maxims and morals, his theoretical studies, his political philosophy, his political economy, and his desire to break the drowsy spell of narrative, and to set us all problems? I ask this question in no spirit of enmity towards these theoretical studies, nor do I doubt for one moment that the student of history proper, who has a turn in their directions, will find his pursuit made only the more fascinating the more he studies them—just as a little botany is said to add to the charm of a country walk; but—and surely the assertion is not necessarily paradoxical—these studies ought not to be allowed to disfigure the free-flowing outline of the historical Muse, or to thicken her clear utterance, which in her higher moods chants an epic, and in her ordinary moods recites a narrative which need not be drowsy.
As for maxims, we all of us have our ‘little hoard of maxims’ wherewith to preach down our hearts and justify anything shabby we may have done; but the less we import their cheap wisdom into history the better. The author of the Expansion of England will probably agree with Burke in thinking that ‘a great empire and little minds go ill together,’ and so, surely, à fortiori, must a mighty universe and any possible
maxim. There have been plenty of brave historical maxims before Professor Seeley’s, though only Lord Bolingbroke’s has had the good luck to become itself historical. [189] And as for theories, Professor Flint, a very learned writer, has been at the pains to enumerate fourteen French and thirteen German philosophies of history current (though some, I expect, never ran either fast or far) since the revival of learning.
We are (are we not?) in these days in no little danger of being philosophy-ridden, and of losing our love for facts simply as facts. So long as Carlyle lived the concrete had a representative, the strength of whose epithets sufficed, if not to keep the philosophers in awe, at least to supply their opponents with stones. But now it is different. Carlyle is no more a model historian than is Shakspeare a model dramatist. The merest tyro can count the faults of either on his clumsy fingers. That born critic, the late Sir George Lewis, had barely completed his tenth year before he was able, in a letter to his
mother, to point out to her the essentially faulty structure of Hamlet, and many a duller wit, a decade or two later in his existence, has come to the conclusion that Frederick the Great is far too long. But whatever were Carlyle’s faults, his historical method was superbly naturalistic. Have we a historian left us so honestly possessed as he was with the genuine historical instinct, the true enthusiasm to know what happened; or one half so fond of a story for its own sake, or so in love with things, not for what they were, but simply because they were? ‘What wonderful things are events!’ wrote Lord Beaconsfield in Coningsby; ‘the least are of greater importance than the most sublime and comprehensive speculations.’ To say this is to go perhaps too far; certainly it is to go farther than Carlyle, who none the less was in sympathy with the remark; for he also worshipped events, believing as he did that but for the breath of God’s mouth they never would have been events at all. We thus find him always treating even comparatively insignificant facts with a measure of reverence, and handling them lovingly, as does a book-hunter the shabbiest pamphlet in his collection. We have only to think of Carlyle’s essay on the Diamond Necklace to fill
our minds with his qualifications for the proud office of the historian. Were that inimitable piece of workmanship to be submitted to the criticisms of the new scientific school, we doubt whether it would be so much as classed, whilst the celebrated description of the night before the battle of Dunbar in Cromwell, or any hundred scenes from the French Revolution, would, we expect, be catalogued as good examples of that degrading process whereby history fades into mere literature.
This is not a question, be it observed, of style. What is called a picturesque style is generally a great trial. Who was it who called Professor Masson’s style Carlyle on wooden legs? What can be drearier than when a plain matter-of-fact writer attempts to be animated, and tries to make his characters live by the easy but futile expedient of writing about them in the present tense? What is wanted is a passion for facts; the style may be left to take care of itself. Let me name a historian who detested fine writing, and who never said to himself, ‘Go to, I will make a description,’ and who yet was dominated by a love for facts, whose one desire always was to know what happened, to dispel illusion, and establish the true account—Dr. S. R. Maitland,
of the Lambeth Library, whose volumes entitled The Dark Ages and The Reformation are to history what Milton’s Lycidas is said to be to poetry: if they do not interest you, your tastes are not historical.
The difference, we repeat, is not of style, but of aim. Is history a pageant or a philosophy? That eminent historian, Lord Macaulay, whose passion for letters and for ‘mere literature’ ennobled his whole life, has expressed himself in some places, I need scarcely add in a most forcible manner, in the same sense as Mr. Morley. In his well-known essay on history, contributed to the Edinburgh Review in 1828, we find him writing as follows: ‘Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent amongst them like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value.’ And again: ‘No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future.’ These are strong passages; but Lord Macaulay was a royal eclectic, and was quite out of sympathy with the majority of that brotherhood who are content to tone down their contradictories to the dull level of ineptitudes.
Macaulay never toned down his contradictories, but, heightening everything all round, went on his sublime way, rejoicing like a strong man to run a race, and well knowing that he could give anybody five yards in fifty and win easily. It is, therefore, no surprise to find him, in the very essay in which he speaks so contemptuously of facts, laying on with his vigorous brush a celebrated purple patch I would gladly transfer to my own dull page were it not too long and too well known. A line or two taken at random will give its purport: