At
the time of his death in 1781, Watson was engaged on a History of
Philip III, which was completed by William Thomson, a prolific
Scottish writer.
the time of his death in 1781, Watson was engaged on a History of
Philip III, which was completed by William Thomson, a prolific
Scottish writer.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v10
The first volume of his Conquest of Syria,
Persia, and Egypt by the Saracens, generally known as The
History of the Saracens, appeared in 1708, the second in 1718,
with an introduction dated from Cambridge gaol, where he was
then imprisoned for debt : he had in past years received help
from the earl of Oxford (Harley); but that had ceased, and the
poor scholar had a large family. Gibbon, who admired and used
his work, speaks of his fate as 'unworthy of the man and of his
## p. 281 (#307) ############################################
Scottish Historians
281
country? ' His History extends from the death of Mahomet, 632,
to that of the fifth Ommiad caliph, 705 ; it was cut short by the
author's death in 1720, after a life of incessant and ill-requited
toil. The Life of Mohammed prefixed to the third edition of his
History, which was issued for the benefit of his destitute daughter
in 1757, is by Roger Long, master of Pembroke hall, Cambridge.
Ockley based his work on an Arabic manuscript in the Bodleian
library which later scholars have pronounced less trustworthy
than he imagined it to be. His English is pure and simple, his
narrative extraordinarily vivid and dramatic, and told in words
exactly suited to his subject—whether he is describing how Caulah
and her companions kept their Damascene captors at bay until
her brother Derar and his horsemen came to deliver them, or
telling the tragic story of the death of Hosein. The book was
translated into French in 1748, and was long held to be authori-
tative. As a history, its defects are patent, its account of the
conquest of Persia, for example, is so slight that even the decisive
battle of Cadesia is not mentioned ; nor is any attempt made to
examine the causes of the rapid successes of the Saracen arms : it
reads, indeed, more like a collection of sagas than a history.
Such defects, however, do not impair its peculiar literary
merit.
A change in the character of British historical writing began in
the middle of the century; it was raised by Hume to a foremost
place in our prose composition; its right to that place was main-
tained by Robertson, and, finally, in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, it rose to the highest degree of perfection
that it has ever attained in this, or, perhaps, in any, country. That
its two earliest reformers should both have been Scotsmen is one
of many illustrations of the activity of the Scots at that time in all
the higher spheres of thought and of literary production. When
the failure of the Jacobite cause put an end to the struggle for
Scottish national life as an independent political force, it would
almost seem as though the educated class in Scotland consciously
set themselves to endow their country with an independent life in
the domains of philosophy, literature, science and art? ; for their
efforts were not made in isolation ; they were made by men who
constantly communicated with each other or consorted together,
especially in Edinburgh, where, from 1754, they formed themselves
into the 'Select Society,' of which both Hume and Robertson were
1 Decline and Fall, vol. vi, p. 4, note, ed. Bury, J. B.
· Hume Brown, History of Scotland, vol. III, p. 371.
## p. 282 (#308) ############################################
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members, and which met every week to discuss philosophical
questions. While this intellectual life was distinctly national, its
output was not marred by its local character. Political affairs
had for centuries driven or led Scots abroad: the habit of
resorting to other countries remained, and Scottish thinkers and
writers kept in touch with the intellectual life of other peoples,
and especially of the French, the ancient allies of Scotland. In
their mode of expression, too, the desire to be widely read and
the necessity of gaining a larger and richer market for their books
than they could find at home made them careful to avoid local
peculiarities, and write in such a way as would be acceptable to
English readers. Though this movement attained its full develop-
ment during the latter half of the century, it had been in progress
for several years.
It was during those years that David Hume first became known
as a philosopher and essayist ; his earliest book, A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739—40), written when he was not more than
twenty-eight, met with a chilling reception which gave little
promise of his future renown. His metaphysical opinions led him
to put a special value on the study of history. As his scepticism
limited mental capability to sensible experience, so he regarded
past events as affording experience. Holding mankind to be much
the same under all conditions, he considered that history, by
exhibiting the behaviour of men in the past, enables us to discover
the principles of human action and their results, and to order our
conduct accordingly: its records are so many collections of
experiments by which the moral philosopher fixes the principles
of his science, and man obtains a guide for his own conduct.
Hume would therefore be drawn to study history, and, believing
that a knowledge of it would be of public utility by affording men
experience, he would be inclined to record the experiments from
which they could derive it. A three years' residence in France from
1734 to 1737, most of it spent 'very agreeably' at La Flèche, on
the Loir, then famous for its great Jesuits' college, probably
strengthened this inclination and influenced his style. Historical
study was being eagerly pursued in France. Among the religious
orders, the Benedictines were preparing Le Recueil des Historiens
des Gaules et de la France, issuing their Gallia Christiana, and
beginning their histories of the French provinces, while the
Dominicans had produced the Scriptores of their order, and the
Jesuits were engaged on Acta Sanctorum. On the lay side,
the Académie des Inscriptions was carrying on the publication of
6
>
## p. 283 (#309) ############################################
Hume
283
the royal ordinances, and gathering a store of historical erudition?
Count de Boulainvilliers had already treated French history in a
philosophic spirit, and Voltaire, in his exquisite little Histoire de
Charles XII, had shown that historical writing might be endowed
with literary excellence. A strange contrast Hume must have
seen in this activity and accomplishment to the condition of
historical work in Great Britain. Elegance in the structure of
sentences and an almost excessive purity of language, which
marked contemporary French literature, were specially inculcated
by the Jesuits, the masters of French education. Hume's History
shows enough French influence to justify us in considering his long
visit to La Flèche as an important factor in its character.
Some insight into the conduct of the great affairs of nations he
gained as secretary to general St Clair during his ineffectual
expedition against Lorient in 1746, when Hume acted as judge
advocate, and while attached to St Clair's embassy to Vienna and
Turin in 1748. By 1747, he had ‘historical projects. His appoint-
ment as librarian to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, in
1752, gave him command of a large library well stocked with
historical works, and he forthwith set about his History of
England. Intending to trace the steps by which, as he believed,
the nation had attained its existing system of government, he had
at first thought of beginning his work with the accession of
Henry VII; for he imagined that the first signs of revolt against
the arbitrary power of the crown were to be discerned during the
Tudor period, and of carrying it down to the accession of George I.
Finally, however, he began with the accession of James I, alleging,
as his reason, that the change which took place in public affairs
under the Tudor dynasty was very insensible, and that it was
under James that the House of Commons first began to rear its
head, and then the quarrel betwixt privilege and prerogative
commenced? ' The first volume of his History of Great Britain,
containing the reigns of James I and Charles I, appeared in 1754.
He was sanguine in his expectations of the success of the work;
but, though for a few weeks it sold well in Edinburgh, it met with
almost universal disapprobation and seemed likely to sink into
premature oblivion. Its unfavourable reception was mainly due,
as we shall see later, to political reasons. Hume was bitterly
disappointed, and even thought of retiring to France and living
there under an assumed name. His second volume, which ended
i Carré, H. , Histoire de France (Lavisse), vol. VIII, ii, pp. 182—3.
Burton, J. H. , Life of Hume, vol. 1, p. 375.
## p. 284 (#310) ############################################
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with the revolution of 1688, and appeared in 1756, was less
irritating to whig sensibilities : it sold well and helped the sale of
the first. Then he worked backwards, and published two volumes
on the Tudor reigns in 1759, ending, in 1761, with two on the history
from the time of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry VIL
He did not carry out his original idea of bringing his work
down to 1714. By that time, the sale of his History had become
large, and had made him, he said, 'not merely independent but
opulent'; and it kept its place in popular estimation as the best
comprehensive work on English history for at least sixty years.
The first two published volumes were translated into French in
1760; and, in Paris, where Hume resided from 1763 to 1766, during
part of the time as secretary of legation, he received, both as
historian and as philosopher, an amount of adulation which excited
the spleen of Horace Walpole? .
Hume gave so little time to preparation for his task that it
is evident that he had no idea of writing a scientific history.
With all due allowance for the infinitely greater facilities which
now exist for arriving at the truth, it cannot be contended that
he took full advantage of such authorities as were then ac-
cessible : he seems to have been content with those under his
hand in the advocates' library; he was not critical as to their
comparative values ; and he was careless in his use of them.
His History, consequently, contains many misstatements which
he might have avoided—some of small importance, others of a
serious kind, as they affect his conclusions. Of these, a typical
instance, noticed by Hallam, is, that he misstates the complaint
of the Commons in 1396 that sheriffs were continued in office
beyond a ye
a year, as a petition that they might be so continued, and
uses this mistake in defence of the misgovernment of Richard II.
His later published volumes, on the history before the Tudor
dynasty, become more and more superficial as he advances further
into times which were obscure to him, in which he took no interest,
regarding them as ages of barbarism, and on which he would
scarcely have written save for the sake of completeness. What he
set out to do was to write a history which would be generally
attractive-for he appealed ' ad populum as well as ad clerum'-
and would be distinguished from other histories alike by its style
and by its freedom from political bias, a matter on which he was
insistent in his correspondence. He approached his work, then, in
1 Letters, vol. vi, p. 301, ed. Toynbee. ? Middle Ages, vol. II, p. 75, ed. 1860.
3 Hume to Clephane, Burton, vol. 1, p. 397.
## p. 285 (#311) ############################################
Hume's Style
285
BO
a
a spirit of philosophic impartiality, or, at least, believed that he did
a belief commonly dangerous to a historian—and, throughout
its course, adorned it with judgments and reflections admirable in
themselves though not always appropriate to facts as they really
were. Here, his philosophical treatment ends: he shows no appre-
ciation of the forces which underlay great political or religious
movements. As a sceptic, he did not recognise the motives which
led men to work for a common end, or the influences which guided
them. Such movements were, to him, mere occurrences, or the
results of personal temperament, of the ambition, obstinacy, or
fanaticism of individuals. The advance of historical study is
indebted to him ; for his praiseworthy attempts at various
divisions of his narrative to expound social and economic conditions
were an innovation on the earlier conception of a historian's duty
as limited to a record of political events.
Hume's History occupies a high place among the few master-
pieces of historical composition. His expression is lucid, conveying
his meaning in direct and competent terms. It is eminently
dignified, and is instinct with the calm atmosphere of a philosophic
mind which surveys and criticises men and affairs as from an emi-
nence. Its general tone is ironical, the tone of a man conscious of
intellectual superiority to those whose faults and follies he relates.
