Victorian Literature Part 4

[9] "The Collected Works of Charles Lever." Downey & Co.

[10] A New Library Edition of the novels of Wilkie Collins has just been published by Chatto and Windus.

CHAPTER III

The Historians

The reign of Victoria has been pre-eminently the reign of the historian in our literature. Greater poets we had seen in the reigns of the Georges, greater essayists in the reign of Anne. But Grote and Carlyle, Macaulay and Gardiner, Bishop Stubbs and Dr Freeman, had no counterparts in an earlier age--always excepting the one great name of Gibbon. Before them there were chroniclers of contemporary events and pamphleteers under the guise of historians, but little more. Goldsmith's histories are the laughing-stock of those to whom the modern methods of research are familiar, and even Hume had little of the spirit of the genuine student. Hallam and Lingard were the pioneers in this branch of literature, although both of them had done their work before Queen Victoria came to the throne.

=Henry Hallam (1777-1859)= was born at Windsor, where his father held a canonry. His first great work, ent.i.tled "View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages," was published in 1818, and his "Const.i.tutional History of England, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II.," in 1827. In 1838 he produced his "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries." Of these three works the first and the last are valuable mainly for their stimulus to the more philosophical and imaginative work of later writers, but the "Const.i.tutional History" remains the text-book for the period which it covers. Macaulay praised it highly, possibly because of the Whiggism which undoubtedly underlies some of the more debatable propositions in the book; but Macaulay and many other writers have disputed the correctness of many of Hallam's judgments. To write the const.i.tutional history of England from the earliest period to the year 1485, where Hallam begins, was a far more difficult undertaking than to deal with the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts. This work devolved on Dr Stubbs.

=William Stubbs (1825- )=, who was appointed Bishop of Oxford in 1889, was born at Knaresborough, and was educated at Ripon Grammar School and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1850 he became vicar of Navestock, in Ess.e.x, and in 1862 he was made librarian at Lambeth Palace. His editions of mediaeval chronicles were well calculated to smooth the path of any future historian, and the critical introductions showed the profound scholarship of the editor. Probably no one man has done so much to throw light on the obscure by-ways of history, and as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, a post he accepted in 1866, he gave so great a stimulus to historical study that many brilliant writers have since been proud to call him "master." In 1870 he published his "Select Charters,"

of which the "Introductions" are also invaluable, and between 1874 and 1878 he wrote his great work, "The Const.i.tutional History of England in its Origin and Development," the three volumes of which carry us down to the death of Richard III. The book is profoundly scientific in its method, but it is a mistaken, although popular, belief which cla.s.ses Dr Stubbs among Dryasdust investigators. The work glows with life and interest, and is full of suggestive parallels for modern political society.

The work of tracing the growth of the English const.i.tution, which had been so worthily begun by Hallam, and continued in so wise and scholarly a fashion by Bishop Stubbs, was carried on by =Sir Thomas Erskine May (1815-1886)=, who, a few days before his death, was created Baron Farnborough. After a long official career in connection with the House of Commons, he was appointed Clerk to the House in 1871. In addition to several publications dealing with Parliamentary forms, and a book on "Democracy in Europe," he wrote a "Const.i.tutional History since the Accession of George III.," thus continuing the work from the point at which Hallam had dropped it, and completing a continuous history of the English Const.i.tution.

When we turn to what is more popularly understood by the history of a country, the political and social life of peoples, and the wars and conquests of nations, we are not less fortunate in the results attained.

=John Lingard (1771-1851)= had, it is true, written his great work before 1837. "The History of England, from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Commencement of the Reign of William III.," appeared in eight volumes between 1819 and 1830. Lingard was the son of a Winchester carpenter. He was for some time the Professor of Moral Philosophy at a Roman Catholic College. His religious views doubtless affected, in considerable measure, his judgment of events, especially in the reign of Henry VIII., but he is a fairly impartial historian. He confesses that he has been more anxious to arrive at the facts than troubled as to the garb in which those facts were presented to the public, and his work is really very dull in consequence. A contemporary of Lingard, who covered much of the same historic ground, was Sharon Turner (1768-1847), and yet another was =John Mitch.e.l.l Kemble (1807-1857)=, whose "Saxons in England" (1849) still fills a useful place. Another distinguished writer, of what we may term the earlier school of historical research, was =Sir Francis Palgrave (1788-1861)=, one of whose accomplished sons, Francis Turner Palgrave, is still living (born 1824), whilom Professor of Poetry at Oxford and the friend of Tennyson, the author of excellent verse, and, moreover, the editor of that incomparable volume, the "Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics." Sir Francis was the son of a Jewish stockbroker named Cohen, and changed his name on becoming a Christian. His best book, the "History of Normandy and of England," lost much of its value by the publication of Freeman's monumental work, "The History of the Norman Conquest."

=Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-1892)= was born at Harborne, in Staffordshire, and educated at Trinity College, Oxford. His first work was a "History of Architecture," published in 1849. In 1863 he issued the first volume of a "History of Federal Government." The "History of the Norman Conquest," in five large volumes, appeared between 1867 and 1876, and the "Reign of William Rufus, and Accession of Henry I.," in 1882. His "Old English History" was a most delightful collection of the primitive stories which have always had a great fascination for beginners in history. There was scarcely any period of European history with which the author of the "Norman Conquest" did not show a thorough familiarity. No historian has had a keener grasp of hard solid facts, or is more able to make common-sense deductions from them. "I am quite unable," he candidly confessed, "to appreciate physical or metaphysical works in any language," and he hated literary discussion, which he contemptuously termed "Chatter about Harriet," in reference to the debatable question of Sh.e.l.ley's treatment of his wife. Perhaps this lack of breadth did not materially spoil him for his work. Of his many volumes of histories and essays, those on the "Norman Conquest" must be given the first place. It has been said, indeed, that the work takes as long to read as the event took to achieve, but it is worth reading nevertheless. The battle of Hastings, or, as Mr Freeman would say, of Senlac, was a turning-point in our national history, and we have here the most complete description of that great struggle. Since Freeman's death some attempt has been made to question his accuracy and his scholarship; but it has not amounted to very much. When Dr Stubbs, with whom difference of political views has in no way impaired a lifelong friendship, was appointed Bishop of Chester in 1884, Mr Freeman succeeded him as Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford, where he was followed on his death by Mr Froude.

It would be hard to find a greater contrast, both in method and in manner, than between Edward Freeman and James Anthony Froude. Freeman's style, though clear and trenchant, was never brilliant; Froude's language compares with that of the best artists in literature. Freeman was always scrupulously exact, never at fault in a fact or a date; Froude was notoriously careless, and slipped at every turn. Freeman cared nothing for theories; Froude was never so happy as when he stopped abruptly in a description to discourse on the mysteries of Providence or the follies of mankind. Between men of such opposite natures no friendship was possible, and in the _Sat.u.r.day Review_ and other periodicals Freeman commented vigorously, and not always fairly, on the other's inaccuracy.

=James Anthony Froude (1818-1894)= was one of three gifted brothers, another being William Froude (1810-1879), the mathematician and engineer; and the third, Richard Hurrell Froude (1803-1836), a leader of the Tractarian movement, whose "Literary Remains" were published after his death by Keble and Newman. Froude was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, and for a time came under the influence of the movement of which his elder brother was a leading spirit, but ultimately he abandoned supernatural Christianity altogether, subst.i.tuting for it a kind of poetic Theism which he partly adopted from Carlyle. In 1847 he published anonymously two novels, "The Spirit's Trials" and "The Lieutenant's Daughter," which contained some not very generous criticisms on his brother and former friends. His "Nemesis of Faith," which appeared in 1848, was a further criticism of the doctrines which he had abandoned.

Between the years 1856 and 1869 he published the twelve volumes of his great work, "The History of England, from the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada," which achieved a great and, in many respects, a well-deserved popularity. Rarely indeed has history been written with so much brilliancy and picturesque power. The earlier volumes have been much discredited among historical students: yet we would not willingly miss such delightful word-painting as his description of the Pilgrimage of Grace and other scenes in the career of the Eighth Henry, whom he selected for rehabilitation. It was, of course, a vain and impossible task to remove the odium which has settled upon the name of Henry VIII.; but it was as well that the attempt should be made. Henry had appeared to the ma.s.s of modern Englishmen as an old-world ogre, and Mr Froude has at least enabled them to see that he was after all a man. Mr Freeman, himself the most conscientious and laborious of writers, expressed his hearty contempt for an author who professed in the preface to his history that he took up the subject because he had "nothing better to do." As, however, Froude warmed to his work his book increased in value, and there are few who will deny the most sterling worth to his "Edward VI.," "Mary," and "Elizabeth." His escape from Tractarianism had made him unfriendly to all kindred movements, and his views of the struggle between Catholicism and Evangelicalism in the sixteenth century are more worthy of a Puritan divine than of an academic writer of our own day. But we can forgive all this, and much more, to one who has described with so much delicate fancy the adventurous life of Drake and Hawkins, the intrigues of the Scottish Queen, and the restless fickleness and untruthfulness of Elizabeth. His exquisite literary style and general breadth of sympathy are shown in such pa.s.sages as his sketch of the rise of Protestantism and the execution of More and Fisher:--

"Whilst we exult in that chivalry with which the Smithfield martyrs bought England's freedom with their blood, so we will not refuse our admiration to those other gallant men whose high forms, in the sunset of the old faith, stand transfigured on the horizon, tinged with the light of its dying glory."[11]

