The catalogue of Spanish linguists opens with a name hardly less marvellous than that which I have placed at the head of the linguists of modern Italy—that of Fernando di Cordova;—one of those universal geniuses, whom Nature, in the prodigal exercise of her creative powers, occasionally produces, as if to display their extent and versatility. He was born early in the fifteenth century, and was hardly less precocious than his Italian rival, Pico della Mirandola. At ten years of age he had completed his courses of grammar and rhetoric. He could recite three or four pages of the Orations of Cicero after a single reading. Before he attained his twenty-fifth year, he was installed Doctor in all the faculties; and he is said by Feyjoo to have been thorough master (supo con toda la perfeccion) of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic. Feyjoo adds, that he knew, besides, all the principal European languages.[72] He could repeat the entire Bible from memory. He was profoundly versed in theology, in civil and canon law, in mathematics, and in medicine. He had at his perfect command all the works of St. Thomas, of Scotus, of Alexander of Hales, of Galen, Avicenna, and the other lights of the age in every department of science.[73] Like the Admirable Crichton, too, he was one of the most accomplished gentlemen and most distinguished cavaliers of his time. He could play on every known variety of instrument; he sang exquisitely; he was a most graceful dancer; an expert swordsman; and a bold and skilful rider; and he was master of one particular art of fence by which he was able to defeat all his adversaries, by springing upon them at a single bound of twenty-three or twenty-four feet! In a word, to adopt the enthusiastic panegyric of the old chronicler on whose simple narrative these statements rest, “if you could live a hundred years without eating or drinking, and were to give the whole time to study, you could not learn all that this young man knew.”[74] The occasion to which this writer, quoting Monstrelet’s Chronicle,[75] refers was the Royal Fête at Paris in 1445; so that Fernando must have been born about 1425. Of his later history but little is known. He was sent as ambassador to Rome in 1469, and died in 1480.
A Portuguese of the same period, Pedro de Covilham, is mentioned by Damian a Goes in his curious book, De Ethiopum Moribus in terms which, if we could take them literally, should entitle him to a place among the linguists. During the reign of John II. of Portugal (1481-95) Covilham, who had already distinguished himself as an explorer under Alfonzo V., was sent, in company with Alfonzo de Payva, in search of the kingdom of Prester John, which the traditional notions of the time placed in Abyssinia. Payva died upon the expedition. Covilham, after visiting India, the Persian Gulf, and exploring both the coasts of the Red Sea, at length reached Abyssinia, where he was received with much distinction by the King. He married in the country, and obtained large possessions; but, in accordance with a law of Abyssinia[76] similar to that which still exists in Japan, prohibiting any one who may have once settled in the country ever again to leave it, he was compelled to adopt Abyssinia as a second home. When, therefore, he was recalled by John II., the King of Abyssinia refused to relinquish him, pleading “that he was skilled in almost all the languages of men,”[77] and that he had made to him, as his own adopted subject, large grants of land and other possessions. Covilham, after a residence of thirty-three years, was still alive in 1525, when the embassy under Alvarez de Lima reached Abyssinia.
Very early in the sixteenth century, I find a notice of a Spanish convert from Judaism, called in Latin “Libertas Cominetus” (Libertas being, in all probability, but the translation of his Hebrew patronymic,) whose acquirements are more precisely defined. He was born at Cominedo, towards the close of the fifteenth century, and renounced his creed about 1525. His fellow-convert Galatinus, an Italian Jew, and himself no mean linguist, describes Libertas in his work “De Arcanis Catholicæ Veritatis,” as not only deeply versed in Holy Writ, but master of fourteen languages.[78] The Biographical Dictionaries and other books of reference are quite silent regarding him.
The name of Benedict Arias Montanus, editor of the so-called “King of Spain’s Polyglot Bible,” is better known to Biblical students. He was born at Frexenal[79] in Estremadura in 1527 and studied in the university of Alcala, then in the first freshness of the reputation which it owed to the magnificence of the great Cardinal Ximenes. Montanus entered the order of St. James, and after accompanying the Bishop of Segovia to the Council of Trent, where he appeared with great distinction, returned to the Hermitage of Nuestra Señora de los Angelos near Aracena, with the intention of devoting himself entirely to study and prayer. From this retreat, however, he was drawn by Philip II., who employed him to edit a new Polyglot Bible on a more comprehensive plan than the Complutensian Polyglot. On the completion of this task, Philip sought to reward the learned editor by naming him to a bishopric; but Montanus had humility and self-denial enough to decline the honour, and died an humble chaplain, in 1598. The estimate formed by his contemporaries of Montanus’s attainments in languages falls little short of the marvellous. Le Mire describes him as omnium fere gentium linguis et literis raro exemplo excultus; but we may more safely take his own modest statement in the preface of his Polyglot, that he knew ten languages.[80]
The celebrated Father Martin Del Rio, best known perhaps to English readers, since Sir Walter Scott’s pleasant sketch, by his vast work on Demonology, was also a very distinguished linguist. Del Rio, although of Spanish parentage, was born at Antwerp in May 1551. His first university studies were made at Paris; but he received the Doctor’s degree at Salamanca, and has merited a place in Baillet’s Enfans Celebres, by publishing an edition of Solinus, with a learned commentary, before he was twenty years old.[81] Del Rio’s talents and reputation opened for him a splendid career; but he abandoned all his offices and all his prospects of preferment, in order to enter the Society of the Jesuits at Valladolid in 1580. According to Feyjoo,[82] Del Rio knew ten languages; and Baillet would appear to imply even more, when he says that he was master of at least that number. Del Rio died at Louvain in 1608.
One of Del Rio’s most distinguished contemporaries, the celebrated dramatic poet, Lope de Vega, although his celebrity rests upon a very different foundation, was also a very respectable linguist, so far, at least, as regards the modern languages. The extraordinary fecundity of this author, especially when we consider his extremely chequered and busy career as a secretary, a soldier, and eventually a priest, would seem to preclude the possibility of his having applied himself to any other pursuit than that of dramatic literature. The mere physical labour of committing to paper (putting composition out of view altogether) his fifteen hundred versified plays,[83] three hundred interludes and sacred dramas[84], ten epic poems, and eight prose novels, besides an infinity of essays, prefaces, dedications, and other miscellaneous pieces, would appear more than enough to occupy the very busiest human life. Yet notwithstanding all this prodigious labour, Lope de Vega contrived to find time for the acquisition of Greek, Latin, Italian, Portuguese, French, and probably English! Well might Cervantes call him “a Prodigy of Nature!”
