his: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact
the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth
century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties,
and _inanity_ now fallen _putrid_, rotting inevitably towards
annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it,
and to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which the
perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire so far as I can
see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated."[25]

The student, who has become acquainted with the works of Gibbon,
Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something of the men themselves
and this curiosity may be easily and delightfully gratified. The
autobiographies of Gibbon, the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan,
the History of Carlyle's Life by Froude, present the personality of
these historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of all his
own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two
books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they
are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were
seldom without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be derived
from a study of their lives from their suggestions of books, helpful in
the development of a historian. They knew how to employ their odd
moments, and Gibbon and Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory
reading. Sainte-Beuve makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing
Tocqueville's lack of it, so that he failed to illustrate and animate
his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long run, great
monotony.[26] As a relief to the tired brain, without a complete loss of
time, the reading at hazard, even browsing in a library, has its place
in the equipment of a historian. One of the most striking examples of
self-education in literature is Carlyle's seven years, from the age of
thirty-two to thirty-nine, passed at Craigenputtock where his native
inclination was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock,
wrote Froude, is "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The
nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, 700 feet
above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce to the
hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking."[27] The
place realized Tennyson's w