The well-known Polish General, Wenceslaus Rzewuski, devoted the later years of his busy and chequered career to literary, and especially to linguistic, pursuits. He is said to have spoken the learned tongues as well and as freely as his native Polish, and to have been master, moreover, of all the leading modern languages of Europe. The great Oriental Journal published at Vienna, Fundgruben des Orients, which is really what its title implies, a mine of Oriental learning, was for many years under his superintendence.
The Russo-Polish diplomatist, Count Andrew Italinski, is another example of the union of profound scholarship with great talents for public affairs. Born in Poland about the middle of the eighteenth century, Italinski visited in the successive stages of his education, Kiew, Leyden, Edinburgh, London, Paris, and Berlin, and acquired the languages of all those various countries. Being eventually appointed to the Russian embassy in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, he became even more perfect in Italian. In addition to all these languages, he was so thoroughly master of those of the East, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, &c., as to challenge the admiration even of the Easterns themselves.[231]
It is perhaps right to add that the eminent Orientalist of St. Petersburg, Senkowsky, although a Russian by residence and by association, is not only, as I have already stated, of Polish birth, but is, moreover, one of the most popular writers in his native language.
Our notice of Bohemian linguists must be even more meagre.
The early period of Bohemian letters presents no distinguished name. From the extraordinary activity which the Bohemians exhibited in translating the Bible in the fifteenth century, it might be supposed that the study of Greek and Hebrew had already taken root in the schools of Prague. But out of the “thirty-three copies in Bohemian of the entire Bible, and twenty-two of the New Testament,”[232] which are still extant, translated during that period, not one was rendered from the original languages. Blakoslav, the first translator of the Bible from Greek (in 1563) is said to have been a man of “profound erudition.” The same is said of George Strye a few years later; and the Jesuits Konstanj, Steyer, and Drachovsky, are also entitled to notice.
John Amos Komnensky, also, better known by his Latinized name, Comenius, a native of Komna in Moravia, (1592-1671) deserved well of linguistic science, not only by his own acquirements, but by his well-known work, the Janua Linguarum Reserata, which has had the rare fortune of being translated not only into twelve European languages, but into those of several Oriental nations besides. The Janua Linguarum, however, though it attracted much attention at the time, has long been forgotten.
It would be still more unpardonable to overlook the celebrated philologer, Father Joseph Dobrowsky, who, although born in Raab, in Hungary, was of a Bohemian family, and devoted himself especially to the literature and language of his nation. He had just entered the Jesuit society at Brunn at the moment of the suppression of the order. Repairing to Prague, he applied himself for a time to the study of the Oriental languages, but eventually concentrated all his energies on the history and language of Bohemia. His works upon Bohemian history and antiquities fill many volumes; and his Slavonic Grammar may be regarded as a classical work, not only in reference to his native language, but to the whole Slavonian family. Father Dobrowsky survived till the year 1829, engaged until the very time of his death in active projects for the cultivation of the language and literature of the country of his adoption.
But probably the most remarkable name among Bohemian linguists is that of Father Dobrowsky’s friend, the poet Wenceslaus Hanka, born at Horeneyes in 1791. Hanka’s love of languages was first stirred while he was tending sheep near his native village, by the opportunity which he had of learning Polish and Servian from some soldiers of these races being quartered upon his father’s farm. When he grew somewhat older, his parents, in order to save him from the chances of military conscription, (from which, in Bohemia, scholars are exempted) sent him to school; and he afterwards entered the University of Prague, and subsequently that of Vienna. On the foundation of the Bohemian Museum at Prague, he was appointed its librarian, through the recommendation of Father Dobrowsky; and from that time he devoted himself almost entirely to the antiquities, literature, and language of his native country. Besides his own original compositions, Hanka’s name has obtained considerable celebrity in connexion with the controversy about the genuineness of the early Bohemian poems known under the title of “Kralodvor,”—a controversy which, although it has ended differently, was for a time hardly less animated than those regarding the Ossian and Rowley MSS. in England. Notwithstanding the variety of Hanka’s pursuits, and his especial devotion to his own language, his acquisitions in languages have been most various and extensive. He is described in the “Oesterreichische National Encyclopædie” as “master of eighteen languages.”[233]
With the Slavonic race our Catalogue of Linguists closes. Many particulars regarding the eminent names which it comprises are, of necessity, left vague and undetermined. I should have especially desired to distinguish, in all cases, between mere book knowledge of languages and the power of writing, or still more of speaking, them. But unfortunately the accounts which are preserved regarding these scholars hardly ever enter into this distinction. Even Sir William Jones, though he carefully classified the languages which he knew, did not specify this particular; and in most other instances, the narrative, far from particularizing, like that of Jones, the extent of the individual’s acquaintance with each language, even leaves in uncertainty the number of languages with which he was acquainted in any degree.
The very distribution, too, which I have found it expedient to follow—according to nations—has had many disadvantages. But it seemed to be upon the whole the most convenient that could be devised. A distribution into periods, besides that it would have been difficult to follow out upon any clear and intelligible principle, would have been attended with the same disadvantages which characterize that according to nations; while the more strictly philosophical distribution according to ethnographical or philological schools, would have in great measure failed to illustrate the object which I have chiefly had in view. Several of the most eminent of the modern ethnographical writers, and particularly Pritchard, disavow all claim to the character of linguists; and the qualifications of many even of those whose pretensions seem the highest, have, when submitted to a rigid examination, proved far more than problematical.