Autograph Letter Signed from George Combe to Joseph C. Neal, 11 March 1839

Autograph Letter Signed from Scottish phrenologist and lawyer George Combe to Joseph C. Neal, Marshall House [i.e. Marshall House Hotel Philadelphia], 11 March 1839. In the letter, Combe tells Neal he is "obliged & gratified" by his notice of "Roget's re-publication". In 1838, Peter Mark Roget (who was hostile to phrenology) published Treatises on physiology and phrenology : from the seventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was re-published in 1939 unter the title Outlines of physiology, with an appendix on phrenology. Combe says he sent Roget and the editor of the Phrenological Journal a copy of the Pennseylvanian journal containing [the notice].

He then quotes a paragraph from a "letter from [his] Brother Dr. A. Combe", which he suggests Neal makes use of "as a piece of literary news, only suppressing all allusion to the source from which it is derived". The paragraph announces the forthcoming publication of a pamphlet titled "The Ballantyne Humbug handled", and will lead the executors of Sir Walter Scott "to publish Documents hitherto kept back from feelings of delicacy, which have not been appreciated by Lockhart. The public will obtain authentic materials for judging for themselves "of Sir W. Scott's conduct."