characteristics of both. Herodotus is supposed to have been indebted to them for some portions of his own delightful narrative. Though he is the acknowledged "father of history," yet he is the child of a poetic age. He wears his swaddling-clothes even in the meridian of life. He ever loves the marvels of childhood. "He reminds us," says an eminent critic, "of a delightful child. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no writer who makes such an interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written an incomparable book." If we consider the strange medley of materials from which he derived his information, the character of the age, and the people for whom he wrote, we shall rather admire the truthfulness of his history than carp at its blemishes. He wrote for a people lively, fickle, inquisitive, and fond of novelty. He adapted his history to the wants of his age, and very fortunately chose a style of narrative so true to nature, so artless, and pleasing, that it is suited to any age or people. To be sure he has not rejected all the marvels of the hoary past. The infancy of society abounded in wild adventure, in hercic exploits, and fabled monsters. Tradition exaggerated the deeds of the fathers, and poetry flung her veil of many hues about them. It was impossible for the most acute mind to separate truth from falsehood. Herodotus, the child of a new epoch, looking with filial reverence upon all that was old, did not desire to do it. He looked upon men as they lived and moved about him. He listened to their narratives and recorded them; he consulted the records and traditions of earlier days, and wrote down the responses they uttered. He recorded many things which to us seem improbable and unnatural. To him they undoubtedly wore the aspect of truth. They accorded with the common faith of those for whom he wrote. They corresponded with the general current of traditions which had come down from early times. While he recorded these pleasing fables, he believed. His contemporaries were equally confiding. He seemed to them to speak under the guidance and inspiration of the Muses. They honored him as the herald of their nation's glory. It does not appear that they questioned any of his "specious wonders." By bring

ing the hoarded treasures of the world's history to the Greeks he became their benefactor, and as such they loved and honored him. At a subsequent period men began to doubt and to censure. Strabo accuses him of recording trifles and corrupting history with incredible tales. Plutarch accuses him of malicious misrepresentations respecting his countrymen, the Baotians; but such censures were soon forgotten; the authors of them were regarded as prejudiced critics, and their voice was drowned in the acclamations of praise which confiding ages raised to the memory of "the father of history." The same is substantially true of Livy, the most illustrious of Roman historians. His authority was little questioned till a comparatively recent age. While the Romish church bore undisputed sway throughout Christendom, historical faith was as sound and unvarying as religious faith. Men who could credit the saintly legends and pretended miracles of monkish biography were prepared to believe the less marvellous stories of Greek and Roman history. Historical criticism was unknown. For some time after the revival of literature in Europe so extravagant was the admiration-I might say, perhaps, veneration-of scholars for the learning of antiquity, that no one thought of questioning the credibility of an ancient historian any more than the authority of the church. Ancient authors ruled the understandings, the church the consciences, of men. Had any reckless critic presumed to question the infallibility of either, the attempt would have been regarded as an act of atrocious presumption. The object of compilers was to combine what was written into one whole, notwithstanding discrepancies and contradictions, and to yield an unhesitating faith to all its integral parts though they virtually neutralized each other. Hence, in the circle of ancient history, every thing was believed and nothing certainly known. Fable was not distinguished from fact, nor truth from falsehood. Credulity, however, declined as the Reformation advanced. When the right of private judgment began to be advocated, and to some extent acknowledged in religion, it was also boldly maintained in history. Men passed suddenly from the extreme of mental dependence to mental freedon, and they soon became as ready to doubt and disbelieve as they were before to trust and obey. The Jesuits also contributed not a little to the general skepticism by their attacks upon the fidelity and correctness of existing records. This arose in part from their hostility to other religious orders, particularly the Benedictines, who were much

employed in chronicling the history of the dark ages. The Jesuits examined with critical acumen their numerous productions, exposed their errors and puerile inventions, and in this way aided in destroying the public confidence in all written records. However, they meant it not so: they intended to promote their own private plans and the advancement of the church. But the weapons they put into the hands of the people for the destruction of their personal enemies were soon turned against themselves. They summoned a spirit to their aid which would not down at their bidding. The most reckless of these innovators was the Jesuit, Hardouin, born in 1646, whose literary career is very aptly described in the following epitaph, written by Jacob Vernet of Geneva :

Hic jacet hominum paradoxotatos,
Orbis literati portentum,

Venerandæ antiquitatis cultor et depredator,
Docte febricitans,

Somnia et inaudita commenta vigilans edidit,
Scepticium pie egit,
Credulitate puer,
Audacia juvenis,
Deliriis senex.

