Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects

Front matter

SEVENTEEN LECTURES

ON THE STUDY OF

MEDIEVAL AND MODERN HISTORY

Inaugural

I.

INAUGURAL.

(Feb. 7, 1867.)

THE giving of an Inaugural Lecture is an occasion which compels and may well excuse a little trepidation. The speaker, although he is wisely restrained by academic decorum from courting or fearing the thunder, propitious or otherwise, of right or left, cannot divest himself of the feeling that he is really about to take the omens of his future success, and cannot but be anxious to make, if he possibly can, a promising beginning. This is especially the case when he is called upon, as I am now, for the first time in his life, to address an academic, I may even say an educated, audience. He has not learned the tone of authority which befits the professorial character: it is no mere matter of form for him to deprecate adverse criticism; he feels that he must introduce himself, in a way that is of necessity painful both to his self-respect and to his modesty, to an audience from whom he has at least as much to learn as he can ever hope to teach them. I can indeed hardly use the word teach without reservation. I am so sensible of the greatness of the field, the variety of the instruments, the infinite multitude of the workers employed on the subject to which my labours in this place are to be devoted, that I am afraid even to advertise myself as a teacher, and would rather be looked on as a helper and trainer in a school in which every man has to learn his own lessons.

For I am thoroughly convinced that the purpose which is answered by the study of Modern and Medieval History is twofold; it is at once the process of acquisition of a stock of facts, an ignorance of which unfits a man from playing the very humblest part as a citizen, or even watching the politics of his own age with an intelligent apprehension; and it is an educational discipline directed to the cultivation of powers for whose development, as it seems to me, no other training is equally efficacious. It is but natural that I should speak thus of a study which has been to me the pleasure, rest, and comfort of a somewhat busy and anxious life, to whose teachings I feel myself indebted for whatever power of judgment, critical experience, or speculative equity, if I may be allowed to use such a form of words, I am conscious of possessing. I wish to undervalue no other system of training, no other field of inquiry, but I speak of this as I love it, and as, if a sound purpose of doing with my might what my hand has found to do can be any pledge of honest and effectual work, I trust those who will apply themselves to it with my assistance will come to love it and profit by it as well. But as I shall have, no doubt, to say more than enough about myself before I finish this lecture, I will proceed now, in that desultory way which the nature of an inaugural lecture necessitates, to say something about my founder and my predecessors; and, having done that, to enlarge somewhat on the place which our study has among the pursuits of this University, the method of training, and the end which I propose to myself in the work that lies before me. I have pleaded guilty to a natural trepidation, I have acknowledged that what I have to say will be desultory. I think that the circumstances account for both, and trust to you for an equitable consideration.

The Professorship of Modern History was founded in the year 1724 by King George I; a prince of whom those who would say the worst must allow that he was an honest and harmless sovereign, whilst a professed panegyrist would most wisely content himself with saying that his reign is the commencement of an era during which the happiness of the kingdoms he ruled, their progress in knowledge, political intelligence, wealth, domestic and social comfort, have increased in a ratio unprecedented and unparalleled: during which the exertion of English influence in the councils and contests of the world has been effective beyond precedent and parallel, and has been used, if not always in the most enlightened way, always for the end and for the cause that seemed to be just and right. The process of events, and the action of various systems of politics, have in a great measure served to alter the views which at the time were taken of the wars of the last century and of the early years of the present. We have learned some of us to approve, and more perhaps to acquiesce in, proceedings which our fathers looked on as in the last degree unrighteous and intolerable. The days in which men go to war for an idea, and accept subjugation because they cannot afford to be sentimental, can safely smile at the errors of statesmen and the short-sightedness of kings, to whom justice and honesty were still justice and honesty, although disguised in the mock solemnities of dynastic shadows. But we will not deny either to kings or to peoples the credit of zeal for what they believed to be right, and the glory they had, so far as it was real, of counting no cost too great to be incurred for what they saw to be the cause of order and of society. They fought, as they believed, for their own existence and ours.

