CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP.*

IN this volume Dr. Max Milner is no longer the professor, but comes before us as the essayist or litterateur. He has ceased to speak ex cathedra on early phases of speech and language, and the comparison of later forms of language among each other, or on the apparently capricious forms of mythologic thought, which he has shown to be developed historically and regularly ; be now stands on the same platform as his hearers, and discourses pleasantly on German poetry, on Cornish antiquities, and on the lives of great men, where be will be found an agreeable companion, as a highly educated gentleman ought always to be, but not a learned doctor,

* Chips from a German Workshop. By F. Max Milner, Vol. IIL Essays on

Literature, Biography, and Antiquities. London : Longman. 1870. the weight of whose intellect and erudition oppresses more than it attracts. So much may be said of any scientific explorer who- doffs the gown to give his lighter thoughts' on things in general to his friends. But the lighter thoughts of many a professor great in his own sphere are often not great at all ; and if they are, the language of the lecture-hall is not so easily put off as the gown. It is necessary therefore to say most emphatically, that the language of the drawing-room seems to fit Dr. Max Muller even better than that of the college; that his manner of discourse is persuasive rather than instructive ; that his tone is that of a fellow- thinker, not of one who has investigated the subject for himself and others, and only requires to lay the results before a public ignorant of it. It is indeed difficult to imagine Dr. Muller speaking professionally at all ; and in truth he rarely does. The persuasive tone is natu- ral to him. However abstruse the subject he handles, he always contrives first to make its main features intelligible to the unpre- pared mind, then to show what the points of controversy respect- ing it have been, and lastly to guide the student to a correct de- cision on these. On very large or difficult subjects this elevation of the reader to his own rank, and iuvitation to decide the question on data furnished there and then, is rather a dangerous proceed- fug; and the cautious and modest reader will resist the temptation. to believe that he has been told all that is necessary to make him a competent judge of the question. But on smaller subjects, on which the evidence really lies in a small compass, Dr. MUller's per- suasive method is highly admirable ; it establishes at once the beat feeling between himself and his reader, and elevates the latter by inviting him to an equal share in the process of argument which he himself goes through. Two of the antiquarian papers in this volume, " Are there Jews in Cornwall ?" and " The Insulation of St. Michael's Mount", are notable instances of this skill. if these and the essay on "Cornish Antiquities," all dated 1867, are the results of a visit to that county, then we must say that seldom has a journey been turned to better account. The genius loci has certainly inspired the writer, but happily left his judgment unim- paired, and thus enabled him to write sensible and convincing refutations of mistaken local traditions.

The article on the Jews, which both common-sense and the lucid conduct of the argument show to be simply intended as a. negative answer to the question whether there were any ancient Jewish settlements in Cornwall, or whether gangs of Jews were forced to work the mines there, does not of course, as one anti- quarian has misread it, deny the presence of individual Jews, now or in former times. The name Marazion and its equivalent Market Jew, the Jews' houses, as ancient deserted smelting-houses are called, and the abandoned tin mines called Attall Sarazin, have given rise to the belief in settlements of Jews somewhere in the dim past, whether under Nero or under some later emperor matters little. Marah Zion, Dr. Mailer admits, looks like Hebrew, and might signify the Bitterness of Zion ' ; but we fait to see in this a probable name for a place of Jewish exile. ZIOM is not equivalent to Israel or Judah : the Bitterness of Judah' or ' of Israel' would be plausible, which the existing name is not. Moreover, Marah Zion is not Hebrew at all, it must be Marath Zion. But he prefixes to his inquiry the golden precept, which ought to be well drilled into every dabbler into the etymology of names :— " It cannot be too often repeated that inquiries into the origin of local names are in the first place historical, and only in the second place philological. To attempt an explanation of any name without having first traced it back to the earliest form in which we can find it, is to set at defiance the plainest rules of the science of language, as well as of the science of history. Even if the interpretation of a local name should be right, it would be of no scientific value without the preliminary inquiry into its history, which frequently consists in a succession of the most startling changes and corruptions."

He therefore gives the various ancient forms of the name Mara- zion, the oldest being Marchadyon, Markasyon, Markysyow, &c., and after stating that the Cornish (Celtic) name for market is Marches, derived from an older Marched (from Latin mcrca(us), shows that Marchadyon might be a diminutive, " the Little Market," which explanation appears to be confirmed by the synonymous name Marghasbigan, apparently applied in an old charter to the same place ; but that it might also be a plural form, " The Markets," which is supported by the fact that three markets were held there. Moreover, "another termination of the plural is Cornish is ieu, which added to marched, would give us Marchadieu," and thus explain the other name Market Jew :— " Now it is perfectly true that no real Cornishman, I mean no man who spoke Cornish, would ever have taken Marchadtew for Market Jew, or Jews' Market. The name for Jew in Cornish is quite different. It is Edhow, Yedhow, Yudhout, corrupted likewise into Ezow, plural Yedhewon, &c. But to a Saxon ear the Cornish name Marchediew- might well convey the idea of Market Jew, and thup, by a tuetamorphie

process, a name meaning in Cornish the Markets would give rise in a perfectly natural manner not only to the two names Marazion and Market Jew, but likewise to the historical legends of Jews settled in the county of Cornwall."

