CHAPTER IX
IMPERSONAL ACCOUNTS
In its general sense narrative history includes all true-story forms, even incidents and eye-witness accounts. But annals and chronicles may be grouped by themselves on the basis of the non-personal and scientific attitude of the writer and the fact that the story is usually of the doings of a set of people living as a unit. Of course we find such type blendings as the "Annals" of Goethe, which are true but autobiographical, and the "Annals of the Parish" by John Galt, and the "Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family," which though collective are fictitious; yet for the most part these forms are thought of as embodying community and actual history, and we will take them up as such, remembering that fiction has drawn on all true-narrative forms for verisimilitude. History is often classified into narrative, scenic, and philosophical. Only with the first kind have we anything to do.
There are a number of histories that have extraordinary literary value, that are not mere recitals of past events with tame descriptions of by-gone scenes and more-or-less acute analysis of epochs and causes, but are intense human documents with the life-blood of nations throbbing and beating in their pages. Green gave his health and the best days of his living to write his "History of the English People," and we love it. It has something more than a scholar's accuracy in it. It has a broad and deep inspiration that brings a catch in the throat and a gleam of pride in the eye of any who are fortunate enough to belong to the magnificent race whose deeds it records. Enthusiasts fought for Macaulay's "History" at the door of the bindery, fulfilling the author's hope that it might be considered more interesting than a novel. Motley's "Rise of the Dutch Republic" is one of the most creditable things in American letters. Prescott's "Ferdinand and Isabella," "Conquest of Mexico" and of "Peru," and Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe" are along side for literary qualities. Carlyle's "French Revolution" is a unique and graphic set of pictures. Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" has long stood as a classic example of literary high-seriousness in an allied department. Grote's "History of Greece," Machiavel's "History of Florence," Sismondi's "Italian Republics," Hallam's "Middle Ages," Symond's "Italian Renaissance" and Schiller's "Thirty Years' War" are all worthy the name of literature and have excellent narrative in them. We can study at present, however, only those forms of history that are shorter and are merely narrative—annals, chronicles, and true relations.
I. Annals
What annals are
Annals are a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year. The accounts of necessity are brief, since they are made and kept for reference. They contain any matter the recorders deemed worthy of notice, especially, of course, whatever affected the community as a whole. The report stands in relation to the community much as a diary stands in relation to a person. Intimate facts are to be expected. The ambitions, hopes, defeats, expenditures, future plans, of the city or state, are mentioned perhaps, as are also, maybe, its success and honor—in the carrying out of a town fiesta or county fair, or in being host to some distinguished visitor or to a session of some large political party. The essential element of this kind of narrative history is the yearly periods, though the term "annals" has been loosely used in modern literature to signify almost any temporal order. Indeed, except in studies like this such titles are never very strictly applied. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, for instance, is in large part annals. However, we have a few clear cases, especially among the ancients.
Famous old annals
Tacitus wrote annals. Then later there are the Annales Ecclesiastici of Baronius; the Annales et Historia de Rebus Belgicis by Grotius, published at Amsterdam in 1557; Hailes's "Annals of Scotland from the Accession of Malcolm III to the Accession of the House of Stuart;" Chamber's "Domestic Annals of Scotland," and others. John Stow bears a very high reputation as "an accurate and impartial recorder of public events." He travelled on foot through a considerable part of England examining old manuscripts in cathedrals and other places of preservation. He wrote down impartially what he judged to be the truth, and, unswayed by "fear, favor, or malice," as he himself declared, he established trustworthy history in his native land. His "Survey of London" (1598) is the best known of his writings. A scholarly piece of work, it has served us the foundation of all subsequent histories of the metropolis.
American history, so badly treated in the past, is being written accurately for the first time, think our present day historians. They go about their work in the good old Stow fashion: they use authenticated local records. The friendly fable is current that the way a noted professor composes his many histories is this: he merely reaches about from left to right and up and down of his mammoth desk and pulls from the numerous cubby-holes bundles of closely written pages, sorts them a little, ties a string around them, and says, "Here's your book." But these closely written pages are carefully prepared, minutely accurate material—monographs on the local annals and traditions of various places, done by the professor's own students under the scrutinizing eye of their master. Whether the fable is based on truth or not, it is illustrative of the value of annals.