THE READING OF HISTORY
The plays of Shakespeare which are based upon the chronicles of
English kings are grouped in the Folio edition of the dramatic works
as “Histories.” It will not surprise any reader, who happens not to
have thought of it before, to learn that the episodes in “Henry IV” and
“Henry V” do not follow the actual course of events in the reigns of
the real kings; we take it for granted that Shakespeare meant to write
historical fiction, and we read the plays as creations of the poetic
imagination. But many readers will be surprised to hear that most works
which we call historic are likewise figments of the imagination, and
that we should read many of them in somewhat the same spirit as we
read the historical plays of Shakespeare or good historical novels.
Not only do we get the most pleasure out of the great historians by
regarding their works as pieces of artistic writing, but we save
ourselves from the error of accepting their narratives as fact. For
it is generally true that the more glowing, the more imaginative, the
more architectural a work of history, the more it is open to suspicion
that it is not an exact account of true events. In taking this
position we are not appropriating to the uses of literary enjoyment
works of information that should be left among the dictionaries and
encyclopedias; we are only obeying the best critical historians, who
warn us not to believe the accepted masterpieces of history, but allow
us to enjoy them. And enjoyment is what we seek and value.
The conception of history as the work of the imagination was held by
all the older historians. Bacon said that poetry is “feigned history.”
That is, he conceived that the methods of poetry and history are the
same and that the difference lies in the material, the poet inventing
the substance of his story, the historian finding his substance in the
recorded events of the past. This view of history obtained up to the
nineteenth century. Macaulay said that history is a compound of poetry
and philosophy. And Carlyle thought it proper to designate as a history
his “French Revolution,” a work based on certain facts in history but
consisting in large part of dramatic fiction, philosophic reflection,
and political argument. In the last hundred years there has grown up a
view of history as a science, the purpose of which is to examine the
evidences of the past in human life as the geologist studies the past
of the physical globe on which we live. The new school of history is
comparatively so young that it has not produced many writers of high
rank in eloquence and literary power, whereas poetic history is as
old as literature and includes the work of many great masters. These
masters live by their eloquence; for it is eloquence rather than mere
truth to fact that gives a work a permanent place in literature. So
our knowledge of historic events must come to us, the world of general
readers, in large part from historians who were great artists rather
than accurate scholars. And scientific history, and also scientific
biography, will for another century be a voice crying in the beautiful
wilderness of legend, myth, philosophical opinion, political prejudice,
and patriotic enthusiasm.
We can cheerfully leave this scientific history where it belongs,
in the hands of historians and special students. The better for us
as readers if we can read the great histories with the same delight
and somewhat the same kind of interest that we bring to the reading
of romances. There will be enough truth in them to give us a fairly
just view of former ages. The culture and humanity will be there.
Shakespeare’s stories of English kings give us the spirit of England.
Carlyle’s “French Revolution” will never cease to be a splendid work
of art. Bancroft’s “History of the United States” will remain a noble
celebration of democracy, even though he was not strict in his use of
documents.
In school we expect to learn true lessons in history, to get our dates
right and keep our judgments impartial. Out of school we shall read
history for pleasure and like it the better if it is informed with the
eloquence, the prejudice, the philosophy, in short the personality of a
great writer.
There are certain books that occur immediately as introductions to
the various departments of literature. We agreed that Palgrave’s
“Golden Treasury” is the best book to put into the hands of one
knocking for the first time at the door of poetry. Boswell’s “Life of
Johnson” is a perfect biography to win the new reader’s liking for
biographical literature and memoirs. And so there is one volume of
history that seems the best of all books in which English-speaking
youth may read the great story of the race, Green’s “Short History of
the English People.” One might wish from patriotic motives that there
were an American history equally good, but there is none, so far as I
know--none which covers our national life as a whole. We can, however,
be content with Green, for the American cannot know his own history or
his own literature and traditions without knowing those of England. Our
literature is English literature and must be for centuries to come,
and in most of our reading of poetry and fiction we shall find that
the history of England is involved more deeply than the history of our
country.
