‘High as my expectations were of it,’ he writes to Dr Schmitz, ‘it has very much surpassed them all, and affords an earnest of something which has never been done for the subject either in our own or any other literature[61]’; and to Grote himself, when the publication of four volumes had enabled him to form a maturer judgment, he not only used stronger words of praise, but contrasted it with his own History in terms which for generosity and sincerity can never be surpassed. After alluding to ‘the great inferiority’ of his ‘own performance,’ he concludes as follows: ‘I may well be satisfied with that measure of temporary success and usefulness which has attended it, and can unfeignedly rejoice that it will, for all highest purposes, be so superseded[62].’ It would be beside our present purpose to attempt a comparison of the relative merits of these two works, which, by a curious coincidence, had been elaborated simultaneously. They have many points of resemblance. Both originated in a desire to apply to the history of Greece those principles of criticism which Niebuhr had applied so successfully to the history of Rome; both were intended to counteract the misrepresentations of Mitford; both were the result of long and careful preparation. Grote has a decided advantage in point of style; he writes vigorous, ‘newspaper’ English, as might be expected from a successful pamphleteer; while Thirlwall’s periods are laboured and somewhat wooden. Grote has infused animation into his work by being always a partisan. We do not mean that he wilfully misrepresents facts; he certainly does not; but he unconsciously finds ‘extenuating circumstances’ for those with whom he sympathizes, and condemns remorselessly those whose springs of action are alien to his own. Thirlwall, on the contrary, holds the judicial balance with a firm hand. In estimating character his serene intellect is never warped by partisanship, or by a wish to present old facts under a new face; while from his scholarship and critical power there is no appeal.