the school; so I divided it into portions, by which method it was pronounced thrice every week; and this I performed for years. Next I became acquainted with Camden's Greek Grammar, which I also re This man, whom bad passions led to the commission of so sad an atrocity, and in consequence to so miserable an end, strikingly exemplified, in the previous part of his life, what resolution and perseverance may accomplish in the work of self-peated in the same manner, education. Aram, who was born in Yorkshire in the year 1704, only learned to read a little English in the school of his native village, and never afterwards had the benefit of any further instruction; yet, by his own exertions, he first qualified himself to teach all the more common branches of education, including arithmetic and mathematics, and then proceeded, with an industry that has scarcely been surpassed, to make his way to the highest departments of learning. In a letter written to a clerical friend from York Castle, after his conviction, in which he gives an account of his life, he says, referring to the period when he was first engaged in thus at the same time teaching others and himself: Perceiving the deficiency in my education, and sensible of my want of the learned languages, and prompted by an irresistible covetousness of knowledge, I commenced a series of studies in that way, and undertook the tediousness, the intricacies, and the labours of grammar. I selected Lilly from the rest, all which I got and repeated by heart. The task of repeating it all every day was impossible while I attended memoriter. Thus instructed, I entered upon the Latin classics, whose allurements repaid my assiduities and my labours. I remember to have at first hung over five lines for a whole day; and never, in all the painful course of my reading, left any one passage but I did, or thought I did, perfectly comprehend it. After I had accurately perused. every one of the Latin classics, historians, and poets, I went through the Greek Testament, first parsing every word as I proceeded; next I ventured upon Hesiod, Homer, Theocritus, Herodotus, Thucydides, and all the Greek tragedians. A tedious labour was this; but my former acquaintance with history lessened it extremely, because it threw a light upon many passages which, without that assistance, must have appeared obscure.' There was scarcely any part of literature, indeed, with which Aram was not profoundly conversant. History, antiquities, heraldry, botany, had all been elaborately and extensively studied by him; but his favourite pursuit was the investigation and comparison of languages, with a view to the determination of their origin and connection. For R time when it appeared, was a schoolmaster at Andover, but had been almost entirely selfeducated. Having been born (about the year 1702) in low life, he had been originally apprenticed to a shoemaker, by whom, however, he was employ this purpose, in addition to the Greek, Latin, and French, he had studied with great attention several of the oriental tongues, and all the remaining dialects of the Celtic. He had meditated, indeed, the compilation of a dictionary of the Celtic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Eng-ed as a shepherd, an occupation lish, in which different languages he is said to have left behind him a list of about three thousand words, which he considered them to possess in common. Some of his observations upon this subject have been printed, and are creditable both to his ingenuity and good sense. The address, we may add, which he delivered on his trial in his own defence is an extraordinary specimen of the curious learning with which his mind seems to have been stored. But he is a mournful example of high mental powers brought low by illregulated passions, and of the vanity and worthlessness even of talents and knowledge, when separated from moral principle.1 which afforded him considerable leisure for reading and study. In the course of time, he acquired, with scarcely any assistance, a very considerable knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. It was the accidental perusal of a book, in which some errors were pointed out in the common translation of the Bible, that first awakened in him a desire to make himself acquainted with the two sacred tongues. Purver, who died in 1777, was a Quaker; and his version of the Scriptures, which was the labour of thirty years of his life, was published at the expense of the eminent Dr. Fothergill, who was himself also a member of that religious body. humble life, who died in London, and whose attainments seem to have been as extensive, and as entirely the result of his own exertions in quest of knowledge, There is an English translation of the Scriptures, in two There appeared in the newsvolumes folio, which was pub-papers an account of a scholar in lished at London in 1765, and, although not distinguished by much elegance, is held in considerable esteem for its general accuracy and closeness to the original. This was the work of a person of the name of ANTHONY PURVER, who, at the 1 For the trial of Eugene Aram, see Howell's State Trials. [One of Lord Lytton's well-known novels is founded on the life-story of Eugene Aram.] 2 Dr. Fothergill gave Purver £1000 for the copy of his translations (an attempt had before been made to pub lish it in numbers), and also carried it, at his own expense, through the press. Purver afterwards revised the work for a second edition. See Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary. as those of any one of the individuals we have yet mentioned. JOSEPH PENDRELL had received at school nothing more than the ordinary education in English reading and writing, and at an early age was apprenticed by his father to a shoemaker, which business he followed until his death. He had, when young, a great taste for books; but was first led to the more learned studies, in which he eventually made so much progress, by the following accident:-Stopping at a book-stall one day, he laid hold of a book of arithmetic, marked fourpence; he purchased it, and availed himself of his leisure hours at home in making himself master of the subject. At the end of the volume, he found a short introduction to the mathematics. This stimulated him to make further purchases of scientific works, and in this way he gradually proceeded from the elements to the highest departments of mathematical learning. When a journeyman, he made every possible saving in order to purchase books. He found there were many valuable writers on his favourite subject in French; this determined him to study that language, for which purpose he procured a grammar, a book of exercises, and a dictionary, and he persevered until he was able to read the French writers with ease. In the same manner, he proceeded to acquire the Latin and Greek languages, of the latter of which he made himself master so far as to have little difficulty in reading the Septuagint, or any other common prose work. He had formed a large collection of classical books, many of which he purchased at the auction-rooms in King Street, Covent Garden, formerly belonging to Paterson, the celebrated book-auctioneer, in whose time they formed a favourite resort of literary men. Pendrell did not, however, avail himself of any opportunity of becoming known to the literary characters he was accustomed to meet here. On the contrary, he always shunned notice, and made it a practice invariably to conceal his name when a lot was knocked down to him. He had often met in these rooms the learned Bishop Lowth, who frequently fell into conversation with him, as they sometimes happened to before the sale began. The Bishop was much interested with his conversation, and one day asked Paterson who he was; on which Paterson took the first opportunity to inquire his name, acquainting him at the same time who the person was that felt interested in his favour. The poor shoemaker, however, from extreme diffidence, declined telling Paterson his name, although the introduction to the Bishop, of which an opportunity was thus given him, might probably have drawn him from obscurity and led to some improvement of his humble circum CHAPTER XX. FORCE OF APPLICATION: DR. ALEXANDER MURRAY. WITH the exception of Maglia- | himself in his works to posterity. becchi, the names we have as yet mentioned under our present head have been those of persons whose acquirements, although most honourable to themselves, and well entitled to our admiration, when the circumstances in which they were made are considered, have yet hardly been such as to secure for their possessors any permanent place in the annals of the learned. They are remembered not so much on account of what they accomplished, as on account of the disadvantages under which it was accomplished. But he whom we are now to introduce, while the narrative of his progress from obscurity to distinction presents to us as praiseworthy a struggle with adverse circumstances as is anywhere else recorded, had taken his rank, even before his premature death, among the scholars of his time; and although suddenly arrested when in the very speed of his career, has bequeathed something of We speak of Dr. ALEXANDER MURRAY, the celebrated orientalist; nor are there many more interesting histories than his in the whole range of literary biography. Happily the earlier portion of it, with which we have principally to do, has been sketched by his own pen with characteristic naïveté; and we are thus in possession both of a very full and of a perfectly trustworthy detail of everything we can desire to know respecting him. This piece of autobiography, which is prefixed to Dr. Murray's posthumous work, The History of European Languages, is, we believe, comparatively but little known to ordinary readers; and both for this reason, and from its value as an illustration of our subject, we shall allot as much space as can be afforded to an abstract of it. There are one or two other sources from which a few additional particulars with regard to Dr. Murray may be gathered, and |