No More Learning

He
seems to have cared only about the picturesque effect of his book, and
the honour of his country. On the other hand, we do not know, in the
whole range of literature, an instance of a bad thing so well done. The
painting of the narrative is beyond description vivid and graceful. The
abundance of interesting sentiments and splendid imagery in the speeches
is almost miraculous. His mind is a soil which is never over-teemed, a
fountain which never seems to trickle. It pours forth profusely; yet
it gives no sign of exhaustion. It was probably to this exuberance of
thought and language, always fresh, always sweet, always pure, no sooner
yielded than repaired, that the critics applied that expression which
has been so much discussed lactea ubertas.

All the merits and all the defects of Livy take a colouring from the
character of his nation. He was a writer peculiarly Roman; the proud
citizen of a commonwealth which had indeed lost the reality of liberty,
but which still sacredly preserved its forms--in fact, the subject of
an arbitrary prince, but in his own estimation one of the masters of the
world, with a hundred kings below him, and only the gods above him. He,
therefore, looked back on former times with feelings far different from
those which were naturally entertained by his Greek contemporaries, and
which at a later period became general among men of letters throughout
the Roman Empire. He contemplated the past with interest and delight,
not because it furnished a contrast to the present, but because it
had led to the present. He recurred to it, not to lose in proud
recollections the sense of national degradation, but to trace the
progress of national glory. It is true that his veneration for antiquity
produced on him some of the effects which it produced on those who
arrived at it by a very different road. He has something of their
exaggeration, something of their cant, something of their fondness for
anomalies and lusus naturae in morality. Yet even here we perceive
a difference. They talk rapturously of patriotism and liberty in the
abstract. He does not seem to think any country but Rome deserving of
love; nor is it for liberty as liberty, but for liberty as a part of the
Roman institutions, that he is zealous.

Of the concise and elegant accounts of the campaigns of Caesar little
can be said. They are incomparable models for military despatches. But
histories they are not, and do not pretend to be.

The ancient critics placed Sallust in the same rank with Livy; and
unquestionably the small portion of his works which has come down to us
is calculated to give a high opinion of his talents. But his style
is not very pleasant: and his most powerful work, the account of the
Conspiracy of Catiline, has rather the air of a clever party pamphlet
than that of a history. It abounds with strange inconsistencies, which,
unexplained as they are, necessarily excite doubts as to the fairness
of the narrative. It is true, that many circumstances now forgotten may
have been familiar to his contemporaries, and may have rendered passages
clear to them which to us appear dubious and perplexing. But a great
historian should remember that he writes for distant generations, for
men who will perceive the apparent contradictions, and will possess no
means of reconciling them. We can only vindicate the fidelity of Sallust
at the expense of his skill. But in fact all the information which we
have from contemporaries respecting this famous plot is liable to the
same objection, and is read by discerning men with the same incredulity.
It is all on one side. No answer has reached our times. Yet on the
showing of the accusers the accused seem entitled to acquittal.
Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal virgin, and murdered his
own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man
could cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation.
Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was willing to coalesce in a
contest for the first magistracy of the republic; and whom he described,
long after the fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accomplished
hypocrite, by whom he had himself been deceived, and who had acted with
consummate skill the character of a good citizen and a good friend. We
are told that the plot was the most wicked and desperate ever known,
and, almost in the same breath, that the great body of the people, and
many of the nobles, favoured it; that the richest citizens of Rome were
eager for the spoliation of all property, and its highest functionaries
for the destruction of all order; that Crassus, Caesar, the Praetor
Lentulus, one of the consuls of the year, one of the consuls elect,
were proved or suspected to be engaged in a scheme for subverting
institutions to which they owed the highest honours, and introducing
universal anarchy. We are told that a government, which knew all this,
suffered the conspirator, whose rank, talents, and courage rendered
him most dangerous, to quit Rome without molestation. We are told that
bondmen and gladiators were to be armed against the citizens. Yet we
find that Catiline rejected the slaves who crowded to enlist in his
army, lest, as Sallust himself expresses it, "he should seem to identify
their cause with that of the citizens. " Finally, we are told that the
magistrate, who was universally allowed to have saved all classes of
his countrymen from conflagration and massacre, rendered himself so
unpopular by his conduct that a marked insult was offered to him at
the expiration of his office, and a severe punishment inflicted on him
shortly after.