Inaccuracy and tactlessness, however, seemed to haunt Mr Froude like evil spirits. He wrote a series of articles on Thomas a Becket, but the numerous mistakes and misstatements brought down on him once again the strictures of Mr Freeman. He wrote a biography of Carlyle, to whom he acted as literary executor, and the whole of the literary world was in arms at the revelations of Carlyle's somewhat unamiable relations with his wife, and of his too contemptuous sentiments about many personal friends. Still, Mr Froude's great literary faculty will secure to this biography a far greater permanence than will fall to the lot of the thousand-and-one memoirs which have appeared during the reign. Even should Carlyle's writings cease to be generally studied, it is not improbable that Froude's "Life of Carlyle" will always be read as an important chapter in literary history. In this connection I cannot do better than quote from an unpublished letter from Sir Fitz James Stephen, Mr Froude's co-executor, to Mr Froude:--

"For about fifteen years I was the intimate friend and constant companion of both you and Mr Carlyle, and never in my life did I see any one man so much devoted to any other as you were to him during the whole of that period of time. The most affectionate son could not have acted better to the most venerated father. You cared for him, soothed him, protected him as a guide might protect a weak old man down a steep and painful path. The admiration you habitually expressed for him both morally and intellectually was unqualified. You never said to me one ill-natured word about him down to this day. It is to me wholly incredible that anything but a severe regard for truth, learnt to a great extent from his teaching, could ever have led you to embody in your portrait of him a delineation of the faults and weaknesses which mixed with his great qualities.

"Of him I will make only one remark in justice to you. He did not use you well. He threw upon you the responsibility of a decision which he ought to have taken himself in a plain, unmistakable way. He considered himself bound to expiate the wrongs which he had done to his wife. If he had done this himself it would have been a courageous thing; but he did not do it himself. He did not even decide for himself that it should be done after his death. If any courage was shown in the matter, it was shown by you, and not by him. You took the responsibility of deciding for him that it ought to be done. You took the odium of doing it, of avowing to the world the faults and weaknesses of one whom you regarded as your teacher and master. In order to present to the world a true picture of him as he really was, you, well knowing what you were about, stepped into a pillory in which you were charged with treachery, violation of confidence, and every imaginable base motive, when you were in fact guilty of no other fault than that of practising Mr Carlyle's great doctrine that men ought to tell the truth."

Mr Froude has other claims to remembrance. In his "Short Studies on Great Subjects," many of them essays written for _Fraser's Magazine_, of which he was for a long time editor, are some very wise and thoughtful papers, particularly one on the Book of Job. His "Life of Bunyan" is characteristic, as is also his "Life of Caesar." Carlyle taught him hero-worship, and from Carlyle also he learnt the disposition which inspired his powerful book, "The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century."

He also wrote two picturesque books of travel, and three volumes of lectures[12] delivered at Oxford during his occupancy of the chair of history, which had been previously held in succession by his two great rivals, Bishop Stubbs and Dr Freeman.

The historian who devoted himself most earnestly to Mr Froude's chief historical period, and whose writings were in some measure a reply to his, was the =Rev. John Sherren Brewer (1810-1879)=, who for many years was Professor of English Literature at King's College, London.

Brewer's chief work, a "Calendar of Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII.," comes down, however, to 1530, the year in which Mr Froude's history commences, and thus Brewer stands alone as an authority on Henry's early reign. A compressed work in one volume, "The Reign of Henry VIII.," was published after his death. Mr Froude concludes his narrative at the year 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, but no recent writer of mark has treated of the closing years of Elizabeth's reign in any detail, although we owe to Major Martin Hume a well-written study ent.i.tled "The Year after the Armada." Major Hume, who is the best living authority upon this period, has also written upon "The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth," and has edited for the Public Record Office the Calendar of Spanish State Papers of Elizabeth.

The next great period of English history, that of the Stuart kings, is dealt with by Professor Gardiner. =Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829- )= was born at Ropley, in Hampshire, and was educated at Winchester and at Christ Church, Oxford. His whole life has been devoted to the most laborious research in the annals of the reigns of James I., Charles I., and the Protectorate of Cromwell. He has not, like Mr Froude, taken up history as a pleasant literary recreation, but has given years of unremitting labour to the production of each separate volume. He is now well into the study of the Protectorate, the first volume of his history of which appeared in 1894. He has written many minor books, one dealing with "The Gunpowder Plot," and another with "Cromwell's Place in History." Mr Gardiner will not perhaps be counted a brilliant writer. He gives us none of the fire and eloquence, almost bordering on poetry, which we find so abundantly in Froude; but he has been described by Sir John Seeley as the only historian who has trodden the controversial ground of seventeenth-century English political history with absolute fairness and impartiality. James and Charles, Buckingham and Bristol, Strafford and Pym, stand out in clear and well-defined lineaments. There is no hero-worship to blind us; no flowing rhetoric to atone for insufficient knowledge. We see these men in their weakness and in their strength, neither side monopolising the virtue and the patriotism, but each, on occasion, acting from n.o.ble or ign.o.ble motives. It may be urged that too much attention is devoted to the follies of princes and the intrigues of courtiers, and certainly of the inner life of the nation we get all too little in Mr Gardiner's pages: but it may be fairly said that these books are the safest and best of guides to one of the most important and critical periods in our political history. It is impossible to avoid contrasting Mr Gardiner with a far more popular and more brilliant historian, Lord Macaulay, and the contrast is, in some respects, in favour of the former. Mr Gardiner sees that in dealing with the complexities of human motives we are on very uncertain and delicate ground. We need to pause step by step to weigh probabilities and to qualify our every statement, although such hesitancy and qualification is not conducive to brilliant writing.

