RASK, Erasmus, an eminent scholar and philologist, was born at Brendekild, in the island of Even, in the year 1784. He studied at the university of Copenhagen, and early distinguished himself by his singular talent for the acquisition of languages. In the year 1808, he was appointed assistant keeper of the University Library, and some years afterwards made professor of Literary History. In 1811, he published, in the Danish language, his Introduction to the Grammar of the Icelandic and other Ancient Northern Languages, the materials of which were entirely derived from the immense mass of manuscript and printed works which had been accumulated by his predecessors in the same field of research. This grammar appears to have given a fresh impulse to the study of the ancient northern languages, even in Germany. The reputation which Rask acquired by it recommended him to the Arna-Magnaean Institution, by which he was employed as editor of the Icelandic Lexico of Biorne Haldorsen,
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which had long remained in manuscript To this work, which appeared in 1814, Bishop Miiller contributed a preface, in which he pronounces a just eulogium on the talents and the spirit of research displayed by the youthful editor. About the same time, Rask, who had never been in Iceland, paid a visit to that country, where he remained from 1813 to 1815, during which time he made himself completely master of the language, and familiarized himself with the literature, manners, and customs of the natives. To the interest with which they inspired him, may probably be attributed the establishment at Copenhagen, early in 1816, of the Icelandic Literary Society, which was mainly instituted by his exertions, and of which he had the honour to be the first president.

Whilst thus employed, however, he was about to enter upon a more ample field pf enterprise. In October 1816, he left Denmark on a literary expedition, which had been fitted out for the double purpose of prosecuting inquiries into the languages of the East, and collecting manuscripts for the University Library at Copenhagen. The king of Denmark having liberally provided him with the requisite means, he proceeded first to Sweden, where he remained two years, in the course of which he made an excursion into Finland, for the purpose of studying the language of that country. Here he published, in Swedish, his Anglo-Saxon Grammar, in 1817; and during the same year there appeared at Copenhagen, in Danish, an Essay on the Origin of the Ancient Scandinavian or Icelandic Tongue, in which he traced the affinity of that remarkable idiom to the other European languages, particularly to the Latin and the Greek. In 1818, he published a second edition, very much improved, of his Icelandic Grammar, translated by himself into Swedish; and in the course of the same year he also brought out the first complete editions of Snorro’s Edda, and Saemund’s Edda, in the original text, along with Swedish translations of both Ed-das, the originals and the versions occupying each two volumes. From Stockholm he proceeded, in 1819, to St Petersburg, where he wrote in German an interesting paper on the Languages and Litcrature of Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and Finland, which was published in the sixth number of the ViennaJahrbucher. From Russia, which he traversed, he proceeded through Tartary into Persia, and resided for some time at Tauris, Teheran, Persepolis, and Shiraz. It may be mentioned here, as an instance of his remarkable facility in acquiring languages, that, in about six weeks, he made himself sufficiently master of the Persian to be able to converse freely in that language with the natives. In 1820, he embarked at Abuschekr, in the Persian Gulf; for Bombay, which he reached in safety; and during his residence there he wrote, in English, a Dissertation on the Authenticity of the Zend Language, which he addressed to the governor, the Hon. Mountstuart Elphinstone, and which was afterwards published in the third volume of the Transactions of the Literary Society of Bombay. The same production, with corrections and additions, was afterwards deemed worthy of insertion in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society. From Bombay he proceeded through India to Ceylon, where he arrived in 1822, and soon afterwards wrote, in English, a Dissertation respecting the best Method of expressing the Sounds of the Indian Languages in European Characters, which was printed in the Transactions of the Literary and Agricultural Society of Colombo. Professor Rask, having at length completed his researches on the scale prescribed, set out for Europe, and reached Copenhagen in the beginning of May 1823, after an absence of nearly seven years. He brought home with him a considerable collection of rare and curious oriental manuscripts, Persian, Zend, Pali, Cingalese, and others, which now enrich the university and royal libraries of the Danish capital.

Notwithstanding all his labours and exertions, this indefatigable scholar scarcely allowed himself an interval of re-

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pose. Between the period of his return from the East and that of his death, which occurred far too soon for the interests of philology, Professor Rask published in his native language a Spanish Grammar in 1824, an Italian Grammar and a Frisic Grammar in 1825, a Treatise respecting the Ancient Egyptian Chronology in 1827, the Ancient Jewish Chronology previous to Moses in 1828, and an Essay on Danish Orthography in the same year. He likewise edited an edition of Schneider’s Danish Grammar for the use of Englishmen in 1829, and superintended the English translation of his Anglo-Saxon Grammar in 1830. This last work supplies what had long been a desideratum in English literature. Before its appearance, persons whose taste might dispose them to investigate our early vernacular remains, had no guides to direct them, and each had to form for himself a Grammar and a Dictionary of the Saxon. Hickes’ was full of blunders, and in these Elstob, Lye, Manning, and others had religiously followed him, superadding their own contingents respectively. By the publication of Rask’s Saxon Grammar, however, we were to a certain degree freed from this lamentable state of things, and facilities were affordedfor the acquisition of the language, which previously had no existence. The attentive student will at once perceive the important light which he has thrown upon its principles, by what he has advanced regarding accentuation, in all which the soundness of his views is fully supported by the manuscripts. He has divided nouns into simple and complex, and adjectives into definite and indefinite; a division which is new to us in this country, and, by its simplicity of arrangement, forms a striking contrast to the endless subdivisions, exceptions, and annotations of Hickes. But it is in the investigation of the verbs that Rask appears to the greatest advantage. His classification of them is simple and obvious; nor can there be a better proof of his accuracy than the perfect order and regularity which it enables us to detect in numerous formations previously considered as irregular. His observations on prefixes and postfixes are written with less care, and he has also treated the important branch of syntax in too slight and perfunctory a manner; omissions which excite some surprise, in a scholar possessing such an entire mastery over the Anglo-Saxon.

