CORSSEN, Wilhelm Paul (1820-1875), a distinguished German philologist, was born at Bremen, January 20, 1820, and received bis school education in the Prussian town of Schwedt, to which his father, a merchant, had removed. After spending some time at the Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin, where his interest in philological pursuits was awakened by the Rector Meinike, he proceeded to the university, and there came especially under the influence of Boeckh and Lachmann. His first important appearance in literature was as the author of Origines Poesis Romance, by which he had obtained the prize offered by the “philosophical” or “arts” faculty of the university. In 1846 he was called from Stettin, where he had for nearly two years held a post in the gymnasium, to occupy the position of lecturer in the royal academy at Pforta (near Naumburg), and there he continued to labour for the next twenty years. The philosophico-historical class of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences having, in 1854, offered a prize for the best work on the pronunciation and accent of Latin, he gained the day by means of a treatise which at once took rank, on its publication under the title of Ueber Aussprache, Vokalismus, und Betonung der Lateinischen Sprache (2 vols. Leipsic, 1858-59), as one of the most erudite and masterly works in its department. This was followed in 1863 by his Kritische Beiträge zur Lat. Formenlehre, which were supplemented in 1866 by Kritische Nachträge zur Lat. Formenlehre. In the discus sion of the pronunciation of Latin he was naturally led to consider the various old Italian dialects, and the results of his investigations appeared in miscellaneous communications to Kuhn’s Zeitschrift für vergleichende Schriftforschung. The state of his health obliged him to ...