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Lior Rokach
Oded Maimon
Erez Shmueli Editors

Machine
Learning
for Data Science
Handbook
Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
Handbook
Third Edition
Machine Learning for Data Science Handbook
Lior Rokach • Oded Maimon • Erez Shmueli
Editors

Machine Learning for Data

Science Handbook
Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery
Handbook

Third Edition
Editors
Lior Rokach Oded Maimon
Department of Software and Information Department of Industrial Engineering
Systems Engineering Tel Aviv University
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Ramat Aviv, Israel
Beer-Sheva, Israel

Erez Shmueli
Department of Industrial Engineering
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, Israel

ISBN 978-3-031-24627-2 ISBN 978-3-031-24628-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24628-9

1st edition: Springer-Verlag US 2005

2nd edition: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010
3rd edition: © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
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claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents

Data Science and Knowledge Discovery Using Machine Learning

Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Oded Maimon, Lior Rokach, and Erez Shmueli
Handling Missing Attribute Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Jerzy W. Grzymala-Busse and Witold J. Grzymala-Busse
Data Integration Process Automation Using Machine Learning:
Issues and Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Kartick Chandra Mondal and Swati Saha
Rule Induction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Jerzy W. Grzymala-Busse
Nearest-Neighbor Methods: A Modern Perspective. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Aryeh Kontorovich and Samory Kpotufe
Support Vector Machines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Armin Shmilovici
Empowering Interpretable, Explainable Machine Learning
Using Bayesian Network Classifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Boaz Lerner
Soft Decision Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
Oren Fivel, Moshe Klein, and Oded Maimon
Quality Assessment and Evaluation Criteria in Supervised Learning . . . . . 171
Amichai Painsky
Trajectory Clustering Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Yulong Wang and Yuan Yan Tang
Clustering High-Dimensional Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
Michael E. Houle, Marie Kiermeier, and Arthur Zimek

v
vi Contents

Fuzzy C-Means Clustering: Advances and Challenges (Part II) . . . . . . . . . . . 239

Janmenjoy Nayak, H. Swapna Rekha, and Bighnaraj Naik
Clustering in Streams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Charu C. Aggarwal
Introduction to Deep Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301
Lihi Shiloh-Perl and Raja Giryes
Graph Embedding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
Palash Goyal
Autoencoders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
Dor Bank, Noam Koenigstein, Raja Giryes
Generative Adversarial Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Gilad Cohen and Raja Giryes
Spatial Data Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 401
Yan Li, Yiqun Xie, and Shashi Shekhar
Multimedia Data Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423
Zhongfei (Mark) Zhang and Ruofei (Bruce) Zhang
Web Mining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Petar Ristoski
Mining Temporal Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
Robert Moskovitch
Cloud Big Data Mining and Analytics: Bringing Greenness and
Acceleration in the Cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491
Hrishav Bakul Barua and Kartick Chandra Mondal
Multi-Label Ranking: Mining Multi-Label and Label Ranking Data . . . . . 511
Lihi Dery
Reinforcement Learning for Data Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 537
Jonatan Barkan, Michal Moran, and Goren Gordon
Adversarial Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559
Ziv Katzir and Yuval Elovici
Ensembled Transferred Embeddings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 587
Yonatan Hadar and Erez Shmueli
Data Mining in Medicine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 607
Beatrice Amico, Carlo Combi, and Yuval Shahar
Recommender Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 637
Shuai Zhang, Aston Zhang, and Lina Yao
Contents vii

Activity Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 659

Jindong Wang, Yiqiang Chen, and Chunyu Hu
Social Network Analysis for Disinformation Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681
Aviad Elyashar, Maor Reuben, Asaf Shabtai, and Rami Puzis
Online Propaganda Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 703
Mark Last
Interpretable Machine Learning for Financial Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 721
Boris Kovalerchuk, Evgenii Vityaev, Alexander Demin,
and Antoni Wilinski
Predictive Analytics for Targeting Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 751
Jacob Zahavi
Machine Learning for the Geosciences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 779
Neta Rabin and Yuri Bregman
Sentiment Analysis for Social Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 801
Nir Ofek
Human Resources-Based Organizational Data Mining
(HRODM): Themes, Trends, Focus, Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 833
Hila Chalutz-Ben Gal
Algorithmic Fairness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 867
Dana Pessach and Erez Shmueli
Privacy-Preserving Data Mining (PPDM) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 887
Ron S. Hirschprung
Explainable Machine Learning and Visual Knowledge Discovery . . . . . . . . . 913
Boris Kovalerchuk
Visual Analytics and Human Involvement in Machine Learning . . . . . . . . . . . 945
Salomon Eisler and Joachim Meyer
Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Motivation,
Terminology, and Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 971
Aviv Notovich, Hila Chalutz-Ben Gal, and Irad Ben-Gal
Data Science and Knowledge Discovery
Using Machine Learning Methods

Oded Maimon, Lior Rokach, and Erez Shmueli

1 Introduction

Since the dawn of the big data age, accumulating and storing data has become
more accessible and inexpensive. Data science is an emerging interdisciplinary
field that combines methods, processes, technologies, and know-how from various
fields, particularly statistics, data mining, machine learning, big data, and busi-
ness intelligence, to address data-driven problems. Data science usually involves
discovering knowledge and actionable insights from data and then applying them
to solve problems in various domains. /textit[Knowledge Discovery in Databases]
(KDD) is another closely related term referring to automatic, exploratory analysis
and modeling of large data repositories. The goal of KDD is to identify novel, useful,
valid, and understandable patterns in large and complex data sets. Data mining
(DM) is an integral part of the KDD process, involving algorithms that explore
data, develop models, and uncover previously unknown patterns in order to make
predictions and understand phenomena that are found in the data sets.
Today’s accessibility and abundance of data make knowledge discovery and data
science matters of considerable importance and necessity. Given the field’s recent
growth, it is not surprising that researchers and practitioners now have a wide range
of methods and tools at their disposal.
While statistics is fundamental for data science, methods originated from artifi-
cial intelligence, particularly machine learning, are also playing a significant role.

O. Maimon · E. Shmueli
Department of Industrial Engineering, Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
e-mail: maimon@tauex.tau.ac.il; shmueli@tauex.tau.ac.il
L. Rokach ()
Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev, Be’er Sheva, Israel
e-mail: liorrk@bgu.ac.il; liorrk@post.bgu.ac.il

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1

L. Rokach et al. (eds.), Machine Learning for Data Science Handbook,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24628-9_1
2 O. Maimon et al.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a scientific discipline that aims to create intelligent

machines. Machine learning is a popular AI subfield that seeks to improve the
performance of computer programs at a given task through experience rather
than being explicitly programmed. Most machine learning techniques are based
on inductive learning , where a model is constructed explicitly or implicitly by
generalizing from a sufficient amount of training data. Machine learning methods
are becoming increasingly popular in data science and data mining.
This handbook is intended to organize all significant methods developed in the
field into a coherent and unified catalog. It presents approaches and techniques
for performance evaluation and shows the different techniques with examples
and software tools. The target audiences of the handbook include students, data
scientists, ML engineers, researchers, and practitioners.
This introductory chapter aims to explain the KDD process and position machine
learning within this process. Research and development challenges for the next gen-
eration of data science are also defined. The rationale, reasoning, and organization
of the handbook are presented in this chapter for helping the reader to navigate the
extremely rich and detailed content provided in this handbook.
In this chapter, there are six sections: 1. The KDD process; 2. Taxonomy of data
mining methods; 3. Data mining within the complete decision support system; 4.
Data science and KDD research opportunities and challenges; 5. Recent trends in
data science; 6. The organization of the handbook
The unique recent aspects of data availability that promote the rapid development
of data science are the electronic readiness of data (though of different types and
reliability). In particular, the Internet and Intranet’s fast growth promotes data
accessibility (as formatted or unformatted, voice or video, etc.). Methods developed
before the Internet revolution considered smaller amounts of data with less vari-
ability in data types and reliability. Since the information age, the accumulation
of data has become more accessible and less costly. It has been estimated that
stored information doubles every twenty months. Unfortunately, as the amount
of electronically stored information increases, the ability to understand and make
use of it does not keep pace with its growth. Data mining is a term coined to
describe the process of sifting through large databases for interesting patterns and
relationships. Today’s studies aim at evidence-based modeling and analysis, as is
the leading practice in healthcare, finance, cyber-security, and many other fields.
Data availability increases exponentially, while the human processing level is almost
constant. Thus, the potential gap rises exponentially. This gap is the opportunity for
the data science field, which has become increasingly important and necessary.

