I am assuming that among my audience there are some students who aspire
to become historians. To these especially my discourse is addressed.
It is not to be expected that I should speak positively and in detail on
matters of education. Nevertheless, a man of sixty who has devoted the
better part of his life to reading, observation, and reflection must
have gained, if only through a perception of his own deficiencies, some
ideas that should be useful to those who have, life's experience before
them. Hence, if a Freshman should say to me, I wish to be a historian,
tell me what preliminary studies you would advise, I should welcome the
opportunity. From the nature of the case, the history courses will be
sought and studied in their logical order and my advice will have to do
only with collateral branches of learning.
In the first place, I esteem a knowledge of Latin and French of the
highest importance. By a knowledge of French, I mean that you should be
able to read it substantially as well as you read English, so that when
you have recourse to a dictionary it will be a French dictionary and not
one of the French-English kind. The historical and other literature that
is thus opened up to you enables you to live in another world, with a
point of view impossible to one who reads for pleasure only in his own
tongue. To take two instances: Moliere is a complement to Shakespeare,
and the man who knows his Moliere as he does his Shakespeare has made a
propitious beginning in that study of human character which must be
understood if he desires to write a history that shall gain readers. "I
have known and loved Moliere," said Goethe, "from my youth and have
learned from him during my whole life. I never fail to read some of his
plays every year, that I may keep up a constant intercourse with what is
excellent. It is not merely the perfectly artistic treatment which
delights me; but particularly the amiable nature, the highly formed mind
of the poet. There is in him a grace and a feeling for the decorous, and
a tone of good society, which his innate beautiful nature could only
attain by daily intercourse with the most eminent men of his age."[3]
My other instance is Balzac. In reading him for pleasure, as you read
Dickens and Thackeray, you are absorbing an exact and fruitful knowledge
of French society of the Restoration and of Louis Philippe. Moreover you
are still pursuing your study of human character under one of the acute
critics of the nineteenth century. Balzac has always seemed to me
peculiarly French, his characters belong essentially to Paris or to the
provinces. I associate Eugenie Grandet with Saumur in the Touraine and
Cesar Birotteau with the Rue St. Honore in Paris; and all his other men
and women move naturally in the great city or in the provinces which he
has given them for their home. A devoted admirer however tells me that
in his opinion Balzac has created universal types; the counterpart of
some of his men may be seen in the business and social world of Boston,
and the peculiarly sharp and dishonest transaction which brought Cesar
Birotteau to financial ruin was here exactly reproduced.
The French language and literature seem to possess the merits which ours
lack; and the writer of history cannot afford to miss the lessons he
will receive by a constant reading of the best French prose.
I do not ask the Freshman who is going to be a historian to realize
Macaulay's ideal of a scholar, to "read Plato with his feet on the
fender,"[4] but he should at least acquire a pretty thorough knowledge
of classical Latin, so that he can read Latin, let me say, as many of us
read German, that is with the use of a lexicon and the occasional
translation of a sentence or a paragraph into English to arrive at its
exact meaning. Of this, I can speak from the point of view of one who is
deficient. The reading of Latin has been for me a grinding labor and I
would have liked to read with pleasure in the original, the History and
Annals of Tacitus, Caesar's Gallic and Civil wars and Cicero's Orations
and Private Letters even to the point of following Macaulay's advice,
"Soak your mind with Cicero."[4] These would have given me, I fancy, a
more vivid impression of two periods of Roman history than I now
possess. Ferrero, who is imparting a fresh interest to the last period
of the Roman republic, owes a part of his success, I think, to his
thorough digestion and effective use of Cicero's letters, which have the
faculty of making one acquainted with Cicero just as if he were a modern
man. During a sojourn on the shores of Lake Geneva, I read two volumes
of Voltaire's private correspondence, and later, while passing the
winter in Rome, the four volumes of Cicero's letters in French. I could
not help thinking that in the republic of letters one was not in time at
a far greater distance from Cicero than from Voltaire. While the
impression of nearness may have come from reading both series of letters
in French, or because, to use John Morley's words, "two of the most
perfect masters of the art of letter writing were Cicero and
Voltaire,"[5] there is a decided flavor of the nineteenth century in
Cicero's words to a good liver whom he is going to visit. "You must not
reckon," he wrote, "on my eating your hors d'oeuvre. I have given them
up entirely. The time has gone by when I can abuse my stomach with your
olives and your Lucanian sausages."[6]
To repeat then, if the student, who is going to be a historian, uses his
acquisitive years in obtaining a thorough knowledge of French and Latin,
he will afterwards be spared useless regrets. He will naturally add
German for the purpose of general culture and, if languages come easy,
perhaps Greek. "Who is not acquainted with another language," said
Goethe, "knows not his own." A thorough knowledge of Latin and French is
a long stride towards an efficient mastery of English. In the matter of
diction, the English writer is rarely in doubt as to words of
Anglo-Saxon origin, for these are deep-rooted in his childhood and his
choice is generally instinctive. The difficulties most persistently
besetting him concern words that come from the Latin or the French; and
here he must use reason or the dictionary or both. The author who has a
thorough knowledge of Latin and French will argue with himself as to the
correct diction, will follow Emerson's advice, "Know words
etymologically; pull them apart; see how they are made; and use them
only where they fit."[7] As it is in action through life, so it is in
writing; the conclusions arrived at by reason are apt to be more
valuable than those which we accept on authority. The reasoned literary
style is more virile than that based on the dictionary. A judgment
arrived at by argument sticks in the memory, while it is necessary for
the user of the dictionary constantly to invoke authority, so that the
writer who reasons out the meaning of words may constantly accelerate
his pace, for the doubt and decision of yesterday is to-day a solid
acquirement, ingrained in his mental being. I have lately been reading a
good deal of Gibbon and I cannot imagine his having had frequent
recourse to a dictionary. I do not remember even an allusion either in
his autobiographies or in his private letters to any such aid.
