BookRix

Revd. And Dear Sir, - I Have Just Received your Communication, And
Notwithstanding it Is Sunday Morning, And The Bells With Their Loud
And Clear Voices Are Calling me To Church, I Have Sat Down To
Answer It By Return Of Post. It Is Scarcely Necessary For Me To
Say That I Was Rejoiced to See The Chrestomathie Mandchou, Which
Will Be Of No Slight Assistance In learning the Tartar Dialect, On
Which Ever Since I Left London I Have Been Almost Incessantly
Occupied. It Is, Then, Your Opinion, That From The Lack Of
Anything in the Form Of Grammar I Have Scarcely Made Any Progress
Towards The Attainment Of Mandchou; Perhaps You Will Not Be
Perfectly Miserable At Being informed that You Were Never More
Mistaken In your Life. I Can Already, With The Assistance Of
Amyot, Translate Mandchou With No Great Difficulty, And Am
Perfectly Qualified to Write A Critique On The Version Of St.
Matthew'S Gospel, Which I Brought With Me Into The Country. Upon
The Whole, I Consider The Translation A Good One, But I Cannot Help
Thinking that The Author Has Been Frequently Too Paraphrastical,
And That In various Places He Must Be Utterly Unintelligible To The
Mandchous From Having unnecessarily Made Use Of Words Which Are Not
Mandchou, And With Which The Tartars Cannot Be Acquainted.