Sallust tells us, what, indeed, the letters and speeches of Cicero
sufficiently prove, that some persons consider the shocking, and
atrocious parts of the plot as mere inventions of the government,
designed to excuse its unconstitutional measures. We must confess
ourselves to be of that opinion. There was, undoubtedly, a strong party
desirous to change the administration. While Pompey held the command of
an army, they could not effect their purpose without preparing means for
repelling force, if necessary, by force. In all this there is nothing
different from the ordinary practice of Roman factions. The other
charges brought against the conspirators are so inconsistent and
improbable, that we give no credit whatever to them. If our readers
think this scepticism unreasonable, let them turn to the contemporary
accounts of the Popish plot. Let them look over the votes of Parliament,
and the speeches of the king; the charges of Scroggs, and the harangues
of the managers employed against Strafford. A person who should form his
judgment from these pieces alone would believe that London was set on
fire by the Papists, and that Sir Edmondbury Godfrey was murdered for
his religion. Yet these stories are now altogether exploded. They have
been abandoned by statesmen to aldermen, by aldermen to clergymen, by
clergymen to old women, and by old women to Sir Harcourt Lees.

Of the Latin historians, Tacitus was certainly the greatest. His
style, indeed, is not only faulty in itself, but is, in some respects,
peculiarly unfit for historical composition. He carries his love of
effect far beyond the limits of moderation. He tells a fine story
finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till
stimulants lose their power. Thucydides, as we have already observed,
relates ordinary transactions with the unpretending clearness and
succinctness of a gazette. His great powers of painting he reserves for
events of which the slightest details are interesting. The simplicity
of the setting gives additional lustre to the brilliants. There are
passages in the narrative of Tacitus superior to the best which can be
quoted from Thucydides. But they are not enchased and relieved with the
same skill. They are far more striking when extracted from the body of
the work to which they belong than when they occur in their place, and
are read in connection with what precedes and follows.

In the delineation of character, Tacitus is unrivalled among historians,
and has very few superiors among dramatists and novelists. By the
delineation of character, we do not mean the practice of drawing up
epigrammatic catalogues of good and bad qualities, and appending them
to the names of eminent men. No writer, indeed, has done this more
skilfully than Tacitus; but this is not his peculiar glory. All the
persons who occupy a large space in his works have an individuality of
character which seems to pervade all their words and actions. We know
them as if we had lived with them. Claudius, Nero, Otho, both the
Agrippinas, are masterpieces. But Tiberius is a still higher miracle of
art. The historian undertook to make us intimately acquainted with a man
singularly dark and inscrutable,--with a man whose real disposition long
remained swathed up in intricate folds of factitious virtues, and over
whose actions the hypocrisy of his youth, and the seclusion of his old
age, threw a singular mystery. He was to exhibit the specious qualities
of the tyrant in a light which might render them transparent, and enable
us at once to perceive the covering and the vices which it concealed. He
was to trace the gradations by which the first magistrate of a republic,
a senator mingling freely in debate, a noble associating with his
brother nobles, was transformed into an Asiatic sultan; he was to
exhibit a character, distinguished by courage, self-command, and
profound policy, yet defiled by all

"th' extravagancy
And crazy ribaldry of fancy. "

He was to mark the gradual effect of advancing age and approaching death
on this strange compound of strength and weakness; to exhibit the old
sovereign of the world sinking into a dotage which, though it rendered
his appetites eccentric, and his temper savage, never impaired the
powers of his stern and penetrating mind--conscious of failing strength,
raging with capricious sensuality, yet to the last the keenest of
observers, the most artful of dissemblers, and the most terrible of
masters. The task was one of extreme difficulty. The execution is almost
perfect.

The talent which is required to write history thus bears a considerable
affinity to the talent of a great dramatist. There is one obvious
distinction. The dramatist creates; the historian only disposes.
The difference is not in the mode of execution, but in the mode
of conception. Shakspeare is guided by a model which exists in his
imagination; Tacitus, by a model furnished from without. Hamlet is to
Tiberius what the Laocoon is to the Newton of Roubilliac.

