L
J
-
\
n
'"f give tke/e Books
*ar the founding of a College 'n this Colon)
»
0
mLE "Wmvekset Y°
I
I
Gift of
1
Prof. Irving Fisher
L
\9Up
1
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
MY
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
A FRAGMENT
BY THE
Rt. Hon. Professor F. MAX MULLER, K.M.
WITH PORTRAITS
New York
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1901
Copyright, 1901, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
PREFACE
For some years past my father had, in the in¬
tervals of more serious work, occupied his leisure
moments in jotting down reminiscences of his early
life. In 1898 and 1899 he issued the two volumes
of Auld Lang Syne, which contained recollections
of his friends, but very little about his own life and
career. In the Introductory Chapter to the Auto¬
biography he explains fully the reasons which led
him, at his advanced age, to undertake the task of
writing his own Life, and he began, but alas! too
late, to gather together the fragments that he had
written at different times. But even during the
last two years of his life, and after the first attack
of the illness which finally proved fatal, he would
not devote himself entirely to what he considered
mere recreation, as can be seen from such a work
as his Six Systems of Indian Philosophy published
in May, 1889, and from the numerous articles
which continued to appear up to the very time of
his death.
During the last weeks of his life, when we all
knew that the end could not be far off, the Auto-
v
VI
Preface
biography was constantly in his thoughts, and his
great desire was to leave as much as possible ready
for publication. Even when he was lying in bed
far too weak to sit up in a chair, he continued to
work at the manuscript with me. I would read
portions aloud to him, and he would suggest altera¬
tions and dictate additions. I see that we were
actually at work on this up to the 19th of October,
and on the 28th he was taken to his w7ell-earned
rest. One of the last letters that I read to him was
a letter from Messrs. Longmans, his life-long pub¬
lishers, urging the publication of the fragments of
the Autobiography that he had then written.
My father's object in writing his Autobiography
was twofold: firstly, to show what he considered to
have been his mission in life, to lay bare the thread
that connected all his labours; and secondly, to
encourage young struggling scholars by letting them
see how it had been possible for one of themselves,
without fortune, a stranger in a strange land, to
arrive at the position to which he attained, without
ever sacrificing his independence, or abandoning the
unprofitable and not very popular subjects to which
he had determined to devote his life.
Unfortunately the last chapter takes us but lit¬
tle beyond the threshold of his career. There is
enough, however, to enable us to see how from his
earliest student days his leanings were philosophical
and religious rather than classical; how the study
of Herbart's philosophy encouraged him in the
Preface
vii
work in which he was engaged as a mere student,
the Science of Language and Etymology; how his
desire to know something special, that no other phi¬
losopher would know, led him to explore the virgin
fields of Oriental literature and religions. With
this motive he began the study of Arabic, Persian,
and finally Sanskrit, devoting himself more espe¬
cially to the latter under Brockhaus and Ruckert,
and subsequently under Burnouf, who persuaded
him to undertake the colossal work of editing the
Rig-veda.
The Autobiography breaks off before the end of
the period during which he devoted himself ex¬
clusively to Sanskrit. It is idle to speculate what
course his life's work might have taken, had he been
elected to the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit; but
he lived long enough to realize that his rejection
for that chair in 1860, which was so hard to bear at
the time, was really a blessing in disguise, as it
enabled him to turn his attention to more general
subjects, and devote himself to those philological,
philosophical, religious and mythological studies,
which found their expression in a series of works
commencing with his Lectures on the Science of
Language, 1861, and terminating with his Con¬
tributions to the Science of Mythology, 1897,—
" the thread that connects the origin of thought
and language with the origin of mythology and re¬
ligion."
As to his advice to struggling scholars, the self-
viii
Preface
depreciation, which, as Professor Jowett said, is one
of the greatest dangers of an autobiography, makes
my father rather conceal the real causes of his
success in life. He even goes so far as to say,
" everything in my career came about most natu¬
rally, not by my own effort, but owing to those cir¬
cumstances or to that environment, of which we
have heard so much of late " : or again, " it was
really my friends who did everything for me and
helped me over many a stile and many a ditch."
Ho doubt in one sense this is true, but not in the
sense in which it would have been true had he, when
at the University, accepted the offer which he tells
us a wealthy cousin made him, to adopt him and
send him into the Austrian diplomatic service, and
even to procure him a wife and a title into the bar¬
gain. The friends who helped him, men such as
Humboldt, Burnouf, Bunsen, Stanley, Kingsley,
Liddell, to mention only a few, were men whose
very friendship was the surest proof of my father's
merits. The real secret of his success lay not in his
friends, but in himself;—in the knowledge that his
success or failure in life depended entirely on his
own efforts; in the fixity of purpose which made
him refuse all offers that would lead him from the
pathway that he had laid down for himself; and in
the unflagging industry with which he strove to
reach the goal of his ambition. " My very strug¬
gles," he writes, " were certainly a help to me."
When I came to examine the manuscript with
Preface
ix
a view to sending it to press, I found that there
was a good deal of work necessary before it could
be published in book form. The fragments were
in many cases incomplete; there was no division
into chapters, no connexion between the various
periods and episodes of his life; important incidents
were omitted; while, owing to the intermittent way
in which he had been writing, there were frequent
repetitions. My father was always most critical of
his own style, and would often, when correcting his
proof-sheets, alter a whole page, because a word or
a phrase displeased him, or because some new idea,
some happier mode of expression, occurred to him;
but in the case of his Autobiography, the only re¬
vision that he was able to give, was on his death-bed,
while I read the manuscript aloud to him.
My father points out how rarely the sons of great
musicians or great painters become distinguished
in the same line themselves. " It seems," he says,
" almost as if the artistic talent were exhausted by
one generation or one individual "; and I fear that,
in my case at all events, the same remark applies
to literary talent. I have done my best to string
the fragments together into one connected whole,
only making such insertions, elisions and alterations
as appeared strictly necessary. Any deficiency in
literary style that may be noticeable in portions of
the book should be ascribed to the inexperience of
the editor.
I have thought it right to insert the last chapter,
X
Preface
which. I call " A Confession," though I am not sure
that my father intended it to be included in his
Autobiography. It will, however, explain the at¬
titude which he observed throughout his life, in
keeping aloof, as far as possible, from the arena of
academic contention at Oxford. He was never
chosen a member of the Hebdomadal Council, he
rarely attended meetings of Convocation or Congre¬
gation ; he felt that other people, with more leisure
at their disposal, could be of more use there; but
he never refused to work for his University, when
he felt that he was able to render good service,
and he acted for years as a Curator of the Bodleian
Library and of the Taylorian Institute, and as a
Delegate of the Clarendon Press.
With reference to the illustrations, it may be of
interest to readers to know that the portraits of my
grandfather and grandmother are taken from pencil-
drawings by Adolf Ilensel, the husband of Mendels¬
sohn's sister Fanny, herself a great musician, who,
as my father tells us in Auld Lang Syne, really
composed several of the airs that Mendelssohn pub¬
lished as his Songs without Words. The last por¬
trait of my father is from a photograph taken soon
after his arrival in Oxford by his great friend Thom¬
son, afterwards xirchbishop of York.
Nothing now remains for me but to acknowl¬
edge the debt that I owe personally to this book.
" Work," my father used often to say to me, " is
the best healer of sorrow. In grief or disappoint-
Preface
xi
ment, try hard work; it will not fail you." And
certainly during these three sad months, I have
proved the truth of this saying. He could not have
left me a surer comfort or more welcome distraction
than the duty of preparing for press these pages, the
last fruits of that mind which remained active and
fertile to the last.
W. G. MAX MULLER.
Oxford, January, 1901.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introductory 1
II. Childhood at Dessau 46
III. School-days at Leipzig 97
IV. University 115
V. Paris 162
VI. Arrival in England 188
VII. Early Days at Oxford 218
VIII. Early Friends at Oxford .... 272
IX. A Confession 308
INDEX 319
LIST OF PORTRAITS
F. Max MulLER, Aged Four . . . Frontispiece
FACING
PAGE
My Father 46
My Mother 58
F. Max Muller, Aged Fourteen .... 106
" " Aged Twenty 156
" " Aged Thirty 268
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
After, the publication of the second volume of
my Auld Lang Syne, 1899, I had a good deal
of correspondence, of public criticism, and of pri¬
vate communings also with myself, whether I
should continue my biographical records in the form
hitherto adopted, or give a more personal char¬
acter to my recollections. Some of my friends
were evidently dissatisfied. " The recollections of
your friends and the account of the influence they
exercised on you," they said, " are interesting, no
doubt, as far as they go, but we want more. We
want to know the springs, the aspirations, the
struggles, the failures, and achievements of your
life. We want to know how you yourself look at
yourself and at your past life and its various inci¬
dents." What they really wanted was, in fact, an
autobiography. " JSTo one," as a friend of mine,
not an Irishman, said, " could do that so well as
yourself, and you will never escape a biographer."
I confess that did not frighten me very much. I
i
2 My Autobiography
did not think the danger of a biography very im¬
minent. Besides, I had already revised two biog¬
raphies and several biographical notices even dur¬
ing my lifetime. USTo sensible man ought to care
about posthumous praise or posthumous blame.
Enough for the day is the evil thereof. Our con¬
temporaries are our right judges, our peers have
to give their votes in the great academies and
learned societies, and if they on the whole are not
dissatisfied with the little we have done, often under
far greater difficulties than the world was aware
of, why should we care for the distant future?
Who was a greater giant in philosophy than Hegel?
Who towered higher than Darwin in natural
science? Yet in one of the best German reviews 1
the following words of a young German biologist2
are quoted, and not without a certain approval:
" Darwinism belongs now to history, like that other
curiosum of our century, the Hegelian philosophy.
Both are variations on the theme, How can a gen¬
eration be led by the nose ? and they are not calcu¬
lated to raise our departing century in the eyes of
later generations."
If I was afraid of anything, it was not so much
the severity of future judges, as the extreme kind¬
ness and leniency which distinguish most biogra¬
phies in our days. It is true, it would not be easy
for those who have hereafter to report on our labours
1 Deutsche Rundschau, Feb., 1900, p. 249.
IDriesch, Biologisches Centralblatt, 1896, p. 335.
Introductory 3
to discover the red thread that runs through all of
them from our first stammerings to our latest mur-
murings. It might be said that in my own case the
thread that connects all my labours is very visible,
namely, the thread that connects the origin of
thought and languages with the origin of mythol¬
ogy and religion. Everything I have done was, no
doubt, subordinate to these four great problems,
but to lay bare the connecting links between what
I have written and what I wanted to write and never
found time to write, is by no means easy, not even
for the author himself. Besides, what author has
ever said the last word he wanted to say, and who
has not had to close his eyes before he could write
Finis to his work? There are many things still
which I should like to say, but I am getting tired,
and others will say them much better than I could,
and will no doubt carry on the work where I had to
leave it unfinished. We owe much to others, and
we have to leave much to others. For throwing
light on such points an autobiography is, no doubt,
better adapted than any biography written by a
stranger, if only we can at the same time complete¬
ly forget that the man who is described is the same
as the man who describes.
" Friends," as Professor Jowett said, " always
think it necessary (except Boswell, that great
genius) to tell lies about their deceased friend; they
leave out all his faults lest the public should exag¬
gerate them. But we want to know his faults,
4 My Autobiography
—that is probably the most interesting part of
him."
Jowett knew quite well, and he did not hesitate
to say so, that to do much good in this world, you
must be a very able and honest man, thinking of
nothing else day and night; and he adds, "you
must also be a considerable piece of a rogue, having
many reticences and concealments; and I believe a
good sort of roguery is never to say a word against
anybody, however much they may deserve it."
blow Professor Jowett has certainly done some
good work at Oxford, but if any one were to say
that he also was a considerable piece of a rogue, what
an outcry there would be among the sons of Balliol.
Jowett thought that the only chance of a good bi¬
ography was for a man to write memoirs of him¬
self, and what a pity that he did not do so in his
own case. His friends, however, who had to write
his Life were wise, and he escaped what of late has
happened to several eminent men. He escaped the
testimonials for this, and testimonials for another
life, such as they are often published in our days.
Testimonials are bad enough in this life, when
we have to select one out of many candidates as
best fitted for an office, and it is but natural that
the electors will hardly ever look at them, but will
try to get their information through some other
channel. But what are called post obit testimonials
really go beyond everything yet known in funeral
panegyrics. Of course, as no one is asked for such
Introductory
5
testimonials except tliose who are known to have
been friends of the departed, these testimonials
hardly ever contain one word of blame. One feels
ashamed to write such testimonials, but if you are
asked, what can you do without giving offence ? We
are placed altogether in a false position. Let any
one try to speak the truth and nothing but the truth,
and he will find that it is almost impossible to put
down anything that in the slightest way might seem
to reflect on the departed. The mention of the most
innocent failings in an obituary notice is sure to
offend somebody, the widow or the children, or some
dear friend. I thought that my Recollections had
hitherto contained nothing that could possibly of¬
fend anybody, nothing that could not have been
published during the lifetime of the man to whom
it referred. But no; I had ever so many complaints,
and I gladly left out, in later editions, names which
in many cases were really of no consequence com¬
pared with what they said and did.
Surely every man has his faults and his little
and often ridiculous weaknesses, and these weak¬
nesses belong quite as much to a man's character as
his strength; nay, with the suppression of the for¬
mer the latter would often become almost unintel¬
ligible.
I like the biographies of such friends of mine as
Dean Stanley, Charles Ivingsley, and Baron Bun-
sen. But even these are deficient in those shadows
which would but help to bring out all the more clear-
6 My Autobiography
ly the bright points in their character. "We should
remember the words of Dr. Wendell Holmes: " We
all want to draw perfect ideals, and all the coin that
comes from Nature's mint is more or less clipped,
filed, ' sweated,' or bruised, and bent and worn,
even if it was pure metal when stamped, which is
more than we can claim, I suppose, for anything
human." True, very true; and what would the de¬
parted himself say to such biographies as are now
but too common,—most flattering pictures no doubt,
but pictures without one spot or wrinkle? In Ger¬
many it was formerly not an uncommon thing for
the author of a book to write a self-review (Selbst-
Kritik), and these were generally far better than
reviews written by friends or enemies. For who
knows the strong and weak points of a book so well
as the author? True; but a whole life is more diffi¬
cult to review and to criticize than a single book.
Nevertheless it must be admitted that an autobi¬
ography has many advantages, and it might be well
if every man of note, nay, every man who has some¬
thing to say for himself that he wishes posterity to
know, should say it himself. This would in time
form a wonderful archive for psychological study.
Something of the kind has been done already at
Berlin in preserving private correspondences. Of
course it is difficult to keep such archives within
reasonable limits, but here again I am not afraid
of self-laudation so much as of self-depreciation.
Professor Jowett, who did not write his own bi-
Introductory
7
ography, was quite riglit in saying that there is
great danger of an autobiography being rather self-
depreciatory; there is certainly something so nause¬
ous in self-praise that most people would shrink far
more from self-praise than from self-blame. There
may be some kind of subtle self-admiration even in
the fault-finding of an out-spoken autobiographer;
but who can dive into those deepest depths of the
human soul? To me it seems that if an honest man
takes himself by the neck, and shakes himself, he
can do it far better than anybody else, and the
castigation, if well deserved, comes certainly with
a far better grace from himself than if administered
by others.
Few men, I believe, know their real goodness and
greatness. Some of the most handsome women, so
we are assured, pass through life without ever know¬
ing from their looking-glass that they are hand¬
some. And it is certainly true that men, from sad
experience, know their weak points far better than
their good points, which they look on as no more
than natural.
The Autos, for instance, described by John
Stuart Mill, has no cause to be grateful to the Autos
that wrote his biography. Mill had been threatened
by several future biographers, and he therefore
wrote the short biographical account of himself al¬
most in self-defence. But besides the truly miracu¬
lous, and, if related by anybody else, hardly credible
achievements of his early boyhood and youth, his
8
My Autobiography
great achievements in later life, the influence which
he exercised both by his writings and still more by
his personal and public character, would have found
a far more eloquent and truthful interpreter in a
stranger than in Mill himself. I remember another
case where a most distinguished author tried to
escape the oil and the blessings, perhaps the opposite
also, from the hands of his future biographers.
Froude destroyed the whole of his correspondence,
and he wished particularly that all letters written
to him in the fullest confidence should be burnt,—
and they were. I think it was a pity, for I know
what valuable letters were destroyed in that auto da
fe; and yet when he had done all this, he seems to
have been seized with fear, and just before he re¬
turned to Oxford as Regius Professor of Modern
History he began to write a sketch of his own life,
which was found among his papers. Interesting it
certainly was, but fortunately his best friends pre¬
vented its publication. It would have added noth¬
ing to what we know of him in his writings, and
would never have put his real merits in their proper
light. Besides, it came to an end with his youth and
told us little of his real life.
I flattered myself that I had found the true way
out of all these difficulties, by writing not exactly
my own life, but recollections of my friends and ac¬
quaintances who had influenced me most, and guid¬
ed me in my not always easy passage through life.
As in describing the course of a river, we cannot
Introductory
9
do better than to describe the shores which hem in
and divert the river and are reflected on its waves,
I thought that by describing my environment, my
friends, and fellow workers, I could best describe
the course of my own life. I hoped also that in this
way I myself could keep as much as possible in the
background, and yet in describing the wooded or
rocky shores with their herds, their cottages, and
churches, describe their reflected image on the pass¬
ing river.
But now I am asked to give a much fuller ac¬
count of myself, not only of what I have seen, but
also of what I have been, what were the objects or
ideals of my life, how far I have succeeded in carry¬
ing them out, and, as I said, how often I have failed
to accomplish what I had sketched out as my task
in life. People wished to know how a boy, born and
educated in a small and almost unknown town in
the centre of Germany, should have come to Eng¬
land, should have been chosen there to edit the
oldest book of the world, the Veda of the Brahmans,
never published before, whether in India or in Eu¬
rope, should have passed the best part of his life as
a professor in the most famous and, as it was thought,
the most exclusive University in England, and
should actually have ended his days as a Member
of Her Majesty's most honourable Privy Council.
I confess myself it seems a very strange career, yet
everything came about most naturally, not by my
own effort, but owing again to those circumstances
io My Autobiography
or to that environment of which we have heard so
much of late.
Young, struggling men also have written to me,
and asked me how I managed to keep my head above
water in that keen struggle for life that is always
going on in the whirlpool of the learned world of
England. They knew, for I had never made any
secret of it, how poor I -was in worldly goods, and
how, as I said at Glasgow, I had nothing to depend
on after I left the University, but those fingers with
which I still hold my pen and write so badly that I
can hardly read my manuscript myself. When I
arrived I had no family connections in England,
nor any influential friends, " and yet," I was told,
" in a foreign country, you managed to reach the
top of your profession. Tell us how you did it;
and how you preserved at the same time your in¬
dependence and never forsook the not very popular
subjects, such as language, mythology, religion, and
philosophy, on which you continued to write to the
very end of your life."
I generally said that most of these questions could
best be answered from my books, but they replied
that few people had time to read all I had written,
and many would feel grateful for a thread to lead
them through this labyrinth of books, essays, and
pamphlets, which have issued from my workshop
during the last fifty years.1
1 As giving a clear and complete abstract of my writings I
may now recommend M. Montcalm's Uorigine de la Pensee et
de la Parole, Paris, 1900.
Introductory 11
All I could say was that each man must find his
own way in life, but if there was any secret about
my success, it was simply due to the fact that I had
perfect faith, and went on never doubting even
when everything looked grey and black about me.
I felt convinced that what I cared for, and what I
thought worthy of a whole life of hard work, must
in the end be recognized by others also as of value,
and as worthy of a certain support from the public.
Had not Layard gained a hearing for Assyrian
bulls? Did not Darwin induce the world to take an
interest in Worms, and in the Fertilization of Or¬
chids? And should the oldest book and the oldest
thoughts of the Aryan world remain despised and
neglected?
For many years I never thought of appointments
or of getting on in the world in a pecuniary sense.
My friends often laughed at me, and when I think
of it now, I confess I must have seemed very
Quixotic to many of those who tried for this and
that, got lucrative appointments, married rich wives,
became judges and bishops, ambassadors and minis¬
ters, and could hardly understand what I was driv¬
ing at with my Sanskrit manuscripts, my proof-
sheets and revises. Perhaps I did not know myself.
Still I was not quite so foolish as they imagined.
True, I declined several offers made to me which
seemed very advantageous in a worldly sense, but
would have separated me entirely from my favour¬
ite work.
12 My Autobiography
When at last a professorship of Modern Litera¬
ture was offered me at Oxford, I made up my mind,
though it was not exactly what I should have liked,
to give up half of my time to studies required by
this professorship, keeping half of my time for the
Yeda and for Sanskrit in general. This was not so
bad after all. People often laughed at me for
being professor of the most modern languages, and
giving so much of my time and labour to the most
ancient language and literature in the world. Per¬
haps it was not quite right my giving up so much of
my time to modern languages, a subject so remote
from my work in life, but it was a concession which
I could make with a good conscience, having always
held that language was one and indivisible, and
that there never had been a break between Sanskrit,
Latin, and French, or Sanskrit, Gothic, and Ger¬
man. One of my first lectures at Oxford was " On
the antiquity of modern languages," so that I gave
full notice to the University as to how I meant to
treat my subject, and on the whole the University
seems to have been satisfied with my professorial
work, so that when afterwards for very good
reasons, whether financial, theological, or national,
I, or rather my friends, failed to secure a majority
in Convocation for a professorship of Sanskrit, the
University actually founded for me a Professorship
of Comparative Philology, an honour of which
I had never dreamt, and to secure which I certainly
had never taken any steps.
Introductory 13
Here is all my secret. At first, as I said, it re¬
quired faith, but it also required for many years a
perfect indifference as to worldly success. And
here again in my career as a Sanskrit scholar, mere
circumstances were of great importance. They
were circumstances which I was glad to accept, but
which I could never have created myself. It was
surely a mere accident that the Directors of the Old
East India Company voted a large sum of money
for printing the six large quartos of the Kig-veda of
about a thousand pages each. It was at the time
when the fate of the Company hung in the balance,
and when Bunsen, the Prussian Minister, made
himself persona grata by delivering a speech at one
of the public dinners in the City, setting forth in
eloquent words the undeniable merits of the Old
Company and the wonderful work they had
achieved. It was likewise a mere accident that I
should have become known to Bunsen, and that he
should have shown me so much kindness in my liter¬
ary work. He had himself tried hard to go to India
to discover the Kig-veda, nay, to find out whether
there was still such a thing as the Veda in India.
The same Bunsen, His Excellency Baron Bunsen,
the Prussian Minister in London, on his own accord
went afterwards to see the Chairman and the Di¬
rectors of the East India Company, and explained
to them what the Kig-veda was, and that it would
be a real disgrace if such a work were published in
Germany; and they agreed to vote a sum of money
14 My Autobiography
such as they had never voted before for any literary
undertaking. Though after the mutiny nothing
could save them, I had at least the satisfaction of
dedicating the first volume of my edition of the
Rig-veda to the Chairman and the Directors of the
much abused East India Company,—much abused
though splendidly defended also by no less a man
than John Stuart Mill.
This is what I mean by friends and circum¬
stances, and that is the environment which I wished
to describe in my Recollections instead of always
dwelling on what I meant to do myself and what
I did myself. Small and large things work
wonderfully together. It was the change threaten¬
ing the government of India, and a mighty change
it was, that gave me the chance of publishing the
Yeda, a very small matter as it may seem in the
eyes of most people, and yet intended to bring about
quite as mighty a change in our views of the ancient
people of the world, particularly of their languages
and religions. This, too—the development of lan¬
guage and religion—seems of importance to some
people who do not care two straws for the East India
Company, particularly if it helps us to learn what
we really are ourselves, and how we came to be what
we are.
In one sense biographies and autobiographies are
certainly among the most valuable materials for the
historian. Biography, as Heinrich Simon, not
Henri Simon, said, is the best kind of history, and
Introductory l y
the life of one man, if laid open before us witli all
he thought and all he did, gives us a better insight
into the history of his time than any general ac¬
count of it can possibly do.
Now it is quite true that the life of a quiet scholar
has little to do with history, except it may be the
history of his own branch of study, which some peo¬
ple consider quite unimportant, while to others it
seems all-important. This is as it ought to be, till
the universal historian finds the right perspective,
and assigns to each branch of study and activity its
proper place in the panorama of the progress of man¬
kind towards its ideals. Even a quiet scholar, if he
keeps his eyes open, may now and then see some¬
thing that is of importance to the historian. While
I was living in small rooms at Leipzig, or lodging
au cinquieme in the Rue Roy ale at Paris, or copy¬
ing manuscripts in a dark room of the old East India
House in Leadenhall Street, I now and then caught
glimpses of the mighty stream of history as it was
rushing by. At Leipzig I saw much of Robert
Blum who was afterwards fusille at Vienna by
Windischgratz in defiance of all international law, for
he was a member of the German Diet, then sitting
at Frankfurt. From my windows at Paris I looked
over the Boulevard de la Madeleine, and down on the
right to the Chambre des Deputes, and I saw from
my windows the throne of Louis Philippe carried
along by its four legs by four women on horseback,
with Phrygian caps and red scarfs, and I saw the
16 My Autobiography
next morning from the same windows the stretchers
carrying the dead and wounded from the Boulevards
to a hospital at the back of my street. In my small
study at the East India House I saw several of the
Directors, Colonel Sykes and others, and heard
them discussing the fate of the East India Com¬
pany and of the vast empire of India too, and at the
same time the private interests of those who hoped
to be Members of the new India Council, and those
who despaired of that distinction. I was the first
to bring the news of the French Be volution in Feb¬
ruary to London, and presented a bullet that had
smashed the windows of my room at Paris, to Bun-
sen, who took it in the evening to Lord Palmerston.
After I had seen the Kevolution in Paris and the
flight of the King and the Duchesse d'Orleans, I was
in time to see in London the Chartist Deputation
to Parliament, and the assembled police in Trafal¬
gar Square, when Louis Napoleon served as a
Special Constable, and I heard the Duke of Well¬
ington explain to Bunsen, that though no soldier
was seen in the streets there was artillery hidden
under the bridges, and ready to act if wanted. I
could add more, but I must not anticipate, and
after all, to me all these great events seemed but
small compared with a new manuscript of the Veda
sent from India, or a better reading of an obscure
passage. Diversos cliversa iuvant, and it is fort¬
unate that it should be so.
All these things, I thought, should form part of
Introductory 17
my Recollections, and my own little self should
disappear as much as possible. Even the pronoun
I should meet the reader but seldom, though in
Recollections it was as impossible to leave it out
altogether as it would be to take away the lens from
a photographic camera. Now I believe I have al¬
ways been most willing to yield to my friends, and
I shall in this matter also yield to them so far that
in the Recollections which follow there will be more
of my inward and outward struggles; but I must
on the whole adhere to my old plan. I could not,
if I would, neglect the environment of my life, and
the many friends that advised and helped me, and
enabled me to achieve the little that I may have
achieved in my own line of study.
If my friends had been different from what they
were, should I not have become a different man
myself, whether for good or for evil ? And the same
applies to our natural surroundings also. And here
I must invoke the patience of my readers, if I try
to explain in as few words as possible what I think
about environment, and what about heredity or
atavism.
I was a thorough Darwinian in ascribing the
shaping of my career to environment, though I was
always very averse to atavism, of which we have
heard so much lately in most biographies. Even
with respect to environment, however, I could not
go quite so far as certain of our Darwinian friends,
who maintain that everything is the result of envi-
18 My Autobiography
ronment, or translated into biographical language,
that everybody is a creature of circumstances. No,
I could not go so far as that. Environment may
shape our course and may shape us, but there must
be something that is shaped, and allows itself to be
shaped. I was once seriously asked by one who
considers himself a Darwinian whether I did not
know that the Mammoth was driven by the extreme
cold of the Pleiocene Period to grow a thick fur in
his struggle for life. That he grew then a thicker
fur, I knew, but that surely does not explain the
whole of the Mammoth, with and without a thick
fur, before and after the fur. It is really a pity to
sec for how many of these downright absurdities
Darwin is made responsible by the Darwinians. He
has clearly shown how in many cases the individual
may be modified almost beyond recognition by
environment, but the individual must always have
been there first. Defore we had a spaniel and a
Newfoundland dog there must have been some
kind of dog, neither so small as the spaniel nor so
large as the Newfoundland, and no one would now
doubt that these two belonged to the same species
and presupposed some kind of a less modified canine
creature. It is equally tine that every individual
man lias been modified by his surroundings or en¬
vironment, if not to the same extent as certain ani¬
mals, yet very considerably, as in the case of Kas-
par Ilauser, the man with the iron mask, or the
mutineers of the Bounty in the Pitcairn Islands.
Introductory 19
But there must have been the man first, before he
could be so modified. Mow it was this very indi¬
vidual, my own self in fact, the spiritual self even
more than the physical, that interested my critics,
while I thought that the circumstances which
moulded that self would be of far greater interest
than the self itself. Of course all the modifications
that men now undergo are nothing if compared to
the early modifications which produced what we
speak of as racial, linguistic, or even national pe¬
culiarities. That we are English or German, that
we are white or black, nay, if you like, that we are
human beings at all, all this has modified our self,
or our germ-plasm, far more powerfully than any¬
thing that can happen to us as individuals now.
When my friends and readers assured me that an
account of my early struggles in the battle of life
would be useful to many a young, struggling man,
all I could say was that here again it was really my
friends who did everything for me, and helped me
over many a stile, and many a ditch, nay, without
whom I should never have done whatever I did for
the Sciences of Language, of Mythology, and Relig¬
ion, in fact for Anthropology in the widest sense
of that word. My very struggles were certainly a
help to me, even my opponents were most useful to
me. The subjects on which I wrote had hardly
been touched on in England, at least from the his¬
torical point of view which I took, and I had not
only to overcome the indifference of the public, but
2o My Autobiography
to disarm as much as possible the prejudices often
felt, and sometimes expressed also, against any¬
thing made in Germany! Now I confess I could
never understand such a prejudice among men of
science. Was I more right or more wrong because
I was born in Germany? Is scientific truth the ex¬
clusive property of one nation, of Germany, or of
England? If I say two and two make four in Ger¬
man, is that less true because it is said by a Ger¬
man? and if I say, no language without thought,
no thought without language, has that anything to
do with my native country? The prejudice against
strangers and particularly against Germans is, no
doubt, much stronger now than it was at the time
when I first came to England. I had spent nearly
two years in Paris, and there too there existed then
so little of unfriendly feeling towards Germany,
that one of the best reviews to which the rising
scholars and best writers of Paris contributed was
actually called Revue Germanique. Who would
now venture to publish in Paris such a review and
under such a title? If there existed such an anti-
German feeling anywhere in England when I ar¬
rived here in the year 1846, one would suppose that
it existed most strongly at Oxford. And so it did, no
doubt, particularly among theologians. With them
German meant much the same as unorthodox, and
unorthodox was enough at that time to taboo a man
at Oxford. In one of the sermons preached in these
early days at St. Mary's, German theologians such
Introductory 21
as Strauss and Meander (sic) were spoken of as fit
only to be drowned in the German Ocean, before
they reached the shores of England. I do not add
what followed: the story is too well known. I was
chiefly amused by the juxtaposition of Strauss and
Neander, whose most orthodox lectures on the his¬
tory of the Christian Church I had attended at Ber¬
lin. Heander was certainly to us at Berlin the very
pattern of orthodoxy, and people wondered at my
attending his lectures. But they were good and
honest lectures. He was quite a character, and I
feel tempted to go a little out of my way in speak¬
ing of him. By birth a Jew, he became one of the
most learned Christian divines. Ever so many sto¬
ries were told of him, some true, some no doubt in¬
vented. I saw him often walking to and from the
University to give his lectures in a large fur coat,
with high black polished boots beneath, but showing
occasionally as he walked along. It was told that
he once sent for a doctor because he was lame. The
doctor on examining his feet, saw that one boot was
covered with mud, while the other was perfectly
clean. The Professor had walked with one foot on
the pavement, with the other in the gutter, and was
far too much absorbed in his ideas to discover the
true cause of his discomfort. He lived with his
sister, who took complete care of him and saw to his
wardrobe also. She knew that lie wore one pair of
trousers, and that on a certain day in the year the
tailor brought him a new pair. Great was her
22 My Autobiography
amazement when one day, after her brother had
gone to the University, she discovered his pair of
trousers lying on a chair near his bed. She at once
sent a servant to the Professor's lecture-room to in¬
quire whether he had his trousers on. The hilarity
of his class may be imagined. The fact was it was
the very day on which the tailor was in the habit of
bringing the new pair of trousers, which the Pro¬
fessor had put on, leaving his usual garment behind.
Many more stories of his absent-mindedness were
en vogue about Dr. Meander, but that this man, a
pillar of strength to the orthodox in Germany, who
was looked up to as an infallible Pope, should have
his name coupled with that of Strauss certainly gave
one a little shock. Yet it was at Oxford that I
pitched my tent, chiefly in order to superintend the
printing of my Rig-veda at the University Press
there, and never dreaming that a fellowship, still
less a professorship in that ancient Tory University,
would ever be offered to me.
For me to go to Oxford to get a fellowship or
professorship would have seemed about as absurd
as going to Rome to become a Cardinal or a Pope;
and yet in time I was chosen a Fellow of All Souls,
and the first married Fellow of the College, and
even a professorship was offered to me when I least
expected it. The fact is, I never thought of either,
and no one was more surprised than myself when
I was asked to act as deputy, and then as full Tay-
lorian Professor; no one could have mistrusted his
Introductory
eyes more than I did, when one of the Fellows of
All Soul's informed me by letter that it was the in¬
tention of the College to elect me one of its fellows.
My ambition had never soared so high. I was think¬
ing of returning to Leipzig as a Privat-docent, to
rise afterwards to an extraordinary and, if all went
well, to an ordinary professorship.
But after these two appointments at Oxford had
secured to me what I thought a fair social and finan¬
cial position in England, I did not feel justified in at¬
tempting to begin life again in Germany. I had not
asked for a professorship or fellowship. They were
offered me, and my ambition never went beyond
securing what was necessary for my independence.
In Germany I was supposed to have become quite
wealthy; in England people knew how small my
income really was, and wondered how I managed
to live on it. They did not suppose that I had
chiefly to depend on my pen in order to live as a
professor is expected to live at Oxford. I could
not see anything anomalous in a German holding a
professorship in England. There were several cases
of the same kind in Germany. Lassen (1800-
1876), our great San-skrit professor at Bonn, was
a Norwegian by birth, and no one ever thought of
his nationality. What had that to do with his
knowledge of Sanskrit? Nor was I ever treated as
an alien or as intruder at Oxford, at least not at
that early time. As to myself, I had now obtained
what seemed to me a small but sufficient income
24 My Autobiography
with perfect independence. The quiet life of a
quiet student had been from my earliest days my
ideal in life. Even at school at Dessau, when we
boys talked of what we hoped to be, I remember
how my ideal was that of a monk, undisturbed in
his monastery, surrounded by books and by a few
friends. The idea that I should ever rise to be a
professor in a university, or that any career like that
of my father, grandfather, and other members of
my family would ever be open to me, never entered
my mind then. It seemed to me almost disloyal
to think of ever taking their places. Even when I
saw that there were no longer any Protestant monks,
no Benedictines, the place of an assistant in a large
library, sitting in a quiet corner, was my highest
ambition.
I do not see why it should have been so, for all
my relations and friends occupied high places in the
public service, but as I had no father to open my
eyes, and to stimulate my ambition—he having died
before I was four years old—my ideas of life and
its possibilities were evidently taken from my young
widowed mother, whose one desire was to be left
alone, much as the world tempted her, then not yet
thirty years old, to give up her mourning and to
return to society. Thus it soon became my own
philosophy of life, to be left alone, free to go my
own way, or like Diogenes, to live in my own tub.
Here we see what I call the influence of circum¬
stances, of surroundings, or as others call it, of en-
Introductory
vironment. This, however, is very different from
atavism, as we shall see presently. Atavism also
has been called a kind of environment, attacking us
and influencing us from the past, and as it were,
from behind, from the North in fact instead of the
South, the East, and the West, and from all the
points of the compass.
But atavism means really a very different thing,
if indeed it means anything at all.
I must ease my conscience once for all on this
point, and say what I feel about atavism and en¬
vironment. Environment in the shape of friends,
of locality, and other material circumstances, has
certainly influenced my life very much, and I could
never see why such a hybrid word as environment
should be used instead of surroundings or circum¬
stances. Creatures of circumstances would be far
better understood than creatures of environment;
but environment, I suppose, would sound more
scientific. Atavism also is a new word, instead of
family likeness, but unless carefully defined, the
word is very apt to mislead us.
When it is said 1 that children often resemble
their grandfathers or grandmothers more than their
immediate parents, and that this propensity is
termed atavism, this does not seem quite correct
even etymologically, for atavus in Latin did not
mean father or grandfather, but at first great-great-
1 Oxford Dictionary, s. v.; J. Rennie, Science of Gardening,
p. 113.
26 My Autobiography
great-grandfather, and then only ancestors; and
what should be made quite clear is that this mys¬
terious atavism should not be used by careful speak¬
ers, to express the supposed influence of parents
or even grandparents, but that of more distant an¬
cestors only, and possibly of a whole family.
Many biographers, such is the fashion now, be¬
gin their works with a long account not only of
father and mother, but of grandparents and of ever
so many ancestors, in order to show how these de¬
termined the outward and inward character of the
man whose life has to be written. Who would deny
that there is some truth, or at least some plausibility,
in atavism, though no one has as yet succeeded in
giving an intelligible account of it? It is supposed
to affect the moral as well as the physical peculiari¬
ties of the offspring, and that here, too, physical and
moral qualities often go together cannot be denied.
A blind person, for instance, is generally cautious,
but happy and quite at his ease in large societies.
A deaf person is often suspicious and unhappy in
society. In inheriting blindness, therefore, a man
could well be said to have inherited cautiousness;
in inheriting deafness, suspiciousness would seem to
have come to him by inheritance.
But is blindness really inherited? Is the son of a
father who has lost his eyesight blind, and neces¬
sarily blind? We must distinguish between ata¬
vistic and parental influences. Parental influences
would mean the influence of qualities acquired by
Introductory 27
the parents, and directly "bequeathed to their off-
' spring; atavistic influences would refer to qualities
inherited and transmitted, it may be, through sev¬
eral generations, and engrained in a whole family.
In keeping these two classes separate, we should
only be following Weismann's example, who denies
altogether that acquired qualities are ever heritable.
His examples arc most interesting and most im¬
portant, and many Darwinians have had to accept
his amendment. Besides, we should always consider
whether certain peculiarities are constant in a fam¬
ily or inconstant. If a father is a drunkard, surely
it does not follow that his sons must be drunkards.
Neither does it follow that all the children must
be sober if the parents are sober. Of course, in
ordinary conversation both parental and ancestral
influences seem clear enough. But if a child is said
to favour his mother, because like her he has blue
eyes and fair hair, what becomes of the heritage
from the father who may have brown eyes and dark
hair? "Whatever may happen to the children, there
is always an excuse, only an excuse is not an ex¬
planation. If the daughter of a beautiful woman
grows up very plain, the Frenchman was no doubt
right when he remarked, C'etait alors le pere qui
n'etait pas bien, and if the son of a teetotaller
should later in life become a drunkard, the conclu¬
sion would be even worse. In fact, this kind of
atavistic or parental influence is a very pleasant
subject for gossips, but from a scientific point of
28 My Autobiography
view, it is perfectly futile. If it is not the father,
it is the mother; if it is not the grandmother, it is
the grandfather; in fact, family influences can al¬
ways he traced to some source or other, if the whole
pedigree may be dug up and ransacked. But for
that very reason they are of no scientific value what¬
ever. They can neither be accounted for, nor can
they be used to account for anything themselves.
Even of twins, though very like each other in many
respects, one may be phlegmatic, the other passion¬
ate. Some scientists, such as Weismann and others,
have therefore denied, and I believe rightly, that
any acquired characters, whether physical or men¬
tal, can ever be inherited by children from their
parents. Whatever similarity there is, and there is
plenty, is traced back by him to what he calls the
germ-plasm, working on continuously in spite of all
individual changes. If that germ-plasm is liable to
certain peculiar modifications in the father or grand¬
father, it is liable to the same or similar modifica¬
tions in the offspring, that is, if the father could be¬
come a drunkard, so could the son, only we must not
think that the post hoc is here the same as the
propter hoc. If we compare the germ-plasm to the
molecules constituting the stem or branches of a
vine, its grapes and leaves in their similarity and
their variety would be comparable to the individu¬
als belonging to the same family, and springing
from the same family tree. But then the grape we
see would not be what the grape of last year, or
Introductory 29
the grape immediately preceding it on the same
branch, had made it, though there can he no doubt
that the antecedent possibilities of the new grape
were the same as those of the last. If one grape is
blue, the next will be blue too, but no one would say
that it was blue because the last grape was blue.
The real cause would be that the molecules of the
protoplasm have been so affected by long continued
generation, that some of the peculiar qualities of
the vine have become constant.
The child of a negro must always be a negro;
his peculiarities are constant, though it may be quite
true that the negro and other races are not different
species, but only varieties rendered constant by im¬
mense periods of time. What the cause of these
constant and inconstant peculiarities may be, not
even Weismann has yet been able to explain satis¬
factorily.
The deafness of my mother and the prevalence of
the misfortune in numerous members of her family
acted on me as a kind of external influence, as some¬
thing belonging to the environment of my life; it
never frightened me as an atavistic evil. It justi¬
fied me in being cautious and in being prepared for
the worst, and so far it may be said to have helped
in shaping or narrowing the course of my life. Fort¬
unately, however, this tendency to deafness seems
now to have exhausted itself. In my own genera¬
tion there is one case only, and the next two genera¬
tions, children and grandchildren of mine, show no
My Autobiography
signs of it. If, on the other hand, my son was con¬
gratulated when entering the diplomatic service, on
being the son of his father, it is clear that the dif¬
ference between inherited and acquired qualities,
so strongly insisted on by Weismann, had not been
fully appreciated by his friends. Besides, my own
power of speaking foreign languages has always
been very limited, and I have many times declined
the compliment of being a second Mezzofanti.1 I
worked at languages as a musician studies the nat¬
ure and capacities of musical instruments, though
without attempting to perform on every one of
them. There was no time left for acquiring a prac¬
tical familiarity with languages, if I wanted to carry
on my researches into the origin, the nature and
history of language. My own study of languages
could therefore have been of very little use to me,
nor did my son himself perceive such an advantage
in learning to converse in French, Spanish, Turkish,
&c. The facts were wrong, and the theory of
atavism perfectly unreasonable as applied to such
a case.
If the theory of atavism were stretched so far, it
would soon do away with free will altogether. That
heredity has something to do with our moral char¬
acter, no one would deny who knows the influence
of our national, nay even of racial character. We
are Aryan by heredity; we might be Negroes or
Chinese, and share in their tendencies. Animals
1 Science of Language, vol. i. p. 24 (1861),
Introductory 31
also have their instincts. Only while animals, like
serpents for instance, would never hesitate to follow
their innate propensity, man, when he feels the
power of what we may call inherited human instinct,
feels also that he can fight against it, and preserve
his freedom, even while wearing the chains of his
slavery. This may have removed some of Dr. Wen¬
dell Holmes' scruples in writing his powerful story,
Elsie Venner, and may likewise quiet the fears of
his many critics.
I believe that language also—our own inherited
language—exercises the most powerful influence on
our reason and our will, far more powerful than we
are aware of.
A Greek speaking Greek and a Roman speaking
Latin would certainly have been very different
beings from the Romance and French descendants
of a Horace or a Cicero, and this simply on account
of the language which they had to speak, whether
Greek, Latin, French, or Spanish. We cannot tell
whether the original differentiation of language,
symbolized by the story of the Tower of Babel, took
place before or after the racial differentiation of
men. Anyhow it must have taken place in quite
primordial times. Without speaking positively on
this point, I certainly hold as strongly as ever that
language makes the man, and that therefore for
classificatory purposes also language is far more use¬
ful than colour of skin, hair, cranial or gnathic pe¬
culiarities. Whether it be true that with every new
32 My Autobiography
language we speak we become new men, certain it
is that language prepares for us channels in which
our thoughts have to run, unless they are so power¬
ful as to break all dams and dykes, and to dig for
themselves new beds.
For a long time people would not see that lan¬
guages can be classified; and as languages always
presuppose speakers of language, these speakers
also can be classified accordingly. It is quite true
that some of these Aryan speakers may in some
cases have Negro blood and Negro features, as when
a Negro becomes an English bishop. Conquered
tribes also may in time have learnt to speak the lan¬
guage of their conquerors, but this too is excep¬
tional, and if we call them Aryas, we do not commit
ourselves to any opinion as to their blood, their
bones, or their hair. These will never submit to
the same classification as their speech, and why
should they? Nor should it be forgotten that
wherever a mixture of language takes place, mixed
marriages also would most likely take place at the
same time. But whatever confusion may have
arisen in later times in language and in blood, no
language could have arisen without speakers, and
we mean by Aryas no more than speakers of Aryan
languages, whatever their skulls or their hair may
have been. An Octoroon, and even a Quadroon,
may have blonde waving hair, but if he speaks
English he would be classified as Aryan, if Berber
as a Negro. But who is injured by such a classifi-
Introductory
cation? Let blood and skulls and hair and jaws be
classified by all means, but let us speak no longer
of Aryan skulls or Semitic blood. We might as well
speak of a prognathic language.
While fully admitting, therefore, the influence
which family, nationality, race, and language exer¬
cise on us, it should be clearly perceived that habits
acquired by our parents are not heritable, that the
sons of drunkards need not be drunkards, as little
as the sons of sober people must be sober. But
though biographers may agree to this in general
they seem inclined to hold out very strongly for
what are called special talents in certain families,.
This subject is decidedly amusing, but it admits of
no scientific treatment, as far as I can see.
The grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn Bar-
tholdy for instance, though not a composer, was evi¬
dently a man of genius, a philosopher of consider¬
able intellectual capacity and moral strength. The
father of the composer was a rich banker at Berlin,
and he used to say: " When I was young I was the
son of the great Mendelssohn, now that I am old,
I am the father of the great Mendelssohn; then what
am I? " Even a poor man to become a rich banker
must be a kind of genius, and so far the son may
be said to have come of a good stock. But the great
musical talent that was developed in the third gen¬
eration both in Felix and his sisters, failed entirely
in his brother, who, to save his life, could never
have sung " God save the Queen." In the little
34 My Autobiography
theatrical performances of the whole family for
which Felix composed the music, and his sister
Fanny (Hensel) some of the songs, the unmusical
brother—was it not Paul?—had generally to be
provided with some such part as that of a night
watchman, and he managed to get through his song
with as much credit as the Nachtwachter in the
little town of Germany, where he sang or repeated,
as I well remember, in his cracked voice:
" H5rt, ihr Herren, und lasst eucli sagen,
Die Glock' hat zwolf geschlagen ;
Wahret das Feuer und auch das Licht,
Dass Keinem kein Schade geschickt."
" Listen, gents, and let me tell,
The clock struck twelve by its last knell;
Watch o'er the fire and o'er the light
That no one suffer any plight.''
I have known in my life many musicians and their
families, but I remember very few instances indeed,
where the son of a distinguished musician was a
great musician himself. If the children take to
music at all they may become very fair musicians,
but never anything extraordinary. The Bach fam¬
ily may be quoted against me, but music, before
Sebastian Bach, was almost like a profession, and
could be learned like any other handicraft.
FTor are the cases of painters being the sons of
great painters, or of poets being the sons of great
poets, more numerous. It seems almost as if the
Introductory
artistic talent was exhausted by one generation or
one individual, so that we often see the sons of
great men by no means great, and if they do any¬
thing in the same line as their fathers, we must re¬
member that there was much to induce them to
follow in their steps without admitting any atavistic
influences.
For the present, I can only repeat the conclusion
I arrived at after weighing all the arguments of
my friends and critics, namely, to continue my
Recollections much as I began them, to try to ex¬
plain what made me what I am, to describe, in fact,
my environment; though as my years advance, and
my labours and plans grow wider and wider, I shall,
no doubt, have to say a great deal more about my¬
self than in the volumes of Auld Lang Syne. In
fact, my Recollections will become more and more
of an autobiography, and the I and the Autos will
appear more frequently than I could have wished.
In an autobiography the painter is of course sup¬
posed to be the same as the sitter, but quite apart
from the metaphysical difficulties of such a sup¬
position, there is the physical difficulty when the
writer is an old man, and the model is a young boy.
Is the old man likely to be a fair judge of the young
man, whether it be himself or some one else? As
a rule, old men are very indulgent, while young
men are apt to be stern and strict in their judg¬
ments. The very fact that they often invent ex¬
cuses for themselves shows that they feel that they
36 My Autobiography
want excuses. The words of the Preacher, vii. 16:
" Be not righteous over much; neither make thy¬
self over wise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?
Be not over much wicked, neither be thou foolish:
why shouldest thou die before thy time ?" are evi¬
dently the words of an old man when judging of
himself or of others. A young man would have
spoken differently. He would have made no allow¬
ance; for anything like compassion for an erring
friend is as yet unknown to him. In an autobi¬
ography written by an old man there is therefore
a double danger, first the indulgence of the old man,
and secondly the kindly feeling of the writer tow¬
ards the object of his remarks.
All these difficulties stand before me like a moun¬
tain wall. And it seems better to confess at once
that an old man writing his own life can never be
quite just, however honest he tries to be. He may
be too indulgent, but he may also be too strict and
stern. To say, for instance, of a man that he has
not kept his promise, would be a very serious charge
if brought against anybody else. Yet my oldest
friend in the world knows how many times he has
made a promise to himself, and has not only not
kept it but has actually found excuses why he did
not keep it. The more sensitive our conscience be¬
comes, the more blameworthy many an act of our
life seems to be, and what to an ordinary conscience
is no fault at all, becomes almost a sin under a
fiercer light.
Introductory 37
This changes the moral atmosphere of youth
when painted by an old man, but the physical
atmosphere also assumes necessarily a different hue.
Whether we like it or not, distance will always lend
enchantment to the view. If the azure hue is in¬
separable from distant mountains and from the dis¬
tant sky, we need not wonder that it veils the dis¬
tant paradise of youth. A man who keeps a diary
from his earliest years, and vdio as an old man simply
copies from its yellow pages, may give us a very
accurate black and white image of what he saw as
a boy, but as in old faded photographs, the life and
light are gone out of them, while unassisted mem¬
ory may often preserve tints of their former reality.
