Mr. Fletcher does not thoroughly know the language of the country of which he writes; he has included accounts of many things “of which I had made no special study” in this precious book; and finally, the historian of the Victor of Breitenfeld and Lützen knows absolutely nothing of military history, the art of war, or the meaning of military terms, in spite of which, at page 119, he declares (a) that Gustavus was “certainly a greater master of tactics than Wallenstein,” but “not a greater cavalry captain than Pappenheim;” and (b) “that Pappenheim had not the coup d’œil which enables a man to grasp a whole battle at once.”
How a man can dare to print such a cataract of admissions I do not understand. At any rate, tested by the lowest standard, treated with the utmost leniency, his book stands self-confessed as worthless. However modest the author’s estimate of his work and the humility of Heep was as nothing to the assumption of this preface, the book cannot under any conceivable circumstances be of the least use to the student. It outrages every canon by which the most amateur of historians should guide himself to write.
Yet this book is recommended in the Examination Statutes to be read by men wishing to take Honours in History while the works of James Anthony Froude are rigidly excluded.
I would fain linger a little longer with Mr. Fletcher, possibly one of the richest unconscious humourists who have ever written history. He deserves to be known to a wider circle than the mere academic. In these drab, hurried days, anything that makes for innocent gaiety is to be welcomed. I think it was Ruskin who said that Edwin Lear’s Book of Nonsense was one of the most valuable books ever written. It is a pity that Mr. Ruskin did not live to read Mr. Fletcher’s other work, An Introductory History of England.
Gustavus Adolphus was published in 1900, and Mr. Fletcher was then described as “Late Fellow of All Souls’ College.” The later and more mature work was published in 1904, and we then see Mr. Fletcher as a Fellow of Magdalen.
In An Introductory History of England we have, of course, the usual preface, from which I wish I had space to quote largely. I have not, but in turning the leaves, the eye at once falls on another apologia:—
“I have no pretensions to be a scholar in the original document sense;” and, “I fear it will be very easy for those who are such scholars to find many mistakes in detail, as well as to question my conclusions.”
Further, he speaks of the Honour School of Modern History in language which I, for one, heartily endorse. “I do not consider,” he says (p. vi.), “that the immense growth of the History School at Oxford ... is at all a healthy sign for English education.”
I do not intend to do more than give one specimen of Mr. Fletcher’s style in this book, though I have read the whole of it with pleasure and amusement. The paragraph I am about to quote should live in the annals of the Oxford Historicides for ever. I imagine that in writing it, Mr. Fletcher had been slyly reading Oceana in secret, and longed to emulate the vividness of that august prose. The volume of Froude was obviously out of the way when the purple passage was produced, but if it loses in style owing to this circumstance, it gains in interest as the unconnected revelation of a truly extraordinary mind.