UPTON,
Oct. 25, 1904.
DEAR HERBERT,--I have been studying, with a good deal of interest, two
books, the Letters of Professor A----, and the Life of Bishop F----.
Given the form, I think the editor of the letters has done his work
well. His theory has been to let the Professor speak for himself; while
he himself stands, like a discreet and unobtrusive guide, and just says
what is necessary in the right place. In this he is greatly to be
commended; for it happens too often that biographers of eminent men use
their privilege to do a little adventitious self-advertisement. They
blow their own trumpets; they stand and posture courteously in the
ante-room, when what one desires is to go straight into the presence.
I once had a little piece of biography to do which necessitated my
writing requests for reminiscences to several of the friends of the
subject of my book. I never had such a strange revelation of human
nature. A very few people gave me just what I wanted to know--facts,
and sayings, and trenchant actions. A second class of correspondents
told me things which had a certain value--episodes in which my hero
appeared, but intermingled with many of their own opinions, doings, and
sayings. A third class wrote almost exclusively about themselves, using
my hero as a peg to hang their own remarks upon. The worst offender of
all wrote me long reminiscences of his own conversations, in the
following style: "How well I remember the summer of 18--, when dear
P---- was staying at F----. I and my wife had a little house in the
neighbourhood. We found it convenient to be able to run down there and
to rest a little after the fatigues of London life. I remember very
well a walk I took with P----. It was the time of the Franco-Prussian
War, and I was full of indignation at the terrible sacrifice of life
which appeared to me to be for no end. I remember pouring out my
thoughts to P----." Here followed a page or two of reflections upon the
barbarity of war. "P---- listened to me with great interest; I cannot
now recall what he said, but I know that it struck me very much at the
time." And so on through many closely written pages.
Well, the editor of the Professor's letters has not done this at all;
he keeps himself entirely in the background. But, after reading the
book, the reflection is borne in upon me that, unless the hero is a
good letter-writer (and the Professor was not), the form of the book
cannot be wholly justified. Most of the letters are, so to speak,
business letters; they are either letters connected with ecclesiastical
politics, or they are letters dealing with technical historical points.
There are many little shrewd and humorous turns occurring in them. But
these should, I think, have been abstracted from their context and
worked into a narrative. The Professor was a man of singular character
and individuality. Besides his enormous erudition, he had a great fund
of sterling common sense, a deep and liberal piety, and a most
inconsequent and, I must add, undignified sense of humour. He carried
almost to a vice the peculiarly English trait of national
character--the extreme dislike of emotional statement, the inability to
speak easily and unaffectedly on matters of strong feeling and tender
concern. I confess that this has a displeasing effect. When one desires
above all things to have a glimpse into his mind, to be reassured as to
his seriousness and piety, it is ten to one that the Professor will, so
to speak, pick up his skirts, and execute a series of clumsy, if comic,
gambols and caracoles in front of you. A sense of humour is a very
valuable thing, especially in a professor of theology; but it should be
of a seemly and pungent type, not the humour of a Merry Andrew. And one
has the painful sense, especially in the most familiar letters of this
collection, that the Professor took an almost puerile pleasure in
trying to shock his correspondent, in showing how naughty he could be.
One feels the same kind of shock as if one had gone to see the
Professor on serious business, and found him riding on a rocking-horse
in his study, with a paper cap on his head. There is nothing morally
wrong about it; but it appears to be silly, and silliness is out of
place behind a gown and under a college cap.
But the Biography of Bishop F---- opens up a further and more
interesting question, which I feel myself quite unequal to solving. One
has a respect for erudition, of course, but I find myself pondering
gloomily over the reasons for this respect. Is it only the respect that
one feels for the man who devotes patient labour to the accomplishment
of a difficult task, a task which demands great mental power? What I am
not clear about is what the precise value of the work of the erudite
historian is. The primary value of history is its educational value. It
is good for the mind to have a wide view of the world, to have a big
perspective of affairs. It corrects narrow, small, personal views; it
brings one in contact with heroic, generous persons; it displays noble
qualities. It gives one glimpses of splendid self-sacrifice, of lives
devoted to a high cause; it sets one aglow with visions of patriotism,
liberty and justice. It shows one also the darker side; how great
natures can be neutralised or even debased by uncorrected faults; how
bigotry can triumph over intelligence; how high hopes can be
disappointed. All this is saddening; yet it deepens and widens the
mind; it teaches one what to avoid; it brings one near to the deep and
patient purposes of God.
