The character was definitely introduced into English literature when the historians took as their subjects contemporary or recent events at home, and, abandoning the methods of the chronicle, fashioned their work on classical models. Its introduction had been further prepared to some extent by the growing interest in lives, which, unlike chronicles that recorded events, recognized the part played by men in the control of events. In his Advancement of Learning Bacon regretted that Englishmen gave so little thought to describing the deeds and characters of their great countrymen. 'I do find strange', he said, 'that these times have so little esteemed the virtues of the times, as that the writing of lives should be no more frequent.' He and Hayward both wrote lives with the consciousness that their methods were new in English, though largely borrowed from the classics.[6] Hayward tried to produce a picture of the period he dealt with, and his means for procuring harmoniousness of design was to centre attention on the person of the sovereign. It is a conception of history not as a register of facts but as a representation of the national drama. His Henry IV gives the impression, especially by its speeches, that he looked upon history as resolving itself ultimately into a study of men; and it thus explains how he wished to be free to describe the times wherein he lived. He is on the whole earlier than Bacon, who wrote his Historie of the Reigne of King Henry the Seventh late in life, during the leisure that was forced on him by his removal from all public offices. Written to display the controlling policy in days that were 'rough, and full of mutations, and rare accidents', it is a study of the statecraft and character of a king who had few personal gifts and small capacity for a brilliant part, yet won by his ready wisdom the best of all praises that 'what he minded he compassed'. How he compassed it, is what interested Bacon. 'I have not flattered him,' he says, 'but took him to the life as well as I could, sitting so far off, and having no better light.' Would that Bacon had felt at liberty to choose those who sat near at hand. Who better than the writer of the Essays could have painted a series of miniatures of the courts of Elizabeth and James?
When at last the political upheaval of this century compelled men to leave, whether in histories, or memoirs, or biographies, a record of what they had themselves experienced, the character attained to its full importance and excellence. 'That posterity may not be deceaved by the prosperous wickednesse of these tymes, into an opinyon, that lesse then a generall combination and universall apostacy in the whole Nacion from their religion and allegiaunce could in so shorte a tyme have produced such a totall and prodigious alteration and confusion over the whole kingdome, and so the memory of those few who out of duty and conscience have opposed and resisted that Torrent which hath overwhelmed them, may loose the recompence dew to ther virtue, and havinge undergone the injuryes and reproches of this, may not finde a vindication in a better Age'—in these words Clarendon began his History of the Rebellion. But he could not vindicate the memory of his political friends without describing the men who had overcome them. The history of these confused and difficult years would not be properly understood if the characters of all the chief actors in the tragic drama were not known. For to Clarendon history was the record of the struggle of personalities. When we are in the midst of a crisis, or view it from too near a distance, it is natural for us to think of it as a fight between the opposing leaders, and the historians of their own time are always liable to attribute to the personal force of a statesman what is due to general causes of which he is only the instrument. Of these general causes Clarendon took little account. 'Motives which influenced masses of men', it has been said, 'escape his appreciation, and the History of the Rebellion is accordingly an account of the Puritan Revolution which is unintelligible because the part played by Puritanism is misunderstood or omitted altogether'.[7] But the History of the Rebellion is a Stuart portrait gallery, and the greatest portrait gallery in the English language.
[Footnote 1: Book II, ed. Aldis Wright, pp. 92-5.]
[Footnote 2: 'Historæ nostræ particulam quidam non male: sed qui totum corpus ea fide, eaque dignitate scriptis complexus sit, quam suscepti operis magnitudo postularet, hactenus plane neminem extitisse constat…. Nostri ex fæce plebis historici, dum maiestatem tanti operis ornare studuerunt, putidissimis ineptiis contaminarunt. Ita factum est nescio qua huiusce insulæ infoelicitate, ut maiores tui, (serenissima Regina) viri maximi, qui magnam huius orbis nostri partem imperio complexi, omnes sui temporis reges rerum gestarum gloria facile superarunt, magnorum ingeniorum quasi lumine destituti, iaceant ignoti, & delitescant.']
[Footnote 3: Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed.
Spingarn, vol. i, pp. 82-115.]
[Footnote 4: See also Camden Society Publications, No. 7, 1840.]
[Footnote 5: Roger Ascham in his Scholemaster divides History into
'Diaria', 'Annales', 'Commentaries', and 'Iustam Historiam'.]
[Footnote 6: Bacon told Queen Elizabeth that there was no treason in Hayward's Henry IV, but 'very much felony', because Hayward 'had stolen many of his sentences and conceits out of Cornelius Tacitus' (Apophthegms, 58). Hayward and Bacon had a precursor in the author of The History of King Richard the Thirde, generally attributed to Sir Thomas More, and printed in the collection of his works published in 1557. It was known to the chroniclers, but it did not affect the writing of history. Nor did George Cavendish's Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey, which they likewise used for its facts.]
[Footnote 7: C.H. Firth, 'Burnet as a Historian', in Clarke and
Foxcroft's Life of Gilbert Burnet, 1907, pp. xliv, xlv.]
II. The Literary Models.