order. Until I can establish whether the difference lies in the copy-text or in me, I have nothing to report but a description of my own unreliability, and I would rather publish nothing than publish that with a title on it.

You will say that the honest course is to print the tables and let others judge. The honest course is to print the tables when I know what the tables are of. A collation with an unestablished exemplar is a rumour set in type.

I am not being difficult. I am being slow, which is a different vice and, in this field, the lesser one.

Ask me again in two years. I shall probably still be at it.

Yours sincerely,

— E. L. Harrow