hen any new evidence was discovered or any new
argument brought to his notice, and not unfrequently modified his view
in the light of such evidence or arguments. It was this passion for
accuracy and for that lucidity of statement which is the necessary
adjunct of real accuracy, that made him deal so sternly with confused
thinkers and careless writers. Carelessness seemed to him a moral
fault, because a fault which true conscientiousness excludes. So also
clearness of conception and exact precision in the use of words were
so natural to him, and appeared so essential to good work, that he
would set down the want of them rather to indolence than to
incapacity, and apply to them a proportionately severe censure. Mere
ignorance he could pardon, but when it was, as often happens, even in
persons of considerable pretensions, joined to presumption, his wrath
was the hotter because he deemed it a wholly righteous wrath. Never
touching any subject which he had not mastered, he thought it his duty
as a critic to expose impostors, and rendered in this way, during the
years when he wrote for the _Saturday Review_, services to English
scholarship second only to those which were embodied in his own
treatises. It must be confessed that he enjoyed the work, and, like
Samuel Johnson, was not displeased to be told that he had "tossed and
gored several persons."

His determination to get to the bottom of a question was the cause of
the censure he so freely bestowed both on lawyers, who were wont to
rest content with their technicalities, and not go back to the
historical basis on which those technicalities rested, and on
politicians who fell into the habit of using stock phrases which
muddled or misrepresented the principles involved. The expression
"national property," as applied to tithes, incensed him, and gave
occasion for some of his most vigorous writing. So the commonplace
grumblings against the presence of bishops in the House of Lords,
which may be heard from people who acquiesce in the presence of
hereditary peers, led him to give the most clear and forcible
statement of the origin and character of that House which our time has
produced. Here he was on ground he knew thoroughly. But his habits of
accuracy were not less fully illustrated by his attitude towards
branches of history he had not explored. With a profound and minute
knowledge of English history down to the fourteenth century, so far as
his aversion to the employment