OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JUNE 9, 1868. 49 



Philology, by the establishment of a Bopp fund, of which the income 

 should be forever devoted to the encouragement and aid of researches 

 in this department of knowledge. The endowment, amounting to over 

 ten thousand thalers, was made up by the contributions of scholars and 

 friends of learning in all parts of the world, — those of our own coun- 

 try, among the rest, furnishing their mite to swell the sum. 



On his return to his native country, Bopp was nominated by the 

 Bavarian government to a professorship in the University of Wiirz- 

 burg; but the handful of pedants who composed the senate of that in- 

 stitution resolved that the studies which he represented had no claim 

 to a place in it, and respectfully declined to ratify the appointment. 

 But the next year (1821) he was called to a vastly higher and wider 

 sphere of labor in the Berlin University, in connection with which and 

 with the Academy of Sciences of the same city his chief literary ac- 

 tivity was henceforth exercised. 



The most important of his works, by far, is his Comparative Gram- 

 mar, of which the first edition began to appear in 1833 and reached its 

 completion in 1849. A second edition, in three volumes, considerably 

 modified and extended, was commenced in 1857 and finished in 1861. 

 The former was long since translated into English ; of the latter, M. 

 Breal is now putting forth a French version. Into any extended de- 

 scription or criticism of this great work we are not called upon to 

 enter. It is a rich mine of observations and conclusions, the compen- 

 dium of what was done for the new science by its founder. We must 

 not regard it, however, as in all parts of equal merit and authority. 

 Bopp lived long enough to see his science carried further, in many 

 points, by his followers than by himself. At the same time, he was 

 not one who readily assimilated the results won by others. The later 

 years of his life were comparatively unfruitful of valuable additions to 

 science ; and when at length he passed away, it was rather the pres- 

 ence of the man than the work of the scholar that was missed by us. 



August Boeckh, the illustrious philologist, long a member of the 

 Academy, died in Berlin, August 3, 1867, aged 82. He was born in 

 Karlsruhe, November 24, 1785, and had the misfortune to be left an 

 orphan at the age of three. From his sixth to his eighteenth year he 

 attended the gymnasium at Karlsruhe, where he went through an un- 

 usually thorough course of study for the times, embracing the classics, 

 mathematics and physics, and philosophy. 



Thus prepared for a more independent course of study, Boeckh left 



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