BY

IT

T may appear to many persons, unacquainted with the causes of the delay, as somewhat surprising that certain unfounded calumnies contained in THE QUARTERLY REVIEW So long ago as the commencement of 1822, should not have been publicly answered in England before the close of the year 1824. As this impression, wherever entertained, cannot fail to be unfavourable, I take the earliest opportunity to remove it, even before entering on the merits of the case: being ready to admit, that whoever remains for a long period voluntarily silent under imputations that deeply affect his character, furnishes presumptive evidence of his indifference to the good opinion and esteem of mankind, and consequently deprives himself of all just claim to their sympathy and regard.

I shall state, therefore, that when these calumnies first appeared in January 1822, I was residing in India, where the number of the Quarterly Review in which they were contained (No. 52.) did not reach until August of the same year. It had not been landed in Calcutta, however, three days, before a most ample refutation, containing all the important matter included in this Appendix, was issued from the press, and by sale and gratuitous distribution about 2000 copies were placed in the hands of the British Indian public.

Copies of these documents were then sent immediately to England, for re-publication here, either in any periodical work, or in a separate form. By the time of their reaching England, upwards of a year had elapsed; and it was then thought, by the parties to whom they were sent, that the interest of the subject had gone by, and that the refutation would not be extensively read if published in a separate form; while none of the periodicals could include it in their sheets in that perfect state in which alone it could be read with advantage. Funds were also sent to England at the same time for commencing a prosecution against the parties: but it was thought that this

could not be satisfactorily conducted without my

presence; and thus every step that I had yet taken to obtain reparation or redress had been ineffectual. Towards the close of 1823, I arrived in England myself, and the very first step taken by me was to commence legal proceedings against the principal agents in creating and spreading the calumnies adverted to. From that moment to this I have never relaxed in my endeavours to bring them to justice; but, by the aid of their influence, their purses, and the scandalously defective state of the law in this respect, they have hitherto succeeded in procuring delay after delay, on one frivolous pretence or another, being evidently ashamed or afraid to come at once to the encounter, like honest men, capable of establishing their assertions by evidence of their truth.

During this interval, the present Volume of Travels has been passing through the press, delayed unavoidably, from time to time, in its progress, by the multiplicity of other occupations on my hands; and even now brought out under the most distracting and incessant cares, and perpetual interruptions, the most unfavourable to the satisfactory execution of any literary labours, but particularly those involving in their very nature great care and research.

The publication of this volume has always been regarded by me as the fittest and best opportunity for printing, in an Appendix, the calumnies of the several individuals named before, and the refutations which were instantly opposed to them, on the first appearance of the calumnies themselves in India. It is essential that the readers of the present volume should see the real grounds on which the accuracy of my preceding one has been impugned, and the facts and arguments by which such imputations on its fidelity have been repelled. It is desirable that the literary world in general should also see recorded, what authors can say of critics, as well as what critics can say of authors.

The Reviewers have carried their insolence and injustice to a pitch beyond endurance: and far

beyond what any one of them would have dared to do, if writing in his own name, and under all the responsibility of open and avowed authorship. It is one of the great evils of anonymous criticism, that masked slanderers dip their weapons in poison, and care not who they wound, provided their stabs are but considered to be skilfully made. The phrase of being "cut up" in a Review has, indeed, grown into common use, as if men's very hearts were there actually laid open with all the brutality of a butcher preparing a victim for the shambles.

The envious form so large a class, that the more bitter the invectives of Reviews the more extensive is their circulation likely to be. Ten thousand copies of the Quarterly will blast the fame of any man, and carry the stigma which it affixes to his name to the uttermost corner of the earth. If the object of its calumny be in another hemisphere, and at the distance of a year's voyage or journey in point of time, his reputation is damned throughout Europe, before even the rumour of the injury done to him reaches his own ears: and when it does, and he replies, however complete his refutation may be, he is told that the injury is irreparable; that his countrymen have seen the calumnies to remain unanswered for a whole year, and, therefore, they believe them true; while, now, other subjects engross their attention, and they will not turn aside to examine a question, the very name of which sounds stalely in their ears; which they have been accustomed to consider as long since decided; and which they will not, therefore, disturb themselves even to look at again.

