Autograph Letter Signed ('Samuel Prince.') from the Victorian book collector Rev. Samuel Prince [to George Cruikshank], discussing his involvement in the Philological Society's new dictionary (later the Oxford English Dictionary).

3pp., 12mo. Fair, on lightly-aged paper. Addressed to 'Dear Sir', but from the context clearly addressed to Cruikshank. (That Cruikshank and Prince were correspondents is shown by a reference in Rosa Baughan's 'Character Indicated by Handwriting' (1880), which describes a 'long letter' from Cruikshank to Prince.) Prince begins by apologising for not thanking Cruikshank for his 'Exposure of that "Scamp's" devices'. He has been prevented from coming down to London, and so is writing to ask if Cruikshank 'has been able to go on with the "Knockdundas" as a companion to the "Rob Roy" or with a companion to the Gumilli, or with the larger painting of which I suggested a subject similar to the one in the Comic Almanack!' He may come up to London in November, 'because I have offered to take a part, in the new project of the Philological Society, of collecting words, phrases &c from selected Old English Authors for the purpose of attempting a Complete Dictionary of the English Language. As I am prevented by my health from officiating in the Church, I thought I might be of some use in sharing in such a plan.' He ends by asking if there is 'any printed list containing the names of the works which you have illustrated, also of those which you have printed yourself, and if so, which of the latter are still procurable.' Prince was dead by 1865, when his library was auctioned in London by Sotheby's.