Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/227

 The Sifted Grain and the Grain Sifters 2 1 7 names, noting the shortcoming of each. The roll scarcely extends beyond the century, — Hume, Robertson and Gibbon constituting the solitary remembered exceptions. Of Gibbon, I have already spoken. He combined in highest degree all the elements of the historian, — in as great a degree as Thucydides or Tacitus. He was an orb of the first order ; and it was his misfortune that he was born and wrote before Darwin gave to history unity and a scheme. Hume was a subtle philosopher, and his instinctive mastery of form has alone caused his history to survive. He was not an investigator in the modern sense of the term, nor was he gifted with an intuitive historical instinct. Robertson had fair judgment and a well-developed though in no way remarkable sense of form ; but he lacked erudi- tion, and, as compared with Gibbon, for example, was content to accept his knowledge at second hand. Telling his story well, he was never master of his subject. Coming down to our own century, and speaking only of the dead, a series of familiar names at once suggest themselves, — Mit- ford, Grote and Thirlwall ; Arnold and Merivale ; Milman, Lingard, Hallam, Macaulay, Carlyle, Buckle, Froude, Freeman and Green, — naming only the more conspicuous. Mitford was no historian at all ; merely an historical pamphleteer. His judgment was inferior to his erudition even, and he had no sense of form. Grote was erudite, but he wrote in accordance with his political affinities, and what is called the spirit of the time and place ; and that time and place were not Greece, nor the third and fourth centuries before Christ. He had, moreover, no sense of literary form, for he put what he knew into twelve volumes, when human patience did not suffice for six. Thirlwall was erudite in a way, and a thinker and writer of unquestionable force ; but his work on Greece was written to order, and is what is known as a "standard history." Correct, but devoid of inspiration, it is slightly suggestive of a second-class epic. Arnold is typical of scholarship and insight ; his judgment is excellent ; but of literary art, so conspicuous in his son, there is no trace. Merivale is scholarly and academic. Milman was hampered by his church training, which fettered his judgment ; learned, as learning went in those days, there is in his writings nothing that would attract readers or students of a period later than his own. Lingard was another church historian. A correct writer, he tells England's story from the point of view of Rome. Hallam is deeply read, and judicial ; but the literary sense is conspicuously absent. His volumes are well-nigh unreadable. Freeman is the typical modern historian of the original-material-and-monograph school. He writes irrespective of the readers. Learned beyond