Chapter XLIV

which is "admired by jurists as a brief and brilliant exposition of the principles of Roman law,"[118] Gibbon wrote, "Attached to no party, interested only for the truth and candor of history, and directed by the most temperate and skillful guides, I enter with just diffidence on the subject of civil law."[119] In speaking of the state of Britain between 409 and 449, he said, "I owe it to myself and to historic truth to declare that some _circumstances_ in this paragraph are founded only on conjecture and analogy."[120] Throughout his whole work the scarcity of materials forces Gibbon to the frequent use of conjecture, but I believe that for the most part his conjectures seem reasonable to the critics. Impressed with the correctness of his account of the Eastern empire a student of the subject once told me that Gibbon certainly possessed the power of wise divination.

Gibbon's striving after precision and accuracy is shown in some marginal corrections he made in his own printed copy of "The Decline and Fall." On the first page in his first printed edition and as it now stands, he said, "To deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall: a revolution which will ever be remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth." For this the following is substituted: "To prosecute the decline and fall of the empire of Rome: of whose language, religion, and laws the impression will be long preserved in our own and the neighboring countries of Europe." He thus explains the change: "Mr. Hume told me that, in correcting his history, he always labored to reduce superlatives and soften positives. Have Asia and Africa, from Japan to Morocco, any feeling or memory of the Roman Empire?"

On page 6, Bury's edition, the text is, "The praises of Alexander, transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous emulation in the mind of Trajan." We can imagine that Gibbon reflected, What evidence have I that Trajan had read these poets and historians? Therefore he made this change: "Late generations and far distant climates may impute their calamities to the immortal author of the Iliad. The spirit of Alexander was inflamed by the praises of Achilles; and succeeding heroes have been ambitious to tread in the footsteps of Alexander. Like him, the Emperor Trajan aspired to the conquest of the East."[121]

The "advertisement" to the first octavo edition published in 1783 is an instance of Gibbon's truthfulness. He wrote, "Some alterations and improvements had presented themselves to my mind, but I was unwilling to injure or offend the purchasers of the preceding editions." Then he seems to reflect that this is not quite the whole truth and adds, "Perhaps I may stand excused if, amidst the avocations of a busy winter, I have preferred the pleasures of composition and study to the minute diligence of revising a former publication."[122]

The severest criticism that Gibbon has received is on his famous chapters XV and XVI which conclude his first volume in the original quarto edition of 1776. We may disregard the flood of contemporary criticism from certain people who were excited by what they deemed an attack on the Christian religion. Dean Milman, who objected seriously to much in these chapters, consulted these various answers to Gibbon on the first appearance of his work with, according to his own confession, little profit.[123] "Against his celebrated fifteenth and sixteenth chapters," wrote Buckle, "all the devices of controversy have been exhausted; but the only result has been, that while the fame of the historian is untarnished, the attacks of his enemies are falling into complete oblivion. The work of Gibbon remains; but who is there who feels any interest in what was written against him?"[124] During the last generation, however, criticism has taken another form and scientific men now do not exactly share Buckle's gleeful opinion. Both Bury and Cotter Morison state or imply that well-grounded exceptions may be taken to Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. He ignored some facts; his combination of others, his inferences, his opinions are not fair and unprejudiced. A further grave objection may be made to the tone of these two chapters: sarcasm pervades them and the Gibbon sneer has become an apt characterization.

Francis Parkman admitted that he was a reverent agnostic, and if Gibbon had been a reverent free-thinker these two chapters would have been far different in tone. Lecky regarded the Christian church as a great institution worthy of reverence and respect although he stated the central thesis of Gibbon with emphasis just as great. Of the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Lecky wrote, "it may be boldly asserted that the assumption of a moral or intellectual miracle is utterly gratuitous. Never before was a religious transformation so manifestly inevitable."[125] Gibbon's sneering tone was a characteristic of his time. There existed during the latter part of the eighteenth century, wrote Sir James Mackintosh, "an unphilosophical and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity." But Gibbon's private defense is entitled to consideration as placing him in a better light. "The primitive church, which I have treated with some freedom," he wrote to Lord Sheffield in 1791, "was itself at that time an innovation, and I was attached to the old Pagan establishment."[126] "Had I believed," he said in his Autobiography, "that the majority of English readers were so fondly attached to the name and shadow of Christianity, had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the prudent would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might perhaps have softened the two invidious chapters."[127]

