No More Learning

Of this method he made use in his masterpiece, the Roman
History, which was something very different from a mere assault
on the traditional view of his subject; nor was he, by any means,
the first to impugn the authority of the accepted narratives. On the
other hand, his explanation of that account as mainly due to
the influence of a popular ballad-literature cannot be said to have
ultimately established itself as sufficient. The permanent strength
of Niebuhr's great work lay elsewhere in the force of his
imagination and in his steadfast adherence to the belief in the
moral principles which underlie legal institutions freely adopted
by freemen, as determining the continuance and prosperity of a
political community.
So much it seemed necessary to premise, in order to account
for the impression made by Niebuhr upon Englishmen who, in the
first and second quarters of the nineteenth century, were shaking
off the isolation which, in the preceding period of the great wars,
had kept English learning and letters more or less apart from
continental, and who were eager to breathe the free air of re-
search and enquiry. One of these was Julius Hare, perhaps
best known to posterity by Guesses at Truth (1827), written by
him in conjunction with his brother Augustus. Julius Hare was
1 Wolfs Prolegomena ad Homerum appeared, Latin, in 1795. Boeckh's Public
Economy of Athens was translated into English in 1828 by (Sir) G. Cornewall Lewis,
and K. O. Müller's Dorians by the same and H. Tufnell in 1830.
? See ante, vol. x, p. 320.
3 In & review, for instance, of Tytler's Roman History published in The Literary
Journal in 1803 by James Mill, a strong protest is made against accepting as true the
record of the Roman kinge, or, generally, of the transactions supposed to have taken
place before the fall of Carthage: which is precisely the position of Sir G. C. Lewis.
9


## p. 302 (#326) ############################################

302
[CH.
Historians
an early lover of German literature, with which he had first
become familiar at Weimar in the classical days of 1804–5. In
1828–32, he united with his schoolfellow and brother fellow of
Trinity, Connop Thirlwall, in publishing a translation of Niebuhr's
Roman History. Their first volume was vehemently denounced
in The Quarterly Review' as the product of scepticism; so that, in
1829, Julius Hare put forth a Vindication of Niebuhr's History
from these charges. Another follower of Niebuhr was Thomas
Arnold, headmaster of Rugby from 1827, to whom Niebuhr himself
ascribed the first introduction of his Roman History to the British
public? Arnold, on first becoming acquainted, in his studious days
at Laleham, with Niebuhr's work, had been reluctant to accept all
his conclusions, but had gradually grown unwilling to dissociate
himself from any of them. In 1827, he paid a memorable visit to
the master at Bonn, where he formed a lasting friendship with
Bunsen, Niebuhr's successor at Rome and the zealous transmitter
of many of his historical ideas. Arnold had by this time resolved
upon testifying, after an enduring fashion, to his almost unbounded
admiration for a historian with whose genius his own had
certain affinities—notably, the union of deep religious conviction
with a sturdy liberalism, due, in Niebuhr's case, to the influence of
descent, while, in Arnold's, it was nowhere stronger than in his
view of priestcraft as the fellow antichrist to utilitarian unbelief.
Arnold's interest in historical work had always been great,
and, while, like Niebuhr's, it was closely associated with philo-
logical studies, it particularly directed itself to geographical and
topographical research, in their bearing upon history. He had
begun historical composition with a short history of Greece, which
never saw the lights, and with a series of articles on Roman
1 In a review of Granville's Travels in Russia, vol. XXXIX, no. 77 (1829).
2 This was in an earlier article in The Quarterly Review, vol. XXXII, no. 63 (1825),
which directs attention to the originality of Niebuhr and Mitford, whom it describes as
deserving the credit of the earliest modern discoverers in Grecian and Roman history,
and to whose account of the origin of the agrarian laws, as well as that of the Roman
army, Arnold offers a warm tribute. While deprecating agreement with some of
Niebuhr's paradoxes, he goes on to vindicate the claims of the true, as distinguished
from the false, spirit of enquiry.
3 A History of Greece (1835) was one of the many historical books of Thomas
Keightley, who also wrote a History of the War of Greek Independence (1830) and
a much used Mythology of Ancient Greece and Italy (1831). Keightley, who bears the
responsibility of a considerable proportion of historical instruction in this country in
the earlier half of the century, began, like a good history master, with Outlines of
General History (1815), which held its humble place for many years. It was followed
by a large number of school-books and publications of a kindred description, and, as
a historical writer, he earned the respect of many scholars, together with the gratitude of
a long succession of schoolmasters. The History of Greece, if it may be taken as an
>


## p. 303 (#327) ############################################

Xiv]
Arnold's Roman History 303
1
history from the second Punic war onwards to the age of Trajan?
a period which Niebuhr, had he ever reached it in his History,
would have treated as one of decay. (Arnold's edition of Thucy-
dides, where the topographical element is not wanting, is mentioned
in a subsequent chapter. ) But it was in his History of Rome
that, inspired by Niebuhr's, he first essayed a historical narrative
on a large scale. The book appeared in three volumes, reaching
to the end of the second Punic war (1828—42); the History of
the later Roman Commonwealth followed posthumously, in 1845.
It is, of course, above all in the earlier parts of the work that the
spiritus of his great exemplar dominates the scene.
'I need not tell you,' Arnold writes to Bunsen in 1836, 'how entirely 1 have
fed upon Niebuhr; in fact, I have done little more than put his first volume
into a shape more fit for general, or at least for English, readers, assuming
his conclusions to be proved when he was obliged to give the proof in detail. '
Yet the work, as a whole, was very far from being a mere second-
hand reproduction; his independence of judgment and openness
of outlook would, in any case, have made this impossible ; and it
was precisely in the period before reaching which his predecessor's
narrative breaks off, and in his account of the mighty conflict of
the second Punic war itself that Arnold's powers as a historian
rise to their height. His capacity for military and geographical
expositions and statements here found the amplest opportunity for
display: he loved this side of his task, and, as he writes, “thirsted
for Zama? ' At the same time, no student or writer of history
has ever been more conscious than Arnold of the responsibility
implied in Acton's memorable saying that ‘if we lower our
standard in History, we cannot uphold it in Church and State. '
When speaking, with that inborn modesty which was part of his
constant homage to truth, of the many advantages which he
lacked in carrying on the 'overpowering labour of writing the
history of Rome,' he added :
Yet I feel that I have the love of history so strong in me, and that it has been
working in me so many years, that I can write something which will be read,
example of his particular histories, is not free from slips—possibly not all his own-but
is quite readable. He was a man of many literary sympathies, and his biographical
account of Milton was long in the hands of the public. He was an Irishman by birth
and education, like Dionysius Lardner, to the historical section of whose Cabinet
Cyclopaedia (1829—49) he was a contributor, together with Thirlwall and Mackintosh,
Scott, Southey and Moore, Gleig, Forster and (for chronology) Sir N. Harris Nicolas.
This collection must be distinguished from Lardner's other series, The Critical Library
and from The Edinburgh Cabinet Library, which also contained some historical works.
6
1 These were published (posthumously) in 1845.
? See Life and Correspondence (1844), vol. 11, p. 71.
3 Inaugural Lecture on the Study of History (1895), ad fin.
8


