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Setanta ne ne ae eee L161—H+41 AN ESSAY ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES BEING Che Fnaugural Decture DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD JANUARY 25, 1890 _ BY’ W»RYMORFILL, M.A. READER IN RUSSIAN AND THE OTHER SLAVONIC LANGUAGES Rondon HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C. 1890 ne, AN ESSAY ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE STUDY OF THE SLAVONIC LANGUAGES BEING Che Fnaugural Decture DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD JANUARY 25, 1890 \ ay ve VA W- RY MORFILL, M.A. READER IN RUSSIAN AND THE OTHER SLAVONIC LANGUAGES London HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE AMEN CORNER, E.C. 1890 ie “Q4 SAIO EE RO Lhvbs- Com. Rateo9 INAUGURAL LECTURE. For the purposes of my Inaugural Lecture, it seems to me that the two following points would be mosti worthy, the | attention of my hearers. (1) What attempts in the way of studying the Slavonic languages have previously been made in England ? (2) What advantages can we gain from a study of these languages and their literature ? I shall proceed to discuss the first of these, and say a few words about the relations between England and Slavonic countries. ) The connexion between England and Russia, as is pretty generally known, dates from the middle of the sixteenth century. In the year 1553 three ships were sent under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor to attempt to find the north-eastern passage. The ships were unfortunately separated by a storm; Sir Hugh Willoughby and his crew were afterwards found frozen to death on the coast of Russian Lapland, but Chancellor arrived at Arch- angel, where he landed. He succeeded in reaching Moscow, the capital of Ivan the Terrible, then reigning, who concluded a treaty of commerce with the English and sent an embassy under Osep Napea in return. The whole reign of Ivan is described to us in the graphic diary of Sir Jerome Horsey, the English ambassador at his court, but I can only allow myself a few allusions to it, as the scope of my lecture is not historical. Some letters of B peVeae 4 Ivan’s are preserved in the British Museum, but only the sionatures are his, the body of the letter being written by a diak or secretary. The rule of Ivan, tyrant as he was, was on the whole beneficial to Russia. ‘Thus in the year 1553 a printing-press was set up in Moscow, and there was printed in 1564 the first book, an Apostol as it is called by the Slavs, i.e. a book containing the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles. The chief printers were Ivan Fedorov and Peter Mstislavets. Their labours, however, were destined to be of short duration. The efforts of those who earned a living by copying books, and the prejudices of the superstitious prevailed. The printers were driven out of Russia and found a refuge in Lithuania, having lost their protector, Macarius, the metro- politan of Moscow, who died in 1564. Ivan Fedorov was warmly received by Sigismund III of Poland, and printed several books in that country, among others the Bible of Ostrog in 1581, of which there is a fine copy in the Bodleian Library. Another copy is preserved in the British Museum, and actually came from the library of Ivan. It was brought from Russia by Horsey. On the fly-leaf is the following memorandum in Horsey’s own hand. ‘This Bibell in the Slavonian tonge, had out of the Emperor’s librari.’ Before parting with Horsey, I must give his character of Ivan, which is graphic and valuable as coming from one who had frequently seen him and conversed with him. He writes as follows: ‘Thus much to conclude with this Emperor Ivan Vasiliwich. He was a goodlie man of person and presence, well favored, high forehead, shrill voice, a right Sithian, full of readie wisdom, cruell, bloudye, merciless ; his own experience mannaged by direction both his state and commonwealth affares; was sumptuously intomed in Michell Archangell Church, where he though garded daye and night, remaines a fearfull spectacle to the memory of such as pass by or heer his name spoken of, [who] are contented to cross and bless themselves from his resurrection again.’ 