Thus historians who push criticism to the point of so-called hypercriticism perform a most instructive philosophical duty when they render the whole of such work vain, and therefore fit to be called by the title of Sanchez's work Quod nihil scitur. I recollect the remark made to me when I was occupied with research work in my young days by a friend of but slight literary knowledge, to whom I had lent a very critical, indeed hypercritical, history of ancient Rome. When he had finished reading it he returned the book to me, remarking that he had acquired the proud conviction of being "the most learned of philologists," because the latter arrive at the conclusion that they know nothing as the result of exhausting toil, while he knew nothing without any effort at all, simply as a generous gift of nature.[1]
II

  of this spontaneous dissolution of philological history should be the negation of history claimed to have been written with the aid of narratives and documents conceived as external things, and the consignment of these to their proper lower place as mere aids to historical knowledge, as it determines and redetermines itself in the development of the spirit. But if such consequences are distasteful and the project is persevered in of thus writing history in spite of repeated failures, the further problem then presents itself as to how the cold indifference of philological history and its[Pg 35] intrinsic uncertainty can be healed without changing those presumptions. The problem, itself fallacious, can receive but a fallacious solution, expressed by the substitution of the interest of sentiment for the lack of interest of thought and of ?sthetic coherence of representation for the logical coherence here unobtainable. The new erroneous form of history thus obtained is poetical history　The short stories were first collected in a little volume in 1879..

Numerous examples of this kind of history are afforded by the affectionate biographies of persons much beloved and venerated and by the satirical biographies of the detested; patriotic histories which vaunt the glory and lament the misadventures of the people to which the author belongs and with which he sympathizes, and those that shed a sinister light upon the enemy people, adversary of his own; universal history, illuminated with the ideals of liberalism or humanitarianism, that composed by a socialist, depicting the acts, as Marx said, of the "cavalier of the sorry countenance," in other words of the capitalist, that of the anti-Semite, who shows the Jew to be everywhere the source of human misfortune and of human turpitude and the persecution of the Jew to be the acme of human splendour and happiness. Nor is poetical history exhausted with this fundamental and general description of love and hate (love that is hate and hate that is love), for it passes through all the most intricate forms, the fine gradations of sentiment.

To many Dr. Stark’s conclusion may appear to be a natural and obvious sequitur from the evidence upon which it is founded. Admitting the facts—and I see no reason for doubting them—it may appear at first sight that we are bound to accept the conclusion that241 matrimony is favourable to longevity. Yet the consideration of a few parallel cases will suffice to show how small a foundation the figures I have quoted supply for such a conclusion. What would be thought, for example, of any of the following inferences?—Among hot-house plants there is observed a greater variety and brilliance of colour than among those which are kept in the open air; therefore the housing of plants conduces to the splendour of their colouring. Or again: The average height of Life Guardsmen is greater than that of the rest of the male population; therefore to be a Life Guardsman conduces to tallness of stature. Or to take an example still more closely illustrative of Dr. Stark’s reasoning: The average longevity of noblemen exceeds that of untitled persons; therefore to have a title is conducive to longevity; or borrowing his words, to remain without a title ‘is more destructive to life than the most unwholesome trades, or than residence in an unwholesome house or district, where there has never been the most distant attempt at sanitary improvement of any kind.’

  is absurd in each of the above instances, and we are able at once to show where the flaw in the reasoning lies. We know that splendid flowers are more commonly selected for housing, and that Life Guardsmen are chosen for their tallness, so that we are prevented from falling into the mistake of ascribing splendour of colour in the one instance, or tallness in the other, to the influence of causes which have nothing whatever to do with those attributes;242 nor is anyone likely to ascribe the longevity of our nobility to the possession of a title. Yet there is nothing in any one of the above inferences which is in reality more unsound than Dr. Stark’s inference from the mortality bills, when the latter are considered with due reference to the principles of interpretation which statisticians are bound to follow style Two considerations must have caused Scheer the gravest possible anxiety..

The fact is, that in dealing with statistics the utmost care is required in order that our inferences may not be pushed beyond the evidence afforded by our facts. In the present instance, we have simply to deal with the fact that the death-rate of unmarried men is higher than the death-rate of married men and widowers. From this fact we cannot reason as Dr. Stark has done to a simple conclusion. All that we can do is to show that one of three conclusions must be adopted:—Either matrimony is favourable (directly or indirectly) to longevity, in a degree sufficient wholly to account for the observed peculiarity; or a principle of selection—the effect of which is such as, on the whole, to fill the ranks of married men from among the healthier and stronger portion of the community—operates in a sufficient degree to account wholly for the observed death-rates; or lastly, the observed death-rates are due to the combination, in some unknown proportion, of the two causes just mentioned.

Certain truths with regard to the force that Cradock took north, and of the force that he attacked, should be borne in mind. Good Hope, Monmouth, and Glasgow were as a squadron, markedly faster than Von Spee’s squadron. Whether the Otranto was capable of more than 22 or 23 knots I do not know; but the three warships certainly had the heels of the Germans. It is, then, obvious that if Admiral Cradock’s staff regarded themselves and their ships as inadequate or in danger, it cannot have been because, had the enemy attacked them, they would have been unable to escape. It is next equally obvious that had the Admiral kept Canopus with him, while the pace of the squadron would have been brought down from 23 knots to 15, its fighting value, as measured by broadside power, would have been very much greater than Von174 Spee’s. That Von Spee at least thought so is clear from his published letters.

