No such cloud hangs over the fame of, after De Guignes, the true reviver of Chinese literature, Abel Remusat.[116] He was born at Paris in 1788, and brought up to the medical profession; and it may almost be said that the only time devoted by him to his early linguistic studies was stolen from the laborious preparation for the less congenial career to which he was destined by his father. By a very unusual preference, he applied himself, almost from the first, to the Chinese and Tartar languages. Too poor to afford the expensive luxury of a Chinese dictionary, he compiled, with incredible labour, a vocabulary for his own use; and the interest created at once by the success of his studies, and by the unexampled devotedness with which they were pursued, were so great as to procure for him, at the unanimous instance of the Academy of Inscriptions, the favour, at that period rare and difficult, of exemption from the chances of military conscription. From that time forward he applied himself unremittingly to philological pursuits; and, although he was admitted doctor of the faculty of medicine, at Paris in 1813, he never appears to have practised actively in the profession. On the creation of the two new chairs of Chinese and Sanscrit, in the College de France, after the Restoration, Remusat was appointed to the former, in November, 1814; from which period he gave himself up entirely to literature. He was speedily admitted into all the learned societies both of Paris and of other countries; and in 1818 he became one of the editors of the Journal des Savans. On the establishment (in which he had a chief part,) of the Société Asiatique, in 1822, he was named its perpetual secretary; and, on the death of Langlés, in 1824, he succeeded to the charge of keeper of Oriental MSS. in the Bibliothèque du Roi. This office he continued to hold till his early and universally lamented death in 1832. Remusat’s eminence lay more in the depth and accuracy of his scholarship in the one great branch of Oriental languages, which he selected as his own—those of Eastern Asia—and in the profoundly philosophical spirit which he brought to the investigation of the relations of these languages to each other, and to the other great families of the earth, than in the numerical extent of his acquaintance with particular languages. But this, too, was such as to place him in the very first rank of linguists.
A few words must suffice for the French school since Remusat, although it has held a very distinguished place in philological science. The Société Asiatique, founded at Remusat’s instance, and for many years directed by him as secretary, has not only produced many eminent individual philologers, as De Sacy, Quatremere, Champollion, Renan, Fresnel, and De Merian; but, what is far more important, it has successfully carried out a systematic scheme of investigation, by which alone it is possible, in so vast a subject, to arrive at satisfactory results. M. Stanislas Julien’s researches in Chinese; M. Dulaurier’s in the Malay languages; Father Marcoux’s in the American Indian; Eugene Bournouf’s in those of Persia; the brothers Antoine and Arnauld d’Abbadie in the languages of East Africa, and especially in the hitherto almost unknown Abyssinian and Ethiopian families; Eugene Borè in Armenian;[117] M. Fresnel’s explorations among the tribes of the western shores of the Red Sea; and many similar successful investigations of particular departments, are contributing to lay up such a body of facts, as cannot fail to afford sure and reliable data for the scientific solution by the philologers of the coming generation, of those great problems in the science of language, on which their fathers could only speculate as a theory, and at the best could but address themselves in conjecture. Although I have no intention of entering into the subject of living French linguists, yet there is one of the gentlemen whom I have mentioned, M. Fulgence Fresnel, whom I cannot refrain from alluding to before I pass from the subject of French philology. His name is probably familiar to the public at large, in connexion with the explorations of the French at Nineveh; but he is long known to the readers of the Journal Asiatique as a linguist not unworthy of the very highest rank in that branch of scholarship. M. d’Abbadie,[118] himself a most accomplished linguist, informed me that M. Fresnel, although exceedingly modest on the subject of his attainments, has the reputation of knowing twenty languages. The facility with which he has acquired some of these languages almost rivals the fame of Mezzofanti. M. Arago having suggested on one occasion the desirableness of a French translation of Berzelius’s Swedish Treatise “On the Blow-pipe,” Fresnel at once set about learning Swedish, and in three months had completed the desired translation! He reads fluently Hebrew, Greek, Romaic, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, and what little is known of the Hieroglyphical language. He is second only to Lane as an Arabic scholar. Among the less known languages of which M. Fresnel is master, M. d’Abbadie heard him speak a few sentences of one, of which he may be said to have himself been the discoverer, and which is, in some respects, completely anomalous. M. Fresnel describes this curious language in the Journal Asiatique, July, 1838. It is spoken by the savages of Mahrak; and as it is not reducible to any of the three families, the Aramaic, the Canaanitic, or the Arabic, of which, according to Gesenius, the Ethiopic is an elder branch, M. Fresnel believes it to be the very language spoken by the Queen of Saba! Its present seat is in the mountainous district of Hhacik, Mirbât, and Zhafâr. Its most singular characteristic consists in its articulations, which are exceedingly difficult and most peculiar. Besides all the nasal sounds of the French and Portuguese, and that described as the “sputtered sound” of the Amharic, this strange tongue has three articulations, which can only be enunciated with the right side of the mouth; and the act of uttering them produces a contortion which destroys the symmetry of the features! M. Fresnel describes it as “horrible, both to hear and to see spoken.” Endeavouring to represent the force of one of these sounds by the letters hh, he calls the language Ehhkili.[119]
§ V. LINGUISTS OF THE TEUTONIC RACE.[120]
If we abstract from the Sacred Languages, the German scholars were slow in turning themselves to Oriental studies.
