exposition of the intricate relations of Scottish Presbyterians with Roman Catholics, or of Queen Elizabeth's tortuous foreign policy. These things are the bricks and mortar of history. Fragments of them may be needed as props in outlying portions of the biographical edifice, but even then they must be kept largely out of sight
On these grounds I am afraid that that mass of laborious works which bears the title of "the life and times" of this or that celebrated person, calls for censure. These Weighty volumes can be classed neither with light history nor with right biography. Most of them must be reckoned fruit of a misdirected zeal. One would not wish to speak disrespectfully of the self-denying toil which has raised a mountain of stones on however sprawling a plan to a great man's memory. But when one surveys that swollen cairn The Life of John Milton narrated in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical and literary history of his time which occupied a great part of David Masson's long and distinguished
