Historical Essays Part 2

Mathematics beyond arithmetic are of no use to the historian and may be entirely discarded. I do not ignore John Stuart Mill's able plea for them, some words of which are worth quoting. "Mathematical studies," he said, "are of immense benefit to the student's education by habituating him to precision. It is one of the peculiar excellences of mathematical discipline that the mathematician is never satisfied with an _a peu pres_. He requires the _exact_ truth.... The practice of mathematical reasoning gives wariness of the mind; it accustoms us to demand a sure footing."[12] Mill, however, is no guide except for exceptionally gifted youth. He began to learn Greek when he was three years old, and by the time he had reached the age of twelve had read a good part of Latin and Greek literature and knew elementary geometry and algebra thoroughly.

The three English historians who have most influenced thought from 1776 to 1900 are those whom John Morley called "great born men of letters"[13]--Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle; and two of these despised mathematics. "As soon as I understood the principles," wrote Gibbon in his "Autobiography," "I relinquished forever the pursuit of the Mathematics; nor can I lament that I desisted before my mind was hardened by the habit of rigid demonstration, so destructive of the finer feelings of moral evidence, which must however determine the actions and opinions of our lives."[14] Macaulay, while a student at Cambridge, wrote to his mother: "Oh, for words to express my abomination of mathematics ... 'Discipline' of the mind! Say rather starvation, confinement, torture, annihilation!... I feel myself becoming a personification of Algebra, a living trigonometrical canon, a walking table of logarithms. All my perceptions of elegance and beauty gone, or at least going.... Farewell then Homer and Sophocles and Cicero."[15] I must in fairness state that in after life Macaulay regretted his lack of knowledge of mathematics and physics, but his career and Gibbon's demonstrate that mathematics need have no place on the list of the historian's studies. Carlyle, however, showed mathematical ability which attracted the attention of Legendre and deemed himself sufficiently qualified to apply, when he was thirty-nine years old, for the professors.h.i.+p of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. He did not succeed in obtaining the post but, had he done so, he "would have made,"

so Froude his biographer thinks, "the school of Astronomy at Edinburgh famous throughout Europe."[16] When fifty-two, Carlyle said that "the man who had mastered the first forty-seven propositions of Euclid stood nearer to G.o.d than he had done before."[17] I may cap this with some words of Emerson, who in much of his thought resembled Carlyle: "What hours of melancholy my mathematical works cost! It was long before I learned that there is something wrong with a man's brain who loves them."[18]

Mathematics are of course the basis of many studies, trades, and professions and are sometimes of benefit as a recreation for men of affairs. Devotion to Euclid undoubtedly added to Lincoln's strength, but the necessary range of knowledge for the historian is so vast that he cannot spend his evenings and restless nights in the solution of mathematical problems. In short, mathematics are of no more use to him than is Greek to the civil or mechanical engineer.

In the category with mathematics must be placed a detailed study of any of the physical or natural sciences. I think that a student during his college course should have a year's work in a chemical laboratory or else, if his taste inclines him to botany, geology, or zoology, a year's training of his observing powers in some one of these studies. For he ought to get, while at an impressible age, a superficial knowledge of the methods of scientific men, as a basis for his future reading. We all know that science is moving the world and to keep abreast with the movement is a necessity for every educated man. Happily, there are scientific men who popularize their knowledge. John Fiske, Huxley, and Tyndall presented to us the theories and demonstrations of science in a literary style that makes learning attractive. Huxley and Tyndall were workers in laboratories and gave us the results of their patient and long-continued experiments. It is too much to expect that every generation will produce men of the remarkable power of expression of Huxley and John Fiske, but there will always be clear writers who will delight in instructing the general public in language easily understood.

In an address which I delivered eight or nine years ago before the American Historical a.s.sociation, I cheerfully conceded that, in the realm of intellectual endeavor, the natural and physical sciences should have the precedence of history. The question with us now is not which is the n.o.bler pursuit, but how is the greatest economy of time to be compa.s.sed for the historian. My advice is in the line of concentration.

Failure in life arises frequently from intellectual scattering; hence I like to see the historical student getting his physical and natural science at second-hand.

The religious and political revolutions of the last four hundred years have weakened authority; but in intellectual development I believe that in general an important advantage lies in accepting the dicta of specialists. In this respect our scientific men may teach us a lesson.

