of Bologna, now only famous as a painter, but in his own day equally celebrated as a worker in gold, and whose practice it was to sign his pictures with the word Goldsmith after his name, whilst he engraved Painter on his golden crucifixes.

The true historian, therefore, seeking to compose a true picture of the thing acted, must collect facts, select facts, and combine facts. Methods will differ, styles will differ. Nobody ever does anything exactly like anybody else; but the end in view is generally the same, and the historian's end is truthful narration. Maxims he will have, if he is wise, never a one; and as for a moral, if he tell his story well, it will need none; if he tell it ill, it will deserve none.

The stream of narrative flowing swiftly, as it does, over the jagged rocks of human destiny must often be turbulent and tossed; it is, therefore, all the more the duty of every good citizen to keep it as undefiled as possible, and to do what in him lies to prevent peripatetic philosophers on the banks from throwing their theories into it, either dead ones to decay, or living ones to drown. Let the philosophers ventilate

their theories, construct their blow-holes, extract their essences, discuss their maxims, and point their morals as much as they will; but let them do so apart. History must not lose her Muse, or 'take to her bosom doubts, queries, essays, dissertations, some of which ought to go before her, some to follow, and all to stand apart.' Let us at all events secure our narrative first sermons and philosophy the day after.

CHARLES LAMB.*

MR. WALTER BAGEHOT preferred Hazlitt to Lamb, reckoning the former much the greater writer. The preferences of such a man as Bagehot are not to be lightly disregarded, least of all when their sincerity is vouched for, as in the present case, by half a hundred quotations from the favoured author. Certainly no writer repays a literary man's devotion better than Hazlitt, of whose twenty seldom read volumes hardly a page but glitters with quotable matter; the true ore, to be had for the cost of cartage. You You may live like a gentleman for a twelvemonth on Hazlitt's ideas. Opinions, no doubt, differ as to how many quotations a writer is entitled to, but, for my part, I like to see an author leap-frog into his subject over the back of a brother.

*The Works of Charles Lamb. Edited, with notes and introduction, by the Rev. Alfred Ainger. Three volumes. London: 1883-5.

erence

I do not remember whether Bagehot has anywhere given his reasons for his prefthe open avowal whereof drove Crabb Robinson well-nigh distracted; and it is always rash to find reasons for a faith you do not share; but probably they partook of the nature of a complaint that Elia's treatment of men and things (meaning by things, books) is often fantastical, unreal, even a shade insincere; whilst Hazlitt always at least aims at the centre, whether he hits it or not. Lamb dances round a subject; Hazlitt grapples with it. So far as Hazlitt is concerned, doubtless this is so; his literary method seems to realise the agreeable aspiration of Mr. Browning's Italian in England:

'I would grasp Metternich until

I felt his wet red throat distil

In blood thro' these two hands.'

Hazlitt is always grasping some Metternich. He said himself that Lamb's talk was like snap-dragon, and his own 'not very much unlike a game of nine-pins.' Lamb, writing to him on one occasion about his son, wishes the little fellow a 'smoother head of hair and somewhat of a better temper

than his father;' and the pleasant words seem to call back from the past the stormy figure of the man who loved art, literature, and the drama with a consuming passion, who has described books and plays, authors and actors, with a fiery enthusiasm and reality quite unsurpassable, and who yet, neither living nor dead, has received his due meed of praise. Men still continue to hold aloof from Hazlitt, his shaggy head and fierce scowling temper still seem to terrorise, and his very books, telling us though they do about all things most delightful-poems, pictures, and the cheerful playhouse - frown upon us from their upper shelf. From this it appears that would a genius ensure for himself immortality, he must brush his hair and keep his temper; but alas! how seldom can he be persuaded to do either. Charles Lamb did both; and the years as they roll do but swell the rich revenues of his praise.

Lamb's popularity shows no sign of waning. Even that most extraordinary compound, the rising generation of readers, whose taste in literature is as erratic as it is pronounced; who have never heard