THE HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.
Carlyle was so much besides being a historian, and seems, when we look
back from a distance of sixty years, so clearly the leader of thought in
the early part of this period, that it has been deemed advisable to treat
him by himself. But even without him the volume and the quality of
historical work accomplished during those forty years is very great.
Besides Macaulay, who surpassed Carlyle in popular estimation, Thomas
Arnold, Grote, Thirlwall and Froude were all men who, in most periods,
might well have filled the first place in historical literature.
Several reasons may be assigned for the concentration of talent upon
history. In the first place, the circumstances of the time made an
examination of the foundations of society imperative. This necessity
reveals itself everywhere, in poetry, in philosophy, and in theology, as
well as in history. The cry is on all sides for reconstruction; and there
is a growing sense that the reconstruction must take place upon a
groundwork of fact, discoverable only by a study of the past. The
pre-Revolutionary writers had relied upon _a priori_ theory, but the
immediate results were so different from their anticipations that their
successors were little disposed to repeat the mistake. Modern history
teaches above all things the lesson of continuity. Institutions change and
grow, but they never spring up suddenly like a Jonah's gourd; and even
revolutions only modify, they do not annul the past.
Science too has had a powerful influence, and the success of the
scientific method has encouraged the application of a method similar in
principle, though necessarily different in minor points, to the facts of
history. The last two generations have witnessed a great extension of the
principle of induction in the sphere of history; and as the first step in
a complex process of induction is the accumulation of masses of facts, we
have here perhaps an explanation of some of the weaknesses of the modern
school of history. It is apt to lose itself in detail. The reach of
Tacitus or of Gibbon seems no longer attainable, because their successors
must know everything, and can with difficulty restrain themselves from
stating everything. Some one, doubtless, whether he be called a
philosopher or a historian, will ultimately assimilate the masses of
information thus laboriously compiled, and the world will once more have
the principal results compactly stated and in orderly sequence. Buckle's
experiment proves that it is possible to attempt this too soon; but at the
same time the welcome that experiment received is an indication that we
shall not be permanently satisfied with the fragments and aspects of
history which alone the new method as yet yields. Unity of treatment is
ultimately as essential in history as codification is in law; and it is
essential for much the same reason. The old proverb tells us that the wood
may be invisible by reason of the trees.
We may trace the influence of science also in the greatly deepened sense
of the importance of origins. In science the chief triumphs have been won
by tracing things to their beginnings; in physical structure to atoms and
molecules, in animal life to nerve cells, protoplasm, or whatever is
simplest and most primitive. Exactly the same effort is made in modern
history; and nothing is more distinctive of it, in contrast with the
comparatively superficial historical school of the eighteenth century,
than the determination to trace the starting-point and original meaning of
institutions. Ages which had been previously left to legend and myth have
been patiently investigated, and it is to them that we are now referred
for the explanation of our own times.
But not only has the ideal of history changed; the material from which it
is written, old in one sense, is to a large extent new in the sense that
it is now for the first time accessible. The men of earlier times, even
when they had the industry and the will for minute investigation, had
seldom the means. The vast increase of accessible documents has caused
history to be written afresh, to an extent best measured by the fact that,
except those who rank as original authorities, Gibbon alone among
historians prior to the present century still holds his ground.
[Sidenote: Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859).]
Thomas Babington Macaulay felt these modern influences, though not quite
in their full force. He was the son of Zachary Macaulay, celebrated for
his exertions in the Anti-Slavery crusade. At Cambridge, whither he went
in 1818, young Macaulay had for contemporaries a very brilliant set of
young men, including Derwent and Henry Nelson Coleridge, Moultrie, Praed
and Charles Austin, 'the only man,' says Sir George Trevelyan, 'who ever
succeeded in dominating Macaulay,' the man who weaned him from the Toryism
in which he had been brought up, and 'brought him nearer to Radicalism
than he ever was before or since.' A constitutional incapacity for and
hatred of mathematics was punished by the omission of his name from the
Tripos list of 1822. He had been 'gulfed.' Nevertheless, in 1824, he was
elected to a Fellowship of Trinity College. He was called to the bar in
1826, but never took seriously to the law as a profession. He had received
an earlier call to another profession, and during his stay at Cambridge he
had been a frequent contributor to _Knights Quarterly Magazine_. But we
may date from 1825, when his essay on Milton appeared in the _Edinburgh
Review_, the opening of his career in literature. For many years
afterwards he was a frequent and certainly the most effective contributor
to the review.
Macaulay's connexion with Jeffrey's review was profitable in several ways
to himself as well as to it. He gained money, and fame, and political
connexions which determined the course of his life for many years, and
which by doing so unquestionably influenced his historical work. Through
the influence of Lord Lansdowne, who had been struck by his articles on
Mill, Macaulay became, in 1830, member for Calne. He soon made his mark,
rather as a speaker of set speeches than as a debater. His speeches have
much the character of his essays, the rhetorical style of which is not ill
adapted to verbal utterance. The clearness which Macaulay never failed to
give made the rhetoric effective. His great knowledge, and especially his
wonderful command of historical illustration, enabled him often to clinch
his argument where abstract discussion would have failed. The most telling
passage in one of his best known speeches, the speech on copyright, is a
long list of concrete instances of the effect of the proposal he was
advocating as contrasted with that of the proposal he was combating. At
the close, with well-founded confidence, he challenges his opponent to
match it. While therefore Macaulay had but a small share of the highest
faculty of the orator, the power to sway the passions of his audience, he
had in a high degree the power to interest their intellect. For neat,
crisp statement, apt and copious illustration, and effective rhetoric
occasionally rising into eloquence, his speeches have few equals.
As a reward for his services in the cause of reform Macaulay was appointed
a member of the Supreme Council of India. In 1834 he sailed from England,
and he resided in India till the beginning of 1838. Soon after his return
to England he was elected M.P. for Edinburgh, and in 1839 was raised to
the Cabinet as Secretary at War. But he gradually became absorbed in his
history and devoted less and less time to politics. His defeat in 1847 in
the parliamentary election for Edinburgh contributed to wean him still
more from public life. He was hurt, and the smart of wounded pride is
apparent in the most beautiful verses he ever wrote. They were composed on
the night of his defeat, and they declare that the writer's true
allegiance belongs to that Spirit of Literature who, when all the 'wayward
sprites' of Gain, Fashion, Power and Pleasure have passed away, draws near
to bless his first infant sleep. The verses are transparently sincere.