The importance of this rhetorical principle was fully grasped by =Thomas Babington Macaulay, (1800-1859)= and, accordingly, in his writings a single definite and distinct motive is seized upon as the guiding principle of every action, and, by the simple plan of ignoring complexities in human character, we are carried along in an easy manner to positive and undoubting opinions. "I wish," said Lord Melbourne, "that I were as c.o.c.k-sure of _anything_ as Tom Macaulay is of everything;" and the remark hit off an undoubted failing, at least from the standpoint of sound and trustworthy workmanship. Macaulay, whose father was a distinguished philanthropist and slavery abolitionist, was born at Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire. From a private school he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. His earliest efforts in literature were articles for Knight's _Quarterly Magazine_, and contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_, the first of which, on "Milton," drew from Lord Jeffrey the remark, "The more I think the less I can conceive where you picked up that style." Perhaps Macaulay's essays have been more popular even than his history. The extraordinary knowledge they display, the discursive familiarity with all poetry and fiction, ancient and modern, and their enthusiastic interest in historical events, make them a kind of education to men whose reading has been slight, or who are beginners in the art of reading--an art at which Macaulay was such an adept. In 1830 Macaulay entered Parliament as member for Calne, and four years later received the post of member of the Indian Council at Calcutta, with a salary of 10,000 a year. He left India in 1838, having rendered great service to that country by a.s.sisting to frame the Indian penal code. After his return to England he sat in Parliament for many years as member for Edinburgh, and for a short time held a seat in Lord Melbourne's Cabinet. Some of his speeches in the House were among the most eloquent and successful to which that a.s.sembly has listened. In 1849 the first two volumes of his "History of England from the Accession of James II." were published. The great success of these and the succeeding volumes made him one of the most popular authors of his day.

In 1857 Macaulay was made a Peer, but he never spoke in the House of Lords. He died in December 1859, before he had finished the "Reign of William III.," and was buried in Westminster Abbey. During the later years of Macaulay's life, and for many years after his death, he received the unstinted praise, not only of the great ma.s.s of readers, but even of cultured brother authors. Of late years this has changed; a reaction has set in, and perhaps the time has not yet come to a.s.sign to him his true place in literature. When Sir George Trevelyan's admirable life of his uncle appeared in 1876, a number of eminent writers based upon that book a criticism of Macaulay's work. Mr Gladstone wrote in the _Quarterly Review_, Mr Leslie Stephen in the _Cornhill Magazine_, and Mr John Morley in the _Fortnightly Review_. In each separate case the review was unfavourable. All alike agreed as to his high qualities as a man; his sincerity, generosity, kindliness, and purity, his love of children and his brotherly devotion; but each in turn found matter for censure in his work. One condemned his style, another his Whig partialities, another his boundless optimism, and another his errors of judgment or alleged misstatements of facts. It is true that Macaulay is sometimes inaccurate, that he is not seldom unjust to the characters whom he paints so vividly. It is now a commonplace to say that his history was written, as Carlyle said, "to prove that Providence was on the side of the Whigs." It is clear that he was a man of strong literary prejudices, and he undoubtedly owes much of his popularity to the fact that he expresses in grandly rhetorical language the average sentiment of his day, its belief in material prosperity, and its delight in being told that there has been no age of the world so happy as our own. All this is true, and yet it is also true that Macaulay's real services to literature are lost sight of when such an estimate is propounded too harshly.

In spite of obvious deficiencies, Macaulay's history is a great work. It fills up a gap in historical literature, and such incidents as the trial of the seven bishops and the siege of Londonderry excel both in picturesqueness and in accuracy. But Macaulay has claims far beyond his merits as a historian. The critics who condemn him so freely seem to have forgotten their own early years. "If I am in the wrong," said Macaulay of his history, "I shall at least have set the minds of others at work." He has set the minds of others at work. What cultivated man or woman lives, with whom Macaulay's writings have not been among the first books read, who has not been made to feel that all the great poetry, and fiction, and history to which he alludes so freely must be well worth careful study? What matter if in after-years we discover that Macaulay was unjust to Bacon the man, and was entirely ignorant of Bacon the philosopher; or understand clearly what he meant by saying that such critiques as Lessing's "Laoc.o.o.n" "filled him with wonder and despair?"

