  My readers will, perhaps, agree with me in being sorry to find that we are coming to the end of our present series. I say, “my readers,” though I have so little part in purveying for them, that I mostly consider myself one of them. It is no light task, however, to give a good account of a conversation; and I say this, and would wish people to try whether I am not right in saying so, not to call attention to my labour in the matter, but because it may be well to notice how difficult it is to report anything truly. Were this better known, it might be an aid to charity, and prevent some of those feuds which grow out of the poverty of man’s power to express, to apprehend, to represent, rather than out of any malignant part of his nature. But I must not go on moralising. I almost feel that Ellesmere is looking over my shoulder, and breaking into my discourse with sharp words; which I have lately been so much accustomed to. I had expected that we should have many more readings this summer, as I knew that Milverton had prepared more essays for us. But finding, as he said, that the other subjects he had in hand were larger than he had anticipated, or was prepared for, he would not read even to us what he had written. Though I was very sorry for this—for I may not be the chronicler in another year—I could not but say he was right. Indeed, my ideas of literature, nourished as they have been in much solitude, and by the reading, if I may say so, mainly of our classical authors, are very high placed, though I hope not fantastical. And, therefore, I would not discourage anyone in expending whatever thought and labour might be in him upon any literary work. In fine, then, I did not attempt to dissuade Milverton from his purpose of postponing our readings: and we agreed that there should only be one more for the present. I wished it to be at our favourite place on the lawn, which had become endeared to me as the spot of many of our friendly councils. It was later than usual when I came over to Worth-Ashton for this reading; and as I gained the brow of the hill, some few clouds tinged with red were just grouping together to form the accustomed pomp upon the exit of the setting sun. I believe I mentioned in the introduction to our first conversation that the ruins of an old castle could be seen from our place of meeting. Milverton and Ellesmere were talking about it as I joined them. Milverton. Yes, Ellesmere, many a man has looked out of those windows upon a sunset like this, with some of the thoughts that must come into the minds of all men on seeing this great emblem, the setting sun—has felt, in looking at it, his coming end, or the closing of his greatness. Those old walls must have been witness to every kind of human emotion. Henry the Second was there; John, I think; Margaret of Anjou and Cardinal Beaufort; William of Wykeham; Henry the Eighth’s Cromwell; and many others who have made some stir in the world. Ellesmere. And, perhaps, the greatest there were those who made no stir.
Milverton. I am slow to believe that. I cannot well reconcile myself to the idea that great capacities are given for nothing. They bud out in some way or other. Ellesmere. Yes, but it may not be in a noisy way. Milverton. There is one thing that always strikes me very much in looking at the lives of men: how soon, as it were, their course seems to be determined. They say, or do, or think, something which gives a bias at once to the whole of their career. Dunsford. You may go farther back than that, and speak of the impulses they got from their ancestors. Ellesmere. Or the nets around them of other people’s ways and wishes. There are many things, you see, that go to make men puppets. Milverton. I was only noticing the circumstance that there was such a thing, as it appeared to me, as this early direction. But, if it has been ever so unfortunate, a man’s folding his hands over it in a melancholy mood, and suffering himself to be made a puppet by it, is a sadly weak proceeding. Most thoughtful men have probably some dark fountains in their souls, by the side of which, if there were time, and it were decorous, they could let their thoughts sit down and wail indefinitely. That long Byron wail fascinated men for a time; because there is that in Human Nature. Luckily, a great deal besides. Ellesmere. I delight in the helpful and hopeful men. Milverton. A man that I admire very much, and have met with occasionally, is one who is always of use in any matter he is mixed up with, simply because he wishes that the best should be got out of the thing that is possible. There does not seem much in the description of such a character; but only see it in contrast with that of a brilliant man, for instance, who does not ever fully care about the matter in hand. Dunsford. I can thoroughly imagine the difference. Milverton. The human race may be bound up together in some mysterious way, each of us having a profound interest in the fortunes of the whole, and so, to some extent, of every portion of it. Such a man as I have described acts as though he had an intuitive perception of that relation, and therefore a sort of family feeling for mankind, which gives him satisfaction in making the best out of any human affair he has to do with. But we really must have the essay, and not talk any more. It is on History. HISTORY.Among the fathomless things that are about us and within us, is the continuity of time. This gives to life one of its most solemn aspects. We may think to ourselves: Would there could be some halting-place in life, where we could stay, collecting our minds, and see the world drift by us. But no: even while you read this, you are not pausing to read it. As one of the great French preachers, I think, says, We are embarked upon a