SALE, THE TRANSLATOR OF THE KORAN.
The learned Sale, who first gave to the world a genuine version of the Koran, pursued his studies through a life of wants. This great Orientalist, when he quitted his books to go abroad, too often wanted a change of linen; and he frequently wandered the streets, in search of some compassionate friend, who might supply him with the meal of the day.
THE LATTER DAYS OF LOVELACE.
Sir Richard Lovelace, who in 1649 published the elegant collection of amorous and other poems entitled Lucasta, was an amiable and accomplished gentleman: by the men of his time (the time of the civil wars) respected for his moral worth and literary ability; by the fair sex, almost idolized for the elegance of his person and the sweetness of his manners. An ardent loyalist, the people of Kent appointed him to present to the House of Commons their petition for the restoration of Charles and the settlement of the government. The petition gave offence, and the bearer was committed to the Gate House, at Westminster, where he wrote his graceful little song, “Loyalty Confined,” opening thus:
“When love, with unconfined wings,
Hovers within my gates,
And my divine Althea brings
To whisper at my grates;
When I lie tangled in her hair,
And fettered in her eye;
The birds that wanton in the air
Know no such liberty.”
But “dinnerless the polished Lovelace died.” He obtained his liberation, after a few months’ confinement. By that time, however, he had consumed all his estates, partly by furnishing the king with men and money, and partly by giving assistance to men of talent of whatever kind, whom he found in difficulties. Very soon, he became himself involved in the greatest distress, and fell into a deep melancholy, which brought on a consumption, and made him as poor in person as in purse, till he even became the object of common charity. The man who in his days of gallantry wore cloth of gold, was now naked, or only half covered with filthy rags; he who had thrown splendour on palaces, now shrank into obscure and dirty alleys; he who had associated with princes, banqueted on dainties, been the patron of the indigent, the admiration of the wise and brave, the darling of the chaste and fair—was now fain to herd with beggars, gladly to partake of their coarse offals, and thankfully to receive their twice-given alms—
“To hovel him with swine and rogues forlorn,
In short and musty straw.”
Worn out with misery, he at length expired, in 1658, in a mean and wretched lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane, and was buried at the west end of St. Bride’s church, Fleet Street. Such is the account of Lovelace’s closing days given by Wood in his Athenæ, and confirmed by Aubrey in his Lives of Eminent Men; but a recent editor and biographer (the son of Hazlitt) pronounces, though he does not prove, the account much exaggerated.