No More Learning

The tenth Dis-
course, on sculpture, is the least satisfactory of the series. The
fourteenth Discourse is of special interest as relating to Gains-
borough ; and the particulars of the meeting of the two great
painters at the death-bed of Gainsborough are charmingly related.
Although great changes have taken place in public opinion in
the relative estimation of various schools of painting, most of
Reynolds's remarks, dealing as they do with essentials, remain of
value. The book is charming reading for all who love art, and the
reader will close it with a higher appreciation of the character of
the man and the remarkable insight of the great painter.
Hannah More's life was a remarkable one, and her fame as
an author, at one time considerable, was kept alive until near the
middle of the nineteenth century. It is at present nearly dead
and is not likely to revive. But her correspondence is most
undeservedly neglected, for she was a good letter-writer, and her
accounts of the doings of the intellectual world are of great interest,
and worthy to be read after Fanny Burney and Mrs Thrale. We
have full information respecting the doings of Johnson's circle from
different points of view; but there is much fresh information in
Hannah More's letters. Boswell was offended with the young lady
and is often spiteful in his remarks about her. The story of the
value of her flattery has been made too much of, for there is
1 See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. B. , vol. II, p. 293.


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268
Letter-Writers
plenty of evidence that Johnson highly esteemed the character
of Hannah More. Sally More was a lively writer and she
gives a vivid picture of her sister's intercourse with Johnson in
1775.
We drank tea at Sir Joshua's with Dr Johnson. Hannah is certainly a great
favourite. She was placed next him, and they had the entire conversation to
themselves. They were both in remarkably high spirits; it was certainly her
lucky night! I have never heard her say so many good things. The old
genius was extremely jocular, and the young one very pleasant.
The scene had changed when Hannah More met Johnson at
Oxford, in the year of his death, at dinner in the lodge at Pem-
broke. She wrote home :
wan.
Who do you think is my principal cicerone at Oxford ? Only Dr Johnson,
and we do so gallant it about! You cannot imagine with what delight he
showed me every part of his own college. . . . When we came into the Common
room, we spied a fine large print of Johnson, framed and hung up that very
morning with this motto: ‘And is not Johnson ours, himself a host ? ' Under
which stared you in the face ‘From Miss More's Sensibility. ' This little
incident amused us;-but alas! Johnson looks very ill indeed-spiritless and
However he made an effort to be cheerful and I exerted myself much
to make him so.
The triumphant entrance into the great London world by
Hannah More, a young Bristol schoolmistress, is difficult to account
for except on the grounds of her remarkable abilities. An agree-
able young lady of seven and twenty, fresh from the provinces, who
gained at once the cordial friendship not only of Garrick, Reynolds,
Johnson and Horace Walpole but of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu and
the literary ladies of the day, and who became herself one of the
leaders of the Blue Stockings, must have been a woman very much
out of the common. When Hannah More came first to London,
she visited Reynolds, whose sister promised to introduce her to
Johnson. She then met Garrick, who was first interested in her
because of some intelligent criticism of his acting which he had
seen. He and his wife became Hannah's dearest friends, and, on
hearing of Mrs Garrick's death, Hannah More wrote to a friend
(21 October 1822) :
I spent above twenty winters under her roof, and gratefully remember not
only their personal kindness, but my first introduction through them into a
society remarkable for rank, literature and talents.
She kept up her correspondence with her distinguished London
friends ; but most of them had died before she had arrived at
middle age. We then notice a considerable change in the subjects
of her correspondence, and her letters are occupied with the


