XV11 



though Mr. Hallam holds avowedly and without disguise his own 

 strong opinions, those of a calm, conscientious Whig of the old school, 

 still there is an enforced impression that nothing could tempt him to 

 be an unfair partisan ; that he seeks, and only seeks and seeks with- 

 out fear, without compromise, without awe of great names, without 

 respect for popular idolatry right and truth, justice and humanity, 

 sound law, tolerant religion. If there has grown up a more general 

 accordance of sentiment and opinion on English Constitutional History; 

 if extreme differences have died away, and, so far as past times are 

 concerned, the old party watchwords have nearly sunk into oblivion; 

 if there has been greater general sympathy for the wise and good, 

 more unanimous reprobation of the base and bad, this may in some 

 degree be attributed to the influence of ' The Constitutional History 

 of England/ 



After another interval of nearly the same length (in Sept. 1838 

 and July 1839) appeared the 'Introduction to the Literature of the 

 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries/ This view of the intellectual deve- 

 lopment of the world during the most active and prolific period in 

 the history of the human mind, if with Mr. Hallam a work of labour 

 (to most others it had been a work of intense labour), was yet a work 

 of love. It was the overflow of a mind full to abundance of the best 

 reading on almost all subjects, a disburthening, as it were, and a relief 

 from the stores of knowledge accumulated during a long life. If it 

 be hardly possible for a single mind to achieve a history of literature 

 during three centuries (the work bore the modest title of ' Introduc- 

 tion to the Literature of Europe '), yet much is gained by the unity 

 of the work, by the proportion, harmony and order in the distribution 

 of its parts ; and if one mind was capable of passing a fair judgment 

 on such different productions of human thought and imagination, it 

 was that of Mr. Hallam. How well he had read the best authors 

 may be tested by his criticisms on Shakspeare, on Ariosto, on Cer- 

 vantes, and on some of our older poets ; his power of grappling with 

 more profound and abstruse subjects, by his estimate of Locke ; while 

 writers of a more dry and uninviting class, scholars, even gramma- 

 rians, pass before us, if with less minute investigation, with much 

 more than a dull and barren recension of their names* 



Only one other work, a small one, bears the name of Mr. Hallam ; 

 and that, though printed for private distribution, having been liberally 



b 



