exactly the same way, by the several people who were at the same time eye-witnesses of it? No; one mistakes, another misrepresents; and others warp it a little to their own turn of mind or private views. A man who has been concerned in a transaction will not write it fairly; and a man who has not, cannot.' Four or five years later, his lordship impresses anew on his son's receptive faculties the same cautionary counsel, in a more practical form: "I would have you see everything with your own eyes, and hear everything with your own ears; for I know, by very long experience, that it is very unsafe to trust to other people's. Vanity and interest cause many misrepresentations; and folly causes many more. Few people have parts enough to relate exactly and judiciously; and those who have, for some reason or other, never fail to sink or to add some circumstances."† (6 La The words with which Frederick the Great opens his History are, plupart des histoires que nous avons sont des compilations de mensonges mêlés de quelques vérités." Archdeacon Hare, without standing up for the strict justice of this censure, yet quotes it in arguing against the shallow common-place that "history is all true, and poetry is all false,"— quotes it as from an historian of his opponent's own school, an assertor and exposer of the profligacy of mankind. "Thus much too is most certain, that circumstantial accuracy with regard to facts is a very ticklish matter; as will be acknowledged by every one who has tried to investigate an occurrence even of yesterday, and in his own neighbourhood, when interests and passions have been pulling opposite ways." In which sense too might he say, as Raleigh says in a different sense, that "if we follow Truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out our eyes." Applicable to this view of the question is Prescott's remark, after enforcing the difficulty of arriving at historical truth amidst the conflict of testimony, and the little reliance to be placed on those writers who pronounce on the mysterious past with what Fontenelle calls "a frightful degree of certainty," a spirit the most opposite to that of the true philosophy of history,-that it must be admitted, however, that the chronicler who records the events of an earlier age has some obvious advantages in the store of manuscript materials at his command-the statements of friends, rivals, and enemies furnishing a wholesale counterpoise to each other; and also, in the general course of events as they actually occurred, affording the best commentary on the true motives of the parties. The actor, he remarks, engaged in the heat of the strife, finds his view bounded by the circle around him, and his vision blinded by the smoke and dust of the conflict; while the spectator, whose eye ranges over the ground from a more distant and elevated point, though the individual objects may lose somewhat of their vividness, takes in at a glance all the operations of the field. "Paradoxical as it may appear, truth founded on contemporary testimony would seem, after all, as likely to be attained by the writers of a later day as by contemporaries themselves."§ Incidentally, in another of his works, Prescott cautions those of his readers who may not themselves have had occasion to pursue historical inquiries, as to the difficulty they must have of imagining on what loose * Lord Chesterfield to his Son, Apr. 26, 1748. † Ibid., Sept. 22, 1752. Guesses at Truth, First Series. Prescott, Preface to History of Conquest of Peru. grounds the greater part of his narrative is to be built. With the exception of a few leading outlines, he says, there is such a mass of inconsistency and contradiction in the details, "even of contemporaries," that it seems almost as hopeless to seize the true aspect of any particular age as it would be to "transfer to the canvas a faithful likeness of an individual from a description simply of his prominent features."* And again, in another chapter, which describes the celebrated tournament near Trani, in September, 1502, the historian observes, in a foot-note, pertinently prosaic in contrast with the chivalric romance of the text, that this famous tourney, its causes, and all the details of the action, are told in as many different ways as there are narrators; and this, notwithstanding it was fought in the presence of a crowd of witnesses, who had nothing to do but look on, and note what passed before their eyes. The only facts in which all agree, are, that there was a tournament, and that neither party gained the advantage. So much for history!