December, 1793. The mere desire of increasing a fortune, which he professed to find already large enough for his moderate wishes, would not have tempted Sir William Jones to remain alone in Bengal: but he felt an earnest desire to complete the great work on Hindoo Law, which he had originated; and no apprehension was felt on his account, as his constitution seemed to have become inured to the climate. But in the following spring he was attacked by inflammation of the liver, which ran its fatal course with unusual rapidity. He died, April 27, 1794. The ‘Digest,’ to which he had thus sacrificed his life, was completed by Mr. Colebrooke, and published in 1800. Blameless in his domestic relations, consistent and enlightened in his political views, an honest and indefatigable magistrate, few men have gone through life with more credit, or as far as it is possible to form an opinion, with more happiness than Sir William Jones. As a scholar, the circumstances of his life being considered, his acquirements were extraordinary; and in this light the most remarkable feature of his character was his singular facility in learning languages. A list, preserved in his own handwriting, thus classes those with which he was in any degree acquainted; they are twenty-eight in number. “Eight languages studied critically—English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit. Eight studied less perfectly, but all intelligible with a dictionary—Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish. Twelve studied less perfectly, but all attainable: Thibetian, Pâli, Pahlair, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, Chinese.” Besides law, which as his profession, was his chief business through life, his writings embrace a vast variety of subjects in the several classes of philology, botany, zoology, poetry original and translated, political discussion, geography, mythology, astronomy as applied to chronology, and history, especially that of the Asiatic nations. And the praise of ‘adorning everything that he touched’ is singularly due to him, for the elegance of his style, and his power of throwing interest over the dry and uncertain inquiries in which he took such delight. As far as England is concerned, he was our great pioneer in Eastern learning; and if later scholars, profiting in part by his labours, have found reason to dissent from his opinions, it is to be recollected, as far as our estimate of his powers is concerned, that most men, who have obtained eminence in this recondite department of literature, have done so by the devotion of their undivided powers: what Jones accomplished was performed, on the contrary, in the intervals of those official labours, to which the best hours and energies of his life were, as his first point of duty, devoted. What he had meditated, if life and leisure had been granted, may be inferred from the list of ‘Desiderata,’ which his biographer (vol. ii., p.