WAR IMPORTANCE OF CORSICA 19

cumstances, therefore, under which it was won, and the causes which led to its loss, are of immense interest to any one who wishes to know the true history of the essentially maritime period of our great war. It will be found that Moore's evidence, jotted down almost day by day, supplies facts nowhere else recorded which throw much light upon the sequence of events. That they were written down at the time, and not modified in accordance with subsequent impressions, gives them a value of their own, more especially from the biographical point of view, such as hardly any other form of narrative possesses. If Moore makes a mistake in his calculations or in his first impressions of men, it stands recorded here. He makes many, and is no more ashamed to own them and to learn from them than were Nelson or Napoleon to learn from their own blunders. On the other hand, where he clearly sees the inevitable consequences that must follow certain lines of conduct, which he records, these vaticinations remain to be judged by their fulfilment.

Of the physical features of Corsica, Sir Gilbert Elliot's word-pictures, written during his occasional tours through the island, are from the artistic and literary point of view much more graphic than Moore's. On the other hand, Moore knew the people incomparably better than Sir Gilbert. He lived among them, and does not merely sketch them as seen from a throne. Of most of the actors Moore's portraits are so clear and vigorous that they require no words but his own to introduce them. Indeed, most of them are such typical specimens of men who present themselves in every age, that if one wanted to put on the stage or in a novel types that one has known in the end of the nineteenth century, these figures from the end