absolutely necessary to enable me to get a grasp of them; for I
was stimulated by the desire to reproduce them to myself
dramatically. In this way Greek particularly attracted me,
because the stories from Greek mythology so seized upon my fancy
that I tried to imagine their heroes as speaking to me in their
native tongue, so as to satisfy my longing for complete
familiarity with them. In these circumstances it will be readily
understood that the grammar of the language seemed to me merely a
tiresome obstacle, and by no means in itself an interesting
branch of knowledge.

The fact that my study of languages was never very thorough,
perhaps best explains the fact that I was afterwards so ready to
cease troubling about them altogether. Not until much later did
this study really begin to interest me again, and that was only
when I learnt to understand its physiological and philosophical
side, as it was revealed to our modern Germanists by the pioneer
work of Jakob Grimm. Then, when it was too late to apply myself
thoroughly to a study which at last I had learned to appreciate,
I regretted that this newer conception of the study of languages
had not yet found acceptance in our colleges when I was younger.

Nevertheless, by my successes in philological work I managed to
attract the attention of a young teacher at the Kreuz Grammar
School, a Master of Arts named Sillig, who proved very helpful to
me. He often permitted me to visit him and show him my work,
consisting of metric translations and a few original poems, and
he always seemed very pleased with my efforts in recitation. What
he thought of me may best be judged perhaps from the fact that he
made me, as a boy of about twelve, recite not only 'Hector's