When I had settled in England in 1847, my literary acquaintances began afresh. I have had the good fortune of being on more or less intimate terms with such poets as Kingsley, Clough, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Browning, and with poets in prose such as Froude, Ruskin, Carlyle, and I may add, in spite of the Atlantic, Emerson, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. I knew other writers such as Macaulay, Arthur Helps, Arthur Stanley, Frederick Maurice, Dr. Martineau; I may add even the names of Faraday, Lyall, Sedgwick, Thirlwall, Grote, Whewell, Richard Owen, Darwin, Huxley, among my personal acquaintances or friends.
Kingsley was married to one of my wife’s aunts. She was one of six most remarkable sisters, all married except the eldest and, I believe, the most gifted, who had devoted her life to the education of her younger sisters. Besides Charles Kingsley, the husbands of the other sisters were Froude, the historian; Lord Wolverton, of high standing in the financial world as the head of the house of Glyn, and the valued adviser of Mr. Gladstone in his earlier financial reforms; R. Mertyns Bird, an illustrious name in the history of India as the organiser of the North-Western Provinces; and “S. G. O.”
How soon popularity vanishes! There was a time when everybody knew and spoke of “S. G. O.” He was Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, an influential writer on political and social subjects, a frequent contributor to The Times during the Crimean War, a man of great force and independence of character. He was a giant in stature, and extremely attractive by his varied knowledge in different branches of physical science. He was a well-known microscopist, and when it was wanted, a doctor, a nurse, a surgeon, a dentist. However, he was not a poet, like his two brothers-in-law. He was an active clergyman, a sanitary reformer, a ready helper wherever poor people were ready to be helped. These five men, the husbands of five remarkable sisters—of whom one, Mrs. Bird, is still living at the age of ninety-six (she died this year), and not only living, but alive to all that is interesting in the world, and full of good works—represented a power in England. “S. G. O.” moved in a sphere of his own, and seldom came to Oxford. But Kingsley and Froude soon became my intimate friends.
If I call Froude a poet it is because, as I explained before, I do not consider rhyme as essential to poetry. But for really poetical power, for power of description, of making the facts of history alive, of laying bare the deepest thoughts of men and the most mysterious feelings of women, there was no poet or historian of our age who came near him. I knew him through all his phases. I knew him first when he was still a fellow of Exeter College. I was at that time often with him in his rooms in High Street, opposite to St. Mary’s Church, when he was busy writing novels, and I well remember passing an evening with him and trying to find the right name for a novel which afterwards appeared under the title of “Nemesis of Faith.” I saw him almost daily while his persecution at Oxford was going on, gaining strength every day. He had to give up his fellowship, on which he chiefly depended. I will not repeat the old story that his novel was publicly burnt in the quadrangle of Exeter College. The story is interesting as showing how quickly a myth can spring up even in our own lifetime, if only there is some likelihood in it, and something that pleases the popular taste. What really happened was, as I was informed at the time by Froude himself, no more than that one of the tutors (Dr. Sewell) spoke about the book at the end of one of his College Lectures. He warned the young men against the book, and asked whether anybody had read it. One of the undergraduates produced a copy which belonged to him. Dr. Sewell continued his sermonette, and warming with his subject, he finished by throwing the book, which did not belong to him, into the fire, at the same time stirring the coals to make them burn. Of what followed there are two versions. Dr. Sewell, when he had finished, asked his class, “Now, what have I done?” “You have burned my copy,” the owner of the book said in a sad voice, “and I shall have to buy a new one.” The other version of the reply was, “You have stirred the fire, sir.”
