Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/660

 650 Reviews 0/ Books This change in his point of view was not due to any individual influ- ence, but he fought it out for himself, and as I was then engaged in active historical work and was fighting out the same battle for myself, we naturally spent much time in discussing this matter. It is difficult to imagine in these days of historical seminars, in which Langlois and Seignobos's Introduction to the Study of History and Bernheim's Lehr- huch dcr historischcn Methode are in daily use, the extent of the isolation of Oxford historical scholars twenty-five years ago from the great movement of scientific history upon the continent of Europe. Stubbs indeed was Regius Professor of Modern History, but we had to gather his method from his work and not from direct instruction ; learned historical students there were among our history tutors like C. W. Boase and G. W. Kitchin and J. Franck Bright, but they taught us more of historical facts than of historical criticism; brilliant young men there were, who have since fulfilled their early promise like C. H. Firth and J. H. Round and Reginald Lane Poole, but they were busy in laying the foundation of future erudition ; some great historians there were, like Mandell Creighton and S. R. Gardiner, who visited Oxford but did not help its aspiring young historians ; so that we had to work out our problems for ourselves. It was York Powell who first set me to a task of historical work in pressing upon me the undertaking of a history of the French Revolution. I realize to-day the rashness of my attempt and with particular force the absurdity of my making such an attempt without any of the historical apparatus, which is now so liberally bestowed upon undergraduate students in a German or in an American university. But to the undertaking of that task I owe much of the long intercourse with York Powell in the days when he was working toward his theory of the duty of the historian. Of this struggle toward the light Mr. Elton, and with good reason, since he could know nothing of it, tells nothing in his life of York Powell. And yet the chief importance of York Powell's career lies in the fact that as successor of Froude he turned away from Froudacity to inculcate into the minds of friends and students the meaning and the method of the modern school of history. Stubbs indeed has left a larger histori- cal monument behind him, but he never breathed into others, as York Powell did, during his professorship, the sense of the historian's duty to seek the truth without swerving to follow out a personal opinion. As Mr. Elton points out, York Powell used his personality as an im- mense incentive for getting work out of others; I doubt if there has ever been any Oxford man who has made others work so much as he did ; I doubt if there has ever been a scholar who gave of his store of knowledge and of his originality of thought more help to others; and the multiplicity of his prefaces to other men's work is a proof of itself of the personality of a great teacher. Mr. Firth, as his successor, will find his work of bringing the study of history at Oxford up to date much lightened by the fact that York Powell went before him. This then was York Powell's true work, the turning of the point of