No More Learning

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. For
Cambridge and for England, he became the creator of the ideal of
finished and exact verbal scholarship, which prevailed for more
than fifty years after his death.
Among Porson's older contemporaries was Samuel Parr of
1 Parr's Memoirs, vol. vii, p. 403.
? Crito Cantabrigiensis, A Vindication of the Literary Character of Prof. Porson,
1827, pp. 347 f.
3 The Edinburgh Review, vol. XVII, p. 382.
• Rogers, Table Talk, Porsoniana, p. 334.
»4


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326
[CH.
Greek Scholars
Harrow, and of Emmanuel and St John's, who was born twelve
years before Porson, and survived him by seventeen.
Head-
master of three schools in succession, he spent the last forty years
of his life as perpetual curate and private tutor at Hatton, in
Warwickshire. He attained considerable distinction as a writer
of Latin prose, closely following Cicero and Quintilian in the long
preface to his edition of a treatise on Cicero written about 1616
by Bellenden, and Morcelli in his stately epitaphs and other
Latin inscriptions. Notwithstanding his extensive erudition, he
accomplished little of permanent value ; but he freely lavished his
advice and his aid on others. Porson spent the winter of 1790—1
at Hatton, enriching his mind with the vast stores of Parr's library
of more than 10,000 volumes. He was described by one who had
surveyed all the literature associated with his life, as one of the
kindest hearted and best read Englishmen’ of his generation? ;
while Macaulay characterised his 'vast treasure of erudition’as
'too often buried in the earth, too often paraded with injudicious
and inelegant ostentation, but still precious, massive, and splendid. '?
Among the minor lights of the age was Gilbert Wakefield,
fellow of Jesus college, Cambridge, whose passion for tampering
with the text of the classics is exemplified in his editions of
Horace, Virgil and Lucretius. His notes on Lucretius are dis-
figured by his attacking 'the most brilliant and certain emendations
of Lambinus' with a vehemence of abuse that would be too great
even for his own errors. '3 His Lucretius was completed in the
same year as Porson's first edition of the Hecuba. Porson "out
of kindness' had forborne to mention certain conjectures on the
text proposed by Wakefield; but his silence led to Wakefield's
1
inditing a violent and hasty ‘Diatribe' teeming with injudicious
and intemperate criticism. In 1799 his treasonable expression of
a hope that England would be invaded and conquered by the
French led to his imprisonment for two years in Dorchester gaol.
During his imprisonment he continued to correspond with Fox on
points of scholarship, and, soon after his release, he died.
Porson had a high opinion of his earlier contemporary, John
Horne Tooke, of St John's college, Cambridge. His reputation
rests on The Diversions of Purley (1786), which certainly excited
a new interest in etymology, and had the merit of insisting on the
importance of the study of Gothic and Old English.
The date of its appearance also marks the birth of the science
1 Baker-Mayor, History of St John's College, vol. 1, p. 540.
2 Essays, p. 642, ed. 1861.
3 Munro's Lucretius, vol. I, p. 19, ed. 1873.
>


## p. 327 (#351) ############################################

Xv] Sir William Jones. Elmsley 327
:
of comparative philology. In that year Sir William Jones, who
had passed from the study of English, Attic and Indian law to
that of the Sanskrit language, made a memorable declaration :
a
The Sanscrit tongue. . . is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the
Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either,
yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and
in the forms of grammar, than could have been produced by accident; so
strong that no philologer could examine the Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin,
without believing them to have been sprung from some common source. . . .
There is a similar reason . . . for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtio
had the same origin with the Sanscrit. The old Persian may be added to the
same family1.
Dr Parr, who died in 1825, writes thus in his diary:
England, in my day, may boast of a Decad of literary luminaries,
Dr Samuel Butler, Dr Edward Maltby, bishop Blomfield, dean Monk,
Mr E. H. Barker, Mr Kidd, Mr Burges, professor Dobree, professor Gaisford,
and Dr Elmsley. They are professed critics: but, in learning and taste,
Dr Routh of Oxford is inferior to none.
Martin Joseph Routh, who was born in 1755, died in 1854, in
the hundredth year of his age, after holding the position of presi-
dent of Magdalen for three and sixty years. In 1784 he edited
the Euthydemus and Gorgias of Plato; he lived to produce the
fifth volume of his Reliquiae Sacrae in 1848, and, at the age of
seventy-two, summed up his long experience in the precept: 'I
think, sir, you will find it a very good practice always to verify
your references. '
Edward Maltby, the pupil of Parr and the friend of Porson,
received valuable aid from both in supplementing a useful lexicon
of Greek prosody, founded on Morell's Thesaurus. Educated at
Winchester, and at Pembroke college, Cambridge, he was succes-
sively bishop of Chichester and of Durham.
The Porsonian tradition passed for a time from Cambridge to
Oxford in the person of Peter Elmsley, of Winchester and of
Christ Church, who was born in 1773 and died in 1825. At
Florence, in 1820, he collated the Laurentian manuscript of
Sophocles, and the earliest recognition of its excellence is to be
found in the preface to his edition of the Oedipus Coloneus (1823).
He also edited the Oedipus Tyrannus ; and the Heraclidae,
Medea and Bacchae of Euripides. As a scholar whose editorial
labours were almost entirely confined to the Greek drama, he had
a close affinity with Porson, who held him in high esteem, until he
found him appropriating his emendations without mentioning his
1 Asiatic Researches, vol. I, p. 422 (1786).


