r, was a historian. Southey was a
very considerable historian, and master of one of the most admirable
historical styles on record. But he was signally unfortunate in having
that work of his which should have been most popular, the _History of
the Peninsular War_, pitted against another by a younger man of
professional competence, of actual experience, and of brilliant literary
powers, Sir William Napier (1786-1860). The literary value of these two
histories is more even than a generation which probably reads neither
much and has almost forgotten Southey is apt to imagine; and though
there is no doubt that the Poet Laureate was strongly prejudiced on the
Tory side, his competitor was even more partial and biassed against that
side. But the difference between the two books is the difference between
a task admirably performed, and performed to a certain extent _con
amore_, by a skilled practitioner in task-work, and the special effort
of one who was at once an enthusiast and an expert in his subject. It is
customary to call _Napier's History of the Peninsular War_ "the finest
military history in the English language," and so, perhaps, it is. The
famous description of the Battle of Albuera is only one of many showing
eloquence without any mere fine writing, and with the knowledge of the
soldier covering the artist's exaggeration.

Moore, Campbell, Scott himself, were all, as has been previously
recorded in the notices of their proper work, historians by trade,
though hardly, even to the extent to which Southey was, historians by
craft. But an exception must be made for the exquisite _Tales of a
Grandfather_, in which Sir Walter, without perhaps a very strict
application of historical criticism, applied his creative powers,
refreshed in their decay by combined affection for the subject and for
the presumed auditor, to fashioning the traditional history of old
Scotland into one of the most delightful narratives of any language or
time. But Henry Hallam, a contemporary of these men (1778-1859), unlike
them lives as a historian only, or as a historian and literary
critic--occupations so frequently combined during the present century
that perhaps an apology is due for the presentation of some writers
under the general head of one class rather than under that of the other.
Hallam, the son of a Dean of Bristol, educated at Eton and Christ
Church, an early _Edinburgh_ reviewer, and an honoured pundit and
champion of the Whig party