BOOKS.
PHILLIMORE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.*
ANY doubt which may have been felt as to the reasons which have induced Mr. Massey to bring his history of the reign of George the Third to an abrupt close with the peace of Amiens may now be regarded as dispelled. Clearly Mr. Phillimore has scared him away. He saw the tempest gathering, and fled to shelter while there was yet time. At all events, that is the best thing that anybody who is at all in Mr. Phillimore's road can do, and we do not say that even that will save him. Dr. Newman feels the lash (preface and p. 108). So do Mr. Ruskin and the late Mr. Assheton Smith (p. 119). So do Mr. Smith's biographer and Mr. Smiles (preface). So do the anti-Raphaelites (p. 7, note), and the authors of "Essays and Reviews" (p. 36), and the people who believe in Niebuhr, and the people who do not believe in Homer, and many others who certainly did not flourish in the reign of George the Third. However, though we who are now alive are the most cruelly used, it is a comfort to reflect that our grandfathers and grandmothers, and even our remotest ancestors, by no means escape. Mr. Phillimore has "endeavoured to prevent any hope or fear of a personal nature from having the slightest influence" on him ; and so far as his object can be attained by the indiscriminate use of bad language he has certainly succeeded. Any- body who takes up this book to kill a few hours will feel like the man in the farce, who hid himself in a shower-bath and inadvertently pulled the string. 'We trust, too, that no elderly gentleman may be induced by its size and subject to imagine it fitted for after-dinner reading ; be will soon find out that he might as well try to sleep in a hailstorm. From William the Conqueror to Queen Victoria our history is one melancholy tissue • Hilton, of Ragland during the Reign of George the Third. By Joh* Ueorge Phillimore. Vol. L London: Virtue, Brothers, and Co. 1863.
of dullness, brutality, cruelty, and corruption. In this state of things we ought seriously to reflect how good it is of Mr. Philli- more ,to write history, which must present a spectacle painful indeed to one who has .preserved himself from all these vices. Moreover, "in no free country" has public spirit been so utterly
wanting—for which see this History, p. 8, and the statute-book passim—and our system of education, "in nine cases out of ten, stunts the intellectual growth of the unhappy boys for ever."
Can we be too thankful to that Providence which has been pleased to save Mr. Phillimore's mind from these evil influences, and to raise him up as a teacher to those " contemporaries " whom "lie disdains to court ?"
The first three chapters are occupied with a preliminary view of England and the English in general, and the reigns of the first two princes of the house of Hanover in particular. We owe everything in Mr. Phillimore's opinion to our Constitution. We did not make it. On the contrary, it has suffered at our hands everything that corruption and chicane—" to which fresh meshes were added by the avarice of each successive gang of judges"—could do to destroy it. We are, moreover, a "selfish and rude people," neither quick-witted, nor far-seeing, nor large- minded, without penetrating or comprehensive genius, without an idea of grandeur, illogical, tasteless, as is shown by the books we read, and by our buildings, monuments, and inscriptions—lovers of mediocrity, avaricious, indifferent to merit for its own sake— inveterate empirics. "Our extravagance is common-place and our very scepticism taken on trust." On the other hand, we are brave, persevering, patient, enterprising, truthful, endowed with fortitude and the quality" of improving by education" (p. 6-8). Neither our vices nor our virtues, however, as has been stated,
made our Constitution. It is the result, first, of our insular situation, and consequent freedom from standing armies ; second, of "the splendid virtues of a few eminent Oitizens"—as, for instance, Simon de Montfort, Bohun, Hampden, Elliot, Somers, and we hope we may now be permitted to add Mr. John George Phillimore. It seems strange that in such a hot-bed of evil these noble plants should have been so strong and healthy, but as no explanation is vouchsafed, probably no better account of their existence can be given than Topsy's- " we s'pose they grow'd there." Of the different elements of our society the nobility are marked by "factitious pride and love of Court favour," but at that time they had happily not yet "learnt to make the employments of grooms, gamekeepers, watertnen, and drill-serjeants, the serious and almost the sole objects of their children's education" (p. 215). The bishops, from Cranmer to Sheldon, are "more thoroughly odious and contemptible than any characters in modern history" (p. 28). Since 1688, having been equally worldly and servile, they have been "scorned by the powerful with whom they aspired to associate, and hated by the lower classes whom they affected to despise." The ordinary clergy to these faults too often added "gross intemperance and systematic dissipation." Lawyers are " selfish pedants" (p. 12), and judges are ignorant, narrow-minded, avaricious, interested, of "unexampled corruption" (p. 16) ; but language fails Mr. Phillimore in describing the vices of the bench. The gentry are marked by sullen arrogance (p. 12), and in- credible immorality in both sexes (p. 44), and even the ladies, unless refined by careful education, are apt to be "narrow-minded, rough, and trivial" (p. 7). Of our kings, Henry VII. aimed at establishing absolute power by chi- cane. Henry VIII. was "the most perfectly wicked and detestable of all modern tyrants," and "a fury of lust and blood." James I. was "stained with the most loathsome vices and privy to the blackest crimes." Charles I. was a "prevaricator;" James II., "by no means the worst king of his contemptible race;" Anne, "weak and prejudiced." The habits of George I. were "coarse, profligate, and repulsive." In his relations with the other sex Charles II. was like "a voluptuary in a harem," George II. like "a quadruped in a pasture." The worship of the Church of England, we are told, is" tedious and formal," while Calvinism is " more immoral than any creed with which Paganism can be reproached." The law, on the other hand, "rests on false- hood," because, forsooth, the judges invented legal fictions to defeat the Statute of Uses, of which the policy was at least doubtful, and that of entails, of which the policy was certainly mischievous. But space fails us to enumerate all Mr. Phillimore's harsh and sweeping judgments.
It is the more to be regretted that he should have made his work a mere tirade of this kind, because there is almost always a certain element of truth in his strictures, although expressed with a one-sided vehemence which defeats itself, For it is not
true that even in the consideration of the most reprehensible conduct the historian does well to be angry. He is not in the position of the judge or the moralist. He is not bound to take every separate action of a man, and approve or condemn it, according as it conforms to a rigid law. As a matter of fact, men are almost always better than their actions. Human nature is the same at all times—the same now as it was in the time of the Black Prince ; but human conduct alters, and, no doubt, on the whole, steadily improves. People might and may do very improper things, which, if sanctioned by custom, are, neverthe- less, quite consistent with very considerable moral elevation of character ; while, on the other hand, very minor faults, if they imply reckless defiance of public opinion, may argue great depravity. Now, it is the business of a historian to take all these things into account, to make allowances for men's temptations and defects of intellect and education, and to recognize that no public man can be much blamed for not being in advance of the age in which he lives. But this is precisely what Mr. Phillimore never will do. He calls it servility ; and when lie writes in the very opposite spirit, fancies himself influenced by a zeal for truth. Neither, again, is it possible to draw up at all a fair account of the state of the law at any given period by going through the ./Innual Register, and picking out exceptional crimes (pp. 51 to 59). This age, too, has had its Burkes and Greenacres, but such cases find their way into the ilnnual Register, not because they give a picture of the age, but because they are abnormal and monstrous. Neither do we trust Mr. Phillimore when he makes the aspersions which he scatters right and left with so much profusion. Of Bishop Warburton we are told that it is difficult to believe that the man who wrote the "Divine Legation can have been a Christian. We do not see the difficulty ; but Sheldon and Atterbury fare worse, for both are set down as unbelieving priests without any reason being given for the assertion. The Princess of Wales is accused of the grossest profligacy on the evidence of a sneer of Walpole (p.279), and the existence of a liaison with Lord Bute is taken as proved on the authority of popular rumour and the vague sarcasms of memoir-writers. But even the last imputation, however probable, cannot be said to be established beyond the possibility of doubt, and there is nothing in the world which ought to be taken with more suspicion than scandalous tales about great people in the private correspondence of men who, like Walpole, cared little about the truth of a story so long as it was amusing. Gossip- mongers are always liars ; and if one goes back a century or two further, we shall find every important personage accused, as a matter of course, not merely of intrigue, but of crimes so horrible as to be almost incredible.
