1888, Garibaldi's Autobiography
Equally characteristic of his zeal for what he calls "colourless neutrality" in the presentment of historic facts are his observations on a proposed article for the Review on the autobiography of Garibaldi, then recently published. As to this he writes (February, 1888):
Perhaps the Contessa M—— C—— could do it; and if the book is on the Index (which is not unlikely),[[4]] she could easily get a dispensation by stating her object in wishing to read it. I suppose she is not a Garibaldian, by the way? that would never do. She should express as little opinion of any sort as possible—I don't mean, of course, that she should abstain from stating known facts—and should leave the man to speak for himself by an analysis and a string of quotations, which must be given from the Italian text, and severely literal.
The above example—many others could of course be cited—are sufficient to indicate the spirit of rigid impartiality in which Bute treated, and desired that others should treat, historical questions of every kind, and his almost passionate endeavours to follow in all such researches the old maxim, Audi alteram partem. It must be confessed, however—indeed he himself practically owned—that were his historiographical principles universally adopted, English literature, if not the cause of historic truth, would be the poorer. "Most history," he said in one of his addresses to a body of university students, "is not history at all, but romance, sometimes fascinating but seldom trustworthy, coloured, as it often is deeply, with the prejudices and prepossessions of its writers. Names—facts—dates—there is true history; but when a man gets beyond that, when he begins to dissect characters, to attribute motives, to analyse principles of action, then in nine cases out of ten he ceases to be a historian and becomes a romancer. Gibbon, with his enormous erudition, could have presented to us all the details of Rome's decline as they really were—-he has given us instead a travesty of them distorted by his own devilish hatred of Christianity. Macaulay, whose whiggery may have been all very well on the hustings, disgusts us by intruding it into every page of his so-called "History of England." Froude vaunts that his history of the English Reformation is entirely based on original documents; by which he really means that he has used all those which have helped him in his self-imposed task of whitewashing Henry VIII., and has suppressed all the rest.[[5]] I need not give other instances."
Bute might have pointed to his own laborious work on Scottish Chronology in illustration of his theory of how history should be written—the immense folio volumes, specially constructed for the purpose, in which day by day and year by year he inserted dates, with the barest and briefest statement of facts bearing on the history of Scotland and her early kings, as he encountered them in the course of his omnivorous reading. He could hardly have seriously maintained the paradox that history in this skeleton form was the only true history worthy of the name. But no historic student (and he disclaimed for himself any higher title) ever aimed more anxiously than he did, in every line that he wrote, to set forth the plain facts of history absolutely uncoloured by any views or prepossessions of his own. It was this marked characteristic, coupled (it is not necessary to say contrasted) with his complete and unquestioning loyalty to the teachings of his Church, which, especially to those who knew him, gave a unique interest to everything that came from his pen. Genuine erudition—a virile independence of thought and judgment—an engaging personal diffidence and a complete absence of anything like obtrusion of the writer's own opinions, combined with a gift of expression and a command of language which often soars to real, if sober, eloquence—these qualities may all be found in the essays which he wrote during the years which were the most intellectually productive of his life; and it is well that they have been rescued from the pozzo profondo of the pages of a provincial periodical of limited circulation, and are accessible, in two handsome volumes,[[6]] to all who care to read them.
1888, Tribute from Lord Rosebery
It may be well at this point, and in this connection, to cite an interesting tribute to Bute's literary abilities paid by one who had been among the earliest friends of his dawning manhood, and whose own distinction in the world of letters gives a particular value to his judgment. Lord Rosebery said of him as follows:—[[7]]
The late Lord Bute was a remarkable character to the world at large, whether they knew him well or did not. To some it may often have seemed that he was out of place in the nineteenth century. His mind, his thoughts, his studies were so entirely thrown back into a past more or less remote; and I think, had he had more incentive to make known the objects and subjects of his researches, he would have left no mean name in the republic of letters. And even as it is he has left behind him a rectorial address to the University of St. Andrews, which contains, I think, one of the strangest, most pathetic, most striking passages of eloquence with which I am acquainted in any modern deliverance.
This is high praise; but to those who are familiar with the passages to which Lord Rosebery refers, it will not seem exaggerated or misplaced. They form the peroration to Bute's inaugural address delivered at St. Andrews on the occasion of his election to the lord-rectorship of that University; and they run as follows:—