§ VI. LINGUISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.
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
“Preacher at once, and Zany of his age,”
was unquestionably a linguist of great acquirements. His “Complete Linguist,” consisting of grammars of ten languages, was published when he was but twenty-five years old; and throughout his entire career, eccentric as it was, he appears to have persevered in the same studies. John Henley was born at Melton Mowbray, in 1692, and graduated in the University of Cambridge. He took orders, and obtained some notoriety as a preacher; but his great theatre of display was his so-called “Oratory,” where he delivered orations or lectures on a variety of topics, religious, political, humorous, and even profane. It was on one of these occasions that he drew together a large congregation of shoemakers, by the promise of showing them “the best, newest, and most expeditious way of making shoes,” which he proceeded to illustrate by holding out a boot and cutting off the leg part! Henley died in 1756.[182]
What Henley was in the learned languages, the distinguished statesman Lord Carteret, afterwards Earl of Granville, was in the modern. With all his brilliant qualities as a debater, and all his great capacity for public affairs, Carteret combined the learning and the accomplishments of a finished scholar. Swift said of him that “he carried away from Oxford more Greek, Latin, and philosophy, than became a person of his rank.” He spoke and wrote French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and even Swedish; and one of the first causes of the jealousy with which Walpole regarded him, was the volubility with which he was able to hold converse in German with their common master, George the First.
But Henley and Carteret stand almost alone among the English scholars of the early half of the seventeenth century; and the first steady impulse which the study of languages received in England, may be chiefly traced to the attractions of the honourable and emolumentary service of the East India Company. What the diplomatic ambition of France in the Levant effected among the scholars of that country, the commercial enterprise of the merchant princess of England achieved in her Indian territory; and the splendid rewards held out to practical Oriental scholarship, gave an impulse to the study of Eastern languages on a more liberal and comprehensive scale.[183] It is in great part to this, that we are indebted for the splendid successes of Sir William Jones, of Marsden, of Colebrooke, of Craufurd, of Lumsden, of Leyden, and still more recently, of Colonel Vans Kennedy.
The first of these, William Jones, was the son of a school-master, and was born in London, in 1741. He was educated at Harrow, where he exhibited an early taste for languages,[184] and was especially distinguished in Greek and Latin metrical composition. In 1764, he entered the University of Oxford, where he learned Arabic from a Syrian whose acquaintance he chanced to form. To this he soon after added Persian; and in 1770, he performed the very unusual feat of translating the history of Nadir Shah into French. In the following year he published his Persian Grammar, which took the general public as much by surprise, by the beauty and eloquence of the poetical translations which accompanied the copious examples that illustrated it, as it excited the admiration of scholars by the simplicity and practical good sense of its technical details. He soon afterwards applied himself to the language and literature of China; which, however, he never made a profound study, as about this time (1770), feeling the precariousness of a purely literary profession, he took steps to have himself called to the English bar, and for the following twelve years devoted himself with all his characteristic energy, and with marked success, to its laborious and engrossing duties. During the same period he endeavoured unsuccessfully to obtain a seat in Parliament; but in 1783, he accepted the appointment of Judge in the supreme court at Calcutta, and repaired to India in the same year. His attention to the duties of his office, is said to have been most earnest and exemplary. But, in the intervals of duty, he travelled over a great part of India; mixed eagerly in native society; and had acquired a familiarity with the history, antiquities, religions, science, and laws of India, such as had never before been attained by any European scholar, when, unhappily for the science to which he was so thoroughly devoted, he was cut off prematurely in the year 1794, at the early age of forty-seven. During a life thus laborious, and in great part spent in pursuits utterly uncongenial with linguistic studies, Sir William Jones had nevertheless amassed a store of languages which had seldom, perhaps never, been equalled before his time. Fortunately too, unlike most of the linguists whom we have been enumerating, he himself left an autograph record of these studies, which Lord Teignmouth has preserved in his interesting Biography. In this paper, he describes the total number of languages with which he was in any degree acquainted to have been twenty-eight; but he further distributes these into classes according to the degree of his familiarity with each. From this curious memorandum, it appears that he had studied critically eight languages, viz:—English, Latin, French, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Sanscrit; eight others he had studied less perfectly, but all were intelligible to him with the aid of a Dictionary, viz:—Spanish, Portuguese, German, Runick, Hebrew, Bengali, Hindi, Turkish; twelve others, in fine, he had studied least perfectly; but he considered all these attainable; namely Tibetan, Pali, Palavi, Deri, Russian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Coptic, Welsh, Swedish, Dutch, and Chinese.[185]
Now, as Lord Teignmouth[186] describes him as perfectly familiar with Spanish, Portuguese, and German, three languages which he has himself placed on the list of languages, “less critically studied, but intelligible with the aid of a dictionary,” it may fairly be believed that this estimate is, to say the least, a sufficiently modest one; and that his acquaintance even with the languages of the third class was by no means superficial, we may infer from another memorandum preserved by Lord Teignmouth from which we find that he had studied the grammars of two at least of the number, namely: Russian and Welsh. His biographer, however, unfortunately enters into no details as to his power of speaking languages; but he is said by the writer of the notice in the Biographie Universelle to have spoken eight languages as perfectly as his native English.
