American linguist, born in Milwaukee, WI, in 1835; graduated at Harvard College in 1863; developed a wonderful faculty for acquiring languages, and on leaving college had a good knowledge of French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Roumanian, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Gothic, German, Finnish, Greek and Latin. He subsequently mastered the Hebrew, Persian, Sanscrit, Russian, Polish, Bohemian, Lithuanian, Lettish, Hungarian, Turkish, Slovenish, Croatian, Servian, Bulgarian, Mingrelian, Abkhasian and Armenian languages. He made a study of the American Indian dialects, and attained proficiency in over fifty different tongues. He was on the staff of the Smithsonian Institute, and has published Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (1889); Myths and Folk Tales of the Russians, Western Slavs and Magyars (1890); and Fairy Tales of Ireland (1895).
