RYLAND'S MEMOIRS OP DR. RITTO. * Tin late Dr. Kitto was,
in a certain way, as remarkable a man as any in theof science or literature. Except a desultory attendance forraangew years at the cheapest day-schools, such as country day-schools were fifty years ago, he had no instruction; and though a few men might possibly be adduced as having had even less educational advantages, he may fairly be ranked among the self-taught. Through an accidental fall, in his thirteenth year, he became so deaf that he was shut out from all external impres- sions by the ear ; even the loudest musical sounds could not sti- mulate his auditory nerve. His parents were in such abject poverty through the tippling propensities of his father, that some time of ter his recovery he was sent to the Plymouth workhouse. Here he was kindly regarded by the master, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Barnard, clerk to the Guardians ; both of whom allowed him some indul- gences, and to pursue that love of reading which seemed in him in- nate. The rule of the house, however, was work ; young Kitto was taught shoemaking, and after a time was bound apprentice to a man of the name of Bowden. This person not only used him cruelly, but kept him so unreasonably long at work that he had no time to read or write. Hitherto ho had occupied his leisure by reading all the books he could borrow ; what money he could command he devoted to the purchase of paper ; and he made a trifle by paint- ing "lodgings to let" and similar window-bills. The tyranny of his master becoming unbearable, he complained to his friend Mr, Barnard ; and the case having been investigated, the indentures were cancelled and Kitto returned to the workhouse. His in- firmity compelled him to explain his case by writing ; and the ability he displayed having attracted attention, his story was inquired into, and procured him a certain provincial patronage. A subscription was raised ; he was placed with Mr. Barnard to board and lodge, and allowed to have the run of the public library. Various plans were talked about, but the final upshot was the publication of a volume of " Essays" by subscription, and the re- moval of the author, who had then a missionary longing, to the College at Islington, with a view to his instruction as a missionary printer—not, as Kitto wished, a preaching or literary missionary. He appears to have been somewhat self-willed by nature ; his affliction probably rendered. him sensitive and irritable ; complaints were made that he gave too much time to literary study, at the expense of the types. Some corre- spondence passed, and Kitto withdrew from the Society ; but, through the mediation of a stanch friend, Mr. Groves, the differ- ence was arranged, and Kitto went to Malta. Hero the same complaint arose ; and after some eighteen months he returned to England, on a censure which he conceived to be a dismissal. Mr. Ryland seems to think that Kitto was not free from blame ; but religions Nonconformist bodies are generally hard taskmasters.. Kitto was again adrift upon the world in his twenty-fifth year. (He was born in December 1804, and his return from Malta took place in the early part of 1829.) He had some schemes in view, which were stopped by his friend Mr. Groves. That gentleman was going to Bagdad, via St. Petersburg, on some missionary plan of his own, and he offered to take Kitto with him, nominally as a tutor to his sons. This was the turning-point in Kitto's literary career. The long journey from St. Petersburg to Persia, through Moscow, Astrachan, and the Caucasian provinces, opened to him a larger field of observation ; his sojourn at Bagdad, and his Eastern travels, not only gave him matter for books on his re- turn, but furnished him with the ideas and the materials for that peculiar walk of literature which occupied so much of his future life—the illustration of Scripture by the existing features of na- ture and the actual practices of life. After about four years' ab- sence, he returned to England in June 1833 ; and was introduced to the Useful Knowledge Society. With this body, or more pro- perly with Mr. Charles Knight, he was connected till the stop- page of the concern ; having published in the interim, The Pictorial Bible, and The Pictorial History of Palestine, as well as a good many smaller books. He also contributed regularly and extensively to The Penny Magazine, The Com- panion to the Newspaper, and other periodicals emanating from the same quarter. Is 1843, he published with Messrs. Black The History of Palestine ; and in 1845 his broadest and we think his best work, The Cyclopedia of Biblical Litera- ture. From that time till his death, in 1854, his public life was measured by his successive publications. In fact, through necessity and habit, all his waking hours were devoted to read- ing or writing. He rose at four or five, and, with no other • Memoirs of John Kitt°, D.D., F.LA. ; compiled chilly from his Letters and Journals. By J. E. Ryland, Editor or Foster's Life and Correspondence," ¢c. With a Critical Estimate of Dr. Xttto's AA and Writings, by Professor Sadie, D.D., LL.D., Glasgow. Published by Hamilton and Adams, London; Oli- phant, Edinburgh.
relaxation than a little gardening, and no other interruption than meals and an occasional visitor, he worked till bedtime. His deafness, shutting him out from external impressions, seems to have had the effect of concentrating his mind upon itself, or rather upon intellectual ideas and images. This deafness, it was thought, by preventing any self-test of his articulation,— aggravated, perhaps, by a West-country patois,—rendered his discourse not very intelligible to those unaccustomed to it. This, again, had a tendency to prevent him from talking ; finger-speak- ing is known to few, and is difficult to follow ; writing, to which he had recourse, is very troublesome ; so that he was almost shut out from social communication. Mrs. Kitto writes as follows to the biographer.