## p. 304 (#328) ############################################

304
[CH.
Historians
and which I trust will encourage the love of all things noble and just, and
wise and lovely1.
This sense of the grandeur and dignity of his theme the
English historian of free Rome took over from the conception and
development of his narrative into its style. Though clearness and
directness of speech were like a natural law to him in all his
public utterances, he told his nephew that it had cost him trouble
so to 'pitch his style’ in his History as to bring it to the level of
his subject; and he afterwards said of his work, in words which it
would be well if some historians not less eminent than he could
have applied to theirs :
I feel to regard the History more and more with something of an artistic
feeling as to composition and arrangement of it-points on which the ancients
laid great stress, and I now think very rightly?
a
To the great satisfaction of what was already an important
part of Oxford, Arnold was, in 1841, appointed regius professor of
modern history there, and at once threw himself with his wonted
energy into the fulfilment of his new duties. Although he died in
the following year, he had lived long enough to justify the only
official tribute which his friends in power ever paid to his deserts;
and it is probable that, before very long, he would have exchanged
Rugby, where the chief work of his life had been done, for Oxford.
He had enough insight as well as knowledge to perceive the folly
of attempting to draw a hard and fast line between the civilisation
of Greece and Rome and the progress of what is called modern
history; and it is quite likely that, had his life been prolonged, he
might have carried on his chief work to a much further point (he
had in fact, so far back as 1824, written on the period from
Augustus to Aurelian, which he declared he would not give up to
anyone), or, better still, have written a history of Hellas, to which
his sympathies were, most of all, attracted. But, in his inaugural
lecture, he laid out the ground, in accordance with the accepted
notion of the work of his chair, plainly and unostentatiously, and,
in his first brief course, essayed a survey of the advancement of
civilisation in England, more or less analogous to what Guizot, not
long before, had achieved for France.
1 The concluding part of Arnold's History of Rome (The Second Punic War) was
edited, with notes (1886), by his grandson William Thomas Arnold, who had already
made a name for himself among our younger historians by his Roman System of
Provincial Administration, published in 1879—81, and since twice re-issued.
? Life and Correspondence, vol. II, p. 246.


## p. 305 (#329) ############################################

xiv] Merivalė's Romans under the Empire 305
Arnold's judgment of Niebuhr as a historian of Rome, passed, as
has been seen, from partial doubt into full acceptance; and it
was not till 1855 that, in Sir George Cornewall Lewis's Credibility
of Early Roman History, the conclusions adopted by Arnold were
subjected to a searching analysis, in the light both of their genesis
and of the comments which they had called forth. But this
master of argument did not himself advance to constructive
history.
The history of Rome, from nearly the point which Arnold had
reached, was carried on by a Cambridge scholar who was a sincere
admirer of his and a liberal theologian, although, in general, con-
servative in his tendencies and tastes. Charles Merivale could, in
his old age, from his fair deanery at Ely, look back with satisfaction
on a life in which he had achieved everything that his father would
have wished him to achieve and would, in the son's modest opinion,
have himself achieved with superior distinction. The elder son,
Herman, gained a high reputation by his writings, more especially
on colonial and Indian subjects, and by his services in the colonial
and the India offices? . Charles seemed at one time likely to be
chiefly renowned for pure scholarship-as it was, he had few equals
in Latin verse composition, of which he was, through life, an en-
thusiastic practitioner? But a visit to Rome in 1845, when he is
found taking careful notes of the impression made on him by the
imperial portrait-busts, seems to have finally confirmed in him the
idea of writing a history of Rome from the Social war to Con-
stantine, and thus bridging, as it were, the interval between
Arnold (Niebuhr) and Gibbon. By the close of 1846, he had
nearly completed the first volume. In 1848, he accepted the
rectory of Lawford near Manningtree in Essex ; and here—in the
quiet Constable country—he finally matured the scheme of his
magnum opus; benefiting much by the counsel of his old college
friend, William Bodham Donne, a fine scholar and sound critic? .
The first volume of The History of the Romans under the Empire
was published in 1850, and the last in 1864. The first three volumes
were so successful that, after in vain seeking to secure feminine
aid to this end, he epitomised them under the title The Fall of
the Roman Republic (1853). A better book of the kind, sober
1 See bibliography in a later volume.
? He published, in 1863, a Latin version of Keats's Hyperion.
3 Donne, the schoolfellow and friend of Edward FitzGerald, and, in turn, librarian
of the London Library and deputy examiner of plays, wrote not a little, including
Essays on the Drama, worthy of preservation.
E. L. XII. CH, XIV.
20


## p. 306 (#330) ############################################

306
[ch.
Historians
and stimulating at the same time, never blessed a generation of
schoolmasters and schoolboys, no longer satisfied with Keightley
and only on the eve of a flow of up to date students' manuals.
Merivale afterwards brought out a short General History of
Rome (1875), besides subsidiary contributions to the history of the
empire. The most interesting of these, as taking wide views of
a great historical problem which famous predecessors had treated
after their own fashion, is to be found in the companion Boyle
lectures, The Conversion of the Roman Empire (1864) and The
Conversion of the Northern Nations (1866).
Merivale's chief book, if it does not quite bear out the com-
parisons which gratified the author in his old age, is a history of
high merit and enduring value, composed in a style of simple
dignity and dealing, in a spirit of both candour and justice, with
the many difficult moral as well as intellectual problems which,
in its course from Tiberius and, indeed, from Tacitus himself,
downwards, call for solution. The narrative is based on an intimate
knowledge of contemporary literature. Merivale, to begin with,
was a close student of Cicero, whose Life and Lettergby Abeken
he translated into English (1854); before this, he had edited
Sallust (1852); and he was not less familiar with Tacitus and
Suetonius than he was with his beloved Lucan and Statius.
edited Thus, his History was as free from pragmatic dryness and
preconceived onesidedness as it was from mere fine writing,
which his reserved and rather humourous nature abhorred. On
the other hand, he was lacking in complete command of the
primary sources of Roman history and had only partially investi-
gated the unwritten remains of Roman life and its surroundings.
He was pre-Mommsen in his unavoidable neglect of epigraphic
material, and could not, in most cases, bring to bear upon his
theme the observation of a traveller. While, in these respects, he
a
still belonged to an older school of historians, he shared with the
newer their freer outlook upon men and things, and the single-
minded pursuit of truth by the application of the critical method.
He is no more 'without bias' than is Niebuhr or Arnold, or
any historian whose mind is merged in his work; but the point of
view from which he favours monarchical government is a different
one from Mommsen's. It may, perhaps, be added that Merivale's
Cambridge life had gone some way towards teaching him the
advantages of a knowledge of men as well as of things—though
his fellow Saturday reviewers he had, for the most part, only known,
when there, de haut en bas : no doubt, the correct 'apostolic'


