4 UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF THE 



and Liturgy into Hindoostanee and Persian, which is well- 

 known and still highly valued : * but his scientific training 

 ever urged him not only to build up the separate languages, 

 but to trace their mutual relations and common origins in the 

 Semitic and Sanscrit families severally. 



The age of such linguistic studies had hardly dawned. If 

 Martyn had attained the full age of man, he would have been 

 spared many fallacies in philological speculation ; for he would 

 have been succoured by the orientalists of Grermany, and 

 probably have co-operated with them. 



Springing as he did from a family of calculators, which 

 comprised T. Martyn and M. Hitchins, he had the patience and 

 taste necessary for mathematical attainments. But there are 

 few traces of his having pursued science either at Cambridge or 

 subsequently, except as an educator. He does not appear to 

 have been a mathematical examiner even in his own college. 

 Stephen describes him as ''patient of the most toilsome 

 " enquiries, but not wooing philosophy for her own sake." The 

 age was unfavourable to research, as the English were bigoted 

 adherents of Newton's methods, and paid no heed to the 

 analytical processes, which the continental philosophers had 

 invented.! We have the further express evidence of Archdeacon 

 Hoare, that "poetry and the classics were his predominant 

 passion." [Memoir, p. 494.] 



5. Attention may be drawn to an alteration in Martyn's 

 feelings, which was revealed in the closing paragraph of the 

 long letter, No. 13 (1808), which had been carefully concealed 

 by gum. The engagement with | Miss Grrenf ell, if it ever 

 existed, was formally at an end. Martyn takes a calm, prosaic 

 view of the situation ; he continues to proffer his friendship, 

 but cancels his attachment. Miss Harriet Parr, who founded 



* For a descriptive catalogue of the translations, tracts and sermons of the 

 Eev. H. Martyn, see " Bibliotheea Cornubiensis," Vol.11. The last work of 

 the late Prof. Palmer was to revise Martyn's Persian New Testament for the 

 Bible Society. Monthly Reporter, December, 1882. 



t Dr. Carlyon has recorded (Early Years, Vol. Ill, p. 5) how high wranglers 

 won their places in 1796, by correct book-work rapidly produced in oral 

 examination from four set treatises by Wood and Vince on Optics, Mechanics, 

 Hydrostatics, and Astronomy ; problem-papers were answered by the best men, 



X See Miss Greiifell's Pedigree on page 12, as extracted from the Bibliotheea 

 Cornubiensis, to which I am signally indebted. 



