zjames's mental excellencies and defects
exactly invert Macaulay's. His imagination did not clothe the evidence
with brilliant colours; and, on the other hand, did not convert
conjectures into irresistible illusions. The book upon 'Nuncomar and
Impey' shows the sound judgment of evidence in regard to a particular
fact which Professor Maitland perceives in his treatment of mediaeval
affairs. It is an exhaustive, passionless, and shrewd inquiry into the
facts. He speaks in one of his letters of the pleasure which he has
discovered in treating a bit of history 'microscopically'; in getting at
the ultimate facts instead of trusting to the superficial summaries of
historians. In brief, he is applying to an historical question the
methods learnt in the practice of the courts of law. The book is both in
form and substance the careful summing up of a judge in a complicated
criminal case. The disadvantage, from a literary point of view, is
obvious. If we were profoundly interested in a trial for murder, we
should also follow with profound interest the summing up of a
clear-headed businesslike judge. But, if we did not care two straws
whether the man were guilty or innocent, we might find the summing up
too long for our patience. That, I fear, may be true in this case.
Macaulay's great triumph was to create an interest in matters which, in
other hands, were repulsively dry. Fitzjames could not create such an
interest; though his account may be deeply interesting to those who are
interested antecedently. He observes himself that his 'book will be read
by hardly anyone, while Macaulay's paragraph will be read with delighted
conviction by several generations.' So long as he is remembered at all,
poor Impey will stand in a posthumous pillory as a corrupt judge and a
judicial murderer.[186] One reason is, no doubt, that the effect of a
pungent paragraph is seldom obliterated by a painstaking exposure of its
errors requiring many pages of careful and guarded reasoning. Macaulay's
narrative could be superseded in popular esteem only by a writer who
should condense a more correct but equally dogmatic statement into
language as terse and vivid as his own. Yet Fitzjames's book must be
studied by all conscientious historians in future, and will help, it is
to be hoped, to spread a knowledge of the fact that Macaulay was not
possessed of plenary inspiration.

It will be enough to give one instance of Macaulay's audacity. 'Every
schoolboy of