Fachgenossen? No, because it was full of imaginative writing and belles lettres, and it gave translations, and even poetical translations, of the passages which it cited from Greek authors. For the ordinary public'? No, because it was full of learning and argument and new theories which could only be followed by a specialist in Greek. There was no public in Germany, said the critic, which would read such a book.

I am inclined to think that the difference here indicated goes deep. There have been several books produced of recent years in England of which one could say this: they are the work of professional scholars possessed of much exact learning and a decided spirit of research, yet the moving impulse which produced the books is really the impulse of an artist. For example, the writings of Mr Cornford, Mr A. E. Zimmern, Mr R. W. Livingstone, Mr Edwyn Bevan's 'Stoics and Cynics,' Mr J. A. K. Thomson's Studies in the Odyssey,' to say nothing of older works like some by Mr Mackail or Mr Warde Fowler; all these are books that stand as much by their sense of beauty and their imaginative suggestiveness as by the particular conclusions which they try to prove. Yet they are all of them works of definitely technical and professional scholars, men who would probably dally with the thought of suicide if guilty in public of a false quantity or a grammatical blunder. Such books represent an ideal quite different from that of Jebb or Conington, who wrote good editions of the classics in good English and with thorough intelligence, but not from an artistic impulse; and equally different from that of J. A. Symonds, who wrote artistic criticism of Greek poetry with no pretence to professional scholarship or research.

The nearest class of German books would be, perhaps, the best works of popularisation. Schwartz's two volumes of 'Charakterköpfe aus der Antiken Literatur' are very good and the work of a fine scholar. But they have not much actual beauty of thought or writing about them, and they have not the spirit of research. The author tells us his results, he does not try to lead us groping on. Wendland's 'Hellenistisch-Römische Kultur' is a wonderfully competent, valuable and interesting book; it has the charm of research in it as well as an

extraordinary command of relevant information. So has Seeck's Geschichte des Untergangs der Antiken Welt,' a book, whatever its faults, which has a real mind behind it. But neither book begins to make the particular artistic or spiritual effort which is at the heart of the English books mentioned above. The Germans of an older generation, like Winckelmann and Schlegel, did pre-eminently make such an effort. The famous Nietzsche, before he gave up Greek and went a-whoring after false philosophies, did some fine work of this character, half-creative and half-critical, but decidedly illuminating. At the present time I can think of only one German who makes this particular effort-Schultz, who writes on 'Ionische Philosophie' and on 'Gnosis.' But he cannot control his impulse. It only leaves him hashing his authorities and passionately floundering in his explanations, and German scholars in general treat him severely. Of course I do not say that English scholars in general approve of this quality which I have ascribed to certain English books. They illustrate a tendency, and a tendency which may be dangerous, for the writer to use his whole mind in his work and not to limit and stunt himself. The true specialist ruthlessly cuts away every interest that may interrupt his particular work, and sets his achievement above his personal development.

In Germany there is more devotion and more loss of proportion. More people are willing to spend their lives in narrow and absorbed pursuit of some object which, viewed in cold blood, possesses no very great importance and no particular illumination or beauty. In England there is more humanity, more interest in life, more common sense, and, as an almost inevitable consequence, less one-sided devotion and less industry. Browning's grammarian would be more at home in Germany. He would be decorated and made a 'Geheimrath.' GILBERT MURRAY

IV.-MODERN GERMAN HISTORIANS.

THE admirable work in which Mr Gooch surveys the historiography of the 19th century reminds us not only of the extent to which the thought and knowledge of the world is indebted to the labours of historical students, but also of the catholicity and interconnexion of the historical movement. No country can claim a monopoly. Every country has made contributions corresponding to its wealth of scientific equipment and reflecting the characteristics of its peculiar genius. It cannot even be said that the primacy goes unchallenged; for, if in the fifties and sixties, when Sybel, Mommsen, Haüsser, Droysen, and Giesebrecht were at the height of their powers, the pride of place unquestionably belonged to the Germans, in the last decade of the century the most brilliant galaxy of historical talent was undoubtedly to be found on the banks, not of the Spree but of the Seine. Here the student might listen to Renan on the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament, to Sorel on European diplomacy, to Paul Meyer and Gaston Paris on the medieval literature of the Romance nations, to Viollet on the history of law, and to Aulard on the annals of the French Revolution. Taine was completing his brilliant historical work in the Origins of Contemporary France. Vandal, Houssaye, and Masson were illustrating the Napoleonic age in a style which suffered little from the rich abundance of material. Luchaire was already famous as the most finished exponent of French municipal antiquities. Rambaud and Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu were established authorities on Russia. Hanotaux and Lavisse were widely known, the one for an unfinished fragment of high quality on the age of Louis XIV, the other for a series of valuable contributions to Prussian history as well as for his general powers as a teacher. Among the younger generation Langlois and Bémont were attracting notice for the solidity of their medieval studies; and, when a 'Soutenance de thèse' was held at the École des Chartes, the great Léopold Delisle would preside over the jury,

