“_Et quidquid Graecia mendax,
Audet in historia._”
JUVENAL.
Sir Robert Walpole, who sometimes spoke with an eloquent crash that
echoes in our ears to-day, once said, “Do not read history to me, for
that, I know, must be false.” Walpole may have read the _Scienza
Nuova_ of Vico probably in the French translation, and could hardly
have failed to know something of Bossuet and Montesquieu. The result
of his deliberations on the labours of contemporary historians is
expressed thus, in a short, sudden bark of contempt.
Sir Robert made history, and did not dare to attempt the far more
arduous task of writing it. When he gave it, his judgment had not so
much value as it has to-day. Some of us read the limpid prose of
Bossuet still, nor is the _Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_
forgotten. Yet if at this moment a statesman were to repeat the
opinion in reference to most of the history taught and written in
Oxford, he would only be speaking the literal truth. The youth of a
nation are Trustees for posterity, and it is to them in the first
place, and to those who are responsible for their education in the
second, that this paper is addressed.
I am aware that I am going to say some astonishing things, nor am I,
under the sense of a strong conviction, confounding antipathy with
duty. My words may fail to penetrate into the gloom of that temple
where the fanatic priests of the inarticulate, inaccurate, and dull
still sacrifice victims to the idols Freeman and Stubbs. But I have a
reasonable expectation of a wider audience, and it lies in the hands
of that audience, the undergraduate members of the University and
their parents, to say if the present state of things shall continue.
The Hebdomadal Council, Congregation and Convocation represent an
insignificant minority. It is to the Pupil not the Tutor, to the
Parent not the Fellow, to the Majority not to the Minority that I
propose to speak.
It is axiomatic that no sum which the well-to-do undergraduate is
prepared to pay could be too high for a perfect education and a
learned environment. It is the fact that neither the one nor the other
is provided, which deserves the attention, and should excite the
alarm, of those who expect the former, the latter, or a combination of
them both.
The poor man, to whom a good degree means a knife with which he will
open the world’s oyster, suffers more greatly than the wealthier man.
But both suffer, and both have a right to expect that in paying money
for a genuine article they shall certainly obtain it.
The object of this essay, therefore, is to awaken the majority upon
the whole matter, more especially that portion of the majority that
designs to read history. The power lies in your hands. It is only by
your acquiescence that the scandal continues, and it is the money of
you and your parents which runs the machine. Once supplies are
stopped, the present state of things will also stop with automatic
suddenness. The art of history--for it is an art and not a
science--will then revive in its full splendour, as the frescoes glow
out upon the walls of an ancient church when the disfiguring whitewash
is removed. The art of history will take its proper place and exercise
its right function in the University, and the Historicides will remove
their activities to a sphere in which they will be more appreciated. I
believe that a University exists in Hayti....
I purpose a comprehensive summary of this question, and have spared no
trouble to make the indictment as fair and accurate as I can. For a
considerable period I have been steadily gathering data and forming
opinions. Documents of importance and value have been furnished to me,
and if something actual and conclusive does not result, then the fault
is that of the writer, who has failed to deal adequately with the
material which he has himself collected and with which he has been
lavishly and generously supplied.
“Doest thou well to be angry?” was the question asked of the Hebrew
prophet, who thereupon “went out of the city, and sat on the east side
of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the
shadow, till he might see what would become of the city.” And finally
came the answer of Jonah, “I do well to be angry, even unto death.” My
friends and I have built our modest place of espial, and we have our
idea of what would become of the city were it left in the hands of
certain rulers. That we do well to be angry I hope to show.
In the first place, it is really necessary to define history, and the
duties of the historian. Until we have done this we have no
standpoint. The axiom must always precede the syllogism just as the
epithet concludes it. No one can build a basis in a vacuum.
Innumerable minds have been at pains to define history.
From the remote time when Lucian published his treatise _How History
ought to be Written_ until the depressing moment when Bishop Stubbs
first attempted to write it, there has been an enormous divergence of
thought on this point. Kant believed that Dynasty and Nation, Emperor
and Clown were alike incidents and puppets illustrating the theory
that an irresistible, all-pervading Force works through history
towards one end--the development of a perfect constitution. If Kant
had written history and applied his method instead of indicating it,
he would have had us believe that history is a science to be studied
under the limiting influence of a rigid formula.
