MY readers will, perhaps, agree with me in being sorry to find that we
are coming to the end of our present series. I say, “my readers,” though
I have so little part in purveying for them, that I mostly consider
myself one of them. It is no light task, however, to give a good account
of a conversation; and I say this, and would wish people to try whether I
am not right in saying so, not to call attention to my labour in the
matter, but because it may be well to notice how difficult it is to
report anything truly. Were this better known, it might be an aid to
charity, and prevent some of those feuds which grow out of the poverty of
man’s power to express, to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of
any malignant part of his nature. But I must not go on moralising. I
almost feel that Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder, and breaking into
my discourse with sharp words; which I have lately been so much
accustomed to.
I had expected that we should have many more readings this summer, as I
knew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us. But finding, as he
said, that the other subjects he had in hand were larger than he had
anticipated, or was prepared for, he would not read even to us what he
had written. Though I was very sorry for this—for I may not be the
chronicler in another year—I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my
ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by
the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very
high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not
discourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in
him upon any literary work.
In fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his purpose
of postponing our readings: and we agreed that there should only be one
more for the present. I wished it to be at our favourite place on the
lawn, which had become endeared to me as the spot of many of our friendly
councils.
It was later than usual when I came over to Worth-Ashton for this
reading; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds tinged
with red were just grouping together to form the accustomed pomp upon the
exit of the setting sun. I believe I mentioned in the introduction to
our first conversation that the ruins of an old castle could be seen from
our place of meeting. Milverton and Ellesmere were talking about it as I
joined them.
_Milverton_. Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those windows
upon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must come into
the minds of all men on seeing this great emblem, the setting sun—has
felt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the closing of his greatness.
Those old walls must have been witness to every kind of human emotion.
Henry the Second was there; John, I think; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal
Beaufort; William of Wykeham; Henry the Eighth’s Cromwell; and many
others who have made some stir in the world.
_Ellesmere_. And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no
stir.
“The world knows nothing of its greatest men.”
_Milverton_. I am slow to believe that. I cannot well reconcile myself
to the idea that great capacities are given for nothing. They bud out in
some way or other.
_Ellesmere_. Yes, but it may not be in a noisy way.
_Milverton_. There is one thing that always strikes me very much in
looking at the lives of men: how soon, as it were, their course seems to
be determined. They say, or do, or think, something which gives a bias
at once to the whole of their career.
_Dunsford_. You may go farther back than that, and speak of the impulses
they got from their ancestors.
_Ellesmere_. Or the nets around them of other people’s ways and wishes.
There are many things, you see, that go to make men puppets.
_Milverton_. I was only noticing the circumstance that there was such a
thing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction. But, if it has
been ever so unfortunate, a man’s folding his hands over it in a
melancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is a
sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably some dark
fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and
it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down and wail
indefinitely. That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time; because
there is that in Human Nature. Luckily, a great deal besides.
_Ellesmere_. I delight in the helpful and hopeful men.
_Milverton_. A man that I admire very much, and have met with
occasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed up
with, simply because he wishes that the best should be got out of the
thing that is possible. There does not seem much in the description of
such a character; but only see it in contrast with that of a brilliant
man, for instance, who does not ever fully care about the matter in hand.
_Dunsford_. I can thoroughly imagine the difference.
_Milverton_. The human race may be bound up together in some mysterious
way, each of us having a profound interest in the fortunes of the whole,
and so, to some extent, of every portion of it. Such a man as I have
described acts as though he had an intuitive perception of that relation,
and therefore a sort of family feeling for mankind, which gives him
satisfaction in making the best out of any human affair he has to do
with.
But we really must have the essay, and not talk any more. It is on
History.
HISTORY.
Among the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the
continuity of time. This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects.
We may think to ourselves: Would there could be some halting-place in
life, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift
by us. But no: even while you read this, you are not pausing to read it.
As one of the great French preachers, I think, says, We are embarked upon
a stream, each in his own little boat, which must move uniformly onwards,
till it ceases to move at all. It is a stream that knows “no haste, no
rest”; a boat that knows no haven but one.
This unbated continuity suggests the past as well as the future. We
would know what mighty empires this stream of time has flowed through, by
what battle-fields it has been tinged, how it has been employed towards
fertility, and what beautiful shadows on its surface have been seized by
art, or science, or great words, and held in time-lasting, if not in
everlasting, beauty. This is what history tells us. Often in a
faltering, confused, be-darkened way, like the deed it chronicles. But
it is what we have, and we must make the best of it.
