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THE

CRITICAL REVIEW;

OR,

ANNALS OF LITERATURE.

VOL. IV.

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PRINTED FOR J. MAWMAN, 22 POULTRY:
AND SOLD BY J. DEIGHTON, CAMBRIDGE; Hanwell and
PARKER, AND J. COOKE, OXFORD.

T. Gillet, Printer, Salisbury Square.

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CRITICAL REVIEW.

SERIES THE FOURTH.

Vol. IV.

JANUARY, 1805.

No. I.

ART. I.-Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Correspondence, of Sir William Jones. By Lord Teignmouth. 4to. 17. 10s. Imperial 4to. 21. 12s. 6d. Boards. Hatchard. 1804.

THE biography of a man of real excellence and celebrity is entitled to a hearty welcome, however late its appearance; but more especially when the abilities of the biographer are worthy of the object to whom they are consecrated. It is now more than ten years since the much-lamented death of sir William Jones; a name which will ever be dear to the community of taste, science, and letters, and which we never pronounce without profound veneration: yet till the publication of the present memoirs have we remained without any adequate or detailed narrative of his life. To the splendid edition of his works by the Robinsons, indeed, a brief and unsatisfactory sketch is prefixed, from the pen of the noble biographer before us, in the form of a discourse delivered at a meeting of the Asiatic Society: but it is a hasty and unfinished performance, less minute and explicit than an éloge of the old Academie Royale, or a notice, as it is now denominated, of the National Institute. The friends of this pre-eminent scholar, as well as his biographer himself, appear alive to the same train of observations: they seem sensible that no literary monument of sufficient splendour and durability has hitherto been erected to his memory; and, in consequence hereof, they have at length endeavoured to render him that justice to which he is so amply entitled. The biographer's immediate motive, however, and the resources from which he has deduced his narrative, are so explicitly stated in the preface, that we shall allow him to speak for himself.

CRIT. REV. Vol. 4. January, 1805.

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