124 



PHILOLOGY 



brought with tin-in the MSS. of Thueydides ami f 

 Plato, t<. lie translated liy Valla ami liy Fioinus ; 

 .in.i it wax in Italy that the results of tli.-ii laliours 

 were lir>t published to the world lit large liy tin- 

 great houses of the Manucci mill the Giunta. But 

 with tin- exception of Kaemo Italy had no great 

 scholar. Yet liy its connection with Fnuicc it pro- 

 duced scholars in northern Europe. llmlr was 

 secretary to Louis XII., whom- main interests were 

 in Italy; Lamhin visited Home ami Venice heimc 

 In- IMVHIMI- the editor of Horace, of Lucretius, and 

 of Cicero ; while Murt-t, though horn near Lininge-. 

 lived ami worked at Itome from 1559 to his death 

 in 1585, and at Koine he lodged for two years the 

 young .loM-jnh Scaliger, destined to liecome the 

 ioreimmt of Kuro|x>an scholars. Italian by descent, 

 hut IKHII in France, where he edited hi Mniuliiis 

 and wrote hi- l>< Emen<luti"i /' 'iujmrttm, the first 

 great work in historical criticism, he was led by 

 hi- i-oiivcr-ion ti Protestantism eventually to retire 

 from France to Leyden, where he ench-il his days, 

 tin- dictator of t he world of letters. Isaac Casaubon, 

 a leader in exegesis, as Scalier wa- in criticism, 

 though Uirn at (li-m-va, was the son of a French 

 Huguenot refugee, and in France he lived during 

 the greater |art of his life, till like Scaliger he 

 found a securer home elsewhere in Protestant 

 England. Justus l.i|i-iu-. the third ^n-at scholar 

 of t In- i lay, was a Belgian, professor successively at 

 Jena, at Leyden, and at Louvain ; he also had 

 travelled in Italy. 



Of the nu-ml>ers of the older German school the 

 inii-t famous was Erasmus, hy hirth a Hollander, 

 luit tin- centre of a Imml of able scholars at Basel, 

 where he spent the lout sixteen years of his life, 

 well known in England, and for a short time a 

 professor at Cambridge, a man of vast learning, hut 

 not a master in criticism, ' the man of letters, the 

 first who hail appealed in Europe since the fall of 

 the Human empire '( Mark PaUison). He lived some 

 tluee years in Italy, but gained, as he thought, 

 nothing from it. Able scholars were Cameranus, 

 pi'ifcKsor at Leipzig, and (Iiuler of Antwerp, the 

 lir-t great collector of Greek and Lai in inscriptions. 



For different reasons France and Germany ceased 

 to be the nurse of -cholarship in the 17th century. 

 The reign of Loui- XIV. fostered modern rather 

 than ancient literature; and (iermany was the 

 scene of furious war. But Scaliger's influence lived 

 mi in Holland. At Leyden, where he died, lived 

 I'aiiicl Hcin-iiis and his son Nicolas, Gronow, 

 coii-pii-uoiiH for his skill in appreciating MSS., and 

 Cliiwer, the first great writer on geography. At 

 tin- -aim- time (iraefe was editing Cicero at I'trecht. 

 SomeHliat later in England lived the lir-t if Knglish 

 scholars, Kiehard Bentley, in frei|iient corri'spond- 

 eno- with I hitch scholar-, hut owing nothing to 

 tin-in, a man whose astounding critical power could 

 mil always save him from errors due to his self- 

 oonlidence. The only other Englishman whose 

 fame, lik'- Bcntley's, has steadily gmwn with time 

 was Kiehard I'onum, professor of (ireek at Cam- 

 bridge at t In- end .if ih,. I Nth century. Distingui-h'-d 



nai in the -, h..,,l nf Hulland in the IHlh century 



an- llein-terliiii- and hi- pupils Uiihiiken anil 

 Valckenaer. In ( iermany we find Krnesti at Ix-ipzig, 

 the c.|it.ir nf Ciceio ; his wholar . Hevne. the founder 

 of theM'hiHilof Coltingeii ; Uei-keiit' Lcip/ig. skilled 

 leu (inly in lirci'k and l^itin. hut also in Araliic. 

 who*)- eiliiinii nl I he (ireek orator- i- Mill in 

 \\ im-kelnmmi. the lii-t great wiiter on am-ient art : 

 \V,,lf. piofeMMir at Halle. IN-M known as the great 

 hut whose general jxiwerand methoil 

 almost entitle him ton place hy the side of Scaliger 

 and Beiillcy Scholars of a later date, whose h\ - 



extended far into the I'nl ntury. are Immanuel 



Bekker. profemor at Berlin, editor 'of Plato. Tlnn-y 

 dides, the orators, and Aristophanes ; Godfrey 



Hi imann, a scholar of unusual breadth, W)KIM- fame 

 rest* securely U|KUI his work on .Eschvlus ; \Velcker, 

 professor at 'Bonn, the first who combined the study 

 of (ireek art, literature, and mythology; K. < i. 