Ranke thought, and thought rightly, that the analysis of original
documents alone made possible the synthesis of the past, while the
trained historian in his endeavour to get at the truth should be chary
of accepting contemporary authors, unless eye-witnesses of the events
they chronicled. Yet Ranke definitely placed himself with those who
were beginning to believe that history was a science and nothing more.
Guizot, who edited Gibbon, freshly defined the labours of the
historian. Guizot’s view was that faithful research, _with its
results duly applied, ought to enable the historian to supply such a
picture of the past that it should be both to his readers and himself
a veritable present_. I know of no more illuminating conception. But
how can an historian supply the picture unless he has a competent
knowledge of psychology? To write about human beings in the past
without a knowledge of psychology is exactly like writing a history of
locomotives without understanding anything whatever about the nature
and properties of steam.
It is only quite lately that the scientists have allowed psychology to
be a science, with, for example, as fixed a place and purpose as
biology. If any one asked me for a list of authors from whom he would
learn something of psychology I should probably commend to him Maher
(1900), Spencer (1890), Stout (1899), James (1892), M’Cosh (1886), and
so on.
You see the dates, do you not? You realize what every one who lives in
the realm of thought, as also many who work in the sphere of action,
must realize? Briefly it is this. The old historians were concerned
only with the simple results of investigation; the best modern
historian adds to his equipment a knowledge of the processes of
thought. The older sciences are joining hands with the new science of
psychology. It is discerned that the individual temperament must
clothe the bones of fact with the colour and movement that
psychological knowledge alone can give.
It is discerned, but only by the important people as yet--only by the
people who matter and count. The Oxford historians whom I am attacking
have not realized it and will never realize it, which is the precise
reason why we must reform them or give them the alternative of
staffing the upper grade board schools.
James Anthony Froude did realize this certainty, and his works are not
recommended to be read by candidates for history honours. The
malignant personal hatred of Freeman, the stupidity of lesser men,
long endeavoured to crush and limit the influence of the greatest
historian, because the completest artist, who wrote history in our
era. The endeavour to suppress him continues, but it is no longer
anything but an endeavour. The times are changing very rapidly, and
the triumphant war-whoops of some years ago have sunk to-day into the
moribund whimpers of the discredited and deposed.
Everybody in Oxford is waking up to the fact that if history is to
have unity of organism and purpose it must have artistic proportion
and be informed by art. The leaven has been working for a long time,
unobserved by the people it is destined to destroy at the moment of
completed fermentation. It is always thus with revolutions. The
period of gestation is lengthy and its processes are obscure. But the
completed moment arrives, the goddess bursts in full armour from her
sire, or Gargantua is born “crying not as other babes used to do,
miez, miez, miez, miez, but with a high, sturdy, and big voice!”
The occasion that has set in motion forces which in no short time will
destroy the little eminence of the Oxford Historicides, was the
publication of Mr. Herbert Paul’s _Life of James Anthony Froude_.
Everything had led up to that; I was cognizant of all the restlessness
and disgust which were seething below the surface, and when at last
the volume fell into Oxford with the noise and reverberation of a
thunder-bolt, I was daily informed of the hideous consternation of
those who realized that their day was over, that the judge was set and
the doom begun, that no one could stay it.
I wish that I could write frankly and openly of the disturbance and
alarm the book occasioned. If I were publishing this essay in the
first instance in America I should certainly do so. However, as it
will appear in England and afterwards in the Land of Freedom of
Speech, this joy is not permitted to me. As Mr. H. G. Wells would say,
“Figure that the bomb fell upon the green of All Souls’ while the
clock in the gateway of Christ Church was in the act of striking
twelve.”
The rush and hurry, the frightened consultations, the squeaks of those
who realized that Nemesis was at hand at last and was beating at the
door, were, I can assure the public that will read this paper,
comparable to nothing so much as the occasion when the feet of the
ferret are heard drumming down the hollow burrows of the warren, while
the rabbits know the day of irresponsible frolic is over and that they
must die in the dark or in the open, but must die.