*History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century'; Longmans, 1913. Cf. Fueter, 'Geschichte der neuern Historiographie'; Munich, Oldenburg, 1911.

bringing from the Bibliothèque Nationale such a sum of minute and exact medieval scholarship as can seldom have been gathered in a single brain.

There is, however, a sense in which the 19th century may be claimed for the German historians, for not only was the critical treatment of authorities greatly developed in Germany, but in sheer volume of printed matter the Germans easily distance their competitors. It is, however, important to observe that the competence of the Germans in historical study is a fact of comparatively recent date. No English contemporary of Charles James Fox would ever have thought of Germany as a source of historical illumination. No German of that age would have looked to his own countrymen to furnish him with a 'history in the grand style. 'Read Burke,' wrote Stein to Gneisenau, 'it is the breviary of all wisdom'; and again, English literature especially deserves to be known because it furnishes us with the best historians.' Even if we take account of the preliminary work of editing and publishing chronicles and documents, in which the Germans have now acquired so great a mastery, there was in those days nothing anywhere comparable, for the imposing mass of its achievement, with the patient labours of the French Benedictines. Your bold progress,' wrote Ranke to Waitz in 1838, evokes my greatest sympathy and joy. You are treading the paths of Baluze and Mabillon.' That is a significant compliment.

The true historical awakening of Germany sprang out of the Napoleonic wars; and the movement has never lost all traces of its origin. German historians have been what the political history of their country has made them. They have been opposed to doctrinaire radicalism because it is the creation of the French Revolution. They have been liberal because they hated the French despot and saw in the development of constitutional liberties a guarantee for national power. Fervent advocates of Prussian expansion, they favoured the exclusion of Austria from the German confederation, facing such ridicule as might attach to the label of 'Little Germans,' and losing no opportunity of exposing the waste of national power involved in the political disunion of their country, Since a military monarchy

was a distinguishing mark of Prussia, they combined with their constitutional liberalism a strong faith in the Hohenzollern dynasty, whose services to the German cause they depicted with romantic enthusiasm.

The patriarch of all this historical movement was a Danish administrator, who being called to Berlin a little before the battle of Jena was entrusted with the direction of the Bank of Prussia. Niebuhr was a competent financier, a master of twenty languages, and the most profound and various scholar of his age. It is customary (though not entirely exact) to speak of him as a pioneer in critical method, and as, in a sense, the founder of scientific history as that term is now understood. But the real importance of Niebuhr in the intellectual development of Germany does not consist in his learning or in his critical acumen or in his application of philological tests to decide historical problems; for in the generation of Wolf, Boeck, Savigny and Grimm there was no lack of learned scepticism in Germany, and the Homeric poems had suffered violence before Niebuhr laid sacrilegious hands on Livy. It consists rather in his political spirit. He was the first of the Germans to approach history from the angle of a modern statesman and to discover in the past a discipline for character and a guide for public action. Thus the learning which gave to Niebuhr's Roman history an authoritative place in our English Universities until it was deposed by Mommsen is not really its chief title to be remembered. The learning commended but did not constitute the message. For Niebuhr the true interest of the history of Latium was that, presenting as it did 'a model of national development,' it served as an example to his adopted country of the methods by which a small people may achieve greatness. Even as Rome had gathered all Italy under her sway by a resolute exercise of prudence and courage, so might Prussia, shaking off the foreign tyrant and incarnating all that was valiant and manly in the German spirit, unite the scattered fragments of the German Federation under her rule.

The impetus, once given, continued through the century, gaining volume as it went and bringing to the academic prophets of German unity and Prussian