This is no exaggerated picture. It has been my case; and will be the case of others, no doubt, who may be equally distant from their country at the time that their characters are assailed. The Reviewers have now and then had some severe castigations in return, from those who have been nearer at hand; but these, as compared with the number of others who have remained silent, and thereby given a colour of justice to their slanders, have been few indeed; while, like daring smugglers, or still more desperate pirates, the Reviewers think themselves sufficiently triumphant if they are successful in most of their iniquitous violations of the property and character of others, notwithstanding they may now and then, like the outlaws of the ocean, get a severe lesson taught them in an occasional conflict with one whose strength they had underrated, and who had consequently proved more than a match for them, and compelled them to abandon the encounter, or retreat under cover of their own noise and smoke.

Before entering on the publication of the documents necessary to the refutation of the calumnies before adverted to, it will be necessary to give a brief narrative of the principal facts, for the information of those to whom the question may be entirely new.

In the year 1816, being at Alexandria in Egypt, and but recently returned to that country from India, where I had been on affairs of private business, partly connected with endeavours to restore the ancient commerce between Egypt and India

by way of the Red Sea, I was solicited by Mr. Lee, the British consul there, and member of the firm of Briggs and Co. of the same place, to undertake a second journey to India by land, partly to be the bearer of a treaty of commerce drawn up between Mohammed Ali Pasha, the viceroy of the country, Mr. Lee, the British consul, and myself; and partly to be in Bombay at the time the first ships should come up the Red Sea, in order that I might navigate them through the difficult passages of the Arabian Gulf, with which I had made myself practically acquainted.

I consented to undertake this journey, on the condition of my bare expenses being paid; for which purpose an unlimited letter of credit was given me on Mr. Barker, the consul at Aleppo, the route by which I intended to go, although this was left open, to be determined as circumstances might direct.

Events altogether beyond my controul, and detailed at length in the volume already published under the title of "Travels in Palestine," as well as in the present, retarded my journey more than I either expected or wished. I arrived, however, safely at Bombay, where the notes that I had made on the journey having been read by some of the most distinguished literary characters of the place, I was advised to prepare them immediately for publication. I readily yielded to this sugges tion, and at length completed the task. Some portions of the work were read at the meetings of the Literary Society at Bombay; and others were afterwards read at the meetings of the Literary Society at Madras. The whole of the manuscript passed through the hands of many individuals in succession, and approbation of its contents was very generally expressed.

I went soon afterwards to Bengal, where the materials were again shown to several of the leading characters in Calcutta, and I was urged on all sides to hasten its publication. I took immediate steps to effect this; and after a series of obstacles which will hereafter be detailed, the work appeared at the close of 1821. In the beginning of 1822, the Quarterly Review published its slanderous article on it; and on that Review reaching India, an immediate refutation was published there. On reverting to the whole series of discussions which arose out of this controversy in India, it is a source of great satisfaction to me to remember that my triumph was complete, both in the arena of written controversy and in the trial of my calumniators for libel in the Supreme Court of Justice at Calcutta, where they were found guilty, and sentenced to pay the penalties awarded by the law. It appears to me, therefore, that I cannot do better than republish here the principal articles that appeared in the Indian papers at the time, omitting such as are unimportant, amending the style of others; and changing the editorial plural "we" into the personal pronoun "I," as it is no longer as the editor of the Calcutta Journal, but as the author of the Travels in Palestine, that I now appear before the reader of the present volume. To this task, therefore, I shall at once proceed.

(From the Calcutta Journal of August 13, 1822.)

AFTER the Travels in Palestine had been reviewed and eulogized by some of the most respectable periodical publications in England, I expected my full share of virulent abuse from The Quarterly, and I have not been disappointed. I have been just permitted to glance over the article in this Review, a copy of which has been lent to me for perusal; but when I receive a copy of which I can make use, (for the purpose of reprinting it, accompanied with comments, in these pages,) I shall let the Indian public see how truly The Quarterly maintains its established reputation for malignant detraction,—and show them that it can publish known falsehoods with as much unblushing impudence as ever, whether the nature of its hatred and animosity be of a political, religious, or merely critical description. I shall then also give publicity to certain documents, which will illustrate the true character of the Editor of that publication, as well as of Mr. Bankes, who appears to have furnished the same scandalous and unfounded complaints to him as the groundwork of his Review, that were sent to India by a gentleman now in the country, and which were then most triumphantly refuted.

I must here, however, confine myself to a very brief outline of this disreputable transaction, which the details will show in all its glowing colours. In the year 1818, the notes of the Travels in Palestine, having been put in order for publication, were placed in the hands of the late lamented Dr. Middleton, Lord Bishop of Calcutta, whose piety and learning no man could doubt, The object of placing the MS. in his Lordship's possession was avowedly to ascertain his candid and undisguised opinion as to its merits and defects, and as to its fitness for publication in the state in which it was then presented to him. It remained in the Bishop's possession for several weeks, during which time his Lordship was confined to his room by a temporary indisposition, and during which he went through several portions of it, having a full opportunity at the same time, of inspecting the whole: when on returning it for transmission to England, he permitted the use of his name in the prospectus published in India, as well as in the preface of the work itself, approving generally of the nature of the whole, and never once raising a single objection either to its moral or religious tendency.

The original MS. was taken from Calcutta to England, by Mr. Eneas Mackintosh, formerly of this city, and the duplicate by Captain Sydenham of the Bengal army, and placed in Mr. Murray's hands for publication. This bookseller considered the work so likely to be acceptable to the public, as to undertake that it should be out in a few months; and he so far approved of it as to engage to give 200 copies, each value six guineas, for the MS., and take all the risk of publication on himself. After these terms had been fixed on, Mr. Gifford, the Editor of The Quarterly Review, had the examination of the MS. entrusted to him; and finding in it certain proofs of the blunders of The Quarterly Review in its remarks on Dr. Clarke's Travels, he wished Mr. Murray to allow him to curtail the work some forty or fifty pages, admitting, however, that it contained much that was new and interesting, and that deserved publication as such. Soon after this, Mr. Bankes set up a pretext of the work not being original, but being mostly compiled from his notes (although he had not seen the work at all); and from these joint causes, Mr. Murray declined the fulfilment of his engagement.

Reference being made to me in India, I collected a few of my friends, and exhibited to them such documents as convinced them that Mr. Murray's breach of engagement was unwarrantable; that Mr. Gifford's objections were wholly untenable; and that Mr. Bankes's assertions were in direct contradiction to his own letters addressed to me in Syria, the originals of which I fortunately had in my possession.

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A notarial paper, stating all these facts, was drawn up by Mr. Smoult, of this city, Calcutta, and transmitted to England, with the documents in question. The result was, that Messrs. Longman and Co. to whom the MS, was then offered for publication, were so satisfied of the justice of the author's case, that they undertook the publication immediately, and got the work out with all possible dispatch. It was advertised in all the public papers as preparing for publication. It was announced in the most public way, when completed; and continued to sell rapidly, and to be reviewed favourably, by publication after publication, without Mr. Bankes offering it any public opposition, though he was in London during the whole of this time, and was fully informed of all that had taken place. His behaviour in this scandalous transaction will deserve a more detailed notice; and he deserves richly that his conduct should be shown in its true colours; because, although he has not had the courage or the manliness to come forward in his own name in a public manner upon this question, he has, under shelter of The Quarterly Review, sought to impress the public with the most unfavourable impressions regarding the character of one who was guilty of the great sin of being more active, more industrious, and earlier than himself in the field as a candidate for public favour. It may suffice here to say, that Mr. Bankes, after having paid the highest compliments that one man could pay to another, and bowed with deference to what he considered the superior judgment and understanding of his companion, traduces that same individual, and declares him to be incompetent, from his extreme ignorance, even to copy an inscription! This same Mr. Bankes, after having acknowledged in writing his own indolence as preventing him from making notes, and admitted his having derived information from consulting those of his more careful fellow-traveller, accuses that same individual of never having made notes, or even having paper to write them on, and of copying from him, who seldom made any!! The Quarterly Reviewers, under whose wing he has taken shelter, are of the same stamp and value as himself; for they, or Mr. Gifford, its editor, after having admitted in writing that the MS. contained much that was new and interesting, and that by curtailing it forty or fifty pages it would deserve publication,now pronounce the same book, which has undergone no alteration since then, to be a tissue of ignorance and vulgarity, full of egregious blunders; and the conduct of the author, from beginning to end, as that of a dishonourable, infidel, illiberal, and pilfering ignoramus!!!

