No More Learning

Hare and Thirlwall were as well acquainted as any Englishmen of
their day with German literature, yet they retained a thoroughly
English outlook. They collaborated in the translation and editing
of Schleiermacher's St Luke (1825) and/ of Niebuhr's History
of Rome (1828–32). They both recognised the necessity of
applying the newer historical method to the study of the Scrip-
tures, and were upheld in that view by a belief in the progressive
unfolding of religious truth. If Christians accepted the dispensa-
tion of the Spirit, said Thirlwall, they must believe that 'His later
ii
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## p. 289 (#313) ############################################

XII]
289
Frederick Denison Maurice
lessons may well transcend His earlier. ' He did not expect his
English readers to accept all the conclusions of Schleiermacher,
but
hanya
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27
to diffuse the spirit of impartial criticism more extensively among ourselves
in the study of the sacred writings, when it has hitherto been either wholly
wanting or confined to very subordinate points, was also the translator's
principal object.
'I do not believe,' wrote Hare, 'that there is any other living
man who has done anything at all approaching to what Maurice
has effected in reconciling the reason and the conscience of the
thoughtful men of our age to the faith of our church. ' Maurice
was a religious teacher more than a critic: indeed, for biblical
criticism, he had no great liking or aptitude. Rather, he
was in the true succession to Coleridge and Erskine: the latter's
Brazen Serpent (1831) had helped him, as it helped McLeod
Campbell, to find his gospel. The son of a unitarian minister,
member of a family sharply divided in its religious allegiance,
Maurice believed himself called 'from my cradle' to the pursuit
of unity. He was persuaded, like J. S. Mill, that thinking people
were, for the most part, right in what they affirmed, wrong in what
they denied. He believed that each church party asserted some
great truth, and in The Religions of the World (1847), an early
example of the comparative study of religions in this country, he
showed the same anxiety to appreciate all positive excellence.
But his breadth of sympathy was not indifference or vagueness.
He had nothing in common with the ‘hang theology' air of some
broad churchmen, or with the contemporary shyness of dogmatic
statement. “Theology,' he declared, “is what our age is crying
out for, even when it thinks that it is crying to be rid of
theology. He saw the necessity of clearing current theology
of what he took to be erroneous and even immoral teaching.
He was deeply concerned so to state the doctrine of atone-
ment as not to offend the moral sense, and he resented, as
warmly as Mill, Mansel's suggestion that the justice of God
‘is not the kind of justice which would be expected of men. '
The starting point of all his theology was the love of God,
not the sinfulness of man. This was his best inheritance from
his unitarian upbringing; he remained surer of the infinite
love of God than of any other doctrine, and he examined all
current religious belief in the light of this ruling idea. Here,
he believed, was a gospel for all mankind; any limitation
of it he attacked with an almost savage intensity. He gibbeted
19
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## p. 290 (#314) ############################################

290 The Growth of Liberal Theology [[
CH.
6
his opponents as giving, in effect, Christ's good news in these
reduced terms:
Your Father has created multitudes whom He means to perish for ever
and ever. By my agony and bloody sweat, by my cross and passion, I have
induced Him in the case of an inconceivably small minority to forego that
design.
A divine who could write and speak in this strain showed more
courage than discretion; he was bound to be misunderstood and
mistrusted. He knew himself what to expect; when I wrote
the sentence about eternal death, I was writing my own sentence
at King's College. '
It may be felt that Maurice forced upon the New Testament
language an interpretation of eternal punishment to square with
his belief in the 'infinite' love of God, rather than that he came
to his decision from an unimpassioned study of the text. But he
was a prophet of great ideas, which consumed and fired him, not
an exact student of philology and history. He had, also, that
mystical quality of mind which was lacking in the Oxford
liberals. He sought to read the eternal in the manifestations of
it in time: 'we must have the eternal, which our fathers nearly
forgot. ”
With the same disregard of popularity and the same risk
of misunderstanding, Maurice proclaimed himself a Christian
socialist; 'I seriously believe,' he wrote, that Christianity is the
only foundation of Socialism, and that a true Socialism is the
necessary result of a sound Christianity. But, though both
Christians and socialists hastened to disown him, the direction
which he gave to Christian thinking has been extensively followed,
so that much of what he taught, whether of a more universal
theology or of a truer Christian brotherhood, has become the
commonplace of the pulpit. As his friend Kingsley had hoped,
Christians came to accept the teaching of Theological Essays
(1853) ‘not as a code complete, but as a hint towards a new
method of thought. Maurice was more capable of giving hints
than precise directions, and even the hints were sometimes un-
necessarily indistinct. But he was not wilfully obscure; if he
was less lucid than the Oriel liberals, it was partly because he
was struggling to plumb greater depths of religious experience.
It is characteristic of the changing times to find Maurice
associated with Kingsley and Robertson, in 1851, in giving a course
of sermons in a London church on the message of the church
to rich and poor. Robertson's turn came first; Kingsley was


