Chapter VI: VI (7)

Oxford is an excellent place for seeing illustrious visitors from all parts of the world. It is the cynosure of all Americans, and it is strange to see how many travellers know all about the beauties of Oxford, and seem often to be quite unaware of the similar, nay, in some respects greater, beauties of Cambridge. There is only one drawback. Most travellers come to Oxford during the Long Vacation, and during the Long Vacation most professors naturally go away. In that way I have missed seeing some people whose acquaintance I should have highly valued. I thus lost the pleasure of showing the late Emperor of Brazil the historical sights of Oxford, being absent when he passed through. He saw everything in a marvellously short time, but then he was up sight-seeing at five in the morning. However, I made his acquaintance afterwards in Switzerland. We were staying at an out-of-the-way place at Gimmelwald, and one day about five in the morning there was a loud knock at my bedroom door. The whole wooden cottage trembled. When I got up to see what was the matter, I saw my friend Mr. Ralston, standing breathless on the staircase and saying, “The Emperor of Brazil wants to see you. He is staying at Interlaken, and has persuaded the Empress to stay another day to see you. But you must get up at once and take a carriage and drive to Interlaken.” I did so, and was with the Emperor and Empress soon after breakfast. The Empress and the gentlemen-in-waiting were not in the best of humours on account of this unexpected delay in their journey. We had a long and undisturbed talk in a private room. I was sorry the Emperor would speak French, though, having been at school in Switzerland, he spoke German quite as well. He was full of questions about Sanskrit literature and the Vedic religion. I was amazed at his knowledge, for he had actually begun to study Sanskrit, and was fully aware of all the difficulties that had to be met before we could hope to gain an insight into the heart of the ancient religion of the Vedic Rishis. He had a young German with him who acted as his tutor in Sanskrit, and likewise in Hebrew. It was very pleasant to be examined by a man who really knew what questions to ask, and who was bent on finding out by himself what the “Rig Veda,” the most ancient of all the books in the world, really contained. Like many others he seemed to expect too much, and I had to tell him he must not be disappointed, and that, though the Veda was certainly the oldest book in the proper sense of that word, which had been preserved to us in an almost miraculous manner, still it bore already traces of a long growth, nay, even of a long decay of religious thought. If the Vedic poets were different from what we expected them to be, it was our fault, not theirs. They showed us what the world was like in the second millennium B.C., and if we thought that there was in that millennium much that sounds childish and absurd to us, it was well that we should know that fact, and talk no longer of the mysterious or esoteric wisdom of the East. Like most students, the Emperor wished to know the exact date of the Veda, and I did not find it easy to explain to him that where we have no contemporaneous history we cannot expect an exact chronology. If some scholars placed the Veda 5000 or 10,000 B.C., we should find it difficult to refute them, but we should gain nothing, it would be like one of the distant dates in Egyptian and Babylonian chronology, a mere point _in vacuo_. He was surprised when I confessed to him that even the low date of about 1200 B.C., which I had fixed upon, seemed to me too high rather than too low, and that I should feel it a relief if anybody could establish a lower date for at least some of the Vedic hymns. I think the Emperor saw that in spite of this inevitable uncertainty, the “Rig Veda” would always maintain its unique position in the history of religion, nay, of literature, being without an equal anywhere, and allowing us an insight into the growth of thought, such as we find in no other literature. Whatever the antecedents of the Vedic religion may have been, however rudely its original features may have been effaced even before the beginning of the Brâhmana period, we can still see here and there in the Veda some germ ideas, some thoughts requiring no antecedents, and in that sense primitive, more primitive even than the thoughts of Egypt, Babylon, and Nineveh, whatever their merely chronological antiquity may have been. I do not know how it happened—that from discussing the ancient names of metals and the relative value of gold and silver, as fixed, we do not know how, in Egypt, Babylon, and afterwards in Greece, in Italy, and the rest of the civilised world at about 1 to 15—our conversation drifted away into financial questions. Here I must have been betrayed into uttering some financial heresy, possibly savouring of bimetallism, for I well remember the Emperor becoming rather impatient and saying: “I know all about that, and have studied the question for many years. Let us return to the Veda.”

After a very pleasant luncheon we parted, and soon after the Emperor lost his crown, as some would have it, because he had given too much thought and time to his studies instead of keeping in touch with the leaders of the different parties around his throne. However that may be, Brazil has not been long before regretting her learned Emperor. I heard afterwards that to the very end of his reign, and even when in exile, the Emperor kept his tutor and carried on his studies in Sanskrit and Hebrew. When at Stockholm in 1889, attending the International Oriental Congress, under the auspices of the King of Sweden, I received a letter from the Emperor of Brazil giving an account of his Sanskrit studies. I showed the letter to the King of Sweden, Oscar II., himself a man extremely well informed on Eastern literature, and full of the warmest sympathy for Oriental scholars and scholarship. He read the letter and sighed. “I have no leisure for Sanskrit,” he said. “The happy Emperor of Brazil has but one people to govern, I have two.”

