Historical and Political Essays

William Edward Hartpole Lecky

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• Publié par: mosir
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 34
• Langue: English

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Historical and Political Essays,
by William Edward Hartpole
Lecky
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Title: Historical and Political Essays
Author: William Edward Hartpole Lecky
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Language: English
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HISTORICALAND
POLITICAL ESSAYS
BY
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1908
All rights reserved
CONTENTS
PAGE
THOUGHTS ON HISTORY 1
THE POLITICAL VALUE OF HISTORY 21
THE EMPIRE: ITS VALUE AND ITS GROWTH 43
IRELAND IN THE LIGHT OF HISTORY 68
FORMATIVE INFLUENCES 90
CARLYLE'S MESSAGE TO HIS AGE 104
ISRAEL AMONG THE NATIONS 116
MADAME DE STAËL 131
THE PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE OF SIR ROBERT
151
PEEL
THE FIFTEENTH EARL OF DERBY 200
MR. HENRY REEVE 242
DEAN MILMAN 249
QUEEN VICTORIA AS A MORAL FORCE 275
OLD-AGE PENSIONS 298
INDEX 319The Essays 'Thoughts on History,' 'Formative Influences,'
'Madame de Staël,' 'Israel among the Nations,' 'Old-age
Pensions,' appeared originally in the American Review, the
Forum—the first under the title of 'The Art of Writing History';
'Ireland in the Light of History,' in the North American Review.
Those on Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Henry Reeve, and Dean Milman
were written for the Edinburgh Review. The Essay on 'Queen
Victoria as a Moral Force' appeared first in the Pall Mall
Magazine; 'Carlyle's Message to His Age' in the Contemporary
Review. 'The Political Value of History' was a presidential
address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute;
'The Empire,' an inaugural address delivered at the Imperial
Institute; and the 'Memoir of the Fifteenth Earl of Derby' was
originally prefixed to the volumes of his speeches and
addresses.
HISTORICAL AND POLITICAL ESSAYS
ToCTHOUGHTS ON HISTORY
I do not propose in this paper to enter into any general inquiry about the best
method of writing history. Such inquiries appear to me to be of no real value, for
there are many different kinds of history which should be written in many
different ways. A diplomatic, a military, or a parliamentary history, dealing with a
short period or a particular episode, must evidently be treated in a very differentspirit from an extended history where the object of the historian should be to
describe the various aspects of the national life, and to trace through long
periods of time the ultimate causes of national progress and decay. The history
of religion, of art, of literature, of social and industrial development, of scientific
progress, have all their different methods. A writer who treats of some great
revolution that has transformed human affairs should deal largely in retrospect,
for the most important part of his task is to explain the long course of events that
prepared and produced the catastrophe; while a writer who treats of more
normal times will do well to plunge rapidly into his theme.
Historians, too, differ widely in their special talents, and these talents are
[2]never altogether combined. The power of vividly realising and portraying men,
or societies or modes of thought that have long since passed away; the power
of arranging and combining great multitudes of various facts; the power of
judging with discrimination, accuracy, and impartiality conflicting arguments or
evidence; the power of tracing through the long course of events the true chain
of cause and effect, selecting the facts that are most valuable and significant
and explaining the relation between general causes and particular effects, are
all very different and belong to different types of mind. It is idle to expect a writer
with the gifts of a Clarendon, a Kinglake, or a Froude to write history in the spirit
of a Hallam or a Grote. Writers who are eminently distinguished for wide,
patient, and accurate research have sometimes little power either of describing
or interpreting the facts which they collect. All that can be said with any profit is
that each writer will do best if he follows the natural bent of his genius, and that
he should select those kinds or periods of history in which his special gifts have
most scope and the qualities in which he is deficient are least needed.
It is the fashion of a modern school of historical writers to deplore what they
call the intrusion of literature into history. History, in their judgment, should be
treated as science and not as literature, and the kind of intellect they most value
is not unlike that of a skilful and well-trained attorney. To collect documents
with industry; to compare, classify, interpret and estimate them is the main work
of the historian. It is no doubt true that there are some fields of history where the
primary facts are so little known, so much contested or so largely derived from
recondite manuscript sources, that a faithful historian will be obliged in justice
[3]to his readers to sacrifice both proportion and artistic charm to the supreme
importance of analysing evidence, reproducing documents and accumulating
proofs; but in general the depreciation of the literary element in history seems to
me essentially wrong. It is only necessary to recall the names of Herodotus and
Thucydides, of Livy and Tacitus, of Gibbon and Macaulay, and of the long line
of great masters of style who have related the annals of France. It may, indeed,
be confidently asserted that there is no subject in which rarer literary qualities
are more demanded than in the higher forms of history. The art of portraying
characters; of describing events; of compressing, arranging, and selecting great
masses of heterogeneous facts, of conducting many different chains of
narrative without confusion or obscurity; of preserving in a vast and complicated
subject the true proportion and relief, will tax the highest literary skill, and no
one who does not possess some, at least, of these gifts in an unusual measure
is likely to attain a permanent place among the great masters of history. It is a
misfortune when some stirring and momentous period falls into the hands of the
mere compiler, for he occupies the ground and a really great writer will hesitate
to appropriate and plagiarise the materials his predecessor has collected.
There are books of great research and erudition which one would have wished
to have been all re-written by some writer of real genius who could have given
order, meaning and vividness to a mere chaos of accurate and laboriously
sifted learning. The great prominence which it is now the fashion to ascribe to
the study of diplomatic documents, is very apt to destroy the true value andperspective of history. It is always the temptation of those who are dealing with
[4]manuscript materials to overrate the small personal details which they bring to
light, and to give them much more than their due space in their narrative. This
tendency the new school powerfully encourages. It is quite right that the
treasure-houses of diplomatic correspondence which have of late years been
thrown open should be explored and sifted, but history written chiefly from
these materials, though it has its own importance, is not likely to be
distinguished either by artistic form or by philosophical value. Those who are
immersed in these studies are very apt to overrate their importance and the part
which diplomacy and statesmanship have borne in the great movement of
human affairs.
A true and comprehensive history should be the life of a nation. It should
describe it in its larger and more various aspects. It should be a study of causes
and effects, of distant as well as proximate causes, and of the large, slow and
permanent evolution of things. It should include, as Buckle and Macaulay saw,
the social, the industrial, the intellectual life of the nation as well as mere
political changes, and it should be pre-eminently marked by a true perspective
dealing with subjects at a length proportioned to their real importance. All this
requires a powerful and original intellect quite different from that of a mere
compiler. It requires too, in a high degree, the kind of imagination which
enables a man to reproduce not only the acts but the feelings, the ideals, the
modes of thought and life of a distant past, and pierce through the actions and
professions of men to their real characters. Insight into character is one of the
first requisites of a historian. It is therefore, much to be desired that he should
possess a wide knowledge of the world, the knowledge of different types of
[5]character, foreign as we