THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ESSAYS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS
 
 ESSAYS ON 
 VARIOUS SUBJECTS 
 
 BY JOHN ANDREW DOYLE 
 
 LATE FELLOW OF ALL SOULS ; 
 AUTHOR OF "THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA" 
 
 EDITED BY W. P. KER 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 THE RIGHT HON. SIR WILLIAM ANSON, BART., M.P. 
 
 WARDEN OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 LONDON 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 191 1
 
 EDITOR'S NOTE 
 
 THANKS and full acknowledgments are here 
 rendered to those who have kindly allowed the 
 following Essays to be reprinted : namely, to 
 the editor and publishers of the Quarterly Review 
 for the articles on " Freeman, Froude, and Seeley " 
 (October 1895), "Francis Parkman " and "The 
 Poetry of Sport" (which both appeared in April 
 1897), and "Rifle Shooting" (January 1897); the 
 English Historical Review for the papers on Sir 
 George Trevelyan (1899 and 1904), and Ezra 
 Stiles (1904) ; Baily's Magazine for " Literature 
 and the Turf" (November 1892), and the three 
 articles on "Racehorse Breeding" (October 1894, 
 January 1896, and May 1905) ; the Kennel 
 Encyclopedia for the essay on " Harriers," written 
 in the spring of 1907. 
 
 Besides these, Doyle wrote many others, more 
 particularly in the English Historical Review on 
 American books between 1886 and 1906. He 
 
 vii
 
 viii EDITOR'S NOTE 
 
 contributed to the American Historical Review 
 (January 1902) an account of the papers of Sir 
 Charles Vaughan ; this might well have been 
 included here but for the large number of quota- 
 tions from Vaughan's MSS., which would have 
 overloaded this volume. 
 
 Some readers, it is true, might have chosen it 
 rather than the very technical papers on "Race- 
 horse Breeding " ; but many of Doyle's acquaint- 
 ance will turn first to these, while others may be 
 content to accept what the Warden of All Souls 
 has said in the pages that follow about Doyle's 
 serious interests. The book is dedicated to all 
 his friends. 
 
 W. P. KER. 
 
 19th September 1911.
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE writer of the essays which form the con- 
 tents of this little volume was one who left an 
 enduring recollection of his personality upon 
 those whose privilege it was to know him ; and 
 the essays themselves will to some extent account 
 for this in the testimony which they bear to 
 his many interests, his wide knowledge, his 
 sound common sense, and his abundant genial 
 humour. 
 
 John Andrew Doyle was born in 1844; he 
 went to Eton when he was nine years old, and 
 his Eton life extended from 1853 to 1862 a full 
 nine years. At Eton he was not specially dis- 
 tinguished ; his ability was recognised, but it was 
 not of the sort which made for success on the 
 lines on which success was in those days attainable. 
 His scholarship was somewhat rough, he was a 
 fair mathematician, and he was very unhandy at 
 games, curiously so for one who was interested 
 
 ix
 
 x INTRODUCTION 
 
 in every form of sport, and who was, in after 
 life at any rate, a sound critic of performance 
 on the river and in the cricket field. 
 
 As I first recollect him, though he had been 
 at Eton for nearly four years before I went there, 
 he was still a small boy of thirteen, conspicuously 
 untidy, but always a pleasant companion. We 
 recognised that his knowledge both of sport and 
 literature was outside the range of the ordinary 
 Eton boy. When he left Eton in 1862 he went 
 for a year to a private tutor before coming up 
 to Balliol, and so he somewhat drifted away from 
 his immediate contemporaries at Eton, and lived 
 in a different group of friends from theirs. So 
 I did not see very much of him during the time 
 that we were at Balliol together. It used to be 
 said of him that he had enjoyed every sort of 
 experience in examinations. In the final classical 
 school he obtained a first class, and in distinguished 
 company ; in moderations he was placed in the 
 second class in classics, and in the third in mathe- 
 matics ; while in responsions he failed on the 
 first occasion to satisfy the examiners. In other 
 and plainer words he formed one of the group 
 of distinguished men, a solace to many weaker 
 vessels, who were ploughed in Smalls. He
 
 INTRODUCTION xi 
 
 obtained his first class in the autumn of 1867, 
 and between that date and his election to a 
 Fellowship at All Souls in November 1869, he 
 resided a good deal in Oxford, reading for the 
 Arnold Essay, and for the Fellowship. During 
 this time he made many friends among a genera- 
 tion of Balliol men junior to himself, so that 
 his Oxford circle was a wide one. 
 
 He won the prize for the Arnold Essay in 
 the spring of 1869, the subject being " The English 
 Colonies in America before the Declaration of 
 Independence," and this essay was the starting- 
 point of the literary work of his life. 
 
 From the first he spent a good deal of time 
 at All Souls, not as a regular resident but coming 
 for days together, either for College business or 
 for purposes of study. At that time a feeling 
 had already arisen in the College that the Commis- 
 sioners' Ordinance of 1857 had left room for further 
 considerable change ; in the early seventies leases 
 fell in, the College income increased, and All Souls 
 became the playground of the academic reformer. 
 Doyle threw himself with keen interest into the 
 questions of College reform, and, among the 
 various schemes of change propounded by our con- 
 stitution makers, he steadily upheld the view
 
 xii INTRODUCTION 
 
 that there was room for a college of an exceptional 
 type, devoting itself through its professoriate and 
 its library to University purposes, encouraging 
 advanced study by the endowment of research, 
 securing through a system of Prize Fellowships 
 the continued interest in academic life of men 
 engaged in professional or public work, and yet 
 retaining its old character as a Collegiate Society. 
 No better representative of the Fellowship 
 system could be found than Doyle. Always 
 available for the transaction of College business, 
 the conduct of a Fellowship examination, the 
 management of the Library, a real student, with 
 wide interests outside Oxford life, he regarded a 
 Fellowship as membership of a society. And 
 thus the part which he played in the social life 
 of the College for nearly forty years was not merely 
 the outcome of a kindly and companionable nature, 
 it was his contribution to the common stock of 
 corporate good feeling which went to make up 
 his conception of a college. The days when the 
 last University commission was sitting were days 
 of storm and stress, of strong though friendly 
 difference of opinion as to the future of the College. 
 Of the many who knew Doyle long and well as the 
 link between successive generations of Fellows,
 
 INTRODUCTION xiii 
 
 few know how strenuous a part he played in the 
 making, as well as in the working, of the con- 
 stitution of the College as it now is. 
 
 But his home, while his father and mother lived, 
 was the centre of his affections. He was an only 
 child. His father, whom I recollect as a most 
 courteous and genial host, died at the end of 
 1888. He had been editor of the Morning 
 Chronicle when that paper was almost a rival of 
 the Times. Then he became a Poor Law Inspector, 
 and settled in North Wales. John Doyle's mother 
 was one of the three daughters of Sir John Easthope 
 who owned the Morning Chronicle from 1834 to 
 1847, and sat as a Liberal for various constituencies, 
 before, and for a good many years after, the Reform 
 Bill of 1832. 
 
 Doyle's home, when I first knew him, was at 
 Plas-dulas in Denbighshire, but, later, property 
 was bought and a house built at Pendarren near 
 Crickhowell in Breconshire ; there he lived during 
 the greater part of his life, and there he died in 
 August 1907. The house was very prettily situ- 
 ated, looking up and down a wooded valley in the 
 hills of Brecon, and the estate gave scope for 
 Doyle's love of breeding cattle, sheep, horses, and 
 dogs. His local interests, apart from his family
 
 xiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 ties, were strong. His experiments in the breed- 
 ing of animals were not merely speculative. He 
 wanted to raise the standard and to improve the 
 quality of stock in his own neighbourhood. As 
 time went on he took his share in Local Govern- 
 ment, and in that highly contentious branch of 
 Local Government which is concerned with educa- 
 tion. He was a member of the joint committee 
 appointed for Breconshire under the Welsh Inter- 
 mediate Education Act, and of the conference 
 which formulated the Charter for the University of 
 Wales. He did much useful work on the Brecon- 
 shire Education Committee under the Act of 1902, 
 and on the Council and Agricultural Committee 
 of the Aberystwyth College. 
 
 The "Idyll of Education," printed a little 
 further on, is all that appears here to testify to 
 his interest in the subject ; but it may be com- 
 mended to the reader as showing how Doyle 
 brought to bear upon the transaction of business 
 the inestimable gift of humour. It may suggest 
 how acceptable would be letters from him describ- 
 ing the educational situation in Wales, addressed 
 to an anxious Minister struggling with the 
 difficulties of the administration of the Act of 
 1902, and written, as one old friend would write to
 
 INTRODUCTION xv 
 
 another, during the years 1904 to 1905. They were 
 indeed an oasis in the desert of official correspond- 
 ence. Shortly one may say of this side of Doyle's 
 life that though he had no ambition for a Parlia- 
 mentary career, no great desire for public life, nor 
 any of that liking which some men have for the 
 transaction of business for its own sake, he gave 
 his time and labour ungrudgingly to the service of 
 the people among whom he lived. 
 
 Apart from local business and College affairs, 
 he devoted himself to serious historical study, 
 with leisure for the acquisition of an almost in- 
 exhaustible knowledge of all that pertains to the 
 successful breeding of racehorses, and of dogs, and 
 to a continuous and practical interest in rifle- 
 shooting. The essays which follow may serve to 
 give some idea of the range of his interests, and of 
 his modes of treating the subjects that interested 
 him. 
 
 The papers on Parkman, on Ezra Stiles, and 
 on Trevelyan, illustrate the wealth of his learn- 
 ing in that part of history which he had made 
 more especially his own. The essay on Freeman 
 leads up to a comparison of his old friend with 
 Froude and Seeley, and to an analysis of the qualities 
 which go to make a historian. It is a good sample
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 of the judicial and appreciative qualities of Doyle's 
 mind. Personal friendship and a certain intel- 
 lectual sympathy did not blind him to the limita- 
 tions and prejudices of Freeman. Froude's whole 
 conception of historical treatment, his impressionist 
 methods and his use of authorities, were alien to 
 Doyle's habits of thought. Yet he makes an effort, 
 though perhaps the effort is obvious, to appreciate 
 the artistic value of Froude's work ; and he freely 
 acknowledges that Freeman's assaults on his great 
 contemporary were not merely clumsy and often 
 unfair, but that they showed an incapacity to 
 understand some qualities which a historian must 
 possess if his work is to take a permanent place 
 in literature. He gives full recognition to Seeley's 
 genius for summing up and generalising the results 
 of large tracts of history ; but he makes very good 
 fun of the theory that history is only valuable, or 
 even respectable, in so far as it bears upon present 
 political issues. 
 
 The essays on the Poetry of Sport, on Litera- 
 ture and the Turf, and on the Breeding of Race- 
 horses, bring out some of Doyle's most characteristic 
 features ; his range of literary knowledge, his 
 intimate acquaintance with most forms of sport, 
 his keen appreciation of the humorous side of any
 
 INTRODUCTION xvii 
 
 topic, and the extreme seriousness with which he 
 would treat its serious side. 
 
 Take the article on the " Poetry of Sport," one 
 may note how easily he treats two poets so 
 different in character as Drayton and Somerville, 
 and how satisfactory is his explanation of the 
 deficiencies of the poetry of the eighteenth century 
 in its handling of sporting topics. When he 
 criticises the choice of sporting poems in the 
 Badminton series he complains, and with reason, 
 that many of these are remote from any connec- 
 tion with sport, while Sir Francis Doyle and Mr 
 Bromley Davenport are left out of the collection ; 
 but he also unearths, from back numbers of BclVs 
 Life and the Saturday Review, ballads which 
 testify to his own omnivorous reading, his retentive 
 memory, and his shrewd critical sense of what is 
 worth remembering. 
 
 Again, in the paper on " Literature and Sport," 
 he deals with the hold which the language of 
 the turf has taken upon our vocabulary, and he 
 draws his illustrations first from the correspond- 
 ence in the " Rockingham Memoirs," and then 
 from speeches to which he had listened at a 
 Diocesan Conference. One may regret that he 
 did not intervene, as he was half-minded to do,
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 in the last instance, in order to satisfy himself 
 whether the reverend speakers "quite understood 
 the difference between a handicap, and a weight 
 for age race with penalties." 
 
 In truth Doyle looked on sport as he describes 
 it on page 173 ; to him it is "a subject which 
 involves vivid passion and varied action, and 
 which brings men into contact with all that is 
 most beautiful in inanimate nature." 
 
 "Vivid passion, and varied action" thus it 
 was that a run, a race, a cricket match, became to 
 him a living dramatic event. Therein he found 
 a kindred spirit in Sir Francis Doyle, of whom 
 he tells anecdotes which bring back pleasant 
 memories of days when one might hear the two 
 Doyles, in the Common Room at All Souls, dis- 
 cussing the great races of the past ; where John 
 Doyle knew the history and Sir Francis had 
 witnessed the event. 
 
 And a great race was to John Doyle a bit of 
 history which should be treated with conscientious 
 accuracy of detail. He will not admit the veri- 
 similitude of the "bird -like dart" with which 
 Sir Francis tells us that Matilda came to the 
 front and won the Leger. "Did ever human 
 being," he asks, "see the horse who could make
 
 INTRODUCTION xix 
 
 running over the mile and three-quarters of the 
 Leger course, and then muster speed for a * bird- 
 like dart'?" And then he, with the scrupulous 
 fairness of his nature, admits a possible excep- 
 tion in the way that Throstle won the Leger in 
 1894. I well remember a conversation in which he 
 tried to bring home to my untutored intelligence 
 the finish of that celebrated race, how Ladas 
 having made his effort and settled accounts with 
 Matchbox was called on to meet the unexpected 
 challenge of Throstle, and, as Doyle said, to win 
 his race twice over, which he failed to do. If I 
 have told the story aright it shows how real 
 Doyle could make these things to a novice in 
 racing. 
 
 Doyle's experiments in breeding were on a 
 small scale, but at the time of his death he 
 owned a filly foal by St Frusquin out of his mare 
 Rosaline, who trained on into the Oaks winner, 
 Rosedrop, of the year 1910. 
 
 The papers on the " Breeding of Racehorses " 
 bring out a feature of Doyle's literary method, 
 or I should say of his character, which has to 
 some extent deprived him of his due as a historian. 
 When writing on a subject, and under conditions 
 which, in his opinion, justified treatment with a
 
 xx INTRODUCTION 
 
 light hand, we get literature of the pleasantest 
 sort; a topic of interest, treated with a constant 
 sparkle of jest and allusion, and a vast range and 
 reserve of knowledge easily handled. Facts are 
 there in abundance, marshalled in admirable array, 
 and we feel that as many more might be forth- 
 coming as were wanted, but we are never over- 
 whelmed either with the mass of the material 
 or the gravity of the subject. 
 
 But when Doyle thought it necessary to be 
 serious he could be very serious indeed, in small 
 things as in great. I have seen him called on, 
 as judge, to decide on the merits of two belated 
 fox terriers at a village show. A jesting con- 
 versation was broken off midway; his counten- 
 ance, which nature had invested with a quaint 
 solemnity of feature, assumed the air of a counsel 
 about to sum up in a grave criminal trial, or of 
 an examiner called on to pronounce finally between 
 two candidates for a fellowship. Every point 
 was considered and weighed with anxious care, 
 judgment was pronounced between two animals 
 whose merits hardly justified the pains bestowed 
 upon them and he took up his humorous tale 
 at the point at which he had left off. 
 
 Race horse breeding was, to Doyle, a serious
 
 INTRODUCTION xxi 
 
 subject. He was as he tells us (p. 225) "precoci- 
 ously well grounded in the * studbook,' " and knew 
 all about Touchstone and his parentage, when, at 
 the age of eleven, he was introduced to that 
 distinguished horse. Many years ago I was his 
 companion in a visit to the Cobham Stud Farm. 
 The groom who showed us round was not at 
 first impressed with our appearance as sportsmen, 
 and assumed that we had no more than a cockney 
 interest in what we saw. But I watched his face 
 as Doyle discussed the parentage of one animal 
 after another, and ran through its pedigree for 
 generations. In half an hour he was like the 
 Queen of Sheba after her interview with Solomon. 
 There was no more spirit in him ; and we left 
 the place with a reputation of which I hoped 
 that by a judicious silence I had acquired some 
 portion. 
 
 But though this interest began early and lasted 
 through his life, the knowledge which these 
 chapters show, and the memory which could 
 retain the bewildering intricacies of pedigree to 
 which we are introduced, is amazing. And the 
 knowledge was there for use. Doyle was always 
 testing theory by practice, as the papers show. 
 
 But they are not light reading, nor did Doyle
 
 xxii INTRODUCTION 
 
 intend them so to be. He desired, for practical 
 purposes, to criticise certain theories and to state 
 his own. As a critic he would overlook nothing 
 that might be said against his own opinion ; as 
 an exponent of a theory he was careful to state 
 its limitations. To inform those who wanted to 
 know, and for that purpose to be full, and clear, 
 and fair these were his objects, and these were 
 the objects with which he set about writing his 
 great work on the English in America. 
 
 True it is that the subject of his choice does 
 not lend itself to dramatic treatment ; nor does the 
 growth of the individual colonies bring out, in 
 respect of any one of them, events on a grand 
 scale. The subject is broken up into histories of 
 a number of separate groups. There is abundance 
 of incident and adventure, but a lack of continuous 
 and concentrated interest. Heroism and endurance 
 may be found in plenty, but of the sort that makes 
 history without obtaining individual recognition. 
 The great personalities of the AVar of Independence 
 and its sequel are outside the period with which 
 he had undertaken to deal ; and we miss, too, that 
 chain of family connection which contributes to 
 the unity of our own history. 
 
 Doyle would sacrifice nothing to display. All
 
 INTRODUCTION xxiii 
 
 that has to be told is told in clear nervous English, 
 admirably arranged as to matter, and with a 
 judicial quality which is not a common character- 
 istic of the historians of the United States. 
 Fulness of detail is never allowed to overmaster 
 the general scheme of each volume ; the vigour of 
 thought which draws illustrations from historical 
 events remote in time or place is never over- 
 whelmed by the minutiae of the affairs of a 
 struggling municipality. But these volumes are 
 necessarily a series of separate narratives ; all, 
 from an Englishman's point of view, leading up 
 to the monumental incompetence of statesmanship 
 and generalship which brought about, and brought 
 to its bitter close, the War of Independence. 
 
 The English in America is a storehouse of 
 information ; it is probably destined to acquire a 
 heightened value as time goes on; as the history 
 of the colonies passes out of the region of political 
 controversy, and is read as the story of the develop- 
 ment of English institutions under diverse forms, 
 amidst inhospitable surroundings and in constant 
 conflict with savage life ; the small beginnings of 
 a great nation. 
 
 But Doyle devoted his life to a work which 
 from its nature, as he well knew, could not take
 
 xxiv INTRODUCTION 
 
 its place as a literary classic, and to this work he 
 devoted literary powers of no common order. 
 This was characteristic of the man. Whether the 
 breeding of horses, or dogs, or cattle, or poultry 
 was in question, or the encouragement of rifle- 
 shooting, or the promotion of education in Wales, 
 or the provision of a truthful account of a period 
 of history, Doyle's methods were the same to do 
 a piece of work which needed to be done, to do it 
 thoroughly, without a touch of self-consciousness 
 or a thought of display. 
 
 Doyle's keenness about rifle-shooting, and his 
 work in that line are evidenced by his paper on 
 Modern Rifle-Shooting ; but it is a subject on which 
 I am not qualified to speak, nor again is it easy 
 for any one but a neighbour to describe what 
 Doyle was to the people among whom he lived. 
 
 He had no near relations, and his love of 
 country life made him somewhat of a solitary. 
 He was a man with many friends ; but few of 
 them knew all the many sides of him. He is well 
 described by an anonymous writer in the West- 
 minster Gazette, who clearly knew him well. 
 
 " Witty, deeply read, overflowing with sym- 
 pathy, intelligently interested in an astonishing 
 variety of subjects, modest and chary of self-
 
 INTRODUCTION xxv 
 
 assertion, vigorous in his likes and dislikes, but 
 always prone to take the generous view, swift to 
 anger against any petty or mean act, quick in 
 repartee, a perfect mine of good stories, he was a 
 companion among a thousand, and as followed of 
 necessity from the catholicity of his tastes, a 
 companion to many kinds of men." 
 
 This is a very true account of John Doyle as 
 I knew him, and I had known him for a long 
 time. It is not easy to write of an old friend in 
 a way that satisfies oneself. Doyle had no near 
 relations ; his house is sold ; the memory of his 
 service to his neighbours will in due course pass 
 away; in All Souls it will be many years before 
 he is forgotten. But the man, so unassuming, so 
 companionable, with his great powers of mind and 
 memory, and the serious purpose which underlay 
 his many interests and his abundant humour, made 
 an enduring impression upon those with whom he 
 lived, an impression more valuable perhaps, and 
 more lasting in its influence than is made by many 
 who play a more conspicuous part in the world's 
 affairs, and occupy a larger space in the chronicle 
 of their time. 
 
 WILLIAM R. ANSON. 
 
 August 1911.
 
 AN IDYLL OF EDUCATION 
 
 THYRSIS : Chairman of Agricultural Education Committee 
 
 (just returned from Shrewsbury). 
 
 STEEPHON : Chairman of Intermediate Education Committee. 
 DAMCETAS : Chairman of County Council. 
 
 THYRSIS 
 
 Sweet as to man long pent in dismal city 
 
 Is flight to woodland shade and meadow green, 
 
 Such, such to me this peace-begirt Committee 
 To me fresh fled from a far stormier scene. 
 
 Here education's bark may find a haven, 
 
 A haven sought in vain by Severn shore, 
 Where conferences endless, at the Raven, 
 
 Suggest an altered motto ' Evermore. 1 
 
 DAM<ETAS 
 
 Sing then, while thought of strife and turmoil slumbers, 
 
 Proclaim the praises of the nymph adored : 
 
 Sing thou too, Strephon, in alternate numbers, 
 
 "I crown the victor from the County's hoard. 
 
 THYRSIS 
 
 Fair is the milk, the churn, the separator, 
 
 Fairer the maids that list to Parrey's lay. 
 Fairest is Phyllis. Ill can words translate her 
 
 Beauty, while marching on her milky way. 
 
 xxvii
 
 xxviii AN IDYLL OF EDUCATION 
 
 STREPHOK 
 
 Blue are the hose, ill-darned, of her I dote on, 
 Blue as the glass that veils her beaming eye, 
 
 She who knows all that ever Plato wrote on, 
 She who evaluates, but makes not, pi (e). 
 
 THYRSIS 
 
 See Erin weep o'er casks of unsold butter, 
 
 See Stilton tremble on her cheese-built throne, 
 
 No grocer dare the name of Dorset utter, 
 
 Camembert conquered, Roquefort overthrown. 
 
 STREPHON 
 
 Wretched the maid who wastes, howe'er expert, on 
 Butter and cheese a heaven-descended soul. 
 
 Better to roam through Somerville and Girton, 
 Freshwoman, free from chaperon's control. 
 
 DAMCETAS 
 
 Verdict in this case would mean endless sitting, 
 
 Far past my powers to decide the prize 
 'Twixt you who sing, observing language fitting, 
 
 The nose of Phyllis, and sweet Chloe's eyes. 
 
 Thyrsis, these notes, a sheaf, all equal mated, 
 Ten, and each lettered ten, to thee belong. 
 
 Take, Strephon, take this cheque, crossed, signed and dated, 
 And know twice fifty pounds have crowned thy song. 
 
 Thus each of you receives an equal bounty, 
 
 And still while you, my shepherds, shall bear sway, 
 
 The teacher shall perambulate the county, 
 
 The maids shall study, and the rates shall pay.
 
 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 1 
 
 IN criticising the manner in which Mr Stephens 
 has done his work it is not easy to avoid some- 
 what conventional terms of praise. To say that 
 a biography is sober, impartial, and well balanced 
 sounds suspiciously like a euphemistic description 
 of dullness. Yet, in truth, it does a biographer 
 no little credit when this can be said about the 
 life of one who held many unpopular opinions, who 
 assuredly made no pretence of expressing those 
 opinions in a modified or conciliatory fashion, 
 and whose work even on topics which are not 
 necessarily controversial often gathered about it 
 an atmosphere of controversy. Mr Stephens has 
 shown no wish to conceal the asperity with which 
 Freeman often expressed his views. He has not 
 
 1 "The Life and Letters of Edward A. Freeman," by W. R. W. 
 Stephens, B.D., Dean of Winchester (2 vols.). London, 1895. 
 
 " English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century," by James Anthony 
 Froude. London, 1895. 
 
 " Lectures and Essays," by Sir J. R. Secley. London, 1895. 
 
 1 A
 
 2 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 done less than justice to the warm sympathies and 
 strenuous love of right which, however warped 
 in their action by prejudices, invariably underlay 
 those views. To a great extent Mr Stephens has 
 been willing to keep himself in the background. 
 He has allowed his subject, the most copious, the 
 most outspoken and most characteristic of letter- 
 writers, to present himself in his correspondence, 
 while the biographer has, in a great measure, 
 confined himself to the work of selection and 
 explanatory comment. To those who knew Free- 
 man the book may not present many new lights. 
 His mind and character had no inner chambers, 
 no half-revealed recesses. What Mr Stephens's 
 work will do, we think, is to amplify and illustrate 
 what most of Freeman's friends already know. 
 And there must be many to whom Freeman 
 was personally unknown, but who, having learned 
 from him either directly, or indirectly and un- 
 consciously, will take no small interest in tracing 
 the formation and development of views which 
 thirty years ago were original, though they are 
 now commonplaces of historical study. 
 
 "The general reader" was a being of whom 
 Freeman spoke with no good will, and probably 
 the general reader will have his revenge by taking
 
 THE CHARACTER OF FREEMAN 3 
 
 no great interest in Mr Stephens's book. That 
 will not be the fault of the writer. The life of 
 Freeman was not rich in incident ; the character 
 was not made interesting by complexities. And 
 yet, while free from complexity, it is a difficult 
 character to sketch in such a fashion as to make 
 it live. It is not easy to bring home to people's 
 minds that curious mixture of wide learning and 
 great mental activity with an almost total in- 
 difference to many sides of human life and thought. 
 Mr Stephens is no doubt right in regarding Free- 
 man as his own best biographer. The letters are 
 a very full exposition of his beliefs, his hopes, 
 his likes and dislikes. They are, as Mr Stephens 
 says, written with a simplicity and directness which 
 often remind one of a very clever child. And if 
 Freeman was in a sense egotistic, he had no lack 
 of self-knowledge. He could judge himself and 
 his own works as he judged others, by a some- 
 what narrow and peculiar, but exceedingly definite 
 standard. Yet the allusiveness of the letters, the 
 constant use of phrases not chosen for their ex- 
 pressiveness, but consecrated in Freeman's mind 
 by some peculiar association, will probably make 
 them obscure and even distasteful to many readers. 
 That capacity for self-judgment of which we
 
 4 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 have just spoken is well illustrated by an article 
 in the Forum, published in 1892, wherein Free- 
 man sketched his own early life as bearing on 
 the formation and growth of his opinions. The 
 article is an interesting comment on what Mr 
 Stephens tells us of his hero's childhood. When 
 eighteen months old he became an orphan, and 
 two years later he was left with no friend and 
 companion save his grandmother and one sister 
 twelve years older than himself. Freeman was 
 not the man to magnify small grievances, or to 
 be disloyal to his own flesh and blood, yet it is 
 very plain that the old lady was exacting and 
 often unsympathetic. Elsewhere he met with 
 kindness and encouragement. Hannah More, as 
 Mr Masson has pointed out, might have eloped 
 with Chatterton, much to the benefit of both 
 parties, and she declined a glass of old spirits 
 from Macaulay. A liaison with Freeman, aged 
 four, has now to be added to the scandalous 
 chronicle. 
 
 Under such conditions a quick - witted child, 
 with an unbounded thirst for knowledge and with 
 singular vigour and definiteness of mind, could 
 hardly fail to develop symptoms of priggishness. 
 His bent was to theology ; at fourteen he taught
 
 POLITICAL TENDENCIES 5 
 
 himself Hebrew, disputed over the translation of 
 the Septuagint, and waxed wroth with a French 
 writer who propounded a theory of Creation which 
 Freeman deemed unscriptural. 
 
 As a rule the political views of a schoolboy, 
 if he has any, are determined by a process of 
 reaction and contradiction. The associations of 
 Freeman's house were Tory. His mother, Mary 
 Anne Carless, claimed descent from a Royalist 
 soldier who had shared the retreat of Charles 
 in the Boscobel oak. Freeman, however, was 
 impelled towards Liberalism by something more 
 than the mere negative process of repulsion. His 
 maternal aunt was married to Thomas Attwood, 
 of Birmingham. He is probably best known to 
 the present generation by his projects for paper 
 money projects which have survived not by their 
 own interest or merit, but as having furnished 
 Mill with an opportunity of annihilating " currency 
 juggles " once and for ever. Mill, however, in 
 assailing the financier, pays a tribute of respect 
 to the political leader. To the early teaching of 
 Mr Attwood, Freeman himself attributed that 
 sympathy with the efforts of small nations to 
 maintain their independence which underlay all 
 his political convictions. At fourteen Freeman
 
 6 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 was sent to a somewhat rough preparatory school 
 at Cheam, in Surrey, where he remained for two 
 years. In his own opinion he gained more than 
 he lost by not going to one of the great public 
 schools. We may agree with the conclusion, with- 
 out accepting the reasoning by which Freeman 
 arrived at it. " Would Harrow or Eton, in 1836 
 or 1837, have set me to read the book which I 
 was set to read in my private school ? That book 
 was A. A. Taylor's ' History of the Overthrow 
 of the Roman Empire and the Foundation of the 
 principal European States.' ' Probably not ; nor 
 can we suppose that the reading of this or that 
 book in particular was essential to the formation 
 of Freeman's mind. " You never will teach the 
 oak or the beech to be aught but a greenwood 
 tree." Freeman's passion for historical study was 
 too deeply innate to depend on any one bit of 
 teaching. And we can but feel that a great public 
 school might have taught Freeman certain things 
 about his fellow -men which he never learned, 
 and the knowledge of which would have added a 
 good deal to the effectiveness of his work in life. 
 Yet it is not unlikely that he would have been 
 among those whose after-lives bear witness to one 
 of the worst sides of a public school. Probably
 
 he would have been forced from his books into 
 games for which he had no aptitude, cobbed by 
 his fagmaster as an incorrigible toast-burner, and, 
 except when he was wanted to do verses or 
 give a construe, hunted hatless round the school- 
 yard as " mad Freeman," till a nature, thoroughly 
 kindly and far more sensitive than it seemed to 
 be on the surface, would have been warped and 
 soured. 
 
 Whatever doubts there may have been as to 
 the good or bad fortune which governed Freeman's 
 lot in his school-days, there can be none as to the 
 conditions of his University career. He had good 
 grounds for saying that he could never forget that 
 he had been a Scholar and Fellow of Trinity. To 
 a man of Freeman's cast of mind and temper, to 
 have been the dominant spirit of his own society 
 would have been fatal. Hardly less fatal would 
 it have been if he had fallen under the influence 
 of men of narrow views and strong prejudices. For 
 with all Freeman's independence and originality he 
 was throughout life fully amenable to the influence 
 of others. Let him once recognise that a man 
 spoke on his own subject with authority, Freeman 
 would accept him as a teacher on that subject 
 with loyalty and even docility.
 
 8 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 It is clear that the scholars' table at Trinity 
 was one of those little intellectual oligarchies 
 which in those days were rendered possible and 
 necessary by the ordinary conditions of a pass- 
 man's life in Oxford. The atmosphere into which 
 Freeman was admitted was one of plain living 
 and high thinking ; and, as the career of many 
 of its members showed, it included men of far 
 too much vigour of mind and width of interest to 
 be in any danger of deteriorating into a mutual 
 admiration society. 
 
 Freeman came up to Oxford with a bent 
 towards Anglicanism, and Trinity helped to con- 
 firm it. But it was only the more vigorous and 
 dignified side of Anglicanism which commanded 
 his sympathy. An austere and intelligent system 
 of moral discipline, methods of church govern- 
 ment and teaching which had their roots in the 
 past and could ever justify themselves by a 
 rational appeal to historical precedent, these were 
 the aspects of Anglicanism by which it com- 
 mended itself to Freeman. One can find no 
 trace of any sympathy with those crudities and 
 absurdities on which Newman heaped contempt 
 in " Loss and Gain." Indeed, in Freeman's first 
 published work, the " History of Architecture,"
 
 CLASSICAL READING 9 
 
 of which we shall have occasion to speak again, 
 he protests against the irreverent puerilities into 
 which some of his Anglican contemporaries were 
 led by their eagerness to find "symbolism" in 
 Christian buildings. 
 
 And if Freeman owed much to his college, he 
 also owed, and acknowledged that he owed, much 
 to his University. To a mind like Freeman's, 
 diffuse in some directions, narrow in others, the 
 school of Liter ce Humaniores offered just the 
 necessary mixture of restraint and stimulus. In 
 the domain of history it prevented him from be- 
 coming a mere accumulator: it forced upon him 
 those studies bearing on abstract thought for which 
 he was disinclined rather than unfitted. At the 
 same time Freeman's natural gifts of mind and 
 temper saved him from the special dangers of 
 the schools. The ordinary candidate for classical 
 honours who has by nature no special turn for 
 metaphysics or moral philosophy will become a 
 retailer of half -understood formula?. There was 
 no danger of that with one like Freeman, to 
 whom half-knowledge was of all things the most 
 abhorrent. 
 
 How Freeman's mind was widened by his 
 classical reading, and even imbued with a certain
 
 10 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 artistic sense whereof nature had been none too 
 bounteous, may be best understood from his 
 unfinished work, the " History of Sicily." We 
 feel that as the writer is transported back to 
 the field of his early studies, so the habits of 
 mind which these studies required instinctively 
 and unconsciously reassert themselves. The poetry 
 of Pindar furnishes the writer with illustrations. 
 The crudity and ungainliness of style which 
 reached their height in the " Reign of William 
 Rufus " disappear or are modified. 
 
 One incident of Freeman's early life preserved 
 by Mr Stephens is thoroughly characteristic. 
 Before he was of age he was in love, and as 
 soon as he reached twenty-one he offered marriage 
 and was accepted. Some opposition from Free- 
 man's own kinsfolk seemed the only hindrance 
 to a happy union. But another was created by 
 the sensitiveness of Freeman's own conscience. 
 " He had expectations of a sufficient income, 
 but it was partly derived from coal mines, and 
 the shocking disclosures recently made respect- 
 ing the treatment of colliers made him doubt 
 whether he could conscientiously draw an income 
 from that branch of industry until the system 
 was reformed." There we see the same temper
 
 -TO SEEK THE NOBLEST' 11 
 
 at work which in later days made Freeman throw 
 up a pleasant and lucrative connection with the 
 Saturday Review, because he disapproved of its 
 foreign politics. His standard of right and wrong 
 might sometimes be perverse, his judgments 
 hastily formed. But seldom has any man lived 
 to whom the call of duty, once made clear, was 
 more absolutely imperative, in defiance of any 
 pleas of convenience or of usage. His action was 
 always in purpose the embodiment of George 
 Eliot's fine lines : 
 
 " Nay, falter not ; 'tis an assured good 
 To seek the noblest ; 'tis your only good 
 Now you have seen it, for that higher vision 
 Poisons all meaner choice for evermore." 
 
 The inability of ordinary men to enter fully 
 into that view no doubt often led them to mis- 
 understand Freeman. His own inability to see 
 that a man may fail on one point and yet not 
 be unscrupulous on all, was at times a hindrance 
 to his perception of the attitude of others. Like 
 all enthusiasts, too, he often thought that what 
 convinced him must be self-evident to all men, 
 and charged his neighbours with breaking a 
 moral law when they really denied its existence. 
 
 That special type of virtue which one may
 
 12 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 claim for Freeman does not in a worldly sense 
 bring very much reward. Yet one reward it 
 did earn for him. His was in many ways a life 
 of strife, and he awakened not a few strong dis- 
 likes. But we doubt whether his bitterest oppo- 
 nent ever regarded him with a shade of suspicion 
 or distrust. 
 
 In 1849 Freeman published his first substantial 
 work, a " History of Architecture." Mr Stephens 
 has been no more than just to the merits of a 
 somewhat forgotten book in the space which he 
 has given to an analysis of it, and in the one ex- 
 tract which he quotes. One defect no doubt the 
 book has. Freeman very imperfectly perceived 
 the truth, which perhaps Viollet-le-Duc alone 
 among architectural writers has fully worked out, 
 that the development of Christian architecture 
 has been throughout determined by structural 
 conditions ; that the artistic spirit in its quest 
 for beauty has had almost invariably to work in 
 strict subordination to those conditions ; that an 
 architectural tour de force, such as St Urbain 
 at Troyes, is no more than the logical outcome 
 of one or two leading principles of structure 
 pushed to their extreme. It is hardly fanciful 
 to say that Freeman's classification of buildings
 
 QUALITY OF FREEMAN'S WORK 13 
 
 is to Viollet-le-Duc's as the Linnean system of 
 botany is to that which has superseded it. On 
 one side we have a classification according to 
 visible forms, on the other according to principles 
 of growth, only that in the case of buildings the 
 practical results of the two classifications are 
 largely the same. From its own point of view 
 Freeman's work shows a width of knowledge 
 and a power of generalisation which put it in 
 advance of anything written up to that time. 
 
 Isolated passages, too, such as that quoted by 
 Mr Stephens, show Freeman at his very best as 
 a writer. They are not the work of a man who 
 is straining after purple patches ; they are the 
 work of a man of vigorous mind and sound 
 though limited literary taste, stirred by real 
 conviction and real sympathy with his subject. 
 
 Freeman's Anglicanism shows itself in the 
 whole line of the work, and here and there in a 
 somewhat boisterous attack on the Renaissance. 
 But, as we have said before, he never scruples 
 to take an independent attitude. His historical 
 sense rebels against arbitrary divisions of archi- 
 tecture into orthodox and unorthodox. In one 
 writing under the full spell of the Oxford move- 
 ment, with its suspicion of everything which
 
 14 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 savoured of the Renaissance, it needed insight to 
 see and courage to assert the merits of Jacobean 
 Gothic, and to sing the praises of such a church 
 as St Eustache in Paris. Again, in opposition 
 to most of his Anglican contemporaries, Freeman 
 claims a high place for Romanesque, and largely 
 anticipates one of the best of his later mono- 
 graphs, in which he classifies the various groups 
 and analyses the principles of that school. 
 
 With Freeman's marriage began his life as a 
 literary man with a tincture of country tastes 
 and pursuits. The records of his strenuous and 
 overwhelming industry are contained in the ten 
 pages at the end of Mr Stephens's book which 
 enumerate the bare titles of Freeman's various 
 productions. The letters on which, as we have 
 said, Mr Stephens has so largely depended are 
 interesting and attractive from their freshness, 
 their directness, their revelation of an exceed- 
 ingly vigorous mind. They have not the interest 
 which attaches to a disclosure of the growth of 
 convictions or the development of beliefs. In 
 these, as in Freeman's published writings, we 
 always feel that we are watching principles and 
 habits of thought formed once for all and applied 
 to new sets of facts.
 
 PARLIAMENTARY AMBITION 15 
 
 There was little chance that the course of 
 Freeman's life would be changed, as it would 
 have been changed, by the fulfilment of his 
 ambition to obtain a seat in Parliament. Most 
 of Mr Stephens's readers will agree with him in 
 not regretting the failure. The lighter aspects 
 of Freeman's character and the texture of his 
 mind alike unfitted him for the atmosphere of 
 practical politics. A man who is at once self- 
 reliant and shy is almost sure to pass for being 
 wilfully discourteous. A man who pours forth 
 copiously and spontaneously allusions to out-of- 
 the-way subjects, with an air which suggests 
 something of contempt for the less learned, is 
 sure to be set down as a pedant, and in a member 
 of Parliament pedantry is the unpardonable sin. 
 
 Nor was it only in manner that Freeman would 
 have failed. If a view was distasteful to him, 
 he could not make the attempt to analyse it or 
 even to understand it patiently. He was capable 
 of travestying the opinions of his opponents, and 
 that in all honesty, by talking of their " passionate 
 hatred for Russia and romantic love of the Turk." 
 One sees what a gulf sundered him in many of 
 his views from the bulk of his fellow-countrymen 
 when one reads such passages as these : " I believe
 
 16 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 I hate the British army more than any institution 
 in being," " William Rufus is my ideal gentle- 
 man," "probus miles, preux chevalier, and all 
 the rest of the humbug " ; or again, " If a man 
 takes to gambling at all, I should think he would 
 naturally take to cheating, and after all it is not 
 so bad as selling yourself to the Turk or several 
 other things that are called honourable." 
 
 It is not the question what amount of truth 
 there may be in each of these views. True or 
 false, it is very certain that no man could hold 
 them in that crude and unhesitating fashion and 
 be a power in public life. The much-denounced 
 "perish India" passage was no doubt really a 
 harmless truism. But a wise man who seeks 
 to influence others does not utter even truisms 
 in such a form that they are certain to be mis- 
 understood and misrepresented. Moreover, whole 
 provinces of human thought and activity which 
 nearly concern every practical politician were to 
 Freeman a blank. Though he abhorred a town 
 abode, he knew but little of the lives of his 
 country neighbours, of how they bought and 
 sold, tilled their fields and earned their bread. 
 For him the life of a community was always a 
 map, never a picture. Thus we find him in 1874
 
 FREEMAN'S LIBERALISM 17 
 
 writing that he has become comparatively in- 
 different to politics. "Then (in 1868) there 
 were several great questions ahead into which 
 I went heart and soul : now it seems to be 
 all Contagious Diseases, Women's Rights, Per- 
 missive Bills, 25th clause, and such like mere 
 nuisances." 
 
 In truth, foreign politics apart, Freeman's 
 views belonged to that rather sterile type of 
 Liberalism which concerns itself very much with 
 political machinery, and very little with the 
 detailed and concrete results which that machinery 
 has to effect. 
 
 Moreover, Freeman's habits of mind went far 
 to cut him off from that comprehension of the 
 views of others which is indispensable to a 
 politician. One of the first duties of a politician 
 is to understand half-truths uttered in a con- 
 fused form. But for Freeman there was no such 
 thing as a half-truth. The doctrine might itself 
 be in the main sound, but if the mode of utterance 
 betrayed ignorance or confusion of thought, woe 
 to him who uttered it ! In these days when " Is 
 not there something in it ? " formulates the view 
 with which every person approaches every question, 
 Freeman's attitude is no doubt refreshing and
 
 18 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 wholesome. But it is not an attitude which can 
 safely be taken up by one who seeks to influence 
 his fellow-men. It weakened Freeman's actions 
 as an outside critic of politics ; it would have 
 been fatal to him if he had become an actual 
 combatant. 
 
 The stronger side of Freeman's mind and 
 character would have been equally fatal to his 
 practical success as a politician. Compromise is 
 the essence of party politics, and compromise was 
 the one thing of which, above all others, Freeman 
 was incapable. He never could have learned that 
 the practical politician must at every turn be 
 bound in the expression of his views by the 
 requirements of advocacy. In one of the last 
 articles that Freeman ever wrote on practical 
 politics, he pointed out certain obvious and 
 glaring inconsistencies in the attitude of some of 
 his Home Rule allies, and was astonished when 
 his utterance was received in some quarters as a 
 symptom of lukewarmness. He had not learned 
 that to ask a professional politician whether his 
 argument is logically or historically sound is like 
 asking a salmon-fisher whether his fly is edible. 
 
 Two of Freeman's main ambitions in life were 
 a seat in Parliament and a chair at Oxford. The
 
 OXFORD 19 
 
 one was never fulfilled ; the other came late, and 
 was thereby robbed in his eyes of some of its 
 charm. He went back to an Oxford which to 
 him, in all matters of taste and everyday life 
 the most Conservative of men, was changed in 
 a measure that made it at times unendurable. 
 Freeman, with his exacting and methodical habits 
 of work, his simple tastes and limited pursuits, had 
 little sympathy with modern Oxford, many-sided, 
 receptive, uncritical, strenuous in its organised 
 pursuit of pleasure. One feels, too, that his rather 
 limited knowledge of the Oxford of the past 
 made him unconsciously unfair to the Oxford of 
 the present. One cannot but see that he judged 
 the Oxford of his own day by the one side of 
 it which he knew Trinity and the scholars of 
 Trinity, with their severe moral discipline and 
 their high intellectual ambitions. He overlooked 
 what such a book as "Tom Brown at Oxford" 
 reminds one, that Oxford then had its passman's 
 life of idleness and pleasure, with which at least 
 the non- reading or half -reading life of Oxford 
 to-day contrasts favourably. 
 
 Freeman felt too, and with some justice, that 
 the immediate requirements of the class list had 
 overpowered all other considerations in an under-
 
 20 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 graduate's course of study, and the meagre attend- 
 ance at his lectures, due as he thought to that 
 cause, embittered him. It must be admitted, 
 however, that a good deal of his lecture con- 
 sisted of the repetition of doctrines which had 
 once in Freeman's mouth been original, but which 
 had by that time become trite. He was fond of 
 quoting, and certainly acted on Cuddie Headrigg's 
 principle that " a gude tale's no the waur o' being 
 twice told," and he would have despised any 
 attempt to give a semblance of freshness to the 
 matter by varying the turn of expression. Yet 
 it would be unfair to speak as if Freeman's pro- 
 fessorial career had done nothing for his reputation 
 as a historical teacher. The two published volumes 
 of lectures show some of the best qualities of his 
 work. They show that with all Freeman's taste 
 for somewhat diffuse detail, few men could seize 
 the salient points of a wide period more clearly 
 and forcibly or set them forth more emphatically. 
 No one indeed who is familiar with Freeman's 
 writings will doubt that Mr Stephens is right in 
 his claim that Freeman could condense when he 
 thought it expedient, and that his work when 
 condensed was at its best. 
 
 Freeman's antipathy to the examination system
 
 as he found it on his return to Oxford may be 
 taken as illustrating a characteristic side of his 
 mind. Examinations had been unnecessary in 
 his case as a stimulus to study, though, as we 
 have already said, one may believe that they 
 were of value as restraining his studies and giving 
 them definiteness. But as he could work without 
 examinations, so could other men. And with 
 characteristic inability to understand the existence 
 of mixed motives, he argued as if men might be 
 divided sharply into those who read, and in any 
 case would read, from a genuine love of know- 
 ledge, and those who only read from the inferior 
 motive of a desire for honours, and who therefore 
 gain little by their reading. He overlooked the 
 large proportion of men who have not enough 
 disinterested love of study to become students 
 for learning's sake, but who, once constrained to 
 work, gradually throw themselves into study with 
 something of real zeal. 
 
 Freeman's attitude towards the life into which 
 he found himself cast on his return to Oxford is 
 a good illustration of the indirect effect of those 
 limitations of which Mr Stephens has spoken, 
 and which formed such a conspicuous and curious 
 element in Freeman's character. Few of his friends
 
 22 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 can fail to remember some quaint instances where 
 his familiarity with remote things and his ignorance 
 of obvious things came in conjunction. "That 
 sounds as if it came from Godwin," was the remark 
 of one who was more familiar with Georgian times 
 than with the eleventh or seventeenth centuries. 
 "Which Godwin, the Earl or the Bishop?" was 
 the answer. 
 
 Freeman's " limitations " were made all the more 
 conspicuous by his intense honesty, his horror of 
 anything like pretence or half -knowledge. "I 
 am a very illiterate person," was the frank con- 
 fession which once startled some at least of the 
 guests round the breakfast table at Somerleaze. 
 Mr Stephens makes no attempt to gloss over this 
 side of Freeman's character. 
 
 " Outside the field of history his knowledge, 
 tastes, and even his capacity were undoubtedly 
 limited. Mental philosophy and political economy 
 were subjects that he could not, or at any rate did 
 not, attempt to understand, and no department 
 of art had any interest for him with the single 
 and signal exception of architecture. He did 
 not care much for 'poetry except of the epic or 
 ballad kind ; of Shakespeare he was almost wholly 
 ignorant."
 
 LIMITATIONS 23 
 
 It would be easy to heap up instances from 
 the letters confirming and even amplifying Mr 
 Stephens's statement. Carlyle "babbles and 
 blunders," and is plainly called what the Bible 
 tells us we should not call a brother. There is 
 a lament over Mrs Ward, who is forsaking the 
 legitimate work of Spanish history to write novels. 
 Some persons, inadequately careful of their own 
 and their neighbours' souls, might perhaps share 
 the regret in that particular instance. But we 
 feel that it would probably have been the same 
 if the work had been not " Robert Elsmere," but 
 "Jane Eyre" or "Consuelo." 
 
 Freeman's view of metaphysics was delightfully 
 simple and direct :- 
 
 "I am not at all convinced that Mansel and 
 that lot know anything that I don't. They seem 
 to me simply to bamboozle one with hard words 
 I am not clear that the words have any meaning 
 at all. They seem to me to be pure gibberish, 
 which would be just as much to the purpose if 
 you read it backward." 
 
 One is reminded of another West -country 
 worthy, Betty Muxworthy, who, as Mr Blackmore 
 has told us, "never would believe in reading or 
 the possibility of it, but stoutly maintained that
 
 24 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 people just learned things by heart and then pre- 
 tended to make them out from patterns done 
 upon paper, for the sake of astonishing honest 
 folk, just as do the conjurers." And it is really 
 painful to find Freeman assailing Matthew Arnold 
 as a "chatterer," when he should have seen that 
 Matthew Arnold and he were fellow-fighters in 
 the same battle, upholding the cause of scholarly 
 exactitude and precision against vagueness and 
 flimsiness. 
 
 Mr Stephens hardly sees, we think, how much 
 Freeman's own special work as a historian suffered 
 by this narrowing of his interests. 
 
