was shadowed out." Encouraged by "these glorious beginnings," De Rossi continued his oriental studies, and in the two years before his second degree, devoted himself to the Hebrew without points, the Rabbinical, the Chaldee, the Syriac, the Samaritan and the Arabic all which he studied by himself; and submitted only to the professor, out of respect to him, the exercises in Hebrew and Rabbinic. He appeals to a collection of Rabbinical texts, a compendium of sentences, extracted from that of Plantavizio,-a part of the sacred hymns of Machazor, translated by himself,-and Syriac and Latin extracts from St. Ephrem, all printed in 1765, (at the age of 23,) as proofs of his rapid progress. In the same year, he employed himself on a rare and unpublished work of Caspi, existing in manuscript in the royal library, which he copied and translated in great part as a specimen. This he dedicated to the first president, and with it a Syriac poem of his own, in the Jacobitic measure. Three years after, and at the age of 26, he published his Oriental Poems, written in the languages already mentioned, with an introduction in Coptic, and a short Ethiopic eulogium. A short time only passed before Rorà, the Bishop of Ivrea, was made Archbishop of Turin. On this occasion, our indefatigable linguist composed two poems, one in Estranghelo Syriac, expressing the sorrow of the church, which had lost a bishop, and the other a Polyglot poem, expressing the joy of the church, which had gained an archbishop. These poems were printed in the year 1768; and in the vacations of the same year, De Rossi commenced two great works: -one, De Studio Legis seu Biblico, ea Rabbinorum Præceptis optime instituendo, compiled in a good degree from the Mahasse Efod of Peripot Duran, and illustrated" by an infinity of authors of all languages and nations, among which was the Enchiridion Studiosi of the Arabian Borhaneddino." The other work had its origin in the objections made by his fellowstudents to the utility and necessity of the study of Hebrew. He thought it his duty to refute their objections in a work which he called "De præcipuis Causis ac Momentis neglecta Hebraicarum Literarum Discipline Dissertatio elenchtica," in which work he discusses, in twelve chapters, the same number of objections to the study of the Hebrew. It is worthy of remark, in a young Catholic priest, that one of the objections refuted is," that the use of the Vulgate renders that of the text useless." One would suppose that these works and studies would have furnished at least full employment for a man of 27. But we are informed, that he found the means to learn, at the same time, the French, the Spanish, the English, the German and Russian languages, making of the three last small grammars of his own to facilitate the acquisition. The two works mentioned were so far from engrossing the attention of this great man, that besides a compendium in Hebrew and Italian, he had composed seven other works on subjects connected with Hebrew and Rabbinical literature, which are all mentioned in the preface to the compendium. It does not appear that they were printed. While a list equally long, of works planned and partly composed, leaves one at a loss to conceive how he was thus able, in a few years, to bring to pass the productions of a life. The early merit of De Rossi was perceived, and in this same year, so fruitful of his works, he was appointed to a post in the Royal Library. Few months, however, elapsed before he received the still more honourable call of the Duke of Parma to the chair of the oriental languages, in the University in that city. The letter of invitation was accompanied with an order of the minister to prepare some oriental poems for the impending nuptials of his new master; which, with exemplary promptitude, he did before leaving Turin. A severe illness, which threatened his life, and left a weakness from which he has never recovered, cast a shadow over the pleasing prospects that were opening on the professor. The first moments of recovery were devoted to study, and the fruit was a Dissertation on the Epoch of the first Origin and Variety of Languages, against Vitringa. This was followed by three other Dissertations on the Native Language of Christ and the Jews of Palestine, against Diodati, who had published a work of great learning and acuteness, De Christo Græcè loquente. While these works were in a course of composition, Pro fessor de Rossi prepared manuals and text-books for his various lectures, and divided his course of Hebrew instruction into three years, which the students of theology were obliged to attend. At the close of the year 1772, he published a Confutation of the vain Expectation of the Jews of their King Messiah, from the Fulness of all the Periods. Professor de Rossi remarks of this work, "I treated these arguments, very convincing as they are, and not hitherto separately discussed, in a new order, and with a new and rare erudition, the fruit of long and laborious reading of the Jewish writers." In the following year, 1774, Professor de Rossi took occasion of the baptism of the new-born Prince to compose twenty inscriptions, in as many different languages, celebrating this event. These were printed with the newly-cast types of the celebrated Bodoni, also a Piedmontese, whom the Duke's