The subject of this essay may be thus divided: Why history should be
read—how it should be read—by whom it should be written—how it should be
written—and how good writers of history should be called forth, aided,
and rewarded.
I. WHY HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.
It takes us out of too much care for the present; it extends our
sympathies; it shows us that other men have had their sufferings and
their grievances; it enriches discourse, it enlightens travel. So does
fiction. But the effect of history is more lasting and suggestive. If
we see a place which fiction has treated of, we feel that it has some
interest for us; but show us a spot where remarkable deeds have been
done, or remarkable people have lived, and our thoughts cling to it. We
employ our own imagination about it: we invent the fiction for ourselves.
Again, history is at least the conventional account of things: that which
men agree to receive as the right account, and which they discuss as
true. To understand their talk, we must know what they are talking
about. Again, there is something in history which can seldom be got from
the study of the lives of individual men; namely, the movements of men
collectively, and for long periods—of man, in fact, not of men. In
history, the composition of the forces that move the world has to be
analysed. We must have before us the law of the progress of opinion, the
interruptions to it of individual character, the principles on which men
act in the main, the trade winds, as we may say, in human affairs, and
the recurrent storms which one man’s life does not tell us of. Again, by
the study of history, we have a chance of becoming tolerant travelling
over the ways of many nations and many periods; and we may also acquire
that historic tact by which we collect upon one point of human affairs
the light of many ages.
We may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what great
defects are incident to the moral and political writers who know nothing
of history. A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in
their minds all other considerations; their little bottle of oil is to
still the raging waves of the whole human ocean; their system, a thing
that the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to
reconcile all diversities. Then they would persuade you that this class
of men is wholly good, that wholly bad; or that there is no difference
between good and bad. They may be shrewd men, considering what they have
seen, but would be much shrewder if they could know how small a part that
is of life. We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when
we thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere.
That was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the
famishing people on cakes. History takes us out of this confined circle
of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims,
struggles, and distractions of mankind.
History has always been set down as the especial study for statesmen, and
for men who take an interest in public affairs. For history is to
nations what biography is to individual men. History is the chart and
compass for national endeavour. Our early voyagers are dead: not a plank
remains of the old ships that first essayed unknown waters; the sea
retains no track; and were it not for the history of these voyages
contained in charts, in chronicles, in hoarded lore of all kinds, each
voyager, though he were to start with all the aids of advanced
civilisation (if you could imagine such a thing without history), would
need the boldness of the first voyager.
And so it would be with the statesman, were the civil history of mankind
unknown. We live to some extent in peace and comfort upon the results
obtained for us by the chronicles of our forefathers. We do not see this
without some reflection. But imagine what a full-grown nation would be
if it knew no history—like a full-grown man with only a child’s
experience.
The present is an age of remarkable experiences. Vast improvements have
been made in several of the outward things that concern life nearly, from
intercourse rapid as lightning to surgical operation without pain. We
accept them all; still, the difficulties of government, the management of
ourselves, our relations with others, and many of the prime difficulties
of life remain but little subdued. History still claims our interest, is
still wanted to make us think and act with any breadth of wisdom.
At the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of
instruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it furnishes
will enable its readers to anticipate the experience of life. An
experienced man reads that Cæsar did this or that, but he says to
himself, “I am not Cæsar.” Or, indeed, as is most probable, the reader
has not to reject the application of the example to himself: for from
first to last he sees nothing but experience for Cæsar in what Cæsar was
doing. I think it may be observed, too, that general maxims about life
gain the ear of the inexperienced, in preference to historical examples.
But neither wise sayings nor historical examples can be understood
without experience. Words are only symbols. Who can know anything
soundly with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life,
unless he has experienced some of them? All knowledge of humanity
spreads from within. So in studying history, the lessons it teaches must
have something to grow round in the heart they teach. Our own trials,
misfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we can read
history. Hence it is that many an historian may see far less into the
depths of the very history he has himself written than a man who, having
acted and suffered, reads the history in question with all the wisdom
that comes from action and suffering. Sir Robert Walpole might naturally
exclaim, “Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false.”
But if he had read it, I do not doubt that he would have seen through the
film of false and insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter
narrated, in a way that men of great experience can alone attain to.
II. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.
I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea
of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it
had had fair access to their minds. But they were set down to read
histories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but
practised students. Some such works are mere framework, a name which the
author of the _Statesman_ applies to them; very good things, perhaps, for
their purpose, but that is not to invite readers to history. You might
almost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and
clear view of language. When, in any narration, there is a constant
heaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling
them, a hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on
as in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to
be so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and
inaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history. You cannot
epitomise the knowledge that it would take years to acquire into a few
volumes that may be read in as many weeks.
The most likely way of attracting men’s attention to historical subjects
will be by presenting them with small portions of history, of great
interest, thoroughly examined. This may give them the habit of applying
thought and criticism to historical matters.
For, as it is, how are people interested in history? and how do they
master its multitudinous assemblage of facts? Mostly, perhaps, in this
way. A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event, and plunges
into its history, really wishing to master it. This pursuit extends:
other points of research are taken up by him at other times. His
researches begin to intersect. He finds a connection in things. The
texture of his historic acquisitions gradually attains some substance and
colour; and so at last he begins to have some dim notions of the myriads
of men who came, and saw, and did not conquer—only struggled on as they
best might, some of them—and are not.
When we are considering how history should be read, the main thing
perhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is
reading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it. The
most elaborate and careful historian must omit, or pass lightly over,
many points of his subject. He writes for all readers, and cannot
indulge private fancies. But history has its particular aspect for each
man: there must be portions which he may be expected to dwell upon. And
everywhere, even where the history is most laboured, the reader should
have something of the spirit of research which was needful for the
writer: if only so much as to ponder well the words of the writer. That
man reads history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly
misled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can
be fully ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least
perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer’s style, of his epithets,
of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life, our faith in any
narration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and
gesture of the person narrating. There is some part of all these things
in his writing; and you must look into that well before you can know what
faith to give him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and
references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish
to enlighten himself and then you. Another may not be wrong in his
facts, but have a declamatory or sophistical vein in him, much to be
guarded against. A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring
not so much for anything as to write his book. And if the reader cares
only to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of
former days.
In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is
necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and science at
the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a
context of this knowledge in the mind of the reader. For the same
reason, some of the main facts of the geography of the countries in
question should be present to him. If we are ignorant of these aids to
history, all history is apt to seem alike to us. It becomes merely a
narrative of men of our own time, in our own country; and then we are
prone to expect the same views and conduct from them that we do from our
contemporaries. It is true that the heroes of antiquity have been
represented on the stage in bag-wigs, and the rest of the costume of our
grandfathers: but it was the great events of their lives that were thus
told—the crisis of their passions—and when we are contemplating the
representation of great passions and their consequences, all minor
imagery is of little moment. In a long-drawn narrative, however, the
more we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of the people
we read about, the better. And in general it may be said that history,
like travelling, gives a return in proportion to the knowledge that a man
brings to it.
III. BY WHOM HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.
Before entering directly on this part of the subject, it is desirable to
consider a little the difficulties in the way of writing history. We all
know the difficulty of getting at the truth of a matter which happened
yesterday, and about which we can examine the living actors upon oath.
But in history the most significant things may lack the most important
part of their evidence. The people who were making history were not
thinking of the convenience of future writers of history. Often the
historian must contrive to get his insight into matters from evidence of
men and things which is like bad pictures of them. The contemporary, if
he knew the man, said of the picture, “I should have known it, but it has
very little of him in it.” The poor historian, with no original before
him, has to see through the bad picture into the man. Then, supposing
our historian rich in well-selected evidence—I say well-selected,
because, as students tell us, for many an historian one authority is of
the same weight as another, provided they are both of the same age;
still, how difficult is narration even to the man who is rich in
well-selected evidence. What a tendency there is to round off a
narrative into falsehood; or else by parenthesis to destroy its pith and
continuity. Again, the historian knows the end of many of the
transactions he narrates. If he did not, how differently often he would
narrate them. It would be a most instructive thing to give a man the
materials for the account of a great transaction, stopping short of the
end, and then see how different would be his account from the ordinary
ones. Fools have been hardly dealt with in the saying that the event is
their master (“eventus stultorum magister”), seeing how it rules us all.
