Upbraids PE for not writing. Asks after his progress with Sophocles. Politics has been occupying everyone - Pitt is hostile to the current administration. CW has spoken in Parliament on the feeble conduct which has emboldened Bonaparte and caused the present war - a sentence of the speech was in Latin (quotation from Cicero?), which he presents for PE's approval. His brother Henry has been appointed His Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of Dresden, at a salary of
PE has consulted a female friend about his love affair, who has recommended that he propose via an intermediary. CW (and his wife) strongly disagree, 'though recognising that PE is nervous of losing a pleasant and easy intercourse. His wife still suffering the consequences of her 'misfortune' (miscarriage?). CW's immediate plans (including a fortnight's exercise with his cavalry) preclude organising a visit from PE. Recommends that PE accepts one of the select preacherships at Oxford as well as the Bampton lectureship in order to prove that he has followed the studies of his profession (as well as those horribly pagan and idolatrous ones which are still pursued at Westminster and Eton).
Abuse of Classical Journal. Proposal for a new journal (for the moment to be kept secret, and to be called The Cambridge Literary Journal)) to be run by Monk, Kaye, Kennel, Blomfield and brother. Asks for support and contributions.
Walpole seeking to use (and attribute) some PE emendations of Chandler's reading of an inscription in a forthcoming work on Greece and Asia (Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, 1817?). The letter is black-edged.
Copy of a letter to PE (from Monk), re plagiarism. PE had written an anonymous review of Blomfield's Prometheus for the Church of England Quarterly Review, and suggested a few emendations of Athenaeus. Porson (died 1808) during his lifetime had claimed these as his own - therefore plagiarism. Monk (in an anonymous and subsequent review of the same in the CEQR) had alluded to the matter, and PE had written to Gifford (ed. CEQR) asking him to convey to the anonymous Monk that the emendations had occurred to him separately. Here Monk, full of admiration, praise and apology, say that he only wanted to convey Porson's own belief. PE had thought the anon. reviewer was Dobree - Monk concludes that Dobree is absent in Spain, and therefore cannot be the culprit.
