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LETTER 35 (Fragment)

To REVELL PHILLIPS

Zurich 1833 Decr 18th

MY DEAR PHILLIPS,--I beg you to present my best compliments to Mrs. R. Phillips for her kind message: I am afraid our friend Kelsall was guilty of putting me into the Athenĉum. It is of as little consequence as possible, but curious enough that those lines of which I imagined that I had burnt the only copy some years ago in Gottingen, should nevertheless have gained the light of letter press in London. I wish they had been more worthy of it.

With all deference to the opinion of Mrs. R. Phillips and all thank's for her kind partiality, I cannot help thinking that every able bodied person, capable of what's called tuning the lyre to all manner of ballads &c who spares the much annoyed reading public his possible and impossible productions, is entitled to some sort of acknowledgment for his rare forbearance.

I believe that the London publishers are extremely unwilling to publish translations of foreign medical works: nevertheless I should wish much to know whether no one would undertake the printing of one which is destined to appear at Easter, Schoenlien's Natural History of the diseases of Europeans--it will consist of about 6 vols of which 1 or 2 will come out in the Spring--Sch: is perhaps the most distinguished of German Physicians, (now professor here, banished by that ingenious Jack-a-napes of Bavaria) & his work is destined to attract the attention of the medical men of all nations.

I know both him and German, and should wish to render the literature of my country a service by translating the book--for the MSS of the first volume I would require nothing but cannot afford anything more than the trouble. I know that the book must be sooner or later Englished, I do not expect that any bookseller will take my offer and so in the end it will be done like most of the Anglo-German things of the kind by some one only half acquainted with the language as an exercise.

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