gladly
complied with a wish expressed by many of my hearers. As they are, they
only form a short abstract of several Courses delivered from time to time
in Oxford, and they do not pretend to be more than an introduction to a
science far too comprehensive to be treated successfully in so small a
compass.

My object, however, will have been attained, if I should succeed in
attracting the attention, not only of the scholar, but of the philosopher,
the historian, and the theologian, to a science which concerns them all,
and which, though it professes to treat of words only, teaches us that
there is more in words than is dreamt of in our philosophy. I quote from
Bacon: "Men believe that their reason is lord over their words, but it
happens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal and reactionary power over
our intellect. Words, as a Tartar's bow, shoot back upon the understanding
of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment."

MAX MUeLLER.

_Oxford_, June 11, 1861.

LECTURE I. THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.

When I was asked some time ago to deliver a course of lectures on
Comparative Philology in this Institution, I at once expressed my
readiness to do so. I had lived long enough in England to know that the
peculiar difficulties arising from my imperfect knowledge of the language
would be more than balanced by the forbearance of an English audience, and
I had such perfect faith in my subject that I thought it might be trusted
even in the hands of a less skilful expositor. I felt convinced that the
researches into the history of languages and into the nature of human
speech which have been carried on for the last fifty years in England,
France, and Germany, deserved a larger share of public sympathy than they
had hitherto received; and it seemed to me, as far as I could judge, that
the discoveries in this newly-opened mine of scientific inquiry were not
inferior, whether in novelty or importance, to the most brilliant
discoveries of our age.

It was not till I began to write my lectures that I became aware of the
difficulties of the task I had undertaken. The dimensions of the science
of language are so vast that it is impossible in a course of nine lectures
to give more than a very general survey of it; and as one of the greatest
charms of this science consists in the minuteness of the analysis by which
each language, each dialect, each word, each grammatical form is tes