The Travels of Macarius, Patriarch of Antioch/Volume 1/Part 1/Translator's Preface
Preface.
The Arabic Manuscript, of which the Translation, under the auspices and at the expense of the Oriental Translation Committee, is here, in part, laid before the Public, was purchased, many years ago, at Aleppo, by the late Frederic Earl of Guilford; and, in 1824, placed in my hands by his Lordship, to be translated into English. Meeting with those numerous errors of transcription which are found more or less in all Manuscripts, I became desirous to provide myself with other copies, for the purpose of collation; and, in my progress through the Eastern Countries, sought for them, but without success, at Constantinople, Smyrna, and Cairo. Reduced, therefore, to the employment of my single copy, I have had to contend with great difficulties, amidst the erroneous and diversified readings continually presenting themselves, both in the narrative and in the names of places; but most of all in the Greek words, so defectively written in the Arabic Character, that some of them it has been impossible satisfactorily to decipher. With the obliging help of the Rev. H. D. Leeves, late of Constantinople, whose excellent knowledge of the Greek Language, and extensive acquaintance with the Uses and Ceremonies of the Greek Church, have enabled him to be of great assistance to me, I have, notwithstanding these difficulties, been able to render most of them, I believe correctly, in their proper form; and should have been glad to have had leisure fully to explain them. I have been surprised at the hallucination which their Arabic appearance has sometimes occasioned me, even where the reading might, upon a more leisurely view, seem perfectly easy: as in one instance, where Ancient Greek is mentioned, and Ἑλληνιϰὰ might naturally occur, I have been led to take the first syllable of الينكاء for the Arabic article, and rendered the word "of Yenika."
Another and more serious difficulty, which has much retarded me in my prosecution of the work, is the perpetual recurrence of Church Ceremonies, repeated, nearly all, with little variation, and serving to mark the Calendar of the Archdeacon's Journal. To neglect them altogether, would have been to interrupt the thread of the narrative, and sometimes to lose sight of the Clerical travellers for periods of weeks together. I have, therefore, been compelled to give such as seemed absolutely necessary to the continuation of the history; but much, I fear, to the weariness of those who shall undertake to read them, from the aversion, which our English habits and pure practices of religion produce in us, to the tedious forms of unmeaning and superstitious ceremonial. The Archdeacon himself often complains of the excessive length to which the ceremonies of the Greek Church are protracted, particularly amid the Cossacks and in Muscovy; and yet, from his inbred love of Ecclesiastic rites, he omits no opportunity to dwell on the description of their lengthened splendors, as though detailing them to none, but such inveterate amateurs of them, as his own education had made him. These details, however, give him frequent opportunities for remarks on the morals and religious principles of the various Nations whom he visits, which it is hoped may be interesting to the Reader: and the Political and Statistical history of countries, so little known as Moldavia and Wallachia, may be simultaneously gathered from his Ecclesiastical records.
To the excellent Institution, which owes its origin mainly to the activity and influence of its inestimable Treasurer, Lieutenant-Colonel Fitzclarence, who has himself set the example, in the Narrative of his Journey from India, through Egypt, to England, of collecting useful instruction, and communicating it, through the Press, for the benefit of his countrymen the English Public will soon be indebted for much novel information on the history of the Eastern World, over so great a part of which the British Empire is extended. Hitherto it must have been the frequent regret of every scholar, at all acquainted with the riches of Oriental Literature, that so little wealth has been extracted from it, for the practical purposes of Commerce and Government. While the valuable time of diligent investigators has been perpetually wasted on re-editing and re-translating, for times innumerable, the well-known pages of the Greek and Roman Authors, well-attested facts and solidly-grounded theories, which, if made known to the world, might powerfully promote its improvement and augment its general happiness, have lain buried in voluminous Manuscripts of intelligent and benevolent Authors, scarcely ever perused by even the few, whose attainments have qualified them for the task.
To no class of Literati is mankind more indebted, at the present time, than to the persevering Writers of the German Nation. Their unwearied and indefatigable diligence has obtained for them the highest reputation in the World of Letters; so extraordinary are the efforts which they make, up the arduous road of Science! How lamentable, that the pains of so many of them should be wasted upon the vain attempt, to fix some unimportant writing upon the thousands-of-times printed Manuscript of Writers some thousands of years dead. Of this vain labour, such as Homer describes of Sisyphus—
Καὶ μὴν Σίσυϕον εἰσεῖδον, ϰρατέρ᾽ ἄλγε᾽ ἔχοντα,
Λᾶαν βαστάζοντα πελώριον ἀμϕοτέρῃσιν.
Ἦτοι ὁ μὲν, σϰηριπτόμενος χερσίν τε ποσίν τε,
Λᾶαν ἄνω ὤθεσϰε ποτὶ λόϕον· ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε μέλλοι
Ἄϰρον ὑπερβαλέειν, τότ᾽ ἀποστρέψασϰε ϰραταιίς·
Αὖτις ἔπειτα πέδονδε ϰυλίνδετο λᾶας ἀναιδής.
Αὐτὰρ ὅγ᾽ ἂψ ϰε τιταινόμενος· ϰατὰ δ᾽ ἱδρὼς
Ἔρρεεν ἐϰ μελέων, ϰονίη δ᾽ ἐϰ ϰρατὸς ὀρώρει.
I will quote an instance, from the Oxford Literary Gazette:—"In a late Number of the Rheinisches Museum, (Vol. II. p. 125.) Professor Welcker has suggested a new and ingenious solution of a difficulty in a very beautiful passage of Sophocles. In the Philoctetes, v. 816, the Chorus sings thus:
Ὕπν᾽ ὀδύνας ἀδαής, Ὕπνε δ᾽ ἀλγέων
εὐαὲς ἡμῖν ἔλθοις
εὐαίων, εὐαίων, ὦναξ·
ὄμμασι δ᾽ ἀντίσχοις τάνδ᾽ αἴγλαν,
ἃ τέταται τὰ νῦν.
