more zealous. He gazed on that venerable fabric, raised by the collective wisdom of a thousand years,' till his mind was filled with exalted conceptions of its perfection, which he found somewhat disproportionate to its practical excellence. He could not without some degree of impatience rise from the study of the sublime original, to look abroad into the world, where he must be frequently condemned to see its purity corrupted and its rectitude distorted: and hence we find him occasionally indulging in a little angry declamation, about faction and party, and joining in the old constitutional hue and cry against standing armies, and extolling the militia as the only safe and legal mode of national defence; prejudices which seem now to be daily becoming obsolete, and which the present state of Europe may soon totally exterminate. Charmed with the beauty of the fundamental laws by which the movements of our polity are regulated, he seems to have made too narrow an allowance for those numberless disturbing forces with which the nature and passions of man must sometimes necessarily interrupt the harmony of the system; and in some measure to have been betrayed into a weakness of the same kind as a philosopher who should be vexed and provoked that his experi ments were frustrated by the resistance of the air or the ope ration of friction. We cannot, however, refuse our admiration to that dignified and liberal spirit of independence, that Dicendi quodcunque animo flagrante liberet Simplicitas, which he always exercised, and to that benevolent interest which he never ceased to feel for the preservation of the essential liberties of mankind. A noble instance of this may be found in a letter written by him to the author of these Memoirs in the year 1788, occasioned by a conference between the judges and the executive government of Bengal, the object of which he conceived to be an application to the legislature for a power of summary conviction and punishment in Calcutta. Against this measure he most vigorously protests; boldly recommends the wise and humane policy of extending to the natives the beneficial effects of the British judicature; suggests a scheme by which the trial by juries may be preserved, consistently with the convenience of the individuals who should compose them; and anxiously deprecates the abolition of that mode of trial, without some greater good to compensate the private injustice, than would result from the power of summary conviction, if it were exercised by men whose monthly gains would depend on the number of complaints made, and fines levied.' PP. 315, 317. His suggestions, lord Teignmouth informs us, were adopted in the application to parliament, and confirmed by its sanction. It is almost needless to remark the tender and anxious attachment which is frequently expressed in these letters for his amiable consort, and his apprehension lest her health should suffer from the climate. As a brother and a son he was equally exemplary. We cannot imagine a more pleasing tribute to his memory than the following circumstance: The pundits who were in the habit of attending him, when I saw them at a public durbar, a few days after that melancholy event', (his death) could neither restrain their tears for his loss, nor find terms to express their admiration at the wonderful prɔgress which he had made, in the sciences which they professed." P. 400. The letters are introduced into the body of the work, and not separately collected at the end of the volume; a method of the propriety of which we are not quite convinced, notwithstanding what the author has said in his preface. It may, how ever, be conceded, that this arrangement may be adopted with least inconvenience and most advantage, where the events are not very numerous or perplexed, and therefore is most allowable in the life of a literary man. Among the original works published in the appendix, we find the design of the heroic poem which sir William had long meditated; and the first idea of which, it seems, was formed at Spa in the year 1770, in the twenty-third year of his age. 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 and beneficial, that the warmest imagination can form. (P. 476.) The action was to consist of the adventures of the prince of Tyre previous to his final establishment in Britain. The machinery was to be taken 'partly from the Socratic doctrine of attendant spirits or benevolent angels, and partly from the scriptural accounts of Baal, Astarte, Nisroc, Dagon, Mammon, and Moloch.'-It was to be written in rhyme'; and a specimen of its execution, consisting of eight lines, is adjoined. Of this design he never totally lost sight; but it was resumed with greater earnestness about the year 1787, when he had changed his resolution, and was inflexibly determined, in defiance of Johnson, to write it in blank verse. (P. 304) He also intended to substitute a different machinery, taken entirely from the Indian mythology. The plan too is completely new-moulded; and the materials are assigned to each of the books, the number of which was to be twelve. (PP. 483 et seqq.) Of this embryo our limits do not permit us to enter into a full examination: we shall therefore content ourselves with remark ing, that the original design appears to us happier than the lat ter, and its machinery incomparably better chosen. The inythology of Hindustan is so little known in this part of the world, that we greatly doubt whether the imagination of any but Oriental scholars would be soon sufficiently familiarized to the attributes of Indian divinities, or easily reconciled to their agency. What would have been the rank of such a work executed by sir William Jones, it would now be idle to inquire. It would most probably have been highly enriched with the beauties, and perhaps somewhat disfigured with the extravagance, of Oriental imagery. It would have abounded with sentiments of the loftiest heroism, the tenderest benevolence, and the purest morality. Whether the whole would have been animated by the vital breath of poetical genius, which alone could have given it immortality, who shall pronounce? Our readers may not be displeased with the following specimen of its execution 'from Book VII.' As Tibetian mountains rise Stupendous, measureless, ridge beyond ridge, Cambala vast, then loftier without bound, Till sight is dimm'd, thought maz'd; the traveller Relax'd not, but still cloth'd its edge with death, Disturb'd, yet undismay'd; stung, not