With the illustrious name of Leibnitz we commence a new era in the science of languages. This extraordinary man, who united in himself all the most varied, and it might seem incompatible, excellencies of other men—a jurist and a divine, a mathematician and a poet, a historian and a philosopher—added to all his other prodigious attainments a most extensive and profound knowledge of languages. It is not, however, on the actual extent of his acquaintance with particular languages (although this too was most remarkable), that his fame as a scientific linguist rests. He was the first to recognize the true nature and objects of linguistic science, and to direct its studies to an object at once eminently practical and profoundly philosophical. It is not alone that, deserting the trivialities of the old etymologists, he laid down the true principles of the great science of comparative philology, and detected its full importance; Leibnitz may claim the further merit of having himself almost created that science, and given it forth, a new Minerva, in its full and perfect development. There is hardly a principle of modern philology the germ of which may not be discovered in his singularly pregnant and suggestive essays and letters; and, what is far more remarkable, he has often, with the instinctive sagacity of original genius, anticipated sometimes by conjecture, sometimes by positive prediction, analogies and results which the investigations of actual explorers have since realized.[137]
One of the most important practical services rendered by Leibnitz to science, was the organization of academies and other scientific bodies, by which the efforts of individuals might be systematically guided to one common end, and the results of their researches, whether in collecting facts or in developing theories, might, through the collision of many minds, be submitted to the ordeal of careful examination and judicious discussion. It is chiefly to him that science is indebted for the Royal Society of Berlin and the Academy of St. Petersburg. Both of these bodies, although embracing the whole circle of science, have proved most eminent schools of languages; and it is a curious illustration of that profound policy, in pursuance of which we see Russia still availing herself of the service of genius wherever it is to be found, that many of the ablest German linguists of the eighteenth century were, either directly or indirectly, connected with the latter institution.
Gerard Frederic Müller is an early example. He was born, at Herforden in Westphalia, in 1705, and was a pupil of the celebrated Otto Mencken. Mencken, having been invited to become a member of the new academy of St. Petersburg, declined the honour for himself, but recommended his scholar Müller in his stead.[138] Müller accordingly accompanied the scientific expedition which was sent to Siberia under the elder Gmelin, (also a German,) from 1733 to 1741. On his return, he was appointed keeper of the Imperial Archives, and Historiographer of Russia. Müller does not appear to have given much attention to Oriental languages; but he was more generally familiar with modern languages than most of the scholars of that period.[139]
Augustus Lewis Schlötzer, another German literary adventurer in the Russian service, and for a time secretary of Müller, was a more generally accomplished linguist. Unlike Müller, he was a skilful Orientalist; and he was versed, moreover, in several of the Slavonic languages with which Müller had neglected to make himself acquainted, before engaging in the compilation of his great collection of Russian Historians. For this he availed himself of the assistance of his secretary Schlötzer. Gottlieb Bayer of Königsberg, one of the earliest among the scholars of Germany, author of the Museum Sinicum, also occupied for some years a chair at St. Petersburg; but he is better known by his ferocious controversial writings, than by his philological works. A much more distinguished scholar of modern Germany, almost entirely unknown in England, is Christian William Buttner. He was born at Wolfenbüttel in 1716, and was destined by his father (an apothecary) for the medical profession; but, although he gave his attention in the first instance to the sciences preparatory to that profession, the real pursuit of his life became philology, and especially in its relation to the great science of ethnography. It was a saying of Cuvier’s, that Linnæus and Buttner realised by their united studies the title of Grotius’s celebrated work, “De Jure Naturæ et Gentium;”—Linnæus by his pursuit of Natural History assuming the first, and Buttner, by his ethnological studies, appropriating the second—as the respective spheres of their operations. In every country which Buttner visited, he acquired not only the general language, but the most minute peculiarities of its provincial dialects. Few literary lives are recorded in history which present such a picture of self-denial and privation voluntarily endured in the cause of learning, as that of Buttner. His library and museum, accumulated from the hoardings of his paltry income, were exceedingly extensive and most valuable. In order to scrape together the means for their gradual purchase, he contented himself during the greater part of his later life with a single meal per day, the cost of which never exceeded a silber-groschen, or somewhat less than three half-pence![140] It may be inferred, however, from what has been said, that Buttner’s attainments were mainly those of a book-man. In the scanty notices of him which we have gleaned, we do not find that his power of speaking foreign languages was at all what might have been expected from the extent and variety of his book-knowledge. But his services as a scientific philologer were infinitely more important, as well as more permanent, than any such ephemeral faculty. He was the first to observe and to cultivate the true relations of the monosyllabic languages of southern Asia, and to place them at the head of his scheme of the Asiatic and European languages. He was the first to conceive, or at least to carry out, the theory of the geographical distribution of languages; and he may be looked on as the true founder of the science of glossography. He was the first to systematise and to trace the origin and affiliations of the various alphabetical characters; and his researches in the history of the palæography of the Semitic family may be said to have exhausted the subject. Nevertheless, he has himself written very little; but he communicated freely to others the fruits of his researches; and there are few of the philologers of his time who have not confessed their obligations to him. Michaelis, Schlötzer, Gatterer, and almost every other contemporary German scholar of note, have freely acknowledged both the value of his communications and the generous and liberal spirit in which they were imparted.[141]
John David Michaelis[142] (1717-91) is so well known in these countries by his contributions to Biblical literature[143] that little can be necessary beyond the mention of his name. His grammar of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic languages, sufficiently attest his abilities as an Orientalist; and, as regards that particular family of languages, his philological views are generally solid and judicious. But I am unable to discover what were his attainments in modern languages; and to the general science of comparative philology he cannot be said to have rendered any important original contribution.
The Catholic Missionaries of Germany, although of course less numerous than their brethren of Italy and the Spanish Peninsula, have contributed their share to the common stock of linguistic science. Many of the Jesuit Missionaries of Central and Southern America;—for example, Fathers Richter, Fritz, Grebmer, and Widmann—whose papers are the foundation of Humboldt’s Essay in the Mithridates, were of German origin. Father Dobritzhofer, whose interesting account of the Abipones has been translated into English[144], under Southey’s advice and superintendence, was a native of Austria; and the learned Sanscrit scholar, Father Paulinus de Sancto Bartholomeo, (although less known under his German name, John Philip Werdin) was an Austrian Carmelite, and served for above fourteen years in the Indian missions of his order.
A German philanthropist of a different class, Count Leopold von Berchtold (1738-1809) the Howard of Germany, deserves to be named, not merely for his devoted services to the cause of humanity throughout the world, but for his remarkable acquirements as a linguist. He spoke fluently eight European languages;[145] and, what is more rare, wrote and published in the greater number of them, tracts upon the great subject to which he dedicated his life. He died, at a very advanced age, of the plague, and has long been honoured as a martyr in the cause of philanthropy; but he has left no notable work behind him.
Very different the career of the great author of the Mithridates, John Christopher Adelung, who lived almost exclusively for learning. He was born in 1734, at Spantekow in Pomerania. In 1759, he was appointed to a professorship at Erfurt; but he exchanged it, after a few years, for a place at Leipsic, where he continued to reside for a long series of years. Although habitually of a gay and cheerful disposition, and a most agreeable member of society, he was one of the most assiduous students upon record, devoting as a rule no less than fourteen hours a day to his literary occupations.[146] His services to his native language are still gratefully acknowledged by every German etymologist, and his Dictionary, (although since much improved by Voss and Campe,) has been declared as great a boon to Germany, as the united labours of the Academy had been able to offer to France. Adelung’s personal reputation as a linguist was exceedingly high, but his fame with posterity must rest on his great work, the Mithridates, which I have already briefly described. The very origination of such a work, or at least the undertaking it upon the scale on which he has carried it out, would have made the reputation of an ordinary man. In the touching preface of the first volume, (the only one which Adelung lived to see published,) he describes it as “the youngest and probably the last child of his muse;” and confesses that “he has nurtured, dressed, and cherished it, with all the tenderness which it is commonly the lot of the youngest child to enjoy.”[147] It is indeed a work of extraordinary labour, and, although from the manner in which its materials were supplied, necessarily incomplete and even inaccurate in its details, a work of extraordinary ability. The first volume alone (containing the languages of Asia, and published in 1806,) is exclusively Adelung’s. Of the second, only a hundred and fifty pages had been printed when the venerable author died in his seventy-third year. These printed sheets, and the papers which he had collected for the subsequent volumes, he bequeathed to Dr. Severinus Vater, professor of theology at Königsberg, under whose editorship, with assistance from several friends, (and especially from the lamented William von Humboldt and Frederic Adelung,) the second volume, which comprises the languages of Europe with all their ramifications, appeared in 1809. The third, on the languages of Africa, and of America, (for which last the work is indebted to Humboldt,) appeared, in parts, between 1812 and 1816; and a supplementary volume, containing additions to the earlier portions of the work, by Humboldt, Frederic Adelung, and Vater himself, was published in 1817. It is impossible to overstate the importance and value of this great linguistic repertory. The arrangement of the work is strictly scientific, according to the views then current. The geographical distribution, the origin and history, and the general structural peculiarities of each, not only of the great families, but of the individual languages, and in many cases even of the local dialects, are carefully, though briefly described. The specimen Pater Noster in each language and dialect, is critically examined, and its vocabulary explained. To each language, too, is prefixed a catalogue of the chief philological or etymological works which treat of its peculiarities; and thus abundant suggestions are supplied for the prosecution of more minute researches into its nature and history. And for the most part, all this is executed with so much simplicity and clearness, with so true a perception of the real points of difficulty in each language, and with so almost instinctive a power of discriminating between those peculiarities in each which require special explanation, and those less abnormal qualities which a philosophical linguist will easily infer from the principles of general grammar, or from a consideration of the common characteristics of the family to which it belongs, that one may learn as much of the real character of a language, in a few hours, from the few suggestive pages the Mithridates, as from the tedious and complicated details of its professional grammarians.
