JB/013/183/001

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1821. June 4.
To Carvalho

1. Ao Senhor Deputado Jose Baptista Felguiras
Senhor Jose de Silva Carvalho
&c &c &c.
(Tuesday)

Sir

When as yet I had but a prospect of
the honour I have just received, I was at no loss to distinguish
the kind and illustrious hand to which, if ever it came, I
should stand principally indebted for it. A candle such as
this was not destined to be kept under a bushel. It is of the
number of those lights, with which it was fit that the Gentiles
should be enlightened: enlightened even till their eyes aked.
It has, accordingly, after being recast in an English mould,
been multiplied by eight, and each unit sent at the same
moment for insertion to one of our eight Morning Newspapers:
the most servile not excepted. It is impossible to say which of
them, or indeed whether any, will, or even can, give insertion
to it: that in some other of our Newspapers it will make its
appearance there can not however be a doubt.

Something it seems necessary I should
attempt to trouble you with, on the subject of the translation
of my works. I should be alike insensible to interest and to
duty were I to omitt any thing of what depends upon me
towards turning dispositions such as those in question, to the
best account possible.

Such as you may have seen being
the enormity of the aggregate mass, selection and distribution
are operations, which, for that purpose present themselves,
both of them, as indispensable: selection, not only of the entire
works, but of those parts in them, which, exclusively or
preferably, afford in the eyes of the author any thing of a promise,
of rendering service in any shape, in a country, the
circumstances of which are in so many points so different from
those of the land which gave them birth: distribution, among
different hands: I mean different translators: for, in such an
extent, such is the variety, that, in many instances, that which
would suit the taste and acquirements of this or that one,
would not do so in regard to this or that other. But this is a
task, which must be mine if any body's: and, by the present
opportunity, there is no time for it.

Identifier: | JB/013/183/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 13.
Date_1	1821-06-04	Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	013	Main Headings	rid yourselves of ultramaria
Folio number	183	Info in main headings field	to carvalho
Image	001	Titles
Category	correspondence	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	d1 / e1
Penner	john flowerdew colls	Watermarks
Marginals		Paper Producer
Corrections	jeremy bentham	Paper Produced in Year
Notes public	letter 2772, vol. 10	ID Number	4632
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