is a very broad one; and the mere mention of every historical work would not only transcend our limits, but would be inconsistent with the spirit and design of this volume. The student having now been introduced to our greatest historians and to those works which represent their best thought, will be at no loss to continue, if he desires, his studies in this branch of literature. We name, below, a few works which may be included with those already mentioned as among the most important contributions to this department of English literature:

History of Europe "from the French Revolution of 1789 to the Accession of Napoleon III.," by Sir Archibald Alison (1842).

History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France "from the year 1807 to the year 1814," by Sir William Francis Napier (1840).

The Sacred History of the World, by Sharon Turner (1832). History of the Jewish Church, by Dean Stanley (1863). The History of Scotland, by Patrick Fraser Tytler (1840). The Spanish Conquest of America, by Arthur Helps (1861). History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace (18161846), by Harriet Martineau (1850).

Historic Sketches, by Lord Brougham (1843).

Historical Essays, by John Foster (1859).

A History of the War in the Crimea, by Alexander W. Kinglake (1875).

After all, what are the qualifications necessary to an accomplished historian and to a perfect history? Macaulay says: "A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque. Yet he must control it so absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner. Yet he must possess sufficient self-command to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can justly estimate these almost insuperable

difficulties will not think it strange that every writer should have failed, either in the narrative or in the speculative department of history. It may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to considerable qualifications and exceptions, that history begins in novel and ends in essay." Mr. Prescott says: "Almost as many qualifications may be demanded for a perfect historian, indeed the Abbé Mably has enumerated as many, as Cicero stipulates for a perfect orator. He must be strictly impartial; a lover of truth under all circumstances, and ready to declare it at all hazards: he must be deeply conversant with whatever may bring into relief the character of the people he is depicting, not merely with their laws, constitution, general resources, and all the other more visible parts of the machinery of government, but with the nicer moral and social relations, the informing spirit which gives life to the whole, but escapes the eye of a vulgar observer. If he has to do with other ages and nations, he must transport himself into them, expatriating himself, as it were, from his own, in order to get the very form and pressure of the times he is delineating. He must be conscientious in his attention to geography, chronology, etc., an inaccuracy in which has been fatal to more than one good philosophical history; and, mixed up with all the drier details, he must display the various powers of a novelist or dramatist, throwing his characters into suitable lights and shades, disposing his scenes so as to awaken and maintain an unflagging interest, and diffusing over the whole that finished style without which his work will only become a magazine of materials for the more elegant edifices of subsequent writers. He must be-in short, there is no end to what a perfect historian must be and do. It is hardly necessary to add that such a monster never did and never will exist."

REFERENCES.

SIR THOMAS MORE: See Lord Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors; The Household of Sir Thomas More (1851), republished in Harper's Magazine; Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH: See E. P. Whipple's Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature; Kingsley's Miscellanies; Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by Tytler (Edinburgh, 1833); also any standard history of England.

LORD CLARENDON (EDWARD HYDE): See Macaulay's History of England; Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors; T. H. Lister's Life of Clarendon.

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY: See his complete Works, edited by Lady Trevelyan (1871); also Taine's English Literature.

DAVID HUME: See his own Works; also John Hill Burton's Life of Hume (1847); and Hume (English Men of Letters), by Prof. Huxley. EDWARD GIBBON: See his Works, edited by Milman; his Works, edited by Guizot, an American edition of which was published in 1840; Gibbon (English Men of Letters), by J. C. Morison.

WILLIAM ROBERTSON: See his Works; also Lord Brougham's Men of Letters of the Time of George III. (1845); Dugald Stewart's Life of Robertson.

WILLIAM MITFORD: See Macaulay's Essays.

HENRY HALLAM: See his Works; also Macaulay's Essays; Life of Henry Hallam, by H. H. Milman.

THOMAS CARLYLE: See his Works; also Taine's English Literature, vol. iv.; Greg's Literary and Social Judgments; Morley's Critical Miscel lanies; Lowell's My Study Windows; Carlyle's Reminiscences, edited by Froude; The Philosophy of Carlyle, by Edwin D. Mead. BANCROFT, PRESCOTT, MOTLEY: See their own Works.

CHAPTER IV.

BIOGRAPHICAL PROSE, INCLUDING LETTERS AND DIARIES. Biography: Plutarch's Lives-Early English Biographies-Izaak Walton-Thomas Fuller's Worthies of England-Goldsmith's Life of Richard Nash, Esq.-Johnson's Lives of the Poets-Boswell's Life of Johnson-Southey's Life of Nelson-Moore's Life of Lord Byron -Lockhart's Life of Sir Walter Scott-The Popular Demand for Biographies-Carlyle on Biography-Autobiographies and Diaries : Diaries in the Sixteenth Century-King Alfred's "Hand-Boc"-The Paston Letters-Bulstrode Whitelocke's Memoirs-Pepys's DiaryJohn Evelyn-Richard Baxter-The Letters of Alexander PopeSwift's Journal to Stella-Lady Mary Wortley Montagu-Chesterfield's Letters to his Son-Horace Walpole's Letters-Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay-De Quincey's Confessions.

1. Biography.-Biography bears the same relationship to the life of the individual that history bears to that of the nation or of the people collectively; indeed, it has been very aptly remarked that history is, at best, but "the essence of innumerable biographies," just as the nation is but the aggregate of the individuals which compose it. Biographical writing admits of a variety of treatment and of a diversity of style much greater than is allowable in history. "There is," says Dryden, "a descent into minute circumstances and trivial passages of life which are natural to this way of writing, and which the dignity of the other will not admit. There you are conducted only into the rooms of state; here you are led into the private lodgings of the hero, and are made familiar with his most private. actions and conversations. You may behold a Scipio and a Lælius gathering cockle-shells on the shore, Augustus playing at bounding-stones with boys, and Agesilaus riding on a hobby-horse among his children. The pageantry of life is taken away; you see the poor, reasonable animal as naked as ever nature made him, are made

acquainted with his passions and his follies, and find the demi-god a man."*

The biography of an individual may be confined merely to what we may term the picturesque events in his life, -the incidents of his childhood, his school-days, his marriage, his business relations, his death,—or its chief interest may lie in the analysis of his character, the process of his education, his influence upon the thoughts and actions of his contemporaries and upon the world at large. Some biographies are simply narratives; some are largely made up of gossiping chit-chat,-entertaining, it may be, but not always elevating; some encroach more or less extensively upon the domains of history and criticism; and some almost lose their true character in the mass of philosophical or theological disquisitions with which they are burdened. The best-known and most valuable collection of biographies bequeathed to us from the ancients is that known as the Parallel Lives of Plutarch. So important has been the influence of this work upon more than one branch of English literature, that we shall be justified in noticing it in connection with the great biographies of our own time and language. Plutarch's design was to write the biography, first of a Greek and then of a Roman, and afterwards to draw a comparison between the lives and exploits of the two-hence the title Parallel Lives. His work is a good illustration of the ancient manner of biographical writing—a manner which has been preserved in a large measure to the present day. The leading incidents in a man's life are written in their natural order, without any attempt at analysis of character or philosophical elucidation, and sometimes without strict attention to accuracy. "In writing the lives of illustrious men," says Plutarch, "I am not tied to the laws of history; nor does it follow, that, because an action is great, it therefore manifests the greatness and virtue of him who did it, but, on the other

* Introduction to Plutarch's Lives.