My Autobiography Part 7

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 benefactors, 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 Boulevards. Baron d'Eckstein, as I have said, was willing 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 interesting characters, and having kept aloof from others, because my interests were absorbed elsewhere. 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 d.u.c.h.esse 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 anxieties 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 is generally thought of their vagaries and extravagances. 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 German 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 chercher, pour Monsieur Max Muller, le ma.n.u.scrit sanscrit, numero ...," and then followed a pause, till he had translated "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 already established in England, we had a little controversy, 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 he wrote to me, "Pardonnez-moi, je n'ai pas compris 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 attend some lectures at the College de France, and to make the acquaintance of some distinguished French _savants_ of the _Inst.i.tut_. 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 l'Inst.i.tut_, rose to that dignity much later. I was made not only a corresponding, but 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 cla.s.sical and Oriental scholarship, and for once Oriental scholarship carried the day.

Mommsen, however, was elected in 1895, and there can be 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 mal_, 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 detected 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 Library of the East India Company in London, and my desire to visit England consequently grew stronger and stronger; but I had not the wherewithal 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 sc.r.a.ped 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, ???atta, ???atta. 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 at the docks in London, a real drizzly day, rain and mist, and such a crowd rushing on sh.o.r.e 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 books 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 a.s.sistance.

"You stay here," he said, "and I will arrange everything for you;" and so he did. He fetched a four-wheeler, put my luggage on 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 Ess.e.x 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 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 meeting 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 Burnouf, 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 written him a strong letter of recommendation on my behalf, but that was hardly sufficient reason to account 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 congeniality in principles, a fellowship in the pursuit of favourite objects, which attracted and bound Bunsen 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 prosecuting 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 take 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 Niebuhr, the Prussian Amba.s.sador there, became the friend of the future Frederick William IV, and thus gradually drifted into diplomacy, giving 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 governing 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 communications of Roman Catholic missionaries in India, that the ma.n.u.scripts themselves, at least those of the Veda, 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 Veda, except the Upanishads. Professor Wilson told me that once, when examining 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 ominous and threatening looks of some of the Brahmans present, and thought it wiser to beat a retreat." Dr. Mill had known of a gentleman who had a very sacred hymn of the Veda, 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 G.o.ds.

Colebrooke, however, was allowed to possess himself of several most valuable Vedic MSS., and he found Brahmans quite ready to read with him, not only the cla.s.sical 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 Researches_ as early as 1801. But people went on dreaming about the Veda, instead of reading Colebrooke'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 itself, 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.

Ma.n.u.scripts were never considered in India as of very high authority; they were always over-ruled by the oral traditions of certain schools.

However, such ma.n.u.scripts, 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 myself grown young again."

And he did help me, as only a father can help his son.

Perhaps he expected too much from the Veda, 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 supposed 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 interested in the origin and the first development of language, thought, religion, and social inst.i.tutions, looked forward to the Veda as a new revelation. All such dreams, natural enough before the Veda was known, were dispersed by my laying sacrilegious hands on the Veda itself, and actually publishing it, making it public property, to the dismay of the Brahmans in India, and to the delight of all 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. Sch.e.l.ling seemed quite disappointed when I showed him some of the translations of the hymns of the Rig-veda; and Bunsen, who was still under Sch.e.l.ling's influence, had evidently expected a great many more of such philosophical 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 miraculous 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; Babylon had its cuneiform monuments; and certain portions of the Old Testament may have existed in a written form at the time of Josiah, when Hilkiah, 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 accent plainly written, was a different thing. It may safely be called a book. No doubt it existed for a long time, as it does even at present, in oral tradition, 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 antiquity. More important, however, than the purely chronological antiquity of the book, is the antiquity or primitiveness of the thoughts which it contains. If the people of the Veda 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 Vedic 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 produce 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 Veda, 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 G.o.ds, whose genesis has been watched by living missionaries. The great difficulty in all such researches is to distinguish between what is common to human nature, and what is really inherited or traditional. All such questions 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 Vedic and Babylonian savages. But we must have patience and learn to wait. It has been a favourite idea among anthropologists 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 recognize 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 prominent 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_, the most natural of all the Aryan G.o.ds 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 history in the sense of the description of evolution, or in that of evolution itself. History has generally 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.

