Original Letters and Papers of the Late Viscount Strangford Upon Philological and Kindred Subjects

GIFT OF Now ready, cloth, price 15$. LIVES OP THE LORDS STRANGFORD, WITH THEIR ANCESTORS AND CONTEMPORARIES THROUGH TEN GENERATIONS. BY EDWARD HARRINGTON DE FONBLANQUE, " AUTHOR OF EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURGOYNE," " THE LIFE AND LABOURS OF ALBANY FONBLANQUE," &C. &C. &C. CASSELL, FETTER, & GALPIN: LONDON, PARIS, AND NEW YORK. ORIGINAL LETTERS AND PAPERS OF THE LATE VISCOUNT STRANGFORD. jfrltantgtu tyvtss. BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON ORIGINAL LETTERS AND PAPERS OF THE LATE VISCOUNT STRANGFORD UPON PHILOLOGICAL AND KINDRED SUBJECTS. EDITED BY VISCOUNTESS STRANGFORD. LONDON: TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL. 1878. [All rig/Us reserved.] GARPENTIER PREFACE BY THE EDITOR. IN a notice upon the death of Lord Strangford that 1 appeared in one of the newspapers of the day, the " remark was made, We feel sure that no correspondent of Lord Strangford ever burned a letter of his. His letters ran over alike with wit and with information ; there was some happy allusion, some apt sarcasm in every line. Nor was this all. No one was ever more ready and generous in communicating knowledge. A question on any of his favourite subjects would be rewarded by a letter which was in fact a philological or political treatise composed in his own terse and amusing had a keener sense of if there style. No one humour ; was a grotesque side to a thing, Lord Strangford was sure to find it out. And, like all really accurate men, like all men who really live in their work, he had the keenest appreciation of a blunder. It was curious indeed to listen to the half-provoked, half-amused way in which he would speak of the grotesque mistakes with regard to his favourite studies which he was constantly coming across. In short, a letter of Lord Strangford's, written in one of his happiest veins, was a mixture of wit and learning which it was really a privilege to 1 Saturday Review, January 16, 1869. M211135 vi PREFACE. The conviction of this writer was unhappily far from being justified by fact. In this age we live so fast that few of us take time to appreciate our own possessions, so that even treasures become encumbrances ; the few long letters that are still written are as often as not tossed aside and forgotten under the mass of daily dust that crowds out all, good and bad alike. The publication of the letters in this volume has been, I am well aware, too long delayed; I plead the excuse not only 1 of long illness after the publication of the two volumes of Lord Strangford's writings which I edited immediately after his death, but also the fact that I shared ti|e conviction of the writer I have quoted, and for some years searched near and far to find more of the many letters my husband wrote with a lavish hand. For some long ones almost essays that I remembered, I willingly and miles to obtain them but waited, journeyed many ; I searched and waited in vain ; no more than these have been found for me. What I publish now may. not appeal to a very general public, but they will, I feel sure, be gladly welcomed by a few. I have ventured to reprint also a very few of the essays and fugitive pieces written Lord on various kindred by Strangford topics ; of these I would gladly have reprinted more had space allowed me, for many that were thrown off on the spur of the moment trifles apparently a propos only of a passing event or publication contain some golden grain of erudite knowledge, some keen bit of criticism, or some thought so suggestive and informing, that it seemed a pity not to collect them into a form that might be pleasing to the scholar or useful to the student. There 1 Selections from the Writings of Viscount Strangford, 2 vols., Bentley, 1869. PREFACE. vii is food in this volume for those who study other subjects than purely scientific philology and ethnology. The same writer quoted above adds : "The linguistic and philological attainments of Lord Strangford were simply amazing. It was wonderful to talk to a man to whom all the languages of Europe and civilised Asia seemed equally familiar. It was wonderful to hear a man who could discuss the peculiarities of Basque, and Lithuanian, and the Eomance of Dacia, and who could address a native of Sogdiana in the peculiar forms of Turkish and Persian spoken in his native province. But this was not all. The power of speaking a vast number of languages and dialects has often existed in company with very little real philological knowledge, and with very little real intellectual capacity of any kind. It was not so with Lord Strangford. He was a scientific and historical philologer of a high order. There are few men who more emphatically know whence words come and whither they are going. He not only knew a vast number of languages, but he knew all about the languages which he knew. He knew their history, their several stages of growth, their exact relations to another and he knew all this in one ; the most intelligent and philosophical way. He had too, beyond most men, his knowledge, as the phrase is, at his finger's ends. And he was one who thoroughly realised the way in which cognate though not identical studies must be brought to bear upon one another. This is, we need hardly say, especially needful in the case of comparative philology and of history strictly so called. The comparative philologist will be sure to go astray without a pretty considerable knowledge of the political of nations with he is history the whose tongues dealing ; b viii PREFACE. and the political historian is equally sure to go astray unless he clearly grasps the relations between the languages of the different nations whose history he writes. Now Lord Strangford could perhaps hardly be called an historian in the strictest sense of the word, one with whom political history was in itself an object of but on the one hand he had primary study ; always studied philology in its proper relations to history, and on the other hand he had mastered, as few men have, the political history and condition of those particular nations with which the events of his own life brought him into special contact. Lord Strangford was, in short, an ethnologist in the highest sense of the word. And he brought ethnological knowledge to bear on times *and countries alike with the past and the present. He was at the same moment an authority on the present state of Eastern Europe, who might rank side by side with Mr. Einlay, and an authority on the earliest state of England, who might rank side by side with Dr. Guest. He was equally ready to discuss the relations of the Turk, the Greek, and the Bulgarian at the present moment, and to discuss the exact relations of the Briton, the Scot, and the Englishman in the days of Ceawlin. It seemed wonderful to have to go to one man for the details of the ecclesiastical movement now going on between the Danube and Mount Hsemus, and also for the details by which the Welsh tongue retreated before the English, from the Axe to the Parret, and from the Parret to the Tamar." And though the criticism in these letters is sharp and the humour keen, not the most tetchy of authors can detect the faintest breath of ill-nature : he was indeed utterly PREFACE. ix " incapable of it. He used to call himself the Literary " " Detective," and the Chronicler of Current Error ; and when he thought he detected wilful imposture, he was in his denunciations but not the certainly unsparing ; faintest shadow of a personally unkind feeling ever darkened his mind. As it happens, the long delay in publishing these letters has brought them to an opportune moment, for scarcely a page of the volume can be read without the feeling that here was a mind which had mastered what is vulgarly " " called the Eastern Question : one who knew both the upper and the nether springs of all that caused and con- cerned that question : one who had read deeply in the of all that history led up to the complications of to-day : one who had watched and touched the hidden intrigues that traded on the various characteristics of the races " engaged in it : one who knew the peoples as he knew " their languages : one who, looking back, could also look forward with the eye of a true prophet : one who had thought for himself, and formed his own judgment upon that thorough knowledge which comes of personal experi- ence and understanding. And many a one maynow deplore his loss, besides those sorrowing friends who loved him. I have ventured to add two letters which explain themselves. Prince L. Lucien Bonaparte kindly permits me to publish the affectionate dloge for the scholar and the friend whose loss still he mourns ; the letter of Pro- fessor Arminius Vambery is the honest outpouring of a grateful and appreciative heart written on hearing of the intended publication of this book. My warm thanks are due to both for the permission kindly granted to me to share these two letters with the world. x : PREFACE. Permission to reprint articles already published has been kindly accorded to me by the proprietor of the "Pair Mall Gazette," by Admiral Spratt, and by Mr. Matthew Arnold and I here most ; gratefully acknowledge their kindness.

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