Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/180

  Men of the Seventeenth Century,’ and were edited by S. J. Rigaud (Oxford, 1841). Those addressed to Jones will be found in i. 256 sqq.; they include two letters from Reyneau and one from Maupertuis. Jones's papers are still at Shirburn. His library, which was then considered the most valuable in mathematical books to be found in England, was also bequeathed to Macclesfield. It was when living at Shirburn that he became acquainted with Maria, daughter of George Nix, a London cabinet-maker, and Chippendale's chief rival, whom he married. He left two sons, George, and (afterwards Sir William) [q. v.], the oriental scholar, and a daughter, Mary.



JONES, WILLIAM (1746–1794), oriental scholar, youngest child of  (1675–1749) [q. v.] the mathematician, was born at Beaufort Buildings, Westminster, on 28 Sept. 1746, and lost his father while a child of three years old. His mother, a woman of exceptional ability, superintended his early education, and his precocious genius was encouraged by his father's scientific friends. He was entered at Harrow School in the Michaelmas term of 1753, and spent more than ten years there under the masterships of Dr. Thackeray and Dr. Sumner. His extraordinary capacities marked him out at this early age from his schoolfellows. He not only became a thorough classical scholar, but learned French and Italian, and the rudiments of Arabic and Hebrew, in his leisure hours. His chief amusement seems to have been chess, but for change of pastime he and two of his companions, Dr. Bennet, afterwards bishop of Cloyne, and the future scholar, Dr. Parr, occasionally mapped out the neighbourhood of Harrow into the states of Greece, and acted the famous events of ancient history. His father's friends recommended that he should be sent from school to the chambers of a special pleader; but he took a dislike to law on the ground that old English law books were written in bad Latin, and resolved to go to the university.

On 15 March 1764 Jones was matriculated at Oxford as a commoner of University College, and on 31 Oct. 1764 he was elected to a scholarship. His mother's means were not sufficiently large to maintain him at college without assistance, and on the strength of his brilliant Harrow reputation he was in 1765 appointed private tutor to Lord Althorp, the only son of the first Earl Spencer, and brother of Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire. His pupil was only a boy of seven, and Jones continued for five years to superintend his early education, while still keeping his terms at Oxford. This connection proved of the greatest advantage to Jones. He went abroad more than once with the Spencer family, and he maintained his friendship with his former pupil and the Duchess of Devonshire until his death. While connected with the Spencer family, Jones considerably increased his knowledge of languages. He mastered Arabic and Persian with the assistance of a Syrian Mirza, whom he brought to Oxford; he improved his knowledge of Hebrew, and gained some acquaintance with Chinese; and he became a fluent scholar in German, Spanish, and Portuguese. Nor did he disdain accomplishments. He took lessons in riding and fencing from Angelo, shared his pupil's dancing lessons, and learnt the use of the broad-sword from an old Chelsea pensioner. In 1766 he was elected a fellow of University College, Oxford; in 1768 he graduated B.A., and in 1773 M.A.

In 1768 Christian VII of Denmark had brought to England a life of Nadir Shah in Persian, and it was proposed to Jones that he should undertake the translation of it into French. He at first declined, but when it was represented to him that the honour of translating it would then fall to a Frenchman, he complied with the wishes of his friends. The translation—his first book—appeared in 2 vols. 4to, in 1770, the year in which he left Lord Spencer's family, and was received with universal commendation. It was followed in the same year by another work in French, a ‘Traité sur la Poésie Orientale,’ accompanied by a metrical translation of some of the odes of Hafiz. In 1771, in a ‘Dissertation sur la littérature Orientale,’ Jones defended the Oxford scholars against the strictures of Anquetil du Perron, the French orientalist, published in the introduction to the latter's translation of the ‘Zendavesta,’ and in the same year he issued the first edition of his ‘Grammar of the Persian Language.’ Johnson sent a copy of the grammar to Warren Hastings on 30 March 1774. His literary activity at the time was very great. In 1772 he issued ‘Poems, consisting chiefly of translations from the Asiatick Languages, with two Essays on the Poetry of the Eastern Nations, and on the Arts called Imitative’ (2nd edit. 1777), and in 1774 ‘Poeseos Asiaticæ Commentariorum Libri Sex.’ The latter work was suggested by Lowth's famous ‘Prælections on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews,’ and finally established his reputation as an