Idle and cursory readers, who have only heard or thought of Niebuhr as the provoking destroyer of some agreeable fictions—as the ruthless enemy of poetic and traditionary lore—will be surprised to find what a deep earnestness of conviction there was in this man, and how his enthusiasm for truth and for all virtue rises into romance. Once for all, let no man parade his love of poetry, with the least hope of being respected for it, who has not a still greater love of truth. Nay, if we reflect patiently and calmly upon this matter, we shall find that there is but one way to keep this flower of poesy in perennial bloom—it is to see that the waters of truth are flowing free and clear around it. We may be quite sure that to whatever level this stream, by its own vital force, shall rise or sink, the same fair lily will be seen floating just on the surface of it. Just where these waters lie open to the light of heaven, do we find this beautiful creation looking up from them into the sky.
The scene and circumstances amongst which the childhood of Niebuhr was passed, appear to us to be singularly in accordance with the future development and character of the man. They were favourable to concentration of thought, and to an independent, self-relying spirit; they were favourable to the exercise of an imagination which was fed continually by objects remote from the senses, and by knowledge obtained from books, or else from conversation with his father, who was both a learned man and a great traveller. If nature, in one of her freaks—or, let us say, if some German fairies, of an erudite species, had resolved to breed a great scholar, who should be an independent thinker—who should be devoted to books, yet retain a spirit of self-reliance—who should have all the learning of colleges without their pedantry, and read through whole libraries, and yet retain his free, unfettered right of judgment—how would they have proceeded to execute their project? Would they have thrown their little pupil at the feet of some learned professor at Bonn or Göttingen? Not at all. They would have carried their changeling into some wild tract of country, shut him up there with his books, and given him for his father a linguist and a traveller. They would have provided for him just those circumstances into which young Niebuhr was thrown. His childish imagination was no sooner kindled than he found himself wandering in all quarters of the globe, and listening to the stories of the most remote ages.
This father of our historian—Carsten Niebuhr—was himself a remarkable man; full of energy, of great perseverance, and of strong feelings. He had been one of five travellers despatched by the Danish Government on an expedition of discovery into the East. In crossing the deserts of Arabia, his four companions sank under the hardships and calamities they encountered. This was in the first year of their journey; nevertheless, he pursued his way alone, and spent six years in exploring the East. He had returned to Copenhagen, and “was on the point,” says our biography, “of undertaking a journey into the interior of Africa, when he fell in love with a young orphan lady, the daughter of the late physician to the King of Denmark.” He gives up Africa, and all the world of travel and discovery, for this “young orphan lady;” and a few years after his marriage, we find him settled down at Meldorf, as land-schreiber to the province of South Dithmarsh—a civil post, whose duties seem chiefly to have concerned the revenues of the province.
This Meldorf is a little, decayed, antiquated town, not without its traditions of municipal privileges; and Dithmarsh is what its name suggests to an English ear—an open marshy district, without hills or trees, with nothing but the general sky, which we all happily share in, to give it any beauty. One figures to one’s self the traveller, who had been exploring the sunny regions of the East, or who had been living at Copenhagen, in the society of scholars and of statesmen, retiring, with his young orphan lady, to this dreary Dithmarsh, peopled only by peasantry. Even the high-road runs miles off from his habitation, so that no chance can favour him, and no passing or belated traveller rests at his door. He occupies his spare hours in building himself a house; in which operation there is one little fellow standing by who takes infinite delight. This is our Barthold George Niebuhr, who had been born in Copenhagen on the 27th of August 1776. He and an elder sister will be principal inhabitants of the new house when it is built, and their education be the chief care and occupation of the traveller.
Barthold is in his sixth or seventh year when his father writes thus of him:—
“He studied the Greek alphabet only for a single day, and had no further trouble with it: he did it with very little help from me. The boy gets on wonderfully. Boje says he does not know his equal; but he requires to be managed in a peculiar way. May God preserve our lives, and give us grace to manage him aright! Oh if he could but learn to control the warmth of his temper—I believe I might say his pride! He is no longer so passionate with his sister: but if he stumbles in the least in repeating his lessons, or if his scribblings are alluded to, he fires up instantly. He cannot bear to be praised for them; because he believes he does not deserve it. In short, I repeat it, he is proud; he wants to know everything, and is angry if he does not know it.... My wife complains that I find fault with Barthold unnecessarily. I did not mean to do so. He is an extraordinarily good little fellow; but he must be managed in an extraordinary way; and I pray God to give me wisdom and patience to educate him properly.”
