this very
person.

A living geographer, to whom the world stands deeply indebted, does not
read Herodotus in the original; yet, by the exercise of his
extraordinary aptitude, it is well known that he has often corrected the
Greek historian, explained obscurities in a text which he never read, by
his own happy conjectures, and confirmed his own discoveries by the
subsequent knowledge which modern travellers have afforded.

Gray's perseverance in studying the geography of India and of Persia, at
a time when our country had no immediate interests with those ancient
empires, would have been placed by a cynical observer among the curious
idleness of a mere man of letters. These studies were indeed
prosecuted, as Mr. Mathias observes, "on the disinterested principles of
liberal investigation, not on those of policy, nor of the regulation of
trade, nor of the extension of empire, nor of permanent establishments,
but simply and solely on the grand view of what is, and of what is past.
They were the researches of a solitary scholar in academical
retirement." Since the time of Gray, these very pursuits have been
carried on by two consummate geographers, Major Rennel and Dr. Vincent,
who have opened to the classical and the political reader all he wished
to learn, at a time when India and Persia had become objects interesting
and important to us. The fruits of Gray's learning, long after their
author was no more, became valuable!

The studies of the "solitary scholar" are always useful to the world,
although they may not always be timed to its present wants; with him,
indeed, they are not merely designed for this purpose. Gray discovered
India for himself; but the solitary pursuits of a great student, shaped
to a particular end, will never fail being useful to the world; though
it may happen that a century may elapse between the periods of the
discovery and its practical utility.

Halley's version of an Arabic MS. on a mathematical subject offers an
instance of the extraordinary sagacity I am alluding to; it may also
serve as a demonstration of the peculiar and supereminent advantages
possessed by mathematicians, observes Mr. Dugald Stewart, in their fixed
relations, which form the objects of their science, and the
correspondent precision in their language and reasoning:--as matter of
literary history it is highly curious. Dr. Bernard accidentally
discovered in the Bodleian Library an Arabic version of Apollonius _de
Sectione