Most heartily do I wish you success and happiness in the new year. Stanley
will have told you of our negotiations as to your beautiful article. He
will have laid before you the sketch of a genuine English prologue and
epilogue promised by him, and for which I gave him a few ideas. You can
then choose between the “Quarterly” and “Edinburgh Review.”
Pertz has authorized me to pay you £20 on the 1st of January, as you
wished. So send your receipt, that I may at once send you the £20 (in four
bank-notes), unless you will fetch them yourself. If you can be here on
Monday, you are invited to dinner with Macaulay, Mahon, and General
Radowitz, otherwise any other day.
P. S. (Wednesday). No, my dear M., I will not send your article, but take
it myself. Let me have it soon.
[15.]
LONDON, _March 13, 1851_.
It is such a delight to be able at last to write to you, to tell you that
few events this year have given me such great pleasure as your noble
success in Oxford. The English have shown how gladly they will listen to
something good and new, if any one will lay it before them in their own
halls and in their “gown.” Morier has faithfully reported everything, and
my whole family sympathize in your triumph, as if it concerned ourselves.
I have heard from Empson that he will let your article appear in the third
quarter (1st July). All space for the 1st of April had been promised since
December. He will have it printed very early, that we may have time to
read it comfortably, and see if it really wants a “head and tail.” He
seems to think it is _not_ wanted. So much the better, I answered him.
George writes diligently, _De Nili fontibus_, and revels in the scientific
life of Bonn. He is coming at Easter for four weeks, and intends
immediately after Whitsuntide to take his degree _cum honore_.
You have seen that Lachmann was obliged to have his foot amputated, as it
was mortifying. The operation was very well performed; but the question
is, whether the evil may not still spread. Haupt writes in great anxiety;
he hurried off to his friend, to nurse him.
Theodore comes as early as the 7th of April, and goes to the University
after Easter.
We have all had something of influenza, but not so that we were obliged to
give up our _Tuesday evenings_, which are very well attended, as many as
300 people, who amuse themselves and us well. When are you coming to us?
I have come to the end of the third volume, in working over “Egypt,” and
have already besides a third of the fourth volume ready for press. By the
1st of May the fourth volume must be sent to Gotha.
[16.]
CARLTON TERRACE, _Tuesday Morning, May 13, 1851_, 7 o’clock.
(_Olymp._ I. I. I.) according to new German Chronology. See tables for
“Egypt.”
I must at last take my early morning hour to write to you, instead of
writing, or rather preparing, a chapter of my fifth volume. For I find the
flood of business which begins with breakfast subsides now only after
midnight, and I have many things I must say to you. First, my thanks and
good wishes for the sketch of your lectures. You have rightly understood
the importance of epic poetry in its historical bearing, and for _the __
first time_ connected it with the earliest times of the epic nations,
namely, the primitive period of their community of language.
This has given me indescribable pleasure, and daily roused a longing to
see you again very soon, and to read to you some chapters out of my fifth
volume, the writing of which has continued to be an excessive delight to
me. I have attempted the restoration of the times of the patriarchs, in
the full belief in their real existence and in my own method, and have
been surprised at the great results. After I had finished this section I
felt inspirited to add the Introduction to the Preface, written at Easter,
“The History and Method of the Philosophy of History,” and then, as by a
stroke of magic, I found myself again in the lost Paradise of the deepest
philosophical and historical convictions of all my life, on the strength
of which I consecrated my dim anticipations to definite vows in the holy
vigils of 1810-13, and wrote them down in the last weeks of my German life
(January, 1816) in Berlin in order to explain myself to Niebuhr. The
little book which I then wrote comes back again, after the lapse of quite
thirty-five years, into my thoughts. The journey to India has turned out a
journey to Egypt, and the journey of life hastens towards its close. But
though I, since 1816, never found the means and opportunity to fix my eyes
on the first youthful ideal, after I had dedicated my life to investigate,
to think, and to live for it; and though all the grand and elevated views
had been hidden from me in the narrow valleys of life and of special
research, except some blessed moments of intuition, I am now again raised
