Pritchard as a polyglot

Pritchard
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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, roost 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 ; 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." 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. 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 Hot a SyriaccB 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 those 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 thore 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 those gentlemen in the other families of language.