systematic preparation of calendars for the public use, and for the public use alone, are obviously the sufficient and only remedies' against such fatal contingencies. It is only by printed Calendars of our national papers, which men can take home and con over in the leisure of their studies, that the value of these papers can be fully appreciated. It is only by such Calendars and the researches suggested by them, that the almost inevitable tendency of these papers to get mislaid or forgotten can be effectually counteracted. And as there are no manuscripts at home, or even abroad, in public or in private, at all comparable to our own in historic importance, and none so intimately connected with our national credit, so there are none which have a stronger claim on the attention and liberality of the Government. push his investigations further, if needful; 6 : To print all the records and muniments so it comes to a choice or balance between hav- There must then be Official Calendars of the whole collection for office purposes, ⚫and no selection of documents will satisfy these requirements. If they can be made besides generally useful to the public, that is a gain, and that utility has been one object of the Master of the Rolls. As Keeper of these Records, as bound by the repeated recommendations of the House of Commons, calendars and inventories for the better use and safer custody of the Records under his charge were with Lord Romilly a primary obligation. Nor until such calendars have been completed is it easy to see how any satisfactory selection can be made. Supposing, what is hardly probable, that all who were interested in consulting these papers could agree upon a principle of selection, long before such a selection had approached its completion new papers would have turned up, additions and alterations would have had to be made, a new series would be required to supplement the first, whilst the varying tastes, pursuits, and requirements of many readers would have remained unsatisfied. Hardly any two judges would be found to agree why this document should be selected and that rejected. Nor indeed is it possible for the most skilful to lay down abstract rules as to the relative importance of any class of historical papers. Their real importance cannot always be measured until they are viewed in vantages of first making catalogues are also great when viewed in connexion with the plan Their true of afterwards printing a selection of the remeaning and value are not patent at first cords themselves. Being once acquainted with sight, nor perhaps until subsequent researches the whole mass of records, letters, state pahave long after flashed an alien light upon pers, &c., in short, all the materials illustrating them, and invested with an unexpected grathe civil, ecclesiastical, or constitutional histovity what by itself seemed trivial and unim-ry of the country, this selection will be made portant. In all researches of this kind no editor can be trusted to select for another. He may methodize, index, and catalogue, leaving the inquirer to sift his materials and their connexion with others. Would it not be easier and under the most favourable circumstances. The be chosen, and there will be the greatest most valuable for the purpose of history will chance of all being printed from originals. Lastly, the benefits resulting from this plan of forming catalogues, will be most important in! presentations of the truth. But the same obchecking the progress of historical error.' * ble. jection will apply to every kind of corres pondence, oral or verbal. Dr. Johnson's conversation is no more to be received for a faithful representation of Whiggery than the journal of Whitelock or the Presbyterian Dr. Baillie is to be regarded as an accurate description of Charles I. and the Cavaliers. The thoughts and the writings of politicians, like those of other men, are variously colour These arguments appear to us unansweraBut whilst there is one class of critics who set such an inordinate value on our public muniments that nothing will satisfy them short of printing all at full length, there is an opposite class who reject them all as equally unworthy of credit. They are possessed by a strange notion that of all historical evidences State Papers are the least trustwor-ed by passion, by prejudice, by employment, thy. It is the fixed creed of these objectors by party, by the desire of success or the fear that statesmen and ambassadors indulged in of discomfiture. Are they for this reason a perpetual masquerade, and joined in a gen- absolutely and entirely false? If the histoeral combination to hide the truth, not only rian is to reject them on this ground, he must from the public-which might appear plau- equally reject all testimony; and all history, sible-but from each other-which must ap- whether of his own or of any other time, bepear absurd. Without, then, insisting on the comes impossible. But the correspondence fact that State Papers were secret papers, of statesmen is not more distorted by prejunever intended for the public eye, and there- dice and falsehood than that of ordinary fore not likely to offer any temptation or ad- men, not even when engaged in some diplo vantage for disguise, what possible motive, it matic intrigue they may have wished to demay be asked, could there be for a foreign ceive the outside world; for though they ambassador in a foreign Court to pervert the might hide their real intentions from others, facts which fell under his own observation? they could have no object in deceiving their Why should the Spanish, the French, or the own agents and ambassadors. Outside the Venetian envoys residing in England trans- charmed circle the world is deluded and demit to their respective governments studious ceived, but once within it and all things apmisrepresentations of what was passing