Gerard Frederic Müller is an early example. He was born, at Herforden in Westphalia, in 1705, and was a pupil of the celebrated Otto Mencken. Mencken, having been invited to become a member of the new academy of St. Petersburg, declined the honour for himself, but recommended his scholar Müller in his stead.[138] Müller accordingly accompanied the scientific expedition which was sent to Siberia under the elder Gmelin, (also a German,) from 1733 to 1741. On his return, he was appointed keeper of the Imperial Archives, and Historiographer of Russia. Müller does not appear to have given much attention to Oriental languages; but he was more generally familiar with modern languages than most of the scholars of that period.[139]
Augustus Lewis Schlötzer, another German literary adventurer in the Russian service, and for a time secretary of Müller, was a more generally accomplished linguist. Unlike Müller, he was a skilful Orientalist; and he was versed, moreover, in several of the Slavonic languages with which Müller had neglected to make himself acquainted, before engaging in the compilation of his great collection of Russian Historians. For this he availed himself of the assistance of his secretary Schlötzer. Gottlieb Bayer of Königsberg, one of the earliest among the scholars of Germany, author of the Museum Sinicum, also occupied for some years a chair at St. Petersburg; but he is better known by his ferocious controversial writings, than by his philological works. A much more distinguished scholar of modern Germany, almost entirely unknown in England, is Christian William Buttner. He was born at Wolfenbüttel in 1716, and was destined by his father (an apothecary) for the medical profession; but, although he gave his attention in the first instance to the sciences preparatory to that profession, the real pursuit of his life became philology, and especially in its relation to the great science of ethnography. It was a saying of Cuvier’s, that Linnæus and Buttner realised by their united studies the title of Grotius’s celebrated work, “De Jure Naturæ et Gentium;”—Linnæus by his pursuit of Natural History assuming the first, and Buttner, by his ethnological studies, appropriating the second—as the respective spheres of their operations. In every country which Buttner visited, he acquired not only the general language, but the most minute peculiarities of its provincial dialects. Few literary lives are recorded in history which present such a picture of self-denial and privation voluntarily endured in the cause of learning, as that of Buttner. His library and museum, accumulated from the hoardings of his paltry income, were exceedingly extensive and most valuable. In order to scrape together the means for their gradual purchase, he contented himself during the greater part of his later life with a single meal per day, the cost of which never exceeded a silber-groschen, or somewhat less than three half-pence![140] It may be inferred, however, from what has been said, that Buttner’s attainments were mainly those of a book-man. In the scanty notices of him which we have gleaned, we do not find that his power of speaking foreign languages was at all what might have been expected from the extent and variety of his book-knowledge. But his services as a scientific philologer were infinitely more important, as well as more permanent, than any such ephemeral faculty. He was the first to observe and to cultivate the true relations of the monosyllabic languages of southern Asia, and to place them at the head of his scheme of the Asiatic and European languages. He was the first to conceive, or at least to carry out, the theory of the geographical distribution of languages; and he may be looked on as the true founder of the science of glossography. He was the first to systematise and to trace the origin and affiliations of the various alphabetical characters; and his researches in the history of the palæography of the Semitic family may be said to have exhausted the subject. Nevertheless, he has himself written very little; but he communicated freely to others the fruits of his researches; and there are few of the philologers of his time who have not confessed their obligations to him. Michaelis, Schlötzer, Gatterer, and almost every other contemporary German scholar of note, have freely acknowledged both the value of his communications and the generous and liberal spirit in which they were imparted.[141]
John David Michaelis[142] (1717-91) is so well known in these countries by his contributions to Biblical literature[143] that little can be necessary beyond the mention of his name. His grammar of the Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, and Arabic languages, sufficiently attest his abilities as an Orientalist; and, as regards that particular family of languages, his philological views are generally solid and judicious. But I am unable to discover what were his attainments in modern languages; and to the general science of comparative philology he cannot be said to have rendered any important original contribution.
