I adopt from Mr. Otter the following account of Clarke’s death. It was hastened, if not entirely caused, by continued high-wrought mental excitement. He was carried to town for advice by Sir William and Lady Rush, where he was attended by Sir Astley Cooper, Dr. Bailey, and Dr. Scudamore, but their efforts to save him were in vain; the rest of his life, about a fortnight, over which a veil will soon be drawn, was like a feverish dream after a day of strong excitement, when the same ideas chase each other through the mind in a perpetual round, and baffle every attempt to banish them. Nothing seemed to occupy his attention but the syllabus of his lectures, and the details of the operations he had just finished; nor could there exist to his friends a stronger proof that all control over his mind was gone, and that the ascendency of such thoughts at a season when the devotion so natural to him, and of late so strikingly exhibited under circumstances far less trying, would, in a sounder state, have been the prime, if not the only, mover of his soul. One lucid interval there was, in which, to judge from the subject and the manner of his conversation, he had the command of his thoughts, as well as a sense of his danger; for in the presence of Lieut. Chappel and Mr. Cripps, he pronounced a very pathetic eulogium on Mrs. Clarke, and recommended her earnestly to the care of those about him; but when the currents of his thoughts seemed running fast towards those pious contemplations on which they would naturally have rested, his mind suddenly relapsed into the power of its former occupants, from which it never more was free. At times, indeed, gleams of his former kindness and intelligence would mingle with the wildness of his delirium, in a manner the most striking and affecting; and then, even his incoherences, to use his own thoughts respecting another person who had finished his race shortly before him, was as the wreck of some beautiful decayed structure, when all its goodly ornaments and stately pillars fall in promiscuous ruin. He died on Saturday, the 9th of March, and was buried in Jesus College chapel on the 18th of the same month.
FRANCOIS LE VAILLANT.
Born 1753.—Died 1824.
In commencing the life of this traveller I experience some apprehension that the interest of the narrative may suffer in my hands; since his exploits, as Sallust observes of those of the Athenians, appear to acquire much of their importance from the peculiar eloquence with which they are described. The style of Le Vaillant, though regarded by many as declamatory and negligent, is in fact so graceful, natural, and full of vivacity,—his sentiments are so warm,—his ideas, whether right or wrong, so peculiarly his own, that, whether he desires to interest you in the fate of his friends or of his cattle, of his collections or of his cocks and hens, the result is invariably the same: he irresistibly inspires you with feelings like his own, and for the moment compels you, in spite of yourself, to adopt his views and opinions. I cannot, however, flatter myself with the hope of equal success. Things really trifling in themselves might, I am afraid, continue to appear so when dressed in my plain style; and it therefore only remains for me to select, to the best of my judgment, such actions and events as really deserve to be remembered, and must always, with whatever degree of simplicity they may be described, command a certain degree of attention. The scene of this writer’s adventures had in many instances all the charm of novelty when his travels first appeared. No European had preceded him in his route. He could form no conjecture respecting the nature of the objects with which the morrow was to bring him acquainted, and at every step experienced the
Novos decerpere flores.
In all the pleasures to be derived from pursuing an untrodden path, from penetrating into an unknown world; for such then was Africa, and such, in a great measure, it still continues—from beholding new species of birds and animals which his enthusiasm and perseverance were about to make known to mankind;—in all these pleasures, I say, he skilfully makes his readers his associates, and thus, apparently without effort, accomplishes the intention of the most consummate rhetorical art, the object of which is only to lead the imagination captive by the allurements of pleasure, or to urge it along by the keen sting of curiosity.
François le Vaillant was born in 1753, at Paramaribo, in Dutch Guiana, where his father, a rich merchant, originally from Metz, filled the office of consul. Even while a child the tastes and habits of his parents inspired him with a partiality for a wandering life, and for collections of objects of natural history, which quickly generated another passion, the passion for hunting; and this amusement, unphilosophical as it may seem, not only occupied his boyish days, in which man is cruel from thoughtlessness, but his riper and declining years, when suffering and calamity might have taught him to respect the lives even of the inferior animals.
His father, actuated by the love of science, or by the vanity of forming a collection, employed much of the leisure which he enjoyed in travelling through the less frequented parts of the colony, accompanied by his wife and son; and to this circumstance may be attributed Le Vaillant’s twofold passion for travelling and for natural history. The desire of possessing a cabinet of his own soon arose. Birds and beasts being as yet beyond his reach, he commenced with caterpillars, butterflies, and other insects; but his ambition increasing with his acquisitions, he at length armed himself with the Indian sarbacan and bow, and before he had reached his tenth year had slain innumerable birds.
In 1763 he proceeded with his parents to Europe, where every object which presented itself to his eye was new. They first landed in Holland, where the phlegmatic Dutchmen, who, like the Chinese, pique themselves upon being “slow and sure,” viewed with astonishment the pert and forward urchin, who, at ten years of age, began to babble of science, cabinets, and collections. From Holland, however, they soon removed to the more congenial soil of France. Here precocity, which too frequently generates hopes never destined to be fulfilled, has always been viewed with more complacency than in any other country in Europe; and accordingly our youthful traveller, whose vanity amply made up for his want of knowledge, was flattered and encouraged to his heart’s content. In this particular instance the flowers were succeeded by fruit. Being capable of existing in solitude, which is difficult in youth, but yet absolutely necessary to the acquisition of studious habits, he yielded to his natural inclination for the chase, and spent whole weeks in the forests of Lorrain and Germany, intently studying the manners of animals and birds. His education, meanwhile, was not in other respects neglected; but the books which occupied him most agreeably were voyages and travels, as his mind seems already to have turned towards that point from which he was to derive his fame.
In the course of the year 1777 some fortunate circumstance conducted him to Paris, where the collections and cabinets of learned and scientific men at first afforded him extraordinary delight; but ended, he says, by inspiring him with contempt, the richness of the treasures which they contained being equalled only by the confusion and absurdity observable in their arrangement. He discovered likewise in the current works on natural history, even in those of Buffon, so much exaggeration, and so many errors, notwithstanding the masterly eloquence with which those errors are clothed, that, convinced that no degree of genius could preserve from delusion the man who describes nature at second-hand, he at length determined to become a traveller before he became a natural historian, that he might observe in their native woods and deserts the animals which he wished to make known to the world. With these views, without communicating his plans to any person, he departed from Paris on the 17th of July, 1780, and proceeded to Holland.