PREFACE. IN presenting the public with an account of the Life of SIR WILLIAM JONES, I feel a particular anxiety, to guard against the charge of prefumption for an undertaking, which may be thought to require a more than ordinary fhare of learning and abilities. I hope therefore, to have credit for a declaration, that nothing but the earnest folicitation of Lady Jones, who knew my affection for her Husband when living, and my unabated regard for his memory, and who conceived that these qualifications might supply the deficiency of more effential talents, could have prevailed upon me, to enter upon a literary career, fo foreign to the habits of a life, of which more than fifty years are now elapfed. It may be proper to notice the materials, which I have used in this compilation, and to explain the plan which I have adopted in the arrangement of them. The first, is a fingle sheet written by Sir William Jones, containing fhort notices of his fituation and occupations during every year of his life; it is indeed extended beyond the date of his existence, to the 50th year, opposite to which the words cut, if God pleafes, are inferted; it appears to have been haftily written, a few months only before his death, and although the dates are fometimes inaccurate, and the notices too brief to supply more than a reference, it fuggefted enquiries which have fometimes terminated fatisfactorily, though more frequently in difappointment. paper however dictated the plan of the work, and I have endeavoured, as far as my materials permitted, to trace the life of Sir William Jones, year by year. This For the first twenty-two years of it, my authorities are ample and fatisfactory; they confift principally of memoranda written by Sir William himself, and in defcribing the occurrences of this period, I have frequently availed myself of his own words. I wish indeed that I could have used them exclufively, but the paper is not altogether in a form to admit of publication. The account of the laft twelve years of his life in India, is chiefly fupplied by my own recollection, affifted by information collected from his writings and correfpondence. Of the events of his life between 1768, his twenty-fecond year, and the date of his embarkation for India in 1783, my information is lefs complete, although I have spared no diligence in endeavouring to collect all that could be obtained. I was in hopes that the recollection of his contemporaries at Oxford, where he occafionally refided until he left England, might have supplied fome material anecdotes, and that farther information might have been procured from his companions in Westminster Hall, or on the Circuit, but my refearches have had little fuccefs, and I am chiefly indebted to his correfpondence for the information which I have been able to communicate. In the arrangement of thefe materials, it was my wish, as far as poffible, to make Sir William Jones describe himself; and with this view, I have introduced his letters into the body of the Memoirs. They develop his occupations, hopes, purfuits, and feelings; and although the narrative, from the introduction of them, may lose fomething in point of connection, this inconvenience, I flatter myself, will be more than compenfated by the letters themselves. By this mode they will excite an interest, which they might have failed to produce, if the fubftance or fubjects of them only had been interwoven into the narrative, with a reference to the letters themselves in the Appendix. This arrangement has however impofed upon me the neceffity of tranflating many of the letters of Sir William Jones and his learned correfpondents, from the Latin or French, and I have endeavoured to give the sense of them in a plain familiar ftyle. But I must warn the reader, that he is to expect nothing more in these translations, and that those who are qualified to peruse the original letters of Sir William Jones, will find in them an elegance which I do not pretend to transfuse into my verfion of them. Some few sentences of the original letters have been purposely omitted in the tranflation, and many paffages of the originals themselves have been fuppreffed, The Latin letters of Sir William Jones are printed in the Appendix, and with respect to them it is further proper to obferve, that in confequence of interlineations, corrections, erafures, and mutilation from time, I could not always ascertain the exact words which he ultimately adopted. In fuch cases I have been compelled to exercise my own judgment, and I defire the reader to notice this remark, left any inaccuracy of mine should be imputed to a man, who was equally qua |