With what pleasure, when again permitted to go out in the evening, I witnessed the performances of Plautus’s pieces given by Professor Geppert’s pupils!

The refreshed and enlarged knowledge of school Latin was of great service in writing, and afterwards discussing, a Latin dissertation.  I devoted perhaps a still larger share of my time to Greek, and, as the fruit of these studies, still possess many translations from Anacreon, Sappho, and numerous fragments from the Bergk collection of Greek lyrics, but, with the exception of those introduced into my novels, none have been printed.

During my leisure hours translating afforded me special pleasure.  An exact rendering of difficult English authors soon made Shakespeare’s language in both prose and poetry as intelligible as German or French.

After mastering the rules of grammar, I needed no teacher except my mother.  When I had conquered the first difficulties I took up Tennyson’s Idyls of the King, and at last succeeded in translating two of these beautiful poems in the metre of the original.

My success with Enid I think was very tolerable.  The manuscript still lies in my desk unpublished.

As I was now engaged in studying the languages I easily learned to read Italian, Spanish, and Dutch books.

In view of this experience, which is not wholly personal, I have wondered whether the instruction of boys might not be shortened to give them more outdoor exercise.  In how brief a time the pupils, as men studying for their own benefit, not the teacher’s, would acquire many things!  Besides the languages, I studied, at first exclusively under Lepsius’s thoroughly admirable instruction, ancient history and archeology.

Later I owed most to Gerhard, Droysen, Friederichs, and August Bockh.

A kind fate afterwards brought me into personal relations with the latter, whose lectures on the Athenian financial system were the finest and the most instructive I have ever heard.  What clearness, what depth of learning, what a subtle sense of humour this splendid old man possessed!  I attended his lectures in 1863, and how exquisite were the allusions to the by no means satisfactory political conditions of the times with which he spiced them.  I also became sincerely attached to Friederichs, and it made me happy to be able to requite him in some small degree in Egypt for the kindness and unselfishness he had shown me in Berlin.

Bopp’s lectures, where I tried to increase my meagre knowledge of Sanscrit, I attended, unfortunately, only a few hours.

The lectures of the African traveller Heinrich Earth supplied rich sources of material, but whoever expected to hear bewitching narratives from him would have been disappointed.  Even in more intimate intercourse he rarely warmed up sufficiently to let others share the rich treasure of his knowledge and experience.  It seemed as if, during his lonely life in Africa, he had lost the necessity of exchanging thoughts with his fellow-men.  During this late period Heinrich Brugsch developed in the linguistic department of Egyptology what I had gained from Lepsius and by my own industry, and I gladly term myself his pupil.