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To a student in after times the past seems tranquil; it has lost its heat and unrest, and has settled into a deceptive aspect of repose. But to the men who lived in the sound of the busy hum of its voices, it wore a very different appearance; to them all was real and living, and every event enlisted on its side strong sentiments and earnest convictions. To us these are all past; we can look on the scene with dispassionate eye; nay more, in many of the conflicts and crises we can sympathise with the better portion of both parties. But to the contemporary this is impossible; he must, nay he ought to feel strongly, and the man who could write in cold blood about the Persian war in which he himself had fought, or the Reformation struggle in which his dearest friends had suffered, would be below, not above, the level of human nature. The contemporary should write with a desire to do broad justice to all, and he should consciously allow himself in no deviation from the truth; but he cannot alter his point of view; he must see "in section," not "in plan." No one blames Clarendon for his Royalist prepossessions; these in him were natural and right; we honour him for his loyalty and fidelity, and they make us the more ready to trust him. But we have a right to demand conscious truthfulness, and in this Clarendon fails; and, as Hallam says, "No man can avoid considering his incessant deviations from the great duties of an historian as a moral blemish in his character." An honest contemporary may sometimes mislead, but it will be by an unconscious bias; and wilfully to misrepresent an antagonist is to forfeit that honesty. A contemporary record therefore, however honest its aim, will necessarily require caution in its use; we must test it by other accounts, especially those of the opposite party, and existing letters and public documents. But inasmuch as too large a proportion of mankind are habitually careless of truth, we must lay our account to find some degree of intentional perversion of facts in the mass of contemporary writers; and this is a serious drawback to historical accuracy in general.

Again, to the contemporary the future is unknown. This may at first seem a matter of little importance, but in reality, we can hardly over-estimate its effects. To us, the fears and hopes of a past age are over, its triumphs and dangers are equally past, and it is only by a strong effort of the imagination that we can realise them, as if still in the womb of futurity. Especially must we bear this in mind in the great crises of a nation; to the contemporaries the final issue, which to us is known from the lessons of childhood, was uncertain and alarming, and in this twilight of the future men saw shadows of terror, which we know to have been illusions, however real to them. Now this bright or sombre hue from an uncertain future colours the

contemporary's page; while at the same time his ignorance of the goal, to which the events of his age are tending, leads him to violate all relative proportion in his estimates. It is only the after historian who can reduce the events to their proper standard,-who can read the whole as a whole, and so duly subordinate the parts.

Contemporary evidence will vary in kind. This might seem a truism, but no rule has been so often and habitually violated. Our histories of Athens, for instance, have been hitherto compiled on an almost opposite principle. Our scholars have written Greek history, as if every contemporary record were of equal value; and they have drawn their conclusions from the sneers of the satirist, as unhesitatingly as from the gravest statesman. To the historian satires and libels are often invaluable aids; they may sometimes throw a new light on a period, and they will always illustrate its manners and views. Thus every classical scholar, who has read Thucydides and Aristophanes, hand in hand, taking each comedy in its order, as he reaches the corresponding year of the Peloponnesian war, will know how vivid the interest is, which the comedy throws on the sober history. Thus,-to give only one instance which occurs to us, we learn from Thucydides that the Athenians who had lived in the country, were loath to be torn from their family homes, on the breaking out of the war, and to be cooped up in the crowded city; but to realise this to the full, we should read the comedy of the Peace,' where these very old citizens form the chorus, and hear them lamenting in person for the pleasant farms and vineyards they have left:

Glad day for honest country folks,-oh Peace, how you remind me!
You make me think directly of the vines I left behind me,
And the fig trees which I planted,-ah I was younger then!
How I long to bid good morrow to their honest heads again!

But satire and comedy are to illustrate, not to prove; and when we use them as evidence, they must mislead. Mr. Grote's chapter on the Sophists is a memorable illustration of this. For ages men have accepted satire as proof, and of course it has prejudiced their views. The Punch of our day will be an invaluable aid to the future historian, as representing the present time in its lighter traits and feelings; but alas for historic truth if he forgets what Punch is, and treats it as many a grave scholar has treated the Greek Punch, Aristophanes.

"There has been a time, when every Arabic, Persian or Turkish work, con taining the history of Mohammed and his successors, or any part of the history of the East, was considered as a source of information, the authenticity of which was above all doubt and question."-Dr. Sprenger.

We need not here classify all the different kinds of contemporary evidence, but we may notice a few of the more important.

First, then, we would put the contemporary historian, who writes with an honest wish to tell the story of his own time. We can forgive him a hearty partiality for his own side, if he can resist its temptations to wilful perversion of the truth. Of such writers, prejudiced it may be, but honest in the main, there are many degrees, varying with the shades of moral and intellectual strength; but in this class, though in different ranks of it, we would place such writers as Thucydides, Froissart, Comines, and Burnet. In a far lower class would we rank those who often intentionally deceive, such as Julius Cæsar and Clarendon, because, however high their merits as authors, they have violated the cardinal rule of history, truth; and no powers of thought or beauties of style can atone for this crime.