One not infrequently meets a naturalist or a physician, who possesses an excellent knowledge of history, acquired by reading the works of general historians who have told an interesting story. He would laugh at the idea that he must verify the notes of his author and read the original doc.u.ments, for he has confidence that the interpretation is accurate and truthful. This is all that I ask of the would-be historian.

For the sake of going to the bottom of things in his own special study, let him take his physical and natural science on trust and he may well begin to do this during his college course. As a manner of doing this, there occur to me three interesting biographies, the Life of Darwin, the Life of Huxley, and the Life of Pasteur, which give the important part of the story of scientific development during the last half of the nineteenth century. Now I believe that a thorough mastery of these three books will be worth more to the historical student than any driblets of science that he may pick up in an unsystematic college course.

With this elimination of undesirable studies--undesirable because of lack of time--there remains ample time for those studies which are necessary for the equipment of a historian; to wit, languages, histories, English, French, and Latin literature, and as much of economics as his experienced teachers advise. Let him also study the fine arts as well as he can in America, fitting himself for an appreciation of the great works of architecture, sculpture, and painting in Europe which he will recognize as landmarks of history in their potent influence on the civilization of mankind. Let us suppose that our hypothetical student has marked out on these lines his college course of four years, and his graduate course of three. At the age of twenty-five he will then have received an excellent college education. The university with its learned and hard-working teachers, its wealth, its varied and wholesome traditions has done for him the utmost possible.

Henceforward his education must depend upon himself and, unless he has an insatiable love of reading, he had better abandon the idea of becoming a historian; for books, pamphlets, old newspapers, and ma.n.u.scripts are the stock of his profession and to them he must show a single-minded devotion. He must love his library as Pasteur did his laboratory and must fill with delight most of the hours of the day in reading or writing. To this necessity there is no alternative. Whether it be in general preparation or in the detailed study of a special period, there is no end to the material which may be read with advantage. The young man of twenty-five can do no better than to devote five years of his life to general preparation. And what enjoyment he has before him! He may draw upon a large ma.s.s of histories and biographies, of books of correspondence, of poems, plays, and novels; it is then for him to select with discrimination, choosing the most valuable, as they afford him facts, augment his knowledge of human nature, and teach him method and expression. "A good book," said Milton, "is the precious life blood of a master spirit," and every good book which wins our student's interest and which he reads carefully will help him directly or indirectly in his career. And there are some books which he will wish to master, as if he were to be subjected to an examination on them. As to these he will be guided by strong inclination and possibly with a view to the subject of his magnum opus; but if these considerations be absent and if the work has not been done in the university, I cannot too strongly recommend the mastery of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" and Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire." Gibbon merits close study because his is undoubtedly the greatest history of modern times and because it is, in the words of Carlyle, a splendid bridge from the old world to the new.

He should be read in the edition of Bury, whose scholarly introduction gives a careful and just estimate of Gibbon and whose notes show the results of the latest researches. This edition does not include Guizot's and Milman's notes, which seem to an old-fas.h.i.+oned reader of Gibbon like myself worthy of attention, especially those on the famous Fifteenth and Sixteenth Chapters. Bryce's "Holy Roman Empire" is a fitting complement to Gibbon, and the intellectual possession of the two is an education in itself which will be useful in the study of any period of history that may be chosen.

The student who reads Gibbon will doubtless be influenced by his many tributes to Tacitus and will master the Roman historian. I shall let Macaulay furnish the warrant for a close study of Thucydides. "This day," Macaulay said, when in his thirty-fifth year, "I finished Thucydides after reading him with inexpressible interest and admiration.

He is the greatest historian that ever lived." Again during the same year he wrote: "What are all the Roman historians to the great Athenian?

I do a.s.sure you there is no prose composition in the world, not even the oration on the Crown, which I place so high as the seventh book of Thucydides. It is the _ne plus ultra_ of human art. I was delighted to find in Gray's letters the other day this query to Wharton: 'The retreat from Syracuse--is or is it not the finest thing you ever read in your life?' ... Most people read all the Greek they ever read before they are five and twenty. They never find time for such studies afterwards until they are in the decline of life; and then their knowledge of the language is in great measure lost, and cannot easily be recovered.

