tica, published at this period,
he announces his determination to quit the service of the muses, and
apply himself entirely to his professional studies. In a letter to
Reviczki, of February, 1775, we find him declaring that he no longer
intended to solicit the embassy to Constantinople. This year he attended
the spring circuit, and sessions at Oxford; and the next was appointed
one of the commissioners of bankrupts, and was to be found regularly as
a legal practitioner in Westminster Hall. At the same time, that he
might not lose sight of classical literature, he was assiduous in his
perusal of the Grecian orators, and employed himself in a version of the
Orations of Isaeus; nor does he appear to have broken off his
correspondence with learned foreigners, among whom were the youngest
Schultens, and G.S. Michaelis. The translation of Isaeus, which appears
to be executed with fidelity, was published in 1778, with a dedication
to Lord Bathurst, in which he declares "his Lordship to have been his
greatest, his only benefactor." His late appointment is the obligation
to which he refers.

A vacancy had now occurred on the bench at Fort William, in Bengal; and
Jones was regarded by his brethren at the bar as the fittest person to
occupy that station. The patronage of the minister, however, was
requisite to this office; and the violent measures which government had
lately adopted, with respect to the American Colonies, were far from
being such as accorded with his notions of freedom and justice. He was
resolved that no consideration should induce him to surrender the
independence of his judgment on this, or any other national topic. "If
the minister," says he, in one of his letters to his pupil, Lord
Althorpe, "be offended at the style in which I have spoken, do speak,
and will speak, of public affairs, and on that account, shall refuse to
give me the judgeship, I shall not be at all mortified, having already a
very decent competence without a debt, or a care of any kind." His
patriotic feelings displayed themselves in a Latin Ode to Liberty;
published in March, 1780, under the title of Julii Melesigoni ad
Libertatem, an assumed name, formed by an anagram of his own in Latin.

The resignation of Sir Robert Newdigate, one of the members returned to
parliament for the University of Oxford, in the meantime, induced
several members of that learned body, who were friendly to Jones, to
turn their eyes towards him as their future rep