RICHARD CLEASBY (1797-1847).
In the forties of the nineteenth century several minds began to work, independently of one another, in this wider field of Icelandic literature. Richard Cleasby (1797-1847), an English merchant's son with scholarly instincts, began the study of the sagas, but made slight progress because of what he called an "unaccountable and most scandalous blank," the want of a dictionary. This was in 1840, and for the next seven years he labored to fill up that blank. The record [[16]] of those years is a wonderful witness to the heroism and spirit of the scholar, and justifies Sir George Dasent's characterization of Cleasby as "one of the most indefatigable students that ever lived." The work thus begun was not completed until many years afterward (it is dated 1874), and, by untoward circumstances, very little of it is Richard Cleasby's. But generous scholarship acknowledged its debt to the man who gave his strength and his wealth to the work, by placing his name on the title-page. No less shall we fail to honor his memory by mentioning his labors here. Although the dictionary was not completed in the decade of its inception, the study that it was designed to promote took hold on a number of men and the results were remarkable for both literature and scholarship.