orian. He set little store upon what is called
literary excellence, and would often reply, when questioned as to the
merits of some book bearing an eminent name, "You need not read it: it
adds nothing to what we knew." He valued facts only so far as they
went to establish a principle or explained the course of events. It
was really not so much in the range of his knowledge as in the
profundity and precision of his thought that his greatness lay.

His somewhat overstrained conscientiousness, coupled with the
practically unattainable ideal of finish and form which he set before
himself, made him less and less disposed to literary production. No
man of first-rate powers has in our time left so little by which
posterity may judge those powers. In his early life, when for a time
he edited the _Home and Foreign Review_, and when he was connected
with the _Rambler_ and the _North British Review_, he wrote
frequently; and even between 1868 and 1890 he contributed to the press
some few historical essays and a number of anonymous letters. But the
aversion to creative work seemed to grow on him. About 1890 he so far
yielded to the urgency of a few friends as to promise to reissue a
number of his essays in a volume, but, after rewriting and polishing
these essays during several years, he abandoned the scheme altogether.
In 1882 he had already drawn out a plan for a comprehensive history of
Liberty. But this plan also he dropped, because the more he read with
a view to undertaking it the more he wished to read, and the vaster
did the enterprise seem to loom up before him. With him, as with many
men who cherish high literary ideals, the Better proved to be the
enemy of the Good.

Twenty years ago, late at night, in his library at Cannes, he
expounded to me his view of how such a history of Liberty might be
written, and in what wise it might be made the central thread of all
history. He spoke for six or seven minutes only; but he spoke like a
man inspired, seeming as if, from some mountain summit high in air, he
saw beneath him the far-winding path of human progress from dim
Cimmerian shores of prehistoric shadow into the fuller yet broken and
fitful light of the modern time. The eloquence was splendid, but
greater than the eloquence was the penetrating vision which discerned
through all events and in all ages the play of those moral forces, now
creating, now destroying, always transmuting, which had moulded and
remoulded institutio