Adelung’s associate in the Mithridates and its continuator, Dr. Severinus Vater, was born at Altenburg, in 1771; he studied at Jena and Halle, in both of which universities he afterwards held appointments as professor; at Jena, as extraordinary Professor of Theology in 1796, and at Halle, as Professor of Oriental Languages in 1800. Thence he was transferred, in 1809, to Königsberg in the capacity of Professor of Theology and Librarian; but he returned, in 1820, to Halle, where he continued to reside till his death, in 1826. Although Vater was by no means a very scientific linguist,[148] the importance of his contributions to the study of languages cannot be too highly estimated. Besides the large share which he had in the preparation of the Mithridates (the last three volumes of which were edited by him,) he also wrote well on the grammar of the Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and German languages. Nevertheless, his reputation is rather that of a scholar than of a linguist.
A few years after the author of the Mithridates appears the celebrated Peter Simon Pallas, to whom we are indebted for the great “Comparative Vocabulary” already described. He was born at Berlin in 1741, and his early studies were mainly directed to natural philosophy, which he seems to have cultivated in all its branches. His reputation as a naturalist procured for him, in 1767, an invitation from Catherine II. of Russia, to exchange a distinguished position which he had obtained at the Hague for a professorship in the Academy of St. Petersburg. His arrival in that capital occurred just at the time of the departure of the celebrated scientific expedition to Siberia for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus; and, as their mission also embraced the geography and natural history of Siberia, Pallas gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. They set out in June, 1768, and after exploring the vast plains of European Russia, the borders of Calmuck Tartary, and the shores of the Caspian, they crossed the Ural Mountains, examined the celebrated mines of Catherinenberg, proceeded to Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia, and penetrated across the mountains to the Chinese frontier, whence Pallas returned by the route of Astrakan and the Caucasus to St. Petersburg. He reached that city in July, 1774, with broken health, and hair prematurely whitened by sickness and fatigue. He resumed his place in the Academy; and was rewarded by the Empress with many distinctions and lucrative employments, one of which was the charge of instructing the young grand-dukes, Alexander and Constantine. It was during these years that he devoted himself to the compilation of the Vocabularia Comparativa, which comprises two hundred and one languages; but, in 1795, he returned to the Crimea, (where he had obtained an extensive gift of territory from the Empress) for the purpose of recruiting his health and pursuing his researches. After a residence there of fifteen years, he returned to Berlin in 1810, where he died in the following year. It will be seen, therefore, that, prodigious as were his acquirements in that department, the study of languages was but a subordinate pursuit of this extraordinary man. His fame is mainly due to his researches in science. It is to him that we owe the reduction of the astronomical observations of the expedition of 1768; and Cuvier gives him the credit of completely renewing the science of geology, and of almost entirely re-constructing that of natural history. It is difficult, nevertheless,[149] to arrive at an exact conclusion as to the share which he personally took in the compilation of the Vocabulary; and still more so, as to his powers as a speaker of foreign languages; although it is clear that his habits of life as a traveller and scientific explorer, not only facilitated, but even directly necessitated for him, the exercise of that faculty, to a far greater degree than can be supposed in the case of most of the older philologers.
The career of Pallas bears a very remarkable resemblance to that of a more modern scholar, also a native of Berlin, Julius Henry Klaproth. He was the son of the celebrated chemist of that name, and was born in 1783. Although destined by his father to follow his own profession, a chance sight of the collection of Chinese books in the Royal Library at Berlin, irrevocably decided the direction of his studies. With the aid of the imperfect dictionary of Mentzel and Pere Diaz, he succeeded in learning without a master that most difficult language; and, though he complied with his father’s desire, so far as to pursue with success the preparatory studies of the medical profession, he never formally embraced it. After a time he gave his undivided attention to Oriental studies; and, in 1802, established, at Dresden, the Asiatisches Magazin. Like so many of his countrymen, he accepted service in Russia, at the invitation of Count Potocki, who knew him at Berlin; and he was a member of the half-scientific, half-political, mission to Pekin, in 1805, under that eminent scholar and diplomatist. He withdrew, however, from the main body of this expedition, in order to be able to pursue his scientific researches more unrestrainedly; and, after traversing eighteen hundred leagues in the space of twenty months, in the course of which he passed in review all the motley races of that inhospitable region, Samoiedes, Finns, Tartars, Monguls, Paskirs, Dzoungars, Tungooses, &c., he returned to St. Petersburg, in 1806, with a vast collection of notes on the Chinese, Mantchu, Mongul, and Japanese[150] languages. With a similar object, he was soon afterwards sent by the Academy, in September, 1807, to collect information on the languages of the Caucasus, a journey of exceeding difficulty and privation, in which he spent nearly three years. On his return to St. Petersburg, he obtained permission to go to Berlin for the purpose of completing the necessary engravings for his work; and he availed himself of this opportunity to withdraw altogether from the Russian service, although with the forfeiture of all his titles and honours. After a brief sojourn in Italy, he fixed his residence in Paris. To him the Société Asiatique may be said to owe its origin; and he acted, almost up to his death in 1835, as the chief editor of its journal—the well-known Journal Asiatique. In Paris, also, he published his Asia Polyglotta, and “New Mithridates.” Klaproth, perhaps, does not deserve, in any one of the languages which he cultivated, the character of a very deep scholar; but he was acquainted with a large number: with Chinese, Mongol, Mantchu, and Japanese, also with Sanscrit, Armenian, Persian, and Georgian;[151] he was of course perfectly familiar with German, Russian, French, and probably with others of the European languages.
