plan of this compilation was more comprehensive than that of the collectors of the Lord's Prayer. It consisted of a vocabulary of two hundred and seventy-three familiar and ordinary words, in part selected by the Empress herself, and drawn up in her own hand. The vocabulary, which is very judiciously chosen, is translated into two hundred and one languages. The compilation of this vast comparative catalogue of words, was entrusted to the celebrated philologer, Pallas, assisted by the most eminent scholars of the northern capital; among whom the most efficient seems to have been Bakmeister, the Librarian of the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The opportunities afforded by the patronage of a sovereign who held at her disposition the services of the functionaries of a vast, and, in the literal sense of the word, a polyglot empire like Russia, were turned to the best account. Languages entirely beyond the reach of private research, were unlocked at her command; and the rude and hitherto almost unnamed dialects of Siberia, of Northern Asia, of the Halieutian islanders, and the nomadic tribes of the Arctic shores, find a place in this monster vocabulary, beside the more polished tongues of Europe and the East. Nevertheless, the vocabulary of Pallas (probably from the circumstance of its being printed altogether in the Russian character *) is but little familiar to our philologers, and is chiefly known from the valuable materials which it supplied. to Adelung and his colleagues in the compilation of the wellknown Mithridates. Of the last-named work, it is hardly necessary for us to speak.† It closes this long series of philological

* A portion of the edition contains a Latin preface, explanatory of the plan and contents; but the majority of the copies have this prefare in Russian; and, in all, the character employed throughout the body of the work is Russian. This character, however, may be mastered with so little difficulty, that, practically, its adoption can hardly be said to interfere materially with the usefulness of the work; and the use of the Russian character had many advantages over the Roman in accurately representing the various sounds, especially those of the northern languages.

An alphabetical digest (4 vols. 4to. 1790-1) of all the words contained in the vocabulary (arranged in the order of the alphabet without reference to language) was compiled, a few years later, by Theodor Jankiewitsch de Miriewo, by which it may be seen at once to what language each word belongs. But it is said to be most unscientific in its plan and execution; and the Empress was so dissatisfied with it, that the work was suppressed and is now extremely rare.

Mithridates, oder allgemeine Sprachenkunde; mit dem Vater Unser, als Sprach-Probe, in beynahe fünfhundert Sprachen und Mund-Arten. Von Jos. Christoph Adelung, Berlin, 1806. The first

collections; but although in its general plan, it is only an expansion of the original idea of the first simple traveller who presented to his countrymen, as specimens of the languages of the countries which he had visited, versions in each language of that Prayer which is most familiar to every Christian, yet it is not only far more extensive in its range than any of its predecessors, but also infinitely more philosophical in its method.. There can be no doubt that the selection, in the first instance, of a prayer so idiomatical, and so constrained in its form, as the Lord's Prayer, was far from judicious. As a specimen of the structure of the various languages, the choice of it was singularly infelicitous; and the utter disregard of the principles of criticism (and in truth of everything beyond the mere multiplication of specimens), which marks all the early collections, is an additional aggravation of its original defect. But it is not so in the Mithridates of Adelung. The Mithridates retains the Lord's Prayer, it is true, like the rest, as the specimen (although not the only one) of each language; but it abandons the unscientific arrangement of the older collections, the languages in it being distributed into groups according to their ethnographical affinities. The versions, too, are much more carefully made; they are accompanied by notes and critical illustrations, and in general, each language or dialect is minutely and elaborately described. In a word, the Mithridates, although, as might be expected, still falling far short of perfection, is a strictly philosophical contribution to the study of ethnography; and has formed the basis, as well as the text, of the researches of all the masters in the modern schools of comparative philology.

We have alluded to this curious series of publications more as illustrating the progress of philological studies, than as affording any adequate idea of the actual attainments of the several authors. Many of them made no pretence, in reference to the great majority of the languages included in their several collections, to anything beyond the simple character of compilers. Very few, indeed, could claim a more intimate acquaintance with them all volume contains the languages of Asia; the second, which, under the direction of Dr. Severinus Vater, was published after Adelung's death, but chiefly from his own papers, comprises the European families, the Celtic, German, Basque, &c.; the third, which is in the languages of Africa and America, appeared in parts between 1812 and 1816; and the work was completed in the following year by a supplementary volume, edited by Vater and the younger Adelung. For the languages of America, the work is chiefly indebted to the researches of Humboldt.

