Besides the miscellaneous paragraphs, there are periodical reports of the weather, and the storms, and the droughts, and the harvests. Moreover, there are what answer to our police reports, and details of criminal proceedings against Jew and Gentile, and births and deaths and marriages, and now and then brief notes upon the state of the markets, and sometimes hints and reflections upon the desirability of certain reforms in Church and State; and all this not in the spirit of modern journalism, which at its best too often bears the marks of haste, and betrays the literary soldier of fortune paid for his work at so much a column, but genuine, hearty, throbbing with a certain passionate loyalty to a tradition, or an idea which you may say is exploded, grotesque, or fanciful, but which in the 13th century honest men and devout ones lived by and lived for, and were trying in their own way to carry out into action.
But now that we have got this precious 'Chronicle,' not to mention other works in the composition of which Brother Matthew had at least a large share—though our space forbids us dwelling upon them or their contents, and we must refer our readers to Dr. Luard's elaborate prefaces if they would desire to know all about them—another question suggests itself, which sooner or later will become a pressing question—What are we going to do with such a national work of which this country has great reason to be proud?
The days are gone by when a man was supposed to be educated in proportion as he was familiar with the literature of Greece and Rome and ignorant of everything else. Already at Oxford candidates for the highest honours in the final schools think it no shame to read their Plato or their Aristotle in English translations, and in half the time that was needed under the old plan they get a mastery of their Thucydides or Herodotus, devoting themselves to the subject-matter after they have proved at 'Moderations' that they have a respectable acquaintance with the language of the authors.
May the day be far off when Homer and Æschylus shall cease to be read in the original! The great writers of Hellas and Italy were poets or orators, great teachers or great thinkers; but they were something more. They were perfect instrumentalities too. Their thoughts, their lessons, their aspirations, their regrets, you may interpret and transfer into the speech and the idioms of the moderns; but the music of their language, the subtleties of melody and rhythm, and harmony and tone, can no more be translated than a symphony for the strings can be adequately represented upon the organ. You may persuade yourself that you have got the substance; you have missed the perfection of the form. Yet who but a narrow pedant will insist that the study of any literature, ancient or modern, is valuable chiefly for familiarizing us with the language, not for enriching our minds with the subject matter? Do we desire to understand the past and so to be better able to estimate the importance of great movements that are going on in the present or, by the help of the experience of bygone ages, to forecast the future? Then it behoves us to see that our induction shall be made from as wide a view as may be, and to avail ourselves of any light that may be gained. But it is mere waste of time to be for ever staring at the lamp which may be pretty to look at in itself, but is then most precious when it serves as a means to an end. If we are ever to construct a Science of History, the old methods must give place to something which may approximate to philosophic enquiry. When we come to think of it, how very small an area of time or space is covered by the historians of Greece and Rome: how small an area and how superficially dealt with! Even Thucydides hardly ventures to lift the veil which separates the civilization of his own age from that of an earlier period; he lifts it for a moment, then drops the curtain and passes on. It is true indeed that Herodotus introduces us to a world that is not Hellenic, and brings us into some sort of relation with men whose habits and art and religion had a character of their own; but then these nations were not as we, and not as men even of our race could ever become. We never seem to be in touch with Egypt or Assyria, and when he prattles on about these nations it is less as a historian than as an observant traveller that Herodotus delights and allures. Xenophon's passing notices of the manners and education, of the feudalism and the social life of the Medes, are too brief to be anything but tantalizing; but the neglect of Xenophon by professed students is not creditable, however significant. Perhaps of all the Greek writers Polybius was the man who had the truest conception of the historian's vocation; perhaps, too, it was just because he was so much before his age that his voluminous and ambitious work has come down to us little more than a fragment. Because he was something better than a compiler of annals, they who read history only to be amused found him dull, and the moderns have not yet reversed the verdict which was passed upon him. Who ever heard of a candidate for honours taking Polybius into the schools?
It is from the Latin historians that we might have expected so much and from whom we get so little. What do they tell us of ancient Spain—the Spain that Sertorius pretended he was going to regenerate, and whose civilization, literature, and national life he did so much to extinguish? If it were not for what Aristotle has told us in the Politics, what should we know of that mighty commercial Republic which monopolized the carrying trade of the old world? It never seems to have occurred to Livy that the political organization of Carthage could be worth his notice. His business was to glorify Rome, and to tell how Rome grew to greatness—grew by war and conquest and pillage, and the ferocious might of her relentless soldiery. The 'Germania' of Tacitus stands alone—unique in ancient literature; but what would we not give for such a monograph upon the Britain which Cæsar attempted to conquer, or the Gaul which he plundered and devastated? The great captain's famous missive might be inscribed as the motto of his 'Commentaries.' Veni! vidi! vici! sums up in brief the substance of what they contain. It was always Rome's way! Rome swept a sponge that was soaked in blood over all the past of the nations she subdued. She came to obliterate, never to preserve. Her chroniclers disdained to ask how these or those doughty antagonists had grown formidable, how their national life had developed; whether their progress had been arrested by the conquerors or whether they had become weak and enervated by social deterioration or moral corruption. Enough that they were Barbarians.
The science of history can be but little advanced by writers such as these, who pass from battlefield to battlefield—
'Crimson-footed, like the stork,
Through great ruts of slaughter,'
and to whom the silent growth of institutions and the evolution of ethical sentiments and the development of the arts of peace were matters which never presented themselves as worthy of their attention. You may call this history if you will, in truth it is little better than Empiricism. The world is a larger world than Rome or Athens dreamt of, and students of history are beginning to realize that not quite the last thing they have to do is 'to look at home.' Such a work as the 'Chronica Majora' of Matthew Paris is a national heritage which it is shameful to allow much longer to be known only by the curious and erudite. Now that there is no excuse for our neglect, is it too much to hope that the day may not be far distant when the name of this great Englishman may become as familiar to schoolboys as that of Sallust or Livy, of Cornelius Nepos or Cæsar—his name as familiar, and his writings better known and more loved?
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lord Langdale resigned three weeks before his death.