Undoubtedly his thorough knowledge of Latin and French, his vast reading
of Latin, French, and English books, enabled him to dispense with the
thumbing of a dictionary and there was probably a reasoning process at
the back of every important word. It is difficult, if not impossible, to
improve on Gibbon by the substitution of one word for another.
A rather large reading of Sainte-Beuve gives me the same impression.
Indeed his literary fecundity, the necessity of having the Causerie
ready for each Monday's issue of the _Constitutionnel_ or the
_Moniteur_, precluded a study of words while composing, and his rapid
and correct writing was undoubtedly due to the training obtained by the
process of reasoning. Charles Sumner seems to be an exception to my
general rule. Although presumably he knew Latin well, he was a slave to
dictionaries. He generally had five at his elbow (Johnson, Webster,
Worcester, Walker, and Pickering) and when in doubt as to the use of a
word he consulted all five and let the matter be decided on the American
democratic principle of majority rule.[8] Perhaps this is one cause of
the stilted and artificial character of Sumner's speeches which, unlike
Daniel Webster's, are not to be thought of as literature. One does not
associate dictionaries with Webster. Thus had I written the sentence
without thinking of a not infrequent confusion between Noah and Daniel
Webster, and this confusion reminded me of a story which John Fiske
used to tell with gusto and which some of you may not have heard. An
English gentleman remarked to an American: "What a giant intellect that
Webster of yours had! To think of so great an orator and statesman
writing that dictionary! But I felt sure that one who towered so much
above his fellows would come to a bad end and I was not a bit surprised
to learn that he had been hanged for the murder of Dr. Parkman."
To return to my theme: One does not associate dictionaries with Daniel
Webster. He was given to preparing his speeches in the solitudes of
nature, and his first Bunker Hill oration, delivered in 1825, was mainly
composed while wading in a trout stream and desultorily fishing for
trout.[9] Joe Jefferson, who loved fishing as well as Webster, used to
say, "The trout is a gentleman and must be treated as such." Webster's
companion might have believed that some such thought as this was passing
through the mind of the great Daniel as, standing middle deep in the
stream, he uttered these sonorous words: "Venerable men! You have come
down to us from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened
out your lives that you might behold this joyous day." I think Daniel
Webster for the most part reasoned out his choice of words; he left the
dictionary work to others. After delivery, he threw down the manuscript
of his eulogy on Adams and Jefferson and said to a student in his law
office, "There, Tom, please to take that discourse and weed out the
Latin words."[10]
When doubtful as to the use of words, I should have been helped by a
better knowledge of Latin and enabled very often to write with a surer
touch. Though compelled to resort frequently to the dictionary, I early
learned to pay little attention to the definition but to regard with
care the illustrative meaning in the citations from standard authors.
When I began writing I used the Imperial Dictionary, an improvement over
Webster in this respect. Soon the Century Dictionary began to appear,
and best of all the New English Dictionary on historical principles
edited by Murray and Bradley and published by the Clarendon Press at
Oxford. A study of the mass of quotations in these two dictionaries
undoubtedly does much to atone for the lack of linguistic knowledge; and
the tracing of the history of words, as it is done in the Oxford
dictionary, makes any inquiry as to the meaning of a word fascinating
work for the historian. Amongst the multiplicity of aids for the student
and the writer no single one is so serviceable as this product of labor
and self-sacrifice, fostered by the Clarendon Press, to whom, all
writers in the English language owe a debt of gratitude.
Macaulay had a large fund of knowledge on which he might base his
reasoning, and his indefatigable mind welcomed any outside assistance.
He knew Greek and Latin thoroughly and a number of other languages, but
it is related of him that he so thumbed his copy of Johnson's Dictionary
that he was continually sending it to the binder. In return for his
mastery of the languages, the dictionaries are fond of quoting Macaulay.
If I may depend upon a rough mental computation, no prose writer of the
nineteenth century is so frequently cited. "He never wrote an obscure
sentence in his life," said John Morley;[11] and this is partly due to
his exact use of words. There is never any doubt about his meaning.
