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I.

INAUGURAL LECTURE,

ON THE VALUE OF COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AS

A BRANCH OF ACADEMIC STUDY,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,

THE

THE 27TH OF OCTOBER, 1868.

HE foundation of a professorial chair in the University of Oxford marks an important epoch in the history of every new science1. There are other

1 The following statute was approved by the University of Oxford in 1868 ('Statuta Universitatis Oxoniensis,' iv, i, 37, §§ 1-3):—

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1. Professor philologiæ comparativæ a Vice-Cancellario, et professoribus linguarum Hebraica, Sanskriticæ, Græcæ, Latinæ, et Anglo-Saxonicæ cligatur. In æqualitate suffragantium rem decidat Vice-Cancellarius.

'Proviso tamen ut si vir cl. M. Müller, M. A., hodie linguarum modernarum Europæ professor Taylorianus, eam professionem intra mensem post hoc statutum sancitum resignaverit, seque professoris philologiæ comparativæ munus suscipere paratum esse scripto ViceCancellarium certiorem fecerit, is primus admittatur professor.

'2. Professor quotannis per sex menses in Universitate incolat et commoretur inter decimum diem Octobris et primum diem Julii sequentis.

3. Professor duas lectionum series in duobus discretis terminis legat, terminis Paschatis et S. Trinitatis pro uno reputatis; scilicet per sex septimanas in utroque termino, et bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana: atque insuper per sex septimanas unius alicujus termini bis ad minimum in unaquaque septimana per unius horæ spatium vacet instruendis auditoribus in iis quæ melius sine solennitate tradi possunt. Unam porro ad minimum lectionem quotannis publice habeat ab academicis quibuscunque sine mercede audiendam. De die hora et loco quibus hæc lectio solennis habenda sit academiam modo consueto certiorem faciat.'

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universities far more ready to confer this academical recognition on new branches of scientific research, and it would be easy to mention several subjects, and no doubt important subjects, which have long had their accredited representatives in the universities of France and Germany, but which at Oxford have not yet received this well-merited recognition.

If we take into account the study of ancient languages only, we see that as soon as Champollion's discoveries had given to the study of hieroglyphics and Egyptian antiquities a truly scientific character, the French government thought it its duty to found a chair for this promising branch of Oriental scholarship. Italy soon followed this generous example; nor was the Prussian government long behind hand in doing honour to the new-born science, as soon as in Professor Lepsius it had found a scholar worthy to occupy a chair of Egyptology at Berlin.

If France had possessed the brilliant genius to whom so much is due in the deciphering of the cuneiform inscriptions, I have little doubt that long ago a chair would have been founded at the Collège de France expressly for Sir Henry Rawlinson.

England possesses some of the best, if not the best, of Persian scholars (alas! he who was here in my mind, Lord Strangford, is no longer among us), yet there is no chair for Persian at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of the charms of its modern literature, and the vast importance of the ancient language of Persia and Bactria, the Zend, a language full of interest, not only to the comparative philologist, but also to the student of Comparative Theology.

There are few of the great universities of Europe without a chair for that language which, from the

very beginning of history, as far as it is known to us, seems always to have been spoken by the largest number of human beings, I mean Chinese. In Paris we find not one, but two chairs for Chinese, one for the ancient, another for the modern language of that wonderful empire; and if we consider the light which a study of that curious form of human speech is intended to throw on the nature and growth of language, if we measure the importance of its enormous literature by the materials which it supplies to the student of ancient religions, and likewise to the historian who wishes to observe the earliest rise of the principal sciences and arts in countries beyond the influence of Aryan and Semitic civilization,-if, lastly, we take into account the important evidence which the Chinese language, reflecting, like a never-fading photograph, the earliest workings of the human mind, is able to supply to the student of psychology, and to the careful analyser of the elements and laws of thought, we should feel less inclined to ignore or ridicule the claims of such a language to a chair in our ancient university'.

I could go on and mention several other subjects, well worthy of the same distinction. If the study of Celtic languages and Celtic antiquities deserves to be encouraged anywhere, it is surely in England,-not, as has been suggested, in order to keep English literature from falling into the abyss of German platitudes, nor to put Aneurin and Taliesin in the place of Shakespeare and Burns, and to counteract by their suavity

1 An offer to found a professorship of Chinese, to be held by an Englishman whom even Stanislas Julien recognised as the best Chinese scholar of the day, has lately been received very coldly by the Hebdomadal Council of the University.

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