He is forced
into an attempt to reconstitute the picture for others. If hitherto
you have failed to perceive that a historian is a being in strong
emotion, trying to convey his emotion to others, read the passage in
the _Memoirs_ of Gibbon, in which he describes how he finished the
_Decline and Fall_. You will probably never again look upon the
_Decline and Fall_ as a "dry" work.
What applies to history applies to the other "dry" branches. Even
Johnson's Dictionary is packed with emotion. Read the last paragraph
of the preface to it: "In this work, when it shall be found that
much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is
performed.... It may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to
observe that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have
only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto
completed...." And so on to the close: "I have protracted my work
till most of those whom I wish to please have sunk into the grave, and
success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with
frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or
from praise." Yes, tranquillity; but not frigid! The whole passage,
one of the finest in English prose, is marked by the heat of emotion.
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