Evolution, 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 necessary, but as real.

Perhaps the difference is of no importance, but the historical method seems certainly 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 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 conjectures 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 pa.s.sed 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 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 inscriptions may give us, as a book there is nothing so old in Egypt as the Veda in India.

Besides, we have in the Veda thoughts; and in the chronology of thought the Veda seems to me older than even the Book of the Dead."

As to the actual date of the Veda, 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 Veda, 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 suffice 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 elaboration, 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 Veda for an historical study of mankind and the growth of the human mind, but he 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 highest 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 Oldenburg, specimens only in vols. x.x.xii 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 Vedic 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 of them could understand, and many of them had perhaps never even heard of. Bunsen pointed out what a disgrace it would be 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 Veda, and were meanwhile 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 indeed 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. Anybody might have done that, yet this, as I said, was 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 a.s.sisted 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 edition repeated in his. He himself was far above such tactics. He knew, and they knew perfectly well that, whatever the _vulgus profanum_ may think, my real work was the critical edition of Sayana's commentary on the Rig-veda.

I had determined 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 proceed 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 Nirukta, the glossary of the Rig-veda; the Aitareya-brahmana, a very old explanation of the Vedic sacrifice; the asvalayana Sutras, on the ceremonial; and sundry works of the same character. Sayana generally alludes very briefly only to these works and presupposes 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 pa.s.sages 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 a.s.sistants seemed to 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 Vedic 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 welcome in Bunsen's house, and among the men whom I remember meeting at his breakfast parties, were Rawlinson, Layard, Hodgson, Birch, and many more. Those breakfast parties were then quite a new inst.i.tution to me, and it is curious how entirely 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 anywhere 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 undergraduates' 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, however, was never put out by my gaucheries, but gave me friendly hints in feeling my way 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? n.o.body had ever told me, and I thought it obtrusive to call. Nor 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_. Nor 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 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 discarded. 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 innovation.

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 consequence? 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 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 addressed him as "My dear Professor H." At the end of his answer he wrote, "Don't call me Professor." All depends on the tone in which such words are said. I imagined that living in fashionable society in London, he did not like the somewhat scholastic t.i.tle of Professor which, in London particularly, has always a by-taste of diluted omniscience 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 Hurstmonceux with Archdeacon Hare, and a delightful 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 pa.s.sage that was being discussed, occurred, and excelled even the famous dog, which at one of these literary breakfast parties-I believe in Hallam'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 disputed pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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 dangers which threatened not only the Church, but the religion of England. The real danger, he evidently thought, came from the clergy, and their hankering after Rome. "They have forgotten their history," 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 declared 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 something new to show him, he said: "You must come with me to Oxford to the meeting of the British a.s.sociation." This was in 1847. Of course I did not know what sort of thing this British a.s.sociation 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 "Results of the recent Egyptian Researches in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology and the Cla.s.sification of Languages,"

and he wanted Dr. Karl Meyer and myself to support him, the former with a paper on Celtic Philology, and myself with a paper on the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India. I a.s.sured 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 language," 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, and Mr. Crawford, known by the name of the Objector General. Our section was presided over by the famous Dr. Prichard, the author of that cla.s.sical work, _Researches into the Physical History of Mankind_, in five volumes, and it was he who protected me most chivalrously against the somewhat frivolous objections of certain members, who were not over friendly towards Prince Albert, Chevalier Bunsen, and all that was called German in scholarship. All, however, went off well. Bunsen's speech was most successful, and it is a pity that it should be buried in the _Transactions of the British a.s.sociation 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 improvement, but printed it was in the _Transactions_, and much canva.s.sed at the time in different journals.

I have always been doubtful about the advantages of these public meetings, so far as any scientific 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 themselves, and I have actually seen quoted among a man's t.i.tles 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 generally 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 moderator, 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 unparalleled 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.

But though I cannot say that the result of these meetings and wranglings was very great or valuable, 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 freedom 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.