of the languages of mankind, missionaries and travellers felt it their duty to collect lists of words, and draw up grammars wherever they came in contact with a new race. The two great works in which, at the beginning of our century, the results of these researches were summed up, I mean the Catalogue of Languages by Hervas, and the Mithridates of Adelung, can both - be traced back directly to the influence of Leibniz. As to Hervas, he had read Leibniz carefully, and though he differs from him on some points, he fully acknowledges his merits in promoting a truly philosophical study of languages. Of Adelung's Mithridates and his obligations to Leibniz we shall have to speak presently.

Hervas lived from 1735 to 1809. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a Jesuit by profession. While working as a missionary among the Polyglottous tribes of America, his attention was drawn to a systematic study of languages. After his return, he lived chiefly at Rome in the midst of the numerous Jesuit missionaries who had been recalled from all parts of the world, and who, by their communications on the dialects of the tribes among whom they had been laboring, assisted him greatly in his researches.

Most of his works were written in Italian, and were afterwards translated into Spanish. We cannot enter into the general scope of his literary labors, which are of the most comprehensive character. They were intended to form a kind of Kosmos, for which he chose the title of "Idea del Universo." What is of interest to us is that portion which treats of man and language as part of the universe; and here, again, chiefly his Catalogue of Languages, in six volumes, published in Spanish in the year 1800.

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If we compare the work of Hervas with a similar work which excited much attention towards the end of the last century, and is even now more widely known than Hervas, I mean Court de Gebelin's "Monde Primitif," we shall see at once how far superior the Spanish Jesuit is to the French philosopher. Gebelin treats Persian, Armenian, Malay, and Coptic as dialects of Hebrew; he speaks of Bask as a dialect of Celtic, and he tries to discover Hebrew, Greek, English, and French words in the idioms of America. Hervas, on the contrary, though embracing in his catalogue five times the number of languages that were known to Gebelin, is most careful not to allow himself to be carried away by theories not warranted by the evidence before him. It is easy now to point out mistakes and inaccuracies in Hervas, but I think that those who have blamed him most are those who ought most to have acknowledged their obligations to him. To have collected specimens and notices of more than 300 languages is no small matter. But Hervas did more. He himself composed grammars of more than forty languages.2 He was the first to point out that the true affinities of languages must ☛ be determined chiefly by grammatical evidence, not by mere similarity of words. He proved, by a compara1 Monde primitif analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne: Paris, 1773.

2 Catalogo, i. 63.

3 "Mas se deben consultar gramaticas para conocer su caracter proprio por medio de su artificio gramatical."- Catalogo, i. 65. The same principle was expressed by Lord Monboddo, about 1795, in his Ancient Metaphysics, vol. iv. p. 326. "My last observation is, that, as the art of a language is less arbitrary and more determined by rule than either the sound or sense of words, it is one of the principal things by which the connection of languages with one another is to be discovered. And, therefore, when we find that two languages practise these great arts of language,—

tive list of declensions and conjugations, that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic.1 He scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish, three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family.2 He had proved that Bask was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic dialect, but an independent language, 7 spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and rivers.3 Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208 degrees of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America, was made by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.

derivation, composition, and flexion, in the same way, we may conclude, I think, with great certainty, that the one language is the original of the other, or that they are both dialects of the same language."

1 Catalogo, ii. 468.

2 Ibid. i. 49. Witsen, too, in a letter to Leibniz, dated Mai 22, 1698, alludes to the affinity between the Tataric and Mongolic languages. "On m'a dit que ces deux langues (la langue Moegale et Tartare) sont différentes à peu près comme l'Allemand 'est du Flamand, et qu'il est de même des Kalmucs et Moegals." — Collectanea Etymologica, ii. p. 363.

3 Leibniz held the same opinion (see Hervas, Catalogo, i. 50), though he considered the Celts in Spain as descendants of the Iberians.

