Friends in Council Part 15

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 antic.i.p.ate the experience of life. An experienced man reads that Caesar did this or that, but he says to himself, "I am not Caesar." 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 Caesar in what Caesar 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 mult.i.tudinous a.s.semblage 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 pa.s.s 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 p.r.o.ne 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 pa.s.sions--and when we are contemplating the representation of great pa.s.sions 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 Ra.s.selas 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 cla.s.sifying 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 a.s.sociations 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 prudentiae civilis, hominum denique nomen et fama commissa sunt." {183}

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 pa.s.sage 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.

"O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd, All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky, And its peculiar tint of yellow-green: And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye!

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel how beautiful they are."

Dunsford. Admirable! In the Ode to Dejection, is it not? where, too, there are those lines,

"O Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does Nature live."

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 quant.i.ty in a Boyle.

Ellesmere. Listen and perpend, my historical friends.

"To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book, sealed with seven seals: That which you call the spirit of ages past Is but, in truth, the spirit of some few authors In which those ages are beheld reflected, With what distortion strange heaven only knows.

Oh! often, what a toilsome thing it is This study of thine--at the first glance we fly it.

A ma.s.s of things confusedly heaped together; A lumber-room of dusty doc.u.ments, Furnished with all approved court-precedents And old traditional maxims! History!

Facts dramatised say rather--action--plot-- Sentiment, everything the writer's own, As it bests fits the web-work of his story, With here and there a solitary fact Of consequence, by those grave chroniclers, Pointed with many a moral apophthegm, And wise old saws, learned at the puppet-shows."

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.

"To us, my friend, the times that are gone by Are a mysterious book."--

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 Caesar, 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.