"The best, or rather the least bad, of the interpretations proposed, is that of Hermann: 'Oculis prætendas eamn, quæ nunc expansa est, lucem: quæ quoniam nulla est, sed caligo potius, hæc est intelligenda.' Mr. Welcker, however, has collected several passages from the Grammarians, in which αἴγλη is explained to be a band, or properly a ligature, round the feet or arms (Bekker, Anecd. p. 354, Pollux, v. 100). The most important authority is Hesychius, whose article should (it appears) be read thus: Αἴγλη, χλιδών Σοφοκλῆς Τηρεῖ καὶ πέδη παρὰ Ἐπιχάρμῳ ἐν Βάϰχαις. It seems, therefore, that Sophocles had, in a lost tragedy, used the word αἴγλη in nearly the sense required; and accordingly, Mr. Welcker supposes the Chorus to invoke the God of Sleep 'To hold over Philoctetes eyes the veil which then covers them.'"
First, the Professor, in order to force out something new, requires his authority to be read as it suits him; differently, of course, from the accepted method: and then Sophocles is proved to have used the word he has fixed upon for his ingenious distortions, in nearly the sense required. And all this ingenuity and labour is employed to bring out the most ridiculous conception of the passage, that the forced fancy of a Commentator could perhaps give birth to. The only word that requires any comment, is ἀντέχοις, which appears clearly to mean prohibe: Withhold from my eyes this painful light. But the obvious meaning is too simple for the acceptance of the ostentatious Critic, whose famished appetite has long been confined to the close-cropped pasture of a thread-bare text. He would gain no name by following the direct passage, to which plain sense is the guide; and prefers a noisy dash upon the rocks which bound it. These unfortunate toilers might have given occasion to some such proverb as the Arabic
كسَير وعوَير وكل غَير خَير Koseir wa Aoeir, wa kollo gheir-a kheir:
"Koseir and Aoeir (two banks on the coast of Arabia), and all but what is good."
To the industrious pursuit of more profitable labours, opening the road to fresh information, and unbounded communication of thought and language—to the display of feelings and propensities, as they are diversified by clime, and promoted by the suggestions of various education, so necessary to be contemplated in the happy government of the human race—the encouragement now given is the foundation of a new æra in the dynasty of Science, and venturous explorers may now strike out from the beaten track of the circulating shores of the Mediterranean.
I should have wished that it had been in my power to elucidate the text with more copious Notes from other Writers. Hut to the original remarks of Mr. Leeves, I have been able to add but few commentaries from the small number of Travellers who have visited Turkey. Dr. Neale, Wilkinson, and Walsh, have furnished me with a few; and I hereby acknowledge my obligations to their valuable Works.
In the Appendix, will be found some extracts from Sir Robert Ker Porter, Dr. King, Messrs. Hobhouse, Thornton, Madden, &c.; which I thought it advisable to subjoin, especially as several of their Works are out of print, in order to explain the nature and Ceremonies of the Greek Church, mentioned in this book; to throw light upon some obscure passages in its narrative and historical details: and to corroborate some of the Archdeacon's most remarkable observations, by the corresponding testimony of other Travellers.
In transcribing the Arabic and Turkish words, I cannot say that I have strictly followed one unvaried orthography. The word Romelia, for instance, I have indifferently written with the o, or the u, Rumelia. I have merely confined myself to the general Alphabet of Europe, whereof the Eastern Aliph stands for the a and e, the Waw for the o and u, and the Ya for the e and i; avoiding, by this course, the laughable errors in spelling, into which our English and peculiar system of diphthongs has led more than one-half of our Anglo-Oriental Writers.
There is a Scholar, who takes the highest interest in every thing connected with Oriental Literature whose vigilant superintendence of its welfare suffers no production, however small, from its Arabic, Persian, or Hebrew Cabinets, to circulate through the hands of its philologic negotiators, without affixing to it the respected signet of his paramount criticism who will probably deign to honour also this slight Work with his official notice. To this Chief of the Literate Arabs, my once kind and helpful instructor, Silvestre Baron de Sacy, whom my conversation among the Learned, both in England and on the Continent, in Turkey and in Christendom, whether Professors of high pretensions or unambitious Students, has ever taught me to regard as at a very long interval indeed from any second; who, neglecting no iota of accurate knowledge in the various languages which he possesses better than the learned Natives, shines forth the great light, by which the wandering and uncertain course of the inferior Ulema and Docti should ever be guided; and
; velut inter ignes
To him I seize the opportunity of offering my joyful ongratulations, that his unceasing efforts to exalt the refined science, whereof he has so long been the active minister, have, at length, met with such powrful patronage and support: and that the useful means he has so amply provided for the easier investigation of Eastern lore, are about to be employed by skilful and industrious Labourers.
Would that you too, Illustrious Earl of Guilford! whose premature departure from the sphere of your beneficence has left to your admiring friends, to your loving and numerous dependants, a loss incapable of repair, a grief that can never be consoled—would that you, too, could have prolonged your inestimable life for the advantage of those Institutions most beneficial to mankind, which it was your constant endeavour to establish and support! You would have again deigned to peruse, with renewed attention, the printed sheets of the Archdeacon's Journal, which it was your delight so sedulously to read, as, at your command, they were produced in the Translated Manuscript. May your immortal spirit still shed its influence, from the realms above, upon the powerful body of your exalted rank, to follow the bright example which you have bequeathed them of encouraging, to their utmost, the continual and rapid advancement of sound learning and practical information!