This is not the place to enlarge on the distinguished merits which foreigners, and especially Germans, have acquired in relation to Russian history, statistics, etc. But their labours in relation to the language, form a part of the literature to which they were devoted; and cannot of course be separated from the works of native writers. The most distinguished names in this department are again Germans, viz. Heym, Vater, Tappe, Puchmayer, etc. The catalogue of elementary works upon the Russian language, is too long to be inserted here; we limit ourselves therefore to those only which are written in English, and the best in German and French. The English grammars and dictionaries of the Russian, are indeed so few, that an American or Englishman would hardly succeed in acquiring a full knowledge of the language, except through the medium of the German and French. The first Russian Grammar, however, that was ever printed, was published at Oxford. We give the titles of this and of the other principal grammars and lexicons of the Russian language, in the note below.[51]
[Footnote 2: See more on this subject in Part IV.]
[Footnote 3: See Schaffarik, _Geschichte_ p. 178, note 4.]
[Footnote 4: Sviatoslav, Jaropulk, Jaroslav, etc.]
[Footnote 5: The chronographic manuscript in which the above poem was found, entitled _Slowa o polku Igora_, literally _Speech on Igor's Expedition_, is said to have also contained several other pieces of poetry. By an unpardonable carelessness, the manuscript, after Igor was copied, was lost again. We hear too of an old poetical tale, _History of the wicked Tzar Mamai_; but have no means of ascertaining its age or value, nor even its existence.]
[Footnote 6: _Pravda Russka_, Jus Russorum. See above, p. 40, n. 19.]
[Footnote 8: These valuable chronicles were continued under different titles, but without interruption, until the reign of Alexis, father of Peter I.]
[Footnote 9: The Mongols and Tartars have been frequently confounded by historical writers; they are however two races perfectly distinct from each other, the first a North-Eastern, the second a South-Western Asiatic nation. The Mongols, however, between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, conquerors of the Tartars as well as of half Asia, and of Europe as far as Silesia, and comparatively not numerous, amalgamated gradually with the subjugated Tartars among whom they settled. The present Mongols are partly under the sovereignty of China in the ancient Mongolia, the country whence Jenghis Khan came; partly Russian subjects, scattered through the government of Irkutzk, and mixed with Kalmucks and other Asiatic tribes.]