Excerpt from Red Letter Library If Macaulay's famous reading of Temple's character were correct, it would not be worth while to listen to the pretended self-revelation of one whose most intimate talks with his reader were only a calculated pose. A tem per not naturally good, but under strict com mand; a constant regard to decorum; a rare caution in playing that mixed game of skill and hazard, human life; a disposition to be con tent with small and certain winnings rather than go on doubling the stakes; these seem to Macaulay to be the most remarkable features of Temple's character, and they are features, as he reasonably enough maintains, that may be perfectly compatible with laxity of principle, with coldness of heart, and with the most intense selfishness. But Macaulay was notoriously incapable of appreciating the more delicate shades and half-tones of char acter. He seemed even to resent the very ex istence of qualities which did not lend themselves to reproduction by his crude method of glaring high lights and contrasts. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.