I am glad to enter upon our list the name of this illustrious scholar,
who was born in London, 28th September, 1746, and died in Calcutta,
27th April, 1794.
If others have excelled Sir William Jones in different departments
of human activity, no Englishman has attained equal eminence in so
many, and at the same time borne the priceless crown of character. His
wonderful attainments and his various genius excite admiration, but
his goodness awakens love. It is pleasant to know that his benediction
rests upon our country.
From boyhood to his last breath he was always industrious, thus
helping the generous gifts of Nature,--and it is not easy to say where
he was most eminent. As a jurist, he is memorable for the “Essay on
the Law of Bailments,” undoubtedly at the time it appeared the most
complete and beautiful contribution to the science of jurisprudence
in the English language. As a judge, he was the voice of the law and
of justice, so that his appointment to a high judicial station in
India was called “the greatest blessing ever conferred by the British
Government on the inhabitants of the East.”[578] As a linguist, knowing
no less than twenty-eight languages, he was the predecessor of Baron
William Humboldt, and the less scholarly prodigy, Mezzofanti, while
as a philologist he will find a parallel in the former rather than
the latter. As an Orientalist, he was not only the first of his time,
but the pioneer through whom the literature of the East was opened to
European study and curiosity. As a poet, he is enshrined forever by his
Ode modestly called “An Ode in Imitation of Alcæus,”[579] and doubtless
inspired by sympathy with the American cause:--
“What constitutes a State?
Not high-raised battlement or labored 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,
…
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.”[580]
To all these accomplishments add the glowing emotions of his noble
nature, his love of virtue, his devotion to freedom, his sympathy for
the poor and downtrodden. His biographer records as “a favorite opinion
of Sir William Jones, that all men are born with _an equal capacity
for improvement_,”[581] and also reports him as saying: “I see chiefly
under the sun the two classes of men whom Solomon describes, the
oppressor and the oppressed.… I shall cultivate my fields and gardens,
and think as little as possible of monarchs or oligarchs.”[582] With
these declarations it is easy to credit Dr. Paley, who said of him,
“He was a great republican when I knew him.”[583] Like seeks like, and
a long intimacy in the family of the good Bishop of St. Asaph,[584]
ending in a happy marriage with his eldest daughter, shows how he must
have sympathized with the American cause and with the future of our
country.
Our author had been the tutor of Lord Althorp, the same who, as Earl
Spencer, became so famous a bibliophile and a patron of Dibdin, and
on the marriage of his pupil with Miss Lavinia Bingham, he was moved
to commemorate it in a poem, entitled “The Muse Recalled: an Ode
on the Nuptials of Lord Viscount Althorp and Miss Lavinia Bingham,
eldest Daughter of Charles Lord Lucan, March 6, 1781,”[585] which his
critic, Wraxall, calls “one of the most beautiful lyric productions in
the English language, … emulating at once the fame of Milton and of
Gray.”[586] But beyond the strain of personal sympathy, congenial to
the occasion, was a passion for America, and the prophetic spirit which
belongs to the poet. Lamenting that Freedom and Concord are repudiated
by the sons of Albion, all the Virtues disappear,--
“Truth, Justice, Reason, Valor, with them fly
To seek a purer soil, a more congenial sky.”