291 
for an event which occurred more than one thousand years 
before his time. If he had no definite historical materials 
before him, his authority because he lived 1,800 years ago 
would be valueless. If the world should last another thousand 
years, writers of the present day may be then ancient authori- 
ties, and some will probably think their testimony valuable for 
some fact connected with the battle of Hastings. Against this 
fallacy we cannot be too closely on our guard. 
A considerable portion of the blame must be laid on the 
ancient historians themselves. History was viewed by them 
too much as a work of art. Style held the first place; the 
separation of fact from fiction the second. Hence the facility 
with which they composed speeches, and put them into the 
mouths of others. Even the accurate Thucydides, as you 
know, did not escape from this evil habit, though he candidly 
owns that his speeches are his own composition. The same spirit 
has led some of them to give us lively descriptions of battles for 
which it is evident they could have had no authority but their 
own inventive powers. Hardly an ancient historian exists 
who applied the principles of criticism to events which occurred 
before the period of written contemporaneous documents. 
Livy’s preface well exhibits the careless spirit with which they 
generally treated the events of early history. 
Great, also, is the debt which modern history owes to the 
growth of the critical spirit. Partisan writers, and writers who 
drew their information from second-rate authorities, had suc- 
ceeded in stereotyping their own views of it. We have now 
arrived at the conclusion, that history which is not based on a 
comparison of original authorities, and a careful sifting of evi- 
dence, is valueless. The extent to which documentary evidence 
has been adduced is one of the most striking improvements 
which the spirit of modern times has introduced into this study. 
If hero-worship has sometimes too much characterized it, it has 
certainly demolished a multitude of idols. 
Of the critical school of ancient history Niebuhr may be 
regarded as the founder, although several earlier writers had 
prepared the way by calling attention to its uncertainty. Prior 
to his labours the general views of it were hopelessly indistinct, 
and the value of the authorities, on which it rested, had never 
been tested. Certain positions may be considered to be now 
firmly established. 1. That all secular history, to entitle it to the 
name, must be founded on contemporaneous testimony of some 
sort, and that alleged facts, which cannot be discovered to rest 
on such testimony, are unworthy of credit. 2. That the 
assertions of no writer, however ancient, are trustworthy 
evidence for events which occurred centuries before his birth, 