In this part of his art Tacitus certainly had neither equal nor second
among the ancient historians. Herodotus, though he wrote in a dramatic
form, had little of dramatic genius. The frequent dialogues which he
introduces give vivacity and movement to the narrative, but are not
strikingly characteristic. Xenophon is fond of telling his readers, at
considerable length, what he thought of the persons whose adventures he
relates. But he does not show them the men, and enable them to judge for
themselves. The heroes of Livy are the most insipid of all beings, real
or imaginary, the heroes of Plutarch always excepted. Indeed, the
manner of Plutarch in this respect reminds us of the cookery of those
continental inns, the horror of English travellers, in which a certain
nondescript broth is kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured,
without distinction, over every dish as it comes up to table.
Thucydides, though at a wide interval, comes next to Tacitus.
His Pericles, his Nicias, his Cleon, his Brasidas, are happily
discriminated. The lines are few, the colouring faint: but the general
air and expression is caught.

We begin, like the priest in Don Quixote's library, to be tired with
taking down books one after another for separate judgment, and feel
inclined to pass sentence on them in masses. We shall therefore,
instead of pointing out the defects and merits of the different modern
historians, state generally in what particulars they have surpassed
their predecessors, and in what we conceive them to have failed.

They have certainly been, in one sense, far more strict in their
adherence to truth than most of the Greek and Roman writers. They do
not think themselves entitled to render their narrative interesting by
introducing descriptions, conversations, and harangues which have no
existence but in their own imagination. This improvement was gradually
introduced. History commenced among the modern nations of Europe, as it
had commenced among the Greeks, in romance. Froissart was our Herodotus.
Italy was to Europe what Athens was to Greece. In Italy, therefore,
a more accurate and manly mode of narration was early introduced.
Machiavelli and Guicciardini, in imitation of Livy and Thucydides,
composed speeches for their historical personages. But, as the classical
enthusiasm which distinguished the age of Lorenzo and Leo gradually
subsided, this absurd practice was abandoned. In France, we fear, it
still, in some degree, keeps its ground. In our own country, a writer
who should venture on it would be laughed to scorn. Whether the
historians of the last two centuries tell more truth than those of
antiquity, may perhaps be doubted. But it is quite certain that they
tell fewer falsehoods.

In the philosophy of history, the moderns have very far surpassed the
ancients. It is not, indeed, strange that the Greeks and Romans should
not have carried the science of government, or any other experimental
science, so far as it has been carried in our time; for the experimental
sciences are generally in a state of progression. They were better
understood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in
the eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this constant
improvement, this natural growth of knowledge, will not altogether
account for the immense superiority of the modern writers. The
difference is a difference not in degree, but of kind. It is not merely
that new principles have been discovered, but that new faculties seem to
be exerted. It is not that at one time the human intellect should have
made but small progress, and at another time have advanced far: but
that at one time it should have been stationary, and at another time
constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces of style,
in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the
ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as justly as ourselves
on subjects which required pure demonstration. But in the moral sciences
they made scarcely any advance. During the long period which elapsed
between the fifth century before the Christian era and the fifth century
after it little perceptible progress was made. All the metaphysical
discoveries of all the philosophers, from the time of Socrates to the
northern invasion, are not to be compared in importance with those which
have been made in England every fifty years since the time of Elizabeth.
There is not the least reason to believe that the principles of
government, legislation, and political economy, were better understood
in the time of Augustus Caesar than in the time of Pericles. In our
own country, the sound doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have
been, within the lifetime of a single generation, dimly hinted, boldly
propounded, defended, systematised, adopted by all reflecting men of all
parties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorporated into laws and
treaties.

To what is this change to be attributed? Partly, no doubt, to the
discovery of printing, a discovery which has not only diffused knowledge
widely, but, as we have already observed, has also introduced into
reasoning a precision unknown in those ancient communities, in which
information, was, for the most part, conveyed orally. There was, we
suspect, another cause, less obvious, but still more powerful.

