She drove in the dark to leeward. She struck-not a reef or ...

She drove in the dark to leeward.

She struck-not a reef or a rock But the combs of a smother of sand: night drew her Dead to the Kentish Knock. As life is short and knowledge boundless, is there any canon by which we can determine whether, in the history of Victorian England, Lord Russell's email or Gerard Hopkins's poem better deserves to be recorded? Philosophies of History are many, and all of them are wrecked on the truth that in the career of mankind the illuminated passages are so brief, so infrequent, and still for the most part so imperfectly known, that

we have not

the materials for a valid induction.

Of historic method, indeed, nothing wiser has ever been said than a word which will be found in Gibbon's youthful Essay on the Study of Literature. Facts, the young sage instructs us, are of three kinds: those which prove nothing beyond themselves, those which serve to illustrate a character or explain a motive, and those which dominate the system and move its springs.

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