The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti: With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modernRussell, Charles William
History
The life of Cardinal Mezzofanti: With an introductory memoir of eminent linguists, ancient and modern
Russell, Charles William
Linguists; Mezzofanti, Giuseppe, 1774-1849
Dr. Pritchard, who may be regarded as the founder of the English
school of ethnography, can hardly, notwithstanding, be strictly called
a linguist. If we except the Celtic languages, and Greek, Latin, and
German, most of his learning regarding the rest is taken at second-hand
from Adelung and others. Nevertheless, the linguistic section of his
“Researches into the Physical History of Mankind,” is a work of very
great value. M. Bunsen pronounces it “the best of its kind; infinitely
superior, as a whole, to Adelung’s _Mithridates_”;[193] and Cardinal
Wiseman, in his masterly lecture “On the Natural History of the Human
race,” not only gives Pritchard the credit of being “almost the first who
attempted to connect ethnography with philology,” but even goes so far
as to say that it will henceforth “be difficult for any one to treat of
this theme without being indebted to Dr. Pritchard for a great portion of
his materials.”[194]
Of the school of living British linguists I shall not be expected to
speak at much length; but there are a few names so familiar to the
scholars of every country that it would be unpardonable to pass them over
entirely without notice.
The work just quoted, from the very time of its publication in 1836,
established the reputation of Dr. (now Cardinal) Wiseman, still a very
young writer, as a philologist of the first rank. His latest writings
show that, through all the engrossing duties in which he has since been
engaged, he has continued to cultivate the science of philology.[195]
The Cardinal is, moreover, a most accomplished linguist. Besides the
ordinary learned languages, he is master not only of Hebrew and Chaldee,
but also of Syriac (of his scholarship in which his _Horæ Syriacæ_ is
a most honourable testimony), Arabic, Persian, and Sanscrit. In modern
languages he has few superiors. He speaks with fluency and elegance
French, Italian, German, Spanish, and Portuguese; and in most of these
languages he has frequently preached or lectured extempore, or with
little preparation.
The interesting discoveries of Colonel Rawlinson and of Dr. Hincks, and
Dr. Cureton’s very important Syriac publications, have associated their
names with the linguistic as well as the antiquarian memories of this
age. Nor are there many English Orientalists whose foreign reputation is
so high as that of Mr. Lane. But I am unable to speak of the attainments
of any of these gentlemen in the other families of language.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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