F. Max Müller
Aged 30.
Long before Commissions came down on Oxford a new life seemed to be springing up there, and what was formerly the exception became more and more the rule among the young Fellows and Tutors. They saw what a splendid opportunity was theirs, having the very flower of England to educate, having the future of English society to form. They certainly made the best of it, helped, I believe, by the so-called Oxford Movement, which, whatever came of it afterwards, was certainly in the beginning thoroughly genuine and conscientious. The Tutors saw a good deal of the young men confided to their care, and the result was that even what was called the “fast set” thought it a fine thing to take a good class. I could mention a number of young noblemen and wealthy undergraduates who, in my early years, read for a first class and took it; and my experience has certainly been that those who took a first class came out in later life as eminent and useful members of society. Not that eminence in political, clerical, literary, and scientific life was restricted to first classes, far from it. But first-class men rarely failed to appear again on the surface in later life. It may be true that a first class did not always mean a first-class man, but it always seemed to mean a man who had learned how to work honestly, whether he became Prime Minister or Archbishop, or spent his days in one of the public offices, or even in a counting-house or newspaper office.
I felt it was an excellent mixture if a young man, after taking a good degree at Oxford, spent a year or two at a German University. He generally came back with fresh ideas, knew what kind of work still had to be done in the different branches of study, and did it with a perseverance that soon produced most excellent results. Of course there was always the difficulty that young men wished to make their way in life, that is to make a living. The Church, the bar, and the hospital, absorbed many of those who in Germany would have looked forward to a University career. In my own subject more particularly, my very best pupils did not see their way to gaining even an independence, unless they gave their time to first securing a curacy, or a mastership at school; and they usually found that, in order to do their work conscientiously, they had to give up their favourite studies in which they would certainly have done excellent work, if there had been no dira necessitas. I often tried to persuade my friends at Oxford to make the fellowships really useful by concentrating them and giving studious men a chance of devoting themselves at the University to non-lucrative studies. But the feeling of the majority was always against what was called derisively Original Research, and the fellowship-funds continued to be frittered away, payment by results being considered a totally mistaken principle, so that often, as in the case of the new septennial fellowships, there remained the payment only, but no results.
Still all this became clear to me at a much later time only. My first years at Oxford were spent in a perfect bewilderment of joy and admiration. No one can see that University for the first time, particularly in spring or autumn, without being enchanted with it. To me it seemed a perfect paradise, and I could have wished for myself no better lot than that which the kindness of my friends later secured for me there.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Will it be believed that the battels (bills) in College are connected with this word?
[11] Opere, ed. Wagner, i. p. 179.
CHAPTER VIII
EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD
I was still very young when I came to settle at Oxford, only twenty-four in fact; and, though occasionally honoured by invitations from Heads of Houses and Professors, I naturally lived chiefly with undergraduates and junior Fellows, such as Grant, Sellar, Palgrave, Morier, and others. Grant, afterwards Sir Alexander Grant and Principal of the University of Edinburgh, was a delightful companion. He had always something new in his mind, and discussed with many flashes of wit and satire. He possessed an aristocratic contempt for anything commonplace, or self-evident, so that one had to be careful in conversing with him. But he was generous, and his laugh reconciled one to some of his sharp sallies. How little one anticipates the future greatness of one’s friends. They all seem to us no better than ourselves, when suddenly they emerge. Grant had shown what he could do by his edition of Aristotle’s Ethics. He became one of the Professors at the new University at Bombay and contributed much to the first starting of that University, so warmly patronized by Sir Charles Trevelyan. On returning to this country he was chosen to fill the distinguished place of Principal of the Edinburgh University. More was expected of him when he enjoyed this otium cum dignitate, but his health seemed to have suffered in the enervating climate of India, and, though he enjoyed his return to his friends most fully and spending his life as a friend among friends, he died comparatively young, and perhaps without fulfilling all the hopes that were entertained of him. But he was a thoroughly genial man, and his handshake and the twinkle of his eye when meeting an old friend will not easily be forgotten.