answer that it was the
impression of picturesqueness and vividity--picturesqueness in
attention to the externals of the life described, vividity in the
presentation of that life itself.

I remember to have once, in talking with Green about Greek history,
told him how I had heard Mr. Jowett, in discussing the ancient
historians, disparage Herodotus and declare him unworthy to be placed
near Thucydides. Green answered, almost with indignation, that to say
such a thing showed that eminent scholars might have little feeling
for history. "Great as Thucydides is," he said, "Herodotus is far
greater, or at any rate far more precious. His view was so much
wider." I forget the rest of the conversation, but what he meant was
that Herodotus, to whom everything in the world was interesting, and
who has told us something about every country he visited or heard of,
had a more fruitful conception of history than his Athenian successor,
who practically confined himself to politics in the narrower sense of
the term, and that even the wisdom of the latter is not so valuable to
us as the flood of miscellaneous information which Herodotus pours out
about everything in the early world--a world about which we should
know comparatively little if his book had not been preserved.

This deliverance was thoroughly characteristic of Green's own view of
history. Everything was interesting to him because his imagination
laid hold of everything. When he travelled, nothing escaped his quick
eye, perpetually ranging over the aspects of places and society. When
he went out to dinner, he noted every person present whom he had not
known before, and could tell you afterwards something about them. He
had a theory, so to speak, about each of them, and indeed about every
one with whom he exchanged a dozen words. When he read the newspaper,
he seemed to squeeze all the juice out of it in a few minutes. Nor was
it merely the large events that fixed his mind; he drew from stray
notices of minor current matters evidence of principles or tendencies
which escaped other people's eyes. You never left him without having
new light thrown upon the questions of the hour. His memory was
retentive, but more remarkable was the sustained keenness of
apprehension with which he read, and which made him fasten upon
everything in a book or in talk which was significant, and could be
made the basis for an illustration of some view. He had the Herodotean
quality of reckoning no