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Already Trevelyan had begun to parallel his nineteenth-century Italian studies with several works on English figures of the same period.

First The Life Of John Bright appeared and seven years later Lord Grey Of The Reform Bill.

Of the two, The Life Of Bright is incomparably the better biography.

Trevelyan centers too exclusively on Bright, is insufficiently appreciative of the views of Bright's opponents and critics, and makes light of the genuine difficulties faced by Peel.

Yet he is right when he claims in his autobiography that he drew the real features of the man, his tender and selfless motives and his rugged fearless strength.

In the story of Bright and the Corn Law agitation, the Crimean War, the American Civil War, and the franchise struggle Trevelyan reflects something of the moral power which enabled this independent man to exercise so immense an influence over his fellow countrymen for so long.

Because Bright's speeches were so much a part of him, there are long and numerous quotations, which, far from making the biography diffuse, help to give us the feel of the man.

Associated in a sense with the Manchester School through his mother's family, Trevelyan conveys in this biography something of its moral conviction and drive.

Nineteenth-century virtues, however, seem somehow to have gone out of fashion and the Bright book has never been particularly popular.