Book I. History, Historians, and the Writing of Histories

Part I. Prolegomena

Chapter I. Some General Considerations

Broadly speaking, the historians of all recorded ages seem to have had the same general aims. They appear always to seek either to glorify something or somebody, or to entertain and instruct their readers. The observed variety in historical compositions arises not from difference in general motive, but from varying interpretations of the relative status of these objects, and from differing judgments as to the manner of thing likely to produce these ends, combined, of course, with varying skill in literary composition, and varying degrees of freedom of action.

As to freedom of selective judgment, the earliest historians whose records are known to us exercised practically none at all. Their task was to glorify the particular monarch who commanded them to write. The records of a Ramses, a Sennacherib, or a Darius tell only of the successful campaigns, in which the opponent is so much as mentioned only in contrast with the prowess of the victor.

With these earliest historians, therefore, the ends of historical composition were met in the simplest way, by reciting the deeds, real or alleged, of a king, as Ramses, Sennacherib, or David; or of the gods, as Osiris, or Ishtar, or Yahveh. As to entertainment and instruction, the reader was expected to be overawed by the recital of mighty deeds, and to draw the conclusion that it would be well for him to do homage to the glorified monarch, human or divine.

A little later, in what may be termed the classical period, the historians had attained to a somewhat freer position and wider vision, and they sought to glorify heroes who were neither gods nor kings, but the representatives of the people in a more popular sense. Thus the Iliad dwells upon the achievements of Achilles and Ajax and Hector rather than upon the deeds of Menelaus and Priam, the opposing kings. Hitherto the deeds of all these heroes would simply have been transferred to the credit of the king. Now the individual of lesser rank is to have a hearing. Moreover, the state itself is now considered apart from its particular ruler. The histories of Herodotus, of Xenophon, of Thucydides, of Polybius, in effect make for the glorification, not of individuals, but of peoples.

This shift from the purely egoistic to the altruistic standpoint marks a long step. The writer now has much more clearly in view the idea of entertaining, without frightening, his reader; and he thinks to instruct in matters pertaining to good citizenship and communal morality rather than in deference to kings and gods. In so doing the historian marks the progress of civilisation of the Greek and early Roman periods.

In the mediæval time there is a strong reaction. To frighten becomes again a method of attacking the consciousness; to glorify the gods and heroes a chief aim. As was the case in the Egyptian and Persian and Indian periods of degeneration, the early monotheism has given way to polytheism. Hagiology largely takes the place of secular history. A constantly growing company of saints demands attention and veneration. To glorify these, to show the futility of all human action that does not make for such glorification, became again an aim of the historian. But this influence is by no means altogether dominant; and, though there is no such list of historians worthy to be remembered as existed in the classical period, yet such names appear as those of Einhard, the biographer of Charlemagne; De Joinville, the panegyrist of Saint Louis; Villani, Froissart, and Monstrelet, the chroniclers; and Comines, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini.

In the modern period the gods have been more or less disbanded, the heroes modified, even the kings subordinated. We hear much talk of the “philosophy” of history, even of the “science” of history. Common sense and the critical spirit are supposed to hold sway everywhere. Yet, after all, it would be too much to suppose that any historian even of the most modern school has written entirely without prejudice of race, of station, or of religion. And in any event the same ideals, generally stated, are before the historian of to-day that have actuated his predecessors—to glorify something or somebody, though it be, perhaps, a principle and not a person; and to entertain and instruct his readers.

The Oriental Period

The earliest historians whose writings have come down to us are the authors of the records on the monuments of Egypt and of Mesopotamia. We shall see later on that these records, made in languages a knowledge of which has only been recovered in the past century, are full of historical interest because of the facts they narrate, and the insight they give us into the life of their times. For the moment, however, we are only concerned with the method of their construction. They are parts of records dating from many centuries before the beginning of the Christian era. Their authors are utterly unknown by name. The narrative is, indeed, in some cases, couched in the first person, but it is not to be supposed from this that the alleged writer—who, of course, is the king whose deeds are glorified—is the actual composer of the narrative. The actual scribes, mere adjuncts of the royal ménage, never dreamed of putting their own names on record beside those of their royal masters. Yet their work has preserved to future generations the names of kings that otherwise would have been absolutely forgotten. For example, Tehutimes III of Egypt and Asshurbanapal of Assyria, two of the most powerful monarchs of antiquity, had ceased to be remembered even by name several centuries before the dawn of our era, and for two thousand years no human being knew that such persons had ever existed. Yet now, thanks to the monuments, their deeds are almost as fully known to us as the deeds of an Alexander or a Cæsar.

There is, indeed, one regard in which these most ancient historical records have an advantage over more recent works. They were for the most part graven in stone or stamped in clay that was burned to stonelike hardness, and they have come down to us with the assurances of authenticity which must always be lacking in many compositions of more recent periods. The Babylonian and Assyrian records lay buried with the ruins of cities whose very location had been forgotten for ages. The most recent of these records had been seen by no human eye for more than two thousand years. Their unnamed authors seem thus to speak to us directly across the centuries. However these earliest of historians may have dreamed of immortality for their work, they can hardly have hoped to speak to eager audiences in regions far beyond the limits of their world, twenty-five centuries after the very nation to which they belonged had vanished from the earth, and the language in which they wrote had ceased to be known to men. Yet that unique glory was reserved for them.

The Classical Historians

It requires but a glance at the historians of the classical period to see how altered is the point of view from which they write. Here we have no longer men commanded by a monarch, or impelled by religious fervour to glorify a single person or epoch or country to the utter exclusion of everything else. We have bounded from insularity of view to universality. Even the Homeric legends deal with the events of two continents and of several countries. Herodotus and Diodorus make the writing of their histories a life-work. They travel from one country to another, and familiarise themselves with their subject as much as possible at first hand. They mingle with the scholars of many lands, and listen to their recitals of the annals of their respective peoples. They weigh and consider, though in a quite different mental balance from that which an historian uses in our day. They spend thirty, forty, years in composing their books. From them, then, we have, not simple chronicles of a single event, but universal histories. These are in many ways different from the universal histories of our own time; but in their frank, human way of looking out upon the world, they have a charm that is quite their own. In their interest for the general reader, they have perhaps never been excelled. And in their citation of fact and fable they become a storehouse upon which succeeding generations of historians have drawn to this day.

There are other historians of the period no less remarkable, some of them even superior, from some points of view, to these masters. The names of Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius among the Greeks, of Tacitus, Livy, Cæsar among the Romans, to go no farther, are as familiar to every cultivated mind of our own day as the names of Gibbon, Macaulay, or Bancroft. Several of these were men who participated in the events they described, and, confining themselves to limited periods, treated these periods in such masterly fashion, with such breadth of view and discriminating judgment, that their verdicts have weight with all succeeding generations of historians. Thucydides, writing in the fifth century B.C., is regarded, even in our critical age, as a matchless writer of history. An oft-repeated tale relates that Macaulay despaired of ever equalling him, though feeling that he might hope to duplicate the work of any other historian. Polybius and Tacitus are mentioned with respect by the most exacting investigators. Clearly, then, this was a culminating epoch in the writing of histories.

The Mediæval and Modern Histories

We have seen that in the classical period the brief space of half a dozen generations saw a cluster of great histories written. No such intellectual activity in this direction marked the mediæval period. Now for the space of more than a thousand years there was no work produced that could bear a moment’s comparison with the great productions of the earlier periods. One theme was now dominant in the Western world, and the intellects that might have produced histories of broad scope under other circumstances contented themselves with harping on the one string. So we have ecclesiastical records in place of histories.

In due time the reaction came, but it was long before the influence of the dominant spirit was made subordinate to a saner view. Indeed, scarcely before our own generation, since the classical period, have historians been able to cast a clear and unbiased glance across the entire field of history.

Toward the middle of the eighteenth century a school of secular historians with broad views and high aims again arose. Now once more men sought to write world histories not dominated by a single idea. The first great exponents of the movement were Gibbon and Hume in England, Schlozzer and Müller in Germany. They have had a host of followers, of whom the greater number have been Germans.

The attitude of these modern writers is philosophical; they are disposed to recognise in the bald facts of human existence an importance commensurate solely with the lessons they can teach for the betterment of humanity. In this modern view, each fact must be correlated with a multitude of other facts before its true significance can be perceived. Events are, in this view, meaningless unless we know something of the human motives that led to their enactment. The task of the historian is to search for causes, to endeavour to build up from the lessons of history a true philosophy of living. It is really no different a task, as already pointed out, from that which such ancient writers as Polybius had very prominently in view; but there is an emphasis upon this phase of the subject in our time that it did not generally receive in the earlier age. In other words, the philosophy of history of our time is a more conscious philosophy. For a century past the phrase, “philosophy of history,” has been current, and it has been the custom for men who were not primarily historians to discourse on the subject. Latterly, following again the current of the times, we have come to speak even of the “science” of history; indeed, in Germany in particular, history to-day claims unchallenged position as a true science. The word “science” is a very flexible term, yet there are those who deny that it may be properly applied, as yet at any rate, to our aggregation of knowledge of historical facts. The question resolves itself into a matter of definition, the solution of which is not particularly important.

The essential thing is that the modern historical investigator is fully actuated by the spirit of scientific accuracy and impartiality. And since impartiality depends very largely upon breadth of view, it results rather curiously that the minute investigations of the specialist make indirectly for the comprehensive view of the World Historian. Professor Freeman well expressed the idea when he said:

“My position is that in all our studies of history and language—and the study of language, besides all that it is in other ways, is one most important branch of the study of history—we must cast away all distinctions of ‘ancient’ and ‘modern,’ of ‘dead’ and ‘living,’ and must boldly grapple with the great fact of the unity of history. As man is the same in all ages, the history of man is one in all ages. No language, no period of history, can be understood in its fullness; none can be clothed with its highest interest and its highest profit, if it be looked at wholly in itself, without reference to its bearing on those other languages, those other periods of history, which join with it to make up the great whole of human, or at least of Aryan and European, being.”

