Like many other eminent men, George Grote owed much of his future intellectual greatness to his mother’s careful training. Having a strong desire to see her son excel in learning, she taught him reading and writing herself, and even grounded him in the elements of Latin before he was sent to the grammar school at Sevenoaks, in his sixth year (1800). The four years spent there gave an earnest of his whole future life. In the language of his biographer, who has lately attained the end of a life inseparably interwoven with his, “he evinced a decided aptitude for study, being rarely found behindhand with his tasks, and ranking habitually above boys of his age in the class to which he belonged.” In his tenth year he was removed to the Charter-house, the headmaster of which, Dr Raine, had the honour of training, along with George Grote, Connop Thirlwall, Dean Waddington and his brother Horace, Sir Cresswell Cresswell, Sir Henry Havelock, and other men of future distinction. Grote was not allowed to share the course of most of his schoolfellows at a university; but this great privation was turned into a pre-eminent distinction by the resolution with which his own strong will and untiring industry supplied the loss. The suppose! advantage of an early application to business led the father to take George into the bank at the age of sixteen. But his six years at the Charter-house had not only imbued him with a strong taste for classical learning, but had supplied him with that motive to high culture, which forms the most convincing argument in its favour, and to which he remained faithful through a half century of educational disputes and heresies. It was not as an alternative to a life of business, but as its proper complement, that he chose and advocated ancient learning. “Looking forward,” says his biographer, “to a commercial course of life, certain to prove uninteresting in itself, he resolved to provide for himself the higher resources of intellectual occupation.” Engaged in the bank throughout the day, he devoted his early mornings and evenings to a systematic course of reading, of which the chief subjects were the ancient classics, history, metaphysics, and political economy, to the last of which he was attracted by the writings of David Ricardo, whose personal acquaintance he formed in 1817. To these studies he added the learning of German by the aid of a Lutheran clergyman, which, together with his knowledge of French and Italian, placed the stores of Continental scholarship within his reach. His chief recreation waβ music, and he learned to play the violoncello, to accompany his mother, who was a fine musician. Arrived at the age of manhood (in the winter of 1814-1815), he formed the acquaintance of the young lady who afterwards became his wife, devoted to and worthy of him, the very complement of his life, intellectual as well as social, and finally his biographer in a spirit of loving but not indiscriminate admiration. This was Miss Harriet Lewin, the daughter of Mr Thomas Lewin, of Bexley, in Kent, a gentleman of old family and independent fortune. She was born at Southampton, July 1, 1792, and was consequently nearly two years older than Grote. From causes which need not be related here their intimacy was suspended for three years, during which Grote’s studies made steady progress. To this period belongs his earliest literary composition, an essay on his favourite Lucretius, which still exists in MS. His letters also record the careful study of Aristotle, his final estimate of whom formed his last unfinished work. But the most interesting light is thrown on the method and course of his studies in the diary which he kept for Miss Lewin’s information. This record bears witness, not only to the wide diversity of his studies in ancient and modern literature, philosophy, and political economy, but also to the fact that he read the authors themselves whom he wished to know,—read them as a whole, instead of merely reading what others had written about them.

An epoch, perhaps the most critical turning-point of Grote’s intellectual life, was formed by his introduction, through David Ricardo, to James Mill, who was then composing his metaphysical work entitled An Analysis of the Human Mind. Already attracted to this study, Grote became Mill’s admiring disciple in mental and political philosophy. From this time he adopted the fixed principles, from which he never receded, of experience as the source of all knowledge, and utility as the foundation of morals. The views derived from Mill were confirmed by the teaching of Jeremy Bentham, and by intercourse with a band of young disciples, over whom the two philosophers wielded an unbounded influence. Among these John Stuart Mill began now to make his appearance as a boy of twelve years old. It is important to note the influence which the study of metaphysics exercised upon the development of Grote’s intellectual character. To the general public he is chiefly known as an historian; but he was equally distinguished as a metaphysical philosopher. To the teaching of Jame3 Mill may also be traced his democratic principles and his zeal for freedom of thought, hardening into intolerance of all religious systems and their ministers. But, however they may have determined his course upon certain occasions, these antipathies never struck their root down into the real soil of his gentle and courteous nature.

In 1820, at the age of twenty-four, he was married to Miss Harriet Lewin, They lived at first at the banking-house in Threadneedle Street. The confined situation soon told on Mrs Grote’s health, and the death of her only child, a week after its birth, was followed by a dangerous illness. It was at her bedside at Hampstead, during her slow recovery, that Grote composed the first work he published, an Essay on Parliamentary Reform, in reply to an article by Sir James Mackintosh in the Edinburgh Review, No. 61 (1821). The pamphlet is a vigorous assertion of the broadest principles of popular representation, in opposition to a scheme of class representation sketched by the reviewer. It proclaimed Grote’s adherence to those political views held by the party afterwards called the “philosophic radicals,” and it strongly pleaded for the vote by ballot, of which he afterwards became the parliamentary advocate. The most important parts of this pamphlet were embodied in his later essay on the Essentials of Parliamentary Reform (1831), reprinted in his Minor Wortes.

In April 1822 Grote sent a vigorous letter to the Morning Chronicle in reply to Canning’s speech against Lord John Russell’s motion for reform. In the same year he spent much time upon some MSS. of Jeremy Bentham, which the aged philosopher entrusted to his young disciple to put into a readable form. After carefully digesting and arranging them, he published them anonymously in a small 8vo volume, entitled Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind, by Philip Beauchamp. Meanwhile the quiet course of life went on in Threadneedle Street The scanty leisure of each day was devoted to the joint studies of husband and wife, for “Mrs George Grote was habitually studious, after her fashion, under the direction of her husband, who laid great stres3 upon her cultivating the ratiocinative vein of instruction—above all, logic, metaphysics, and politics; and she accordingly strove to master these subjects, out of deference to his wish, and in order to qualify herself to be associated with his intellectual tastes and labours as time wore on.” Their pleasures were likewise in common; the wife, who was an accomplished musician, learnt the violoncello to accompany her husband; but he dropped his music in 1830. A circle of congenial minds frequented the house in Threadneedle Street from 1822 to 1830. Within that choice society there was a narrower circle of students, who met there twice a week at half-past eight in the morning for an hour or two’s reading. Among others were John Stuart Mill, Charles Buller, and John Arthur Roebuck. They read the most recent works on metaphysics and kindred subjects in the light of their adored teachers, Bentham and James Mill, beyond whom they believed all to be in Cimmerian darkness.

The year 1823 marks the epoch of the first conception of Grote⅛ great work; and an extant letter shows the spirit in which he approached it. On January 14th he writes :—“I am at preseut engaged in the fabulous ages of Greece, which I find will be required to be illustrated by bringing together a large mass of analogical matter from other early histories, in order to show the entire uncertainty and worthlessness of tales to which early associations have so long familiarized all classical minds. I am quite amazed to discover the extraordinary greediness and facility with which men assert, believe, re-assert, and are believed. The weakness appears to be next to universal, and I really think that one ought to write on the walls of one’s dressing-room the caution of the poet Epicharmus :—

Nτjφε, και μεμνησ απιστεΐρ, άρθρα ταvτα τωr φρένων.

The subject ever present to his thoughts came up so often in the discussions with his friends as to suggest to his wife’s sympathy and ambition for his fame the definite work of his future life. One day she said to him—“You are always studying the ancient authors whenever you have a moment’s leisure, now here would be a fine subject for you to treat. Suppose you try your hand !” “The idea” (she adds) “proved acceptable to the young student, and, after reflecting for some time, he came to the resolution of entering upon the work.” Henceforth this definite aim prevailed amidst the still wide range of reading which threw new light from all quarters upon the central object, and the mass of notes and extracts still preserved attest the diligence with which he prepared for it. Happily for himself and for the world, he was diverted from the work till he could resume it, not only with that clearer mental perspective in which a long meditated object appears when we return to it afresh, but with the enlarged experience of nearly twenty years occupied in practical politics and converse with statesmen, abroad as well as at home. Meanwhile he gave the world an earnest of his work in an exhaustive review of Mitford’s History of Greece in the Westminster Review for April 1826,—one result of which was a letter from Niebuhr, clearly designating Grote as the historian of Greece, and inviting him to a visit which events never permitted him to pay.

From 1825 to 1827 Grote took part in the scheme of founding the “University of London” in Gower Street, with the management of which institution he became afterwards intimately connected. As the political crisis of 1830 approached, public and private events conspired to draw Grote into the vortex of politics. The failure of his father’s health gave him a new position in the bank; and in the spring of 1830 he was able to arrange for a visit to the Continent, which brought him into connexion with the liberal politicians of Paris on the eve of the revolution. An interesting record of the state of affairs and of the impressions of this visit are preserved in Mrs Grote’s Life of Ary Scheffer, published in 1860. The travellers were recalled in June by the illness of Grote’s father, who died before their arrival, at the age of 70.

Thus, in his 36th year, George Grote, now the head of the family, found himself master of his own affairs, and of about £40,000 personal property, besides the family estates in Lincolnshire and Oxfordshire. His business and studies alike led him to fix his residence in London; and the first use he made of his wealth was to subscribe £500 to the revolutionary committee of the Hôtel de Ville, with an offer to come himself to Paris if his presence would be of any use. The pressure of business as his father’s executor kept him, in spite of strong solicitations, out of any active part in the agitation for reform, but did not prevent the steady progress of the History, which Mrs Grote writes (February 1, 1831), “must be given to the public before he can embark in any active scheme of a political kind.” He refused an invitation to stand for the city in 1831; but he made an able contribution to the argument in a statement of the Essentials of Parliamentary Reform, published this year, to which reference has already been made. His reluctance to enter parliament was overcome after the passing of the Reform Act in 1832; and, being returned at the head of the poll, he appeared as one of the members for the city of London in the first reformed parliament, which met on February 4, 1833. Pie at once gave notice of a motion for the vote by ballot in parliamentary elections, which he brought before the house on the 25th of April following. His speech on that occasion was prepared with great care, and displayed that cogent reason and calm earnest eloquence which marked all his efforts in debate. The substance of the argument, and a notice of his principal speeches in parliament, will be found in Professor Bain’s sketch of his character and writings prefixed to his “minor works.” Earnest as were his political convictions, and faithfully as he discharged the duties which he had undertaken, Grote’s parliamentary career forms only an episode in his life, but an episode which contributed to refresh and qualify him for his main work. He sat in three successive parliaments, from 1833 to 1841, witnessing the gradual passage from the first triumphs of reform to the Conservative reaction under Sir Robert Peel, and the steady decay of his own sect of philosophic radicalism, which never had a root in popular opinion. He was returned the last time by a bare majority of six, and his party numbered just the same figure. Charles Buller said to him one evening: “1 see what we are coming to, Grote; in no very long time from this, you and I shall be left to ‘ tell ’ Molesworth.”