Macaulay began the use of Latin words at an early age. When four and a
half years old he was asked if he had got over the toothache, to which
question came this reply, "The agony is abated."
Mathematics beyond arithmetic are of no use to the historian and may be
entirely discarded. I do not ignore John Stuart Mill's able plea for
them, some words of which are worth quoting. "Mathematical studies," he
said, "are of immense benefit to the student's education by habituating
him to precision. It is one of the peculiar excellences of mathematical
discipline that the mathematician is never satisfied with an _a peu
pres_. He requires the _exact_ truth.... The practice of mathematical
reasoning gives wariness of the mind; it accustoms us to demand a sure
footing."[12] Mill, however, is no guide except for exceptionally gifted
youth. He began to learn Greek when he was three years old, and by the
time he had reached the age of twelve had read a good part of Latin and
Greek literature and knew elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly.
The three English historians who have most influenced thought from 1776
to 1900 are those whom John Morley called "great born men of
letters"[13]--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; and two of these despised
mathematics. "As soon as I understood the principles," wrote Gibbon in
his "Autobiography," "I relinquished forever the pursuit of the
Mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind was
hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the
finer feelings of moral evidence, which must however determine the
actions and opinions of our lives."[14] Macaulay, while a student at
Cambridge, wrote to his mother: "Oh, for words to express my abomination
of mathematics ... 'Discipline' of the mind! Say rather starvation,
confinement, torture, annihilation!... I feel myself becoming a
personification of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking
table of logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or
at least going.... Farewell then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero."[15] I
must in fairness state that in after life Macaulay regretted his lack of
knowledge of mathematics and physics, but his career and Gibbon's
demonstrate that mathematics need have no place on the list of the
historian's studies. Carlyle, however, showed mathematical ability which
attracted the attention of Legendre and deemed himself sufficiently
qualified to apply, when he was thirty-nine years old, for the
professorship of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. He did not
succeed in obtaining the post but, had he done so, he "would have made,"
so Froude his biographer thinks, "the school of Astronomy at Edinburgh
famous throughout Europe."[16] When fifty-two, Carlyle said that "the
man who had mastered the first forty-seven propositions of Euclid stood
nearer to God than he had done before."[17] I may cap this with some
words of Emerson, who in much of his thought resembled Carlyle: "What
hours of melancholy my mathematical works cost! It was long before I
learned that there is something wrong with a man's brain who loves
them."[18]
Mathematics are of course the basis of many studies, trades, and
professions and are sometimes of benefit as a recreation for men of
affairs. Devotion to Euclid undoubtedly added to Lincoln's strength, but
the necessary range of knowledge for the historian is so vast that he
cannot spend his evenings and restless nights in the solution of
mathematical problems. In short, mathematics are of no more use to him
than is Greek to the civil or mechanical engineer.
In the category with mathematics must be placed a detailed study of any
of the physical or natural sciences. I think that a student during his
college course should have a year's work in a chemical laboratory or
else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoology, a year's
training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he
ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of
the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all
know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the
movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are
scientific men who popularize their knowledge. John Fiske, Huxley, and
Tyndall presented to us the theories and demonstrations of science in a
literary style that makes learning attractive. Huxley and Tyndall were
workers in laboratories and gave us the results of their patient and
long-continued experiments. It is too much to expect that every
generation will produce men of the remarkable power of expression of
Huxley and John Fiske, but there will always be clear writers who will
delight in instructing the general public in language easily understood.
In an address which I delivered eight or nine years ago before the
American Historical Association, I cheerfully conceded that, in the
realm of intellectual endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should
have the precedence of history. The question with us now is not which is
the nobler pursuit, but how is the greatest economy of time to be
compassed for the historian. My advice is in the line of concentration.
Failure in life arises frequently from intellectual scattering; hence I
like to see the historical student getting his physical and natural
science at second-hand.
The religious and political revolutions of the last four hundred years
have weakened authority; but in intellectual development I believe that
in general an important advantage lies in accepting the dicta of
specialists. In this respect our scientific men may teach us a lesson.
One not infrequently meets a naturalist or a physician, who possesses
an excellent knowledge of history, acquired by reading the works of
general historians who have told an interesting story. He would laugh at
the idea that he must verify the notes of his author and read the
original documents, for he has confidence that the interpretation is
accurate and truthful. This is all that I ask of the would-be historian.
For the sake of going to the bottom of things in his own special study,
let him take his physical and natural science on trust and he may well
begin to do this during his college course. As a manner of doing this,
there occur to me three interesting biographies, the Life of Darwin, the
Life of Huxley, and the Life of Pasteur, which give the important part
of the story of scientific development during the last half of the
nineteenth century. Now I believe that a thorough mastery of these three
books will be worth more to the historical student than any driblets of
science that he may pick up in an unsystematic college course.
With this elimination of undesirable studies--undesirable because of
lack of time--there remains ample time for those studies which are
necessary for the equipment of a historian; to wit, languages,
histories, English, French, and Latin literature, and as much of
economics as his experienced teachers advise. Let him also study the
fine arts as well as he can in America, fitting himself for an
appreciation of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting
in Europe which he will recognize as landmarks of history in their
potent influence on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that our
hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his college course of
four years, and his graduate course of three. At the age of twenty-five
he will then have received an excellent college education. The
university with its learned and hard-working teachers, its wealth, its
varied and wholesome traditions has done for him the utmost possible.
Henceforward his education must depend upon himself and, unless he has
an insatiable love of reading, he had better abandon the idea of
becoming a historian; for books, pamphlets, old newspapers, and
manuscripts are the stock of his profession and to them he must show a
single-minded devotion. He must love his library as Pasteur did his
laboratory and must fill with delight most of the hours of the day in
reading or writing. To this necessity there is no alternative. Whether
it be in general preparation or in the detailed study of a special
period, there is no end to the material which may be read with
advantage. The young man of twenty-five can do no better than to devote
five years of his life to general preparation. And what enjoyment he has
before him! He may draw upon a large mass of histories and biographies,
of books of correspondence, of poems, plays, and novels; it is then for
him to select with discrimination, choosing the most valuable, as they
afford him facts, augment his knowledge of human nature, and teach him
method and expression. "A good book," said Milton, "is the precious life
blood of a master spirit," and every good book which wins our student's
interest and which he reads carefully will help him directly or
indirectly in his career. And there are some books which he will wish to
master, as if he were to be subjected to an examination on them. As to
these he will be guided by strong inclination and possibly with a view
to the subject of his magnum opus; but if these considerations be absent
and if the work has not been done in the university, I cannot too
strongly recommend the mastery of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and
Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire." Gibbon merits close study because his is
undoubtedly the greatest history of modern times and because it is, in
the words of Carlyle, a splendid bridge from the old world to the new.
He should be read in the edition of Bury, whose scholarly introduction
gives a careful and just estimate of Gibbon and whose notes show the
results of the latest researches. This edition does not include Guizot's
and Milman's notes, which seem to an old-fashioned reader of Gibbon like
myself worthy of attention, especially those on the famous Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Chapters. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire" is a fitting complement
to Gibbon, and the intellectual possession of the two is an education in
itself which will be useful in the study of any period of history that
may be chosen.
The student who reads Gibbon will doubtless be influenced by his many
tributes to Tacitus and will master the Roman historian. I shall let
Macaulay furnish the warrant for a close study of Thucydides. "This
day," Macaulay said, when in his thirty-fifth year, "I finished
Thucydides after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration.
He is the greatest historian that ever lived." Again during the same
year he wrote: "What are all the Roman historians to the great Athenian?
I do assure you there is no prose composition in the world, not even the
oration on the Crown, which I place so high as the seventh book of
Thucydides. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of human art. I was delighted to
find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: 'The retreat
from Syracuse--is or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your
life?' ... Most people read all the Greek they ever read before they are
five and twenty. They never find time for such studies afterwards until
they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of the
language is in great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered.
Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature
are ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man,
whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides.
I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him
with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs
and I am astonished at my own former blindness and at his
greatness."[19]
I have borrowed John Morley's words, speaking of Gibbon, Macaulay, and
Carlyle as "three great born men of letters." Our student cannot
therefore afford to miss a knowledge of Macaulay's History, but the
Essays, except perhaps three or four of the latest ones, need not be
read. In a preface to the authorized edition of the Essays, Macaulay
wrote that he was "sensible of their defects," deemed them "imperfect
pieces," and did not think that they were "worthy of a permanent place
in English literature." For instance, his essay on Milton contained
scarcely a paragraph which his matured judgment approved. Macaulay's
peculiar faults are emphasized in his Essays and much of the harsh
criticism which he has received comes from the glaring defects of these
earlier productions. His history, however, is a great book, shows
extensive research, a sane method and an excellent power of narration;
and when he is a partisan, he is so honest and transparent that the
effect of his partiality is neither enduring nor mischievous.
I must say further to the student: read either Carlyle's "French
Revolution" or his "Frederick the Great," I care not which, although it
is well worth one's while to read both. If your friends who maintain
that history is a science convince you that the "French Revolution" is
not history, as perhaps they may, read it as a narrative poem. Truly
Carlyle spoke rather like a poet than a historian when he wrote to his
wife (in his forty-first year): "A hundred pages more and this cursed
book is flung out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that
consummation; above all with the speed of fire.... It all stands pretty
fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much more about it, but to
splash down what I know in large masses of colors, that it may look like
a smoke-and-flame conflagration in the distance, which it is."[20] It
was Carlyle's custom to work all of the morning and take a solitary walk
in Hyde Park in the afternoon, when looking upon the gay scene, the
display of wealth and fashion, "seeing," as he said, "all the carriages
dash hither and thither and so many human bipeds cheerily hurrying
along," he said to himself: "There you go, brothers, in your gilt
carriages and prosperities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother
and confusion, the devil very largely in it.... Not one of you could do
what I am doing, and it concerns you too, if you did but know it."[21]
When the book was done he wrote to his brother, "It is a wild, savage
book, itself a kind of French Revolution."[22] From its somewhat obscure
style it requires a slow perusal and careful study, but this serves all
the more to fix it in the memory causing it to remain an abiding
influence.
