al stratifications, in any collection of his national
literature. He would be lunatic to do so. A Birmingham or Glasgow
Directory has an equal title to take its station in the national
literature. But he will hesitate on the same question arising with
regard to a history. Where upon examination the history turns out to be
a mere chronicle, or register of events chronologically arranged, with
no principle of combination pervading it, nor colouring from peculiar
views of policy, nor sympathy with the noble and impassioned in human
action, the decision will be universal and peremptory to cashier it from
the literature. Yet this case, being one of degree, ranges through a
large and doubtful gamut. A history like that of Froissart, or of
Herodotus, where the subjective from the writer blends so powerfully
with the gross objective, where the moral picturesque is so predominant,
together with freshness of sensation which belongs to 'blissful
infancy' in human life, or to a stage of society in correspondence to
it, cannot suffer a demur of jealousy as to its privilege of entering
the select fold of literature. But such advantages are of limited
distribution. And, to say the truth, in its own nature neither history
nor biography, unless treated with peculiar grace, and architecturally
moulded, has any high pretension to rank as an organic limb of
literature. The very noblest history, in much of its substance, is but
by a special indulgence within the privilege of that classification.
Biography stands on the same footing. Of the many memorials dedicated to
the life of Milton, how few are entitled to take their station in the
literature! And why? Not merely that they are disqualified by their
defective execution, but often that they necessarily record what has
become common property.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Between the forms _modal_, _modish_, and _modern_, the difference
is of that slight order which is constantly occurring between the
Elizabethan age and our own. _Ish_, _ous_, _ful_, _some_, are
continually interchanging; thus, _pitiful_ for _piteous_, _quarrelous_
for _quarrelsome_.

[30] I deny that there is or could have been one truant fluttering
murmur of the heart against the reality of glory. And partly for these
reasons: 1st, That, _hoc abstracto_, defrauding man of this, you leave
him miserably bare--bare of everything. So that really and sincerely the
very wisest men may be seen clinging convulsively, and clutching with