The Earl of Aberdeen to John Wilson Croker, in response to a query regarding quotation from Homer by Thucydides, 1 September 1846: 'I should have answered your letter sooner, but I had not a copy of the Life of Johnson at hand; and before writing to you, I wished to see the passage to which you refer. 'From the expressions of Johnson, it would appear that he thought the lines quoted by Thucydides were from the Iliad or Odyssey, in which case they certainly would not be found in any of our copies. But the quotation is from the hymn to Apollo. It is in the third book of his history, and in that part of it in which he gives an account of the extraordinary and barbarous proceeding, called by the Athenians the purification of Delos.'