credit. With his usual frankness he boasted of the deed, which effectually prevented his obtaining his degree of M. D. in Edinburgh. He gained it at St. Andrew's. He was now all the physician, and ludicrous stories are told of him at this time, even as of Dr. Goldsmith in similar circumstances. It may be remembered that Dr. Milner, the quondam employer of the latter at the Peckham School, promised to use his influence with an East India Director to obtain him an appointment in India, and he was nominated "physician and surgeon to one of the factories on the Coromandel Coast," with a salary of £100, and prospects of private practice to the extent of £1,000. But, alas for Goldsmith, though perhaps happily for his future patients, the appointment was given to another candidate, and his patron died. There is much that is like Leyden's career in the life of Goldsmith at this period : some "The sudden change of his profession gave great amusement to of his friends, especially when a lady having fainted in a crowded assembly, Dr. Leyden advanced to her assistance, and went through the usual routine of treatment with all the gravity which beseemed his new faculty. In truth, the immediate object of his studies was always, in season and out of season, predominant in Leyden's mind; and just about this time he went to the evening party of a lady of the highest rank with the remnants of a human hand in his pocket, which he had been dissecting in the morning, and on some question being stirred about the muscular action, he was with difficulty withheld from producing this grisly evidence in support of the argument which he maintained. The character of Leyden cannot be understood without mentioning these circumstances that are allied to oddity; but it is not so easy to body forth those qualities of energy, application, and intelligence, by which he dignified his extravagancies, and vindicated his assumption of merit, far less to paint his manly, generous, and friendly disposition." Though Leyden had thus satisfied the India House as to his medical acquirements, it was never intended that his time in India should be devoted to the practice of the profession which he had thus, so to speak, stormed. The merits and capabilities of Leyden were well understood by Dundas, and he knew that in sending Leyden to India he was advancing the then rising cause of Orientalism in all, but especially its linguistic, forms. He was appointed, however, to the Madras medical service, and great was his joy when he felt secure of being raised above that poverty which he had lately begun to contemplate with fear, of being freed from that dependence on mere literary effort which has been well termed, by one who had felt it to be so in his bitter experience,-a crutch, and of having opportunities of pursuing his studies and distinguishing himself as an Orientalist, of which he had often dreamed, but which he had hardly dared to hope he would ever obtain. Amid all his pleasure in the anticipation of a bright Indian career, he felt not a little, for the moment at least, as he said farewell to that circle of friends which his genius had created, his eccentricities amused, and his warm enthusiasm had attached to himself. At the close of 1802, he revisited the old haunts which he was even at that time engaged in marrying to verse, certainly not immortal, and took a last farewell of those scenes towards which he often looked longingly in imagination afterwards when in a foreign land, and of which he sometimes sung, as in his Ode to an Indian Gold Coin: : "By Chéricál's dark wandering streams, Where loves of youth and friendship smil'd Then too he bade his parents adieu, and we can understand the stern, old, honest yeoman, his father, resigning his son as a matter of duty, and as he checked the paternal tear and hurried the paternal farewells, sending him forth with his blessing. He had fairly started but "Some accident changed his purpose, and his unexpected arrival at Edinburgh was picturesque and somewhat startling. A party of his friends had met in the evening to talk over his merits, and to drink in Scottish phrase, his Bonallie. While about the witching hour they were crowning a solemn bumper to his health, a figure burst into the room, muffled in a seaman's cloak and travelling cap, covered with snow, and distinguishable only by the sharpness and ardour of the tone with which he exclaimed, "Dash it, boys, here I am again !" The start with which this unexpected apparition was received, was a subject of great mirth at the time, and the circumstance has been often recalled by most of the party with that mixture of pleasure and melancholy which attaches to the particulars of a last meeting with a beloved and valuable friend." Scott thus writes on the subject of Leyden's