hree centuries have most influenced thought. This would
bring Wolf into line with Descartes, Newton, Locke, Kant, Rousseau, or
whatever other five master-spirits of thought from then to now the
judicious reader may select. The present writer has assuredly no
competence to assign Wolf's place in the history of modern criticism, but
straying aside for a season from the green pastures of Hansard, and
turning over again the slim volume of a hundred and fifty pages in which
Wolf discusses his theme, one may easily discern a fountain of broad
streams of modern thought (apart from the particular thesis) that to Mr.
Gladstone, by the force of all his education and his deepest
prepossessions, were in the highest degree chimerical and dangerous.

He once wrote to Lord Acton (1889) about the Old Testament and Mosaic
legislation:--

Now I think that the most important parts of the argument have in
a great degree a solid standing ground apart from the destructive
criticism on dates and on the text: and I am sufficiently aware of
my own rawness and ignorance in the matter not to allow myself to
judge definitely, or condemn. I feel also that I have a
prepossession derived from the criticisms in the case of Homer. Of
them I have a very bad opinion, not only in themselves, but as to
the levity, precipitancy, and shallowness of mind which they
display; and here I do venture to speak, because I believe myself
to have done a great deal more than any of the destructives in the
examination of the text, which is the true source of the materials
of judgment. They are a soulless lot; but there was a time when
they had possession of the public ear as much I suppose as the Old
Testament destructives now have, within their own precinct. It is
only the constructive part of their work on which I feel tempted
to judge; and I must own that it seems to me sadly wanting in the
elements of rational probability.

This unpromising method is sufficiently set out when he says: "I find in
the plot of the _Iliad_ enough of beauty, order, and structure, not merely
to sustain the supposition of its own unity, but to bear an independent
testimony, should it be still needed, to the existence of a personal and
individual Homer as its author."(319) From such a method no permanent
contribution could come.

Yet scholars allow that Mr. Gladstone in these three volumes, as well as
in _Juventus M