They had lost all power of doing the best work; for they passed their lives in a circle of small literary men, who shrank from any departure from conventional European standards.
On the other hand, the men who wrote history for the mass of our people, not for the scholars, although they preserved much important matter, had not been educated up to the point of appreciating the value of evidence, and accepted undoubted facts and absurd traditions with equal good faith.

Some of them (notably Flint and one or two of Boon's other biographers) evidently scarcely regarded truthfulness and accuracy of statement as being even desirable qualities in a history.

Others wished to tell the facts, but lacked all power of discrimination.

Certain of their books had a very wide circulation.

In some out-of-the-way places they formed, with the almanac, the staple of secular literature.