Eighteenth-century Orientalism could not support a living

Evidence

It was impossible to make a living as an Orientalist and, in the introduction to the Persian Grammar, he had complained of the difficulty of finding patronage for Oriental studies. At an early stage in his life Jones’s father had considered attaching him to a chambers to get a legal education, but Jones had resisted this on the understandable grounds that the quality of the Latin used in English law books was so very bad. However, in the end he had to knuckle down to legal studies and he was called to the Bar in 1774. There were various false turns in his career. For instance, he had hoped to become an MP, but his liberalism, his hostility to slavery and support of American independence counted against him. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 218