## p. 269 (#295) ############################################

White of Selborne
269
progress of some of the great movements in which she was
interested. Wilberforce was a constant correspondent, and he found
her a warm helper in the anti-slavery cause. When she and her
sisters gave up their school at Bristol and retired on a competence,
she devoted all her time to philanthropic purposes. This is not the
place for dealing with the subjects of her voluminous writings, and
they are only referred to here as an indication of the more serious
character of the later correspondence? .
Gilbert White's Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne
(1789) holds a unique position in English literature as the solitary
classic of natural history. It is not easy to give, in a few words,
a reason for its remarkable success. It is, in fact, not so much
a logically arranged and systematic book as an invaluable record
of the life work of a simple and refined man who succeeded in
picturing himself as well as what he saw. The reader is carried
along by his interest in the results of far-sighted observation; but,
more than this, the reader imbibes the spirit of the writer which
pervades the whole book and endears it to like-minded naturalists
as a valued companion.
For some twenty years or more (1767—87), White wrote a
series of letters to Thomas Pennant and Daines Barrington, giving
a remarkable account of the chief instances of the special habits of
animals and of natural phenomena which he was daily observing.
Although these correspondents asked him questions and remarked
upon his observations, they learned much more from White than
he from them. Pennant is severely criticised by Thomas Bell, one
of the editors of White's work, who writes : The man to whom
the vain and self-seeking author of "British Zoology” was so
greatly indebted is almost entirely ignored. ' The late Alfred
Newton, in his notice of Gilbert White in The Dictionary of
National Biography, however, exonerates Pennant, noting that
'In the preface he generally but fully acknowledges White's
services. ' White's friendship with Barrington appears to have
begun about the end of 1767, the first published letter to him
being dated June 1769. Barrington, in 1770, suggested the
publication of White's observations; but, although White thought
favourably of the advice, he was diffident and did not prepare his
materials for press until January 1788. Even then, there was more
delay, so the book was not published until 1789.
White seems to have collected largely, with the ultimate object
1 Cf. , as to Hannah More, post, vol. XI.


## p. 270 (#296) ############################################

270
Letter-Writers
of forming a naturalist's calendar; for, writing to Pennant on
19 July 1771, he expresses his diffidence in respect to publishing
his notes because
I ought to have begun it twenty years ago. If I was to attempt anything, it
should be somewhat of a Natural History of my native parish, an Annus
Historio-Naturalis, comprising a journal for one whole year, and illustrated
with large notes and observations. '
Eventually, he did not make any considerable alteration in his
letters but left all the vivid pictures in their original setting ; and
The Naturalist's Calendar did not see the light until two years
after his death-in 1795.
A Quarterly reviewer? , speaking of White, describes him as
'a man the power of whose writings has immortalised an obscure
village and a tortoise,--for who has not heard of Timothy-as long
as the English language lives. The life history of Timothy may be
read in White's letters, and in the amusing letter to Miss Hecky
Mulso, afterwards Mrs Chapone (31 August 1784), written by him
in the name of Timothy. The tortoise was an American, born in
1734 in the province of Virginia, who remembered the death of his
great-great-grandfather in the 160th year of his age. Thomas Bell
disputes the American origin and believes the animal to have
belonged to a north African species, naming it testudo marginata;
but Bennet'held that it was distinct and he described and named
it T. Whitei, after the man who had immortalised it.
Selborne may be obscure ; but it is a beautiful village in a
beautiful country eminently suited for the purpose of White in
making it the centre of a life's work of zoological research and
observation. The book was immediately popular both with the
general public and with all naturalists, many of the most eminent
of which class have successively edited it with additional and
corroborative notes.
White's was an uneventful life as we usually understand the
phrase ; but it was also a full and busy one, the results of which
have greatly benefited his fellow men. He was born and died at
Selborne; and that delightful neighbourhood was the centre of his
world. But it would be a mistake to forget that he was a man of
capacity equal to the duties of a larger sphere. He was for fifty
years a fellow of Oriel college, Oxford, and, for some of these
years, dean of the college. In 1757, there was an election for the
provostship, when, although Musgrave was chosen, White had
many supporters. He quitted residence at Oxford in the following
1 Vol. LXXI, no. 141, p. 8 note; art. on The Honey-Bee.


