The tale of Rome is threadbare; that of England is still new. If our people would know the price which Great Britain is now paying for defeats a century

old, they may learn it in Mr. Chamberlain's manifestoes, or in the report of the Inspector General of Recruiting on the degeneracy of the British army.

Brooks Adams.

THE essays on history are a confusing sort of literature. Whoever seeks in such writings a systematic philosophy of the past or a standard of values in human experience will be woefully disappointed. What is more surprising, if one inquire solely about the right method and the true purpose of historical studies, the enlightenment one gets is but slight and dubious. The treatises, while they all emphasize the difficulty of the historian's task, do not seem to agree at all concerning the nature of it, or its aim, or its scope, or the best way to go practically about it.

Even on what is perhaps the oldest of all the questions that ever have been raised concerning it, the question, namely, whether it should be philosophical and interpretative or merely narrative and accurate, there is no agreement reached; some of the writers seeming to feel that the historian is bound to take upon himself the fairly godlike rôle of interpreter, that is to say, teleologist, of the past, while others seem to be equally firm that he ought to hold himself with a rigorous, impersonal modesty to his lesser function of investigator and chronicler of facts.

But it has been pointed out that his task, even in the least expanded acceptation of it, involves a daunting exercise of judgment. Through the obvious necessity to choose from the mass of his material he is driven upon a sort of interpretation. In the proportions of his work, in his allotments of space and emphasis, in countless unconscious manifestations of sympathy and repulsion, in his very restraints and forbearances, his at

titude toward his subject is revealed. However he may strive to keep himself out of his work, he cannot do it. he chooses to tell, and how he tells it, so much is his, is he. And yet, unavoidable as these questions of what and how are seen to be, quite apart from the whys and wherefores, there is no closer approach to a consensus on them than there is on the whole meaning and teaching of the past. In the entire field covered by the discussions of history there is scarcely to be found a single res adjudicata, a single universally accepted canon.

But the writers, differing as they do on all the specific points in controversy, seem to be agreed, nevertheless, that there are canons, if they could only be formulated, that there is a standard, if it could only be defined. Let any historian set to work attacking the contentions of another, or defending his own, and it is ten to one his language will imply that there is a way of dealing with the past which is "history," and that all other ways are wrong. The other historian's work is interesting, brilliant perhaps, he will say; or, on the other hand, he will pronounce it undeniably accurate, unimpeachably respectable, and consonantly dull.

But in either case he is sure it is not "history." When, for example, Buckle announced that he had formulated a "science of history," Droysen was one of the first to explode his pretensions, and spared no ridicule in the refutation; but in that very same essay Droysen himself advanced many of the ideas which afterwards, when he had collected and

ordered them, he ventured to call The Principles of History.

Not long ago, it was because of inaccuracy in details that this true quality of history was most frequently denied to historical writings. Nowadays, one seems to hear more of insight, imagination, and sympathy; even of skill in presentation, and of literary style. But there is no agreement, probably there would be no way to phrase an agreement if it were reached, concerning the relative importance of these two parts or aspects of the historian's work. Perhaps we shall never get a better saying on the matter than a quiet remark of Parkman in his introduction to what is still, on the whole, the best performance any American has ever made in history. The utmost care and patience in the study of all sources of information is, he said, indispensable and inadequate. The philosophers will, no doubt, continue to find fault with the story-tellers, and the "dryas-dusts" to debate with the "romancers," so long as history shall continue to be written.

Three books which have appeared within the year invite Americans who care about the history of their country to consider anew the question of the best way to write it. President Woodrow Wilson of Princeton has essayed to cover the entire field in a single narrative of moderate length. A number of English and American scholars have collaborated

to the same end in a group of essays and narratives which make up the seventh volume of The Cambridge Modern History. With the posthumous publication of John Fiske's Essays, Historical and Literary, we have before us, it seems, all that we shall ever have from the pen of a very pleasing writer who has left

1 A History of the American People. By WOODROW WILSON. 5 Vols. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1903.

The Cambridge Modern History. Vol. VII. The United States. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.

untouched scarcely a single period of our American past. It happens, also, that President Wilson, in an essay published several years ago, Lord Acton, who planned The Cambridge Modern History, in his inaugural discourse as Regius Professor at Cambridge, and Fiske, in one of the papers in these last two volumes of his, have all three set forth at some length their views of historical work.