John Müller, of Königsberg, commonly known as Regiomontanus, although he had the highest repute for learning of all the German scholars of the fifteenth century, does not appear to have gone beyond the classical languages. Martin Luther, Reuchlin,[121] Ulrich Van Hutten, Hoogenstraet, were Hebraists and no more; and John Widmanstadt, when he wished to study Arabic, was forced to make a voyage to Spain expressly for the purpose.
The first student of German race at all distinguished by scholarship in languages, was Theodore Bibliander,[122] who, besides Greek and Hebrew, was also well versed in Arabic, and probably in many other Oriental tongues.[123] The celebrated naturalist, Conrad Gesner, though perhaps not so solidly versed as Bibliander, in any one language, appears to have possessed a certain acquaintance with a greater number. His Mithridates; de Differentiis Linguarum,[124] resembles in plan as well as in name, the great work of Adelung. The number and variety of the languages which it comprises is extraordinary for the period. It contains the Pater Noster in twenty-two of these; and, although the observations on many of the specimens are exceedingly brief and unsatisfactory, yet they often exhibit much curious learning, and no mean familiarity with the language to which they belong.[125] Gesner’s success as a linguist is the more remarkable, inasmuch as that study by no means formed his principal pursuit. Botany and Natural History might much better be called the real business of his literary life. Accordingly, Beza says of him, that he united in his person the very opposite genius of Varro and Pliny; and, although he died at the comparatively early age of forty-nine, his works on Natural History fill nearly a dozen folio volumes. Both Gesner and Bibliander fell victims, one in 1564, the other in 1565, to the great plague of the sixteenth century.
Jerome Megiser, who, towards the close of the same century compiled the more extensive polyglot collection of Pater Nosters already referred to, need scarcely be noticed. He is described by Adelung,[126] as a man of various, but trivial and superficial learning.
Not so another German scholar of the same age, Jacob Christmann, of Maintz. Christmann was no less distinguished as a philosopher than as a linguist. He held for many years at Heidelberg the seemingly incompatible professorships of Hebrew, Arabic, and Logic, and is described as deeply versed in all the ancient and modern languages, as well as in mathematical and astronomical science.[127]
It would be unjust to overlook the scholars of the Low Countries during the same period. Some of these, as for example, Drusius, and the three Schultens, father, son, and grandson, were chiefly remarkable as Hebraists. But there are many others, both of the Belgian and the Dutch schools, whose scholarship was of a very high order. Among the former, Andrew Maes (Masius,) deserves a very special notice. He was born in 1536, at Linnich in the diocese of Courtrai. In 1553 he was sent to Rome as chargé d’affaires. During his residence there, in addition to Greek, Latin, Spanish, and other European languages, with which he was already familiar, he made himself master, not only of Italian, but also of Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac. He is said[128] to have assisted Arias Montanus in the compilation of his Polyglot Bible; but of this no mention is made by Montanus in the preface. No doubt, however, can be entertained of his great capacity as an Orientalist; and Sebastian Munster used to say of him that he seemed to have been brought up among the Hebrews, and to have lived in the classic days of the Roman Empire. About the same period, or a few years later, David Haecx published his dictionary of the Malay languages, one of the earliest contributions to the study of that curious family. Haecx, though he spent his life in Rome, was a native of Antwerp.