In his ninth year he had the misfortune to break his thigh-bone in a scramble with his school-fellows, and this accident detained him from school twelve months. After his relief from pain, however, the period of his confinement was not suffered to pass in indolence; his mother was his constant companion, and amused him daily with the perusal of such English books as she deemed adapted to his taste and capacity. The juvenile poems, of Pope, and Dryden's translation of the Eneid afforded him incessant delight, and excited his poetical talents, which displayed themselves in the compilation of verses in imitation of his favourite authors. But his progress in classical learning, during this interval, was altogether suspended; for, although he might have availed himself of the proffered instruction of a friend, in whose house he resided, to acquire the ru diments of Latin, he was then so unable to comprehend its utility, and had so little relish for it, that he was left unrestrained to pursue his juvenile occupations and amusements; and the little which he had gained in his first two years was nearly lost in the third. On his return to school he was, however, placed in the same class which he would have attained if the progress of his studies had not been interrupted. He was, of course, far behind his fellow-labour ers of the same standing, who erroneously ascribed his insufficiency to laziness or dullness; while the master, who had raised him to a situation above his powers, required exertions of which he was incapable; and corporal punishment and degradation were applied for the nonperformance of tasks which he had never been instructed to furnish. But, in truth, he far excelled his school-fellows in general, both in diligence and quickness of appre hension; nor was he of a temper to submit to imputations which he knew to be unmerited. Punishment failed to produce the intended effect; but his emulation was roused. He devoted himself incessantly to the perusal of various elementary treatises, which had never been explained, nor even recommended to him; and, having thus acquired principles, he applied them with such skill and success, that in a few months he not only recovered the station from which he had been degraded, but was at the head of his class: his compositions were correct, his analyses accurate, and he uniformly gained every prize offered for the best exercise. He voluntarily extended his studies beyond the prescribed limits, and by solitary labour, having acquired a competent knowledge of the rules of prosody, he composed verses in imitation of Ovid, a task which had never been required from any of the students in the lower school at Harrow. In his twelfth year Jones was removed into the upper school. Of the retentive powers of his memory, at this period, the following anecdote is a remarkable instance: his school-fellows proposed to amuse themselves with the representation of a play; and at his recommendation they fixed upon the Tempest: as it was not readily to be procured, he wrote it for them so correctly from memory, that they acted it with great satisfaction to themselves, and with considerable entertainment to the spectators. He performed the character of Prospero. His diligence increased with his advancement advancement in the schools; he now entered' upon the study of the Greek tongue, the characters of which he had already learned for his amusement. His genius and assiduity were also displayed in various compositions, not required by the discipline of the school. He translated into English verse several of the epistles of Ovid, all the pastorals of Virgil, and composed a dramatic piece on the story of Meleager, which he denominated a tragedy; and it was acted, during the vacation, by some of his school-fellows, with whom he was most intimate. In his own play he performed the part of the hero. In the usual recreations of his school-fellows at Harrow, Jones was rarely a partaker; and the hours which they allotted to amusement, he generally devoted to improvement. The following anecdote strongly indicates the turn of his mind, and the impression made by his studies. He invented a play, in which Dr. William Bennet, bishop of Cloyne, and the celebrated Dr. Parr, were his principal associates. They divided the fields in the neighbourhood of Harrow according to a map of Greece, into states and kingdoms; each fixed upon one as his dominion, and assumed an ancient name. Some of their school-fellows consented to be styled barbarians, who were to invade their territories, and attack their hillocks, which were denominated fortresses. The chiefs vigorously defended their respective domains against the incursions of the enemy; and in these imitative wars, the young statesmen held councils, made vehement harangues, and composed memorials, all, doubtless, very boyish, but calculated to fill their minds with ideas of legislation In these un and civil government. usual amusements, Jones was ever the leader; and he might justly have appropriated