realization of philosophic ideas. George Eliot's earlier novels are more than that; but this is a fair description of Romola and the rest. Romola is the sternest of all her dramas of temptation, crime, and retribution. But study and thought have overborne the original creative impulse, now that she has deserted the familiar scenes of her childhood. Felix Holt is a special study of the working classes after the Reform Bill, and of the militant activities of Radical politicians. Middlemarch, in spite of being too big and too complicated, is one of her finest novels, and recaptures some of the charm of her Warwickshire memories. It is a huge bundle of life histories, all enforcing the same moral. Dorothea's vague and fruitless aspirations, Bulstrode's moral and financial downfall, Edward Casaubon's wasted labour on the Key to All Mythologies, the disillusionment of the brilliant Dr. Lydgate are each and all a parable of lost ideals. The happier lives of Caleb (said to be a study of George Eliot's father) and Mary Garth give the obverse. Her Influence.-George Eliot's influence was for a time omnipotent in English fiction, though it was not the delightful humanist of Silas Marner and The Mill on the Floss that set the pattern to other novelists, but the austere philosopher who had gone through the ordeal of Romola and written herself out in Daniel Deronda. For a good quarter of a century after Romola, though there were novelists who freely obeyed the dictates of genius, the novel on which critical attention was focused, and which cultivated readers looked upon as fulfilling the orthodox theory of fiction, was the novel that professed to be a diagnosis of society, so firmly grounded on accurate observation and logical deduction that its conclusions were as irrefutable as the census returns. The works of her second period were of a kind singularly congenial to the Puritan temper of New England, where a school of novelists appropriated her methods of analysing the conflicts of egoism and conscience, the evolution of character, and similar ethical problems, amid new surroundings. Both in America and in England her influence is by no means exhausted, either on readers or writers. SUPPLEMENTARY READING LIST Texts.-All the novels named above are available, for the most part in editions by numerous publishers and at all kinds of prices. Critical Studies.-English Men of Letters: Dickens, Thackeray, Mrs. Gaskell, George Eliot (Macmillan v.y.).—GISSING, G.: Dickens (Blackie, 1898).—CHESTERTON, G. K.: Dickens (Methuen, 1906).—LANIER, S.: The English Novel (Scribner, 1883).—SAINTSBURY, G.: The English Novel (Dent, 1913).-Stephen, L.: Hours in a Library (2nd and 3rd series, Smith, Elder, 1876); Studies of a Biographer, Vol. IV., Trollope (Duckworth, 1902).—WILLIAMS, H.: Two Centuries of the English Novel (Smith, Elder, 1911). CHAPTER 7. VICTORIAN HISTORY From Gibbon to Hallam-History as a Science: Grote, Buckle, Freeman, Stubbs, FROM GIBBON TO HALLAM Gibbon's Decline and Fall, the greatest work produced by any British historian, was completed in 1778, and for thirty years thereafter there was little historical work done in England. There was no parallel in these islands to the intense historical activity in Germany which produced Niebuhr, Savigny, and Ranke. In Gibbon all the arts of the historian were blended; he was moralist, philosopher, and man of letters, as well as chronicler, and if his conception of a scientific method falls short of the rigour of to-day, it was far beyond anything contemplated by his immediate successors. Among the lesser names of this transition period may be noted William Mitford (1744-1827), who produced A History of Greece, which was not superseded till Connop Thirlwall (1797-1875) published his abler and less biased work on the same subject between 1835 and 1844. Dr. John Lingard, a Roman Catholic professor, issued his History of England between 1819 and 1830. Lingard's book is written from a special point of view, and is never free from a propagandist purpose; but he worked honestly at his sources, and was the master of a clear and pleasant prose style. Robert Southey (1774-1843) produced a number of historical works-a History of Brazil (1810-19) and a History of the Peninsular War (1823–32), but he is better remembered as the author of two admirable biographies-a Life of Nelson (1813) and a Life of John Wesley (1820). Hallam. The first considerable historian after Gibbon was Henry Hallam (1777– 1859). He was a trained lawyer, and a man of immense erudition; but above all things he was a man of a sober and central judgment, who, fortified with a moderate Whig philosophy, endeavoured to see the past as a consequence of the strife of great principles. Throughout he is an ardent moralist, regarding history as a basis for a reasoned optimism and a confidence in the advance of liberty and justice. His View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818) is a series of self-contained surveys presenting rather a philosophic outline than a detailed history. His Constitutional History of England, dealing with the period between Henry VII. and George II., was the first attempt at a type of history which was to have many successors. Hallam also produced An Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries (1837-8), which is still a valuable and accurate encyclopædia. Hallam had a powerful mind, a little narrow and dry, but eminently sane and masculine. His style is cold, dignified, and workmanlike, without heights and without disasters. He has little colour or grace and small imaginative power, and his merits are to be sought in the firm architectural lines of his work and in its invariable lucidity and moderation. HISTORY AS A SCIENCE Historical writing in Britain since Hallam has tended to fall into two distinct classes that in which the scientific interest is uppermost, and that in which a definite effort is made to raise history to a literary art. The two classes are not exclusive, for the scientific historian often attains to the literary graces, and the literary historian rarely lacks something of the scientific standpoint. Both schools were apt to produce moralists, who either read contemporary conditions into the past or drew from the past a moral for their own times. But the division is useful, since it enables us to classify according to temperament. In the first class the line of succession is Grote, Buckle, Freeman, Lecky, Stubbs, Gardiner, and Lord Acton, and the great names of the second are Carlyle, Macaulay, and Froude. George Grote (1794-1871) was a typical philosophical Radical who sought to apply both the scientific bias and the political principles of that school to the study of ancient history. Irritated by Mitford's Tory interpretation of Greek history, he produced between 1845 and 1856 a History of Greece, based on a careful study of the documents then at the disposal of the world, and full of that assurance of the invulnerability of its judgment which marked his school of thought. Grote was a man of affairs, and his book is always distinguished by good sense, and though much of it has been superseded by later archæological discoveries, it remains as a great intellectual achievement. His style is ugly and hard, and no book on Greece has ever been written with less Attic grace. Buckle. Of the same temper was Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-62), whose unfinished History of Civilization in England (1857-61) is one of the boldest attempts at the dogmatic interpretation of history ever made. His philosophy was of the harsh materialistic type which becomes at times almost comically shortsighted; but his handling of facts and his vigorous deductions from them are always impressive, and his study of 17th-century Scotland is in its way a masterpiece of sharp, narrow, intellectual analysis. In both Buckle and Grote there was a genuine desire to ascertain truth according to what they regarded as a scientific standard. The same impulse may be found in The History of Christianity by Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), in the Enquiry into the Credibility of Early Roman History and Remarks on the Use and Abuse of some Political Terms by Sir George Cornewall Lewis (180663), and in the studies in the early history of institutions and laws of Sir Henry Maine (1822-88). Freeman. Edward Augustus Freeman (1823-92) believed in science, liberalism, and, above all, in the study of history as a source of practical wisdom. He held, too, that all history is continuous, being the exemplification in practice of eternal principles; but while his ethical interest is strong, his judgments are kept in order by his view of the importance of the comparative method. His main works are his History of the Norman Conquest (1867–79), and his unfinished History of Sicily. Freeman's erudition is great, but few historians of his intellectual calibre have been so lacking in the literary arts. His rhetoric is crude and undistinguished, and his ordinary style is flat and monotonous-the style, as has been said, of a lecturer who has to emphasize his points by repetition. Yet he has a large historical vision, and, though apt to be unfair to his contemporaries, he laboured after justness in his historical estimates. Stubbs.-William Stubbs (1825-1901) was a greater man of letters than Freeman, but he chose for his branch of history one in which the details are apt to be so arid that literary graces have little scope. No British historian has ever been a completer master of his material, and if we seek an example of the scientific method at its best we may find it in him. Apart from editing many charters and chronicles, he produced A Constitutional History of England (1873-8) which covers his subject down to 1485. His other works are chiefly reprinted lectures, such as On Mediæval and Modern History, On European History, and The Early Plantagenets. Stubbs had little desire to read modern politics into the past, or to preach any contemporary moral. He altogether disbelieved in the philosophy of history, which he defined as "in nine cases out of ten a generalization founded rather on ignorance of points in which particulars differ, than on any strong grasp of one in which they agree." He is a master of the art of arrangement; his mind is at all times most scrupulous and candid; his style is close, compact, but never ugly, and often subtly interpenetrated with humour. Lecky. The early work of William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838-1903) was on the same lines as that of Buckle, but with a larger outlook and a wiser judgment. His contribution to this branch of the subject can be found in The History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe (1865) and The History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne (1869). His History of England in the Eighteenth Century (1878-90) shows his laborious industry and the skill and discretion of his detachment. He makes no attempt at fine writing, but there is a sober grace in his orderly sequence, and in his descriptions of social life he rises often to a real animation. He is one of the most convincing of historians, suffering from no party bias or infirmity of temper. Gardiner. Samuel Rawson Gardiner (1829-1902) was a type of historical student more common in Germany than in England. He gave up his whole life to his work, and, unlike most of his contemporaries, was never drawn into politics. His History of England (1603-42) appeared between 1863 and 1882. Four more volumes (188691) dealt with the Great Civil War, and another three (1895-1901) with the history of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. He is perhaps the greatest of English scientific historians, and he who gleans after Gardiner will find little to reward him. He is not only accurate in his facts, but singularly true and just in his estimates, for we see him laboriously stating both sides, and we see, too, the mental processes by which he arrives at his final conclusion. He has in the highest degree the historic sense, for he never reads later mental processes into the past, and it may fairly be said that no historian has ever built up more convincingly the mind of a dead statesman or society. His style is a little flat and dull; but it is always honest, and when he is moved by a great argument, as in the description of Cromwell, he rises to passages of real literary beauty. He has small pictorial power, and has not Macaulay's gift of visualizing the physical details of a scene or figure; but he can interpret most finely and exactly a mind and character. His labours have altogether transformed the world's view of the 17th century in England. Green.-John Richard Green (1837-83) belonged in theory to the school of Freeman, but his main works, A Short History of the English People (1874) and The History of the English People (1877-80), were an attempt at a vivid popular history. He wished, as he said, to delineate the "constitutional, intellectual, and social advance in which we read the history of a nation itself," and he was less concerned with wars and politics than with social conditions. Green's work is a brilliant performance, perfect of its kind, and for all its vivacity and colour it is based on considerable research. His style is agreeable and animated.. Green provides the link between the orthodox, academic, philosophic and scientific school of historians and the school which conceived of history first and foremost as an art. HISTORY AS AN ART The scrupulous scientific conscience in history is apt to lead to aphasia. Lord Acton, for example (1834-1902), the most learned of modern Englishmen, though he contemplated all his life a great History of Freedom, left behind him only a few volumes of republished lectures. The 19th century was fortunate in possessing three historians who, following the tradition of Thucydides, saw history more as a picture and an interpretation than as a bloodless scientific analysis. Carlyle, Macaulay, and Froude have all specific merits from the historical point of view; but even had these been lacking they would rank as great men of letters. Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) was many things besides historian, and his philosophical and controversial works are treated elsewhere (p. 526); but it is probable that on his histories his fame will chiefly rest. The French Revolution was |