Such a position as this, assumed by one of the most minute searchers among modern historians, is highly interesting as illustrative of a reactionary tendency which will probably characterise the historical work of the near future. Hair-splitting analysis having been carried to its limits of refinement, there will probably come a reaction in the direction of a more comprehensive study of historical events in their wider relations. The work of the specialist, after all, is really important only when it furnishes material for wider generalisations. All minute workers in the fields of biology, geology, and the allied sciences, in the first half of the nineteenth century were unconsciously gathering material which, interesting in itself, became of real importance chiefly in so far as it ultimately aided in elucidating the great generalisation of Darwin. Perhaps the minute historians of to-day are in similar position.

The special worker, imbued with enthusiasm for his subject, is apt to forget the real insignificance of his labours. Entire epochs are dominated by the idea of microscopic research, and the workers even come to suppose that microscopic analysis is in itself an end; whereas, rightly considered, it is only the means to an end. We are just passing through such an epoch as regards historical investigation. But, as just suggested, it seems probable that we are approaching a new epoch when the work of the specialist will be subordinated to its true purpose, while at the same time proving its real value as a means to the proper end of historical studies—the comprehension of the world-historical relations of events.

Chapter II. Materials for the Writing of History

It is obvious that the materials for the writing of history consist for the most part of written records. It is true that all manner of monuments, including the ruins of buried cities, remains of ancient walls and highways, and all other traces of a former civilisation, must be allotted their share as records to guide the investigator in his attempt to reconstruct past conditions. But for anything like a definite presentation of the events of by-gone days, it is absolutely essential, as Sir George Cornewall Lewis pointed out in great detail, to have access to contemporary written records, either at first hand, or through the medium of copyists, in case the original records themselves have been destroyed. Lewis reached the conclusion, as the result of his exhaustive examination of the credibility of early Roman history, that a tradition of a past event is hardly transmitted orally from generation to generation with anything like accuracy of detail for more than a century.

Theoretically, then, no accurate history could ever be constructed of events covering a longer period than about four generations before the introduction of writing. In actual practice the scope of the strictly historic view of man’s progress is confined to very much narrower limits than this, for the simple reason that the earliest written records that might otherwise serve to give us glimpses of remote history have very rarely been preserved. The destruction of ancient inscriptions with the lapse of centuries has led to a great deal of difference of opinion as to the time when the art of writing was introduced among various nations. In reference to the Greeks in particular, the dispute has been ardently waged, many scholars contending that the art of writing was little practised in Greece until the sixth century B.C.

Later discoveries, in particular a knowledge of the inscription on the statue of Ramses at Abu Simbel, have made it clear that the earlier estimates were much too conservative, and it now seems probable that the Greeks had been acquainted with the art of writing for several, or perhaps many, centuries before the one previously fixed upon. It is not to be supposed, however, that the practice of the art of writing was universal in that early day. On the other hand, it was doubtless very exceptional indeed for the average individual to be able to write, and such difficulties as the lack of writing material stood in the way of composition until a relatively late period. But whether the art of writing was much or little practised in the early days does not greatly matter so far as the present-day historian is concerned, since practically all specimens of early writing in Greece disappeared in the course of succeeding ages. No fragment of any book proper, no scrap of parchment or papyrus, no single waxen tablet, from the soil of classic Greece has been preserved to us.

The Greek authors are known to us only through the efforts of successive generations of copyists; and, with the exception of a comparatively small number of Egyptian papyri, there is almost nothing in existence representing the literature of classical Greece that is older than the middle ages. There are, to be sure, considerable numbers of monumental inscriptions dating from classical times. These have the highest interest for the archæologist, but in the aggregate they give but meagre glimpses into the history of antiquity. If we were dependent upon these records for all that we know of Greek history, the entire story of that people might be told, as far as we could ever hope to learn it, in a few pages.

The case is somewhat different with Egypt and with Mesopotamia, since the climate of the former and the resistant character of the writing materials employed by the latter have permitted the modern world to receive direct messages that, under other circumstances, must inevitably have been lost. But even here the historical records are neither so abundant nor so comprehensive in their scope as might have been hoped. History-writing, in anything like a comprehensive meaning of the words, is a relatively modern art. The nearest approach to it among the nations of remote antiquity got no farther than the recording of the personal deeds of individual kings. Such records, indeed, are excellent materials for history, but they hardly constitute history by themselves. The entire lists of Egyptian inscriptions, so far as known, suffice merely to give glimpses of Egyptian history; and if the Mesopotamian records are, in this regard, somewhat more satisfactory, it is only in reference to a comparatively brief period of later Assyrian history that they can be said to have anything like comprehensiveness. As to the other nations of Oriental antiquity,—Indians, Persians, Syrians, the inhabitants of Asia Minor,—the entire sum of the monumental records that have been transmitted to us amounts to nothing more than a scattered series of vague suggestions.

In the classical world Rome is but little better off than Greece in this regard. As to both these countries, we depend for our knowledge almost exclusively upon the works of historians of a relatively late period. Before Herodotus, who lived in the fifth century B.C., there is almost no consecutive history proper of Greece; and despite all the efforts of archæologists, records of Roman progress scarcely suffice to push back the prehistoric veil beyond the time of the banishment of the kings. Indeed, even for a century or two after this event transpired, the would-be historian finds himself still on very treacherous ground. The reason for this is that there were no contemporary historians in Rome in this early period; and until such contemporary chroniclers appear, no secure record of history is possible.

Once it became the fashion to write chronicles of events, the custom rapidly spread and took a fixed hold upon the people. From the day of Herodotus there was no dearth of Greek historians, and after Polybius there is an unbroken series of Roman chroniclers.

Had all the writings of these various workers been preserved to us, we should have abundant material for reconstructing the history of the entire later classical epoch in much detail; but, unfortunately, the historian worked with perishable materials. An individual papyrus or parchment roll could hardly be expected on the average to be preserved for more than a few generations, and unless copies had been made of it in the meantime, the record that it contained must inevitably be lost. Such has been the fate of the great mass of historical writings, no less than of productions in other fields of literature.

Many of the fragments of ancient writers have come down to us through rather curious channels. In the later age of Rome it became the fashion to make anthologies and compilations, and it is through such collections that the majority of classical authors are known. One of the most curious of these anthologies is that made by Athenæus about the beginning of the third century A.D. This author called his work Deipnosophistæ, or the Feast of the Learned. He attempted to give it a somewhat artistic form, making it ostensibly a dialogue in which the sayings of a company of diners were related to a friend who was not present at the banquet. The diners were supposed to have introduced quotations from the classical writers, so that the book is chiefly made up of such quotations. The work has not come down to us quite in its entirety, but, even so, no fewer than eight hundred authors and twenty-five hundred different works are represented in the anthology. Of these authors about seven hundred are known exclusively through the excerpts of Athenæus.

Two or three centuries later another Greek named Stobæus compiled a set of extracts from the Greek writers of all accessible periods prior to his own. The number of authors quoted in this anthology is more than five hundred, and here again the major part of them are quite unknown to us except through this single source. Yet another collection of excerpts was made in the latter part of the ninth century by Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, who made excerpts from about 280 authors with whose works he had familiarised himself through miscellaneous reading. In addition to these works of individual compilers there were two or three anthologies compiled in the Byzantine period, including an important collection of fragments of the Greek poets which is still extant under the title of The Greek Anthology, and the elaborate set of encyclopædias made under the direction of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. But for such collections as these, supplemented by the biographical notices of such workers as Suidas, and by fragments that have come to us through a few other channels, it would scarcely have been conceived that so many authors had written in the entire period of Grecian activity, since only a fraction of this number are represented by complete works that have come down to us. Such facts as these give an inkling as to the mental activity of the old-time author, while pointing a useful lesson as to the perishability of human works. In this age of easy multiplying of books through printing, one is prone to forget how precarious must have been the existence of a manuscript of the elder day. It was a long, laborious task to produce an edition of a single copy of any extended work, and each successive duplication was precisely as slow and as difficult as the first. Under these circumstances no doubt a very considerable proportion of books were never duplicated at all, and the circulation of a very large additional number most likely was limited to two or three copies. It was only works which were early recognised as having an unusual intrinsic interest or value that stood any reasonable chance of being copied often enough to insure preservation through many succeeding generations.

As one considers the field of extant manuscripts, one is led naturally to reflect on the quality of work that was likely thus to insure perpetuity, and the more we consider the subject, limiting the view for our present purpose to historical compositions, the more clear it becomes that the one prime quality that gave a lease of life to the composition of an author was the quality of human interest. In other words, such historical compositions as were works of art, rather than such as depended upon other merits, were the ones which successive generations of copyists reproduced, and which ultimately were enabled to pass the final ordeal imposed by the monks of the middle ages, who made palimpsests of many an author deserving a better fate. The upshot of this process of the survival of the fittest was that all Greek would-be historians prior to Herodotus were allowed to sink into oblivion, causing Herodotus himself to stand out as apparently the absolute creator of a new art. In point of fact, could we know the whole truth, it would doubtless appear that there was no real revolution of method effected by the writings of Herodotus. He surpassed all of his predecessors in such a measure that the future copyist saw no necessity for preserving any work but the one, since this one practically covered the field of all the rest. It is, perhaps, an ill method of phrasing, to say that these copyists saw no reason for preserving those earlier manuscripts. There was no thought in their minds of the preservation of one book and the destruction of another; they merely copied the work which interested them, or which they believed would interest the book-buying public. The disappearance of the works not copied was a mere negative result, about which no one directly concerned himself.

The proof of the value of the work of Herodotus is found in the fact that it has come down to us entire in numerous copies, something that can be said of only three or four other considerable historical compositions of the entire classical period; two others of this select company being Thucydides and Xenophon, both of whom were contemporaries of Herodotus, though considerably younger, and therefore, properly enough, counted as belonging to the next generation. Of the other Greek historians, the biographical works of Plutarch, the works of Strabo and Pausanius, which are geographical rather than strictly historical, and the Life of Alexander the Great by Arrian, are the sole ones of the large number undoubtedly written that have come down to us intact. A survey of the Roman historians furnishes an even more striking illustration, for here no one of the great historical works has been preserved in its entirety. Livy’s monumental work is entire as to the earlier books, which treat of the mythical and half-mythical period of Roman development; but the parts of it that treated of later Roman history, concerning which the author could have spoken, and probably did speak, with first-hand knowledge, are almost entirely lost. In other words, the copyists of the middle ages preserved the least valuable portion of Livy, doubtless because they found the hero tales of mythical Rome more interesting than the matter-of-fact recitals of the events of the later republic and the early empire. We can hardly suppose that Livy detailed the events of the later period with less art than characterised his earlier work, but different conditions were imposed upon him. He had now to deal with much fuller records than hitherto, and no doubt he treated many subjects that seemed important to him, simply because they were near at hand, but which another generation found tiresome and not worth the trouble of copying. Thus we see emphasised again the salient point that the interesting story rather than the important historical narrative proved itself most fit for preservation in the estimate of posterity.

