Socratic Elunchus

CHARLES A. BEARD: AN APPRAISAL, edited by Howard K. Beale. University of Kentucky Press, 312 pages. $4.50.

Charles A. Beard once summarized for a friend the “laws of history”:

First, whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.

Second, the mills of the gods grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.

Third, the bee fertilizes the flower that it robs.

Finally, “When it gets dark enough you can see the stars.”

This ironically hopeful approach to history might well be extended by Beard himself to this book appraising him as historian, teacher, critic and public figure. The editor, Howard K. Beale, begins with a curious introduction whose very candor would have delighted Beard. We learn that this volume, originally planned in 1939-40 by admirers of Beard, was intended to honor him ” . . . while he was still alive and under serious attack for his latest wr...