away. Next day he wrote a Greek letter to the librarian, bitterly
complaining about the _Apage_, and offering some more MSS. for his
inspection. But all was in vain; too much had been discovered about him
in the meantime. He was certainly a most extraordinary man—a scholar
who, if he had applied his ingenuity to editing instead of forging Greek
MSS., might have held a very high position. His greatest achievement
was, of course, the newly discovered Greek text of the history of
ancient Egypt by Uranios. The man possessed a large quantity of later
Greek MSS. It seems that in the Eastern monasteries, where he sold, he
also acquired some Greek MSS., by what means we must not ask. He tried
several of these MSS. with chemicals to see whether, as was the fashion
during the middle ages, the parchment on which they were written had
been used before, and the old writing scraped off in order to get
writing material for some legends of Christian saints or other modern
compositions. When that has been the case, chemical appliances bring out
the old writing very clearly, and he knew that in this way some very old
and valuable Greek texts had been recovered. In that case the old uncial
writing comes out generally in a dark blue, and becomes quite legible as
underlying the modern Greek text. As Simonides was not lucky enough to
discover or recover an ancient Greek text, or what is called a
Palimpsest MS., the thought struck him that he might manufacture such a
treasure, which would have sold at a very high price. But even this did
not satisfy his ambition. He might have taken the text of the Gospels
and written it between the lines of one of his modern Greek MSS., adding
some startling various readings. In that case detection would have
seemed much more difficult. But he soared higher. He knew that a man of
the name of Uranios had written a history of Egypt which was lost.
Simonides made up his mind to write himself in ancient Greek a history
of Egypt such as he thought Uranios might have written. And, deep and
clever as he was, he chose Bunsen’s “Egypt” and Lepsius’ “Chronology” as
the authorities which he faithfully followed. After he had finished his
Greek text, he wrote it in dark blue ink and in ancient uncial Greek
letters between the letters of a Greek MS. of about 1200 a.d. Anybody
who knows the smallness of the letters in such a MS. can appreciate the
enormous labour it must have been to insert, as it were, beneath and
between these minute lines of each letter the supposed earlier writing
of Uranios, so that the blue ink should never encroach on the small but
true Greek letters. One single mistake would have been fatal, and such
is the knowledge which antiquaries now possess of the exact changes of
Greek letters in every century that here, too, one single mistake in the
outline of the old uncial letters would have betrayed the forger.
When Simonides had finished his masterpiece, he boldly offered it to the
highest tribunal, the Royal Berlin Academy. The best chemists of the
time examined it microscopically, and could find no flaw. Lepsius, the
great Egyptologist, went through the whole text, and declared that the
book could not be a forgery, because no one except Uranios could have
known the names of the ancient Egyptian kings and the right dates of the
various dynasties, which were exactly such as he had settled them in his
books. The thought that Simonides might have consulted these very books
never entered anybody’s mind. Great was the excitement in the camp of
the Egyptologists, and, though the price demanded by Simonides was
shamefully extravagant, Bunsen persuaded the then King of Prussia,
Frederick William IV., to pay it and to secure the treasure for Berlin.
Dindorf, the famous Greek scholar, had been entrusted by Simonides with
the editing of the text, and he had chosen the Clarendon Press at Oxford
to publish the first specimen of it. In the meantime unfavourable
reports of Simonides reached the German authorities, and during a new
examination of the MS. some irregularities were detected in the shape of
the uncial M, and at last one passage was discovered by a very strong
microscope where the blue ink had run across the letters of the modern
Greek text. No doubt could then remain that the whole MS. was a forgery.
Part of it had actually been printed at the Clarendon Press, and I was
able to secure six copies of Dindorf’s pamphlet, which was immediately
destroyed, and has now become one of the scarcest books in any library.
