Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/390

 I was going to the Archæological meeting and to stay at Somerleaze. 'Oh then,' he said, 'you must be either Stubbs or Dimock.' I replied, 'I am not Dimock.' He came to me at Navestock afterwards, and that volume of Renan found its way uncut into my waste-paper basket. That is all; a matter of confusion and inversion; and so, they say, history is written. Well, perhaps a friendship between two historical workers may be called a historic friendship and, to be historical, should gather some of the mist of fable about its beginning: anyhow it was a friendship that lasted for his life, and the loss of which I shall never cease regretting.

Mr. Green's death is one of our greatest losses, but not the only one. In Sir Thomas Hardy the whole world of historical students lost a leader, a counsellor, and a friend; whose services it is impossible to overrate. Practically the founder of the series of national Chroniclers to which I at all events, and our school here, owe so much; a man full of carefully stored and readily imparted knowledge; full of business and as full of kindliness, to every Oxford student, of record or of chronicle, he was a most willing and ready helper. Soon after him we lost Mr. Brewer, who shared with him some of the most important sections of his work, and who added to his labours as a collector and arranger of record, those of an indefatigable writer and faithful, energetic, and stimulating teacher. Then we lost Dr. Pauli, the man who made English History a living study on the continent; the most faithful and fair-minded of investigators, bound to me by peculiar bonds of friendship, and to Oxford by a number of ties; an honourable recognition on our part, and a grateful affection on his. In Dr. Guest we have lost not indeed an Oxford man, but an Oxfordshire scholar, whose devotion to our studies, and whose only half completed labours, are well deserving to be had in remembrance. If I were able now to go beyond our immediate limits, I should say a word about Mr. Carlyle, but it would take me too far afield, and it is perhaps even a presumption in me to name him at all, or to claim for History a champion whose exploits are in all the regions of literary life.