liberality had drawn to Parma, and who, after signalizing himself throughout Europe for the splendour and correctness of his typography, died about four years ago. The twenty languages in which Professor de Rossi composed the baptismal inscriptions for the Prince were, the Hebrew without points, the Hellenistic, the Rabbinic, the Syriac, the Chaldee, the Palmyrene, the Turkish, the Hebrew with points, the Coptic, the Estrangbelo-Syriac, the Samaritan, the Arabic, the Phenician, the Persian, the Greek, the German, the Egyptian, the Armenian, the Etruscan, the Carthagenian, and the Latin. At the same time, he attempted to decipher a Phenician inscription which had been lately dis By Hellenistic, we understand our author to mean here the Alexandrian dialect of the Greek. It means properly that form of the Greek language which arose out of the Attic dialect, purified of its most marked peculiarities: the court language as it were of Greece, after the age of criticism had succeeded to the age of invention. See Buttman's Greek Grammar, § 8, and Matthia's Greek Grammar, §7; where there is an unsuccessful attempt of the editor of the English translation to correct the statement in the original. The modern Greek authors understand by Hellenistic the ancient Greek, in distinction from the Romaic. covered at Cagliari, and to illustrate a Saracenic distich of Theodosius, the deacon: the former in an Italian letter, published in the Efemeridi di Roma of the year 1774, and the other in a Latin one, printed in the last volume of the Storia Byzantina in the same city. The following year, 1775, brought forth a still more magnificent collection of Polyglot inscriptions, upon occasion of the marriage of Prince Emanuel, of Piedmont, with a French Princess. Twenty-four of the most conspicuous cities of Piedmont were introduced, saluting the royal pair in twenty-four addresses, in as many different languages, all in different characters, of the Bodoni foundery, and adorned with emblematical engravings, relative to the cities respectively, by the first Italian artists. Besides the languages in the former collection, there were introduced in this, the Ethiopic. the Jewish-German, the Gothic, the Russian, the Tibetian, the Illyrian, in the Hieronymian character, the Sanscrit, the Illyrian or Cyrillic-Sclavonian, and, finally, the Georgian." Of these languages," says Professor de Rossi, "there were several, particularly of the Asiatic, which are very abstruse and hard. This could not but make the undertaking for a single person, and him a European, extremely arduous, and even hazardous, inasmuch as whenever at Rome and elsewhere, there is a proposal of similar Polyglot productions, though of much less extent than this, many learned men and the natives best acquainted with their respective tongues which can be found, are employed in composing them." After having finished this splendid work, and published a defence of the one above-mentioned, on the Vain Expectation of the Jews, Professor de Rossi turned his attention to the subject of Hebrew bibliography. From the mass of editions of the fifteenth century, and of materials relative to the subject, which he had been long collecting, he published the following year his work de Hebraicæ Typograreceived by the learned with great phiæ Origine et Primitiis, which was applause, and two years after reprinted in Germany. He afterwards pursued this subject much farther, and, after a lapse of twenty years, published his Annali Ebreo Typografici, del sec. xv. Two years after the first-mentioned work, appeared a specimen of the Syro-Hexaplarian Bible, from a very valuable manuscript in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. This specimen contained only the first Psalm, but this was given in the Hexaplar Syriac of the Ambrosian manuscript, in the common simplex, (the peshito,) with their respective sources, the Greek and Hebrew, and Latin translations of both. The Origenian Notes were added in the margin, and in the beginning was a diatribe on the rarity and value of this codex, and the version it contains, and on the celebrated hexaplar codex of Masius, which was the first volume of this. This little specimen was very acceptable to the learned, and often reprinted in Germany. More luminous specimens of whole books, as Daniel and the Psalter, have since been given by Bugati, Librarian of the Ambrosian. We come now to the work on which Professor de Rossi's fame chiefly rests in the Extra-Continental world, viz. the Collection of Various Readings of the Hebrew Old Testament. It is well known with what interest this subject of the Various Readings of the Old Testament was regarded by the biblical critics of the last century. The success of the collations which had been made of the manuscripts of the New Testament, and the great light thrown upon the Greek Scriptures, by the labours of Mill and Wetstein, led scholars to look with eagerness to similar labours for the correction of the Hebrew text. It was doubtful how far the masoretic revision pervaded the existing Hebrew manuscripts-there was no positive reason for despairing of manuscripts which should contain a text older than these diligent grammarians, and there were strong hopes felt that families and classes would be discovered, in the written copies of the Hebrew