On the other hand Gibbon's treatment of Julian the Apostate is in accordance with the best modern standard. It might have been supposed that a quasi-Pagan, as he avowed himself, would have emphasized Julian's virtues and ignored his weaknesses as did Voltaire, who invested him with all the good qualities of Trajan, Cato, and Julius Cæsar, without their defects.[128] Robertson indeed feared that he might fail in this part of the history;[129] but Gibbon weighed Julian in the balance, duly estimating his strength and his weakness, with the result that he has given a clear and just account in his best and most dignified style.[130]

Gibbon's treatment of Theodora, the wife of Justinian, is certainly open to objection. Without proper sifting and a reasonable skepticism, he has incorporated into his narrative the questionable account with all its salacious details which Procopius gives in his Secret History, Gibbon's love of a scandalous tale getting the better of his historical criticism. He has not neglected to urge a defense. "I am justified," he wrote, "in painting the manners of the times; the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian.... My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language."[131] This explanation satisfies neither Cotter Morison nor Bury, nor would it hold for a moment as a justification of a historian of our own day. Gibbon is really so scientific, so much like a late nineteenth-century man, that we do right to subject him to our present-day rigid tests.

There has been much discussion about Gibbon's style, which we all know is pompous and Latinized. On a long reading his rounded and sonorous periods become wearisome, and one wishes that occasionally a sentence would terminate with a small word, even a preposition. One feels as did Dickens after walking for an hour or two about the handsome but "distractingly regular" city of Philadelphia. "I felt," he wrote, "that I would have given the world for a crooked street."[132] Despite the pomposity, Gibbon's style is correct, and the exact use of words is a marvel. It is rare, I think, that any substitution or change of words will improve upon the precision of the text. His compression and selection of salient points are remarkable. Amid some commonplace philosophy he frequently rises to a generalization as brilliant as it is truthful. Then, too, one is impressed with the dignity of history; one feels that Gibbon looked upon his work as very serious, and thought with Thucydides, "My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten."

To a writer of history few things are more interesting than a great historian's autobiographical remarks which relate to the composition of his work. "Had I been more indigent or more wealthy," wrote Gibbon in his Autobiography, "I should not have possessed the leisure or the perseverance to prepare and execute my voluminous history."[133] "Notwithstanding the hurry of business and pleasure," he wrote from London in 1778, "I steal some moments for the Roman Empire."[134] Between the writing of the first three and the last three volumes, he took a rest of "near a twelvemonth" and gave expression to a thought which may be echoed by every studious writer, "Yet in the luxury of freedom, I began to wish for the daily task, the active pursuit which gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry."[135] Every one who has written a historical book will sympathize with the following expression of personal experience as he approached the completion of "The Decline and Fall": "Let no man who builds a house or writes a book presume to say when he will have finished. When he imagines that he is drawing near to his journey's end, Alps rise on Alps, and he continually finds something to add and something to correct."[136]

