Chapter IX: Part 9

Another six years were devoted to shape and to polish the immense collections he had amassed. All this untired labour and continued study were rewarded by Henry VIII. It is delightful, from its rarity, to record the gratitude of a patron: Henry was worthy of Leland; and the genius of the author was magnificent as that of the monarch who had created it.

Nor was the gratitude of Leland silent: he seems to have been in the habit of perpetuating his spontaneous emotions in elegant Latin verse. Our author has fancifully expressed his gratitude to the king:--

"Sooner," he says, "shall the seas float without their silent inhabitants; the thorny hedges cease to hide the birds; the oak to spread its boughs; and Flora to paint the meadows with flowers;"

Quam Rex dive, tuum labatur pectore nostro
Nomen, quod studiis portus et aura meis.

Than thou, great King, my bosom cease to hail,
Who o'er my studies breath'st a favouring gale.

Leland was, indeed, alive to the kindness of his royal patron; and among his numerous literary projects, was one of writing a history of all the palaces of Henry, in imitation of Procopius, who described those of the Emperor Justinian. He had already delighted the royal ear in a beautiful effusion of fancy and antiquarianism, in his _Cygnea Cantio_, the Song of the Swans. The swan of Leland, melodiously floating down the Thames, from Oxford to Greenwich, chants, as she passes along, the ancient names and honours of the towns, the castles, and the villages.

Leland presented his "Strena, or a New Year's Gift," to the king.--It consists of an account of his studies; and sketches, with a fervid and vast imagination, his magnificent labour, which he had already inscribed with the title _De Antiquitate Britannica_, and which was to be divided into as many books as there were shires. All parts of this address of the King's Antiquary to the king bear the stamp of his imagination and his taste. He opens his intention of improving, by the classical graces of composition, the rude labours of our ancestors; for,

"Except Truth be delicately clothed in purpure, her written verytees can scant find a reader."

Our old writers, he tells his sovereign, had, indeed,

"From time to time preserved the acts of your predecessors, and the fortunes of your realm, with great diligence, and no less faith; would to God with like eloquence!"

An exclamation of fine taste, when taste was yet a stranger in the country. And when he alludes to the knowledge of British affairs scattered among the Roman, as well as our own writers, his fervid fancy breaks forth with an image at once simple and sublime:--

"I trust," says Leland, "so to open the window, that the light shall be seen so long, that is to say, by the space of a whole thousand years stopped up, and the old glory of your Britain to re-flourish through the world."[123]

And he pathetically concludes--

"Should I live to perform those things that are already begun, I trust that your realm shall so well be known, once painted with its native colours, that it shall give place to the glory of no other region."

The grandeur of this design was a constituent part of the genius of Leland, but not less, too, was that presaging melancholy which even here betrays itself, and even more frequently in his verses. Everything about Leland was marked by his own greatness; his country and his countrymen were ever present; and, by the excitement of his feelings, even his humbler pursuits were elevated into patriotism. Henry died the year after he received the "New Year's Gift." From that moment, in losing the greatest patron for the greatest work, Leland appears to have felt the staff which he had used to turn at pleasure for his stay, break in his hands.

He had new patrons to court, while engaged in labours for which a single life had been too short. The melancholy that cherishes genius may also destroy it. Leland, brooding over his voluminous labours, seemed to love and to dread them; sometimes to pursue them with rapture, and sometimes to shrink from them with despair. His generous temper had once shot forwards to posterity; but he now calms his struggling hopes and doubts, and confines his literary ambition to his own country and his own age.

POSTERITATIS AMOR DUBIUS.

Posteritatis amor mihi perblanditur, et ultro
Premittit libris secula multa meis.
At non tam facile est oculato imponere, nosco
Quam non sim tali dignus honore frui.
Graecia magniloquos vates desiderat ipsa,
Roma suos etiam disperiisse dolet.
Exemplis quum sim claris edoctus ab istis,
Qui sperem Musas vivere posse meas?
Certe mi sat erit praesenti scribere saeclo,
Auribus et patriae complacuisse meae.

IMITATED.

Posterity, thy soothing love I feel,
That o'er my volumes many an age may steal:
But hard it is the well-clear'd eye to cheat
With honours undeserved, too fond deceit!
Greece, greatly eloquent, and full of fame,
Sighs for the want of many a perish'd name;
And Rome o'er her illustrious children mourns,
Their fame departing with their mouldering urns.
How can I hope, by such examples shown,
More than a transient day, a passing sun?
Enough for me to win the present age,
And please a brother with a brother's page.

By other verses, addressed to Cranmer, it would appear that Leland was experiencing anxieties to which he had not been accustomed,--and one may suspect, by the opening image of his "Supellex," that his pension was irregular, and that he began, as authors do in these hard cases, to value "the furniture" of his mind above that of his house.

AD THOMAM CRANMERUM, CANT. ARCHIEPISCOP.

Est congesta mihi domi Supellex
Ingens, aurea, nobilis, venusta,
Qua totus studeo Britanniarum
Vero reddere gloriam nitori.
Sed Fortuna meis noverca coeptis
Jam felicibus invidet maligna.
Quare, ne pereant brevi vel hora
Multarum mihi noctium labores
Omnes, et patriae simul decora
Ornamenta cadant, &c. &c.

IMITATED.

