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Tiic Sifted Gi'aiii and the Grain Sifters 2 1 9 moreover, he was gifted with a phenomenal memory, which seemed to put at his immediate disposal the entire accumulation of his om- nivorous reading. His judgment was, however, defective ; for he was, from the very ardor of his nature,' more or less of a partisan, while the wealth of his imagination and the exuberance of his rhet- oric were fatal to his sense of form. He was incomparably the greatest of historical raconteurs, but the fascination of the story overcame his sense of proportion, and he was buried under his own riches. For it is a great mistake to suppose, as so many do, that what is called style, no matter how brilliant, or how correct and clear, constitutes in itself literary form ; it is a large and indis- pensable element in literary form, but neither the whole, nor indeed the greatest part of it. The entire scheme, the proportion of the several parts to the whole and to each other, the grouping and the presentation, the background and the accessories constitute literary form ; the style of the author is merely the drapeiy of presentation. Here was where Macaulay failed ; and he failed on a point which the average historical writer, and the average historical instructor still more, does not as a rule even take into consideration. Macaulay's general conception of his scheme was so imperfect as to be practi- cally impossible ; and this he himself, when too late, sadly recog- nized. His interest in his subject and the warmth of his imagination swept him away, — they were too strong for his sense of proportion. Take, for instance, two such wonderful bits as his account of the trial of the seven bishops, and his narrative of the siege of Londonderry. They are masterpieces ; but they should be monographs. They are in their imagery and detail out of all proportion to any general his- torical plan. They imply a whole which would be in itself an his- torical library rather than a history. On the matter of judgment it is not necessary to dwell. Macaulay's work is unquestionably his- tory, and history on a panoramic scale ; but the pigments he used are indisputably Whig. Yet his method was instinctively correct. He had his models and his scheme, — he made his preliminary studies, — he saw his subject as a whole, and in its several parts ; but he labored under two disadvantages : — in the first place, like Gibbon, he was born and wrote before the discoveries of Darwin had > " It is well to realize that this greatest history of modern times was written by one in whom a distrust in enthusiasm was deeply rooted. This cynicism was not inconsistent with partiality, with definite prepossessions, with a certain spite. The conviction that enthusiasm is inconsistent with intellectual balance was engrained in his mental constitu- tion, and confirmed by study and experience. It might be reasonably maintained that zeal for men or causes is an historian's undoing, and that ' reserve sympathy ' — the prin- ciple of Thucydides — is the first lesson he has to learn." J. B. Bury, Introduction to his edition (1896) of Gibbon, I. Ixvii.-lxviii.