s he had indeed no more knowledge than any
cultivated man of the world is expected to possess. But of all the
so-called "human subjects" his mastery was unequalled. Learning was
the business of his life. He was gifted with a singularly tenacious
memory. His industry was untiring. Wherever he was--in London, at
Cannes in winter, at Tegern See in summer, at Windsor or Osborne with
the Queen, latterly (till his health failed) at Cambridge during the
University terms--he never worked less than eight hours a day. Yet,
even after making every allowance for his memory and his industry, his
friends stood amazed at the range and exactness of his knowledge. It
was as various as it was profound, and much of it bore on recondite
matters which few men study to-day. Though less minute where it
touched the ancient and the early mediaeval world than as respected
more recent times, it might be said to cover the whole field of
history, both civil and ecclesiastical, and became wonderfully full
and exact when it reached the Renaissance and Reformation periods. It
included not only the older theology, but modern Biblical criticism.
It included metaphysics; and not only metaphysics in the more special
sense, but the abstract side of economics and that philosophy of law
on which the Germans set so much store. Most of the prominent figures
who have during the last half-century led the march of inquiry in
these subjects, men like Ranke and Fustel de Coulanges in history,
Wilhelm Roscher in economic science, Adolf Harnack in theology, were
his personal friends, and he could meet them as an equal on their own
ground. On one occasion I had invited to meet him at dinner the late
Dr. (afterwards Bishop) Creighton, who was then writing his _History
of the Popes_, and the late Professor Robertson Smith, the most
eminent Hebrew and Arabic scholar in Britain. The conversation turned
first upon the times of Pope Leo the Tenth, and then upon recent
controversies regarding the dates of the books of the Old Testament,
and it soon appeared that Lord Acton knew as much about the former as
Dr. Creighton, and as much about the latter as Robertson Smith. The
constitutional history of the United States is a topic far removed
from those philosophical and ecclesiastical or theological lines of
inquiry to which most of his time had been given; yet he knew it more
thoroughly than any other living European, at least in England and
France, for of the Germans I will not