## p. 328 (#352) ############################################

328
[CH.
Greek Scholars
name. In all his editions, Elmsley devoted himself mainly to the
illustration of the meaning of the text, and to the elucidation of
the niceties of Attic idiom. He had also a wide knowledge of
history, and, for the last two years of his life, was Camden
professor of ancient history at Oxford.
Elmsley's careful edition of the Laurentian scholia on Sophocles
was published at the Clarendon press by Thomas Gaisford, who
was born only six years later than Elmsley, and survived him by
more than thirty. He was appointed regius professor of Greek
at Oxford in 1812, and was dean of Christ Church for the last
twenty-four years of his life. He first made his mark, in 1810,
by his edition of Hephaestion's Manual of Greek Metre. He
published an annotated edition of the Poetae Minores Graeci;
but almost all the rest of his work was in the province of Greek
prose. Thus, he prepared a variorum edition of Aristotle's
Rhetoric, and also edited Herodotus and Stobaeus, and the great
lexicon of Suidas as well as the Etymologicum Magnum.
A certain deflection from the Porsonian tradition at Cambridge
is exemplified by Samuel Butler, who was educated at Rugby and
St John's, and was headmaster of Shrewsbury from 1798 to 1836,
and bishop of Lichfield for the last three years of his life. For
the syndics of the Cambridge press he edited Aeschylus, after
Stanley's text, with the Greek scholia, and also with the notes of
Stanley and his predecessors, and selections from those of subse-
quent editors, and a synopsis of various readings. ' It was ably
reviewed by Charles James Blomfield, who described it as 'an
indiscriminate coacervation' of all that had been expressly written
on Aeschylus,' and, many years afterwards, said of Butler, ‘he was
a really learned as well as amiable man, but his forte did not lie
in verbal criticism. He was interested in classic travel, and his
Atlas of Ancient Geography, first published in 1822, passed
through many editions, and was reprinted as late as 1907.
The Porsonian type of scholarship, represented at Oxford by
Elmsley, was maintained at Cambridge by three fellows of Trinity:
Dobree, Monk and C. J. Blomfield. The first of these, Peter
Paul Dobree, was indebted to his birth in Guernsey for his
mastery of French. He edited (with many additions of his own)
Porson's Aristophanica, as well as Porson's transcript of Photius.
He was regius professor of Greek for the last two years of his
life (1823—5). His Adversaria on the Greek poets, historians
and orators, as well as his transcript of the Lexicon rhetoricum
Cantabrigiense, and his Notes on Inscriptions, were edited by


