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Plate 77 (Illustration VI a)
[Incised in bottom corners:]
<The Real Selfhood in the
[ ]thin P[ ] T[ ]m>
Extensive photographic attack has not recovered more of this deleted inscription than Sir Geoffrey Keynes was able to read in the Fitzwilliam copy (Complete Writings, p. 919), except for a trace or two of the doubly deleted second line. The word below "Selfhood" may be "within". To indicate the lengths of the other words, a purely speculative reading can be invented: "The Real Selfhood / is our Spectre within / in the / Poisonous Term".
Whatever the message, covered with thick foliage in the Mellon copy, it was perhaps first written as a sort of marginal motto. Then deep horizontal lines of shading were gouged across the letters, and, outside this pattern, the first and last words in the bottom line were directly erased by scratches.
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