Historians and Ancient History
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HISTORIANS AND ANCIENT HISTORY.
NORTH BRITISH REVIEW, FOR MAY.—The first article in this number is a statement of the reaction of philosophic historians from the violent blows of Niebuhr, and of those who so rapidly rose out of him and seconded him. According to the reviewer, the probabilities are that a man believing Niebuhr, and all his inferences, will stand just the same chance of going wrong in new directions, as the routing historians have gone in the old directions. Niebuhr himself provides for some such contingency. He said, when he first appeared as a reformer:
"He who contends against noted prejudices, digging to the bottom of them, and resolved to upset their dominion, cannot possible keep entirely free from excess; he is led into it by the contemptible aspect which everything connected with the old error wears in his eyes. Moderation can only come in after victory is achieved. This is the time to look into the erroneous opinion which had previously been current, for those features of truth which had been crusted over; and the restoring this truth to honor, when purified from what had made it worthless, is a delightful reward, to which an honest man will joyfully sacrifice his hypothesis."
The writer in the North British acknowledges the great benefits of Niebuhr's labors toward the clearing up of ancient History, and then goes on to mention his deficiencies and overdoings. That the history of Language is proposed by Niebuhr to bear a too prominent part in the re-statement and testing of general ancient History, is mentioned as a fault. Also that the learned German depends too much on his "intuitions." Also that he assumes that many gaps, many unknown things, of ancient history, can be filled up by reference to modern and established history—reasoning "from the known to the unkown," as it is called. The reviewer thinks that the process of the history of different nations, different ages, separate widely, and are not to be judged from one another. He calls Niebuhr the herald, no the bearer, of the truth.
The North British has considerable to say in the course of its article of a work of Sir Cornewall Lewis, on the credibility of early Roman History. In that work, the authority of Niebuhr is rejected, not as wholly false, but as unprovable, merely speculative, and therefore wholly useless.
The Review comes down sternly on other latter-day Romans—as for instances: "There is no exaggeration in concluding that such lays as have been furnished by the Celtic Macaulay for the ancient Romans, might be, with perhaps more philosophy, ascribed to the Choctaw Indians."
We might go deeper into the merits of this whole subject, except that it would hardly be the proper theme for an extended article in a daily newspaper.