The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it.
There is something dark and wintry about the atmosphere of the later Middle Ages.
The old interests of aristocracy - the romance of action, the exalted passions of chivalry and war - faded into the background, and their place was taken by the refined and intimate pursuits of peace and civilization.
The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.
It is perhaps as difficult to write a good life as to live one.
English dramatic literature is, of course, dominated by Shakespeare; and it is almost inevitable that an English reader should measure the value of other poetic drama by the standards which Shakespeare has already implanted in his mind.