5 I have endeavoured in a small work about to be published to set before my readers some of the curious stories which bring England into connexion with this tyrant. Among other things, he wished his friend Elizabeth to procure him an English wife. One was accordingly selected for him, Lady Mary Hastings; but when she heard of the seven wives he had previously had, who had been divorced or had died, her heart failed her at the last moment and she declined the hand of the northern Nero. Horsey tells us that when on one occasion he showed a letter of Ivan’s to Elizabeth, she asked him many questions about the Russian language and said in a bright, quick way, ‘I could soon learn it. Mikulin, a Russian ambassador to her court, had his portrait painted while in England, which is still preserved. Boris Godunov, who usurped the throne after the death of Feodore the feeble son of Ivan, sent some youths to be educated in England, and one of them at least seems to have stayed in our country and become an English clergyman, for his name is mentioned in Walker’s ‘ Sufferings of the Clergy’ as one who was expelled by the Puritans. A curious relique of the same period is still preserved in the Bodleian. It is the note-book of a certain Richard James, a clergyman, who seems to have been chaplain or something of the kind to the Embassy at Moscow. The vocabulary of Russian words which he has collected is curious: under the word hkinzhal (dagger) he writes: such as the one which was shown me as that by which the false Demetrius was killed. It will be remembered, that this false Demetrius was an impostor, who gave himself out to be a son of Ivan the Terrible, who had been killed in early youth. This pretender howeyer, after having for a time deceived the Russians, met with a violent death. But not only have we the curious note-book of James, but — he has copied out, or caused to be copied out, some of the B 2 6 interesting Russian ballads of the time, d/imz, as they are called, of which I shall shortly speak more at large. One of these is very interesting: it is the lamentation of Xenia the daughter of Boris Godunov, who on her father’s death was forced to enter a monastery. Throughout Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages’ and the diary of Horsey we have stories about how our countrymen fared in Russia in these early times. Let us take ~ one as a specimen, to show how hard it went with them in the Tatar invasions. This is the account in a letter of Richard Uscombe to Mr. Henry Lane, written the 5th day of August, 1571. ‘The Mosco is burnt every sticke by the Crimme, the 24th day of May last and an innumerable number of people; and in the English house was smothered Thomas Southam, Tosild Waverley, Green’s wife and children, two children of Rafe, and more to the number of twenty-five persons were stifeled in our beere seller; and yet in the same seller was Rafe, his wife, John Browne and John Clarke preserved, which was wonderfull. And there went into that seller Master Glover and Master Rowley also; but because the heate was so great they came forth againe with much perill, so that a boy at their heeles was taken with the fire, yet they escaped blindfold into another seller, and there, as God’s will was, they were preserved. The emperor fled out of the field, and many of his people were carried away by the Crimme Tartar. And so with exceeding much spoile and infinite prisoners they returned home againe. What with the Crimme on the one side and his crueltie on the other, he hath but few people left.’ | . Cromwell was not recognised by the tsar Alexis, who was astonished to hear that the English had cut off the head of their King Carolus. We find Charles II during his exile and when in dire necessity borrowing money of the Russian tsar. The arrival of Peter the Great in England is well known: this was no doubt the cause of the first Russian 7 grammar being printed in England and at Oxford. It appeared in Latin in 1696. We must remember that Peter the Great was the lion of the day, and general object of curiosity, like the Shah in our own time; but it need hardly be said, that he was in every respect a much nobler and more interesting man. Henry Ludolf, the author of this work, was nephew of Job Ludolf, who wrote a history of Ethiopia, a celebrated work in its day. The grammar is a somewhat slender one: of course it knows nothing about the aspects of the verbs, that terror of modern Russian students. The dialogues at the end have a very modern ring about them: they would be good Russian at the present day. The Old Slavonic letters are used, for Peter had not as yét turned the ¢serkovuaya azhuka or church alphabet into the grazhdanskaya or civil. The type with which the book was printed is preserved at the Clarendon Press. Still no one as yet thought of studying Russian in England: there were many Scotchmen in Russia besides the English merchants, Dalziels, Gordons, Bruces, Carmichaels, and Hamiltons. We come upon their names in various documents, frequently strangely perverted: thus Hamilton has got into Khomutov. A short time ago in the Starina, or Antiquary, a Russian magazine full of interesting matter, a document was published in which the tsar Alexis gives permission to Dalziel to quit his service. He was accused, as my hearers will remember, of having contracted some cruel habits while serving in barbarous Muscovy, which he exhi- bited in his treatment of the Covenanters. The diary of Patrick Gordon, one of the most active coadjutors of Peter the Great, is still preserved in manuscript and has partly been published. Peter has justly