But perhaps the two greatest sinners against the code of frigid impartiality were Froude and Carlyle. Both were intensely convinced of the truth of the gospel which they preached, and both were careless of detail if they could strain the facts of history to support their doctrines. The apotheosis of the strong man formed no part of Carlyle's original philosophy. In 1830, he wrote: "Which was the greatest benefactor, he who gained the battles of Cannae and Trasimene or the nameless poor who first hammered out for himself an iron spade?" He condemned Scott's historical writings: "Strange," he said, "that a man should think he was writing the history of a nation while he is describing the amours of a wanton young woman and a sulky booby blown up with gunpowder." After having slighted biography in this characteristically Carlylese utterance, he straightway set to work, with splendid inconsistency, to base his philosophy of history mainly on the biographies of men of the type of Cromwell and Frederic.
The invective levelled against Froude by Freeman is now generally recognised as exaggerated and unjust, but it would certainly appear, as Mr. Gooch says, that Froude "never realised that the main duty of the historian is neither eulogy nor criticism, but interpretation of the complex processes and conflicting ideals which have built up the chequered life of humanity."
Yet when all is said that can be said on the necessity of insisting on historical veracity, it has to be borne in mind that inaccuracy is not the only pitfall which lies in the path of the expounder of truth. History is not written merely for students and scholars. It ought to instruct and enlighten the statesman. It should quicken the intelligence of the masses. Whilst any tendency to distort facts, or to sway public opinion by sensational writing of questionable veracity, cannot be too strongly condemned, it is none the less true that it requires not merely a touch of literary genius, but also a lively and receptive imagination to tell a perfectly truthful tale in such a manner as to arrest the attention, to excite the wayward imagination and to guide the thoughts of the vast majority of those who will scan the finished work of the historian. It is here that some of the best writers of history have failed, Gardiner has written what is probably the best, and is certainly the most dispassionate and impartial history of the Stuart period. "With one exception," Mr. Gooch says, "Gardiner possessed all the tools of his craft—an accurate mind, perfect impartiality, insight into character, sympathy with ideas different from his own and from one another. The exception was style. Had he possessed this talisman his noble work would have been a popular classic. His pages are wholly lacking in grace and distinction." The result is that Gardiner's really fine work has proved an ineffectual instrument for historical education. The majority of readers will continue to turn to the brilliant if relatively partial pages of Macaulay.
The case of Freeman, though different from that of Gardiner, for his style, though lacking in grace and flexibility was vigorous, may serve as another illustration of the same thesis. Freeman was a keen politician, but he would never have for a moment entertained the thought of departing by one iota from strict historical truth in order to further any political cause in which he was interested. Mr. Gooch says, "He regarded history as not only primarily, but almost exclusively, a record of political events. Past politics, he used to say, were present history." Why is it, therefore, that his works are little read, and that they have exercised but slight influence on the opinions of the mass of his countrymen? The answer is supplied by Mr. Gooch. Freeman ignored organic evolution. "The world of ideas had no existence for him.... No less philosophic historian has ever lived." For one man who, with effort, has toiled through Freeman's ponderous but severely accurate Norman and Sicilian histories, there are probably a hundred whose imagination has been fired by Carlyle's rhapsody on the French Revolution, or who have pored with interested delight over Froude's account of the death of Cranmer.
Much the same may be said of Creighton's intrinsically valuable but somewhat colourless work. "He had no theories," Mr. Gooch says, "no philosophy of history, no wish to prove or disprove anything." He took historical facts as they came, and recorded them. "When events are tedious," he wrote, "we must be tedious."
The most meritorious, as also the most popular historians are probably those of the didactic school. Of these, Seeley and Acton are notable instances. Seeley always endeavoured to establish some principle which would capture the attention of the student and might be of interest to the statesman. He held that "history faded into mere literature when it lost sight of its relation to practical politics." Acton, who brought his encyclopaedic learning to bear on the defence of liberty in all its forms, "believed that historical study was not merely the basis of all real insight into the present, but a school of virtue and a guide to life."
Limitations of space preclude any adequate treatment of the illuminating work done by Ranke, whom Mr. Gooch regards as the nearest approximation the world has yet known to the "ideal historian"; by Lecky, who was driven by the Home Rule conflict from the ranks of historians into those of politicians; by Milman, whose style, in the opinion of Macaulay, was wanting in grace and colour, but who was distinguished for his "soundness of judgment and inexorable love of truth"; by Otfried Müller, Bérard, Gilbert Murray, and numerous other classical scholars of divers nationalities; by Fustel de Coulanges, the greatest of nineteenth-century mediaevalists; by Mahan, whose writings have exercised a marked influence on current politics, and who is thus an instance of "an historian who has helped to make history as well as to record it," and by a host of others.
At the close of his book Mr. Gooch very truly points out that "the scope of history has gradually widened till it has come to include every aspect of the life of humanity." Many of the social and economic subjects of which the historian has now to treat are of an extremely controversial character. However high may be the ideal of truth, which will be entertained, it would appear that the various forms in which the facts of history may be stated, as also the conclusions to be drawn from these facts, will tend to divergence rather than to uniformity of treatment. It is not, therefore, probable that the partisan historian—or, at all events, the historian who will be accused of partisanship—will altogether disappear from literature. Neither, on the whole, is his disappearance to be desired, for it would almost certainly connote the composition of somewhat vapid and colourless histories.
The verdicts which Mr. Gooch passes on the historians whose writings he briefly summarises are eminently judicious, though it cannot be expected that in all cases they will command universal assent. In a work which ranges over so wide a field it is scarcely possible that some slips should not have occurred. We may indicate one of these, which it would be as well to correct in the event of any future editions being published. On p. 435 the authorship of Fieramosca and Nicolo dei Lapi, which were written by Azeglio, is erroneously attributed to Cesare Balbo.