vent he never proceeded beyond the preliminary stage.
His 'Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey,'
published in the spring of 1885, gives the result.

Fitzjames had been familiar from his boyhood with the famous article
upon Warren Hastings, in which Macaulay reached the very culminating
point of his surpassing literary skill. It is a skill which, whatever
else may be said of it, makes his opponents despair. They may disprove
his statements; they can hardly hope to displace his versions of fact
from their hold upon popular belief. One secret of Macaulay's art is
suggested by the account of his delight in 'castle-building.' His vast
reading and his portentous memory enabled him to create whole galleries
of mental pictures of the past, and his vigorous style embodies his
visions with admirable precision and sharpness of outline. But, as those
who have followed him in detail became painfully aware, there is more
than one deduction to be made from his merits. His imagination
undoubtedly worked upon a great mass of knowledge; but the very nature
of the imaginative process was to weave all the materials into a
picture, and therefore to fill up gaps by conjecture. He often
unconsciously makes fancy do the work of logic. 'The real history' (of
the famous quarrel between Addison and Steele), says Macaulay, 'we have
little doubt, was something like this': and he proceeds to tell a story
in minute detail as vividly as if he had been an eye-witness. To him,
the clearness of the picture was a sufficient guarantee of its
truthfulness. It was only another step to omit the 'doubt' and say
simply 'The real history was.' Yet all the time the real history
according to the best evidence was entirely different. We can never be
certain whether one of Macaulay's brilliant pictures is--as it sometimes
certainly is--a fair representation of a vast quantity of evidence or an
audacious inference from a few hints and indications. It represents, in
either case, the effect upon his mind; but the effect, if lively enough,
is taken to prove itself. He will not condescend to the prosaic
consideration of evidence, or to inserting the necessary 'ifs' and
'perhapses' which disturb so painfully the impression of a vivid
narrative. When his strong party feelings have coloured his beliefs from
the first, his beliefs acquire an intensity which enables them not only
to dispense with but to override evidence.

I insist upon this because Fit