TALBOT2374

Atheneum ¹
Saturday

Dear Talbot

I am very much obliged to you for your kind offer which presents a great temptation in the circumstances of your being so near a neighbour. There are however one or two [illegible deletion] considerations which must prevent my coming to any immediate decision. One of these is my having agreed to go & help Hare ² at Hirstmonceaux next Spring, in consequence of which he has I believe made arrangements with his present curate to leave at that time – Another is of a different kind & though it would have been absurd to mention it if you had not made me such an offer it is perhaps right to do so now – The fact is that I find it requires a greater effort than I had expected, to settle myself permanently at so great a distance from my own friends & family of whom there is already a [illegible] established round the Ancestral home – I already hold a family living of about 160 [symbol] but it is a small & remote village on the moors & has no house on it If I could get another living small or great with a house [illegible deletion] on it either in the neighbourhood or within a feasible distance I should of course very much prefer it And I may possibly have some chance of effecting this – Do you conceive my position, & can you after having made a gratuitous offer brook this division-empiricism? If you can I will proceed as fast as I may to eliminate these two unknown quantities & send you the result.

I am very glad you meditate longer contributions to the Phil. M.³ It seems to me most worthy of support Perhaps its only fault is being too good – fit readers will be few: Yet in time it must create more, & raise, or at least contribute to raise the standard of English Scholarship – Hare’s admiration of Thirlwalls ⁴ articles knows no bounds & I don’t wonder at it – of his scholarship I do not pretend to judge, lest his style seem to me a model of that kind spirit Hare wrote to me (before I had got the [illegible]⁵ that his first, the Ancæus I think, had raised him at once above all English, & placed him on a level with the first german scholars – The irony in his review of the Bonn professors lucubration on Kenophons good citizenship is perfect – To vary the Streams criteria of illness, I have amused myself with translating not publishing one or two of Goethe’s ⁶ poesie of which as they are short you shall give me tho’ the weather is hot a critical opinion. Hare wants me to join him in translating Schleiermachers Einleitungen ⁷ to Plato’s dialogues qu’en pensez vous ⁸ They are marvellously hard german.

Ever yours
W.

I am better –

W. H. F. Talbot Esq^re
31 Sackville Street