To fix his home you would think Ansty loth,
From his Bath-guide; and yet he lived in both ;-
Gray too took earth at Granta, though a hater
Of the dry studies of his alma mater,

To endure the sober seniors' scorn, the noise,
Nonsense and naughty pranks of drunken boys ;—
And thus, at strife with the retreat he chose,
At Brighton dwells your faithful William Rose;
Who sings the pleasures and the pains-as best
He can of his selected place of rest.
Nor think it strange if he that home commend
For pains as well as pleasures, to his friend.
A preacher (and he, like a saint of old,

*

Deserves the title of the mouth of gold)†

Says, that it steads not body more than soul

To infuse some bitter in the festive bowl;

Which makes the cup so seasoned, when 'tis quaffed,

A sounder, if less palatable draught;

So I into the beverage which I brew,

Like that brave preacher, cast a branch of rue.'-Rose, p. 14.. There is much of the Horatian in this last extract-but perhaps more to remind one of the lighter style of Ariosto's Epistolary Satires. Now that Mr. Rose has finished his long labours on the Orlando, we wish he would enrich our literature by a translation of such of those charming compositions as have not been so fortunate as to engage the services of his friend Lord Holland. Such a task might help to occupy the hours of an invalid-but we hope neither it nor any other undertaking will wean him entirely from the habit of original composition, more especially in verse.

ART. VI.-Herinneringen uit Japan. Van Hendrik Doeff, ond Opperhoofd der Nederlanders in Japan, op het Eiland Decima. Haarlem, 1835.

Quarto.

(Recollections of Japan. By Hendrik Doeff, formerly President of the Dutch Factory at Decima.)

ALTHOUGH two works upon the Japanese empire have been

recently brought under the notice of our readers, we think ourselves warranted in drawing for their use some further information on the same subject from that source which alone can supply it, the contemporary literature of our Dutch neighbours. Reviewing Mr. Fischer's narrative, we made some allusion to his account of the Japanese and Dutch Lexicon of the writer now before us :

* Jeremy Taylor.

† Chrysostom.

2 E 2

'It

It was (says Fischer) Mr. Doeff's chief employment in the solitary Decima, during the war in Europe, and the occupation of the Dutch colonies by the English. For several years, thus separated from the rest of the world, without the sight of a sail or the receipt of a dispatch from Europe, he devoted to this undertaking his long experience, his talents, and his diligence. A combination of circumstances could alone make such a task feasible: the friendship of the natives, a knowledge of their manners and usages, and an advanced instruction in the language, all were necessary, and all were his. Above all, however, patience and assiduity were requisite, as must appear, when we consider that this work, following the Dutch and French dictionary of Halma, is illustrated by examples wherever a word of double meaning occurs, and comprises an amount of 2500 pages. The original exists in Japan, but the copy privately written out by Mr. Doeff was lost on his return to Europe, by the foundering of the ship in which he had sailed. An accident led me to discover the traces of this work in 1823, and procured me opportunity for making a copy, which, in 1829, I brought to a close-but which is less complete than the original. It is now in the library of the Royal Institution at Amsterdam.'

Returning to Europe after nineteen years of arduous service in a distant region, during which he appears to have laboured in the cause of his country's political interests, as well as that of literature, under circumstances of painful difficulty, Mr. Doeff saw the results of his studies, and the curiosities collected during his exile, go down in the Admiral Evertsen, from which vessel he had scarcely time to save himself and a wife, who survived the catastrophe only four days, and carried a promised offspring to the grave. Such have been the labours and the lot of the author of the volume now before us, in which, under the title of Reminiscences of Japan, he has endeavoured to repair, in some degree, the loss of submerged diaries, journals, and other materials for works of greater magnitude. We have to regret, not merely as Englishmen, but as labourers in the wide vineyard of literature, that so great a proportion of it is devoted to the subject of certain collisions with our own countrymen. It is some consolation for the scantiness of his positive additions to our knowledge of Japan, that his opus magnum has been saved to Europe by Mr. Fischer's exertions; for we can hardly hope that the Imperial Library of Jeddo will, in our time, become accessible to foreigners, or that its rules of admission will appear in the Report of the British Museum Committee. Could we even look forward to the time which our wise men anticipate, when the beds of existing oceans shall have effected an amicable exchange with present continents, and when fossil seventy-fours shall engage the attention of future Coles and Murchisons, we could hardly hope that even a semi

Dutch

Dutch manuscript dictionary, whatever might be its propensity to descend to ocean's quietest depths, would remain legible to our posterity, and we echo Mr. Fischer's wish for an early edition of the treasure he claims to have saved.

Mr. Doeff's remarks on the constitution and practice of the Japanese government would lead us to attribute to the Sjogfoen (or reigning Emperor) more influence and more of personal interference in the affairs of administration than was conceded to him in the works which we formerly reviewed. He also supplies an important defect in those two works, by giving us some information as to the mode by which the members of the great council of state are elevated to their seat in that assembly. It may be difficult to ascertain to what extent the measures and decisions of that assembly originate with, or are controlled by the sovereign; but as in that body are concentrated all the executive powers of government, as every imperial order goes forth under their countersignature, it is important to know that they are selected by the sovereign from a particular race of the nobility, viz., the descendants of the principal supporters of the usurper Jjegos or Daifoesama, on whom the title of Gonge was conferred after his death, and from the date of whose prosperous usurpation the peace of the empire has been uninterrupted. The descendants of those who opposed the establishment of his power are, on the contrary, excluded from the council.

