Long, very long as is this address, I am obliged to add two remarks more: were an enlightened foreigner to read a translation of some of those excellent books published in such numbers by the English, or of the debates in Parliament, or of the protests of the House of Lords, he would be apt to believe, that the language spoken by such a nation of thinkers-born, must needs be the most regular language that ever was spoken by the mouth of man; and yet on learning it himself, he would find that this language of theirs, beautiful, nervous, energetic, abundant, versatile and commodious, as it is, is nevertheless inconsequent: the grammar of such a nation is inconsequent; and their alphabet is still more inconsequent; and although the alphabet of all the nations which have adopted the Roman letters, is more or less liable to the same impu­tation, yet I cannot help believing that the English alphabet is nearly intractable. I have been therefore obliged to write all the Oriental names of this history in the Italian alphabet, or if you will the Scotish alphabet, as the sound of its letters is less variable, and it requires the fewer letters for one word.

My second observation is on those numerous poetical quota­tions, with which our author abounds, as well as all the Oriental writers. When I compare those inimitable translations of the Æneid, and of the Iliad, made by the English, with those prose tanslations published by the French; and I consider what a figure the latter never fail to cut when set against the former, I become convinced at once, that nothing but poetry ought to translate poetry; and that our author’s Persian verses ought to have been translated by English verses at least, if not by English poetry.—But here I found myself out of my depth at once: and although, sometimes an English verse or two, would drop from my pen, when I least thought of it; I found by a woeful experience, that the muses would not come near me, when I was most inclined to court their company.—Over-ruled by the sense, and brow-beaten by the quantity, as well as endlessly bullied by the rhyme, I became sick of my task: I became tired of cudgelling refractory word into its place, and of dragging a rhyme by the hair; and I have therefore translated in prose all the verses of my author: the more so, as I was afraid of affording a handle against the genuineness of the translation, by applying for assistance to a better versificator than myself; nor was this apprehension groundless; for an ingenious friend having chanced to observe, that I could hardly say in two lines what the author had said in one; surmised moreover, that I must have been assisted or corrected by some English hand.— Such a remark having given much offence to my sincerity, or if you will, to my vanity; and being myself on the other hand, so very proud of my acquisitions in the English language, I beg leave to declare, that the awkward and uncouth gown, in which I take the liberty to come forward, and to make my respectful bow to the public, is entirely of my own cutting and stiching. Nor am I afraid, that those, to whom I have the honor to be known these many years, both in London and in Bengal, shall ever refuse their full assent to the veracity of my assertion.

NOTA-MANUS.

Calcutta, 2nd November, 1786.