Its riches had been accumulating during thousands of years, waiting till the fortunate man should arrive, destined to reveal to our age the barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East,--the true wealth of Ormus and of Ind.
Sir William Jones came well equipped for his task.

Some men are born philologians, loving _words_ for their own sake,--men to whom the devious paths of language are open highways; who, as Lord Bacon says, "have come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar." Sir William Jones was one of these, perhaps the greatest of them.

A paper in his own handwriting tells us that he knew critically eight languages,--English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit; less perfectly eight others,--Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runic, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; and was moderately familiar with twelve more,--Tibetian, Pali, Phalavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese.
There have been, perhaps, other scholars who have known as many tongues as this.

But usually they are crushed by their own accumulations, and we never hear of their accomplishing anything.

Sir William Jones was not one of these, "deep versed in books, and shallow in himself." Language was his instrument, but knowledge his aim.