I wonder whether the columns of The Esperantist are disposed
freely to admit that ever-present personal pronoun, "I." I am perhaps
bold in introducing it, but I cannot help thinking that a new
language must have to put up with some of the inconveniences, at
least, that all old languages have had to tolerate.
What I have to relate is but a little personal souvenir, but it is
connected with the name of a great linguist, and an authority well
worth quoting.
I was in Venice, not standing between a palace and a prison, but
gliding along the canals of the fairy city in a gondola, as every
mortal should if he desires to realise that life is worth living. I
was reading an article, "Reminiscences," by Max Müller, which
delighted me so that the first thing I did on returning home was to
write to him, somewhat on these lines--
"I am a stranger to you, and if I don't write on the spur of the
moment, I should not venture to do so at all. Yet surely we ought to
know one another. You, a godson of Max Maria von Weber, and I a
godson of Felix Mendelssohn! You learnt your Latin and Greek in
Leipzig, and so did I; only you went to the Nicolai-Schule and I to
the Thomas-Schule, which accounts for the difference in the result.
But we must have eaten our schoolboy apples from the same old woman's
basket in the Grimmaische Strasse, etc., etc."
Well, Max Müller answered in the kindest spirit. He had heard my
father play with Mendelssohn, and he had seen a picture of mine, so
we were not strangers. Would I come to Oxford on my return to England
and be his guest.
Some months later I went, and spent several days at his house. There
was a unique opportunity of fully ascertaining his views on the
adoption of a universal language.
"Is such a thing _possible_?" I asked him. "Never mind which language
is to be selected. I want your authority to silence those who look
upon anything of the kind as chimerical."
"Well," he said, "you must go to younger people for an answer to
that. You know that I have given it as my opinion that Esperanto is
the best attempt at a universal language yet made, and that is as
much as I can say." I pressed him, perhaps rather unduly, but without
success.
But as I was leaving his hospitable house he handed me back a little
album (a godfather's gift from Mendelssohn), in which I had asked him
to inscribe his name, and I read--"Is a universal language possible?
Yes.--M.M."
Felix Moscheles.
[Illustration: hand-written letter.]