PHILOLOGY. 



515 



the system of that ancient mode of writing. It led 

 us into a false tract, in which we continued until 

 Champollion showed us another and a better way. 

 This prejudice continued until a very late period. 

 Even in the days of Dante, Petrarch, and Macchia- 

 velli, and later still, in those of Ariosto and Tasso, 

 the beautiful Italian language was styled, in opposi- 

 tion to the Latin, la lingua volgare ; that is to say, 

 the lingua rustica, the patois, the jargon, the dialect 

 of the vulgar. The same contempt followed the 

 other modern idioms. It was taught in the colleges 

 that there were but four mother tongues, the Latin, 

 the Greek, the Hebrew, and the Syriac (the two last 

 were added by the theologians on account of their 

 supposed sacred origin). All other languages were 

 mere dialects. Such was the ignorance that prevailed 

 on the subject of languages. In the seventeenth cen- 

 tury, the cloud began to be dispelled, but gradually 

 indeed. A great step was made by Messieurs de Port 

 Royal, who, in 1CGO, published their Grammaire gene- 

 rale et raisonnie, the work of Arnaud and Lancelot, 

 two of their members. Here the first attempt was 

 made to generalize the grammatical science, and to 

 deduce from it principles and rules applicable to all 

 languages. That work was much and justly admired 

 when it appeared, and has been the model of almost 

 all that have been published since on the same sub- 

 ject. But the foundation was wanting for such a 

 work at that time. The knowledge of languages 

 was vet confined to a few. The Greek, the Latin, 

 the Hebrew, with the French and Italian, and, per- 

 haps, the Spanish, were the most that a philologist 

 aspired to know. One cannot refrain from smiling, 

 when he sees Messieurs de Port Royal, after stating 

 a principle or rule common to the languages that 

 they knew, gravely asserting that that principle 

 governs in every language (dans toutes les langues}. 

 This assertion is frequently met with in the General 

 Grammar, and may at this day be as often easily 

 disproved. The variety of forms existing in lan- 

 guages was not even suspected. The missionaries 

 had not yet made known the extraordinary structure 

 of the Chinese on the one hand, and of the American 

 idioms on the other ; what little was known of them 

 might produce a momentary wonder, but did not 

 excite the curiosity of grammarians and philologists. 

 It was not until about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century that a broad and comprehensive view of the 

 various languages of men began to be taken by the 

 learned. M. Maupertius, who did not deserve all 

 the ridicule which the jealousy of Voltaire endea- 

 voured to throw upon him, published an essay on 

 the Origin of Language, in which he recommended 

 studying the idioms even of savage and barbarous 

 nations, " because," said he, "there may be found 

 among them some that are formed on new plans of 

 ideas." So little was the world prepared for this 

 view of the subject, that M. Turgot, a man, cer- 

 tainly, of great sense and judgment, who was after- 

 wards minister to the unfortunate Louis XVI., in a 

 similar essay that he published, thought proper to 

 sneer at this expression, saying that lie could 

 not understand what was meant by plans of ideas. 

 The science was then in its infancy. Languages 

 were considered only in respect to the etymology 

 of their words and their affinity with eacli 

 other. For more than three centuries, attempts have 

 been made from time to time to collect materials for 

 the comparison of languages. These consisted of 

 vocabularies, and of the Lord's prayer printed in 

 various idioms, but all on a very limited scale. Ade- 

 lung has given us a list of those works at the end of 

 the first volume of the Mithridates, beginning with 

 Johann Schildberger, who, about the year 1427, at 

 the end of a book of travels, published the Pater 



Noster in the Armenian and Tartar languages. In 

 all these the science was considered as confined to the 

 knowledge and comparison of words ; the importance 

 of the grammatical forms and internal structure of the 

 various idioms might have struck some privileged 

 mind, as it did that 'of M. Maupertuis, but it was far 

 from being understood by the grammarians and phi- 

 lologists of that day. 



The science did not begin to extend its bounds until 

 the latter half of the last century. Hervas, in 1784, 

 published atCesena,in the Roman states, his catalogue 

 of known languages (Catalogo delle Litigue conos- 

 ciute, e Notizia delle loro Affinita e Diversitd), and 

 afterwards his polyglot vocabulary of 150 languages, 

 and a collection of the Lord's prayer in more than 

 300. But, while he was engaged in the composition 

 of these works, Catharine the Second, empress of 

 Russia, was meditating another, on a plan much more 

 extensive, which was no less than a comparative 

 vocabulary of all the languages in the world.t* This 

 noble idea she not only conceived, but actually car- 

 ried into execution, with the aid of professor Pallas, 

 for the languages of Asia and Europe, and of Mr 

 Theodore Jankiewitsch, for those of Africa and Ame- 

 rica. Then, and not till then, philology began to be 

 a science. Still etymology alone was the only 

 object which that great work had in view. The vari- 

 ous structure of languages had not yet attracted the 

 attention of the learned. In the celebrated French 

 Encyclopedic, under the word Langue, languages, in 

 this respect, are divided only into two classes, those 

 which admit of inversions, like the Latin and Greek, 

 and in some measure the German, and those which 

 do not, like the French, and some other modern 

 European idioms. The monosyllabic Chinese, with 

 its absence of forms, the polysyllabic and polysyn- 

 thetic structure of the American Indian languages, 

 were not at all taken into, consideration in the classi- 

 fication of the various modes of human speech : in- 

 deed, that classification had not even been attempted, 

 either in respect to etymological affinities, or to 

 the grammatical construction and arrangement of 

 words ; or, if some efforts were made, they were so 

 limited in their range, and on the whole so unsatis- 

 factory, that they are undeserving of any attention at 

 this day. To two illustrious Germans, John Christo- 

 pher Adelung, and his able successor, John Severin 

 Vater, is due the honour of having first presented 

 the world with a scientific classification of all the 

 known languages, and a correct description of each 

 idiom, particularly with regard to its grammatical 

 structure. This was done in their admirable work, 

 the Mithridates, a work so well known to the learned, 

 that it is unnecessary to mention more than its title. 

 We may venture to call this book, without fear of 

 being contradicted, the fountain of all philological 

 knowledge ; and we do not hesitate to say that it 

 deserves to be placed among the greatest and hap- 

 piest efforts of the human mind. A translation of it 

 into the English or French language has been long 

 desired, ana ;t is astonishing that no one has been yet 

 found to attempt it. M. Balbi lately published, at 

 Paris, a valuable work, entitled Atlas Ethnogra- 

 phique du Globe, in which he gives a succinct view of 

 the different languages, with the addition of the 

 knowledge acquired since the publication of the 

 Mithridates. But the form which he has adopted- 

 that of a large folio atlas, with synoptic tables has 

 prevented him from executing as perfect a work as 

 he might otherwise have done with the knowledge 

 and talent which he possesses ; and we are compelled 

 to say that a translation of the Mithridates is still a 

 desideratum in the philological science. Next to the 

 Mithridates, we think Balbi's work the most useful 

 book of its kind, on the subject, that has appenrr.l 

 2 K 2 