Accordingly, almost all the ideas that people have of Greek literature are ideas formed while they were still very young. A young man, whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides.

I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accustomed to historical researches and to political affairs and I am astonished at my own former blindness and at his greatness."[19]

I have borrowed John Morley's words, speaking of Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle as "three great born men of letters." Our student cannot therefore afford to miss a knowledge of Macaulay's History, but the Essays, except perhaps three or four of the latest ones, need not be read. In a preface to the authorized edition of the Essays, Macaulay wrote that he was "sensible of their defects," deemed them "imperfect pieces," and did not think that they were "worthy of a permanent place in English literature." For instance, his essay on Milton contained scarcely a paragraph which his matured judgment approved. Macaulay's peculiar faults are emphasized in his Essays and much of the harsh criticism which he has received comes from the glaring defects of these earlier productions. His history, however, is a great book, shows extensive research, a sane method and an excellent power of narration; and when he is a partisan, he is so honest and transparent that the effect of his partiality is neither enduring nor mischievous.

I must say further to the student: read either Carlyle's "French Revolution" or his "Frederick the Great," I care not which, although it is well worth one's while to read both. If your friends who maintain that history is a science convince you that the "French Revolution" is not history, as perhaps they may, read it as a narrative poem. Truly Carlyle spoke rather like a poet than a historian when he wrote to his wife (in his forty-first year): "A hundred pages more and this cursed book is flung out of me. I mean to write with force of fire till that consummation; above all with the speed of fire.... It all stands pretty fair in my head, nor do I mean to investigate much more about it, but to splash down what I know in large ma.s.ses of colors, that it may look like a smoke-and-flame conflagration in the distance, which it is."[20] It was Carlyle's custom to work all of the morning and take a solitary walk in Hyde Park in the afternoon, when looking upon the gay scene, the display of wealth and fas.h.i.+on, "seeing," as he said, "all the carriages dash hither and thither and so many human bipeds cheerily hurrying along," he said to himself: "There you go, brothers, in your gilt carriages and prosperities, better or worse, and make an extreme bother and confusion, the devil very largely in it.... Not one of you could do what I am doing, and it concerns you too, if you did but know it."[21]

When the book was done he wrote to his brother, "It is a wild, savage book, itself a kind of French Revolution."[22] From its somewhat obscure style it requires a slow perusal and careful study, but this serves all the more to fix it in the memory causing it to remain an abiding influence.

There are eight volumes of "Frederick the Great," containing, according to Barrett Wendell's computation, over one million words; and this eighteenth-century tale, with its large number of great and little characters, its "ma.s.s of living facts" impressed Wendell chiefly with its unity. "Whatever else Carlyle was," he wrote, "the unity of this enormous book proves him, when he chose to be, a t.i.tanic artist."[23]

Only those who have striven for unity in a narrative can appreciate the tribute contained in these words. It was a struggle, too, for Carlyle.

Fifty-six years old when he conceived the idea of Frederick, his nervousness and irritability were a constant torment to himself and his devoted wife. Many entries in his journal tell of his "dismal continual wrestle with Friedrich,"[24] perhaps the most characteristic of which is this: "My Frederick looks as if it would never take shape in me; in fact the problem is to burn away the immense dungheap of the eighteenth century, with its ghastly cants, foul, blind sensualities, cruelties, and _inanity_ now fallen _putrid_, rotting inevitably towards annihilation; to destroy and extinguish all that, having got to know it, and to know that it must be rejected for evermore; after which the perennial portion, pretty much Friedrich and Voltaire so far as I can see, may remain conspicuous and capable of being delineated."[25]

