The manners of Leyden, when he first entered the higher ranks of society, were very peculiar. He possessed a large share of animal spirits, and he delighted to be accounted a master in out-of-door sports and athletic exertions, to which he was very partial. In company, his manner was animated and unpolished, and he perhaps erred in reckoning at too low a value the forms of a well-bred community-a circumstance which often excited a prejudice against him on his first appearance. This seems to have arisen from a false idea of sustaining his independence of feeling, and of marking the humility of his origin. He bore, however, with great good-humour, all decent raillery on his rough manners, and was often ready to promote such pleasantry by his own example. His temper was, in reality, of an exceedingly gentle nature; and to gratify the slightest wish of a friend, he would engage at once in the most toilsome and difficult researches. He also avoided the most fatal errors of men of genius. He was rigidly temperate, and the purity of his morals was attested by the most blameless line of conduct. His temperance even approached to abstinence; and although his pecuniary resources were exceedingly slender, he managed his funds so as to avoid all embarrassment.

In 1800 Leyden was ordained a preacher; but his pulpit appearances were more scholarly than evangelical, and it does not appear that he cared about pursuing the profession of a clergyman. He now engaged himself in procuring materials for the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," a task congenial to his poetic temperament. In 1802 he was engaged by Mr Constable to edit the Scots Magazine, which he did for five or six months; and this employment was followed by the writing of his "Scenes of Infancy," a poem exhibiting his own early feelings and recollections, interwoven with the descriptive and traditional history of his native vale of Teviot. But all this was but a desultory mode of living. The writing of poetry yields no revenue, and barely furnishes bread to those whose talents are of the loftiest order. The friends of Leyden began now to be anxious for his permanent settlement in life, and he seconded their views. In 1802 he made some overtures to the African Society for undertaking a journey of discovery through the interior of Africa; but from this rash enterprise he was turned by the prospect of promotion in another quarter. A representation was made to a member of the Board of Control, stating the talents and disposition of Leyden, and it was sug gested that such a person might be usefully employed in investigating the language and learning of the Indian tribes. The only appointment that could be given in this quarter was, however, that of surgeon's assistant, which could be held by none but a person having a surgical degree, and who could sustain an examination before the Medical Board at the India House.

It was upon this occasion that Leyden showed, in their utmost

extent, his wonderful powers of application and comprehension. He at once intimated his readiness to accept the appointment under the conditions annexed to it; and availing himself of the superficial information he had formerly acquired by a casual attendance upon one or two of the medical classes, he gave his whole mind to the study of medicine and surgery, with the purpose of qualifying himself for his degree in the short space of five or six months. The labour which he underwent on this occasion was actually incredible; but with the powerful assistance of a gentleman of the highest eminence in his profession (the late Mr John Bell of Edinburgh), he succeeded in acquiring such a knowledge of this complicated and most difficult art, as enabled him to obtain his diploma as surgeon with credit, even in the city of Edinburgh, so long famed for its medical school, and for the wholesome rigour adopted in the distribution of degrees. Another Scottish university conferred the degree of M.D. upon him, and he immediately prepared to leave the country. It is not necessary in this sketch to detail the difficulties he encountered before his ultimate departure for India. After some trouble, he procured a passage in the Hugh Inglis, in which vessel he sailed in the beginning of April 1803. Having arrived at Madras, he was transferred to the duties of his new profession; but it was speedily demonstrated that his constitution was unfitted for the climate. He was therefore obliged to leave the presidency of Madras, suffering an accumulation of diseases, and reached with difficulty Prince of Wales Island, situated on the coast of Malacca. In this more salubrious spot he resided some time, busily engaging himself in the pursuit of the languages and literature of the East, and in which he soon acquired an extraordinary degree of knowledge, calculated to be extensively beneficial to his countrymen. He also continued to indulge his poetic fancies, and kept up a constant intercourse by letters with a number of his old friends in Europe; and some of his epistles furnish many amusing details of Oriental life and manners, as well as of his own arduous researches.

The health of Leyden being restored, in 1806 he took leave of Prince of Wales Island, regretted by many friends, whom his eccentricities amused, his talents enlightened, and his virtues conciliated. His reception at Calcutta, and the effect he produced upon society, were exceedingly flattering. The efficient and active patronage of Lord Minto-himself a man of letters, a poet, and a native of Teviotdale-was of most essential service to Leyden, and no less honourable to the governor-general. He appointed a professor in the Bengal college, a promotion suited to his studies; and from this function he was subsequently transferred to fill the office of a judge of the twenty-four Purgunnahs of Calcutta. In this capacity he had a charge of police, which jumped well with his odd humour; for the task of pursuing and dispersing the bands of robbers who infest Bengal had

was

his

something of active and military duty. He also exercised a judicial capacity among the natives, to the discharge of which he was admirably fitted, by his knowledge of their language, manners, and customs. To this office a very considerable yearly income was annexed. This was neither expended in superfluities, nor even in those ordinary expenses which the fashion of the East has pronounced indispensable; for Dr Leyden kept no estab lishment, gave no entertainments, and was, with the receipt of this revenue, the very same simple, frugal, and temperate student which he had been at Edinburgh. But, exclusive of a portion remitted home for the most honourable and pious purpose, income was devoted to the pursuit which engaged his whole soul-to the increase, namely, of his acquaintance with Eastern literature in all its branches. The expense of native teachers of every country and dialect, and that of procuring from every quarter Oriental manuscripts, engrossed his whole emoluments, as the task of studying under the tuition of the interpreters, and deciphering the contents of the volumes, occupied every moment of his spare time. "I may die in the attempt," he writes to a friend; but if I die without surpassing Sir William Jones a hundredfold in Oriental learning, let never a tear for me profane the eye of a Borderer!" The term was soon approaching when these regrets were to be bitterly called forth, both from his Scot tish friends, and from all who viewed with interest the career of his ardent and enthusiastic genius, which, despising every selfish consideration, was only eager to secure the fruits of knowledge, and held for sufficient reward the fame of having gathered

them.