There is life and light in such recollections, but
I am willing to admit that memory can be very
treacherous also. Thus in my own case I can vouch
that whatever I relate is carefully and accurately
transcribed from the tablets of my memory, as I
see them now, but though I can claim truthfulness
to myself and to my memory, I cannot pretend to
photographic accuracy. I feel indeed for the his¬
torian who uses such materials unless he has learnt
to make allowance for the dim sight of even the most
truthful narrators.
I doubt whether any historian would accept a
statement made thirty years after the event without
independent confirmation. I could not give the
date of the battle of Sadowa, though I well remem¬
ber reading the full account of it in the Times
38 My Autobiography
from day to day. I can of course get at the date
from historical books, and from that kind of arti¬
ficial memory which arises by itself without any
memoria technica. There is a favourite German
game of cards called Sixty-six, and it was reported
that when the French in 1870 shouted A Berlin,
the then Crown-Prince who had won the battle of
Sadowa, or Koniggratz, said: " Ah, they want an¬
other game of Sixty-six! " that is they want a bat¬
tle like that of Sadowa. In this way I shall always
remember the date of that decisive battle. But I
could not give the date of the Crimean battles nor
a trustworthy account of the successive stages of
that war. I doubt whether even my old friend, Sir
William II. Russell, could do that now without re¬
ferring to his letters in the Times. After thirty
years no one, I believe, could take an oath to the ac¬
curacy of any statement of what he saw or heard
so many years ago.
All then that I can vouch for is that I read my
memory as I should the leaves of an old MS. from
which many letters, nay, whole words and lines have
vanished, and where I am often driven to decipher
and to guess, as in a palimpsest, what the original
uncial writing may have been. I am the first to
confess that there may be flaws in my memory,
there may be before my eyes that magic azure which
surrounds the distant past; but I can promise that
there shall be no invention, no DicJitung instead of
Wahrheit, but always, as far as in me lies, truth.
Introductory 39
I know quite well that even a certain dislocation of
facts is not always to he avoided in an old memory.
I know it from sad experience. As the spires of
a city—of Oxford for instance—arrange themselves
differently as we pass the old place on the railway,
so that now one and now the other stands in the
centre and seems to rise above the heads of the rest,
so it is with our friends and acquaintances. Some
who seemed giants at one time assume smaller pro¬
portions as others come into view towering above
them. The whole scenery changes from year to
year. "Who does not remember the trees in our
garden that seemed like giants in our childhood, but
when we see them again in our old age, they have
shrunk, and not from old age only ?
And must I make one more confession? It is
well known that George the Fourth described the
battle of Waterloo so often that at last he persuaded
himself that he had been present, in fact that he
had won that battle. I also remember Dr. Eouth,
the venerable president of Magdalen College, who
died in his hundredth year, and who had so often
repeated all the circumstances of the execution of
Charles I, that when Macaulay expressed a wish to
see him, he declined " because that young man has
given quite a wrong account of the last moments of
the king," which he then proceeded to relate, as if
he had been an eye-witness throughout.
Are we not liable to the same hallucination,
though, let us hope, in a more mitigated form?
40 My Autobiography
Have we never told a story as if it were our own,
not from any wish to deceive, hut simply because it
seemed shorter and easier to do so than to explain
step by step how it reached us? And after doing
that once or twice, is there not great danger of our
being surprised at somebody else claiming the story
as his own, or actually maintaining that it was he
who told it to us?
Hot very long ago I remember reading in a jour¬
nal a story of the Duke of Wellington. His servant
had been sent before to order dinner for him at an
out-of-the-way hotel, and in order to impress the
landlord with the dignity of his coming guest, he
had recited a number of the Duke's titles, which
were very numerous. The landlord, thinking that
the Duke of Yittoria, the Prince of Waterloo, the
Marquis of Torres Yedras, and all the rest, were
friends invited to dine with the Duke of Welling¬
ton, ordered accordingly a very sumptuous banquet
to the great dismay of the real Duke. This may
or may not be a very old and a very true story;
all I know is that much the same thing was told at
Oxford of Dr. Bull, who was Canon of Christ
Church, Canon of Exeter, Prebendary of York,
Yicar of Staverton, and lastly, the Kev. Dr. Bull
himself. Dinner was provided for each of these
persons, and we are told that the reverend pluralist
had to eat all the dishes on the table and pay for
them. This also may have been no more than one
of the many " Common-roomers " which abounded
Introductory 41
in Oxford when Common Rooms were more fre¬
quented than they are now. But what I happen to
know as a fact is that Dean Stanley received no less
than four invitations to a ball at Blenheim, ad¬
dressed A. P. Stanley, Esq., the Rev. A. P. Stanley,
Canon Stanley, Professor Stanley, all evidently
copied from some books of reference.
I may perhaps claim one advantage in trying to
describe what happened to myself in my passage
through life. From the earliest days that I can
recollect, I felt myself as a twofold being—as a
subject and an object, as a spectator and as an actor.
I suppose we all talk to ourselves, and say to our
better and worse selves, O thou fool! or, Well done,
my boy! Well this inward conversation began with
me at a very early time, and left the impression
that I was the coachman, but at the same time the
horse too which he drove and sometimes whipped
very cruelly. And this phase of thought, or rather
this state of feeling, seems soon to have led me on
to another view which likewise dates from a very
early time, though it afterwards vanished. As a
little boy, when I could not have the same toys
which other boys possessed, I could fully enjoy what
they enjoyed, as if they had been my own. There
is a German phrase, " Ich freue mich in deiner
Seele," which exactly expressed what I often felt.
It was not the result of teaching, still less of reason¬
ing—it was a sentiment given me and which cer¬
tainty did not leave me till much later in life, when
42 My Autobiography
competition, rivalry, jealousy, and envy seemed to
accentuate my own I as against all other I's or
Thou's. I suppose we all remember how the sight
of a wound of a fellow creature, nay even of a dog,
gives us a sharp twitch in the same part of our own
body. That bodily sympathy has never left me, I
suffer from it even now as I did seventy years ago.
And is there anybody who has not felt his eyes mois¬
ten at the sudden happiness of his friends? All this
seems to me to account, to a certain extent at least,
for that feeling of identity with so-called strangers,
which came to me from my earliest days, and has
returned again with renewed strength in my old age.
The " know thyself," ascribed to Chilon and other
sages of ancient Greece, gains a deeper meaning
with every year, till at last the I which we looked
upon as the most certain and undoubted fact, van¬
ishes from our grasp to become the Self, free from
the various accidents and limitations which make
up the I, and therefore one with the Self that un¬
derlies all individual and therefore vanishing I's.
"What that common Self may be is a question to be
reserved for later times, though I may say at once
that the only true answer given to it seems to me
that of the Upanishads and the Vedanta philosophy.
Only we must take care not to mistake the moral
Self, that finds fault with the active Self, for the
Highest Self that knows no longer of good or evil
deeds.
Long before I had worked and thought out this
Introductory 43
problem as the fundamental truth of all philosophy,
it presented itself to me as if by intuition, long be¬
fore I could have fathomed it in its metaphysical
meaning. I had just heard of the death of a dear
little child, and was standing in our garden, looking
at a rose-bush, covered in summer with hundreds
of rose-buds and rose-flowers. While I was looking
I broke off one small withered bud from the midst
of a large cluster of roses, and after I had done so
a question came to me, and I said to myself, What
has happened ? Is it only that one small bud is dead
and gone, or have not all the other roses been
touched by the breath of death that fell on it?
Have they not all suffered from the death of their
sister, for they all spring from the same stem, they
all have their life from the same source? And if
one rose suffers, must not all the others suffer with
it? Then all the buds and flowers of the cluster
seemed to me to become one, as it were a family
of roses, and each single bud seemed but the repe¬
tition of the same thing, the manifestation of the
same thought, namely the thought of the rose. But
my eyes were carried still further, and the stem
from which the bunch of roses sprang was lost with
other stems in a branch, and it was that branch on
which all the roses of the branchlets and stems de¬
pended, and without which they could not flower
or exist. The single roses thus became identified
with the branch from which they had sprung, and
by which they lived. I wondered more and more,
44 My Autobiography
and after another look all the branches with all their
branchlets became absorbed in the stem, and the
stem was the tree, and the tree sprang from a seed,
or as it is now called, the protoplasm; but beyond
that seed there was nothing else that the eye could
see or the mind could grasp. And while this vision
floated before my eyes I thought of my little friend,
and the home from which she had been broken off,
and the same vision which had changed the rose¬
bush with all its flowers, and buds, and branchlets,
and branches, into a stem and a tree, and at last into
one invisible germ and seed, seemed now to change
my little friend and her brothers and sisters, her
parents too and all her family, into one being which,
like an old oak tree, started from an invisible stem,
or an invisible seed, or from an invisible thought,
and that divine thought was man, as the other di¬
vine thought had been rose.
Perhaps I did not see it so fully then as I see it
now, and I certainly did not reason about it. I
simply felt that in the death of my little friend,
something of myself had gone, though she was
no relation, but only a stray human friend. "We see
many things as children which we cannot see as
grown-up men and women, for, as Longfellow said,
" the thoughts of youth are long long thoughts."
Hay, I feel convinced that He who spoke the par¬
able of the vine had seen the same vision when He
said: " I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide
in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear
Introductory 45
fruit of itself except it abide in the vine, no more
can ye, except ye abide in Me." And it is on this
vision, or this parable of tbe vine, that immediately
afterwards follows the lesson, " Love one another,
as I have loved you." In loving one another we
are in truth loving the others as ourselves, as one
with ourselves; and while we are loving Him who
is the vine, we are loving the branches, ourselves
—aye, even our own little selves.
Such vague visions or intuitions often remain
with us for life, but while they seem to be the same,
they vary as we vary ourselves. We imagine we
saw their deepest meaning from the first, but, like
a parable, they gain in meaning every time they
come back to us.
CHAPTER II
childhood at dessau
In a small town such as Dessau was when I lived
there as a child and as a hoy, one lived as in an
enchanted island. The horizon was very narrow,
and nothing happened to disturb the peace of the
little oasis. The Duchy was indeed a little oasis
in the large desert of Central Germany. The land¬
scape was beautiful: there were rivers small and
large—the Mulde and the Elbe; there were magnifi¬
cent oak forests; there were regiments of firs stand¬
ing in regular columns like so many grenadiers;
there were parks such as one sees in England only.
The town, the capital of the Duchy of Anhalt-Des-
sau, had been cared for by successive rulers—men
mostly far in advance of their time—who had read
and travelled, and brought home the best they could
find abroad. Their old castle, centuries old, over¬
awed the town; it was by far the largest building,
though there were several other smaller places in
the town for members of the ducal family. All the
public buildings, theatres, libraries, schools, and bar¬
racks, had been erected by the Dukes, as well as sev¬
eral private residences intended for some of the high¬
er officials. The whole town was, in fact, the creation
46
MY FATHER
Childhood at Dessau 47
of the Dukes; the whole ground on which it stood
had been originally their property, but it was most¬
ly held as freehold by those who had built their
own private houses on it. bio one would have built
a house on leasehold land, and several of the houses
were of so substantial a character that one saw they
had been intended to last for more than ninety-nine
years. The same family often remained in their
house for generations, and the different stories
were occupied by three generations at the same
time—by grandparents, parents, and children. In
this small town I was born on December 6, 1823.
My father, Wilhelm Miiller, was Librarian of the
Ducal Library, and one of the most popular poets in
Germany. A national monument was erected to
his memory at Dessau in the year 1891, nearly a
hundred years after his birth.
"What a blessing it would be if such a rule were
followed with all great men, who seem so great at
the time of their death, and who, a hundred years
later, are almost forgotten, or at all events appre¬
ciated by a small number of admirers only. This
Monument- and Society-mania is indeed becoming
very objectionable, for if for some time there has
been no room for tombs and statues in Westminster
Abbey, there will soon be no room for them in the
streets of London. The result is that many of the
people who walk along the Thames Embankment,
particularly foreigners, often ask, "Cur?" when
looking at the human idols in bronze and marble
48 My Autobiography
put up there; while historians, remembering the
really great men of England, would ask quite as
often, " Cur non? " There is a curious race of peo¬
ple, who, as soon as a man of any note dies, are
ready to found anything for him—a monument, a
picture, a school, a prize, a society—to keep alive
his memory. Of course these societies want presi¬
dents, members of council, committees, secretaries,
&c., and at last, subscriptions also. Thus it has
happened that the name of founder (Grilnder) has
assumed, particularly in Germany, a perfume by no
means sweet. Those who are asked to subscribe to
such testimonials know how disagreeable it is to
decline to give at least their name, deeply as they
feel that in giving it they are offending against all
the rules of historical perspective. I should not
say that my father was one of the great poets of
Germany, though Heine, no mean critic, declared
that he placed his lyric poetry next to that of
Goethe. Besides, he was barely thirty-three when
he died. He had been a favourite pupil of F. A.
Wolf, and had proved his classical scholarship by
his Homerische Vorschule, and other publications.
His poems became popular in the true sense of the
word, and there are some which the people in the
street sing even now without being aware of the
name of their author. Schubert's compositions also
have contributed much to the wide popularity of his
Schone Mullerin and his Winterreise, so that
though it might truly be said of him that he wanted
Childhood at Dessau 49
no monument in bronze or stone, it seemed but
natural that a small town like Dessau should wish
to honour itself by honouring the memory of one
of its sons. In the company of Mendelssohn, the
philosopher, and of F. Schneider, the composer, a
monument of my father in the principal street of
his native town, and before the school in which he
had been a pupil and a teacher, could hardly seem
out of place. That the Greek Parliament voted the
Pentelican marble for the poet of the Griechen-
lieder, as it had done for Lord Byron, was another
inducement for his fellow citizens to do honour to
their honoured poet. Lie died when I was hardly
four years old, so that my recollection of him is
very faint and vague, made up, I believe, to a great
extent, of pictures, and things that my mother told
me. I seem to remember him as a bright, sunny,
and thoroughly joyful man, delighted with our lit¬
tle naughtinesses. One book I still possess which
he bought for me and which was to be the first book
of my library. It was a small volume 'of Horace,
printed by Pickering in 1820. It has now almost
vanished among the 12,000 big volumes that form
my library, but I am delighted that I am still able,
at seventy-six, to read it without spectacles. I
think I remember my father taking my sister and
me on his knees, and telling us the most delightful
stories, that set us wondering and laughing- and
crying till we could laugh and cry no longer. He
had been a fellow worker with the brothers' Grimm,
50 My Autobiography
and the stories he told were mostly from their col¬
lection, though he knew how to embellish them
with anything that could make a child cry and
laugh.
People have little idea how great and how lasting
an influence such popular stories about kings and
queens, and princesses and knights, about ogres and
witches, about men that have been changed into
animals, and about animals that talk and behave
like human beings, exercise on the imagination of
young children. While we listened, a new world
seemed to open before us, and anything like doubt
as to the reality of these beings never existed.
What was reality or unreality to young children
of four and five? How few people know what real
reality is, even after they have reached the age of
fifty or sixty. For children, such names as reality
and unreality do not exist, nor the ideas which they
express. They listen to what their father tells them,
and they cannot see any difference between what
he tells them of Frederick Barbarossa, of Romulus
and Remus suckled by a wolf, or of the dwarfs that
guarded the coffin of Schneewittchen.
Some people, however, have thought that from
an educational point of view, a belief in this im¬
aginary world must be mischievous. I doubt it,
and it would be easy to show that originally these
stories and fables were really meant to inculcate
right and good principles. Luther declared that he
would not lose these wonderful stories of his tender
Childhood at Dessau 51
childhood for any sum of money, and Camerarius
(Fabulae Aesopeae, p. 406, Lipsiae, 1570) speaks of
these German fables as filling the minds of the peo¬
ple, and particularly of children, with terror, hope,
and religion. The oldest collections in which some
of these Aesopean fables occur, the Pantschatantra
and Hitopadesa in Sanskrit, were distinctly intended
for the education of princes, and though they may
make the young listeners inclined to be supersti¬
tious, such superstitiousness is not likely to last long.
Children delight in Marchen as in a kind of panto¬
mime, and when the curtain has fallen on that fairy
world they often think of it as of a beautiful dream
that has passed away. The stories are certainly
more impressive than the proverbs and wise saws
which many of them were meant to illustrate, with¬
out always saying, haec fabula docet. Even if some
of these stories touch sometimes on what may not
seem to us quite correct, it is done to make children
laugh rather at the silliness than cry at the downright
wickedness of some of the heroes. It is by no means
uncommon, for instance, that a good-for-nothing
fellow succeeds, while his virtuous companions fail.
But there is either a reason for it, or the injustice
provokes the indignation of children, long before
they have learnt that in real life also virtue does not
always receive its reward, while falsehood often
prospers, at least for a time. There is no harm, I
think, in a certain dreaminess in children. I re¬
member that I have often laughed with all my heart
52 My Autobiography
at Rumpelstilzchen, and shed bitter tears at Briider-
chen and Schwesterclien. I seemed to see brother
and sister driven into the wood, the brother being
changed into a deer, and the sister sleeping with her
head on his warm fur, till at last the deer was killed
by a huntsman, and the little sister had to travel on
quite alone fn the forest. Of course in the end she
became a princess, and the brother a prince who
married a queen, and all ended in great joy and
jubilation in which we all joined. How good for
children that they should for a time at least have
lived in such a dreamland, in which truthfulness
was as a rule rewarded, and falsehood punished in
the end.
It was like a recollection of a Paradise, and such
a recollection, even if it brought out the contrast be¬
tween the dream-world and the real world, would
often set children musing on what ought and what
ought not to be. They did not long believe in
Dornroschen and Schneewittchen, they learnt but
too soon that Dornroschen and Schneewittchen
belonged to another world. They may even have
come to learn that Dornroschen (thorn-rose) and
Schneewittchen (snow-white) were meant originally
for the sleep or death of nature in her snow-white
shroud, and the return of the sun; but woe to the
boy who on first learning these stories should have
declared that they were mere bosh, or, as Sir Walter
Scott says, the detritus of nature-myths.
My father's father, whom I never knew, seems
Childhood at Dessau
53
not to have been distinguished in any way. He
was, however, a useful tradesman and a respected
citizen of Dessau, and, as I see, the founder of the
first lending library in that small town. He married
a second time, a rich widow, chiefly, as I was told,
to enable him to give his son, my father, a liberal
education. She grew to be very old, and I well re¬
member her, to me, forbidding and terrifying ap¬
pearance. She quite belonged to a past generation,
and when I saw her again after having been in
England, she asked me whether I had seen Napo¬
leon who had been taken prisoner and sent to Eng¬
land, but had lately escaped and resumed his throne
in Paris. She evidently mixed up the two Napo¬
leons, and I did not contradict her. To me her con¬
versation was interesting as showing how little the
traditions of the people can be relied on, and how
easily, by the side of real history, a popular history
could grow up. After all, the poems of Charle¬
magne besieging Jerusalem owed their origin very
likely to some similar confusion in the minds of old
women. My sister and I were always terrified when
we were sent to visit her, for with her dishevelled
grey hair, her thin white face, and her piercing
eyes, she was to us the old grandmother, or the
witch of Grimm's stories; and the language she
used was such that, if we repeated it at home, we
were severely reprimanded. She knew very little
about my father, but her memory about her first
husband and about her own youth and childhood
5*4 My Autobiography
was very clear, though not always edifying. Her
stories about ghosts, witches, ogres, nickers, and the
whole of that race were certainly enough to frighten
a child, and some of them clung to me for a very
long time. On my mother's side my relations were
more civilized, and they had but little social inter¬
course with my grandmother and her relatives. My
mother's father was von Basedow, the President,
that is Prime Minister of the Duchy of Anhalt-
Dessau, a position in which he was succeeded by his
eldest son, my uncle. He was the first man in the
town; the Duke and he really ruled the Duchy ex¬
actly as they pleased. There was no check on them
of any kind, and yet no one, as far as I know, ever
complained of any tyranny. My grandfather's
father again was the famous reformer of public edu¬
cation in Germany. He (1723-1790) had to brave
the conservative and clerical parties throughout the
country. His home at Hamburg was burnt in a
riot, and it was then that he migrated to Dessau, to
become the founder of the Philanthropinum, and
at the same time the path-breaker for men such as
Pestalozzi (1746-1827) and Proebel (1782-1852).
Considering his lifelong struggles, he deserved a
better monument at Dessau than he has found there.
Ho doubt he was a passionate and violent man, and
his outbreaks are still remembered at Dessau, while
his beneficial activity has almost been forgotten. I
was often told that I took after my mother's family,
whatever that may mean, and this was certainly the
Childhood at Dessau
55
case in outward appearance, though I hope not in
temper. My great grandfather, the Pedagogue as
he was called, was a friend of Goethe's, and is men¬
tioned in his poems.
My childhood at home was often very sad. My
mother, who was left a widow at twenty-eight with
two children, my sister and myself, was heart¬
broken. The few years of her married life had been
most bright and brilliant. My father was a rising
poet, and such was his popularity that he was able
to indulge his tastes as he liked, whether in travelling
or in making his house a pleasant centre of social
life. Contemporaries and friends of my father, par¬
ticularly Baron Simolin, a very intimate friend,
who spent the Christmas of 1825 in our house, have
written of the bright gaiety, the whole-hearted en¬
joyment of life that reigned there, and have told
how, though his income was to say the least of it
small, Wilhelm Miiller's home was the rallying-
point for all the cultivated, scientific, and artistic
society of Dessau, who felt attracted by the simple
and unaffected yet truly genial disposition of the
master of the house.
It would be interesting to know how much an
author could make at that time by his pen. Pub¬
lishers seem to have been far more liberal then than
they are now. The circumstances were different.
The number of writers was of course much smaller,
and the sale of really popular books probably much
larger. Anyhow, my father, whose salary was mi-
56 My Autobiography
nute, seems to have been able to enjoy the few years
of his married life in great comfort. The thought
of saving money, however, seems never to have en¬
tered his poetical mind, and after his unexpected
death, due to paralysis of the heart, it was found
that hardly any provision had been made for his
family. Even the life insurance, which is obliga¬
tory on every civil servant, and the pension granted
by the Duke, gave my mother but a very small in¬
come, fabulously small, when one considers that she
had to bring up two children on it. It has been a
riddle to me ever since how she was able to do it.
However, it was done, and could only have been
done in a small town like Dessau, where education
was as good as it was cheap, and where v-ery little
was expected by society. We must also take into
account the very low prices which then ruled at
Dessau with regard to almost all the necessaries of
life. I see from the old newspapers that beef sold
at about threepence a pound (two groschen), mutton
at about twopence. Wine was sold at seven to eight
groschen a bottle, a better sort for twelve to fourteen
groschen—a groschen being about a penny. People
drank mostly beer, and this was sold under Govern¬
ment inspection at two to three groschen per quart.
Fish was equally cheap, and such, at the beginning
of the century, was the abundance of salmon caught
in the Elbe, and even in the Mulde at Dessau, that
it was stipulated as in Scotland, that servants should
not have salmon more than twice or thrice in the
Childhood at Dessau
57
week. The lowest price for salmon was then two¬
pence halfpenny a pound. As a boy I can remem¬
ber seeing the salmon in large numbers leap over
a weir in the very town of Dessau, and though they
had travelled for so many miles inland, the fish was
very good, though not so good as Severn salmon.
Game also was very cheap, and sold for not much
more than mutton, nay, at certain times it was given
away; it could not be exported. Corn was sold at
three shillings per Scheffel, and by corn was chiefly
meant rye. USTo one took wheaten bread, and the
bread was therefore called brown bread and black
bread. White bread was only taken with coffee,
and peasants in the villages would not have touched
it, because it was not supposed to make such strong
bones as rye-bread. With such prices we can un¬
derstand that a salary of £300 was considered suffi¬
cient for the highest officers of state.
My mother's relations, who were all high in the
public service, my grandfather, as I said, being the
Duke's chief minister, made life more easy and
pleasant for us; but for many years my mother
never went into society, and our society consisted
of members of our own family only. All I remem¬
ber of my mother at that time was that she took her
two children day after day to the beautiful Gottes-
acker (God's Acre), where she stood for hours at
our father's grave, and sobbed and cried. It was a
beautiful and restful place, covered with old acacia
trees. The inscription over the gateway was one of
My Autobiography
my earliest puzzles. Tod ist nicht Tod> ist nur
F er editing mensclilicher Natur (Death is not
death, 'tis hut the ennobling of man's-nature). On
each side there stood a figure, representing the
genius of sleep and the genius of death. All this
was the work, of the old Duke, Leopold Friedrich
Franz, who> tried to educate his people as he had edu¬
cated himself, partly by travel, partly by intercourse
with the best men he could attract to Dessau.
At home the atmosphere was certainly depressing
to a boy. I heard and thought more about death
than about life, though I knew little of course of
what life or death meant. I had but few pleasures,
and my chief happiness was to be with my mother.
I shared her grief without understanding much
about it. She was passionately devoted to her
children, and I was passionately fond of her. What
there was left of life to her, she gave to us, she lived
for us only, and tried very hard not to deprive our
childhood of all brightness. She was certainly most
beautiful, and quite different from all other ladies
at Dessau, not only in the eyes of her son, but as
it seemed to me, of everybody. Then she had a
most perfect voice, and when I first began music
she helped and encouraged me in every possible way.
We played a quatre mains, and soon she made me
accompany her when she sang. As far as I can
recollect, I was never so happy as when I could
be with her. She read so much to us that I was
quite satisfied, and saw perhaps less of my young
MY MOTHER
Childhood at Dessau
59
friends than I ought. When my mother said she
wished to die, and to he with our father, I feel
sure that my sister and I were only anxious that she
should take us with her, for there were few golden
chains that hound us as yet to this life. I see her
now, sitting on a winter's evening near the warm
stove, a candle on the table, and a book from which
she read to us in her hands, while the spinning-wheel
worked by the servant-maid in the corner went on
humming all the time. She read Paul Gerhard's
translation of St. Bernard's:
" Salve caput cruentatum,
Totuni spinis coronatum,
Conquassatum, vulneratum,
Arundine verberatum,
Facies sputis illita."
" O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
Yoll Schmerz und voller Hohn 1
O Haupt zu Spott gebunden
Mit einer Dornenkron,
O Haupt sonst schon gezieret
Mit hoclister Ehr und Zier,
Jetzt aber hoch schimpfiret:
Gegrtisset seist du mir !''
Though the German translation does not come
near the powerful majesty of the original, yet such
was the effect produced on me that I saw the bleed¬
ing head before my eyes, and cried and cried until
my mother had to comfort me by assuring me that
the sufferer was now in Heaven and that it
6o My Autobiography
was only a song to be sung in church. How
deeply such scenes seem engraved on the memory;
how vividly they return when the rubbish of many
years is swept away and all is again as it was then,
and the caput cruentatum looks down on us once
more, as it did then, with the human eyes full of
divine love, so truly human that one could say with
St. Bernard, " Tuum caput hue inclina, in meis
pausa brachiis." But willingly as I listened to these
readings at home, and full as my heart was of love to
Christ, I suffered intensely when I was taken to
church as a young boy. It was a very large church,
and in winter bitterly cold. Even though I liked
the singing, the long sermon was real torture to me.
I could not understand a word of it, and being thinly
clad my teeth would have chattered if I had not
been told that it was wrong " to make a noise in
church." Oh! what misery is inflicted on child¬
hood by this enforced attendance at church. When
a church can be warmed the suffering is less intense,
but a huge whitewashed church that feels like an
ice-cellar is about the worst torture that human
ingenuity could have invented to make children
hate the very name of church. These early impres¬
sions often remain for life, and the worst of it is
that the idea remains in the minds of children, and
of grown-up people too, that by going to church
and repeating the same prayers over and over again,
and listening to long and often dreary sermons, they
are actually doing a service to God (Gottesdienst).
Childhood at Dessau
61
Why does 110 new prophet arise and say in the name
of God, as David did in the name of Jehovah,
" Sermons and long prayers ' thou didst not de-
sire'"?
Many years later I had to discuss the same ques¬
tion with Keshub Cliunder Sen, the Indian Re¬
former. He wanted to know what kind of service
should be adopted by his new church, the Brahmo
Somaj; his friends thought of sermons, singing, and
processions with flags and flowers through the streets.
" Ho," I said to him, " service of God should be
service of men; if you want divine service, let it
be a real service, such as God would approve of.
Let other people go to church, to their mosques or
their temples, but take you your own friends on
certain days of the week to whatever you like to
call your meeting-place, and after a short prayer
or a few words of advice send some of them to the
poorest streets in the city, others to the prisons,
others to the hospitals. Let them pray with all who
wish to pray, but let them speak words of true love
and comfort also, and when they can, let them help
them with their alms. That would be a real Divine
Service and a divine Sunday for you, and you
would all come home, it may be sadder, but certain¬
ly wiser and better men."
I am afraid he did not agree with me. ILe did
not think that true religion was to visit the poor and
the afflicted. That might do for a practical people
like the English, but the Hindu wanted something
62 My Autobiography
else, he wanted some outward show and ceremony
for the people, and at the same time some silent
communion with God. Who can tell what differ¬
ent people understand by religion? and who can
prescribe the spiritual food that is best for them?
" Only," I said, " do not call it practical to encour¬
age millions of people to waste hours and hours in
mere repetition, and to spend millions and millions
in supplying this cold comfort, when next door to
the magnificent cathedral there are squalid streets,
and squalid houses, and squalid beds to lie and
die on."
The religious and devotional element is very
strong in Germany, but the churches are mostly
empty. A German keeps his religion for week¬
days rather than for Sunday. When the German
regiments marched, and when tliey made ready for
battle, they did not sing ribald songs, they sang the
songs of Luther and Paul Gerhard, which they
knew by heart and which strengthened them to
face death as it ought to be faced.
Fortunately, while enforced attendance at church
was apt to produce the strongest aversion in the
young heart against anything that was called re¬
ligion, religious instruction both at home and at
school too was excellent, and undid much of the mis¬
chief that had been done during cold winter days.
True religious sentiments can be planted in the soul
at home only, by a mother better even than by a
father. The sense of a divine presence everywhere,
Childhood at Dessau 63
7ravra TrXtjpr] Oewv, once planted in the heart
of a child remains for life. Of course the child
soon begins to argue, and says to his mother that
God cannot be at the same time in two rooms. But
only let a mother show to the child the rays of the
sun in the sky, in the streets, and in every corner of
the house, and it will begin to understand that noth¬
ing can be hid from the eyes of Him who is greater
than the sun. And when a child doubts whether
the voice of conscience can be the voice of God, and
asks how he could hear that voice without seeing
the speaker, ask him only whose voice it can be that
tells him not to do what he himself wishes to do,
and not to say what he could say without any fear
of men; and his idea of God will be raised from that
of a visible being like the sun, to the concept of a
presence that never vanishes, that is not only with¬
out, in the sky, in the mountains, and in the storm,
but nearer also within, in the sense of fear, in the
sense of shame, and in the hope of pardon and love.
At school our religious teaching was chiefly his¬
torical and moral. There was no difficulty in find¬
ing proper teachers for that, and there were no
attempts on the part of parents to interfere with
religious instruction or to demand separate teaching
for each sect. It is true that religious sects are not
so numerous in Germany as they are in England.
Some, though by no means all, children of Roman
Catholic and Jewish parents were allowed to be ab¬
sent from religious lessons. But most parents knew
64 My Autobiography
that the history of the Jewish religion would be
taught at school in so impartial and truly historical
a spirit as never to offend Jewish children. Respect
for historical truth, and an implanted sense of the
reverence due to children, would keep any teacher
from making the history of the Christian Church,
whether before or after the Reformation, an excuse
for offending one of the little ones committed
to his care. If Jews or Roman Catholics wished
for any special religious instruction it was given
by their own priests or Rabbis, and was given with¬
out any interference on the part of the Government.
But such was at my time the state of public
feeling that I hardly knew at school who among my
young friends were Roman Catholics, or Luther¬
ans, or Reformed. I must admit, however, that the
very name of Luther might have offended Roman
Catholics. He was represented to us as a perfect
saint, almost as inspired and infallible. His hymns
sung in church seemed to us little different from the
Psalms of David, and I well remember what a shock
it gave me when at Oxford, much later in life, I
heard Luther spoken of like any other mortal, nay,
as a heretic, and a most dangerous heretic too.
When I was a boy I remember that in some places
the same building had to be used for Protestant
and Roman Catholic services. All that, I am
afraid, is now changed, and the old liberal and toler¬
ant feeling then prevailing on all sides is now often
stigmatized as indifference, and by other ugly
Childhood at Dessau 65
names. It should really be called the golden age
of Christianity, and this so-called indifference
should be classed among the highest Christian virt¬
ues, and as the fullest realization of the spirit of
Christ.
Thus we grew up from our earliest youth, being
taught to look upon Christianity as an historical
fact, on Christ and His disciples as historical char¬
acters, on the Old and Hew Testaments as real his¬
torical books. Though we did not understand as
yet the deeper meaning of Christ and of His words,
we had at least nothing to unlearn in later times, or
to feel that our parents had ever told us what they
themselves could not have held to be true. Our
simple faith was not shaken by mere questions of
criticism, or by the problem how any human being
could take upon himself to declare any book to be
revealed, unless he claimed for himself a more than
human insight. The simplest rules of logic should
make such a declaration impossible, whatever the
sacred book may be to which it is applied. Granted
that the Pope was infallible, how could the Cardi¬
nals know that he was, unless they claimed for them¬
selves the same or even greater infallibility? It is
far more easy to be inspired than to know some one
else is or was inspired; the true inspiration is, and
always has been, the spirit of truth within, and this
is but another name for the spirit of God. It is truth
that makes inspiration, not inspiration that makes
truth. "Whoever knows what truth is, knows also
66 My Autobiography
what inspiration is: not only theopneustos, blown
into the soul by God, but the very voice of God,
the real presence of God, the only presence in which
we, as human beings, can ever perceive Him.
How often have I in later life tried to explain
this to my friends in France and in England who
endured mental agonies before they could arrive
at the simple conclusion that revelation can never
be objective, but must always be subjective. I may
return to this question at a later period of my life,
when I had to discuss with Itenan, at Paris, with
Froude, Kingsley, and Liddon, in England, and
tried to show how entirely self-made some of their
difficulties were. At present I have only to explain
how it was that I had never to extricate myself from
a net in which so many honest thinkers find them¬
selves entangled without any fault of their own;
as Samson, when he awoke, found himself bound
with seven green withs and had to break them with
all his might before he could hope to escape from
the Philistines. The Philistines never bound me.
During my early schooldays these difficulties did
not exist, but I have often been grateful in after life
that the seven locks of my head have never been
woven with the web.
I remember a number of small events in my
school-life at Dessau, but though they were full of
interest to me, nay, full of meaning, and not without
an influence on my later life, they would have no
meaning and no interest for others, and may remain
Childhood at Dessau 67
as if they had never been. The influence which
music exercised on my mind, and, I believe, on my
heart also, I have related in my Musical Recollec¬
tions. The image of those passing years, though its
general tone was melancholy, chiefly owing to my
mother's melancholy, seemed to me at the time
free from all unhappiness. My work at school and
at home was not too heavy; I was fond of it, and
very fond of books. Books were scarce then, and
whoever possessed a new and valuable book was ex¬
pected to lend it to his friends in the little town.
If a man was known to possess, say, Goethe's works
or Jean Paul's works, the consequence was that one
went to him or to her to ask for the loan of them.
And not only books, but paper and pens also were
scarce. The first steel pens came in when I was
still in the lower school, and bad as they were they
were looked upon as real treasures by the school¬
boys who possessed them. Paper was so dear that
one had to be very sparing in its use. Every mar¬
gin and cover was scribbled over before it was
thrown away, and I felt often so hampered by the
scarcity of paper that I gladly accepted a set of
copybooks instead of any other present that I
might have asked for on my birthday or at
Christmas. I am sorry to say I have had to suffer
all my life from the inefficiency of our writing
master, or maybe from the fact that my thoughts
were too quick for my pen. In other subjects I did
well, but though I was among the first in each class,
68 My Autobiography
I was by no means cleverer than other boys. In
the lower school work was more like conversation
or like hearing news from our teachers. The idea
of effort did not yet exist. The drudgery began,
however, when I entered the upper school, the
gymnasium, and learnt the elements of Latin and
Greek. Though our teachers were very conscien¬
tious, they tried to make our work no burden to us,
and the constant change of places in each class kept
up a lively rivalry among the boys, though I am
not sure that it did not make me rather ambitious
and at times conceited. Still, I had few enemies,
and it seemed of much more consequence who could
knock down another boy than who could gain a
place above him. I feel sure I could have done a
great deal more at school than I did, but it was
partly my music and partly my incessant headaches
that interfered with my school work.
I remember as a boy that certain streets were in¬
habited exclusively by Jewish families. A large
number of Jews had been received at Dessau by
a former Duke; but though he granted them leave
to settle at Dessau when they were persecuted in
other parts of Germany, he stipulated that they
should only settle in certain streets. These streets
were by no means the worst streets of the town;
on the contrary they showed greater comfort and
hardly any of the squalor which disgraced the Jew¬
ish quarters in other towns in Germany. As chil¬
dren we were brought up without any prejudice
Childhood at Dessau
69
against the Jews, though we had, no doubt, a cer¬
tain feeling that they were tolerated only, and were
not quite on the same level with ourselves. We also
felt the religious difficulty sometimes very strongly.
Were not the Jews the murderers of Christ? and
had they not said: " the blood be on us and on our
children " ? But as we were told that it was wrong
to harbour feelings of revenge, we boys soon forgot
and forgave, and played together as the best friends.
I remember picking up a number of Jewish words
which would not have been understood anywhere
else. I was hardly aware that they were Jewish and
used them like any other words. But I once gave
great offence to my friend Professor Bernays, who
was a Jew. He had uttered some quite incredible
statement, and I exclaimed, " Sind Sie denn ganz
maschukke?"—Hebrew for "mad." I meant no
harm, but he was very much hurt.
I knew several Jewish families, and received
much kindness from them as a hoy. Many of these
families were wealthy, but they never displayed
their wealth, and in consequence excited no envyc
All that is changed now. The children of the Jews
who formerly lived in a very quiet style at Dessau,
now occupy the best houses, indulge in most expen¬
sive tastes, and try in every way to outshine their
non-Jewish neighbours. They buy themselves
titles, and, when they can, stipulate for stars and
orders as rewards for successful financial operations,
carried out with the money of princely personages.
JO My Autobiography
Hence the revulsion of feeling all over Germany,
or what is called Anti-Semitism, which has assumed
not only a social hut a political significance. I doubt
whether there is anything religious in it, as there
was when we were boys. The Anti-Semitic hatred
is the hatred of money-making, more particularly
of that kind of money-making which requires no
hard work, but only a large capital to begin with,
and boldness and astuteness in speculating, that is
in buying and selling at the right moment. The
sinews of war for that kind of financial warfare were
mostly supplied by the fathers and grandfathers of
the present generation. Sometimes, no doubt, the
capital was lost, and in those cases it must be said
that the Jewish speculator disappears from the stage
without a sigh or a cry. He begins again, and if
he should have to do what his grandfather did, walk
from house to house with a bag on his back, he does
not whine.
One cannot blame the Jews or any other specu¬
lators for using their opportunities, but they must
not complain either if they excite envy, and if that
envy assumes in the end a dangerous character.
The Jews, so far from suffering from disabilities,
enjoy really certain privileges over their Christian
competitors in Germany. They belong to a regnum,
but also to a regnum in regno. They have, so to
say, our Sunday and likewise their Sabbath. Jew
will always help Jew against a Christian; and again
who can blame them for that? All one can say is
Childhood at Dessau 71
that they should not complain of their unpopularity,
but take into account the risk they are running.
FTo one hated the Jews such as they were in Dessau
fifty years ago. They had their own schools and
synagogues, and no one interfered with them when
they built their bowers in the streets at the time
of their Feast of Tabernacles, and lived, feasted,
and slept in them to keep up the memory of their
sojourning in the desert. They indulged in even
more offensive practices, such as, for instance, put¬
ting three stones in the coffins to be thrown by the
dead at the Virgin Mary, her husband, and their
Son. dSTo one suspected or accused them of kidnap¬
ping Christian children, or offering sacrifices with
their blood. They were known too well for that.
Conversions of Jews were not infrequent, and con¬
verted Jews were not persecuted by their former
co-religionists as they are now. Even marriages
between Christians and Jews were by no means
uncommon, particularly when the young Jewesses
were beautiful or rich, still better if they were both.
Disgraceful as the Anti-Semitic riots have been in
Germany and Russia, there can be no doubt that
in this as in most cases both sides were to blame,
and there is little prospect of peace being re-estab¬
lished till many more heads have been broken.
What helped very much to keep the peace in the
small town of Dessau, as it did all over Germany,
nay, all over the world, till about the year 1848,
was the small number of newspapers. In my child-
72 My Autobiography
hood and youth their number was very small. In
Dessau I only knew of one, which was then called
the Wochenblatt, afterwards the Staatsanzeiger.
At that time newspapers were really read for the
news which they contained, not for leading or mis¬
leading articles and all the rest. What a happy
time it was when a newspaper consisted of a sheet,
or half a sheet in quarto, with short paragraphs
about actual events, which had often taken place
weeks and months before. A battle might have
been fought in Spain or Turkey, in India or
China, and no one knew of it till some official
information was vouchsafed by the respective
Governments or by Jewish bankers. War-corre¬
spondents or regular reporters did not exist, and
the old telegraphic dispatches were sent by wooden
telegraphs fixed on high towers, which from a dis¬
tance looked like gallows on which a criminal was
hanging and gesticulating with arms and feet.
Anybody who watched these signals could decipher
them far more easily than a hieroglyphic inscription.
The peace of Europe, nay, of the whole world,
was then in the keeping of sovereigns and their
ministers, and Prince Metternich might certainly
take some credit for having kept what he called the
Thirty Years' Peace. Shall we ever, as long as
there are newspapers, have peace again—peace be¬
tween the great nations of the world, and peace at
home between contending parties, and peace in our
mornings at home which are now so ruthlessly
Childhood at Dessau 73
broken in upon, nay, swallowed up by those paper-
giants, most unwelcome yet irresistible callers, just
when we want to settle down to a quiet day's work?
It is no use protesting against the inevitable, nor
can we quite agree with those who maintain that no
newspaper carries the slightest weight or exercises
the smallest influence on home or foreign politics.
A very influential statesman and wise thinker used
to say that we should never have had Christianity
if newspapers had existed at the time of Augustus.
When unsuccessful litterateurs or bankrupt bank¬
ers' clerks were the chief contributors to the news¬
papers, their influence might have been small; but
when Bismarcks turned journalists, and Gortcha-
koffs prompted, newspapers could hardly be called
quantites negligeables.
The horizon of Dessau was very narrow, but
within its bounds there was a busy and happy life.
Everybody did his work honestly and conscientious¬
ly. There were, of course, two classes, the educated
and the uneducated. The educated consisted of the
members of the Government service, the clergy, the
schoolmasters, doctors, artists, and officers; the un¬
educated were the tradesmen, mechanics, and
labourers. The trade was mostly in the hands of
Jews, it had become almost a Jewish monopoly.
When one of these tradesmen went bankrupt, there
was a commotion over the whole town, and I re¬
member being taken to see one of these bankrupt
shops, expecting to find the whole house broken up
74 My Autobiography
and demolished, and being surprised to see the
tradesman standing whole, and sound, and smiling,
in his accustomed place. My etymological tastes
must have developed very early, for I had asked
why this poor Jew was called a bankrupt, and had
been duly informed that it was because his bank
had been broken, banca rotta, which of course I
took in a literal sense, and expected to see all the
furniture broken to pieces. The commercial rela¬
tions of our Dessau tradesmen did not extend much
beyond Leipzig, Berlin, possibly Hamburg and
Cologne. If a burgher of Dessau travelled to these
or to more distant parts the whole town knew of it
and talked about it, whereas a journey to Paris or
London was an event worthy to be mentioned and
discussed in the newspapers. These old newspa¬
pers are full of curious information. We find that
if a person wished to travel to Cologne or further,
he advertised for a companion, and it was for the
Burgomaster to make the necessary arrangements
for him.
Prench was studied and spoken, particularly at
Court, but English was a rare acquirement, still
more Italian or Spanish. There was, however, a
small inner circle where these languages were stud¬
ied, chiefly in order to read the master-works of
modern literature. And this was all the more credit¬
able because there were no good teachers to be found
at Dessau, and people had to learn what they wished
to learn by themselves, with the help of a gram-
Childhood at Dessau
75
mar and dictionary. We learnt French at school,
but the result was deplorable. As in all public
schools, the French master who had to teach the lan¬
guage at the Ducal Gymnasium could not keep
order among the boys. He of course spoke French,
but that was all. He did not know how to teach,
and could not excite any interest in the boys, who
insisted on pronouncing French as if it were Ger¬
man. The poor man's life was made a burden to
him. His name was Noel, and he had all the pleas¬
ing manners of a Frenchman, but that served only
to rouse the antagonism of the young barbarians.
The result was that we learnt very little, and I was
sent to an old Jew to learn French and a little Eng¬
lish. That old Jew, called Levy Rubens, was a
perfect gentleman. He probably had been a com¬
mercial traveller in his early days, though no one
knew exactly where he came from or how he had
learnt languages. He had taught my father and
grandfather and he was delighted to teach the third
generation. He certainly spoke French and Eng¬
lish fluently, but with the strongest Jewish accent,
and this was inherited by all his pupils at Dessau.
I feel ashamed when I think of the tricks we played
the old man—putting mice into his pockets, upset¬
ting inkstands over his table, and placing crackers
under his chairs. But he never lost his temper; he
never would have dared to punish us as we deserved;
but he went on with his lesson as if nothing had hap¬
pened. He took his small pay, and was satisfied
76 My Autobiography
when his lessons were over and he could settle down
to his long pipe and his hooks. lie lived quite alone
and died quite alone, a hardworking, honest, poor
Jew, not exactly despised or persecuted, hut not
treated with the respect which he certainly deserved,
and which he would have received if he had not
been a Jew.
Our public school was as good as any in Germany.
These small duchies generally followed the example
of Prussia, and they carried out the instructions
issued by the Ministry of Education at Berlin ac¬
cording to the very letter. Besides, several of the
reigning dukes had taken a very warm and personal
interest in popular education, and at the beginning
of the century the eyes of the whole of Germany,
nay, of Europe, were turned towards the educational
experiments carried on by my great-grandfather,
Basedow,1 at the so-called Philanthropinum at Des¬
sau under the patronage of the Duke and of several
of the more enlightened sovereigns of Europe, such
as the Empress Catherine of Russia, the King of
Denmark, the Emperor Joseph of Austria, Prince
Adam Czartoryski, &c. Even after Basedow's
death the interest in education was kept alive in
Dessau, and all was done that could be done in so
small a town to keep the different schools—element¬
ary, middle-class, and high schools—on the highest
possible level of efficiency.
1 Johann Bernhard Basedow, yon seinem Urenkel, F. M. M.
(Essays, Band IV).
Childhood at Dessau
77
Bathing was a very healthful recreation, though
I very nearly came to grief from trusting to my
seniors. They could swim and I could not yet. But
while bathing with two of my friends in a part of
the river which was safe, they swam along and asked
me to follow them. Having complete confidence
in them I jumped in from the shore, but very soon
began to sink. My shouts brought my friends back,
and they rescued me, not without some difficulty,
from drowning.
In an English school the influence of the master
is, of course, more constant, because one of the mas¬
ters is always within call, while in Germany he is
visible during school-hours only. If a master is
fond of his pupils, and takes an interest in them
individually, he can do them more good than parents
at home, or the teacher at a day school. The boys
at a German school are, no doubt, a very mixed
crew, but that cannot be helped. This mixture of
classes may be a drawback in some respects, but
from an educational point of view the sons of very
rich parents are by no means more valuable than the
poor boys. Ear from it. Many of the evils of
schoolboy life come from the sons of the rich, while
the sons of poor parents are generally well behaved.
But for all that, there was a rough and rude tone
among some of the boys at school, arising from de¬
fects in the education at home, and this sometimes
embittered what ought to be the happiest time of
life, particularly in the case of delicate boys. The
78 My Autobiography
son of a Minister has often to sit by the side of the
son of a wealthy butcher, and the very fact that he
is the son of a gentleman often exposes the more
refined boy to the bullying of his muscular neigh¬
bour. I was fortunate at school. I could hold my
own with the boys, and as to the masters, several of
them had known my father or had been his pupils,
and they took a personal interest in me.
I remember more particularly one young master
who was very kind to me, and took me home for
private lessons and for giving me some good advice.
There was something sad and very attractive about
him, and I found out afterwards that he knew that
he was dying of consumption, and that besides that
he was liable to be prosecuted for political liberal¬
ism, which at that time was almost like high trea¬
son. I believe he was actually condemned and sent
to prison like many others, and he died soon after
I had left Dessau. His name was Dr. Honicke, and
he was the first to try to impress on me that I ought
to show myself worthy of my father, an idea which
had never entered my mind before, nay, which at
first I could hardly understand, but which, never¬
theless, slumbered on in my mind till years after¬
wards it was called out and became a strong influ¬
ence for the whole of my life. I still have some
lines which he wrote for my album. They were
the wTell-known lines from Horace, which, at the
time, I had great difficulty in construing, but which
have remained graven in my memory ever since:
Childhood at Dessau
79
u Fortes creantur fortibus et bonis,
Est in iuvencis est in equis patrum
Virtus nee imbellem feroces
Progenerant aquilae columbam.
Doetrina sed vim promovet insitam,
Rectique cultus peetora roborant;
Utcunque defecere mores,
Dedecorant bene nata culpae."
In my childhood I had to pass through the ordi¬
nary illnesses, but it was the faith in our doctor that
always saved me. The doctor was to my mind the
man who was called in to make me well again, and
while my mother was agitated about her only son,
I never dreamt of any danger. The very idea of
death never came near me till my grandfather died
(1835), but even then I was only about twelve years
old, and though I had seen much of him, particular¬
ly during the years that my mother lived again in
his house, yet he was too old to take much share in
his grandchildren's amusements. He left a gap, no
doubt, in our life, but that gap was filled again with
new figures in the life of a boy of twelve. He was
only sixty-one years old when he died, and yet my
idea of him was always that of a very old man.
Everything was done for him, his servant dressed
him every morning, he was lifted into his carriage
and out of it, and he certainly lived the life of an
invalid, such as I should not consent to own to at
seventy-six. He made no secret that he cared more
for the son of his son who was the heir, and was to
perpetuate the name of von Basedow, than for the son
80 My Autobiography
of his daughter. He was very fond of driving and
of shooting, and he frequently took my cousin out
shooting with him. When my cousin came home
with a hare he had shot, I confess I was sometimes
jealous, but I was soon cured of my wish to go with
my grandfather into the forest. Once when I was
with him in his little carriage, my grandfather, not
being able to see well, had the misfortune to kill a
doe which had come out with her two little ones.