 " But if these limitations were defects, his 
 knowledge of those subjects which he loved was 
 the more thorough, and his work in connection 
 with them the fresher, because all his interests 
 and energies were concentrated upon it." 
 
 Stronger in a sense it may be, but can one say 
 "fresher"? What part of human life is there 
 which lies wholly " outside the field of history " ? 
 Arnold and Macaulay were names of which 
 Freeman always spoke with great respect. No 
 one ever preached more emphatically than Arnold, 
 no one ever practised more thoroughly than
 
 FREEMAN'S VIEW OF HISTORY 25 
 
 Macaulay, the duty of a historian in making 
 himself familiar with every phase of the life of 
 his own period. Should not a historian know 
 how men thought, how they felt, how they fed 
 and clothed themselves ? And can a historian 
 understand those things if speculative philosophy, 
 art, political economy are all sealed books to him ? 
 And we venture to think that if a reader knew 
 nothing whatever of Freeman's mental tastes and 
 habits, these are precisely the defects which he 
 would find patent in his work. What we have 
 said already of his view of politics is true of his 
 view of history. Few writers could describe the 
 corporate action of men in their political character, 
 or even the action of individuals in purely political 
 relations, more effectively. The concrete facts 
 of social and industrial life which are inseparably 
 blended with the political facts disappear. 
 
 The indirect loss was perhaps even greater than 
 the direct. To do such work as Freeman had to 
 do, the mind needs to be nourished from those 
 very sources from which he turned away. " He 
 was making himsell a' the time," said Scott's friend 
 Shortreed, of those days in Liddesdale which Sir 
 Walter's staider and more studious friends doubt- 
 less thought wasted. All the ** making " that
 
 26 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 Freeman deemed necessary was the acquisition 
 and digestion of knowledge bearing on a certain 
 limited class of phenomena. There is a character- 
 istic passage in an article on Macaulay where 
 Freeman comments on the fact that Macaulay 
 never wrote a classical article, and says, "Very 
 little came of all this Greek and Latin reading." 
 
 No doubt, as Mr Stephens points out, the 
 constitution of Freeman's mind made this limita- 
 tion of interests less mischievous than it often 
 would have been. The province of history as 
 he saw it may have been in some respects bare, 
 but it was a vast one and abundantly furnished 
 with incident. His papers on towns and places 
 show, even more perhaps than his larger works, 
 how fully he valued biographical details. Nor 
 did his mental narrowness carry with it any lack 
 of moral sympathy. He was full of hearty and 
 affectionate interest in all who had any sort of 
 claim on his good-will. His kindliness of nature 
 made him often tolerant in defiance of his theories. 
 Like Bishop Thirlwall, he loved dumb animals, 
 not in the half-hearted fashion of those who " like 
 them in their proper place," and they as well as 
 children instinctively recognised in him a friend. 
 
 But if these things saved the man, they could
 
 THE INSTRUMENT OF WORDS 27 
 
 not wholly save the writer and still less the critic. 
 No doubt Freeman did good service in his protest 
 against those who " corrupt the language of the 
 nation with long-tailed words in 'osity and 'ation." 
 But in his own case a limited dialect was able to 
 suffice because it had only to express limited con- 
 ceptions. The tongue of the Saxon Chronicle 
 may be sufficient or nearly sufficient for the mere 
 description of external facts. It fails when one 
 passes into that world of abstract ideas which 
 Freeman heeded so little. Freeman denounced 
 what he considered the jargon of physical science, 
 forgetful that to all but specialists his own talk 
 of "Gal -Welsh" and "Rum -Welsh" sounded 
 very odd jargon indeed. 
 
 This applies not merely to choice of words, 
 but to style in its widest sense. Freeman was 
 an enthusiastic admirer of Macaulay's style. He 
 overlooked the fact that a definite, emphatic, 
 uninvolved style is rendered comparatively easy 
 by a limited range of thought. Perhaps one 
 should rather say that Freeman hardly understood 
 what a limited range of thought meant. With 
 Freeman himself, as with John Austin, style was 
 mainly regarded as a machine for pounding definite 
 propositions into somewhat unreceptive minds.
 
 28 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 At the same time, Freeman's sympathy with his 
 subject, his early training in scholarship, above 
 all, the resources of a mind intensely vigorous and 
 original, and in certain directions not lacking 
 imagination, made his practice often very much 
 better than his theories. 
 
 But where Freeman suffered most from his 
 " limitations " was in the part which he sought to 
 play in influencing public thought on practical 
 questions. His range of interests gave him few 
 points of contact with his neighbours. The every- 
 day man, wholly ignorant of Freeman's own class 
 of subjects, was apt to think that Freeman, when 
 they did meet, regarded him with something of 
 contempt and ill-will. That, assuredly, was not 
 so, unless the person were so ill-advised as to affect 
 a knowledge or interest which he did not possess. 
 For Freeman's attitude was somewhat like Swift's : 
 
 " True genuine dulness moved his pity, 
 Unless it offered to be witty." 
 
 But though Freeman had no ill-will towards the 
 average man, he did look upon him as a somewhat 
 unapproachable and unintelligible being. And the 
 penalty which he paid was that the mind of the 
 average man was a sealed book to him. 
 
 Freeman's lack of mental width no doubt often
 
 LACK OF MENTAL WIDTH 29 
 
 made him a harsh critic. Small defects which he 
 could perceive counted for more than substantial 
 merits which were wasted on him. And his 
 criticism was, no doubt, sometimes thought not 
 merely harsh, but ungenerous and even jealous. 
 Nothing could be further from the truth. His 
 letters must convince any one that he could be 
 heartily and even extravagantly appreciative. Nor 
 do they show, any more than his conversation 
 did, the slightest tendency to imply comparisons 
 between himself and other writers. Let a man 
 only show that he had any capacity for what 
 Freeman considered good and sound work in the 
 field of history, and he was certain of a cordial 
 welcome and encouragement. In some respects, 
 as we have seen, Freeman may have been im- 
 perfectly equipped for his career as a man of 
 letters, but assuredly in compensation he escaped 
 many of the besetting faults of the profession. 
 He was not one of those who claim to be kept 
 at the public cost in the Prytaneum. In his 
 latter days, during his Oxford professorate, we find 
 some touch of discontent and even querulousness, 
 but that was far more due to physical than to 
 mental and moral causes. For the most part, 
 Freeman was content to march on his way cheer-
 
 80 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 fully and manfully, preaching his own gospel and 
 heeding little of reward or acknowledgment. 
 
 In that as in many of the leading features of 
 his character, we find and who need ask higher 
 praise ? something to remind us of Johnson. 
 There is the same odd mixture of clear-sighted, 
 vigorous common-sense and inexplicable prejudice. 
 There is the same contrast between superficial 
 harshness or impatience and a warmth of feel- 
 ing which never failed when there was any real 
 call for it. The conventional view of Johnson's 
 bearishness is swept to the winds by the kindly 
 courtesy of his letters. So we think the bitterest 
 of Freeman's political or literary enemies would 
 acknowledge the charm of such letters as those in 
 the first volume at page 88, written when real 
 grief called for sympathy, or of his answer at 
 page 372 to a stranger who had written to discuss 
 with him the morality of field sports. They 
 exhibit those excellent things, the tenderness of 
 a reserved man, the courtesy of a straightforward 
 man. And Freeman, like Johnson, was liberal 
 with limited means liberal, too, with that touch 
 of spontaneity and unconsciousness which raises 
 liberality into generosity. Nor can any one doubt 
 after reading Mr Stephens's book, if he did not
 
 THE ULTIMATE JUDGMENT 81 
 
 know it before, that Freeman, like Johnson, had 
 his reward in the real friendship of those whose 
 friendship was not given lightly. 
 
 We stand, perhaps, too near Freeman's work 
 to be able to judge fairly of its abiding value and 
 place in historical literature. His reputation will 
 not, we think, depend greatly on the success or 
 failure of attempts to find inaccuracies of detail in 
 his work. No man ever covered so much ground 
 without occasional slips, or dealt with such a mass 
 of authorities without occasionally misinterpreting. 
 In that respect we think that his fame has little 
 to fear. He will be held, we believe, more than 
 almost any other English historian to have laid 
 down a severe and exacting canon of evidence, and 
 to have striven through much toil to maintain it ; 
 he will be looked upon as a strictly conscientious 
 interpreter of his authorities, as one who went to 
 them with an honest desire to find out what lesson 
 they had to teach, not as one who sought the 
 confirmation or illustration of any preconceived 
 theory. Nor will it be Freeman's only title to 
 remembrance that he did this himself. He may 
 fairly claim to have so done it as to make clear to 
 all what was meant by sound historical evidence. 
 His notes and appendices, often cumbrous and,
 
 32 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 from an artistic point of view, detrimental, have 
 that value. They make clear to all men what 
 was the exact nature of the process by which the 
 writer reached his conclusions. Diffuseness, lack 
 of a due sense of proportion, and other defects 
 whereon we have already dwelt, will probably 
 make it impossible for any one work to take rank 
 as a historical masterpiece. Yet we think there 
 is hardly one, if one, which does not contain much 
 that will never be superseded. As Mr Stephens 
 points out, with all Freeman's diffuseness some of 
 his very best passages are those in which he sums 
 up the characteristics of some special epoch in 
 history. Besides the instances given by Mr 
 Stephens, we may refer to the sketch of Greek 
 city politics in the Introduction to the "History 
 of Federal Government." 
 
 Nor is Freeman's influence as a teacher to be 
 measured merely by his solid historical works. In 
 his occasional papers he constantly taught sound 
 habits of historical thought, and made successful 
 war against confusion of mind and slovenliness 
 of speech. The "Revilers," to which there are 
 so many references in the letters, were potent 
 influences in indirectly forming the thoughts and 
 language of ordinary men on historical subjects.
 
 ARCHITECTURAL WRITINGS 33 
 
 Freeman's lot as a teacher was not wholly unlike 
 that of one with whom he had himself no great 
 sympathy. Like Ruskin, he preached seeming 
 paradoxes so effectively that at last he appeared to 
 be preaching truisms. 
 
 Of Freeman's architectural writings we have 
 already said something. Some of the very best 
 of them, the papers on Welsh Churches, written 
 during his sojourn in Glamorganshire, are buried 
 in the back numbers of the Archceologia Cam- 
 brensis. Many of the churches wherewith he 
 dealt have little architectural dignity or artistic 
 beauty. But they have almost invariably indi- 
 viduality of character, and Freeman's mode of 
 looking at architecture without any pedantic pre- 
 possessions in favour of the "orthodoxy" of this 
 or that period, and his power of classifying build- 
 ings according to their principles, and showing 
 the connecting links between them, had here full 
 scope. 
 
 Indeed we think it would be generally allowed 
 that his most interesting and attractive work is 
 that where the two sides of his learning, the 
 architectural and the purely historical, were able 
 to work together. He himself, with that character- 
 istic modesty which so often underlay a semblance
 
 34 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 of self-assertion, used to profess that he had learned 
 from his friend John Green to look upon a town 
 as a being with an individual character of its own. 
 If so, one can only say that there are qualities 
 in the work of the self-styled pupil of which one 
 can find little trace in the work of the supposed 
 master. Here too, as elsewhere, Freeman's teach- 
 ing is hardly less valuable in its indirect influence 
 than in its direct lessons. Those who have made 
 themselves familiar with his mode of looking at 
 places, can find in a building, insignificant it may 
 be in itself, in a local name, or a local tradition, 
 illustrations of the principles which have deter- 
 mined the history of the world. 
 
 It is scarcely possible to avoid a comparison 
 between Freeman and those two distinguished 
 workers in the same field who have just been 
 taken from us, Froude and Seeley. It would be 
 difficult to imagine three men differing more 
 widely in the original character and constitution 
 of their minds. One point of community, and 
 one only, seems to bind them together. To each 
 of them history was something more than an 
 inspiring and impressive drama. Each fully 
 acknowledged the truth, more clearly perhaps 
 laid down by Arnold than by any teacher who
 
 FREEMAN AND FROUDE 35 
 
 preceded him, that the things of history happened 
 for an ensample ; that it is only by a knowledge 
 of history that the citizen can attain to a clear 
 understanding of the duties and responsibilities 
 which lie about him. But that very point of 
 agreement carries with it as an inevitable conse- 
 quence wide differences in their historical work : 
 for it would be hard to imagine political ideas or 
 conceptions of national life differing more widely 
 than did those held by Freeman and those of his 
 two contemporaries. It would certainly be of no 
 profit to review in detail the onslaughts of Freeman 
 upon his successor. Freeman's best friends and 
 warmest admirers would probably admit that as 
 a controversialist he was often cumbrous and in- 
 discreet, and not always courteous. They would 
 admit that the professorial chair at Oxford was 
 hardly the place in which to carry on what had, 
 in the eyes of the public at least, resolved itself 
 into a personal contest, any more than it was the 
 place from which to preach a highly controversial 
 doctrine on Eastern politics. But, after all, to 
 say that is only to admit what no one questions, 
 that Freeman was not one of those rare people 
 who can hold very strong and definite convictions 
 without any touch of fanaticism.
 
 36 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 One may admit, too, that the whole con- 
 stitution of Freeman's mind rendered him unfit 
 to do justice to Froude. To Freeman, subtlety 
 of any kind, whether in the good or the bad 
 sense of the word, was repellent. It mystified 
 him as it mystifies a child. And a complex 
 mind like Froude's, with its curious mixture 
 of cynicism and earnestness, scepticism and 
 enthusiasm, was to him a sealed book. 
 
 Nor were Froude's special merits the careful 
 arrangement and just proportion of his work, his 
 keen sense of the need of making his story an 
 artistic whole qualities which Freeman could 
 duly appreciate. At the same time we think 
 that any one who has had occasion to study in 
 original authorities the periods with which Froude 
 dealt, and to compare his work with them, will 
 make a good deal of allowance for his assailant. 
 It is not easy to read his strange perversion of 
 authorities, to witness the marvellous transforma- 
 tion which a statement often undergoes during 
 its passage from the original writer to Froude's 
 pages, and then to bring to bear on the mere 
 literary merits of his work the mind of a calm 
 and judicial critic. 
 
 If Freeman was unjust to Froude, he was
 
 FREEMAN AND FROUDE 37 
 
 perhaps even more unjust to those who admired 
 Froude. In his eyes they were men given over 
 to believe a lie, men who through sheer per- 
 versity of mind preferred darkness to light, at 
 best men who were tricked by certain specious 
 qualities with which the true historian had little 
 or no concern. The two sides of men's minds 
 to which Froude's writings appealed, their sense 
 of literary art and their militant patriotism, were 
 in Freeman's eyes either unreal or contemptible. 
 No doubt the method in which Freeman 
 conducted his repeated attacks on Froude, taste 
 and courtesy apart, tended to create a mis- 
 conception as to the real issue. He was not 
 confuting this or that detailed error, nor even 
 any particular accumulation of errors. He was, 
 rightly or wrongly, endeavouring to expose a 
 habit of mind and a method of dealing with 
 authorities, which must in its very essence and 
 nature be the parent of errors. And indeed, as 
 we have already implied, it is difficult to read 
 any extensive portion of Froude's work, where 
 one is acquainted with original authorities, and 
 not feel that, if references are to be thus used, 
 we should be better without references at all. 
 Probably in his heart of heart Froude would
 
 have admitted that. Exactitude of detail, he 
 might have said, that exactitude which refer- 
 ences are supposed to ensure, is hardly to be got); 
 and if it were got, the majority of men would 
 be none the better for it. What a historian 
 should give his readers is not accuracy of detail, 
 but truthfulness of impression. Let a writer 
 once for all, by study of contemporary writers, 
 master the leading principles which determined 
 the history of a period; then let him use his 
 authorities so as to furnish himself with material 
 for effectively and artistically illustrating the 
 views at which he has arrived. We think that 
 those who are qualified to judge will allow that 
 this is not an unfair representation of Froude's 
 attitude. We think, too, that many who are not 
 insensible to Froude's literary merits will agree 
 that, even if history can ever be dealt with thus, 
 it can only be so dealt with by those who possess 
 a more judicial mind than Froude's and a greater 
 freedom from paradox. 
 
 Froude's method, too, is not without its draw- 
 backs from a merely artistic point of view; it 
 begets a constant tendency, from which he is 
 certainly not free, to write in a half controversial 
 fashion, with a sort of underlying reference to
 
 FROUDE 39 
 
 supposed opponents. One feels that the writer 
 is not simply telling his tale according to the 
 evidence, but that he is emphasising certain sides 
 of it, because he suspects that those for whom 
 he writes have a bias in the opposite direction. 
 There is a constant danger that the methods of 
 the historian should give way to the methods of 
 the pamphleteer. 
 
 It may sound like a paradox to say that 
 Froude's work suffers from want of imagination ; 
 yet, so far as imagination is the power of seeing 
 concrete persons with their individual character- 
 istics, we think it is true. He fails to under- 
 stand how all generalisations about classes of men 
 are set at nought by individual peculiarities. 
 Monasticism may have been an evil system ; the 
 cause of Humanism may have been the cause of 
 enlightenment and progress ; but it is a very 
 different thing to hold, as Froude certainly 
 holds by implication, that there is even a pre- 
 sumption in favour of any individual monk being 
 a dull sensualist, or any individual humanist a 
 wise man. One sees this perhaps most where 
 Froude had an entirely free hand, as in his 
 historical novel, " The Two Chiefs of Dunboyne." 
 There all that is wise and virtuous groups itself
 
 40 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 on the side with which Froude sympathises. Not 
 thus have the great imaginative writers dealt with 
 history. Look at "Woodstock" and "Peveril of 
 the Peak " ; how Scott with all his Cavalier 
 sympathies has resisted the temptation " to take 
 care that the Whig dogs should not have 
 the best of it!" how in "Waverley" he has 
 brought out the jealousies and meannesses of 
 the Pretender's Court ! If Froude had been 
 dealing with the same material from the same 
 point of view, Bridgnorth and Everard would 
 have been snuffling canters, and Fergus Maclvor 
 a wise patriarch living for the good of his people. 
 Take another instance. It is clear enough that 
 Thackeray had no special sympathy with the 
 American cause ; if he had ever written a history 
 of the War of Independence, it would have prob- 
 ably had the fate which Washington prophesied 
 for Mr George Warrington's unpublished work 
 and would have been "certain to offend both, 
 parties " : yet where, in the pages of any 
 American patriot or in any Fourth of July 
 oration, can we find the glory of Washington 
 measured out as it is in a few vivid sentences 
 of the "Virginians"? 
 
 Wide as is the gulf which severs Freeman
 
 THE DIDACTIC VIEW 41 
 
 from Froude, it is not wider than that which 
 severs each of them from Seeley. On one point 
 alone do the three agree. Each, as we have 
 said, acknowledges what one may call the didactic 
 view of history. None of them would be content 
 with mere literary brilliancy nor with mere anti- 
 quarian correctness. Each of them accepts for 
 the historian the duties and responsibilities of a 
 political teacher ; but if the goal be the same, the 
 paths by which it is sought are widely divergent. 
 Freeman is content for the most part to lay 
 before the reader a clear and careful record of 
 events, and then leave him to draw his own 
 moral. With Froude, as we have said, the 
 events are so grouped as to illustrate clearly and 
 effectively a preconceived moral, while at the 
 same time the writer's sense of dramatic effect 
 and his artistic instinct at times keep his directly 
 didactic purpose in the background. Seeley is 
 of all the three the most definitely and avowedly 
 didactic. There are passages in which he seems 
 virtually to lay down the doctrine that no 
 historical learning is of value unless it bears 
 directly on the practical problems of the present 
 day. Nor is this merely an ultimate end to be 
 aimed at. It is to be the guiding principle of
 
 42 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 even elementary historical study. Here the views 
 of Seeley and Freeman respectively at once stand 
 out in direct opposition to one another. 
 
 " It is," says Seeley, in his inaugural lecture 
 at Cambridge, " most desirable that studies should 
 have an object not merely good but visibly and 
 plainly good. Compare in your own minds the 
 student who studies politics in the living time 
 and him who studies them in the mirror of 
 remote history. . . . That the history of the 
 past is useful the student takes upon trust ; 
 that contemporary history is useful must needs 
 be palpably evident to him. It is useful, like 
 past history, for the lessons it gives, the prin- 
 ciples it illustrates : but, unlike past history, 
 it is also indispensable to the politician for its 
 own sake. He who studies contemporary history, 
 therefore, at the same time masters the principles 
 and becomes familiar with the age, while he who 
 studies the past learns only the principles and 
 remains a stranger to the age. . . . And this 
 advantage being felt from the beginning cannot 
 fail to give the student of contemporary history 
 an ardour and an interest in his work which the 
 student of the past must want." 
 
 And the lecture ends with the declaration that, 
 "if I succeed in any measure, I hope to do so
 
 SEELEY 43 
 
 by the method I have now indicated, by giving 
 due precedence in the teaching of History to 
 the present over the past." Surely to all this 
 there is an obvious answer. It might be sound 
 doctrine if the Professor and his audience could 
 be transplanted to some happy region where 
 there were no elections, no leading articles, no 
 Union debates, no Palmerston and Canning 
 Clubs. How in the world is a lad of twenty 
 to apply the methods of scientific enquiry to 
 problems which as soon as he has begun to think 
 about them at all have been enveloped in an 
 atmosphere of passion and controversy, where at 
 every turn his prejudices are being stimulated 
 by a machinery created for that special purpose? 
 One would have thought that the very instances 
 by which Seeley illustrates the change of teach- 
 ing at which he aims would have brought home 
 that truth to him. 
 
 "We read in one sentence of the distress of 
 the Roman peasantry and of the agrarian law by 
 which Tiberius Gracchus tried to relieve them; 
 and few readers pause to consider what were the 
 possible solutions out of which Gracchus made his 
 choice. Surely it is much more stimulating to the 
 intellect to consider, as we have been doing for
 
 44 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 some months, the distress of the Irish peasantry, 
 and to conjecture the provisions of the agrarian 
 law by which Mr Gladstone yesterday evening 
 proposed to relieve it." 
 
 It seems astonishing that Seeley should have 
 overlooked the obvious truth that if University 
 teachers worked on the lines he suggested, every 
 professor would be regarded as an endowed 
 electioneering agent. The view might be un- 
 founded, but the suspicion would be only less 
 bad than the reality. 
 
 To that danger Freeman was fully alive, 
 perhaps for the very reason that political parti- 
 sanship had far more temptation for him than 
 it had for Seeley 's judicial and scientific mind. 
 As we have seen, when Freeman did touch 
 on a controversial question, he did not wholly 
 succeed in keeping clear of party issues ; but 
 he at least saw plainly that, if history is to be 
 of value as an educational instrument, it must 
 be kept free from political controversy, and that 
 it must therefore steer clear of those periods 
 which are of necessity fertile in controversy. 
 Seeley was, as it seems to us, too apt to trouble 
 himself with the views of imaginary or insig- 
 nificant opponents. He was haunted by the
 
 MEDIAEVAL HISTORY 45 
 
 dread of certain persons who valued the study 
 of the Middle Ages, not because of their con- 
 nection with modern history, but because of a 
 supposed "romantic" or "picturesque" contrast 
 to it. Freeman in his inaugural lecture at least 
 purged himself wholly of any such charge by his 
 defence of the study alike of so-called " ancient " 
 and of mediaeval history. "We must proclaim 
 that the real life of the history of those times 
 lies not in its separation from the affairs of our 
 own time, but in its close connection with them." 
 Freeman was probably unconsciously drawn 
 towards mediaeval history because it seemed less 
 likely to entangle him in those social and eco- 
 nomical issues with which, as we have seen, he 
 had little taste or aptitude for dealing. No doubt, 
 too, the class of questions on which the direct 
 connection of ancient, mediaeval, and modern 
 history depends are just those which attracted 
 Freeman and wherein he was strong. The out- 
 ward form of political institutions and the rela- 
 tions of nation to nation have their roots far back 
 in the past, and these were the matters which 
 interested Freeman more than the "Expansion 
 of England" or Irish Land Bills. But he also 
 had a belief, and we think a well-founded belief,
 
 46 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 that the man who has had a historical training 
 in the non-controversial periods will be the best 
 fitted to deal with the controversial periods. We 
 quite agree who can fail to agree? with Seeley 
 in the view that scientific political teaching is 
 sorely needed. People ordinarily do not seem to 
 perceive how great a danger it is that nine-tenths 
 of our political teaching comes from men who 
 are professedly and legitimately advocates; that 
 such training as our instructors can give us in 
 the science of government and the duties of 
 citizenship has at best to cloak itself under the 
 guise of some practical exhortation to voters ; 
 that when a writer does deal with practical politics 
 and yet detach himself from party issues, as did 
 the late Mr Bagehot, his voice sounds strange and 
 meaningless to an audience for which politician and 
 advocate have become synonyms. But so far as the 
 remedy lies, and we believe it largely does lie, in 
 historical teaching, we think that the longest way 
 round will prove the shortest way home, and that 
 more is to be hoped for from the methods advocated 
 by Freeman than from those advocated by Seeley. 
 To say that is a very different thing from 
 disparaging Seeley 's own work as a teacher. It 
 would be difficult to praise too highly such a
 
 THE "EXPANSION OF ENGLAND" 47 
 
 piece of work as the " Expansion of England." 
 It is not an epitome in the ordinary sense, but 
 the condensed production of a man whose mind 
 was fully stored with detail. How Seeley would 
 have fared if he had ever tried to produce a 
 continuous historical work on a larger scale one 
 may perhaps doubt. His mind turned of choice 
 almost entirely to general views of history. To 
 expend literary effort or to concentrate the atten- 
 tion of his readers in the telling of isolated 
 events would have been a violation of his own 
 principles. His "Life of Stein" also shows that 
 while Seeley did not lack insight into character, 
 the individual and biographical side of history 
 had no great attraction for him. 
 
 A very hearty admiration for Seeley 's own 
 historical work is not inconsistent with dissent 
 from some of the canons which he lays down 
 as to the teaching of history. We have already 
 touched upon his views on that point. They 
 are further set forth in two addresses to a 
 Historical Society at Birmingham which were 
 republished in Macmillan's Magazine, and in their 
 most definite and strongest form in the opening 
 of the "Expansion of England." Seeley 's teach- 
 ing on this point illustrates, we think, what
 
 48 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 Freeman's also illustrates in a slightly different 
 fashion the truth of Coleridge's doctrine, that 
 men are generally right in their assertions, but 
 wrong in their denials. No one can doubt the 
 importance of that side of history for which 
 Seeley pleads. We may doubt whether we can 
 afford to lose all those sides of history which 
 he by implication condemns. It is not altogether 
 easy to formulate Seeley's views on this point, 
 because they are largely couched in the rather 
 baffling shape of attacks on certain undescribed 
 and undefined opponents. And certainly, unless 
 the critic were constructing dummies for the 
 purpose of bowling them over, he had been 
 singularly unfortunate or shall we say, fortun- 
 ate ? in his experiences. Two persons are 
 supposed to deliver themselves with what Seeley 
 not inappropriately calls " quaint candour " in 
 this wise: 
 
 " * I was quite disappointed in that book,' says 
 one, 'for I was told it was of first-rate infallible 
 authority, but not at all. All I can say is, I 
 found it so dull that I could not read fifty pages.' 
 * That book,' says another, ' gave me quite a 
 surprise. I had been warned against it as utterly 
 untrustworthy and unsound, and did not intend
 
 TILTING AT WINDMILLS 49 
 
 to read it, but taking it up by accident I found 
 it most delightful, really quite like a romance, 
 and now I recommend it to every one I meet.' ' 
 
 One is tempted to say, like the rector addressing 
 his curate, who had just preached a controversial 
 sermon on the evidences of Christianity : " Very 
 good, Mr Jones. But next time get a better 
 infidel." Such people may exist. Mr Collins 
 may have become a widower and married Mary 
 Bennet, and Seeley may have met some of their 
 descendants. But if so, why could he not let 
 them go, and thank God he was rid of a fool ? 
 The real truth is that Seeley 's mind was so 
 dominated with the importance of one side of 
 history, that he almost brought himself to see 
 in every other department of history a dangerous 
 rival to be discredited and extirpated. In all his 
 general criticisms on history as it has been written, 
 there is in his tone something of " I alone serve 
 the Lord." Take such a passage as this in one 
 of the Birmingham addresses : 
 
 "It" (history) "is supposed to be romantic 
 and concerned only with remote times, because 
 literary historians for the success of their books 
 choose romantic subjects and dress them in poetical 
 
 D
 
 50 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 diction, and affect remote periods in which they 
 can escape from political controversy." 
 
 Does that fairly describe the attitude of Gibbon, 
 of Arnold, of Grote, of Thirlwall, of Sismondi, of 
 Ranke ? And if not, is not the critic tilting at 
 windmills ? 
 
 At times, indeed, Seeley fails to distinguish 
 friend from foe. He quotes, as a leading in- 
 stance of the perverse conceptions of history which 
 exist, a familiar passage in which Thackeray claims 
 for the Tatler and the Spectator the position 
 of historical authorities, and declares that the 
 real life of the time is to be found in them, not 
 in so-called history. 
 
 " Out of the fictitious book I get the exposition 
 of the life of this time, of the manners, of the 
 movement, of the dress. . . . The old times live 
 again, and I travel in the old country of England. 
 Can the heaviest historian do more for me ? " 
 
 What is that more than a humorist's character- 
 istically paradoxical statement of the truth that 
 historians have concerned themselves too little 
 with the facts of social and economical life ? 
 A man must have read " Esmond " and the 
 " Virginians " to very little purpose who does not
 
 POLITICS IN HISTORY 51 
 
 see that Thackeray's real conception of history 
 was something very much higher than a chronicle 
 of gossip and upholstery. 
 
 Nor is it quite easy to see what Seeley meant 
 when he told his hearers that 
 
 "English history as it is popularly related not 
 only has no distinct end, but leaves off in such 
 a gradual manner, growing feebler and feebler, 
 duller and duller, towards the close, that one 
 might suppose that England, instead of steadily 
 gaining in strength, had been for a century or so 
 dying of mere old age." 
 
 If historians have dealt inadequately and im- 
 perfectly with the history of their own times, it 
 is largely because they felt, and we believe felt 
 rightly, that history must stand clear of the 
 immediate and personal issues of politics, and 
 that it could not be written until it was evident 
 that the historian approached it judicially and 
 not as a political partisan. 
 
 In another point, we venture to think, excep- 
 tion may be taken to Seeley 's views. Like 
 Freeman, he was too apt to measure the wants 
 of other men's minds by the peculiarities of his 
 own.
 
 52 FREEMAN, FROUDE, AND SEELEY 
 
 " I cannot," are the words with which the 
 " Expansion of England " closes " I cannot make 
 history more interesting than it is except by 
 falsifying it ; and therefore when I meet a person 
 who does not find history interesting, it does not 
 occur to me to alter history, I try to alter him." 
 
 Is not the lecturer here, somewhat like another 
 distinguished Cambridge professor, "damning the 
 nature of things " ? It may be perfectly true 
 that the main interest of history lies, not in 
 episode nor in character, but in the sequence 
 and causation of events. But it does not follow 
 that the desire to have such episodes as have to 
 be told graphically, and such persons as necessarily 
 cross the stage drawn vividly, is otherwise than 
 wholesome, or that a writer sacrifices, as Seeley 
 would seem to imply, the real utility of his work 
 by gratifying that wish. Macaulay no doubt for- 
 feited much in his determination to be popular 
 at all hazards. But is it not a very distinct 
 triumph of art to have given the living interest 
 which he has given to a subject so apparently 
 unattractive as the recall and re -issue of the 
 silver currency? Take writers of a far more 
 austere and restrained type than Macaulay. Is 
 not Arnold's account of the Second Punic War
 
 THE ART OF HISTORY 53 
 
 all the more effective for such a passage as that 
 in which he tells of the death of Marcellus? 
 Does Mr Gardiner's work gain or lose by his 
 vivid presentment of the complex character of 
 Strafford, or by that effective use of details with 
 which he has painted such a graphic picture of 
 Montrose's great campaign? 
 
 Surely, too, there are times when it is the 
 proper province of the historian not merely to 
 inform the intelligence of his readers, but to 
 appeal to their emotions. It will be a bad day, 
 we think, when Napier and Kinglake are unread, 
 and when a historian no longer deems it part of 
 his task to "praise famous men and our fathers 
 that begat us."
 
 THE HISTORICAL WRITINGS OF 
 FRANCIS PARKMAN 1 
 
 THERE is probably no branch of the English- 
 speaking race wherein heredity and identity of 
 training have combined to produce a greater 
 definiteness of type, not indeed won at the 
 expense of individuality of character, than what 
 the late Dr Wendell Holmes has called the 
 Brahmin caste of New England. 
 
 To that branch Francis Parkman belonged. 
 He was the son of a Boston merchant, the 
 inheritor, to use the words of his brother New 
 Englander, Mr James Lowell, of wealth " patiently 
 
 1 " The Oregon Trail : Sketches of Prairie and Rocky Mountain 
 Life/' by Francis Parkman. London, 1893. 
 
 " The Conspiracy of Pontiac," by the Same. 
 
 " Pioneers of France in the New World," by the Same. 
 
 ' e The Jesuits in North America/' by the Same. 
 
 " La Salle and the Discovery of the Great West," by the Same. 
 
 " The Old Regime in Canada under Louis XIV.," by the Same. 
 
 " Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV.," by the 
 Same. 
 
 "A Half Century of Conflict" (2 vols.), by the Same. 
 
 " Montcalm and Wolfe" (2 vols.), by the Same. 
 
 54
 
 NEW ENGLAND 55 
 
 acquired in the wise fashion of (old) days." And 
 throughout Parkman's writings we can trace the 
 best moral and mental qualities of New England, 
 earnestness, directness, vigour, and a keen love 
 and admiration of moral good, freed indeed from 
 those harsher features which marred the perfection 
 and attractiveness of the earlier New England 
 character. How the thoughtfulness and definite- 
 ness of mind inherited from Puritan ancestors 
 and confirmed by the training of a Boston home 
 were combined with a wider culture, with graces 
 and an insight learned elsewhere, is best expressed 
 in the words of the writer quoted above : 
 
 " It is rare to find, as they are found in him, 
 a passion for the picturesque, a native predilection 
 for rapidity and dash of movement, in helpful 
 society with patience in drudgery and a scrupulous 
 deference to the rights of facts. . . . 
 
 " Though never putting on the airs of the 
 philosophic historian, or assuming his privilege 
 to be tiresome, Mr Parkman never loses sight of 
 those links of cause and effect which give to the 
 history of man a moral, and reduce the fortuitous 
 to the narrow limits where it properly belongs." 
 
 With a writer so self-restrained and free from 
 egotism as Parkman was, it is but by inference
 
 56 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 that we can trace the character of the man in 
 his historical work. Only in the first of his books 
 does the author himself directly come before us. 
 When he was little more than twenty years old, 
 Parkman had chosen the subject and was planning 
 the scheme of the work of his life. He had 
 to tell of the conflict of England and France 
 for the dominion of the New World. To do 
 that adequately he had to survey the battlefield, 
 and even more to study the habits and life of 
 those Indians whose precarious friendship and 
 more persistent and calculable hostility formed 
 so large an element in the conflict. The im- 
 mediate literary result was Parkman's first book, 
 " The Oregon Trail." In it is described a summer 
 spent on the prairies. Starting from Fort Leaven- 
 worth, on the Missouri, Parkman journeyed as 
 far as what is now the western boundary of 
 Colorado. For his main object of studying Indian 
 habits and character, he sacrificed comfort and 
 health and endangered life. For a portion of 
 his journey he sojourned in an Indian village, at 
 times without a single white companion, sharing 
 the meals and joining in the sports of his savage 
 hosts. Looked at merely as a book of travel 
 and adventure, " The Oregon Trail " is full of
 
 "THE OREGON TRAIL" 57 
 
 charm and interest. There is no attempt at 
 thrilling sketches of danger, yet throughout we 
 feel that we are following the fortunes of men 
 who carried their lives in their hands. There is 
 ever present to one the greed, the cruelty, the 
 suspiciousness, the childish levity and impulsive- 
 ness of the savages. But the book has other 
 and further interest. We see disclosed in it just 
 those qualities which we trace in Parkman's 
 matured historical work ; observation, balance of 
 mind, a critical and not unkindly humour, a 
 determination to repress personal prejudices and 
 to do justice to all men, even if such justice in- 
 volves the sacrifice of epigram and literary effect. 
 In " The Oregon Trail," too, we see the education 
 of the future historian, not only in method, but 
 in the substance of his subject. More than once 
 in Parkman's writings can we recognise, in descrip- 
 tions of typical scenes and episodes of Indian life, 
 the fruit of his personal experiences here recorded. 
 The real effect, however, is something wider and 
 deeper than is revealed in isolated touches. It 
 gives definiteness and truth to Parkman's sketches 
 of Indian character. If " The Oregon Trail " had 
 never been given to the world, we should still 
 feel that Parkman had learned the Indians from
 
 58 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 life, not from books. His savage is never a 
 creature of unmixed devilry, still less of senti- 
 mental and impossible virtue. Therein Parkman 
 resembles another American historian, not unlike 
 him in original habit of mind, and trained by 
 the same influences, Mr Theodore Roosevelt. In 
 each, Indian life and frontier warfare have a reality 
 which mere reading could never give, and which 
 could only be reached by a writer who had 
 been himself in contact with the scenes that he 
 describes. 
 
 Unhappily in Parkman's case, this gain was 
 bought at a heavy price. The hardships which 
 he met with during his summer in the wilder- 
 ness wrought injuries to health which were never 
 repaired. Nerves and eyesight suffered in a way 
 which made continuous literary exertion impossible, 
 and the whole of Parkman's historical work was 
 done through effort and at the cost of suffering 
 which made it heroic. A knowledge of that fact 
 makes it almost impossible to criticise the result 
 coolly and judicially. It assuredly goes far to 
 explain Parkman's most pronounced failing, a 
 certain lack of cohesion and continuity which at 
 times mars his work. It enhances our admira- 
 tion of some among his special merits, his kindly
 
 AMERICAN HISTORIANS 59 
 
 cheerfulness, his facility of style, his laborious 
 and unsparing research, the entire absence of the 
 tone of the querulous controversialist, too common 
 among modern historians. 
 
 With deductions for the inevitable roughness 
 and incompleteness of a generalisation, we may 
 divide American historians into three classes. 
 There are what Mr Charles Adams effectively, 
 if not very gracefully, calls the " filiopietistic " 
 school, those who sing the sacred legend of 
 America and with whom America means little 
 more than New England. That school began in 
 the last century with such comparatively simple 
 chronicles as Belknap's " History of New Hamp- 
 shire" and Trumbull's "History of Connecticut." 
 It culminates in far more learned and elaborate 
 writers, such as Bancroft and Palfrey. Widely 
 differing from them in temper and method are 
 the cosmopolitans, as we may call them, Prescott, 
 Motley, and Kirk, who answer somewhat in litera- 
 ture to the Europeanised American of social life, 
 distracted from the interests of his own country 
 by the mellower associations and, perchance 
 only in semblance, the more picturesque scenes 
 and incidents of the Old World. Lastly, there 
 is yet in growth a school of writers, applying
 
 60 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 to the problems of colonial history methods of 
 research as laborious and canons of historical evi- 
 dence as exacting as any recognised by historical 
 writers of the Old World. A few of this school, 
 such as Mr Henry Adams, Mr Rhodes, and Mr 
 Lodge, have given us histories on a large scale. 
 Its results have more often taken the form of 
 careful monographs, too special in subject to 
 appeal to the interest of the generality of English 
 readers. In some of these writers, such as Mr 
 Henry Adams and Mr Lodge, a certain portion 
 of the spirit which animated Bancroft and Palfrey 
 has lingered on, showing itself not so much in any 
 exaggerated reverence for the founders of New 
 England as in occasional outbursts of vehement 
 anti- English feeling, which seem as inexplicable 
 and as much out of place in such writers as they 
 were in Mr Lowell. In others, such as Mr 
 Charles Adams and Mr Ferguson, the writings of 
 the patriotic New England school have begotten 
 a somewhat violent reaction. 
 
 The native independence and originality of 
 Parkman's mind, perhaps even more his choice of 
 a subject, forbid us to place him in any of these 
 groups. Yet he has affinities with all three. In 
 mere outward style he, in common with Motley,
 
 AMERICAN HISTORIANS 61 
 
 shows the influence of Prescott. There is the 
 same tendency to diffuseness with a consequent 
 loss of emphasis. Parkman's ornament is hardly 
 ever florid, as Motley's too often was. It is 
 occasionally out of place. In Parkman, too, the 
 self-repression begotten of Puritan descent and 
 confirmed by Boston training, existed in happy 
 conjunction with a keen admiration for the width 
 and diversity of old-world culture. Yet with all 
 this he is as loyal to America and to New England 
 as Bancroft or Palfrey. The main burden of his 
 stoiy is to tell how the English race secured 
 the keys of the North American continent. The 
 course of his tale is often obscured by inevitable 
 digressions ; the tide ebbs and flows, or breaks 
 away to the right and left. But the leading 
 thread of interest is ever there. The part which 
 New England plays is always conspicuous and 
 in the main honourable, and the patriotic satis- 
 faction with which Parkman tells that part of 
 his story is in no wise concealed. Yet he never 
 forgets what he owes to England. If he is often 
 compelled to be severe to British administrators, 
 to the British nation he is always just and even 
 sympathetic. The praise of Wolfe, of Forbes, 
 and of Shirley is measured out in no grudging
 
 62 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 spirit. The writer waxes as keenly enthusiastic 
 over the fall of Quebec as he does over the 
 capture of Louisburg by Pepperell and his New 
 England militia, or over the many isolated deeds 
 of heroism wrought in frontier skirmishes, and 
 in the defence of forts or farmhouses against 
 Frenchmen and Hurons. And when we pass 
 from method to substance, Parkman's laborious 
 studies among original authorities, mainly among 
 manuscripts in the French archives, are fully up 
 to the most exacting standard laid down by 
 modern advocates of original research. All that 
 they could find to complain of is that he does 
 not consider it enough for a historian to present 
 bald undigested details, and claims no exemption 
 from those obligations of form and method which 
 are acknowledged by his brethren in every other 
 branch of the craft. Not long ago we read in 
 an American historical magazine a criticism of Mr 
 Hodgkin. His work, we are told, " is amateurish 
 from beginning to end. The traces of accurate 
 historical method are only a surface beneath 
 which we constantly perceive the good old- 
 fashioned literary man, who writes history as an 
 elegant accomplishment." We have little doubt 
 that this gentleman would extend his condemna-
 
 THE ART OF HISTORY 63 
 
 tion to Parkman and find in him "the good 
 old - fashioned literary man," since he, like Mr 
 Hodgkin, recognised the claim of style and finish, 
 and enjoyed sketching a character or describing 
 a stirring incident. Posterity will probably think 
 none the worse of him that he was not of those 
 who would stir up one of the noblest provinces 
 in the kingdom of letters to rebel against its 
 sovereign. 
 
 The likeness that we have just suggested is 
 something more than a mere superficial one. In 
 the American and in the English writer we find 
 the same simplicity, directness, and wholesome- 
 ness of mind, the same freedom from the slightest 
 tendency to paradox, and the same width of 
 sympathy. There is a likeness, too, in their choice 
 of subjects. Each is always close to the great 
 highway of the world's history as generally known 
 to historical students, yet often not actually in it ; 
 and thus each is telling a tale which would have 
 become provincial, had it not fallen into the hands 
 of a writer gifted with wide culture and sound 
 historical scholarship. 
 
 The labours of Parkman, extending over a 
 period of more than forty years, are embodied in 
 the series of monographs of which the titles are
 
 64 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 prefixed to this article. The first written, "The 
 Conspiracy of Pontiac," is, somewhat singularly, 
 the last in real order of time. It is, in fact, 
 described by Parkman himself as a sequel, not 
 an integral part of his work. His main subject 
 was the conflict of England and France for the 
 dominion of North America. That issue was 
 settled when Wolfe prevailed on the heights of 
 Abraham. Yet the Conspiracy of Pontiac is not 
 altogether an isolated or detached episode ; it 
 was the last systematic and connected effort of 
 the Indian to beat back the wave of European 
 invasion. The struggle of Englishmen against 
 Frenchmen is blended at every turn with the 
 battle between civilisation and barbarism, and 
 Parkman's work would hardly have been com- 
 plete if he had ignored the last act in that drama 
 which made it possible for the English race to 
 extend itself to the Pacific. 
 
 Parkman's work really begins with " The 
 Pioneers of France in the New World." In that 
 are set forth the hideous tale of the treachery and 
 cruelty whereby Spain extirpated the Huguenot 
 colony in Florida ; and the stirring histories of 
 Cartier, the first explorer of the St Lawrence, of 
 Champlain, the founder of the first European
 
 FROUDE IN THE NEW WORLD 65 
 
 settlement in Canada, and of those devoted men 
 and women who sacrificed lives of lettered ease or 
 of fashionable luxury to carry the message of the 
 Cross into a frost-bound wilderness. The writer's 
 powers as a story-teller have full play in dealing 
 with a subject well - nigh as rich in romantic 
 incident as the Spanish conquests, and with men 
 as strenuous and self-devoted as the pilgrims of 
 the Mayflower. 
 
 The next of the series, " The Jesuits in Canada," 
 carries the tale of the Indian missions down to 
 1670. It also reveals to us the two great Indian 
 powers who entered as factors into the strife 
 between France and England. There stood on 
 one side that ill-compacted group of tribes, belong- 
 ing to the Algonquin division of the Indian race 
 and known collectively as Hurons, who occupied 
 Canada. France, through her missions, won an 
 ascendency over them which did nothing to unfit 
 them for serving as the instruments of an un- 
 scrupulous and ruthless policy. Over against them 
 stood the one unit among all the Indian races 
 or tribes which had enough fixity of organisation 
 and continuity of purpose to have any calculable 
 and abiding influence, either as friend or foe, 
 
 the Iroquois confederacy. As a rule, an Indian 
 
 E
 
 66 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 alliance was a broken reed, from the incurable 
 levity and instability of the savage character, and 
 the lack of any central authority which could be 
 effectively responsible for the policy of the whole 
 body. The alliance with the Five Nations was 
 at times an embarrassment rather than a help to 
 the English, but from precisely opposite causes. 
 The Iroquois alone among the Indians could fight 
 or stand aloof, not from an impulse of savage fury 
 or in a fit of sullen indifference or discontent, but 
 in conformity with a deliberate and settled policy. 
 They alone saw that the complete ascendency of 
 either civilised race meant the ultimate exclusion 
 of the savage from his forests and hunting-grounds. 
 Parkman's next work, " La Salle and the 
 Discovery of the Great West," deals with an 
 isolated episode in Canadian history, but one of 
 overwhelming interest and importance. A single 
 daring French explorer conceived the scheme of 
 linking Canada to the mouth of the Mississippi 
 by a continuous line of French occupation. In 
 the story of La Salle we read, as summed up in 
 a prerogative instance, what France might have 
 achieved in the New World, and how and why 
 she failed. La Salle's project would have hemmed 
 in the disconnected, ill-governed, and unmilitary
 
 67 
 
 colonies of England in a fashion which would 
 have made expansion westward impossible. 
 
 The next two books in the series, "The Old 
 Regime " and " Count Frontenac," tell clearly 
 and forcibly so much of the administration and 
 economical history of Canada as it is needful for 
 us to know, if we would understand how she 
 fared in the last great struggle against England. 
 That struggle itself is told in " Montcalm and 
 Wolfe." No one can read Parkman without see- 
 ing that he had an enjoyment of dramatic effect, 
 albeit strictly kept in check by a severe and exact- 
 ing love of truth. It is fortunate that he was 
 able to gratify that taste without any sacrifice of 
 facts in grouping the characters for the final act 
 of his drama. The two protagonists are the real 
 and not merely the titular heroes. Canada, alter- 
 nately neglected and overgoverned, and through 
 all misgoverned, handed over on the one hand to 
 corrupt speculators, and on the other to officials 
 so fettered that all freedom of action or sense 
 of individual responsibility was impossible, fell 
 a prey to inanition and internal dissension. By 
 the time that the last struggle with England 
 came, it was past the power of any civil adminis- 
 trator to repair the past faults, or of any military
 
 68 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 chief to atone for them ; but the daring and soldier- 
 ship of Montcalm illumined the fall of Canada. 
 " Si Pergama dextra defendi possent etiam hac 
 defensa fuissent " might have been written on his 
 tomb. Yet, moribund as Canada was, it seemed 
 a well-nigh hopeless task to concentrate the power 
 of the English colonies for the final blow. Wolfe 
 did not, like Washington at a later day, wear 
 down by steady persistence the discord, lethargy, 
 and disaffection of the colonial governments ; but 
 only his daring genius, animated by the kindred 
 spirit of Pitt, could have won success independent 
 of the grudging and half-hearted aid of the colonies. 
 Parkman's last work, " Half a Century of 
 Conflict," bridges over the period between " Count 
 Frontenac" and "Montcalm and Wolfe." The 
 writer himself says of it, apologetically, that 
 
 "the nature of the subject does not permit an 
 unbroken thread of narrative, and the unity of 
 the book lies in its being throughout, in one form 
 or another, an illustration of the singularly con- 
 trasted characters and methods of the rival claimants 
 to North America." 
 