The world may well wonder at such irreconcileable contradictions as these. At an earlier period they might have done me irreparable injury, though I now regard them with as much indifference as scorn. But after the eulogistic testimonies of some of the most respectable publications in England in favour of the "Travels in Palestine," it would be a waste of time, perhaps, to show that the abuse of The Quarterly must fall pointless to the ground.

The Review from the Literary Gazette has been partly given to the Indian public: at the close of the second portion of the remarks offered on the Travels in that publication, is the following paragraph:

"It is not possible, in a few desultory extracts, to do justice to this important volume. We have endeavoured, for the information of our readers, to furnish an outline of Mr. Buckingham's tour, but have been unable to record, in an abbreviated form, any of the numerous and valuable illustrations of the sacred writings with which this work abounds. If to throw a light upon the pages of the poet, historian, or philosopher, deserve our thanks, that writer has surely a greater claim to our countenance and acknowledgments, who, by his useful and important researches has illustrated several of the obscure texts of a book, the due knowledge of which can only enable us to become wise' in the best and most extended sense of the term."

"Mr. Buckingham has given ample proof, in the course of this volume, of his activity, resolution, energy, and observation."-British Critic, Dec. 1821.

The Monthly Magazine, published by Sir Richard Phillips, in speaking of the work, calls it one "of great interest and importance, forming a valuable addition to the numerous volumes of Travels into the Holy Land which have been published during the last ten years." It ends by saying:

"To make amends for the want of novelty consequent upon all details respecting Palestine, Mr. Buckingham has introduced numerous and learned disquisitions illustrative of the sacred writings, and has corrected many errors, which, like the mummies of the Egyptians, have only been consecrated for their antiquity. Tyre, Acre, Nazareth, Mounts Tabor and Carmel, Cesarea, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Ramlah, and the holy places round the sacred city, have all been described by Mr. Buckingham's predecessors. Those portions of his volume, therefore, will be found to be most important, which are the details respecting the country beyond the Jordan, in which he has not been anti. cipated by other travellers. The minute descriptions of Geraza, Soof, Oomkais, the ruins of the ancient Gamala, Nazareth, Tiberias, Shechem, Mount Ebal, Gerizim, and the Wells of Samaria, are full of interest; and as they have not been touched upon before, afford valuable records of a country which has been an object of curiosity from the earliest ages. The style is worthy of the materials; numerous curious and erudite notes are scattered over the work."

The New Monthly Magazine, edited by the celebrated author of the " Pleasures of Hope,”—Mr. Thomas Campbell, whose judgment and good taste on subjects of general literature will scarcely be disputed, commences and closes his notice of the Travels in Palestine, with the two following paragraphs:—

