e
Arabians! "A reverend dignitary asked me if, when I wrote that book, I
had not lately been reading the history of Oliver Cromwell?" Such was
the plaudit the oriental student received, and returned to grow pale
over his MSS. But when Petis de la Croix, observes Ockley, was
pursuing the same track of study, in the patronage of Louis XIV., he
found books, leisure, and encouragement; and when the great Colbert
desired him to compose the life of Genkis Chan, he considered a period
of ten years not too much to be allowed the author. And then Ockley
proceeds--

"But my unhappy condition hath always been widely different from
anything that could admit of such an exactness. Fortune seems only to
have given me a taste of it out of spite, on purpose that I might
regret the loss of it."

He describes his two journeys to Oxford, for his first volume; but in
his second, matters fared worse with him--

"Either my domestic affairs were grown much worse, or I less able to
bear them; or what is more probable, both."

Ingenuous confession! fruits of a life devoted in its struggles to
important literature! and we murmur when genius is irritable, and
erudition is morose! But let us proceed with Ockley:--

"I was forced to take the advantage of the slumber of my cares, that
never slept when I was awake; and if they did not incessantly
interrupt my studies, were sure to succeed them with no less constancy
than night doth the day."

This is the cry of agony. He who reads this without sympathy, ought to
reject these volumes as the idlest he ever read, and honour me with
his contempt. The close of Ockley's preface shows a love-like
tenderness for his studies; although he must quit life without
bringing them to perfection, he opens his soul to posterity and tells
them, in the language of prophecy, that if they will bestow
encouragement on our youth, the misfortunes he has described will be
remedied. He, indeed, was aware that these students--

"Will hardly come in upon the prospect of finding leisure, in a
prison, to transcribe those papers for the press which they have
collected with indefatigable labour, and oftentimes at the expense of
their rest, and all the other conveniences of life, for the service of
the public."

Yet the exulting martyr of literature, at the moment he is fast bound
to the stake, does not consider a prison so dreadful a reward for
literary labours--

"I can assure them, from my own experience, that I have e