The fact that I, a self-taught man, with no scholastic education--a man who was no grammarian, and who had but very vague notions about philology in general should dare to venture on a philological work, and that, moreover, in German; that I should dare to lay this before the severe forum of expert philology--this, indeed, was almost too bold a stroke, wellnigh on a par with my journey into Central Asia. Fortunately at that time I was still ignorant of the _furor teutonicus_, and the spiteful nature of philologists. I was moving, so to speak, on untrodden ground, for with the exception of the specimen Chagataic passages published by Quatremere in his _Chrestomathie Orientale_, and what was published in the original by Baber and Abulghazi, East Turkish was an entirely unknown language to Western Orientalists. I began by giving specimens of national literature, proverbs, and the different dialects of Turkish inner Asia. Then I gave a whole list of East-Turkish books of which no one in Europe had ever heard, and I published the first East-Turkish dictionary which the French scholar Pavel de Courteille incorporated in his later issued work, _Dictionnaire Turk-Oriental_. He says in his preface, "J'avoue tout de suite, que j'ai mis à contribution ce dictionnaire, en insérant dans mon travail autant que je le pouvais, le livre le plus instructif qui fait grand honneur à son auteur," as he called this my first philological production (Preface, p. xi.). But still more did it surprise me to find that the Russian Orientalist, Budagow, who was so much nearer akin to this branch of philology, used my work in his elaborate dictionary; and so, although the critical press took little notice of my first philological efforts, I was nevertheless encouraged to persevere, and began to realise that without being a scholarly linguist one can yet do useful work in this line. "It is but the first step that costs," says the proverb. My Chagataic linguistic studies were soon followed by isolated fragments on this subject, and the more readily they were received the deeper I endeavoured to penetrate into the ancient monuments of the Turkish language. As a result of these efforts appeared my-- 4. _Uiguric Linguistic Monuments_,