Without Canopus, then, Cradock would have been safe if he had run away. With Canopus he would have been reasonably safe if he had awaited the enemy’s attack. The significance of the letter which I have alluded to is that it was written by a man to whom neither of these contingencies seemed to be open. The superiority in speed which would always have made it possible for Cradock to evade Von Spee was also the one quality of his ships that gave him capacity to attack the Germans if they showed any signs of avoiding action. No doubt, if the Germans would have awaited action by a squadron which included the Canopus Admiral Cradock’s chances might have been brilliant. But if he started out to look for Von Spee with a 15-knot squadron, his chances for acting swiftly on any information that came his way would have been greatly reduced; and to have limited his advance to 15 knots would have been handing over the initiative in the matter entirely to the enemy The moment Von Spee found himself under the effective. .

 in mind and noting first that the British Admiral deliberately left Canopus behind; next, that at two o’clock in the afternoon of November 1, when the presence of an enemy was suspected to the north, he at once ordered all ships to close on Good Hope, and continued when the squadron was formed, to advance against the enemy, and that then, when he saw him, in spite of the bad weather and bad light, at once announced that he intended to attack him, the inference is irresistible that he thought it his duty to find and attack the enemy, and that he refused to interpret the sending of Canopus to mean that he could judge for himself whether or not he was in sufficient force to attack. He acted, that is to say, as175 no man would act unless he believed his mission to be of a peremptory and quite unmistakable kind.

So much, I think, is clear from the few known facts of the case. Whether Admiral Cradock was right in so interpreting his orders is, of course, another matter. Of that no one can judge until the orders themselves are published, and then only those who are familiar with the precise meaning of the phrases employed. Of the instructions themselves, then, I express no opinion. I am only concerned with the light that Admiral Cradock’s actions throw on his own interpretation of them.

A great Enchanter indeed was Merlin. He served with his enchantments the King of the Isle of Britain from the time he was a stripling to the time when he was two score years of age. Then, when he might have passed from being a lesser to being a great Enchanter, Merlin vanished altogether and was seen no more at the court of the King of the Isle of Britain. All the great works he had planned were left undone, all the instruments he had gathered were left unused, all the books he had brought together were left unopened, and the King whom he had served so long was left to whistle for his Enchanter.

  for that it was the daughter of King Dionas. She was young, but she was ungentle. What she saw, that she would[Pg 132] have. One day a stranger was passing with her father, and when he looked on her he said, “A young hawk she is, a young hawk that has not yet flown at any prey.” That very day the daughter of King Dionas walked on the plain that was at a distance from her father’s castle. The stranger who had spoken of her to the King was there, and he looked long upon her　threat of vengeance she passed by in contempt..

Now Merlin had looked on all the ladies who were at the court of the King of the Isle of Britain, and on the maidens who were in far countries and distant castles, and besides, the ladies of the times of old had been shown him in his Magic Glass, but never before had he seen any one who seemed so[Pg 133] lovely to him as this child. She was bright eyed as a bird. She had a slim body, and pale cheeks, and quick, quick hands. Her hair was red and in thick tangles. “Show me thine enchantments,” she cried to him again.

Merlin bade her come with him and she came. He brought her to a high place, a place that was of rock with rocks piled all about it. On the ground he made magical figures. Then he said magical words. And all the time Vivien, slim Vivien with her tangle of red hair, stood upon the rocks and kept her eyes upon him.

 were uttered, an old serving-man, in a blue side-coat of thirty years before, with threadbare lace falling low at the neck and hands in a forgotten fashion, appeared at the doorway. His bald and shining head had still a few lyart locks clinging like white fringes about the sides. These, however, were not allowed to grow downward in the natural manner, but were trained as gardeners train fruit trees against walls that look to the south. They climbed directly upward so that the head of Thomas Allen was criss-crossed in both directions by streaks of hair, interlaced like the fingers of one’s hands netted together. But owing to the natural haste with which Thomas did his work, these were never all seen in place at one time. Invariably they had fallen to one side or the other, and being stiffened with candle grease or other greyish unguent, they stood out at all angles like goose quills from a scrivener’s inkpot.

During the perfunctory repast which was finally brought forward and placed on the table by the reluctant Thomas, Mistress Mary sat directly opposite to me with her chin resting on her fingers and her elbows on the table. Her mother, at the upper end of the chamber, occupied herself in looking out of the window, occasionally clasping her hands in the urgency of her supplications or giving vent to a pitiful moan which indicated her sense of the hopeless iniquity of mankind threat of vengeance she passed by in contempt. .

Then with more kindliness than she had ever yet shown me, Mary Gordon asked of my people of Balmaghie, whether the call had been unanimous, who abode with me in the manse, and many other questions, to all of which I answered as well as I could. For the truth is, that the nearness of so admirable a maid and the directness of her gaze wrought in me a kind of desperation, so that it was all I could do to keep from telling her then that I had come to the house of Earlstoun to ask her to be my wife.

Not that I had the wildest hope of a favourable answer, but simply from inexperience at the{166} business of making love to a young lass I blundered blindly on. Plain ram-stam Hob could have bested me fairly at that. For he had not talked so long to the good-wives of the Lothians without getting a well-hung tongue in the head of him.