to himself the words of Catullus : Ego gymnasii flos, ego decus olei. Dr. Thackeray retired from the superintendance of the school at Harrow when his pupil had attained his fifteenth year. It was a singular trait in the character of this good man and respectable tutor, that he never applauded the best compositions of his scholars, from a notion which he had adopted, that praise only tended to make them vain or idle. But the opinion which he gave of Jones in private was, that he was a boy of so active a mind, that if he were left naked and friendless on Salisbury plain, he would, nevertheless, find the road to fame and riches. Dr. Thackeray was succeeded by Dr. Sumner; and for his information of the course of study pursued at Harrow, a plan of the lectures and exercises in the upper school was accurately delineated by Jones, at the suggestion of the principal assistant, who presented it to the new master, with many encomiums on the talents of his favourite scholar. He annexed it to a collection of his compositions, including his translation of the pastorals of Virgil. Dr. Sumner quickly distinguished him; and of the two complete years which he passed under that excellent instructor, it is sufficient to say, that he employed them in reading and imitating the best ancient authors; nor did he confine himself merely to the compositions of Greece and Rome; he learned the Arabic characters, and studied the Hebrew language sufficiently to enable him 3 A 2 to to read some of the original Psalms. His ardour for knowledge was so unlimited, that he frequently devoted whole nights to study, taking coffee or tea as an antidote to drow siness and his improvement by these extraordinary exertions was so rapid, that he soon became the prime favourite of his master, who, with an excusable partiality, was heard to declare, that Jones knew more Greek than himself, and was a greater proficient in the idiom of that language. Nor was he less a favourite with his fellow-students than with his master. He acquired popularity with them, by the frequent holidays that rewarded the excellence of his compositions. His reputation at the same time was so extensive, that he was often flattered by the enquiries of strangers, under the title of the great scholar. During the vacations, his application was directed to improve his knowledge of French and arithmetic, to which he also added the study of the Italian. Books he had always at command; for his mother, who contemplated with delight the progress of her son, with a wise liberality, allowed him unlimited credit on her purse. But of this indulgence, as he knew that her finances were restricted, he availed himself no farther than to purchase such books as were essential to his improvement. The period of tuition under Dr. Sumner passed rapidly, to the mutual satisfaction of the master and scholar, until Jones had reached his seventeenth year, when it was determined to remove him to one of the universities. Cambridge was recommended by Dr. Sumner, who had received his education there; but Dr. Glasse, who had private pupils at Harrow, and had always distinguished Jones by the kindest attention, recommended Oxford. His choice was adopted by Mrs. Jones, who, in compliance with the wishes of her son, had determined to reside at the university with him, and greatly preferred the situation of Oxford. In the Spring of 1764 he went to the university, for the purpose of being matriculated and entered at college; but he returned to Harrow for a few months, that he might finish a course of lectures which he had just begun, and in which he had been highly interested by the learning, eloquence, taste, and sagacity of his excellent instructor. They separated soon after, with mutual regret, and in the following term he fixed himself at Oxford. A collection of English poems, composed by Mr. Jones, at Harrow, was presented by him to his friend Parnell, in 1763. The first and longest of the collection, containing more than three hundred and thirty lines, is entitled Prolusions, and is a critique on the various styles of pastoral writers. This was written by Mr. Jones, at the age of fifteen, and is the original of the poem which he afterwards published under the title of Arcadia. The remaining poems in the collection consist of translations and imitations of Horace, Sophocles, and Theocritus; Saul and David, an ode; and a Satire on the inordinate love of novelty, *The late sir John Parnell, who filled the office of chancellor of the exchequer, in Ireland. A manuscript A manuscript of these poems, in the hand-writing of Mr. Jones, was presented to lady Jones by sir John Parnell, a few weeks only before his death. We select as a specimen of Mr. Jones's poetical talents, at the age of fourteen, the shortest in the collection, in imitation of a well known ode of Horace, and addressed to his friend Parnell :— How quickly fades the vital flower! The early joys of blooming youth, Can zeal drear Pluto's wrath restrain? No-tho' an hourly victim