mer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe--was genuine
and enthusiastic, and incomparably better informed than that of some
more conventional critics. Yet this cordial submission to recognized
authority, this honest loyalty to established reputation, did not blind
him to defects, did not seduce him into indiscriminate praise, did not
deter him from exposing the tendency to verbiage in Burke and Jeremy
Taylor, the excessive blankness of much of Wordsworth's blank verse, the
undercurrent of mediocrity in Macaulay, the absurdities of Ruskin's
etymology. And, as in great matters, so in small. Whatever literary
production was brought under his notice, his judgment was clear,
sympathetic, and independent. He had the readiest appreciation of true
excellence, a quick eye for minor merits of facility and method, a
severe intolerance of turgidity and inflation--of what he called
"desperate endeavours to render a platitude endurable by making it
pompous," and a lively horror of affectation and unreality. These, in
literature as in life, were in his eyes the unpardonable sins.

On the whole it may be said that, as a critic of books, he had in his
lifetime the reputation, the vogue, which he deserved. But his criticism
in other fields has hardly been appreciated at its proper value.
Certainly his politics were rather fantastic. They were influenced by
his father's fiery but limited Liberalism, by the abstract speculation
which flourishes perennially at Oxford, and by the cultivated Whiggery
which he imbibed as Lord Lansdowne's Private Secretary; and the result
often seemed wayward and whimsical. Of this he was himself in some
degree aware. At any rate he knew perfectly that his politics were
lightly esteemed by politicians, and, half jokingly, half seriously, he
used to account for the fact by that jealousy of an outsider's
interference, which is natural to all professional men. Yet he had the
keenest interest, not only in the deeper problems of politics, but also
in the routine and mechanism of the business. He enjoyed a good debate,
liked political society, and was interested in the personalities, the
trivialities, the individual and domestic ins-and-outs, which make so
large a part of political conversation.

But, after all, Politics, in the technical sense, did not afford a
suitable field for his peculiar gifts. It was when he came to the
criticism of national life that the hand of the master was felt. In all
questions affect