Macaulay's love for letters was the passion of his life; and, acting on
such a character as his, the unmerited rebuff dealt by Edinburgh proved a
turning point in his career. He retired into private life, and though
after the repentance of Edinburgh in 1852 he sat again for his old
constituency, it was with the fixed intention not to immerse himself in
parliamentary work, and above all not to accept office. He was now
completely absorbed in his history; and as he gradually became conscious
of the greatness of his task, and felt that life was slipping away with
only a fragment of it accomplished, he grudged more and more any deduction
from the time which, he foresaw, must be too short at best. For his
previously excellent health had broken down soon after his election, and
he never fully recovered it. He resigned his seat in 1856. In the
following year he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay of Rothley,
and he died on December 28th, 1859, leaving his history a fragment.
The works of Macaulay are remarkably easy to classify and not very
difficult to appraise. They fall under four heads,--speeches, essays,
including the biographical articles contributed to the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_, the _History of England_, and poetry.
The speeches have been already noticed. The essays, which are described as
'critical and historical,' are only to a very minor degree critical. The
well-known paper on Robert Montgomery, irresistibly amusing in its
severity, is exceptional in the fact that, starting with a literary
subject, it treats that subject throughout from a literary point of view.
In most of his essays, as he himself confessed, Macaulay escapes as soon
as possible from criticism and glides into history. This is the case even
in the essay on Milton, who would have enchained him to criticism if
anyone could. Where he is really critical, Macaulay always shows the
qualities of good sense, sound judgment and extensive knowledge; but few
will think that he shows any remarkable fineness of critical faculty. On
occasion he could characterise a style exceedingly well. His contrast
between the simple, nervous and picturesque expression of Johnson's
familiar letters and his Latinised pomposity when his sentences are done
out of English into Johnsonese, cannot be forgotten; and his treatment of
Bacon's style is as sound and excellent as his treatment of Bacon's
philosophy is mistaken and false. But his mind was of too positive a type
to admit of the finest kind of criticism. He saw nothing in half-light,
and he was deficient in sympathy. His criticism of the Queen Anne writers,
whom he knew best, will not bear comparison, in respect of insight and
sensitive appreciation, with Thackeray's criticism of them in the _English
Humourists_.
Macaulay's strength lay elsewhere; and though he carried into all he did
the deficiencies revealed by his criticism, as well as deficiencies due to
political prejudice and personal bias, yet all faults are forgotten, for
the time at least, in admiration of wide knowledge, boundless energy and
brilliant style. Macaulay's extensive reading, backed by his wonderful
memory, served him well. His knowledge was always at hand. If he wanted a
reference or an allusion he could in a moment supply it. Yet his
quotations, references and allusions are never pedantic, nor are they
allowed to clog and weight his style. They serve their proper purpose of
illustrating and enforcing his point. He defends his position by parallel
after parallel, contrast after contrast. It was this wealth of
illustration that forced acquiescence from men of less knowledge among his
contemporaries; it is the suspicion that the parallels are not always
accurate, and the contrasts not always sound, that has since caused so
many of his conclusions to be regarded with suspicion. But frequently the
historical illustrations are poured out, not to defend any thesis, but
simply because they crowd spontaneously into the writer's mind; and some
of the most effective passages in Macaulay's writings are of this
character. Take, for example, the well-known passage from _Warren
Hastings_ beginning, 'The place was worthy of such a trial,' or the
description in the _History_ of the spot where the dust of Monmouth was
laid. Less crowded with historical names and details, but still deriving
most of its charm from the same cause, is the almost equally well-known
paragraph in the essay on _Ranke's History of the Popes_, beginning,
'There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy
so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church.' There is a
rapidity, fire and vividness in such passages by which we may in great
measure account for Macaulay's popularity. He had no more marked literary
gift. It shows itself even more spontaneously in his letters than in his
formal writings; and the letters have sometimes moreover a touch of humour
rare in the works he intended for publication. Few things of his are more
purely delightful than the letter to his friend Ellis, describing the
division in the House of Commons in 1831, when the Reform Bill was carried
by a majority of one: 'You might have heard a pin drop as Duncannon read
the numbers. Then, again, the shouts broke out, and many of us shed tears.
And the jaw of Peel fell; and the face of Twiss was as the face of a
damned soul; and Herries looked like Judas taking his necktie off for the
last operation.'
It is true that the vivid colouring of the essays sometimes becomes too
glaring, that the characters, especially when they have relation to
politics, are apt to be too dark or too bright for human nature, and that
the writing is throughout that of a partisan. But if this detracts from it
is far from destroying their value; and Macaulay's biographer is
pardonably proud of their popularity, and insists, with justice, that it
is an element in their greatness as well as an evidence of it.
The first two volumes of the _History of England_ were published in 1848,
and the third and fourth in 1855, while the fifth was left unfinished at
Macaulay's death. The history repeats in great measure both the merits and
the defects of the essays. Written with a steady eye to permanence, it is
far purer and more perfect, better proportioned, more restrained and more
harmonious than they; but it is marked still by the same limitations. We
find the writer's strength in a great command of facts and in clearness
and force of style. His weaknesses are partisan bias, exaggeration and a
certain want of depth.
The story of Macaulay's ambition to write a history which every young lady
should read in preference to the latest novel has been often repeated and
often ridiculed. The ridicule is ill judged. To aim at popularity is in
itself innocent and even laudable; in truth it is universal. Carlyle
himself with reason felt aggrieved that he remained so long unrecognised.
The desire for popularity becomes vicious only when it leads the man who
cherishes it to pander to a taste which he knows to be depraved, or to
write something worse than his best, because he knows that his best would
not be as popular. There is no trace of such conduct in Macaulay. His
faults were inherent in his nature, and could have been eradicated only by
making him anew.
Of late years Macaulay's history has been often challenged on the score of
inaccuracy and untruth. The charge is brought against every historian in
turn; and we must remember, on the other hand, that Freeman, one of the
most competent of judges, warmly praised Macaulay for his command of
facts. It is necessary to distinguish three things: falsity of statement,
incompleteness of statement, and the drawing of disputable conclusions. In
the first respect Macaulay was rarely, in the second and third he was
frequently, at fault. His omissions are often indefensible. The whole
evidence of his character is against the supposition that they were due to
conscious dishonesty. It is far more probable that, approaching his
subject with a strong prepossession, he was positively blind to anything
that told against his own view. Partly for the same reason, and partly
because his philosophic endowment was not equal to his literary talent,
his inferences too are often questionable. And this perhaps will prove in
the end a more serious objection to his history than his partisanship;
for, after all, there are worse things, even in historical writing, than
partisanship. The man who is free from all temptation to take a side, if
not from political affinity then from moral sympathy, must run some risk
of being dull and colourless.
