226 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
his work is to be a record only of the results of law: like the records 
of the naturalist and mathematician: and that the virtues and vices 
of men are equally the results of law, of conditions and environment, 
and are not affected by the metaphysical figment called free-will. 
If a man holds such a theory, as many do, it is obvious that even a 
marked and vivacious personality will not obtrude itself into his 
history: that his history will become almost impersonal on principle: 
that though the writer be a Bishop, it may be, his history will not be 
a hand book of morals, a collection of inspiring anecdotes, a fountain 
of moral edification: that it will not improve the occasion, as the phrase 
is. For all such efforts, the writer will turn to such other functions 
as he may be in a position to discharge, the functions of a Bishop, 
or a schoolmaster, or a father, and the like. 
Bishop Stubbs, for example, was a man of marked personality, 
of caustic humour and masculine good sense, intolerant only of triviali- 
ties, of humbug and affectation and waste of time. But we know this 
‘from sources other than his histories: and if he was a voracious reader 
of fiction as well as a veracious historian we are entitled to surmise 
that it was because he found history, as he conceived it and made it, 
so dull, that he turned instinctively to the opposite field of literature 
for relief and refreshment. If he had held a less dry theory of history 
he would have written better history and have read fewer novels: 
both his writing and his reading would have gained. 
The historian of to-day, says another academic historian, Lord 
Acton, dines in the kitchen: if he does so, he does so of his own will 
and judgment and no one else need complain: if ke does not. But 
it is a different matter that he should make his readers dine there with 
him. After all, it is usual for the cook who prepares the entertainment 
in the kitchen to take her own entertainment there: it is not usual for 
her to ask the guests to join her at her repast. 
I trust I am not flippant beyond measure. Quite seriously, it 
does not really and rightly follow that, because history involves a 
lot of dull spade work and heavy research, the result, when served up, 
should be also dull and heavy. Goldwin Smith was not. Gibbon was not: 
he avoided it by footnotes. We may suppose that he was always 
learned: that he read Thucydides amid the diversions of the nursery: 
but his learning sits lightly on him and the easy reading which he 
furnishes is the best tribute he desired to the hardness of his work. 
There is, however, and always has been a conception of history 
diametrically the opposite of that which imposed itself upon Bishop 
Stubbs: the conception that the historian is also or almost a poet. 
A true historian will give his imagination free play in the interpretation 
of the difficult and bygone minutiz of time and place and nationality, 
