SIR JOHN BOWRING. MERCHANT, DIPLOMAT, LINGUIST. (1792-1872.) A VERY pleasant and chatty book to take up at any time is the "Autobiographical Recollections of Sir John Bowring," a man who did many things in the course of his long life and did them all well. He was the possessor of many accomplishments, a merchant, politician, linguist, poet and diplomatist, who received great honor in his own country, and was not without honor in other lands. He was the writer of many poems and hymns, and one of the latter, at least, "In the Cross of Christ I Glory," has achieved a worldwide fame. A master of many languages, it was his ambition to write the history and give translated specimens of the popular poetry of both the western and the oriental worlds, and though he did not carry out his scheme as he conceived it, he nevertheless made translations from the Chinese, Sanskrit, Cingalese, Spanish, Servian, Magyar and Russian languages, and many of these have been published in separate volumes. One of the best and most scholarly of these is "Ancient Poetry and Romances of Spain," composed of translations of the oldest popular poetry of that country. It was first published in 1824 and the volumes are now comparatively rare. They are culled from many sources and are not gay, but serious. The following may serve as a specimen. It belongs to the sixteenth century : Awake, awake, my sleeping soul ! Rouse from thy dreams of hope and fear, How soon life's moments roll, How soon the hour of death draws near How silently! How swiftly hurrying joy glides by, And nought but sorrow's shade remains Of vanish'd bliss ; And sweeter is the memory Of other moments' griefs and pains, Than joy in this. Our lives are rivers flowing on To that interminable sea, The mighty grave; There go, as there have gone, All pomp, and pride, and royalty, Which nought can save. There roll the mountain's rapid streams, There rolls the little gentle rill, There mingle all; Lost in that ocean tide, which seems It is a long poem, but full of wisdom on the everlasting text of the vanity of human life. Sir John Bowring was born in Devonshire in 1792, was bred to the business of a merchant, and in pursuit of his commercial projects traveled widely, first throughout Europe and afterward to the Orient. He had a great facility for languages, and early acquired a knowledge of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Dutch. He afterward added to these of the European languages Swedish, Danish, Russian, Servian, Polish, Bohemian and Magyar. He was the intimate friend of Jeremy Bentham, and together they founded the Westminster Review in 1824, but Bowring soon became the sole editor. In the next few years he made translations of Spanish, Polish, Magyar, Batavian and Servian popular poetry, and the degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him by the University of Göttingen. He was also employed from time to time by the English government to investigate financial questions and the commercial relations between Great Britain and other countries. He served in parliament for several years, and in 1837 traveled in Egypt, Syria and Turkey on another commercial mission for the government. He became consul at Canton and then plenipotentiary to China, and was accredited also to the courts of Japan, Siam, Cochin-China and Korea. In his autobiography he gives a most interesting account of his visit to Siam and to the Philippines. Speaking of the latter he says: In these islands Spain possesses a great treasure, and at some future time they will become one of the greatest emporiums of commerce and one of the widest fields for the production of tropical articles. This was written in 1859. Sir John could not foresee that forty years later those islands would be transferred by Spain to the United States. Bowring relates anecdotes of the distinguished men with whom he became acquainted, including Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Southey, Bunsen, Lamartine, Louis Philippe, Louis Napoleon and Queen Hortense. With Tom Hood he was on terms of more than ordinary intimacy, and he received the following lines from the great punster : To Bowring! man of many tongues (All over tongues, like rumor), To paint his learned humor. But far more Polly-glottish. No grammar too abstruse he meets, He gossips Greek about the streets, Strange tongues-whate'er you do them call- To tell you what's o'clock in all The dialects of Babel. Take him on 'Change-in Portuguese, Polish, Hungarian, Tyrolese, The Swedish or the Danish; Try him with these, and fifty such, And end (like me) in Finnish. He was certainly a master of many languages, and he says: In the study of languages for practical purposes I have found that courage in speaking is the best means of advancing. Far more is learnt by the exercise of the tongue, which is necessarily active, than by that of the ear, which is nearly |