12 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



language did not then rank high in the estimation 

 of kings and princelings who made a pretence to 

 literature. It was the tongue of rude and ignorant 

 boors. Among them French was the language of 

 learning, literature, and politeness. William Herschel 

 was too quick-witted to neglect the language of the 

 country he was destined to look forward to for prefer- 

 ment. He became a proficient in English, though at 

 the best it was sometimes dictionary English, with 

 its long Latin words, that cropped up in his written 

 pages. Towards the end of his life, his mother tongue, 

 the rude language of Germany, as it was then deemed, 

 became somewhat unfamiliar to him. His sister Caro- 

 line, after fifty years' residence in this country, had to 

 consult an English dictionary to find or recover words 

 sufficiently strong to describe the objects of her t dis- 

 like. Her brother, after a longer residence in England, 

 found difficulty in carrying on a conversation in 

 German with the Chancellor of the University of 

 Halle, who paid him a visit at Slough shortly before 

 the close of his life: "All accounts from his native 

 country seemed to please him, although the German 

 language had become somewhat less familiar to his 

 ear." So the visitor wrote. Both brother and sister 

 appear to have felt as Caroline felt when she wrote 

 in her eighty-sixth year that she was a countrywoman 

 of the Duke of Cambridge and would not be a 

 Hanoverian. 



The schooldays of William Herschel ended at the 

 age of fourteen ; his real education then began. Under 

 the careful instruction of his father, he had become 

 an excellent performer on the oboe and violin. But 

 the father had higher views for a young man of his 



