revifit

we cannot leave Calcutta long enough to your Indian Montpelier. As one of the Cymro-dorians, I am warmly interested in British antiquities and literature; but my honour is pledged for the completion of the new digeft of Hindu laws, and I have not a moment to spare for any other study.

Sir William Jones to Sir J. Sinclair, Bart. Whitehall.

Crishna-nagur, Oct. 15, 1791.

You may rely upon my best endeavours to procure information concerning the Afiatic wool, or soft hair; and the animals that carry it. I had the pleasure of circulating your very interefting tracts at Calcutta, and of exhibiting the fpecimens of very beautiful wool with which you favoured me. My own time, however, is engaged from morning to night in difcharging my public duties, and in arranging the new digeft of Indian laws. I must therefore depend chiefly on others in procuring the information you are defirous of obtaining. Mr. Bebb of the board of trade,

and Colonel Kyd who fuperintends the Company's garden, have promifed to affift me. The wool of these provinces is too coarse to be of use; but that of Kerman in Perfia, which you know by the name of Carmanian wool, is reckoned exquifitely fine, and you might I fuppofe procure the sheep from Bombay. The shawl goats would live, I imagine, and breed, in England; but it is no less difficult to procure the females from Cashmir, than to procure mares from Arabia.' When you fee Mr. Richardfon, do me the favour to give him my best thanks for the parcel, which he fent me by the defire of the Highland Society.

Sir William Jones to George Harding, Esq. Crifbna-nagur, Oct. 16, 1791.

MY DEAR SIR,

If the warmth of hearts were measured by the frequency of letters, my heart must be thought the coldeft in the world; but you, I am confident, will never apply fo fallacious a thermometer. In ferious truth, I am, and

muft be, the worst of correfpondents for the Life-V. II,

P

S

following reasons among a hundred, a strong glare and weak eyes, long tasks and short day-、 light, confinement in court fix hours a day, and in my chambers three or four, not to mention cafual interruptions and engagements. You spoke fo lightly of your complaint, that I thought it must be tranfient, and should have been extremely grieved, if, in the very moment when I heard you had been seriously ill, I had not heard of your recovery.

Anna Maria has promised me to fail for Europe in January 1793, and I will follow her, when I can live as well in England on my private fortune as I can do here on half my falary.

I cannot but like your fonnets, yet wifh you would abstain from politicks, which add little to the graces of poetry.

very

Sir William Jones to Sir Jofeph Banks.

Crishna-nagur, O. 18, 1791.

I thank you heartily for your kind

letters, but perhaps I cannot express my

thanks better than by answering them as exactly as I am able.

First, as to fending plants from India, I beg you to accept my excufes, and to make them to Sir George Young, for my apparent inattention to fuch commiffions. In fhort, if you wifh to transfer our Indian plants to the Western islands, the Company must direct Kyd and Roxburgh to send them, and their own captains to receive them, and attend to them.

We are in fad want of a travelling botanist, with some share of my poor friend Koenig's knowledge and zeal. A stationary botanist would fix on the indigo-fera, as the chief object of his care. Roxburgh will do much on the coaft, if he can be relieved from his terrible head-achs, but here we have no affistance.

I have neither eyes nor time for a botanist, yet with Lady Jones's affiftance, I am continually advancing; and we have examined about 170 Linnæan Linnæan genera. She brought home, a morning or two ago, the most lovely epidendrum that ever was feen, but the defcription of it would take up too much room in a letter; it grew on a lofty amra, but it is an

air plant, and puts forth its fragrant enamelled bloffoms in a pot without earth or water: none of the many species of Linnæus correfponds exactly with it. You must not imagine that, because I am, and shall be, faucy about the Linnæan language, that I have not the higheft veneration for its great author; but I think his diction barbarous and pedantic, particularly in his Philofophia Botanica, which I have a right to criticise, having read it three times with equal attention and pleasure. Had Van Rheede exhibited the Sanfcrit names with accuracy, we should not be puzzled with reading the Indian poems and medical tracts; but in all his twelve volumes, I have not found above ten or twelve names correctly expreffed, either in Sanfcrit or Arabic. I fhall touch again on botany, but I proceed with your first letter. I have little knowledge of Yacob Bruce; but his five volumes, which I read aloud, (except fome paffages which I could only read with my eyes) are fo entertaining that I wished for five more, and readily forgave not only his mistakes in the bo