Here we have “his picture in little;” the wonderful quickness and application, the extreme conscientiousness, and the warmth of temper which distinguished the man Niebuhr through his career. But who is this Boje, who says “he does not know his equal?” And how happens it that there is any one in Meldorf—a place, we are told, quite destitute of literary society—who is entitled to give an opinion on the subject? This Boje was ex-editor of the Deutsches Museum, and translator, we believe, of Walter Scott’s novels; and has been lately appointed prefect of the province. His coming is a great event to the Niebuhrs, a valuable acquisition to their society, and of especial importance to young Barthold; for Boje has “an extensive library, particularly rich in English and French, as well as German books,” to which library our youthful and indefatigable student is allowed free access. French and English he has, from a very early age, been learning from his father and mother. Are we not right in saying, that no Teutonic fairies could have done better for their pupil? By way of nursery tale, his father amuses him with strange accounts of Eastern countries, of the Turks, of sultans, of Mahomet and the caliphs. He is already a politician. “He had an imaginary empire called Low-England, of which he drew maps, and he promulgated laws, waged wars, and made treaties of peace there.” Then comes Boje to give him his first lesson upon myths. The literary prefect of Dithmarsh, writing to a friend, says:—
“This reminds me of little Niebuhr. His docility, his industry, his devoted love for me, procure me many a pleasant hour. A short time back, I was reading Macbeth aloud to his parents, without taking any notice of him, till I saw what an impression it made on him. Then I tried to render it intelligible to him, and even explained to him how the witches were only poetical beings. When I was gone, he sat down, (he is not yet seven years old,) and wrote it all out on seven sheets of paper, without omitting one important point, and certainly without any expectation of receiving praise for it; for, when his father asked to see what he had written, and showed it to me, he cried for fear he had not done it well. Since then, he writes down everything of importance that he hears from his father or me. We seldom praise him, but just quietly tell him when he has made any mistake, and he avoids the fault for the future.”
Very surprising accounts are given of the boy’s precocious sagacity in picturing to himself a historic scene, with all its details, or following out the probable course of events. These accounts are rather too surprising. When the war broke out in Turkey, it so excited his imagination that he not only dreamt of it, but anticipated in his dreams, and we suppose also in his waking hours, the current of events. His notions were so just, and his knowledge of the country, and the situations of the towns, so accurate, that, we are told, “the realisation of his nightly anticipations generally appeared in the journals a short time afterwards.” One would say that the fairies had indeed been with him. Madame Hensler’s narrative partakes here, in some measure, of that marvellous character which accompanies family traditions of all kinds, whether of the Roman gens or the Danish household. But on other occasions, and from Niebuhr’s own words, we learn that, owing to his minute knowledge, his most tenacious memory, and his vivid imagination, he, at a very early time, manifested that spirit of quite philosophical divination which led him to his discoveries in Roman history. We say quite philosophical divination; for we do not suppose that Niebuhr claimed for himself, or his friends for him, any mysterious intuition into the course of events; but there is occasionally, both in the memoir and in the letters, a vagueness of expression on this subject which might lead to misapprehension, and which one wishes had been avoided.
We must now follow this precocious pupil to the University at Kiel. A lad of seventeen, we find him already a companion for professors. Writing home to his parents, he says of Dr Hensler:—“My ideas about the origin of the Greek tribes, the history of the colonisation of the Greek cities, and my notions in general about the earliest migration from west to east, are new to him; and he thinks it probable that they may be correct. He exhorts me to work them out, and bring them into as clear a form as I can.” Meanwhile, he is to be occupied, heart and soul, in studying metaphysics under Reinhold, one of the most celebrated disciples of Kant. To enumerate the studies in which he is alternately engaged, would be to pass in review the whole series of subjects which are taught in a university; just as, at a somewhat later period, to enumerate all the languages which he had learnt, would be simply to name in order every language which a European scholar, by the aid of grammar and dictionary, could learn. His father, with a very excusable pride, makes out, in one of his letters, a list of his son’s attainments of this kind: he was, more or less, master of some twenty languages.