George I, whatever may have been his personal faults, and, however little adapted he may have seemed in his own days, or may seem now, to fulfil the ideal character of kingship in a free and enlightened people, comes on the stage of English History as the representative of a principle which has been found to answer, and as the inaugurator of a period of national prosperity. So far at least we have no cause to blush for our founder. But as our founder, I think we may look at him more closely. The house of Brunswick has always had the reputation for the good sense to patronise literature, and especially historical literature. Not to seek for precedents so far back as Henry the Lion, who superintended the writing of the annals of his country in the twelfth century, it will perhaps suffice to give a general reference to the enormous number of historical books which, during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, issued under ducal patronage from the presses of Helmstadt, Hanover, and Göttingen. George himself had been the patron of Leibnitz, of Jo. George Eccard, Burckhard Gotthilf Struve, and Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, whom I name rather as familiar to English ears than as standing alone in their peculiar studies. One of his first measures, when his accession to the crown of Great Britain had increased his influence in Europe, was to interest himself in behalf of Leibnitz and Muratori in their attempts to draw from the archives of the jealous republic of Venice, materials for their gigantic undertakings in the same line. At Cambridge, again, he appears as purchasing and bestowing on the University the invaluable MS. Collections of Bishop More, which have helped to make the Public Library there one of the most useful and famous historical libraries in Europe. Whatever may have been the king's purpose in these several measures, we may safely, I think, affirm that it was not a mere political or official object which determined him when, in 1724, he wished to confer a mark of favour on Cambridge and to hold out an olive-branch to Oxford, to give to his sister foundations the same character of professorships of Modern History. Leibnitz was the most learned man he had ever seen, and perhaps Leibnitz's learning was most intelligible to George I in the shape of the Annales rerum Brunsvicensium. Nor should I omit to mention what, in the opinion of their most adverse critics, ought to be a redeeming point in the later Hanoverian princes. George II refounded and reformed the Chair which I have the honour to fill; under George III began those long and at last successful investigations into the archives of the kingdom and the treasures of our great public libraries, which are now but beginning to bear a promise of abundant interest: under George IV, as king of Great Britain and Hanover, was begun the great series of Monuments of German History, the editor of which was once wont to call himself Historiographer of the Most Serene Guelfic house, and of which the king of Hanover was a patron to an extent double of that of Prussia, and nearly equal to the patronage of all the rest of the German Courts; a great work which has made Hanover its home, and for the possession of which our Library here is indebted to the munificence of king George V.

It is hardly, I think, necessary to look further than the king himself for the influence under which the foundation was first projected; the exact time and the declared purpose of the completion of the design may have been determined by others. It is possible that Walpole or Stanhope may have been the adviser; it is by no means improbable that bishop Robinson, who has been looked upon as the founder of the eighteenth century school of English diplomacy, may have been consulted as to those details of the plan which were intended to afford to the students of the Universities the means of a diplomatic education. I am sorry to say that I have been unable to find any satisfactory evidence on the subject. I have indeed heard it positively affirmed that bishop Robinson drew up the scheme which took effect the year after his- death; and I should have been glad to believe it was so, for bishop Robinson was a benefactor of the Church to which I owe my own education, and the College which has munificently contributed a large portion of the endowment of the professorship. But until more evidence is attainable, I cannot speak with confidence. The influence of either Stanhope or Robinson Would account for the particular intention with which the foundation was completed; whilst that of Walpole, if it were used, would hardly have taken any other than a utilitarian direction. It is to the prominence with which this particular intention is put forward that, in conjunction I think with a general distaste to accept a benefaction from the duke of Brunswick, the ungracious reception which the new foundation met with at Oxford is to be ascribed. For the University not only acknowledged the receipt of the king's letter in a most contemptuous way, forwarding their letter of thanks by a bedell, but when, by due pressure and by the example of Cambridge, compelled to send a formal answer by a deputation to the king, clothed it in such words as showed that the introduction of the new study was looked on as an unwarranted interference with the educational government of the place; clearly it was no part of the intention of Oxford in 1724 to educate able servants for the house of Hanover.

For the study of History Oxford had hitherto been no unkindly school. The period of literary activity which had succeeded the Restoration had been greatly indebted to Oxford scholars. The names of Bishops Nicholson, Tanner, and Kennett, of Atterbury, Wake, and Gibson, although in these days they are chiefly known, if known at all, as antiquaries or controversialists, mark a period of historical exertion second to none either in the importance of its researches or in the value of their results. Cambridge began the modern study of English History with Parker, Oxford followed up briskly with Savile and Camden, Selden, Gale, Fulman, and Fell; men, who, if they did not pretend to shine as Historians, are entitled to the eternal gratitude of all students, and appreciated at least that true and fundamental canon of composition that the materials for History must be provided before History can be written. From Oxford, or from the studies of Oxford men, proceeded nearly all the great collections of English Historians; and the old school of students was now well represented by Thomas Hearne. But at the time when this professorship was founded this class of men were either withdrawn, like Tanner and Kennett, to other work, or relegated by their own political sympathies and Whig liberality, like Hearne and Baker, to the comparative uselessness of literary retirement. Nor, I think, were the ministers of the crown very careful as to the hands in which they placed the engine of education, from which so much might have been hoped. To speak with the utmost respect of my early predecessors, I do not find that they were men to whom the study of History, either English or foreign, is in any way indebted, until we come down to Dr. Nares at the beginning of the present century. They probably owed their position to their political connexions or to literary eminence of other kinds. It is no wonder that under the circumstances the place of History among the studies of the University became worse rather than better, or, like that of Moral Philosophy, was lost altogether.

Passing on from Dr. Nares, of whom I speak with all gratitude, remembering well, as many of the elders amongst my hearers can doubtless remember likewise, the days when his weighty volumes were almost the only available sources of information for later history: we come to the great name, never to be pronounced without reverence even by his opponents, of the man whose sincerity, energy, and power of training, made him the prime mover of this generation. What Arnold might have done for the study of History in this place, had his time been given to it or been prolonged sufficiently to produce any appreciable effect on it, may be estimated by the effect of his work on other branches and in other places of education. I say it with diffidence, rather because I fear your criticism than because I have any doubt of the truth of the assertion, I believe that the one thing which Arnold wanted to perfect the balance of his admirable judgment, and to direct the current of his overflowing sympathies, was that experience of critical difficulties and moral incompatibilities which becomes practically, to the devoted student of History, a training in itself. Of Dr. Cramer I can say little. He was well furnished as a scholar and a most accomplished man: his contributions to literary history are exceedingly valuable: but his time here was short; he was not a young man when he undertook the office: he had other cares which took him away from Oxford. Most of all perhaps during the time of his holding this office all the thinking men of the University were engrossed in controversies on matters interesting, most interesting to all, in which, however much a historical training might have profited them, it was too late to forge their weapons when they were in the midst of battle. Of the two professors who preceded me, I must not, need not, say much: you are far better able than I am to appreciate their work here: but I may say that none of you can more sincerely than I do admire the learning, acuteness, earnestness and eloquence of Professor Goldwin Smith: learning, acuteness, earnestness, and eloquence never more signally admirable than when employed, as we have so often rejoiced to see them employed, on the behalf of Christian Truth against philosophic sciolism.

The circumstances under which I return to Oxford and begin my work here are, for many reasons, most encouraging; so encouraging as to afford, I think, some grounds of apprehension that the responsibility is heavier than I ought to have undertaken. In no respect does the Oxford I find on my return contrast more favourably with the Oxford I left sixteen years ago. At that time the professorship of Church History had been founded, and was filled by one [Robert Hussey] who was undoubtedly the founder of the modern study of that subject in Oxford. I mean the study of the history of the Church as a whole, not from points of controversy to supply weapons for the discomfiture of opposing theologians, but as the life of the Christian Church itself, the whole history of the body of which the modern nations claim in their spiritual character to be members. But the theological exigencies of the time had so far narrowed the field of inquiry that it was practically restricted to the first three centuries, or at the outside to the period embraced under the topics of the general councils. The attempt which he made to extend the range by introducing the study of the Venerable Bede as a text-book was, as you are aware, foiled by the impossibility of getting together a lecture on a matter that was neither connected with the controversies of the day, nor required to be known by candidates for holy orders. The College libraries then as now afforded abundant resources for any student who would take up the subject for himself, but my grateful recollection of the first acquaintance made with Hearne, Dugdale, and Prynn, in Christ Church Library, is inseparably connected with the reminiscence of the amused, and I am glad to remember approving, surprise, with which Dean Gaisford took me unawares at my note-book. It is possible that the rooms of the Architectural Society in Holywell were the school in which a taste for medieval history, at least, was insensibly acquired.

