y noticing its literary expression, was
possible, though it had to be done, so to speak, in shorthand. To do the
same thing with science, or even with what is technically called
scholarship, would be simply impossible. Much of their expression is
hardly susceptible of literary form at all, hardly any ever receives
such form, while the subdivision of the branches of physical science is
now so great and their shadow so wide that no systematic sketch of them
is to be thought of. It is only possible to mention a few distinguished
writers, writers who would have been distinguished whatever their
subject, but who happen to have devoted themselves, solely or mainly, to
scientific writing, or to classical criticism and philology.

A curious independent study might be made of the literary gradations of
classical scholarship. In the Middle Ages, though the complete ignorance
of the classics, once imagined as prevailing, has been shown to be a
figment, scarcely anybody could claim to be a scholar. During the
Renaissance almost every man of letters had necessarily some tinge of
scholarship, and some of the greatest in its earlier period, such as
Erasmus, were scholars first of all. The growth of vernacular
literature, the constant increase and subdivision of subjects, and the
advance in minute study of the Greek and Latin languages, brought about
an inevitable cleavage, and from the seventeenth century onwards
scholarship became an independent profession or vocation. For some
considerable time, however, it was the almost indispensable novitiate of
a literary career, and the tradition that a scholar must be first
applied to, for no matter what literary work, was still potent in the
times of Salmasius, and cannot be said to have been discredited in those
of Bentley, who would undoubtedly have been as formidable in purely
political or general controversy as he was on _Phalaris_ or on his own
private interests. The eighteenth century, however, saw the divorce
nearly completed, and by the period of our present volume it was an
accomplished fact.

Even then, however, though for men of letters it was not customary to
turn first to scholars, scholars had not ceased to be men of letters,
and philology (or the mere study of language, as apart from literature)
had not absorbed them.

During that part of our period which is still concerned with the last
century, there were many excellent scholars in England, but perhaps only
three--two of w