419 



Whilst diving into the secrets of Slavonian and Lithuanian literature, 

 August Schleicher never forgot his native land and his native lan- 

 guage, and remained fondly attached to his own native town. 



In 1858 he published, at Weimar, a book about the language, tra- 

 ditions, manners, and customs (Yolksthumliches) of Sonneberg, the 

 small Saxon town in which he spent his early youth. This was fol- 

 lowed, in 1860, by a book called " The German Language" (Stuttgart), 

 a short scientific narrative of the origin, and exposition of the structure 

 of the present literary language of Germany — his native tongue and my 

 own — next to Grimm's Grammar, the most scholarly book on the 

 subject, indeed in some respects surpassing Grimm. 



The last great work (in the estimation of the learned world his 

 greatest achievement) is the " Compendium of the Comparative Philo- 

 logy of the Indo-Germanic Languages" (first edition, Werner, 1861-62). 

 The second edition appeared in 1866, and obtained in the next year 

 from the French Academy the Yolney Prize — no mean honour. As a 

 supplement, or rather as a second part to this, Schleicher published his 

 "Indo-Germanic Anthology," a collection of texts, taken from the 

 Sanskrit, Zend, old Slavonic, Lithuanian, old Latin, Oscan, Umbrian, 

 Gothic, and old Irish, with notes, transcriptions, and glossaries, 

 partly done by himself, partly by friends of his. This was his 

 last. Professor Kuhn informs me that a grammar of the Polab lan- 

 guage, a Slavonic dialect near the Elbe, is ready for printing, as also 

 a book on the comparison of the declension of the Slavonian languages. 

 Schleicher contemplated, according to a statement of M. Breal, a com- 

 parative grammar of the Slavonic languages in general ; but he said 

 it would take him ten years more to accomplish it. His greatest 

 and noblest promise — the history of language in general — remains un- 

 fulfilled. What a noble achievement it would have been we may con- 

 clude from the specimens given — " The Languages of Europe," the 

 paper on "Morphology," quoted above, and the short but significant 

 writing, published in 1863 (Weimar), on " The Darwinian theory as 

 applicable to the Science of Languages," in which he tries to show that 

 by a process of "natural selection" the languages of the nobler races 

 supersede, and have superseded, those of inferior nations. 



Another paper, " On the Importance of Language for the Sciences of 

 Anthropology and Ethnology," Weimar, 1865, is unknown to me; 

 but the title, coupled with the knowledge we have of Schleicher's 

 views in general, is sufficient to show that in it a wide vista must 

 have been opened on the primeval history of our species. 



Besides these Schleicher contributed many essays to various journals, 

 chiefly Kuhn's Zeitschrift fiir vergleich. Sprachforschung and the Bei- 

 trage zur vergleichenden Sprachforschung, of the latter of which he was 

 co-editor with Prof. Kuhn. 



August Schleicher has paid, as might have been expected, due at- 

 tention to Celtic matters— in fact, next to Pictet, Bopp, Zeuss, Ebel, 

 and Gliick, he must be considered as having done most for the due 