His sentences are highly polished; they are well balanced and
their cadence is musical. They are never jerky, and they flow on in
a seemingly inevitable sequence. Their polish does not suggest
elaboration; their beauties, so easy is Hume's style, appear careless
and natural. In fact, however, he made many corrections in his
manuscript ; he was anxious to avoid Scotticisms and, in a careful
revision of the first edition of his earlier volumes, removed all he
detected. Johnson, with his usual prejudice against Scotsmen,
declared, he does not write English, the structure of his sentences
is French. Though this was a conversational exaggeration, it was
more deliberately echoed by Lord Mansfield, and it is so far true
that Hume's easy style indicates French influence, and, as Horace
Walpole observed, the influence of Voltaire. The same may be
said of the style of other contemporary Scottish writers, of
Robertson, Adam Smith and Ferguson. While he never falls
below dignity, he never rises to eloquence. The prose of his age
was generally colourless, and his abhorrence of enthusiasm of every
kind rendered this greyness of tone especially appropriate as a
vehicle of his thoughts. Yet, though elegance rather than vigour
is to be looked for in his writing, its irony gives it a force which, at
## p. 286 (#312) ############################################
286
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а
purpose; there
the least, is as powerful as any which could be obtained by a more
robust style. His excellences are not without their defects.
Charmed, at first, by the polish of his sentences, the reader may,
perhaps, soon find them cold, hard and monotonous ; and since
historical narrative will not excite sustained interest unless it
appeals to the imagination and emotions as well as to the judgment,
Hume's attitude of philosophic observer and dispassionate critic
may become wearisome to him and, as he discovers that the
philosopher is not free from prejudice, even irritating. In the
composition of his History, Hume shows in a remarkable degree a
skill which may be described as dramatic : when working up to
some critical event, he selects and arranges his facts, so that each
leads us a step further towards the climax that he has in view; he
tells us nothing that is extraneous to his immediate purpose;
is no anticipation and no divagation in his narrative.
In spite of his belief in his own impartiality, Hume was justly
accused of tory prejudice, and this caused the ill-success of his
first published volume. He did not, of course, regard the royal
authority as founded on divine appointment any more than on
contract. As a utilitarian, he held that the end of government
was the promotion of the public good, and that monarchy was
based on the necessity of escape from lawless violence. While he
admitted that resistance to sovereignty might be justifiable, he
considered this doctrine so dangerous to society, as opening the
door to popular excesses, that it should be concealed from the
people unless the sovereign drove his subjects from their allegiance.
This theory affected his view of the Stewart period. Ignorant
of common law, as a Scotsman might well be, and of earlier
English history, and inclined to scepticism, he failed to recognise
the fundamental liberties of the nation. To him, they were
'privileges,' more or less dependent on the will and strength of the
monarch; they had no common foundation in the spirit of the
people, there was no general'scheme of liberty. He held that, at
the accession of James I, the monarchy was regarded as absolute,
and that, though Charles pushed the exercise of the prerogative too
far, it was practically almost unlimited. The parliament made en-
croachments upon it: Charles defended his lawful position. Hume
did not undervalue the liberties for which the parliamentary party
contended, but he blamed them for the steps by which they asserted
and secured them. His opinions were probably affected by his
dislike of the puritans as much as by his erroneous theory of
constitutional history : 'my views of things,' he wrote, "are more
## p. 287 (#313) ############################################
Robertson
287
>
6
conformable to Whig principles, my representations of persons to
Tory prejudices. ' His scepticism led him to sneer at a profession
of religious motives. To the church of England in Charles's reign,
he accorded his approval as a bulwark of order, and, possibly,
because in his own day it afforded many examples of religious
indifference; and, including all the sects under the common appel-
lation of puritans, he condemned them as 'infected with a wretched
fanaticism' and as enemies to free thought and polite letters.
The extent to which his prejudices coloured his treatment of the
reign of Charles I may be illustrated by his remarks on the penal-
ties inflicted by the Star chamber and by his sneer at the reverence
paid to the memory of Sir John Eliot, 'who happened to die while
in custody. '
His second volume was not so offensive to the whigs, for he
held that limitations to the prerogative had been determined by
the rebellion, and that Charles II and James II tried to override
them. In his treatment of the reign of Elizabeth, his misconception
of the constitution again came to the front and again caused
offence; for he regarded the queen’s arbitrary words and actions
as proofs that it was an established rule that the prerogative
should not be questioned in parliament, and that it was generally
allowed that the monarchy was absolute. The same theory
influenced his treatment of some earlier reigns, especially those of
Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. His contempt for the
Middle Ages as a rude and turbulent period, which he derived
from, or shared with, Voltaire encouraged his error. Quarrels
between kings and their subjects might result in diminutions
of monarchical powers, but, in such barbarous times, no system
of liberty could have been established. No one now reads
Hume's History, though our more conscientious and more en-
lightened historians might learn much from it as regards the
form in which the results of their labours should be presented :
its defects in matter, therefore, are of little consequence, while its
dignity, its masterly composition and its excellence of expression
render it a literary achievement of the highest order.
In 1759, William Robertson, a presbyterian minister of
Edinburgh, published his History of Scotland during the Reigns
of Queen Mary and of James VI until his Accession to the Crown
of England, in two volumes : it was received with general applause
and had a large sale. Robertson was rewarded by his appointment
as principal of Edinburgh university in 1762, and as historio-
grapher royal. In 1769 appeared his History of Charles V in
## p. 288 (#314) ############################################
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three volumes, for which he received £4500, a larger sum than had
ever been paid for a historical work : it brought him an European
a
reputation; it was translated into French in 1771; Voltaire
declared that it made him forget his woes, and Catherine II
of Russia, who sent him a gold snuff-box, that it was her constant
travelling companion. His History of America, in two volumes,
recording the voyages of discovery, conquests and settlements of
the Spaniards, was published in 1771, and, in 1791, his Disquisition
concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India.
Robertson paid more attention to authorities than Hume did,
but sometimes misunderstood them, besides being uncritical, and
apt to be superficial. Like Hume, he comments on events in a
philosophic strain; but his comments are often commonplace, and,
like Hume, too, he fails to appreciate the forces at work in great
social or political movements. Nevertheless, he had the historic
sense in a measure given to none of his contemporaries before
Gibbon : he had some idea of the interdependence of events and
of the unity of history as one long drama of human progress to
which even checks in this direction or that contribute fresh forces.
His History of Scotland is remarkably fair, though, here and else-
where, he shows a strong protestant bias: his mistaken view of the
character and aims of Esme Stewart, earl of Lennox, is probably con-
nected with the earl’s ‘firm adhesion to the protestant faith. ' In
common with Hume, he did not satisfy the more ardent admirers of
Mary, queen of Scots; and, in reply to both, William Tytler, a writer
to the signet and a member of the Select Society, wrote his Inquiry
as to the Evidence against her, in two volumes (1760), which passed
through four editions and was twice translated into French. Before
him, Walter Goodall, the advocates' sublibrarian, had defended her
in his Examination of the [Casket] Letters &c. , in two volumes
(1754), an ingenious book, proving that the French versions of the
letters were translated; and so the endless dispute began.
Robertson’s Charles V opens with a view of the ‘Progress
of Society during the Middle Ages,' which Hallam praises highly
and Carlyle, in boyhood, found inspiring. His misrepresentation of
the state of learning, especially among the clergy, from the eighth
to the eleventh century, has been exposed by Maitland": it
illustrates the contempt with which he, in common with Hume,
regarded the Middle Ages, his careless use of authorities, his
tendency to hasty generalisation and his religious bias. Other
defects might be pointed out, but, though his review can no longer
1 Dark Ages, passim.
a
## p. 289 (#315) ############################################
>
Robertson's Style
289
be regarded as authoritative, it is interesting and meritorious as
the earliest attempt made by a British historian to present, on
a large scale, a general view of history. In his work on the
emperor's reign, his record of events, though insufficient and,
occasionally, inaccurate, is, on the whole, more trustworthy than his
estimate of their significance or of the characters and conduct of
the chief actors in them. His erroneous description of the emperor's
life at Yuste, as withdrawn from this world's affairs, is due to the
authorities he used: in his day, access had not been allowed to the
records at Simancas which have enabled later writers to give
a very different account of it.
Robertson's style, in its lucidity, polish and signs of French
influence, has a strong likeness to that of Hume : his sentences are
well balanced, they lack Hume's ironic tone, but seem more alive
than his. They are more sonorous, and often end with some word
or words of weighty sound and Latin derivation, as when, speaking
of the feeling of the English against queen Mary, he says, “they
grasped at suspicions and probabilities as if they had been irre-
fragable demonstrations. ' Robertson's 'verbiage and use of big
'
'
words, illustrated in this sentence, Johnson humorously declared
to have been learnt from him? Some development may be dis-
cerned in his writing : passages in his Charles V show that he was
beginning to write history with an animation of which there is little
sign in his Scotland, and this tendency ripened in his America into
a faculty for rhetorical narrative finely displayed in his description
of the voyage and landing of Columbus and some other passages.
As history, his America is now of small value, for it is based on
insufficient authorities, but, nevertheless, it is delightful to read.
His books were, at least at first, more popular than Hume's
History: as the work of a minister of religion, they did not alarm
religious people, many of whom regarded all that Hume wrote as
likely to be dangerous : his style was more attractive to simple
folk, and they were impressed by the evidences of his learning in
directions wholly beyond their knowledge. Hume's friendship
with his younger rival? , and the cordial admiration which Gibbon
expressed for both of them? , are among the pleasing incidents in
our literary history.
The works of Hume and Robertson seem to have excited other
Scotsmen to write history. 'I believe,' Hume wrote in 1770, ‘this
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, p. 173.
· Burton, Life, vol. 11, passim.
3 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. 122, ed. Hill, G. B. ; Dugald Stewart, Life of Robertson.
a
p. 367.
E. L. X.
CH. XII.
19
## p. 290 (#316) ############################################
290
Historians
is the true historical age and this the historical nation: I know no
less than eight Histories on the stocks in this country? ' The letter
which begins with these words refers especially to a History of
England by Robert Henry, an Edinburgh minister, in six volumes,
of which the first appeared in 1771, and which ends with the death
of Henry VIII. It is arranged under various headings, as political
and military affairs, religion, commerce, and so forth; and its interest
lies in the assertion, already, though not so strongly, made in Hume's
History, that history is concerned with all sides of social life in
the past. It is mainly written from second-hand authorities and is
inordinately dull. Nevertheless, its comprehensiveness made it
popular: it brought its author £3300 and a crown pension of £100
and was translated into French.