2 The KDD Process

The knowledge discovery process (Fig. 1) is iterative and interactive, consisting of

nine steps. Note that the process is iterative at each stage, meaning that moving back
to adjust previous steps may be required. The process has many “artistic” aspects
in the sense that one cannot present one formula or make a complete taxonomy
Data Science and Knowledge Discovery Using Machine Learning Methods 3

Fig. 1 The process of knowledge discovery in databases

for the right choices for each step and application type. Thus, it is required to
deeply understand the process and the different needs and possibilities in each step.
Taxonomy for the data science methods is helping in this process. It is presented in
the next section.
The process starts with determining the KDD goals and “ends” with the
implementation of the discovered knowledge. As a result, changes would have to
be made in the application domain (such as offering different features to mobile
phone users to reduce churning). Such modification closes the loop, the effects are
then measured on the new data repositories, and the KDD process is relaunched.
Following is a brief description of the nine-step KDD process, starting with a
managerial step:
1. Developing an understanding of the application domain The people in charge
of a KDD project need to understand and define the end-user goals and the
environment in which the knowledge discovery process will take place (including
relevant prior knowledge). As the KDD process proceeds, there may be a revision
and tuning of this step. Having understood the KDD goals, the preprocessing of
the data starts, as defined in the next three steps (note that some of the methods
here are similar to data mining algorithms but are used in the preprocessing
context).
2. Selecting and creating a data set on which we will work. Having defined the
goals, the data used for the knowledge discovery should be determined. This
includes finding out what data are available, obtaining additional necessary
data, and then integrating all the data for the knowledge discovery into one
data set, including the attributes considered for the process. This process is
essential because data mining learns and discovers from the available data. This
4 O. Maimon et al.

is the evidence base for constructing the models. If some crucial attributes are
missing, then the entire study may fail. From the success of the process, it is
good to consider as many as possible attributes at this stage. On the other hand,
collecting, organizing, and operating complex data repositories are expensive,
and there is a tradeoff with the opportunity to understand the phenomena best.
This tradeoff represents an aspect where the interactive and iterative part of the
KDD is taking place. It starts with the best available data set and later expands
and observes the effect in terms of knowledge discovery and modeling.
3. Preprocessing and cleansing. In this stage, data reliability is enhanced. It in-
cludes data clearing, such as handling missing values and removing noise or
outliers. Several methods are explained in the handbook, from doing nothing
to becoming the major part (in terms of time consumed) of a KDD process in
specific projects. It may involve complex statistical methods or specific data
mining algorithms in this context. For example, suppose one suspects that a
particular attribute is not reliable enough or has too much missing data. In that
case, this attribute could become the goal of a data mining supervised algorithm.
A prediction model for this attribute will be developed, and then missing data
can be predicted. The extent to which one pays attention to this level depends
on many factors. Studying these aspects is essential and often reveals insights by
itself regarding enterprise information systems.
4. Data transformation. In this stage, the generation of better data for the data
mining is prepared and developed. Methods here include dimension reduction
(such as feature selection and extraction, and record sampling) and attribute
transformation (such as discretization of numerical attributes and functional
transformation). This step is often crucial for the success of the entire KDD
project, but it is usually very project-specific. For example, in medical ex-
aminations, the quotient of attributes may often be the most important factor
and not each one by itself. In marketing, we may need to consider effects
beyond our control as well as efforts and temporal issues (such as studying
the impact of advertising accumulation). However, even if we do not use the
right transformation initially, we may obtain a surprising effect that hints to us
about the transformation needed (in the next iteration). Thus the KDD process
reflects upon itself and leads to an understanding of the necessary transformation
(like a concise knowledge of an expert in a particular field regarding key leading
indicators). Having completed the above four steps, the following four steps are
related to the data mining part, where the focus is on the algorithmic aspects
employed for each project.
5. Choosing the appropriate data science task. We are now ready to decide on
which type of data science task to perform, for example, classification, re-
gression, or clustering. This mostly depends on the KDD goals and also on
the previous steps. There are two major tasks in data science: prediction and
description. Prediction is often referred to as supervised machine learning
and statistical regression analysis, while descriptive includes exploratory data
analysis, statistical hypothesis testing, unsupervised machine learning, and
visualization aspects. Many data science techniques are based on inductive
Data Science and Knowledge Discovery Using Machine Learning Methods 5

learning, where a model is constructed explicitly or implicitly by generalizing

from a sufficient number of training examples. The underlying assumption of the
inductive approach is that the trained model applies to future cases. The strategy
also considers the level of meta-learning for the particular set of available data.
6. Choosing the algorithm. Having the strategy, we now decide on the tactics.
This stage includes selecting the specific method for searching patterns (includ-
ing multiple inducers). For example, considering precision versus understand-
ability, the former is better with neural networks, while the latter is better with
decision trees.
7. Running the algorithm. Finally, the implementation of the algorithm is
reached. In this step, we might need to run the algorithm several times until
a satisfying result is obtained, for instance, by turning the algorithm’s control
parameters, such as the minimum number of instances, in a single leaf of a
decision tree.
8. Evaluation. In this stage, we evaluate the predictive performance of the trained
model and interpret the mined patterns (rules, reliability, etc.) with respect to
the goals defined in the first step. Here we consider the preprocessing steps
concerning their effect on the results (for example, adding features in Step 4 and
repeating from there). This step focuses on the comprehensibility and usefulness
of the induced model. In this step, the discovered knowledge is also documented
for further usage. The last step is the usage and overall feedback on the patterns
and discovery results obtained by the models.
9. Using the discovered knowledge. We are now ready to incorporate the knowl-
edge into another system for further action. The knowledge becomes active
because we may make changes to the system and measure the effects. The
success of this step determines the effectiveness of the entire KDD process. There
are many challenges in this step, such as losing the “laboratory conditions” under
which we have operated. For instance, the knowledge was discovered from a
certain static snapshot (usually sample) of the data, but now the data become
dynamic. Data structures may change (certain attributes become unavailable),
and the data domain may be modified (such as an attribute may have a value that
was not assumed before).

3 Taxonomy of Data Science Methods

Depending on the main purpose, many methods are used in practice for data
science. Taxonomy is called for to help understand the variety of methods, their
interrelation, and grouping. It is useful to distinguish between two main types of
data science: verification-oriented (the system verifies the user’s hypothesis) and
discovery-oriented (the system finds new rules and patterns autonomously). Figure 2
presents this taxonomy.
Discovery methods are those that automatically identify patterns in the data.
The discovery method branch consists of prediction methods versus description
6 O. Maimon et al.

Fig. 2 Data science taxonomy

methods. Descriptive methods are oriented to data interpretation, which focuses on

understanding (by visualization, for example) the way the underlying data relate
to its parts. Prediction-oriented methods aim to build automatically a behavioral
model that obtains new and unseen samples and can predict the values of one or
more variables related to the sample. It also develops patterns, which form the
discovered knowledge in a way that is understandable and easy to operate upon.
Some prediction-oriented methods can also help provide an understanding of the
data.
Recall that most of the discovery-oriented techniques (quantitative in particular)
are based on inductive learning, where a model is constructed, explicitly or
implicitly, by generalizing from a sufficient number of training examples. The
underlying assumption of the inductive approach is that the trained model applies to
future unseen examples.
Verification methods, on the other hand, deal with the evaluation of a hypothesis
proposed by an external source (like an expert, etc.). These methods include the
most common methods of traditional statistics, such as the goodness-of-fit test,
tests of hypotheses (e.g., t-test of means), and analysis of variance (ANOVA).
These methods are less associated with data mining than their discovery-oriented
counterparts because most data mining problems are concerned with discovering
a hypothesis (out of a very large set of hypotheses), rather than testing a known
one. Much of the focus of traditional statistical methods are on model estimation
as opposed to one of the main objectives of data science: model identification
and construction, which is evidence -based (though overlap occurs). There can be
a security flaw, for example, an unauthorized user accessing an application or a
specific feature that s/he is not supposed to access, or a malicious user attempting
to do something in order to break the system. These kinds of flaws can not be
Data Science and Knowledge Discovery Using Machine Learning Methods 7

acceptable. Unsupervised learning refers to modeling the distribution of instances

in typical, high-dimensional input space.
Unsupervised learning refers mostly to techniques that group instances without
a prespecified, dependent attribute. Thus the term “unsupervised learning” covers
only a portion of the description methods presented in Fig. 2. For instance, it covers
clustering methods but not visualization methods. Supervised methods are methods
that attempt to discover the relationship between input attributes (sometimes called
independent variables) and a target attribute (sometimes referred to as a dependent
variable). The association discovered is represented in a structure referred to as a
model. Usually, models describe and explain phenomena, which are hidden in the
data set and can be used for predicting the value of the target attribute, knowing
the values of the input attributes. The supervised methods can be implemented
on a variety of domains„ such as marketing, finance, and manufacturing. It is
useful to distinguish between two main supervised models: classification models
and regression models. The latter map the input space into a real-valued domain.
For instance, a regressor can predict the demand for a certain product given its
characteristics. On the other hand, classifiers map the input space into predefined
classes. For example, classifiers can be used to classify mortgage consumers as
good (fully payback the mortgage on time) and bad (delayed payback), or as many
target classes as needed. There are many alternatives to represent classifiers. Typical
examples include support vector machines, decision trees, probabilistic summaries,
or algebraic functions.

4 Data Science Within the Complete Decision Support

System

Data science methods are becoming part of integrated information technology (IT)
software packages. Figure 3 illustrates the three tiers of the decision support aspect
of IT. Starting from the data sources (such as operational databases, semi- and non-
structured data and reports, Internet sites, etc.), the first tier is the data warehouse,
followed by OLAP (On-Line Analytical Processing) servers and concluding with
analysis tools, where data science tools are the most advanced.
The main advantage of the integrated approach is that the preprocessing steps are
much easier and more convenient. Since this part is often the major burden for the
KDD process (and can consume most of the KDD project time), this industry trend
is very important for expanding the use and utilization of data mining. However, the
risk of the integrated IT approach comes from the fact that DM techniques are much
more complex and intricate than OLAP, for example, so the users need to be trained
appropriately.
This handbook shows the variety of strategies, techniques, and evaluation
measurements. We can naively distinguish among three levels of analysis. The
simplest one is achieved by report generators (for example, presenting all claims that
8 O. Maimon et al.

Fig. 3 The IT decision support tiers

occurred because of a specific cause last year, such as car theft). We then proceed to
OLAP multi-level analysis (for example, presenting the ten towns where there was
the highest increase of vehicle theft in the last month compared to the month before).
Finally, a complex analysis is carried out in discovering the patterns that predict car
thefts in these cities and what might occur if anti -theft devices were installed. The
latter is based on mathematical modeling of the phenomena, where the first two
levels are ways of data aggregation and fast manipulation. This handbook mainly
focuses on the third level of analysis.

