LEOPOLD VON RANKE.
VON RANKE, by whose removal in his ninety-first year European literature may be said to lose its doyen, was a striking instance of the longevity so often achieved by men in whom the constant exercise of the intellect seems to have lent vigour to a naturally frail physique. The inflexible regularity with which he carried on his studies might, indeed, well suggest to those unacquainted with his works a uniformity and an absence of animation which are as far from being the character- istics of his narrative as they were from being those of the man himself. Vivacity was imprinted on his features, and manifested itself in his conversation, which was brilliant in his own tongue and fluent in the half-a-dozen other European languages which he spoke with an equal indifference for grammatical proprieties. He is described by one who knew him well as always smiling, except on the rare occasions when he was an- noyed, for, though excitable, he was exceedingly good-tempered and tolerant, qualities which, as a historian, he displayed in an inexhaustible patience in amassing materials, as well as in the judicial impartiality with which he used them. The expression used by the writer of a notice in one of our daily papers that he lived "the peculiar life of a student" is somewhat mislead- ing. It is true that he was primarily a great intellectual athlete, regulating his mode of life with a view to the daily " performance of eight hours' literary work. But this arrange- ment did not exclude the distractien afforded by his long walks, by talking and reading aloud in his home circle, or by the fre- quent acceptance of dinner and other evening engagements ; for his animated style of conversation and vast information ren- dered him a welcome guest alike at Court and in literary circles. His connection with the Prussian Royal Family, which dated back to his appointment as Historiographer-B oyal in 1841, was no mere formal or titular association, but partook of the nature of an intimate and personal attachment. It is therefore all the more to his credit that, although the lapse of years, as he confessed, made him more intensely Conservative and Protestant, he was yet able to maintain relations of un- abated friendliness with the adherents of views diametrically opposed to his own. Brilliant and vivacious as Ranke un- doubtedly was, with a keen interest in all that went on around him, he can hardly be described as sympathetic. He lived too habitually in the dry light of reason to manifest affection even where he felt it, and the enforced frugality of his early life, which survived in a Spartan asceticism of diet, begot a certain stoical karteria, a hardness which showed itself in an indifference to the minor amenities of life. His own iron endurance rendered him somewhat inconsiderate towards the weakness of others, and even in the last few years of his life, his amanuenses "toiled after him in vain ;" for in spite of a system of relays which gave him a fresh hand for the second division of his daily labours, the scribe was always the first to tire. In person he was diminutive, and the unequal height of his shoulders gave him almost the appearance of being deformed. Neverthe- less, fatigue and bodily weakness were unknown to him till the very close of his life, and the great bulk of his work was done on the modest sustenance afforded by one regular meal per diem.. Indeed, he remained so perfectly master of his faculties until his final illness, that there was nothing presumptuous in the wish expressed at the close of the little address delivered to his friends on his ninetieth birthday, that he might be spared for a few years to complete his " Weltgeschichte " and the other undertakings he had on hand. When it is borne in mind that he was eighty-six when be undertook this colossal task, a good notion of his extraordinary vitality is obtained.
Turning for a while from Ranke's personality to his work, it will be enough briefly to indicate some of the chief services which he rendered to that branch of literature in which his activity was confined. Foremost amongst these was the method of research which he may fairly be said to have inaugurated in his first work, and which he lived to see adopted by the scientific historians of every other European country. This method con- sisted in the personal inspection of State archives and diplo- matic evidence, and the signal success which attended his own investigations is nowhere more strikingly exhibited than in his "History of England, chiefly in the Seventeenth Century." Picturesqueness was never consciously aimed at by him, and the course of social life, no matter how brilliant, interested him but little. But the whole network of political intrigue in which Charles II. lived was unravelled by Von Ranke for the first time, while the masterly summaries of character which so often close his chapters have an eloquence of their own, and even in the translation create a profound impression of the author's penetration and sagacity. Alike with his method of research, Ranke's impartial judgment and scrupulous accuracy constitute further claims to respect and admiration. At the. same time, he possessed the happy knack, as Dr. Mommeen said to him on his last birthday, of discovering the best side of every man, and so, like an ideal portrait-painter, "of representing men perhaps not always as they were, but as they might have been." He was very far, however, from being a romantic historian, while owning the impulse which the historical romances of Sir Walter Scott gave to his studies. His first feeling, which was one of admiration, soon gave way, as he tells us, to one of antagonism, when his perusal of Comines and the chroniclers revealed Scott's divergences from authentic records in "Quentin Durward." If we add to his masterly power of characterisation and scrupulous in- tegrity a certain broad and fez-reaching view of human affairs, three of his most striking merits will have been indicated. His defects were eminently those of his virtues, and grew out of his conception of the duty of a historian to confine himself to facts, without intruding his own personality or indulging in specula- tion. To say that he was content to dispense with the grace of style, is hardly fair. His diction, while avoiding all suspicion of conscious adornment, rises occasionally to the level of genuine eloquence ; and if he never fascinates us, we should remember that fascination is hardly to be expected in a scientific historian.
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