The Jews' houses are disposed of similarly. The Cornish word for house, like the Welsh, was ty, which was subsequently cor- rupted into tshey, or dzhyi. This word was probably applied par excellence to the smelting-houses, and as the English tongue gained ground in the county would be further defined by the addition of the word " house " (as we speak of the river Esk, in ignorance that Esk itself means water, or river) ; and then Dzhyi- .house would be inevitably understood as Jews' house.

The essay on "Cornish Antiquities" is full of interesting matter, and ought to have practical utility in the demonstration of the extent and importance of ancient monuments in Cornwall, and the lamentable fate which has already been for some centuries consigning some of the chief of them to destruction to satisfy the greed of landowners wanting their few yards of ground or of farmers in search of stone convenient for gate-posts :-

"It does honour to tho British Parliament that largo sums are granted, when it is necessary, to bring to these safe shores whatever can still be rescued from the ruins of Greece and Italy, of Lycia, Pergamos, Palestine, Egypt, Babylon, or Nineveh. But . . . . it is painful to see the splendid granite slabs of British cromlechs thrown down and carted away, stone circles destroyed to make way for farming improvements It is high time, indeed, that something should be done, and nothing will avail but to place every truly historical monu- ment under national protection Let those whom it concerns look to it before it is too late. These Celtic monuments are public property as much as London Stone, Coronation Stone, or Westminster Abbey, and posterity will hold the present generation responsible for the safe- keeping of the national heirlooms of England."

We hope this powerful appeal, backed by a truly fearful list of acts of Vandalism" already perpetrated, may come, or rather be influentially submitted, to the eyes of His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who, as Duke of Cornwall and recipient of an immense income from that county, ought to be the leader in a movement for the preservation of its historical monuments.

The same paper contains some thoughts, which appear to us the least wise in the book, on distinctions of race. After denying that there is anything in " blOod," and showing the negative results of skull-measurement, the writer comes to the conclusion that there is only one practicable and at the same time really useful division of men,—according to the language they speak. Language sits closer to the mind than any condition of the body, and " the mind's the measure of the man," as Dr. Watts teaches us ; conse- quently, language, as the exponent of the mind, shows in its diversities the essential distinctions of human beings. Thus, " a man like Bishop Crowther, though a negro in blood, is, in thought and speech, an Aryan. He speaks English, he thinks English, he acts English ; and, unless we take English in a purely historical, and not in its truly scientific, i.e., linguistic sense, he is English." Dr. Muller has previously reminded us of the inextricable mixture of blood through conquest, migration, and intermarriage, which renders it a hopeless task to determine nationality on the principle of blood in special cases ; and if the language-test is adopted simply as a pis aller, we have nothing to say against it, except that it was scarcely worth so many words. But the fact that the physiologists have failed as yet to produce the bodily fea- ture which varies with the mental features constituting nation- ality, does not prove that they were, or are, foolish in seeking for such a feature. Once it was the blood, and we heard of the hot blood of one race and the cold of another, to say nothing of the blue of the high-born. Then came the skin, which surely gives a stronger distinction than mere colour, since the negro is black through a pigment which is wanting in the other races ; then the hair ; then the shape and size of the skull. Perhaps no one feature will be found to divide races, but a combination of features may. So in botany, when the Linnean system, based exclusively on the cumber and position of the reproductive organs, had been found riot to divide the vegetable kingdom naturally, a truly natural system was substituted, founded on the construction of the seed and the mode of growth of the tissue, but including secondarily the character of the reproductive organs, and many other features. 'Tae very fact that distinction of race has been a natural instinct of mankind, which, when they became learned and called themselves physiologists they could neither ignore nor explain satisfactorily, ought to prevent us rejecting the idea as a mere will o' the wisp which will land us in a quagmire. Language undoubtedly in its first formation was a distinction according to race ; each race had its own language, and as the race divided into separate nations, each nation took the original language, but developed its resources independently, and so produced a variety of dialects. But when we arrive at the later period when languages are numerous

and men can artificially gain languages not their own, and children grow up speaking different tongues from their fathers, the case is altered. Then race is proved to be stronger than language ; for when new languages are adopted, not by individuals only, but even by whole nations, these nations cannot put off their original mental characteristics as easily as they change their language, but retain them as they retain the shape of their skulls and the colour of their skin. An Irishman is no less different from an Englishman because he is born in the English- speaking part of Ireland ; Dr. Muller, pace himself, and though he writes excellent English, remains still a German, and shows it in this very book, which (we say it neither in praise nor blame) could not well have been written by an Englishman. All the books on the folk-lore of different countries, and books like Ramsay's Scottish Wit and Humour and Lover's Irish Legends, testify to a diversity of national character quite overriding dis- tinctions of language. To take an extreme case, suppose that the English language were gradually to become that of the civilized world, or even of the English Empire, can any one suppose that the character of the Hindus, the Maoris, or the Maltese would undergo an assimilation to that of the English ? The mental character of a race varies, after all, more constantly with their physical features than with their spoken language. For language is, after all, an accident rather than an ingredient. The Cubans, Mexicans, and Peruvians speak Spanish ; why? Because Columbus the Genoese, who went begging for a commission, happened to be engaged by Castile, and not by England.

