ly 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 th