 Parkman's method of narrative, not by a con- 
 tinuous history but by a series of monographs,
 
 ACADIA 69 
 
 brings with it obvious drawbacks. It may have 
 been in a measure induced by that physical 
 necessity which in so unhappy a fashion made 
 continuity of work impossible. It throws on the 
 writer the responsibility of a somewhat arbitrary 
 choice of the incidents and characters which 
 shall be brought into prominence. That danger 
 was minimised by the catholicity of Parkman's 
 interests and the sober, judicial balance of his 
 mind. Another objection is that there must 
 almost inevitably be overlappings and repetitions. 
 Thus the expulsion of the Acadians is told twice 
 over with some detail, once in "Montcalm and 
 Wolfe," and once in " Half a Century of Conflict." 
 The mention of Acadia suggests a passing 
 remark. No better instance can be found of 
 Parkman's fairness and independence of mind 
 than the manner in which he treats the Acadian 
 question. He scatters to the winds those myths 
 of a pastoral people endowed with peculiar virtues 
 and charms of character, which have so long done 
 duty, not only in romance, but even in serious 
 history. The Acadians, as Parkman describes 
 them, were kindly, industrious, moral folk, boorish 
 in habits and slavishly superstitious. That they 
 were the victims of great and undeserved cruelty
 
 70 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 cannot be doubted ; but Mr Parkman clearly 
 transfers the responsibility for their suffering from 
 the English Ministry to those priestly diplomatists 
 who, in defiance alike of the letter and the spirit 
 of the Treaty of Utrecht, insisted on making 
 Acadia an outpost of France : 
 
 " Although," Parkman says, " by the twelfth 
 article of the Treaty of Utrecht, France had 
 solemnly declared the Acadians to be British 
 subjects, the Government of Louis XV. intrigued 
 continually to turn them from subjects into 
 enemies. Before me is a mass of English docu- 
 ments on Acadian affairs from the Peace of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle to the catastrophe of 1755, and 
 above a thousand pages of French official papers 
 from the archives of Paris, memorials, reports, 
 and secret correspondence, relating to the same 
 matters. With the help of these and some 
 collateral lights, it is not difficult to make a 
 correct diagnosis of the political disease that 
 ravaged this miserable country. Of a multitude 
 of proofs only a few can be given here, but these 
 will suffice. 
 
 " It was not that the Acadians had been ill-used 
 by the English : the reverse was the case. They 
 had been left in free exercise of their worship as 
 stipulated by treaty. It is true that from time
 
 ACADIA 71 
 
 to time there were loud complaints from French 
 officials that religion was in danger, because certain 
 priests had been rebuked, arrested, brought before 
 the Council at Halifax, suspended from their 
 functions, or required on pain of banishment to 
 swear that they would do nothing against the 
 interests of King George. Yet such action on the 
 part of the provincial authorities seems, without 
 a single exception, to have been the consequence 
 of misconduct on the part of the priest, in opposing 
 the Government and stirring his flock to disaffec- 
 tion." ("Montcalm and Wolfe," vol. i. pp. 94, 95.) 
 
 Such, seen in the sober light of history, were 
 the events which culminated in the tragedy best 
 known to many English readers through the pages 
 of Evangeline. 
 
 It was not Parkman's habit to indulge over- 
 much in historical generalisations. For the most 
 part he lets events and persons speak for them- 
 selves, and if he acts as chorus it is in an under- 
 tone. Yet few historians have succeeded better in 
 making their work the exposition and illustration 
 of broad general principles. We never lose sight 
 of the vital difference which underlay French and 
 English colonisation. The history of the English 
 colonies is the history of corporations. The life of
 
 72 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 the community is always stronger, fuller, richer in 
 possibilities than the life of any individual within 
 it. In Canada the case is wholly different. There 
 we see men of dominant genius and energy, such 
 as Cartier, La Salle, Frontenac, and Montcalm, 
 struggling ineffectually and with a tragic sense 
 of impotence against the numbing influence of 
 political conditions. Opposed to them we have 
 a centralising despotism, unintelligent, wholly 
 unsympathetic, endeavouring to force social and 
 economical life into certain fixed moulds, wanting 
 continuity even in its errors, permitting and even 
 undesignedly stimulating the grossest official cor- 
 ruption. We see ever conspicuous and active a 
 third power, that of the Church, at times acting 
 independently and infusing into the life of the 
 colony an element of genuine heroism and self- 
 devotion, at times lending itself as the resolute 
 and unscrupulous instrument of an aggressive 
 foreign policy, at times joining hands with the 
 central power, and in the domain of morals and 
 manners exercising a tyranny as harsh, as petty, 
 and as interfering as any that New England ever 
 suffered from in the days of Endicott and Dudley. 
 The reader of Parkman is never allowed to 
 forget one essential difference between Canada
 
 CANADA 73 
 
 and the English colonies. The latter were often 
 exasperating in their mutual jealousy, their narrow 
 provincialism, their total inability to take a wide 
 and statesmanlike view of imperial questions. 
 But intrigues begotten of personal ambition or 
 greed play a very small part in their political life. 
 Where we find energy and intelligence, whether 
 in officials or in private citizens, we usually find 
 them under the control of public spirit. In 
 Canada, on the other hand, self - seeking was 
 rampant in everyday official life : men such as 
 Frontenac, who morally and mentally rose far 
 above the ordinary official standard, were not 
 wholly free from the taint. 
 
 One body of men, and one only, stand wholly 
 free from this charge. Never was courage more 
 devoted or toil more disinterested than in the early 
 Jesuit missionaries commemorated by Parkman. 
 Of the hideous perils which beset their path he 
 says forcibly but with no exaggeration, " Not the 
 most hideous nightmare of a fevered brain could 
 transcend in terror the real and waking perils 
 with which they" (the Iroquois) "beset the path of 
 these intrepid priests." A passage which follows 
 in which Parkman extenuates the ferocity of the 
 savages is an instance of his judicial fairness,
 
 74 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 characteristic enough to be worth quoting. They 
 were, he says, 
 
 "not so bereft of the instincts of humanity as 
 at first sight appeared. An inexorable severity 
 towards enemies was a very essential element in 
 their conception of the character of the warrior. 
 Pity was a cowardly weakness, at which their 
 pride revolted. This, joined to their thirst for 
 applause and their dread of ridicule, made them 
 smother every movement of compassion, and con- 
 spired with their native fierceness to give a 
 character of unrelenting cruelty rarely equalled." 
 
 And Parkman supports this view by giving in 
 the course of his narrative several instances where 
 prisoners, once spared the ordeal of torture and 
 adopted into the tribe, were treated with a kind- 
 ness which permanently attached them to their 
 new associates. 
 
 Parkman's admiration for the fortitude of the 
 early Canadian missionaries, such as Brebeuf and 
 Lallemand, does not blind him to the narrowness 
 and inadequacy of their aims. Their whole policy 
 was based on a simple definite theory. The 
 unbaptized heathen was certainly doomed to ever- 
 lasting fire : once baptized, he was at the least
 
 JESUITS IN CANADA 75 
 
 on the road to salvation. It would be unfair to 
 say of the first Canadian missionaries, whatever 
 might be the case with their successors, that they 
 neglected the morals of their converts. They 
 protested against cannibalism, against the incanta- 
 tions of the medicine-man over the sick, against 
 dances savouring of devil-worship, and indeed 
 in some cases against what would seem to have 
 been harmless and wholesome amusements. They 
 did something to mitigate the ferocity of their 
 converts. Under the influence of his Jesuit 
 teachers, as Parkman says 
 
 "the savage burned his enemies alive, it is true, 
 but he rarely ate them, neither did he torment 
 them with the same deliberation and persistency. 
 He was a savage still, but not so often a devil." 
 
 Two things also we must remember. The 
 cruelties of the Indians were not so remote from 
 the ideas and practice of civilised men in that 
 age as they are now. Moreover, the missionaries 
 accepted, not formally, but as realities and work- 
 ing principles, the emptiness of this life and the 
 worthlessness of the body. 
 
 " What," Parkman asks, " were a few hours of 
 suffering to an eternity of bliss or woe ? If the
 
 76 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 victim were heathen, these brief pangs were 
 but the faint prelude of an undying flame ; 
 and if a Christian, they were the fiery portal 
 of heaven." 
 
 The same feeling made the Canadian mission- 
 ary heedless of the material prosperity and the 
 safety of his converts. Once let them accept 
 baptism, then it was probably well if they fell 
 victims to starvation, to small-pox or an Iroquois 
 tomahawk, before they could relapse. It is clear 
 that missions based on these principles, let them 
 be never so successful spiritually, were wholly 
 profitless or even hurtful to the material interests 
 of the colony. In the latter part of " The Jesuits 
 in Canada," Parkman describes the mission station 
 which sprung up in the Huron country about 
 the middle of the seventeenth century. He tells, 
 too, how the labours of the missionaries did but 
 intensify the wrath and facilitate the task of the 
 still heathen Iroquois, how priest and convert 
 alike fell victims, and how, in a happy hour for 
 the New England colonies, the Huron nation was 
 virtually annihilated. 
 
 Missionaries of the heroic and high-minded 
 type of Brebeuf and Lallemand were succeeded
 
 THE INDIANS 77 
 
 by men of altogether lower aims. As the seven- 
 teenth century advanced the "epoch of saint and 
 martyr passed away, and henceforth we find the 
 Canadian Jesuit less and less an apostle, more 
 and more an explorer, a man of science and a 
 politician." The early missionaries may not have 
 striven to the utmost to eradicate the ferocity 
 of their converts. It is not too much to say 
 that in many cases their successors deliberately 
 stimulated that ferocity and utilised it as a 
 political instrument. As Parkman says : 
 
 " These so-called missions were but nests of 
 baptized savages, who wore the crucifix instead 
 of the medicine - bag, and were encouraged by 
 the Government for purposes of war." 
 
 And here one may not unfitly consider a 
 question never formally discussed by Parkman, 
 but on which various passages in his writings 
 throw ample light, the extent to which French- 
 men in a responsible position were to blame for 
 the atrocities of their Indian allies. In the face 
 of the facts stated by Parkman in various passages 
 it is scarcely possible to give a verdict of ac- 
 quittal. To employ the savages on their own 
 terms, that is to say, to let them burn and torture
 
 78 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 their native prisoners and sack English villages, 
 massacring women and children, was the settled 
 policy not only of civil governors like Frontenac, 
 but of ecclesiastics such as Piquet and Rasle. 
 Parkman gives an extract from the diary of a 
 French officer, Villieu, in which he thus announces 
 the designs of his Indian allies : " They mean 
 to divide into bands of four or five and knock 
 people on the head by surprise, which cannot fail 
 to produce a good effect." This was written 
 in 1694, when Villieu, in command of a party 
 of Indians, attacked the English settlement of 
 Oyster River, with the result thus described by 
 Parkman : " A hundred and four persons, chiefly 
 women and children half-naked from their beds, 
 were tomahawked, shot, or killed by slower and 
 more painful methods." The performance ended 
 with a mass said by Father Thury, a Jesuit who 
 accompanied the party. Parkman further quotes 
 a passage from a despatch by Piquet, an eminent 
 French missionary in the middle of the eighteenth 
 century, wherein he exults over the prospect that 
 an Indian party under his command will do their 
 utmost (tout entreprendre] against the settlers in 
 Virginia. That French priests clearly knew what 
 that " utmost " meant is shown by a private letter
 
 THE INDIANS 79 
 
 from one of them written five years later (1757), 
 and quoted by Parkman : " They kill all they meet ; 
 and, after having abused the women and maidens, 
 they slaughter or burn them." And one is un- 
 willingly forced to admit that the massacre which 
 followed the surrender of Fort William Henry 
 was largely due to Montcalm's supineness in 
 guarding against the ferocity of his Indian allies. 
 It may be urged that connivance at such practices 
 was a needful price to pay for that Indian alliance 
 without which Canada could not exist. The plea 
 at best amounts to this, that a savage was cheaper 
 than a civilised soldier. In one set of cases at 
 least the attitude of the French went beyond 
 connivance. We more than once find them hand- 
 ing over Iroquois prisoners to their savage allies, 
 with the certainty of torture before them. 
 
 There at least one may reasonably doubt 
 whether the action of the French was not a 
 blunder as well as a crime. Hardly any price 
 would have been too heavy for the French to 
 pay which could have detached the Iroquois from 
 the English. The Five Nations were, as Parkman 
 points out, the one obstacle which prevented the 
 secure extension of French power along the valleys 
 of the Missouri and the Ohio. More than once
 
 80 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 that obstacle was all but overcome. In 1645 all 
 seemed tending to alliance, thanks to the devo- 
 tion and astuteness of a Jesuit missionary, Father 
 Jogues, when the Hurons in their jealousy per- 
 suaded the Iroquois that a box in which the 
 priest carried his necessaries contained the small- 
 pox, ready to be launched in their midst. Forty- 
 three years later the alliance was again frustrated 
 by the unscrupulous craft of a Huron chief, nick- 
 named the Rat, to whom an Italian diplomatist 
 of the sixteenth century could have taught little. 
 He heard that an Iroquois embassy was on its 
 way to the French outpost, Fort Frontenac. 
 Determined to thwart it, he laid an ambush, 
 slew one of the ambassadors, and made prisoners 
 of the rest. He then told them that the French 
 commander had instructed him to lie in wait for 
 an Iroquois war - party. When they explained 
 their errand, the Rat broke out into well-acted 
 indignation at the treachery of which he had 
 been made the instrument, and sent the prisoners 
 to their homes with presents and fair words. The 
 deception was undiscovered. As a consequence, 
 before the year was out an Iroquois party of 
 fifteen hundred warriors invaded Canada, ravaging 
 and massacring up to the very walls of Montreal.
 
 THE INDIANS 81 
 
 Yet, as Parkman points out, the hostility of 
 the Iroquois always just stopped short of actual 
 destruction. 
 
 "Canada was indispensable to them. The 
 four upper nations of the league soon became 
 dependent on her for supplies, and all the nations 
 alike appear at a very early period to have con- 
 ceived the policy in which they afterwards dis- 
 tinctly acted, of balancing the rival settlements 
 of the Hudson and the St Lawrence the one 
 against the other. They would torture, but not 
 kill. It was but rarely that in fits of fury they 
 struck their hatchets at the brain, and thus the 
 bleeding and gasping colony lingered on in 
 torment." 
 
 In another way, as Mr Parkman points out, 
 the dependence on the Indian alliance was fatal 
 to the colonies, and went far to account for 
 the different fortunes of France and England in 
 America. The need for securing the good- will 
 of the savage gave prominence to two classes, 
 the missionary and the fur-trader, and neither 
 did anything to further what in a new country 
 is an essential condition of well-being, the growth 
 of population. The missionaries had no wives : 
 
 the traders left theirs at home or took squaws 
 
 F
 
 82 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 whose half-savage progeny did nothing for the 
 colony. Not only that, but the trapper and fur- 
 trader themselves drifted into semi- barbarism, and 
 lost all the qualities most needed in a colonist. 
 The extension of a peaceful, settled agricultural 
 community was adverse alike to their tastes and 
 their interests. Thus we find that one of the 
 main influences which thwarted La Salle's project 
 was the jealousy felt by fur- traders to what they 
 deemed his encroachments. 
 
 Moreover, the material resources of the French 
 colonies were not such as enabled them to enjoy 
 a monopoly of the Indian trade. Their attempts 
 to make it a basis for the Indian alliance were 
 constantly thwarted by English traders. The 
 latter were less enterprising than their French 
 rivals ; but they had wealthier communities at 
 their back, and they were free from the restric- 
 tions with which the Canadian Government 
 harassed its subjects at every turn, and thus 
 were able to supply better goods. 
 
 Parkman's readers are never allowed to forget 
 that if the relations of Canada to her savage 
 neighbour were so largely the source of her weak- 
 ness, yet it was largely the inherent vices of her 
 internal system which made her so dependent on
 
 CANADIAN GOVERNMENT 83 
 
 those relations. The whole civil system of Canada 
 rested on a jealous division of power and avoid- 
 ance of individual responsibility. What the main 
 features of that system were is best told in 
 Parkman's own words : 
 
 " The Governor-General and the Intendant of 
 Canada answered to those of a French province. 
 The Governor, excepting in the earliest period 
 of the colony, was a military noble, in most cases 
 bearing a title, and sometimes of high rank. The 
 Intendant, as in France, was usually drawn from 
 the gens de robe, or legal class. 
 
 " The Intendant was virtually a spy on the 
 Governor- General, of whose proceedings and of 
 everything else that took place he was required 
 to make report. Every year he wrote to the 
 Minister of State one, two, three, or four letters, 
 often forty or fifty pages long, filled with the 
 secrets of the colony, political and personal, great 
 and small, set forth with a minuteness often 
 interesting, often instructive, and often exces- 
 sively tedious. The Governor, too, wrote letters 
 of pitiless length; and each of the colleagues 
 was jealous of the letters of the other. In truth, 
 their relations to each other were so critical, and 
 perfect harmony so rare, that they might almost 
 be described as natural enemies." (" The Old 
 Regime," pp. 265, 266.)
 
 84 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 The full evils of the system were well illustrated 
 when Canada was in the very crisis of her fate. 
 It is clear that Vaudreuil, the Intendant, a born 
 Canadian, looked with jealousy on Montcalm as 
 a Frenchman and a newcomer. He did not 
 actually venture to say that Canada could have 
 defended herself with her own militia ; but he 
 made it clear that he looked on the regular troops 
 as at best a necessary evil. The difficulty was 
 complicated, though probably not made worse by 
 the difficulty of communication with France. We 
 read how 
 
 "Frontenac rarely began a new quarrel till the 
 autumn vessels had sailed for France, because a 
 full year must then elapse before his adversaries 
 could send their complaints to the king, and six 
 months more before the king could send back 
 his answer. The Governor had been heard to 
 say on one of these occasions that he should now 
 be master for eighteen months, subject only to 
 answering with his head for what he might do." 
 
 Another element of discord was to be found 
 in the presence of a stirring and ambitious priest- 
 hood, owning no effective central authority. How 
 devoted men and women formed at Montreal a 
 community of secular priests and of nuns wholly
 
 RELIGIOUS FACTIONS 85 
 
 independent of the Jesuit missions, and sub- 
 sequently affiliated to the French seminary of 
 St Sulpice, is vividly told by Parkman in "The 
 Jesuits in Canada" and "The Old Regime." But 
 his admiration for the heroic spirit of self-sacrifice 
 which animated these efforts does not prevent 
 him from seeing their weaker side and the discord 
 which they brought in their train. 
 
 "Though a unit against heresy, the pious 
 founders of New France were far from unity 
 among themselves. To the thinking of Jesuits, 
 Montreal was a government within a government, 
 a wheel within a wheel. The rival Sulpitian 
 settlement was, in their eyes, an element of dis- 
 organisation, adverse to the disciplined harmony 
 of the Canadian Church, which they would fain 
 have seen, with its focus at Quebec, radiating 
 light unrefracted to the uttermost parts of the 
 colony ; that is to say, they wished to control it 
 unchecked through their ally, the bishop. 
 
 "The emigrants, then, were received with a 
 studious courtesy, which veiled but thinly a stiff 
 and persistent opposition. The bishop and the 
 Jesuits were especially anxious to prevent the 
 La Fleche nuns from establishing themselves at 
 Montreal, where they would form a separate com- 
 munity under Sulpitian influence, and in place
 
 86 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 of the newly - arrived Sisters they wished to 
 substitute nuns from the H6tel Dieu at Quebec, 
 who would be under their own control. That 
 which most strikes the non - Catholic reader 
 throughout this affair is the constant reticence and 
 dissimulation practised, not only between Jesuits 
 and Montrealists, but among the Montrealists 
 themselves. Their self-devotion, great as it was, 
 was fairly matched by their disingenuousness." 
 ("The Old Regime," p. 48.) 
 
 The priestly influence with which Canada was 
 permeated was exercised almost as unsparingly 
 as in New England, in subjecting social life to 
 severe discipline, and in repressing individuality 
 of taste and character. The narrow asceticism 
 of the Massachusetts ministry had, as Parkman 
 shows, its match in the Canadian priesthood. 
 We find La Motte - Cadaillac, the founder of 
 Detroit, complaining that "nobody can live here 
 but simpletons and slaves of the ecclesiastical 
 dominion." Married women, he says, were 
 whipped by order of the priests for attending 
 balls and masquerades ; houses were forcibly shut 
 at nine in the evening ; ladies were excluded from 
 the Holy Table because they had worn unseemly 
 finery. Another victim, a young French officer,
 
 RELIGIOUS DISCIPLINE 87 
 
 complains that he "can neither go to a pleasure 
 party, nor play a game of cards, nor visit the 
 ladies without the cur knowing it and preaching 
 about it publicly from his pulpit." And he 
 describes a domiciliary visit paid to his lodgings 
 by his own cure, who, finding a fine copy of 
 Petronius on the table, summarily expurgated the 
 offending author by tearing out nearly all the 
 leaves. One may allow something for rhetorical 
 exaggeration in both these witnesses ; yet even 
 so one cannot but see how exasperating such 
 restraint must have been to the pleasure-loving 
 French temper, confirmed by the adventurous 
 freedom of colonial life. 
 
 In this minute and exacting system of discipline, 
 the clergy did but apply to the one department 
 of morals the same principles on which the civil 
 government of Canada dealt with the whole fabric 
 of social and economical life. Colbert had intro- 
 duced into the administration of Canada a system 
 of minute and persistent government interference. 
 Parkman, trained in the free life of New England 
 yet a man of the world, free from any doctrinaire 
 devotion to abstract principles, was eminently well 
 qualified to deal with this question. In " The Old 
 Regime " he brings together a number of instances
 
 88 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 of the system of paternal government. One 
 Intendant, specially moved by the desire and 
 determination to play Providence, ordered that no 
 farmer should move into Quebec under penalty of 
 a fine of fifty livres and confiscation of goods and 
 furniture ; and by the same edict to let houses or 
 rooms in Quebec to people coming in from the 
 country was made penal under a fine of a hundred 
 livres. Another Intendant, thinking that horses 
 were too many and sheep and. cattle too few, put 
 out an order limiting every inhabitant to two 
 horses and one foal. All above that were to be 
 destroyed by a fixed date. Among its other func- 
 tions the Government ran a matrimonial agency, 
 exporting marriageable young women, sometimes 
 a hundred in a year. An officer who had been 
 quartered in Canada, writing in 1709, describes 
 the intending husband choosing his bride out of a 
 consignment " as a butcher chooses his sheep out 
 of the midst of the flock," and on like principles. 
 " The plumpest were taken first, because it was 
 thought that being less active they were more 
 likely to keep at home, and that they could resist 
 the winter cold better." The same writer impugns 
 the virtue of the girls so consigned ; but according 
 to Parkman this is a calumny, at least so far as
 
 THE OLD REGIME 89 
 
 the intentions of the Government went. He 
 admits, however, that errors were occasionally 
 made ; that wives who had fled from their 
 husbands and other discreditable characters occa- 
 sionally appeared among the candidates for matri- 
 mony. Manon Lescaut may have really crossed 
 the Atlantic, though no doubt her case was 
 exceptional. 
 
 Not only was the horse taken to the water, but 
 as far as law could prevail he was made to drink. 
 A bounty was offered to all men under twenty 
 and to all girls under sixteen if they married. 
 For a father to have children above these ages 
 unmarried was a crime punishable by a fine. 
 Prolificacy was a highly - rewarded virtue, since 
 the happy parent of ten children received an 
 annual pension of three hundred livres ; two more 
 children brought an additional hundred. Talon, 
 the Intendant in 1670, issued an order prohibit- 
 ing bachelors from hunting, fishing, or trading with 
 the natives ; and Colbert approved his action, and 
 even went further, suggesting "those who may 
 seem to have absolutely renounced marriage should 
 be made to bear additional burdens and be excluded 
 from all honours ; it would be well even to add 
 some marks of infamy." " The success of these
 
 90 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 measures," Parkman adds, "was complete. . . . 
 Throughout the length and breadth of Canada, 
 Hymen, if not Cupid, was whipped into a frenzy 
 of activity." Such a system must have given an 
 air of grotesque unreality to the teaching and 
 mythology of the Romish Church. 
 
 As might be expected, every branch of in- 
 dustry rested on elaborate systems of government 
 aid and government restraint. To enforce by law 
 and reward by bounties and a monopoly was 
 the specific invariably proposed by Intendants for 
 developing each successive form of production. 
 Hemp-growing, fishing, the beaver trade, and the 
 making of wood-ashes were all dealt with thus. 
 We hardly need that Parkman should tell us the 
 inevitable result : 
 
 " In all departments of industry the appeals for 
 help are endless. Governors and Intendants are 
 so many sturdy beggars for the languishing colony. 
 ' Send us money to build storehouses, to which the 
 habitants can bring their produce and receive goods 
 from the Government in exchange. Send us a 
 teacher to make sailors of our young men ; it is 
 a pity the colony should remain in such a state 
 for want of instruction for youth. We want a 
 surgeon : there is none in Canada who can set a
 
 THE OLD REGIME 91 
 
 bone. Send us some tilers, brickmakers, and 
 potters. Send us iron-workers to work our mines. 
 It is to be wished that his Majesty would send us 
 all sorts of artisans, especially potters and glass- 
 workers. Our Canadians need aid and instruction 
 in their fisheries ; they need pilots.' ' 
 
 Yet this government, which was expected to 
 leave Providence without occupation, was all the 
 while showing itself unable to fulfil one of its most 
 obvious and elementary functions. No care of 
 legislator or administrator could infuse prosperity 
 into a community which was being drained at 
 every pore by a horde of official bloodsuckers. 
 Not every thief leaves the trace of his footsteps, 
 and it is pretty safe to assume that what can 
 be proved from records falls short of the reality. 
 Yet Parkman is able from the data available to 
 construct an appalling record of corruption. It 
 would seem to have reached its climax in the 
 last years of French rule. " Profit by your place ; 
 clip and cut you are free to do what you please 
 so that you can come soon to join me in France 
 and buy an estate near me " : thus writes a depart- 
 ing official in 1754 to his successor. Bigot, who gave 
 this advice, was outdone by a colleague and friend, 
 Cadet. He with the connivance of Bigot bought
 
 92 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 for six hundred thousand francs stores belonging 
 to the king, and then sold them back to him for 
 one million four hundred thousand. The evil did 
 not end with the mere loss of money. In 1758 
 several of the tribes who had before been allies 
 of France deserted her because the gifts intended 
 for them had been intercepted by corrupt officials. 
 
 One essential weakness in the position of 
 Canada was the lack of any clear and connected 
 conception of material progress on the part of the 
 colony as a whole. Honest and public-spirited 
 officials there were, but they neither embodied 
 nor identified themselves with the corporate life 
 of the community. The clergy, when conscientious 
 and scrupulous, taught in their home ministrations 
 as in their Indian missions the worthlessness of the 
 material world. The physical conditions of the 
 country were all adverse to corporate life. The 
 facility of water-carriage acted much as it did in 
 Virginia : 
 
 " Wherever the settlers were allowed to choose 
 for themselves they ranged their dwellings along 
 the watercourses. With the exception of Talon's 
 villages, one could have seen nearly every house in 
 Canada by paddling a canoe up the St Lawrence 
 and the Richelieu. The settlements formed long
 
 LA SALLE AND FRONTENAC 93 
 
 thin lines on the edges of the rivers ; a con- 
 venient arrangement, but one very unfavourable 
 to defence, to ecclesiastical control, and to strong 
 government." 
 
 The authorities at home strove against the tend- 
 ency, but natural conditions were too strong. 
 
 The types of character which the two systems 
 respectively produced were not wholly unlike. In 
 the life of Canada, as in that of Virginia, there is 
 a charm begotten of individuality and diversity of 
 character which is wholly wanting to the cast-iron 
 system on which New England, in her early days 
 at least, was fashioned. To that charm Parkman, 
 clearly as he perceives the deficiencies of Canada 
 in those essential qualities which make a com- 
 munity, is fully alive. He does ample justice to 
 the high-minded and patriotic adventurousness of 
 the discoverer La Salle ; to the happy mixture of 
 diplomatic tact and dominant self-assertion with 
 which Frontenac, almost alone among Canadian 
 governors, made the alliance of the fickle savage 
 into an effective and trustworthy weapon ; to the 
 strenuous energy with which the same governor 
 in his seventieth year, yet defiant of age, fashioned 
 the resources of his disunited and misgoverned
 
 94 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 colony into a military engine which threatened 
 the British power in America with annihilation. 
 Amid all the episodes of heroism and devotion 
 commemorated by Parkman none are more im- 
 pressive than the heroism of two French gentle- 
 women, worthy successors of Jeanne de Penthievre 
 and Jeanne de Montfort. Fort Vercheres on the 
 St Lawrence, twenty miles below Quebec, was, as 
 Parkman expresses it, "the Castle Dangerous of 
 Canada." In 1690 the wife of the commander 
 with a mere handful of men held it for two days 
 against the Iroquois till relief came. Her daughter 
 was more than worthy of such a mother. One 
 day when the commander and his wife were both 
 away, and the occupants of the fort were working 
 in the fields, it was surprised by the Iroquois. 
 Madeline de Vercheres, a girl of fourteen, fled to 
 the fort with bullets whistling about her head, 
 and just succeeded in shutting the gate on her 
 pursuers. She found in the fort two soldiers, 
 her two brothers, lads of twelve and ten, and a 
 number of women and children. The soldiers, 
 panic-stricken, had hidden themselves in a block- 
 house attached to the fort. Not only was the 
 fort ungarrisoned, but the palisades were in places 
 broken down. Madeline at once had them
 
 MADELINE DE VERCHERES 95 
 
 repaired, helping with her own hands. Then 
 visiting the blockhouse where the ammunition 
 was, she found the two soldiers making ready to 
 blow up the fort. She thereupon ordered them 
 out of the blockhouse, and armed herself and her 
 two brothers, bidding them remember their father's 
 teaching, " That gentlemen were born to shed their 
 blood for the service of God and the king." 
 
 To attack a fort was a form of warfare for 
 which the savages had always the greatest reluct- 
 ance and incapacity, and for the present they 
 confined themselves to killing any settlers whom 
 they found scattered in the fields. One man and 
 his family contrived in a canoe to reach the 
 landing-place near the fort. But they would in 
 all likelihood have been cut off if Madeline had 
 not sallied forth herself to meet them, a task 
 which the soldiers refused. Before night came 
 she disposed her little garrison. The newcomer 
 with the two soldiers was to guard the women 
 and children in the blockhouse, while Madeline 
 and her two brothers, with an old man of eighty, 
 stood guard on the bastions. Passing the word as 
 sentries and remaining continuously at their post 
 day and night, they in all likelihood impressed 
 the Iroquois with the belief that the fort was
 
 96 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 effectively garrisoned, till after a week a relieving 
 force appeared and the siege was raised. 
 
 Such episodes redeem and even do something 
 to excuse the baser and worse side of Canadian 
 military history. That the Iroquois invading 
 Canada and threatening peaceful settlers with 
 death and torture were acting simply from their 
 own instincts and policy and not at the bidding 
 of their English allies, though in the main true, 
 was a view of the case which the threatened 
 inhabitants could hardly be expected to take. 
 The Iroquois were the recognised allies of 
 England, and the raids of the French Indians 
 may well have seemed to be mere measures of 
 retaliation. And if an immoral policy could ever 
 be defended on the plea of expediency, the 
 attempt to uproot the English settlements might 
 be. Frontenac was not more distinguished by 
 his administrative energy and diplomatic tact than 
 by the clearness with which he saw that truth 
 and the persistency with which he acted on it. 
 Vast as the North American continent was, it 
 had not room for the colonies of France and 
 England : for the very existence of Canada, 
 dependent as she was on the fur trade, required 
 as one of its conditions the existence of a large
 
 FRANCE AND CANADA 97 
 
 tract of country peopled with savages, who must 
 of necessity be brought into conflict with a rival 
 civilised power. 
 
 It was but fitfully and intermittently that the 
 Home Government of France rose to a perception 
 of the situation. As a consequence there was no 
 consistent attempt to maintain Canada as a basis 
 of military strength and a check on the English 
 colonies. Once and again some comprehensive 
 scheme of conquest would pass before the mind 
 of French rulers. Such was the scheme projected 
 in 1689 by Callieres, the Governor of Montreal, 
 and approved by Louis. New York was to be 
 invaded by the line of the Hudson, while French 
 vessels were to co-operate from the sea. The 
 inhabitants were to be replaced by French settlers, 
 and thus New England was to be isolated. It was 
 a faint copy on a smaller scale of La Salle's great 
 project for hemming in the English colonies, with 
 the substitution of the Hudson for the Mississippi. 
 Parkman justly criticises the atrocity of the scheme 
 and the grotesque inadequacy of the means by 
 which it was to be effected. 
 
 "Louis XIV. commanded that eighteen 
 thousand unoffending persons should be stripped 
 of all that they possessed and cast out to the 
 
 6
 
 98 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 mercy of the wilderness. The atrocity of the 
 plan is matched by its folly. The king gave 
 explicit orders, but he gave neither ships nor 
 men enough to accomplish them ; and the Dutch 
 farmers, goaded to desperation, would have cut 
 his six hundred soldiers to pieces. It was the 
 scheme of a man blinded by a long course of 
 success. Though perverted by flattery, and 
 hardened by unbridled power, he was not cruel 
 by nature ; and here, as in the burning of the 
 Palatinate and the persecution of the Huguenots, 
 he would have stood aghast if his dull imagination 
 could have pictured to him the miseries he was 
 prepared to inflict." (" Count Frontenac," p. 190.) 
 
 The difficulties which beset France in her 
 dealings with the insurgent colonies of Great 
 Britain were singularly anticipated early in the 
 eighteenth century. In 1776 Vergennes hesitated 
 between the desire to cripple Great Britain and 
 the dread of making America an independent 
 power. So in 1710 we find two distinct lines of 
 policy suggested by French politicians. We find 
 Costebelle, a French officer commanding in New- 
 foundland, proposing that negotiations should be 
 entered into with " Les Bostonnais," and that it 
 should be explained to them that the professed 
 designs of the British Government against Canada
 
 FRANCE AND CANADA 99 
 
 were really a cloak for an attack on the republican 
 institutions of New England. On the other hand, 
 Parkman quotes a paper from the French archives 
 pointing out that the growth of the English 
 colonies was a far greater danger to Canada than 
 the ambition of the English crown. With singular 
 prophetic insight the writer points out that the 
 fall of French power in America will surely be 
 followed by the independence of the British 
 colonies and their union as a single democracy. 
 His practical advice is to make a vigorous attack 
 on New England by sea and land, and wholly to 
 destroy Boston and " Rhodelene." 
 
 Mr Parkman points out that, amid all the 
 schemes and devices of French statesmen on 
 behalf of Canada, they overlooked the one great 
 resource which lay ready to their hands, the 
 Huguenot population of France. 
 
 "From the hour when the Edict of Nantes 
 was revoked hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen 
 would have hailed as a boon the permission to 
 transport themselves, their families and their 
 property, to the New World. The permission 
 was fiercely refused, and the persecuted sect was 
 denied even a refuge in the wilderness. Had it 
 been granted to them, the valleys of the West
 
 100 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 would have swarmed with a laborious and virtuous 
 population, trained in adversity and possessing the 
 essential qualities of self-government. Another 
 France would have grown beyond the Alleghanies, 
 strong with the same kind of strength that made 
 the future greatness of the English colonies." 
 ("Count Frontenac," p. 396.) 
 
 That criticism strikes us as either going too 
 far or not far enough. It is another way of say- 
 ing that Louis XIV. and his advisers should have 
 been wholly other than they were. Such a colony 
 as sketched by Parkman would hardly have served 
 a single interest of France, as those interests were 
 understood by her responsible rulers. 
 
 One only of the French governors of Canada, 
 the humpback La Gallissonniere, seems to have 
 perceived that the colony was worth maintain- 
 ing, quite independent of the direct advantages 
 derived from it as a check on the great rival of 
 France in Europe. From that policy France was 
 led aside by the blindness of her king and the 
 wounded vanity of a harlot. As Parkman says : 
 " Louis XV. and Pompadour sent 100,000 men 
 to fight the battles of Austria, and could spare 
 but 1,200 to reinforce New France." 
 
 Yet Englishmen can hardly throw stones.
 
 ENGLAND AND CANADA 101 
 
 Throughout his work Parkman shows how, with 
 one or two exceptions, Englishmen, those in the 
 colonies and those at home alike, were unable 
 to grasp the issues involved in the continued 
 existence of Canada as a French dependency. 
 Pitt alone among English statesmen, William 
 Shirley and Robert Dinwiddie, Governors of 
 Massachusetts and Virginia respectively, alone 
 among colonial officials, really saw the question 
 in its full bearings, and did their utmost to 
 force it on the minds of their fellow-countrymen. 
 French raids might occasionally stir up the 
 colonies immediately endangered to some resolute 
 effort of resistance. But every attempt at a con- 
 nected and continuous policy for checking French 
 aggression was thwarted either by intercolonial 
 jealousy and rivalry or by the factiousness of 
 colonial Assemblies. The case could hardly be 
 better stated than it is by Parkman. 
 
 "The English colonies were separate, jealous 
 of the Crown and of each other, and incapable as 
 yet of acting in concert. Living by agriculture 
 and trade, they could prosper within limited areas, 
 and had no present need of spreading beyond the 
 Alleghanies. Each of them was an aggregate of 
 persons busied with their own affairs, and giving
 
 102 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 little heed to matters which did not immediately 
 concern them. Their rulers, whether chosen by 
 themselves or appointed in England, could not 
 compel them to become the instruments of enter- 
 prise in which the sacrifice was present and the 
 advantage remote. The neglect in which the 
 English Court left them, though wholesome in 
 most respects, made them unfit for aggressive 
 action, for they had neither troops, commanders, 
 political union, military organisation, nor military 
 habits. In communities so busy and governments 
 so popular much could not be done in war till 
 the people were roused to the necessity of doing 
 it, and that awakening was still far distant. 
 Even New York, the only exposed colony except 
 Massachusetts and New Hampshire, regarded the 
 war merely as a nuisance to be held at arm's 
 length." ("Frontenac," p. 394.) 
 
 In justice to the colonists, one thing must 
 not be forgotten. So doubtful were the claims 
 to uninhabited territory that no colony could feel 
 sure that its own expenditure in occupying and 
 defending lands on the western frontier might 
 not end in the profit of a rival. At best each 
 colony felt that as the dangers and the possible 
 gains involved were in a great measure common, 
 so ought the burden of resistance to be common
 
 THE ENGLISH COLONIES 103 
 
 also. Thus the persistent refusal of Pennsylvania 
 to co-operate in any way in military action, 
 went far to paralyse the policy of every other 
 colony. 
 
 Moreover, it must be remembered that the 
 retention of Canada and the occupation of the 
 West by France affected the material interests of 
 the different colonies in widely different fashions. 
 For New England, drawing her wealth mainly 
 from the fisheries and from foreign trade, the 
 whole question was a military one. Let her be 
 insured against the raids of the French Indians, 
 and she asked no more. The conditions of a 
 New England colony, like those of the Greek 
 city State, imposed rigid limitations on her 
 growth. Extension westward had to be carried 
 out by the isolated efforts of settlers relinquish- 
 ing corporate life and resigning themselves to 
 a period of semi - barbarism, and to the New 
 Englander that prospect was wholly repellent. 
 The proximity of Virginia to the fertile valley 
 of the Ohio was of singular good fortune for 
 the future of America. The appeal to farmers, 
 hunters, and fur-traders was made to the one 
 colony with a population willing and able to 
 profit by it.
 
 104 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 The reader of Parkman needs to be reminded 
 that it is of necessity the weaker and meaner 
 side of colonial life which is being brought into 
 the foreground. There could be no higher proof 
 of Parkman's impartiality and self-restraint than 
 the way in which the lethargy, the factiousness, 
 the disunion of the colonies are unsparingly 
 brought out, while the redeeming virtues which 
 do not enter directly into the story have for the 
 most part to be inferred. In the absence of any 
 continuous corporate policy everything turned on 
 the isolated efforts of individuals, and thus we 
 are brought face to face with the most glaring 
 contrasts of heroism and sagacity on the one 
 side, of blundering sloth and cowardice on the 
 other. This is specially true of the military 
 policy of New England as portrayed by Parkman 
 in the "Half Century of Conflict." On the one 
 hand, we have the state of things described by 
 the Rev. Benjamin Doolittle, the minister and 
 chronicler of Northfield, a village in the frontier 
 of Massachusetts specially exposed to attack from 
 Canada. 
 
 " He complains," Parkman says, " that plans 
 are changed so often that none of them take
 
 THE ENGLISH COLONIES 105 
 
 effect ; that terms of enlistment are so short that 
 the commissary can hardly serve out provisions 
 to the men before their term is expired; that 
 neither bread, meat, shoes, nor blankets are kept 
 on hand for an emergency, so that the enemy 
 escapes while the soldiers are getting ready to 
 pursue them ; that the pay of a drafted man is 
 so small that twice as much would not hire a 
 labourer to take care of the farm in his absence, 
 and that untried and unfit persons are com- 
 missioned as officers ; in all of which strictures 
 there is no doubt much truth." (" Half Century 
 of Conflict," vol. ii. p. 249.) 
 
 The helpless and appalling lack of discipline 
 of which an English colony was capable is shown 
 by the tale of the destruction of Schenectady, a 
 village on the New York frontier. In 1689 the 
 colony was in a state of civil war, and the chief 
 magistrate of Schenectady as well as the com- 
 mander of the troops were of the unpopular party. 
 The result was that when the warning came that 
 a party of French with their Indian allies was 
 advancing on the village, the inhabitants turned 
 the advice to ridicule, laughed at the idea of 
 danger, left both their gates wide open and placed 
 there, it is said, two snow images as mock sentinels.
 
 106 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 The result was a surprise ending in the destruction 
 of the village and the massacre of the inhabitants, 
 of whom more than a third were women and 
 children. 
 
 It would be hard to imagine a more con- 
 temptible record of treachery and cowardice than 
 the story which Mr Parkman tells of Pascho 
 Chubb, the commander of Pemaquid, who first 
 killed a number of Indian envoys who had come 
 as a conference, and then with an adequate garrison 
 surrendered the fort entrusted to him at the first 
 sound of the French cannon. 
 
 On the other hand, we have isolated efforts 
 of heroism worthy to rank with those selected 
 by Parkman from the annals of French Canada. 
 Such was the exploit of Hannah Dustan, the wife 
 of a settler at Haverhill, on the northern frontier 
 of Massachusetts. A week after her lying-in, her 
 house was attacked by Indians, while her husband 
 with their seven young children was working in 
 the fields. The husband hearing the attack sent 
 the children to a place of safety, and rushed to the 
 rescue, but before he could arrive, his wife, with 
 the babe and a neighbour who was nursing them, 
 were carried off. The child was immediately 
 killed. There were other English prisoners, some
 
 NEW ENGLAND BRAVERY 107 
 
 of whom were slain, the rest divided among their 
 captors. One party consisting of two warriors, 
 seven children, and three squaws, took possession 
 of Hannah Dustan, her companion and an English 
 boy, and with them marched through the forest 
 to a point some 250 miles to the north. At 
 length the prisoners, rendered desperate by their 
 captors' tales of the atrocities in store for them, 
 rose silently in the night, tomahawked ten out of 
 the twelve savages as they slept, and made their 
 way home through the wilderness with the scalps 
 of their victims. 
 
 In 1746 a party of New England militia, 
 numbering but thirty combatants, held Fort 
 Number Four for forty-eight hours against a mixed 
 force of French and Indians, sixty times their 
 own number, and finally capitulated on safe and 
 honourable terms. In the following year another 
 force of thirty New England militia, holding Fort 
 Massachusetts, defied and successfully resisted an 
 attacking party of seven hundred. One incident 
 in the siege is specially characteristic of the New 
 England temper and habits of mind. Stephens, 
 the commander, being summoned to surrender, 
 went out to hold a parley with the besiegers. He 
 declined to take any definite course till he had
 
 108 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 consulted his garrison. On his return he, to quote 
 Parkman, 
 
 " acted as if he had been the moderator of a town 
 meeting. ' I went into the fort and called the 
 men together, and informed them what the General 
 said, and then put it to the vote whether they 
 would fight or resign, and they voted to a man to 
 stand it out, and also declared that they would 
 fight as long as they had life." 
 
 We find somewhat the same contrast between 
 blundering incapacity at one time, and heroic and 
 effective daring on the other, in the two attempts 
 made by New England to strike a decisive blow 
 at the enemy. In 1690 a naval force was sent 
 out from Boston to attack Quebec under the 
 command of Phipps, afterwards Governor of the 
 colony. A combined land force from the New 
 England colonies and New York was to co-operate. 
 Small-pox, dissensions with the Indian allies, those 
 difficulties of transport which in the next century 
 thwarted Burgoyne, made the land expedition a 
 failure. Phipps sailed up the St Lawrence. He 
 learned from French prisoners of the existence of 
 the footpath up the heights by which Wolfe led 
 his troops to victory. The town was ill-garrisoned, 
 the inhabitants alarmed and dispirited. A sudden
 
 PHIPPS AT QUEBEC 109 
 
 attack offered the one chance of success. Phipps, 
 personally brave, but wholly lacking in judgment 
 and administrative power, hesitated, held council 
 after council, and delayed till the uproar of a 
 cheering crowd and the noise of fifes and drums 
 within the town told him that a strong reinforce- 
 ment had arrived from Montreal. There was no 
 lack of personal courage, but at every stage the 
 operations were marked by alternations of purpose- 
 less delay with reckless but ineffectual daring. 
 After an absence of three months the fleet re- 
 appeared at Boston with the tale of its discomfiture. 
 
 " Had Phipps come a week earlier or stayed a 
 week later," Parkman says, apparently with justice, 
 "the French themselves believed that Quebec 
 would have fallen, in the one case for want of 
 men, and in the other for want of food." 
 
 How fully Parkman had outgrown the prejudices 
 of an earlier New England generation is shown by 
 his summary of Phipps's failure. 
 
 " Massachusetts had made her usual mistake. 
 She had confidently believed that ignorance and 
 inexperience could match the skill of a tried 
 veteran, and that the rude courage of her fisher- 
 men and farmers could triumph without discipline 
 or leadership. The conditions of her material
 
 110 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 prosperity were adverse to efficiency in war. A 
 trading republic without trained officers may win 
 victories, but it was then either by accident, or 
 by an extravagant outlay in money and life." 
 ("Count Frontenac," p. 285.) 
 
 At a later stage of his story Parkman has to 
 tell of one of these " accidental " victories. The 
 capture of Louisburg in 1745 was an exploit 
 which assuredly could never have been achieved 
 without an amount of good fortune on which 
 no one had the right confidently to reckon. Yet 
 none the less did it do credit to the tenacity of 
 purpose of the Massachusetts' democracy and the 
 courage and endurance of her citizen soldiers. 
 They threw themselves, too, with all the more 
 zeal into the enterprise, that it was in a great 
 measure of their own devising. " A Mad Scheme " 
 is the title of the chapter in which Mr Parkman 
 tells the planning of this attempt. 
 
 " Louisburg," he says, " was a standing menace 
 to all the Northern British colonies ; it was the 
 only French naval station on the continent, and 
 was such a haunt of French privateers that it 
 was called the American Dunkirk. It commanded 
 the chief entrance of Canada, and threatened to 
 ruin the fisheries, which were nearly as vital to 
 New England as was the fur trade to New France.
 
 LOUISBURG 111 
 
 The French Government had spent twenty-five 
 years in fortifying it, and the cost of its powerful 
 defences, constructed after the system of Vauban, 
 was reckoned at thirty million of livres. 
 
 " This was the fortress which William Vaugham 
 of Damariscotta advised Governor Shirley to attack 
 with fifteen hundred raw New England militia." 
 ("Half Century of Conflict," vol. ii. p. 83.) 
 
 The advice was given to the one man likely 
 to accept it, and capable, with much aid from 
 fortune, of bringing the attempt to a good issue. 
 Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts, was in many 
 ways the typical man of the eighteenth century ; 
 energetic, practical, something of an egotist and 
 a self-seeker, yet full of public spirit and touched 
 with the love of enterprise which so fully redeems 
 that age from the shallow charge of being prosaic 
 and unimaginative. With a thorough understand- 
 ing of the men with whom he had to deal, 
 Shirley brought his scheme before the Assembly, 
 and accepted its defeat with much inward sorrow, 
 but without any sort of official remonstrance. By 
 sober patience, by the use of his influence with 
 individual members, by enlisting strongly the 
 sympathy of the New England traders, all of 
 whom, Parkman says, "looked on Louisburg as
 
 112 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 an arch-enemy," Shirley at length induced the 
 Assembly to reverse its decision. Even then the 
 scheme was only carried by a single vote, and 
 it is said would not have been carried at all but 
 for an accident which befell a member on his 
 way to the division. 
 
 It does no little honour alike to Shirley and 
 to the men of Massachusetts that when once 
 the scheme was taken up all previous opposi- 
 tion was forgotten. Of the commander chosen, 
 William Pepperell, Parkman says that he "joined 
 to an unusual popularity as little military incom- 
 petency as any one else who could be had." The 
 expedition, he goes on to say, 
 
 " had something of the character of broad farce, 
 to which Shirley himself, with all his ability and 
 general good sense, was a chief contributor. He 
 wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that, though 
 the officers had no experience and the men no 
 discipline, he would take care to provide against 
 these defects." 
 
 Grotesque as the expression sounds, there was 
 just an element of truth in it. Only under a 
 Governor who understood the New England 
 temper could it have come about that the 
 personal good qualities of a general, not merely
 
 LOUISBURG 113 
 
 his zeal and courage, but his kindliness and 
 liberality, made his troops wholly forget his 
 lack of professional skill and training, and that 
 the impetuous and sanguine temper in which 
 the siege was begun remained proof against the 
 toil and hardships and sickness with which it was 
 attended. On the 1st of May Pepperell landed 
 before Louisburg, and on the 15th of June the 
 garrison, straitened for powder and with no hope 
 of assistance from without, surrendered. The 
 result was no doubt largely due to the infatu- 
 ated supineness of the French Government, nor 
 could the town have been taken unless three 
 vessels of the British Navy had come to the 
 aid of the colonial force. Yet the very fact 
 that the fleet, under a commander with a some- 
 what exaggerated sense of his own dignity, was 
 able to co-operate without friction or hindrance, 
 showed that Pepperell had some of the most 
 valuable qualities of a leader. After all deduc- 
 tions for exceptional good fortune, the result 
 ought to have saved English statesmen of the 
 next generation from so fatally underrating the 
 soldiership and the tenacity of purpose of the 
 colonists. 
 
