the management of the school devolved
on Dr. Sumner, by whom Jones, then in his fifteenth year, was
particularly distinguished. Such was his zeal, that he devoted whole
nights to study; and not contented with applying himself at school to
the classical languages, and during the vacations to the Italian and
French, he attained Hebrew enough to enable him to read the Psalms in
the original, and made himself acquainted with the Arabic character.
Strangers, who visited Harrow, frequently inquired for him by the
appellation of the great scholar.

Some of his compositions from this time to his twentieth year, which he
collected and entitled Limon,[1] in imitation of the ancients, are
printed among his works. A young scholar who should now glance his eye
over the first chapter, containing speeches from Shakspeare and
Addison's Cato translated into Greek iambics on the model of the Three
Tragedians, would put aside the remainder with a smile of complacency at
the improvement which has since been made in this species of task under
the auspices of Porson.

His mother was urged by several of the legal profession, who interested
themselves in his welfare, to place him in the office of a special
pleader: but considerations of prudence, which represented to her that
the course of education necessary to qualify him for the practice of the
law was exceedingly expensive and the advantages remote, hindered her
from acquiescing in their recommendation; at the same time that his own
inclination and the earnest wishes of his master concurred in favour of
prosecuting his studies at college. Which of the two universities should
have the credit of perfecting instruction thus auspiciously commenced
was the next subject of debate. But the advice of Dr. Glasse, then a
private tutor at Harrow, prevailing over that of the head master, who,
by a natural partiality for the place of his own education would have
given the preference to Cambridge, he was in 1764 admitted of University
College in Oxford, whither his mother determined to remove her
residence, either for the purpose of superintending his health and
morals, or of enjoying the society of so excellent a son.

Before quitting school he presented to his friend Parnell, nephew of the
poet, and afterwards Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland, a
manuscript volume of English verses, consisting, among other pieces, of
that essay which some years after he moulded into his Arcadia; and of
transla