Byron on the terrace with
the Fathers of St. Lazarus
Dr Father Paschal Aucher
Byron's Teacher
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another sheet, I send you some sheets of a grammar,
English and Armenian, for the use of the Armenians, of which
I promoted, and indeed induced, the publication. (It cost me but a thousand
francs-French livres). I still pursue my lessons
in the language without any rapid progress, but advancing a little
daily. Padre Paschal, with some little
help from me as translator of his Italian
into English, is also proceeding in a Mss. Grammar for the English
acquisition of Armenian, which will be printed also, when finished. - We
want to know if there are Armenian types and etter-press
in England, at Oxford, Cambridge, or
elsewhere? You know, I suppose that, many years ago,
the two Whistons published in England an original text of a history of
Armenia, with their own Latin translation? Do those types still exist?
And where? Pray inquire among your learned acquaintance.
- When this Grammar (I mean the one now printing) is done, will you have any objection to take forty or fifty copies, which will not cost in all above five or ten guineas, and try the curiosity of the learned with a sale of them? Say yes or no, as you like. I can assure you that they have some very curious books and Mss, chiefly translations from Greek originals now lost. They are, besides, a much respected and learned community, and the study of their language was taken up with great ardour by some literary Frenchmen in Buonaparte's time*. |
| * To the Armenian Grammar
mentioned above, the following interesting fragment, found
among his (Lord Byron's) papers, seems to have
been intended as a preface. "The English reader will
probably be surprised to find my name associated with a work of the present
discription, and inclined to give me more credit for my attainments
as a linguist than they deserve. - As I would not willingly be guilty
of a deception, I will state, as shortly as I can,
my own share in the compilation, with the motives
which led to it. On my arrival at Venice in the year 1816, I found my mind
in a state which required study, and study of a nature which
should leave little scope for the imagination,
and furnish some difficulty in the pursuit. - At this
period I was much struck - in common, I believe, with every other
traveller - with the society of the Convent
of St. Lazarus, which appears to unite all
the advantages of the monastic institution, without
any of its vices. - The neatness, the comfort, the
gentleness, the unaffected devotion, the accomplishments,
and the virtues of the brethren of the order, are well
fitted to strike the man of the
world with the conviction that "there is another and a
better" even in this life. - These men are the priesthood
of an oppressed and a noble nation, which has partaken of the proscription
and bondage of the Jews and of the Greeks, without the sullenness
of the former or the servility of the letter. This people has
attained riches without usury, and all the honours
that can be awarded to slavery without intrigue.
But they have long occupied,
nevertheless, a part of "the House of Bondage", who has
lately multiplied her many mansions. It would be difficult, perhaps, to
find the annals of a nation less stained with crimes than those of
the Armenians, whose virtues have been those of peace and their
vices those of compulsion. But whatever may have been their
destiny - and it has been better - wathever it may be in future,
their country must ever be one of the most interesting on the globe; and
perhaps their language only requires to be more studied to
become more attractive. If the Scriptures are rightly understood it was
in Armenia that Paradise was placed, Armenia, which has paid
as dearly as the descendants of Adam for that fleeting
participation of its soil in the happiness if Him who was created
from its dust. It was in Armenia that the
flood first abated. and the dove alighted.
But with the disappearance of Paradise itself may be dated almost the unhappiness of the country, for though long a powerful kingdom, it was scarcely ever an independent one, and the satraps of Persia and the pachas of Turkey have alike desolated the region wheri God created man in his own image". |
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