## p. 291 (#315) ############################################

XIII]
291
Robertson of Brighton
6
inhibited by the bishop of London after delivering the second; and
the third was consequently never delivered. If Maurice was out-
spoken, and Robertson impetuous, 'Parson Lot' was vehement;
when once fairly let loose upon the prey,' wrote W. R. Greg
of him, all the Red Indian within him comes to the surface,
and he wields the tomahawk with an unbaptized heartiness. '
Though Kingsley made no original contribution to theological
thinking, he was a successful populariser of Maurice's teaching,
and applied it to the social questions of the day with remarkable
directness. Nor was he a mere echo of Maurice; his romantic
love of nature and of all things that have breath and his fine
humanity were great gifts for a preacher.
Frederick Robertson's reputation was won in the face of
obstacles. He entered the Anglican ministry without any
academic fame, and, for some years, had neither success nor
happiness, owing to uncongenial surroundings and his own extreme
sensitiveness. For barely six years, he ministered in a small pro-
prietary chapel in Brighton. When death took him thence, in
1853, at the age of thirty-seven, he had published only a few
casual sermons, and yet, already, he was known as a unique
preacher. Five volumes of his sermons were posthumously
printed. Their form is unfinished; some of them are only his
extensive notes, others are the products of amateur reporting. Yet
no sermons of that period, not even Newman's, have found so wide
a range of readers. They are like no other sermons; they owe
almost nothing recognisable to works of theological learning ;
they do not reflect the theology of any master-mind or of any
party. Robertson preserves his independence till it becomes to
him an almost painful isolation. He thinks his own way through
the difficulties, and, though his exegesis may be unwarranted, it is
never uninteresting. He avoids the technical terms of the schools,
and yet his sermons are full of doctrinal teaching, conveyed by
suggestion rather than by dogmatic exposition. A typical example
of his habit of mind is afforded by his sermon 'On the Glory of
the Virgin Mother. He is not content to point out the dangers
of the cult of the Virgin ; its very prevalence establishes for him
the probability that it ‘has a root in truth. '
We assume it as a principle that no error has ever spread widely, that was
not the exaggeration or perversion of a truth. And be assured that the first
step towards dislodging error is to understand the truth at which it aims. It
matters little whether fierce Romanism or fierce Protestantism wins the day:
but it does matter whether or not in a conflict we lose some precious Christian
truth, as well as the very spirit of Christianity.
19-2


