1854. Robert Southey to Herbert Hill, 15 January [1811] ⁠* 

Friday. Jan^y. 15.

Rocha Pitta [1]  I hope has reached you – I sent with it some of your papers which you may probably like to have at hand.

I have just procured from an Edinburgh Catalogue a book containing three treatises upon the Inquisition, which are said in the title page to have been presented to Innocent XI by Vieyra. [2]  The title says Juntos por hum Anoncino. Em Veneza com Licenza do Santo Officio, na officina de Joaõ Moretin. 1750. & on the back of the title is [MS missing] singular apology for typographical errors, saying that the printers did not understand [MS missing] of Portuguese, & the Editor who spoke it very badly could not correct their [MS missing] such blunders perhaps you never saw in any other work. I have no doubt [MS missing] is English printing. – the preface is manifestly by a Jew, [MS missing] & the tracks, as far as I have yet read, bear no marks whatever of el mismissimo Vieyra en su mesma mesmedad, as he is called in Fr. Gerundio [3]  – I will endeavour by means of D’Israeli, who is of the synagogue, to find out who was the editor of this curious, but app[MS missing] very useless publication, – for by whom was it to be read!

Have you that Relations of Madagascar Brazil &c [4]  which I see you have read? I sent for it from a catalogue unsuccesfully some twelvemonths ago. Dellon the author of the Rel. de L Inquisicion de Goa [5]  was at both places about half a century afterwards. I have his travels, [6]  & they are some of the best in the French language, & will be very useful in the Hist. of P. Asia.

This chart would have come sooner – but poor Tom could neither stand nor sit to finish it. – The Mauritias [7]  has no plates but what are in Barlaeus [8]  & only such of them as fitted the subject of the poem, – but they are earlier impressions (tho both books are the same date,) – for two or three of the plates are unfinished.

RS.