During the eight years and a half of his parliamentary life, Grote kept up his varied reading, and formed a growing desire for a knowledge of physical science. But the staff of his mental diet, and his refuge from all meaner objects of thought, was still the same. In the weary intervals of attendance on parliament a Tauchnitz copy of Plato was ready in his pocket, and when snowed up in the country during the vacation he writes—“A Greek book is the only refuge.” His hospitalities expanded with his social position; and among his new friendships the one he most valued was that formed in 1835 with Mr (afterwards Sir) George Cornewall Lewis, the letters exchanged with whom on various points in classics and philosophy enrich the narrative of his Life. Among the other objects of his literary interest at that time was Sir William Molesworth’s collected edition of the works of Hobbes, dedicated to Grote, whose review of the first two volumes in the Spectator (1839) is reprinted among the Minor Works.

During the whole period of Whig decay, and especially from the beginning of the present reign, Grote felt a declining interest in politics, and accordingly, on the dissolution in June 1841, he determined to retire from parliament. Thus at the age of forty-six he was set free to spend the remaining thirty years of his life in the work long prepared and contemplated. In half that period the History of Greece was finished; the remaining half was devoted to the two works on Plato and Aristotle, which made up the Hellenic “trilogy” of his life-long studies.

After a six . months’ holiday (1841-1842) for the long desired purpose of visiting Italy and studying the antiquities of Rome upon the spot, he returned to his business at the bank, and set vigorously to work on the new plan for the first two volumes of his History— reperusing the authorities, revising his notes, and rewriting the whole. The greater part of these two volumes was occupied with the first division of his subject, which was now for the first time severed from actual history, and placed in its proper mythical light, under the title of. “Legendary Greece.” The closing months of 1842 were employed in sending forth a sort of “pilot-vessel” in the form of a review of Niebuhr’s Griechische Heroen-Geschichte, which appeared in the Westminster Review (May 1843) under the title of “Grecian Legends and Early History,” and is reprinted in the Minor Works. His biographer states that, “this article, wherein the collected store of Grote’s long and assiduous studies on the subject found a vent, was written with uncommon zest, and he anticipated with lively curiosity the effect it would produce over the learned world.” It was received as a striking promise of the new light in which he was about to place the primeval ages of Grecian history. It is important to record an incidental remark, which shows that, amidst his uncompromising severance of legend from real history, Grote adhered to the great principle avowe 1 alike by Herodotus and by Bede: “An historian is bound to produce the materials upon which he builds, be they never so fantastic, absurd, or incredible.”

With the beginning of 1843, exactly ten years after the interruption caused by his entrance into parliament, the composition of the first volume for the press was vigorously begun; and at midsummer he further cleared his path by retiring from the banking-house of Prescott, Grote, & Company. While still at work upon the History, he published in the Classical Museum (1843) an important essay on ancient weights and measures, reviewing Boeckh’s Metrologische Untersuchungen, which is reprinted among his Minor IFor/ts.

The first two volumes of the History were completed early in 1845, and published in March 1846. Their reception is well known; and the effect of their success upon Grote himself was thoroughly characteristic of the man :—“From all sides congratulation and eulogy flowed in upon the author, insomuch that he himself now began to feel something like confidence in the success of his long-cherished work. Thu3 I became” (writes Mrs Grote) “for once witness of a state of feeling on his part approaching to gratified self-love, which at times would pierce through that imperturbable veil of modesty habitually present with him.” The first volume and nearly half of the second are occupied with “Legendary Greece”; the latter half of the second volume begins “Historical Greece,” and consequently contains only a small portion of the real history. These volumes were reviewed with great praise by John Stuart Mill in the Edinburgh Review, and by Dean Milman in the Quarterly Review.

The success of the first two volumes incited Grote to prosecute the work with redoubled ardour; and such progress had been already made that the third and fourth volumes, bringing the narrative down to the battle of Marathon, and containing an account of Grecian poetry and. philosophy in its earlier stages, appeared in the following year (1847). Two more volumes, the fifth and sixth, coming down to the eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, were published in 1849. These two volumes, together with the two preceding ones, were reviewed in the Edinburgh Review by Sir George Cornewall Lewis. The seventh and eighth volumes, which brought the Peloponnesian war to the end, and which contained the striking and...