After I had secured my copy, I read on the first page κὰτ’ ἐμὴν ἰδέαν,
which was intended for “According to my idea.” I went straight to the
then Master of Balliol, Dr. Scott, of Greek Lexicon fame. I asked him
whether he thought such an expression possible before the fifteenth
century A.D. He took down his Stephanus, but after looking for some time
and hesitating, he admitted at last that such an expression was
certainly not quite classical. Simonides had, of course, to refund the
money, and was sent to prison, never to appear again in the libraries of
Europe. A number of his forgeries, however, exist in England, in public
and private collections; among them portraits of the Virgin Mary and
some of the Apostles painted by St. Luke, a copy of Homer with a
dedication from Perikles to the tyrant of Syrakuse, other Greek MSS.
written on paper made of human skin, etc. His forged MS. of Uranios was
such a masterpiece that he was offered £100 for it, but he declined, and
I have never been able to find out what has been the end of it.
Some years afterwards another forger of the name of Shapira offered to
the British Museum some scrolls of parchment containing the text of the
Pentateuch from the hand of Moses. They, too, were very closely
criticised, and were exhibited for some time at the Museum; nay, a
Commission was appointed to report on the MS., for which, very
naturally, an enormous sum was demanded. It was perfectly well known, of
course, among Semitic scholars that writing for literary purposes was
unknown at the time of Moses, and that the very alphabet used by the
forger belonged to a much later period. Poor Shapira, whose name had
already become notorious as connected with the spurious Moabite
antiquities, which he had sold at Berlin, professed to be so dejected
when the fraud was discovered, a fraud, as he stated, not committed by
himself, but practised on him by some Arabs, that he went to Belgium,
and there, according to the newspapers, committed suicide; while some of
his victims maintained that even then the newspaper paragraphs on his
suicide were a forgery, and that he had retired from an ungrateful world
under the veil of a new name.
It is extraordinary how low a man may sink who once takes to this kind
of trade. A Greek gentleman whom I knew, and who moved in the very best
society in London, who held a responsible position in a bank, where he
was trusted with any amount of money, roused the suspicions of the
authorities in the coin department of the British Museum. He possessed
himself a very valuable collection of ancient coins, and was admitted to
all the privileges of a special student of numismatics.
Nearly all the employees of the British Museum were his personal
friends, and no one would have ventured to doubt his honour. However,
some unique specimens of Greek coins disappeared, or rather were found
to be replaced by inferior specimens. A trap was laid, and there
remained little doubt that he had transferred the better specimens to
his own collection, substituting inferior specimens in his possession.
At first no one would believe it, but an English jury found him guilty,
and he was condemned to five years’ penal servitude. Great efforts were
made by some of the Foreign Ministers, and by the directors of the bank
in which he had been employed, and a pardon was obtained for him on
condition of his never returning to England. When, however, inquiries
were made as to his behaviour in the hulks where he had been detained in
the meantime, it turned out that this perfect gentleman had behaved
there worse than the lowest criminal, so that it was quite out of the
question to release him, and he was kept to serve his full sentence.
What may have become of him afterwards, who knows? But it shows how
scientific devotion can go hand in hand with moral degradation, nay, can
blunt the conscience to such an extent that exchange seems no robbery,
and even the abstraction of a book from a public or private library is
looked upon as a venial offence. MSS. have again and again disappeared
from libraries, and have been returned after the death of the scholar
who took them, showing, at least, a late repentance. But I have also
known of cases where MSS. seemed to have vanished and suspicion fell on
scholars who had consulted them last, while after a time the MSS. turned
up again, having been placed in a wrong place in the library; which, of
course, in a large library is tantamount to throwing them out of window.
There was a well-known case in the same coin-room of the British Museum,
where, during a visit of a number of gentlemen and ladies, it was
observed that a very valuable and almost unique Sicilian coin had
disappeared. All the gentlemen present in the room at the time had to be
searched, and no one objected except one. He protested his innocence,
but declared that nothing would induce him to allow his pockets to be
searched. All the other visitors were allowed to go home, but he was
detained while the coin-room was swept, and every corner searched once
more. At last the missing coin was found in a chink of the floor.
Every apology was made to the suspected person, but he was asked why he
had so strongly objected to being searched. He then produced from his
pocket another specimen of the very same coin. “I came here,” he said,
“to compare my specimen, which is very perfect, with the only other
specimen which is thought to be superior to mine, and almost unique in
the world. Now, suppose,” he added, “that you had not found your coin,
and had found my specimen in my pocket, would anybody have believed in
my innocence?”
