Joshua Marshman, Serampore, to William Hope, Liverpool, 13 January 1818.

Serampore

Jany 13.th 1818

My dear Sir,

          Permit me tho’ personally unknown to you, to drop you a few lines to express the satisfaction and esteem excited in our minds by the interest so generously taken by you and your Son and your excellent family, in what we are enabled to do at Serampore to promote the cause of God. Some years ago either you or your Son kindly sent me a copy of Lancaster’s System, enriched with some highly sensible observations in m.s. The book unhappily did not reach me till some years after, which prevented my acknowledging your goodness sooner, but I now beg you to accept my sincere thanks, together with a copy of a small work on National Schools, from which you will see that the Lord is blessing us in this way far beyond our expectation; and that if due means be afforded, there is reason to suppose that these schools will prove of the highest value in diffusing abroad the light of Divine revelation

          I have taken the liberty of sending you and your Son, who is held in the highest estimation by my son as well as myself; a copy of the Pentateuch in Chinese just completed with our metallic moveable characters, of which lot we expect your kind acceptance. You will perceive that the whole Pentateuch is brought into a volume quite portable; and that the latter part and that only, is printed on both sides of the page without any injury to them legibly. Had the whole volume been thus printed, as we now print all we do, the size would have been still more reduced; and the New Testament which contains only a sixth part more of letter press, will when printed on both sides, make a volume little as nothing exceeding that in size.

         I have also taken the liberty to send to your kind care by Captn [?] of the [Bounty?] Hall four other copies, which if you will kindly send to D.r Ryland at Bristol, in a way the cheapest and most expeditious, you will very highly oblige me. I have also further troubled you by thus directing to your kind care a large packet of Letters for D.r Ryland, which you will greatly oblige me by sending in the same manner, as speedily as you can. It struck me that this ship may arrive with in four or five days of the Annual Baptist Meeting in London held the 25.th of June, and in this case, as D.r Ryland will be in London, the parcels directed to him there, to the care of Wm Burls Esq.r of Lothbury, would reach him more quickly. Pardon, my giving you so much trouble, and believe me with kindest regards to your Son & Mrs Hope

                                             My dear Sir

                                                      Most respectfully yours

                                                               J Marshman

P.S. Mr Pearce and Mrs Ward want to be kindly remembered to you. Let me hope to be indulged with a line answer—[paper torn] your worthy Son.

+pray is my worthy friend D.r Adam Clark in Liverpool?  If he be kindly present him with the blank copy of the Pentateuch with my cordial regards

Text: Timothy Whelan, Baptist Autographs in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 1741-1845 (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2009), pp. 181-82 (annotated version); also Eng. MS. 387, fol. 123c, John Rylands University Library of Manchester.  Letter is marked on first page “Recd 10 July.” William Hope, Esq., of Liverpool, served for many years as the director of the Yorkshire and Lancashire Auxiliary Society of the BMS. In the early part of the nineteenth century William Hope (most likely the father) built the first house in what became Hope Street in Liverpool. Joseph Lancaster (1778-1838) was education entrepreneur and founder of the Lancastrian system. William Hopkins Pearce (1794-1840) was a BMS missionary to India, 1817-40. Adam Clarke (1760?-1832) was a Wesleyan preacher, Biblical commentator, theologian, linguist, and scholar. Reference here is to Joshua Marshman’s Hints Relative to Native Schools, Together with the Outline of an Institution for Their Extension and Management (Serampore, 1816, 1817). Between July 1816 and October 1817, as G. E. Smith writes, BMS missionaries opened 103 schools, instructing more than 6,700 students. By the time of the above letter, BMS missionaries in the East were operating 126 schools with a student population of more than 9000. Besides education and preaching, Marshman also devoted himself to mastering the Chinese language, the results of which were several significant translations of Chinese works into English and from English into Chinese, some with the assistance of Johannes Lassar. Among these were The Works of Confucius (Serampore, 1809), Dissertation on the Characters and Sounds of the Chinese Language (1809), Elements of Chinese Grammar (1814), and the translation of the Bible into Chinese (mentioned in the above letter) between 1818 and 1824. See F. A., Cox, History of the Baptist Missionary Society, from 1792 to 1842, 2 vols. (London: T. Ward, and G. and J. Dyer, 1842), 1.231-33, 315; G. E. Smith, “Patterns of Missionary Education: The Baptist India Mission 1794-1824,” Baptist Quarterly 20 (1963-64), 300; M. A. Laird, “The Serampore Missionaries as Educationists 1794-1824,” Baptist Quarterly 22 (1967-68), 320-25; Keith Farrer, William Carey: Missionary and Botanist (Kew, Victoria, Australia: Carey Baptist Grammar School, 2005), 41-46.