As a boy he had been taught drawing by Albert Varley, who gave him a copy of Matthew Pilkington's Dictionary of Painters, and he frequented the National Gallery.

[3][4] On the recommendation of Edward Byles Cowell, Strong worked on Sanskrit with Cecil Bendall, but discouraged at Cambridge, he moved to Oxford towards the end of 1885.

Neubauer advised him to visit the continent, and gave him letters of introduction to Ernest Renan and James Darmesteter at Paris; he also studied with Eberhard Schrader in Berlin.

Strong on his return to England found recognition and employment slow in coming, and he failed in his candidature for the chair of Arabic at Cambridge vacant by the death of Robertson Smith in 1894.

At his death he was engaged on the Arabic text of Ibn Arabshah's History of Yakmak, Sultan of Egypt, on Jaqmaq, the first part of which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1904.

As well as Sanskrit and Arabic, Strong studied Pali, Persian and Assyrian hieroglyphics and Chinese; on all these he wrote in learned publications, and he also contributed reviews to the Athenæum and The Academy.