274 GERMANIC LANGUAGES 



philology, using the word in the customary German sense, 

 whether we lay the chief stress upon the criticism of form or that of 

 matter. German linguistics is intimately associated with still other 

 fields of knowledge, but the limited time at my disposal will not 

 allow me to discuss such wider relations. 



The sciences of Indo-Germanic linguistics, German philology, and 

 Germanic linguistics arose practically at the same time, leaving 

 out of consideration, of course, early sporadic and uncertain efforts 

 that were more or less amateurish. In the year 1816, Franz Bopp, 

 with his System of Conjugation in Sanscrit compared with those in 

 Greek, Latin, Persian, and Germanic, laid the foundation for the 

 science of Indo-Germanic linguistics, which since then has assumed 

 such splendid proportions. In the same year appeared Karl Lach- 

 mann's famous treatise on The Original Form of the Poem of the 

 Fall of the Nibelungs, which was followed in rapid succession by 

 his editions of the Nibelungenlied, of Hartmann's von Aue Iwein of 

 the poems of Walther von der Vogelweide and of the works of 

 Wolfram von Eschenbach, editions that were to serve for many 

 years as unexcelled models for the critical treatment of Middle 

 High German works of poetry. And finally, in 1819 and 1822, 

 respectively, there were published the first and second editions of 

 the first volume of Jakob Grimm's immortal German grammar, the 

 monumental work upon which all Germanic linguistics cience rests, 

 and whose rich treasures, in spite of the most zealous efforts, have 

 not been exhausted even at the present day. 



The intellectual talents of the three scholars mentioned were as 

 dissimilar as the fields in which they labored. Of the three, Jakob 

 Grimm and Franz Bopp possess the greatest similarity. In both we 

 admire an equal wealth of fancy and native intuition, which enabled 

 them to make use of even the most minute details and to discover 

 an intellectual or historical bond for facts apparently unrelated. 

 On the other hand, Lachmann appears as the incarnation of a care- 

 fully discriminating critic, and as the master of restrained and 

 methodical thought. These qualities he exhibited in his efforts to 

 reconstruct a poorly preserved text by supplying all the delicate 

 touches of the author, as well as in attempts to establish literary- 

 historical relations or to clear up the historical genesis of the text 

 and its contents. 



From both the positive and the negative standpoints, Jakob 

 Grimm's activity and personal position were for a long time repre- 

 sentative and authoritative on the question of the relation of Ger- 

 man linguistic science to Indo-Germanic linguistics, on one hand, 

 and to German philology on the other. The older grammar of the 

 East in accordance with its "philological" leanings had pursued 

 linguistics only as a means to an end. In the pursuit of semi-anti- 