The furnitures that fill my house,
The vast and beautiful disclose,
All noble, and the store is gold;
Our ancient glory here unroll'd.
But fortune checks my daring claim,
A step-mother severe to fame.
A smile malignantly she throws
Just at the story's prosperous close.
And thus must the unfinish'd tale,
And all my many vigils fail,
And must my country's honour fall;
In one brief hour must perish all?

But, conscious of the greatness of his labours, he would obtain the favour of the Archbishop, by promising a share of his own fame--

----pretium sequetur amplum--
Sic nomen tibi litterae elegantes
Recte perpetuum dabunt, suosque
Partim vel titulos tibi receptos
Concedet memori Britannus ore:
Sic te posteritas amabit omnis,
Et fama super aethera innotesces.

IMITATED.

But take the ample glorious meed,
To letter'd elegance decreed,
When Britain's mindful voice shall bend,
And with her own thy honours blend,
As she from thy kind hands receives
Her titles drawn on Glory's leaves,
And back reflects them on thy name,
Till time shall love thy mounting fame.

Thus was Leland, like the melancholic, withdrawn entirely into the world of his own ideas; his imagination delighting in reveries, while his industry was exhausting itself in labour. His manners were not free from haughtiness,--his meagre and expressive physiognomy indicates the melancholy and the majesty of his mind; it was not old age, but the premature wrinkles of those nightly labours he has himself recorded. All these characteristics are so strongly marked in the bust of Leland, that Lavater had triumphed had he studied it.[124]

Labour had been long felt as voluptuousness by Leland; and this is among the Calamities of Literature, and it is so with all those studies which deeply busy the intellect and the fancy. There is a poignant delight in study, often subversive of human happiness. Men of genius, from their ideal state, drop into the cold formalities of society, to encounter its evils, its disappointments, its neglect, and perhaps its persecutions. When such minds discover the world will only become a friend on its own terms, then the cup of their wrath overflows; the learned grow morose, and the witty sarcastic; but more indelible emotions in a highly-excited imagination often produce those delusions, which Darwin calls hallucinations, and which sometimes terminate in mania. The haughtiness, the melancholy, and the aspiring genius of Leland, were tending to a disordered intellect. Incipient insanity is a mote floating in the understanding, escaping all observation, when the mind is capable of observing itself, but seems a constituent part of the mind itself when that is completely covered with its cloud.

Leland did not reach even the maturity of life, the period at which his stupendous works were to be executed. He was seized by frenzy. The causes of his insanity were never known. The Papists declared he went mad because he had embraced the new religion; his malicious rival Polydore Vergil, because he had promised what he could not perform; duller prosaists because his poetical turn had made him conceited. The grief and melancholy of a fine genius, and perhaps an irregular pension, his enemies have not noticed.

The ruins of Leland's mind were viewed in his library; volumes on volumes stupendously heaped together, and masses of notes scattered here and there; all the vestiges of his genius, and its distraction. His collections were seized on by honest and dishonest hands; many were treasured, but some were stolen. Hearne zealously arranged a series of volumes from the fragments; but the "Britannia" of Camden, the "London" of Stowe, and the "Chronicles" of Holinshed, are only a few of those public works whose waters silently welled from the spring of Leland's genius; and that nothing might be wanting to preserve some relic of that fine imagination which was always working in his poetic soul, his own description of his learned journey over the kingdom was a spark, which, falling into the inflammable mind of a poet, produced the singular and patriotic poem of the "Polyolbion" of Drayton. Thus the genius of Leland has come to us diffused through a variety of other men's; and what he intended to produce it has required many to perform.

A singular inscription, in which Leland speaks of himself, in the style he was accustomed to use, and which Weever tells us was affixed to his monument, as he had heard by tradition, was probably a relic snatched from his general wreck--for it could not with propriety have been composed after his death.[125]

Quantum Rhenano debet Germania docto
Tantum debebit terra Britanna mihi.
Ille suae gentis ritus et nomina prisca
AEstivo fecit lucidiora die.
Ipse antiquarum rerum quoque magnus amator
Ornabo patriae lumina clara meae.
Quae cum prodierint niveis inscripta tabellis,
Tum testes nostrae sedulitatis erunt.

IMITATED.

What Germany to learn'd Rhenanus owes,
That for my Britain shall my toil unclose;
His volumes mark their customs, names, and climes,
And brighten, with a summer's light, old times.
I also, touch'd by the same love, will write,
To ornament my country's splendid light,
Which shall, inscribed on snowy tablets, be
Full many a witness of my industry.

Another example of literary disappointment disordering the intellect may be contemplated in the fate of the poet COLLINS.

Several interesting incidents may be supplied to Johnson's narrative of the short and obscure life of this poet, who, more than any other of our martyrs to the lyre, has thrown over all his images and his thoughts a tenderness of mind, and breathed a freshness over the pictures of poetry, which the mighty Milton has not exceeded, and the laborious Gray has not attained. But he immolated happiness, and at length reason, to his imagination! The incidents most interesting in the life of Collins would be those events which elude the ordinary biographer; that invisible train of emotions which were gradually passing in his mind; those passions which first moulded his genius, and which afterwards broke it! But who could record the vacillations of a poetic temper, its early hope and its late despair, its wild gaiety and its settled frenzy, but the poet himself? Yet Collins has left behind no memorial of the wanderings of his alienated mind but the errors of his life!

