Sir W. Elliot on Denholm and its Vicinity. 3^1 



Asiatic Society.* In addition to these, he adds, that he had 

 made out several Hala Lippi inscriptions in the most ancient 

 Tamil, all of which if recoverable would prove valuable con- 

 tributions to our knowledge of Indian antiquities even now. 



The elegant cenotaph which adorns the green before us was 

 erected by a few of his admiring fellow-countrymen in 1861. 

 At its inauguration on the 19th October of that year. Lord 

 Minto read the following extracts of a letter from his grand- 

 father, the Governor-general of India, written only a few 

 weeks before Leyden's death. They were published in a 

 local journal with an account of the ceremony, but are 

 deserving of a more permanent record. 



" H.M.S. Modeste, at sea, May, 1811. 



Dr. Leyden's learning is stupendous, and he is also a very 

 universal scholar. His knowledge, extensive and minute as 

 it is, is always in his pockets, at his finger ends, and on the 

 tip of his tongue. He has made it completely his own, and 

 it is all ready money. All his talent and labour indeed, 

 which are both excessive, could not, however, have accumu- 

 lated such stores without his extraordinary memory. I begin, 

 I fear, to look at that faculty with increasing wonder, I hope 

 without envy, but something like one's admiration of young 

 eyes. It must be confessed that Leyden has occasion for all 

 the stores which application and memory can furnish to sup- 

 ply his tongue, which would dissipate a common stock in a 

 week. I do not believe so great a reader was ever so great a 

 talker before," — . . . . 



"The following passage," said Lord Minto, "occurs after 

 some remarks by my grandfather on the excellent conversa- 

 tional powers of some members of his family, addressed to 

 one of them in particular": — "You would appear absolutely 

 silent in his company, as a ship under weigh seems at anchor 

 "when it is passed by a swifter sailer. Another feature of his 

 conversation is a shrill, piercing, and at the same time grating 

 voice. A frigate is not near large enough to place the ear at 

 the proper point of hearing. His audience is always suffer- 

 ing the same sort of strain which the eye experiences too near 

 an object which it is to examine attentively. One peculiarity 

 more, which is the more remarkable in so great a learner of 

 languages, he has never learned to speak English either in 

 pronunciation or idiom. In all these respects he is as faith- 

 ful to the * Scenes of Infancy' as if he had never greeted 

 Te'ot water, or seen anything more like a ship than a pair 



* Vol. II., 258. 