The spirit of the two most famous nations of antiquity was remarkably
exclusive. In the time of Homer the Greeks had not begun to consider
themselves as a distinct race. They still looked with something of
childish wonder and awe on the riches and wisdom of Sidon and Egypt.
From what causes, and by what gradations, their feelings underwent a
change, it is not easy to determine. Their history, from the Trojan to
the Persian war, is covered with an obscurity broken only by dim and
scattered gleams of truth. But it is certain that a great alteration
took place. They regarded themselves as a separate people. They had
common religious rites, and common principles of public law, in which
foreigners had no part. In all their political systems, monarchical,
aristocratical, and democratical, there was a strong family likeness.
After the retreat of Xerxes and the fall of Mardonius, national pride
rendered the separation between the Greeks and the barbarians complete.
The conquerors considered themselves men of a superior breed, men who,
in their intercourse with neighbouring nations, were to teach, and
not to learn. They looked for nothing out of themselves. They borrowed
nothing. They translated nothing. We cannot call to mind a single
expression of any Greek writer earlier than the age of Augustus,
indicating an opinion that anything worth reading could be written in
any language except his own. The feelings which sprung from national
glory were not altogether extinguished by national degradation. They
were fondly cherished through ages of slavery and shame. The literature
of Rome herself was regarded with contempt by those who had fled before
her arms, and who bowed beneath her fasces. Voltaire says, in one of his
six thousand pamphlets, that he was the first person who told the French
that England had produced eminent men besides the Duke of Marlborough.
Down to a very late period, the Greeks seem to have stood in need of
similar information with respect to their masters. With Paulus Aemilius,
Sylla, and Caesar, they were well acquainted. But the notions which
they entertained respecting Cicero and Virgil were, probably, not unlike
those which Boileau may have formed about Shakspeare. Dionysius lived
in the most splendid age of Latin poetry and eloquence. He was a
critic, and, after the manner of his age, an able critic. He studied
the language of Rome, associated with its learned men, and compiled its
history. Yet he seems to have thought its literature valuable only for
the purpose of illustrating its antiquities. His reading appears to have
been confined to its public records, and to a few old annalists. Once,
and but once, if we remember rightly, he quotes Ennius, to solve a
question of etymology. He has written much on the art of oratory: yet he
has not mentioned the name of Cicero.

The Romans submitted to the pretensions of a race which they despised.
Their epic poet, while he claimed for them pre-eminence in the arts of
government and war, acknowledged their inferiority in taste, eloquence,
and science. Men of letters affected to understand the Greek language
better than their own. Pomponius preferred the honour of becoming an
Athenian, by intellectual naturalisation, to all the distinctions which
were to be acquired in the political contests of Rome. His great
friend composed Greek poems and memoirs. It is well-known that Petrarch
considered that beautiful language in which his sonnets are written,
as a barbarous jargon, and intrusted his fame to those wretched Latin
hexameters which, during the last four centuries, have scarcely found
four readers. Many eminent Romans appear to have felt the same contempt
for their native tongue as compared with the Greek. The prejudice
continued to a very late period. Julian was as partial to the Greek
language as Frederic the Great to the French: and it seems that he could
not express himself with elegance in the dialect of the state which he
ruled.

Even those Latin writers who did not carry this affectation so far
looked on Greece as the only fount of knowledge. From Greece they
derived the measures of their poetry, and, indeed, all of poetry that
can be imported. From Greece they borrowed the principles and the
vocabulary of their philosophy. To the literature of other nations they
do not seem to have paid the slightest attention. The sacred books
of the Hebrews, for example, books which, considered merely as human
compositions, are invaluable to the critic, the antiquarian, and
the philosopher, seem to have been utterly unnoticed by them. The
peculiarities of Judaism, and the rapid growth of Christianity,
attracted their notice. They made war against the Jews. They made
laws against the Christians. But they never opened the books of Moses.
Juvenal quotes the Pentateuch with censure. The author of the treatise
on "the Sublime" quotes it with praise: but both of them quote it
erroneously. When we consider what sublime poetry, what curious history,
what striking and peculiar views of the Divine nature and of the
social duties of men, are to be found in the Jewish scriptures, when
we consider that two sects on which the attention of the government was
constantly fixed appealed to those scriptures as the rule of their faith
and practice, this indifference is astonishing. The fact seems to be,
that the Greeks admired only themselves, and that the Romans admired
only themselves and the Greeks. Literary men turned away with disgust
from modes of thought and expression so widely different from all
that they had been accustomed to admire. The effect was narrowness and
sameness of thought. Their minds, if we may so express ourselves, bred
in and in, and were accordingly cursed with barrenness and degeneracy.
No extraneous beauty or vigour was engrafted on the decaying stock. By
an exclusive attention to one class of phenomena, by an exclusive
taste for one species of excellence, the human intellect was stunted.
Occasional coincidences were turned into general rules. Prejudices were
confounded with instincts. On man, as he was found in a particular state
of society--on government, as it had existed in a particular corner
of the world, many just observations were made; but of man as man,
or government as government, little was known. Philosophy remained
stationary. Slight changes, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for
the better, were made in the superstructure. But nobody thought of
examining the foundations.