The Historicides of Oxford have always feared an extended public and
distrusted a name that has been made without their connivance, and
which is beyond their reach. I find it difficult to suppose that those
who do not realize the incredible narrowness and stupidity of a
certain type of history don, will believe the anecdote I am about to
tell. Nevertheless, it is true. A pedant, whose name I will not give,
was recently heard to refer to Mr. Thomas Hardy in these words,
“Hardy? Hardy? Oh, do you mean the little novelist man?”
Let me put it before you quite plainly and in antithesis. Hardly
anything could better illustrate the appalling mental position of the
_camarilla_ that has got to go. Here is a priggish person, whom no
one has ever heard of outside Oxford, piping out his contempt for a
man who is generally recognized as one of the most distinguished
novelists and one of the chief artists alive in our time.
It is possible that many people will not immediately appreciate the
reason for all the terror excited by Mr. Paul’s biography. The outside
man cannot quite know how Froude is, and always was, hated and feared
by a certain section of the Oxford historians. They were always trying
to hit him below the belt because he hit them above the intellect.
There was a definite conspiracy among the malignant, from Freeman
downwards, to lie about Froude in every conceivable way, and to
complete their malicious impudence by calling Froude himself a liar.
Froude was a master of English prose; the highest praise that can be
given to the jargon which his detractors wrote, and write, is that it
is not exactly Esperanto. Froude understood the colour of words, the
movements of a paragraph, the harmonic rhythm of an emotion expressed
in prose. His words were the incarnation of his original thought,
theirs but accentuated their borrowings. While the genius of this
great man was coming into its own, while it burned brightly and yet
more bright, while all thoughtful England was beginning to be moved
and stirred by a new force, and the possessor of it was living with
intellects as great and gracious as his own, the Oxford historians
slept in their padded rooms, and because they snored loudly imagined
they were thinking. Too indolent to search for the truth, they
contented themselves with dodging difficulties, and persuading each
other that their ostentatious obscurity was fame.
There came a time at last when James Anthony Froude could no longer be
ignored. His achievement was beginning to be a national possession,
and he shared the councils of the rulers. The echoes of his fame
reached the ears of the troglodytes, and, led by Freeman, they swarmed
to the attack, yelping a pæan to mediocrity and brandishing weapons
from a more than doubtful armoury.
Froude, as Mr. Paul has pointed out, “toiled for months and years over
parchments and manuscripts often almost illegible, carefully noting
the calligraphy, and among the authors of a joint composition
assigning his proper share to each. Freeman wrote his _History of the
Norman Conquest_, upon which he was at this time engaged, entirely
from books, without consulting a manuscript or original document of
any kind.”
Freeman,--the head of the daguerreotypical historians,--attacked a
man whom he very well knew was his superior, pretending publicly to a
greater knowledge of the special subject under discussion, and
cynically denying any special knowledge in private. In public Freeman
represented his hostile attitude as the natural outcome of his zeal
for truth; in private it was known that he was actuated by personal
hatred, and the discoveries made by Mr. J. B. Rye on the margins of
Freeman’s books in Owens College library have discredited him for all
time. Again I quote from Mr. Paul’s _Life of Froude_:--
“Freeman’s biographer, Dean Stephens, preserves absolute and
unbroken silence on the duel between Freeman and Froude. I
think the Dean’s conduct was judicious. But there is no reason
why a biographer of Froude should follow his example. On the
contrary, it is absolutely essential that he should not; for
Freeman’s assiduous efforts, first in _The Saturday_, and
afterwards in _The Contemporary Review_, did ultimately produce
an impression, never yet fully dispelled, that Froude was an
habitual garbler of facts and constitutionally reckless of the
truth. But, before I come to details, let me say one word more
about Freeman’s qualifications for the task which he so lightly
and eagerly undertook. Freeman, with all his self-assertion,
was not incapable of candour. He was staunch in friendship, and
spoke openly to his friends. To one of them, the excellent Dean
Hook, famous for his _Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_,
he wrote, on the 27th of April, 1857, ‘You have found me out
about the sixteenth century. I fancy that from endlessly
belabouring Froude, I get credit for knowing more of those
times than I do. But one can belabour Froude on a very small
amount of knowledge, and you are quite right when you say that
I “have never thrown the whole force of my mind on that portion
of history.”’ These words pour a flood of light on the temper
and knowledge with which Freeman must have entered on what he
really seemed to consider a crusade. His object was to belabour
Froude. His own acquaintance with the subject was, as he says,
‘very small,’ but sufficient for enabling him to dispose
satisfactorily of an historian who had spent years of patient
toil in thorough and exhaustive research. On another occasion,
also writing to Hook, whom he could not deceive, he said, ‘I
find I have a reputation with some people for knowing the
sixteenth century, of which I am profoundly ignorant.’ It does
not appear to have struck him that he had done his best in _The
Saturday Review_ to make people think that, as Froude’s critic,
he deserved the reputation which he thus frankly and in private
disclaims.