I might go on for a long time with my royal recollections, but it is, of course, impossible to do so when living persons are concerned. Most of the royal persons with whom I was brought into contact were eminent among their peers, but were I to say what I think of them, I should at once be called ugly names—courtier, flatterer, etc. Such things cannot be helped, and the only excuse I could, perhaps, plead as a _circonstance atténuante_ would be the reverence I imbibed with my mother’s milk for my own Duke and my own Duchess of Anhalt-Dessau.

There is only one more sovereign about whom I may say a few words, the late Queen of Holland, highly gifted as she was, and most charming in society. She frequently came to England; according to the newspapers, as a friend and advocate of the Emperor Napoleon. She was far too wise, however, to attempt to play such a part at the English court. But that she was much admired and won the hearts of many people in London is certainly true. She came to lunch with Stanley at the Deanery. She had asked him to invite a number of literary men—Tennyson, Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Huxley, and several more. We were waiting and waiting, but Tennyson did not appear. Stanley suggested that we should not wait any longer, but the Queen refused to sit down before the great poet’s arrival. At last it was suggested that Tennyson might be mooning about in the Cloisters, and so he was. He was caught, and was placed next to the Queen. The Queen knew wonderfully how to hide her Crown, and put everybody at their ease. She took the conversation into her own hands, and kept the ball rolling during the whole luncheon. But she got nothing out of Tennyson. He was evidently in low spirits, and, sitting next to him, I could hear how to every question the Queen addressed to him he answered, “Yes, Ma’am,” “No, Ma’am,” and at last, by a great effort, “Ma’am, there is a good deal to be said on both sides of the question.” He then turned to me and said in a whisper, but a loud whisper: “I wish they had put some of you talking fellows next to Regina.”

While I am finishing these “Recollections of Royalties,” and sending the proof sheets to press, the last echoes of the greatest triumph that has ever been granted to royalty, which has ever been celebrated by royalty, are vanishing from our ears. May those royal recollections never vanish from our memories! We need not, nay, we cannot exaggerate their importance. Magnificent as the pageant has been of the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen of England, what was invisible in it was far greater than what was so brilliantly visible in the royal procession passing through the crowded streets of London. Has there ever been an empire like the British, not excluding the Babylonian, the Persian, the Macedonian, or the Roman empires? Sixty years of one reign is not a mere numerical expression; no, it means permanent vitality, unbroken continuity, sustained strength and vigour, such as, I believe, have never been witnessed in any reign during the whole history of the world.

And England is not only the greatest, it is also the freest, country in the world, so free that even republics may well envy it its fresh and pure air; and yet was there ever among the vast masses, rich and poor, a more universal outburst of hearty loyalty to the Throne, of personal love of the sovereign, than in the days of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee?

It was said early in her reign by a royal and loyal thinker that constitutional government was then on its trial in England. So it was, but it has come out triumphant, and stronger than ever. Constitutional government under a royal protector will henceforth be recognised as the most perfect form of government which human ingenuity has been able to devise, after many centuries of patient and impatient search. Royalty has proved its right to exist, and that under the sceptre of a Queen who, if compared to other sovereigns, will be famous not only for much that she has done, but also for much that she has not done. Constitutional government has proved its superiority over any form of government by the triumph on 22nd June.

If the people have been loyal to the Queen, how loyal has the Queen been to her people; if her subjects have shared her joys and sorrows, how warmly has she taken the sufferings of her people to heart. Royalty has its dangers, and mankind has suffered much from kings and emperors, but the greatness of England during the last sixty years has chiefly been due to the mutual esteem and love of her people and their sovereign. The world will know henceforth one at least of the secret springs of England’s health and wealth and strength—namely, the true sympathy that for years has knitted ruler and ruled together. England has had great ministers and counsellors, but ask those ministers, who for years has been their truest and most trusted counsellor, and they will not hesitate in their answer. No wonder that England, celebrating the Sixty-years’ Jubilee of her Sovereign, should have roused the admiration—and it may be, the envy also—of other nations. Let us hope that the admiration, so ungrudgingly bestowed, may last, and that the envy, if any, may pass away. “Viel Ehr, viel Feind” is as true here as elsewhere. Let other nations blame and criticise, it is the highest compliment they can pay. But let them ponder what Europe would have been without England, what the world would have been without the sceptre of the wise and good Queen Victoria.

