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be, except, as I said, because people can imagine a prejudiced and false view, or an unprejudiced and true view, of English history, but are quite incapable of conceiving a view unprejudiced and yet false? It seems never to occur to them that a writer may study the Great Rebellion and similar events with a mind perfectly clear from old constitutional, Whig or Tory, preconceptions, and yet take a wholly mistaken view of it, because, though he has a philosophy, his philosophy is false.

Is it then so easy to understand history, if only Conservative prejudice be resisted? We blame the French for allowing the story of Napoleon to be turned into a lying legend which by its fascination has misled them into the gravest practical errors. Here plainly it was not prejudice but the fascination of rhetoric and poetry that perverted history. But are we not as frivolous as the French in this matter? When we abandoned the old constitutional view of Cromwell for that of Mr. Carlyle, we may possibly have shaken off some prejudice, but it certainly was not to philosophy but to poetry, not to better instruction but to richer amusement, that we sacrificed our prejudices.

History is liable to a peculiar corruption when it falls into the hands of purely literary men, a corruption the seriousness of which is seldom perceived. The men and the deeds which suit the purposes of the literary man writing history are wholly different from those which attract the historian proper. The best statesmanship, the most successful politics, make dull reading, and what charms the imagination in history is precisely that which, considered as politics, is worst. Thus Mr. Hamerton tells us that French society "round his house" cannot be induced to take any interest in English politics, because of their tameness and uniformity. In other words, because in England we avoid revolutions and civil wars, which is precisely what it were desirable that the French should

learn to do, for that very reason they can see nothing to interest them in our affairs! This paradox is very important when we are considering the effect of history on political opinions in a country where history is not studied seriously. In England we change our opinions according to the amusing books on history which happen to appear. We read modern history only on the strict condition that it shall be amusing. As a natural consequence it falls into the hands of purely literary But such writers, in looking about for material, will not be attracted by those parts of history which afford instruction, for nothing is duller than political instruction; they will look about for exciting events, for wars and revolutions. And therefore in such a country the heroes of wars and revolutions must steadily rise in reputation.

Some time ago I expressed in this magazine my opinion that Macaulay's History has introduced a period of decline in that department of historical literature which deals with recent periods. It has driven out, I maintained, the true and high conception of history and replaced it by a false, vulgar, and popular conception. Now the corrupt fashion then introduced, which assumed that genius is shown in history solely by vivid, picturesque language, and that investigation, criticism, and historical philosophy, are mere humdrum in which no genius can possibly be shown; that, in short, a historian is simply a brilliant narrator, and not rather an investigator and a discoverer,—this corrupt fashion essentially consisted in the historian proper being superseded by the literary man writing history. Since the time when Macaulay, who might so well have claimed the former title, elected to appear in the latter part, it is surprising to notice to what a length the notion has since been carried that any lively littérateur may write history. Mr. Bayard Taylor tells us that Thackeray showed him the materials he had collected for a

history of Queen Anne, and told him that he felt sure he should succeed. So that we might have had the happiness of reading a history of England by the author of Vanity Fair! And the author of Vanity Fair would have done us less harm than Lamartine and Victor Hugo have done to our neighbours.

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I urged at the same time that the secret cause of this corruption is the absence of any sufficiently organised school of modern history whether at the universities or elsewhere. The historian finds himself writing, not— as every writer aiming at science should write-for the students in his own department of learning, who alone are at all qualified to understand or to judge him, but for the general public. He thus naturally becomes demoralised. To this cause is to be added the immense demand for books of history for the young. Every schoolmaster asks me what ought to be done to induce boys to read history. To which my answer is, Anything or everything may be done except to spoil history itself in the hope of making it readable.' At all times literature needs to be protected from the insidious influence of youth and of the family, which in any department where the demand of mature men is slack draws it gradually down into a lower sphere. "Immer für Weiber und Kinder!" writes Goethe, "ich dächte man schriebe für Männer." But the English literature of the last generation has suffered in an especial degree from this cause. Macaulay let loose the plague upon modern history with peculiar effect, just because he was a writer of such grave and high pretensions. He was the literary man writing history under the most imposing disguise of the historian proper.

Mr. Carlyle wore no such disguise. He was a literary historian pure and simple, who had studied in the school neither of practical nor theoretical politics, but in that of German æsthetics and literature in the most dreamy

period of Germany. I should be sorry to speak of him in language which should hurt his warmest admirers. I admire as much as others this striking reappearance of the Hebrew prophet in the modern world. No mere echo or literary imitation of Hebrew prophecy, but the thing itself; the faculty of seeing moral evils which others are too drowsy to see, and of seeing them as distinctly as if they were material objects, the sublime impatience, the overwhelming denunciation, in fact, ancient prophecy revived and effective as of old; this is what I see in his best writings, in Past and Present and some of the Latter-Day Pamphlets. The case is different when he appears as a historian, for it is questionable whether a prophet ought to write history. But yet up to a certain point I can cordially admire his histories. We are to consider that, like his prophecies, they had an immediate practical object. They were not intended to conform to any ideal standard; they were prophecies on a larger scale, intended to awaken drowsy minds to a sense of the greatness of God's judgments and the inexorableness of the laws by which He governs the modern world, as He governed the ancient. Considered thus, they are wonderful works, and we know that in some conspicuous instances they attained their end, they did awaken, and to good purpose, the slumbering historic sense. Of these three prophetic histories, that of the French Revolution is, in my opinion, much the most successful, and for this reason, that the subject is best suited to the prophetic mode of treatment. The prophet is out of his element when he has no practical object.

