But he has left a place vacant, not only in the halls of jurisprudence, but also in the circle of scholars throughout the world, and, it may be said, in the Pantheon of universal learning. Contemplating the variety, the universality of his attainments, the mind, borrowing an epithet once applied to another, involuntarily exclaims, "The admirable Pickering!" He seems, indeed, to have run the whole round of knowledge. His studies in ancient learning had been profound; nor can we sufficiently admire the facility with which, amidst other cares, he assumed the task of lexicographer. Unless some memorandum should be found among his papers, as was the case with Sir William Jones,[150] specifying the languages to which he had been devoted, it might be difficult to frame a list with entire accuracy. It is certain that he was familiar with at least _nine_,--English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, German, Romaic, Greek, and Latin, of which he spoke the first five. He was less familiar, though well acquainted, with Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Hebrew,--and had explored, with various degrees of care, the Arabic, Turkish, Syriac, Persian, Coptic, Sanscrit, Chinese, Cochin-Chinese, Russian, Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Malay in several dialects, and particularly the Indian languages of America and the Polynesian Islands. [150] Sir William Jones had studied eight languages critically,--English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit; eight less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary,--Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; twelve least perfectly, but all attainable,--Tibetian, Pâli, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Æthiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese: in all twenty-eight languages.--TEIGNMOUTH, _Life of Jones_, p. 376, note. The sarcasm of Hudibras on the "barren ground" supposed congenial to "Hebrew roots" is refuted by the richness of his accomplishments. His style is that of a scholar and man of taste. It is simple, unpretending like its author, clear, accurate, and flows in an even tenor of elegance, which rises at times to a suavity almost Xenophontian. Though little adorned by flowers of rhetoric, it shows the sensibility and refinement of an ear attuned to the harmonies of language. He had cultivated music as a science, and in his younger days performed on the flute with Grecian fondness. Some of the airs he had learned in Portugal were sung to him by his daughter shortly before his death, bringing with them, doubtless, the pleasant memories of early travel and the "incense-breathing morn" of life. A lover of music, he was naturally inclined to the other fine arts, but always had particular pleasure in works of sculpture.