## p. 329 (#353) ############################################

xv] Dobree. Monk. Blomfield. Kennedy 329
his successor, James Scholefield, who, in 1828, produced, in his
edition of Aeschylus, the earliest English attempt to embrace in
a single volume the results of modern criticism on the text of that
poet. While Dobree was a follower of Porson in the criticism of
Aristophanes, he broke new ground as a critic of the Attic orators.
As professor of Greek, Porson was immediately succeeded by
James Henry Monk, of Charterhouse and Trinity, afterwards dean
of Peterborough, and bishop of Gloucester and Bristol. Following
in the steps of Porson and Elmsley, Monk edited four plays of
Euripides, the Hippolytus and Alcestis and the two Iphigenias.
The year of his consecration as bishop was that of the first
publication of his admirable Life of Bentley (1830).
Monk's fellow-editor of Porson's Adversaria in 1812 was
Charles James Blomfield, who edited, with notes and glossaries,
the Prometheus, Septem, Persae, Agamemnon and Choëphoroe.
The Prometheus of 1810 was the first text of any importance
printed by the Cambridge press in the ‘Porson type. ' The best
part of Blomfield's edition of each of these plays was the glossary,
a feature of special value in days when there was no good Greek
and English lexicon. He also edited Callimachus, and collected
(in the Museum Criticum) the fragments of Sappho, Alcaeus,
Stesichorus and Sophron. For the last thirty-three years of his
life, he was successively bishop of Chester and of London.
Among the ablest of Samuel Butler's pupils at Shrewsbury
was Benjamin Hall Kennedy, fellow of St John's, who succeeded
Butler as headmaster, a position which he filled with the highest
distinction for thirty years. Born in 1804, he died in 1889, after
holding the Greek professorship at Cambridge for the last twenty-
two years of his life. His best-known works are his Latin
Primer, and his Public School Latin Grammar. He also pub-
lished, with translation and notes, the Agamemnon of Aeschylus,
the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, the Birds of Aristophanes
and the Theaetetus of Plato. His school edition of Virgil was
followed by his Cambridge edition of the text. He produced
many admirable renderings in Greek and Latin verse, as principal
contributor to Sabrinae Corolla, and sole author of Between
Whiles. His younger brother, Charles Rann Kennedy, is re-
membered as translator of Demosthenes.
The senior classic of 1830, Christopher Wordsworth, nephew of
the poet, travelled in Greece, where he discovered the site of Dodona.
He was afterwards headmaster of Harrow, and finally bishop of
Lincoln. Of his classical publications, the most widely known is


## p. 330 (#354) ############################################

330
Greek Scholars
[CH.
- ,
his ‘pictorial, descriptive and historical' work on Greece. Breadth
of geographic and historic interest, rather than minute scholarship,
was the main characteristic of the able edition of Herodotus
produced by his contemporary, Joseph William Blakesley, ulti-
mately dean of Lincoln.
Edmund Law Lushington, the senior classic of 1832, is
represented in literature mainly by the inaugural discourse On
the Study of Greek, delivered in 1839 at the beginning of his
long tenure of the Greek professorship at Glasgow. Wedded
to Tennyson's youngest sister, he is happily described, in the
epilogue to In Memoriam, as wearing all that weight of learning
lightly like a flower. ' The second place in the tripos of 1832 was
won by Richard Shilleto, of Trinity (finally fellow of Peterhouse),
who soon became famous as a private tutor in classics. A con-
summate master of Greek idiom, he produced notable editions
of the speech De Falsa Legatione of Demosthenes, and of the
first and second books of Thucydides, while his genius as an
original writer of Greek verse was exemplified in fugitive fly-
sheets in the style of Aristophanes or Theocritus. His distin-
guished contemporary, William Hepworth Thompson, regius
professor of Greek from 1853 to 1867, and, for the last twenty
years of his life, master of Trinity, produced admirable comment-
aries on the Phaedrus and Gorgias of Plato, and, by his personal
influence, did much towards widening the range of classical
studies in Cambridge. His dry humour is exemplified by many
memorable sayings, while the serene dignity of his presence still
survives in the portrait by Herkomer in the hall of his college.
Thompson had a high regard for the original and independent
scholarship of Charles Badham, of Wadham college, Oxford, and of
Peterhouse, Cambridge. Badham gave ample proof of his ability
and his critical acumen in his editions of three plays of Euripides,
and of five dialogues of Plato. He was specially attracted to the
school of Porson, and of the great Dutch scholar, Cobet, to whom
he dictated a letter written on his death-bed at Sydney, where he
passed the last seventeen years of his life as professor of classics
and logic.
Among Thompson's contemporaries at Trinity was John William
Donaldson, whose New Cratylus and Varronianus gave a con-
siderable impulse to the study of comparative philology and
ethnology. His name is also associated with a comprehensive
work on The Theatre of the Greeks, an edition of Pindar and
a Greek and a Latin grammar. A volume, in which he contended


## p. 331 (#355) ############################################

Xv] Thompson. Donaldson. Paley.
Cope 331
that the lost book of Jasher formed the religious marrow of
the Scriptures,' caused much excitement in theological circles,
and led to his resigning the headmastership of Bury St Edmunds
school. He subsequently wrote an interesting work entitled
Classical Scholarship and Classical Learning, and translated
and completed K. O. Müller's History of Greek Literature.
Donaldson's younger contemporary, Frederick Apthorp Paley,
of Shrewsbury and St John's, was a man of wide and varied
interests. An eager botanist, and an enthusiastic student of
ecclesiastical architecture, he joined the church of Rome in 1846,
returned to Cambridge as a private tutor from 1860 to 1874 and,
after three years' tenure of a professorship in a catholic college
in Kensington, spent the last eleven years of his life at Bourne-
mouth. His edition of Aeschylus with Latin notes was followed
by an English edition, which is widely recognised as his best work.
He also edited Euripides, Hesiod, Theocritus and the Iliad. An
incidental remark by Donaldson on certain resemblances between
the Iliad and the late epic of Quintus Smyrnaeus led Paley to
maintain that the Homeric poems in their present form were not
earlier than the age of Alexander. In the preface to his Euripides
he protests against the purely textual notes characteristic of the
school of Porson.
Edward Meredith Cope, of Trinity, who was educated under
Kennedy at Shrewsbury, is best known as the author of an
elaborate introduction to the Rhetoric of Aristotle, which was
followed by a comprehensive commentary. William George
Clark, of Shrewsbury and Trinity, published in his Peloponnesus,
in 1858, the results of a Greek tour taken in the company of
Thompson. During his tenure of the office of public orator, from
1857 to 1869, a critical edition of Shakespeare, designed in 1860,
was successfully completed by Clark and Aldis Wright? . Clark's
name has been fitly commemorated by the establishment, at Trinity
college, of the ‘Clark Lectureship in the Literature of England. '
His contemporary, Churchill Babington, of St John's, produced,
in 1851–8, the editio princeps of four of the recently discovered
speeches of Hyperides. He was also interested in botany, and in
the birds of Suffolk, and was Disney professor of archaeology
from 1865 to 1880. Born a year later than Clark and Babington,
Hubert Ashton Holden, fellow of Trinity and afterwards head-
master of Ipswich, edited a school-text of Aristophanes, with an
exhaustive Onomasticon, and produced elaborate commentaries
1 Cf. ante, vol. v, p. 280.
6


## p. 332 (#356) ############################################

332
[CH.
Greek Scholars
6
on three of the treatises of Xenophon, and on eight of Plutarch's
Lives, besides editing Cicero, De Officiis, and two of his speeches.
Kennedy's successor as regius professor of Greek was Richard
Claverhouse Jebb, of Charterhouse and Trinity, who was elected
public orator in 1869, professor of Greek at Glasgow in 1875,
and at Cambridge in 1889. For the last sixteen years of his life
he held the Cambridge professorship, and, for the last fourteen,
was member for the university. He will long be remembered
as the accomplished editor of Sophocles and Bacchylides, and
as the eloquent author of The Attic Orators. His other works
include an annotated text and translation of the Characters of
Theophrastus, an Introduction to Homer, with lectures on
modern Greece and on Greek poetry, and monographs on
Erasmus and on Bentley. A humanist in the highest sense of
the term, he assimilated the spirit of classical literature, and The
Attic Orators revealed to the literary world the fact that one of
the foremost among living Greek scholars was himself an artist
in English prose. His Sophocles has been justly characterised
as 'one of the most finished, comprehensive, and valuable works,
in the sphere of literary exposition, which this age or any has
produced,' and these consummate qualities were also exhibited in
his latest work, his complete edition of Bacchylides. His powers as
a writer of classical verse had already been proved by his three
Pindaric Odes, to one of which allusion was made by the poet
laureate of the day in his dedication of Demeter. The most
brilliant scholar of his time, he unconsciously portrayed his own
gifts, when, in his admirable monograph on Bentley, he translated
that great scholar's declaration that 'wide reading' and erudite
‘knowledge of Greek and Latin antiquity' are not enough for
the modern critic of an ancient author :
A man should have all that at his fingers' ends. . . . But, besides this,
there is need of the keenest judgment, of sagacity and quickness, of a certain
divining tact and inspiration, as was said of Aristarcbus-a faculty which
can be acquired by no constancy of toil or length of life, but comes solely by
the gift of nature and the happy star2.
As member for the university of Cambridge, Sir Richard Jebb
was succeeded by Samuel Henry Butcher, of Marlborough and
Trinity, professor of Greek in the university of Edinburgh from
1882 to 1903, and ultimately president of the British Academy.
Besides producing a compendious work on Demosthenes, and the
1
>
1 Verrall, A. W. , in Biographisches Jahrbuch, Leipzig, 1906, p. 77.
: Jebb's Bentley, p. 210.