 Parkman's task in one way became easier as 
 
 H
 
 114 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 it advanced. The struggle between France and 
 England in America in the seventeenth century 
 is bewildering, from the wide area over which it 
 raged and from the lack of any definitely central 
 point of interest. 
 
 " The contest for territory was fourfold : First, 
 for the control of the West ; secondly, for that 
 of Hudson's Bay ; thirdly, for that of Newfound- 
 land ; and, lastly, for that of Acadia. All these 
 vast and widely sundered regions were included 
 in the government of Frontenac. Each division 
 of the war was distinct from the rest, and each 
 had a character of its own." (" Count Frontenac," 
 p. 335.) 
 
 Parkman clearly points out how adverse to 
 the interest of England was this diffusion of the 
 field of conflict : 
 
 "One marvels at the dissensions, the short- 
 sightedness, the apathy which had left the key of 
 the interior so long in the hands of France without 
 an effort to wrest it from her. To master Niagara 
 would be to cut the communications of Canada 
 with the whole system of French forts and settle- 
 ments in the West, and leave them to perish 
 like the limbs of a girdled tree." ("Montcalm 
 and Wolfe," vol. i. p. 318.)
 
 CHARACTERS 115 
 
 As the end draws near operations become 
 more concentrated, and Parkman's story gains 
 in definiteness and in dramatic effect. His bio- 
 graphical power, his strong sense of the value 
 and importance of individual character, have full 
 play. Of his presentments of Montcalm, of Wolfe, 
 and of Shirley, we have already spoken. Slighter, 
 but hardly less effective, are his sketches of Forbes, 
 the " Scotch veteran, forty - eight years of age, 
 who had begun life as a student of medicine, and 
 who ended it as an able and faithful soldier," 
 and whose patient toil in road -making through 
 the forest, battling with colonial obstinacy and 
 corruption, yet not despising colonial experience 
 and military traditions, " opened the great West 
 to English enterprise, took from France half her 
 savage allies, and relieved the Western frontier 
 from the scourge of Indian war " ; and of Johnson, 
 the genial, resolute, free-living Irishman, who pos- 
 sessed the gift so common among the French 
 Canadians, so rare among the English settlers, of 
 assuming something of the tastes and habits of 
 the savage, yet without any sacrifice of ascendency. 
 
 Another character of the war to whom 
 Parkman does ample justice is Lord Howe, that 
 Marcellus of the eighteenth century, whom Wolfe
 
 116 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 generously described as " the noblest Englishman 
 that has appeared in any time and the best soldier 
 in the British army." 
 
 "The army," Parkman says, "felt him, from 
 General to drummer-boy. He was its soul, and, 
 while breathing into it his own energy and ardour 
 and bracing it by stringent discipline, he broke 
 through the traditions of the service, and gave it 
 new shapes, to suit the time and place. During 
 the past year he had studied the arts of forest 
 warfare, and joined Rogers and his rangers in 
 their scouting parties, sharing all their hardships 
 and making himself one of them." ("Montcalm 
 and Wolfe," vol. ii. p. 90.) 
 
 "This Lycurgus of the Camp" washed his linen 
 in the brook with his own hands, and, when he 
 invited his officers to dinner, seated them on logs, 
 fed them on pork and peas, and expected every 
 man to bring his knife and fork in his pocket. 
 Yet it is clear that these were no touches of 
 affectation, but only the visible symbol of the 
 spirit in which he wished and meant forest war- 
 fare to be carried out. With his death, wrote a 
 contemporary, " the soul of General Abercromby's 
 army seemed to expire," and, as Parkman adds,
 
 LORD HOWE 117 
 
 "the death of one man was the ruin of fifteen 
 thousand." 
 
 The colonists were nowise backward in recog- 
 nising his merits, and in the evil days of the 
 next generation the name of Howe, even when 
 borne by those with few of his gifts, was not 
 without its influence on colonial feeling. As 
 Parkman says 
 
 " he made himself greatly beloved by the provincial 
 officers, with many of whom he was on terms of 
 intimacy, and he did what he could to break 
 down the barriers between the colonial soldiers 
 and the British regulars." 
 
 That comment calls to mind one feature of the 
 war, in nowise a pleasing one for Englishmen to 
 dwell upon, which Parkman brings out clearly, 
 though with no exaggeration or bitterness : 
 
 " The provincial officers . . . and especially 
 those of New England, being no less narrow and 
 prejudiced, filled with a sensitive pride and a 
 jealous local patriotism, and bred up in a lofty 
 appreciation of the merits and importance of their 
 country, regarded British superciliousness with a 
 resentment which their strong love for England 
 could not overcome."
 
 118 FRANCIS PARKMAN 
 
 "The deportment of British officers in the 
 Seven Years' War no doubt had some part in 
 hastening on the Revolution." 
 
 That is not an unfitting extract with which 
 to take leave of Parkman. For it is the com- 
 bination of feelings which he describes, " a strong 
 love for England," "a lofty appreciation of the 
 merits and importance of his own country," which, 
 aided by indefatigable toil, inspired and controlled 
 by genuine zeal and love for letters, makes his 
 work what it is.
 
 TREVELYAN'S "AMERICAN 
 REVOLUTION" 1 
 
 THE general character of Sir George Trevelyan's 
 literary work, and especially of the book to which 
 this is a sequel, is a guarantee for certain definite 
 literary merits. His narrative is sure to be ani- 
 mated, his presentment of characters vivid, and 
 his estimate of them intelligent. His actors are 
 always living personages. No one who remembers 
 his picture of that brilliant and reckless oligarchy 
 which in the last century formed the fashionable 
 world of London could doubt his power of bring- 
 ing before his readers, distinctly and attractively, 
 the social and intellectual life of a period. In 
 that respect indeed, Sir George was more fortunate 
 in the subject of his earlier than of his later work. 
 
 1 "The American Revolution," part i. 1766-76, by the Right 
 Hon. Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Bart. London, 1899. Longmans, 
 Green & Co. 
 
 (Engliih Historical Review, vol. xiv. pp. 696-604. 1899.) 
 
 119
 
 120 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 It is in the outward aspects of life that his style 
 finds its most appropriate material, and no one 
 would contend that the world in which Washing- 
 ton and Adams and Franklin moved was as rich 
 in diversity of incident, in variety of motive, in 
 picturesqueness of colouring as the world of Fox 
 and Fitzpatrick. Nor, I venture to think, does 
 Sir George Trevelyan understand it with the same 
 sympathetic familiarity. Still, the old gifts of 
 technique, as one may call it, are there. And 
 here and there the technical skill is used on a 
 newer and in some sense a wider canvas. Sir 
 George Trevelyan shows that he can describe not 
 only social and political movements, but the actual 
 drama of war clearly and forcibly. Here and 
 there, indeed, he presses a hereditary antipathy 
 to " the dignity of history " rather far. It is 
 somewhat flippant to describe Warren as going 
 into the battle of Bunker's Hill "with a head- 
 ache soon to be cured." It is not only flippant 
 but cumbrous to say of those Connecticut militia- 
 men who Ephraim-like, being armed, turned back 
 in the day of battle, that they were 
 
 "convinced that unless they returned straight 
 away to their regiment before the public opinion 
 of their village took shape in action, they would
 
 AMERICAN REVOLUTION 121 
 
 have to travel at least the first stage of their 
 journey to Cambridge by a mode of conveyance 
 neither easy nor dignified, and in a costume not 
 unsuited to people who had chosen to display 
 the white feather." 
 
 But a book is not to be condemned for occa- 
 sional lapses of good taste, and as far as mere 
 style goes the directness and effectiveness of the 
 narrative more than outweigh its shortcomings. 
 Yet, despite the merits which I have acknow- 
 ledged, I cannot think that Sir George Trevelyan 
 has succeeded in producing a satisfactory history 
 of the American Revolution. For one thing he 
 seems wholly lacking in sense of proportion, and 
 in the relative importance of incidents. The space 
 which is needed for those main issues which are 
 often very incompletely dealt with is freely given 
 to what is irrelevant and immaterial. The author's 
 impressions of characters are almost always con- 
 veyed by the accumulation of biographical detail, 
 picturesquely set forth, with little or no attempt 
 at a summary of the result. This process is 
 applied not only to the central but occasionally 
 to the minor figures of the drama. In fact, if 
 the minor characters interest the writer and 
 furnish material for a picturesque description or
 
 122 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 episode they are suffered to crowd out the main 
 actors. Thus Burgoyne, soldier, politician, and 
 man of letters, is an interesting character and an 
 attractive study. But his personal qualities had 
 no great share in determining the fate of the 
 Revolution, and, considering the space at Sir 
 George Trevelyan's disposal, he is hardly justi- 
 fied in telling at full length how Burgoyne once 
 when on his travels in England discomfited a 
 rude practical joker. 
 
 Again, Sir George Trevelyan is too apt to 
 allow his interest in the mere scenery and still- 
 life, as one may call it, of his subject to overlay 
 the real political issues. With him, as with the 
 historian whose traditions and methods he has 
 inherited, research is too apt to mean, not judicial 
 enquiry, but an elaborate quest for details to 
 illustrate a position already taken up. There is 
 a conspicuous instance of this sacrifice of the 
 essential to the accidental in the account taken 
 from John Adams's diary of the journey made by 
 the Massachusetts delegates on their way to the 
 Congress of 1774 held at Philadelphia. Adams 
 was an acute observer of trifles, partly because 
 to his sensitive and egotistical mind trifles were 
 apt to seem important, and he was also a
 
 JOHN ADAMS 123 
 
 vigorous, original, and at times even a profound 
 political thinker. In his diary we see both sides 
 of him reflected. He notes carefully every social 
 peculiarity of those middle colonies which differed 
 so widely from his beloved New England. Sir 
 George Trevelyan reproduces at some length 
 these detailed experiences of travel. But Adams 
 has also recorded other things a good deal more 
 important of which we learn nothing here. He 
 has told us how he and his colleagues had been 
 warned that in New York they would be looked 
 upon as Republican incendiaries, how with a 
 painful and unwonted effort at opportunism they 
 watered down their political sentiments to the 
 standard which they supposed would suit their 
 hearers, and how as a consequence they were set 
 down as mere Laodiceans. All this has more 
 to do with the Revolution than the steeples 
 and statues which Adams saw and recorded. 
 Nor would any one suspect from Sir George 
 Trevelyan 's account that the Congress was any- 
 thing but a perfectly harmonious and homo- 
 geneous body. In reality the main interest of 
 Adams's diary lies in the fact that it records how 
 the divisions which resulted from wide divergence 
 of interest and from diversity of social habits and
 
 political training were overcome through patience 
 and self-restraint and by the mastering sense of 
 a common purpose. The question which any 
 intelligent reader at once and of necessity asks is, 
 How did these colonial delegates, knowing little 
 of one another, with no pre-existing forms or pre- 
 cedents, with their deliberative machinery all to 
 make, work out their appointed task ? And to that 
 question Sir George Trevelyan gives no answer. 
 
 The main faults of the book are, as it seems 
 to me, almost inevitably inherent in the method 
 on which it is framed. As Malebranche saw all 
 things in God, so Sir George Trevelyan sees the 
 American Revolution in Fox and the Whig party. 
 It is primarily interesting to him because it was 
 for a time the chief field on which his hero and 
 those with whom he acted displayed their powers. 
 One result is an almost inevitable tendency to 
 underrate what one may call the purely colonial 
 side of the question. As Brindley thought that 
 navigable rivers existed for the purpose of feeding 
 canals, so in Sir George Trevelyan's mind there is 
 an underlying feeling that Washington and Adams 
 existed in order to give full scope for the display 
 of Whig virtues. This is specially a danger in 
 the case of a writer whose tendency certainly is to
 
 THE COLONIES 125 
 
 be drawn aside from his main issue by picturesque 
 and interesting episodes. 
 
 The method adopted also often brings about an 
 arbitrary choice of incidents and a lack of pro- 
 portion in the treatment assigned to them. There 
 is certainly nothing in this book to show that 
 the writer has made a careful study of the early 
 constitutional history of the colonies or of their 
 relations to the Mother Country. Yet without 
 such study it is simply impossible to understand 
 the final struggle. And it certainly seems to me 
 that even where Sir George Trevelyan has made 
 any such study he has not made it in the spirit 
 of an impartial enquirer, but rather in that of an 
 advocate seeking for arguments on behalf of a 
 case which he has already prejudged. Sir George 
 Trevelyan has read and refers to works of that most 
 fair-minded writer, the late Mr Parkman. He is 
 ready enough to quote them when they emphasise 
 the way in which the narrowness, the arrogance, 
 the unsympathetic hardness of English officials and 
 English soldiers alienated the colonists. Yet it is 
 scarcely conceivable how any fair-minded student of 
 Parkman could have written such a passage as this : 
 
 "Throughout a splendid and fruitful war 
 Americans had fought side by side with English-
 
 126 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 men as compatriots rather than auxiliaries. They 
 had given him (Pitt) cheerfully in men, in money, 
 and in supplies whatever he had asked to aid the 
 national cause and secure the common safety." 
 
 Those were the very things which, as every page 
 of Parkman shows, the colonists had not done. 
 In isolated instances they had shown military 
 qualities of a high order. But it is not too much 
 to say that the conduct of the colonial Legislature, 
 throughout, was marked by inertness, by faction, 
 by inability to see the real issue. Resolute and 
 patriotic governors such as Dinwiddie and Shirley 
 were driven to despair by the conduct of the 
 colonial Assemblies. That tale is told plainly 
 enough in the pages of Mr Parkman's greatest 
 work, "Montcalm ind Wolfe." It is told more 
 fully but not more plainly in the official corre- 
 spondence of the time. It would, no doubt, be 
 unfair to make all this matter of grave moral 
 blame to the colonists. There was nothing in 
 their history to give them any strong sense of 
 common interests and purpose ; there was nothing 
 in the existing colonial system to make effectual 
 united action possible. But there remains the 
 fact that the war with France had filled the minds 
 of English administrators with a belief that the
 
 OMISSIONS 127 
 
 colonists were deficient in energy and in capacity 
 for military organisation and, above all, for united 
 action. Events showed that such an estimate was 
 unjust, but I do not think any one can study the 
 history of the colonies and not see that it was not 
 wholly unfounded or unreasonable. 
 
 The same lack of previous study seriously 
 impairs Sir George Trevelyan's estimate of the 
 individual actors whom he brings upon the scene, 
 and therefore of the affairs in which they took 
 part. That his view of the Revolution should 
 specially concentrate itself on Boston is natural. 
 That was a stage on which all that was most 
 stirring in the early scenes of the drama was 
 enacted. Massachusetts was, above all the colonies, 
 the chosen home of those political principles which 
 it is Sir George Trevelyan's purpose to glorify. 
 Yet an account of the Revolution is a very 
 maimed and incomplete one which does not tell 
 us of the influences at work in other colonies, and 
 especially in Virginia. And there at the outset no 
 actor played so conspicuous and effective a part 
 as Patrick Henry. That his name should occur 
 only once in Sir George Trevelyan's book, that 
 we should hear nothing of his antecedents and per- 
 sonal character, is a strange omission. And it is,
 
 128 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 I think, all the more strange because there is a 
 very distinct individual likeness between Henry 
 and Sir George Trevelyan's own hero. Henry, 
 like Fox, won by the charm of a lovable nature 
 the toleration and goodwill of many who had 
 neither sympathy with his views nor confidence 
 in his public character. Like Fox, he combined 
 rhetorical brilliancy and boisterous energy with a 
 real capacity for sustained work. He made his 
 first conspicuous entry on public life in his 
 character of an advocate acting as counsel on the 
 popular side in one of those administrative disputes 
 which preceded and in a great measure brought 
 about the final rupture. It was then, in a Virginia 
 law court, that the young orator made that often- 
 quoted comparison in which it was plainly hinted 
 that George III. might expect the fate of tyrants 
 such as Caesar and Charles I., and then extricated 
 himself by a dexterous evasion. The case turned 
 on the right of the laity to pay their tithes in 
 tobacco at a fixed rate when tobacco was cheap 
 and in money when tobacco was dear. That right 
 had been conferred on them by an Act of the 
 Assembly. The king in council vetoed that Act. 
 Nevertheless the Virginia tithe-payer claimed the 
 right to act upon it, and that right was defended
 
 PATRICK HENRY 129 
 
 by Henry not so much on legal as on moral and 
 equitable grounds. This is how the Act is described 
 by an impartial American writer, Mr Coit Tyler, 
 the biographer of Patrick Henry : 
 
 " Such then, in all its fresh and unadorned 
 rascality, was the famous 'option law,' or 'two- 
 penny act/ of 1758 : an act firmly opposed, on 
 its first appearance in the Legislature, by a noble 
 minority of honourable men ; an act clearly 
 indicating among a portion of the people of 
 Virginia a survival of the old robber instincts 
 of our Norse ancestors ; an act having there the 
 sort of frantic popularity that all laws are likely 
 to have which give a dishonest advantage to the 
 debtor class and in Virginia, unfortunately, on 
 the subject of salaries due to the clergy, nearly 
 all persons above sixteen years of age belonged 
 to that class." 1 
 
 These, be it observed, are the words of a writer 
 whom Sir George Trevelyan refers to with deserved 
 approval. Constitutionally, it may be said, the 
 morality of the law and of Henry's defence of 
 it had nothing to do with the subsequent struggle. 
 But they had much to do with the ethics of that 
 struggle, with the frame of mind in which the 
 
 1 Tyler's " Life of Henry/' pp. 37, 38.
 
 combatants entered upon it: and it is with the 
 ethical side of the struggle that Sir George 
 Trevelyan is largely, if not mainly, concerned. 
 
 A like instance may be found in his treatment 
 of the incident of Hutchinson's letters. I would 
 say at the outset that Sir George Trevelyan does 
 not seem to me to have any comprehension of 
 the peculiar and characteristic attitude and temper 
 of Hutchinson. Hutchinson furnishes as good an 
 instance as could be found of the extent to which 
 an honest, thoughtful, and public-spirited citizen 
 of Massachusetts could without any keen admira- 
 tion for George III.'s methods of government, 
 yet through distrust of the anti-English faction 
 at Boston, throw his lot in wholly with the 
 Loyalists. As an administrator, and especially 
 as a financier, he had done good service to his 
 colony by acts which, though they incurred 
 immediate unpopularity, were in the opinion of 
 all men vindicated by the result. He had 
 expressed his disapproval of the Stamp Act. 
 Yet in the riots which that measure produced 
 he had seen his house sacked and an invaluable 
 collection of archives scattered to the winds. 
 His own life would have been in great peril if 
 it had not been for the dauntless conduct of his
 
 HUTCHINSON 131 
 
 daughter, who forced him to withdraw by declaring 
 that if he did not she would remain with him 
 and share the danger. He and certain other 
 officials had written letters home strongly hostile 
 to the views of the popular party. There was, 
 however, nothing in Hutchinson's letters which 
 was a novelty or could have been a surprise to 
 those who knew his opinions. They advocated 
 measures for which his preference had never 
 been concealed. These letters, as is well known, 
 were intercepted by Franklin and by him sent 
 to Boston. Sir George Trevelyan defends some- 
 what elaborately the action of Franklin. It may 
 be, as Sir George considers, that Franklin in 
 this act did not in any way fall below the 
 recognised moral standard of his own day. At 
 all events, one may safely admit that such oppo- 
 nents as Wedderburn were perfectly ready to 
 trade on moral indignation which they did not 
 in the least share. But Sir George Trevelyan 
 does not appear to see that the matter of 
 Hutchinson's letters touched upon much graver 
 moral and political issues than those involved in 
 Franklin's conduct. No incident in the whole 
 struggle more fully illustrated the resolute, far- 
 seeing, unscrupulous policy of Samuel Adams
 
 132 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 and those who acted with him. Care was taken 
 that the letters should not be publicly and for- 
 mally produced till the minds of men had been 
 thoroughly poisoned against them by two pro- 
 cesses. It was implied Sir George Trevelyan's 
 language sanctions the implication that there 
 was a plot between certain Government officials, 
 of whom Hutchinson was one, for the injury of 
 Massachusetts. As a matter of fact, there is 
 nothing whatever to show that the Governor was 
 in any way acting in concert with any other 
 official. Furthermore, men were led to believe 
 that Hutchinson was hatching some secret plot, 
 whereas he was in fact merely making recom- 
 mendations in conformity with the policy which 
 he had over and over again publicly advocated. 
 I cannot, 1 think, do better than quote the words 
 used by the biographer in the main the admiring 
 biographer of Samuel Adams : 
 
 " This transaction, which has been dwelt on at 
 considerable length, deserves attention because it is 
 probably the least defensible proceeding in which 
 the patriots of New England were concerned 
 during the Revolutionary struggle. Nothing can 
 be more sly than the manoeuvring throughout. 
 ... It is hard to palliate the conduct of the
 
 HUTCHINSON 138 
 
 patriots. Had the leaders lost in the excite- 
 ment of the controversies the power of weighing 
 words properly, and did they honestly think 
 Hutchinson's expressions deserved such an inter- 
 pretation ? Did they honestly believe that it was 
 right to hold him responsible for what Oliver 
 and Paxton had said? Unfortunately there is 
 some testimony to show that their conduct was 
 due to deliberate artifice. Says their victim : 
 ' When some of the Governor's friends urged to 
 the persons principally concerned . . . the un- 
 warrantableness of asserting or insinuating what 
 they knew to be false and injurious, they justified 
 themselves from the necessity of the thing; the 
 public interest, the safety of the people, making 
 it absolutely necessary that his weight and influence 
 among them should by any means whatever be 
 destroyed.' Further, if Hutchinson's testimony 
 in his own case is not to be received, what are 
 we to say of Franklin's suspicious hint, who, in 
 transmitting the letters, counsels the use of mystery 
 and manoeuvring, that, * as distant objects seen 
 only through a mist appear larger, the same may 
 happen from the mystery in this case.' There 
 never were cooler heads than stood on the 
 shoulders of some of those leaders ; it is impossible 
 to think that they were blinded." l 
 
 I would not for a moment conceal my own 
 
 1 Hosmer's " Life of Samuel Adams," pp. 229, 232, 233.
 
 134 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 opinion that if a historian must needs take sides 
 Sir George Trevelyan has taken the right one. 
 His view is nearer the truth than that strangely 
 paradoxical one which at times ventures to show 
 its head, and which represents the colonists as 
 ungrateful rebels against a wise and well- 
 intentioned ruler. Neither Sir George nor any 
 other writer can exaggerate the blundering in- 
 capacity of the British policy, civil and military 
 alike. But it is a very different thing to say, as 
 Sir George Trevelyan does, often in words and 
 always by implication, that all the moral and 
 civic virtue was on the side of the colonists. He 
 represents, indeed, a phase of thought which 
 American writers themselves have by this time 
 wholly outgrown. On this subject I would quote 
 two of them, to one at least of whom Sir George 
 Trevelyan himself refers with just praise : 
 
 " Hardly have we known, seldom have we been 
 reminded, that the side of the Loyalists, as they 
 called themselves, of the Tories, as they were 
 scornfully nicknamed by their opponents, was 
 even in argument not a weak one, and in motive 
 and sentiment not a base one, and in devotion 
 and self-sacrifice not an unheroic one. . . . May 
 we not now hope that it will not any longer cost
 
 IMPARTIAL HISTORY 135 
 
 us too great an effort to look calmly, even con- 
 siderately, at least fairly, upon what, in the words 
 and acts of the Tories, our fathers and grandfathers 
 could hardly endure to look at all ? And, surely, 
 our willingness to do all this can hardly be lessened 
 by the consideration that, 'in dealing with an 
 enemy, not only dead, but dead in exile and 
 defeat, candour prescribes the fullest measure of 
 generous treatment. 1 At any rate, the American 
 Revolution affords no exemption from the general 
 law of historic investigation that the truth is to 
 be found only by him who searches for it with 
 an unbiassed mind. Until we shall be able to 
 take, respecting the problems and the parties of 
 our own Revolution, the same attitude which we 
 freely and easily take respecting the problems 
 and parties of other revolutions, that is, the 
 attitude, not of hereditary partisans, but of 
 scientific investigators, will it be forbidden us 
 to acquire a thoroughly discriminating and just 
 acquaintance with that prodigious epoch in our 
 history." 2 
 
 Or again : 
 
 " Impartial history will not palliate the bar- 
 barities that were committed by either party ; 
 
 1 Quoted from Wmthrop Sargent, Preface to "The Loyalist Poetry/' 
 etc., p. vi. 
 
 a Tyler's " Literary History of the American Revolution," vol. i. 
 pp. 296, 297.
 
 136 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 but there can be no doubt that the Tory wrong- 
 doings have been grossly exaggerated, or at least 
 have been dwelt upon as dreadful scenes of 
 depravity to form a background for the heroism 
 and fortitude of the patriotic party whose mis- 
 deeds are passed over very lightly. The methods 
 of the growth of popular mythology have been 
 the same in America as elsewhere ; the gods of 
 one party have become the devils of the other. 
 The haze of distance has thrown a halo around the 
 American leaders, softening their outlines, obscur- 
 ing their faults, while the misdeeds of Tories and 
 Hessians have grown with the growth of years. 
 But it is an undoubted fact that there were 
 outrages upon both sides, brutal officers on both 
 sides, bad treatment of prisoners on both sides, 
 guerrilla warfare with all its evil concomitants 
 on both sides, and in these respects the Tories 
 were no worse than the Whigs. There was not 
 much to choose between a Cowboy and a Skinner, 
 very little difference between Major Ferguson's 
 command and that of Marion and Lumter. There 
 was no more orderly or better behaved troop 
 in either army than Simcoe's Queen's Rangers ; 
 possibly there was none on either side as bad as 
 the mixture of Iroquois Indians and Tory half- 
 breeds who were concerned in the massacres at 
 Wyoming and Cherry Valley. . . . 
 
 " These convictions were undoubtedly strength-
 
 IMPARTIAL HISTORY 137 
 
 ened by the abominable treatment which many 
 of them personally received. They were not apt 
 to look with greater favour upon a cause whose 
 votaries had tried to recommend it to their liking 
 by breaking their windows, plundering their houses, 
 constantly insulting them, their wives and their 
 daughters, to say nothing of tarring and feathering 
 them, or of burning them in effigy. The penal 
 measures imposed by the Parliament upon the 
 town of Boston and the colony of Massachusetts 
 had been called upon themselves by the so-called 
 patriots. One rather wonders at the slowness 
 and mildness of the British Government, and at 
 their miserable inefficiency, than at any repressive 
 measures that they undertook. They deserved 
 to lose the colonies for their invincible stupidity, 
 which led them from one blunder into another ; they 
 irritated when they ought either to have crushed or 
 conciliated ; they tried half-measures when vigorous 
 action was necessary ; they persisted in affronting 
 all the other colonies while they failed in chastising 
 sedition in Massachusetts. The result was that 
 they drove many men, who were loyal subjects 
 of Great Britain in 1774, into revolution in 1776, 
 while they allowed the rebels of Massachusetts 
 to wreak vengeance at their will upon those who 
 had been faithful in their allegiance to their 
 king." 1 
 
 1 Ferguson's " Essays on American History," pp. 169-176.
 
 138 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 Indiscriminate praise and indiscriminate invec- 
 tive invariably bring their own Nemesis by miss- 
 ing the real points where praise and blame are 
 appropriate. Sir George deals with the colonists 
 as the writer of a fairy tale deals with the hero, 
 on whom he bestows a flying horse, magic armour, 
 and a cap of darkness. He so loads them with 
 the virtues needful for success that all the credit 
 due to their rulers in the council chamber and 
 their leaders in the field vanishes. Washington 
 and Franklin were great, not because they were 
 simply advancing to a pre-ordained success, but 
 because with supreme patience they were striving 
 against sloth, disunion, ignorance, and presumption. 
 So, too, it seems to me that Sir George misses 
 the whole moral of such incidents as the Boston 
 Massacre and the Tea Riots. What they did 
 show was the astounding capacity of the Boston 
 leaders for using edged tools without cutting 
 themselves, for making an instrument out of 
 anarchy, for discerning the exact point at which 
 mob violence would become dangerous to their 
 own cause and at once checking its further course. 
 In the same way Sir George shows but little per- 
 ception of those individual gradations of character 
 which mark off men fighting under the same flag.
 
 AMERICAN PATRIOTS 139 
 
 All Americans are enlightened patriots; all the 
 adherents of George III. are ignorant and wrong- 
 headed oppressors. Thus praise and blame alike 
 miss the mark. Washington and John Adams 
 deserve something better than to be grouped with 
 a heady rhetorician like Warren, who desired 
 revolution and strife for their own sake. Political 
 vermin like Sandwich and Rigby escape unhurt 
 under a general condemnation which includes an 
 honourable and well - intentioned man such as 
 North. 
 
 There are, moreover, two important aspects of 
 the matter which Sir George Trevelyan wholly 
 overlooks. There was, as has been clearly pointed 
 out by Mr Lecky, and as is fully acknowledged 
 by the biographer of Samuel Adams whom I have 
 quoted above, a section of the American patriots 
 headed by Adams who were fully determined to 
 thwart any attempt at conciliation. That section 
 was not numerous, but it was able, influential, 
 well organised, and unscrupulous. Those who 
 belonged to it clearly showed that it was their 
 policy to stimulate and intensify every germ of 
 disaffection, to press to the very utmost every 
 ground of dispute. It may be that the blunder- 
 ing tyranny of the king, the subservience of
 
 140 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 ministers, the ignorance and corruption of Parlia- 
 ment would have brought about disruption in any 
 case, and would have driven moderate men among 
 the colonists into the ranks of the revolutionary 
 party. But it is certain that those who, like 
 Dartmouth and North, were anxious for a com- 
 promise which should not be a surrender were 
 throughout thwarted by the action of the extreme 
 party among the colonists. 
 
 Again, Sir George Trevelyan does not seem 
 to perceive how largely the trouble was due, not 
 to the incapacity or misconduct of individuals, 
 but to defects in our parliamentary system. It 
 is impossible to read the various debates on the 
 great colonial questions, such as the Stamp Act 
 and the Declaration Act, and not see how in 
 such a crisis the party system is beset with 
 dangers. Harmless proposals and necessary criti- 
 cisms become inevitably tainted with suspicion 
 when delivered by men whose avowed position is 
 that of advocates. It is painful to think how 
 different might have been the result if questions of 
 colonial administration had come, as they would 
 at the present day have come, before a competent 
 and responsible department, detached from party 
 influences, largely governed by official traditions,
 
 PARTY POLITICS 141 
 
 and informed by the knowledge and intelligence 
 of trained experts. That, however, is a view to 
 which Sir George Trevelyan, trained in the party 
 system and steeped in reverence for parliamentary 
 government, could hardly do justice. And with 
 that side of his work before us, one is tempted 
 to ask, Can a strong party politician write the 
 history of a period in which party issues meet 
 him at every turn? The practical exigencies of 
 politics leave no place for those nicely - balanced 
 judgments, or for that thoughtful and discrimin- 
 ating analysis of actions and motives, which are 
 the first duty of the historian. It is not in human 
 nature suddenly to discard mental habits which 
 it has been a duty to cultivate and develop. 
 
 Lastly, I would say that there seems to me 
 to be one strange incongruity between the bio- 
 graphical and the historical side of Sir George 
 Trevelyan 's work. As a historian he preaches the 
 doctrine that the determining forces which gave 
 success to the colonists were mainly moral forces. 
 England was steeped in profligacy ; America was 
 the home of Republican simplicity. The view is 
 in itself, I think, somewhat exaggerated. London 
 was not England, any more than Boston was 
 America. Drinking and gaming were not all un-
 
 142 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 known among New York merchants and Virginia 
 planters. But apart from that, how is this view 
 to be reconciled with the glorification of Fox ? 
 In him, more perhaps than in any contemporary 
 public man, were embodied those very tendencies 
 to which Sir George Trevelyan ascribes the mis- 
 fortunes of his country. In real truth, Sir George 
 Trevelyan has too much sympathy with his hero, 
 and the class to which he belongs, to estimate 
 justly their place in history. Filled with Whig 
 traditions, he keeps his real affections for the 
 Whig aristocracy and their life a life in which 
 the prizes of politics were fought for strenuously 
 and not always too scrupulously, yet in the main 
 with honesty and public spirit. At the same 
 time, like those whom he admires, he offers a 
 tribute of conventional respect to republican ideals 
 of life which never had any actual existence. 
 
 There is so much in Sir George Trevelyan's 
 attitude towards history and towards letters which 
 is attractive that it neither seems a gracious task, 
 nor is a pleasant one, to criticise him unfavour- 
 ably ; but magis arnica veritas.
 
 "THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION" 148 
 
 II 1 
 
 AT the very outset of the present volume there 
 is a passage which I think goes far to confirm 
 the views already expressed : 
 
 "A curious tribute to their point of view has 
 been paid of late years by ingenious writers in the 
 United States, who have raised a protest against 
 the spirit and the style in which the story of 
 their Revolution has too often been told. Under 
 the impulse of a wholesome reaction against the 
 inflated panegyric and overloaded denunciation 
 which in past days have formed the stock in trade 
 of too many American chroniclers, they especially 
 insist on bringing to a test the estimation in which 
 the heroes of that Revolution have been popularly 
 held. The biographies of those heroes, it is con- 
 tended, were to a large degree legends ; the best 
 of them were human, and the worst very bad 
 indeed ; and from these premises the conclusion 
 has been deduced that George III. and his cabinet 
 could not have been so greatly in the wrong. 
 Samuel Adams, we are told, showed himself un- 
 
 1 "The American Revolution," by the Right Hon. Sir George 
 Otto Trevelyan, Bart., part ii. (2 vols.). London, Longmans, 
 1903. 
 
 (English Historical Review, vol. xix., 1904, pp. 367-373.)
 
 144 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 scrupulous as to the means which he employed in 
 the pursuit of public ends ; John Adams was vain 
 and sensitive ; Arthur Lee, when an envoy from 
 congress in Paris, insinuated that his colleague, 
 Silas Deane, was a rascal, and Deane openly said 
 the same of Lee, while Franklin distrusted and 
 disliked them both ; the merchants of Boston were 
 smugglers, the mob was ruffianly, and throughout 
 New England no serious efforts were made by the 
 more respectable citizens to exact retribution for 
 violence and cruelty committed against partisans 
 of the crown. All this may be valuable history. 
 It may all be worth telling. It is quite in place 
 as an explanation of the sentiments excited in the 
 British Parliament by the transactions in America, 
 but as an argument for or against the wisdom of 
 British policy it is of no account at all" (i. 18). 
 
 Surely the questions with which Sir George 
 Trevelyan and his readers are primarily concerned 
 are the very questions which he rather contemptu- 
 ously thrusts into the background. If this is 
 valuable history, "if it is worth telling," why 
 criticise the telling of it as "a curious tribute " to 
 some view? Does Sir George Trevelyan think 
 that the primary business of historians is to 
 supply political partisans with ready-made argu- 
 ments, or that a writer of history must be always
 
 DIFFICULTIES 145 
 
 looking round the corner to see what use may 
 be possibly made of his statements ? 
 
 A passage which immediately follows seems 
 to me to show how Sir George has overlooked 
 the most essential features of his subject : 
 
 " The question," he says, " to be determined at 
 successive points of the American controversy was 
 in every case a clear and simple issue. Whether 
 Boston should be subjected to a military occupa- 
 tion ; whether the tea duty was to be retained or 
 removed ; whether the Port Bill was to be passed 
 and the charter of Massachusetts broken ; whether 
 the petitions and remonstrances from the congress 
 were to be respectfully considered or contemptu- 
 ously thrown aside wert problems demanding 
 nothing beyond good sense and good feeling for 
 their right solution" (i. 21). 
 
 I venture to think that a good deal more was 
 needed. One thing at least was needed local 
 knowledge, knowledge of the currents of Ameri- 
 can thought and of the character and influence 
 of individual men. Nor can it be fairly claimed 
 for the opposition that in this matter they were 
 greatly superior to the ministry. Chatham no 
 doubt brought to bear on the problem an imagina- 
 tive insight into the wants and aspirations of the 
 
 K
 
 146 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 colonists, as Burke brought to bear a clear con- 
 ception of general principles of government, which 
 had no parallel among their opponents. Yet, 
 taking the parliamentary debates as a whole, we 
 cannot but feel that the opposition contributed 
 little towards an effective solution of the question. 
 Government and Parliament were alike moving 
 in a mist, and we may not forget, though Sir 
 George Trevelyan does, that the mist was largely 
 the creation of the colonists themselves. As I 
 pointed out in my previous review, it is a sheer 
 delusion to speak of the colonists as men goaded 
 into revolt and straining to the utmost and to 
 the last to remain loyal. Sir George Trevelyan 
 quotes the words of congress, officially delivered 
 in 1774 : " You have been told that we are 
 seditious, impatient of government, and desirous 
 of independence. Be assured that these are not 
 facts but calumnies." Samuel Adams was not an 
 irresponsible free lance, but the recognised and 
 authoritative leader of a party in Massachusetts. 
 In September 1773 Samuel Adams openly advo- 
 cated in the Boston Gazette the formation of 
 "an independent state, an American common- 
 wealth." Sir George Trevelyan says that " before 
 blood had been shed and towns burned and half
 
 AMERICAN PATRIOTS 147 
 
 a score of petitions thrown into the royal waste- 
 paper basket colonists of every shade in politics 
 had scouted as a libel the charge that they 
 aimed at separation from the Mother Country." 
 Has he forgotten that in the autumn of 1774, 
 before a single town had been burned, a body of 
 Massachusetts citizens met at Suffolk and passed 
 resolutions, drafted by that irresponsible fire- 
 brand James Warren, declaring their intentions 
 of resisting the obnoxious Acts of Parliament 
 by force, and of retaliating upon those officials 
 who tried to execute the law ? Has he for- 
 gotten, what is even more important, that 
 congress, while it was uttering professions of 
 loyalty, had formally approved these resolutions ? 
 It is difficult to think that Sir George Trevelyan 
 has overlooked such an incident ; it is perhaps 
 even more difficult to understand how, if he 
 knows it, he can reconcile it with the views 
 which he expresses. 
 
 Sir George Trevelyan endeavours to strengthen 
 his case by calling as an independent witness to 
 colonial loyalty Thomas Paine. It would be 
 difficult to overrate Paine's force, dexterity, and 
 effectiveness as a political controversialist. But 
 those who know Paine as revealed even in his
 
 148 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 own writings, apart from external report, will 
 think twice before they accept him as a witness 
 to character. " I found," he says, " the dis- 
 position of the people such that they might 
 have been led by a thread and governed by a 
 reed." One is reminded of a passage in the 
 early life of Mr Midshipman Easy. "'What a 
 dear, good, obedient child it is!' exclaimed Mrs 
 Easy; 'you may lead him by a thread.' 'Yes, 
 to pick cherries,' thought Dr Middleton." 
 
 Sir George Trevelyan very rightly calls atten- 
 tion to an aspect of the dispute between the 
 Colonies and the Mother Country which has 
 hardly received due notice from previous writers, 
 the effect which the proposal for an episcopate 
 had in alarming and embittering the colonists. 
 Sir George's treatment of the subject is fair and 
 temperate. Yet he hardly sees how largely the 
 errors of those responsible for the ecclesiastical 
 policy of the Mother Country were due to ignor- 
 ance of the wide diversity of needs and condi- 
 tions in different colonies. And certainly a fuller 
 knowledge of colonial history would, I think, 
 have saved him from one error. He says : 
 
 "As early as 1691 the full right of citizen- 
 ship and the free exercise of public worship had
 
 TOLERATION 149 
 
 been (in Massachusetts) extended to all Christians, 
 with the exception of Roman Catholics " (ii. 310). 
 
 This is stated as though it was a mark of tolera- 
 tion on the part of the citizens of Massachusetts, 
 and is contrasted with the bigoted attitude of the 
 Church of England towards Nonconformists. As 
 a matter of fact, this relief was not granted by 
 legislation, but by the Royal Charter of William 
 and Mary, a charter regarded by the most in- 
 fluential and representative citizens of Massa- 
 chusetts, with great disfavour. Again, Sir George 
 appears to me to be confounding the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries when he says : 
 
 "Not John Lilburn or Baillie of Kilwinning 
 had a stronger and more present faith in the 
 personal government of the universe than that 
 which in the year 1776 animated the congrega- 
 tions of America " (i. 234). 
 
 That is only true even approximately of New 
 England, and New England was but a section, 
 though, no doubt, in the crisis of revolution 
 the most strenuous and influential section, of 
 British America. And even of New England 
 it is a statement which needs a good deal of
 
 150 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 qualification. It is a sentiment of which we see 
 no trace in the writings of such a typical New- 
 Englander as John Adams, and which would 
 have seemed as strange to Franklin as to any 
 of the French wits and philosophers with whom 
 he associated. 
 
 When he has to deal with action Sir George 
 Trevelyan is always animated, and his description 
 of the battle of Long Island is no exception. Yet 
 he seems to me to have rather missed the main 
 military lessons of the story. It would be hard 
 to defend the statement that "nothing could 
 be better planned than Washington's scheme of 
 battle." The central conception of that scheme 
 was to hold a line over eight miles long with less 
 than twelve thousand raw troops. Sir George 
 Trevelyan says but little of the general character 
 of the ground. The clearing of woods, the lower- 
 ing of hills, and the filling in of hollows have 
 materially altered it. Yet this at least can be 
 seen at a glance, that the advance of the British 
 had to be made over ground where communica- 
 tion was easy, while the constituent parts of the 
 defending force were by comparison isolated. To 
 take up such a defensive position could only be 
 justifiable when a commander possessed a marked
 
 WASHINGTON 151 
 
 superiority both in numbers and fighting power. 
 Again, Sir George does not seem to perceive the 
 extent to which he has himself condemned the 
 strategy of Washington. The wind prevented 
 the British fleet from co-operating with Howe's 
 land force, entering the strait which separates 
 Long Island from New York, and cutting off 
 the American retreat. As Sir George puts it, 
 
 "when once the wind changed and the leading 
 British frigates had passed within Governor Island 
 and taken Brooklyn in the rear, the independence 
 of the United States would have been indefinitely 
 postponed." 
 
 In securing the retreat of his beaten and 
 demoralised army Washington was, no doubt, 
 greatly aided by the culpable supineness of Howe 
 and the opportune intervention of a fog. Still, 
 after these deductions, we may fairly say that the 
 retreat brought out Washington's best qualities, 
 his mixture of impetuosity and patience, his power 
 of controlling and guiding men, his mens aequa 
 in arduis. Yet we must not forget that he was 
 only saving his country from a danger of his own 
 creation, and that he had staked her fortunes on 
 an almost desperate hazard.
 
 152 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 One can hardly blame an historian of the 
 War of Independence if, surveying Washington's 
 career and character as a whole, he deals some- 
 what leniently with special phases of them. The 
 tenderness with which Sir George Trevelyan treats 
 Howe is, I venture to think, much less deserved. 
 Once at least was the whole of Washington's 
 army absolutely at Howe's mercy. If he had 
 postponed his attack till his ships were ready to 
 co-operate, nothing could have saved Washington. 
 There was no need for haste on Howe's part. 
 The situation was not unlike that at York Town, 
 with this all-important difference, that there was 
 no possibility of naval co-operation to help the 
 beleaguered force. The one thing which could 
 have justified Howe's precipitate attack would 
 have been a strenuous following up of his advan- 
 tage. On the battle of Haarlem Sir George 
 Trevelyan comments : 
 
 "Not one of the retreating battalions would 
 ever have reached the American lines in military 
 order and with half its full numbers if Howe had 
 promptly thrust his troops across the peninsula. 
 When all allowance has been made for exaggera- 
 tion the semi-mythical narratives of that Sunday 
 morning and afternoon have their value, as
 
 HOWE 153 
 
 embodying the indelible impression left on the 
 public mind by Howe's untimely inactivity." 
 
 Yet in his second volume Sir George says : 
 " This month of December " (that of the Trenton 
 campaign) "ruined once and for ever Howe's 
 repute as a strategist." Long Island and Haarlem 
 had not, even on Sir George's own showing, left 
 much to ruin. No doubt Howe was by temper 
 inert, and although personally brave, yet, as other 
 brave generals have been, too cautious of the 
 lives of his soldiers. Still it is difficult, when 
 one reads the history of the war as a whole, not 
 to think that Howe was hampered by his political 
 convictions and by his dread of a crushing success. 
 Perhaps the best justification for the risks which 
 Washington ran at Long Island, and at a later 
 day at Germantown, was his reliance on the for- 
 bearance of his opponent. One of the least credit- 
 able incidents in Howe's career, the demoralisation 
 of his troops during their stay in Philadelphia, is 
 glossed over by Sir George Trevelyan with airy 
 geniality. " Howe," he says, " might love ease and 
 pleasure, but he was no selfish voluptuary, and 
 he liked to see others comfortable and happy 
 about him." Whether that is inconsistent with 
 the character of a selfish voluptuary is a question
 
 154 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 for the moralist rather than the historian. It is 
 at least certain that Howe was a deplorably bad 
 disciplinarian. Sir George Trevelyan has read 
 Stedman's history. Has he forgotten the writer's 
 lamentations over the demoralisation of our officers 
 during their winter in Philadelphia, the havoc 
 wrought alike in character and in fortune by the 
 seductions of the faro table ? 
 
 I had occasion in my former review to 
 criticise Sir George Trevelyan 's strange deficiency 
 in sense of proportion, the manner in which 
 important incidents are hurried over and unim- 
 portant episodes elaborated. There is an astonish- 
 ing instance of this in the account of the 
 unsuccessful invasion of Canada by Montgomery 
 and Arnold. Just six lines are devoted to the 
 unsuccessful attack on Quebec, in which Mont- 
 gomery was killed and Arnold seriously wounded, 
 and which in all likelihood determined the fate 
 of Canada. Nearly three pages are allotted to 
 describing the journey of Franklin and John 
 Adams from Philadelphia to Amboy, where they 
 went to confer with Lord Howe. Of this space 
 about a fifth is taken up with describing how 
 Franklin and Adams disputed whether their bed- 
 room window should be shut or open. Nor
 
 SUPERFLUITY 155 
 
 are we spared a single detail in the menu of 
 the lunch which Lord Howe prepared for the 
 American envoys " good bread, good claret, cold 
 ham, tongues, and mutton." Indeed, Sir George 
 Trevelyan's passion for culinary details is worthy 
 of an American novelist of domestic life. The 
 habits of the Westchester settlers are but a minor 
 matter in a history of the War of Independence. 
 Nevertheless, we are told with a conscientious 
 regard to detail that 
 
 "at Christmas the stupendous brick ovens were 
 filled three times a day first with generous loaves 
 of wheat and rye, then with chicken, quail, and 
 venison pasties, and lastly with long rows of 
 fruit and mince pies." 
 
 Sir George Trevelyan's study of authorities is 
 undoubtedly extensive, and yet it seems to me 
 to be somewhat incomplete. There is very little 
 material bearing on the biographical aspect of his 
 work, especially on the side of English biography, 
 that he has not studied. On the other hand, he 
 appears to have entirely missed one or two recent 
 and valuable contributions to the history of the 
 war. He would have dealt more fully and more 
 effectively with the invasion of Canada if he had
 
 156 SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN 
 
 read Mr Codman's monograph on that subject, 
 with its invaluable appendix of diaries. Sir George 
 has also missed a real mine of information in the 
 diary of Ezra Stiles, published in 1901. Ezra 
 Stiles, president of Yale College, was a man of 
 extraordinary mental activity and quickness of 
 observation, combined with soundness of judgment 
 and a clear sense of what was not worth recording. 
 His record from day to day of military affairs, as 
 the news of them reached him, is of no little value, 
 and is, for the work of a civilian, surprisingly lucid 
 and thoughtful. The book is even more important 
 as a record of what intelligent New-Englanders 
 were saying and doing during the years of strife. 
 Sir George Trevelyan deals severely, though not 
 a whit too severely, with the character of that 
 discreditable adventurer, Charles Lee. He was 
 one of those who talk the commonplace jargon 
 of revolutionists, without any sort of that under- 
 lying conviction which gives stability of purpose 
 and makes egotism impossible. Though, as I 
 have said, Sir George Trevelyan appraises Lee at 
 his real value, yet he seems to be ignorant of far 
 the worst feature in his whole career. In 1860 
 Mr Moore published a pamphlet entitled The 
 Treason of Charles Lee. In this he reproduced
 
 OMISSIONS 157 
 
 a document, which he attributed, apparently on 
 good grounds, to Lee, in which he, while still 
 in the American service, was giving the English 
 Government advice as to the best method of 
 carrying out their campaign. There is at times a 
 rather provoking indefiniteness about Sir George 
 Trevelyan's references to authorities. He refers, 
 for example, to an article by Mr Charles Francis 
 Adams the younger on the battle of Long 
 Island; but he omits to tell his readers where 
 the article is to be found, and thereby give them 
 an opportunity of studying it for themselves. 
 This is all the more to be regretted since even 
 the exhaustive bibliography of American history 
 compiled by Mr Lamed contains no reference 
 to the article, and any historical work from 
 Mr Adams's pen deserves attention. 
 
 Sir George Trevelyan takes exception, why 
 I do not understand, to " Tories " in England 
 who held certain opinions about Arthur Lee "a 
 Virginian, so they described him." Why should 
 they describe him as anything else ? It is true 
 that he was educated at Eton and spent much 
 of his early life in England, but that does not 
 destroy his nationality.
 
