ELIOT T. S.: (1888-1965) American-born British poet, Nobel Prize winner for Literature, 1948. Autograph statement signed, one page, slim oblong 8vo, n.p., n.d. (December 1951), in full, 'The word “the Love of God”. Annotated in ink in the hand of a collector to the lower left corner and with very slightly irregularly trimmed upper and lower edges. Together with an interesting T.L.S. by Natalie Balch Foote, an assistant to Eliot ('Dictated by Mr. Eliot but signed in his absence'), one page, 4to, Russell Square, London, 29^th May 1957, to Henri Corbiere, on the printed stationery of Faber and Faber Limited. Eliot's letter acknowledges receipt of his correspondent's questionnaire 'on the spread of human intelligence' and continues 'I cannot answer the first question as I do not understand it. As for the second question, my answer is emphatically “no”. I think that all men of genius have their limitations, and it is particularly apparent when scientists and artists attempt to take a hand in any social and political questions. It is possible for a man of genius to be so emotionally undeveloped that he will be in many matters no more than a child. As for the third question, your celebrated scientist or scholar will be fertile in ideas in every field to which he turns his attention on condition that he only turns his attention to those fields which he has fully cultivated'. VG, 2