Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was writing his “History of the World” in the Tower of London, overheard two boys quarrelling over the facts of an incident that had happened the day before; and he said to himself: “If these two boys cannot agree on an event which occurred almost before their own eyes, how can any one be profited by the narration which I am writing, of events which occurred in ages long past?” The answer which the critical historian would give to Raleigh would probably be: “Go and examine the two boys; find out their home, their relations, their circumstances, particularly the opportunities they had of seeing what they profess to have seen; and try to discover whether there was any bias in their minds that could have made them incline towards one side rather than the other. Give all that evidence, and then you are a real historian.” But is that true, and were any of the great historians satisfied with that? Was not their heart in their work, and is the heart ever far from what we call bias? Did not Herodotus, in describing the conflict between Greece and Asia, clearly espouse the cause of Greece? I know he has been called the father of lies rather than of history; but he has survived for all that. Did not Thucydides throughout his history write as the loyal son of Athens? Was Tacitus very anxious to find out all that could be said in favour of Tiberius? Was even Gibbon, in his “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” quite impartial? Ranke’s “History of the Popes,” may be very accurate, but for thousands who read Macaulay and Froude is there one who reads Ranke, except the historian by profession? History is not written for historians only. Macaulay wrote the history of the English Restoration as a partisan, and Froude made no secret on which side he would have fought, if he had lived through the storms of the English Reformation. If Macaulay had been one of the two boys of Sir Walter Raleigh, he would probably not have discovered some of the dark shadows on the face of William III. which struck the other boy; while some critics might possibly say of Froude that in drawing the picture of Henry VIII. he may have followed now and then the example of Nelson in the use of his telescope. Still, in describing such recent periods as the reign of Henry VIII., historians cannot, at all events, go very far wrong in dates or names. Froude may have been wrong in embracing the cause of Henry VIII. and accepting all the excuses or explanations which could be given for his violent acts. But Froude is, at all events, honest, in so far that no one can fail to see where his sympathies lie, so that he really leaves us free to decide what side we ourselves should take.
When the historian has to analyse prominent characters, and bring them again full of life on the stage of history, is it not the artist, nay the poet, who has to do the chief work, and not the mere chronicler? In Froude’s case the difficulty was very great. The contemporary estimates of Henry’s character were most conflicting, and without taking a line of his own, without claiming in fact the same privilege which Henry’s contemporaries claimed, whether friends or foes, it would have been impossible for him to create a character that should be consistent and intelligible. There was nothing too fiendish to be told of the English king by the Papal party, and yet we cannot help asking how such a caitiff, as he is represented to have been by Roman Catholic agents, could have retained the love of the English people and secured the services of some of the best among the noblemen and gentlemen of his time? If we take upon ourselves to reject all reports of Royal Commissioners in Henry’s reign as corrupt and mendacious, would it be worth while to write any history of the English people at all? It is, no doubt, an ungrateful task to whitewash a historical character that has been besmirched for years by a resolute party. Yet it has to be done from time to time, from a sense of justice, and not from a mere spirit of opposition. Carlyle’s heroes were nearly all the best-abused men in Christendom: Frederick the Great, Cromwell, and Goethe. Every one of these characters was lying, as Carlyle said himself, under infinite dung; yet every one of them is now admired by thousands, because they trust in Carlyle. It was the same Carlyle who encouraged Froude in his work of rehabilitating Bluff King Hal, and we ought, at all events, to be grateful to him for having enabled us to know all that can be said by the king’s advocates. If Froude wrote as a partisan, he wrote, at the same time, as a patriot, and if a patriot sees but one side of the truth, some one else will see the other.
Can we imagine any history of our own times written from the pole star, and not from amid the turmoil of contending parties? Would a history of the reign of Queen Victoria, written by Gladstone, be very like a history written by Disraeli? However, these squabbles of reviewers about the histories of Macaulay and Froude are now almost entirely forgotten, while the historical dramas which Macaulay and Froude have left us, remain, and Englishmen are proud of possessing two such splendid monuments of the most important periods of their history. Macaulay’s account of William III. remained unfinished, and it is characteristic of Froude that, if I understood him rightly, he gave up the idea of finishing the reign of Queen Elizabeth, because, as an Englishman, he was disappointed in her character towards the end of her reign.
I saw much of Froude again during the last years of his life, when he returned to Oxford as Regius Professor of History, having been appointed by Lord Salisbury. “It is the first public recognition I have received,” he used to say. He rejoiced in it, and he certainly did credit to Lord Salisbury’s courageous choice. His lectures were brilliant, and the room was crowded to the end. His private lectures also were largely attended, and he was on the most friendly and intimate terms with some of his pupils.