There are eight volumes of "Frederick the Great," containing, according
to Barrett Wendell's computation, over one million words; and this
eighteenth-century tale, with its large number of great and little
characters, its "mass of living facts" impressed Wendell chiefly with
its unity. "Whatever else Carlyle was," he wrote, "the unity of this
enormous book proves him, when he chose to be, a Titanic artist."[23]
Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can appreciate the
tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle.
Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his
nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his
devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual
wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is
this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact
the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth
century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties,
and _inanity_ now fallen _putrid_, rotting inevitably towards
annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it,
and to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which the
perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire so far as I can
see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated."[25]
The student, who has become acquainted with the works of Gibbon,
Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something of the men themselves
and this curiosity may be easily and delightfully gratified. The
autobiographies of Gibbon, the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan,
the History of Carlyle's Life by Froude, present the personality of
these historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of all his
own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two
books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they
are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay
had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were
seldom without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be derived
from a study of their lives from their suggestions of books, helpful in
the development of a historian. They knew how to employ their odd
moments, and Gibbon and Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory
reading. Sainte-Beuve makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing
Tocqueville's lack of it, so that he failed to illustrate and animate
his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long run, great
monotony.[26] As a relief to the tired brain, without a complete loss of
time, the reading at hazard, even browsing in a library, has its place
in the equipment of a historian. One of the most striking examples of
self-education in literature is Carlyle's seven years, from the age of
thirty-two to thirty-nine, passed at Craigenputtock where his native
inclination was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock,
wrote Froude, is "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The
nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, 700 feet
above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce to the
hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking."[27] The
place realized Tennyson's words, "O, the dreary, dreary moorland." Here
Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation, and wrote
for his bread, although a man who possessed an adequate income could not
have been more independent in thought than he was, or more averse to
writing to the order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no
outside distractions, books were his companions as well as his friends.
As you read Froude's intimate biography, it comes upon you, as you
consider Carlyle's life in London, what a tremendous intellectual stride
he had made while living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It
was there that he continued his development under the intellectual
influence of Goethe, wrote "Sartor Resartus" and conceived the idea of
writing the story of the French Revolution. Those seven years, as you
trace their influence during the rest of his life, will ever be a
tribute to the concentrated, bookish labors of bookish men.
It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for
the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge
of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory
is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may
be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of
fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against
the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. Hence we
are to believe the dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men
which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them. It is true
that Gibbon's service in the Hampshire militia and his membership in the
House of Commons were of benefit to the historian of the Roman Empire.
Grote's business life, Macaulay's administrative work in India, and the
parliamentary experience of both were undoubtedly of value to their work
as historians, but there are excellent historians who have never had any
such training. Carlyle is an example, and Samuel R. Gardiner is another.
Curiously enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university and
the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many of the prominent
men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay. I am not aware that there
is in historical literature any other such striking contrast as this,
for it is difficult to draw the line closely between the historian and
the man of affairs, but Gardiner's example is strengthened in other
historians' lives sufficiently to warrant the statement that the
historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written by men and
treat of the thoughts and actions of men and a good study may be made of
human character without going beyond the walls of a library.
Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that the two authors
who have helped me most in this study of human character are
Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet
Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue
of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come
in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition
and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page of
history from having grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A
constant reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging passions and
feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did the British
matron who remarked of "Antony and Cleopatra" that it was "so unlike the
home life of our beloved queen." Bernard Shaw, who has said much in
detraction of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, "that
the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real to us
than our actual life--at least until our knowledge and grip of actual
life begins to deepen and glow beyond the common. When I was twenty,"
Shaw continues, "I knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to
Abhorson, much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries; and
to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius catches my eye in a
newspaper, I turn to the passage with curiosity."[28]
Homer's character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient and the
modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at home in the twentieth
century and would adapt himself to the conditions of modern political
life. Perhaps, indeed, he would have preferred to his militant age our
industrial one where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive
eloquence rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a
signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives a luminous
commentary in Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses
gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted
on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in
regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book
which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it first when
seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail
to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind
of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's plays,
I carry away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it
affords with one of the greatest of human minds.
All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo historian is,
of course, merely supplementary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive.