## p. 271 (#297) ############################################

The Warwickshire Coterie
271
year, with the intention of settling permanently at Selborne. He
refused several college livings for this reason, although he held
the living of Moreton Pinckney in Northamptonshire as a non-
resident incumbent. Notwithstanding this apparent indifference
to duty, he worked successively in several curacies, the last being
that of his beloved Selborne.
II
THE WARWICKSHIRE COTERIE
Somewhat apart from the more famous letter-writers of the
age stood a circle of friends, some of whom might be described
as in the great world while none were exactly of it, whose corre-
spondence, and more general literary work, are full of interest.
They were all, at one time or another, dwellers in Warwickshire or
on its borders, lived at no great distance from each other and
wrote frequently when they did not meet. Perhaps the poet
Shenstone is the most obvious link between them : they all were
acquainted with him, if they were not all personally known to
each other. The circle includes Henrietta Lady Luxborough, of
Barrels near Henley-in-Arden ; Frances duchess of Somerset, one
of whose residences was Ragley near Alcester ; Richard Graves,
who belonged to the family which owned Mickleton, not actually
in Warwickshire but not far from Stratford-on-Avon ; Richard
Jago, who was vicar of Harbury and held other cures in the county;
William Somerville, of Edstone near Henley ; and it was com-
pleted by persons who were not so much writers themselves as
friends of men of letters, such as Anthony Whistler (who had
been at Pembroke college, Oxford, with Graves and Shenstone),
and Sanderson Miller, antiquary and architect, the builder of the
tower on Edge-hill commemorated by Jago in his poem. Nearly
all of these wrote good letters, which were published, and most
of them at least dabbled in literature also, in light verse or easy
prose. And all were more or less in the net of the omnivorous
publisher Robert Dodsley, who did a great deal to make Shenstone
and the Leasowes famous1.
Of Somerville”, a scholar and a gentleman (though his writing
1 As to Robert Dodsley, see ante, vol. ix, pp. 190—1 et al.
? This spelling has been continued in the present chapter for the sake of uni-
formity. The name was, however, always spelt Somervile in the autograph letters
of its owner and in his works printed in his lifetime.


## p. 272 (#298) ############################################

272
Letter-Writers
does not always suggest it) some account has already been given
in an earlier chapter': his prose, in prefaces and letters, many of
the latter still unpublished, is of the good, sonorous, somewhat
pedantic kind which was beginning, even when he wrote, to be
old-fashioned. Another country gentleman was Anthony Whistler
of Whitchurch, an Eton boy, who imbibed 'such a dislike to
learning languages that he could not read the Classics, but no one
formed a better judgment of them,' and was 'a young man of
great delicacy of sentiment. As an undergraduate, he published
anonymously, in 1736, a poem entitled The Shuttlecock. He died
in 1754, aged forty. For many years he had corresponded with
Shenstone and Graves, and, on his death, the former wrote to
the latter "the triumvirate which was the greatest happiness and
the greatest pride of my life is broken. ” Few of their letters,
unfortunately, are preserved. Through Sanderson Miller, the
squire of Radway at the foot of Edge-hill and the friend of all
the noble builders and gardeners of the age (except Horace
Walpole who rarely lost an opportunity of laughing at him), the
Warwickshire coterie had links at once with the great world and
with the greatest writer of the age. It was in his drawing-room
that Fielding read the manuscript of Tom Jones to an admiring
circle of ladies and gentlemen ; and for an improvement which
Pitt generously designed in his garden Miller happily thanked
The Paymaster, well skilled in planting,
Pleased to assist when cash was wanting,
He bid my Laurels grow: they grew
Fast as his Laurels always do.
It was no doubt as a refuge from domestic unhappiness that
Lady Luxborough turned to literature and sought the friendship
of lesser poets. Born about 1700, she was half-sister of Henry St
John, afterwards viscount Bolingbroke, to whom she was all her
life devotedly attached? . In 1727, she married Robert Knight, son
of the cashier of the South Sea company, whom Horace Walpole
contemptuously calls a 'transport. ' About nine years later, she
was separated from her husband in consequence of some scandal
which has never been verified. Horace Walpole, who disliked her
and her friends, speaks of a 'gallantry' in which Dalton, tutor to
the son of Lady Hertford (afterwards duchess of Somerset) was
concerned; but this is unlikely, for the friendship of the two ladies
See chap. v, pp. 109 ff. ante. As to Jago, see ibid. pp. 112-113. As to Shenstone,
see chap. VII, pp. 149 ff. , ante.
2 Cf, ante, vol. IX, p. 217 and note.
<


