Kemble's insults

I know, you're probably tired of hearing about John Mitchell Kemble.  But I had so much fun running across his various insults that I thought I would compile them for your (ok, my) amusement.  He didn't pull any punches, as you'll see.


On 18th-century attempts to get rid of strong verbs:
These truly original and groundforms of the language having been called irregular, a logical fallacy suggested to the purists that what was irregular must be wrong…the wind blew and the cock crew no longer, -- they now blowed and crowed.  In short, these masters and doctors, though grammarians and lexicographers, knowed a thing or two less than they ought.
[Footnote in unpublished review of Jakob Grimm's Deutsche Grammatik, p. 38]


On interpreting Old English based on Old Norse:
I beg once and for all to say that Norse forms have nothing whatever to do with Anglo-Saxon inscriptions.  It was by trusting to Norse forms that Thorkelin misread every line and mistranslated nearly every word of Beowulf.  It is by trusting to Norse forms that Dr. Repp has plunged himself into his ludicrous Christ-basin, and that Finn Magnusen has recorded his own rashness throughout 105 of the most adventurous pages I ever remember to have read.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 56]


On other scholars' work on the Ruthwell Cross:
It is enough to say, that no such language ever existed as they find on this stone...[Magnusen invents] a new language, in which he says the inscription is written, and a people, by whom he says the language was spoken.
[Anglo-Saxon Runes p. 41, 47]


On a former student who published something from his collection without his permission:
I had the pleasure of seeing my views travestied, my collections ill-used, and the whole subject on which I have long been working most groundedly and seriously, taken out of my hands, and miserably ill-treated in a flippant, superficial, wretched style, by a man who has not a thought on the subject but what he has picked up from me…He is a literary pirate, and as ignorant as he is impudent.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 112, 152]


On the Antiquarian Society's new committee:
Rather amusing that, is it not?  A Saxon committee of which not one single member understands a word of Saxon.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 191]


On scholars clinging to old-fashioned and unnecessary Gothic typefaces: 
It will be some time before the bibliomaniacal foppery of using these types ceases.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, p. 393]


On the most commonly-used Anglo-Saxon dictionary:
If ever a book was calculated to do harm, to retard the progress of study, to perplex and fill with trouble the mind of the learner, Lye’s Dictionary is assuredly that book.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica p. 392]


On an anticipated new dictionary:
It will be a pitiful performance, for the man is as devoid of philology, as an ox of milk.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 57]


On the origin of Anglo-Saxon (aka Old English):
To suppose the Anglo-Saxon derived from a mixture of Old Saxon and Danish, is at once to stamp oneself ignorant both of Old Saxon, Old Norse, and Anglo-Saxon, and to declare one's incompetency to pass a judgment on the subject.
[Preface to Beowulf, p. xxii]


On the British Anglo-Saxonist establishment:
We could mention, were we so inclined, Doctors, yea, Professors of Anglo-Saxon, whose doings in the way of false concords, false etymology, and ignorance of declension, conjugation and syntax, would, if perpetrated by a boy in the second form of a public school, have richly merited and been duly repaid by a liberal application of ferula or direr birch.
[Review of Analecta Anglo-Saxonica]


The Oxford men have been railing at me, and at you too worse than the frogs at Latona: you will say as I do [Greek] which in plain English is, they may kiss mine A.
[Correspondence with Jakob Grimm, p. 90]


On the author of nasty letters to the editor about Kemble:
I know not whether he has filled, does fill, or means to fill the Saxon Chair in [Oxford]; but from the specimen of his ability which he has supplied in these letters, I can assure him that he is worthy to take his place in the long list of illustrious obscures who have already enjoyed that cheap dignity.
[Letter on Oxford Professors of Anglo-Saxon, p. 605]