to accept the office. John Pigot, who thought his acceptance a stroke of good luck, wrote to me on the subject:—
"Monday, 5th July."My dear Duffy,—Thanks for speaking to M'Glashan for me. Tell him in return that I am obliged, and will prepare the Memoir of MacDowell in the course of the summer, for any month he thinks fit.
"I heard from Bindon on Saturday of M'Gee's acceptance of office, and without any slight of Hamill I may say it was the pleasantest news to me of the Confederation since that body got born. You know I have been some months wishing just that M'Gee could have been induced to do this work; and especially that to have a man of such past and prospective reputation and achievements, literary and other, in this post, reflects on us all a sort of credit and raises the respectability of the body. This above and besides the certainty of having the business rightly done by hands so competent for business. I think we should all be heartily obliged to him for assuming the secretaryship, and I wish you would express to him for me my share of the obligation. It has besides every way increased my respect for and opinion of the man. In haste.—Ever yours truly,"J. E. P."
A little later he wrote on another subject which interested me for Davis's sake and Ireland's:
"Wednesday, March 3, 1847."I have just had a note from Mrs. Hutton. It seems that poor Davis had been very anxious to have Rinuccini's 'Embassy to Ireland, from 1645 to 1649,' translated from the Italian (for a volume of the Irish Library), and Miss A. H. has been accordingly translating it (I suppose Davis would have printed and edited it, as far as necessary), and she asks me if it would be a suitable thing to do. Now if the Library was going on, nothing could be more suitable, and doubly so after the article in the Dublin Review a couple of years ago upon Rinuccini's papers. So I have answered Mrs. H. by telling her how the Library is situated, and saying that had the translation been in time, I was convinced it would have been most acceptable for your purpose.
