mine, and give me comfort, since, after Parnell's departure, he is almost the only company I keep. As for news, the only article I know is, that Mrs. Par is dead and buried. Mr. and Mrs. Sumner are well the latter thanks you for bringing the letter from your old acquaintance, and the former has made an elegant present. I am now very much taken up with study; am to speak Antony's speech in Shakspeare's Julius Cæsar, (which play I will read to you when I come to town,) and am this week to make a declamation. I add no more than the sincere well wishes of your faithful friend, &c. WILLIAM JONES.

DEAR SIR,

Dr. Hunt to Mr. Jones.

Ch. Church, March 2, 1774.

I RETURN you my hearty thanks for your most acceptable present of your excellent book on the Asiatic Poetry. I should have made you my acknowledgments for this great favour before, but I have been so entirely engaged in reading the book (which I have done from the beginning to the end,) that I have not had time to think of its worthy author, any otherwise than by tacitly admiring, as I went along, his exquisitely fine parts, and wonder. ful learning. Indeed, so engaging is the beautiful style of this admirable performance, and so striking the observations it contains, that it is next to im possible for a person, who has any taste for this branch of literature, when he has once taken it into his hand, to lay it aside again, without giving it a thorough perusal. I find you have enriched this work with a great variety of curious quotations

and judicious criticisms, as well as with the addition of several valuable new pieces, since you favoured me with the sight of it before, and the pleasure which I have now had in reading it has been in proportion. I hope this new key to the Asiatic poetry, with which you have obliged the world, will not be suffered to rust for want of use; but that it will prove, what you intended it to be, a happy instrument in the hands of learned and inquisitive men, for unlocking the rich treasures of wisdom and knowledge, which have been preserved in the Hebrew, Arabic, Persic, and the other Oriental languages; and especially the Hebrew, that venerable channel, through which the sacred compositions of the divinely inspired poets have been conveyed down to us. I hope this will find you well, and am, &c.

P. S. I have seen your proposals for printing the mathematical works of my worthy friend your late father, and beg to be of the number of your subscribers.

Mr. Jones to F. P. Bayer.

October 4, 1774.

I CAN scarcely find words to express my thanks for your obliging present of a most beautiful and splendid copy of Sallust, with an elegant Spanish translation. You have bestowed upon me, a private, untitled individual, an honour which heretofore has only been conferred upon great monarchs, and illustrious universities. I really was at a loss to decide whether I should begin my letter by congratulating you on having so excellent a translator,

or by thanking you for this agreeable proof of your remembrance. I look forward to the increasing splendour, which the arts and sciences must attain in a country, where the son of the king possesses genius and erudition capable of translating and illustrating with learned notes the first of the Roman historians. How few youths amongst the nobility in other countries possess the requisite ability or inclination for such a task! The history of Sallust is a performance of great depth, wisdom, and dignity to understand it well is no small praise; to explain it properly is still more commendable; but to translate it elegantly, excites admiration. If all this had been accomplished by a private individual, he would have merited applause; if by a youth, he would have had a claim to literary honours; but when to the title of youth that of Prince is added, we cannot too highly extol, or too loudly applaud, his distinguished merit. Many years are elapsed since I applied myself to the study of your learned language, but I well remember to have read in it, with great delight, the heroic poem of Alonzo, the odes of Garcilasso, and the humorous stories of Cervantes: but I most sincerely declare, that I never perused a more elegant or polished composition than the translation of Sallust; and I readily subscribe to the opinion of the learned author in his preface, that the Spanish language approaches very nearly to the dignity of the Latin.

May the accomplished youth continue to deserve well of his country and mankind, and establish his claim to distinction above all the princes of the age! If I may be allowed to offer my sentiments, I would advise him to study most diligently the divine works of Cicero, which no man, in my opinion,

ever perused without improving in eloquence and wisdom. The epistle which he wrote to his brother Quintus, on the government of a province, deserves to be daily repeated by every sovereign in the world; his books on offices, on moral ends, and the Tusculan question, merit a hundred perusals; and his orations, nearly sixty in number, deserve to be translated into every European language; nor do I scruple to affirm, that his sixteen books of letters to Atticus are superior to almost all histories, that of Sallust excepted. With respect to your own compositions, I have read with great attention, and will again read, your most agreeable book. I am informed that you propose giving a Latin translation of it, and I hope you will do it for the benefit of foreigners. I see nothing in it which requires alteration-nothing which is not entitled to praise. I much wish that you would publish more of your treatises on the antiquities of Asia and Africa. I am confident they would be most acceptable to such as study those subjects. I have only for the present to conclude, by bidding you farewell in my own name, and that of the republic of letters. Farewell.

WILLIAM JONES.

Edmund Burke to Mr. Jones.

MY DEAR SIR,

March 12, 1779.

I GIVE you many thanks for your most obliging and valuable present, and feel myself extremely honoured by this mark of your friendship. My first leisure will be employed in an attentive perusal of an author, who had merit enough to fill up a part of yours, and whom you have made accessible

to me with an ease and advantage, which one so many years disused to Greek literature as I have been, could not otherwise have. Isæus is an author of whom I know nothing but by fame: I am sure that any idea I had from thence conceived of him will not be at all lessened by seeing him in your translation. I do not know how it has happened, that orators have hitherto fared worse in the hands of the translators than even the poets; I never could bear to read a translation of Cicero. Demosthenes suffers I think somewhat less; but he suffers greatly; so much, that I must say, that no English reader could well conceive from whence he had acquired the reputation of the first of orators. I am satisfied that there is now an eminent exception to this rule, and I sincerely congratulate the public on that acquisition. I am, with the greatest truth and regard, my dear sir, your, &c. EDMUND BUrke.

Sir William Jones to Sir Joseph Banks.

DEAR SIR JOSEPH,

September 17, 1789.

THE season for paying my annual epistolary rents being returned with the rough gales of the autumnal equinox, I am eager to offer my tribute where it is most due, to my best landlord, who, instead of claiming, like the India company, sixteen shillings in the pound for the neat profits of my farm (I speak correctly, though metaphorically,) voluntarily offers me indulgences, even if I should run in arrears.

You have received, I trust, the pods of the finest Dacca cotton, with which the commercial resident at that station supplied me, and which I sent by