At college he published his "Persian Eclogues," as they were first called, to which, when he thought they were not distinctly Persian, he gave the more general title of "Oriental." The publication was attended with no success; but the first misfortune a poet meets will rarely deter him from incurring more. He suddenly quitted the university, and has been censured for not having consulted his friends when he rashly resolved to live by the pen. But he had no friends! His father had died in embarrassed circumstances; and Collins was residing at the university on the stipend allowed him by his uncle, Colonel Martin, who was abroad. He was indignant at a repulse he met with at college; and alive to the name of author and poet, the ardent and simple youth imagined that a nobler field of action opened on him in the metropolis than was presented by the flat uniformity of a collegiate life. To whatever spot the youthful poet flies, that spot seems Parnassus, as applause seems patronage. He hurried to town, and presented himself before the cousin who paid his small allowance from his uncle in a fashionable dress with a feather in his hat. The graver gentleman did not succeed in his attempt at sending him back, with all the terror of his information, that Collins had not a single guinea of his own, and was dressed in a coat he could never pay for. The young bard turned from his obdurate cousin as "a dull fellow;" a usual phrase with him to describe those who did not think as he would have them.

That moment was now come, so much desired, and scarcely yet dreaded, which was to produce those effusions of fancy and learning, for which Collins had prepared himself by previous studies. About this time Johnson[126] has given a finer picture of the intellectual powers and the literary attainments of Collins than in the life he afterwards composed. "Collins was acquainted not only with the learned tongues, but with the Italian, French, and Spanish languages; full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention." Such was the language of Johnson, when, warmed by his own imagination, he could write like Longinus; at that after-period, when assuming the austerity of critical discussion for the lives of poets, even in the coldness of his recollections, he describes Collins as "a man of extensive literature, and of vigorous faculties."

A chasm of several years remains to be filled. He was projecting works of labour, and creating productions of taste; and he has been reproached for irresolution, and even for indolence. Let us catch his feelings from the facts as they rise together, and learn whether Collins must endure censure or excite sympathy.

When he was living loosely about town, he occasionally wrote many short poems in the house of a friend, who witnesses that he burned as rapidly as he composed. His odes were purchased by Millar, yet though but a slight pamphlet, all the interest of that great bookseller could never introduce them into notice. Not an idle compliment is recorded to have been sent to the poet. When we now consider that among these odes was one the most popular in the language, with some of the most exquisitely poetical, it reminds us of the difficulty a young writer without connexions experiences in obtaining the public ear; and of the languor of poetical connoisseurs who sometimes suffer poems, that have not yet grown up to authority, to be buried on the shelf. What the outraged feelings of the poet were, appeared when some time afterwards he became rich enough to express them. Having obtained some fortune by the death of his uncle, he made good to the publisher the deficiency of the unsold odes, and, in his haughty resentment at the public taste, consigned the impression to the flames!

Who shall now paint the feverish and delicate feelings of a young poet such as Collins, who had twice addressed the public, and twice had been repulsed? He whose poetic temper Johnson has finely painted, at the happy moment when he felt its influence, as "delighting to rove through the meadows of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and repose by the waterfalls of Elysian gardens!"

It cannot be doubted, and the recorded facts will demonstrate it, that the poetical disappointments of Collins were secretly preying on his spirit, and repressing his firmest exertions. With a mind richly stored with literature, and a soul alive to the impulses of nature and study, he projected a "History of the Revival of Learning," and a translation of "Aristotle's Poetics," to be illustrated by a large commentary.

But "his great fault," says Johnson, "was his _irresolution_; or the frequent calls of _immediate necessity_ broke his schemes, and suffered him to pursue no settled purpose." Collins was, however, not idle, though without application; for, when reproached with idleness by a friend, he showed instantly several sheets of his version of Aristotle, and many embryos of some lives he had engaged to compose for the "Biographia Britannica;" he never brought either to perfection! What then was this _irresolution_ but the vacillations of a mind broken and confounded? He had exercised too constantly the highest faculties of fiction, and he had precipitated himself into the dreariness of real life. None but a poet can conceive, for none but a poet can experience, the secret wounds inflicted on a mind of romantic fancy and tenderness of emotion, which has staked its happiness on its imagination; for such neglect is felt as ordinary men would feel the sensation of being let down into a sepulchre, and buried alive. The mind of Tasso, a brother in fancy to Collins, became disordered by the opposition of the critics, but perpetual neglect injures it not less. The HOPE of the ancients was represented holding some flowers, the promise of the spring, or some spikes of corn, indicative of approaching harvest--but the HOPE of Collins had scattered its seed, and they remained buried in the earth.

The oblivion which covered our poet's works appeared to him eternal, as those works now seem to us immortal. He had created HOPE with deep and enthusiastic feeling!--

With eyes so fair--
Whispering promised pleasure,
And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail;
And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair!