Macaulay did much to enlarge and liberalise the conception of history.
More than any of his predecessors, he attempted to base his views on a
wide consideration of the literature and life of the people, as well as on
their constitution and campaigns and treaties. He cast all pseudo-dignity
to the winds. His method was sound; and herein Carlyle, though he applied
the principle differently, was quite at one with Macaulay. Another
honourable characteristic, wherein the two historians likewise agreed, was
their care in visiting the scenes about which they had to write; and both
have gained in vividness and in topographical accuracy from this habit.
Macaulay's notes on the scenes of the Irish war were 'equal in bulk to a
first-class article in the _Edinburgh_ or _Quarterly Review_.'
The style of Macaulay is at its best in the _History_, where it is more
chastened, more varied and sonorous than in the _Essays_. The same tricks
and mannerisms reappear, but they are softened and restrained. The trick
of a rapid succession of curt sentences, at times so effective, but also
at times monotonous and jarring, is kept within bounds. Short and simple
are mingled with comparatively long and complex sentences; for Macaulay,
scornful of 'the dignity of history' when it is merely cramping and
obstructive, is scrupulously mindful of it when the phrase has a
legitimate application. He rejects as meretricious ornament and
illustration which, as he himself declared, he would have considered not
only admissible but desirable in a review. The just censure that his style
is hard and metallic applies with far more force against the _Essays_
than against the _History_. Greater care and higher finish deepen and
enrich the tone.
Macaulay's verse must be dismissed with few words. He is best known by his
_Lays of Ancient Rome_, compositions which, like his prose writings, are
historical in principle. They neither are nor pretend to be great, but
they rank high among the modern imitations of popular poetry. At the same
time, they display no such sympathetic genius as, for example, Scott's
ballad of Harlaw, no such loftiness of mind as his _Cadyow Castle_. They
are clear, rapid and vigorous, like their author's prose. The generous
judgment of Elizabeth Barrett, quoted in Ward's _English Poets_, is
essentially just: 'He has a noble, clear, metallic note in his soul, and
makes us ready by it for battle.' That he makes us ready by it for battle
is eminently true of the splendidly martial _Battle of Naseby_, the most
stirring piece of verse Macaulay ever wrote. It is interesting to note
that the historian of England thus, at the age of twenty-four, reached his
highest point in ballad verse in a subject taken from the country and the
century which all his life long attracted his most serious study.
In several respects Macaulay is the natural antithesis to Carlyle: to some
extent they may even be regarded as complementary. We may correct the
excess of the one by the opposite excess of the other. Macaulay was an
optimist, Carlyle a pessimist; Macaulay was the panegyrist of his own
time, Carlyle was its merciless critic; Macaulay devoutly believed all the
formulas of the Whig creed, and had great faith in Reform Bills and
improvements in parliamentary machinery, Carlyle accepted no formulas
whatsoever, and set small store by any reforms that were merely
parliamentary; Macaulay was orthodox in his literary tastes and methods,
Carlyle was revolutionary and scornful of rule. The contrast applies
equally to their personal history and character. Macaulay was sunny,
genial and healthy, Carlyle dyspeptic, irascible, 'gey ill to deal wi';'
Macaulay suddenly sprang into fame, Carlyle slowly and with difficulty
fought his way to it. They are contrasted in their very biographies.
Macaulay's is one of the pleasantest in the language; Carlyle's awoke an
acrimonious discussion, due in part certainly to the sins of the subject,
but in part also to his injudicious treatment by the biographer.
The truth lay between them. If Macaulay was too easily optimistic, Carlyle
was too gloomy. To paint a picture all shadow is as untrue to art, and
generally to fact, as it is to paint one all light. It is true that the
great problem of society, wise government, cannot be solved by franchises
and ballot-boxes; but proper regulations as to these may help to solve it.
Carlyle sometimes forgot that the practical problem usually is, not to
secure that complex and difficult thing, wise government, but to effect
some little improvement which will conduce to the comparative, wiser
government, if it does not lead us to the unattainable positive.
The example of German thoroughness had no small influence in fostering the
new movement in history. It acted most directly on the students of ancient
history, and Niebuhr was the channel through which it was transmitted to
England. Before the middle of the century his authority was hardly
questioned, though a little later we can trace the reaction in the works
of Sir George Cornewall Lewis and others; and now it is no longer possible
to conjure with the Pelasgians. But whatever doubts may cloud some of the
conclusions of Niebuhr, it was he who enabled the English historians to
breathe life into the dry bones of ancient history. Thomas Arnold,
Thirlwall and Grote were all inspired by him. Taking these writers as a
group, we may remark one important difference between them and the
writers of modern history. The historians of the ancient world are wider
in their range, and in their works it is still possible to trace the whole
life of a people. Thirlwall and Grote embrace all the history of Greece
down to the period of decay, and only Arnold's early death prevented him
from being equally comprehensive. The reason is that there is a certain
finality about ancient history. The materials are manageable in quantity,
and there neither have been nor can be such additions to them as to those
on which modern history is based.
[Sidenote: Thomas Arnold (1795-1842).]
Thomas Arnold was a man of untiring energy, and he found for his energies
three channels, two of them practical and one literary. It is as a
schoolmaster that he has won his widest, and what will probably prove his
most enduring fame. Some unfavourable critics have insisted that Arnold's
Rugby boy could only be described by the slang term, prig. But such
criticism is merely the revolt against excessive praise. There may have
been some intellectual and moral coxcombry developed in early years by
many of Arnold's pupils; but that is not the mature characteristic of men
like Clough and Stanley and Dean Vaughan. Moreover, Thomas Arnold was
emphatically one of those men from whom virtue goes out; and a result due
to affectation can hardly have come from a character so simple and so
sincere.
But Arnold was ambitious likewise to have a hand in determining the
doctrines and shaping the thought of England. He, a clergyman, naturally
took an ecclesiastical view of what would do that; but it was at the same
time a broad view. His position was singularly interesting. The two great
evils of the age, in his eyes, were that materialism which he believed to
be centred in the University of London, and the Catholic revival
associated with the University of Oxford. He stood upon a ground of
rationalism, but it was a rationalism which he firmly believed to be
consistent with faith. He hated materialism because it left no room for a
religious creed; he hated Tractarianism because it was irreconcilable with
reason, and he was convinced that whatever was irrational must and ought
to go to ruin. He would have accepted the aphorism of a living writer,
'Nothing that is intellectually unsound can be morally sound.' 'It is,'
says he, 'because I so earnestly desire the revival of the Church that I
abhor the doctrine of the priesthood.' It was this, the combination of
faith with fearless loyalty to reason, that gave him his peculiar interest
in the eyes of observers. The keenest of these however thought the
permanent maintenance of that position impossible; and Dr. Arnold's son,
Matthew, in his _Letters_ expresses in another way an opinion
substantially identical with that which Carlyle had expressed before.
