THEORISTS on history differ as widely among themselves as historians,
but most are agreed that the perfect history must combine something of the interest of story with the signifi- cance of science. They differ only in the emphasis which they place on the several constituents. But since human nature is partisan, historians in practice tend to ignore the catholicity of their creed, and one gives us a fascinating but unauthoritative tale, and another an arid monograph where the actors are of less account than the figures in a mathe- matical proposition. The more honour to the man who sets the higher standard before him, and aims at writing history which shall reproduce human action with something of the fulness of life. Mr. George Trevelyan seems to us to have combined in a remarkable manner accuracy of research and a philosophic understanding of principles and movements with a power of graphic narrative. His characters are not casual notes to the text, but real personalities, clearly realised and firmly drawn. In manner he has something of his great kinsman's rhetoric. His eloquence, that is, rarely rings false, but he is far from being a slave, as Macaulay sometimes proved himself, to the antithetical method. On the other hand, his style is highly allusive, full of quota- tions in solution,—which, if the quotations be good enough, is a sure way of holding the interest of the reader. He has taken a century of English history, and, without overloading his book with detail, has contrived to give us the period in a series of dramatic pictures, with the movements of spiritual and intellectual change showing clear in the background. It is perhaps rather a guide to principles and movements than a history of incident or a gallery of portraits, but the graver interest is not allowed to impair its vitality. Towards the close the narrative is a little huddled together ; and as politics begin in the reign of Anne to fall more into well-known lines, Mr. Trevelyan becomes appreciably less good, being tempted to some of the stale conventions of our modern disputations. But the faults are few and far between, and we can con- gratulate him on a work of real value. We have no living writer of history of the first class, but Mr. Trevelyan seems to us more likely than any of the younger men to attain some day the rank of a great historian. Our only regret is that he should spend his time in contributions to a composite work. A hundred years in five hundred pages is not the true pro- portion for history, and serious history is an exacting Muse, and does not permit of a distracted service. Mr. Oman's scheme is admirable in its intention, and we have no doubt will be amply justified in its result, but we grudge Mr. Trevelyan even to work of such undoubted merit.
No part of the book is better than the chapter describing the social life of the people. From contemporary dramas and memoirs the author has constructed a brilliant panorama of an old strange world, with curiously modern touches at intervals to reveal the continuity of national life. He has shown how readily one class merged in another, and how English commerce at its start drew as good blood to it as the learned professions. The period of colonisation was beginning, and the seaman was taking the place of the soldier as the
• (1) England under the Stuart,. By G. N. Trevelyan. London : Methuen and Co. [10s. 6d. net. J—(2) James I. and VI. By T. F. Henderson, London Goupil and Co. [E3 32.)—(3) Memoirs of the 3fartgr King : being a Detailed Record of the Last l''wo Years of the Reign of His Most Sacred Majeatu King Charles the First (1a40-1048.9). By Allan Yea. London: John Lane. V..5 be.) he townsman was not yet cut off finally from the country, and in all classes still survived that affection for the soil and that intimacy with Nature which go to the making of the stalwart citizen. Poetry in its dramatic form had to appeal alike to the cultured and the unlettered, and was thus saved from both vulgarity and preciosity. It was a soil well fitted to nourish strong creeds, and in spite of much misery and squalor, there was a truer spiritual fire in all classes than at any time, perhaps, in our history. Strange though the accents are, the language is often astonishingly modern. In certain taverns discontented people would "make a mock of your word 'Great Britain,' and offer. to prove that it is a great deal less than little England was wont to be,"—a sentiment not un- known to-day. Realising that historical centres of gravity are not necessarily palaces and senates, but often clubs and market-places, Mr. Trevelyan has managed to group the events of each crisis round some dramatic position, which gives his narrative the unity of a good tale. An example is his admirable account of the Green Ribbon Club in Chancery Lane, which was the true centre of interest in the Popish Plot. The book is full of brilliant summaries, which are generally as true as they are memorable. Sometimes Mr. Trevelyan is led by a desire of saying a thing finely into some exaggeration; but considering the frequency of his generalisations, his slips are uncommonly rare. There is both truth and point in such sayings as these :—" From Cromwell to Wilberforce the road lay through Voltaire " ; seventeenth-century rules of evidence were "the rules of probability interpreted by prejudice" ; Laud's mistake lay in not perceiving that "if there is no comprehension within the Church there must be toleration without"; and there is humour besides in the account of Charles's Queen and her revenge on p. 351, and the summary of the political significance of the Popish Plot :—" The truth that would have saved the Whigs remained hid, but a liar came to their deliverance. In the autumn of 1678 Titus Oates deposed that the Jesuit Con- gregation had met on the 24th of April in the White Uorse tavern and take counsel to murder the King. The position of Shaftesbury and his followers was not one in which they could afford to look a gift horse in the mouth."
