[Geologist] Autograph Letter Signed "John Carrick Moore" to Lady Eastlake, born Elizabeth Rigby, author, art critic and art historian, on W.E. Gladstone's scholarship [Prime Minister].

Author: 
John Carrick Moore (1805-98), geologist
Publication details: 
113 Eaton Square, Saturday [no date given].
£80.00
SKU: 14237

Four pages, 12mo, closely written, good condition. "Your approval of my criticism on the '[?] of Hector' has greatly gratified me. Gladstone is twenty fold a better Grecian than S.C.M., but he is crochetty, and a crochetty man sees what no one else sees, and refuses to see the palpable. I have not seen his colour blindness paper: but ifd he says there is no 'blue' in the Iliad he is distinctly wrong. The word [Cyanens?] occurs frequently, and it is applied to the lapis lazuli, which surely is blue enough; and chemists have called the principal component of Prussian blue Cyano-gen, that is, blue-producer. He identifies other errors that Gladstone has perpetrated in translation from the 'Iliad' (including the incident when Achilles bores through Hector's corpse's ankles (the 'divine Hector'). | Therefore I will not trust W.E.G. out of my sight. I shpould like to know where the red [snow?] occurs; as for the other instances, Turner would not have quarrelled with red sky or red sea: [...] But the argument seems to me a bad one: shall we start a theory that in the old Saxon race there were no such passions as envy, malice, jea;lousy, &c&c, becausew they had no words to express them & were forced to borrow ? In an early state of society, words are used in a very wide sense, as the Highlander uses his dirk to cut wood, to cut up his dinner, to kill his neighbour, and what not.| I hope you will get Partan, or better still, Desnoireterres in his five thicj octavoes. I have a sneaking fondness for that rogue. He was as Walter Scott says of Rob Roy 'ower bad for blessing, and ower gude for banning['].