temptations to
the attainment of Greek, far less does Grecian history. If you except
later historians--such as Diodorus, Plutarch, and those (like Appian,
Dionysius, Dion Cassius) who wrote of Roman things and Roman persons
in Greek, and Polybius, who comes under the same class, at a much
earlier period--and none of whom have any interest of style, excepting
only Plutarch: these dismissed, there are but three who can rank as
classical Greek historians; _three who can lose by translation_. Of
these the eldest, Herodotus, is perhaps of real value. Some call him
the father of history; some call him the father of lies. Time and
Major Rennel have done him ample justice. Yet here, again, see how
little need of Greek for the amplest use of a Greek author. Twenty-two
centuries and more have passed since the fine old man read his history
at the Grecian games of Olympia. One man only has done him right, and
put his enemies under his footstool; _and yet this man had no Greek_.
Major Rennel read Herodotus only in the translation of Beloe. He has
told us so himself. Here, then, is a little fact, my Grecian boys,
that you won't easily get over. The father of history, the eldest of
prose writers, has been first explained, illustrated, justified,
liberated from scandal and disgrace, first had his geography set to
rights, first translated from the region of fabulous romance, and
installed in his cathedral chair, as Dean (or eldest) of historians,
by a military man, who had no more Greek than Shakspeare, or than we
(perhaps you, reader) of the Kalmuck.

Next comes Thucydides. He is the second in order of time amongst the
Grecian historians who survive, and the first of those (a class which
Mr. Southey, the laureate, always speaks of as the corruptors of
genuine history) who affect to treat it philosophically. If the
philosophic historians are not always so faithless as Mr. Southey
alleges, they are, however, always guilty of dulness. Commend us to
one picturesque, garrulous old fellow, like Froissart, or Philip de
Comines, or Bishop Burnet, before all the philosophic prosers that
ever prosed. These picturesque men will lie a little now and then, for
the sake of effect--but so will the philosophers. Even Bishop Burnet,
who, by the way, was hardly so much a picturesque as an anecdotal
historian, was famous for his gift of lying; so diligently had he
cultivated it. And the Duchess of Portsmouth told a noble lord, when
inquiring into the tr