[JOHN RICHARD GREEN.]
By Rev. H. A. HAWEIS, M.A.
Before the publication of Mr. Green’s “Short History,” 86,000 copies of which have been sold in England alone, Mr. Green, although a voluminous essayist in the Saturday Review, was absolutely unknown by name to the general public. It is not true, as was asserted in a leading journal, that the success of his book surprised his friends. In 1863, the clergyman whom he followed at Holy Trinity, Hoxton, said to me, “I think we have a giant among us in Johnny Green.” “I made up my mind about that,” I replied, “the very first night I saw and spoke to him.” Mr. Freeman, Prof. Stubbs, Dr. Stanley, and, I may say, Archbishop Tait, all knew of his powers before he became famous at a leap, and I venture to say not one of them was surprised at his success. I think he was more surprised himself.
He was filled with a great love of historical study, but was generally diffident about his own work. “I read it over,” he said to me in the old days, when I was favored with copious extracts; “and I write and re-write, and wonder after all whether it is worth much—whether any one else will read it!”
His own standard was so high, his knowledge so great, and his critical friends, Freeman, Stubbs, Brewer, etc., so accomplished, that he was inclined to be generally very modest about his own rank as an historian, and at times even wavered in his general design.
When I first knew Mr. Green, he was revolving a work which should deal, I believe, with the Plantagenet period, illustrate the story of the Great Charter, and the making of the English political constitution. The first fragment he put into my hand in type was Stephen’s Ride to London.
At the instance of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher, he abandoned the magnum opus for a season, and taking, in one wide sweep, the whole of English history, produced that unique and popular narrative which raised him immediately into the very first rank of historians.
I remember his anxiety to bring the book within the reach of the masses, to make it a cheap book, his battle with the publisher on that ground, and his final victory.