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When Charles XII. had arrived at Ystad, he conceived
the idea of recruiting his officers from the students at
Lund. For this purpose he sent an officer there with
the order that on a given day an examination of all
the students should be held by the Professor in the
presence of this Royal messenger, and all who did not
show the necessary aptitude for studies should at once
be enlisted. When the appointed day came everybody
appeared with the exception of the students, who,
following an advice privately given by Professor Ihre,
considered it their bounden duty to stay away.
Besides being a good classical scholar, Ihre spoke French,
Italian, German, English, and Dutch. He was compared
to St Chrysostom as a preacher, and to Luther in his
outward appearance.1 His son, Johann Ihre, who was
probably Sweden’s most brilliant linguist, was the first to
apply strictly critical methods to the study of languages.
He was born at Lund, on the 18th of March, 1707. A
terrible “ camp fever,” which followed upon the invasion
of the Danes in 1710, carried off his mother and two
sisters in one week, so that the mourning father was left
with one little boy only, whom he educated himself, and
whose taste for languages he by all possible means
encouraged. In his twelfth year John was able to read
Homer in the original. A sad interruption of his studies
seemed to threaten, when, in 1720, his father died; but
under the fostering care of his mother’s father, the
Archbishop of Upsala, Steuchius, the youth continued
to make excellent progress. In 1730, according to the
custom of the time, he commenced a journey of three
years’ duration, which first led him to Jena, where he
studied modern languages, and afterwards to Holland,
1 See Svenskt Biogr. Lexikon. The most important of Thomas
Ihre’s writings was a Latin Grammar, called Roma in nuce.
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