But then there is a temptation to think that vivid, picturesque,
stimulating writers can do more to develop this side of history than
patient, laborious, just writers. One begins to be inclined to forgive
anything but dulness in a writer; to value vitality above accuracy,
colour above truth. One is tempted to feel that the researches of
erudite historians end only in proving that white is not so white, and
black not so black as one had thought. That generous persons had a
seamy side; that dark and villainous characters had much to be urged in
excuse for their misdeeds. This is evidently a wrong frame of mind, and
one is disposed to say that one must pursue truth before everything.
But then comes in the difficulty that truth is so often not to be
ascertained; that documentary evidence is incomplete, and that even
documents themselves do not reveal motives. Of course, the perfect
combination would be to have great erudition, great common sense and
justice, and great enthusiasm and vigour as well. It is obviously a
disadvantage to have a historian who suppresses vital facts because
they do not fit in with a preconceived view of characters. But still I
find it hard to resist the conviction that, from the educational point
of view, stimulus is more important than exactness. It is more
important that a boy should take a side, should admire and abhor, than
that he should have very good reasons for doing so. For it is character
and imagination that we want to affect rather than the mastery of
minute points and subtleties.
Thus, from an educational point of view, I should consider that Froude
was a better writer than Freeman; just as I should consider it more
important that a boy should care for Virgil than that he should be sure
that he had the best text.
I think that what I feel to be the most desirable thing of all is, that
boys should learn somehow to care for history--however prejudiced a
view they take of it--when they are young; and that, when they are
older, they should correct misapprehensions, and try to arrive at a
more complete and just view.
Then I go on to my further point, and here I find myself in a still
darker region of doubt. I must look upon it, I suppose, as a direct
assault of the Evil One, and hold out the shield of faith against the
fiery darts.
What, I ask myself, is, after all, the use of this practice of
erudition? What class of the community does it, nay, can it, benefit?
The only class that I can even dimly connect with any benefits
resulting from it is the class of practical politicians; and yet, in
politics, I see a tendency more and more to neglect the philosophical
and abstruse view; and to appeal more and more to later precedents, not
to search among the origins of things. Nay, I would go further, and say
that a pedantic and elaborate knowledge of history hampers rather than
benefits the practical politician. It is not so with all the learned
professions. The man of science may hope that his researches may have
some direct effect in enriching the blood of the world. He may fight
the ravages of disease, he may ameliorate life in a hundred ways.
But these exponents of learning, these restorers of ancient texts,
these disentanglers of grammatical subtleties, these divers among
ancient chronicles and forgotten charters--what is it that they do but
to multiply and revive useless knowledge, and to make it increasingly
difficult for a man to arrive at a broad and philosophical view, or
ever attack his subject at the point where it may conceivably affect
humanity or even character? The problem of the modern world is the
multiplication of books and records, and every new detail dragged to
light simply encumbers the path of the student. I have no doubt that
this is a shallow and feeble-minded view. But I am not advancing it as
a true view; I am only imploring help; I only desire light. I am only
too ready to believe in the virtues and uses of erudition, if any one
will point them out to me. But at present it only appears to me like a
gigantic mystification, enabling those who hold richly endowed posts to
justify themselves to the world, and to keep the patronage of these
emoluments in their own hands. Supposing, as a reductio ad absurdum,
that some wealthy individual were to endow an institution in order that
the members of it might count the number of threads in carpets. One can
imagine a philosophical defence being made of the pursuit. A man might
say that it was above all things necessary to classify, and
investigate, and to arrive at the exact truth; to compare the number of
threads in different carpets, and that the sordid difficulties which
encumbered such a task should not be regarded, in the light of the fact
that here, at least, exact results had been obtained.
Of course, that is all very silly! But I believe; only I want my
unbelief helped! If you can tell me what services are rendered by
erudition to national life, you will relieve my doubts. Do not merely
say that it enlarges the bounds of knowledge, unless you are also
prepared to prove that knowledge is, per se, a desirable thing. I am
not sure that it is not a hideous idol, a Mumbo Jumbo, a Moloch in
whose honour children have still to pass through the fire in the
recesses of dark academic groves.--Ever yours,