Unidad documental simple 218 - William Whewell to Richard Jones

3 pp.

WW wants advice over the candidates for Thomas Turton's vacated chair (Regius Professor of Divinity): 'which is as you know one of our best University appointments, being about 800 pounds a year, and one of great influence'. The candidates are Mill [William Hodge Mill], Christopher Wordsworth (junior), Dr Lee [Samuel Lee?] - the Hebrew Professor and WW thinks Graham [John Graham?]. Mill is 'somewhat too near the Tractarians in his opinions'. Wordsworth is well aquainted with the Fathers 'and draws from them consequences very different from the Oxford men'. There is an expectation that WW should be a candidate: 'It would give me a power of trying to introduce improvements into the University, but I think it would not fall in with my schemes of building up moral philosophy. My philosophy grows under my hand, and grows into a form in which I think the world will not reject it. I must add that I believe I should be elected if I were to offer myself'.