Although the missionaries of Spain and Portugal are, as a body, less distinguished in the department of languages than those of Italy, yet there are some among them not inferior to the most eminent of their Italian brethren. The great Coptic and Abyssinian scholar, Antonio Fernandez, was a Portuguese Jesuit. He was born at Lisbon in 1566, and entered the Jesuit society as a member of the Portuguese province of the order. After a long preparatory training, he was sent, in 1602, to Goa, the great centre of the missionary activity of Portugal. His ultimate destination, however, was Abyssinia, which country he reached in 1604, in the disguise of an Armenian. He resided in Abyssinia for nearly thirty years, and was charged with a mission to the Pope Paul III. and Philip IV. of Spain, from the king, who, under the influence of the missionaries, had embraced the Catholic religion. Fernandez set out with some native companions in 1615; but they were all made prisoners at Alaba, and narrowly escaped being put to death; nor was he released in the end, except on condition of relinquishing this intended mission, and returning to Abyssinia. On the death of the king, who had so long protected them, the whole body of Catholic missionaries were expelled from Abyssinia by the new monarch in 1632; and Fernandez returned, after a most chequered and eventful career, to Goa, where he died, ten years later, in 1642. Of his acquirements in the Western languages, I am unable to discover any particulars, but he was thoroughly versed in Armenian, Coptic, and Amharic or Abyssinian, in both of which last named languages he has left several ritual and ascetic works for the use of the missionaries and native children.
The Spanish and Portuguese missionaries in America, too, (especially those of the Jesuit order) rendered good service to the study of the numerous native languages of both continents.[85] Most of the modern learning on the subject is derived from their treatises, chiefly manuscript, preserved by the Society.
Nor were the other orders less efficient. Padre Josef Carabantes, a Capuchin of the province of Aragon, (born in 1648) wrote a most valuable practical treatise for the use of missionaries, which was long a text book in their hands.
One of the Portuguese missionaries in Abyssinia, Father Pedro Paez, who succeeded Fernandez, and whose memory still lingers among the native traditions of the people,[86] not only became thorough master of the popular dialects of the various races of the Valley of the Nile, but attained a proficiency in Gheez, the learned language of Abyssinia, not equalled even by the natives themselves.[87] A Franciscan missionary at Constantinople about the same time, mentioned by Cyril Lucaris, is described by him as “acquainted with many languages;”[88] but I have not been able to discover his name.
By far the most eminent linguist of the Peninsula, however, is the learned Jesuit, Father Lorenzo Hervas-y-Pandura. He was born in 1735, of a noble family, at Horcajo, in la Mancha. Having entered the Jesuit society, he taught philosophy for some years in Madrid, and afterwards in a convent in Murcia; but at length, happily for the interests of science as well as of religion, he embraced a missionary career, and remained attached to the Jesuit mission of America, until 1767. On the suppression of the order, Father Hervas settled at Cesena, and devoted himself to his early philosophical studies, which, however, he ultimately, in a great measure, relinquished in order to apply himself to literature and especially to philology. When the members of the society were permitted to re-establish themselves in Spain, Hervas went to Catalonia; but he was obliged to return to Italy, and settled at Rome, where he was named by Pius VII. keeper of the Vatican Library. In this honourable charge he remained till his death in 1809.
Father Hervas may with truth be pronounced one of the most meritorious scholars of modern times. His works are exceedingly numerous; and, beside his favourite pursuit, philology, embrace almost every other conceivable subject, theology, mathematics, history, general and local, palæography; not to speak of an extensive collection of works connected with the order, which he edited, and a translation of Bercastel’s History of the Church, (with a continuation), executed, if not by himself, at least under his superintendence. Besides all the stupendous labour implied in these diversified undertakings, Father Hervas has the still further merit of having devoted himself to the subject of the instruction of the deaf-mute, for whose use he devised a little series of publications, and published a very valuable essay on the principles to be followed in their instruction.[89]
Our only present concern, however, is with his philological and linguistic publications, especially in so far as they evince a knowledge of languages. They form part of a great work in twenty-one 4to. volumes, entitled Idea dell’ Universo; and were printed at intervals, at Cesena, in Italian, from which language they were translated into Spanish by his friends and associates, and republished in Spain. It will only be necessary to particularize one or two of them—the Saggio Prattico delle Lingue, which consists of a collection of the Lord’s Prayer in three hundred and seven languages, together with other specimens of twenty-two additional languages, in which the author was unable to obtain a version of the Lord’s Prayer, all illustrated by grammatical analyses and annotations; and the Catalogo delle Lingue conosciute, e Notizia delle loro Affinità e Diversità.[90] In the compilation of these, and his other collections, it is true, Hervas had the advantage, not alone of his own extensive travel, and of his own laborious research, but also of the aid of his brethren; and this in an Order which numbered among its members, men to whose adventurous spirit every corner of the world had been familiar:—
But he, himself, compiled grammars of no less than eighteen of the languages of America; which, with the liberality of true science, he freely communicated to William von Humboldt for publication in the Mithridates of Adelung. He was a most refined classical scholar and a profound Orientalist. He was perfectly familiar, besides, with almost all the European languages; and, wide as is the range of tongues which his published works embrace, his critical and grammatical notes and observations, even upon the most obscure and least known of the languages which they contain, although in many cases they have of course all the imperfections of a first essay, exhibit, even in their occasional errors, a vigorous and original mind.
The name of Father Hervas-y-Pandura is a fitting close to the distinguished line of linguistic “Glorias de España.”
The University of Paris did not enter into the study of languages so early, or with so much zeal as the rival schools of Spain and Italy.
The first[91] great name in this department which we meet in the history of French letters, is that of the celebrated Rabbinical scholar, William Postel. This extraordinary man was born at Dolerie in 1510. Having lost both his parents at a very early age, he was left entirely dependent upon his own exertions for support; and, with that indomitable energy which often accompanies the love of knowledge, he began, from his very boyhood, a systematic course of self-denial, by which he hoped to realize the means of prosecuting the studies for which he had conceived an early predilection. Having scraped together, in the laborious and irksome occupation of a school-master, what he regarded as a sufficient sum for his modest wants, he repaired to Paris; but he had scarcely reached that city, when he was robbed by some designing sharpers, of the fruits of all his years of self-denial; and a long illness into which he was thrown by the chagrin and privation which ensued, reduced him to the last extremity. Even still, however, his spirit was unbroken. He went to Beauce, where, by working as a daily labourer, he earned the means of returning to Paris as a poor scholar. Presenting himself at the College of Saint Barbara, he obtained a place as a servant, with permission to attend the lectures; and having in some way got possession of a Hebrew grammar, he contrived, in his stolen half hours of leisure, to master the language so thoroughly, that in a short time his preceptors found themselves outstripped by their singular dependent.
