tical Remains of
Butler, which in wit and sarcasm are second only to his great work, were
rescued from oblivion by the drudging antiquary Thyer, who was so
conceited of the performance that he had the portrait of his own
respectable and stupid face engraved beside that of Butler, in order
perhaps that all men might see how incapable he was of fabricating the
pieces to which it is prefixed. There is a good deal of the poetry of
the club books of which it may at least be said, that worse is printed
and praised as the produce of our contemporaries.

It is not so much, however, in Poetry or the Drama as in Historical
literature that the clubs develop their strength. It is difficult to
estimate the greatness of the obligations of British history to these
institutions. They have dug up, cleansed, and put in order for immediate
inspection and use, a multitude of written monuments bearing on the
greatest events and the most critical epochs in the progress of the
empire. The time thus saved to investigators is great and priceless. In
no other department of knowledge can the intellectual labourer more
forcibly apply the Latin proverb which warns him that his work is
indefinite, but his life brief. In the ordinary sciences the philosopher
may and often does content himself with the well-rounded and professedly
completed system of the day. But no one can grapple with history without
feeling its inexhaustibleness. Its final boundaries seem only to retreat
to a farther distance the more ground we master, as Mr Buckle found,
when he betook himself, like another Atlas, to grapple with the history
of the whole world.

The more an investigator finds his materials printed for him, the
farther he can go. No doubt it is sometimes desirable, even necessary,
to look to some manuscript authority for the clearing-up of a special
point; but too often the profession of having perused a great mass of
manuscript authorities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who
searches for and finds the truth in any considerable portion of history,
performs too great an achievement to care for the praise of deciphering
a few specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the sense hidden
in certain words couched in obsolete spelling. If casual discoveries of
this kind do really help him to great truths, it is well; but it too
often happens that he exaggerates their value, because they are his own
game, shot on his own manor. Until he has exhausted all that