Arnold's _History of Rome_, published between the years 1838 and 1843, has
in great part lost its importance through the researches of Mommsen and
other German scholars; but there are portions which can never lose their
importance. The point of view is essentially Arnold's own. The impulse to
write came to him because he found in Rome the ancient analogue to the
'kingly commonwealth of England.' He found in the great republic lessons
both of encouragement and of warning to his own country; but he sinned
less than some others, notably Grote, in the way of drawing these lessons
direct from the ancient state to the modern. In another respect, dignity
of style, he had an immense advantage over his more widely-read
contemporary. Arnold's English is always forcible, and in the best
passages it is eloquent. He is strongest in his account of military
operations, and his description of the campaigns of the Second Punic War
remains still the most vivid and readable in our language, and probably in
modern literature. Certainly Mommsen, powerful as his work is, cannot
rival Arnold as a military historian. It is rather in depth of
scholarship, in mastery of facts, in comprehension of the early history,
and consequently of the subsequent working, of the constitution, that
Arnold has been surpassed.
[Sidenote: Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875).]
The other two historians of the ancient world both chose Greece for their
subject. The more interesting and abler man of the two, and the profounder
scholar, had the singular ill fortune to see his work superseded, almost
as soon as he had written it, by that of his rival. Connop Thirlwall was
celebrated in his day as one of the best of English scholars; but no man
was ever less of the mere grammarian. Trenchant intellect and sound
judgment were his characteristics. He impressed all who encountered him
with his capacity to be a leader of men; and his early enterprises seemed
a guarantee that he would redeem his promise. As one of the translators of
Niebuhr he moulded English historical thought; and his translation of
Schleiermacher's essay on St. Luke made an equally deep impression on
English theology. It almost stopped his professional advancement. When, in
1840, Thirlwall was suggested to Lord Melbourne for the bishopric of St.
David's, Melbourne, with the characteristic oath, objected: 'He is not
orthodox in that preface to Schleiermacher.' After some investigation the
pious minister convinced himself that the writer of the preface was
sufficiently orthodox for the purpose. Thirlwall, perhaps to the cost of
his permanent fame, became Bishop of St. David's, and held the office till
the year before his death. As Bishop he was bold and independent in
judgment. On two memorable occasions he stood alone among his order. He
was the solitary bishop who refused to sign the address calling upon
Colenso to resign, and he alone voted for the disestablishment of the
Irish Church. Nevertheless he was in a position unfortunate for himself.
His nature demanded unfettered freedom of thought; and the controversy
with Rowland Williams over the question of _Essays and Reviews_ proved
that such freedom was not to be found on a bishop's throne.
Thirlwall's principal contribution to literature is his _History of
Greece_ (1835-1847). The completed work is unfortunately marred by traces
of the original design. It had been meant for _Lardner's Cyclopaedia_, but
overflowed the limits set. Thirlwall thereupon revised the scheme; but he
never attained the freedom he would have had if he had begun to write on
his own plan and his own scale. His profound scholarship, penetrating
judgment, nervous though severe style, and critical acumen, all show to
advantage in the _History_. He is far more concentrated than Grote; and
though the latter caught the meaning of certain movements and certain
institutions which Thirlwall neglected or misinterpreted, he presents a
more luminous and a less prejudiced view of Greek history than his
successful rival.
But if the _History of Greece_ is Thirlwall's most solid contribution to
literature, that which gives the best impression of the man, regarded by
contemporaries as a rival of the greatest, is his _Letters to a Young
Friend_.[3] Few collections of letters give a more charming view of a
relation of pure friendship between two people of widely different age.
They are weighty too because they touch at many points on questions of
universal interest. It has been said that the letters a man writes ought
to be ascribed to his correspondent in equal measure with himself; and it
is certain that from the sympathy he found in this friendship Thirlwall
drew an inspiration nothing else in his life ever gave him.
[Sidenote: George Grote (1794-1871).]
George Grote, the schoolfellow, friend and rival of Thirlwall, was a man
in most respects widely different from the great Bishop. Thirlwall's
thought was German in origin, though it was coloured by English
ecclesiastical opinion. Grote was a Benthamite, and had all the hardness
without quite all the force of that school. It was the rising school, and
part of Grote's success was due to the fact that he was moving along the
line of least resistance. He was a persevering, clear-sighted, determined
man. As a historian of Greece he was patient and thorough. He had marked
out the subject as his own more than twenty years before the publication,
in 1846, of his first two volumes; and ten years more passed before the
work was finished. Indeed, we may say that his whole life was devoted to
it; for, according to his conception of history, _Plato and the other
Companions of Sokrates_ (1865), and the incomplete Aristotelian studies
issued posthumously in 1872, were parts and appendages of the history.
Grote was spurred on to this work by political feelings more nearly
related to the present time. He was irritated by the Toryism of Mitford's
_History of Greece_, which he exposed in an article in the _Westminster
Review_. Yet one of his own most conspicuous defects is that he too
evidently holds a brief on the opposite side. He does not slur facts,
still less does he falsify, but his arguments have sometimes the character
of special pleading. Democracy becomes a kind of fetish to him. Its
success in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. is made an argument for
extending the English franchise in the nineteenth century A.D.; and Grote
is wholly blind to the fact that the wide difference of circumstances
makes futile all reasoning from the one case to the other.
Grote's style is heavy and ungainly. He plods along, correct as a rule,
but uninspiring and unattractive. He is similarly clumsy in the use of
materials. Skilful selection might have appreciably shortened his history;
but Grote rarely prunes with sufficient severity, and often he does not
prune at all. His habit of pouring out the whole mass of his material in
the shape of notes lightens the labour of his successors, but injures his
own work as an artistic history. Nevertheless, though Grote had no genius,
and nothing that deserves to be called a style, his _History of Greece_
holds the field. It does so because of its solidity and conscientious
thoroughness, because of its patient investigation of the origin and
meaning of institutions, and because its very faults were, after all,
faults which sprang from sympathy. Grote was the first who did full
justice to the Athenian people; and he may be pardoned if he sometimes did
them more than justice.
