Sir William Jones to Thomas Caldicott, Efq.

Crishna-nagur, Sept. 27, 1787.

Your brother fent me your letter at a convenient time, and to a convenient place, for I can only write in the long vacation, which I generally spend in a delightful cottage, about as far from Calcutta as Oxford is from London, and close to an ancient university of Brahmans, with whom I now converse familiarly in Sanfcrit. You would be aftonished at the refemblance between that language and both Greek and Latin. Sanscrit and Arabic will enable me to do this country more effential fervice, than the introduction of arts (even if I fhould be able to introduce them) by procuring an accurate digeft of Hindu and Mohammedan laws, which the natives hold facred, and by which both justice and policy require that they should be governed.

I have published nothing; but Armenian clerks make fuch blunders, that I print ten or twenty copies of every thing I compose,

which are to be confidered as manuscripts. I beg you will fend me your remarks on my plan of an epic poem. Sanfcrit has engaged my vacations lately; but I will finish it, if I live. I promise you to attend to all that is said, especially if alterations are fuggefted, always reserving to myself the final judgment. One thing I am inflexible in; I have maturely confidered the point, and am refolved to write in blank verse. I have not time to add my reafons; but they are good.

I thank you for Sheridan's fpeech, which I could not however read through. For the laft fixteen years of my life, I have been in a habit of requiring evidence of all affertions, and I have no leifure to examine proofs in a business fo foreign to my pursuits.

*

If Haftings and Impey are guilty, in God's name let them be punished; but let them not be condemned without legal evidence. I will fay more of myself, than you do of yourself, but in few words. I never was unhappy in England; it was not in my nature to be fo; Life-V. II.

K

but I never was happy till I was fettled in India. My conftitution has overcome the climate; and if I could say the same of my beloved wife, I fhould be the happiest of men; but she has perpetual complaints, and of course I am in perpetual anxiety on her account.

Sir William Jones to J. Wilmot, Efq.
Crishna-nagur, Bengal, Oct. 3, 1787.

*

that you,

I cannot, however,

let the feafon flip, without fcribbling a few lines to tell my conftitution feems to have overcome the climate, and that I fhould be as happy as mortal man can be, or perhaps ought to be, if my wife had been as well as I have for the laft three years.

I have nothing to fay of India politics, except that Lord Cornwallis and * * * are juftly popular, and perhaps the most virtuous governors in the world. Of English politics I fay nothing; because I doubt whether you and I fhould ever agree in them. I do not mean the narrow politics of contending par

ties, but the great principles of government and legislation, the majefty of the whole nation collectively, and the confiftency of popular rights with regal prerogative, which ought to be fupported, to suppress the oligarchical power. power. But in India I think little of

these matters.

Sir William Jones to J. Shore, Efq.

Crishna-nagur, Oct. 10, 1787.

you

I hope in less than a fortnight to fee in perfect health, as I fhall leave this charming retreat on the 20th. I want but a few leaves of having read your copy of Hafez twice through; and I am obliged to you for the most agreeable task (next the Shah-nameh) I ever performed. The annexed elegy* was fent to me by the poft; and I send it to you, because I think you will like it. There

* The elegy alluded to, which has been since printed in a collection of poems, is the following:

PHILEMON. An Elegy.

Where shade yon yews the church-yard's lonely bourn, With faultering step, absorb'd in thought profound, Philemon wends in solitude to mourn,

While evening pours her deep'ning glooms around.

is a great pathos in the fourth tetrastick; and I know unhappily that exceffive grief is neither full of tears, nor full of words; yet if a dramatic poet were to represent such grief naturally, I doubt whether his conduct would be approved, though with fine acting and fine founds in the orcheftra, it ought to have a wonderful effect. Lady J. is pretty well; a tiger about a month old, who is fuckled by a goat, and has all the gentlenefs of his foftermother, is now playing at her feet. I call him Jupiter. Adieu.

Loud shrieks the blast, the sleety torrent drives,
Wide spreads the tempest's desolating power;
To grief alone Philemon reckless lives,

No rolling peal he heeds, cold blast, nor shower.

For this the date that stamp'd his partner's doom;
His trembling lips receiv'd her latest breath.
"Ah! wilt thou drop one tear on Emma's tomb ?"
She cried and clos'd each wistful eye in death.

No sighs he breath'd, for anguish riv'd his breast;
Her clay-cold hand he grasp'd, no tears he shed,
"Till fainting nature sunk by grief oppress'd,
And ere distraction came all sense was fled.

Now time has calm'd, not cur'd Philemon's woe,
For grief like his, life-woven, never dies;
And still each year's collected sorrows flow,
As drooping o'er his Emma's tomb he sighs.