s death. Two years later he
began a Universal History which is not without traces of weakness, but
which, composed after the age of eighty-three, and carried, in
seventeen volumes, far into the Middle Ages, brings to a close the
most astonishing career in literature.

[Sidenote: SUPPRESSION OF OPINION]

His course had been determined, in early life, by _Quentin Durward_.
The shock of the discovery that Scott's Lewis the Eleventh was
inconsistent with the original in Commynes made him resolve that his
object thenceforth should be above all things to follow, without
swerving, and in stern subordination and surrender, the lead of his
authorities. He decided effectually to repress the poet, the patriot,
the religious or political partisan, to sustain no cause, to banish
himself from his books, and to write nothing that would gratify his
own feelings or disclose his private convictions.[66] When a strenuous
divine who, like him, had written on the Reformation, hailed him as a
comrade, Ranke repelled his advances. "You," he said, "are in the
first place a Christian: I am in the first place a historian. There is
a gulf between us."[67] He was the first eminent writer who exhibited
what Michelet calls _le desinteressement des morts_. It was a moral
triumph for him when he could refrain from judging, show that much
might be said on both sides, and leave the rest to Providence.[68] He
would have felt sympathy with the two famous London physicians of our
day, of whom it is told that they could not make up their minds on a
case and reported dubiously. The head of the family insisted on a
positive opinion. They answered that they were unable to give one, but
he might easily find fifty doctors who could.

[Sidenote: CRITICISM OF MODERN SOURCES]

Niebuhr had pointed out that chroniclers who wrote before the
invention of printing generally copied one predecessor at a time, and
knew little about sifting or combining authorities. The suggestion
became luminous in Ranke's hands, and with his light and dexterous
touch he scrutinised and dissected the principal historians, from
Machiavelli to the _Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat_, with a rigour never
before applied to moderns. But whilst Niebuhr dismissed the
traditional story, replacing it with a construction of his own, it was
Ranke's mission to preserve, not to undermine, and to set up masters
whom, in their proper sphere, he could obey. The many excellent
dissertations in which he displ