Of the other great historians of Rome, Tacitus, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Polybius, have all fared rather worse than Livy, although a few briefer masterpieces, like the two histories of Sallust and the Gallic Wars of Cæsar, and such biographies as the “Lives” of Suetonius and Cornelius Nepos, were able to fight their way through the middle ages and gain the safe shelter of the printing-press without material loss.

But perhaps the most suggestive example of all is furnished by the brief world history of Justin, which, if not quite entire, has been preserved as to its main structure in various manuscripts. This work is an artistic epitome of a large, and in its day authoritative, history of the world, written by Trogus Pompeius. Justin, when a student in Rome in the day of the early Cæsars, was led to make an epitome of this work, seemingly as proof to his friends in the provinces that he was not wasting his time. He did his task so well that future generations saw no reason to trouble themselves with the prolixities of the original work, but were content to copy and re-copy the epitome, pointing the moral that brevity, next to artistic excellence, is the surest road to permanent remembrance for the historian,—a lesson which many modern writers have overlooked to their disadvantage.

Chapter III. The Methods of the Historians

It is a curious fact, a seeming paradox, that the first two great histories ever written—the histories, namely, of Herodotus and Thucydides—should stand out pre-eminently as types of two utterly different methods of historical writing. Herodotus, “the Father of History,” wrote with the obvious intention to entertain. There is no great logicality of sequence in his use of materials; he simply rambles on from one subject to another with little regard for chronology, but with the obvious intention everywhere to tell all the good stories that he has learned in the course of his journeyings. It would be going much too far to say that there is no method in his collocation of materials, but what method he has is quite generally overshadowed and obscured in the course of presentation. Thus, for example, he is writing the history of the Persian wars, and he has reached that time in the history of Persia when Cambyses comes to the throne and prepares to invade Egypt. The mention of Egypt gives him, as it were, the cue for an utterly new discourse, which he elaborates to the extent of an entire book, detailing all that he has learned of Egypt itself, its history, its people, and their manners and customs, without, for the most part, referring in any way whatever to Cambyses. He returns to the Persian king ultimately, to be sure, and takes up his story regardless of the digression, and seemingly quite oblivious of any incongruity in the fact of having introduced very much more extraneous matter in reference to Egypt than the entire subject matter proper of the Persian Empire. The method of Herodotus was justified by the results. There is every reason to believe that he was enormously popular in his own time,—as popularity went in those days,—and he has held that popularity throughout all succeeding generations. But it has been said of him often enough that this work is hardly a history in the narrower sense of the word; it is a pleasing collection of tales, in which no very close attempt is made to discriminate between fact and fiction, the prime motive being to entertain the reader. As such, the work of Herodotus stands at the head of a class which has been represented by here and there a striking example throughout all succeeding times.

Xenophon’s Anabasis, detailing the story of Cyrus the Younger and his ten thousand Greek allies, is essentially a history of the same type. It differs radically, to be sure, from Herodotus, in that it holds with the closest consistency to a single narrative, scarcely giving the barest glimpses into any other field than that directly connected with the story of the ten thousand. But it is like Herodotus in the prime essential that its motive is to entertain the reader by the citation of the incidents of a venturesome enterprise. Xenophon does indeed pause at the beginning of the second book long enough to pronounce a eulogy upon the character of Cyrus,—a eulogy that is distinctly the biased estimate of a friend, rather than the calm judgment of a critical historian. But this aside, Xenophon, philosopher though he is, concerns himself not at all with the philosophy of the subject in hand. He quite ignores the immoral features of the rebellion of Cyrus against his brother. Indeed, it seems never to occur to him that this fratricidal enterprise has any reprehensible features, or could be considered in any light other than that of a commendable proceeding of which a throne was the legitimate goal. Doubtless the very fact of this banishment of the philosophical from the work of Xenophon has been one source of its great popularity, for, as every one knows, Xenophon shares with Herodotus the credit of being the most widely read of classical authors. It would be quite aside from the present purpose to emphasise the opinion that the intrinsic merit of Xenophon’s work does not fully justify this popularity. It suffices here to note the fact that this famous work of the successor of Herodotus belongs essentially to the same class with the work of the master himself.

Of the Roman historians doubtless the one most similar to Herodotus in general aim was Livy. The author of the most famous history of Rome does not indeed make any such excursions into the history of outlying nations, as did Herodotus, but he details the history of his own people with an eye always to the literary, rather than to the strictly historical, side; transmitting to us in their best form that series of beautiful legends with which all succeeding generations have been obliged to content themselves in lieu of history proper. There is little of philosophical thought, little of search for motives, in such history-writing as this. It is essentially the art of the story-teller applied to the facts and fables of history.

Returning now to Thucydides, we have illustrated, as has been said, an utterly different plan and motive. Thucydides does indeed tell the story of the Peloponnesian War; tells it, moreover, with such wealth of detail as no other historian of antiquity exceeded, and few approached. But in addition to narrating the plain facts, Thucydides searches always for the motives. He gives us an insight into the causes of events as he conceives them. He is obviously thinking more of this phase of the subject than of the mere recital of the facts themselves. It is the philosophy of history, rather than the story of history, that appeals to him, and that he wishes to make patent to the reader.

Only two or three other writers of the entire classical period whose works have come down to us followed Thucydides with any considerable measure of success in this attempt to write history philosophically; the two most prominent exponents of this method being the Greek Polybius, who told the story of Rome’s rise to world power, and Tacitus, the famous author of the Roman Annals and of the earliest history of the German people. These three examples—Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus—stand out at once in refutation of a claim which might otherwise be made that philosophical, or, if one prefers, didactic, historical composition is essentially a modern product. But for these exceptions one might be disposed to make a sweeping generalisation to the effect that the old-time history was a collection of tales intended to entertain the reader, and that the strictly modern historical method aims at instruction rather than at entertainment. Such generalisations, however, assuming, as they do, that the entire trend of human thought has fundamentally changed within historical times, are sure to be faulty. Quite possibly it may be true to say that the earliest historians tended as a class to write entertaining narratives rather than philosophical histories; and to say, on the other hand, that nineteenth century historians as a class have reversed the order of motives: but it must not be forgotten that our judgment here is based upon a mere fragment of the entire output of ancient historians. We have already noticed, in another connection, that the names of some hundreds of Greek writers have been preserved to us solely through a single anthological collection or two; and now, speaking of the historical works, it must be remembered that a vast number of these have perished altogether. Whole companies of historians are known to us only by name, and there is every reason to suppose that considerable other companies that once existed and wrote works of greater or less importance have not left us even this memento. The scattered fragments of Greek historical works that have come down to us, dissociated from any considerable part of their original context, fill three large volumes of the famous Didot collection of Greek classics, as edited by K. O. Müller; some hundreds of authors being represented.

We have noted that all the predecessors of Herodotus were blotted out, chiefly, perhaps, by the excellence of the work of Herodotus himself. Similarly the entire histories of Alexander the Great, written by his associates and contemporaries and his successors of the ensuing century, have without exception perished utterly.

Doubtless the excellence of the work of Arrian, which summarised and attempted to harmonise the contents of the more important preceding histories of Alexander, was responsible for the final elimination of the latter. One can hardly refer too often to that intellectual gantlet of the middle ages, which all classical literature was called upon to pass, and from which only here and there a work emerged. It is almost pathetic to consider the number of works that made their way heroically almost through this gantlet, only to succumb just before achieving the goal. One knows, for example, that there was a work of Theopompus on later Grecian affairs, in fifty odd books, which was extant in the ninth century, as proved by the summary of its contents made then by a monk, but of which no single line is in existence to-day. Even the works that have come down to us in a less fragmentary condition have not usually been preserved entire in any single manuscript, but, as presented to us now, are patched together from various fragments, preserved often in widely separated collections. The explanation is that the copying of a manuscript of great length was a somewhat heroic task, and that hence the copyist would often content himself with excerpting a single book from a work which he would gladly have reproduced entire but for the labour involved.

The point of all this in our present connection is that we know the historians of antiquity very imperfectly, and that hence we are almost sure to misjudge them as a class when we attempt generalisations concerning them. In the very nature of the case, the historian who told a good story in a pleasing style stood a far better chance of being perpetuated through the efforts of copyists, than did the philosophical historian, however profound, who put forward his theories at the expense of the narrative proper. Making all due allowance for this, however, it can hardly be in doubt that the last century and a half has seen a remarkable development of the scientific spirit in its application to the work of the historian, and that the average historical work of the nineteenth century is philosophically on a far higher plane than the average historical work of antiquity. If we were to attempt to characterise the most recent phases of historical composition, we should, perhaps, not go far afield in saying that in regard to history-writing, as in regard to many other subjects, this is pre-eminently the age of specialists. In recent years no historical work could hope for any large measure of recognition among historians, unless it were based upon personal investigation of the most remote sources bearing upon the period that could be made accessible. The recent period has been pre-eminently a time of the searching out of obscure or forgotten records; the unburying of old letters and state papers; the delving into hitherto neglected archives; and the critical analysis of the conflicting statements of alleged authorities previously accessible.

The work began prominently—if any intellectual movement may properly be said to have an explicit beginning—with Gibbon and Niebuhr; it was continued by Grote and Mommsen and George Cornewall Lewis and Clinton, and the host of more recent workers, whose specific labours will claim our attention as we proceed. Naturally enough, since each generation of specialists builds upon the labours of all preceding generations, the work has become more and more minute and hair-splitting with each succeeding decade. Gibbon, specialist though he was, covered a period of a thousand years of European history, and left scarcely anything untouched that falls properly within that period. Niebuhr specialised on the few centuries of early Roman history, but his comprehensive view reached out also to Greece and to the Orient, and he was accounted a master over the whole range of ancient history. Mommsen’s efforts have followed the Roman Republic and Empire throughout the length and breadth of its wide domains, and over the whole period of its existence, as well as into all the ramifications of its political, commercial, and social life.

