Marsh, GEORGE PERKINS

Marsh, GEORGE PERKINS, an American philologist, was born at Woodstock, Vermont, March 15, 1801; graduated at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, in 1820; studied law in Burlington, Vermont; was elected to the Supreme Executive Council of the state in 1835, and to congress in 1842 to 1849. Whilst United States minister at Constantinople from 1849 to 1853 he was charged with a special mission to Greece (1852); in 1861 he was appointed the first United States minister to the newly-formed kingdom of Italy. He was made LL.D. by Harvard in 1859, and delivered courses of lectures on English philology at Columbia and at the Lowell Institute in Boston. He died at Vallombrosa in Italy, July 23, 1882. Marsh had a sound knowledge of English philology, and his chief works are valued equally on both sides of the Atlantic. These are his Lectures on the English Language (1861) and The Origin and History of the English Language (1862). Other works are The Camel, his Organisation, Habits, and Uses (1856), and Man and Nature (1864; largely rewritten, 1874). See Life and Letters by his widow (New York, 1888).