And so it was. A book which at present would call forth no remark, no controversy, was discussed in all the newspapers, and raised a storm all over England. Bishops shook their heads, nay even their fists, at the young heretic, and even those among his contemporaries at Oxford who ought to have sympathised with him, and were in fact quite as unorthodox as he was, did not dare to stand up for him or lend him a helping hand. Stanley alone never said an unkind word of him. The worst was that Froude not only lost his fellowship, but when he had accepted the Headmastership of a college far away in Tasmania, his antagonists did not rest till his appointment had been cancelled. Froude unfortunately was poor, and his father, a venerable and well-to-do Archdeacon, was so displeased with his son that he stopped the allowance which he had formerly made him. It seems almost as if the poverty of a victim gave increased zest and enjoyment to his pursuers. Froude had to sell his books one by one, and was trying hard to support himself by his pen. This was then not so easy a matter as it is now. At that very time, however, I received a cheque for £200 from an unknown hand, with a request that I would hand it to Froude to show him that he had friends and sympathisers who would not forsake him. It was not till many years later that I discovered the donor, and Froude was then able to return him the money which at the time had saved him from drowning. I should like to mention the name, but that kind friend in need is no longer among the living, and I have a feeling that even now he would wish his name to remain unknown. This is by no means the only instance of true English generosity which I have witnessed. But at the time I confess that I was surprised, for I did not yet know how much of secret goodness, how much of secret strength there is in England, how much of that real public spirit, of that chivalrous readiness to do good and to resist evil without lifting the vizor. Froude had a hard struggle before him, and, being a very sensitive man, he suffered very keenly. Several times I remember when I was walking with him and friends or acquaintances of his were passing by without noticing him, he turned to me and said: “That was another cut.” I hardly understood then what he meant, but I felt that he meant not only that he had been dropped by his friends, but that he felt cut to the quick. Persecution, however, did not dishearten him; on the contrary, it called forth his energies, and the numerous essays from his pen, now collected under the title “Short Studies on Great Subjects,” show how he worked, how he thought, how he followed the course that seemed right to him without looking either right or left. Bunsen, who was at the time the Prussian Minister in London, and had heard from me about Froude, took a deep interest in him, and after consulting with Archdeacon Hare and Frederick Maurice, suggested that he should spend a few years at a German university. I was asked to bring my young friend to Carlton Terrace, where Bunsen received him with the truest kindness. What he tried to impress on him was that the questions which disturbed him required first of all a historical treatment, and that before we attempt to solve difficulties we should always try to learn how they arose. Froude was on the point of going to Germany with the assistance of some of Bunsen’s friends when other prospects opened to him in England. But frequently in later life he referred to his interview with Bunsen and said, “I never knew before what it meant that a man could drive out devils.”
I confess I was somewhat surprised when Froude suddenly told me of his plan of writing a History of England, beginning with Henry VIII. My idea of a historian was that of a professor who had read and amassed materials during half his life, and at the end produced a ponderous book, half text, half notes. But, hazardous as the idea of writing a History of England seemed to me for so young a man, I soon perceived that Froude had an object in writing, and he certainly set to work with wonderful perseverance. Few of his critics have given him credit for what he did at Simancas and at the Record Office in London. I have seen him at work, morning and evening, among piles of notes and extracts. I know how the pages which are such pleasant light reading were written again and again till he was satisfied. Often I had to confess to him that I never copied what I had once written, and he was outspoken enough to tell me, “But you ought; and you will never write good English if you don’t.” He learnt Spanish, French, and German, so as to be able to read new and old books in these languages. He always kept up his classical reading, and translated, as far as I remember, several Greek texts from beginning to end. To these he afterwards referred, and quoted from them, without always, as he ought, going back again to the original Greek.
It is not for me to say that he did not make mistakes, and that he was not weak in some branches of historical knowledge. I cannot deny that in his translations also there are mistakes, arising from haste rather than from ignorance. But who has ever examined any translation from any language, without finding signs of what seems carelessness or ignorance? Four eyes see more than two. We have translations of Plato and Aristotle in Latin and in almost every language of Europe. The text has been critically examined for hundreds of years, and every difficult passage has been explained again and again. But is there any one translation which could be called immaculate? Was not even the last translation of Plato which is so deservedly popular, characterised by the late Rector of Lincoln, in the well-known words of a French writer, as très belle, mais peu fidèle? Now, while the true scholar, when examining a new translation, rejoices over every new happy rendering, the ill-natured critic, particularly if he wants to display his own superior knowledge, can easily pick out a number of passages where a mistake has been made, or where he thinks that a mistake has been made, and then proceed to show that the very best Greek scholar of the day does not know “what every schoolboy ought to know,” etc. There are many passages in Greek and other authors that admit of more than one translation. If the translator adopts one and rejects another, the game of the critic is easy enough: he has only to adopt the rejected rendering, and his triumph is secured. If that is so in Greek, how much more is it the case in translating passages from faded documents written in antiquated Spanish, nay, even letters of Erasmus written in his peculiar Latin, or statutes in Norman-French.
