CHAPTER XXIV

WHAT IS HISTORY!

Most of us like true stories. Often, when we listen to a story which seems interesting and surprising, perhaps even delightful, we say when the story is ended, "But, is it true?" If the answer is no, or even that the story is not all true, we are disappointed.

This feeling of wishing to know the truth about people and events, about what the world is really like and what it used to be like, belongs to human nature. It is born in our hearts when we are born. From the beginning of the world, people have cared for true stories.

As you know, knowledge of remarkable events and people at first was repeated by one generation to another by word of mouth. But tradition, although interesting, is often inaccurate. It does not tell the whole, exact true story. So people were willing to spend a great deal of time, and to work very hard, to find out the truth about past events and about people who lived in the past.

In this way was born the art and science of history. History is a science, because writing true history requires careful, painstaking, unwearied research. Writing history is also an art, since to make events and human beings of long ago, or even of yesterday and to-day, live in a book in such a way that we can understand {166} them, and read of them with interest and enjoyment, requires imagination and all other gifts which are needed to write true histories, or true stories.

Herodotus, a Greek, who lived four hundred and eighty-four years before the birth of Christ, is called the father of history. He is a model, or pattern, still for historians. He was not only the first great historian, he is one of the greatest among writers of history. When he wrote history first, he used to recite what he had composed to his friends. At one of these recitals of history by Herodotus, a boy was present with his father. The boy's name was Thucydides. He was so charmed and excited by what Herodotus said that he burst into tears, as we do sometimes when we are greatly moved by a beautiful thing. Thucydides afterwards, when he grew up, became a great historian.

In another chapter, we shall try to learn of some interesting modern histories, and some famous modern historians,--modern, that is, as compared with Herodotus and Thucydides. But many of the books that we have read for other reasons have told us a good deal about people who lived long ago, and of their customs.

You remember the ballads of "Chevy Chase" and "The Battle of Otterbourne", which tell how the English and Scots fought with one another. These ballads are not accurate history, but they are undoubtedly historical. They take us, with a strange, thrilling feeling that we can almost see what must have happened, as far back as 1388.

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At the time when Queen Philippa of Hainault was the wife of King Edward III of England, a young Hainaulter, a fellow countryman of hers, came from France to visit her and brought with him a copy of a book of chronicles, written by himself about recent wars in France. His name was Sir John Froissart. He was eager to write true histories of his own time, medieval histories as we call them. You will find Sir John Froissart's _Chronicles_ a delightful book to read. Many of the stories which Froissart first wrote are in the histories we read to-day. Queen Philippa was greatly pleased with the visit of her young fellow-countryman and with his book. Froissart stayed in England for some time, and while he was there found out everything he could about the Battle of Otterbourne. The story is told in one of his chronicles.

Here are two short extracts from the chronicle of the Battle of Otterbourne. Froissart wrote in old French. His chronicles were translated into English by Lord Berners in the time of King Henry VIII. In these extracts the old English spelling has been modernized.

"At the beginning the Englishmen were so strong that they reculed back their enemies: then the Earl Douglas, who was of great heart and high of enterprise, seeing his men recule back, then to recover the place and to shew knightly valour, he took his axe in both his hands, and entered so into the press that he made himself way in such wise that none durst approach near him, and he was so well armed that he bare well off such strokes as he received. Thus he went ever {168} forward like a hardy Hector, willing alone to conquer the field and to discomfit his enemies: but at last he was encountered with three spears all at once, so that he was borne perforce to the earth and after that he could not be again relieved. Some of his knights and squires followed him, but not all, for it was night, and no light but by the shining of the moon..."

"This battle was fierce and cruel till it came to the end of the discomfiture; but when the Scots saw the Englishmen recule and yield themselves, then the Scots were courteous and set them to their ransom, and every man said to his prisoner: Sirs, go and unarm you and take your ease: I am your master': and so made their prisoners as good cheer as though they had been brethren, without doing to them any damage."

You will notice that part of the battle must have been fought at night, for the moon was shining. It is likely that Froissart was told this story by some man who had been at the battle and remembered well that there was no light but the light of the moon. The direct account of an eyewitness is one of the most convincing forms of true history. If you will turn to the Acts of the Apostles, you can read in the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth chapters another account by an eyewitness, telling how Paul, after he had been kept in prison two years, was sent for by a new governor Festus, and of the speech he made to Festus, and to King Agrippa and Queen Bernice. As you know, some books of the Bible are histories. This splendid account of an old trial is a fine example of historical writing.

