GREEN'S "HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE."* Alas. GREEN has done
good service to English history by pub- lishing a new edition of her husband's epoch-making work, the Short History. It is a book the world will not willingly let die, and new editions are the best way to prevent death over- taking it. The new edition is announced as " thoroughly revised," and ths only unfavourable criticism we should be in- clined to pass upon it is that it is perhaps too thoroughly revised.
It is quite right, of course, to correct any and every mistake of fact that may have been discovered, and in a work covering so long a period and written in so short a time, mistakes in fact
were inevitable. By some of these mistakes, as when they consist in putting the cart before the horse, or when by a wrong date an event which was the effect or merely a sequitur of another event, is converted into a cause, a recasting and
rewriting of whole passages is necessarily entailed. It may even be right, as in the case of the Ironsides, to introduce the light of new knowledge, and to deprive Cromwell's troops of their time-honoured nickname in favour of Cromwell him- self, though until Mr. Gardiner's statements on this point have been published and thoroughly sifted, we decline to recog- nise the necessity for its posthumous introduction into Mr. Green's work. We can no more tolerate it on the ipso di.uit even of Mr. Gardiner, than we could allow Alfred to be deprived of his cakes without the strongest evidence of their non-existence. But Mrs. Green seems to have gone, in a great many cases, even unnecessarily beyond either the correction of admitted errors, or the introduction of new knowledge or reputed knowledge.
Whole sentences are recast, and the order of phrases changed, for no reason apparent, except a difference of taste on a matter of style or euphony. Epithets are altered or omitted; and verbs changed and toned down, sometimes, it would seem, almost at random, rarely with any gain of effect. Most of these changes are in the direction of substitution of a leas for a more striking phrase, a weaker for a stronger word. In fact, Mrs. Green seems to have considered it her duty to play the part of Arthur to the Piper's story of Philip and Katie in the far-famed " Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich i"—
" And it was told, the Piper narrating, and Arthur correcting, Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture, He to a matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating, He to the great might-have.been upsoaring, sublime and ideal, He to the merest it was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing, River to streamlet reducing and fall to slope subduing."
Now, we cannot but think that this is a mistake. Mr. Green's History no more bears tampering with in matters of style and expression, even by himself, than do the works of a poet.
Who can forgive Tennyson for having altered "the grand old
• A Short History of the English People. By J. R. Green. Hew Edition, by Mrs. Green. London : Macmillan and Co.
gardener and his wife," into " Adam the gardener " ? In these things it is not true that second thoughts are best, nor even "third, which are a riper first." For what was the cause of the unparalleled success of the Short History ? and what were the characteristics which raised a school-book on the trite subject of English history almost to the height of a new revelation ? Surely it was the epic nature of the narrative, the rash and rapidity of the style, the picturesque felicity of phrase, the eagerness and earnestness of epithet. Mr. Green did two things at once for English history. Like Anaxagoras in Greek philosophy, he introduced a governing mind into that which had been before a fortuitous concourse of chaotic atoms. He introduced a philosophic theory of national evolution into that which had been too often treated as a mere series of dis- connected stories, or anecdotes, more or less interesting, of Kings, nobles, and Archbishops. And he did this not in the measured periods and stilted style which had generally been regarded as the orthodox qualities of one class of historians, nor in the cold simplicity which has been aimed at by others, but with all the verve and vigour of an ancient poet, and all the loving multiplicity of detail of the modern novelist. He did for English history what Gibbon did for later Rome, and he wrote English history, as a whole, in the spirit with which Macaulay had written a small portion of it. Milton had re- garded early English history before the Conquest as a mere struggle of kites and crows. To most people, it was little more than a collection of old deeds and customs, or a series of detached anecdotes. Green breathed life into the old documents, and wove the old tales into a connected and interesting story of the development of the English race. If it be only a slight ex- aggeration to say that in the old edition no one ever simply went anywhere, but either rushed, or flew, or flung himself there, why the very violence of the expressions—not at all, by-the-way, out of keeping with the violence of those whose doings were described—was part and parcel of the vigour of the narrative which made the dry bones live. He showed once for all that no part of authentic history need be like an old almanack, and that epitomes need not be the cankers of history. He demon- strated that the earliest as well as the latest records may be and must be treated as the stories of living beings, and not as fragments of abstractions, if their true relations are to be appre- hended by the writer and their trite bearing to be conveyed to the reader. His writings have given an immense impulse to the rational study alike of early English history and early English literature. He has probably sent more hundreds of readers to the pages of the Bishop of Chester than the Bishop of Chester without his aid would have gained scores. It is probable that he immensely widened the circle of the readers of Freeman. We can hardly help feeling that if Green had not written, Dr. Jessop would not have written on the coming of the Friars, and the im- portant movement effected by those Salvationists of the four- teenth century would have remained unexplained. And one can hardly help thinking that if Green had not made the growth of the English towns so prominent a part of his work, the excellent series of the histories of English towns would not have made its appearance. It would be unfair, and unjust, indeed, to great historical writers still living, to impute to Green's initiative the whole, or even the most important part, of the historical work done by the Oxford historical school of which he was so prominent a member. The Bishop of Chester and Professor Freeman are masters at whose feet Mr. Green sat, whose teaching and whose inspiration he would have been the first to acknowledge. No unimportant part of Mr. Green's work was to bring their methods and their results from the university to the school, from the library to the drawing-room,—one may almost say, from the study to the street. But he was more than a popnlariser of other men's studies. He showed a striking genius for generalisations which have illumined the dark pages of history. He had in a strong degree that note of genius, the power of giving new names to things. "The New Monarchy," the title given to the Tudor period, was in itself a revolution in the established methods of con- stitutional classifications. "England under Foreign Kings, 1013-1204," conveyed totally new but true conceptions to those who had laboured under the old notions which regarded Edward the Confessor and Harold, Henry IL and John, as purely English Sovereigns. The introduction of literary history, not as a mere necessary appendix in final chapters, but as an integral part of the story to be told, interspersed with, explaining and explained by the general life of the nation, was another innovation which only enthusiasm amounting to genius could have introduced. Bat in all these things, which together make up that inexplicable compound, a work of genius, the matter and the form are so interdependent that one can hardly be touched without affecting the other. Therefore it is that while we welcome Mrs. Green's new edition of her husband's History, we cannot but regret the toning-down of epithets, phrases, and expressions, on the vivacity, the vigour, and even the exaggeration of which largely depended the striking effect which the book has produced alike on historical students and the world at large.
Previous page
