R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

Oxford in the 'Seventies 233of Historical Essays, which some have preferred to hislarger lucubrations. The next of the Diadochi, AnthonyFroude, had finished his long excursion on the high seasof Tudor history, and was collecting his Short Studies onGreat Subjects; among whose delinquencies a too easyliterary style was, perhaps, included, as it certainly wasnot eclipsed, by his predecessor. And this brilliantsuccession may end for us with York Powell and SirCharles Firth, both remarkable in this connection as pureproducts of the Oxford School, as it was in the 'seventies.Powell, indeed, bore witness to the unregenerate system,for, on taking his degree, he started as a Law Lecturer at'The House', devoting his leisure to the joint-productionwith Gustav Vigfusson, of the Corpus Poeticum Boreale(2 vols. 1883: now out of print); and keeping his friendsmeanwhile well informed about French literature andJapanese art, before he settled down to inaugurate, withinfinite labour, an Historical Series, of which he waseditor, with a little volume, a school-book but a pageantin its way—The History of England to the death of HenryVII. Surely never a man of such supreme literary culturewrote with more reluctance than did he! Doubtless theModern History School has by this time left the 'seventiesfar behind. The most popular and by no means the leastscientific of the Faculties, it has been adorned by a successionof sound and even brilliant teachers and writers:but its foundations were well and truly laid in the'seventies, to which (I presume) it should look back withpride, as it doubtless may look forward with confidenceto every fresh crisis: die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht!VIII. THEOLOGY AT OXFORD IN THE'SEVENTIESThe case of Theology in the 'seventies was much lesscheerful. The Faculty was still, as the whole University