University of Virginia Library

Plate 91

<Forgiveness of Enemies ?can [ ] only [ ] God [ ]> [1]
It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend:
. . . .

We seem very close to a restoration of this deleted first line, but the deeper gouges baffle: the deletion is not made by hatching but by a scooping out of the centers of words. Redundancy (of lines 1 and 2) or a changed position in the sequence of plates might account for the deletion — but until we know what exactly was erased we cannot safely speculate about the motive. Tendrils are added only in the Harvard copy.