A BARBER LINGUIST.
King of Italy's Prize for Language Scholarship
Won by Humble Toiler
Who Amazes Europe.
Alfredo Trombetti, who won the King of Italy's Prize for Languages, has a remarkable history. In 1903 King Victor Emmanuel of Italy, carrying out his plan for encouraging education, offered a prize of ten thousand lire—two thousand dollars—for the best contribution to the study of languages. Hundreds of Italian scholars competed. But the work of the judges was facilitated by the fact that one man so far distanced the others that there could be absolute unanimity in making the award. The successful treatise was in five volumes, and was a remarkable study and comparison of ancient languages, into which the author had compressed a store of knowledge that astounded the learned judges.
The writer was Trombetti. Those who passed on his work had never before heard of him. They looked him up, and their astonishment at his erudition was heightened when they found he was a poor teacher in a little academy at Cuneo, a town with a population of thirty thousand. He, in turn, was astonished that the reward should come to him, for he was as modest as he was poor. His salary was less than two hundred and fifty dollars a year, and on this he supported a family of seven. The prize amounted to two thousand dollars—a sum greater than he could earn in eight years of teaching. He was master of fifty languages and dialects.