## p. 292 (#316) ############################################

292 The Growth of Liberal Theology ([
ch.
An enquiry begun in this spirit could not fail to be constructive
rather than destructive. A generation that felt its doubts acutely
was fortunate to have such men as Maurice and Robertson for its
preachers. While they criticised what they believed to be faulty
or obsolete modes of theological expression, their main concern
was to lose nothing which had spiritual value.
Their influence was more enduring than that of the Oxford
liberals, whose early promise had hardly justified itself. In spite
of their intellectual ability and vigorous self-assertion, the Oriel
men stirred little general enthusiasm, and were soon attracting
less attention in Oxford itself than the second movement which
emanated from the Oriel common-room. The tractarians were in
full reaction against the liberals ; in Newman's eyes 'the great
apostasy is Liberalism in religion. There was, for a while, a
serious set-back and discouragement of free enquiry. Moreover,
the liberal theologians of the next generation spoke with less
confidence than the Whatelys and Arnolds. The difficulties of
faith were increasing under the pressure of many convergent lines
of modern enquiry, and the concessions asked for were heavier and
nearer the heart of Christian teaching. Strauss's Life of Jesus
(1835), which George Eliot translated in 1846, opened anew for
English readers the whole question of the supernatural. The
problems suggested by physical science were hardly less urgent.
Scientific knowledge had been rapidly advancing all through the
century, though its bearing on the traditional theology was not at
first perceived. But queen Victoria's reign had not proceeded far
before there was a more general appreciation of the difficulties of
reconciling new and old ways of thinking. The spirit of doubt,
even if it were reluctant and ill at ease, obtruded itself in poet and
essayist and historian, as well as in philosopher and theologian,
Many who had started in the following of Newman, like Mark
Pattison and James Anthony Froude, instead of following him to
Rome, had recovered from their enthusiasm only to become coldly
distrustful of any authority.
But, while there were many who lost their faith and drifted
into a relation of indifference or positive antagonism to Chris-
tianity, there was also a fresh and vigorous attempt on the part of
those who sought to combine free thinking with a position inside
the Christian church. If the first wave of Oxford liberal thought
had long spent itself, it was followed at some interval by a larger
wave, which made more stir. The new movement bore a new
The label 'broad church' is said by Jowett to have been
name.


## p. 293 (#317) ############################################

XIII] The Broad Churchmen 293
o
नष्ट
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proposed in his hearing by A. H. Clough, and it came into familiar
use in Oxford some years before it received any literary expres-
sion? In The Edinburgh Review, in 1853, W. J. Conybeare spoke
of a third party in the church, which is called Moderate or
Catholic or Broad Church by its friends, Latitudinarian or In-
different by its enemies. ' He described its distinctive character
as the desire for comprehension, and its watchwords as charity
and toleration. An organised party they never designed to be-
come: individual independence was their most treasured right.
There were many, like Maurice, who unquestionably helped to
liberalise theological thought, and yet hated the very notion of
party. But there was a fairly coherent band of liberal clergymen,
linked by academic friendship or for self-defence, who stood
together, both consciously and in the public mind. They advo-
cated a bolder application of critical methods to the Bible than
their predecessors would have allowed, and yet their love for the
Bible was often conspicuous. As preachers or commentators,
many of them exhibited notable gifts for interpretation. The
concerted appearance on the same day in 1855 of Jowett's com-
mentary on certain epistles of St Paul and of Stanley's commentary
on the epistles to the Corinthians, indicated the freer spirit
which was beginning to animate English study of the New Testa-
ment. The freshness of Jowett's treatment, especially in the
dissertations, is still unexhausted. The Pauline terms, which had
become hard and unlovely in the hands of schoolmen and reforma-
tion doctors, are again alive, as Jowett submits them to the
scrutiny of modern psychology. There is, also, an unforgettable
picture of the apostle himself, not more remarkable for its delicate
intuition than for its emotional quality.
A poor aged man, worn by some bodily or mental disorder, who had been
often scourged, and bore on his face the traces of indignity and sorrow in
every form-such an one, led out of prison between Roman soldiers, probably
at times faltering in his utterance, the creature, as he seemed to spectators, of
nervous sensibility; yearning, almost with a sort of fondness, to save the souls
of those whom he saw around him-spoke a few eloquent words in the cause
of Christian truth, at which kings were awed, telling the tale of his own con-
version with such simple pathos, that after-ages have hardly heard the like.
The ungenerous treatment which Jowett received from his
theological opponents at Oxford was enough to discourage him
from further theological studies, and, in succeeding years, Plato
received from him more attention than St Paul. But he continued
to find expression for his thoughts on religion in regular preaching.
See New English Dictionary, 8. v. “Broad. '
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## p. 294 (#318) ############################################