As these three, Arnold, Thirlwall and Grote, dealt with the ancient world
in its glory and greatness, so there were two, Milman and Finlay, who
traced its decay, or the process of transition from the ancient to the
modern world.
[Sidenote: Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868).]
Henry Hart Milman in his earlier days wrote poetry. The turning-point in
his literary career was the publication of the _History of the Jews_
(1830), the first English work which adequately treats the Jews in their
actual historical setting, not in the traditional way as a 'peculiar
people' with practically no historical setting at all. Milman afterwards
edited Gibbon and wrote a life of the historian; and in 1840 the result of
his studies appeared in the _History of Christianity under the Empire_.
In 1855 the _History of Latin Christianity down to the Death of Pope
Nicholas V._ set the crown upon his labours. This work is Milman's best
title to remembrance, and though errors have been detected in it, the tone
and spirit are good, the method sound and the scholarship admirable.
[Sidenote: George Finlay (1799-1875).]
George Finlay has suffered from an unattractive theme, for few care about
the obscure fortunes of Greece after its conquest by the Romans. But
Finlay was an enthusiast who not only wrote about Greece but lived in it;
and this residence (continuous after 1854) imparts to his history its most
valuable qualities. Finlay published a series of works on Greece between
1844 and 1861, all of which were summed up in his _History of Greece from
its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time_ (1877).
[Sidenote: John Mason Neale (1818-1866).]
[Sidenote: Charles Merivale (1808-1893).]
Among historians of less importance, John Mason Neale did for the Holy
Eastern Church a service similar to that performed by Milman for the Latin
Church; but he is more likely to be remembered as a hymn-writer than as a
historian. Charles Merivale was likewise a subordinate member of the group
of ancient historians. His principal work was a _History of the Romans
under the Empire_ (1850-1862). Its worst defect is that the author is not
quite equal to his subject. Merivale was a respectable historian, but the
successful treatment of the Romans under the Empire demanded a great one.
[Sidenote: James Anthony Froude (1818-1894).]
Among the writers of modern history the next in rank after Macaulay and
Carlyle is James Anthony Froude, the brother of Richard Hurrell Froude,
famous for his connexion with the Oxford movement. For a time J. A. Froude
himself was a Tractarian, and he took orders. But Newman's drift to Rome
forced him in the opposite direction. His first considerable book, _The
Nemesis of Faith_ (1849), records his change of mind and indicates how
impossible it must always have been for him to rest permanently in the
position of the Tractarians.
Leaving Oxford and the Tractarians, Froude fell under the spell of
Carlyle. They were introduced to each other soon after this, but it was
not till Froude's settlement in London in 1860 that they became intimate.
Carlyle's influence upon his disciple was almost wholly good. The younger
man had the good sense not to imitate his master's style, while he learnt
from him clear, sharply-outlined, fearless judgment; and the mists of
Tractarianism rolled away for ever.
The great work of Froude's life was his _History of England from the Fall
of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada_ (1856-1870). It was written
under the direct inspiration of Carlyle. 'If I wrote anything,' says
Froude, 'I fancied myself writing it to him, reflecting at each word what
he would think of it, as a check on affectations.' He submitted the first
two chapters, in print, to Carlyle; and the verdict, 'though not wanting
in severity,' was on the whole favourable. The critics were divided.
Froude was a man who usually either carried his readers wholly with him or
alienated them. Those who loved clear, vigorous, pointed English, keen
intelligence and life-like portraiture, were delighted with the book.
Students, familiar with the original documents and able to criticise
details, regarded it with very different eyes.
Both sides were right in their principal assertions, and both were prone
to forget that there was another aspect of the case. On the one hand, it
has been established beyond the reach of reasonable dispute that Froude
was habitually and grossly inaccurate. It is indeed doubtful whether any
other historian, with any title to be considered great, can be charged
with so many grave errors. Froude is inaccurate first of all in his facts.
He does not take the trouble to verify, he misquotes, he is not careful to
weigh evidence. But moreover, he is inaccurate in what may be called his
colour. He paints his picture in the light of his own emotions and
prejudices, he is rather the impassioned advocate than the calm judge. He
would not only have acknowledged this, but he would have defended himself;
and there is something to be said for his view. Absolute impartiality is,
in the first place, unattainable; and in the second place, so far as it is
attained, it is not always an unmixed good. Pure disinterestedness is apt
to mean absence of interest. It is certainly true that some of the
greatest histories in the world are all alive with the passions of the
writers. Those of Tacitus are so, and likewise those of Carlyle; and
Herodotus had undoubtedly a partiality for Athens. Froude therefore is not
to be wholly condemned on this score; but he ought to have remembered that
the adoption of such a theory of history made it doubly incumbent on him
to examine carefully the grounds upon which his opinions rested. His
cardinal defect was a disregard of this precaution.
Froude moreover was given to paradox. It has been repeatedly pointed out
that one of the great tasks of the century has been the whitewashing of
scoundrels. De Quincey undertook Judas. Carlyle in his later days
performed the service for Frederick. Froude in his justification of Henry
VIII. was only following a fashion. Nevertheless, the twisting of facts,
the exaggeration of all that tells on the one side and the slurring or
suppression of arguments on the other, are grave faults in history. And
these are the almost inevitable results of the indulgence in paradox and
the advocacy of weak causes. All the cleverness is unconvincing, and the
detection of the sophistry brings discredit upon the whole work into which
it is admitted.
This is the case of the _advocatus diaboli_ against Froude. It is a
re-statement of the main points in Freeman's indictment. But a history is
a piece of literature as well as a record of facts; and as literature
Froude's work stands very high. In the first place, he is great in style.
Not that his English is of the kind that calls attention to itself. It is
seldom magnificent, but it is always adequate, and the reader never feels
himself jarred by want of taste or befogged by obscurity either of thought
or expression. It is wholly free from affectation. Froude concerned
himself merely to express his meaning, and wrote a good style because he
did not trouble himself about style. He answered impatiently those who
inquired into the secret of his prose, telling them that he only wrote
what he thought and let the style take care of itself.
Froude had moreover a great talent for the delineation of character.
Whether his characters are always true to fact may be questioned; but his
Henry VIII., his Queen Mary and his Queen Elizabeth certainly leave the
impression of living human beings, and the charm of his history is largely
due to the vividness with which he paints them.
Froude never undertook another work on such a scale as the _History_.