Next to these comes the dull plodding chronicler, such as the monkish writers of the middle ages; and below these the mere partizan, who upholds his side through thick and thin, the indiscriminate laudator or abuser, such as Abu'l Fazl in his history of Akbar, in which "an uniform strain of panegyric and triumph is kept up, which disgusts the reader with the author, and almost with the hero. Amidst these unmeaning flourishes, the 'real merits of Akbar disappear, and it is from other authors we learn the motives of his actions, the difficulties he had to 'contend with, and the resources by which they were surmount'ed."*

From these we pass to works not historical in their form, but abounding with the raw materials of history; and foremost among these are the letters of the leading men of the age,-where we talk with the minds which ruled the course of events, and see them undisguised and without reserve. Such evidence, as we have before observed, is of the highest value,† and it is the great advantage of the modern writer that stores of such letters have been published, and stores, relating to every modern period, yet await an editor. With these may be classed the documents of the time, such collections as Rymer's Foedera, the Statute Book, and those various papers in the Rolls house, which have recently proved such a rich mine, when worked by Mr. Froude. His history of Henry VIII. will be variously judged by different readers, and we may all dissent from some of his conclusions; but one thing seems certain, that it must remain the history of the times, unless * Elphinstone's India.

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Surely this testimony," says Hallam, speaking of the Paston collection of letters," outweighs a thousand ordinary chronicles."

"The library at Besançon contains sixty volumes of the letters of Grauvella, Charles the Fifth's great minister."- Dr. Arnold's Lectures on History.

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some one digs deeper in the same mine. "I have taken my story," he says, " almost exclusively from contemporary letters, state-papers and acts of Parliament. In examining each sepa'rate transaction, my plan has been to arrange the materials relating to it in chronological order; and when this has been done closely and carefully, it has seemed to me, as if the history has written itself, and can be read in its main outlines without 'difficulty."

Next to these are the various fugitive works, the pamphlets and controversial treatises, out of which such an artist as Macaulay can pick all those vivid traits which light up his pages. Ample collections of these are found in all our great public libraries in England; and little to be relied on as such productions are for their own authority, they sometimes contain imbedded facts and allusions of great value.

With these we may mention the satires and libels to which we have already alluded-those ephemeral bubbles, which are lashed into existence by party conflict, and whose interest expires with the hour that gave them birth. To the general reader, few things are more stale and unprofitable; but they are often full of interest to the historical and antiquarian student, whose researches enable him to revive the forgotten jest. It is indeed singular that works of wit in general, which are the readiest understood in their own time, and appeal to the immediate perceptions of their original readers, become of all books to after times the most obscure and uninteresting. Charles Lamb, in one of his essays, remarks that a joke cannot be transmitted by letter to Australia," It is a merchandise that above all requires a quick return,-a pun and its recognitory laugh must be 'co-instantaneous !" Open any of the political satires of former times, and how flat and spiritless they seem; even Hudibras, Absalom and Ahithophel, and the Dunciad, have an obsolete and forgotten air. Such books must pass away as works of humour; their only chance of perpetuity is the Antiquarian interest, which attaches to these vivid pictures of the past, and always leads a few minds to such studies.

To this catalogue, the future historian will have to add one most important item, which has only lately risen into significance the daily newspaper. He will have no longer to complain of any dearth of materials, he will rather be overwhelmed by their accumulation; and the impossibility of reading one, tenth of the mass will bring in new sources of error and confusion. The files of the Times, with their daily rumours and contradictions, will give him a most vivid picture of our age; but his will be a steady head which does not turn giddy amidst the hubbub and whirl. Still the newspaper will be a most valuable aid,

especially for confirmation and proof; and above all, our reports of all public meetings and Parliamentary debates. Great indeed will be the change to pass from the fictitious harangues of ancient authors, or the hardly more trustworthy debates of the senate of Liliput, to the verbatim reports in any number of the Times. The lost speeches of Bolingbroke, for which Pitt would have exchanged so many an extant classic, would now be preserved for ever; and though our present Parliamentary debates may lack the sententious eloquence of former oratory, we can hardly doubt that, for business-like grappling with the subject, and lucid exposition of its details, (the real points of interest to the future historian) the orators of the present day are far superior to their predecessors, and their speeches therefore far more worthy to be preserved.

The "organon" of historical criticism, which we have thus imperfectly described, has already changed every field of history to which it has been honestly applied,-especially that classical field which every one had previously pronounced to be clipped bare, and barren. Mr. Grote's twelve volumes are professedly written under its laws; and however we may dissent from some of his opinions, none can rise from their perusal without new views of that subject in some of its most essential features. Greek and Latin had been read for centuries, and their histories studied and commented on by successive generations of scholars; but the soil was a virgin one to the husbandman after all. Mitford and Thirlwall had already shewn its fertility, but it has been reserved to Mr. Grote's life-study to reap the full harvest. Similarly the three great provinces of modern history (to use Dr. Arnold's division,) European, Colonial and Oriental, must be all examined* and re-written with this strict attention to evidence; and wherever it is tried, new discoveries will be the result.

In many things the effect will be startling and disagreeable. Much that has been received on tradition for ages will be found untenable, just as our school-boys are now taught to reject the Roman history which their grand-fathers implicitly believed; and much that we now reject may be weighed and proved true. The process will be distasteful; but after all, truth is best. If history be not true, it is worse than the idlest fiction, because it deceives. Our history may become less picturesque; we may find some of our heroes dethroned; but the result will be something to be relied on; and if historical philosophy is to be ever better than a dream, it is only by an induction from real facts that its laws and principles are to be gained.

Thus Dr. Sprenger was the first writer who submitted the sources of the biography of Mohammed to a critical enquiry.

SEPT., 1857.

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