“Another curious piece of evidence has come to light. After
Freeman’s death his library was transferred to Owens College,
Manchester, and there, among his other books, is his copy of
Froude’s _History_. He once said himself, in reference to his
criticism of Froude, ‘In truth there is no kind of temper in
the case, but only a strong sense of amusement in bowling down
one thing after another.’ Let us see. Here are some extracts
from his marginal notes. ‘A lie, _teste_ Stubbs,’ as if Stubbs
were an authority, in the proper sense of the term, any more
than Froude. Authorities are contemporary witnesses, or
original documents. Another entry is ‘Beast,’ and yet another
is ‘Bah!’ ‘May I live to embowel James Anthony Froude,’ is the
pious aspiration with which he has adorned another page. ‘Can
Froude understand honesty?’ asks this anxious inquirer; and
again, ‘Supposing Master Froude were set to break stones, feed
pigs, or do anything else but write paradoxes, would he not
curse his day?’ Along with such graceful compliments as ‘You’ve
found that out since you wrote a book against your own father,’
‘Give him as slave to Thirlwall,’ there may be seen the
culminating assertion, ‘Froude is certainly the vilest brute
that ever wrote a book.’ Yet there was ‘no kind of temper in
the case,’ and ‘only a strong sense of amusement.’ I suppose it
must have amused Freeman to call another historian a vile
brute. But it is fortunate that there was no temper in the
case. For if there had, it would have been a very bad temper
indeed.”
Until Mr. Herbert Paul’s _Life of Froude_ appeared a year ago, the
Historicides had been continually repeating the lie that Froude
garbled documents, was untrustworthy, and wrote not history but
fiction. History, of course, often imitates fiction, for good fiction
always deals with realities. But these slanderers did not pause for a
definition. They continued to abuse Froude, to prevent their pupils
from reading him, and to refuse him a place in the recognized
curriculum of historical study at the University.
From time to time a doubter or inquirer arose and was promptly
suppressed. Nor was it likely that a man, whatever his private opinion
of those in authority might be, was going to jeopardize his chance of
a good degree by publishing it. There were awkward moments, of course,
for the slanderers. A lie is like a forged promissory note. When it
becomes due another must be forged in order to take up the first. But
the Historicides had the whip-hand. They controlled the examinations,
and they could do what they pleased.
I once wrote a little story which I will outline here, because I think
it illustrates the method of these people whenever any ugly fact was
discovered and some one required an explanation.
There was once a simple-minded old gentleman of a philosophic temper
and an inquiring mind. Blessed with an ample fortune and untroubled by
any business instincts, he devoted his life to the search for truth.
On the whole his life was a happy one, because he possessed the
faculty of going on. His failures were not made tragic with courage,
but were minimized by persistence, and so were not very different from
successes. Yet, as the years went on, he began to feel that in his
time he would never achieve his end. Seeing him somewhat downcast, and
becoming indifferent to his chop and Chambertin, his butler, a
faithful person, came to him one day, and, after venturing a
privileged remonstrance, stated that he had something to disclose. “I
have lately heard, sir,” said the butler, “that truth is really hidden
at the bottom of a well. It may of course, sir, be mere idle talk, but
I think, as far as I remember, we have not looked there yet? There was
the church, sir--we found nothing there--and then I held the lantern
for you in the chapel, too. There was none behind the art wall-paper,
nor did Liberty have any in stock. And it wasn’t in history, sir,
because I turned over every leaf of them Oxford books myself, and
shook them well, too. You did think you’d found it in science, sir, I
remember, there was something that you thought was truth in the bottom
of the test-tube, but then you told me it wasn’t, though I forget what
you said it was after all.”
“Merely a note of a recorded fact, Thomas,” said the old gentleman
sorrowfully. “But do you _really_ think there is anything in this idea
of yours?”