 EZRA STILES 1 
 
 MR CABOT LODGE in one of his essays speaks of 
 Sewell as a New-England Pepys. There might 
 perhaps be better ground for describing Ezra 
 Stiles as a New-England Evelyn. There are in 
 both the same restless curiosity, the same diver- 
 sified interest alike in human life and in the 
 phenomena of the external world. The scholarly 
 repose of the Englishman, the vigorous partisan- 
 ship of the New-Englander were fully as much 
 the result of circumstance and training as of 
 natural temperament. Thus the interest of the 
 book is in part historical and in part biographical. 
 While free from any touch of marked or ex- 
 aggerated egotism, Stiles has the self - revealing 
 temper needed to make autobiography effective 
 and interesting. From an historical point of 
 
 1 "The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, D.D., President of Yale 
 College." Edited by F. B. Dexter, M.A. (3 vols.). New York: 
 Scribners, 1901. 
 
 (English Historical Review, vol. xix., 1904, pp. 595-599.) 
 
 158
 
 NEW ENGLAND CULTURE 159 
 
 view the book has a twofold value. It forms 
 an important part of the literature of the war, 
 and that not merely as a record of events but as 
 showing us the working of men's minds during 
 the struggle. It is hardly less valuable as show- 
 ing how widely the New England of Otis and 
 the Adamses differed from the New England of 
 Bradstreet and Increase Mather. We see this 
 in the width and diversity of Stiles's intellectual 
 interests, just as we see it in those of a greater 
 New-Englander, Franklin. No subject of study 
 comes amiss to Stiles, and he approaches each 
 with a mental fearlessness and absence of preju- 
 dice wholly alien to an earlier generation of New- 
 Englanders. He does not believe in alchemy, 
 but he investigates its literature with keenness. 
 Judaism specially interests him. He converses 
 " much and freely " with a learned Jew, and asks 
 his opinion of the Septuagint. Two days later 
 Stiles attends the synagogue, and records some- 
 what minutely the details of the ceremonial and 
 the vestments worn by the rabbi. Between the 
 two entries are notes upon the production of silk 
 in Pennsylvania and on the population of France. 
 Later on we find Stiles reading one day the 
 life of Cagliostro and on the next the so-called
 
 160 EZRA STILES 
 
 " Blue Laws of Connecticut." The catholicity 
 of his literary taste is further illustrated by his 
 study of Apuleius. He is actively interested in 
 any new mechanical invention of which he may 
 hear, and not less in economical statistics. At 
 the age of fifty-seven we find him corresponding 
 with learned men in Sweden. Age does not 
 bring any distaste to change any more than it 
 does with Franklin. When Yale College is 
 partially secularised by the addition of a lay 
 element to the governing body, he not merely 
 accepts but even welcomes the change. His 
 liberality of view in educational matters is shown 
 by his treatment of the suggestion to substitute 
 a translation of the Psalms in Greek, executed 
 by a French Protestant, Suranus, for the classics. 
 
 " If," says Stiles, " a stranger was to learn 
 English, he would not need an English book 
 wrote by a German or Italian, but by a Pope 
 or an Addison. So that I rather incline to the 
 antients, banishing the unchaste tribe." 
 
 It is a little painful to find Horace included in 
 that condemnation, but Puritanism was not to be 
 exorcised bodily at a single effort. And no one 
 can find fault with the choice of Homer, Plato,
 
 YALE 161 
 
 Xenophon, Cicero, Tacitus, and Virgil, while the 
 inclusion of Dionysius and Justin is an illustra- 
 tion of the unexpectedly wide range of Stiles's 
 own studies. 
 
 The change of mental habits to which I have 
 referred is strikingly illustrated by the subjects 
 chosen for the approved and formal disputations 
 between the students at Yale. It is startling to 
 find such matters as the lawfulness of poly- 
 gamy, the descent of mankind from Adam, and 
 the existence of eternal punishment treated as 
 open questions. An earlier generation of New- 
 Englanders would have been hardly less shocked 
 by the discussion "whether theatres ought to be 
 encouraged" and "whether deists and Roman 
 Catholics ought to be admitted to a share in 
 government." We find the students also invited 
 to discuss not merely those general questions which 
 are the stock subjects of debate, such as the 
 utility or otherwise of standing armies and the 
 relative merits of monarchy and democracy, but 
 also practical questions concerning politics and 
 education. Ought the national securities to be 
 redeemed at the nominal value? Ought the 
 President to have independent military power? 
 What was the best method of ratifying the new 
 
 L
 
 162 EZRA STILES 
 
 constitution? Ought medical and legal studies 
 to be included in a college course ? Is literature 
 too much cultivated in Connecticut? The last 
 question seems not wholly inappropriate when we 
 read the following entry : 
 
 " I examined Miss Lucinda Foot, 12. act., 
 daughter of the Rev. Mr Foot of Cheshire. She 
 had learned the four orations against Cataline (sic), 
 the first four books of the ^Eneid, and St John's 
 gospel in Greek. I examined her not only where 
 she had learned, but indifferently elsewhere in 
 Virgil, Tully, and the Greek Testament, and 
 found her well fitted to be admitted into the 
 freshman class." 
 
 It is a little surprising to learn from a footnote 
 that this portentous creature married seven years 
 later and lived to be fifty-six. 
 
 But the main value of the book lies in its 
 contributions to our knowledge of the struggle 
 between the Colonies and the Mother Country. 
 More than once Stiles has preserved important 
 facts which have for the most part escaped the 
 notice of historians. He records, for example, 
 how in April 1771, a printed scheme found its 
 way to New England, proposing that the Irish 
 Parliament should be dissolved and an imperial 
 Parliament, as it would now be called, should be
 
 COLONIAL POLITICS 163 
 
 created, in which the American colonies should 
 have fifty members. Two and a half years later 
 Stiles tells us that he has seen the draft of an Act 
 for gradually extinguishing the Roman Catholic 
 religion by the substitution, as vacancies came, 
 of an Anglican clergy for the existing priest- 
 hood. The Canadians are to be reconciled to this 
 by a reduction of tithe. We need not believe 
 that either of these schemes ever came within 
 the range of practical politics. But it is of no 
 small interest to know that the possibility of such 
 changes was before men's minds. It is significant 
 that almost from the outset of the struggle, Stiles, 
 sober and well-judging as he was by natural temper 
 and training, was swept away in the current of 
 vehement and unreasoning partisanship. What- 
 ever might be the real merits or demerits of 
 British administration, it is clear that those who 
 were responsible for it had utterly failed to win 
 the goodwill and confidence of men not naturally 
 inclined to be incendiaries and revolutionists. 
 Every act of the British Government or its 
 American supporters is seen by the diarist through 
 a distorting medium of partisanship, and con- 
 demned. When Lord Dartmouth, at once the 
 most moderate and conciliatory and the most
 
 164 EZRA STILES 
 
 honest of politicians, makes proposals for accom- 
 modation, they are stigmatised as " insidious." 
 Carleton's wise generosity in releasing the prisoners 
 taken in Canada is explained away on a series 
 of more or less discreditable hypotheses. It may 
 be to avoid giving up certain Indians who had 
 been guilty of atrocities ; or it might be to " wipe 
 off the disgrace with which their treatment of our 
 prisoners has tarnished the glory of the British 
 troops " ; or it was a design to obtain a complete 
 surrender of prisoners on both sides, in which case 
 the balance would have been in favour of the 
 British ; or, despairing of conquest, the British 
 " wish so to mix generosity with rigour that they 
 may tempt and captivate America and so heal 
 the breach." British statesmen might well despair 
 in dealing with an enemy who could thus find 
 equal matter for dissatisfaction in a policy of 
 coercion and a policy of conciliation. 
 
 Again, Stiles is indignant with the ministry 
 for insisting that remonstrances and petitions must 
 come not from congress, but from various pro- 
 vincial assemblies. The reason is not far to seek, 
 nor was the claim an unreasonable one. The 
 assemblies were, what congress was not, bodies 
 whose composition and forms of procedure were
 
 PARTY SPIRIT 165 
 
 definitely known to the ministry. The same 
 temper shows itself in the uncompromising bitter- 
 ness with which Stiles denounces any approach to 
 loyalist feeling among his countrymen and in the 
 credulity with which he accepts stories to the 
 discredit of the British troops. It is made a 
 matter of reproach to the Baptists and Quakers 
 that they turned to the British Government for 
 relief and redress under the undoubted hardships 
 which they had suffered from the Presbyterians of 
 Massachusetts. Without the faintest note of dis- 
 approval Stiles describes the proceedings at the 
 funeral of a leading Loyalist, Lieutenant- Governor 
 Oliver. Boys cheered over the grave, an un- 
 popular custom-house officer was publicly insulted, 
 and one patriot publicly expressed the hope that 
 within a fortnight the public might be attending 
 Hutchinson's funeral. " Parricide " is the term 
 applied by Stiles to a New York official and to an 
 Episcopalian clergyman in the same colony who 
 had in private letters expressed their sympathy 
 with the British Government and approval of its 
 policy. In the same spirit Stiles quotes without 
 any question a letter published in the Pennsyl- 
 vanian Gazette. The writer, who dates from 
 Hartford, states that the British troops during
 
 166 EZRA STILES 
 
 their advance to Concord searched a house for 
 Hancock and Adams, and failing to find them 
 deliberately killed the woman of the house and 
 her children. Stiles also publishes a letter purport- 
 ing to have been written by a British soldier and 
 intercepted, in which it is said that during the 
 same advance a number of women and children 
 were burned in their beds. We may, I think, safely 
 say that the silence of American writers on what 
 must have been matter of notoriety is an ample 
 refutation of these stories. 
 
 Yet on three important points Stiles's evidence 
 disposes of the case set up by American partisans. 
 He describes the colonial army at Roxbury in 
 May 1775. There is "a general seriousness and 
 sense of religion, and much singing of psalms and 
 anthems through the army, especially morning 
 and evening prayers." Also there are present 
 "fourty Stockbridge Indians." In the face of 
 that, Chatham's rhetoric about the tomahawk and 
 scalping knife of the savage loses some of its force. 
 
 Another incident may also be given in Stiles's 
 own words : 
 
 " Gov. Hutchinson, now in England, has 
 written a letter of 4 Nov. last to Rev. Dr 
 Pemberton of Boston. He says it was about
 
 HUTCHINSON 167 
 
 being resolved by the king in council to moderate 
 matters with the Americans by adopting a plan in 
 which taxation and legislation should be left to 
 the American assemblies, the parliament reserving 
 a general power to regulate commerce. But upon 
 receiving the news that the continental congress 
 had adopted the resolves of the co. of Suffolk 
 they had suspended any further consideration of 
 matters." 
 
 The Suffolk resolutions, it may be remembered, 
 were drafted by that reckless firebrand Joseph 
 Warren; they declared that "no obedience was 
 due to the recent acts of parliament, the attempts 
 of a wicked administration to enslave America," 
 and they declared that political arrests should be 
 met by retaliation. 
 
 Stiles also makes it clear that the dread of 
 episcopacy being introduced into the Colonies was 
 a purely imaginary alarm. He relates a conver- 
 sation in which Lord Hillsborough assured an 
 English Nonconformist, friendly to the Colonies, 
 that not only were ministers but also the English 
 Episcopate unfavourable to any such scheme. 
 Stiles more than once notices the fact that whereas 
 in the northern colonies the Episcopalians were 
 almost to a man Loyalists, there was not in the
 
 168 EZRA STILES 
 
 south any such connection. The reason is not 
 far to seek : from the very earliest days in New 
 England Episcopacy and Dissent were sharply 
 opposed forces, the one as naturally connected 
 with the party of prerogative as the other with 
 that of civil liberty. In the south Episcopali- 
 anism was too dominant for its influence to be 
 limited to a single party, and too languid to assert 
 itself as a principle of action. 
 
 Throughout the war Stiles kept an observant 
 eye on all military operations, and in dealing with 
 them he shows insight and prescience beyond what 
 are ordinarily found in civilian critics. In many 
 cases, too, he appends rough plans of the ground, 
 which are not without value. After the war the 
 interest of the diary of necessity falls off. It is 
 noticeable that one of the principal contemporary 
 incidents, Shay's rebellion, is fully recorded, yet 
 Stiles makes no sort of comment, condemnatory 
 or otherwise, on the conduct of the actors. One 
 cannot help suspecting that Stiles, like other New- 
 Englanders, felt embarrassed by a certain incom- 
 patibility between the principles which they had 
 been lately professing and the requirements of 
 effective government. Stiles's references to the 
 formation and ratification of the new constitution
 
 ALWAYS LEARNING 169 
 
 are not without historical value. And to the last 
 there is no abatement in the diarist's keenness of 
 observation, or in the diversity of his intellectual 
 interests. It was in no spirit of self-deception that 
 Stiles prefixed to one of the volumes of his diary 
 the motto, 
 
 u r/pd0vcfc> <5e ael TToAAa
 
 THE POETRY OF SPORT 1 
 
 A VOLUME on the Poetry of Sport forms a fitting 
 conclusion to this complete and deservedly popular 
 series. In his preface to this volume, Mr Watson, 
 the sub-editor of the series, tells us how it has 
 grown far in excess of the limits originally 
 designed for it. Intended at the outset to include 
 some half-dozen books on the more popular and 
 generally recognised form of field sports and 
 pastimes, it has grown into a library of twenty- 
 eight volumes, dealing with well-nigh everything 
 that can by the most comprehensive and catholic 
 application of the term be brought under the head 
 of Sport. This expansion was no doubt in part 
 due to the success of the earlier volumes. Mr 
 Watson dwells in this preface on that success 
 with no undue self-complacency, and is generously 
 enthusiastic in acknowledging the services of his 
 
 1 "The Poetry of Sport." The Badmintou Library. Selected and 
 edited by Hedley Peek. London, 1896. 
 
 170
 
 "THE BADMINTON LIBRARY' 171 
 
 editor-in-chief and their contributors. The experts 
 in whose hands the work was placed proved 
 capable of bringing to bear on their own subjects 
 a power of literary expression beyond what had 
 been hoped for. Success begat confidence, and it 
 soon became clear that the series might be made 
 into something like a complete and exhaustive 
 encyclopaedia of all reputable pastimes. 
 
 The growth of the series, too, was stimulated 
 by the development of new sports. Between the 
 first planning and the final execution of the series, 
 football had risen from a schoolboy's game, carried 
 on at the universities by a few enthusiasts, to the 
 dignity of a national pastime, with its own news- 
 paper and its own public of devotees and critics. 
 Golf, when the Badminton editors began their 
 labours, was still in the stage described by Mr 
 Watson, when "in a few out-of-the-way places 
 men were occasionally met carrying what to the 
 casual eye looked like overgrown walking-sticks 
 with fantastic handles." Thus an ever-increasing 
 number of popular pursuits claimed admission to 
 the series. 
 
 Moreover, there was on the part of those who 
 planned the series an ever-increasing readiness to 
 enlarge its boundaries, which probably reached
 
 172 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 the final point when places were assigned to 
 " mountaineering " and " dancing." In short, the 
 Badminton series became, to borrow the title of 
 an earlier work, the library of "A gentleman's 
 complete recreation." That all parts of it should 
 be equally good was not to be looked for : but the 
 editor may fairly claim that no pursuit to which 
 the name of sport could by the widest liberality 
 of expression be given has been excluded ; that in 
 arrangement, expression, and not least pictorial 
 illustration, some have been dealt with brilliantly 
 and all adequately. 
 
 New sports may, as Mr Watson points out, 
 give birth, as time goes on, to new volumes. 
 But for the present the series may be regarded 
 as complete, and it was, as we have said, a happy 
 thought to wind up with a volume showing the 
 place which sport has occupied in national 
 literature, and the spirit in which it has been 
 regarded by English men of letters through suc- 
 cessive generations. 
 
 The volume has a short introduction by the 
 departmental editor, Mr Peek, on the subject, 
 " Is sport a fitting subject of the poet ? " and 
 another by Mr Lang, on " Classical Sport." Of 
 the first, one is inclined to say, Solvitur ambulando.
 
 CLASSICAL SPORT 173 
 
 No one would claim that the subject of sport gave 
 scope for the poetry of reflection or of emotion in 
 its highest form; but it would have been indeed 
 strange if a subject which involves vivid passion and 
 varied action, and which brings man into contact 
 with all that is most beautiful in inanimate nature, 
 had not gathered round it much poetry of a high 
 order. Mr Lang's excursus is, as might be expected, 
 full of scholarly learning, coupled with the keenest 
 appreciation of his subject, and expressed with 
 delightful freshness and unconventionality. He 
 points out that in Homer's time the chase had 
 hardly passed from the phase when it is under- 
 taken, not as a self-imposed toil for exercise and 
 pastime, but of necessity for self-defence or for 
 procuring food. He contrasts the definite realism 
 of the boxing matches in Theocritus and Virgil 
 with the vagueness of Pindar. The latter "was 
 obviously bored by his task and shirked the 
 sporting details," drifting away into mythological 
 genealogies, "as if one were offered five pounds 
 to celebrate Mr G. O. Smith, and then wrote 
 an ode on Hephaestus." Mr Lang, too, taking 
 Xenophon as his text, adds some words of wisdom 
 on the general subject of sport in its social and 
 moral bearings.
 
 174 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 "These are very English reflections. Xeno- 
 phon's is a protest against a purely urban life, 
 an existence of pleasure, lawsuits, ' culture,' 
 politics, and * hearing or telling some new thing,' 
 as St Luke has it. Sport keeps alive the original 
 wholesome barbarian in our nature, as it did, he 
 confessed, in the apostle of culture in Matthew 
 Arnold. But ' sport ' does not mean betting on 
 horses, nor looking on at billiard matches. The 
 labour and toil of sport endear it to Xenophon, 
 that illustrious commander, the most English of the 
 Athenians. . . . Sport is best when most natural 
 and least accompanied by hot luncheons. Xeno- 
 phon would have despised, not unjustly, the 
 luxuries of many modern marksmen who have a 
 name to a sportsman 'falsely so called.' He 
 would rather have esteemed the hardy hunter 
 and the pursuer of big game in Asia and 
 Africa." 
 
 The main body of the work consists of two 
 parts ; the first a collection of passages in which 
 English poets, more or less classical, have touched 
 upon sporting subjects. Of these one or two, 
 such as Somerville's Chase and Gay's Rural 
 Sports, deal avowedly and specially with sport. 
 The greater part, however, are incidental refer- 
 ences to sport embodied in literature of a more
 
 EARLY ENGLISH AUTHORS 175 
 
 general kind. This is followed by a collection of 
 avowedly sporting songs and ballads. 
 
 To us the first half of Mr Peek's task seems 
 the better discharged. In one or two cases, how- 
 ever, we think that an editorial footnote telling 
 us something more about the writer or about 
 the position which the poem quoted occupied in 
 general literature would not have been out of 
 place. And we must protest against the hope- 
 lessly confusing fashion in which some of the 
 earlier extracts are dated. The dates appended 
 are probably those of the particular edition or 
 editions which Mr Peek has used. We acquit 
 him of supposing that Chaucer wrote in 1532, 
 or that Sir Eglamour of Artoys dates from the 
 reign of Elizabeth ; but if those dates refer to 
 editions, that should be stated. And why could 
 not Mr Peek give the date of the original pro- 
 duction of Sir Eglamour for the benefit of those 
 who may not have an Early English library to 
 refer to? It is somewhat bewildering to find 
 poems of the fourteenth century packed in between 
 Chaucer and Gascoigne. 
 
 However, we can forgive Mr Peek a good 
 deal for some of the extracts that he has brought 
 before us. One may pardon a reader who, while
 
 176 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 admiring the trumpet notes of Drayton's shorter 
 Agincourt poem or the stately swell of the longer 
 one, and delighting in the graceful pedantry of 
 the Nymphidia, has yet never steered his barque 
 over all the winding, and it must be confessed 
 at times somewhat wearisome, waters of the 
 " Polyolbion." And one should therefore be duly 
 grateful for the admirable description of a course 
 which Mr Peek has exhumed. The passage is 
 Drayton at his best, brilliant in colouring and 
 definite in detail : 
 
 " The greyhounds forth are brought for coursing then in case, 
 And choycely in the slip, one leading forth a brace. 
 The Finder puts her up and gives her coursers law. 
 
 When each man runnes his horse with fixed eyes, and notes 
 Which dog first turns the hare, which first the other cotes ; 
 They wrench her once or twice ere she a turn will take. 
 What's offered by the first the other good doth make, 
 And turn for turn again with equal speed they ply, 
 Bestirring their swift feet with strange agilitie. 
 A hardened ridge or way which if the hare doth win, 
 Then as shot from a bow she from the dogs doth spin, 
 That strive to put her off; but when he cannot reach her, 
 This giving him a coat about again doth fetch her 
 To him that comes behind, which seems the hare to bear, 
 But with a nimble turn she casts them both arrere ; 
 Till oft for want of breath to fall to ground they make her, 
 The greyhounds both so spent that they want breath to 
 take her."
 
 DRAYTON'S COURSING MATCH 177 
 
 The man who wrote that had watched many 
 a course, we may be sure, and knew the meaning 
 and value of a greyhound's work. We should 
 like to point out by the way that the explana- 
 tion of " coting," supplied by Mr Peek in a 
 footnote as simply "passing," is somewhat in- 
 adequate. The cote, now no longer recognised, 
 was made, so far as we can understand the not 
 very lucid words of the old rules, when a dog 
 scored a point without any previous advantage 
 of position, or, to put it in another way, when 
 he turned the hare to his opponent and then by 
 superior speed again turned it himself. 
 
 We do not know what opinion Shakespeare 
 may have had of his contemporary Drayton, but 
 we rather fear that he would have stigmatised 
 him, as Sir James Chetham did Mr Vincy, as 
 " a coursing fellow " : for it is clear from the 
 stock passage in Venus and Adonis of "poor 
 Wat upon a hill," which Mr Peek duly quotes, 
 that Shakespeare was a keen and appreciative 
 hare-hunter. And as his only coursing man is 
 Master Page, who seems to have quibbled rather 
 about the undecided course which his fallow grey- 
 hound ran on Cotsale, it is likely that Shakespeare 
 
 looked on coursing as a somewhat bourgeois sport. 
 
 M
 
 178 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 Another passage which Mr Peek quotes from 
 Drayton, where in the Muses' Elysium the hunts- 
 man Silvius and the fisherman Halcius chant the 
 praises of their respective pursuits, shows at once 
 a fine catholicity in its love of sport and a keen 
 appreciation of all its picturesque incidents and 
 surroundings. 
 
 From the sporting poetry of the Elizabethan 
 to that of the last century there is, as Mr Peek's 
 selection reminds one, a great falling away. One 
 could hardly expect that it should be otherwise, 
 whether one looks to the literary conventions of 
 the age or its underlying sentiments. If sporting 
 poetry is to be worth much, it must be, as 
 Drayton's is, vividly and naturally descriptive, 
 or it must carry with it the drum and trumpet 
 note of the ballad. Neither in the school of Pope 
 nor in the school of Collins was there room for 
 either of these qualities. It may sound like a 
 strange paradox to say that the one man in the 
 last century who could have written sporting 
 poetry was Cowper. Yet he had a good part 
 of the needful equipment, a style vividly and 
 directly realistic in the best sense of the word, 
 and a keen enjoyment, so far as joy was allowed 
 him, of homely English life and scenery. Somer-
 
 COWPER 179 
 
 ville could not divorce rural life from frippery 
 and pedantry. Diana walks in his woods and 
 Naiads haunt his streams. The England that 
 Cowper knew and loved was the England of 
 Walton and Cobbett, the England of farmstead 
 and copse and trout stream. But one hardly 
 need say that moral conviction, and even more 
 intense tenderness of feeling, made such a choice 
 of subject impossible. The lover of sport, if he 
 be also a lover of Cowper, is apt to be haunted 
 with recollections of Puss, Bess, and Tiny, and 
 to feel deteriora sequor. 
 
 The change of which we have spoken was 
 something more than a mere change in literary 
 form or fashion. It was part of that movement 
 whereby the relations of town to country under- 
 went so great a revolution between the age of the 
 earlier Stuart kings and that of their Hanoverian 
 successors. Country life became somewhat vulgar- 
 ised ; letters became, if one may coin a word, 
 even more decidedly Cockneyised. No doubt the 
 country gentleman in 1630 was not always a 
 Hampden or an Elliot, any more than in 1750 
 he was always a Squire Western or a Tony 
 Lumpkin. But the tide ran that way, and that 
 public opinion which largely decides the literary
 
 180 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 fashions of the day exaggerated the change. How 
 the lettered Londoner regarded the man whose 
 talk was of bullocks may be seen from Horace 
 Walpole's description of the Norfolk squires, 
 " mountains of roast beef just roughly hewn out 
 into the outlines of human form " ; better perhaps 
 from the kindly tone of patronage with which 
 Steele and Addison treat Sir Roger and with 
 which Johnson writes of Somerville. 
 
 Mr Peek has, we think, been decidedly less 
 fortunate in his selection of sporting poems proper 
 than in the extracts which we have already 
 criticised. No doubt the composition of an 
 anthology is one of those matters of which every 
 one thinks, as King Alfonso of Spain did of the 
 construction of the world, that "if he had been 
 consulted several errors would have been avoided." 
 We cannot, however, but think that there would 
 be a consensus of opinion among those who take 
 any interest in the subject that this part of Mr 
 Peek's task has been somewhat inadequately per- 
 formed. One need not be a specialist in sporting 
 literature to detect a good many of his sins of 
 omission. One need not have a highly cultivated 
 or peculiarly susceptible taste to be offended by 
 a good many of his sins of commission. Too
 
 SOME FAILURES 181 
 
 often, it seems to us, he has cumbered his pages 
 with poems which merely touch the fringe of 
 the subject, in which sport furnishes nothing 
 more than a vague background. The editor, for 
 example, tells us that one of the best hunting 
 songs in the collection was written by Bishop 
 Heber. The song in question is called The 
 Rising of the Sun. It begins 
 
 " Wake, wake, wake to the hunting " ; 
 
 but, once the Bishop has got his sportsman out 
 of bed, he leaves him wholly to his own devices. 
 So, too, with a poem of Cullen Bryant's called 
 The Hunter's Legend. The hero, being tired, 
 we are told, with a long stalk, lies on a rock 
 overlooking a precipice. The unfortunate youth, 
 an outdoor Eutychus, goes to sleep, dreams of 
 his sweetheart, falls over the cliff, and is killed. 
 Now in what sense is this a sporting poem ? We 
 are quite willing to take Mr Bryant's word for 
 it that his hero was a hunter ; but for all that 
 appears in the action of the poem he might 
 have been canvassing the county or composing 
 a University extension lecture. 
 
 Take, again, the poem called Trout Hall. 
 We ask for fish, and we are given a party of
 
 182 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 anglers, with "humming ale," "Nantz," tankards 
 and pipes ; but of sport not a word. We are 
 tempted to plagiarise from the speaker who, in 
 a discussion on political crime, asked whether 
 the murder of a fiddler would be a musical 
 felony ? 
 
 Of the so - called humorous poems which 
 occupy the last seventy pages, especially of those 
 by a Mr Outwood, it is charitable not to speak. 
 We will only say that if the aspects of sport 
 presented to us in the Badminton series had 
 in the least resembled those given us in these 
 pieces, it would have been very far from achieving 
 that assured success which the editor justly claims 
 for it. 
 
 It is all the more strange that Mr Peek should 
 have cared to pad out his pages with inferior and 
 irrelevant matter, when there was so much with 
 which he must have been familiar and, one cannot 
 but believe, very loth to exclude. A volume of 
 sporting poetry in which Sir Francis Doyle's St 
 Leger and the ringing ballads of Lindsay Gordon 
 and Bromley - Davenport find no place seems a 
 strange anomaly. There is hardly a better bit of 
 sporting verse in the language than the last- 
 named writer's Dream of an Old Meltonian, with 
 its description of that run,
 
 RIDING AND RACING 183 
 
 " too speedily over, 
 A century's joys all condensed in its course, 
 
 From the find till we ate him by Woodwellhead Cover, 
 In thirty quick minutes from Ranksboro' Gorse." 
 
 Indeed the riding poems of Lindsay Gordon, of 
 Bromley - Davenport, and of Kingsley have the 
 merit of being written by men who could do 
 with their own hands the very feats that they 
 sing. That is a merit which a racing poem is 
 hardly likely to possess. We have never heard of 
 a poetical jockey, and we fear that any tendency 
 to woo the Muses, as our ancestors called it, 
 would find as little favour with trainers as we 
 believe it does with attorneys. Even with Sir 
 Francis Doyle's poem, vivid and spirited as it 
 is, we at times feel that we have the literary man 
 looking at the subject from outside, and analysing 
 the crowd and its emotions rather than actually 
 seeing the struggle. One stirring passage is 
 marred by a "little rift within the lute," a lack 
 of reality. At the very crisis of the finish, 
 when the southern horse is on the point of out- 
 raging Yorkshire patriotism by bearing off the 
 prize, the northern mare, who has been in front 
 throughout, comes to the rescue : 
 
 " With bird-like dart she shoots away, 
 And by half a length has gained the day."
 
 184 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 Did ever human being see the horse who could 
 make running over the mile and three-quarters 
 of the Leger course, and then muster speed for 
 a " bird-like dart " ? Probably the nearest approach 
 ever seen to such a "dart" was in that singular 
 and dramatic Leger finish some three years ago, 
 when Throstle, after sulking and shirking for five- 
 sixths of the distance, suddenly, as Bohn's Homer 
 would say, "remembered her impetuous might" 
 and shot past Ladas. But then she, with what 
 appeared like temper, but may have been deep- 
 laid strategy, unappreciated by her rider, had 
 been husbanding her strength, and, moreover, we 
 suspect that the appearance of great speed was 
 only relative to the pace of her exhausted 
 opponents. 
 
 The turf indeed fares poorly in this collection. 
 We could wish the editor had republished an old 
 Yorkshire ballad which was reprinted or perhaps 
 printed for the first time in BelVs Life not 
 very long before the decease of that respectable 
 journal. It described a match run in the latter 
 part of the seventeenth century between Sir 
 William Strickland's Merlin, trained and ridden 
 by a Yorkshire groom, Heseltine, and a horse 
 belonging to Tregonwell Frampton, afterwards
 
 MERLIN'S RACE 185 
 
 Master of the Horse to Queen Anne. The chief 
 interest of the matter lies in the fact that the 
 race is the earliest of which we know anything 
 beyond the barest details as to the description 
 and ownership of the horses. 
 
 We feel ourselves in the real ballad atmosphere 
 when we read how 
 
 " Little Merlin won the race, 
 
 And all to his owner's gain, 
 And four-and-twenty Yorkshiremen 
 
 Guarded him to his stable again ; 
 And as they rode through Newmarket, 
 
 Many curses on them did fall : 
 4 A curse light on each Yorkshire knight, 
 
 Their horses and riders and all. ' ' 
 
 The same race is referred to in a spirited 
 passage occurring in one version, unhappily not 
 the best known, of Sir Francis Doyle's poem, as 
 
 " Our first victory handed on 
 Through the long years from sire to son, 
 When subtle Frampton schemed in vain, 
 And from Newmarket's baffled plain 
 Our triumph leapt like beacon fires 
 Across the sullen Midland shires, 
 To fill with glee our reeling spires ; 
 When children started from their beds, 
 Those joy-bells clanging round their heads, 
 To hear through shouting Yorkshire run 
 The news that Merlin's race was won."
 
 186 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 Another racing ballad which might well have 
 found a place, not altogether for its merits but 
 from its historical interest, is the very vigorous 
 doggerel describing how Careless "beat his 
 Grace's Atlas that never was beat before." The 
 ballad is interesting, firstly as showing that the 
 Cavendish racing colours were then as now 
 yellow, and secondly because the line which 
 tells how 
 
 " Brave Careless then did head the Crack " 
 
 shows that a living piece of slang is of venerable 
 antiquity. 1 Atlas, by the way, was the horse of 
 whom Dr Johnson, on his visit to Chatsworth, 
 said that he was the only one of the Duke of 
 Devonshire's possessions whom he coveted, a 
 remark which shows fine sportsmanlike possibilities 
 latent in that vigorous John Bull nature. 
 
 Mr Peek does give us a ballad of somewhat 
 the same order, but in every way poorer, more 
 modern, and of much less interest, concerning 
 Lady Peeswing\ and we must say that in so 
 doing he shows that he is either somewhat poorly 
 equipped for his task or has a comfortably easy 
 
 1 The ballad is to be found in the letter-press accompanying Mr 
 Tavmton's "Portraits of celebrated Race-horses."
 
 THE WILD DEER 187 
 
 view of the duties of an editor. It is startling 
 to find the Trial Stakes at Chester figuring under 
 such an inexplicable name as the " Tyrol " Stakes ! 
 It is more startling to read that Beeswing in 
 the Newcastle Cup beat Lanercost and Eclipse. 
 Heroine though she was in her own county, we 
 can hardly think that the most patriotic bard 
 would have brought Eclipse out of the grave in 
 which he had reposed for more than half a century 
 to swell her triumph. The mystery is solved 
 when we find that Calypso, probably spelt by the 
 local poet Calipso, figured in the rac% referred to. 
 No doubt the error was either with the printer 
 or reprinter ; but, after all, it is the business of 
 an editor to edit. 
 
 In the hunting department the Billesdon 
 Coplow Hunting song might, we think, have 
 found a place, not so much from its poetical 
 merits as from its historical interest. One of the 
 most picturesque forms of all field sports, the 
 chase of the wild deer, is wholly unrepresented, 
 for we cannot accept Whyte-Melville's " Lord of 
 the Valley," " fresh from his carriage," as a sub- 
 stitute for the wild stag of Exmoor. Why could 
 not Mr Peek have preserved that rattling lay of 
 the Exmoor Stag Hunt which appeared in the
 
 188 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 Saturday Review some three years back, with its 
 vivid description of the scene when 
 
 " The tufters on a find 
 
 Are turning to the norrard. 
 Hark back ! Hark back, it is a hind ! 
 The stag himself hark forrard ! " 
 
 through the incidents of the run, in which 
 
 " We chucked a City swell to the pig 
 
 By the mixen in Cloutsham corner ; 
 We hung our artist by the wig 
 Like Absalom, in Homer " ; 
 
 to the last scene when 
 
 " His foes with fury facing, 
 
 Back, back he hurls the pack, 
 Or heaves them neck and crop, boys, 
 
 Till now, now down goes brow, 
 Bay, tray and three on top, boys." 
 
 And what sportsman could ask for higher im- 
 mortality than that given in the concluding lines ? 
 
 " Yet only five of all the hive 
 
 That set on foot the sport, boys, 
 Rode straight and true the whole hunt through, 
 
 And mingled in the mort, boys. 
 Now name, name those sons of fame, 
 
 Who'll match them near and farther ? 
 Jim Scarlett, Bassett, and Bissett were there, 
 
 With Parson Jack Russell and Arthur." 
 
 The writings of Mr H. H. Dixon ("The 
 Druid ") are the very A B C of sporting literature,
 
 "THE DRUID" 189 
 
 and we think that a careful study of them might 
 have put Mr Peek on the track of more than one 
 poem or song worth preservation. There is, for 
 example, a genuine ring of what one may call 
 latter-day Borderdom, as of Hogg or Wilson a 
 little artificial, it may be, yet full of vigour and 
 spirit in the commemorative lines inscribed on 
 a stone somewhere in the Cheviots : 
 
 " Reared by a veteran sportsman's hand, 
 Through sunshine and through mist I stand, 
 To tell the time and show the place 
 Where high-born beauty led the chase, 
 And gentle lady's graceful steed 
 Won from the field its hard-earned meed. 
 I mark the spot on this wild fell 
 That sires to their sons may tell 
 How once a youthful English bride 
 Taught the rough borderers to ride." 
 
 We do not know whether Mr Peek is him- 
 self a fisherman. Certainly his selections in that 
 branch strike us happier than in others. Stoddart, 
 of whom the editor has made good use, is known 
 to most men as the Laureate of the fishing-rod. 
 But probably the merits of Thomas Doubleday, 
 a Scotchman from whose " Fisher's Garland "Mr 
 Peek quotes two charming poems in Lowland 
 Scotch vernacular, will be new to many English 
 readers.
 
 190 
 
 Cricket has, we think, fared very poorly in 
 Mr Peek's hands. Two thin ballads, two mock 
 heroic poems, cumbrous and pompous specimens 
 of last - century humour, though not without 
 historical interest, are all that we get: and this 
 was not for lack of material. Why could not the 
 editor have given us what one of his colleagues in 
 an earlier volume justly called "the best cricket- 
 ing poem yet published," Mr Prowse's lines on 
 Alfred Mynn? We should also have welcomed 
 Lord Lyttelton's Song of Hagky Cricket, which 
 tells how 
 
 " the peer and all his clan 
 Grasped the bat to guard the wicket 
 As no other household can." 
 
 There is a pleasing autobiographical candour in 
 the description of the total failure of all the older 
 members of the family to make runs, somewhat 
 redeemed by the fact that 
 
 " The peer to mend his glory 
 
 One and eke another caught, 
 While the parson, doleful story, 
 
 Missed the pair his hands that sought " ; 
 
 and there is a foreshadowing of future greatness 
 in the lines which tell how the two youngest of 
 the house,
 
 CRICKET 191 
 
 " the pair of infant heroes 
 Trained in Walker's school of fame, 
 Scorned papa's and uncle's zeros, 
 Swelled the score and stayed the game." 
 
 There is no exact record of the result, but we 
 have no doubt that it justified the boast with 
 which the poem ends, that, 
 
 " come whate'er eleven may, 
 I and my eight boys will lick it, 
 My stout sons will gain the day." 
 
 Again, we think that some of Mr Cochrane's 
 lyrics might find a place. A cricketing poet who 
 bowled for his University for three years, and 
 who had a large share in getting rid of an 
 Australian eleven for seventy and thirty-eight, 
 surely has special claims. Not that Mr Cochrane's 
 would have been a succes cCestime. How many 
 bowlers could avenge themselves of their adversary 
 as he does in the delightful Ballade of the Corner 
 Stroke, wherein he deals with the presumption 
 and downfall of "the man who snicketh the 
 length ball"? 
 
 " It was my best, no better one I crave, 
 To bowl ; it hurtled like an autumn gale, 
 
 And yet withal a crafty twist I gave, 
 Sufficing, as I fancied, to prevail.
 
 192 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 " Then, as I looked his exodus to hail, 
 
 Expectant to behold his timbers fall, 
 It went for four hard by his inner bail. 
 
 This is the man who snicketh the length ball. 
 
 " Sirs, I was taken off* ; expletives fail : 
 
 He never used the weapon's face at all : 
 They bowled him with an under like a snail ! 
 This is the man that snicketh the length ball." 
 
 We trust that we have, at the risk of some 
 weariness to our readers, piled up enough 
 instances of Mr Peek's omissions to justify what 
 we have said in our preliminary remarks. Yet 
 we fully admit that, maimed and incomplete 
 though this anthology may be, it is one from 
 which every man who is at once a lover of 
 sport and a man of letters may derive much 
 pleasure. And, wishing to part from Mr Peek 
 in a spirit of friendship, we would thank him for 
 at least one good thing. He has rescued from 
 Peacock's Maid Marian that most delightful duet 
 between the heroine and Friar Tuck : 
 
 " Though I now am a gray, gray friar, 
 
 Yet I once was a gay young knight, 
 And the cry of my dogs was the only choir 
 In which my spirit did take delight." 
 
 It is rather sad that one should have to talk
 
 PEACOCK 198 
 
 of " rescuing " a fragment of Peacock, yet we 
 fear it is so. We once heard the War Song 
 of Dinas Vawr quoted, and the author thereof 
 named, in the presence of a man not unknown 
 in the world of learning and letters. He asked 
 whether the author was not the Dean of Ely ! 
 Even Dr Johnson might with such provocation 
 have forgiven the reply, that the two birds spread 
 very different tails. And if Mr Peek brings back 
 some lost sheep to the Pavonian fold, he will 
 not have worked in vain. 
 
 We cannot take leave of this book without 
 referring to some of those wider issues which 
 are suggested by Mr Watson in his Introduction 
 and by Mr Lang in his prefatory moralisings. 
 The Badminton series as a whole not only 
 reminds us of the charm of sport ; it also bears 
 witness to the comprehensiveness of sport as at 
 present understood, of the width of its claims 
 and therefore, we venture to think, of its dangers. 
 The twenty-eight volumes whereof Mr Watson 
 boasts are beyond doubt a proof of the catholicity 
 and popularity of sport, but it must not be for- 
 gotten as a set-off that they multiply vulnerable 
 faces. We have already quoted some of the whole- 
 some words of warning which Mr Lang addresses 
 
 N
 
 194 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 to the friends of sport, real and so-called. They 
 
 certainly are not its true friends who are ready 
 
 at once to raise a howl against every one who 
 
 questions the morality, the humanity, or the 
 
 expediency of this or that sport as a kill-joy and 
 
 a Puritan forgetful in their use of the latter 
 
 term that Cromwell raced and Hutchinson hunted. 
 
 What is really to be regretted is that those, who 
 
 might reform sport and keep in check its meaner 
 
 and worse sides, should squander their energy and 
 
 discredit their influence by protests which only 
 
 show their ignorance of the subject with which 
 
 they are dealing. Not long ago we read a 
 
 protest signed by some who might at least have 
 
 been expected to weigh their words, in which 
 
 the Royal Buckhounds were denounced, on the 
 
 plea that, if cruelty to the stag was avoided, it 
 
 was avoided at the expense of suffering to the 
 
 horses of the whips who rescued him. Now we 
 
 certainly do not hold a brief for the chase of 
 
 the carted deer. Our own view of that sport 
 
 is somewhat like that of an old-fashioned Baptist 
 
 minister of whom we have heard. One of his 
 
 flock about to be immersed on a cold winter's 
 
 day insisted on the tank being warmed. When 
 
 the operation was completed, he exclaimed : " O
 
 REFORMERS OF SPORT 195 
 
 minister, I am so much happier since I have 
 descended into Jordan ! " " Jordan ! " was the 
 retort, " biled Jordan ! " Carted deer, bag-foxes, 
 and the like seem to us to savour largely of " biled 
 Jordan." But when we read of the " suffering " 
 inflicted on a well-trained hunter by a smart 
 gallop for the purpose of whipping off hounds, 
 we are reminded of Mr Bromley-Davenport's 
 anticipated millennium of humanity, "when the 
 oyster will not be eaten without an anaesthetic." 
 The Turf, again, has had some rude attacks 
 and denunciations to endure of late. There are 
 one or two questions which we should like to put 
 to those who would suppress racing. Have they 
 ever considered whether the evils which they aim 
 at uprooting do not really lie, not in any special 
 conditions or external circumstances, but in human 
 nature and character, and whether they are not 
 simply checking symptoms instead of really striking 
 at the root of the evil ? It is more than likely 
 that, if Tattersall's and betting on horses were 
 abolished to-morrow, we should see an outburst of 
 speculation in stock and shares more demoralising 
 and far more widely pernicious in its influence 
 than the Turf. We would further ask headlong 
 reformers to reflect whether it is not exceedingly
 
 196 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 likely that their efforts would do away with the 
 Turf as it exists, voluntarily accepting the control 
 of the Jockey Club, and substitute a Turf wholly 
 anarchical and disorganised. For the Jockey Club, 
 be it remembered, is a responsible body, which has 
 shown plainly enough by its action of late years 
 that it is fully alive to the possible abuses of racing, 
 and that its members have no sympathy with 
 gambling. At all events, we would ask those who 
 denounce the Turf, alike in fairness and in their 
 own interests, to confine themselves to that side 
 of the question with which they are familiar, and 
 not to seek to bolster up their case by wholly 
 exaggerated pictures of racing as honeycombed 
 with fraud. The internal morality of the Turf is 
 one thing; its effect as an influence for good or 
 evil on those interested in it, but outside it, is 
 something very different. The latter is a point 
 on which the clergyman, the philanthropist, the 
 employer of labour, and every one who really has 
 opportunities of studying the habits and tempta- 
 tions of the poor, have a perfect right to express 
 an opinion and to claim a hearing. When, on the 
 other hand, they endeavour to show that every 
 owner, trainer, and jockey is a knave, they are 
 going wholly beyond their brief, and in ninety-
 
 THE ENGLISH TURF 197 
 
 nine cases out of a hundred are displaying their 
 ignorance. 
 
 And lastly, we would ask, whether it is certain 
 that, if racing were abolished, a good deal of wheat 
 would not come up with the tares? Burke was 
 not afraid to defend his chief, Rockingham, against 
 those who " charged him with jockeyship, as they 
 were pleased to style it, as though any diversion 
 could become noblemen in general better than 
 that by which the breed of one of the noblest and 
 most useful of animals is so much improved." 
 Does not Kinglake tell us that Louis Napoleon, 
 though not by nature reticent, had, " partly from 
 habits acquired in the secret societies of the Italian 
 Carbonari, partly from long years passed in prison, 
 and partly too, as he once said, from his inter- 
 course with the calm, self-possessed men of the 
 English Turf, derived the power of keeping long 
 silence." 
 
 Not many men were better judges of human 
 nature or shrewder observers of English life than 
 the late Mr Cory. And in his exceedingly 
 suggestive book, " A Guide to modern English 
 History," he wrote thus: 
 
 " Lord Palmerston was sufficiently philosophical 
 and literary for political life. But he was in the
 
 198 THE POETRY OF SPORT 
 
 main a country gentleman, a sportsman, a racing 
 man. Out of this set of habits there grew in 
 him a wholesome sympathy with warriors." 
 
 And thereto is appended the following footnote : 
 
 " In the species sportsman, one expects courage, 
 cheerfulness, and a frank, plain manner; in the 
 variety racing man, one expects also powers of 
 calculation and reticence." 
 
 Nevertheless, while we think that the anti- 
 gambler, like the Temperance reformer, is pursuing 
 aims, many of them good in themselves, by short- 
 sighted and ineffectual means, we do not think 
 that in any trial of strength the friends of sport 
 as such will feel any special call to take a side. 
 They will probably accept the view which we have 
 already quoted as pithily set forth by Mr Lang, 
 and will feel that the discouragement of gambling 
 by legitimate means is so much clear gain to the 
 cause of sport. 
 
 Again, those who protest against the prominence 
 and publicity given to athletics are not to be dis- 
 posed of by venerable references to mens sana in 
 corpore sano, or to the Duke of Wellington and 
 the playing-fields. We may be quite willing to 
 admit that schoolboys, yea and undergraduates, 
 cannot row, or play cricket and football, too
 
 AVOIDABLE DANGERS 199 
 
 strenuously or too thoughtfully. At all events, 
 we may say generally of athletics as Mistress 
 Alison Wilson said of matrimony, "They maun 
 either marry or do waur." The real danger lies, 
 not, we think, in the actual devotion to field sports 
 or athletic games, but in the evils, often attendant 
 but not really inherent, of laborious and exacting 
 organisation, of publicity, of continuous existence 
 in a feverish atmosphere of small excitements.
 
 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 NOT the literature of the Turf. If I thought of 
 venturing on so vast a topic, I should have to 
 bespeak the monopoly of several numbers of 
 Baity in advance. I have no intention of dis- 
 cussing the various writers whose theme has been 
 racing and the racehorse : from the time of that 
 eccentric theorist, Osman, who waxed indignant 
 at the term " blood," and at the idea of hereditary 
 qualities. I shall only ask your readers to accom- 
 pany me through a few of the byeways which the 
 racing man and the man of letters have trodden 
 together. 
 
 Not long ago a certain Mr Eagles probably 
 a lineal descendant of Solomon Eagles, and, if so, 
 a valuable illustration of the doctrine of heredity 
 for "Borderer" and other people who deal in 
 pedigrees announced, through, of all places, 
 the columns of the Sportsman, that the Turf 
 
 was a doomed institution. Need it be said that 
 
 200
 
 REFORMERS 201 
 
 the Gladstonian majority which is to be as 
 industrious and as versatile as the servant of 
 M. Harpagon was to be the instrument for 
 sweeping away the hideous abuse, with all its 
 immorality and cruelty. The cruelty, by the way, 
 was illustrated by the conduct of the racehorse 
 Judith who had " hurled herself out of the course 
 to escape from her tormentors." 
 
 I fear Mr Eagles has a little deteriorated from 
 the standard of his Puritan ancestors. They, as 
 Lord Macaulay tells us, hated bear-baiting, not 
 because it gave pain to the bear, but because it 
 gave pleasure to the spectators. Will not Mr 
 Eagles be reconciled to Judith's sufferings when 
 he thinks of the acute annoyance which she inflicted 
 on her backers ? 
 
 Well, at all events, when Mr Eagles, with the 
 help of the London County Council, and, of course, 
 with the approval of Lord Rosebery, has sown 
 salt on the polluted sites of the Ascot and Epsom 
 grand stands, he still will have a pretty heavy job 
 before him in obliterating all the traces which the 
 national love of the Turf has left on our literature 
 and our speech. It will take a good deal to uproot 
 " making running," and " answering to the whip." 
 Probably more than one schoolboy will still walk
 
 202 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 in the footsteps of the translator who rendered 
 Dido vento reditura secundo, "Dido will come 
 again when she gets her second wind." Turf slang 
 has an odd way of cropping up in unlooked-for 
 places. Not more than a year ago I sat at a 
 Church Congress. I remember how one speaker 
 illustrated his views about Church and Dissent 
 by the case of one horse giving away weight to 
 another, and called forth from an archiepiscopal 
 punster in the chair some remarks on his racy 
 illustration. I felt inclined to intervene, having 
 some doubts whether the speaker quite understood 
 the difference between a handicap and a weight- 
 for-age race with penalties. But the interruption 
 might have seemed pedantic, and I am glad that I 
 forbore. 
 
 What, however, first suggested to me this 
 train of thought was a passage whereon I lit in 
 the Rockingham " Memoirs," where that honest 
 Yorkshireman, Sir George Savile, gives Lord 
 Rockingham some sound political advice as to 
 the advantage of coming out boldly on a line of 
 his own. 
 
