Part 12

What a change there has been in English opinion of Cromwell in the last half century! Unquestionably that is due to Carlyle more than to any other one man, but there might have been a reaction from the conception of the hero worshiper had it not been supported and somewhat modified by so careful and impartial a student as Gardiner.

The alteration of sentiment toward Wentworth and Laud is principally due to Gardiner, that toward Cromwell is due to him in part. These are two of the striking results, but they are only two of many things we see differently because of the single-minded devotion of this great historian. We know the history in England from 1603 to 1656 better than we do that of any other period of the world; and for this we are indebted mainly to Samuel Rawson Gardiner.

History of the Great Civil War, I, viii.

History of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, III, 27.

History, I, v.

Ibid., IX, viii.

He was transferred to the roll of honorary members in October, 1896.

History, I, 43.

Ibid., VIII, 36.

Ibid., 67.

Ibid., 215.

Ibid., IX, 229.

WILLIAM E. H. LECKY

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November meeting of 1903.

WILLIAM E. H. LECKY

Amazement was the feeling of the reading world on learning that the author of the History of Rationalism was only twenty-seven, and the writer of the History of European Morals only thirty-one. The sentiment was that a prodigy of learning had appeared, and a perusal of these works now renders comprehensible the contemporary astonishment. The Morals (published in 1869) is the better book of the two, and, if I may judge from my own personal experience, it may be read with delight when young, and re-read with respect and advantage at an age when the enthusiasms of youth have given way to the critical attitude of experience. Grant all the critics say of it, that the reasoning by which Lecky attempts to demolish the utilitarian theory of morals is no longer of value, and that it lacks the consistency of either the orthodox or the agnostic, that there is no new historical light, and that much of the treatise is commonplace, nevertheless the historical illustrations and disquisitions, the fresh combination of well-known facts are valuable for instruction and for a new point of view. His analysis of the causes of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is drawn, of course, from Gibbon, but I have met those who prefer the interesting story of Lecky to the majestic sweep of the great master. Much less brilliant than Buckle's "History of Civilization," the first volume of which appeared twelve years earlier, the Morals has stood better the test of time.

The intellectual biography of so precocious a writer is interesting, and fortunately it has been related by Lecky himself. When he entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1856, "Mill was in the zenith of his fame and influence"; Hugh Miller was attempting to reconcile the recent discoveries of geology with the Mosaic cosmogony. "In poetry," wrote Lecky, "Tennyson and Longfellow reigned, I think with an approach to equality which has not continued." In government the orthodox political economists furnished the theory and the Manchester school the practice. All this intellectual fermentation affected this inquiring young student; but at first Bishop Butler's Analogy and sermons, which were then much studied at Dublin, had the paramount influence. Of the living men, Archbishop Whately, then at Dublin, held sway. Other writers whom he mastered were Coleridge, Newman, and Emerson, Pascal, Bossuet, Rousseau, and Voltaire, Dugald Stewart, and Mill. In 1857 Buckle burst upon the world, and proved a stimulus to Lecky as well as to most serious historical students. The result of these studies, Lecky relates, was his History of Rationalism, published in the early part of 1865.

The claim made by many of Lecky's admirers, that he was a philosophic historian, as distinct from literary historians like Carlyle and Macaulay, and scientific like Stubbs and Gardiner, has injured him in the eyes of many historical students who believe that if there be such a thing as the philosophy of history the narrative ought to carry it naturally. To interrupt the relation of events or the delineation of character with parading of trite reflections or with rashly broad generalizations is neither science nor art. Lecky has sometimes been condemned by students who, revolting at the term "philosophy" in connection with history, have failed to read his greatest work, the "History of England in the Eighteenth Century." This is a decided advance on the History of Morals, and shows honest investigation in original material, much of it manuscript, and an excellent power of generalization widely different from that which exhibits itself in a paltry philosophy. These volumes are a real contribution to historical knowledge. Parts of them which I like often to recur to are the account of the ministry of Walpole, the treatment of "parliamentary corruption," of the condition of London, and of "national tastes and manners." His Chapter IX, which relates the rise of Methodism, has a peculiarly attractive swing and go, and his use of anecdote is effective.