"Mr. Buckingham combines what are scarcely ever found to meet in the same individual, the fearless and hardy habits of a sailor by profession, with the reading of a scholar. Early smitten with a passion for travelling, he began to indulge it at the age of nine years, in a maritime capacity, and in the course of the succeeding years of his life he has visited most of the places of any note in the four quarters of the globe. From the mass of his observations during his extensive wanderings, he has selected those which regard Palestine, and the country which surrounds it, wherewith to commence the character of author. That part of his route which was directed through the country of Bashan and Gilead, east of the river Jordan, has hitherto been the boundary of all our knowledge regarding the ancient Judea. As this part of Mr. Buckingham's travels is the most attractive in itself, so likewise is it that which is the most pleasingly written. The exquisite beauty of the country which lay before his eyes, as he descended the second range of hills on the east of Jordan, its natural fertility, joined to an enchanting wildness, and the associations irresistibly connected in his mind with the ground over which he was passing, the most famed pos session of the Jews, the scene of many of the most interesting events in scripture history, and the seat of ten Roman cities, giving the name of Decapolis to the region in which they were placed, all warm his imagination into more luxuriant and aniinated description than he is in the habit of indulging in."

"We now take our leave of Mr. Buckingham, feeling assured that it is only necessary to draw the attention of the

public towards his work, to make them anxious to judge of it for themselves, marked as it is by research, impartiality, and a sober simplicity of style, which makes amends for the absence of more attractive graces."

The British Review, which yields to none in its rigid criticism of all works on scriptural subjects (being understood to be edited by a body of divines of the Church of England,) has the following paragraphs :

"Dissatisfied with the imperfect results of the labours of preceding travellers, and persuaded that he can add something new to our local acquaintance with the country of Judea and its interesting relations, Mr. Buckingham offers to the acceptance of the public the elegant volume of which we are now to give some account to our readers."

"At this period, the travels announced in the present volume commenced; and the preceding abstract of his introductory narrative, as well as every page of his elegant and interesting volume, will show that he undertook them possessed of that ardour in the pursuit of inquiry, that fortitude of mind, physical strength, competent knowledge of the native languages, and, above all, that intimate acquaintance with the national habits and religion of the people with whom he was about to associate, and that capacity of adapting himself to foreign manners which are so essential to those who wish to explore a country lying unhappily under the dominion of the Turks."

"

"Mr. Buckingham bears testimony to the fidelity of Josephus's description of this lake (Tiberias), the features of which, he says, are drawn by the Jewish historian with an accuracy that could only have been attained by one who had resided in the country."

"Before we conclude this article, we cannot but advert to the contemptuous epithets which Mr. Buckingham very liberally pours forth in some of his strictures on the reputed holy places, and on the gross and absurd impositions practised in Palestine on the credulity of pilgrims and travellers. We confess, that we could wish such epithets and remarks had been omitted, as we have heard that they have been considered as displaying a contempt for religion itself.' As, however, this intelligent traveller, in his preface, disclaims any such intention, we have (to borrow his own expression) put the most favourable construction' upon the passages in question; especially as he has every where made a laudable application of his researches to the elucidation of the Scriptures, and (as our extracts will shew) has, in many instances, happily succeeded in throwing much light on sacred geography.'

Lastly, the reverend Samuel Burder, D.D. author of a well-known work on the Illustrations of Scripture, which has passed through several editions, and which evinces an extent of reading on all subjects connected with the history, antiquities, and state of Palestine, beyond all former parallel; his book being, indeed, a compendium of every thing that is known on the subject in the writings of ancient and modern geographers, critics, and travellers; expresses himself to the following effect, in a note to the publishers, on returning the Travels in Palestine, which, had been lent to him for perusal just as the book was ready to issue from the press. The original note is now in this country, having been inclosed to the author by a friend in England, and is as follows:

"Mr. Burder returns ‹ Buckingham's Travels in Palestine,' with many thanks to Mr. R-- for the perusal of it. He has made many extracts from it for the new edition of the Oriental Customs,' and his new work in continuation of it. He considers Buckingham's Travels the very best book he ever perused of the kind, and thinks it will stand high in the first rank of that kind of literature."

I was content to receive all these unsought encomiums, in humble gratitude and silent satisfaction at having deserved well of persons for whose judgment I was compelled to entertain a feeling of respect. I would still have confined these complimentary and eulogistic expressions to my own private circle, and have suffered them to remain unnoticed, had not the rancorous spirit of The