Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and BookmenShorter, Clement King
History
Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen
Shorter, Clement King
English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism
I regret that my space will not permit me to write at length of the men
who have studied so thoroughly sciences which have so much bearing upon
history, and who have written delightful books upon them. I must be
content merely to mention the names of William Boyd Dawkins, who has
written "Cave-hunting" and "Early Man in Britain;" and Sir John Lubbock,
banker and member of Parliament, who has written "Pre-historic Times"
and "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man,"
also various books on natural science, and some very inadequate literary
essays. Nor must I forget Edward Burnett Tylor's "Primitive Culture" and
"Anthropology," Grant Allen's "Anglo-Saxon Britain," and Edward Clodd's
"Childhood of the World," "Childhood of Religion," and "Pioneers of
Evolution." From such works as these it is but a very short step to the
writings of Max Müller. =Friedrich Max Müller (1823- )=, son of the
German poet, Wilhelm Müller, was educated at the University of Leipzig,
and made a special study of philosophy in Germany for many years before
he came to the land of his adoption, in 1846. Appointed an Oxford
professor, first of modern languages and later of comparative philology,
a science which he may almost be said to have created, he has become an
Englishman both in speech and in writing. Max Müller's most popular
works are his interesting "Lectures on the Science of Language," and his
"Chips from a German Workshop," in which he deals not only with the
common origin of the world's leading languages, but in a skilful and
almost startling manner reconstructs, by the aid of language alone, the
conditions out of which have risen the various religious and social
systems of the early nations. The writers who have most prominently
followed in Max Müller's footsteps, as elucidators of primitive
religious belief, are Professor Sayce and the Rev. Sir George Cox.
=Archibald Henry Sayce (1846- )=, who succeeded Max Müller in the
chair of comparative philology at Oxford, has written numerous books and
treatises dealing with the Chaldean and other ancient nations, and has
also published an annotated edition of Herodotus, noticeable chiefly for
its unfavourable verdict on the "Father of History." =Sir George Cox
(1827- )=, whose "Mythology of the Aryan Nations" has provoked much
adverse criticism from its extreme application of the "Solar" theory to
the interpretation of myth, epic, and romance, has also written an
interesting "History of Greece" in two volumes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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