## p. 273 (#299) ############################################

An Aristocratic Correspondence 273
was unbroken, and Lady Hertford was a particularly upright and
scrupulous person. Family tradition associates her rather with
Somerville ; but this, again, does not seem probable. Whatever
the cause, Henrietta Knight was banished to Barrels in 1736, and
never saw her husband (who became Lord Luxborough in 1746
and earl of Catherlough in 1763, seven years after her death)
again.
At Barrels, she lived quietly, but made friends with her neigh-
bours, and became the centre of a literary society which included
Shenstone and Somerville, Graves, Jago and a number of Warwick-
shire clergy. She was the 'Asteria' of their poems, which
commemorated her love of letters, her library and her garden.
Her letters to Shenstone were carefully preserved by him, and he
described them as 'written with abundant ease, Politeness, and
Vivacity; in which she was scarce equalled by any woman of her
time. ' She, certainly, wrote with simplicity and charm about
trivial things, such as her friends' poetry and her own horticultural
experiments—one of her letters contains a delightful defence of
autumn; and, after the manner of ladies in society who have
any knowledge of literature, she had an exaggerated appreciation
of the literary achievements of her friends. Her adulation of
Shenstone is so excessive that one almost begins to suspect her
of a warmer feeling. The letters which he received from her
between 1739 and 1756 were published by Dodsley in 1775, and
three years later there appeared, under the editorship of Thomas
Hull the actor, two more volumes of correspondence between
them, with other letters from the duchess of Somerset, Miss Dolman
(Shenstone's cousin), Thomas Percy (of the Reliques) who had
himself connections with Warwickshire', Dodsley, Whistler and
others. They discussed public affairs sparingly, though, in later
years, they were all, through the Lytteltons, much interested in
Pitt; they talked a great deal about gardens, and waterfalls,
statues and urns; and they cast a favourable eye upon contem-
porary literature, admiring Thomson (whose Spring was dedicated
to Lady Hertford), thinking very well of Gray's Elegy, and being
“highly entertained with the History of Sir Charles Grandison,
which is so vastly above Pamela or Clarissa. Though the authors
were students of the greater letter-writers, of Mme de Sévigné,
Pope and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, their own interests were
simple, only slightly tinged with the sentimental affectations of
1
1 As to Percy, see chap. x, ante,
E. L. X.
CH. XI.
18


## p. 274 (#300) ############################################

274
Letter-Writers
the shepherdesses and hermits with whom the poets played,
genuinely delighting in out of door pleasures, but not averse
from a good dinner and a glass of wine. They present a pic-
ture of English country life, in a literary circle, unsurpassed, if
not unique, in its veracity and completeness. Hull's collection
goes down to 1775, and is concluded by some rather tedious
reflections from a ‘Miss N—’upon Venice and the residences
and manners of John, third duke (and thirty-first earl) of Atholl,
a benevolent personage who drowned himself in the Tay in
1774.
The Correspondence between Frances Countess of Hertford
(afterwards Duchess of Somerset) and Henrietta Louisa Countess
of Pomfret, which was not published till 1805, belongs to an earlier
period, extending from 1738 to 1741. The two ladies were both
of the bedchamber of queen Caroline, and it was Lady Hertford
who obtained the pardon of Savage through the queen's influence.
Johnson, who pays her a lofty compliment on this, is less polite
towards her interests in literature, and tells us that it was her 'prac-
tice to invite every summer some poet into the country, to hear
her verses, and assist her studies,' adding that this honour was one
year conferred on Thomson, but he took more delight in carousing
with Lord Hertford and his friends than assisting her ladyship’s
poetical operations, and therefore never received another summons. '
Another poet who dedicated a volume to her was Isaac Watts, and
Shenstone's ode, Rural Elegance, was also, after her death,
inscribed to her memory. Her correspondent Henrietta, countess
of Pomfret, was granddaughter of lord chancellor Jeffreys, and her
letters from France and Italy faintly recall the style of Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu, with some details, not uninteresting, of
life at foreign courts. Lady Hertford was a shrewd observer,
and contributes opinions on the early methodists which represent
the judgment of the quiet, cultivated, religious society to which,
after her retirement from court, she belonged. Two smart poems
in Dodsley's collection refer to her supposed affection for Sir
William Hamilton; and gossips made free with her name, but quite
without reason. Her later years, at least, those of warm friend-
ship with Lady Luxborough, were secluded and sad.
‘After a Ball or Masquerade,' she wrote, in language which well illustrates
the style of these letters, ‘have we not come Home very well contented to pull
off our Ornaments and fine Cloaths in order to go to rest ? Such, methinks,
6
1 Vol. vi, pp. 230-1.


