Edmund Robertson

“ In fact, allusions to the necessary studies of a gentleman meet us constantly, reminding us of the unlikely erudition of the schoolboy in Macaulay. Hallam’s prejudices, so far as he had any, belong to the same character. His criticism is apt to assume a tone of moral censure when he has to deal with certain extremes of human thought—scepticism in philosophy, atheism in religion and democracy in politics. ”

“ If Hallam can ever be said to have deviated from perfect fairness, it was in the tacit assumption that the 19th-century theory of the constitution was the right theory in previous centuries, and that those who departed from it on one side or the other were in the wrong. ”

“ Like the Constitutional History, the Introduction to the Literature of Europe continues one of the branches of inquiry which had been opened in the View of the Middle Ages. In the first chapter of the Literature, which is to a great extent supplementary to the last chapter of the Middle Ages, Hallam sketches the state of literature in Europe down to the end of the 14th century: the extinction of ancient learning which followed the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of Christianity ”

“ Thus he objects to the use of statistics because they favour that tendency to regard all men as mentally and morally equal which is so unhappily strong in modern times. At the same time Hallam by no means assumes the tone of the mere scholar. He is even solicitous to show that his point of view is that of the cultivated gentleman and not of the specialist of any order. ”

“ For the first century and a half of his special period he is mainly occupied with a review of classical learning, and he adopts the plan of taking short decennial periods and noticing the most remarkable works which they produced. The rapid growth of literature in the 16th century compels him to resort to a classification of subjects. Thus in the period 1520–1550 we have separate chapters on ancient literature, theology, speculative philosophy and jurisprudence, the literature of taste, and scientific and miscellaneous literature ”

“ Others deal with the great institutional features of medieval society—the development of the feudal system, of the ecclesiastical system, and of the free political system of England. The last chapter sketches the general state of society, the growth of commerce, manners, and literature in the middle ages. The book may be regarded as a general view of early modern history, preparatory to the more detailed treatment of special lines of inquiry carried out in his subsequent works, although Hallam’s original intention was to continue the work on the scale on which it had been begun. ”

“ Hallam’s style is singularly uniform throughout all his writings. It is sincere and straightforward, and obviously innocent of any motive beyond that of clearly expressing the writer’s meaning. In the Literature of Europe there are many passages of great imaginative beauty. (E. R.)
↑ Lord Brougham, overlooking the constitutional chapter in the Middle Ages, censured Hallam for making an arbitrary beginning at this point, and proposed to write a more complete history himself. ”