Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/29

 wildest and most absurd errors the moment that he tries to draw a comparison between epoch and epoch, or to illustrate his thesis by parallels from another age or another country. The scientifically trained continental historian is as liable to this as the most self-taught English local antiquary. May I give an illustration? Seignebos [sic]'s Europe Contemporaine is an oft-quoted authority, yet drawing a moral from English Politics and mentioning the Adullamites of 1866, he (for want of a little Scripture history) solemnly adds, 'Adullamites, allusion Biblique, assassins—parce qu'Adullam a voulu tuer David.' And did not the almost infallible Mommsen, trespassing, for once in a way, into ground where he was insufficiently informed, note in one of his chapters on the Roman Empire that the Welsh tongue is to-day spoken in Cumberland and Westmoreland?

If such men can write such strange errors, what are we to expect from the Oxford researcher, if we let him off any appreciable portion of his study of the general foundations of history, in order that he may substitute technical and specialistic knowledge of the epoch in which he is interested? I would have no man permitted to undertake any original work until he has acquired a very broad as well as a very sound knowledge of the general outlines of history, and this is what I maintain that our present Modern History School—with all its defects—does on the whole give us. But—say some—granted that the School may put those who study it honestly in possession of a vast mass of facts, it yet does not furnish them with method with the art of turning all those facts to logical account. Here I venture to differ: there are parts of the curriculum which seem to me to be precisely calculated