stream, each in his own little boat, which must move uniformly onwards, till it ceases to move at all. It is a stream that knows “no haste, no rest”; a boat that knows no haven but one. This unbated continuity suggests the past as well as the future. We would know what mighty empires this stream of time has flowed through, by what battle-fields it has been tinged, how it has been employed towards fertility, and what beautiful shadows on its surface have been seized by art, or science, or great words, and held in time-lasting, if not in everlasting, beauty. This is what history tells us. Often in a faltering, confused, be-darkened way, like the deed it chronicles. But it is what we have, and we must make the best of it. The subject of this essay may be thus divided: Why history should be read—how it should be read—by whom it should be written—how it should be written—and how good writers of history should be called forth, aided, and rewarded. I. WHY HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.It takes us out of too much care for the present; it extends our sympathies; it shows us that other men have had their sufferings and their grievances; it enriches discourse, it enlightens travel. So does fiction. But the effect of history is more lasting and suggestive. If we see a place which fiction has treated of, we feel that it has some interest for us; but show us a spot where remarkable deeds have been done, or remarkable people have lived, and our thoughts cling to it. We employ our own imagination about it: we invent the fiction for ourselves. Again, history is at least the conventional account of things: that which men agree to receive as the right account, and which they discuss as true. To understand their talk, we must know what they are talking about. Again, there is something in history which can seldom be got from the study of the lives of individual men; namely, the movements of men collectively, and for long periods—of man, in fact, not of men. In history, the composition of the forces that move the world has to be analysed. We must have before us the law of the progress of opinion, the interruptions to it of individual character, the principles on which men act in the main, the trade winds, as we may say, in human affairs, and the recurrent storms which one man’s life does not tell us of. Again, by the study of history, we have a chance of becoming tolerant travelling over the ways of many nations and many periods; and we may also acquire that historic tact by which we collect upon one point of human affairs the light of many ages. We may judge of the benefit of historical studies by observing what great defects are incident to the moral and political writers who know nothing of history. A present grievance, or what seems such, swallows up in their minds all other considerations; their little bottle of oil is to still the raging waves of the whole human ocean; their system, a thing that the historian has seen before, perhaps, in many ages, is to reconcile all diversities. Then they would persuade you that this class of men is wholly good, that wholly bad; or that there is no difference between good and bad. They may be shrewd men, considering what they have seen, but would be much shrewder if they could know how small a part that is of life. We may all refer to our boyhood, and recollect the time when we thought the things about us were the type of all things everywhere. That was, perhaps, after all no silly princess who was for feeding the famishing people on cakes. History takes us out of this confined circle of child-like thought; and shows us what are the perennial aims, struggles, and distractions of mankind. History has always been set down as the especial study for statesmen, and for men who take an interest in public affairs. For history is to nations what biography is to individual men. History is the chart and compass for national endeavour. Our early voyagers are dead: not a plank remains of the old ships that first essayed unknown waters; the sea retains no track; and were it not for the history of these voyages contained in charts, in chronicles, in hoarded lore of all kinds, each voyager, though he were to start with all the aids of advanced civilisation (if you could imagine such a thing without history), would need the boldness of the first voyager. And so it would be with the statesman, were the civil history of mankind unknown. We live to some extent in peace and comfort upon the results obtained for us by the chronicles of our forefathers. We do not see this without some reflection. But imagine what a full-grown nation would be if it knew no history—like a full-grown man with only a child’s experience. The present is an age of remarkable experiences. Vast improvements have been made in several of the outward things that concern life nearly, from intercourse rapid as lightning to surgical operation without pain. We accept them all; still, the difficulties of government, the management of ourselves, our relations with others, and many of the prime difficulties of life remain but little subdued. History still claims our interest, is still wanted to make us think and act with any breadth of wisdom. At the same time, however, that we claim for history great powers of instruction, we must not imagine that the examples which it furnishes will enable its readers to anticipate the experience of life. An experienced man reads that CÆsar did this or that, but he says to himself, “I am not CÆsar.” Or, indeed, as is most probable, the reader has not to reject the application of the example to himself: for from first to last he sees nothing but experience for CÆsar in what CÆsar was doing. I think it may be observed, too, that general maxims about life gain the ear of the