But there has been a tendency among most recent workers to confine their attention to a narrower field. Macaulay’s History of England attempts the really detailed history of only about seventeen years. Carlyle devotes six large volumes to the History of Frederick the Great, and such authorities as Freeman and Stubbs and Gardiner and Gairdner gave years of patient research to the investigation of single periods of English history. The obvious result of all this minute and laborious effort is the piling up of a mass of more or less incoördinate details as to the crude facts of history, which only the specialist in each particular field can hope to master, and the remoter bearings of which in their relations to world history are not always clearly appreciable. It is rarely given to the same mind to have a taste or a capacity at once for minute research and for broad and accurate generalisation. Therefore much of the work of the specialist, admirable in its kind, must still be regarded rather as crude material than as a finished product. It is the work of the world historian to attempt to mass this crude material, to visualise it in its relations to other similar masses, and to build with it a unified structure of history, in which each portion shall appear in its proper relations to all the rest.

Let us turn for a moment to the work of the world historians of the past, and glance at the results of their various efforts to weld the individual history of men and of nations into a comprehensive history of mankind.

Chapter IV. World Histories

No historian worthy of the name can narrate the events even of a limited period without at least an inferential reference to the world-historic import of these events. Just in proportion as one fails to take a sweeping general view, the force of his facts is weakened; any narrow period of history, on which the attention is fixed, assumes, for the time being, a disproportionate interest, and is necessarily seen quite out of perspective. It is only when the limited period is considered in reference to other periods that it can be made to assume anything like its proper status. Something of this has been understood by all writers from the earliest times, and accordingly we find that very few of the ancient authors failed to take at least a sweeping view of contemporaneous events, even when detailing specifically the incidents of a restricted period; and often, as in the case of Herodotus, the space devoted to the history of events not strictly cognate to the main story is quite out of proportion to that reserved for the main story itself. Thus in a certain sense the history of Herodotus is a world history, inasmuch as it deals more or less comprehensively with practically all nations known to the Greeks of that time. Thucydides, as we have seen, confines himself much more closely to a precise text; yet even he devotes an introductory book to a summary of the past history of the Greeks as a preparation for the full understanding of the Peloponnesian War.

But, after all, a somewhat sharp distinction should be drawn between histories such as these, which ostensibly describe the incidents of a particular period, and more comprehensive treatises, which set the explicit task of dealing with the history of all nations in all times.

Of the works of this latter class,—World Histories proper,—the oldest one that has come down to us is at the same time probably the most comprehensive in scope, and the most extensive in point of matter, of any that was written in ancient times. This is the so-called Historical Library of Diodorus the Sicilian. Diodorus was a Greek, a native of Sicily, who lived during the time of Julius Cæsar and of Augustus. He set himself the explicit task of writing a comprehensive history of the world, and he devoted thirty years to the accomplishment of this task. This history, as originally written, comprised forty books, which treated of the entire history of mankind from the earliest times to the age of Augustus. Diodorus recognised the vagueness of early chronology, and he made no attempt to estimate the exact age of the world, but he computes the time covered by what he considers the historic period proper, in the following terms:

“According to Apollodorus, we have accounted fourscore years from the Trojan War to the return of Heraclides: from thence to the first olympiad, three hundred and twenty-eight years, computing the times from the Lacedæmonian kings: from the first olympiad to the beginning of the Gallic War (where our history ends) are seven hundred and thirty years: so that our whole work (comprehended in forty books) is an history which takes in the affairs of eleven hundred and thirty-eight years, besides those times that preceded the Trojan War.”

In his preface Diodorus further explains the exact scope of his work and the precise division in the books in the following words:

“Our first six books comprehend the affairs and mythologies of the ages before the Trojan War, of which the three first contain the barbarian, and the next following almost all the Grecian antiquities. In the eleven next after these, we have given an account of what has been done in every place from the time of the Trojan War till the death of Alexander. In the three and twenty books following, we have set forth all other things and affairs, till the beginning of the war the Romans made upon the Gauls; at which time Julius Cæsar, the emperor (who upon the account of his great achievements was surnamed Divus), having subdued the warlike nations of the Gauls, enlarged the Roman Empire, as far as to the British Isles; whose first acts fall in with the first year of the hundred and eightieth olympiad, when Herodes was chief magistrate at Athens. But as to the limitations of times contained in the work, we have not bound those things that happened before the Trojan War within any certain limits, because we could not find any foundation whereon to rely with any certainty.”

Of these forty books only fifteen have come down to us intact, namely, the first five, which carry down the history only to the Trojan wars, and books eleven to twenty, which cover the period from the invasion of Greece by Xerxes to the subjugation of Greece by the Romans. The remaining books are represented by considerable fragments, which, however, even in the aggregate, are insignificant in bulk as compared with the fifteen books that are preserved entire.

Considering the time when it was written, this work of Diodorus was really an extraordinary production, though there has been a tendency on the part of the modern critic to dwell rather upon its defects than its merits. It has indeed become quite the fashion to speak of Diodorus as a weak-minded, prejudiced person, who gathered together materials for history from all sources indiscriminately, and gave them to the world, true and false together, quite unsifted by criticism. Such an estimate, however, does Diodorus a very great injustice, as the briefest perusal of his work must suffice to demonstrate. Indeed, it is perhaps not saying too much to assert that one would be nearer the truth were he to accept an estimate by Pliny, who affirms that Diodorus was the first of the Greeks who wrote seriously and avoided trifles. That Diodorus did write seriously, his work clearly testifies; that he largely avoided trifles, is shown by the mass of matter which he crowded into a comparatively small space; and that he was far from using his materials without exercising selective judgment, should be evident to any one who scans these materials themselves. It is quite true that he made many mistakes. He sometimes accepted as fact what was only fable, his chronologies are not always secure, his narratives of events not always photographically accurate. But consider the task he had set himself. He was endeavouring to write a history of the entire world so far as known in his day and generation, including within the scope of his narrative all the leading events of all the nations of the globe as known in that day. No man can perform such a task, even in this day of multiplied records and edited authorities, without making mistakes.

Whoever attempts to write history philosophically is brought, sooner or later, face to face with the fact that all historical records are woven through and through with fiction. To separate the threads of truth from the threads of fable is the task of critical judgment. It will be perfectly clear to any one who considers the case, that in making such selection the historian of any generation must be biased and influenced by the prejudices and preconceptions of his time. From such prejudices and preconceptions Diodorus was, of course, not free. He looked out upon the world with eyes of the first century B.C., not with eyes of the twentieth century A.D. That century, no less than this,—perhaps not more than this,—was an age of faith and superstition; but the faith of that time was not the faith of this time; the superstitions of the Greek and Roman were not our superstitions. They were a credulous people; we are a credulous people: but the exact type of their credulity differed in many ways from the type of our credulity.

In judging Diodorus, then, one must judge him as a Roman of the first century B.C., not as a European of the twentieth century A.D. And if we bear this in mind, we shall find, after scanning his pages, that Diodorus was by no means marked among his fellows by simple credulity of the unquestioning type which accepts whatever is told it without subjecting it to criticism. Diodorus, to be sure, tells us fabulous tales as to the origin of the world and the creation of its various peoples; but he explicitly forewarns us that he tells these tales, not as matters of his own belief, but in order to make an historical record of the opinions current among the different nations themselves as to their own origin.

These tales seem to us fabulous, grotesque, absurd; but we have no reason to doubt that many of them seemed equally mythical to Diodorus himself; and modern criticism should not forget that there is one other myth tale of the creation of the world and the origin of a particular race, which, had Diodorus known it, he would doubtless have narrated with the rest, and viewed with the same scepticism which he shows towards the others, as being fabulous, grotesque, and absurd, but which would have been accepted by the critics of all Christendom, in every age prior to our own, as the authentic historical record of the actual creation of the earth, and as the true account of its chosen people.

In a word, modern criticism should bear in mind, when reproaching Diodorus and others like him for their credulity, that the accepted faith of nineteenth-century Europe would have seemed to Diodorus as absurd and fabulous and mythical as any tale which he has to tell us can seem to the twentieth-century critic.

And as to the mistakes of Diodorus in the more strictly historical portions of his narrative, these also must be viewed with a certain toleration by every candid critic when he reflects upon the vast preponderance of those cases in which the records of Diodorus are worthy of the fullest credence. In considering these matters, it is very easy, indeed, to generate myths that befog our view of the true status of an ancient author. Thus, for example, it was once traditional to regard Thucydides as the most candid, just, and impartial historian who has ever lived; but it can hardly be in doubt that the real reason why this estimate has grown up about the name of Thucydides is the fact that, as Professor Mahaffy points out, Thucydides is the sole authority for the history of most of the period of which he treats. It has even been admitted by Müller that in the early portion of the first chapter of Thucydides, where he treats on Grecian history in general, and up to the Peloponnesian War, he does not manifest the same impartiality which distinguishes him in the later portions of his narrative. But it is precisely in this earlier chapter that Thucydides deals with events that are recorded by other historians. It is here, and for the most part here alone, that his story can be checked by data from other authors. Could we similarly check the story of the Peloponnesian War in general, it can hardly be in doubt that we should come across at least some discrepancies which would have tended materially to modify the almost idolatrous estimate of Thucydides that came to be, and long continued to be, unquestionably associated with his name.

Making the application of this thought to Diodorus, it is evident at once that the historian of a limited period of antiquity lays himself open to no such range of comparison as he who undertakes to write the history of the entire world. In the very nature of the case, such a writer pits himself against the whole company of specialists; and, after all, it is hardly surprising, should it be susceptible of proof, that in several, or all, fields there are specialists whose accuracy excels the accuracy of Diodorus in each particular field. Surely the comprehensiveness of his task must count for something in the estimate, and, when all this is taken into consideration, it may fairly be repeated that the general estimate of modern criticism has done but scant justice to the author of the first attempt ever made to write a complete and comprehensive history of the world.