been charged with cruelty in his treatment of the revolted Stre/ts, but Gordon does not seem to have been of a more tender disposition, and coolly avows the severities he practised. One more fact about these 8 Seotchmen in Russia, and I have done. Lermontov, who occupies the second place among the poets of that country, was of Scotch extraction, having been descended from a certain Learmont, who came from Scotland to Poland about the beginning of the seventeenth century, and thence mi- erated into Russia, probably at the smutnoye vremya or time of troubles, when so much fighting was going on. In one of | his latest lyrics Lermontov alludes pathetically to his Scotch ancestors. Those who are curious in the matter will find many stories about Russian ambassadors in England, scattered here and there in the diaries and other papers of the seven- teenth century. Pepys has something to tell us about them which is amusing. A very quaint little book of about the same period is the account of Russia by Samuel Collins, which contains curious personal details of Alexis, the father of Peter, a religious man and mild sovereign. Collins tells us that on one occasion he refused to allow a soldier to be shot for cowardice, piously remarking that the poor fellow could not help it, because courage being to a great extent a physical quality, God had not given it to all persons alike. In his reign occurred the great struggle between the ecclesiastical and civil power headed by the metropolitan Nicon. And perhaps this reso- lute prelate would have carried his point with the easy-going tsar, had not the boyars been too much for him. The struggle is wonderfully interesting, and the account published by the Englishman Palmer is of primary importance, because he has translated from documents that have never been allowed to be published in Russia. Antiokh Kantemir, the Russian ambassador in England at the beginning of the reign of George I, wrote some of his satires in this country: the work of Stephen Krasheninnikov on Kamschatka, was translated by one James Grieve and published at Gloucester in 1764. About the same time . we find some Russian students at Queen’s College, Michael — 9 Bikov and Prokhor Suvorov, as I find in the entrance book. I have since discovered that the latter was president of the Russian Historical Society at the beginning of this century. English connexions with Poland are scanty. A palatine of Sieradz was entertained in England in the time of Eliza- beth and visited Oxford, where he saw a play acted. The arrival of the Polish ambassador Paul Dzialinski, whose name is Latinised into Jalinus, sent by Sigismund III to her court, is well known. He was a man of stately presence and appeared in a fine suit of black velvet: on being presented to the Queen he made a long oration in Latin, complaining of the wars between the English and Spaniards, whereby he asserted that the commerce of Poland was seriously injured. In reply Elizabeth reprimanded him in excellent Latin, in which as Speed says, ‘lion-like rising, she daunted the mala- pert orator no less with her stately port and majestical deporture than with the tartness of her princely checks.’ Kochanowski, a Polish poet of the sixteenth century, still held in great esteem among his countrymen, says that the time will come when the Englishman will read his poems. Perhaps it has not come yet, but let us hope. I ought not to pass over the eminent Polish reformer John Laski or a Lasko, as he is sometimes called, who was much in our country in the sixteenth century. As regards Bohemia, the connexion with England has several times been close since the fourteenth century when Peter Payne, a former principal of St. Edmund Hall, carried over to that country the doctrines of Wicliffe, which led to the great religious movement among that people. The burning of Huss at Constance and the wars of the terrible Zizka are well known. The name of Wicliffe is of frequent occurrence in Bohemian religious songs still preserved. Mr. Wratislaw fortunately discovered at Cambridge one of the most valuable manuscripts of the chronicle of Dalimil of the fourteenth century. 10 Wealthy Bohemians occasionally visited England, among others, Slavata, the hero of the defenestration, as it is called, in 1618. The winter-king Frederick and his marriage with Elizabeth, the daughter of James I, are well known. After the battle of the White Mountain in 1620 the Bohemian nation is for a time obscured, but it has revived in our own days in a wonderful manner. About this subject I hope to speak more at length in a future lecture. With the Serbs and Bulgarians England has had but little to do. Upwards of sixty years ago, Dr., afterwards Sir John, Bowring published a series of translations from Russian, Polish, Serbian, and Bohemian. They did not effect much in the way of popularising among us the literatures of those countries. Unfortunately there