Leacock Abbey: December 16, no year. 1 1/4pp. 4to. Autograph letter signed "H. F. Talbot", with integral address leaf signed by and presumably addressed in Talbot’s hand; broken folds, with no paper loss, expertly restored, some minor spotting in body of letter, contents & signature clear, strong, & dark. The presence of a Chippenham Penny Post hand stamp on the address leaf leads us to presume this letter was sent before the uniform penny post was instituted on January 9, 1840. To Rev. H. Barry, objecting to Barry’s scheme of forming a society to edit Shakespeare’s works, “...You never would get the members of a numerous committee to agree in opinion respecting a difficult point of criticism, and if the question were decided according to the opinion of the majority, their decision would be more likely to be wrong than right...individual excretions are generally most successful in literature. You will perhaps think me a heretic, but I cannot subscribe to your opinion that your favorite Shakespeare is the first of British poets.”.