And in nothing more than in history. The event is always present to our
minds; along the pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have
walked till they are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to
the men who first went along them. Indeed, we almost fancy that these
ancestors of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we
do; whereas, they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest. This
knowledge of the end we must, therefore, put down as one of the most
dangerous pitfalls which beset the writers of history. Then consider the
difficulty in the “composition,” to use an artist’s word, of our
historian’s picture. Before both the artist and the historian lies
Nature as far as the horizon; how shall they choose that portion of it
which has some unity and which shall represent the rest? What method is
needful in the grouping of facts; what learning, what patience, what
accuracy!
By whom, then, should history be written? In the first place, by men of
some experience in real life; who have acted and suffered; who have been
in crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can care about nothings;
who have observed how much is done in the world in an uncertain manner,
upon sudden impulses and very little reason; and who, therefore, do not
think themselves bound to have a deep-laid theory for all things. They
should be men who have studied the laws of the affections, who know how
much men’s opinions depend on the time in which they live, how they vary
with their age and their position. To make themselves historians, they
should also have considered the combinations amongst men and the laws
that govern such things; for there are laws. Moreover our historians,
like most men who do great things, must combine in themselves qualities
which are held to belong to opposite natures; must at the same time be
patient in research and vigorous in imagination, energetic and calm,
cautious and enterprising. Such historians, wise, as we may suppose they
will be, about the affair of other men, may, let us hope, be sufficiently
wise about their own affairs to understand that no great work can be done
without great labour, that no great labour ought to look for its reward.
But my readers will exclaim as Rasselas to Imlac on hearing the
requisites for a poet, “Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human
being can ever be an historian. Proceed with thy narration.”
IV. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.
One of the first things in writing history is for the historian to
recollect that it is history he is writing. The narrative must not be
oppressed by reflections, even by wise ones. Least of all should the
historian suffer himself to become entangled by a theory or a system. If
he does, each fact is taken up by him in a particular way: those facts
that cannot be so handled cease to be his facts, and those that offer
themselves conveniently are received too fondly by him.
Then, although our historian must not be mastered by system, he must have
some way of taking up his facts and of classifying them. They must not
be mere isolated units in his eyes, else he is mobbed by them. And a man
in the midst of a crowd, though he may know the names and nature of all
the crowd, cannot give an account of their doings. Those who look down
from the housetop must do that.
But, above all things, the historian must get out of his own age into the
time in which he is writing. Imagination is as much needed for the
historian as the poet. You may combine bits of books with other bits of
books, and so make some new combinations, and this may be done
accurately, and, in general, much of the subordinate preparation for
history may be accomplished without any great effort of imagination. But
to write history in any large sense of the words, you must be able to
comprehend other times. You must know that there is a right and wrong
which is not your right and wrong, but yet stands upon the right and
wrong of all ages and all hearts. You must also appreciate the outward
life and colours of the period you write about. Try to think how the men
you are telling of would have spent a day, what were their leading ideas,
what they cared about. Grasp the body of the time, and give it to us.
If not, and these men could look at your history, they would say, “This
is all very well; we daresay some of these things did happen; but we were
not thinking of these things all day long. It does not represent us.”
After enlarging upon this great requisite, imagination, it seems somewhat
prosaic to come down to saying that history requires accuracy. But I
think I hear the sighs, and sounds more harsh than sighing, of those who
have ever investigated anything, and found by dire experience the
deplorable inaccuracy which prevails in the world. And, therefore, I
would say to the historian almost as the first suggestion, “Be accurate;
do not make false references, do not mis-state: and men, if they get no
light from you, will not execrate you. You will not stand in the way,
and have to be explained and got rid of.”
Another most important matter in writing history, and that indeed in
which the art lies, is the method of narrating. This is a thing almost
beyond rules, like the actual execution in music or painting. A man
might have fairness, accuracy, an insight into other times, great
knowledge of facts, some power even of arranging them, and yet make a
narrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled together there,
the purpose so buried or confused, that men would agree to acknowledge
the merit of the book and leave it unread. There must be a natural line
of associations for the narrative to run along. The separate threads of
the narrative must be treated separately, and yet the subject not be
dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things
occurred. The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of
the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce
him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story
easy where it is not so.
After all, it is not by rule that a great history is to be written. Most
thinkers agree that the main object for the historian is to get an
insight into the things which he tells of, and then to tell them with the
modesty of a man who is in the presence of great events; and must speak
about them carefully, simply, and with but little of himself or of his
affections thrown into the narration.
