‘As Mr Thirlwall can speak French sufficiently well to make himself understood, and as he has _something to say_, Charles found it very practicable to make him and Professor Bekker acquainted, though Professor Bekker has usually the great defect of _never_ speaking but when he is prompted by his own inclination, and of never being _inclined to speak_ except to persons whom he has long known—that is, to whose faces and manners he has become accustomed, and whose understanding or character he respects or likes.... In conclusion, I must say about Mr Thirlwall, that I was prepossessed in his favour by his having made up in a marked manner to Charles, rather than to myself. I had no difficulty in getting on with him, but I had all the advances to make; and I can never think the worse of a young man, just fresh from college and unused to the society of women, for not being at his ease with them at first[36].’
It is vexatious that Thirlwall’s biographers should have failed to discover—if indeed they tried to discover—any information about his Roman visit, to which he always looked back with delight, occasioned as much by the friends he had made there as by ‘the memorable scenes and objects’ he had visited[37]. So far as we know, the above letter is the only authority extant. We should like to have heard whether Thirlwall had, or had not, any personal intercourse with Niebuhr, whom we have reason to believe he never met; and to what extent Bunsen influenced his future studies. We find it stated in Bunsen’s life that he determined Thirlwall’s wavering resolutions in favour of the clerical profession[38]. This, as we shall presently shew, is clearly a mistake; but, when we consider the strong theological bias of Bunsen’s own mind, it does seem probable that he would direct his attention to the modern school of German divinity. We suspect that Thirlwall had been already influenced in this direction by the example, if not by the direct precepts, of Herbert Marsh, then Lady Margaret’s Professor of Theology at Cambridge[39], who had stirred up a great controversy by translating Michaelis’ _Introduction to the New Testament_, and by promoting a more free criticism of the Gospels than had hitherto been thought permissible. However this may be, it is certain that the friendship which began in Rome was one of the strongest and most abiding influences which shaped Thirlwall’s character, and just half a century afterwards we find him referring to Bunsen as a sort of oracle in much the same language that Dr Arnold was fond of employing.