Historian

“ Nor should we permit ourselves to be deflected in our thought, and from our purpose, by the emphasis which the historian puts, almost exclusively, upon results and by the historian's definition—not merely his interpretation—of facts in the life of men in society. ”

“ Where the historian uses the press or pounder of his historical learning, documentary lore, abstracts, synthesis, statistics, and other professional devices, to squeeze thousands and hundreds of thousands of little vital personal incidents into a dense and arbitrary conglomerate known as "a historical fact," "a social phenomenon," "a mass movement," "evolution," "the mind of the race," or "historical truth" in general, the chronicler sees only the individual cases and even finds them pleasing in themselves. ”

“ When a historian pretends to give you the causes and motives of events, compare those causes and motives with the characters and interests of the parties concerned, and judge for yourself whether they correspond or not. ”

“ The historian presents to you the outward face, the external form of history; Historical Romance would show you the heart of history, and thus bring near to your heart what, else, would stand so far off. ”

“ In the first place it must be remembered that History itself possesses interest for us more as the unfolding of certain moral and mental developments than as the mere enumeration of facts. Of course, I am aware that the ideal of the Historian is Truth utterly regardless of prejudice and inclination, but, as with all other human ideals, this one is never fully realised, and there is ever that discrepancy between Fact and its Narration to which I just now alluded. ”

“ Conscious however and reserved upon general questions, the historian has restricted himself almost entirely to the narrative form, and has seldom indulged us with, what we esteem the principal ornament of elegant history, reflexion and character. ”

“ These, and perhaps other ways in which Literature may illustrate History, are tolerably obvious, and need no farther exposition. There is, however, a higher and somewhat more subtle service which Literature may perform towards illustrating History and modifying our ideas of the Past.
What the historian chiefly and finally wants to get at, through all his researches, and by all his methods of research, is the mind of the time that interests him, its mode of thinking and feeling. ”

“ One of the strongest points in our argument is the fact that history, as we have it, is composed of the clang of battles and the private lives of kings and despots. The ordinary, everyday life of the peasant people—the working classes—the backbone of the nation, so to speak—was beneath the consideration of the historian throughout all times. ”

“ True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything. ”

“ Momentary resemblances often mislead the politician who seeks a sure foothold in the past, as well as the historian who seeks it in the present. The Muse of history has the widest intellectual horizon and the full courage of her convictions ”

“ Of such an historian, an historian so diffuse, and so little selective, it would obviously be difficult to give any suitably brief specimen that should seem to present a considerable historic action in full. ”

“ That is to say, history itself and the real objects of history are not the main purpose of the historian, whose interest is rather concentrated either on giving the government in vogue a lesson or teaching others how they ought to detest it. ”

“ As these facts express the thoughts and feelings, and the growth, of a people, they become the language in which that people writes its history, and the work of the historian is to read and interpret this history for the benefit of his fellow men. ”

“ An historian should, if possible, be at once profoundly acquainted with ethics, politics, jurisprudence, the military art, theology; in a word, with all branches of knowledge by which any insight into human affairs, or into the moral and intellectual nature of man, can be obtained. ”

“ What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian according to the experience which we have had of mankind? ”

“ In the larger sense the historian has here to deal not only with ancient and modern political history, as ordinarily understood, but with past doings in every field, and thus with the steps by which existing conditions have been reached. ”

“ Not content with telling the unvarnished tale of the great acts which have been wrought by the heroes of the world's history, and with acknowledging that their inward being corresponds with the import of their acts, the pragmatic historian fancies himself justified and even obliged to trace the supposed secret motives that lie behind the open facts of the record. ”

“ The modern historian has come to realize that the qualities of a people, the characteristics of an epoch, the motives of a great struggle or movement, are by no means the clear-cut, sharply defined matters sketched by the patriotic writers of a simpler day. ”

“ The historian of the future, casting his eye back across the long perspective of history, will find civilized man pursuing an even and unbroken course across the ages from the time of the pyramids of Egypt to about the time of the French Revolution. ”

“ Wherever men have lived there is a story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller, the historian, whether that is interesting or not. ”

“ THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS is the answer to a problem which has long been agitating the learned world. How shall real history, the ablest and profoundest work of the greatest historians, be rescued from its present oblivion on the dusty shelves of scholars, and made welcome to the homes of the people? ”

“ Saying very little about kings, armies and governments, he concentrates his attention on the life, death, employments, pleasures and prejudices of the ordinary men and women of the age with which he deals, using to illustrate his theme a vast body of documents previously neglected by the official historian. ”

“ To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture. ”

