Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence, of Sir William Jones, Volume 2

Front Cover
John Hatchard, (Bookseller to her Majesty) 190, Piccadilly., 1806 - 531 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 378 - The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and in the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists...
Page 67 - Where the great Sun begins his state Robed in flames and amber light, The clouds in thousand liveries dight; While the ploughman, near at hand, Whistles o'er the furrow'd land, And the milkmaid singeth blithe, And the mower whets his scythe, And every shepherd tells his tale Under the hawthorn in the dale.
Page 325 - Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power...
Page 365 - The Scriptures, contain, independently of a divine origin, more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, purer morality, more important history, and finer strains both of poetry and eloquence, than could be collected within the same compass from all other books that were ever composed in any age, or in any idiom.
Page 68 - Whilst the landscape round it measures, Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray, Mountains on whose barren breast The labouring clouds do often rest: Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks, and rivers wide. Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighbouring eyes.
Page 266 - On parent knees, a naked new-born child Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled ; So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep, Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.
Page 21 - Thackeray, one of his masters, was wont to say of him, that he was a boy of so active a mind, that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury Plain, he would, nevertheless, find the road to fame and riches.
Page 187 - I pass with haste by the coast of Africa, whence my mind " turns with indignation at the abominable traffic in the human " species, from which a part of our countrymen dare to derive " their most inauspicious wealth.
Page 306 - Musul" man subjects of Great Britain, that the private laws which " they severally hold sacred, and a violation of which they "would have thought the most grievous oppression, should "not be superseded by a new system, of which they could " have no knowledge, and which they must have considered as " imposed on them by a spirit of rigour and intolerance.
Page 288 - To this spot,' says his amiable and intelligent biographer, Lord Teignmouth, ' he returned every evening after sunset, and in the morning rose so early, as to reach his apartments in town, by walking, at the first appearance of dawn. The intervening period of each morning, until the opening of court, was regularly allotted and applied to distinct studies.

Bibliographic information