The hereditary principle which pervades the institutions of Japan is strongly apparent in this mode of organizing the moving power of the executive machinery. Investigation, however, usually modifies general conclusions. Mr. O'Connell has elicited the fact that the Crown of England is elective; we learn from Mr. Doeff that in Japan a parent may select a successor to office from his children, or, being childless, may adopt and invest with his own family name the scion of another house, the child of such adoption being prohibited thenceforth from addressing his real parents by that title on any public occasion. The present sovereign has afforded a curious illustration of this practice. His predecessor had the misfortune to lose his only son, in consequence of a fall from a wild Persian horse, an unlucky gift from the gentlemen of the factory. The prince now flourishing was adopted by the bereaved Sjogfoen during his own father's lifetime. On an occasion subsequent to his accession, he addressed his parent in public by the accustomed, but forbidden title. The president of the council, Matsoe Dairi Isoe no Cami, instantly remonstrated, and in so doing was himself guilty of a violation of the rule which forbids any one to gainsay or rebuke his superior in rank. He immediately quitted the council, placed himself in arrest in his own house, and besought his associates in writing to lay the case before

before the emperor. The latter, by acknowledging his error, followed without hesitation the example of submission to usage thus set him by his minister, and soon released the president from his voluntary confinement.

However the powers of government may, in practice, be apportioned, from the emperor down to the humblest functionary, all are subject to that rigid code of usage and precedent which attained its final establishment under the Gonge. Two officers are resident at the Court of Jeddo, whose functions would be better expressed perhaps by the title of grand inquisitors than that of directors of police, which Mr. Doeff applies to them. They are charged to watch over, and report the minutest infraction of the sacred code even on the part of the emperor himself. Their agents are spread through the empire, and especially at the courts of the sixty-eight provincial sovereigns, who are under constant suspicion of an aspiration to independence, only attainable by revolution. The mode of operation is curious. The spy, usually of an inferior class, is dispatched to his post, to remain there till he receives a signal of recall, which consists in a report of some extraordinary occurrence set in circulation by his appointed successor. Whether these posts are coveted in Japan on the principle which in our service procures candidates for forlorn hopes and judges and governors for Sierra Leone, we do not learn, but certain assassination awaits the detected spy. From the province of Satsoema, in particular, it is said that none have been known to return. The invariable impunity of these murders exhibits a singular feature of weakness in the central government and independence in the provincial, but the despotism of usage overrules both. A further and formidable check on this independence of the governors is, however, to be found in their own compulsory residence at Jeddo each alternate year, and the perpetual confinement of their wives and children, natural and legitimate, in that city. Governors suspected of undue accumulation of wealth are mulcted by an ingenious process. The Dairie (or spiritual Emperor) is employed to bestow on such a title of honour, accompanied by fees of installation, which speedily reduce the means of the receiver of the Japanese Garter or Guelph to proper limits. The slightest demur would, as Mr. Doeff states, be immediately overruled by the assistance of the neighbouring princes, whose mutual jealousies he considers as, after all, the main security for that general submission which for two centuries has secured the peace of so vast an empire.

Mr. Doeff spends a good many pages on the defence of his countrymen from the old imputation, so wittily adverted to by Swift in his Laputa, of submitting to trample on the emblem of

the

the Christian faith. The falsity of the accusation has, we believe, long been acknowledged.* We think our author less successful in relieving his countrymen from all participation in the struggle which ended in the extirpation of the last remnant of the votaries of Christianity in Japan. That the contest, indeed, was not a purely religious one he shows; but it is equally clear that the Christian remnant was engaged on the side of the revolters in the bay of Simabarra, and that the Dutch Captain Koekebakker did, in obedience, doubtless, to a very significant request from the reigning powers, fire from his vessel some four hundred and twenty-five shots on the stronghold of the revolters. To these the Zumalacarreguy of the period replied by an arrow, with a letter attached, containing the not unnatural interrogatory, whether native soldiers were not to be found to subdue him, and whether his countrymen were not ashamed to call in the assistance of strangers. Koekebakker was allowed hereupon to retire, and exempt himself from any share in the final and bloody catastrophe,

It appears, however, that the ceremony of trampling on the cross is still exacted from the Chinese who visit Japan, the Jesuits having diffused originally among the traders of that nation a large assortment of crucifixes, rosaries, &c. and with their usual zeal and ingenuity endeavoured to introduce their missionaries in Chinese vessels. Even in the Dutch ships careful search is made for all such emblems of Christianity, and books on religious subjects, which are taken possession of by the authorities, and only restored on the departure of the vessel. The important exception, however, is made of bibles and psalm-books.

Mr. Doeff describes the journey to the capital, which he has performed more than once, in his capacity of president, the only individual who is admitted for the one minute's audience to the presence of the emperor. The appointment of a Japanese treasurer or purse-bearer for the expenses of the journey, rendered necessary by the extortion of the purveyors of horses, proves that the family features of the tribe of postmasters are similar over the world, wherever unmodified by competition, and that human nature is the same on the road from Nangasaki to Jeddo as on that between Calais and Paris. The following passage will afford some notion of Japanese commercial opulence, and the extent of the loss to which it is sometimes subject by fire. Speaking of his residence at Jeddo, our author says

There is here an extensive dealer in silks, by name Itsigoja, who has large establishments besides in all the other great cities of the

*Sir Stamford Raffles represents the Dutch as themselves the authors of this unfounded allegation. See his dispatch to Lord Minto, included in Lady Raffles's very interesting Memoir. The three works we have noticed repel it with indignation.

empire.