The misery of the mother and afterwards of her
two young ones, was heart-rending, and from that
day on I made up my mind never to go out shoot¬
ing, and never to kill an animal. And I have kept
my word, though I was much laughed at. It may
be that later in life and after my grandfather's death
I had little opportunity of shooting, but the cry of
the doe and the whimpering of the young ones who
tried to get suck from their dead mother have re¬
mained with me for life.
My grandfather, though he aged early, remained
in harness as Prime Minister to the end of his life,
and it was his great desire to benefit his country by
new institutions. It was he who, at the time when
people hardly knew yet what railroads meant, suc¬
ceeded in getting the line from Berlin to Halle
and Leipzig to pass by Dessau. He offered to build
the bridge across the Elbe and to give the land and
the wood for the sleepers gratis, and what seemed at
the time a far too generous offer has proved a bless¬
ing to the duchy, making it as it were the centre
Childhood at Dessau
8l
of the great railway connecting Berlin, Leipzig,
Magdeburg, the Elbe, Hanover, Bremen, nay,
Cologne also, the Rhine, and "Western Europe. He
was in his way a good statesman, though we are too
apt to measure a man's real greatness by the circum¬
stances in which he moves.
As far back as I can remember I was a martyr
to headaches. Ho doctor could help me, no one
seemed to know the cause. It was a migraine, and
though I watched it carefully I could not trace it
to any fault of mine. The idea that it came from
overwork was certainly untrue. It came and went,
and if it was one day on the right side it was always
the next time on the left, even though I was free
from it sometimes for a week or a fortnight, or
even longer. It was strange also that it seldom
lasted beyond one day, and that I always felt par¬
ticularly strong and well the day after I had been
prostrate. For prostrate I was, and generally quite
unable to do anything. I had to lie down and try
to sleep. After a good sleep I was well, but when
the pain had been very bad I found that sometimes
the very skin of my forehead had peeled off. In
this way I often lost two or three days in a week,
and as my work had to be done somehow, it was
often done anyhow, and I was scolded and punished,
really without any fault of my own. After all reme¬
dies had failed which the doctor and nurses pre¬
scribed (and I well remember my grandmother us¬
ing massage on my neck, which must have been
82 My Autobiography
about 1833 to 1835) I was handed over to Hahne¬
mann, the founder of homeopathy. Hahnemann
(born 1755) had been practising as doctor at Des¬
sau as early as 1780—that is somewhat before my
time—but had left it, and when in 1820 he had
been prohibited by the Government from practising
and lecturing at Leipzig, he took refuge once more
in the neighbouring town of Coethen. From there
he paid visits to Dessau as consulting physician, and
after I had explained to him as well as I could all
the symptoms of my chronic headache, he assured
my mother that he would cure it at once. He was
an imposing personality—a powerful man with a
gigantic head and strong eyes and a most persuasive
voice. I can quite understand that his personal in¬
fluence would have gone far to effect a cure of many
diseases. People forget too much how strong a cura¬
tive power resides in the patient's faith in his doctor,
in fact how much the mind can do in depressing and
in reinvigorating the body. I shall never forget
in later years consulting Sir Andrew Clarke, and
telling him of ever so many, to my mind, most seri¬
ous symptoms. I had lost sleep and appetite, and
imagined myself in a very bad state indeed. He
examined me and knocked me about for full three
quarters of an hour, and instead of pronouncing my
doom as I fully expected, he told me with a bright
look and most convincing voice that he had ex¬
amined many men who had worked their brains too
much, but had never seen a man at my time of life
Childhood at Dessau
83
so perfectly sound in every organ. I felt young and
strong at once, and meeting my old friend Morier
on my way home, we ate some dozens of oysters to¬
gether and drank some pints of porter without the
slightest bad effect. In fact I was cured without a
pill or a drop of medicine.
And who does not know how, if one makes up
one's mind at last to have a tooth pulled out, the
pain seems to cease as soon as we pull the bell at
the dentist's?
However, Hahnemann did not succeed with me.
I swallowed a number of his silver and gold glob¬
ules, but the migraine kept its regular course, right
to left and left to right, and this went on till about
the year 1860. Then my doctor, the late Mr. Sy-
monds of Oxford, told me exactly what Hahnemann
had told me—that he would cure me, if I would
go on taking some medicine regularly for six months
or a year. He told me that he and his brother had
made a special study of headaches, and that there
were ever so many kinds of headache, each requiring
its own peculiar treatment. When I asked him to
what category of headaches mine belonged, I was
not a little abashed on being told that my headache
was what they called the Alderman's headache.
" Surely," I said, " I don't overeat, or overdrink."
I had thought that mine was a mysterious nervous
headache, arising from the brain. But no, it seemed
to be due to turtle soup and port wine. However,
the doctor, seeing my surprise, comforted me by
84 My Autobiography
telling me that it was the nerves of the head which
affected the stomach, and thus produced indirectly
the same disturbance in my digestion as an alder-
manic diet. Whether this was true or was only
meant as a solatium I do not know. But what I do
know is, that by taking the medicine regularly for
about half a year, the frequency and violence of my
headaches were considerably reduced, while after
about a year they vanished completely. I was a new
being, and my working time was doubled.
One lesson may be learnt from this, namely, that
the English system of doctoring is very imperfect.
In England we wait till we are ill, then go to a doc¬
tor, describe our symptoms as well as we can, pay
one guinea, or two, get our prescription, take drastic
medicine for a month and expect to be well. My
German doctor, when he saw the prescription of my
English doctor, told me that he would not give it to
a horse. If after a month we are not better we go
again; he possibly changes our medicine, and we
take it more or less regularly for another month.
The doctor cannot watch the effect of his medicine,
he is not sure even whether his prescriptions have
been carefully followed; and he knows but too well
that anything like a chronic complaint requires a
chronic treatment. The important thing, however,
was that my headaches yielded gradually to the
continued use of medicine; it would hardly have
produced the desired effect if I had taken it by fits
and starts. All this seems to me quite natural; but
Childhood at Dessau 85
though my English doctor cured me, and my Ger¬
man doctors did not, I still hold that the German
system is better. Most families have their doctor
in Germany, who calls from time to time to watch
the health of the old and young members of the
family, particularly when under medical treatment,
and receives his stipulated annual payment, which
secures him a safe income that can be raised, of
course, by attendance on occasional patients. Per¬
haps the Chinese system is the best; they pay their
doctor while they are well, and stop payment as
long as they are ill. I know the unanswerable argu¬
ment which is always thrown at my head whenever
I suggest to my friends that there are some things
which are possibly managed better in Germany than
in England. If my remarks refer to the study and
practice of medicine I am asked whether more men
are killed in England than in Germany; if I refer
to the study and practice of law I am assured that
quite as many murderers are hanged in England
as in Germany; and if I venture to hint that the
study of theology might on certain points be im¬
proved at Oxford, I am told that quite as many
souls are saved in England as in Germany, nay,
a good many more. As I cannot ascertain the facts
from trustworthy statistics, I have nothing to reply;
all I feel is that most nations, like most individuals,
are perfect in their own eyes, but that those are
most perfect who are willing to admit that there is
something to be learnt from their neighbours.
86 My Autobiography
But to return to Hahnemann. He was very kind
to me, and I looked up to him as a giant both in
body and in mind. But he could not deliver me
from my enemy, the ever recurrent migraine. The
cures, however, both at Dessau and at Coethen,
where he had been made a II of rath by the reigning
Duke, were very extraordinary. Hahnemann re¬
mained in Coethen till 1835, and in that year, when
he was eighty, he married a young French lady,
Melanie d'Hervilly, and wyas carried off by her to
Paris, where he soon gained a large practice, and
died in 1843, that is at the age of eighty-eight.
Much of his success, I feel sure, was due to his
presence and to the confidence which he inspired.
How do I know that Sir Andrew Clarke, seeing
that I was in low spirits about my health, did not
think it right to encourage me, and by encouraging
me did certainly make me feel confident about my¬
self, and thus raised my vitality, my spirits, or
whatever we like to call it ? " Thy faith hath made
thee whole " is a lesson which doctors ought not
to neglect.
How little we know the effect of the environment
in which we grow up. My old granny has drawn
deeper furrows through my young soul than all my
teachers and preachers put together. I am not
going to add a chapter to that most unsatisfactory
of all studies, child-psychology. It is an impossible
subject. The victim—the child—cannot be interro¬
gated till it is too late. The influences that work
Childhood at Dessau
87
on the child's senses and mind cannot be determined;
they are too many, and too intangible. The ob¬
servers of babies, mostly young fathers proud of
their first offspring, remind me always of a very
learned friend of mine, who presented to the Royal
Society most laborious pages containing his lifelong
observations on certain deviations of the magnetic
needle, and who had forgotten that in making these
observations he always had a pair of steel spectacles
on his nose. However, I have nothing to say against
these observations, nor against their more or less
successful interpretations. But the real harm be¬
gins when people imagine that in studying the ways
of infants they can discover what man was like in
his original condition, whether as a hairy or a hair¬
less creature. To imagine that we can learn from
the way in which children begin to use our old
words, how the primitive language of mankind was
formed, seems to me like imagining that children
playing with counters would teach us how and for
what purpose the first money was coined. There
is no doubt a grain of truth in this infantile psychol¬
ogy, but it requires as many caveats as that which
is called ethnological psychology, which makes us
see in the savages of the present day the representa¬
tion of the first ancestors of our race, and would
teach us to discover in their superstitions the ante¬
cedents of the mythology and religion of the Aryan
or Semitic races. The same philosophers who con¬
stantly fall back on heredity and atavism in order
88 My Autobiography
to explain what seems inexplicable in the beliefs
and customs of the Brahmans, Greeks, or Romans,
seem quite unconscious of the many centuries that
must needs have passed over the heads of the
Patagonians of the present day as well as of the
Greeks at the time of Homer. They look upon
the Patagonians as the tabula rasa of humanity,
and they forget that even if we admitted that the
ancestors of the Aryan race had once been more
savage than the Patagonians, it would not follow
that their savagery was identical with that of the
people of Tierra del Fuego. Why should not the
distance between Patagonian and Vedic Rishis have
been at least as great as that between Vedic Rishis
and Homeric bards? If there are ever so many
kinds of civilized life, was there only one and the
same savagery?
To take, for instance, the feeling of fear; is it
likely that we shall find out whether it is innate in
human nature or acquired and intensified in each
generation, by shaking our fists in the face of a
little baby, to see whether it will wink or shrink or
shriek? Some children may be more fearless than
others, but whether that fearlessness arises from
ignorance or from stolidity is again by no means
easy to determine. A burnt child fears the fire,
an unburnt child might boldly grasp a glowing
coal, but all this would not help us to determine
whether fear is an innate or an acquired tendency
or habit.
Childhood at Dessau
89
All I can say for myself is that my young life
and even my later years were often rendered mis¬
erable by the foolish stories of one of my grand¬
mothers, and that I had to make a strong effort of
will before I could bring myself to walk across a
churchyard in the dark. This shows how much our
character is shaped by circumstances, even when
we are least aware of it. I did not believe in ghosts
and I was not a coward, but I felt through life a
kind of shiver in dark passages and at the sound of
mysterious noises, and the mere fact that I had
to make an effort to overcome these feelings shows
that something had found its way into my mental
constitution that ought never to have been there,
and that caused me, particularly in my younger
days, many a moment of discomfort.
All such experiences constitute what may be
called the background of our life. My first ideas
of men and women, and of the world at large, that
is of the unknown world, were formed within the
narrow walls of Dessau, for Dessau was still sur¬
rounded by walls, and the gates of the city were
closed every night, though the fears of a foreign
enemy were but small. Of course the views of life
prevailing at Dessau were very narrow, but they
were wide enough for our purposes. Though we
heard of large towns like Dresden or Berlin, and
of large countries like France and Italy, my real
world was Dessau and its neighbourhood. We had
no interests outside the walls of our town or the
9° My Autobiography
frontiers of our duchy. If we heard of things that
had happened at Leipzig or Berlin, in Paris or Lon¬
don, they had no more reality for us than what we
had read about Abraham, or Romulus and Remus,
or Alexander the Great. To us the pulse of the
world seemed to beat in the Haupt- und Residenz-
stadt of Dessau, though we knew perfectly well
how small it was in comparison with other towns.
And this, too, has left its impression on my
thoughts all through life, if only by making every¬
thing that I saw in later life in such towns as Leip¬
zig, Berlin, Paris, and London, appear quite over¬
whelmingly grand. Boys brought up in any of
these large towns start with a different view of the
world, and with a different measure for what they
see in later life. I do not know that they are to be
envied for that, for there is pleasure in admiration,
pleasure even in being stunned by the first sight of
the life in the streets of Paris or London. I cer¬
tainly have been a great admirer all my life, and
I ascribe this disposition to the small surroundings
of my early years at Dessau.
And so it was with everything else. Having ad¬
mired our Cavalier-Strasse, I could admire all the
more the Boulevards in Paris, and Regent Street
in London. Having enjoyed our small theatre, I
stood aghast at the Grand Opera, and at Drury
Lane. This power of admiration and enjoyment
extended even to dinners and other domestic amuse¬
ments. Having been brought up on very simple
Childhood at Dessau 91
fare, I fully enjoyed the dinners which the Old East
India Company gave, when we sat down about
400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid
for each guest. I mention this because I feel that
not only has the Spartan diet of my early years
given me a relish all through life for convivial en¬
tertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a
head, but that the general self-denial which I had
to exercise in my youth has made me feel a constant
gratitude and sincere appreciation for the small
comforts of my later years.
I remember the time when I woke with my
breath frozen on my bedclothes into a thin sheet of
ice. We were expected to wash and dress in an
attic where the windows were so thickly frozen as
to admit hardly any light in the morning, and
where, when we tried to break the ice in the jug,
there were only a few drops of water left at the bot¬
tom with which to wash, bio wonder that the ab¬
lutions were expeditious. After they were per¬
formed we had our speedy breakfast, consisting of
a cup of coffee and a semmel or roll, and then we
rushed to school, often through the snow that had
not yet been swept away from the pavement. We
sat in school from eight to eleven or twelve, rushed
home again, had our very simple dinner, and then
back to school, from two to four. How we lived
through it I sometimes wonder, for we were thinly
clad and often wet with rain or snow; and yet we
enjoyed our life as boys only can enjoy it, and had
92 My Autobiography
no time to be ill. One blessing this early roughing
has left me for life—a power of enjoying many
things which to most of my friends are matters of
course or of no consequence. The background of
my life at Dessau and at Leipzig may seem dark,
but it has only served to make the later years of my
life all the brighter and warmer.
The more I think about that distant, now very
distant past, the more I feel how, without being
aware of it, my whole character was formed by it.
The unspoiled primitiveness of life at Dessau as it
was when I was at school there till the age of twelve,
would be extremely difficult to describe in all its
details. Everybody seemed to know everybody and
everything about everybody. Everybody knew
that he was watched, and gossip, in the best sense of
the word, ruled supreme in the little town. Gossip
was, in fact, public opinion with all its good and all
its bad features. Still the result was that no one
could afford to lose caste, and that everybody be¬
haved as well as he could. I really believe that the
private life of the people of Dessau at the begin¬
ning of the century was blameless. The great evils
of society did not exist, and if now and then there
was a black sheep, his or her life became a burden
to them. Everybody knew what had happened, and
society being on the whole so blameless, was all the
more merciless on the sinners, whether their sins
were great or small. So from the very first my idea
was that there were only two classes—one class quite
Childhood at Dessau
93
perfect and pure as angels, the other black sheep,
and altogether unspeakable. There was no transi¬
tion, no intermediate links, no shading of light and
dark. A man was either black or white, and this
rigid rule applied not only to moral character, but
intellectual excellence also was measured by the
same standard. A work of art was either superla¬
tively beautiful, or it was contemptible. A man of
science was either a giant or a humbug. Some
people spoke of Goethe as the greatest of all poets
and philosophers the world had ever known; others
called him a wicked man and an overvalued
poet.1
It is dangerous, no doubt, to go through life with
so imperfect a measure, and I have for a long time
suffered from it, particularly in cases where I ought
to have been able to make allowance for small fail¬
ings. But as I had been brought up to approach
people with a complete trust in their rectitude, and
with an unlimited admiration of their genius, it
took me many years before I learnt to make allow¬
ance for human weaknesses or temporary failures.
I have lost many a charming companion and excel¬
lent friend in my journey through life, because I
weighed them with my rusty Dessau balance. I
had to learn by long experience that there may be
a spot, nay, several spots on the soft skin of a peach,
1 That this was not only the case at Dessau, may be seen by
a number of contemporary reviews of Goethe's works repub¬
lished some years ago and the exact title of which I cannot find.
94 My Autobiography
and yet the whole fruit may be perfect. I acted
very much like the merchant who tested a whole
field of rice by the first handful of grains, and who,
if he found one or two had grains, would have noth¬
ing to do with the whole field. I had to learn what
was, perhaps, the most difficult lesson of all, that a
trusted friend could not always he trusted, and yet
need not therefore be altogether a reprobate. What
was most difficult for me to digest was an untruth:
finding out that one who professed to be a friend
had said and done most unfriendly things behind
one's back. Still, in a long life one finds out that
even that may not be a deadly sin, and that if we
are so loth to forgive it, it is partly because the false¬
hood affected our own interests. Thus only can we
explain how a man whom we know to have been
guilty of falsehoods towards ourselves may be looked
upon as perfectly honest, straightforward, and trust¬
worthy, by a large number of his own friends. We
see this over and over again with men occupying
eminent positions in Church and State. We see
how a prime minister or an archbishop is represent¬
ed by men who know him as a liar and a hypocrite,
while by others he is spoken of as a paragon of hon¬
our and honesty, and a true Christian. My narrow
Dessau views became a little widened when I went
to school at Leipzig; still more when I spent two
years and a half at the University of Leipzig, and
afterwards at Berlin. Still, during all this time I
saw but little of what is called society, I only knew
Childhood at Dessau
95
of people whom I loved and of people whom I dis¬
liked. There was no room as yet for indifferent
people, whom one tolerates and is civil to without
caring whether one sees them again or not. Of the
simplest duties of society also I was completely igno¬
rant. dSTo one ever told me what to say and what to
do, or what not to say and what not to do. What I
felt I said, what I thought right I did. There was, in
fact, in my small native towrn very little that could be
called society. One lived in one's family and with
one's intimate friends without any ceremony. It
is a pity that children are not taught a few rules
of life-wisdom by their seniors. I know that the
Jews do not neglect that duty, and I remember be¬
ing surprised at my young Jewish friends at Dessau
coming out with some very wise saws which evi¬
dently had not been grown in their own hot-houses,
but had been planted out full grown by their seniors.
The only rules of worldly wisdom which I remem¬
ber, came to me through proverbs and little verses
which we had either to copy or to learn by heart,
such as:
" Wer einmal lttgt, dem glaubt man nicht
Und wenn er auch die Wahrheit spricht."
" Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde."
" Kein Fad en ist so fein gesponnen,
Er kommt doch endlich an die Sonnen."
" Jeder ist seines Gltickes Schmied."
96 My Autobiography
Some lines which hung over my bed I have carried
with me all through life, and I still think they are
very true and very terse:
" Im Gltick nicht jubeln und im Sturm mcht zagen,
Das Unvermeidliche mit Wtlrde tragen,
Das Rechte thun, am SchOnen sich erfreuen,
Das Leben lieben und den Tod nicht scheuen,
Und fest an Gott und bessere Zukunft glauben,
Heisst leben, heisst dem Tod sein Bitteres rauben.''
Still, all this formed a very small viaticum for a
journey through life, and I often thought that a few
more hints might have preserved me from the pain¬
ful process of what was called rubbing off one's
horns. Again and again I had to say to myself,
" That would have done very well at home, but
it was a mistake for all that." My social rawness
and simplicity stuck to me for many years, just as
the Dessau dialect remained with me for life; at
least I was assured by my friends that though I
had spoken French and English for so many years,
they could always detect in my German that I came
from Dessau or Leipzig.
CHAPTER III
school-days at leipzig
It was certainly a poor kind of armour in which
I set out from Dessau. My mother, devoted as she
was to me, had judged rightly that it was best
for me to be with other boys and under the super¬
vision of a man. I had been somewhat spoiled by
her passionate love, and also by her passionate se¬
verity in correcting the ordinary naughtinesses of
a boy. So having risen from form to form in the
school at Dessau, I was sent, at the age of twelve,
to Leipzig, to live in the house of Professor Carus
and attend the famous JSTicolai-Schule with his
son, who was of the same age as myself and who
likewise wanted a companion. It was thought
that there would be a certain emulation between
us, and so, no doubt, there was, though we
always remained the best of friends. The house
in which we lived stood in a garden and was really
an orthopaedic institution for girls. There were
about twenty or thirty of these young girls living
in the house or spending the day there, and their
joyous company was very pleasant. Of course the
names and faces of my young friends have, with
one or two exceptions, vanished from my memory,
97
98 My Autobiography
but I was surprised when a few years ago (1895) I
was staying with Madame Salis-Schwabe at her de¬
lightful place on the Menai Straits, and discovered
that we had known each other more than fifty years
before in the house of Professor Carus at Leipzig.
Though we had met from time to time, we never
knew of our early meeting at Leipzig, till in com¬
paring notes we discovered how we had spent a
whole year in the same house and among the same
friends. Hers has been a life full of work and
entirely devoted to others. To the very end of her
days she was spending her large income in found¬
ing schools on the system recommended by Froebel,
not only in England, but in Italy. She died at
Maples in 1896, while visiting a large school that
had been founded by her with the assistance of the
Italian Government. Her own house in Wales was
full of treasures of art, and full of memorials of
her many friends, such as Bunsen, Renan, Mole,
Ary Scheffer, and many more. LIow far her char¬
ity went may be judged by her being willing to
part with some of the most precious of Ary Scheff-
er's pictures, in order to keep her schools well en¬
dowed, and able to last after her death, which she
felt to be imminent.
Public schools are nearly all day schools in Ger¬
many. The boys live at home, mostly in their own
families, but they spend six hours every day at
school, and it is a mistake to imagine that they are
not attached to it, that they have no games to-
School-Days at Leipzig 99
gether, and that they do not grow np manly or in¬
dependent. Most schools have playgrounds, and in
summer swimming is a favourite amusement for
all the boys. There were two good public schools
at Leipzig, the ISTicolai School and the Thomas
School. There was plenty of esprit de corps in
them, and often when the boys met it showed it¬
self not only in words but in blows, and the dis¬
cussions over the merits of their schools were often
continued in later life. I was very fortunate in
being sent to the Mcolai School, under Dr. jSTobbe
as head master. He was at the same time Professor
at the University of Leipzig, and is well known in
England also as the editor of Cicero. He was very
proud that his school counted Leibniz 1 among its
former pupils. He was a classical scholar of the
old school. During the last three years of our
school life we had to write plenty of Latin and
Greek verse, and were taught to speak Latin. The
speaking of Latin came readily enough, but the
verses never attained a very high level. Besides
ISTobbe we had Eorbiger, well known by his books
on ancient geography, and Palm, editor of the same
Greek Dictionary which, in the hands of Dr. Lid-
dell, has reached its highest perfection. Then there
was Funkhanel, known beyond Germany by his
edition of the Orations of Demosthenes, and his
studies on Greek orators. "We were indeed well off
for masters, and most of them seemed to enjoy their
1 His own spelling of his name.
100 My Autobiography
work and to be fond of the boys. Our head master
was very popular. He was a man of the old Ger¬
man type, powerfully built, with a large square
head, very much like Luther, and, strange to say,
when in 1839 a great Luther festival was celebrated
all over Germany, he published a book in which
he proved that he was a direct descendant of Luther.
The school was carried on very much on the old
plan of teaching chiefly classics, but teaching them
thoroughly. Modern languages, mathematics, and
physical science had a poor chance, though they
clamoured for recognition. Latin and Greek verse
were considered far more important. In the two
highest forms we had to speak Latin, and such as
it was it seemed to us much easier than to speak
French. Hebrew was also taught as an optional
subject during the last four years, and the little I
know of Hebrew dates chiefly from my school-days.
Schoolboys soon find out what their masters think
of the value of the different subjects taught at
school, and they are apt to treat not only the sub¬
jects themselves but the teachers also according
to that standard. Hence our modern language and
our physical science masters had a hard time of it.
They could not keep their classes in order, and it
was by no means unusual for many of the boys
simply to stay away from their lessons. The old
mathematical master, before beginning his lesson,
used to rub his spectacles, and after looking round
the half empty classroom, mutter in a plaintive
School-Days at Leipzig 101
voice: " I see again many boys who are not here
to-day." When the same old master began to lect¬
ure on physical science, he told the boys to bring
a frog to be placed under a glass from which the
air had been extracted by an air-pump. Of course
every one of the twenty or thirty boys brought
two or three frogs, and when the experiment was
to be made all these frogs were hopping about the
lecture-room, and the whole army of boys were hop¬
ping after them over chairs and tables to catch
them. No wonder that during this tumult the mas¬
ter did not succeed with his experiment, and when
at last the glass bowl was lifted up and we were
asked to see the frog, great was the joy of all the
boys when the frog hopped out and escaped from
the hands of its executioner. Such was the wrath
excited by these new-fangled lectures among the
boys that they actually committed the vandalism of
using one of the forms as a battering-ram against
the enclosure in which the physical science appara¬
tus was kept, and destroyed some of the precious
instruments supplied by Government. Severe pun¬
ishments followed, but they did not serve to make
physical science more popular.
We certainly did very well in Greek and Latin,
and read a number of classical texts, not only criti¬
cally at school, but also cursorily at home, having to
give a weekly account of what we had thus read
by ourselves. I liked my classics, and yet I could
not help feeling that there was a certain exaggera-
102 My Autobiography
tion in the way in which every one of them was
spoken of by our teachers, nay, that as compared to
German poets and prose writers they were somewhat
overpraised. Still, it would have been very conceit¬
ed not to admire what our masters admired, and
as in duty bound we went into the usual raptures
about Homer and Sophocles, about Horace and
Cicero. Many things which in later life we learn
to admire in the classics could hardly appeal to the
taste of boys. The directness, the simplicity and
originality of the ancient, as compared with modern
writers, cannot be appreciated by them, and I well
remember being struck with what we disrespect¬
ful boys called the cheekiness of Horace expecting
immortality (non omnis moriar) for little poems
which we were told were chiefly written after Greek
patterns. We had to admit that there were fewer
false quantities in his Latin verses than in our own,
but in other respects we could not see that his odes
were so infinitely superior to ours. His hope of
immortality has certainly been fulfilled beyond
what could have been his own expectations. With
so little of ancient history known to him, his idea
of the immortality of poetry must have been far
more modest in his time than in our own. He may
have known the past glories of the Persian Empire,
but as to ancient literature, there was nothing for
him to know, whether in Persia, in Babylonia, in
Assyria, or even in Egypt, least of all in India.
Literary fame existed for him in Greece only, and
School-Days at Leipzig 103
in the Roman Empire, and his own ambition could
therefore hardly have extended beyond these limits.
The exaggeration in the panegyrics passed on every¬
thing Greek or Latin dates from the classical
scholars of the Middle Ages, who knew nothing
that could be compared to the classics, and who
were loud in praising what they possessed the
monopoly of selling. Successive generations of
scholars followed suit, so that even in our time it
seemed high treason to compare Goethe with
Horace, or Schiller with Sophocles. Of late, how¬
ever, the danger is rather that the reaction should
go too far and lead to a promiscuous depreciation
even of such real giants as Lucretius or Plato. The
fact is that we have learnt from them and imitated
them, till in some cases the imitations have equalled
or even excelled the originals, while now the taste
for classical correctness has been wellnigh sup¬
planted by an appetite for what is called realistic,
original, and extravagant.
With all that has been said or written against
making classical studies the most important ele¬
ment in a liberal education, or rather against re¬
taining them in their time-honoured position, noth¬
ing has as yet been suggested to take their place.
For after all, it is not simply in order to learn two
languages that we devote so large a share of our
time to the study of Greek and Latin; it is in order
to learn to understand the old world on which our
modern world is founded; it is in order to think
104 My Autobiography
the old thoughts, which are the feeders of our own
intellectual life, that we become in our youth the
pupils of Greeks and Romans. In order to know
what we are, we have to learn how we have come
to be what we are. Our very languages form an
unbroken chain between us and Cicero and Aris¬
totle, and in order to use many of our words intelli¬
gently, we must know the soil from which they
sprang, and the atmosphere in which they grew up
and developed.
I enjoyed my work at school very much, and
I seem to have passed rapidly from class to class.
I frequently received prizes both in money and in
books, but I see a warning attached to some of them
that I ought not to be conceited, which probably
meant no more than that I should not show when I
was pleased with my successes. At least I do not
know what I could have been conceited about.
What I feel about my learning at school is that it
was entirely passive. I acquired knowledge such
as it was presented to me. I did not doubt what¬
ever my teachers taught me, I did not, as far as I
can recollect, work up any subject by myself. I
find only one paper of mine of that early time, and,
curiously enough, it was on mythology; but it con¬
tains no inkling of comparative mythology, but
simply a chronological arrangement of the sources
from which we draw our knowledge of Greek my¬
thology. I see also from some old papers, that I
began to write poetry, and that twice or thrice I
School-Days at Leipzig 105
was chosen at great festivities to recite poems writ¬
ten by myself. In the year 1839 three hundred
years had passed since Luther preached at Leipzig
in the Church of St. hficolai, and the tercentenary
of this event was celebrated all over Germany. My
poem was selected for recitation at a large meeting
of the friends of our school and the notables of the
town, and I had to recite it, not without fear and
trembling. I was then but sixteen years of age.
In the next year, 1840, Leipzig celebrated the
invention of printing in 1440. It was on this oc¬
casion that Mendelssohn wrote his famous Hymn
of Praise. I formed part of the chorus, and I well
remember the magnificent effect which the music
produced in the Church of St. Thomas. Again a
poem of mine was selected, and I had to recite it
at a large gathering in the Nicolai-Schule on July
18, 1840.
On December 23 another celebration took place
at our school, at which I had to recite a Latin poem
of mine, In Schillerum. Lastly, there was my
valedictory poem when I left the school in 1841,
and a Latin poem " Ad fSTobbium," our head master.
I have found among my mother's treasures the
far too often flattering testimonial addressed to her
by Professor ISTobbe on that occasion, which ends
thus: "I rejoice at seeing him leave this school
with testimonials of moral excellence not often
found in one of his years—and possessed of knowl¬
edge in more than one point, first-rate, and of intel-
l o6 My Autobiography
lectual capacities excellent throughout. May his
young mind develop more and more, may the fruits
of his labours hereafter he a comfort to his mother
for the sorrows and cares of the past."
It was rather hard on me that I had to pass my
examination for admission to the University (Abi-
turienten-Exameri) not at my own school, hut at
Zerbst in Anhalt. This was necessary in order to
enable me to obtain a scholarship from the Anhalt
Government. The schools in Anhalt were modelled
after the Prussian schools, and laid far more stress
on mathematics, physical science, and modern lan¬
guages than the schools in Saxony. I had there¬
fore to get up in a very short time several quite new
subjects, and did not do so well in them as in Greek
and Latin. However, I passed with a first class, and
obtained my scholarship, small as it was. It was
only the other day that I received a letter from a
gentleman who was at school at Zerbst when I came
there for my examination. He reminds me that
among my examiners there were such men as Dr.
Hitter, the two Sentenis, and Professor "Werner, and
he says that he watched me when I came upstairs
and entered the locked room to do my paper work.
My friend's career in life had been that of Director
of a Life Insurance Company, probably a more
lucrative career than what mine has been.
During my stay at Leipzig, first in the house of
Professor Carus, and afterwards as a student at the
University, my chief enjoyment was certainly
School-Days at Leipzig 107
music. I had plenty of it, perhaps too much, but
I pity the man who has not known the charm of it.
At that time Leipzig was really the centre of music
in Germany. Felix Mendelssohn was there, and
most of the distinguished artists and composers of
the day came there to spend some time with him
and to assist at the famous Gewandhaus Concerts.
I find among my letters a few descriptions of con¬
certs and other musical entertainments, which even
at present may be of some interest. I was asked
to be present at some concerts where quartettes and
other pieces were performed by Mendelssohn,
Hiller, Kaliwoda, David, and Eckart. Liszt also
made his triumphant entry into Germany at Leip¬
zig, and everybody was full of expectation and ex¬
citement. His concert had been advertised long
before his arrival. It was to consist of an Overture
of Weber's; a Cavatina from Robert le Diable,
sung by Madame Schlegel; a Concerto of Weber's,
to be played by Liszt, the same which I had shortly
before heard played by Madame Pleyel; Beet¬
hoven's Overture to Prometheus; Fantasia on La
Juive; Schubert's Ave Maria and Serenade, as
arranged by Liszt. I was the more delighted be¬
cause I had myself played some of these pieces.
But suddenly there appeared a placard stating that
Liszt, on hearing that tickets were sold at one
thaler (three shillings), had declared he would play
a few pieces only and without an orchestra. In spite
of that disappointment, the whole house was full,
lo8 My Autobiography
the staircase crowded from top to bottom, and when
we had pushed our way through, we found that
about 300 places had been retained for one and a
half thalers (four shillings and sixpence), while
tickets at the box-office were sold for two thalers
(six shillings). Nevertheless, I managed to get a
very good place, by simply not seeing a number of
ladies who were pushing behind me. When Liszt
appeared there was a terrible hissing—he looked
as if petrified, glanced like a demon at the public,
but nevertheless began to play the Scherzo and
Finale of the Pastoral Symphony. Then there
burst out a perfect thunder of applause, and all
seemed pacified, while Madame Schmidt sang a
song accompanied by a certain Mr. Kermann. As
soon as that was over, a new storm of hisses arose,
which was meant for this Mr. Kermann, who was a
pupil, but at the same time the man of business of
Liszt. He and three other men had made all ar¬
rangements, and Liszt knew nothing about them,
as he cared very little for the money, which went
chiefly to his managers. A Fantasia by Liszt fol¬
lowed, and lastly a Galop Chromatique—but the
public would not go away, and at length Liszt was
induced to play Une grande Valse. It was no
doubt a new experience; but I could not go into
ecstasies like others, for after all it was merely me¬
chanical, though no doubt in the highest perfection.
The day after Liszt advertised that his original Pro¬
gramme would be played, but at six o'clock Profess-
School-Days at Leipzig 109
or Cams, with whom I lived, was called to see Liszt,
who was said to be ill; the fact being he had only
sold fifty tickets at the raised prices. Many
strangers who had come to Leipzig to hear him went
away, anything but pleased with the new musical
genius. At one concert, where he appeared in Mag¬
yar costume, the ladies offered him a golden laurel
wreath and sword. He had just published his ar¬
rangement of Adelaida, which he promised to play
in one of the concerts.
Another very musical family at Leipzig was that
of Professor Froge. He was a rich man, and had
married a famous singer, Fraulein Schlegel. One
evening the Sonnambula was performed in their
house, which had been changed into a theatre. She
acted the Sonnambula, and her singing as well as
her acting was most finished and delightful. Men¬
delssohn was much in their house, and made her
sing his songs as soon as they were written and be¬
fore they were published. They were great friends,
the bond of their friendship being music. He
actually died when playing while she was singing.
People talked as they always will talk about what
they cannot understand, but they evidently did not
know either Mendelssohn or Madame Froge.
The house of Professor Cams was always open
to musical geniuses, and many an evening men like
Hiller, Mendelssohn, David, Eckart, &c., came
there to play, while Madame Carus sang, and sang
most charmingly. I too was asked sometimes to
l lo My Autobiography
play at these evening parties. I see that Ernst gave
a concert at Leipzig, and no doubt his execution was
admirable. Still, I could not understand what
David meant when he declared that after hearing
Ernst he would throw his own instrument into the
fire.
Mendelssohn, who was delighted with Liszt—and
no one could judge him better than he—gave a
soiree in honour of him. About 400 people were
invited—I among the rest, being one of the tenors
who sang in the Oratorio that Hiller was then re¬
hearsing for the first performance. I think it was
the Destruction of Babylon. There was a complete
orchestra at Mendelssohn's party, and we heard a
symphony of Schubert (posthumous), Mendels¬
sohn's psalm " As the hart pants," and his overture
Meeresstille und gliicJcliche Fahrt. After that
there was supper for all the guests, and then fol¬
lowed a chorus from his St. Paul, and a triple con¬
certo of Bach, played on three pianofortes by Men¬
delssohn, Liszt, and Hiller. It was a difficult piece
—difficult to play and difficult to follow. Lastly,
Liszt played his new fantasia on Lucia di Lammer-
moor, and his arrangement of the Erlkonig. All
was really perfect; and hearing so much music, I
became more and more absorbed in it. I even gave
some concerts with Grabau, a great violoncellist, at
Merseburg, and at a Count Arnim's, a very rich
nobleman near Merseburg, who had invited Liszt
for one evening and paid him 100 ducats. This
School-Days at Leipzig ill
seemed at that time a very large sum, almost sense¬
less. As a ducat was about nine shillings, it was
after all only £45, which would not seem excessive
at present for an artist such as Liszt.
I also heard Thalberg at Leipzig. They all came
to see Mendelssohn, and I believe did their best to
please him. At that time my idea of devoting my¬
self altogether to the study of music became very
strong; and as Professor Carus married again, I pro¬
posed to leave Leipzig, and to enter the musical
school of Schneider at Dessau. But nothing came
of that, and I think on the whole it was as well.
While at school at Leipzig I had but little op¬
portunity of travelling, for my mother was always
anxious to have me home during the holidays, and
I was equally anxious to be with her and to see my
relations at Dessau. Generally I went in a wretched
carriage from Leipzig to Dessau. It was only seven
German miles (about thirty-five English miles), but
it took a whole day to get there; and during part
of the journey, when we had to cross the deep and
desert-like sands, walking on foot was much more
expeditious than sitting inside the carriage. But
then we paid only one thaler for the whole journey,
and sometimes, in order to save that, I walked on
foot the whole way. That also took me a whole day;
but when I tried it the first time, being then quite
young and rather delicate in health, I had to give
in about an hour before I came to Dessau, my legs
refusing to go further, and my muscles being
112 My Autobiography
cramped and stiff from exertion, I had to sit down
by the road. During one vacation I remember ex¬
ploring the valley of the Mulde with some other
boys. We travelled for about a fortnight from vil¬
lage to village, and lived in the simplest way. A
more ambitious journey I took in 1841 with a friend
of mine, Baron von Hagedorn. He was a curious
and somewhat mysterious character. He had been
brought up by a great-aunt of mine, to whom he
was entrusted as a baby. Ho one knew his parents,
but they must have been rich, for he possessed a
large fortune. He had a country place near Mu¬
nich, and he spent the greater part of the year in
travelling about, and amusing himself. He had
been brought up with my mother and other mem¬
bers of our family, and he took a very kind interest
in me. I see from my letters that in 1841 he
took me from Dessau to Coethen, Brunswick, and
Magdeburg. At Brunswick we saw the picture gal¬
lery, the churches, and the tomb of Schill, one of
the German volunteers in the War of Independence
against France. We also explored Hildesheim, saw
the rose-tree planted, as we were told, by Charle¬
magne; then proceeded to Gottingen, and saw its
famous library. We passed through Minden, where
the Fulda and Werra join, and arrived late at Cas-
sel. From Cassel we explored Wilhelmshohe, the
beautiful park where thirty years later Hapoleon
III was kept as a prisoner.
Hagedorn, with all his love of mystery and oc-
School-Days at Leipzig 113
casional exaggeration, was certainly a good friend
to me. He often gave me good advice, and was
more of a father to me than a mere friend. He
was a man of the world; and he forgot that I never
meant to be a man of the world, and therefore his
advice was not always what I wanted. He was
also a great friend of my cousin who was married
to a Prince of Dessau, and they had agreed among
themselves that I should go to the Oriental
Academy at Vienna, learn Oriental languages, and
then enter the diplomatic service. As there were
no children from the Prince's marriage, I was to
be adopted by him, and, as if the princely fortune
was not enough to tempt me, I was told that even a
wife had been chosen for me, and that I should
have a new name and title, after being adopted by
the Prince. To other young men this might have
seemed irresistible. I at once said no. It seemed
to interfere with my freedom, with my studies, with
my ideal of a career in life; in fact, though every¬
thing was presented to me by my cousin as on a
silver tray, I shook my head and remained true to
my first love, Sanskrit and all the rest. Hagedorn
could not understand this; he thought a brilliant
life preferable to the quiet life of a professor. Hot
so I. He little knew where true happiness was to
be found, and he was often in a very melancholy
mood. He did not live long, but I shall never for¬
get how much I owed him. When I went to Paris,
he allowed me to live in his rooms. They were,
114 My Autobiography
it is true, au cinquieme, but they were in the best
quarter of Paris, in the line Roy ale St. Honore,
opposite the Madeleine, and very prettily furnished.
This kept me from living in dusty lodgings in the
Quartier Latin, and the five flights of stairs may
have strengthened my lungs. I well remember
what it was when at the foot of the staircase I saw
that I had forgotten my handkerchief and had to
toil up again. But in those days one did not know
what it meant to be tired. "Whether my friends
grumbled, I cannot tell, but I myself pitied some
of them who were old and gouty when they arrived
at my door out of breath.
CHAPTEK IV
university
In order to enable me to go to tbe University, my
mother and sister moved to Leipzig and kept house
for me during all the time I was there—that is,
for two years and a half. In spite of the res angusta
domi, I enjoyed my student-life thoroughly, while
my home was made very agreeable by my mother
and sister. My mother was full of resource, and
she was wise enough not to interfere with my free¬
dom. My sister, who was about two years older
than myself, was most kind-hearted and devoted
both to me and to our mother. There was nothing
selfish in her, and we three lived together in perfect
love, peace, and harmony. My sister enjoyed what
little there was of society, whereas I kept sternly
aloof from it. She was much admired, and soon
became engaged to a young doctor, Dr. A. Krug,
the son of the famous professor of philosophy at
Leipzig, whose works, particularly his Dictionary of
Philosophy, hold a distinguished place in the history
of German philosophy. He was a thorough patriot,
and so public spirited that he thought it right to
leave a considerable sum of money to the Univer¬
sity, without making sufficient provision for his
115
n6 My Autobiography
children. ^However, the young married couple
lived happily at Chemnitz, and my sister was proud
in the possession of her children. It was the sud¬
den death of several of these children that broke her
heart and ruined her health; she died very young.
Standing by the grave of her children, she said to
me shortly before her death, " Half of me is dead
already, and lies buried there; the other half will
soon follow."
Of society, in the ordinary sense of the word, I
saw hardly anything. I am afraid I was rather a
bear, and declined even to invest in evening dress.
I joined a student club which formed part of the
Burschenschaft, but which in order to escape pros¬
ecution adopted the title of Gemeinschaft. I went
there in the evening to drink beer and smoke, and
I made some delightful acquaintances and friend¬
ships. What fine characters were there, often be¬
hind a very rough exterior! My dearest friend was
Prowe, of Thorn in East Prussia—so honest, so
true, so straightforward, so over-conscientious in the
smallest things. He was a classical scholar, and
later on entered the Prussian educational service.
As a master at the principal school at Thorn his
time was fully occupied, and of course he was cut
off there from the enlivening influences of literary
society. Still he kept up his interest in higher ques¬
tions, and published some extremely valuable books
on Copernicus, a native of Thorn, for which he
received the thanks of astronomers and historians,
University
117
and flattering testimonials from learned societies.
We met but seldom later in life, and my own life
in England was so busy and full tbat even our cor¬
respondence was not regular. But I met bim once
more at Ems with a charming wife, and decidedly
happy in his own sphere of activity. These early
friendships form the distant landscape of life on
which we like to dwell when the present ceases to
absorb all our thoughts. Our memory dwells on
them as a golden horizon, and there remains a con¬
stant yearning which makes us feel the incomplete¬
ness of this life. After all, the number of our true
friends is small; and yet how few even of that small
number remain with us for life. There are other
faces and other names that rise from beyond the
clouds which more and more divide us from our
early years.
There were some wild spirits among us who fret¬
ted at the narrow-minded policy which went by the
name of the Metternich system. Repression was
the panacea which Metternich recommended to all
the governments of Germany, large and small.
Eo doubt the system of keeping things quiet se¬
cured to Germany and to Europe at large a thirty
years' peace, but it could not prevent the accumula¬
tion of inflammable material which, after several
threatenings, burst forth at last in the conflagra¬
tion of 1848. Among my friends I remember
several who were ready for the wildest schemes in
order to have Germany united, respected abroad,
118 My Autobiography
and under constitutional government at home.
Splendid fellows they were, hut they either ended
their days within the walls of a prison, or had to
throw up everything and migrate to America.
"What has become of them? Some have risen to the
surface in America, others have yielded to the in¬
evitable and become peaceful citizens at home; nay,
I am grieved to say, have even accepted service
under Government to spy on their former friends
and fellow-dreamers. But not a few saw the whole
of their life wrecked either in prison or in poverty,
though they had done no wrong, and in many cases
were the finest characters it has been my good fort¬
une to know. They were before their time, the
fruit was not ripe as it was in 1871, but Germany
certainly lost some of her best sons in those miser¬
able years; and if my father escaped this political
persecution, it was probably due to the influence of
the reigning Duke and the Duchess, a Princess of
Prussia, who knew that he was not a dangerous man,
and not likely to blow up the German Diet.
I myself got a taste of prison life for the offence
of wearing the ribbon of a club which the police
regarded with disfavour. I cannot say that either
the disgrace or the discomfort of my two days'
durance vile weighed much with me, as my friends
were allowed free access to me, and came and drank
beer and smoked cigars in my cell—of course at my
expense—but what I dreaded was the loss of my
stipendium or scholarship, which alone enabled me
University
119
to continue my studies at Leipzig, and which, as
a rule, was forfeited for political offences. On my
release from prison I went to the Rector of the
University and explained to him the circumstances
of the case—how I had been arrested simply for
membership of a suspected club. I assured him
that I was innocent of any political propaganda, and
that the loss of my stipendium would entail my
leaving the University. Much to my relief, the old
gentleman replied: " I have heard nothing about
this; and if I do, how am I to know that it refers to
you, there are many Miillers in the University?"
Fortunately the distinctive prefix Max had not yet
been added to my name.
I must confess that I and my boon companions
were sometimes guilty of practices which in more
modern days, and certainly at Oxford or Cambridge,
would be far more likely to bring the culprits into
collision with the authorities than mere member¬
ship of societies in which comparatively harmless
political talk was indulged in.
Duelling was then, as it is now, a favourite pas¬
time among the students; and though not by nature
a brawler, I find that in my student days at Leipzig
I fought three duels, of two of which I carry the
marks to the present day.
I remember that on one occasion before the intro¬
duction of cabs we hired all the sedan-chairs in Leip¬
zig, with their yellow-coated porters, and went in
procession through the streets, much to the astonish-
12o My Autobiography
ment of the good citizens, and annoyance also, as
they were unable to hire any means of conveyance
till a peremptory stop was put to our fun. Not con¬
tent with this exploit, when the first cabs were in¬
troduced into Leipzig, thirty or forty being put on
the street at first, I and my friends secured the use
of all of them for the day, and proceeded out into
the country. The inhabitants who were eagerly
looking forward to a drive in one of the new con¬
veyances were naturally annoyed at finding them¬
selves forestalled, and the result was that a stop
was put to such freaks in future by the issue of a
police regulation that nobody was allowed to hire
more than two cabs at a time.
Yery innocent amusements, if perhaps foolish,
but very happy days all the same; and it must be
remembered that we had just emerged from the
strict discipline of a German school into the unre¬
stricted liberty of German university life.
It is in every respect a great jump from a Ger¬
man school to a German university. At school a
boy even in the highest form, has little choice. All
his lessons are laid down for him; he has to learn
what he is told, whether he likes it or not. Few
only venture on books outside the prescribed curric¬
ulum. There is an examination at the end of every
half-year, and a boy must pass it well in order to
get into a higher form. Boys at a public school
(gymnasium), if they cannot pass their examina¬
tion at the proper time, are advised to go to another
University
121
school, and to prepare for a career in which classical
languages are of less importance.
I must say at once that when I matriculated at
Leipzig, in the summer of 1841, I was still very
young and very immature. I had determined to
study philology, chiefly Greek and Latin, hut the
fare spread out by the professors was much too
tempting. I read Greek and Latin without diffi¬
culty; I often read classical authors without ever
attempting to translate them; I also wrote and
spoke Latin easily. Some of the professors lectured
in Latin, and at our academic societies Latin was
always spoken. I soon became a member of the
classical seminary under Gottfried Hermann, and
of the Latin Society under Professor Haupt. Ad¬
mission to these seminaries and societies was ob¬
tained by submitting essays, and it was no doubt a
distinction to belong to them. It was also useful,
for not only had we to write essays and discuss them
with the other members, generally teachers, and
with the professor, but we could also get some use¬
ful advice from the professor for our private studies.
In that respect the German universities do very
little for the students, unless one has the good fort¬
une to belong to one of these societies. The young
men are let loose, and they can choose whatever
lectures they want. I still have my Collegien-Buch,
in which every professor has to attest what lectures
one has attended. The number of lectures on vari¬
ous subjects which I attended is quite amazing, and
122 My Autobiography
I should have attended still more if the honorarium
had not frightened me away. Every professor
lectured publice and privatim, and for the more
important courses, four lectures a week, he charged
ten shillings, for more special courses less or nothing.
This seems little, hut it was often too much for me;
and if one added these honoraria to the salary of a
popular professor, his income was considerable, and
was more than the income of most public servants.
I have known professors who had four or five hun¬
dred auditors. This gave them £250 twice a year,
and that, added to their salary, was considered a
good income at that time. All this has been much
changed. Salaries have been raised, and likewise
the honoraria, so that I well remember the case of
Professor von Savigny, who, when he was chosen
Minister of Justice at Berlin, declared that he would
gladly accept if only his salary was raised to what
his income had been as Professor of Law. Of
course, professors of Arabic or Sanskrit were badly
off, and Privatdocenten (tutors) fared still worse,
but the professores ordinarii, particularly if they
lectured on an obligatory subject and were likewise
examiners, were very well off. In fact, it struck me
sometimes as very unworthy of them to keep a
famulus, a student who had to tell every one who
wished to hear a distinguished professor once or
twice, that he would not allow him to come a third
time.