The student, who has become acquainted with the works of Gibbon, Macaulay, and Carlyle, will wish to know something of the men themselves and this curiosity may be easily and delightfully gratified. The autobiographies of Gibbon, the Life of Macaulay by Sir George Trevelyan, the History of Carlyle's Life by Froude, present the personality of these historians in a vivid manner. Gibbon has himself told of all his own faults and Froude has omitted none of Carlyle's, so that these two books are useful aids in a study of human nature, in which respect they are real adjuncts of Boswell's Johnson. Gibbon, Carlyle, and Macaulay had an insatiable love of reading; in their solitary hours they were seldom without books in their hands. Valuable instruction may be derived from a study of their lives from their suggestions of books, helpful in the development of a historian. They knew how to employ their odd moments, and Gibbon and Macaulay were adepts in the art of desultory reading. Sainte-Beuve makes a plea for desultory reading in instancing Tocqueville's lack of it, so that he failed to ill.u.s.trate and animate his pages with its fruits, the result being, in the long run, great monotony.[26] As a relief to the tired brain, without a complete loss of time, the reading at hazard, even browsing in a library, has its place in the equipment of a historian. One of the most striking examples of self-education in literature is Carlyle's seven years, from the age of thirty-two to thirty-nine, pa.s.sed at Craigenputtock where his native inclination was enforced by his physical surroundings. Craigenputtock, wrote Froude, is "the dreariest spot in all the British dominions. The nearest cottage is more than a mile from it; the elevation, 700 feet above the sea, stunts the trees and limits the garden produce to the hardiest vegetables. The house is gaunt and hungry-looking."[27] The place realized Tennyson's words, "O, the dreary, dreary moorland." Here Carlyle read books, gave himself over to silent meditation, and wrote for his bread, although a man who possessed an adequate income could not have been more independent in thought than he was, or more averse to writing to the order of editors of reviews and magazines. With no outside distractions, books were his companions as well as his friends.

As you read Froude's intimate biography, it comes upon you, as you consider Carlyle's life in London, what a tremendous intellectual stride he had made while living in this dreary solitude of Craigenputtock. It was there that he continued his development under the intellectual influence of Goethe, wrote "Sartor Resartus" and conceived the idea of writing the story of the French Revolution. Those seven years, as you trace their influence during the rest of his life, will ever be a tribute to the concentrated, bookish labors of bookish men.

It is often said that some practical experience in life is necessary for the training of a historian; that only thus can he arrive at a knowledge of human nature and become a judge of character; that, while the theory is occasionally advanced that history is a series of movements which may be described without taking individuals into account, as a matter of fact, one cannot go far on this hypothesis without running up against the truth that movements have motors and the motors are men. Hence we are to believe the dictum that the historian needs that knowledge of men which is to be obtained only by practical dealings with them. It is true that Gibbon's service in the Hamps.h.i.+re militia and his members.h.i.+p in the House of Commons were of benefit to the historian of the Roman Empire.

Grote's business life, Macaulay's administrative work in India, and the parliamentary experience of both were undoubtedly of value to their work as historians, but there are excellent historians who have never had any such training. Carlyle is an example, and Samuel R. Gardiner is another.

Curiously enough, Gardiner, who was a pure product of the university and the library, has expressed sounder judgments on many of the prominent men of the seventeenth century than Macaulay. I am not aware that there is in historical literature any other such striking contrast as this, for it is difficult to draw the line closely between the historian and the man of affairs, but Gardiner's example is strengthened in other historians' lives sufficiently to warrant the statement that the historian need not be a man of the world. Books are written by men and treat of the thoughts and actions of men and a good study may be made of human character without going beyond the walls of a library.

Drawing upon my individual experience again I feel that the two authors who have helped me most in this study of human character are Shakespeare and Homer. I do not mean that in the modern world we meet Hamlet, Iago, Macbeth, and Shylock, but when we perceive "the native hue of resolution sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," when we come in contact with the treachery of a seeming friend, with unholy ambition and insensate greed, we are better able to interpret them on the page of history from having grasped the lessons of Shakespeare to mankind. A constant reading of Shakespeare will show us unchanging pa.s.sions and feelings; and we need not make literal contrasts, as did the British matron who remarked of "Antony and Cleopatra" that it was "so unlike the home life of our beloved queen." Bernard Shaw, who has said much in detraction of Shakespeare, writes in one of his admiring moods, "that the imaginary scenes and people he has created become more real to us than our actual life--at least until our knowledge and grip of actual life begins to deepen and glow beyond the common. When I was twenty,"

Shaw continues, "I knew everybody in Shakespeare from Hamlet to Abhorson, much more intimately than I knew my living contemporaries; and to this day, if the name of Pistol or Polonius catches my eye in a newspaper, I turn to the pa.s.sage with curiosity."[28]