He maintained the extraordinary paradox that most of the Greek and Roman classics were spurious productions of the thirteenth century. He excepted the works of Cicero and Pliny with some portions of the works ascribed to Horace and Virgil. He attempts to prove the spuriousness of the Eneid with argumen's so ingenious as to shake the faith of the unlearned and afford a very agreeable recreation to the scholar. He maintains that Horace and Virgil are allegorical writers, representing Christianity and its founders under assumed names. These acute and learned speculations may afford a salutary admonition to those who are disposed to yield an unhesitating confidence to more recent sophists. When a sober contemporary reproached Hardouin for his devotion to absurd hypotheses, he answered suddenly, "Do you suppose, my good friend, that I rise every morning, both in summer and winter, to write common-place remarks?" This love of notoriety may be one of the secret sources of many of the paradoxical theories and systems of more recent times. The Germans have been most active in breaking up the old foundations of popular belief and destroying the confi

*

dence of men in the truth of all past history. Every ancient author is subjected to the fiery ordeal of philosophic criticism. All writers both sacred and profane are treated with the same severity. Not content with guarding the entrance to the temple of truth, they have entered her inmost sanctuary and demolished many an idol which pious hands had set up. Some of these historical reformers fall appropriately under the appellation of destructives. In their esteem, the world has been one vast theatre of literary delusion. What is denominated history is a base fabrication. Writers have conspired to cheat posterity by false records. History must be re-written and made what it ought to be, and what it would have been had it not been composed by quacks and impostors. Their appropriate motto would be: "Of old things all are over old,

Of new things none are new enough;

We'll show them, we can help to frame
A world of other stuff."

In the absence of all written records, these "rapt seers pour forth improvisatory effusions concerning the past, and, by a species of ex post facto inspiration, forin a poetic history of forgotten eras. Like the student of comparative anatomy, who is enabled from the existence of a single bone to describe the form, size, and habits of the animal, these reproducers of ancient records, from the existence of a few poetic fragments, are enabled to restore the lost history of a people. When old writers are submitted to their examination, they can decide intuitively upon their credibility. When authorities clash, their merits are weighed, and their respective claims are decided by judicial sentence. The rejected author is thereby presumed to be annihilated. When old writers doubt, they dogmatize. Thus by their inventions, dijudications, dogmatisms, and alterations, they create a new history, and from their oracular records the world learns what it ought to have been, and what, according to philosophic criticism, it probably has been. During the last century, England gave birth to one of these literary reformers. John Richardson

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* Menzel speaking of the histor cal skepticism of the Germans says: What they did not understand they denied away. The celebrated historical skepticism which was brought into fashion by Schlözer, Rühs, and others, went so far as to reject as stupid fable every thing which did not appear rational and natural to their comprehension."

prefixed to a dictionary of Persian, Arabic, and English, an elaborate dissertation upon Persian history, in which he attempts to prove the utter falsity of all that Herodotus has written respecting that nation. The history of the war between Persia and Greece is, in his view, a work of pure fancy. No such war ever occurred. This is evident to him from a comparison of the existing histories of Persia, written by natives, with the fictions. of Herodotus. In the former, we find no Cyrus, no Croesus, no Cambyses, nor any of the numerous monarchs and heroes that figure in the romance of the "father of history." "Not a vestige," says he," is to be discovered of the famous battles of Marathon, Platæa, Thermopyla, Salamis, and Mycale; nor of that prodigious force of Xerxes, led out of the Persian empire to overwhelm the states of Greece." In fine, the whole history of the Persian wars is a fable from beginning to end, because the Persians themselves know of no such events. He goes into a labored argument to show that they must have been familiar with these wars, had they ever occurred, from the fact that they are exceedingly careful in preserving all existing records and perpetuating traditions. But one fact, which is essential to the right decision of this question, this veracious critic forgot to mention. It is said that all Persian history was carefully destroyed by the Arabs when they overran that country, and that whatever history they now possess has been written since the eighth century. Moreover, the frequent changes that have taken place in the government and inhabitants of that country since the days of Herodotus, must have disturbed the current of tradition so as to render this a very uncertain test of truth. Such special pleading respecting an old writer is exceedingly unfair, if not disingenuous. The authority of Herodotus has been often attacked, but never destroyed. Indeed, it seems now in the ascendant. The recent discoveries in Egypt, from the interpretation of the hieroglyphics, have given new and undoubted confirmation to his history of that country. An accurate comparison of the works of Wilkinson and Roselini* with the account Herodotus has given of the

The researches of archæologists also prove that the "Homeric poems" described real men and manners. "Professor Roselini said that he looked upon Homer as the most correct of historians, and that it was the tombs of Egypt which had taught him to think so." Tour to the Sepulchres of Etruria, p. 358.