critical meaning of several Greek words which had been introduced into it; and also with Dr. Henley, upon the sacred writings of the Egyptians, in all of which he took great interest; and it will convey some notion of the extraordinary activity of his mind at this period, to add, that in the very midst of this controversy (Easter, 1805) he composed and sent to press a treatise on Mineralogy, principally intended for students, of which the following notice is given in a letter to Dr. Henley; "I have already sent another work to the press, very different in its nature, which will be mere play to me this Easter vacation. It is an easy and simple method of arranging the substances of the mineral kingdom;' by which i hope to make mineralogists, as fast as Bolton makes buttons. The introduction only is addressed to persons rather above the class of students, and is intended to develope the theory of elementary principles, the cause and origin of the fluid matter of heat, the formation of atmosphere, &c. &c. It is a portable volume, small and pleasant for travellers." The work was never published, and its existence is scarcely known to any of his friends, but one or two copies were found among his papers, and a slight view of it is sufficient to show, that it must have cost him considerable time and labour, at the moment his hands appeared to be full of other things. But this was not all; not many months before, he had been appointed to the office of Senior Tutor of Jesus College, in the room of the author of this Memoir, who had vacated it by marriage, and thus a new class of occupations and engagements was thrown upon his shoulders, of the greater part of which he had no previous knowledge or experience, and of some (business and accounts) a great horror; and when to all this, it is added, that he had taken another pupil in the room of Mr. Cripps, and that his time was liable to be broken in upon by innumerable strangers of all descriptions, foreigners and natives, who pressed upon him with letters of recommendation, and always went away delighted, it will create no surprise to learn, that the number and variety of his engagements during this year furnished matter of wonder, and sometimes of amusement, to his friends. Notwithstanding all these distractions, by which his time was frittered away, the College, with the imperial authority, the Professor's reading furnished him with a seasonable argument: Herodian mentious Soros, and St. Austin tells us, a sarcophagus is what all the Greeks called soros: so Caracalla lays his mantle rn oopw, or upon the sarcophagus. In confirmation of this, is an inscription copied by Dr. Clarke at Alexandria Troas, of the time of Alexander, as Porson judged from the lettering, in which the sarcophagus is called soros : "Aurelius Soter constructed this soros (sarcophagus) for himself." assistance of his experienced friend and coadjutor, Mr. Caldwell, went on prosperously in his hands, till he was happily relieved from it by his marriage, in the spring of 1806: upon which occasion, the noblemen and fellow-commoners of the College, presented to him, through the hands of the Marquis of Sligo, a piece of plate, accompanied by a handsome letter, expressing their sense of his kindness and attention in his office, and their regret for his loss. The lady who was the object of his choice was Angelica. Rush, the fifth daughter of Sir William Rush, of Wimbledon, and the cousin of his pupil, Mr. Rush, of Elsenham. It was, strictly speaking, a match of affection on both sides, and throughout the whole progress of it, was marked with a more than usual portion of those anxieties and fears which are apt to accompany such arrangements, although happily exempt in the sequel from the disappointments and inconveniences which sometimes follow them. At first, indeed, the connexion was thought very flattering; the lady was beautiful and accomplished, her father a man of large fortune, and Mr. Cripps, Dr. Clarke's pupil, was about to marry the third sister. But when the circumstances and dispositions of the parties had been fairly considered, in relation to each other, the aspect under which it appeared to his friends was very different. A wide disparity of years, (Dr. Clarke's age was double that of the lady,) a real difference of habits, a presumed discrepancy of taste, and, worst of all, a very narrow income, were the prominent features of the case, as they presented themselves uniformly to those whom he consulted; and making every fair allowance for the chances of life, and for that powerful stimulus to exertion which the wisdom of Providence has happily annexed to a prolific marriage, it was impossible for them to regard the match, or to represent it to himself in any other light than as a most imprudent one; insomuch that, notwithstanding the powerful influence by which he was impelled, (for it was not likely that a passion which is apt to animate even the cold and sluggish, should burn with an ordinary flame in a heart so susceptible as his,) there were moments in which he himself was so strongly touched with the thought of involving in unknown difficulties a person to whom he was so much attached, as to undergo the most painful struggles; during which, many letters tinged with his romantic spirit, and marked with his peculiar mode of expression, but always generous and honourable, were written by him to his biographer. From the moment, however, that he was convinced of the lady's firmness, he looked no farther back, but giving himself up entirely to the stream of his affection, and relying upon his own exertions, in some shape or other, for a better provision, if it should be needed, he pressed on his marriage with all the despatch imaginable; and as no difficulties were now thrown in the way by her parents, they were married, on the 25th of March, 1806. The ceremony was performed in London, by the Bishop of Bath and Wells, and the events which preceded and followed it, amply justified the confidence he had placed in his own good fortune. During the short administration of the Whigs, he had been a candidate for the Professorship of Modern History, in which he did not succeed; but before