Plain truthful tales are Gibbon's autobiographies. The style is that of the history, and he writes of himself as frankly as he does of any of his historical characters. His failings--what he has somewhere termed "the amiable weaknesses of human nature"--are disclosed with the openness of a Frenchman. All but one of the ten years between 1783 and 1793, between the ages of 46 and 56, he passed at Lausanne. There he completed "The Decline and Fall," and of that period he spent from August, 1787, to July, 1788, in England to look after the publication of the last three volumes. His life in Lausanne was one of study, writing, and agreeable society, of which his correspondence with his English friends gives an animated account. The two things one is most impressed with are his love for books and his love for Madeira. "Though a lover of society," he wrote, "my library is the room to which I am most attached."[137] While getting settled at Lausanne, he complains that his boxes of books "loiter on the road."[138] And then he harps on another string. "Good Madeira," he writes, "is now become essential to my health and reputation;"[139] yet again, "If I do not receive a supply of Madeira in the course of the summer, I shall be in great shame and distress."[140] His good friend in England, Lord Sheffield, regarded his prayer and sent him a hogshead of "best old Madeira" and a tierce, containing six dozen bottles of "finest Malmsey," and at the same time wrote: "You will remember that a hogshead is on his travels through the torrid zone for you.... No wine is meliorated to a greater degree by keeping than Madeira, and you latterly appeared so ravenous for it, that I must conceive you wish to have a stock."[141] Gibbon's devotion to Madeira bore its penalty. At the age of forty-eight he sent this account to his stepmother: "I was in hopes that my old Enemy the Gout had given over the attack, but the Villain, with his ally the winter, convinced me of my error, and about the latter end of March I found myself a prisoner in my library and my great chair. I attempted twice to rise, he twice knocked me down again and kept possession of both my feet and knees longer (I must confess) than he ever had done before."[142] Eager to finish his history, he lamented that his "long gout" lost him "three months in the spring." Thus as you go through his correspondence, you find that orders for Madeira and attacks of gout alternate with regularity. Gibbon apparently did not connect the two as cause and effect, as in his autobiography he charged his malady to his service in the Hampshire militia, when "the daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking" had sown in his constitution "the seeds of the gout."[143]

Gibbon has never been a favorite with women, owing largely to his account of his early love affair. While at Lausanne, he had heard much of "the wit and beauty and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod" and when he first met her, he had reached the age of twenty. "I saw and loved," he wrote. "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners.... She listened to the voice of truth and passion.... At Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity"; and indeed he appeared to be an ardent lover. "He was seen," said a contemporary, "stopping country people near Lausanne and demanding at the point of a naked dagger whether a more adorable creature existed than Suzanne Curchod."[144] On his return to England, however, he soon discovered that his father would not hear of this alliance, and he thus related the sequence: "After a painful struggle, I yielded to my fate.... I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son."[145] From England he wrote to Mademoiselle Curchod breaking off the engagement. Perhaps it is because of feminine criticism that Cotter Morison indulges in an elaborate defense of Gibbon, which indeed hardly seems necessary. Rousseau, who was privy to the love affair, said that "Gibbon was too cold-blooded a young man for his taste or for Mademoiselle Curchod's happiness."[146] Mademoiselle Curchod a few years later married Necker, a rich Paris banker, who under Louis XVI held the office of director-general of the finances. She was the mother of Madame de Staël, was a leader of the literary society in Paris and, despite the troublous times, must have led a happy life. One delightful aspect of the story is the warm friendship that existed between Madame Necker and Edward Gibbon. This began less than a year after her marriage. "The Curchod (Madame Necker) I saw at Paris," he wrote to his friend Holroyd. "She was very fond of me and the husband particularly civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to supper; go to bed, and leave me alone with his wife--what an impertinent security!"[147]

If women read the Correspondence as they do the Autobiography, I think that their aversion to the great historian would be increased by these confiding words to his stepmother, written when he was forty-nine: "The habits of female conversation have sometimes tempted me to acquire the piece of furniture, a wife, and could I unite in a single Woman the virtues and accomplishments of half a dozen of my acquaintance, I would instantly pay my addresses to the Constellation."[148]

I have always been impressed with Gibbon's pride at being the author of "six volumes in quartos"; but as nearly all histories now are published in octavo, I had not a distinct idea of the appearance of a quarto volume until the preparation of this essay led me to look at different editions of Gibbon in the Boston Athenæum. There I found the quartos, the first volume of which is the third edition, published in 1777 [it will be remembered that the original publication of the first volume was in February, 1776]. The volume is 11¼ inches long by 9 inches wide and is much heavier than our very heavy octavo volumes. With this volume in my hand I could appreciate the remark of the Duke of Gloucester when Gibbon brought him the second volume of the "Decline and Fall." Laying the quarto on the table he said, "Another d--d thick square book! Always scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh! Mr. Gibbon?"[149]

