Written from Foxley, Price's estate near Yazor, Herefordshire.
This item was formerly identified as MA 1581 (Price) 4.
This letter is from a large collection of letters written to Sir George Howland Beaumont (1753-1827) and Lady Margaret Willes Beaumont (1758-1829) of Coleorton Hall, and to other members of the Beaumont family.
Teasingly chiding Beaumont for his silence: "Turkey, chine, welch mutton, stilton cheese, Burton ale (a list that makes my mouth water while I am writing it) are all goods of import to you Londoners, but news is your staple commodity, & god knows most shamefully adulterated, but we good easy folks receive it as genuine & are satisfied if you do but give us enough of it"; agreeing to "subscribe to Combe because you desire it" (probably referring to a work in preparation by William Combe), but saying that he supposes it will be "highly monarchical, a sort of anti-Belsham" (possibly a reference to the historian William Belsham); adding that he would like to see Combe again, though he suspects that Combe is the author of several negative reviews of his Letter to Repton: "there is a sort of malicious ingenuity in the manner of asserting the most direct falsehoods, that can only belong to a steady veteran in the art of lying, & nobody has had more [sea?]-service, as Captain O'Callaghan calls it, than my old friend Combe"; adding that Combe has accused him of making concessions to Repton and abandoning his positions: "he of course does not produce any instances or even make references to passages where such concessions or contradictions appear [...] trusting that the indolence of most readers will be equal to his impudence"; informing Beaumont about new developments in his ongoing feud with Repton; saying that a Mr. Marshall has made "a most fierce attack" on him and Richard Payne Knight; explaining that Marshall has somehow gotten the idea that "Knight is a sort of needy Poet & I his Patron & that having some odd quirks of my own about improvement [...] I ordered my Bard to write some verses in order to try the taste of the public & finding his poem was well received, followed it up with my prose"; adding that he knows another attack is coming from a different quarter, but he suspects it will be "candid & ingenious" and he welcomes it; describing in great detail a Welsh friend of his, the painter Thomas Jones, and saying that he will be "proud to see you at Penkerrig [Pencerrig]."