The merits of Green’s History, the literary merits, are its clear
arrangements, the fine lucidity of the writing, its condensation
of national movements into rich chapters where, as from a peak one
overlooks the great epochs of disaster and progress. These are the
opening sentences:
“For the fatherland of the English race we must look far away from
England itself. In the fifth century after the birth of Christ, the
one country which we know to have borne the name of Angeln or the
Engleland lay in the district which we now call Sleswick, a district
in the heart of the peninsula which parts the Baltic from the northern
seas. Its pleasant pastures, its black-timbered homesteads, its prim
little townships, looking down on inlets of purple water, were then but
a wild waste of heather and sand, girt along the coast with sunless
woodland, broken here and there by meadows which crept down to the
marshes and the sea.”
Could any historic novel, we may say could any _other_ historic
romance, open more enticingly? Here is rich promise, promise of
the picturesque, promise of the eloquent phrase, promise of a
sympathetic history of a people who are delvers in the soil, dwellers
in homesteads, and no mere pawns in the game of kings. This is to
be a history of a people. We shall learn of their great common
characteristics; we shall understand them as we understand a family,
and every adventure from King Alfred’s burning of the cakes to Clive’s
conquest of India will spring like the episodes in a great plot from
the character of the English race.
From Green’s History, as a whole, we shall learn what are the
important things in the history of any people. His admirable sense
of the relative values of events and persons informs his work with a
philosophy of life that is just, wholesome, and salutary for a young
person to be imbued with who must look out on the daily struggle about
him, read the endless hodge-podge of newspaper chronicle, and weigh
the day’s events wisely. Green fulfils the ideal which he sets forth
in the preface: “It is the reproach of historians that they have too
often turned history into a mere record of the butchery of men by their
fellow men. But war plays a small part in the real history of European
nations, and in that of England its part is smaller than in any....
If I have said little of the glories of Cressy, it is because I have
dwelt much on the wrong and misery which prompted the verse of Longland
and the preaching of Ball. But on the other hand, I have never shrunk
from telling at length of the triumphs of peace. I have restored to
their place among the achievements of Englishmen the ‘Faerie Queene’
and the ‘Novum Organum.’ I have set Shakespeare among the heroes of
the Elizabethan age.... I have had to find a place for figures little
heeded in common history--the figures of the missionary, the poet, the
printer, the merchant, the philosopher.”
One of the practical merits of Green’s England as an introduction to
the reading of historic literature is that at the head of each chapter
he gives the works from which he has drawn. And as his nature and
ideals of history led him to the most fertile and interesting of other
historians, his lists contain the titles of readable books rather than
dry and obscure sources. So that if a reader finds one part of the
story of England especially fascinating he can turn aside to those
historians who have treated it more fully, to the authorities whom
Green read and enjoyed. For instance, see the wealth of books which
Green mentions at the head of the chapter that most concerns us, The
Independence of America. There are Lord Stanhope’s “History of England
from the Peace of Utrecht,” Bancroft’s “History of the United States,”
Massey’s “History of England from the Accession of George the Third,”
Lecky’s “History of England in the Eighteenth Century”; the letters
and memoirs of individuals who witnessed the struggle, or took part
in it, such as the “Letters” of Junius, “Life and Correspondence of
Charles James Fox,” Burke’s speeches and pamphlets. And we should add
the newest important authority on the conflict, Trevelyan’s “American
Revolution.”
These books in turn will lead to others as far as the reader cares
to go. Indeed it is one of the delights and excitements of reading
that one book suggests another, and the eager reader, who is under no
obligation to go along a definite course, finds himself in a glorious
tangle of bypaths. A book like Green’s may lead into any corner of
literature; one may follow, as it were, over the intellectual ground
where he got his education. We may begin with Gibbon’s “Rome” which
he read at sixteen (other boys of sixteen can read it with as much
pleasure as he found in it, even if they do not become historians),
and we can go on through his early studies of the English church. If
one reads only the poets and men of letters to whom he gives a place
in his chronicle of English life one will be, before one knows it, a
cultivated man--even a learned man.
Let us dwell a moment on this aspect of leadership in books. No two
persons will ever follow the same course of reading; no list will
prove good for everybody; but any book which has interested you, and
which you have reason to think the product of a great mind, will
constitute itself a guide to reading;[3] it will throw out a hundred
clues, far-leading and profitable to take up, clues which show what
has been the reading of the author whose work suggests them. And there
must always be safety in following where a great man has gone in his
literary pilgrimages.