## p. 307 (#331) ############################################

0
xiv] George Long. Thirlwall and Grote 307
ats
2
If
SI
attitude--and that, in his later days, when, as chaplain to the
Speaker, he regularly watched the House of Commons and its
vicissitudes, he found that he had gone through a good preliminary
training in his study of Roman public character and life! .
An authoritative position among English historians of ancient
Rome was long held by George Long's Decline of the Roman Re-
public (1864—74), of which the first volume appeared in the same
year as the last of Merivale's principal work. Long was one of
the most productive classical scholars of his day, and one of the
most trustworthy teachers of general history: besides a long series
of volumes of Charles Knight's Penny Cyclopaedia, published by
the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, he edited the
seven volumes of its Biographical Dictionary, which, although-or,
perhaps, because they covered only the letter A, remained the
one precursor deserving the name of the later Dictionary of
National Biography. Long's qualifications as a historian were
not limited to indefatigable industry: he wrote with lucidity and
judgment, and he had in him a strain of high philosophic morality
such as became the translator of Marcus Aurelius.
The influence of the new school of historical criticism, as well
as that of the great personality of Niebuhr, is conspicuous in both
the English historians of Greece who adorned this age of our
literature. Their labours were almost simultaneous—for Grote's
first two volumes appeared in 1845—rather more than a year
after the publication of the last of Thirlwall's; and, of Grote, we
know that he had been actively engaged upon the chief literary
work of his life for more than twenty years. Although the pair
were schoolfellows, their lives had lain in very different spheres of
mental exertion-college and city; and they long remained quite
unaware of their common devotion to the same subject of special
study. It is all the more to Thirlwall’s honour that, from the
first, he should have welcomed so formidable a competitor ;
while Grote declared that, had Thirlwall's book appeared two or
three years sooner, he would have abandoned his own design. In
much the same spirit, some of the best qualified of judges—
1 See the clear and shrewd judgments in the letters printed in conjunction with
Merivale’s admirable Autobiography, which, unfortunately, extends only to 1880.
? Some reference to Charles Knight's historical publications, the importance of
which for the spread of historical knowledge in wide circles should not be under-
estimated, will be found in the bibliography to a later chapter.
3 Thirlwall's share in the translation of Niebuhr has been already mentioned. Grote
wrote of Niebuhr in The Westminster Review (1843): his ‘moral nature was distinguished
not only by a fearless love of truth, but by a quality yet more remarkable among
literary men—a hearty sympathy with the mass of the people. '
1! !
現
​lil
TS
Trai
w
20—2


## p. 308 (#332) ############################################

308
[CH.
Historians
E. A. Freemand above all-compared and contrasted the two
great English historians of ancient Greece. Freeman, no doubt, is
right in saying that, notwithstanding its relative conciseness, and
the absence of the large excursive element to be found in Grote's
book, Thirlwall’s is primarily that of a scholar rather than of a
man of affairs, and is free from all political passion-generally, to
all appearance, even from political preferences. This unlikeness
is, of course, partly due to the different genesis of the two works :
Grote's was the execution of a great design, gradually but con-
sciously formed, and harmonising with the writer's ideals of public
life; Thirlwall's, originally intended for a contribution to Lardner's
a
Cyclopaedia, was at first undertaken as little more than a trápepyov,
and, in its earlier age, inspired by no more ardent ambition than
that of leaving the history of Greece in some respects in a better
condition than I found it. '
Connop Thirlwall, whose literary life had begun with the
publication, over his infant head, of a volume of his precocious
primitiae in prose and verse, had early come to the conclusion
that history and biography are the basis of polite literature’;
but his linguistic gifts were always quite extraordinary? , and
brought him into early contact with many branches of learning.
A version by him of Schleiermacher's essay on St Luke preceded
his translation of Niebuhr, with Julius Hare. In 1831, the two
Trinity fellows jointly founded the short-lived Philological Museum,
in which appeared Thirlwall's masterly essay 'On the Irony of
Sophocles,' which, of itself, would suffice to prove him a critic of
rare perceptive power. Before settling down into the country
living which gave him the necessary leisure for writing the
History of Greece, he had been, very effectively, engaged in
academic controversy and shown that, when he chose, he could
wield a trenchant pen. His History—for of the wise ecclesiastical
statesmanship and immovable sense of duty which marked his
episcopal life nothing can be said here—was worthy of a fully
furnished mind and of a self-controlled character. The progress
of the narrative sustains the reader's interest by a style which
holds him easily and naturally; as it happens, while the
opening of the work is not its most remarkable portion (for
1 See his Historical Essays, 2nd ser. (1873), chapter iv, “The Athenian Democracy'
et al.
2 After his appointment to the see of St David's, he, in six months, mastered
Welsh sufficiently to be able to preach in that tongue; and, when blindness came upon
him at the last, he employed his leisure in rendering passages dictated to him into
Latin, Greek, German, Italian, Spanish, French and Welsh.
6


## p. 309 (#333) ############################################

XIV]
309
Thirlwall and Grote
ethnological research is not held to have been Thirlwall's strongest
point), the later volumes, especially those which treat of the struggle
with Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great, are, in
some respects, more successful than the corresponding portions of
Grote’s narrative. Although his habit of mind was critical, the
author of Letters to a Friend was not without tenderness of soul;
and it would be strange if one of the noblest among the qualities
that distinguished him in life-a consistent hatred of injustice-
were not found reflected in his History. Yet, at times, in his
desire to be fair, he places a curious restraint upon himself, as in
his account of the death of Socrates, following on a more than
adequate tribute to the patriotism of Aristophanes.
Thirlwall, though he cannot be said to have been superseded
by Grote, must, if the highest standard is impartially applied to
the whole historical achievements of both, be allowed to be sur-
passed by him. Grote's is, or used to be, not unfrequently cited as
a signal example of the historical work which has been produced
in England without the training of the academical specialist and
which thus conspicuously exhibits the vivifying effects of a direct
contact with public life and a knowledge of the world, with its
interests and motives of action. Apart, however, from the fact
that, in Grote's younger days, at the English universities, such men
as Arnold and Thirlwall had, virtually, to strike out for themselves
the path of critical historical studies, it should be remembered
that his own training was full and protracted as a student of
both moral and mental philosophy in general, and of those of its
branches, in particular, which are intimately connected with the
philosophy of history. This training was carried on, partly as
a discipline of private enquiry and study, and partly under the
influence of the school or party of which Bentham was the founder
or 'spiritual father,' and of which James Mill was the indefatigable
prophet. Grote, therefore, like those Athenian followers of wisdom
in hall or garden with whom his mind loved to dwell, cherished in
himself those instincts of academic life which have little to do
with degree courses and examinations, and, both in the early days
of the new university of London and during his later official con-
nection with University college, showed the warmest interest in
the advancement of higher studies -
1 See Croom Robertson's notice of Grote in the Dictionary of National Biography,
vol. XXIII (1890). This should be read with Mrs Grote's Personal Life of George
Grote, whioh shows how deeply the creative energy of Grote was indebted to his wife's
sympathetic devotion.


## p. 310 (#334) ############################################

310
Historians
[CH.
To the arduous service exacted from Grote in his early
manhood by the important banking-house with which he was
connected by birth was added a political activity extending from
1820, when he came forward with a temperate Statement of the
Question of Parliamentary Reform in response to an Edinburgh
article by Sir James Mackintosh, to his final retirement from
parliament in 1842. He had been elected for the City at the end
of 1831, having, at the beginning of the year, in a second pamphlet,
The Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, re-stated those political
principles to which he consistently adhered, and which included
the advocacy of secret and frequent elections. But, so early as
1823, he had been so deeply interested in the study of Greek
history that his wife's suggestion, 'Suppose you try your hand,'
instantly caught fire ; and, from this time forward, he engaged
in the collection of notes and extracts towards that end. In
April 1826, in an article, a review of Clinton's Fasti Hellenici,
in The Westminster Review, of which the editor, Dr (afterwards
6
get vid Sir James) Bowring, recognised the unusual value, Grote had
Johnt
taken occasion to examine at length the claims of Mitford's
History of Greece to the reputation which it still enjoyed and
which was fervently upheld by Clinton, and to predict that, should
Greek history "ever be rewritten with care and fidelity, these
claims would be prodigiously lowered. ' Business and politics
alike long prevented him from devoting the necessary time to
his great historical project; but, when, with the requisite leisure,
the day of fulfilment came at last, it did not find him unprepared.
Niebuhr’s influence upon Grote? , and his intimacy with Sir George
Cornewall Lewis, alike led him to enter with very great interest
into the earliest section of the work before him; and March 1845
1 As to Mitford's History of Greece (1785–1810), cf. ante, vol. x, p. 320. Grote's
strictures on the work are unsparing and, while pronouncing Mitford's treatment of
his authorities as unsatisfactory, directly condemn the political tendency manifested
without disguise or mitigation in the whole of it, more especially in the portions
written after the French revolution. Henry Fynes Clinton's Fasti Hellenici: the Civil
and Literary Chronology of Greece appeared in 1824—30, and were succeeded, in
1850— 1, by Fasti Romani : the Civil and Literary Chronology of Rome and Constan-
tinople. After passing from parliamentary into literary life, he devoted an enormous
amount of time to his chronological labours. He seems to have been wholly
incapable of doubt with regard to facts and figures as recorded on the written
page, and, notwithstanding his extraordinary industry and accuracy as a recorder,
must be viewed as a rather belated example of the pre-critical age of ancient history
studies.
2 In 1843 there appeared in The Westminster Review (vol. XXXIX) an article by Grote
on Niebuhr's Griechische Heroengeschichten (1842) which treats with much acumen both
the question of the origin of myths and the Homeric poems in particular.


## p. 311 (#335) ############################################

XIV] Grote's History and other Works 3II
at last saw the publication of the first two volumes of the History
of Greece. Although this instalment of the work was occupied
with the legendary rather than the properly historical part of its
subject, the high merit of these volumes, and the thoroughness
with which they applied the critical method to Hellenic mythology,
ensured to them an immediate success; Hallam, though far more
conservative as a critic than Cornewall Lewis, with whom he joined
in according a warm welcome to Grote's production, declared
that he had never known a book take so rapid a flight to the
highest summit. Although the earliest portion of the work is,
perhaps, in some respects, less conclusive than the body of the
historical narrative that follows, it bears upon it, like the rest,
the stamp of both independence and freedom of judgment. The
review of the Homeric problem, following on the general survey of
Greek mythology, specially exemplifies these qualities and offers
a good test of Grote's powers as a critical scholar.
The remaining volumes appeared in a fairly regular and quick
sequence; the circumstance that the twelfth and last volume,
published in 1856, was three years behind the eleventh being due
partly to the labour entailed by the revision of the previous
volumes for later editions, partly, perhaps, to uncertainty in the
author's mind as to the ultimate limits of the work. During its
progress, it absorbed his literary labours almost entirely; in 1847,
however, when on the eve of giving to the world its most vital
portion, the review of the history of the great Athenian democracy,
he spared time to put on paper his views as to the progress of the
earliest of the series of revolutionary movements in mid-nine-
teenth century Europe, the conflict between the Swiss confedera-
tion and the Sonderbund. As the historian of Greece drew
nearer to the close of his work, he finally made up his mind to
reserve for fuller treatment in a separate book the philosophy which
he expounded in Plato and the Companions of Sokrates (1865);
but he did not, as he had at first intended, proceed to a complete
examination of the philosophy of Aristotle? His historical work
?
proper had come to an end some time before his death. Yet,
he may be esteemed happy in that he ended his intellectual life
i Grote's Seven Letters on the Recent Politics of Switzerland were the product of
& visit to that country in the late summer of 1847. His sympathies, of course, were
with the liberal cantons ; but the Letters showed discrimination as to the faults on
both sides, and gained the approval of a very clear-sighted judge of contemporary
politics, queen Victoria's consort prince Albert.
See bibliography.


## p. 312 (#336) ############################################

312
[CH.
Historians
where he had begun it; for, if other great historians have reared
their historical works on the substratum of philological, legal or
other studies, with him it was divine philosophy' which had
suggested the ideals that were before him in his narrative of
Greek, or, perhaps, it might better be said of Attic, life and thought.
He died on 18 June 1871. He had refused Gladstone's offer of
a peerage; but he was buried in Westminster abbey, and a bust
of him was erected there.
Of the criticisms to which Grote's great work, as a whole, has
been subjected, two seem specially deserving of notice, since, at
the same time, they point to characteristics from which it derives
much of its value, and not a little of the power of attraction
which it exercises. For, notwithstanding its undeniable longueurs,
and a certain formlessness, due to the contempt for the artifices of
composition and style observable in Grote as in nearly all the
members of the philosophical school which he followed, the
History has a fascination of its own from which few will escape
who read consecutively at least the last ten volumes. Grote's
work-with the exception, if it be such, of its first two volumes-
is, practically, political. Herein lies at once its strength and its
limitation. The investigation of the origines of Hellenic national
life (partly, no doubt, in consequence of the condition, in his
younger days, of philological and ethnological science) hardly
entered into the range of his closer studies; while it would have
been equally out of keeping alike with his natural gifts and with
the unimaginative atmosphere in which his own intellectual
powers had ripened that he should have been able to give colour
and glow to his picture of Periclean Athens, albeit the very centre
of his entire History. As to the former restriction, apart from
the drawbacks chargeable on the period of learning to which he
belonged, it is much to his credit that, in discussing ethnological
problems, he should not have surrendered his judgment even to
the authority to whose guidance he was under the greatest
obligation, as in the case of K. 0. Müller and his Dorians. In
the matter of pure scholarship, Grote had to undergo (and could
afford to undergo) attacks like those of Richard Shilleto. But
there was some force in the broader-minded criticism that, in his
attention to political problems and the phenomena of the working
out of these, he neglected social and economic conditions.
And,
since the history of the Athenian democracy was, to him, the very
heart and kernel of the history of Greece, it must be allowed that
this way of looking at his subject causes a certain impression


## p. 313 (#337) ############################################

XIV] Grote and the History of Athens 313
of incompleteness in his great work, although, of course, inasmuch
as a history is not a handbook, he was wholly within his rights in
determining what ground that work should cover. At the same
time, it is difficult not to think that Grote's republican instincts,
to which we owe his sympathetic account of Epaminondas, pre-
judiced his general view of the Macedonian period, and of
Alexander the Great in particular, if it did not, as Merivale para-
doxically put it, cause him to break off his story just where 'it
became interesting? ?
But in what, as has been hinted, may be regarded as the main
thread in the woof of his fabric, in the history of Athens and of her
constitution, and of its influence upon the destinies and the
achievements of the Athenian people, Grote accomplished a
ktínua és del, which communicated its qualities to the whole of
his historic work, and which, whatever exceptions may be taken
to some of the details of the narrative, remains, and probably
always will remain, without a parallel. The age of political
reform, or of aspirations for reform, throughout Europe, and
the mind of a reformer familiar with the struggle on behalf of
high political inspirations, or reaching out for the realisation of
ulterior ideals—these both live in Grote's volumes and give life to
them. Athenian history had been miswritten from the days of
Xenophon to those of Mitford; and the strength of a great writer,
of whose nature political thought and political endeavour had
come to form part, was required to redress the balance. Grote's
love of liberty joined with his fundamental sense of justice in
producing a sympathetic though candid relation of the progress
of the Athenian constitution and of Athenian public life from
Clisthenes to Pericles, in whom this progress reached its height;
and nowhere does that sense of justice shine forth more con-
spicuously than in his temperate, though still sympathetic, narrative
of the ensuing decline. He refuses to set down the sophists as
agents in this decline, or to draw a contrast between them and
Socrates, whom he shows to have been, though generously dis-
tinguished from them in some respects, yet essentially one of
their body. Thus, he is neither daunted nor depressed by the view
of earlier historians, but rather stimulated to opposition, though,
even in opposition, he maintains his fairness and his self-control.
On Grote's work was largely founded The History of Greece
by George William Cox (who, in his later years, assumed the title of
baronet), also known by the part taken by him in ecclesiastical
1 Cited by Gooch, History and Historians, ete, p. 318.


## p. 314 (#338) ############################################

314
Historians
[ch.
controversies, more especially in that concerning bishop Colenso,
whose life he wrote. Cox was associated with Freeman in their
early publication of Poems Legendary and Historical (1850), and
afterwards gained a considerable reputation by a succession of
popular historical volumes. Perhaps the most striking part of his
History of Greece is to be found in its mythological chapters,
where he followed Max Müller's method of interpretation, which
he carried to a great length in other books; as a whole, the History
has not achieved a lasting reputation.
The most notable contribution to the history of Greece
since the appearance of Grote's work, which it can claim the
honour of supplementing worthily, is George Finlay's History of
Greece from its conquest by the Romans to the present time
(146 B. C. -A. D. 1864). Such is its title in the collective Oxford
edition, which includes the successive Histories of Greece under
the Romans, of the Byzantine and Greek Empires and of Greece
under Othoman and Venetian domination. The subject of this
voluminous narrative, which, in part, was treated afresh in a separate
work—the History of Greece from the Conquest by the Crusaders
to that by the Turks, and of the Empire of Trebizond (the eastern
provinces of the Byzantine empire) was continued by the same
indefatigable pen in a History of the Greek Revolution. In certain
stages of the revolution, including Byron's difficult experiences at
Mesolonghi, Finlay had in his early manhood taken some part.
After the advent of Capodistrias as president of Greece under
the protection of the great powers had at last seemed to offer
the prospect of a settled condition to the heroic little country,
he resolved to take up his abode there, hoping to 'aid in
putting Greece into the road that leads to a rapid increase of
production, population, and material improvement. ' When, he
adds in his brief autobiography, he had wasted as much money as
he possessed, he 'turned his attention to study, and planned
writing a true history of the Greek Revolution in such a way as
to exhibit the condition of the people' and to be of real use to
future generations. Thus, his work, like certain other celebrated
histories, but after a fashion of its own, and on the primary basis
of actual dearly-bought experience, went back from the near to
the remoter past ; but, however em bittering may have been the
disappointment with which this single-minded and noble-hearted
student looked back upon his literary labours as well as upon his
experiences as a landowner, he would not allow these feelings
to narrow his horizon or to depress his historical standpoint,
a


## p. 315 (#339) ############################################

xiv]
315
Freeman's Federal Government
although he took into consideration the social, as well as the
political, side of his subject. His History begins with a tribute
to the effects of the conquests of Alexander the Great, highly
valued by Freeman (to whom, it may be observed, Finlay's reputa-
tion as a historian was not a little indebted); and the students,
now many and distinguished, of the history of that Byzantine
empire which, as Freeman says, may claim Alexander as its
founder, will not refuse to recognise in Finlay a pioneer among
those who have essayed the continuous, as well as the exact,
treatment of an all but incomparable theme. In his later years,
Finlay, whose entire work stretches over more than two thousand
years, engaged largely in journalism, without, however, at any
time abandoning the main interest of his life's work. Un-
fortunately, his letters from Greece, of which the most important
were addressed to The Times from 1864 to 1870, bave never
been collected in his native country ; or they would form a
characteristic, though depressing, epilogue to the story of the
great decline and fall, followed by a truncated risorgimento,
which he made it the chief business of his later life to unfold.
Although, as will be shown in a subsequent chapter, many
English scholars and antiquaries have, by their researches and
criticisms, rendered great services to the study of ancient history,
and strengthened its foundations while widening and diversifying
its scope, the historians who have more particularly devoted them-
selves to this field of labour have not been numerous.
partly be due to a narrowing of the field, by fencing off the
prehistoric section, and leaving it mainly, though not exclusively,
in the first instance, to the archaeologist; partly, it is accounted for
by the preponderating attention given, in the second and third
quarters of the century, to medieval historical research and in-
vestigation, largely because of the popularity of the romanticists
in our literature. By the side of the names already mentioned,
that of Edward Augustus Freeman would have been more con-
spicuous than it is had not-primarily through his love of
architecture—these medieval influences long sought to claim him
as their own. His work as a historian will thus, as a whole, be
more appropriately estimated in a later volume. But, in the first
and only published volume of his History of Federal Government
(1861), written when he was at the very height of his productivity,
and intended as but the first instalment of a work comprising,
also, the history of federalism in medieval and modern times
(inclusive of the Swiss and German leagues, the United Provinces
This may


## p. 316 (#340) ############################################

316
[ch.
Historians
of the Netherlands and the United States of America), he produced
a memorable work on a notable subject of ancient history.
He was careful to insist on his proper theme being, not the
history, or even the military history, of a period, but the history
of an idea in its actual development. In the same spirit, he
abstained from identifying himself, like other historians, great or
not, of Greece, with party or faction ; with the result that few,
if any, of his books are so instructive as this, the beginning
of what might have proved one of the most important of consti-
tutional histories. Among Freeman's Historical Essays, those of
the second series (published in 1873), devoted to ancient history,
have a freshness and, so to speak, an ease of manner which mark
them out among his contributions to periodicals. Finally, his
History of Sicily (1891–4), almost uniquely fitted as the theme was
for illustrating his favourite dogma of the unity of history! , offered
him an opportunity of returning to his Greek studies. He carried
on the work, though not completely, to the death of Agathocles
(300 B. C. ), and the fourth volume was piously edited by his
son-in-law (Sir) Arthur Evans. From this point, it was to have
proceeded to the Roman, and thence to the Norman, conquest of
Sicily, so that Roger was to take his place by the side of Gelon.
This fragment in four volumes, owing not a little to the stimulating
influence of personal observation”, is one of the most enjoyable of
Freeman's books, and will survive by the side of works which have
treated the subject of ancient Sicily with greater completeness and
with more marked attention to its singularly attractive literary
side.
Although Freeman's History of Sicily throws much light on
the history of Carthage, the later centre of Phoenician life, it was
no part of his plan to essay a narrative of the whole of her
fortunes-a task which, on a scale befitting its importance, still
remains unperformed? . The history of Phoenicia as a whole,
however, was included in the vast field of the labours of George
Rawlinson, brother of Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose memoir he
a
6
1 'In Sicily at least,' he writes, 'there is no room for an "ancient" school and a
“modern".
2 Freeman repeatedly visited Sicily; so that, as he says, many of the places of
which he speaks in this work were as familiar to him as his own house ; on the other
hand, he found it very difficult to discuss new facts in his reading as he had done when
writing his History of the Norman Conquest.
Among later English writers, Reginald Bosworth Smith (better known as the
biographer of Lord Lawrence) has made it the subject of a useful monograph (1878),
which was able to take advantage of the rather loosely recorded researches of N. Davis.


## p. 317 (#341) ############################################

LE
xiv] George Rawlinson. Sir W. Smith 317
wrote, and whose logical discoveries find mention in a later then
,
kin!
30
Cat
chapter. Canon Rawlinson, who had long taken an active part
in Oxford administrative work, was, by his appointment to the
Camden professorship of history in the university, enabled to
devote himself more exclusively to historical research; but,
already in the previous year, The History of Herodotus (1858–
60) was completed, in which a new English version was accom-
panied by a large apparatus of historical and ethnological notes,
based, to a great extent, on the cuneiform and hieroglyphic dis-
coveries of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Sir J. Gardner Wilson.
During his occupation of his chair, George Rawlinson published a
succession of histories designed to bring home to the public the
general, as well as the particular, importance of recent discoveries
and researches in the near east for the history of the ancient world.
His deeply-rooted conservatism, which displayed itself both in his
contributions to biblical and other theological works and in his
share in the religious controversies of his day also asserted itself
in his historical productions. But it was of service to him, in the
gradual execution of a great design, which sought to cover, in
turn, the history, geography and antiquities of the seven great
oriental monarchies, as well as of Egypt and Phoenicia, by leading
him to avoid rashness and crudity of conjecture, and, in the
earlier of his volumes in particular, to build up foundations likely
to be of use to future historians.
Works on the history of Greek and Latin literature, inclusive
of writings where historical narrative and biography are welded
into an organic whole with literary criticism, must be left for notice
elsewhere. There, notice will, also, be taken, among Sir William
Smith's invaluable aids to classical study, of his Dictionary of
Greek and Roman Biography (1844—9), which materially helped
to advance the study of ancient history on critical lines, and that
of Greek and Roman Geography, which dealt with an indispensable
adjunct to, or, rather, an integral part of, that study (1854—7). His
Dictionary of the Bible was published in 1863; that of Christian
Biography, in which Wace was his coadjutor, from 1877 to 1887.
Henry Hart Milman's History of Latin Christianity, and,
indeed, the whole of his course as a historical writer, connect
uz
aik
Tic
Grid
ir
nes
1 Henry Francis Pelham, canon Rawlinson's successor as Camden professor, was
prevented by temporary loss of eyesight as well as by other causes from completing
more than a fragment of the History of the Roman Empire projected by him; and
nothing but this, together with a volume of Outlines of Roman History and a number
of essays and articles in the same field, remains to attest his unusual powers, though
he did much to advance historical research in and beyond his university.
ಸE 1


## p. 318 (#342) ############################################

318
[ch.
Historians
themselves so closely with the beginnings of critical history in
England, already illustrated in the present chapter from the works
of Arnold, Thirlwall and Grote, that it seems most appropriate to
speak of him here, together with one or two other writers whose
works, in part, cover the same ground as his.
The earliest work with which this rarely accomplished man of
letters and courageous, though at no time other than reverent,
thinker came forward as a historical writer was The History of
the Jews (1839). The 'poet-priest,' as Byron called him, was
already conspicuous among the poetic dramatists of his genera-
tion, as he was among the writers of hymns; and he had
very appropriately filled the chair of poetry at Oxford'. The
History of the Jews had, originally, been written for The Family
Library, and, notwithstanding the candour of whatever came
from its author's hand, gave some indications of the reserve
befitting sober treatment of its subject? . Nevertheless, the book
made its mark, in the words of a wakeful observer, as
the first decisive inroad of German theology into England, the first palpable
indication that the Bible can be studied like another book; that the
characters and events of the sacred history could be treated at once critically
and reverently.
Even Arnold (whose personal feelings as to the Jews could hardly
have entered into the matter) was not altogether comfortable.
But Milman, in whose moral texture there was a strand of un-
common courage, was not dismayed, and, instead of accom-
modating the further work which he had in preparation to the
requirements of the series in which The History of the Jews had
appeared, prepared himself for its execution on a wider basis,
while, at the same time, collecting materials for an annotated
edition of The Decline and Fall. This was published in 1839,
accompanied by a life of Gibbon and selections from his corre-
spondence, and, enlarged and revised in a later edition with the
cooperation of other eminent historical scholars, held its own till,
in our day, it has been superseded in an edition embodying the
results of more recent research. The History of Christianity
from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the
Roman Empire was itself not published till 1840, and was
followed in 1854–5, by the author's magnum opus, The History
1 While holding it, he produced translations from Sanskrit poetry. At a later date,
he published an edition of Horace, and versions of Agamemnon and Bacchae.
2 Grote, in The Westminster Review (vol. XXXIX, 1843), spoke of it as 'written in a
perfectly religious spirit, but exhibiting some disposition to economise the supernatural
energy. '