 M idler, whose services to the study of ancient 

 history were cut short by his premature death : F. 

 liitschl. professor at Bonn, tin- restorer of the text 

 of Plautus, as Lachmann at Berlin was tin- le-tmci 

 of Lucretius. \Ve have only of late Mitlcicd the 

 loss of H. A. J. Munro of Cambridge, the inheritor 

 of Lachmann s labour on Lueretiu.- ; of .Madvig the 

 Dane, a Latin scholar of eminent acuteness ; and 

 of Coliet. in whom the critica.1 power of Holland 

 seemed to be renewed again. (An excellent .-ketch 

 of the history"? classical philology, hy I)r L. MUI 

 Urlichs of Wttnbnrg, will he found in the-fii-t 

 volume of I wan Miiller's Hunilliurli I/IT Kliuntdum 



Speculations on the connection of Gieek and 

 Ijitin--.'.g. that Latin was derived from some 

 Greek dialect, and that both, as well as all the 

 other languages of the earth, must In- derived from 

 Hebrew an- not wanting in the writings of the 

 older scholars. It was reserved for an English- 

 man, Sir \Villiani Jones, in 17S6, to point out thai 

 Sanskrit, /end, (ireek, Latin, Gothic, and Celtic 

 l>elong to the same family ; and for Fran/. Bopp, 

 I mm at Main/ in 1791, to become the foiindci nf 

 the special science of comparative philology. In 

 his 'conjugation-system, 'published at Frankfort in 

 1816, he worked out the details of the principle 

 already established by tracing out the history of 

 the verb inflections of the (ireek, Latin, Old 1'crsian, 

 and Teutonic as compared with Sanskrit. His 

 monumental work, the C;;i/imrYv (ii-iiiumiu-, 

 appeared at different times between 1833 and Is.VJ. 

 In this he lays down the phonetic laws of the se\eral 

 languages, and traces their grammatical forms back 

 to their common origin in a lost ' Indo-Germanie ' 

 speech. It is im{H>ssihle here to descriU- the 

 development of this work in the hands of the 

 singularly able men who lubmni'.l at it in the s:.nn- 

 generation, such as Jakob (ii hum. the founder of 

 the scientific study of the Teutonic languages ; 

 Pott, the most learned and \ohiniinonsof\vriteis; 

 Benfey, the acute philologist and accomplished Sans- 

 kritist. The most successful application of the 

 science to (ireek was made somewhat later by Gemg 

 Curtius, and to Latin hy Corssen. and in F ranee by 

 Michel Breal. The common principle of all these 

 writers was that the never ceasing change in every 

 language is regulated by law : that in each language 

 there is a regular sequence of sound, one pacing 

 into the other, not by chance or by the will of 

 any s|ieaker or speaker-, but in a definite ascertain- 

 able course : and that only by the knowledge of 

 the-e seiiuenees. commonly but not n'ry wisely 

 termed 'laws, 'can the science of language exist. 

 One of the lies! known of these is the sound change 

 commonly called ' Grimm's Law,' which states the 

 fact that whenever we find a /. /, or /' in Sanskiil, 

 (ireek. Latin, and | inferentially ) in the common 

 parent language, we shall find in Knglish and most 

 other Teutonic languages an //, Ih, /e.g. napt-ia' 

 ( l.at. 'cord-') will appear a- 'heart,' 'tres'as 'I hive.' 

 'pes' as 'foot;' that .</, <l, l> will appear as /-, /. /i 

 ('genus' = 'kin,' 'duo' = 'two'); and aspirates 

 (gh, tlh, /i/i } will appear as g, <l, b (e.g. Ind.-Cer. 

 gliiin-' ' JJIKISC,' ' lihygos' = ' beech '). Further, 

 that a hiihscijiicnt ' shifting ' of the same kind, hut 

 much less complete, t<K>k place many centuries latei 

 in (iermany itself, and produced there the changes 

 which distinguished the dialect- of South (iermany 

 (' High') from those of the north ('Low German,' 

 or, as it is called in ( iermany itself. Platt-Deutsch') 

 and from our own Knglish e.g. ' drei ' from ' thn-e,' 

 'zwei' from 'two,' &c. Such astounding uniformity 

 of change over so large an area was well calculated 