294 The Growth of Liberal Theology [CH.
In his posthumous volumes of sermons, he shows more care for
simple truths and simple duties than for the controversies of the
hour; he encourages a sane and well-balanced outlook on life-
'that is a maimed soul which loves goodness and has no love
of truth, or which loves truth and has no love of goodness'-and
he expresses himself as thankful for his church-membership
in this ancient house of our fathers, with all its faults the best and most
tolerant of the Churches of Christendom, and the least opposed to the spirit
6
>
of the age.
6
Stanley's commentary was full of human interest, but de-
fective, like the rest of his writings, in critical power. He had
many gifts and much miscellaneous knowledge, but never gave
himself wholly to any one branch of exact learning. "What does
this remind you of? ' was Arnold's favourite question in school,
and Stanley was busy answering it the rest of his life. His
Lectures on the Jewish Church (1863–76), and most of his many
books, abound in historical parallels and similitudes, sometimes
felicitous, at other times forced. He had 'a grand curiosity' for
the historical and literary associations of place. He would sooner
describe an heresiarch's country and customs than unravel his
exploded opinions. When he was installed dean of Westminster,
he hailed as a happy omen the ancient admonition that he was set
there ‘for the enlargement of the Christian Church. ' He proved
faithful to his conception of his office in giving the abbey pulpit
a more national character ; the preachers whom he brought there
represented English religious thought of many types. His pub-
lished sermons reflect his own urbane, cultured and tolerant spirit,
his feeling for history and his dramatic sense, but they made no
contribution to the theology of the next generation.
The publication of Essays and Reviews in 1860 made the
broad churchmen a storm-centre as much as Tract XC had done
for the high churchmen. It was not intended, but was generally
taken to be, the manifesto of a party. The volume was, in fact,
the concluding number of a series of Oxford and Cambridge essays,
issued annually. The editor, Henry Bristow Wilson, was a country
clergyman whose Bampton lectures entitled The Communion of
Saints (1851) had already caused him to become suspect. The
seven writers consisted of six clergymen, and one layman, Charles
Wycliffe Goodwin, an Egyptologist who had resigned his Cambridge
fellowship on finding himself unable to take holy orders. They
were soon, by an outraged religious public, dubbed Septem
contra Christum. Replies, in the shape of books and pamphlets


## p. 295 (#319) ############################################

XII]
295
Essays and Reviews
and articles, continued for many months to be issued. Two of the
essayists, Rowland Williams and the editor, were tried and con-
demned for heresy in the court of arches; their acquittal, on
appeal to the judicial committee of the privy council, afforded
a valuable protection to liberty of thought within the church of
England. But it is not hard to account for the opposition to the
essayists. Though many of the essays were blameless and un-
aggressive, the general effect was negative, and some of the essays
were provocative. Maurice complained of the absence of theology
in the volume, and especially of the neglect of the full revelation
of God in Christ' which he believed to be all that was worth
preaching. Stanley, who must have symbolised closely with
some of the contributors, found fault with its negative character:
‘no book which treats of religious questions can hope to make its
way to the heart of the English nation unless it gives, at the same
time that it takes away. The editor gave just offence in his essay,
"The National Church' by betraying a greater anxiety to see the
church national than Christian. Baden Powell, Savilian professor
of geometry at Oxford from 1827, was a survivor from the early
Oriel school, and died directly after the issue of Essays and
Reviews He had already written much on the relations of
theology and science, and in his essay he pressed the uniformity
of nature against the argument for miracle. But for his opportune
death, he could hardly have escaped prosecution. His generation
would never have tolerated his attempt to free Christian theism
from a dependence on miracles. Mark Pattison's essay, The
Tendencies of Religious Thought, 1688—1750,' was, for the most
part, a purely historical survey, and would have avoided criticism
if it had not appeared in the incriminating volume. Jowett urged,
‘Interpret the Scripture like any other book,' and yet maintained
that it would remain unlike any other book.
Scripture has an inner life or soul; it has also an outward body or form.
That form is language, which imperfectly expresses our common notions,
much more those higher truths which religion teaches.
His essay, like Frederick Temple’s, “The Education of the World,
was pious and conciliatory, though both included (what, indeed,
gives unity to the whole collection of essays) a strong plea for free
criticism. 'He is guilty of high treason against the faith,' wrote
Temple, 'who fears the result of any investigation, whether philo-
sophical, or scientific, or historical. ' Yet, the future archbishop
may have had some qualms when he read Rowland Williams's essay
on Bunsen's Biblical Researches. The shock was not mediated by
6