 "You advertise that G. G. (George Grenville) 
 should have continued Minister if you ride the 
 heat as he did. He waited, and lay in a good
 
 SAVILE AND ROCKINGHAM 203 
 
 place till he came to the ending-post. I beseech 
 you make the play if you are stout" 
 
 Clearly the general principles of race-riding were as 
 well understood then as now. " Make the play if 
 you are stout." Cannot we imagine the very same 
 counsellor giving Rockingham the same advice 
 nine months later as the saddling bell rang for 
 
 " That stern struggle ended well 
 When strong of heart, the Wentworth Bay, 
 From staggering Herod, strode away." 
 
 That is not the only passage in Savile's letters to 
 Rockingham where the racing man stands con- 
 fessed. " It is like a child pulling against a 
 runaway horse ; let him alone, and he will stop 
 the sooner." That sounds like a prophecy of the 
 slack-rein method, for which Chifhey, with his 
 patrons, was nearly laughed off Newmarket Heath, 
 till he confuted his critics on Knowsley and Eagle. 
 " Didn't a sick horse once pay forfeit to a dead 
 one ? " Surely here we have an early version 
 of an oft- told tale ; I will not say the earliest 
 version, for who ever yet ran a good story or 
 saying to earth in its original form? 
 
 The memory of the writer and that of him 
 whom he addressed are associated with some 
 stirring scenes in later Turf history. Rufford was
 
 204 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 the country seat of Savile, and as he wrote he may 
 have had under his eyes the very paddocks where 
 Skirmisher and Cremone sported in their foalhood. 
 The green jacket of Lord Rockingham, which Bay 
 Malton and Allabaculia carried to victory, was 
 handed down together with the lands of Went- 
 worth to the owner of Catton and Mulatto. 
 Rockingham himself was an honest and consistent 
 performer, and always answered gamely to the calls 
 of that clever Irishman, Mr Burke, who trained and 
 rode him. But I fear that history can hardly rank 
 him as more than " useful," and not to be named 
 with classical winners like Walpole and Chatham. 
 
 While I am on the subject of Turf antiquities, 
 I should like to say a word though it is rather a 
 digression on the exceedingly interesting article 
 which appeared in Bailys Magazine on thorough- 
 bred horses in war. It was there assumed, as it 
 usually is, that the Duke of Wellington's charger, 
 Copenhagen, was thoroughbred. As a matter of 
 fact, the entry of his dam in the second volume of 
 the Stud Book runs thus : " Lady Catherine, got 
 by John Bull, her dam by the Rutland Arabian 
 out of a hunting mare, not thoroughbred." There 
 is not, as far as I know, any other instance where a 
 horse avowedly not thoroughbred has passed the
 
 SIR FRANCIS DOYLE 205 
 
 equine College of Heralds in Burlington Street. 
 Copenhagen's admission may be looked upon as a 
 special case where a title of nobility was granted 
 for military services. 
 
 Any one whose lot it was to reside in Oxford 
 between 1868 and 1878, and to know the then 
 Professor of Poetry, Sir Francis Doyle, must 
 have learned what a wealth of illustration might 
 be got out of the language of the racecourse. I 
 was, I remember, one of a band of intending 
 listeners on our way to his lecture. By some 
 blunder, the place in which he was to hold forth 
 was otherwise engaged : and we met Sir Francis, 
 wandering through the streets with some more 
 punctual disciples at his heels, in quest of a lecture 
 room. Some one was ill-advised enough to ask if 
 he still intended to lecture. " Lecture ? of course ! 
 Do you think I should not go to the post after 
 my number was put up ? " On another occasion 
 he was found by a brother Fellow, just as the 
 college chapel bell was on its last stroke, searching 
 for his surplice. Those who knew the Professor's 
 occasional forgetfulness about details would not 
 have been surprised if the surplice had changed 
 places with the window curtain. His friend sug- 
 gested that it was late, and he had better go in
 
 206 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 his gown. " Go in my gown ! I shall be fined 
 for riding in the wrong colours ! " 
 
 The morality of declarations to win is an 
 often-disputed question of Turf ethics. It cropped 
 up prominently when, in the One Thousand, 
 Memoir made way for Semolina. Those who 
 upheld the Duke of Portland's action may be 
 gratified by Sir Francis Doyle's comment on a 
 certain candidate for the Newdigate, who, rather 
 to the disgust of the examiners, had sent in two 
 poems. "Did he declare to win with one?" 
 was the not unnatural question. "No? Most 
 unsportsmanlike ! " 
 
 The lectures of the Professor of Poetry have 
 never commanded a large academic audience : 
 whereby, in Sir Francis Doyle's time, people lost 
 the chance of hearing much humour and much 
 enthusiastic and appreciative criticism. Such 
 hearers as there were came mainly from the lady 
 population of the Parks, even then a factor of 
 some importance : with a few members of the 
 Professor's own college, and occasionally one of 
 his own colleagues who, I fear, did not always 
 get a return in kind. One utterance, at least, 
 that I remember was rather startling to such 
 a body of listeners. It came in a lecture on
 
 MATILDA 207 
 
 Sir Walter. The lecturer illustrated some point 
 or other by an experience of his own an accident 
 which had befallen him in his youth when on 
 a visit in Yorkshire. " I recovered," he told us. 
 " I completed my journey, and reached Doncaster, 
 where I had the honour of a conversation with 
 Scott." Divers enthusiasts fogies, and frumps, 
 no doubt, for I am told that in these days 
 enthusiasm about Scott is limited to such drew 
 their breath. It was not quite clear what had 
 brought their idol so far from Abbotsford: but, 
 at all events, there was one before them who had 
 touched the hem of his garment. Then opened 
 an awful gulf of learned frivolity. "Yes, with 
 Scott not the mere poet and novelist, but that 
 far greater, that immortal, man, the trainer of 
 Matilda ! " I heard Sir Francis afterwards explain, 
 sine ulla sollemnitate, how each Scott had a 
 Matilda: but that there was no doubt which was 
 the superior creature. For my own part, I should 
 say that each was very lucky to pull off a good 
 engagement: and that it was well, for the fame 
 both of the master of Whitewall and the author 
 of Rokeby, that both could produce worthier 
 heroines. 
 
 Sir Francis Doyle's special talents certainly
 
 208 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 fitted him to act as " horse-godfather," to modify 
 Rowley's phrase. I do not know whether his 
 services were often called in in that capacity. I 
 can call to mind his speaking with satisfaction 
 of the success of "his godson" Triermain. For 
 a son of Gwendoline that was adequate. But 
 one might use a phrase which I remember in 
 one of Sir Francis's own lectures. He was cor- 
 recting some rather inaccurate reminiscences of 
 Lord Houghton's, concerning a Union debate at 
 which Mr Gladstone was present. " All that Mr 
 Gladstone did was to help to eat the supper 
 afterwards, a part which might have been played 
 with equal success by a less distinguished man." 
 But if Sir Francis Doyle did not specially shine 
 in this line himself, he had a keen enjoyment of 
 the efforts of others. I do not know whether 
 he was ever privileged to see the unpublished 
 records of that conference at Whitewall where the 
 late Lord Derby amused himself and his hearers 
 by suggesting names for the offspring of that 
 strangely-assorted couple, Ithuriel and Cyprian. If 
 so, he was more lucky than the present writer. 
 But I well remember his delight over that happiest 
 of all combinations, St Augustine by Wild Oats 
 out of Faith. " Who," as he said, " would have
 
 THE HORSE-GODFATHER 209 
 
 expected such theological accuracy in the Racing 
 Calendar?" He would no doubt have heartily 
 congratulated the sponsor who christened the 
 daughter of Trappist and Festive after that most 
 unclerkly Churchwoman, L'Abbesse de Jouarre. 
 Has it, by the way, ever occurred to any one 
 how completely the same idea was anticipated 
 by Sir Joseph Hawley when he gave the name 
 of Chaucer's frisky prioress to the daughter of 
 Cowl and Diversion ? "She was cleped Madame 
 Eglantine." 
 
 The mere index of names in the Stud Book 
 leads one into many a forgotten by-path of 
 literature. How many people could say offhand 
 why a son of John Bull should have been Job 
 Thornberry : or who was Sir Harry Dimsdale ? A 
 pleasant morning, I doubt not, might be spent 
 in a library in hunting for the prototypes of Lady 
 Cramfeazer and the Duchess of Limbs. In a 
 good many instances the adapted name has had 
 more vitality than its original. When Tim 
 Whiffler carried all before him over long courses 
 in 1862, there were, I daresay, not many who 
 remembered his namesake the son of Voltaire 
 and Cyprian who won some celebrity as a plater 
 
 and hunter sire in the West of England. But 
 
 o
 
 210 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 still fewer, I suspect, could have found the 
 whereabouts of the stage character from whom 
 the name was taken. How many of those who 
 read the pedigrees of Springfield and Hermit 
 could localise Monimia ? I have always suspected 
 that any one familiar with the stage between 1830 
 and 1840 could identify the originals of Alice 
 Hawthorne and Madame Pelerine. But they have 
 no share in the immortality of their equine name- 
 sakes. In these days when " M'Call " has ten 
 readers for one who reads Orton or " The Druid " 
 Mandane is probably pretty well forgotten. 
 But of those who do remember the name, a 
 good many more, I fancy, connect it with the 
 paddocks at Bishop Burton than with the pages 
 of Herodotus or Scuderi. I wonder, by the way, 
 whether any classical scholar can speak as to the 
 quantity of the second a confidently. There is 
 authority on the point, though possibly not of a 
 very high order. If any one wants to find it, let 
 him search the pages of Crabbe. He may miss 
 the passage in question, but he will at least 
 make the acquaintance of a too little-remembered 
 poet ; and he will learn that Englishmen need not 
 cross the Channel to search the pages of Balzac 
 and his disciples for the tragedy of common life.
 
 EMILIUS 211 
 
 I once saw a novel- reader of no common 
 range brought to grief over the name of a horse 
 not, indeed of a racehorse. He was one of 
 those omnilegous persons, to whom an examina- 
 tion in Scott or Thackeray would have been, in 
 police-court phrase, a little lot to be done on 
 his head. He was at home in the byeways of 
 Mrs Trollope and Mrs Gore. But he was fairly 
 beaten when asked why a runaway mare should 
 have been named Fanny Hamper. I do not 
 know whether he has solved the problem yet. 
 I certainly have not. 
 
 I do not know whether the process has often 
 been reversed : and whether many human beings 
 have owed their names to racehorses. We have, 
 of course, a notable instance in that jockey, 
 " born and bred," Mornington Cannon. Tradi- 
 tion has it that a reverend baronet, a pillar of 
 Eton cricket in his day, was vowed in his cradle 
 to bear the name of the Derby winner in 1828. 
 The legend may be true, but one or two purely 
 mythical accretions have attached themselves to 
 it. One hears that the second horse was called 
 Soapsuds. A pretty careful search through Stud 
 Book and Calendar has failed to reveal such an 
 animal at any date. I have been gravely told
 
 212 LITERATURE AND THE TURF 
 
 and that, too, by a man who had enjoyed 
 what is called a liberal education that the issue 
 lay between Emilius and PotSos ! That, I think, 
 was worse than the Soapsuds error : as half- 
 knowledge is worse than total ignorance. What, 
 I wonder, would my friend (who gave that in- 
 formation) think of a candidate in history who 
 should tell him that William Tell shot Richard 
 Coeur de Lion with an arrow as they were 
 hunting together in the New Forest? As a 
 matter of fact, I have always thought how kindly 
 fate melior fortuna parente used the future 
 Eton captain in giving him the alternative of 
 Emilius and Tancred. Still, the father, if he 
 outlived the victory of Emilius by eight years, 
 must have felt himself a modern Jephthah in his 
 rashness. What could there have been in store 
 for a Sir Lapdog Jones or a Sir Spaniel Smith ? 
 Would either of them have made a hundred and 
 fifty against Harrow ? I trow not. And what 
 revulsions of feeling would the maker of such a 
 vow have gone through during the Derby of 1845 ! 
 His alarm would not be disposed of thougli 
 Mr Greville's might be when the son of Venison 
 and Fortress came down the hill, riderless and 
 wounded. For was not Squire Gratwicke waiting
 
 POWER OF NAMES 218 
 
 ready to catch the rash parent between his anti- 
 thetically-named pair, the Jean qui pleure and 
 Jean qui rit of the racecourse ? He would have 
 escaped Doleful only to fall a victim to Merry 
 Monarch. And with what eyes would a father 
 have beheld the finish of 1857, and seen his 
 offspring on the brink of being launched on life 
 as Black Tommy? If such a vow should be 
 made for any unhappy child between now and 
 May 1893, what will be his fate? Will he be 
 saved by Raeburn or Buckingham ? Or is he 
 doomed to go through life as Isinglass, Inferno, 
 or Meddler? Prophecy is not my line: but I 
 should incline towards hope.
 
 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 I. IS RACEHORSE BREEDING A LOTTERY? 
 
 I WONDER how many of those who have asserted 
 this have ever really analysed what they meant. 
 If they did so I think they would soon see that 
 the aphorism, literally applied, would carry them 
 a good deal further than they really intended to 
 go. A man who held that doctrine would, if he 
 were logically consistent, simply buy the cheapest 
 mares and use the cheapest sires, and would believe 
 that he was nevertheless starting on equal terms 
 with his neighbours. As a matter of fact, it is 
 certain that if we went to one of the advocates of 
 the " lottery " doctrine and asked him, " To which 
 of these two horses shall I put my mare?" he 
 would in three cases out of four express a prefer- 
 ence, and would in doing so surrender his whole 
 case. 
 
 Again, the analogy of any other domestic 
 2J4
 
 A LOTTERY? 215 
 
 animal makes dead against this view. A success- 
 ful breeder of hounds, of Shorthorns, of Shrop- 
 shire sheep, would rather open his eyes if he 
 were told that his pursuit was the mere sport of 
 chance. We read in the pages of " The Druid " 
 of Mr Watts' "endless searching of hearts and 
 pedigrees." Let any one study the breeding opera- 
 tions of Mr Garforth, of Lord Egremont, Lord 
 Grosvenor, or Lord Jersey, or in later times of 
 Lord Falmouth, and I think he will be convinced 
 that they worked on fixed principles. " My pork 
 pies don't turn out well by chance," said Miss 
 Pris cilia Lammeter, and I suspect that any of 
 the breeders whom I have named would have 
 said the same about their horses. 
 
 Interpreted in its bald and literal form, the 
 " lottery " theory is not, I think, hard to confute, 
 and certainly does not offer much material for 
 profitable discussion. The practical question is 
 not whether breeding is altogether a matter of 
 chance, but whether we can arrive at anything 
 like systematic principles, sound enough and exact 
 enough to be a useful guide to breeders ? Or is 
 racehorse breeding a mere matter of common- 
 sense and rule of thumb, for which judgment 
 of make and shape, and a fair knowledge of
 
 216 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 performances, are all that is needed? This view 
 was set forth not long ago by Mr Strickland 
 Constable in a book which he wrote on the 
 subject. His view was that theories as to par- 
 ticular strains nicking, and the like, were all 
 moonshine. One horse was better than another 
 because he was more truly made. Now, it seems 
 to me that Mr Constable was in a great measure 
 playing the part of Balaam, and blessing where 
 he meant to curse. For he himself contended 
 very stoutly for the transmission by certain sires 
 of well-defined family characteristics of make and 
 shape, while he also admitted that these character- 
 istics were often almost imperceptible. Surely 
 that is another way of saying that excellence 
 depends, not on the obvious and easily recognised 
 points of make and shape, but on pedigree. More- 
 over, Mr Constable quite overlooked the fact that 
 temper, constitution, and nervous energy have as 
 much to do with success as external shape. I 
 remember, after the Biennial at Ascot in 1889, 
 remarking to a friend what a wonder it was to 
 see a bit of a filly like Semolina tackle such a 
 colt as Surefoot. " Ah ! " he answered, " these 
 St Simons are built differently from other horses 
 inside I "
 
 THEORISTS 217 
 
 There are one or two other arguments in 
 favour of the " lottery " view which may, I think, 
 be pushed aside without much difficulty. We hear 
 that view asserted whenever a " fashionably "-bred 
 young one, i.e., the offspring of a distinguished 
 sire and dam, fails, or when one bred out of a 
 cheap mare, or got by some neglected sire, turns 
 up trumps. The very thing which the breeding 
 theorist would deny is that a fashionably-bred 
 one need be a good one. The man who picks 
 up a cheap mare, such as Deadlock, or breeds 
 from an out-of-the-way sire and produces a North 
 Lincoln, a Tim Whiffler, or a St Gatien, may 
 be in the position of M. Jourdain with his prose, 
 and may be practising scientific breeding without 
 knowing it. 
 
 On the other hand, the breeding theorists, I 
 think, not unfrequently prejudice their own case 
 by writing or talking as though horses could be 
 bred according to mere theoretical rules, without 
 regard to the peculiarities of individual animals. 
 They often forget, too, that the thing which 
 needs to be proved is not merely that certain 
 conditions are accompanied with success, but that 
 when those conditions are removed success ceases. 
 The question to be considered is not whether
 
 218 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 some particular mode of crossing or in- breeding 
 has produced good horses, but whether it has 
 produced more than the average proportion of 
 successes to failures ? 
 
 Now, I certainly do not cherish the ambitious 
 project of putting forth any full-blown theory of 
 breeding. What I propose to do is rather to 
 suggest the possibility of working out such a 
 theory by giving a few detailed instances of the 
 kind of generalisation which one can make. When 
 we have done that it will be time to consider, 
 what is really a different question, whether those 
 generalisations can furnish a practical breeder with 
 any useful working principles ? And I would ask 
 any one who desires to go into the matter carefully 
 to take each set of cases, and to consider for him- 
 self how far it is reasonable to think that the 
 success which has attended a particular method 
 is a mere chance coincidence, and how far a case 
 of cause and effect. 
 
 The class of cases to which I would call atten- 
 tion may be conveniently grouped under two 
 heads. Firstly, those where a particular sire has 
 shown a marked liking for one, or, if not for 
 one, at least for certain selected and, generally, 
 related strains of blood ; secondly, when two
 
 BAY MIDDLETON 219 
 
 strains have shown a permanent aptitude for 
 combining. 
 
 Mr Kent, in one of his articles in Baity, pointed 
 out how, in defiance of make and shape, Bay 
 Middleton hit conspicuously well with Velocipede 
 mares. A very cursory view of the Stud Book 
 confirms that theory. The two best brood mares 
 that Bay Middleton ever got were the dams of 
 Saunterer and Wild Dayrell. The dam of the 
 former mare was by Velocipede, that of the latter 
 by his brother Malek. Other successful brood 
 mares by Bay Middleton were Nun Appleton and 
 Rose of Cashmere, the former from a Malek mare, 
 the latter from a sister to Velocipede. And, 
 pointing further in the same direction, we find 
 Bay Middleton's son, Autocrat, getting Queen 
 Elizabeth from a granddaughter of Velocipede. 
 It seems to me that to set this down as a 
 succession of chance coincidences would be an 
 instance of the credulity of scepticism. I should 
 myself be disposed to say that, inasmuch as no 
 similar tendency is to be found in the other 
 Blacklock strains such as Voltaire and Brutandorf, 
 the result is due to the in-breeding to Whiskey, 
 Sorcerer, St Peter, and PotSos, every one of these 
 strains being found in Velocipede's dam, and also
 
 220 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 in Bay Middleton's dam, Cobweb. But this I 
 admit is no more than an hypothesis. 
 
 This, again, can, I think, hardly be matter of 
 chance. Out of those daughters of Melbourne 
 who have been conspicuously successful as brood 
 mares, the dams of Lord Clifden, Ely, Fazzoletto, 
 La Toucques, St Mungo, Thunder, and Martinique, 
 and the granddam of Sterling, all go back direct 
 to Blacklock. The pedigree of Secret (Lady 
 Audley's dam), of Midsummer, of Blink Bonny, 
 and of Mentmore Lass show a liking for a strain 
 akin to that of Blacklock, i.e., Emilius. 
 
 Sterling, again, got Isonomy, Paradox, Geo- 
 logist, and Energy in fact, at least sixty per cent, 
 of his successful offspring from mares in- bred to 
 Birdcatcher. Yet such mares must have formed 
 a minority of all those put to him. 
 
 His son Isonomy furnishes even a better 
 instance. Wherever a mare has hit conspicuously 
 well with him, save in the one case of Satiety, 
 the Bay Middleton blood, which he already inherits 
 from Sterling, has been present. This applies to 
 Seabreeze, Isinglass, Ingram, Ravensbury, and 
 Prisoner, while in Common it occurs twice. 
 
 I now come to a case where two particular 
 strains have shown a continuous aptitude for
 
 221 
 
 uniting. No one who has studied the early 
 pedigrees can have failed to be struck with this 
 in the case of Selim and Orville. Some of my 
 readers may have heard of a schoolboy who 
 described one of the tragedies of English history 
 in this wise : " And so, by the order of the cruel 
 queen, the head of Lady Jane Grey, including 
 that of her husband, fell upon the scaffold " ! 
 The figure has always seemed to me a convenient 
 one, and I would premise that in Selim I 
 " include " his own brothers Castrel and Rubens, 
 and in Orville his own sister Orvillina. The 
 following is a list of animals where the two 
 parents were descended each from one of these, 
 not further back than three generations : Pleni- 
 potentiary, Oxygen, Emiliana, Preserve, My Dear, 
 Miss Anne, Pocahontas, Flying Dutchman, Heron, 
 Redshank, Barbelle, Touchstone, Medora (the dam 
 of Ion), and Hester. Now here I would offer a 
 suggestion which may propitiate Mr Constable. 
 Few breeders of any domestic animals would 
 deny that judicious in-breeding is the keystone 
 of success, while at the same time it can be 
 practised only where there is robust material to 
 work upon, and where care is taken not to repeat 
 and thereby intensify any marked faults. Now,
 
 222 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 Selim and Orville are made up of much the 
 same material, both being in-bred to Herod and 
 Regulus through Eclipse and Highflyer. They 
 were also both large, powerful horses. Moreover, 
 while Selim and his stock were high - couraged 
 and excitable, Orville was a slug. It seems to 
 me, then, not at all mysterious that each should 
 have specially suited the other. 
 
 Another instance, which can hardly be due 
 to chance, is the success of Defence mares with 
 Venison. That cross produced Alarm, Miami, 
 Joe Miller, Marlborough Buck, and Tame Deer ; 
 Caractacus was by a son of Venison out of a 
 Defence mare ; and again the strains of Defence 
 and Partisan came together in Gladiateur, and 
 more remotely in Favonius. Can it be an 
 accident that Ion's best son was out of a Bay 
 Middleton mare, that his son Tadmor made his 
 best hit with a Cowl mare, and that St Angela 
 (Ion's granddaughter) bred St Simon to a great- 
 grandson of Bay Middleton? Again we find 
 Rosicrucian and his brother The Palmer hitting 
 with Gladiator blood in Beauclerc, Geheimniss, 
 Pilgrimage, and her brother Pellegrino, and last, 
 but not least, Ladas. Indeed, one may say that, 
 if Gladiator blood were blotted out of the Stud
 
 IN-BREEDING 223 
 
 Book, Rosicrucian would have been a dead 
 failure. 
 
 I now come to another class of cases which 
 I must deal with very compendiously, inasmuch 
 as a full examination of them would be little less 
 than an analysis of the Stud Book. I do not 
 believe that there is any cut-and-dried theory or 
 formula which will meet all the complex problems 
 of horse-breeding. But I believe Mr Cookson got 
 as near it as any one ever did in his simple rule, 
 " Pay a mare back with the best strain in her 
 own pedigree." I quite admit that in some cases 
 the application of the principle is a matter of 
 difficulty. Why should Isonomy have hit with 
 Bay Middleton blood better than with that of 
 Birdcatcher or Touchstone, both of which enter 
 into his pedigree ? I can only point out that 
 Bay Middleton blood has shown a somewhat 
 special aptitude for in-breeding, as illustrated by 
 the fact that The Miser was, for his chances, 
 the best sire Hermit ever got, and Goldfinder 
 the best horse that he, in turn, ever got, while 
 Galopin's blood has hit specially well with that of 
 Hermit and Scottish Chief. But I quite admit that 
 it would have been difficult to foresee the precise 
 lines on which Isonomy's stud success would run.
 
 224 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 There are, however, a few instances over and 
 above this where the superiority of in-breeding 
 over other methods stands out with a distinct- 
 ness which forbids us to suppose that chance is 
 at work, and where a strain has only retained its 
 merit by being replenished from the fountain- 
 head. This, as 1 have endeavoured to show, is 
 in a great measure true of Sterling. It can 
 hardly be chance that the Rataplan blood has 
 been kept alive solely through the exceedingly 
 close alliance of Blinkhoolie with a Stockwell 
 mare, with Wisdom for the result. It can 
 hardly be chance that of all the families which 
 have come from Voltigeur one only seems likely to 
 survive, that of Galopin, whose sire was the most 
 in-bred of all Voltigeur's sons, while Galopin himself 
 was closely bred back, not only to Voltaire, but also, 
 through another line, to Phantom and to Catton. 
 
 I think that any one who makes a careful 
 study of the Touchstone family will agree that 
 there, too, the same theory is illustrated. But 
 I admit that the plethora of Touchstone blood 
 in the Stud Book makes it less easy to work out 
 such a theory. It may plausibly be urged that 
 Touchstone's in-bred descendants have been the 
 best only because they are in a majority.
 
 TOUCHSTONE 225 
 
 While I am on the subject of Touchstone 
 may I, though it is a digression, supplement 
 "Borderer's" account of the old Eaton hero by 
 an incident described to me by, I believe, an 
 eye-witness. There was once staying at Eaton 
 a certain well - known and, not to put it too 
 strongly, eccentric nobleman. Touchstone was led 
 up on the drive before the house for inspection. 
 The visitor in question looked him over, and then 
 asked, with an air of languid curiosity : "Is he 
 thoroughbred?" A certain schoolboy of eleven, 
 who alas ! as long ago as Wild Dayrell's year 
 was introduced to the old brown, might have 
 made a similar blunder, if he had not been some- 
 what precociously well grounded in Ruff" and Sell's 
 Life. Nancy and Black Doctor were the heroine 
 and hero of his one day's racing, and he looked 
 with wonder on the very different figure before 
 him with its massive crest, rather heavy shoulders, 
 and round barrel. The benign-looking head, with 
 its broad forehead and crooked blaze, is as vividly 
 remembered as if it had been seen yesterday. 
 
 And now comes the very important question, 
 How far can we out of all this deduce any 
 practical rules for the guidance of breeders ? I 
 am quite willing to admit that in a good many
 
 226 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 cases the generalisation can only be arrived at 
 when it is too late for breeders practically to 
 profit by it. Who could foresee that the presence 
 of Bay Middleton rather than of Touchstone or 
 Birdcatcher blood would be the keystone of success 
 in the case of Isonomy? By the time that one 
 had the material for forming such a conclusion 
 Isonomy was in his grave. So again with Venison's 
 liking for Defence mares. 
 
 On the other hand, I would point out that 
 I do not for a moment pretend to have exhausted 
 the generalisations which an observant man will, 
 I think, deduce from a careful study of pedigrees. 
 My object in choosing the instances which I have 
 taken was not to select those which bear on the 
 breeding problems of the present day. That would 
 have necessarily involved complicated and perhaps 
 controversial enquiry. I have simply chosen the 
 most obvious instances of which I could think to 
 illustrate compendiously the possibility of laying 
 down general rules; and even if any one should 
 think that in one particular instance I may have 
 arrived at an unsound conclusion, that does not 
 undermine my position. 
 
 At the same time, I am quite willing to concede 
 this much : in mating a mare or endeavouring
 
 PRINCIPLE AND DETAIL 227 
 
 to forecast the merits of a horse from his pedigree, 
 there must always be a large element of guesswork. 
 The cases where a man can say, " This and no 
 other must be the right sire to use," are very few. 
 What a rational man may, I think, say is : " With 
 this alliance I have very little chance of success ; 
 with that a good chance." And one general 
 principle may allow a good deal of latitude of 
 choice in detail. It has sometimes been said that 
 Lord Falmouth was a haphazard breeder because 
 he would vary considerably his choice of mates 
 for the same mare in successive seasons. Yet I 
 venture to think one can always trace a common 
 element running through his choice. It fell to 
 my lot this year to mate three thoroughbred mares. 
 In two cases I was limited by considerations of 
 age, make and shape, and the like ; but in the 
 third I had a free hand. Yet I am quite ready 
 to admit that I could have chosen at least three 
 sires in the limited ranks of the " fashionables " 
 who might have suited as well as the one whom 
 I chose, if not better. 
 
 I quite admit, too, that good management 
 in detail is every whit as important as system in 
 mating. I should have far more faith in the 
 future of a well-appointed and well-managed stud
 
 228 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 farm, where the master had really good judgment 
 of make and shape, than in one administered in a 
 slovenly fashion by a man who relied on a paper 
 knowledge of pedigrees. Moreover, I should 
 attach even more importance to having mares 
 of winning blood than to mating them correctly. 
 I would sooner buy a yearling who went back 
 in the female line to Paradigm or Queen Mary, 
 even though I saw no special congruity in the 
 pedigree of his sire and dam, than one the result 
 of a more judicious cross, but springing from an 
 inferior source. That, however, is no concession 
 to Mr Constable or to the " lottery " doctrine. 
 
 To sum up, I fully admit that only a lucky 
 conjunction of favourable conditions can produce 
 an Isinglass or a Ladas. But I believe, and I 
 have endeavoured to show grounds for my belief, 
 that the breeder who studies pedigrees can mini- 
 mise his chances of failure, and will, therefore, 
 in the long run get a higher average result than 
 his unscientific rival.
 
 THE FIGURE SYSTEM 229 
 
 II MR LOWE AND THE FIGURE SYSTEM 1 
 
 I CANNOT help thinking that Mr Lowe's choice 
 of a title for his work was a little unfortunate. 
 The figure system may be a convenient form, and 
 once one has read Mr Lowe's book, it is intelligible 
 enough. But, on the face of it, it is hardly calcu- 
 lated to disarm the prejudices of those who look 
 with suspicion on all general theories of racehorse 
 breeding. It suggests to irreverent minds thoughts 
 of Apocalyptic speculations, after the fashion of 
 the late Dr Cumming's as to the number of the 
 Beast and the four - and - twenty Elders, and it 
 may beget an idea, quite unfounded, that Mr 
 Lowe was offering to provide his readers with 
 some formula by which, without detailed know- 
 ledge of individual animals, they would produce 
 good horses. The figure system is simply another 
 name for the reckoning of descent through females 
 instead of males. 
 
 Mr Lowe's view, expressed rightly and practi- 
 cally, is that we ought to speak and think, not 
 
 1 " Breeding Racehorses by the Figure System." Compiled by the 
 late C. Bruce Lowe ; edited by William Allison. London, Horace 
 Cox, Field Office, 1895.
 
 230 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 of the Stockwell, Touchstone, Melbourne, and 
 Voltigeur strains, but (let us say for illustra- 
 tion) of the Prunella, Mandane, Pocahontas, and 
 Martha Lynn strains. He would, in short, apply 
 to blood stock the principle which, as most people 
 know, has from the beginning been applied to 
 Shorthorns. There, we need hardly say, descent 
 has always been reckoned as going from cow to 
 cow ; no number of Duchess crosses will make 
 a cow into a Duchess who does not trace back 
 through an unbroken line of females to the 
 original Duchess. Mr Lowe adopts this view in 
 the case of racehorses, on the ground that descent 
 through females is more tenacious than that 
 through males. He does not deny the great 
 importance of the sire, nor that it may be at 
 times convenient for discussion to group animals 
 together according to paternal descent; but, 
 according to his view, the female line is the more 
 essential. One has been accustomed to regard 
 (let us say for example) Ladas as a representa- 
 tive of Touchstone blood, modified by successive 
 crosses of Melbourne, Rataplan, and Tramp. In 
 Mr Lowe's view we should regard Ladas as a 
 representative of Prunella, modified by all the 
 intervening crosses.
 
 GREAT FAMILIES 231 
 
 The classification on which Mr Lowe's theory 
 rests is that adopted in that new edition of the 
 first volume of the Stud Book issued in 1891. 
 There, as my readers will no doubt remember, 
 all sires of note were classified under the original 
 female from which they had sprung. Mr Lowe 
 works out this classification with great complete- 
 ness. He takes in forty-three families, which he 
 classifies in order, according to their supposed 
 merit. His estimate is formed, in not wholly 
 satisfactory method, by reckoning the number of 
 winners of so - called " classical " races produced 
 by each family. One instance may show how 
 far this is from being a wholly adequate test. 
 Isonomy, Vedette, Alarm, Plaisanterie, Monarque, 
 and Cambuscan, all belong to one family, yet 
 not one of them scores a point, so to speak, 
 according to Mr Lowe's method of conducting 
 the competition. Yet any one of these is worth 
 an Andover and a Sefton put together. This, 
 however, is, after all, a detail, and does not touch 
 the essence of Mr Lowe's theory. It is not 
 difficult for any one who is well up in the Stud 
 Book and Racing Calendar to modify that theory 
 so as to meet these facts. 
 
 One of the most important practical points
 
 232 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 brought forward by Mr Lowe, that perhaps which 
 more than any other may claim to be regarded 
 as a really valuable discovery, is this : that certain 
 horses have almost a monopoly of the power of 
 producing great sires, that where a great sire is 
 met with outside these families it will be found 
 that a large preponderance of his male ancestors 
 on each side belong to these families. Nor is 
 this all. That quality, whatever it may be, 
 which enables certain families to produce great 
 sires is a quality which must never be far distant 
 in the case of a high-class racehorse, and the 
 absence of it in the sire may be in some measure 
 compensated for by its presence in the dam. It 
 may at this stage be convenient to give in a 
 summarised form Mr Lowe's principal families. 
 There are, according to him, five great racing 
 families : 
 
 1. Tregonwell's Natural Barb Mare, from 
 
 whom came Snap, Prunella, and Wood- 
 pecker. 
 
 2. Burton's Barb Mare, from whom came 
 
 Sir Hercules, Blacklock, Voltigeur, 
 Crucifix, and Marcia. 
 
 3. The dam of the Two True Blues, whence 
 
 came Sir Peter, Stockwell, Galopin,
 
 GREAT FAMILIES 233 
 
 Flying Dutchman, Lanercost, Musket, 
 and a host of good brood mares. 
 
 4. The Layton Barb Mare, represented mainly 
 
 through Matchem, Ion, Maniac, Rebecca, 
 and Sacrifice. 
 
 5. The daughter of Massey's Black Barb, 
 
 the ancestress of Hermit, Doncaster, 
 Gladiateur, and Diversion. 
 Of these, however, only No. 3 is conspicuous for 
 the production of sires. For those we must go to 
 the following families, as placed by Mr Lowe : 
 
 No. 8, whence come Marske, Orville, Sultan, 
 Humphrey Clinker, Newminster, Cer- 
 vantes, Cain, Sir Paul, and Paulowitz. 
 
 No. 11, whence come Squirt, Regulus, Bird- 
 catcher, Brutandorf, Lottery, Belshazzar, 
 Venison, Pelion, Golumpus, and St 
 Simon. 
 
 No. 12, which gives us Eclipse, Young 
 Marske, Filho da Puta, Voltaire, Tad- 
 mor, Lexington, Sterling, Adventurer, 
 Weatherbit, Marsyas, Scottish Chief, and 
 Ethelbert. 
 
 No. 14, to which belong Trumpator, Touch- 
 stone, Buccaneer, Leamington, Macaroni, 
 and Saraband.
 
 234 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 Whatever may be thought of other portions 
 of Mr Lowe's theory, it must be granted, I 
 think, that the production of all these sires from 
 such a limited number of families, and the very 
 marked tendency of the members of these families 
 to reproduce and even intensify their own merit, 
 in direct opposition to the habit of certain other 
 families, can hardly be a matter of chance. 
 
 These are the outlines of Mr Lowe's system, 
 and before discussing it further I should like to 
 anticipate a few objections to the form in which 
 the system is here presented by the author. 
 Firstly, I would say that, in my opinion, the 
 book must be regarded not as setting forth a 
 scientific theory, but rather as setting up a number 
 of valuable empirical generalisations. When Mr 
 Lowe attempts to connect his teaching with 
 scientific theories of heredity, he does not seem 
 to me to be successful. 
 
 As regards his general style, one must remember 
 that we are criticising a posthumous work. Mere 
 detailed errors of fact can be corrected, as no 
 doubt they often have been corrected, by the 
 editor. But he would have been going beyond 
 his province if he had endeavoured to fill in 
 omitted links in Mr Lowe's train of reasoning
 
 METHOD 235 
 
 and confused or obscure expressions, such as not 
 infrequently occur. These, I have little doubt, 
 would have been removed or diminished by the 
 author if he had lived to revise his work. These, 
 however, are not the only defects whereby Mr 
 Lowe prejudices his own case. One is reminded 
 sometimes of the judge's admonition to a dis- 
 cursive counsel. " Do, sir, arrange your facts in 
 some order alphabetical if you like." A pedigree 
 is discussed, not in connection with the theory 
 which it illustrates, but because it is incidentally 
 called up by some chance reference. An argument 
 is suddenly interrupted by some not very relevant 
 personal reminiscence. It is often difficult to 
 understand whether a particular case is adduced 
 as proof of a principle, or merely to illustrate a 
 principle which has already been proved. In 
 fact, it is not very often that Mr Lowe definitely 
 states a proposition, and then accumulates the 
 proofs of it. The instances in which he has done 
 this most successfully, and to which I would 
 refer my reader for a favourable specimen of Mr 
 Lowe's treatment of his subject, are where, at 
 pages 52, 55, and 56, he brings together all the 
 successful alliances of the three sires, Herod, 
 Eclipse, and Matchem, showing in each group
 
 236 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 respectively a common principle holding good ; 
 and again at page 156, where he illustrates briefly, 
 but, I think, successfully, his general principle 
 from more than thirty pedigrees. 
 
 One objection to Mr Lowe's theory, as he 
 states it, will probably occur to many readers. 
 It is highly improbable that the various founda- 
 tion strains which he treats as distinct really 
 are distinct. He himself, indeed, candidly calls 
 attention to the fact that his No. 2 and No. 3 
 strains are, according to the Stud Book, probably 
 identical. Considering, too, the very imperfect 
 material from which the Stud Book was compiled, 
 one can hardly doubt that there are other cases 
 of this. Again, Mr Lowe often writes as though 
 there were a hard-and-fast line between " sire- 
 producing " and " non-sire-producing " strains. As 
 I have said before, there seems to me to be 
 overwhelming evidence to show that the theory 
 of "sire" blood is sound, and, as I shall try to 
 show later on, it explains what have hitherto 
 been some of the most awkward stumbling-blocks 
 which students of pedigrees have encountered. 
 But I think it is probable that the quality is 
 not one which is present in some families and 
 wholly absent in others, but one which presents
 
 SIRE FAMILIES 237 
 
 itself in graduations. For example, the family 
 of which I spoke before, that which produced 
 Isonomy and Vedette, is not among Mr Lowe's 
 sire families, yet almost every great horse whom 
 it has produced has shown himself capable of 
 begetting first-class stock, under special conditions. 
 For it is to be noticed and this, I think, is a 
 very strong verification of Mr Lowe's main theory 
 that whenever successful results have been got 
 from this family they have been the consequence 
 of very strong in-breeding to some representative 
 of high-class running blood, such as Whalebone 
 or Blacklock. I think the same may be said 
 of Mr Lowe's No. 7 family, which in recent 
 times, with the help of two successive crosses of 
 Stockwell, produced Wisdom. If these cases are 
 at variance with the letter of Mr Lowe's teaching, 
 it seems to me that they furnish strong undesigned 
 proof of its essential soundness. 
 
 The origin of the racehorse is now only a 
 matter of speculative interest. Mr Lowe, in 
 direct contradiction to the statement of the Stud 
 Book and to all tradition, holds that the Royal 
 mares were English, not Eastern. He also, at 
 page 41, argues that a certain mare could not have 
 been of Eastern blood, because she was described
 
 238 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 as dun. Mr Lowe can never have read the 
 correspondence extracted from the Harley manu- 
 scripts, and published in the Field, concerning 
 the Oxford Dun Arabian, one of the few early 
 Eastern sires of whose importation we have full 
 particulars. 
 
 Now to pass from detailed criticism of Mr 
 Lowe's book to the more general consideration 
 of his theories. Three questions at once suggest 
 themselves : Does he teach anything new ? Is 
 his teaching sound ? And is it likely to be 
 of practical service to breeders ? The first of 
 these questions is the one which can probably 
 be answered affirmitively with most confidence. 
 The difference between all previous theories 
 of racehorse breeding and that put forward by 
 Mr Lowe is practically this : hitherto we have 
 considered the sire as the main element. Now, 
 from this point of view, there has always been 
 one difficulty. All our existing thoroughbreds 
 branch off from three sires Eclipse, Matchem, 
 and Herod. Whatever differences exist must 
 have arisen from a process of rapid individual 
 variation. And the difficulty inherent in this 
 view is intensified by the fact that the three 
 main lines above-named are now handed down
 
 MR LOWE'S CRITERION 239 
 
 only through a very limited number of sub- 
 families. All modern horses, good, bad, and 
 indifferent, are in-bred to Whalebone, Blacklock, 
 Orville, and Sir Peter, and any theory which 
 rests on the superiority of these strains at once 
 breaks down, because it furnishes no criterion 
 whereby we can discriminate the good from the 
 bad. The same argument practically applies to 
 strains much nearer our own time, such as 
 Touchstone and Stockwell. But if we accept 
 Mr Lowe's theory, we have (practically) over 
 twenty different elements to deal with, all vary- 
 ing in merit. Every sire whose name occurs in 
 a pedigree has a distinctly graduated value, and 
 we are at once furnished with an effective means 
 for calculating the different values of pedigrees. 
 I can probably make myself understood better 
 if I translate this into the language of concrete 
 facts. Let us suppose two horses both got by 
 Stockwell. The dam of one is by Newminster, 
 granddam by Gladiator. The dam of the other 
 is by Orlando, granddam of Venison. The re- 
 maining elements in their pedigree are wholly 
 diverse. In one case the great-granddam, we 
 will say, belongs to family No. 1, and is got by 
 a horse of No. 2 ; in the other she belongs to
 
 240 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 No. 35, and is got by a horse of No. 36. Now, 
 according to accepted ideas, these two pedigrees 
 are virtually the same. Both animals are by 
 Stockwell, dam by a son of Touchstone, grand- 
 dam by a son of Partisan. The difference is 
 unimportant. But, according to Mr Lowe's 
 view, the difference is essential and all-important, 
 the resemblance little more than accidental. I 
 do not say that Mr Lowe's theory, thus repre- 
 sented, necessarily offers a correct solution of 
 the difference between a good horse and a bad 
 one. I only say that it offers a solution, a 
 definite criterion ; to test the correctness of the 
 criterion we must go a step further. 
 
 It is wholly out of my power within the limits 
 of a magazine article to test the practical sound- 
 ness of Mr Lowe's theory as a whole. All I can 
 do is rather to follow up the line of thought 
 which I suggested to the readers of Baity in 
 October last year to point out the manner in 
 which the theory may be tested, and at the 
 same time to adduce a few noticeable facts which, 
 if they do not prove it, are at least consistent 
 with it, and cannot, as far as I know, be explained 
 by any other theory. Most Oxford men know 
 the story of a certain distinguished classical
 
 PROBABILITY 241 
 
 scholar who, emerging from the mathematical 
 schools, assured his friends complacently that if 
 he had not proved any of the propositions set 
 him, he had at least given most of them an air 
 of great probability. Now, when we come to a 
 practical question, where results do not admit 
 of exact measurement and proof, we must often 
 be content with that amount of probability on 
 which reasonable men are prepared to act. 
 
 To begin with, I would say that whenever 
 any sire has exercised a wide-reaching influence 
 for good, such, for example, as have Whalebone, 
 Blacklock, Stockwell, Bay Middleton, or Touch- 
 stone, it will be found that his pedigree is built 
 up by persistent in-breeding to the lines which 
 Mr Lowe puts at the top of his graduated scale. 
 Further, if we take any individual sire, we shall 
 find that if he has been himself deficient in high- 
 class running blood, he has required an extra 
 supply of it in his mates. There is a con- 
 spicuous deficiency of high-class running blood 
 in Newminster's dam, especially in her sire, 
 Dr Syntax a fact, by the way, which fits in 
 with a very slight permanent influence which 
 Dr Syntax has exercised. Now, of Newminster's 
 best sons, Hermit comes from family No. 5, 
 
 Q
 
 242 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 Lord Clifden from a direct union of No. 2 and 
 No. 1, Victorious from a mare whose sire as 
 well as herself belonged to No. 3. Of the 
 peculiar conditions of Cambuscan's breeding I 
 have already spoken. It is also noticeable that 
 no large family of mares have done less in pro- 
 portion to their number and opportunities than 
 the daughters of Newminster. Almost the same 
 phenomena are repeated in Newminster's son 
 Adventure. He takes on board a good deal more 
 inferior running blood, while his dam belongs to 
 a sire family, and is also in-bred to a great 
 sire-producing line, since she is on one side a 
 granddaughter, on the other side a great-grand- 
 daughter, of Orville. Here, too, we find Adven- 
 ture getting two great winners, Wheel of Fortune 
 and Apology, from mares of the first and fourth 
 family, Bal Gal and A venturiere from mares of 
 the second family. His daughters, too, like those 
 of Newminster, have been distinctly unsuccessful 
 as brood mares. 
 
 In the article to which I have before referred, 
 I called the attention of the readers of Baity 
 to the fact that Isonomy had shown a most 
 marked preference for mares descended from 
 Bay Middleton. I cited this as illustrating the
 
 SIRE BLOOD 243 
 
 doctrine " breed back to the best strain in the 
 parent's pedigree." At the same time I admitted 
 that it was difficult to see why Bay Middleton 
 should in this instance answer better than Bird- 
 catcher or Touchstone, which equally entered 
 into Isonomy's pedigree. But it is perfectly 
 clear that, measured by Mr Lowe's standard, 
 Bay Middleton is a better strain than either of 
 these, because it contains a smaller leaven of 
 inferior families. 
 
 As to Mr Lowe's theory of sire families, I 
 venture to think that the mere list of names 
 which I have adduced raises a very strong pre- 
 sumption in its favour. His contention, amply 
 justified by pedigrees, that it is quite the excep- 
 tion to find any great horse who has not among 
 his eight ancestors in the third generation at 
 least one member of one or the other of the 
 great sire families, is a canon of much practical 
 value. No doubt, the absence of that condition 
 may be compensated for by a plethora of such 
 blood a stage further back. The practical sense 
 of a breeder will be shown in thus modifying 
 and adapting the theory. 
 
 The best proof, perhaps, of the soundness of 
 this portion of Mr Lowe's theory is to be found
 
 244 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 in cases of horses such as Gladiateur, who have 
 wholly failed to reproduce their own excellence. 
 Without attempting to work that out in detail, 
 I would just call attention to two groups of 
 cases which are, I think, instructive. No one 
 can have failed to notice how the combination 
 of Stockwell and Touchstone, excellent for the 
 production of racehorses and brood mares, has 
 failed to produce good sires. The Marquis and 
 Asteroid are leading cases. So, in different 
 degrees, are Caterer, Vespasian, Hubert, The 
 Duke, and Robert the Devil. Now, the main 
 common element which co-exists in Stockwell 
 and Touchstone is the Whalebone blood, and 
 Whalebone was neither of a sire family nor well 
 supplied with sire blood. Ft is further to be 
 noted that far and away the best sire that ever 
 came out of the No. 1 family that to which 
 Whalebone belonged was Melbourne, who was 
 otherwise completely bred away from that family, 
 and that when his blood was re-united with 
 Whalebone, as in the cases of West Australian 
 and General Peel, the produce were unsuccessful 
 as sires. If Barcaldine be quoted as an instance 
 to the contrary, it should be noticed as, indeed, 
 it is by Mr Lowe that Barcaldine was exception-
 
 SULTAN 245 
 
 ally in-bred to a great sire-producing line, of 
 which Birdcatcher and Brutandorf were both 
 members. The union of Orlando and Emilius 
 is another instance of a cross excellent for racing 
 purposes, but incapable of producing a great sire ; 
 and here, again, is a conspicuous want of what 
 Mr Lowe calls sire blood. 
 
 These are negative instances. Let me give a 
 positive one pointing in the same direction. The 
 pedigree of Sultan was built up on the strongest 
 foundation of sire blood possible. Marske and 
 Vixen were common grandchildren each in the 
 direct female line of a mare belonging to the 
 No. 8 family, whose capacity for producing great 
 sires I have already noticed. Folly, the daughter 
 of Marske and Vixen, produced a filly who, in 
 her turn, was put to Marske's grandson, Mercury. 
 More Marske blood was brought in through 
 Ditto and Selim : the result was Sultan. The 
 virtual and, I think, most unfortunate ex- 
 tinction of the Sultan line in tail-male in Eng- 
 land has caused the merits of its founder to be 
 rather forgotten. But probably no sire of the 
 present century has ever begotten such a brace 
 of sons as Glencoe and Bay Middleton not even 
 Parmesan when he got Favonius and Cremorne
 
 246 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 to say nothing of such minor lights as Augustus, 
 Beiram, Galata, and Ibrahim. The really note- 
 worthy feature, however, is that Sultan blood 
 very essentially, according to Mr Lowe's theory, 
 a sire-producing strain has had a history exactly 
 opposite to that of Whalebone. It cannot be 
 said that in-breeding to Sultan has specially 
 tended to produce good racehorses. But an 
 infusion of Sultan blood has helped almost every 
 strain in turn to produce its best sire. Thus 
 we have Sterling's sire, Oxford, from a grand- 
 daughter of Bay Middleton ; Stockwell, Rataplan, 
 and King Tom from a daughter of Glencoe; 
 Galopin from a daughter of the Flying Dutch- 
 man, and Hermit from a mare who inherits 
 Sultan blood both through sire and dam ; while 
 the blood of Cain is only kept alive by the 
 union of Ion with a Bay Middleton mare in 
 Wild Dayrell. 
 
