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.

W. C.