e same line themselves. "It seems,"
he says, "almost as if the artistic talent were exhausted by one
generation or one individual"; and I fear that, in my case at all
events, the same remark applies to literary talent. I have done my
best to string the fragments together into one connected whole, only
making such insertions, elisions and alterations as appeared strictly
necessary. Any deficiency in literary style that may be noticeable in
portions of the book should be ascribed to the inexperience of the
editor.

I have thought it right to insert the last chapter, which I call "A
Confession," though I am not sure that my father intended it to be
included in his Autobiography. It will, however, explain the attitude
which he observed throughout his life, in keeping aloof, as far as
possible, from the arena of academic contention at Oxford. He was
never chosen a member of the Hebdomadal Council, he rarely attended
meetings of Convocation or Congregation; he felt that other people,
with more leisure at their disposal, could be of more use there; but
he never refused to work for his University, when he felt that he was
able to render good service, and he acted for years as a Curator of
the Bodleian Library and of the Taylorian Institute, and as a Delegate
of the Clarendon Press.

With reference to the illustrations, it may be of interest to readers
to know that the portraits of my grandfather and grandmother are taken
from pencil-drawings by Adolf Hensel, the husband of Mendelssohn's
sister Fanny, herself a great musician, who, as my father tells us in
_Auld Lang Syne_, really composed several of the airs that Mendelssohn
published as his _Songs without Words_. The last portrait of my father
is from a photograph taken soon after his arrival in Oxford by his
great friend Thomson, afterwards Archbishop of York.

Nothing now remains for me but to acknowledge the debt that I owe
personally to this book. "Work," my father used often to say to me,
"is the best healer of sorrow. In grief or disappointment, try hard
work; it will not fail you." And certainly during these three sad
months, I have proved the truth of this saying. He could not have left
me a surer comfort or more welcome distraction than the duty of
preparing for press these pages, the last fruits of that mind which
remained active and fertile to the last.

W. G. MAX MUeLLER.

OXFORD, _January_, 1901.

CONTENTS