## p. 333 (#357) ############################################

Xv]
333
Jebb.
Butcher. Verrall. Adam
earlier portion of a critical text of that orator, he took part in
a memorable translation of the Odyssey, published a critical text
and translation of Aristotle's treatise on poetry, and was the
author of two volumes of suggestive and inspiring lectures on the
genius and on the originality of Greece.
A masterly review of the great qualities of Sir Richard Jebb,
as scholar and critic, and especially as editor of Sophocles, was
written by Butcher's friend and contemporary, Arthur Woolgar
Verrall, of Wellington and Trinity, who, in his own editions of
plays of Aeschylus and Euripides, and in his essays on the latter
poet, gave proof of a singular aptitude for verbal emendation,
and of acute literary insight. Part of the too brief life of Walter
Headlam, of Harrow and King's, was devoted to emending and
translating Aeschylus, while his Book of Greek Verse gave ample
evidence of his taste as an interpreter and an imitator of the Greek
poets. A volume of admirable translations into Greek verse and
prose was published by Richard Dacre Archer-Hind, of Shrewsbury
and Trinity, who also produced excellent editions of the Phaedo
and Timaeus of Plato. An elaborate commentary on the Republic
was the most notable achievement of James Adam, of Aberdeen
and of Caius and Emmanuel, whose Gifford lectures, entitled
The Religious Teachers of Greece, were followed by a volume of
collected papers under the title The Vitality of Platonism, and
other Essays.
In the age succeeding that of Elmsley and Gaisford, Greek
scholarship was well represented at Oxford by Henry George
Liddell, dean of Christ Church, and Robert Scott, master of
Balliol, joint authors of the standard Greek and English lexicon,
first published in 1843. As master of Balliol, Scott was suc-
ceeded in 1870 by Benjamin Jowett, who, in 1855, had succeeded
Gaisford as professor of Greek. His complete translation of
Plato was achieved in 1871, and was followed by his translations
of Thucydides, and of the Politics of Aristotle. All these three
great works were justly recognised as masterpieces of English ;
the rendering of Plato in particular, with its admirable intro-
ductions, has done much towards popularising the study of that
author in the English world. Jowett's contemporary, Mark
Pattison, rector of Exeter, is remembered by scholars as the
author of Isaac Casaubon, and of Essays on Scaliger. His f!
younger contemporary, Richard Copley Christie, of Lincoln col-
lege, and for some years professor in Manchester, wrote a valuable


## p. 334 (#358) ############################################

334
Greek Scholars
[CH.
life of Étienne Dolet, the Martyr of the Renaissance. By the side
of Pattison and Jowett should be mentioned George Rawlinson,
fellow of Exeter, who produced in 1858 a standard translation of
Herodotus, with notes and essays, followed by a series of important
volumes on the great oriental monarchies ! .
An excellent edition of the Ethics of Aristotle, with an English
commentary and illustrative essays, was first published in 1857
by Sir Alexander Grant, fellow of Oriel; and two accurate
editions of the Politics were simultaneously produced in 1854
by J. R. T. Eaton, of Merton, and Richard Congreve, of Wadham.
As regius professor of Greek, Jowett was succeeded by Ingram
Bywater, fellow of Exeter, who held that office from 1893 to his
resignation in 1908. The most important of the works of this
admirably accurate scholar was his commentary on the Poetics.
His valuable collection of some of the choicest specimens of
ancient and modern Greek literature was left to the Bodleian.
Among Jowett's pupils at Balliol was William Gunion Rutherford,
ultimately headmaster of Westminster school. He made his mark
mainly by his New Phrynichus, which, under the guise of a
commentary on the grammatical rules of the Atticists of the
second century A. D. , was really a comprehensive treatise on the
characteristics of Attic Greek.
John Conington, afterwards better known as a Latin scholar,
edited, in the early part of his career, the Agamemnon and
Choëphoroe of Aeschylus, and afterwards completed the Spenserian
rendering of the Iliad by Philip Stanhope Worsley, translator of
the Odyssey. A good translation of the Iliad into blank verse
was published in 1864 by the earl of Derby. Rather earlier,
in 1858, William Ewart Gladstone produced Studies on Homer
and the Homeric Age, the greater part of the results of which
were summed up eleven years later in his Juventus Mundi.
He also published, under the title Homeric Synchronism, 'an
enquiry into the time and place of Homer,' besides producing
a primer on Homer. The Homeric poems were the constant
theme of the devoted labours of David Binning Monro, provost
of Oriel for the last twenty-three years of his life. His Grammar
of the Homeric dialect, published in 1882, was ultimately followed
by his edition of the second half of the Odyssey, with important
'appendices, including a masterly discussion of the history of the
Homeric poems. The Homeric question was also ably discussed
1 As to Pattison, R. C. Christie and George Rawlinson, see a later volume of this
History.
3/
A
is zo'rnaer, sis, 11. 376,64777.