my own life. I hoped also
that in this way I myself could keep as much as possible in the
background, and yet in describing the wooded or rocky shores with
their herds, their cottages, and churches, describe their reflected
image on the passing river.

But now I am asked to give a much fuller account of myself, not only
of what I have seen, but also of what I have been, what were the
objects or ideals of my life, how far I have succeeded in carrying
them out, and, as I said, how often I have failed to accomplish what I
had sketched out as my task in life. People wished to know how a boy,
born and educated in a small and almost unknown town in the centre of
Germany, should have come to England, should have been chosen there to
edit the oldest book of the world, the Veda of the Brahmans, never
published before, whether in India or in Europe, should have passed
the best part of his life as a professor in the most famous and, as it
was thought, the most exclusive University in England, and should
actually have ended his days as a Member of Her Majesty's most
honourable Privy Council. I confess myself it seems a very strange
career, yet everything came about most naturally, not by my own
effort, but owing again to those circumstances or to that environment
of which we have heard so much of late.

Young, struggling men also have written to me, and asked me how I
managed to keep my head above water in that keen struggle for life
that is always going on in the whirlpool of the learned world of
England. They knew, for I had never made any secret of it, how poor I
was in worldly goods, and how, as I said at Glasgow, I had nothing to
depend on after I left the University, but those fingers with which I
still hold my pen and write so badly that I can hardly read my
manuscript myself. When I arrived I had no family connections in
England, nor any influential friends, "and yet," I was told, "in a
foreign country, you managed to reach the top of your profession. Tell
us how you did it; and how you preserved at the same time your
independence and never forsook the not very popular subjects, such as
language, mythology, religion, and philosophy, on which you continued
to write to the very end of your life."

I generally said that most of these questions could best be answered
from my books, but they replied that few people had time to read all I
had written, and many would feel grateful for a thread to lead them
through this labyri