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a scientific globe or map is to our earth-a true copy reduced to accurate proportion and of dimensions measurable by the ordinary eye. Truth of proportion is far more essential than any accuracy of detail. Falsity of proportion is a blunder far more misleading than any meagreness of local definition. To confuse the observer with a wilderness of details, and still more to mislead him by falsifying the relative nature of men and of things—this is to make a caricature, not a picture, a fancy sketch not a chart. It will be as fatal to the reader as Ptolemaic maps were to the early navigators. A history wherein the pursuit of trivial facts is carried to confusion, and where the sense of faithful proportion is ruined by antiquarian curiosity, is little more than a comic photograph as taken in a distorted lens. The details may be accurate, curious, and inexhaustible; but the general effect is that of preposterous inversion. We learn nothing by the process. We are wearied and puzzled.'"

Under the head of the scientific historian, as well as the literary historian, we may learn from a specific instance. The late Edward A. Freeman was a notable example of the virtues, and the limitations as well, of this view of the matter. Mr. Freeman was a scholar of exceptional erudition and of minute and precise knowledge in his own fields. Although his work was based more largely on printed materials than on unpublished documents, his industry was extraordinary, and his research untiring. His remarkable equipment, however, did not save him from serious error, nor from well-founded charges of inaccuracy.2 Nor can it be said that his mental equipment was an ideal one for a historian. Besides his tendency to iteration, already referred to in these pages,3 he had an imperfect sense of historical perspective. Still more serious was the very evident prejudice which repeatedly disfigures his pages,— a defect which is even more marked in a "scientific historian" than in a "literary historian." In controversial writing, he invariably appears at his worst, and sometimes

'Harrison's "Tennyson, Ruskin, and Mill, " etc., p. 222-23.

"As a typical instance, see the exhaustive article by J. H. Round, on "Mr. Freeman and the battle of Hastings," in the English Historical Review, April, 1894, v. 9, p. 209-60. Compare also Paul's "Froude," p. 171-84.

Pages 370-71.

"Freeman," says Frederic Harrison, "was an indefatigable inquirer into early records, but he muddled away his sense of proportion." ("The meaning of history," p. 135.)

seems to have parted company with all sense of candor or fairness, as when making Mr. Froude a target for every variety of attack. By the irony of fate, this very excess of violence on Mr. Freeman's part has in the last few months been turned by more than one reviewer to Mr. Froude's credit. While Mr. Froude by himself offers much that is vulnerable to the critic, a comparison of Froude with Freeman is often greatly to the advantage of the former. In spite of all his limitations, Mr. Freeman has rendered enormous service, not only by his historical narratives, but by his discussion of underlying historical principles; and his volume on "The methods of historical study" cannot be safely neglected by any one who takes up the study of history.3

THE ESSENTIALS SUMMARIZED.

Briefly summing up the principles of historical narration, the ideal historian, it will be seen, must unite the somewhat varied and opposite qualities above indicated. He must be at once accustomed to use his imagination, following it, however, by rigid verification, and also accustomed to sift all facts from a judicial point of view. He must see that his narrative possesses proportion and historical perspective, while, at the same time, he aims at historic detachment.

THE QUESTION OF "MATERIALS FOR HISTORY." In a rapid summary of those points which belong to the ideal conception of history, it is plain that the judicial

"Mr. Freeman," says Andrew Lang, "actually objects to the copious use made of the new materials" [by Mr. Froude] "as 'often utterly wearisome!' He even speaks as if the dates of despatches were unimportant." (Cornhill Magazine. Feb., 1906, v. 92, p. 261-62.) For a reference to the discussion, (disastrous to Mr. Freeman), in 1879, see Paul's "Froude," p. 182-84.

*See p. 379 of this paper.

Although published eight years ago, the most judicial of the attempts at summing up the work of these two great men, Froude and Freeman, is that of Mr. Frederic Harrison. He published in the Nineteenth Century, Sept., 1898, his careful study of "The historical method of J. A. Froude, (v. 44, p. 372-85); and in the same journal, Nov., 1898, "The historical method of Professor Freeman," (v. 44, p. 791-806). These papers are reprinted at p. 221-67 of his yolume, "Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill and other literary estimates." (1900).

point of view is "the point of view" in history, preëminently.

And yet when we are confronted with the immense mass of material under any given historical topic, and recognize how small a percentage of the whole has any right to bear the epithet "judicial," we may be for the moment puzzled. Only for a moment, however, because we can, (still following the analogy of the court of law), describe all of this less acceptable portion as "materials for history." In just this same way, all the papers which are introduced in connection with the trial of a case in court are materials for the final decision, including the documents of various kinds, the correspondence, the stenographic report of the testimony, and the pleas made by the counsel. In the domain of history, as has been noticed, we have not only the documents and correspondence, but also the "annals," painfully compiled by rude and unpractised hands, and also the various "pleas," (more or less consciously partisan) known as "memoirs," "vindications," "apologies," etc. These occupy the field until the coming of some historical work which shall sum up the substance of them all, presenting in an adequate manner what they expressed only inadequately.

