Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

men to settle quietly at home. I will not wish you success and fame, for you have both, but all the happiness which even these cannot always give."

6

"Dec. 15, 1813.

"Your very kind letter is the more agreeable, because, setting aside talents, judgment, and the laudari a laudato,' &c. you have been on the spot; you have seen and described more of the East than any of your predecessors-I need not say how ably and successfully; and (excuse the bathos) you are one of the very few who can pronounce how far my costume (to use an affected but expressive word) is correct. As to poesy, that is, as men, gods, and columns,' please to decide upon it; but I am sure that I am anxious to have an observer's, particularly a famous observer's testimony, on the fidelity of my manners and dresses; and, as far as memory and an oriental twist in my imagination have permitted, it has been my endeavour to present to the Franks, a sketch of that of which you have and will present them a complete picture. It was with this notion, that I felt compelled to make my hero and heroine relatives, as you well know that none else could there obtain that degree of intercourse leading to genuine affection; I had nearly made rather too much akin to each other; and though the wild passions of the East, and some great examples in Alfieri, Ford, and Schiller (to stop short of antiquity), might have pleaded in favour of a copyist, yet the times and the north (not Frederic, but our climate) induced me to alter their consanguinity and confine them to cousinship. I also wished to try my hand on a female character in Zuleika, and have endeavoured, as far as the grossness of our masculine ideas will allow, to preserve her purity without impairing the ardour of her attachment. As to criticism, I have been reviewed about a hundred and fifty timespraised and abused. I will not say that I am become indifferent to either eulogy or condemnation, but for some years at least I have felt grateful for the former, and have never attempted to answer the latter. For success equal to the first efforts, I had and have no hope; the novelty was over, and the Bride,' like all other brides, must suffer or rejoice for and with her husband. By the bye, I have used bride Turkishly, as affianced, not married; and so far as it is an English bull, which, I trust, will be at least a comfort to all Hibernians not bigotted to monopoly. You are good enough to mention your quotations in your third volume. I shall not only be indebted to it for a renewal of the high gratification received from the two first, but for preserving my relics embalmed in your own species, and ensuring me readers to whom I could not otherwise have aspired. I called on you, as bounden by duty and inclination, when last in your neighbourhood; but I shall always take my chance; you surely would not have me inflict upon you a formal annunciation; I am proud of your friendship, but not so fond of myself as to break in upon your better avocations. I trust that Mrs Clarke is well; I have

never had the honour of presentation, but I have heard so much of her in many quarters, that any notice she is pleased to take of my productions is not less gratifying than my thanks are sincere, both to her and you. By all accounts, I may safely congratulate you on the possession of a bride' whose mental and personal accomplishments are more than poetical.

[ocr errors]

"P. S. Murray has sent, or will send, a double copy of the Bride and Giaour; in the last one, some lengthy additions; pray accept them, according to old custom, from the author to one of his better brethren. Your Persian, or any memorial, will be a most agreeable, and it is my fault if not an useful present. "

"I trust your third will be out before I sail next month. Can I say or do any thing for you in the Levant? I am now in all the agonies of equipment, and full of schemes, some impracticable, and most of them improbable; but I mean to fly freely to the earth's end,' though not quite so fast as Milton's sprite. "-pp. 627 -628-629.

green

The period of Dr Clarke's life to which we have referred, as more or less devoted to the composition of his book, was diversified with many other laborious pursuits. To his Lectures he gave very great attention; no occupation indeed seems ever to have kindled more of his enthusiasm; and so entirely was he at times engrossed with them, that he studied the art of painting in oil for the sake of enabling himself to prepare more accurate representations of his subjects. He published several tracts and papers upon matters connected with mineralogy and antiquities, He composed a great number of sermons, not less than ten of which he preached on public occasions, or in St Marys; and he took a very active and useful part in the controversy respecting the Bible Society, first at the Cambridge meeting held in 1811, where his speech is described as one of the greatest eloquence, and afterwards in promoting the formation of branch societies in different places. But the subject which, during the last five or six years of his life, engrossed most of his attention, was the gas blow-pipe, which he invented, and the experiments which he made by means of it. We have elsewhere treated of this invention, and we must rest satisfied with remarking here, that ingenious as it is, the importance of its results in a scientific point of view, whatever value they may have in the way of amusement, is by no means such as to compensate for the time which he spent upon it, or to justify the almost morbid interest which, toward his latter days, he felt in it. To say nothing of the imminent risks he ran in the course of his experiments, and of which he was warned in vain, until an explosion had well nigh killed himself, an assistant, and two friends. Upon this subject he published about twenty papers, and he dictated the last of

them in bed a few days before he sunk into the stupor which preceded his dissolution. When we call to mind that these pursuits were followed thus intensely, in the midst of much sickness of his family, almost constant recurrence of severe illness in himself; that they never were allowed to interfere with his clerical or his academical duties; that the composition of his great work was all the while going on steadily; and that several other works of a less elaborate description were also given to the world at intervals during the same period,-we may well be amazed at the extraordinary energy of a mind thus able to bear up under so much pressure; but we can hardly wonder that it wore out the over-informed tenement of clay. He died on the 9th of March 1822, and was buried in Jesus College Chapel, where a monument is erected to his memory by Master and Fellows.

