1897.] on the Picturesque in History. 315 



We may agree that history should be made as picturesque as 

 possible ; but picturesqueness cannot be applied in patches. Char- 

 acters must be made life-like by remembering that after all they were 

 human beings, neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but animated by 

 motives analogous to those which animate ourselves, and are common 

 to man in all ages. An historian ought to live with his characters 

 as much as possible, and form a conception of their temperament and 

 appearance, so as to feel that he is dealing, not with dummies, but 

 with real persons. This is not always the method pursued. I re- 

 member being told by a friend that he was in a great library, and 

 saw a popular writer anxiously searching the catalogue, with a bundle 

 of proofs under his arm. He proffered his assistance, as he was 

 merely reading at large for a few days, and would be glad to have an 

 object. " Oh," said the author with a sigh, " I want to know the colour 

 of So-and-so's hair, and I don't know where to find out." My friend 

 spent three days in discovering this fact, and observed, when the 

 book appeared, that the information was used in a description of the 

 hero at a great crisis of his fortunes : " He stood with his shock of 

 red hair and flashing eyes," &c. Now in this case it is obvious that 

 the judgment on which the book was written was formed first, and 

 then picturesque details were sought to deck it out. I have some- 

 times meditated whether or no the judgment would have been the 

 same if the writer had known at first that his hero had red hair. As 

 we are affected in daily life by personal appearance as an index of 

 character, so we might well be affected by some corresponding con- 

 ception of temperament in great men of the past. Historical portraits 

 are very valuable ; the knowledge how a man's appearance impressed 

 those who saw him is equally valuable. No outburst of description 

 makes a man real. This is only possible by a sympathy between the 

 writer and his character, which penetrates all that he says of him. 

 A large, yet consistent, representation is the best form of picturesque- 

 ness in this important field. 



The danger of an excessive desire for picturesqueness is that it 

 leads to a purely external view of the course of affairs. The writer 

 passes hastily from one strongly marked personality to another, from 

 one striking event to another, and neglects all that lies between them. 

 Yet personalities are only really interesting as they exhibit tendencies 

 which are widely spread ; and it is the strength of these tendencies 

 which finds expression in the dominating character. In fact, the 

 character itself is of no value for the purposes of history unless it be 

 brought into relation with the general conditions of life and thought 

 which produced it. This is the difference between history and fiction. 

 For the purposes of fiction you have to grant the possibility of the 

 character which is analysed or displayed in action. For the purposes 

 of history you have to understand the correspondency of the char- 

 acter with the conditions and circumstances of national life. It requires 

 a skilful delineation of those conditions to give a character historical 

 reality. He cannot be detached from his background. His whole 