## p. 296 (#320) ############################################

296
The Growth of Liberal Theology
[CH.
the English writer, but rendered liable to cause the maximum of
offence. Williams's Psalms and Litanies, published by his widow
in 1872, proves him to have had a true devotional feeling, and
a desire to enter into communion with the Eternal Spirit, but
it also shows how he consistently reduced ancient collects to a
unitarian standard. Maurice had, indeed, touched the chief defect
of Essays and Reviews, a defect which the lapse of time has
made even more apparent. The disparagement of doctrine, and,
especially, the neglect to contribute anything to the understanding
of the person and nature of Jesus Christ, render it of little service
to a later age, which, like other ages before it, sees that here is the
core of essentially Christian thinking. The true claim of the
essayists to grateful remembrance is that they asserted with one
voice the duty of the Christian church to welcome new truth,
and the right of her accredited sons to make it known. Not in
vain is one of the essayists commemorated on the walls of
his college chapel as a scholar qui libertatem cleri anglicani
feliciter vindicavit.
Public opinion was so far in favour of wider theological liberty
that the acquittal of the essayists in 1864 was followed next year
by the Clerical Subscription act, substituting a general assent to
the XXXIX Articles of religion for the ex animo subscription
'to all things therein contained,' which had been required for two
centuries. There were similar struggles for freedom in other
churches. Scottish theology, which had been eminently con-
servative, became less provincial as it grew bolder and more
critical. In the Free church of Scotland, the biblical con-
tributions of William Robertson Smith to the ninth edition of
the Encyclopaedia Britannica excited a growing hostility from
1875 till 1881, when he was removed from his professorial chair
at Aberdeen. But there was a larger public ready to form its
judgment when he published his popular lectures, The Old
Testament in the Jewish Church (1881) and The Prophets of
Israel (1882). Freed from ecclesiastical ties, he pursued at
Cambridge, till his death in 1894, his original researches into
the primitive religions of the Semitic peoples.
Prosecutions for heresy and indictments of heterodox pub-
lications brought theological questions into general discussion
throughout the 'sixties. The magazines, and especially the new
Fortnightly Review, often provided the arena. The excitement
,
over Essays and Reviews was not allayed before a new quarry
was started by bishop Colenso's free handling of the Pentateuch,
6
>


