Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/73

 be a vox clamantis at the time, must have been astonished at the rapidity with which his Gospel of Force triumphed as soon as it had its chance. Some of us shook our heads over it, one great man amongst us, whose place I am proud to occupy, I dare not say to fill, did not hesitate to speak words of summary condemnation; but the doctrine itself was esoteric, the words, like much else of Carlyle's, were Φωνάντα συνέτοιοιν but συνέτοιοιν only; to the ears of the many they required the sacred interpreter. Shall I be thought hard if I say that the popularity of Carlyle's Frederick was not an intelligent appreciation; that it was Carlyle's reputation and manner that made men read it; and that it was for the Carlyle not for the Frederick that they cared, whilst they wholly missed the prophet's lesson. Such as it is, however, Carlyle's Frederick stands alone in recent historic work.

There may be good reasons for this. The accumulation of new material for German and Italian history is perplexing in itself; the Germans and Italians have scarcely begun to sort it. The materials for Spanish history are only a little more accessible than before, and accessible only to workers who are capable of great fatigue, as well as, what few can pretend to be, already well qualified to make the very utmost of scanty opportunities. But making allowance for everything that can be allowed for, it is, I think, no credit to us that since the republication of the old Universal History, a hundred years ago, we have had nothing like a general book of historic reference undertaken in England, and that, with the exception of Carlyle, we have had no first-class work on German history since Archdeacon Coxe wrote on the House of Austria. We have had sketches and essays, and lectures, and articles in encyclopædias,—one of which at least, Lardner's Cyclopædia, furnishes incidentally some very valuable helps,—but nothing like a comprehensive, well-considered design, such as for its day the old Universal History was. This I hope is a lacuna which will not exist much longer. Not that it can be filled up in a day; but that we have in Heeren and Uckert a model which it will be no disgrace to us to copy, a great credit to equal or to surpass.