5 KDD and Data Science Research Opportunities and

Challenges

An empirical comparison of the performance of different approaches and their

variants in a wide range of application domains has shown that each performs best in
some, but not all, domains. This phenomenon is known as the selective superiority
problem, which means, in our case, that no induction algorithm can be the best
in all possible domains. The reason is that each algorithm contains an explicit or
implicit bias that leads it to prefer certain generalizations over others, and it will
be successful only as long as this bias matches the characteristics of the application
domain. Results have demonstrated the existence and correctness of this “no free
lunch theorem.” If one inducer is better than another in some domains, then there
are necessarily other domains in which this relationship is reversed. This implies in
KDD that a certain approach can yield more knowledge from the same data for a
given problem than other approaches.
In many application domains, the generalization error (on the overall domain,
not just the one spanned in the given data set) of even the best methods is far above
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
preceding Waterloo: though the Marquis of Steyne was too closely
studied from a contemporary wicked Marquis. From the first chapter,
the scene of Becky with the Dictionary, to the end where (quite out
of character, say Becky's admirers) she appears as a melodramatic
Clytæmnestra, the author "never stoops his wing". Never, surely, did
man create, in a single novel, characters so many, so varied, so
justly conceived, so immortal. Fielding has not a quarter of
Thackeray's variousness, does not see so wide a vision of life. Think
of them; all the Crawleys, the two Sir Pitts, Rawdon (amo Rawdon),
Jim Crawley; Miss Crawley, the old patrician Whig and sceptic; the
two Osbornes, the little boys, Osborne III. and little Rawdon; Mrs.
O'Dowd; the spunging-house keeper; Mr. Wenham, Ensign Stubble,
Lord Steyne, the Misses Pinkerton, Briggs, Waterloo Sedley, the
Belgian courier, Glorvina, the Lady Bareacres,—the catalogue is
endless. Dobbin is as good as that honest gentleman can be made:
we can only say that Thackeray's good women are not at once as
human and as angelic as Fielding's Sophia and Amelia. Emmy is not
clever; Emmy can be jealous; a vice from which Mrs. Rawdon
Crawley is nobly free. The nearest woman to Sophia in Thackeray is
Theo in "The Virginians". But Sophia is a paragon.
Thackeray was now, by no fault of his, set up as the rival of Dickens,
whose works he constantly praised, in season and out of season, in
public and in private. But as every man is born an Aristotelian or a
Platonist, a Whig or a Tory, so men are born to take one side or
other about the Great Twin Brethren of English fiction, in place of
admiring and enjoying both. Each has his masterpieces, Dickens with
"Pickwick," "David Copperfield," and "Great Expectations"; Thackeray
with "Vanity Fair," "Esmond," "The Newcomes," and "Pendennis".
That admirable but lengthy picture of the life of school, of the
University, literature, and Society, and of Mr. Henry Foker, bears
traces, in discrepancies and fatigue, of a severe illness which
affected the author's memory of part of the tale, as a malady swept
from Scott's the whole of "The Bride of Lammermoor".
The noble tour de force of "Esmond" (1852) was, for the most part,
dictated in disturbing conditions, which makes yet greater the
marvel of its style of Queen Anne's date; not uniform, to be sure,
not all antique (any more than Colonel Esmond's political views are
all antique or uniform), but still, a kind of prodigy. Beatrix Esmond is
indeed, as her lover said, a "paragon," and it is historically
impossible that, in the end, she should have betrayed "the blameless
king," King James III., whom Thackeray converted from a
melancholy Quietist into a witty and profligate prince. There was no
"Queen Oglethorpe". Scott never took this kind of liberty with an
historical character, in fiction; and Thackeray rivalled Scott's other
licences by making the Duke of Hamilton an unmarried man. But
nobody thinks of these things when "Esmond" admits him into the
society of the Augustan age, and when Bolingbroke hiccups about
Jonathan's readiness to command the fleet.
"The Newcomes" (1855) revived the public taste for Thackeray; the
public did not, it is said, quite understand "Esmond". Like all novels
published in parts throughout two years, "The Newcomes" is too
long, and has its languors, but every one wept over the good
Colonel, loathed the Campaigner, delighted in Fred Bayham, wished
"to beat Barnes Newcome on the nose," was afraid of Lady Kew;
sighed with Clive, was more or less in love with Ethel, and was
anxious, vainly anxious, to see no more of Laura Pendennis: an
angel perhaps, but a recording angel.
At Rome, in winter, 1853, Thackeray, to amuse some children, wrote
"The Rose and the Ring," a classic of the nursery, of the schoolroom,
and of the "grown up". He who writes was a child in 1855, and to
him Bulbo, Hedzoff, King Valoroso, and the Countess Gruffanuff, with
the usual contrasted heroines, Angelica and Rosalba, were not
dearer then than they are now. Even then the equation was plain:—

{Angelica Rosalba}
Fair and {Becky Emmy }
Dark and
false {Blanche Amory Laura }
true and
 {Rowena Rebecca}
tender.

Thackeray's naughty women are "fair and false," his good women
are "dark, and true, and tender".
The novelist's is a "dreadful trade". He has to raise ever new crops
from soil more or less exhausted. Dickens had his "Dombey," his
"Little Dorrit," his "Mutual Friend"; and Thackeray had his
"Virginians," the grandsons of Colonel Esmond, with their
kinswoman, Beatrix Esmond, fallen into an old age of cards, and
rouge and powder. Beatrix, for her beauty's sake, should have been
translated, like the fairest woman of the ancient world, Helen, to the
plain Elysian. We do not want to see her in old age, or to hear her
last wild words, "Mesdames, Je suis la ——" La Reine, the Queen.
"The Virginians" is full of excellent things, wonderful studies of the
later eighteenth century; and Harry is a deal, brave, stupid lad, and
George is a sardonic, melancholy descendant of Colonel Esmond,
and ancestor of "Stunner Warrington" in Pendennis; and Will
Esmond and Chaplain Sampson are worthy of Fielding, but the
author was tired; after "Vanity Fair" he was always tired, and the
book has barren expanses and languors. "'The Virginians,'" he said
to Motley, "is devilish stupid, but at the same time most admirable."
Thackeray's health was worn out; as a change of work he founded,
but soon wearied of editing, "The Cornhill Magazine"; was at his
lowest level in "Lovel the Widower"; was so weary in "Philip" that he
styled the hero "Clive" by inadvertence, though he endowed his
clumsy Philip with one of his best women, Charlotte. He ventured
into melodrama, which he liked, but could not write well; yet his
"Roundabout Papers" show that he was, as an essayist, equal to his
younger self.
His "Denis Duval" seemed to promise a return of his genius, but
Christmas Day, 1863, was a black Christmas, for the author had
died, suddenly and alone, in the night of Christmas Eve.
He had a great faculty of enjoyment, a generous heart sorely tried, a
melancholy that was not causeless: immense kindness and love of
the young, in short the character, in these respects, of Molière and
of Charles Lamb. Let us confess that he was unjust to Becky Sharp
and Beatrix Esmond. But he had a Shakespearean tenderness for his
rogues, and having conceived the draconic design of hanging
Colonel Altamont, he respited that bold adventurer. From boyhood
he had his own originality of style.
In the cultivated town of Highbury
My father kept a circulating library,
are boyish lines of his, and we recognize him even there, beginning
to be what he is in his "Book of Ballads," so various, so merry, so
melancholy, so fresh as they are. Though the influences of the prose
of Queen Anne and of Fielding helped to form his style, it is entirely
his own; with the blended accents of his own humour and pathos,
and harmonies before unheard; exquisite passages of verbal music.

The Brontë Sisters.

Concerning the Brontë sisters much, mainly personal, has been
written, in proportion to the amount of their works. Their novels,
especially those of Charlotte ("Jane Eyre," "Shirley," "Villette," "The
Professor"), seem like the extraordinary and almost automatic
products of their parentage and surroundings. The father, the Rev.
Patrick Prunty or Brontë, was an Irish Protestant of County Down,
who, after struggles with circumstances, was educated at St. John's
College, Cambridge, and took holy orders. His Protestantism and
politics were those of an Orangeman: his hero (who could have a
better?) was the Duke of Wellington, and he was addicted to the
composition of verse. His wife, a Cornish woman, was of feeble
health, and died after giving birth to six children, two of whom,
Maria and Elizabeth, died in early youth; the others were Charlotte
(1816), Branwell (1817), Emily (1818), and Anne (1820). On the
mother's death the father lived a sequestered studious life in a bleak
parsonage on the Yorkshire moors, and the children were entirely
devoted to drawing, reading books and magazines meant for their
elders, to writing, day-dreaming, and to wandering from the grim
rectory over the open moors. Their health was blighted by the
conditions of the school called Lowood in "Jane Eyre"; their tempers
were hardened and sharpened by poverty and the white slave's life
of the governess, so much dreaded and so well understood by Miss
Austen's Jane Fairfax in "Emma". The unhappy Branwell, in the end,
haunted the rectory, an awful presence of intellect degraded, and
while Emily wrapped herself up in a kind of Christian stoicism,
Charlotte was left to the contrast between the dreams of her fiery
genius, and the facts of her narrow life. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily
became inmates of the school of Monsieur and Madame Heger at
Brussels, which later afforded to Charlotte the scene and two
characters in "Villette". In 1846 the three sisters published "Poems,
by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell". Of this book two copies were sold,
of the poems Emily's alone are still admired for their sombre energy
and resolute spirit.
The sisters now wrote novels, Emily, "Wuthering Heights," Charlotte,
"The Professor"; Anne, "Agnes Grey". In August, 1846, Charlotte
began "Jane Eyre," which, when finished, came into the hands of
Thackeray's publishers, Messrs. Smith & Elder, and filled them with
amazement and enthusiasm. The book appeared in autumn, 1847,
pleased Lockhart, then editor of "The Quarterly Review," no less
than it pleased Mr. Smith, and at once became the "daughter of
debate," discussed everywhere, praised and reviled, and, in some
unintelligible way, most reviled by "The Quarterly". The critic
detected in the author an unregenerate, violent rebel against society,
and a woman who was a dishonour to her sex! Certainly—
A wounded human spirit turns
Here on its bed of pain.
The unparalleled vigour and genius of the early scenes, the cruelties
which the lonely child supports with unconquered spirit, were things
new in fiction, while the repressed passion of the plain yet seductive
governess during the wooing of the too Byronic Mr. Rochester, and in
a house as terrible as the castle of Mrs. Radcliffe's "Sicilian
Romance," excited a lively romantic interest, accompanied by a
tendency to smile at an ignorant imagination. Borrowed romance
combined with instinctive realism, bitter experience blended with the
day-dreams of a life, a frankness long forgotten by early Victorian
fiction, made the novel a strange and triumphantly successful
combination. That mentor of young novelists, George Lewes,
recommended to the author the study of Miss Austen, whose novels
Charlotte Brontë was not happy enough (because she never had
been happy) to appreciate. That she had no humour we cannot say,
but she had none of the kindly humour of her great predecessor.
Meanwhile "Wuthering Heights," that strange and strenuous study of
violent characters, was eclipsed by "Jane Eyre," though it has now
come to its own, thanks to the appreciations of Mr. Matthew Arnold
and Mr. Swinburne. The author did not live to find herself famous;
Anne Brontë also died, leaving their sister in deeper solitude.
Charlotte's "Shirley" (1849), with its caricatures of the local curates,
caused the discovery of her authorship: the curates were forgiving,
and the novel was welcomed. Miss Brontë visited London, a shy and
tameless lioness, and met Thackeray, whom she had regarded as a
Saul among the prophets, and discovered to be something rather
different. Her shyness permitted her to rebuke him in good set
terms, but blighted his guests. Her last novel, "Villette" (1852), with
romantic situations, is a record of her personal experiences at
Brussels; unfortunate for her hosts, and a cause of much gossip and
personal discussion. The book is not destitute of the hungry
bitterness which Matthew Arnold detected and disliked; and we ask
how in the nature of things it could be otherwise? Her experience
had been narrow, atrocious, and on her experience and from her
experience she always drew when she did not borrow from her day-
dreams. In life she did not find the love of which she dreamed: in
1854 (she had rejected several other suitors) she married the Rev.
Mr. Nicholls, her father's curate, and died in the following year. Her
life, her character, and her books were one, and were unique. "This
little Jeanne d'Arc," as Thackeray called her, this eager rebel and
ardent Tory, broke into the placidity of the contemporary novel, and
opened a pathway unto many, who had little or none of her genius.
The best estimate of the Brontës, clear of and contemptuous of
trivialities and gossip, is in French, "Les Sœurs Brontë," by the Abbé
Dimnet.

Nathaniel Hawthorne.
The end of all that Greeks and Trojans suffered for Helen's sake was
"that there might be a song in the ears of men of after times". In
the view of the interests of art (and in no other) the end of
Puritanism in New England was to inspire the novels of Nathaniel
Hawthorne (1804-1864). He was more certainly the classical author
of American fiction than either Thackeray or Dickens is in England.
They were prodigal of their genius, giving "as rich men give who
care not for their gifts," or, if you please, as poor men when the
printer's devil is at the door, even as did Sir Walter, who never
thought about "art". But Hawthorne hoarded his inspirations, and
when he used them gave them in the best form which was within his
means. The inspiration was always moral, and usually bizarre. In his
published note-books we see his method; he conceived some
strange situations; over some of these he brooded till the characters
disengaged themselves and lived before his eyes, and worked out
their wyrd under stress of sin and remorse. He thought of the effect
of a sudden homicidal act on a character gay, innocent, and faunlike,
and we have Donatello in "The Marble Faun" (or "Transformation").
He thought of the amour of a Puritan preacher (like Lockhart in
"Adam Blair") and the idea grew into "The Scarlet Letter". He
thought of the beautiful poisonous girl (an old legend) and we have
"Rappacini's Daughter". The Puritan sense of sin, and the old New
England sorrows of the witchcraft trials, and the shadows of the
woods, and the fear of the Indians, among whom Meikle John Gibb
(a Covenanter who went too far even for the Rev. Mr. Cargill) was a
great medicine-man, dwelt in his imagination. He felt acutely, though
not a man of religion, the horrors of the Genevan creed, which did
not make the people who believed in it more unhappy than their
Episcopalian neighbours. They were accustomed to the doctrines
which horrified Hawthorne's contemporaries in America, and, like the
Black Laird of Ormistoun, hanged for Darnley's murder, and richly
deserving to be hanged for his daily misdeeds, they saw their way
out of a doom of eternal fire which Hawthorne supposed them
always to anticipate. Nervousness had not set in, the climate had not
produced its effect on the sturdy Puritans of New England. By
Hawthorne's time the climate had produced its effect, and he
brooded blackly over what his ancestors should have felt—but did
not feel. The Black Laird of Ormistoun had only to convince himself
that he was of the Elect, as he did, and death, to him, meant, as he
said, that he should sup that night in Paradise. Not understanding
this buoyancy of temperament, Hawthorne dwelt on the horrors
which he supposed his ancestors to have fed full of, and, in his
stories, expressed his emotions in terms of imperishable art. Though
he had no theological basis he remained a Puritan. He, to whom
beauty was everything, talked of "the squeamish love of beauty". In
Europe he is said (like an excellent Pope who had tin aprons made
for the classic nude figures of Graeco-Roman sculpture) to have
been horrified by the innocent nudities of ancient art. They had
never seen anything so improper at Salem, Massachusetts, a
decaying seaport where he was born, and lived for fourteen years
after taking his degree at Bowdoin in 1825. Here he wrote short
tales with little acceptance; and he did not till 1849-1854, publish his
best known novels, "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of the Seven
Gables," and (a result of a stay at a peaceful and purely amateur
socialist settlement, Brook Farm) "The Blithedale Romance". His
"Tanglewood Tales," from Greek myths (in which Hermes is called
"Quicksilver") at first repel, for obvious reasons, but, in fact and on
reflection, have much charm, and with Kingsley's "The Heroes"
ought not to be neglected by parents and guardians, but rather
"placed in the hands" of children. Though some amateurs may
prefer "The House of the Seven Gables," haunted as it is by the
blood which chokes the Justice, and a little enlivened by the dusty
humour of Hepzibah, a decayed gentlewoman, and pervaded by the
pretty charm of Phoebe, "The Scarlet Letter" is probably
Hawthorne's masterpiece. It may be, and has been, denied by
specialists that the hectic and craven Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale could
possibly have been the father of the elf-like child Pearl, but these are
"oppositions of science, falsely so called". Hester's avenging husband
may be, in conception, Dickenslike, but the treatment is far from
suggesting Dickens, while the passion of Hester is a masterpiece of
poetical fiction. Knots may be sought and found in any reed of
fictitious narrative, but "The Scarlet Letter" remains, in its human
characters and its dim lights, in its purposeful limitations, and hints
at something unrevealed, a masterpiece of romance written under
classical conditions. "The Marble Faun" (the plot and mystery were
suggested by the murder, by a French duke, of his wife; Miriam is
the British governess in that unholy affair) has noble moments and
passages, and unconsciously reveals what his Note Books publicly
avow, that Hawthorne was terribly ill at ease in Europe, and among
monuments of classic and mediaeval art. He had some scruple about
enjoying them—they were not at all American, and he was rather
bitterly patriotic, one might almost say parochial, in certain moods.
But he had lived for most of his life in Salem, Massachusetts; he
had, for several years, been American consul at Liverpool; he was a
genius of the most exquisite nature, and no more is needed to
explain some acerbities and some misappreciations, while we can all
sympathize with his criticisms of the adiposity of some British
matrons.

Oliver Wendell Holmes.