In contrast with successes so brilliant as these, the comparatively humble career of the other British Orientalists named in conjunction with Sir William Jones, will appear tame and uninteresting. William Marsden was born in Dublin, 1754; and, after having completed the ordinary classical studies, was sent out to Bencoolen in the island of Sumatra, at the early age of sixteen. The extraordinary facility which he exhibited for acquiring the Malay languages led to his rapid advancement. He was named first under-secretary, and afterwards chief secretary of the Island; and, before his return in 1779, he had accumulated the materials for the exceedingly valuable work on Sumatra which he published in 1782. Marsden held several important appointments after his return,[187] and he employed every interval of his official duties in literary pursuits. He was a thorough master of Sanscrit, and all its kindred languages; but he must be described, nevertheless, rather as a book-learned, than a practical linguist. His Essay on the Polynesian or East Insular languages, tracing their connexion with each other, and their common relations with Sanscrit, is still a standard source of information on this interesting ethnological question.
Henry Thomas Colebrooke,[188] well known by his numerous contributions to Oriental literature, especially in the Asiatic Journal, was also an official of the East India Company, whose employment he entered, while still very young, as a civil servant. Colebrooke was well versed, not only in the Indian languages, but also in those of the Hebrew and cognate races; and his early education in France gave him a greater familiarity with French and other modern tongues than is often found to accompany the more profound linguistic studies.
Matthew Lumsden was born in Aberdeenshire in 1777, and went as a mere boy to India, where his brother had an appointment in the service of the Company. Lumsden’s knowledge of Hindostani and of Persian led to his being employed first as translator in the criminal court, and afterwards as professor in Fortwilliam College, where he remained till 1820. His skill in Persian and Arabic is attested by several publications upon both, chiefly elementary; but he can hardly be classed with the higher Orientalists, much less with linguists of more universal pretensions.
Lord Cockburn, in the lively section of his amusing “Memorials of his Own Time” which he devotes to the singular and unsteady career of John Leyden, says that M’Intosh, to whom “his wild friend” was clearly a source of great amusement, used to laugh at the affected modesty with which Leyden “professed to know but seventy languages.”[189] It is plain that M’Intosh considered this an extreme exaggeration; but there can be no doubt, nevertheless, that Leyden was a very extraordinary linguist. This strange man, whose name will perhaps be remembered by the frequent allusions to it in the early correspondence of Sir Walter Scott, was born of a very humble family at Denholm in 1775. Though his education was of the very lowest order, yet Scott relates that “before he had attained his nineteenth year, he confounded the doctors of Edinburgh by the portentous mass of his acquisitions in almost every department of knowledge.”[190] Having failed very signally in the clerical profession, to which he was brought up by his parents, he embraced that of medicine; and, after undergoing a more than ordinary share of the privations and vicissitudes of literary life such as it then existed, he went to Madras in 1803 in the capacity of assistant surgeon in the East India Company’s service. The adoption of this career decided the course of his after studies. He had learned, while yet a mere youth, preparing for the university, Hebrew and Arabic. He afterwards extended his researches into all the chief languages of the East, Sanscrit, Hindustani, and many other minor varieties of the Indian tongues. He was also thorough master of Persian. His career as Professor of Hindustani at Calcutta was more successful than that of any European scholar since Sir William Jones. Having also studied the Malay language, from which he made several translations, he was induced to accompany Lord Minto on the Java expedition in 1811, where he was cut off after a short illness in the same year, too soon, unhappily, to allow of his turning to full account the important materials which he had collected for the comparative study of the Indo-Chinese languages.
The well-known evangelical commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, born in 1760, of very humble parentage, at Magherafelt, in the County of Londonderry, in the north of Ireland, and for a long course of years the most distinguished preacher of the Methodist communion, enjoyed a high reputation among his followers as a linguist; but his studies had been confined almost entirely to the Biblical languages. The same may be said of the Rev. Dr. Barrett, vice-provost of Trinity College, Dublin, who is known to Biblical students as the editor of the Palimpsest MS. of the Gospels, and of the celebrated Codex Montfortianus.
