Sir William Jones to Dr. Ford.

Gardens, on the Ganges, Jan. 5, 1788.

Give me leave to recommend to your kind attentions Colonel Polier, who will deliver this to you at Oxford. He presents to the university an extremely rare work in Sanfcrit, a copy of the four vedas, or Indian fcriptures, which confirm, instead of oppofing the Mofaic account of the creation, and of the deluge. He is himself one of the beft-difpofed and beft informed men, who ever left India. If he embark to-morrow, I shall not be able to fend you, by him, an Arabic manufcript, which I have read with a native of Mecca, the poems of the great Ali. *

*

Our return to Europe is very diftant; but I hope, before the end of the eighteenth century, to have the pleasure of conversing with you, and to give you a good account of Perfia, through which I purpose to return.

Sir William Jones to Sir Jofeph Banks.

Gardens, near Calcutta, Feb. 25, 1788.

I was highly gratified by your kind letter, and have diffused great pleasure among our astronomers here, by fhewing them an account of the lunar volcano. The Brahmans, to whom I have related the discovery in Sanfcrit, are highly delighted with it. Public business preffes on me so heavily at this feafon, that I muft poftpone the pleasure of writing fully to you, till I can retire in the long vacation to my cottage, where I hear nothing of plaintiffs or defendants. Your fecond commiffion I will faithfully execute, and have already made enquiries concerning the dacca cotton; but I shall be hardly able to procure the feeds, &c. before the Rodney fails.

*

These letters defcribe the elegant occupations of a mind disciplined in the school of fcience, ardent to embrace it in all its extent, and to make even its amufements fubfervient

to the advancement of useful knowledge, and the public good. From the discharge of his appointed duties, we fee Sir William Jones returning with avidity to his literary pursuits, improving his acquaintance with botany, and, relaxing from the severity of ftudy by the perufal of the most admired Oriental authors, communicating his pleasures and acquirements to his friends. There are few of his letters in which he does not introduce the name of Lady Jones, with that affection which never abated: fhe was his conftant companion, and the affociate of the literary entertainment which occupied and amufed his evenings.

Amongst the letters which I have transcribed, I cannot pafs, without particular notice, that which he wrote to me in the beginning of 1787. The prediction which it contains, is a melancholy proof of the disappointment of human expectations; and I am now discharging the duty of affection for his memory, at a short distance only from the spot which he mentions, as the anticipated fcene of future delight, and where I once fondly

hoped to enjoy the happiness of his society. That happiness would indeed have imparted

a higher bloom to the valleys of Devonshire, which I now trace with the melancholy recollection, that the friend whom I loved, and whofe virtues I admired, is no more.

The introduction of the unvarnished tale of his refpectable Hindu friend, is a proof of that kindness and sensibility, which he ever felt for diftreffed merit. It is fuperfluous to add, what the reader will have anticipated, that the difpofition to relieve his wants was not fuffered to evaporate in mere profeffion.

In the midst of his public duties and litęrary employments, political fpeculations had but little share of his attention; yet the fentiments which he occafionally expreffes on this fubject, do honour to his heart, and prove that the welfare of his country was always nearest to it.

The hope with which he flatters himself, that his conftitution had overcome the climate, was unfortunately ill-founded; few months elapsed without his fuffering from the effects

of it, and every attack had a tendency to weaken the vigour of his frame.

Among other literary designs which he meditated, he mentions the plan of an epic poem. It was founded on the fame ftory which he had originally felected for a compofition of the fame nature in his twenty-fecond year, the discovery of England by Brutus; but his acquaintance with Hindu mythology had fuggefted to him the addition of a machinery perfectly new, by the introduction of the agency of the Hindu deities; and however wild or extravagant the fiction may appear, the discordancy may be easily reconciled by the actual fubjection of Hindustan to the British dominion, poetically visible to the guardian angels of that country. The first hint of this poem, was not fuggefted by the example of Pope, but by a paffage in a letter of Spenfer to Sir Walter Raleigh*; it is evident however, that Sir William Jones was not disposed to abandon the execution of his * Appendix A.