260 
report— 1847 . 
on a general plan as complete a review of all the languages of the globe i. 
his n?ateriaU%owed him to form. This careful compilation far surjjsc- 
all previous collections, like those of Ilervaz (1785), mid 
den (1796), not only by its completeness, but alw by its method. 
to say, Adclung seems not to have known Leibmtes 
follows out Tcibnita’s plan. He not only gives for everj- laogu^ 
ditianal specimen of the Lonl’s Prayer, and more or less cowpWte 
words, with the most clmracterisUc grammatical form& wbereur 
and are known; but he presents the languages themselves for the h^j- 
in a systematic order, and classiBes them, to a certain degree, . 
their affinities. In this classiticatiou he proceeds from the , 
distinction of monosyllabic and polysyllabic languages, and ac _ 
the claim of tho first to a higher antiquity. ' 
establishing one of his own, respecting races and their origin, > 
and often successfully, to group together a vast number , 
guages. These qualities, and a sober, rather biJd, style o > t? 
composition, have procured Adelung’s work a great authority m . P ^ 
comprises, moreover, in one of the later volumes, one of tbe ni . 
specimens of linguistic analysis which wc possess, in Wuh m ,, 
boldt’s Essay on the Iberian or Basque language. Fiually, “ ^ 
be forgotten, in this essay, and in this place, that the study an 
‘ Mithridates,’ gave Dr. Young, as he himself said, the farstmea ^ 
into the hieroglyphic system ; intjuirics which have led to 
out which our problem could not even be proposed, nor the que» i 
which we hojie to answer. , . , , 
But judging the work by its bearings upon the definitive jjis 
guistic science, we must confess that Adelung was Vjtir* 
neither un accurate pbilologer nor a deep philosopher; 
tlie continuation has not shown himself much of either. Ibc 
their researches arc therefore only elementary and provisional. 
compilation, the ‘ Mithridates ' is already superannuated. 
materials, in eonscipience of the copiousness of later uw* 
ries, laiiientahly defective; but the method of arranging and -j^u; 
materials is entirely below the demands and necessities ol the p 
of science. , 
Adelung’s work wa.s completed by Vater in 1S17. .{-iijrk i ■ ■ 
after the publication of the first volume of tbe‘Mithridates, 
plact' in 1806, a work appearefl, small in extent, and ou the * . 
sketch, but possessiug all those properties which constitute philtff'^ 
work, — 1 mean Friedrich Sclilegel’s ‘ Essay on the Language ^ 
of the Hindoos (1808).' He fully established in it the decisive 
and precedence which grammatical forms ought to have over 
in proving tho affinities of languages. He based this claim * ^^^£0 
ami indvsiructible nature, and the unmistakeable evidence, of 
system^ ms to the original formative principles of language. 
tioii of this method he triumphantly sliowed tbe intimate histoncai ^ 
between the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, the 
manic languages. Such a connexion had indeed been already , .; 
the active and elegant mind of Sir William Jones, but, 
so little philological accuracy and philosophical clearocss. d‘* 
did not lend him or his friends and followers to any historic^ ’ 
of languages. It is to the impulse given by Schlegel's work, 
debted in a high degree for the ideas on which the new 
Germany has proceeded. The value of its details has now quite 
