GAIL, JEAN BAPTISTE (1755-1829)

This article appears in Volume V11, Page 387 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: GAG-GEO

GAIL, JEAN BAPTISTE (1755-1829) , French hellenist, was born in Paris on the 4th of July 1755. In 1791 he was appointed

deputy

DEPUTY (through the Fr. from a Late Lat. use of deputare, to cut off, allot; putare having the original sense of to trim, prune)

, and in 1792 titular professor at the College de France. During the Revolution he quietly performed his professional duties, taking no

part

PART

in politics, although he possessed the faculty of ingratiating himself with those in authority. In 1815 he was appointed by the king keeper of Greek MSS. in the royal library over the heads of the candidates proposed by the other conservators, an appointment which made him many enemies. Gail imagined that there was an organized conspiracy to belittle his learning and professional success, and there was a

standing

STANDING

quarrel between him and his literary opponents, the most distinguished of whom was P. L. Courier. He died on the 5th of February 1829. Without being a

great

GREAT

Greek scholar, Gail was a man of unwearied industry, whose whole life was devoted to his favourite studies, and he deserves. every credit for having rescued Greek from the neglect into which it had fallen during the troublous times in which he lived. The

list

LIST (O.E.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
, a Teutonic word, cf. Dut. lust, Ger. Leiste, adapted in Ital. lista and Fr.
lisle
- LISLE, ALICE (c. 1614-1685)
)
LIST,
FRIEDRICH
- FRIEDRICH, JOHANN (1836— )
(1789-1846)

of Gail's published works filled 500 quarto pages of the introduction to his edition of Xenophon. The best of these is his edition of Theocritus (1828): He also wrote a number of elementary educational works, based on the principles of the school of Port Royal. His communications to the Academic des

Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

being coldly received and seldom accorded the honour of

, he inserted them in a vast compilatibn in 24 volumes, which he called Le Philologue, containing a

mass

of ill-digested notes on Greek grammar, geography, archaeology, and various authors.
See " Notice historique sur la vie et les ouvrages de J. B. G.," in Mem. de l'Aced. des

Inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

, ix.; the articles in Biographie universelle (by A. Pillon) and Ersch and Gruber's Allgemeine Encyclopadie (by C. F. Bahr) ; a

list

of his works will be found in J. M Querard, La France litteraire (1829), including the contents of the volumes of Le Philologue.

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