In reversing the relation, in reading history by the light of literature, the danger is not so great. The man of genius may, and does, see deeper than his contemporaries; but, for that very reason, he is a surer guide to the tendencies of his time than they. He is above and beyond his time; but, just in so far as he is so, he sees over it and through it. As Shakespeare defined it, his "end, both at the first and now, was and is... to show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure". Some allowance must doubtless be made for the individuality of the poet; for the qualities in which he stands aloof from his time, and in which, therefore, he must not be taken to reflect it. But to make such allowance is a task not beyond the skill of the practised critic; and many instances suggest themselves in which it has, more or less successfully, been done. Witness not a few passages in Michelet's _Histoire de France_, and some to be found in the various works of Ranke. [Footnote: As instances may be cited, Michelet's remarks on Rabelais (tome viii. 428-440) and on Moliere (tome xiii. 51-85): or again Ranke's _Papste_, i. 486-503 (on Tasso and the artistic tendencies of the middle of the sixteenth century): _Franzosische Geschichte_, iii. 345-368 (the age of Louis XIV.).] Witness, again, Hegel's illustration of the Greek conception of the family from the _Antigone_ and the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles; or, if we may pass to a somewhat different field, his "construction" of the French Revolution from the religious and metaphysical ideas of Rousseau. [Footnote: Hegel, _Phanomenologie des Geistes_, pp. 323-348, and pp. 426-436.] So far as it employs literature to give the key to the outward history of a nation or to the growth of its spiritual faith, it is clear that the historical method ceases to be, in the strict sense of the word, a literary instrument. It implies certainly that a literary judgment has been passed; but, once passed, that judgment is used for ends that lie altogether apart from the interests of literature. But it is idle to consider that literature loses caste by lending itself to such a purpose. It would be wiser to say that it gains by anything that may add to its fruitfulness and instructiveness. In any case, and whether it pleases us or no, this is one of the things that the historical method has done for literature; and neither Carlyle, nor any other thinker of the century, would have been minded to disavow it.