The few years Collins passed in the metropolis he was subsisting with or upon his friends; and, being a pleasing companion, he obtained many literary acquaintances. It was at this period that Johnson knew him, and thus describes him:--"His appearance was decent, and his knowledge considerable; his views extensive, and his conversation elegant." He was a constant frequenter at the literary resorts of the Bedford and Slaughter's; and Armstrong, Hill, Garrick, and Foote, frequently consulted him on their pieces before they appeared in public. From his intimacy with Garrick he obtained a free admission into the green-room; and probably it was at this period, among his other projects, that he planned several tragedies, which, however, as Johnson observes, "he only planned." There is a feature in Collins's character which requires attention. He is represented as a man of cheerful dispositions; and it has been my study to detect only a melancholy, which was preying on the very source of life itself. Collins was, indeed, born to charm his friends; for fancy and elegance were never absent from his susceptible mind, rich in its stores, and versatile in its emotions. He himself indicates his own character, in his address to "Home:"--

Go! nor, regardless while these numbers boast
My short-lived bliss, forget my social name.

Johnson has told us of his cheerful dispositions; and one who knew him well observes, that "in the green-room he made diverting observations on the vanity and false consequence of that class of people, and his manner of relating them to his particular friends was extremely entertaining:" but the same friend acknowledges that "some letters which he received from Collins, though chiefly on business, have in them some flights which strongly mark his character, and for which reason I have preserved them." We cannot decide of the temper of a man viewed only in a circle of friends, who listen to the ebullitions of wit or fancy; the social warmth for a moment throws into forgetfulness his secret sorrow. The most melancholy man is frequently the most delightful companion, and peculiarly endowed with the talent of satirical playfulness and vivacity of humour.[127] But what was the true life of Collins, separated from its adventitious circumstances? It was a life of want, never chequered by hope, that was striving to elude its own observation by hurrying into some temporary dissipation. But the hours of melancholy and solitude were sure to return; these were marked on the dial of his life, and, when they struck, the gay and lively Collins, like one of his own enchanted beings, as surely relapsed into his natural shape. To the perpetual recollection of his poetical disappointments are we to attribute this unsettled state of his mind, and the perplexity of his studies. To these he was perpetually reverting, which he showed when after a lapse of several years, he could not rest till he had burned his ill-fated odes. And what was the result of his literary life? He returned to his native city of Chichester in a state almost of nakedness, destitute, diseased, and wild in despair, to hide himself in the arms of a sister.

The cloud had long been gathering over his convulsed intellect; and the fortune he acquired on the death of his uncle served only for personal indulgences, which rather accelerated his disorder. There were, at times, some awful pauses in the alienation of his mind--but he had withdrawn it from study. It was in one of these intervals that Thomas Warton told Johnson that when he met Collins travelling, he took up a book the poet carried with him, from curiosity, to see what companion a man of letters had chosen--it was an English Testament. "I have but one book," said Collins, "but that is the best." This circumstance is recorded on his tomb.

He join'd pure faith to strong poetic powers,
And in reviving reason's lucid hours,
Sought on one book his troubled mind to rest,
And rightly deem'd the book of God the best.

At Chichester, tradition has preserved some striking and affecting occurrences of his last days; he would haunt the aisles and cloisters of the cathedral, roving days and nights together, loving their

Dim religious light.

And, when the choristers chanted their anthem, the listening and bewildered poet, carried out of himself by the solemn strains, and his own too susceptible imagination, moaned and shrieked, and awoke a sadness and a terror most affecting amid religious emotions; their friend, their kinsman, and their poet, was before them, an awful image of human misery and ruined genius!

This interesting circumstance is thus alluded to on his monument:--

Ye walls that echoed to his frantic moan,
Guard the due record of this grateful stone:
Strangers to him, enamour'd of his lays,
This fond memorial of his talents raise.

A voluntary subscription raised the monument to Collins. The genius of Flaxman has thrown out on the eloquent marble all that fancy would consecrate; the tomb is itself a poem.

There Collins is represented as sitting in a reclining posture, during a lucid interval of his afflicting malady, with a calm and benign aspect, as if seeking refuge from his misfortunes in the consolations of the Gospel, which lie open before him, whilst his lyre, and "The Ode on the Passions," as a scroll, are thrown together neglected on the ground. Upon the pediment on the tablet are placed in relief two female figures of LOVE and PITY, entwined each in the arms of the other; the proper emblems of the genius of his poetry.

Langhorne, who gave an edition of Collins's poems with all the fervour of a votary, made an observation not perfectly correct:--"It is observable," he says, "that none of his poems bear the marks of an amorous disposition; and that he is one of those few poets who have sailed to Delphi without touching at Cythera. In the 'Ode to the Passions,' _Love_ has been omitted." There, indeed, Love does not form an important personage; yet, at the close, _Love_ makes his transient appearance with _Joy_ and _Mirth_--"a gay fantastic round."

And, amidst his frolic play,
As if he would the charming air repay,
Shook thousand odours from his dewy wings.

It is certain, however, that Collins considered the amatory passion as unfriendly to poetic originality; for he alludes to the whole race of the Provencal poets, by accusing them of only employing

Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean.

Collins affected to slight the urchin; for he himself had been once in love, and his wit has preserved the history of his passion; he was attached to a young lady who was born the day before him, and who seems not to have been very poetically tempered, for she did not return his ardour. On that occasion he said "that he came into the world _a day after the fair_."

Langhorne composed two sonnets, which seem only preserved in the "Monthly Review," in which he was a writer, and where he probably inserted them; they bear a particular reference to the misfortunes of our poet. In one he represents Wisdom, in the form of Addison, reclining in "the old and honoured shade of Magdalen," and thus addressing

The poor shade of Collins, wandering by;
The tear stood trembling in his gentle eye,
With modest grief reluctant, while he said--
"Sweet bard, belov'd by every muse in vain!
With pow'rs, whose fineness wrought their own decay;
Ah! wherefore, thoughtless, didst thou yield the rein
To fancy's will, and chase the meteor ray?
Ah! why forget thy own Hyblaean strain,
Peace rules the breast, where Reason rules the day."

