Henry Hallam (1777-1859) was an Oxford-educated historian (and the father of Tennyson's friend Arthur Hallam) who, with inherited wealth, was able to devote himself to writing Hallam's best-known work, the Constitutional History of England (1827), to the death of George II, became a work of great and prolonged influence. His last great work was An Introduction to the Literature of Europe during the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (1837-9), the sweep of which covers not only creative literature but the literature of the classics, mathematics, theology, science, and, most notably, of philosophy and thought. More valuable than commonly credited, this is perhaps the last critical work to discuss Neo-Latin literature in detail in the context of a general study of European literature.