as dispassionate as Gardiner, but are more definitely committed to particular points of views, while democratic fervour pervades the fascinating pages of J. R. Green, and an intellectual secularism, which is almost religious in its intensity and idealism, inspired the genius of Maitland.
The latest controversy about history is whether it is a science or an art. It is, of course, both, simply because there must be science in every art and art in every science. The antithesis is largely false; science lays stress on analysis, art on synthesis. The historian must apply scientific methods to his materials and artistic methods to his results; he must test his documents and then turn them into literature. The relative importance of the two methods is a matter of dispute. There are some who still maintain that history is merely an art, that the best history is the story that is best told, and that what is said is less important than the way in which it is said. This school generally ignores records. Others attach little importance to the form in which truth is presented; they are concerned mainly with the principles and methods of scientific criticism, and specialize in palaeography, diplomatic and sources. The works of this school are little read, but in time its results penetrate the teaching in schools and universities, and then the pages of literary historians; it is represented in England by a fairly good organization, the Royal Historical Society (with which the Camden Society has been amalgamated), and by an excellent periodical, The English Historical Review (founded in 1884), while some sort of propaganda is attempted by the Historical Association (started in 1906). Its standards have also been upheld with varying success in great co-operative undertakings, such as the Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge Modern History, and Messrs Longmans’ Political History of England.
These 19th-century products require some sort of classification for purposes of reference, and the chronological is the most convenient. Lingard’s, J. R. Green’s and Messrs Longmans’ histories are the only notable attempts to tell the history of England as a whole, though Stubbs’s Constitutional History (3 vols.) covers the middle ages and embodies a political survey as well (for corrections and modifications see Petit-Dutaillis, Supplementary Studies, 1908), while Hallam’s Constitutional History (3 vols.) extends from 1485 to 1760 and Erskine May’s (3 vols.) from 1760 to 1860. Sir James Ramsay’s six volumes also cover the greater part of medieval English history. There is no work on a larger scale than Lappenberg and Kemble, dealing with England before the Norman Conquest, though J. R. Green’s Making of England and Conquest of England deal with certain portions in some detail, and Freeman gives a preliminary survey in his Norman Conquest (6 vols.). For the succeeding period see Freeman’s William Rufus, J. H. Round’s Feudal England and Geoffrey de Mandeville, and Miss Norgate’s England under the Angevins and John Lackland. From 1216 we have nothing but Ramsay, Stubbs, Longmans’ Political History and monographs (some of them good), until we come to Wylie’s Henry IV. (4 vols.); and again from 1413 the same is true (Gairdner’s Lollardy and the Reformation being the most elaborate monograph) until we come to Brewer’s Reign of Henry VIII. (2 vols.; to 1530 only), Froude’s History (12 vols., 1529–1588) and R. W. Dixon’s Church History (6 vols., 1529–1570). From 1603 to 1656 we have Gardiner’s History (England, 10 vols.; Civil War, 4 vols.; Commonwealth and Protectorate, 3 vols.), and to 1714 Ranke’s History of England (6 vols.; see also Firth’s Cromwell and Cromwell’s Army, and various editions of texts and monographs). For Charles II. there is no good history; then come Macaulay, and Stanhope and Wyon’s Queen Anne, and for the 18th century Stanhope and Lecky (England, 7 vols.; Ireland, 5 vols.). From 1793 to 1815 is another gap only partially filled. Spencer Walpole deals with the period from 1815 to 1880, and Herbert Paul with the years 1846–1895.
A few books on special subjects deserve mention. For legal history see Pollock and Maitland’s History of English Law (2 vols. to Edward I.), Maitland’s Domesday Book and Beyond, and Anson’s Law and Custom of the Constitution; for economic history, Cunningham’s Growth of Industry and Commerce, and Ashley’s Economic History; for ecclesiastical history, Stephens and Hunt’s series (7 vols.); for foreign and colonial, Seeley’s British Foreign Policy and Expansion of England, and J. A. Doyle’s books on the American colonies; for military history, Fortescue’s History of the British Army, Napier’s and Oman’s works on the Peninsular War, and Kinglake’s Invasion of the Crimea; and for naval history, Corbett’s Drake and the Tudor Navy, Successors of Drake, English in the Mediterranean and Seven Years’ War, and Mahan’s Influence of Sea-Power on History and Influence of Sea-Power upon the French Revolution and Empire.
