Having made himself master of the
reconstructive process that was carried on a little apart from the main
chain of durable literature, in academic transactions, in dissertations
and periodicals, he submitted the materials he was about to use to the
exigencies of the day. Without it, he would have remained a man of the
last generation, distanced by every disciple of the new learning. He
went to work with nothing but his trained and organised common sense,
starting from no theory, and aiming at no conclusion. If he was beyond
his contemporaries in the mass of expedient knowledge, he was not before
them in the strictness of his tests, or in sharpness or boldness in
applying them. He was abreast as a critic, he was not ahead. He did not
innovate. The parallel studies of the time kept pace with his; and his
judgments are those which are accepted generally. His critical mind was
pliant, to assent where he must, to reject where he must, and to doubt
where he must. His submission to external testimony appeared in his
panegyric of our Indian empire, where he overstated the increase of
population. Informed of his error by one of his translators, he replied
that the figures had seemed incredible also to him, but having verified,
he found the statement so positively made that he did not venture to
depart from it. If inclination ever swayed his judgment, it was in his
despair of extracting a real available Buddha from the fables of
Southern India, which was conquered at last by the ablest of Mommsen's
pupils.

He was less apprehensive than most of his English friends in questions
relating to the Old Testament; and in the New, he was disposed, at
times, to allow some force to Muratori's fragment as to the person of
the evangelist who is least favourable to St. Peter; and was puzzled at
the zeal of the Speaker's commentator as to the second epistle of the
apostle. He held to the epistles of St. Ignatius with the tenacity of a
Caroline prelate, and was grateful to De Rossi for a chronological point
in their favour. He rejected the attacks of Lucius on the most valued
passages in Philo, and stood with Gass against Weingarten's argument on
the life of St. Anthony and the origin of Monasticism. He resisted
Overbeck on the epistle to Diognetus, and thought Ebrard all astray as
to the Culdees. There was no conservative antiquarian whom he prized
higher than Le Blant: yet he considered Ruinart credulous in dealing
with acts of early martyrs