The introduction of new studies into the course of University training was viewed with apprehension by many: some perhaps of us who are now here were inclined to waver between a mistrust of innovations which seemed likely to break down the traditionary character of our education and the desire of welcoming a study of all others the most germane to the true and perpetual genius of Oxford. I may now, I suppose, say it without offence, I think that the distrust of the new studies, at all events of the study of Modern History, was owing quite as much to the management of their advocates as to the conservative habits of the opponents. I am not sure that either party would have admitted, or indeed would now admit, what, to adopt a proper professorial tone, I may say is certain, that whilst of all studies in the whole range of knowledge, the study of law affords the most conservative training, so the study of Modern History is, next to Theology itself, and only next in so far as Theology rests on a divine revelation, the most thoroughly religious training that the mind can receive. It is no paradox to say that Modern History, including Medieval History in the term, is co-extensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History. We may call them sister studies, but, if they are not really one and the same, they are twin sisters, so much alike that there is no distinguishing between them. Men who are bent on seeing only differences and ignoring points of agreement refused to see that in 1850, and I dare say refuse to see it still.

So much, however, has changed and changed rapidly in sixteen years; so many old friends have sought new fields of work, so great changes have passed over the moral and intellectual atmosphere of Oxford, that one is prone to forget that in truth the precedent era from 1830 to 1850 was itself only a transient phase, and not to be looked on as stamping for ever the character of the University. I for one can rejoice in looking back on those days, and I can look forward with hope and sympathy to what is before us in these respects. If I regret the absence of some things that were pleasant in the old life, at least I can appreciate much of that which promises to be the charm of the new. Happily removed for all these years from Oxford controversies, and I am glad to say that in the humblest way I have not had a finger in them, I can still clothe the old life with that gladness which for most men gilds the recollection of undergraduate days. But the world did not stop with me when I left Oxford, and I trust, if God shall spare me, to work with a good heart as long as it is called to-day.

I rejoice then to find on my return the School of Law and Modern History occupying a well-defined and still improving position, and bestowing honours which the men most honoured in the other contests of the academic arena are glad not only to win but to work for. The Modern History School has thriven with very little nursing; and it needs but a glance at the class lists to show that there has been and continues to be, I will not say abundant promise, but actual work done m the cause of historical study by those who have distinguished themselves in our examinations. It is not invidious to mention the names of some who have challenged public criticism by their books, and have not merely shown in them the usefulness of historical training, but conferred lasting benefits on the students that follow them. The Law and Modern History School helped at least to train my excellent colleague, the Chichele Professor, for his labours; and it has helped to give us from Mr. Kington an English life of Frederick II, from Mr. Bryce a monograph on the Western Empire, which have already taken their place as standard books on our shelves. But far more than this has been done by the direction into the same channel of a considerable part of the more industrious teaching power of the Colleges, so that there is now a strong and, I hope, an increasing, staff of College tutors, whose time and mind are devoted primarily to the cultivation of this study. With these my occasional visits here as examiner have put me into communication, and the association with them in their work is to my mind one of the happiest incidents of my present position. I would, indeed, that this thought had been without the drawback that, at the very moment of my return, I in common with the whole of the rest of the University should have to lament the loss of one [Dr. Shirley], noble, good, and wise far beyond his years, who had watched and worked for the development of this study from the day of its introduction to Oxford, whose labours and influence were ever used for good and for every thing that was good, whose early promotion and effective character had marked him out as the man who was to do great things for the University and the Church of God in this age. Seldom has so much promise, seldom have so great earnests of great work been so sadly or so fatally blighted: we cannot look that his place can ever in all respects be so filled that there will not still be much, very much, to desiderate; for it is not Oxford alone that laments him, nor the cause of Historical study only with which he had identified himself both here and throughout the literary world. But I will not touch on questions beyond the scope of my present consideration.

Besides the very advantageous position which, without nursing, I repeat, our study has attained here, in men, books, and honours, the immense treasures of historical lore which are now being poured liberally from the great storehouses of record throughout Europe, but most especially in England, form, a feature of the present time that promises to renew the youth of the Historic Muse. The great Continental collections of Historians are growing slowly but substantially; the German collection, begun in 1826, nearly rivals the French one a century its senior; the Sardinian Government had one of its own, which we may hope will not be smothered for the sake of more ambitious plans; the Vatican itself, under the kindly influence of a German Oratorian, has begun to thaw from its old reserve. Last and greatest, our own national work under the direction of Lord Romilly has in eight years proved itself more than a worthy rival both in bulk and workmanship of the older repositories. And not to speak of the collection of Historians, of which from my own connexion with it I am obliged to speak with modesty and reserve, the extracts and abstracts of public and private documents found in our Record offices and in those of Spain and Venice are rapidly filling our libraries with cases of stout green volumes from which the history of the most eventful of our years is being rewritten, and which will soon involve the necessity of a new Macaulay as they have already brought into being a new Burnet and a new Robertson.

From this sudden breaking up of the fountains of historical refreshment I dare not augur what results may follow, or what new worlds may be opening for other generations to exercise their logical acuteness and their historical perspicacity upon. We have our work set, in a literary point of view, in arranging, and bringing into bearing on one another, the masses of information that are threatening to overwhelm us. Happily, there is no lack of helpers; the great German hive of historical workers is busy as we are on our archives: such and so close are the ties which now, owing to the facilities of travelling and communication, the abundance of libraries and the accessibility of records, the extension of literary and investigative sympathies, and, I am happy to think, the extinction of literary jealousies, are now binding the historical scholars of Em-ope, that I think and hope that the day is coming when, although we may not cease to quarrel with and criticise one another, there will be a great republic of workers able and willing to assist one another; not working for party pm-poses, unfettered by political prejudices, and although as strong partizans and politicians as ever, anxious above all to find the truth, and to purify the cause that each loves best from every taint of falsehood, every inclination to calumny or concealment. I confess that it is towards this consummation that my dearest wishes as a student of History are directed; and that I anticipate with the greatest pleasure the prospect of being instrumental and able to assist in the founding of an historical school in England, which shall join with the other workers of Europe in a common task; which shall build, not upon Hallam and Palgrave and Kemble and Froude and Macaulay, but on the abundant collected and arranged materials on which those writers tried to build whilst they were scanty and scattered and in disorder. The time cannot be far off when all the records of the medieval world which are in existence will be in print either in full or in such abundant abstracts as will be thoroughly trustworthy representations of their contents; when every great Library will contain copies of them all, and when every town will contain a great Library. The seed sown by the old Record Commission, by presenting copies of their publications to the municipal corporations and principal provincial libraries, marks an era, as antiquaries well know, in the development of antiquarian study and the preservation of archaeological treasures. We may hope to see the same principle extended now, and although the chief labours of the historian must continue to find their place in his own study, as no library can supersede the need of books at home, still no man may be obliged to keep all his ideas in chronic effervescence and all his hopeful discoveries in a state of tantalising suspension, in the hope that once a year he can visit the Bodleian or the British Museum. For that day of many students, many books, many libraries, and many readers, I look with confidence; in the meantime I do hope and trust that my work here, although this may not be its primary aim or its most successful use, may help in a humble way to educate workers for the good time coming.

For I desire to introduce myself to you, not as a philosopher nor as a politician, but as a worker at history. Not that I have not strong views on politics, nor short and concise opinions on philosophy, but because this is my work, and I have taken it up in all sincerity and desire of truth, and wish to keep to my work and to the sort of truth that I can help on in the inquiry; because you have plenty of politicians and plenty of scholars to whom, if they wish to have it, I certainly win not begrudge the name of philosophers. I suppose that it is truth we are all seeking, and that though the sorts of truth are distinct and the ways that we work in are very different, when we have found what we seek for we shall find all our discoveries combine in harmony; and I trust and believe that the more sincerely, the more single-heartedly we work each of us, the nearer we consciously come to the state where we shall see the oneness and glory and beauty of the truth itself. So that the theologian, the naturalist, the historian, the philosopher, if he work honestly, is gaining each for his brother, and being worked for each by his brother, in the pursuit of the great end, the great consummation of all. We may all speak humbly, the theologian because of the excellence of his subject, the rest because of the vastness of our field of work, the length of our art and the shortness of our life; but we cannot afford to speak contemptuously of any sort of knowledge, and God forbid that we should speak contemptuously, or hypercritically of any honest worker.