The eminent historical successes of Berthold George Niebuhr, (born at Copenhagen in 1776), have so completely eclipsed the memory of all his other great qualities, that perhaps the reader will not be prepared to find that in the department of languages his attainments were of the highest rank. His father, Carsten Niebuhr, the learned Eastern traveller, had destined him to pursue his own career; but the delicacy of the youth’s constitution, and other circumstances, forced his father to abandon the idea, and saved young Niebuhr for the far more important studies to which his own tastes attracted him. His history, both literary and political, is too recent and too well known to require any formal notice. It will be enough for our purpose to transcribe from his life an extremely interesting letter from his father, which bears upon the particular subject of the present inquiry. It is dated December, 1807, when Niebuhr was little more than thirty years of age. “My son has gone to Memel,” writes the elder Niebuhr, “with the commissariat of the army. When he found he should probably have to go to Riga, he began forthwith to learn Russian. Let us just reckon how many languages he knows already. He was only two years old when we came to Meldorf, so that we must consider, 1st, German, as his mother tongue. He learned at school, 2nd, Latin; 3rd, Greek; 4th, Hebrew; and, besides in Meldorf he learned, 5th, Danish; 6th, English; 7th, French; 8th, Italian; but only so far as to be able to read a book in these languages; some books from a vessel wrecked on the coast induced him to learn, 9th, Portuguese; 10th, Spanish; of Arabic he did not know much at home, because I had lost my lexicon and could not quickly replace it; in Kiel and Copenhagen he had opportunities of practice in speaking and writing French, English, and Danish; in Copenhagen he learned, 11th, Persian, of Count Ludolph, the Austrian minister, who was born at Constantinople, and whose father was an acquaintance of mine; and 12th, Arabic, he taught himself; in Holland he learned, 13th, Dutch; and again, in Copenhagen, 14th, Swedish, and a little Icelandic; at Memel, 15th, Russian; 16th, Slavonic; 17th, Polish; 18th, Bohemian; and, 19th, Illyrian. With the addition of Low German, this makes in all twenty languages.”[152]
As this letter does not enter into the history of Niebuhr’s later studies, I inquired of his friend, the Chevalier Bunsen, whether he had continued to cultivate the faculty thus early developed. I received from him the following interesting statement:—“Niebuhr,” he says, “ought not to be ranked among Linguists, in contradistinction with Philologers. Language had no special interest for him, beyond what it affords in connection with history and literature. His proficiency in languages was, however, very great, in consequence of his early and constant application to history, and his matchless memory. I have spoken of both in my Memoir on Niebuhr, in the German and English edition of Niebuhr’s Letters and Life; it is appended to the 2nd volume of both editions. I think it is somewhere stated how many languages he knew at an early age. What I know is, that besides Greek and Latin, he learned early to read and write Arabic; Hebrew he had also learned, but neglected afterwards; Russian and Slavonic he learned (to read only,) in the years 1808, 1810. He wrote well English, French, and Italian; and read Spanish, and Portuguese. Danish he wrote as well as his mother tongue, German, and he understood Swedish. In short, he would learn with the greatest ease any language which led him to the knowledge of historical truth, when occupied with the subject; but language, as such, had no charm for him.”
Among the scholars who assisted Adelung and Vater in the compilation of the Mithridates, by far the most distinguished was the illustrious Charles William von Humboldt. He was born at Potsdam, in 1767, and received his preliminary education at Berlin. His university studies were made partly at Göttingen, partly at Jena, where he formed the acquaintance and friendship of Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and, above all, of Herder, from whose well-known tastes it is highly probable that Humboldt’s mind received the strong philological bias which it exhibited during his life. Unlike most of the scholars who preceded him in this career, however, Humboldt’s life was spent amid the bustle and intrigue of diplomatical pursuits. He was sent to Rome as Prussian Minister in 1802, and, from that period until 1819, he was almost uniformly employed in this and similar public services. From his return to Berlin, in 1819, he lived almost entirely for science, till his death, which occurred at Tegel, near Berlin, in 1835. Humboldt is, in truth, the author of that portion of the third volume of the Mithridates which treats of the languages of the two continents of America; and, although a great part of its materials were derived from the labours of others—from the memoirs, published and unpublished, of the missionaries, from the works and MSS. of Padre Hervaz, and other similar sources—yet no one can read any single article in the volume without perceiving that Humboldt had made himself thoroughly master of the subject; and that, especially in its bearings upon the general science of philology, or the great question of the unity of languages and its kindred ethnological problems, he had not only exhausted all the learning of his predecessors, but had successfully applied to it all the powers of his own comprehensive and original genius. To the consideration, too, of this numerous family of languages he brought a mind stored with the knowledge of all the other great families both of the East and of the West; and although it is not easy to say what his success in speaking languages may have been, it is impossible to doubt either the variety or the solidity of his attainments both as a scientific and as a practical linguist. But Humboldt’s place with posterity must be that of a philologer rather than of a linguist. His Essay on the “Diversity of the Formation of Human Language, and its Influence on the Intellectual Development of Mankind,” published posthumously in 1836, as an Introduction to his Analysis of the Kawi Language, is a work of extraordinary learning and research, as well as of profound and original thought; analysing all the successive varieties of grammatical structure which characterize the several classes of language in their various stages of structural development, from the naked simplicity of Chinese up to the minute and elaborate inflexional variety of the Sanscritic family. M. Bunsen describes this wonderful work as “the Calculus Sublimis of linguistic theory,” and declares that “it places William von Humboldt’s name by the side of that of Leibnitz in universal comparative ethnological philology.”[153]
