Victorian Literature: Sixty Years of Books and Bookmen

by Clement King Shorter

Inaccuracy and tactlessness, however, seemed to haunt Mr Froude like evil spirits. He wrote a series of articles on Thomas à Becket, but the numerous mistakes and misstatements brought down on him once again the strictures of Mr Freeman. He wrote a biography of Carlyle, to whom he acted as literary executor, and the whole of the literary world was in arms at the revelations of Carlyle's somewhat unamiable relations with his wife, and of his too contemptuous sentiments about many personal friends. Still, Mr Froude's great literary faculty will secure to this biography a far greater permanence than will fall to the lot of the thousand-and-one memoirs which have appeared during the reign. Even should Carlyle's writings cease to be generally studied, it is not improbable that Froude's "Life of Carlyle" will always be read as an important chapter in literary history. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from an unpublished letter from Sir Fitz James Stephen, Mr Froude's co-executor, to Mr Froude:—

"For about fifteen years I was the intimate friend and constant companion of both you and Mr Carlyle, and never in my life did I see any one man so much devoted to any other as you were to him during the whole of that period of time. The most affectionate son could not have acted better to the most venerated father. You cared for him, soothed him, protected him as a guide might protect a weak old man down a steep and painful path. The admiration you habitually expressed for him both morally and intellectually was unqualified. You never said to me one ill-natured word about him down to this day. It is to me wholly incredible that anything but a severe regard for truth, learnt to a great extent from his teaching, could ever have led you to embody in your portrait of him a delineation of the faults and weaknesses which mixed with his great qualities.

"Of him I will make only one remark in justice to you. He did not use you well. He threw upon you the responsibility of a decision which he ought to have taken himself in a plain, unmistakable way. He considered himself bound to expiate the wrongs which he had done to his wife. If he had done this himself it would have been a courageous thing; but he did not do it himself. He did not even decide for himself that it should be done after his death. If any courage was shown in the matter, it was shown by you, and not by him. You took the responsibility of deciding for him that it ought to be done. You took the odium of doing it, of avowing to the world the faults and weaknesses of one whom you regarded as your teacher and master. In order to present to the world a true picture of him as he really was, you, well knowing what you were about, stepped into a pillory in which you were charged with treachery, violation of confidence, and every imaginable base motive, when you were in fact guilty of no other fault than that of practising Mr Carlyle's great doctrine that men ought to tell the truth."

Mr Froude has other claims to remembrance. In his "Short Studies on Great Subjects," many of them essays written for Fraser's Magazine, of which he was for a long time editor, are some very wise and thoughtful papers, particularly one on the Book of Job. His "Life of Bunyan" is characteristic, as is also his "Life of Cæsar." Carlyle taught him hero-worship, and from Carlyle also he learnt the disposition which inspired his powerful book, "The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century."

He also wrote two picturesque books of travel, and three volumes of lectures[12] delivered at Oxford during his occupancy of the chair of history, which had been previously held in succession by his two great rivals, Bishop Stubbs and Dr Freeman.

The historian who devoted himself most earnestly to Mr Froude's chief historical period, and whose writings were in some measure a reply to his, was the Rev. John Sherren Brewer1810-1879, who for many years was Professor of English Literature at King's College, London. Brewer's chief work, a "Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.," comes down, however, to 1530, the year in which Mr Froude's history commences, and thus Brewer stands alone as an authority on Henry's early reign. A compressed work in one volume, "The Reign of Henry VIII.," was published after his death. Mr Froude concludes his narrative at the year 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, but no recent writer of mark has treated of the closing years of Elizabeth's reign in any detail, although we owe to Major Martin Hume a well-written study entitled "The Year after the Armada." Major Hume, who is the best living authority upon this period, has also written upon "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," and has edited for the Public Record Office the Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth.

The next great period of English history, that of the Stuart kings, is dealt with by Professor Gardiner. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829- ) was born at Ropley, in Hampshire, and was educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford. His whole life has been devoted to the most laborious research in the annals of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and the Protectorate of Cromwell. He has not, like Mr Froude, taken up history as a pleasant literary recreation, but has given years of unremitting labour to the production of each separate volume. He is now well into the study of the Protectorate, the first volume of his history of which appeared in 1894. He has written many minor books, one dealing with "The Gunpowder Plot," and another with "Cromwell's Place in History." Mr Gardiner will not perhaps be counted a brilliant writer. He gives us none of the fire and eloquence, almost bordering on poetry, which we find so abundantly in Froude; but he has been described by Sir John Seeley as the only historian who has trodden the controversial ground of seventeenth-century English political history with absolute fairness and impartiality. James and Charles, Buckingham and Bristol, Strafford and Pym, stand out in clear and well-defined lineaments. There is no hero-worship to blind us; no flowing rhetoric to atone for insufficient knowledge. We see these men in their weakness and in their strength, neither side monopolising the virtue and the patriotism, but each, on occasion, acting from noble or ignoble motives. It may be urged that too much attention is devoted to the follies of princes and the intrigues of courtiers, and certainly of the inner life of the nation we get all too little in Mr Gardiner's pages: but it may be fairly said that these books are the safest and best of guides to one of the most important and critical periods in our political history. It is impossible to avoid contrasting Mr Gardiner with a far more popular and more brilliant historian, Lord Macaulay, and the contrast is, in some respects, in favour of the former. Mr Gardiner sees that in dealing with the complexities of human motives we are on very uncertain and delicate ground. We need to pause step by step to weigh probabilities and to qualify our every statement, although such hesitancy and qualification is not conducive to brilliant writing.

