sions of Warren Hastings. He was not squeamish in
pecuniary transactions; but he was neither sordid nor rapacious. He was
far too enlightened a man to look on a great empire merely as a
buccaneer would look on a galleon. Had his heart been much worse than it
was, his understanding would have preserved him from that extremity of
baseness. He was an unscrupulous, perhaps an unprincipled statesman; but
still he was a statesman, and not a freebooter.

In 1764 Hastings returned to England. He had realized only a very
moderate fortune; and that moderate fortune was soon reduced to nothing,
partly by his praiseworthy liberality, and partly by his mismanagement.
Towards his relations he appears to have acted very generously. The
greater part of his savings he left in Bengal, hoping probably to obtain
the high usury of India. But high usury and bad security generally go
together; and Hastings lost both interest and principal.

He remained four years in England. Of his life at this time very little
is known. But it has been asserted, and is highly probable, that liberal
studies and the society of men of letters occupied a great part of his
time. It is to be remembered to his honor, that in days when the
languages of the East were regarded by other servants of the Company
merely as the means of communicating with weavers and money-changers,
his enlarged and accomplished mind sought in Asiatic learning for new
forms of intellectual enjoyment, and for new views of government and
society. Perhaps, like most persons who have paid much attention to
departments of knowledge which lie out of the common track, he was
inclined to overrate the value of his favorite studies. He conceived
that the cultivation of Persian literature might with advantage be made
a part of the liberal education of an English gentleman; and he drew up
a plan with that view. It is said that the University of Oxford, in
which Oriental learning had never, since the revival of letters, been
wholly neglected, was to be the seat of the institution which he
contemplated. An endowment was expected from the munificence of the
Company; and professors thoroughly competent to interpret Hafiz and
Ferdusi were to be engaged in the East. Hastings called on Johnson, with
the hope, as it should seem, of interesting in this project a man who
enjoyed the highest literary reputation, and who was particularly
connected with Oxford. The interview appears to have left on Johnson's
mind