The school of Humboldt in Germany has supplied a long series of distinguished names to philological literature, beginning with Frederic von Schlegel, (whose Essay “On the Language and Literature of the Hindoos, 1808,” opened an entirely new view of the science of comparative philology), and continued, through Schlegel’s brother Augustus, Rask, Bopp, Grimm, Lepsius, Pott, Pfizmaier, Hammer-Purgstall (the so-called “Lily of Ten Tongues”), Sauerwein, Diez, Boehtlingk, and the lamented Castrén, down to Bunsen, and his learned fellow-labourers, Max Müller, Paul Boetticher, Aufrecht, and others.[154] For most of those, as for Schlegel, the Sanscrit family of languages has been the great centre of exploration, or at least the chief standard of comparison; and Bopp, in his wonderful work, the “Comparative Grammar of the Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, old Slavonic, Gothic, and German Languages,”[155] has almost exhausted this part of the inquiry. Others (still, however, with the same general view) have devoted themselves to other families, as Lepsius to the Egyptian, Rask to the Scythian, Boehtlingk to the Tartar,[156] Grimm to the Teutonic, Diez to the Romanic, and Castrén to the Finnic. Others, in fine, as Bunsen in his most comprehensive work, “Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History applied to Language,” (the third volume of his “Christianity and Mankind”) have digested the entire subject, and applied the researches of all to the solution of the great problem of the science. Some of those whom I have named rather resembled the ancient heroes of romance and adventure, than the common race of quiet everyday scholars. The journeys of Rask, Klaproth, and Lepsius, were not only full of danger, but often attended with exceeding privation; and Alexander Castrén of Helsingfors was literally a martyr of the science. This enthusiastic student,[157] although a man of extremely delicate constitution, “left his study, travelled for years alone in his sledge through the snowy deserts of Siberia; coasted along the borders of the Polar Sea; lived for whole winters in caves of ice, or in the smoky huts of greasy Samoiedes; then braved the sand-clouds of Mongolia; passed the Baikal; and returned from the frontiers of China to his duties as Professor at Helsingfors, to die after he had given to the world but a few specimens of his treasures.”[158]
Rask and M. Bunsen, even as linguists, deserve to be more specially commemorated.
The former, who was born in 1787 at Brennekilde, in the island of Funen, traversed, in the course of the adventurous journey already alluded to, the Eastern provinces of Russia, Persia, India, Malacca, and the island of Ceylon, and penetrated into the interior of Africa. In all the countries which he visited he made himself acquainted with the various languages which prevailed; so that besides the many languages of his native Teutonic family, those of the Scandinavian, Finnic, and Sclavonic stock, the principal cultivated European languages, and the learned languages (including those of the Bible), he was also familiar with Sanscrit in all its branches; and is justly described as the first who opened the way to “a real grammatical knowledge of Zend.”[159] M. Bunsen’s great work exhibits a knowledge of the structural analysis of a prodigious number of languages, from almost every family. As a master of the learned languages, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and (though he has cultivated these less), Arabic and Persian, he has few superiors. He speaks and writes with equal facility Latin, German, English, French, and Italian, all with singular elegance and purify; he speaks besides Dutch and Danish; he reads Swedish, Icelandic, and the other old German languages, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romaic; and he has also studied many of the less known languages, as Chinese, Basque, Finnic, and Welsh, together with several of the African and North American languages, but chiefly with a view to their grammatical structure, and without any idea of learning to read them.
Nevertheless, with all the linguistic learning which they undoubtedly possess, neither Humboldt nor the other members of his distinguished school fall properly within the scope of this Memoir. With all of them, even those who were themselves accomplished linguists, the knowledge of languages, (and especially of their vocabularies), is a subordinate object. They have never proposed the study to themselves, for its own sake, but only as an instrument of philosophical inquiry. It might almost be said, indeed, that by the reaction which this school has created against the old system of etymological, and in favour of the structural, comparison of languages, a positive discouragement has been given to the exact or extensive study of their vocabularies. Philologers, as a class, have a decided disposition to look down upon, and even to depreciate, the pursuit of linguists. With the former, the knowledge of the words of a language is a very minor consideration in comparison with its inflexions, and still more its laws of transposition (Lautverschiebung); Professor Schott of Berlin plainly avows that “a limited knowledge of languages is sufficient for settling the general questions as to their common origin;”[160] and beyond a catalogue of a certain number of words for the purpose of a comparative vocabulary, there is a manifest tendency on the part of many, to regard all further concern about the words of a language as old-fashioned and puerile. It it some consolation to the admirers of the old school to know, that, from time to time, learned philologers have been roughly taken to task for the presumption with which they have theorized about languages of whose vocabulary they are ignorant; and it is difficult not to regard the unsparing and often very amusing exposures of Professor Schott’s blunders which occur in the long controversy that he has had with Boehtlingk, Mr. Caldwell’s recent strictures[161] upon the Indian learning of Professor Max Müller, or Stanislaus Julien’s still fiercer onslaught on M. Panthier, in the Journal Asiatique,[162] as a sort of retributive offering to the offended Genius of neglected Etymology.