Perhaps he realised that the scale was too large. The plan of the _Short
Studies on Great Subjects_ (1867-1883) was in some respects better suited
to him. In these essays he gives with unsurpassed vigour the thoughts of a
powerful mind on themes of special interest; and as they do not pretend to
be exhaustive the writer's weaknesses are not brought into prominence.
_The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century_ (1872-1874) was, next
to the great _History_, his largest work. But Irish history has been and
is the source of so much passion that the present generation is no
favourable time for either writing or criticising such a work. Later, in
1889, the historical romance, _The Two Chiefs of Dunboy_, showed that his
interest in the country still survived; and those who know Ireland are the
readiest to acknowledge that Froude has not only written an interesting
story, but has shown great insight into the country and its inhabitants.
But the principal work of Froude's later years was his biography of
Carlyle, the first instalment of which was published in 1882, and the
second two years later. No biography has ever raised a greater storm of
indignation; nor can it be denied that for this Froude was partly to
blame. His method is ruthless, and in some cases its justice is
questionable. At the same time, the condemnation passed upon him has been
unmeasured; and no small part of it has been due to the disappointment of
worshippers of Carlyle at the discovery that if the head of their idol was
pure gold the feet were miry clay. Froude has written, perhaps one of the
least judicious, but certainly one of the most readable of English
biographies.
The other works of Froude are of inferior consequence. Neither his _Julius
Caesar_ nor his _Erasmus_ is calculated to increase his reputation; while
the very interesting _Oceana_ indicates, more clearly than any of his
other writings, the source of his greatest errors--a habit of jumping to
conclusions from insufficient premisses. Froude pronounces confidently
upon the colonies on no better ground than a hurried visit and a few
conversations with chance residents, who might not always be
disinterested. Yet _Oceana_ had more influence than many a better book.
Like Seeley's _Expansion of England_ it was partly the consequence, but
also partly the cause of the great change in public opinion whereby the
colonies, regarded thirty years ago as little better than a burden, have
come to be considered the principal support of the greatness of England.
[Sidenote: Alexander William Kinglake (1809-1891).]
The historian generally prefers to work upon a subject removed to some
distance from his own time, but the intense interest of a great armed
struggle not infrequently makes it an exception. Thus, the Peninsular War
found a contemporary historian in Napier, and similarly Alexander William
Kinglake wrote the story of the next great European contest in which
England was engaged after the fall of Napoleon. He had previously won a
purer literary fame in the fascinating volume of travel, _Eothen_,
published in 1844. The journey of which it is a record had been made about
nine years earlier, and _Eothen_ as finally published was the result of
long thought and of fastidious care in literary workmanship. It is little
concerned with facts and occurrences, attempting rather to reproduce the
effect of the life and the scenes of the East.
The reputation acquired by this book opened up for Kinglake the larger
subject of the Crimean War. He had accompanied the expedition from love of
adventure, and chance made him acquainted with Lord Raglan, whose papers
were ultimately intrusted to him. _The Invasion of the Crimea_ (1863-1887)
is open to several serious objections. It is far too long, and the style
is florid, diffuse and highly mannered. Moreover, Kinglake is a most
prejudiced historian. There is no mean in his judgment; he either can see
no faults, or he can see nothing else. Raglan and St. Arnaud are examples
of the two extremes. But frequently the historian supplies the corrective
to his own judgment. If the battle of the Alma was won as Kinglake says it
was, then it was won not by generalship but by hard fighting plus a lucky
blunder on the part of the general. On the other hand, Kinglake sustains
the interest with great skill, especially in the battle volumes. Long as
are the accounts of the Alma and of Balaclava, they are perfectly clear,
and the impression left is indelible.
[Sidenote: Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862).]
It has been already hinted that the chief defect in this great mass of
historical work is the want of a philosophy of history. The unmanageable
volume of material almost smothers the intellect. An attempt to make good
the defect was made by Henry Thomas Buckle, in his _History of
Civilisation_ (1857-1861), with results not altogether satisfactory.
Buckle was a man of vast reading and tenacious memory; but no knowledge,
however extensive, could at that time have sufficed to do what he
attempted. He soon discovered this himself, and what he has executed is a
mere fragment of his daring design. Even so, it is larger than his
materials justified. In accounting for Buckle's failure, stress has often
been laid upon the fact that his education was private. This is a little
pedantic. Grote, whose history has been accepted at the universities as
the best available, was of no university. Mill, one of the men who have
most influenced thought in this century, was of none either. Gibbon,
perhaps the greatest of historians, has put on record how little he owed
to Oxford; and Carlyle has told us with characteristic vigour how
unprofitable he thought his university of Edinburgh. The men who did not
go to a university have done good work; and the men who did go to one have
declared that they owed little or nothing to the education there received.
In the face of such facts it is impossible to account so for the failure
of Buckle. The real reason, besides the cardinal fact that the attempt was
premature, is that Buckle, though he had the daring of the speculator's
temperament, had neither its caution nor its breadth. The great
speculative geniuses of the world have been prudent as well as bold. No
one is bolder than Aristotle, but no one is more careful to lay first a
broad foundation for his speculations. Buckle did not use his great
knowledge so. His account of the causes of things always rouses suspicion
because it is far too simple. He never understood how complex the life of
a nation is; and when he came to write he practically rejected the greater
part of his knowledge and used only the small remainder. He was moreover a
man of strong prejudices. He could not endure the ecclesiastical type of
mind or the ecclesiastical view of things; and his account of civilisation
in Scotland is completely vitiated by his determination to regard the
Church, before the Reformation and after the Reformation alike, as merely
a weight on the wheel, not a source of energy and forward movement.
Buckle then illustrates the tendency of the mind, noted by Bacon, to grasp
prematurely at unity. This very fact, conjoined with the clearness and
vigour of his style, was the reason of his popularity. When the inadequacy
of his theories began to be perceived there came a reaction. But
inevitably those theories will be replaced by others. To some extent they
have been replaced already by the theories of two writers, Sir Henry Maine
and Mr. W. E. Hartpole Lecky, of whom the latter belongs, however, rather
to the period still current than to the Age of Tennyson.
[Sidenote: Sir Henry Maine (1822-1888).]
