Excerpt from The North American Review and Miscellaneous Journal, 1821, Vol. 10

The following year, 1775, brought forth a still more mag nificent collec tiun of Polyglot inscriptions, upon occasion ot the marriage of prince Emanuel of Piedmont, with a French princess. Twenty four of the most conspit uous cities of Piedmont were introduced, saluting the royal pair in twenty four addresses, m as many dtfl'erent languages, all in different characters, of the Bodoni foundery, and adorned with em blematit al engravings, relative to the cities respectively, by the first Italian artists. Besides the languages in the former collection, there were introduced in this, the Ethiopic, the jewish-german, the Gothic, the Russian. Tne Tibetian, the lllyrian in the Hieronymian character, the Sanscrit, the III) rian or cyrillic-sclavonian. And finally the Georgian. Of these languages, ' says Professor de Rossi, there were several, particularly of the Asiatic. Which are very abstruse and hard. This could not but make the undertaking for a single person, and him a European, extremely arduous; and even hazardous, inasmuch as whenever at Rome and else where, there is a proposal of similar Polyglot productions, though of much less extent than this, many learned men and the natives, best acquainted with their respective tongues which can be found, are employed in composing them.' After having finished this splendid work, and published a defence of the one above mentioned, on the Vain Expectation of the Jews, Professor de Rossi turned his attention to the subject of He brew bibliography. From the mass of editions of the fifteenth century and of materials relative to the subject, which he had been long collecting. He published. The following year, his work do Hebraica typographite Origine et Primitiis, which was received by the learned with great applause, and two years after reprinted in Germany. He afterwards pursued tlns subject much farther, and after a lapse of twenty years, published his Amati Ebrco typografici del sec. Xv.

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