TO THE RIGHT HON.

THE EARL OF LIVERPOOL, K. G.

FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY,

COMMISSIONER FOR THE AFFAIRS OF INDIA, PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM,

ETC. ETC. ETC.

MY LORD,

THE variety, value, and extent of the talents and character of Sir William Jones, are acknowledged wherever the English language is spoken or understood.

The immensity of his literary attainments, his fertile capacity, his great and unerring judgment, his zeal, his patriotism, and his

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public services to his country, in the administration of justice in her most important colony, India, are as universally acknowledged at home as they are felt and valued in our Eastern settlements. His works are a monument of his greatness; and the two volumes of the lighter and more generally interesting parts, the elegant amusements of his leisure hours, selected from his vast storehouse of intellect, which your Lordship has permitted me to dedicate to you, are proofs of the brilliancy and versatility of his powers, the blanched purity of his vigorous mind, and the ardent love of his fellow creatures, which so prominently distinguish this illustrious character.

It is delightful, instructive, and exhilarating, to follow this great lawyer, unbending from a pursuit which generally requires the entire occupation of the strongest minds, informing,

amusing, and enlightening his auditors and readers with discussions on law; language; the elegant literature of France, Spain and Italy, by turns with that of Greece and Rome; diving into 'Hebrew with ease and success * acquiring the Arabic and Persian with an accuracy acknowledged by natives to be equal to their own; conversant with the Turkish idiom, and the characters of that singularly constructed language, the Chinese; reading, translating, and writing law, religion and poetry with equal profoundness, sincerity, and elegance. He was a phenomenon in literature, and one of the greatest ornaments of the English name. It is also satisfactory, if religion requires such consolation, to find this profoundly investigating philosopher, who acknowledges, with our great Newton, that we must not admit more causes of natural

* Lord Teignmouth's Discourse.

things than those which are true, and sufficiently account for natural phenomena*; expressing his firm conviction of the truth of our national religion †.

He was in short, my Lord, in literature, what Raffaelle was in art. Like that justly celebrated painter, he was distinguished by the precocity of his intellect, by the elegance of his manners, by the goodness of his heart, and by the cultivation of the minor graces of society. Like that great man also, he was cut off in the spring and vigour of his life; and like him too, his name will be as immortal as language, and as great an ornament to 'England, as Raffaelle is to Italy.

Your Lordship has had the gratification of having pursued a liberal policy in the govern

* Vol. II. p. 3. † Vol. I. pp. 145, 146.

ment of a nation of which Sir William Jones was a native, with a continued perseverance under clouds of apparently appalling difficulties, which have terminated in a success as brilliant as any in our history, and most aptly illustrative of your Lordship's family motto, Palmam non sine pulvere. The part which your Lordship has taken in all the public measures of the late reign, of the brilliant epoch of the regency, and of the present momentous period, will be amply honoured by the historian, done justice to by posterity, and acknowledged by the most enlightened of your cotemporaries.

I did not mean in this dedication to touch upon politics, but it was unavoidable, nor have I said half what I feel: but a Dedication of the Discourses of Sir William Jones, and not flattery, is my object; and whenever your Lordship may retire from the fatigues of