## p. 275 (#301) ############################################

Richard Graves
275
is the Reception we naturally give to the Warnings of bodily Decays; they
seem to undress as by Degrees, to prepare us for a Rest that will refresh us
more powerfully than any Night's Sleep could do. '
There is, indeed, in most of the members of this coterie, a
pensive, even plaintive, tone. Jago found the country clergyman's
quiet melancholy natural to him, and, if Shenstone began by being
sad as night only for wantonness, his retirement at the Leasowes,
in spite of the interest of his wilderness, his waterfall and his urns,
and the polite appreciation of his fashionable neighbours, soon
tinged his sedentary and self-indulgent life with sorrow and regret
as well as with dyspepsia and fretfulness. But he could write a
cheerful letter and a bright and ingenious essay to the last. His
friend Graves, to whom a large number of his letters were addressed,
in the Recollections of some particulars of his life (1788), perhaps
the most interesting of bis works, gives him not undeserved credit
for
such a justness of thought and expression, and such a knowledge of human
nature as well as of books that, if we consider how little [he] had conversed
with the great world, one would think he had almost an intuitive knowledge
of the characters of men.
He had, indeed, all the acuteness of observation which belongs to
the literary recluse, and he wrote with an entire absence of affec-
tation and an easy grace which made his letters not unworthy to
stand among the very best of those which the eighteenth century
produced. Passages of pleasant fancy or humour, of description
and of criticism, occur again and again in his correspondence, and,
whatever may be said of his poetry, his prose style is eminently
felicitous. Admirers of good writing have too long neglected
him.
The same may be said of his intimate friend, Richard Graves,
well known to all the Warwickshire coterie. He wrote so much
that there is a natural temptation to regard him as a mere scribbler
or a literary hack. Such a judgment would be most unjust. He
lived to be nearly ninety, and in so many years it is no tedious
achievement to have written some dozen books that are worth
reading, besides a few more which, perhaps, are not. Graves
was a fellow of All Souls, and there began a lifelong friendship
with Blackstone. He was a poet, and a collector of poems :
Euphrosyne and The Festoon bear witness. He was a translator
of Marcus Aurelius and of many ancient epigrams. He was a
correspondent of clever people, but better pleased to receive
than to write letters and not one to copy and preserve those
18-2


## p. 276 (#302) ############################################

276
Letter-Writers
ri
he had written. He was a diligent country parson (not to be
confused with his son, sometime vicar of Great Malvern, whose
boyish skill in Latin was commended by Shenstone), never away
for a month at a time in all the fifty-five years he was rector of
Claverton. In that delightful village, at an easy distance from
Bath, by a charming country road, along which he walked almost
every weekday for more than fifty years, he resided from 1749 to
1804, paying occasional visits to London, to Warwickshire and to
the Leasowes. He was chaplain to the countess of Chatham, and
became private tutor to several eminent persons, such as Prince
Hoare and Malthus; and, at Bath, he was a popular figure, the
intimate friend of 'lowborn Allen' and his nephew-in-law, bishop
Warburton. He had the knack of writing pleasing trivialities in
the form of essays, which contained often curious information,
entertaining anecdotes and sound morals. But his chief success,
which should preserve his memory green, was as a novelist.
He was unquestionably the most natural and effective writer
of prose tales in his time, and might almost claim to be the
originator of unemotional, impassionate romances of rural life
and manners.
The Spiritual Quixote (1772), his most famous story, and the
only one which, in his own time, achieved a second edition, is a tale
of a young country squire who was influenced by the methodists
and took a long tour of the midlands, suffering a number of mild
adventures, as a follower of Whitefield. Graves had been at
Pembroke, Oxford, and never quite overcame his disdain of the
servitor. He makes great fun of the followers of methodism; but
he always respects genuine piety. Descriptions of open air preach-
ing and of the treatment of the preachers are frequent: he could
never get rid of the conviction that, in spite of irregularities,
methodism was showing the parish clergy how to do their duty.
But this is only a small part of the interest of The Spiritual
Quixote : its real attraction lies in the accounts of the social life
and entertainments of the time, the ways of travellers and the
customs of rustics and innkeepers. So, again, Columella, or the
Distressed Anchoret (1776), which, like its predecessor, has a de-
tailed (this time faintly disguised) picture of Shenstone, records the
travels of a lawyer and a college don and the placid, but not always
proper, recreations of a sluggish country gentleman of small fortune
and literary interest. There is a placid satisfaction in the outlook
on life which represents not only the attitude of Columella's old
friends but that of Graves himself. Thus, he speaks of the journey
a


## p. 277 (#303) ############################################

Literature at Bath
277
of Atticus the 'solemn Head of a college,' and Hortensius 'the
sage Counsel learned in the law':-
The consciousness of having punctually discharged every duty of their
respective stations diffused an ease and chearfulness over their minds, and
left them open to enjoyment, and at leisure to receive amusement from every
objeot that presented itself in the way. The freshness of the morning, the
Serenity of the air, the verdure of the fields, every gentleman's seat, every
farm-house, and every cottage they passed by, or every village they rode
through, afforded some kind of pleasing reflections to persons of their happy
disposition. . . . Thus if they overtook or were overtaken by anyone on the road,
even of the lowest rank, instead of passing him by with a supercilious air, as
if he were of a different species, they considered him in the same light as a
sportsman would a partridge or a woodcock, as one that might afford them
either pleasure or instruction; and usually commenced a conversation.
This was the way in which Graves lived and wrote.
Yet he was
not blind, as Columella shows, to the seamy side of things.
More delicate than Columella are the two charming little
volumes entitled Eugenius or Anecdotes of the Golden Vale (1785),
which, from a description or two of scenery, suggest that the
neighbourhood of the Wye was familiar to the writer and thus
account, perhaps, for the reference in The Spiritual Quixote to
Pope's 'Man of Ross'—'What, old Kyrle! I knew him well; he
was an honest old cock and loved his pipe and a Tankard of cider
as well as the best of us. '—They show, too, as do other of Graves's
writings, in a touch here and there, a knowledge of the habits
and sufferings of the poor almost as intimate as Crabbe's.
Plexippus or The Aspiring Plebeian, published (anonymously as
was Columella) in 1790, is a quiet tale of the love affairs of two
young men, eminently sober and respectable, told in the pleasantest
vein of Graves's quiet observation of mankind. Cheltenham, Wales
and London are the scenes of the story, which is of the placid type
that Graves loved. In his later years, he wrote essays and studies
of character, with a few vers de société, all very gentle, unaffected
and trivial; and he kept green, to the last, the memory of his
friend Shenstone and the literary circle in which he had moved.
The venue was now changed to Bath, where everybody in the
later eighteenth century (except poor Lady Luxborough, the terms
of whose separation from her husband would not allow her even to
go on the Bath road) came sooner or later. At Lady Miller's, of
Bath Easton, the undoubted original of Mrs Leo Hunter, a com-
pany of poetasters and dilettantes met every week for some years ;
Graves, who was constantly present, records, with a little flutter
of satisfaction, that on one occasion he met four duchesses. The


## p. 278 (#304) ############################################

278
Letter-Writers
results of their poetic contests were published in 1775 as Poetical
Amusements at a Villa near Bath, increased to three volumes a
year later, a sign of the popularity of this tepid form of literary
dissipation. The verses themselves are often ingenious, and the
'candid reader' is asked by their editor to
recollect that they were frequently the production of a few days-most of
them of as many hours; [and] that they originated amidst the hurry of plays,
balls, public breakfasts, and concerts, and all the dissipations of a full Bath
Season-alike unfriendly to contemplation and the Muses.
By the time they were written, most of the earlier and much more
brilliant literary coterie to which Graves had belonged had passed
away, and he was the only survivor with any claim to be a true
man of letters. The Leasowes had received all the wit and fashion
of the earlier time, and lovers of good literature had always been
welcome at Barrels. It is, indeed, round Shenstone and Lady
Luxborough, the poet and the letter-writer of unaffected charm,
that the memory of the Warwickshire coterie lingers; but Richard
Graves, who long survived them both, won for himself a place in
English letters, not lofty, but secure, where none of his friends
could excel him.