Homer's character of Ulysses is a link between the ancient and the modern world. One feels that Ulysses would be at home in the twentieth century and would adapt himself to the conditions of modern political life. Perhaps, indeed, he would have preferred to his militant age our industrial one where prizes are often won by craft and persuasive eloquence rather than by strength of arm. The story of Ulysses is a signal lesson in the study of human character, and receives a luminous commentary in Shakespeare's adaptation of it. The advice which Ulysses gives to Achilles[29] is a piece of worldly wisdom and may well be acted on by those who desire advancement in life and are little scrupulous in regard to means. The first part of Goethe's "Faust" is another book which has profoundly affected my view of life. I read it first when seventeen years old and have continually re-read it; and, while I fail to comprehend it wholly, and, although it does not give me the same kind of knowledge of human character that I derive from Shakespeare's plays, I carry away from it abiding impressions from the contact that it affords with one of the greatest of human minds.

All this counsel of mine, as to the reading of the embryo historian is, of course, merely supplementary, and does not pretend to be exhaustive.

I am a.s.suming that during his undergraduate and graduate course the student has been advised to read, either wholly or in part, most of the English, German, and French scientific historians of the past fifty years, and that he has become acquainted in a greater or less degree with all the eminent American historians. My own experience has been that a thorough knowledge of one book of an author is better than a superficial acquaintance with all of his works. The only book of Francis Parkman's which I have read is his "Montcalm and Wolfe," parts of which I have gone over again and again. One chapter, pervaded with the scenery of the place, I have read on Lake George, three others more than once at Quebec, and I feel that I know Parkman's method as well as if I had skimmed all his volumes. But I believe I was careful in my selection, for in his own estimation, and in that of the general public, "Montcalm and Wolfe" is his best work. So with Motley, I have read nothing but the "Dutch Republic," but that I have read through twice carefully. I will not say that it is the most accurate of his works, but it is probably the most interesting and shows his graphic and das.h.i.+ng style at its best. An admirer of Stubbs told me that his "Lectures and Addresses on Mediaeval and Modern History" would give me a good idea of his scholars.h.i.+p and literary manner and that I need not tackle his magnum opus. But those lectures gave me a taste for more and, undeterred by the remark of still another admirer that n.o.body ever read his "Const.i.tutional History" through, I did read one volume with interest and profit, and I hope at some future time to read the other two. On the other hand, I have read everything that Samuel R. Gardiner has written except "What Gunpowder Plot Was." Readers differ. There are fast readers who have the faculty of getting just what they want out of a book in a brief time and they retain the thing which they have sought. a.s.suredly I envy men that power. For myself, I have never found any royal road to learning, have been a slow reader, and needed a re-reading, sometimes more than one, to acquire any degree of mastery of a book. Macaulay used to read his favorite Greek and Latin cla.s.sics over and over again and presumably always with care, but modern books he turned off with extraordinary speed. Of Buckle's large volume of the "History of Civilization" Macaulay wrote in his journal: "I read Buckle's book all day, and got to the end, skipping, of course. A man of talent and of a good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent."[30] John Fiske, I believe, was a slow reader, but he had such a remarkable power of concentration that what he read once was his own. Of this I can give a notable instance. At a meeting in Boston a number of years ago of the Military Historical Society of Ma.s.sachusetts, Colonel William R.

Livermore read a learned and interesting paper on Napoleon's Campaigns in Northern Italy, and a few men, among whom were Fiske and John C.

Ropes, remained after supper to discuss the paper. The discussion went well into details and was technical. Fiske had as much to say as any one and met the military critics on their own ground, holding his own in this interchange of expert opinions. As we returned to Cambridge together, I expressed my surprise at his wide technical knowledge. "It is all due to one book," he said. "A few summers ago I had occasion to read Sir Edward Hamley's 'Operations of War' and for some reason or other everything in it seemed to sink into my mind and to be there retained, ready for use, as was the case to-night with his references to the Northern Italian campaigns."

