212 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



pathetic in the cry which went up from the ex- 

 hausted and fever-stricken traveller : " My book, 

 my book ! I shall never finish my book ! " The 

 pathos is not diminished, but perhaps rather deep- 

 ened, by the reflection that the book possessed no 

 such transcendent value as its author ascribed to 

 it, and that in all probability the strange irony of 

 fate, had it granted to Mr. Buckle the long life of 

 a Carlyle or a Humboldt, would only have per- 

 mitted him to survive his own reputation as a 

 leader in the world of thought. It is seldom that 

 so brilliant a success as Mr. Buckle's has been 

 even temporarily achieved by such superficial 

 thinking and such slender scholarship. The im- 

 mense array of authors cited in his book bears 

 witness to the extent of his reading, but the loose, 

 indiscriminate way in which they are cited shows 

 equally how uncritical and desultory his reading 

 was. One may ascribe this looseness to the na- 

 tive impatience of temperament illustrated in his 

 disposing of Gibbon and Hallam in ten days ; but 

 certainly his solitary education and solitary habits 

 of study could do little towards curing the fault. 

 One reason why the scholarship of university- 

 bred men is in the main so far superior to that of 

 men who have been taught at home is that the 

 former are regularly forced, by continual contact 



