In his twenty-second year the “great scholar” undertakes a task which no other quality than perseverance could have enabled him to accomplish. The King of Denmark, then on a visit to this country, brought over with him an eastern manuscript, containing a life of Nadir Shah, and expressed his wish to the officers of government to have it translated into French, by an English scholar. The under secretary of state applied to Sir William Jones, who recommended Major Dow, the able translator of a Persian history, to perform the work. Major Dow refused: and, though hints of greater patronage did not influence the inclination of Sir William Jones, his reflection that the reputation of English learning would be dishonoured by the Danish king taking back the manuscript, with a report that no scholar in our country had courage to undertake the difficult labour, impelled him to enter on it. The fact that he had a French style to acquire, in order to discharge his task, and had, even then, to get a native Frenchman to go over the translation, to render it a scholar-like production, made the undertaking extremely arduous. It was, however, accomplished magnificently; and the adventurous translator added a treatise on oriental poetry, “such as no other person in England could then have written.” He was immediately afterwards made a member of the Royal Society of Copenhagen, and was recommended by the King of Denmark to the particular patronage of his own sovereign.
At twenty-six he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of England, and took his degree of Master of Arts the year after. Meanwhile he was composing his celebrated Persian Grammar; had found the means of entering effectively on the study of Chinese, a language at that time surrounded with unspeakable difficulties; had written part of a Turkish history; and was assiduously copying Arabic manuscripts in the Bodleian. The “Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry” were published in his twenty-eighth year, being five years after they were finished; his modesty, that invariable attendant of true merit, and his love of correctness, having induced him to lay the manuscript before Dr. Parr, and other profound judges, ere he ventured to give his composition to the world. Amidst so many absorbing engagements his biographer still notes the correct state of his heart. He was a regular correspondent with his excellent mother, and ever paid the most affectionate attention to her and his sister.
In his twenty-eighth year he devotes himself more exclusively to his legal studies, goes the Oxford circuit after being called to the bar, and afterwards attends regularly at Westminster Hall. Except the publication of a translation of the speeches of Isæus, he performs no remarkable literary labour for the next few years; his professional practice having become very considerable, and his thoughts being strongly directed towards a vacant judgeship, at Calcutta, as the situation in which he felt assured, by the union of his legal knowledge with his skill in oriental languages, he could best serve the interests of learning and of mankind.
Before this object of his laudable ambition was attained, however, Sir William Jones gave proof, as our great Englishman, Milton, had given before him, that the mightiest erudition does not narrow, but serves truly to enlarge the mind, and to nourish its sympathies with the great brotherhood of humanity. The war with the United States of America had commenced, and he declared himself against it; he wrote a splendid Latin ode, entitled “Liberty,” in which his patriotic and philanthropic sentiments are most nobly embodied; and became a candidate, on what are now called “liberal principles,” for the representation of Oxford. He withdrew, after further reflection, from the candidateship, still purposing to devote his life to the East, but not before he had testified his disapproval of harsh ministerial measures, by publishing an “Enquiry into the legal mode of suppressing riots, with a constitutional plan for their suppression.” Finally, to the record of this part of his life, Lord Teignmouth adds the relation, that Sir William Jones had found time to attend the lectures of the celebrated John Hunter, and to acquire some knowledge of anatomy; while he had advanced sufficiently far into the mathematics to be able to read and understand the “Principia” of Sir Isaac Newton.
The last eleven years of the illustrious scholar’s life form the most brilliant part of his career, and only leave us to lament that his days were not more extended. In the month of March, 1783, being then in his thirty-seventh year, he was appointed a judge of the supreme court of judicature, Fortwilliam, Calcutta, and on that occasion received the honour of knighthood. In the following month he married the eldest daughter of Dr. Shipley, Bishop of St. Asaph, and thus happy in a union with the lady to whom he had been long devoted, almost immediately embarked for India.
As a concluding lesson from the life of Sir William Jones, let us note how unsubduable is the intellect trained by long and early habits of perseverance, under the corrupting and enfeebling influences of honours and prosperity. On the voyage, the “great scholar” drew up a list of “Objects of Enquiry.” If he could have fulfilled the gigantic schemes which were thus unfolding themselves to his ardent mind, the world must have been stricken with amazement. The list is too long to be detailed here; suffice it to say, that it enumerates the “Laws of the Hindus and Mahommedans,” “The History of the Ancient World;” all the sciences, all the arts and inventions of all the Asiatic nations, and the various kinds of government in India. Following the list of “Objects of Enquiry,” is a sketch of works he purposes to write and publish; including “Elements of the Laws of England,” “History of the American War,” an epic poem, to be entitled “Britain Discovered,” “Speeches, Political and Forensic,” “Dialogues, Philosophical and Historical,” and a volume of letters, with translations of some portions of the Scriptures into Arabic and Persian.
Intense and indefatigable labour enabled him to complete his masterly “Digest of Mahommedan and Hindu Law,” but to accomplish this work, so invaluable to the European conquerors of Hindoostan, he had first, critically, to master the Sanscrit, at once the most perfect and most difficult of known languages. If it be remembered that Sir William Jones was also most active in the discharge of his judicial duties, our admiration will be increased. His translation of the “Ordinances of Menu,” a Sanscrit work, displaying the Hindoo system of religious and civil duties—and of the Indian drama of “Sacontala,” written a century before the Christian era—and his production of a “Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and Rome,” were among the last of his complete works. He also edited the first volume of the “Asiatic Researches;” and gave an impetus to eastern enquiry among Europeans, by instituting the Asiatic Society, of which he was the first president. His annual discourses before that assembly have been published, and are well known and highly valued.
The death of this great and good man, though sudden, being occasioned by the rapid liver complaint of Bengal, was as peaceful as his life had been noble and virtuous. A friend, who saw him die, says that he expired “without a groan, and with a serene and complacent look.” His death took place on the 27th April, 1794, when he was only in his forty-eighth year; yet he had acquired a “critical knowledge” of eight languages—English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit; he knew eight others less perfectly, but was able to read them with the occasional use of a dictionary—Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengalee, Hindostanee, Turkish; and he knew so much of twelve other tongues, that they were perfectly attainable by him, had life and leisure permitted his continued application to them—Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese. Twenty-eight languages in all; such is his own account. When you sum up the other diversified accomplishments and attainments of the scarce forty-eight years of Sir William Jones, reflect deeply, youthful reader, on what may be achieved by “perseverance,” and when you have reflected—resolve.
To that emphatic early lesson of “read and you will learn,” and to his ready opportunities and means of culture, we must, undoubtedly, attribute much of the “great scholar’s” success. In the life of one still living, and enjoying the honours and rewards of virtuous perseverance, it will be seen that even devoid of help, unstimulated by any affectionate voice in the outset, and surrounded with discouragements, almost at every step, the cultivation of this grand quality infallibly leads on to signal triumph.