The last line is most happily applied; it is a verse by the unfortunate bard himself, which heightens the contrast with his forlorn state! Langhorne has feelingly painted the fatal indulgences of such a character as Collins.

Of fancy's too prevailing power beware!
Oft has she bright on life's fair morning shone;
Oft seated Hope on Reason's sovereign throne,
Then closed the scene, in darkness and despair.
Of all her gifts, of all her powers possest,
Let not her flattery win thy youthful ear,
Nor vow long faith to such a various guest,
False at the last, tho' now perchance full dear;
The casual lover with her charms is blest,
But woe to them her magic bands that wear!

The criticism of Johnson on the poetry of Collins, that "as men are often esteemed who cannot be loved, so the poetry of Collins may sometimes extort praise when it gives little pleasure," might almost have been furnished by the lumbering pen of old Dennis. But Collins from the poetical never _extorts_ praise, for it is given _spontaneously_; he is much _more loved_ than _esteemed_, for he does not give _little pleasure_. Johnson, too, describes his "lines as of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants." Even this verbal criticism, though it appeals to the eye, and not to the ear, is false criticism, since Collins is certainly the most musical of poets. How could that lyrist be harsh in his diction, who almost draws tears from our eyes, while his melodious lines and picturing epithets are remembered by his readers? He is devoured with as much enthusiasm by one party as he is imperfectly relished by the other.

Johnson has given two characters of this poet; the one composed at a period when that great critic was still susceptible of the seduction of the imagination; but even in this portrait, though some features of the poet are impressively drawn, the likeness is incomplete, for there is not even a slight indication of the chief feature in Collins's genius, his tenderness and delicacy of emotion, and his fresh and picturesque creative strokes. Nature had denied to Johnson's robust intellect the perception of these poetic qualities. He was but a stately ox in the fields of Parnassus, not the animal of nature. Many years afterwards, during his poetical biography, that long Lent of criticism, in which he mortified our poetical feeling by accommodating his to the populace of critics--so faint were former recollections, and so imperfect were even those feelings which once he seemed to have possessed--that he could then do nothing but write on Collins with much less warmth than he has written on Blackmore. Johnson is, indeed, the first of critics, when his powerful logic investigates objects submitted to reason; but great sense is not always combined with delicacy of taste; and there is in poetry a province which Aristotle himself may never have entered.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] Leland, in his magnificent plan, included several curious
departments. Jealous of the literary glory of the Italians,
whom he compares to the Greeks for accounting all nations
barbarous and unlettered, he had composed four books "De Viris
Illustribus", on English Authors, to force them to acknowledge
the illustrious genius, and the great men of Britain. Three
books "De Nobilitate Britannica" were to be "as an ornament
and a right comely garland."

[124] What reason is there to suppose with Granger that his bust, so
admirably engraven by Grignion, is supposititious? Probably
struck by the premature old age of a man who died in his
fortieth year, he condemned it by its appearance; but not with
the eye of the physiognomist.

[125] Ancient Funerall Monuments, p. 692.

[126] In a letter to Joseph Warton.

[127] Burton, the author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," offers a
striking instance. Bishop Kennett, in his curious "Register
and Chronicle," has preserved the following particulars of
this author. "In an interval of vapours _he would be extremely
pleasant, and raise laughter in any company_. Yet I have heard
that nothing at last could make him laugh but going down to
the Bridge-foot at Oxford, and hearing the bargemen scold and
storm and swear at one another; at which he would set his
hands to his sides, and laugh most profusely; yet in his
chamber so mute and mopish, that he was suspected to be _felo
de se_." With what a fine strain of poetic feeling has a
modern bard touched this subject!--

"As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow,
While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below,
So the cheek may be tinged with a warm sunny smile,
Though the cold heart to ruin runs darkly the while."
MOORE'S "Irish Melodies."

THE REWARDS OF ORIENTAL STUDENTS.

At a time when oriental studies were in their infancy in this country, SIMON OCKLEY, animated by the illustrious example of Pococke and the laborious diligence of Prideaux, devoted his life and his fortune to these novel researches, which necessarily involved both. With that enthusiasm which the ancient votary experienced, and with that patient suffering the modern martyr has endured, he pursued, till he accomplished, the useful object of his labours. He, perhaps, was the first who exhibited to us other heroes than those of Rome and Greece; sages as contemplative, and a people more magnificent even than the iron masters of the world. Among other oriental productions, his most considerable is "The History of the Saracens." The first volume appeared in 1708, and the second ten years afterwards. In the preface to the last volume, the oriental student pathetically counts over his sorrows, and triumphs over his disappointments; the most remarkable part is the date of the place from whence this preface was written--he triumphantly closes his labours in the confinement of Cambridge Castle for debt!

Ockley, lamenting his small proficiency in the Persian studies, resolves to attain to them--

"How often have I endeavoured to perfect myself in that language, but my malignant and envious stars still frustrated my attempts; but they shall sooner alter their courses than extinguish my resolution of quenching that thirst which the little I have had of it hath already excited."

