WILLIAM DWIGHT WHITNEY. 581 



brought back with him was a copy of the second edition of Bopp's 

 Sanscrit Grammar. This work attracted the attention of his youDger 

 brother, and aroused a keener interest than he had before felt in any 

 ijarticuhir subject. In the winter of tiie following year he began the 

 systematic study of Sanscrit. For him this was the parting of the 

 ways. In June, 1849, indeed, he joined an expedition sent out by the 

 United States government to explore the region about Lake Superior. 

 One of its two directors was his elder brother, and to the future philolo- 

 gist were assigned the barometrical observations, the botany, and the 

 charge of the accounts. But he took with him also this copy of Bopp, 

 and the leisure moments he enjoyed during the expedition were, as far 

 as possible, devoted to the fuller study of that work. 



His progress in it at that time definitely decided his career. The 

 study of Sanscrit is a pursuit which in any country has never been 

 specially lucrative ; and in the United States at that time there was 

 certainly little to prompt any one to choose it as a profession. Whit- 

 ney's father, a business man, and naturally anxious for the success of 

 his children, saw this clearly ; but he was not disposed to stand in the 

 way of a pursuit upon which his son had set his heart. Accordingly, 

 the latter was allowed to follow his choice. The only instruction in 

 Sanscrit then offered in the United States was at Yale College, where 

 in 1841 Edward E. Salisbury had been created Professor of that 

 tongue and of Arabic. To New Haven, therefore, Whitney repaired 

 in the autumn of 1849, and to the study of Sanscrit he devoted the 

 following year. He had but one fellow student, Hadley, who had 

 been made in 1848 Assistant Professor of Greek, and whose compara- 

 tively early death Whitney was always wont to lament as the greatest 

 loss American scholarship had up to that time suffered. 



After remaining a year in New Haven he sailed in the autumn of 

 1850 for Europe. He was absent for three years. Arabic, Persian, 

 Egyptian, and Coptic were attacked by him ; but his attention was 

 mainly given to Sanscrit, which he studied at Berlin under Weber, and 

 at Tubingen under Roth. In conjunction with the latter he began the 

 preparation of an edition of the Atharva-Veda, and with this object in 

 view spent some months before his return in Paris, in London, and in 

 Oxford, engaged principally in the collation of Sanscrit manuscripts. 

 He reached America in August, 1853. 



In 1854 the chair of Sanscrit and Arabic, held by Professor Salis- 

 bury, was at his wish divided. At his suggestion, also, Whitney was 

 called to the newly created separate chair of Sanscrit. It was a posi- 

 tion the latter held to his death, though to the title was subsequently 