Outside of ordinary historical reading, a book occurs to me which is well worth a historian's mastery. I am a.s.suming that our hypothetical student has read Goethe's "Faust," "Werther," and "Wilhelm Meister," and desires to know something of the personality of this great writer. He should, therefore, read Eckermann's "Conversations with Goethe," in which he will find a body of profitable literary criticism, given out in a familiar way by the most celebrated man then living. The talks began when he was seventy-three and continued until near his death, ten years later; they reveal his maturity of judgment. Greek, Roman, German, English, French, Spanish, and Italian authors are taken up from time to time and discussed with clearness and appreciation, running sometimes to enthusiasm. As a guide to the best reading extant up to 1832 I know nothing better. Eckermann is inferior as a biographer to Boswell, and his book is neither so interesting nor amusing; but Goethe was far greater than Johnson, and his talk is cosmopolitan and broad, while Johnson's is apt to be insular and narrow. "One should not study contemporaries and compet.i.tors," Goethe said, "but the great men of antiquity, whose works have for centuries received equal homage and consideration.... Let us study Moliere, let us study Shakespeare, but above all things, the old Greeks and always the Greeks."[31] Here is an opinion I like to dwell upon: "He who will work aright must never rail, must not trouble himself at all about what is ill done, but only to do well himself. For the great point is, not to pull down, but to build up and in this humanity finds pure joy."[32] It is well worth our while to listen to a man so great as to be free from envy and jealousy, but this was a lesson Carlyle could not learn from his revered master. It is undoubtedly his broad mind in connection with his wide knowledge which induced Sainte-Beuve to write that Goethe is "the greatest of modern critics and of critics of all time."[33]

All of the conversations did not run upon literature and writers.

Although Goethe never visited either Paris or London, and resided for a good part of his life in the little city of Weimar, he kept abreast of the world's progress through books, newspapers, and conversations with visiting strangers. No statesman or man of business could have had a wider outlook than Goethe, when on February 21, 1827, he thus spoke: "I should wish to see England in possession of a ca.n.a.l through the Isthmus of Suez.... And it may be foreseen that the United States, with its decided predilection to the West will, in thirty or forty years, have occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains.

It may furthermore be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific Ocean where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and the United States. In such a case, it would not only be desirable, but almost necessary, that a more rapid communication should be maintained between the eastern and western sh.o.r.es of North America, both by merchant s.h.i.+ps and men-of-war than has. .h.i.therto been possible with the tedious, disagreeable, and expensive voyage around Cape Horn.... It is absolutely indispensable for the United States to effect a pa.s.sage from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, and I am certain that they will do it. Would that I might live to see it!"[34]

"Eckermann's book," wrote Sainte-Beuve, "is the best biography of Goethe; that of Lewes, for the facts; that of Eckermann, for the portrait from the inside and the physiognomy. The soul of a great man breathes in it."[35]

I have had frequent occasion to speak of Sainte-Beuve and I cannot recommend our student too strongly to read from time to time some of his critical essays. His best work is contained in the fifteen volumes of "Causeries du Lundi" and in the thirteen volumes of "Nouveaux Lundis"

which were articles written for the daily newspapers, the _Const.i.tutionnel_, the _Moniteur_, and the _Temps_, when, between the ages of forty-five and sixty-five, he was at the maturity of his powers.

Considering the very high quality of the work, the quant.i.ty is enormous, and makes us call to mind the remark of Goethe that "genius and fecundity are very closely allied." Excluding Goethe, we may safely, I think, call Sainte-Beuve the greatest of modern critics, and there is enough of resemblance between historical and literary criticism to warrant a study by the historian of these remarkable essays. "The root of everything in his criticism," wrote Matthew Arnold, "is his single-hearted devotion to truth. What he called 'fictions' in literature, in politics, in religion, were not allowed to influence him." And Sainte-Beuve himself has said, "I am accustomed incessantly to call my judgments in question anew and to recast my opinions the moment I suspect them to be without validity."[36] The writer who conforms to such a high standard is an excellent guide for the historian and no one who has made a study of these Causeries can help feeling their spirit of candor and being inspired to the attempt to realize so high an ideal.

Sainte-Beuve's essays deal almost entirely with French literature and history, which were the subjects he knew best. It is very desirable for us Anglo-Saxons to broaden our minds and soften our prejudices by excursions outside of our own literature and history, and with Goethe for our guide in Germany, we can do no better than to accept Sainte-Beuve for France. Brunetiere wrote that the four literary men of France in the nineteenth century who had exercised the most profound influence were Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, Victor Hugo, and Auguste Comte.[37]

I have already recommended Balzac, who portrays the life of the nineteenth century; and Sainte-Beuve, in developing the thought of the same period, gives us a history of French literature and society.