During my researches at the Athenæum, I found an octavo edition, the first volume of which was published in 1791, and on the cover was written, "Given to the Athenæum by Charles Cabot. Received December 10, 1807." This was the year of the foundation of the Athenæum. On the quarto of 1777 there was no indication, but the scholarly cataloguer informed me that it was probably also received in 1807. Three later editions than these two are in this library, the last of which is Bury's of 1900 to which I have constantly referred. Meditating in the quiet alcove, with the two early editions of Gibbon before me, I found an answer to the comment of H. G. Wells in his book "The Future in America" which I confess had somewhat irritated me. Thus wrote Wells: "Frankly I grieve over Boston as a great waste of leisure and energy, as a frittering away of moral and intellectual possibilities. We give too much to the past.... We are obsessed by the scholastic prestige of mere knowledge and genteel remoteness."[150] Pondering this iconoclastic utterance, how delightful it is to light upon evidence in the way of well-worn volumes that, since 1807, men and women here have been carefully reading Gibbon, who, as Dean Milman said, "has bridged the abyss between ancient and modern times and connected together the two worlds of history."[151] A knowledge of "The Decline and Fall" is a basis for the study of all other history; it is a mental discipline, and a training for the problems of modern life. These Athenæum readers did not waste their leisure, did not give too much to the past. They were supremely right to take account of the scholastic prestige of Gibbon, and to endeavor to make part of their mental fiber this greatest history of modern times.

I will close with a quotation from the Autobiography, which in its sincerity and absolute freedom from literary cant will be cherished by all whose desire is to behold "the bright countenance of truth in the quiet and still air of delightful studies." "I have drawn a high prize in the lottery of life," wrote Gibbon. "I am disgusted with the affectation of men of letters, who complain that they have renounced a substance for a shadow and that their fame affords a poor compensation for envy, censure, and persecution. My own experience at least has taught me a very different lesson: twenty happy years have been animated by the labor of my history; and its success has given me a name, a rank, a character in the world, to which I should not otherwise have been entitled.... D'Alembert relates that as he was walking in the gardens of Sans-souci with the King of Prussia, Frederick said to him, 'Do you see that old woman, a poor weeder, asleep on that sunny bank? She is probably a more happy Being than either of us.'" Now the comment of Gibbon: "The King and the Philosopher may speak for themselves; for my part I do not envy the old woman."[152]

[46] Autobiography, 270.

[47] Autobiography, 333.

[48] Autobiography, 311.

[49] Lectures, 763.

[50] Chief Periods European Hist., 75.

[51] Introduction, lxvii.

[52] Introduction, xxxi.

[53] Preface, ix.

[54] Introduction, xli.

[55] p. 324.

[56] Letters, I, 23.

[57] Autobiography, 310.

[58] Letters, II, 36.

[59] _Ibid._, 127.

[60] Autobiography, 196.

[61] Autobiography, 310. "I am more and more convinced that we have both the right and power on our side." Letters, I, 248.

[62] Hill's ed. Gibbon Autobiography, 212, 213, 314.

[63] Letters, II, 249.

[64] Autobiography, 342.

[65] Letters, II, 310.

[66] Causeries du Lundi, viii, 469.

[67] Letters, II, 98.

[68] Trevelyan, II, 232.

[69] Lectures on the Hist. of Literature, 185.

[70] Autobiography, 196.

[71] Bury's ed., xxxv.

[72] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., 236.

[73] _Ibid._, I, 349.

[74] Decline and Fall, Smith's ed., II, 35.

[75] II, 235.

[76] History, I, 1.

[77] Annals, I, 11.

[78] Bury's introduction, xxxv.

[79] Autobiography, 193.

[80] _Ibid._, 48, 59.

[81] _Ibid._, 67.

[82] Autobiography, 86 _et seq._; Hill's ed., 69, 291.

[83] Autobiography, 131.

[84] _Ibid._, 137.

[85] _Ibid._, 134.

[86] Autobiography, 139-142.

[87] V, 108, 130, 231.

[88] Autobiography, 141.

[89] Autobiography, 133.

[90] Hill's ed., 89, 293.

[91] Autobiography, 149.

[92] Autobiography, 149.

[93] _Ibid._, 161.

