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,
θἁλαττα, θἁλαττα. 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 _Märchen_.
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 Göttingen,
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 Göttingen, 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 Râjah, 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 Sanhitâ 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 Sâyana’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.
Sâyana 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-brâhmana, a very old
explanation of the Vedic sacrifice; the Âsvalâyana Sûtras, on the
ceremonial; and sundry works of the same character. Sâyana 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 Pânini’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 Sâyana 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 _Liberté_, _Égalité_,
_Fraternité_, there is very little freedom, and, with all the trees of
_liberté_ 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.