Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/120

104 object, and has come back to prepare for the press a great work on Phœnician antiquities, and to put into shape the numerous new ideas which he had gained in the East.

“A month or two after his return, the Imperial Government appointed him to the chair of Hebrew. His fitness for the post is beyond dispute. He is incomparably the first Shemitic scholar in France, and is one of the very few Frenchmen whom the proudest of German literati allow to be on a level with themselves in learning, while they speak with the highest admiration of his immeasurably greater skill in clothing his ideas in simple and eloquent language. On this point we may speak with some certainty, because it is only a few weeks since we had the pleasure of conveying to Monsieur Renan the cordial congratulations of the greatest German scholar whose line of study has coincided with his labours. Some symptoms of disapprobation having reached the ears of Government, when Monsieur Renan’s appointment was first talked of, it was proposed that the title of the chair to which he was nominated should be the ‘Professorship of the Shemitic Languages as compared with each other,’ and not the old title of ‘Professorship of Hebrew.’”

“It was understood,” adds a writer in the Literary Gazette of the same date, “when the