inexperienced, in preference to historical examples. But neither wise sayings nor historical examples can be understood without experience. Words are only symbols. Who can know anything soundly with respect to the complicated affections and struggles of life, unless he has experienced some of them? All knowledge of humanity spreads from within. So in studying history, the lessons it teaches must have something to grow round in the heart they teach. Our own trials, misfortunes, and enterprises are the best lights by which we can read history. Hence it is that many an historian may see far less into the depths of the very history he has himself written than a man who, having acted and suffered, reads the history in question with all the wisdom that comes from action and suffering. Sir Robert Walpole might naturally exclaim, “Do not read history to me, for that, I know, must be false.” But if he had read it, I do not doubt that he would have seen through the film of false and insufficient narrative into the depth of the matter narrated, in a way that men of great experience can alone attain to. II. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE READ.I suppose that many who now connect the very word history with the idea of dulness, would have been fond and diligent students of history if it had had fair access to their minds. But they were set down to read histories which were not fitted to be read continuously, or by any but practised students. Some such works are mere framework, a name which the author of the Statesman applies to them; very good things, perhaps, for their purpose, but that is not to invite readers to history. You might almost as well read dictionaries with a hope of getting a succinct and clear view of language. When, in any narration, there is a constant heaping up of facts, made about equally significant by the way of telling them, a hasty delineation of characters, and all the incidents moving on as in the fifth act of a confused tragedy, the mind and memory refuse to be so treated; and the reading ends in nothing but a very slight and inaccurate acquaintance with the mere husk of the history. You cannot epitomise the knowledge that it would take years to acquire into a few volumes that may be read in as many weeks. The most likely way of attracting men’s attention to historical subjects will be by presenting them with small portions of history, of great interest, thoroughly examined. This may give them the habit of applying thought and criticism to historical matters. For, as it is, how are people interested in history? and how do they master its multitudinous assemblage of facts? Mostly, perhaps, in this way. A man cares about some one thing, or person, or event, and plunges into its history, really wishing to master it. This pursuit extends: other points of research are taken up by him at other times. His researches begin to intersect. He finds a connection in things. The texture of his historic acquisitions gradually attains some substance and colour; and so at last he begins to have some dim notions of the myriads of men who came, and saw, and did not conquer—only struggled on as they best might, some of them—and are not. When we are considering how history should be read, the main thing perhaps is, that the person reading should desire to know what he is reading about, not merely to have read the books that tell of it. The most elaborate and careful historian must omit, or pass lightly over, many points of his subject. He writes for all readers, and cannot indulge private fancies. But history has its particular aspect for each man: there must be portions which he may be expected to dwell upon. And everywhere, even where the history is most laboured, the reader should have something of the spirit of research which was needful for the writer: if only so much as to ponder well the words of the writer. That man reads history, or anything else, at great peril of being thoroughly misled, who has no perception of any truthfulness except that which can be fully ascertained by reference to facts; who does not in the least perceive the truth, or the reverse, of a writer’s style, of his epithets, of his reasoning, of his mode of narration. In life, our faith in any narration is much influenced by the personal appearance, voice, and gesture of the person narrating. There is some part of all these things in his writing; and you must look into that well before you can know what faith to give him. One man may make mistakes in names, and dates, and references, and yet have a real substance of truthfulness in him, a wish to enlighten himself and then you. Another may not be wrong in his facts, but have a declamatory or sophistical vein in him, much to be guarded against. A third may be both inaccurate and untruthful, caring not so much for anything as to write his book. And if the reader cares only to read it, sad work they make between them of the memories of former days. In studying history, it must be borne in mind that a knowledge is necessary of the state of manners, customs, wealth, arts, and science at the different periods treated of. The text of civil history requires a context of this knowledge in the mind of the reader. For the same reason, some of the main facts of the geography of the countries in question should be present to him. If we are ignorant of these aids to history, all history is apt to seem alike to us. It becomes merely a narrative of men of our own time, in our own country; and then we are prone to expect the same views and conduct from them that we do from our contemporaries. It is true that the heroes of antiquity have been represented on the stage in bag-wigs, and the rest of the costume of our grandfathers: but it was the great events of their