Let us now take a survey of the history which the powers that be in
Oxford have substituted for the work of Froude. Let us shake the
upas-trees which shadow the quadrangle of the Schools and wonder how
these astonishing vegetables have managed to produce such fruit as
that of which I have to set samples before you.
The Examination Statutes in the section containing the regulations for
the Honour School of Modern History recommend, among other books, that
candidates who take the period 1559-1715 should study _Gustavus
Adolphus_, by Mr. C. R. L. Fletcher, M.A., late Fellow of All Souls’
College, Oxford. The gentlemen who compile the Examination Statutes
would “recommend” almost anything, but I imagine that I am about to
astonish the general reader.
I will begin with Mr. Fletcher’s preface. He himself says in the very
first line that his book “demands little preface.” It would have been
perhaps better for him had he been guided by his own pious opinion and
resisted the temptation to print his confessions in nine
closely-printed pages. I say “confessions” advisedly, for rarely in
the course of a wide experience of books have I set eyes upon a more
candid and almost disarming statement than the one before me here.