In my first readings of Pilgrim's Way I was most interested in John Buchan's portraits of people I had barely heard of, or not at all. He set the limits of his reminiscences: only dead guys and nothing of the tattler even on them. They were three-quarters of the book. Fine. We were on notice. On subsequent readings the self-imposed moral code resulted in coloring with the palest pastels, fifty shades of white. It's not realism; you have to look the figures up to see what they were "really" like. Why write about them then? Take Arthur Balfour.

If it be a statesman's first duty to see facts clearly and to make the proper deductions from them, then I think that Arthur Balfour was the greatest public figure of that time.

Well, is it? That is a perfectly sound standard to measure a statesman, is that the standard Buchan employs? Why the "If"?

A statesman should not be judged by his policy alone...

Indeed! I would have thought policy the cash value of deductions from clearly-seen facts!

...since much of that may be the work of others; to get at the real man we must have cross-bearings from different angles. (emphasis added)

One key to the understanding of Arthur Balfour was his conversation. Unhesitatingly I should put him down as the best talker I have ever known...

"Talker." "The best talker"?