It might have been expected, that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world.  Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is, to most readers, not only insipid, but positively distasteful.  Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians.  Mr. Mill’s book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement.  Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness.  In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours.  The consequence is, that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our language, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

We fear that the volumes before us will not much attract those readers whom Orme and Mill have repelled.  The materials placed at the disposal of Sir John Malcolm by the late Lord Powis were indeed of great value.  But we cannot say that they have been very skilfully worked up.  It would, however, be unjust to criticise with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangement.  We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information.

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive.  We are far indeed from sympathising with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol.  But we are at least equally far from concurring in the severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less discrimination in his account of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work.  Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults.  But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council.

The Clives had been settled, ever since the twelfth century, on an estate of no great value, near Market-Drayton, in Shropshire.  In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity.  He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor.