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 MÜLLER. OXFORD, _January_, 1901. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. CHILDHOOD AT DESSAU 46 III. SCHOOL-DAYS AT LEIPZIG 97 IV. UNIVERSITY 115 V. PARIS 162 VI. ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND 188 VII. EARLY DAYS AT OXFORD 218 VIII. EARLY FRIENDS AT OXFORD 272 IX. A CONFESSION 308 INDEX 319 LIST OF PORTRAITS F. MAX MÜLLER, AGED FOUR _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE MY FATHER 46 MY MOTHER 58 F. MAX MÜLLER, AGED FOURTEEN 106 " " AGED TWENTY 156 " " AGED THIRTY 268 MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY