REV. HENRY MARTYN, B.D. O 



lior religious novel, entitled, " Her title of honor," on the 

 romantic relations of Martyn with Miss Grrenfell, ought to have 

 perused this common-sense conclusion of the love-tale. 



In letter (6) we read, for the first time, the initials of a rival 

 and priur suitor for the lady's hand, S. J(ohn) [Y ) It should 

 be noticed that Miss Grenfell was senior to Martyn by six years, 

 so that in 1805 the disparity of years was striking. 



6. It was unfortunate for Martyn, that he tied himself at 

 the outset of his Indian life. His friends urged him to marry 

 on general and particular grounds, as we read in letter 1 , and 

 throughout his correspondence. Cecil's opinion was particularly 

 emphatic. 



If ever a man required the domestic control of a sister or 

 wife, to save him from reckless waste of his own existence, 

 Martyn needed the affectionate curb. He worked in India at 

 the eastern languages, as he had laboured in England as an 

 undergraduate, with utter self-abandonment. Thus he writes 

 (A^Dril, 1808), that he "fags as hard as ever we did for our 

 "degrees at Cambridge." "Such a week of laboui' I never 

 ' ' passed, not excepting even the last week before going into 

 "the Senate-House. I have read and corrected the MS. copies of 

 "my Hindoostanee Testament so often, that my eyes ache. 

 " The heat is terrible, often at 98° ; the nights insupportable." 



His biographer, Sargent, comments on this record with com- 

 placent admiration : " whatever he had to do, he did it with all 

 his might "; on the other hand, a wife or sister would simply have 

 forbidden self-sacrifice, either by literary toil, by fasting, by 

 exposure to the sun, or by preventable hardships in travel, 

 which were, in fact, the combined causes of his early death. 



He could lecture (Memoir, p. 247) his friend and coadjutor, 

 Corrie, for wasting his health by impetuous zeal ; but he was 

 unable to ajpply his sage counsel to his own short-comings. 

 Thus it came to pass that Martyn's constitution, congenitaUy 

 weak, was unprotected, either by himself or by others, and he 

 died prematurely, alone, and unbefriended by man. 



A fiery soul, which, working out its way. 



Fretted the pigmy body to decay, 



And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. — Dryden. 