Mr.

Carlyle has, in my opinion, no real talent for reviving distant times, such as that of Cromwell; if he sometimes makes the past seem to live it is only with a galvanic and unnatural life which belongs really to the present. But the French Revolution may fairly be said to belong to the present, and

then its awfulness and the impressiveness of the punishment which it inflicted on the frivolity of the old French aristocracy make it a most legitimate subject for the apocalyptic method. I value also, both in this book and in the Life of Friedrich, the first serious attempt that has been made to break through the trance of insularity which seals up the English mind. Here, for once, an Englishman has honestly tried to understand the continental world! I do not for my part think that Frederick really was such a person as Mr. Carlyle supposes, nor do I think that Mr. Carlyle has drawn the true moral from his career. But at any rate, he has not spared labour. If he has scarcely succeeded, the fault is to be laid not on any insular want of sympathy, but simply on that prophetic cast of mind which does not know how to investigate, and cannot see at all except where it sees intensely and instinctively. He has, at any rate, repaired the mischief which had been done by Macaulay's Essay on Frederick the Great, which to this day is cited with contempt by every German writer who wishes to jibe at English conceit and ignorance of the Continent.

But the merit of all these books alike is simply in the art of representation, and this art is only good on the supposition that the reader is dull, or has never acquired a taste for history. For it consists, after all, simply in enormous exaggeration, and is therefore quite as repulsive to the serious historical student as it is attractive to the beginner in history. Even where, as in the History of the French Revolution, Mr. Carlyle has not perhaps seriously perverted the truth, I cannot think that the practised reader of history can regard his work but with impatience and complete dissatisfaction. To such a reader all the prophecy is mere verbiage, for it announces what he is in no danger of overlooking, so that all the emphasis and all the reiteration fall flat upon his

ear, and seem as out of date as the inspiration of the Koran. Meanwhile he perceives that the prophet's whole attention has been exhausted upon the mere scenery of the event, that his insight into its nature and causes is not great, and in particular that he has discovered nothing. No such reader could ever learn much from Mr. Carlyle, even when his work first appeared, and even considered as a work for beginners, I fear that this book, if it has an awakening influence upon some, has a confusing effect for others. The glare of those pictures draws off the eye from that which most deserves to be contemplated; a biographical interest is substituted for a historic one; and I notice that, in spite of the great number of Englishmen who have read it with eager interest, no tolerably clear understanding of the French Revolution is commonly to be found in England.

But the worst is that Mr. Carlyle usually produces his effects at the expense of truth. I do not mean to charge him with misstating facts. He is no doubt as careful about correctness, particularly in costume, as a modern stage-manager, but in greater matters, particularly in the greatest of all, in his estimate of great events and characters, he seems to me entirely astray. I regard him as the principal representative of that false tendency in history which Macaulay made fashionable, the tendency to substitute a literary for a political estimate. He makes no secret of this tendency, but everywhere avows it as if he were introducing a reform and not a new abuse. And yet, as I have said, this literary estimate positively turns history upside down. It teaches us to admire in the past whatever we most disapprove in the present, bloody catastrophes, desperate policies, revolutions. Nothing can exceed the simplicity with which Mr. Carlyle avows that he takes no interest in any wise, successful statesman who has brought happiness to his country, and that he feels

no admiration for such a character. In his Essay on Mirabeau he ridicules the English public for continuing to repeat the names of Pitt and Fox when heroes like the leaders of the French Revolution were soliciting their homage. Of these leaders he selects three, Mirabeau, Danton, and Napoleon, whom he is prepared to maintain to be characters of an altogether higher order than Pitt and Fox. Now on what ground? Evidently because of the terrible events with which they were mixed up. Mr. Carlyle means to say that stormy scenes in the Tennis Court or in the Paris streets, September massacres, battles of Austerlitz, excite his imagination, while Regency debates and the like put him to sleep. So feels, no doubt, the literary man in search of a subject. It is little to say that the historian proper judges differently. He reverses the judgment. To him the enormous disquiet of France is the strongest presumptive evidence against the revolutionary statesmen, and the comparative tranquillity of England the best proof of the merit of Pitt and Fox.