One great drawback of the professorial system is
University 123
certainly the small measure of personal advice that
a student may get from the professors. Unless he
is known to them personally, or has gained admis¬
sion to their societies or seminaries, the young stu¬
dent or freshman is quite bewildered by the rich
fare in the shape of lectures that is placed before
him. Some students, no doubt, particularly in their
early terms, solve this difficulty by attending none
at all, and there is no force to make them do so, ex¬
cept the examinations looming in the distance. But
there are many young men most anxious to learn,
only they do not know where to begin. I open my
old Collegien-Buch and I find that in the first term
or Semester I attended the following lectures, and
I may say I attended them regularly, took careful
notes, and read such books as were recommended
by the professors. I find
1. The first book of Thucydides . Gottfried Hermann.
2. On Seenie Antiquities . . The same.
3. On Propertius . . . P. M. Haupt.
4. History of German Literature The same.
5. The Ranae of Aristophanes . Stallbaum-
6. Disputatorium (in Latin) . Nobbe.
7. Aesthetics .... Weisse.
8. Anthropology .... Lotze.
9. Systems of Harmonic Compo¬
sition Fink.
10. Hebrew Grammar . . . Fiirst.
11. Demosthenes .... Westermann.
12. Psychology .... Heinroth.
This was enough for the summer half-year. Ex¬
cept Greek and Latin, the other subjects were en-
1i\ My Autobiography
tirely new to me, and what I wanted was to get an
idea of what I should like to study. It may be
interesting to add the other Semesters as far as I
have them in my Collegien-Buch.
13. Aeschyli Persae . . . Hermann.
14. On Criticism .... The same.
15. German Grammar . . . Haupt.
16. Walther von der Vogelweide . The same.
17. Tacitus, Agricola, and De Ora-
toribus .... The same.
18. On Hegel .... Weisse.
19. Disputatorium (Latin) . . Nobbe.
20. Modern History . . . Waehsmuth.
21. Sanskrit Grammar . . Brockhaus.
22. Latin Society .... Haupt.
Then follows the summer term of 1842.
23. Pindar Hermann.
24. Nibelungen .... Haupt.
25. Nala ..... Brockhaus.
26. History of Oriental Literature The same.
27. Arabic Grammar . . . Fleischer.
28. Latin Society .... Haupt.
29. Plauti Trinumu6 . . . Becker.
Winter term, 1842.
30. Prabodha Chandrodaya . Brockhaus.
31. History of Indian Literature . The same.
32. Ax-istophanes' Yespae . . Hermann.
33. Plauti Rudens . . . The same.
34. Greek Syntax .... The same.
35. Juvenal Becker.
36. Metaphysics and Logic . . Weisse.
37. Philosophy of History . . The same.
University
125
Hermann & Klotze.
Haupt.
Weisse.
Drobisch.
38. Greek and Latin Seminary
39. Latin Society .
40. Philosophical Society
41. Philosophical Society
Summer term, 1843.
42. Greek and Latin Seminary
43. Philosophical Society
44. Philosophical Society
45. Soma-deva
46. Hitopadesa
47. History of Greeks and Romans Wachsmuth.
48. History of Civilization . . The same.
49. History after the Fifteenth
Century .... Flathe.
50. History of Ancient Philosophy Niedner.
Hermann & Klotze.
Drobisch.
Weisse.
Brockhaus.
The same.
Winter term, 1843-4.
51. Rig-veda
52. Elementa Persica .
53. Greek and Latin Seminary
Brockhaus.
Fleischer.
Hermann & Klotze.
Here my Collegien-Buch breaks off, the fact be¬
ing that I was preparing to go to Berlin to hear
the lectures of Bopp and Schelling.
It will be clear from the above list that I certainly
attempted too much. I ought either to have de¬
voted all my time to classical studies exclusively, or
carried on my philosophical studies more systemati¬
cally. I confess that, delighted as I was with Gott¬
fried Hermann and Haupt as my guides and teach¬
ers in classics, I found little that could rouse my
enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature, and I
126 My Autobiography
always required a dose of that to make me work
hard. Everything seemed to me to have been done,
and there was no virgin soil left to the plough, no
ruins on which to try one's own spade. Hermann
and Haupt gave me work to do, but it was all in
the critical line—the genealogical relation of vari¬
ous MSS., or, again, the peculiarities of certain
poets, long before I had fully grasped their general
character. What Latin vowels could or could not
form elision in Horace, Propertius, or Ovid, was a
subject that cost me much labour, and yet left very
small results as far as I was personally concerned.
One clever conjecture, or one indication to show
that one MS. was dependent on the other, was re¬
warded with a Doctissime or Excellentissime, but
a paper on Aeschylus and his view of a divine
government of the world received but a nodding
approval.
They certainly taught their pupils what accuracy
meant; they gave us the new idea that MSS. are
not everything, unless their real value has been dis¬
covered first by finding the place which they occupy
in the pedigree of the MSS. of every author. They
also taught us that there are mistakes in MSS. which
are inevitable, and may safely be left to conjectural
emendation; that MSS. of modern date may be and
often are more valuable than more ancient MSS.,
for the simple reason that they were copied from
a still more ancient MS., and that often a badly
written and hardly legible MS. proves more helpful
University
127
than others written by a calligraphist, because it is
the work of a scholar who copied for himself and
not for the market. All these things we learnt and
learnt by practical experience under Hermann and
Haupt, but what we failed to acquire was a large
knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, of the
character of each author and of the spirit which
pervaded their works. I ought to have read in
Latin, Cicero, Tacitus, and Lucretius; in Greek,
Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle; but
as I read only portions of them, my knowledge of
the men themselves and their objects in life re¬
mained very fragmentary. For instance, my real
acquaintance with Plato and Aristotle was confined
to a few dialogues of the former and some of the
logical works of the latter. The rest I learnt from
such works as Hitter and Preller's Historia Philoso-
phiae Graecae et Eomanae ex fontium locis con-
texta, and from the very useful lectures of Niedner
on the history of ancient philosophy. However, I
thought I had to do what my professors told me,
and shaped my reading so that they should approve
of my work.
This must not be understood as in any way dis¬
paraging my teachers. Such an idea never entered
my head at the time. People have no idea in Eng¬
land what kind of worship is paid by German stu¬
dents to their professors. To find fault with
them or to doubt their ipse dixit never entered our
minds. What they said of other classical scholars
128 My Autobiography
from whom they differed, as Hermann did from
Otfried Miiller, or Haupt from Orelli, was gospel,
and remained engraved on our memory for a long
time. Once when attending Hermann's lectures,
another student who was sitting at the same table
with me made disrespectful remarks about old Her¬
mann. I asked him to be quiet, and when he went
on with his foolish remarks, I could only stop him
by calling him out. As soon as the challenge was
accepted he had of course to be quiet, and a few
days after we fought our duel without much dam¬
age to either of us. I only mention this because it
shows what respect and admiration we felt for our
professor, also because it exemplifies the usefulness
of duelling in a German university, where after a
challenge not another word can be said or violence
be threatened even by the rudest undergraduate. A
duel for a Greek conjecture may seem very absurd,
but in duels of this kind all that is wanted is really
a certain knowledge of fencing, care being taken
that nothing serious shall happen. And yet, though
that is so, the feeling of a possible danger is there,
and keeps up a certain etiquette and a certain proper
behaviour among men taken from all strata of so¬
ciety. Hor can I quite deny that when I went in
the morning to a beautiful wood in the neighbour¬
hood of Leipzig, certain misgivings were difficult
to suppress. I saw myself severely wounded, pos¬
sibly killed, by my antagonist, and carried to a house
where my mother and sister were looking for me.
University
129
This went off when I met the large assembly of
students, beautifully attired in their club uniforms,
the beer barrels pushed up on one side, the surgeon
and his instruments waiting on the other. There
were ever so many, thirty or forty couples I think,
waiting to fight their duels that morning. Some
fenced extremely well, and it was a pleasure to look
on; and when one's own turn came, all one thought
of was how to stand one's ground boldly, and how
to fence well. Some of the combatants came on
horseback or in carriages, and there was a small
river close by to enable us to escape if the police
should have heard of our meeting. For popular as
these duels are, they are forbidden and punished,
and the severest punishment seemed always to be
the loss of our uniforms, our arms, our flags, and
our barrels of beer. However, we escaped all inter¬
ference this time, and enjoyed our breakfast in the
forest thoroughly, nothing happening to disturb the
hilarity of the morning.
Hot being satisfied with what seemed to me a
mere chewing of the cud in Greek and Latin, I
betook myself to systematic philosophy, and even
during the first terms read more of that than of
Plato and Aristotle. I belonged to the philosophi¬
cal societies of Weisse, of Drobisch, and of Lotze,
a membership in each of which societies entailed a
considerable amount of reading and writing.
At Leipzig, Professor Drobisch represented the
school of Herbart, which prided itself on its clear-
130 My Autobiography
ness and logical accuracy, but was naturally less at¬
tractive to the young spirits at the University who
had heard of Hegel's Idea and looked to the dia¬
lectic process as the solution of all difficulties. I
wished to know what it all meant, for I was not
satisfied with mere words. There is hardly a word
that has so many meanings as Idea, and I doubt
whether any of the raw recruits, just escaped from
school, and unacquainted with the history of philos¬
ophy, could have had any idea of what Hegel's
Idea was meant for. Yet they talked about it very
eloquently and very positively over their glasses of
beer; and anybody who came from Berlin and could
speak mysteriously or rapturously about the Idea
and its evolution by the dialectic process, was lis¬
tened to with silent wonder by the young Saxons,
who had been brought up on Kant and Krug. The
Hegelian fever was still very high at that time. It
is true Hegel himself was dead (1831), and though
he was supposed to have declared on his deathbed
that he left only one true disciple, and that that
disciple had misunderstood him, to be a Hegelian
was considered a sine qua non, not only among
philosophers, but quite as much among theologians,
men of science, lawyers, artists, in fact, in every
branch of human knowledge, at least in Prussia.
If Christianity in its Protestant form was the
state-religion of the kingdom, Hegelianism was its
state-philosophy. Beginning with the Minister of
Instruction down to the village schoolmaster, every-
University
body claimed to be a Hegelian, and this was sup¬
posed to be the best road to advancement. Though
Altenstein, who was then at the head of the Minis¬
try of Instruction, began to waver in his allegiance
to Hegel, even he could not resist the rush of pub¬
lic and of official opinion. It was he who, when a
new professor of philosophy was recommended to
him either by Hegel himself or by some of his fol¬
lowers, is reported to have said: " Gentlemen, I
have read some of the young man's books, and I
cannot understand a word of them. However, you
are the best judges, only allow me to say that you
remind me a little of the French officer who told
his tailor to make his breeches as tight as possible,
and dismissed him with the words: 'Enfin, si je peux
y entrer, je ne les prendrai pas.' This seems to me
very much what you say of your young philosopher.
If I can understand his books, I am not to take
him." This Hegelian fever was very much like what
we have passed through ourselves at the time of the
Darwinian fever; Darwin's natural evolution was
looked upon very much like Hegel's dialectic proc¬
ess, as the general solvent of all difficulties. The
most egregious nonsense was passed under that
name, as it was under the name of evolution. Hegel
knew very well what he meant, so did Darwin. But
the empty enthusiasm of his followers became so
wild that Darwin himself, the most humble of all
men, became quite ashamed of it. The master, of
course, was not responsible for the folly of his
132 My Autobiography
so-called disciples, but the result was inevitable.
After the bow had been stretched to the utmost, a
reaction followed, and in the case of Hegelianism,
a complete collapse. Even at Berlin the popularity
of Hegelianism came suddenly to an end, and after
a time no truly scientific man liked to be called a
Hegelian. These sudden collapses in Germany are
very instructive. As long as a German professor
is at the head of affairs and can do something for
his pupils, his pupils are very loud in their encomi¬
ums, both in public and in private. They not only
exalt him, but help to belittle all who differ from
him. So it was with Hegel, so it was at a later time
with Bopp, and Curtius, and other professors, par¬
ticularly if they had the ear of the Minister of Edu¬
cation. But soon after the death of these men, par¬
ticularly if another influential star was rising, the
change of tone was most sudden and most surpris¬
ing; even the sale of their books dwindled down,
and they were referred to only as landmarks, show¬
ing the rapid advance made by living celebrities.
Perhaps all this cannot be helped, as long as human
nature is what it is, but it is nevertheless painful
to observe.
I had the good fortune of becoming acquaint¬
ed with Hegelianism through Professor Christian
Weisse at Leipzig, who, though he was considered
a Hegelian, was a very sober Hegelian, a critic quite
as much as an admirer of Hegel. He had a very
small audience, because his manner of lecturing was
certainly most trying and tantalizing. But by being
University
*33
brought into personal contact with him one was
able to get help from him wherever he could give
it. Though Weisse was convinced of the truth of
Hegel's Dialectic Method, he often differed from
him in its application. This Dialectic Method con¬
sisted in showing how thought is constantly and ir¬
resistibly driven from an affirmative to a negative
position, then reconciles the two opposites, and from
that point starts afresh, repeating once more the
same process. Pure being, for instance, from which
Hegel's ideal evolution starts, was shown to be the
same as empty being, that is to say, nothing, and
both were presented as identical, and in their iden¬
tity giving us the new concept of Becoming (JVer-
clen), which is being and not-being at the same
time. All this may appear to the lay reader rather
obscure, but could not well be passed over.
So far Weisse followed the great thinker, and
I possess still, in his own writing, the picture of a
ladder on which the intellect is represented as climb¬
ing higher and higher from the lowest concept to
the highest—a kind of Jacob's ladder on which the
categories, like angels of God, ascend and descend
from heaven to earth. We must remember that the
true Hegelian regarded the Ideas as the thoughts
of God. Hegel looked upon this evolution of
thought as at the same time the evolution of Being,
the Idea being the only thing that could be said to
be truly real. In order to understand this, we must
remember that the historical key to Hegel's Idea
134 My Autobiography
was really the Neo-Platonic or Alexandrian Logos.
But of this Logos we ignorant undergraduates, sit¬
ting at the feet of Prof. Weisse, knew absolutely
nothing, and even if the Idea was sometimes placed
before us as the Absolute, the Infinite, or the Divine,
it was to us, at least to most of us, myself included,
vox et praeterea nihil. We watched the wonderful
evolutions and convolutions of the Idea in its Dia¬
lectic development, but of the Idea itself or himself
we had no idea whatever. It was all darkness, a vast
abyss, and we sat patiently and wrote down what
we could catch and comprehend of the Professor's
explanations, but the Idea itself we never could lay
hold of. It would not have been so difficult if the
Professor had spoken out more boldly. But when¬
ever he came to the relation of the Idea to what we
mean by God, there was always even with him, who
was a very honest man, a certain theological hesita¬
tion. Ilegel himself seems to shrink occasionally
from the consequence that the Idea really stands in
the place of God, and that it is in the self-conscious
spirit of humanity that the ideal God becomes first
conscious of himself. Still, that is the last word of
Hegel's philosophy, though others maintain that
the Idea with Hegel was the thought of God, and
that human thought was but a repetition of that
divine thought. With Hegel there is first the evo¬
lution of the Idea in the pure ether of logic from
the simplest to the highest category. Then follows
Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, that is, the evolu-
University 135
tion of the Idea in nature, the Idea having by the
usual dialectic process negatived itself and entered
into its opposite (Anderssein), passing through a
new process of space and time, and ending in the
self-conscious human soul. Thus nature and spirit
were represented as dominated by the Idea in its
logical development. Nature was one manifestation
of the Idea, History the other, and it became the
task of the philosopher to discover its traces both in
the progress of nature and in the historical progress
of thought.
And here it was where the strongest protests be¬
gan to be heard. Physical Science revolted, and His¬
torical Research soon joined the rebellion. Profess¬
or Weisse also, in spite of his great admiration for
Hegel, protested in his Lectures against this idealiza¬
tion of history, and showed how often Hegel, if he
could not find the traces he was looking for in the
historical development of the Idea, was misled by
his imperfect knowledge of facts, and discovered
what was not there, but what he felt convinced
ought to have been there. Nowhere has this be¬
come so evident as in Hegel's Philosophy of Re¬
ligion. The conception was grand of seeing in the
historical development of religion a repetition of
the Dialectic Progress of the Idea. But facts are
stubborn things, and do not yield even to the su¬
preme command of the Idea. Besides, if the histori¬
cal facts of religion were really such as the Dialec¬
tic Process of the Idea required, these facts are no
136 My Autobiography
longer what they were before 1831, and what would
become then of the Idea which, as he wrote in his
preface to his Metaphysics, could not possibly be
changed to please the new facts? It was this part
of Weisse's lectures, it was the protest of the histori¬
cal conscience against the demands of the Idea, that
interested me most. I see as clearly the formal
truth as the material untruth of Hegel's philosophy.
The thorough excellence of its method and the des¬
perate baldness of its results, strike me with equal
force. Though I did not yet know what kind of
thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I
knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy
and of Oriental religions to venture to criticize
Hegel's representation and disposition of the facts
themselves. I could not accept the answer of my
more determined Hegelian friends, Tant pis pour
les faits, but felt more and more the old antagon¬
ism between what ought to be and what is, between
the reasonableness of the Idea, and the unreason¬
ableness of facts. I found a strong supporter in
a young Privat-Docent who at that time began his
brilliant career at Leipzig, Dr. Lotze. He had made
a special study of mathematics and physical science,
and felt the same disagreement between facts and
theories in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature which
had struck me so much in reading his Philosophy of
Peligion. I joined his philosophical society, and I
lately found among my old papers several essays
which I had written for our meetings. They amused
University
*37
me very much, but I should be sorry to see them
published now. It is curious that after many
years I, as a Delegate of the University Press
at Oxford, was instrumental in getting the first
English translation of Lotze's Metaphysics pub¬
lished in England; and it is still more curious that
Mark Pattison, the late Rector of Lincoln, should
have opposed it with might and main as a useless
book which would never pay its expenses. I stood
up for my old teacher, and I am glad to say to the
honour of English philosophers, that the transla¬
tion passed through several editions, and helped not
a little to establish Lotze's position in England and
America. He died in 1881.
It is extraordinary how the young minds in Ger¬
man universities survive the storms and fogs
through which they have to pass in their academic
career. I confess I myself felt quite bewildered for
a time, and began to despair altogether of my rea¬
soning powers. Why should I not be able to un¬
derstand, I asked myself, what other people seemed
to understand without any effort? We speak the
same language, why should we not be able to think
the same thought? I took refuge for a time in his¬
tory—the history of language, of religion, and of
philosophy. There was a very learned professor at
Leipzig, Dr. Niedner, who lectured on the History
of Greek Philosophy, and whose Manual for the
History of Philosophy has been of use to me
through the whole of my life. Socrates said of
138 My Autobiography
Heraclitus: " What I have understood of his book
is excellent, and I suppose therefore that even what
I have not understood is so too; hut one must be a
Deli an swimmer not to be drowned in it." I tried
for a long time to follow this advice with regard
to Hegel and Weisse, and though disheartened did
not despair. I understood some of it, why should
not the rest follow in time? Thus, I never gave up
the study of philosophy at Leipzig and afterwards
at Berlin, and my first contributions to philosophical
journals date from that early time, when I was a
student in the University of Leipzig. My very ear¬
liest, though very unsuccessful, struggles to find an
entrance into the mysteries of philosophy date even
from my school-days.
I remember some years before, when I was quite
young, perhaps no more than fifteen years of age,
listening with bated breath to some professors at
Leipzig who were talking very excitedly about phi¬
losophy in my presence. I had no idea what was
meant by philosophy, still less could I follow when
they began to discuss Kant's Kritik der reinen Ver-
nunft. One of my friends, whom I looked up to as
a great authority, confessed that he had read the
book again and again, but could not understand the
whole of it. My curiosity was much excited, and
once, while he was taking a walk with me, I asked
him very timidly what Kant's book was about, and
how a man could write a book that other men could
not understand. He tried to explain what Kant's
University
*39
book was about, but it was all perfect darkness be¬
fore my eyes; I was trying to lay hold of a word
here and there, but it all floated before my mind like
mist, without a single ray of light, without any
way out of all that maze of words. But when at last
he said he would lend me the book, I fell on it and
pored over it hour after hour. The result was the
same. My little brain could not take in the simplest
ideas of the first chapters—that space and time were
nothing by themselves; that we ourselves gave the
form of space and time to what was given us by the
senses. But though defeated I would not give in;
I tried again and again, but of course it was all in
vain. The words were here and I could construe
them, but there was nothing in my mind which the
words could have laid hold on. It was like rain
on hard soil, it all ran off, or remained standing in
puddles and muddles on my poor brain.
At last I gave it up in despair, but I had fully
made up my mind that as soon as I went to the
University I would find out what philosophy really
was, and what Kant meant by saying that space and
time were forms of our sensuous intuition. I see
that, accordingly, in the summer of 1841, I attend¬
ed lectures on Aesthetics by Professor Weisse, on
Anthropology by Lotze, and on Psychology by Pro¬
fessor Heinroth, and I slowly learnt to distinguish
between what was going on within me, and what I
had been led to imagine existed outside me, or at
least quite independent of me. But before I had
140 My Autobiography
got a firm grasp of Kant, of his forms of intuition,
and the categories of the understanding, I was
thrown into Hegelianism. This, too, was at first
entire darkness, but I was not disheartened. I at¬
tended Professor Weisse's lectures on Hegel in the
winter of 1841-2, and again in the winter of
1842-3 I attended his lectures on Logic and Meta¬
physics, and on the Philosophy of History. He took
an interest in me, and I felt most strongly attracted
by him. Soon after I joined his Philosophical So¬
ciety, and likewise that of Professor Drobisch. In
these societies every member, when his turn came,
had to write an essay and defend it against the pro¬
fessor and the other members of the society. All this
was very helpful, hut it was not till I had heard a
course of lectures on the History of Philosophy, by
Professor Miedner, that my interest in Philosophy
became strong and healthy. "While Weisse was a
leading Hegelian philosopher, and Drobisch repre¬
sented the opposite philosophy of Herbart, Kiedner
was purely historical, and this appealed most to my
taste. Still, my philosophical studies remained very
disjointed. At last I was admitted to Lotze's Philo¬
sophical Society also, and here we chiefly read and
discussed Kant's Kritik. Lotze was then quite a
young man, undecided as yet himself between
physical science and pure philosophy.
Weisse was certainly the most stirring lecturer,
but his delivery was fearful. He did not read his
lectures, as many professors did, hut would deliver
University 141
them extempore. He had no command of language,
and there was a pause after almost every sentence.
He was really thinking out the problem while he
was lecturing; he was constantly repeating his sen¬
tences, and any new thought that crossed his mind
would carry him miles away from his subject. It
happened sometimes in these rhapsodies that he con¬
tradicted himself, but when I walked home with
him after his lecture to a village near Leipzig
where he lived, he would readily explain how it
happened, how he meant something quite different
from what he had said, or what I had understood.
In fact he would give the whole lecture over again,
only much more freely and more intelligibly. I
was fully convinced at that time that Hegel's phi¬
losophy was the final solution of all problems; I
only hesitated about his philosophy of history as ap¬
plied to the history of religion. I could not bring
myself to admit that the history of religion, nor
even the history of philosophy as we know it from
Thales to Kant, was really running side by side
with his Logic, showing how the leading concepts
of the human mind, as elaborated in the Logic, had
found successive expression in the history and de¬
velopment of the schools of philosophy as known
to us. Weisse was strong both in his analysis of
concepts and in his knowledge of history, and
though he taught Hegel as a faithful interpreter,
he always warned us against trusting too much in
the parallelism between Logic and Llistory. Study
142 My Autobiography
the writings of the good philosophers, he would
say, and then see whether they will or will not fit
into the Procrustean bed of Hegel's Logic. And
this was the best lesson he could have given to
young men. How well founded and necessary the
warning was I found out myself, the more I studied
the religion and philosophies of the East, and then
compared what I saw in the original documents with
the account given by Hegel in his Philosophy of
Religion. It is quite true that Hegel at the time
when he wrote, could not have gained a direct or
accurate knowledge of the principal religions of the
East. But what I could not help seeing was that
what Hegel represented as the necessity in the
growth of religious thought, was far away from the
real growth, as I had watched it in some of the
sacred books of these religions. This shook my
belief in the correctness of Hegel's fundamental
principles more than anything else.
At that time Herbart's philosophy, as taught by
Drobisch at Leipzig, came to me as a most useful
antidote. The chief object of that philosophy is,
as is well known, the analysing and clearing, so to
speak, of our concepts. This was exactly what I
wanted, only that occupied as I was with the prob¬
lems of language, I at once translated the object of
his philosophy into a definition of words. Hence¬
forth the object of my own philosophical occupa¬
tions was the accurate definition of every word.
All words, such as reason, pure reason, mind?
University 143
thought, were carefully taken to pieces and traced
hack, if possible, to their first birth, and then
through their further developments. My interest
in this analytical process soon took an historical,
that is etymological, character in so far as I tried
to find out why any words should now mean ex¬
actly what, according to our definition, they ought
to mean. For instance, in examining such words
as Vernunft or Verstand, a little historical retro¬
spect showed that their distinction as reason and
understanding was quite modern, and chiefly due to
a scientific definition given and maintained by the
Kantian school of philosophy. Of course every
generation has a right to define its philosophical
terms, but from an historical point of view Kant
might have used with equal right Vernunft for
Ver stand, and Ver stand for Vernunft. Etymo-
logically or historically both words have much the
same meaning. Vernunft, from Vernehmen, meant
originally no more than perception, while Ver stand
meant likewise perception, but soon came to imply
a kind of understanding, even a kind of technical
knowledge, though from a purely etymological
stand-point it had nothing that fitted it more for
carrying the meaning, which is now assigned to it
in German in distinction to Vernunft, than un¬
derstanding had as distinguished from reason. It
requires, of course, a very minute historical re¬
search to trace the steps by which such words as
reason and understanding diverge in different di-
144 My Autobiography
reetions, in the language of the people and in phil¬
osophical parlance. This teaches us a very im¬
portant distinction, namely that between the popu¬
lar development of the meaning of a word, and its
meaning as defined and asserted by a philosopher
or by a poet in the plenitude of his power. Ety¬
mological definition is very useful for the first stages
in the history of a word. It is useful to know, for
instance, that deus, God, meant originally bright,
bright whether applied to sky, sun, moon, stars,
dawn, morning, dayspring, spring of the year, and
many other bright objects in nature, that it thus
assumed a meaning common to them all, splendid,
or heavenly, beneficent, powerful, so that when in
the Yeda already we find a number of heavenly
bodies, or of terrestrial bodies, or even of periods of
time called Devas, this word has assumed a more
general, more comprehensive, and more exalted
meaning. It did not yet mean what the Greeks
called OeoL or gods, but it meant something com¬
mon to all these 6eoC, and thus could naturally rise
to express what the Greeks wanted to express by
that word. There was as yet no necessity for de¬
fining deva or #eo?, when applied to what was
meant by gods, but of course the most opposite
meanings had clustered round it. "While a philo¬
sophical Greek would maintain that 0eo? meant
what was one and never many, a poetical Greek or
an ordinary Greek would hold that it meant what
was by nature many. But while in such a case
University
philosophical analysis and historical genealogy
would support each other, there are ever so many
cases where etymological analysis is as hopeless as
logical analysis. Who is to define romantic, in
such expressions as romantic literature. Etymo-
logically we know that romantic goes back finally
to Rome, but the mass of incongruous meanings
that have been thrown at random into the caldron
of that word, is so great that no definition could
be contrived to comprehend them all. And how
should we define Gothic or Romanic architecture,
remembering that as no Goths had anything to do
with pointed arches, neither were any Romans re¬
sponsible for the flat roofs of the German churches
of the Saxon emperors.
Enough to show what I meant when I said that
Professor Drobisch, in his Lectures on Herbart,
gave one great encouragement in the special work
in which I was already engaged as a mere student,
the Science of Language and Etymology. If Her¬
bart declared philosophy to consist in a thorough
examination (Bearbeitung) of concepts, or con¬
ceptual knowledge, my answer was, Only let it be
historical, nay, in the beginning, etymological; I
was not so foolish as to imagine that a word as used
at present, meant what it meant etymologically.
Deus no longer meant brilliant, but it should be
the object of the true historian of language to prove
how Deus, having meant originally brilliant, came
to mean what it means now.
146 My Autobiography
For a time I thought of becoming a philosopher,
and that sounded so grand that the idea of prepar¬
ing for a mere schoolmaster, teaching Greek and
Latin, seemed to me more and more too narrow a
sphere. Soon, however, while dreaming of a chair
of philosophy at a German University, I began to
feel that I must know something special, something
that no other philosopher knew, and that induced
me to learn Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian. I had
only heard what we call in German the chiming,
not the striking of the bells of Indian philosophy;
I had read Frederick Schlegel's explanatory book
Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808),
and looked into Windischmann's Die Philosophie
im Fortgange der Weltgeschichte (1827-1834).
These books are hardly opened now—they are anti¬
quated, and more than antiquated; they are full of
mistakes as to facts, and mistakes as to the conclu¬
sions drawn from them. But they had ushered new
ideas into the world of thought, and they left on
many, as they did on me, that feeling which the dig¬
ger who prospects for minerals is said to have, that
there must be gold beneath the surface, if people
would only dig. That feeling was very vague as
yet, and might have been entirely deceptive, nor did
I see my way to go beyond the point reached by
these two dreamers or explorers. The thought re¬
mained in the rubbish-chamber of my mind, and
though forgotten at the time, broke forth again
when there was an opportunity. It was a fortunate
University
H7
coincidence that at that very time, in the winter of
1841, a new professorship was founded at Leipzig
and given to Professor Brockhaus. Uncertain as
I was about the course I had to follow in my studies,
I determined to see what there was to he learnt in
Sanskrit. There was a charm in the unknown, and,
I must confess, a charm also in studying something
which my friends and fellow students did not know.
I called on Professor Brockhaus, and found that
there were only two other students to attend his
lectures, one Spiegel, who already knew the ele¬
ments of Sanskrit, and who is still alive in Erlan-
gen,1 as a famous professor of Sanskrit and Zend,
though no longer lecturing, and another, Klengel;
both several years my seniors, but both extremely
amiable to their younger fellow student. Ivlengel
was a scholar, a philosopher, and a musician, and
though after a term or two he had to give up his study
of Sanskrit, he was very useful to me by his good ad¬
vice. He encouraged me and praised me for my
progress in Sanskrit, which was no doubt more rapid
than his own, and he confirmed me in my conviction
that something might be made of Sanskrit by the
philologist and by the philosopher. It should not
be forgotten that at that time there was a strong
prejudice against Sanskrit among classical scholars.
The number of men who stood up for it, though it
included names such as W. von Humboldt, F. and
A. W. von Schlegel, was still very small. Even
1 Herr Geheimrath von Spiegel now lives at Munich.
148 My Autobiography
Herder's and Goethe's prophetic words produced
little effect. It is said that when the Government
had been persuaded, chiefly by the two Humboldts,
to found a chair of Sanskrit at the University of
Wiirzburg, and had nominated Bopp as its first
occupant, the philological faculty of the University
protested against such a desecration, and the ap¬
pointment fell through. It is true, no doubt, that
in their first enthusiasm the students of Sanskrit had
uttered many exaggerated opinions. Sanskrit was
represented as the mother of all languages, instead
of being the elder sister of the Aryan family. The
beginning of all language, of all thought, of all re¬
ligion was traced back to India, and when Greek
scholars were told that Zeus existed in the Yeda
under the name of Dyaus, there was a great flutter
in the dovecots of classical scholarship. Many of
these enthusiastic utterances had afterwards to be
toned down. IIow we did enjoy those enthusiastic
days, which even in their exaggerated hopes were
not without some use. Problems such as the begin¬
ning of language, of thought, of mythology and
religion, were started with youthful hope that the
Yeda -would solve them all, as if the Yedic Rishis
had been present at the first outburst of roots, of
concepts, nay, that like Pelops and other descend¬
ants of Zeus, those Yedic poets had enjoyed daily
intercourse with the gods, and had been present at
the mutilation of Ouranos, or at the over-eating of
Kronos. We may be ashamed to-day of some of
University
149
the dreams of the early spring of man's sojourn on
earth, but they were enchanting dreams, and all
our thoughts of man's nature and destiny on earth
were tinged with the colours of a morning that
threw light over the grey darkness which preceded
it. It was delightful to see that Dyaus meant origi¬
nally the bright sky, something actually seen, but
something that had to become something unseen.
All knowledge, whether individual or possessed by
mankind at large, must have begun with what the
senses can perceive, before it could rise to signify
something unperceived by the senses. Only after
the blue aether had been perceived and named, was
it possible to conceive and speak of the sky as active,
as an agent, as a god. Dyaus or Zeus might thus
be called the most sublime, he who resides in the
aether, aldepi vaicov v\jri£vyo<;, the heavenly one, or
ovpdvio9 xnraTo<i and in^oTo?, the highest, and at
last Iupiter Optimus Maximus, a name applied
even to the true God. When Zeus had once become
like the sky, all seeing or omniscient (eV6i|rto?),
would he not naturally be supposed to see, not only
the good, but the evil deeds of men also, nay, their
very thoughts, whether pure or criminal? And if
so, would he not be the avenger of evil, the watch¬
er of oaths (op/ctos), the protector of the helpless
(t/cecrio?)? Yet, if conceived, as for a long time all
the gods were conceived and could only be con¬
ceived, namely, as human in their shape, should we
not necessarily get that strange amalgamation of a
150 My Autobiography
human being doing superhuman work—hurling the
thunderbolt, shouting in thunder, hidden by dark
clouds, and smiling in the serene blue of the sky
with its brilliant scintillations? All this and much
more became perfectly intelligible, the step from
the visible to the invisible, from the perceived to
the conceived, from nature to nature's gods, and
from nature's god to a more sublime unseen and
spiritual power. All this seemed to pass before our
very eyes in the Veda, and then to be reflected in
Ilomer and Pindar.
Some details of this restored picture of the world
of gods and men in early times, nay, in the very
spring of time, may have to be altered, but the pict¬
ure, the eidyllion remained, and nothing could curb
the adventurous spirit and keep it from pushing for¬
ward and trying to do what seemed to others almost
impossible, namely, to watch the growth of the hu¬
man mind as reflected in the petrifactions of lan¬
guage. Language itself spoke to us with a different
voice, and a formerly unsuspected meaning.
We knew, for instance, that ewig meant eternal,
but whence eternal. Nothing eternal was ever seen,
and it seemed to the philosopher that eternal could
be expressed by a negation only, by a negation of
what was temporary. But we now learnt that ewig
was derived in word and therefore in thought from
the Gothic aiwar, time. Ewigkeit was therefore
originally time, and " for all time " came naturally
to mean "for all eternity." Eternity also came
University
from aeternus, that is aeviternus, for time, i. e. for
all time, and thus for eternity, while aevum meant
life, lifetime, age. But now came the question, if
aevum shows the growth of this word, and its origin,
and how it arrives in the end at the very opposite
pole, life and time coming to mean eternity, could
we not by the same process discover the origin and
growth of such short Greek words as ad and aid ?
It seems almost impossible, yet remembering that
aevum meant originally life, we find in Yedic San¬
skrit eva, course, way, life, the same as aevum,
while the Sanskrit ayush, likewise derived from i,
to go, forms its locative ayushi. Ayushi, or origi¬
nally ayasi, would mean " in life, in time," and
turned into Greek would regularly become then
aid, lifelong, or ever. It was not difficult to find
fault with this and other etymologies, and to ask for
an explanation of alev and aid, as derived from
the same word ayus. It is curious that people will
not see that etymologies, and particularly the
gradual development in the form and meaning of
words, can hardly ever be a matter of mathematical
certainty.
Historical, nay, even individual, influences come
in which prevent the science of language from be¬
coming purely mechanical. Pott, and Curtius, and
others stood up against Bopp and Grimm, maintain¬
ing that there could be nothing irregular in lan¬
guage, particularly in phonetic changes. If this
means no more than that under the same circum-
\$2 My Autobiography
stances the same changes will always take place, it
would he of course a mere truism. The question
is only whether we can ever know all the circum¬
stances, and whether there are not some of these
circumstances which cause what we are apt to call
irregularities. When Bopp said that Sanskrit d cor¬
responds to a Greek 8, hut often also to a Greek 6,
I doubt whether this is often the case. All I say is,
if deva corresponds to deos, we must try to find the
reason or the circumstances which caused so un¬
usual a correspondence. If no more is meant than
that there must he a reason for all that seems ir¬
regular, no one would gainsay that, neither Bopp
nor Grimm, and no one ever doubted that as a prin¬
ciple. But to establish these reasons is the very
difficulty with which the Science of Language has
to deal.
There is no word that has not an etymology, only
if we consider the distance of time that separates us
from the historical facts we are trying to account
for, we should sometimes be satisfied with prob¬
abilities and not always stipulate for absolute cer¬
tainty. Many of Bopp's, Grimm's, and Pott's ety¬
mologies have had to be surrendered, and yet our
suzerainty over that distant country which they
conquered, over the Aryan home, remains. If
there is an etymology containing something irregu¬
lar, and for which no reason has as yet been found,
we must wait till some better etymology can be sug¬
gested, or a reason be found for that apparent ir-
University
*53
regularity. If the etymological meaning of duhitar,
daughter, as milkmaid, is doubted, let us have a
better explanation, not a worse; but the general
picture of the early family among the Aryans
" somewhere in Asia" is not thereby destroyed.
The father, Sk. pitar, remains the protector or
nourisher, though the i for a in pater and irarpp
is irregular. The mother, mdtar, remains the
bearer of children, though mci is no longer used in
that sense in any of the Aryan languages. Pati
is the lord, the strong one—therefore the husband;
vadhu, the yoke-fellow, or the wife as brought
home, possibly as carried off by force. Vis or vesa
is the home, ol/co? or vicus, what was entered for
shelter. Svasura, e/cvpos, Socer, the father-in-law,
is the old man of the svas, the famuli, or the family,
or the clients, though the first s is irregular, and
can be defended only on the ground of mistaken
analogy. Bhrdtar, frater, brother, was the sup¬
porter ; svastar, soror, sister, the comforter, &c.
"What do a few objections signify? The whole
picture remains, as if we could look into the vesa,
the oitcos the veih, the home, the village of the
ancient Aryans, and watch them, the svas, the
people, in their mutual relations. Even compound
words, such as vis-pati, lord of a family or a village,
have been preserved to the present day in the Lith¬
uanian Veszpats, lord, whether King or God. It
is enough for us to see that the relationship be¬
tween husband and wife, between parents and chil-
154 My Autobiography
then, between brothers and sisters, nay, even be¬
tween children-in-law and parents-in-law, had been
recognized and sanctified by names. That there
are, and always will be, doubts and slight differences
of opinion on these prehistoric thoughts and words,
is easily understood. We were pleased for a long
time to see in vidua, widow, the Sanskrit vidua,
i. e. without a man or a husband. We now derive
vi-dhava, widow, from vidh, to be separated, to
be without (cf. vido in divido, and Sk. vidh), but
the picture of the Aryan family remains much the
same.
When these and similar antiquities were for the
first time brought to light by Bopp, Grimm, and
Pott, what wonder that we young men should have
jumped at them, and shouted with delight, more
even than the diggers who dug up Babylonian
palaces or Egyptian temples! No one did more for
these antiquarian finds and restorations than A.
Kuhn, a simple schoolmaster, but afterwards a most
distinguished member of the Berlin Academy.
How often did I sit with him in his study as he
wrorked, surrounded by his Greek, Latin, and San¬
skrit books. In later times also, when I had made
some discoveries myself as to the mythological
names or beings identical in Yedic and Greek writ¬
ings, how pleasant was it to see him rub his hands
or shake his head. Long before I had published my
identifications they were submitted to him, and he
communicated to me his own guesses as I communi-
University
155
cated mine to him. Kuhn would never appropriate
what belonged to anybody else, and even in cases
where we agreed, he would always make it clear
that we had both arrived independently at the same
result.
It is in the nature of things that every new gen¬
eration of scholars should perfect their tools, and
with these discover flaws in the work left by their
predecessors. Still, what is the refined chiselling of
later scholars compared with the rough-hewn stones
of men like Bopp or Grimm? If the Cyclopean
stones of the Pelasgians are not like the finished
works of art by Phidias, what would the Parthenon
be without the walls ascribed to the Cyclops? It
is the same in all sciences, and we must try to be
just, both to the genius of those who created, and
to the diligence of those who polished and refined.
For all this, however, I met with but small
sympathy and encouragement at Leipzig; nay, I
had to be very careful in uttering what were sup¬
posed to be heretical or unscholarlike opinions in
the seminary of Gottfried Hermann, or in the Latin
society of Haupt. The latter particularly, though
he knew very well how much light had been spread
on the growth of language by the researches of
Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, and though Grimm was
his intimate friend of whom he always spoke with
real veneration, could not bear his own pupils dab¬
bling in this subject. And of course at that time
my knowledge of comparative philology was a mere
156 My Autobiography
dabbling. If he could discover a false quantity in
any etymology, great was his delight, and his sar¬
casm truly withering, particularly as it was poured
out in very classical Latin. Gottfried Hermann
was a different character. He saw there was a new
light and he would not turn his back to it. He
knew how lightly his antagonist, Otfried Miiller,
valued Sanskrit in his mythological essays, and he
set to work, and in one of his last academical pro¬
grams actually gave the paradigms of Sanskrit verbs
as compared with those of Greek. He saw that the
coincidences between the two could not be casual,
and if they were so overwhelming in the mere termi¬
nation of verbs, what might we not expect in words
and names, even in mythological names? He by no
means discouraged me, nay, he was sorry to lose
me, when in my third year I went to Berlin. He
showed me great kindness on several occasions, and
when the time came to take my degree of M.A. and
Ph.D., he, as Dean of the Faculty, invited me to
return to Leipzig, offering me an exhibition to cover
the expenses of the Degree.
My wish to go to Berlin arose partly from a de¬
sire to hear Bopp, but yet more from a desire to
make the acquaintance of Schelling. My inclina¬
tion towards philosophy had become stronger and
stronger; I had my own ideas about the mythologi¬
cal as a necessary form of ancient philosophy, and
when I saw that the old philosopher had advertised
his lectures or lecture on mythology, I could not
%
Vv " !•
/
F. MAX MULLER
Aged Twenty
University 157
resist, and went to Berlin in 1844. I must say at
once that Professor Bopp, though he was extremely
kind to me, was at that time, if not old—he was only
fifty-three—very infirm. In his lectures he simply
read his Comparative Grammar with a magnifying
glass, and added very little that was new. He lent
me some manuscripts which he had copied in Latin
in his younger days, but I could not get much help
from him when I came to really difficult passages.
This, I confess, puzzled me at the time, for I looked
on every professor as omniscient. The time comes,
however, when we learn that even at fifty-three a
man may have forgotten certain things, nay, may
have let many books and new discoveries even in
his own subject pass by, because he has plenty to do
with his own particular studies. We remember the
old story of the professor who, when charged by a
young and rather impertinent student with not
knowing this or that, replied: " Sir, I have for¬
gotten more than you ever knew." And so it is
indeed. Human nature and human memory are
very strong during youth and manhood, but even at
fifty there is with many people a certain decline of
mental vigour that tells chiefly on the memory.
Things are not exactly forgotten, but they do not
turn up at the right time. They just leave a certain
knowledge of where the missing information can
be found; they leave also a kind of feeling that the
ground is not quite safe and that we must no longer
trust entirely to our memory. In one respect this
158 My Autobiography
feeling is very useful, for instead of writing down
anything, trusting to our memory as we used to do,
we feel it necessary to verify many things which
formerly were perfectly clear and certain in our
memory without such reference to books.
I remember being struck with the same thing in
the case of Professor Wilson, the well-known Ox¬
ford Professor of Sanskrit. He was kind enough to
read with me, and I certainly was often puzzled,
not only by what he knew, but also by what he had
forgotten. I feel now that I misjudged him, and
that his open declaration, " I don't know, let us
look it up," really did him great honour. I still
have in my possession a portion of Panini's Yedic
grammar translated by him. I put by the side of it
my own translation, and he openly acknowledged
that mine, with the passages taken from the Yeda,
was right. There was no humbug about Wilson.
He never posed as a scholar; nay, I remember his
saying to me more than once, " You see, I am not a
scholar, I am a gentleman who likes Sanskrit, and
that is all." He certainly did like Sanskrit, and he
knew it better than many a professor, but in his own
way. He had enjoyed the assistance of really
learned Pandits, and he never forgot to record their
services. But he had himself cleared the ground—
he had really done original work. In fact, he had
done nothing but original work, and then he was
abused for not having always found at the first trial
what others discovered when standing on his shoul-
University 159
ders. Again, he was found fault with for not hav¬
ing had a classical education. His education was,
I believe, medical, but when once in the Indian
Civil Service, he made himself useful in many ways,
educational and otherwise. When he left India he
was Master of the Mint. Such a man might not
know Greek and Latin like F. A. von Schlegel, or
any other professor, but he knew his own subject,
and it is simply absurd if classical scholars imagine
that anybody can carry on his Greek and Latin and
at the same time make himself a perfect scholar in
Sanskrit. Such a feeling is natural among small
schoolmasters, but it is dying out at last among real
scholars. I have known very good Sanskrit scholars
who knew no Greek at all, and very little Latin.
And I have also known Greek scholars who knew
no Sanskrit and yet attempted comparisons between
the two. When Lepsius was made a Member of
the Berlin Academy, Lachmann, who ought to have
known better, used to say of him: " He knows
many things which nobody knows, but he also is
ignorant of many things which everybody knows."
Such remarks never speak well for the man who
makes them.
Another disadvantage from which the aged
scholar suffers is that he is blamed for not having
known in his youth what has been discovered in his
old age, and is still violently assailed for opinions
he may have uttered fifty years ago. When quite
a young man I wrote, at Baron Bunsen's request, a
160 My Autobiography
long letter on the Turanian Languages. It was pub¬
lished in 1854, but it still continues to be criticized
as if it had been published last year. Of course,
considering the rapid advance of linguistic studies,
a great part of that letter became antiquated long
ago; but at the time of its first appearance it con¬
tained nearly all that could then be known on these
allophylian, that is, non-Aryan and non-Semitic
languages; and I may, perhaps, quote the opinion
of Professor Pott, no mean authority at that time,
who, after severely criticizing my letter, declared
that it belonged to the most important publications
that had appeared on linguistic subjects for many
years. And yet, though I have again and again
protested that I could not possibly have known in
1854 what has been discovered since as to a number
of these Turanian languages, everybody who writes
on any of them seems to be most anxious to show
that in 1894 he knows more than I did in 1854. No
astronomer is blamed for not having known the
planet Neptune before its discovery in 1846, or for
having been wrong in accounting for the irregulari¬
ties of Saturn. But let that pass; I only share the
fate of others who have lived too long.
After all, all our knowledge, whatever show we
may make of it, is very imperfect, and the more
we know the better we learn how little it is that we
do know, and how much of unexplored country
there is beyond the country which we have explored.
We must judge a man by what he has done—by
University 161
his own original work. There are many scholars,
and very useful they are in their own way, but if
their books are examined, one easily finds the stores
from which they borrowed their materials. They
may add some notes of their own and even some cor¬
rections, particularly corrections of the authors from
whom they have borrowed most; but at the end
where is the fresh ore that they have raised; where
is the gold they have extracted and coined? There
are cases where the original worker is quite forgot¬
ten, whereas the retailers flourish. Well, facts are
facts, whether known or not known, and the tri¬
umphal chariot of truth has to be dragged along
by many hands and many shoulders.
CHAPTER V
PARIS
My stay in Paris from March, 1845, to June,
1846, was a very useful intermezzo. It opened my
mind and showed me a new world; showed me, in
fact, that there was a world besides Germany,
though even of Germany and German society I had
seen as yet very little. I had been working away
at school and university, but with the exception of
my short stay in Berlin, I had little experience of
men and manners outside the small sphere of Dessau
and Leipzig.
I had been at Berlin some nine months when,
in December, 1844, my old friend Baron Hagedorn
came to see me, and invited me to spend some time
with him in Paris. He had his own apartments
there, and promised to look after me. At the same
time my cousin, Baroness Stolzenberg, whom I have
mentioned before as wishing me to enter the Aus¬
trian diplomatic service, offered to send me to Eng¬
land'at her expense as a teacher. I hesitated for
some days between these two offers. I knew that
my own patrimony had been nearly spent at Leip¬
zig and Berlin, and the time had come for me to
begin to support myself; and how was I to do that
162
Paris
163
in Paris? On the other hand, I had long felt that
for continuing my Sanskrit studies a stay in Paris,
and later perhaps in London also, was indispensable.
I had also to consider the feelings of my mother,
whose whole heart was absorbed in her only son.
However, Sanskrit, and my love of an independent
life won the day, and I decided to accept Hagedorn's
proposal. My mind once made up, I wanted to be
off at once, but Hagedorn could not fix the exact
time when he would be free to leave, and told me to
keep myself in readiness to start whenever he found
himself free to go. I accordingly went to stay with
my mother and my married sister at Chemnitz, and
indulged in idleness and the unwonted dissipations
of parties, dances, and long skating expeditions.
At last, feeling I could not afford to wait any longer,
I went off to Dessau to see Hagedorn, and found
to my great disappointment that he was detained
by important legal business in connection with his
property near Munich, and could not yet fix a date
for his departure. So it was settled that I was to
go on to Paris without him, and instal myself in his
apartment, 25, Rue Roy ale St. Ibonore.
I got my passport wherein I was carefully de¬
scribed with all my particular marks, and started
off on my foreign travels. At first all went well.
I stopped a few days at Bonn, and again at Brus¬
sels, where I had my first experience of hearing a
foreign language spoken round me, and found that
my French was sadly deficient. But from Brus-
164 My Autobiography
sels on, my experiences were anything but agree¬
able. The journey to Paris took twenty-four hours,
and we travelled day and night without any stop
for meals. Most of the passengers were well pro¬
vided with food and wine, but had it not been for
the kindness of some old ladies, my fellow-travellers,
I should really have starved. "When we crossed the
frontier the luggage of all passengers was carefully
examined. But the douanier, in trying to open my
portmanteau, broke the lock, and then began a fear¬
ful cursing and swearing. I was perfectly help¬
less. I could hardly understand what the French
douaniers said, still less make them understand
what I had to say. They had done the damage, but
would do nothing to remedy it. The train would
not wait, and I should certainly have been left be¬
hind if the other travellers had not taken my part,
and I was allowed to go on to Paris. I looked a
mere boy, very harmless, not at all the clever smug¬
gler the officials took me to be. , If they had forced
the portmanteau open they would have found noth¬
ing but the most essential wearing apparel and a few
books and papers all in Sanskrit.
