BABYLON AND PERSIA

12 MEDIA, BABYLON, AND PERSIA.tablishedbyhim, and SeveralImportant Traits Bearingon the Ancient History of the Persians." The manu- -scripts from which he worked had already been de¬posited in the Royal Library. He had thereforefully redeemed the vow to which he pledged himselfseventeen years before on first beholding the puz¬zling pot-hooks on the Oxford tracing, andnowwaited anxiously and with natural curiosity to seethe impression which his labors would produce onthe scholarly world of Europe.-13. Here he was doomed to an unlooked-for anddisheartening experience.True, there was here andthere a little burst of enthusiasm, but the large ma¬jority of scholars held aloof, uncertain and bewil¬dered, while the English scholars, partly movedthereto by personal feeling against the author, whohad been guilty of some very ill-teinpered and un¬warrantable attacks on the University of Oxford,took a decided hostile stand.Their spokesman wasWilliam Jones, then a very young man, but al¬ready distinguished as a linguist and Orientalist,who published in French an anonymous " Letter toMr. A duP " in the form of a pamphlet.Though so abusive as to be decidedly in bad taste,it was very clever, and the French was so perfectthat it was some time before the nationality of thewriter was suspected. Jones siinply accused theelder scholar of forgery, or else of a credulity pass¬ing all reasonable bounds.He objected that thewritings, presented to the world as the works of oneof the greatest thinkers of all ages, half the time .to use a homely expression," didn't make Sense,"