BEGGARS

Often when I had related to my friends some of my painful experiences with beggars and they laughed at me, “Wait,” I said, “I shall have my revenge; and when I am unfit to do anything else, I shall write a book about Beggars.” Now it has sometimes happened to me of late that, when I had sat down to do the work to which I have been accustomed for so many years, I could not get on at all, or if by a great effort of will I managed to do something, it was of no use, and had to be done again. I felt, therefore, that the time had come for rest, or at all events, for a change of occupation, and, though I had not yet sufficient time to spare for writing a whole book on beggars, I thought I might jot down a few of my experiences, not only as an amusement to myself, but possibly as a useful lesson to some of my friends. It seems to me that my experience has been large, larger than that of most of my acquaintances. Why, I cannot tell; but beggars, and extremely clever beggars too, have evidently singled me out as an easy prey. They seem to have imagined—in fact they told me so again and again—that I was a rich man, and could well afford to help a poor beggar. They little knew what a poor beggar I was myself, and how hard I have had to work through life to keep myself afloat, and to live as I was expected to live among my wealthy colleagues at Oxford. They would have smiled incredulously if I had told them how many hours, nay, how many weeks, a scholar has often to do the hardest drudgery without getting a penny for his work. He has often to be thankful if he can find a publisher for what is the outcome of years of hard labour. It is schoolbooks only that are remunerative, or novels and sermons, and novels he has to leave to his worldly, sermons to his unworldly, fellow-labourers.

Some of my beggar acquaintances were so clever and so well educated that they might easily have made a living for themselves; but, as one of them told me when I thought I had made him thoroughly ashamed of himself, and quite confidential, they preferred begging to any other kind of occupation. “Talk of shooting partridges or pheasants,” he said, “talk of racing or gambling, there is no sport like begging. There must always be risk in sport, and the risk in begging is very great. You are fighting,” my half-penitent informant said, “against tremendous odds. You ring at the door, and you must first of all face a servant, who generally scrutinises you with great suspicion, and declines to take your name or your card, unless you have a clean shirt and a decent pair of boots. Then, after you have been admitted to the presence, you have to watch every expression of your enemy or your friend, as the case may be. You have to face the cleverest people in the world, and you know all the time that the slightest mistake in your looks or in the tone of your voice may lead to ruin. You may be kicked out of the house, and if you meet with a high-minded and public-spirited gentleman, who does not mind trouble and expense, you may find yourself in the hands of the police for trying to obtain money under false pretences. No,” he concluded, “I have known in my time what hunting and shooting and gambling are; but I assure you there is no sport like begging.”

What is one to do with such a visitor—in appearance, in manners, and in language, quite a gentleman, or a _ci-devant_ gentleman, a man who has been at a university, and who, when asked, will translate a page of Homer to you very fairly, who bears, of course, a noble name, and has friends, as he gives you to understand, in every university or at every court in Europe—what is one to do with him, if not to accelerate his departure by means of a small gift, for which he is generally very grateful? But that is really the worst one can do. For, on the strength of it, your noble sportsman will at once go to other covers, to all your friends, tell them that you have helped him, describe your generosity, your room, your dog, your cat, and thus among your unsuspecting friends secure a fresh bag, dearer to him, if you may believe him, than any number of pheasants and partridges.

The information which these beggars possess is quite astounding. They have stepped into my room, and given me the most minute information about my friends and relations in Germany, who live in a small and little-known town, describing their houses, their gardens, their dogs—everything, in fact, to show that they had been on the most familiar terms with them. This happened to me some years ago when the organisation among the foreign beggars in London was far more perfect than it is, or seems to be, at present. It may be, of course, that they know that an old fox who has been hunted again and again is difficult to catch. Anyhow, I have not of late heard of any such exploits as, unfortunately, I have had to suffer from in former years.