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Old books, old manuscripts, inscriptions, records of all kinds, old and new, even buried cities, form part of the material which historians study. A historian may find that the same event is related in one manuscript after one fashion, and in another manuscript in quite a different way. So it is that historians always want to find corroboration, if possible, for facts which they wish to use in their histories. Thus we see that the work of a historian is difficult. But anyone who writes a history which is true, and well authenticated, and interesting to read, has served mankind well. He has increased our knowledge and understanding, and in this way has made those who read his history more useful and capable men and women.

Let us take one or two of the easiest and most attractive books that a historian might wish to consult, and see if we can find in them any facts, or pictures, which might be useful in writing a true history.

Long ago, in the latter part of the fourteenth century, there lived an English poet whose name was Geoffrey Chaucer. He wrote a poem called _The Canterbury Tales_ which tells of a number of people who were going as pilgrims to a shrine in the great Cathedral at Canterbury. They met in the Tabard Inn in Southwark at London. Chaucer describes these people one by one so accurately that we can learn how people looked, and what they wore, these many hundred years ago. He tells, too, of the landlord or host who kept the Inn. His name was Harry Bayly. It seems from other records in the Public Record {170} Office in London that the landlord of the Tabard Inn at the time actually was a Harry Bayly. Chaucer, as well as being a poet, had a post in the Custom House. There is a record of Harry Bayly paying money into the Customs. It seems certain that Chaucer's descriptions of the Canterbury pilgrims are true and accurate pictures of people who lived in his time.

Who were these people?

"A knyght ther was, and that a worthy man,"--Later Chaucer says of him that:

"He was a verray parfit gentil knyght." His son was there, a young squire, and among the other pilgrims were a yeoman, a nun, a prioress, a monk, a friar, a merchant, a clerk, a sergeant at law, a franklin, a haberdasher, a carpenter, a cook, a shipman or sailor, a doctor, a goodwife, a ploughman, a reeve, a pardoner, and several others.

The squire "was as fressh as in the monthe of May." The prioress was very good-looking.

Hire nose tretys, hir eyen greye as glas, Hir mouth ful smal and ther-to softe and reed, But sikely she hadde a fair forheed.

These words are easily changed into our modern spelling. The last line, for instance is

"But certainly she had a fair forehead."

Chaucer describes exactly the way in which each one was dressed. Then each of the pilgrims tells a story, and in these stories we find more information of how people looked and how they lived in the fourteenth century. Chaucer's poetry, {171} although somewhat difficult to read on account of the old words, is fresh and beautiful still.

Shakespeare's plays, especially his historical plays, throw a wonderful light on the battles, life and customs of England at the time of Agincourt, in the Wars of the Roses, and his own lifetime. Besides the beauty and greatness of his plays, Shakespeare added always to whatever he wrote his wonderful true knowledge of human nature. Turn to Act iii, Scene ii of _King Henry V_, and you will read what a boy, serving some of the soldiers, says in all the tumult and excitement of the battle.

"Would I were in an alehouse in London! I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety."

One of the most important subjects of which many historians write is politics. Charles Dickens, as you know, was a humorist. In his stories, he describes social conditions which existed in the early part of the nineteenth century and which later have been somewhat improved. Dickens, possibly, exaggerated a little, and made his accounts somewhat of a burlesque of what actually existed. Yet when we want to read a true and very amusing account of an election, which might be of use to political historians when they write of the earlier part of the nineteenth century, we will find it in chapter thirteen of _Pickwick Papers_.

The town of Eatanswill is the scene of the election. Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Winkle, and Sam Weller are in Eatanswill, and take a lively part in the proceedings. {172} Dickens, as you know, helped to laugh away many abuses. Elections are not carried on in the same way to-day. But the political candidates and newspapers of Eatanswill, what they said, did, and printed, make an amusing story which has at the same time not a little historical truth.

Now we know a very little of how historians try to find out the truth about what has happened in the past, so that they may write true histories. Very long ago, people used to believe that each art had its own muse, a beautiful being like a goddess, who helped and guided followers of her art. They called the muse of history Clio. So if it pleases us to do so, we can think of the beautiful spirit, or muse, of history teaching, entertaining and helping us all.

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