us
culprits, however, none is more deeply guilty than Mr Mitford. We
willingly acknowledge the obligations which are due to his talents
and industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the habit of
writing as if the world had learned nothing new during the last sixteen
hundred years. Instead of illustrating the events which they narrated
by the philosophy of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by
itself alone. They seemed to think that notions, long driven from every
other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this
last fastness. They considered all the ancient historians as equally
authentic. They scarcely made any distinction between him who related
events at which he had himself been present and him who five hundred
years after composed a philosophic romance for a society which had in
the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek, and all
true! The centuries which separated Plutarch from Thucydides seemed
as nothing to men who lived in an age so remote. The distance of
time produced an error similar to that which is sometimes produced by
distance of place. There are many good ladies who think that all the
people in India live together, and who charge a friend setting out for
Calcutta with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in the
same manner, all the classics were contemporaries.

Mr Mitford certainly introduced great improvements; he showed us that
men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes told lies; he showed us that
ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not only
allusions to schoolboys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that
love of theatrical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned
almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly free.
But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungenerous, led him
substantially to violate truth in every page. Statements unfavourable
to democracy are made with unhesitating confidence, and with the utmost
bitterness of language. Every charge brought against a monarch or an
aristocracy is sifted with the utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some
palliating supposition is suggested; or we are at least reminded that
some circumstances now unknown MAY have justified what at present
appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by the same author in
the same sentence; their truth rests on the same testimony; but the one
supports the darling hypoth