distinction. When his companions damned him for a milksop, he was
loftily contemptuous, conscious that it was not in intelligence alone
that he was their superior. While the Stuarts were the gods of his
idolatry, while the Regicides were the fiends of his frank abhorrence,
it was from the Elizabethans that he caught the splendid vigour of his
style; and he owed not only his historical sense, but his living English
to the example of Philemon Holland. Moreover, it is to his constant
glory that, living at a time that preferred as well to attenuate the
English tongue as to degrade the profession of the highway, he not only
rode abroad with a fearless courtesy, but handled his own language with
the force and spirit of an earlier age.

He wrote with the authority of courage and experience. A hazardous
career had driven envy and malice from his dauntless breast. Though he
confesses a debt to certain 'learned and eminent divines of the Church
of England,' he owed a greater debt to his own observation, and he
knew--none better--how to recognise with enthusiasm those deeds of
daring which only himself has rivalled. A master of etiquette, he
distributed approval and censure with impartial hand; and he was
quick to condemn the smallest infraction of an ancient law. Nor was he
insensible to the dignity of history. The best models were always
before him. With admirable zeal he studied the manner of such masters
as Thucydides and Titus Livius of Padua. Above all, he realised
the importance of setting appropriate speeches in the mouths of his
characters; and, permitting his heroes to speak for themselves, he
imparted to his work an irresistible air of reality and good faith. His
style, always studied, was neither too low nor too high for his subject.
An ill-balanced sentence was as hateful to him as a foul thrust or a
stolen advantage.