I am assuming that during his undergraduate and graduate course the
student has been advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the
English, German, and French scientific historians of the past fifty
years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater or less degree
with all the eminent American historians. My own experience has been
that a thorough knowledge of one book of an author is better than a
superficial acquaintance with all of his works. The only book of Francis
Parkman's which I have read is his "Montcalm and Wolfe," parts of which
I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded with the scenery
of the place, I have read on Lake George, three others more than once at
Quebec, and I feel that I know Parkman's method as well as if I had
skimmed all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection,
for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public, "Montcalm
and Wolfe" is his best work. So with Motley, I have read nothing but
the "Dutch Republic," but that I have read through twice carefully. I
will not say that it is the most accurate of his works, but it is
probably the most interesting and shows his graphic and dashing style at
its best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his "Lectures and Addresses
on Mediaeval and Modern History" would give me a good idea of his
scholarship and literary manner and that I need not tackle his magnum
opus. But those lectures gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the
remark of still another admirer that nobody ever read his
"Constitutional History" through, I did read one volume with interest
and profit, and I hope at some future time to read the other two. On the
other hand, I have read everything that Samuel R. Gardiner has written
except "What Gunpowder Plot Was." Readers differ. There are fast readers
who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of a book in a
brief time and they retain the thing which they have sought. Assuredly I
envy men that power. For myself, I have never found any royal road to
learning, have been a slow reader, and needed a re-reading, sometimes
more than one, to acquire any degree of mastery of a book. Macaulay used
to read his favorite Greek and Latin classics over and over again and
presumably always with care, but modern books he turned off with
extraordinary speed. Of Buckle's large volume of the "History of
Civilization" Macaulay wrote in his journal: "I read Buckle's book all
day, and got to the end, skipping, of course. A man of talent and of a
good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent."[30] John Fiske, I
believe, was a slow reader, but he had such a remarkable power of
concentration that what he read once was his own. Of this I can give a
notable instance. At a meeting in Boston a number of years ago of the
Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, Colonel William R.
Livermore read a learned and interesting paper on Napoleon's Campaigns
in Northern Italy, and a few men, among whom were Fiske and John C.
Ropes, remained after supper to discuss the paper. The discussion went
well into details and was technical. Fiske had as much to say as any one
and met the military critics on their own ground, holding his own in
this interchange of expert opinions. As we returned to Cambridge
together, I expressed my surprise at his wide technical knowledge. "It
is all due to one book," he said. "A few summers ago I had occasion to
read Sir Edward Hamley's 'Operations of War' and for some reason or
other everything in it seemed to sink into my mind and to be there
retained, ready for use, as was the case to-night with his references to
the Northern Italian campaigns."
Outside of ordinary historical reading, a book occurs to me which is
well worth a historian's mastery. I am assuming that our hypothetical
student has read Goethe's "Faust," "Werther," and "Wilhelm Meister," and
desires to know something of the personality of this great writer. He
should, therefore, read Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," in
which he will find a body of profitable literary criticism, given out in
a familiar way by the most celebrated man then living. The talks began
when he was seventy-three and continued until near his death, ten years
later; they reveal his maturity of judgment. Greek, Roman, German,
English, French, Spanish, and Italian authors are taken up from time to
time and discussed with clearness and appreciation, running sometimes to
enthusiasm. As a guide to the best reading extant up to 1832 I know
nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and
his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far
greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while
Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study
contemporaries and competitors," Goethe said, "but the great men of
antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and
consideration.... Let us study Moliere, let us study Shakespeare, but
above all things, the old Greeks and always the Greeks."[31] Here is an
opinion I like to dwell upon: "He who will work aright must never rail,
must not trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only to do
well himself. For the great point is, not to pull down, but to build up
and in this humanity finds pure joy."[32] It is well worth our while to
listen to a man so great as to be free from envy and jealousy, but this
was a lesson Carlyle could not learn from his revered master. It is
undoubtedly his broad mind in connection with his wide knowledge which
induced Sainte-Beuve to write that Goethe is "the greatest of modern
critics and of critics of all time."[33]
All of the conversations did not run upon literature and writers.
Although Goethe never visited either Paris or London, and resided for a
good part of his life in the little city of Weimar, he kept abreast of
the world's progress through books, newspapers, and conversations with
visiting strangers. No statesman or man of business could have had a
wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21, 1827, he thus spoke: "I
should wish to see England in possession of a canal through the Isthmus
of Suez.... And it may be foreseen that the United States, with its
decided predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have
occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains.
It may furthermore be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific
Ocean where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure
harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the
furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and
the United States. In such a case, it would not only be desirable, but
almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained
between the eastern and western shores of North America, both by
merchant ships and men-of-war than has hitherto been possible with the
tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage around Cape Horn.... It is
absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a passage from
the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and I am certain that they will
do it. Would that I might live to see it!"[34]
"Eckermann's book," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "is the best biography of
Goethe; that of Lewes, for the facts; that of Eckermann, for the
portrait from the inside and the physiognomy. The soul of a great man
breathes in it."[35]
I have had frequent occasion to speak of Sainte-Beuve and I cannot
recommend our student too strongly to read from time to time some of his
critical essays. His best work is contained in the fifteen volumes of
"Causeries du Lundi" and in the thirteen volumes of "Nouveaux Lundis"
which were articles written for the daily newspapers, the
_Constitutionnel_, the _Moniteur_, and the _Temps_, when, between the
ages of forty-five and sixty-five, he was at the maturity of his powers.