Moreover, it must not be forgotten that in his use of authorities Diodorus sometimes showed a selective judgment that is entitled to the fullest praise. A notable instance is found in his treatment of that period of Grecian history following the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans and the Thebans were contending for supremacy. It was treated by Xenophon in his Hellenica, and as Xenophon was actual witness of many of the events which he describes, the presumption would be that his authority for the period might be considered incontestable. But in point of fact, Xenophon, philosopher though he was and pupil of Socrates, was not above the influence of personal prejudice. He was a friend of Agesilaus, and his admiration for that hero, as well as his fondness for the Spartans in general, prejudiced his narrative to such an extent that he did very scant justice to the merits of the great Epaminondas. Indeed, were we to trust to Xenophon alone, the world never would have had in later times anything like a just appreciation of the merits of the great Theban, and since Xenophon’s account of this period is the only contemporary one that has been preserved, it was a rare chance, indeed, that preserved to posterity a just appreciation of the greatest of the Thebans, whom some critics are wont to consider the greatest of all the Greeks; and it is Diodorus whom we must thank for doing this historic justice to a great man whose merits might otherwise have been obscured by the personal prejudice of a contemporary historian.

Diodorus, in treating this period, chose as his authority, not Xenophon, but Aphorus. Just how he came to this decision is not known; it suffices that the decision was a good one. None but a prejudiced critic can doubt that in many other cases his judgment was equally perspicuous in selecting among divergent accounts the one of greatest verisimilitude.

A part of the relative neglect which has fallen to the lot of Diodorus may be ascribed to the manner of his handling. He threw his work into the form of annals, in which a chronological idea was predominant. He gives the history of a nation in a given year, and then turns aside to other nations, to follow the fortunes of each in turn over the same period. Necessarily, under such a treatment, the whole plan lacks continuity. One must break from one subject to another, must turn from Assyria to Egypt, from Greece to Rome, in order to follow the story through constantly broken chapters. Naturally, under such treatment, the reader’s interest flags. From a popular standpoint, such a treatment is clearly a mistake.

The plan of Herodotus, which took up the story of each nation, and carried it through a long period uninterruptedly, has many advantages; is infinitely more artistic. It is chiefly due to this treatment, rather than the actual phrasing of his story, that Herodotus has gained so much more universal fame than Diodorus; for in those parts of his history in which he does attempt a continuous narrative, Diodorus shows much skill as a story-teller. In the earlier portion of his work, that portion which, fortunately, has in the main been preserved to us, when dealing with what he regards as the fabulous history of the nations prior to the establishment of a fixed chronology, his narrative runs on continuously, suggesting in many ways that of the Father of History. It was so with his treatment of early Egypt, and with his even more interesting history of ancient Assyria. These parts alone of his work serve to make him one of the most important authors of antiquity whose writings have been preserved to us, and we shall have occasion to draw largely upon him for the history of this period.

What has just been said about the attitude of modern critics toward Diodorus must not be taken to imply that this earliest of great world historians has, on the whole, failed of an appreciative audience. The facts of the case amply refute such a supposition as this. An author writes to be read, and in the last resort the only valid criterion as to the value of his work is found in the preservation or neglect of that work by successive generations of readers.

Tested by this standard, very few of the ancient writers have obtained such a measure of appreciation as has been accorded to Diodorus. Something like three-fourths of what he wrote has been lost, it is true; but in fairly estimating the import of this, one must consider the bulk of what remains. The briefest comparison supplies us with some very interesting data. It appears that, of the entire series of the predecessors of Diodorus, no single historian has left us anything like a comparable bulk of extant matter. Only one predecessor in any field of literature, namely, Aristotle, greatly exceeds him in this regard, and a single other writer, Plato, about equals him. Turning to the contemporaries of Diodorus and to his successors in the use of the Greek language, a similar result is shown. A single writer exceeds him in output. This is Plutarch, the biographer and philosopher rather than historian proper. No other Greek writer in any field equals Diodorus, though two historians, Dion Cassius and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are within hailing distance. When one reflects on the actual labour implied by the preservation of any manuscript throughout the long generations of the middle ages, these data speak volumes for the aggregate judgment passed upon the work of Diodorus by posterity. Of the long list of Greek historians,—a list mounting far into the hundreds, as proved by fragmentary remains,—only three as ancient as Diodorus have fared better than he, these three being Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. But the entire bulk of the works of these three writers does not so very greatly exceed the bulk of the extant writings of Diodorus. The works of Herodotus and Thucydides together do not comprise more matter than is contained in books eleven to twenty of Diodorus, which are preserved en bloc.

It would, of course, be absurd to imply that the mere bulk of the manuscripts preserved before the age of printing is a test of the value of an ancient author’s work; but, on the other hand, bearing in mind always the labour employed in the production of a single copy of a large work, it would be equally absurd to deny that the bulk of manuscripts has a certain bearing upon the value of the matter which they preserve. No doubt many a scribe would be deterred from starting out to copy manuscript by the great bulk of the work, and where he had no great preference, would be influenced by this alone to choose a smaller book. Again, doubtless many a scribe wearied of his task in the case of the more ponderous works, and gave it up after copying a few books. This common-sense explanation no doubt accounts for the fact that quite generally the earlier books rather than the later ones of works that have come down to us in a fragmentary condition are the ones preserved. Had Herodotus and Thucydides written forty books instead of eight or nine, it is very unlikely that even their genius would have sufficed to preserve the entire number. The case of Livy, whose work, despite the beauty of its style, has come down to us so sadly mutilated, sufficiently sustains this supposition. It is nothing against the merit of Diodorus, then, to reflect that half his work is lost; the wonder is rather that so much of it has been preserved.

We have dwelt thus at length upon the work of Diodorus because it is a work that may be taken as in many ways representative of world histories in general. Certainly it was by far the greatest world history produced in antiquity, of the exact merits of which we have any present means of judging. Indeed, there is only one other world history that has come down to us, and this, the work of Justin, is in itself only an abridgment of the writing of another author, Trogus Pompeius. Considering when it was written, this work of Trogus, if we may judge from the abridgment, was an admirable production, and the abridgment itself is of great value in throwing light on some periods that otherwise are not well covered by extant documents. As a whole, however, it is a compendium of history rather than a comprehensive work like that of Diodorus. Of the works of the other world historians of antiquity it is impossible to speak with any measure of certainty. Polybius accredited Aphorus with being the only man who had written a world history before his day. It is known that Aphorus lived in the fifth century B.C., and that he was a fellow-pupil of another historian, Theopompus, in the famous school of Isocrates at Athens; but his work is only known to us through inadequate fragments and the indirect quotations of other authors. The same is true of the works of Theopompus just referred to, and of Timæus, another Greek whose writing had something of world historic comprehensiveness. But, even had these works been preserved, it may well be doubted whether any one of them would compare favourably with the great history of Diodorus, which must stand out for all time as the greatest illustration of the writing of world history in antiquity.

Diodorus, as we have seen, brought his work down to the time of the Gallic wars of Cæsar. There are references in his writing which imply that he lived well into the time of Augustus. He probably died not long before the beginning of the Christian era.

No Greek of later time and no Roman of any period produced a work that supplanted the history of Diodorus, though most of the Byzantine historians produced chronicles, many of which had more or less aspect of world history in epitome. Several of these have been preserved, but no one thinks of comparing them with the work of the older writer. The chronological work of Eusebius, however, deserves a word of special mention. It was a mere epitome of world history, but a relatively comprehensive one, and one which, through the loss of more pretentious works, has come to be of great value to the modern historian. It was written originally in Greek, but the most important copy of it that has come down to us is, curiously enough, an Armenian translation. It is the Latin translation of this Armenian manuscript that is the work usually referred to by modern historians in speaking of Eusebius. The encyclopædia of history compiled for Constantine Porphyrogenitus, to which reference has already been made, must also be mentioned as a world history of real importance. It was based almost exclusively upon Greek authors, who were quoted at length, with such abbreviations or modifications as were made necessary in adjusting the various texts to one another. As a means of preserving the work of numerous important Greek historians this collection had the utmost value, but, unfortunately, it has come down to us in a much mutilated condition. During the Byzantine period the minds of would-be historians of the Western world were so occupied with ecclesiastical quarrels and the chronicles of local princes, that no one thought of world histories in the broader sense. We should be thankful that here and there a monk had interest and energy enough to copy the ancient authors, and thus in part to preserve them. Considering the intellectual atmosphere of the time, the wonder is, not that so many of the pagan authors were lost, but rather that any of them were preserved. Yet there were occasional gleams of light, even in the so-called dark age. Such a one of peculiar interest to the English reader is found in the fact that King Alfred translated into Anglo-Saxon the compendious world history of Orosius, a work that otherwise would be but little known to fame, but which, thanks to its brevity of treatment, and to this very unusual distinction of translation into a “barbaric tongue,” no doubt served a most excellent purpose in giving to the Anglo-Saxons of the ninth century a glimpse of the events of ancient times.

The best guide to the historic point of view of the generations that ushered in what we are accustomed to think of as the modern period is furnished by the History of the World which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote toward the close of his life, late in the sixteenth century. Raleigh was not an historian from choice, but was led to his task as a diversion during the time of his imprisonment. The work as far as he completed it is in five books, the titles of which are instructive. First book, “In treating of the First Ages of the World, from the Creation to Abraham.” Second book, “Of the Times from the Birth of Abraham to the Destruction of the Temple of Solomon.” Third book, “From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the Time of Philip of Macedon.” Fourth book, “From the Reign of Philip of Macedon to the Establishing of that Kingdom in the Race of Antigonus.” Fifth book, “From the Settled Rule of Alexander’s Successors in the East, until the Romans (prevailing over all) made Conquest of Asia and Macedon.”

It will appear that Raleigh did not carry his history beyond the early Roman period, yet, even so, it is a very bulky book, comprising more than eight hundred enormous quarto pages, an actual bulk far exceeding the extant portions of Diodorus. Raleigh very generally names his authorities in the margin, but even had he failed to do so, it would be easy to understand the sources on which he must have drawn. Obviously he depended largely upon the Bible for the early history of mankind, and for the rest he had access, no doubt, to the dozen or so of classical authors whose names we have had occasion to mention again and again. Naturally enough, the pages of Raleigh seem archaic to the modern reader, yet passages are not wanting which show the shrewd practical insight of the courtier and statesman. As a whole, the work had sufficient interest to be reprinted in 1687, a century after the author’s death. Indeed, until this time there was practically no world history in the field in competition with Raleigh’s that had been written since classical times. It is a curious commentary on the life of the post-classical times and of the middle ages that between the work of Diodorus, written just before the beginning of the Christian era, and the work altogether similar in scope of Sir Walter Raleigh, written sixteen hundred years later, there was no world history produced that is strictly comparable to either. Nor did the seventeenth century produce any marked change in the situation as regards the literature of world history.

