His power

stone; in stateliness, it is probable that he stands alone among the orators of our nation. Pitt. At times, too, he gave play to qualities not ordinarily associated with these. of retort was terrible, his sarcasm scathing; and he was capable of an imaginative splendour which few orators, if any, have surpassed. The crucial instance of the last quality is to be found in his speech on the Slave Trade (1792), the last halfhour of which, as Wilberforce proudly testifies, was "one unbroken torrent of majestic eloquence," and it certainly closes with one of the finest images in the records of eloquence. With him, as with his father, what seems to have struck the hearers most was the nobility of character, the inflexible resolution, which lay behind his great powers of speech and gave double weight to every word. And there is one speech-—the last words he ever uttered in public-which, even at the distance of a century, gives some impression of what was habitually felt by those who heard him. At the Mayor's banquet, a few days after Trafalgar, the health of the great Minister was proposed as "the saviour of Europe." "He was not up for more than two minutes," said Wellington, who was present, "but his reply was perfect: 'Let us hope that England, having saved herself by her energy, may save Europe by her example."

Before passing to the next chapter, it may be well to go beyond the bounds of our own country and to glance at some of those achievements, on

editio princeps of the Nibelungenlied, by C. H. Myller, in 1782; the first sign of that renewed interest in the heroic literature of the nation which worked with so profound an effect upon the generation following that of Herder and Goethe. It may be added that the editio princeps of the Edda began to appear at Copenhagen in 1787; it was not completed till 1828.

History of

Of the beginnings of the History of Literature, in the strictest sense,―of that study which treats literature as the expression of the life of a Literature. given nation, as determined by that life, and, like it, as subject to an intelligible law of progress, it is unnecessary to say much. It will fall to be spoken of in connection with Friedrich Schlegel. The one work to be mentioned here is Warton's History of English Poetry (1774-78), which may fairly claim to be the earliest History of a national literature to be attempted in any country. The arrangement, no doubt, is bad; the sense of proportion, weak; the connection between one period and another is most imperfectly explained. But the learning is wide, as well as deep; and on not a few points the book remains an authority to the present day. It is significant that the first History of Literature should have come from the hand of one who, both in his critical essays and his original poems, had shown himself a staunch supporter of the romantic revolt.

Among those who applied critical principles to the

1 Bodmer had published the latter part of the Lied (Kriemhild's Revenge), together with the Klage, in 1757.

older monuments of literature it must suffice to mention Wolf, whose edition of Homer,

Wolf. with the famous Prolegomena, was published in 1795. The object of this memorable treatise is to prove that the Homeric poems consisted originally of short, separate lays, possibly by various authors; that these were not put together as two connected poems until the age of Pisistratus ; and that they did not assume the shape in which we have them-a shape which is still marked by many awkward transitions-until the time of the Ptolemies, perhaps of Aristarchus (circ. 200 B.C.). The bare germs of this theory had been anticipated by scholars like Bentley, or again by philosophers like Vico and Rousseau,1 But the depth of learning and the acuteness of argument with which it was expounded by Wolf are all his own, and give it an entirely new character and value. In the next generation it was applied by Grimm and Lachmann to the Nibelungenlied, and to the "popular epic" in general. Yet later, it was used as a weapon in the controversies which raged round the Old Testament and the New.2 Few books have been so pregnant with results.

Neither in History nor in Theology is there so

1 By Bentley in 1713 (see Prolegomena, § 27); by Rousseau in Sur l'Origine des Langues (ib., § 20). I am not aware that Wolf makes any reference to Vico. But see Scienza Nuova (second version, 1730), Book III., especially pp. 428, 432, 445, 448, 450 (ed. Ferrari).

2 Wolf himself cautiously suggests the application to the Old Testament: Proleg., § 35.

L

History.

For

marked an advance to be noted as in literary study. Yet here, too, a new dawn is to be traced. The monumental work of Gibbon (17761788) belongs, in spirit, to the preceding period. But in the amazing industry and insight which he brought to his sources we may add, in his genius for massing facts and events in orderly array-he introduced a new ideal into historical research. And it was half a century before his example was adequately followed. From the nature of his material, throughout the bulk of his work, it was impossible that he should employ "sources," in the sense of original documents. Roman history, Inscriptions are the only thing coming under that head; and Inscriptions were practically a sealed book till the days of Mommsen. We may note, however, that such writers as Schlözer (1737-1809) and Johannes Müller (1752-1809) display a deeper sense of the crucial importance of such material than had previously been common: the former, in his edition of the Russian Chronicle of Nestor (1802); the latter, in his Schweizergeschichte (1786-1808). In the case of Müller this is the more remarkable, as his main search was for the picturesque.

In theology likewise, it was an age rather of preparation than of absolute performance. Michaelis (1727-1790) and Eichhorn (1752-1827), Theology. both learned orientalists, may be said to have laid the foundation for much subsequent criticism of traditional beliefs; the latter especially, in his edition of the Apocalypse (1791). But the most original thinker in this field was undoubtedly Schleier

macher (1768-1834), who combined a fearless criticism with the deepest piety and a heroic endeavour to disentangle the essence of Christianity from the historical forms in which it has been delivered. This was especially the aim of his Reden über die Religion (1799). His best known works, the edition of Saint Luke and Der Christliche Glaube, belong to a later date (1817, 1822). The criticism of earlier days had, in the main, been an unlearned criticism. That of our period, and still more of the following one, was profoundly learned. Schleiermacher at the close of the eighteenth century-Strauss, Baur, and Renan in the first three-quarters of the nineteenth-were at least as erudite as their orthodox opponents. The result of this, together with the popularisation of scientific theory, has been to change the whole fabric of current theology, from top to bottom.

Far more startling was the progress of Natural Science. Franklin's discoveries in Electricity, it is Chemistry true, fall before our period. But they were and Biology. carried further, during these years, by Volta and Galvani. It is, however, in two other sciences that the most astonishing results were attained. The last third of the eighteenth century saw the creation of modern Chemistry. It saw the first beginnings of evolutionary Biology. By the discovery of Oxygen (1774), Priestley, unknown to himself, gave the first shock to the dominant theory of the old Chemistrythat which assumed the existence of a specific element, phlogiston, the sole source of combustion. And the