At an early stage of our labours, many years ago, we took occasion
to offer, for the consideration of the young, a memoir of Professor
Heyne of Gottingen, one of the greatest scholars of the age, and
who, by dint of perseverance, rose from a very humble to an exalted
station in life. Heyne presented not an uncommon instance of German
enthusiasm in scholarship. In our own country, erudition seems to
be pursued chiefly for the sake of professional advancement, and
consequently it seldom attains to any very lofty pitch. How few of our
scholars, it may be asked, know anything critically of the ancient
classics? How few write or speak Latin with elegance or purity? How
few ever saw any more recondite exemplars of Roman literature than
elementary school-books--the copy of a copy? In Germany, where no
sort of painstaking seems to be grudged, scholarship has gone, and
still goes on, immeasurably farther. As in the case of Heyne, Wolf,
Hermann, Boeckh, Vater, Gesenius, and others, men are there found
devoting themselves to a whole lifetime of earnest study in complete
forgetfulness of self. Living perhaps on the merest trifle, they bury
themselves in a library surrounded by old vellum-bound classics; and
there, poring over dingy yellow pages, they compare words with words,
examine into the merits of punctuation and orthography, and detect
new meanings, till they transfuse into themselves, as it were, the
very soul of their author. In this way, by collating old and priceless
versions of the classics--some of them in manuscript, and unique--they
are able to produce modern editions, which are greedily accepted
throughout European universities, and which have usually formed the
basis of elementary works for British compilers. We at least know of
few works in Latin common in our schools which have not been copied
in a reduced form from the painfully-constructed editions of German
scholars. We have been led into these observations from a desire to do
honour to the memory of one whose name has gone to swell the already
long list of German philologists.
Carl Gottlob Zumpt, the individual to whom we refer, was born at Berlin
in 1792. His parents were not wealthy: but in the circumstances in
which Prussia was placed at the beginning of the present century,
this was a matter of little importance. The oppressions of France
pretty nearly brought down all ranks into one common mass of distress
and poverty. To meet the cruel exactions of Napoleon, families gave
up every article of value to the state. For their gold they received
tokens in iron; and these acknowledgments are still treasured by
families, as lasting memorials of an adversity which took away
almost everything but life. Amidst these national sufferings and
humiliations, Carl Gottlob Zumpt received such an education as could
then be procured. Fortunately he required no incitement to learn: from
childhood he had been a diligent porer over books; and the acquisition
of languages cost him no trouble. Nature made him a scholar. After
passing through a series of schools and gymnasia in Berlin, he was
sent, by the advice of Buttman, the well-known grammarian, to the
university of Heidelberg, which at that time enjoyed a high reputation.
Kreuzer, Voss, Boeckh, belonged to it, all of them men of talent, and
celebrated for their philological learning. During Zumpt's residence at
Heidelberg, the university of Berlin was founded; and returning home,
he finished his education in his native city.
Though still a young man, Zumpt was already noted for his remarkable
attainments in the Greek and Roman languages. Thrown upon his own
resources, he soon distinguished himself, and was appointed a teacher
in one of the principal seminaries. From this position he subsequently
rose to be Professor of History in the Royal Military Academy, and
finally to be Professor of Roman Literature in the university of Berlin.
The life of a scholar is usually barren of incident. There is little to
tell about Zumpt. Amidst the cares of public teaching, he found time to
occupy himself in writing various works, critical and historical, all
connected with his favourite branch of study. To improve his knowledge
of antiquities, he made a tour through Italy and Greece, which, while
of considerable service to him as a man of letters, unfortunately
tended to injure his health. This tour was made in 1835, and after that
year Zumpt laboured still more assiduously at his critical editions of
the classics, unmindful of aught but that love of digging among ancient
words and thoughts which seems a fanaticism in the German mind. His
great aim was to be a Latinist worthy of the Augustine age itself. Nor
was he unsuccessful; for he wrote Latin with great elegance. He was
seldom required to speak the language; but when called on to do so, he
delivered himself with correctness and fluency. In this respect he is
supposed to have had no superior among his learned countrymen.
Holding this man in respect, not alone for his intellectual, but his
moral and social qualities, we shall always consider it as something
to say that we have enjoyed his personal acquaintance. In the course
of a tour in Germany, and short residence in Berlin in 1847, we had
the pleasure of visiting him at his house in the Burgher Strasse--a
terrace-like street on a branch of the Spree. We found Zumpt entombed
amidst his books. Tall in person, emaciated from study, and wrapped in
a dressing-gown, he rose and affectionately welcomed us to Berlin in
tolerable English--a language which, in compliment, he insisted all his
family should speak on every occasion of our visit. At this time he was
engaged on his edition of 'Quintus Curtius'--a work which will long be
regarded as a monument of his industry and learning.
One of the objects of our visit to Zumpt was to consult with him on
the subject of an enterprise in which he had recently engaged--the
joint editorship, with Dr Schmitz of Edinburgh, of a series of Latin
classics for use in schools. The projectors of this undertaking
were the publishers of the present sheet. Having in our own early
days experienced the dreary heaviness of ordinary school classics,
unrelieved by the slightest explanations in English touching the
subject or the authors, we were glad to be instrumental in putting into
the hands of youth a series which they could peruse with some degree
of pleasure, or at all events not with absolute weariness and disgust.
As Dr Zumpt entered heartily into the design, the arrangement promised
to have the advantage of naturalising in Britain a set of editions
drawn freshly from comparatively original sources, in place of the bald
reprints of antiquated copies. The task occupied the amiable scholar
during the remainder of his too short life, at the close of which he
had prepared the whole series excepting a portion of Horace, which
has consequently fallen into the hands of his nephew and son-in-law,
A. W. Zumpt. A victim to his study of ancient literature, his failing
eyesight first, and afterwards disordered viscera, admonished him to
take some species of relaxation. This counsel he took when too late.
In the hope of relief from his sufferings, he repaired to Carlsbad, a
watering-place in Bohemia; and there, to the great grief of his family
and friends, he died on the 25th of June last, in the fifty-eighth
year of his age. The decease of the illustrious Zumpt, together with
the loss of Orelli, and the veteran Hellenist, Gottfried Hermann, both
of whom died within the last eighteen months, leaves a blank among
European scholars which will not soon be filled up.