His reputation as an Oriental scholar spread rapidly. When La Fôret’s memorable embassy to the Sultan was being organized by Francis I., the king was recommended to entrust to Postel a literary mission, somewhat similar to that undertaken during the reign of Louis Philippe, at the instance of M. de Villemain, one of the objects of which was to collect Greek and Oriental MSS. It was on his return from this expedition, (in which he visited Constantinople, Greece, Asia Minor, and part of Syria,) that Postel met Teseo Ambrosio at Venice, and published what may be said to have been the first systematic attempt as yet made to bring together materials for the philosophical investigation of the science of language—being a collection of the alphabets of twelve languages, with a slight account of each among the number.[92] He was soon after appointed Professor of Mathematics, and also of Oriental Languages, in the College de France; but the wild and visionary character of his mind appears to have been quite unsuited to any settled pursuit. He had conceived the idea that he was divinely called to the mission of uniting all Christians into one community, the head of which he recognized in Francis I. of France, whom he maintained to be the lineal descendant of Sem, the eldest of the sons of Noah. Under the notion that this was his pre-ordained vocation, he refused to accompany La Fôret on a second mission to the East, although he was pressed to do so by the king himself, and a sum of four thousand crowns was placed at his disposal for the purchase of manuscripts. He offered himself, in preference, to the newly founded society of the Jesuits; but his unsuitableness for that state soon became so apparent, that St. Ignatius of Loyola, then superior of the society, refused to receive him. After many wanderings in France, Italy, and Germany, and an imprisonment in Venice, (where his fanaticism reached its greatest height,) he undertook a second expedition to the East, in 1549, whence he returned in 1551, with a large number of valuable MSS. obtained through the French ambassador, D’Aramont, but wilder and more visionary than ever. He resumed his lectures in the College des Lombards, now the property of the Irish College in Paris. The crowds who flocked to hear him were so great, that they were obliged to assemble in the court, where he addressed them from one of the windows. His subsequent career was a strange alternation of successes and embroilments. The Emperor Ferdinand invited him to Vienna, as Professor of Mathematics. While there, he assisted Widmandstadt in the preparation of his Syriac New Testament. He left Vienna, however, after a short residence, and betook himself to Italy, in 1554 or 1555. He was put into prison in Rome, but liberated in 1557. In 1562 he returned to Paris. The extravagancies of his conduct and his teaching led to his being placed under a kind of honourable surveillance, in 1564, in the monastery of St. Martin des Champs, near Paris. Yet so interesting was his conversation that crowds of the most distinguished of all orders continued to visit him in this retreat till his death in 1581. Postel’s attainments in languages living or dead, were undoubtedly most extensive. Not reckoning the modern languages, which he may be presumed to have known, his Introduction exhibits a certain familiarity with not less than twelve languages, chiefly eastern; and he is said to have been able to converse in most of the living languages known in his time. Duret states, as a matter notorious to all the learned, that he “knew, understood, and spoke fifteen languages;”[93] and it was his own favourite boast, that he could traverse the entire world without once calling in the aid of an interpreter. In addition to his labours as a linguist, Postel was a most prolific writer. Fifty-seven of his works are enumerated by his biographer.
It is to this learned but eccentric scholar that we owe the idea of the well-known polyglot collections of the Lord’s Prayer. These compilations as carried out by later collectors, have rendered such service to philology, that, although many of their authors were little more than mere compilers, and have but slender claims to be considered as linguists, in the higher sense of the word, it would be unpardonable to pass them over without notice in a Memoir like the present. Towards the close of the fourteenth century, a Hungarian soldier named John Schildberger, while serving in a campaign against the Turks in Hungary, was made prisoner by the enemy; and on his return home, after a captivity of thirty-two years, published (in 1428) an account of his adventures. He appended to his travels, as a specimen of the languages of the countries in which he had sojourned, the Lord’s Prayer in Armenian, and also in the Tartar tongue. This, however, was a mere traveller’s curiosity: but Postel’s publication (Paris, 1558) is more scientific. It contains specimens of the characters of twelve different languages, in five of which—Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Armenian, the Pater Noster is printed both in Roman characters and in those of the several languages. This infant essay of Postel was followed, ten years after, by the collection of Theodore Bibliander, (the classicized form of the German name Buchmann,) which contains fourteen different Pater Nosters. Conrad Gesner, in 1555, increased the number to twenty-two, to which Angelo Rocea, an Augustinian Bishop, added three more (one of them Chinese) in 1591. Jerome Megiser, in 1592, extended the catalogue to forty. John Baptist Gramaye, a professor in Louvain, made a still more considerable stride in advance. He was taken prisoner by the Algerine corsairs, in the beginning of the next century, and after his return to Europe, collected no fewer than a hundred different versions of the Pater Noster, which he published in 1622. But his work seems to have attracted little notice; for more than forty years later, (1668) a collection made by Bishop Wilkins, the learned linguist, to whom I shall hereafter return, contains no more than fifty.
In all these, however, the only object appears to have been to collect as large a number of languages as possible, without any attention to critical arrangement. But, in the latter part of the same century, the collection of Andrew Müller (which comprises eighty-three Pater Nosters) exhibits a considerable advance in this particular. Men began, too, to arrange and classify the various families. Francis Junius (Van der Yonghe) published the Lord’s Prayer in nineteen different languages of the German family; and Nicholas Witsen devoted himself to the languages of Northern Asia—the great Siberian family,—in eleven of which he published the Lord’s Prayer in 1692. This improvement in scientific arrangement, however, was not universal; for although the great collection of John Chamberlayne and David Wilkins, printed at Amsterdam in 1715, contains the Lord’s Prayer in a hundred and fifty-two languages, and that of Christian Frederic Gesner—the well-known Orientalischer und Occidentalischer Sprachmeister (Leipzic 1748)—in two hundred, they are both equally compiled upon the old plan, and have little value except as mere specimens of the various languages which they contain.[94]
It is not so with a collection already described, which was published near the close of the same century, by a learned Spanish Jesuit, Don Lorenzo Hervas y Pandura. It is but one of that vast variety of philological works from the same prolific pen which, as I have stated, appeared, year after year, in Cesena, originally in Italian, though they were all afterwards published in a Spanish translation, in the author’s native country. Father Hervas’s collection, it will be remembered, contains the Lord’s Prayer in no less than three hundred and seven languages, besides hymns and other prayers in twenty-two additional dialects, in which the author was not able to find the Pater Noster.