If we have been encouraged by him to desire a wider knowledge, if we have learnt from him to admire so many great writers, so many famous statesmen, we may surely forgive him much, if indeed there be anything to forgive.

=Earl Stanhope (1805-1875)=, who did most of his historical work when, as an expectant peer, he was known as Lord Mahon, was a great friend of Macaulay's. In 1870 he published a "History of the Reign of Queen Anne,"

which began at the year 1701, and thus served as a connecting link between Macaulay's history and his own larger work--the "History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht down to the Peace of Versailles (1713-1783)." The continuation of Earl Stanhope's narrative may be found either in Mr Lecky's "Eighteenth Century," or in =William Nathaniel Ma.s.sey's (1809-1881)= "History of England under George III." Mr Ma.s.sey brings us down to the Peace of Amiens in 1801, from which date Harriet Martineau leads us to 1846 in a work ("History of the Peace") which is quite unworthy of her abilities. The reign of Victoria has been written by many hands, not the least successful being the "History of England, 1830-1873" of the =Rev. William Na.s.sau Molesworth (1816-1890)= of Rochdale, the author also of a "History of the Church of England."

Equally popular is the "History of Our Own Time, 1830-1897," of =Justin MacCarthy (1830- )=, who has also written a "History of the Four Georges," and many popular novels. Nor must we forget the brilliant literary effort of =Alexander William Kinglake (1811-1891)= who, in his "History of the War in the Crimea," has made a younger generation familiar with a struggle in which their fathers took so brave a part. Mr Kinglake was for some years the Liberal member for Bridgewater. His first literary effort, "Eothen," a volume of travels, is scarcely less popular than his history. By far the most important work, however, on English history, in a period subsequent to that dealt with by Macaulay, is Lecky's "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," a work of great thoroughness and thoughtfulness, the eighth and concluding volume of which was published in 1890. =William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838- )=, who was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, which he now represents in Parliament, is one of the most brilliant and suggestive writers of our age. His "Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism," and "European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne," as well as the "History of the Eighteenth Century," are justly popular.

It is impossible to enumerate all the important contributions to historical study of the past few years, but the "History of Scotland, from the Invasion of Agricola to the Revolution of 1688," by =John Hill Burton (1809-1881)=, and the "Life and Reign of Richard III.," by James Gairdner must not be forgotten, nor the "History of the War in the Peninsula," by Sir Charles Napier (1786-1860). Many writers have embodied the main conclusions of the historians we have named, in brief, but useful, histories for the use of the more advanced schools. The more successful of these are the Rev. James Franck Bright and the late John Richard Green. =James Franck Bright (1832- )= is master of University College, Oxford, and his "English History for the use of Public Schools"

is a work so lucidly and carefully written, that it is ent.i.tled to be lifted out of the category of mere text-books, and to take rank as good literature. Still more is this true of Green's "Short History of the English People." =John Richard Green (1837-1883)= was born at Oxford, and educated at Magdalen College School and at Jesus College. For some time he was vicar of St Philip's, Stepney. His "Short History,"

published in 1874, was speedily adopted in schools, and had an enormous sale among general readers. It was immediately recognised that a brilliant writer had appeared, one who had a.s.similated all that was worthy in the work of laborious contemporary historians, had himself made much study of original doc.u.ments, and had welded all together by the power of real genius. A critic here and there devoted himself to discovering the errors, mainly of dates, which, owing to the illness of the author, disfigured the first edition. But the popular instinct which declared this to be a great work, was a sound one. In the main its conclusions are just. There is not a line of cheap sentiment or rhetorical clap-trap in the book. Mr Green soon afterwards enlarged his work, and published it in four handsome volumes, which he dedicated to his friends--"My Masters in the Study of English History,"--Bishop Stubbs and Professor Freeman. Later on appeared "The Making of England,"

and, after his decease, another volume, "The Conquest of England,"

written on his deathbed, was published by his widow, Alice Stopford Green, who has written "Town Life in the Fifteenth Century." Sir Archibald Geikie, the geologist, once rendered a tribute to Green for endeavouring to bring geological science to the aid of historical research; but on the question of the Teutonic element in our nation, it has been urged that Green follows his friends, Stubbs and Freeman, all too readily, and ignores the evidence from anthropology in favour of the very great prevalence of Celtic blood in the English-speaking race.

