The Sun.
London, England, 1865-11-21 00:00:00

ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY.

Yesterday afternoon the first meeting of the
session of the Asiatic Society was held at their
house in New Burlington-street—Sir Edward Cole-
brooke in the chair. The table was covered with
nuuerous presents of books received since the last
meeting in July. Six new members were balloted
for and elected. A paper, contributed by Dr. Hoole,
was then read by the secretary " On the Dural of
Tiruvalluver," translated by the late Dr. Grant,
and considered the finest specimen of Tamil litera-
ture. Dr. Hoole took a general view of the work,
describing its character, and giving some of the
most striking passages, which inculcated moral pre-
cepts in highly poetical language. The date of the
book is uncertain, but Dr. Hoole is of opinion it was
written at the end of the eighth century. After a
few remarks from the chairman, thanks were given
to the author of the paper, and the meeting ad-
journed to the 4th of December. At the commence-
ment of a new session we have again to regret that
the Royal Asiatic Society, which possesses the ele-
ments of much usefulness, and ranks among its
members noblemen and gentlemen of great influence
and intelligence, personally well acquainted with
India, should not procure interesting papers to be
read at the periodical meetings calculated to pro-
mote the interests of our vast Eastern empire. The
papers too often read have no vitality, and, like the
one of yesterday, elicit no discussion. Hence it is
that the meetings of the society are usually very
thinly attended.

DR. JOHNSON'S LOVE FOR BURTON'S ANATOMY OF
MELANCHOLY is well known, but there was a fitness
of things in his sympathy with it. Everything in Burton
was adapted to make him the pet of the lexicographer—the
congenial temper and melancholy to begin with, then the
infinite capacity, a bottomless maw—for learned detail,
combined with adequate and even strong perception, but
perception just short of that critical, analytical, f.nd artistic
temper which accepts detail as a necessary but deplorable
evil, and which through long centuries, with a yearning
passion after some ultimate unity, keeps throwing detail
overboard with the long despair, yet constant hope of land,
of the lost mariner in a cranky craft. Burton has none of
this weariness of detail ; he has no criticism properly so
called, or just the modicum which Johnson had, and which
sufficed to his wants as a literary partisan and Tory—not
for new truth. In both men, combined with their melan-
choly is a rollicking, gravis-armaiurce raillery, armed cap-a-
pie in learning and quotation, a heavy scorn, a rolling of
the fine literary porpoise hither and thither from shore to
shore, and a delight (in Burton at all events) in the storm
and jumble of quotations, without any critical ideas in his
h.ad as to the ocean itself in which he tumbles about
tumbling, not without a grace which must have seemed
ravishing to the big Sesqaipedalian. No wonder the Doc-
tor said "it was the only book that ever took him out of
bed two hours sooner than he wished to rise." He himself
thought it overloaded with quotation, and no doubt he
was the better artist, and had seen chaster models, but
even to him Burton's mania for quotation was no worse
than the ceaseless rattle of an established wit who really
delights the audience that laughs at his clatter.—Spectator.

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