And he states the deficiencies of his history with the most natural modesty--

"Had I not been forced to snatch everything that I have, as it were, out of the fire, our Saracen history should have been ushered into the world after a different manner." He is fearful that something would be ascribed to his indolence or negligence, that "ought more justly to be attributed to the influence of inexorable necessity, could I have been master of my own time and circumstances."

Shame on those pretended patrons who, appointing "a professor of the oriental languages," counteract the purpose of the professorship by their utter neglect of the professor, whose stipend cannot keep him on the spot where only he ought to dwell. And Ockley complains also of that hypocritical curiosity which pretends to take an interest in things it cares little about; perpetually inquiring, as soon as a work is announced, when it is to come out. But these Pharisees of literature, who can only build sepulchres to ancient prophets, never believe in a living one. Some of these Ockley met with on the publication of his first volume: they run it down as the strangest story they had ever heard; they had never met with such folks as the Arabians! "A reverend dignitary asked me if, when I wrote that book, I had not lately been reading the history of Oliver Cromwell?" Such was the plaudit the oriental student received, and returned to grow pale over his MSS. But when Petis de la Croix, observes Ockley, was pursuing the same track of study, in the patronage of Louis XIV., he found books, leisure, and encouragement; and when the great Colbert desired him to compose the life of Genkis Chan, he considered a period of ten years not too much to be allowed the author. And then Ockley proceeds--

"But my unhappy condition hath always been widely different from anything that could admit of such an exactness. Fortune seems only to have given me a taste of it out of spite, on purpose that I might regret the loss of it."

He describes his two journeys to Oxford, for his first volume; but in his second, matters fared worse with him--

"Either my domestic affairs were grown much worse, or I less able to bear them; or what is more probable, both."

Ingenuous confession! fruits of a life devoted in its struggles to important literature! and we murmur when genius is irritable, and erudition is morose! But let us proceed with Ockley:--

"I was forced to take the advantage of the slumber of my cares, that never slept when I was awake; and if they did not incessantly interrupt my studies, were sure to succeed them with no less constancy than night doth the day."

This is the cry of agony. He who reads this without sympathy, ought to reject these volumes as the idlest he ever read, and honour me with his contempt. The close of Ockley's preface shows a love-like tenderness for his studies; although he must quit life without bringing them to perfection, he opens his soul to posterity and tells them, in the language of prophecy, that if they will bestow encouragement on our youth, the misfortunes he has described will be remedied. He, indeed, was aware that these students--

"Will hardly come in upon the prospect of finding leisure, in a prison, to transcribe those papers for the press which they have collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at the expense of their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for the service of the public."

Yet the exulting martyr of literature, at the moment he is fast bound to the stake, does not consider a prison so dreadful a reward for literary labours--

"I can assure them, from my own experience, that I have enjoyed more true liberty, more happy leisure, and more solid repose in six months here, than in thrice the same number of years before. Evil is the condition of that historian who undertakes to write the lives of others before he knows how to live himself. Yet I have no just reason to be angry with the world; I never stood in need of its assistance in my life, but I found it always very liberal of its advice; for which I am so much the more beholden to it, by how much the more I did always in my judgment give the possession of wisdom the preference to that of riches."[128]

Poor Ockley, always a student, and rarely what is called a man of the world, once encountered a literary calamity which frequently occurs when an author finds himself among the vapid triflers and the polished cynics of the fashionable circle. Something like a patron he found in Harley, the Earl of Oxford, and once had the unlucky honour of dining at the table of my Lord Treasurer. It is probable that Ockley, from retired habits and severe studies, was not at all accomplished in the _suaviter in modo_, of which greater geniuses than Ockley have so surlily despaired. How he behaved I cannot narrate: probably he delivered himself with as great simplicity at the table of the Lord Treasurer as on the wrong side of Cambridge Castle gate. The embarrassment this simplicity drew him into is very fully stated in the following copious apology he addressed to the Earl of Oxford, which I have transcribed from the original; perhaps it may be a useful memorial to some men of letters as little polished as the learned Ockley:--

"_Cambridge, July 15, 1714._

"MY LORD,--I was so struck with horror and amazement two days ago,
that I cannot possibly express it. A friend of mine showed me a
letter, part of the contents of which were, 'That Professor Ockley
had given such extreme offence by some uncourtly answers to some
gentlemen at my Lord Treasurer's table that it would be in vain to
make any further application to him.'

"My Lord, it is impossible for me to recollect, at this distance
of time. All that I can say is this: that, as on the one side for
a man to come to his patron's table with a design to affront
either him or his friends supposes him a perfect natural, a mere
idiot; so on the other side it would be extreme severe, if a
person whose education was far distant from the politeness of a
court, should, upon the account of an unguarded expression, or
some little inadvertency in his behaviour, suffer a capital
sentence.

"Which is my case, if I have forfeited your Lordship's favour;
which God forbid! That man is involved in double ruin that is not
only forsaken by his friend, but, which is the unavoidable
consequence, exposed to the malice and contempt not only of
enemies, but, what is still more grievous, of all sorts of fools.

"It is not the talent of every well-meaning man to converse with
his superiors with due decorum; for, either when he reflects upon
the vast distance of their station above his own, he is struck
dumb and almost insensible; or else their condescension and
courtly behaviour encourages him to be too familiar. To steer
exactly between these two extremes requires not only a good
intention, but presence of mind, and long custom.