Such cases will happen, though no doubt a man must have been born under
a very unlucky star to come in for such a trial. In most museums unique
specimens are now never shown except under precautions which make such
accidents, as well as deliberate thefts, almost impossible.
After all the sad experiences which one has had, it is perhaps quite
right that we should shut our ears and our house against all beggars,
whether in rags or in the disguise of gentlemen. But even our servants
have hearts, and though they have orders not to admit beggars, they
often are, or imagine they are, better judges than ourselves. I know
that they sometimes give something where their masters, rightly or
wrongly, decline to do anything. Physical suffering appeals to them,
though they also have learnt how beggars who ask for a crust of bread
throw away what has been given them as soon as they leave the house.
I remember once my servant coming in and saying: “There is a poor man at
the door, I believe he is dying, sir!” I confess I did not believe it,
but I went to see him, and he looked so ill that the doctor had to be
sent for. The doctor declared he was in the last stage of consumption,
and I was glad to send him to the Infirmary.
He was a poor tailor, a German by birth, but who had lived many years in
England and spoke English perfectly well. Being well taken care of, he
got better for a time. I went to see him and tried to cheer him as well
as I could. He was surprised to see me, and said with a frown: “Why do
you come to see me?” I said that he seemed quite alone in the world,
without any friends or relations in England.
“Friends and relations!” he said. “I have never had any in all my life.”
“You had father and mother?” I said.
“No,” he answered, “I never had. I never knew anybody that belonged to
me. I was brought up at a Government school for poor children, was
apprenticed to a tailor, and when I was quite young sent to England,
where I have been working in different places for nearly twenty years. I
have never begged, and have always been able to support myself.”
He told me the name of the tailor for whom he had been working in
Oxford, and I received the most satisfactory account both from his
employer and from the men with whom he had been working.
“Why do you come to see me?” he said again and again. “No one has ever
been kind to me. I want to die; I have nothing to care for in this
world. The few things that belong to me I wish to leave to the poor
servant girl in the house where I have last been at work, the little
money in my purse may go to the Infirmary. I know no one else; no one
cares for me, or has ever cared for me.”
Who can imagine such a life? Without father or mother, without friends,
without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being
loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and
loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. His one wish was to have
done with it all. It was no trouble to him to leave this world and to
cease from stitching. He could not even express anything like gratitude.
All he could say was that it was so strange that any one should care for
him, and come to see him. He passed away without suffering, anyhow
without a sound of complaint. Whatever he left was given to the poor
servant girl, who was equally surprised that the poor tailor should have
thought of her. What an empty, purposeless life it seemed to have been,
and yet his, too, was a precious soul, and meant to be more on earth
than a mere sewing machine.
Yes, now and then one can do a little good, even to professional
beggars; but very, very seldom—and it is right that such cases should be
known and remembered. The most difficult people to deal with are
educated young foreigners, who always came to me with the same tale.
Some of them were hardened sinners, and had to end their visits to
Oxford and to the always open rooms of undergraduates in college, with a
visit to our gaol. I have no doubt whatever that some of them belonged
to good families, and had received an excellent education. Some of them
had run away from home with a woman they had fallen in love with; others
may have committed some crime, mostly while serving in the army, and had
tried to escape punishment by deserting. But there were others who had
come to England to learn English, hoping to support themselves by giving
lessons, for as soon as a foreigner arrives in England he imagines that
a dozen people are ready to learn his language, which in many cases he
is quite unable to teach. I remember one of this class whom, by mere
accident, I was able to help. He came to me in a ragged and very
disreputable state. He told me he was starving, and wished me to find
pupils for him at Oxford. Well, I managed with some effort to get hold
of him and shake him. He showed that he knew Greek and Latin, and his
German was that of an educated man. “My dear fellow,” I said, “how in
the world did you sink so low?” He saw that I meant it, and, with tears
in his eyes, told me his simple, and this time true, story. He had been
a teacher in a well-known German watering-place, and, as he had several
English pupils, he was anxious to perfect himself in English. He arrived
in London without knowing anybody, and with but a small sum of money
left. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said; “I must have had a
very serious illness, and I was told that for weeks I was in a delirious
fever. When I came to myself, I was in a miserable hovel occupied by a
