Autograph letter signed : Old Windsor, to Siegfried Sassoon, 1942 February 24.

Writing that he hopes Sassoon received the keys he sent him a month ago and that he has been looking at the books: "There are some important ones in the lower cupboard"; discussing the reception of a book on Thomas Hardy by Edmund Blunden: "Desmond McCarthy was very heavily down on Blunden's Hardy and I was quite dismayed until I saw that it was thought worthy of quite a large part of the Literary Supplement. I think it was done rather against the grain, and perhaps a true judgment lies somewhere between the two"; mentioning that he has been reading two books by Homer Lea, The Valor of Ignorance and The Day of the Saxon, and that he thinks very highly of them: "He foretells almost exactly a world war with the Japs and all that has happened hitherto, as well as much that may yet happen"; commenting that he read Sassoon's article on Hardy's verse drama "The Dynasts" with interest; exclaiming "Dear old Hardy! What a giant he was! And yet not quite unassailable as [William] Morris seemed to me to be -- But Hardy had the wider vision all the same"; adding in a postscript that he has been wondering what has happened to Tim White (probably T.H. White, who was known as "Tim").