Volume 22, Number 4 · March 20, 1975
The Curious Case of Max Müller
By Hugh Lloyd-Jones
Scholar Extraordinary: The Life of Professor the Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Müller, P.C.
by Nirad C. Chaudhuri
Oxford University Press, 393 pp., $15.00
Few eminent Victorians have been so much forgotten as Max Müller; and few academic reputations that were once as high as his have fallen so low. Even in Oxford, where he spent most of his working life, from 1848 to 1900, he is seldom mentioned except as the man who called Wilhelm II 'the nicest emperor I know' and whose wife, after they had given luncheon to an Oriental potentate, received by post the Imperial Order of Chastity, Third Class. Yet in his day Müller was a figure of national and even international importance. Relying on his achievements as a Sanskrit scholar, but aided by his rare gifts for presenting his work effectively and by a personal charm not always found in learned men, he won a great reputation as a comparative linguist and as an investigator of the early history of religion.
Review, 2509 words
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