[1] About 1806 he began to earn a livelihood as tutor in Greek and Latin to university students.
Subject to attacks of asthma to which he had always been subject, he left Glasgow about ten or twelve years before his death and retired into the country, living in a cottage at Campsie, Stirlingshire, twelve miles north of Glasgow.
In 1824 he wrote An Examination of the various Opinions that have been held respecting the Sources of the Ganges and the Correctness of the Lama's Map of Thibet.
had a section on the cartography of England and Wales, compiled mainly from Richard Gough's British Topography.
[1] Bell's way of working was at issue in a later court case brought by Samuel Lewis against Archibald Fullarton.