Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish Chronology in illustration of his theory of how history should be written--the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the paradox that history in this skeleton {143} form was the only true history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed for himself any higher title) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine erudition--a virile independence of thought and judgment--an engaging personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a command of language which often soars to real, if sober, eloquence--these qualities may all be found in the essays which he wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the _pozzo profondo_ of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[6] to all who care to read them. [Sidenote: 1888, Tribute from Lord Rosebery] It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:--[7] {144} The late Lord Bute was a remarkable character to the world at large, whether they knew him well or did not. To some it may often have seemed that he was out of place in the nineteenth century. His mind, his thoughts, his studies were so entirely thrown back into a past more or less remote; and I think, had he had more incentive to make known the objects and subjects of his researches, he would have left no mean name in the republic of letters. And even as it is he has left behind him a rectorial address to the University of St. Andrews, which contains, I think, one of the strangest, most pathetic, most striking passages of eloquence with which I am acquainted in any modern deliverance.