The true renaissance of history writing came with the eighteenth century. About 1730 an English publisher was led to notice the paucity of recent literature in this field, and to project a universal history of the widest scope. Such men as Archibald Bower, John Campbell, William Guthrie, George Sale, George Psalmanazar, and John Swinton were associated in the undertaking, and in the course of the following twenty years a long series of volumes dealing with all phases of universal history, except, curiously enough, the history of Great Britain, was brought to a close. A subsequent edition, modified and improved as regards the earlier volumes, and supplemented with an account of English history, was published toward the close of the eighteenth century, the editor being the famous Dr. Tobias Smollett. This work, the first important history of the world produced in modern times, excited great interest. It is odd to reflect in the light of more recent events that the work was translated into various European languages, including German. The production of this work was a notable achievement, but the various parts of the work had widely different degrees of merit. A competent German critic, writing about the middle of the nineteenth century, conceded that the parts of the universal history referring to antiquity were fairly well done, but noted that the treatment of the middle ages was superficial, and the treatment of modern history even worse.

Inasmuch as the history of antiquity has been very largely reconstructed within the past fifty years, it will be obvious that the universal history in question cannot now be regarded with other than an antiquarian interest. Nevertheless, it contains numberless descriptive passages, which are as historically accurate and as interesting to-day as they were when written.

The impulse to historical composition, of which this universal history is a monumental proof, found expression a little later in the great histories of Hume and Robertson and Gibbon. Thanks to these writers, England was easily in advance of all other countries at the close of the eighteenth century in the matter of historical composition. Indeed, as to world histories she was first, without a second. Early in the nineteenth century, however, a great world history was produced in Germany. This was the work of Schlosser. In its earliest form this work was completed in 1824; it was a strictly technical production. But about twenty years later a pupil of Schlosser, under the direction of the author himself, elaborated a popular edition of the world history, which soon had an enormous circulation in Germany, and which in recurring editions still finds a multitude of readers. This work of Schlosser’s would probably have been translated into English were it not that the field had been preoccupied by another great universal history. This was the work which Dr. Lardner edited, and which began to appear in 1830, about a century after the inauguration of that first universal history in English to which we have just referred. Dr. Lardner’s work, like its English predecessor, was produced by a company of specialists; but it differed from the other in that each volume or set of volumes dealing with a period or country was written by a specialist whose authorship was acknowledged on the title-page, whereas the previous work had been altogether anonymous. In other words, it was essentially a collection of monographs, each by a more or less distinguished authority, which, in the aggregate, constituted a history of the world. The work as a whole comprised a large number of volumes. Needless to say the component parts were of varying merit; but as a whole the work was an excellent one, and many of the volumes still have value, though necessarily much of their contents is antiquated.

The production of the popular edition of Schlosser’s world history in Germany marked an epoch in this class of literature. Almost contemporaneously with this production several other world histories saw the light in Germany, and from that day to this world histories have come from the German press in unbroken succession. These are varied in scope, from the marvellously compressed and beautifully philosophical work of Rottock in four small volumes, published about 1830, to the gigantic Oncken series, which is just completed. In this list of German world histories the works of Bekker, of Leo, and of Weiss hold conspicuous places, in addition to those just named. But perhaps the most notable of all is the world history of Dr. George Weber. This work of Dr. Weber occupied the author during the best years of his life. It is in eighteen volumes, and occupied about twenty years in passing through the press. We shall have occasion to refer more at length to Dr. Weber’s work in another place, as well as to quote from it frequently. Suffice it here that Dr. Weber may justly be called the Diodorus of modern times, his work being certainly the most complete and comprehensive exposition of world history that has ever issued from a single pen.

One other world history of German origin must be mentioned as holding a place beside that of Weber. This is the work of Ranke. It is very different in plan from Weber’s, in some ways more philosophical, and often less detailed in its narrative of events. The author, recognised as almost the greatest of German historians, began the work late in life, and brought to bear upon it perhaps as full an equipment of historical knowledge in divers fields as any single man has ever attained. Unfortunately, he did not live to complete his work, which, as it stands, comes only to the close of the middle ages, and which, therefore, cannot be compared in its entirety with the completed work of Weber.

The most recent of all the great German world histories, the Oncken series, just referred to, is a work built essentially upon the plan of Dr. Lardner’s series of the early part of the century. Each volume of the Oncken series is written virtually as an independent work by an authority, and there is no close bond between the various component parts of the structure, though doubtless an attempt was made on the part of the editor to have the various authors conform somewhat to the same scheme of treatment. The work comprises about fifty very large octavo volumes, being therefore the bulkiest, as it is the most recent, of world histories.

Chapter V. The Present History

It is a singular fact that since the publication of Dr. Lardner’s series in the first half of the nineteenth century, no satisfactory attempt has been made to bring the entire story of the world’s history to the attention of the English reader in a single work. While the presses of Germany have sent out their never ending stream of world histories, the English-speaking world has remained utterly inactive, so that until now there has been no work in English less than half a century old that could pretend to compete with any one of the numerous German productions. Buckle’s work would, to some extent, have supplied the deficit had he lived to complete it, yet even his effort was aimed rather at philosophical generalisations regarding human evolution, than at a narrative of historical events.

If we attempt to explain this paucity of literature in so fascinating a field as that of world history, the solution is not far to seek: it is found in the very magnitude of the task. This is the age of specialists, and just in proportion as one appreciates the full meaning of special knowledge of any subject in its modern interpretation, must he feel the hopelessness of attempting to gain more than a general knowledge in a variety of fields. Yet something approaching the knowledge of the specialist should be brought to bear upon each period of history by any one who attempts to write a comprehensive history of the world. It is an appreciation of this fact that has led to the production of such a symposium as the Oncken series, just referred to, and contrariwise, it is the appreciation of the same fact that has led to the relative neglect of so admirable a work as that of Weber. The modern critic is disposed to feel that the writing of a really comprehensive world history in this age is a task beyond the capacity of any single man. When one considers the vast amount of research work in hitherto unexplored fields that is being carried on in every department of history, it becomes patent that no single mind can hope to cope at first hand with the ever increasing flood of special literature. In almost every department of history special bibliographies have been published of late years which are utterly bewildering, even to the specialist, in the wealth of material which they reveal.

To cite but a single instance, the bibliography of early English history, down to about the year 1485, as recently collated by Professor Gross, comprises a large volume of small type. It would be the work of a lifetime for any specialist to deal, even in a cursory way, with each and every one of the works cited in this list; yet this is only one little corner of the field which the world historian must cover. Obviously, then, the world historian, if he attempt personally to construct a narrative of the entire subject, must content himself with a more or less superficial glance at each field; his reading may indeed be wide, but it cannot by any possibility be exhaustive. Moreover, in the nature of the case, he must often read merely to gather material for the day’s task of writing, and no matter what his memory, he will inevitably forget the greater part of the multitudinous details that he has dealt with. In the case of a man of such wide scholarship and such tenacity of purpose as Dr. Weber, it must be freely admitted that a view of the entire range of world history may be attained, which it would be rank injustice to pronounce really superficial. Yet even such a worker as Weber must have depended very largely upon second-hand epitomes for his facts. He cannot have read at first hand more than a fraction of the authors upon whom he is obliged explicitly or inferentially to pass judgment. In a word, great as is the value of works of the class of which Weber’s is the finest example, such works must, in the very nature of the case, be content to be ranked as more or less successful compilations, lacking the authority which the modern critic is unwilling to vouchsafe to anything but strictly original work,—original work, that is, in the sense of work based upon a first-hand examination of the most remote authorities, the only sense in which the word “original” can properly be applied to any form of historical composition.

If we turn from world histories of the one-man type to those produced by a symposium of specialists, we are met with a quite different, but none the less insistent, series of inherent defects.

In the first place, the intrinsic defect of the one-man treatment is not altogether overcome, since specialism has nowadays been carried to such a stage that few men feel altogether at home outside a comparatively limited period, even of the history of a single nation. If, then, one man is asked to write the entire history of, let us say, the Greeks, he necessarily passes over ground that his special studies have not covered uniformly, and in certain periods he must feel himself more or less in the position of the general historian. It would, of course, be possible to meet this objection by having a sufficient number of writers, so that each limited period should be covered by a true specialist; but the great difficulty in such a scheme as this is the entire lack of harmony of view that must pertain to such a work.

A glance at the Oncken series will convince any one how very difficult it is to attain even approximately to a true perspective of world history under the symposial plan. Thus one finds in this series, to cite but a single illustration of disproportionate treatment, that various relatively insignificant periods of modern German history are allowed to fill bulky volumes where a true perspective would have relegated them to mere chapters. It is only from a very prejudiced modern standpoint that the history of Frederick II can be thought worth greater space than the entire history of the Greek world. Where such inconsistencies are permitted there is a danger that the alleged world history will become rather the history of a single nation in its relations to other nations, past and present, than an impartial presentation of the history of nations as a whole.

In the present work an attempt has been made to avoid the pitfalls of one-man treatment on the one hand, and of ill-adjusted specialist treatment on the other. We have made sure of presenting special knowledge by drawing upon the specialists of every field, and letting them present their information in their own words; but, at the same time, we have attempted to avoid the prejudiced view from which the specialist is least of all men free, by presenting the counter views of various students wherever there is failure of agreement among those best competent to judge.

The authorities on whom historial compositions are necessarily based, and who in other works are merely cited by name, or at most by volume and page reference, are here quoted in detail in their own words wherever practicable, always with full credit to the author, and with exact reference to the work from which the excerpt is taken. Such authorities are quoted, not merely from histories in English, but from the entire range of historical writings of all ages. It is hoped that few important names are overlooked. The aggregate number of different works thus quoted (not merely cited) will be about one thousand. These quotations vary in length from illuminative paragraphs to excerpts of many pages, averaging perhaps about two thousand words each. Some fifteen hundred of such extensive quotations are made from foreign languages, and by far the greater number of these have been translated from the originals expressly for the present work, thus representing matter never before accessible to the reader of English. The languages represented in this list of important historical works of foreign origin include practically all the tongues of civilised nations, ancient and modern,—Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Arabic, Syriac, Persian, Chinese, Japanese, and the entire range of European languages from Greek, Latin, and Russian to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, German, and Scandinavian. From all of these the original words of the various authors have been translated into the most literal English consistent with our idiom. It is speaking well within bounds to assert that seldom before has so varied an exposition of cosmopolitan thought been collected in a single work.

