126 REMINISCENCES. 



Mr. Ruskin brought him some photographs of pictures (I think 

 Vandyke portraits), and courteously seemed to value my 

 father's opinion about them. 



Much of his scientific reading was in German, and this 

 was a great labour to him ; in reading a book after him, I was 

 often struck at seeing, from the pencil-marks made each day 

 where he left off, how little he could read at a time. He 

 used to call German the "Verdammte," pronounced as if in 

 English. He was especially indignant with Germans, because 

 he was convinced that they could write simply if they chose, 

 and often praised Dr. F. Hildebrand for writing German 

 which was as clear as French. He sometimes gave a German 

 sentence to a friend, a patriotic German lady, and used to 

 laugh at her if she did not translate it fluently. He himself 

 learnt German simply by hammering away with a dictionary ; 

 he would say that his only way was to read a sentence a 

 great many times over, and at last the meaning occurred to 

 him. When he began German long ago, he boasted of the 

 fact (as he used to tell) to Sir J. Hooker, who replied, " Ah, 

 my dear fellow, that's nothing ; I've begun it many times." 



In spite of his want of grammar, he managed to get on 

 wonderfully with German, and the sentences that he failed to 

 make out were generally really difficult ones. He never 

 attempted to speak German correctly, but pronounced the 

 words as though they were English ; and this made it not a 

 little difficult to help him, when he read out a German sentence 

 and asked for a translation. He certainly had a bad ear for 

 vocal sounds, so that he found it impossible to perceive small 

 differences in pronunciation. 



His wide interest in branches of science that were not 

 specially his own was remarkable. In the biological sciences 

 his doctrines make themselves felt so widely that there was 

 something interesting to him in most departments of it. He 

 read a good deal of many quite special works, and large parts 

 of text books, such as Huxley's * Invertebrate Anatomy/ or 



