These are the Lectures referred to in the last paragraph of the
Preface to the course on the “Methods of Historical Study,” lately
published. I have added to them the second of two articles which
appeared in the Contemporary Review for 1884. The former of them,
“Some Neglected Periods of European History,” I have not reprinted,
as its substance will be found in the present course. The second,
“Greek Cities under Roman Rule,” as dealing somewhat more in detail
with some points which are barely glanced at in the present course,
seemed to make a fitting Appendix to it.
I find that the same thought as to the political result of modern
scientific inventions which is brought out at pp. 184, 185 of these
Lectures is also brought out in the Lecture at Edinburgh, reprinted
in my little book “Greater Greece and Greater Britain,” published
last May. This kind of thing is always likely to happen in lectures
given in different places. It seemed to me that the thought came
naturally in both lectures, and that either would lose something by
its being struck out. As for those who may be so unlucky as to read
both, I can only say that a thought which is worth suggesting once
is worth suggesting twice. At least I have often found it so in the
writings of others, specially in those of Mr. Grote.
The two courses of Oxford lectures which have now been printed are
both introductory. In this present course the division into periods
which is attempted is, on the face of it, only one among many which
might be made. Another man might divide on some principle altogether
different; I might myself divide on some other principle in another
course of lectures. My present object was to set forth as strongly
as possible, at the beginning of my teaching here, the main outlines
of European history, as grouped round its central point, the Roman
power. The main periods suggested by such a view of things are those
which concern the growth and the dying-out of that power--Europe
before the growth of Rome--Europe with Rome, in one shape or another,
as her centre--Europe since Rome has practically ceased to be. When
this main outline, a somewhat formal one, has once been established,
it is easy at once to fill in and to subdivide in an endless number
of ways and from an endless number of points of view. Thus I have at
present little to do with the political developement of particular
nations. Of some branches of that subject I have treated at some
length in other shapes; I may, in the course of my work here, have
to treat of others. But they are not my subject now. Nor have I now
to deal with the great events and the great institutions of Europe,
except so far as they helped to work out the one main outline which
I have tried to draw. The power of the Popes may be looked at in a
thousand ways; it concerns me now only in its strictly Roman aspect,
as one, and the greatest, of the survivals of Roman power. The
great French Revolution again may be looked on in a thousand ways.
It concerns me now as having led to the sweeping away of the last
relics of the old Roman tradition, and as having set up for a while
the most memorable of conscious imitations of the Roman power. I say
all this, that no one may be disappointed if he fails to find in
this thin volume even a summary of all European history, much less a
philosophical discussion of all European history. My business now is
simply to draw an outline, ready either for myself or for others to
fill up in various ways.
These two introductory courses make up the result of my public work
as Professor during my first year of office, 1884-5. Besides these,
there was the minute study of Gregory of Tours with a smaller class,
followed by the like study of Paul the Deacon. In my second year,
1885-6, I have, besides this study of texts, been engaged, as I said
in my former Preface, with public lectures of a much more minute
kind, on the history of the Teutonic nations in Gaul. These I do not
design to publish as lectures. If I live long enough, I trust to
make my way through them to an older subject of mine, the Teutonic
settlements in Britain. Neither the history of Gaul nor the history
of Britain in the fifth century A.D. can be fully understood--it
follows that the whole later history of the two lands cannot be
fully understood--without comparing it with the history of the other
land. In dealing with Goths, Burgundians, and Franks, the comparison
and contrast with Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, if it sometimes passes
out of the immediate sight, must never be allowed to pass out of
the mind’s eye. The broad light of the history of Gaul is the best
comment on the yet more instructive darkness of the history of
Britain.
This subject brings me at once within the range of controversy. I
believe that the doctrine for which I have struggled so long, the
doctrine, as I have somewhere put it epigramatically, that we, the
English people, are ourselves and not somebody else, is now often
held to be altogether set aside. Only a few old-fashioned people
like myself are thought likely to maintain it. Yet, whenever I come
across these new lights, I always begin to doubt whether those who
kindle them have ever minutely contrasted the circumstances or the
results of the Teutonic settlements in Britain with those of the
better known Teutonic settlements in Gaul. Now this is the very root
of the matter; in discoursing of the phænomena of Gaul, I have always
had an eye to the phænomena of Britain, and I trust some day, if I
am ever able to work through my materials, to set forth the contrast
in full. To this object the lectures which I am now gradually giving
will, I hope, serve; but it will be best to put no essential part of
them forth to the world till I can deal with the subject as a whole.
Till then I will simply put on record, for the benefit of those who
may have heard statements attributed to me which they have certainly
not read in my writings, that I have nowhere said, because I never
thought, that every one Briton was necessarily killed, even in those
parts of Britain which became most thoroughly Teutonic. At the same
time, I think that every one who really reads his Gregory and his
Bæda, every one who carefully compares the map of Gaul with the map
of Britain, every one who stops to think over the history of the
French and the English tongues--and the history of the Welsh tongue
too will not do him any harm--may possibly come to the conclusion
that the doctrine that Englishmen after all are Englishmen has really
some little to be said for it.
16, ST. GILES’, OXFORD,
_October 18, 1886_.