It was after the Schleswig-Holstein war, in about 1850, that one morning a young military-looking man stepped into my room. He limped, and told me he had still a ball in his leg, which must be removed. He presented himself as an officer in the Danish Army—the only officer who had joined the rebels, the Schleswig-Holsteiners—and had been taken prisoner at the battle of Idstedt in 1850. He described most graphically how he was confronted with his former Danish comrades, how his epaulettes were torn off, how his sword was broken, and he himself sent to a military prison, previous, as he thought, to being _fusillé_ for high treason. All this naturally appealed to my sympathy, and then he went on telling me, in the most confidential way, that when at last sentence of death had been pronounced against him, he knew quite well that it would never be carried out, because the Queen of Denmark was his dearest friend, and would never have allowed such a thing. “Give me some paper,” he said; “I must write to my beloved Queen, and tell her I am safe in England. She will be in deep distress till she hears of me.” He sat down and wrote a letter, which he wished me to read. I only saw the beginning of it: that was quite enough; it was in a style which only the most devoted lover could have used. That letter was stamped—I supplied the stamps—dropped into the pillar-box, sent to Copenhagen, and must have been delivered to the Queen, though I doubt its being preserved in the royal archives. And that was not all. In a few days a letter came from Copenhagen, delivered by post, which again I was asked to read, but declined. I did not wish to pry into State or Court secrets. But all this showed, at all events, how cleverly the whole scheme had been laid, so that a confederate could send from Copenhagen a letter apparently written by the Queen, in answer to a letter despatched to her a few days before. I was completely taken in. The young officer went to London to have the ball extracted. I doubt now whether there was any ball to extract. There he made many acquaintances, and was helped by some very influential people. I remember one, who afterwards rose to the highest post in our Diplomatic Service, and was at that time known among his friends as never having a five-pound note in his possession. He gave him £10, and when I asked him: “But, my dear fellow, where in the world did you get that ten-pound note?” he used, as was his wont, very strong language, and said: “I borrowed it from the porter at my club.” This little comedy went on for some time. The man himself must have enjoyed his sport thoroughly, and he never lost his presence of mind. I still think that he must have been at one time in the Danish Service, as he possessed very accurate information about Danish officials and Danish affairs in general, though in what capacity he served his country and his Queen has never been found out. His ostensible correspondence with the Queen continued for some time. Even remittances arrived, as we were told from his royal patroness, but most of his funds were drawn, I am sorry to say, from English pockets, and might have served some better purpose. As far as I remember—for I am trying to recall events that happened nearly fifty years ago—a collection was made for our clever adventurer, and he left England uninjured to look for more dupes in the United States.

Though I might have learnt a lesson, I have to confess that hardly a month passed without something of the same kind happening to me. Few swindlers were so clever or had their schemes so beautifully prepared as my Danish friend, but I generally felt whenever I was taken in that I could hardly have acted differently. Nay, when I mustered courage to say “No,” I often regretted it. Let me give an instance. A gentleman steps into your room, tells you that he has been robbed, offers you his gold watch, and asks you to lend him a pound to pay his bill at the hotel. What are you to do? I declined to advance any money, particularly as my visitor behaved rather like a sturdy beggar, and what was the consequence? He broke out into violent abuse, mentioned a number of newspapers whose correspondent he professed to be, and told me I should rue the day when I had insulted him. And it was not a vain threat. From time to time I received extracts, not indeed from _The Times_ or the _Débats_ or the _Augsburger Zeitung_, but from some obscure local papers, with violent tirades against me as an ignoramus, as a Jesuit, as a German spy, as a hard-hearted miser, etc. For all I know, the man may have been in momentary distress, but was I to open a pawnbroker’s shop in my house?

There was a time, and it lasted for several years, when a man, though he never tried his hand on me, victimised a large number of my friends. He called himself my brother, evidently unaware of the fact that I never had a brother. He must have taken the “Clergy List,” for week after week came letters from my friends, mostly clergymen in London who had known me at Oxford and who had been swindled by my brother.

Twice _The Times_ was kind enough to print a letter from me in large type to warn my friends. It was of no use. I seldom went to London without some friend coming up to me and asking after my brother, or expressing himself thoroughly ashamed of having allowed himself to be so stupidly victimised by a common impostor. One friend told me that he was so convinced that the man was a swindler that he had him turned out of the house. But then it struck him that after all the man might really be my brother, who only wanted a ticket to go to Oxford, so he rushed into the street after him, apologised, and pressed a sovereign into his hand. “There were telegraphs in those days, and why did you not telegraph to me?” I said. But my brother went on unabashed. He once called at the house of Lord W., telling the old story of having been robbed, and wanting a ticket to go to Oxford to see his dear brother. Lord W. was not to be taken in so easily, but Lady W., who came into the room and heard the story, said to the young man: “Perhaps you are not aware that you are speaking to a very near relation of your brother, who is the husband of my niece?” The man never flinched, but was rushing up to Lady W. to shake hands most affectionately and to embrace her, if she had not beaten a sudden retreat. Lord W. was quite convinced that the man was an impudent beggar, took him to the front door, and told him to be gone. “Would you tell your servant to call a cab for me,” he said, “to go to the station?” A servant, who was present, hailed a cab. “Please to give the man half a crown,” my brother said. The half-crown was given, and the man got away unharmed, having swindled one of the cleverest financial men in London out of half a crown. Only a few minutes after, my wife called at her aunt’s house, and regretted that she was just too late to make the long-desired personal acquaintance of my lost brother.

After carrying on this business for more than two years in England, and chiefly in London, the place seems to have become too hot at last. He vanished from the soil of England without ever having called on his brother at Oxford, and the next I heard of him was through some friends in New Zealand, who had suffered as others had suffered before in England.

The worst of such experiences is that they make us very hard-hearted. One believes nothing that a man tells one who comes begging to the door. And yet how much of real misery there is! It is a problem which really seems to admit of no solution. Of course we must not expect angels to come to us in the disguise of beggars. All beggars are more or less disreputable; not one of them would venture to tell the true story of his life. Yet they generally have something to say for themselves, and they hardly know the mischief they are doing by making it impossible for any one with any self-respect to believe the old, old stories which they are telling. They say: “What can we do? We must say something to appeal to your pity, and the unvarnished tale of our life is too long and too dry, and not likely to excite your sympathy.” All this is true, but what is to be done to alleviate or to cure this terrible evil of poverty and beggary? Nothing really seems to remain but to adopt the example of the Buddhists, and give to the beggar a recognised status in society. The Buddhists have no poor rates, but whoever is admitted to the brotherhood has a right to go round the village or town once or twice a day, to hold out his begging bowl, and to take home to his monastery whatever is given him. No householder likes these Bhikshus or beggars to depart from his house without having received a gift, however small, while the Bhikshu himself is not degraded, but enjoys, on the contrary, the same respect which the begging friars enjoyed during the middle ages. Even in later times we hear in Scotland of the Gaberlunzie men, and elsewhere of Bedesmen, Bluegowns, etc., all forming a kind of begging fraternity, and having a recognised position in society.

Free above Scot-free, that observe no laws,
Obey no governor, use no religion,
But what they draw from their own ancient custom,
Or constitute themselves, yet they are no rebels.
“Antiquary,” chap. xii.

All this is extinct now, but the beggar is not extinct, and never will be, as we are told. What then is to be done? for we are all more or less responsible for their existence. It seems to me that there is only one thing to be done, namely, to give up, every one of us, whatever quotum of our income we think right, and to hand it over to such societies as take the trouble to find out for us some not quite undeserving poor. Our Charity Organisation Society does no doubt much good, but it should have another branch, the members of which should be understood to give, say, a tenth part, or any other quotum of their annual income for charitable purposes. Such a society existed formerly. The members of it were not subjected to any inquisitorial questions. They simply declared that they would regularly devote a tenth of their income to the alleviation of poverty, and they were left perfectly free to do it each in his own way. What has become of that society? The organiser and leading spirit of it died, and no one seems to have taken it up again.

There is, however, one class of beggars and impostors more objectionable than any—people who do not beg for money, but borrow, and never mean to return either the money or any thanks. I have known of a good many cases where young men visiting Oxford and having made a few acquaintances among the undergraduates, were invited to dinner in college, and not only borrowed from their young companions, but, introduced by their young friends, ran up bills among the tradesmen of the town, and then quietly slipped away, leaving their friends to satisfy their creditors as best they could. All this goes on, and it seems impossible to stop it. Even if now and then these swindlers make a mistake, and place themselves within the clutches of the law, what satisfaction is it to keep them in prison for a month or two? No one knows their real names. They are boarded and fed at the expense of the country, and enjoy a little rest from their labours. That is all. They go in and come out of prison as if nothing had happened, and all they have learnt in prison is how to be more careful in future.

Who can doubt that there is much poverty and suffering, even undeserved suffering, among the poor, more particularly among poor foreigners in London? The Society for the Relief of Foreigners in Distress does much, but that much is but like a drop of milk in an ocean of salt water. The stories of the applicants printed each year, and carefully sifted by the committee, are simply heart-rending. And those who go to see for themselves often wish they had never crossed the thresholds of these hovels in which whole families live huddled up together, hungry, sick, dying, dead. One feels utterly hopeless and helpless at the sights one sees. One might as well jump into the Atlantic to save a sinking vessel and a drowning crew as attempt to rescue this drowning humanity.

And the men, after all, can help themselves. They can work, they may fight and beg, and even steal, and be sent to prison. But what is the fate of the poor unfortunate women!

There is one more class of beggars, though they would indignantly protest against such a name, who have given me great trouble. They are gentlemen who have something to sell and who are willing to sell it to you as a great favour. In Oxford these gentlemen have generally manuscripts to sell, ancient, valuable, unique. As I spent a good deal of my time at the Bodleian Library, and was there every day for several years as Oriental librarian, I made some curious acquaintances. After some time I never trusted a man who offered to sell scarce manuscripts or unique books to the library. My experiences were many, most of them painful. Perhaps the most interesting was when we received a visit from the famous forger, Simonides. Fortunately his fame had preceded him. There had been a full account of his doings and misdoings abroad, yet he arrived quite unabashed with a box full of Greek MSS. I had warned our librarian, the Rev. H. O. Coxe, and it was amusing to watch the two when their _pourparlers_ began. Simonides—so called, not because he was a descendant of the poet Simonides, but (with a long _î_) because his ancestor was one Simon, a Jew—addressed the librarian half in ancient Greek, half in modern English. He knew both equally well. His manners were most engaging. The librarian was equally polite, and began to examine some of the Greek MSS. “These are of small value,” Simonides said, “they are modern. What century would you assign to them?” The librarian assigned the thirteenth century to them, and Simonides fully agreed. He then went on producing MS. after MS., but claiming for none of them more than the twelfth or tenth century. All went on most amicably until he produced some fragments of an uncial Greek MS. The librarian opened his eyes wide, and, examining them very carefully, put some of them aside for further consideration. Becoming more and more confidential, Simonides at last produced a real treasure. “This,” he said, “ought to repose nowhere but in the Bodleian Library. And what century would you assign to it, Mr. Librarian?” Simonides said with a smile and a respectful bow. Mr. Coxe turned over a few pages, and, looking very grave, though never quite without his usual twinkle, “The second half of the nineteenth century, sir,” he said, “and now pack up your MSS. and _Apage_ (begone).”

