Richardson, of Wadham College, with laudable zeal for the pro motion of Persian literature, published, in 1770, Proposals for printing the Thesaurus of Meninski,' with an English transla tion, and other improvements, in four volumes, folio, under the superintendance of William Jones, Esq. (the late Sir William Jones). To give a history,' (says Mr. R.) of the zeal and assi duity with which this great object was pursued through incon ceivable difficulties and disappointments, would be extremely uninteresting to the reader; it is only necessary to say, that though the list of subscribers in point of quality was extremely flattering, yet the sang froid with which it was viewed by the public at large, made him at length, after much loss and mure labour, reluctantly listen to the voice of prudence, and desist from an undertaking, which, from the vast expence, and inadequaté encouragement, promised no recompence but fatigue and loss of fortune. Pref. to Specimens of Persian Poetry.

The plan for translating the Thesaurus having thus miscarried, and some of the Directors of the Honourable East-India Company having expressed a desire to see a work of a similar kind undertaken, on a less complicated and extensive scale, Mr. Richardson was induced to draw up a specimen, and present it to the court. This met with their approbation, and to encourage Mr. R. in the arduous undertaking, the company subscribed for 100 copies, and by a minute of court recommended the work to every person going out in their service to India.

Matters being thus far arranged and settled, Mr. R. informed the public in 1776, that under the patronage of the Honourable East India Company, and the sanction of the University of Oxford, he would proceed to print immediately, at the Clarendon press, a dictionary Persian, Arabic, and English, to consist of two large volumes, folio.

The first volume, or the Persian, Arabic, and English, to be published in the month of November next. The second, or the English, Persian, and Arabic, in the course of the following year.

The price to subscribers to be seven guineas, bound. The money to be paid on publication: four guineas on delivery of the first volume, and three on delivery of the second.' Pref. to Arab. Gram. 1776.

Previous to this, the original subscribers to the translation of Meninski's work, who were inclined to withdraw, were requested to send their receipts to Mr. R. that their subscriptions might be returned. Few we shonld hope availed themselves of Mr. R.'s handsome and candid offer, but rather left their subscriptions to be employed in defraying the heavy expense of the dictionary. In 1777, the first volume of this long-expected work was published, and met with a very favourable reception from those who

کردن

بودن

were best qualified to appreciate its merits. The University of Oxford were so pleased with it, that they unanimously conferred the degree of Master of Arts on Mr. Richardson, Nov. 1780. On comparing it with the work of Meninski, it was casily seen that Mr. R. had taken that indefatigable Lexicographer for his model; and that he had constructed his own work entirely on the plan of the Thesaurus. Indeed Mr. R.'s Dictionary is little else than a translation of the Persian and Arabic part of Meninski's work, sometimes abridged and in other cases differently arranged; with such additions as tend to illustrate historical facts, proper names, local customs political and religious, or to extend the acceptation of the original words. As Meninski's composition, was chiefly intended for the Turkish, with which he was accurately acquainted, Mr. Richardson designed his chiefly for the Persian; the genius and spirit of the Arabic being little farther consulted than as its words entered into the composition of the modern Persian. Hence the Arabic roots, which are always the third person preterite of the verb, are translated by Mr. R. as Nouns, Gerunds, or Participles, in which senses only, they are adopted by the Persians, who convert them into verbs, by means of their own auxiliaries kerden to do; ls dashten to have shuden and booden to be. All this may be very proper, in a Dictionary merely Persian; but on such a mode of explanation, how can any adequate knowledge of the Arabic (per se) be acquired? Let the young Arabic student take the verb i one of the examples to which Mr. R. refers, (plan of the work, p. 1.) and turn to it in the Dictionary, and what does he find? Why ‘bis hyfz, memory, custody, guardian-ship, administration, bi hyfz kerden, to preserve, guard, defend, to learn by heart.' But where is the Arabic root, is the third person, pret. mas., which is the simple form whence all the inflections are derived? No where! Where is the Arabic student to find the ideal meaning of the root, he laid up in store, (in loculum condidit) he preserved; whence, he remembered. i. e. reproduced by association or reflection, the ideas which he had laid up, in the mental store house, called the memory-and hence also he guarded, defended, &c? Where, in either Meninski's or Mr. R.'s work, is the student to meet with this root, in its proper sense? The same might be said of a thousand other words; or rather of all the roots in the Arabic language, which in Mr. R.'s Dictionary are still translated as nouns, gerunds, or participles, and only appear to have the power of verbs, and to occupy their places when connected with the Persian auxiliaries! But to proceed with our history.

In the same year in which Mr. R. published his proposals for a translation, with improvements, of Meninski, Mr. Francis Gladwin, of Bengal, well known by his translation of the Ayeen Akbery and other works, published proposals for printing An Asiatic Vocabulary in 3 vols. 4to. The first part, containing the Arabic, Persian, Hindoost any, or Moors, with some prefixed grammatical remarks, to be comprized in two vols. and to be delivered, neatly bound, at four guineas the set, in the course of the year 1778. The second part, containing the Shanscreet, Bengaly, and Nagry, in their respective characters, to be published in the year 1779.' But as the whole of this part was to be engraven on plates, the exact time when it might be expected, could not be positively ascertained. The languages were to be arranged in such order, as to show how the Arabie is incorporated with the Persian, and to exhibit how the Persian is used in the Hindoostany or Moors; as well as to discover some traces of the Shanscreet language, both in the last named tongue, and also in that of Bengal.' A specimen of this intended work was published in the same year (1776) in five columns, in the following order: 1. English; 2. Arabic; 3. Persian; 4., Hindoostany; and, 5. The Hindoostany, or Moors, in roman characters; for the benefit of those who were unacquainted with the Arabic and Persian. Annexed to this printed specimen were four copper-plates, containing engraved specimens of the second part of the work, each plate divided into four columns, in the following order: 1. The English; 2. The Shanscreet; 3. The Bengaly; and, 4. The Nagry.

