[228] Lit. and Lang. of Slavonic Nations, p. 178.
[229] The Thesaurus (4 vols, folio, Vienna 1680) supposes in its author a knowledge of at least eight different languages, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Latin, Italian, French, German, and Polish. Meninski was a man of indomitable energy. In two successive pamphlets which he published in the course of a controversy which he carried on with his great rival, Podestà (who was professor of Arabic in the University) he went to the pains of actually transcribing with his own hand in each copy the quotations from Oriental authors, as there were no Oriental types in Vienna from which they could be printed! Meninski’s Thesaurus, however, is best known from the learned edition of it which was printed at Vienna (1780-1802) under the revision of Baron von Ienisch, himself an Orientalist of very high reputation, and for a considerable time interpreter of the Austrian embassy at Constantinople.
[230] Literature of Slavonic Nations, 270. See also an interesting memoir in the Biographie Universelle. He was born at Warsaw in 1731, and survived till 1808.
[231] See Biographie Universelle (Supplement), Vol. LVII., p. 589. Italinski continued and completed D’Hancarville’s great work on Etruscan Antiquities.
[232] Ibid., p. 190.
[233] See an interesting memoir in Knight’s Cyclopædia of Biography, Vol. III., pp. 280-1.
[234] See Staudenmaier’s “Pragmatismus der Geistes-gaben,” [Tübingen 1835], and Englmann’s “Von der Charismen im allgemeinen, und von dem Sprachen-charismen im Besondern.” [Regensburg, 1848]. See also a long list of earlier writers (chiefly Rationalistic) in Kuinoel’s “Commentarius in Libros N. T.” vol. IV. pp. 40-2; also in Englmann, pp. 15-23.
[235] Jost’s Geschichte der Israeliten, VI., 166.
[236] P. 15. The example and patronage of Frederic tended much to promote the revival of Oriental studies. Many of the earliest versions of the works of Aristotle from the Arabic, were made under his auspices or those of his son Manfred; among others (compare Jourdain’s “Recherches sur les Traductions Latines d’Aristote,” p. 124, Paris 1843; also Whewell’s “History of the Inductive Sciences,” I., p. 343;) that of Sir Michael Scott of Balwearie, a learned Orientalist and an accomplished general scholar, although his traditionary character is that of “the wizard Michael Scott.” His namesake, Sir Walter, has immortalized him, not as a scholar, but as
“A wizard of such dreaded fame,