I regret that my s.p.a.ce will not permit me to write at length of the men who have studied so thoroughly sciences which have so much bearing upon history, and who have written delightful books upon them. I must be content merely to mention the names of William Boyd Dawkins, who has written "Cave-hunting" and "Early Man in Britain;" and Sir John Lubbock, banker and member of Parliament, who has written "Pre-historic Times"

and "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man,"

also various books on natural science, and some very inadequate literary essays. Nor must I forget Edward Burnett Tylor's "Primitive Culture" and "Anthropology," Grant Allen's "Anglo-Saxon Britain," and Edward Clodd's "Childhood of the World," "Childhood of Religion," and "Pioneers of Evolution." From such works as these it is but a very short step to the writings of Max Muller. =Friedrich Max Muller (1823- )=, son of the German poet, Wilhelm Muller, was educated at the University of Leipzig, and made a special study of philosophy in Germany for many years before he came to the land of his adoption, in 1846. Appointed an Oxford professor, first of modern languages and later of comparative philology, a science which he may almost be said to have created, he has become an Englishman both in speech and in writing. Max Muller's most popular works are his interesting "Lectures on the Science of Language," and his "Chips from a German Workshop," in which he deals not only with the common origin of the world's leading languages, but in a skilful and almost startling manner reconstructs, by the aid of language alone, the conditions out of which have risen the various religious and social systems of the early nations. The writers who have most prominently followed in Max Muller's footsteps, as elucidators of primitive religious belief, are Professor Sayce and the Rev. Sir George c.o.x.

=Archibald Henry Sayce (1846- )=, who succeeded Max Muller in the chair of comparative philology at Oxford, has written numerous books and treatises dealing with the Chaldean and other ancient nations, and has also published an annotated edition of Herodotus, noticeable chiefly for its unfavourable verdict on the "Father of History." =Sir George c.o.x (1827- )=, whose "Mythology of the Aryan Nations" has provoked much adverse criticism from its extreme application of the "Solar" theory to the interpretation of myth, epic, and romance, has also written an interesting "History of Greece" in two volumes.

The "History of Greece" which may be considered one of the most satisfactory achievements of the Victorian era, is that by Grote, published in twelve volumes. =George Grote (1794-1871)= was born at Clay Hill, near Beckenham, and was educated at the Charterhouse School.

He early went into the banking-house in Threadneedle Street, of which his father was one of the partners, but found time to devote himself to philosophy and history, and to write for the _Westminster Review_, the organ of philosophical Radicalism. It was as a representative of this phase of thought that he was returned as member of Parliament for the city of London in 1833. He sat in the House as one of a small body of philosophical Radicals until 1841, bringing forward annually a resolution in favour of the ballot. He retired from Parliamentary life to devote himself more energetically to his "History of Greece," the first two volumes of which appeared in 1846; the twelfth, and last, which takes us to the death of Alexander the Great, was published in 1856. During the same years, but unknown to Grote, =Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875)=, Bishop of St David's, a former schoolfellow of his, was engaged upon the same task. Each acknowledged the superiority of his rival's work, and Grote said that he should never have written his had Thirlwall's book appeared a few years earlier; but there can be little hesitation in a.s.signing the higher place to Grote. Of Thirlwall it may be said, however, that but for Grote his history would have taken high rank, and would have been a welcome relief from the foolish but once popular work of William Mitford. Thirlwall is also interesting for having translated, in 1825, Schleiermacher's "Essay on St Luke," and thus first introduced German theology into England. Grote's history is a book of high educational value. In it we have all that is best in Herodotus, Thucydides, and the other ancient historians, added to the sound and weighty judgment of a clear-sighted modern critic, exceptionally free from prejudice. It was Grote's great destiny to free the English mind from the erroneous impressions which had so long prevailed as to the real character of the Athenian democracy, and we cannot find elsewhere a truer or juster picture of Athens at the height of her power. A great work on Greek history in later aspects than those of Grote and Thirlwall is "A History of Greece, from its Conquest by the Romans to the Present Time," by =George Finlay (1799-1875)=. Finlay fought in the Greek War of Independence, and lived for the greater part of his life in Athens.

A number of clergymen besides Dr Thirlwall have shown an able grasp of cla.s.sical history. Dr Arnold wrote a "History of Rome," based on Niebuhr, which, although interesting, is scarcely worthy of so great a man. =Charles Merivale (1808-1893)=, Dean of Ely, wrote an admirable summary of Roman history from the foundation of the city in B.C. 753 to the fall of Augustulus in A.D. 476; but his great work is the "History of the Romans under the Empire," which is indispensable for a thorough appreciation of Gibbon. =Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868)=, Dean of St Paul's, did good service to historical scholarship by his edition of Gibbon's pre-eminent work, and by his own "History of the Jews,"

"History of Christianity under the Empire," and "Latin Christianity."

