Siyar al-mutaʾakhkhirin 42.28
A Translation of the Seir Mutaqherin (Haji Mustafa) 42.28
- Language
- English
42.28.1
Let us have done then with subscriptions, as well as with errors of syntax and grammar. The more so with the latter, as no one of my readers, on stumbling upon an error of the kind, or upon a solecism, has so much as once thought proper to look at the end of the book, and to try whether it was a fault of the printer's or not? Let us draw a veil upon this singular and very novel doubt, whether a man of some knowledge and some sense, who has in times of yore wrote very esteemed French, which he had practised only for twelve years, is so very likely to ignore the English, which he is practising these thirty. But I am likewise reproached for having written in bad language, and for having dared to write an history, notwithstanding the physical impossibility under which a foreigner labours, and must labour, on that head; and all this is said by people that might have reflected on the many foreigners, who are become authors in foreign languages. Bolingbroke is an author, and an elegant one in French; Voltaire wrote Sonnets to Queen Caroline, and also some other pieces, which were never suspected to be written by a foreigner. The Frenchman Menage is an author, and an elegant Poet, in Italian. Lord Carteret wrote excellent Spanish. Lord Cobham wrote in German and French at Vienna, and gave in 1730 the first notions of commerce, maritime affairs, and prosperity resulting from manufactures, to the Austrian Council. Barretti, an Italian, has written in English in 1760;
42.28.2
and an English nobleman, whose name I have forgotten, but who fled to Florence in the civil war of 1640, where he became a favourite and a Minister with the Grand Duke, is well known to have written elegantly in Italian verses, as well as in prose. Of late, Lord Chesterfield wrote so amazingly well in French, that one would almost say that he wrote it still better than the English. The Abbé Vinkleman, a German, wrote enthusiastically and poetically in Italian of the antiquities of Rome, and of Italy; and he is reckoned amongst the Classics. Lastly, notwithstanding the slight thrown upon them by Barretti of late, Milton's Penseroso and his Allegro always had the esteem of the Italians themselves. I could carry the catalogue much further, and tell you of good translations of Pope's Essay on Man, made by German noblemen in French verses. I will not tire you with a longer list; still less would I meddle with the invidious question of asking what language then I must be acknowledged to write tolerably; for I am very often a foreigner with the French, and my first section of the Seir-el-Mutaqherin in that language, has cost me an infinite deal of trouble, and at last proved to be full of anglicismes; and well it might, being translated upon no other original than the English itself.
42.28.3
It was only after having got within the current of the French language, that I came back to that first section, and wrote it better in fifteen days at this second time, than I had been able to do it the first time in three months. It is needless then and even invidious to handle such a question. But here is another which does not labour under that inconvenience, although it is akin to it. There is a man in Calcutta, who, so early as the year 1766, was an author in the English language, say, a scribbler. He wrote a long letter of eight or ten pages to Luke Scrafton, Esq., once resident at the Court of Moorshood-abad, and then Director of the East India Company, a gentleman, who in his dispute with Governor Vansittart, had reproached him for his having given service to a man who was known for being a spy to Mons. de Bussy. This accusation was shewn to be not only groundless, but absurd; the man having undergone a thorough examination before the Council in 1761, and that examination having produced Governor Vansittart's good will, and that of Mr. Hastings. The letter was printed in London, although anonymously; and I can assure you that the reviewers said, that it was written with spirit and temper; nor did Mr. Vansittart and Mr. George Gray, (the latter once of the Council of Calcutta) express themselves in any other terms. But we have but your word for that approbation.
42.28.4
Indeed, Sir, you have but that, because at such a distance of time and place, the former is not susceptible of better proof, and because I never keep either copies of such letters or originals. Here is then another story: In 1775 and 1776, that same man chanced to be in correspondence with Colonel Monson from Moorshood-abad; a correspondence which did him some wrong in the mind of Governor Hastings, who did not know then that the man was nearly a stranger to that Gentleman, which latter, he did not suspect to be at the bottom of all his correspondence with Mr. Goring. This correspondence contained a variety of matters: "The famine of 1769, and its consequences; the Rohilla war; the quantity of cash in Bengal; the population of the Country; the quantity of cash imported by the war; the quantity monthly imported by that war; the quantity monthly imported from Banaress." It contained also much extraneous matter. That same man afterwards wrote "a very long letter on the necessity and even expediency of parting with the Americans, and securing to Old England, as early as possible, the Herring-fishery, Cod-fishery, &c.. Whale-fishery, and the Trade of Coals, four important Articles, that afforded thirty thousand Seamen, a year to Old England. In the two first of which, the Americans had a local advantage over the English and in the fourth of which, they made up the local disadvantage of greater distance by the local advantage of easier purchase and cheaper manufacture;
42.28.5
for coals may be had in Cape Breton and all over Nova Scotia, even at the surface, but surely at no greater expense than digging five or six feet; whereas in Old England, digging for coals, and bringing them up to the surface, required an immense deal of ingenuity and a most expensive machinery." This letter contained likewise a variety of new remarks upon America and England respectively. These two Pamphlets Colonel Monson sent to England, after having declared here, that they considered a subject already trite, under a new point of view. But they were immediately followed by a letter, intituled State of Europe in 1800. This also was a novel subject treated in an original manner. All three were sent to England, anonymous, all three were printed in London with not a single note of emendation, and all three passed for done by an Englishman. The reviewers in giving a list of the new works printed, mentioned them both, without adding a word of encomium or blame, and just as they had mentioned fifty more publications, of which they only indicated the contents and date. This last transaction, Mr. Champain, now at Dacca, is well informed of; indeed, the author of these three pamphlets never kept a copy of any of these papers, and he had forgot them totally. But the gentleman having chanced to find him in 1779 at a certain Armenian girl's, called Mrs. Drivers, he mentioned the letter on the year 1800, and told him that he knew more of it than was suspected; for he had a copy of it.
42.28.6
The same man in the year 1776, had a considerable difference with the Provincial Council of Moorshood-abad, who were guilty towards him of a glaring injustice and this was the expression used by Governor Hastings himself in full Council. In the sequel the man who saw that the public and even the Supreme Council itself swayed by the name and authority of Provincial Council, had greatly mistaken his case, thought it incumbent upon him to set the public to rights; and he distributed ten copies of a long letter of twenty pages written on the subject. All that I can say about it is, that it turned the tide of popular favor, and produced the gain of his cause. But as it represented the glaring injustice in such a manner as rendered the Provincial Council, both odious and ridiculous, and even threw a slur upon some operations of Government itself, the Supreme Council wrote to their substitutes at Moorshood-abad to let the man alone henceforward. This letter was read by Sir Elijah Impey; and the man happening once to be at breakfast with that Magistrate, but at the other end of the table, a Captain of an East Indiaman, who was close to Sir E., asked him whether the man could speak some English? Speak some English! answered the Magistrate in a low voice, but which I overheard; he writes it as they do in London, without having ever been in England, and he is a formidable writer in polemics. The latter phrase was pronounced with a sneer.