“I cannot be positive, sir,” the butler replied; “but I see it stated
definite at the end of a leading article in the _Artesian Engineer_.”
“Have we a well on the premises, Thomas?” the old gentleman asked,
putting on his spectacles and rubbing his hands briskly together.
“I asked the gardener this morning, sir,” Thomas answered, “and he
informs me that there is an old disused well by the cucumber-frame
which could be opened easily enough by a couple of men working for a
week.”
“Engage some men at once,” said the old gentleman, now thoroughly
interested and pleased, and that day he enjoyed his chop with all his
accustomed pleasure. The faithful butler, who had all his life lived
worthily and well without truth, was overjoyed at the success of his
suggestion. Anticipating, however, another disappointment, he gave
private instructions, received _con amore_ by the workmen, that they
were not to hurry over their task of opening the well, and for a month
the old gentleman’s appetite whetted by hope, was all that his
faithful retainer could desire.
At length the work was done, the well was fully opened, and the
page-boy (an adventurous youth) descended in the bucket. There was a
tense silence in the garden as the boy disappeared, until his
hollow-sounding voice hailed them from below vibrating with
excitement.
“I’ve got un, sir,” ascended in a triumphant pipe; “he be here, sir,
sure ’nuff!”
In a moment more the young fellow came to the surface, holding a large
and speckled toad in his hand. On the back of the reptile an
arrangement of orange-coloured spots spelt out the word TRUTH.
The old gentleman saw it, fell into uncontrollable rage, snatched the
wondering reptile from the page-boy’s hand and stamped out its life
upon the ground.
“To the house all of you,” he cried; “and never let me hear the name
of truth again!” With that he forswore all his former theories, and in
bitter irony started a society paper. However, the gardener, a wise,
silent, and pawky person, came along later, and, picking a diamond
from the crushed _débris_ of the toad took it home and hid it away for
the rest of his life, fearing discovery. When the gardener died, his
relatives discovered the jewel, and knowing nothing of its value threw
it away.
The old gentleman made an enormous fortune out of the society paper.
Forgive the digression. This, or something like it, was what the
Historicides of Oxford did before the publication of Mr. Paul’s book.
Whenever any one showed them the truth they snatched it from him, and
ordered him back into Stubbs’s Charters.
I have already said something of the terror the _Life of Froude_
excited. In a swift moment pretensions were exposed, lies were shown
to be lies, and people began to read _Froude_. Mr. Paul made it quite
plain that the accusations of dishonesty against Froude were utter
fabrications. Mr. Paul, himself a learned historian, an artist and a
man of letters, has gone into the charges _seriatim_, and triumphantly
disproved them. No one can ever make them again. _They are lies, they
have been proved once and for ever to be lies._ I cannot quote here
the mass of refutation which has brought about the complete
vindication of the accused historian. This is a summary and nothing
more. It stands for all to read in Mr. Paul’s book, a volume which
should be in the hands of every man who is reading, and means to read
history at Oxford.
This memorable book is a protest against the charlatanry of the
pseudo-scientific school of history. The acts and intentions of people
in the past cannot be known better than the intentions and acts of
people in the present. No one man can possibly sift all, or anything
like all the evidence for any period. Much of the important evidence
is missing. No one can be examined or cross-examined, and for an
historian to write as if he were a judge delivering a decision is a
piece of impertinence. The abler man, assuming his honesty, will make
the abler historian, and the mere bookworm is not the best judge of
what probably happened. It is the dull and incompetent who formerly
invented the fable that brilliant writers are superficial. This is the
lie behind which the “dry as dusts” have lurked for years; it was
their last line of defence, and Mr. Paul has destroyed it.
The historian must be able to write distinguished English, and he must
understand the enormous possibilities of his medium. He must add a
sense of artistry to his scholarship. He must be a man of experience
in human event, a man who has done and suffered; must have been in
crowds and seen “how madly men can care about nothings,” and he must
disabuse his mind of formula and theory before he begins to write. Sir
Arthur Helps said this years ago:--
“To make themselves historians, they should also have considered the
combinations among 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.”
History, in short, is the complement of poetry, and with this
definition as a basis let us proceed to examine some of the Oxford
historians of to-day. But first let me recapitulate the points at
which we have so far arrived.