In 1811, an expedition having been formed to proceed to the island of Java, Leyden accompanied the governor-general and the forces for the purpose of investigating the manners, language, and literature of the tribes which inhabit that island, and partly also because it was thought his extensive knowledge of the Eastern dialects and customs might be useful in settling the government of the country, or in communicating with the independent princes in the neighbourhood of the Dutch settlements. His spirit of romantic adventure led him literally to rush upon death; for, with another volunteer who attended the expedition, he threw himself into the surf, in order to be the first Briton of the expedition who should set foot upon Java. When the suc cess of the well-concerted movements of the invaders had given them possession of the town of Batavia, Leyden displayed the same ill-omened precipitation, in his haste to examine a library, or rather a warehouse of books, in which many Indian manu scripts of value were said to be deposited. A library in a Dutch settlement was not, as might have been expected, in the best order; the apartment had not been regularly ventilated, and either from this circumstance, or already affected by the fatal sickness peculiar to Batavia, Leyden, when he left the place, had

a fit of shivering, and declared the atmosphere was enough to give any mortal a fever. The presage was too just he took his bed, and died in three days, on the eve of the battle which gave Java to the British empire.

Thus died John Leyden, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, precisely at the period when every avenue of new and interesting discovery was opening to his penetrating research. His great abilities, his prospects of benefiting his fellow-creatures, his stores of Eastern learning, were all in a moment quenched and sunk in death: a catastrophe the more lamentable, from having been produced by a culpable degree of rashness and disregard of personal suffering.

The poetical remains of Leyden were collected and given to the public in 1821, and in some instances exhibit a power of numbers which, for the mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English poetry. Besides his poetical works, he compiled and translated the "Commentaries of Baber," from the Turki language, a work of great interest to those who love the study of Indian antiquities, and which was published in 1826 for the benefit of his aged father.

The remains of Leyden, honoured with every respect by Lord Minto, repose in a distant land, far from the green-sod graves of his humble ancestors at Hazeldean, to which he bids an affecting farewell in a solemn passage concluding his "Scenes of Infancy." His language is that of nature, moved by the kindly associations of country and of kindred affections. But little recks it where our bodies rest and exhale into their primitive elements. The best epitaph is the story of a life engaged in the practice of virtue and the pursuit of honourable knowledge; the best monument, the regret of the worthy and the wise.*

Another, and perhaps a still more interesting example of precocious diligence in acquiring languages, is found in the subject of the succeeding sketch.

DR ALEXANDER MURRAY.

THIS eminent linguist and scholar, who, from the lowly condition of a shepherd boy, raised himself to the situation of Professor of Oriental Languages in the University of Edinburgh, was born on the 22d of October 1775, at a place called Dunkitterick, in Galloway, in the south of Scotland, where his father

*The above_article is chiefly condensed from a memoir of Leyden, written by Sir Walter Scott for the "Edinburgh Annual Register," and republished in the cheap and elegant series of his Miscellaneous Prose Works.

followed the profession of a shepherd, and reared a large family in humble comfort and respectability. The following is a condensation of the narrative which Murray has written of himself, and which appeared in the "Literary History of Galloway:"

"Some time in autumn 1781, my father bought a catechism for me, and began to teach me the alphabet. As it was too good a book for me to handle at all times, it was generally locked up, and he throughout the winter drew the figures of the letters to me in his written hand, on the board of an old wool-card, with the black end of an extinguished heather stem or root snatched from the fire. I soon learned all the alphabet in this form, and became writer as well as reader. I wrote with the board and brand continually. Then the catechism was presented, and in a month or two I could read the easier parts of it. I daily amused myself with copying, as above, the printed letters. In May 1782 he gave me a small psalm-book, for which I totally abandoned the catechism, which I did not like, and which I tore into two pieces, and concealed in a hole of a dike. I soon got many psalms by memory, and longed for a new book. Here difficulties arose. The Bible, used every night in the family, I was not permitted to open or touch. The rest of the books were put up in chests. I at length got a New Testament, and read the historical parts with great curiosity and ardour. But I longed to read the Bible, which seemed to me a much more pleasant book, and I actually went to where I knew an old looseleaved Bible lay, and carried it away piecemeal. I perfectly remember the strange pleasure I felt in reading the history of Abraham and of David. I liked mournful narratives, and greatly admired Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Lamentations. I pored on these pieces of the Bible in secret for many months, for I durst not show them openly; and as I read constantly, and remembered well, I soon astonished all our honest neighbours with the large passages of Scripture I repeated before them. I have forgot too much of my biblical knowledge; but I can still rehearse all the names of the patriarchs from Adam to Christ, and various other narratives seldom committed to memory.

My father's whole property was only two or three scores of sheep, and four muirland cows, his reward for herding the farm of Kitterick for Mr Alexander Laidlaw in Clatteranshaws, on the other side of the Dee. He had no debts, and no money; We lived in a wild glen, five or six miles from Minigaff, and more from New Galloway. All his sons had been bred shepherds: he meant to employ me in that line; and he often blamed me for laziness and uselessness, because I was a bad and negligent herd-boy. The fact was, I was always a weakly child; not unhealthy, but not stout. I was short-sighted, a defect he did not know, and which was often the occasion of blunders when I