Turgenev has copied out a quatrain from the larger work reading:

“S’occuper c’est savoir jouir
L’oisiveté pèse et tourmente;
L’âme est un feu, qu’il faut nourrir
Et qui s’éteint, s’il ne s’augmente”.

Walker begins by apologising for his delayed reply, explaining that his father died in a fire that destroyed the upper stories of their house at Eccles Street, and that Lord Charlemont also died, resulting in him being unwell from a cold and mental suffering. He then turns to literary matters, mentioning Sheridan’s Pizarro, Malone, Pope Agris, and Voltaire’s Merope.

A corrected manuscript copy of De la nouvelle Philosophie de Newton. The text presents variations on the versions printed in 1738 at Ledet in Amsterdam. The text seeks to introduce Newtonian ideas into France. This is bound with a manuscript copy of Essay sur la nature de feu et sur sa propagation published in 1738 by l’Académie des sciences de Paris.