Note 183 — MEMOIRS OF EMINENT LINGUISTS. (continued 2)

A plan for the promotion of Oriental studies, under the patronage of the Company, formed one of the many magnificent schemes of Warren Hastings, himself no mean linguist. Hastings consulted Johnson on the subject; and it is observed as an evidence of his extraordinary coolness and self-possession, that his letter, acknowledging Johnson’s present of Sir W. Jones’s Persian Grammar, was written in the midst of the excitement of one of the most eventful days in his chequered life. See Croker’s Boswell’s Life of Johnson. VIII., 38-42, and Macaulay’s Essays, p. 593.