You know Wackernagel's “Anthology”? It is useful, but gives too much of second rate. I will make my daughters copy out Arndt's German song for his eighty-third birthday for you. Adieu.
[19.]
What in all the world is this undertaking to which Vaux asks my aid, the new edition of Herbelot's “Bibliothéque Orientale”? It might be made a good work, although I hate the form, but everything depends on the management. It is otherwise a mere bookseller's speculation or Jesuit's trick. I have answered provisionally that in case biblical literature is to be taken up (which is highly necessary), Ewald, Freytag, Bernays, Rödiger, Hengstenberg, and Bernstein should be summoned to help. I don't quite trust the thing; but if it is possible to introduce the people to good ideas, I am ready to aid.
When are you coming? I have sent the last MS. to-day to the press, or rather to the translator. I have only now reached the point on which I can really speak in a practical tone. Volume III. will contain 600 pages.
[20.]
Though late, I send you my hearty greetings on your return to England. I heard from Wilson that you were well, and that you had left your mother well for the winter.
Hippolytus lies here ready for you, on purpose that you may fetch it. I hope you will do so on the 18th, for which you have already received the invitation. You will find Morier also here. Is not that furious and ridiculous article in the “Morning Chronicle” on the second volume (the first article, as yet without a continuation) by the same man (of Jesus College?) on whose article in the “Ecclesiastic” on Hippolytus' book I have thrown some degree of light? The leading thought is exactly the same in both; the account of Calixtus' knavery is interpolated (by Novatianus), says the writer in the “Chronicle.” This is a proof that nothing can be said against my argument requiring a serious answer. Gladstone felt ashamed of the review. It has helped the book; but it would be read even without this and the recommendation of the “Guardian”—so Longman says. One circulating library here has taken twenty-five copies, and wants more. So the book cannot be ignored; and that is all I first of all wished for, aculeum reliqui. As the people of this country, with a few exceptions that one can count upon one's fingers, do not understand the book, not even the title, and have never had a conception of what it means, to reproduce the spirit of a century of which men as yet, with the exception of Irenæus, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Origen, know only the names and enigmas (of which latter Hippolytus was one), their fault-finding with the composition of the book does not affect me at all. In spite of the timidity of nearly all English theologians, inter muros academicos et extra, I have received very many hearty and manly letters from numerous and distinguished people. The King has, on my recommendation, sent Dr. Boetticher to spend two years here and in Paris in order to bring to light the Syriac treasures which have not been laid claim to by Cureton. I see that I have not been mistaken in him in spite of his sporadic many-sidedness. I am free from the 2d of December. There is a letter of mine just printing to Miss Winkworth, “On Niebuhr's Political Character,” with extracts from letters.
[21.]
General von Scharnhorst, the worthy and highly educated son of his great father, intends going to Oxford the day after tomorrow, Thursday, by the morning express, perhaps to stay over the night. I will give him a line for you, begging you to [pg 417] set him a little on his way. As to the collections, geographical charts will be the most interesting to him; he himself possesses the largest known collection (40,000).
As soon as this infernal game is played out in Paris, I hope to have a little leisure again. I have written a warning to Bernays: he is very much out of spirits, and still far behindhand; says he only received the proper appointment (from Gaisford) in February, and without mention of any fixed time. He will write to you, and inclose what is done as a specimen. I am delighted to hear from Lassen that Aufrecht is coming to England. Tell him to call on me. Cura ut valeas. Rawlinson has been preferred to Luynes and Wilson by the Berlin Academy.