The vast despotism of the Caesars, gradually effacing all national
peculiarities, and assimilating the remotest provinces of the empire to
each other, augmented the evil. At the close of the third century after
Christ, the prospects of mankind were fearfully dreary. A system of
etiquette, as pompously frivolous as that of the Escurial, had been
established. A sovereign almost invisible; a crowd of dignitaries
minutely distinguished by badges and titles; rhetoricians who said
nothing but what had been said ten thousand times; schools in which
nothing was taught but what had been known for ages: such was the
machinery provided for the government and instruction of the most
enlightened part of the human race. That great community was then in
danger of experiencing a calamity far more terrible than any of
the quick, inflammatory, destroying maladies, to which nations are
liable,--a tottering, drivelling, paralytic longevity, the immortality
of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese civilisation. It would be easy to indicate
many points of resemblance between the subjects of Diocletian and the
people of that Celestial Empire, where, during many centuries, nothing
has been learned or unlearned; where government, where education, where
the whole system of life, is a ceremony; where knowledge forgets to
increase and multiply, and, like the talent buried in the earth, or
the pound wrapped up in the napkin, experiences neither waste no
augmentation.

The torpor was broken by two great revolutions, the one moral, the other
political, the one from within, the other from without. The victory of
Christianity over Paganism, considered with relation to this subject
only, was of great importance. It overthrew the old system of morals;
and with it much of the old system of metaphysics. It furnished the
orator with new topics of declamation, and the logician with new points
of controversy. Above all, it introduced a new principle, of which the
operation was constantly felt in every part of society. It stirred the
stagnant mass from the inmost depths. It excited all the passions of a
stormy democracy in the quiet and listless population of an overgrown
empire. The fear of heresy did what the sense of oppression could not
do; it changed men, accustomed to be turned over like sheep from tyrant
to tyrant, into devoted partisans and obstinate rebels. The tones of an
eloquence which had been silent for ages resounded from the pulpit of
Gregory. A spirit which had been extinguished on the plains of Philippi
revived in Athanasius and Ambrose.
Yet even this remedy was not sufficiently violent for the disease. It
did not prevent the empire of Constantinople from relapsing, after a
short paroxysm of excitement, into a state of stupefaction, to which
history furnishes scarcely any parallel. We there find that a polished
society, a society in which a most intricate and elaborate system of
jurisprudence was established, in which the arts of luxury were well
understood, in which the works of the great ancient writers were
preserved and studied, existed for nearly a thousand years without
making one great discovery in science, or producing one book which
is read by any but curious inquirers. There were tumults, too, and
controversies, and wars in abundance: and these things, bad as they are
in themselves, have generally been favourable to the progress of the
intellect. But here they tormented without stimulating. The waters were
troubled; but no healing influence descended. The agitations resembled
the grinnings and writhings of a galvanised corpse, not the struggles of
an athletic man.

From this miserable state the Western Empire was saved by the fiercest
and most destroying visitation with which God has ever chastened
his creatures--the invasion of the Northern nations. Such a cure was
required for such a distemper. The fire of London, it has been observed
was a blessing. It burned down the city; but it burned out the plague.
The same may be said of the tremendous devastation of the Roman
dominions. It annihilated the noisome recesses in which lurked the seeds
of great moral maladies; it cleared an atmosphere fatal to the health
and vigour of the human mind. It cost Europe a thousand years of
barbarism to escape the fate of China.

At length the terrible purification was accomplished; and the second
civilisation of mankind commenced, under circumstances which afforded a
strong security that it would never retrograde and never pause. Europe
was now a great federal community. Her numerous states were united
by the easy ties of international law and a common religion. Their
institutions, their languages, their manners, their tastes in
literature, their modes of education, were widely different. Their
connection was close enough to allow of mutual observation and
improvement, yet not so close as to destroy the idioms of national
opinion and feeling.