is a want of colour in all these versions and a great sameness. In many instances one finds that the translator has mistaken the meaning of the original or translated through a German medium. This was decidedly the case with the versions of the Serbian folk-songs. Of these a German translation had previously appeared at Halle by a learned lady, Fraulein Theresia von Jacob, who wrote under the nom de guerre of Talvj, and afterwards married Professor Edward Robinson, the American theologian. In the charming little sketch of Slavonic literature which this lady published at New York in 1850, she alludes to the use which Dr. Bowring had made of her German version. In 1849 and 1852 Mr. Wratislaw published some excellent translations of Bohemian poems, and also in 1878 the lectures which he delivered on the Ilchester foundation on the litera- ture of the Chekhs in the fourteenth century. One of the first mentioned volumes contains versions of the notorious ‘ralodvorsky Rukopis, or Queen’s Court Manuscripts, but owing to the suspicion of spuriousness under which these poems labour, we cannot greet them with a welcome. The shades gathering round them seem to grow darker, and Hanka, who affected to have discovered them, has been almost con- II victed of forgery. Mr. W. R. Ralston, whose death last year must be ever lamented by Slavonic students, published two valuable works among others on Russian folk-tales and folk-songs. These well-written books have done a ereat deal to make English readers acquainted with the trea- sures of this kind possessed by Russia. Of all my late friend’s work it may be said that it is done in honest and scholarly fashion: he was a man of sound knowledge and generous heart. Polish literature, with the exception of Bewring’s poor versions, has been almost entirely neglected among us. We must add the translation of the Konrad Wallenrod of Mickiewicz by a Mr. Cattley some years ago, and versions of the same poem and the Pan Tadeusz of that author by Miss Biges. The work by this lady is scrupulously accurate, but unfortunately she has deserted the metre of the original, a fatal error as I cannot help thinking. For the rhyming lines of Mickiewicz she has adopted a rather halting style of blank verse, and blank verse is a metre which is intolerable, unless it be effectively handled. It is not every day that we shall find a Milton or a Tennyson. Here and there in stray volumes I have come upon translations of some of the spirited lyrics of Mickiewicz. As, for instance, in a work entitled the ‘ Polish Exile’ published in Edinburgh in 1833, there is a vigorous version of the ode called Faris written on the enthusiast Wenceslaus Rzewuski, who passed his life among the Arabs in the desert and obtained the name Amir Tad)-oul-Fekher, or the Emir of the Crown of Glory. What was the fate of this eccentric man is not known: he figured in the revolutionary war of 1830, when he fitted out a squadron of cavalry at his own expense, but afterwards disappeared. According to some, he was found slain after the battle of Daszow; another and a pleasing tradition is that he escaped to the desert, where he spent the remainder of his days. In 1881 was published at Chicago in America, a work es LIBRARY 12 entitled ‘Poets and Poetry’ of Poland, edited by Paul Sobo- leski. The book is however of a rather disappointing character. It consists for the most part of a reprint of the translations of Bowring, with a few others; some of the versions having evidently been composed by the editor, who appears to be imperfectly acquainted with the English lan- guage. On many grounds a new translation of the master- pieces of Mickiewicz is required, and it is probably owing to this cause and the difficulty of the language in which they are written, that this poet, who has considerable merits, 1s so little known among us. Pushkin, however, the Russian poet has fared even worse. The South-Slavonic languages have been seldom brought to the notice of Englishmen, almost the only exception being the interesting works published by Mr. Arthur J. Evans, who has visited both Serbia and Bulgaria and is well acquainted with South-Slavonic languages. He is the author of a valuable book of travels in Bosnia and the Herzegovina at the time of the war; he has issued a volume of Illyrian letters and also published ‘Antiquarian Researches in Illy- ricum.’ The Slavonic races have no more staunch friend among: us. Some years back our libraries were very poor in Slavonic books, but now that of the Taylor Institution boasts of a fairly good collection, which includes’ the chief classics in the literature of each and some dictionaries of a high character, such as Dahl’s Zolkovii Slovar, or Explanatory Dictionary, a valuable work, full of information; weak only in one point, the etymologies, and indeed this deficiency cannot be won- dered at, when we see how recently our own language has been scientifically treated. At the present day we are wit- nesses of the gigantic labours and learning which are being expended on the great English Dictionary undertaken by the Clarendon Press. We have at the Taylor the Polish Lexicon of Linde and 13 the Cech or Bohemian of Jungmann. All appliances are at hand for a scientific study of the Slavonic languages. The Bodleian Library, through the care of Dr. Neubauer, who among: other departments has superintended the Slavonic, has greatly increased its Slavonic books and is more on a level with other learned libraries. Leaving then this first division of my subject in which I have attempted to discuss what has been done in England in the fields of Slavonic study—very scanty at best—I come to my second division, viz., the use of the Slavonic languages. In plain English, what profit can be derived taking the word in its widest sense from the study of them ? I shall divide this part of my lecture into three heads :— (2) The importance of the Slavonic languages for the study of Comparative Philology. (4) What literature they possess worthy of our attention, and the treatment of this wide subject must necessarily be brief on the present occasion, seeing how scanty are the limits I can allow myself. (c) Their practical use for diplomacy and other purposes, based upon the consideration of the great number of people who speak them, and other reasons. This third part of my subject may be considered the practical one in the strictest sense of the term. (a) Ever since the appearance of the great work of Bopp in 1835, which, as is well known, laid the foundation of Comparative Philology, the importance of the Slavonic branch in the study of the Aryan languages has been fully recog- nised. Only a short time before, Joseph Dobrowsky, the Nestor of Slavonic philology, had published in 1822 his Institutiones Linguae Slavicae Dalecti Veteris, the first work to put Slavonic philology upon a scientific basis. Up to that time and indeed for some time afterwards—so long is error dying—the wildest theories had prevailed about the Slavs and their languages. For example, Professor Dan- 14 kowsky of Pressburg published a work to show that the old Slavonic was a direct daughter of Greek, and translated some portions of Homer into their exact Slavonic equivalents, which by twisting words he made almost identical, just as Sir W. Betham made the Punic in the Paenulus of Plautus to be Old Irish. Of course Dankowsky had much more to go upon, as the Greek and Slavonic languages belong to the same family. We shall see that there have been Slavomaniacs as there have been Keltomaniacs. Wolanski found Slavonic inscriptions in Italy, and Kollar the Bohemian, a good poet, but poor philologist, explained the geographical nomenclature throughout Italy by Slavonic roots. The droll thing is that all this nonsense found its way into Donaldson’s Varronianus, which was a text-book in the University when I was an undergraduate thirty-three years ago. The map appended to that work is indeed a curiosity, with its Slavonic popula- tions of Italy and its identification of Lithuani and Latini. One rubs one’s eyes on looking at it, and wonders how such nonsense was actually held to be gospel in the University. The impetus given by Bopp to scientific philology soon found an echo in the Slavonic countries : in Russia, Vostokov published his grammar of Old Slavonic ; he was followed by Sreznevski and others: in Bohemia, Schafarik treated of Slavonic ethnology in a monumental work, which has become familiar in its German translation under the title ‘ Slawische Alterthiimer. He has been followed by a series of scholars, one of the most eminent in our own day being Jan Gebauer of Prag; Poland can boast of Malecki, author of an excellent Historico-Comparative Grammar, and Lucian Malinowski, now professor at Cracow and one of the most eminent of modern Slavists. Danicié, recently deceased, published an excellent Serbian ¢rammar and Suman one of Slovenish, that strange Hastern Slavonic idiom, which is spoken in the provinces of which g 15 Laibach is the centre, and although the vernacular of a small population, is of great interest on account of the old forms which it shows. Even the Lusatian Wends or Sorbs have their philologist in Dr. Pfuhl. Bulgarian late in the field, after being crushed for so many centuries, is now being scientifically treated in the pages of the Periodichesko Spisanie. The extinct Polabish, a language once spoken on the Elbe (Slay. Laba), was restored from some fragments by Schleicher, just as Professor Owen classified the extinct mowa by a few bones which had been found. The, language ceased to be spoken, like Cornish among ourselves, in the early part of last century. Schleicher also wrote a good grammar of Old Slavonic,:the language of the Bible and the Church among the Eastern Slavs, and we have the valuable yea wh aL = ty ae iH) they ae Piva.