stain His hallow'd shrine with blood, In vain, my Parnell, wrapt in ease, sist his exertions, and rewarded their success with unlimited applause, his ardour for learning had been raised to a degree of enthusiasm; at the university he expected to find a Sumner or an Askew in every master of arts, and generally the same passion for literature which he had himself imbibed. It was evident that such extravagant expectations must he disappointed; and from the public lectures he derived little gratification or instruction: they were much below the standard of his attainments, and, in fact, were considered as merely formal; and instead of pure principles on subjects of taste, on rhetoric, poetry, or practical morals, he complained that he was required to attend dull comments on artificial ethics, and logic, detailed in such barbarous Latin, that he professed to know as little of it as he then knew of Arabic. The only logic then in fashion was that of the schools; and in a memorandum written by himself, which is our authority for these remarks, we find an anecdote related of one of Our house, our land, our shadowy grove, the fellows, who was reading Locke The very mistress of our love, Ah me! we soon must leave! Of all our trees, the hated boughs Of cypress shall alone diffuse Their fragrance o'er our grave. with his own pupils, that he carefully passed over every passage in which that great metaphysician derides the old system. After the residence of a few months at the university, on the 31st of October, 1764, Mr. Jones was unanimously elected one of the four scholars on the foundation of Sir Simon Bennett, to whose munificence he was ever proud to acknowledge his obligations. The prospect of a fellowship, to which he looked with natural impatience, was, however, remote, as he had three seniors. His partiality for oriental litera ture now began to display itself in the study of the Arabic, to which he was strongly incited by the example and encouragement of a fellow-stuIdent of great worth and abilities, who had acquired some knowledge in that celebrated language, and offered him the use of the best books, with which he was well provided. In acquiring the pronunciation, he was assisted by a native of Aleppo, who spoke and wrote the vulgar Arabic fluently, but was without any pretensions to the character of a scholar. Mr. Jones accidentally discovered him in London, where he usually passed his vacations, and prevailed upon him to accompany him to Oxford, under a promise of maintaining him there. This promise he was obliged exclusively to fulfil for several months, at an expence which his finances could ill afford, being disappointed in the hopes which he had entertained that some of his brother collegians might be inclined to avail themselves of the assistance of the Syrian, and participate with him in the expence of his mainte nance. In the course of his application to this ancient language, he discovered, what he never before suspected, a near connexion between the modern Persic and Arabic, and he immediately determined to acquire the former. He accordingly studied it with attention in the only Persian Grammar then extant; and having laboured diligently in the Gulistan of Sadi, assisted by the accurate, but inelegant version of Gentius, and at the well-chosen praxis at the close of Meninski's grammar, he found his exertions rewarded with rapid success. don, where he daily attended the schools of Angelo, for the purpose of acquiring the elegant accomplishments of riding and fencing. He was always a strenuous advocate for the practice of bodily exercises, as no less useful to invigorate his frame, than as a necessary qualification for any active exertions to which he might eventually be called. At home his attention was directed to the modern languages; and he read the best authors in Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, following in all respects the plan of education recommended by Milton, which he had by heart; and thus, to transcribe an observation of his own, with the fortune of a peasant, giving himself the education of a prince. If the literary acquisitions of Mr. Jones at this period be compared with his years, few instances will be found in the annals of biography, of a more successful application of time and talents, than he exhibits; and it is worthy of observation, that he was no less indebted to his uncommon industry and method for his attainments, than to his superior capacity. A mind thus occupied in the pursuit of universal literature, was little susceptible of the passions of avarice or ambition; but, as he was sensible that the charges attending his education, notwithstanding his habitual attention to economy, must occasion a considerable deduction from the moderate income which his mother possessed, he anxiously wished for a fellowship, that he might relieve her from a burden which she could ill support. If the prospect of acquiring that adHis vacations were passed in Lon- vantage had not been remote, no tempta |