 And I believe that nothing better could befall 
 English blood-stock breeders than for some enter- 
 prising man to emulate the example set by the 
 importers of Carbine and Carnage, and to reclaim 
 from the Americans some good if possible some 
 in-bred representatives of the Glencoe blood. 
 
 It would be unfair to leave Mr Lowe's work
 
 IN-BREEDING 247 
 
 without noticing one or two other theories, apart 
 from his main system, but interesting, and, I think, 
 valuable. He points out that it is exceptional to 
 find a really high-class brood mare who has not at 
 some portion of her pedigree, generally among her 
 dam's ancestors, some very close in-breeding, while 
 the same is seldom to be found in a successful sire. 
 He further points out in what a very large propor- 
 tion of mares distinguished as runners we find the 
 same line of blood existing in the sire's sire and 
 the dam's dam. We have, for example, Thebais 
 and Jannette, got by sons of Newminster, from 
 mares whose dams were by Touchstone. As 
 other instances of this method of in -breeding, 
 Mr Lowe quotes Wheel of Fortune, Canezou, and 
 Reve d'Or. When one considers that he might 
 have added Virago, Crucifix, Cobweb, Galata, 
 Alice Hawthorne, and Industry, it is difficult not to 
 believe that Mr Lowe has hit on a sound doctrine. 
 Another part of Mr Lowe's teaching will 
 probably, if received at all, be received with con- 
 siderable modifications. He attaches great import- 
 ance to the influence of a sire, not only on his own 
 progeny, but on the subsequent progeny of the 
 dam, whether by other sires or by himself. By the 
 latter phrase I mean that, according to Mr Lowe's
 
 248 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 view, the influence of the sire is an increasing 
 quantity. Each alliance leaves behind an increased 
 tendency to resemblance. Mr Lowe endeavours 
 to prove this in, I think, a somewhat unsatis- 
 factory and certainly unscientific fashion, by citing 
 instances, equine and human, where the earlier 
 progeny have resembled the dam, the later the 
 sire. I have not much doubt that one could find 
 instances where this has been exactly reversed. 
 No practical breeder will deny that "previous 
 influence " may often come in as a disturbing 
 force. Few, I think, will agree with Mr Lowe, 
 who actually regards it as a controllable force, 
 which a breeder can reckon upon and even utilise. 
 Indeed, it seems to me that the very fashion in 
 which Mr Lowe states this part of his case goes 
 far to upset it. " The stud master may say with 
 truth, ' If this theory be correct, a mare may not 
 be all she is represented to be." Logically, it 
 would mean that every single animal in the Stud 
 Book represents the accumulated blood of all the 
 sires with whom the dam has been previously 
 allied. If so, the Stud Book becomes a chaos, 
 and the sooner we burn our pedigrees the better. 
 What I think we may admit is that the influence 
 of a previous alliance is a factor which a breeder
 
 BEND OR; ISINGLASS 249 
 
 will do well to take into account, not as certainly, 
 but as possibly, operative. And I am inclined to 
 think, though I do not put forward the view 
 dogmatically, that in some cases when a mare is 
 put to a sire closely related to her, her power of 
 transmitting the character of the common ancestor 
 to her subsequent produce is increased. Two 
 instances strike me as tending in that direction. 
 Before producing Bend Or, Rouge Rose had six 
 successive foals by Lord Lyon. Now, Lord Lyon's 
 granddam, Ellen Home, was also Rouge Rose's 
 dam, and was a mare of exceptionally good blood 
 all through, and I think it not unlikely that this 
 in-breeding, unusual alike in its closeness and its 
 repetition, may have had an effect on Bend Or. 
 Deadlock, again, was twice put to Isonomy; the 
 first time she produced that very moderate horse 
 Islington, the second time Isinglass. Between the 
 two came a foal by Crafton. Now, Deadlock's 
 sire, Wenlock, and Crafton's sire, Kisber, were 
 both sons of Mineral, than whom one could hardly 
 find a better-bred mare in the Stud Book ; while 
 Crafton himself was also through his dam descended 
 from Mineral's sire, Rataplan. 
 
 I have already, I think, pretty well answered 
 incidentally the third question which I propounded
 
 250 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 How far does Mr Lowe's book contain any- 
 thing likely to be of practical service to breeders ? 
 Take the first thing which a breeder has to con- 
 sider choice of mares. Mr Lowe has shown the 
 very great advantage of selecting mares belonging 
 to the great families, not because they have a 
 monopoly of producing high - class racers, but 
 because they give a breeder far greater latitude 
 in his choice of sires. No doubt there has been 
 an increasing sense among breeders generally of 
 the importance of having a good " tap-root." As 
 Mr Lowe says, " There have been certain mares 
 selected by reason of their great excellence, and 
 these have served the purpose of milestones along 
 the path of students." I will give an instance of 
 the kind of way in which Mr Lowe has, as it seems 
 to me, widened our knowledge. I know a breeder 
 with a small stud, whose practical rule has been 
 never to take any mare that did not go back at no 
 long interval to the dam of a great winner, for 
 choice to the own sister of a great winner. As 
 a matter of fact, all the five mares who make up 
 his stud are within the pale of Mr Lowe's four 
 head families. But this is a mere accident. He 
 had done, crudely and unscientifically, what Mr 
 Lowe would have taught him to do systematically.
 
 PRACTICAL RULES 251 
 
 What Mr Lowe aims at showing is not that the 
 excellence of a few families is in individual cases of 
 a higher kind, but that it is far more certain, and 
 far more continuous. 
 
 As to choice of sires, Mr Lowe's theory of sire 
 blood, if we accept it, furnishes the breeder with 
 a succession of beacon lights warning him off 
 dangerous shoals. Any one who carefully reads 
 Mr Lowe's book, and then looks through the list 
 of sires, will see that, whether his teaching is 
 correct or not, it is thoroughly practical and 
 definite somewhat alarmingly definite. And, as 
 I have said before, 1 think, if any one will take the 
 trouble to search the past annals of the Turf, he 
 will see not a few wrecks which might have been 
 saved if Mr Lowe's theories had been known 
 before. 
 
 When it comes to the actual question of 
 mating any particular mare, I am not sure that 
 Mr Lowe's teaching is as satisfactory, or, at least, 
 as definite. It is not difficult to say, " This cross 
 is distinctly wrong," " That cross fits in with Mr 
 Lowe's views." But I think that it would still 
 be possible that in a good many cases Mr Lowe's 
 teaching would leave a latitude of choice in dis- 
 tinctly different directions. I am not sure that
 
 252 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 this does not tend to prove that the author is 
 a reasonable man, not a doctrinaire. In a good 
 many instances considerations of make and shape 
 and temperament would settle the question. Still, 
 I am bound to say that, whether it be obscurity 
 on Mr Lowe's part or obtuseness on mine, I can- 
 not altogether understand the positive principles 
 of mating which he lays down. I think, too, 
 that he sometimes sees what is remote and over- 
 looks what is near. He is so absorbed in his 
 consideration of horses as falling into groups based 
 on female descent that he forgets that it is possible 
 and very often useful to classify them otherwise. 
 In some cases the union of particular male families 
 may be the best practical guide for the breeder 
 to follow, though the success of such union may 
 be ultimately explained by Mr Lowe's theories. 
 I may give an instance of this. Mr Lowe speaks 
 of Stockwell as "catholic in his matings." It is 
 generally received, and I think a sound doctrine, 
 that Stockwell showed a very marked preference 
 for mares of Touchstone blood. 
 
 Though Mr Lowe does not furnish breeders 
 with anything like a cut-and- dried formula for 
 mating applicable to each mare, I can hardly 
 imagine any breeder reading his book carefully,
 
 PREDICTION 253 
 
 and without prejudice, and not in future seeing 
 his way a good deal clearer. It would be unfair 
 not to point out that Mr Lowe does not in the 
 least underrate the importance either of make or 
 shape, or of conditions of rearing and management. 
 He does not go into these questions in detail, 
 but all that he does say about them is sensible 
 and practical. All that he claims all that any 
 sensible man who theorises about breeding will 
 claim is that he can point out certain conditions 
 which must be obeyed if symmetry, physique, 
 and good management are to have fair play. 
 
 It is an old doctrine that prediction is the 
 test of science. It is a test which unfortunately 
 theories of racehorse breeding are apt to evade. 
 The practical breeder no doubt has his errors 
 brought home to him by lengthening forfeits, or 
 by " the law of diminishing returns," as exemplified 
 in Mr Tattersall's yearling sales. But when the 
 newspaper critic glibly prophesies that " this grand - 
 looking and grandly-bred young sire cannot fail 
 to get racehorses," how often is the scribe con- 
 fronted four years later with the grim reality as 
 disclosed in the list of winning stallions? It 
 may not, therefore, be out of place to jot down 
 a few of the conclusions as to the future which
 
 254 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 would seem to follow as necessary deductions 
 from Mr Lowe's teaching, and to cast in accordance 
 with his principles the horoscope of some of the 
 young aspirants to fame at the stud, taking only 
 those whose career has not begun, or, at least, 
 has not gone far enough to be a key to their 
 probable future. If our author's ideas are sound, 
 no horse ever began stud life with better prospects 
 than Isinglass. It is, perhaps, hardly fair to speak 
 of St Serf, who has already given us a taste of 
 his quality. But he, too, pre-eminently fulfils 
 the conditions laid down. Mr Lowe could have 
 had nothing but praise for Orme and Best Man ; 
 while, among minor lights, Blue Green and that 
 very honest, if not very comely, horse Queen's 
 Birthday, would surely have his good word. 
 Ladas, Sir Hugo, Oberon, Ravensbury, our two 
 Australian visitors, Carbine and Carnage, and 
 Childwick, should each in their degree do well, 
 though probably within a much narrower circle 
 of alliances than those named above. Galeazzo, 
 too, is worth mentioning as one who, if all goes 
 well with him in his Turf career, should help 
 St Simon in keeping up the line of Voltigeur. 
 This does not, of course, in the least pretend 
 to be an exhaustive application of Mr Lowe's
 
 THE PROBLEM DISCUSSED 255 
 
 principles to the sire list. But I think it may 
 furnish a rough test by which, as time goes on, 
 the soundness of these principles may be measured. 
 
 III. HAVE OUR RACEHORSES DETERIORATED 
 AND, IF SO, WHY? 
 
 A WELL-KNOWN writer in the daily Press, the 
 special commissioner of the Sportsman, has lately 
 been discussing this subject, and his views have 
 been commented upon, partly with approval, 
 partly with dissent, in the Field. In each case 
 the question is treated with an amount of care 
 and a fulness of knowledge which at least raises 
 a presumption that the matter is worth considering. 
 The case put forward in the Sportsman may, I think, 
 be summed up in the following propositions : 
 
 1. That our racehorses have of late years 
 
 deteriorated and are likely to go on 
 deteriorating. 
 
 2. That this deterioration is due to excessive 
 
 in-breeding. 
 
 3. That this in-breeding has been forced upon 
 
 us by the ascendency of the Eclipse lines
 
 256 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 and the weakening, approaching to extinc- 
 tion, of the Herod and Matchem lines. 
 4. That the remedy for this is to be found in 
 the resuscitation of the Herod blood in the 
 direct male line. 
 
 Every one of those propositions seems to me 
 sufficiently important to deserve consideration, and 
 also to be so general as to need a certain amount 
 of definition and limitation. 
 
 I. The first is one on which it is scarcely 
 possible, as far as I can see, to arrive at any 
 definite conclusion. How is it possible to measure 
 the relative merits of the great horses of different 
 epochs ? Who could decide the supremacy between, 
 let us say, Camarine, Alice Hawthorne, Virago, 
 and Pretty Polly ? The cry of deterioration has 
 always been heard. The late Sir Francis Doyle 
 was a stout advocate of that view. Yet, as it 
 always seemed to me, he himself furnished one 
 of the strongest arguments against it. In an article 
 which he wrote in the Fortnightly he took up his 
 parable, and effectively, against those optimists, 
 such as Admiral Rous, who maintained that the 
 development of the racehorse had been in the 
 direction of continuous improvement. He took 
 for his example Medoro, a good, though not quite
 
 SIR FRANCIS DOYLE 257 
 
 first-class Cup horse, who was running in 1829. 
 Now, Medoro himself and his immediate forebears 
 were all begotten by old horses, and he therefore 
 belonged to one generation in point of time, but 
 to an earlier one in point of descent. How, then, 
 was it, Sir Francis asked the advocates of the 
 improvement theory, that Medoro held his own 
 well among his contemporaries ? It did not, 
 apparently, occur to him that the argument could 
 be turned round. As it happens, Touchstone, 
 the Flying Dutchman, and Thormanby were all 
 descended by an equal number of removes from 
 Selim and his brother Castrel. If we accept the 
 deterioration theory in full, then the Dutchman 
 and Thormanby, instead of being merely the best 
 of their year respectively, as the former certainly 
 was (in a very bad year) and the latter possibly 
 (in a very good one) should have been far and 
 away the best of their decades. There should, 
 for example, have been no comparison between 
 Thormanby - - three removes from Castrel and 
 St Albans, six removes (through Pasquinade and 
 Camel) from Selim. 
 
 I am quite prepared to admit that the last few 
 years have not given us all that we have a right to 
 
 wish for or expect ; but then, good horses have a 
 
 it
 
 258 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 curious way of coming together, in pockets, as a 
 miner would say, and years of brilliancy alternate 
 with years of mediocrity. We have years which 
 give us nothing better than Andover and Knight 
 of St George, Beadsman and Sunbeam, Jeddah 
 and Wildfowler. Then we have Ormonde, Mint- 
 ing, and The Bard, coming on us in a heap, or 
 Blair Athol followed home at Epsom by General 
 Peel, Scottish Chief, Ely, and Cambuscan, any one 
 of them good enough to win most Derbies. So 
 I am not going to despair because Pretty Polly 
 reigns alone, with only such minor stars as Rock 
 Sand and Zinfandel in her train. 
 
 At the same time, reasonable dissatisfaction is 
 a much safer frame of mind than blind optimism. 
 The practical question is not so much, Are our 
 horses deteriorating ? as, Are they as good as they 
 might be and ought to be ? I once heard a gallant 
 Irishman defend a certain measure of reform by 
 the plea that to stand still was a retrograde move- 
 ment. Like many bulls, the statement concealed 
 a sound truth. It does seem to me to be open 
 to grave doubt whether racehorse breeding at 
 present is as successful and progressive as it ought 
 to be. I have always held that horse breeding 
 cannot be reduced to anything like an exact
 
 INSTANCES NOTED 259 
 
 science, that we must be content to ascertain 
 tendencies and to build upon probabilities. I 
 venture to think that a careful study of the subject 
 will show that breeders are at present very probably 
 on a mistaken and dangerous track. 
 
 II. The next point to be considered is, Are our 
 racers too much in-bred ? Now certainly, if any 
 one was asked to name the two most successful 
 sires of the present day, he would in all likelihood 
 name Flying Fox and Gallinule, and if a further 
 quartette had to be chosen, two of them would 
 certainly be Sainfoin and Cyllene. Now of these, 
 Flying Fox is quite exceptionally iii-bred, while 
 Gallinule is got by a grandson out of a great- 
 granddaughter of Stockwell. Cyllene's sire and 
 dam are both great-grandchildren of Stockwell. 
 Sainfoin is by a grandson of Stockwell, his dam is 
 a granddaughter of Stockwell and is by Wenlock, 
 whose dam was by Rataplan, Stockwell's own 
 brother, and out of a daughter of Birdcatcher. 
 Birdcatcher, I need hardly remind readers of 
 Baity, was the paternal grandsire of Stockwell 
 and Rataplan. 
 
 What is more, every one of these sires has 
 succeeded, not by avoiding those lines to which he 
 was himself in-bred, but by carrying in-breeding
 
 260 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 to them still further. Flying Fox is a grandson 
 and great-grandson of Galopin, and the dam of 
 Jardy has Galopin blood in her. Pretty Polly's 
 dam is a direct descendant of Stockwell, and her 
 dam goes back to Rataplan. Rock Sand's dam 
 brings in more of the two leading strains in 
 Sainfoin's pedigree Stockwell and Newminster. 
 The same is true of Cicero's dam. Under these 
 circumstances I do not see how it can be contended 
 that in-breeding, in itself, has had a deleterious 
 effect. If it were so the most in-bred horses 
 would be the worst. It would be much nearer 
 the truth to say that they are the best. 
 
 III. I just said in-breeding in itself. There, I 
 venture to think, is the keynote of the whole 
 business. While mere consanguinity does not do 
 any harm, it does seem to me that there is one 
 form of in-breeding which undoubtedly does lead 
 to deterioration, that is in-breeding continuously 
 to the. same family in tail -male. For, be it 
 observed, the two things, in-breeding and in- 
 breeding in tail-male, are not at all necessarily 
 the same. At this stage I had better, perhaps, 
 make it quite clear what I mean when I . speak 
 of in - breeding, or cross - breeding in tail-male. 
 Most people know that all our racehorses are
 
 A NECESSARY DISTINCTION 261 
 
 descended from three male lines, those of the 
 Darley Arabian, the Byerley Turk, and the 
 Godolphin Barb, or to bring it nearer to our 
 own times, of Eclipse, Herod, and Matchem ; and 
 it may save my readers trouble and enable me 
 to avoid circumlocution if I say now, that where- 
 ever in this article I use the expression " descended 
 from " or " descendant," I am speaking of descent 
 in direct male succession, and that when I refer 
 to other forms of descent, I shall specially indicate 
 them. 
 
 Now, as I just said, it is obvious that in- 
 breeding generally is one thing and in-breeding in 
 tail-male quite another. Let me exemplify what 
 I mean. Cadland and Galopin were exception- 
 ally in-bred in the one sense. Cadland was by a 
 grandson of Sorcerer out of a daughter of Sorcerer. 
 Galopin's parents were both grandchildren of 
 Voltaire ; but in each case sire and dam belonged 
 to different families. On the other hand, Vedette 
 and Ladas might fairly be called in the ordinary 
 sense cross-bred horses, since there was no near 
 relationship between sire and dam in either case ; 
 but each of them had four grandparents, all of 
 the same line. I may have been somewhat prolix 
 in my manner of setting this forth, but I want
 
 262 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 my readers clearly to understand what is really 
 the very central feature of my case, that while 
 the results of the past raise no presumption what- 
 ever against merely consanguineous alliances, they 
 do, as I shall try to show, raise a very strong 
 presumption against continuous in-breeding in the 
 male line. 
 
 I venture to put forward this view with all 
 the more confidence, because when I started on 
 this enquiry my presumptions were all the other 
 way. I regarded the preponderance of Eclipse 
 blood in the male line as simply an instance of 
 the survival of the fittest. I argued, here we 
 have the Herod and Matchem lines embodied in 
 great sires through the dams. As long as we 
 cross them and their descendants in such a fashion 
 as to preserve fairly the balance of strains, the 
 mere fact that the majority of our horses go back 
 to Eclipse in tail-male can do no harm. 
 
 There are, I fear, not a great many readers of 
 Baily at the present day who remember much of 
 what appeared in Belfs Life. In the latter days 
 of that excellent journal a gentleman named, 
 I think, Robinson, but I am not sure on that 
 point published some letters on blood - stock 
 breeding. He had got access, if I remember
 
 LORD EGREMONT'S SYSTEM 263 
 
 rightly, to some private memoranda of Lord 
 Egremont, the breeder of Gohanna, etc. Accord- 
 ing to this gentleman, Lord Egremont worked on 
 an exceedingly simple system. He continuously 
 crossed the descendants of the three great lines, 
 so that the sire and dam should always come 
 from different lines, and that every pedigree should 
 include among the four grandparents one direct 
 representative of each of the three lines. I can 
 perhaps make the matter clearer by a practical 
 illustration. Newminster would have conformed 
 to this theory. His sire was of the Eclipse family, 
 his dam's sire of the Matchem, his dam's dam of 
 the Herod. Hermit, again, having a Herod dam, 
 was correct. Lord Clifden was not, as Herod 
 was wanting. Blair Athol again fulfilled the 
 requirements even better than Newminster or 
 Hermit, since his sire was by an Eclipse horse 
 from a Herod mare, and his dam by a Matchem 
 horse from a Herod mare. 
 
 It was no hard matter to show that something 
 like 50 per cent, of successful horses were bred 
 in defiance of this formula, and that there were 
 various other conditions of success which were 
 entirely ignored. Nevertheless, I think that the 
 writer was on the track of a truth, and if, insteacj
 
 264 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 of trying to make a hard and fast formula he 
 had contented himself with saying that tolerably 
 frequent crosses in the male line were necessary, 
 he would have had a good case. 
 
 I have taken the trouble to look out the 
 pedigree of all Derby winners back as far as 
 1800, and I find that there are only twelve who 
 can claim four grandparents all belonging to the 
 same line. Of course, Derby winners do not of 
 necessity give a sample of what is best in thorough- 
 bred stock. I will not weary my readers with 
 those dismal things, statistics ; but, taking the best 
 ten or twelve horses of every decade, and trying 
 to pick them fairly, and not cook the facts, I 
 find that a slight majority, about 60 per cent., 
 are the result of a direct cross between two of 
 the three families. This, coupled with the statistics 
 of Derby winners given above, seems to me to 
 raise a strong presumption that continuous in- 
 breeding in tail-male to one line is attended with 
 danger. 
 
 It is very often the best way of understanding 
 a rule to study it in its exceptions. I find, 
 according to my reckoning, four animals of un- 
 doubtedly first-class excellence, all of whose four 
 grandparents are descended from Eclipse. These
 
 EXCEPTIONS CONSIDERED 265 
 
 are Alice Hawthorne, Vedette, Isonomy, and 
 Isinglass. Well up in the next rank come 
 Weatherbit, Beadsman, Longbow, Cotherstone, 
 Blue Bonnet, Governess, Blue Gown, Throstle, 
 Sir Hugo, Royal Hampton, Paradox, Ladas, 
 Sainfoin, Flying Fox, Ardpatrick, and Rock Sand. 
 The only instance that I can discover of a really 
 good horse whose four grandparents were all of 
 the Herod line are Elis and his brother Epirus. 
 In the case of Elis's great rival, Bay Middleton, 
 none of the four grandparents go back to Eclipse. 
 I can find no instance where all four grandparents 
 are of the Matchem blood. 
 
 The first thing I would notice about this list is 
 that of the four names it contains two, Governess 
 and Throstle, who were failures at the stud at 
 least Throstle is so far. Blue Bonnet only deserves 
 inclusion by virtue of a very lucky Leger victory, 
 and the only good she did at the stud was to 
 produce that very smart two-year-old, Mary Copp, 
 by a Herod horse, the Flying Dutchman. Alice 
 Hawthorne was a failure when put to Eclipse 
 horses, though to Windhound of the Herod and 
 to Melbourne of the Matchem line she produced 
 Thormanby and Oulston respectively. Vedette's 
 fame as a sire rests on his union with a Flying
 
 266 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 Dutchman (Herod) mare. Sir Hugo, for all his 
 good looks, has done very little at the stud. Blue 
 Gown was a total failure. Cotherstone, Royal 
 Hampton, and Ladas only rank in the second 
 class of sires, and the success of Isinglass has 
 hardly been in proportion to his opportunities. 
 Longbow, again, must stand or fall by Toxophilite, 
 from a mare whose four grandparents were all 
 of Herod blood. These practically leave us with 
 Isonomy, Weatherbit, Beadsman, Sainfoin, and 
 Flying Fox as making against my theory. 
 
 At this stage I would fain pause and make 
 two somewhat general remarks, one of them 
 rather an admission against myself. In the first 
 place I would remind my readers that horse 
 breeding is not like an exact science. If a man 
 professes to get beyond tendencies and proba- 
 bilities he is, in my opinion, only discrediting 
 his own theories. But tendencies and probabilities 
 are quite good enough to be a very valuable guide 
 to the practical man. 
 
 I will promptly admit that in what one may 
 call an inexact and largely conjectural science one 
 is no doubt in great danger of straining facts 
 to suit one's conclusion, and of explaining away 
 those cases which do not fit with one's theories,
 
 ORVILLE AND CATTON 267 
 
 Having thus honestly given the reader notice that 
 I may be in this matter a suspicious character, I 
 will set forth a few considerations which seem to 
 me to show that the apparent exceptions admit 
 of some discounting. 
 
 I would begin by pointing out that certain 
 lines of Eclipse have been so leavened by Herod 
 or Matchem blood that it is not unreasonable to 
 suppose that they do not stand in the same need 
 of a complete outcross as those in which two or 
 three lines of Eclipse are brought together in 
 close proximity. Touchstone and Sir Hercules 
 are instances of the latter, Orville and Catton of 
 the former. I can perhaps best explain what 
 I mean by tracing in some detail the process 
 by which the two last-named strains have been 
 constructed. Let us begin with Orville. A 
 granddaughter of Tartar (a horse of the Byerley 
 Turk blood and sire of Herod) is put to Eclipse, 
 and breeds King Fergus. He is put to a Herod 
 mare and gets Beningboro', and he, from a mare 
 by Highflyer (son of Herod) gets Orville. So 
 far there is no further introduction of Eclipse 
 blood. Orville, from a direct descendant of Herod, 
 begets Emilius. Emilius is put to a mare whose 
 sire and dam are both of the Herod line, and
 
 268 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 gets Plenipotentiary. Take, again, the Catton 
 line. Mercury is by Eclipse from a Tartar 
 mare, Gohanna by Mercury from a Herod mare, 
 Golumpus by Gohanna out of a mare by Wood- 
 pecker, son of Herod. So far, too, there is no 
 fresh infusion of Eclipse. Catton is by Golumpus 
 from a mare of the Herod line. Then, again, we 
 must remember that the various lines of Herod 
 differ greatly in the extent to which they have 
 been modified by Eclipse crosses. Bay Middleton, 
 for example, as I have already pointed out, has 
 four grandparents, not one directly descended from 
 Eclipse. Sultan, Langar, Tadmor, and Macaroni 
 may be taken as specimens of what one may call 
 double Herod horses. On the other hand, in 
 Thormanby's case the main line of Herod is kept 
 in check by an immense preponderance of Eclipse 
 blood elsewhere. The same may be said of 
 Parmesan. We should, therefore, expect that 
 those strains in which Herod not only furnishes 
 the direct line, but also preponderates in the 
 contributory lines, would be the most effective 
 as correctives to an excess of Eclipse blood. 
 
 Let us apply these considerations to cases 
 which I singled out as exceptional. Take Alice 
 Hawthorne her sire is a grandson of Orville,
 
 LADAS; ISONOMY 269 
 
 with a second cross of Beningboro', while her 
 dam is descended not actually from Orville, but 
 from both of his parents. 
 
 Again, in the case of Ladas we have on the 
 dam's side four crosses of Emilius, one in each 
 quarter of the pedigree, and two "of them coming 
 through Plenipotentiary, with yet another line of 
 Plenipotentiary in Ladas's sire Hampton. 
 
 Let us take the case of Isonomy. In his 
 paternal grandsire Oxford we have Plenipotentiary 
 and Bay Middleton, and Isonomy gets more Sultan 
 on the dam's side. Isonomy also showed a marked 
 partiality for Hermit mares. Now Hermit's dam 
 was by Tadmor (just referred to), out of a grand- 
 daughter of Bay Middleton. Hermit blood is not 
 present in Isinglass, but his dam inherits three 
 strains of Sultan, one through Bay Middleton. 
 Still, I am quite ready to admit that Isinglass 
 does show the extent to which in-breeding to one 
 family in tail-male may be carried, and one may, 
 I think, say the same of Rock Sand. 
 
 Gallinule may be quoted as another instance 
 of a son of Isonomy whose dam derived three 
 out of her four principal lines from Eclipse. But 
 it should not be forgotten that Gallinule's two 
 best offspring, Pretty Polly and Wildfowler, were
 
 270 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 from mares whose dams were of the Herod line, 
 while that brilliant filly, Gamechick, was from a 
 mare by Barcaldine (a Matchem horse), granddam 
 by Knight of Kars of the same line. Another son 
 of Isonomy, Fortunio, deserves notice as the sire 
 of one of the speediest horses of modern times. 
 His dam was by Hermit out of a Buccaneer mare. 
 Buccaneer's sire, Wild Dayrell, was by Ion out of 
 a Bay Middleton mare, and thus the very lines 
 through which Hermit got his Herod blood were 
 duplicated. 
 
 Now let us turn to the Galopin family, and 
 apply the same considerations to it. I spoke 
 above of Orville and Catton. Mulatto was by 
 Catton, dam by Orville, out of a mare with no 
 Eclipse blood in her. Voltigeur is by Voltaire 
 (of the Eclipse line), dam by Mulatto ; but both 
 his granddams are of the Herod line. Vedette's 
 dam is by Birdcatcher, her dam by Inheritor, 
 granddam by Comus. Birdcatcher and Inheritor 
 were of the Eclipse line but from Herod mares, 
 while Comus was by a Matchem horse out of a 
 Herod mare. Vedette's son Galopin was not only, 
 as I have already pointed out, from a Herod mare, 
 but Galopin was also strongly in-bred to Phantom, 
 of the Herod line, and to Catton. Flying Fox is,
 
 TOUCHSTONE 271 
 
 of course, almost incestuously in-bred to Galopin, 
 and this must modify any conclusions based on 
 his in-breeding to Eclipse in the male line. 
 
 It may be, I think, worth while to look at 
 the matter from another point of view, and to 
 see by what process the Touchstone line has been 
 carried on. Touchstone himself went back to 
 Eclipse through three out of his four grand- 
 parents. His best sons on the Turf were Surplice 
 and Cotherstone. Their dams were both in the 
 Eclipse family ; Cotherstone's dam doubly so. 
 But it is not through these that the blood has 
 been successfully handed on. In the case of 
 Cotherstone this may be explained in part by 
 the fact that he came of what Mr Lowe regards 
 I think with perfectly good grounds as a 
 " bad sire family." I believe, too, that he was 
 mismanaged at the stud, and he certainly did get 
 one very good horse in Stilton. But Surplice, 
 with good chances, never got a horse within a 
 stone of his own form. 
 
 The three lines through which the Touchstone 
 blood has been carried on are Newminster, Orlando, 
 and Lord of the Isles. Let us take the four 
 grandparents of each, and what do we find ? In 
 Orlando's case all four lines coming from Herod ;
 
 272 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 in Newminster's two from Herod, one from 
 Matchem and one from Eclipse ; in Lord of the 
 Isles two from Herod, two from Eclipse. How 
 the Newminster line was carried on through 
 Hermit I have already described. But it is also 
 worth notice that Newminster's other son, who 
 has founded a line probably more durable than 
 that of Hermit, Lord Clifden, was out of a 
 Melbourne (Matchem) mare, while her dam was 
 an own sister to Voltigeur, of whose debt to 
 Herod I have already spoken. I am content to 
 leave it to my readers to say whether the facts 
 which I have set forth in, I fear, rather a prolix 
 fashion do not justify the view that excellence 
 cannot be maintained by continuous in-breeding 
 in the male line. It may, of course, be said that 
 I have, like the man in Hogarth's picture, cut 
 through the bough on which I am sitting by 
 the admission that when a line of Eclipse has 
 been strongly crossed with Herod or Matchem 
 the evil of in-breeding is lessened. Lessened, I 
 admit, but only lessened. The statistics I have 
 quoted seem to me clearly to show that it is 
 scarcely possible to dispense with an outcross in 
 the second, or at furthest in the third, generation. 
 And unless the three strains of Eclipse, Herod,
 
 WHAT IS EXPEDIENT 273 
 
 and Matchem are all kept alive in tail-male, how 
 is that cross to be got? 
 
 IV. This brings me to the practical question 
 of the remedy. On this point the writer in the 
 Field to whom I have referred has expressed 
 decided opinions. He admits the expediency of 
 an outcross from Eclipse, but he takes the view 
 that the Herod line is practically worn out, that 
 it had its full chance in the palmy days of the 
 Sweetmeat blood, when that strain was carrying 
 all before it, and that we must therefore rely for 
 our outcross on the Matchem line. Up to a 
 certain point I quite agree with him. It would 
 be folly to overlook the great possibilities of the 
 Melbourne blood as it stands. Its present posi- 
 tion may not be a brilliant one, but it is a line 
 with marvellous power of unexpected recovery. 
 Between 1820 and 1830 the Sorcerer branch of 
 the Matchem family was represented at the stud 
 by two Derby winners, Smolensko and Tiresias, 
 and three Leger winners, Soothsayer, Reveller, and 
 Jerry. By 1850 Jericho and Nutwith were their 
 only representatives at the stud. The task of 
 perpetuating the line had devolved on a much less 
 distinguished horse, Humphry Clinker, whose son 
 
 Melbourne, with two Derbies, two Legers, and 
 
 s
 
 274 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 three Oaks to his credit (to say nothing of the 
 Derby and Leger, which Sir Tatton Sykes and 
 Blink Bonny respectively did not win), stands out 
 as one of the greatest sires of his century. Then 
 again, when General Peel and Pall Mall had failed, 
 it was left for an obscure son of West Australia, 
 Solon, to resuscitate the blood through Arbitrator 
 and Barcaldine. It is rather the fashion to dis- 
 parage Barcaldine as a sire. Surely Morion, Sir 
 Visto, Mimi, The Rush, Marco, and Wolfs Crag 
 is a pretty good quiverful for one sire to claim, 
 with Winkfield's Pride, St Maclou, Elopement, 
 Gamechick, and First Principal in the next genera- 
 tion. It must not be forgotten that Plebeian, also 
 of the West Australian line, was the grandsire of 
 St Frusquin and Matchbox. Breeders who put 
 their trust in mares by any of the Barcaldine 
 horses whom I have mentioned will probably not 
 be disappointed. 
 
 I also quite agree with the view expressed in 
 the Field, that it is idle to talk of resuscitating the 
 Sweetmeat blood. There is, however, one Herod 
 line still with us which seems to me well worth 
 preservation. In Loved One and Dinna Forget 
 we have two representatives of a line which cannot 
 be regarded as decadent. From what Buccaneer
 
 BUCCANEER 275 
 
 did during his too short stay in England we 
 may well believe that he would in a few more 
 seasons have stood out at the very top of the tree. 
 I have seen a good many Ascot Cups, but I have 
 seen few more dashing victories than that of 
 Buccaneer's daughter, Brigantine, with a Derby 
 winner, an Oaks and Leger winner, and those 
 two good stayers, Thorwaldsen and Trocadero, 
 behind her. And did not Buccaneer revenge 
 himself on Mr Cookson for selling him by send- 
 ing us back Kisber to beat Forerunner? Seesaw 
 was not a Kisber, but he was good enough to 
 win the Cambridgeshire under 8st. 2lb. Loved 
 One was a Wokingham winner, and Dinna Forget 
 was one of those honest, handy horses to whom 
 no course comes amiss. I do not think that 
 breeders who try to keep the Buccaneer line alive 
 through these sires need be afraid that they are 
 sacrificing themselves to an illusory theory. 
 
 But the possibilities of a Herod revival do not 
 end there. The greatest gain that our Australian 
 cousins ever scored at our expense was their im- 
 portation of Fisherman. Quite apart from the 
 value of the blood as a cross, Fisherman was the 
 very horse to give the qualities in which our 
 modern blood-stock is lacking hardness, sound
 
 276 RACEHORSE BREEDING 
 
 limbs, and wear-and-tear constitution. Where- 
 fore I sincerely hope that the breeder who has 
 just brought over a good Fisherman horse, The 
 Victory, may find imitators. There are other 
 branches of Herod well worth considering. From 
 France we may get Glaucus and Flying Dutchman 
 blood, from Hungary more Buccaneer blood, from 
 America descendants of Glencoe. Of course, if 
 such importations are to do good, they must be 
 picked animals. We do not want mere tag-rag 
 and bobtail because it happens to claim descent 
 from Herod. 
 
 There is just one other point which I would 
 notice in conclusion. Pending a fuller supply of 
 fresh blood, breeders can make the most of such 
 partial crosses as we have got. If my conclusions 
 are correct, mares in whom no outcross from 
 Eclipse is to be found for two or even three 
 generations had best be mated with horses such 
 as St Frusquin, St Maclou, Elopement, St Serf, 
 and the like, whose dams strain back to lines other 
 than Eclipse,
 
 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 1 
 
 To those who follow with any interest the records 
 of the chief shooting competitions at Bisley the 
 names of the two writers who head our list will 
 at least carry with them a voucher for practical 
 familiarity with their subject. The late Mr 
 Foulkes from his schooldays onward played a con- 
 spicuous part in the chief matches at Wimbledon 
 and Bisley; Mr Fremantle has done so too; and 
 though " A Marksman " has chosen to remain 
 anonymous, his work bears on it plainly the 
 stamp of practical experience. 
 
 The aim of Mr Fremantle's book is to sketch 
 
 1 " Notes on the Rifle/' by the Hon. T. F. Fremantle. London, 
 1896. 
 
 " The Theory and Practice of Target Shooting," by A. G. Foulkes, 
 M.A. London, 1895. 
 
 " Modern Rifle Shooting," by " A Marksman." (Reprinted from 
 the Volunteer Service Gazette.) London, 1895. 
 
 " Infantry Fire Tactics," by Captain C. B. Mayne, Royal Engineers. 
 Second Edition. Chatham, 1895. 
 
 "Text Book for Military Small Arms and Ammunition." London, 
 1804. 
 
 " Report and Proceedings of the Rifle Congress." London, 1864. 
 
 277
 
 278 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 the development of rifles and the projectiles 
 belonging to them, and to set forth, in a clear 
 and unpretending fashion, the mechanical principles 
 which have controlled that development. The 
 writer, too, has not only a sound knowledge of 
 the practical sides of his subject, but his book 
 shows, so far as the limits of it allow, a careful 
 and exhaustive study of the literature of the rifle. 
 Here and there the style bears traces of what 
 one may call amateurishness. But these are few, 
 and the book throughout displays a noteworthy 
 power of dealing with a technical subject in such 
 a way as to make it intelligible and interesting 
 to the ordinary layman. The special language 
 of mechanical science is used sparingly and 
 judiciously. 
 
 Mr Foulkes's book and that by "A Marks- 
 man " are in a sense more practical. They contain, 
 that is to say, a good deal more in the way of 
 advice and suggestions as to the use of the rifle. 
 At the same time each writer clearly understands 
 that a man cannot be a successful rifle-shot if he 
 trusts merely to natural skill and to good luck, 
 and is ignorant of the mechanical conditions which 
 limit his efforts. Accordingly, each of these 
 writers has given a sketch, less elaborate than
 
 VOLUNTEERS 279 
 
 Mr Fremantle's, but clear and business-like so 
 far as it goes, of the laws which must govern the 
 construction of rifles and ammunition. Indeed, 
 this part of " A Marksman's " work strikes us as 
 a singularly happy attempt at stating scientific 
 truths in a clear, practical fashion. 
 
 These three books are, we think, a very satis- 
 factory illustration of what the Volunteer move- 
 ment and the labours of the National Rifle 
 Association have done for the country. It is 
 not the least among their services to have called 
 into existence, outside the Army, a number of 
 persons keenly interested in gunnery and capable 
 of bringing to bear on the problems of the subject 
 both trained intelligence and practical experience. 
 We greatly doubt whether, forty years ago, 
 civilians would have been found with the practical 
 knowledge needful to produce books. We are 
 very certain that, forty years ago, such books 
 would have found but few civilian readers. 
 
 Captain Mayne's book on " Infantry Fire 
 Tactics" is more distinctly didactic in purpose 
 than either of the three already mentioned, and, 
 as might be expected in the work of a professional 
 soldier, it deals with the subject more exclusively 
 from a military point of view. It may be looked
 
 280 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 on as in a measure supplementing them. Under- 
 lying the whole of Captain Mayne's work is the 
 thoroughly-sound contention that effectiveness in 
 individual shooting, whether due to personal skill 
 or to improvements in firearms, is valuable only 
 so far as it enables the marksman to play his 
 part more efficiently as part of an organised 
 force. It is clear, therefore, that, in all attempts 
 to develop individual skill or to improve the 
 rifle, no condition should be introduced which is 
 inconsistent with the end to be finally sought, 
 that of effective organised fire. And no one can 
 have carefully followed the history of rifle-shooting 
 since the foundation of the National Rifle Associa- 
 tion and not see that there have been times 
 when the search for mere accuracy at the target 
 has led to forgetfulness of military conditions, 
 and that the considerations set forth by Captain 
 Mayne must be constantly kept in view alike by 
 rifle-shots and rifle-makers. 
 
 The book which appears last but one on our 
 list, "The Official Text Book of Military Small 
 Arms," carries the detailed history of the subject 
 back to a point earlier than that chosen by Mr 
 Fremantle. It gives contemporary sketches of 
 the " gonnes " used by foot and horse soldiers
 
 THE RIFLE 281 
 
 respectively in the middle of the fifteenth century. 
 One is tempted to think that they must have 
 demanded even greater courage from the shooter 
 than from the recipient. But it is with rifles, 
 not firearms generally, that we are concerned. As 
 a military weapon the rifle first came to the front 
 in America, where the value of an arm of pre- 
 cision soon made itself felt in woodland warfare. 
 Braddock's defeat was due, not only to his own 
 contemptuous ignorance of the peculiar condi- 
 tions under which he had to fight, but also to 
 the effective marksmanship of French irregular 
 troops and their Indian allies, armed with hunt- 
 ing rifles. At Saratoga, the deliberate aim of 
 an American rifleman deprived Burgoyne of his 
 best subordinate, Fraser. The years which separ- 
 ated Waterloo from the Crimea were not years 
 of military inventiveness ; nevertheless, the result 
 of the battle of the Alma gave the old smooth 
 bore its death-blow. Readers of Punch will re- 
 member the horrified face of the elderly spinster 
 in Leech's picture as she listens to the letter in 
 which the writer announces that he has abandoned 
 his old Brown Bess in favour of his "beautiful 
 MinieV' But as a pastime for civilians rifle- 
 shooting then was as much the exclusive hobby
 
 282 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 of a few enthusiasts as golf was south of the 
 Tweed twenty years ago, and even among them 
 long-range shooting was unknown. 
 
 With the Volunteer movement, and as a 
 consequence the formation of the National Rifle 
 Association, came a revolution. The Volunteers 
 had not been in existence two years when it 
 became clear that target-shooting was definitely 
 taking its place among the manly exercises of 
 Englishmen ; and that whatever might be the 
 deficiencies of the Volunteer force in drill, in 
 organisation, or in commissariat, it had in it the 
 making of an effective body of marksmen. And 
 it soon became clear, too, that the Volunteer 
 movement, acting mainly through the National 
 Rifle Association, which it had called into exist- 
 ence, was destined to do another work, and, esti- 
 mating its services at their very lowest, to give 
 the military authorities of the country invaluable 
 help in the task of supplying the Army with a 
 weapon of precision. 
 
 As we have already implied, rifle-shooting 
 previous to the Volunteer movement had been 
 the pursuit exclusively of the deerstalker and 
 of a few enthusiasts whose prowess was wholly 
 unknown to the general public. One such
 
 HORATIO ROSS 283 
 
 formed a noteworthy link between the past and 
 future of rifle-shooting. Thirty years before the 
 Volunteer movement few names had been more 
 conspicuous in the world of sport than that of 
 Captain Horatio Ross. To the general public 
 he was best known as probably the finest living 
 game-shot and the owner of the famous steeple- 
 chasers Clinker and Smasher. But he had fully 
 as good titles to fame as a deerstalker and a 
 target-shot. His son Edward, then a lad just 
 about to matriculate at Cambridge, showed how 
 thoroughly he had inherited and learned his 
 father's craft by carrying off the Queen's Prize at 
 the first Wimbledon Meeting in 1860. Captain 
 Ross himself, with nerve and eyesight unimpaired 
 by nearly sixty years, himself at once appeared 
 on the scene as a conspicuously successful com- 
 petitor in the extra - military competitions at 
 Wimbledon, and his example was followed, not 
 only by Edward, but by two more sons. In fact, 
 it may be doubted whether a long-range competi- 
 tion between England and Scotland could have 
 taken place at all in those early days if the Ross 
 family had not furnished the nucleus of a Scottish 
 Eight. 
 
 If the National Rifle Association had confined
 
 284 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 itself to its obvious and primary duty, that of 
 fostering Volunteer shooting, it would no doubt 
 have done something to make our auxiliary forces 
 more useful, but it would not have contributed 
 anything towards solving the important problem, 
 what should be the arm of the future? For 
 the Enfield rifle was inaccurate at any distance 
 beyond five hundred yards, and hopelessly un- 
 trustworthy at such a range as eight hundred, 
 and no practice with it could have done any- 
 thing to develop an arm of precision. But 
 happily the rulers of the National Rifle Associa- 
 tion took a wide view of their duties, and long- 
 range competitions, with rifles deviating from 
 strict military conditions, at once formed part of 
 their programme. The Queen's Prize, too, was 
 not merely a competition with the service arm 
 at the ordinary military distances. The second 
 and more important stage of it was shot with 
 small-bore rifles, conforming in other respects to 
 military regulations, chosen by a competition 
 among gunmakers. Furthermore, the cause of 
 long-range shooting was greatly advanced by the 
 establishment of a competition to which we have 
 already referred. In 1862 that staunch friend 
 to rifle- shooting, the present Earl of Wemyss,
 
 THE ELCHO SHIELD 285 
 
 gave the Elcho Shield to be competed for at 
 long ranges between England and Scotland, and 
 in 1865 Ireland was admitted as a third com- 
 petitor. The position of the last-named country 
 in the match is not without interest as illustrating 
 the value of strict co-operation in rifle-shooting. 
 The absence of Volunteers in Ireland, and con- 
 sequently the small number of those who turned 
 their attention to rifle-shooting, seemed at first 
 likely to be fatal hindrances to success. This, 
 however, was counterbalanced, firstly, by the 
 fact that there was no short-range military 
 shooting to distract the attention of competitors, 
 but probably even more by the fact that the 
 competitors, being drawn almost exclusively from 
 two small clubs, those of Dublin and Belfast, 
 had a knowledge of one another's shooting, and 
 felt an esprit de corps hardly to be found among 
 competitors chosen from a wider area. How this 
 acted is best proved by the fact that between 
 the years 1873 and 1890 Ireland was no less 
 than eleven times successful. 
 
 Another important step towards the further- 
 ance of long-range shooting was taken in 1864. 
 The Cambridge Volunteer Corps had then the 
 good fortune not only to number among its
 
 286 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 members Edward Ross, but also to have for its 
 commanding officer one of the finest long-range 
 shots ever known, Colonel Baker. Furthermore, 
 it possessed perhaps the best range in England, 
 extending to 1100 yards. This happy conjunc- 
 tion of circumstances led to the formation of a 
 long-range club, not limited to members of the 
 University, and holding an annual competition. 
 It was at one of these competitions that Captain 
 Ross, of whom we have already spoken, beat, 
 when in his sixty-sixth year, a field which in- 
 cluded nearly all the first-class long-range shots 
 in the kingdom. And it is also worth noticing 
 that the Metford rifle, which with its shallow 
 grooves and increasing spiral marked an entirely 
 new development in the practice of rifle-making, 
 made its first public appearance when in 1865, 
 in the hands of Colonel (afterwards Sir Henry) 
 Halford, it won the Cambridge Cup. 
 
 The records of the first Elcho Shield match 
 furnish as good a gauge as one could find of the 
 general progress of long-range shooting. With- 
 out going into statistical details, which to the 
 generality of readers would convey no definite 
 meaning, we may shortly state the case thus. 
 In the first match, that shot in 1862, no com-
 
 LONG-RANGE SHOOTING 287 
 
 petitor hit the bull's-eye more than thirteen times, 
 and one competitor only hit it five times. No 
 competitor completed his score without missing 
 the target seven times, and one competitor missed 
 it no less than thirty-three times. The condi- 
 tions of wind and light under which the match is 
 shot vary so much that statistics can hardly be 
 said to give even an approximate guide to what 
 are normal results. But, speaking generally, 
 one may say that under ordinary conditions any 
 competitor would be endangering the success 
 of his side who did not place two shots out of 
 every three in the bull's - eye, and that the 
 prospects of a team would look very black if, 
 not a single competitor, but the whole eight 
 competitors together, missed the target as often 
 as seven times. 
 
 It need hardly be said that only a portion 
 of this change, probably not the chief portion, 
 is due to advance in individual skill. Rifling, 
 projectiles, sights, have all been revolutionised. 
 The marking in those days only indicated the 
 value of the shot, and left the exact position to 
 be ascertained somewhat conjecturally by a man 
 at the firing-point with a telescope. The art of 
 " coaching " that is to say, of utilising to the
 
 288 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 utmost all that can be learned both by direct 
 observation and also inferred from the result of 
 each shot as to changes of wind, light, and so on 
 instead of leaving each competitor to his own 
 guidance, has been brought to perfection. The 
 universal adoption, too, of the back position, a 
 change due mainly to the brilliant results achieved 
 by American marksmen who made use of it, has 
 had an even more important result on matches, 
 such as the Elcho Shield, than on individual 
 scores : for the superiority of the back position 
 lies not so much in the fact that each individual 
 shot is fired with greater steadiness, as that there 
 is less danger, and indeed with competent and 
 experienced shots no danger, of an erratic shot 
 being unknowingly fired. Thus each successive 
 shot may be taken as a guide to the strength of 
 the wind, with a degree of certainty which never 
 could be attained when competitors shot in the 
 prone position. 
 
 While on the subject of the back position, 
 we may notice a somewhat interesting discovery 
 which Mr Fremantle has unearthed. He quotes 
 (page 19) from " A History of the War of 
 Independence," written in 1785, the following 
 description of Colonel Ferguson, a leader of
 
 THE BACK POSITION 289 
 
 irregular troops on the Loyalist side, who fell at 
 the battle of King's Mountain, fought in North 
 Carolina in 1780. 
 
