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NOTES

TO

LECTURE I.

NOTE 1.-Page 96.

Though Lord Clarendon has not preserved the dialect of James the First, the dramatic form of several passages in the first book of his History gives a very life-like notion of the King's familiar conversation-the coarse mind and manners distinctly reflected in the coarseness and voluble profanity of his speech.

NOTE 2.-Page 96.

"The fate of Joan in literature has been strange,-almost as strange as her fate in life. The ponderous cantos of Chapelain in her praise have long since perished-all but a few lines that live embalmed in the satires of Boileau. But besides Schiller's powerful drama, two considerable narrative poems yet survive with Joan of Arc for their subject: the epic of Southey, and the epic of Voltaire. The one, a young poet's earnest and touching tribute to heroic worth-the first flight of the muse that was ere long to soar over India and Spain; the other full of ribaldry and blasphemous jests, holding out the Maid of Orleans as a fitting mark for slander and derision. But from whom did these far different poems proceed? The shaft of ridicule came from a French-the token of respect from an English-hand!

***“Who that has ever trodden the gorgeous galleries of Versailles, has not fondly lingered before that noble work of art-before that touching impersonation of the Christian heroine-the head meekly bended, and the hands devoutly clasping the sword in sign of the cross, but firm resolution imprinted on that close-pressed

mouth, and beaming from that lofty brow! Whose thoughts, as he paused to gaze and gaze again, might not sometimes wander from old times to the present, and turn to the sculptress-sprung from the same royal lineage which Joan had risen in arms to restoreso highly gifted in talent, in fortunes, in hopes of happiness, yet doomed to an end so grievous and untimely? Thus the statue has grown to be a monument, not only to the memory of the Maid, but to her own: thus future generations in France-all those at least who know how to prize either genius or goodness in woman— -will love to blend together the two names, the female artist and the female warrior-MARY OF WURTEMBERG and JOAN OF ARC."

66

Quar. Review, vol. lxix., p. 328, March, 1842.

NOTE 3.-Page 104.

Keep your view of men and things extensive, and depend upon it that a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one ;-as far as it goes, the views that it gives are true, but he who reads deeply in one class of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, and which are not only narrow but false. Adjust your proposed amount of reading to your time and inclination-this is perfectly free to every man, but whether that amount be large or small, let it be varied in its kind, and widely varied. If I have a confident opinion on any one point connected with the improvement of the human mind, it is on this."

Life and Correspondence, Letter ccv., Am. edition, 357.

"It is a very hard thing to read at once passionately and critically, by no means to be cold, captious, sneering, or scoffing; to admire greatness and goodness with an intense love and veneration, yet to judge all things; to be the slave neither of names nor of parties, and to sacrifice even the most beautiful associations for the sake of truth. I would say, as a good general rule, never read the works of any ordinary man, except on scientific matters, or when they contain simple matters of fact. Even on matters of fact, silly and ignorant men, however honest and industrious in their particular subject, require to be read with constant watchfulness and suspicion; whereas great men are always instructive, even amidst much of error on particular points. In general, however, I hold it

to be certain, that the truth is to be found in the great men, and the error in the little ones."

Life and Correspondence, Letter xcvii., Am. edit. p. 245.

NOTE 4.-Page 108.

This case of the traditional misrepresentation of St. Eligius and of the times he lived in has been even more completely and conclusively treated by Mr. Maitland, in one of the numbers (vii.) of his work entitled “The Dark Ages,”—a volume in which the genuine learning and the dauntless love of truth, that were needed to expose old habitual falsehood, are happily united with much appropriate pleasantness of thought and with true and well-directed satire. He remarks that the sermon which was mutilated seems almost as if it had been written in anticipation of all and each of Mosheim's and Maclaine's charges, and he quotes the observations of the late Hugh James Rose, by whom it was well said:

“Here we find not only an individual traduced, but, through him, the religious character of a whole age misrepresented, and this misrepresentation now generally believed. We find men leaving out what a writer says, and then reproaching him and his age for not saying it. We find Mosheim, Maclaine, Robertson, Jortin, White, mangling, misusing, and (some of them) traducing a writer whose works 'not one of them, except Mosheim, (if even he,) had ever seen. These things are very serious. We may just as well, or better, not read at all, if we read only second-hand writers, or do not take care that those whom we do trust read for themselves, and report honestly. We, in short, trust a painter who paints that black which is white, and then think we have a clear idea of the object."

This is a case that cannot be too strongly condemned, for it is but one of many examples that might, with little pains, be collected, of the vicious habit of unacknowledged quotation at second hand, or at some even more remote degree from the original-a vicious habit, for at least two reasons: that it is frequent cause of historical error, gaining authority by the activity of falsehood; and that it is the ready device by which the superficial and the uncandid can make a false display.

NOTE 5.-Page 110.

It is to Mitford and his history that Bishop Thirlwall alludes when, in a note in his History of Greece, he speaks of "a writer who considers it as the great business of history to place royalty in the most favourable light;" and in another note, he speaks of "a work which, though cast in an historical form, is intended not to give historical information, but to state opinions, and then to give such facts as square with them."

NOTE 6.-Page 110.

"the

In Raleigh's History of the World, says Mr. Hallam, Greek and Roman story is told more fully and exactly than by any earlier English author, and with a plain eloquence, which has given this book a classical reputation in our language, though from its length, and the want of that critical sifting of facts which we now justly demand, it is not greatly read. Raleigh has intermingled political reflections, and illustrated his history by episodes from modern times, which perhaps are now the most interesting passages."

Introduction to Literature of Europe, vol. iii. p. 657.

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