the day appointed for the marriage arrived, the vicarage of Harlton, belonging to Jesus College, became vacant, and after some weeks of anxiety, during which his seniors were deliberating, the option at last came down to him; and having already determined to enter into holy orders, he was ordained by his old friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, in December, 1805, and immediately instituted to the living. But this was only a part of his good fortune. Not more than three years after his marriage, the rectory of Yeldham, in Essex, in the gift of Sir Wm. Rush, and tenable with Harlton, unexpectedly became vacant, and was presented to him. Thus he became possessed of a considerable income from church preferment, not any part of which he had calculated upon when he determined upon his marriage. "As to the living of Yeldham," he says, "I never knew of its existence until it came. I was like a man gaping in a hail-storm, and a pearl of great price' fell into my mouth, to my utter astonishment." In all other respects, the consequences of this union proved directly the reverse of what the calmer heads of his friends had anticipated from it. Before many months had elapsed, it was obvious that the character and disposition of Mrs. Clarke were precisely such as those who loved him best would have chosen for him, and that the habits of life she was forming were in perfect conformity with his own wishes, and suitable to the new fortunes and circumstances in which her marriage had placed her. So far from being desirous of public admiration, she was more attached to domestic privacy than himself; all her employments and all her pleasures were sought for and found at home; nor did she seem to have an expectation, or even a wish of any kind, beyond the sphere of her husband's fortune, or the circle of his employments, while the taste which was gradually displayed by her, first in the comforts and crnaments of his house, then in the embellishments of his work, and finally through the whole range of his intellectual pleasures, gave a charm to her character in his eyes, which was perpetually varied and renewing, and appeared perhaps more delightful to him, because it was discovered and elicited by himself. Nor did the benignant influence of this union rest here; he was indebted to it for a better frame of mind, and a greater steadiness and consistency in his pursuits. In the whole character of the lady, there was a quietness and repose admirably calculated to soften that turbulence of spirit, which was at once the charm and the danger of his own, and which literary fame often stimulates, but rarely satisfies; while the suggestions of her plain and unaffected sense, openly but seasonably delivered, often called him back to calmer and juster views of things, and made him question the results to which his own sensibility was leading him. On the other hand, in the desire he felt of adding to the comfort and of providing for the necessities of his family, he had a strong and unfailing motive for his literary labours, which now began to wear a new and an additional value in his eyes; and there is the strongest reason to believe, that without this stimulus, his great work, the Travels, the fruit of so much painful labour, would never have been finished, and scarcely perhaps have been begun; not that his literary ardour would have been less, but it would have been more excursive and more ambitious of new paths, and, at all events, more philosophical and experimental. But, after all, the great beauty of the union was, that to the quiet habits of domestic life it induced, so favourable to the reception of Christian truth, and to the formation of Christian virtue, concurrent with the serious nature of the office he had undertaken, he was indebted for a more earnest application of the Scriptures to his own mind than had hitherto been remarked in him. Many proofs of this may be drawn from various parts of his works and life; but the most striking will be found under the pressure of the afflictions which clouded his latter days. The report of his marriage was hailed by a distinguished classical friend, with the following complimentary verses: E. D. CLARKE, LL.D. GRANTA Lugubrem Hunc Cantum. Ah fugis? aut nostrum frustra petis advena lucum? Non sancta inspirat tales Rhadegunda* furores, Quin Pellea suo stupet umbra emota sepulchro : Et novus Angelicâ luce Medorus erit. 1805 Immediately after this event, he went to reside in Cambridge, where he hired a small house in St. Andrew's Street, and as his living of Harlton was only seven miles from the University, he constantly performed the duties himself. CHAPTER VIII. His Lectures on Mineralogy-Sale of Manuscripts-Of Medals-Removal to Trumpington-Publication of the first volume of his Travels-Other Engagements-Plan for the farther prosecution of his Travels-Return to residence at Cambridge. THE course of Dr. Clarke's life now turns from this happy union to a department of his labours, which was always upperinost in his own thoughts, and, next to his Travels, obtained for him his highest distinction, as a literary man: viz. his Lectures on Mineralogy. The history of these Lectures belongs properly to this period of his life, for they commenced not long after his marriage, and were, in truth, one of the resources upon which he always seemed to rely, when the difficulties of a family were pressed upon him by his friends; but as they had been a favourite object of his speculations for many years, and were now only accidentally connected with this event, it will be necessary to trace them somewhat nearer to their source. It is well known to all his friends, that whatever temporary interest his works already published had excited in his mind, they were only the result of so much time and labour reluctantly withdrawn from mineralogy. During the whole course of his journey, this science, and the objects connected with it, obtained every where the greatest share of his attention, and had been cultivated by him with the greatest success; to which several circumstances had contributed. Low at that time, as * Abbatissa Monast. Jes. ↑ Episcopus Alcock fundator Jes. Coll. Cant. |