## p. 297 (#321) ############################################

,! !
297
XII]
Ecce Homo
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which found few whole-hearted defenders in the Christian camp,
partly owing to the author's provocative and unfortunate
manner. It was more difficult for the contemporary orthodox
mind to decide whether the anonymous author of Ecce Homo
(1865) was friend or foe. Like Matthew Arnold's essays and
many other books of the period, Ecce Homo represents the
attempt to save religion in the shipwreck of orthodoxy, and,
above all, to save Christian ethics. Its author, who was soon
discovered to be John Robert Seeley, at that time professor
of Latin in University college, London, intentionally avoided
controversial theology. When he was reproached for 'concealing'
his theological opinions, he replied that he concealed them ‘only in
the sense in which the vast majority of the community have con-
cealed them; that is, he has not published them. ' Seeley took for
granted, as orthodox and heterodox writers commonly did in his
generation, that “almost all men 'could agree upon the Christian
ethical standard. With an engaging fervour and literary grace, he
set before his readers Christ's enthusiasm for humanity,' and
found in it a motive which could still be for Christians a stronger
passion than any other.
Christ raised the feeling of humanity from being a feeble restraining power
to be an inspiring passion. The Christian moral reformation may indeed be
summed up in this-humanity changed from a restraint to a motive.
Seeley regarded Christianity as natural fellow-feeling or
humanity raised to the point of enthusiasm. He did not think
that the world could do without Christ and his Church. Indeed,
he reckoned the person of Christ to be of more account than
anything which he said or did: 'Christ's discovery is himself. The
moral teaching of the New Testament, for instance, the law of
forgiveness, ‘Christ's most striking innovation in morality,' was
commended by Seeley to his generation with greater freshness
and charm than by any other writer. No one could miss his
meaning or ever forget his fine tribute to the distinctive note of
Christian morality.
There was much to discourage the Christian advocate in the
'seventies. Neither science nor culture was inclined to be docile.
Huxley made merry in the monthly reviews, and Matthew Arnold
subjected the defenders of traditional theology to successive
volleys of Gallic raillery. Confidence was restored to the
orthodox ranks, less by the concessions of broad churchmen or
the defence of orthodox apologists, than by the rise of a school
of historical criticism. If the appeal was to be to scholarship, ,
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## p. 298 (#322) ############################################

298 The Growth of Liberal Theology [CH.
6
6
even the general reader would soon see that sound learning and
candour were not all on one side. A notable part in the creation
of an improved theological scholarship was played by three
Cambridge contemporaries and friends, Brooke Foss Westcott,
Fenton John Anthony Hort, and Joseph Barber Lightfoot. The
tractarian scholars had been chiefly interested in the age of the
councils; the Cambridge scholars devoted themselves to the study of
Christian origins. Westcott and Hort's main work was the recension
of the Greek text of the New Testament; Lightfoot was concerned
with the Pauline epistles and the apostolic Fathers. Their work was
timely and valuable, but they would have been the last to regard
it as final. They shared the characteristic belief of the liberal
theologians in the progressive apprehension of Christian truth.
'Let us all thank God,' said bishop :Westcott to his clergy, at the
close of his long life of teaching, that He has called us to unfold
a growing message, and not to rehearse a stereotyped tradition. '
'Christianity,' wrote Hort, “is not an uniform and monotonous
tradition, but to be learned only by successive steps of life. '
Hort's passion for meticulous accuracy and his extreme caution
caused him to publish little, and his shyness stood in the way
of his influence as an oral teacher. Yet his posthumous Hulsean
lectures, The Way the Truth the Life, revealed him as a master
of pregnant phrase. Centuries of speculation on the doctrine
of atonement are arraigned by the terse judgment: “Theologies
which have sundered God's righteousness from His love have done
equal wrong to both. '
While Christian scholarship was thus holding its own, there
was also a welcome escape from the determinist and utilitarian
fashions in philosophy. At Oxford, Thomas Henry Green, tutor
of Balliol, exercised a strong spiritual influence over those
whom criticism was compelling to discard the fair humanities
of old religion. ' James Martineau, of an older generation than
Green, did not publish any of his more important books till his
eightieth year. In earlier life, Martineau had adopted the deter-
minist and utilitarian theories of morals, but he proved their
effective critic in his octogenarian volume, Types of Ethical
Theory (1885).
Three years later, he vindicated theistic belief in
A Study of Religion.
The critical principles for which liberal theologians had had
to do battle were by this time no longer the badges of their
tribe, but were accepted by most educated Christians. For
instance, high churchmen had travelled more than half way from
Hill