Chapter XX, on the "Causes of the French Revolution," covering one hundred and forty-one pages, is an ambitious effort, but it shows a thorough digestion of his material, profound reflection, and a lively presentation of his view. Mr. Morse Stephens believes that it is idle to attempt to inquire into the causes of this political and social overturn. If a historian tells the how, he asserts he should not be asked to tell the why. This is an epigrammatic statement of a tenet of the scientific historical school of Oxford, but men will always be interested in inquiring why the French Revolution happened, and such chapters as this of Lecky, a blending of speculation and narrative, will hold their place. These volumes have much well and impartially written Irish history, and being published between 1878 and 1890, at the time when the Irish question in its various forms became acute, they attracted considerable attention from the political world. Gladstone was an admirer of Lecky, and said in a chat with John Morley: "Lecky has real insight into the motives of statesmen. Now Carlyle, so mighty as he is in flash and penetration, has no eye for motives. Macaulay, too, is so caught by a picture, by color, by surface, that he is seldom to be counted on for just account of motive." The Irish chapters furnished arguments for the Liberals, but did not convert Lecky himself to the policy of home rule. When Gladstone and his party adopted it, he became a Liberal Unionist, and as such was elected in 1895 a member of the House of Commons by Dublin University. In view of the many comments that he was not successful in parliamentary life, I may say that the election not only came to him unsought, but that he recognized that he was too old to adapt himself to the atmosphere of the House of Commons; he accepted the position in the belief which was pressed upon him by many friends that he could in Parliament be useful to the University.

Within less than three years have we commemorated in this hall three great English historians—Stubbs, Gardiner, and Lecky. The one we honor to-day was the most popular of the three. Not studied so much at the seats of learning, he is better known to journalists, to statesmen, to men of affairs, in short to general readers. Even our Society made him an honorary member fourteen years before it so honored Gardiner, although Gardiner was the older man and two volumes of his history had been published before Lecky's Rationalism, and two volumes more in the same year as the Morals. One year after it was published, Rationalism went into a third edition. Gardiner's first volumes sold one hundred and forty copies. It must, however, be stated that the Society recognized Gardiner's work as early as 1874 by electing him a corresponding member.

It is difficult to guess how long Lecky will be read. His popularity is distinct. He was the rare combination of a scholar and a man of the world, made so by his own peculiar talent and by lucky opportunities. He was not obliged to earn his living. In early life, by intimate personal intercourse, he drew intellectual inspiration from Dean Milman, and later he learned practical politics through his friendship with Lord Russell. He knew well Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. In private conversation he was a very interesting man. His discourse ran on books and on men; he turned from one to the other and mixed up the two with a ready familiarity. He went much into London society, and though entirely serious and without having, so far as I know, a gleam of humor, he was a fluent and entertaining talker.

Mr. Lecky was vitally interested in the affairs of this country, and sympathized with the North during our Civil War. He once wrote to me: "I am old enough to remember vividly your great war, and was then much with an American friend—a very clever lawyer named George Bemis—whom I came to know very well at Rome.... I was myself a decided Northerner, but the 'right of revolution' was always rather a stumbling block." Talking with Mr. Lecky in 1895, not long after the judgment of the United States Supreme Court that the income tax was unconstitutional, he expressed the opinion that it was a grand decision, evidencing a high respect for private property, but in the next breath came the question, "How are you ever to manage continuing the payment of those enormous pensions of yours?"

It is not, I think, difficult to explain why Stubbs and Gardiner are more precious possessions for students than Lecky. Gardiner devoted his life to the seventeenth century. If we may reckon the previous preparation and the ceaseless revision, Stubbs devoted a good part of his life to the constitutional history from the beginnings of it to Henry VII. Lecky's eight volumes on the eighteenth century were published in thirteen years. A mastery of such an amount of original material as Stubbs and Gardiner mastered was impossible within that time. Lecky had the faculty of historic divination which compensated to some extent for the lack of a more thorough study of the sources. Genius stood in the place of painstaking engrossment in a single task.

The last important work of Lecky, "Democracy and Liberty," was a brave undertaking. Many years ago he wrote: "When I was deeply immersed in the 'History of England in the Eighteenth Century,' I remember being struck by the saying of an old and illustrious friend that he could not understand the state of mind of a man who, when so many questions of burning and absorbing interest were rising around him, could devote the best years of his life to the study of a vanished past." Hence the book which considered present issues of practical politics and party controversies, and a result that satisfied no party and hardly any faction. It is an interesting question who chose the better part,—he or Stubbs and Gardiner—they who devoted themselves entirely to the past or he who made a conscientious endeavor to bring to bear his study of history upon the questions of the present.

SIR SPENCER WALPOLE

A paper read before the Massachusetts Historical Society at the November meeting of 1907.

