140 Bernard Acworth, This Progress: The Tragedy of Evolution (London: Rich & Cowan, 1934).
141 The tomb of Boethius (AD 480-524) is in the Church of S. Pietro Ciel d’Oro at Pavia.
142 The edition Lewis used was The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English Translation of ‘I.T.’ (1609), rev. H. E Stewart (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1918).
143 Kinter had asked about a sentence in the preface of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (London: John Lane, 1945; HarperCollins, 2000), p. xii: ‘Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.’
144 Max M”uller, The Science of Language, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1891), Vol. II, p. 454.
145 George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie (1879), ch. 47: ‘the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.’
146 Wendell W. Watters, MD, a Canadian psychiatrist, was Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was the author of Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-talk (1992).
147 This letter first appeared in L as ‘To A CRITICAL BUT CHARITABLE READER’, and was incorrectly dated 12 September 1951.
148 Dr Watters’s objection to Christ’s ‘unfair advantage’ was occasioned by Lewis’s Broadcast Talks, Bk. II, ch. 4. When revising the talks for Mere Christianity (London: Bles, 1952; HarperCollins, 2002), Lewis added two paragraphs to the end of Book II, Chapter 4, in which he used the example given here: ‘I have heard some people complain that if lesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, “because it must have been so easy for him”…If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) “No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank”? That advantage—call it “unfair” if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?’ (pp. 58-9)
149 Geoffrey Bles was pressing Blamires to persuade Lewis to write a preface for Blamires’s English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).
150 i.e., the preface he was writing for D. E. Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.
151 See the biography of Herbert Palmer, poet and literary critic, in CL II, p. 678n.
152 John Milton, Prose Works, with preliminary remarks and notes by J. A. St John, 5 vols. (London: Bohn’s Standard Library, 1948-53).
153 Herbert Palmer, ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–I’, The Fortnightly, CLXX (September 1951), pp. 624-8; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–II’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 695-700; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–III’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 768-74.
155 i.e., The Problem of Pain.
156 Ashley Sampson of Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, had asked Lewis to contribute a book on pain to the Christian Challenge series. See CL II, p. 289n.
157 The Problem of Pain, ch. 1, p. 15: ‘The Christian faith…has the master touch–the rough, male taste of reality’
158 ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. d. 290.
159 Since the thirteenth century there have been many versions of the legend of the Wandering Jew. In essence the legend recounts how a Jew chided Christ as he bore the cross to Calvary and was thereafter condemned to wander about the world until Christ’s Second Coming.
160 Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part I, pp. 55-6.
161 United Nations Organization.
162 25 April.
163 Hebrews 11:1: ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’
164 Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16.
165 Numbers 22:24-31.
166 Philippians 4:4.
167 Colossians 2:14-5.
TO EDNA GREEN WATSON (BOD): TS
REF.52/9
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 2nd January 1952.
Dear Mrs. Watson,
Very many thanks for your kind present of the cake, which has just arrived in good condition; good external condition that is, for it will not be opened until I get it out to my house this evening, where it will be received with enthusiasm. I often hear laments about the difficulty of getting cake making materials, so you can imagine how much pleasure it will give.
It will also help to distract attention from all the news in the papers about the shortages which are expected in 1952: news which is not rendered any the more palatable by Churchill’s assurance that when he gets back from your country,1 and meets Parliament, he will have several proposals to make which ‘will be very unpleasant for all of us.’ But we are in hopes that his treatment will differ from Atlee’s in being like