NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 451 



residue infinitely more valuable than the original amalgam of 

 myth, legend, and chronicle. 



His methods were especially brought to bear on English his- 

 tory by one of the truest men and noblest scholars that the Eng- 

 lish race has produced Arnold of Rugby and, in spite of the 

 inevitable heavy conservatism, were allowed to do their work in 

 the field of ancient history as well as in that of ancient classical 

 literature. 



The place of myth in history thus became more and more 

 understood, and historical foundations, at least so far as secular 

 history was concerned, were henceforth dealt with in a scientific 

 spirit. The extension of this new treatment to all aEcient litera- 

 ture and history was now simply a matter of time. 



Such an extension had already begun, for in 1829 had appeared 

 Milman's History of the Jews. In this work came a further evo- 

 lution of the truths and methods suggested by Bentley, Wolf, 

 and Niebuhr, and their application to sacred history was made 

 strikingly evident. Milman, though a clergyman, treated the 

 history of the chosen people in the light of modern knowledge of 

 Oriental and especially of Semitic peoples. He exhibited sundry 

 great biblical personages of the wandering days of Israel as sheiks 

 or emirs or Bedouin chieftains, and the tribes of Israel as obedient 

 then to the same general laws, customs, and ideas as govern wan- 

 dering tribes in the same region now. He dealt with conflicting 

 sources somewhat in the spirit of Bentley, and with the mythical, 

 legendary, and miraculous somewhat in the spirit of Niebuhr. 

 This treatment of the history of the Jews, simply as the develop- 

 ment of an Oriental tribe, raised great opposition. Such cham- 

 pions of orthodoxy as Bishop Mant and Dr. Faussett straightway 

 took the field, and with such effect that the Family Library, a 

 very valuable series in which Milman's history appeared, was 

 put under the ban and its further publication stopped. For years 

 Milman, though a man of exquisite literary and lofty historical 

 gifts, as well as of most honorable character, was debarred from 

 preferment and outstripped by ecclesiastics vastly inferior to 

 him in everything save worldly wisdom ; for years he was passed 

 in the race for honors by divines who were content either to 

 hold briefs for all the contemporary unreason which happened 

 to be popular or to keep their mouths shut altogether. This 

 opposition to him extended to his works. For many years they 

 were sneered at, decried, and kept from the public as far as 

 possible. 



Fortunately, the progress of events lifted him, before the 

 closing years of his life, above all this opposition. As Dean of 

 St. Paul's he really outranked the contemporary archbishops ; he 

 lived to see his main ideas accepted, and his History of Latin 



