From James Madison to Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta, [ca. 1 January 1817]
To Carlo Giuseppe Guglielmo Botta
Washington [ca. 1 January] 1817
Sir
I have been some time in debt for the obliging favor of your “Camillo.[”]1 Its subject as well as its Author makes me regret more than ever that my knowlege of the Italian does not enable me to do justice to the merits & enjoy the beauties of a poem in that language. A translation into English, well executed may mitigate my disappointment. In G. Britain this may take place. In this Country, the qualifications for such tasks & likely to be so employed, do not exist. But I have the satisfaction to learn that a translation of your “Storia della Guerra d’America” is contemplated by an american Citizen equally resputable for his literary talents & his political station.2 Accept Sir assurances of my friendly respects.
JM
FC (DLC). Addressed to Botta “Paris.”
1. See Botta to JM, 10 Jan. 1816, 10:154.
2. Botta’s work was translated by George Alexander Otis and published in a three-volume edition as History of the War of the Independence of the United States of America (Philadelphia, 1820–21).