So far, therefore, as the preliminary portion of this history is con- cerned, we are obliged to condemn it altogether. It is an essay written on erroneous principles. History in Mr. Phillimore's hands may be "the glass" which he undertakes to hold up, but it is so ill- made that it does not "reflect " but distort "the spirit and character of past generations." The same proneness to conclude evil, on evidelce either insufficient or untrustworthy, equally disfigures the narrative itself, and we are quite unable to see that there is any very substantial variation in matters of fact, between the view which he takes of the first few years of the reign of George III. and that which has been taken by previous historians. The leading idea of his history seems to be to show the effect on our history of the personal character of the king, and this we are convinced that be entirely mistakes. The desire for absolute power which lie attributes to George III. we believe to be a sheer figment. The king, no doubt, desired to emancipate himself from the state of tutelage in which his predecessors had been kept by the great nobles of 1688, but so far he is not to be blamed. And if his love of power carried him too far, be was probably entirely unconscious of it. This is expressed with great naivete in the king's remark about the British Constitution, of which he was a passionate admirer, that" it provided for the liberty of everybody except that of the monarch—him it made a slave." Certainly we are not disposed to defend the dismissal of Pitt, the appointment of Bute to be Prime Minister, or the Peace of Paris ; but the king was then a mere boy, and entirely under the influence of those who had educated him. That he should have struggled against the dictation of Grenville and Bedford is not wonderful, and he never pretended to be favourable to Lord Rockingham, who was accepted merely as a pis oiler. But is it any proof of a de- sire for arbitrary power that during the Grenville administration he, by choice, twice applied to the elder Pitt to replace them, and that it was Pitt for whom he supplanted the first administra-
tion of Lord Rockingham? Whatever Pitt's faults may have been, he would not have held office an hour after he ceased to direct the policy of the State. Mr. Phillimore not only denies the king's integrity of purpose, but underrates his abilities. If all things be considered, he deserves less blame for his subser- vience to Bute than praise for having had the strength of mind to emancipate himself from his influence so soon. His whole educa- tion, if education it can be called, had been directed to making him dependent ; and his dependence certainly did not last four years, and was probably greatly exaggerated during the latter part of that time. He was also a goad judge of men, and was rarely the dupe of the selfishness by which he was surrounded. As for his narrow-minded opposition to all reform, and his atti- tude with reference to the American and revolutionary wars, he did but partake, after all, of the prejudices of his contemporaries. On all these points the vast majority of the people was with him, and they who enjoy the immunity from ambitious intrigues, which is one of the advantages of hereditary monarchy, must take also its disadvantage—the liability to be ruled by one who is not in advance of his age.
The motives which induced Lord Bute to resign as suddenly as he did are a favourite subject of speculation. Lord Macaulay, whom Mr. Phillimore is fond of sneering at, has probably put the matter on its right footing. Mr. Phillimore's idea that Bute feared impeachment by the Duke of Bedford seems to us most improbable. The Duke was nearly as unpopular as Bute lihn- self ; and the authorities which Mr. Phillitnore cites do not in the least bear out his conclusion. The most they speak of is a per- sonal attack in the House.
It remains that we should say a word on Mr. Phillimore's style. He speaks with great contempt of schoolmasters, as people who are ignorant of "the art of writing," and prides himself on having imbibed the spirit of the classics instead of learning what the Germans have said about them. No doubt he is able to com- pare English legislators with Solon, and the demeanour of Mr. Pitt before the king with that of Demosthenes in the presence of Philip, which is very improving. We wish, however, that his Latin quotations were either less frequent or less common-place, and that in the next edition be would make his printer give them accurately (p. 32 and 219). Moreover, a master of the "art of writing " should abstain from the use of strange words, such as " sabbathless " for unceasing, and " worsened ;" from long in- volved sentences, notable instances of which may be found at pages 26, 60, and 155; and still more from being unintelligible, as in the sentence beginning, "The abuse of pluralities," at p. 34. The style, however, if incorrect, is vigorous and spirited.
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