THE

LIFE OF SIR WILLIAM JONES.

WHEN we regard the extent of his genius, the accumulations of his knowledge, the variety of his attainments, the unremitting vigor of his mind, the unfaltering consistency of his patriotism, the hightoned independence of his spirit, the inflexible rectitude and the ever active benevolence of his heart, we must necessarily place the illustrious subject of our present narrative in the very first class of our British worthies, among whom we shall find it impossible to discover his superior as a human character, and difficult to gratify our eyes with the spectacle even of his equal. We must contemplate Sir W. JONES,

quem tu, Dea, tempore in omni,

Omnibus ornatum voluisti excellere rebus,

at once with reverence and with love; and must perceive that his life, if circumstantially and fully written by the hand of a master, would form a grand biographical object; and would be extensively beneficial by the example, which it exhibited, of victorious industry; of splendid talents, and rare knowledge offered to the Deity upon the altar of duty; of a mind uniformly kindled with the holy love of liberty and of truth, and undeviately directed in its exertions to the promotion of all the higher in

B

terests of his country, and of the general happiness of the whole race of man. A full length portrait of the great and the good Sir W. Jones would, indeed, be a rich and a most useful present to the world: but our plan will not permit us to give it; and we must confine our ambition to such a representation of him as can be contained in a faithful, but a naked outline.

Sir Wm. Jones was born on the 28th of September, 1746, of parents who were distinguished characters, his father (William Jones, a native of Anglesea) being an eminent mathematician, the correspondent and friend of the great Newton; and his mother (Mary Nix, the daughter of a cabinet maker in London) being a woman whose superiority of understanding was peculiarly enriched with the acquisitions of science. His father dying in 1749, the care of our Author in his infancy devolved wholly upon his mother; and she approved herself to be admirably qualified for the faithful discharge of the delegated and important duty. From the early instruction which he received under his parental roof, our William Jones passed in his seventh year to the school of Harrow; where he had the rare good fortune of becoming the pupil of the celebrated Doctor Sumner, and the schoolfellow of the still more celebrated Doctor Parr. From Harrow he was removed, in his seventeenth year, to University College in Oxford; and here the same display of great talents, of unremitting industry, and of extraordinary proficiency, which had excited the admiration and conciliated the regard of his two successive masters at Harrow, Dr. Thackeray and Dr. Sumner, obtained for the youthful student a degree of celebrity, which, spreading beyond the walls of his own college, occupied the whole of the university, and extended over a considerable portion of England. He now, as the tutor of the young Lord Althorpe, became domesticated in the Spencer family; in whose so

ciety he made two excursions to the continent, one in 1767, and one in 1769; during the latter of which he resided for some time at Nice, compressing and concentrating the knowledge which he had amassed from his personal intercourse with our polished and literary neighbours. In the following year (1770) he first ventured from the press, in a French translation of a Persian history of Nadir Shah, or, as he is also styled, Thamas Kouli Kan. To this work, which was printed at his own expense, Mr. Jones was incited by the especial request of the King of Denmark, who was at that time on a visit to England: but of the Author, who by this publication had discovered himself to be master of the two great languages of the Eastern and the Western world, the Persian and the French, a barren laurel was the sole compensation: for he received nothing more for his arduous achievement than a letter of thanks from the monarch, who had engaged him to undertake it, and a diploma constituting him a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen. His next intellectual effort was a Latin elegy on the death of Doctor Sumner, which afflicting event occurred in 1771: and in this year Mr. Jones successively published Dissertation sur la Litérature Orientale;' A Grammar of the Persian Language;' and 'Lettre à M. Anquetel Du Perron, dans laquelle est compris l'examen de sa traduction des livres attribués à Zoroastre;' written for the purpose of vindicating his university from the calumnious attack of this translator of the works attributed to Zoroaster. A volume of poems, principally translated from the Oriental languages, with two Essays on the poetry of the East, and on the imitative arts, was sent from the press by our Author in 1772; and in the succeeding year, when he took his M. A. degree, he gave to the public a translation of his history of Nadir Shab, together with a 'Description

of Asia according to the Oriental Geographers;' and 'A short History of Persia, from the earliest times to the present; with an Appendix, containing an Essay on Asiatic Poetry, and the History of the Persian Language.'

On the literature of the East, which had occupied so much of the attention of his powerful mind, he published a greater work, in 1774, under the title of 'Poëseos Asiatica commentariorum libri sex, cum appendice,' &c. In the preceding year he had adopted the law as his profession; and to the attainment of that peculiar knowledge, which was requisite for the success of his difficult undertaking, he now bent all the vigor of his intellect; and the effort was not made without its corresponding effect. When he had not long been called to the Bar, he was nominated a commissioner of bankrupts by the Lord Chancellor Bathurst; and to this nobleman he dedicated, in 1779, a translation of 'The Speeches of Isæus in Causes concerning the Law of Succession to Property at Athens, with a commentary and a preliminary Discourse.'

In 1780 he offered himself as a candidate for the representation of the University of Oxford in the Commons' House of Parliament. But the liberality of his political principles proved, in this instance, an effectual obstacle to the success of his honorable ambition; and he discovered his prudence by withdrawing himself from the contest before the commencement of a poll. Disguising the cause of his disappointment, his friends imputed it to the lateness with which he had offered himself to the choice of his University. But in truth, as he was not an advocate for passive obedience, and the divine and, consequently, the indefeasible right of kings, he had nothing to hope on this occasion from the votes of Oxford; which, unaffected by the claims of his genius, his erudition, his eloquence, and his probity,

were surrendered, as their inalienable property, to toryism and dulness. The riots in London, which disgraced this year (1780) induced him to publish 'An Inquiry concerning the legal mode of suppressing riots, with a constitutional plan of future defence;' and in 1781, to evince his proficiency in the knowledge of the laws of England, he gratified the world with a masterly Essay on the Law of Bailments.'

Mr. Jones's political opinions, which had baffled his attempt on the representation of Oxford, now stimulated him to take an active part in opposition to the arbitrary measures of the government; and he became a leading and efficient member in the Constitutional Society. He could not, therefore, well expect favour from an administration, not remarkable for its liberality or its placability; and we cannot reasonably be surprised that his desire, for a place on the judicial bench of Calcutta, should not be readily gratified, how eminently soever he might be qualified for the solicited dignity by his splendid acquisitions of Oriental literature, by his general acquaintance with law, by the inviolable integrity of his heart, and the expansive illumination of his mind. To demonstrate, however, the propriety of his claims to the station which he affected, claims which were authenticated by the united suffrages of his country, he published, in 1782, The Mahommedan Law of Succession to the Property of Intestates, in Arabic, with a verbal translation and explanatory notes.'

In the following year, during the short power of the Whig administration under the Earl of Shelburne, Mr. Jones at length obtained, by the influence of his friend Lord Ashburton, the object of his long pursuit; and, on the 4th of March, 1783, he was nominated to the office of judge in the supreme court of judicature at Fort William; being