Almost at the very same time with this important publication of Hervas, a more extensive philological work made its appearance in the extreme north, under the patronage and indeed the direct inspiration, of the Empress Catherine II. of Russia. The plan of this compilation was more comprehensive than that of the collections of the Lord’s Prayer. It consisted of a Vocabulary of two hundred and seventy-three familiar and ordinary words, in part selected by the Empress herself, and drawn up in her own hand. This Vocabulary, which is very judiciously chosen, is translated into two hundred and one languages. The compilation of this vast comparative catalogue of words was entrusted to the celebrated philologer, Pallas, assisted by all the eminent scholars of the northern capital; among whom the most efficient seems to have been Bakmeister, the Librarian of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The opportunities afforded by the patronage of a sovereign who held at her disposition the services of the functionaries of a vast, and, in the literal sense of the word, a polyglot empire like Russia, were turned to the best account. Languages entirely beyond the reach of private research, were unlocked at her command; and the rude and hitherto almost unnamed dialects of Siberia, of Northern Asia, of the Halieutian islanders, and the nomadic tribes of the Arctic shores, find a place in this monster vocabulary, beside the more polished tongues of Europe and the East. Nevertheless, the Vocabulary of Pallas (probably from the circumstance of its being printed altogether in the Russian character)[95] is but little familiar to our philologers, and is chiefly known from the valuable materials which it supplied to Adelung and his colleagues in the compilation of the well-known Mithridates.
The Mithridates of Adelung closes this long series of philological collections; but although in its general plan, it is only an expansion of the original idea of the first simple traveller who presented to his countrymen, as specimens of the languages of the countries which he had visited, versions in each language of the Prayer which is most familiar to every Christian, yet it is not only far more extensive in its range than any of its predecessors, but also infinitely more philosophical in its method. There can be no doubt that the selection of a prayer so idiomatical, and so constrained in its form as the Lord’s Prayer, was far from judicious. As a specimen of the structure of the various languages, the choice of it was singularly infelicitous; and the utter disregard of the principles of criticism (and in truth of everything beyond the mere multiplication of specimens), which marks all the early collections, is an additional aggravation of its original defect. But it is not so in the Mithridates of Adelung. It retains the Lord’s Prayer, it is true, like the rest, as the specimen (although not the only one) of each language; but it abandons the unscientific arrangement of the older collections, the languages being distributed into groups according to their ethnographical affinities. The versions, too, are much more carefully made; they are accompanied by notes and critical illustrations; and in general, each language or dialect, with the literature bearing upon it, is minutely and elaborately described. In a word, the Mithridates, although, as might be expected, still falling far short of perfection, is a strictly philosophical contribution to the study of ethnography; and has formed the basis, as well as the text, of the researches of all the masters in the modern schools of comparative philology.[96]
To return, however, to the personal history of linguists, from which we have been called aside by the mention of the work of Postel.
A celebrity as a linguist equally distinguished, and even more unamiable, than Postel’s, is that of his countryman and contemporary, the younger of the two Scaligers.
Joseph Justus Scaliger was born at Agen in 1544, and made his school studies at Bordeaux, where he was only remarkable for his exceeding dulness, having spent three years in a fruitless, though painfully laborious, attempt to master the first rudiments of the Latin language. These clouds of the morning, however, were but the prelude of a brilliant day. His after successes were proportionately rapid and complete. The stories which are told of him seem almost legendary. He is said to have read the entire Iliad and Odyssey in twenty-one days, and to have run through the Greek dramatists and lyric poets in four months. He was but seventeen years old when he produced his Œdipus. At the same age he was able to speak Hebrew with all the fluency of a Rabbi. His application to study was unremitting, and his powers of endurance are described as beyond all example. He himself tells, that even in the darkness of the night, when he awoke from his brief slumbers, he was able to read without lighting his lamp![97] So powerful, according to his own account, was his eye-sight, that like the knight of Deloraine:—
After a brilliant career at Paris, he was invited to occupy the chair of Belles Lettres at Leyden, where the best part of his life was spent. Like most eminent linguists, Scaliger possessed the faculty of memory in an extraordinary degree. He could repeat eighty couplets of poetry after a single reading: he knew by heart every line of his own compositions, and it was said of him that he never forgot anything which he had learnt once. But with all his gifts and all his accomplishments, he contrived to render himself an object of general dislike, or at least of general dis-esteem. His vanity was insufferable; and it was of that peculiarly offensive kind which is only gratified at the expense of the depreciation of others. His life was a series of literary quarrels; and in the whole annals of literary polemics, there are none with which, for acrimony, virulence, and ferocity of vituperation, these quarrels may not compete. And hence, although there is hardly a subject, literary, antiquarian, philological, or critical, on which he has not written, and (for his age) written well, there are few, nevertheless, who have exercised less influence upon contemporary opinion. Scaliger spoke thirteen languages, in the study of which Baillet[98] says he never used either a dictionary or a grammar. He himself declares the same. The languages ascribed to him are strangely jumbled together in the following lines of Du Bartas:—
In his case it is difficult, as in most others, to ascertain the degree of his familiarity with each of these. To Du Bartas’s poetical epithet, elegamment, of course, no importance is to be attached; and it would perhaps be equally unsafe to rely on the depreciatory representations of his literary antagonists. One thing, at least, is certain, that he himself made the most of his accomplishment. He was not the man to hide his light from any overweening delicacy. He was one of the greatest boasters of his own or any other time. In one place he boasts that there is no language in which he could write with such elegance as Arabic.[100] In another he professes to write Syriac as well as the Syrians themselves.[101] And it is curiously significant of the reputation which he commonly enjoyed, that the wits of his own day used to say that there was one particular department of each language in which there could be no doubt of his powers—its Billingsgate vocabulary! There was not one, they confessed, of the thirteen languages to which he laid claim, in which he was not fully qualified to scold![102]
The eminent botanist, Charles Le Cluse, (Clusius), a contemporary of Scaliger, can hardly be called a great linguist, as his studies were chiefly confined to the modern European languages, with several of which he was thoroughly conversant; but he is remarkable as having contributed, by a familiarity with modern languages very rare among the naturalists of his day, to settle the comparative popular nomenclature of his science. He is even still a high authority on this curious branch of botanical study.