But my miseries were not yet over, on the con¬
trary, they became much worse. On my arrival in
Paris I got a fiacre and told the man to drive to
25, Rue St. Honore; Boy ale I considered of no im¬
portance; but, alas! at the right number of the
Rue St. Honore, the concierge stared at me, telling
me that no Baron Hagedorn lived there. Try
Paris
165
Faubourg St. Honore, they said, but here the same
thing happened. And all this was on a rainy after¬
noon, I being tired out with travelling and fasting,
and perfectly overwhelmed by the immensity of
Paris. I knew nobody at Paris, having trusted for
all such things to Baron Hagedorn, in fact I was
clu desespoir. Then as I was driving along the
Boulevard des Italiens, looking out of window, I
saw a familiar figure—a little hunchback whom I
had known at Dessau, where he studied music under
Schneider. It was M. Gathy, a man well known by
his musical writings, particularly his Dictionary of
Music. I shrieked Gathy! Gathy! and he was as
much surprised when he recognized the little boy
from Dessau, as I was when in this vast Paris I
discovered at last a face which I knew. I jumped
out of my carriage, told Gathy all that had hap¬
pened to me, being all the time between complete
despair and perfect delight. He knew Hagedorn
and his rooms very well. It was the Rue Royale
St. Honore. The concierge was quite prepared for
my arrival, and took us both to the rooms which
were au cinquieme, but large and extremely well
furnished. I was so tired that I lay down on the
sofa, and called out in my best French, Donnez-
moi quelque chose a manger et a hoire. This was
not so easily done as said, but at last, after toiling
up and down five flights of stairs, he brought me
what I wanted; I restored myself in the true sense
of the word, and then began to discuss the most
166 My Autobiography
necessary matters with M. Gathy. He was the most
charming of men, half German, half French, full
of esprit, and, what was more important to me, full
of real kindness and love. As soon as I saw him I
felt I was safe, and so I was, though I had still some
battles to fight. First of all, I had taken but little
money with me, looking upon Hagedorn as my
banker. Fortunately I remembered the name of
one of his friends, about whom Hagedorn had often
spoken to me and who was in Rothschild's Bank.
I went there to find that he was away, but another
gentleman there told me that I could have as much
as I liked till Hagedorn or his friend came back.
So I was lucky, unlucky as I had been before.
The next step I had to consider was what I should
do for my breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. Break¬
fast I could have at home, but for the other meals I
had to go out and get what I wanted wherever I
could. It was not always what I wanted, for it had
to be cheap, and even a dinner a deux francs in the
Palais Royal seemed to me extravagant. I became
more knowing by-and-by, and discovered smaller
and simpler restaurants, where Frenchmen dined
and had arranged for a less showy but more whole¬
some diet.
The impression that my first experience of life
in one of the great capitals of the world made on
me is still fresh in my memory. My principal
amusement at first was to go on voyages of dis¬
covery through the town. The beauty of the city
Paris
167
itself, and the rush and crowd in the streets de¬
lighted me, and I remember specially a few days
after my arrival, when I went to watch " le tout
Paris " going out to the races at Longchamps, that I
was so struck by the difference between these streets
full of equipages of all sorts, ladies in resplendent
dresses, and well-groomed gentlemen, and the quiet
streets that I had been accustomed to in Dessau
and Leipzig, that I could hardly keep myself from
laughing out loud. However, when the novelty
wore off there was another contrast that struck me,
and made me more inclined to cry this time than to
laugh, and that was, that while at home I knew
almost every face I passed, here in these crowds I
was a stranger and knew no one, and I suffered
cruelly from the solitude at first.
I began my work, however, at once, and on the
third day after my arrival I was at the Bibliotheque
Royale armed with a letter of introduction from
Humboldt, and the very next day was already at
work collating the MSS. of the Kathaka Upani-
shad. I had also to devote some hours daily to the
study of French; for, much as I grudged these
hours, I fully realized that in order to get full ad¬
vantage from my stay in Paris, I must first master
French.
Hext came the great question, how to make the
acquaintance of Burnouf. I did not know the
world. I did not know whether I should write to
him first, in what language, and to what address. I
168 My Autobiography
knew Burnouf from his books, and I felt a desperate
respect for him. After a time Gathy discovered
his address for me, and I summoned up courage to
call on him. My French was very poor as yet, but
I walked in and found a dear old gentleman in his
robe de chambre, surrounded by his hooks and his
children—four little daughters who were evidently
helping him in collecting and alphabetically arrang¬
ing a number of slips on which he had jotted down
whatever had struck him as important in his reading
during the day. He received me with great civility,
such as I had not been accustomed to before. He
spoke of some little book which I had published,
and inquired warmly after my teachers in Germany,
such as Brockhaus, Bopp, and Lassen. He told
me I might attend his lectures in the College de
France, and he would always be most happy to give
me advice and help.
I at once felt perfect trust in the man, and was
really aux cieux to have found such an adviser. He
was, indeed, a fine specimen of the real French
savant. Fie was small, and his face was decidedly
German, with the tete carree which one sees so
often in Germany, only lighted up by a constant
sparkle, which is distinctively French. I must
have seemed very stupid to him when I tried to
explain to him what I really wanted to do in Paris.
He told me himself afterwards that he could not
make me out at first. I wanted to study the Yeda,
but I had told him at the same time that I thought
Paris
169
the Yedic hymns very stupid, and that I cared
chiefly for their philosophy, that is, the Upanishads.
This was really not true, but it came up first in con¬
versation, and I thought it would show Burnouf
that my interest in the Yeda was not simply philo¬
logical, but philosophical also. dSTo doubt at first I
chiefly copied the Upanishads and their commen¬
taries, but Burnouf was not pleased. " We know
what is in the Upanishads," he used to say, " but we
want the hymns and their native comments." I
soon came to understand what he meant; I carefully
attended his lectures, which were on the hymns of
the Kig-veda and opened an entirely new world to
my mind. We had the first book of the Ilig-veda
as published by Rosen, and Burnouf's explanations
were certainly delightful. He spoke freely and con¬
versationally in his lectures, and one could almost as¬
sist at the elaboration of his thoughts. His audience
was certainly small; there was nothing like Renan's
eloquence and wit. But Burnouf had ever so many
new facts to communicate to us. He explained to
us his own researches, he showed us new MSS.
which he had received from India, in fact he did
all he could to make us fellow workers. Often did
he tell us to look up some passage in the Yeda, to
compare and copy the commentaries, and to let him
have the result of our researches at the next lecture.
All this was very inspiriting, particularly as Bur¬
nouf, upon examining our work, was very generous
in his approval, and quite ready, if we had failed, to
170 My Autobiography
point out to us new sources that should be examined.
He never asserted his own authority, and if ever
we had found out something which he had not
known before, he was delighted to let us have the
full credit for it. After all, it was a new and un¬
known country, that had to be explored and mapped
out, and even a novice might sometimes find a grain
of gold.
His select class contained some good men. There
were Barthelemy St. Iiilaire, the famous translator
of Aristotle, and for a time Minister of Foreign
Affairs in France, the Abbe Bardelli, K. Roth, Th.
Goldstiicker, and a few more.
Barthelemy St. Flilaire was a personal friend of
Burnouf, and came to the College de France not so
much to learn Sanskrit as to hear Burnouf's lucid
exposition of ancient Indian religion and philoso¬
phy. Bardelli was a regular Italian Abbe, studying
Sanskrit at Paris, but chiefly interested in Coptic.
He was, like St. Hilaire, much my senior, but we
became great friends, and he once confided to me
what had certainly puzzled me—his reasons for be¬
coming an ecclesiastic. He had been deeply in love
with a young lady; his love was returned, but he
was too poor to marry, and she was persuaded and
almost forced to marry a rich man. Dear old Abbe,
always taking snuff while he told me his agonies,
and then finishing up by saying that he became a
priest so as to put an end for ever to his passion.
Who would have suspected such a background to
Paris
171
his jovial face? I don't know how it was that peo¬
ple, much my seniors, so often confided to me their
secret sufferings. I may have to mention some
other cases, and I feel that after my friends are
gone, and so many years have passed over their
graves, there is no indiscretion in speaking of their
confidences. It may possibly teach us to remember
how much often lies buried under a grave bright
with flowers. I saw Bardelli's own grave many
years later in the famous cemetery at Pisa. R. Roth
and Th. Goldstiicker were both strenuous Sanskrit
scholars. Both owed much to Burnouf, Roth even
more than Goldstiicker, though the latter has per¬
haps more frequently spoken of what he owed to
Burnouf. Roth was my senior by several years,
and engaged in much the same work as myself. But
we never got on well together. It is curious from
what small things and slight impressions our likes
and dislikes are often formed. I have heard men
give as a reason for disliking some one, that he had
forgotten to pay half a cab-fare. So in Roth's case,
I never got over a most ordinary experience. He
and two other young students and myself, having
to celebrate some festal occasion, had ordered a good
luncheon at a restaurant. To me with my limited
means this was a great extravagance, but I could
not refuse to join. Roth, to my great surprise and,
I may add, being very fond of oysters, annoyance,
took a very unfair share of that delicacy, and when¬
ever I met him in after life, whether in person or
172 My Autobiography
in writing, this incident would always crop up in
my mind; and when later on he offered to join me
in editing the Rig-veda, I declined, perhaps influ¬
enced by that early impression which I could not
get rid of. I blame myself for so foolish a preju¬
dice, but it shows what creatures of circumstance
we are.
With Goldstiicker I was far more intimate. He
was some years older than myself and quite inde¬
pendent as far as money went. He knew how small
my means were, and would gladly have lent me
money. But through the whole of my life I never
borrowed from my friends, or in fact from anybody,
though I was forced sometimes when very hard up
for ready money, and when I knew that money was
due to me but had not arrived when I expected it,
to apply to some friend for a temporary advance. I
will try and recall the lines in which I once applied
to Gathy for such a loan.
Versueh' ich's wohl, mein herzgeliebter Gathy,
Mit schmeiclielndem Sonnet Sie anzupumpen ?
Ich bitte nicht urn schwere Goldesklumpen,
Ich bitte nur um etliche Ducati.
Auch zahl' ich wieder ultimo Monati.
Auf Wiedersehn bei Morel und Frascati
TJnd Nachsicht fiir den Brief, den allzu plumpen I
Zwar reiche Nabobs sind die braven Inder,
Doch arme Teufel die Indianisten !
Reich sind hienieden schon die Heiden-Kinder,
Doch selig werden nur die armen Christen !
Reimsucher bin ich, doch kein Reimeflnder,
Und sans critique sind all die Sanscritisten.
Paris
173
This kind of negotiating a loan I have to confess
to, but the idea of borrowing money, without know¬
ing when I could repay it, never entered my mind.
Kelations who could have helped me I had none,
and nothing remained to me hut to work for others.
Indeed my want of money soon began to cause me
very serious anxiety in Paris. Little as I spent, my
funds became lower and lower. I did not, like many
other scholars, receive help from my Government.
I had mapped out my course for myself, and instead
of taking to teaching on leaving the University, had
settled to come to Paris and continue my Sanskrit
studies, and it was in my own hands whether I
should swim or sink. It was, indeed, a hard strug¬
gle, far harder than those who have known me in
later life would believe. All I could do to earn a
little money was to copy and collate MSS. for other
people. I might indeed have given private lessons,
but I have always had a strong objection to that
form of drudgery, and would rather sit up a whole
night copying than give an hour to my pupils. My
plan was as follows: to sit up the whole of one night,
to take about three hours' rest the next night, but
without undressing, and then to take a good night's
rest the third night, and start over again. It was a
hard fight, and cannot have been very good for me
physically, but I do not regret it now.
Often did I go without my dinner, being quite
satisfied with boiled eggs and bread and butter,
which I could have at home without toiling down
174 My Autobiography
and toiling up five flights of stairs that led to my
room. Sometimes I went with some of my young
friends hors de la barriere, that is, outside Paris,
outside the barrier where the octroi has to be paid
on meat, wine, &c. Here the food was certainly
better for the price I could afford to pay, but the so¬
ciety was sometimes peculiar. I remember once see¬
ing a strange lady sitting not very far from me,
who was the well-known Louve of Eugene Sue's
Mysteres de Paris. One of my companions on
these expeditions was Karl de Schloezer, who was
then studying Arabic in Paris. He was always
cheerful and amusing, and a delightful companion.
He knew much more of the world than I did, and
often surprised me by his diplomatic wisdom. " Let
us stand up for each other," he said one day; " you
say all the good you can of me, I saying all the good
I can of you." I became very fierce at the time,
charging him with hypocrisy and I do not know
what. He, however, took it all in good part, and
we remained friends all the time he was at Paris,
and indeed to the day of his death. He was very
fond of music, but I was, perhaps, the better per¬
former on the pianoforte. He had invited me, a
violin, and violoncello, to play some of Mozart's and
Beethoven's Sonatas. Alas! when we found that
he murdered his part, I sat down and played the
whole evening, leaving him to listen, not, I fear, in
the best of moods. He took his revenge, however;
and the next time he asked me and the two other
Paris
175
musicians to his room, we found indeed everything
ready for us to play, hut our host was nowhere to
be found. He maintained that he had been called
away; I am certain, however, that the little trick
was played on purpose.
He afterwards entered the Prussian diplomatic
service and was the protege of the Princess of Prus¬
sia, afterwards the Empress of Germany. That was
enough to make Bismarck dislike him, and when
Schloezer served as Secretary of Legation under
Bismarck as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, he com¬
mitted the outrage of challenging his chief to a duel.
Bismarck declined, nor would it, according to diplo¬
matic etiquette, have been possible for him not to
decline. Later on, however, Schloezer was placed
en disponibilite, that is to say, he was politely dis¬
missed. He had to pay a kind of farewell visit to
Bismarck, who was then omnipotent. Being asked
by Bismarck what he intended to do, and whether
he could be of any service to him, Schloezer said
very quietly, "Yes, your Excellency, I shall take
to writing my Memoirs, and you know that I have
seen much in my time which many people will be
interested to learn." Bismarck was quiet for a time,
looking at some papers, and then remarked quite
unconcernedly, " You would not care to go to the
United States as Minister?" " I am ready to go
to-morrow," replied Schloezer, and having carried
his point, having in fact outwitted Bismarck, he
started at once for Washington. Bismarck knew
176 My Autobiography
tliat Schloezer could wield a sharp pen, and there
was a time when he was sensitive to such pen-pricks.
They did not see much of each other afterwards,
but, owing to the protection of the Empress, Schloe¬
zer was later accredited as Prussian envoy to the
Pope, and died too soon for his friends in beautiful
Italy.
One of my oldest friends at Paris was a Baron
d'Eckstein, a kind of diplomatic agent who knew
everybody in Paris, and wrote for the newspapers,
Erench and German. He had, I believe, a pension
from the French Government, and was, as a Roman
Catholic, strongly allied with the Clerical Party.
This did not concern me. What concerned me was
his love of Sanskrit and the ancient religion of
India. He would sit with me for hours, or take me
to dine with him at a restaurant, discussing all the
time the Yedas and the Upanishad and the Yedanta
philosophy. There are several articles of his writ¬
ten at this time in the Journal Asiatique, and I was
especially grateful to him, for he gave me plenty
of work to do, particularly in the way of copying
Sanskrit MSS. for him, and he paid me well and so
helped me to keep afloat in Paris. Knowing as he
did everybody, he was very anxious to introduce
me to his friends, such as George Sand, Lamennais,
the Comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern), Lamartine,
Yictor Hugo, and others; but I much preferred
half an hour with him or with Burnouf to paying
formal visits. I heard afterwards many unkind
Paris
177
things about Baron d'Eckstein's political and cleri¬
cal opinions, but though in becoming a convert to
Roman Catholicism he may have shown weakness,
and as a political writer may have been influenced
by his near friends and patrons, I never found him
otherwise than kind, tolerant, and trustworthy. His
life was to have been written by Professor Win-
dischmann, but he too died; and who knows what
may have become of the curious memoirs which he
left? At the time of the February revolution in
1848, he was in the very midst of it. He knew
Lamartine, who was the hero of the day, though of
a few days only. He attended meetings with La¬
martine, Odilon, Barrot, and others, and he assured
me that there would be no revolution, because no¬
body was prepared for it.
Lamartine who had been asked by his friends,
all of them royalists and friends of order, whether
he would, in case of necessity, undertake to form
a ministry under the Duchesse d'Orleans as regent,
scouted such an idea at first, but at last promised
to be ready if he were wanted. The time came soon¬
er than he expected, and the Duchesse d'Orleans
counted on him when she went to the Chamber and
her Regency was proclaimed. Lamartine was then
so popular that he might have saved the situation.
But the mob broke into the Chamber, shots were
fired, and there was no Lamartine. The Duchesse
d' Orleans had to fly, and fortunately escaped under
the protection of the Due de Hemours, the only son
ij8 My Autobiography
of Louis Philippe then in Paris, and the dynasty
of the Orleans was lost—never to return. Baron
d'Eckstein lost many of his influential friends at
that time, possibly his pension also, but he had
enough to live upon, and he died at last as a very
old man in a Roman Catholic monastery, a most
interesting and charming man, whose memoirs
would certainly have been very valuable.
But to return to Burnouf, I never can adequately
express my debt of gratitude to him. He was of
the greatest assistance to me in clearing my thoughts
and directing them into one channel. " Either one
thing or the other," he said. " Either study Indian
philosophy and begin with the Upanishads and San-
kara's commentary, or study Indian religion and
keep to the Rig-veda, and copy the hymns and
Sayana's commentary, and then you will be our
great benefactor." A great benefactor! that was
too much for me, a mere dwarf in the presence of
giants. But Burnouf's words confirmed me more
and more in my desire to give myself up to the
Yeda.
Burnouf told me not only what Yedic MSS. there
were at the Bibliotheque Royale, he also brought
me his own MSS. and lent them to me to copy, with
the condition, however, that I should not smoke
while working at them. He himself did not smoke,
and could not bear the smell of smoke, and he
showed me several of his MSS. which had become
quite useless to him, because they smelt of stale
Paris
179
tobacco smoke. I did all I could to guard these
sacred treasures against such profanation.
Another and even more useful warning came to
me from Burnouf. " Don't publish extracts from
the commentary only," he said; " if you do, you
will publish what is easy to read, and leave out what
is difficult." I certainly thought that extracts
would be sufficient, but I soon found out that here
also Burnouf was right, though there was always
the fear that I should never find a publisher for so
immense a work. This fear I confided to Burnouf,
but he always maintained his hopeful view. " The
commentary must be published, depend upon it,
and it will be," he said.
So I stuck to it and went on copying and collat¬
ing my Sanskrit MSS., always trusting that a pub¬
lisher would turn up at the proper time. I had, of
course, to do all the drudgery for myself, and I soon
found out that it was not in human nature, at least
not in my nature, to copy Sanskrit from a MS. even
for three or four hours without mistakes. To my
great disappointment I found mistakes whenever
I collated my copy with the original. I found that
like the copyists of classical MSS. my eye had
wandered from one line to another where the same
word occurred, that I had left out a word when the
next word ended with the same termination, nay
that I had even left out whole lines. Hence I had
either to collate my own copy, which was very te¬
dious, or invent some new process. This new process
180 My Autobiography
I discovered by using transparent paper, and thus
tracing every letter. I had some excellent papier
vegetal made for me, and, instead of copying, traced
the whole Sanskrit MS. This had the great ad¬
vantage that nothing could be left out, and that
when the original was smudged and doubtful I
could carefully trace whatever was clear and visible
through the transparent paper. At first I confess
my work was slow, but soon it went as rapidly as
copying, and it was even less fatiguing to the eyes
than the constant looking from the MS. to the copy,
and from the copy to the MS. But the most im¬
portant advantage was, that I could thus feel quite
certain that nothing was left out, so that even now,
after more than fifty years, these tracings are as use¬
ful to me as the MS. itself. There was room left
between the lines or on the margin to note the va¬
rious readings of other MSS.; in fact, my materials
grew both in extent and in value.
Still there remained the question of a publisher.
To print the Rig-veda in six volumes quarto of about
a thousand pages each, and to provide the editor
with a living wage during the many years he would
have to devote to his task, required a large capital.
I do not know exactly how much, but what I do
know is that, when a second edition of the text of
the Veda in four volumes was printed at the ex¬
pense of the Maharajah of Vizianagram, it cost that
generous and patriotic prince four thousand pounds,
though I then gave my work gratuitously.
Paris
181
While I was working at the Bibliotheque Royale,
Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the
king of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to help me
in publishing my edition of the Rig-veda in Ger¬
many. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it
proved too costly for any private publisher, even
with royal assistance.
Then came a vague offer from St. Petersburg.
Boehtlingk, the great Sanskrit scholar, as a mem¬
ber of the Imperial Russian Academy, invited me
to come to St. Petersburg and print the Veda there,
in collaboration with himself, and at the expense of
the Academy. Burnouf and Goldstiicker both
warned me against accepting this offer, but, hopeless
as I was of getting my Veda published elsewhere,
I expressed my willingness to go on condition that
some provision should be made for me before I
decided to migrate to Russia, as I possessed abso¬
lutely nothing but what I was able to earn myself.
Boehtlingk, I believe, suggested to the Academy
that I should be appointed Assistant Keeper of the
Oriental Museum at St. Petersburg, but his col¬
leagues did not apparently consider so young a man,
and a mere German scholar, a fit candidate for so re¬
sponsible a post. Boehtlingk wished me to send him
all my materials, and he would get the MSS. of the
Rig-veda and of Sayana's commentary from the Li¬
brary of the East India Company, and Paris. No
definite proposition, however, came from the Im¬
perial Academy, but an announcement of Boeht-
182 My Autobiography
lingk's appeared in the papers in January, 1846, to
the effect that he was preparing, in collaboration
with Monsieur Max Miiller of Paris, a complete
edition of the Rig-veda.
All this, I confess, began to frighten me. For
me, a poor scholar, to go to St. Petersburg without
any official invitation, without any appointment,
seemed reckless, and though I have no doubt that
Boehtlingk would have done his best for me, yet
even he could only suggest private lessons, and that
was no cheerful outlook. The Academy would do
nothing for me unless I joined Boehtlingk, but at
last offered to buy my materials, on which I had
spent so much labour and the small fund at my dis¬
posal. If the Academy could have got the necessary
MSS. from Paris and London, I should have been
perfectly helpless. Boehtlingk could have done
the whole work himself, in some respects better
than I, because he was my senior, and besides, he
knew Panini, the old Indian grammarian who is
constantly referred to in Sayana's Commentary,
better than I did. With all these threatening clouds
around me, my decision was by no means easy.
It was Burnouf's advice that determined me to
remain quietly in Paris. He warned me repeatedly
against trusting to Boehtlingk, and promised, if I
would only stay in Paris, to give me his support
with Guizot, who was then Minister for Foreign
Affairs, and very much interested in Oriental
studies.
Paris
183
Boehtlingk seems never to liave forgiven me,
and lie and several of his friends were highly dis¬
pleased at my ultimate success in securing a pub¬
lisher for the Rig-veda in England. Their lan¬
guage was most unbecoming, and they tried, and
actually urged other Sanskrit scholars, to criticize
my edition, though I must say to their credit that
they afterwards confessed that it was all that could
be desired.
Many years later, Boehtlingk published a violent
attack on me, entitled F. Max Muller als Mythen-
clichter, but I thought it unnecessary to take up the
dispute, and preferred to leave my friends to judge
for themselves between me and this propounder of
accusations, the legitimacy of which he was utterly
unable to establish. However, as I discovered later
that he accused me of having acted discourteously
towards the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg,
with whom I had never had any direct dealings,
and stated that he had prevented that illustrious
body from ever making me a corresponding mem¬
ber, I thought it right to offer an explanation to the
Secretary, and I have in my possession his reply,
in which he wrote that there was no foundation
whatever for Professor Boehtlingk's statements.
However, the outcome of it was that I did not go
to St. Petersburg, but went on with my work at the
Library in Paris, till one day I found it necessary to
run over to London, to copy and collate certain
MSS., and there I found the long-sought-for bene-
184 My Autobiography
factors, who were to enable me to carry out the work
of my life.
Of course, during my stay in Paris there was no
idea of my going into society, or of buying tickets
for theatres or concerts. I went out to dinner at
some small restaurant, but otherwise I remained at
home, and viewed Paris life from my high windows,
looking out on the Chambre des Deputes on one
side, the Madeleine close to me on the left, and the
Porte St. Martin far away at the end of the Boule¬
vards. Baron d'Eckstein, as I have said, was will¬
ing to introduce me into society, but I refused his
kind offers. In fact, I was more or less of a bear,
and I now regret having missed meeting many in¬
teresting characters, and having kept aloof from
others, because my interests were absorbed else¬
where. Burnouf asked me sometimes to his house;
so did a Monsieur Troyer, who had been in India
and published some Sanskrit texts, and whose
daughter, the Duchesse de Wagram, made much of
me, as she was very fond of music. There were
some German families also, some rich, some poor,
who showed me great kindness.
I was too much oppressed with cares and anxi¬
eties about my life and my literary plans to think
much of society and enjoyment. Even of the
students and student life I saw but little, though I
was actually attending lectures with them. I must
say, however, that the little I did see of student
life in Paris gave me a very different idea from what
Paris
185
is generally thought of their vagaries and extrava¬
gances. A Frenchman, if he once begins to work,
can work and does work very hard. I remember
seeing several instances of this, but it is possible
that I may have seen the pick of the Quartier Latin
only. One who was then a young man, preparing
for the Church, but already with an eye to higher
flights, was Renan. At first he still looked upon
all young Germans with suspicion, but this feeling
soon disappeared. I remember him chiefly at the
Bibliotheque Royale, where he had a very small
place in the Oriental Department. Hase, the Greek
scholar, Reinaud, the Arabist, and Stanislas Julien,
the Sinologue, were librarians then. Hase, a Ger¬
man by birth, was most obliging, but he was greatly
afraid of speaking German, and insisted on our
always speaking French to him. Often did he call
Renan to fetch MSS. for me: " Renan," he would
call out very loudly, " allez chereher, pour Mon¬
sieur Max Miiller, le manuscrit Sanscrit, numero
. . .," and then followed a pause, till he had trans¬
lated " 1637 " into French. In later years Renan
and I became great friends, but we German scholars
were often puzzled at his great popularity, which
certainly was owing to his style more even than to
his scholarship. Some time later, when I was al¬
ready established in England, we had a little contro¬
versy, and I printed a rather fierce attack on his
Grammaire Semitique. But we were intimate
enough for me to show him my pamphlet, and when
186 My Autobiography
he wrote to me, " Pardonnez-moi, je n'ai pas com-
pris ce que vous vouliez dire," I suppressed the
pamphlet, though it was printed, and we remained
friends for life. He translated my first article on
Comparative Mythology, and I had a number of
most interesting letters from him. It was his wife
who did the translation, while he revised it. That
French pamphlet is very scarce now; my own
pamphlet was entirely suppressed; even I myself
can find no copy of it among the rubbish of my early
writings, and what I regret most, I threw away his
letters, not thinking how interesting they would
become in time.
With all my work, however, I found time to at¬
tend some lectures at the College de France, and
to make the acquaintance of some distinguished
French savants of the Institut. I went there with
Burnouf, or Stanislas Julien, or Reinaud, little
dreaming that I should some day belong to the same
august body. Many of my young French friends,
who afterwards became Membres de VInstitut, rose
to that dignity much later. I was made not only a
corresponding, hut a real member of the Academie
des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1869, before
my friends, such as G. Perrot 1874, Michel Breal
1875, Gaston Paris 1876, and Jules Oppert 1881,
occupied their well-merited academical fauteuils.
The struggle when I was elected in 1869 was a
serious one; it was between Mommsen and myself,
between classical and Oriental scholarship, and for
Paris
187
once Oriental scholarship carried the day. Momm-
sen, however, was elected in 1895, and there can he
little doubt that his strong and outspoken political
antipathies had something to do with the late date
of his election.
I am sorry to say that one result of my seeing
so little of French life was that my French did not
make such progress as I expected. Though I was
able to express myself tant bien que mat, I have
always felt hampered in a long conversation. Of
course, the French themselves have always been
polite enough to say that they could not have de¬
tected that I was a German, but I knew better than
that, and never have I, even in later years, gained
a perfect conversational command of that difficult
language.
CHAPTER VI
ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND
While working in Paris I constantly felt the
want of some essential MSS. which were at the Li¬
brary of the East India Company in London, and
my desire to visit England consequently grew
stronger and stronger; but I had not the where¬
withal to pay for the journey, much less for a stay
of even a fortnight in London. At last (June,
1846) I thought that I had scraped together enough
to warrant my starting. At that time I had never
seen the sea, and I was very desirous of doing so.
I well remember my unbounded rapture at my first
sight of the silver stream, and like Xenophon's
Greeks I could have shouted, OaXarra, OaXarra.
Once on board my rapture soon collapsed and was
succeeded by that well-known feeling of misery
which I have so frequently experienced since then,
and I huddled myself up in a corner of the deck.
There a young fellow-traveller saw the poor
bundle of misery, and tried to comfort me, and
brought me what he thought was good for me, not,
however, without a certain merry twinkle in his eye
and a few kindly jokes at my expense. We landed
188
Arrival in England 189
at tlie docks in London, a real drizzly day, rain and
mist, and such a crowd rushing on shore that I
missed my cheerful friend and felt quite lost. In
addition to all this a porter had run away with my
portmanteau, which contained my hooks and MSS.,
in fact all my worldly goods. At that moment my
young friend reappeared, and seeing the plight I
was in, came to my assistance. " You stay here,"
he said, " and I will arrange everything for you; "
and so he did. He fetched a four-wheeler, put my
luggage 011 the top, bundled me inside, and drove
with me through a maze of London streets to his
rooms in the Temple. Then, still knowing nothing
about me, he asked me to spend the night in his
rooms, gave me a bed and everything else I wanted
for the night. The next morning he took me out to
look for lodgings, which we found in Essex Street,
a small street leading out of the Strand.
The room which I took was almost entirely filled
by an immense four-post bed. I had never seen
such a structure before, and during the first night
that I slept in it, I was in constant fear that the top
of the bed would fall and smother me as in the
German Marchen. When the landlady came in to
see me in the morning, after asking how I had slept,
the first thing she said was, " But, sir, don't you
want another ' pillar ' ?" I looked bewildered, and
said: " Why, what shall I do with another pillar?
and where will you put it? " She then touched the
pillows under my head and said, " Well, sir, you
igo My Autobiography
shall have another ' pillar' to-morrow." " How
shall I ever learn English," I said to myself, " if
a ' pillar ' means really a soft pillow? "
But to return to my unknown friend, he came
every day to show me things which I ought to see
in London, and brought me tickets for theatres and
concerts, which he said were sent to him. His name
was William Howard Russell, endeared to so many,
high and low, under the name of " Billy " Russell,
the first and most brilliant war-correspondent of
The Times during the Crimean War. He remained
my warm and true friend through life, and even
now when we are both cripples, we delight in meet¬
ing and talking over very distant days.
I had come over to London expecting to stay
about a fortnight, but I had been there working
at the Library in Leadenhall Street for nearly a
month, and my work was far from done, when I
thought that I ought to call and pay my respects to
the Prussian Minister, Baron Bunsen. I little
thought at the time when I was ushered into his
presence that this acquaintance was to become the
turning-point of my life. If I owed much to Bur-
nouf, how can I tell what I owed to Bunsen? I
was amazed at the kindness with which from the
very first he received me. I had no claim whatever
on him, and I had as yet done very little as a scholar.
It is true that he had known my father in Italy, and
that Humboldt, with his usual kindness, had writ¬
ten him a strong letter of recommendation on my
Arrival in England 191
behalf, but that was hardly sufficient reason to ac¬
count for the real friendship with which he at once
honoured me.
Baroness Bunsen, in the life of her husband,
writes: " The kindred mind, their sympathy of
heart, the unity in highest aspirations, a congeni¬
ality in principles, a fellowship in the pursuit of
favourite objects, which attracted and bound Bun-
sen to his young friend (i. e. myself), rendered this
connexion one of the happiest of his life." I am
proud to think it was so.
At first the chief bond between us was that I
was engaged on a work which as a young man he
had proposed to himself as the work of his life,
namely, the editio princeps of the Rig-veda. Often
has he told me how, at the time when he was prose¬
cuting his studies at Gottingen, the very existence
of such a book was unknown as yet in Germany.
The name of Veda had no doubt been known, and
there was a halo of mystery about it, as the oldest
book of the world. But what it was and where it
was to be found no one could tell. Mr. Astor, a
pupil of Bunsen's at Gottingen, had arranged to
taken Bunsen to India to carry on his researches
there. But Bunsen waited and waited in Italy, till
at last, after maintaining himself by giving private
lessons, he went to Rome, was taken up by Brandes
and Mebuhr, the Prussian Ambassador there, be¬
came the friend of the future Frederick William
IV, and thus gradually drifted into diplomacy, giv-
192 My Autobiography
ing up all hopes of discovering or rescuing the
Rig-veda.
People have hardly any idea now, how, in spite
of the East India Company conquering and govern¬
ing India, India itself remained a terra incognita,
unapproachable by the students of England and of
Europe. That there were literary treasures to be
discovered in India, that the Brahmans were the
depositaries of ancient wisdom, was known through
the labours of some of the most eminent servants
of the East India Company. It had been known
even before, through the interesting communica¬
tions of Roman Catholic missionaries in India, that
the manuscripts themselves, at least those of the
Yeda, were not forthcoming. Even as late as the
times of Sir W. Jones, Colebrooke, and Professor
Wilson, the Brahmans were most unwilling to part
with MSS. of the Yeda, except the Upanishads.
Professor Wilson told me that once, when exam¬
ining the library of a native Rajah, he came across
some MSS. of the Rig-veda, and began turning
them over; but " I observed," he said, " the omi¬
nous and threatening looks of some of the Brah¬
mans present, and thought it wiser to beat a re¬
treat." Dr. Mill had known of a gentleman who
had a very sacred hymn of the Yeda, the Gayatri,
printed at Calcutta. The Brahmans were furious
at this profanation, and when the gentleman died
soon after, they looked upon his premature death
as the vengeance of the offended gods. Colebrooke,
Arrival in England
193
however, was allowed to possess himself of several
most valuable Vedic MSS., and he found Brah-
mans quite ready to read with him, not only the
classical texts, but also portions of the Veda.
" They do not even," he writes, " conceal from us
the most sacred texts of the Veda." His own
essays on the Veda appeared in the Asiatic Re¬
searches as early as 1801. But people went on
dreaming about the Veda, instead of reading Cole-
brooke's essays.
It was curious, however, that at the time when
I prepared my edition of the Rig-veda, Vedic
scholarship was at a very low ebb in Bengal it¬
self, and there were few Brahmans there who knew
the whole of the Rig-veda by heart, as they still
did in the South of India. Manuscripts were never
considered in India as of very high authority; they
were always over-ruled by the oral traditions of
certain schools. However, such manuscripts, good
and bad, but mostly bad, existed, and after a time
some of them reached England, France, and even
Germany. Portions of those in Berlin and Paris
I had copied and collated, so that I could show
Bunsen the very book which he had been in search
of in his youth. This opened his heart to me as
well as the doors of his house. " I am glad," he
said, " to have lived to see the Veda. Whatever
you want, let me know; I look upon you as my¬
self grown young again." And he did help me,
as only a father can help his son.
194 My Autobiography
Perhaps he expected too much from the Yeda,
as many other people did at that time, and before
the verba ipsissima were printed. As the oldest
book that ever was composed, the Veda was sup¬
posed to give us a picture of what man was in his
most primitive state, with his most primitive ideas,
and his most primitive language. Everybody in¬
terested in the origin and the first development of
language, thought, religion, and social institutions,
looked forward to the Veda as a new revelation.
All such dreams, natural enough before the Veda
was known, were dispersed by my laying sacri¬
legious hands on the Veda itself, and actually pub¬
lishing it, making it public property, to the dismay
of the Brahmans in India, and to the delight of ali
Sanskrit scholars in Europe. The learned essays
of Colebrooke in India, and the extracts published
by Rosen, the Oriental librarian of the British
Museum, might indeed have taught people that
the Veda was not a book without any antecedents,
that it would not tell us the secrets of Adam and
Eve, or of Deukalion and Pyrrha. I myself had
both said and written that the Veda, like an old
oak tree, shows hundreds and thousands of circles
within circles; and yet I was afterwards held
responsible for having excited the wildest hopes
among archaeologists, when I had done my best,
if not to destroy them, at all events to reduce them
to their proper level. Schelling seemed quite dis¬
appointed when I showed him some of the transla-
Arrival in England 195
tions of the hymns of the Rig-veda; and Bunsen,
who was still under Schelling's influence, had evi¬
dently expected a great many more of such philo¬
sophical hymns as the famous one beginning:
" There was not nought nor was there aught at
that time."
To the scholar, no doubt, the Veda remained
and always will remain the oldest of real books,
that has been preserved to us in an almost miracu¬
lous way. By book, however, as I often explained,
I mean a book divided into chapters and verses,
having a beginning and an end, and handed down
to us in an alphabetic form of writing. China
may have possessed older books in a half phonetic,
half symbolic writing; Egypt certainly possessed
older hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyri; Baby¬
lon had its cuneiform monuments; and certain
portions of the Old Testament may have existed
in a written form at the time of Josiah, when Ilil-
kiah, the high priest, found the law book in the
sanctuary (2 Kings xxii. 8). But the Veda, with
its ten books or Mandalas, its 1017 hymns or
Suktas, with every consonant and vowel and ac¬
cent plainly written, was a different thing. It may
safely be called a book. Ko doubt it existed for a
long time, as it does even at present, in oral tradi¬
tion, but as it was in tradition, so it was when
reduced to writing, and in either form I doubt
whether any other real book can rival it in an¬
tiquity. More important, however, than the purely
196 My Autobiography
chronological antiquity of the hook, is the antiquity
or primitiveness of the thoughts which it contains.
If the people of the Yeda did not turn out to be
quite such savages as was hoped and expected,
they nevertheless disclosed to us a layer of thought
which can be explored nowhere else. The Yedic
poets were not ashamed of exposing their fear that
the sun might tumble down from the sky, and
there are no other poets, as far as I know, who still
trembled at the same not quite unnatural thought.
!Nor do I find even savages who still wonder and
express their surprise that black cows should pro¬
duce white milk. Is not that childish enough for
any ancient or modern savage? Mere chronology
is here of as little avail as with modern savages,
whose customs and beliefs, though known as but
of yesterday, are represented to us as older than
the Yeda, older than Babylonian cylinders, older
than anything written. When certain modern
savages recognize the relationship of paternity,
maternity, and consanguinity, this is called very
ancient. If they admit traditional restrictions as
to marriage, food, the treatment of the dead, nay,
even a life to come, this too, no doubt, may be
very old; but it may be of yesterday also. There
are even quite new gods, whose genesis has been
watched by living missionaries. The great diffi¬
culty in all such researches is to distinguish be¬
tween what is common to human nature, and what
is really inherited or traditional. All such ques-
Arrival in England 197
tions have only as yet been touched upon, and they
must wait for their answer till real scholars will
take up the study of the language of living savages,
in the same scholarlike spirit in which they have
taken up the study of Yedic and Babylonian sav¬
ages. But we must have patience and learn to
wait. It has been a favourite idea among anthro¬
pologists that the savage races inhabiting parts of
India give us a correct idea of what the Aryans
of India were before they were civilized. It may
safely be said of this as of other mere ideas, that it
may be true, but that there is no evidence to show
that it is true. At all events it takes much for
granted, and neglects, as it would seem, the very
lessons which the theory of evolution has taught
us. It is the nature of evolution to be continuous,
and not to proceed per saltum. Therein lies the
beauty of genealogical evolution that we can recog¬
nize the fibres which connect the upper strata with
the lower, till we strike the lowest, or at least that
which contains what seem to be the seeds and
germs of early thoughts, words, and acts. We can
trace the most modern forms of language back to
Sanskrit, or rather to that postulated linguistic
stratum of which Sanskrit formed the most promi¬
nent representative, just as we can trace the French
Dieu back to Latin Deus and Sanskrit Devas, the
brilliant beings behind the phenomena of nature;
and again behind them, Dyaus, the brilliant sky,
the Greek Zeus, the Roman Iovis and Iuppiter,
198 My Autobiography
the most natural of all the Aryan gods of nature.
This is real evolution, a real causal nexus between
the present and the past. It used to be called
history or pragmatic history, whether we take his¬
tory in the sense of the description of evolution,
or in that of evolution itself. History has gen¬
erally to begin with the present, to go back to the
past, and to point out the palpable steps by which
the past became again and again the present. Evo¬
lution, on the contrary, prefers to begin with the
distant past, to postulate formations, even if they
have left no traces, and to speak of those almost
imperceptible changes by which the postulated past
became the perceptible present, as not only neces¬
sary, but as real. Perhaps the difference is of no
importance, but the historical method seems cer¬
tainly the more accurate, and the more satisfactory
from a purely scientific point of view.
In all such evolutionary researches language has
always been the most useful instrument, and the
study of the science of language may truly be said
to have been the first science which was treated
according to evolutionary or historical principles.
Here, too, no doubt, intermediate links which must
have existed, are sometimes lost beyond recovery,
and when we arrive at the very roots of language,
we feel that there may have been whole aeons
before that radical period. Here science must
recognize her inevitable horizons, but here again
no surviving literary monument could carry us so
Arrival in England
199
far as the Veda. Hence its supreme importance
for Aryan philology—for the philology of the
most important languages of historical mankind.
Other languages, whether Babylonian or Accadian,
whether Hottentot or Maori, may be, for all we
know, much more ancient or much more primitive;
but, as scientific explorers, we can only speak of
what we know, and we must renounce all conject¬
ures that go beyond facts.
In all these researches no one took a livelier
interest and encouraged me more than Bunsen.
When some of my translations of the Vedic hymns
seemed fairly satisfactory, I used to take them to
him, and he was always delighted at seeing a little
more of that ancient Aryan torso, though at the
time he was more specially interested in Egyptian
chronology and archaeology. Often when I was
alone with him did we discuss the chronological
and psychological dates of Egyptian and Aryan
antiquity. Kind-hearted as he was, Bunsen could
get very excited, nay, quite violent in arguing,
and though these fits soon passed off, yet it made
discussions between His Excellency the Prussian
Minister and a young German scholar somewhat
difficult. At that time much less was known of
the earliest Egyptian chronology than is now.
But I was never much impressed by mere dates.
If a king was supposed to have lived 5,000 years
before our era, " What is that to us? " I used to
say, " He sits on his throne in vacuo, and there
200 My Autobiography
is nothing to fix him by, nothing contemporary
which alone gives interest to history. In India we
have no dates; but whatever dates and names of
kings and accounts of battles the Egyptian inscrip¬
tions may give us, as a book there is nothing so
old in Egypt as the Yeda in India. Besides, we
have in the Yeda thoughts; and in the chronology
of thought the Yeda seems to me older than even
the Book of the Dead."
As to the actual date of the Yeda, I readily
granted that chronologically it was not so old as
the pyramids, but supposing it had been, would
that in any way have increased its value for our
studies? If we were to place it at 5000 b. c., I
doubt whether anybody could refute such a date,
while if we go back beyond the Yeda, and come
to measure the time required for the formation of
Sanskrit and of the Proto-Aryan language I doubt
very much whether even 5,000 years would suf¬
fice for that. There is an unfathomable depth in
language, layer following after layer, long before
we arrive at roots, and what a time and what an
effort must have been required for their elabora¬
tion, and for the elaboration of the ideas expressed
in them.
Our battles waxed sometimes very fierce, but we
generally ended by arriving at an understanding.
As a young man, Bunsen had clearly perceived the
importance of the Yeda for an historical study of
mankind and the growth of the human mind, but
Arrival in England
201
lie was not discouraged when he saw that it gave
us less than had been expected. " It is a fortress,"
he used to say, " that must be besieged and taken,
it cannot be left in our rear." But he little knew
how much time it would take to approach it, to
surround it, and at last to take it. It has not been
surrendered even now, and will not be in my time.
It is true there are several translations of the whole
of the Rig-veda, and their authors deserve the high¬
est credit for what they have done. People have
wondered why I have not given one of them in
my Sacred Books of the East. I thought it was
more honest to give, in co-operation with Olden¬
burg, specimens only in vols, xxxii and xlvi of that
series, and let it be seen in the notes how much
uncertainty there still is, and how much more of
hard work is required, before we can call ourselves
masters of the old Yedic fortress.
Bunsen's interest in my work, however, took a
more practical turn than mere encouragement. It
was no good encouraging me to copy and collate
Sanskrit MSS. if they were not to be published.
He saw that the East India Company were the
proper body to undertake that work. Bunsen's
name was a power in England, and his patronage
was the very best introduction that I could have
had. It was no easy task to persuade the Board
of Directors—all strictly practical and commercial
men—to authorize so considerable an expenditure,
merely to edit and print an old book that none
202 My Autobiography
of them could understand, and many of them had
perhaps never even heard of. Bunsen pointed out
what a disgrace it would he to them, if some other
country than England published this edition of the
Sacred Books of the Brahmans.
Professor Wilson, Librarian of the Company,
also gave my project his support, and at last, not
quite a year after my arrival in England, after a
long struggle and many fears of failure, it was
settled that the East India Company were to bear
the cost of printing the Yeda, and were mean¬
while to enable me to stay in London, and prepare
my work for press.
I had already been working five years copying
and collating, and my first volume of the Rig-veda
was progressing, but it was only when all was
settled that I realized how much there was still
to do, and that I should have very hard work in¬
deed before the printing could begin. I must enter
into some details to show the real difficulties I
had to face.
I felt convinced that the first thing to do was to
publish a correct text of the Rig-veda. That was
not so difficult, though it brought me the greatest
kudos. The MSS. were very correct, and the text
could easily be restored by comparing the Pada
and Sanhita texts, i. e. the text in which every word
was separated, and the text in which the words
were united according to the rules of Sandhi. Any¬
body might have done that, yet this, as I said, was
Arrival in England
203
the part of my work for which I have received the
greatest praise.
When my edition of the Rig-veda containing
text and commentary was nearly finished, another
scholar, who had assisted me in my work, and who
had always had the use of my MSS., my Indices,
in fact of the whole of my apparatus criticus,
published a transcript of the text in Latin letters,
and thus anticipated part of the last volume of my
edition. His friends, who were perhaps not mine,
seemed delighted to call him the first editor of the
Rig-veda, though they ceased to do so when they
discovered misprints or mistakes of my own edi¬
tion repeated in his. He himself was far above
such tactics. He knew, and they knew perfectly
well that, whatever the valgus profanum may
think, my real work wras the critical edition of
Sayana's commentary on the Rig-veda. I had de¬
termined that this also should be edited according
to the strictest rules of criticism. I knew what an
amount of labour that would involve, but I refused
to yield to the pressure of my colleagues to pro¬
ceed more quickly but less critically.
Sayana quotes a number of Sanskrit works
which, at the time when I began my edition, had
not yet been edited. Such were the Hirukta, the
glossary of the Rig-veda; the Aitareya-brahmana,
a very old explanation of the Yedic sacrifice; the
Asvalayana Sutras, on the ceremonial; and sundry
works of the same character. Sayana generally
204 My Autobiography
alludes very briefly only to tliese works and pre¬
supposes that they are known to us, so that a short
reference would suffice for his purposes. To find
such references and to understand them required,
however, not only that I should copy these works,
which I did, but that I should make indices and
thus be able to find the place of the passages to
which he alluded. This I did also, but over and
over again was I stopped by some short enigmatical
reference to Panini's grammar or Yaska's glossary,
which I could not identify. All these references
are now added to my edition, and those who will
look them up in the originals, will see what kind
of work it was which I had to do before a single
line of my edition could be printed. How often
was I in perfect despair, because there was some
allusion in Sayana which I could not make out,
and which no other Sanskrit scholar, not even
Burnouf or Wilson, could help me to clear up. It
often took me whole days, nay, weeks, before I
saw light. A good deal of the commentary was
easy enough. It was like marching on the high
road, when suddenly there rises a fortress that has
to be taken before any further advance is to be
thought of. In the purely mechanical part other
men could and did help me. But whenever any
real difficulty arose, I had to face it by myself,
though after a time I gladly acknowledged that
here, too, their advice was often valuable to me.
In fact I found, and all my assistants seemed to
Arrival in England
205
have found out the same, that if they were useful
to me, the work they did for me was useful to
them, and I am proud to say that nearly all of
them have afterwards risen to great prominence in
Sanskrit scholarship. From time to time I also
worked at interpreting and translating some of the
Yedic hymns, though I had always hoped that
this part of the work would be taken up by other
scholars.
Bunsen was also my social sponsor in London,
and my first peeps into English society were at the
Prussian Legation. He often invited me to his
breakfast and dinner parties, and when I saw for
the first time the magnificent rooms crowded with
ministers, and dukes, and bishops, and with ladies
in their grandest dresses, I was as in a dream, and
felt as if I had been lifted into another world.
Men were pointed out to me such as Sir Robert
Peel, the Duke of Wellington, Van der Weyer,
the Belgian Minister, Thirlwall, Bishop of St.
David's and author of the History of Greece,
Archdeacon Hare, Frederick Maurice, and many
more whom I did not know then, though I came
to know several of them afterwards. Anybody
who had anything of his own to produce was wel¬
come in Bunsen's house, and among the men whom
I remember meeting at his breakfast parties, were
Rawlinsen, Layard, Hodgson, Birch, and many
more. Those breakfast parties were then quite a
new institution to me, and it is curious how en-
206 My Autobiography
tirely they have gone out of fashion, though Sir
Harry Inglis, Member for Oxford, Gladstone,
Member for Oxford, Monckton Milnes (afterwards
Lord Houghton), kept them up to the last, while
in Oxford they survived perhaps longer than any¬
where else. They had one great advantage, people
came to them quite fresh in the morning; but they
broke too much into the day, particularly when,
as at Oxford, they ended with beer, champagne,
and cigars, as was sometimes the case in under¬
graduates' rooms.
How I was able to swim in that new stream, I
can hardly understand even now. I had been
quite unaccustomed to this kind of society, and
was ignorant of its simplest rules. Bunsen, how¬
ever, was never put out by my gaucheries, but
gave me friendly hints in feeling my wTay through
what seemed to me a perfect labyrinth. He told
me that I had offended people by not returning
their calls, or not leaving a card after having dined
with them, paying the so-called digestion-visit to
them. How should I know? Hobody had ever
told me, and I thought it obtrusive to call. Mor
did I know that in England to touch fish with a
knife, or to help yourself to potatoes with a fork,
was as fatal as to drop or put in an h. Mor did I
ever understand why to cut crisp pastry on your
plate with a knife was worse manners than to
divide it with a fork, often scattering it over your
plate and possibly over the table-cloth. I must
Arrival in England 207
confess also that fish-knives always seemed to me
more civilized than forks in dividing fish, but fish-
knives did not exist when I first came to England.
The really interesting side of all this is to watch
how customs change—come in and go out—and by
what a slow and imperceptible process they are dis¬
carded. Let us hope it is by the survival of the
fittest. "When I first went to Oxford everybody
took wine with his neighbours, now it is only at
such conservative colleges as my own—All Souls
—that the old custom still survives. But then we
have not even given up wax candles yet, and we
look upon gas as a most objectionable innova¬
tion.