" In ordinary company he was far from comfortable, and could only take refuge in a book. Most of his friends, though they might enjoy hearing him talk,—that is, the few who could understand him,—had themselves so little to say, or were so discouraged by the slow process of finger-talk and the still more cumbrous resource of pen and paper, that they seldom or ever made the effort to speak. Thus he was generally left to himself reading, or while watching an opportunity to speak, perhaps incurring the mortifica- tion of finding that he had interrupted some one. When he met with lite- rary characters or men of real information, he kept them continually writing, often catching with his quick eye the meaning of their answers before they were fully written. He had one friend who was capable of keeping him in a state of continued excitement. Though I could execute the finger-talk with great rapidity, I could never read it ; so that I could only guess at what had been said by other persona from the tenor of my husband's remarks. I was always aware when the company was irksome to him. Husbands are not clever at hiding their feelings from their wives ; and I could easily discern his, which often made me quite as miserable as himself. I felt that he ought not to be made to feel his infirmity, which was always the case when he was out of his library. We therefore mutu- ally agreed that the reception of friends was not suited to our condition, and learned to live alone. But there was one dear family of children, whose growing intelligence he had watched from their infancy on his visits to their parents ; them he delighted to visit, or to be visited by They had all been drawn to him in love during their childhood, and had learned to talk on their fingers, and could as freely ask and reply to questions as any of his own family. He always kept these young people in full talk, and while in his company there was no reprieve for their poor fingers. Some- times he insisted on their playing on the piano The Battle of Prague' ; and he sat with his fingers placed on the sounding-board, seeming to derive pleasure from the vibrations he felt. His entire helplessness in all matters extraneous to his library rendered him quite dependent on me • whilst I felt it a privilege thus to guard and keep in quiet one whose time was de- voted to such noble ends. But the cares of a large family quite destroyed of late years the close union of the early period, and I may say quite sepa- rated us except at meal-times ; for it rendered such exactions of labour necessary on his part that he had no spare time : but of this he never com- plained."
Kitto was once married, and twice engaged - each having a touch of romance. The first time he was jilted; his betrothed during his absence at Malta having married another, without a word of explanation. His courtship arose from peculiar circum- stances. Mrs. Kitto had originally been engaged to Mr. Shepherd, who was attached to an Oriental mission, came home with Kitto, and died in quarantine off the Isle of Sheppy. Kitto waited upon the lady with her lover's last memorials ; an acquaintance took place ; pity melts the mind to love," and they were married. The life of John Kitto ought to have produced a book alike in- teresting and instructive. Such is very far from being the case with this bulky volume of nearly seven hundred pages. The narrative parts of the early career are distinguished by the flat diffuseness, the minute details, and occasionally the poor jokes of the platform school. It seems to be a theory with many people that whatever a man writes himself must be autobiographical. At all events, Mr. Ryland acts upon this notion nearly through- out. The early period is quite overwhelmed by "letters and journals," many of them apparently written as literary exercises, at a time of life when neither observation nor experience could have given Kitto matter to write about. The few facts or ex- pression of biographical feelings they contain are smothered by a sermonlike quantity of words ; the power of pouring forth which was natural to Kitto, unless writing had become to him a substitute for speech. The letters from Islington and Malta have more matter than the Plymouth writings ; and they are fewer in num- ber, perhaps from the printing-work allowing him less leisure. The epistles and journals during the four years in the East are interesting ; but they are travels, and the substance of a large por- tion was known already from books or articles published by Kitto after his return. Contrary to the usual case, the last twenty years of his life, when he was directly engaged in literature, though somewhat overdone, are fresher and more interesting. Yet this newest and most mature part of the life occupies little more than one-fifth of the book. It is a mechanical mode of criticism to reckon pages, but that is really the best mode of conveying an idea of this memoir.
The early life at Plymouth and Exeter, the sub- stance of which is before the world in several forms, occupies 184 pages. His connexion with the Missionary body at Lon- don and Malta 107 pages. His Oriental life, the greater portion travels, and
that part already known 234 pages. Literary life in London 137 pages.
The excessive extension of biographies without any correspond- ing character or information, is a crying literary evil. Southey's Life and Correspondence will fill ten volumes. Only last week we had the journals of Moore, extending to eight volumes ; the me- moirs of so feeble and past a poet as Montgomery of Sheffield are to make seven ; the life of Dr. Beaumont, with hardly any bio- graphical matter in it, was nominally only one volume, but with type enough to have formed two or three volumes of the usual kind ; and now we have Mr. Ryland's very bulky book, whose chief value is its raw material for the use of a future biographer of Kitto.
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