The nine volumes of this last were called by Dean Stanley "a complete epic and philosophy of mediaeval Christianity." Milman is said to have described himself as "the last learned man in the Church," but in the presence of so eminent a scholar as =Mandell Creighton (1843- )=, Bishop of London, the statement is meaningless. Dr Creighton's great work, "A History of the Papacy From the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome," is of the highest value in the consecutive study of European history; and so also is the work of another clergyman, =George William Kitchin (1827- )=, Dean of Durham, whose "History of France previous to the Revolution," is very attractively written.

A writer who generalises freely from the facts of history, and whose generalisations were once very popular, and, according to Sir Mackenzie Wallace, are still widely read in Russia, was =Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862)=, who published in 1857 the first volume of the "History of Civilisation in England;" a second volume appeared in 1861, but the author died before he had completed his intended undertaking. Buckle unduly emphasises the influence of national and moral laws upon the progress of civilisation, minimises the influence of individuals, and overlooks the momentous action of heredity. A writer of equal importance with Buckle was =John Addington Symonds (1840-1893)=, whose "Renaissance in Italy" is a work of great literary merit, and whose translation of Cellini's "Autobiography" has superseded Roscoe's.

Pa.s.sing from historic Italy to Germany we may note that "The Holy Roman Empire" of =James Bryce (1838- )= created quite a _furore_ as a prize essay at Oxford, and, in its enlarged shape, forms the only English sketch of German history of great literary merit. Mr Bryce was, some years ago, announced to write a "History of Germany" of more formidable dimensions, but the glamour of parliamentary life and a seat in the Cabinet have robbed us of a capable historian. Although we are without a satisfactory German history we possess two very solid contributions to such a work. With one of these, Carlyle's "Frederick II.," I shall deal later; the other is =Sir John Robert Seeley's (1834-1895)= "Life and Times of Stein; or, Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age." When this work appeared it was received with high commendation in Germany, but in England with the qualification that it had none of the literary charm of the author's earlier efforts. To such criticism Professor Seeley--he received the professorship of modern history at Cambridge on Kingsley's resignation in 1869--replied in a series of papers ent.i.tled "History and Politics," wherein he practically contended that it was the business of historians to be dull, and that brilliant history-writing was, as a matter of fact, little other than fiction. Still, in his lectures on "The Expansion of England" (1883) and "A Short History of Napoleon" (1886) he succeeded in making himself entirely interesting.

The books which gave Sir John Seeley his greatest fame--he received a knighthood in 1893--were not, however, historical, but, in a sense, theological; and with him we find ourselves in the midst of the great religious controversies of the reign. "Ecce h.o.m.o; a Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus Christ," was published anonymously in 1865. While censured on many sides on account of its alleged heterodoxy, it drew from opponents unstinted admiration on account of its perfect literary workmanship. One of these opponents was Mr Gladstone, who ventured the prophecy that the author would at a later period write something from a more orthodox standpoint. The prediction was not verified, for in 1882 a further work, "Natural Religion," by the Author of "Ecce h.o.m.o," showed still less sympathy with the supernatural side of religion.

Mr Gladstone, who flung himself into this as into so many other controversies, has a fame quite apart from any literary achievement. But whatever posterity may say of his influence on the destinies of the nation which he has helped for so many years to rule, it is certain that his powers as an author would have made the reputation of a man of less versatility.

=William Ewart Gladstone (1809- )=, the son of a Lancashire merchant, was born at Liverpool. Into his political career it is not my province to enter. His first literary work, "The State in its Relations with the Church," was made famous through a review by Macaulay. Later in life he indulged in theological controversy, publishing an "Essay on Ritualism"

and "The Vatican Decrees." Mr Gladstone's chief work is, however, his "Studies in Homer," in which he argues for the unity of the poem, for the foundation in fact of its main incidents, and for the definite personality of the author. His contributions to periodical literature have been innumerable, and only a few--and those non-controversial and non-cla.s.sical--have been republished in his five volumes of "Gleanings."

Mr Gladstone's chief opponent in theological controversy, Cardinal Newman, has profoundly influenced his religious views. "In my opinion,"

wrote Mr Gladstone many years after Newman had become a Roman Catholic, "his secession from the Church of England has never yet been estimated among us at anything like the full amount of its calamitous importance.

It has been said that the world does not know its greatest men; neither, I will add, is it aware of the power and weight carried by the words and the acts of those among its greatest men whom it does know. The ecclesiastical historian will perhaps hereafter judge that this secession was a much greater event even than the partial secession of John Wesley, the only case of personal loss suffered by the Church of England since the Reformation which can be at all compared with it in magnitude."

