In the end of the century we have history which is not “as interesting as a novel” (like that of Prescott, Motley, Froude, and Macaulay), but very far from gay. Novelty of research is, quite justly, insisted upon (though research is as old as Hemingburgh, and was much advanced by Gibbon, Carter, Rymer, Walpole, Tytler, and so on) till, by a natural error, every scrap won from a wilderness of charters is valued beyond its deserts. The human interest is frowned upon; movements of forces, political and social, are treated in preference to personal character and adventure. Meticulous accuracy is insisted upon, till nervous students are actually afraid to publish. Even Mommsen, greatest of original students, is regarded as frivolous, even Curtius as “popular” by the modern school. It is natural to man to run into these excesses of reaction. Froude is not often accurate, Macaulay has prejudices, even Mr. Freeman was not sound about Knights’ Fees and about a certain palisade. Now the public does not care about Knights’ Fees or about the Manor, much; nor even about the obscure early history of civic institutions. In fact, even references to authorities frighten away part of the public, whose timidity I do not applaud. The results of our frivolity and of the portentous gravity of some modern historians is that, since Mr. Green, scarcely any writer of history is read except for examinations. As long as historians declare (often with perfect truth) that their own works are not literature, but something far more awful and solemn, namely science, history must be unpopular. But we are only waiting for a man of genius as accurate as the most meticulous, and as interesting as the agreeably irresponsible Froude. Of science I am not to treat, so I am dispensed from remarks on our scientific modern historians. It is certain that in collecting and printing and calendaring documents the age in all countries has shown praiseworthy industry, while Mr. Parkman in America, like our mid-century historians, was not too scientific to be readable. Of theology, except when recommended by the art of a Newman or a Jowett, nothing is here to be said; though I could cheerfully say a good deal, especially about Biblical criticism. But that is science, though scarcely the sort of science which has been defined as “organized common-sense.” The poetry of the late century in England boasts the names of Rossetti, William Morris, Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Swinburne. It is tinged, in the former with mediævalism derived from the Italians and Chaucer; while in Mr. Swinburne every conceivable literary influence, from the Greeks to Baudelaire, from the Elizabethans to Victor Hugo, makes itself abundantly conspicuous. These poets, younger than Matthew Arnold, are not much influenced by Wordsworth, though by Shelley Mr. Swinburne was influenced. On the other hand, Mr. Arnold was a modern, academic, heterodox Wordsworth, and often a truly delightful poet.