"Another article in my friend's letter was, 'That somebody had
informed your Lordship that I was a very sot.' When first I had
the honour to be known to your Lordship, I could easily foresee
that there would be persons enough that would envy me upon that
account, and do what in them lay to traduce me. Let Haman enjoy
never so much himself, it is all nothing, it does him no good,
till poor Mordecai is hanged out of his way.

"But I never feared the being censured upon that account. Here in
the University I converse with none but persons of the most
distinguished reputations both for learning and virtue, and
receive from them daily as great marks of respect and esteem,
which I should not have if that imputation were true. It is most
certain that I do indulge myself the freedom of drinking a
cheerful cup, at proper seasons, among my friends; but no
otherwise than is done by thousands of honest men, who never
forfeit their character by it. And whoever doth no more than so,
deserves no more to be called a sot, than a man that eats a hearty
meal would be willing to be called a glutton.

"As for those detractors, if I have but the least assurance of
your Lordship's favour, I can very easily despise them. They are
_Nati consumere fruges_. They need not trouble themselves about
what other people do; for whatever they eat and drink, it is only
robbing the poor. Resigning myself entirely to your Lordship's
goodness and pardon, I conclude this necessary apology with like
provocation. That _I would be content he should take my character
from any person that had a good one of his own_.

"I am, with all submission, My Lord,
"Your Lordship's most obedient, &c.,
"SIMON OCKLEY."

To the honour of the Earl of Oxford, this unlucky piece of awkwardness at table, in giving "uncourtly answers," did not interrupt his regard for the poor oriental student; for several years afterwards the correspondence of Ockley was still acceptable to the Earl.

If the letters of the widows and children of many of our eminent authors were collected, they would demonstrate the great fact, that the man who is a husband or a father ought not to be an author. They might weary with a monotonous cry, and usually would be dated from the gaol or the garret. I have seen an original letter from the widow of Ockley to the Earl of Oxford, in which she lays before him the deplorable situation of her affairs; the debts of the Professor being beyond what his effects amounted to, the severity of the creditors would not even suffer the executor to make the best of his effects; the widow remained destitute of necessaries, incapable of assisting her children.[129]

Thus students have devoted their days to studies worthy of a student. They are public benefactors, yet find no friend in the public, who cannot yet appreciate their value--Ministers of State know it, though they have rarely protected them. Ockley, by letters I have seen, was frequently employed by Bolingbroke to translate letters from the Sovereign of Morocco to our court; yet all the debts for which he was imprisoned in Cambridge Castle did not exceed two hundred pounds. The public interest is concerned in stimulating such enthusiasts; they are men who cannot be salaried, who cannot be created by letters-patent; for they are men who infuse their soul into their studies, and breathe their fondness for them in their last agonies. Yet such are doomed to feel their life pass away like a painful dream!

Those who know the value of LIGHTFOOT'S Hebraic studies, may be startled at the impediments which seem to have annihilated them. In the following effusion he confides his secret agitation to his friend Buxtorf: "A few years since I prepared a little commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the same style and manner as I had done that on Matthew. But it laid by me two years or more, nor can I now publish it, but at my own charges, and to my great damage, which I felt enough and too much in the edition of my book upon Mark. Some progress I have made in the gospel of St. Luke, but I can print nothing but at my own cost: thereupon I wholly give myself to reading, scarce thinking of writing more; for booksellers and printers have dulled my edge, who will print no book, especially Latin, unless they have an assured and considerable gain."

These writings and even the fragments have been justly appreciated by posterity, and a recent edition of all Lightfoot's works in many volumes have received honours which their despairing author never contemplated.

FOOTNOTES:

[128] Dr. Edmund Castell offers a remarkable instance to illustrate
our present investigation. He more than devoted his life to
his "Lexicon Heptaglotton." It is not possible, if there are
tears that are to be bestowed on the afflictions of learned
men, to read his pathetic address to Charles II., and forbear.
He laments the seventeen years of incredible pains, during
which he thought himself idle when he had not devoted sixteen
or eighteen hours a day to this labour; that he had expended
all his inheritance (it is said more than twelve thousand
pounds); that it had broken his constitution, and left him
blind as well as poor. When this invaluable Polyglott was
published, the copies remained unsold in his hands; for the
learned Castell had anticipated the curiosity and knowledge of
the public by a full century. He had so completely devoted
himself to oriental studies, that they had a very remarkable
consequence, for he had totally forgotten his own language,
and could scarcely spell a single word. This appears in some
of his English Letters, preserved by Mr. Nichols in his
valuable "Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century," vol.
iv. Five hundred of these Lexicons, unsold at the time of his
death, were placed by Dr. Castell's niece in a room so little
regarded, that scarcely one complete copy escaped the rats,
and "the whole load of learned rags sold only for seven
pounds." The work at this moment would find purchasers, I
believe, at forty or fifty pounds.--The learned SALE, who
first gave the world a genuine version of the Koran, and who
had so zealously laboured in forming that "Universal History"
which was the pride of our country, pursued his studies
through a life of want--and this great orientalist (I grieve
to degrade the memoirs of a man of learning by such
mortifications), when he quitted his studies too often wanted
a change of linen, and often wandered in the streets in search
of some compassionate friend who would supply him with the
meal of the day!