Another great difficulty I had was in writing
letters and addressing my friends properly as Sir,
or Mr. Smith, or Smith. I was told that the rule
was very simple and that you addressed everybody
exactly as they addressed you. "What was the con¬
sequence? When I received an invitation to dine
with the Bishop of Oxford who addressed me as
" My dear Sir," I wrote back " My dear Sir," and
said that I should be very happy. How Samuel
Wilberforce must have chuckled when he read my
epistle. But how is any stranger to know all the
intricacies of social literature, particularly if he is
wrongly informed by the highest authorities. I
must confess that even later in life I have often
been puzzled as to the right way of addressing my
friends. There is no difficulty about intimate
2o8 My Autobiography
friends, but as one grows older one knows so many
people more or less intimately, and according to
their different characters and stations in life, one
often does not know whether one offends by too
great or too little familiarity. I was once writing
to a very eminent man in London who had been
exceedingly friendly to me at Oxford, and I ad¬
dressed him as " My dear Professor H." At the
end of his answer he wrote, " Don't call me Pro¬
fessor." All depends on the tone in which such
words are said. I imagined that living in fashion¬
able society in London, he did not like the some¬
what scholastic title of Professor which, in London
particularly, has always a by-taste of diluted om¬
niscience and conceit. I accordingly addressed
him in my next letter as " My dear Sir," and this,
I am sorry to say, produced quite a coldness and
stiffness, as my friend evidently imagined that I
declined to be on more intimate terms with him,
the fact being that through life I have always been
one of his most devoted admirers. I did my best
to conform to all the British institutions, as well
as I could, though in the beginning I must no
doubt have made fearful blunders, and possibly
given offence to the truly insular Briton. Bunsen
seemed to delight in asking me whenever he had
Princes or other grandees to lunch or dine with
him.
One day he took me with him to stay at Hurst-
monceux with Archdeacon Hare, and a delightful
Arrival in England
209
time it was. There were books in every room, on
the staircase, and in every corner of the house, and
the Archdeacon knew every one of them, and as
soon as a book was mentioned, he went and fetched
it. He generally knew the very place at which the
passage that was being discussed, occurred, and ex¬
celled even the famous dog, which at one of these
literary breakfast parties—I believe in Ilallam's
house—was ordered on the spur of the moment to
fetch the fifth volume of Gibbon's History, and
at once climbed up the ladder and brought down
from the shelf the very volume in which the dis¬
puted passage occurred. He had been taught this
one trick of fetching a certain volume from the
shelves of the library, and the conversation was
turned and turned till it was brought round to a
passage in that very volume. The guests were, no
doubt, amazed, but as it was before the days of
Darwin and Lubbock, it led to no more than a
good laugh. I was surprised and delighted at the
honesty with which the Archdeacon admitted the
weak points of the Anglican system, and the dan¬
gers which threatened not only the Church, but the
religion of England. The real danger, he evidently
thought, came from the clergy, and their hanker¬
ing after Rome. " They have forgotten their his¬
tory," he said, " and the sufferings which the sway
of a Roman priesthood has inflicted for centuries
on their country." I think it was he who told me
the story of a young Romanizing curate, who de-
2io My Autobiography
clared that he could never see what was the use of
the laity.
One day when I called on Bunsen with my
books, and I frequently called when I had some¬
thing new to show him, he said: " You must come
with me to Oxford to the meeting of the British
Association." This was in 1847. Of course I did
not know what sort of thing this British Associa¬
tion was, but Bunsen said he would explain it all
to me, only I must at once sit down and write a
paper. He, Bunsen, was to read a paper on the
" Kesults of the recent Egyptian Researches in
reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology and
the Classification of Languages," and he wanted
Dr. Karl Meyer and myself to support him, the
former with a paper on Celtic Philology, and my¬
self with a paper on the Aryan and Aboriginal
Languages of India. I assured him that this was
quite beyond me. I had hardly been a year in
England, and even if I could write, I knew but
too well that I could not read a paper before a
large audience. However, Bunsen would take no
refusal. "We must show them what we have done
in Germany for the history and philosophy of lan¬
guage," he said, " and I reckon on your help."
There was no escape, and to Oxford I had to go.
I was fearfully nervous, for, as Prince Albert was
to be present, ever so many distinguished people
had flocked to the meeting, and likewise some not
very friendly ethnologists, such as Dr. Latham,
Arrival in England
211
and Mr. Crawford, known by the name of the Ob¬
jector General. Our section was presided over by
the famous Dr. Prichard, the author of that classi¬
cal work, Researches into the Physical History of
Mankind, in five volumes, and it was he who pro¬
tected me most chivalrously against the somewhat
frivolous objections of certain members, who were
not over friendly towards Prince Albert, Cheva¬
lier Bunsen, and all that was called German in
scholarship. All, however, went off well. Bun-
sen's speech was most successful, and it is a pity
that it should be buried in the Transactions of the
British Association for 1847. At that time it was
considered a great honour that his speech should
appear there in extenso. "When Bunsen declared
that he would not give it, unless Dr. Meyer's paper
and my own were published in the Transactions
at the same time, there was renewed opposition.
I was so little proud of my own essay, that I should
much rather have kept it back for further improve¬
ment, but printed it was in the Transactions, and
much canvassed at the time in different journals.
I have always been doubtful about the advan¬
tages of these public meetings, so far as any scien¬
tific results are concerned. Everybody who pays a
guinea may become a member and make himself
heard, whether he knows anything on the subject
or not. The most ignorant men often occupy the
largest amount of time. Some people look upon
these congresses simply as a means of advertising
212 My Autobiography
themselves, and I have actually seen quoted among
a man's titles to fame the fact that he had been a
member of certain congresses. Another drawback
is that no one, not even the best of scholars, is
quite himself before a mixed audience. Whereas
in a private conversation a man is glad to receive
any new information, no one likes to be told in
public that he ought to have known this or that, or
that every schoolboy knows it. Then follows gen¬
erally a squabble, and the best pleader is sure to
have the laughter on his side, however ignorant he
may be of the subject that is being discussed. But
Dr. Prichard was an excellent president and mod¬
erator, and though he had unruly spirits to deal
with, he succeeded in keeping up a certain decorum
among them. Dr. Prichard's authority stood very
high, and justly so, and his Researches into the
Physical History of Mankind still remain un¬
paralleled in ethnology. His careful weighing of
facts and difficulties went out of fashion when the
theory of evolution became popular, and every
change from a flea to an elephant was explained by
imperceptible degrees. He dealt chiefly with what
was perceptible, with well-observed facts, and
many of the facts which he marshalled so well,
require even now, in these post-Darwinian days I
should venture to say, renewed consideration. Like
all great men, he was wonderfully humble, and
allowed me to contradict him, who ought to have
been proud to listen and to learn from him.
Arrival in England 213
But though I cannot say that the result of these
meetings and wranglings was very great or valu¬
able, I spent a few most delightful days at Oxford,
and I could not imagine a more perfect state of
existence than to be an undergraduate, a fellow,
or a professor there. A kind of silent love sprang
up in my heart, though I hardly confessed it to
myself, much less to the object of my affections.
I knew I had to go back to be a University tutor
or even a master in a public school in Germany,
and that was a hard life compared with the free¬
dom of Oxford. To be independent and free to
work as I liked, that was everything to me, but
how I ever succeeded in realizing my ideal, I
hardly know. At that time I saw nothing but a
life of drudgery and severe struggle before me, but
I did not allow myself to dwell on it; I simply
worked on, without looking either right or left,
behind or before.
While at Oxford on this my first flying visit, I
had a room in University College, the very college
in which my son was hereafter to be an under¬
graduate. My host was Dr. Plumptre, the Master
of the College, a tall, stiff, and to my mind, very
imposing person. He was then Vice-Chancellor,
and I believe I never saw him except in his cap
and gown and with two bedels walking before him,
the one with a gold, the other with a silver poker
in his hands. We have no Esquire bedels any
longer! All the professors, too, and even the un-
214 My Autobiography
dergraduates, dressed in their mediaeval academic
costume, looked to me very grand, and so different
from the German students at Leipzig or still more
at Jena, walking about the streets in pink cotton
trousers and dressing-gowns. It seemed to me
quite a different world, and I made new discoveries
every day. Being with Bunsen I was invited to
all the official dinners during the meeting of the
British Association, and here, too, the Vice-Chan¬
cellor acted his part with becoming dignity. He
never unbent; he never indulged in a joke or
joined in the laughter of his neighbours. When
I remarked on his immovable features, I was told
that he slept in starched sheets—and I believed it.
At one of these dinners, Prince Louis Lucien Bona¬
parte caused a titter during a speech about the
freedom which people enjoyed in England. " In
France," he said, " with all the declamations about
Liberie, Egaliie, Fraternite, there is very little
freedom, and, with all the trees of liberie which
are being planted along the boulevards, there is
very little of real liberty to be found there! "
" But you in England," he finished, " you have your
old tree of liberty, which is always flowering and
showering peas on the whole world." He wanted
to say peace. We tried to look solemn but failed,
and a suppressed laugh went round till it reached
the Vice-Chancellor. There it stopped. He was
far too well bred to allow a single muscle of his
face to move. " He throws a cold blanket on
Arrival in England
215
everything/' my neighbour said; and my knowl¬
edge of English was still so imperfect that I ac¬
cepted many of these metaphorical remarks in their
literal sense, and became more and more puzzled
about my host. It was evidently a pleasure to my
friends to see how easily I was taken in. On the
walls of the houses at Oxford I saw the letters F. P.
about ten feet from the ground. Of course it was
meant for Eire Plug, but I was told that it marked
the height of the Vice-Chancellor, whose name
was Frederick Plumptre.
My visit to Oxford was over all too soon, and
I returned to London to toil away at my Sanskrit
MSS. in the little room that had been assigned to
me in the Old East India House in Leadenhall
Street. That building, too, in which the reins of
the mighty Empire of India were held, mostly by
the hands of merchants, has vanished, and the
place of it knoweth it no more. However, I
thought little of India, I only thought of the li¬
brary at the East India House, a real Eldorado for
an eager Sanskrit student, who had never seen such
treasures before. I saw little else there, I only
remember seeing Tippoo Sahib's tiger which held
an English soldier in his claws, and was regularly
wound up for the benefit of visitors, and then ut¬
tered a loud squeak, enough to disturb even the
most absorbed of students. I felt quite dazed by
all the books and manuscripts placed at my dis¬
posal, and revelled in them every day till it became
2l6 My Autobiography
dark, and I had to walk home through Ludgate
Hill, Cheapside, and the Strand, generally carry¬
ing ever so many books and papers under my arms.
I knew nobody in the city, and no one knew me;
and what did I care for the world, as long as I had
my beloved manuscripts?
In March, 1848, I had to go over to Paris to
finish up some work there, and just came in for the
revolution. Prom my windows I had a fine view of
all that was going on. I well remember the pan¬
demonium in the streets, the aspect of the savage
mob, the wanton firing of shots at quiet spectators,
the hoisting of Louis Philippe's nankeen trousers on
the flag-staff of the Tuileries. When bullets began
to come through my windows, I thought it time to
be off while it was still possible. Then came the
question how to get my box full of precious manu¬
scripts, &c., belonging to the East India Company,
to the train. The only railway open was the line to
Havre, which had been broken up close to the sta¬
tion, but further on was intact, and in order to get
there we had to climb three barricades. I offered
my concierge five francs to carry my box, but his
wife would not hear of his risking his life in the
streets; ten francs—the same result; but at the sight
of a louis d'or she changed her mind, and with an
" Allez, mon ami, allez toujours," dispatched her
husband on his perilous expedition. Arrived in
London I went straight to the Prussian Legation,
and was the first to give Bunsen the news of Louis
Arrival in England
217
Philippe's flight from Paris. Bunsen took me off
to see Lord Palmerston, and I was able to show
him a bullet that I had picked up in my room as
evidence of the bloody scenes that had been enacted
in Paris. So even a poor scholar had to play his
small part in the events that go to make up history.
CHAPTER VII
early days at oxford
It liad been settled that my edition of the Rig-
veda should be printed at the Oxford University
Press, and I found that I had often to go there
to superintend the printing. Hot that the printers
required much supervision, as I must say that the
printing at the University Press was, and is, ex¬
cellent—far better than anything I had known in
Germany. In providing copy for a work of six vol¬
umes, each of about 1000 pages, it was but natu¬
ral that lapsus calami should occur from time to
time. What surprised me was that several of these
were corrected in the proof-sheets sent to me. At
last I asked whether there was any Sanskrit scholar
at Oxford who revised my proof-sheets before they
were returned. I was told there was not, but
that the queries were made by the printer himself.
That printer was an extraordinary man. His right
arm was slightly paralysed, and he had therefore
been put on difficult slow work, such as Sanskrit.
There are more than 300 types which a printer must
know in composing Sanskrit. Many of the letters
in Sanskrit are incompatible, i. e. they cannot follow
each other, or if they do, they have to be modified.
218
Early Days at Oxford 219
Every d, for instance, if followed by a t, is changed
to t; every dh loses its aspiration, becomes likewise
t, or changes the next t into dh. Thus from budh +
ta, we have Buddha, i.e. awakened. In writing
I had sometimes neglected these modifications, but
in the proof-sheets these cases were always either
queried or corrected. When I asked the printer,
who did not of course know a word of Sanskrit,
how he came to make these corrections, he said:
" Well, sir, my arm gets into a regular swing from
one compartment of types to another, and there
are certain movements that never occur. So if
I suddenly have to take up types which entail a
new movement, I feel it, and I put a query." An
English printer might possibly be startled in the
same way if in English he had to take up an s
immediately following an h. But it was certainly
extraordinary that an unusual movement of the
muscles of the paralysed arm should have led to the
discovery of a mistake in writing Sanskrit. In
spite of the extreme accuracy of my printer, how¬
ever, I saw, that after all it would be better for
myself, and for the Yeda, if I were on the spot, and
I decided to migrate from London to Oxford.
My first visit had filled me with enthusiasm for
the beautiful old town, which I regarded as an ideal
home for a student. Besides, I found that I was
getting too gay in London, and in order to be able
to devote my evenings to society, I had to get up
and begin work soon after five. May, therefore,
220 My Autobiography
saw me established for the first time in Oxford, in
a small room in Walton Street. The moving of my
books and papers from London did not take long.
At that time my library could still be accommodated
in my portmanteau, it had not yet risen to 12,000
volumes, threatening to drive me out of my house.
A happy time it was when I possessed no books
which I had not read, and no one sent books to
me which I did not want, and yet had to find a
place for in my rooms, and to thank the author for
his kindness.
I at once found that my work went on more
rapidly at Oxford than in London, though if I
had expected to escape from all hospitality I cer¬
tainly was not allowed to do that. Accustomed as
I was to the Spartan diet of a German convictorium,
or a dinner at the Palais Royal a deux francs, the
dinners to which I was invited by some of the Fel¬
lows in Hall, or in Common Room, surprised me not
a little. The old plate, the old furniture, and the
whole style of living, impressed me deeply, partic¬
ularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious inven¬
tion for lightening the trouble of the guests who
took wine in Common Room. There was a small
railway fixed before the fire-place, and on it a wagon
containing the bottles went backwards and forwards,
halting before every guest till he had helped him¬
self. That railway, I am afraid, is gone now; and
what is more serious, the pleasant, chatty evenings
spent in Common Room are likewise a thing of the
Early Days at Oxford 221
past. Married Fellows, if they dine in Hall, return
home after dinner, and junior Fellows go to their
hooks or pupils. In my early Oxford days, a mar¬
ried Fellow would have sounded like a solecism.
The story goes that married Fellows were not en¬
tirely unknown, and that you could hold even a fel¬
lowship, if you could hold your tongue. Young
people, however, who did not possess that gift of
silence, had often to wait till they were fifty, before
a college living fell vacant, and the quinquagenarian
Fellow became a young husband and a young vicar.
What impressed me, however, even more than
the great hospitality of Oxford, was the real friend¬
liness shown to an unknown German scholar. After
all, I had done very little as yet, but the kind words
which Bunsen and Dr. Prichard had spoken about
me at the meeting of the British Association, had
evidently produced an impression in my favour far
beyond what I deserved. I must have seemed a
very strange bird, such as had never before built
his nest at Oxford. I was very young, but I looked
even younger than I -was, and my knowledge of
the manners of society, particularly of English
society, was really nil. Few people knew what I
was working at. Some had a kind of vague im¬
pression that I had discovered a very old religion,
older than the Jewish and the Christian, which con¬
tained the key to many of the mysteries that had
puzzled the ancient, nay, even the modern world.
Frequently, when I was walking through the streets
222 My Autobiography
of Oxford, I observed how people stared at me, and
seemed to whisper some information about me.
Tradespeople did not always trust me, though I
never owed a penny to anybody; when I wanted
money I could always make it by going on faster
with printing the Rig-veda, for which I received
four pounds a sheet. This seemed to me then a
large sum, though many a sheet took me at first
more than a week to get ready, copy, collate, under¬
stand, and finally print. If I was interested in any
other subject, my exchequer suffered accordingly—
but I could always retrieve my losses by sitting up
late at night. Poor as I was, I never had any cares
about money, and when I once began to write in
English for English journals, I had really more than
I wanted. My first article in the Edinburgh Re¬
view appeared in October, 1851.
At that time the idea of settling at Oxford, of
remaining in this academic paradise, never entered
my head. I was here to print my Rig-veda and
work at the Bodleian; that I should in a few years
be an M.A. of Christ Church, a Fellow of the most
exclusive of colleges, nay, a married Fellow—a be¬
ing not even invented then—and a professor of the
University, never entered into my wildest dreams.
I could only admire, and admire with all my heart.
Everything seemed perfect, the gardens, the walks
in the neighbourhood, the colleges, and most of all
the inhabitants of the colleges, both Fellows and
undergraduates. My ideas were still so purely
Early Days at Oxford 223
continental that I could not understand how the
University could do such a thing as incorporate a
foreign scholar—could, in fact, govern itself with¬
out a Minister of Education to appoint professors,
without a Royal Commissioner to look after the
undergraduates and their moral and political senti¬
ments. And here at Oxford I was told that the
Government did not know Oxford, nor Oxford the
Government, that the only ruling power consisted
in the Statutes of the University, that professors and
tutors were perfectly free so long as they conformed
to these statutes, and that certainly no minister
could ever appoint or dismiss a professor, except the
Regius professors. " If we want a thing done," my
friends used to explain to me, " we do it ourselves,
as long as it does not run counter to the statutes."
But Oxford changes with every generation. It is
always growing old, but it is always growing young
again. There was an old Oxford four hundred years
ago, and there was an old Oxford fifty years ago.
To a man who is taking his M.A. degree, Oxford, as
it was when he was a freshman, seems quite a thing
of the past. By the public at large no place is sup¬
posed to be so conservative, so unchanging, nay, so
stubborn in resisting new ideas, as Oxford; and yet
people who knew it forty or fifty years ago, like
myself, find it now so changed that, when they look
back they can hardly believe it is the same place.
Even architecturally the streets of the University
have changed, and here not always for the better.
224 My Autobiography
Architects unfortunately object to mere imitation of
the old Oxford style of building; they want to pro¬
duce something entirely their own, which may be
very good by itself, but is not always in harmony
with the general tone of the college buildings. I
still remember the outcry against the Taylor Institu¬
tion, the only Palladian building at Oxford, and yet
everybody has now grown reconciled to it, and even
Ruskin lectured in it, which he would not have done,
if he had disapproved of its architecture. He would
never lecture in the Indian Institute, and wrote me a
letter sadly reproving me for causing Broad Street to
be defaced by such a building, when I had had abso¬
lutely nothing to do with it. He was very loud in his
condemnation of other new buildings. He abused
even the Hew Museum, though he had a great deal
to do with it himself. He had hoped that it would
be the architecture of the future, but he confessed
after a time that he was not satisfied with the
result.
In his days we still had the old Magdalen Bridge,
the Bodleian unrestored, and no trams. Ruskin was
so offended by the new bridge, by the restored
Bodleian, and by the tram-cars, that he would go
ever so far round to avoid these eyesores, when he
had to deliver his lectures; and that was by no
means an easy pilgrimage. There was, of course,
no use in arguing with him. Most people like the
new Magdalen Bridge because it agrees better with
the width of High Street; they consider the Bod-
Early Days at Oxford 225
leian well restored, particularly now tliat the new
stone is gradually toning down to the colour of the
old walls, and as to tram-cars, objectionable as they
are in many respects, they certainly offend the eye
less than the old dirty and rickety omnibuses. The
new buildings of Merton, in the style of a London
police-station, offended him deeply, and with more
justice, particularly as he had to live next door to
them when he had rooms at Corpus.
These new buildings could not be helped at Ox¬
ford. The stone, with which most of the old colleges
were built, was taken from a quarry close to Oxford,
and began to peel off and to crumble in a very curi¬
ous manner. Artists like these chequered walls, and
by moonlight they are certainly picturesque, but
the colleges had to think of what was safe. My own
college, All Souls, has ever so many pinnacles, and
we kept an architect on purpose to watch which of
them were unsafe and had to be restored or replaced
by new ones. Every one of these pinnacles cost us
about fifty pounds, and at every one of our meetings
we were told that so many pinnacles had been tested,
and wanted repairing or replacing. Many years
ago, when I was spending the whole Long Vacation
at Oxford, I could watch from my windows a man
who was supposed to be testing the strength of
these pinnacles. He was armed with a large crow¬
bar, which he ran with all his might against the
unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls
of any Eoman castellum could have resisted such
226 My Autobiography
a ram. I spoke to some of the Fellows, and when
the builder made his next report to us, we rather
objected to the large number of invalids. He was
not to be silenced, however, so easily, but told us
with a very grave countenance that he could not
take the responsibility, as a pinnacle might fall any
day on our Warden when he went to chapel. This,
he thought, would settle the matter. But no, it
made no impression whatever on the junior Fellows,
and the number of annual cripples was certainly
very much reduced in consequence.
It is true that Oxford has always loved what is
old better than what is new, and has resisted most
innovations to the very last. A well-known liberal
statesman used to say that when any measure of
reform was before Parliament, he always rejoiced to
see an Oxford petition against it, for that measure
was sure to be carried very soon. It should not
be forgotten, however, that there always has been
a liberal minority at Oxford. It is still mentioned
as something quite antediluvian, that Oxford, that
is the Hebdomadal Council, petitioned against the
Great Western Railway invading its sacred pre¬
cincts; but it is equally true that not many years
later it petitioned for a branch line to keep the Uni¬
versity in touch with the rest of the world.
Many things, of course, have been changed, and
are changing every year before our very eyes; but
what can never be changed, in spite of some recent
atrocities in brick and mortar, is the natural beauty
Early Days at Oxford 227
of its gardens, and the historical character of its
architecture. Whether Friar Bacon, as far back
as the thirteenth century, admired the colleges,
chapels, and gardens of Oxford, we do not know;
and even if we did, few of them could have been
the same as those which we admire to-day. We
must not forget that Greene's Honourable History
of Friar Bacon does not give us a picture of what
Oxford was when seen by that famous philosopher,
who is sometimes claimed as a Fellow of Brasenose
College, probably long before that College existed;
but what is said in that play in praise of the Univer¬
sity, may at least be taken as a recollection of what
Greene saw himself, when he took his degree as
Bachelor of Arts in 1578. In his play of the His¬
tory of Friar Bacon, Greene introduces the Em¬
peror of Germany, Henry II, 1212-50, as paying
a visit to Henry III of England, 1216-73, and he
puts into his mouth the following lines, which,
though they cannot compare with Shelley's or Mat
Arnold's, are at all events the earliest testimony to
the natural attractions of Oxford. Anyhow, Shel¬
ley's and Mat Arnold's lines are well known and are
always quoted, so that I venture to quote Greene's
lines, not for the sake of their beauty, but simply
because they are probably known to very few of my
readers:
" Trust me, Plantagenet, these Oxford schools
Are richly seated near the river-side:
The mountains full of fat and fallow deer,
228 My Autobiography
The battling1 pastures lade with kine and flocks,
The town gorgeous with high built colleges,
And scholars seemly in their grave attire."
The mountains round Oxford we must accept as
a bold poetical licence, whether they were meant for
Headington Hill or Wytham Woods. The German
traveller, Hentzner, who described Oxford in 1598,
is more true to nature when he speaks of the wooded
hills that encompass the plain in which Oxford lies.
But while the natural beauty of Oxford has al¬
ways been admired and praised by strangers, the
doctors and professors of the old University have
not always fared so well at the hands of English
and foreign critics. I shall not quote from Giordano
Bruno, who visited England in 1583-5, and calls Ox¬
ford "the widow of true science2," but Milton
surely cannot be suspected of any prejudice against
Oxford. Yet he writes in 1656 in a letter to Rich¬
ard Jones: " There is indeed plenty of amenity
and salubrity in the place when you are there.
There are books enough for the needs of a Univer¬
sity : if only the amenity of the spot contributed so
much to the genius of the inhabitants as it does to
pleasant living, nothing would seem wanting to the
happiness of the place."
These ill-natured remarks about the Oxford Dons
seem to go on to the very beginning of our century.
1 Will it be believed that the battels (bills) in College are con¬
nected with this word ?
5 Opere, ed. Wagner, i. p. 179.
Early Days at Oxford 229
The buildings and gardens are praised, but by way
of contrast, it would seem, or from some kind of
jealousy, their inhabitants are always treated with
ridicule. USTot long ago a book was published,
Memoirs of a Highland Lady. Though published
in 1898, it should be remembered that the memoirs
go back as far as 1809. Nor should it be forgotten
that at that time the authoress was hardly more
than thirteen years of age, and certainly of a very
girlish, not to say frivolous, disposition. She stayed
some time with the then Master of University,
Dr. Griffith, and for him, it must be said, she always
shows a certain respect. But no one else at Oxford
is spared. She arrived there at the time of Lord
Grenville's installation as Chancellor of the Univer¬
sity. Though so young, she was taken to the Thea¬
tre, and this is her description of what she saw and
heard:—" It was a shock to me; I had expected to
be charmed with a play, instead of being nearly set
to sleep by discourses in Latin from a pulpit. There
were some purple, and some gold, some robes and
some wigs, a great crowd, and some stir at times,
while a deal of humdrum speaking and dumb show
was followed by the noisy demonstrations of the stu¬
dents, as they applauded or condemned the honours
bestowed; but in the main I tired of the heat and
the mob, and the worry of these mornings, and so,
depend upon it, did poor Lord Grenville, who sat
up in the chair of state among the dignitaries, like
the Grand Lama in his temple guarded by his
230 My Autobiography
priests." One thing only she was delighted with,
that was the singing of Catalani at one of the con¬
certs. Yet even here she cannot repress her remark
that she sang " Gott safe the King." She evidently
was a flippant young lady or child, and with her
sister, who afterwards joined her at Oxford, seems
to have found herself quite a fish out of water in
the grave society of the University.
The room in the Master's Lodge which appalled
her most and seems to have been used as a kind
of schoolroom, was the Library, full of Divinity
books, but without curtains, carpet, or fireplace.
Here they had lessons in music, drawing, arithmetic,
history, geography, and French. " And the Mas¬
ter," she adds, " opened to us what had been till
then a sealed book, the Hew Testament, so that this
visit to Oxford proved really one of the fortunate
chances of my life."
This speaks well for the young lady, who in later
life seems to have occupied a most honoured and
influential position in Scotch society. But Oxford
society evidently found no favour in her eyes.
Her uncle and aunt, as she tells us, were fre¬
quently out at dinner with other Heads of Llouses,
for there was, of course, no other society. These
dinners seem to have been very sumptuous, though
their own domestic life was certainly very simple.
For breakfast they had tea, and butter on their
bread, and at dinner a small glass of ale, college
home-brewed ale. " How fat we got! " she exclaims.
Early Days at Oxford
231
The Master seems to have been a man of refined
taste, fond of drawing, and what was called poker-
painting; he was given also to caricaturing, and
writing of squibs. The two young ladies were evi¬
dently fond of his society, hut of the other Oxford
society she only mentions the ultra-Tory politics,
and the stupidity and frivolity of the Heads of
Houses. " The various Heads," she writes, " with
their respective wives, were extremely inferior to
my uncle and aunt. More than half of the Doctors
of Divinity were of humble origin, the sons of small
gentry or country clergy, or even of a lower grade.
Many of these, constant to the loves of their youth,
brought ladies of inferior manners to grace what
appeared to them so dignified a station. It was not
a good style; there was little talent, and less polish,
and no sort of knowledge of the world. And yet
the ignorance of this class was less offensive than
the assumption of another, when a lady of high
degree had fallen in love with her brother's tutor,
and got him handsomely provided for in the Church,
that she might excuse herself for marrying him. Of
the lesser clergy, there were young witty ones—
odious; young learned ones—bores; and elderly
ones—pompous; all, however, of all grades, kind
and hospitable. But the Christian pastor, humble,
gentle, considerate, and self-sacrificing, had no rep¬
resentative, as far as I could see, among these deal¬
ers in old wines, rich dinners, fine china, and mas¬
sive plate."
232 My Autobiography
" The religion of Oxford appeared in those days
to consist in honouring the King and his Ministers,
and in perpetually popping in and out of chapel.
Chapel was announced by the strokes of a big ham¬
mer, beaten on every staircase half an hour before
by a scout. The education was suited to Divinity.
A sort of supervision was said to be kept over the
young, riotous community, and to a certain extent
the Proctors of the University and the Deans of the
different colleges did see that no very open scandal
was committed. There were rules that had in a
general way to be obeyed, and lectures that had to
be attended, but as for care to give high aims, pro¬
vide refining amusements, give a worthy tone to
the character of responsible beings, there was none
ever even thought of. The very meaning of the
word ' education ' did not appear to be understood.
The college was a fit sequel to the school. The
young men herded together; they lived in their
rooms, and they lived out of them, in the neighbour¬
ing villages, where many had comfortable establish¬
ments. . . . All sorts of contrivances were re¬
sorted to to enable the dissipated to remain out all
night, to shield a culprit, to deceive the dignitaries."
This was in 1809, and even later.
And yet with all this, and while we are told that
those who attended lectures were laughed at, it
seems strange that the best divines, and lawyers,
and politicians of the first half of our century, some
of whom we may have known ourselves, must have
Early Days at Oxford 233
been formed under that system. We can hardly
believe that it was as bad as here described, and we
must remember that much of the Memoirs of this
Scotch lady can have been written from memory
only, and long after the time when she and her
sister lived at University College. Life there, no
doubt, may have been very dull, as there were no
other young ladies at Oxford, and it cannot have
been very amusing for these young girls to dine
with sixteen Heads of Houses, all in wide silk
cassocks, scarves and bands, one or two in powdered
wigs, so that, as we are told, they often went home
crying. All intercourse with the young men was
strictly forbidden, though it seems to have been
not altogether impossible to communicate, from the
garden of the Master's Lodge, with the young men
bending out of the college windows, or climbing
down to the gardens.
One of these young men, who was at University
College at the same time, might certainly not have
been considered a very desirable companion for
these two Scotch girls. It was no other than
Shelley. "What they say of him does not tell us
much that is new, yet it deserves to be repeated.
" Mr. Slielley," we read, " afterwards so celebrated,
was half crazy. Lie began his career with every
kind of wild prank at Eton. At University he was
very insubordinate, always infringing some rule, the
breaking of which he knew could not be overlooked.
He was slovenly in his dress, and when spoken to
234 My Autobiography
about these and other irregularities, he was in the
habit of making such extraordinary gestures, ex¬
pressive of his humility under reproof, as to overset
first the gravity and then the temper of the lecturing
tutor. When he proceeded so far as to paste up
atheistical squibs on the chapel doors, it was con¬
sidered necessary to expel him privately, out of
regard to Sir Timothy Shelley, the father, who
came up at once. He and his son left Oxford to¬
gether."
Ho one would recognize in this picture the Uni¬
versity of Oxford, as it is at present. Nous avons
change tout cela might be said with great truth by
the Heads of Houses, the Professors, and Fellows
of the present day. And yet what the Highland
lady, or rather the Highland girl, describes, refers
to times not so long ago but that some of the men
we have known might have lived through it. How
this change came about I cannot tell, though I can
bear testimony to a few survivals of the old state of
things.
The Oxford of 1848 was still the Oxford of the
Heads of Houses and of the Hebdomadal Board.
That board consisted almost entirely of Heads of
Houses, and a most important board it w;as, con¬
sidering that the whole administration of the Uni¬
versity was really in its hands. The colleges, on
the other hand, were very jealous of their inde¬
pendence; and even the authority of the Proctors,
who represented the University as such, was often
Early Days at Oxford 235
contested within the gates of a college. It is
wonderful that this old system of governing the
University through the Heads of Houses should
have gone on so long and so smoothly. Having
been trusted by the Fellows of his own society with
considerable power in the administration of his own
college, it was supposed that the Head would prove
equally useful in the administration of the Univer¬
sity. A Head of a House became at once a
member of the Council. And, on the whole, they
managed to drive the coach and horses very well.
But often when I had to take foreigners to hear
the University Sermon, and they saw a most ex¬
traordinary set of old gentlemen walking into St.
Mary's in procession, with a most startling combina¬
tion of colours, black and red, scarlet and pink, on
their heavy gowns and sleeves, I found it difficult
to explain who they were. " Are they your pro¬
fessors?" I was asked. "Oh, no," I said, "the
professors don't wear red gowns, only Doctors of
Divinity and of Civil Law, and as every Head of
a House must have something to wear in public,
he is invariably made a Doctor." I remember one
exception only, and at a much later time, namely,
the Master of Balliol, who, like Canning at the
Congress of Vienna, considered it among his most
valued distinctions never to have worn the gown
of a D.C.L. or D.D. It is well known that when
Marshal Bliicher was made a Doctor at Oxford he
asked, in the innocence of his heart, that General
236 My Autobiography
Gneisenau, his right-hand man, might at least he
made a chemist. He certainly had mixed a most
effective powder for the French army under Napo¬
leon.
" But," my friend would ask, " have you no
Senatus Academicus, have you no faculties of pro¬
fessors such as there are in all other Christian uni¬
versities? " " Yes and no," I said. " We have
professors, but they are not divided into faculties,
and they certainly do not form the Senatus Aca¬
demicus, or the highest authority in the University."
It seems very strange, hut it is nevertheless a
fact, that as soon as a good tutor is made a professor,
he is considered of no good for the real teaching
work of the colleges. His lectures are generally de¬
serted ; and I could quote the names of certain pro¬
fessors who afterwards rose to great eminence, hut
who at Oxford were simply ignored and their lect¬
ure-rooms deserted. The real teaching or coaching
or cramming for examination is left to the tutors
and Fellows of each college, and the examinations
also are chiefly in their hands. Many undergrad¬
uates never see a professor, and, as far as the teach¬
ing work of the University is concerned, the pro¬
fessorships might safely he abolished. And yet, as
I could honestly assure my foreign friends, the hest
men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite
the equals of the best men at Paris or Berlin. The
professors may not he so distinguished, but that is
due to a certain extent to the small salaries attached
Early Days at Oxford 237
to some of the chairs. England has produced great
names both in science and philosophy and scholar¬
ship, but these have generally drifted to some more
attractive or lucrative centres. When I first came to
Oxford one professor received £40 a year, another
£1,500, and no one complained about these inequali¬
ties. A certain amount of land had been left by a
king or bishop for endowing a certain chair, and
every holder of the chair received whatever the en¬
dowment yielded. The mode of appointing profess¬
ors was very curious at that time. Often the elec¬
tions resembled parliamentary elections, far more
regard being paid to political or theological partisan¬
ship than to scientific qualifications. Every M.A.
had a vote, and these voters were scattered all over
the country. Canvassing was carried on quite
openly. Travelling expenses were freely paid, and
.lists were kept in each college of the men who could
be depended on to vote for the liberal or the con¬
servative candidate. Imagine a professor of medi¬
cine or of Greek being elected because he was a lib¬
eral! Some appointments rested with the Prime
Minister, or, as it was called, the Crown; and it was
quoted to the honour of the Duke of Wellington,
that he, when Chancellor of the University, once
insisted that the electors should elect the best man,
and they had to yield, though there were electors
who would declare their own candidate the best
man, whatever the opinion of really qualified judges
might be. All this election machinery is much im-
238 My Autobiography
proved now, though an infallible system of electing
the best men has not yet been discovered. One sin¬
gle elector, who is not troubled by too tender a con¬
science, may even now vitiate a whole election; to
say nothing of the painful position in which an
elector is placed, if he has to vote against a personal
friend or a member of his own college, particularly
when the feeling that it is dishonourable to disclose
the vote of each elector is no longer strong enough
to protect the best interests of the University.
It took me some time before I could gain an in¬
sight into all this. The old system passed away
before my very eyes, not without evident friction
between my different friends, and then came the
difficulty of learning to understand the working of
the new machinery which had been devised and
sanctioned by Parliament. Reformers arose even
among the Heads of Houses, as, for instance, Dr.
Jeune, the Master of Pembroke College, who was
credited with having rajeuni Vancienne universite.
But he was by no means the only, or even the
chief actor in University reform. Many of my
personal friends, such as Dr. Tait, afterwards Arch¬
bishop of Canterbury, the Rev. II. G. Liddell, after¬
wards Dean of Christ Church, Professor Baden-
Powell, and the Rev. G. H. S. Johnson, afterwards
Dean of Wells, with Stanley and Gold win Smith
as Secretaries, did honest service in the various
Royal and Parliamentary Commissions, and spent
much of their valuable time in serving the Univer-
Early Days at Oxford
239
sity and the country. I could do no more than an¬
swer the questions addressed to me by the Commis¬
sioners and by my friends, and this is really all the
share I had at that time in the reform of the Uni¬
versity, or what was called Germanizing the English
Universities. At one time such was the unpopu¬
larity of these reformers in the University itself
that one of them asked one of the junior professors
to invite him to dinner, because the Heads of Houses
would no longer admit him to their hospitable
boards.
Certainly to have been a member of the much
abused Hebdomadal Board, and a Head of a College
in those pre-reform days must have been a delightful
life. Before the days of agricultural distress the in¬
come of the colleges was abundant; the authority of
the Heads was unquestioned in their own colleges;
not only undergraduates, but Fellows also had to
be submissive. No junior Fellow would then have
dared to oppose his Head at college meetings.
If there was by chance an obstreperous junior, he
was easily silenced or requested to retire. The
days had not yet come when a Master of Trinity
ventured to remark that even a junior Fellow
might possibly be mistaken. Colleges seemed to
be the property of the Heads, and in some of them
the Fellows were really chosen by them, and the
rest of the Fellows after some kind of examination.
The management of University affairs was likewise
entirely in the hands of the Heads of Colleges, and
240 My Autobiography
it was on rare occasions only that a theological ques¬
tion stirred the interest of non-resident M.A.s, and
brought them to Oxford to record their vote for or
against the constituted authorities. Men like the
Dean of Christ Church, Dr. Gaisford, the Warden
of Wadham, Dr. Parsons, and the Provost of Oriel,
Dr. Hawkins, were in their dominions supreme, till
the rebellious spirit began to show itself in such men
as Dr. Jeune, Professor Baden-Powell, A. P. Stan¬
ley, Goldwin Smith and others.
Nor were there many very flagrant abuses under
the old regime. It was rather the want of life that
was complained of. It began to he felt that Oxford
should take its place as an equal by the side of
foreign Universities, not only as a high school, hut
as a home of what then was called for the first
time " original research." There can be no question
that as a teaching body, as a high school at the
head of all the public schools in England, Oxford
did its duty nobly. A man who at that time could
take a Double Eirst was indeed a strong man, well
fitted for any work in after life. He would not
necessarily turn out an original thinker, a scholar,
or a discoverer in physical science, hut he would
know what it was to know anything thoroughly.
To take honours at the same time in classics and
mathematics required strength and grasp, and the
effort was certainly considerable, as I found out
when occasionally I read a Greek or Latin author
with a young undergraduate friend, What struck
Early Days at Oxford
241
me most was the accurate knowledge a candidate
acquired of special authors and special books, but
also the want of that familiarity with the language,
Greek or Latin, which would enable him to read
any new author with comparative ease. The young
men whom I knew at the time they went in for
their final examination, were certainly well ground¬
ed in classics, and what they knew they knew thor¬
oughly.
The personal relations existing between under¬
graduates and their tutors were very intimate.
A tutor took a pride in his pupils, and often became
their friend for life. The teaching was almost
private teaching, and the idea of reading a written
lecture to a class in college did not exist as yet.
It was real teaching with questions and answers;
while lectures, written and read out, were looked
down upon as good enough for professors, but en¬
tirely useless for the schools. The social tone of the
University was excellent. Many of the tutors and
of the undergraduates came of good families, and
the struggle for life, or for a college living, or col¬
lege office, was not, as yet, so fierce as it became
afterwards. College tutors toiled on for life, and
certainly did their work to the last most conscien¬
tiously. There was perhaps little ambition, little
scheming or pushing, but the work of the University,
such as the country would have it, was well done.
If the Honour-Lists were small, the number of utter
failures also was not very large.
242 My Autobiography
For a young scholar, like myself, who came to
live at Oxford in those distant days, the peace and
serenity of life were most congenial, though several
of my friends were among the first who began to
fret, and wished for more work to be done and for
better use to be made of the wealth and the oppor¬
tunities of the University. My impression at that
time was the same as it has been ever since, that
a reform of the Universities was impossible till the
public schools had been thoroughly reformed. The
Universities must take what the schools send them.
There is every year a limited number of boys from
the best schools who would do credit to any Uni¬
versity. But a large number of the young men
who are sent up to matriculate at Oxford are not
up to an academic standard. Unless the colleges
agree to stand empty for a year or two, they cannot
help themselves, but have to keep the standard of
the matriculation examination low, and in fact do,
to a great extent, the work that ought to have been
done at school. Think of boys being sent up to
Oxford, who, after having spent on an average six
years at a public school, are yet unable to read a line
of Greek or Latin which they have not seen before.
Yet so it was, and so it is, unless I am very much mis¬
informed. It is easy for some colleges who keep up
a high standard of matriculation to turn out first-
class men; the real burden falls on the colleges and
tutors who have to work hard to bring their pupils up
to the standard of a pass degree, and few people have
Early Days at Oxford 243
any idea how little a pass degree may mean. Those
tutors have indeed hard work to do and get little
credit for it, though their devotion to their college
and their pupils is highly creditable. Fifty years
ago even a pass degree was more difficult than it is
now, because candidates were not allowed to pass in
different subjects at different times, but the whole
examination had to be done all at once, or not
at all.
I had naturally made it a rule at Oxford to stand
aloof from the conflict of parties, whether academi¬
cal, theological, or political. I had my own work to
do, and it did not seem to me good taste to obtrude
my opinions, which naturally were different from
those prevalent at Oxford. Most people like to wash
their dirty linen among themselves; and though I
gladly talked over such matters with my friends who
often consulted me, I did not feel called upon to join
in the fray. I lived through several severe crises at
Oxford, and though I had some intimate friends on
either side, I remained throughout a looker on.
Seldom.has a University passed through such a
complete change as Oxford has since the year 1854.
And yet the change was never violent, and the
University has passed through its ordeal really re¬
juvenated and reinvigorated. It has been said that
our constitution has now become too democratic,
and that a University should be ruled by a Senatus
rather than by a Juventus. This is true to a certain
extent. There has been too much unrest, too con-
244 My Autobiography
stant changes, and a lack of continuity in the studies
and in the government of the University. Every
three years a new wave of young masters came in,
carried a reform in the system of teaching and
examining, and then left to make room for a new
wave which brought new ideas, before the old ones
had a fair trial. Senior members of the University,
heads of houses and professors, have no more voting
power than the young men who have just taken
their degrees, nay, have in reality less influence than
these young Masters, who always meet together and
form a kind of compact phalanx when votes are to
be taken. There was even a Hon-placet club, ready
to throw out any measure that seemed to emanate
from the reforming party, or threatened to change
any established customs, whether beneficial or other¬
wise to the University. The University, as such,
was far less considered than the colleges, and money
drawn from the colleges for University purposes
was looked upon as robbery, though of course the
colleges profited by the improvement of the Uni¬
versity, and the interests of the two ought never to
have been divided, as little as the interests of an
army can be divided from the interests of each
regiment.
When I came to Oxford there was still practically
no society except that of the Heads of Houses, and
there were no young ladies to grace their dinners.
Each head took his turn in succession, and had twice
or three times during term to feed his colleagues.
Early Days at Oxford 245
These dinners were sumptuous repasts, though they
often took place as early as five. To be invited to
them was considered a great distinction, and, though
a very young man, I was allowed now and then to
be present, and I highly appreciated the honour.
The company consisted almost entirely of Heads of
Houses, Canons, and Professors; sometimes there
was a sprinkling of distinguished persons from Lon¬
don, and even of ladies of various ages and degrees.
I confess I often sat among them, as we say in Ger¬
man, verrathen und verkauft. After dinner I saw
a number of young men streaming in, and thought
the evening would now become more lively. But
far from it. These young men with white ties and
in evening dress stood in their scanty gowns hud¬
dled together on one side of the room. They re¬
ceived a cup of tea, but no one noticed them or
spoke to them, and they hardly dared to speak
among themselves. This, as I was told, was called
" doing the perpendicular," and they must have felt
much relieved when towards ten o'clock they were
allowed to depart, and exchange the perpendicular
for a more comfortable position, indulging in songs
and pleasant talk, which I sometimes was invited to
join.
At that time I remember only very few houses
outside the circle of Heads of Houses, where there
was a lady and a certain amount of social life—the
houses of Dr. Acland, Dr. Greenhill, Professor
Baden-Powell, Professor Donkin, and Mr. Greswell.
246 My Autobiography
In their houses there was less of the strict academi¬
cal etiquette, and as they were fond of music, par¬
ticularly the Donkins, I spent some really delight¬
ful evenings with them. Hay, as I played on the
pianoforte, even the Heads of Houses began to
patronize music at their evening parties, though no
gentleman at that time would have played at Ox¬
ford. I being a German, and Professor Donkin
being a confirmed invalid, we were allowed to play,
and we certainly had an appreciative, though not
always a silent, audience.
In one respect, the old system of Oxford Fellow¬
ships was still very perceptible in the society of the
University. Ho Fellows were allowed to marry,
and the natural consequence was that most of them
waited for a college living, a professorship or libra-
rianship, which generally came to them when they
were no longer young men. Headships of colleges
also had so long to be waited for that most of them
were generally filled by very senior and mostly un¬
married men. Besides, headships were but seldom
given for excellence in scholarship, science, or even
divinity, but for the sake of personal popularity,
and for business habits. Some of the Fellows gave
pleasant and, as I thought, very Lucullic dinners
in college; and I still remember my surprise when
I was asked to the first dinner in Common Room at
Jesus College. My host was Mr. Ffoulkes, who
afterwards became a Roman Catholic, and then an
Anglican clergyman again. The carpets, the cur-
Early Days at Oxford
247
tains, the whole furniture and the plate quite con¬
founded me, and I became still more confounded
when I was suddenly called upon to make a speech
at a time when I could hardly put two words to¬
gether in English.
The City society was completely separated from
the University society, so that even rich bankers
and other gentlemen would never have ventured to
ask members of the University to dine.
Considering the position then held by the Heads
of Houses, I feel I ought to devote some pages to
describing some of the most prominent of them.
At my age I may well hold to the maxim seniores
prior es, and will therefore begin with Dr. Routh,
the centenarian President of Magdalen, as, though
the headship of a house seems to be an excellent pre¬
scription for longevity, there was no one to dispute
the venerable doctor's claim to precedence in this
respect. He was then nearly a hundred years old,
and he died in his hundredth year, and obtained his
wish to have the C, anno centesimo, on his grave¬
stone, for, though tired of life, he often declared, so
I was told, that he would not be outdone in this re¬
spect by another very old man, who was a dissenter;
he never liked to see the Church beaten. I might
have made his personal acquaintance, some friends
of the old President offering to present me to him.
But I did not avail myself of their offer, because
I knew the old man did not like to be shown as
a curiosity. When I saw him sitting at his window
248 My Autobiography
he always wore a wig, and few had seen him without
his wig and without his academic gown. He was
certainly an exceptional man, and I believe he stood
alone in the wdiole history of literature, as having
published books at an interval of seventy years.
His edition of the Enthymemes and Gorgias of
Plato was published in 1784, his papers on the
Ignatian Epistles in 1854. His Reliquia Sacra
first appeared in 1814, and they are a work which
at that time would have made the reputation of any
scholar and divine. His editions of historical works,
such as Burnet's History of his own Time and the
History of the reign of King James, show his con¬
siderable acquaintance with English history. I have
already mentioned how he used to speak of events
long before his time, such as the execution of
Charles I, as if he had been present; nor did he
hesitate to declare that even Bishop Burnet was a
great liar. He certainly had seen many things
which connected him with the past. He had seen
Samuel Johnson mounting the steps of the Claren¬
don building in Broad Street, and though he had
not himself seen Charles I when he held his Parlia¬
ment at Oxford, he had known a lady whose mother
had seen the king walking round the Parks at Ox¬
ford.
However, we must not forget that many stories
about the old President were more or less mythical,
as indeed many Oxford stories are. I was told
that he actually slept in wig, cap and gown, so that
Early Days at Oxford 249
once when an alarm of fire was raised in the quad¬
rangle of his College, he put his head out of window
in an incredibly short time, fully equipped as above.
Many of these stories or " Common-Roomers " as
they were called, still lived in the Common Rooms
in my time, when the Fellows of each College as¬
sembled regularly after dinner, to take wine and
dessert, and to talk on anything but what was called
Shop, i.e. Greek and Latin. Ro one inquired about
the truth of these stories, as long as they were well
told. In a place like Oxford there exists a regular
descent, by inheritance, of good stories. I remem¬
ber stories told of Dr. Jenkins, as Master of Balliol,
and afterwards transferred to his successor, Mr.
Jowett. Bodleian stories descended in like manner
from Dr. Bandinell to Mr. Coxe, and will probably
be told of successive librarians till they become
quite incongruous. I am old enough to have
watched the descent of stories at Oxford, just as
one recognizes the same furniture in college rooms
occupied by successive generations of undergradu¬
ates. To me they sometimes seem threadbare like
the old Turkish carpets in the college rooms, but I
never spoil them by betraying their age, and, if
well told, I can enjoy them as much as if I had
never heard them before.
Dr. Hawkins, Provost of Oriel, was quite a rep¬
resentative of Old Oxford, and a well-known char¬
acter in the University. I had been introduced to
him by Baron Bunsen, and he showed me much
250 My Autobiography
hospitality. I was warned that I should find him
very stiff and forbidding. His own Fellows called
him the East-wind. But though he certainly was
condescending, he treated me with great urbanity.
