[Footnote 2: _Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft und Orientalischen Philologie in Deutschland_, von Theodor Benfey. München, 1869.] [Footnote 3: _Aristoteles’ Metaphysik, eine Tochter der Sânkhya-Lehre des Kapila_, von Dr. C. B. Schlüter. 1874.] [Footnote 4: See Note A, p. 355.] [Footnote 5: See Note B, p. 356.] [Footnote 6: _Academy_, August 1, 1874.] [Footnote 7: I read +yathâpûrve+ as one word.] VIII. LIFE OF COLEBROOKE.[1] The name and fame of Henry Thomas Colebrooke are better known in India, France, Germany, Italy--nay, even in Russia--than in his own country. He was born in London on the 15th of June, 1765; he died in London on the 10th of March, 1837; and if now, after waiting for thirty-six years, his only surviving son, Sir Edward Colebrooke, has at last given us a more complete account of his father’s life, the impulse has come chiefly from Colebrooke’s admirers abroad, who wished to know what the man had been whose works they know so well. If Colebrooke had simply been a distinguished, even a highly distinguished, servant of the East India Company, we could well understand that, where the historian has so many eminent services to record, those of Henry Thomas Colebrooke should have been allowed to pass almost unnoticed. The history of British India has still to be written, and it will be no easy task to write it. Macaulay’s “Lives” of Clive and Warren Hastings are but two specimens to show how it ought to be, and yet how it cannot be, written. There is in the annals of the conquest and administrative tenure of India so much of the bold generalship of raw recruits, the statesmanship of common clerks, and the heroic devotion of mere adventurers, that even the largest canvas of the historian must dwarf the stature of heroes; and characters which, in the history of Greece or England, would stand out in bold relief, must vanish unnoticed in the crowd. The substance of the present memoir appeared in the “Journal” of the Royal Asiatic Society soon after Mr. Colebrooke’s death. It consisted originally of a brief notice of his public and literary career, interspersed with extracts from his letters to his family during the first twenty years of residence in India. Being asked a few years since to allow this notice to appear in a new edition of his “Miscellaneous Essays,” which Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall desired to republish, Sir Edward thought it incumbent on him to render it more worthy of his father’s reputation. The letters in the present volume are, for the most part, given in full; and some additional correspondence is included in it, besides a few papers of literary interest, and a journal kept by him during his residence at Nagpur, which was left incomplete. Two addresses delivered to the Royal Asiatic and Astronomical Societies, and the narrative of a journey to and from the capital of Berar, are given in an appendix and complete the volume, which is now on the eve of publication.