But these excerpts are not given as random references crowded into footnotes or appendices; they are woven into the text of the consecutive story of world history so that they themselves constitute the bulk of that story. Thus the history of Germany is mainly told in the words of German writers, that of France in the words of French historians. To avoid the prejudiced national view of history, however, the story of a nation thus told by the native historian is always subject to the corrective views of foreigners. Thus we gain both the sympathetic and the critical points of view. When the authorities are not agreed as to any important fact of history, or where there are important differences of opinion in estimating the influence of a great event or the real status of a famous character, reliance is not placed upon the estimate of a single historian, but counterviews are quoted, even though they may be directly contradictory, each, of course, being ascribed to its proper source.

To give unity to these various views and to weld the entire mass of matter into a consistent and comprehensive history of the world, original editorial passages are everywhere freely introduced as a part of the main narrative, forming indeed the warp of the whole, and serving to elucidate and harmonise the views of the authorities quoted. A feature of the original editorial matter is that it comprises, first and last, critical estimates of the work of important historians of every age, informing the reader as to the status—even to the particular prejudice and bias—of the authority he is asked to consult. Thus the novice is everywhere placed somewhat on a par with the special student in his estimate of the authorities. Where conflicting views are quoted of nominally equal authority, the reader is given data on which to base an intelligent personal opinion as to the probabilities. Moreover, elaborate additional bibliographies of works that may advantageously be consulted are everywhere given, and these in the aggregate constitute such a critical bibliography of the entire range of historical compositions as cannot fail to interest even the general reader.

Our method of introducing critical bibliography, and the critical selection of the excerpts themselves, make it feasible to introduce quotations, not only from the latest authority in any field, but also from the great historians of the past. Thus in the case of ancient history, the classical authorities themselves are drawn upon wherever available,—Herodotus for the Persian wars, Thucydides for the Peloponnesian wars, Xenophon for later Greek history, Sallust, Cæsar, Livy, Dionysius, Dion Cassius, Tacitus, Ammianus, and the rest for Roman history; and so on indefinitely. Herodotus describes the battle of Thermopylæ; Arrian tells of the glories of Alexander; Dionysius relates the story of Virginia; Polybius shows us Hannibal crossing the Alps; Appian pictures the fall of Carthage; Josephus the fall of Jerusalem; Zosimus the fall of Palmyra. In this way a mass of first-hand matter, much of it hitherto absolutely inaccessible to the reader of English, and much more only to be found in rare and costly editions, is put within the reach of the least scholarly. But—what is most essential—such matter as this is not merely given by itself unsupported. It is supplemented by the verdicts of the latest investigators in the various fields covered. Thus, to cite but a single instance, in the history of early Greece, not merely Herodotus, Thucydides, Diodorus, Pausanias, and other ancient authorities are quoted, but the long range of modern students as well, from Mitford, Thirlwall, and Grote to Curtius, Bezold, Busolt, Geddes, Schliemann, Mahaffy, Bury, and in general the latest investigators in the field of classical archæology.

Thanks to this system of checking ancient accounts with editorial criticism and other recent expert evidence, it is even practicable to avail ourselves sometimes of the writings of men who are not primarily historians, but who wrote, as so many other great authors have done, most important incidental essays on historical subjects; thus matter in the highest degree picturesque and interesting is often presented in a manner which the technical historian, however great his scientific authority, is seldom able to imitate.

Another peculiar merit of this system is that it enables us to preserve specimens of the work of a large coterie of historians, whose influence was great and whose writings were formerly standard, but whose books, as a whole, have been superseded by more recent works. Some of the classical authors are cases in point. A few of these are indeed read by students in colleges everywhere, but the great bulk of them are as utterly unknown to the average reader as if they had never existed. Who reads Pausanias, or Diodorus, or Polybius, or Appian, or Dion Cassius, or Dionysius, or Ælianus, or Arrian, or Quintus Curtius, or Zosimus? Yet these men are the only original authorities left us in many fields of ancient history. Their works are the sources which moderns can do little more than paraphrase in writing of those times. Surely, then, it is worth while to go to these authors themselves and hear their story at first hand, applying to it the corrective judgment of later criticism, rather than to depend upon the mere paraphrase of some modern compiler.

Much the same argument applies to parts of the work of once famous historians of more recent times: such historians as Hume, Mitford, Thirlwall, and a host of others. Their work, as a whole, can no longer be commended to the student who is to confine himself to a single authority, for in many parts their writings have been superseded; yet there are other parts of their work that are to-day as valuable as when they were written, and it seems regrettable that a great name should drop from public recognition merely because the sweep of progress has dethroned it from supremacy. It is inevitable that the present should always loom large before mankind, and that egotism should stamp with peculiar force the importance of the Recent. “Each generation abandons the ideas of its predecessors like stranded ships,” says Emerson. Yet it must not be forgotten that posterity often plays strange tricks with reputations. Herodotus was held up to ridicule some centuries after his death by a “False Plutarch,” who is only known now because of his attack upon the master historian, while the work criticised, though for some generations looked on with suspicion, is as fully appreciated, after more than two thousand years, as it can have been in the day when it was written.

Similarly, the judgments of our own age of specialism may be reversed by posterity; and in any event it would be regrettable if a once important historical work should be quite forgotten. Yet such a fate threatens work of every grade. Müller’s collection of the fragments of Greek historians gives mere bits from the writings of more than five hundred authors about whom nothing is known—not even the exact age in which they lived—beyond the fact that they wrote works of which these fragments are the only mementoes. Could any page of manuscript of any one of these authors be recovered, it would to-day be considered worth many times its weight in gold.

Precisely the same process of decay is gradually removing the evidences of the historical labours of the writers of recent generations even now. The multiplication of books by the printing-press makes the process a trifle slower, perhaps; but it is no less sure. A goodly number of works that were famous half a century ago are now absolutely inaccessible to the would-be purchaser: the great book markets of Paris, Berlin, and London cannot secure or supply them. A few copies of these works are still extant in private collections and public libraries, but the fate of these is assured. Libraries are constructed to be burned. Some day a lick of flame will wipe out the last copy of any work issued only in a single edition, and the author will become thenceforth merely a name and a memory; or if, perchance, some latter-day Suidas or Stobæus has quoted a sentence from him, such sentence will be treasured in catalogues of fragments of eighteenth and nineteenth century historians. For many such an author, the present work may perform the function of Suidas or Stobæus, for a long list of these obsolescent writers will be found represented in our pages,—not always preserved for their antiquarian interest indeed, but quoted in regard to events concerning which their authority is still standard, and because it is believed that, in the cases selected, their treatment has not been excelled by any more recent performance; sometimes, on the other hand,—but more rarely,—quoted because of the quaintness of their diction, because of the archaic cast of thought through which they reflect the spirit of their times, or because of their sheer whimsicality.

But while emphasising the catholicity of taste that judges matter on its own merits, excluding nothing simply because it is old, it must be emphasised also that in the main such selection leads to the inclusion of a preponderance of recent matter. Each generation builds upon the shoulders of the last, and the work, as a whole, is progressive. So we go not merely to the latest books, but also to the recent numbers of periodicals, the publications of learned societies and the like. And to put the cap-sheaf to modernity, the greatest living experts in each field have contributed original essays and characterisations expounding the latest developments. These contributions, in which master workers summarise the results of years of investigation, will be found not the least valuable part of our work.

Most that has been said thus far has tended to emphasise the variorum or anthological features of our work. But it must be evident that there is another and quite different point of view from which our historical structure may be considered. This point of view regards our history not as a compilation—an anthology—but as an altogether new and original work. A moment’s consideration will show how fully justified we are in referring to this aspect of the subject. For it is obvious to the least attentive consideration that the intrinsic materials which make up the story of history might be never so abundant, never so valuable, without in the least presupposing that the history composed of them will be an artistic or valuable work; any more than an abundant supply of bricks, marble, and mortar necessarily determines the building of a beautiful edifice. The materials are, indeed, prerequisites; but an intelligent manipulation of the materials is at least equally essential. There must be an architect to plan the structure as a whole, and artists and artisans to select and manipulate the materials in accordance with the plan, or the result will be, not an edifice, but a brick-heap.

Since, then, we have dwelt at some length upon the fundamental materials of our historical structure, it is necessary that we should be equally explicit regarding the shaping of the architectural design—to hold to our figure—in accordance with which the materials have been first selected, and secondly amalgamated with other materials;—each stone not only selected of proper quality and size, but chiselled and polished to fit its proper niche.

The simile of an architect constructing a building, cheap and trite as it is, cannot well be dispensed with if we are to give the reader a vivid picture of our method of construction. It must be understood that whether our result be good or bad, there is nothing fortuitous, nothing haphazard about it. We did not start groping blindly for material, hoping to see an artistic structure form itself out of chaos. Our entire plan was as fully preconceived as the plan of any other architect. First, the kind of structure was determined on: in other words the scope of our subject,—world history; the entire sweep of important human events from the earliest times to the present day. Secondly, the approximate size of the projected structure was determined—its ground surface, its height, its total mass; or, speaking in the terminology of our specific structure, the number of volumes, the size of each volume, the total mass or number of pages involved.

Next the proportions of the structure, the number of floors and of rooms to each floor; the relative size and dimensions of the various departments; or, in book terms, the proportionate number of volumes or pages to be given to each important department of history: so many volumes to the Old Orient; so many to the Classical World; so many to the Middle Ages; so many to the important divisions of modern history.

All this, let it be repeated, was accurately predetermined before a single block of material was explicitly selected for the building. It does not follow that absolutely no changes have ever been made in the original plan—no architect perhaps ever made a building of which this was quite true; but it is true that the original plan was so carefully thought out, so well considered, that the changes are utterly insignificant in comparison with the unmodified portions of the structure. This point should be emphasised and clearly borne in mind, because upon it depends a large measure of our confidence that we have produced a structure not without artistic and correct proportions. It was the predetermination of the proportions, and this alone, that could control the enthusiasm of unrestrained specialism, and keep to anything like a true historical perspective. Over and over again it has been proved that the special worker, when he came to focus upon a given period, was in the position of a microscopist, viewing his wonderfully interesting microcosm. All the rest of the world shut out for the moment, the little circle of the microscopic field, which may be in reality one hundredth of an inch in diameter, looms before the view at an angle which literally makes it seem to eclipse the world itself.