appall'd,' r. 489. The prefatory discourse to an intended essay on the history of the Turks, which also forms part of the appendix, contains a brief but interesting review of the most genuine materials from which such an history might be compiled; and of the merits of those writers who have hitherto illustrated the manners or the annals of that nation, either in the European or Eastern languages. It is justly regretted by sir William Jones, that 'the persons who have resided among the Turks, and who from their skill in the Eastern dialects have been best qualified to present us with an exact account of that nation, were either confined to a low sphere of life, or engaged in views of interest, and but little addicted to polite letters; while they who from their exalted stations and refined taste for literature, have had both the opportunity and the inclination to penetrate into the secrets of Turkish policy, have been ignorant of the language of Constantinople, and therefore but imperfectly qualified to as certain the sentiments and prejudices of so singular a people.' To this circumstance he ascribes the incomplete state of our information respecting the history and character of the Turks, and the hasty admission of many illiberal prejudices which have represented them as proud and ignorant barbarians. He therefore proposes, after enumerating the authorities from which his knowledge was to be derived, to trace out in the form of an essay the great outlines of the Turkish history,' leaving the minuter parts to be filled up as opportunity or leisure should invite. It appears also that from the age of Elizabeth to the present century, the history of our trade to the Levant was to be interwoven with it, and a few hints offered for its improvement, as an object of the highest importance to the whole na tion. In this prospectus there is enough to excite curiosity which must never be gratified, and regret which never can be allayed. It is needless to tell the public what they might have expected from one so admirably prepared for an undertaking of this nature as sir William Jones; or to indulge the melancholy satisfaction of enumerating the perfections which would most probably have been assembled in a work executed under the guidance of the most liberal philosophy, and the most wide and varied erudition. One part of the task, however, which sir William seems to have imposed on himself, appears to us of no very easy performance. It is no less than the extirpation of those prejudices which have been universally indulged against the bigotry and ignorance of the infidels. He combats (not, perhaps, with complete success) the notion that ignorance is a principle of the Mahommedan religion; and that too liberal a spirit of inquiry was forbidden by the prophet, lest it should conduct his followers to the suspicion of his being an impostor. This jealousy for the honour of the faithful' may perhaps be traced to his fondness for every thing however remotely connected with Oriental literature. And the successful cultivation of the Arabian tongue, with the considerable advances which were made in various departments of philosophy, under the patronage of the caliphs, may be allowed in some degree to justify his opposition to the established opinion. At the same time he must have been compelled to confess that the vast libraries of Bagdad and Cordova were chiefly crowded with ponderous commentaries on that holy volume which supplied the believers with the maxims of jurisprudence, as well as with the precepts of theology; that the moral and political wisdom of the Greek philosophers was rejected by their doctors, as inculcating a spirit of freedom and toleration inconsistent with the existence of mili tary and religious despotism; and that the commanders of the faithful have at times been reproved by the sages of the law, for the rashness which prompted them to encourage the diffusion of science. If there be passages in the Koran' which recommend the earnest search for learning, there are others which remind the Mussulman that all essential knowledge is to be found there; and the well known reply of the caliph Omar, which sentenced the Alexandrian library to destruction, is conceived in the same spirit which has held a great part of the globe in intellectual bondage: If these works agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they contradict it, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed.' But whatever may be conceded to the Arabians, the effect of the persuasion of Mahommed upon the Turks is more obvious and unequivocal. Surrounded by nations whose belief they despise, and persuaded that they are in possession of the only true faith, they view with contempt every pursuit which has no tendency to illustrate their own manners, or their own history. And hence that solemn arrogance with which they claim a superiority over all their neighbours, and the insolent indifference with which they have generally regarded the politics and the characters of the other nations of Europe. Besides, what can be said for the letters of a people among whom printing was not introduced till the middle of the eighteenth century, and who suffered the project to die with the enterprising and industrious individual who began it? We are persuaded that the most indulgent review of Turkish literature will be found to prove, not that the genius of the Mahommedan faith is favourable to intellectual improvement, but only that it has been unable entirely to extinguish among its followers the thirst for knowledge, or to repress the expansive force of human curiosity. Of the remaining articles in the appendix, little need be said. That of the most importance is the story of an episode in the heroic poem of Ferdûsi, the Homer of Persia, which sir William Jones intended to have wrought into a tragedy, the plan of which the author of the Memoirs has thought too imperfect for publication. The others are merely morsels of poetry, none of them very delicious and we think that the public would not reasonably have complained of the omission of a ballad to lady Jones, remarkable for nothing but the rapidity with which it was composed; and of love stanzas to a nameless fair-one, of whose understanding we should entertain no very favourable opinion if we thought she could be much gratified by being mistaken for Diana. On the whole, we close this volume with emotions of the warmest gratitude for the author, and of admiration for that |