[94] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 445.

[95] Autobiography, 167.

[96] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 446.

[97] Autobiography, Hill's ed., 142.

[98] Autobiography, 258.

[99] _Ibid._, 277.

[100] _Ibid._

[101] Letters, II, 279.

[102] Preface, x.

[103] Smith's ed., I, xi.

[104] Causeries du Lundi, VIII, 453.

[105] _London Times_, November 16, 1894.

[106] Smith's ed., I, 215, 371; II, 230.

[107] Smith's ed., I, 165; II, 205.

[108] _Ibid._, I, 216.

[109] _Ibid._, I, 144.

[110] _Ibid._, III, 78.

[111] Letters, I, 23.

[112] Smith's ed., V, 230.

[113] See Mahan's From Sail to Steam, 276.

[114] Causeries du Lundi, I, 153.

[115] Introduction, xlv, l, lxvii.

[116] Smith's ed., III, 14.

[117] _Ibid._, IV, 31.

[118] Bury, lii.

[119] Smith's ed., V, 258.

[120] _Ibid._, IV, 132 n.

[121] Bury's ed., xxxv, xxxvi.

[122] Smith's ed., I, xxi.

[123] Smith's ed., I, xvii.

[124] History of Civilization, II, 308 n.

[125] Morals, I, 419.

[126] Letters, II, 237.

[127] Autobiography, 316.

[128] Cotter Morison, 118.

[129] Sainte-Beuve, 458.

[130] Cotter Morison, 120.

[131] Autobiography, 337 n.

[132] American Notes, Chap. VII.

[133] p. 155.

[134] Letters, I, 331.

[135] Autobiography, 325.

[136] Letters, II, 143.

[137] Letters, II, 130.

[138] _Ibid._, 89.

[139] _Ibid._, 211.

[140] _Ibid._, 217.

[141] _Ibid._, II, 232.

[142] Letters, II, 129.

[143] _Ibid._, 189.

[144] _Ibid._, I, 40.

[145] Autobiography, pp. 151, 239.

[146] Letters, I, 41.

[147] Letters, I, 81. In 1790 Madame de Staël, then at Coppet, wrote: "Nous possédons dans ce château M. Gibbon, l'ancien amoreux de ma mère, celui qui voulait l'épouser. Quand je le vois, je me demande si je serais née de son union avec ma mère: je me reponds que non et qu'il suffisait de mon père seul pour que je vinsse au monde."--Hill's ed., 107, n. 2.

[148] Letters, II, 143.

[149] Birkbeck Hill's ed., 127.

[150] p. 235.

[151] Smith's ed., I, vii.

[152] Autobiography, 343, 346.

SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the March meeting of 1902, and printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_, May, 1902.

SAMUEL RAWSON GARDINER

It is my purpose to say a word of Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the English historian, who died February 23, 1902, and who in his research and manner of statement represents fitly the scientific school of historical writers. He was thorough in his investigation, sparing neither labor nor pains to get at the truth. It may well enough be true that the designedly untruthful historian, like the undevout astronomer, is an anomaly, for inaccuracy comes not from purpose, but from neglect. Now Gardiner went to the bottom of things, and was not satisfied until he had compassed all the material within his reach. As a matter of course he read many languages. Whether his facts were in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Dutch, Swedish, or English made apparently no difference. Nor did he stop at what was in plain language. He read a diary written chiefly in symbols, and many letters in cipher. A large part of his material was in manuscript, which entailed greater labor than if it had been in print. As one reads the prefaces to his various volumes and his footnotes, amazement is the word to express the feeling that a man could have accomplished so much in forty-seven years. One feels that there is no one-sided use of any material. The Spanish, the Venetian, the French, the Dutch nowhere displaces the English. In Froude's Elizabeth one gets the impression that the Simancas manuscripts furnish a disproportionate basis of the narrative; in Ranke's England, that the story is made up too much from the Venetian archives. Gardiner himself copied many Simancas manuscripts in Spain, and he studied the archives in Venice, Paris, Brussels, and Rome, but these, and all the other great mass of foreign material, are kept adjunctive to that found in his own land. My impression from a study of his volumes is that more than half of his material is in manuscript, but because he has matter which no one else had ever used, he does not neglect the printed pages open to every one. To form "a judgment on the character and aims of Cromwell," he writes, "it is absolutely necessary to take Carlyle's monumental work as a starting point;"[153] yet, distrusting Carlyle's printed transcripts, he goes back to the original speeches and letters themselves. Carlyle, he says, "amends the text without warning" in many places; these emendations Gardiner corrects, and out of the abundance of his learning he stops a moment to show how Carlyle has misled the learned Dr. Murray in attributing to Cromwell the use of the word "communicative" in its modern meaning, when it was on the contrary employed in what is now an obsolete sense.[154]