Scriptures, similar to those which have been traced in the manuscripts of the Greek Scriptures. It is well known to the biblical student that these expectations have been disappointed. No antemasoretic text has been discovered: and as the lawyers who compiled the pandects of the civil law have by the success of their labours occasioned the loss of the two thousand volumes of preceding jurists, which formed the basis of their labours, so the grammarians of Tiberias, whatever service they did the Hebrew text, have at least cost us all the means of correcting it, which a comparison of older manuscripts would have afforded. But, to return to our author, Kennicott's collation of manuscripts of the Old Testament, which appeared about this time, served no other purpose with Professor de Rossi than to inspire him with the idea of attempting a more perfect one. He had already in his hands a good number of Hebrew manuscripts which had never been examined, and proposed to make a journey to Rome, and other parts of Italy, in the double purpose of augmenting the number of his manuscripts and editions, and collating manuscripts which had not been examined by Dr. Kennicott's agents. He succeeded in both to his entire satisfaction. In one library, he discovered seventeen manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible which had escaped former collectors, and in Rome, six entire libraries, which had not been entered in behalf of Kennicott. As an earnest of his discoveries, a small specimen of a very valuable codex, in the private library of Pope Pius V., with an ap pendix relative to the famous Barbarini tritapla Samaritan Codex, was pub lished in Rome by Professor de Rossi in 1780, and reprinted the year after at Tübingen. Returned to Parma, he yielded to the requests of two friends in composing the History of Hebrew Typography in Ferrara and Sabionetta, in two commentaries filled with curious erudition relative to the editions of Hebrew Scriptures in these cities. They were speedily reprinted, with additions by the author, in Germany. These were followed by an appendix to Masch's edition of Lelong's Bibliotheca, in which account is given of various editions which had escaped both Lelong and his editor, Masch. These, however," says Professor de Rossi, were but small digressions; the main object of my labours was the great work of the Various Readings. I had, in the specimen of the Codex Pontificus just mentioned, announced my work, and promised that it should be more perfect, ample and correct than the English collection. I had, moreover, confuted a patriotic assertion of Kennicott, who boasts his country to be richer than all others in manuscripts of the Hebrew Scriptures, while Italy, nay, a private Italian, We find but a few years' repose after the incredible labours of this work. In 1795, Professor de Rossi published the Annali Ebreo-typografici del sec. xv. mentioned above. This work, in three parts, treats first, of editions with a date, second, of editions without a date, third, of false editions; the whole arranged in chronological order, and illustrated in an ample commentary. "Whoever," adds Professor de Rossi, "cherishes the opinion formerly universal, that the edition of Soncino was the first, will not read without surprise, in my dissertation, that there are twenty seven editions quoted there anterior to the Soncino, and nearly all in my possession." After having published, in 1799, an appendix to the great work on the Various Readings, containing subsequent collections, Professor de Rossi pursued the subject of Hebrew bibliography, in a work entitled Annales Hebræo-typographici ab Anno 1501 ad 1540. The editions described in this work are also very rare, printed for the most part in Constantinople and the Levant, and taken from manuscripts. Before commencing the work, he collected one hundred and fifty of these editions. In the following year appeared Bibliotheca Giudaica Anticristiana, containing an exact description of all the works of the Jews against Christianity: a performance rendered considerably interesting by the rarity of these books, and the jealousy of the Jews with respect to their circulation. This performance was but the forerunner of another, of still more general interest, viz. the Dizionario Storico degli Autori Ebrei, in which all that is valuable in the large works of Wolf and Bartolocci is reduced into a convenient compass, innumerable omissions supplied, and errors corrected. Professor de Rossi had been all his life collecting a library of manuscripts and rare editions, of which his works are at once the evidence and the fruit. Proposals from several princes-the King of Spain and the Pope-were made to him to dispose of it, but he had determined not to deprive himself of it till he should have published a catalogue raisonné of its contents. This he finally accomplished in 1803, and the result of it is, that the library contained in the whole 1571 manuscripts, of which 1377 were Hebrew, and 194 in other oriental and European languages. More than 1070 are on parchment; a few hitherto unknown, unique and original; and several hundreds inedited. Of one of these, a Pentateuch, with the inedited commentary of R. Immanuel, a manuscript in five thick folios, we were told in the ducal library of Parma, that the Jews of