What has been said about Longfellow may be whispered about
Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was at once poet, essayist, and novelist.
Both authors should be read first while the reader is young, and can
enjoy their books with the freshness of an unsophisticated taste.
This is not true of the very great things in literature, in these with
advancing experience we ever find new merits, while in studying
some early favourites we can scarcely recapture our original delight.
Holmes was born in the same year as Edgar Allan Poe (1809) at
Cambridge in New England, where his father was "Orthodox minister
of the First Church". This appears to mean that he was a Calvinist,
while Harvard, where the son was educated, was devoted to the
Unitarian creed, of which the Articles are, to the writer, unknown.
Holmes accepted them. Medicine was his profession, he held for
some time a Chair of Anatomy; in Boston, where he lived for the
greater part of his life, he practised for some time, but his
productions in verse and prose gradually caused him to occupy
himself mainly with letters. In 1831 he first produced part of his
"Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," monologues with rare
interruptions from the fellow guests of a pension. In 1857 he
returned to this pleasant form of discursive essays, the other guests
breaking in occasionally according to their ages and characters.
Hitherto Holmes had been best known for "occasional verses,"
especially verses written for the Phi Beta Kappa Society of his
University, and for college anniversaries. The "One Hoss Shay" is, in
England, with "The Nautilus," the best known of these social feats.
In his discursive essays he frequently breaks a lance with his old
enemy, Calvinistic theology. This is not very exhilarating; at least to
readers who never learned, or if they learned never attached any
meaning to the Shorter Catechism. Holmes, who, to be sure, had a
minister as his tutor, and Hawthorne, appear to have understood the
doctrines, which were useful to Holmes as a butt, and to Hawthorne
as a background in his novels, gloomy and alarming,—"The ghoul-
haunted woodland of Weir". Naturally Holmes found the sciences to
which he was bred very useful in supplying anecdotes and
illustrations to his essays and romances. In "Elsie Venner," the
heroine, on good Calvinistic principles, is of the seed of the Serpent,
and inherits its nature, owing to some mishap of her mother with a
rattlesnake. Whether this be scientifically conceivable or not, Elsie is,
by inheritance, a perfectly original young woman in an ordinary
environment of New England. We do not expect to meet Melusine so
far from Lusignan. In "The Guardian Angel" the heroine has several
complex personalities, derived from different ancestors, one of them
a Red Indian. These devices are in Hawthorne's manner of fantastic
invention, without Hawthorne's grasp and power, but the heroines
are surrounded by characters more humorous and natural than
Hawthorne's people, and the stories are extremely good reading, as
are the discursive essays. There is abundance of knowledge of the
world, of wit, of humour, and of kind good-humour. There is plenty
of strange lore from old books of mystic medicine, and Holmes
confessed to being "a little superstitious". Near the house of his
boyhood there were "Devil's Footsteps" in a field, and a house from
which a portion of the wall had been carried away "from within
outward". The marks were associated with a story of a diabolical
apparition at a Hell Fire Club, just as at Brasenose College, Oxford.
The terrors of his childhood left their mark on his books. There was
the faintest touch of Cotton Mather in this foe of Cotton's creed,
which, out of fashion or not, was the nurse of many virtues inherited
by its tireless opponent. His enduring fame rests on his "Autocrat"
and other essays. "No man in England," said Thackeray in 1858,
"can write with his charming mixture of wit, pathos, and
imagination."

Charles Kingsley.
Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) was a novelist "by way of by-work,"
and had intellect and energy which might have found for themselves
other fields; born thirty years earlier he might have distinguished
himself under Wellington or Nelson. But in piping times of peace,
after living the life of an athlete, sportsman, and reading man at
Magdalene, Cambridge, he took holy orders, as Colonel Gardiner
might have done, had he been earlier converted. As Rector of
Eversley in Hampshire, he was an energetic parish priest, and had
opportunities of angling for those uneducated trout which he
commemorates in his pleasant "Chalk Stream Studies," for he was a
born naturalist and observer of nature. The agitation among the
labouring classes in the times of the Chartists awakened him to
social questions and "Christian Socialism"; but as the excitement of
the populace lulled, his interest slackened. The fruits of it were the
novels of "Yeast" and "Alton Locke" (1848, 1850) which well deserve
to be read, and repay the reader. It is almost incredible that
Cambridge crews, in Kingsley's day, rowed in the May week after
wine-parties and much eating of ices; but the sympathy with
"sweated" artisans and the delineation of rural scenes and sports,
are fiery, forcible, and sincere, whatever the truth may be about
Cambridge training at that distant date. In 1853 he produced
"Hypatia," a romance of the pagan girl-philosopher, torn to pieces by
the Christian mob of Alexandria. The advent of Goths who cut up
these beasts is a welcome relief, but the Jew who attempts
humorous philosophy is merely a proof of Kingsley's lack of humour
and an example of his characteristically strenuous efforts to be
humorous. The book is, indeed, a boy's book, and has something in
it, Kingsley's preoccupation with sexual ethics, which is not so
agreeable to reflective seniors. Somewhat of this, with an aggressive
Protestantism, and the sin of "jocking wi' deeficulty," mar the
otherwise delightful romance of "Westward Ho!" the adventures of
Amyas Leigh on the Spanish Main and in tropical forests in the great
days of Elizabethan adventure. Kingsley hates and execrates the
Spaniards. We have ourselves exterminated some savage peoples,
and nearly exterminated others, and have no right to throw the first
stone at the Spanish conquerors in America, odious beyond words as
their dealings with Aztecs and Incas were; while the Privy Council,
under Cecil, could give points in cruelty to the Spanish Inquisition of
the day. But the boy who reads, or ought to read, "Westward Ho!"
has none of these chilling reflections, nor had Kingsley. Taking the
facts as Kingsley saw them, in the old English way, the novel is a
superlatively excellent romance of English virtue and valour; and
there is no doubt as to the valour and the adventurers had no
doubts as to their own virtues. The whole is the work of a poet—for
a poet Kingsley was,—and of a patriot, sympathizing with Drake's
England in the crucial trial whence she emerged a victor. "Where are
the galleons of Spain?"
"Two Years Ago," a novel of the Crimean War, must take its chances
with the historical facts; and, in "Hereward the Wake," the
bloodthirsty hero, despite the glory of his final fight, which rivals that
of the brave Bussy or of Grettir the Strong in the Saga, in places
awakes the smile even of the reflective schoolboy, to whom however,
it may be recommended. "The Water Babies" is not always defective
in humour, and would be excellent as a tale for children were it not
for satire directed at the parents of the period. "The Heroes" initiate
the young into the glories of the romance of Minyans and Minoans,
and can only be spoken of by those who read it in early boyhood
with entire gratitude and the remembrance of delight. Indeed, no
one who has read Kingsley after the age of 16 is a fair critic of an
author who, like R. L. Stevenson, was always at heart a boy; to
appreciate him we must put away grown-up things; while, as to his
verse, his songs and ballads, in "Andromeda" (1858), and even his
hexameters, deserve immortality. He was not fitted for the Chair of
History at Cambridge.
Froude thinks that Kingsley's a divine,
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history,
said the poet. His controversy with Cardinal Newman brought him
into contact with a prettier fighter, and he did not come up to time
against the author of the "Apologia". His essays, especially that on
the Puritan aversion to the Caroline drama, are vigorous, and well
worth reading.
The brother of Charles Kingsley, Henry (1830-1876) either wanted
leisure or lacked care and constructive faculty, but in his earlier
works he displayed high spirits, and kind humour, with a good deal
of skill in drawing character, and an engaging reckless manner. His
most careful book, "Geoffrey Hamlyn," though promising, is not so
dear to its readers as "Ravenshoe," a delightful topsy-turvy romance.
The children in Henry Kingsley's books are especially fascinating.
Here we may briefly advert to two writers who with remarkable
originality of character and outlook as novelists appeal to but small
but devoted audiences. Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866) was an
almost self-made classical scholar, and a friend of Shelley's. His
contributions to Shelley's biography are those of a rather candid
though intensely admiring friend. His novels, from the early
"Headlong Hall" and "Melincourt," and "Nightmare Abbey," to "Gryll
Grange," at the end of his career, are not so much romances as
discursive and satirical studies of, and dialogues about,
contemporary society, opinion, and taste. Some of the characters are
drawn, in part, from real personages, for example, from Shelley
himself. The wit which Shelley called so keen, occasionally yields
place to somewhat florid burlesque. The interest of Peacock is partly
that which we feel in his own character and satiric views of life;
partly it is historical.
George Borrow (1803-1881), a Norfolk man, who in childhood had
followed his father's regiment as Sterne had done, can be best
estimated by a study of his "Lavengro," really a sort of
autobiography. Here he paints himself as a genius in the study of
many languages, a friend of gypsies and their fellow-wanderer; an
expert in the art of boxing, and altogether as a character equally
vigorous and eccentric, and a sturdy Low Churchman who hates
Papists, snobs, and Sir Walter Scott. Whether on the moors with the
Viper-catcher; or at horse-fairs with jockeys and thimble-riggers; or
as the hack of a niggardly publisher; or fighting the Flaming Tinman
under the eyes of the lovely but unconvincing Isopel Berners,
Borrow is always the strong, wild, tameless heroic figure. As an
agent for the Bible Society in Spain he was in a place which suited
his genius, and his "The Bible in Spain" is at least as romantic as
evangelical. "The Romany Rye" is of the same fantastically
autobiographical form as "Lavengro"; brilliantly capricious and
picturesque. Other books are "The Gypsies in Spain," and "Wild
Wales". Borrow plumed himself much on his wide range of
philological learning, from Welsh to Manchu, but the strict modern
science does not regard him as a very great scholar. There are dull
stagnant places in his books, and there are passages aflame with
genius.
Mrs. Oliphant (Mary Margaret Wilson (1828-1897)) was a woman of
letters who heroically undertook incessant labour for the sake of
others who were dependent on her pen. Consequently her gifts were
diluted, and she must always be best known for the novels styled
"The Chronicles of Carlingford," which are remarkable for their placid
unstrained humour. More than once she displayed a very unusual
power of dealing with the supernatural, especially in "A Beleaguered
City," and "Old Lady Mary". In these pieces her manner is unique for
tenderness and sympathy. In her historical biographies, as of Molière
and Jeanne d'Arc, she suffered from want of strict training, and if
she found a good thing of apocryphal source, inserted it on its
literary merits. Her work on the publishing "House of Blackwood" is
valuable to the student of literature and literary lives in the days of
Wilson and Lockhart. Few who have written so much have written so
well.
Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), a close associate of Dickens, was an
assiduous professional novelist, who strenuously did his best and
achieved two or three immense popular successes. His main
strength lay in the construction of plots which powerfully excited
curiosity, as in "The Woman in White," "No Name," and "The
Moonstone"; the former was apparently suggested by the mystery of
a French law suit, which dragged on from before the Revolution to
the reign of Louis Philippe. The central puzzle, a question of identity,
never was solved. Collins did his best to create characters, as well as
to tell stories, but his humour was laboured (Captain Wragge is his
chief success), and he shared with Dickens the mannerism of
constantly dwelling on the tricks and hobbies of his people. For a
long and warm appreciation of Collins, Mr. Swinburne's essay may be
consulted. The work of his later years and overtasked fancy, such as
"Poor Miss Finch" and "The Haunted Hotel," may be neglected; some
of his short stories are good.
Popular novelists were Major Whyte-Melville, best in tales of sport
and the affections, but ranging all fields from ancient Assyria to "The
Queen's Maries"; George Lawrence, the author of that joy of
boyhood, "Guy Livingstone," "Sword and Gown," and other tales
military and sporting. He was the intellectual father of "Ouida" (Miss
de la Ramée) with her magnificent guardsmen, and innocent
descriptions of racing and of field sports. She was for long very
prolific and very popular, she lashed the vices of society, and was the
constant friend of animals. Gorgeous is the epithet that may be
applied to her style, and humour did not enter into her genius, which
may be called "heroic" in the manner of the seventeenth century
tragedies.
James Payn, on the other hand, had almost too much humour for
the purposes of a novelist, accompanied by the most delightful high
spirits. These would have interfered with the success of his novels,
from "Lost Sir Massingberd" onwards, in which he provided the
public with highly wrought melodramas,—the style of the serious
characters being "heroic" in a high degree,—had the public
perceived that he was laughing in his sleeve. But his domestic
sentiment, and his spirited heroes and heroines, carried the serious
reader on, while light-hearted readers were convulsed with laughter.
His best novels proper are perhaps "By Proxy" and "Halves". He was
one of the best and kindest of men, and most hospitable, as editor
of "The Cornhill Magazine," to the work of younger authors, such as
Mr. Stanley Weyman and R. L. Stevenson. The "John Inglesant" of
Mr. Shorthouse, a dignified and thoughtful novel of the Great
Rebellion, which had a resonant success, Mr. Payn declined when it
came before him in manuscript; he also took no pleasure in the
works of Æschylus.

