Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/311



Of the birth, education, and early life of this traveller little or nothing appears to be known with certainty. His friends, who were of genteel rank, since he calls Sir Charles Hodges, judge of the High Court of Admiralty, his uncle, seem to have resided in the neighbourhood of Richmond. Having completed his studies, and taken the degree of master of arts at Oxford, he was appointed chaplain to the English factory at Aleppo, and departed from England in the year 1695. Part of this journey was performed by land; but whether it passed off smoothly, or was diversified by incidents and adventures, we are left to conjecture, our traveller not having thought his movements of sufficient importance to be known to posterity. It is simply recorded that he passed through Germany, and made some short stay at Frankfort, where he conversed with the celebrated Job Ludolphus, who, learning his design of residing in Syria, and visiting the Holy Land, communicated to him several questions, the clearing up of which upon the spot might, it was hoped, tend to illustrate various passages in the Old and New Testaments.

Shortly after his arrival at Aleppo, he undertook, in company with a considerable number of his flock, that journey to Jerusalem which, short and unimportant as it was, has added his name to the list of celebrated travellers; so pleasantly, ingenuously, and delightfully is it described. The history of the short period of his life consumed in this excursion is all that remains to us; and this is just sufficient to excite our regret that we can know no more; for,