Markland, towards the end of his life--as was the case with so many
others like him--became imbued with a repugnance for all scholarly
reputation, to such an extent, indeed, that he partly tore up and
partly burnt several works which he had long had in hand.

Wolf says: "The amount of intellectual food that can be got from
well-digested scholarship is a very insignificant item."

In Winckelmann's youth there were no philological studies apart from the
ordinary bread-winning branches of the science--people read and
explained the ancients in order to prepare themselves for the better
interpretation of the Bible and the Corpus Juris.


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In Wolf's estimation, a man has reached the highest point of historical
research when he is able to take a wide and general view of the whole
and of the profoundly conceived distinctions in the developments in art
and the different styles of art. Wolf acknowledges, however, that
Winckelmann was lacking in the more common talent of philological
criticism, or else he could not use it properly: "A rare mixture of a
cool head and a minute and restless solicitude for hundreds of things
which, insignificant in themselves, were combined in his case with a
fire that swallowed up those little things, and with a gift of
divination which is a vexation and an annoyance to the uninitiated."


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