Our Earlier Historians of Greece. PAGE Definite and indefinite problems 1 Examples in theology and metaphysics 1 Examples in literature 2 The case of history generally 3 Special claims of Greek history 4 The claims of Rome and of the Jews 4 Greek influences in our religion 4 Increasing materials 5 Plan of this Essay 6 Universal histories 6 Gillies 7 Effects of the French Revolution on the writers of the time 8 Mitford writes a Tory history of Greece 8 He excites splendid refutations 9 Thirlwall: his merits 10 his coldness 11 his fairness and accuracy, but without enthusiasm 11 Clinton's _Fasti_: his merits 12 Contrast of Grote's life 13 His theory Radicalism 13 The influences of his time 14 To be compared with Gibbon 14 His eloquence; his panegyric on democracy 15 Objections: that democracies are short-lived 16 that the Athenian democrat was a slave-holder and a ruler over subjects 16 The Athenian not the ideal of the Greeks 17 Grote's treatment of the despots 18 Their perpetual recurrence in the Greek world 18 Advantages of despotism 18 Good despots not infrequent 19 Grote a practical politician 20 His treatment of Alexander the Great 20 Contrast of Thirlwall 20 Grote ignores the later federations, and despises their history 21 His treatment of the early legends 22 Even when plausible, they may be fictions 22 Thirlwall's view less extreme 23 Influence of Niebuhr on both historians 23