TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

Glot

AN apology is perhaps due for the title of this translation. Of the alternative renderings tology' and the more familiar and for better or worse established Philology' I have with some hesitation chosen the latter; and in the text, wherever they occur, the words 'glottologo' and 'filologo' appear as 'philologist' and 'scholar' respectively. The epithet Aryan' as against Indo-European' or 'Indo-Germanic' I felt I had no right to alter.

In making the translation I have had the advantages of the author's latest corrections and additions. Any remarks of my own have been given in foot-notes enclosed in square brackets. In many of the quotations from other than Italian writers I have sought where opportunity offered to ensure a faithful representation of the sense by consulting the originals.

E. S. R.

GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE,

CAMBRIDGE.

January, 1879.

PREFACE.

AUGUST SCHLEICHER in the second edition of his well-known Compendium, published in 1866, and translated by me in great part into Italian, described with wonderful precision, order and clearness the results of the investigations made by a historical and comparative method in the preceding fifty years on the subject of that linguistic stock which he with nearly all the German scholars called 'IndoGermanic,' and which I with several illustrious masters of our science, for want of a positively better term, call 'Aryan' or Indo-European.' Theodor Benfey, in his Geschichte der sprachwissenschaft, was unable to carry the narration beyond 1867. To continue, as far as my powers permitted, the work of those two most learned scholars, tracing the progress of research on the field of the Aryan languages from 1866 to the present year, is the task which I have set myself in writing this book. But it is well to observe at the outset that it is my intention to discuss only those works which concern, more or less

1

Paris, 1875, pp. 146-8, 213-6 (note).

directly, the entire Aryan stock, considered in itself and in its supposed relations with other stocks of viii languages. I have, therefore, excluded from our examination all researches which extend only to some one part of the Indo-European languages and all those which belong to the widest circle of general philology for this reason I have not spoken, for example, either of the works of Corssen on the ancient languages of Italy, or of the studies on comparative syntax of which G. Gabelentz gave us a specimen. I am, moreover, far from presuming to have achieved, within the limits mentioned, a work in every way complete, as was indeed my most lively

wish

because sometimes I have not had the means at hand, from inability to consult all those works without exception to which I have felt the need of referring in the composition of the present book.1 I may nevertheless affirm, quoting in proof this work itself, that I have had at my disposal the majority of the works, principally German, which were able to serve my purpose at all. For this my thanks and acknowledgements are due especially to the National Library of Turin, which is presided over with a keen love of science by the distinguished man to whom I have chosen to dedicate this book, in

1 Among the reviews of which, for the reason mentioned, I have not been able to avail myself, may be mentioned the Revue de linguistique et de philologie comparée, the Jenaer literaturzeitung, the North British Review, [see however note on p. 99.—Tr.],

to which might be added some others. Of some of them it was not possible to procure even a number containing matter, generally of a critical kind, which it was very important to be able to consult.