CHAPTER V
THE HISTORIANS OF THE CENTURY
After the brilliant group of historians whose work illustrated the close of the period covered by the preceding volume, it was some time before a historical writer of the first rank again appeared in England; and there were reasons for this. Not that, as in the case of purely creative literature, in prose as in verse, there is any natural or actual lull between different successive periods in this case; on the contrary the writing of history is more likely to be stimulated by example, and requires rather the utmost talent than positive genius, except in those rare cases which, as in other departments, are not to be accounted for, either in their presence or in their absence, by observation or inference. But in the first place the greatest minds of the first generation of which we have to take account, who were born about the beginning of the third quarter of the eighteenth century, were, partly by time and partly by chance, directed for the most part either into poetry, or into politics, or into active life; and the five and twenty years of the Revolutionary War in which they passed their manhood were more likely to provide materials for history, than history itself.
Yet history, after the example given by Hume, by Robertson, and above all by Gibbon, was not at all likely to cease, nor did some men of great talents in other ways fail to betake themselves to it. Godwin was a historian, and, considering his strong prejudices, the unkindness of fortune (for history demands leisure almost as much as poetry), and some defects of knowledge, not a contemptible historian in his way. Mackintosh, intended for a philosopher, was a historian. Southey was a very considerable historian, and master of one of the most admirable historical styles on record. But he was signally unfortunate in having that work of his which should have been most popular, the History of the Peninsular War, pitted against another by a younger man of professional competence, of actual experience, and of brilliant literary powers, Sir William Napier (1786-1860). The literary value of these two histories is more even than a generation which probably reads neither much and has almost forgotten Southey is apt to imagine; and though there is no doubt that the Poet Laureate was strongly prejudiced on the Tory side, his competitor was even more partial and biassed against that side. But the difference between the two books is the difference between a task admirably performed, and performed to a certain extent con amore, by a skilled practitioner in task-work, and the special effort of one who was at once an enthusiast and an expert in his subject. It is customary to call Napier's History of the Peninsular War "the finest military history in the English language," and so, perhaps, it is. The famous description of the Battle of Albuera is only one of many showing eloquence without any mere fine writing, and with the knowledge of the soldier covering the artist's exaggeration.
Moore, Campbell, Scott himself, were all, as has been previously recorded in the notices of their proper work, historians by trade, though hardly, even to the extent to which Southey was, historians by craft. But an exception must be made for the exquisite Tales of a Grandfather, in which Sir Walter, without perhaps a very strict application of historical criticism, applied his creative powers, refreshed in their decay by combined affection for the subject and for the presumed auditor, to fashioning the traditional history of old Scotland into one of the most delightful narratives of any language or time. But Henry Hallam, a contemporary of these men (1778-1859), unlike them lives as a historian only, or as a historian and literary critic—occupations so frequently combined during the present century that perhaps an apology is due for the presentation of some writers under the general head of one class rather than under that of the other. Hallam, the son of a Dean of Bristol, educated at Eton and Christ Church, an early Edinburgh reviewer, and an honoured pundit and champion of the Whig party, possessing also great literary tastes, much industry, and considerable faculty both of judging and writing, united almost all the qualifications for a high reputation; while his abstinence from public affairs, and from participation in the violent half-personal, half-political squabbles which were common among the literary men of his day, freed him from most of the disadvantages, while retaining for him all the advantages, of party connections. Early, too, he obtained a post in the Civil Service (a Commissionership of Audit), which gave him a comfortable subsistence while leaving him plenty of leisure. For thirty years, between 1818 and 1848, he produced a series of books on political and literary history which at once attained a very high reputation, and can hardly be said to have yet lost it. These were a View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, published in the first, and supplemented by a volume of notes and corrections in the last, of the years just mentioned; a Constitutional History of England from Henry VII. to George II. (1827); and an Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries (1837-39).