poor German family in Whitechapel. I know nothing about them, nor how I
had fallen into their hands. But they had taken me in; they had nursed
me, as I found out, for several weeks; and they now asked me to repay
what they had spent on me. My money was gone; I knew no one who would
have sent me any money from Germany. My Whitechapel friends were kind to
me, and at last they advised me, as I knew Greek and Latin, to go to
Oxford and Cambridge and beg. I did not like it at all; but what could I
do? I owed them the money, and I had no means of earning anything in
London. I was starving, and my friends had little to eat and drink
themselves.” I believed his story, and this time I had no reason to
regret it. The master of a school for boys near London had written to me
to recommend a German teacher as a stop-gap. I wrote to him, giving him
a full account of my man, and told him that he had experience in
teaching, and wished to stay for a time in England to improve his
knowledge of English. The master said he would give him a trial. I told
the young man to get rid of every article of clothing he had on, and had
him clothed as well as I could before I sent him off. He acquitted
himself admirably at the school, and his first thought was to pay the
poor Samaritans in Whitechapel for what they had done for him. After a
time he went back to Germany to resume his work as a teacher of German
at the fashionable watering-place he had come from; and for several
years I regularly received letters of thanks from him, telling me how
well he was getting on in the world, that he was happily married, and
hoped that he would see me once more, though not in England, but at his
watering-place in Germany. Here I had my reward.
During the first year I was in England I sometimes saw harrowing scenes
among the poor German families stranded and wrecked in London. These
poor people flocked to the Prussian Legation. Generally they could only
see the porter. If they were lucky, they saw a secretary; and, if very
lucky, the Minister himself, Bunsen, came to see them in the hall. Now
and then I was sent to find out what might be true in the heart-rending
stories they told. And often there was plenty of truth in them. Father,
mother, and children had been tempted away from a small village in the
Black Forest or the Erzgebirge. They had been told that England was made
of gold and silver, and that they had only to scratch the soil to get as
much as they wanted and bring it home. They believed it all, and when
they saw the glistening white chalk cliffs near Dover, they thought they
were all of silver. Then when they came to London, the misery began, and
began very soon. They were hungry, the children were sickly, and there
was nothing for them to do to earn an honest penny. Nothing remained but
to earn dishonest pennies, and in this they were readily helped by all
the people around them.
I cannot tell the harrowing scenes I saw. Those who care to know what is
going on among the poor German families in London should go themselves,
and they would see more than they would wish ever to have seen. One case
I shall never forget, and it is perhaps as well that people should know
these things. In one room on a miserable bed there lay a poor girl,
quite young, who had given birth to a child. The child had fortunately
died. The people about her had been kind to her, and done all they could
be expected to do. But, oh! the sad, half-delirious face of the dying
mother, for there could be no doubt that she was dying. And what was her
story? As far as I could find out from the women about her, she was the
daughter of a German clergyman. A young Englishman had come to their
vicarage to learn German. He had fallen in love with his pretty German
teacher, and the poor girl had fallen in love with him. He had promised
her marriage, and when she could no longer hide her state from her
parents she had been persuaded by her lover to follow him to England. In
London he had left her with a small sum of money at a little German
hotel, promising to come back as soon as possible after he had seen his
father. When the money which he had left for her became low, she had
been sent to a poor German family. She never believed that he whom she
called her English husband had forsaken her. Something, she felt sure,
had happened to prevent him from coming back to her. I hope she was
right. However, he never came; she died, and died in agonies, calling
for him, for her child, for her happy home in Germany, and with her last
breath and her last tears for her mother! She never divulged any names.
She died and was buried with her child.
Can society do nothing for these poor victims? Can we only call them
hard names—some of them being the most gentle, the most loving, the most
innocent creatures in the world! Have we not even some Pharisees left
among us who will go out one by one, beginning at the eldest even unto
the last, instead of throwing a stone at her? Who is to solve this
problem if not He who said: “Neither do I condemn thee; go, and sin no
more”? And she, the poor girl, was she really so great a sinner? She did
not look so. And if she was, had she not expiated her sin and been
purified by the most awful suffering? She looked so pure and innocent
that Heine’s lines were constantly coming into my mind:—
Mir ist’s als ob ich die Hände
Auf’s Haupt Dir legen sollt’,
Und beten dass Gott Dich behüte,
So fromm, so rein, so hold.
