Portable Autograph Letter Signed ("max Müller") To "my Dear Grove" [sir George Grove (1820-1900, Writer On Music)], Collection [EfYWL0ty]

Müller thanks Grove “for the Plumpudding”, writing humorously of his recent - in fact current! - illness: “poor me! I have been laid up for nearly 3 weeks - poisoned from opening a sewer. France may dance on a volcano, in this country we dance on a Sewer, and I don’t know which catastrophe I should prefer!” The French idiom he refers to can loosely be translated as “don’t play with fire / don’t tempt fate”.

He changes the subject to music, continuing, “how I wish I could hear Joachim” [Joseph Joachim (violinist, composer, conductor)], but due to his illness he is unable to: “no such luck for me, at least for the present.” He finishes by mentioning his ongoing work on the Rig Veda, and his plans for the near future: “As soon as I have finished vol.V of Rig Veda I go to Strasbourg to delivery my first Course of Lectures in German.” He signs off in Latin, “semper tuissimus” [always very much yours].

Max Müller was one of the founders of the western academic field of comparative philology, and in 1868 he became Oxford University’s first Professor of Comparative Philology. In 1872 he was offered a position as a professor of Sanskrit at the newly founded university of Strasbourg. Although he decided not to accept the post he agreed to give a series of lectures in the summer of 1872. It is to this lecture series that Müller undoubtedly refers to in this letter. He worked on a critical edition of the Rig-Veda for many years, between 1849 and 1874.

Contemporary ink smudge made by Müller before the ink had dried, otherwise in very good condition.