Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/20

 a moral, the personal element inevitably makes itself felt. Imagine an appreciation of Bismarck that equally pleased a patriotic Frenchman and a patriotic German!

Therefore I am practically driven to concede to Froude that history must be subjective. No great book ever has been or ever will be written by a historian who suppressed self as he wrote each word: what such a book may conceivably gain in accuracy it loses in spontaneity and conviction. The passionless scientist chronicling the antics of puppets with whom he feels no sympathy, for whom he has no moral like or dislike, does not tend to produce a readable literary output. I can safely leave the view of those who hold that history has nothing to do with literature—any more than it has anything to do with morals—and the view advocated by Froude to fit out their duel in the public arena, little doubting which will be the winner.

And now for a word on the third of the inaugural lectures of history professors that I have listened to, York Powell was the friend of all of us: most of us also owe him a kindly memory for help given and useful hints received. All remember the high hopes which we entertained when he was appointed to the Regius Chair. His Inaugural was characteristic-a short eulogy of Freeman and Stubbs—a bare mention of Froude—an earnest plea for the starting in England of something like the Paris École des Chartes—and then a pause and a gap and nothing more. The address was a sympathetic and suggestive torso, lasting less than half an hour. York Powell, with all his vast knowledge and his ready, many-sided brain, was always more effective in what he suggested than in what he accomplished. So far as I could follow the thesis that he wished to develop in his address, it was that the study of history