Mr. Wells as Historian

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Excerpt from Mr. Wells as Historian: An Inquiry Into Those Parts of Mr. H. G. Wells' Outline of History Which Deal With Greece and Rome It was a good idea of Mr. Wells to attempt to write an Outline of History of a popular nature, to co-ordinate the vast accumulations of knowledge, and to present a story that can be easily understood by the general public. Such a work, instead of being an encyclopaedia, written by a large number of specialists, would bear the stamp of a single mind, and that, we might hope, of a well-balanced one. There was indeed reason for fear in that Mr. Wells is not an expert (as far as I know) in any one section of his history. It is true that there are dangers when an expert in one part attempts a history of the whole, for he will probably exaggerate the importance of the part he knows best, and so destroy the proportions of the whole. But at least he will know what is the present basis of a history of former ages, how far certainty can be attained, how much to believe of the more positive statements of his colleagues, what research really is and what it imports. The non-expert, on the other hand, will always be at sea (though he may not often know it), will not know what expert to follow-, nor how- far, and may make the most absurd blunders by using the wrong book or misunderstanding the methods of the right one, through ignorance of the sources of opinion. Mr. Wells blunders in this way through making confident statements at random. 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.