Dear Henry
I hope you got all the letters I directed to Basle. I have got for you the Ezekiel Louis 25 (frame included) & ordered the Correggio <1> i.e. – provisionally, as it cannot be done yet – from Wallis <2>. There is a very good Magdalen by a <3> for L. 20 – which is not dear & I think would tempt you if you saw it. Have you any design of visiting Egypt or Greece next winter. I have a trunk full of books John <4> sent back – but which might be useful to you also if you came this way – such as Larchers Herodotus <5> – Plin. Nat hist. <6> – Anarcharsis <7> – Anastasius. <8> – & many others.These I would not send home if I thought they might be useful to anybody I knew coming out. I wish we had looked over them when you were here. I have found out Euph <9>. chamaesyce at last. I have found it before but passed it over as a Parietaria or some such nonsense. I have also made out E. Esula.
Yr Aff
W T H F S
H. Talbot Esqre
31 Sackville Street
London
Notes:
1. Antonio Allegri (Correggio) (1494–1534).
2. Probably George Augustus Wallis (1770-1847), Scottish born painter resident in Florence who also was an art dealer and served as a representative of art dealers.
3. Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599–1641), painter.
4. John George Charles Fox Strangways (1803–1859), MP.
5. Pierre Henri Larcher (1726–1812), Herodotus (Oxford: Talboys & Wheeler), 1824).
6. Pliny, Naturalis historia.
7. Probably Jean Jacques Barthélemy, Le voyage du jeune Anarcharsis en Grèce (Amsterdam; Maradan: Paris, 1789).
8. Anastasius the Librarian.
9. Euphorbia.