Charles William Chadwick Oman

“ And now I have to come before you, not like so many of my predecessors with all the prestige of a reputation gained outside Oxford, not with the glamour of the unknown about me, but simply as a veteran college tutor with twenty-one years of essays and lectures behind me, to say what I must say. How can such a work-a-day being, known personally to almost every one here present, the most simple and comprehensible of phenomena, hope to deliver to you any message that you do not already know by heart? ”

“ By setting forth a hypothesis that may turn out to be only half true, by formulating a thesis that requires indefinite modification, we may serve the cause of history far better than by refusing to put anything on paper that is not absolutely certain, complete, and undeniable. It is only the shallowest fool among critics who contemns the pioneer in any line of research for not having achieved absolute accuracy. ”

“ It matters little what the particular line may be that we take up, so long as we take up some line. There are many before me to-day, admirably competent to set to work to build up some particular comer in the vast gap of unwritten history that shames us all. Work while you may, and where you may. Why have we no real history of mediaeval Scotland— why is there in English no standard general history of Holland, of Hungary, of Norway, of Portugal, even of modern Germany? ”

“ For of all things the most necessary for the researcher is a very broad knowledge of the general trend of history far outside the limits of his special period. Unless he has this, he risks making the wildest and most absurd errors the moment that he tries to draw a comparison between epoch and epoch, or to illustrate his thesis by parallels from another age or another country. The scientifically trained continental historian is as liable to this as the most self-taught English local antiquary. ”

“ Do not be led away by megalomania: do not think that you can possibly write a book without mistakes: the man who imagines that he can do so will probably never write a book at all. The great Turenne once remarked that 'the general who has made no errors in strategy must have commanded in uncommonly few campaigns', and hinted that he did not believe that general to exist It is the same with the writer of history: he must make up his mind that, however hard he may strive for absolute accuracy, it is certain that there will be errors of detail somewhere—perhaps errors of more than detail. ”

“ If such men can write such strange errors, what are we to expect from the Oxford researcher, if we let him off any appreciable portion of his study of the general foundations of history, in order that he may substitute technical and specialistic knowledge of the epoch in which he is interested? I would have no man permitted to undertake any original work until he has acquired a very broad as well as a very sound knowledge of the general outlines of history, and this is what I maintain that our present Modern History School—with all its defects—does on the whole give us. ”

“ The first is that the would-be historian must avoid vague sporadic and ill-defined aims, which enable him to wander over vast and miscellaneous fields of research, absorbing masses of material of such heterogeneous kinds that they never get digested, and never arrive at the dignity of print. If any work is ever really wasted in the world, it is that of the man who makes himself a sort of walking encyclopaedia, and then dies without having produced a single book. ”

“ We have the largest, and as we boast, the best school of history in the realm: must we not each do our best to make it as productive as it is popular, and as solid in its practical results as it is philosophic in its structure? ”

“ We must draw the moral, whether we will or no: conscious that much nonsense has been talked under the name of 'the philosophy of history' that nothing is so cheap and so easy as to knock together ingenious theories from insufficient data, we yet hold that history has its lessons, and that they can be discovered and taught 'The experience of the past,' as Stubbs wrote, 'can be carried into the present: study gives us maxims as well as dry facts.' The teacher who contents himself with arraying the facts in due order has only accomplished half his task. ”

“ First-hand knowledge is unteachable—it must be learnt for oneself—not from the lecture of the man who has been there before'. I hate to hear the historical beginner whining that he cannot go out into the world of history and find everything already ticketed and docketed and done up into neat parcels, ready for his immediate use. His moan is merely like that of the stupid undergraduate who comes back to you to complain that he can find nowhere in print the comparison between the strategy of Napoleon Bonaparte and of Frederic the Great which you have set him for an essay. ”

“ In short, it seems to me that zeal, insatiable curiosity, a ready mind to shape hypotheses, a sound judgement to test them, above all a dogged determination to work at all times and in all places, are the real requisites of the historian rather than any array of technical trainings The very best of our own English work has always been done in that fashion, and I think that it will continue so to be done. The sanity and energy and ingenuity of the researcher is the main thing that matters. If he is worth his salt, he will teach himself 'method' in a very short time. ”

“ It may be that I am prejudiced from having taken the old Literae Humaniores School before I turned my hand to history. I fear that I am still more prejudiced by having been engaged for more than twenty years in conducting all sorts and conditions of men up to, and through, the portals of the Examination Schools. Five years spent as a deputy professor have not eradicated the old tutorial virus from my system. It is from the standing-point of the college teacher, released at last from his dumbness and permitted for the first time to speak ex cathedra that I state my conclusion. ”

“ The first problem that must be faced is that this University is a place of Education as well as a place of Research. It is sometimes difficult to correlate its two functions: it often seems difficult to determine how far they can or ought to be discharged by the same body of workers. But, whatever may be our views on this point, there remains the obvious fact that we are confronted by a large body of young men who have to be educated, and that the larger proportion of them are intended for careers for which no technical Schools-curriculum exists. ”

“ To those who were ready to specialize in the one period, the other period was only a small comer of that vast bulk of universal history which cannot be studied in a minute fashion. We all believe, in short, in the unity of history, but we know to our sorrow that it is not possible to master all parts of it with the same thoroughness. ”

