COLLEGE LIFE. 77 



several excursions into Hesse, and through Lower Saxony, and 

 describes a visit to Pyrmoiit, where he spent a week in daily 

 companionship with Jacobi, Eehberg, Moser, Markard, Esch en- 

 burg, Mauvillon, &c., c with whom, unfortunately, were included 

 seven or eight princes.' 



On the subject of this antiquarian treatise upon weaving, 

 Humboldt writes to Sommering, at the close of the year 1793, 

 that it was a sort of commentary upon the Onomasticon. of 

 Pollux, and that the work had proved a great interruption to 

 his ordinary occupations. The treatise was sent by William 

 von Humboldt on March 8, 1794, to Friedrich August Wolf, 

 for his revision, and Alexander availed himself of the oppor- 

 tunity to enclose to him the following letter : l 



c It is certainly very presumptuous in us to expect you to 

 revise so youthful a production. What I ventured only to 

 desire has been made by William into a request. For this he 

 alone is responsible. I believe I am in a position not only to 

 explain satisfactorily the meaning of the radius (/csp/cis) 

 [staff], but also of the pecten (gdviov) [comb], which hitherto 

 has been confused with plectrum [rod], and which by modern 

 commentators has frequently been confounded with radius, 

 and sometimes even translated Lade [lay or batten]. ... It 

 would seem that in the ancient mode of manufacture the Zeros 

 [loom] stood upright, and that the weavers, especially when 

 engaged upon the ^TODV appafyos [seamless garment], as they 

 walked round the frame interwove the radius (a mere staff 

 wound round with thread) into the warp arranged in a cylin- 

 drical form, making use of the pecten to drive together the 

 threads of the weft. As it can be proved historically that 

 the high-warp loom, which was introduced into Spain by the 

 Saracens in the reign of Charles Martel, is originally from the 

 same source as that in use among the ancient Greeks, as the 

 pecten still employed in the East is of this form, and as by this 

 hypothesis everything stated by Pollux on the subject of 

 weaving may be easily explained, the theory I have propounded 

 becomes at least a probable one.' 



At the conclusion of the letter William adds the following 



1 Wilhelm von Humboldt, < Gesammelte Werke/ vol. v. pp. 103, 106. 