Moreover, his volumes are valuable to one who is studying human character by the means of books. "Sainte-Beuve had," wrote Henry James, "two pa.s.sions which are commonly a.s.sumed to exclude each other, the pa.s.sion for scholars.h.i.+p and the pa.s.sion for life. He valued life and literature equally for the light they threw on each other; to his mind, one implied the other; he was unable to conceive of them apart."[38]

Supposing the student to have devoted five years to this general preparation and to have arrived at the age of thirty, which Motley, in similar advice to an aspiring historian, fixed as the earliest age at which one should devote himself to his special work, he is ready to choose a period and write a history, if indeed his period has not already suggested itself during his years of general preparation. At all events it is doubtless that his own predilection will fix his country and epoch and the only counsel I have to offer is to select an interesting period. As to this, opinions will differ; but I would say for example that the attractive parts of German history are the Reformation, the Thirty Years' War, the epoch of Frederick the Great, and the unification of Germany which we have witnessed in our own day.

The French Revolution is to me the most striking period in modern annals, whilst the history of the Directory is dull, relieved only by the exploits of Napoleon; but when Napoleon becomes the chief officer of state, interest revives and we follow with unflagging attention the story of this master of men, for which there is a superabundance of material, in striking contrast with the little that is known about his t.i.tanic predecessors, Alexander and Caesar, in the accounts of whose careers conjecture must so frequently come to the aid of facts to construct a continuous story. The Restoration and the reign of Louis Philippe would for me be dull periods were they not illumined by the novels of Balzac; but from the Revolution of 1848 to the fall of the Second Empire and the Commune, a wonderful drama was enacted. In our own history the Revolutionary War, the framing of the Const.i.tution, and Was.h.i.+ngton's administrations seem to me replete with interest which is somewhat lacking for the period between Was.h.i.+ngton and the slavery conflict. "As to special history," wrote Motley to the aspiring historian, "I should be inclined rather to direct your attention to that of the last three and a half centuries."[39] Discussing the subject before the advanced historical students of Harvard a number of years ago, I gave an extension to Motley's counsel by saying that ancient history had better be left to the Germans. I was fresh from reading Holm's History of Greece and was impressed with his vast learning, elaboration of detail, and exhaustive treatment of every subject which seemed to me to require a steady application and patience, hardly consonant with the American character. But within the past five years Ferrero, an Italian, has demonstrated that others besides Germans are equal to the work by writing an interesting history of Rome, which intelligent men and scholars discuss in the same breath with Mommsen's.

Courageously adopting the t.i.tle "Grandeur and Decadence of Rome" which suggests that of Montesquieu, Ferrero has gleaned the well-reaped field from the appearance of Julius Caesar to the reign of Augustus[40] in a manner to attract the attention of the reading public in Italy, France, England, and the United States. There is no reason why an American should not have done the same. "All history is public property," wrote Motley in the letter previously referred to. "All history may be rewritten and it is impossible that with exhaustive research and deep reflection you should not be able to produce something new and valuable on almost any subject."[41]

After the student has chosen his period I have little advice to offer him beyond what I have previously given in two formal addresses before the American Historical a.s.sociation, but a few additional words may be useful. You will evolve your own method by practice and by comparison with the methods of other historians. "Follow your own star." If you feel impelled to praise or blame as do the older historians, if it is forced upon you that your subject demands such treatment, proceed fearlessly, so that you do nothing for effect, so that you do not sacrifice the least particle of truth for a telling statement. If, however, you fall naturally into the rigorously judicial method of Gardiner you may feel your position sure. It is well, as the scientific historians warn you, to be suspicious of interesting things, but, on the other hand, every interesting incident is not necessarily untrue. If you have made a conscientious search for historical material and use it with scrupulous honesty, have no fear that you will transgress any reasonable canon of historical writing.

An obvious question to be put to a historian is, What plan do you follow in making notes of your reading? Langlois, an experienced teacher and tried scholar, in his introduction to the "Study of History," condemns the natural impulse to set them down in notebooks in the order in which one's authorities are studied, and says, "Every one admits nowadays that it is advisable to collect materials on separate cards or slips of paper,"[42] arranging them by a systematic cla.s.sification of subjects.

