"Ne'er of the living can the living judge,
Too blind the affection or too fresh the grudge."

The limitation is equally true in the case of one like Sir Wilfrid
Laurier who, though dead, will be a factor of moment in our politics
for at least another generation. Professor Skelton's book is
interesting and valuable, but not conclusive. The first volume is a
political history of Canada from the sixties until 1896, with
Laurier in the setting at first inconspicuously but growing to
greatness and leadership. For the fifteen years of premiership the
biographer is concerned lest Sir Wilfrid should not get the fullest
credit for whatever was achieved; while in dealing with the period
after 1911, constituting the anti-climax of Laurier's career, Mr.
Skelton is avowedly the alert and eager partisan, bound to find his
hero right and all those who disagreed with him wrong. Sir Wilfrid
Laurier is described in the preface as "the finest and simplest
gentleman, the noblest and most unselfish man it has ever been my
good fortune to know;" and the work is faithfully devoted to the
elucidation of this theme. Men may fail to be heroes to their valets
but they are more successful with their biographers. The final
appraisement of Sir Wilfrid, to be written perhaps fifty years hence
by some tolerant and impartial historian, will probably not be an
echo of Prof. Skelton's judgment. It will perhaps put Sir Wilfrid
higher than Prof. Skelton does and yet not quite so high; an abler
man but one not quite so preternaturally good; a man who had
affinities with Macchiavelli as well as with Sir Galahad.

The Laurier of the first volume is an appealing, engaging and most
attractive personality. There was about his earlier career something
romantic and compelling. In almost one rush he passed from the