nes and the national portrait gallery to the poets
and romancers of genius--to Shakespeare and Walter Scott, whose art
had nothing to gain from accuracy, who have only to give us the types,
the right colouring and strong outline of life and character in days
bygone.

However, I think we shall be compelled to accept the change from the
artistic to the scientific school of historians, though we may regret
it as unavoidable. It is the vast enlargement of the field of
historical study, the strong critical searchlight that is turned on
all the dark corners and outlying tracts of this field, that is
irresistibly affecting the work of writers, enforcing the need of
caution, of scrutinising every point, of weighing evidence in the
finest scales, of assaying its precise value. The contemporary writer
has to deal with the huge accumulation of material to which I have
already referred; he must ransack archives, hunt through records piled
up, public and private, must decipher ancient manuscript, must follow
the labours of the wandering collector of inscriptions and the
excavator of old tombs. He has to make extracts from correspondence,
diaries, and notes of travel which are coming for the first time to
the light; he must keep abreast of foreign literature and criticism.
The mass and multiplicity of documentary evidence now at his disposal,
most of which may not have been available to his predecessors, is
enormous. Some twelve years ago Lord Acton wrote: 'The honest student
has to hew his way through multitudinous transactions, periodicals
and official publications, where it is difficult to sweep the horizon
or to keep abreast. The result has been that the classics of
historical literature are found inadequate, are being re-written, and
the student has to be warned that they have been superseded by later
discoveries.'

What has been the effect of this altered situation upon the writer of
history at the present time? On such an extensive field of operations,
which has to be cultivated so intensely, he finds himself compelled to
contract the scope of his operations; he can only take up very narrow
ground. So in many instances he limits himself to a period, or even to
a single reign, to a particular class of historical personage, or to
some special department of human activity. He looks about for a plot
that he can work thoroughly; he concentrates his attention upon some
line or aspect of a subject in which he may hope that he has n