George Meredith.
George Meredith, novelist and poet, was, in his literary fortunes, a
somewhat mysterious power; a somewhat thwarted force. His early
novels, the comic Oriental tale of "The Shaving of Shagpat," "The
Ordeal of Richard Feverel," "Evan Harrington," "Rhoda Fleming,"
were full of humour, wit, pathos, the charm of Love's young dream;
were peopled by delightful heroines, whose heroes were
appropriate, brave, and not too staid. Rose Jocelyn, Lucy, the
Countess, the dark Rhoda Fleming, the beautiful hapless Dahlia,
certainly very young readers in those old days of the early' sixties
were in love with them—thought the aphorisms of "The Pilgrim's
Scrip" the acme of witty wisdom; rejoiced in Mrs. Berry as in the
Nurse of Julia, delighted in the hypochondriac Hippy, and in Adrian,
the Wise Young Man; nearly shed tears over Clare Doria Forey, who
let concealment, like the worm i' the bud, feed on her damask
cheek; admired the Glorious Mel; laughed sympathetically over
Algernon, the Young Fool, and his Derby day, and generally were a
most favourable public. But the general public was unfavourable.
Meredith's "Evan Harrington" nearly ruined "Once a Week,"—even
aided by Charles Keene's designs it was a failure; and the editor had
to call in Shirley Brooks, with "The Silver Cord," which no man
remembereth, perhaps, except him who writes. Those early novels
were not obscure, even to the reading boy; the wit was net too
subtle and alembicated, or too profuse; the humour was English—
beer and cricket were provided—there was pathos, comedy,
character in abundance, but the novels did not appeal to that happy
reading public which had still Thackeray and Dickens; and George
Eliot for the thoughtful, and Miss Braddon, in the full flush of her
early genius, for all who liked a plain tale well told, a humorous
melodrama (such as "The Doctor's Wife"); or while Mrs. Henry Wood
poured forth romances that deans and princes and everybody could
appreciate. It is said to be a fact that Her Majesty Queen Victoria
took pleasure in Mrs. Wood's novels; and it is quite certain that
another lady, believed by many to be the great granddaughter of
Charles III. (better known as Prince Charlie) shared the royal taste.
Possibly this competition caused Meredith's grace to be hid; possibly,
curious as it may seem, he was best appreciated by readers in
extreme youth. This is probably the truth, for, in much later years,
the writer has seen quite unaffected young girls absorbed in "The
Egoist" or "Diana of the Crossways," while he, after gallant efforts,
was defeated by both in a very early round, tripped up on every
page by the Leg of Sir Wilfrid, the Egoist. Too much seemed to be
made of that limb. But with "The Egoist," which is doubtless a
triumph in wit and knowledge of human nature (as such it was
rapturously hailed by R. L. Stevenson), Meredith's fortunes turned.
The enthusiasm of young critics at last communicated itself to the
more cultured public, and to the public which wished to seem
cultured, a lucrative circle. It was like the success of Mr. Browning,
which came so many years after "Men and Women". People then
turned back on Meredith's early novels, and discovered the manifold
virtues which had been overlooked by contemporaries. They who
had been boys in the 'sixties might think that by the 'eighties an
over-excessive straining after wit and epigram, and a subtlety which
was too near neighbour to obscurity, with a mannerism of style too
precious and too easily imitable, had overtaken the Master. The truth
may be that age had dulled the wits of these critics; that they had
lost wit and zest. To them the English prose of "One of Our
Conquerors" seemed darkling and decadent, and in "The Amazing
Marriage" the baby was the most astonishing element. Whether they
were in the right or in the wrong, the admiration of Meredith, like
the admiration of FitzGerald's "Omar Khayyám," had become, not
only a "cult" (it had already, as in Omar's case, been a cult with the
few), but a cult with mysteries open to what Coleridge did not love,
"the reading public". Be it as it may, the Master came to his own, as
a novelist who to wit, fancy, humour, and power of creating
characters, added the still rarer qualities of a true though decidedly
difficult poet.

Anthony Trollope.
"The pace is too good" in the world of novel-writing and of novel
readers to inquire deeply into the characteristics of the genius of
Anthony Trollope, who was born in the year of Waterloo, held a
place in the Post Office, pursued the fox; knew much of many sides
of life in London, and much of a cathedral town, but did not make a
great impression on public taste till, in 1855, he began his series of
tales of Barchester. The Bishop, Dr. Proudie, his termagant wife, his
chaplain, his Archdeacon Grantley, with the loves and marriages of
their children, and the ecclesiastical politics of the age, were the
farrago libelli. Trollope had a good deal of humour, his heroines, Lily
Dale and Lucy Robartes and the rest were, in various degrees, "nice
girls," his political characters and Dukes were of their date; he was
extremely fluent; and he stamped his own ideas of his art and of the
true method of composition on his brief life of Thackeray.[1]
People who have read Trollope will probably bear witness that many
of his characters live in memory, and are friendly inmates of her cell.
This can scarcely be said of the characters of Lytton, for example,
and in his power of creating characters Trollope comes before any
novelist of his own rank, and of his now neglected age. It would be
easy to write a long catalogue of Trollope's memorable people,
mainly, but by no means solely, dwellers in Barchester. The
Grantleys, the Proudies, Bertie Stanhope and his sister, "the last of
the Neros," the Crawleys (not of Queen's Crawley) Adolphus Crosby,
Johnny Eames, Amelia Roper, "Planty Pal" (so justly driven back to
the path of virtue by Griselda), Mr. Slope, these are only a few of his
creations. With this creative gift, Trollope, though not refined, or
"daring," or emancipated, or passionate, has a claim to be
remembered; and the right readers will still find in his works
abundance of entertainment.

George Eliot.
In 1857 "Blackwood's Magazine," always notable for discovering
good new hands, began to publish "Scenes from Clerical Life," which
at once attracted notice by their humour, tenderness, and quiet
accomplished style. Were they by a man or a woman? Dickens voted
that "George Eliot" was a woman; he was right. She was Miss Mary
Ann Evans, born in Warwickshire in 1819. Familiar from childhood
with the rural characters whom she drew so admirably (perhaps this
art was her true forte, in other fields her humour was inconspicuous
or absent), she went to London, associated with advanced
philosophers, such as Mr. Herbert Spencer, changed her theological
views and made her home with George Henry Lewes, author of a
"Life of Goethe," and of a surprising "History of Philosophy". He was
a married man, separated from his wife with no chance of a divorce,
and he was the constant mentor of the new novelist, though his own
essays in the art of fiction were absolute failures. In 1859 George
Eliot made a very great success with "Adam Bede," which, to the
merits of her "Scenes from Clerical Life", added a plot and a story of
a not heartless seducer who fights and is knocked out of time by a
hardy carpenter, his rival, the hero. The little victim, Hetty, is like a
more heartless Effie Deans, and her crime, not committed by poor
Effie, caused many sympathetic tears. The Jeanie Deans of the story
is a female preacher, with considerable strength of character. "The
Mill on the Floss," which followed, is excellent in the humorous parts,
and the heroine, Maggie Tulliver, is delightful as a child, less
interesting when she falls in love with a distasteful admirer. "Silas
Marner," a much shorter is perhaps a still better tale, and marks the
central period of the author's genius. In "Romola" (1863), a story of
the Florentine Renaissance, the author was out of the environment
which she knew, and was thought to be too moral and didactic. In
"Middlemarch" her heroes were, to men, distasteful, and they
preferred her pretty to her noble heroine, while Mr. Casaubon, of the
"Key to All Mythologies," was held to be too closely studied from the
life. "Daniel Deronda" was very long, and a kind of scientific jargon
had been taking the place of the old rustic humours. Moreover
people felt that they were being preached at, and Mr. Swinburne,
contrasting Charlotte Brontë with George Eliot, helped to turn the
tide from worship of the living to adoration of the dead woman of
genius. George Eliot (Mrs. Cross after Lewes's death, and her own
marriage to Mr. Cross in 1880) wrote no more than a book of
reflections, "The Opinions of Theophrastus Such". She died in 1880.
"Culture," which had exaggerated her merits, began unjustly to
disparage them. To understand the injustice it is only necessary to
read her books written before "Romola". There has been no better
novelist since the death of Dickens.

