Life of Edward William Lane. By Stanley Lane Poole. (Williams
and Norgate.)—This memoir is a reprint of that which was prefixed to the Sixth Part of Mr. Lane's Arabic Lexicon, published under Mr. Poole's care in the year following his uncle's death. It is necessarily brief, not only because the life which it records was uneventful, but because the materials are so scanty. Of a scholar who lived in profound seclusion, wrote no letters and kept no diary (except for a brief space of time in Egypt), there can be but a very scanty biography. We have to thank Mr. Poole for telling us, and telling us so well, all that could be told. Mr. Lane began life by deliberately refusing what seemed to promise a successful career. He had had the idea of entering Cambridge, but visiting the place and finding it uncongenial, he turned his thoughts in another direction. What he might have done may be judged from the fact that having obtained the Honour questions set for the year, he found himself able to answer all of them except one problem, and the solution of that presented itself to him in his dreams. It was doubtless well for the world that he so acted. He would have been one among many great mathematicians, but among Orientalists he stands first. In 1825 he visited Egypt, where he assumed with perfect success the dress and manners of the natives, and so saw much that is hidden from the ordinary traveller. This visit ncluded a journey to the Second Cataract,—(how the travellers of to-day will regret a time when a boat with eight men, finding their own pro- visions, could be hired for twenty-five dollars per month !) The result of this visit (which lasted three years) was a "Description of Egypt," a part of which still, strange to say, remains unpublished. Part, how- ever, " An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egypt- ians," was brought out under the auspices of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and had a considerable success, but Mr. Lane did not publish it till after he had again visited Egypt. The notes made at this time, so far as they have not been published before, are included in this memoir, and are exceedingly interesting. In 1840 appeared the translation of " The Thousand and One Nights." The last twenty-seven years of Mr. Lane's life were devoted to unremitting toil on his Arabia Lexicon. The picture of these years, drawn as it is by his biographer in a few simple touches, is profoundly affecting. Never was there a man who more thoroughly realised the scholar's ideal "to scorn delights, and live labourious days " than " Lane, of blessed memory."
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