The circumstances in which he left his family were such as might be expected from a man of his generous and disinterested temper,-one who had held his course straight forward and independent through life,-neither courting the favour of patrons by flattery, nor seeking to turn aside the anger of powerful men by a compromise of his opinions, nor sordidly bent upon accumulating wealth, at the expense of general usefulness and honest fame. Imprudence, or neglect of those dearest to him, he could no way be charged with; but he had not the means of leaving them in affluence; and the kindness of his friends supplied such aid as remained wanting. Among the foremost- we ought perhaps to say the very foremost in these pious offices-stands his reverend, worthy, and intelligent biographer, his intimate friend from early years; and, if his eulogist, yet so judicious and temperate in his praise, that he wins the affections of the reader to his subject, without ever deviating from strict impartiality, or even concealing the little weaknesses which a less honest, or less discreet artist, would shrink from touching. The work which he has thus prepared, and which we have now been occupied with, was undertaken by this excellent man for the benefit of his deceased friend's family. Too intent upon the subject of it, to pay the execution the attention it so well merits, we have not sufficiently placed Mr Otter's share in this volume before the reader. We cannot close this article, however, without giving a specimen of his composition; and it shall be part of his concluding summary of Dr Clarke's character. After remarking that the most prominent features of his mind were enthusiasm and benevolence, he proceeds thus

'His ardour for knowledge, not unaptly called by his old tutor, literary heroism, was one of the most zealous, the most sustained, the

most enduring principles of action, that ever animated a human breast; a principle which strengthened with his increasing years, and carried him at fast to an extent and variety of knowledge infinitely exceeding the promise of his youth, and apparently disproportioned to the means with which he was endowed; for though his memory was admirable, his attention always ardent and awake, and his perceptions quick and vivid, the grasp of his mind was not greater than that of other intelligent men, and in closeness and acuteness of reasoning, he had certainly no advantage, while his devious and analytic method of acquiring knowledge, involving as it did in some of the steps all the pain of a discovery, was a real impediment in his way, which required much patient labour to overcome. But the unwearied energy of this passion bore down every obstacle and supplied every defect; and thus it was, that always pressing forwards, without losing an atom of the ground he had gained, profiting by his own errors as much as by the lights of other men, his maturer advances in knowledge often extorted respect from the very persons who had regarded his early efforts with a sentiment approaching to ridicule. Allied to this was his generous love of genius, with his quick perception of it in other men; qualities which, united with his good nature, exempted him from those envyings and jealousies which it is the tendency of literary ambition to inspire, and rendered him no less disposed to honour the successful efforts of the competitors who had got before him in the race, than prompt to encourage those whom accident or want of opportunity had left behind. But the most pleasing exercise of these qualities was to be observed in his intercourse with modest and intelligent young men, none of whom ever lived much in his society without being improved and delighted-improved by the enlargement or elevation of their views, and delighted with having some useful or honourable pursuit suitable to their talents pointed out to them, or some portion of his own enthusiasm imparted to their minds. pp. 663, 664.

An account of his exemplary conduct as a parish priest then follows, with some reflexions on the eloquence of his discourses, and the effects they produced; and our author thus paints him in society and in domestic life, with a truth which they who knew him not may almost admit from internal evidence, but which will indeed recall the lamented subject of the picture forcibly and mournfully to the minds of his surviving associates.

Of that happy combination of qualities and endowments for which he was so distinguished and admired in general society, enough perhaps has been already said, although it would be difficult to do jus tice to such a theme. It may be added, however, that though he often gave the tone to the conversation, he was more disposed to bring forward the opinions of other men than to take the lead in it himself, and the genuine delight with which he hailed a bright or good thought from others, was one source of the pleasure which he gave.

'In the bosom of his own family, and in the intercourse of intimate friendship, he was more kind, engaging, and affectionate, than can be well conceived by those who did not know him. It was here that the warmth of his heart, and the cheerfulness of his spirit appeared to most advantage; and though the slightest acquaintance was enough to excite an interest in his behalf, yet the nearer he was approached and the more intimately he was known, the more delightful did he appear. His tête-à-tête conversation with a friend was a perpetual flow of humour, kindness, and intelligence, in which every fold of his heart was laid open, and the confidence and even energies he felt were alınost certain to be inspired. It was quite impossible for an intelligent man whom he regarded to be dull in his society, or to have occasion to inquire within himself what he was to say. In fine, all who were closely connected with him must feel that with him one great charm of their existence is gone. In public life his loss will be long and severely felt; in private it is irreparable. In the walks of science his place may be supplied. Another traveller equally patriotic and enlightened may, like him, enrich his country with the spoils of other ages, or of other climes; and his mantle may be caught by some gifted academic, who will perhaps remind his audience of the genius and eloquence they have lost; but the void occasioned by his death in the breasts of his family and friends can never be filled up.' pp. 665, 666.

No. LXXXVIII. will be published in September.

Printed by J. Hutchison, for the Heirs of D. Willison.

« AnteriorContinuar »