But there is more of curious interest in the career of a very extraordinary individual, Richard Roberts Jones, of Aberdarvan, in Carnarvonshire, who, if not for the extent of his attainments, at least for the exceedingly unfavourable circumstances under which they were acquired, deserves a place among examples of the “pursuit of knowledge under difficulties.” A privately printed memoir of this singular character, by Mr. Roscoe, who took much interest in him, and exerted himself warmly in his behalf, contains several most curious particulars regarding his studies and acquirements, as well as his personal habits and appearance. Mr. Roscoe first met him in 1806, and described him to Dr. Parr as “a poor Welsh fisher-lad, as ragged as a colt, and as uncouth as any being that has a semblance of humanity. But beneath such an exterior,” he adds, “is a mind cultivated, not only beyond all reasonable expectation, but beyond all probable conception. In his fishing boat on the coast of Wales, at an age little more than twenty, he has acquired Greek, Hebrew, and Latin; has read the Iliad, Hesiod, Theocritus, &c.; studied the refinements of Greek pronunciation; and examined the connection of that language with Hebrew.” An attempt was made to raise him to a position more befitting his acquirements. But his habits were of the rudest and most uncleanly. “He loved to lie on his back in the bottom of a ditch. His uncouth appearance, solitary habits, and perhaps weak intellect, made him an object of ridicule and persecution to the children of the district; and, he often carried an iron pot on his head to screen him from the stones and clods which they threw at him. He wore a large filthy wrapper, in the pockets and folds of which he stowed his library; and his face, covered with hair, gave him a strangely uncouth appearance; although the mild and abstracted expression of his features took from it much of its otherwise repulsive character.” Mr. Roscoe gives a very curious account of an interview between Dr. Parr and this strange genius, in 1815, in the course of which Jones “exhibited a familiarity with French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee.” He described too, for Dr. Parr, his mode of acquiring a new language, which consisted in carefully examining its vocabulary, ascertaining what words in it corresponded with those of any language which he had previously learned, and having struck such words out of the vocabulary, proceeding to impress the remaining words upon his memory, as being the only ones which were peculiar to the new language which he sought to acquire. It may easily be believed that Jones’s irreclaimably uncouth and eccentric habits defeated the efforts made by his friends to place him in a condition more befitting his acquirements. Clothes with which their thoughtfulness might replace his habitual rags, in a few days were sure to present the same filthy and dilapidated appearance. When a bed was provided for him, he chose to sleep not upon, but under it; and all his habits bespoke at once weakness of mind and indisposition, or perhaps incapacity, to accommodate himself to the ordinary usages of other men.
Dr. Thomas Young, although his fame must rest chiefly upon his brilliant philosophical discoveries, (especially in the Theory of Light), and on his success in deciphering and systematizing the hieroglyphical writing of the Egyptians, as exhibited in the inscriptions of the Rosetta Stone and in the funereal papyri, cannot be passed over in a history of eminent British linguists. Young was born at Milverton in Somersetshire, in 1773. His mind was remarkably precocious. He had read the whole Bible twice through, besides other books, before he was four years old. In his seventh year he learnt Latin; and before he left school in his thirteenth year, he added to this Greek, French, and Italian. Soon after his return from school, he mastered Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Persian; and, in all those languages, as well as in his own, his reading (of which his journals have preserved a most minute and accurate record), was so various and so vast, as almost to exceed belief. Having embraced the medical profession, he passed two years in different German Universities, during which time he not only extended his knowledge of learned languages, but also became perfect master of German;—not to speak of various other acquisitions, some of them of a class which are seldom found to accompany scholastic eminence, such as riding two horses at the same time, walking or dancing on the tight rope, and various other feats of harlequinade! Of his skill in the ancient Egyptian language, as well as its more modern forms, in which he rivalled, and as his English biographer, Dr. Peacock, seeks to show,[191] surpassed, Champollion and Lepsius, it is unnecessary to speak: and it is highly probable that, having learned Italian while a mere youth,[192] he also made himself acquainted with Spanish, and perhaps Portuguese.
Dr. Pritchard, who may be regarded as the founder of the English school of ethnography, can hardly, notwithstanding, be strictly called a linguist. If we except the Celtic languages, and Greek, Latin, and German, most of his learning regarding the rest is taken at second-hand from Adelung and others. Nevertheless, the linguistic section of his “Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” is a work of very great value. M. Bunsen pronounces it “the best of its kind; infinitely superior, as a whole, to Adelung’s Mithridates”;[193] and Cardinal Wiseman, in his masterly lecture “On the Natural History of the Human race,” not only gives Pritchard the credit of being “almost the first who attempted to connect ethnography with philology,” but even goes so far as to say that it will henceforth “be difficult for any one to treat of this theme without being indebted to Dr. Pritchard for a great portion of his materials.”[194]
Of the school of living British linguists I shall not be expected to speak at much length; but there are a few names so familiar to the scholars of every country that it would be unpardonable to pass them over entirely without notice.
