[116] Most of those who have a vocation for critical scholarship possess both the power of solving problems and the taste for collecting. It is, however, easy to divide them into two categories according as they show a marked preference for textual criticism and investigation of authorship on the one hand, or for the more absorbing and less intellectual labours of collection on the other. J. Havet, a past-master in the study of erudite problems, always declined to undertake a general collection of Merovingian royal charters, a work which his admirers expected from him. In this connection he readily admitted his "want of taste for feats of endurance" (_Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes_, 1896, p. 222). [117] It is common to hear the opposite of this maintained, namely, that the labours of critical scholarship (external criticism) have this advantage over other labours in the field of history that they are within the range of average ability, and that the most moderate intellects, after a suitable preliminary drilling, may be usefully employed in them. It is quite true that men with no elevation of soul or power of thought can make themselves useful in the field of criticism, but then they must have special qualities. The mistake is to think that with good will and a special drilling every one without exception can be fitted for the operations of external criticism. Among those who are incapable of these operations, as well as among those who are fitted for them, there are both men of sense and blockheads. [118] A. Philippi, _Einige Bemerkungen über den philologischen Unterricht_, Giessen, 1890, 4to. Cf. _Revue Critique_, 1892, i. p. 25. [119] J. von Pflugk-Harttung, _Geschichtsbetrachtungen_, Gotha, 1890, 8vo. [120] Ibid., p. 21. [121] Cf. _supra_, p. 99. [122] Renan, _L'Avenir de la science_, p. xiv. [123] _Revue historique_, lxiii. (1897), p. 320. [124] Renan, ibid., pp. 122, 243. The same thought has been more than once expressed, in different language, by E. Lavisse, in his addresses to the students of Paris (_Questions d'enseignement national_, pp. 14, 86, &c.). [125] One of us (M. Langlois) proposes to give elsewhere a detailed account of all that has been done in the last three hundred years, but especially in the nineteenth century, for the organisation of historical work in the principal countries of the world. Some information has already been collected on this subject by J. Franklin Jameson, "The Expenditures of Foreign Governments in behalf of History," in the "Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1891," pp. 38-61. [126] L. Feugère, _Étude sur la vie et les ouvrages de Du Cange_, pp. 55, 58.