Bibliography of Bibliographies.—The sources for the middle ages have been enumerated in C. Gross’s Sources and Literature of English History ... to about 1485 (London, 1900), but there is nothing similar for modern history. G. C. Lee’s Source Book of English History is not very satisfactory. More information can be obtained from the bibliographies appended to the volumes in Longmans’ Political History, or the chapters in the Cambridge Modern History, or to the biographical articles in the D.N.B. and Ency. Brit. A series of bibliographical leaflets for the use of teachers is issued by the Historical Association. For MSS. sources see Scargill-Bird’s Guide to the Record Office, and the class catalogues in the MSS. Department of the British Museum. Lists of the state papers and other documents printed and calendared under the direction of the master of the Rolls and deputy keeper of the Records are supplied at the end of many of their volumes. (A. F. P.)
ENGLISH LANGUAGE. In its historical sense, the name
English is now conveniently used to comprehend the language
of the English people from their settlement in Britain to the
present day, the various stages through which it has passed being
distinguished as Old, Middle, and New or Modern English. In
works yet recent, and even in some still current, the term is confined to the third, or at most extended to the second and third of these stages, since the language assumed in the main the vocabulary and grammatical forms which it now presents, the oldest or inflected stage being treated as a separate language, under the title of Anglo-Saxon, while the transition period which connects the two has been called Semi-Saxon. This view had the justification that, looked upon by themselves, either as vehicles of thought or as objects of study and analysis, Old English or Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are, for all practical ends, distinct languages,—as much so, for example, as Latin and Spanish. No amount of familiarity with Modern English, including its local dialects, would enable the student to read Anglo-Saxon, three-fourths of the vocabulary of which have perished and been reconstructed within 900 years;[1] nor would a knowledge even of these lost words give him the power, since the grammatical system, alike in accidence and syntax, would be entirely strange to him. Indeed, it is probable that a modern Englishman would acquire the power of reading and writing French in less time than it would cost him to attain to the same proficiency in Old English; so that if the test of distinct languages be their degree of practical difference from each other, it cannot be denied that “Anglo-Saxon” is a distinct language from Modern English. But when we view the subject historically, recognizing the fact that living speech is subject to continuous change in certain definite directions, determined by the constitution and circumstances of mankind, as an evolution or development of which we can trace the steps, and that, owing to the abundance of written materials, this evolution appears so gradual in English that we can nowhere draw distinct lines separating its successive stages, we recognize these stages as merely temporary phases of an individual whole, and speak of the English language as used alike by Cynewulf, by Chaucer, by Shakespeare and by Tennyson.[2] It must not be forgotten, however, that in this wide sense the English language includes, not only the literary or courtly forms of speech used at successive periods, but also the popular and, it may be, altogether unwritten dialects that exist by their side. Only on this basis, indeed, can we speak of Old, Middle and Modern English as the same language, since in actual fact the precise dialect which is now the cultivated language, or “Standard English,” is not the descendant of that dialect which was the cultivated language or “Englisc” of Alfred, but of a sister dialect then sunk in comparative obscurity,—even as the direct descendant of Alfred’s Englisc is now to be found in the non-literary rustic speech of Wiltshire and Somersetshire. Causes which, linguistically
- ↑ A careful examination of several letters of Bosworth’s Anglo-Saxon dictionary gives in 2000 words (including derivatives and compounds, but excluding orthographic variants) 535 which still exist as modern English words.
- ↑ The practical convenience of having one name for what was the same thing in various stages of development is not affected by the probability that (E. A. Freeman notwithstanding) Engle and Englisc were, at an early period, not applied to the whole of the inhabitants of Teutonic Britain, but only to a part of them. The dialects of Engle and Seaxan were alike old forms of what was afterwards English speech, and so, viewed in relation to it, Old English, whatever their contemporary names might be.