The reader who remembers the extraordinary reputation enjoyed among his contemporaries by the learned Nicholas Peiresc, may be disappointed at finding him overlooked in this enumeration: but, as of his extraordinary erudition he has left no permanent fruit in literature, so of his acquirements as a linguist no authentic record has been preserved. The same is true of his friend, Galaup de Chasteuil, a less showy, perhaps, but better read orientalist. Through devotion to these studies, quite as much as under the influence of religious feeling, Chasteuil made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and, in 1631, permanently fixed his abode in Palestine; and so thoroughly conversant did he become, not only with the language and literature, but also with the manners, usages and feelings of the Maronites of the Lebanon, that, on the death of their patriarch, despite the national predilections by which all Easterns are characterized, they desired to elect him, a Western as he was, head of their national church.[103] Lewis de Dieu, the two Morins—Stephen, the Calvinist minister, and John, the learned Oratorian convert—the two Cappels, Lewis and James, and even the celebrated D’Herbelot, author of the Bibliothèque Orientale, all belong rather to the class of oriental scholars than of linguists in the popular acceptation of the word. The two Cappels, as well as their adversaries, the Buxtorfs, are best known in connexion with the controversy about the Masoretic Points.
One of the writers named in a previous page, Claude Duret, although Adelung[104] could not discover any particulars regarding him, beyond those which are detailed in the title of his book, (where he is merely described as “Bourbonnais, President a Moulins,”) nevertheless deserves very special mention on account of the extensive and curious learning, not alone in languages, but also in general literature, history and science, which characterize his rare work, Thresor de l’Histoire des Langues de cet Univers.[105] This work is undoubtedly far from being exempt from grave inaccuracies; but it is nevertheless, for its age, a marvel, as well of curious learning and extensive research, as of acquaintance with a great many (according to one account, seventeen,) languages, both of the East and of the West.[106] How much of this, however, is mere book-scholarship, and how much is real familiarity, it is impossible, in the absence of all details of the writer’s personal history, to decide.
Although far from being so universal a linguist as Duret, the great biblical scholar, Samuel Bochart (born at Rouen in 1599) was much superior to him in his knowledge of Hebrew and the cognate languages, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, and even Coptic. His Hierozoicon and Geographia Sacra, as monuments of philological as well as antiquarian knowledge, have maintained a high reputation even to the present time, notwithstanding the advantages enjoyed by modern students of biblical antiquities and history.[107]
Bochart’s pupil and his friend in early life, (although they were bitterly alienated from each other at a later period, and although Bochart’s death is painfully associated with their literary quarrel[108]) the celebrated Peter Daniel Huet, can hardly deserve a place in the catalogue of French linguists; but he was at least a liberal and enlightened patron of the study.
Many of the French missionaries of the seventeenth century would deserve a place in this series, and among them especially Francis Picquet, who, after serving for several years as French consul at Aleppo, embraced a missionary life, and at last was consecrated Archbishop of Bagdad in 1674. Le Jay, the projector and editor of the well-known polyglot Bible which appeared in France a few years before the rival publication of Brian Walton, though he is often spoken of as the mere patron of the undertaking, was in reality a very profound and accomplished Orientalist. The same may be said of Rapheleng, the son-in-law of Plantin, and often described as his mere assistant in the publication of the King of Spain’s Polyglot Bible. Matthew Veysiere de la Croze, too, the apostate Benedictine, although a superficial scholar and a hasty and inaccurate historian, was a very able linguist.
But, as we descend lower in the history of this generation of French linguists, we find comparatively few names which, for variety of attainments, can be compared with those of Italy or Germany. Beyond the cultivation of the Biblical languages, little was done in France for this department of study during the rest of the seventeenth century. There seems but too much reason to believe that the reputation of the learned but pedantic Menage as a linguist, is extravagantly exaggerated. He was an accomplished classicist, and his acquaintance with modern languages was tolerably extensive. He was a good etymologist, too, according to the servile and unscientific system of the age. But his claims to Oriental scholarship appear very questionable. And in truth during this entire period, if it were not for the interest of the controversy above referred to, on the antiquity and authority of the Masoretic Points, it might almost be said that Oriental studies had fallen entirely into disuse in France. Even of those who took a part in that discussion, the name of Masclef (who knew Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Chaldee, and Arabic, with perhaps some of the modern languages) is the only one which can approach the rank of the higher masters of the study. The three Buxtorfs (father, son, and grandson), Guarin, and even Girandeau, were mere Hebraists; patient and accurate scholars, it is true, but with few of the characteristics of an eminent linguist. La Bletterie can hardly claim even this qualified reputation.
There is one brilliant exception—the eminent historian and controversialist, Eusebius Renaudot. He was born at Paris in 1646. Having made his classical studies under the Jesuits, and those of Philosophy in the College d’Harcourt, he entered the congregation of the Oratory. But he very soon quitted that society; and, although he continued to wear the ecclesiastical dress, he never took holy orders. His life, however, was a model of piety and of every Christian virtue; and it was his peculiar merit that, while many of his closest friends and most intimate literary allies were members of the Jansenist party, Renaudot was inflexible in his devotion to the judgment of the Holy See. His first linguistic studies lay among the Oriental languages, the rich fruit of which we still possess in his invaluable Collection of Oriental Liturgies, and in the last two volumes of the Perpetuitè de la Foi sur l’Eucharistie, which are also from his prolific pen. But he soon extended his researches into other fields; and he is said to have been master of seventeen languages,[109] the major part of which he spoke with ease and fluency.
But Renaudot stands almost alone.[110] The only names which may claim to be placed in comparison with his, are those of the two Petis, François Petis, and François Petis de la Croix. The latter especially, who succeeded his father as royal Oriental interpreter, under Lewis XIV., and made several expeditions to the East in this capacity, was well versed, not only in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Tartar, but also in Coptic and Armenian. His translation of the Arabian Nights Entertainments is the work by which he is best known; but his dissertations and collections on Oriental history are full of valuable learning. The eighteenth century in France was a period of greater activity. Etienne Fourmont, although born in 1683, belongs properly to the eighteenth century. He is often cited as an example of extraordinary powers of memory, having, when a mere boy, learnt by rote the whole list of Greek Roots in the Port Royal Treatise, so as to repeat them in every conceivable order. He soon after published in French verse all the roots of the Latin language. But it is as an Orientalist that he is chiefly remarkable. He was appointed to the chair of Arabic in the College Royal, and also to the office of Oriental interpreter in the Bibliothèque du Roi; and soon established such a reputation as an Orientalist, that he was consulted on philological questions by the learned of every country in Europe. He was thoroughly master of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Persian, and was one of the first French scholars who, without having visited China,[111] attained to any notable proficiency in Chinese.
