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BARFORD,
CHURT,
FARNHAM.

April 25 1903.

My dear Buchan,

I was very glad to get your letter and to hear that you had liked the Eu-
ripides. I do think him one of the most interesting minds I have ever come
across – and one on the whole very inadequately understood. Your letter reach-
ed me in Rome where I was working at MSS in the Vatican. The Library is organi-
sed rather like a preparatory school for boys. Open from 9 to 1; the Papal Pre-
fect sitting all the time at a big desk in the middle, and the readers at long
tables in front of him. Windows not opened since the time of the Borgias. The
Florence libraries are much better: and the Naples place so far more convenient
that the lower officials are entirely occupied in intriguing against – or for –
the Head of the Museum, and let the readers do what they like. There have been
three new directors in the last three months, and the present one was "in Rome,
answering the charges against him" when I was there.

I suppose my politics show through pretty plainly in that Introduction,