262
NOTES AND QUERIES.
[9 th 8. 1. Al-KiL 2, '98.
means for its study as the Germans have.
The only grammar of Persian in English
which combines common sense with the power
of fascinating the pupil is Bleeck's, which has
therefore never been appreciated, and has
long been out of print. The Germans have
several works, admirable in every respect,
ranging from another two-shilling booklet by
the same ubiquitous Seidel to the expensive
but princely grammar by Wahrmund, which
is not only the finest Persian Grammar in
any language, but perhaps as fine a grammar
of any language as has ever been written.
It is absolutely the only book in English,
French, or German which completely masters
the difficult subject of Persian prosody and
presents it intelligibly to the reader. One
would think that to anybody, even of the
meanest intelligence, writing on this theme,
it would have occurred that the one indis-
pensable thing in all scansion is the know-
ledge where to place the tonic accent. A
false quantity will pass muster in reciting
poetry, but a false accent never : yet, incredible
as it may seem, all English and French
writers on Persian prosody have united in
saying nothing of this aspect of it, so that
their pupils could never, were it to save
their lives, read a line aloud. This German
alone equips his readers with this absolutely
necessary information. Apart from poetry,
a knowledge where the tonic accent falls is
needful for the speaking of any and every
language. This is woefully left out of sight
in all English grammars of languages, but
never in the German ones. We have plenty
of pretentious and expensive English books
in which from start to finish no word is
accented, so that the learner must perforce
have a teacher or drop his studies in despair,
from sheer inability to pronounce. Compare,
for instance, Chamberlain's otherwise admir-
able Japanese Grammar with the German
one by Lange, which is at any rate partially
accented. It is the greatest of pities that we
do not translate some of these practical cheap
little German books instead of writing dear
and nasty original grammars. The only
publisher who has made a move in this
direction is, I think, David Nutt, who has
brought out an adaptation of Wied's 'Grammar
of Modern Greek. Its superiority over any
English work on the subject must be appareni
to the most dense. Its only fault is that the
translator has made an utterly English
muddle of the directions for pronunciation
(always our weakest point), in spite of the
clearness of the German which was before
her. This Greek book is of the same size as
those by Seidel mentioned above; in fact, fo
a couple of shillings one can get in German
a good grammar of any important language,
Javanese, Annamite, Siamese (an excellent
book, truly German in combined simplicity
ind grasp), Turkish (fully accented, a feature
vhich simply does not exist in our expensive
English books), and so on an object lesson
'n linguistic enterprise of which it is to be
'eared we shall never learn the wisdom.
JAMES PLATT, Jun.
SIR WALTER SCOTT ON GRIMMS'
'POPULAR STORIES.'
DK. O. HARTWIG, director of the Library at Halle, and editor of the Centralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen (Leipzig, O. Harrassowitz), contributes to Heft 1 arid 2, January-February, 1898, of that periodical, an article* on the first English translation of that famous collection of 'Kinder- und Hausmarchen,' for which children of all ages and countries owe a debt of gratitude to the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. To this article are appended .nedited letters of Edgar Taylor, the English translator of the stories, J. and W. Grimm, GJeorg Benecke, and last, but not least, Sir Walter Scott.
The special character of the Centralblatt seems to preclude the likelihood of its being seen by many subscribers to 'N. & Q.'j and as anly a few lines of Sir Walter Scott's cha- racteristic letter were printed in Taylor's preface to his now scarce work, 'Gammer Grethel,' published in 1839, it is here pre- sented in full as given by Dr. Hartwig, who states, however, that "the original had Iready in parts become illegible, so that even its owner could no longer decipher all the words." Before coming to this letter, how- ever, it may be well to state how Dr. Hartwig obtained it and the others mentioned above. He says :
"One day last winter, in Florence, while on my way to visit my revered friend Frau Karl Hille- brand to take afternoon tea, the postman placed in my hand the appeal of the Grimm Committee in Cassel, of which I myself was one of the co-signa- tories. Being already aware that Frau Hillebrand had in her possession letters from J. and W. Grimm and that she was still in correspondence with Her- mann Grimm, whose wife rests 'far from home and yet in God's own soil' f in the Evangelical churchyard near Certosa, the conversation natur- ally came upon the foundation of the Grimm Museum at Cassel. All at once the dear lady said :
- "Zur ersten englischen Uebersetzung der
Kinder- und Hausmarchen der Briider Grimm. Mit ungedruckten Briefen von Edgar Taylor, J. und W. Grimm, Walter Scott, und G. Benecke. Mitgeteilt von Dr. 0. Hartwig."
t " Fern von der Heimath, doch in Gottes Ercle.