Gardiner's great work is the History of England from 1603 to 1656. In the revised editions there are ten volumes called the "History of England, from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War," and four volumes on the Great Civil War. Since this revision he has published three volumes on the History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate. He was also the author of a number of smaller volumes, a contributor to the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Dictionary of National Biography, and for ten years editor-in-chief of the _English Historical Review_.

I know not which is the more remarkable, the learning, accuracy, and diligence of the man, or withal his modesty. With his great store of knowledge, the very truthfulness of his soul impels him to be forward in admitting his own mistakes. Lowell said in 1878 that Darwin was "almost the only perfectly disinterested lover of truth" he had ever encountered. Had Lowell known the historian as we know him, he would have placed Gardiner upon the same elevation. In the preface to the revised ten-volume edition he alludes to the "defects" of his work. "Much material," he wrote, "has accumulated since the early volumes were published, and my own point of view is not quite the same as it was when I started with the first years of James I."[155] The most important contribution to this portion of his period had been Spedding's edition of Bacon's Letters and Life. In a note to page 208 of his second volume he tells how Spedding's arguments have caused him to modify some of his statements, although the two regard the history of the seventeenth century differently. Writing this soon after the death of Spedding, to which he refers as "the loss of one whose mind was so acute and whose nature was so patient and kindly," he adds, "It was a true pleasure to have one's statements and arguments exposed to the testing fire of his hostile criticism." Having pointed out later some inaccuracies in the work of Professor Masson, he accuses himself. "I have little doubt," he writes, "that if my work were subjected to as careful a revision, it would yield a far greater crop of errors."[156]

Gardiner was born in 1829. Soon after he was twenty-six years old he conceived the idea of writing the history of England from the accession of James I to the restoration of Charles II. It was a noble conception, but his means were small. Having married, as his first wife, the youngest daughter of Edward Irving, the enthusiastic founder of the Catholic Apostolic Church, he became an Irvingite. Because he was an Irvingite, his university,--he was a son of Oxford,--so it is commonly said, would give him no position whereby he might gain his living. Nevertheless, Gardiner studied and toiled, and in 1863 published two volumes entitled "A History of England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief Justice Coke." Of this work only one hundred and forty copies were sold. Still he struggled on. In 1869 two volumes called "Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage" were published and sold five hundred copies. Six years later appeared two volumes entitled "A History of England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I." This installment paid expenses, but no profit. One is reminded of what Carlyle said about the pecuniary rewards of literary men in England: "Homer's Iliad would have brought the author, had he offered it to Mr. Murray on the half-profit system, say five-and-twenty guineas. The Prophecies of Isaiah would have made a small article in a review which ... could cheerfully enough have remunerated him with a five-pound note." The first book from which Gardiner received any money was a little volume for the Epochs of Modern History Series on the Thirty Years' War, published in 1874. Two more installments of the history appearing in 1877 and 1881 made up the first edition of what is now our ten-volume history, but in the meantime some of the volumes went out of print. It was not until 1883, the year of the publication of the revised edition, that the value of his labors was generally recognized. During this twenty-eight years, from the age of twenty-six to fifty-four, Gardiner had his living to earn. He might have recalled the remark made, I think, by either Goldsmith or Lamb, that the books which will live are not those by which we ourselves can live. Therefore Gardiner got his bread by teaching. He became a professor in King's College, London, and he lectured on history for the London Society for the Extension of University Teaching, having large audiences all over London, and being well appreciated in the East End. He wrote schoolbooks on history. Finally success came twenty-eight years after his glorious conception, twenty years after the publication of his first volume. He had had a hard struggle for a living with money coming in by driblets. Bread won in such a way is come by hard, yet he remained true to his ideal. His potboilers were good and honest books; his brief history on the Thirty Years' War has received the praise of scholars. Recognition brought him money rewards. In 1882 Mr. Gladstone bestowed upon him a civil list pension of £150 a year. Two years later All Souls College, Oxford, elected him to a research fellowship; when this expired Merton made him a fellow. Academic honors came late. Not until 1884, when he was fifty-five, did he take his degree of M.A. Edinburgh conferred upon him an LL.D., and Göttingen a Ph.D.; but he was sixty-six when he received the coveted D.C.L. from his own university. The year previous Lord Rosebery offered him the Regius Professorship of History at Oxford, but he declined it because the prosecution of his great work required him to be near the British Museum. It is worthy of mention that in 1874, nine years before he was generally appreciated in England, the Massachusetts Historical Society elected him a corresponding member.[157]