The character of the historical work of Sir David Dalrymple
or Lord Hailes, the title he took as a Scottish judge (1766), was
determined by professional instinct. He edited two small volumes
of documents belonging respectively to the reigns of James I and
Charles I, and compiled Annals of Scotland from the Accession
of Malcolm III to the Accession of the House of Stewart, in two
volumes (1776, 1779). This book contains an accurate and bare
record of events, impartially stated, supported by references to
authorities, and illustrated in footnotes and appendixes. Hailes,
though one of the Select Society, was more closely connected with
Johnson than with his fellow members. Johnson read the proofs of
the Annals and praised its “stability of dates' and its 'punctuality
of citation, though it had not that painted form which is the
taste of the age'-a hit at Robertson—but also aptly described it
as a 'Dictionary' containing ‘mere dry particulars. Hailes's attack
on Gibbon is noticed in the next chapter? .
Another Dalrymple, Sir John, of Cranstoun, a baronet, and,
later, a judge, who was also a member of the Select Society, and
had written an essay on feudal property, produced his Memoirs
of Great Britain and Ireland from 1684 to 1692, in two parts
(1771-8), beginning with a review of affairs from 1660. The
appendixes to his chapters contain a mass of previously unpublished
political correspondence of first-rate importance on which he based
his work. His first volume caused much stir, for it revealed the
extent to which English politics, in the reign of Charles II, had
been influenced by French intrigues, and disgusted the whigs by
exhibiting Sidney's acceptance of money from Barillon. Dalrymple
wrote in a pompous strain, and Johnson ridiculed his 'foppery'
1 Letters to Strahan, pp. 155 ff.
2 See chap. XIII, post.
6
## p. 291 (#317) ############################################
6
Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts 291
and 'bouncing style! He continued his work, in a new edition
(1790), to the capture of the French and Spanish fleets at Vigo.
Another history, which may have been 'on the stocks' in
Scotland in 1770, is Robert Watson's History of the Reign of
Philip II, published in two volumes in 1777, the year of its author's
promotion as principal of St Salvator's college, St Andrews. It
contains a full and careful account of the revolt of the Netherlands,
derived from van Meteren, Bentivoglio and Grotius, but its com-
paratively scanty notices of other Spanish affairs and of the foreign
policy of Philip II are unsatisfactoryWatson's style is similar,
though inferior to Robertson's : his sentences are generally well
balanced, but some are less skilfully constructed; he is verbose,
and, though his narrative shows a perception of the things which
appeal to the emotions, it lacks emotional expression. Horace
Walpole greatly admired his book, which passed through several
editions and was translated into French, German and Dutch.
At
the time of his death in 1781, Watson was engaged on a History of
Philip III, which was completed by William Thomson, a prolific
Scottish writer.
Incursions into the field of history were made by two English
authors of the governing class. Walpole's Historic Doubts on the
Life and Reign of Richard III (1768) is an attempt to show that
Richard was probably innocent of the crimes imputed to him
by Lancastrian writers. Sir George Buck, Carte and William
Guthrie, whose History of England to 1688 in four volumes (1744
–51) was little read and is of no importance, had, in different
degrees, anticipated him ; but Walpole was the first to argue the
case with skill. He got it up well, his points are clearly put, and
his pleading is witty and readable. The question has been revived
and adequately discussed in our own day. Some of the accusations
which Walpole criticises are no longer maintained by competent
historians, but Walpole could not (nor can any one) show sufficient
cause for doubting that Richard had part, at least, in the murder
of Henry VI, that he put Hastings to death without a trial and
that he murdered his nephews. Walpole was much pleased with
his own book and bitterly resented adverse criticism from Humes
and others
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, pp. 210, 237 ; vol. v, p. 403.
? Forneron, H. , Histoire de Philippe II (1881), vol. I, p. 392, says that, with Gregorio
Leti, Watson contributed most to substitute legend for fact in the history of Philip II.
3 Letters, vol. x, p. 224.
4 Cf. ante, vol. VII, p. 443.
5 In Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne. See Walpole, Short Notes of My
Life.
6 See bibliography.
19-2
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George, first baron Lyttelton, a second rate whig statesman,
whose active interest in other departments of literature is noticed
elsewhere', worked intermittently for some thirty years at his
History of the Life of Henry II, which he produced, in three vol-
umes, in 1767. The whole work, Johnson records, was printed twice
over and a great part of it three times, ‘his ambitious accuracy'
costing him at least £1000. He used the best authorities he could
find, and gives a minute and accurate account of the political
events of Henry's reign, together with remarks not always accord-
ing to knowledge on its constitutional and legal aspects. His style
is clear, but remarkably flat, his narrative inanimate, and his re-
flections, in which ‘Divine Providence' frequently appears, are
often almost childish. His opinions on the constitution in the
twelfth century flattered whig sentiment. Hume jeered at his
whiggery and his piety; Johnson was offended by his whiggery;
and Gibbon, referring to a review of the book which he had written
in Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne, declared that
the public had ratified his judgment that the author's 'sense and
learning were not illuminated by a single ray of genius' Horace
Walpole's remark, 'How dull one may be if one will but take pains
for six or seven and twenty years together! ", is just, though, as
work conscientiously and, to some extent, efficiently done, the book
deserves some kinder comment. Lyttelton was a patron of poorer
authors, and among those he befriended was Archibald Bower,
a Scot, who wrote for booksellers. Bower asserted that he had
been a Jesuit and a counsellor of the inquisition in Italy, that he
had escaped and had become a protestant. Between 1748 and 1753,
a
he issued to numerous subscribers three volumes of a History
of the Popes written with a great show of learning and ending at
757. Through Lyttelton's influence, he was appointed librarian to
the queen (1748), and clerk of the buck-warrants (1754). In
1756—8, however, John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury,
published proofs that Bower's account of himself was false, and
that his volumes, text and references, were stolen from other
authors, two-thirds of his first volume being practically translated
from Tillemont". He defended himself vigorously so far as his
own story was concerned, and gradually completed his History in
seven volumes, the seventh going down to 1758, but disposing of
the history from 1600 onwards in twenty-six pages. The book,
i See chap. V, ante.
2 Lives of the Poets.
• Memoirs, pp. 173–4, ed. Hill, G. B.
4 Letters, vol. VII, p. 122.
• See bibliography as to Gibbon's debt to Tillemont, cf. chap. XIII, post.
## p. 293 (#319) ############################################
Smollett.
Goldsmith. Leland
293
which was avowedly written against the claims of the see of Rome,
has no literary merit. Bower, though an impudent impostor, had
some learning, but his last four volumes are not of historical
importance, and the reputation of his History did not survive
Douglas's attack.
History was written as hackwork by two authors of eminent
genius. Tobias George Smollett was hired to write a history to
rival Hume's work, of which the first two volumes had then
appeared, and, in 1757, he produced his Compleat History of
England to 1748, in four volumes, written in fourteen months. He
boasts of having consulted over three hundred books. When he
began to write, he had 'a warm side' to whig principles ; but he
changed his opinions as he proceeded. The History sold well, and
Hume, while contemptuous, was annoyed at his rivalry! Smollett
wrote a continuation ; the part from the revolution was revised
and republished as a continuation of Hume's History and, as such,
passed through several editions. It favours the tory side and is
written in a robust and unaffected style. Oliver Goldsmith, in the
preface to his History of England to 1760, in four volumes (1771),
disclaims any attempt at research, and says that he wrote to
instruct beginners and to refresh the minds of the aged, and not
to add to our historical knowledge but to contract it. ' In matter,
his History is indebted to Hume. Both it and his two smaller
books on the same subject are written in the charming and graceful
style which makes all his prose works delightful. The smaller
books, at least, were extensively used in education within the last
seventy years. Neither Smollett, though he took his History
seriously, nor Goldsmith should be considered as a historian.
Ireland found its historian at home. Thomas Leland, senior
fellow of Trinity college, Dublin, wrote a History of Ireland from
the Invasion of Henry II, ending with the treaty of Limerick
(1691), which was published in 1773 in three volumes. Though he
consulted some original authorities, he founds his work, after losing
the guidance of Giraldus, mainly on those of Ware, Camden,
Stanihurst, Cox and Carte, noting his authorities in his margins
though without precise references. He writes in a lucid, straight-
forward, but inanimate style, and, though some of his statements
and comments are capable of correction by modern scholars, his
narrative, as a whole, is accurate, sober and impartial. The History
of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan,
from 1745 to 1761, by Robert Orme, published in two volumes
1 Burton, J. H. , Life, vol. 11, p. 53.
## p. 294 (#320) ############################################
294
Historians
a
(the second in two sections') in 1763–78, is a contemporary
memoir, for Orme was in India in the company's service during
practically the whole time of which he wrote. It is a record of
noble deeds written with picturesque details, and in dignified and
natural language appropriate to its subject. Its accuracy in all
important matters is unquestionable? It is too full of minor
events which, however interesting in themselves, bewilder a reader
not thoroughly acquainted with the history. Nor does it lay
sufficient stress on events of the first magnitude. To this defect,
all contemporary memoirs are, relatively, liable, and, in Orme's
case, it is heightened by his excessive minuteness. It has been
observed that he errs in treating the native princes rather than
the French 'as principals in the story. This, which would be
a fault in a later history, is interesting in Orme's book, as it shows
the aspect under which affairs appeared to a competent observer
on the spot. William Russell's History of Modern Europe, from
the time of Clovis to 1763, in five volumes (1779—86), is creditable
to its author, who began life as an apprentice to a bookseller and
printer, and became ‘reader' for William Strahan, the publisher
of the works of Gibbon, Hume, Robertson and other historians.
Its sole interest consists in Russell's idea that Europe, as a whole,
has a history which should be written by pursuing what he calls
'a great line. ' He was not the man to write it : his book is badly
constructed ; far too large a space is given to English history;
there are strange omissions in his narrative and several blunders.
Together with the development of historical writing, this period
saw a remarkable increase in the publication of materials for it in
the form of state papers and correspondence. The share taken by
Lord Hailes and Sir John Dalrymple in this movement is noticed
above. A third volume of Carte's Ormond, published in 1735,
the year before the publication of the two containing the duke's
Life, consists of a mass of original letters to which he refers in the
Life. A portion of the State Papers of the Earl of Clarendon
was published in three volumes by the university of Oxford in 1767.
