s have a
melancholy tendency to be monumental, in the sense that they cover the
graves of literary reputations. Historical works are superseded with
shocking rapidity. One remembers the description which FitzGerald gave
of the labours of his friend Spedding upon Bacon. Spedding gave up the
whole of his life, said FitzGerald, to editing works which did not need
editing, and to whitewashing a character which could not be
whitewashed. It is awful to reflect how many years Walter Scott gave to
editing Dryden and Swift and to writing a Life of Napoleon--years
which might have given us more novels and poems. Did Scott, did anyone,
gain by the sacrifice? Of course one would like to write a great
biography, but the biographies that live are the lives of men written
by friends and contemporaries, living portraits, like Boswell's
_Johnson_ or Stanley's _Arnold_. To write such a book, one needs to
have been in constant intercourse with a great personality, to have
seen him in success and failure, in happiness and depression, in health
and sickness, in strength and weakness. Such an opportunity is given to
few.

Of course, if one has a power of wide and accurate historical survey, a
trustworthy memory, a power of vitalising the past, one may well give
one's life to producing a wise and judicious historical work. But here
a man must learn his limitations, and one can only deal successfully
with congenial knowledge. I have myself a very erratic and
unbusinesslike mind. There are certain things, like picturesque
personal traits, landscape, small details of life and temperament, that
lodge themselves firmly in my mind; but when I am dealing with
historical facts and erudite matters, though I can get up my case and
present it for the time being with a certain cogency, the knowledge all
melts in my mind; and no one ought to think of attempting historical
work unless his mind is of the kind that can hold an immense amount of
knowledge in solution. I have a friend, for instance, who can put all
kinds of details into his mind--he has an insatiable appetite for
them--and produce them again years afterwards as sharp and definite in
outline as when he put them away. His mind is, in fact, a great
spacious and roomy warehouse, where things are kept dry and in
excellent order. But with myself it is quite different. To store
knowledge of an uncongenial kind in my own mind is just as though I put
away a heap of snowballs. In a day or two their out