## p. 319 (#343) ############################################

XIV]
Milman's Latin Christianity 319
6
of Latin Christianity, including that of the Popes to Nicolas V.
This work raised the reputation of Milman as a historian to a high
pinnacle. Froude (who had reasons for knowing Milman's mag-
nanimity) spoke of it as 'the first historical work in the English
language'; and A. P. Stanley described his future brother-dean's
achievement as 'in fact, a complete epic and philosophy of medieval
literature. ' Such praise seems too high; for, while Milman's
book proves him capable of viewing a great subject both in
its historical proportions and in its inner coherence, and of
dealing with its main features and, indeed, with its main
problems in a large spirit of comprehension and of insight into
both men and institutions, it is lacking in certain other qualities.
Of these, in view of Milman's previous literary record, it would
not be easy to explain the absence, if such deficiencies always
admitted of explanation. In a word, Milman, in his History,
seems to be without the imaginative force of his great predecessor,
which, in Gibbon, reflected itself in the mirror of a truly grand
style, such as, perhaps, no other subject could have so appro-
priately sustained. On the other hand, no commendations could
be more just than those which, so long as the book continues
to be read, will continue to be bestowed on its breadth and
generosity of judgment—the qualities of which ecclesiastical
history frequently stands in need, but with which the writers of
it are too often insufficiently endowed. It was the possession of
these gifts which led no less competent a judge than Milman's
later successor at St Paul's, dean Church, to express the wish that
Milman should undertake a history of the reformation-a subject
perhaps less august than that chosen by him, but one with which
no man dwelling between Rome and the remote regions of Britain
could have been more safely trusted than Milman to treat loftily,
perspicuously, fearlessly, justly.
The verdict of the world--the clerical world in especial-was,
at first, less favourable, or, at all events, less articulate. But, in
1849, Lord Russell (he, too, not wanting in courage) promoted
Milman from the Westminster canonry held by him together with
the rectory of St Margaret's to the deanery of St Paul's, where
he acquitted himself of the duties of his office admirably. At the
time of his death (24 September 1868), his Annals of St Paul's
was passing through the press : in his later years, he had written
a memorial notice of Macaulay (for the Royal society), besides
historical essays of value, which, likewise, were published posthu-
mously. His chief work will maintain its place, because of the


## p. 320 (#344) ############################################

320
[CH.
Historians
great mass of material which, with equal judgment and sincerity,
he has compressed within its limits, and because of the open-
mindedness and magnanimity which are even rarer in the historians
of great periods and problems than is the constructive ability
requisite for their comprehensive treatment.
It is difficult to speak of the eminent historian whose name
stands forth even on the illustrious roll of the deans of St Paul's
without also recalling the brilliant writer and single-minded
champion of religious toleration who, during the last five years
of Milman's life, held the deanery of the sister cathedral, com-
memorated by him, in his turn, in a monograph testifying, at least,
to his desire to identify himself with the great minster committed
to his charge. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, though neither a
great historian nor a profound theologian, deserves to be remem-
bered in the annals of English literature as well as in those of
English public life, primarily in its religious and educational
aspects. His Life of Arnold (1844) is one of those biographies
which will never lose their value; for, although it cannot claim to be
one of the masterpieces of national biography, inasmuch as it fails
to give anything like a complete account either of the man or of
his work, it possesses that kind of unity and force which spring
from an absolute projection of the author into his narrative, which
glows with the noble enthusiasm of a faithful disciple. Stanley's
whole nature was pervaded by the influence of Arnold, and, though
the master's simple, and, indeed, severe, manliness never could and
never can appropriately be made the object of a cult, the example
of his biographer, whose geniality and tolerance were gifts of his
own, proves how potent and enduring was that influence, which
had been ‘the lodestar of his early life. ' This it is which makes
the book, though, apart from the letters, far less rich than many
other biographies in illustrative detail, singularly attractive, and
does away with Stanley's fears that he might, by exaggeration of
language, have done harm to the object of his reverence.
Neither the outward circumstances of Stanley's career, which
ran smoothly, as became that of the kindliest of men, with
the most favourable of family connections, nor the greater part of
his extraordinary activity as a preacher, lecturer and writer, must
detain us here. Marked early for preferment, he found himself a
canon of Canterbury in 1851—the year in which his exertions as
an academical reformer had secured to him the secretaryship of
the Oxford university commission ; and, in the following year,
he started on his memorable tour in Egypt and Palestine, in


## p. 321 (#345) ############################################

XIV]
Stanley's Lectures
321
attendance on the prince of Wales. His canonical residence bore
literary fruit in his Memorials of Canterbury (1854)-four essays,
in which that on the well-worn subject the murder of Becket
attracted attention; and his eastern tour in his Sinai and Palestine,
a historian's book of travel, any defects in which (and it met with
censure in certain very high quarters) may be forgiven in con-
sideration of the force with which it brings home to the reader
the associations, sacred and other, of the land it describes. This
labour of love, generously furthered by aid not less generously
acknowledged, was, like the biography with which his literary life
had begun, entirely congenial to him. Its success, no doubt,
helped to bring about his appointment as professor of ecclesiastical
history at Oxford (1861). His first course of professorial lectures,
dealing with the eastern church, attracted attention by the
oriental character-portraits introduced into the account of the
council of Nicaea, and by other passages. Then followed two
series of lectures on the history of the Jewish church (from
Abraham to Samuel, and thence to the fall of Jerusalem), of which
his insight into historical character again forms a most attractive
feature; for the time had passed when, as in Milman's earlier days,
worthy people 'were shocked at hearing Abraham called a sheikh.
At least equally striking in these lectures was the freedom of
critical enquiry which they displayed, though the remark that
what Niebuhr was to Arnold, Ewald was to Stanley'may, perhaps,
err on the side of overstatement. In 1872 came out Lectures
on the Church of Scotland, delivered at Edinburgh ; to Memorials
of Westminster Abbey (1867) reference has already been made.
The book was criticised, with some severity, by Freeman, whose
review was, at first, attributed to Green; on the other side
may be remembered, as a notable tribute to the encouragement
derived from Stanley by many students, that Green was not only im-
pelled to historical work by Stanley's Oxford lectures, but declared
that it was from these that he first learned the principle of fairness.
Stanley's successor in his Oxford chair, William Bright, will
be remembered, if only for his extraordinary industry in the
amassing of materials, which he arranged with so much lucidity
that his History of the Church, A. D. 315—451 (1860) has been
accepted as a standard manual for theological students. Although
this book was composed for the special purpose it has fulfilled, and
is unfrequently illuminated by sayings so fine as that concerning
Constantine the Great, who, while he gave much to his religion,
did not give himself,' the author writes with a suppressed, but, at
21
a
E. L. XII.
CH. XIV.


## p. 322 (#346) ############################################

322
Historians
[CH. XIV
times, caustic, zeal that appears to have been one of his character-
istics. His Chapters of Early English Church History (1878),
though full of learning, are less attractive. He was, also, a hymn-
writer of much power.
From a different point of view than that of Milman, and with
an amplitude of detail such as would hardly have commended
itself to the historian of later Christianity, or even to him
of The Decline and Fall itself, Thomas Hodgkin undertook the
task of supplementing the vast enterprise of Gibbon, where it un-
doubtedly fell short of the historical learning of the present age.
Having, like Grote, been trained in the responsibilities of the
higher spheres of business, it was not till a relatively advanced
stage of his life that Hodgkin first came before the historical public
in an attempt to introduce to wider circles the letters of the chief
extant authority on Roman life under Gothic dominion, the great
Theodoric's circumspect minister Cassiodorus (1886), whose works
have found a notable editor in Mommsen. After this, during
nearly twoscore years (while some of his earlier publications
marked the gradual advance of his labours) he carried out the task
which he had set himself, and which covered the entire period
from the partition of the Roman empire between Valens and
Valentinian to the death of Charles the Great. The eight volumes
entitled Italy and her Invaders were complete in 1899. During
the execution of this great undertaking his enthusiasm had never
deserted him, either in the main course of his narrative or the
many side-paths into which his unflagging desire for knowledge
diverted his researches, aided by his experiences as a traveller.
He was an accomplished archaeologist and a most attractive
historical topographer, who had thus good reason for the sympathy
which he felt with the genius of Ernst Curtius. His personal
preferences, nevertheless, inclined to the medieval type of historical
writing, and he was at least a chronicler, something after the
manner of Barante, rather than a critical historian, and loved to
reproduce at length the flow of the sources of which his learning
had enabled him to appreciate the value. Thus, his narrative was
wont to run into a lengthiness which was not altogether redeemed
by the general charm of his style. Hodgkin, besides publishing
some shorter pieces, contributed to The Political History of
England a well-written volume on the period before the Norman
conquest and composed an interesting monograph on the founder
of the religious body to which he belonged and with whose spirit
of humankindness he was signally imbued.


