July 22, 2004
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James Murray
“I possess,” James Murray wrote in an application letter for employment in the British Museum Library, “that general lexical & structural knowledge which makes the intimate knowlege (of a lanuage) only a matter of a little application. With several I have a more intimate acquaintance as with the Romance tongues, Italian, French, Catalan, Spanish, Latin & in a less degree Portuguese, Vaudois, Povencal & various dialects.”
“In the Teutonic branch, I am tolerably familiar with Dutch, Flemish, German and Danish.In Anglo-Saxon and Moeso-Gothic my studies have been much closer, I having prepared some books for publication in these languages.”
“I know a little of the Celtic and am at present engaged with the Sclavonic, having obtained a useful knowledge of Russian. In the Persian, Achaemenian, Cuneiform, & Sanscrit branches, I know for the purposes of Comparative Philology.”
“I have sufficient knowledge of Hebrew and Syriac to read at sight the Old Testament and Peshito; To a less degree I know Aramaic Arabic, Coptic and Phoenecian to the point where it was left by Gesenius.”
Murray was turned down for lack of a college degree, but went on to edit the Oxford English Dictionary.
For a year, J.R.R. Tolkien served as one of his sub-editors.
-William F. Buckley, Jr., New York Times Book Review
Caught in the Web of Words
See also: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/classics/william_minor/6.html?sect=13
