"
In dangerous cases, where a note-book is carried, your loose M.P. must
be made to reside within the pale of guarded conversation. If you are
wise you will speak to him in the interrogative mood exclusively; and
you will treat his answers with contumelious laughter or disdainful
silence.
About a week after your M.P. has landed in India he will begin his
great work on the history, literature, philosophy and social
institutions of the Hindoos. You will see him in a railway carriage
when stirred by the [Greek: oistros] studying Forbes's Hindustani
Manual. He is undoubtedly writing the chapter on the philology of the
Aryan Family. Do you observe the fine frenzy that kindles behind his
spectacles as he leans back and tries to eject a root? These pangs are
worth about half-a-crown an hour in the present state of the book
market. One cannot contemplate them without profound emotion.
The reading world is hunger-bitten about Asia, and I often think I
shall take three months' leave and run up a _precis_ of Sanskrit and
Pali literature, just a few folios for the learned world.
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