Some of the linguists of Holland may claim a higher rank. The well-known Arabic scholar, Erpenius, (Thomas Van Erpen,) was also acquainted with several other Oriental languages, Hebrew, Chaldee, Persian, Turkish, and Ethiopic. His countryman and successor in the chair of Oriental languages at Leyden, James Golius, was hardly less distinguished. Peter Golius, brother of James, who entered the Carmelite Order and spent many years as a missionary in Syria and other parts of the East, became equally celebrated in Rome for his Oriental scholarship. In all these three cases the knowledge of the languages was not a mere knowledge of books, but had been acquired by actual travel and research in the various countries of the East. John Henry Hottinger, too, a pupil of James Golius at Leyden, and the learned Jesuit, Father Athanasius Kircher, belong also to this period. The latter, who is well known for his varied and extensive attainments in every department of science, was moreover a linguist of no ordinary merit.[130] He was born at Geyzen, near Fulda, in 1602, and entered the Jesuit society in 1618, when only sixteen years old. No detailed account is given by his biographers (with whom languages were of minor interest,) of the exact extent of his attainments in the department of languages; but they were both diversified and respectable, and in some things he was far beyond the men of his own time. His _Lingua Egyptiaca Restituta_ may still be consulted with advantage by the student of Coptic. Most of these men, however, confined themselves chiefly to one particular department. The first really universal linguist of Germany is the great Ethiopic scholar, Job Ludolf, who was born at Erfurt, in 1624. Early in life he devoted himself to the study of languages; and his extensive travels—first as preceptor to the sons of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha, and afterwards as tutor to the children of the Swedish ambassador in Paris—coupled with his unexampled industry,[131] enabled him, not only to hold a high rank in history and general literature, but also to attain to a success as a linguist which had rarely been equalled before his time. He is said to have been master of twenty-five languages,[132] but as I have never seen any exact enumeration of them, I am inclined to allow for considerable exaggeration.