departure, "How truly vexatious that such a man should embark, not for the fines Atticæ,' but for those of Asia; that the Genius of Scotland, instead of a poor Complaint, and an address in the style of Navis, quæ tibi creditum debes Virgilium'reddas incolumem, precor;' should not interfere to prevent 6 his loss." A few months before Leyden left, he had accompanied Scott to the Borders. They returned "loaded with the treasures of oral tradition." At the close of 1802, Leyden left Scotland for ever, and went up to London to make all necessary arrangements for setting out for the East. There, through the kindness of George Ellis and Richard Heber, he met with many friends. He accompanied Heber to Oxford, and by him was introduced to his brother Reginald-the future Bishop, Bishop Cleaver, and several of the Professors. In London he was introduced to Lord Castlereagh, the Marquis of Abercorn and the Honorable Mr. Greville. By them he received strong recommendations to Lord William Bentinck who had just been appointed Governor of Madras. Leyden afterwards found these recommendations of great use to him. He received orders to leave about the middle of January 1803, by the Hindostan, but could not set sail in her as he was unwell when the time came for embarkation. He gives a humorous account of the whole in a letter to Mr. Ellis: "You will no doubt be surprised at my silence, and indeed I cannot account for it myself; but I write you now from the lobby of the East-India House, to inform you that G. Ellis has saved my life, for without his interference I should certainly, this precious day, have been snug in Davy's locker. At my arrival in town, or rather on my journey, I was seized with violent cramps in the stomach, the consequence of my excessive exertion before leaving Scotland, a part of which you know, and a greater part you do not know. The clerks of the India House, who, I suppose, never had the cramp of the stomach in their life, paid no kind of respect to this whatever, but with the most remorseless sang froid, told me either to proceed to the Downs, or to vacate the appointment. Neither of these alternatives were much to my taste, especially as I found that getting on board at the Downs would cost me at least 501. or 601. sterling, which I imagined, unlike the bread cast upon the water, would not return even after many days. I, however, passed the principal forms, and was examined by Dr. Hunter on the diseases of warm climates, with tolerable success, but most intolerable anguish, till I contrived to aggravate my distemper so much from pure fatigue and chagrin, and dodging attendance at the India House from ten till four each day, that Dr. Hunter obstinately confined me to my room for two days. These cursed clerks, however, whose laws are like those of the Medes and Persians, though I sincerely believe there is not one of them who has the slightest particle of taste for either Arabic or Persian, not to speak of Sanscrit or Tamalic, made out my appointment and order to sail in the Hindostan without the slightest attention to this circumstance, and I dare say they would not have been moved had I written and addressed to them the finest ode ever written in Sanscrit, even though it had been superior to those of the sublime Jayadeva. Heber was in Paris, and every person with whom I had the slightest influence out of town, and Ellis, even in the distressed state of his family, as Lady Parker is just dying, and several others dangerously unwell of his relations, was my only resource. That resource, however, succeeded, and I have just got permission to go in the Hugh Inglis to Madras, and am at the same time informed that the Hindostan, which I ought to have joined yesterday morning, was wrecked going down the river, and one of the clerks whispered me that a great many passengers have been drowned. About fifty individuals have perished. So you see there is some virtue in the old proverb, " He that is born to be hanged," &c. I feel a strange mixture of solemnity and satisfaction, and begin to trust my fortune more than ever." He finally arranged to go by the Hugh Inglis, which left on 7th April, 1803. Meanwhile he continued to employ his time in preparing for the press his "Scenes of Infancy," which he intended to leave as a legacy to his friends and his native land. Its concluding portions are filled with allusions to many of these friends, and give vent to his feelings as he contemplated his departure. He chose Ballantyne as his printer, and was enabled to correct the final sheets ere he left. Dr. Thomas Brown who himself had tasted, if he had not drunk deep of, the Pierian spring, conducted the work through the press, and at Leyden's request exercised his critical skill on it, but in a manner that called forth a playfully