Considering the very high quality of the work, the quantity is enormous,
and makes us call to mind the remark of Goethe that "genius and
fecundity are very closely allied." Excluding Goethe, we may safely, I
think, call Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern critics, and there is
enough of resemblance between historical and literary criticism to
warrant a study by the historian of these remarkable essays. "The root
of everything in his criticism," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is his
single-hearted devotion to truth. What he called 'fictions' in
literature, in politics, in religion, were not allowed to influence
him." And Sainte-Beuve himself has said, "I am accustomed incessantly to
call my judgments in question anew and to recast my opinions the moment
I suspect them to be without validity."[36] The writer who conforms to
such a high standard is an excellent guide for the historian and no one
who has made a study of these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of
candor and being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal.
Sainte-Beuve's essays deal almost entirely with French literature and
history, which were the subjects he knew best. It is very desirable for
us Anglo-Saxons to broaden our minds and soften our prejudices by
excursions outside of our own literature and history, and with Goethe
for our guide in Germany, we can do no better than to accept
Sainte-Beuve for France. Brunetiere wrote that the four literary men of
France in the nineteenth century who had exercised the most profound
influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.[37]
I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the
nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the
same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.
Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is studying human
character by the means of books. "Sainte-Beuve had," wrote Henry James,
"two passions which are commonly assumed to exclude each other, the
passion for scholarship and the passion for life. He valued life and
literature equally for the light they threw on each other; to his mind,
one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart."[38]
Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this general
preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty, which Motley, in
similar advice to an aspiring historian, fixed as the earliest age at
which one should devote himself to his special work, he is ready to
choose a period and write a history, if indeed his period has not
already suggested itself during his years of general preparation. At all
events it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country
and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select an
interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but I would say
for example that the attractive parts of German history are the
Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the epoch of Frederick the Great,
and the unification of Germany which we have witnessed in our own day.
The French Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern
annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved only by
the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes the chief officer of
state, interest revives and we follow with unflagging attention the
story of this master of men, for which there is a superabundance of
material, in striking contrast with the little that is known about his
Titanic predecessors, Alexander and Caesar, in the accounts of whose
careers conjecture must so frequently come to the aid of facts to
construct a continuous story. The Restoration and the reign of Louis
Philippe would for me be dull periods were they not illumined by the
novels of Balzac; but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the
Second Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted. In our own
history the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Constitution, and
Washington's administrations seem to me replete with interest which is
somewhat lacking for the period between Washington and the slavery
conflict. "As to special history," wrote Motley to the aspiring
historian, "I should be inclined rather to direct your attention to
that of the last three and a half centuries."[39] Discussing the subject
before the advanced historical students of Harvard a number of years
ago, I gave an extension to Motley's counsel by saying that ancient
history had better be left to the Germans. I was fresh from reading
Holm's History of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning,
elaboration of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject which
seemed to me to require a steady application and patience, hardly
consonant with the American character. But within the past five years
Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated that others besides Germans are
equal to the work by writing an interesting history of Rome, which
intelligent men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen's.
Courageously adopting the title "Grandeur and Decadence of Rome" which
suggests that of Montesquieu, Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field
from the appearance of Julius Caesar to the reign of Augustus[40] in a
manner to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy, France,
England, and the United States. There is no reason why an American
should not have done the same. "All history is public property," wrote
Motley in the letter previously referred to. "All history may be
rewritten and it is impossible that with exhaustive research and deep
reflection you should not be able to produce something new and valuable
on almost any subject."[41]
After the student has chosen his period I have little advice to offer
him beyond what I have previously given in two formal addresses before
the American Historical Association, but a few additional words may be
useful. You will evolve your own method by practice and by comparison
with the methods of other historians. "Follow your own star." If you
feel impelled to praise or blame as do the older historians, if it is
forced upon you that your subject demands such treatment, proceed
fearlessly, so that you do nothing for effect, so that you do not
sacrifice the least particle of truth for a telling statement. If,
however, you fall naturally into the rigorously judicial method of
Gardiner you may feel your position sure. It is well, as the scientific
historians warn you, to be suspicious of interesting things, but, on the
other hand, every interesting incident is not necessarily untrue. If you
have made a conscientious search for historical material and use it with
scrupulous honesty, have no fear that you will transgress any reasonable
canon of historical writing.
An obvious question to be put to a historian is, What plan do you follow
in making notes of your reading? Langlois, an experienced teacher and
tried scholar, in his introduction to the "Study of History," condemns
the natural impulse to set them down in notebooks in the order in which
one's authorities are studied, and says, "Every one admits nowadays that
it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of
paper,"[42] arranging them by a systematic classification of subjects.
This is a case in point where writers will, I think, learn best from
their own experience. I have made my notes mainly in notebooks on the
plan which Langlois condemns, but by colored pencil-marks of emphasis
and summary, I keep before me the prominent facts which I wish to
combine; and I have found this, on the whole, better than the card
system. For I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical
succession. First I go over the period in some general history, if one
is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the
order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts.
Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is
logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my
study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required,
I have drawn off my memoranda from the notebooks to cards, classifying
them according to subjects. Such a method enables me to digest
thoroughly my materials, but in the main I find that a frequent
re-perusal of my notes answers fully as well and is an economy of time.
Carlyle, in answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure, has gone
to the heart of the matter. "I go into the business," he said, "with all
the intelligence, patience, silence, and other gifts and virtues that I
have ... and on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the
_living_ mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles or
otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly turns out to be a
truth; only what you at last _have living_ in your own memory and heart
is worth putting down to be printed; this alone has much chance to get
into the living heart and memory of other men. And here indeed, I
believe, is the essence of all the rules I have ever been able to devise
for myself. I have tried various schemes of arrangement and artificial
helps to remembrance," but the gist of the matter is, "to keep the thing
you are elaborating as much as possible actually _in_ your own living
mind; in order that this same mind, as much awake as possible, may have
a chance to make something of it!"[43]
The objection may be made to my discourse that I have considered our
student as possessing the purse of Fortunatus and have lost sight of
Herbert Spencer's doctrine that a very important part of education is to
fit a man to acquire the means of living. I may reply that there are a
number of Harvard students who will not have to work for their bread
and whose parents would be glad to have them follow the course that I
have recommended. It is not too much to hope, therefore, that among
these there are, to use Huxley's words, "glorious sports of nature" who
will not be "corrupted by luxury" but will become industrious
historians. To others who are not so fortunately situated, I cannot
recommend the profession of historian as a means of gaining a
livelihood. Bancroft and Parkman, who had a good deal of popularity,
spent more money in the collection and copying of documents than they
ever received as income from their histories. A young friend of mine, at
the outset of his career and with his living in part to be earned, went
for advice to Carl Schurz, who was very fond of him. "What is your aim?"
asked Mr. Schurz. "I purpose being a historian," was the reply. "Aha!"
laughed Schurz, "you are adopting an aristocratic profession, one which
requires a rent-roll." Every aspiring historian has, I suppose, dreamed
of that check of L20,000, which Macaulay received as royalty on his
history for its sale during the year 1856,[44] but no such dream has
since been realized.
Teaching and writing are allied pursuits. And the teacher helps the
writer, especially in history, through the necessary elaboration and
digestion of materials. Much excellent history is given to the world by
college professors. Law and medicine are too exacting professions with
too large a literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical
investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good start, or, in
the talk of the day, the right sort of a "pull," I can recommend
business as a means of gaining a competence which shall enable one to
devote one's whole time to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until
he reached the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house
and began the composition of the first volume of his history. Henry C.
Lea was in the active publishing business until he was fifty-five, and
as I have already frequently referred to my own personal experience, I
may add that I was immersed in business between the ages of twenty-two
and thirty-seven. After three years of general and special preparation I
began my writing at forty. The business man has many free evenings and
many journeys by rail, as well as a summer vacation, when devotion to a
line of study may constitute a valuable recreation. Much may be done in
odd hours in the way of preparation for historical work, and a business
life is an excellent school for the study of human character.
[3] Conversations of Goethe, Eng. trans., 230.
[4] Trevelyan, I, 86.
[5] Life of Gladstone, II, 181.
[6] III, 51.
[7] Talks with Emerson, 23.
[8] My Vol. II, 142, n. 2.
[9] Curtis, I, 250.
[10] _Ibid._, I, 252.
[11] Miscellanies, I, 275.
[12] Exam. of Sir W. Hamilton's Philosophy, II, 310, 311.
[13] Gladstone, I, 195.
[14] p. 142.
[15] Trevelyan, I, 91.
[16] Froude, II, 317.
[17] Nichol, 20.
[18] Talks with Emerson, 162.
[19] Trevelyan, I, 379, 387, 409.
[20] Froude, III, 64, 65.
[21] _Ibid._, II, 385; III, 59.
[22] _Ibid._, III, 73.
[23] English Composition, 158.
[24] Letters of Jane Carlyle, II, 31.
[25] Froude's Carlyle, IV, 125.
[26] Causeries du Lundi, XV, 95.
[27] Froude, II, 19.
[28] Dramatic Opinions, II, 53.
[29] "Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back
Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,
A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:" etc.
[30] Trevelyan, II, 388, n.
[31] Eng. trans., 236.
[32] _Ibid._, 115.
[33] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 265.
[34] Eng. trans., 222.
[35] Nouveaux Lundis, III, 328.
[36] Enc. Brit.
[37] Balzac, 309.
[38] Brander Matthews, _Cent. Mag._, 1901.
[39] Letter of April 4, 1864, _Harper's Mag._, June, 1889.
[40] I speak of the first four volumes.
[41] _L.c._
[42] p. 103.
[43] New Letters, II, 11.
[44] Life, II, 345.