Fi F72 8163 OXFORD: By T. Combe, M.A., E. B. Gardner, E. Pickard Hall, and J. H. Stacy, PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. PREFACE. THE present collection is that which was spoken of in the Preface to the second edition of my former series of Essays. The Essays now reprinted chiefly relate to earlier periods of history than those which were dealt with in the former volume -to the times commonly known as 'ancient' or 'classical.' I need hardly say that to me those names simply mark convenient halting-places in the one continuous history of European civilization. They mark the time when political life was confined to the two great Mediterranean peninsulas, and when the Teutonic and Slavonic races had as yet hardly shown themselves on the field of history. I should be well pleased some day to connect the two series by a third, which might deal with the intermediate times, with those times which I look on as the true Middle Ages, the times when the Roman and Teutonic elements of modern Europe stood side by side, and had not yet been worked together into a third thing distinct from either. In reprinting these Essays, I have followed nearly the same course which I followed in the former series. As most of them were written before those which appeared in my former series, they have, on the whole, needed a greater amount of revision, and a greater number of notes to point out the times and circumstances under which they were written. In the process of revision I have found myself able to do very much in the way of improving and simplifying the style. In almost every page I have found it easy to put some plain English word, about whose meaning there can be no doubt, instead of those needless French or Latin words which are thought to add dignity to style, but which in truth only add vagueness. I am in no way ashamed to find that I can write purer and clearer English now than I did fourteen or fifteen years back; and I think it well to mention the fact for the encouragement of younger writers. The common temptation of beginners is to write in what they think a more elevated fashion. It needs some years of practice before a man fully takes in the truth that, for real strength and above all for real clearness, there is nothing like the old English speech of our fathers. All the Essays in this volume, except the first, were written as reviews. When the critical part of the article took the shape of discussion, whether leading to agreement or to difference, of the works of real scholars like Bishop Thirlwall, Mr. Grote, and Dr. Merivale, I have let it stand pretty much as it was first written. But the parts which were given to pointing out the mistakes of inferior writers I have for the most part struck out. On this principle I had to sacrifice nearly the whole of the article headed 'Herodotus and his Commentators,' in the National Review for October 1862. I have kept only a small part of it as a note to one of the other Essays. I have done this, not because there is a word in that or in any other article of the kind which I now differ from or regret, but because, while the unflinching exposure of errors in the passing literature of the day is the highest duty of the periodical critic, it is out of place in writings which lay any claim to lasting value. I do not think I have sinned against my own rule in reprinting my articles in the Saturday Review on the German works of Mommsen and Curtius. Both are scholars of the highest order, and, as such, I trust that I have dealt with them with the respect that they deserve. But if, as there seems to be some danger, Curtius should displace Grote in the hands of English students, and if Mommsen should be looked up to as an infallible oracle, as Niebuhr was in my own Oxford days, I believe that the result would be full of evil, not only for historical truth, but, in the case of Mommsen, for political morality also. I have to renew my thanks to the publishers of the Edinburgh Review and to the editors and publishers of the other periodicals in which the Essays appeared, for the leave kindly given to me to reprint them in their present form. SOMERLEAZE, WELLS. January 7th, 1873. CONTENTS. Note from Herodotus and his Commentators' (National Review, October 1862) MR. GLADSTONE'S HOMER AND THE HOMERIC AGE THE HISTORIANS OF ATHENS (National Review, January PAGE 94 107 THE ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY (North British Review, May Appendix on Curtius' History of Greece (Saturday |