## p. 323 (#347) ############################################

1
T
CHAPTER XV
it:
012
ܕ
SCHOLARS, ANTIQUARIES AND BIBLIOGRAPHERS
CLASSICAL SCHOLARS
2
re
zu er
a
EARLY in the nineteenth century the most notable name in
the world of classical scholarship was that of Richard Porson. A
son of the parish clerk at East Ruston, near North Walsham, in
Norfolk, he was born in 1759, and gave early proof of remarkable
powers of memory. Thanks to the liberality of his friends, his
education, begun in the neighbourhood of his birthplace, was
completed at Eton and at Trinity college, Cambridge. He was
elected Craven scholar in 1781, and first chancellor's medallist
and fellow of Trinity in 1782. Ten years later, he lost his fellow-
ship, solely because of his resolve to remain a layman; but, once
more, his friends raised a fund which provided him with an annual
income of £100, and, in the same year, he was unanimously elected
regius professor of Greek, the stipend at that time being only
£40. He lived mainly in London, where his society was much
sought by men of letters. In November 1796, he married the
sister of James Perry, editor of The Morning Chronicle, but he
lost his wife in the following April. In 1806 he was appointed
librarian of the London Institution, with a salary of £200 a year;
and, in 1808, he died. He was buried in the ante-chapel of his
college. In the same building is his bust by Chantry. His portrait el
by Kirkby is in the dining-room of Trinity lodge; that by Hoppner,
which has been engraved by Sharpe and by Adlard, is in the
university library.
The first work that made him widely known was his Letters to
Travis in 1788–9. Archdeacon Travis, in his Letters to Gibbon,
had maintained the genuineness of the text as to the 'three that
bear record in heaven' (1 St John v 7). Porson gave ample
proof of its spuriousness, partly on the ground of its absence from,
practically, all the Greek manuscripts. He thus supported an
fta
heter
atire
telesa
ches
Vio
fort
21–2


## p. 324 (#348) ############################################

324
[CH.
Greek Scholars
3
opinion which had been held by critics from the days of
Erasmus, and had recently been affirmed afresh by Gibbon', who
regarded Porson's reply as 'the most acute and accurate piece of
criticism since the days of Bentley. '?
This was immediately followed by Porson's preface and notes
to a new edition of Toup's Emendations on Suidas (1790). It was
by a copy of that critic's Longinus, presented to Porson in his
boyhood by the headmaster of Eton, that the great Greek scholar
had been first drawn to classical criticism. He also owed much to
the influence of Bentley. "When I was seventeen,' he once said,
'I thought I knew everything; as soon as I was twenty-four, and
had read Bentley, I found I knew nothing. ' He calls Bentley's
, .
work on Phalaris an 'immortal dissertation'4; he is said to have
wept with delight when he found that his own emendations of the
text of Aristophanes had been anticipated by Bentley, and the
correctness of many of these emendations was confirmed by the
subsequent collation of the famous manuscript at Ravenna.
In 1783 he had been invited by the syndics of the Cambridge
university press to edit Aeschylus, but his offer to visit Florence
with a view to collating the Laurentian manuscript was unfortu-
nately rejected, the chairman of the syndics gravely suggesting that
‘Mr Porson might collect his manuscripts at home. ' The syndics
had also unwisely insisted on an exact reprint of the old and
corrupt text of Stanley's edition of 1663, and Porson naturally
declined the task. Porson's partial revision of the text was printed
by Foulis at Glasgow in 1794, but was not published until 1806;
meanwhile, his corrections were surreptitiously incorporated in a
folio edition, fifty-two copies of which were printed by the same
firm in 1795 ; but in neither edition was there any mention of
Porson's name.
His masterly edition of four plays of Euripides began in 1797
with the Hecuba; it was continued in the Orestes (1798) and
Phoenissae (1799), and in the Medea (1801), where the editor's
name appears for the first time. It was from Porson's transcript
of the Medea, still preserved in the library of his college, that
the so-called “Porson type' was cut for the university Press. In
the preface to his edition of the Hecuba, he settled certain points
of Greek prosody in a sense contrary to that of Hermann's early
1 Decline and Fall, chap. XXXVII, notes 117-122.
* Miscellaneous Works, vol. 1, 159.
3 Luard, H. R. , in Cambridge Essays, 1857, p. 169 n.
4 Note on Medea, 139 f.
6 Luard, 1. c. p. 153.
6 David Murray's R. and A. Foulis, 1913, pp. 121 f.


## p. 325 (#349) ############################################

Xv]
325
Porson
treatise on metres, but without complete proof. In 1800 Hermann
produced a rival edition, attacking Porson's opinions; and, in
1802, Porson replied in a supplement appended to the preface of
his second edition. This reply has justly been regarded by Jebb
as ‘his finest single piece of criticism. He here lays down the
law that determines the length of the fourth syllable from the end
of the normal iambic or trochaic line, tacitly correcting Hermann's
mistakes, but never mentioning his name.
Porson spent at least ten months in transcribing in his own
beautiful hand the Codex Galeanus of the lexicon of Photius ; in
1796 the transcript was destroyed by fire in London ; a second
transcript was prepared by Porson and deposited in the library
of his college, and finally published by Dobree in 1822, fourteen
years after Porson’s death.
It is to be regretted that Porson failed to finish his edition of
Euripides, and that he did not live to edit either Aristophanes or
Athenaeus. He would doubtless have achieved far more, if the
sobriety of his life had been equal to the honesty and truthfulness
of his character. Parr, writing to Burney, said : 'He is not only
a matchless scholar, but an honest, a very honest man’? ; and
Thomas Turton, the future bishop of Ely, in vindicating Porson's
literary character against the attacks of an episcopal champion of
an unscholarly archdeacon, declared that Porson ‘had no superior'
in 'the most pure and inflexible love of truth. '?
In the study of Attic Greek, Porson elucidated many points of
idiom and usage, and established the laws of tragic metre. Bishop
Blomfield, after speaking of Bentley and Dawes, says that 'Porson,
a man greater than them all, added to the varied erudition and
universal research of Valckenaer and Ruhnken, a nicety of ear and
acquaintance with the laws of metre, which the former possessed
but imperfectly, and the latter not at all. '? Of himself he modestly
said: 'I am quite satisfied if, three hundred years hence, it shall
be said that one Porson lived towards the close of the eighteenth
century, who did a good deal for the text of Euripides.