The Catholic Missionaries of Germany, although of course less numerous than their brethren of Italy and the Spanish Peninsula, have contributed their share to the common stock of linguistic science. Many of the Jesuit Missionaries of Central and Southern America;—for example, Fathers Richter, Fritz, Grebmer, and Widmann—whose papers are the foundation of Humboldt’s Essay in the Mithridates, were of German origin. Father Dobritzhofer, whose interesting account of the Abipones has been translated into English[144], under Southey’s advice and superintendence, was a native of Austria; and the learned Sanscrit scholar, Father Paulinus de Sancto Bartholomeo, (although less known under his German name, John Philip Werdin) was an Austrian Carmelite, and served for above fourteen years in the Indian missions of his order.
A German philanthropist of a different class, Count Leopold von Berchtold (1738-1809) the Howard of Germany, deserves to be named, not merely for his devoted services to the cause of humanity throughout the world, but for his remarkable acquirements as a linguist. He spoke fluently eight European languages;[145] and, what is more rare, wrote and published in the greater number of them, tracts upon the great subject to which he dedicated his life. He died, at a very advanced age, of the plague, and has long been honoured as a martyr in the cause of philanthropy; but he has left no notable work behind him.
Very different the career of the great author of the Mithridates, John Christopher Adelung, who lived almost exclusively for learning. He was born in 1734, at Spantekow in Pomerania. In 1759, he was appointed to a professorship at Erfurt; but he exchanged it, after a few years, for a place at Leipsic, where he continued to reside for a long series of years. Although habitually of a gay and cheerful disposition, and a most agreeable member of society, he was one of the most assiduous students upon record, devoting as a rule no less than fourteen hours a day to his literary occupations.[146] His services to his native language are still gratefully acknowledged by every German etymologist, and his Dictionary, (although since much improved by Voss and Campe,) has been declared as great a boon to Germany, as the united labours of the Academy had been able to offer to France. Adelung’s personal reputation as a linguist was exceedingly high, but his fame with posterity must rest on his great work, the Mithridates, which I have already briefly described. The very origination of such a work, or at least the undertaking it upon the scale on which he has carried it out, would have made the reputation of an ordinary man. In the touching preface of the first volume, (the only one which Adelung lived to see published,) he describes it as “the youngest and probably the last child of his muse;” and confesses that “he has nurtured, dressed, and cherished it, with all the tenderness which it is commonly the lot of the youngest child to enjoy.”[147] It is indeed a work of extraordinary labour, and, although from the manner in which its materials were supplied, necessarily incomplete and even inaccurate in its details, a work of extraordinary ability. The first volume alone (containing the languages of Asia, and published in 1806,) is exclusively Adelung’s. Of the second, only a hundred and fifty pages had been printed when the venerable author died in his seventy-third year. These printed sheets, and the papers which he had collected for the subsequent volumes, he bequeathed to Dr. Severinus Vater, professor of theology at Königsberg, under whose editorship, with assistance from several friends, (and especially from the lamented William von Humboldt and Frederic Adelung,) the second volume, which comprises the languages of Europe with all their ramifications, appeared in 1809. The third, on the languages of Africa, and of America, (for which last the work is indebted to Humboldt,) appeared, in parts, between 1812 and 1816; and a supplementary volume, containing additions to the earlier portions of the work, by Humboldt, Frederic Adelung, and Vater himself, was published in 1817. It is impossible to overstate the importance and value of this great linguistic repertory. The arrangement of the work is strictly scientific, according to the views then current. The geographical distribution, the origin and history, and the general structural peculiarities of each, not only of the great families, but of the individual languages, and in many cases even of the local dialects, are carefully, though briefly described. The specimen Pater Noster in each language and dialect, is critically examined, and its vocabulary explained. To each language, too, is prefixed a catalogue of the chief philological or etymological works which treat of its peculiarities; and thus abundant suggestions are supplied for the prosecution of more minute researches into its nature and history. And for the most part, all this is executed with so much simplicity and clearness, with so true a perception of the real points of difficulty in each language, and with so almost instinctive a power of discriminating between those peculiarities in each which require special explanation, and those less abnormal qualities which a philosophical linguist will easily infer from the principles of general grammar, or from a consideration of the common characteristics of the family to which it belongs, that one may learn as much of the real character of a language, in a few hours, from the few suggestive pages the Mithridates, as from the tedious and complicated details of its professional grammarians.