The value of Hallam as a political and as a literary historian is by no means the same. In the former capacity he was perhaps too much influenced by that artificial and rather curious ideal of politics which distinguished the Whig party of the later eighteenth century, which was exaggerated, celebrated brilliantly, and perhaps buried by his pupil and younger contemporary, Macaulay, and which practically erects the result of a coincidence of accidents in English history into a permanent and rationally defensible form of government, comparable with and preferable to the earlier and unchanging forms of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy with their sub-varieties. A certain coldness and sluggishness of temperament and sympathy also marred this part of Hallam's work, though less mischievously than elsewhere. But to balance these drawbacks handsomely in his favour, he possessed an industry which, immense as have been the pains spent on his subjects since he wrote, leaves him in possession of a very fair part of the field as a still trustworthy authority; a mind, on the whole, judicial and fair; and an excellently clear and scholarly if not exactly brilliant or engaging style.
As a literary historian and critic Hallam deserves, except on the score of industry and width of reading, rather less praise; and his dicta, once quoted with veneration even by good authorities, and borrowed, with or without acknowledgment, by nearly all second-hand writers, are being more and more neglected by both. Nor is this unjust, for Hallam, though possessed, as has been said, of sound and wide scholarship, and of a taste fairly trustworthy in accepted and recognised matters, was too apt to be at a loss when confronted with an abnormal or eccentric literary personality, shared far too much the hide-bound narrowness of the rules which guided his friend Jeffrey, lacked the enthusiasm which not seldom melted Jeffrey's chains of ice, and was constantly apt to intrude into the court of literary judgments, methods, procedures, and codes of law which have no business there.
Many other estimable, and some excellent writers fill up the space of fifty years, which may be described best, both for remembrance and for accuracy, as the space between Gibbon and Carlyle. William Roscoe, who was born as far back as 1753 and did not die till 1831, was the son of a market-gardener near Liverpool, and had few advantages of education, but became an attorney, attached himself strenuously to literature, especially Italian literature, and in 1796 published his Life of Lorenzo de Medici, which, after finishing it, he followed up nine years later with the Life of Leo the Tenth. Both obtained not merely an English but a continental reputation, both became in a manner classics, and both retain value to this day, though the Italian Renaissance has been a specially favourite subject of modern inquiry. Roscoe was a violent Whig, and not a very dispassionate student in some respects; but he wrote well, and he is an early example of the diffusion of the historic spirit proper, in which Gibbon had at once set the example and, with some lapses, attained nearly to perfection.
William Mitford (1744-1827) was even an older man than Roscoe, and belonged to a slightly less modern school of history-writing. He was a man of means, a friend of Gibbon, his fellow-officer in the militia, and like him a strong Tory, though unlike him he could not keep his politics out of his history. Although Mitford's hatred of democracy, whether well- or ill-founded, makes him sometimes unfair, and though his History of Greece contains some blunders, it is on the whole rather a pity that it should have been superseded to the extent to which it actually has been by those of Grote and Thirlwall. For it is not more prejudiced and much better written than Grote's, while it has greater liveliness and zest than the Bishop's. It occupied more than thirty years in publication, the first volume appearing in 1784, the last in 1818.
While Roscoe and Mitford were thus dealing with foreign and ancient subjects, English history became the theme of a somewhat younger pair of historians, one of whom, Sharon Turner, was born in 1768 and died in 1847; while John Lingard, born three years later, outlived Turner by four. Lingard was a Roman Catholic priest, and after being educated at Douai, divided most of his time between pastoral work and teaching at the newly founded Roman Catholic school of Ushaw. He was the author of what still retains the credit of being the best history of England on the great scale, in point of the union of accuracy, skilful arrangement, fairness (despite his inevitable prepossessions), and competent literary form,—no mean credit for a member of an unpopular minority to have attained in a century of the most active historical investigation. Turner was more of a specialist and particularist, and his style is not very estimable. He wrote many books on English history, those on the later periods being of little value. But his History of the Anglo-Saxons, first issued in 1799, was based on thorough research, and may be said to have for the first time rescued the period of origins of English history from the discreditable condition of perfunctory, traditional, and second- or third-hand treatment in which most, if not all, previous historians of England had been content to leave it.