not university, nomination; and although he always stayed in his friend Lightfoot's rooms when at Cambridge, the chair cost him more than it brought in, as Castell himself stated in a letter (16 Aug. 1674) to the celebrated Dr. Spencer, master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (still preserved among the manuscripts at Lambeth Palace). He was also elected F.R.S. in 1674.
Castell brought out his ‘Lexicon’ in 1669. It marks an epoch in Semitic scholarship. J. D. Michaelis, who edited a separate issue of the Syriac division of the work (Göttingen, 4to, 1788), writes with respectful enthusiasm of Castell's unparalleled industry and solid learning, and differs in some points of detail from that ‘vir magnus’ only with the greatest diffidence. The Hebrew section also was published separately at Göttingen by Trier in 1790–2 in 4to. But the original ‘Lexicon’ met with a deplorably cold welcome in England. The ‘London Gazette’ (No. 429, December 23–7, 1669) contains an advertisement in which the unhappy scholar states that for three-quarters of a year he or his servants have attended in London at the place of sale, but that the subscribers send so slowly for their copies that he must fix the following Lady-day as the last date of attendance. At the time of his death about five hundred copies still remained unsold, and his niece and executrix, Mrs. Crisp, lodged the remnant of her uncle's life-work in one of her tenant's houses at Martin in Surrey, where for some years the rats played such havoc with the learned pages that when the stock came to be examined scarcely a single copy could be made up from the wreck of the sheets, and the fragments were sold for the sum of 7l.
When worn out with work and bowed with years Castell received the vicarage of Hatfield Peverell in Essex, from which he was removed to the rectory of Wodeham Walter in the same county, and finally to Higham Gobion, Bedfordshire, where he died in 1685. We learn from the epitaph which he himself inscribed over the grave of his wife, for them both, that he married Elizabeth, relict of Sir Peter Bettesworth, and afterwards of one Herris. In spite of the unhandsome usage he experienced at his university, he preserved to the last his zeal for academic interests, and he bequeathed his oriental manuscripts, including nineteen Hebrew, thirteen Arabic, and six Ethiopic, to the University Library (receipt of vice-chancellor, Nichols, Lit. Anecd. iv. 28); 111 books selected from his library to Emmanuel College, and a massive silver tankard to St. John's. The tankard and the manuscripts were left on condition that his name should be inscribed on each; and this, with his portrait (which may also be seen in the frontispiece to his ‘Lexicon’), has been duly affixed (Will of E. Castell, 24 Oct. 1685, Baker MS. 24, pp. 268–71, Brit. Mus.)
Besides the ‘Lexicon Heptaglotton’ and his share in Walton's ‘Biblia Polyglotta,’ Castell was the author of an inaugural lecture on the merits of the study of Arabic, as exemplified by the interpretation of the Canon of Avicenna (‘Oratio … in secundum canonis Avicennæ librum,’ London, 1667, 4to), which was included in Kapp's ‘Clarissimorum Virorum Orationes selectæ.’ Some marginal manuscript notes of Castell's are preserved in the copy of Plempius's Canon of Avicenna (1658) in the British Museum. His volume of poems addressed to Charles II is entitled ‘Sol Angliæ oriens auspiciis Caroli II regum gloriosissimi’ (London, ad insigne Campanæ in cœmiterio D. Pauli, 1660, 4to), and includes congratulatory odes in Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, and Greek, with indifferent Latin translations. The obvious design of these effusions is to attract the king's notice and support for the toiling author of the ‘Lexicon Heptaglotton:’
Sic erit ut sudans respiret Lexicon, atque
Lætius hinc totum progrediatur opus.
The terrible distress of the poor scholar excuses the fulsomeness of the language in which the king's virtues are set forth.
[Biog. Brit. s.v.; Hearne's Prælim. Obs. to Leland's Collectanea, p. 80; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iii. 883; Fasti, ii. 48; Worthington's Diary, ii. 21, 44; twenty-three letters of Castell to Lightfoot, 1664–70, in Lightfoot's Works (ed. Pitman), vol. xiii.; London Gazette, No. 429; Ded. and Præf. to the Lex. Heptaglotton; information from Rev. J. E. B. Mayor, and from Rev. J. G. Lawrence, vicar of Tadlow, who finds the name spelt Castell in the baptismal register—not Castle, as some have supposed.]
CASTELL, WILLIAM (d. 1645), published ‘A Petition exhibited to the High Court of Parliament for the Propagating of the Gospel in America and the West Indies, and for settling our Colonies there,’ 1641, reprinted in Force's ‘Tracts,’ vol. i. 1836; and ‘A Short Discoverie of the coasts of the Continent of America, from the Equinoctiall Northward, and of the adjacent Isles,’ 1644, reprinted in Osborne's ‘Voyages,’ 1745. He became rector of Courteenhall, Northamptonshire, in 1627, and died on 4 July 1645.
[Brydges's Northamptonshire, i. 354; British Museum Catalogue.]