Adelung’s associate in the Mithridates and its continuator, Dr. Severinus Vater, was born at Altenburg, in 1771; he studied at Jena and Halle, in both of which universities he afterwards held appointments as professor; at Jena, as extraordinary Professor of Theology in 1796, and at Halle, as Professor of Oriental Languages in 1800. Thence he was transferred, in 1809, to Königsberg in the capacity of Professor of Theology and Librarian; but he returned, in 1820, to Halle, where he continued to reside till his death, in 1826. Although Vater was by no means a very scientific linguist,[148] the importance of his contributions to the study of languages cannot be too highly estimated. Besides the large share which he had in the preparation of the Mithridates (the last three volumes of which were edited by him,) he also wrote well on the grammar of the Hebrew, Polish, Russian, and German languages. Nevertheless, his reputation is rather that of a scholar than of a linguist.
A few years after the author of the Mithridates appears the celebrated Peter Simon Pallas, to whom we are indebted for the great “Comparative Vocabulary” already described. He was born at Berlin in 1741, and his early studies were mainly directed to natural philosophy, which he seems to have cultivated in all its branches. His reputation as a naturalist procured for him, in 1767, an invitation from Catherine II. of Russia, to exchange a distinguished position which he had obtained at the Hague for a professorship in the Academy of St. Petersburg. His arrival in that capital occurred just at the time of the departure of the celebrated scientific expedition to Siberia for the purpose of observing the transit of Venus; and, as their mission also embraced the geography and natural history of Siberia, Pallas gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. They set out in June, 1768, and after exploring the vast plains of European Russia, the borders of Calmuck Tartary, and the shores of the Caspian, they crossed the Ural Mountains, examined the celebrated mines of Catherinenberg, proceeded to Tobolsk, the capital of Siberia, and penetrated across the mountains to the Chinese frontier, whence Pallas returned by the route of Astrakan and the Caucasus to St. Petersburg. He reached that city in July, 1774, with broken health, and hair prematurely whitened by sickness and fatigue. He resumed his place in the Academy; and was rewarded by the Empress with many distinctions and lucrative employments, one of which was the charge of instructing the young grand-dukes, Alexander and Constantine. It was during these years that he devoted himself to the compilation of the Vocabularia Comparativa, which comprises two hundred and one languages; but, in 1795, he returned to the Crimea, (where he had obtained an extensive gift of territory from the Empress) for the purpose of recruiting his health and pursuing his researches. After a residence there of fifteen years, he returned to Berlin in 1810, where he died in the following year. It will be seen, therefore, that, prodigious as were his acquirements in that department, the study of languages was but a subordinate pursuit of this extraordinary man. His fame is mainly due to his researches in science. It is to him that we owe the reduction of the astronomical observations of the expedition of 1768; and Cuvier gives him the credit of completely renewing the science of geology, and of almost entirely re-constructing that of natural history. It is difficult, nevertheless,[149] to arrive at an exact conclusion as to the share which he personally took in the compilation of the Vocabulary; and still more so, as to his powers as a speaker of foreign languages; although it is clear that his habits of life as a traveller and scientific explorer, not only facilitated, but even directly necessitated for him, the exercise of that faculty, to a far greater degree than can be supposed in the case of most of the older philologers.