[129] The following are extracts from Ockley's letters to the Earl of
Oxford, which I copy from the originals:--

"_Cambridge Castle, May 2, 1717._

"I am here in the prison for debt, which must needs be an
unavoidable consequence of the distractions in my family.
I enjoy more repose, indeed, here, than I have tasted
these many years, but the circumstance of a family obliges
me to go out as soon as I can."

"_Cambridge, Sept. 7, 1717._

"I have at last found leisure in my confinement to finish
my Saracen history, which I might have hoped for in vain
in my perplexed circumstances."

DANGER INCURRED BY GIVING THE RESULT OF LITERARY INQUIRIES.

An author occupies a critical situation, for, while he is presenting the world with the result of his profound studies and his honest inquiries, it may prove pernicious to himself. By it he may incur the risk of offending the higher powers, and witnessing his own days embittered. Liable, by his moderation or his discoveries, by his scruples or his assertions, by his adherence to truth, or by the curiosity of his speculations, to be persecuted by two opposite parties, even when the accusations of the one necessarily nullify the other; such an author will be fortunate to be permitted to retire out of the circle of the bad passions; but he crushes in silence and voluntary obscurity all future efforts--and thus the nation loses a valued author.

This case is exemplified by the history of Dr. COWEL'S curious work "The Interpreter." The book itself is a treasure of our antiquities, illustrating our national manners. The author was devoted to his studies, and the merits of his work recommended him to the Archbishop of Canterbury; in the Ecclesiastical Court he practised as a civilian, and became there eminent as a judge.[130]

Cowel gave his work with all the modesty of true learning; for who knows his deficiencies so well in the subject on which he has written as that author who knows most? It is delightful to listen to the simplicity and force with which an author in the reign of our first James opens himself without reserve.

"My true end is the advancement of knowledge; and therefore have I published this poor work, not only to impart the good thereof to those young ones that want it, but also to draw from the learned the supply of my defects. Whosoever will charge these my travels [labours] with many oversights, he shall need no solemn pains to prove them. And upon the view taken of this book sithence the impression, I dare assure them that shall observe most faults therein, that I, by gleaning after him, will gather as many omitted by him, as he shall show committed by me. What a man saith well is not, however, to be rejected because he hath some errors; reprehend who will, in God's name, that is, with sweetness and without reproach. So shall he reap hearty thanks at my hands, and thus more soundly help in a few months, than I, by tossing and tumbling my books at home, could possibly have done in many years."

This extract discovers Cowel's amiable character as an author. But he was not fated to receive "sweetness without reproach."

Cowel encountered an unrelenting enemy in Sir Edward Coke, the famous Attorney-General of James I., the commentator of Littleton. As a man, his name ought to arouse our indignation, for his licentious tongue, his fierce brutality, and his cold and tasteless genius. He whose vileness could even ruffle the great spirit of Rawleigh, was the shameless persecutor of the learned Cowel.

Coke was the oracle of the common law, and Cowel of the civil; but Cowel practised at Westminster Hall as well as at Doctors' Commons. Coke turned away with hatred from an advocate who, with the skill of a great lawyer, exerted all the courage. The Attorney-General sought every occasion to degrade him, and, with puerile derision, attempted to fasten on Dr. Cowel the nickname of _Dr. Cowheel_. Coke, after having written in his "Reports" whatever he could against our author, with no effect, started a new project. Coke well knew his master's jealousy on the question of his prerogative; and he touched the King on that nerve. The Attorney-General suggested to James that Cowel had discussed "too nicely the mysteries of his monarchy, in some points derogatory to the supreme power of his crown; asserting that the royal prerogative was in some cases limited." So subtly the serpent whispered to the feminine ear of a monarch, whom this vanity of royalty startled with all the fears of a woman. This suggestion had nearly occasioned the ruin of Cowel--it verged on treason; and if the conspiracy of Coke now failed, it was through the mediation of the archbishop, who influenced the King; but it succeeded in alienating the royal favour from Cowel.

When Coke found he could not hang Cowel for treason, it was only a small disappointment, for he had hopes to secure his prey by involving him in felony. As physicians in desperate cases sometimes reverse their mode of treatment, so Coke now operated on an opposite principle. He procured a party in the Commons to declare that Cowel was a betrayer of the rights and liberties of the people; that he had asserted the King was independent of Parliament, and that it was a favour to admit the consent of his subjects in giving of subsidies, &c.; and, in a word, that he drew his arguments from the Roman Imperial Code, and would make the laws and customs of Rome and Constantinople those of London and York. Passages were wrested to Coke's design. The prefacer of Cowel's book very happily expresses himself when he says, "When a suspected book is brought to the torture, it often confesseth all, and more than it knows."

The Commons proceeded criminally against Cowel; and it is said his life was required, had not the king interposed. The author was imprisoned, and the book was burnt.

On this occasion was issued "a proclamation touching Dr. Cowel's book called 'The Interpreter.'" It may be classed among the most curious documents of our literary history. I do not hesitate to consider this proclamation as the composition of James I.

I will preserve some passages from this proclamation, not merely for their majestic composition, which may still be admired, and the singularity of the ideas, which may still be applied--but for the literary event to which it gave birth in the appointment of a royal licenser for the press. Proclamations and burning of books are the strong efforts of a weak government, exciting rather than suppressing public attention.