This is a case in point where writers will, I think, learn best from their own experience. I have made my notes mainly in notebooks on the plan which Langlois condemns, but by colored pencil-marks of emphasis and summary, I keep before me the prominent facts which I wish to combine; and I have found this, on the whole, better than the card system. For I have aimed to study my authorities in a logical succession. First I go over the period in some general history, if one is to be had; then I read very carefully my original authorities in the order of their estimated importance, making copious excerpts.

Afterwards I skim my second-hand materials. Now I maintain that it is logical and natural to have the extracts before me in the order of my study. When unusually careful and critical treatment has been required, I have drawn off my memoranda from the notebooks to cards, cla.s.sifying them according to subjects. Such a method enables me to digest thoroughly my materials, but in the main I find that a frequent re-perusal of my notes answers fully as well and is an economy of time.

Carlyle, in answer to an inquiry regarding his own procedure, has gone to the heart of the matter. "I go into the business," he said, "with all the intelligence, patience, silence, and other gifts and virtues that I have ... and on the whole try to keep the whole matter simmering in the _living_ mind and memory rather than laid up in paper bundles or otherwise laid up in the inert way. For this certainly turns out to be a truth; only what you at last _have living_ in your own memory and heart is worth putting down to be printed; this alone has much chance to get into the living heart and memory of other men. And here indeed, I believe, is the essence of all the rules I have ever been able to devise for myself. I have tried various schemes of arrangement and artificial helps to remembrance," but the gist of the matter is, "to keep the thing you are elaborating as much as possible actually _in_ your own living mind; in order that this same mind, as much awake as possible, may have a chance to make something of it!"[43]

The objection may be made to my discourse that I have considered our student as possessing the purse of Fortunatus and have lost sight of Herbert Spencer's doctrine that a very important part of education is to fit a man to acquire the means of living. I may reply that there are a number of Harvard students who will not have to work for their bread and whose parents would be glad to have them follow the course that I have recommended. It is not too much to hope, therefore, that among these there are, to use Huxley's words, "glorious sports of nature" who will not be "corrupted by luxury" but will become industrious historians. To others who are not so fortunately situated, I cannot recommend the profession of historian as a means of gaining a livelihood. Bancroft and Parkman, who had a good deal of popularity, spent more money in the collection and copying of doc.u.ments than they ever received as income from their histories. A young friend of mine, at the outset of his career and with his living in part to be earned, went for advice to Carl Schurz, who was very fond of him. "What is your aim?"

asked Mr. Schurz. "I purpose being a historian," was the reply. "Aha!"

laughed Schurz, "you are adopting an aristocratic profession, one which requires a rent-roll." Every aspiring historian has, I suppose, dreamed of that check of 20,000, which Macaulay received as royalty on his history for its sale during the year 1856,[44] but no such dream has since been realized.

Teaching and writing are allied pursuits. And the teacher helps the writer, especially in history, through the necessary elaboration and digestion of materials. Much excellent history is given to the world by college professors. Law and medicine are too exacting professions with too large a literature of their own to leave any leisure for historical investigation. If one has the opportunity to get a good start, or, in the talk of the day, the right sort of a "pull," I can recommend business as a means of gaining a competence which shall enable one to devote one's whole time to a favorite pursuit. Grote was a banker until he reached the age of forty-nine when he retired from the banking house and began the composition of the first volume of his history. Henry C.

Lea was in the active publis.h.i.+ng business until he was fifty-five, and as I have already frequently referred to my own personal experience, I may add that I was immersed in business between the ages of twenty-two and thirty-seven. After three years of general and special preparation I began my writing at forty. The business man has many free evenings and many journeys by rail, as well as a summer vacation, when devotion to a line of study may const.i.tute a valuable recreation. Much may be done in odd hours in the way of preparation for historical work, and a business life is an excellent school for the study of human character.

[3] Conversations of Goethe, Eng. trans., 230.

[4] Trevelyan, I, 86.

[5] Life of Gladstone, II, 181.

[6] III, 51.

[7] Talks with Emerson, 23.

[8] My Vol. II, 142, n. 2.