Lectures on Modern historyActon, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History
Lectures on Modern history
Acton, John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, Baron
History, Modern
criticism, in comparison with the servile and often mechanical work of
pursuing statements to their root. For a historian has to be treated
as a witness, and not believed unless his sincerity is established #61.
The maxim that a man must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt
is proved, was not made for him.
For us, then, the estimate of authorities, the weighing of
testimony, is more meritorious than the potential discovery of
new matter #62. And modern history, which is the widest field of
application, is not the best to learn our business in; for it is
too wide, and the harvest has not been winnowed as in antiquity,
and further on to the Crusades. It is better to examine what has
been done for questions that are compact and circumscribed, such
as the sources of Plutarch's Pericles, the two tracts on Athenian
government, the origin of the epistle to Diognetus, the date of
the life of St. Antony; and to learn from Schwegler how this
analytical work began. More satisfying because more decisive has
been the critical treatment of the medieval writers, parallel
with the new editions, on which incredible labour has been
lavished, and of which we have no better examples than the
prefaces of Bishop Stubbs. An important event in this series was
the attack on Dino Compagni, which, for the sake of Dante, roused
the best Italian scholars to a not unequal contest. When we are
told that England is behind the Continent in critical faculty, we
must admit that this is true as to quantity, not as to quality of
work. As they are no longer living, I will say of two Cambridge
professors, Lightfoot and Hort, that they were critical scholars
whom neither Frenchman nor German has surpassed.
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