pear in their true colours. This is the adaround them? That would have been to vantage of such publications as these neutralize the very purpose of their mission, Calendars. They take the reader behind the and unquestionably have exposed them at scenes; they lay bare before him the puponce to disgrace and dismissal. Or, if such pets and the real men, the phantasies and the had been the practice of any one of them, facts, the true and ostensible motives. If can it be imagined that all were embarked there be deceit, they furnish him with the in the same ridiculous plot? Did all com- means of detecting it. They enable him to bine in the same tale of misrepresentation, divide, the false from the true. Moreover, and were all their despatches written by con- they supply him with the cross lines of evisent in a sort of ambassadorial conclave? If dence; they furnish the means of comparing not, the inconsistency displayed in their se- statement with statement, of confronting one parate reports and despatches would certain-witness with another. Testimony may be ly have betrayed them. It is hardly needful to expose seriously so transparent a sophism -so transparent indeed and so absurd, that it could never have been entertained for a moment by any one who possessed any real knowledge of the subject, or had taken the trouble to verify his suspicions. Ambassadors, like other men, have their national and individual prejudices. They are liable to be misled by those about them. They are exposed to the temptation of sending home their own views of the facts, and of select ing those facts which are most in accordance with their own prepossessions and their own interests. Statesmen have objects to be gained by diplomacy and state-craft, the free use of which they consider legitimate; and no one in reading their reports would accept them all implicitly as simple, unbiassed re * Report of Select Committee, p. 715. false, events in history may be perverted, mathematical accuracy is nowhere attainable; but society stands on no better testimony than this. Its contracts, its laws, its dealings, and its obligations rests on no surer foundation. Does any man question its sufficiency in the actual business of life? Then why should he doubt its sufficiency for the past? So long indeed as the old and exclusive system prevailed, there was a tendency among historians, in their triumphant possession of a few diplomatic papers, to rear specious and paradoxical theories on the slender and barren foundation of a very small number of original discoveries. Some inquirer, more careful or more fortunate than others, had the good fortune to enrich his pages with extracts from the national archives. Through their help he has been enabled to discover new facts, to remove anti rently the same opportunities, and drawing their information equally from the same original documents, arriving at opposite and irreconcileable conclusions; thus lending plausibility to the notion that truth is unat tainable, at least in all that pertains to the history of this country, whatever may be said for that of Greece or Rome. quated prejudices, to place past events in a Happily, a better era is at hand, not merein the superior authenticity, accuracy, and minuteness of the information supplied by these Calendars, but in the facility for testing and applying it. Here, at all events, the reader possesses an infallible means of verifying history, of counteracting partial or exaggerated statements. He is enabled to trace the real progress and development of events; to ascertain their order, their proportions, and their natural significance. To the value of the materials thus carefully tabulated and digested the chronological arrangement adopted in these Calendars has contributed not a little. Merely as a matter of arrangement a chronological order, for all historical purposes, is superior to any other. It is the simplest and the most intelligible in principle, the most practicable in execution. If disarranged-and to accidents of this kind all papers are liable-it is most easily replaced. But a classified arrangement, whether of books or historical documents, specious as it may appear to some, is illusory, and sooner or later ends in inextricable confusion. Hardly any two persons can agree on the classification in the first instance; still less on the manner in which it ought to be carried out. If it be too minute it defeats itself, if too narrow it fails to meet all requirements. The other principle—if principle it can be called-of allowing all manuscripts and papers to remain in their original disorder, as in the Bodleian Library and Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris, is wholly indefensible. What is the consequence? No student, however laborious or persevering, can be sure of mastering the documentary evidence relating to any one period or any one subject on which he is employed. His search is baffled at every point; his most careful investigation ends in disappointment. Hours are wasted in searching indexes or examining collections without result for want of a little preliminary arrangement, the total absence of which can scarcely be considered as otherwise than discreditable. Until Were there, then, no other advantage to be gained from these Calendars of the Master of the Rolls, it is no slight one that in placing before the reader the whole facts, so far as they can be known, they set before him the order in which these facts occurred, their connexion, and their relative proportions. For history generally a more just and equitable treatment is thus secured; a more careful and considerate adjustment of all its parts. Hasty and imaginative writers are thus deterred from imposing their own conceptions upon their readers, and careless ones from wandering too far from the plain truth without control or fear of detection. Till now