country is that of the law, and I need not add how ambitious and laborious I am.”

In what spirit he addressed himself to his new course of life, we may learn from his letter to his friend, Mr. Wilmot, son of Lord Chief-Justice Wilmot :-*

"I have just begun," he says, "to contemplate the stately edifice of the laws of England

if

"The gathered wisdom of a thousand years,"

you will allow me to parody a line of Pope. I do not see why the study of the law is called dry and unpleasant; and I very much suspect that it seems so to those only who would think any study unpleasant which required a great application of the mind and exertion of the memory. I have just read most attentively the two first volumes of Blackstone's Commentaries,' and the two others will require much less attention. I am much pleased with the care he takes to quote his authorities in the margin, which not only give a sanction to what he asserts, but point out the sources to which the student may refer for more diffusive knowledge.

"I have opened two common-place books-the one of the law, the other of oratory, which is surely too much neglected by our modern speakers. I do not mean the popular eloquence which cannot be tolerated at the bar; but that correctness of style and elegance of method which at once pleases and persuades the hearer. But I must lay aside my studies for about six weeks, while I am printing my Grammar, from which a good deal is expected, and which I must endeavour to make as perfect as a human work can be. When that is finished, I shall attend the Court of King's Bench very constantly."

From a letter to another friend I take a not less illustrative extract :

* Lord Teignmouth, "Life of Sir William Jones."

"I have learned so much, seen so much, written so much, said so much, and thought so much, since I conversed with you that, were I to attempt to tell half what I have learned, seen, writ, said, and thought, my letter would have no end. I spend the whole winter in attending the public speeches of our greatest lawyers and senators, and in studying our own admirable laws, which exhibit the most noble example of human wisdom that the mind of man can contemplate. I give up my leisure hours to a political treatise on the Turks, from which I expect some reputation; and I have several objects of ambition which I cannot trust to a letter, but will impart to you when we meet. If I am in England, I shall print my De Poesi Asiatica next summer, though I shall be at least two hundred pounds out of pocket by it. In short, if you wish to know my occupations, read the beginning of Middleton's 'Cicero,' pp. 13-18, and you will see my model, for I would willingly lose my head at the age of sixty, if I could pass a life at all analogous to that which Middleton describes."

But the generation to which Jones belonged was, in many respects, intensely conservative and bigoted. It was an axiom of general belief that a good lawyer could be nothing else than a lawyer; that in proportion as he cultivated his mind by the study of letters, did he deteriorate in the application of " precedents" and "" cases." A lawyer who was known to write poetry and read foreign languages was shunned by the public with honest aversion and mistrust. No clients came to his door; no fees jingled in his pockets. "It would hurt me as a student at the bar," writes Jones, in reference to this extraordinary superstition, "to have it thought that I continue to apply myself to poetry." So that, after he was called to the bar in 1774, he abandoned his literary pursuits, and devoted himself wholly to legal studies. "As the law is a jealous science," he writes, "and will not

have any partnership with the Eastern Muses, I must absolutely renounce their acquaintance for ten or twelve years to come."

Sir William Jones was not a poet; he had the poetic taste, but not the vision and the faculty divine, not the creative gift, or the soaring sweep of the poet's imagination. But an accomplished student of polite letters, he wrote with ease and elegance, and his translations are admirably executed. From a volume which he published in 1772 I quote a few stanzas, "A Persian Song of Hafiz," the smoothness of which not unfairly represents the liquid fluency of the original:

"Sweet maid, if thou wouldst charm my sight,

And bid these arms thy neck enfold;

That rosy cheek, that lily hand,
Would give thy poet more delight
Than all Bokhara's haunted gold,
Than all the gems of Samarcand.

"Go boldly forth, my simple lay,
Whose accents flow with artless ease,
Like orient pearls at random strung :*
Thy notes are sweet, the damsels say;
But, oh! far sweeter if they please

The nymph for whom these notes are sung!"

This is very graceful, though it is a paraphrase rather than a translation. As an original writer, little of Jones's poetry is now read or remembered; but in one of his lyrics he strikes an unusually elevated note, and exhibits a considerable power of condensed thought. I refer to the "Ode, in imitation of Alcæus :

"What constitutes a State?

Not high-raised battlement or laboured mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;

Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crowned;
Not bays and broad armed ports,

Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride ;
Not starred and spangled courts,

Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride.
No; men, high-minded men,

With powers as far above dull brutes endued
In forest, brake, or den,

As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude;
Men who their duties know,

But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain,
Prevent the long-aimed blow,

And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain.
These constitute a State';

And sovereign law, that State's collected will,
O'er thrones and globes elate

Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill;
Smit by her sacred frown,

The fiend Dissension like a vapour sinks,

And even the all-dazzling crown

Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks.

* A happy line, which has become familiar as household words,

"Such was this heaven-loved isle,
Than Lesbos fairer, and the Cretan shore !
No more shall Freedom smile?

Shall Britons languish and be men no more?
Since all must life resign,

Those meet rewards which decorate the brave
"Tis folly to decline,

And steal inglorious to the silent grave."

For a few months after he was called to the bar Mr. Jones did not seek to practise, from an idea, it is supposed, that he had not sufficiently mastered the principles of jurisprudence. For he took as comprehensive a view of the study of law as he had taken of his other and lighter studies; and, regarding it as a science, proceeded to investigate it with scientific method, comparing the legal systems of ancient times with those of modern Europe, all of which he carefully examined and compared. In a wider and deeper sense than usually attaches to the words, he was "learned in the law" when he began his regular attendance at Westminster Hall in 1775. His remarkable acquirements and high character secured him a very easy promotion; for in the following year, Lord Chancellor Bathurst, unsolicited by Jones himself, and uninfluenced by any friend, presented him to a commissionership of bankruptcy, he dedicating to his patron his translation of "Isæus" (1778). Jones says:—

"I cannot let slip this opportunity of informing the publicwho have hitherto indulgently approved and encouraged my labours-that although I have received many signal marks of friendship from a number of illustrious persons, to whose favours I can never proportion my thanks, yet your Lordship has been my greatest, my only benefactor; that, without any solicitation, or even request, on my part, you gave me a substantial and permanent token of regard, which you rendered still more valu