SIR SPENCER WALPOLE

Sir Spencer Walpole was an excellent historian and industrious writer. His first important work, entitled "The History of England from 1815," was published at intervals from 1878 to 1886; the first installment appeared when he was thirty-nine years old. This in six volumes carried the history to 1858 in an interesting, accurate, and impartial narrative. Four of the five chapters of the first volume are entitled "The Material Condition of England in 1815," "Society in England," "Opinion in 1815," "The Last of the Ebb Tide," and they are masterly in their description and relation. During the Napoleonic wars business was good. The development of English manufactures, due largely to the introduction of steam as a motive power, was marked. "Twenty years of war," he wrote, "had concentrated the trade of the world in the British Empire." Wheat was dear; in consequence the country gentlemen received high rents. The clergy, being largely dependent on tithes,—the tenth of the produce,—found their incomes increased as the price of corn advanced. But the laboring classes, both those engaged in manufactures and agriculture, did not share in the general prosperity. Either their wages did not rise at all or did not advance commensurately with the increase of the cost of living and the decline in the value of the currency. Walpole's detailed and thorough treatment of this subject is historic work of high value.

In the third volume I was much impressed with his account of the Reform Act of 1832. We all have read that wonderful story over and over again, but I doubt whether its salient points have been better combined and presented than in Walpole's chapter. I had not remembered the reason of the selection of Lord John Russell to present the bill in the House of Commons when he was only Paymaster of the Forces, without a seat in the Cabinet. It will, of course, be recalled that Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, was in the House of Lords, and, not so readily I think, that Althorp was Chancellor of the Exchequer and the leader of the House of Commons. On Althorp, under ordinary circumstances, it would have been incumbent to take charge of this highly important measure, which had been agreed upon by the Cabinet after counsel with the King. Russell was the youngest son of the Duke of Bedford; and the Duke was one of the large territorial magnates and a proprietor of rotten boroughs. "A bill recommended by his son's authority," wrote Walpole, "was likely to reassure timid or wavering politicians." "Russell," Walpole continued, "told his tale in the plainest language. But the tale which he had to tell required no extraordinary language to adorn it. The Radicals had not dared to expect, the Tories, in their wildest fears, had not apprehended, so complete a measure. Enthusiasm was visible on one side of the House; consternation and dismay on the other. At last, when Russell read the list of boroughs which were doomed to extinction, the Tories hoped that the completeness of the measure would insure its defeat. Forgetting their fears, they began to be amused and burst into peals of derisive laughter" (III, 208).

Walpole's next book was the "Life of Lord John Russell," two volumes published in 1889. This was undertaken at the request of Lady Russell, who placed at his disposal a mass of private and official papers and "diaries and letters of a much more private nature." She also acceded to his request that she was not to see the biography until it was ready for publication, so that the whole responsibility of it would be Walpole's alone. The Queen gave him access to three bound volumes of Russell's letters to herself, and sanctioned the publication of certain letters of King William IV. Walpole wrote the biography in about two years and a half; and this, considering that at the time he held an active office, displayed unusual industry. If I may judge the work by a careful study of the chapter on "The American Civil War," it is a valuable contribution to political history.

Passing over three minor publications, we come to Walpole's "History of Twenty-five Years," two volumes of which were published in 1904. A brief extract from his preface is noteworthy, written as it is by a man of keen intelligence, with great power of investigation and continuous labor, and possessed of a sound judgment. After a reference to his "History of England from 1815," he said: "The time has consequently arrived when it ought to be as possible to write the History of England from 1857 to 1880, as it was twenty years ago to bring down the narrative of that History to 1856 or 1857.... So far as I am able to judge, most of the material which is likely to be available for British history in the period with which these two volumes are concerned [1856-1870] is already accessible. It is not probable that much which is wholly new remains unavailable." I read carefully these two volumes when they first appeared, and found them exceedingly fascinating. Palmerston and Russell, Gladstone and Disraeli, are made so real that we follow their contests as if we ourselves had a hand in them. A half dozen or more years ago an Englishman told me that Palmerston and Russell were no longer considered of account in England. But I do not believe one can rise from reading these volumes without being glad of a knowledge of these two men whose patriotism was of a high order. Walpole's several characterizations, in a summing up of Palmerston, display his knowledge of men. "Men pronounced Lord Melbourne indifferent," he wrote, "Sir Robert Peel cold, Lord John Russell uncertain, Lord Aberdeen weak, Lord Derby haughty, Mr. Gladstone subtle, Lord Beaconsfield unscrupulous. But they had no such epithet for Lord Palmerston. He was as earnest as Lord Melbourne was indifferent, as strong as Lord Aberdeen was weak, as honest as Lord Beaconsfield was unscrupulous. Sir Robert Peel repelled men by his temper; Lord John Russell, by his coldness; Lord Derby offended them by his pride; Mr. Gladstone distracted them by his subtlety. But Lord Palmerston drew both friends and foes together by the warmth of his manners and the excellence of his heart" (I, 525).