† Something it is that in something all should agree-near as that minute aliquid may be to a mere negative nescio quid. Thereby the foundations of history are laid, such as, and shadowy as, they are. There is a sort of substratum obtainable, after all, out of this medley of internecine narratives, and thereupon the jaded, eyesore, brainsick historian is fain to set up his rest. It is like the practical conclusion come to by the Venetian Senate, in Shakspeare, when a conflict of statistics bewilders their calculations. Duke. There is no composition in these news 1 Sen. Indeed, they are disproportion'd: 2 Sen. And mine, two hundred; But though they jump not on a just account To some such practical deduction, after eliminations wholesale, must the most sceptical of historical critics come, if such a thing as history is to remain in esse, or in posse even, in rerum naturâ. Even Raleigh knew to the last that there had been a scene, of some sort, under his windowthough the details of it, like the terms of an equation, had been made to cancel each other, right and left,—and x alone remained, a still unknown quantity. l'ont vue "Une La Bruyère puts the standing difficulty in his best lively way. chose arrive aujourd'hui, et presque sous nos yeux; cent personnes qui la racontent en cent façons différentes; celui-ci, s'il est écouté, la dira encore d'une manière qui n'a pas été dite. Quelle créance done pourrais-je donner à des faits qui sont anciens et éloignés de nous par plusieurs siècles? Quel fondement dois-je faire sur les plus graves historiens? Que devient l'histoire ?"|| † Ibid., ch. ii. § Othello, Act I. Sc. 3. + Consistency. Les Caractères de La Bruyère, ch. xvi., Des Esprits forts. The inevitable oversights and mistakes of history are a common-place with even the most common-place thinkers. All that we know is, nothing can be known, is the despairing ultimatum of many a disgusted inquirer. 66 Thou know'st, of things perform'd so long agone, This latter age hears little troth or none,* Tasso reminds his Muse, when buckling himself to the toil of historicising in immortal verse the Recovery of Jerusalem by Godfrey and his peers. By coach to my Lord Crewe's," writes Mr. Pepys one day, in his wellkept diurnal: "Here I find they are in doubt where the Duke of Buckingham is; which makes me mightily reflect on the uncertainty of all history, when, in a business of this moment, and of this day's grow h, we cannot tell the truth."+ Mr. Barham rhymes and reasons con amore on the pros and cons of this vexed question at large: I've heard, I confess, with no little surprise, And a certain Divine, A connexion of mine, Who ought to know better, as some folks opine, Leaning back in his chair, With a sort of a smirking, self-satisfied air, Like the Bold Captain Smith's, and the Luckless Miss Bailey's- Were very great liars, And raised stories faster than Grissell and Peto: That, in short, all the facts' in the Decem Scriptores, The common remark as to the "utility of reading history" being one day made in Johnson's presence, the sage remarked: "We must consider how very little history there is; I mean, real authentic history. That certain kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend upon as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of history, is conjecture." Mr. Arthur Pendennis fancies, for his part, that the speeches attributed in his veracious Chronicles of a Most Respectable Family, to Clive Newcome, the Colonel, and the rest, are as authentic as the orations in Sallust or Livy. "You tell the tales as you can, and state the facts as you think they must have been. In this manner, Mr. James, Titus Livius, Professor Alison, Robinson Crusoe, and all historians proceeded. Blunders there must be in the best of these narratives, and more asserted than they can possibly know or vouch for."|| *Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered (Fairfax), book iv. st. xix. Ingoldsby Legends, Third Series: The House-warming. The Newcomes, ch. xxiv. Don't read history to me, for that can't be true, Sir Robert Walpole is reported to have said, when asked to choose the book he would like to listen to. His son Horace appears to have inherited the paternal pyrrhonism in an almost aggravated form. His letters abound with pungent proofs of this. "We know past times very imperfectly," he writes, in one place, "and how should we, when few know even the present, and they who do, have good reason for not being communicative? I have lived till I think I know nothing at all."* Again, three or four years later: "Whether like the history of darker ages, falsehood will become history, and then distant periods conjecture that we have transmitted very blundered relations. . . . [I know not;] but when I know so little of what has passed before my own eyes," he is referring to the riots of 1780,-" I shall not guess how posterity will form their opinions." Again: "The multiplicity of lies coined every day only perplexes, not instructs. When I send you falsehoods, at least I think or believe them probable at the time, and correct myself afterwards, when I perceive I have been misled. I, who am in no secrets, trust to facts lone, as far as they come to light. Mercy on future historians, whose duty it will be to sift the ashes of all the tales with which the narratives of the present war have been crammed! Some will remain inexplicable." To another and reverend correspondent he writes: "I have long said, that if a paragraph in a newspaper contains a word of truth, it is sure to be accompanied with two or three blunders; yet, who will believe that papers published in the face of the whole town should be nothing but magazines of lies, every one of which fifty persons could contradict and disprove? Yet so it certainly is, and future history will probably be ten times falser than all preceding."