Letter from Rev. James Warley Miles to Samuel Gaillard Barker on Shelley's Prometheus Unbound (page 4 of 4 — signed and addressed)

Concluding page of the four-page handwritten letter begun on page 078, signed at lower right J.W. Miles and addressed at lower left to Samuel G. Barker Esqr. The writer closes his reflection on Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound as ‘the most remarkable unintended and unconscious concession to Christianity which human genius could have made — the enemy tipping his arrow with adamant from his despised opponent’s stores,’ thanks his correspondent for the suggestion offered in the previous letter, and asks leave to ‘lay up the idea for future use.’ A vertical fold runs down the centre. The folded outer panel of the same sheet — the address to ‘Mr. Samuel G. Barker / Charleston S.C.’ with the compiler’s pencilled annotation ‘my great gra[nd]father — A.F.W.’ — is mounted on page 082. The signatory is Rev. James Warley Miles (1818–1875), Charleston Episcopal priest, philologist, and Librarian of the Charleston Library Society 1854–1858; the addressee is Samuel Gaillard Barker (1799–1863), Susan Milliken Barker FitzSimons’s father and the compiler’s paternal great-grandfather.

The pencilled annotation on the folded address panel — “my great gra[nd]father — A.F.W.” (page 082) — confirms the recipient is the compiler Amy FitzSimons (Mrs. James Pickens Walker)'s paternal great-grandfather. Rev. James Warley Miles served as Librarian of the Charleston Library Society from 1854 to 1858 and as professor of Greek at the College of Charleston; he is best remembered for his addresses on philology and the philosophy of religion, including “Philosophic Theology” (1849) and “The Student of Philology” (1853) — most likely the “Ad-dress” referred to on page 078.