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 disposal. 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.

Boehtlingk seems never to have forgiven me, and he and several of his friends were highly displeased at my ultimate success in securing a publisher for the Rig-veda in England. Their language 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 Mueller als Mythendichter, 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 member, 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 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 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 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 Mueller, le manuscrit 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 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 l'Institut, 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 classical 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 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, [Greek: thalatta, thalatta]. 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 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 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 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 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 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 Maerchen. 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 Goettingen, 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 Goettingen, 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 Ambassador 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 manuscripts 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 gods. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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. Schelling seemed quite disappointed when I showed him some of the translations of the hymns of the Rig-veda; and Bunsen, who was still under Schelling'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 gods, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 institution 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? Nobody 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 title 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 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 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 passage 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 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 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 Association." This was in 1847. Of course I did not know what sort of thing this British Association 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 Classification 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 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 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 classical 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 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 improvement, but printed it was in the Transactions, and much canvassed 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 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 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.

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 undergraduate. 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 undergraduates, 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-Chancellor 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 Bonaparte caused a titter during a speech about the freedom which people enjoyed in England. "In France," he said, "with all the declamations about Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite, there is very little freedom, and, with all the trees of liberte 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 everything," my neighbour said; and my knowledge of English was still so imperfect that I accepted 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 Fire 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 library 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 uttered 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 disposal, and revelled in them every day till it became dark, and I had to walk home through Ludgate Hill, Cheapside, and the Strand, generally carrying 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. From my windows I had a fine view of all that was going on. I well remember the pandemonium 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 manuscripts, &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 station, 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 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 had 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. Not that the printers required much supervision, as I must say that the printing at the University Press was, and is, excellent—far better than anything I had known in Germany. In providing copy for a work of six volumes, each of about 1000 pages, it was but natural 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. 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, however, I saw, that after all it would be better for myself, and for the Veda, 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, 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 certainly 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 Fellows 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, particularly the after-dinner railway, an ingenious invention for lightening the trouble of the guests who took wine in Common Room. There was a small railway fixed before the fireplace, and on it a wagon containing the bottles went backwards and forwards, halting before every guest till he had helped himself. 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 past. Married Fellows, if they dine in Hall, return home after dinner, and junior Fellows go to their books or pupils. In my early Oxford days, a married Fellow would have sounded like a solecism. The story goes that married Fellows were not entirely unknown, and that you could hold even a fellowship, 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 friendliness 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 impression that I had discovered a very old religion, older than the Jewish and the Christian, which contained 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 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, understand, 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 Review 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 being 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 continental that I could not understand how the University could do such a thing as incorporate a foreign scholar—could, in fact, govern itself without a Minister of Education to appoint professors, without a Royal Commissioner to look after the undergraduates and their moral and political sentiments. 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 supposed 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. Architects unfortunately object to mere imitation of the old Oxford style of building; they want to produce 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 Institution, 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 absolutely nothing to do with it. He was very loud in his condemnation of other new buildings. He abused even the New 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 Bodleian well restored, particularly now that 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 Oxford. 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 curious 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 crowbar, which he ran with all his might against the unfortunate pinnacle. I doubt whether the walls of any Roman castellum could have resisted such 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 precincts; but it is equally true that not many years later it petitioned for a branch line to keep the University 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 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 University, 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 History of Friar Bacon, Greene introduces the Emperor 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, Shelley'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, The battling[10] pastures lade with kine and flocks, The town gorgeous with high built colleges, And scholars seemly in their grave attire."

[10] Will it be believed that the battels (bills) in College are connected with this word?

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 always 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 Oxford "the widow of true science[11]," but Milton surely cannot be suspected of any prejudice against Oxford. Yet he writes in 1656 in a letter to Richard 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 University: 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."

[11] Opere, ed. Wagner, i. p. 179.

These ill-natured remarks about the Oxford Dons seem to go on to the very beginning of our century. 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. Not 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 University. Though so young, she was taken to the Theatre, 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 students, 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 priests." One thing only she was delighted with, that was the singing of Catalani at one of the concerts. 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 Master," she adds, "opened to us what had been till then a sealed book, the New 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 frequently out at dinner with other Heads of Houses, 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. 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 evidently fond of his society, but 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 representative, as far as I could see, among these dealers in old wines, rich dinners, fine china, and massive plate."

"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 hammer, 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, provide 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 neighbouring villages, where many had comfortable establishments.... All sorts of contrivances were resorted 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 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. Shelley," we read, "afterwards so celebrated, was half crazy. He 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 about these and other irregularities, he was in the habit of making such extraordinary gestures, expressive 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 considered 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 together."

No one would recognize in this picture the University 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 was, considering that the whole administration of the University was really in its hands. The colleges, on the other hand, were very jealous of their independence; and even the authority of the Proctors, who represented the University as such, was often 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 University. 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 extraordinary set of old gentlemen walking into St. Mary's in procession, with a most startling combination 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 professors?" 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 Bluecher was made a Doctor at Oxford he asked, in the innocence of his heart, that General Gneisenau, his right-hand man, might at least be made a chemist. He certainly had mixed a most effective powder for the French army under Napoleon.

"But," my friend would ask, "have you no Senatus Academicus, have you no faculties of professors such as there are in all other Christian universities?" "Yes and no," I said. "We have professors, but they are not divided into faculties, and they certainly do not form the Senatus Academicus, or the highest authority in the University."

It seems very strange, but 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 deserted; and I could quote the names of certain professors who afterwards rose to great eminence, but who at Oxford were simply ignored and their lecture-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 undergraduates never see a professor, and, as far as the teaching work of the University is concerned, the professorships might safely be abolished. And yet, as I could honestly assure my foreign friends, the best men who take honour degrees at Oxford are quite the equals of the best men at Paris or Berlin. The professors may not be so distinguished, but that is due to a certain extent to the small salaries attached to some of the chairs. England has produced great names both in science and philosophy and scholarship, but these have generally drifted to some more attractive or lucrative centres. When I first came to Oxford one professor received L40 a year, another L1,500, and no one complained about these inequalities. 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 endowment yielded. The mode of appointing professors was very curious at that time. Often the elections resembled parliamentary elections, far more regard being paid to political or theological partisanship 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 conservative candidate. Imagine a professor of medicine or of Greek being elected because he was a liberal! 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 improved now, though an infallible system of electing the best men has not yet been discovered. One single elector, who is not troubled by too tender a conscience, 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 insight 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 l'ancienne 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 Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rev. H. G. Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church, Professor Baden-Powell, and the Rev. G. H. S. Johnson, afterwards Dean of Wells, with Stanley and Goldwin Smith as Secretaries, did honest service in the various Royal and Parliamentary Commissions, and spent much of their valuable time in serving the University and the country. I could do no more than answer the questions addressed to me by the Commissioners and by my friends, and this is really all the share I had at that time in the reform of the University, or what was called Germanizing the English Universities. At one time such was the unpopularity 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 income 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 it was on rare occasions only that a theological question 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. Stanley, 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 be felt that Oxford should take its place as an equal by the side of foreign Universities, not only as a high school, but 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 First 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, but 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 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 grounded in classics, and what they knew they knew thoroughly.

The personal relations existing between undergraduates 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 entirely 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 college 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 conscientiously. 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.

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 opportunities 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 University. 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 misinformed. 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 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 academical, 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 rejuvenated 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 constant 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 Non-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 otherwise 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 University, 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.