And so the historical delver, when he finds himself in the midst of the literature on any period whatever—be it a mere historical mole-hill—finds himself surrounded by a heap of literary bricks which shuts out the very mountain ranges of history from his vision. At once he demands—feels that he must have—space for his magnified mole-hill; and it is only the predetermined editorial restrictions that keep him from filling entire volumes with fascinating stories about some petty kingdom which, from the world-historical standpoint, is entitled to pages only. It is a conservative estimate of the facts to assert that there is no period of our history for which ten times the amount of material has not been garnered than could possibly be used in extenso. The chart of the architect has lain always open upon the editorial desk, and rule and compass have been ever ready to restrain and check the over-enthusiasm of the worker whose zeal would otherwise lead him to present megaliths where the specification called for, and the plan permitted, only tiny bricks.

As to whether the plans of the architect were intrinsically good; whether the specification called for bricks where bricks were logically needed, and for megaliths in their proper place—these are questions that will not be entered on here. But a word may be permitted as to the ruling motives which have dominated the conception, and which, it is hoped, have never been lost sight of. These ruling motives are two: first, the hope of attaining a high standard of historical accuracy in the most critical acceptance of the term; secondly, the desire to retain as much as possible of human interest in the broadest and best sense of the words. To attain the first of these ends it is necessary to be free from prejudice, to have unflagging zeal in collecting testimony, to have scientific and critical acumen in weighing evidence; to attain the second end it is essential that kindred faculties should be applied not to the facts of history but to the literary presentations of these facts, that the good and true story may not be spoiled in the telling.

The desire to be free from all prejudice in the judgment of historical facts is, then, the key-note of all our philosophy of historical criticism; and the desire to retain interest—human interest—is the key-note of our philosophy of historical composition.

To attain either end, what perhaps is most required is catholicity of sympathies. There must be no race prejudice, no national prejudice. There must be no attempt to blacken or whiten historical characters, in correspondence with the personal bias. There must be no special pleading for or against any form of government, any racial propensity, or any individual deed. In a word, there must be freedom from prejudice in every field,—except indeed that prejudice in favour of the broad principles of right, regarding which all civilised nations of every age have been in virtual agreement. But the deeds, the motives, the superstitions of all times and of all races must be viewed, so far as such a thing is possible, through the same clear atmosphere of impartiality. As between Egyptian, Assyrian, Hebrew, Hindoo, Persian, Mongul—he who would produce a world history of truly catholic scope should have no inherent prejudice or preconception.

Equally must there be freedom from prejudice regarding various classes of ideas. “Whatever concerns mankind is of interest to me,” must be the editorial motto. Some persons are interested only in military events, in battles, treaties, and the like; others care only for constitutional and governmental affairs; yet others think most of literature and of art, or of science. But the editorial spirit of a world history should show a catholicity of taste that is receptive of each and all of these. Xerxes at Thermopylæ, and Æschylus writing his tragedy “The Persians”; Alexander mourning for Hephæstion, and Phidias building the Parthenon; Augustus Cæsar disputing the mastery of the world with Antony, and Dionysius telling of the myths of early Rome; Richard of the lion heart prosecuting a crusade, and Dante vitalising the Italian language; each and all of these and kindred topics up and down the scroll of history should equally, each in proportion to its relative influence, excite the sympathetic attention of the historian. With the same zeal he should tell of the alleged iniquities of a Messalina or a Catherine de’ Medici and of the noble self-abnegation of a Cornelia; of the self-seeking of a Cæsar and of the self-abnegation of a Cincinnatus or a St. Louis. With sound common-sense for a guide, he should strive to avoid on the one hand the over-credulity of the untrained mind, and on the other the dogmatic scepticism that so often perverts the judgment of the specialist.

But what then, it may be asked, of the moral of our story—of our drama? Shall we be content to present the bare facts, and leave their philosophical interpretation to chance? To this it may be replied, that in the minds of most of us a profound philosophical idea is one that accords with our own preconception;—other views are superficial, perverse, or obviously mistaken. Hence a wise interpreter of history will be extremely chary of putting forward his own more or less dogmatic interpretations of the events he relates. It does not follow that no opinion can ever be expressed; indeed, a tacit expression of opinion is implied in the selection of almost every excerpt. But witnesses from all sides must be given an impartial hearing in any case where a clear balance of evidence is not attainable; and where the evidence is demonstrative it must be presented with all fairness, and without reservation or innuendo, regardless of its apparent bearing.

Fortunately the study of world history in itself tends to make for precisely such impartiality. He who has attentively followed the story of the rise and fall of nations will have learned that human nature is everywhere at its foundation much the same; that no race, no nation, no individual even is ideally good or totally bad; that the Past has always been a Golden Age for the pessimist, the Future always utopian for the dreamer, and that a broad optimism regarding the Present—a belief that on the whole the conditions of any given time are about as good as the character of the time permits—is, perhaps, the safest philosophy of living.

In the main, then, we may rest content with the conviction that, however unobtrusive our philosophy, the great lessons of history will not fail to make themselves felt by any attentive reader of these pages. We greatly mistake the purport of the story if it does not on the whole make for broader views, for truer humanitarianism, for higher morals, personal and communal;—in a word, for better citizenship in the fullest and broadest meaning of the term. Indeed, to attain the plane of the best citizenship, historical studies are absolutely essential. No one can have a competent judgment regarding the affairs of his own country without such studies; no one is a fair judge of the political principles of the party he supports or of the one that he opposes, who has not prepared himself by a study of the political systems of the past. “Had I begun earlier and spent thirty years in reading history,” said Schiller, “I should be far different and a far better man than I am.” Echoing these words, we may say that the outlook for every constitutional government would be brighter if every youth and every man who exercises or is about to exercise the responsibilities of a voter, and every woman whose advice aids or stimulates a father, brother, husband, or son towards the performance of his civic duties, could spend not thirty years, let us say, but as many weeks in studying the history of nations. Little fear that the student who has got such a start as this would willingly stop there. He would have gained enough of insight to be keenly interested, and it would require no urging to send him on; for the panorama of history, once we gain a little insight into it as it unfolds before us its never ending variety of scenes, can hardly be viewed otherwise than with unflagging interest; unless indeed the view is befogged by the atmosphere through which it is presented. To prevent such befogging,—to present the story through a clear medium,—requires only that the narrative shall be true to the facts in its presentation of topics of real importance. This is what we had in mind when we said that interest—human interest—is the key-note of our philosophy of historical composition. It is the editorial conviction that attention, based upon interest, is the foundation of mental development. A literary work that lacks interest, might, indeed, subserve a useful purpose, but the scope of its influence is curtailed from the outset if the reader must go to it as a task and not as to a recreation. Interest breaks down the barriers between work and play. Interest fixes attention, and fixed attention is the basis of memorising.

Let it freely be asserted, then, that in the selection of material for our work the principle acted on has been that, other things being equal, the best account of any historical event is the most picturesque and entertaining account,—for what, after all, does picturesqueness imply, except an approach to the vivid reproduction of the actualities? Written words are intended to be read, and any writer who, like Polybius, despises the literary graces must expect to be despised in turn, or, at least, neglected. Properly presented, the narrative of history should have all the breathless interest of a novel,—for what is so fascinating as a true story from human life? In the present work an attempt is made to raise history towards the level of fiction in point of interest, without sacrificing anything of scientific accuracy. No account is given here merely because it is picturesque, to the exclusion of a truer narrative; but the preference is always given to the graphic story as against the dull, where the two have equal authority as to matters of fact. Further to enhance the vividness of presentation, pictures are everywhere introduced. There are thousands of these pictures in the aggregate, drawn from the most varied sources, and constituting, it is believed, one of the most remarkable series of historical illustrations ever collected.

All in all, then, one might describe our intention as the desire to dramatise the story of history,—for, again, what is dramatisation but the mimicry of life? Our various books and sections are the settings for the acts and scenes of the play, and it is hoped that, with the aid of the introductions by way of proem, and the pictures to aid the eye, the characters are made to move across the stage before the reader with something like the vividness of living actors. One cannot quite dare promise that there shall be no dull scenes, but it is hoped that, in the main, the play will be found to move lightly on, as with words spoken “trippingly upon the tongue.”

In particular, it is hoped that our dramatisation of history will present the events of the long play in something like a true perspective, the large events looming large in our story, the lesser ones forced into the background. As an aid to this treatment, tables of chronology are everywhere introduced before the curtain rises, if it be permissible to hold to our metaphor. These are virtually the lists of dramatis personæ. Even the minor characters will be named here, though they act only as chorus, or prate a few lines in the play where the chief personages will dominate the situation as they dominated it in real life, and as they dominate it in the memory of posterity. Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon—such figures will loom large in our drama of history; yet it will never be forgotten that the play is not a monologue. The minor actors will be given a fair hearing from first to last.

It follows from this that the main story of our history has to do with the deeds of men of action. But here at the very outset an important question may be raised: do the deeds of men of action then, after all, constitute the great events of history? An affirmative answer may be given with much confidence. Great men of action carve out the contour of history. High culture can only rise from soil fertilised by material prosperity. The swords of Leonidas, Themistocles, and Pausanias must prune the tree of civilisation before the flower of Periclesian culture can bloom at Athens. There are no names like Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil in the annals of Rome before the conquests and the carnage of Marius, Sulla, and Cæsar. But let us hasten to add that the deeds of men of action can never be rightly understood unless they are considered in relation to the intellectual and social surroundings in which these men of action moved. In other words, the civilisation and culture of each succeeding period cannot be ignored. It will be found to be as fully treated here in all its phases as the limitations of space permit. It furnishes the atmosphere everywhere for our picture, or, if you prefer, the setting for our stage.

In a word, then, our work becomes, if its intent has been realised in actuality, a Comprehensive History of Human Progress in all departments of action and of thought, told dramatically and picturesquely, yet authoritatively, in the words of the great historical writers of every age. Recurring to our metaphor, it is the book of a veritable Drama of History; our unity of action being Historic Truth; our unity of time, the Age of Man; our stage, the World.