Letters of Lord Acton
It was said of Sir Robert Peel by Disraeli that he
was the greatest member of Parliament that ever lived.
If a corresponding generality were permitted, it would
be safe to assert of Lord Acton that he was the greatest
editor. Few readers of these Letters but will rid themselves of prevalent opinions as to the ease with which a
serious magazine may be conducted, or as to the levity
with which grave articles are put into print. Probably
no Minister of State ever performed his duties more
conscientiously than Acton his as essayist or reviewer;
none in any department of affairs could give to the
details of his office a more anxious attention, a more
exhaustive care.
The familiar praise of Acton as "the most erudite man of his generation," if unattested by any volume all his own, receives abundant illustration in these Letters. For this reason they have been printed in a detail which sometimes serves little purpose beyond that of giving completion to the picture and exactitude to its setting. The alacrity of such a man to devote a life of labour and learning to apparently transitory tasks, with little reward beyond the approval of his own literary and historical conscience, since the praise of contemporaries Matthew Arnold's even hardly came into count with him, sets a standard for all those who create or control serial literature, and robs of half its terrors the prophecy of Lamartine that the periodical must sooner or later supersede the book.
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