If there is no history of America comparable in scope and style to
Green’s “Short History of the English People,” there are several
American historians of high rank. Perhaps because they were endowed
with dramatic imagination, or were influenced by the literary rather
than the scientific masterpieces of history, American historians of
genius have applied their talents to romantic periods in the story of
foreign nations, or to those early navigations and settlements which
resulted in the founding of our nation. Washington Irving began in
his “Life of Columbus” and “The Conquest of Granada” the brilliant
stories of Spanish chivalry and adventure, which were continued by
William Hickling Prescott in “The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and
Isabella,” “The Conquest of Mexico” and “The Conquest of Peru.” The
writings of Prescott and Irving have a kind of antique gorgeousness
in which the modern historian does not allow himself to indulge. The
history of the French and the Indians and the pioneers appealed to
the genius of Francis Parkman. The beginner may settle down to any
book of Parkman’s with the happy certainty of finding a brilliant
and thrilling story. John Lothrop Motley, in “The Rise of the Dutch
Republic” and “The United Netherlands,” treats of a people whose story
the American reader may learn in youth or may postpone until after
he has become acquainted with some books on English and American
history. The colonial history of America is best read in the work
of John Fiske, whose gifts of style and philosophic outlook on life
place him among the great historians. The history of America from the
beginning to modern times must be read in books by various authors,
who deal with limited sections and periods. It is especially true of
recent periods that no one historian is adequate. Partisanship and
our closeness to the Civil War have prevented the American historian
from seeing the conflict clearly in its relations to the rest of our
national story, and for a just impression of the struggle between
the states, the reader should go to the documents and the memoirs of
the time. The reminiscences of the political leaders, the biography
of Lincoln, and the excellent narratives of Union and Confederate
generals--Grant, Alexander, Longstreet, Gordon, Sherman, Sheridan, and
others--constitute a history of the period. There is peculiar validity
in the reminiscences of the contemporary witnesses of historical
events. The writer of autobiography and memoirs is not expected to
give final judgments, and we unconsciously allow for his personal
limitation. The professional historian, on the other hand, is obliged
to make sweeping decisions, and we are likely too often to accept his
decisions as final, unless we are trained and critical students of
history. If one reads several memoirs of the same period, one gradually
forms an historical judgment about it and comes to a position midway
between the points of view of the various writers.
The young man beginning to read history now, as Green began Gibbon at
sixteen, may consider whether he will devote himself to the task of
writing the history of the American people. Even if his ambitions are
not so high, he may be sure that as a citizen of the Republic he can
never know too much about the history of his nation and of the men who
helped to make it.
As aids to historical reading, it is well to have some books of bare
facts, a short history of America, a dictionary of dates, and a compact
general encyclopedia of events, such as Ploetz’s “Epitome.” But these
are for reference and not for entertainment. As a rule, text books
of history prepared for schools, however excellent they may be for
the purposes of study, are not entertaining to read. They have not
space for all the elaborate plots, political intrigues, biographical
interludes, accounts of popular movements of thought, which appeal to
the imagination of the leisurely reader. Our school teachers will
take care that we learn the salient facts which everyone must know.
By ourselves we shall dip into Parkman’s “Montcalm and Wolfe” or
Prescott’s “Conquest of Mexico” or Carlyle’s “French Revolution.” In
reading these masterpieces for pleasure, we shall be supplementing our
work in school and making our daily lessons easier.
LIST OF WORKS OF HISTORY
_Supplementary to Chapter VII_
The following list of titles is not intended to outline an adequate
reference library for the student of history. It includes principally
books that have taken their place in literature by virtue of their
readability and their imaginative power, and may therefore be supposed
to interest the general reader. A few books are included which deal
with current historical problems and politics.
AMERICAN HISTORY
HENRY ADAMS. _History of the United States._
Covers exhaustively the period immediately following the Revolution.
GEORGE BANCROFT (1800-91). _History of the United States from the
Discovery of the Continent to 1789._
JAMES BRYCE. _The American Commonwealth._
The recognized authority on American political institutions.
EDWARD CHANNING. _Students’ History of the United States._
Said to be the best of the one-volume histories of this country.
