Contrast of Grote's life.
His theory Radicalism.
§ 6. For the same reason Thirlwall's great and solid book was ousted at once from public favour by the appearance of Grote's history. Two minds more unlike can hardly be imagined, admitting that they were both honest and hard workers, and that both knew German as well as Greek, Latin, and French. Instead of a cold, calm college don, loving cautious statement and accurate rendering as the highest of virtues; instead of a mild and orthodox Liberal both in religion and politics,—we have a business man, foreign to university life and its traditions, a sceptic in religion, a Positivist in philosophy, and above all an advanced Radical in politics, invading the subject hitherto thought the preserve and apanage of the pedagogue or the pedant. Of course he occasionally missed the exact force of an optative, or the logic of a particle; he excited the fury of men like Shilleto, to whom accuracy in Greek prose was the one perfection,
containing all the Law and the Prophets. What was far worse, he even mistook and misstated evidence which bore against his theories, and was quite capable of being unfair, not from dishonesty, but from prejudice.
The influences of his time.
To be compared with Gibbon.
He lived in the days when the world was recovering from its horror at the French Revolution, and the reaction against the monarchical restorations in central Europe was setting in. He was persuaded that the great social and political results of Greek history were because of, and not in spite of, the prevalence of democracy among its States, and because of the number and variety of these States. He would not accept the verdict of all the old Greek theorists who voted for the rule of the one or the enlightened few; and he wrote what may be called a great political pamphlet in twelve volumes in vindication of democratic principles. It was this idea which not only marshalled his facts, but lent its fire to his argument; and when combined with his Radicalism in religion and philosophy, produced a book so remarkable, that, however much it may be corrected and criticised, it will never be superseded. It is probably the greatest history among the many great histories produced in this century; and though very inferior in style to Gibbon's Decline and Fall, will rank next to it as a monument of English historical genius.
His eloquence.
His panegyric on democracy.
There are chapters of speculation, such as those on the Greek myths and their historical value, on the Homeric question, on Socrates and the Sophists,