Simonides did as he was told, and, with an injured expression, walked away. Next day he wrote a Greek letter to the librarian, bitterly complaining about the _Apage_, and offering some more MSS. for his inspection. But all was in vain; too much had been discovered about him in the meantime. He was certainly a most extraordinary man—a scholar who, if he had applied his ingenuity to editing instead of forging Greek MSS., might have held a very high position. His greatest achievement was, of course, the newly discovered Greek text of the history of ancient Egypt by Uranios. The man possessed a large quantity of later Greek MSS. It seems that in the Eastern monasteries, where he sold, he also acquired some Greek MSS., by what means we must not ask. He tried several of these MSS. with chemicals to see whether, as was the fashion during the middle ages, the parchment on which they were written had been used before, and the old writing scraped off in order to get writing material for some legends of Christian saints or other modern compositions. When that has been the case, chemical appliances bring out the old writing very clearly, and he knew that in this way some very old and valuable Greek texts had been recovered. In that case the old uncial writing comes out generally in a dark blue, and becomes quite legible as underlying the modern Greek text. As Simonides was not lucky enough to discover or recover an ancient Greek text, or what is called a Palimpsest MS., the thought struck him that he might manufacture such a treasure, which would have sold at a very high price. But even this did not satisfy his ambition. He might have taken the text of the Gospels and written it between the lines of one of his modern Greek MSS., adding some startling various readings. In that case detection would have seemed much more difficult. But he soared higher. He knew that a man of the name of Uranios had written a history of Egypt which was lost. Simonides made up his mind to write himself in ancient Greek a history of Egypt such as he thought Uranios might have written. And, deep and clever as he was, he chose Bunsen’s “Egypt” and Lepsius’ “Chronology” as the authorities which he faithfully followed. After he had finished his Greek text, he wrote it in dark blue ink and in ancient uncial Greek letters between the letters of a Greek MS. of about 1200 a.d. Anybody who knows the smallness of the letters in such a MS. can appreciate the enormous labour it must have been to insert, as it were, beneath and between these minute lines of each letter the supposed earlier writing of Uranios, so that the blue ink should never encroach on the small but true Greek letters. One single mistake would have been fatal, and such is the knowledge which antiquaries now possess of the exact changes of Greek letters in every century that here, too, one single mistake in the outline of the old uncial letters would have betrayed the forger.

When Simonides had finished his masterpiece, he boldly offered it to the highest tribunal, the Royal Berlin Academy. The best chemists of the time examined it microscopically, and could find no flaw. Lepsius, the great Egyptologist, went through the whole text, and declared that the book could not be a forgery, because no one except Uranios could have known the names of the ancient Egyptian kings and the right dates of the various dynasties, which were exactly such as he had settled them in his books. The thought that Simonides might have consulted these very books never entered anybody’s mind. Great was the excitement in the camp of the Egyptologists, and, though the price demanded by Simonides was shamefully extravagant, Bunsen persuaded the then King of Prussia, Frederick William IV., to pay it and to secure the treasure for Berlin. Dindorf, the famous Greek scholar, had been entrusted by Simonides with the editing of the text, and he had chosen the Clarendon Press at Oxford to publish the first specimen of it. In the meantime unfavourable reports of Simonides reached the German authorities, and during a new examination of the MS. some irregularities were detected in the shape of the uncial M, and at last one passage was discovered by a very strong microscope where the blue ink had run across the letters of the modern Greek text. No doubt could then remain that the whole MS. was a forgery. Part of it had actually been printed at the Clarendon Press, and I was able to secure six copies of Dindorf’s pamphlet, which was immediately destroyed, and has now become one of the scarcest books in any library. After I had secured my copy, I read on the first page κὰτ’ ἐμὴν ἰδέαν, which was intended for “According to my idea.” I went straight to the then Master of Balliol, Dr. Scott, of Greek Lexicon fame. I asked him whether he thought such an expression possible before the fifteenth century A.D. He took down his Stephanus, but after looking for some time and hesitating, he admitted at last that such an expression was certainly not quite classical. Simonides had, of course, to refund the money, and was sent to prison, never to appear again in the libraries of Europe. A number of his forgeries, however, exist in England, in public and private collections; among them portraits of the Virgin Mary and some of the Apostles painted by St. Luke, a copy of Homer with a dedication from Perikles to the tyrant of Syrakuse, other Greek MSS. written on paper made of human skin, etc. His forged MS. of Uranios was such a masterpiece that he was offered £100 for it, but he declined, and I have never been able to find out what has been the end of it.