V. HOW GOOD WRITERS OF HISTORY SHOULD BE CALLED FORTH, AIDED, AND
REWARDED.
Mainly by history being properly read. The direct ways of commanding
excellence of any kind are very few, if any. When a State has found out
its notable men, it should reward them, and will show its worthiness by
its measure and mode of reward. But it cannot purchase them. It may do
something in the way of aiding them. In history, for instance, the
records of a nation may be discreetly managed, and some of the minor
work, therefore, done to the hand of the historian. But the most likely
method to ensure good historians is to have a fit audience for them. And
this is a very difficult matter. In works of general literature, the
circle of persons capable of judging is large; even in works of science
or philosophy it is considerable: but in history, it is a very confined
circle. To the general body of readers, whether the history they read is
true or not is in no way perceptible. It is quite as amusing to them
when it is told in one way as in another. There is always mischief in
error: but in this case the mischief is remote, or seems so. For men of
ordinary culture, even if of much intelligence, the difficulty of
discerning what is true or false in the histories they read makes it a
matter of the highest duty for those few persons who can give us
criticism on historical works, at least to save us from insolent and
mendacious carelessness in historical writers, if not by just
encouragement to secure for nations some results not altogether unworthy
of the great enterprise which the writing of history holds out itself to
be. “Hujus enim fidei exempla majorum, vicissitudines rerum, fundamenta
prudentiæ civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt.” {183}
_Ellesmere_. Just wait a minute for me, and do not talk about the essay
till I come back. I am going for Anster’s _Faust_.
_Dunsford_. What has Ellesmere got in his head?
_Milverton_. I see. There is a passage where Faust, in his most
discontented mood, falls foul of history—in his talk to Wagner, if I am
not mistaken.
_Dunsford_. How beautiful it is this evening! Look at that yellow-green
near the sunset.
_Milverton_. The very words that Coleridge uses. I always think of them
when I see that tint.
_Dunsford_. I daresay his words were in my mind, but I have forgotten
what you allude to.
_Milverton_.
“O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow-green:
And still I gaze—and with how blank an eye!
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel how beautiful they are.”
_Dunsford_. Admirable! In the _Ode to Dejection_, is it not? where,
too, there are those lines,
“O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live.”
_Milverton_. But here comes Ellesmere with triumphant look. You look as
jovial, my dear Ellesmere, as if you were a Bentley that had found a
false quantity in a Boyle.
_Ellesmere_. Listen and perpend, my historical friends.
“To us, my friend, the times that are gone by
Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals:
That which you call the spirit of ages past
Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors
In which those ages are beheld reflected,
With what distortion strange heaven only knows.
Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is
This study of thine—at the first glance we fly it.
A mass of things confusedly heaped together;
A lumber-room of dusty documents,
Furnished with all approved court-precedents
And old traditional maxims! History!
Facts dramatised say rather—action—plot—
Sentiment, everything the writer’s own,
As it bests fits the web-work of his story,
With here and there a solitary fact
Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers,
Pointed with many a moral apophthegm,
And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows.”
_Milverton_. Yes; admirable lines; they describe to the life the very
faults we have been considering as the faults of badly-written histories.
I do not see that they do much more.
_Ellesmere_.
“To us, my friend, the times that are gone by
Are a mysterious book.”—
_Milverton_. Those two first lines are the full expression of Faust’s
discontent—unmeasured as in the presence of a weak man who could not
check him. But, if you come to look at the matter closely, you will see
that the time present is also in some sense a sealed book to us. Men
that we live with daily we often think as little of as we do of Julius
Cæsar, I was going to say—but we know much less of them than of him.
_Ellesmere_. I did not mean to say that Faust spoke my sentiments about
history in general. Still, there are periods of history which we have
very few authors to tell us about, and I daresay in some of those cases
the colouring of their particular minds gives us a false idea of the
whole age they lived in.
_Dunsford_. This may have happened, certainly.
_Milverton_. We must be careful not to expect too much from the history
of past ages, as a means of understanding the present age. There is
something wanted besides the preceding history to understand each age.
Each individual life may have a problem of its own, which all other
biography accurately set down for us might not enable us to work out. So
of each age. It has something in it not known before, and tends to a
result which is not down in any books.
_Dunsford_. Yet history must be of greatest use in discerning this
tendency.