The importance of this rhetorical principle was fully grasped by Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859) and, accordingly, in his writings a single definite and distinct motive is seized upon as the guiding principle of every action, and, by the simple plan of ignoring complexities in human character, we are carried along in an easy manner to positive and undoubting opinions. "I wish," said Lord Melbourne, "that I were as cock-sure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything;" and the remark hit off an undoubted failing, at least from the standpoint of sound and trustworthy workmanship. Macaulay, whose father was a distinguished philanthropist and slavery abolitionist, was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire. From a private school he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. His earliest efforts in literature were articles for Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and contributions to the Edinburgh Review, the first of which, on "Milton," drew from Lord Jeffrey the remark, "The more I think the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." Perhaps Macaulay's essays have been more popular even than his history. The extraordinary knowledge they display, the discursive familiarity with all poetry and fiction, ancient and modern, and their enthusiastic interest in historical events, make them a kind of education to men whose reading has been slight, or who are beginners in the art of reading—an art at which Macaulay was such an adept. In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament as member for Calne, and four years later received the post of member of the Indian Council at Calcutta, with a salary of £10,000 a year. He left India in 1838, having rendered great service to that country by assisting to frame the Indian penal code. After his return to England he sat in Parliament for many years as member for Edinburgh, and for a short time held a seat in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet. Some of his speeches in the House were among the most eloquent and successful to which that assembly has listened. In 1849 the first two volumes of his "History of England from the Accession of James II." were published. The great success of these and the succeeding volumes made him one of the most popular authors of his day. In 1857 Macaulay was made a Peer, but he never spoke in the House of Lords. He died in December 1859, before he had finished the "Reign of William III.," and was buried in Westminster Abbey. During the later years of Macaulay's life, and for many years after his death, he received the unstinted praise, not only of the great mass of readers, but even of cultured brother authors. Of late years this has changed; a reaction has set in, and perhaps the time has not yet come to assign to him his true place in literature. When Sir George Trevelyan's admirable life of his uncle appeared in 1876, a number of eminent writers based upon that book a criticism of Macaulay's work. Mr Gladstone wrote in the Quarterly Review, Mr Leslie Stephen in the Cornhill Magazine, and Mr John Morley in the Fortnightly Review. In each separate case the review was unfavourable. All alike agreed as to his high qualities as a man; his sincerity, generosity, kindliness, and purity, his love of children and his brotherly devotion; but each in turn found matter for censure in his work. One condemned his style, another his Whig partialities, another his boundless optimism, and another his errors of judgment or alleged misstatements of facts. It is true that Macaulay is sometimes inaccurate, that he is not seldom unjust to the characters whom he paints so vividly. It is now a commonplace to say that his history was written, as Carlyle said, "to prove that Providence was on the side of the Whigs." It is clear that he was a man of strong literary prejudices, and he undoubtedly owes much of his popularity to the fact that he expresses in grandly rhetorical language the average sentiment of his day, its belief in material prosperity, and its delight in being told that there has been no age of the world so happy as our own. All this is true, and yet it is also true that Macaulay's real services to literature are lost sight of when such an estimate is propounded too harshly.

In spite of obvious deficiencies, Macaulay's history is a great work. It fills up a gap in historical literature, and such incidents as the trial of the seven bishops and the siege of Londonderry excel both in picturesqueness and in accuracy. But Macaulay has claims far beyond his merits as a historian. The critics who condemn him so freely seem to have forgotten their own early years. "If I am in the wrong," said Macaulay of his history, "I shall at least have set the minds of others at work." He has set the minds of others at work. What cultivated man or woman lives, with whom Macaulay's writings have not been among the first books read, who has not been made to feel that all the great poetry, and fiction, and history to which he alludes so freely must be well worth careful study? What matter if in after-years we discover that Macaulay was unjust to Bacon the man, and was entirely ignorant of Bacon the philosopher; or understand clearly what he meant by saying that such critiques as Lessing's "Laocoon" "filled him with wonder and despair?" If we have been encouraged by him to desire a wider knowledge, if we have learnt from him to admire so many great writers, so many famous statesmen, we may surely forgive him much, if indeed there be anything to forgive.

Earl Stanhope1805-1875, who did most of his historical work when, as an expectant peer, he was known as Lord Mahon, was a great friend of Macaulay's. In 1870 he published a "History of the Reign of Queen Anne," which began at the year 1701, and thus served as a connecting link between Macaulay's history and his own larger work—the "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht down to the Peace of Versailles (1713-1783)." The continuation of Earl Stanhope's narrative may be found either in Mr Lecky's "Eighteenth Century," or in William Nathaniel Massey's1809-1881 "History of England under George III." Mr Massey brings us down to the Peace of Amiens in 1801, from which date Harriet Martineau leads us to 1846 in a work ("History of the Peace") which is quite unworthy of her abilities. The reign of Victoria has been written by many hands, not the least successful being the "History of England, 1830-1873" of the Rev. William Nassau Molesworth1816-1890 of Rochdale, the author also of a "History of the Church of England." Equally popular is the "History of Our Own Time, 1830-1897," of Justin MacCarthy1830-, who has also written a "History of the Four Georges," and many popular novels. Nor must we forget the brilliant literary effort of Alexander William Kinglake1811-1891 who, in his "History of the War in the Crimea," has made a younger generation familiar with a struggle in which their fathers took so brave a part. Mr Kinglake was for some years the Liberal member for Bridgewater. His first literary effort, "Eothen," a volume of travels, is scarcely less popular than his history. By far the most important work, however, on English history, in a period subsequent to that dealt with by Macaulay, is Lecky's "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," a work of great thoroughness and thoughtfulness, the eighth and concluding volume of which was published in 1890. William Edward Hartpole Lecky1838-, who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, which he now represents in Parliament, is one of the most brilliant and suggestive writers of our age. His "Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism," and "European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne," as well as the "History of the Eighteenth Century," are justly popular.