The publication of the Thurloe Papers by Thomas Birch has
already been noted in this work? Birch, rector of St Margaret
Pattens, London, and Depden, Suffolk, did much historical work,
scenting out manuscript authorities with the eagerness of 'a young
setting dog. His more important productions are An Inquiry
into the Share which Charles I had in the Transactions of the
Earl of Glamorgan (1747), in answer to Carte's contention in his
1 Macaulay, Essay on Clive.
2 See vol. VII, pp. 187–8.
>
## p. 295 (#321) ############################################
State Papers, etc.
295
Ormond that the commission to the earl was not genuine; Negotia-
tions between the Courts of England, France, and Brussels,
1592–1617 (1749); Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth from 1581
(1754), mainly extracts from the papers of Anthony Bacon at
Lambeth ; and Lives of Henry, prince of Wales and archbishop
Tillotson. At the time of his death (1766), he was preparing for
press miscellaneous correspondence of the times of James I and
Charles I. This interesting collection presenting the news of the
day has been published in four volumes, two for each reign, under
the title Court and Times etc. (1848). Birch, though a lively talker
was a dull writer ; but his work is valuable. He was a friend of
the family of lord chancellor Hardwicke, who presented him to
seven benefices.
The second earl of Hardwicke shared Birch's historical taste, and,
in 1778, published anonymously Miscellaneous State Papers, from
1501 to 1726, in two volumes, a collection of importance compiled
from the manuscripts of lord chancellor Somers. In 1774, Joseph
Maccormick, a St Andrews minister, published the State Papers
and Letters left by his great-uncle William Carstares, private
secretary to William III, material invaluable for Scottish history
in his reign, and prefixed a life of Carstares. The manuscripts left
by Carte were used by James Macpherson, of Ossianic fame, in his
Original Papers, from 1660 to 1714, in two volumes (1775). In the
first part are extracts from papers purporting to belong to a life of
James II written by himself, Carte's extracts being supplemented
by Macpherson from papers in the Scottish college at Paris. The
second part contains Hanover papers, mostly extracts from the
papers of Robethon, private secretary to George II, now in the
British Museum; the copies are accurate, but some of the translations
are careless? . Also, in 1775, he produced a History of Great Britain
during the same period, in two volumes, which is based on the papers,
and is strongly tory in character. For this, he received £3000.
His style is marked by a constant recurrence of short and some-
what abrupt sentences. Both his History and his Papers
annoyed the whigs, especially by exhibiting the intrigues of
leading statesmen of the revolution with the court of St
Germain? . His Introduction to the History of Great Britain
and Ireland (1771) contains boldly asserted and wildly erroneous
a
9
1 For the James II papers and their relation to the Life of James II, ed. Clarke, J. S. ,
1816, see Ranke, History of England (Eng. trans. ), vol. vi, pp. 29 ff. , and, for the Hanover
papers, Chance, J. F. , in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. xm (1898), pp. 55 ff. and pp. 533 ff.
2 Horace Walpole, Last Journals, vol. 1, pp. 444–5, ed. Steuart, A. F.
## p. 296 (#322) ############################################
296
Historians
theories, particularly on ethnology, inspired by a spirit of excessive
Celticism.
Much interest was excited by the speculations of the French
philosophes, in some measure the literary offspring of Locke and
enthusiastic admirers of the British constitution. Influenced by
Montesquieu's famous Esprit des Lois (1748), Adam Ferguson,
Hume's successor as advocates' librarian (1757) and then a professor
of philosophy at Edinburgh, published his Essay on the History of
Civil Society (1767). Hume advised that it should not be published,
but it was much praised, was largely sold and was translated into
German and French. Nevertheless, Hume's judgment was sound;
the book is plausible and superficial'. It is written in the polished
and balanced style of which Hume was the master? . The admiration
expressed on the continent for the British constitution led Jean
Louis Delolme, a citizen of Geneva, who came to England about
1769, to write an account of it in French which was published at
Amsterdam in 1771. An English translation, probably not by the
author, with three additional chapters, was published in London in
1775, with the title The Constitution of England; it had a large
sale both here and in French and German translations abroad, and
was held in high repute for many years. Delolme was a careful
observer of our political institutions and, as a foreigner, marked
some points in them likely to escape the notice of those familiar
with them from childhood. The fundamental error of his book is
that it regards the constitution as a nicely adjusted machine in
which the action of each part is controlled by another, instead of
recognising that any one of the 'powers' within it was capable of
development at the expense of the others; though, even as he
wrote, within hearing of mobs shouting for ‘Wilkes and Liberty,'
one of them, the 'power of the people,' was entering on a period of
development. To him, the outward form of the constitution was
everything : he praised its stability and the system of counterpoises
which, he believed, assured its permanence, so long as the Commons
did not refuse supplies ; he failed to see that it was built up by
living forces any one of which might acquire new power or lose
something of what it already had, and so disturb the balance which
he represented as its special characteristic and safeguard.
1 Stephen, Sir L. , English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 215.
? Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic is noticed
in the following chapter.
* Stephen, u. 8. 209–214.
## p. 297 (#323) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
HISTORIANS
II
GIBBON
THE mind of Gibbon, like that of Pope, from which, in many
respects, it widely differed, was a perfect type of the literary mind
proper. By this, it is not meant that either the historian or the
poet was without literary defects of his own, or of weaknesses-one
might almost say obliquities—of judgment or temperament which
could not fail to affect the character of his writings. But, like
Pope and very few others among great English men of letters,
Gibbon had recognised, very early in his life, the nature of the
task to the execution of which it was to be devoted, and steadily
pursued the path chosen by him till the goal had been reached
which he had long and steadily kept in view1. Like Pope, again,
Gibbon, in the first instance, was virtually self-educated; the
intellectual education with which he provided himself was more
conscientious and thorough, as, in its results, it was more pro-
ductive, than that which many matured systems of mental training
succeed in imparting. The causes of his extraordinary literary
success have to be sought, not only or mainly in the activity and
the concentration of his powers-for these elements of success he
had in common with many writers, who remained half-educated as
well as self-educated—but, above all, in the discernment which
accompanied these qualities. He was endowed with an inborn
tendency to reject the allurements of hand-to-mouth knowledge
and claptrap style, and to follow with unfaltering determination
the guidance which study and reason had led him to select. Thus,
1 His statement (Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck--the edition cited throughout this
chapter—p. 195) that he never presumed to accept a place,' with Hume and Robert-
son, 'in the triumvirate of British historians' may be taken cum grano.
## p. 298 (#324) ############################################
298
Historians
as culminating in the production of his great work, Gibbon's
literary labours were very harmonious, and, so far as this can
be asserted of any performance outside the field of pure literature,
complete in themselves. While carrying them on, he experienced
the periods of difficulty and doubt which no worker is spared ;
but, though the flame flickered at times, it soon recovered its
steady luminosity. After transcribing the caliph Abdalrahman's
reflection, how, in a reign of fifty years of unsurpassed grandeur,
he had numbered but fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness,
he adds in a note :
If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with
certainty) my happy hours have far exceeded the scanty numbers of the
caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to
the pleasing labour of the present composition 1
Thus, while he was continuously engaged in occupations which
never ceased to stimulate his energies and to invigorate his powers,
he was also fortunate enough to achieve the great work which
proved the sum of his life's labours, to identify himself and his
fame with one great book, and to die with his intellectual task
done. Macaulay, the one English historian whose literary genius
can be drawn into comparison with Gibbon’s, left the history of
England which he had 'purposed to write from the accession of
King James II down to a time which is within the memory of
men living' a noble fragment. Gibbon could lay down his pen,
in a summer-house in his garden at Lausanne, ‘in the day, or
rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, after writing this final
sentence of his completed book :
It was among the ruins of the Capitol, that I first conceived the idea of a
work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life; and
which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity
and candour of the publica.
Though what Gibbon calls the curiosity of the public' may
have exhausted itself long since, the candid judgment of many
generations and of almost every class of readers has confirmed the
opinion formed at once by Gibbon's own age. His great work
remains an enduring monument of research, an imperishable
literary possession and one of the highest encouragements to
intellectual endeavour that can be found in the history of
letters.
The facts of Gibbon's life in themselves neither numerous
nor startling—are related by him in an autobiography which,
i Decline and Fall, chap. LII.
2 Cf. Memoirs, p. 225.
## p. 299 (#325) ############################################
Gibbon's Autobiography
299
by general consent, has established itself as one of the most
fascinating books of its class in English literature. This is the
more remarkable, since the Memoirs of My Life and Writings,
as they were first printed by Gibbon's intimate friend the first
earl of Sheffield (John Baker Holroyd), who made no pretence
of concealing his editorial method, were a cento put together out
of six, or, strictly speaking, seven, more or less fragmentary
sketches written at different times by the author! Lord Sheffield
was aided in his task (to what extent has been disputed) by
his daughter Maria Josepha (afterwards Lady Stanley of Alderley),
described by Gibbon himself as 'a most extraordinary young
woman,' and certainly one of the brightest that ever put pen
to paper. The material on which they worked was excellent in
its way, and their treatment of it extraordinarily skilful ; so that
a third member of this delightful family, Lord Sheffield's sister
Serena,' expressed the opinion of many generations of readers
in writing of the Memoirs : "They make me feel affectionate to
Mr Gibbon? ' The charm of Gibbon's manner as an autobiographer
and, in a lesser degree, as a letter-writer, lies not only in his
inexhaustible vivacity of mind, but, above all, in his gift of self-
revelation, which is not obscured for long either by over-elaboration
of style or by affectation of chic (such as his more than filial
effusions to his stepmother or his facetious epistles to his friend
Holroyd occasionally display). Out of all this wealth of matter, ,
we must content ourselves here with abstracting only a few
necessary data
Edward Gibbon, born at Putney-on-Thames on 27 April 1737,
came of a family of ancient descents, tory principles and ample
income. His grandfather, a city merchant, had seen his wealth
.
engulfed in the South Sea abyss—it was only very wise great men,
like Sir Robert Walpole, or very cautious small men, like Pope,
1 For details, see bibliography. Frederic Harrison, in Proceedings of the Gibbon
Commemoration (1895), describes the whole as '& pot-pourri concocted out of the MS
with great skill and tact, but with the most daring freedom. ' He calculates that
possibly one-third of the MS was not printed at all by Lord Sheffield.