## p. 299 (#323) ############################################

XIII]
George Tyrrell
299
the tractarian to the liberal position, when, in 1889, a group of
Oxford friends combined, in Lux Mundi, to make a re-statement
of Christian faith; "it needs disencumbering, re-interpreting,
explaining. ' 'It is the test of the Church's legitimate tenure
that she can encourage free inquiry into her title-deeds. '
Cross-currents of theological opinion have become in recent
years increasingly noticeable. If high churchmen have adopted
a freer biblical criticism, broad churchmen and free churchmen
have ceased to belittle the idea of the church. Theology becomes
more and more cosmopolitan, and oversteps denominational boun-
daries. Even that church which rates highest the principle of
authority has had its disciplinary difficulties with those sons who
seek to create a catholic atmosphere in which the modern mind
may breathe more freely. The modernist movement is yet too
near and unexhausted to find historical treatment, were it not
that its most brilliant English representative, George Tyrrell,
has already written his last word. The title of one of his earlier
books, Nova et Vetera, is a fit symbol of his lifelong attempt to
adjust new and old. His mind was delicately sensitive to every
modern pressure, yet he loved the past and would lose none of its
heritage: 'The new must be made out of the old, must retain and
transcend all its values. ' The very word catholic, said the Abbé
Brémond at his graveside, was music to his ears; he was more
securely catholic than Christian. Now he would be wondering
whether the Christianity of the future would consist of mysticism
and charity, and possibly the Eucharist in its primitive form as
the outward bond’; now he would look longingly back to the
church of his baptism; and yet again give a last loyalty to the
church of his adoption. He was still probing this way and that
for sure foothold when death interrupted his pilgrimage. 'Had
I been Moses I don't think I should have felt not entering the
Land of Promise one bit, so long as I knew that Israel would
do so one day. '
It is inevitable that Tyrrell's career should be compared with
Newman's; he made the comparison himself in one of the latest
6
of his essays.
'Be my soul with the Saints! ' says Newman, looking away from
Anglicanism towards the altars of Rome. But is there not a wider
Communion of Saints, whereof the canonised are but a fraction, and whose
claims are founded, not in miracles or prodigies, but in that sincerity to
truth and righteousness, without which even orthodoxy were nothing worth?
Be my soul with such saints, whatever their creed and communion!


## p. 300 (#324) ############################################

CHAPTER XIV
HISTORIANS
WRITERS ON ANCIENT AND EARLY ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
With the eighteenth century, or, more precisely, in its con-
cluding decade, the last two of its three great British historians
had passed away; and it was as if, beneath the shadow of the
imposing names of Hume, Robertson and Gibbon, no growth of
rival dignity and splendour could venture to rear its head.
During the ensuing years of long-sustained national effort, few
minds cared to concentrate themselves upon a close study of past
public life. Yet, when this period came to an end with the
Napoleonic, that had grown out of the revolutionary, wars, it
was not, in the first instance, a patriotic impulse which turned
attention back to historical studies. Nor, although in our
literature the efforts of the romantic school were then at their
height, and although, both here and in other countries, the influence
of Scott, more powerfully than that of any other poet or prose
writer, changed alike the spirit and the form of historical
composition, were the revival of the study of history and the re-
assertion of the claim of historians to a place of honour among
English writers due, primarily at all events, to an intellectual
reaction. The motive force which, first and foremost, inspired
the new progress of English historical literature in the nineteenth
century is to be sought in what has been aptly called the second
revival of classical learning in Europe, but what may be more
exactly described as the beginnings of later critical scholarship.
In the field of history, the search for materials and the examina-
tion of them now first became an integral part of the historian's
task, without pretending to supersede composition, or, in other
words, the literary or artistic side of his labours. F. A. Wolf had
led the way on which, in Greek historical studies, Otfried Müller


## p. 301 (#325) ############################################

CH. XIV]
301
Influence of Niebuhr
and Boeckh1 followed ; but it was Niebuhr who placed historical
writing on an entirely new basis ; and it was his immortal History
of Rome which first conveyed to his English contemporaries a
clear perception of the uses of the critical method in the treat-
ment of history. We shall, therefore, not go far wrong in starting
in our present summary from near the point at which we closed
that of English historical literature in the eighteenth century? ,
speaking, in the first instance, of English contributions to ancient
history in the nineteenth.
Niebuhr's title to hold a high and enduring place among
historians rests, above all, on his having been the first to apply,
on a grand scale and to an important subject (the growth of the
national life of a great popular community), the critical method
which had become indispensable to the discovery of historical
truth. 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.