As in all questions of "names and things," discrimination in this matter is usually difficult and sometimes dangerous. We shall be content, in ordinary conversation, at least, to adopt the conventional designation, "historian", as applying to the writers of all alike, rather than assume a pedantic attitude,—just as one does not quarrel with the census enumerator who, with unconscious humor, perhaps, would affix the same label, "pianist", alike to Paderewski, and to some half-fledged pounder of the keys who rents an office for instructing pupils.

Nor must we forget that some of these "memoirs" which fall short most flagrantly, of the judicial standard,—and indeed because of thus falling short of it,-have a value of

their own as "human documents." So unrestrained, so genuine, so natural, so lifelike, is their picture of the event or period, that one's heart almost goes out to them in reading them.

Our own literature, fortunately, is full of these biographies, and autobiographical memoirs, whose very charm is in their subjective character, and their freedom from self-consciousness.

Othello's last injunction to his two friends ran thus:"When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.""

And when, says Agnes Repplier, he thus implored them, "he offered the best and most comprehensive advice which the great race of biographers and memoir writers have ever listened to and discarded." She adds: "For half truths", "those broken utterances which come bubbling up the well from the great unloved goddess whom we all unite in holding below the water, there are no such mediums as the memoir and the biography."

one.

It is evident that the impulse to find enjoyment as well as information in the mass of historical literature which the world has seen gradually accumulating, is a deep-seated But so also is the impulse to find in it instruction,— wisdom, guidance, a lesson for the future. That there is risk, not to say peril, in such a tendency as this, no one who has made himself familiar with the scientific point of view in history can for a moment doubt. For example, one feels like asking: "If history "teaches", what does it teach,and how?" "How can one be assured of the correctness of the supposed lessons, or inferences?" Assuredly, the pages of history are full of erroneous inferences. Doubtless also there have been many instances of "disputed" inferences. To this day, there are two different schools

'Shakespeare's "Othello," Act. 5, scene 2, lines 414-16. "Counsel upon the reading of books," p. 97-98.

of interpretation, so far as the "lessons" of the French Revolution are concerned; and each of the opposite schools is quite sure that the other is alarmingly wrong.

Perhaps a question which goes to the root of the matter is this; "Should the lesson be an explicit one, or merely implicit?" Should it be driven in,-almost "rubbed in", one might say,-or should it be left there to be discovered by any reader who is in possession of his reasoning powers? The sober second thought will point to the latter.'

ALTERNATIONS OF OPINION AS TO THE POINT OF VIEW.

No one who examines critically the body of historical literature from century to century, and from decade to decade,―can fail to be impressed by the extent to which it has reflected the tendencies of the time. A writer who should have published his history in the early part of the Nineteenth Century could hardly fail to be influenced by the theories of natural rights, which were universally discussed at that period. Likewise, one who wrote during the later years of that century would necessarily be influenced, and most profoundly, by the doctrine of evolution. But there are also tendencies to be observed, or rather violent oscillations from one extreme to the other,

so far

1An analogous question is that which relates to "ethical values in history." One view, (namely, that the historian should take account of these data), is held by Mr. Goldwin Smith and Lord Acton.

"The treatment of history," by Goldwin Smith, (President's address to the American Historical Association, Dec. 28. 1904), American Historical Review, April, 1905, v. 10, p. 511-20.

"A lecture on the study of history," (inaugural lecture at the University of Cambridge, June 11, 1895), by Lord Acton, London: Macmillan & Co., 1895, p. 63-73.

On the contrary, Mr. Lea and the late Bishop Creighton hold that history should be little more than a photograph of what took place, not considering whether it ought to have taken place.

"Ethical values in history," by Henry Charles Lea, (President's address to the American Historical Association, Dec. 29, 1903), American Historical Review, Jan., 1904, v. 9, p. 233-46. A somewhat kindred subject is treated in the "President's address in 1905, by John B. McMaster, on "Old standards of public morals," American Historical Review, April, 1906, v. 11, p. 515-28.

"Historical ethics," by the Rt. Rev. Mandell Creighton, late Bishop of London, printed posthumously, (under the direction of his widow), in the Quarterly Review, July, 1905, v. 203, p. 32-46. (Reprinted in the Living Age, Aug. 26, 1905, v. 246, p. 515-24; and in the Churchman, Sept. 9, 1905, v. 92, p. 384-85).

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