h the public,
who, as the French gibe has it, were not "hampered by the style," and
who probably found in the popular explanation of a great series of
important and interesting affairs all that they cared for. Nor is it
unlikely that this popularity rather exaggerated the ill-will of the
critics themselves. Alison is not quotable; he is, even after youth,
read with no small difficulty; but it would be no bad thing if other
periods of history had been treated in his manner and spirit.

Henry Hart Milman belongs to very much the same class of historian as
Hallam, but unlike Hallam he was a poet, and, though a Broad Churchman
of the days before the nickname was given, more of an adherent to the
imaginative and traditional side of things. His father was a King's
Physician, and he was educated at Eton and Brasenose. He obtained the
Newdigate, and after bringing out his best play _Fazio_ (of which more
will be said later), took orders and received the vicarage of St.
Mary's, Reading. Some poems of merit in the second class, including some
hymns very nearly in the first, followed, and in 1821 he became
Professor of Poetry at Oxford, where six years later he was Bampton
Lecturer. It was in 1829 that Milman, who had been a frequent
contributor to the _Quarterly Review_, began the series of his works on
ecclesiastical history with the _History of the Jews_, the weakest of
them (for Milman was not a very great Hebraist, and while endeavouring
to avoid rigid orthodoxy did not satisfy the demands of the newer
heterodox criticism). The _History of Christianity to the Abolition of
Paganism_ was better (1840), and the _History of Latin Christianity_
(1854) better still. This last indeed, based on an erudition which
enabled Milman to re-edit Gibbon with advantage, is a great book, and
will probably live. For Milman here really _knew_; he had (like most
poets who write prose with fair practice) an excellent style; and he was
able--as many men who have had knowledge have not been able, and as many
who have had style have not tried or have failed to do--to rise to the
height of a really great argument, and treat it with the grasp and ease
which are the soul of history. That he owed much to Gibbon himself is
certain; that he did not fail to use his pupilage to that greatest of
historians so as to rank among the best of his followers is not less
certain, and is high enough praise for any man. He received the Deanery
of St. Paul's in 1849, an