Elton: Frederick York Poivell 651 view of history in Oxford from the philosophical to the scientific stand- point, and so great were his services in this direction that I have felt it worth while to use the personal note and to dwell upon the develop- ment of York Powell's point of view in history during the formative years instead of merely summarizing the contents of Mr. Elton's book. But I cannot leave the subject of York Powell without re-enforc- ing some of Mr. Elton's kindly appreciations. The York Powell of the eighties, when he was feeling his way, was the same man as the professor of the later period. He was the most helpful man that I have ever known, helpful in brains, in sympathy, and in purse ; loving dearly and being loved dearly; the more lovable because of his pre- judices and because of his sweet unconsciousness of his superiority to other men. I remember in particular one evening in his little old room in Christ Church before he moved to the comparative spaciousness of his later dwelling-place there, when Powell met in argument a group of specialists in history, as we should call them nowadays, and after vanquishing each of them in their own particular subjects set to work to dilate at length on the difference between the Deal and the New- castle styles of prize-fighting and thereby reduced the rest of us to silence. Yet the effect he left upon his hearers was then, as always, a sense of admiration and not of the slightest resentment. Of his friends in those days, of Purcell in particular, whom he admired so heartily, there might have been more place made in Mr. Elton's biography, but the friends of York Powell need no biography to remind them of the friend that they have lost. I can personally confirm !Mr. Elton's mild statement that York Powell was prejudiced against Jews and Roman Catholics and Americans. But his prejudice was general and not particular. Where he found a man in trouble or ready to work, York Powell forgot race and origin. Let Dr. Gross testify that his great work on The Gild Merchant would never have seen the light but for York Powell's hearty aid; let his friendship for Father Barry, the novelist, refute his hard words on Catholics ; and let those American students who went to his rooms at Oxford bear testimony that his feel- ing against the United States never prevented his sympathy with indi- vidual American students. I confess that he never quite forgave my coming to America ; we were neither of us good correspondents ; but if there was anybody to be helped no one was more ready, even to write a letter, than York Powell. The last letter I ever received from him was about the son of a former friend of ours, upon whom he in- voked the curse that fell upon Kipling's " Tomlinson." But this re- view has gone far enough ; it has been written greatly against the grain, for to find one of one's contemporaries and intimates thought worthy of a biography seems a startling proof of oncoming old age; but it seemed to me that the readers of the American Historic.l Review from a reading of Mr. Elton's book could not place York Powell prop- erly, or estimate his influence upon the study of history properly, un- less some one who knew him as I did should set forth his greatest
