xxiii 



*r 



lay. On the function, on the proper rank, on the real province and use 

 of history, he had meditated long and profoundly. His ideal of the 

 perfect historian, such as he aspired to be, may be found in an essay, 

 somewhat too excursive, in the Edinburgh Review, republished in the 

 recent volumes. A perfect history, according to Macaulay, would 

 combine the unity and order of the great classical historians, with the 

 diversity and immense range of modern aifairs. This was but one 

 condition; the history would not be content with recording the 

 wars and treaties, the revolutions and great constitutional changes, 

 the lives of kings, statesmen, generals ; it would embrace the manners, 

 usages, social habits, letters, arts, the whole life of the nation. It 

 would cease to be haughtily aristocratic ; it would show the progress 

 of the people in all its ranks and orders. There can be no doubt that, 

 as to the actual life of certain periods, Shakespeare and Scott are 

 more true and trustworthy historians than Hume or even Clarendon. 

 Why should not romance surrender up the province which it had 

 usurped ? Why should not all this, which is after all the instructive, 

 not to say amusing part of the annals of mankind, be set in a frame- 

 work of historic truth, instead of a framework of fiction? If we would 

 really know our ancestors, if we would really know mankind, and 

 look to history for this knowledge, how can history, secluding itself in 

 a kind of stately majesty, affect to disdain this most important part 

 of her office ? Nothing can be more clumsy than the devices to 

 which the historian sometimes has recourse. It may be excusable in 

 historic dissertations (the form which Hallam's works have assumed) 

 to have the book half text, half notes, broken, fragmentary, without 

 continuity. Hume and Robertson took refuge in appendices, in which 

 they sum up with unsatisfactory brevity, what they have wanted 

 skill to inweave into their narrative. Henry's history may be read 

 as containing what Hume left out. If there is in notes much beyond 

 citation of authorities, perhaps comparison of conflicting authorities 

 (we may perhaps pardon in Gibbon something more), this can only 

 show that the historian has an unworthy conception of his high art, or 

 that he wants the real power and skill of an historian. But to this 

 lofty view of the historian's function who is equal? It required all 

 Macaulay 's indefatigable research ; for the historian, the true 

 historian, must not confine himself to the chronicles and annals, the 

 public records, the state papers, the political correspondence of 



