[blind embossed:]
Killyleagh

18^th Jan 1862

Dear Sir,

I send you back by this post the five publications you lent me – for which I am much obliged to you. I sent Oppert, Renan and Menant copies of my last paper & added a letter to Menant – I hope the direction Caen will suffice to find him. Oppert will I suppose launch another of his pamphlets against me; but I scarcely think he will have such a triumph over me as he has had over the four others.

It is really astonishing how any one can examine the Assyrian decipherments without coming to the conclusion that they are in the main sound. In this country, persons will not examine them – in many cases, I am sure, because they have a sort of consciousness that if they did they would have to accept them, & that would involve the most unwelcome conclusion that persons who thought they knew everything that could be known about Semitic languages were ignorant of one of the most important of all these languages.

I am trying to get a paper ready for the Royal Asiatic Society on some Chaldean titles which have an historical value. I have so much to do, however, in various ways that I doubt if I can have it in time for the next meeting – tuesday week

Yours vy truly
Edw Hincks

[envelope:]
H.F. Talbot Esq^e
Millburn Tower
Edinburgh
[added by WHFT upper left recto:]
D^r Hincks