His nephew, Michael Angelo Deshauterayes, born at Conflans Ste. Honorine, near Pontoise, 1724, was even more precocious. At the age of ten, he commenced his studies under Fourmont’s superintendence. He thus became familiar at an early age with Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, and Chinese; so that in his twenty-second year he was appointed to succeed his uncle as Oriental Interpreter to the Royal Library, to which post, a few years later, was added the Arabic professorship in the College de France. In these employments he devoted himself to Oriental studies for above thirty years.
Another pupil of Fourmont, Joseph de Guignes, born at Pontoise in 1721, attained equal eminence as an Orientalist. At Fourmont’s death, he was associated with the last named linguist on the staff of the Royal Library. But De Guignes’ merit in the department of Oriental history and antiquities, has almost overshadowed his reputation as a mere linguist, although he was a proficient in all the principal Eastern languages, and in many of those of Europe. His History of the Huns, Turks, Moguls, and other Tartar nations, notwithstanding that many of its views are now discarded, is still regarded as a repertory of Oriental learning; and, while both in this and also in some others of his works, De Guignes is often visionary and even paradoxical,[112] he is acknowledged to have done more for Chinese literature in France, than any linguist before Abel Remusat; nor is there one of the scholars of the eighteenth century, who in the spirit, if not in the letter, of the views which he put forward, comes so near to the more enlarged and more judicious theories of the scholars of our own day, on the general questions of philology.
From the days of De Guignes the higher departments of linguistic science fell for a time into disrepute in France; but a powerful impulse was given to the practical cultivation of Oriental languages by the diplomatic relations of that kingdom with Constantinople and the Levant. The official appointments connected with that service served to supply at once a stimulus to the study and an opportunity for its practice. Cardonne, Ruffin,[113] Legrand, Kieffer, Venture de Paradis, and Langlés, were all either trained in that school, or devoted themselves to the study as a preparation for it.
Of these, perhaps John Michael Venture De Paradis is the most remarkable. His father had been French Consul in the Crimea, and in various cities of the Levant, and appears to have educated the boy with a special view to the Oriental diplomatic service. From the College de Louis le Grand, he was transferred, at the age of fifteen, to Constantinople, and, before he had completed his twenty-second year, he was appointed interpreter of the French embassy in Syria. Thence he passed into Egypt in the same capacity, and, in 1777, accompanied Baron de Tott in his tour of inspection of the French establishments in the Levant. He was sent afterwards to Tunis, to Constantinople, and to Algiers; and eventually was attached to the ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris, with the Professorship of Oriental Languages. His last service was in the memorable Egyptian expedition under Bonaparte, in which he fell a victim to fatigue, and the evil effects of the climate, in 1799.[114]
Lewis Matthew Langlés[115] was a Picard, born at Peronne, in 1763. From his boyhood he too was destined for the diplomatic service; and studied first at Montdidier, and afterwards in Paris, where he obtained an employment which afforded him considerable leisure for the pursuit of his favourite studies. He learned Arabic under Caussin de Perceval, and Persian under Ruffin. Soon afterwards, however, he engaged in the study of Mantchu, and in some time became such a proficient in that language, that he was entrusted with the task of editing the Mantchu Dictionary of Pere Amiot. From that time his reputation was established, at least with the general public. His subsequent publications in every department of languages are numerous beyond all precedent. He had the reputation of knowing, besides the learned languages, Chinese, Tartar, Japanese, Sanscrit, Malay, Armenian, Arabic, Turkish, and Persian. But it must be added that the solidity of these attainments has been gravely impeached, and that by many he is regarded more as a charlatan than as a scholar.
No such cloud hangs over the fame of, after De Guignes, the true reviver of Chinese literature, Abel Remusat.[116] He was born at Paris in 1788, and brought up to the medical profession; and it may almost be said that the only time devoted by him to his early linguistic studies was stolen from the laborious preparation for the less congenial career to which he was destined by his father. By a very unusual preference, he applied himself, almost from the first, to the Chinese and Tartar languages. Too poor to afford the expensive luxury of a Chinese dictionary, he compiled, with incredible labour, a vocabulary for his own use; and the interest created at once by the success of his studies, and by the unexampled devotedness with which they were pursued, were so great as to procure for him, at the unanimous instance of the Academy of Inscriptions, the favour, at that period rare and difficult, of exemption from the chances of military conscription. From that time forward he applied himself unremittingly to philological pursuits; and, although he was admitted doctor of the faculty of medicine, at Paris in 1813, he never appears to have practised actively in the profession. On the creation of the two new chairs of Chinese and Sanscrit, in the College de France, after the Restoration, Remusat was appointed to the former, in November, 1814; from which period he gave himself up entirely to literature. He was speedily admitted into all the learned societies both of Paris and of other countries; and in 1818 he became one of the editors of the Journal des Savans. On the establishment (in which he had a chief part,) of the Société Asiatique, in 1822, he was named its perpetual secretary; and, on the death of Langlés, in 1824, he succeeded to the charge of keeper of Oriental MSS. in the Bibliothèque du Roi. This office he continued to hold till his early and universally lamented death in 1832. Remusat’s eminence lay more in the depth and accuracy of his scholarship in the one great branch of Oriental languages, which he selected as his own—those of Eastern Asia—and in the profoundly philosophical spirit which he brought to the investigation of the relations of these languages to each other, and to the other great families of the earth, than in the numerical extent of his acquaintance with particular languages. But this, too, was such as to place him in the very first rank of linguists.