Translation is a difficult art, and scholars, particularly those who know the language from which, or the language into which, they translate as well as their own, consider a good translation almost impossible. I have had some experience in translating, and I know something of the treatment which translators may expect from conceited critics. The Sacred Books of the East, translated by myself and a number of friends, the best scholars I could find, have not escaped that kind of pedantic criticism. Impartial and honest critics have recognised the difficulties under which scholars labour in translating, often for the first time, ancient texts, whether Greek or Sanskrit. It is easy enough to translate a text, after it has once been translated; it is easy even to improve in a few places on the translations of the first pioneers. But to translate for the first time an ancient text, badly edited or not yet edited at all, is a totally different thing, and those who undertake it have a right not only to the indulgence, but to the gratitude of all who come after them. No one in our sphere of studies would call himself a scholar who has not edited a text never edited before, or at least translated a text that never was translated before. There are some critics who think they have done their duty if they can discover a few flaws in a translation, though they cannot even appreciate the labours and the brilliant though silent discoveries of a first translator. The work that has to be done by a first translator of an ancient text is often the work of a real decipherer. He has to grope his way through Egyptian darkness like the first interpreter of an Egyptian or Babylonian inscription. He cannot help making mistakes. But though we know now how often even a Champollion (died 1832) was mistaken, do we not feel ashamed if we read what another most eminent Egyptologist and Coptic scholar, Amadeo Peyron (died 1870), the head of the Egyptian Museum at Turin, said of Champollion? “I have known Champollion,” he said, “the so-called decipherer of hieroglyphics, very well, from his first visits to our Museum. I took him for an ordinary swindler, and his publications have afterwards confirmed me in my views. His philological labours have remained to me unsolved riddles.”[[7]]
I have lately had another experience. I had to revise my translation of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” and I was surprised to see how many passages there were which I had to alter, not because I did not know either German or English, but because in many places a translation can only be approximately faithful; and it is only a happy thought that enables us now and then to approach nearer to the German original, though in that case often at the expense of the English idiom.
In the case of Froude, we must remember that, whatever he wrote, he had to meet not a single critic only, but a whole army. As far as one could see, a kind of association had been formed for the suppression of his “History.” Those who were behind the scenes know how certain of his rivals and enemies actually banded themselves together, as if against a common enemy. Now, I remember seeing in Fraser’s Magazine, then edited by Froude, a review of Green’s “History of the English People,” with pages and pages of mistakes in names, in dates, in facts. Yet, the same writers who delighted in picking holes in Froude’s “History” from week to week, from month to month, from year to year, kept up a constant chorus of applause for Green’s “History of the English People”—no doubt rightly so; but why not mete the same measure to others also? One of his reviewers openly confessed that if he took the trouble of reading a book carefully, he could not afford to review it in one paper only, he had to write at least five or six articles to make it pay. This Φρουδοφονία, as it was called, went on year after year, but, strange to say, Froude’s work was not killed by it; on the contrary, it became more and more popular. In fact, together with his other works, it enabled him to live independently and even comfortably by his pen. Things have come to such a pass that, if we may trust the experience of publishers, nothing sells so well as a well-abused book, while laudatory notices seem to produce little or no effect. The public, it seems, has grown too wise. Even such powerful adjectives as epoch-making (Epoche-machend), monumental and even pyramidal, fall flat. Epoche-machend has too often been found out to mean no more than Poche-machend (Poche in German means claque), and monumental has once or twice proved a misprint for momental or momentary. Few scholars would agree with M. Le Bon that “works of history must be considered as works of pure imagination, as fanciful accounts of ill-observed facts.” This is a French exaggeration. But neither are books of history meant to be mere chronicles. History is surely meant to teach not only facts, but lessons also; and, though historians may say that facts ought to speak for themselves, they will not speak without a vates sacer. I am the last man to stand up for an unscholarlike treatment of history, or of anything else. But as I do not call a man a scholar who simply copies and collates MSS., makes indices or collects errata, I doubt whether mere Quellenstudium will make a historian. Quellenstudium is a sine quâ non, but it is not everything; and whereas the number of those who can ransack archives and libraries is large, the world has not been rich in real historians whom it is a delight to listen to, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Livy and Tacitus, Montesquieu, Gibbon, and, may we not add, Macaulay and Froude? None of these historians, not even Gibbon, has escaped criticism, but how poor should we be without them!