I shall not delay upon the Biblical linguists of Germany as Hug, Jahn, Schott, Windischmann, Vullers, &c., among Catholics, or the rival schools of Rosenmüller, Tholuck, Ewald, Gesenius, Fürst, Beer, De Lagarde, &c. Extensive[163] as is the range of the attainments of these distinguished men in the languages of the Bible, and their literature, this accomplishment has now become so universal among German Biblical scholars, that it has almost ceased to be regarded as a title to distinction. Its very masters are lost in the crowd of eminent men who have grown up on all sides around him.
Among the scholars of modern Hungary there are a few names which deserve to be mentioned. Sajnovitz’s work on the common origin of the Magyar and Lapp languages, though written in 1770, long before the science of Comparative Philology had been reduced to its present form, has obtained the praise of much learning and ingenuity. Gyarmathi, who wrote somewhat later on the affinity of the Magyar and Finnic languages (1799) is admitted by M. Bunsen[164] to “deserve a very high rank among the founders of that science.” But neither of these authors can be considered as a linguist. Father Dubrowsky, of whom I shall speak elsewhere, although born in Hungary, cannot properly be considered as a Hungarian. Kazinczy, Kisfaludy, and their followers, have confined themselves almost entirely to the cultivation of their own native language, or at least to the ethnological affinities which it involves.
I have only discovered one linguist of modern Hungary whom I can consider entitled to a special notice, but the singular and almost mysterious interest which attaches to his name may in some measure compensate for the comparative solitude in which it is found.
I allude to the celebrated Magyar pilgrim and philologer, Csoma de Körös. His name is written in his own language, Körösi Csoma Sandor; but in the works which he has published (all of which are in English), it is given in the above form. He was born of a poor, but noble family, about 1790, at Körös, in Transylvania; and, received a gratuitous education at the College of Nagy-Enyed. The leading idea which engrossed this enthusiastic scholar during life, was the discovery of the original of the Magyar race; in search of which (after preparing himself for about five years, at Göttingen, by the study of medicine and of the Oriental languages,) he set out in 1820, on a pilgrimage to the East, “lightly clad, with a little stick in his hand, as if meditating a country walk, and with but a hundred florins, (about £10), in his pocket.” The only report of his progress which was received for years afterwards, informed his friends that he had crossed the Balkan, visited Constantinople, Alexandria, and the Arabic libraries at Cairo; and, after traversing Egypt and Syria, had arrived at Teheran. Here, on hearing a few words of the Tibetan language, he was struck by their resemblance to Magyar; and, in the hope of thus resolving his cherished problem, he crossed Little Bucharia to the desert of Gobi; traversed many of the valleys of the Himalaya; and finally buried himself for four years (1827-1830), in the Buddhist Monastery of Kanam, deeply engaged in the study of Tibetan; four months of which time he spent in a room nine feet square, (without once quitting it), and in a temperature below zero! He quickly discovered his mistake as to the affinity of Tibetan with Magyar; but he pursued his Tibetan studies in the hope of obtaining in the sacred books of Tibet some light upon the origin of his nation; and before his arrival at Calcutta, in 1830, he had written down no less than 40,000 words in that language. He had hardly reached Calcutta when he was struck down by the mortifying discovery that the Tibetan books to which he had devoted so many precious years were but translations from the Sanscrit! From 1830 he resided for several years chiefly at Calcutta, engaged in the study of Sanscrit and other languages, and employed in various literary services by the Asiatic Society of Bengal. He published in 1834 a Tibetan and English Dictionary, and contributed many interesting papers to the Asiatic Journal, and the Journal of the Bengal Asiatic Society. In 1842, he set out afresh upon the great pilgrimage which he had made the object of his life; and, having reached Dharjeeling on his way to Sikam in Tibet, he was seized by a sudden illness, which, as he refused to take medicine, rapidly carried him off. This strange, though highly gifted man, had studied in the course of his adventurous life, seventeen or eighteen languages, in several of which he was a proficient.[165]
The career of this enthusiastic Magyar resembles in many respects that of Castrén, the Danish philologer; and in nothing more than in the devotedness with which each of them applied himself to the investigation of the origin of his native language and to the discovery of the ethnological affinities of his race.
The names with which the catalogue of Italian and that of Spanish linguists open, find a worthy companion in the first name among the linguists of Britain.
With others the study of languages, or of kindred sciences, formed almost the business of life. But it was not so with the wonder of his own and of all succeeding generations—the “Admirable Crichton”; who, notwithstanding the universality of his reputation, became almost equally eminent in each particular study, as any of those who devoted all their powers to that single pursuit.