The work just quoted, from the very time of its publication in 1836, established the reputation of Dr. (now Cardinal) Wiseman, still a very young writer, as a philologist of the first rank. His latest writings show that, through all the engrossing duties in which he has since been engaged, he has continued to cultivate the science of philology.[195] The Cardinal is, moreover, a most accomplished linguist. Besides the ordinary learned languages, he is master not only of Hebrew and Chaldee, but also of Syriac (of his scholarship in which his Horæ Syriacæ is a most honourable testimony), Arabic, Persian, and Sanscrit. In modern languages he has few superiors. He speaks with fluency and elegance French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese; and in most of these languages he has frequently preached or lectured extempore, or with little preparation.
The interesting discoveries of Colonel Rawlinson and of Dr. Hincks, and Dr. Cureton’s very important Syriac publications, have associated their names with the linguistic as well as the antiquarian memories of this age. Nor are there many English Orientalists whose foreign reputation is so high as that of Mr. Lane. But I am unable to speak of the attainments of any of these gentlemen in the other families of language.
By far the most noticeable names in the list of living linguists of British race are those of Sir John Bowring, now Governor at Hong-Kong, Professor Lee of Cambridge, and the American ex-blacksmith, Elihu Burritt. All three, beyond their several degrees of personal merit, possess a common claim to admiration, as being almost entirely self-educated. John (now Sir John) Bowring, as I learn from a Memoir published about three years since,[196] before he had attained his eighteenth year, had learned Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. He is said to have since added to his store almost every language of Europe;—Russian, Servian, Bohemian, Polish, Hungarian, Slovakian, Swedish, Danish, Icelandic, Lettish, Finnish, and even Basque; and he is further described as familiar with all the provincial varieties of each; for instance, of the various offshoots of German, and of the several dialects of Spanish which prevail in Catalonia, Valencia and Galicia. Dr. Bowring’s later career brought him into familiarity with Arabic and Turkish; and his still more recent successes in China and in Siam and its dependencies are equally remarkable. It is not so easy to offer an opinion as to the degree of Sir John Bowring’s acquaintance with each of the languages which are ascribed to him. His interesting poetical translations from Russian, Servian, Bohemian, and other languages of Europe, are rather a test of elegant literary tastes than of exact linguistic attainments; nor am I aware to what more direct ordeal his various attainments have been subjected. It were to be wished that the Memoir from which these particulars are derived had entered more into detail upon this part of the subject. But, even making every allowance for possible exaggeration, it seems impossible to doubt the claim of Sir John Bowring to a place in the very highest rank of modern linguists.
Dr. Samuel Lee is perhaps even a still more extraordinary example of self-education. He was born in the very humblest rank in the village of Longnor in Shropshire, and, after having spent a short time in the poor-school of his native village, commenced life as a carpenter’s apprentice, when he was but twelve years old. In the few intervals of leisure which this laborious occupation permitted, Mr. Jerdan states[197] that, without the least assistance from masters, he taught himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Chaldee; having contrived, from the hoardings of his scanty wages, to procure a few elementary books in these and other languages. On his marriage, however, he was forced to sell the little library which he had accumulated, in order to provide for the new wants with which he found himself encompassed: and for a time his struggle after learning was suspended; but his extraordinary attainments having begun to attract notice, he was relieved from the uncongenial occupation which he had hitherto followed, and appointed master of a school at Shrewsbury. In the more favourable position which he had thus obtained, he soon extended his reading to Arabic, Persian, and Hindustani. In 1813 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where it is worthy of note that he distinguished himself no less in science than in languages, and took his degree with much credit. He was afterwards appointed superintendent of the Oriental press of the British and Foreign Bible Society, for which body he has not only edited the Arabic, Persian, Coptic, Hindustani, Malay, and other versions of the Bible, but has also translated, or superintended the translation, of many tracts in these various languages. When Mr. Wheaton, an American traveller, (brother of the well-known American jurist of that name) visited Professor Lee, he found him acquainted with no less than “sixteen languages, in most of which he was able to write.”[198] Neither this writer, however, nor Mr. Jerdan, informs us as to the extent of Dr. Lee’s attainments in speaking foreign languages.
