Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical

by R. G. Latham

They are different; and the intellectual powers that they require and exercise are different also. The greatest comparative philologists have, generally, been but moderate linguists.

A certain familiarity with different languages they have, of course, had; and as compared with that of the special scholar—the Classic or the Orientalist, for instance—their range of language (so to say) has been a wide one; but it has rarely been of that vast compass which is found in men after the fashion of Mezzofanti, &c.—men who have spoken languages by the dozen, or the score;—but who have left comparative philology as little advanced as if their learning had been bounded by the limits of their own mother tongue.

Now this difference, always of more or less importance in itself, increases when we consider Language as an object of education; and it is for the sake of illustrating it that the foregoing preliminaries have been introduced. No opinion is given as to the comparative rank or dignity of the two studies; no decision upon the nobility or ignobility of the faculties involved in the attainment of excellence in either. The illustration of a difference is all that has been aimed at. There is a difference between the two classes of subjects, and a difference between the two kinds of mental faculties. Let us make this difference clear. Let us also give it prominence and importance.

One main distinction between the study of Language and the study of Languages lies in the fact of the value of the former being constant, that of the latter, fluctuating. The relative importance of any two languages, as objects of special attention, scarcely ever remains steady. The value, for instance, of the German—to look amongst the cotemporary forms of speech—has notably risen within the present century. And why? Because the literature in which it is embodied has improved. Because the scientific knowledge which, to all who want the key, is (so to say) locked up in it, has increased some hundred per cent.

But it may go down again. Suppose, for instance, that new writers of pre-eminent merit, ennoble some of the minor languages of Europe—the Danish, Swedish, Dutch, &c. Such a fact would divide the attention of savans—attention which can only be bestowed upon some second, at the expense of some first, object. In such a case, the extent to which the German language got studied would be affected much in the same way as that of the French has been by the development of the literature of Germany.

Or the area over which a language is spoken may increase; as it may, also, diminish.

Or the number of individuals that speak it may multiply—the area being the same.

Or the special application of the language, whether for the purposes of commerce, literature, science, or politics, may become changed. In this way, as well as in others, the English is becoming, day by day, more important.

There are other influences.

High as is the value of the great classical languages of Greece and Rome, we can easily conceive how that value might be enhanced. Let a manuscript containing the works of some of the lost, or imperfectly preserved, writers of antiquity be discovered. Let, for instance, Gibbon's desiderata—the lost Decads of Livy, the Orations of Hyperides, or the Dramas of Menander—be made good. The per-centage of classical scholars would increase; little or much.