Objects of artistic and antiquarian interest are fewer than might be expected from the position which Leyden holds in the history of painting (Rembrandt, Jan Steen, and Gerard Douw were natives of the town); but such as they are—pieces by Van Finck, Fr. van Mieris, Cornelis Engelbrechtszoon, Lucas of Leyden, and other masters —they have for the most part been collected in the newly founded municipal museum located in the old cloth hall. More interesting is the great collection of portraits of famous professors in the aula of the university. All the gate-houses of the city were still standing about the close of the 17th century; two only, the Zijlpoort and the Morschpoort have been spared. The old town-hall is a quaint 16th century building, and St Pancratius church has some striking features. Near the site of the Rijnsburg gate is the statue of Boerhaave by Stracké. The “Burg,” on an artificial mound (perhaps of Roman origin) in the centre of the town, is an old circular wall resting on twenty arches; it forms a favourite promenade, and affords a fine point of view. Towards the south side of the town lies an open space, suggestively called the Ruin, which in 1807 was the scene of a terrible disaster, a powdership blowing up and destroying eight hundred houses and killing hundreds of men. In 1623 the population of Leyden was much more than 50,000, and in 1640, it is estimated, reached 100,000. Between 1796 and 1811 it sunk to 30,000. In 1850 it was 35,864; in 1870, 38,943 (9632 Roman Catholics, 396 Jews); and in 1882 about 41,000.

Though Lugdunum Batavorum is used by the learned as the Latin name for Leyden, there is no possibility of identifying the town itself with the Lugdunum of the Romans. It first appears in 11th and 12th century documents as Leythen, Leithen, Leithon, and Leithan. The history of Leyden follows the same general lines as the history of the Netherlands. During the period of the counts the city suffered from the quarrels of one count with another (as when Countess Ada was besieged in the castle by Lewis of Loon in 1203), or of the nobles with the citizens; between 1419 and 1485 it was besieged and captured no less than six times by the “Hooks” or the “Cods.” From Floris V. it received the confirmation of its privileges (1266) and of its freedom from toll throughout Holland (1290). During the struggle with Spain Leyden covered itself with glory by the persistence with which it held out against the double siege from 31st October 1573 to 21st March 1574, and from 25th May to 2d October (see Motley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. ii.). With the internal troubles of the 17th century it was closely connected. Coolhas, one of the first professors of its university, gave rise about 1578 to a question of heresy which formed in some sort the prelude to the great contest in which his successors Arminius and Gomarus were protagonists. In 1587 Leicester vainly attempted to bring the city over to his side; in 1618 Maurice was there constrained to alter the government; and in 1672 there were violent disturbances in connexion with the elevation of William III. to the stadtholdership. The revolution, excited by the French, took place in 1798; and in 1813 the Rhenish peasants, in revolt against the conscription, marched into the city. In 1836 there was a great inundation caused by the Haarlem Lake. The bicentenary of the university was celebrated with great ceremony in 1874.

See Mieris, Beschrijrnng der Stαd Leyden, 1772-84.

LEYDEN, John (1775-1811), was born on the 8th of September 1775, at Denholm on the Teviot, not far from Hawick. Like most Scottish villages, Denholm is commonplace and uninteresting, but Leyden’s upbringing was in a wilder part of the country, at the foot of Ruberslaw, whither his father had gone as shepherd to a relation of the family. Though he did not attend school till he was nine years old, long before that he had learnt at home to read, and had devoured all the books he could lay his hands on in the border farm houses and cottages. Naturally his parents thought that a boy so fond of letters was meant for something else than shepherding; and, as the only scholarly office clearly within their horizon was that of a parish minister, they concluded that his gifts pointed in that direction, and with much stinting of their own little comforts sent him to Edinburgh university in 1790. There the uncouth lad, dressed in rough homespun, with a voice that smacked strongly of the Jed and the Teviot, played his part manfully enough in the classwork, but still better in the “societies” where Brougham, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Horner, and other clever young fellows were then chopping logic and cracking jokes. Leyden was a diligent but somewhat miscellaneous student, reading everything apparently, except theology, for which he seems to have had no taste. Accordingly, though he completed his divinity course, and took licence from the presbytery of St Andrews, and preached occasionally, it soon became clear that the pulpit was not his vocation, and that the border shepherds were not to find a second Thomas Boston in John Leyden.

