GROWTH AND DIFFUSION OF CRITICAL SPIRIT. 165 



work, which exerted a great influence all through the 

 century on biblical studies abroad, he is considered as 

 having, for the first time, assumed the truly scientific 

 position in the larger sense of the word, having applied 

 " the principles of philological and historical criticism, 

 the use of which he had learnt under Heyne in the 

 domain of archaeology, to the study of the Old Testa- 

 ment." ^ This beginning of biblical criticism, which was 

 not applied methodically to the books of the New Testa- 

 ment till much later, had for a considerable time but 

 little influence upon religious, theological, or even philo- 

 sophical thought, which was rather under the influence 

 of the purely philosophical writings mentioned above or 

 of the poetical views elaborated by Herder.^ Appar- 



records following Astruc, criticism 

 " has so little notion of the pre- 

 vailing spirit which is to be found 

 also in apparently heterogeneous 

 portions that it sees the solution of 

 the problem in accepting a number 

 of unconnected and irreconcilable 

 fragments " (E. Krautsch in Lexis, 

 loc. cit., vol. ii. p. 181). It is in- 

 teresting to note that from the 

 Gottingen school, and especially 

 from Michaelis, emanated the plan 

 of exploring the countries of the 

 East in the interest of theological 

 science. This led to such travels 

 as those of the elder Niebuhr and 

 others which were supported by 

 the Danish Government. 



^ Siegfried in ' Deutsche Bio- 

 graphic.' 



'■^ In this connection it is im- 

 portant to draw attention to 

 Herder's relations to Gottingen, 

 especially to Eichhorn, and how he 

 and the latter represent two sides 

 of biblical study, the poetical and 

 literary on the one side, the critical 

 and archaeological on the other. 

 That Herder himself recognised 



the difference is evident from his 

 correspondence with Eichhorn, and 

 is fully dealt with in R. Haym, 

 'Herder,' 2 vols., 1880-85 (see 

 vol. ii. p. 166 sqq.) Herder's most 

 important work in this direction 

 was that on the ' Spirit of Hebrew 

 Poetry ' (1782). Although, as is 

 stated in the Preface, the posi- 

 tion taken up is original, it 

 was no doubt to a considerable 

 extent suggested by an English 

 writer whom Michaelis in Got- 

 tingen had brought prominently 

 before the German literary world, 

 namely, Robert Lowth (1710- 

 87), Bishop of London, who, as 

 Professor of Poetry at Oxford 

 (1741), delivered ' Pnelectiones 

 Academicae de Sacra Poesi He- 

 brseorum.' These were published 

 in Latin in 1753. A second edi- 

 tion appeared in 1763, and was 

 republished at Gottingen, with 

 Notes by Michaelis in 1770, and 

 translated, with the Notes, into 

 English by G. Gregory (1787). 

 Though Lowth is now recognised 

 as one of the pioneers in the 



