Born, at Stepney, 11 Feb. 1797. Early education at Charterhouse School. Matric. Trin. Coll., Camb., 1814; Craven Scholar, 1815; Bell’s Scholar, 1815; Chancellor’s Medallist, 1818; B.A., 1818; Minor Fellow, Trin. Coll., 1818; M.A., 1821. Student of Lincoln’s Inn, Feb. 1820. Called to Bar, 1825. Ordained Deacon, 1827; Priest, 1828. Rector of Kirby-under-Dale, Yorks, 1834–40. B.D. and D.D., 1840. Bishop of St. David’s, July 1840 to May 1874. Died, at Bath, 27 July 1875. Works: [exclusive of separate sermons and episcopal charges, etc.]: “Primitiæ” (priv. ptd.), 1809; “History of Greece” (8 vols.), 1835–47; “The Advantages of Literary and Scientific Institutions,” 1850; “Inaugural Address” [at the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution], 1861; “The Present State of Relations between Science and Literature,” 1867. Posthumous: “Remains, literary and theological,” ed. by J. J. S. Perowne (3 vols.), 1877–78; “Letters, literary and theological,” ed. by J. J. S. Perowne and L. Stokes, 1881; “Letters to a Friend,” ed. by Dean Stanley, 1881. He translated: Schleiermacher’s “Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke,” 1825; Niebuhr’s “History of Rome” (with J. C. Hare), 1828.

Personal

  My Bishop, I can discern, is a right solid honest-hearted man, full of knowledge and sense, excessively delicate withal, and, in spite of his positive temper, almost timid. No wonder he is a little embarrassed with me, till he feel gradually that I have not come here to eat him, or make scenes in his still house. But we are getting, or as good as got, out of that, and shall for a brief time do admirably well. Here is medicine for the soul, if the body fare worse for such sumptuosities, precisely the converse of Llandough. It is wholly an element of rigid, decently elegant forms that we live in. Very wholesome for the like of me to dip for a day or two into that, is it not? For the rest, I have got two other novels of Tieck, of which the admiring Bishop possesses a whole stock.

  The Bishop had but few intimate friends; and of those who were his contemporaries at Cambridge, most had passed away before him. To the world at large he was known as the scholar, the historian, the theologian, foremost in the first rank of these; but of the man they knew little or nothing…. The Bishop’s life was not an eventful life. It was essentially the life of the student and the man of letters; it presented few of those incidents which make the ordinary biography. With the exception of the remarkable episode at Cambridge, there was little in it that attracted notice. Men far less distinguished made more noise in the world. He rarely spoke in the House of Lords; he never threw himself in the strife of parties. No man governed a diocese better, and the difficulties of his diocese were peculiar; but he did not belong to the modern type of bishop, whose efficiency is measured in common estimation by his power of speech and motion.

  In April, 1875, the Bishop became almost totally blind, and lost the use of his right hand. His solitude was relieved as far as possible by those around him. He was kept acquainted with everything that happened, and his unabated interest in all religious and political matters was shown by the letters he dictated. His mind was kept in continual exercise; a letter from his nephew, written a short time before the Bishop’s death, speaks of him as translating Sanscrit as it was read to him by one member of the family, Italian and Portuguese with another, and German and French with another. Even the little ones were employed in reading history and chemistry to him. His patience and gentleness touched the hearts of all about him. The loss of eyesight and the loss of power of using his pen must have tried him severely, yet no complaint ever escaped him.

  The English Church will probably never again have a prelate of Thirlwall’s power or character.

  It has often been observed that every great mind has its distinct phases, according as it is known to outsiders or to intimates. This was true of the late Bishop of St. David’s whose claims to greatness are indisputable. You could not judge of him by his portraits and photographs, for which he sat only to please his friends, or by his effigy in Westminster Abbey. The broad forehead, the massive jaw, the intellectual but stern countenance revealed one phase, the smile which occasionally lit up his face revealed another. Under the grave face was an almost womanly tenderness, a sense of humour and an enjoyment of a merry thought, to be looked for in a Wilberforce but which was a revelation in a Thirlwall. But like the heat latent in an anvil, it needed the percussion of kindred influences to bring these warmer traits to the surface. Scholar, historian, theologian—so is he described on his monument; but he was much more than this. He might emphatically have said, Humani nihil alienum.