In 1794 Leyden had formed the acquaintance of Dr Robert Anderson, editor of The British Poets, and of The Literary Magazine, a cultivated but not otherwise remarkable individual, who, however, filled a rather important niche in the Edinburgh of that time. Contributions to his magazine were probably what brought them first together, but more important results follovyed from their intimacy than either the verses on “Ruberslaw,” or “The Descent of Odin,” translated from the Norse. For it was Anderson who introduced him to Dr Alexander Murray, and Murray, probably, who led him to the study of Eastern languages, to which that great scholar was so passionately devoted. Soon they became warm friends and generous rivals, though Leyden excelled, perhaps, in the rapid acquisition of new tongues, and acquaintance with their literature, while Murray was the more scientific philologist. Through Anderson also he came to know Richard Heber, by whom he was brought under the notice of Walter Scott, when he was collecting materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Leyden was admirably fitted for helping in this kind of work. A borderer himself, an enthusiastic lover of old ballads and folk-lore, he spared no pains to enrich the work that promised to bring fame to his beloved hills and glens. Scott tells us how, on one occasion, Leyden walked 40 miles to get the last two verses of a ballad, and returned at midnight, singing it all the way with his loud, harsh voice, to the wonder and consternation of the poet and his household. Neither Scott nor Leyden, however, studied this folk-lore for proper scientific purposes. They cared only for the picturesque and the poetic in it, and were not very successful in their efforts to restore it to life. Of course, the rough old ballads themselves were a welcome addition to our literature, but Leyden’s attempt to make Lord Soulis interesting in a modern ballad was something of a failure, and, though he might have made a Scotch Lorelei out of the mermaid of Corrievreckan, his poem wants the delicate touch of the German, and he does not know where to stop. Scott, however, got valuable assistance from him in his task, and learned to esteem highly the blunt integrity of the man, his literary enthusiasm, and his large attainments.

Leyden was evidently drifting away from the church into the life of a scholar, but as yet he had not found his line there, was indeed only wasting himself on miscellaneous learning. He had compiled a work of four hundred pages on the Discoveries and Settlements of Europeans in Northern and Western Africa, suggested by Mungo Park’s travels. He had edited for Constable The Complaint of Scotland, giving a glossary, and a long preliminary dissertation. He had printed various poems, and nearly finished his Scenes of Infancy, a poem in four books, based, no doubt, on border scenes and traditions, but meandering “at its own sweet will” over all the world, and a good way beyond it. There are, here and there, some effective enough lines in this poem, but, in the main, it is of the thin, artificial, bigsounding order, and has no unity of design, so that there is no particular reason why it should not go on for ever. He had also made some translations from Eastern poetry, Persian and Arabic, but they have not somehow the aroma of the East. Clearly, here was a man of great and varied powers which, however, were like to run to waste unless he found a definite field to work in. So, at last, friends got him an appointment in India, at first on the medical staff, for which he qualified by a year of intense hard work; but it was hoped something more fitting would turn up by and by. In 1803, therefore, he sailed for Madras, and took his place in the general hospital there. From that he was soon promoted to be naturalist to the commissioners going to survey Mysore. Ere long, however, his knowledge of the languages and dialects of India procured him an appointment as professor of Hindustani, which he soon after resigned for a judgeship, and that again to be a commissioner in the court of requests, which required a familiarity with several Eastern tongues. Friends who had come from the same border country—Lord Minto, Sir John Malcolm, and others—had done what they could to make his path smooth for him, and his linguistic attainments had been recognized by Colebrooke, the greatest Oriental scholar of the day. But in 1811, having joined Lord Minto in the expedition to Java, on landing there he made his way into a library which was said to contain many Eastern MSS., without having the place aired, and was seized with shivering and sickness, first symptoms of the Batavian fever. The climate of India had never agreed with him, and his constitution had already been shaken by several serious illnesses. He was ill fitted, therefore, to endure the assault of this deadly complaint, and after three days of struggle he died on the 28th of August, in the thirty-sixth year of his age. Cut off thus prematurely, he has left comparatively little fruit of all the bright promise of his youth. As a poet he cannot take high rank, but in his knowledge of Eastern languages he would probably have been no mean rival of Henry Colebrooke, had he been spared a little longer to methodize and perfect his attainments. A genuine and generous nature, with a fine enthusiasm for learning, there were few of Britain’s sons in India from whom friends at home looked for better work, and few therefore who were more deeply regretted. (w. c. s.*)

LEYDEN, Lucas van. See Lucas.