Japan and the Japanese

JAPANESE LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 557
written and printed, and abounding in books, and once familiarly spoken
and read by a considerable number of Europeans, and though a considerable
number of books in it exist in European libraries, yet scarcely two or three
European scholars are to be found who make any pretensions to be able to
read Japanese, notwithstanding that, for two centuries and a half, there have
not been wanting European helps to its acquisition.
Four Japanese grammars have been published by missionaries ; that of
Alvarez, in Latin and Japanese (De inslilutione Grummailca llbri Hi., cum
Versione Japonia), printed at Amacusa in 1593 ; that of Rodriguez, in
Portuguese (Arte du Lingua de Japan), printed at Nagasaki in 1604 ;
of Collado, in Latin (Jlrs Grammatica Juponica Lingua), at Rome, 1632 ;
and that of Ovangusen, in Spanish (Arte du la Linyu-i Japonica), printed
that
at Mexico in 1738, its author, who was a Franciscan friar, having ended his
days there, after having been a missionary in Cochin-China, and superintendent
of two convents in the Philippines, where it would appear that some
knowledge of the Japanese was long preserved.
All these grammars, composed rather with a view to Japanese as spoken
than as written, represent the sounds in Roman letters, and attempt to apply
grammatical ideas and forms derived from the Greek and Latin to a language
of a totally difterent structure, thus very superfluously complicating and ob-
scuring a subject difficult enough in itself. These books are also exceedingly
rare, except that of Collado, which is both the shortest and the worst. Rod-
riguez prepared at Macao, in 1620, an abridgment of his grammar, which
remained, however, in manuscript till 1825, when, with some omissions, it was
printed by the Asiatic Society, at Paris, in a French version, with an introduction
by M. Abel Remusat, the distinguished Chinese scholar ; to which, the
next year, was added a supplement, by Baron G. de Humbolt, containing an.
account of the grammar of Oyangusen, and some observations on his points
of agreement and disagreement, with Rodriguez, and on the Japanese
language generally. Siebold has also published in Latin, in the transactions
of the Dutch Academy at Batavia, in 1826, an Epitome of the Japanese lan-
guage (Epitome Lingua Japonica), and, more recently, an introduction to
the study of Japanese books (Isayoye in Biblothecum Librarum Japonicum).
Japonicum et stadium
Of dictionaries, or vocabularies, there are one in Latin, Portuguese and
Japanese, a thick quarto of near a thousand pages, Amacusa, 1595 ; a vocabulary
in Japanese and Portuguese, Nagasaki, 1606 ; one in Spanish ( Vocabulario
de Japan), Manilla, 1630 ; all these exceedingly rare ; Callado'a
Thesaurus, a small Latin vocabulary, Rome, 1632 ; and Medhurst's English
and Japanese vocabulary, Batavia, 1830, 8vo, pp. 314, containing about
seven thousand Japanese words, compiled by the help of Chinese-Japanese
and Japanese-Dutch dictionaries, printed in Japan. Slebold's Thesaurus
(Wa Kan Won Si-ki Sio-gen Ziako, THESAURUS LIXGU.E JAPOXIC.E seu
illustratio omnium quee libris receptce sunt verborum ac dictionum Lo~
tarn Japonic^ quam Sinensis) is but a mere transcript of a Chinese-
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