JOHN FISKE (1842-1901). _Discovery of America, with Some Account
of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest._ _New France and New
England._ _Old Virginia and Her Neighbors._ _The Beginnings of New
England._ _The Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and
Religious Liberty._ _Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America._ _American
Revolution._ _Critical Period of American History (1783-89)._ _War
of Independence._ _Mississippi Valley in the Civil War._ _Civil
Government in the United States._
JOHN BROWN GORDON. _Reminiscences of the Civil War._
ALBERT BUSHNELL HART (and collaborators). _American History Told by
Contemporaries._
Four volumes of extracts from diaries and writers who lived in the
epochs under consideration. A rich source of information and enjoyment,
as are also the following books:
_How Our Grandfathers Lived._ _Colonial Children._ _Camps and
Firesides of the Revolution._ _Romance of the Civil War._
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. _American Revolution._
Selected from his “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.” This
with Trevelyan’s “American Revolution” will give American readers the
history of the conflict from a British point of view.
JAMES LONGSTREET. _From Manassas to Appomattox._
To be read in conjunction with the Memoirs by Grant, Porter, Sherman,
Gordon, Alexander, and other Union and Confederate generals.
FRANCIS PARKMAN (1823-93). _The Oregon Trail._ _France and England in
North America._
“France and England in North America” is divided into seven parts under
the following titles:
_Pioneers of France in the New World_; _The Jesuits in North America
in the Seventeenth Century_; _La Salle and the Discovery of the Great
West_; _The Old Régime in Canada_; _Count Frontenac and New France
under Louis XIV_; _A Half Century of Conflict_; _Montcalm and Wolfe_.
JAMES FORD RHODES. _History of the United States from the Compromise
of 1850._
THEODORE ROOSEVELT. _American Ideals._ _The Naval War of 1812._ _The
Winning of the West._
ELLEN CHURCHILL SEMPLE. _American History and Its Geographic
Conditions._
GOLDWIN SMITH. _Canada and the Canadian Question._ _The United States,
an Outline of Political History._
GEORGE OTTO TREVELYAN. _American Revolution._
WOODROW WILSON. _Congressional Government: a Study in American
Politics._ _History of the American People._
The second work, in five volumes, covers the history of the country
from the beginnings to the present time; both readable and trustworthy.
GREAT BRITAIN
FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626). _History of the Reign of Henry VII._
The first great piece of critical history in our language.
HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. _History of Civilization in England._
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). _Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches, with
Elucidations._
EARL OF CLARENDON (1608-74). _History of the Great Rebellion._
A vivid account of the Cromwellian wars by a royalist. Interesting to
read in connection with Carlyle’s “Elucidations” of the letters and
speeches of Cromwell.
MANDELL CREIGHTON. _Age of Elizabeth._
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN (1823-92). _History of the Norman Conquest._
_William the Conquerer._ _Growth of the English Constitution from the
Earliest Times._
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE (1818-94). _History of England from the Fall of
Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada._
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. _A Student’s History of England._ _History of
England from the Accession of James to the Outbreak of the Civil War._
_History of the Great Civil War._ _History of the Commonwealth and the
Protectorate._
The three histories last named constitute a continuous work of eighteen
volumes. Gardiner is not the easiest historian to read, but his work
is indispensable to anyone who would get a true view of a period which
more than any other in English history has been discolored by brilliant
biased historians, from Clarendon to Carlyle and Macaulay.
JOHN RICHARD GREEN (1837-83). _A Short History of the English People._
_The Making of England._ _The Conquest of England._ _A History of the
English People._
The “History” is a longer, though, perhaps, not a “greater,” book than
the “Short History.”
RICHARD HAKLUYT (1553-1616). _The Principal Navigations, Voyages and
Discoveries of the English Nation._
In eight volumes of _Everyman’s Library_.
HENRY HALLAM (1777-1859). _Constitutional History of England._
DAVID HUME (1711-76). _History of England._
Almost displaced as a historian by later writers, but still interesting
because of his philosophic and literary genius.
ANDREW LANG. _History of Scotland._
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. _History of England in the Eighteenth
Century._
THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-59). _History of England from James
II._
In three volumes in _Everyman’s Library_.
GOLDWIN SMITH. _The United Kingdom._
JACQUES NICOLAS AUGUSTIN THIERRY. _History of the Norman Conquest of
England._
In _Everyman’s Library_.
FRANCE
EDMUND BURKE (1729-97). _Reflections on the Revolution in France._
THOMAS CARLYLE (1795-1881). _The French Revolution._
VICTOR DURUY. _History of France._
English translation, published by Crowell & Co.