Some years afterwards another forger of the name of Shapira offered to the British Museum some scrolls of parchment containing the text of the Pentateuch from the hand of Moses. They, too, were very closely criticised, and were exhibited for some time at the Museum; nay, a Commission was appointed to report on the MS., for which, very naturally, an enormous sum was demanded. It was perfectly well known, of course, among Semitic scholars that writing for literary purposes was unknown at the time of Moses, and that the very alphabet used by the forger belonged to a much later period. Poor Shapira, whose name had already become notorious as connected with the spurious Moabite antiquities, which he had sold at Berlin, professed to be so dejected when the fraud was discovered, a fraud, as he stated, not committed by himself, but practised on him by some Arabs, that he went to Belgium, and there, according to the newspapers, committed suicide; while some of his victims maintained that even then the newspaper paragraphs on his suicide were a forgery, and that he had retired from an ungrateful world under the veil of a new name.

It is extraordinary how low a man may sink who once takes to this kind of trade. A Greek gentleman whom I knew, and who moved in the very best society in London, who held a responsible position in a bank, where he was trusted with any amount of money, roused the suspicions of the authorities in the coin department of the British Museum. He possessed himself a very valuable collection of ancient coins, and was admitted to all the privileges of a special student of numismatics.

Nearly all the employees of the British Museum were his personal friends, and no one would have ventured to doubt his honour. However, some unique specimens of Greek coins disappeared, or rather were found to be replaced by inferior specimens. A trap was laid, and there remained little doubt that he had transferred the better specimens to his own collection, substituting inferior specimens in his possession. At first no one would believe it, but an English jury found him guilty, and he was condemned to five years’ penal servitude. Great efforts were made by some of the Foreign Ministers, and by the directors of the bank in which he had been employed, and a pardon was obtained for him on condition of his never returning to England. When, however, inquiries were made as to his behaviour in the hulks where he had been detained in the meantime, it turned out that this perfect gentleman had behaved there worse than the lowest criminal, so that it was quite out of the question to release him, and he was kept to serve his full sentence. What may have become of him afterwards, who knows? But it shows how scientific devotion can go hand in hand with moral degradation, nay, can blunt the conscience to such an extent that exchange seems no robbery, and even the abstraction of a book from a public or private library is looked upon as a venial offence. MSS. have again and again disappeared from libraries, and have been returned after the death of the scholar who took them, showing, at least, a late repentance. But I have also known of cases where MSS. seemed to have vanished and suspicion fell on scholars who had consulted them last, while after a time the MSS. turned up again, having been placed in a wrong place in the library; which, of course, in a large library is tantamount to throwing them out of window.

There was a well-known case in the same coin-room of the British Museum, where, during a visit of a number of gentlemen and ladies, it was observed that a very valuable and almost unique Sicilian coin had disappeared. All the gentlemen present in the room at the time had to be searched, and no one objected except one. He protested his innocence, but declared that nothing would induce him to allow his pockets to be searched. All the other visitors were allowed to go home, but he was detained while the coin-room was swept, and every corner searched once more. At last the missing coin was found in a chink of the floor.

Every apology was made to the suspected person, but he was asked why he had so strongly objected to being searched. He then produced from his pocket another specimen of the very same coin. “I came here,” he said, “to compare my specimen, which is very perfect, with the only other specimen which is thought to be superior to mine, and almost unique in the world. Now, suppose,” he added, “that you had not found your coin, and had found my specimen in my pocket, would anybody have believed in my innocence?”

Such cases will happen, though no doubt a man must have been born under a very unlucky star to come in for such a trial. In most museums unique specimens are now never shown except under precautions which make such accidents, as well as deliberate thefts, almost impossible.

After all the sad experiences which one has had, it is perhaps quite right that we should shut our ears and our house against all beggars, whether in rags or in the disguise of gentlemen. But even our servants have hearts, and though they have orders not to admit beggars, they often are, or imagine they are, better judges than ourselves. I know that they sometimes give something where their masters, rightly or wrongly, decline to do anything. Physical suffering appeals to them, though they also have learnt how beggars who ask for a crust of bread throw away what has been given them as soon as they leave the house.

