318 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



that it is one of the worst edited books in the Grerman lan- 

 guage, and that is saying a good deal ; I am quite aware of 

 it, and I feel it as much as you can do, my dear friend ; I 

 think that my work, rudis indigestaque moles, monstrum c,ui 

 lumen ademptum, contains much that is altogether new, that 

 the erudition is select and not commonplace, and that it 

 receives a character of its own from the combination of phy- 

 sical science with historical research ; but alas ! the absence 

 of chapters is a source of terrible ennui to the reader, and in 

 those interminable sections a little vivacity of style is not 

 sufficient to give coherency to passages of a fragmentary cha- 

 racter. My style, unfortunately, is very wearisome.' This un- 

 pleasing example of his own composition served as a perpetual 

 warning in the compilation of ' Cosmos,' and with ineffable 

 labour he sought to avoid 'all those cliffs which,' as he 

 modestly remarked in the preface, 4 he knew only how to point 

 out.' In a work comprising so extensive a range of subjects, 

 it is not unusual in the preface to refer to the difficulty of 

 arranging the materials at command, but scarcely any other 

 book furnishes an instance of such reiterated allusions to the 

 aim of the author, the mode of treatment, the limitation of 

 subject, and the deficiencies in the execution of the whole plan, 

 and rarely is the attention of the reader so constantly diverted 

 from the work itself to the consideration of the aim and pur- 

 pose of the author. In an undertaking which, in so many 

 points of view, might be regarded as the first of its kind, being 

 the outline of a new science, it is only natural that attention 

 should be occasionally directed to the author and the purposes 

 before him in the plan of the work ; but no unprejudiced reader 

 can be blind to the fact that observations of this character are 

 of much too frequent occurrence in ' Cosmos ; ' frequently, for 

 example, facts are brought into notice in the text that were 

 not to be expected from the new science, or at least not at that 

 day. This may be received as evidence of the tedious and 

 exceedingly careful composition of the work ; for when Hum- 

 boldt spoke of 6 Cosmos ' as ' ill-considered,' he could only have 

 used that term in reference to the uncertainty he felt of being 

 spared to complete the task, as in point of fact there never was 

 a work composed with so much painstaking care. In his 