A few words must suffice for the French school since Remusat, although it has held a very distinguished place in philological science. The Société Asiatique, founded at Remusat’s instance, and for many years directed by him as secretary, has not only produced many eminent individual philologers, as De Sacy, Quatremere, Champollion, Renan, Fresnel, and De Merian; but, what is far more important, it has successfully carried out a systematic scheme of investigation, by which alone it is possible, in so vast a subject, to arrive at satisfactory results. M. Stanislas Julien’s researches in Chinese; M. Dulaurier’s in the Malay languages; Father Marcoux’s in the American Indian; Eugene Bournouf’s in those of Persia; the brothers Antoine and Arnauld d’Abbadie in the languages of East Africa, and especially in the hitherto almost unknown Abyssinian and Ethiopian families; Eugene Borè in Armenian;[117] M. Fresnel’s explorations among the tribes of the western shores of the Red Sea; and many similar successful investigations of particular departments, are contributing to lay up such a body of facts, as cannot fail to afford sure and reliable data for the scientific solution by the philologers of the coming generation, of those great problems in the science of language, on which their fathers could only speculate as a theory, and at the best could but address themselves in conjecture. Although I have no intention of entering into the subject of living French linguists, yet there is one of the gentlemen whom I have mentioned, M. Fulgence Fresnel, whom I cannot refrain from alluding to before I pass from the subject of French philology. His name is probably familiar to the public at large, in connexion with the explorations of the French at Nineveh; but he is long known to the readers of the Journal Asiatique as a linguist not unworthy of the very highest rank in that branch of scholarship. M. d’Abbadie,[118] himself a most accomplished linguist, informed me that M. Fresnel, although exceedingly modest on the subject of his attainments, has the reputation of knowing twenty languages. The facility with which he has acquired some of these languages almost rivals the fame of Mezzofanti. M. Arago having suggested on one occasion the desirableness of a French translation of Berzelius’s Swedish Treatise “On the Blow-pipe,” Fresnel at once set about learning Swedish, and in three months had completed the desired translation! He reads fluently Hebrew, Greek, Romaic, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and what little is known of the Hieroglyphical language. He is second only to Lane as an Arabic scholar. Among the less known languages of which M. Fresnel is master, M. d’Abbadie heard him speak a few sentences of one, of which he may be said to have himself been the discoverer, and which is, in some respects, completely anomalous. M. Fresnel describes this curious language in the Journal Asiatique, July, 1838. It is spoken by the savages of Mahrak; and as it is not reducible to any of the three families, the Aramaic, the Canaanitic, or the Arabic, of which, according to Gesenius, the Ethiopic is an elder branch, M. Fresnel believes it to be the very language spoken by the Queen of Saba! Its present seat is in the mountainous district of Hhacik, Mirbât, and Zhafâr. Its most singular characteristic consists in its articulations, which are exceedingly difficult and most peculiar. Besides all the nasal sounds of the French and Portuguese, and that described as the “sputtered sound” of the Amharic, this strange tongue has three articulations, which can only be enunciated with the right side of the mouth; and the act of uttering them produces a contortion which destroys the symmetry of the features! M. Fresnel describes it as “horrible, both to hear and to see spoken.” Endeavouring to represent the force of one of these sounds by the letters hh, he calls the language Ehhkili.[119]
If we abstract from the Sacred Languages, the German scholars were slow in turning themselves to Oriental studies.
John Müller, of Königsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus, although he had the highest repute for learning of all the German scholars of the fifteenth century, does not appear to have gone beyond the classical languages. Martin Luther, Reuchlin,[121] Ulrich Van Hutten, Hoogenstraet, were Hebraists and no more; and John Widmanstadt, when he wished to study Arabic, was forced to make a voyage to Spain expressly for the purpose.
The first student of German race at all distinguished by scholarship in languages, was Theodore Bibliander,[122] who, besides Greek and Hebrew, was also well versed in Arabic, and probably in many other Oriental tongues.[123] The celebrated naturalist, Conrad Gesner, though perhaps not so solidly versed as Bibliander, in any one language, appears to have possessed a certain acquaintance with a greater number. His Mithridates; de Differentiis Linguarum,[124] resembles in plan as well as in name, the great work of Adelung. The number and variety of the languages which it comprises is extraordinary for the period. It contains the Pater Noster in twenty-two of these; and, although the observations on many of the specimens are exceedingly brief and unsatisfactory, yet they often exhibit much curious learning, and no mean familiarity with the language to which they belong.[125] Gesner’s success as a linguist is the more remarkable, inasmuch as that study by no means formed his principal pursuit. Botany and Natural History might much better be called the real business of his literary life. Accordingly, Beza says of him, that he united in his person the very opposite genius of Varro and Pliny; and, although he died at the comparatively early age of forty-nine, his works on Natural History fill nearly a dozen folio volumes. Both Gesner and Bibliander fell victims, one in 1564, the other in 1565, to the great plague of the sixteenth century.
Jerome Megiser, who, towards the close of the same century compiled the more extensive polyglot collection of Pater Nosters already referred to, need scarcely be noticed. He is described by Adelung,[126] as a man of various, but trivial and superficial learning.
Not so another German scholar of the same age, Jacob Christmann, of Maintz. Christmann was no less distinguished as a philosopher than as a linguist. He held for many years at Heidelberg the seemingly incompatible professorships of Hebrew, Arabic, and Logic, and is described as deeply versed in all the ancient and modern languages, as well as in mathematical and astronomical science.[127]
It would be unjust to overlook the scholars of the Low Countries during the same period. Some of these, as for example, Drusius, and the three Schultens, father, son, and grandson, were chiefly remarkable as Hebraists. But there are many others, both of the Belgian and the Dutch schools, whose scholarship was of a very high order. Among the former, Andrew Maes (Masius,) deserves a very special notice. He was born in 1536, at Linnich in the diocese of Courtrai. In 1553 he was sent to Rome as chargé d’affaires. During his residence there, in addition to Greek, Latin, Spanish, and other European languages, with which he was already familiar, he made himself master, not only of Italian, but also of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. He is said[128] to have assisted Arias Montanus in the compilation of his Polyglot Bible; but of this no mention is made by Montanus in the preface. No doubt, however, can be entertained of his great capacity as an Orientalist; and Sebastian Munster used to say of him that he seemed to have been brought up among the Hebrews, and to have lived in the classic days of the Roman Empire. About the same period, or a few years later, David Haecx published his dictionary of the Malay languages, one of the earliest contributions to the study of that curious family. Haecx, though he spent his life in Rome, was a native of Antwerp.
John Baptist Gramaye, already named as a collector of Pater Nosters, acquired some reputation as one of the first contributors to the history of the languages of Africa, although his work is described by Adelung as very inaccurate. Gramaye was a native of Antwerp, and became provost of Arnheim and historiographer of the Low Countries. On a voyage from Italy to Spain, he fell into the hands of Algerine corsairs, who carried him to Algiers. There he was sold as a slave, and was detained a considerable time in Barbary. Having at length obtained his liberty, he published, after his return, a diary of his captivity, a descriptive history of Africa, and a polyglot collection of Pater Nosters, among which are several African languages not previously known in Europe.[129] Very little, however, is known of his own personal acquirements, which are noticeable, perhaps, rather on account of their unusual character, than of their great extent or variety.
Some of the linguists of Holland may claim a higher rank. The well-known Arabic scholar, Erpenius, (Thomas Van Erpen,) was also acquainted with several other Oriental languages, Hebrew, Chaldee, Persian, Turkish, and Ethiopic. His countryman and successor in the chair of Oriental languages at Leyden, James Golius, was hardly less distinguished. Peter Golius, brother of James, who entered the Carmelite Order and spent many years as a missionary in Syria and other parts of the East, became equally celebrated in Rome for his Oriental scholarship. In all these three cases the knowledge of the languages was not a mere knowledge of books, but had been acquired by actual travel and research in the various countries of the East.
