He had much ardour of curiosity with respect to discoveries and observations in foreign and remote countries, and particularly directed his attention towards Africa. He was familiarly acquainted with all that had, in ancient and modern times also, been published on the subject of that country, which still seems to mock the unavailing efforts of all who attempt to penetrate into its interior recesses. He did not, however, live to see how much of this obscurity and darkness had been dissipated by the generous and patriotic efforts of the African Association, and by the result of the exertions of Browne, Hornemann, Park, and others.
Of all the books which our modern æra have produced on the subject of foreign discovery, he principally avowed his admiration of Turner’s Embassy to the court of the Dalai Lama, at Thibet, concerning which we had previously very little, and indeed no satisfactory information. He considered this work as highly valuable and important, and as filling up an interesting desideratum in the philosophical history of man. The extraordinary peculiarities of religious superstition, which prevail in that country, the extreme singularity of manners, particularly those relating to marriage, where it often happens that one woman is wife to six or seven brothers in a family, had so much occupied his mind, that it is more than probable, that his ideas on these subjects must have been communicated to paper, and remain among his manuscripts.
Hospitable, kind, and generous, he had one marvellous weakness, which often produced the most unpleasing consequences, namely, a childish irritability of temper.
The wrong label accidentally put upon a decanter, on one occasion so exasperated him against the offending servant, that much temporary inconvenience was occasioned to a large and elegant party, who were at dinner. These squalls, however, were short and transitory;—and perhaps more tolerable than the grimace and adulatory obsequiousness of “the Traveller,” whose name next succeeds.
Opera haud fui parcus meâ. Nimis homo
Nihili est, qui piger est, nimisque id genus odi ego male,
Vigilare decet hominem qui volt sua tempori conficere officia.
CHAPTER XIX.
Louis has written his own life, restrained by no very strong considerations of delicacy, nor at all abashed by the circumstantiality of what he has disclosed. His parentage, his education, his early and his late amours, the variety of his efforts to get on in the world, his obsequiousness to his superiors, and his final arrival at wealth and independence, are all communicated without the smallest reserve, as if his object, aim, principle, first and last determination, was “Quærenda Pecunia.” He does not seem much to have cared about the opinions of mankind, and to have exclaimed with Horace, “Populus me sibilet,” &c. “ad cœlum jusseris ibo.”