4 Catalogo, i. 30. "Verá que la lengua llamada malaya, la qʻıal se habla en la península de Malaca, es matriz de inumerables dialectos de naciones isleñas, que desde dicha península se extienden por mas de doscientos grados de longitud en los mares oriental y pacífico."

Ibid. ii. 10. “De esta península de Malaca han salido enjambres de pobladores de las islas del mar Indiano y Pacífico, en las que, aunque parece haber otra nacion, que es de negros, la malaya es generalmente la mas dominante y extendida. La lengua malaya se habla en dicha península, continente del Asia, en las islas Maldivas, en la de Madagascar (perteneciente

7

Hervas was likewise aware of the great grammatical similarity between Sanskrit and Greek, but the imperfect information which he received from his friend, the Carmelite missionary, Fra Paolino de San Bartolomeo, the author of the first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790, prevented him from seeing the full meaning of this grammatical similarity. How near Hervas was to the discovery of the truth may be seen from his comparing such words as theos, God, in Greek, with Deva, God, in Sanskrit. He identified the Greek auxiliary verb eimi, eis, esti, I am, thou art, he is, with the Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti. He even pointed out that the terminations of the three genders1 in Greek, 08, ē, on, are the same as the Sanskrit, as, â, am. But believing, as he did, that the Greeks derived their philosophy and mythology from India," he supposed that they had likewise borrowed from the Hindus some of their words, and even the art of distinguishing the gender of words.

The second work which represents the science of language at the beginning of this century, and which is, to a still greater extent, the result of the impulse which Leibniz had given, is the Mithridates of Adelung. Adelung's work depends partly on Hervas,

al Africa), en las de Sonda, en las Molucas, en las Filipinas, en las del archipiélago de San Lázaro, y en muchísimas del mar del Sur desde dicho archipiélago hasta islas, que por su poca distancia de América se creian pobladas por americanos. La isla de Madagascar se pone á 60 grados de longitud, y á los 268 se pone la isla de Pasqua ó de Davis, en la que se habla otro dialecto malayo; por lo que la extension de los dialectos malayos es de 208 grados de longitud."

1 Catalogo, ii. 134.

2 Ibid. ii. 135.

8 The first volume appeared in 1806. He died before the second volume was published, which was brought out by Vater in 1809. The third and fourth volumes followed in 1816 and 1817, edited by Vater and the younger Adelung.

partly on the collections of words which had been made under the auspices of the Russian government. Now these collections are clearly due to Leibniz. Although Peter the Great had no time or taste for philological studies, the government kept the idea of collecting all the languages of the Russian empire steadily in view.1 Still greater luck was in store for the science of language. Having been patronized by Cæsar at Rome, it found a still more devoted patroness in the great Cesarina of the North, Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Even as Grand-duchess Catherine was engrossed with - the idea of a Universal Dictionary, on the plan suggested by Leibniz. She encouraged the chaplain of the British Factory at St. Petersburg, the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq, to undertake the work, and he is said to have published, at her desire, a "Comparative Vocabulary of Eastern Languages," in quarto; a work, however, which, if ever published, is now completely lost. The reputed author died in London in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-four. When Catherine came to the throne, her plans of conquest hardly absorbed more of her time than her philological studies; and she once shut herself up nearly a year, devoting 7 all her time to the compilation of her Comparative Dictionary. A letter of hers to Zimmermann, dated the 9th of May, 1785, may interest some of my hearers:

"Your letter," she writes, "has drawn me from the solitude in which I had shut myself up for nearly nine months, and from which I found it hard to stir. You

1 Evidence of this is to be found in Strahlenberg's work on the "North and East of Europe and Asia," 1730; with tabula polyglotta, &c.; in Messerschmidt's "Travels in Siberia," from 1729-1739; in Bachmeister, "Idea et desideria de colligendis linguarum speciminibus:" Petropoli, 1773; in Güldenstädt's "Travels in the Caucasus," &c.