I have a
special interest in this character, because I knew the undoubted
original of the character with a considerable amount of intimacy.
Without the permission of the author of _Aylwin_, I can only touch on
outward traits--the deep, spiritual life of this man is beyond me.
Although a very near relation, he was not, as has been so often
surmised, the author's father. [Footnote] He was a man of
extraordinary learning in the academic sense of the word, and
possessed still more extraordinary general knowledge. He lived for
many years the strangest kind of hermit life, surrounded by his
books and old manuscripts. His two great passions were philology
and occultism. He knew more, I think, of those strange writers
discussed in Vaughan's _Hours with the Mystics_ than any other
person--including, perhaps, Vaughan himself; but he managed to
combine with his love of Mysticism a deep passion for the physical
sciences, especially astronomy. He seemed to be learning languages up
to almost the last year of his life. His method of learning languages
was the opposite of that of George Borrow, that is to say, he made
great use of grammars; and when he died it is said that from four to
five hundred treatises on grammar were found among his books.
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