The list of linguists of the British race may be closed not unworthily with the still more remarkable name of Elihu Burritt, who, though born in America (in 1811,) is descended of an English family, settled in Connecticut for the last two centuries. The circumstances of Burritt’s father, who was a shoemaker, were so narrow, that the education of Elihu, the youngest of five sons, was entirely neglected. When his father died, Elihu, then above fifteen years old, had spent but three months at school; and, being altogether dependent on his own exertions for support, he was obliged to bind himself as an apprentice to the trade of blacksmith. Fortunately, however, an elder brother who was a schoolmaster, settled in the same town before the term of Elihu’s apprenticeship expired; and as the latter had carefully devoted each spare moment of his laborious life to reading every book that came within his reach, he gladly availed himself, as soon as he became his own master, of his brother’s offer to take him as a pupil for half a year, which was all the time he could hope to spare from his craft. During that time, brief as it was, Elihu “became well versed in mathematics, went through Virgil in the original, and read several French books.” Having thus laid the foundation, he returned to his trade, resolved to labour till he should have acquired the means of completing the work; and, in the strong passion for knowledge which devoured him, he actually engaged himself to do the work of two men, in order that, by receiving double wages, he might more quickly realize the desired independence. Yet, even while he was thus doubly tasked, and while his daily hours of labour were no less than fourteen, he contrived to give some time in the mornings and evenings to Latin, French, and Spanish; and he actually procured a small “Greek grammar, which would just lie in the crown of his hat, and used to carry it with him to read during his work—the casting of brass cow bells, a task which required no small amount of attention!”
With the little store which he thus toilfully accumulated, he betook himself to New Haven, the seat of Yale College, although without a hope of being able to avail himself of its literary advantages. Here too he worked almost unaided. He took lodgings at an inn frequented by the students, though too poor to enter the university; and in the course of a few months, by unremitting study, he read through the whole Iliad in Greek, and had made considerable progress in Italian and German, besides extending his knowledge of Spanish and French. Having obtained, soon afterwards, a commercial appointment, he was partially released, for a space, from the mechanical drudgery in which he was so long engaged; and, as he was thus enabled to devote a little more time to his favourite studies, he contrived to learn Hebrew, and made his first advance towards a regular course of Oriental reading. But this interval of rest was a brief one; after a very mortifying failure, he was at last compelled to return once more to the anvil, as his only sure resource against poverty. Still, nevertheless, he toiled on in his enthusiastic struggle for knowledge. Even while engaged in this painful drudgery, “every moment,” says Mrs. Howitt,[199] “which he could steal out of the four-and-twenty hours was devoted to study; he rose early in the winter mornings, and, while the mistress of the house was preparing breakfast by lamplight, he would stand by the mantel-piece, with his Hebrew Bible on the shelf, and his lexicon in his hand, thus studying while he ate; the same method was pursued at the other meals; mental and bodily food being taken in together. This severe labour of mind, as might be expected, produced serious effects on his health; he suffered much from headaches, the characteristic remedy for which were two or three additional hours of hard forging, and a little less study.”
An extract from his own weekly Diary, which Mrs. Howitt has preserved, tells the story of his struggle still more touchingly:—“Monday, June 18, headache; forty pages Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth, sixty-four pages French, eleven hours forging. Tuesday, sixty-five lines of Hebrew, thirty pages of French, ten pages Cuvier’s Theory, eight lines Syriac, ten ditto Danish, ten ditto Bohemian, nine ditto Polish, fifteen names of stars, ten hours forging. Wednesday, twenty-five lines Hebrew, fifty pages of astronomy, eleven hours forging. Thursday, fifty-five lines Hebrew, eight ditto Syriac, eleven hours forging. Friday, unwell; twelve hours forging. Saturday, unwell; fifty pages Natural Philosophy, ten hours forging. Sunday, lesson for Bible class.”
Through these and many similar difficulties, has this extraordinary man found his way to eminence. Without attempting to chronicle the stages of his progress, it will be enough to state that a writer of last year describes him as at present acquainted with eighteen languages, besides his native English, viz:—Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Ethiopic, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Danish, Irelandic, Esthonian, Bohemian, and Polish.[200] He is author of several works, and was for some time Editor of a Journal entitled “The Christian Citizen.”
As in the case of Dr. Lee, no attempt is made, in either of the biographies of Burritt which I have consulted, to define with exactness the degree of his knowledge of each among the various languages which he has learned; but if his proficiency in them be at all considerable, his position among linguists must be admitted to be of the very highest; and as he is still only in his forty-sixth year, it would be difficult to predict what may be the limit of his future successes.