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INAUGURAL LECTURE.
OXFORD:
BY E PICKAR) HALL AND J. H. SPACY, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY.
EIGHT years ago Professor Max Müller commenced his inaugural lecture in the Chair of Comparative Philology with this sentence:The foundation of a professorial Chair in the University of Oxford marks an important epoch in the history of new science.' The sentiment and words appear to me appropriate in entering on the duties of
my own appointment to the recently constituted Chair of the Chinese Language and Literature.
every
This is not, indeed, the first Chinese Chair that has been constituted in England. I commenced the study of the language towards the end of 1838, under the Rev. Samuel Kidd, in London University College. The first Englishman that distinguished himself by his attainments in Chinese was the Rev. Dr. Robert Morrison, who went from this country as the first Protestant Missionary to China in 1807, and was the pioneer of English-speaking Sinolo- gists. In 1811 he had completed his Grammar of the Chinese Language; and in 1815 he published the first volume of his great Chinese-English and English-Chinese Dictionary, the last volume of it appearing in 1822. Both of those Works, I may
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