2

It is scarcely to be believed, however, that the particular example of coöperation presented by this volume of the Cambridge series will help us in any positive way to a notion of what the best possible history of the United States will be like; for the best possible history will not, one feels sure, prove to be a coöperative enterprise. Even the late Justin Winsor, though himself the editor of the most important coöperative work we have, freely admitted that no conceivable advantage of coöperation could ever compensate for the disappearance of the personal historian. After all, a coöperative history can be nothing more than a series of separate histories, or of separate essays, or of both. There is a great convenience in such a collection, so arranged as to make a complete survey of a subject or a period; but it is prepos terous to suppose that the extremely difficult problem of historical presentation has been solved by so simple and mechanical a device. It was the individual contributors to the seventh volume of The Cambridge Modern History who had to face that problem, not the editors of the series. To compare the several styles and methods of these contributors would be a more practical approach to it than to attempt a judgment of the entire volume. The principle of E pluribus unum

Essays, Historical and Literary. By JOHN FISKE. 2 vols. New York: The Macmillan Co. 1903.

2 In the Atlantic for February, 1903, Professor Emerton pointed out, very simply and convincingly, some of the reasons why.

will not deliver even an American historian from his vexations.

But the method and style of the better known of these contributors is more fully exhibited in books which are wholly their

own.

When we have made every possible concession to the encyclopædical plan, it remains true that a man will ordinarily write his own book better than he will write a part of a book which is not to be all his own. To consider carefully President Wilson's narrative and the way he wrote it, to take account of that part of John Fiske's lifework which began with his Old South Lectures and which ended, "shorn and parceled," in the fragmentary essays now before us, is no doubt a better way to approach the particular problem of the American historian than any we can find through the labors of Lord Acton and his successors.

One need not be of the number of those who, joining to a tithe of Fiske's ability neither greater industry nor a higher purpose, have consistently decried his work in history, in order to perceive that these two volumes will not strengthen his claim to a high place among American historians. A sincere admirer may very well question the propriety of publishing in this form papers which were originally prepared for other uses and connections. One might even question the wisdom of publishing at all several which are apparently little more than working models. At least, however, their appearance may serve to assure us that nothing of Fiske's which ought to be given to the public is withheld. The essay on New and Old Ways of Treating History is one of those which seem unfinished; it can hardly be taken as a complete expression of Fiske's ideas about his work. To treat it controversially would be unfair. Its principal value is in the light it throws, particularly if we consider it with a constant reference in our minds to his actual performance, on his own method in history. Fortunately, perhaps, for himself and for his work,

Fiske, though much of his time was given to lecturing, did not at any time, I believe, conduct a seminary in history. We may well suppose, however, that if he ever had sat at the head of a seminary table and talked informally with the students gathered about him on the general aspects of their work and his, he would have talked as he has written in this paper.

It is significant, even though we take the discourse to be incomplete, that there is scarcely a word in it about the writing of history. So far, it confirms the strongest impression which the present writer got from Fiske's conversation. For my instant reflection on first hearing him was that I understood at last how he wrote the way he did. He talked the same way. It is entirely probable that he could neither have talked nor written any other way if he had tried. Once, when he and Justin Winsor spoke in public on the same occasion, a meeting held in memory of Parkman, the contrast between the two in the matter of naturalness was very marked.

art

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The contrast in the same respect between Fiske's narrative style and President Wilson's is scarcely less marked. In the final sentence of his essay on The Truth of the Matter, in Mere Literature, President Wilson said: "There is an art of lying; there is equally an an infinitely more difficult art of telling the truth." One feels concerning Fiske, however, that if he exercised any art at all in writing history, it was an extraordinarily unconscious sort of art. If there was any conscious art whatsoever, then it must have been profoundly subtle far too subtle to be reconciled with one's impression of the man himself to attain so completely the effect of artlessness. Several of these papers are, as I have said, mere rough sketches and outlines, based on incomplete investigation, which he would surely have amplified and changed in many details; but no one in the least familiar with his fin

ished work could doubt for a moment that they are his. The style is as unmistakable as his voice or his handwriting. To have written in any other style would have been, for him, like disguising his handwriting or his voice. In the presentation of his thought he was as free from artifice, not to speak of affectation, as a peasant or a king. There is neither straining nor restraint. He is never dull, but one would scarcely use such a word as brilliant to describe his happiest effects.

"Brilliant" is, on the other hand, the very first word one applies to the work of President Wilson. That praise cannot be denied or spared. And it is impossible to believe that the effect is unconsciously attained, as a sort of unearned increment of his labors in the searching out and setting forth of the truth. One feels that, however well he has builded, he builded no better than he knew. Perhaps the quickest and keenest mind now at play on our American past, confessedly regardful of all that can be accomplished in the way of impressionistic statement, he was, one would say, the best writer we had among us to try, with a narrative of the whole course of our development, an experiment of that particular theory of historical composition which he himself had so eloquently advanced. For in the days when the German influence was at its height in all our academic circles, when the document threatened to win here the same dominance which it had already at the German universities, when the historians of both continents seemed to be trying, as Lord Acton acquiescingly explained, "to develop learning at the expense of writing," and to elevate history by subduing the historian, President Wilson's work was to many of us a source of comfort and of hope. He continued steadfastly to treat scholarship as a means, not an end, and to regard history as a branch of literature rather than of science. But a great and successful attempt in the writing of history would have done

more to establish his position than any reasoning or eloquence could do. The attempt which he has made was certainly big enough. It was so big, in truth, that one might consider he was courting absolute success or failure when he set about it.