Walpole's knowledge of continental politics was apparently thorough. At all events, any one who desires two entrancing tales, should read the chapter on "The Union of Italy," of which Cavour and Napoleon III are the heroes; and the two chapters entitled "The Growth of Prussia and the Decline of France" and "The Fall of the Second Empire." In these two chapters Napoleon III again appears, but Bismarck is the hero. Walpole's chapter on "The American Civil War" is the writing of a broad-minded, intelligent man, who could look on two sides.

Of Walpole's last book, "Studies in Biography," published in 1907, I have left myself no time to speak. Those who are interested in it should read the review of it in the Nation early this year, which awards it high and unusual commendation.

The readers of Walpole's histories may easily detect in them a treatment not possible from a mere closet student of books and manuscripts. A knowledge of the science of government and of practical politics is there. For Walpole was of a political family. He was of the same house as the great Whig Prime Minister, Sir Robert; and his father was Home Secretary in the Lord Derby ministry of 1858, and again in 1866, when he had to deal with the famous Hyde Park meeting of July 23. On his mother's side he was a grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister who in 1812 was assassinated in the lobby of the House of Commons. Walpole's earliest publication was a biography of Perceval.

And Spencer Walpole himself was a man of affairs. A clerk in the War Office in 1858, private secretary to his father in 1866, next year Inspector of Fisheries, later Lieutenant-Governor of the Isle of Man, and from 1893 to 1899 Secretary to the Post-office. In spite of all this administrative work his books show that he was a wide, general reader, apart from his special historical studies. He wrote in an agreeable literary style, with Macaulay undoubtedly as his model, although he was by no means a slavish imitator. His "History of Twenty-five Years" seems to me to be written with a freer hand than the earlier history. He is here animated by the spirit rather than the letter of Macaulay. I no longer noticed certain tricks of expression which one catches so easily in a study of the great historian, and which seem so well to suit Macaulay's own work, but nobody else's.

An article by Walpole on my first four volumes, in the Edinburgh Review of January, 1901, led to a correspondence which resulted in my receiving an invitation last May to pass Sunday with him at Hartfield Grove, his Sussex country place. We were to meet at Victoria station and take an early morning train. Seeing Mr. Frederic Harrison the day previous, I asked for a personal description of his friend Walpole in order that I might easily recognize him. "Well," says Harrison, "perhaps I can guide you. A while ago I sat next to a lady during a dinner who took me for Walpole and never discovered her mistake until, when she addressed me as Sir Spencer, I undeceived her just as the ladies were retiring from the table. Now I am the elder by eight years and I don't think I look like Walpole, but that good lady had another opinion." Walpole and Harrison met that Saturday evening at the Academy dinner, and Walpole obtained a personal description of myself. This caution on both our parts was unnecessary. We were the only historians traveling down on the train and could not possibly have missed one another. I found him a thoroughly genial man, and after fifteen minutes in the railway carriage we were well acquainted. The preface to his "History of Twenty-five Years" told that the two volumes were the work of five years. I asked him how he was getting on with the succeeding volumes. He replied that he had done a good deal of work on them, and now that he was no longer in an administrative position he could concentrate his efforts, and he expected to have the work finished before long. I inquired if the prominence of his family in politics hampered him at all in writing so nearly contemporary history, and he said, "Not a bit." An hour of the railroad and a half-hour's drive brought us to his home. It was not an ancestral place, but a purchase not many years back. An old house had been remodeled with modern improvements, and comfort and ease were the predominant aspects. Sir Spencer proposed a "turn" before luncheon, which meant a short walk, and after luncheon we had a real walk. I am aware that the English mile and our own are alike 5280 feet, but I am always impressed with the fact that the English mile seems longer, and so I was on this Sunday. For after a good two hours' exertion over hills and meadows my host told me that we had gone only five miles. Only by direct question did I elicit the fact that had he been alone he would have done seven miles in the same time.