§ Three years later he is telling Mann of the Westminster riots (1785) at Fox's election, &c., and of a squabble between his neighbour the new Marquis of Buckingham, and two young rioters of rank, of which quite contradictory stories were told: "In short, in such a season of party violence, one cannot learn the truth of what happens in the next street: future historians, however, will know it exactly, and what is more, people will believe them!"|| Four years afterwards he is entertaining Lady Ossory with the rumoured items of the Princess Amelia's Will, and the newspaper assumptions and comments thereupon,whence this reflection, in the old strain and to the old tune, ensues: "History, I believe, seldom contains much truth; but should our daily lying chronicles exist and be consulted, the annals of these days will deserve as little credit as the Arabian Nights.'" To the same Countess, after an interval of five summers, he again expresses his scepticism as to the "study of history" being "useful"—" which I doubt, considering how little real truth it communicates, and how much falsehood it teaches us to believe.”** And once more, for a last example, writing on the chaotic politics of 1794: "I leave to history to collect the mass together, and digest it as well as it can; and then I * Walpole to Sir Horace Mann, Nov. 24, 1776. Ibid., Aug. 24, 1780. should believe it, as I do most ancient histories, composed by men who did not live at the time, and guessed as well as they could at the truth and motives of what had happened, or who, like Voltaire and David Hume, formed a story that would suit their opinions, and raise their characters as ingenious writers."* If from those of our fellow-men whom we daily meet, as Mr. Froude has observed, we are divided inwardly by impalpable and mysterious barriers, how much more difficult to understand a bygone age, the actors being so different from ourselves in motives and habits and feelings. The past he therefore calls a perplexity to the present; "it lies behind us as an enigma, easy only to the vain and unthinking, and only half solved after the most earnest efforts of intellectual sympathy, alike in those who read and those who write."† So much for the unravelling of motives. And not so very much better for the elucidation of facts. The date of historical narratives, remarks a National Reviewer,-especially of modern histories-are a heap of confusion: no one can tell where they lie, or where they do not lie; what is in them, or what is not in them. If literature is called the "fragment of fragments," so is history "a vestige of vestiges;" so few facts leave any trace of themselves, any witness of their occurrence; while of fewer still is that witness preserved; "a slight track is all anything leaves, and the confusion of life, the tumult of change, sweep even that away in a moment. It is not possible that these data can be very fertile in certainties. Few people would make anything out of them: a memoir is here, a manuscript there-two letters in a magazine-an assertion by a person whose veracity is denied,-these are the sort of evidence out of which a flowing narrative is to be educed."+ The recent trial for libel in the case of Lord Cardigan against Major Calthorpe, in respect of the magnificent but not warlike Charge at Balaklava, elicited from the leading journal the following among other comments: Here is a brilliant feat of arms performed before the eyes of a whole army. Hundreds who took part in it and thousands who watched it with intense anxiety are still living. It has been described again and again in despatches, in journals, in letters, in books, and in conversation; and yet it is with the utmost difficulty that we get at the truth of its most remarkable features. The smoke, the din, the excitement, and the confusion of battle left such impressions on the minds of the actors that we can hardly get from them a consistent story of just those particulars on which an historian would dwell so glibly and dogmatically. With such an example before our eyes, if we do not share Sir Robert Walpole's scepticism about history in general, we may well receive the minute details of battles and sieges with some little reservation of judgment."§ Mr. Carlyle follows up his reflections on the imperfectness of that same experience, by which philosophy is to teach, by others on the incompleteness of our understanding of those occurrences which do stand recorded, which, at their origin seemed worthy of record, and the summary of *Walpole to Lady Ossory, Dec. 8, 1794. § The Times, June 11, 1863. |