 " He was perhaps the best marksman living, 
 and probably brought the art of rifle-shooting to 
 its highest point of perfection. He even invented 
 a gun of that kind upon a new construction, which 
 was said to have far exceeded in facility and 
 execution anything of the sort before known ; and 
 he is said to have greatly outdone even the 
 American Indians in the adroitness and quickness 
 of firing and loading and in the certainty of hitting 
 the mark, lying upon the back or belly and every 
 other possible position of the body." 
 
 Mr Fremantle also reproduces from a book 
 written early in the present century by Ezekiel 
 Baker, and called " Remarks on Rifle Guns," 
 two singular and interesting prints. One repre- 
 sents a Volunteer in uniform on his back, aiming, 
 with the sling of his rifle twisted, as it is occasion- 
 ally in the present day, round one foot. The 
 other print represents a startling form of the prone 
 position. The marksman has divested himself 
 of his shako, which, placed on the ground before 
 him, serves as a rest for his rifle barrel 1 A 
 
 reviewer of Mr Fremantle's book has ingeniously 
 
 T
 
 290 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 and plausibly suggested that the height of the 
 shako was designed to fit it for this purpose. 
 
 In the year 1864 a Congress of Rifle-shots 
 was held in London. It appears to have been 
 open to all who cared to pay half a guinea for 
 a ticket, and it had no executive powers. Never- 
 theless, their debates seem to have been carried 
 on in a conspicuously sensible and practical spirit. 
 Their deliberations occupied three days, and it 
 is noteworthy that the opening day's discussion 
 was held under the chairmanship of Mr William 
 Forster, not yet a Cabinet Minister. 
 
 The Report is of very great interest, as showing 
 what the leading rifle-shots of that day thought 
 on a good many questions which have since been 
 warmly debated, and how far their anticipations 
 and their fears have been fulfilled. It is also 
 worth noticing that, on more than one important 
 point, the National Rifle Association has, in some 
 cases rather tardily, and as the result of warning 
 failures, adopted the methods recommended by 
 this Congress. There was, for example, a con- 
 sensus of opinion that the minimum number of 
 shots should be seven instead of five, and the 
 Association, after some years, definitely adopted 
 that change. The Conference furthermore recom-
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG CONDITIONS 291 
 
 mended the encouragement of second-rate shots, 
 not as was then often suggested by handicapping, 
 but rather by diminishing the individual value 
 and enlarging the number of prizes, and the policy 
 of the Association has steadily tended in that 
 direction. The Conference, too, expressed a 
 decided opinion as to the expediency of making 
 each competition, or at least each distinct stage 
 of every competition, take place on the same day, 
 so that all competitors might, as far as possible, 
 shoot under the same conditions of wind and 
 atmosphere. From this policy the National Rifle 
 Association gradually drifted away. Long-range 
 competitions were established, increasing year by 
 year in importance, which ran on for several days, 
 and for which a competitor might enter any 
 number of times with the one limitation that he 
 could not shoot twice on the same morning or 
 afternoon. As a consequence a few first - rate 
 scores made in easy weather paralysed subsequent 
 shooting, and during a spell of wind or wet the 
 targets might have been seen standing idle for 
 hours, if not for days together. Moreover, the 
 system bore hardly on busy shots who were 
 occupied in various competitions, and who con- 
 sequently could not pick their time. Such was
 
 292 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 the disaffection created by the system that in 
 1892 the Association thrust back these "bi- 
 diurnal " competitions into a secondary place, and 
 arranged all the principal matches throughout the 
 meeting on what has been called the " shoulder 
 to shoulder" system, whereby all the competitors 
 for any one prize are shooting at the same range 
 simultaneously. In doing this they were simply 
 reverting to a principle which had been clearly 
 and emphatically laid down by the Congress of 
 1864. 
 
 It is also interesting to find that the battle 
 had already begun on behalf of strictly military 
 shooting as against so-called "fancy" shooting: 
 we shall endeavour to show that we use the 
 latter term in no invidious sense. The case for 
 the former was put tersely and effectively by 
 Lord Ducie, himself no mean performer with 
 the match rifle fitted with aperture-sights. That 
 weapon, he said, would be useful 
 
 "if the British soldier were always certain of 
 meeting with a black enemy, if the ground upon 
 which that enemy stood were always covered with 
 snow ; and further, if the enemy would be so 
 complaisant as to dispense with his clothes." 
 
 And it has been added to this criticism, that
 
 TWO POLICIES 293 
 
 since long-range shooting does not test the power 
 of judging distance, it would be needful for the 
 nude enemy to mark time while sighting- shots 
 were being fired. 
 
 Nevertheless, we think that Lord Ducie, in 
 a somewhat Balaam - like fashion, removed half 
 the sting of his curse and changed it into some- 
 thing like a blessing, by another passage in his 
 letter : 
 
 " I am convinced that it is now no longer 
 the steadiest hand or clearest eye that will win. 
 
 " Lying down gives practically a perfect rest ; 
 the aperture-sight clears off all haze (in tolerable 
 weather), and makes my short sight equal to 
 your long sight. 
 
 " The real skill now lies in watching the wind 
 and the light, in keeping the rifle in good 
 condition, in careful manipulation in loading, and 
 in having the best ammunition." 
 
 Is not that another way of saying that aperture- 
 sights get rid of the personal element of error, 
 and furnish the best means of testing systems 
 of rifling and varieties of ammunition, and so of 
 working by experiment towards an ideal military 
 weapon ? 
 
 That side of the case was well put in a paper
 
 294 MODERN RIFLE SHOOTING 
 
 read at the Congress by Mr John Rigby, lately 
 the Superintendent of the Government Small 
 Arms Factory at Enfield. The paper was further 
 noteworthy as setting forth very clearly what 
 the whole aim of the National Rifle Association 
 ought to be, and what, we think, allowing for 
 certain deviations and imperfections, it in the 
 main has been. 
 
 "There is one further matter, which, as it 
 comes strictly under the head of general principles, 
 I feel I cannot pass over altogether, and that is, 
 the rule by which we ought to be guided in 
 laying down the conditions of any match. It 
 appears to me manifest that in every case we 
 should first ascertain the object which the match 
 is intended to promote. If it be to encourage 
 Volunteers to attain proficiency with their regi- 
 mental rifles, then manifestly that rifle only should 
 be used, and all the rules should be modelled on 
 the military standard, with the addition that as 
 shooting at a target at measured distances is 
 only the first step towards the efficient use of 
 the rifle in war, far more attention should be 
 given than has hitherto been done to matches 
 so arranged that the proficiency of the competitors 
 in judging distances, calculating the elevation for 
 intermediate ranges, and the allowance for wind, 
 delivering their fire with rapidity and accuracy
 
 MILITARY AND MATCH RIFLES 295 
 
 as in file-firing, etc., etc., may be tested and 
 rewarded. I cannot but think that such contests 
 are of more practical value in a military point 
 of view than the unvarying succession of matches 
 at 200, 500, and 600 yards. 
 
 "Among the other objects which are well 
 worthy that special matches should be arranged 
 for their promotion, are the encouragement of 
 rifle-shooting as a healthy, manly, and scientific 
 pastime. And again the stimulation of improve- 
 ments in the manufacture of rifles. If, therefore, 
 it be proposed in any contest to unite these two 
 last-named purposes, the greatest latitude should 
 be given in the matter of aperture or other sights, 
 of special and costly projectiles, etc., etc. ; and 
 of such a nature are the small-bore contests at 
 Wimbledon. 
 
 "There is, however, another and a most im- 
 portant object which may and ought to be promoted 
 by means of matches, with conditions suitable to 
 that end. And this is the improvement of our 
 military arm. There should be the matches with 
 rifles suitable for service alluded to in the pro- 
 gramme, and the existence of such matches would 
 stimulate powerfully the improvement of military 
 rifles. Fine screw adjustments, wind-gauges, sight- 
 covers, aperture-sights, ammunition such as would 
 not be suitable for service, should be prohibited, 
 and the conditions should be so arranged as to
 
 296 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 supply a test of the efficiency of the weapon in 
 a military point of view, such as easy and quick 
 loading, durability, non - liability to foul, etc. 
 These matches would, I think, be highly popular. 
 They would open a fair field to many a skilful 
 shot, who, not finding sufficient reward for his 
 skill in the use of the Enfield rifle only, is yet 
 unwilling to enter the lists with the small-bore 
 competitors under the present rules." (Report of 
 Congress, pp. 177, 178.) 
 
 It is hardly too much to say that the whole 
 experience of the Association, during the time 
 which has intervened, illustrates the soundness 
 of the views set forth in the above extract. The 
 competitions for rifles of an intermediate character 
 military arms, that is to say, but not conform- 
 ing to all the existing Government regulations 
 were gradually and tentatively introduced till they 
 became one of the most conspicuous and interest- 
 ing features of the annual meetings. If they are 
 doomed to extinction, it is only because they have 
 done their work thoroughly, and have in con- 
 junction with other influences called into being a 
 Government rifle which treads close on the heels 
 of the match rifle. 
 
 Mr Rigby also furnishes a full justification for
 
 AN EPISODE 297 
 
 the match rifle, with its elaborate sights and 
 appliances, unfit for actual service in the field. 
 But it must always be borne in mind that the 
 long-range rifle, though it need not be itself a 
 military arm, must be such as to carry us onward 
 in the process of discovering and testing the best 
 military arms. The non-military conditions super- 
 imposed must be designed merely to get rid of 
 chance and to test more exactly the military 
 fitness of the weapon ; they must be such that 
 their removal will merely diminish the accuracy 
 and not destroy the efficiency of the weapon. 
 There was a time when the Association, and 
 indeed the friends of long-range shooting, gener- 
 ally forgot that wholesome truth, and when the 
 cause was very much endangered thereby. The 
 episode forms a somewhat interesting and in- 
 structive chapter in the history of rifle-shooting, 
 and we will venture, therefore, to tell it in detail. 
 In 1874 a team composed of six Irishmen 
 crossed the Atlantic to shoot a match at New 
 York against a team chosen from the whole of 
 the United States. The match was to be identical 
 in distance conditions with that for the Elcho 
 Shield. Little was then known in this country 
 as to the powers of the Americans at long ranges ;
 
 298 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 indeed, it was generally thought that accurate 
 marksmanship at short distances, standing, was 
 their strong point. The Irish were all armed 
 with Rigby muzzle-loading rifles ; their opponents 
 with American breech-loaders. The Irish team, 
 though a strong one, was not absolutely the best 
 that could be found ; they were shooting under 
 new and somewhat trying atmospheric conditions, 
 and they probably held their opponents rather 
 cheap. Consequently the defeat of the Irish by 
 the very narrow margin of three points could 
 hardly be looked on as conclusive either as to 
 the merits of the competitors or their respective 
 arms. By far the most significant feature of the 
 match was that the Americans owed their success 
 to the shooting of one man, Mr Fulton, who made 
 eight points more than any of the Irish, and whose 
 score had up to that time never been approached 
 in any of the Elcho Shield matches. He shot, as 
 we have said, with a breech-loader and also on his 
 back. 
 
 The lesson given by Mr Fulton's performance 
 was soon most emphatically enforced. In 1875 
 and in 1880 American teams visited Ireland, and 
 each time defeated a carefully chosen and repre- 
 sentative Irish team on its own ground ; and this,
 
 AMERICAN SUCCESSES 299 
 
 it should be observed, was at a time when Ireland 
 was more than holding its own in the International 
 competitions at Wimbledon. Nor was that all. 
 In 1876, the year of the Philadelphia Exhibition, 
 a competition was held at New York, in which 
 teams from Scotland, Ireland, and Canada all 
 competed and were beaten by the Americans, 
 while the result was subsequently confirmed by a 
 match in the same year between the Irish and an 
 American team. In the following year a team 
 from Great Britain and Ireland, carefully chosen 
 and well organised, tried its luck against the 
 Americans and fared no better. 
 
 This series of reverses taught British riflemen 
 two lessons. The Americans all shot in the back 
 position, which previous to 1874 had only been 
 adopted by a few competitors here and there. 
 The success of the Americans effectively gave 
 the death-blow to the old prone position except 
 with military rifles. English riflemen, too, had 
 been in a complacent and somewhat unintelligent 
 fashion plodding on with the muzzle-loader as 
 a target weapon, regardless of the fact that it 
 was already regarded as obsolete for military 
 purposes. The conviction that no cartridge could 
 be invented which would clean the barrel as
 
 300 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 effectively as the wad used with the muzzle-loader, 
 was so firmly rooted that no serious attempt was 
 being made to develop a breech-loader for long- 
 range practice. The success of the Americans 
 annihilated the muzzle-loader as it had annihilated 
 the prone position. But, unhappily, the breech- 
 loader as used by the Americans was every whit 
 as much a toy, void of all practical use except 
 for target purposes, as the muzzle-loader : for after 
 every shot an elaborate process of cleaning was 
 gone through before another shot was fired. In 
 fact, the reasons which led the Americans to 
 adopt the breech - loader had absolutely no con- 
 nection with the reasons which made it valuable 
 for military purposes. It was preferred as a 
 target weapon simply because it could be cleaned 
 between the shots, and thus the barrel could be 
 brought every time to a state of uniformity un- 
 attainable with the muzzle - loader. The writer 
 remembers hearing one of the most distinguished 
 long-range shots in America say that if he wanted 
 to make a big score he must use his breech-loader ; 
 if he wanted an enjoyable day on the range, 
 he took his muzzle-loader. An incident which 
 occurred in 1874 ought to have warned all parties 
 of the thoroughly unsatisfactory nature of the
 
 A LESSON 301 
 
 American system of long-range shooting. After 
 the match at New York above mentioned, a 
 second match was arranged, rather to test the 
 merits of the rifles than of the men. The 
 Americans were to shoot their breech-loaders, 
 this time without cleaning. The distance was a 
 thousand yards, and each competitor was to fire 
 twenty-five shots. The result was an utter and 
 hopeless breakdown on the part of the breech- 
 loader. The best American score was below the 
 worst Irish. One American competitor only hit 
 the target four times, and had to retire from the 
 contest with an incapacitated gun, leaving ten 
 shots still unfired. 
 
 It seems astonishing that British riflemen 
 should, after such a lesson, in their desire for 
 mere target accuracy, have adopted not only the 
 breech-loader, but the American method of using 
 it. Nevertheless, the legitimate aim of long-range 
 shooting, the development of a military rifle, was 
 set aside in favour of high scoring. By 1881 the 
 muzzle-loader had virtually disappeared from all 
 high - class competitions at Wimbledon, and an 
 assortment of rods and long - handled brushes, a 
 handful of patches and a can of water, were to 
 be seen among the appliances of every long-range
 
 302 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 shot. A pursuit carried on under these conditions 
 was not likely to enlist recruits, and we can 
 hardly doubt that, if this state of things had 
 been suffered to continue, long-range shooting 
 would have died out here, as it has, we believe, 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. The discom- 
 fort and cumbrousness of the system forced men, 
 however, to look for a remedy. It was found 
 that by careful treatment of the cartridge satis- 
 factory results could be got, and in 1883 clean- 
 ing between shots was definitely abolished at 
 Wimbledon. At the same time, one can hardly 
 say that the whole abuse was got rid of, since 
 the cumbrous and unmilitary practice of blow- 
 ing through the barrel to moisten the fouling 
 was still permitted and very generally practised. 
 Nevertheless, since the abolition of cleaning one 
 may fairly say that the long-range competitions 
 of the National Rifle Association, and those 
 throughout the country which are indirectly 
 dependent upon it, have been doing their legiti- 
 mate work in testing systems of rifling and 
 ammunition for military purposes. Nor is there 
 any doubt that much experimental work of the 
 greatest value has been done by amateurs whose 
 training as riflemen has been mainly gained at
 
 THE LEE-METFORD 303 
 
 Wimbledon and Bisley, and whose interest in 
 the subject has been created and kept alive by 
 the meetings of the Association. 
 
 By the introduction of the Lee-Metford as 
 the accepted Government arm the whole situation 
 has been greatly changed. There is no longer 
 any wide gulf between the match rifle and the 
 regulation arm. Competitions for long-range rifles 
 other than those of Government pattern, yet con- 
 forming to military requirements, seem to have 
 lost their meaning. In the days of the Martini 
 such competitions were the only means whereby 
 the skill of the marksman using a purely military 
 weapon could be tested at long distances ; now 
 the Lee - Metford is amply sufficient for that 
 purpose. If the object be to test systems of 
 breech action, or a calibre or cartridge other than 
 those of the Lee-Metford, that can be perfectly 
 well done by competitions where aperture-sights 
 are allowed. That has not been the case hitherto. 
 So long as a maximum bore of *450 was allowed 
 in the match rifle, as has been hitherto the case, 
 any of the foreign military rifles, such as the 
 Mannlicher or Mauser, carrying a light bullet, 
 were in strong or variable winds so severely 
 handicapped as to be practically out of the
 
 304 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 competition. The National Rifle Association has, 
 however, now definitely accepted the reduction 
 of bore as final ; and though the precise condi- 
 tions which will be required in 1897 are not yet 
 declared, it may safely be assumed that no bore 
 exceeding '315 will be permitted. In accepting 
 this bore, both the military authorities and those 
 of the National Rifle Association are adopting 
 the principle clearly and forcibly set forth by 
 Captain Mayne, that mere target accuracy is not 
 the only thing to be sought in a military rifle, 
 and that, even apart from such considerations as 
 the weight of the arm and the ammunition, the 
 greater susceptibility of the bullet to lateral winds 
 is not too heavy a price to pay for a flatter 
 trajectory : for, as any one will see on a moment's 
 reflection, the flatter trajectory lessens the effect 
 of an error in judging the distance of the object 
 fired at ; and it is not less obvious that as in war 
 the object fired at is as a rule extended laterally, 
 lateral accuracy as compared with vertical is a 
 comparatively unimportant matter. 
 
 If any one should be tempted to think that 
 because the Lee-Metford reaches the maximum 
 of accuracy needed for military purposes, there- 
 fore long-range shooting with aperture-sights has
 
 THE BULLET 305 
 
 served its practical purpose and become a mere 
 ornamental accomplishment, it is not, we think, 
 difficult to disabuse him. The question of rifle 
 may in its main outlines be settled ; that of 
 cartridge is assuredly very far from a final solu- 
 tion. At present the Lee - Metford cartridge 
 labours under two defects the deficient stopping 
 power of the bullet and the corrosive effect of 
 the explosive, cordite. Mr Fremantle has a good 
 deal to say on the first of these points. He quotes 
 several instances where the Lee- Metford bullet has 
 passed right through a man and done but little 
 injury. In the Chitral campaign a native is said 
 to have received six wounds, and two or three 
 days later to have walked nine miles into hospital 
 complaining of a stiff neck ! And, as Mr Fremantle 
 points out, this is of peculiar importance to the 
 British soldier, much of whose fighting has to be 
 done against savages, since it is " a well-recognised 
 fact that it requires a much more severe wound 
 to stop the rush of a savage enemy than that of 
 a well-cared-for European soldier." 
 
 Now, target experiments such, at least, as 
 those to which the Bisley competitions lend them- 
 selves cannot measure the stopping power of the 
 
 bullet ; indeed, this is just one of the points where 
 
 u
 
 306 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 the criterion of accuracy as tested at the target is 
 inadequate ; but target practice can show whether 
 changes made for the sake of increased stopping 
 power have or have not impaired accuracy. 
 
 Again, the deleterious influence of cordite in 
 the barrel may have been exaggerated, and it 
 may be possible by prompt and careful cleaning 
 to neutralise it ; but the soldier being what he 
 is, it is very certain that the influence will be 
 felt, and whoever can invent an explosive free 
 from the drawbacks of cordite will be doing an 
 incalculable service, for the use of an explo- 
 sive which destroys the barrel is manifestly not 
 merely extravagant in time of peace, but actually 
 dangerous in war. And here again, in the long- 
 range competitions at Bisley, Government can 
 have this work of experiment done to their hand 
 without cost. 
 
 We have dwelt so fully on one side of the 
 question of rifle-shooting that we can only con- 
 sider other aspects of it somewhat cursorily. Mr 
 Rigby, in the paper from which we have already 
 quoted, speaks of " encouraging Volunteers to 
 attain proficiency with their regimental rifles," as 
 one of the objects to be sought. A study of 
 the programme of one of the National Rifle
 
 VARIOUS COMPETITIONS 307 
 
 Association meetings will show how that body 
 has accepted this object as its primary end. No 
 doubt one hears from time to time complaints 
 that even in the so-called strictly military depart- 
 ment of the meeting too much stress is laid on 
 accuracy, often obtained by a sacrifice of the 
 conditions which would have to be observed in 
 real warfare. 
 
 To that criticism there are, we think, two 
 answers to be made. In the first place a careful 
 study of the programme will show that in the 
 last year, which was not marked by any special 
 innovation in this way, over five hundred pounds, 
 to say nothing of challenge cups, was given to be 
 competed for with regulation rifles, in matches 
 where mere accuracy was not the sole, often not 
 the chief object, but where it had to be combined 
 with rapidity, simultaneity of fire, power of judg- 
 ing distances and aiming at moving objects, or 
 with running, riding, or cycling. It is true that 
 the public does not hear much of such competitions 
 as compared with the Queen's or Prince of Wales's 
 Prizes, and why? Largely because in most of 
 these competitions excellence is only collective 
 and not individual. Let the display of skill be 
 in what department one may choose, cricket or
 
 308 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 athletics, conspicuous individual excellence is what 
 the imagination of the public fastens upon. The 
 precise proportion in which the too scanty prize 
 funds of the Association should be allotted is of 
 course a reasonable matter for discussion. All 
 that we would point out is that individual shoot- 
 ing, though the most prominent feature of the 
 Bisley meetings, is far from monopolising the 
 prize list. 
 
 There is another side to the matter. The 
 winner of the Queen's Prize is probably for 
 practical military purposes very little more valu- 
 able than the man who can just get his marks- 
 man's badge. But the capacity of the individual 
 winner is a very incomplete measure of the value 
 of such a competition. If a very estimable body 
 of men will forgive so degrading a comparison, 
 a Queen's winner is in the shooting world what 
 a Smithfield prize ox is in the farming world. 
 The prize beast is probably not what the epicure 
 would choose to dine off, certainly not what the 
 farmer would choose for profit. But he serves to 
 show what can be done, and he fixes a standard 
 to try for. So the existence of a great competition 
 like the Queen's, with its long string of prizes 
 culminating in what is virtually the championship
 
 NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION 309 
 
 of the year, stimulates shooting in every corps 
 which comes under its influence, and affects in- 
 directly many who never take part in it. It is 
 the old story of the husbandman and the pot 
 of gold. In reaching for a success which is only 
 within reach of the few, the many attain that 
 amount of mastery over their rifle which is a 
 needful condition of efficient soldiership. No 
 doubt that does not meet the argument often 
 urged, that the Volunteer force is divided into 
 a little aristocracy of skilled shots and a great 
 mass who can hardly shoot at all. That can only 
 be remedied by extended action operating in 
 different localities, and wholly beyond the resources 
 of the National Rifle Association. What that 
 body may, we think, claim for itself in the matter 
 is, that it does not a little to remedy that state 
 of things. 
 
 And this brings us to the third and last requi- 
 site laid down by Mr Rigby in his paper, "the 
 encouragement of rifle - shooting as a healthy, 
 manly, and scientific pastime." (The Italics are 
 Mr Rigby 's.) In that, it seems to us, lies the 
 answer to a good deal of vague talk that one 
 hears as to the policy of the National Rifle 
 Association. There are those who denounce its
 
 310 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 meetings as "picnics," and who clamour for a 
 larger amount of military administration in the 
 conduct of them. We should remind such critics, 
 in the first place, that the competitors at Bisley 
 consist largely of Volunteers who are already 
 freely giving up a good deal of time to the 
 public service. To many of them the Bisley meet- 
 ing is their one annual holiday ; it is to them 
 what six weeks in Scotland or among the Alps 
 are to their more favoured neighbours, and they 
 have surely a right to ask that nothing should 
 be grudged which makes their holiday brighter 
 and more attractive, provided it no way interferes 
 with the main purpose of the meeting, the display 
 of the highest order of skill with the rifle. As 
 for the increase of discipline, we would remind 
 our readers that a section, and a not unimportant 
 section, not only of the competitors, but even 
 of those who control it, are civilians (using the 
 word not in its ordinary sense, but as excluding 
 Volunteers), while even the Volunteers there are 
 merely brought together for the occasion and not 
 bound together by any organic tie. How is a 
 body so composed to be made subject to any- 
 thing that can be called discipline, to parades, 
 practice in tent-pitching, strict mess regulations,
 
 BISLEY 311 
 
 or any of the incidents which properly enough 
 belong to the conduct of a regimental camp ? 
 We cannot help thinking that the mere term 
 " camp " somehow misleads persons as suggest- 
 ing something military. They forget that the 
 camp in this case simply means the cheapest and 
 most convenient way, indeed the only way, of 
 housing a large body of competitors and those 
 who have to manage the competitions, close to 
 the range. Under such circumstances the utmost 
 that the Association can do is to permit, within 
 its own bounds, the formation of regimental camps, 
 which can practise such amount of drill as seems 
 good to their respective members. If any one 
 chooses to say that a large national Volunteer 
 Camp for mixed purposes of drill and shooting 
 would be better than the present mixed camp 
 of Volunteers and civilians for shooting solely, one 
 can only answer as Mr Bingley answered his sister 
 when she suggested that a ball "would be much 
 more rational if conversation instead of dancing 
 were made the order of the day " : " Much more 
 rational, I daresay, but not near so much like a 
 ball." It is at least very certain that such a meet- 
 ing would not be, what the Association meetings 
 are compelled to be, practically self-supporting.
 
 312 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 This view, of course, does not ignore the fact 
 that all the shooting requires to be conducted 
 under strict regulations, and therefore with strict 
 discipline, that much of it is military, and that 
 to such shooting strict military discipline is appli- 
 cable. Apart from that, it seems to us that all 
 which the Association can reasonably be asked 
 to do is, to see that the Volunteers do not learn 
 any unmilitary habits, and that such general 
 discipline is enforced as is needful for the main 
 object in hand, good shooting. As to the first 
 point, no one who remembers the slovenly 
 costumes, half-uniform, half-mufti, which were to 
 be too commonly seen at Wimbledon some fifteen 
 years ago, and notes their present disappearance, 
 can doubt the improvement which has been 
 wrought. On the latter point it is, we think, 
 not too much to say that all the Association has 
 to do is to help the many to protect themselves 
 against the few. The competitors are not children. 
 Though the Volunteer often comes to Bisley, as 
 we have said, for a holiday, yet he also comes 
 there with a very definite and serious purpose, 
 and not once in five hundred times is he such a 
 Hippoclides as, after months of practice, to dance 
 away his chance in ill-timed revelry.
 
 THE UNIVERSITIES 313 
 
 No one who has the interest of the Volunteer 
 movement at heart can but regret that neither 
 the National Rifle Association nor any other 
 influence has succeeded in giving rifle - shooting 
 a higher place among the recognised athletic 
 pursuits of the country. Our Universities have 
 never been the homes of rifle-shooting that they 
 might be expected to be. Not, indeed, that they 
 have been wanting in individually distinguished 
 shots. In 1871, the Queen's Prize fell to the 
 lot of a Cambridge undergraduate, Mr Humphry. 
 Only as late as 1895, an Oxford freshman, Mr 
 Ranken, shooting for Scotland, made the highest 
 score in the International match ; and in previous 
 years, Oxonians, shooting for England and Ireland 
 respectively, have achieved the same success. Yet 
 it cannot be said that the Inter- University matches 
 have ever excited anything like the same interest 
 which attaches to other contests. 
 
 Rifle-shooting, no doubt, suffers in popularity 
 from its total lack of what one may call spectacular 
 interest. Let us suppose a man looking on at 
 the Elcho Shield match. What does he see? A 
 knot of people are sitting together. One looks 
 at the target through a telescope. Another is 
 closely watching the motion of the flags through
 
 314 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 a binocular. A third is poring over a register of 
 figures in a fashion which suggests that he is en- 
 deavouring to find Easter by means of the Sunday 
 letter ; as a matter of fact, he is considering the force 
 of the wind as shown by the last half-dozen shots. 
 After a minute or so of whispered consultation, a 
 report is heard and a puff of smoke seen some- 
 where among the feet of the group which we have 
 described, and the spectator then learns that the 
 real performer, he whose name will appear in the 
 morrow's paper with the whole glory of success 
 or disgrace of failure attached to it, is the one 
 whose prostrate figure surrounded by counsellors 
 has hitherto escaped his notice. No doubt in a 
 great competition, such as the Queen's Prize or 
 the Elcho Shield, when the end is near and the 
 struggle runs close, excitement becomes intense 
 and contagious. But that is because 
 
 " That needs must be a mighty minute 
 When a crowd has but one soul within it." 
 
 The interest is that of a contested election rather 
 than of an athletic contest. There is no outward 
 and visible mark of individual skill. Except by 
 the marking on the target there is nothing to tell 
 the looker-on whether he is watching the efforts
 
 EXPENSE 315 
 
 of a Queen's Prize winner or a man who has 
 struggled out of the second class. 
 
 Another drawback to the popularity of rifle- 
 shooting has been that by far the most attractive 
 form of it, long-range shooting, has been hitherto 
 attended with considerable initial expense. A 
 good long-range rifle with its appurtenances costs 
 at least twenty-five pounds, and a young man 
 thinks twice before he invests that sum in a 
 pursuit in which his interest and his capacity 
 are as yet virtually untried. The substitution of 
 the Lee-Metford for the Martini may do not a 
 little to obviate this. It will put an arm of 
 precision adapted to long ranges in the hands of 
 every one who shoots at all. What will be its 
 effect in the competitions at present open to 
 match rifles that is to say, to rifles fitted with 
 aperture-sights and movable wind-gauges it is not 
 very easy to foresee. On the one hand, the cost 
 of fitting a Lee-Metford with these appliances will 
 be but small. On the other hand, the effective- 
 ness of the Lee-Metford, even with its ordinary 
 military sights, will perhaps diminish the desire 
 for a more exact weapon. 
 
 Unhappily, there is a serious set - off to the 
 advantage which rifle - shooting will derive from
 
 316 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 the new service arm. As is well known, the 
 extra distance travelled by the Lee - Metford 
 bullet, albeit not more than three hundred yards, 
 has already led to the condemnation of many 
 ranges as unsafe. It is possible that a partial 
 remedy may be found in the adoption of a bullet 
 with more "stopping power" than that now in 
 use: for the same quality which will make it 
 more effective, its tendency to become deformed or 
 to break up on striking an object, will obviously 
 lessen the tendency to ricochet. And it is to be 
 observed that it is really only from ricochets that 
 danger is to be expected. Misses over the target 
 can be intercepted by a sufficiently high butt : the 
 chance of a rifle being let off pointed high in the 
 air is simply one of a number of contingencies, all 
 of which imply either some fault in the construc- 
 tion of the rifle or gross carelessness on the part 
 of the shooter. No range can guard against such 
 accidents : the superiority of a range which guards 
 against 1 per cent, of them as against one which 
 makes no provision is not worth considering. 
 
 One measure that has been suggested is the 
 use of a reduced charge. We will not say that 
 the remedy is worse than the disease, but we 
 certainly do say that it would be but a feeble
 
 RANGES 317 
 
 palliative for a thoroughly unsatisfactory state of 
 affairs. It is scarcely possible to overrate the 
 evils which might result from the existence of 
 two sets of ammunition of widely different force, 
 "practice "ammunition and "service" ammunition. 
 Imagine a battalion going into action without a 
 single man knowing the sighting of his rifle with 
 the full charge. Imagine the panic if a rumour 
 got about that two or three regiments had by 
 mischance had the "practice" ammunition served 
 out to them. Let it be supposed that by a large 
 expenditure of Government money safe ranges are 
 found for the regular forces. What would be the 
 fate of the great Volunteer competitions at Bisley 
 when one- half of the force were trained on safe 
 ranges with " service " ammunition, while the other 
 half had only been allowed "practice" ammuni- 
 tion? And be it remembered that anything 
 which lowers the standard of Volunteer shooting 
 at Bisley will in all likelihood carry with it a 
 lowering of the standard of shooting throughout 
 the whole of our forces. Those members of the 
 regular service who have formed the Army Eight 
 Club, and have thereby done much to raise the 
 standard of military shooting, would, we are sure, 
 be the first to acknowledge the value of the
 
 318 MODERN RIFLE-SHOOTING 
 
 lessons learnt at Wimbledon and Bisley, and the 
 stimulus which the shooting there has given to 
 their efforts. The annual match between the 
 different branches of the service has acted in 
 the same way. 
 
 If ranges cannot be found, and the reduced 
 charge must be employed as a means of utilising 
 those already in existence, it is at least not too 
 much to ask that it should be only used by tyros 
 from whom wild shots may be expected. Allow 
 at least every man who has shot into the first 
 class to use the full charge ; then at the worst 
 there would be in every corps a certain number 
 of men who know the sighting for the full charge. 
 
 Want of ranges and want of officers seem to 
 be the two difficulties under which Volunteer 
 corps, especially in country districts, now labour. 
 The leisured and landed classes can do some- 
 thing to supply both wants, and there are few 
 services by which they can more certainly and 
 more effectively secure the gratitude of their 
 countrymen.
 
 HARRIERS l 
 
 IT is a well-known fact in history and in human 
 nature, that the nearer to one another two forms 
 of religion come, the greater is the mutual intoler- 
 ance. This probably explains the severe criticism 
 which hare-hunting has at times received from the 
 worshippers at the chief rival shrines of Diana. " I 
 understand that hare-hunting is a highly scientific 
 sport," was the criticism of one of the most enthusi- 
 astic and competent Masters of Foxhounds that 
 Yorkshire ever produced. " When I see a chap 
 on the road with a strong pair of shoes and a good 
 cudgel, 1 say, ' There is a man well mounted for 
 the 'arriers,' " was one of the dicta of Mr Jorrocks 
 
 1 "John Andrew Doyle died August 3rd, 1907. Few of the readers 
 of this article will be able to realise that, at the time of its being written, 
 its author was suffering from the illness which was to prove fatal. In 
 his last letter to me he said that he hoped to be able to finish it How 
 well he accomplished the task and with what breeziness of expression 
 and scholarly style all can see. It is indeed sad to think that the world 
 of Letters has lost so great a scholar, the world of Sport so keen and 
 able an exponent, and all who knew him so true a friend." GENERAL 
 EDITOR of The Kennel Encyclopaedia. 
 
 819
 
 320 HARRIERS 
 
 in the immortal after-dinner speech. Let it be 
 noticed, however, in passing, that the creator 
 of Jorrocks was here speaking dramatically and 
 impersonally. The run with the " Goose and 
 Dumpling Harriers," in one of Surtees's less known 
 works, Hawbuck Grange, shows how admirably 
 he understood the real merits and characteristics 
 of hare-hunting. All, however, that the hare- 
 hunter need claim is that the two sports are in 
 their essence incomparable. The keenest M.H. 
 who ever watched his hounds puzzling through 
 doubles and with supreme patience and self- 
 control working out a slow line on a bad scenting 
 day, would never claim for his sport that it is 
 what Mr Bromley Davenport, in the best hunt- 
 ing poem ever written, calls " the sublimest of 
 ecstasies under the sun." As well compare a 
 day in the stubbles and roots with two steady 
 pointers to the excitement of lowering rocketer 
 after rocketer, or the patient filling of a basket 
 with trout under a pound in a Welsh stream to 
 the semi-delirious joy of a battle with a thirty- 
 pound salmon. 
 
 One thing, however, the hare-hunter may claim. 
 His is at least the older sport, and compared with 
 it fox-hunting is a mere parvenu. Many will
 
 HARE AND FOX 321 
 
 remember the stock passage in St John's speech 
 impeaching Strafford and defending some possible 
 irregularity in proceedings. The worthier beasts 
 of chase, deer and hare, are the objects of legiti- 
 mate sport, the fox is vermin to be killed as best 
 he may. As Scott paraphrases it 
 
 " Who cares how or when 
 The prowling fox is trapped or slain ? " 
 
 In other words, in the seventeenth century hare- 
 hunting was a recognised branch of scientific 
 " venery," while fox-hunting had not yet emerged 
 from what one may call the Dandie Dinmont 
 stage. No doubt the seventeenth century was 
 bringing in a change. When the Duke of 
 Buckingham Dryden's Zimri was brought home 
 to die, "in the worst inn's worst room," he owed 
 his death either to an accident in the hunting 
 field or to a chill caught in digging out. It was 
 a fox-hunt which gave Frank Osbaldiston, some 
 twenty years later, his first view of Diana Vernon. 
 Yet it is significant that in Blome's " Complete 
 Gentleman's Recreation," printed in 1691, four 
 and a half pages are devoted to the details of 
 hare-hunting, one and a half to the fox. 
 
 In Shakespeare we have many well - known 
 
 x
 
 322 HARRIERS 
 
 references to the chase of the stag and the hare 
 none explicitly to that of the fox. In that 
 delightful and life-like scene in the prelude to the 
 Taming of the Shrew where the Master and the 
 huntsman, as they are jogging home, discuss and 
 wrangle over the work of the hounds, there is 
 nothing to show whether stag or hare has been 
 the quarry. But the explicit and classical hare- 
 hunting passage is that of "poore Wat upon a 
 hill" in the Venus and Adonis. The man who 
 wrote that had watched more than one run with 
 thoughtful observation. To the fox there is one 
 significant reference which has probably puzzled 
 not a few readers. It certainly puzzled the 
 present writer till he met with the explanation 
 given by Judge Madden in that most charming 
 and illuminating book, " The Diary of Master 
 William Silence." When the conspirators against 
 Malvolio are rejoicing over the perversity with 
 which he clings to the belief of Olivia's passion 
 for him, Sir Toby exclaims " Sowter will cry 
 on't though it be as rank as a fox ! " One's first 
 inclination is to say, surely the ranker the scent, 
 the easier to hold the line. But it is clear that 
 "it" refers not to the object of pursuit but to 
 that which may possibly foil the line. He will
 
 itick to the line though a fox comes across it. 
 Clearly the fox presents himself to Sir Toby 
 not as a possible quarry, but only as a cause of 
 interruption. 
 
 We pass over a century and we find another 
 locus classicus, as one may call it, dealing with 
 hare-hunting. When "the quiet gentleman" of 
 the Spectator went down to pay Sir Roger a 
 visit in the country, his remarks on hare-hunting 
 show no lack of observation or interest. He at 
 once notices the discernment with which the pack 
 reckon up the value of each individual hound 
 and the amount of attention and of deference 
 which they pay to each individual cry. 
 
 " If they were at fault and an old hound of 
 reputation opened but once, he was immediately 
 followed by the whole cry, while a raw dog or a 
 noted liar might have yelped his heart out with- 
 out being taken notice of." 
 
 It is true that one rather wonders when one 
 reads that Sir Roger declined the present of a 
 good-looking hound because his voice was a bass, 
 and he wanted a counter tenor. Peterborough 
 was not yet, but there must have been already 
 those who protested against a tendency to sacrifice 
 hunting power to extraneous considerations.
 
 324 HARRIERS 
 
 Again, does not Sir Roger err on the side of 
 tender-heartedness when he occasionally rescues 
 a live hare, just as hounds are about to run 
 into her ? Loveable though Sir Roger is, I think 
 we there have the sportsman seen through the 
 spectacles of the cultured scholar. Let us hope 
 that the hounds had had plenty of blood already. 
 Sir Roger, too, was what his own generation 
 caUed a humorist, and to such much must be 
 forgiven. 
 
 In one respect the silent gentleman of the 
 Spectator showed better judgment than the yokels 
 who made up the field ; acting up to his name, 
 when he viewed a hare, he 
 
 " marked the way she took, which I endeavoured 
 to make the company sensible of by extending 
 my arm, but to no purpose till Sir Roger, who 
 knows that none of my extraordinary motions 
 are insignificant, rode up to me and asked me 
 ' If puss was gone that way ? ' Upon my answer- 
 ing * yes,' he immediately called in the dogs, and 
 put them upon the scent. As they were going 
 off I heard one of the country fellows muttering 
 to his companion 'that 'twas a wonder they had 
 not lost all their sport for want of the silent 
 gentleman crying " Stole away ! "
 
 THE OLDEST PACK 325 
 
 Would that we had more silent gentlemen 
 out. "Dogs" no doubt betrays the Cockney, 
 but I think that Eustace Budgell (for to him is 
 the paper ascribed) had the root of the matter 
 in him, and if he did forge a will, as is said, let 
 us grant him benefit of venery. 
 
 As the eighteenth century advances fox-hunting 
 steadily gains ground on the rival sport. It would 
 hardly be an exaggeration to say that by 1800 
 " hunting " without qualification would have meant 
 fox - hunting. By the days of " Nimrod," fox- 
 hunting had become, as one may say, cosmo- 
 politanised under the influence of rival Masters, 
 as Hugo Meynell, Ralph Lanetta, and Lord 
 Darlington. The great packs exchanged blood 
 and experience. No such process was at work 
 on the harrier. Here and there were to be 
 found local types the Devonshire blue mottles, 
 with a cry such as that which gladdened the 
 heart of Hippolyta, and with legs and feet which 
 to a modern critic would suggest an alliance with 
 the dachshund ; or the Holcombe, said to be 
 the oldest pack with a continued existence, huge 
 hounds, yet so heavily built as to be hunted on 
 foot. It would be, by the way, most interesting 
 if some one could give the complete records of
 
 326 HARRIERS 
 
 the lines on which these hounds have been bred, 
 and of the methods by which fresh blood has 
 been introduced without destroying the original 
 type. But we may be sure that the majority of 
 packs were bred on no very well-defined system. 
 Foxhound blood was used without scruple, and 
 in many cases foxes were hunted. 
 
 At last, by the energy of certain enthusiasts, 
 the Masters of Harriers' Association was created, 
 and order evolved out of chaos. Conspicuous 
 among those who led this reform were Mr Barclay, 
 who owned a private pack in Epping Forest, and 
 Mr Rickards, Master of the Aldenham, and their 
 work has been carried on by such Masters as 
 Mr Gibbon, of the Boddington, Mr Kemp, of the 
 Foxbush, and others. With a practical common 
 sense and a freedom from pedantry which was, 
 I venture to think, most judicious, and has been 
 most fortunate in its results, the Association did 
 not attempt at the outset to close its stud against 
 all alien blood. A hound might be admitted to 
 the Harrier Stud Book provided it could show pure 
 harrier blood in three out of his four parents. 
 Purists, who value words more than things, might 
 protest. But I venture to think that few of 
 those who have had practical experience of harrier
 
 PURE-BRED 327 
 
 breeding will deny that there are certain essential 
 points of make and shape which could never be 
 obtained without a dash of foxhound blood, and 
 that such disadvantages as that brings with it 
 may be controlled and finally got rid of by care. 
 Can any one doubt that in the comparative chaos 
 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there 
 must have been a constant mixture and exchange 
 of harrier and foxhound blood ? 
 
 If I deny the existence of a pure-bred harrier, 
 I only deny it as I would deny the existence of 
 a "pure" type of any domestic animal, if by 
 " pure " we mean one who owes nothing to any 
 alien blood. Besides, is there not a very real 
 danger that if we wholly taboo the foxhound 
 cross, we offer a very great temptation to Masters 
 of harriers to smuggle it in surreptitiously ? The 
 real value of stud books and the like is not so 
 much to hall-mark certain animals and give them 
 a certificate of "purity," often a very vague and 
 deceptive term, as to enable breeders at once to 
 understand what is the material with which they 
 are working. 
 
 This naturally brings me to a crucial point 
 in my subject. What is the essential difference 
 between foxhound and harrier? No one will,
 
 328 HARRIERS 
 
 I think, deny that size counts for a good deal. 
 It must never be forgotten that the hare and the 
 harrier do not exist to give us an exciting gallop, 
 but to show hound work. We want something 
 a little faster and brisker than beagle work. 
 Indeed, there are countries where the strength 
 of the hares and the difficulties of natural 
 obstacles would make the killing of a hare with 
 beagles on a bad scenting day impossible. Nor 
 can it, I venture to think, be truly said foxhound 
 blood in moderation in any way unfits a hound 
 for hare - hunting. The writer had two hounds, 
 brother and sister. Their dam was by a dwarf 
 foxhound, though neither she nor they showed 
 it in appearance. The dog hound always enjoyed 
 a turn at a fox. His sister would turn con- 
 temptuously back from the line of a fox. In this 
 matter I never knew her mislead us. 
 
 While I am so near it I may perhaps say a 
 word on that vexed question should harriers 
 ever be allowed to hunt fox ? Now, I have not 
 the slightest doubt that hunting foxes frequently 
 and promiscuously does impair the faculty of 
 hare - hunting. It makes hounds impatient and 
 flashy. Instead of having before their mind the 
 constant possibility of the line coming round, they
 
 A TURN AT FOXES 329 
 
 instinctively drive forward. Consider the differ- 
 ence of the scent! Would any man be fit to 
 taste a delicate claret whose palate had been 
 saturated with whisky? But I think that when 
 hare-hunting is over, there can be no objection to 
 having a turn at foxes, if all the local conditions 
 are favourable. In this way the hounds will have 
 had plenty of time to forget any bad lesson which 
 they may have learned. When I say "the con- 
 ditions should be favourable," I mean first and 
 foremost that there should be no semblance of 
 interference with foxhounds who have in every 
 way the first claim in the country. But it not 
 infrequently happens that there may be some 
 wild and unenclosed country where foxhounds 
 cannot get with either pleasure or profit, yet 
 where it will be greatly for the benefit of the 
 country to give the foxes a good routing out. 
 The writer does not anticipate very much pleasure 
 from such hunting. It is impossible to stop 
 earths, it is probably too fast for the foot man, 
 too rough for riding. But it probably earns the 
 gratitude of the farmers, and to be killed even 
 by harriers is a nobler death for the august 
 animal than to be shot or trapped. 
 
 It is not inappropriate that a writer on hare-
 
 330 HARRIERS 
 
 hunting should pursue his course through a good 
 many turns and doubles ; so perhaps it may be 
 fitting that I should now come back to the 
 question of the essential differences between the 
 foxhound and the harrier not merely in work, 
 but in make and shape. It is, in my opinion, 
 easier to recognise than to describe. The harrier 
 should, I venture to think, be less tightly and 
 solidly built. He should be more flewed and 
 looser in skin. Above all, he does not need I 
 could put it more strongly and say he is better 
 without those ideally straight legs which I 
 venture to think an exaggerated fashion pre- 
 scribes for the foxhound. I know this will seem 
 to some blasphemy. But first of all, let it be 
 remembered that a harrier needs to turn and to 
 check himself when almost at full speed ten times 
 for once that a foxhound has. Now a perfectly 
 true formation of shoulder and elbow is best of 
 all. But if shoulders are upright and a trifle 
 heavy, a compensation is sometimes to be found 
 in a certain looseness of elbow. That at least 
 is far better than the deceptive appearance of 
 straightness given by clean - looking shoulders 
 pinned in at the elbow. Again, owing to the 
 necessity for "coming round" without strain or
 
 TWO MAXIMS 331 
 
 effort, and also the fact that so much of his work 
 has to be done on sloping ground, well - laid 
 shoulders are even more essential in the harrier 
 than the foxhound. And I think no one can 
 doubt that though the fashionable foxhound type 
 of leg with bone down to the toes may not be 
 inconsistent with good slope of shoulder, yet the 
 two do not naturally go together. It is much 
 to expect from Nature that she should give us a 
 shoulder well sloped from wither to elbow and 
 then continue the limb plumb down from elbow 
 to toe. So, too, a certain slope of pasterns may 
 be dispensed with in the foxhound. In the 
 harrier it is absolutely indispensable. 
 
 In conclusion, just one word about the moral 
 and mental qualities which we should aim at 
 cultivating, and, therefore, the method on which 
 harriers should be hunted. Two leading maxims 
 to my mind stand out. Never excite them. 
 Make them independent. There is no excuse 
 for hurry with harriers. The hare will always 
 wait for them. That is what the fox-hunting 
 man does not know or forgets. I remember the 
 expostulations of one when the huntsman of a 
 pack of harriers announced his intention of trying 
 back to a view " Why, that was twenty minutes
 
 332 HARRIERS 
 
 ago." Again, there is seldom such a field of horse- 
 men as to make it necessary to hurry hounds 
 from under the feet of the horses. Moreover, in 
 proportion as a harrier "gets his blood up," his 
 capacity for proper work is surpassed. The mere 
 sight of his huntsman racing, whether on horse or 
 foot, as a preliminary to a cast, unsettles him. 
 
 Then, as the whole pleasure of hare-hunting is 
 in watching hounds work, cultivate the indepen- 
 dence of your hounds. As an excellent amateur 
 huntsman once said to me, " If you must cast, 
 lead the hounds into the belief that they are 
 doing it themselves." 
 
 Lastly, a word on the subject of riot, in its 
 most serious and perilous form sheep-hunting. 
 Here and there you may get an incorrigible ; 
 but if you have any serious trouble, it means 
 an incompetent huntsman or whip, or both. 
 Lastly, let your whip remember when the real 
 danger is likely to arise. On a bad scenting day, 
 when hares are scarce or lying very close, a little 
 mountain sheep jumping out of the fern with his 
 mysterious whistle is a terrible temptation. 
 
 Lastly, never forget that the good-will of the 
 farmer is even more essential to the M.H. than 
 to the M.F.H., and as a hare runs rings and the
 
 THE MASTER 333 
 
 field will probably be most of them on foot, the 
 risk of damage to fences is greater. Wherefore, 
 let the Master keep his field well in hand, and 
 let every hare saved be carefully allotted to the 
 farmer best entitled to it. If your hounds are 
 keen they may be trusted to secure blood enough 
 to keep them up to the mark. 
 
 THE END.
 
 Printed at 
 
 The Edinburgh Press, 
 9 & 1 1 Young Street.
 
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