by the flood of Egyptian research, after a quarter of a century, on to the
heights of the same Ararat from whence, in the battle of life, I had to
descend. I only wished to give an introductory survey of the manner of
treating the world’s history, and to my astonishment something else
appears, to which I yield myself with fear as well as delight, with the
old youthful ardor. I believe I owe something of my good fortune this time
also to my enemies and enviers. For it is quite true, as the newspaper
said, that my removal or recall was demanded from the King, not only by
our Camarilla and its tool, the ministry, but by more than “flesh and
blood,” that high demoniacal power, which would willingly crush Prussia
and Germany in its unholy embrace. It has come to an avowed struggle. As
yet the King has held fast to me as king and friend. Such attacks always
fill me with courageous indignation and indignant courage, and God has
graciously filled my heart with this courage ever since I, on the day of
the news of our complete defeat (November 10), determined to finish
“Egypt.” Never, since I projected the five books on Egypt, when besieged
on the Capitol by the Pope and his followers, and abandoned by the
ministry at Berlin, from January 6th till Easter Sunday, 1838,—never have
I worked with such success. Even the Great Exhibition and the visit of the
Prince and Princess of Prussia have not hindered me. Volume IV. was
finished on Sunday evening, April 27; and Tuesday morning, the 29th, I
wrote at Dover the first chapter of the “Traditions of Prehistoric Times,”
after Easter Sunday had presented me with the above-mentioned Preface. On
the 27th of May all that is entailed by the Prince’s visit ceases again on
the beach at Dover, and on the 1st June I hope to be able to begin with
the “Methodology.” I have now arrived at Leibnitz in the historical
survey, which is to close with Schelling and Hegel, Goethe and Schiller,
and which began with Abraham. Don’t be frightened, it will please you.
But now, if Oxford and the gods of the Veda allow it, you should come
here. George will, before he returns to Bonn, sail up the waters of the
Nile with me; he has written the first sketch of the dissertation, and can
get through everything in Bonn in six weeks; I believe he returns at the
end of the first week.
Think this over. I do so wish for him to see you before he leaves.
Meanwhile I may tell you, _sub rosa_, that on Saturday morning he, with
Colonel Fischer and the charming Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, will go to
Oxford from Birmingham (12 o’clock), and, in strictest _incognito_, show
the Benares of Europe to the future King of Prussia, who is enthusiastic
about England. He will write to you beforehand; he is now asleep, resting
himself, after running about all day yesterday with the Prince, and
staying at a ball till morning.
But enough of the outpourings of my heart. I hasten to business.
First, Empson has sent me the proof-sheets of your article. I mean your
article for the “Edinburgh Review.” Early this morning I read it through
at last, and joyfully and heartily utter my _Macte virtute_. You have
worked up the article since I first read it in MS. far more than I
expected; and certainly with good and practical results. Your examples,
and particularly your notes, will help and please the English reader very
much. The introduction is as excellent (_ad hominem_ and yet dignified) as
the end. Many thanks for it. God will bless it. To-night I shall read out
the article to my wife, children, and Neukomm, as I long ago promised, and
to-morrow I will send it to the printer (with a few corrected misprints),
and will write to Empson “what I think about it.” So far, so good.
Secondly, I find I cannot with honor shrink from some sort of comparison
of my Egyptian forms and roots with the Semitic and Iranian forms and
roots. The facts are so enormously great, that it does not in the least
matter whether the proof can be _thoroughly_ given in all its details. I
have therefore in my need thought of Rödiger, and have sent a letter to
him, of which I inclose a copy. You will see from it that I hold fast to
your friendly promise, to stand by me in the matter of Iran. What I said
on the certainty and satisfactory completeness of the tools contained in
my English edition, is, I am firmly convinced, not too strong. Still, I do
not mean to say that a comparison with rich results might not be
instituted between such Coptic _roots_ (I do not admit it of the
grammatical _forms_) as have not yet been rediscovered among the
hieroglyphics and the ancient Asiatic: some of them may be found again in
ancient Egyptian, almost unformed and not yet ground down; but that is
mere pedantry in most cases. We have enough in what lies before us in the
oldest form in attested documents, to show us the right formula for the
equation.