Persia, and Egypt by the Saracens, generally known as The
History of the Saracens, appeared in 1708, the second in 1718,
with an introduction dated from Cambridge gaol, where he was
then imprisoned for debt : he had in past years received help
from the earl of Oxford (Harley); but that had ceased, and the
poor scholar had a large family. Gibbon, who admired and used
his work, speaks of his fate as 'unworthy of the man and of his
## p. 281 (#307) ############################################
Scottish Historians
281
country? ' His History extends from the death of Mahomet, 632,
to that of the fifth Ommiad caliph, 705 ; it was cut short by the
author's death in 1720, after a life of incessant and ill-requited
toil. The Life of Mohammed prefixed to the third edition of his
History, which was issued for the benefit of his destitute daughter
in 1757, is by Roger Long, master of Pembroke hall, Cambridge.
Ockley based his work on an Arabic manuscript in the Bodleian
library which later scholars have pronounced less trustworthy
than he imagined it to be. His English is pure and simple, his
narrative extraordinarily vivid and dramatic, and told in words
exactly suited to his subject—whether he is describing how Caulah
and her companions kept their Damascene captors at bay until
her brother Derar and his horsemen came to deliver them, or
telling the tragic story of the death of Hosein. The book was
translated into French in 1748, and was long held to be authori-
tative. As a history, its defects are patent, its account of the
conquest of Persia, for example, is so slight that even the decisive
battle of Cadesia is not mentioned ; nor is any attempt made to
examine the causes of the rapid successes of the Saracen arms : it
reads, indeed, more like a collection of sagas than a history.
Such defects, however, do not impair its peculiar literary
merit.
A change in the character of British historical writing began in
the middle of the century; it was raised by Hume to a foremost
place in our prose composition; its right to that place was main-
tained by Robertson, and, finally, in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, it rose to the highest degree of perfection
that it has ever attained in this, or, perhaps, in any, country. That
its two earliest reformers should both have been Scotsmen is one
of many illustrations of the activity of the Scots at that time in all
the higher spheres of thought and of literary production. When
the failure of the Jacobite cause put an end to the struggle for
Scottish national life as an independent political force, it would
almost seem as though the educated class in Scotland consciously
set themselves to endow their country with an independent life in
the domains of philosophy, literature, science and art? ; for their
efforts were not made in isolation ; they were made by men who
constantly communicated with each other or consorted together,
especially in Edinburgh, where, from 1754, they formed themselves
into the 'Select Society,' of which both Hume and Robertson were
1 Decline and Fall, vol. vi, p. 4, note, ed. Bury, J. B.
· Hume Brown, History of Scotland, vol. III, p. 371.
## p. 282 (#308) ############################################
282
Historians
members, and which met every week to discuss philosophical
questions. While this intellectual life was distinctly national, its
output was not marred by its local character. Political affairs
had for centuries driven or led Scots abroad: the habit of
resorting to other countries remained, and Scottish thinkers and
writers kept in touch with the intellectual life of other peoples,
and especially of the French, the ancient allies of Scotland. In
their mode of expression, too, the desire to be widely read and
the necessity of gaining a larger and richer market for their books
than they could find at home made them careful to avoid local
peculiarities, and write in such a way as would be acceptable to
English readers. Though this movement attained its full develop-
ment during the latter half of the century, it had been in progress
for several years.
It was during those years that David Hume first became known
as a philosopher and essayist ; his earliest book, A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739—40), written when he was not more than
twenty-eight, met with a chilling reception which gave little
promise of his future renown. His metaphysical opinions led him
to put a special value on the study of history. As his scepticism
limited mental capability to sensible experience, so he regarded
past events as affording experience. Holding mankind to be much
the same under all conditions, he considered that history, by
exhibiting the behaviour of men in the past, enables us to discover
the principles of human action and their results, and to order our
conduct accordingly: its records are so many collections of
experiments by which the moral philosopher fixes the principles
of his science, and man obtains a guide for his own conduct.
Hume would therefore be drawn to study history, and, believing
that a knowledge of it would be of public utility by affording men
experience, he would be inclined to record the experiments from
which they could derive it. A three years' residence in France from
1734 to 1737, most of it spent 'very agreeably' at La Flèche, on
the Loir, then famous for its great Jesuits' college, probably
strengthened this inclination and influenced his style. Historical
study was being eagerly pursued in France. Among the religious
orders, the Benedictines were preparing Le Recueil des Historiens
des Gaules et de la France, issuing their Gallia Christiana, and
beginning their histories of the French provinces, while the
Dominicans had produced the Scriptores of their order, and the
Jesuits were engaged on Acta Sanctorum. On the lay side,
the Académie des Inscriptions was carrying on the publication of
6
>
## p. 283 (#309) ############################################
Hume
283
the royal ordinances, and gathering a store of historical erudition?
Count de Boulainvilliers had already treated French history in a
philosophic spirit, and Voltaire, in his exquisite little Histoire de
Charles XII, had shown that historical writing might be endowed
with literary excellence. A strange contrast Hume must have
seen in this activity and accomplishment to the condition of
historical work in Great Britain. Elegance in the structure of
sentences and an almost excessive purity of language, which
marked contemporary French literature, were specially inculcated
by the Jesuits, the masters of French education. Hume's History
shows enough French influence to justify us in considering his long
visit to La Flèche as an important factor in its character.
Some insight into the conduct of the great affairs of nations he
gained as secretary to general St Clair during his ineffectual
expedition against Lorient in 1746, when Hume acted as judge
advocate, and while attached to St Clair's embassy to Vienna and
Turin in 1748. By 1747, he had ‘historical projects. His appoint-
ment as librarian to the faculty of advocates at Edinburgh, in
1752, gave him command of a large library well stocked with
historical works, and he forthwith set about his History of
England. Intending to trace the steps by which, as he believed,
the nation had attained its existing system of government, he had
at first thought of beginning his work with the accession of
Henry VII; for he imagined that the first signs of revolt against
the arbitrary power of the crown were to be discerned during the
Tudor period, and of carrying it down to the accession of George I.
Finally, however, he began with the accession of James I, alleging,
as his reason, that the change which took place in public affairs
under the Tudor dynasty was very insensible, and that it was
under James that the House of Commons first began to rear its
head, and then the quarrel betwixt privilege and prerogative
commenced? ' The first volume of his History of Great Britain,
containing the reigns of James I and Charles I, appeared in 1754.
He was sanguine in his expectations of the success of the work;
but, though for a few weeks it sold well in Edinburgh, it met with
almost universal disapprobation and seemed likely to sink into
premature oblivion. Its unfavourable reception was mainly due,
as we shall see later, to political reasons. Hume was bitterly
disappointed, and even thought of retiring to France and living
there under an assumed name. His second volume, which ended
i Carré, H. , Histoire de France (Lavisse), vol. VIII, ii, pp. 182—3.
Burton, J. H. , Life of Hume, vol. 1, p. 375.
## p. 284 (#310) ############################################
284
Historians
with the revolution of 1688, and appeared in 1756, was less
irritating to whig sensibilities : it sold well and helped the sale of
the first. Then he worked backwards, and published two volumes
on the Tudor reigns in 1759, ending, in 1761, with two on the history
from the time of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry VIL
He did not carry out his original idea of bringing his work
down to 1714. By that time, the sale of his History had become
large, and had made him, he said, 'not merely independent but
opulent'; and it kept its place in popular estimation as the best
comprehensive work on English history for at least sixty years.
The first two published volumes were translated into French in
1760; and, in Paris, where Hume resided from 1763 to 1766, during
part of the time as secretary of legation, he received, both as
historian and as philosopher, an amount of adulation which excited
the spleen of Horace Walpole? .
Hume gave so little time to preparation for his task that it
is evident that he had no idea of writing a scientific history.
With all due allowance for the infinitely greater facilities which
now exist for arriving at the truth, it cannot be contended that
he took full advantage of such authorities as were then ac-
cessible : he seems to have been content with those under his
hand in the advocates' library; he was not critical as to their
comparative values ; and he was careless in his use of them.
His History, consequently, contains many misstatements which
he might have avoided—some of small importance, others of a
serious kind, as they affect his conclusions. Of these, a typical
instance, noticed by Hallam, is, that he misstates the complaint
of the Commons in 1396 that sheriffs were continued in office
beyond a ye
a year, as a petition that they might be so continued, and
uses this mistake in defence of the misgovernment of Richard II.
His later published volumes, on the history before the Tudor
dynasty, become more and more superficial as he advances further
into times which were obscure to him, in which he took no interest,
regarding them as ages of barbarism, and on which he would
scarcely have written save for the sake of completeness. What he
set out to do was to write a history which would be generally
attractive-for he appealed ' ad populum as well as ad clerum'-
and would be distinguished from other histories alike by its style
and by its freedom from political bias, a matter on which he was
insistent in his correspondence. He approached his work, then, in
1 Letters, vol. vi, p. 301, ed. Toynbee. ? Middle Ages, vol. II, p. 75, ed. 1860.
3 Hume to Clephane, Burton, vol. 1, p. 397.
## p. 285 (#311) ############################################
Hume's Style
285
BO
a
a spirit of philosophic impartiality, or, at least, believed that he did
a belief commonly dangerous to a historian—and, throughout
its course, adorned it with judgments and reflections admirable in
themselves though not always appropriate to facts as they really
were. Here, his philosophical treatment ends: he shows no appre-
ciation of the forces which underlay great political or religious
movements. As a sceptic, he did not recognise the motives which
led men to work for a common end, or the influences which guided
them. Such movements were, to him, mere occurrences, or the
results of personal temperament, of the ambition, obstinacy, or
fanaticism of individuals. The advance of historical study is
indebted to him ; for his praiseworthy attempts at various
divisions of his narrative to expound social and economic conditions
were an innovation on the earlier conception of a historian's duty
as limited to a record of political events.
Hume's History occupies a high place among the few master-
pieces of historical composition. His expression is lucid, conveying
his meaning in direct and competent terms. It is eminently
dignified, and is instinct with the calm atmosphere of a philosophic
mind which surveys and criticises men and affairs as from an emi-
nence. Its general tone is ironical, the tone of a man conscious of
intellectual superiority to those whose faults and follies he relates.