James Crichton was born in 1561, in Scotland. The precise place of his birth is uncertain, but he was the son of Robert Crichton of Eliock, Lord Advocate of James VI. He was educated at St. Andrew’s. The chief theatres of his attainments, however, were France and Italy. There is not an accomplishment which he did not possess in its greatest perfection—from the most abstruse departments of scholarship, philosophy, and divinity, down to the mere physical gifts and graces of the musician, the athlete, the swordsman, and the cavalier. His memory was a prodigy both of quickness and of tenacity. He could repeat verbatim, after a single hearing, the longest and most involved discourse.[166] Many of the details which are told of him are doubtless exaggerated and perhaps legendary; but Mr. Patrick Frazer Tytler[167] has shown that the substance of his history, prodigious as it seems, is perfectly reliable. As regards the particular subject of our present inquiry, one account states that, when he was but sixteen years old, he spoke ten languages. Another informs us that, at the age of twenty, the number of languages of which he was master exactly equalled the number of his years. But the most tangible data which we possess are drawn from his celebrated thesis in the University of Paris, in which he undertook to dispute in any of twelve languages—Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, English, German, Flemish, and Slavonic. I am inclined to believe that Crichton’s acquirements extended at least so far as this. It might seem that a vague challenge to dispute in any one of a number of foreign tongues was an empty and unsubstantial boast, and a mere exhibition of vanity, perfectly safe from the danger of exposure. But it is clear that Crichton’s challenge was not so unpractical as this. He not only specified the languages of his challenge, but there is hardly one of those that he selected which was not represented in the University of Paris at the time, not only sufficiently to test the proficiency of the daring disputant, but to secure his ignominious exposure, if there were grounds to suspect him of charlatanism or imposture. Unhappily, however, the promise of a youth so brilliant was cut short by an early death, in 1583, at the age of twenty-two years. Nor did Crichton leave behind him any work by which posterity might test the reality of his acquirements, except a few Latin verses printed by his friend, Aldus Manutius, on whose generous patronage, with all his accomplishments, he had been dependent for the means of subsistence during one of the most brilliant periods of his career.
A few years Crichton’s senior in point of time, although, from the precociousness of Crichton’s genius, his junior in reputation, was Lancelot Andrews, Bishop of Winchester. He was born in London in 1555, and, after a distinguished career in the university, rose, through a long course of ecclesiastical preferments, to the see of Winchester. Beyond the general praises of his scholarship in which all his biographers indulge, few particulars are preserved respecting his attainments. Among his contemporaries he was regarded as a prodigy. Wanley says[168] that “some thought he might almost have served as interpreter-general at the confusion of tongues;” and even the more prosaic Chalmers attributes to him a profound knowledge of the “chief Oriental tongues, Greek, Latin, and many modern languages.”[169]
John Gregory, who was born at Agmondesham in Buckinghamshire, in the year 1607, would probably have far surpassed Andrews as a linguist, had he not been cut off prematurely before he had completed his thirtieth year. He was a youth of unexampled industry and perseverance, devoting sixteen hours of the twenty-four to his favourite studies. Even at the early age at which he died he had mastered not only the Oriental and classical languages, but also French, Italian, and Spanish, and, what was far more remarkable in his day, his ancestral Anglo-Saxon. But he died in the very blossom of his promise, in 1646.
These, however, must be regarded as exceptional cases. The study of languages, it must be confessed, occupied at this period but little of public attention in England. It holds a very subordinate place in the great scheme of Bacon’s “Advancement of Learning.” In the model Republic of his “New Atlantis” only four languages appear, “ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, good Latin of the School, and Spanish.”[170] Gregory’s contemporaries, the brothers John and Thomas Greaves, though both distinguished Persian and Arabic scholars, never made a name in other languages. Notwithstanding the praise which Clarendon bestows on Selden’s “stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages,”[171] it is certain that the range of his languages was very limited. So, also, what Hallam says of Hugh Broughton as a man “deep in Jewish erudition,”[172] must be understood rather of the literature than of the languages of the East; and although Hugh Broughton’s namesake, Richard, (one of the missionary priests in England in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and an antiquarian of considerable merit, mentioned by Dodd[173]) was a learned Hebraist, there is no evidence of his having gone farther in these studies.
Indeed, strange as it may at first sight appear, the first epoch in English history really prolific in eminent scholars is the stormy period of the great Civil War. It is not a little remarkable that the most creditable fruit of English scholarship, Walton’s Polyglot Bible, was matured, if not brought to light, under the Republic.