lives that were thus told—the crisis of their passions—and when we are contemplating the representation of great passions and their consequences, all minor imagery is of little moment. In a long-drawn narrative, however, the more we have in our minds of what concerned the daily life of the people we read about, the better. And in general it may be said that history, like travelling, gives a return in proportion to the knowledge that a man brings to it. III. BY WHOM HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.Before entering directly on this part of the subject, it is desirable to consider a little the difficulties in the way of writing history. We all know the difficulty of getting at the truth of a matter which happened yesterday, and about which we can examine the living actors upon oath. But in history the most significant things may lack the most important part of their evidence. The people who were making history were not thinking of the convenience of future writers of history. Often the historian must contrive to get his insight into matters from evidence of men and things which is like bad pictures of them. The contemporary, if he knew the man, said of the picture, “I should have known it, but it has very little of him in it.” The poor historian, with no original before him, has to see through the bad picture into the man. Then, supposing our historian rich in well-selected evidence—I say well-selected, because, as students tell us, for many an historian one authority is of the same weight as another, provided they are both of the same age; still, how difficult is narration even to the man who is rich in well-selected evidence. What a tendency there is to round off a narrative into falsehood; or else by parenthesis to destroy its pith and continuity. Again, the historian knows the end of many of the transactions he narrates. If he did not, how differently often he would narrate them. It would be a most instructive thing to give a man the materials for the account of a great transaction, stopping short of the end, and then see how different would be his account from the ordinary ones. Fools have been hardly dealt with in the saying that the event is their master (“eventus stultorum magister”), seeing how it rules us all. And in nothing more than in history. The event is always present to our minds; along the pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have walked till they are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to the men who first went along them. Indeed, we almost fancy that these ancestors of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we do; whereas, they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest. This knowledge of the end we must, therefore, put down as one of the most dangerous pitfalls which beset the writers of history. Then consider the difficulty in the “composition,” to use an artist’s word, of our historian’s picture. Before both the artist and the historian lies Nature as far as the horizon; how shall they choose that portion of it which has some unity and which shall represent the rest? What method is needful in the grouping of facts; what learning, what patience, what accuracy! By whom, then, should history be written? In the first place, by men of some experience in real life; who have acted and suffered; who have been in crowds, and seen, perhaps felt, how madly men can care about nothings; who have observed how much is done in the world in an uncertain manner, upon sudden impulses and very little reason; and who, therefore, do not think themselves bound to have a deep-laid theory for all things. They should be men who have studied the laws of the affections, who know how much men’s opinions depend on the time in which they live, how they vary with their age and their position. To make themselves historians, they should also have considered the combinations amongst men and the laws that govern such things; for there are laws. Moreover our historians, like most men who do great things, must combine in themselves qualities which are held to belong to opposite natures; must at the same time be patient in research and vigorous in imagination, energetic and calm, cautious and enterprising. Such historians, wise, as we may suppose they will be, about the affair of other men, may, let us hope, be sufficiently wise about their own affairs to understand that no great work can be done without great labour, that no great labour ought to look for its reward. But my readers will exclaim as Rasselas to Imlac on hearing the requisites for a poet, “Enough! thou hast convinced me that no human being can ever be an historian. Proceed with thy narration.” IV. HOW HISTORY SHOULD BE WRITTEN.One of the first things in writing history is for the historian to recollect that it is history he is writing. The narrative must not be oppressed by reflections, even by wise ones. Least of all should the historian suffer himself to become entangled by a theory or a system. If he does, each fact is taken up by him in a particular way: those facts that cannot be so handled cease to be his facts, and those that offer themselves conveniently are received too fondly by him. Then, although our historian must not be mastered by system, he must have some way of taking up his facts and of classifying them. They must not be mere isolated units in his eyes, else he is mobbed by them. And a man in the midst of a crowd, though he may know the names and nature of all the crowd, cannot give an account of their doings. Those who look down from the housetop must do that. But, above all things, the historian must get out of his own age into the time in which he is writing. Imagination is as much needed for the historian as the poet. You may combine bits of books with other bits of books, and so make some new combinations, and this may be done accurately, and, in general, much of the subordinate preparation for history may be accomplished without any great effort of imagination. But to write history in any large sense of the words, you must be able to comprehend other times. You must know that there is a right and wrong which is not your right and wrong, but yet stands upon the right and wrong of all ages and all hearts. You must also appreciate the outward life and colours of the period you write about. Try to think how the men you are telling of would have spent a day, what were their leading ideas, what they cared about. Grasp the body of the time, and give it to us. If not, and these men could look at your history, they would say, “This is all very well; we daresay some of these things did happen; but we were not thinking of these things all day long. It does not represent us.” After enlarging upon this great requisite, imagination, it seems somewhat prosaic to come down to saying that history requires accuracy. But I think I hear the sighs, and sounds more harsh than sighing, of those who have ever investigated anything, and found by dire experience the deplorable inaccuracy which prevails in the world. And, therefore, I would say to the historian almost as the first suggestion, “Be accurate; do not make false references, do not mis-state: and men, if they get no light from you, will not execrate you. You will not stand in the way, and have to be explained and got rid of.” Another most important matter in writing history, and that indeed in which the art lies, is the method of narrating. This is a thing almost beyond rules, like the actual execution in music or painting. A man might have fairness, accuracy, an insight into other times, great knowledge of facts, some power even of arranging them, and yet make a narrative out of it all, so protracted here, so huddled together there, the purpose so buried or confused, that men would agree to acknowledge the merit of the book and leave it unread. There must be a natural line of associations for the narrative to run along. The separate threads of the narrative must be treated separately, and yet the subject not be dealt with sectionally, for that is not the way in which the things occurred. The historian must, therefore, beware that those divisions of the subject which he makes for our ease and convenience, do not induce him to treat his subject in a flimsy manner. He must not make his story easy where it is not so. After all, it is not by rule that a great history is to be written. Most thinkers agree that the main object for the historian is to get an insight into the things which he tells of, and then to tell them with the modesty of a man who is in the presence of great events; and must speak about them carefully, simply, and with but little of himself or of his affections thrown into the narration. V. HOW GOOD WRITERS OF HISTORY SHOULD BE CALLED FORTH, AIDED, AND REWARDED.Mainly by history being properly read. The direct ways of commanding excellence of any kind are very few, if any. When a State has found out its notable men, it should reward them, and will show its worthiness by its measure and mode of reward. But it cannot purchase them. It may do something in the way of aiding them. In history, for instance, the records of a nation may be discreetly managed, and some of the minor work, therefore, done to the hand of the historian. But the most likely method to ensure good historians is to have a fit audience for them. And this is a very difficult matter. In works of general literature, the circle of persons capable of judging is large; even in works of science or philosophy it is considerable: but in history, it is a very confined circle. To the general body of readers, whether the history they read is true or not is in no way perceptible. It is quite as amusing to them when it is told in one way as in another. There is always mischief in error: but in this case the mischief is remote, or seems so. For men of ordinary culture, even if of much intelligence, the difficulty of discerning what is true or false in the histories they read makes it a matter of the highest duty for those few persons who can give us criticism on historical works, at least to save us from insolent and mendacious carelessness in historical writers, if not by just encouragement to secure for nations some results not altogether unworthy of the great enterprise which the writing of history holds out itself to be. “Hujus enim fidei exempla majorum, vicissitudines rerum, fundamenta prudentiÆ civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt.” Ellesmere. Just wait a minute for me, and do not talk about the essay till I come back. I am going for Anster’s Faust. Dunsford. What has Ellesmere got in his head? Milverton. I see. There is a passage where Faust, in his most discontented mood, falls foul of history—in his talk to Wagner, if I am not mistaken. Dunsford. How beautiful it is this evening! Look at that yellow-green near the sunset. Milverton. The very words that Coleridge uses. I always think of them when I see that tint. Dunsford. I daresay his words were in my mind, but I have forgotten what you allude to. Milverton.
Dunsford. Admirable! In the Ode to Dejection, is it not? where, too, there are those lines,
Milverton. But here comes Ellesmere with triumphant look. You look as jovial, my dear Ellesmere, as if you were a Bentley that had found a false quantity in a Boyle. Ellesmere. Listen and perpend, my historical friends.
Milverton. Yes; admirable lines; they describe to the life the very faults we have been considering as the faults of badly-written histories. I do not see that they do much more. Ellesmere.
Milverton. Those two first lines are the full expression of Faust’s discontent—unmeasured as in the presence of a weak man who could not check him. But, if you come to look at the matter closely, you will see that the time present is also in some sense a sealed book to us. Men that we live with daily we often think as little of as we do of Julius CÆsar, I was going to say—but we know much less of them than of him. Ellesmere. I did not mean to say that Faust spoke my sentiments about history in general. Still, there are periods of history which we have very few authors to tell us about, and I daresay in some of those cases the colouring of their particular minds gives us a false idea of the whole age they lived in. Dunsford. This may have happened, certainly. Milverton. We must be careful not to expect too much from the history of past ages, as a means of understanding the present age. There is something wanted besides the preceding history to understand each age. Each individual life may have a problem of its own, which all other biography accurately set down for us might not enable us to work out. So of each age. It has something in it not known before, and tends to a result which is not down in any books. Dunsford. Yet history must be of greatest use in discerning this tendency. Ellesmere. Yes; but the Wagner sort of pedant would get entangled in his round of history—in his historical resemblances. Dunsford. Now, Milverton, if you were called upon to say what are the peculiar characteristics of this age, what should you say? Ellesmere. One of Dunsford’s questions this, requiring a stout quarto volume with notes in answer. Milverton. I would rather wait till I was called upon. I am apt to feel, after I have left off describing the character of any individual man, as if I had only just begun. And I do not see the extent of discourse that would be needful in attempting to give the characteristics of an age. Ellesmere. I think you are prudent to avoid answering Dunsford’s question. For my own part, I should prefer giving an account of the age we live in after we have come to the end of it—in the true historical fashion. And so, Dunsford, you must wait for my notions. Dunsford. I am afraid, Milverton, if you were to write history, you would never make up your mind to condemn anybody. Milverton. I hope I should not be so inconclusive. I certainly do dislike to see any character, whether of a living or a dead person, disposed of in a summary way. Ellesmere. For once I will come to the rescue of Milverton. I really do not see that a man’s belief in the extent and variety of human character, and in the difficulty of appreciating the circumstances of life, should prevent him from writing history—from coming to some conclusions. Of course such a man is not likely to write a long course of history; but that I hold has been a frequent error in historians—that they have taken up subjects too large for them. Milverton. If there is as much to be said about men’s character and conduct as I think there mostly is, why should we be content with shallow views of them? Take the outward form of these hills and valleys before us. When we have seen them a few times, we think we know them, but are quite mistaken. Approaching from another quarter, it is almost new ground to us. It is a long time before you master the outward form and semblance of any small piece of country that has much life and diversity in it. I often think of this, applying it to our little knowledge of men. Now, look there a moment: you see that house; close behind it is apparently a barren tract. In reality there is nothing of the kind there. A fertile valley with a great river in it, as you know, is between that house and the moors. But the plane of those moors and of the house is coincident from our present point of view. Had we not, as educated men, some distrust of the conclusions of our senses, we should be ready to swear that there was a lonely house on the border of the moors. It is the same in judging of men. We see a man connected with a train of action which is really not near him, absolutely foreign to him, perhaps, but in our eyes that is what he is always connected with. If there were not a Being who understands us immeasurably better than other men can, immeasurably better than we do ourselves, we should be badly off. Such precautionary thoughts as these must be useful, I contend. They need not make us indifferent to character, or prevent us from forming judgments where we must form them, but they show us what a wide thing we are talking about when we are judging the life and nature of a man. Ellesmere. I am sure, Dunsford, you are already convinced: you seldom want more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of things. You are only afraid of not dealing stoutly enough with bad things and people. Do not be afraid though. As long as you have me to abuse, you will say many unjust things against me, you know, so that you may waste yourself in good thoughts about the rest of the world, past and present. Do you know the lawyer’s story I had in my mind then? “Many times when I have had a good case,” he said, “I have failed; but then I have often succeeded with bad cases. And so justice is done.” Milverton. To return to the subject. It is not a sort of equalising want of thought about men that I desire; only not to be rash in a matter that requires all our care and prudence. Dunsford. Well, I believe I am won over. But now to another point. I think, Milverton, that you have said hardly anything about the use of history as an incentive to good deeds and a discouragement to evil ones. Milverton. I ought to have done so. Bolingbroke gives in his “Letters on History,” talking of this point, a passage from Tacitus, “PrÆcipuum munus annalium,”—can you go on with it, Dunsford? Dunsford. Yes, I think I can. It is a passage I have often seen quoted. “PrÆcipuum munus annalium, reor, ne virtutes sileantur; utque pravis dictis factisque ex posteritate et infami metus sit.” Ellesmere. Well done; Dunsford may have invented it, though, for aught that we know, Milverton, and be passing himself off upon us for Tacitus. Milverton. Then Bolingbroke goes on to say (I wish I could give you his own flowing words), that the great duty of history is to form a tribunal like that amongst the Egyptians which Diodorus tells of, where both common men and princes were tried after their deaths, and received appropriate honour or disgrace. The sentence was pronounced, he says, too late to correct or to recompense; but it was pronounced in time to render examples of general instruction to mankind. Now, what I was going to remark upon this is, that Bolingbroke understates his case. History well written is a present correction, and a foretaste of recompense, to the man who is now struggling with difficulties and temptations, now overcast by calumny and cloudy misrepresentation. Ellesmere. Yes; many a man makes an appeal to posterity which will never come before the court; but if there were no such court of appeal— Milverton. A man’s conviction that justice will be done to him in history is a secondary motive, and not one which, of itself, will compel him to do just and great things; but, at any rate, it forms one of the benefits that flow from history, and it becomes stronger as histories are better written. Much may be said against care for fame; much also against care for present repute. There is a diviner impulse than either at the doing of any actions that are much worth doing. As a correction, however, this anticipation of the judgment of history may really be very powerful. It is a great enlightenment of conscience to read the opinions of men on deeds similar to those we are engaged in or meditating. Dunsford. I think Bolingbroke’s idea, which I imagine was more general than yours, is more important: namely, that this judicial proceeding, mentioned by Diodorus Siculus, gave significant lessons to all people, not merely to those who had any chance of having their names in history. Milverton. Certainly: for this is one of Bolingbroke’s chief points, if I recollect rightly. Ellesmere. Our conversations are much better things than your essays, Milverton. Milverton. Of course, I am bound to say so: but what made you think of that now? Ellesmere. Why, I was thinking how in talk we can know exactly where we agree or differ. But I never like to interrupt the essay. I never know when it would come to an end if I did. And so it swims on like a sermon, having all its own way: one cannot put in an awkward question in a weak part, and get things looked at in various ways. Dunsford. I suppose, then, Ellesmere, you would like to interrupt sermons. Ellesmere. Why, yes, sometimes—do not throw sticks at me, Dunsford. Dunsford. Well, it is absurd to be angry with you; because if you long to interrupt Milverton with his captious perhapses and probablys, of course you will be impatient with discourses which do, to a certain extent, assume that the preacher and the hearers are in unison upon great matters. Ellesmere. I am afraid to say anything about sermons, for fear of the argumentum baculinum from Dunsford; for many essay writers, like Milverton, delight to wind up their paragraphs with complete little aphorisms—shutting up something certainly, but shutting out something too. I could generally pause upon them a little. Milverton. Of course one may err, Ellesmere, in too much aphorising as in too much of anything. But your argument goes against all expression of opinion, which must be incomplete, especially when dealing with matters that cannot be circumscribed by exact definitions. Otherwise, a code of wisdom might be made which the fool might apply as well as the wisest man. Even the best proverb, though often the expression of the widest experience in the choicest language, can be thoroughly misapplied. It cannot embrace the whole of the subject, and apply in all cases like a mathematical formula. Its wisdom lies in the ear of the hearer. Ellesmere. Well, I not know that there is anything more to say about the essay. I suppose you are aware, Dunsford, that Milverton does not intend to give us any more essays for some time. He is distressing his mind about some facts which he wants to ascertain before he will read any more to us. I imagine we are to have something historical next. Milverton. Something in which historical records are useful. Ellesmere. Really it is wonderful to see how beautifully human nature accommodates itself to anything, even to the listening to essays. I shall miss them. Milverton. You may miss the talk before and after. Ellesmere. Well, there is no knowing how much of that is provoked (provoked is a good word, is it not?) by the essays. Dunsford. Then, for the present, we have come to an end of our readings. Milverton. Yes, but I trust at no distant time to have something more to try your critical powers and patience upon. I hope that that old tower will yet see us meet together here on many a sunny day, discussing various things in friendly council. Printed by Cassell and Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C. |
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