Robert Louis Stevenson.

To Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) no one who found his works
were sympathetic will deny the title of a man of genius. It is
unnecessary to dwell on the details of his life; the essence of them is
to be gathered from his own essays and from his published
correspondence. From his earliest childhood his health was so
unstable that he appeared to live on his astonishing intellectual and
moral energy rather than on his physical basis. His education was
casual and frequently interrupted by recurrent maladies; from
childhood a dreamer of dreams and teller of tales, he educated
himself, by study of great models mainly in old French and English,
in the formation of style and the choice of words. His contributions
to magazines, essays and short stories, revealed the last successor
of the school of Lamb and Hazlitt, a scholar with a philosophy of life
of his own, the philosophy of youth: see the Essays collected and
published in "Virginibus Puerisque" (1881), and "Familiar Studies of
Men and Books" (1882). At the same time such brief tales of his as
"A Lodging for the Night," and "The Sire de Malétroit's Door," and
"Thrawn Janet," in periodicals, proved him to be a master of
romance, and a master with a thorough understanding of historical
characters, surroundings, superstition, and the power of
communicating the ancestral thrill of superstition. His interest in
history was intense and sympathetic, and was even a danger in his
path, as he would willingly have engaged himself in that unpopular
study. But he was, as Johnson told Boswell that he was, "longer a
boy than other people," and in 1878 he wrote for an obscure
periodical "The New Arabian Nights," a fantasy of humour and of
perilous adventure, "in a spirit of mockery" like his own "Young Man
with the Cream Tarts". In 1881, in a boy's paper, he wrote "Treasure
Island," a story meant for boys, but delightful to a critic so little apt
to notice his juniors as Mr. Matthew Arnold. "Prince Otto" (1885) is a
Court romance of the eighteenth century, full of brilliant passages,
but confessedly written and rewritten again and again under the
influence of George Meredith. In 1886 "The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," a fantasy not uninfluenced, perhaps, by Edgar
Poe, but rich in his own philosophy, humour, and style, at last
captured public attention, caused "a new shudder," and was
rapturously welcomed, as a moral allegory, from the pulpits "of all
denominations". The story, or at least the mechanism of the story,
came, like "Kubla Khan," to the author in a dream. What is probably
his best novel (without a woman in it), "Kidnapped" was suggested
by his studies of Highland history after 1745. It was planned on a
much larger scale, but now, as sometimes occurred, the pen simply
dropped from the author's hand, in one of his many maladies. Such
studies of Highland and Lowland character as he gave in
"Kidnapped" (though the evil uncle is, in his own phrase, "too
steep") are only equalled or excelled in those of Sir Walter Scott,
while the pictures of Highland and Lowland life and society at a
period (just after Culloden) untouched by Scott, are historically
accurate. The same period is again viewed in that bitter study of
almost insane fraternal hatred, "The Master of Ballantrae" (1889),
supposed to be narrated by a loyal servitor who is also a
constitutional coward. There is little relief in this romance except
that which comes from one of Prince Charles's Irish officers, the
inimitable Chevalier Bourke. In 1893 appeared "Catriona," the sequel
to "Kidnapped," in which (for the first time except in the exotic
"Prince Otto," and in a short story, "The Pavilion on the Links")
Stevenson introduced "the love-interest," and drew an admirably
chivalrous and amiable heroine, Catriona herself; with her even more
attractive foil, the daring and dominating Barbara Grant. Alan Breck
in this sequel is worthy of himself in "Kidnapped," and James More
Macgregor is a masterly historical portrait.
"The Wrong Box" (1889) is a humorous fantasy somewhat in the
manner of "The New Arabian Nights," with many scenes which
provoke laughter unquenchable. "The Wrecker" (1892) is rich in
reminiscences of the author's youth in Paris and of Fontainebleau,
and the plot, up to a certain point, strongly excites curiosity, but,
despite the brilliance of some oceanic adventures, the story is not
well constructed, and is rather disappointing. "The Ebb Tide" (1894)
was spoken of by the author as "his blooming failure," for his
colloquial style was not classical.[2] "St. Ives" (1897), left unfinished,
and completed by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch, shows signs of fatigue,
but the fragment of "Weir of Hermiston," in which his foot is on his
native heath, gave all promise of a masterpiece in its many
delineations of character. In all his work, in whatever kind, the
charm of his style accompanied the reader like the murmur of a burn
that runs by the wayside.
Of his verses, "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885) is the most like
himself: a few of his serious poems in English have noble effects,
but perhaps the best of his poems in the Lowland vernacular are to
be preferred. His plays, written in collaboration with Mr. W. E.
Henley, were too literary, or for some other reason were
unsuccessful on the stage ("Deacon Brodie," "Beau Austin," "Admiral
Guinea").
When we consider the great variety of Stevenson's works, their wide
range, their tenderness, their sympathy, their mastery of terror and
pity, their gloom and their gaiety; when we remember that his
sympathy and knowledge are as conspicuous in his tales of the
brown natives of the Pacific ("The Beach of Falesa") as of
Highlanders and Lowlanders, and the French of the fifteenth
century; we can have little doubt concerning his place in literature.

Minor Novelists.
Among other novelists not hitherto named, the author of Charlotte
Brontë's biography, Mrs. Gaskell (née Stevenson) was born at
Chelsea, but lived and married in Manchester, and in 1848 rendered
the life of a manufacturing population, with their strikes and grimy
lives, then a new theme for fiction, in her story of "Mary Barton"
(1848). Her "Cranford" (1853), in a very different field, pictures the
placid existence of maiden ladies in a quiet village. Her "Sylvia's
Lovers," "North and South," and her delightful (unfinished) "Wives
and Daughters" (1866) (the author died in 1865), all deservedly hold
their place among the classics of our fiction.
With them "a little clan" would place novels unjustly forgotten, "The
School for Fathers," by Talbot Gwynne, and "The Initials," by the
Baroness Tautphœus.
Charles Reade (1814-1884) was a very prominent and emphatic
character of his age, a kind of Lawrence Boythorn, engaged in fiction
and the drama. He was a Fellow of Magdalen, Oxford, a barrister
who did not practise, a philanthropist, some of whose novels had a
purpose, a combatant whose lance was ever in rest, and as kind and
generous as he was pugnacious. For a thoroughly appreciative study
of Reade a characteristic essay by Mr. Swinburne should be read. His
"Never too Late to Mend," a study, very painful, of the torture of
prisoners in jails, and a much more pleasant picture of adventurous
life in Australia (Jacky, the black fellow, is a jewel), was most
successful (1856), and some reckon "The Cloister and the Hearth," a
moving romance of latest mediaeval life in Germany and Italy, a
masterpiece of historical fiction. The tone is perhaps too modern and
certainly too "robustious". "Peg Woffington" (1852) is perhaps really
better as a historical tale. "Griffith Gaunt" and "A Terrible
Temptation," with "Foul Play" and "The Wandering Heir" (the
claimant in the great Annesley case of 1743) have but few to praise
them, and the last mentioned is too manifestly made up of the
materials in the never-decided law case; itself stranger than fiction,
but destitute of a single sympathetic character.
Space affords room for no more than a grateful mention of Mr.
William Black, whose pictures of Scottish characters, sport, and
landscape gave much pleasure to his contemporaries; and of Sir
Walter Besant whose gift of humour in character and incident was
combined, on occasion, with a singular power of fantasy, while his
"Dorothy Forster," a tale of the Rising of 1715, is probably the best
historical romance of that period after "Rob Roy".

[1] "English Men of Letters Series."

[2] In these three books Mr. Stevenson's stepson, Mr. Lloyd
Osbourne, collaborated.

CHAPTER XXXVII.
 HISTORIANS.

