and his mastery of a brilliant style, does not exhibit those particular qualities and charms which are distinctive of the best classical prose. John Henry Newman, whose scholarship, in Greek at least, was not equal to Macaulay's, exhibits them in an eminent degree; reminding us that for their happy manifestation a certain spiritual element is requisite, a certain tone of the whole mind and character.
A more living interest in classical antiquity.A new current set in soon after the middle of the century, when a more living interest in classical antiquity began to be felt, outside of scholastic and academic circles, by the cultivated portion of the English public generally. It was in the province of history, I think, rather than of literature, that this new current first became perceptible. Dr Arnold, in his teaching at Rugby, had already prepared it among a select few; but if one were to specify any single book as marking the commencement of its wider influence, one might perhaps name Grote.Grote's History of Greece. Grote had the advantage, not a small one for this purpose, of being not only a scholar, but a man of affairs; the British public was the better inclined to him on that account; and one of his achievements, due especially to his treatment of Athens, was to invest ancient Greece with a modern interest. That good work was carried on by the lamented Freeman.Mr Freeman, ever insisting, as he did, on the unity of history, and emphasising the fact that the story begun by Herodotus and Thucydides should be followed up in Polybius and Finlay.
