Life

Garnett was born at Otley

Otley

-Transport:The main roads through the town are the A660 to the south east, which connects Otley to Bramhope, Adel and Leeds city centre, and the A65 to the west, which goes to Ilkley and Skipton. The A6038 heads to Guiseley, Shipley and Bradford, connecting with the A65...

 in Yorkshire on 25 July 1789, the eldest son of a paper manufacturer, William Garnett. He was educated at Otley grammar school

Prince Henry's Grammar School, Otley

Prince Henry's Grammar School , also known as Prince Henry's, is a secondary school and sixth form established in 1607 in the historic market town of Otley, West Yorkshire, England. The school teaches boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 18 and has around 1,400 pupils and 84 teachers and...

, and afterwards learned French and Italian from an Italian gentleman named Facio, it being intended to place him in a mercantile house. This design was abandoned, and he remained at home, assisting his father in his manufactory, and teaching himself German, that he might be able to read a book on birds in that language. In 1811, convinced that trade was not his vocation, he became assistant-master in the school of the Rev. Evelyn Falkner at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, devoting his leisure hours to preparing himself for the church. Within two years he had taught himself sufficient Latin, Greek, and divinity to obtain ordination from the Archbishop of York, whose chaplain pronounced him the best prepared candidate he had ever examined. After a brief settlement in Yorkshire he became curate at Blackburn and assistant-master of the grammar school, and continued there for several years, engaged in incessant study and research.

In 1822 he married his first wife, Margaret, granddaughter of the Rev. Ralph Heathcote, and in 1826 was presented to the perpetual curacy of Tockholes

Tockholes

Tockholes is a village and civil parish which forms part of the Blackburn with Darwen unitary authority in the North west of England. Tockholes consists of the village of Tockholes itself and the Hamlet of Ryal Fold, and has a population of 454...

, near Blackburn, he had some time before made the acquaintance of Robert Southey

Robert Southey

Robert Southey was an English poet of the Romantic school, one of the so-called "Lake Poets", and Poet Laureate for 30 years from 1813 to his death in 1843...

, who in a letter to John Rickman

John Rickman

John Rickman was an English government official and statistician of the early nineteenth century.He was born in Newburn, Northumberland, son of the Rev Thomas Rickman and educated at Guildford Grammar School, Magdalen Hall, Oxford and Lincoln College, Oxford...

 calls him "a very remarkable person. He did not begin to learn Greek till he was twenty, and he is now, I believe, acquainted with all the European languages of Latin or Teutonic origin, and with sundry oriental ones. I do not know any man who has read so much which you would not expect him to have read".

In 1834 he married Rayne, daughter of John Wreaks, esq., of Sheffield, and in 1836 was presented to the living of Chebsey, near Stafford, which he relinquished in 1838, on succeeding Henry Francis Cary

Henry Francis Cary

Henry Francis Cary was a British author and translator, best known for his blank verse translation of The Divine Comedy of Dante.-Biography:Henry Francis Cary was born in Gibraltar, on 6 December 1772...

, the translator of Dante

DANTE

Delivery of Advanced Network Technology to Europe is a not-for-profit organisation that plans, builds and operates the international networks that interconnect the various national research and education networks in Europe and surrounding regions...

, as assistant-keeper of printed books at the British Museum

British Museum

The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

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He died of a degenerative disease, 27 Sept. 1850 and he was succeeded at the Museum by John Winter Jones

John Winter Jones

John Winter Jones was an English librarian. He was Principal Librarian of the British Museum between 1866–73. He was the first President of the Library Association in the U.K..-Biography:...

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Works

About 1826 he came before the world as a writer on the 'Roman Catholic controversy', contributing numerous articles to the Protestant Guardian, the most remarkable of which were extremely humorous and sarcastic exposures of the apocryphal miracles attributed to St. Francis Xavier. He also commenced and in great measure completed an extensive work in reply to Charles Butler

Charles Butler

Charles Butler KC was an English Roman Catholic lawyer and miscellaneous writer.-Biography:Charles Butler was born in London, the son of James Butler, a nephew of Alban Butler. He was educated at Douai. In 1769 he became apprenticed to the conveyancer John Maire, and subsequently to Matthew Duane...

 on the subject of ecclesiastical miracles; but the extreme depression of spirits occasioned by the death of his wife and infant daughter in 1828 and 1829 compelled him to lay it aside. He sought relief in change of residence, becoming priest-vicar of Lichfield Cathedral

Lichfield Cathedral

Lichfield Cathedral is situated in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England. It is the only medieval English cathedral with three spires. The Diocese of Lichfield covers all of Staffordshire, much of Shropshire and part of the Black Country and West Midlands...

 in 1820, and absorbed himself in the study of comparative philology, then just beginning to be recognised as a science. Having obtained an introduction to Lockhart, he contributed in 1835 and 1836 three articles to the Quarterly Review

Quarterly Review

The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967.-Early years:...

, treating respectively of English lexicography

Lexicography

Lexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....

, English dialects, and Prichard's work on the Celtic languages

Celtic languages

The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic"; a branch of the greater Indo-European language family...

. These papers attracted great attention, and were almost the first introduction of German philological research to the English public. He made the Celtic question peculiarly his own. His conviction of the extent of the Celtic element in European languages, and of the importance of Celtic studies in general was to have been expressed in an article in the Quarterly Review on which for some reason never appeared.

Though exemplary in his attention to his duties at the British museum, he took little part in the great changes then being effected in the library under Anthony Panizzi

Anthony Panizzi

Sir Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi , better known as Anthony Panizzi, was a naturalized British librarian of Italian birth and an Italian patriot.-Early life in Italy:...

, but was an active member of the Philological Society

Philological Society

The Philological Society, or London Philological Society, is the oldest learned society in Great Britain dedicated to the study of language. The society was established in 1842 to "investigate and promote the study and knowledge of the structure, the affinities, and the history of languages"...

 founded in 1842. To its 'Transactions' he contributed numerous papers, including two long and important series of essays "On the Languages and Dialects of the British Islands," and "On the Nature and Analysis of the Verb".

Garnett is identified as contributing to a practical type of English semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

, associated with lexicography and etymology, distinguished from the philosophical stream following John Locke.

His epitaph was briefly written by a colleague in the Museum—"Few men have left so fragrant a memory". Besides his philological essays, edited by his eldest son in 1859, and his theological writings, which have not hitherto been collected, he was author of some graceful poems and translations, and of a remarkable paper 'On the Formation of Ice at the Bottoms of Rivers' in the Transactions of the Royal Institution for 1818, containing a most graphic account of the phenomenon from personal observation. It is republished along with the essays of his brother Thomas Garnett

Thomas Garnett (manufacturer)

-Life:Thomas, younger brother of Richard Garnett and Jeremiah Garnett was born at Otley, Yorkshire, England, on 18 Jan. 1799. In his early days he supported himself by weaving pieces on his own account, but about the age or twenty-one he obtained employment in the great manufacturing establishment...

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As a philologist he is thus characterised in the preface to Mr. Kington Oliphant's Sources of Standard English:

"It is a loss to mankind that Garnett has left so little behind him. He seems to have been the nearest approach England ever made to bringing forth a Mezzofanti, and he combined in himself qualities not often found in the same man. When his toilsome industry is amassing facts he plods like a German; when his playful wit is unmasking quackery he flashes like a Frenchman."