"حياة ومراسلات اللواء السير جون مالكوم، قائد فرسان وسام الطُهر، المبعوث السابق إلى بلاد فارس وحاكم بومباي؛ من رسائل ومذكرات غير منشورة. في مجلّدين. المجلد II." [‎٦‎٣] (٦٥٤/٨٠)

MALCOLM AS AN AUTHOE.
63
miracle, indeed, if Malcolm, who since the age of thirteen
had seldom had any other home than a canvas tent, and
whose library w r as a rusty bullock-trunk, should—I will
not say thought as deeply and written as correctly as
Mackintosh, but been eminently distinguished for these
qualities at all. It is almost a miracle that, considering
in how large a sense he was a man of action, how the
necessities of the public service kept him continually in
motion, and how his mind was diverted and distracted by
a constant succession of new objects, he wrote as much
and as well as he did. The world has furnished few ex
amples of men so largely mixed up with the affairs of active
life taking so high a place among fhe authors of the age.
Malcolm, as I have said before, did everything in a
large way. He was a man of much discourse—discur
sive. But unlike many examples of voluble utterance, he
was emphatically a full man. He talked much and he
wrote much, because he had much to say. His writings
abound in information which, when it was first laid
before the public, was novel and striking. He has sup
plied materials of immense value to every subsequent
writer on Indian affairs. He dealt with facts on a large
scale, and he was conscientious in his statement of them.
He thoroughly understood what he was writing about,
and he made himself understood by others. But he was
not an artist. His works are rather elaborate reports
than finished compositions. The statesman rather than
the author is apparent in them. There are no tricks of
the trade discernible ; but a genuineness which speaks
out everywhere in a strong, natural voice. He could not
been so greatly at fault in Ms estimate
of the comparative importance which
History would attach, and the space
it would assign, to the triumphs of war
and the victories of peace. The re
sult has been precisely the reverse of
what the Recorder anticipated. And
when we consider what are the tempta
tions of writers and the tastes of
readers, we could hardly expect it to
be otherwise.