The career of Pallas bears a very remarkable resemblance to that of a more modern scholar, also a native of Berlin, Julius Henry Klaproth. He was the son of the celebrated chemist of that name, and was born in 1783. Although destined by his father to follow his own profession, a chance sight of the collection of Chinese books in the Royal Library at Berlin, irrevocably decided the direction of his studies. With the aid of the imperfect dictionary of Mentzel and Pere Diaz, he succeeded in learning without a master that most difficult language; and, though he complied with his father’s desire, so far as to pursue with success the preparatory studies of the medical profession, he never formally embraced it. After a time he gave his undivided attention to Oriental studies; and, in 1802, established, at Dresden, the Asiatisches Magazin. Like so many of his countrymen, he accepted service in Russia, at the invitation of Count Potocki, who knew him at Berlin; and he was a member of the half-scientific, half-political, mission to Pekin, in 1805, under that eminent scholar and diplomatist. He withdrew, however, from the main body of this expedition, in order to be able to pursue his scientific researches more unrestrainedly; and, after traversing eighteen hundred leagues in the space of twenty months, in the course of which he passed in review all the motley races of that inhospitable region, Samoiedes, Finns, Tartars, Monguls, Paskirs, Dzoungars, Tungooses, &c., he returned to St. Petersburg, in 1806, with a vast collection of notes on the Chinese, Mantchu, Mongul, and Japanese[150] languages. With a similar object, he was soon afterwards sent by the Academy, in September, 1807, to collect information on the languages of the Caucasus, a journey of exceeding difficulty and privation, in which he spent nearly three years. On his return to St. Petersburg, he obtained permission to go to Berlin for the purpose of completing the necessary engravings for his work; and he availed himself of this opportunity to withdraw altogether from the Russian service, although with the forfeiture of all his titles and honours. After a brief sojourn in Italy, he fixed his residence in Paris. To him the Société Asiatique may be said to owe its origin; and he acted, almost up to his death in 1835, as the chief editor of its journal—the well-known Journal Asiatique. In Paris, also, he published his Asia Polyglotta, and “New Mithridates.” Klaproth, perhaps, does not deserve, in any one of the languages which he cultivated, the character of a very deep scholar; but he was acquainted with a large number: with Chinese, Mongol, Mantchu, and Japanese, also with Sanscrit, Armenian, Persian, and Georgian;[151] he was of course perfectly familiar with German, Russian, French, and probably with others of the European languages.
The eminent historical successes of Berthold George Niebuhr, (born at Copenhagen in 1776), have so completely eclipsed the memory of all his other great qualities, that perhaps the reader will not be prepared to find that in the department of languages his attainments were of the highest rank. His father, Carsten Niebuhr, the learned Eastern traveller, had destined him to pursue his own career; but the delicacy of the youth’s constitution, and other circumstances, forced his father to abandon the idea, and saved young Niebuhr for the far more important studies to which his own tastes attracted him. His history, both literary and political, is too recent and too well known to require any formal notice. It will be enough for our purpose to transcribe from his life an extremely interesting letter from his father, which bears upon the particular subject of the present inquiry. It is dated December, 1807, when Niebuhr was little more than thirty years of age. “My son has gone to Memel,” writes the elder Niebuhr, “with the commissariat of the army. When he found he should probably have to go to Riga, he began forthwith to learn Russian. Let us just reckon how many languages he knows already. He was only two years old when we came to Meldorf, so that we must consider, 1st, German, as his mother tongue. He learned at school, 2nd, Latin; 3rd, Greek; 4th, Hebrew; and, besides in Meldorf he learned, 5th, Danish; 6th, English; 7th, French; 8th, Italian; but only so far as to be able to read a book in these languages; some books from a vessel wrecked on the coast induced him to learn, 9th, Portuguese; 10th, Spanish; of Arabic he did not know much at home, because I had lost my lexicon and could not quickly replace it; in Kiel and Copenhagen he had opportunities of practice in speaking and writing French, English, and Danish; in Copenhagen he learned, 11th, Persian, of Count Ludolph, the Austrian minister, who was born at Constantinople, and whose father was an acquaintance of mine; and 12th, Arabic, he taught himself; in Holland he learned, 13th, Dutch; and again, in Copenhagen, 14th, Swedish, and a little Icelandic; at Memel, 15th, Russian; 16th, Slavonic; 17th, Polish; 18th, Bohemian; and, 19th, Illyrian. With the addition of Low German, this makes in all twenty languages.”[152]