There is no place so trying for a professor as Oxford. Froude’s immediate predecessors, Goldwin Smith, Stubbs, and Freeman, were some of the best men that Oxford has produced. Their lectures were excellent in every respect. Yet every one of them had to complain of the miserable scantiness of their audiences at Oxford. The present Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Stubbs, in his “Seventeen Lectures on the Study of Mediæval and Modern History” (1886), states what may sound almost incredible, that he had sometimes to deliver his lectures “to two or three listless men.” The same may be said of some of the best lectures delivered in the University. The young men are encouraged in each college to attend the lectures delivered by the tutors, and are given to understand that professorial lectures “do not pay” in the examinations. These examinations are chiefly in the hands of college tutors. Professor Stubbs was not given to complain about anything that might seem to concern himself, yet he confesses that “sometimes he felt hurt that in the combined lecture list he found the junior assistant tutor advertising a course on the same subject, or at the same hours, as his own.” Nay, he goes so far in his modesty as to say: “It may be better that there should be a dozen or fifteen college lecturers working away with large classes, when I have only a few stray men,” but the real friends of the University would hardly think so. As things are at present, it has been said, and, I believe, truly said, that nearly all professorial lectures might be abolished, and the studies of the undergraduates would go on just the same. Oxford suffers in this respect from a real embarras de richesse. The University is rich enough, though by no means so rich as it was formerly, to keep up a double staff of teachers, professorial and tutorial. It supports sixty-five professors, readers, and lecturers, and probably four or five times as many tutors. Many of the tutors are quite equal to the professors, nay, it may be, even superior to them, but the most popular tutor, whose lectures, when in college, were crowded, has to be satisfied with two or three listless men as soon as he has been raised to the professoriate. Froude’s lectures formed an exception, but even this was quoted against him.
Froude was not only the most fascinating lecturer, but the most charming companion and friend. His conversation was like his writings. It never tired one, it never made one feel his superiority. His store of anecdotes was inexhaustible, and though in his old age they were sometimes repeated, they were always pleasant to listen to. He enjoyed them so thoroughly himself, he chuckled over them, he covered his eyes as if half ashamed of telling them. They are all gone now, and a pity it is, for most of them referred to what he had actually seen, not only to what he had heard, and he had seen and heard a good deal, both in Church and State. He knew the little failings of great men, he knew even the peccadilloes of saints, better than anybody. He was never ill-natured in his judgments, he knew the world too well for that, and it is well, perhaps, that many things which he knew should be forgotten. He himself insisted on all letters being destroyed that had been addressed to him, and from a high sense of duty, left orders that his own letters, addressed to his friends, should not be divulged after his death. Though he left an unfinished autobiography, extremely interesting to the few friends who were allowed to read it, those who decided that it should not be published have acted, no doubt, wisely and entirely in his spirit.
My friend Charles Kingsley was a very different man. He was a strong man, while Froude had some feminine weaknesses, but also some of the best feminine excellencies. His life and his character are well known from that excellent biography published by his gifted widow, not much more than a year after his death. This Life of hers really gave a new life to him, and secured a new popularity and influence to his writings. In him, too, what I admired besides his delightful character was his poetical power, his brilliant yet minute and accurate descriptions of nature, and the characters he created in his novels. With all the biographies that are now published, how little do people know after all of the man they are asked to love or hate! In order to judge of a man, we ought to know in what quarry the marble of which he was made was carved, what sunshine there was to call forth the first germs of his mind, nay, even whether he was rich or poor, whether he had what we rightly call an independence, and whether from his youth he was and felt himself a free man. There is something in the character of a man like Stanley, for instance, which we have no right to expect in a man who had to struggle in life like Kingsley. The struggle for life may bring out many fine qualities, but it cannot but leave traces of the struggle, a certain amount of self-assertion, a love of warfare, and a more or less pronounced satisfaction at having carried the day against all rivals and opponents. These are the temptations of a poor man which do not exist for a man of independent means. It is no use shutting our eyes to this. Every fight entails blows, and wounds, and scars, and some of them remain for life. Kingsley seems to have had no anxieties as a young man at school or at the University, but when he had left the University and become a curate, and, more particularly, when he had married on his small curacy and there were children, his struggles began in good earnest. He had often to write against time; he had to get up subject after subject in order to be