He was in the habit of "embroidering the subject, whatever it might be, with lively anecdotic illustration,"[470] as one of his biographers says.

We are not to conclude that in writing on specifically literary subjects he felt ill at ease.

He felt, on the contrary, that the objection lay in the too great ease with which the critic might become dictatorial.

He was fond enough of details when they were concrete and vital.

The facts of literary history were in this category to him, as distinguished from the notions of literary theory; and we find that his critical principles are apt to appear incidentally among remarks on what seemed to him the more tangible and important facts of literary and social history.