XXX.

To D. Frederico Perez Bayer.*

March, 1774.

I HAVE received a most elegant copy of your Treatise on the Phoenician Language and Colonies, and I am at a loss to decide whether it is most learned or entertaining. Although I fear, like Diomed, that I shall give you brass in exchange for your gold; yet I send you, as a proof of my gratitude and esteem, my Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry; and it will afford me great satisfaction to learn that they please you.

Farewell.

• A Spanish gentleman of great learning. The letter was written in Latin.

XXXI.

From H. A. Schultens.*

To the phoenix of his time, and the ornament of the age-health!

Amsterdam, Sept. 1774.

WHEN I reflect, my dear Jones, upon the fortunate period which I passed in your happy island, I feel the most exquisite delight at the recollection of the pleasure and improvement which I derived from your society; at the same time, my anxiety for your company excites the most lively regret at our separation. If I cannot altogether conquer it, I can at least alleviate it, by corresponding with you.

Nothing but a variety of unusual occupations could have delayed my writing to you so long after my return to Amsterdam; I was moreover apprehensive of interrupting your studies by my intrusion. The receipt of the obliging present of your Commentaries+ has removed all my fear on this account, and affords me a most agreeable proof of your remembrance. Accept my sincerest thanks

• Written in Latin.

† On Asiatic Poetry, published in 1774.

for your finished and most elegant work, which I have eagerly read again and again with admiration and astonishment.

As sincere a lover as yourself of the Muses, how much I regret their unhappy lot, that whilst they have so few admirers, one of their most distinguished votaries should be seduced from their service by the discordant broils of the bar! Do they not then possess such charms and graces, as to merit a preference to others, who have no portion but wealth and honour? Is not their beauty so attractive, their dress so elegant and enchanting—as to fascinate their admirers to a degree, which makes them despise all others, and feel no delight but in their society? Forgive, my dear Jones, this friendly expostulation.

Two or three copies only of your work have reached us: I beg you will not suffer the inattention of booksellers to deprive us of a larger supply. You will receive shortly a little inaugural discourse which I pronounced here, "On extending the limits of Oriental Literature." It was done too much in haste to be as perfect as it ought to have been, and as I could have made it with more leisure. The office which I hold here is most agreeable to me, but is attended with this inconvenience-that the duties of it allow me no time for the pursuit of other studies; and the attention, which I am forced to bestow on grammatical institutions, on explanatory lectures on the Old Testament, and in disquisitions on the Jewish antiquities, precludes the perusal of Arabic, and still more of Persian authors. But I submit the more cheerfully to this restraint, as the assiduity of my present exertions will produce

more leisure in future; and when I have once committed to paper the mass of lectures which I have annually to repeat, I shall then be at full liberty to employ myself as I please. I have absolutely determined to publish Meidani, but it will require the labour of ten years: you well know, that without a competent knowledge, not only of the language of the East, but of Oriental history, ceremonies, and manners, it would be madness to attempt it. Whether my labours will ever have the assistance of a midwife, time must show. Professor Scheidius is employed in publishing Giewhari; the expense of the undertaking far exceeds his means; but he hopes to provide against this difficulty, by publishing one or more numbers annually, according to alphabetical arrangement; by which means the sale of each may furnish the expense of the succeeding. I have nothing farther to communicate to you, but I most anxiously long to see you. If you have the ambition of your countryman, Banks, to expose yourself to the inclemency of winter by visiting me here, all my fear of the cold will be lost in the hope that a long and intense frost may detain you. Nothing, however, can give me more pleasure, either in winter or summer, than to have you for my guest. My wife, whom I married about five months since, is equally anxious to see a man, of whom she hears her husband perpetually talking; she, as well as my father, who received inexpressible delight in the perusal of your Commentaries, desires to be remembered to you: he entertains the highest respect and esteem for you. Let me know how you are, and whether your mother and sister are well. Do me the favour also to inform them, that

I shall ever remember with gratitude the obligations which I owe to their great politeness and attention to me. Consider me ever as the humble servant of yourself and friends.

:

Farewell, and love me ever.

P. S. I almost forgot to mention our Damascene prince his name, I think, is Joseph Abas. I regret, that during his residence at this place, he only called upon me two days before his departure for Brussels. I was highly delighted with his liberal, mauly, and truly Arabian spirit: neither did he appear deficient in polite literature; but of this you are a better judge than I am. For my own part, I must ever retain a regard for a man, whose conversation so entertained and interested me under the attack of a fever, that it absolutely prevented the return of it.