able to write an article, simply that he might be able to satisfy the most troublesome tradesmen. He always wrote at very high pressure; fortunately his physical frame was of iron, and his determination like that of a runaway horse. People may say that he had the usual income of a country clergyman, but why will they forget that a man in Kingsley’s position had not only to give his children an expensive education, but had to keep open house for his numerous friends and admirers? There was no display in his quiet rectory at Eversley, but even the simplest hospitality entails more expense than a small living can bear, and his friends and visitors ranged from the lowest to the highest—from poor workmen to English and foreign royalties. As long as he could wield his pen he could procure the necessary supplies, but it had to be done with a very great strain on the brain. “It must be done, and it shall be done,” he said; yes, but though most of his work was done, and well done, it was like the work of an athlete who breaks down at the end of the day when his victory is won. People did not see it and did not know it, for he never would yield, and never would show signs of yielding. When, towards the end of his life, a canonry was offered him, first at Chester, then at Westminster, he felt truly grateful. “After all,” he said to me, “these stalls are good for old horses.” His professorship at Cambridge was really too much for him. He was not prepared for it. Personally he did much good among the young men, and was certainly most popular. At Cambridge as a professor he did his best, but he had hardly calculated Quid valeant humeri, quid ferre recusent. Anyhow, the work soon became too much even for his iron constitution, and he was glad to be relieved. The fact is that Kingsley was all his life, in everything he thought and in everything he did, a poet, a man of high ideals, and likewise of unswerving honesty. No one knew Kingsley, such as he really was, who had not seen him at Eversley, and among his poor people. He visited every cottage, he knew every old man and old woman, and was perfectly at home among them. His “Village Sermons” gave them just the food they wanted, though it was curious to see every Sunday a large sprinkling of young officers from Sandhurst and Aldershot sitting quietly among the smock-frocked congregation, and anxious to have some serious conversation with the preacher afterwards. Kingsley was a great martyr to stammering, it often was torture to him in a lively conversation to keep us all waiting till his thoughts could break through again. In church, however, whether he was reading or speaking extempore, there was no sign of stammering; apparently there was no effort to overcome it. But when we walked home from church he would say: “Oh, let me stammer now, you won’t mind it.”
He was not a learned theologian, his one idea of Christianity was practical Christianity, honesty, purity, love. He was always most courteous, most willing to bow before higher authority or greater learning; but when he thought there was anything wrong, or mean, or cowardly, anything with which he, as an honest man, could not agree, he was as firm as a rock.
His favourite pursuits lay in natural science. He knew every flower, every bird, every fish, and every insect in his neighbourhood, and he had imbibed a belief in the laws of nature, which represented to him indirectly the thoughts of God. When, therefore, after a long continuance of drought, the bishop of his diocese ordered him to have a special prayer for rain, he respectfully and firmly declined. He would pray for the good gifts of heaven, offer thanks to God for all that He was pleased to send in His wisdom, but he would not enter into particulars with Him, he would not put his own small human wisdom against the Divine wisdom; he would not preach on what he thought was good for us, for God knew best. He had no difficulty in persuading his farmers and labourers that if they had any trust in God, and any reverence for the Divine wisdom that rules the world, they would place all their troubles and cares before Him in prayer, but they would not beg for anything which, in His wisdom, He withheld from them. “Thy will be done,” that was his prayer for rain. There was great commotion in ecclesiastical dovecotes, most of all in episcopal palaces. All sorts of punishments were threatened, but Kingsley remained throughout perfectly quiet, yet most determined. He would not degrade his sacred office to that of a rain-maker or medicine-man, and he carried his point. “In America we manage these things better!” said an American friend of Kingsley. “A clergyman in a village on the frontier between two of our States prayed for rain. The rain came, and it soaked the ground to such an extent that the young lambs in the neighbouring State caught cold and died. An action was brought against the clergyman for the mischief he had done, and he and his parishioners were condemned to pay damages to the sheep farmers. They never prayed for rain again after that.”
Kingsley incurred great displeasure by the support he gave to what was called Christian Socialism. His novel “Alton Locke,” contained some very outspoken sentiments as to the terrible sufferings of the poor and the duties of the rich. Kingsley, Frederick Maurice, and their friends, did not only plead, but they acted; they formed societies to assist poor tailors, and for a time the clothes they wore showed but too clearly that they had been cut in Whitechapel, not in Regent Street. Poor Kingsley suffered not only in his wardrobe, but in his purse also, owing to his having been too sanguine in his support of tailoring by co-operation.