This leads me to another point. A bald record of events or a faint description of a character by a contemporary does not suffice for historical picturesqueness. Things may loom large, and we may see their importance, but we cannot hope to reproduce them by mere exercise of imagination. Picturesqueness must come from adequate materials, and every touch must be real. Imagination, after all, is only an arrangement of experience. You cannot really create; you are only borrowing and adjusting odds and ends according to some dominant conception. It is useless in history to read a man about whom little is known into the likeness of another about whom you may know much. It is useless to reproduce an obscure period in the terms of a period with which you are more familiar. Where we do not know we cannot safely invent. Now picturesqueness in history must depend on the material available for intimate knowledge. It is only at times when men were keenly interested in life and character that such records were produced. We cannot make the life of Byzantium live again, for the records are formal and official. Outside accounts of magnificence suggest little; we need the touch of intimacy to give life. In short, picturesqueness is only possible in dealing with periods when literature was vigorous and contemporary memoirs were plentiful.
I should not like to say whether the demand created the supply, or the supply created the demand. It is enough that men were interested in themselves and in one another, and have left us the result of their interest. That interest arose from a