readers had no alternative except to surrender themselves implicitly to the guidance of the historian who could move their feelings and enlist their sympathies most strongly, if not always by the most just and legitimate means. No means were at hand for testing the fidelity of their guide or the certainty of the path through which he was leading them. It could not be expected that they should submit to the same laborious process, or prosecute researches amidst obscure and confused documents, or reconcile contradictory statements, or determine the weight of conflicting evidence. It was not possible for them to ascertain when the his-the recent efforts of Mr. Bond, it was not much torian had abandoned the calm impartiality better at the British Museum. Even to disof the judge for the partial province of the cover there the number of the Catalogues advocate. So not only modern history, but was evidence of no small proficiency; and English history in particular, has continually when that is done, what a scene of disorder presented the strange and unedifying spec- presents itself to view! Theology, classics, tacle of different writers, possessing appa-history, philosophy, were jumbled together in the most chaotic confusion. Here, a paper of the reign of Henry VIII. is wedged in by some extraordinary accident among those of Charles I. or Elizabeth; there, another of Charles V., or Ferdinand the Catholic, finds a place among topographical collections or county histories. Life is not long enough to grapple with so many obstacles. The best years and freshest energies of a writer are exhausted long before he has arrived at the end of his preliminary researches. He must go far a-field not merely to collect the straw and the bricks, but in this case straw, bricks, clay, and mud, are all tumbled indiscriminately in disorder before him, and he has patiently to turn over the immense heaps, to cull here and there, with vast labour and waste of time, the materials he requires. So wearisome is the toil, so little has been done in our great libraries to lighten or remove it, that few are willing to undertake it. Much easier is it, and much more remunerative, to reproduce ancient fallacies or refurbish popular errors, than to extend the limits of inquiry and tempt new regions in the face of so many discouragements. In all these respects the Calendars of the Master of the Rolls show as great a superiority over their confused and confusing predecessors, as the chronological arrangement of which they are the index is preferable to the non-arrangement of the Bodleian, the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris, the British Museum, or the absurd classifications adopted at Simancas and the Old State Paper Office. If disorder reigns supreme in the former, system and subdivisions in the latter are carried to excess. In Simancas no one can tell, as no one could tell in the old days of the State Paper Office, where his inquiry is to begin or where it is to end. Documents relating to the same events, the same person, and the same period, appear and reappear under every conceivable disguise. They so wind and double in and out, first under one classification and then under another, that it is hard if the plainest story does not elude the most zealous pursuit at last. Home Papers, Foreign Papers, War Papers, Navy Papers-then a faithful progeof such prolific parents-Border Papers, Rebellion Papers, Calais Papers, Scotch Papers, Irish Papers; and of Foreign as many divisions as there were states or people with whom the mother country cultivated relations; France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, and so on-all the nonessential and non-natural divisions of an artificial system torment the patience of the most devoted and most conscientious reader. For purely diplomatic purposes it may be admitted that such divisions and subdivisions ny But were, at one time, not without their use; and if it were important for the Foreign Minister of this day to be thoroughly acquainted with the policy of this country in reference to Italy and the Pope in the 16th century, or if it were requisite for him to be intimately acquainted with all the despatches connected with the descent on the isle of Rhé, or the negociations for the marriage of Charles II., it might still be prudent to retain these formal and tedious classifications. Archivists, impenetrable to the wishes of the world outside, might still set common sense at defiance, and brave the anger and impatience of those who only value these muniments for their historical importance. such a principle of arrangement leads to endless subdivisions and lands the reader in a practical absurdity. Suppose, for instance, that an ambassador has been sent to the Pope. As a matter of course he lands at Calais; from Dover he despatches a letter to the King or his minister announcing his ar rival. He has something to say at every Court he visits in succession, some secret negociation to reveal, or some anecdote to tell. Now, then, patient and ingenious reader, under what series is his correspondence to be arranged? Under Home, Calais, Flanders, France, Sardinia, Italy, or Papal States? Under one or under all? Under all, by the rules of diplomatic arrangement; and through all must the inquirer hunt for the dislocated members of his subject. The simplification of these endless divisions, and their reduction to a few, clear, and intelligible classifications is not the smallest service conferred by the Master of the Rolls on historical science. Arranging the papers under the fewest possible heads, he has made the basis of his Calendars Chronological. On that subject we might be tempted to enlarge, did not our space forbid us. We have only room for one or two observations. First, by a chronological arrangement, all the materials relating to any given period of time