During the latter part of his life Gardiner resided in the country near London, whence it took him about an hour to reach the British Museum, where he did his work. He labored on his history from eleven o'clock to half-past four, with an intermission of half an hour for luncheon. He did not dictate to a stenographer, but wrote everything out. Totally unaccustomed to collaboration, he never employed a secretary or assistant of any kind. In his evenings he did no serious labor; he spent them with his family, attended to his correspondence, or read a novel. Thus he wrought five hours daily. What a brain, and what a splendid training he had given himself to accomplish such results in so short a working day!

In the preface to his first volume of the "History of the Commonwealth," published in 1894, Gardiner said that he was "entering upon the third and last stage of a task the accomplishment of which seemed to me many years ago to be within the bounds of possibility." One more volume bringing the history down to the death of Cromwell would have completed the work, and then Mr. Charles H. Firth, a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, was to take up the story. Firth now purposes to begin his narrative with the year 1656. Gardiner's mantle has fallen on worthy shoulders.

Where historical scholars congregate in England and America, Gardiner is highly esteemed. But the critics must have their day. They cannot attack him for lack of diligence and accuracy, which according to Gibbon, the master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so they assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no dramatic power, his work is not interesting and will not live. Gardiner is the product solely of the university and the library. You may visualize him at Oxford, in the British Museum, or at work in the archives on the Continent, but of affairs and of society by personal contact he knew nothing. In short, he was not a man of the world, and the histories must be written, so these critics aver, by those who have an actual knowledge by experience of their fellow-men. It is profitable to examine these dicta by the light of concrete examples. Froude saw much of society, and was a man of the world. He wrote six volumes on the reign of Elizabeth, from which we get the distinct impression that the dominant characteristics of Elizabeth were meanness, vacillation, selfishness, and cruelty. Gardiner in an introductory chapter of forty-three pages restores to us the great queen of Shakespeare, who brought upon her land "a thousand, thousand blessings." She loved her people well, he writes, and ruled them wisely. She "cleared the way for liberty, though she understood it not."[158] Elsewhere he speaks of "her high spirit and enlightened judgment."[159] The writer who has spent his life in the library among dusty archives estimates the great ruler more correctly than the man of the world. We all know Macaulay, a member of Parliament, a member of the Supreme Council of India, a cabinet minister, a historian of great merit, a brilliant man of letters. In such a one, according to the principles laid down by these critics, we should expect to find a supreme judge of men. Macaulay in his essays and the first chapter of the History painted Wentworth and Laud in the very blackest of colors, which "had burned themselves into the heart of the people of England." Gardiner came. Wentworth and Laud, he wrote, were controlled by a "noble ambition," which was "not stained with personal selfishness or greed."[160] "England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the type to which the great cardinal belonged."[161] Again Wentworth was "the high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defects of temper and knowledge."[162] From Macaulay we carry away the impression that Wentworth was very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner loved Cromwell not less than did Macaulay, but thus he speaks of his government: "Step by step the government of the Commonwealth was compelled ... to rule by means which every one of its members would have condemned if they had been employed by Charles or Wentworth." Is it not a triumph for the bookish man that in his estimate of Wentworth and Laud he has with him the consensus of the historical scholars of England?

