It is difficult to conceive a more excellent and de- lightful person than Barthold Niebuhr appears to have been ; there are few of whom we have read who have combined so blameless a character and so amiable a disposition with such boundless acquirements and such brilliant intellectual qualities. His History of Rome is perhaps the most original historical work that this age has produced. To miderstand what he has done in this work, we should keep in mind the state of knowledge on the subject before his time, and not go so far as the stricter sort of sceptical critics, like e. g. the late Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who does not hesitate to declare Niebuhr's effort to construct a continuous Roman history out of such legendary materials as we possess as, on the whole, a failure. The disjointed ruins had lain for ages in a confused heap, though there was hardly a child in Europe who was not familiar with their rude outlines, and many a skilful and laborious workman had vainly endeavored to reduce them to symmetry and order. Niebuhr, by a series of combinations which will appear most surprising to those who are best capable of ap- preciating works of genius, succeeded in reconstructing from the scattered fragments a stately fabric, which, if
it is not identical with the original structure, is at least almost perfect and complete in itself. Macaulay ap- proved of Niebuhr's theory, and Dr. Arnold professed never to venture to differ from him except where he manifestly had evidence not accessible to NiebuJir. There cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose, as some have done, that Niebuhr was a sceptic whose sole delight was to render insecure the basis of historical evidence. He has actually done more than any other student of antiquity towards extracting truth and certainty from the misty and mystical legends of early tradition, and towards substituting rational conviction for irrational credulity. The great object which he proposed to him- self in all his philological speculations was to reproduce a true image of the past by getting rid of the deceitful influence of the present. This view he often expresses in very plain terms. Thus, he saj-s in his introductory lecture on Roman history (^Kleine Schriften, p. 93), "As there is nothing which Eastern nations find more diffi- cult to conceive than the idea of a republican constitu- tion, as the people of Hindustan cannot be induced to regard the East India Company as an association of proprietors, or in any other light than as a sovereign, just so is it with even the acutest of the moderns when they study ancient history, unless they have contrived by critical and philological studies to shake off the in- fluence of their habitual associations." In a letter to count Adam Moltke, he exclaims (Lebensnachrichten, ii, 91), "Oh how people would cherish philology did they but know how delightfully it enables us to recall to lif^ the fairest periods of antiquity. Reading is the most trifling part of it; the chief business is to domesticate ourselves in Greece and Rome at the most different pe- riods. Would that I could write history so vividly as to discriminate what is fluctuating and uncertain, and so develop what is confused and intricate, that every one, when he heard the name of a Greek of the age of Thu- cj'dides or Polybius, or a Roman of the days of Cato or Tacitus, might be able to form a clear and adequate idea of what he was." The very existence of such a general design presumes a lively fancy and active imagination ; but though these are qualities often possessed by shallow and superficial persons, they are verj' rarely combined with that extensive and minute learning for which Nie- buhr was distinguished. The range of his acquisitions was really wonderful. In the words of one of his most ardent admirers, " While his horizon was ever widening before him, it never sunk out of sight behind him; what he possessed he always retained; what he once knew became a part of his mind, and the means and instrument of acquiring more knowledge ; and he is one of the very few examples of men gifted with a memory so tenacious as to seem incapable of forgetting any- thing, who at the same time have had an intellect so vigorous as in no degree to be oppressed or enfeebled by the weight of their learning, but who, on the con- trar}^, have kept it in orderly array, and made it min- ister continually to the plastic energy of thought" (^Philol. Mus. i, 271), Some abatements must, however, be made from this general eulogy. While Niebuhr's great work has been neglected or censured, with equal injustice, by persons who have been too indolent to en- counter the labor of studying it or incapable of ap- preciating the method of critical investigation which the author has adopted, it may be doubted, on the other hand, whether many scholars, both in Germany and England, have not been too willing to acquiesce in all Niebuhr's results, to adopt whatever he has written, and sometimes even to receive as established truths as- sertions misupported by evidence or directly opposed by express testimony. Some recent German writers have indeed taken a middle course; they adopt the general views and critical method of the historian, but they find much in the details that is defective or er- roneous. It cannot be denied that the ardent imagina- tion of Niebuhr, and his power of combining and con- structing, sometimes led him to form a complete theory