=John Henry Newman (1801-1890)= was born in London, and educated at a private school at Ealing and at Trinity College, Oxford. Inclined at first to the liberal Christianity which men like Whately and Milman were furthering among churchmen, he was, he says, "rudely awakened by two great blows--illness and bereavement"; and he devoted himself to a life-long opposition to what he has called "the great apostasy--liberalism in religion." "My battle," he writes, "was with liberalism; by liberalism I mean the anti-dogmatic principle and its developments." From 1828 to 1843 he held the inc.u.mbency of St Mary's Church, Oxford, and the influence which he then exerted was of the deepest moment for the future of religious life in England. "Who," says Matthew Arnold, himself, like his father before him, one of the leaders of the movement which Newman has hated so intensely, "who could resist the charm of that spiritual apparition, gliding in the dim afternoon light through the aisles of St Mary's, rising into the pulpit, and then, in the most entrancing of voices, breaking the silence with words and thoughts which were a religious music--subtle, sweet, mournful? I seem to hear him still, saying: 'After the fever of life, after wearinesses and sicknesses, fightings and despondings, languor and fretfulness, struggling and succeeding; after all the changes and chances of this troubled, unhealthy state,--at length comes death, at length the white throne of G.o.d, at length the beatific vision.'" During these years at St Mary's what is called the Tractarian movement sprang to life--a movement, as we have said, against Broad-Churchism. It was at the beginning of the movement, on his way home from Sicily in 1833, whilst pondering over the difficulties of the task he had undertaken, that Newman wrote the hymn "Lead, kindly Light," which is now as popular in the most advanced and liberalized churches as it can be in those nearest to its author's religious standpoint. The "Tracts for the Times," whence Tractarians derived their name, were written by Newman, Hurrell Froude, Pusey, and others. Bishop Bloomfield said that the whole movement was nothing but Newmania. The writers argued now in short papers, now in elaborate treatises, for the Divine mission of the Anglican Church. Not till "Tract XC." was reached did the alarm of the Protestant party manifest itself in any practical form. In that Tract Newman declared that subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles was not inconsistent with the acceptance of Roman Catholic teaching on purgatory, on the invocation of saints, and on the ma.s.s. The Hebdomadal Council of the University condemned the Tract. Two years later Newman resigned his position at St Mary's, and in 1845 formally joined the Church of Rome. According to Disraeli, Anglicanism "reeled under the shock," and Dean Stanley remarked to a friend that the fortunes of the English Church might have been very different "had Newman been able to read German."[13]

In 1848 he was appointed head of the Birmingham Oratory, and there he resided--with one short break as rector of the Roman Catholic University at Dublin--for nearly forty years. In 1879 he was created a cardinal, and his visit to Rome and installation as a Prince of the Sacred College excited much attention in England. Although by temperament and inclination one of the least combative and most retiring of men, Cardinal Newman found himself again and again in the thick of the argumentative fray. At one time he was involved in a libel action by an ex-priest and ultra-Protestant lecturer named Father Achilli, and this cost Newman and his friends twelve thousand pounds; at another time he was arguing with the foremost English statesman, Mr Gladstone, as to the probable loyalty of English Roman Catholics if the Papacy and the English Government were brought into collision. In one great controversy of his life he was generally admitted to have achieved a success, and this success is a.s.sociated with an enduring literary work, the autobiography which he calls his "Apologia pro Vita Sua." Reviewing Froude's "History of England" in _Macmillan's Magazine_ (January 1864), Charles Kingsley charged Newman with being careless about truth, and with teaching that cunning and not truth-seeking was the acceptable method of the Roman Catholic clergy. Brought to bay by Newman, Kingsley contradicted himself in an amazing fashion, and even the most enthusiastic Protestants were compelled to admit that the clever novelist was no match for the trained dialectician. Mrs Kingsley, in her charming life of her husband, practically admits that he was worsted in the conflict, and J. A. Froude, his brother-in-law, wrote: "Kingsley entirely misunderstood Newman's character. Newman's whole life had been a struggle for truth. He had neglected his own interests; he had never thought of them at all. He had brought to bear a most powerful and subtle intellect to support the convictions of a conscience which was superst.i.tiously sensitive. His single object had been to discover what were the real relations between man and his Maker, and to shape his own conduct by the conclusions at which he arrived. To represent such a person as careless of truth was neither generous nor even reasonable."

The final outcome of the controversy was the publication of the "Apologia," a work which, alike in beauty of style and devotion of spirit, must be a.s.signed a very high place in religious literature. My s.p.a.ce is too limited to pa.s.s in review, or even to name, the thirty-six volumes which contain the writings of this eloquent preacher and teacher. His "Dream of Gerontius" and "Verses on Various Occasions" show his high qualities as a poet; his "Apologia," "Callista," and "Essay in aid of the Grammar of a.s.sent," display his genius as a prose stylist. In "Callista: a Sketch of the Third Century," he pictures a beautiful Greek girl, who becomes a convert to Christianity after a severe struggle between human affection and religious faith. The "Grammar of a.s.sent" is an apology for Christianity, far above the narrow controversies in which the author took so distinguished a part.