V. CHAP. are worthy of the very highest praise and have secured for him a lasting place among the historians of modern Europe. If his voluminous work, like that of Mitford, is often uninteresting, and it is felt to be a heavy task to get through it, that must be ascribed rather to the nature and complication of the subject than to any defect in the historian; and those only who have attempted any similar undertaking can conceive the extraordinary difficulty of throwing a broad and steady light on such a multitude of minute transactions as Grecian story presents. A more serious, because better founded, charge arises against him from his adopting the Greek mode of spelling in the names of places and of the heathen deities, instead of the Roman, heretofore in use in modern Europe. The attempt is hopeless, and tends only to confuse the unlearned reader. Jupiter and Neptune, Venus and Mars, Vulcan and Diana are too much naturalised amongst us to admit of their names being ever changed; they may be so when the works of Virgil and Ovid, of Horace and Cicero, of Milton and Racine, are forgotten, but not till then. It may appear strange to say that there is equal truth in the monarchical history of Greece by Mitford, and the republican by Grote, but, nevertheless, it is so. Both tell the truth, and nothing but the truth-but neither the whole truth. They each illustrate, truly and justly, the opposite working of the democratic principle on the greatness and sufferings of nations; but neither presents a picture of their united operations, which, nevertheless, was what really occurred, and occasioned the brilliant meteor of Grecian genius, with its simultaneous suffering and rapid fall. 65. Any age might be proud of having given birth to Thirlwall. histories of such sterling merit as those of Mitford and Grote; but it is remarkable that a third on the same subject, of equal merit, appeared at the same time in England. THIRLWALL is an author who possesses the greatest and most valuable, though not the most popular, V. qualities of a historian. More calm and unimpassioned CHAP. than either of those writers, and yet possessing equal learning, he is more to be relied on in matters verging on political opinion than either. His industry is immense, and the calm judgment displayed throughout his elaborate work entitled it to the highest commendation. Some parts of it are extremely interesting. It is commonly complained of as being dull, and there is no doubt the Bishop of St Davids has not the pictorial power of Gibbon or Lamartine. It was scarcely possible, however, to make the transactions of such a multitude of small republics attractive; and if Thirlwall has failed in doing so, it is chiefly because he has thrown the light too equally on every figure in his pieces-a fault as great in historical painting with the pen as the pencil. 66. If the political events and anxieties of the time have caused the history of Greece to be learned in a very dif- Arnold. ferent spirit, and with much greater intelligence, than in any former period of modern times, a similar effect has appeared in regard to the history of Rome; and the world has too much cause to lament the premature death which interrupted the work which was in progress, illustrative of this influence. ARNOLD possessed the chief qualities required to form a great historian. To profound scholarship, vast industry, and unwearied application, he united the rarer gifts of original genius, independent thought, an ardent disposition. Adopting from Niebuhr and the German scholars all that their prodigious labours had accumulated in regard to the early history of Rome and the adjoining states of the Italian peninsula, he arranged their discoveries in a more lucid order, and adorned them with the charms of a captivating eloquence. His mind was ardent in all things; patient, but yet imaginative-bold, but methodical-brilliant in conception, but laborious in execution. What genius had struck out, learning supported, industry filled up, and eloquence embellished. He had a strong bias on political subjects, and, like most V. CHAP. men of an independent turn, inclined at first to the popular side; but he was essentially candid and trustworthy, and the philosophic student will nowhere find more important facts on the practical working of democracy than in his luminous pages. He had great graphic powers, a strong turn alike for geographical description, strategical operations, and tactical evolutions. His account of the campaigns of Hannibal-the best that exists in any language-proves that, like Livy, he was adequate to the history of the majestic series of Roman victories. A critical taste will probably condemn the strange style in which he has narrated the early and immortal legends of Rome, and regret that the charming simplicity of Livy was not imitated in translating his pages; but a generous mind will hesitate to condemn where there is so much to admire, and join in the general regret that the only man who has yet appeared in Britain capable of throwing over the rise and progress of the Roman Republic the same light which Gibbon has cast over the decline and fall of the Empire, should have been cut short in the very threshold of his career. 67. Mill. British India presents, perhaps, the most fascinating and extraordinary subject for history which modern times have presented; but it has not yet been treated in a style adequate to its vast importance and transcendant splendour. It never will be so till a writer arise who shall unite the ardent imagination and pictorial power to the unwearied industry and vast learning of Gibbon. MR MILL, however, has made great advance towards the completion of such an undertaking, and every future historian will be largely indebted to his important labours. His talent is unquestioned; his intellect clear and powerful; his views in the main founded in reason and justice. Political bias, however, is obvious in his elaborate work; hostility to the East India Company is transparent in its most important passages. Perhaps it is as well that it is so for as nearly all the documents V. on which such a history must be based come from their CHAP. archives, it is well for the cause of historic truth that the first great work on the subject should be animated with a spirit which presents to us the opposite side of the picture from what their advocates would exhibit. school of If the historians of England, during the last half cen- 68. tury, exhibit in a clear light the important influence of The new political convulsions on national literature, the working novelists. of the same causes is still more strikingly evinced in our writers of romance. Indeed, there the change is so great, and so striking, that there is nothing in the whole annals of English literature to compare to it. If we consider the novelists who had attained great, and, in some respects, deserved reputation, before the time of Sir Walter Scott Richardson, Mackenzie, Mrs Radcliffe, Mrs Charlotte Smith-the magnitude of the step made by that great writer appears prodigious. It was not merely the length of the stride which he made that constituted its importance; the great thing was, that it was made in the right direction. Preceding writers of novels had considerable talents, great command of the pathetic, brilliant powers of description. Fielding and Smollett had delighted the world with their wit, humour, and graphic powers, and Mrs Radcliffe had written many works combining richness to profusion in description, with singular powers for romantic effect. But the sentimental school were entirely deficient in the most essential of all requisites for works of imagination-a thorough acquaintance with human nature in all its grades; and the humorous was devoted almost exclusively to middle or low life, and destitute of those elevated and chivalrous feelings which constitute at once the greatest charm and chief utility of works of imagination. Even Miss Burney, with all her merits, and they were great, had failed in making romance the picture of real life, either in its higher or inferior grades. It was reserved for Scott to combine both, and exhibit, in his varied and fascinating pages, alternately the noble spirit V. CHAP. of chivalry, the dignified feelings of heroism, the charms of beauty, and the simplicity and virtues, without the vulgarity, of humble life. 69. Ere the wand of this mighty enchanter, however, had Miss Edge- wrought an entire change in the lighter literature of the worth. age, the reaction against the sentimental school had be come very conspicuous; and what is remarkable, a female |