than was required for the mere mechanical accuracy of their publication; and even the few whose scholarship was of a higher and more ambitious character, fall far short of that lofty standard by which those are to be measured whose names can be considered worthy of any comparison with that of Mezzofanti. Among the many who have attained to eminence as linguists, the vast majority will be found to have contented themselves with such familiarity as enabled them to understand and critically interpret the written languages; and, even in this respect, it is exceedingly difficult, in by far the greater number of cases, to ascertain the true extent of the accomplishment. The earlier linguists after the revival of letters, for the most part devoted themselves to the cultivation of the dead languages. The Greek scholars who were driven to the west by the Moslem occupation of Constantinople, brought their language in its best and most attractive form to the universities of Italy. The Jews and Moors who were exiled from Spain by the harsh and impolitic measures of Ferdinand and Isabella, deposited through all the schools of Europe the seeds of a solid and critical knowledge of the Hebrew, Arabic, and their cognate languages; and the fruits may be discerned at a comparatively early period in the biblical studies of the time. The Complutensian Polyglot (1517) though the first, is a most creditable example of the zeal with which the study of Oriental literature was even then pursued.

It is not our purpose, however, to dwell upon the mere scholars or philologers who form the larger proportion of our catalogue of linguists. We shall content ourselves with enumerating the most eminent among them; our principal concern being with those in whom the faculty of speaking a multiplicity of languages was remarkably developed.

It is curious that almost all the British linguists (except the Admirable Crichton) belong to the former class—that of mere scholars. Neither Brian Walton, the compiler of the Walton Polyglot; nor his friend and fellow-labourer, Edward Castell, author of the Polyglot Lexicon; nor the learned and witty, but eccentric, Bishop Wilkins; nor John Chamberlayne, editor of the well-known collection of Pater Nosters: nor even the accomplished and elegant scholar, Sir William Jones, though he is known to have acquired, more or less completely, no less than twenty-eight languages; would appear to have possessed a facility of speaking languages at all commensurate with their attainments as scholars in that department

Perhaps, indeed, the same may be said of all those who have written much in this department of languages. The amount of time necessarily devoted to mere authorship, may be supposed

to have made it difficult for them to cultivate the accomplishment of speaking; we have little doubt, moreover, that the two pursuits are entirely distinct in their character, and that very different faculties of mind are required in order to command eminent success in one and in the other. The great biblical scholars Theodore Buchmann*, Adrian Van der Jonghe, and Bonaventure Smet; the well-known naturalists Gesner and Claude Duret†; even the eminent travellers (although travel would seem specially calculated to develope the faculty of speaking) Thevenot, the originator of the Academie des Sciences; Thevet; Megiser, author of the Thesaurus Polyglottus; Gramaye; and the elder Niebuhr; all owe their reputation as linguists, exclusively, or almost exclusively, to book knowledge.

The same is true, although perhaps in a minor degree, of many of the great modern masters of philology. Vater's fame rests chiefly on his Oriental studies. Rask gave himself entirely to the analogies of the Sanscrit with its European descendants, and especially to the great Scandinavian family. Nor are we aware that even Adelung himself, notwithstanding the universal and allembracing scope of his immortal work, has established any great claim to what constitutes the peculiar fame of Mithridates, beyond the mere assumption of his name as the title of his publieation.

There are some of the modern scholars, however, whom it would be most unjust to include in this general description. First among them will occur to every reader the name of 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 appears 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 the distinguished position which he occupied 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

Buchmann may possibly fail of being recognised under this name (Ang. Bookman). Like most of the scholars of his day, he classicized it into the Greek equivalent, Bibliander. The same may be said of an author mentioned in a former page (29), Van der Jonghe (Young), who translated this Dutch name into Junius; and of the Belgian Smet (Smith), who appears in the Latin of his time as Vulcanius.

†This eminent but eccentric man is said to have known seventeen languages, and even to have persuaded himself that he had discovered a key to the languages of birds and beasts, and even that of the angelic choir. He died in 1611.

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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 Catherinenburg, 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; 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 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, to arrive at an exact conclusion 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 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. In his youth he devoted himself to his father's science and its kindred studies; but, after a time, he gave his attention exclusively to the cultivation of Oriental languages; and, in 1802, established at Dresden the Asiatic Magazine, which has since rendered so many important services to Eastern literature. Like Pallas, he was invited to St. Petersburg, and, like him, he attached himself to an expedition partly scientific, partly political, despatched to Pekin in 1805. Like