_Ellesmere_. Yes; but the Wagner sort of pedant would get entangled in
his round of history—in his historical resemblances.
_Dunsford_. Now, Milverton, if you were called upon to say what are the
peculiar characteristics of this age, what should you say?
_Ellesmere_. One of Dunsford’s questions this, requiring a stout quarto
volume with notes in answer.
_Milverton_. I would rather wait till I was called upon. I am apt to
feel, after I have left off describing the character of any individual
man, as if I had only just begun. And I do not see the extent of
discourse that would be needful in attempting to give the characteristics
of an age.
_Ellesmere_. I think you are prudent to avoid answering Dunsford’s
question. For my own part, I should prefer giving an account of the age
we live in after we have come to the end of it—in the true historical
fashion. And so, Dunsford, you must wait for my notions.
_Dunsford_. I am afraid, Milverton, if you were to write history, you
would never make up your mind to condemn anybody.
_Milverton_. I hope I should not be so inconclusive. I certainly do
dislike to see any character, whether of a living or a dead person,
disposed of in a summary way.
_Ellesmere_. For once I will come to the rescue of Milverton. I really
do not see that a man’s belief in the extent and variety of human
character, and in the difficulty of appreciating the circumstances of
life, should prevent him from writing history—from coming to some
conclusions. Of course such a man is not likely to write a long course
of history; but that I hold has been a frequent error in historians—that
they have taken up subjects too large for them.
_Milverton_. If there is as much to be said about men’s character and
conduct as I think there mostly is, why should we be content with shallow
views of them? Take the outward form of these hills and valleys before
us. When we have seen them a few times, we think we know them, but are
quite mistaken. Approaching from another quarter, it is almost new
ground to us. It is a long time before you master the outward form and
semblance of any small piece of country that has much life and diversity
in it. I often think of this, applying it to our little knowledge of
men. Now, look there a moment: you see that house; close behind it is
apparently a barren tract. In reality there is nothing of the kind
there. A fertile valley with a great river in it, as you know, is
between that house and the moors. But the plane of those moors and of
the house is coincident from our present point of view. Had we not, as
educated men, some distrust of the conclusions of our senses, we should
be ready to swear that there was a lonely house on the border of the
moors. It is the same in judging of men. We see a man connected with a
train of action which is really not near him, absolutely foreign to him,
perhaps, but in our eyes that is what he is always connected with. If
there were not a Being who understands us immeasurably better than other
men can, immeasurably better than we do ourselves, we should be badly
off.
Such precautionary thoughts as these must be useful, I contend. They
need not make us indifferent to character, or prevent us from forming
judgments where we must form them, but they show us what a wide thing we
are talking about when we are judging the life and nature of a man.
_Ellesmere_. I am sure, Dunsford, you are already convinced: you seldom
want more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of
things. You are only afraid of not dealing stoutly enough with bad
things and people. Do not be afraid though. As long as you have me to
abuse, you will say many unjust things against me, you know, so that you
may waste yourself in good thoughts about the rest of the world, past and
present. Do you know the lawyer’s story I had in my mind then? “Many
times when I have had a good case,” he said, “I have failed; but then I
have often succeeded with bad cases. And so justice is done.”
_Milverton_. To return to the subject. It is not a sort of equalising
want of thought about men that I desire; only not to be rash in a matter
that requires all our care and prudence.
_Dunsford_. Well, I believe I am won over. But now to another point. I
think, Milverton, that you have said hardly anything about the use of
history as an incentive to good deeds and a discouragement to evil ones.
_Milverton_. I ought to have done so. Bolingbroke gives in his “Letters
on History,” talking of this point, a passage from Tacitus, “Præcipuum
munus annalium,”—can you go on with it, Dunsford?
_Dunsford_. Yes, I think I can. It is a passage I have often seen
quoted. “Præcipuum munus annalium, reor, ne virtutes sileantur; utque
pravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infamiâ metus sit.”
_Ellesmere_. Well done; Dunsford may have invented it, though, for aught
that we know, Milverton, and be passing himself off upon us for Tacitus.
