Reading Chinese in Oxford - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 47

mentinthediary.Thetwoeventuallyworkedoutsomesortofaccommodation, for
Woodwasstilltherein1687,whenJamesIIcameforbreakfast.Butthatdidn'tstop
Wood from scribbling in his diary that same year that Hyde's wife was a whore, a
Catholicand'nowamad-woman'.Woodisnotanimpeccablesource,butwhatever
her condition, Hyde's wife died later that year.
One thing that set Hyde apart from Wood was his claim to fluency in several
Oriental languages, a claim without which he wouldn't have got the position at the
Bodleian. This was because of the collecting practices of the Bodleian. One of the
working principles of the library right from the beginning was that it should col-
lect materials in all languages, and in they had come, many by purchase and some
by donation, many as renowned texts of scholarly value and some as curiosities.
When Hyde arrived in Oxford in 1657, the topics and manuscripts in Oriental lan-
guages were starting to pile up. He had actually been hired to teach Hebrew, but
he was hopeless at teaching. As he later acknowledged in the letter announcing his
retirement, the auditors at his lectures were 'scarce and practitioners more scarce'.
He soon angled his way over to the Bodleian, where his skills - not just in Hebrew
but in Arabic and Persian as well - were by this time much needed. Hyde was the
man for the job, and he was on site.
Knowledge of Oriental languages was not a common skill at the time, but,
thanks to the inspiration of scholars such as John Selden, it was a skill in some
demand. The biggest project in mid-seventeenth-century Europe that required this
knowledge was the production of Polyglot Bibles - that is, Bibles in multiple an-
cient languages. The French were the first to publish a Polyglot Bible, in 1645, an
unwieldy but impressive production in ten lavishly bound volumes. The Bodleian
acquired its copy in 1649. The English followed suit, although the project came
aboutinarathercircuitousway.TheChristiandivinewhotookiton,BrianWalton,
did so because he could gain no other employment. Denounced by his parishion-
ers in 1641 for being a royalist, he fled to Oxford, then King Charles's stronghold
againstParliament'sforces.Afterthecollapseoftheroyalistcampin1646,Walton
returned to London and lived unemployed in his father-in-law's house. Sidelined
by politics and out of work, he decided to compile a Polyglot Bible. When it was
published, in 1657, it consisted of the authoritative Latin text accompanied by
the same text in Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Chaldean (referred to as Aramaic today),
Samaritan and Arabic, each with its Latin interpretation, all laid out across each
pair of facing pages. Its two main promoters were none other than John Selden
and the man who taught him Arabic, Archbishop James Ussher. They co-authored