“. . . Mr
Marshal desires me to add that he has conceived the intention of
writing to Volney, who is now at Paris,
and printing, as we understand, his travels in America, to request him, upon
the strength of having been the translator of his ‘Ruins of Empires’—a translation which
has been very successful and much praised here—to send him, if he felt no
impropriety in it, the sheets of his present work before publication. But our
laws relative to corresponding with an enemy are so complicated and severe,
that Mr Marshal, upon trial, has found it impracticable to
send his letter. He thinks it not impracticable that, through Pougens, you might effect his object for him.
He observes that the reputation of Volney as a traveller
has been so puffed by
| 350 | WILLIAM GODWIN |
