Many years later, Boehtlingk published a violent attack on me, entitled F. Max Müller als Mythendichter, but I thought it unnecessary to take up the dispute, and preferred to leave my friends to judge for themselves between me and this propounder of accusations, the legitimacy of which he was utterly unable to establish. However, as I discovered later that he accused me of having acted discourteously towards the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg, with whom I had never had any direct dealings, and stated that he had prevented that illustrious body from ever making me a corresponding member, I thought it right to offer an explanation to the Secretary, and I have in my possession his reply, in which he wrote that there was no foundation whatever for Professor Boehtlingk’s statements.

However, the outcome of it was that I did not go to St. Petersburg, but went on with my work at the Library in Paris, till one day I found it necessary to run over to London, to copy and collate certain MSS., and there I found the long-sought-for benefactors, who were to enable me to carry out the work of my life.

Of course, during my stay in Paris there was no idea of my going into society, or of buying tickets for theatres or concerts. I went out to dinner at some small restaurant, but otherwise I remained at home, and viewed Paris life from my high windows, looking out on the Chambre des Députés on one side, the Madeleine close to me on the left, and the Porte St. Martin far away at the end of the Boulevards. Baron d’Eckstein, as I have said, was willing to introduce me into society, but I refused his kind offers. In fact, I was more or less of a bear, and I now regret having missed meeting many interesting characters, and having kept aloof from others, because my interests were absorbed elsewhere. Burnouf asked me sometimes to his house; so did a Monsieur Troyer, who had been in India and published some Sanskrit texts, and whose daughter, the Duchesse de Wagram, made much of me, as she was very fond of music. There were some German families also, some rich, some poor, who showed me great kindness.

I was too much oppressed with cares and anxieties about my life and my literary plans to think much of society and enjoyment. Even of the students and student life I saw but little, though I was actually attending lectures with them. I must say, however, that the little I did see of student life in Paris gave me a very different idea from what is generally thought of their vagaries and extravagances. A Frenchman, if he once begins to work, can work and does work very hard. I remember seeing several instances of this, but it is possible that I may have seen the pick of the Quartier Latin only. One who was then a young man, preparing for the Church, but already with an eye to higher flights, was Renan. At first he still looked upon all young Germans with suspicion, but this feeling soon disappeared. I remember him chiefly at the Bibliothèque Royale, where he had a very small place in the Oriental Department. Hase, the Greek scholar, Reinaud, the Arabist, and Stanislas Julien, the Sinologue, were librarians then. Hase, a German by birth, was most obliging, but he was greatly afraid of speaking German, and insisted on our always speaking French to him. Often did he call Renan to fetch MSS. for me: “Renan,” he would call out very loudly, “allez chercher, pour Monsieur Max Müller, le manuscrit sanscrit, numéro ...,” and then followed a pause, till he had translated “1637” into French. In later years Renan and I became great friends, but we German scholars were often puzzled at his great popularity, which certainly was owing to his style more even than to his scholarship. Some time later, when I was already established in England, we had a little controversy, and I printed a rather fierce attack on his Grammaire Sémitique. But we were intimate enough for me to show him my pamphlet, and when he wrote to me, “Pardonnez-moi, je n’ai pas compris ce que vous vouliez dire,” I suppressed the pamphlet, though it was printed, and we remained friends for life. He translated my first article on Comparative Mythology, and I had a number of most interesting letters from him. It was his wife who did the translation, while he revised it. That French pamphlet is very scarce now; my own pamphlet was entirely suppressed; even I myself can find no copy of it among the rubbish of my early writings, and what I regret most, I threw away his letters, not thinking how interesting they would become in time.

With all my work, however, I found time to attend some lectures at the Collège de France, and to make the acquaintance of some distinguished French savants of the Institut. I went there with Burnouf, or Stanislas Julien, or Reinaud, little dreaming that I should some day belong to the same august body. Many of my young French friends, who afterwards became Membres de l’Institut, rose to that dignity much later. I was made not only a corresponding, but a real member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres in 1869, before my friends, such as G. Perrot 1874, Michel Bréal 1875, Gaston Paris 1876, and Jules Oppert 1881, occupied their well-merited academical fauteuils. The struggle when I was elected in 1869 was a serious one; it was between Mommsen and myself, between classical and Oriental scholarship, and for once Oriental scholarship carried the day. Mommsen, however, was elected in 1895, and there can be little doubt that his strong and outspoken political antipathies had something to do with the late date of his election.

I am sorry to say that one result of my seeing so little of French life was that my French did not make such progress as I expected. Though I was able to express myself tant bien que mal, I have always felt hampered in a long conversation. Of course, the French themselves have always been polite enough to say that they could not have detected that I was a German, but I knew better than that, and never have I, even in later years, gained a perfect conversational command of that difficult language.

CHAPTER VI

ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND

While working in Paris I constantly felt the want of some essential MSS. which were at the Library of the East India Company in London, and my desire to visit England consequently grew stronger and stronger; but I had not the wherewithal to pay for the journey, much less for a stay of even a fortnight in London. At last (June, 1846) I thought that I had scraped together enough to warrant my starting. At that time I had never seen the sea, and I was very desirous of doing so. I well remember my unbounded rapture at my first sight of the silver stream, and like Xenophon’s Greeks I could have shouted, θἁλαττα, θἁλαττα. Once on board my rapture soon collapsed and was succeeded by that well-known feeling of misery which I have so frequently experienced since then, and I huddled myself up in a corner of the deck.

There a young fellow-traveller saw the poor bundle of misery, and tried to comfort me, and brought me what he thought was good for me, not, however, without a certain merry twinkle in his eye and a few kindly jokes at my expense. We landed at the docks in London, a real drizzly day, rain and mist, and such a crowd rushing on shore that I missed my cheerful friend and felt quite lost. In addition to all this a porter had run away with my portmanteau, which contained my books and MSS., in fact all my worldly goods. At that moment my young friend reappeared, and seeing the plight I was in, came to my assistance. “You stay here,” he said, “and I will arrange everything for you;” and so he did. He fetched a four-wheeler, put my luggage on the top, bundled me inside, and drove with me through a maze of London streets to his rooms in the Temple. Then, still knowing nothing about me, he asked me to spend the night in his rooms, gave me a bed and everything else I wanted for the night. The next morning he took me out to look for lodgings, which we found in Essex Street, a small street leading out of the Strand.