The balance of moral and intellectual influence thus established
between the nations of Europe is far more important than the balance
of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the latter
is valuable principally because it tends to maintain the former. The
civilised world has thus been preserved from a uniformity of character
fatal to all improvement. Every part of it has been illuminated with
light reflected from every other. Competition has produced activity
where monopoly would have produced sluggishness. The number of
experiments in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of
witnessing has been increased beyond all calculation. Society and human
nature, instead of being seen in a single point of view, are presented
to him under ten thousand different aspects. By observing the manners of
surrounding nations, by studying their literature, by comparing it with
that of his own country and of the ancient republics, he is enabled to
correct those errors into which the most acute men must fall when they
reason from a single species to a genus. He learns to distinguish
what is local from what is universal: what is transitory from what is
eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules; to trace the
operation of disturbing causes; to separate those general principles
which are always true and everywhere applicable from the accidental
circumstances with which, in every community, they are blended, and
with which, in an isolated community, they are confounded by the most
philosophical mind.

Hence it is that, in generalisation, the writers of modern times have
far surpassed those of antiquity. The historians of our own country are
unequalled in depth and precision of reason; and, even in the works of
our mere compilers, we often meet with speculations beyond the reach of
Thucydides or Tacitus.

But it must, at the same time, be admitted that they have characteristic
faults, so closely connected with their characteristic merits, and of
such magnitude, that it may well be doubted whether, on the whole,
this department of literature has gained or lost during the last
two-and-twenty centuries.

The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not
by their imagination, but by their reason. They far excel their
predecessors in the art of deducing general principles from facts. But
unhappily they have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit
general principles. They arrive at a theory from looking at some of the
phenomena; and the remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit
the theory. For this purpose it is not necessary that they should assert
what is absolutely false; for all questions in morals and politics
are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which does not
involve a contradiction in terms may by possibility be true; and, if all
the circumstances which raise a probability in its favour, be stated and
enforced, and those which lead to an opposite conclusion be omitted or
lightly passed over, it may appear to be demonstrated. In every human
character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little
exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a
watchful and searching scepticism with respect to the evidence on one
side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition
on the other, may easily make a saint of Laud, or a tyrant of Henry the
Fourth.

This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of
modern historians. Herodotus tells his story like a slovenly witness,
who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the
established rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations
of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what he has seen and heard,
and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass.
Hume is an accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more
than he can prove, he gives prominence to all the circumstances which
support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to
it; his own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which
seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions
into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract
of their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side
is scrutinised with the utmost severity; every suspicious circumstance
is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is
extenuated, or passed by without notice; concessions even are sometimes
made: but this insidious candour only increases the effect of the vast
mass of sophistry.

We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his
class; but the charge which we have brought against him is one to which
all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious.
Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure. Of all the numerous
culprits, however, none is more deeply guilty than Mr Mitford. We
willingly acknowledge the obligations which are due to his talents
and industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the habit of
writing as if the world had learned nothing new during the last sixteen
hundred years. Instead of illustrating the events which they narrated
by the philosophy of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by
itself alone. They seemed to think that notions, long driven from every
other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this
last fastness. They considered all the ancient historians as equally
authentic. They scarcely made any distinction between him who related
events at which he had himself been present and him who five hundred
years after composed a philosophic romance for a society which had in
the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek, and all
true! The centuries which separated Plutarch from Thucydides seemed
as nothing to men who lived in an age so remote. The distance of
time produced an error similar to that which is sometimes produced by
distance of place. There are many good ladies who think that all the
people in India live together, and who charge a friend setting out for
Calcutta with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in the
same manner, all the classics were contemporaries.

Mr Mitford certainly introduced great improvements; he showed us that
men who wrote in Greek and Latin sometimes told lies; he showed us that
ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not only
allusions to schoolboys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that
love of theatrical effect and high-flown sentiment which had poisoned
almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly free.
But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungenerous, led him
substantially to violate truth in every page. Statements unfavourable
to democracy are made with unhesitating confidence, and with the utmost
bitterness of language. Every charge brought against a monarch or an
aristocracy is sifted with the utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some
palliating supposition is suggested; or we are at least reminded that
some circumstances now unknown MAY have justified what at present
appears unjustifiable. Two events are reported by the same author in
the same sentence; their truth rests on the same testimony; but the one
supports the darling hypothesis, and the other seems inconsistent with
it. The one is taken and the other is left.

The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with theory is
a vice not so unfavourable as at first sight it may appear to the
interests of political science. We have compared the writers who indulge
in it to advocates; and we may add, that their conflicting fallacies,
like those of advocates, correct each other. It has always been held,
in the most enlightened nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial
question most fairly when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly
as possible, on the two opposite sides of it; and we are inclined
to think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior
eloquence and dexterity will make the worse appear the better reason;
but it is at least certain that the judge will be compelled to
contemplate the case under two different aspects. It is certain that no
important consideration will altogether escape notice.

This is at present the state of history. The poet laureate appears for
the Church of England, Lingard for the Church of Rome. Brodie has moved
to set aside the verdicts obtained by Hume; and the cause in which
Mitford succeeded is, we understand, about to be reheard. In the midst
of these disputes, however, history proper, if we may use the term, is
disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of Thucydides is
nowhere to be found.

While our historians are practising all the arts of controversy, they
miserably neglect the art of narration, the art of interesting the
affections and presenting pictures to the imagination. That a writer may
produce these effects without violating truth is sufficiently proved
by many excellent biographical works. The immense popularity which
well-written books of this kind have acquired deserves the serious
consideration of historians. Voltaire's Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel's
Memoirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's account of Nelson, are
perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever
any tolerable book of the same description makes its appearance, the
circulating libraries are mobbed; the book societies are in commotion;
the new novel lies uncut; the magazines and newspapers fill their
columns with extracts. In the meantime histories of great empires,
written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of
ostentatious libraries.

The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical contempt for
the writers of memoirs. They think it beneath the dignity of men who
describe the revolutions of nations to dwell on the details which
constitute the charm of biography. They have imposed on themselves a
code of conventional decencies as absurd as that which has been the
bane of the French drama. The most characteristic and interesting
circumstances are omitted or softened down, because, as we are told,
they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The majesty of history
seems to resemble the majesty of the poor King of Spain, who died a
martyr to ceremony because the proper dignitaries were not at hand to
render him assistance.

That history would be more amusing if this etiquette were relaxed will,
we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be less dignified or less
useful? What do we mean when we say that one past event is important and
another insignificant? No past event has any intrinsic importance.
The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just
calculations with respect to the future. A history which does not
serve this purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and
commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike tickets collected by
Sir Matthew Mite.

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hundreds of folio
pages with copies of state papers, in which the same assertions
and contradictions are repeated till the reader is overpowered with
weariness, had condescended to be the Boswell of the Long Parliament.
Let us suppose that he had exhibited to us the wise and lofty
self-government of Hampden, leading while he seemed to follow, and
propounding unanswerable arguments in the strongest forms with the
modest air of an inquirer anxious for information; the delusions which
misled the noble spirit of Vane; the coarse fanaticism which concealed
the yet loftier genius of Cromwell, destined to control a motionless
army and a factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, to arrest
the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold the balance firm between the
rival monarchies of France and Spain. Let us suppose that he had made
his Cavaliers and Roundheads talk in their own style; that he had
reported some of the ribaldry of Rupert's pages, and some of the cant of
Harrison and Fleetwood. Would not his work in that case have been more
interesting? Would it not have been more accurate?

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the
whole be false. The circumstances which have most influence on the
happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition
of communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance,
from ferocity to humanity--these are, for the most part, noiseless
revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are
pleased to call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or
enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no treaties, and recorded
in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church,
behind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper
current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge
of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats
and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst
victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise
ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember
how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman
can bear to the good or evil of a great social system.

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant,
and laying down theories as to the whole internal structure of the vast
animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the
geologists; but is very applicable to those historians who write as
if the body politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of
affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organisation which
lies deep below.

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close of the
Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of prosperity: at the close of
the American war she is in a miserable and degraded condition; as if
the people were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as
well educated at the latter period as at the former. We have read books
called Histories of England, under the reign of George the Second, in
which the rise of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence
this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it should still
exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which
will seem to imply that all government was at an end; that the social
contract was annulled; and that the hand of every man was against his
neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order
out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions
as gross prevail at this moment respecting many important parts of our
annals.

