Postscript on Mr. Buckle. 213 



and rivalry with fellow-students, into habits of 

 self-restraint and self-criticism in reaching con- 

 clusions which only the rarest innate virtues of 

 intellect can enable the latter now and then, in 

 spite of their solitude, to acquire. It is but once 

 or twice in an age that the home-taught student 

 can receive the stimulus to patient sagacity that 

 was afforded in the cases of Grote and Mill. The 

 kind of unceasing criticism which university-life 

 affords the best means of securing is in most cases 

 indispensable. Less effective, because less direct 

 and constant, but still very valuable, is the disci- 

 pline that is gained by early and frequent author- 

 ship, where a writer is so constituted as to be able 

 to profit alike by fair and unfair public criticism. 

 That there may be men of genius with such 

 marked native qualities of caution and vigilance 

 as to enable them partially to dispense with such 

 educational aids we do not deny ; but Mr. Buckle 

 was not one of these. He began life with his full 

 share of the " original sin " of hasty generaliza- 

 tion ; and nothing in his circumstances tended to 

 check or control this disposition until, at an age 

 when one's mental habits are usually pretty well 

 ingrained, he appeared before the world with the 

 first instalment of his able and stimulating but 

 crude and hastily-wrought book. 