The biographical essays on men of letteri are especially interest- ing, as showing a power of appreciating and an enthusiasm in delineating human character which must add to the author's hold on the hearts of his contemporaries. He devotes a judicious and loving paper to the memory of his father, the poet Wilhelm Muller, who has been called the Tom Moore of Germany, but with injustice, since his overflowing patriotism for Germany united and free was larger and nobler than Moore's for Ireland, and because his wine- songs had a deeper soul in them than Moore's effervescing joviality. The essay on Schiller was written for the centenary of the poet's birthday ; and to this circumstance is perhaps due the air of encomium which it seems to us to possess. The most marked points iu his character which he traces from Schiller's boyhood are absolute fearlessness and warm sympathy for others. To these is added the thirst for influence on mankind, which led him to desire above all other stations of usefulness that of Professor at a German University. This he ultimately obtained at Jena, and there he wrote his History of the Thirty-Years' War. But his life was a struggling and hard one, and his mind devoted to no one object till his settlement at Weimar at the age of thirty-five, when Goethe's example and precepts changed the whole tone of his writings, and led him rather to study actual human life and portray characters as he saw them, than strive after ideals which he never could really inspire with life. Schiller's works produced before this period can scarcely be believed to be by the same writer as the later ones ; compare the Robbers, Fiesco, Cabale and Liebe, and Don. Carlos, with Wallen- stein, Song of the Bell, the Ballads, Mary Stuart, Maid of Orleans, Bride of Messina, and TVilliam Tell. What he did not learn from Goethe was the conception of the most delicate sentiment, that is apt to vanish like a volatile perfume when put into words, which makes Goethe's female characters so exquisitely womanly. Schiller's portraiture of female characters is weak. He gives us the strong masculine woman in Elizabeth, the beautiful wronged and martyred woman in Mary Stuart ; the religiously inspired woman in Joan of Arc ; but these are great and interesting solely by the accident of their positions ; no one is a poetical creation in herself, as a woman, of whom we could say with Goethe, " Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht tons hinan." One solitary approach to the latter after the manner of Goethe we have in Thekla, and especially in her song "Der Eichwald brauset," which is worthy to stand beside those of Mignon and Cliirchen. We cannot also avoid to notice with dislike the fine speeches and straining after rhetoric which even Schiller's best dramas, notably Wallenstein and the Maid of Orleans, exhibit. We miss the serenity and perfect mastery of the materials which Goethe shows, and feel the influence of a nervous, anxious, aspiring, but never quiet genius. This is natural enough when we remember Schiller's troubled life ; but it ought to be noted in an estimate of his literary character. So ought also the tendency towards harrowing scenes, which, dating from the

Robbers, never entirely left him. " Es ist immer etwas Grausames im Schiller" is an observation which struck the present writer as profound. But Dr. Miiller's concluding words are noble and judicious ; we must unfortunately curtail them :—

"His whole poetry may be said to be written on the simple text- , Be true, be good, be noble! ' It may seem a short text ; but truth is very short, and the work of the greatest teachers of mankind has always consisted in the unflinching inculcation of these short truths From the beginning to the end Schiller remained true to himself ; he never acted a part, he never bargained with the

world His life is the best commentary on his poetry ; then is never a discrepancy between the two. As mere critics we may be able to admire a poet without admiring the man ; but poetry, it should be remembered, was not meant for critics only, and its highest purpose is never fulfilled, except where, as with Schiller, we can listen to the poet, and look up to the man."

The essay on Bunsen, Dr. Miiller's friend and correspondent, is especially important, from his intimate knowledge of its subject. That Bunsen's entrance into the field of diplomacy, culminating in his appointment as Prussian Envoy in England, to do work " that any Prussian baron could have done as well, if not better," should be regarded by his scholarly biographer as the great mistake of his life, is only natural, and perhaps true. Yet we doubt whether a mind so eager and so prepossessed with ideas of his own, which he avowed his intention of finding through the course of history, would have been constitutionally patient and impartial enough to become thoroughly reliable in historical investigation ; whereas, his influential position and his really great erudition enabled him to give the most salutary aid and counsel to men who had taken up literature or learning as a pro- fession ; which Dr. Muller, among many others, gratefully re- members. A very interesting series of letters from Bunsen to the author closes the volume.