_Milverton_. Then Bolingbroke goes on to say (I wish I could give you
his own flowing words), that the great duty of history is to form a
tribunal like that amongst the Egyptians which Diodorus tells of, where
both common men and princes were tried after their deaths, and received
appropriate honour or disgrace. The sentence was pronounced, he says,
too late to correct or to recompense; but it was pronounced in time to
render examples of general instruction to mankind. Now, what I was going
to remark upon this is, that Bolingbroke understates his case. History
well written is a present correction, and a foretaste of recompense, to
the man who is now struggling with difficulties and temptations, now
overcast by calumny and cloudy misrepresentation.
_Ellesmere_. Yes; many a man makes an appeal to posterity which will
never come before the court; but if there were no such court of appeal—
_Milverton_. A man’s conviction that justice will be done to him in
history is a secondary motive, and not one which, of itself, will compel
him to do just and great things; but, at any rate, it forms one of the
benefits that flow from history, and it becomes stronger as histories are
better written. Much may be said against care for fame; much also
against care for present repute. There is a diviner impulse than either
at the doing of any actions that are much worth doing. As a correction,
however, this anticipation of the judgment of history may really be very
powerful. It is a great enlightenment of conscience to read the opinions
of men on deeds similar to those we are engaged in or meditating.
_Dunsford_. I think Bolingbroke’s idea, which I imagine was more general
than yours, is more important: namely, that this judicial proceeding,
mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, gave significant lessons to all people,
not merely to those who had any chance of having their names in history.
_Milverton_. Certainly: for this is one of Bolingbroke’s chief points,
if I recollect rightly.
_Ellesmere_. Our conversations are much better things than your essays,
Milverton.
_Milverton_. Of course, I am bound to say so: but what made you think of
that now?
_Ellesmere_. Why, I was thinking how in talk we can know exactly where
we agree or differ. But I never like to interrupt the essay. I never
know when it would come to an end if I did. And so it swims on like a
sermon, having all its own way: one cannot put in an awkward question in
a weak part, and get things looked at in various ways.
_Dunsford_. I suppose, then, Ellesmere, you would like to interrupt
sermons.
_Ellesmere_. Why, yes, sometimes—do not throw sticks at me, Dunsford.
_Dunsford_. Well, it is absurd to be angry with you; because if you long
to interrupt Milverton with his captious perhapses and probablys, of
course you will be impatient with discourses which do, to a certain
extent, assume that the preacher and the hearers are in unison upon great
matters.
_Ellesmere_. I am afraid to say anything about sermons, for fear of the
argumentum baculinum from Dunsford; for many essay writers, like
Milverton, delight to wind up their paragraphs with complete little
aphorisms—shutting up something certainly, but shutting out something
too. I could generally pause upon them a little.
_Milverton_. Of course one may err, Ellesmere, in too much aphorising as
in too much of anything. But your argument goes against all expression
of opinion, which must be incomplete, especially when dealing with
matters that cannot be circumscribed by exact definitions. Otherwise, a
code of wisdom might be made which the fool might apply as well as the
wisest man. Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the
widest experience in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misapplied.
It cannot embrace the whole of the subject, and apply in all cases like a
mathematical formula. Its wisdom lies in the ear of the hearer.
_Ellesmere_. Well, I not know that there is anything more to say about
the essay. I suppose you are aware, Dunsford, that Milverton does not
intend to give us any more essays for some time. He is distressing his
mind about some facts which he wants to ascertain before he will read any
more to us. I imagine we are to have something historical next.
_Milverton_. Something in which historical records are useful.
_Ellesmere_. Really it is wonderful to see how beautifully human nature
accommodates itself to anything, even to the listening to essays. I
shall miss them.
_Milverton_. You may miss the talk before and after.
_Ellesmere_. Well, there is no knowing how much of that is provoked
(provoked is a good word, is it not?) by the essays.
_Dunsford_. Then, for the present, we have come to an end of our
readings.
_Milverton_. Yes, but I trust at no distant time to have something more
to try your critical powers and patience upon. I hope that that old
tower will yet see us meet together here on many a sunny day, discussing
various things in friendly council.
* * * * *
* * * * *
Printed by Cassell and Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
12—391
FOOTNOTES.
{12} See _Statesman_, p. 30.
