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in Bengal, and close to a college of Brahmans. I am charmed with your plan; and if the directors have not yet resolved to print the work at their expense, I can perhaps suggest a mode of procuring very powerful influence with them. The king has much at heart his new botanical garden at St. Vincent's: his object is two-fold; to improve the commerce of the West-India islands, and to provide the British troops on service there with medicinal plants. Now, if you could send a box or two of seeds, likely to be useful in commerce or medicine, directed to sir George Young, the secretary at war (to whom I have enclosed your letter to the Board at Madras) I dare say the Board of Control would be desired to use their influence with the directors. * You could not have chosen a better specimen than the pedalium murex, of which little is said by Linnæus, and that from doubtful authority. The opuntia I have not scen here, and I cannot ramble into the woods.Our groves at this place are skirted with an angulated cactus, called sija (pronounced seeja) in the Sanscrit dictionaries, where I find the names of about 300 medicinal plants, the virtues of which are mentioned in medicinal books. I agree with you, that those books do not carry full conviction; but they lead to useful experiments, and are therefore valuable. I made fine red ink, by dropping a solution of tin in aqua regia into an infusion of the coccus, which Dr. Anderson was so polite as to send to me. His discovery will, I trust, be useful; his ardour and ingenuity deserve success.

I have just read with attention the Philosóphia Botanica, which I consider as the grammar,

and the Genera et Species as the dictionary, of botany it is a masterly work, and contains excellent matter in a short volume; but it is harshly, not to say barbarously, written. I grieve to see botany imperfect in its two most important articles, the natural orders and the virtues of plants, between which I suspect a strong affinity. I envy those who have leisure to pursue this bewitching study.

Pray, my dear sir, have you the Oriental manuscripts of my friend Dr. Alexander Russel? He sent me three, which I returned: the Sucardan, the Banquet of Physicians, and a beautiful Hafez. If you have them, I shall beg leave to read them again, when we meet in Europe.

P.S. What is spikenard? I mean botanically, what is the natural order, class, genus, &c. of the plant? What was the spikenard in the alabaster-box of the Gospel? What was nardi parvus onyx? What did Ptolemy mean by the excellent nard of Rhangamutty in Bengal? I have been in vain endeavouring, for above two years, to procure an answer to these questions: your answer will greatly oblige me.

CXXVI.

To Thomas Caldicott, Esq.

Crishna-nagur, Sept. 27, 1787.

YOUR brother sent me your letter at a convenient time, and to a convenient place; for I can only write in the long vacation, which I generally spend in a delightful cottage, about as far from Calcutta as Oxford is from London, and close to an ancient university of Brahmans, with whom I now converse familiarly in Sanscrit. You would be astonished at the resemblance between that language and both Greek and Latin. Sanscrit and Arabic will enable me to do this country more essential service, than the introduction of arts, (even if I should be able to introduce them) by procuring an accurate digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws, which the natives hold sacred, and by which both justice and policy require that they should be governed.

I have published nothing; but Armenian clerks make such blunders, that I print ten or twenty copies of every thing I compose, which are to be considered as manuscripts. I beg you will send me your remarks on my plan of an epic poem. Sanscrit has engaged my vacations lately: but I will finish it, if I live. I promise you to attend to all that is said,

especially if alterations are suggested; always reserving to myself the final judginent. One thing I am inflexible in: I have maturely considered the point, and am resolved to write in blank verse. I have not time to add my reasons; but they are good.

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I thank you for Sheridan's speech, which I could not however read through. For the last sixteen years of my life, I have been in a habit of requiring evidence of all assertions, and I have no leisure to examine proofs in a business so foreign to my pursuits. * If Hastings and Impey are guilty, in God's name, let them be punished; but let them not be condemned without legal evidence. I will say more of myself than you do of yourself, but in few words: I never was unhappy in England; it was not in my nature to be so; but I never was happy till I was settled in India. My constitution has overcome the climate; and if I could say the same of my beloved wife, I should be the happiest of men but she has perpetual complaints, and of course I am in perpetual anxiety on her account.

CXXVII.

To John Wilmot, Esq.

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I cannot, however, let the season slip without scribbling a few lines to tell you, that my constitution seems to have overcome the climate, and that I should be as happy as mortal man can be, or at least ought to be, if my wife had been as well as I have for the last three years.

I have nothing to say of India politics, except that Lord Cornwallis and ✶ ✶ ✶ are justly popular, and perhaps the most virtuous governors in the world. Of English politics I say nothing, because I doubt whether you and I should ever agree in them: I do not mean the narrow politics of contending parties, but the great principles of government and legislation, the majesty of the whole nation collectively, and the consistency of popular rights with regal prerogative, which ought to be supported, to suppress the oligarchical power. But in India I think little of these matters.