The majority of Maine's works too were published after the year 1870, but
as his most awakening and original book, _Ancient Law_, appeared as early
as 1861, we may fairly regard him as belonging to the period under
consideration. Sir Henry Maine was a great teacher as well as a great
writer, and he had already acquired a considerable reputation before the
appearance of his _Ancient Law_. But it was that book which established
his name as an original thinker. It has two great merits. It is written
in a most lucid, pleasant style, and it is decidedly original in
substance. Maine's design is far less ambitious than Buckle's; but for
that very reason his performance is more adequate. The most conspicuous
distinction between the two is that the later writer shows in far greater
measure than his predecessor the modern sense of the importance of
origins. It was this that gave his work importance. To a great extent the
task of recent historians has been to trace institutions to their source,
and explain their later development by means of the germs out of which
they have grown. In this respect Maine was a pioneer, and his later work
was just a fuller exposition of the principles at the root of _Ancient
Law_. His _Village Communities_ (1871) and his _Early History of
Institutions_ (1875) are both inspired by the same idea. In his _Popular
Government_ (1885) he may be said to break new ground; but it is easy to
see the influence on that book of the author's prolonged study of early
forms of society. These later books are not perhaps intrinsically inferior
to _Ancient Law_, but they are less suggestive, just because so much of
the work had been already done by it.
Biography is another form of history, and it is not surprising that a
period so rich in historical writings should also be distinguished in
biography. If Boswell's _Johnson_ is still supreme, the Age of Tennyson
has produced several lives surpassed only by it. Two of the best of these
lives, Carlyle's _Sterling_ and Froude's _Carlyle_, were written by
historians, and have been noticed along with their other works. Another
remarkable book, the _Autobiography_ of John Stuart Mill, is likewise best
taken along with the more formal works of the philosopher. But even after
these large deductions, and after a rigid exclusion of everything that is
not, both in form and substance, of very high quality, there remain at
least two men of great distinction in literature, J. G. Lockhart and A. P.
Stanley, who must be treated as first and chiefly biographers.
[Sidenote: John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854).]
John Gibson Lockhart was a man of many gifts and accomplishments, a good
scholar, a keen satirist and critic, a powerful novelist, an excellent
translator. He was accomplished with the pencil as well as with the pen,
and some of his caricatures are at once irresistibly amusing and
profoundly true. His 'Scotch judge' and 'Scotch minister' would make the
reputation of a number of _Punch_. His biting wit won for him the
_sobriquet_ of 'the Scorpion;' but notwithstanding his sting he won and
retained through life many warm friends. He was trained for the Scottish
bar, but attached himself to the literary set of _Blackwood_, in which
Christopher North was the most striking figure. With him and Hogg Lockhart
was concerned in an exceedingly amusing skit, the famous _Chaldee
Manuscript_; but the joke gave so much offence that this 'promising babe'
was strangled in the cradle. A good deal of more serious literary work
belongs to the period before 1830,--the novels, a mass of criticism, and
the _Spanish Ballads_. Then too was formed the connexion which opened to
Lockhart the great work of his life. He was introduced to Scott in 1818.
The acquaintance prospered. Scott liked the clever young man, Scott's
daughter liked him still better, and in 1820 Lockhart married Sophia
Scott. Largely through her father's influence he was appointed editor of
the _Quarterly Review_, an office which he held until 1853, and in which
he became to a very great degree, both by reason of what he wrote and of
what he printed, responsible for the tone of criticism at the time.
Lockhart undoubtedly shared that excessive personality which was the blot
of criticism, and especially of the _Blackwood_ school, in his
generation. He has been charged with the _Blackwood_ article on Keats, and
with the _Quarterly_ article on _Jane Eyre_, but he may now be acquitted
of both these sins. It was however Lockhart who wrote the _Quarterly_
article on Tennyson's early poems; but this, though bad in tone and
excessively severe, is to a large extent critically sound. So far as they
can be traced, Lockhart's criticisms are such as might be expected from
his mind,--clear, incisive and vigorous. They are however often
unsympathetic and harsh, because criticism was then too apt to be
interpreted as fault-finding, and Lockhart could not wholly free himself
from the influence of a vicious tradition.
But it is by his _Life of Scott_ (1836-1838) that Lockhart will live in
literature. He had in an ample measure the first of all requirements in a
biographer, personal acquaintance with the man whose life he wrote. Almost
from the time of his introduction, and certainly from the date of his
marriage, Lockhart's relations with Scott were of the closest; and though
he was not personally familiar with the facts of Scott's earlier life, he
knew quite enough to understand the springs of the man's character.
Moreover, in the autobiographical fragment and in the endless stores of
family and friendly anecdote open to him he had ample means of making good
the deficiency. For among Lockhart's advantages is to be reckoned the fact
that he had not merely married into the family, but had married, as it
were, into the circle of friends. The _Life of Scott_ shows that the
families of Abbotsford, of Chiefswood and of Huntley Burn (the last
Scott's great friends the Fergusons) were for many purposes only one
larger family.
There are certain dangers, as well as great advantages, to the biographer
even in intimate friendship. Misused in one way, it lowers the
biographer's own character; misused in another, it either lowers or
unnaturally exalts that of his subject. Boswell, employing his materials
with excellent effect for the purposes of his book, degrades himself.
Froude, making a mistake of another sort, exaggerates all the less lovable
characteristics of Carlyle; while there are multitudes who paint pictures
not of flesh and blood, but of impossible saints and heroes. 'A love
passing the love of biographers' was Macaulay's phrase for the excess of
hero-worship. Lockhart has avoided all these errors. When his book was
read the contradictory charges were brought against him, on the one hand
of having exaggerated Scott's virtues and concealed his faults, and on the
other of ungenerous and derogatory criticism. We may be sure that
Lockhart's temptation, if he felt any, was rather to 'extenuate' than to
'set down in malice.' But, with a noble confidence in a noble character,
he does not extenuate. To describe Scott as a mere money-lover would be
untrue; yet many have felt that there is a fault in his relation to
wealth, and Lockhart uses just the right words when he says, 'I dare not
deny that he set more of his affections, during great part of his life,
upon worldly things, wealth among others, than might have become such an
intellect;' and he gives just the right explanation when he goes on to
trace this defect to its root in the imagination. In his treatment of the
commercial matters in which Scott was involved, Lockhart is equally
judicial.
The tact of Lockhart deserves as much praise as his fairness of judgment.
As regards part of his work, he was put to the test a few years ago by the
publication of Scott's _Journal_. Lockhart had made liberal extracts from
this journal, explaining at the same time that passages were necessarily
suppressed because of their bearing upon persons then alive. A comparison
of his extracts with the journal now accessible _in extenso_ shows how
skilfully he suppressed what was likely to give pain, while at the same
time producing much the same general impression as the whole document
leaves.
