CHAPTER VIII.

THE HISTORIANS AND PHILOSOPHERS: HENRY HALLAM, JOSEPH LINGARD-JEREMY BENTHAM, JAMES MACKINTOSH,

JAMES MILL.

HISTORY and Philosophy have always had a certain alliance. It is little possible to investigate the problems of one science without some tendency towards the solutions of the other. The great and many-coloured panorama of existence, with all those vicissitudes that seem so capricious, those successions that are so inevitable, leading the mind from generation to generation in order to catch a thread of meaning or answer a question, has but little effect upon the spectator if it does not lead him to seek some acquaintance with the constitution of human nature, the origin from which all its laws and its irregularities come. The great historians of the past have in most cases recognised the affinity of the two subjects, and the advantage of securing a larger and more comprehensive view of facts and events, by due recognition of their moral and intellectual relations. In the age which we have been discussing it is difficult to know under which heading to classify some of the most important names, since no one will deny to Hallam the title of a philosophical historian; and of Mackintosh and Mill, it is difficult to say which sphere claims them most. We will place in this record the more formal students of history first, without taking

from the others who were historians as well as philosophers their just importance in this lofty field.

The art of history is one which, like all other arts, has greatly changed in its conditions in modern times. On the face of things it would seem that the nearer a historian was to the events which he records, the more accurate and complete his information was likely to be; but it requires little thought to perceive how much that is temporary and evanescent is involved in every contemporary narrative, and how many deluding lights of individual opinion and general gossip flash about the scene, from which it is the province of the historian to choose those points of real illumination which may be reckoned on. Were the

means of judging for ourselves in this very department of literature which has occupied us through these volumes taken from us, and our minds left at the mercy of the critics and historians of the period, what a curiously changed aspect would the history of literature in the beginning of the nineteenth century bear! The monarchs of the age would be dethroned to give place to petty satraps, of whom now-a-days we scarcely know the names; and even if the injustice perpetrated were less in degree, the most curious confusion of levels would remain to mar the conclusions of posterity. As it is, we are nothing but witnesses transmitting each our share of evidence to be judged by those who come after, in whose hands a continually accumulating mass of testimony is being collected. It is impossible to doubt that this has its evils too, and that the existence of the partisan-historian, he who proves his points at his will by a careful selection of so much of the evidence as suits him, is the creation of that all-examining, anxiously-weighing modern science which receives every witness with doubt, cross-examines and throws cold water upon him, and to which the easy conclusions of the past are old-fashioned and contemptible.

better information, fall naturally into the catalogue of "books which are no books," in which Lamb profanely includes the works of Hume and Gibbon. It is probable that this whimsical philosopher would have added to his list the large and important productions of Hallam, as well as those of his predecessors, as belonging to the class of works which are read for profit rather than for pleasure. And in so far as their adaptation to be treated in a popular history of literature goes, Lamb's humorous classification is not without justice. What is to be said about a great historian like Hallam by a modest writer claiming no authority on his imperial themes? Criticism of the style which has admirably served its purpose would be inappropriate, and criticism of his subjects would involve the reader in a disquisition upon the greater part of the history of the modern world. It is another matter with the poets, the essayists, and the writers of fiction more familiar to our bosoms than those great teachers, who sit like the sages above our comments, throned in the calm of an authoritative chair, the judges of a tribunal at which the nations themselves come to be judged. Few in our country have attained this place so completely as Hallam. Gibbon's strong antichristian bias, his attacks, both insidious and direct, upon the religion of Christendom have made him vulnerable, and opened the way to his assailants; but at the same time, his brilliancy and energy of style give him an immediate influence upon his readers which the measured calm and self-controlled sobriety of Hallam do not possess. It is scarcely possible that a Constitutional History should be entertaining reading. It is, in Lamb's sense, no reading at all, but work demanding all the faculties, and the most complete strain of attention. The picturesque is rejected altogether by this severe art, and all the lesser devices with which writers of a lighter strain think no shame to attract the attention of their

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readers, are entirely banished. But the value of the works in question is rather enhanced than lessened by this studied absence of the graces. Their learning, their judgment, their importance as standards of opinion, their solidity as a foundation of future researches, is all the more indisputable that no glamour is ever thrown into the eyes of the reader, and no supreme sympathy with the historian's view ever allowed to bias his judgment. There is little in these works to tempt the roving eye of the devourer of literature who reads for simple pleasure, but their style is such as to put no obstacles in the way of those who read for information and improvement. It is throughout good, clear, and lucid, with an occasional rise into something like eloquence. It is, however, very difficult to discuss in detail works of such a kind; and we cannot do better than to adopt the principle which Mr. Hallam himself sets forth as his own guide in a similar case.

"Some departments of literature," he writes in the Preface to his Literary History, are passed over, or partially touched. Among the former are books relating to particular arts, as agriculture or painting; or to subjects of merely local interest, as those of English law. Among the latter is the great and extensive portion of every library, the historical. Unless when history has been written with peculiar beauty of language or philosophical spirit, I have generally omitted all mention of it. In our researches after truth of fact, the number of books that possess some value is exceedingly great, and would occupy a disproportionate space in such a general view of literature as the present."

Hallam was the son of a dignitary of the Church, the Dean of Bristol, and he lived all his life in the atmosphere of letters and classical lore. His first step in literature was made in the Edinburgh Review, a few years after its first appearance; but his politics were not of that complexion, though this literary tie, and his friendship with many eminent members of the Liberal party, gave a false

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impression on this point, and laid him open to the assaults of the Quarterly Review, the natural enemy not only of its rival the Edinburgh, but of everything that could be supposed to belong to the opposite party, according to the fashion of the time. Miss Martineau, in one of the brilliant little sketches of her contemporaries which she contributed to the newspapers of the day, affords us some information as to the personal aspect of the great historian, in which we can more fully trust to her, than in her discriminations of character and purpose.

"The reader of his weighty (not heavy) works," she says, "impressed with the judicial character of the style both of thought and expression, imagined him a solemn pale student, and might almost expect to see him in a judge's wig; whereas the stranger would find in him the most rapid talker in the company, quick in his movements, genial in his feelings, earnest in narrative, rather full of dissent from what everybody said, innocently surprised when he found himself agreeing with anybody, and pretty sure to blurt out something before the day was done, but never giving offence, because his talk was always the fresh growth of the topic, and, it may be added, his manners were those of a thorough-bred gentleman." *Hallam with his mouth full of cabbage and contradiction," Sydney Smith said of him when describing a dinner party. This lively, talkative, argumentative person does not fit at all into the serious image presented to us in the histories, so grave, so careful, so full of large reading and sober judgment. The same authority tells us, as an instance of the manner in which literature leavened all his thoughts, that the political enthusiasm about Spain which rose in England at the time of the heroic resistance made by that country to Napoleon, turned the mind of the historian to the study of Spanish literature, the natural result in his mind of a new interest.

The incidents which have given interest to Hallam's life have, however, little to do with books or learning, and belong to the closest of domestic sentiments. He had a son in