190 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



honour done to his brother, to whom he was so tenderly attached, 

 by so great and eloquent' a delineation of his character, he 

 showed himself at the same time most desirous to obliterate 

 every unfavourable line from the picture. He touches as 

 follows upon the main difficulty in all historical and biographi- 

 cal representation, arising, especially in the latter case, from the 

 necessary restriction of detail, and increasing in the proportion 

 in which the facts are compressed : ' The more your description 

 calls forth my admiration, the more regret I feel that it should 

 be so limited in extent, as I could have wished the softening 

 touches had been spread over the entire range of a life not 

 unimportant either in politics or literature.' But he adds, with 

 a critique upon his own criticism : < " There is nothing so hope- 

 less," as Gerard the great painter used to say, " as consulting 

 the survivors about the likeness of a departed relative. Their 

 exactions are most irritating. If only their relative had been 

 alive, anything would have been good enough." ' In the year 

 1846, he published in the ' Allgemeine Zeitung' a defence of 

 his brother's translation of the 4 Agamemnon ' of ^Eschylus in 

 reply to a severe critique, and did so ' the more willingly as 

 during half a century he had never taken any notice of the 

 animadversions to which his own views and writings had been 

 subjected, not only in his native country, but in foreign lands.' l 

 Humboldt declined the proposal made to him to deliver the 

 memorial address in honour of his brother at the Academy on 

 the Leibnitz celebration day, in the year 1835, and suggested 

 that his place should be occupied by Bockh, who was well fitted 

 for the task, both from his official position and extensive scien- 

 tific attainments. In an unpublished letter to Lichtenstein of 

 June 7, 1835, he thus refers to the subject : ' I now come, my 

 dear friend, to the public tribute to my brother at the Academy 

 celebration. Such an act of respect to his memory is all the 

 more deserved from the sincere interest which, as you are aware, 

 from long experience, he ever manifested in the welfare of 

 our Academy, and the zeal with which he fulfilled to the last 

 his duties of an academician. It would be impossible for me 

 either to speak or write on such an occasion of a brother to 



1 Zimmermann, ' Humboldtbuch/ vol. ii. p. 43. 