He had a very peculiar habit; when he had to
shake hands with people whom he considered his
inferiors, he stretched out two fingers, and if some
of them who knew this peculiarity of his, tendered
him two fingers in return, the shaking of hands
became rather awkward. One of the Fellows of his
college told me that, as long as he was only a Fel¬
low, he never received more than two fingers; when,
however, he became Head Master of a school, he
was rewarded with three fingers, or even with the
whole hand, but, as soon as he gave up this place,
and returned to live in college, he was at once re¬
duced to the statutable two fingers. I don't recol¬
lect exactly how many fingers I was treated to, and
I may have shaken them with my whole hand.
Anyhow, I am quite conscious now of how many
times I must have offended against academic eti¬
quette. How, for instance, is a man to know that
people who live at Oxford during term-time never
shake hands except once during term? I doubt, in
fact, whether that etiquette existed when I first
came to Oxford, but it certainly had existed for
some time before I discovered it.
Dr. Jenkins, Master of Balliol, was also the hero
of many anecdotes. It was of him that it was first
told how he once found fault with an undergraduate
Early Days at Oxford 251
because, whenever he looked out of window, he
invariably saw the young man loitering about in
the quad; to which the undergraduate replied:
" How very curious, for whenever I cross the quad,
I always see you, Sir, looking out of window." He
had a quiet humour of his own, and delighted in
saying things which made others laugh, but never
disturbed a muscle of his own face. One of his
undergraduates was called Wyndham, and he had
to say a few sharp words to him at " handshaking,"
that is, at the end of term. After saying all he
wanted, he finished in Latin: " Et nunc valeas
Wyndhamme,"—the last two syllables being pro¬
nounced with great emphasis. The Master's regard
for his own dignity was very great. Once, when
returning from a solitary walk, he slipped and fell.
Two undergraduates seeing the accident ran to as¬
sist him, and were just laying hands on him to lift
him up, when he descried a Master of Arts coming.
" Stop," he cried, " stop, I see a Master of Arts
coming down the street." And he dismissed the
undergraduates with many thanks, and was helped
on to his legs by the M.A.
Accidents, or slips of the tongue, will happen to
everybody, even to a Head of a House. One of
these old gentlemen, Dr. Symons, of Wadham,
when presiding at a missionary meeting, had to
introduce Sir Peregrine Maitland, a most distin¬
guished officer, and a thoroughly good man. When
dilating on the Christian work which Sir Peregrine
252 My Autobiography
had done in India, he called him again and again
Sir Peregrine Pickle. The effect was most ludi¬
crous, for everybody was evidently well acquainted
with Roderick Random, and Sir Peregrine had great
difficulty in remaining serious when the Chairman
called on Sir Peregrine Pickle once more to address
his somewhat perplexed audience.
But whatever may he said about the old Heads
of Houses, most of them were certainly gentlemen
both by birth and by nature. They are forgotten
now, but they did good in their time, and much of
their good work remains. If I consider who were
the Dean and Canons and Students I met at Christ
Church when I first became a member of the House,
I should have to give a very different account from
that given by the Highland lady in her Memoirs.
The Dean of Christ Church, who received me, who
proposed me for the degree of M.A., and afterwards
allowed me to become a member of the House, was
Dr. Gaisford, a real scholar, though it may be of
the old school. He was considered very rough and
rude, but I can only say he showed me more of real
courtesy in those days than anybody else at Oxford.
He was, I believe, a little shy, and easily put out
when he suspected anybody, particularly the young
men, of want of consideration. I can quite believe
that when an undergraduate, in addressing him,
stepped on the hearthrug on which he was standing,
he may have said: " Get down from my hearth¬
rug," meaning, "keep at your proper distance."
Early Days at Oxford 253
I can only say that I never found him anything but
kind and courteous. It so happened that he had
been made a Member of the Bavarian Academy,
and I, though very young, had received the same
distinction as a reward for my Sanskrit work, and
the Dean was rather pleased when he heard it.
When I asked him whether he would put my name
on the books of the House, he certainly hesitated
a little, and asked me at last to come again next
day and dine with him. I went, but I confess
I was rather afraid that the Dean would raise dif¬
ficulties. However, he spoke to me very nicely,
" I have looked through the books," he said, " and
I find two precedents of Germans being members
of the House, one of the name of Wernerus, and
another of the name of Hitzschius," or some such
name. " But," he continued, smiling, " even if
I had not found these names, I should not have
minded making a precedent of your case." People
were amazed at Oxford when they heard of the
Dean's courtesy, but I can only repeat that I never
found him anything but courteous.
Most of the Heads of Houses asked me to dine
with them by sending me an invitation. The Dean
alone first came and called on me. I was then
living in a small room in Walton Street in which
I worked, and dined, and smoked. My bedroom
was close by, and I generally got up early, and
shaved and finished my toilet at about 11 o'clock.
I had just gone into my bedroom to shave, my face
254 My Autobiography
was half covered with lather, when my landlady
rushed in and told me the Dean had called, and
my dogs were pulling him about. The fact was
I had a Scotch terrier with a litter of puppies in
a basket, and when the Dean entered in full aca¬
demical dress, the dogs flew at him, pulling the
sleeves of his gown and barking furiously. Covered
with lather as I was, I had to rush in to quiet the
dogs, and in this state I had to receive the Yery Rev.
the Dean, and explain to him the nature of the work
that brought me to Oxford. It was certainly awk¬
ward, but in spite of the disorder of my room, in
spite also of the tobacco smoke of which the Dean
did not approve, all went off well, though, I confess,
I felt somewhat ashamed. In the same interview
the Dean asked me about an Icelandic Dictionary
which had been offered to the press by Cleasby and
Dasent. " Surely it is a small barbarous island,"
he said, " and how can they have any literature?"
I tried, as well as I could, to explain to the Dean the
extent and the value of Icelandic literature, and
soon after the press, which was then the Dean, ac¬
cepted the Dictionary which was brought out later
by Dr. Yigfusson, in a most careful and scholarlike
manner. It might indeed safely be called his Dic¬
tionary, considering how many dictionaries are
called, not after the name of the compiler or com¬
pilers, but after that of their editor.
This Dr. Yigfusson was quite a character. He
was perfectly pale and bloodless, and had but one
Early Days at Oxford 255
wish, that of being left alone. He came to Oxford
first to assist I)r. Dasent, to whom Cleasby, when
he died, had handed over his collections; but after¬
wards he stayed, taking it for granted that the
University would give him the little he wanted.
But even that little was difficult to provide, as there
were no funds that could be used for that purpose,
however uselessly other funds might seem to be
squandered. That led to constant grumbling on
his part. Ever so many expedients were tried to
satisfy him, but none quite succeeded. At last
he fell ill and died, and when he was a patient at
the Acland Home, where the nurses did all they
could for him, he several times said to me when
I sat with him, that he had never been so happy in
his life as in that Home. I sometimes blame myself
for not having seen more of him at Oxford. But
he always seemed to me full of suspicions and very
easily offended, and that made any free intercourse
with him difficult and far from pleasant. Perhaps
it was my fault also. He may have felt that he
might have claimed a professorship of Icelandic
quite as well as I, and he may have grudged my
settled position in Oxford, my independence and my
freedom. Whenever we did work together, I al¬
ways found him pleasant at first, but very soon
he would become wayward and sensitive, do what
I would, and I had to let him go his own way, as
I went mine.
I remember dining with the famous Dr. Bull,
256 My Autobiography
Canon of Christ Church, who certainly managed to
produce a dinner that would have done credit to
any French chef. He was one of the last pluralists,
and many stories were told about him. One story,
which however was perfectly true, showed at all
events his great sagacity. A well-known hanker
had been for years the banker of Christ Church.
Dr. Bull who was the College Bursar had to trans¬
act all the financial business with him. Ho one
suspected the banking house which he represented.
Dr. Bull, however, the last time he invited him to
dinner, was struck by his very pious and orthodox
remarks, and by the change of tone in his conversa¬
tion, such as might suit a Canon of Christ Church,
but not a luxurious banker from London. "Without
saying a word, Dr. Bull went to London next day,
drew out all the money of the college, took all his
papers from the bank, and the day after, to the dis¬
may of London, the bank failed, the depositors lost
their money, but Christ Church was unhurt.
Another of the Canons of Christ Church at that
time had spent half a century in the place, and read
the lessons there twice every day. Of course he
knew the prayer-book by heart, and as long as he
could see to read there was no harm in his reading.
But when his eyesight failed him and he had to
trust entirely to his memory, he would often go
from some word in the evening prayer to the same
word in the marriage service, and from there to
the burial service, with an occasional slip into
Early Days at Oxford 257
baptism. The result of it was that he was no
longer allowed to read the service in Chapel except
during Long Vacation when the young men were
away. I frequently stayed at Oxford during vaca¬
tion, and thought of course that the evening service
would never end, till at last I was asked to name
the child, and then I went home.
One Sunday I remember going to chapel, and
after prayers had begun the following conversation
took place, loud enough to be heard all through
the chapel. Enter old Canon preceded by a beadle.
He goes straight to his stall, and finding it occupied
by a well-known D.D. from London, who is deeply
engaged in prayer, he stands and looks at the inter¬
loper, and when that produces no effect, he says
to the beadle: " Tell that man this is my stall; tell
him to get out."
Beadle: " Dr. A.'s compliments, and whether you
would kindly occupy another stall."
D.D.: " Very sorry; I shall change immediately."
Old Canon settles in his stall, prayers continue,
and after about ten minutes the Canon shouts:
" Beadle, tell that man to dine with me at five."
Beadle: " Dr. A.'s compliments, and whether you
would give him the pleasure of your company at
dinner at five."
D.D.: " Very sorry, I am engaged."
Beadle: " D.D. regrets he is engaged."
Old Canon: " Oh, he won't dine! "
The cathedral was very empty, and fortunately
258 My Autobiography
this conversation was listened to by a small con¬
gregation only. I can, however, vouch for it, as
I was sitting close by and heard it myself.
Bodley's Library, too, was full of good stories,
though many of them do not bear repeating. When
I first began to work there, Dr. Bandinell was
Bodleian Librarian. Working in the Bodleian was
then like working in one's private library. One
could have as many books and MSS. as one desired,
and the six hours during which the Library was
open were a very fair allowance for such tiring
work as copying and collating Sanskrit MSS. I
well remember my delight when I first sat down
at my table near one of the windows looking into
the garden of Exeter. It seemed a perfect paradise
for a student. I must confess that I slightly altered
my opinion when I had to sit there every day
during a severe winter without any fire, shivering
and shaking, and almost unable to hold my pen, till
kind Mr. Coxe, the sub-librarian, took compassion
on me and brought me a splendid fur that had been
sent him as a present by a Russian scholar, who had
witnessed the misery of the Librarian in this Sibe¬
rian Library. Mow all this is changed. The Library
is so full of students, both male and female, that
one has difficulty in finding a place, certainly in
finding a quiet place; and all sorts of regulations
have been introduced which have no doubt become
necessary on account of the large number of read¬
ers, but which have completely changed, or as some
Early Days at Oxford 259
would say, improved tlie character of the place. As
to one improvement, however, there can be no two
opinions. The Library and the reading-room, the
so-called Camera, are now comfortably warmed,
and students may in the latter place read for twelve
hours uninterruptedly, and not be turned out as
we were by a warning bell at four o'clock. And
woe to you if you failed to obey the warning. One
day an unfortunate reader was so absorbed in his
book that he did not hear the bell, and was locked
in. He tried in vain to attract attention from the
windows, for it was no pleasant prospect to pass
a night among so many ghosts. At last he saw
a solitary woman, and shouted to her that he was
locked in. " Ho," she said, " you are not. The
Library is closed at four." Whether he spent the
night among the books is not known. Let us hope
that he met with a less logical person to release him
from his cold prison.
Dr. Bandinell ruled supreme in his library, and
even the Curators trembled before him when he told
them what had been the invariable custom of the
Library for years, and could not be altered. And,
curiously enough, he had always funds at his dis¬
posal, which is not the case now, and whenever
there was a collection of valuable MSS. in the
market he often prided himself on having secured
it long before any other library had the money
ready. How and then, it is true, he allowed himself
to be persuaded by a plausible seller of rare books
260 My Autobiography
or MSS., but generally lie was very wary. He was
not always very courteous to visitors, and still less so
to his under-librarians. The Oriental under-libra-
rian Professor Reay, in particular, who was old and
somewhat infirm, had much to suffer from him, and
the language in which he was ordered about was
such as would not now be addressed to any menial.
And yet Professor Reay belonged to a very good
family, though Dr. Bandinell would insist on call¬
ing him Ray, and declared that he had no right to
the e in his name. In revenge some people would
give him an additional i and call him Dr. Bandinelli,
which made him very angry, because, as he would
say to me, " he had never been one of those dirty
foreigners." Silence was enjoined in the library,
but the librarian's voice broke through all rules of
silence. I remember once, when Professor Reay
had been looking for ever so long to find his spec¬
tacles without which he could not read the Arabic
MSS., and had asked everybody whether they had
seen them, a voice came at last thundering through
the library: " You left your spectacles on my chair,
you old , and I sat on them! " There was
an end of spectacles and Arabic MSS. after that.
There were two men only of whom Dr. Bandinell
and H. O. Coxe also were afraid, Dr. Pusey, who
was one of the Curators, and later on, Jowett, the
Master of Balliol.
There was a vacancy in the Oriental sub-libra-
rianship, and a very distinguished young Hebrew
Early Days at Oxford 261
scholar, William Wright, afterwards Professor at
Cambridge, was certainly by far the best candidate.
But as ill-luck—I mean ill-luck for the Library—
would have it, he had given offence by a lecture at
Dublin, in which he declared that the people of
Canaan were Semitic, and not, as stated in Genesis,
the children of Ham. Ho one doubts this now, and
every new inscription has confirmed it. Still a
strong effort was made to represent Dr. Wright as
a most dangerous young man, and thus to prevent
his appointment at Oxford. The appointment was
really in the hands of Dr. Bandinell; and after I
had frankly explained to him the motives of this
mischievous agitation against Dr. Wright, and as¬
sured him that he was a scholar and by no means
given to what was then called " free-handling of the
Old Testament," he promised me that he would
appoint him and no one else. However, poor man,
he was urged and threatened and frightened, and
to my great surprise the appointment was given to
some one else, who at that time had given hardly
any proofs of independent work as a Semitic scholar,
though he afterwards rendered very good and hon¬
est service. I did not disguise my opinion of what
had happened; and for more than a year Dr. Ban¬
dinell never spoke to me nor I to him, though we
met almost daily at the library. At last the old
man, evidently feeling that he had been wrong,
came to tell me that he was sorry for what had hap¬
pened, but that it was not his fault: after this, of
262 My Autobiography
course, all was forgotten. Dr. Wright had a much
more brilliant career opened to him, first at the
British Museum, and then as professor at Cam¬
bridge, than he could possibly have had as sub-libra¬
rian at Oxford. He always remained a scholar, and
never dabbled in theology.
Some very heated correspondence passed at the
time, and I remember keeping the letters for a long
while. They were curious as showing the then state
of theological opinion at Oxford; but I have evi¬
dently put the correspondence away so carefully
that nowhere can I find it now. Let it be forgotten
and forgiven.
Many, if not all, of the stories that I have writ¬
ten down in this chapter may be legendary, and
they naturally lose or gain as told by different peo¬
ple. Who has not heard different versions of the
story of a well-known Canon of Christ Church in
my early days, who, when rowing on the river, saw
a drowning man laying hold of his boat and nearly
upsetting it. " Providentially," he explained, " I
had brought my umbrella, and I had presence of
mind enough to hit him over the knuckles. He let
go, sank, and never rose again." JSTobody, I im¬
agine, would have vouched for the truth of this
story, but it was so often repeated that it provided
the old gentleman with a nickname, that stuck to
him always.
I could add more Oxford stories, but it seems al¬
most ill-natured to do so, and I could only say in
Early Days at Oxford 263
most cases relata refero. When I first came here
Oxford and Oxford society were to me so strange
that I probably accepted many similar stories as
gospel truth. My young friends hardly treated me
quite fairly in this respect. I had many questions
to ask, and my friends evidently thought it great
fun to chaff me and to tell me stories which I natu¬
rally believed, for there were many things which
seemed to me very strange, and yet they were true
and I had to believe them. The existence of Tel-
lows who received from £300 to £800 a year, as a
mere sinecure for life, provided they did not marry,
seemed to me at first perfectly incredible. In Ger¬
many education at Public Schools and Universities
was so cheap that even the poorest could manage
to get what was wanted for the highest employ¬
ments, particularly if they could gain an exhibition
or scholarship. But after a man had passed his ex¬
aminations, the country or the government had
nothing more to do with him. " Swim or drown "
was the maxim followed everywhere; and it was
but natural that the first years of professional life,
whether as lawyers, medical men, or clergymen,
were years of great self-denial. But they were also
years of intense struggle, and the years of hunger
are said to have accounted for a great deal of excel¬
lent work in order to force the doors to better em¬
ployment. To imagine that after the country had
done its duty by providing schools and universities,
it would provide crutches for men who ought to
264 My Autobiography
learn to walk by themselves, was beyond my com¬
prehension, particularly when I was told how large
a sum was yearly spent by the colleges in paying
these fellowships without requiring any quid pro
quo.
Having once come to believe that, and several
ether to me unintelligible things at Oxford, I was
ready to believe almost anything my friends told
me. There are some famous stone images, for in¬
stance, round the Theatre and the Ashmolean Mu¬
seum. They are hideous, for the sandstone of which
they are made has crumbled away again and again,
but even when they were restored, the same brittle
stone was used. They are in the form of Hermae,
and were planned by no less an architect than Sir
Christopher Wren. When I asked what they were
meant for, I was assured quite seriously that they
were images of former Heads of Houses. I believed
it, though I expressed my surprise that the stone¬
mason who made new heads, when the old showed
hardly more than two eyes and a nose, and a very
wide mouth, should carefully copy the crumbling
faces, because, as I was informed, he had been told
to copy the former gentlemen.
It was certainly a very common amusement of
my young undergraduate friends to make fun of
the Heads of Houses. They did not seem to feel
that shiver of unspeakable awe for them of which
Bishop Thorold speaks; nay, they were anything
but respectful in speaking of the Doctors of Divin-
Early Days at Oxford 265
ity in their red gowns with blaek velvet sleeves. If
it is difficult for old men always to understand
young men, it is certainly even more difficult for
young men to understand old men. There is a very
old saying, " Young men think that old men are
fools, but old men know that young men are."
Though very young myself, I came to know several
of the old Heads of Houses, and though they cer¬
tainly had their peculiarities, they did by no means
all belong to the age of the Dodo. They were en¬
joying their otium cum dignitate, as befits gentle¬
men, scholars, and divines, and they certainly de¬
served greater respect from the undergraduates than
they received.
At the annual Encaenia, a great deal of licence
was allowed to the young men; and I know of sev¬
eral strangers, especially foreigners, who have been
scandalized at the riotous behaviour of the under¬
graduates in the Theatre, the Oxford Aula, when
the Vice-Chancellor stood up to address the assem¬
bled audience. My first experience of this was with
Dr. Plumptre, who, as I have said, was very tall
and stately; when his first words were not quite dis¬
tinct, the undergraduates shouted, " Speak up, old
stick." When the Warden of Wadham, the Rev.
Dr. Symons, was showing some pretty young ladies
to their seats in the Theatre, he was threatened by
the young men, who yelled at the top of their voices,
" I'll tell Lydia, you wicked old man." How Lydia
was his most excellent spouse. At first the remarks
266 My Autobiography
of the undergraduates at the Encaenia, or rather
Saturnalia, were mostly good-natured and at least
witty; but they at last became so rude that dis¬
tinguished men, whom the University wished to
honour by conferring on them honorary degrees,
felt deeply offended. Sir Arthur Helps declared
that he came to receive an honour, and received an
insult. Well do I remember the Rev. Dr. Salmon,
who was asked where he had left his lobster sauce;
Dr. Wendell Holmes was shouted at, whether he
had come across the Atlantic in his " One Hoss
Shay "; the Right Hon. W. H. Smith, First Lord
of the Admiralty, was presented with a Pinafore,
and Lord Wolseley with a Black Watch. There
was a certain amount of wit in these allusions, and
the best way to take the academic row and riot was
Tennyson's, who told me on coming out that " he
felt all the time as if standing on the shingle of the
sea shore, the storm howling, and the spray covering
him right and left." After a time, however, these
Saturnalia had to be stopped, and they were stopped
in a curious way, by giving ladies seats among the
undergraduates. It speaks well for them that their
regard for the ladies restrained them, and made
them behave like gentlemen.
The reign of the Heads of Houses, which was in
full force when I first settled in Oxford, began to
wane when it was least expected. There had, how¬
ever, been grumblings among the Fellows and Tu¬
tors at Oxford, who felt themselves aggrieved by
Early Days at Oxford
267
the self-willed interference of the Heads of Colleges
in their tutorial work, and, it may be, resented the
airs assumed by men who, after all, were their
equals, and in no sense their betters, in the Uni¬
versity.
Society distinctly profited when Fellows and Tu¬
tors were allowed to marry, and when several of
the newly-elected of the Heads of Houses, having
wives and daughters, opened their houses, and had
interesting people to dine with them from the
neighbourhood and from London.
The Deanery of Christ Church was not only
made architecturally into a new house, but under
Dr. Liddell, with his charming wife and daughters,
became a social centre not easily rivalled anywhere
else. There one met not only royalty, the young
Prince of "Wales, but many eminent writers, artists,
and political men from London, Gladstone, Disraeli,
Richmond, Ruskin, and many others. Another
bright house of the new era was that of the Prin¬
cipal of Brasenose, Dr. Cradock, and his cheerful
and most amusing wife. There one often met such
men as Lord Russell, Sir George C. Lewis, young
Harcourt, and many more. She was the true Dres¬
den china marquise, with her amusing sallies, which
no doubt often gave offence to grave Heads of
Houses and sedate Professors. Ho one knew her
age, she was so young; and yet she had been maid
of honour to some Queen, as I told her once, to
Queen Anne. Having been maid of honour, she
268 My Autobiography
never concealed her own peculiar feelings about
people who had not been presented. When she
wanted to be left alone, she would look out of win¬
dow, and tell visitors who came to call, " Very sorry,
but I am not at home to-day." Queen's College
also, under Dr. Thomson, the future Archbishop
of York, was a most hospitable house. Mrs. Thom¬
son presided over it with her peculiar grace and gen¬
uine kindness, and many a pleasant evening I spent
there with musical performances. But here, too,
the old leaven of Oxford burst forth sometimes. Of
course, we generally performed the music of Handel
and other classical authors; Mendelssohn's com¬
positions were still considered as mere twaddle by
some of the old school. At one of these evenings,
the old organist of Hew College, with his wooden
leg, after sitting through a rehearsal of Mendels¬
sohn's Hymn of Praise, which I was conducting at
the pianoforte., walked up to me, as I thought, to
thank me; but no, he burst out in a torrent of real
and somewhat coarse abuse of me, for venturing to
introduce such flimsy music at Oxford. I did not
feel very guilty, and fortunately I remained silent,
whether from actual bewilderment or from a better
cause, I can hardly tell.
Long before Commissions came down on Oxford
a new life seemed to be springing up there, and
what was formerly the exception became more and
more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors.
They saw what a splendid opportunity was theirs,
Early Days at Oxford
269
having the very flower of England to educate, hav¬
ing the future of English society to form. They
certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by
the so-called Oxford Movement, which, whatever
came of it afterwards, was certainly in the begin¬
ning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The
Tutors saw a good deal of the young men confided
to their care, and the result was that even what was
called the " fast set" thought it a fine thing to
take a good class. I could mention a number of
young noblemen and wealthy undergraduates who,
in my early years, read for a first class and took it;
and my experience has certainly been that those who
took a first class came out in later life as eminent
and useful members of society. Not that eminence
in political, clerical, literary, and scientific life was
restricted to first classes, far from it. But first-class
men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in
later life. It may be true that a first class did not
always mean a first-class man, but it always seemed
to mean a man who had learned how to work
honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or
Archbishop, or spent his days in one of the public
offices, or even in a counting-house or newspaper
office.
I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man,
after taking a good degree at Oxford, spent a year
or two at a German University. He generally came
back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still
had to be done in the different branches of study,
270 My Autobiography
and did it with a perseverance that soon produced
most excellent results. Of course there was always
the difficulty that young men wished to make their
way in life, that is to make a living. The Church,
the bar, and the hospital, absorbed many of those
who in Germany would have looked forward to a
University career. In my own subject more par¬
ticularly, my very best pupils did not see their way
to gaining even an independence, unless they gave
their time to first securing a curacy, or a mastership
at school; and they usually found that, in order to
do their work conscientiously, they had to give up
their favourite studies in which they would cer¬
tainly have done excellent work, if there had been
no dira necessitas. I often tried to persuade my
friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really use¬
ful by concentrating them and giving studious men
a chance of devoting themselves at the University
to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling of the
majority was always against what was called deri¬
sively Original Research, and the fellowship-funds
continued to be frittered away, payment by results
being considered a totally mistaken principle, so
that often, as in the case of the new septennial fel¬
lowships, there remained the payment only, but no
results.
Still all this became clear to me at a much later
time only. My first years at Oxford were spent
in a perfect bewilderment of joy and admiration.
]STo one can see that University for the first time,
Early Days at Oxford 271
particularly in spring or autumn, without being
enchanted with it. To me it seemed a perfect para¬
dise, and I could have wished for myself no better
lot than that which the kindness of my friends later
secured for me there.
CHAPTEK VIII
EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD
I was still very young when I came to settle at
Oxford, only twenty-four in fact; and, though oc¬
casionally honoured by invitations from Heads of
Houses and Professors, I naturally lived chiefly
with undergraduates and junior Fellows, such as
Grant, Sellar, Palgrave, Morier, and others. Grant,
afterwards Sir Alexander Grant and Principal of
the University of Edinburgh, was a delightful com¬
panion. He had always something new in his mind,
and discussed with many flashes of wit and satire.
He possessed an aristocratic contempt for anything
commonplace, or self-evident, so that one had to be
careful in conversing with him. But he was gen¬
erous, and his laugh reconciled one to some of his
sharp sallies. How little one anticipates the future
greatness of one's friends. They all seem to us no
better than ourselves, when suddenly they emerge.
Grant had shown what he could do by his edition
of Aristotle's Ethics. He became one of the Pro¬
fessors at the new University at Bombay and con¬
tributed much to the first starting of that Uni¬
versity, so warmly patronized by Sir Charles Tre-
272
Early Friends at Oxford 273
velyan. On returning to this country he was chosen
to fill the distinguished place of Principal of the
Edinburgh University. More was expected of him
when he enjoyed this oiium cum dig nit ate, but his
health seemed to have suffered in the enervating cli¬
mate of India, and, though he enjoyed his return
to his friends most fully and spending his life as a
friend among friends, he died comparatively young,
and perhaps without fulfilling all the hopes that
were entertained of him. But he was a thoroughly
genial man, and his handshake and the twinkle of
his eye when meeting an old friend will not easily be
forgotten.
Sellar was another Scotchman whom I knew as
an undergraduate at Balliol. When I first came
to know him he was full of anxieties about his
health, and greatly occupied with the usual doubts
about religion, particularly the presence of evil or
of anything imperfect in this world. He was an
honest fellow, warmly attached to his friends; and
no one could wish to have a better friend to stand
up for him on all occasions and against all odds.
He afterwards became happily married and a use¬
ful Professor of Latin at Edinburgh. I stayed with
him later in life in Scotland and found him always
the same, really enjoying his friends' society and
a talk over old days. He had begun to ail when
I saw him last, but the old boy was always there,
even when he was miserable about his chiefly im¬
aginary miseries. Soon after I had left him I re-
274 My Autobiography
ceived his last message and farewell from his death¬
bed. We are told that all this is very natural and
what we must he prepared for—hut what cold gaps
it leaves. My thoughts often return to him, as if
he were still among the living, and then one feels
one's own loneliness and friendlessness again and
again.
Palgrave roused great expectations among un¬
dergraduates at Oxford, hut he kept us waiting for
some time. He took early to office life in the Edu¬
cational Department, and this seems to have ground
him down and unfitted him for other work. He had
a wonderful gift of admiring, his great hero being
Tennyson, and he was more than disappointed if
others did not join in his unqualified panegyrics of
the great poet. At last, somewhat late in life, he
was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford, and gave
some most learned and instructive lectures. His
knowledge of English Literature, particularly po¬
etry, was quite astounding. I certainly never went
to him to ask him a question that he did not answer
at once and with exhaustive fullness. Some of his
friends complained of his great command of lan¬
guage, and even Tennyson, I am told, found it
sometimes too much. All I can say is that to me
it was a pleasure to listen to him. I owe him par¬
ticular thanks for having, in the kindest manner,
revised my first English compositions. He was al¬
ways ready and indefatigable, and I certainly owed
a good deal to his corrections and his unstinted ad-
Early Friends at Oxford 275
vice. His Golden Treasury lias become a national
possession, and certainly speaks well both for his
extensive knowledge and for his good taste.
Lastly there was Morier, of whom certainly no
one expected when he was at Balliol that he would
rise to be British Ambassador at St. Petersburg.
His early education had been somewhat neglected,
but when he came to Balliol he worked hard to
pass a creditable examination. He was a giant in
size, very good-looking, and his manners, when he
liked, most charming and attractive. Being the
son of a diplomatist there was something both Eng¬
lish and foreign in his manner, and he certainly was
a general favourite at Oxford. His great desire
was to enter the diplomatic service, but when that
was impossible, he found employment for a time
in the Education Office. But society in London
was too much for him, he was made for society,
and society was delighted to receive him. But it
was difficult for him at the same time to fulfil his
duties at the Education Office, and the result was
that he had to give up his place. Things began
to look serious, when fortunately Lord Aberdeen,
a great friend of his father, found him some diplo¬
matic employment; and that once found, Morier
was in his element. He was often almost reckless;
but while several of his friends came altogether to
grief, he managed always to fall on his feet and
keep afloat while others went down. As an under¬
graduate he came to me to read Greek with me,
276 My Autobiography
and I confess that with such mistakes in his Greek
papers as oi tcdOoi instead of ra irdQr\, I trembled
for his examinations. However, he did well in the
schools, knowing how to hide his weak points and
how to make the best of his strong ones. I travelled
with him in Germany, and when the Schleswig-
Holstein question arose, he wrote a pamphlet which
certainly might have cost him his diplomatic career.
He asked me to allow it to be understood that the
pamphlet, which did full justice to the claims of
Holstein and of Germany, had been written by me.
I received many compliments, which I tried to parry
as well as I could. Fortunately Lord John Russell
stood by Morier, and his prophecies did certainly
turn out true. " Don't let the Germans awake from
their slumbers and find a work ready made for them
on which they all agree." But the signatories of
the treaty of London did the very thing against
which Morier had raised his warning voice, as the
friend of Germany as it was, though perhaps not
of the Germany that was to be. Schleswig-LIolstein
meer-umschlungen became the match, (the Schwe-
fel-holzchen), that was to light the fire of German
unity, a unity which for a time may not have been
exactly what England could have wished for, but
which in the future will become, we hope, the safety
of Europe and the support of England.
Morier's later advance in his diplomatic career
was certainly most successful. He possessed the
very important art of gaining the confidence of the
Early Friends at Oxford 277
crowned lieads and ministers he had to deal with.
Bismarck, it is true, could not bear him, and tried
several times to trip him up. Even while Morier
was at Berlin, as a Secretary of Legation, Bismarck
asked for his removal, but Lord Granville simply
declined to remove a young diplomatist who gave
him information on all parties in Germany, and to
do so had to mix with people whom Bismarck did
not approve of. Besides, Morier was always a
persona grata with the Crown Prince and the
Crown Princess, and that was enough to make Bis¬
marck dislike him. Later in life Bismarck accused
him of having conveyed private information of the
military position of the Germans to the French
Guards, such information being derived from the
English Court. The charge was ridiculous. Morier
was throughout the war a sympathizer with Ger¬
many as against France. The English Court had
no military information to convey or to communi¬
cate to Morier, and Morier was too much of a dip¬
lomatist and a gentleman, if by accident he had
possessed any such information, to betray such a
secret to an enemy in the field. Bismarck was com¬
pletely routed, though his son seemed inclined to
fasten a duel on the English diplomatist. Morier
rose higher and higher, and at last became Ambassa¬
dor at St. Petersburg. When I laughed and con¬
gratulated him he said, " He must be a great fool
who does not reach the top of the diplomatic tree."
That was too much modesty, and yet modesty was
278 My Autobiography
not exactly his fault; but he agreed with me as to
quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.
Nothing could seem more prosperous than my
friend Morier's career; but few people knew how
utterly miserable he really was. He had one son,
in many respects the very image of his father, a
giant in stature, very handsome, and most attrac¬
tive. In spite of all we said to him he would not
send his son to a public school in England, but kept
him with him at the different embassies, where his
only companions were the young attaches and sec¬
retaries. lie had a private tutor, and when that
tutor declared that young Morier was fit for the
University, his father managed to get him into Bal-
liol, recommending him to the special care of the
Master, lie actually lived in the Master's house for
a time, but enjoyed the greatest liberty that an
undergraduate at Oxford may enjoy. His father
was wrapped up in his boy, but at the same time
tried to frighten him into hard work, or at least
into getting through the examinations. All was in
vain; young Morier was so nervous that he could
never pass an examination. What might be ex¬
pected followed, and the father had at last to remove
him to begin work as an honorary attache at his own
embassy. I liked the young man very much, but
my own impression is that his nervousness quite un¬
fitted him for serious work. The end was beyond
description sad. He went to South Africa in the
police force, distinguished himself very much, came
Early Friends at Oxford 279
back to England, and then on his second voyage
to the Cape died suddenly on board the steamer. I
have seldom seen such utter misery as his father's.
He loved his son and the son loved his father pas¬
sionately, but the father expected more than it
was physically and mentally possible for the son to
do. Hence arose misunderstandings, and yet be¬
neath the surface there was this passionate love, like
the love of lovers. When I saw my old friend last,
he cried and sobbed like a child: his heart was really
broken. He went on for a few years more, suffer¬
ing much from ill health, but really killed at last
by his utter misery. I knew him in the bright
morning of his life, at the meridian of his great suc¬
cess, and last in the dark night when light and life
seems gone, when the moon and all the stars are
extinguished, and nothing remains but patient suf¬
fering and the hope of a brighter morn to come.
How little one dreamt of all this when we were
young, and when an ambassador, nay, even a pro¬
fessor, seemed to us far beyond the reach of our
ambition. I could go on mentioning many more
names of men with whom I lived at Oxford in the
most delightful intimacy, and who afterwards
turned up as bishops, archbishops, judges, ministers,
and all the rest. True, it is quite natural that it
should be so with a man who, as I did, began his
English life almost as an undergraduate among un¬
dergraduates. Nearly all Englishmen who receive
a liberal education must pass either through Oxford
28o My Autobiography
or through Cambridge, and I was no doubt lucky
in making thus early the acquaintance of a number
of men who later in life became deservedly eminent.
The only drawback was that, knowing my friends
very intimately, I did not perhaps later preserve on
all occasions that deference which the dignity of an
ambassador or of an archbishop has a right to de¬
mand.
Thomson was a dear friend of mine when he was
still a fellow of Queen's College. We worked to¬
gether, as may be seen by my contributions to his
Laws of Thought, and the translation of a Yedic
hymn which he helped me to make. I think he
had a kind of anticipation of what was in store for
him. Though for a time he had to be satisfied, even
when he was married, with a very small London
living, he soon rose in the Church, at a time when
clergymen of a liberal way of thinking had not
much chance of Crown preferment. But having
gone at the head of a deputation to Lord Palmer-
ston, to inform him that Gladstone's next election
as member for Oxford was becoming doubtful, ow¬
ing to all the bishoprics being given to the Low
Church party—the party of Lord Shaftesbury—
Palmerston remembered his stately and courteous
bearing, and when the see of Gloucester fell vacant,
gave him that bishopric to silence Gladstone's sup¬
porters. This was a very unexpected preferment
at Oxford, but Thomson made such good use of his
opportunity that, when the Archbishopric of York
Early Friends at Oxford 281
became vacant, and Palmerston found it difficult
to make bis own or Lord Shaftesbury's nominee
acceptable to the Queen, he suggested that any one
of the lately elected bishops approved of by the
Crown might go to York, and some one else fill the
see thus vacated. It so happened that Thomson's
name was the first to be mentioned, and he was
made Archbishop, probably one of the youngest
Archbishops England has ever known. He cer¬
tainly fulfilled all expectations and proved himself
the people's Archbishop, for he was himself the son
of a small tradesman, a fact of which he was never
ashamed, though his enemies did not fail to cast
it in his teeth. I confess I felt at first a little awk¬
ward with my old friend who formerly had dis¬
cussed every possible religious and philosophical
problem quite freely with me, and was now His
Grace the Lord Archbishop, with a palace to in¬
habit and an income of about £10,000 a year.
However, though as a German and as a friend of
Bunsen I was looked upon as a kind of heretic, I
never made the Archbishop blush for his old friend,
and I always found him the same to the end of his
life, kind, courteous, and ready to help, though it
is but fair to remember that an Archbishop of York
is one of the first subjects of the Queen, and cannot
do or say everything that he might like to do or to
say. When I had to ask him to do something for
a friend of mine, who as a clergyman had given
great offence by his very liberal opinions, he did
282 My Autobiography
all lie could do, though he might have incurred
great obloquy by so doing.
But when I think of these men, friends and ac¬
quaintances of mine, whom I remember as young
men, very able and hard working no doubt, yet not
so entirely different from others who through life
remained unknown, it is as if I had slept through
a number of years and dreamt, and had then sud¬
denly awoke to a new life. Some of my friends,
I am glad to say, I always found the same, whether
in ermine or in lawn sleeves; others, however, I am
sorry to say, had become something, the old boy in
them had vanished, and nothing was to be seen ex¬
cept the bishop, the judge, or the minister.
It was not for me to remind them of their former
self, and to make them doubt their own identity,
but I often felt the truth of Matthew Arnold's
speeches, who, in social position, never rose beyond
that of inspector of schools, and who often laughed
when at great dinners he found himself surrounded
by their Graces, their Excellencies, and my Lords,
recognizing faces that sat below him at school and
whose names in the class lists did not occupy so high
a place as his own. Not that Matthew Arnold was
dissatisfied; he knew his worth, but, as he himself
asked for nothing, it is strange that his friends
should never have asked for something for him,
which would have shown to the world at large that
he had not been left behind in the race. It strikes
one that while he wTas at Oxford, few people only
Early Friends at Oxford 283
detected in Arnold the poet or the man of remark¬
able genius. I had many letters from him, but I
never kept them, and I often blame myself now that
in his, as in other cases, I should have thrown away
letters as of no importance. Then suddenly came
the time when he returned to Oxford as the poet,
as the Professor of poetry, nay, afterwards as the
philosopher also, placed high by public opinion
among the living worthies of England. What was
sometimes against him was his want of seriousness.
A laugh from his hearers or readers seemed to be
more valued by him than their serious opposition,
or their convinced assent. He trusted, like others,
to persiflage, and the result was that when he tried
to be serious, people could not forget that he might
at any time turn round and smile, and decline to
be taken au grand serieux. People do not know
what a dangerous game this French persiflage is,
particularly in England, and how difficult it be¬
comes to exchange it afterwards for real seriousness.
Those early Oxford days were bright days for
me, and now, when those young and old faces,
whether undergraduates or archbishops, rise up
again before me, I being almost the only one left
of that happy company, I ask again, " Did they
also belong to a mere dreamland, they who gave
life to my life, and made England my real home? "
When I first saw them at Oxford, I was really an
undergraduate, though I had taken my Doctor's
degree at Leipzig. I lived, in fact, my happy uni-
284 My Autobiography
versity life over again, and it would be difficult to
say which academical years I enjoyed more, those
at Leipzig and Berlin, or those at Oxford. There
were intermediate years in Paris, but during my
stay there I saw but little of students and student
life. I was too much oppressed with cares and
anxieties about my present and future to think
much of society and enjoyment. At Oxford, these
cares had become far less, and I could by hard work
earn as much money as I wanted, and cared to
spend. In Paris, I was already something of a
scholar and writer; at Oxford I became once more
the undergraduate.
This young society into which I was received was
certainly most attractive, though that it contained
the germs of future greatness never struck me at
the time. "What struck me was the general tone of
the conversation. Of course, as Lord Palmerston
said of himself when he was no longer very young,
" boys will be boys," but there never was anything
rude or vulgar in their conversation, and I hardly
ever heard an offensive remark among them. Most
of my friends came from Balliol, and were serious-
minded men, many of them occupied and troubled
by religious, philosophical, and social problems.
What puzzled me most was the entire absence of
duels. Occasionally there were squabbles and high
words, which among German students could have
had one result only—a duel. But at Oxford, either
a man apologized at once or the next morning, and
Early Friends at Oxford 285
the matter was forgotten, or, if a man proved him¬
self a cad or a snob, he was simply dropped. I do
not mean to condemn the students' duels in Ger¬
many altogether. Considering how mixed the so¬
ciety of German universities is, and the perfect
equality that reigns among them—they all called
each other " thou " in my time—the son of a gen¬
tleman required some kind of protection against the
son of a butcher or of a day-labourer. Boxing and
fisticuffs were entirely forbidden among students,
so that there remained nothing to a young student
who wanted to escape from the insults of a young
ruffian, but t. call him out. As soon as a challenge
was given, all abuse ceased at once, and such was
the power of public opinion at the universities that
not another word of insult would be uttered. In
this way much mischief is prevented. Besides,
every precaution is taken to guard against fatal
accident, and I believe there are fewer serious acci¬
dents on the mensura than in the hunting-field in
England. "When I was at Leipzig, where we had
at least four hundred duels during the year, only
two fatal accidents happened, and they were, in¬
deed, accidents, such as will happen even at football.
Of course duels can never be defended, but for keep¬
ing up good manners, also for bringing out a man's
character, these academic duels seem useful. How¬
ever small the danger is, it frightens the coward
and restrains the poltroon. For all that, what has
taken place in England may in time take place in
286 My Autobiography
Germany also, and men will cease to think that it
is impossible to defend their honour without a piece
of steel or a pistol. The last thing that a German
student desires to do in a duel is to kill his ad¬
versary. Hence pistol duels, which are generally
preferred by theological students, because they can¬
not easily get a living if their face is scarred all over,
are generally the most harmless, except perhaps for
the seconds.
Before closing this chapter, I should like to say
a few words on the impressions which the theolog¬
ical atmosphere of Oxford in 1848 produced on
me, and which even now fills me with wonder and
amazement.
When I came to Oxford, I was strongly recom¬
mended to Stanley on one side, and to Manuel
Johnson on the other,—a curious mixture. John¬
son, the Observer, was extremely kind and hospi¬
table to me. lie was a genial man, full of love, pos¬
sibly a little weak, but thoroughly honest, nay,
transparently so. I met at his house nearly all the
leaders of the High Church movement, though I
never met Newman himself, who had then already
gone to reside at his retreat at Littlemore. On the
other hand, Stanley received me with open arms as
a friend of Bunsen, Frederick Maurice, and Julius
Hare, and as I came straight from the February
revolution in 1848, he was full of interest and curi¬
osity to know from me what I had seen in Paris.
At first I knew nothing, and understood nothing
Early Friends at Oxford 287
of the movement, call it ecclesiastical or theological,
that was going on at Oxford at that time. I dined
almost every Sunday at Johnson's house, and at his
dinners and Sunday afternoon garden parties I met
men such as Church, Mozley, Buckle, Palgrave,
Pollen, Rigaud, Burgon, and Chretian, who in¬
spired me with great respect, both for their learning
and for what I could catch of their character. Stan¬
ley, on the other hand, Froude, and Jowett, proved
themselves true friends to me in making me feel
at home, and initiating me into the secrets of the
place. There was, however, a curious reticence on
both sides, and it was by sudden glimpses only that
I came to understand that these two sets were quite
divided, nay, opposed, and had very different ideals
before them.
I had been at a German university, and the his¬
torical study of Christianity was to me as familiar
as the study of Roman history. Professors whom
I had looked up to as great authorities, implicitly
to be trusted, such as Lotze and Weisse at Leipzig,
Schelling and Michelet at Berlin, had, after causing
in me a certain surprise at first, left me with the
firm conviction that the Old and New Testament
were historical books, and to be treated according
to the same critical principles as any other ancient
book, particularly the sacred books of the East of
which so little was then known, and of which I too
knew very little as yet; enough, however, to see
that they contained nothing but what under the cir-
288 My Autobiography
cumstances they could contain, traditions of ex¬
treme antiquity collected by men who gathered all
they thought would be useful for the education of
the people. Anything like revelation in the old
sense of the word, a belief that these books had
been verbally communicated by the Deity, or that
what seemed miraculous in them was to be accepted
as historically real, simply because it was recorded
in these sacred books, was to me a standpoint long
left behind. To me the questions that occupied my
thoughts were to what date these books, such as
we have them, could be assigned, what portions of
them were of importance to us, what were the sim¬
ple truths they contained, and what had been added
to them by later collectors. Well do I remember
when, before going to Oxford, I spoke to Bunsen
of the preface to my Rig-veda, and used the ex¬
pression, " the great revelations of the world," he,
perfectly understanding what I meant, warned me
in his loud and warm voice, " Don't say that at Ox¬
ford." I could see no harm, nor Bunsen either, nor
his son who was an Oxford man and a clergyman
of the Church of England; but I was told that I
should be misunderstood. I knew far too little to
imagine that I had a right to speak of what was
fermenting and growing within me. During my
stay at Leipzig and Berlin, and afterwards in my
intercourse with Renan and Burnouf, the principles
of the historical school had become quite familiar
to me, but the application of these principles to the
Early Friends at Oxford 289
early history of religion was a different matter.
How far the Old and the Hew Testament would
stand the critical tests enunciated by Hiebuhr was a
frequent subject of controversy, during the time I
spent at Paris, between young Renan and myself.
Though I did not go with him in his reconstruction
of the history of the Jews and the Jewish religion,
and of the early Christians and the Christian relig¬
ion, I agreed with him in principle, objecting only
to his too free and too idyllic reconstruction of these
great religious movements. Besides, before all
things, I was at that time given to philosophical
studies, chiefly to an inquiry into the limits of our
knowledge in the Kantian sense of the word, the
origin of thought and language, the first faltering
and half-mythological steps of language in the
search for causes or divine agents. All this occu¬
pied me far more than the age of the Fourth Gospel
and its position by the side of the Synoptic Gospels.
I had talked with Schelling and Schopenhauer, and
little as I appreciated or understood all their teach¬
ings, there were certain aspirations left in my mind
which led me far away beyond the historical foun¬
dations of Christianity. What can we know? was
the question which I often opposed to Renan at the
very beginning of our conversations and controver¬
sies. That there were great truths in the teaching
and preaching of Christ, Renan was always ready to
admit, but while it interested me how the truths pro¬
claimed by Christ could have sprung up in His
290 My Autobiography
mind and at that time in the history of the human
race, Kenan's eyes were always directed to the evi¬
dence, and to what we could still know of the early
history of Christianity and its Founder. I could
not deny that, historically speaking, we knew very
little of the life, the work, and the teachings of
Christ; but for that very reason I doubted our
being justified in giving our interpretation and re¬
construction to the fragments left to us of the real
history of the life and teaching of Christ. To this
opinion I remained true through life. I claimed
for each man the liberty of believing in his own
Christ, but I objected to Renan's idyllic Christ as
I objected to ISTiebuhr's filling the canvas of ancient
Roman history with the figures of his own imagina¬
tion.
Naturally, when I came to Oxford, I thought
these things were familiar to all, however much
they might admit of careful correction. Nor have
I any doubt that to some of my friends who were
great theologians, they were better known than to
a young Oriental scholar like myself. But unless
engaged in conversation on these subjects, and this
was chiefly the case with my friends of the Stanley
party, I did not feel called upon to preach what, as
I thought, every serious student knew quite as well
and probably much better than myself, though he
might for some reason or other prefer to keep silence
thereon.
"What was my surprise when I found that most of
Early Friends at Oxford 291
these excellent and really learned men were much
more deeply interested in purely ecclesiastical ques¬
tions, in the validity of Anglican orders, in the
wearing of either gowns or surplices in the pulpit,
in the question of candlesticks and genuflections.
" What has all this to do with true religion?" I
once said to dear Johnson. He laughed with his
genial laugh, and blowing the smoke of his cigar
away, said, " Oh, you don't understand! " But I
did understand, and a great deal more than he ex¬
pected. Truly religious men, I thought, might
please themselves with incense and candlesticks,
provided they gave no offence to their neighbours.
It seemed to me quite natural also that men like
Johnson, with a taste for art, should prefer the Ro¬
man ritual to the simple and sometimes rather bare
service of the Anglican Church, but that things
such as incense and censers, surplice and gown,
should be taken as they are, as paraphernalia, the
work of human beings, the outcome of personal and
local influences, as cliurch-service, no doubt, but
not as service of God. God has to be served by
very different things, and there is the danger of the
formal prevailing over the essential, the danger of
idolatry of symbols as realities, whenever too much
importance is attributed to the external forms of
worship and divine service.
The validity of Anglican orders was often dis¬
cussed at the Observatory, and I no doubt gave
great offence by openly declaring in my imperfect
292 My Autobiography
English that I considered Luther a better channel
for the transmission of the Holy Ghost than a Cae¬
sar Borgia or even a Wolsey. Anyhow I could not
bring myself to see the importance of such ques¬
tions, if only the heart was right and if the whole of
our life was in fact a real and constant life with
God and in God. That is what I called a truly
religious and truly Christian life. What struck me
particularly, both on the [Newman side, and among
those whom I met at Jowett's and Froude's, was a
curious want of openness and manliness in discuss¬
ing these simple questions, simple, if not compli¬
cated by ecclesiastical theories. When Newman at
Iffley was spoken of, it was in hushed tones, and
when rumours of his going over to Rome reached his
friends at Oxford, their consternation seemed to
be like that of people watching the deathbed of a
friend. I am sorry I saw nothing of Newman at
that time; when I sat with him afterwards in his
study at Birmingham, he was evidently tired of
controversy, and unwilling to reopen questions
which to him were settled once for all, or if not
settled, at all events closed and relinquished. I
could never form a clear idea of the man, much as
I admired his sermons; his brother and his own
friends gave such different accounts of him. That
even at Littlemore he was still faithful to his own
national Church, anxious only to bring it nearer to
its ancient possibly Roman type, can hardly be
doubted. When he wrote from Littlemore to his
Early Friends at Oxford 293
friend De Lisle, lie had no reason to economize the
truth. De Lisle hoped that Newman would soon
openly join the Church of Rome, but Newman an¬
swered : "You must allow me to he honest with you
in adding one thing. A distressing feeling arises in
my mind that such marks of kindness as these on
your part are caused by a belief that I am ever
likely to join your communion ... I must as¬
sure you then with great sincerity that I have not
the shadow of an internal movement known to my¬
self towards such a step. While God is with me
where I am, I will not seek Him elsewhere. I
might almost say in the words of Scripture, c We
have found the Messias!' . .
