The interest of this series, which increases rather than diminishes—­as one might have feared would be the case—­with each succeeding volume, lies very much in the fact that the list of writers, almost as long and varied as that of the subjects, is a representative one.  It comprises men who have won distinction in different departments—­as novelists, historians, scholars, scientific expounders—­but who here meet in the common field of biographical criticism and work together under the same limitations and conditions.  Hence their performances give us not so much a measure of their individual powers as of the tone of thought and intellectual depth of the class to which they belong.  However diverse their abilities and special fields of observation or research, their general range of knowledge, methods of study and ideas of life are very much the same.  They are collectively “men of culture,” as the writers of Queen Anne’s time were “wits,” and it is the qualities associated with that term, rather than any distinct gifts or characteristics, that are here called into play.  Mr. Trollope’s Thackeray was perhaps an exception—­a black spot on the otherwise immaculate whiteness.  In a different way the general effect would have been still more seriously impaired if Mr. Ruskin’s co-operation had been invited.  The outcroppings of a vulgar egotism might indicate a substratum necessary to be taken into account, but it would have been a clear loss of labor to follow the leadings of any eccentric vein.  One might wonder at the absence of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the high priest of culture; but we have to remember that Mr. Arnold is solicitous to stand apart, that he holds up ideals which he is careful to inform us are not those of his time, and that he is fastidious in selecting a point of view where he cannot be jostled, with perspectives to which no vision but his own can accommodate itself.  His culture may represent that of the future, but certainly does not typify that of the present.

Mr. Leslie Stephen, on the contrary, might very well stand as a type of his class both in its positive and negative qualities.  He, more than any of his confreres, is a product of culture.  Unlike the greater number of them, he has no special talent, or pet object of enthusiasm, or erratic tendencies.  He is a trained critic, and is “nothing if not critical.”  His coolness is a real coolness, not the effect of any “toning down” for the occasion, as we may suspect to have been the case with Mr. Froude and Mr. Goldwin Smith.  His knowledge is accurate, his judgments are sound, his taste is seldom at fault, his style is faultless and colorless, he never attempts what he is unable to do well and without any appearance of strain.  Though he may have given more attention to the literature of the eighteenth century than to that of any other period, one feels that he might safely have been entrusted with the preparation of any volume of this series.  It was probably from a sense of fitness, not by mere chance, that he was selected to write the initial volume, which pitched the key for those that were to follow, and that so far he is the only writer who has been called upon for a second contribution.