F. Max Müller’s Lectures on the Science of Language brought the new comparative philology to a wide Victorian audience. Delivered at the Royal Institution, these lectures trace the kinship of the Indo-European languages and present language itself as a subject for rigorous scientific study, on a par with geology or botany.
Müller, an Oxford scholar of Sanskrit and comparative mythology, wrote with eloquence and ambition, popularizing ideas about the descent of languages from common ancestors. Though some of his theories were later revised, the lectures shaped how the nineteenth century understood the history of speech and remain a vivid record of philology at its most confident and influential.