Letter from Leslie Stephen, London, to W. E. Henley, 1876 December 5 : autograph manuscript signed.

Reporting that the books he ordered from the London bookseller were on their way to him and that he knew "...nothing of the work of Diderot's of wh. you speak. I will ask Morley about it, who ought to know & let you have the answer - if any;" referring to and expounding on an issue he mentioned in his previous letter about the concern of an American he met; thanking him for the Columbus "...wh. I read with interest & wh. I think tells the story very clearly & well. I have no special criticism to offer - the history being beyond me & the style quite satisfactory to my mind. I have put a pencil mark against 2 or 3 cases of misprints real or suspected. For one place I have written the mysterious phrase "Macaulay' by which I meant that the assertion that Columbus was made up of contradictions reminded me of Mac's favourite formula. In fact, I think that particular phrase wrong. The combination of ideal [illegible] into practical skill is not common, it may be, but is surely not in any sense contradictory...I don't object to your analysis, but only to your beginning by calling it contradictory wh. is wantonly to give it an air of paradox. All this about one world!...I can only reply that Macaulay's trick of representing, people as made up of antitheses is one of my special aversions & therefore your sentence acted as a red rag - I hope that you are in better spirits & health."