The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21). Volume XIV. The Victorian Age, Part Two. II. Historians, Biographers and Political Orators. § 43. J. A. Doyle; E. J. Payne. Colonial history attracted fewer students in the mothercountry during the earlier, than during the later, part of the century. 53  Among more recent writers, it seems right to make special mention of John Andrew Doyle and of Edward John Payne, both of whom were born in 1844. The former gained the Arnold prize at Oxford for an essay on the English colonies in America before the Declaration of Independence, and the chief production of his literary life treated the same theme. The latter devoted the historical labours of his later years to English and other European colonies and to America in general. His comprehensive undertaking A History of the New World called America (1902–9) was, however, but partially carried out. Sir Arthur Helps gave to colonial history so much of his busy leisure as was left for historical research. His Spanish Conquest of the New World did not, however, attain to an enduring success, though the separate biographies in which he reproduced portions of the work could not fail to be popular.   73 Note 53. Mill, also, contributed to the Supplement to The Encyclopaedia Britannica (1816–23) a number of important essays belonging to the domain of politics and political philosophy rather than to that of history. They are analysed in chap. V of Bain’s biography of Mill (1882). Among his numerous critical writings may be noted an early article (in The Annual Review for 1808) on Charles James Fox’s fragment on the early part of the reign of James II, published in the same year. Mill compares its high moral tone, to the disparagement of modern historians, with that of the ancient masters, Thucydides, Tacitus and Livy, and deprecates the modern mode of philosophical history as containing, besides its philosophical element, little beyond “a dry statement of vulgar historical facts.” [ back ]