ORME, Robert, the historian of British India, born at Anjengo, in Travancore, was the son of Dr Alexander Orme; and his mother was a Miss Hill, a sister of Mrs Robert Adams.

He was sent to England at the age of two years, and placed under the care of Mrs Adams, who lived in Cavendish Square. His literary education commenced very early, for he went to Harrow at six, having been previously, for a twelvemonth, under the private tuition of a clergyman in the neighbourhood. For seven or eight years he applied to his classical studies as a school-boy with great diligence; and when he was thirteen, he was placed in the office of the accountant of the African Company, in order to gain some practical knowledge of the principles of commerce.

In 1742 he went out to Calcutta, and was there engaged in a mercantile house of respectability; he made a voyage to Surat in their concerns, and on his return, in 1743, he received from England the appointment of a writer. Five years afterwards he was promoted to the rank of factor in the company’s service. In 1752, having been desired to give his opinion on the regulation of the police of Calcutta, he drew up a memorial on the subject, which did great credit to the accuracy and profoundness of his views of the manners, the habits, and the interests of the country.

He returned to England in 1753, upon a visit to his aunt, and he was much consulted, during his stay in London, by Lord Holderness, then secretary of state, with regard to the policy to be observed towards the French government respecting the affairs of India. He went out again in 1754, and took his seat as a member of the council at Fort St George. He had here an opportunity of effectually serving the company by the vigour of his political conduct, and of greatly contributing to the establishment of the decided preponderance of the English interest in India. After the well-known affair of the Black Hole of Calcutta, he was particularly active in promoting the appointment of Colonel Clive to the command of the expedition destined to punish the cruelty of the tyrant who was the author of that outrage; although his friendship with Colonel Clive did not continue uninterrupted through life. Mr Orme’s exertions on this and other occasions were so highly appreciated by the directors, that he was nominated as eventual successor to the government of Madras; but he did not stay long enough to profit by the appointment. In the capacity of accountant-general, he became intimate with Mr Alexander, afterwards Lord Caledon, who was his deputy, and with Mr Dalrymple the hydrographer, to whom he showed many civilities, from a conviction of his merits. Mr Benjamin Robins, the historiographer of Anson’s Voyage, had also been one of his early friends, that is, during his first residence in India; for this singularly active person died in 1751.

Mr Orme’s situation in India was extremely favourable for the acquisition of historical information, which it was the delight of his life to collect; but his health requiring a change of climate, he sailed for Europe on board of the Grantham in 1758. The ship, however, was captured in January 1759, off the Cape of Good Hope, and carried to the Mauritius; but after having been detained there for some time, Mr Orme was allowed to proceed to the Cape, and thence to France. Having landed at Nantes in the spring of 1760, he paid a visit to Paris, where he amused himself for some months with the literatureand the theatres of the day; and his biographer has preserved some interesting remarks that they suggested to him. In October he arrived in London, and engaged a house which had been lately built in Harley Street.

He employed himself for the two succeeding years upon his Military History, sparing no pains nor expense to complete the collection of materials, which he had begun to form in India, and to prepare the work, with all possible care, for the press. The first volume appeared in 1763, and was received with great approbation. The company not only granted him free access to their records, but gave him also the appointment of their historiographer, with a salary of L.400 a year. After this time, he resumed some of his classical studies, which he had discontinued so long as to have forgotten almost all that he had learned; but he soon recovered his knowledge of the ancient languages, and added to them afterwards such of the modern ones as he found likely to be subservient to his pursuits. His hours of leisure were chiefly passed in the enjoyment of literary society; he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in March 1770; and about the same time he became intimate with Lord Sandys, and with Sir James Harris. Sir William Jones, Dr Robertson the historian, Dr Pemberton, Dr Wilson, Athenian Stuart, and Nourse the bookseller, were also among his particular friends; as well as Mr Rouse Boughton,afterwardsSir Charles Rouse Boughton, towhose urbanity and thorough acquaintance with the Persian language he was indebted for several of his historical documents. He obtained additional information for the completion of his History from the French general De Bussy, who had been much concerned in some of the transactions narrated in his first volume, and who was so much satisfied with his candour and impartiality that he invited him to his house in the country, and entertained him there, in 1773, with great kindness and hospitality.

After the publication of the second volume of his History, he had ample leisure to amuse himself with literary pursuits of a more general nature; but in 1784 he suffered a severe affliction from the loss of his nephew, Mr Hosea, who was shipwrecked, with his wife and family, upon their return from India, on board of the Grosvenor. In 1792 he retired to Ealing, where he continued to reside till the time of his death, which happened on the 13th of January 1801.

Good sense and sound judgment were the principal features of his character. His works are more distinguished by simplicity, clearness, and precision, than by any very powerful eloquence, or a very nice discrimination of cha [7:16:543]racter. He was not, however, deficient either in command of language or in poetical feeling. Sir William Jones and Dr Robertson paid him some very high compliments, in their private correspondence, for the elegance and purity of his style; and the former of these writers has also characterized him, in his third Discourse, as possessing an “exquisite taste for every fine art.” We find also, amongst a few miscellaneous poems collected by his biographer, a remarkable little Address to the Moon, written at Madras in 1757, which is manifestly the original of a well-known Greek epigram and a Latin ode of Sir William Jones; and certainly the compliment of having been “set to music, and much admired,” must be considered as far inferior to that of having been repeatedly imitated and translated by a poet of a judgment so correct, and a taste so refined, and having been called the production of “a man of great talents, and a particular friend of the translator.”

1. Of his works, the earliest in its origin-was his General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan. It was principally written in 1752, and finished during his return to England in the next year. A part of it was prefixed to his Military History, and it is printed in its entire state among his posthumous works.

2. History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan, from the year 1745. A Dissertation on the Mahommedan Conquests and Establishments in Indostan is prefixed to the first volume. “No historian,” says the author of the Annual Register for 1764, “seems to have been more perfectly informed of the subject on which he has undertaken to write; and very few have possessed more fully the talent of impressing it, in the clearest and most vivid manner, on the imagination and understanding of his reader.” The first volume, published in 1763, extends to 1756; and the second, published in 1778, carries the history down to the peace of 1763.

3. Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, from the year 1659, 8vo, London, 1782; first published anonymously, but acknowledged and reprinted in 4to in 1805; together with the Origin of the English Establishment at Broach and Surat, the General Idea of the Government and People of Indostan, and a Life of the Author. The Historical Fragments is a work of considerable research, making a sort of episode to the Military History, to which it affords some additions and corrections. It relates principally to the sanguinary Aurungzebe and his immediate successors, and to his contemporary, Sevagi the “Morattoe,” the professed descendant of Porus. The Essay on the Trade of Surat is a fragment which was left unfinished by the author.

4. Several hundred volumes of Mr Orme’s manuscript collections, together with some scarce printed tracts relating to oriental history, are carefully preserved in the library of the East India Company.