WW would like JCH's judgement on a matter concerning the son of Lord Monteagle [Aubrey Richard Spring Rice]. He has taken his degree and intends to take orders but is only 21. He needs advice on the best way to prepare for ministerial office during the next two years. Should he go to theological college or attach himself to some clergyman as a sort of lay curate? WW is giving his 5th course of lectures on morals to a considerable audience. Unfortunately Henry Taylor's life of Southey will be delayed due to his ill health. WW does not envy Taylor's task of ploughing through Southey's considerable archive of letters: 'Taylor appears from the book to be a man of more ability than I was aware of'. WW still has 'a hankering after etymology. Do you not think that when you and I grow old and are released from the heavier business of life we might re-establish the Etymological Society and work out some of our old plans? I do not see that the Philological Society is likely to supercede our labours'.
WW thanks JCH for the thought he has given WW's question and feels better able to discuss the matter with Aubrey Spring Rice. WW and forty Masters of Arts are taking singing lessons at the Lodge. Many of them want to be able to direct the teaching of singing in their parishes which they have or hope to have. WW finds that Taylor's Synonyms is going to be reprinted: 'There is much to disapprove of in the man...but he did something for the knowledge of German in England and might have done something for literature, if he had not been all extended on periodical review writing'. Has JCH got copies of the translations of Goethe's Hexameter Epistles which he inserted in the Athenaeum many years ago? WW would like to see them again.
Blakesley's sermon, hate of utilitarian philosophy, enquires whether it is too soon to start Aubrey on College preparation