How true this is, and yet the same Newman went
over to the unreformed Church, because the Arch¬
bishop of Canterbury had sanctioned Bunsen's pro¬
posal of an Anglo-German bishopric of Jerusalem,
quite forgetful of the fact that Synesius also had
been bishop of Ptolemais. Again I say, What have
such matters to do with true religion, such as we
read of in the New Testament, as an ideal to be
realized in our life on earth? And it so happened
that at the same time I knew of families rendered
miserable through Newman's influence, of young
girls, daughters of narrow-minded Anglicans, hur¬
ried over to Rome, of young men at Oxford with
their troubled consciences which under Newman's
direct or indirect guidance could end only in Rome.
Newman's influence must have been extraordinary;
294 My Autobiography
the tone in which people who wished to free them¬
selves from him, who had actually left him, spoke
of him, seemed tremulous with awe. I would give
anything to have known him at that time, when
I knew him through his disciples only. They were
caught in various ways. I knew of one, a brilliant
writer, who had been entrusted by Newman with
writing some of the Lives of the Saints. He did
it with great industry, but in the course of his
researches he arrived at the conviction that there
was hardly anything truly historical about his
Saints and that the miracles ascribed to them were
insipid, and might be the inventions of their friends;
such legends, he felt, would take no root on English
soil, at all events not in the present generation. In
consequence he informed Newman that he could
not keep his promise, or that, if he did so, he must
speak the truth, tell people what they might believe
about these Saints, and what was purely fanciful
in the accounts of their lives. And what was New¬
man's answer? He did not respect the young man's
scruples, but encouraged him to go on, because, as
he said, people would never believe more than half
of these Lives, and that therefore some of these un¬
supported legends also might prove useful, if only
as a kind of ballast.
" I rejoice to hear of your success," he writes,
August 21, 1843. " As to St. Grimball, of course
we must expect such deficiencies; where matter is
found, it is all gain, and there are plenty of Lives
Early Friends at Oxford 295
to put together, as you will see, when you see the
whole list.
" I am rather for inserting (of course discreetly
and in way of selection) the miracles for which you
have not good evidence. (1) They are beautiful,
you say, and will tell in the narrative. (2) Next
you can say that the evidence is weak, and this
will be bringing credit for the others where you
say the evidence is strong. People will never go
so far as your narrative. Cut it down to what is
true, and they will disbelieve a part of it; put in
these legends and they will compound for the true
at the sacrifice of what may be true, but is not
well attested."
I confess I cannot quite follow. If a man like
Newman believed in these saints and their mir¬
acles, his pleading would become intelligible, but
it seems from this very letter that he did not, and
yet he tried to persuade his young friend to go on
and not to gather the tares, " lest haply he might
root up the wheat with them. Let both grow to¬
gether until the harvest." I do not like to judge,
but I doubt whether this kind of teaching could
have strengthened the healthy moral fibre of a
man's conscience and have led him to depend en¬
tirely on his sense of truth. And yet this was the
man who at one time was supposed to draw the best
spirits of Oxford with him to Rome. This was the
man to whom some of the best spirits at Oxford
confessed all they had to confess, and that could
296 My Autobiography
have been very little, and of whom they spoke with
a subdued whisper as the apostle who would restore
all faith, and bring back the Anglican sheep to the
Roman fold.
I saw and heard all that was going on, the hopes
deferred, the secret visits to Littlemore, the rumours
and more than rumours of Newman's defection.
Such was the devotion of some of these disciples
that they expected day by day a great catastrophe
or a great victory, for after the publication of so
many letters written at the time by Wiseman, Man¬
ning, De Lisle, and others, there can be little doubt
that a great conversion or perversion of England
to the Romish Church was fully expected. De
Lisle writes: " England is now in full career of a
great Religious Revolution, this time back to Ca¬
tholicism and to the Roman See as its true centre
. . . the best friends of Rome in the Anglican
Church are obliged still to be guarded." Such
words admit of one meaning only, and if Newman
had been followed bv a large number of his Oxford
friends, the results for England might really have
been most terrible. But here, no doubt, the Eng¬
lish national feeling came in. What England had
suffered under Roman ecclesiastical rule had not
yet been entirely forgotten, and the idea that a
foreign potentate and a foreign priesthood should
interfere with the highest interests of the nation,
was fortunately as distasteful as ever, not only to a
large party of the clergy, but to a still larger party
Early Friends at Oxford 297
of the laity also. It seemed to me very curious that
so many of Newman's followers did not see the
unpatriotic character of their agitation. Either
subjection to Rome or civil war at home was the
inevitable outcome of what they discussed very
innocently at the Observatory, and little as I
understood their schemes for the future, I often
felt surprised at what sounded to me like very
unpatriotic utterances.
Another thing that struck me as utterly un-Eng¬
lish and has often been dwelt on by the historians
of this movement, was the curiously secret char¬
acter of the agitation. What has an Englishman
to fear when he openly protests against what he
disapproves of in Church or State? But Newman's
friends at Oxford behaved really, as has been often
said, like so many naughty schoolboys, or like con¬
spirators, yet they were neither. A very similar
charge, however, wras brought against the liberal
party. They also seemed to think that they were
out of bounds, and were doing in secret what they
did not dare to do openly. It is well known that
one friend of Newman's, who afterwards became a
Roman Catholic, had a small chapel set up in his
bedroom in college, with pictures and candles and
instruments of flagellation. No one was allowed
to see this room, till one evening when the flagellant
had retired after dinner and fallen asleep, the ser¬
vants found him lying before the altar. Nothing
remained to him then but to exchange his comfort-
298 My Autobiography
able college rooms for the less comfortable cell of a
Roman monastery, and little was done by his new
friends to make the evening of his life serene and
free from anxiety. These things were known and
talked about in Oxford, and generally with any¬
thing but the seriousness that the subject seemed
to me to require. Again at the Observatory a point
was made of having games in the garden such as
boccia on a Sunday afternoon, thus evading the
strict observance of the Sabbath, without openly
trying to restore to it the character which it had
in Roman Catholic countries.
German theology was talked about as a kind of
forbidden fruit, as if it was not right for them to
look at it, to taste it, or to examine it. Even years
later people were afraid to meet Professor Ewald,
Bishop Colenso, and other so-called heretics at my
house. They even fell on poor Ewald at an evening
party. Ewald was staying with me and working
hard at some Hebrew MSS. at the Bodleian. He
was then already an old man, but in his appearance
a powerful and venerable champion. He is the only
man I remember who, after copying Hebrew MSS.
for twelve hours at the Bodleian with nothing but
a sandwich to sustain him, complained of the short
time allowed there for work. He came home for
dinner very tired, and when the conversation or
rather the disputation began between him and some
of our young liberal theologians, he spoke in short
pithy sentences only. He considered himself per-
Early Friends at Oxford 299
fectly orthodox, nay, one of the pillars of religion in
Germany, and laid down the law with unhesitating
conviction. As far as I can remember, he was
answering a number of questions about St. Paul,
and what he thought of Christ, of the Kingdom of
Christ, and the Life to come, and being pestered
and driven into a corner by his various questioners,
and asked at last how he knew St. Paul's secret
thoughts, he not knowing how to express himself
in fluent English, exclaimed in a loud voice, " I
know it by the Holy Ghost." Here the conver¬
sation naturally stopped, and poor Ewald was al¬
lowed to finish his dinner in peace. He had been
Professor at Bonn, when Pusey came there as a
young man to study Hebrew after he had been ap¬
pointed Canon of Christ Church and Professor of
Hebrew, and he expressed to me a wish to see Dr.
Pusey. I told him it would not be easy to arrange
a meeting, considering how strongly opposed Dr.
Pusey was to Ewald's opinions. Personally I al¬
ways found Pusey tolerant, and his kindness to me
was a surprise to all my young friends. But the
fact was, we moved on different planes, and though
he knew my religious opinions well, they only ex¬
cited a smile, and he often said with a sigh, " I know
you are a German." His own idea was that he was
placed at Oxford in order to save the younger gen¬
eration from seeing the abyss into which he him¬
self had looked with terror. He had read more
heresy, he used to say, than anybody, and he wished
300 My Autobiography
no one to pass through the trials and agonies
through which he had passed, chiefly, I should think,
during his stay at a German university. The his¬
torical element was wanting in him, nay, like Hegel,
he sometimes seemed to lay stress on the unhistorical
character of Christianity. My idea, on the con¬
trary, was that Christianity was a true historical
event, prepared by many events that had gone be¬
fore and alone made it possible and real. Even the
abyss, if there were such an abyss, was, as it seemed
to me, meant to be there on our passage through life,
and was to be faced with a brave heart.
But to return to my first experiences of the
theological atmosphere of Oxford, I confess I felt
puzzled to see men, whose learning and character
I sincerely admired, absorbed in subjects which to
my mind seemed simply childish. I expected I
should hear from them some new views on the date
of the gospels, the meaning of revelation, the his¬
torical value of revelation, or the early history of
the Church. Ho, of all this not a word. Nothing
but discussions on vestments, on private confession,
on candles on the altar, whether they were wanted
or not, on the altar being made of stone or of wood,
of consecrated wine being mixed with water, of the
priest turning his hack on the congregation, &c.
I could not understand how these men, so high
above the ordinary level of men in all other respects,
could put aside the fundamental questions of Chris¬
tianity and give their whole mind to what seemed
Early Friends at Oxford 301
to me rightly called in the newspapers " mere mil¬
linery." I sought information from Stanley, but
he shrugged his shoulders and advised me to keep
aloof and say nothing. This I was most willing to
do; I cared for none of these things. My mind
was occupied with far more serious problems, such
as I had heard explained by men of profound learn¬
ing and honest purpose in the great universities of
Germany; these troubles arose from questions
which seemed to me to have no connexion with true
religion at all. Even the differences between the
reformed and unreformed churches were to me
mere questions of history, mere questions of human
expediency. I did not consider Roman Catholics
as heretics—I had known too many of them of un¬
blemished character in Germany. I might have
regretted the abuses which called for reform, the
excrescences which had disfigured Christianity like
many other religions, but which might be tolerated
as long as they did not lead to toleration for intoler¬
ance. Luther might no longer appear to me in the
light of a perfect saint, but that he was right in
suppressing the time-honoured abuses of the Roman
Church admitted with me of no doubt whatsoever.
Large numbers always had that effect on me, and
when I saw how many good and excellent men were
satisfied with the unreformed teaching of the Ro¬
man Church, I felt convinced that they must attach
a different meaning to certain doctrines and ecclesi¬
astical practices from what we did. I had learned
302 My Autobiography
to discover what was good and true in all religions,
and I could fully agree with Macaulay when he
said, " If people had lived in a country where very
sensible people worshipped the cow, they would
not fall out with people who worship saints."
I know that many of my friends on both sides
looked upon me as a latitudinarian, but my convic¬
tion has always been that we could not be broad
enough. They looked upon me as wishing to keep
on good terms with high and low and broad, and
I made no secret of it, that I thought I could under¬
stand Pusey as well as Stanley, and assign to each
his proper place. Stanley was of course more after
my own heart than Pusey, but Pusey too was a man
who interested me very much. I saw that he might
become a great power whether for good or for evil
in England. He was, in fact, a historical character,
and these were always the men who interested me.
He was fully aware of his importance in England,
and the great influence which his name exercised.
That influence was not always exercised in the right
way, so at least it seemed to me, particularly when
it was directed against such friends of mine as
Kingsley, Froude, or Jowett. Once, I remember,
when he had come to my house, I ventured to tell
him that he could not have meant what he had said
in declaring that the God worshipped by Frederic
Maurice was not the same as his God. Curious to
say, he relented, and admitted that he had used too
strong language. To me everything that was said
Early Friends at Oxford 3°3
of God seemed imperfect, and never to apply to God
Himself but only to the idea which the human mind
had formed of Him. To me even the Hindu, if he
spoke of Brahman or Krishna, seemed to have
aimed at the true God, in spite of the idolatrous
epithets which he used; then how could a man like
Frederic Maurice be said to have worshipped a dif¬
ferent God, considering that we all can but feel
after Him in the dark, not being able to do more
than exclude all that seems to us unworthy of Deity ?
A very important element in the ecclesiastical
views of some of my friends was, no doubt, the ar¬
tistic. If Johnson leant towards Rome, it was the
more ornate and beautiful sendee that touched and
attracted him. I sat near to him in St. Giles'
Church; he told me what to do and what not to
do during service. In spite of the Prayer-book, it
is by no means so easy as people imagine to do ex¬
actly the right thing in church, and I had of course
to learn a number of prayers and responses by heart.
To me the service, as it was in my parish church,
seemed already too ornate, accustomed as I had been
to the somewhat bare and cold service in the Lu¬
theran Church at Dessau. But Johnson constantly
complained about the monotonous and mechanical
performances of the clergy. He had a strong feel¬
ing for all that was beautiful and impressive in art,
and he wanted to see the service of God in church
full both of reverence and beauty.
Johnson's private collection of artistic treasures.
304 My Autobiography
was very considerable, and I learnt much from the
Italian engravings and Dutch etchings which he
possessed and delighted in showing. I often spent
happy hours with him examining his portfolios, and
wondered how he could afford to buy such treasures.
But he knew when and where to buy, and I believe
when his collection was sold after his death, it
brought a good deal more than it had cost him.
Another collection of art was that of Dr. Wellesley,
the Principal of Hew Inn Hall, who was a friend of
Johnson's and had collected most valuable antiq¬
uities during his long stay in Italy. He was the
son of the Marquis of Wellesley, a handsome man,
with all the refinement and courtesy of the old
English gentleman. Though not perhaps very
useful in the work of the University, he was most
pleasant to live with, and full of information in his
own line of study, the history of art, chiefly of
Italian art.
The beautiful services of the Roman Church
abroad, and particularly at Rome, certainly exer¬
cised a kind of magic attraction on many of the
friends of Wiseman and Hewman, though one won¬
ders that the sunny grandeur of St. Peter's at Rome
should ever have seemed more impressive than the
sombre sublimity and serene magnificence of West¬
minster Abbey. Unfortunately, the introduction of
a more ornate service, even of harmless candlesticks
and the often very useful incense, had always a
secret meaning. They were used as symbols of
Early Friends at Oxford 305
something of which the people had no conception,
whereas in the early Church they had been really
natural and useful.
In the midst of all this commotion, and chiefly
secret commotion, I felt a perfect stranger; I saw
the bright and dark sides, but I confess I saw little
of what I called religion. Though my own religious
struggles lay behind me, still there were many ques¬
tions which pressed for a solution, but for which my
friends at Oxford seemed either indifferent or un¬
prepared. My practical religion was what I had
learnt from my mother; that remained unshaken in
all storms, and in its extreme simplicity and childish¬
ness answered all the purposes for which religion
is meant. Then followed, in the Universities of
Leipzig and Berlin, the purely historical and scien¬
tific treatment of religion, which, while it explained
many things and destroyed many things, never in¬
terfered with my early ideas of right and wrong,
never disturbed my life with God and in God, and
seemed to satisfy all my religious wants. I never
was frightened or shaken by the critical writings of
Strauss or Ewald, of Benan or Colenso. If what
they said had an honest ring, I was delighted, for
I felt quite certain that they could never deprive
me of the little I really wanted. That little could
never be little enough; it was like a stronghold with
no fortifications, no trenches, and no walls around it.
Suppose it was proved to me that, on geological
evidence, the earth or the world could not have
306 My Autobiography
been created in six days, what was that to me?
Suppose it was proved to me that Christ could never
have given leave to the unclean spirits to enter into
the swine, what was that to me? Let Colenso and
Bishop Wilberforce, let Huxley and Gladstone fight
about such matters; their turbulent waves could
never disturb me, could never even reach me in my
safe harbour. I had little to carry, no learned
impedimenta to safeguard my faith. If a man pos¬
sesses this one pearl of great price, he may save him¬
self and his treasure, but neither the tinselled vest¬
ments of a Cardinal, nor the triple tiara that crowns
the Head of the Church, will serve as life-belts in
the gales of doubt and controversy. My friends at
Oxford did not know that, though with my one
jewel I seemed outwardly poor, I was really richer
and safer than many a Cardinal and many a Doctor
of Divinity. A confession of faith, like a prayer,
may be very long, but the prayer of the Publican
may have been more efficient than that of the
Pharisee.
After a time I made an even more painful dis¬
covery: I found men, who were considered quite
orthodox, but who really were without any belief.
They spoke to me very freely, because they im¬
agined that as a German I would think as they did,
and that I should not be surprised if they looked on
me as not quite sincere. It was not only honest
doubt that disturbed them. They had done with
honest doubt, and they were satisfied with a kind
Early Friends at Oxford 307
of Voltairian philosophy, which at last ended in pure
agnosticism. But even that, even professed agnosti¬
cism, I could understand, because it often meant no
more than a confession of ignorance with regard to
God, which we all confess, and need not necessarily
amount to the denial of the existence of Deity.
But that Voltairian levity which scoffs at every¬
thing connected with religion was certainly some¬
thing I did not expect to meet with at Oxford, and
which even now perplexes me. Of course, I should
never think of mentioning names, but it seemed to
me necessary to mention the fact, to complete the
curious mosaic of theological and religious thought
that existed at Oxford at the time of my arrival.
CHAPTER IX
a confession
One confession I have to make, and one for
which I can hardly hope for absolution, whether
from my friends or from my enemies. I have never
done anything; I have never been a doer, a can¬
vasser, a wirepuller, a manager, in the ordinary
sense of these words. I have also shrunk from
agitation, from clubs and from cliques, even from
most respectable associations and societies. Many
people would call me an idle, useless, and indolent
man, and though I have not wasted many hours of
my life, I cannot deny the charge that I have
neither fought battles, nor helped to conquer new
countries, nor joined any syndicate to roll up a fort¬
une. I have been a scholar, a Stubengelehrter, and
voila tout!
Much as I admired Ruskin when I saw him with
his spade and wheelbarrow, encouraging and help¬
ing his undergraduate friends to make a new road
from one village to another, I never myself took to
digging, and shovelling, and carting. Nor could
I quite agree with him, happy as I always felt in
listening to him, when he said: " What we think, or
308
A Confession 309
what we know, or what we believe, is in the end of
little consequence. The only thing of consequence
is what we do." My view of life has always been
the very opposite! What we do, or what we build
up, has always seemed to me of little consequence.
Even Nineveh is now a mere desert of sand, and
Ruskin's new road also has long since been worn
away. The only thing of consequence, to my mind,
is what we think, what we know, what we believe!
To Ruskin's ears such a sentiment was downright
heresy, and I know quite well that it would be con¬
demned as extremely dangerous, if not downright
wicked, by most people, particularly in England.
My friend, Charles Kingsley, preached muscular
Christianity, that is, he was always up and doing.
Another old friend of mine, Carlyle, preached all
his life that " it was no use talking, if one would not
do." There is an old proverb in German, too,
" Die nicht mit thaten,
Die nicht mit rathen
actually denying the right of giving advice to those
who had not taken a part in the fight.
However, though I have not been a doer, a
faiseur, as the Erench would say, I do not wish
to represent myself as a mere idle drone during the
long years of my quiet life. Nor did I stand quite
alone in looking on a scholar's life—even when I
was living in a garret au cinquieme—as a paradise
310 My Autobiography
on earth. Did not Emerson write, " The scholar
is the man of the age " ? Did not even Mazziui,
who certainly was constantly up and trying to do,
did not even he confess that men must die, but
that the amount of truth they have discovered does
not die with them? And Carlyle? Did he ever
try to get into Parliament? Did he ever accept
directorates? Did he join either the Chartists or
the Special Constables in Trafalgar Square? As
in a concert you want listeners as well as perform¬
ers, so in public life, those who look on are quite
as essential as those who shout and deal heavy
blows.
JSTature has not endowed everybody with the
requisite muscle to be a muscular Christian. But
it may be said, that even if Carlyle and Buskin
were absolved from doing muscular work in Trafal¬
gar Square, what excuse could they plead for not
walking in procession to Hyde Park, climbing up
one of the platforms and haranguing the men and
women and children? I suppose they had the feel¬
ing which the razor has when it is used for cutting
stones: they would feel that it was not exactly
their metier. Arguing when reason meets reason
is most delightful, whether we win or lose; but
arguing against unreason, against anything that is
by nature thick, dense, impenetrable, irrational, has
always seemed to me the most disheartening oc¬
cupation. Majorities, mere numerical majorities,
by which the world is governed now, strike me
A Confession
as mere brute force, though to argue against them
is no doubt as foolish as arguing against a railway
train that is going to crush you. Gladstone could
harangue multitudes; so could Disraeli; all honour
to them for it. But think of Carlyle or Buskin
doing so! Stroking the shell of a tortoise, or the
cupola of St. Paul's, would have been no more
attractive to them than addressing the discontented,
when in their hundreds and their thousands they
descended into the streets. All I claim is that
there must be a division of labour, and as little
as Way land Smith was useless in his smithy, when
he hardened the iron in the fire for making swords
or horse-shoes, was Carlyle a man that could be
spared, while he sat in his study preparing thoughts
that would not bend or break.
But I cannot even claim to have been a man of
action in the sense in which Carlyle was in England,
or Emerson in America. They were men who in
their books were constantly teaching and preaching.
" Do this! " they said; " Do not do that! " The
Jewish prophets did much the same, and they are
not considered to have been useless men, though
they did not make bricks, or fight battles like Jehu.
But the poor Stiibengelehrte has not even that com¬
fort. Only now and then he gets some unexpected
recognition, as when Lord Derby, then Secretary
of State for India, declared that the scholars who
had discovered and proved the close relationship be¬
tween Sanskrit and English, had rendered more val-
312 My Autobiography
uable service to the Government of India than many
a regiment. This may he called a mere assertion,
and it is true that it cannot he proved mathemati¬
cally, but what could have induced a man like Lord
Derby to make such a statement, except the sense
of its truth produced on his mind by long experi¬
ence?
However, I can only speak for myself, and of my
idea of work. I felt satisfied when my work led me
to a new discovery, whether it was the discovery of
a new continent of thought, or of the smallest desert
island in the vast ocean of truth. I would gladly go
so far as to try to convince my friends by a simple
statement of facts. Let them follow the same course
and see whether I was right or wrong. But to make
propaganda, to attempt to persuade by bringing
pressure to bear, to canvass and to organize, to
found societies, to start new journals, to call meet¬
ings and have them reported in the papers, has al¬
ways been to me very much against the grain. If we
know some truth, what does it matter whether a few
millions, more or less, see the truth as we see it?
Truth is truth, whether it is accepted now or in
millions of years. Truth is in no hurry, at least it
always seemed to me so. When face to face with
a man, or a body of men, who would not be con¬
vinced, I never felt inclined to run my head against
a stone wall, or to become an advocate and use the
tricks of a lawyer. I have often been blamed for it,
I have sometimes even regretted my indolence or
A Confession
3*3
my quiet happiness, when I felt that truth was on
my side and by my side. I suppose there is no
harm in personal canvassing, but as much as I dis¬
liked being canvassed, did I feel it degrading to
canvass others. I know quite well how often it
happened at a meeting when either a measure or
a candidate was to be carried, that the voters had
evidently been spoken to privately beforehand, had
in the conscience of their heart promised their votes.
The facts and arguments at the meeting itself might
all be on one side, but the majority was in favour of
the other. Men whose time was of little value had
been round from house to house, a majority had
been compacted into an inert unreasoning mass;
and who would feel inclined to use his spade of
reason against so much unreason? Some people,
more honest than the rest, after the mischief was
done, would say, " Why did you not call? why did
you not write letters? " I may be quite wrong, but
I can only say that it seemed to me like taking an
unfair advantage, unfair to our opponents, and al¬
most insulting to our friends. Still, from a worldly
point of view, I was no doubt wrong, and it is cer¬
tainly true that I was often left in a minority. My
friends have told me again and again that if a good
measure or a good man is to be carried, good men
must do some dirty work. If they cannot do that,
they are of no use, and I doubt not that I have often
been considered a very useless man by my political
and academic friends, because I trusted to reason
314 My Autobiography
where there was no reason to trust to. I was asked
to write letters, to address and post letters, to prom¬
ise travelling expenses or even convivial entertain¬
ments at Oxford, to get leaders and leaderettes in¬
serted in newspapers. I simply loathed it, and at
last declined to do it. If a measure is carried by
promise, not by argument, if an election is carried
by personal influence, not by reason, what happens
is very often the same as what happens when fruit
is pulled off a tree before it is ripe. It is expected
to ripen by itself, but it never becomes sweet, and
often it rots. A premature measure may be carried
through the House by a minister with a powerful
majority, but it does not acquire vitality and matur¬
ity by being carried; it often remains on the Stat¬
ute-book a dead letter, till in the end it has to be
abolished with other rubbish.
However, I have learnt to admire the indefati¬
gable assiduity of men who have slowly and partially
secured their converts and their recruits, and thus
have carried in the end what they thought right and
reasonable. I have seen it particularly at Oxford,
where undergraduates were indoctrinated by their
tutors, till they had taken their degree and could
vote with their betters. I take all the blame and
shame upon myself as a useless member of Congre¬
gation and Convocation, and of society at large.
I was wrong in supposing that the walls of Jericho
would fall before the blast of reason, and wrong in
abstaining from joining in the braying of rams'
A Confession 315
horns and the shouts of the people. I was fortunate,
however, in counting among my most intimate
friends some of the most active and influential re¬
formers in University, Church, and State, and it is
quite possible that I may often have influenced
them in the hours of sweet converse; nay, that
standing in the second rank, I may have helped to
load the guns which they fired off with much effect
afterwards. I felt that my open partnership might
even injure them more than it could help them; for
was it not always open to my opponents to say that
1 was a German, and therefore could not possibly
understand purely English questions? Besides,
there is another peculiarity which I have often ob¬
served in England. People like to do what has to
be done by themselves. It seemed to me sometimes
as if I had offended my friends if I did anything by
myself, and without consulting them. Besides, my
position, even after I had been in England for so
many years, was always peculiar; for though I had
spent nearly a whole life in the service of my
adopted country, though my political allegiance was
due and was gladly given to England, still I was,
and have always remained, a German.
And next to Germany, which was young and
full of ideals when I was young, there came India,
and Indian thought which exercised their quieting
influence on me. Erom a very early time I became
conscious of the narrow horizon of this life on earth,
and the purely phenomenal character of the world
316 My Autobiography
in which for a few years we have to live and move
and have onr being. As students of classical and
other Oriental history we come to admire the great
empires with their palaces and pyramids and temples
and capitols. What could have seemed more real,
more grand, more likely to impress the young mind
than Babylon and Kineveh, Thebes and Alexandria,
Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome? And now where
are they? The very names of their great rulers and
heroes are known to few people only and have to be
learnt by heart, without telling us much of those
who wore them. Many things for which thousands
of human beings were willing to lay down their
lives, and actually did lay them down, are to us mere
words and dreams, myths, fables, and legends. If
ever there was a doer, it was Hercules, and now we
are told that he was a mere myth!
If one reads the description of Babylonian and
Egyptian campaigns, as recorded on cuneiform cyl¬
inders and on the walls of ancient Egyptian temples,
the number of people slaughtered seems immense,
the issues overwhelming; and yet what has become
of it all? The inroads of the Iluns, the expeditions
of Genghis Khan and Timur, so fully described by
historians, shook the whole world to its foundations,
and now the sand of the desert disturbed by their
armies lies as smooth as ever.
What India teaches us is that in a state advancing
towards civilization, there must be always two castes
or two classes of men, a caste of Brahmans or of
A Confession
thinkers, and a caste of Kshatriyas, who are to
fight; possibly other castes also of those who are
to work and of those who are to serve. Great wars
went on in India, but they were left to be fought
by the warriors by profession. The peasants in their
villages remained quiet, accepting the consequences,
whatever they might be, and the Brahmans lived
on, thinking and dreaming in their forests, satisfied
to rule after the battle was over.
And what applies to military struggles seems to
me to apply to all struggles—political, religious,
social, commercial, and even literary. Let those
who love to fight, fight; but let others who are fond
of quiet work go on undisturbed in their own spe¬
cial callings. That was, as far as we can see, the
old Indian idea, or at all events the ideal which
the Brahmans wished to see realized. I do not stand
up for utter idleness or sloth, not even for drones,
though nature does not seem to condemn even hoc
genus altogether. All I plead for, as a scholar and
a thinker, is freedom from canvassing, from letter-
reading and letter-writing, from committees, deputa¬
tions, meetings, public dinners, and all the rest.
That will sound very selfish to the ears of practical
men, and I understand why they should look upon
men like myself as hardly worth their salt. But
what would they say to one of the greatest fighters
in the history of the world? What would they
say to Julius Caesar, when he declares that the
triumphs and the laurel wreaths of Cicero are as
318 My Autobiography
far nobler than those of warriors as it is a greater
achievement to extend the boundaries of the Ro¬
man intellect than the domains of the Roman
people ?
INDEX
Abiturienten, Examina¬
tion at Zerbst, 106
Acland, Dr., 245
Admiration, power of, 90
Aitareya-brahmana, 203
All Souls' Fellowship, 23
pinnacles, 225, 226
Altenstein, Minister of In¬
struction, 131
Anglican system, 209
— orders, 291
Anhalt-Dessau, Duchy of,
46
Antiquities hid in etymol¬
ogies, 152-154
Anti-Semitism, 70, 71
Arnim, Count, 110
Arnold, Matthew, 282-283
Artistic element in the
Oxford movement, 303,
304
Aryan speakers may differ
in blood, 32
— and aboriginal lan¬
guages of India, M.
M.'s paper on, 210, 211
Aryans of India, 197
Aryas, meaning of, 32
Asvalayana Sutras, 203
Atavism, 17, 25, 26, 27, 30
Atavistic influences, 27
Autobiography, object of
M. M. in writing his,
vi
Autos, the, 35
Babies, studying, 86
Bach family, 34
Baden-Powell, Professor,
238, 245
Bandinell, Dr., 259-261
Bardelli, Abbe, 170
Basedow, von, President,
54
— the Pedagogue, 55, 76
Bathing, 77
Bernays, Professor, 69
Bibliotheque Royale, 167
Biographies, too lenient, 2
— best kind of history, 14
Bismarck, 175
Blucher, Marshal, 235
Blum, Robert, 15
Boden Professorship of
Sanskrit, vii
Bodleian Library, 258, 259
Boehtlingk, 181, 182, 183
Books, scarcity of, 67
Bopp, 125, 132, 148, 151, 156
— his lectures, 156, 157
320
Index
Brahmo Somaj, service for
the, 61
Breakfast parties, 205
British Association at Ox¬
ford, 210, 215
Brockhaus, Professor, 147
Buckle, 287
Bull, Dr., 40, 255, 256
Bunsen, Baron, 5, 13, 16
— first visit to, 190, 191
— his kindness, 193, 199,
221
Burgon, 287
Burnouf, 167, 169, 178, 179-
182, 288
Camebarius, 51
Canon of Christ Church,
an old, 256-258
Canvassing, 312, 313
Carlyle, 310, 311
Carus, Professor, 98, 109
Chartist Deputation, 16
Chretian, 287
Christianity, historical
teaching of, in Ger¬
many, 65, 287, 291
•— an historical event, 300
Church, Dr., 287
Church, not for young
children, 60
Circumstances, influence
of, 24
Clarke, Sir Andrew, 82, 86
Classics, exaggerated
praise of the, 101, 102
reactions from, 103
— nothing takes their
place, 103
Colebrooke, 192
Colenso, 298, 305
Collegien-Buch, 121, 123-
125
Comparative Philology,
Professorship of, 12
Congregation and Convo¬
cation, why M. M. kept
away from, 314, 315
Conscience, the voice of, 63
Coxe, Mr., 258
Cradock, Dr. and Mrs., 267
Crawford, Mr., the Objec¬
tor General, 211
Curtius, 132, 151
Darwin, 2, 11, 17, 131
David, 107, 109
Deafness in M. M.'s fam¬
ily, 29
De Lisle, 293, 296
Dessau, Dukes of, 46
— cheapness of life at, 56,
57
— Gottesacker at, 57
— only two classes at, 73
— trade of, 73
— public school at, 76
— its walls, 89
— M. M.'s world, 89
— simplicity of life at, 92
effect on the charac¬
ter, 92, 96
— moral sayings, 96
Devas, ®e6s, 144
Dieu, Deus, Devas, 197
Donkin, Professor, 246
Double First, 240
Drobisch, 129, 140, 142, 145
Duels at University, 119,
128, 129, 284, 286
Dyaus, Zeus, Iovis, 197
Index
321
Early life, roughing- it,
91
East India Company, 14
East India House, 16, 215
Eckart, 107, 109
Eckstein, Baron d', 176, 177
" Edinburgh Review," first
article in, 222
Egyptian chronology, 199
" Elsie Venner," 31
Emerson, 310
Encaenia, 265, 266
— jokes at, 265
English and German Doc¬
tors, 84, 85
Environment, 17, 18, 25
Ernst, 110
Eternal, eivig, 150, 151
Etymologies, 152
Evolution, 198
Ewald, 298, 299, 305
Fairy tales, influence of,
50-52
Fear, the feeling of, 88
Feast of Tabernacles, 71
Fellowships, old system
of, 246, 247, 263
Forbiger, 99
French master at Dessau,
75
French Revolution, 16, 216
Friar Bacon, 227
Froge, Professor, 109
— his wife and Mendels¬
sohn, 109
Froude, J. A., 8, 287
Funkhanel, 99
Gaisford, Dr., 240, 252-254
Gathy, M., 165, 172
German regiments, hymns
sung by, 62
-— students, 213
Germany and Germans,
prejudice against, 20,
21
— religious feeling in, 62
Germ-plasm, 19, 28
Gewandhaus Concerts, 107
Giordano Bruno on Ox¬
ford, 228
Goethe, not always ad¬
mired, 93
Goldstiicker, 170-172
Goldwin Smith, 238
Gottesacker at Dessau, 57
Grabau, M. M.'s concerts
with, 110
Grandfather of M. M., 79-
81
Grandmother of M. M., 53
Grant, Sir Alexander, 272,
273
Greene's Oxford, 227
Greenhill, Dr., 245
Grenville, Lord, 229
Greswell, Mr., 245
Griffith, Dr., Master of
University, 229
Grimm, 151
Grlinder, ein, 48
Guizot, 182
Habits acquired not he-
reditable, 33
Hagedorn, Baron, 112-114,
162
— journey with him, 112
— his plan of life for M.
M., 113
Hahnemann, 82 et seq., 86
322
Index
Hallam's literary dog, 209
Hare, Archdeacon, 205, 286
— visit to, 208
Hase, 185
Haupt, his Latin Society,
121, 125
— his dislike to modern
philology, 155, 156
Hawkins, Dr., 240, 249
Headaches, suffering from,
81 et seq.
— how cured, 83
Heads of Houses, 234, 264
their power, 239
Hebdomadal Board, 239,
255
Hebrew taught at the
Nicolai-Schule, 100
Hegel, 2
— his philosophy, 130-138
Hegel's idea, 133-135
—" Philosophy of Nat¬
ure," 135, 136
—" Philosophy of Relig¬
ion," 135, 142
— " Metaphysics," 136
Heinroth, 139
Helps, Sir Arthur, 266
Hentzner, his description
of Oxford, 228
Herbart, school of, 129,
140, 142
Heredity, 17
Hermann, Gottfried, 121,
125, 128
— -welcomed modern phi¬
lology, 155
— his kindness to M. M.,
156
Hermae round the The¬
atre, 264
Highland lady at Oxford,
229
Hiller, 107, 109
— his oratorio, 110
Historical method, 198
— events, their influence
transitory, 315, 316
Hitopadesa, 51
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 6,
266
Honicke, Dr., 78
Horace, " cheekiness " of,
102
Human weaknesses, allow¬
ance must be made
for, 93, 94
Humboldt, 181
Imprisonment, M. M.'s, at
University, 118, 119
Indian thought, influence
of, 315, 317
Indolence, M. M.'s, 312
Inherited and acquired
qualities, difference
between, 33
Inspiration and infallibil¬
ity, 65, 66
Institut de France, 186
— M. M. made Member,
186, 187
Jenkins, Dr., Master of
Balliol, 250
Jerusalem, Bishopric of,
293
Jews at Dessau, 68, 70
— their privileges in Ger¬
many, 70
Index
323
Johnson, Manuel, 286, 303
— his art treasures, 303
Jowett, Professor, 4, 6, 287
Kaliwoda, 107
Kant's " Kritik," 138
Kaspar Hauser, 18
Keshub Chunder Sen, 61
Kingsley, Charles, 5
— and muscular Christian¬
ity, 309
Klengel, 147
Kuhn, A., 154
Lamartine, 177
Language, influence of, 31
— differentiation of, 31, 32,
33
— science of, 198
Lassen, 23
Latham, Dr., 210
Layard, 11, 205
Leipzig, 15
— school at, 97
— University, 115
Lepsius, 159
Liberals at University, 117,
118
Liddell, Dr., 238
— and Mrs., 267
Liddell's Dictionary, 99
Liszt, 107-111
London, 188
— society, peeps into, 205
— M. M.'s social difficul¬
ties, 206-208
Longchamps, 167
Lotze, 129, 136, 139, 287
Louis Lucien Bonaparte,
214
Louis Napoleon, 16
Luther, 64
— his love of fairy tales,
50, 51
— tercentenary, 105
Maitland, Sir Peregrine,
251
Mammoth, 18
Manning, 296
Masters, influence of, in
German and English
schools, 77
Maurice, Frederick, 205,
286
— Pusey's attack on, 302
Memory changes, 39
Mendelssohn family, 33, 34
Mendelssohn, Felix, 107,
110
— his death, 110
— his concert for Liszt,
110, 111
Mendelssohn's " Hymn of
Praise," 105
— music in Oxford, 268
Metternich, 72
— his system, 117
Mezzofanti, 30
Michelet, 287
Mill, John Stuart, 7, 14
— his Autos, 7
Mill, Dr., mention of a
Vedic hymn printed at
Calcutta, 192
Milton on Oxford, 228
Modern Literature, Pro¬
fessorship of, 12
Mommsen, 186, 187
Moncalm, " L'origine de la
Pensee," 10 n.
Index
Monk, M. M.'s wish to be
a, 24
Monument-raising, 47
Morier, 275-279
Mother, M. M.'s, 57-59
— her relations, 54, 55
Mozley, 287
MSS., copying, 179
Mulde, excursion on foot
along the, 112
Mxiller, Wilhelm, 47, 48
— his poems, 48
— his family, 52, 53
— his home and society, 55
— early death, 56
— monument to, 49
Music, its influence on M.
M., 67
— wished to make it his
career, 111
" Mysteres de Paris," 174
Natural Science and
Mathematics little
taught at Nicolai-
Schule, 100
Neander, 21, 22
Newman, 286, 292-296
— want of openness in his
friends, 292, 296
— his influence, 293
— on " Lives of the
Saints," 294, 295
Newspapers few in num¬
ber, 71
— influence of modern, 72
— old, 74
Nicolai-Schule, 99
— chie:fly for classics, 99-
101
Niebuhr, 191, 289
Niedner, Dr., 127, 137, 140
Nirukta, the, 203
Nobbe, Dr., 99
— his testimonial, 105
Old and young men, 36
Oriental languages, 146
Orleans, Duchesse d', 177
Oxford, first visit to, 213
— settled at, 220
— social life at, 220, 221
— changes in, 223-226
— new buildings, 224, 225
— conservative, 226
— Greene's, 227
— Hentzner's description
of, 228
— Giordano Bruno on, 228
— Milton on, 228
— society in 1810, 229-231
— great changes in, 243,
244
— society at, in the forties
and fifties, 244, 245
— city society of, 245, 246
— high tone of talk, 284
— theological atmosphere
at, 286
— trivial questions of cere¬
mony in, 291, 292, 300,
301
Palgrave, 274, 287
Palm, Dr., 99
Palmerston, Lord, 16, 217
Panini, 182
— his grammar, 204
Pantschatantra, 51
Paper, scarcity of, 67
Parental influences, 27
Paris, 15, 162
Index
Paris, journey to, 163, 164
— meals there, 166
— hard struggles in, 173,
283
Patagonians as types of
humanity, 88
Peel, Sir Robert, 205
Philanthropinum, 54, 76
Philology, love of, 121
Philosophy, studied by M.
M., 129, 137, 146
Physical science, revolt of,
against Hegel, 135
Pillar and pillow, 189
" Pitar," father, 153
Pitcairn Islands, 18
Plumptre, Dr., 213, 215, 265
Poems, M. M.'s, 104, 105
Pollen, 287
Pott, 151, 160
Pranks at University, 119,
120
" Presence of mind," 262
Prichard, Dr., 211, 212, 221
Professor's lectures and
fees, 121, 122
Professors, feeling of Ger¬
man students for their,
127
Proto-Aryan language, 200
Prowe, Professor, 116, 117
Public schools in Ger¬
many, 98
in England need re¬
forming, 242
Pusey, Dr., 261, 299, 302
Race, differentiation of, 35
Rawlinson, Sir H., 205
Reay, Professor, 260
Reinaud, 186
Religion, practical, 305, 306
Religious feeling in Ger¬
many, 68
great tolerance in, 70,
71
— sentiments must be
taught at home, 62
— teaching in school, 63
Renan, 185, 186, 288, 289,
290, 305
Research, fellowships for,
270
Revelation, subjective not
objective, 66
— in the old sense, 288
Rigaud, John, 287
Rig-veda, how to publish
the, 181, 182
— printing of, 222
Roman Catholic Church,
English national feel¬
ing opposed to, 296,
297
Rose-bush, vision of the,
43, 44
Roth, 170, 171
Routh, Dr., 247-249
Rubens, Levy, 75
Ruskin, 224
Russell, Sir W., 37, 190
Sadowa, and Sixty-six, 38
St. Hilaire, Barthelemy,
170
St. Petersburg, idea of go¬
ing to, 181, 183
Salis-Schwabe, Madame, 98
Salmon at Dessau, 56, 57
" Salve caput cruentatum,"
59
326
Index
Sanskrit Professorship, vii,
12
— chair of, at Leipzig, 147
— feeling against, 147
— unedited works, 204
Savigny, Professor, 122
Say ana's Commentary,
202-204
Sehelling, 156, 195, 287, 289
Schlegel's " Weisheit der
Indier," 146
Schleswig - Holstein ques¬
tion, 276
Schloezer, Karl von, 174,
176
School teaching, 67, 68
— success at, 104, 105
— routine of learning, 120
Schopenhauer, 289
Selbst-Kritik, 6
Self, the, 42
Sellar, Professor, 273, 274
Seminaries and societies at
University, 123
Senatus Academicus, 236,
237
Shelley, 233
Simolin, Baron, 55
Sister, M. M.'s, 115, 116
Spiegel, Professor, 147
Sport, M. M.'s dislike of,
80
Stanislas Julien, 185
Stanley, Dr., 5, 41, 238, 286,
287, 302
Steel pens, 67
Stories in Oxford, regular
descent of, 248
Strauss, 21, 305
Stubengelehrter, 308, 311
Student Clubs, 116
Student life in Paris, 184
Sunday games at the Ob¬
servatory, 298
Sykes, Colonel, 16
Symons, Dr., 239, 240, 251
Sympathy in the joys and
sufferings of others,
41, 42
Tait, Dr., 238
Talents in families, 33-35 v
Taylorian Professorship,
22
Telegraphs, old, 72
Testimonials, 4
Thalberg, 111
Thirlwall, 205
Thomson, Dr. and Mrs.,
267, 268, 280, 281
Tippoo Sahib's tiger, 215
Travelling in the thirties,
111
Troyer, M., and the Duch-
esse de Wagram, 184
Truth, 312
Turanian languages, M.
M.'s letter on, 160, 161
Tutors and Fellows, 236
their influence, 241,
268, 269
University, M. M.'s life
at, 115, 116
— pranks, 119, 120
— duels at, 119, 128-130
University Press, 218, 219
Upanishads, 169
Van der Weyer, 205
Veda, 9, 12-14, 148, 168
Index
327
Veda, a mystery, 191, 194
— MSS. of, in India, 192
brought to Europe,
193
— oldest of real books, 195
— primitive thought in
the, 195, 197-199
— date of, 200
— translations of, 201
— East India Company and
the, 201
— forming correct text of
the Rig-, 202
— enormous work in¬
volved, 204
Vedic scholarship, 193
Veih, home, 153
Vernunft and Verstand, 143
Vigfusson, Dr., 254
Voltairian philosophy at
Oxford, 307
Weismann, 27-30
Weisse, 129, 132-135, 139-
142, 287
YVellesley, Dr., 304
Wellington, Duke of, 16,
40, 205
Westminster Abbey and
St. Peter's, 304
Wilberforce, Samuel, 207,
208
Wilson, Professor, 158, 159
Wiseman, 296
Wolf, F. A., 48
Wolseley, Lord, 266
Wren, Sir Christopher, 264
Wright, Dr., 261, 262
Youth painted by the old,
35, 36
Zerbst, examined at, 106
— M. M.'s examiners at,
106
Zeus, Dyaus, 148, 149
I -
OTHER BOOKS BY MAX MULLER
Auld Lang Syne
First Series. Illustrated. 8vo, $2.00
" This book, the fruit of enforced leisure, as its
author tells us, is a charming mass of gossip about
people whom Professor Max Miiller has known
during his long career—musicians, literary men,
princes, and beggars. The last class is not, per¬
haps, the least interesting or amusing. To our
mind, however, the chapter on musicians, with its
delightful pictures of the author's early life, and
the naive confessions as to musical tastes, with
some of the stories about celebrated composers,
forms the most interesting portion of a work which
has not one dull page."—The Spectator.
" One of the most charming examples of rem¬
iniscent literature that has recently seen the light."
—New York Sun,
Auld Lang Syne
Second Series. My Indian Friends. 8vo, $2.00.
"The professor's 'Indian Friends' are not all
of the nineteenth century. His oldest friends are
in the Veda, about which he has always loved to
write. Indeed, he spent the best years of his life
over the text of the Rig Veda, and has a clear
right to be heard upon the classic he has done so
much to make familiar. . . . But the real charm
of his recollections lies rather in their peaceful
kindliness, in their wide and tolerant sympathies,
and in their earnest aim, which will surely be
attained in some measure, of bringing what is best
in India closer home to foreigners."—Literature.
OTHER BOOKS BY MAX MULLER
Science of Language
Founded on Lectures delivered at the Royal Insti¬
tution. New Edition from New Plates. Largely
Re-written. In 2 vols., crown 8vo, $6.00.
CONTENTS: — Vol. I.—The Science of Language one oj
the Physical Sciences; The Growth of Language in Contra¬
distinction to the History of Language ; The Empirical Stage
in the Science of Language : The Classificatory Stage in the
Science of LanguageThe Genealogical Classification of
Languages; Comparative Grammar; The Constituent Ele¬
ments of Language; The Morphological Classification of
Languages ; the Theoretical Stage in the Science of Lan¬
guage—Origin of Language; Genealogical Tables of Lan¬
guages.
CONTENTS : — Vol. II. — Introductory Lecture. New
Materials for the Science of Language and New Theories:
Language and Reason: The Physiological Alphabet; Phonetic
Change ; Grimm's Law ; On the Principles of Etymology :
On the Powers of Roots ; Metaphor ; The Mythology of the
Greeks; fupiter, The Supreme Aryan God; Myths of the
Dawn ; Modern Mythology.
" In practical value to the student of the science
of language, the work stands alone.''
—Boston Transcript.
Ramakrishna
His Life and Sayings. Crown 8vo, $1.50 net.
" As a whole the little book marks one of the
summit points of recent scientific religious liter¬
ature. Max Midler's penetrating insight into the
broad facts of Hindu intellectual history is coupled
in this instance with all the just criticism needed for
a true valuation of Ramakrishna's personality and
teaching."—American Historical Review.
OTHER BOOKS BY MAX MULLER
Science of Thought
Two Volumes. Crown 8vo, $4.00
" Of the portion of the work in which the
author exemplifies and illustrates his theory—his
analysis of the Sanskrit roots, his chapters on Kant's
philosophy, on the formation of words, on propo¬
sitions and syllogisms—it is only necessary to say
that while they contain, along with much that will
reward a careful study, not a little that will arouse
controversy, they have, like all the author's for¬
mer productions, the prime merit of being free
from the two greatest of literary faults—obscurity
and dulness. A work in which two of the driest
and hardest of studies, analytic philology and
mental philosophy, are made at once lucid and
attractive, is an acquisition for which all students
of those mysteries have reason to be grateful."
—New York Evening Post.
Science of Religion
Lectures on the Science of Religion; with
Papers on Buddhism, and a Translation of the
Dhammapada, or Path of Virtue. Crown 8vo,
$2.00.
CONTENTSLECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF
RELIGION; BUDDHIST NIHILISM; BUDDHA'S
DHAMMAPADA, OR "PATH OF VIRTUE"; Intro¬
duction; The Twin-Verses; On Reflection; Thought;
Flowers; The Fool; The Wise Man; The Venerable; The
Thousands ; Evil; Punishment : Old Age ; Self; The World;
The Awakened (Buddha); Happiness; Pleasure; Anger:
Impurity ; The Just; The Way ; Miscellaneous; The Down¬
ward Course ; The Elephant; Thirst : The Bhikshu (Mendi¬
cant); The Brahmana.
OTHER BOOKS BY MAX MULLER
Chips from a German
Workshop
Five Volumes. Crown 8vo, $2.00 per vol. ; the
set, $10.00
Vol. I. Essays on the Science of Religion.
Vol. II. Essays on Mythology, Traditions and
Customs.
Vol. III. Essays on Literature, Biography and
Antiquities.
Vol. IV. Comparative Philology, Mythology,
etc.
Vol. V. Miscellaneous. Later Essays.
Lectures on the Origin and Growth of
Religion, as Illustrated by the Religions of
India. [Hibbert Lectures for 1878.] Crown
8vo, $1.50 net.
Biographical Essays: Rammohun Roy —
Keshub Chunder Sen—Dayananda Sarasvati—
Bunyiu Nanjio — Kenjiu Kasawara — Mohl —
Kingsley. Crown 8vo, $2.00.
The German Classics. From the Fourth to
the Nineteenth Century. With biographical
notices, translations into modern German and
notes. A New Edition, Revised, Enlarged
and Adapted to Sherer's " History of German
Literature." 2 vols, $6.00 net.
Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers
153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York
YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
3 9002 0'
423
1659