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Klaproth, not caring to retrace his steps, preferred to visit hordes still unknown to him, and he therefore crossed the southern districts of Siberia, and collected during a journey extending over twenty months, a large number of Chinese, Mandchoorian, Thibetan, and Mongolian books, which were of service to him in his great work "Asia Polyglotta." On his return to St.
Watters had to judge of the comparative merits of the versions of Beal and Giles, and pronounce on the many points of contention between them. I have endeavoured to eschew those matters, and have seldom made remarks of a critical nature in defence of renderings of my own. The Chinese narrative runs on without any break. It was Klaproth who divided Remusat's translation into forty chapters.
We will content ourselves with adding to these remarks of Klaproth on the Ossete language, that its pronunciation resembles that of the Low-German and Slavonic dialects. The Georgians differ essentially from the neighbouring nations, alike in their language and in their physical and moral qualities.
Ermann and Ledebur explored Siberia; Klaproth, Kupfer, Parrot, and Eichwald, the Caucasian provinces; Burckhardt, Rueppell, Ehrenberg, and Russegger, Syria and Egypt; the Prince von Neuwied and Paul William, duke of Wuertemberg, North America; Becher, Mexico; Schomburg, Guiana; the Prince von Neuwied and Martius, the Brazils; Poeppig, the banks of the Amazon; Rengger, Paraguay.
Their author's career was cut short by death before he had completed their revision for the press, and they were edited at St. Petersburg by Henry Julius von Klaproth, a young Prussian, who afterwards explored the same countries. Klaproth, who was born at Berlin on the 11th October, 1783, gave proof at a very early age of a special aptitude for the study of Oriental languages.
This opinion, however, appears to us mere conjecture, as in the time of Klaproth the interpretation of cuneiform inscriptions had not been accomplished, and too little was known of the language of the Medes for any one to judge of its resemblance to the Ossete idiom.
The alkalized earths, as lime, magnesia, and still better, pot-ash, seem to intervene as solvents, for alumina, completely dissolved, acquires, as we have shown from Klaproth, a crystallization, of which, by itself, it is not susceptible.
After this account of his journey, from which we might multiply extracts, Klaproth sums up all the information he has collected on the tribes of the Caucasus, dwelling specially on the marked resemblances which exist between the different Georgian dialects and those of the Finns and Lapps. This was a new and useful suggestion.
Klaproth did not belong to the worthy race of book-worms who shut themselves up in their own studies. He took a wider view of the nature of true knowledge, feeling that the surest way to attain a thorough acquaintance with the languages of Asia and of Oriental manners and customs was to study them on the spot.
After seven weeks' study Borrow wrote again to Mr Jowett: "I am advancing at full gallop, and . . . able to translate with pleasure and facility the specimens of the best authors who have written in the language contained in the compilation of the Klaproth.
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