## p. 279 (#305) ############################################

CHAPTER XII
HISTORIANS
I
HUME AND MODERN HISTORIANS
6
'As for good [English] historians,' Voltaire wrote in 1734, ‘I
know of none as yet : a Frenchman [Rapin) has had to write their
history? ' His criticism was just, and, before him, both Addison
and Bolingbroke had noted the backwardness of English literature
so far as history was concerned. Yet there was no lack of interest
on the part of the educated classes in the history of their own
nation, for, during the first half of the eighteenth century, several
histories of England appeared which, in spite of gross defects,
found many readers. Nor is this interest difficult to account for.
Closely connected with the conservatism of the national character,
it had been fostered by the conflicts through which the nation had
passed in the preceding century; for, in these conflicts, great
respect was shown for precedent; in the struggle with Charles I,
though it was temporarily subversive of ancient institutions, the
parliamentary party made constant appeals to historic liberties,
while the lawyers and judges on the king's side found weapons in
the same armoury and cited records in support of the exercise of
arbitrary authority. The process of subversion was sharply
checked, and reverence for the ancient constitution was exhibited
by the invitation to Cromwell to assume the crown. More lately,
the revolution of 1688 had been a vindication of historic rights,
conducted with a punctilious observance of time honoured pro-
cedure. Principles involved in these conflicts still divided the
nation into two opposing parties, and whigs and tories alike were
eager to find such support for their opinions as might be derived
from history. Whigs, for example, would turn to Oldmixon or
1 Euvres, vol. XXIV, p. 137; see Gibbon's Memoirs, p. 295, ed. Hill, G. B.


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Rapin, tories to the History of England by Thomas Carte, the
nonjuror, which though written without literary skill, was superior,
as regards the extent of the author's researches, to any English
history of an earlier date than that of the appearance of his first
two volumes (1747, 1750); his fourth and last volume, which goes
down to 1654, was published in 1755, the year after his death ; his
Life of James, Duke of Ormond (1736), a tedious book, is of first-
rate importance, especially as regards Irish history. The general
interest in English history had been vastly strengthened by the
appearance of Clarendon's History, which has been treated in a
previous volume as belonging essentially to the class of con-
temporary memoirs, and it had been encouraged by the publication,
at the expense of the state, of Foedera et Conventiones (1704—35),
edited by Thomas Rymer and Robert Sanderson, in twenty volumes,
a collection of public documents of great value for most periods of
our history before the seventeenth century, the last document in-
cluded in it being dated 1654. This work laid a new foundation
for the writing of history on a scientific basis, from documentary
authorities; its value was thoroughly appreciated by Rapin, who
used it in his History, and, from time to time, published summaries
of its contents which were translated into English under the title
Acta Regia (1726–7).
Yet this interest did not, as has already been seen, call forth,
before Hume wrote, any history of England by a native historian
that is worthy to be classed as literature ; indeed, it was in itself
adverse to the appearance of such a work, for it caused English
history to be written for party purposes, and, consequently, no
effort was made to write it in a philosophic spirit, or to present it
in well devised form or in worthy language ; it fell into the hands
of hacks or partisans. Only one Englishman of that time wrote
history in a style that, of itself, makes his book valuable, and he
did not write English history. Simon Ockley, vicar of Swavesey,
Cambridgeshire, who had early devoted himself to the study of
eastern languages and customs, was appointed professor of Arabic
at Cambridge in 1711. 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


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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.


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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
>


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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.


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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.


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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


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286
Historians
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


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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


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288
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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


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>
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.