For nearly two hundred years after his death so little was known of Cromwell's personal views and motives that he was generally regarded as, in Hume's words, a hypocritical fanatic. Carlyle's researches were sufficient to refute the charge of hypocrisy, but not until the beginning of this century was a sufficient mass of documents and personal correspondence assembled to make possible a just and balanced account of Cromwell's life. Sir Charles Firth's biography, first published in 1900, presents such an account, and in the years that have passed since the book was written it has become generally recognized as a standard work, soundly informative as history and worthy of preservation as literature.