[Paget Toynbee, English Dante scholar.] Three Autograph Letters Signed and two Autograph Cards Signed to fellow Dantist Herbert Macartney Beatty, topics including English translators of Dante (Musgrave and Ellaby), and the tomb of Henry Francis Cary.

Toynbee was, as his entry in the Oxford DNB notes, 'recognized by his contemporaries as one of the great English Dantists, and a "giant of scholarship" (Oxford Magazine, 723)'. All five items in very good condition, lightly-aged. The three letters on bifoliums, and all five items in Toynbee's neat, close hand. Items One to Four with mourning borders (for his wife, who had died in 1910). ONE: ACS. 30 January 1911. He thanks him for sending 'the Gibbon reference', which he had overlooked, and discusses his 'Chronological List of English Translations from Dante'. TWO: ACS. 13 February 1911. He thanks him for 'this new reference of Gibbon's to Dante. This, as you say, of special interest as showing an acquaintance with the De Vulgari Eloquentia. (I. 15 20-2), of which very few Englishmen in the XVIII century had any knowledge. I think I have noted only Gray (who knew it pretty well), T. Warton, & Tyrwhitt.' THREE: ALS. 17 April 1912. 4pp., 12mo. He thanks him for sending his 'Dante & Virgil', which he had 'already read (some years ago) with interest, also for the loan of Ellaby's first edition, which differs very considerably from that of 1874.' He discusses the work, before turning to Dante translator George Musgrave (1855-1932), who is 'alive & lives at Oxford, but unhappily suffers from ill health, which so far has prevented him from completing his translation - he has a revised Inferno in the stocks, & has translated part of the Purgatorio. I have urged him to continue, but his energies appear to be sapped by the constant suffering caused by neuralgia.' He continues by discussing the inscription on the tomb of Dante translator Henry Francis Cary (1772-1844), and concludes with the news that he is unlikely to complete a new edition of his own edition, which is 'nearly exhausted'. FOUR: ALS. 4pp., 12mo. Themes include Cary's grave, Hewlett, Ernest Ridsdale Ellaby, his own translation, and the 'Cary portraits'. FIVE: ALS. 3pp., 16mo. After acknowledging an article of Beatty's, he again discusses the 'original inscription on Cary's tomb in Westminster Abbey', with reference to Bishop Boyd Carpenter.