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fallor, codicem Nahasi Leydensem in proprios usus transcripsisse. Prætereà in bibliothecæ locupletissimæ Schultensianæ indice, cujus unum exemplar, Huntero, amico meo, fidelitèr tradidi, alterum ipse avidè pervolutavi, hæc verba legi: :-" 6990. Septem Moallakat Arab. pulcherrimè scripta." Ecquis, amabò, codicem hunc emptum possidet? Quonam veniet pretio ? Dolet, emptorem me non fuisse; sed ego tunc variis et magnis negotiis ipse suspensus de suspensis carminibus ne cogitavi quidem. Adjuva me, per Musas oro, in opere hoc

meo lautâ supellectile ornando; et quicquid habes vel notarum vel lectionum variarum apud te reconditum, deprome atque imperti. Multa de familià tuâ Qλága dixi in prooemio, plura et magnifica, sed et vera dicturus. Scire in primis velim, ullúsne è septem poëtis, præter Amriolkaisum et Tarafem Latinè redditus apud vos prodierit. Librum meum, quem benè nitidum reddet Baumgartius pumex, expecta. Mater mea dilectissima omnium mulierum fuit, ut semper putavi, optima; est, ut confido, sanctissima; ego me luctu macerare non desinam. Te et Schultensiam tuam benè valere, si quàm citissimè certior factus fuero, id mihi erit gratissimum.-Vale.

No. XXXVIII.

Baron REVICZKY to Sir W. JONES.
MONSIEUR;

Londres, 30 Juin, 1789.

Par la Vestale, frégate qui devoit con

duire à la Chine le Colonel Cathcart, je vous ai

envoyé

envoyé une lettre, Monsieur, en réponse à une belle epitre Persanne, que le Sr. Elmsley libraire dans le Strand m'a fait tenir de votre part, et qui m'a servi d'un témoignage bien agréable du précieux souvenir dont vous continuez à m'honorer, malgré la distance des lieux qui nous sépare. Mai j'ai sçu que le Colonel étant mort en chemin la Vestale étoit retournée en Angleterre, et j'ai lieu de soupçonner que par cet accident ma lettre n'a pas atteint sa destination. J'ai reçu depuis peu un superbe ouvrage que vous avez fait imprimer à Calcutta ; et qui feroit honneur à la plus celébre imprimerie de l'Europe, accompagné d'une aussi élégante qu'obligeante lettre, où j'ai reconnue la main de quelque très-habile Chattât, si je suis encore en état d'en juger, car en vérité, faute de continuer à cultiver les langues Orientales, elles me sont devenues si étrangères, que sí je n'en avois jamais rien appris. Je n'ai pas encore vu la belle écriture Arabe si bien rendue par l'imprimerie, que dans le poème Persan dont vous m'avez fait l'honneur de me gratifier. Je suis bien faché que pendant mon séjour à Londres j'ai été privé de votre chère compagnie, qui m'auroit été d'une ressource infinie; et j'ignore encore si je jouirai de ce bonheur lors de votre retour, me voyant obligé de suivre bientôt ma nouvelle destination à Naples, où l'Empereur m'a nommé son Ministre. Mais quelle que soit ma destinée, je vous prie d'être persuadé, que l'absence et l'éloignement ne changeront jamais

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rien à la résolution que j'ai prise d'être toute ma vie par reconnoissance et par inclination, Votre très humble et très obeissant Serviteur,

REVICZKI.

Appendix. A.

The Design of "Britain Discovered,” an Heroic Poem; in Twelve Books.-By WILLIAM JONES.

Ne carmine quidem ludere contrarium fuerit: ideoque mibi videtur M. Tullius tantum intulisse eloquentiæ lumen, quod in hos quoque studiorum secessus excurrit.

Quintil. Instit. 1. x. 5.

The Idea of an Epic Poem, at Spa, July 1770,

anno ætat. 23.

BRITAIN DISCOVERED: a Poem. In Twelve

Books.

THE DESIGN.

THE first hint of this poem was suggested by a passage in a letter of Spenser to Sir Walter Raleigh, where having explained his intention in writing the Fairy Queen, he adds, that if he found his image of Prince Arthur, and the allegory of the twelve private virtues to be well accepted, he might, perhaps, be encouraged to frame the other part of political virtues in his person, after he

came

came to be king. What Spenser never lived to perform, it is my design in some measure to supply, and in the short intervals of my leisure from, the fatigues of the bar, to finish an heroic poem. on the excellence of our Constitution, and the character of a perfect king of England.

When this idea first presented itself to my mind, I found myself obliged, though unwillingly, to follow the advice of Bossu, who insists, that a poet should choose his subject in the abstract, and then search in the wide field of universal history for a hero exactly fitted to his purpose. My hero. was not easy to be found; for the story of King Arthur, which might have been excellent in the sixteenth century, has lost its dignity in the eighteenth; and it seemed below a writer of any genius to adopt entirely a plan chalked out by others; not to mention, that Milton had a design in his youth, of making Arthur his hero; that Dryden has given us a sketch of his intended poem on the same subject; and that even Blackmore had taken the same story; whose steps it were a disgrace to follow.

It only remains, therefore, to have recourse to allegory and tradition; and to give the poem a double sense; in the first of which, its subject is simply this, the discovery of our island by the Tyrian adventurers, who first gave it the name of Britain; in the second, or allegorical sense, it exhibits the character above mentioned, of a perfect king of this country,—a character the most glorious

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rious and beneficial of any that the warmest imagination can form. It represents the danger to which a king of England must necessarily be exposed, the vices which he must avoid, and the virtues and great qualities with which he must be adorned. On the whole, Britain Discovered, is intended as a poetical panegyric on our excellent Constitution, and as a pledge of the author's attachment to it; as a national epic poem, like those of Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Camoëns, designed to celebrate the honours of his Country, to display in a striking light the most important principles of politics and morality, and to inculcate these grand maxims, that nothing can shake our state, while the true liberty of the subject remains united with the dignity of the sovereign, and that, in all states, virtue is the only sure basis of private and public happiness.

A work of this nature might indeed have been written in prose, either in the form of a treatise, after the example of Aristotle, or of a dialogue, in the manner of Tully, whose six books on government are now unhappily lost; or perhaps in imitation of Lord Bolingbroke, who has left us something of the same kind in his idea of a patriot king: but as poetry has the allowed advantage over mere prose, of instilling moral precepts in a manner more lively and entertaining, it was thought proper to deliver the whole subject in regular measure, under the fiction of an heroic ad

venture.

The

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