cts of
Bengal. That gentleman, however, declining the honour, and recommending
that it should be conferred on the proposer of the scheme, he was
consequently elected president. The names of Chambers, Gladwyn,
Hamilton, and Wilkins, among others, evince that it was not difficult
for him to find coadjutors. How well the institution has answered the
ends for which it was formed the public has seen in the Asiatic
Researches.

A thorough acquaintance with the religion and literature of India
appeared to be attainable through no other medium than a knowledge of
the Sanscrit; and he therefore applied himself without delay to the
acquisition of that language. It was not long before he found that his
health would oblige him to some restriction in the intended prosecution
of his studies. In a letter written a few days after his arrival in
India, he informs one of his friends that "as long as he stays in India,
he does not expect to be free from a bad digestion, the morbus
literatorum; for which there is hardly any remedy but abstinence from
too much food, literary and culinary. I rise," he adds, "before the sun,
and bathe after a gentle ride; my diet is light and sparing, and I go
early to rest; yet the activity of my mind is too strong for my
constitution, though naturally not infirm; and I must be satisfied with
a valetudinarian state of health." All these precautions, however, did
not avail to secure him from violent and reiterated attacks. In 1784, he
travelled to the city of Benares, by the route of Guyah, celebrated as
the birth-place of the philosopher Boudh, and the resort of Hindu
pilgrims from all parts of the East; and returned by Gour, formerly the
residence of the sovereigns of Bengal. During this journey he laboured
for some time under a fit of illness that had nearly terminated his
life. Yet no sooner did he become a convalescent than he applied himself
to the study of botany, and composed a metrical tale, entitled The
Enchanted Fruit, or Hindu Wife; and a Treatise on the Gods of Greece,
Italy, and India; the latter of which he communicated to the Society. He
had not been many months settled after his return to Calcutta, when he
found the demand made on him for his company, by the neighbourhood of
that place, so frequent as to produce a troublesome interruption to the
course of his literary engagements. He therefore looked out for a
situation more secluded, to which he might betake himself during the
temporary ces