And now for a few words about my family, which is so truly attached to
you, and watches your success with real affection. But no, I have
something else to say first on the Niebelungen. Your delightful letter
awoke a thought which has often crossed my mind, namely, that it does not
appear to me that the historical and early national element, which is but
thinly veiled under the poetical matter, has ever been sufficiently
searched out and distinguished. Grimm hates the historical elements which
lie beyond his “Beginnings of Nations,” and my late dear friend Lachmann
occupied himself with them most unwillingly. When, in 1825, I wrote that
little treatise in French for Chateaubriand, which he printed in his
“Mélanges,” I went over what had been said on this point, as far as it
concerned me, and I was surprised to see how little had been done in it.
Since that time I have heard of no investigations of the kind. But who can
now believe that the mention of Gunther and the Burgundians is the one
isolated historical fact in the poem? Is it not evident, for instance,
that the myth of the contemporaneousness of Attila and the great Theodoric
of the Ostrogoths has its historical root in the fact that _Theodoric,
King of the Visigoths_, fell in the great battle of Chalons, 451, fighting
against Attila; but his son Thorismund, to revenge his father’s death,
defeated the barbarians in a last assault, and gained the victory, on
which the Franks pursued the Huns even across the Rhine. From this arose
the connection of Attila with _Theodoric, the great King of the
Ostrogoths_, who lived forty years later, and was intimately connected
with the royal family of the Visigoths, and with the kingdom of the
Visigoths, but of course could never have had any dealings with Attila.
If one neglects such intimations, one arrives at last at the Görres and
Grimm clairvoyance, where not only everything is everything, but also
everything again is nothing. Etzel, though, is not really Attila to Grimm,
but the fairy nature of the legend allows of no certain conclusions. But I
find that everywhere, where the tools are not wanting, the fermentation
and decomposition process of the historical element can be proved; from
which organically and by a process exactly analogous to that of the
formation of languages in the first ages of the world, the epic legend
arises, which the genius of the epic poet lays hold of when the time
comes, with a consciousness of an historical destiny; as the tragic poet
does in later times.
If you have time, follow up this idea. This is the weak side of your
generation and guild. The whole national element has been kept too much in
the background in the conceit and high-stiltedness, not to say woodenness,
of our critical researches. Instead of saying with the humorists of the
eighteenth century, “Since Herman’s death nothing new has happened in
Germany,” one ought to say “since Siegfried’s death.” The genius of the
nation which mourned over Herman’s fall and murder was the same that in
its sorrow gave shape to the legend of Sigurd. Must not the hearts of our
ancestors, whose blood flows in our veins, have felt as we do in like
circumstances? The princes and their relatives have betrayed and sold and
murdered the true prince of the German people, even to this day. And yet
were there now but a Siegfried-Herman! “Exsurget aliquando istis ex
ossibus ultor.”
I take this opportunity of calling your attention to a pamphlet by
Bethman-Hollweg, which has just appeared, “The Ancient Germans before the
Migration of Nations.” I send it to you to-day, and you must bring it back
when you come. Send me word by George when you can and will come.
The Exhibition is, and will continue to be, the poetical and historical
event of the period. “Les Anglais ont fait de la poésie sans s’en douter,”
as that excellent Jourdain said of his prose. Come and see it and us as
soon as you can.
[17.]
_Thursday, May 15, 1851_, 7 A. M.
George, in the hurry of his journey, begs you, through me, to be so kind
as to be at the Oxford station when the Birmingham train arrives, Saturday
(the day after to-morrow) at 12 o’clock, and then kindly to help him in
showing Oxford to the _princeps juventutis_. They leave again at 8 o’clock
in the evening. The party will of course want some rooms in the best
hotel, to rest themselves. So it might be well to bespeak some rooms for
the travellers as a _pied à terre_. The party travel under the name of
Colonel Fischer or George Bunsen.
I talked over the whole plan of the forms and roots with that good
Steinschneider yesterday, and requested him to ask you further about it.
He willingly undertook to do the work in the course of the summer. Thus we
have certainly got one, perhaps two, for the Semitic work. I have given
him a copy of my “Egypt.” He seems to be getting _tame_.
[18.]