But history is no more the domain of the absolute than politics - or life. We need not use such a word as failure when we admit that the adherents of the document will possibly find in minor inaccuracies of the work more to confirm them in their loyalty than we can find in its larger merits to fortify us in our different faith. To contribute fresh details of

knowledge was, apparently, no part of the design, nor can it have been a principal ambition of the author to keep his work immaculately free from little mistakes. But the book, fair as it is on points of controversy, spacious and catholic and guiltless of conscious partisanship, and everywhere of a lively intelligence, is nowhere profoundly philosophical and sagacious. Readable it is, also, particularly if one take it by episodes and topics, less so if one go on steadily to the end; but it does not stir, absorb, elevate, depress. It is welcome, for no other book at all comparable to it covers the whole great field; welcome even in the cheapening dress, garish with frippery, unedifying illustrations, in which the publishers have clothed it. But if we try it by the simplest test, the only test which the mass of readers ever employ, the test by which we all form our genuine opinions of books, however we may afterward elaborate and explain'them, the test of its hold on our own attention, the appeal it makes to our own intelligence and sympathies, we shall not think of setting it beside the work say of Parkman in American, or of Green in English history.

If we go on to account for our feeling, we may very well reflect that these two, like other still more famous historians, gave themselves to their tasks with an extraordinarily complete devotion, pursu

ing them through years of patient toil; and it is but fair to consider that in so singularly varied and active an academic career as President Wilson's the academic career in America being what it is such absorption in a single task may have been simply impossible. The fame of a historian is not to be won but by the longest of wooings. It is scarcely too much to say that no really great work in history was ever less than a lifework. Even a lifetime may be vainly devoted to this ambition, and the highest powers wasted upon it, unless either Fate vouchsafe the man his share of ordinary human incitements to do his best, and spare him the worst temptations to despair, or else there be in the man himself a singular tenacity and fixedness of purpose. So much of good fortune or of character being granted, it is not alone in the erudition of his work, but in the entire quality of it, that the sacrifice of his years will be found to have availed. Even for the uninstructed reader, careless of footnotes, it will not have been made in vain. It will be manifest not merely in the impregnable accuracy of the narrative, but in the tone and elevation of it, as in that "air of matured power, of grave and melancholy reflection," which Macaulay praised in Thucydides.

The mere fact that he cannot have been long about it goes far, no doubt, to account for our disappointment in President Wilson's performance. But when all has been said that can be said on that score, his manner and style in narrative, particularly if one contrast it with the manner and style of Fiske, is a matter of much interest. For it is not merely that these two, whom many of us would choose from the mass of our recent historians to compare with the historians of other countries who have written as men of letters, may have held differing views concerning the best way to write about the past. We should, no doubt, be very careful not to over- estimate the part which any theories of composition they

may have held actually played in this work; for we know too well that good writers very often break the rules they set themselves, and to the bettering of their books. Here, however, we have not merely two plans, two theories of historical composition, but two manners and styles, two ways of writing history, which differ quite plainly. It should not be entirely impracticable to take account of the difference with a reasonable sureness of one's ground, notwithstanding that there are many other things which should enter into a complete comparison of the two writers.

A comparison on that point alone must, I think, prove favorable to Fiske. Taken paragraph by paragraph, President Wilson's writing is more likely to impress one with the writer's skill than Fiske's is. That is why we call it brilliant. It shines. But the narrative, meanwhile, does not hold the reader as Fiske's does. The continuous flow of skillful sentences actually tends to draw one's attention away from the matter in them. They sometimes come between the reader and the story which they tell; and, after all, it is the story, not the English, which one means to read. One naturally asks, therefore, why it is that a writer of such gifts and sympathies as President Wilson has shown, certainly not unmindful that brilliancy may be a fault, and bent, no doubt, on suiting the manner to the matter, the tone to the occasions, the pace to the progress of the theme, why he has not succeeded better in a thing which he had so carefully studied out the best way to do? To put the matter as simply as possible, why is it that his way of telling us the history of our country is not on the whole so good a way as Fiske's, whose way was, apparently, to tell it as he talked?

Of course, we are speaking now of two literary styles, and for the moment our consideration of them need not be affected by the circumstance that they are employed in history. All that we