Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/223

 1300 B.C., where Hindu idolatry prevailed from the earliest ages."

In the midst of these manifold labours, and in the prime of life—he was just forty-seven,—Sir William Jones was, in 1794, stricken with a mortal malady. His wife, whom he had married on his obtaining the Indian appointment, had been in poor health, and he had sent her to England, intending to follow her in a year's time, on the completion of a work on Hindu law on which he was engaged, so that he was living alone in his house at Garden Reach. Although the particulars of his pathetic and lonely death are well known, the following extracts from the diary of one of his Calcutta contemporaries have a melancholy interest, and give a vivid sense of the strength of the feelings of attachment and regard which the great scholar and remarkable man inspired.

"April 27th, 1794. Received the information that Sir William Jones was no more! I confess it struck me severely, and, in the bitterness of my grief, I almost cursed my own existence to think that such really great and good men as he should be thus snatched away, whilst the wicked and ignorant are permitted not only to walk this planet, but to commit their depredations upon it! Whatever is, is right!