are brought within a reasonable and a readable compass. In the next place, the worth of the evidence is more easily sifted, and contradictory statements more readily compared. Whether history should be written in the form of annals, or whether it should assume a freer and more philosophical form, may be doubted; but it can be no question whether the materials to be used by the historian should be chronologically arranged or not. The essential order of events is only to be discovered, in the first instance, from the natural order, the true development from the apparent. In no other way is it possible to detect the minute movements of history, the gradations of action and reac tion, the ceaseless complications of antagonistic forces, the rise and fall of opposing influences. It may be that the last age was too fond of insisting on the grandeur and philosophy of history, and so exhausted it of all real dramatic and human interest; but are we not in danger of falling into the opposite error? Are we not beginning, both in art and literature, to imitate the Chinese fashion of sacrificing to minute and obtrusive detail the higher and more spiritual graces of both? In selecting, therefore, the State Papers, and adopting a chronological arrangement for his calendars, the Master of the Rolls occupied an untrodden path and inaugurated a new method for the study of history. Whatever other nations may have done for the advancement of historical literature, none has ever yet ventured to publish chronological abstracts of its official papers. Not only France and Germany, but minor States like Italy, far surpass us in their grand collections of annalists and historians. We had nothing to show that can bear comparison with the labours of Dom Bouquet, of Pertz, or even of Muratori. Whilst their works have given a new stimulus to historical studies on the Continent, and raised up a host of consummate historians, like Thierry, Michelet, Guizot, and Sismondi, the history of England has remained, until lately, a barren field, scarcely better explored than it was in the days of Carte or Hume. But in these Calendars of State Papers we stand wholly unrivalled as a nation. Nothing like them has yet been produced; nothing to which future historians, whether of this country or of Europe generally, are likely to owe so many obligations. Henceforth, the historian, here or abroad, who undertakes to treat of any questions connected with the period traversed by these Calendars must turn to them as his surest guides and most unerring authorities. From their pages he will have to learn the true history of events by which the politics of Europe were moulded during the 16th and 17th centuries. They can never be dispensed with; they will never be superseded. We have devoted a considerable portion of this review to these Calendars of State Papers, not only because they are prior in date, but, in our judgment, superior in importance, to all the other Rolls' publications. It was not until two years after, and probably in consequence of the success of his first effort, that the Master of the Rolls was induced to apply to the Treasury for an additional grant to enable him to publish the Chronicles and Memorials' of the United Kingdom. On this, as on the previous occasion, his application was based on an Ad dress presented by the House of Commons to the Crown,* representing that a ‘uniform and convenient edition' of our ancient historians would be an undertaking honourable to his Majesty's reign, and conducive to the advancement of historical and constitutional knowledge.' His Majesty was therefore prayed that the necessary steps might be taken for the furtherance of such a publication. As the monastic chronicles already in print were often defective, and generally scarce and costly, whilst others of equal value existed only in manuscript, the Master of the Rolls announced his intention of giving preference, in the first instance, to those works of which the manuscripts were unique or the materials of which would help to fill up the blanks in English history.' He stated also that he had in view the formation of a Corpus Historicum, within reasonable limits, and which should be as complete as possible.' The plan thus judiciously marked out has, upon the whole, been faithfully observed, as faithfully, perhaps, as could be expected from the nature of the work. Of the eighty and odd volumes given to the world, sixty at least contain new and original matter: the rest present more perfect and complete editions of authors found only in a fragmentary form before, or they supply more accurate and convenient texts. Considering how precarious is the preservation of manuscripts, how numerous the accidents of fire, damp, neglect, and spoliation to which they are liable, the determination of the Master of the Rolls to give preference to those works of which the manuscripts are unique' will command general satisfaction. Science is independent of early discoveries, poetry owes little to mediæval authors; but to history the loss of contemporary documents and original records is the mutilation of a limb, the extinction of a planet from its hemisphere. The loss of a single manuscript is often a sort of literary homicide; it is the utter and irremediable destruction of an author. By such misfortune, a mist settles down on certain periods of history, never to be cleared away; great events in the lives of men and of nations become involved in impenetrable obscurity; opinio manet opinio, et quæstio quæstio. It is, moreover, a curious and humiliating paradox in bibliography that manuscripts of worthless authors may often be counted by hundreds, whilst of great authors there is only one. In selecting, therefore, unique manuscripts, in the first instance, for publication, the Master of the Rolls was doing his best to place the mate * 25th July, 1822. |