A hundred years after Bentley's main efforts appeared in Germany another epoch-making book—Wolf's Introduction to Homer. In this was broached the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey are not the works of a single great poet, but are made up of ballad literature wrought into unity by more or less skilful editing. In spite of various changes and phases of opinion on this subject since Wolf's day, he dealt a killing blow at the idea that classical works are necessarily to be taken at what may be termed their face value.
More and more clearly it was seen that the ideas of early copyists, and even of early possessors of masterpieces in ancient literature, were entirely different from those to which the modern world is accustomed. It was seen that manipulations and interpolations in the text by copyists and possessors had long been considered not merely venial sins, but matters of right, and that even the issuing of whole books under assumed names had been practised freely.
In 1811 a light akin to that thrown by Bentley and Wolf upon ancient literature was thrown by Niebuhr upon ancient history. In his History of Rome the application of scientific principles to the examination of historical sources was for the first time exhibited largely and brilliantly. Up to that period the time-honoured utterances of ancient authorities had been, as a rule, accepted as final: no breaking away, even from the most absurd of them, was looked upon with favour, and any one presuming to go behind them was regarded as troublesome and even as dangerous.
Through this sacred conventionalism Niebuhr broke fearlessly, and, though at times overcritical, he struck from the early history of Rome a vast mass of accretions, and gave to the world a residue infinitely more valuable than the original amalgam of myth, legend, and chronicle.
His methods were especially brought to bear on students' history by one of the truest men and noblest scholars that the English race has produced—Arnold of Rugby—and, in spite of the inevitable heavy conservatism, were allowed to do their work in the field of ancient history as well as in that of ancient classical literature.
The place of myth in history thus became more and more understood, and historical foundations, at least so far as SECULAR history was concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a scientific spirit. The extension of this new treatment to ALL ancient literature and history was now simply a matter of time.
Such an extension had already begun; for in 1829 had appeared Milman's History of the Jews. In this work came a further evolution of the truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf, and Niebuhr, and their application to sacred history was made strikingly evident. Milman, though a clergyman, treated the history of the chosen people in the light of modern knowledge of Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples. He exhibited sundry great biblical personages of the wandering days of Israel as sheiks or emirs or Bedouin chieftains; and the tribes of Israel as obedient then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas governing wandering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with conflicting sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with the mythical, legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of Niebuhr. This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as the development of an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition. Such champions of orthodoxy as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett straightway took the field, and with such effect that the Family Library, a very valuable series in which Milman's history appeared, was put under the ban, and its further publication stopped. For years Milman, though a man of exquisite literary and lofty historical gifts, as well as of most honourable character, was debarred from preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics vastly inferior to him in everything save worldly wisdom; for years he was passed in the race for honours by divines who were content either to hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened to be popular, or to keep their mouths shut altogether. This opposition to him extended to his works. For many years they were sneered at, decried, and kept from the public as far as possible.
Fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the closing years of his life, above all this opposition. As Dean of St. Paul's he really outranked the contemporary archbishops: he lived to see his main ideas accepted, and his History of Latin Christianity received as certainly one of the most valuable, and no less certainly the most attractive, of all Church histories ever written.
The two great English histories of Greece—that by Thirlwall, which was finished, and that by Grote, which was begun, in the middle years of the nineteenth century—came in to strengthen this new development. By application of the critical method to historical sources, by pointing out more and more fully the inevitable part played by myth and legend in early chronicles, by displaying more and more clearly the ease with which interpolations of texts, falsifications of statements, and attributions to pretended authors were made, they paved the way still further toward a just and fruitful study of sacred literature.(480)
(480) For Mr. Gladstone's earlier opinion, see his Church and State, and
Macaulay's review of it. For Pusey, see Mozley, Ward, Newman's
Apologia, Dean Church, etc., and especially his Life, by Liddon. Very
characteristic touches are given in vol. i, showing the origin of many
of his opinions (see letter on p. 184). For the scandalous treatment of
Mr. Everett by the clerical mob at Oxford, see a rather jaunty account
of the preparations and of the whole performance in a letter written at
the time from Oxford by the late Dean Church, in The Life and Letters of
Dean Church, London, 1894, pp. 40, 41. For a brief but excellent summary
of the character and services of Everett, see J. F. Rhodes's History of
the United States from the Compromise of 1850, New York, 1893, vol.
i, pp. 291 et seq. For a succinct and brilliant history of the
Bentley-Boyle controversy, see Macauley's article on Bentley in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Beard's Hibbert Lectures for 1893, pp.
344, 345; also Dissertation in Bentley's work, edited by Dyce, London,
1836, vol. i, especially the preface. For Wolf, see his Prolegomena ad
Homerum, Halle, 1795; for its effects, see the admirable brief statement
in Beard, as above, p. 345. For Niebuhr, see his Roman History,
translated by Hare and Thirlwall, London, 1828; also Beard, as above.
For Milman's view, see, as a specimen, his History of the Jews, last
edition, especially pp. 15-27. For a noble tribute to his character, see
the preface to Lecky's History of European Morals. For Thirlwall, see
his History of Greece, passim; also his letters; also his Charge of the
Bishop of St. David's, 1863.