Poor girl! I felt for her with all my heart, but I had but few words of
comfort for her. How difficult it is to judge. Love, youth, nature, and
ignorance have to be reckoned with in our judgments; and society, which
no doubt has to enforce certain laws for its own protection, should
distinguish at least between sins against society and sins against God,
before whom one untrue and unkind word, written or spoken, may weigh
heavier in the scales, for all we know, than the sin of many a
heart-broken girl.
INDEX
Abeken, 265
Albany, Duke of, 276–280
Albrecht the Bear, 211, 228–230
Alliterative poetry, 44–47
Americans, 167, 169
Anhalt-Coethen, last Duke of, 235–237
Anhalt-Dessau, Duke of, 230, 231
Anhalt-Dessau, Duchess of, 78, 245
Arndt, Moritz, 66, 67
Arnold, Matthew, 86, 120,1 28–142
Ascania, 230 _n._
Basedow, 6, 53
Basedow, Adolf von, 68, 69
Beck, Karl, 67
Bedesmen, 299, 300
Beethoven, 3, 4
Begging, excitement of, 290–292
Bennett, Sterndale, 30
Bernhard of Clairvaux, 227
Bhikshus, 299
Bird, R. Mertyns, 87
Bismarck, 248, 261, 269
Bluegowns, 299
Blum, Robert, 66, 69, 70
Boeckh, 24
Boetticher, Karl. _See_ Lagarde.
Brahms, 3
Brazil, late Emperor of, 280–285
Brother, M. M.’s, 296–299
Browning, Robert, 41, 86, 120, 143, 159–162
Brugsch Pasha, 251
Bunsen, 306
Burnouf, Eugène, 136
Byron, 49
Carlyle, 86, 102, 103
Cetto, Baron, 254
Charity Organization Society, 300
Chorus = dance, 43, 44
Christian, Prince of Anhalt, 224
Church, Dean, 145
Clough, 86, 127, 128
Conservatoire, Paris, 15
Coxe, Rev. H. O., 303
Crown Prince (Emperor Frederick), 257–272
Curtius, Ernst, 256
Danish officer begging, 293–295
Darwin, 86, 202–204
Darwinian School, 194, 200–202
David, 3, 13, 18
Dessau, 5, 6
Dickens, 126, 127
Dindorf, 306, 308
Donkin, Professor, 36
Doyle, Sir F., 144
Eckstein, Baron von, 72
Emerson, 86, 148, 149, 170–177
Eugénie, the Empress, 208
Evolution, 194–200
Faraday, 86, 191–193
Feet in poetry, 42–45
Fiske, John, 137
Fontane, Theodor, 61
Foreigners in distress, Society for relieving, 302
Frederick the Great, 221, 222
Frederick William IV., 245–247, 249, 251, 260, 270, 271
Froude, J. A., 49, 86, 88–106, 138, 146
Gaberlunzie men, 299
Gaisford, Dean, 35
George, Prince of Anhalt, 226
German girl dying, 318
German principalities, 215
German tailor, poor, 312–315
German teacher, poor, 315–317
Gewandhaus Concerts, 13, 16, 27
Gibbon, 98, 99, 146
Goethe, 48, 52–54, 76, 137–139, 141, 142, 218, 234
Goldstücker, 247
Grant, Sir A., 145
Granville, Lord, 275
Greek coins, theft of, 309, 310
Grote, 86, 146
Gustavus Adolphus, 224, 225
Haupt, Professor, 56
Haydn, 3
Heine, H., 41, 48, 57–62
Helmholtz, 137
Helps, Sir A., 86, 188
Hensel, Fanny, 22–25, 27
Herder, 234
Herlossohn, 67
Herodotus, 99
Herwegh, 64–66
Hiller, 13, 17, 30, 31
Holland, late Queen of, 284, 285
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 86, 169, 181–184
Hugo, Victor, 72, 158
Humboldt, Alexander von, 245, 248–251
