Thanks PE for inserting notice of marriage in papers. Is the house ready?

PE a candidate for the preachership of Lincoln's Inn (and several other letters re canvassing and counting votes). NB Lincoln's Inn not mentioned by Hallam in any of these letters - see note at 68 Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn.

Advises against taking precipitate steps. PE is unlikely to succeed - PE has had insufficient opportunity and no encouragement, and there is disparity of age and character. Failure will bring disagreeable consequences, coupled with the 'late business, which is by no means grown stale.'

Miss L has talked to a friend. PE has said evil and unfounded things to hurt Miss L's character, e.g. that she walked by moonlight with George Grote. PE should act as if he had never loved or hated. Miss L is handsome, clever and good-natured; she may not have acted rightly, but she has suffered very severely, not only in her prospects of Grote, which perhaps were never very decided but also by becoming a public talking point, and her spirits are now hurt. PE should be a friend, and even help her with 'young George.'

Knowing that PE has a 'tender regard for Westminster,' he questions the Latinity of the last 2 lines of the 1821 Prologue.

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?

George Grote will not renew his addresses to the lady.