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Tuesday Dec: 26 1780 1/2 after 7 in the eveng
I was going to write to night at all events:
but now I find a letter of yours on my table;
dated Novr 21 O.S. = 2d Decr
that and a dish of Tea dispatched, and I
resume the pen. It was to tell you about the
forwardship of transl. Introd.
Well now I have reced it; but I wish the
Devil had flown away with it instead
of the Postman's bringing it here. If it be
true that there is so little chance of doing
any thing there, it would have been much
better for me not to have known it till
after my affair is finished. I shant be
able now to write a letter worth a farthing.
By the bye I must now tell you since
I have never told you yet that when
you supposed me to have number'd the
paragraphs in my rough draught in the
same manner as those were since to have been
in the copy which I sent you, you did
me too much honour: for want of which
your criticisms could not be perfectly understood.
To supply that comparison send
me therefore the two first words of each
paragraph along with the number of it
This you must do without loss of time as
you will see by the sequel.
It is a monstrous plague to me your
driving it into my head with a fresh
mallet every post that it must must
must be in French; when it can't can't
can't be in French, and so there's an end
of it. You might as well tell me it must
be
---page break---
be in Turkish. There's not a creature I could
get to translate it; and as for doing it myself,
were I to attempt such a thing it
would take me up at least half a year,
a task which I would not undertake for anything
less than the certainty of that appointment
which you tell me I have so feeble
a chance of.
As to Impr: for Debt (not Dept as
you always write it) I may possibly kick
up a thing of that sort in French when I
have done Introd. If so I would send it
in Ms. for you to get printed there.
it should amount to about 50 or 60
pages. But what a cursed penance it is
for me to go to work blindfold to work
according to orders of your worship upon presumption
of your infallibility without
any data to judge from or knowing a syllable
about the why or the wherefore, and
all to no purpose for it won't be either to your
mind or to their mind when all is done.
The object I am to have in view is to accommodate
it to the taste of people then:
and all that I am informed about them is
that they are incapable of reading anything
or distinguishing good from bad.
In the midst of all these disheartening circumstances
it is some comfort that the bigoted
old woman is dead: that seems to give us
another string to our bow: It will be very
odd if a body's own language should not be
endurable; however if we can't get what we
want, we may possibly get something to keep
body & soul together.
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Identifier: | JB/539/117/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 539.
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1780-12-26 |
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539 |
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117 |
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001 |
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Correspondence |
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Jeremy Bentham |
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