tellectual operations only to
vitiate them; its part is to fill up the gaps of memory by conjecture,
to magnify and attenuate realities, and to confuse them with the
products of pure invention. Most children distort everything by
inexactitude of this kind, and it is only after a hard struggle that
they ever attain to a scrupulous accuracy--that is, learn to master
their imagination. Many men remain children, in this respect, the whole
of their lives.

But, let the psychological causes of Froude's Disease be what they may,
another point claims our attention. The man of the sanest and
best-balanced mind is liable to bungle the simplest kinds of critical
work if he does not allow them the necessary time. In these matters
precipitancy is the source of innumerable errors. It is rightly said
that patience is the cardinal virtue of the scholar. Do not work too
fast, act as if there were always something to be gained by waiting,
leave work undone rather than spoil it: these are maxims easy enough to
pronounce, but not to be followed in practice by any but persons of
calm temperament. There are nervous, excitable persons, who are always
in a hurry to get to the end, always seeking variety in their
occupations, and always anxious to dazzle and astonish: these may
possibly find honourable employment in other careers; but if they
embrace erudition, they are doomed to pile up a mass of provisional
work, which is likely to do more harm than good, and is sure in the long
run to cause them many a vexation. The true scholar is cool, reserved,
circumspect. In the midst of the turmoil of life, which flows past him
like a torrent, he never hurries. Why should he hurry? The important
thing is, that the work he does should be solid, definitive,
imperishable. Better "spend weeks polishing a masterpiece of a score of
pages" in order to convince two or three among the scholars of Europe
that a particular charter is spurious, or take ten years to construct
the best possible text of a corrupt document, than give to the press in
the same interval volumes of moderately accurate _anecdota_ which future
scholars will some day have to put through the mill again from beginning
to end.

Whatever special branch of critical scholarship a man may choose, he
ought to be gifted with prudence, an exceptionally powerful attention
and will, and, moreover, to combine a speculative turn of mind with
complete disinterestedness and little taste for action; for he