THE LAST TEN YEARS. 385 



employed by the poet in eulogy of a mightier but certainly 

 not a nobler man : 



" The joys he shed on all around, who could their number tell ! " 



This quotation from the second Olympian ode of Pindar, with 

 which Bockh concludes, reflects so perfectly the elevated tone 

 of his address that it would be superfluous to enter upon any 

 critical examination of its details. Mne years later, on the 

 Leibnitz anniversary of 1859, when, after the death of Humboldt, 

 his bust was really inaugurated, the same orator once more 

 reverts to the jubilant strains of the Greek poet, when com- 

 paring the deceased to 4 the royal eagle of Jupiter,' against 

 whom ' the ravens croaked ' in vain. Towards the close of his 

 career it had become, in fact, a universal custom to greet him 

 on every occasion as an Olympian victor. Humboldt, on his 

 part, never failed to acknowledge with gratitude every tribute 

 of praise. In writing to Bockh on July 26, he remarks : ' You 

 will have received my official thanks to the Academy in a 

 beautiful specimen of caligraphy. As, in accordance with 

 the regulations of the Academy, it will no doubt be preserved, 

 I was anxious it should form a small memento of our friend- 

 ship.' Another public expression of thanks was rendered by 

 him to Bockh,' as from a grateful pupil to a revered master,' 

 in the congratulatory address, already referred to, with which 

 he greeted him on his jubilee held on March 15, 1857. 1 On 

 August 4, 1850, the Academy presented their congratulations 

 to Humboldt at Potsdam, by a deputation, and gave a dinner 

 in his honour, at which, according to a promise he had exacted, 

 there were to be ' no speeches.' 



Unhappily, we have become accustomed to observe in Hum- 

 boldt's conduct a strange mixture of grandeur and littleness ; 

 in no action of his life was this contrast more obvious than in 

 the manner in which he set aside the project of erecting his 

 bust in the Academy of Berlin, and the course he adopted with 

 regard to a similar proposal at the French Institute. Prince 

 Demidoff, a corresponding member, in a fit of enthusiastic 

 admiration, offered in 1856 to present a bust of Humboldt to 



1 See p. 220. Printed, besides other places, in Zimmermann's * Hum- 

 boldtbuch,' vol. i. p. 51, &c. 



VOL. II. C C 



