an his ordinary self.
His appreciation of whatever had any worth in it, his comments and
replies, so stimulated the interlocutor's mind that it moved faster
and could hit upon apter expressions than at any other time. The
same gifts which shone in his conversation, lucid arrangement of
ideas, ready command of words, and a power in perceiving the
tendencies of those whom he addressed, would have made him an
admirable public speaker. I do not remember that he ever did
speak, in his later years, to any audience larger than a committee
of twenty. But he was an eloquent preacher. The first time I ever
saw him was in St. Philip's Church at Stepney about 1866, and I
shall never forget the impression made on me by the impassioned
sentences that rang through the church from the fiery little figure
in the pulpit with its thin face and bright black eyes.

What Green accomplished seems to those who used to listen to him
little in comparison with what he might have done had longer life
and a more robust body been granted him. Some of his finest gifts
would not have found their full scope till he came to treat of a
period where the materials for history are ample, and where he
could have allowed himself space to deal with them--such a period,
for instance, as that of his early choice, the Angevin kings of
England. Yet, even basing themselves on what he has done, they may
claim for him a place among the foremost writers of his time. He
left behind him no one who combined so many of the best gifts. There
were among his contemporaries historians more learned and equally
industrious. There were two or three whose accuracy was more
scrupulous, their judgment more uniformly sober and cautious. But
there was no one in whom so much knowledge and so wide a range of
interests were united to such ingenuity, acuteness, and originality,
as well as to such a power of presenting results in rich, clear,
pictorial language. A master of style may be a worthless historian.
We have instances. A skilful investigator and sound reasoner may be
unreadable. The conjunction of fine gifts for investigation with
fine gifts for exposition is a rare conjunction, which cannot be
prized too highly, for while it advances historical science, it brings
historical methods, as well as historical facts, within the horizon of
the ordinary reader.

Of the services Green rendered to English history, the first, and that
which was most promptly appreciated, was the intensi