We must return to the author himself, however, one of whose last literary efforts we have thus incidentally noticed. In private life the character of Professor Rask was such as to command admiration and respect. His manners, though somewhat retiring, were mild and gentle, and his morals unimpeachable. His mode of living was simple in the extreme, and his temperance that of an anchoret. The habits of Study and application which he had acquired in his youth were never laid aside. In company he was diffident, and always expressed himself with modesty; but when the subject involved any thing relative to his own history or pursuits, he evinced a reluctance to converse, which seemed to grow upon him with years, and almost amounted to a morbid sensibility. His facility in the acquisition of languages was extraordinary; he appeared to gain a knowledge of them by a sort of intuition, and his mind seemed to recollect rather than to learn. In 1822, he was master of no less than twenty-five languages and dialects. His knowledge of English was extensive and correct. He spoke and wrote it with such fluency and precision, that Englishmen to whom he was introduced were accustomed to ask him how long he had been in England, considering that such an acquaintance could only be gained by a residence in the country where it was spoken. Risk, in his personal appearance, was thin and spare, but well made; his habits of temperance, regularity, and exercise, had contributed to give him all the appearance of a healthy man, and he seemed destined to attain a ripe old age. He was capable of enduring much fatigue, and even the privation of necessary rest; changes of climate seemed to produce no impression upon his constitution;
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the scorching sun of India, and the biting frosts of Iceland, were equally braved and disregarded. But, with all this apparent superiority to ordinary infirmities, he fell a victim to consumption, brought on, it is believed, by those habits of intense application, and abstinence from proper nutriment, to which we have already alluded; and he died at that period of life (forty-eight) when the faculties of the human mind have little more than attained their maturity, leaving behind him a name that will not soon be forgotten.

The acquirements of Professor Rask were multifarious and extraordinary, and such as justly entitled him to our respect and admiration. There never perhaps existed any scholar whose study of language had been directed to a wider circle, and assuredly none who had made the structure of language so much an object of attention. He was the great comparative anatomist of philology; not building up theories out of scattered fragments, collected as it were by accident, but drawing his conclusions from the most profound and elaborate research, and, by comparison, comprehension, and exhaustion, initiating us into those curious inquiries which have for the most part been perfunctorily handled by the majority of critics. Not that Rask’s writings have enabled the world to form an accurate estimate of his extraordinary learning. To have written the best Icelandic, and the bes t Anglo-Saxon Grammar; to have tracked, through Hebrew or Kieroglyphical records, the chronology of the Egyptian kings; to have edited Eddas or Sagas, and carried oft' prizes for essays on this or the other limited inquiry; all these constituted little compared to what this extraordinary man was capable of effecting, had it pleased God to prolong his life. He was one of the few men qualified to write on philology, with a sufficient knowledge of the subject in all its bearings; who had seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears, the tribes and the tongues which overspread the surface of the globe; who, if he had not girdled the whole earth, had at least explored those tracts in which so many nations were cradled; and who, travelling throughout the East in quest of philological knowledge, carried with him a mind so well trained, and exercised, and cultivated, that nothing could be wasted upon it of this we have ample evidence furnished to us at every stage in his protracted expedition. His progress was like that of Fame in Virgil, continually gaining fresh accessions of knowledge, and increasing in intellectual stature, but, unlike the impersonation of the poet, never raising aloft his head so as to plunge it into the region of the clouds. His primary object was the collection of sufficient materials to serve as the basis of a most enlarged induction; his next was to employ analysis or resolution in decomposing, separating, and classifying these materials, so as to render them disposable for the purposes of general investigation; and his last by synthetical reasoning, to lay a solid foundation for the science of philology, and to deduce those general laws of connection, resemblance, or filiation, which may be discovered in every branch of the great family of languages. He lived to accomplish the first, and he had even entered upon his analytical labours, when exhausted nature sunk under the toil, and the grave swallowed up the fruits of all his researches. Rask was no theorist; and, if his life had happily been prolonged, he would have finally settled the question, which has long been agitated, viz. whether induction be really applicable as an instrument of investigation and discovery in the science of philology, (a.)