Henry Thomas Buckle, the English historian, was the son of a prosperous businessman who left him sufficient money to devote his life to private study and writing. In common with a number of other dominant thinkers of the Victorian age—such as J. S. Mill, Herbert Spencer, and T. H. Huxley—he was largely self-educated. As he was a delicate child, it was thought unwise for him to undertake work involving much intellectual effort or strain, with the consequence that he was (as he put it) "never much tormented with what is called Education, but allowed to pursue my own way undisturbed … whatever I may be supposed to know I taught myself." Thus he was taken from school, at his own request, at the age of fourteen, never went to a university, and conducted his subsequent reading and research (which by any...