X Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. 
exist; but his own special labours lay in the departments of 
history and literary criticism. Very early he appreciated the 
truth that an original authority was foremost in value as in time. 
The first point was to ascertain what precisely the old authors 
wrote. With respect to many of them — the Eoman writers, for 
example — once their exact words were known, the main difficulty 
was overcome. One had a reasonable guarantee that the fact 
was stated as these men saw it, the report as they heard it or read 
it. They were, as a rule, disinterested, and they must be regarded 
as on the whole trustworthy witnesses. With respect to native 
annalists, things were different. In the case of many of them the 
real difficulty may be said to commence after the accuracy of the 
text is established. Scottish historians had hitherto treated these 
authorities in one of two ways. They accepted them or rejected 
them en bloc. But this was surely unwise. The most imaginative 
among them occasionally writes history ; the most prosaic frequently 
indulges in fiction. The task of the critic is to separate the fact 
from the fancy. For this purpose, accurate texts are indispensable ; 
but accurate texts alone are not sufficient. The native chronicler 
must, at every step, be cross-examined and compared, not merely with 
himself, but as far as possible with contemporary writers, native and 
foreign. It is only when reliable material is thus obtained that the 
labour of the historian proper commences. 
Mr Skene was, in many ways, exceptionally fitted for the work 
which he took in hand. A busy man all his life, he still could 
command leisure. He had a vigorous intellect, a powerful memory, 
a judgment in the main calm and clear. He possessed, in no small 
measure, the constructive faculty that was able to fit together into 
one reticulated whole isolated facts gathered from many quarters, 
the historical imagination that could clothe the dry bones with 
flesh and skin, and make the dead past live again. One most 
essential qualification Mr Skene possessed to which none of his 
predecessors could lay claim. Important light is thrown on many 
points of early Scottish history by Horse Saga and Welsh Triad. 
But, apart from the Roman period, the great mass of material is 
to be found in the works of native authors, written in old Gaelic or 
in Latin. Mr Skene’s predecessors, as matter of course, could all 
read Latin, and one or two of them may have acquired a smatter- 