The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many respects, to
that produced by foreign travel. The student, like the tourist, is
transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears
new modes of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide
diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far,
and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from
their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of
many battles and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be
no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign
countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island
amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has hunted with the
master of the stag-hounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight
of the garter installed, has cantered along Regent Street, has visited
Saint Paul's, and noted down its dimensions; and has then departed,
thinking that he has seen England. He has, in fact, seen a few public
buildings, public men, and public ceremonies. But of the vast and
complex system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of
the practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who
would understand these things rightly must not confine his observations
to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they appear in
their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle
in the crowds of the exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain
admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear
with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the
retreats of misery. He who wishes to understand the condition of mankind
in former ages must proceed on the same principle. If he attends only to
public transactions, to wars, congresses, and debates, his studies will
be as unprofitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene
sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from having gone in
state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with
a few great officers.

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of
an age is exhibited in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes no
expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient
testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he
gives to truth those attractions which have been usurped by fiction.
In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some transactions are
prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is
increased or diminished, not according to the dignity of the persons
concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate
the condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court,
the camp, and the senate. But he shows us also the nation. He considers
no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too
insignificant for his notice which is not too insignificant to
illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to
mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described,
but will be made intimately known to us. The changes of manners will be
indicated, not merely by a few general phrases or a few extracts from
statistical documents, but by appropriate images presented in every
line.

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England,
he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations,
the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would
intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. At
Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by
an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by
his master. It is so far superior to every other in the church, that,
according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himself from
mortification. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those
fragments of truth which historians have scornfully thrown behind them
in a manner which may well excite their envy. He has constructed out of
their gleanings works which, even considered as histories, are scarcely
less valuable than theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim
those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The history of the
government, and the history of the people, would be exhibited in
that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable
conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the
wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology
in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other
half in the Fortunes of Nigel.

The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with colouring
from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the
company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as
those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from
the highest to the lowest,--from the royal cloth of state to the den of
the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where
the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders,--the
stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory and the
high-mass in its chapel,--the manor-house, with its hunting and
hawking,--the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and
the cloth of gold,--would give truth and life to the representation.
We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of
the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled
under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters would
not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern,
in innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite
for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth
century. In the Reformation we should see, not merely a schism which
changed the ecclesiastical constitution of England and the mutual
relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in every
family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the
father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the
mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have
the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his
savage and imperious old age. We should perceive the gradual progress
of selfish and tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or
ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open
and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed,
struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of
disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her
strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted,
and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself
the most contradictory qualities of both her parents,--the coquetry, the
caprice, the petty malice of Anne,--the haughty and resolute spirit of
Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might produce
a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the
novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single trait not authenticated
by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated,
wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the
keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them,
gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels
of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns
extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into
wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more
commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which
produced the great struggle against the House of Stuart slowly growing
up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested themselves
in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those
skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, as
Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are
merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the
loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness
of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced
the royal cause,--the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the
city, the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the
precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected
accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,--the
valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these
ungraceful disguises,--the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the
dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosophic republican, all these
would enter into the representation, and render it at once more exact
and more striking.

The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid
and practical character. It would be received by the imagination as well
as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded
into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in
no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the
greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like
supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is,
that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral
changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and
which originally proceed far before their progress is indicated by any
public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations
is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events.
A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical
treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early
stage of a disease and mention only what occurs when the patient is
beyond the reach of remedies.

A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed
be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with
each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner
see another Shakspeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which
any single faculty can be brought would be less surprising than such a
happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contemplation of
imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind.
It cannot indeed produce perfection; but it produces improvement
and nourishes that generous and liberal fastidiousness which is not
inconsistent with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while
it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not render us unjust to the
artist.

*****




MILL ON GOVERNMENT. (March 1829. )

"Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, the Liberty of the
Press, Prisons, and Prison Discipline, Colonies, the Law of
Nations, and Education. " By James Mill, Esq. , author of the
History of British India. Reprinted by permission from the
Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Not for sale. )
London, 1828.

Of those philosophers who call themselves Utilitarians, and whom others
generally call Benthamites, Mr Mill is, with the exception of the
illustrious founder of the sect, by far the most distinguished. The
little work now before us contains a summary of the opinions held by
this gentleman and his brethren on several subjects most important to
society. All the seven essays of which it consists abound in curious
matter. But at present we intend to confine our remarks to the Treatise
on Government, which stands first in the volume. On some future
occasion, we may perhaps attempt to do justice to the rest.