A biography, like a letter, may be said to have two authors, the man
written about and the person who writes. Scott certainly gave Lockhart the
greatest assistance, both by what he wrote and by what he was. At the
beginning the delightful fragment of autobiography, towards the end the
profoundly interesting _Journal_, and all through the free, manly,
large-hearted letters, were materials of the choicest sort. Scott himself
moreover, genial, cordial, of manifold activity, a centre of racy
anecdote, was a person whom it was far more easy to set in an attractive
frame than any mere literary recluse. Many could have produced a good life
of such a man. Lockhart's special praise is that he has written a great
one. Except Johnson, there is no English man of letters so well depicted
as Scott. Lockhart's taste and style are excellent. The caustic wit which
ran riot in the young _Blackwood_ reviewer is restrained by the experience
of years and by the necessities of the subject. Lockhart's own part of the
narrative is told in grave, temperate English, simple almost to severity,
but in a high degree flexible. In the brighter parts there is a pleasant
lightness in Lockhart's touch; in the more serious parts he is weighty and
powerful; and on occasion, especially towards the end, there is a
restrained emotion which proves that part of his wonderful success is due
to the fact that his heart was in his work.
[Sidenote: Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815-1881).]
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley ranks considerably below Lockhart, yet his _Life of
Arnold_ (1844) is inferior only to the few unapproachable masterpieces of
biography. Stanley was a fluent and able writer in several fields, but in
most respects his work is now somewhat discredited. His _Commentary on
the Epistles to the Corinthians_ (1855) has been severely handled for
inaccuracy and defective scholarship. His _Lectures on the Eastern Church_
(1861) and _On the Jewish Church_ (1863-1876), and his book of Eastern
travel, _Sinai and Palestine_ (1856) are delightful in literary execution,
but they are popular rather than solid. Stanley neither was nor,
apparently, cared to be exact. He trusted too much to his gift of making
things interesting, and had an inadequate conception of the duty he owed
to his readers of writing what was true. Other travellers who have
followed his footsteps in the East have sometimes found that the scenes he
describes, in charming English, are such as are visible only to those
whose eyes can penetrate rocks and mountains. This constitutional
inaccuracy is a blot upon nearly all his works, and his one permanent
contribution to literature will probably prove to be the _Life of Dr.
Arnold_. There is here, as Stanley's biographer justly says, 'a glow of
repressed enthusiasm which gives to the work one of its greatest charms.'
Stanley loved Arnold, and threw himself with unwonted thoroughness into
the task of depicting him. For two years, we are told, he abandoned for it
every other occupation that was not an absolute duty. The principal defect
of the _Life_ is that the plan--a portion of narrative, and then a body of
letters--is too rigid and mechanical. But the narrative is exceedingly
good, giving within moderate compass a clear impression of Arnold; and the
letters are well selected and full of interest.
MINOR HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.
[Sidenote: Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867).]
Sir Archibald Alison was the son of a clergyman who won a name for a work
on the _Principles of Taste_. Alison practised at the Scottish bar, became
Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and was knighted for his services to literature.
His _magnum opus_ is a _History of Europe during the French Revolution_,
which he afterwards continued to the accession of Napoleon III. It is
laborious and honest, though not unprejudiced. Disraeli sneeringly said
that 'Mr. Wordy' had proved by his twenty volumes that Providence was on
the side of the Tories.
[Sidenote: John Hill Burton (1809-1881).]
John Hill Burton, best known as the historian of Scotland, was an
industrious man of letters, who wrote on many subjects,--_The Scot
Abroad_, _The Book Hunter_, and _The Age of Queen Anne_, as well as the
_History of Scotland_. The last is the work of a capable and careful
writer rather than of a great historian. Burton is sensible and
dispassionate, and he has collected and put into shape the principal
results of modern research as applied to Scotland.
[Sidenote: John Forster (1812-1876).]
John Forster was a laborious but somewhat commonplace writer. He was the
author of a _Life of Goldsmith_ (1848) and a _Life of Sir John Eliot_
(1864). But his most valuable works are two biographies of contemporaries,
the _Life of Landor_ (1869) and the _Life of Dickens_ (1872-1874). Forster
had little power of realising character, and the subjects of his
biographies are never clearly outlined. His _Life of Dickens_ has an
importance beyond its intrinsic merits, because it is the most
authoritative book on the great novelist.
[Sidenote: Walter Farquhar Hook (1798-1875).]
Walter Farquhar Hook was a prominent clergyman, whose doctrine, that the
English Roman Catholics were really seceders from the Church of England,
caused a great stir when it was first promulgated. His vast design of the
_Lives of the Archbishops of Canterbury_ (1860-1876) was ultimately
executed in twelve big volumes. The plan was too large and the characters
treated too multifarious for really good biography, but it is solid and
valuable work.
[Sidenote: Sir John William Kaye (1814-1876).]
Sir John William Kaye wrote two meritorious books of military history,
_The History of the War in Afghanistan_ (1851), and _The History of the
Sepoy War in India_ (1864-1876). The latter, which roused some
controversy, was left unfinished at Kaye's death, and was afterwards
completed by Colonel Malleson.
[Sidenote: Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861).]
Sir Francis Palgrave was in the early part of his life an active
contributor to the _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly Reviews_, and a diligent
editor of state documents. His _Rise and Progress of the English
Commonwealth_ (1832) threw much light on the early history of England.
Palgrave was in his day one of the most earnest students of mediaeval
history.
[Sidenote: Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope (1805-1875).]
Philip Henry, Earl Stanhope, wrote the _History of the War of the
Succession in Spain_, the _History of the Reign of Queen Anne_, and the
_History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles_.
He took great pains with his work, but he does not reach distinction
either of thought or style.
[Sidenote: Sir William Stirling-Maxwell (1818-1878).]
Sir William Stirling-Maxwell is less widely known than he deserves to be,
but this is partly due to the expensiveness of his works. He wrote _Annals
of the Artists of Spain_, _The Cloister Life of Charles V._, _Velasquez
and his Work_, and a posthumous book, _Don John of Austria_. All his work
is distinguished for learning and good taste.
[Sidenote: Agnes Strickland (1806-1874)]
Agnes Strickland was a popular writer whose work is readable rather than
profound or original. Her principal books are the _Lives of the Queens of
England_, followed up by _Lives of the Queens of Scotland_.
[Sidenote: Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849).]
Patrick Fraser Tytler, another historian of Scotland, came of a family
distinguished both in literature and in law. His _History of Scotland_ has
been superseded in general favour by Burton's, which has the advantage of
embodying more recent research. Tytler however was the abler man of the
two, and he had a higher literary gift than Burton. Except where the
narrative has to be re-written in the light of later discoveries, his
judgment is always worth weighing.