“ It is the especial business of the historian, certainly, to instruct; but the more he can keep alive our interest without flattering either our passions or vices, the more effectually will he accomplish his great object, and swell the train of the votaries of truth. [Pg 1]
CORONATION ANECDOTES, &c. &c. § 1. ANECDOTES OF THE REGALIA AND ROYAL VESTMENTS.
"History—the picture of man—has shared the fate of its original. ”

“ Your Lordship will observe, by reading some ordinary Historians, and comparing them with these, that History is the most difficult Province of all others; and if there were not something in Novelty grateful to the Curiosity of Mankind, something in the Histories of our own Times and Nation, that engages us as Parties, and gives us an Interest in the Events, Nothing would be read, but what was so beautifully expressed, as by the Charms of Language, and Force of a lively Representation, to attract our Eyes. ”

“ 4 For what gives my work its peculiar quality, and what is most remarkable in the present age, is this. Fortune has guided almost all the affairs of the world in one direction and has forced them to incline towards one and the same end; a historian should likewise bring before his readers under one synoptical view the operations by which she has accomplished her general purpose. ”

“ Somewhat apart from their age stood a remarkable group of historians—Hallam, Freeman, Green, Gardiner, Symonds and others no less praiseworthy—who changed the whole conception of history from a record of political or military events to a profound study of human society in all its activities. ”

“ Thus at all times historians, so far as they have aimed at being more than mere chroniclers, have done their best to show not merely succession, but connexion, among the events upon their record. Moreover, they have striven to elicit general principles of human action, and by these to explain particular events, stating expressly or taking tacitly for granted the existence of a philosophy of history. ”

“ Instead of being equally shared between its two rulers, the Reason and the Imagination, it falls alternately under the sole and absolute dominion of each. It is sometimes fiction. It is sometimes theory.
History, it has been said, is philosophy teaching by examples. Unhappily, what the philosophy gains in soundness and depth the examples generally lose in vividness. A perfect historian must possess an imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque. ”

“ acts themselves alone are history, and these are not the exclusive property of either Hume, Gibbon, or Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, or Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish! All that is not action is not worth reading. ”

“ The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that this indication is the cause. ”

“ Thus the writing of history is left to college professors, moralists, theorists, dunder-heads. Few historians, great or small, have shown any capacity for the affairs they presume to describe and interpret. ”

“ So, then, the best of the historians is subject to the poet; for, whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation, make his own, beautifying it both for farther teaching, and more delighting, as it please him: having all, from Dante’s heaven to his hell, under the authority of his pen. ”

“ Historians contemporary to the events which they record, and who beheld the actions which they describe, usually give free vent to their passions in relating the occurrences of their history, and enter with the zeal of parties upon the various subjects which engage their attention. ”

“ The history of the mores is needed. The modern historians turn with some disdain away from the wars, intrigues, and royal marriages which the old-fashioned historians considered their chief interest, and many of them have undertaken to write the history of the "people." Evidently they have perceived that what is wanted is a history of the mores. ”

“ That which constitutes History, properly so called, is in great part omitted from works on the subject. Only of late years have historians commenced giving us, in any considerable quantity, the truly valuable information. As in past ages the king was everything and the people nothing ”

“ The most usual generalizations adopted by almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment, progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings, ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or hindered that abstraction. ”

“ THE history of the Victorian Age will never be written; we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian—ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placid perfection unattainable by the highest art. ”

“ The tendency of historians nowadays is to neglect completely the study of the influences on State of Man's domestic, social, industrial, religious, and intellectual life, and of the diverse effects on human life and institutions of the working of the political machinery. ”

“ Such original historians, then, change the events, the deeds, and the states of society with which they are conversant, into an object for the conceptive faculty; the narratives they leave us cannot, therefore, be very comprehensive in their range. ”

“ 1 Had previous chroniclers neglected to speak in praise of History in general, it might perhaps have been necessary for me to recommend everyone to choose for study and welcome such treatises as the present, since men have no more ready corrective of conduct than knowledge of the past. But all historians, one may say without exception, and in no half-hearted manner, but making this the beginning and end of their labour, have impressed on us that the soundest education and training for a life of active politics is the study of History, and that surest and indeed the only method of learning how to bear bravely the vicissitudes of fortune, is to recall the calamities of others. ”

“ The study of history is useful to the historian by teaching him his ignorance of women; ”

“ The pages of historians may be swelled with descriptions of the resources, the foreign influence, the population, and the polity of empires; meantime an intelligent inquirer may obtain—from the casual hints and allusions of writers of a less pretentious class, a true knowledge of the taste and the morals of a people. ”

“ They understand the course to be pursued to induce the people to submit to a wholesome government or to a despotic rule as may please the will of the rulers. There are historians of various grades, philosophers wise and simple, and an exceedingly great variety of capacities and tastes. ”