SOURCE: Review of Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah. The Monthly Review 21 (September-December 1796): 176-80.

In the following review, the anonymous critic provides a generally favorable assessment of Hamilton's Translation of the Letters of a Hindoo Rajah, and comments on cultural inaccuracies in the text.

Impressed, from the moment at which we begin to think, with many gratuitous notions; bred up with local prejudices; accustomed to respect certain institutions, and to confound acquired habits with natural instincts; we view at a maturer age, without surprise, the complex structure of refined society. It becomes difficult to disentangle the perplexity of its combinations; to separate that which is essential to its existence, from what is added by caprice; and that which is conducive to our happiness, from what is illusive or pernicious. An ingenious device practised for this purpose, by the learned, has been the introduction of individuals of...