When I was a senior schoolboy this book--not this very volume, for
it had an even more tattered predecessor--opened up a new world to
me. History had been a lesson and abhorrent. Suddenly the task and
the drudgery became an incursion into an enchanted land, a land of
colour and beauty, with a kind, wise guide to point the path. In
that great style of his I loved even the faults--indeed, now that
I come to think of it, it was the faults which I loved best. No
sentence could be too stiff with rich embroidery, and no antithesis
too flowery. It pleased me to read that "a universal shout of
laughter from the Tagus to the Vistula informed the Pope that the
days of the crusades were past," and I was delighted to learn that
"Lady Jerningham kept a vase in which people placed foolish verses,
and Mr. Dash wrote verses which were fit to be placed in Lady
Jerningham's vase." Those were the kind of sentences which used to
fill me with a vague but enduring pleasure, like chords which linger
in the musician's ear. A man likes a plainer literary diet as he
grows older, but still as I glance over the Essays I am filled with
admiration and wonder at the alternate power of handling a great
subject, and of adorning it by delightful detail--just a bold sweep
of the brush, and then the most delicate stippling. As he leads you
down the path, he for ever indicates the alluring side-tracks which
branch away from it. An admirable, if somewhat old-fashioned,
literary and historical education night be effected by working
through every book which is alluded to in the Essays. I should be
curious, however, to know the exact age of the youth when he came
to the end of his studies.

I wish Macaulay had written a historical novel. I am convinced that
it would have been a great one. I do not know if he had the power
of drawing an imaginary character, but he certainly had the gift