The rise of historicism which distinguishes the end of the eighteenth century yielded, among others, the first great histories of music. Works of corresponding comprehensiveness were slow to follow in the wake of these initial achievements, and for this reason a proper understanding of the musical scene in the age of Louis XIV has not been possible until the comparatively recent past. The writings of Charles Burney and John Hawkins, when set in this perspective, become the more remarkable for their precocious sweep and penetrating insights. Burney, in particular, amazes one by his ability to bring to completion the task he set for himself—an account that runs from ancient Greece to his own day. This cannot be said of his distinguished successors in the nineteenth century: the antiquarian completeness of F. J. Fétis and the independent judgments of A. W. Ambros unfortunately were never brought to bear on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; like their fellow romanticists, these scholars were much too fascinated by the more remote past. Lacking modern tools of research to aid him, Burney's narrative, on the other hand, suffers from a disproportionate treatment of the eighteenth century, to the neglect of earlier periods. One cannot wholly blame his enthusiasm for Handel: the paucity of available documents concerning earlier composers like Lully and Scarlatti precluded a corresponding consideration of their achievements. No work comparable in scope with that of Burney appeared until the beginning of the present century, when Henry Hadow edited the Oxford History of Music.