The men who were engaged in this work, however, were, for the most part, merely book-scholars. Edmund Castell, born at Halley, in Cambridgeshire, in 1606, author of the Heptaglot Lexicon, which formed the companion or supplement of Walton’s Bible, is admitted to have been one of the most profound Orientalists of his day. This Lexicon comprises seven Oriental languages, Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic, and Persian; and, if we add to these the classical languages, we shall find Castell’s attainments to have been little inferior to those of any linguist before his time; even without reckoning whatever modern languages he may be supposed to have known. Castell, nevertheless, is one of the most painful examples of neglected scholarship in all literary history. Disraeli truly says that he more than devoted his life to his Lexicon Heptaglotton.[174] His own Appeal to Charles the Second, if less noble and dignified than Johnson’s celebrated preface to the Dictionary, is yet one of the most touching documents on record. He laments the “seventeen years during which he devoted sixteen or eighteen hours a day to his labour. He declares that he had expended his whole inheritance (above twelve thousand pounds), upon the work; and that he spent his health and eyesight as well as his fortune, upon a thankless task.” The copies of his Lexicon remained unsold upon his hands; and, out of the whole five hundred copies which he left at his death, hardly one complete copy escaped destruction by damp and vermin. “The whole load of learned rags sold for seven pounds!”[175]
I cannot find that either Castell or his friend (though by no means his equal as a linguist), Brian Walton possessed any remarkable faculty in speaking even the languages with which they were most familiar.
Another of Walton’s associates in the compilation of the Polyglot, as well as in other learned undertakings, Edward Pocock (born at Oxford in 1604,) appears to have given more attention to the accomplishment of speaking foreign languages. In addition to Latin, Greek, French, and probably Italian, he was well versed in Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic, and Arabic. During a residence of six years at Aleppo, as British chaplain, (1600-6), he had the advantage of receiving instructions from a native doctor, in the language and literature of Arabia; and he engaged an Arab servant for the sole purpose of enjoying the opportunity of speaking the language.[176] In a second journey to the East, undertaken a few years later, under the patronage of Laud, he extended his acquaintance with these languages. Two of Pocock’s sons, Edward and Thomas, attained a certain eminence in the same pursuit; but neither of them can be said to have approached the fame of their father.
The mention of Arabian literature suggests the distinguished names of Simon Ockley, the earliest English historian of Mahometanism, and of George Sale, the first English translator of its sacred book. Both were in their time Orientalists of high character; but both of them appear to have applied chiefly to Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, rather than to the Biblical languages. Both, too, may be cited among the examples of unsuccessful scholarship. It was in a debtor’s prison at Cambridge that Ockley found leisure for the completion of his great History of the Saracens; and it is told of the learned translator of the Koran, that too often, when he quitted his studies, he wanted a change of linen, and frequently wandered in the streets in search of some compassionate friend who might supply him with the meal of the day![177]
Another scholar of high repute at the same period, is Samuel Clarke. He was born at Brackley, in Northamptonshire, in 1623, and was a student at Merton College, Oxford, when the parliamentary commission undertook the reform of the University. The general report of the period represents him as a very profound and accomplished linguist; but the only direct evidence which remains of the extent of his powers, is the fact that he assisted Walton in the preparation of his Polyglot Bible, and also Castell in the composition of his Heptaglot Lexicon. He died in 1669.
Early in the same century was born John Wilkins, another linguist of some pretensions. Perhaps, however, he is better known by the efforts which he made to recommend that ideal project for a Universal Language which has occupied the thoughts of so many learned enthusiasts since his time, than by his own positive and practical attainments; although he published a Collection of Pater Nosters which possesses no inconsiderable philological merit. He was born in 1614, at Fawsley, in Northamptonshire; and at the early age of thirteen, he was admitted a scholar of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1634. In the contest between the Crown and the Parliament, Wilkins became a warm partisan of the latter. He was named Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, by the parliamentary commission in 1648. Some years later, in 1656, he married Robina, sister of the Protector, and widow of Peter French; the Protector having granted him a dispensation from the statute which requires celibacy, as one of the conditions of the tenure of his Wardenship. In 1659, Richard Cromwell promoted him to the Mastership of Trinity College, Cambridge; from which, however, he was dispossessed at the Restoration. But his reputation for scholarship, seemingly through the influence of Buckingham,[178] outweighed his political demerits; and he was named successively Dean of Ripon and Bishop of Chester, in which latter dignity he died in 1670.
The unhappy deistical writer, John Toland, born in the County Donegal, in Ireland, in 1669, was one of the most skilful linguists of his day. His birth was probably illegitimate, and he was baptized by the strange name of James Junius,[179] which the ridicule of his schoolfellows caused him to change for that by which he is now known. During his early youth, he was a member of the Catholic religion; but his daring and sceptical mind early threw off the salutary restraints which that creed imposes, although, like Gibbon, only to abandon Christianity itself in abandoning Catholicity. His eventful and erratic career does not fall within the scope of this notice, and I will only mention that in the singular epitaph, which he composed for his own tomb, he speaks of himself as “linguarum plus decem sciens.” In several of these ten languages, as he states in his memorial to the Earl of Oxford,[180] he spoke and wrote with as much fluency as in English. Toland died at Putney, in 1722.
From this period the same great blank occurs in the history of English scholarship, which we have observed in almost all the contemporary literatures of Europe. Still a few names may be gleaned from the general obscurity.[181] It is true that what many persons may deem the most notable publication of the time, Chamberlayne’s Collection of Pater Nosters, (1715), was rather a literary curiosity than a work of genuine scholarship. But there are other higher, though less known, names.
The once notorious “Orator Henley,” whom the Dunciad has immortalized as the