  The Bishop of St. David’s, Thirlwall, was staying at the Rectory [1853] when I was at home. Excellent as he was, I was horribly afraid of him, for a more repellent, freezing manner than his I never saw. I hated the Rectory now more than ever, but was more than ever devoted to Lime.

History of Greece, 1835–47

  I have lately read Thirlwall’s fourth volume, which perhaps is the best. He has thrown much new light on the history of Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian war. After all, however, the history is so uncertain that one scarcely knows what to believe. He has succeeded in shaking Xenophon’s credit to a greater degree than I should have thought possible.

  You will be glad to hear, I think, that the volumes of Thirlwall’s Greece seem to me to improve as the work advances. There never could be a doubt as to the learning and good sense of the book; but it seems to me to be growing in feeling and animation, and to be now a very delightful history, as well as a very valuable one.

  If my early friend Dr. Thirlwall’s “History of Greece” had appeared a few years sooner, I should probably never have conceived the design of the present work at all; I should certainly not have been prompted to the task by any deficiencies, such as those which I felt and regretted in Mitford. The comparison of the two authors affords indeed a striking proof of the progress of sound and enlarged views respecting the ancient world during the present generation. Having studied of course the same evidence as Dr. Thirlwall, I am better enabled than others to bear testimony to the learning, the sagacity, and the candour which pervades his excellent work.

  A work which, as a whole, is not perhaps to be compared favorably with that of Grote, but which still has some points of great advantage. It shows learning, sagacity, and candor; but it falls far short of Grote in that power of combination and generalization which has made the later work so justly famous. The English of Thirlwall is superior to that of Grote, although the style of neither of them is entitled to very high praise. Thirlwall’s sympathies are aristocratic rather than democratic—the exact opposite of the sympathies of Grote. The books, therefore, may well be read at the same time, in order that conflicting views may be compared and weighed. Another difference between the two works is that while Grote is especially strong on the earlier history of Greece, Thirlwall is strong on the later history. Perhaps the best portion of Thirlwall’s book is that which relates to the age beginning with the period at which Grote ends.

  Bishop Thirlwall certainly rivalled Gibbon and Macaulay in mental calibre, and the inferior reputation of his “History of Greece” is one proof among many of the supreme importance of striking diction. But still more powerful causes concurred. Writing for a cyclopædia, he inevitably worked with a feeling of constraint; and, though he cannot have underrated the difficulties, he seems to have imperfectly realised the grandeur of his undertaking. Hence he is always a little below his subject, and a little below himself; he delights and instructs, but he does not satisfy.

  It is a work full of interest and much more readable than the more elaborate history of Grote, though the latter has to a great extent supplanted it as a work of reference. Thirlwall’s history will, however, always retain its value, and certainly deserves more attention than is generally paid to it.

  He is seldom picturesque, and indeed he never tries to be so. But to a scholarship naturally far superior to Grote’s, he united a much fairer and more judicial mind, and the faculty of writing—instead of loose stuff not exactly ungrammatical nor always uncomely, but entirely devoid of any grace of style—an excellent kind of classical English, but slightly changed from the best eighteenth century models. And he had what Grote lacked, the gift of seeing that the historian need not—nay, that he ought not to—parade every detail of the arguments by which he has reached his conclusions; but should state those conclusions themselves, reserving himself for occasional emergencies in which process as well as result may be properly exhibited. It is fair to say, in putting this curious pair forward as examples respectively of the popular and scholarly methods of historical writing, that Grote’s learning and industry were very much more than popular, while Thirlwall’s sense and style might with advantage have put on, now and then, a little more pomp and circumstance. But still the contrast holds; and until fresh discoveries like that of the “Athenian Polity” accumulate to an extent which calls for and obtains a new real historian of Greece, it is Thirlwall and not Grote who deserves the first rank as such in English.

  As a historian, Thirlwall is undoubtedly a sounder scholar and a better writer than Grote; he has also a more judicial temper and a finer sense of proportion.