Instead of this promised work, which would certainly have been a great acquisition to Asiatic literature, the author published at Malda, in Bengal, 1780, in one thin vol. 4to. A compendious Vocabulary English and Persian, including all the oriental simples in the Materia Medica, employed in modern practice: with tables subjoined of the succession of the Khaliffs and of the Kings of Persia and Hindoostan. Compiled for the use of the honourable East India Company.' This work was accurately printed, under the direction of Mr. now Dr. Wilkins, and with the beautiful Taaleek of his own manufacture. A second part was also promised under the same direction. Though this work professed to be English and Persian only, yet the major part of it is Arabic, with a few Hindoostany words.

Whether this work has been completed or a new one commenced, we cannot assert, and have only the following vague information, which appeared in most of the periodical prints at the close of the last year, to lay before our readers. Mr. Gladwin of Bengal, has, at length, after the laborious application of many years, and with the assistance of the most learned native oriental scholars, compleated his great Persian Dictionary. This work contains, besides a multiplicity of words not to be

found in Richardson or Meninski, above 30,000 words, with examples taken from the best poets, philological writers, and dictionaries. As we have not seen this work, we can give no judgement concerning it: but if it be formed on the same plan with the Vocabulary already noticed, we should feel the same objections to the mode of interpreting Arabic roots, as those which we have already expressed in considering the work of Mr. Richardson. Such compilations, however useful for the Persian, are not proper Dictionaries for the Arabic, but just as far as that language is incorporated with the Persian.

How Dr. Wilkins has supplied this and other defects in Mr. R.'s work, and what improvements, alterations, and additions, he has made in it, will be the subject of inquiry in a succeeding Number. In the mean time, we can most cordially recommend this dictionary, as being a great improvement of the original, in almost every respect, and as possessing in its present form claims to the patronage of the public, which the former edition, though excellent in its kind, could never establish.

(To be continued.)

Art. II. A Description of Latium, or La Campagna di Roma, with etchings by the Author. 4to. pp. 268. Price 11. 11s. 6d. Longman & Co. 1805.

WHOEVER, having long since parted from a friend,

meets unexpectedly with his picture, which revives his image, and recalls sentiments, formerly associated with his presence, resembles in some measure, that reader, who, having visited the precincts of Rome, before they were disfigured by revolutionary violence, should open this volume, comprizing various descriptions of that charming country in its previous state. We have perused them with interest, but with the melancholy suspicion accompanying the perusal, that at this time the general avocations of the people, their sentiments and their enjoyments, bear little resemblance to the narrative which engaged our attention. This yolume is the work of a mind at ease; there is a placidity in it, strongly contrasted with the tenour of those disastrous transactions, now the chief, if not the only events, the progress of which is thought worth communicating.

The author seems to have travelled in personal safety; but, of this, if we are rightly informed, travellers have now no satisfactory assurance. The change of governors and governments, the want of regular employment, the licentiousness of numerous bodies of troops, the interruptions of ordinary intercourse, and the conscious indignity suffered under foreign usurpation, have contributed to alienate the sentiments of the Italians from the objects of their former attachment, and to loosen those bonds by which society was held together among them.

We have so little direct intercourse with Italy, and are so very imperfectly informed of what passes there, that we dare not assert the very existence of many of the palaces, or perhaps, of most of the curiosities, mentioned in this volume. We have reason to believe, that the antiquities, pictures, and establishments, which it describes as the boast of certain places, exist there no longer; some are destroyed, others have been forcibly carried off; they are concealed to evade requisition, or they are sold to liquidate the demands of lawless authority. Within these few years, London has seen not a few of the most valuable articles of Italian curiosity submitted to the hammer; and many a subject executed for a particular palace, and suited to a particular situation, has been wrested from its noble owner, and has found a British purchaser in Pall-Mall. *

Safe from the severer vibrations of the political earthquake, while we sincerely sympathize with the sufferers, we feel thevalue of our own security, and gratefully acknowledge that benignant providence, to which we are beholden for protection, and on which we rely for preservation.

That good will arise out of those evils which have visited so many states around us, that order will issue from these confusions, and that after they have performed their commission the result shall be importantly beneficial, is a consolation to the feeling mind, which Religion alone can furnish, and which alone can abate the poignancy of sympathetic regret.

Considering the work before us, without further reference tó present times, or to extraneous relations, we proceed to report the contents and execution of it to our readers.

The city of Rome, and its immediate environs, contain so many objects of attention to travellers, that only those who reside there a considerable time, have leisure for excursions, which might acquaint them with the surrounding country, and the peculiarities of its inhabitants. And yet nothing can exceed the pleasure of a party, rambling among the rustics of the Campagna, and consisting of agreeable and cultivated individuals, willing to be pleased, and determined to meet all occurrences

A remarkable instance in proof, is that of the celebrated bas relief. representing the Apotheosis of Homer, now in the possession of prince Colonna; one of the most interesting and most beautiful pieces of sculp ture left to us by the ancients. It is supposed to have belonged to the Emperor Claudius Cæsar.'_ p. 138. It is not many months since this capital antique was sold at Bryant's rooms. It had been sent off from its usual custodium, before the French troops arrived at the palace of the owner; but, not totally to miss their object, they laid a fine of 40001. on the proprietor, for daring to remove what they had put on the list of requisitions. This is but one instance among many. Rev.