The Portland daily press., 1895-06-08

the Hub Were Rivals for This Con-
fusion of Tongues,
No action of the trustees of the public
library has been of greater moment than
the recent vote of the board to purchase
the pathological collection of the late
Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte, provided
satisfactory financial arrangements can
be made. The ultimate destination of
this magnificent literary prize has for the
past three or four years been agitating
the scholastic circles of two hemispheres.
In England, the country of the Princes
birth, his chosen home and present abid-
| ing place of his collection, movements
have been at different times started to
purchase it as a national testimonial to
Mr.. Gladstone, by the B. A. s of Oxford
for the pride of their university, the ven
erable Bodleian Library, and for various
other of Britain's well-known resorts of
| learning.
The authorities of the British Museum
have made strenuous attempts to have
Prince L. L. Bonaparte's absolutely per-
feet collection broken up in order to fill
vast gaps in their own supposedly uni
versal collection. Latest of all, it has
been rumored that the modern coal and
the Marquis of Butte was contemplating
the presentation of the Bonaparte collec-
tion to one of the great Catholic universi-
ties.
In France, the political home of the
Bonapartes, the Bibliotheque Rationale
of Paris has been emulating its great
rival, the British Museum, in attempts to
break up the Bonaparte collection for it's
own benefit. AS to Italy, mother of the
Bonaparte 1ace her government, in spite
of it's general financial collapse, has been
seriously contemplating the purchase of
this collection to enable Italian scholars
to study the philology of the peninsula
under advantages no other existing
material can furnish.
1t can be said with no exaggeration,
that no country in Europe can fail to
look with avaricious eyes at the portion
of this collection which appertains to its
own dialects, and not one of them can
OOctSu UlletU ~ pOSStSoCS Ill lUS OWA QldlCCUS
any comparable collection as that which
Prince L. L. Bonaprate managed to
| amass of each and of all.
EUROPE MUST COME TO BOSTON.
Our own library acquiring this perfect
collection, Europe would have to come
to Boston to study it's own language and
its own pathological history. With the
possible exception of the folk lore collec-
tion in the Harvard Library there is no
| library in this country which possesses
such an exclusive mine of material in any
particular line as to oblige European
scholars to come across the water for their
researches however valuable and inter
esting may be such library. for local spur-
poses Even our own literature is no ex-
ception, for much the best collection of
| American books is sill in the British
| Museum.
| Philology is not so dry and abstract a
matter as many imagine. No one can
assert that Sam Weller, Mickey Free, or
Jim Bludso is by any means caviare to
the general, yet each and all of these
| SGuUlSlucn ID VI oCCClebI 41uClCou w ullc
philologist. In fact, it is among just
such people that the thorough philologist,
such as the late Prince Louis Lucien, pro-
cures his most valuable data. Among all
the Princes 20, 900 volumes, with their
100 languages and over 1000 dialects,
perhaps not one-half are dictionaries
lexicons, grammars, and pathological
works proper.
! That was not the Princes broad idea of
pathological library. He sought out the
Sam Wellers, the Mickey Frees, and the
Jim Bludsoes of every corner of the
world and of ages gone by, and got at the
tongues of the common people. 1t is the
great cleaning of rare ancient and modern
hand books and pamphlets and song
books and missionary scraps which is by
far the most unique feature of the
Princes collection, although there are
rarities enough among the larger and
more pretentious works. Scores perhaps
hundreds, of dialects which do not pre-
sent single representative in either of
those twin giants the Bibliotheque
Nationale and the British Museum, are
found often amply provided from Prince
Louis Lucien's list.
THE GREAT PHILOLOGIST.
Louis Lucien Bonaparte, the great
philologist, was an Englishman by birth,
for he first saw the light at Thorngrove
on Jan. 4, 1873 He was indeed child
of quiet literary shades. While the 400, 00C
corpses were being strewn in the Russian
SHOWS by the infatuated autocrat and the
cannon for the life and death struggle at
Lutzen was being spotted, his father,
Napoleon's captured brother Lucien, was
serenely pegging away, polishing the
hexameters of a great epic on the
medieval history of France. Napoleon
disgust when he heard of the poem was
boundless, but he had only himself tc
blame if he had driven from his side the
wisest and truest of his counselors, who
might have ayerted the coming disasters.
Louis Lucien's early bent was scientific.
He even made wide reputation as a