What a change there has been in English opinion of Cromwell in the last half century! Unquestionably that is due to Carlyle more than to any other one man, but there might have been a reaction from the conception of the hero worshiper had it not been supported and somewhat modified by so careful and impartial a student as Gardiner.

The alteration of sentiment toward Wentworth and Laud is principally due to Gardiner, that toward Cromwell is due to him in part. These are two of the striking results, but they are only two of many things we see differently because of the single-minded devotion of this great historian. We know the history in England from 1603 to 1656 better than we do that of any other period of the world; and for this we are indebted mainly to Samuel Rawson Gardiner.

[153] History of the Great Civil War, I, viii.

[154] History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, III, 27.

[155] History, I, v.

[156] _Ibid._, IX, viii.

[157] He was transferred to the roll of honorary members in October, 1896.

[158] History, I, 43.

[159] _Ibid._, VIII, 36.

[160] _Ibid._, 67.

[161] _Ibid._, 215.

[162] _Ibid._, IX, 229.

WILLIAM E. H. LECKY

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November meeting of 1903.

WILLIAM E. H. LECKY

Amazement was the feeling of the reading world on learning that the author of the History of Rationalism was only twenty-seven, and the writer of the History of European Morals only thirty-one. The sentiment was that a prodigy of learning had appeared, and a perusal of these works now renders comprehensible the contemporary astonishment. The Morals (published in 1869) is the better book of the two, and, if I may judge from my own personal experience, it may be read with delight when young, and re-read with respect and advantage at an age when the enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude of experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning by which Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian theory of morals is no longer of value, and that it lacks the consistency of either the orthodox or the agnostic, that there is no new historical light, and that much of the treatise is commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations and disquisitions, the fresh combination of well-known facts are valuable for instruction and for a new point of view. His analysis of the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is drawn, of course, from Gibbon, but I have met those who prefer the interesting story of Lecky to the majestic sweep of the great master. Much less brilliant than Buckle's "History of Civilization," the first volume of which appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better the test of time.

The intellectual biography of so precocious a writer is interesting, and fortunately it has been related by Lecky himself. When he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856, "Mill was in the zenith of his fame and influence"; Hugh Miller was attempting to reconcile the recent discoveries of geology with the Mosaic cosmogony. "In poetry," wrote Lecky, "Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I think with an approach to equality which has not continued." In government the orthodox political economists furnished the theory and the Manchester school the practice. All this intellectual fermentation affected this inquiring young student; but at first Bishop Butler's Analogy and sermons, which were then much studied at Dublin, had the paramount influence. Of the living men, Archbishop Whately, then at Dublin, held sway. Other writers whom he mastered were Coleridge, Newman, and Emerson, Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Dugald Stewart, and Mill. In 1857 Buckle burst upon the world, and proved a stimulus to Lecky as well as to most serious historical students. The result of these studies, Lecky relates, was his History of Rationalism, published in the early part of 1865.

The claim made by many of Lecky's admirers, that he was a philosophic historian, as distinct from literary historians like Carlyle and Macaulay, and scientific like Stubbs and Gardiner, has injured him in the eyes of many historical students who believe that if there be such a thing as the philosophy of history the narrative ought to carry it naturally. To interrupt the relation of events or the delineation of character with parading of trite reflections or with rashly broad generalizations is neither science nor art. Lecky has sometimes been condemned by students who, revolting at the term "philosophy" in connection with history, have failed to read his greatest work, the "History of England in the Eighteenth Century." This is a decided advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest investigation in original material, much of it manuscript, and an excellent power of generalization widely different from that which exhibits itself in a paltry philosophy. These volumes are a real contribution to historical knowledge. Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the account of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of "parliamentary corruption," of the condition of London, and of "national tastes and manners." His Chapter IX , which relates the rise of Methodism, has a peculiarly attractive swing and go, and his use of anecdote is effective.