I remember once my servant coming in and saying: “There is a poor man at the door, I believe he is dying, sir!” I confess I did not believe it, but I went to see him, and he looked so ill that the doctor had to be sent for. The doctor declared he was in the last stage of consumption, and I was glad to send him to the Infirmary.

He was a poor tailor, a German by birth, but who had lived many years in England and spoke English perfectly well. Being well taken care of, he got better for a time. I went to see him and tried to cheer him as well as I could. He was surprised to see me, and said with a frown: “Why do you come to see me?” I said that he seemed quite alone in the world, without any friends or relations in England.

“Friends and relations!” he said. “I have never had any in all my life.”

“You had father and mother?” I said.

“No,” he answered, “I never had. I never knew anybody that belonged to me. I was brought up at a Government school for poor children, was apprenticed to a tailor, and when I was quite young sent to England, where I have been working in different places for nearly twenty years. I have never begged, and have always been able to support myself.”

He told me the name of the tailor for whom he had been working in Oxford, and I received the most satisfactory account both from his employer and from the men with whom he had been working.

“Why do you come to see me?” he said again and again. “No one has ever been kind to me. I want to die; I have nothing to care for in this world. The few things that belong to me I wish to leave to the poor servant girl in the house where I have last been at work, the little money in my purse may go to the Infirmary. I know no one else; no one cares for me, or has ever cared for me.”

Who can imagine such a life? Without father or mother, without friends, without the sense of belonging to anybody in the world, of ever being loved or pitied by a single human soul. Even the idea of a kind and loving Father in heaven had no meaning for him. His one wish was to have done with it all. It was no trouble to him to leave this world and to cease from stitching. He could not even express anything like gratitude. All he could say was that it was so strange that any one should care for him, and come to see him. He passed away without suffering, anyhow without a sound of complaint. Whatever he left was given to the poor servant girl, who was equally surprised that the poor tailor should have thought of her. What an empty, purposeless life it seemed to have been, and yet his, too, was a precious soul, and meant to be more on earth than a mere sewing machine.

Yes, now and then one can do a little good, even to professional beggars; but very, very seldom—and it is right that such cases should be known and remembered. The most difficult people to deal with are educated young foreigners, who always came to me with the same tale. Some of them were hardened sinners, and had to end their visits to Oxford and to the always open rooms of undergraduates in college, with a visit to our gaol. I have no doubt whatever that some of them belonged to good families, and had received an excellent education. Some of them had run away from home with a woman they had fallen in love with; others may have committed some crime, mostly while serving in the army, and had tried to escape punishment by deserting. But there were others who had come to England to learn English, hoping to support themselves by giving lessons, for as soon as a foreigner arrives in England he imagines that a dozen people are ready to learn his language, which in many cases he is quite unable to teach. I remember one of this class whom, by mere accident, I was able to help. He came to me in a ragged and very disreputable state. He told me he was starving, and wished me to find pupils for him at Oxford. Well, I managed with some effort to get hold of him and shake him. He showed that he knew Greek and Latin, and his German was that of an educated man. “My dear fellow,” I said, “how in the world did you sink so low?” He saw that I meant it, and, with tears in his eyes, told me his simple, and this time true, story. He had been a teacher in a well-known German watering-place, and, as he had several English pupils, he was anxious to perfect himself in English. He arrived in London without knowing anybody, and with but a small sum of money left. “I don’t know what happened to me,” he said; “I must have had a very serious illness, and I was told that for weeks I was in a delirious fever. When I came to myself, I was in a miserable hovel occupied by a poor German family in Whitechapel. I know nothing about them, nor how I had fallen into their hands. But they had taken me in; they had nursed me, as I found out, for several weeks; and they now asked me to repay what they had spent on me. My money was gone; I knew no one who would have sent me any money from Germany. My Whitechapel friends were kind to me, and at last they advised me, as I knew Greek and Latin, to go to Oxford and Cambridge and beg. I did not like it at all; but what could I do? I owed them the money, and I had no means of earning anything in London. I was starving, and my friends had little to eat and drink themselves.” I believed his story, and this time I had no reason to regret it. The master of a school for boys near London had written to me to recommend a German teacher as a stop-gap. I wrote to him, giving him a full account of my man, and told him that he had experience in teaching, and wished to stay for a time in England to improve his knowledge of English. The master said he would give him a trial. I told the young man to get rid of every article of clothing he had on, and had him clothed as well as I could before I sent him off. He acquitted himself admirably at the school, and his first thought was to pay the poor Samaritans in Whitechapel for what they had done for him. After a time he went back to Germany to resume his work as a teacher of German at the fashionable watering-place he had come from; and for several years I regularly received letters of thanks from him, telling me how well he was getting on in the world, that he was happily married, and hoped that he would see me once more, though not in England, but at his watering-place in Germany. Here I had my reward.