Last of the Old School

Acquaintances, by Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford, $7.50

THE LOOK-OUT MAN clambers down from his crow’s-nest. Resting awhile from his visionary work, he entertains the many-headed landlubbers with a few yarns of the mates he has shipped with for 79 years and of the perilous historiographical seas they have sailed together. Arnold Toynbee comes of that race of sages who were bred in late Victorian England and whose magisterial self-confidence survives to this day. In their anecdotage, Leonard Woolf and Bertrand Russell have been pleasuring us with their stylish recollections (though Russell’s refrigerated heart in the end repels). Toynbee’s creaking antitheses and verbose images are not in the same class. But Acquaintances interestingly reflects Toynbee’s own. temperament in a personal footnote to A Study of History.

Acquaintances, by Arnold J. Toynbee. Oxford, $7.50

THE LOOK-OUT MAN clambers down from his crow’s-nest. Resting awhile from his visionary work, he entertains the many-headed landlubbers with a few yarns of the mates he has shipped with for 79 years and of the perilous historiographical seas they have sailed together. Arnold Toynbee comes of that race of sages who were bred in late Victorian England and whose magisterial self-confidence survives to this day. In their anecdotage, Leonard Woolf and Bertrand Russell have been pleasuring us with their stylish recollections (though Russell’s refrigerated heart in the end repels). Toynbee’s creaking antitheses and verbose images are not in the same class. But Acquaintances interestingly reflects Toynbee’s own. temperament in a personal footnote to A Study of History.