His sentences are highly polished; they are well balanced and
their cadence is musical. They are never jerky, and they flow on in
a seemingly inevitable sequence. Their polish does not suggest
elaboration; their beauties, so easy is Hume's style, appear careless
and natural. In fact, however, he made many corrections in his
manuscript ; he was anxious to avoid Scotticisms and, in a careful
revision of the first edition of his earlier volumes, removed all he
detected. Johnson, with his usual prejudice against Scotsmen,
declared, he does not write English, the structure of his sentences
is French. Though this was a conversational exaggeration, it was
more deliberately echoed by Lord Mansfield, and it is so far true
that Hume's easy style indicates French influence, and, as Horace
Walpole observed, the influence of Voltaire. The same may be
said of the style of other contemporary Scottish writers, of
Robertson, Adam Smith and Ferguson. While he never falls
below dignity, he never rises to eloquence. The prose of his age
was generally colourless, and his abhorrence of enthusiasm of every
kind rendered this greyness of tone especially appropriate as a
vehicle of his thoughts. Yet, though elegance rather than vigour
is to be looked for in his writing, its irony gives it a force which, at
## p. 286 (#312) ############################################
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а
purpose; there
the least, is as powerful as any which could be obtained by a more
robust style. His excellences are not without their defects.
Charmed, at first, by the polish of his sentences, the reader may,
perhaps, soon find them cold, hard and monotonous ; and since
historical narrative will not excite sustained interest unless it
appeals to the imagination and emotions as well as to the judgment,
Hume's attitude of philosophic observer and dispassionate critic
may become wearisome to him and, as he discovers that the
philosopher is not free from prejudice, even irritating. In the
composition of his History, Hume shows in a remarkable degree a
skill which may be described as dramatic : when working up to
some critical event, he selects and arranges his facts, so that each
leads us a step further towards the climax that he has in view; he
tells us nothing that is extraneous to his immediate purpose;
is no anticipation and no divagation in his narrative.
In spite of his belief in his own impartiality, Hume was justly
accused of tory prejudice, and this caused the ill-success of his
first published volume. He did not, of course, regard the royal
authority as founded on divine appointment any more than on
contract. As a utilitarian, he held that the end of government
was the promotion of the public good, and that monarchy was
based on the necessity of escape from lawless violence. While he
admitted that resistance to sovereignty might be justifiable, he
considered this doctrine so dangerous to society, as opening the
door to popular excesses, that it should be concealed from the
people unless the sovereign drove his subjects from their allegiance.
This theory affected his view of the Stewart period. Ignorant
of common law, as a Scotsman might well be, and of earlier
English history, and inclined to scepticism, he failed to recognise
the fundamental liberties of the nation. To him, they were
'privileges,' more or less dependent on the will and strength of the
monarch; they had no common foundation in the spirit of the
people, there was no general'scheme of liberty. He held that, at
the accession of James I, the monarchy was regarded as absolute,
and that, though Charles pushed the exercise of the prerogative too
far, it was practically almost unlimited. The parliament made en-
croachments upon it: Charles defended his lawful position. Hume
did not undervalue the liberties for which the parliamentary party
contended, but he blamed them for the steps by which they asserted
and secured them. His opinions were probably affected by his
dislike of the puritans as much as by his erroneous theory of
constitutional history : 'my views of things,' he wrote, "are more
## p. 287 (#313) ############################################
Robertson
287
>
6
conformable to Whig principles, my representations of persons to
Tory prejudices. ' His scepticism led him to sneer at a profession
of religious motives. To the church of England in Charles's reign,
he accorded his approval as a bulwark of order, and, possibly,
because in his own day it afforded many examples of religious
indifference; and, including all the sects under the common appel-
lation of puritans, he condemned them as 'infected with a wretched
fanaticism' and as enemies to free thought and polite letters.
The extent to which his prejudices coloured his treatment of the
reign of Charles I may be illustrated by his remarks on the penal-
ties inflicted by the Star chamber and by his sneer at the reverence
paid to the memory of Sir John Eliot, 'who happened to die while
in custody. '
His second volume was not so offensive to the whigs, for he
held that limitations to the prerogative had been determined by
the rebellion, and that Charles II and James II tried to override
them. In his treatment of the reign of Elizabeth, his misconception
of the constitution again came to the front and again caused
offence; for he regarded the queen’s arbitrary words and actions
as proofs that it was an established rule that the prerogative
should not be questioned in parliament, and that it was generally
allowed that the monarchy was absolute. The same theory
influenced his treatment of some earlier reigns, especially those of
Henry III, Edward II and Richard II. His contempt for the
Middle Ages as a rude and turbulent period, which he derived
from, or shared with, Voltaire encouraged his error. Quarrels
between kings and their subjects might result in diminutions
of monarchical powers, but, in such barbarous times, no system
of liberty could have been established. No one now reads
Hume's History, though our more conscientious and more en-
lightened historians might learn much from it as regards the
form in which the results of their labours should be presented :
its defects in matter, therefore, are of little consequence, while its
dignity, its masterly composition and its excellence of expression
render it a literary achievement of the highest order.
In 1759, William Robertson, a presbyterian minister of
Edinburgh, published his History of Scotland during the Reigns
of Queen Mary and of James VI until his Accession to the Crown
of England, in two volumes : it was received with general applause
and had a large sale. Robertson was rewarded by his appointment
as principal of Edinburgh university in 1762, and as historio-
grapher royal. In 1769 appeared his History of Charles V in
## p. 288 (#314) ############################################
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three volumes, for which he received £4500, a larger sum than had
ever been paid for a historical work : it brought him an European
a
reputation; it was translated into French in 1771; Voltaire
declared that it made him forget his woes, and Catherine II
of Russia, who sent him a gold snuff-box, that it was her constant
travelling companion. His History of America, in two volumes,
recording the voyages of discovery, conquests and settlements of
the Spaniards, was published in 1771, and, in 1791, his Disquisition
concerning the Knowledge which the Ancients had of India.
Robertson paid more attention to authorities than Hume did,
but sometimes misunderstood them, besides being uncritical, and
apt to be superficial. Like Hume, he comments on events in a
philosophic strain; but his comments are often commonplace, and,
like Hume, too, he fails to appreciate the forces at work in great
social or political movements. Nevertheless, he had the historic
sense in a measure given to none of his contemporaries before
Gibbon : he had some idea of the interdependence of events and
of the unity of history as one long drama of human progress to
which even checks in this direction or that contribute fresh forces.
His History of Scotland is remarkably fair, though, here and else-
where, he shows a strong protestant bias: his mistaken view of the
character and aims of Esme Stewart, earl of Lennox, is probably con-
nected with the earl’s ‘firm adhesion to the protestant faith. ' In
common with Hume, he did not satisfy the more ardent admirers of
Mary, queen of Scots; and, in reply to both, William Tytler, a writer
to the signet and a member of the Select Society, wrote his Inquiry
as to the Evidence against her, in two volumes (1760), which passed
through four editions and was twice translated into French. Before
him, Walter Goodall, the advocates' sublibrarian, had defended her
in his Examination of the [Casket] Letters &c. , in two volumes
(1754), an ingenious book, proving that the French versions of the
letters were translated; and so the endless dispute began.
Robertson’s Charles V opens with a view of the ‘Progress
of Society during the Middle Ages,' which Hallam praises highly
and Carlyle, in boyhood, found inspiring. His misrepresentation of
the state of learning, especially among the clergy, from the eighth
to the eleventh century, has been exposed by Maitland": it
illustrates the contempt with which he, in common with Hume,
regarded the Middle Ages, his careless use of authorities, his
tendency to hasty generalisation and his religious bias. Other
defects might be pointed out, but, though his review can no longer
1 Dark Ages, passim.
a
## p. 289 (#315) ############################################
>
Robertson's Style
289
be regarded as authoritative, it is interesting and meritorious as
the earliest attempt made by a British historian to present, on
a large scale, a general view of history. In his work on the
emperor's reign, his record of events, though insufficient and,
occasionally, inaccurate, is, on the whole, more trustworthy than his
estimate of their significance or of the characters and conduct of
the chief actors in them. His erroneous description of the emperor's
life at Yuste, as withdrawn from this world's affairs, is due to the
authorities he used: in his day, access had not been allowed to the
records at Simancas which have enabled later writers to give
a very different account of it.
Robertson's style, in its lucidity, polish and signs of French
influence, has a strong likeness to that of Hume : his sentences are
well balanced, they lack Hume's ironic tone, but seem more alive
than his. They are more sonorous, and often end with some word
or words of weighty sound and Latin derivation, as when, speaking
of the feeling of the English against queen Mary, he says, “they
grasped at suspicions and probabilities as if they had been irre-
fragable demonstrations. ' Robertson's 'verbiage and use of big
'
'
words, illustrated in this sentence, Johnson humorously declared
to have been learnt from him? Some development may be dis-
cerned in his writing : passages in his Charles V show that he was
beginning to write history with an animation of which there is little
sign in his Scotland, and this tendency ripened in his America into
a faculty for rhetorical narrative finely displayed in his description
of the voyage and landing of Columbus and some other passages.
As history, his America is now of small value, for it is based on
insufficient authorities, but, nevertheless, it is delightful to read.
His books were, at least at first, more popular than Hume's
History: as the work of a minister of religion, they did not alarm
religious people, many of whom regarded all that Hume wrote as
likely to be dangerous : his style was more attractive to simple
folk, and they were impressed by the evidences of his learning in
directions wholly beyond their knowledge. Hume's friendship
with his younger rival? , and the cordial admiration which Gibbon
expressed for both of them? , are among the pleasing incidents in
our literary history.
The works of Hume and Robertson seem to have excited other
Scotsmen to write history. 'I believe,' Hume wrote in 1770, ‘this
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, p. 173.
· Burton, Life, vol. 11, passim.
3 Gibbon, Memoirs, p. 122, ed. Hill, G. B. ; Dugald Stewart, Life of Robertson.
a
p. 367.
E. L. X.
CH. XII.
19
## p. 290 (#316) ############################################
290
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is the true historical age and this the historical nation: I know no
less than eight Histories on the stocks in this country? ' The letter
which begins with these words refers especially to a History of
England by Robert Henry, an Edinburgh minister, in six volumes,
of which the first appeared in 1771, and which ends with the death
of Henry VIII. It is arranged under various headings, as political
and military affairs, religion, commerce, and so forth; and its interest
lies in the assertion, already, though not so strongly, made in Hume's
History, that history is concerned with all sides of social life in
the past. It is mainly written from second-hand authorities and is
inordinately dull. Nevertheless, its comprehensiveness made it
popular: it brought its author £3300 and a crown pension of £100
and was translated into French.
