OF ARTS AND SCIENCES : JUNE 4, 1872. 445 



patient toil by which he must have mastered many elaborate and often 

 tedious arguments of the Platonic Socrates, leading to conclusions the 

 furthest possible removed from his own sympathies. At the time of 

 his death, he was preparing for the press a similar work on Aristotle ; 

 and it can hardly be doubted that the same sagacity, joined with a deep- 

 er sympathy with the author and the subject, would have made this the 

 crowning work of his life. It remains to be seen how far the posthumous 

 work, now daily expected, will realize the expectations of scholars. 



It was not to be expected that the graduate of a London bank, who 

 had known no higher institution of learning than the Charterhouse 

 School, should be as familiar with all the nice details of classical schol- 

 arship as if he had been trained at a university. But no modern histo- 

 rian of Greece was ever more thoroughly imbued with the whole spirit 

 of classical antiquity, or ever viewed the field from a more commanding 

 position. Although his views have often been violently attacked, and 

 especially his defence of Athenian democracy in its least defensible 

 points, his writings have yet produced a gradual change in the feelings 

 of nearly all scholars towards even the weaknesses of Athens. No one, 

 for example, will ever again attack the Sophists indiscriminately as a 

 corrupt sect of philosophers, with a common creed and a common pur- 

 pose of corrupting the youth of Athens. Even Cleon, that coarsest 

 product of Attic democracy, will perhaps fare a little better at the 

 hands of subsequent historians for having found a friend in Mr. Grote ; 

 it may be doubted, however, whether the historian would not have 

 understood Cleon and his class better if he had spent nine years in 

 Congress instead of in Parliament. Perhaps nothing in Grote's works 

 has been so severely criticised as his defence of ostracism ; and yet it 

 was defended on nearly the same grounds by Aristotle, when it was 

 almost as much a thing of the past as it now is. 



During the later years of his life, Mr. Grote was Vice-Chancellor of 

 the University of London, and one of the Trustees of the British Mu- 

 seum. It is understood that he was offered a peerage about two years 

 before his death, and declined it on the ground that he must devote the 

 remainder of his strength to his work on Aristotle. The long list of 

 honorary titles which have been gradually added to the simple " George 

 Grote, Esq.," which appears on the title-page of his History, show the 

 respect in which he was held by scholars at home and abroad ; and the 

 impressive funeral service at his grave in Westminster Abbey, in which 

 the highest officers of state appeared as mourners, was a fitting testi- 



