SOURCE: "The State of Letters: Did You Once See Morley Plain?," in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXXVI, No. 2, Spring, 1978, pp. 326-30.

In the following essay, Weales offers a posthumous retrospective of Morley's works.

There is nothing more pathetic than the case of the author who is the victim of a supposedly critical essay.

—Christopher Morley, Shandygaff

If I knew where to find a complete file of The Double Six, the 66th Infantry Regiment newspaper that a group of us put out in Garmisch after World War II, I could have another look at an essay called "Old Brandy, Old Briars, Old Books." It was written by a friend of mine who drank sparingly, smoked badly, and read fitfully. A lineal descendant of the English familiar essay, by way of the litry columns that used to decorate most American newspapers, it was a gem of sorts. It has been...