Excerpt from The English Historical Review, 1890, Vol. 5

Animated by a profound belief that the origins of medieval history had been written on wrong lines to serve the ends of Teutonic self-glorification, that the texts had been insufficiently studied, and that a large amount of interested speculation had been im ported to fill up the lacunae. Sweeping away the Teutonic tradi tion, he set himself to build up history anew from its very base, and to correct the results Of German erudition by a fresh and thorough investigation of the texts. He possessed important quali fications for the task, a keen logical understanding, a subtle sense of nice distinctions both of language and law, and untiring industry. The one virtue on which he prided himself, that of absolute scientific impartiality, is the one virtue which experience does not allow us to assign to those historians who give to burning questions a burning answer. The fact is that Fustel de Coulanges was a logician first and an historian afterwards. He has a wonderful eye for the unity of history, for the common properties of institutions, for the widely distributed consequences of some remote force. But he missed the complexity of events, and was, in the process Of simpli fication, apt to ignore the plurality of causes. Determined to extract a clear answer from the darkest oracles of the past, he Often submitted his texts to unwilling tortures. In his treatment Of institutions he was prone to overlook the political circumstances which contributed to their growth and gave them their distinctive colour, to View them in an unreal and stationary isolation, and to insist too strongly on those features which appeared to harmonise with his own dominating convictions. Always a clear and incisive writer, he excelled especially in the exposition and elucidation of texts. No one has better understood the art of eliciting the maxi mum of meaning out of the minimum of text, of developing the result into all its logical consequences, and Of exhibiting the process in an attractive and exhilarating form. Although every one of his works was in part, if not in entirety, a polemic, and sustained by a back ground Of intense personal feeling, he rarely departed from that sobriety which is the true note of genius. He is trenchant without bluster, imperious without insolence.

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