The character of the historical work of Sir David Dalrymple
or Lord Hailes, the title he took as a Scottish judge (1766), was
determined by professional instinct. He edited two small volumes
of documents belonging respectively to the reigns of James I and
Charles I, and compiled Annals of Scotland from the Accession
of Malcolm III to the Accession of the House of Stewart, in two
volumes (1776, 1779). This book contains an accurate and bare
record of events, impartially stated, supported by references to
authorities, and illustrated in footnotes and appendixes. Hailes,
though one of the Select Society, was more closely connected with
Johnson than with his fellow members. Johnson read the proofs of
the Annals and praised its “stability of dates' and its 'punctuality
of citation, though it had not that painted form which is the
taste of the age'-a hit at Robertson—but also aptly described it
as a 'Dictionary' containing ‘mere dry particulars. Hailes's attack
on Gibbon is noticed in the next chapter? .
Another Dalrymple, Sir John, of Cranstoun, a baronet, and,
later, a judge, who was also a member of the Select Society, and
had written an essay on feudal property, produced his Memoirs
of Great Britain and Ireland from 1684 to 1692, in two parts
(1771-8), beginning with a review of affairs from 1660. The
appendixes to his chapters contain a mass of previously unpublished
political correspondence of first-rate importance on which he based
his work. His first volume caused much stir, for it revealed the
extent to which English politics, in the reign of Charles II, had
been influenced by French intrigues, and disgusted the whigs by
exhibiting Sidney's acceptance of money from Barillon. Dalrymple
wrote in a pompous strain, and Johnson ridiculed his 'foppery'
1 Letters to Strahan, pp. 155 ff.
2 See chap. XIII, post.
6
## p. 291 (#317) ############################################
6
Horace Walpole's Historic Doubts 291
and 'bouncing style! He continued his work, in a new edition
(1790), to the capture of the French and Spanish fleets at Vigo.
Another history, which may have been 'on the stocks' in
Scotland in 1770, is Robert Watson's History of the Reign of
Philip II, published in two volumes in 1777, the year of its author's
promotion as principal of St Salvator's college, St Andrews. It
contains a full and careful account of the revolt of the Netherlands,
derived from van Meteren, Bentivoglio and Grotius, but its com-
paratively scanty notices of other Spanish affairs and of the foreign
policy of Philip II are unsatisfactoryWatson's style is similar,
though inferior to Robertson's : his sentences are generally well
balanced, but some are less skilfully constructed; he is verbose,
and, though his narrative shows a perception of the things which
appeal to the emotions, it lacks emotional expression. Horace
Walpole greatly admired his book, which passed through several
editions and was translated into French, German and Dutch.
At
the time of his death in 1781, Watson was engaged on a History of
Philip III, which was completed by William Thomson, a prolific
Scottish writer.
Incursions into the field of history were made by two English
authors of the governing class. Walpole's Historic Doubts on the
Life and Reign of Richard III (1768) is an attempt to show that
Richard was probably innocent of the crimes imputed to him
by Lancastrian writers. Sir George Buck, Carte and William
Guthrie, whose History of England to 1688 in four volumes (1744
–51) was little read and is of no importance, had, in different
degrees, anticipated him ; but Walpole was the first to argue the
case with skill. He got it up well, his points are clearly put, and
his pleading is witty and readable. The question has been revived
and adequately discussed in our own day. Some of the accusations
which Walpole criticises are no longer maintained by competent
historians, but Walpole could not (nor can any one) show sufficient
cause for doubting that Richard had part, at least, in the murder
of Henry VI, that he put Hastings to death without a trial and
that he murdered his nephews. Walpole was much pleased with
his own book and bitterly resented adverse criticism from Humes
and others
1 Boswell, Life, vol. II, pp. 210, 237 ; vol. v, p. 403.
? Forneron, H. , Histoire de Philippe II (1881), vol. I, p. 392, says that, with Gregorio
Leti, Watson contributed most to substitute legend for fact in the history of Philip II.
3 Letters, vol. x, p. 224.
4 Cf. ante, vol. VII, p. 443.
5 In Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne. See Walpole, Short Notes of My
Life.
6 See bibliography.
19-2
## p. 292 (#318) ############################################
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George, first baron Lyttelton, a second rate whig statesman,
whose active interest in other departments of literature is noticed
elsewhere', worked intermittently for some thirty years at his
History of the Life of Henry II, which he produced, in three vol-
umes, in 1767. The whole work, Johnson records, was printed twice
over and a great part of it three times, ‘his ambitious accuracy'
costing him at least £1000. He used the best authorities he could
find, and gives a minute and accurate account of the political
events of Henry's reign, together with remarks not always accord-
ing to knowledge on its constitutional and legal aspects. His style
is clear, but remarkably flat, his narrative inanimate, and his re-
flections, in which ‘Divine Providence' frequently appears, are
often almost childish. His opinions on the constitution in the
twelfth century flattered whig sentiment. Hume jeered at his
whiggery and his piety; Johnson was offended by his whiggery;
and Gibbon, referring to a review of the book which he had written
in Mémoires Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne, declared that
the public had ratified his judgment that the author's 'sense and
learning were not illuminated by a single ray of genius' Horace
Walpole's remark, 'How dull one may be if one will but take pains
for six or seven and twenty years together! ", is just, though, as
work conscientiously and, to some extent, efficiently done, the book
deserves some kinder comment. Lyttelton was a patron of poorer
authors, and among those he befriended was Archibald Bower,
a Scot, who wrote for booksellers. Bower asserted that he had
been a Jesuit and a counsellor of the inquisition in Italy, that he
had escaped and had become a protestant. Between 1748 and 1753,
a
he issued to numerous subscribers three volumes of a History
of the Popes written with a great show of learning and ending at
757. Through Lyttelton's influence, he was appointed librarian to
the queen (1748), and clerk of the buck-warrants (1754). In
1756—8, however, John Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury,
published proofs that Bower's account of himself was false, and
that his volumes, text and references, were stolen from other
authors, two-thirds of his first volume being practically translated
from Tillemont". He defended himself vigorously so far as his
own story was concerned, and gradually completed his History in
seven volumes, the seventh going down to 1758, but disposing of
the history from 1600 onwards in twenty-six pages. The book,
i See chap. V, ante.
2 Lives of the Poets.
• Memoirs, pp. 173–4, ed. Hill, G. B.
4 Letters, vol. VII, p. 122.
• See bibliography as to Gibbon's debt to Tillemont, cf. chap. XIII, post.
## p. 293 (#319) ############################################
Smollett.
Goldsmith. Leland
293
which was avowedly written against the claims of the see of Rome,
has no literary merit. Bower, though an impudent impostor, had
some learning, but his last four volumes are not of historical
importance, and the reputation of his History did not survive
Douglas's attack.
History was written as hackwork by two authors of eminent
genius. Tobias George Smollett was hired to write a history to
rival Hume's work, of which the first two volumes had then
appeared, and, in 1757, he produced his Compleat History of
England to 1748, in four volumes, written in fourteen months. He
boasts of having consulted over three hundred books. When he
began to write, he had 'a warm side' to whig principles ; but he
changed his opinions as he proceeded. The History sold well, and
Hume, while contemptuous, was annoyed at his rivalry! Smollett
wrote a continuation ; the part from the revolution was revised
and republished as a continuation of Hume's History and, as such,
passed through several editions. It favours the tory side and is
written in a robust and unaffected style. Oliver Goldsmith, in the
preface to his History of England to 1760, in four volumes (1771),
disclaims any attempt at research, and says that he wrote to
instruct beginners and to refresh the minds of the aged, and not
to add to our historical knowledge but to contract it. ' In matter,
his History is indebted to Hume. Both it and his two smaller
books on the same subject are written in the charming and graceful
style which makes all his prose works delightful. The smaller
books, at least, were extensively used in education within the last
seventy years. Neither Smollett, though he took his History
seriously, nor Goldsmith should be considered as a historian.
Ireland found its historian at home. Thomas Leland, senior
fellow of Trinity college, Dublin, wrote a History of Ireland from
the Invasion of Henry II, ending with the treaty of Limerick
(1691), which was published in 1773 in three volumes. Though he
consulted some original authorities, he founds his work, after losing
the guidance of Giraldus, mainly on those of Ware, Camden,
Stanihurst, Cox and Carte, noting his authorities in his margins
though without precise references. He writes in a lucid, straight-
forward, but inanimate style, and, though some of his statements
and comments are capable of correction by modern scholars, his
narrative, as a whole, is accurate, sober and impartial. The History
of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan,
from 1745 to 1761, by Robert Orme, published in two volumes
1 Burton, J. H. , Life, vol. 11, p. 53.
## p. 294 (#320) ############################################
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Historians
a
(the second in two sections') in 1763–78, is a contemporary
memoir, for Orme was in India in the company's service during
practically the whole time of which he wrote. It is a record of
noble deeds written with picturesque details, and in dignified and
natural language appropriate to its subject. Its accuracy in all
important matters is unquestionable? It is too full of minor
events which, however interesting in themselves, bewilder a reader
not thoroughly acquainted with the history. Nor does it lay
sufficient stress on events of the first magnitude. To this defect,
all contemporary memoirs are, relatively, liable, and, in Orme's
case, it is heightened by his excessive minuteness. It has been
observed that he errs in treating the native princes rather than
the French 'as principals in the story. This, which would be
a fault in a later history, is interesting in Orme's book, as it shows
the aspect under which affairs appeared to a competent observer
on the spot. William Russell's History of Modern Europe, from
the time of Clovis to 1763, in five volumes (1779—86), is creditable
to its author, who began life as an apprentice to a bookseller and
printer, and became ‘reader' for William Strahan, the publisher
of the works of Gibbon, Hume, Robertson and other historians.
Its sole interest consists in Russell's idea that Europe, as a whole,
has a history which should be written by pursuing what he calls
'a great line. ' He was not the man to write it : his book is badly
constructed ; far too large a space is given to English history;
there are strange omissions in his narrative and several blunders.
Together with the development of historical writing, this period
saw a remarkable increase in the publication of materials for it in
the form of state papers and correspondence. The share taken by
Lord Hailes and Sir John Dalrymple in this movement is noticed
above. A third volume of Carte's Ormond, published in 1735,
the year before the publication of the two containing the duke's
Life, consists of a mass of original letters to which he refers in the
Life. A portion of the State Papers of the Earl of Clarendon
was published in three volumes by the university of Oxford in 1767.
The publication of the Thurloe Papers by Thomas Birch has
already been noted in this work? Birch, rector of St Margaret
Pattens, London, and Depden, Suffolk, did much historical work,
scenting out manuscript authorities with the eagerness of 'a young
setting dog. His more important productions are An Inquiry
into the Share which Charles I had in the Transactions of the
Earl of Glamorgan (1747), in answer to Carte's contention in his
1 Macaulay, Essay on Clive.
2 See vol. VII, pp. 187–8.
>
## p. 295 (#321) ############################################
State Papers, etc.
295
Ormond that the commission to the earl was not genuine; Negotia-
tions between the Courts of England, France, and Brussels,
1592–1617 (1749); Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth from 1581
(1754), mainly extracts from the papers of Anthony Bacon at
Lambeth ; and Lives of Henry, prince of Wales and archbishop
Tillotson. At the time of his death (1766), he was preparing for
press miscellaneous correspondence of the times of James I and
Charles I. This interesting collection presenting the news of the
day has been published in four volumes, two for each reign, under
the title Court and Times etc. (1848). Birch, though a lively talker
was a dull writer ; but his work is valuable. He was a friend of
the family of lord chancellor Hardwicke, who presented him to
seven benefices.
The second earl of Hardwicke shared Birch's historical taste, and,
in 1778, published anonymously Miscellaneous State Papers, from
1501 to 1726, in two volumes, a collection of importance compiled
from the manuscripts of lord chancellor Somers. In 1774, Joseph
Maccormick, a St Andrews minister, published the State Papers
and Letters left by his great-uncle William Carstares, private
secretary to William III, material invaluable for Scottish history
in his reign, and prefixed a life of Carstares. The manuscripts left
by Carte were used by James Macpherson, of Ossianic fame, in his
Original Papers, from 1660 to 1714, in two volumes (1775). In the
first part are extracts from papers purporting to belong to a life of
James II written by himself, Carte's extracts being supplemented
by Macpherson from papers in the Scottish college at Paris. The
second part contains Hanover papers, mostly extracts from the
papers of Robethon, private secretary to George II, now in the
British Museum; the copies are accurate, but some of the translations
are careless? . Also, in 1775, he produced a History of Great Britain
during the same period, in two volumes, which is based on the papers,
and is strongly tory in character. For this, he received £3000.
His style is marked by a constant recurrence of short and some-
what abrupt sentences. Both his History and his Papers
annoyed the whigs, especially by exhibiting the intrigues of
leading statesmen of the revolution with the court of St
Germain? . His Introduction to the History of Great Britain
and Ireland (1771) contains boldly asserted and wildly erroneous
a
9
1 For the James II papers and their relation to the Life of James II, ed. Clarke, J. S. ,
1816, see Ranke, History of England (Eng. trans. ), vol. vi, pp. 29 ff. , and, for the Hanover
papers, Chance, J. F. , in Eng. Hist. Rev. vol. xm (1898), pp. 55 ff. and pp. 533 ff.
2 Horace Walpole, Last Journals, vol. 1, pp. 444–5, ed. Steuart, A. F.
## p. 296 (#322) ############################################
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Historians
theories, particularly on ethnology, inspired by a spirit of excessive
Celticism.
Much interest was excited by the speculations of the French
philosophes, in some measure the literary offspring of Locke and
enthusiastic admirers of the British constitution. Influenced by
Montesquieu's famous Esprit des Lois (1748), Adam Ferguson,
Hume's successor as advocates' librarian (1757) and then a professor
of philosophy at Edinburgh, published his Essay on the History of
Civil Society (1767). Hume advised that it should not be published,
but it was much praised, was largely sold and was translated into
German and French. Nevertheless, Hume's judgment was sound;
the book is plausible and superficial'. It is written in the polished
and balanced style of which Hume was the master? . The admiration
expressed on the continent for the British constitution led Jean
Louis Delolme, a citizen of Geneva, who came to England about
1769, to write an account of it in French which was published at
Amsterdam in 1771. An English translation, probably not by the
author, with three additional chapters, was published in London in
1775, with the title The Constitution of England; it had a large
sale both here and in French and German translations abroad, and
was held in high repute for many years. Delolme was a careful
observer of our political institutions and, as a foreigner, marked
some points in them likely to escape the notice of those familiar
with them from childhood. The fundamental error of his book is
that it regards the constitution as a nicely adjusted machine in
which the action of each part is controlled by another, instead of
recognising that any one of the 'powers' within it was capable of
development at the expense of the others; though, even as he
wrote, within hearing of mobs shouting for ‘Wilkes and Liberty,'
one of them, the 'power of the people,' was entering on a period of
development. To him, the outward form of the constitution was
everything : he praised its stability and the system of counterpoises
which, he believed, assured its permanence, so long as the Commons
did not refuse supplies ; he failed to see that it was built up by
living forces any one of which might acquire new power or lose
something of what it already had, and so disturb the balance which
he represented as its special characteristic and safeguard.
1 Stephen, Sir L. , English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II, p. 215.
? Ferguson's History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic is noticed
in the following chapter.
* Stephen, u. 8. 209–214.
## p. 297 (#323) ############################################
CHAPTER XIII
HISTORIANS
II
GIBBON
THE mind of Gibbon, like that of Pope, from which, in many
respects, it widely differed, was a perfect type of the literary mind
proper. By this, it is not meant that either the historian or the
poet was without literary defects of his own, or of weaknesses-one
might almost say obliquities—of judgment or temperament which
could not fail to affect the character of his writings. But, like
Pope and very few others among great English men of letters,
Gibbon had recognised, very early in his life, the nature of the
task to the execution of which it was to be devoted, and steadily
pursued the path chosen by him till the goal had been reached
which he had long and steadily kept in view1. Like Pope, again,
Gibbon, in the first instance, was virtually self-educated; the
intellectual education with which he provided himself was more
conscientious and thorough, as, in its results, it was more pro-
ductive, than that which many matured systems of mental training
succeed in imparting. The causes of his extraordinary literary
success have to be sought, not only or mainly in the activity and
the concentration of his powers-for these elements of success he
had in common with many writers, who remained half-educated as
well as self-educated—but, above all, in the discernment which
accompanied these qualities. He was endowed with an inborn
tendency to reject the allurements of hand-to-mouth knowledge
and claptrap style, and to follow with unfaltering determination
the guidance which study and reason had led him to select. Thus,
1 His statement (Memoirs, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck--the edition cited throughout this
chapter—p. 195) that he never presumed to accept a place,' with Hume and Robert-
son, 'in the triumvirate of British historians' may be taken cum grano.
## p. 298 (#324) ############################################
298
Historians
as culminating in the production of his great work, Gibbon's
literary labours were very harmonious, and, so far as this can
be asserted of any performance outside the field of pure literature,
complete in themselves. While carrying them on, he experienced
the periods of difficulty and doubt which no worker is spared ;
but, though the flame flickered at times, it soon recovered its
steady luminosity. After transcribing the caliph Abdalrahman's
reflection, how, in a reign of fifty years of unsurpassed grandeur,
he had numbered but fourteen days of pure and genuine happiness,
he adds in a note :
If I may speak of myself (the only person of whom I can speak with
certainty) my happy hours have far exceeded the scanty numbers of the
caliph of Spain; and I shall not scruple to add, that many of them are due to
the pleasing labour of the present composition 1
Thus, while he was continuously engaged in occupations which
never ceased to stimulate his energies and to invigorate his powers,
he was also fortunate enough to achieve the great work which
proved the sum of his life's labours, to identify himself and his
fame with one great book, and to die with his intellectual task
done. Macaulay, the one English historian whose literary genius
can be drawn into comparison with Gibbon’s, left the history of
England which he had 'purposed to write from the accession of
King James II down to a time which is within the memory of
men living' a noble fragment. Gibbon could lay down his pen,
in a summer-house in his garden at Lausanne, ‘in the day, or
rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, after writing this final
sentence of his completed book :
It was among the ruins of the Capitol, that I first conceived the idea of a
work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life; and
which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity
and candour of the publica.
Though what Gibbon calls the curiosity of the public' may
have exhausted itself long since, the candid judgment of many
generations and of almost every class of readers has confirmed the
opinion formed at once by Gibbon's own age. His great work
remains an enduring monument of research, an imperishable
literary possession and one of the highest encouragements to
intellectual endeavour that can be found in the history of
letters.
The facts of Gibbon's life in themselves neither numerous
nor startling—are related by him in an autobiography which,
i Decline and Fall, chap. LII.
2 Cf. Memoirs, p. 225.
## p. 299 (#325) ############################################
Gibbon's Autobiography
299
by general consent, has established itself as one of the most
fascinating books of its class in English literature. This is the
more remarkable, since the Memoirs of My Life and Writings,
as they were first printed by Gibbon's intimate friend the first
earl of Sheffield (John Baker Holroyd), who made no pretence
of concealing his editorial method, were a cento put together out
of six, or, strictly speaking, seven, more or less fragmentary
sketches written at different times by the author! Lord Sheffield
was aided in his task (to what extent has been disputed) by
his daughter Maria Josepha (afterwards Lady Stanley of Alderley),
described by Gibbon himself as 'a most extraordinary young
woman,' and certainly one of the brightest that ever put pen
to paper. The material on which they worked was excellent in
its way, and their treatment of it extraordinarily skilful ; so that
a third member of this delightful family, Lord Sheffield's sister
Serena,' expressed the opinion of many generations of readers
in writing of the Memoirs : "They make me feel affectionate to
Mr Gibbon? ' The charm of Gibbon's manner as an autobiographer
and, in a lesser degree, as a letter-writer, lies not only in his
inexhaustible vivacity of mind, but, above all, in his gift of self-
revelation, which is not obscured for long either by over-elaboration
of style or by affectation of chic (such as his more than filial
effusions to his stepmother or his facetious epistles to his friend
Holroyd occasionally display). Out of all this wealth of matter, ,
we must content ourselves here with abstracting only a few
necessary data
Edward Gibbon, born at Putney-on-Thames on 27 April 1737,
came of a family of ancient descents, tory principles and ample
income. His grandfather, a city merchant, had seen his wealth
.
engulfed in the South Sea abyss—it was only very wise great men,
like Sir Robert Walpole, or very cautious small men, like Pope,
1 For details, see bibliography. Frederic Harrison, in Proceedings of the Gibbon
Commemoration (1895), describes the whole as '& pot-pourri concocted out of the MS
with great skill and tact, but with the most daring freedom. ' He calculates that
possibly one-third of the MS was not printed at all by Lord Sheffield.
