That he is qualified to write such a book, whether from the standpoint of imaginative power or from that of historical knowledge, needs no discussion here. Whether he can, should he choose, combine these qualities, in an extended work, so perfectly that they do not clash, and that neither transcends the other, is a question for the future to decide.
But his imaginative power serves him already in the study, and in the writing of pure history. It is a guarantee, we have said, that the reader will be preserved from barren, unco-ordinated details, which are set down without any reference to human purpose. It is also a guarantee, and this is most important, of as much impartiality as is possible to man. For the imaginative man does not seek fantasy in these things: he can make that for himself in other and more suitable places. Here the plain facts are enough to feed his spirit and to make it rejoice. The most fantastic theories that diversify the page of written history have sprung from the minds of barren dons, who sit in studies unhindered by any realization of the world, and in whose hands the facts are wooden blocks to be piled up in any shape of the grotesque. Mr. Belloc, with a desire to realize and to know the past, a poetic desire that quite overcomes any propagandist bias or routine of thought, is sure of this at least: that he will see the past centuries as clearly and as truly as possible, and with a vision that steadily resolves economic developments and political movements into the actions, and the results of the actions, of human beings.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] But Maitland, of course, was human. He lived some part of his life away from Cambridge.
[9] We make this statement confidently without having read, and not intending to read, the whole of the Cambridge Modern History.
[10] The Old Road, p. 9.
[11] Inaugural Lectures: Lecture on Modern History, p. 24.