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older than that of Kimcbi , and of which Professor" de Rossi had two copies . Extracting from this the most obscure and difficult words , he formed a small work , under the title of Lexicon Hebraicum Selectum , which was
printed in 1805 , and in the same year appeared a dissertation on the Koran , published at Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century , of which , as no copy is known to be extant of it ,
the existence had become problematical . Professor de Rossi , however , establishes the certainty of it . In the following year , 1806 , appeared a specimen of the inedited commentary of R . Immanuel , mentioned above .
Anxious to render those services to the Arabian literature which certainly , more than any other modern scholar , he had rendered to the Hebrew , Professor de Rossi composed and published in 1807 , a Dizionario Storico deg-li Autori Arabu which should serve as a
compendium , supplement and correction of the larger works of D * Herbelot and others . Immediately after the publication of this work , appeared Sinopst delle Istituzioni Ebrawke , with a Hebrew anthology subjoined . Returned from a journey in Piedmont , undertaken after the appearance of these works . Professor de Rossi solaced v «~*^^ % ^^«* * w m ^ m ^ wk , kj % jm . m > »«¦ * *¦ ^*/*** r * -s ^— ' & > - * ^* - * . w ^ -s ** J »* j *¦ *** x ^ r mm- % ^/ v « , v *
the pains of a violent attack of the gout , by an Italian translation , from the original , of the Psalms . The translation was printed in 1808 , and followed the same year by the Annals of Hebrew Typography in Cremona , written to oblige a learned Cremonese friend , in which are described forty-two editions of the Hebrew Scriptures , published in that city . At the close of the year appeared Dizionario Bibliografico Dei LA . bri rari Orie ? itali , an enumeration and description of the most rare and curious works in the
Hebrew , Rabbinic , Chaldee , Syriac , Samaritan and Arabic languages . The following year , 1809 , appeared the translation of Ecclesiastes into Italian , a work which was followed by
a collection of impressive sentiments from the Psalms , both of which appear to have been undertaken by Professor de Rossi with ascetic views , and for the relief they afforded to a mind fatigued with the vanities of life . In the
same year appeared the Memoirs , of which the title is g iven at the hsad of this article , and from which its con -
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tents are derived . It is now nine years since the publication of this work . In this interval , Professor de Rossi has not yielded to the lassitude of age , and has furnished as memorable an exemplification as we have ever met , of the Nil actum reputans , dam
quid superesset agendum . In 1810 , appeared from his pen an Essay on the Origin of Printing in Engraved Tablets , and on a Xylographic Edition hitherto unknown ; in 1811 , a
Compendium of Sacred Criticism ; in 1815 , an Introduction to the Study of Hebrew , and in 1817 , an Introduction to the Sacred Scripture ; while , as he informed us recently , he has now in press a System of ftermeneutics .
Professor de Rossi is at present seventy-six years old , and though not free from the weakness of age , still in full possession of all his faculties , and with an Appearance and countenance far behind his years . The number of
his printed . works amounts to fifty-one , and of works unpublished , commenced and planned , eighty-one . If some of those published be small , they are all such only as a man of consummate learning could produce , and a few seem of themselves a life ' s labour .
Professor de Rossi has lived for letters more exclusively than most scholars of the age , and without having reached any thing that can be called dazzling as the recompense , has had the more solid reward of uniform success ,
respectability and competence . His works have procured him pensions from his native as well as his adopted sovereigns ; and among so many and such various productions , there is not one which has ever been accused of
being superficial or inexact . The work before us , if less fruitful of incidents than some of the more tumultuous biographies , pleases one more by the invariable cheerfulness of the narration , the contentedness of disposition it displays , and the picture it presents of the attainuvent of the desired end ,
by the patient application of the regular means . There is not a sigh over the caprice of fortune , or the neglect of merit ; not a depreciating remark of a contemporary . If there be a little of the self-complacency of age , there is none of the moroseness nor the
sadness ; and surely a little self-complacency may be pardoned in one who stands second to none of the age in his
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386 Memoirs of Professor de Rossi .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1821, page 386, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2502/page/6/
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