General

  Pray get Thirlwall’s “Charge” and read it; it is well worth twice 2s. It is, I think, a specimen of clear, manly thought and expression, and of English equity, though perhaps with too little enthusiasm. There is, however, no want of practical faith, and there are indications of a more devout spirit than one has been wont to attribute to him.

  A fresh perusal of these remarkable “Charges” has only deepened my impression not merely of the extraordinary ability and learning which everywhere stamp them, but of their permanent value as a philosophical contribution to ecclesiastical literature. They were not merely counsels addressed by the Chief Pastor of a diocese to his clergy, or dissertations of more or less value on topics of transient interest: they were the review by a master mind of all the great questions which have agitated the Church of England during one of the most eventful periods of her history…. In the first place, their value consists to a great extent in the depth as well as the breadth of view which they everywhere exhibit…. In the next place, the combination of exact scholarship with a vast range of varied learning gave a singular weight to any opinion which fell from him on questions of criticism and interpretation. Here he had no rival on the Episcopal Bench, perhaps none among English scholars. There might be those who were not inferior to him in a critical knowledge of the Old Testament or of the New; none perhaps were equally sure of their ground in both. There were those who surpassed him in minute acquaintance with patristic and mediæval literature; there were none who possessed in the same degree the critical skill which could dissect a text, with the learning which could illustrate it. His range was wide, but he knew its limits. He was no pretender to knowledge; and hence on questions where an acquaintance with scientific investigations seemed necessary to speak with authority, he speaks with reserve and a caution which to many appeared disappointing. But this very reserve inspires confidence. We can trust a guide who resolutely keeps within the limits of his own knowledge.

  Of that thirst for knowledge in all its parts of which the Bible speaks, of the mastery of all ancient and modern learning, few, if any, in his time have been more wonderful examples than he who from his eleventh till his threescore and eighteenth year was always gathering in fresh stores of understanding. Of him, as of Solomon, it might be said, “Thy soul covered the whole earth.” There was hardly a civilized language which he had not explored both in its structure and literature. He was the chief of that illustrious group of English scholars who first revealed to this country the treasures of German research, and the insight which that research had opened into the mysterious origin of the races, institutions, and religions of mankind…. It may be disappointing to some that this prodigious acquisition of knowledge was not accompanied by a corresponding productiveness. With the exception of the few indications we have given, his learning perished with him.

  We shall not attempt to trace the history of the Bishop through the thirty-four years of his episcopal life. The real record of that life consists in his charges, which, for the lucidity and completeness with which they handle every question that has come to the surface in the Church of England during the period over which they extend, and for the vast store of learning compressed into the positions which they establish, defy all comparison with anything which has been produced by any prelate of the present century.

  In the sphere, at any rate, of theology Thirlwall might have been expected to influence his age. In him profound learning and unrivalled dialectical skill and supreme soundness of judgment coexisted in a rare combination. The candid perusal of his letters makes it apparent that his mind was constantly occupied with the theological problems which have now exercised and tormented two generations of Englishmen. He was prepared to sum up the never-ending case of scepticism against revealed religion in favor of Christianity. His high character and his intellectual eminence were calculated to give to every expression of his convictions a weight, with the English public at least, as great as ought in reason to be attributed in matters of religious belief to the authority of any individual. But though Thirlwall was prepared to sum up the case, he never (if one may be allowed to follow out a metaphor irresistibly suggested by the idiosyncrasies of his genius) delivered judgment.

  Two of the undergraduates were discussing his “dryasdust” ways in the college library after a fashion a little irreverent, when a Fellow walked up to them. He was a somewhat pompous man, and his reproof was true to his character. “You are probably ignorant, young gentlemen, that the venerable person of whom you have been speaking with such levity is one of the profoundest scholars of our age—indeed, it may be doubted whether any man of our age has bathed more deeply in the sacred fountains of antiquity.” “Or come up drier, sir,” was the reply of the undergraduate.

  Connop Thirlwall was celebrated in his day as one of the best of English scholars; but no man was ever less of the mere grammarian. Trenchant intellect and sound judgment were his characteristics. He impressed all who encountered him with his capacity to be a leader of men; and his early enterprises seemed a guarantee that he would redeem his promise. As one of the translators of Niebuhr he moulded English historical thought; and his translations of Schleiermacher’s essay on St. Luke made an equally deep impression on English theology.