Hummel, 21
Hundred Greatest Men, 137
Huxley, 86, 120
Jellineck, 70
Johnson, Manuel, 145
Jowett, 145
Jubilee, the Diamond, 285–288
Kalliwoda, 14, 18
Karl, August, Duke of Weimar, 219, 234
Kerner, J., 54, 55
Kingsley, Charles, 47, 86, 105–119
Klingemann, 32
Kühne, 67
Lagarde, Paul de, 82
Lamartine, 71–74
Lamennais, 72
Laube, 67
Lavater, 219
Leopold Friedrich, late Duke of Dessau, 210–215, 233, 237, 243
Leopold Friedrich Franz, Duke of Dessau, 217–220
Leopold, the old Dessauer, 220–223
Lepsius, 305, 307
Lightfoot, Bishop of Durham, 268
Lind, Jenny, 16, 34, 35
Liszt, 16–21
Livy, 99
Longfellow, 181
Lowell, 86, 170, 177–181
Luther, 224–226
Lyall, 86
Lytton, Lord, 188–190
Macaulay, 86, 99, 102, 185–187
Martineau, Rev. Dr., 86
Matthison, 219
Maurice, Frederick, 86, 192
Melody, 1, 27
Mendelssohn, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 18, 19, 21–27, 31–33
Metre, 42–45
Meyer, Dr. Karl, 273 _n._
Mill, J. S., 192
Milman, Dean, 192
Morier, 145
Moscheles, 21, 30
Mozart, 3, 4, 8
Müller, Wilhelm, 16, 48–55, 56, 84
Napoleon, 219
Natural selection, 195
Neate, 125, 145
Newman and Kingsley, 113–116
Novello, Clara, 30
Oriental languages, School of, 275, 276
Orléans, Duchesse d’, 73, 74
Ouseley, Sir F., 38
Owen, Sir Richard, 86
Palgrave, F., 144, 145
Platen, 40–42
Poetry, 139–143
Porter, Noah, 137
Prince Consort, 271, 272–275
Prussia, Prince of, 252–256
Prussia, Princess of, 256, 257
Pusey and Kingsley, 116
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 99
Ranke, 100
Renan, 137
Rhyme, 40–48
Roggenbach, Baron, 256
Rosen, F., 32
Royal Institution, 193
Rückert, 42, 46, 75–85
Ruskin, 86, 147–152
Russell, Lord John, 274
Sandars, 145
Sand, George, 72
Schiller, 234
Schlœzer, 256
Schneider, F., 8, 10, 12
Schubert, 16, 49
Schumann, 4, 18, 27–30
Schwab, G., 54
Sedgwick, 86
Sellar, 145
Sewell, Dr., 89
“S. G. O.,” 88
Shaftesburys, the three Lord, 130–133, 135
Shairp, John, 144
Shakespeare, 141
Shapira, 308
Simonides, 303–308
Socialism, Christian, 111
Stainer, Sir John, 37
Stanley, Dean, 1, 34, 86, 107, 116, 137, 193, 208, 285
Stanley, Lady, 193
Stern, Daniel, 73
Stockhausen, 16
Stockmarr, General, 240
Strophe, antistrophe, 43
Stubbs, Dr., 104, 105
Taine, H., 137
Tennyson, 41, 47, 86, 152–159, 285
Thackeray, 124–126
Thalberg, 30
Thirlwall, Bishop, 86, 192
Thirty-nine Articles, 141
Translations, 93, 97
Trinity, doctrine of the, 130–135
Trithen, Dr., 149
Turner’s pictures, 151
Tyndall, 120
Uhland, 54, 56
Uranios, Simonides’ forgery of, 304–308
Versus, 43
Vineta, 50
Wagner, 4
Wales, Prince of, at Oxford, 276
Weber, C. M., 11
Whewell, 86
Wieck, Clara (Madame Schumann), 17, 21, 28, 29
Wieland, 219, 234
William I., 265, 272
William II., 267
Winckelmann, 218
Wörlitz, 219, 225
Wolfgang, Prince of Anhalt, 225
Wolfsohn, 62
Wolverton, Lord, 86
-----
Footnote 1:
See M. M., “Vedic Hymns,” S.B.E., vol. xxxii., p. 96.
Footnote 2:
Autobiographie, p. 224.
Footnote 3: