LECTURE II.

THE first step which I ventured to recommend in the study of the history of any period, was, that we should take some one contemporary historian, and if we were studying the history of any one country in particular, then it should be also an historian of that country, and that we should so gain our first introduction both to the events and to the general character of the times. I am now to consider what difficulties and what questions will be likely to present themselves in reading such an historian, interfering, if not answered, with our deriving from him all the instruction which he is capable of rendering. Now you will observe that I am purposely looking out for the difficulties in history, but I am very far from professing to be able to solve them. Still I think that what I am doing may be very useful: because to direct attention to what is to be done is the best means of procuring that it shall be done. And farther, an enterprising student will be rather encouraged by hearing that the work is not all done to his hands; he will be glad to find that the motto upon history, in spite of all that has been lately accomplished, is still "Plus ultra:" the actual boundary reached is not the final one; every bold and able adventurer in this wide ocean may hope to obtain the honours of a discoverer of countries hitherto unknown.

In the first place I said that the difficulties and questions which occurred in reading an historian of a period of imperfect civilization, were not in all respects the same which we

should meet with in an historian of a more advanced age. This leads me naturally to consider what constitutes the difference between these two classes of historians, before I proceed to the proper subject of this lecture, the questions namely suggested by the former class, or those of a period imperfectly civilized.

There are some persons whose prejudices are so violent against their own age, and that immediately preceding it, that they take offence at their claim to a higher civilization, and will by no means allow the earlier centuries of modern history to have been their inferiors in this respect. For my own part, I should find it very difficult, even if I thought it desirable, to relinquish the habitual language of our age; which calls itself civilized, and the middle ages as in comparison half civilized, not in the spirit of controversy or of boasting, but as a simple matter of fact. However, I do not wish to assume any conclusion at the outset which may be supposed to be disputable; and therefore, I will not if I can help it use the terms more or less civilized as applied to the earlier or later periods of modern history, but will state the difference between them in more neutral language. For that there is a difference will scarcely I think be disputed or that this difference coincides chronologically, or nearly so, with the sixteenth century; so that the historians prior to this period up to the very beginning of modern history, have, speaking generally, one character; and those who flourished subsequently to it have another. And farther, I cannot think it disputable, that the great historians of Greece and Rome resemble for the most part the historians of the last two or three centuries, and differ from those of the early or middle ages.

Now without using the invidious words, "civilized" or "half civilized," the difference may be stated thus; that the writers of the early and middle ages belonged to a period in

which the active elements were fewer, and the views generally prevalent were therefore fewer also. Fewer in two ways, first inasmuch as the classes or orders of society which expressed themselves actively in word or deed were fewer; and then, as there were very much fewer individual varieties amongst members of the same class. Hence therefore the history of the early ages is simple; that of later times is complicated. In the former the active elements were kings, popes, bishops, lords, and knights, with exceptions here and there of remarkable individuals; but generally speaking the other elements of society were passive. In later times, on the other hand, other orders of men have been taking their part actively; and the number of these appears to be continually increasing. So that the number of views of human life, and the number of agencies at work upon it, are multiplied; the difficulty of judging between them all theoretically is very great: that of adjusting their respective claims practically is almost insuperable. Again, in later times, the individual differences between members of the same class or order have been far greater; for while the common class or professional influence has still been powerful, yet the restraint from without having been removed, which forced the individual to abstain from disputing that influence, the tendencies of men's individual minds have worked freely, and where these were strong, they have modified the class or professional influence variously, and have thus produced a great variety of theories on the same subject. The introduction of new classes or bodies of men into the active elements of society may be exemplified by the increased importance in later times of the science of political economy, while the individual variety amongst those of the same order is shown by the various theories which have been aavanced at different times by different economical writers. This will explain what I mean, when I divide the historians

of modern history into two classes, and when I call the one class, that belonging to a simpler state of things; and the other that belonging to a state more complicated.

We are now, you will remember, concerned with the writers of the first class; and as a specimen of these in their simplest form, we will take the Church History of the Venerable Bede. This work has been lately published, 1838, in a convenient form, 1 vol. 8vo, by the English Historical Society; and it is their edition to which my references have been made. I need scarcely remind you of the date and circumstances of Bede's life. Born in 674, only fifty years after the flight of Mahomet from Mecca, he died at the age of sixty-one, in 735, two or three years after that great victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens, which delivered France and Europe from Mahometan conquest. At seven years old he was placed under the care of the abbot of Wearmouth, and from that monastery he removed to the neighbouring one of Jarrow, and there passed the remainder of his life. He was ordained deacon in his nineteenth year, and priest in his thirtieth, and beyond these two events we know nothing of his external life except his writings. These are various, and he himself, at the conclusion of his Ecclesiastical History, has left us a list of them :-they consist of commentaries on almost all the books of Scripture, of treatises on some scriptural subjects, of religious biographies, of a book of hymns; and of some of a different character, on general history and chronology, a book de orthographiâ, and another de metricâ arte. His Ecclesiastical History, in five books, embraces the period from Augustine's arrival in 597, down to the year 731, only four years before his own death; so that for a considerable portion of the time to which it relates his work is a contemporary history.

In Bede we shall find no political questions of any kind to create any difficulty, nor are there those varied details of

war and peace which, before they can be vividly comprehended, require a certain degree of miscellaneous knowledge. I may notice then in him one or two things which belong more or less to all history. First, his language. We derive, or ought to derive from our philological studies, a great advantage in this respect; we ought to have acquired in some degree the habit of regarding language critically, and of interpreting it correctly. This is not a trifling matter; for as an immense majority of histories must be written in a foreign language, it is very possible for a careless reader, who has never been trained as we have been from our earliest years in grammatical analysis, to make important mistakes as to the meaning of his author; for translation, to be thoroughly good, must be a matter of habit, and must be grounded on such a minutely accurate process as we are early trained to in our study of Greek and Latin writers. It must be grounded on such a process, the great value of which is, that it hinders us from neglecting little words, conjunctions especially, on which so large a portion of the meaning of continuous writing depends, and which a careless reader not so trained is apt to pass over. But there is a higher step in translation which is by no means a mere matter of ornament, and which I believe is not always attended to as it deserves even amongst ourselves. I mean translation as distinguished from construing; a process which retains all the accuracy of the earlier habit; its searching view into every corner, so to speak, of the passage to be translated; its appreciation of every little word, of every shade of distinction in mood or tense; but from this accuracy makes its way to another still more perfect-the exact expression of the mind of the original, so that the feelings excited by the translation, the images conveyed by the words, the force of their arrangement, their tone, whether serious or half playful, should be the exact representation of the original. And in this greater accuracy