Further textual question. Agamemnon proceeding very slowly.
Year per Horsfall. Proposal to print the collation of the Agamemnon in the Museum Criticum, if PE does not object.
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).
Answers PE's request for information about a vacant living.
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.
Is the (new) house dry? Settlements being prepared re forthcoming marriage.
PE likely to separate from a Miss L, because of her renewal of Hymeneal chains. Presumably a reference to Harriet Lewin, subsequently married to George Grote - a scandal briefly referred to in PE's entry in the DNB, and further described in the Elizabethan, May 1897, p.298.
Advises circumspection on the matter to which PE alludes. The allusiveness and circumlocutions of the language may point to the Harriet Lewin affair.
PE and a Mr Collins have been rivals in love for a young lady - a clandestine amour and a scandal in the neighbourhood. Greek is the chief point of resemblance between PE and Mr Collins - could Mr Collins therefore be a pseudonym for George Grote? HH wonders how the secret got out - did the 'young Lombard' let it slip to exonerate himself, or did the lady's family, with whom PE has quarrelled, do so out of a spirit of vengeance?