1840. RICHARD CLEASBY. Ixxxi

business, seeking recreation in the extension of the wide range of your knowledge, is not less
attractive than rare, and truly encouraging. The circumstance of your having directed your
attention to these parts made it the more interesting to me, for a native partiality for the
Scandinavian North,—a sort, as it were, of veneration for the primitivi Penates,—has induced me
to devote much time to its vulgar, as well as its more archaic literature, and which will, I hope, end
in enabling me to facilitate to my countrymen the acquirement of the knowledge of a great store of
interesting matter—interesting not only in itself, but also as intimately bound up with the early
manners, institutions, and destinies of our own ancestry.'

On the same day we find the following entry: ' Received a most agreeable letter
from my valued friend Schmeller in Munich.' This was in answer to his letter of the
29th of May, and the following is an extract from it:

' Wie sehr uns alle das was Sie zum Bestcn der Nordischen Sprachkunde zu thun im Begriffe
sind, erfreue, brauche ich Ihnen nicht erst zu sagen. Dacht' ich doch oft wie Schaclc es ware, wenn
so viel beharrlicher, griindlicher, wahrhaft ausserordentlicher Fleiss, auf diesen noch so vcrnachliis-
sigten Theil des Sprachstudiums, verwendet, nicht auch zur Hulfe, zum Segen fiir andere ausschla-
gen sollte. Schon die edclmuthige Dazwischenkunft durch die Sie die endliche Herausgabe des
poetischen Wörterbuchs fördern, wird Ihnen den bleibenden Dank aller Freunde der Germanischen
Zunge sichern. Noch weit mehr abcr wird dieses der Fall seyn, wenn Sie dem tagtäglich bitterer
gefiihlten Bediirfnissen nach einem wahrhaft brauchbaren prosaischen Handlexicon der älteren Nord-
sprache entgegen zu kommen, Ihrc eigene Kraft und Miihe daran setzen. Die Aufgabe ist freylich
kein Kinderspiel. Es wollen dazu nicht bios alle bereits vorhandenen Vorarbeiten, sondern auch
samtliche sowohl gedruckte als handschriftliche Literaturstucke durchgelesen und methodisch ex-
cerpiert seyn. Hiefiir aber werden Sie hiilfrciche Amanuensen fmdcn. Einem klaren, umsichtigen,
ausharrendcn Geiste wird keine Aufgabe zu schwer. Sollten mehr als die drei Jahre dariiber
hingehen, so wiirde mich die Licbc zu demsclben Zweig des Wissens dafiir trösten mussen, so lange

ohne das hertzlich gewiinschte Wiedcrsehcn zu seyn.

' Bleiben Sie eingedenk

' Hires

'J. A. SCHMELLER.'
On the 3rd of July he enters :

' Yesterday Etatsraad Rafn brought me from Egilsson in Iceland a specimen of his poetical
Icelandic Dictionary, which had been from negligence lying at the Icelandic merchant Knutsen's 14
days. . . . As a ship was to sail again for Iceland to-morrow morning, by which it was to be
returned to Egilsson, I had only an hour or two to look through it. I told Rafn I thought the work
upon the whole good, but that it appeared to me much too prolix, there being also an immense
number of prose words. I therefore recommended his writing back, that (ist)he should leave out
all the proge words which occurred with no other meaning than what they have in prose: (2nd)
that he should not give more than one citation in full for one meaning of a word, but at all events
only mention tJie place where it besides occurred in that sense : (3rd) that he should not regard the
modern language as his norm, which he seemed to have done at the beginning of letters, giving a
list of how the words were written or pronounced, hodiernis vocabulis. If this was done it might
shorten the work a third.'

On the 3ist of July we find him paying Gislason 40 dollars 'for his labours for the
month of July relating to the Icelandic Dictionary which I propose editing;' and a day or
two afterwards he writes to his sister that he thinks of leaving Copenhagen for Carlsbad
on the iyth of August, and being back about the end of September. On the i8th of
August he started for a little walking excursion with a young Icelandic ' Candidat Juris/
Pjeturson, taking with them the Hrafnkels Saga to read on the way—the first mention
of Pjeturson, one of his amanuenses, whom he took the next year with him to Germany