“ The two addresses are linked together by the fact that both of them are pleas for the researcher—York Powell wished to have him equipped with the necessary machinery for starting on his work, Professor Firth wants to have him 'taught history historically', to use the phrase that stands at the head of the printed form of his lecture. Every one must agree with such an aspiration—the very idea of a historian taught unhistorically seems to carry its own refutation on its face. Clearly we all are and must be at one on this point—if we understand the same thing by the same phrase. ”

“ In sober fact it is impossible to write history that every man, whatever his race, creed, or politics, can accept—unless indeed we are dealing with ages and problems so remote from our own that the personal element does not appear. ”

“ The world greatly needs Columbuses; it has no such pressing need for the critic, incapable of forming a bold hypothesis himself, two exists only to point out ex post facto small errors in the work of those who have gone before him. Yet I would be far from denying that the critic has his uses too; it is certainly far better to have set right even a dozen minute mistakes in other men's books than to have remained altogether dumb. If one cannot be the pioneer, one can at least do unostentatious work as the navvy who makes smooth the path which the pioneer has discovered. ”

“ It is better to have produced one solid monograph on the minutest point—better to have edited a single pipe-roll or annotated a single short chronicle—than to have accumulated for forty years unwritten learning that goes down to the grave and is lost. And I said to myself—Learn to be definite at all costs; be limited, if it is necessary, stick to a single century if it must be so, or to a single reign, but write something—knowledge not committed to paper is knowledge lost. ”

“ It seems to me that we must frankly recognize that the Modern History curriculum must be drawn up rather with an eye to the vast majority of men who seek in it a general liberal education, than to the small minority to whom a technical training in historiography might conceivably be more profitable. ”

“ Of course if his tastes are mediaeval he will have to learn palaeography afterwards; but this is a small matter. Do we not possess an admirable teacher in that subject, though we pay him too little, and do not even enable him to lecture all the year round? But as to the rest, it seems to me that the one counsel that can be given to the man who has achieved his first class for the Schools and then wishes to set sail into the ocean of Research, is simply to work— and work—and work again. ”

“ Perhaps my thrice seven years in harness have stereotyped my views and made me short-sighted in my outlook on history at large; perhaps—and this I naturally prefer to believe myself, for man is a hopeful if a fallible being—they have given me some practical lessons, which not every history professor has had the chance of learning. It is for you to judge. I can but give my humble opinion for what it is worth, on what I think that history is, and how I think it can best be taught The theme, you may say, is trite—we have heard and read far too much about it already. ”

“ What wonder if there are few who love it for its own sake, when there are so few who know it as it is!' In 1867 that great man thought it necessary to defend history from the charge of being the mere handmaid of political or ecclesiastical controversy, to declare that it should be studied as an end in itself with no ulterior motives. ”

“ I can safely leave the view of those who hold that history has nothing to do with literature—any more than it has anything to do with morals—and the view advocated by Froude to fit out their duel in the public arena, little doubting which will be the winner. ”

“ The historian whose verdict on any one of those crucial personages is to be equally satisfactory to everybody, must perform a sort of tour de force of compromise and hedging, or confine himself to the bald statement of facts accomplished. The moment that he dares to draw a deduction or point a moral, the personal element inevitably makes itself felt. ”

“ He will never make a historian, though you drive ' method into him with a hammer.
In short, the true historian—and here lies the gist of my creed—is born and not made. If he has the root of the matter in him, he gets precisely such a preliminary education from his schools as will enable him to work for himself when his schools are over. ”

“ We stand at present in a crisis when the raw material has accumulated in such masses that there is a most pressing want of hands to sort and arrange it To stand by idle, because you feel that some of your work may prove of no more than temporary worth, because your amour propre revolts against the notion that you may be building a scaffolding rather than a permanent structure, is deplorable. ”

“ A little while after giving his Inaugural he wrote to a friend, 'The teaching business at Oxford, which goes on at high pressure, is in itself utterly absurd.' Professor Firth has taught and examined for the School himself, so knows a great deal more about it than Froude or Freeman, but I think he is rather hard upon it when he says that 'he must complain that it does extremely little for the exceptional man who wishes to study history for its own sake'. ”

“ Palaeography, the so-called 'study of methods of investigation and all the Hilfswissenschaften will be of comparatively little use. And—for here comes the difficulty—if the technical subjects are introduced, it can only be at the cost of teaching less of the general subjects. For the student's time during the two years that he has to devote to the Modern History School is quite sufficiently occupied by the present curriculum. New matter can only be introduced by evicting some of the old matter, or teaching it in a less thorough and solid fashion. ”

“ Nothing astonishes me more than the way in which the real born historian learns to get to the heart of a matter within a year or so of starting work—and as to the man who is not born to the trade, it is mistaken kindness to encourage him to turn to a career for which he is not mentally equipped. ”

“ Why are there still important English Chronicles that have not been reprinted since the early eighteenth century, and others that have not been printed at all? Is it not maddening to think of the vast unsorted bulk of local records and documents? There is work for the man who can summarize and digest existing material, no less than for the man who is intent on making fresh discoveries. Indeed the former is perhaps the more needed of the two at the present moment. Many may urge want of leisure—but surely if there is not leisure for a great there is leisure for a small piece of work. ”

“ To my poor apprehension the real blot on the School is not the one that has been alleged, but the want of any provision that the student shall have some grip of several foreign languages. At present Latin is the only tongue with which he is compelled to show some acquaintance. Scores of men every year escape any touch with French, German, or Italian by offering those two special subjects—India and the Great Rebellion—where all the prescribed books are in English. ”