Addressed to PE c/o Donat Orsi (bankers) in Florence - received 13th March. Florence library - ms. of Sophoclean scholia. Asks PE to examine 2 mss. of Suidas (Laurentian library and Badia Fiorentina) - get someone to collate half a dozen pages, then decide which deserves a full collation. Costs of collation (900 francs for a similar job in Paris). Problem in Proclus on Hesiod - can PE find a ms.? Also Scholion on Theognis. (Answers to both written in by PE.) Recommends mss. in library of Badia Fiorentina, based on work by Bernard de Montfaucon. Provost of Oriel and political pamphlets. Blomfield's Agamemnon - very good, though much remains to be done. PE's election as select preacher.
Thanks PE for his transcription of the Suidas ms., and asks him to check in the Vatican, if he visits on his way out or back, if there are 2 other mss. Enquires after 2 mss. of Stobaeus in the Palazzo Capodimonte in Naples, if PE finds time - perhaps he could consult a catalogue by Harles before leaving London. News of his own collating and publishing. Why has Bekker gone to Italy? - anything he does is exciting. Recommends an acquaintance in Naples.
Inadequacy of own work. Sorry to hear of PE's change of plan re Sophocles. Praise for first sheet of OT (sent by Collingwood). PE should assert claim to emendations etc. which have been forestalled in Erdfurt's edition - should also publish Aj. Or OC, neither of which Erdfurt has yet done. G. has just been ordained.
Canvassing PE's support for the father-in-law of a friend, Mr Carstairs, in his candidacy for a directorship of the East India Company. Bekker's Theognis - not sure of genuineness of 159 additional verses from the Modena ms., but will print them anyway as an appendix to vol. 1 of Poetae Minores. Vol. 2 to be ready by Christmas - printers busy with index - asks PE for his observations on Archilochus.
Thanks PE for consulting Athenaeus ms. - criticism of Schweighauser. Has heard of an Athenaeus mss. In Florence, though later than the Venetian. Clarendon Press will not yet publish J B Gail's Xenophon, since it has recently reprinted Schneider's edition. Correspondence with Boissonade. Asks for PE's comments on 1st volume of Poetae Minores (which he will include in an appendix in volume 2).
PE in Florence - received 3rd June. Mss. of Suidas - various thanks and requests. Sophoclean scholion contains an important reading in Isocrates - important ms. of Isocrates in Laurentian library. On mss. of John Damascene and Apollonius Rhodius (PE interlinear notes). A German Baron Schellershem has acquired some mss. from the Badia, but makes them freely available. Salviati family - what has happened to their mss.? Austrian restrictions on export of mss. - PE should be careful if he returns via Venice or Milan. If PE returns via Geneva, a query re a ms. of Theocritean scholia, which may contain some verses of Sositheus. Various gossip.
on PE's difficulties with libraries in Paris. Sarcasm re Herculaneum 'cinders' - more good likely to come from royal and conventual libraries in Naples than from them. Developing technology of lithography excellent for accurate and cheap reproductions. Dobree's Porson's Aristophanica. Hermann, now that Porson is dead, fears an Emsleian school will attract German students. PE on the point od leaving England again. Changes at Ch Ch due to appointment of Goodenough as HM of Westminster.
Will send printing corrections of an edition by PE, but admits carelessness in such matters. Comments on virtues, faults and relationships between some 16th century editions of Eur. Coldness of Bodleian, Porson as book collector.
