Page:Inaugural lecture on The Study of History.djvu/35

 This moral may seem to some of you to be a mere 'occasional glimpse of the obvious', such as may occur to the meanest mind. Not so, I think, the second caution that I would give to all who intend to make history the mistress of their life. It is this, that 'the best', the ideal, the vision of the epoch-making and infallible magnum opus which hovers before the mind of many a would-be writer, is the enemy of 'the good', of the useful and worthy, but comparatively unambitious, book that he is really competent to write. Do not be led away by megalomania: do not think that you can possibly write a book without mistakes: the man who imagines that he can do so will probably never write a book at all. The great Turenne once remarked that 'the general who has made no errors in strategy must have commanded in uncommonly few campaigns', and hinted that he did not believe that general to exist It is the same with the writer of history: he must make up his mind that, however hard he may strive for absolute accuracy, it is certain that there will be errors of detail somewhere—perhaps errors of more than detail. But he should not for that reason shrink back from production; I have known books hung up for years because the author had not the heart to confess himself fallible. Nothing is a more subtle and deadly enemy of the writing of a good book than a great reputation already won without any literary output. The man who has achieved such a reputation dreads committing himself to print, from an exaggerated fear of being detected in error: such a feeling often grows into actual monomania, and one who could have done good work dies bookless, because he hated the idea of seeing his limitations revealed to the world by some captious critic.

This is not the spirit in which the true historian must