THE MUSE OF HISTORY.

Two distinguished men of letters, each an admirable representative of his University, Mr. John Morley and Professor Seeley have lately published opinions on the subject of history, which, though very likely to prove right, deserve to be carefully considered before assent is bestowed upon them.

Mr. Morley, when President of the Midland Institute, and speaking in the Town Hall of Birmingham, said: 'I do not in the least want to know what happened in the past, except as it enables me to see my way more clearly through what is happening to-day,' and this same indifference is professed, though certainly nowhere displayed, in other parts of Mr. Morley's writings.

*

Professor Seeley never makes his point

*Critical Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 9.

quite so sharp as this, and probably would hesitate to do so, but in the Expansion of England he expounds a theory of history largely based upon an indifference like that which Mr. Morley professed at Birmingham. His book opens thus: 'It is a favourite maxim of mine that history, while it should be scientific in its method, should pursue a practical object - that is, it should not merely gratify the reader's curiosity about the past, but modify his view of the present and his forecast of the future. Now, if this maxim be sound, the history of England ought to end with something that might be called a moral.'

This, it must be admitted, is a large order. The task of the historian, as here explained, is not merely to tell us the story of the past, and thus gratify our curiosity, but, pursuing a practical object, to seek to modify our views of the present and help us in our forecasts of the future; and this the historian is to do, not unconsciously and incidentally, but deliberately and of set purpose. One can well understand

how history, so written, will usually begin with a maxim, and invariably end with a moral.

What we are afterwards told in the same book follows in logical sequence upon our first quotation—namely, that 'history fades into mere literature, (the italics are ours) when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics.' In this grim sentence we read the dethronement of Clio. The poor thing must forswear her father's house, her tuneful sisters, the invocation of the poet, the worship of the dramatist, and keep her terms at the University, where, if she is really studious and steady, and avoids literary companions (which ought not to be difficult), she may hope some day to be received into the Royal Society as a second-rate science. The people who do not usually go to the Royal Society will miss their old playmate from her accustomed slopes, but, even were they to succeed in tracing her to her new home, access would be denied them; for Professor Seeley, that stern custodian, has his answer ready for all such seekers. 'If you want recreation, you must find it in Poetry, particularly Lyrical Poetry. Try Shelley. We can no longer allow you to disport yourselves in the Fields of History as if they were a mere playground. Clio is enclosed.'

At present, however, this is not quite the case; for the old literary traditions are still alive, and prove somewhat irritating to Professor Seeley, who, though one of the most even-tempered of writers, is to be found on p. 173 almost angry with Thackeray, a charming person, who, as we all know, had, after his lazy literary fashion, made an especial study of Queen Anne's time, and who cherished the pleasant fancy that a man might lie in the heather with a pipe in his mouth, and yet, if he had only an odd volume of the Spectator or the Tatler in his hand, be learning history all the time. 'As we read in these delightful pages,' says the author of Esmond, the past age returns; the England of our ancestors is revivified; the Maypole rises in the Strand; the beaux are gathering in the coffee houses;' and so on, in the style we all know and love so well, and none better, we may rest assured, than Professor Seeley himself, if only he were not tortured by the thought that people were taking this to be a specimen of the science of which he is a Regius Professor. His comment on this passage of Thackeray's is al

most a groan.

'What is this but the old

literary groove, leading to no trustworthy knowledge?' and certainly no one of us, from letting his fancy gaze on the Maypole in the Strand, could ever have foretold the Griffin. On the same page he cries: Break the drowsy spell of narrative. Ask yourself questions, set yourself problems; your mind will at once take up a new attitude. Now modern English history breaks up into two grand problems -the problem of the Colonies and the problem of India.' The Cambridge School of History with a vengeance.

In a paper read at the South Kensington Museum in 1884, Professor Seeley observes: The essential point is this, that we should recognise that to study history is to study not merely a narrative, but at the same time certain theoretical studies.' He then proceeds to name them :- Political philosophy, the comparative study of legal institutions, political economy, and international law.

These passages are, I think, adequate to give a fair view of Professor Seeley's position. History is a science, to be written