ABSTRACT
Living on to eighty-seven, George Saintsbury found some compensation for the burden of years in the honours that he received and enjoyed. Saintsbury spent some time in expatiating on the enormities of a critic who had suggested that he, Saintsbury, did not know his Horace. He comes out, sometimes in surprising places, with amazing and most amusing flings at the enemy; and only sourness could take offence. The Toryism was an admirable soil for a critic of Saintsbury's cast. He goes through the whole huge chronicle, including many a writer forgotten or obscure, expounding, documenting, annotating, swashing right and left, joking for light relief in the middle of a solemn argument, and enjoying all with unslackening energy. Saintsbury's first principle is very much that of the writer who is known as "Longinus". Among Saintsbury's briefer works, indeed, can be found many shapely and delightful causeries, where the uncertainty does not arise.
