long neglected to write you, I shall conclude with assuring
you that notwithstanding this neglect I have the highest
respect and esteem for you and for your whole family, and
that I am, most sincerely and affectionately, ever yours,

ADAM SMITH.

EDINBURGH, CANONGATE, _26 Oct. 1780_.[307]

As this Danish translation has come up, it may be mentioned here that
the _Wealth of Nations_ had already been translated into several other
languages. The Abbe Blavet's French version ran through the pages of
the _Journal de l'Agriculture, des Commerce, des Finances, et des
Arts_ month by month in the course of the years 1779 and 1780, and was
then published in book form in 1781. This was not a satisfactory
translation, though through mere priority of occupation it held the
field for a number of years and went through a number of editions. In
1790 a second translation appeared by Roucher and the Marquise de
Condorcet, and in 1802 a third, the best, by Germain Garnier. Smith's
own friend Morellet, receiving a presentation copy from the author
through Lord Shelburne on its publication, carried it with him to
Brienne, the seat of his old Sorbonne comrade the Archbishop of
Toulouse, and set at work to translate it there. But he tells us
himself that the ex-Benedictine Abbe (Blavet), who had formerly
murdered the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ by a bad translation,
anticipated him by his equally bad translation of the _Wealth of
Nations_; and so, adds Morellet, "poor Smith was again betrayed
instead of being translated, according to the Italian proverb,
_Tradottore traditore_."[308] Morellet still thought, however, of
publishing his own version, offering it to the booksellers first for
100 louis-d'or and then for nothing, and many years afterwards he
asked his friend the Archbishop of Toulouse, when he had become
Minister of France, for a grant of 100 louis to pay for its
production, but was as unsuccessful with the Minister as he was with
the booksellers. All the good Abbe says is that he is sure the money
would have been well spent, because the translation was carefully
done, and he knew the subject better than any of the other
translators. Everything that was abstract in the theory of Smith was,
he says, quite unintelligible in Blavet's translation, and even in
Roucher's subsequent one, and could be read to more advantage in his
own; but after a good translation was published by Garnier in 1802,
the Abbe g