Holland offered to buy it for its weight in gold. Among the other Hebrew manuscripts, was a large collection of manuscripts of the Karaite Jews, which furnished the materials to a work not yet published, by Professor de Rossi, called Biblioteca Caraitica, from which much light might be expected to be thrown on this curious and little-studied branch of Judaic literature. There were several very valuable Latin classical manuscriptsone or two Greek evangelistaries of antiquity-a Dante written in the poet's life-time, and several Petrarchs, one of which was the basis of the second Cominian edition. Since the publication of this catalogue, Professor de Rossi has acquired many manuscripts, among which are fifty-two Hebrew ones. Among the inedited Rabbinical works, one of the most valuable was the Lexicon of Parchon, older than that of Kimchi, and of which Professor de Rossi had two copies. Extracting from this the most obscure and difficult words, he formed a small work, under the title of Lexicon Hebraicum Selectum, which was printed in 1805, and in the same year appeared a dissertation on the Koran, published at Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, of which, as no copy is known to be extant of it, the existence had become problematical. Professor de Rossi, however, establishes the certainty of it. In the following year, 1806, appeared a specimen of the inedited commentary of R. Immanuel, mentioned above. tents are derived. It is now nine years since the publication of this work. In this interval, Professor de Rossi has not yielded to the lassitude of age, and has furnished as memorable an exemplification as we have ever met, of the Nil actum reputans, dum quid superesset agendum. In 1810, appeared from his pen an Essay on the Origin of Printing in Engraved Tablets, and on a Xylographic Edition hitherto unknown; in 1811, a Compendium of Sacred Criticism; in 1815, an Introduction to the Study of Hebrew, and in 1817, an Introduction to the Sacred Scripture: while, as he informed us recently, he has now in press a System of Hermeneutics. Professor de Rossi is at present seventy-six years old, and though not free from the weakness of age, still in full possession of all his faculties, and with an appearance and countenance far behind his years. The number of his printed works amounts to fifty-one, and of works unpublished, commenced and planned, eighty-one. If some of those published be small, they are Anxious to render those services to the Arabian literature which certainly, more than any other modern scholar, he had rendered to the Hebrew, Professor de Rossi composed and published in 1807, a Dizionario Storico degli Autori Arabi, which should serve as a compendium, supplement and correction of the larger works of D' Herbelot and others. Immediately after the publication of this work, appeared Sinopsi delle Istituzioni Ebraiche, all such only as a man of consummate with a Hebrew anthology subjoined. Returned from a journey in Piedmont, undertaken after the appearance of these works, Professor de Rossi solaced the pains of a violent attack of the gout, by an Italian translation, from the original, of the Psalms. The translation was printed in 1808, and followed the same year by the Annals of Hebrew Typography in Cremona, written to oblige a learned Cremonese friend, in which are described forty-two editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, published in that city. At the close of the year appeared Dizionario Bibliografico Dei Libri rari Orientali, an enumeration and description of the most rare and curious works in the Hebrew, Rabbinic, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan and Arabic languages. The following year, 1809, appeared the translation of Ecclesiastes into Italian, a work which was followed by a collection of impressive sentiments from the Psalms, both of which appear to have been undertaken by Professor de Rossi with ascetic views, and for the relief they afforded to a mind fatigued with the vanities of life. In the same year appeared the Memoirs, of which the title is given at the head of this article, and from which its con His learning could produce, and a few seem of themselves a life's labour. Professor de Rossi has lived for letters more exclusively than most scholars of the age, and without having reached any thing that can be called dazzling as the recompense, has had the more solid reward of uniform success, respectability and competence. works have procured him pensions from his native as well as his adopted sovereigns; and among so many and such various productions, there is not one which has ever been accused of being superficial or inexact. The work before us, if less fruitful of incidents than some of the more tumultuous biographies, pleases one more by the invariable cheerfulness of the narration, the contentedness of disposition it displays, and the picture it presents of the attainment of the desired end, by the patient application of the regular means. There is not a sigh over the caprice of fortune, or the neglect of merit; not a depreciating remark of a contemporary. If there be a little of the self-complacency of age, there is none of the moroseness nor the sadness; and surely a little self-complacency may be pardoned in one who stands second to none of the age in his |