John Henry Hottinger, too, a pupil of James Golius at Leyden, and the learned Jesuit, Father Athanasius Kircher, belong also to this period. The latter, who is well known for his varied and extensive attainments in every department of science, was moreover a linguist of no ordinary merit.[130] He was born at Geyzen, near Fulda, in 1602, and entered the Jesuit society in 1618, when only sixteen years old. No detailed account is given by his biographers (with whom languages were of minor interest,) of the exact extent of his attainments in the department of languages; but they were both diversified and respectable, and in some things he was far beyond the men of his own time. His Lingua Egyptiaca Restituta may still be consulted with advantage by the student of Coptic.
Most of these men, however, confined themselves chiefly to one particular department. The first really universal linguist of Germany is the great Ethiopic scholar, Job Ludolf, who was born at Erfurt, in 1624. Early in life he devoted himself to the study of languages; and his extensive travels—first as preceptor to the sons of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and afterwards as tutor to the children of the Swedish ambassador in Paris—coupled with his unexampled industry,[131] enabled him, not only to hold a high rank in history and general literature, but also to attain to a success as a linguist which had rarely been equalled before his time. He is said to have been master of twenty-five languages,[132] but as I have never seen any exact enumeration of them, I am inclined to allow for considerable exaggeration.
There is even more reason to suspect of exaggeration the popular accounts which have come down to us of a self-educated linguist of the same period—a Saxon peasant called Nicholas Schmid, more commonly known as Cüntzel of Rothenacker, from the name of the village where he was born, in 1606. This extraordinary man was the son of a peasant. His youth was entirely neglected. He worked as a common labourer on his father’s farm, and, until his sixteenth year, never had learned even the letters of the alphabet. At this age one of the farm-servants taught him to read, greatly to the dissatisfaction of his father, who feared that such studies would withdraw him from his work. Soon afterwards, a relative who was a notary, gave him a few lessons in Latin; and, under the direction of the same relative, he learned the rudiments of Greek, Hebrew, and other languages. During all this time, he continued his daily occupation as a farm-labourer, and had no time for his studies but what he was able to steal from the hours allotted for sleep and for meals; the latter of which he snatched in the most hurried manner, and always with an open book by his side. In this strange way, amid the toils of the field and of the farm-yard, Schmid is said to have acquired a store of knowledge the details of which border upon the marvelous, one of his recorded performances being a translation of the Lord’s Prayer into fifty-one languages![133]
One of the scholars engaged in the compilation of Walton’s Polyglot, Andrew Müller, has left a reputation less marvellous, but more solid. He was born about 1630, at Greiffenhagen in Pomerania. Müller, like Crichton, was a precocious genius. At eighteen he wrote verses freely in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. On the completion of his studies, he became pastor of Königsberg on the Warta; but the duties of that charge soon became distasteful to him, and, after a short trial, he resolved, at the invitation of Castell, to settle in England, and devote himself to literature. He arrived just as Brian Walton was making arrangements for the publication of his celebrated Polyglot Bible, and at once entered earnestly into the scheme. He took up his residence in the house of John Castell in the Strand, where, for ten years, he applied himself unremittingly to study. It is told of him that, in the ardour of study or the indifference of scholastic seclusion, he would not raise his head from his books to look out of the window, on occasion of Charles II.’s triumphal progress at the Restoration! Having received from Bishop Wilkins some information on the subject of Chinese, he conceived a most enthusiastic passion for that language. He obtained some types at Antwerp, and, through the instructions of the celebrated Jesuit, Father Kircher, and other members of the society, he was perhaps the first European scholar who, without actually visiting China, acquired a mastery of its language; as he is certainly one of the first who deserted the track of the old philologers, and attempted the comparative study of languages on principles approaching to those which modern science has made familiar. Soon after the completion of Walton’s Polyglot Müller returned to Germany. He was named successively Pastor of Bernau and Provost of Berlin in 1667, but resigned both livings in 1685, and lived thenceforth in retirement at Stettin. He died in 1694. Although a most laborious man and a voluminous writer, Müller’s views were visionary and unpractical. He professed to have devised a plan of teaching, so complete, that, by adopting it, a perfect knowledge of Chinese could be acquired in half a year, and so simple, that it could be applied to the instruction of persons of the most ordinary capacity. Haller states that he spoke no less than twenty languages.
A Burgomaster-linguist is a more singular literary phenomenon. We are so little accustomed to connect that title with any thing above the plodding details of the commerce with which it is inseparably associated, that the name of Nicholas Witzen, Burgomaster of Amsterdam, deserves to be specially commemorated, as an exception to an unliterary class. It was in the pursuit of his vocation as a merchant that Witzen acquired the chief part of the languages with which he was acquainted. He made repeated expeditions to Russia between the years 1666 and 1677, in several of which he penetrated far into the interior of the country, and had opportunities of associating with many of the motley races of that vast empire; Slavonians, Tartars, Cossacks, Samoiedes, and the various Siberian tribes; as well as with natives of Eastern kingdoms not subject to Russia.[134] Besides inquiries into the geography and natural history of those countries which lie upon the north-eastern frontier of Europe and the contiguous provinces of Asia, Witzen used every effort to glean information regarding their languages. He obtained, in most of these languages, not only versions of the Lord’s Prayer, but also vocabularies comprising a considerable number of words; both of which he supplied to his friend and correspondent, Leibnitz, for publication in his Collectanea Etymologica.[135] How far Witzen himself was acquainted with these languages it is difficult to determine; but he is at least entitled to notice as the first collector of materials for this particular branch of the study.
David Wilkins, Chamberlayne’s fellow-labourer in the compilation of the Collection of Pater Nosters referred to in a former page, may also deserve a passing notice. The place of his birth, which occurred about 1685, is a matter of some uncertainty. Adelung[136] thinks he was a native of Dantzig; by others he is believed to have been a native of Holland. The best part of his life, however, was spent in England; where, at Cambridge, he took the degree of Doctor of Divinity, in 1717. He was afterwards appointed Librarian of Lambeth and Archdeacon of Suffolk. His qualifications as Polyglot editor, at the time when he undertook to assist Chamberlayne, appear to have consisted rather in patient industry and general scholarship, than in any extraordinary familiarity with languages; though he afterwards obtained considerable reputation, especially by an edition of the New Testament in Coptic, in 1716.