Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/232

224 the conception of an ordered polity until the days in which Europe was able to organize itself on new and original lines of its own.

The author of the Holy Roman Empire was pledged to history by his own firstfruits, and he never failed to redeem the pledge. He was always prepared to take any pains which might advance the cause of historical study. Of the English Historical Review itself, as Mr. Poole has testified in a recent number, he was, if not the father, at any rate the godfather. As early as 1867 he had been planning a purely Historical Review; and when in 1885 the foundation of this Review was taken in hand by a group of scholars at Oxford—acting, Mr. Poole believes, under the inspiration of York Powell, who had talked the matter over with Bryce—he was invited to become its editor. Already immersed in politics, he was unable to accept the invitation; but it was through him that Creighton became the first editor; it was he who gave a dinner-party at which the policy of the Review was settled; and it was he who wrote the preface for the first number. One of the articles which he contributed has already been mentioned; another, which appeared in volume vii, was a memorial notice of Freeman. And now, thirty years afterwards, in this thirty-seventh volume, it is of Bryce himself that a memorial notice falls to be written. Few as are the titles of the present writer to compose that notice, he has at any rate one—which he shares with many others—that he found in Bryce a generous inspiration and encouragement. For he was kind with a great kindness to young students: he would write to welcome their 'prentice efforts; he would gather them round his table, and encourage them by his suggestion and advice. He has left many monuments behind him. His books are possessions for ever in the student's library; the work which he did in politics is a permanent part of national, and indeed of international, history. Among other monuments there stands the remembrance and the affection of those whom he helped and encouraged. There are nations which call him benefactor (testis Armenia); but among other and larger cares he always remembered the service of scholarship, and was always ready to aid any student concerned with those studies of history and politics of which he was so eminent a master.