William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903), an Irish historian and essayist of classic Whig proclivities, was perhaps the greatest historical scholar Ireland ever produced.

William Lecky was born in Newtown Park near Dublin on March 26, 1838. After the death of his father when he was 14, Lecky was raised as a member of the family of the 8th Earl of Carnwath, whom his stepmother had married. Family wanderings during his childhood gave him a varied education at Kingstown, the Royal School at Armagh, Cheltenham, and Trinity College, Dublin, where he received his bachelor of arts degree in 1859 and his master of arts degree in 1863. An indifferent student, he appears to have benefited much more from the wide range of reading in which he engaged to satisfy his own eclectic interests than from the inspiration of formal academic study.

Lecky entered an active career in letters with the anonymous publication of his...