nterest, but he has chosen to give it a merely ephemeral value and to
substitute for the scientific temper of the true historian the prejudice,
the flippancy, and the violence of the platform partisan. For the
flippancy parallels can, no doubt, be found in some of Mr. Mahaffy's
earlier books, but the prejudice and the violence are new, and their
appearance is very much to be regretted. There is always something
peculiarly impotent about the violence of a literary man. It seems to
bear no reference to facts, for it is never kept in check by action. It
is simply a question of adjectives and rhetoric, of exaggeration and over-
emphasis. Mr. Balfour is very anxious that Mr. William O'Brien should
wear prison clothes, sleep on a plank bed, and be subjected to other
indignities, but Mr. Mahaffy goes far beyond such mild measures as these,
and begins his history by frankly expressing his regret that Demosthenes
was not summarily put to death for his attempt to keep the spirit of
patriotism alive among the citizens of Athens! Indeed, he has no
patience with what he calls 'the foolish and senseless opposition to
Macedonia'; regards the revolt of the Spartans against 'Alexander's Lord
Lieutenant for Greece' as an example of 'parochial politics'; indulges in
Primrose League platitudes against a low franchise and the iniquity of
allowing 'every pauper' to have a vote; and tells us that the
'demagogues' and 'pretended patriots' were so lost to shame that they
actually preached to the parasitic mob of Athens the doctrine of
autonomy--'not now extinct,' Mr. Mahaffy adds regretfully--and
propounded, as a principle of political economy, the curious idea that
people should be allowed to manage their own affairs! As for the
personal character of the despots, Mr. Mahaffy admits that if he had to
judge by the accounts in the Greek historians, from Herodotus downwards,
he 'would certainly have said that the ineffaceable passion for autonomy,
which marks every epoch of Greek history, and every canton within its
limits, must have arisen from the excesses committed by the officers of
foreign potentates, or local tyrants,' but a careful study of the
cartoons published in United Ireland has convinced him 'that a ruler may
be the soberest, the most conscientious, the most considerate, and yet
have terrible things said of him by mere political malcontents.' In
fact, since Mr. Balfour has been caricatured, Greek history must be
entirely rewrit