Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/200

 Waterloo. No previous writer had so succinctly and so pointedly emphasised the colonial and commercial aspects of that struggle. The book was eagerly taken up by a very large public: it drew attention, at an opportune moment, to a great subject; it substituted imperial for provincial interests; and it contributed perhaps more than any other single utterance to the change of feeling respecting the relations between Great Britain and her colonies which marks the end of the nineteenth century.

The study of British foreign policy occupied Seeley during the greater part of the remainder of his life. His original intention was to write a detailed history of this subject during the period covered by the ‘Expansion.’ But he found it necessary to supply an introduction, and, in tracing the origin of those principles and antagonisms on which the policy of the eighteenth century was based, he was gradually forced back to the reign of Elizabeth. It was the protestant reformation, definitely adopted by Elizabeth, which in his view determined all the subsequent relations between England and the great maritime states of the continent. Thus, what had been intended for a short introduction gradually swelled into a considerable book, which he left completed, but not finally revised at his death. It was published in 1895, under the title ‘The Growth of British Policy,’ 2 vols. In this work Elizabeth, Cromwell, and William III are displayed as the great founders of the British empire, and religion and commerce as the leading motives which directed their action. Before actually setting to work on this book Seeley had published (1886) a concise ‘Life of Napoleon,’ expanded from an article in the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica.’ It is a masterly summary of Napoleon's aims and actions, but is written perhaps from too hostile a point of view, and, while doing justice to Napoleon's great powers, deprives him of all claim to originality as a statesman. A little book on ‘Goethe,’ published in 1893, and a volume of ‘Lectures on Political Science,’ issued posthumously, complete the list of Seeley's published works. The volume on Goethe is an amplification of some papers published in the ‘Contemporary Review’ in 1884. It is a study of Goethe the philosopher and teacher, rather than of Goethe the poet or the artist. As in the essay on Milton, it is rather what the author had to say than the way he said it which seems to have been most interesting to Seeley. This little volume was undertaken as a relief from severer work, for which illness made him unfit.

The last years of his life were rendered less productive than they might have been by the attacks of the disease—cancer—to which he eventually succumbed. He was elected fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, in October 1882, and in 1894 was made K.C.M.G. on the recommendation of Lord Rosebery. He had long been in somewhat weak health, and suffered much from insomnia; but he bore his troubles with marvellous patience, and attended to his professorial duties whenever not actually incapacitated by illness. He died at Cambridge on 13 Jan. 1895.

In his teaching of modern history Seeley adopted, though he did not formulate, the view that ‘history is past politics, and politics present history.’ Historical narrative without generalisation had no value for him; he always tried to solve some problem, to trace large principles, to deduce some lesson. If the conclusions which he reached could be made applicable to present difficulties, so much the better. History was to be a school of statesmanship. So eager was he to establish general principles that his conclusions occasionally appear paradoxical, and are sometimes open to dispute. But his method is at once stimulating and productive, and his whole conception of the subject tends to place it on a high level of public utility. Of the duties of the individual towards the state Seeley formed a high ideal, and, though not an active politician, he held strong political views. In later life he was a liberal unionist, and on more than one occasion raised his voice in public against home rule. He was for several years closely connected with the Imperial Federation League, and, though he never traced out any definite scheme of federation, there was nothing that he had more at heart than the maintenance of the union between Great Britain and her colonies. In university politics he took little part; the routine of academic business and the labour of examinations were alike distasteful to him. He never, even in his younger days, went much into society. In 1869 he married Mary Agnes, eldest daughter of Arthur Phillott, by whom he had one child, a daughter, who survives him.

His chief published works are: 1. ‘David and Samuel, with other Poems, original and translated, by John Robertson,’ 1859. 2. ‘Ecce Homo,’ 1865. 3. ‘Lectures and Essays,’ 1870. 4. ‘The first Book of Livy, with an Introduction, Historical Examination, and Notes,’ 1871. 5. ‘English Lessons for English People’ (written in collaboration with Dr. Abbott), 1871. 6. ‘The Life and Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age,’ 1878. 7. ‘Natural