CXXIII.

To J. Shore, Esq.

Crishna-nagur, August 16, 1787. I THANK you heartily, my dear sir, for the tender strains of the unfortunate Charlotte,* which have given us pleasure and pain: the sonnets which relate to herself, are incomparably the best. Petrarca is little known; his sonnets, especially the first book, are the least valuable of his works, and contain less natural sentiments than those of the swan of Avon; but his odes, which are political, are equal to the lyric poems of the Greeks; and his triumphs are in a triumphant strain of sublimity and magnificence. Anna Maria gives you many thanks for the pleasure you have procured her. We are in love with this pastoral cottage; but though these three months are called a vacation, yet I have no vacant hours. It rarely happens that favourite studies are closely connected with the strict discharge of our duty, as mine happily are: even in. this cottage I am assisting the court by studying Arabic and Sanscrit, and have now rendered it an

*Sonnets by Charlotte Smith.

impossibility for the Mohammedan or Hindu lawyers to impose upon us with erroneous opinions.

This brings to my mind your honest pundit, Rhadacaunt, who refused, I hear, the office of pundit to the court, and told Mr. Hastings that he would not accept of it, if the salary were doubled: his scruples were probably religious; but they would put it out of my power to serve him, should the office again be vacant. His unvarnished tale I would have repeated to you, if we had not missed one another on the river; but since I despair of seeing you until my return to Calcutta, at the end of October, I will set it down here, as nearly as I can recollect, in his own words:

"My father," said he, "died at the age of an hundred years, and my mother, who was eighty years old, became a sati, and burned herself to expiate sins they left me little besides good principles. Mr. Hastings purchased for me a piece of land, which at first yielded twelve hundred rupees a year; but lately, either through my inattention, or through accident, it has produced only one thousand. This would be sufficient for me and my family; but the duty of Brahmaus is not only to teach the youths of their sect, but to relieve those who are poor. I made many presents to poor scholars and others in distress, and for this purpose I anticipated my income: I was then obliged to borrow for my family expenses; and I now owe about three thousand rupees. This debt is my only cause of uneasiness in this world. I would have mentioned it to Mr. Shore, but I was ashamed."

Now the question is, how he can be set upon his

legs again, when I hope he will be more prudent. If Bahman should return to Persia, I can afford to give him one hundred rupees a month, till his debt shall be discharged out of his rents; but, at present, I pay more in salaries to my native scholars than I can well afford: nevertheless, I will cheerfully join you in any mode of clearing the honest man, that can be suggested; and I would assist him merely for his own sake, as I have more Brahmanical teachers than I can find time to hear.

I send you, not an elegant pathetic sonnet, but the wildest and strangest poem that was ever writtenKhakani's complaint in prison. The whole is a menace, that he would change his religion, and seek protection among the Christians, or the Gabres. It contains one or two proper names, of which I find no full explanation even in a commentary professedly written to illustrate the poem.

The fire of Khakani's genius blazes through the smoke of his erudition: the measure of the poem, which will enable you to correct the errors of the copies, is,

with a strong accent on the last syllable of each foot. Adieu, my dear sir, &c.

* A parsi, and native of Yezd, employed by sir W. Jones as a reader.

CXXIV.

To Jos. Cowper Walker, Esq.*

Crishna-nagur, Sept. 11, 1787.

I GIVE you my hearty thanks, dear sir, for your kind attention to me, and for the pleasure which I have received from your letter, as well as for that which I certainly shall receive from your Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards. The Term being over before your book could be found, and the state of my health obliging me to seek this pastoral retreat, where I always pass my vacation among the Brahmans of this ancient university-I left Calcutta before I could read your work, but shall peruse it with eagerness on my return to the capital. You touched an important string, when you mentioned the subject of Indian music, of which I am particularly fond. I have just read a very old book on that art in Sanscrit : I hope to present the world with the substance of it, as soon as the Transactions of our Society can be printed: but we go on slowly, since the press is often engaged by government; and we think it better to let our fruit ripen naturally, than to bring forth such watery and imperfect fruits as

* Of Valeri, Bray, Ireland, author of Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards.

VOL. II.

F

are usually raised in hot-beds. The Asiatic Miscellany, to which you allude, is not the publication of our Society, who mean to print no scraps, nor any mere translations: it was the undertaking of a private gentleman, and will certainly be of use in diffusing Oriental literature, though it has not been so correctly printed as I could wish. When you see colonel Vallancy, whose learned work I have read through twice with great pleasure, I request you to present him with my best remembrance. We shall soon, 1 hope, see faithful translations of Irish histories and poems: shall be happy in comparing them with the Sanscrit, with which the ancient language of Ireland had certainly an affinity. Proceed, sir, in your laudable career: you deserve the applause of your country; and will most assuredly have that of, sir, &c.

CXXV.

To Dr. Patrick Russel.

Crishna-nagur, Sept. 22, 1787.

YOUR interesting papers did not find their way to me till I had left this cottage, and was wholly immersed in business. Indeed, I am so harassed for eight months in twelve, that I can seldom think of literature till the autumu vacation, which I pass in this charming plain, the driest