{42} The passage which must have been alluded to is this: “The stricter
tenets of Calvinism, which allow no medium between grace and reprobation,
and doom man to eternal punishment for every breach of the moral law, as
an equal offence against Infinite truth and justice, proceed (like the
paradoxical doctrine of the Stoics), from taking a half-view of this
subject, and considering man as amenable only to the dictates of his
understanding and his conscience, and not excusable from the temptations
and frailty of human ignorance and passion. The mixing up of religion
and morality together, or the making us accountable for every word,
thought, or action, under no less a responsibility than our everlasting
future welfare or misery, has also added incalculably to the difficulties
of self-knowledge, has superinduced a violent and spurious state of
feeling, and made it almost impossible to distinguish the boundaries
between the true and false, in judging of human conduct and motives. A
religious man is afraid of looking into the state of his soul, lest at
the same time he should reveal it to heaven; and tries to persuade
himself that by shutting his eyes to his true character and feelings,
they will remain a profound secret, both here and hereafter.”
{53} This was one of the passages which Milverton afterwards read to
us:—
“Thus, however much may be gained for the world as a whole by this
fragmentary cultivation, it is not to be denied that the individuals
whom it befalls are cursed for the benefit of the world. An athletic
frame, it is true, is fashioned by gymnastic exercises; but a form of
beauty only by free and uniform action. Just so the exertions of
single talents can create extraordinary men indeed; but happy and
perfect men only by their uniform temperature. And in what relation
should we stand, then, to the past and coming ages, if the
cultivation of human nature made necessary such a sacrifice? We
should have been the slaves of humanity, and drudged for her century
after century, and stamped upon our mutilated natures the humiliating
traces of our bondage—that the coming race might nurse its moral
healthfulness in blissful leisure, and unfold the free growth of its
humanity!
“But can it be intended that man should neglect himself for any
particular design? Ought Nature to deprive us, by its design, of a
perfection which Reason, by its own, prescribes to us? Then it must
be false that the development of single faculties makes the sacrifice
of totality necessary; or, if indeed the law of Nature presses thus
heavily, it becomes us to restore, by a higher art, this totality in
our nature which art has destroyed.”—_The Philosophical and
Æsthetical Letters and Essays of_ SCHILLER, _Translated by_ J. WEISS,
pp. 74, 75.
{93} Madame Necker de Saussure’s maxim about firmness with children has
suggested the above. “Ce que plie ne peut servir d’appui, et l’enfant
veut être appuyé. Non-seulement il en a besoin, mais il le désire, mais
sa tendresse la plus constante n’est qu’à ce prix. Si vous lui faites
l’effet d’un autre enfant, si vous partagez ses passions, ses
vacillations continuelles, si vous lui rendez tous ses mouvements en les
augmentant, soit par la contrariété, soit par un excès de complaisance,
il pourra se servir de vous comme d’un jouet, mais non être heureux en
votre présence; il pleurera, se mutinera, et bientôt le souvenir d’un
temps de désordre et d’humeur se liera avec votre idée. Vous n’avez pas
été le soutien de votre enfant, vous ne l’avez pas préservé de cette
fluctuation perpétuelle de la volonté, maladie des êtres faibles et
livrés à une imagination vive; vous n’avez assuré ni sa paix, ni sa
sagesse, ni son bonheur, pourquoi vous croirait-il sa mère.”—_L’Education
Progressive_, vol. i., p. 228.
{116a} See _Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., p. 336. A similar result
may be deduced from a similar table made by the Rev. J. Clay, of Preston.
See the same Report and vol., p. 175.
{116b} See _Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., p. 75.
{117a} See Dr. Arnott’s letter, _Claims of Labour_, p. 282.
{117b} By zinc ventilators, for instance, in the windows and openings
into the flues at the top of the rooms. See _Health of Towns Report_,
1844, vol. i., pp. 76, 77. Mr. Coulhart’s evidence.—_Ibid._, pp. 307,
308.
{117c} There are several thousand gratings to sewers and drains which
are utterly useless on account of their position, and positively
injurious from their emanations.—Mr. Guthrie’s evidence.—_Ibid._, vol.
ii., p. 255.
{118} Mr. Wood states that the masters and mistresses were generally
ignorant of the depressing and unhealthy effects of the atmosphere which
surrounded them, and he mentions the case of the mistress of a
dame-school who replied, when he pointed out this to her, “that the
children thrived best in dirt!”—_Health of Towns Report_, vol. i., pp.
146, 147.
{126} See “The Fair Maid of Perth.”
{161} See “Health of Towns Report,” 1844, vol. i., p. 44.
{183} Bacon, _de Augmentis Scientiarum_.