BIB_ID
401718
Accession number
MA 8861.24
Creator
Balfour, Arthur James, 1848-1930.
Display Date
1898 October 27.
Credit line
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1908.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 18.6 x 12.1 cm
Notes
Acquired as part of a large collection of letters addressed to William Angus Knight, Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and Wordsworth scholar. Items in the collection have been individually accessioned and cataloged.
On stationery with embossed letterhead reading "10, Downing Street,/ Whitehall, S.W." and the blind embossed seal of the First Lord of the Treasury.
Marked "Dictated" and "Private".
With autograph signature and corrections.
On stationery with embossed letterhead reading "10, Downing Street,/ Whitehall, S.W." and the blind embossed seal of the First Lord of the Treasury.
Marked "Dictated" and "Private".
With autograph signature and corrections.
Provenance
Purchased by Pierpont Morgan from William Angus Knight, 1908.
Summary
Thanking Knight for his kind references to Balfour's speech in a previous letter; confessing "I was -- and am -- rather afraid that I blurted out my views on Examinations with a little too much frankness for the occasion"; commenting that, regarding Principal Donaldson, there is no precedent for knighting the head of a university, and that other heads of universities, like William Muir and Alexander Grant, received their knighthoods for other services; writing that this lack of precedent would make him loath to make such a recommendation to the Queen, but "[a]s a matter of fact, however, these are not matters in which I ever intervene, or in which I trench upon the responsibility which properly belongs to the Prime Minister"; referring Knight to the Prime Minister, Robert Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury, for further correspondence on the matter.
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