popular name. As he pointed out, "Our principle should be to supply help to students, not material to historians. ... It is intended that the narrative shall be such as will serve all readers, that it shall be without notes, and without quotations in 'foreign languages.'" With Acton's known views on impartiality, it was a matter of course that he should add, "We shall avoid the needless utterance of opinion and the service of a cause."
The book as planned was worthy of its first editor. Many universities and two continents were ransacked for contributors. Five chapters—none, alas! written—Acton had allotted to himself, and in the titles of the others (not always retained since) his personal characteristics received pregnant expression. In the practical work of editing, it must be admitted that he was less successful. His very fastidiousness prevented him from realising that there is a time when proof correcting must cease, and that even histories cannot be perfect. He was without the driving force needed to keep in line a heterogeneous body of specialists. The result was that his health broke down under the task, and although nearly two volumes were in type at the time of his surrender, the work when it actually appeared did so under different auspices, and expressed ideals not altogether the same.
What we have said does not fully set forth the nature and extent of Acton's influence at Cambridge. But it may serve to show that in the three forms of professorial activity—teaching, organisation, and research—his six years at Cambridge made a mark upon the school of history which will not soon be effaced. What we have here set down is a mere record of facts. But it was an act of piety to lay them before the reader, in order that he may understand something of the strange spell which the late