The meaning of the Stuart epoch in our national develop- ment, as Mr. Trevelyan points out, lies in the fact that, while on the Continent national power and unity could only be pur- chased through a military despotism, the English people un- consciously developed a solution of the same problem by means of a free Constitution. The curse of the Stuart Kings was that they were never able to read the signs of the times. Their problem was difficult, insoluble indeed, given their circumstances and traditions. It is perhaps too much to demand foresight from them and compromise, when such compromise meant in their eyes the surrender of all that gave virtue to kingship. Their history is tragedy sandwiched between comedy,—the perverse nobility of Charles I. flanked by the impracticable cleverness of James L and the mis- chievous and conscienceless adroitness of Charles II. Their careers have some of the interest of antique tragedy, for great as were their own contributory faults, we may truly say that their ruin was decreed in spite of themselves. The old world and the new could not settle their dispute without a sacrifice. Mr. Trevelyan has drawn a careful portrait of the first James, though he seems to us scarcely to do justice to his very con- siderable political talents. Mr. T. F. Henderson, in the latest volume of the Goupil Series, has produced a monograph on the King which is notable for its sympathy and fairness. Of all the Stuarts, he is the only one who has been generally underrated. His personality was singularly unattractive ; everything about him recalled the school- master,—his pedantry, his formalism. As compared with his tragic successor, or with the infinitely witty and human Charles II., he is a dull, drab figure, whom it is difficult either to like or detest. But he was a professional Monarch, he knew what he wanted, and he had remarkable powers of administration and a very clear and logical theory of king- ship. His face, with its loose, puffy mouth, fine forehead, and obstinate eyes, is a true index to his character. Of Charles I. Mr. Trevelyan has little to say. He was a mere puppet in a tragedy which was beyond his power, and certainly beyond
net.] his understanding. His death, as Mr. Trevelyan points out, was the final mistake of the Republicans, for it roused the people of England against them, and created a "national tradition of pity." Thereafter it was impossible for Cromwell to appeal in free election to the people, for the sentiment of the people had been outraged. Mr. Allan Fea in his superbly executed volume of memorials has piously traced every event of the last two years of the King's life, and has printed the original narratives of his last intimates. Let any one who desires to realise what the execution meant to a loyal Cavalier, and how ample were the materials for the tradition which sprang from it, read the conclusion of their narratives. Of the other great tragic figure of the era, Strafford, Mr. Trevelyan gives us only a slight sketch, which means little in Strafford's case, for he was not a mere agent in a propaganda or the disciple of a creed, but a very complex and four-square individual. But there is justice in the final comment :—" He served England well, for he dignified her history. He showed that the cause of tyranny did not fail among us, first of all great nations, because among us it lacked princely intellect or royal valour."
If Mr. Trevelyan shows a defect of sympathy, it is in his estimates of the strong unconstitutional men,—the Straffords and Cromwells, for they were of the same breed, who wished first to pluck out disorder from the nation before they talked of liberties. His imagination leans always to the "magic doors" of constitutional government, "which close at the touch of force, but which force cannot reopen." It is the defect of most modern writers on the seventeenth century, except Mr. Gardiner. The glory of the House of Commons under Pym and Hampden still clings, in their eyes, to the feeble assemblies whose wreckage strews the rest of the century. The age required the strong hand to break the feudalism of the past, it required the democrat, but it did not specially require the constitutionalist. He came later, in easier times, and in the stress of revolutionary war he is a belated and inconsequent voice in the wilderness. Democracy required its armed leader, and there was more true political wisdom in Cromwell than in the whole hive of formalists which he scattered. But Mr. Trevelyan atones by a fairness and breadth in his portrait of Charles IL which are uncommon
enough in his school of historians. He even writes of him with a kind of gusto, which the spectacle of the humourist in high places cannot fail to rouse in the austerest critic :— "On the 25th of May the English world stood crowded on Dover beach, to see what kind of angel was the deliverer for whom they had sent. A man stepped out of the boat, whose thick, sensuous lips, dark hair and face of a type more common in Southern Europe, confessed an origin and temperament in every way the opposite to those of the English squire who had grown up among the Puritans of Huntingdon. The Mayor of Dover put the English Bible into the strange hand. He of the thick lips declared that it was the thing that he loved above all things in the world.' The worthy Mayor was enchanted at so honest an answer, for he did not perceive that the comic spirit had landed on our coast. The wittiest company of comedians that history records had come to tread the stage for a while, as little appre- ciated on the whole by the English people as were the great tragedians who had played their piece and were departing, undis- mayed by the howling and the fury, wrapped in the dignity of self-dependent virtue, Republicans without fear, without repent- ance, without hope."
RECENT ECONOMIC CONTROVERSY.*
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