Who wrote the foolish article in the “Quarterly” against Jowett? The book will live and bear fruit. We are well, except that George has had scarlet fever. Frances is nursing him at Rheindorf. Heartily yours.
I have myself undertaken the comparison of the Aryan with the Semitic, on Lassen's plan. Two thirds of the stems can be authenticated. What a scandal is Roth's deciphering of the Cyprian inscriptions. Renan mourns over the “Monthly Review,” but is otherwise very grateful. I have made use of your Alphabet in my “Egypt.”
[69.]
My dearest M.,—You receive at once a postscript. I have since read W.'s essay on the Deluge of the Hindús, in the second volume of the “Indian Studies;” and can really say now that I understand a little Sanskrit, for the essay is written in a Brahmanic jargon, thickly strewn with very many German and French foreign terms. O, what a style! I am still to-day reading Roth (Münchener Gelehrte Anzeigen). I know therefore what is in it; that is, a child's tale which came to India from the Persian Gulf, or at least from Babylonia, about Oannes, the man in the shape of a fish, who gives them their revelation and saves them. Have you really nothing better? It is just like the fable of Deucalion, from the backward-thrown λᾶς, that is, stones! Or was it ἀπὸ δρυὸς ἥ ἀπὸ πέτρας?
Faith in the old beliefs sits very lightly on all the emigrant children of Japhet. Yet many historical events are clearly buried in the myths before the Pândavas. Wilson's statement (Lassen, i. 479 n.) of the contents of a Purâna, shows still a consciousness of those epochs. There must be (1) a dwelling in the primitive country (bordering on the ideal), quite obscure, historically; (2) expulsion, through a change of climate; (3) [pg 457] life in the land of the Aryans (Iran.); (4) migration to and life in the Punjab.
For the western Aryans and for southern Europe, there is another epoch, between 6000 and 5000 B. C. at latest, namely, the march of the Cushite (Turanian) Nimrud (Memnon?) by Susiana, and then across Northern Africa to Spain. The discovery of Curtius, of the Ionians being Asiatics that had migrated from Phrygia, who disputed with the Phœnicians for the world's commerce long before the colonies started from Europe, is very important.
Write me word what you think of Weber's Indian-Semitic Alphabet.
I have to-day written to Miss Winkworth, to speak to the publisher. If he will undertake it and pay Fischer well, both editions would appear at the same time; and she must then come here in April, to make the translation from the proof-sheets. The printing begins at Easter.
[70.]
So there you are, my worthy Don, sitting as a Member of Committees, etc.; and writing reports, and agitating and canvassing in Academicis! This delights me: for you have it in you, and feel the same longing, which seized me at your age—to act and to exert an influence on the God-given realities of life. It inspirits me; for you, like me, will remain what you are—a German, and will not become a “Philister.”