These general observations upon Mr. Carlyle as a historian have been intended to lead to some remarks on his famous achievement, the rehabilitation of Cromwell. We know what was the old constitutional view of the Great Rebellion; on one side of politics there was of course total disapproval, on the other side vindication and admiration, but most carefully qualified. Hallam, the Whig, qualifies his approbation of Pym and Hampden so far as to hint that even at the beginning of the Civil War their case already a bad one. As for the military party, which in the course of 1648 became predominant with Cromwell at its head, he condemns them altogether, and his estimate of Cromwell is singularly severe, though he does justice to his ability. Hallam may be taken to represent the purely political view. In Macaulay the tone taken is a degree more literary. He

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avoids, apparently with intention, giving any deliberate estimate of Cromwell, but is always warmer and more eloquent than Hallam in speaking of his achievements.

Now comes Mr. Carlyle with the purely literary view. He tells us that he has sincerely tried to admire the Pyms and the Hampdens, but at the bottom" he has found that it would not do." Of course not; we are quite prepared to hear that Cromwell seems to him as much superior to Pym and Hampden as Mirabeau, Danton, and Napoleon to Pitt and Fox. For he is thinking of the subject purely as a literary man, and he sees that from a literary point of view there can be no comparison between the hero of Naseby and Dunbar and two civilians, even though those two civilians did set on foot a civil war. Accordingly, he throws aside entirely the received opinion, and sets up the military party, rejected before by Whigs and Tories alike, for our admiration. In the midst of this military party, like Charlemagne among his peers, Napoleon among his marshals, stands Cromwell, set high above all the statesmen of the Rebellion, and indeed high above all English statesmen, as a genius of the same order in politics as Shakespeare in literature.

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It might have seemed impossible that the public should approve such a total subversion of all received views on a question which is fundamental in English politics, at least without the most careful examination. For if Mr. Carlyle is right, England has been on the wrong path for two hundred years, since it may be said that our politics ever since have been based upon the principle that the Great Rebellion was a mistake, and have consisted principally in expedients for avoiding the recurrence of such mistakes. It is needless to say that it does not cost Mr. Carlyle anything to affirm that England has been on the wrong path for two hundred years. As a prophet, he would not be at his ease if he had a thesis less enormous to support.

For a prophet is nothing unless he is alone against the world, surrounded with mocking and wondering faces, and therefore when a prophet makes the mistake of writing history, he must needs begin by reversing all received opinions. As a matter of course therefore, Mr. Carlyle must maintain that the Restoration, which is the starting-point of modern English politics, was not only a mistake, but a great act of national apostasy, and that the system which has grown out of it, though it has given us a remarkable and long-continued prosperity, and though it has been imitated in other European countries as almost an ideal system, is a contemptible and impious sham, which has brought England to the depths of moral ignominy. This was a matter of course, and it was also natural that he should not support the position by argument-that would be unworthy of a prophet-but simply by violent assertion, reiteration, and denunciation. What seems less intelligible is that by such methods he should succeed. And yet I think he has succeeded. His opinion is now adopted, or rather taken for granted, by all those who would not be thought reactionary. If you are not an old world Tory, admiring Charles I., and thinking the opposition to him impious, it seems now a matter of you admire Cromwell, detest the Restoration, and sneer at the Revolution as a half-hearted compromise.

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This may seem strange, and yet after all it is not strange when we consider that the public does not regard history seriously. For Mr. Carlyle's book really was amusing, and what would you have more? Here is a book that can be read. What a relief after those dreary constitutional tomes, to come upon a book glowing with all the hues of poetry! On one page it is sublime, and then on the next, or even on the same page, it is so exquisitely odd and funny! you would say the prophet Isaiah writing for Punch, How natural then that we

should give up our old opinions about the Great Rebellion, pronounce Cromwell an ideal hero-king, execrate the Restoration, and sneer at the Revolution! It was inevitable, when we consider it. Other causes no doubt cooperated. There were the instincts which have led the French to deify Napoleon, unavowed no doubt, but still powerful, and which we did not think it unsafe to indulge in the case of Cromwell, because his battles were gained in the cause of religion. Then there was the pleasure which the whole religious world felt when they learnt that a religious man, who had so long been despised as a hypocrite, was really one of the greatest and wisest statesmen of history. Then, again, many literary men felt it a relief to see a fine subject rescued out of the hands of lawyers and politicians, and ready to be clothed in the diction of romance and poetry. And, lastly, Radicalism wanted its theory of the Rebellion, and by means of that strange foreign fancy, that military imperialism has a certain affinity with liberty, managed to hit it off with Cromwell, and with a historian who never conceals the contempt he feels for liberty.

I do not complain of Mr. Carlyle for treating Cromwell's life in a new way. There was in truth great need that this should be done. That a man of such striking and strongly marked character should be, as it were, tabooed by history, that writers should be afraid to speak at large about him, that he should never be mentioned except in the tone of invective, or of timid apology, this was ridiculous. He had a right to a biography which should be heartily sympathetic.

Nor do I complain of Mr. Carlyle for defending Cromwell's religious sincerity, nor yet for asserting him to have been an honest, well-intentioned, as well as an able man. Historians have ordinarily spoken far too much of crime, and far too little of mistake. In such a confused age as Cromwell's, in such an abeyance of all ordinary

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