The well-known evangelical commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, born in 1760, of very humble parentage, at Magherafelt, in the County of Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, and for a long course of years the most distinguished preacher of the Methodist communion, enjoyed a high reputation among his followers as a linguist; but his studies had been confined almost entirely to the Biblical languages. The same may be said of the Rev. Dr. Barrett, vice-provost of Trinity College, Dublin, who is known to Biblical students as the editor of the Palimpsest MS. of the Gospels, and of the celebrated Codex Montfortianus. But there is more of curious interest in the career of a very extraordinary individual, Richard Roberts Jones, of Aberdarvan, in Carnarvonshire, who, if not for the extent of his attainments, at least for the exceedingly unfavourable circumstances under which they were acquired, deserves a place among examples of the “pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.” A privately printed memoir of this singular character, by Mr. Roscoe, who took much interest in him, and exerted himself warmly in his behalf, contains several most curious particulars regarding his studies and acquirements, as well as his personal habits and appearance. Mr. Roscoe first met him in 1806, and described him to Dr. Parr as “a poor Welsh fisher-lad, as ragged as a colt, and as uncouth as any being that has a semblance of humanity. But beneath such an exterior,” he adds, “is a mind cultivated, not only beyond all reasonable expectation, but beyond all probable conception. In his fishing boat on the coast of Wales, at an age little more than twenty, he has acquired Greek, Hebrew, and Latin; has read the Iliad, Hesiod, Theocritus, &c.; studied the refinements of Greek pronunciation; and examined the connection of that language with Hebrew.” An attempt was made to raise him to a position more befitting his acquirements. But his habits were of the rudest and most uncleanly. “He loved to lie on his back in the bottom of a ditch. His uncouth appearance, solitary habits, and perhaps weak intellect, made him an object of ridicule and persecution to the children of the district; and, he often _carried an iron pot on his head_ to screen him from the stones and clods which they threw at him. He wore a large filthy wrapper, in the pockets and folds of which he stowed his library; and his face, covered with hair, gave him a strangely uncouth appearance; although the mild and abstracted expression of his features took from it much of its otherwise repulsive character.” Mr. Roscoe gives a very curious account of an interview between Dr. Parr and this strange genius, in 1815, in the course of which Jones “exhibited a familiarity with French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee.” He described too, for Dr. Parr, his mode of acquiring a new language, which consisted in carefully examining its vocabulary, ascertaining what words in it corresponded with those of any language which he had