indignant remonstrance from the author when it was too late. He had at first intended to call the poem "The Vale of Teviot," but exile with its sadness, bringing, as it does, the associations of the past crowding into the present, caused him to change its name. He sailed from Portsmouth in April 1803, and found to his delight, in those days of tedious Indian voyages, much in the society of his fellow passengers that made the hours pass quickly by. He especially enjoyed intercourse with Robert Smith the brother of Sydney, who with his wife was looking towards Bengal. He reached Madras on the 19th of August-rather a speedy voyage for these times. The most striking incident in the course of it was a mutiny, in putting down which Leyden gave the most courageous assistance. He must himself describe his first impressions: "We landed after passing through a very rough and dangerous surf, and being completely wetted by the spray, and were received on the beach by a number of the natives, who wanted to carry us from the boat on their naked, greasy shoulders, shining with cocoa oil. I leapt on shore with a loud huzza, tumbling half a dozen of them on the sand, but the sun was so excruciatingly hot, that my brains seemed to be boiling, for which reason I got into a palankeen, and proceeded to the principal inn. On my way thither, wishing to speak to one of my messmates, I overset the palankeen by leaning incautiously to one side, and nearly tumbled head foremost into the street. At the inn I was tormented to death by the impertinent persevering of the black people, for every one is a beggar as long I then saw a number of as you are reckoned a griffin, or new-comer. jugglers, and fellows that play with the hooded snake a thousand tricks, though its bite is mortal; and among the rest I saw a fellow swallow a sword. You are not to suppose, however, that this was a Highland broad sword, or even a horseman's sabre; it was only a broad piece of iron, perfectly blunt at the edges. I then set out to survey the town in the self-same palankeen. The houses had all of them an unearthly appearance, by no means consonant to our ideas of Oriental splendor. The animals differed a good deal from ours, the dogs looked wild and mangy, their hair stood on end, and they had all the appearance of being mad. The cows and bullocks had all bunches on their shoulders, and their necks low, and apparently bowed beneath the burden. The trees were totally different from any that I had seen, and the long hedges of prickly aloes, like large house leeks in their leaves; and spurge, whose knotted and angular branches seemed more like a collection of tape worms than any thing else. The dress of the natives was SO various and fantastic, as quite to confuse you; and their complexions of all kinds of motley hues, except the healthy European, red and white. Can you be surprised that my curiosity was so thoroughly satisfied that I even experienced a considerable degree of sickness, and felt all my senses so dazzled and tormented, that my head ached, and my ears tingled, and I was so completely fatigued by the multitude of new sensations which crowded on me on every side, that to free myself from the torment, like an ox tormented with gad-flies, I took to the water, and got again on ship-board with more satisfaction than I had descried land after a five months' voyage. The first night I slept ashore I was waked by my side smarting very severely, and rolling myself on my side, discovered, with very little satisfaction, that the smart was occasioned by a large animal, which I imagined to be a snake. As the chamber was dark, I disengaged myself from it with as little bustle and violence as possible, not wishing to irritate such an antagonist. With great pleasure I heard it make its way from the couch to the floor, and with great sang-froid lay down to sleep again as quietly as my blistered side would permit. On the morn, however, I discovered it to be a large lizard, termed a blood-sucker here, which nods with its head when you look at it, and it saluted me with a nod from the window like Xailoun's cousin, the Karduwan in the Arabian Tales, which saluted him so kindly, though it would not condescend to enter into conversation." 6 6 And now Leyden was fairly in India. He had reached the land of his longings and of his dreams-" perhaps the first British traveller," Scott says, " that ever sought India, moved neither by the love of wealth nor of power, and who, despising alike the luxuries commanded by the one, and the pomp attached to the other, was guided solely by the wish of extending our knowledge of oriental literature, and distinguishing himself as its most successful cultivator." The only British traveller it may be, but Wilford and the younger Schlegel, SEPT., 1858. E |