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT. _History of France from the Earliest
Times to 1848._
VICTOR HUGO. _History of a Crime._
Deals with the Coup d’etat of 1851, of which Hugo was a witness.
Vivid, powerful writing, easy to read in the French.
HENRY MORSE STEPHENS. _History of the French Revolution._
The work of a modern scientific historian, may be read after Carlyle’s
“French Revolution” as a corrective and for the sake of comparing two
historical methods.
HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE. _The Ancient Régime._ _The French
Revolution._ _The Modern Régime._
The application to French history of somewhat the same philosophic
methods and principles that inform his “History of English Literature.”
GERMANY
SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER. _The Thirty Years’ War._
ERNEST FLAGG HENDERSON. _A Short History of Germany._
HELMUTH KARL BERNHARD VON MOLTKE. _The Franco-German War._
ANCIENT GREECE
ALFRED JOHN CHURCH. _Pictures from Greek Life and Story._
Especially adapted to young readers.
ERNST CURTIUS. _History of Greece._
A monumental German work to be found in a readable translation.
THOMAS DAVIDSON. _Education of the Greek People and its Influence on
Civilization._
GEORGE FINLAY. _Greece Under the Romans._
In _Everyman’s Library_.
GEORGE GROTE. _History of Greece._
The standard English work in Greek history. In twelve volumes of
_Everyman’s Library_.
HERODOTUS. _Stories of the East from Herodotus._
Extracts retold by Alfred John Church, especially for young readers.
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY. _Greek Life and Thought from the Age of
Alexander to the Roman Conquest._ _A Survey of Greek Civilization._
ANCIENT ROME
SAMUEL DILL. _Roman Society in the Last Century of the Western Empire._
EDWARD GIBBON (1737-94). _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire._
The supreme contribution of England to historical literature, in its
combination of distinguished style and scientific method.
THEODOR MOMMSEN. _History of Rome._
A great German work, in five volumes, to be found in a readable English
translation.
OTHER HISTORIES
_Cambridge Modern History._
Of this great History planned by the late Lord Acton, ten volumes have
been published. It is the work of many writers and will be a storehouse
of the most competent historical writing of our time.
JAMES BRYCE. _Holy Roman Empire._
Readers of Bryce’s “American Commonwealth” will seek this other
excellent work.
JEAN FROISSART. _Chronicles._
In _Everyman’s Library_.
There are several translations and condensations of Froissart’s
“Chronicles,” notably “The Boy’s Froissart,” edited by the American
poet, Sidney Lanier.
MARY HENRIETTA KINGSLEY. _The Story of West Africa._
HENRY HART MILMAN (1791-1868). _History of Latin Christianity._
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. _A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble
in Samoa._
A fine piece of historical writing showing that Stevenson had the gifts
of the historian as well as the gifts of the poet and romancer.
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT (1796-1859). _Conquest of Mexico._ _Conquest
of Peru._ _Reign of Philip Second._ _Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella._
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY (1814-77). _Rise of the Dutch Republic._ _History
of the United Netherlands._
ARCHIBALD FORBES. _The Afghan Wars._
A mixture of history and vivid reporting by a great war correspondent.
PIERRE LOTI. _Last Days of Pekin._
WASHINGTON IRVING (1783-1859). _Knickerbocker’s History of New York._
_The Conquest of Granada._
These books demonstrate the wide range of Irving’s genius from
burlesque, mingled with genuine study of racial characteristics, to
sober and poetic history.
FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET (VOLTAIRE). _History of Charles XII of Sweden._
Accompanied in the English translation by the critical essays of
Macaulay and Carlyle. Easy to read in the French.
JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (1840-93). _Renaissance in Italy._
A work of rare beauty on the men, the history, and the art of Italy.
WALTER RALEIGH (1552-1618). _The Discovery of the Empire of Guiana._
_A History of the World._
Raleigh’s “History of the World” is not so large as it sounds in scope,
but in imagination it almost lives up to its title. Thoreau says: “He
is remarkable in the midst of so many masters. There is a natural
emphasis in his style, like a man’s tread, and a breathing space
between his sentences.”
FREDERIC HARRISON. _The Meaning of History._
An excellent guide to the reading of history.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] See also page 244 of this Guide.