After the appearance of the works of Hume and Robertson, History

became, as we have heard Gibbon say, the most popular theme with
the reading public. His own monumental work gave new impetus to
historical study. Sharon Turner (1768-1847) devoted himself mainly
to Anglo-Saxon researches. Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861)
distinguished himself by research into the institutions and events of
England and of English history from the Conquest to the days of the
Plantagenets. Dr. Lingard, a Catholic priest (1771-1851), produced a
general history of the country up to 1688, which perhaps has not yet
been superseded by any book of similar scope, and which is the
more valuable as indicating the aspect of events in the eyes of a
Catholic. Necessarily the works of these authors lack much
information, contained in manuscripts not then accessible to them,
but now opened to students by the better arrangement and
cataloguing of State Papers. The historians of the end of the
eighteenth and the first thirty or forty years of the nineteenth
century, were not so heavily laden with documents as historical
writers of to-day, and they had leisure enough to assimilate their
less ponderous materials and to arrange them with more of
reflection and of art than is now common.
The historian who wears best is decidedly Henry Hallam (1777-
1859). The son of a Canon of Windsor, he was educated at Eton and
Christ Church. He entered the Middle Temple, but obtained a fairly
lucrative post in the Civil Service, had property of his own, and
devoted himself, in his leisure, to literary and historical study. His
"View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages" holds its
ground, despite the absence of materials now made common coin by
Stubbs, Maitland, and others. Considering the immensity of the
ground which Hallam surveys, his accuracy is remarkable (for
example he corrects, all in vain, an important if minute error of
detail which still infests the latest works on Jeanne d'Arc), and,
though he is compelled to be concise, we see in his pages, for
instance on Charlemagne, that he can combine spirit and interest
with brevity. The same praise must be given to his "Constitutional
History of England" (Henry VII.—George II.). It is commonly said
that an impartial historian cannot be interesting. On the other hand,
Hallam's conscientious efforts to be impartial lend much interest to
his books. He has no flights of impetuous rhetoric; he is the last man
to let his imagination transfigure prosaic facts into glittering fancies.
We see an honourable, learned, and sober-minded man, who sums
up life like a judge and does not plead like an advocate. "Eulogy and
invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the
one weight and the one measure, we know not where else to look,"
says Macaulay in his review of Hallam's book, a review even
unusually rich in the unmeasured invective of the more popular
historian. If we think Hallam "dull," the dullness is in ourselves.
Hallam has not the current delusion that the Protestant reformers,
from 1550 to 1688, were friends of freedom of conscience.
His last important book "An Introduction to the Literature of Europe"
(fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) is very deficient in taste for the
early works of les primitifs: "we cannot place the 'Iliad' on a level
with the Jerusalem of Tasso," in some essential respects. On the
other hand, Hallam speaks thus of Christopher North (Professor
Wilson): "A living writer of the most ardent and enthusiastic genius,
whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty waters," with more to the
same effect. Spenser's stanza "is particularly inconvenient and
languid in narration". Hallam has, in fact, very little space for
inspiriting literary criticism, on account of the vast scope of his
theme. He has to treat of Scioppius, his "Infamia Famiani," and of
Ubbo Emmius, of Grævius and Spanheim, Camerarius and Grew. The
encyclopædic nature of Hallam's task made it impossible for him to
avoid aridity, and to mingle much pleasure with instruction. He is
otherwise associated with poetry, as his son Arthur was the friend of
Tennyson, and dying early, inspired the long elegy of "In
Memoriam," and the beautiful lines on "The Valley of Cauteretz".

Thomas Babington Macaulay.

Thomas Babington Macaulay, born at Rothley Temple in
Leicestershire, on 25 October, 1800, is an ideal representative of one
mood of the English mind and character during the first half of the
nineteenth century. Though the Mac in his patronymic be Gaelic, he
and his forefathers had little in them of the typical Celt. The name
Macaulay means MacOlaf (Olafson) and the Norseman rather than
the Celt predominated in Macaulay. His great grandfather, the Rev.
Aulay, and his grandfather the Rev. John, are reported by Bishop
Forbes (in "The Lyon in Mourning") to have been personally and
peculiarly active in attempting to gain the prize of £30,000 offered
by the English Government for Prince Charles. Their enterprise did
not suit the Celtic character. Macaulay's father, Zachary, was a deeply
religious man, a member of the so-called "Clapham Sect" of
Evangelicals. Though he was at one time prosperous in business, so
much of his time and energy were given to negro emancipation that
misfortunes came, and Macaulay had to work hard for his livelihood.
There are no more delightful chapters in Biography than those in
which Sir George Trevelyan describes Macaulay's childhood. His
intelligence was precocious; his memory was a marvel. At the age of
9 he read once through "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," and was able
to repeat the whole of the poem. This exceeds even Scott's feat of
repeating the whole of a ballad of eighty verses which he had heard
read once by the author. Macaulay's memory lasted throughout his
life, and gave him, naturally, that amazing readiness and richness in
literary and historical allusions which have made his Essays and
History popular beyond rivalry. No doubt like Scott he relied on
memory too confidently; styling Claverhouse, for example, "James
Graham". He read with a rapidity inconceivable; and he read
everything, from Plato, Herodotus, and Æschylus to the worst
novels, forgetting nothing in them that was accidentally good or
exquisitely absurd. Even in childhood he was a copious and
accomplished writer, his "Family Epic on Olaf, King and Saint,"
presents a remarkably successful imitation of Scott's style in "The
Lady of the Lake". With these intellectual gifts he combined intense
affection, good humour, and a turn for loud and vehement
argument. Going from a private school to Trinity College, Cambridge,
Macaulay regretted that he had not chosen Oxford; for mathematics
were his abomination. He twice gained, as Tennyson did once, the
Chancellor's medal for a prize poem, but in the Tripos of 1822
"Macaulay of Trinity was gulfed," by "the cross-grained Muses of the
cube and square". They did not prevent him from obtaining a
Fellowship at Trinity. He won a prize essay on William III., which is
written in the very cadences of style that mark his History; and, at
intervals, in the same short sentences. "He knew where to pause. He
outraged no national prejudice. He abolished no ancient form. He
altered no venerable name." Possibly it is a pity that these sentences
do not describe William's conduct in Scottish affairs.
His early pieces, Macaulay contributed to "Knight's Quarterly
Magazine". At the age of 25 he wrote in "The Edinburgh Review,"
that essay on poetry in general and on Milton as poet, man, and
politician in particular, which took the world as suddenly and as
completely as Byron's "Childe Harold" had done. "The family
breakfast-table was covered with cards of invitation to dinner from
every quarter of London." To readers who in our day read the essay
this enthusiasm seems creditable to the world, but rather surprising.
Of Æschylus, Macaulay wrote: "considered as plays, his works are
absurd; considered as choruses, they are above all praise". Milton's
admiration of Euripides reminds him of "Titania kissing the long ears
of Bottom".
Grateful as every reader is to Macaulay for the vivid and lucid
expression of his knowledge and thought in his essays, we must
admit that, like Charles Lamb, he was a man of "imperfect
sympathies". Miss Edgeworth, delighted to find her own name in a
footnote to his "History of England," expressed to him her regret
that Scott, who had written with entire impartiality about Macaulay's
period, was not once mentioned. In truth, after reading Lockhart's
"Life of Scott," with its magnificent and melancholy close in the
"Journal" of a man working himself to death for honour's sake,
Macaulay wrote thus of Sir Walter: "In politics a bitter and
unscrupulous partisan; profuse and ostentatious in expense;
agitated by the hopes and fears of a gambler,... sacrificing the
perfection of his compositions to his eagerness for money... in order
to satisfy wants which were produced by his extravagant waste or
rapacious speculations; this is the way in which he appears to me".
Scott was a Tory: and from Macaulay's remarks we understand the
justice of his studies of historical characters.
The rapacious speculator, in fact, had shown "extravagant waste" in
publishing books (not his own) of disinterested research; when he
was ruined he gave away his work, because he had not money to
give; the "bitter and unscrupulous partisan" as a historian of his
country was more than scrupulously fair. Of Brougham's essays
Macaulay wrote: "All the characters are either too black or too fair.
The passions of the writer do not suffer him even to maintain the
decent appearance of impartiality." These are the very charges
brought against Macaulay's own "characters" of William Penn the
Quaker, and Claverhouse the Cavalier; while no historian, perhaps,
can defend his account of Sir Elijah Impey. Had a Stuart King
behaved as William III. did in the matter of the Darien enterprise,
we can easily imagine the style in which Macaulay would have
"dusted the varlet's jacket". But with lapse of time his bias, his
prejudices, can be discounted. As early as 1828 he wrote "a perfect
historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make
his narrative affecting and picturesque". That power of imagination
he possessed and exercised so delightfully that his History was at
once purchased more eagerly than a poem or romance. Both as a
collector of materials and as a traveller to the scenes of which he
was to write, Macaulay toiled with his own unexampled energy and
rapidity. It is well worth while to read his account of his own
methods both in study and in composition.[1]
It is not the good fortune of most historians to possess even
Macaulay's private means, the savings of five years passed in India
as legal member of the Indian Council. Nor can his practical
knowledge of politics and of the world be often found among
students, while his natural gifts of imagination and of expression are
almost unexampled. His intellect had the limits of his class, his age,
and his robust and hasty temperament.
His poems, "The Lays of Ancient Rome," have been as popular as his
prose. He tried at 40 to write such ballads as he conceived the folk-
songs of republican Rome to have been, and nobody can deny that
the "Lays" have abundance of spirit and "go". The ballad of the
Armada, and of "The Last Buccaneer" possess the same virtues and
will always be dear to young people of spirit. Arrived at the age of
50, Macaulay wrote, in the very words of the dying Hazlitt, "Well, I
have had a happy life!" It was extended to 1859, he died on 28
December, leaving a name justly honourable and a cherished
memory.

Thomas Carlyle.
Carlyle (1795-1881), with Burns, Knox, and Scott, is the chief
representative in letters of "the good and the not so good" (in his
own words applied to Sir Walter) of the Scottish character. Unlike the
other three, Carlyle was "thrawn," a word not easily translated, but
implying a certain twist, or perversion, towards the whole nature of
things. The apostle of silence was the most voluble of mortals; the
peasant stoic felt the pain of the pea beneath a heap of mattresses
as keenly as the delicate princess of the fairy tale.
Carlyle was first of all a Scottish humorist; that peculiar humour of
which Southrons deny the existence underlay the fateful gloom of
the philosopher and historian who beheld his country "shooting
Niagara," who saw that society was rotten and doomed, and who
found no remedy except in the arrival of a Cromwell or a Frederick.
He "praised the keen unscrupulous force" of such heroes: though he
did not use the term "superman," he believed in the idea. It is quite
certain that he had great tenderness and friendliness; his affection
for Lockhart, so unlike him superficially (though Lockhart, too, was
tender, melancholy, and "thrawn") is really touching. Carlyle had "our
Scottish kindness," in Knox's phrase, that is attachment to kin and
clan. Even in his dourest moods of personal invective his bark was