Page:Englishhistorica36londuoft.djvu/144

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136 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January destinies, he never knew its winning charm or its perilous sophisms.' For all his success in Indian diplomacy, he lacked finesse, grace, and wit. There was a certain matter-of-fact brutality about his outlook, a roughness and heaviness about his humour, a crudeness in his vanity that was absolutely disconcerting. Yet his great qualities are sufficiently clear. None would deny him vigour, courage, and tenacity. The very pride that in some of its manifestations was so unlovely was based upon a certain rough-hewn integrity of soul. His hauteur was sustained by a self-respect which, in an age when standards were low and in a climate where licence was tolerated, preserved his private life from stain and reproach. His sense of his own worth, as M. Martineau says, was pushed to the point of infatuation ; it alienated friendship and caused him to be in many ways a solitary figure isolated from the sympathies of his generation. Yet it gave him intellectually a driving and compelling power in the world of action, and morally it lifted him above the meaner and baser faults of human nature. P. E. Roberts. Germany and the French Revolution. By G. P. Gooch. (London : Longmans, 1920.) Mr. Gooch claims not unjustly to be something of a pioneer in his treat- ment of this subject. Even in Germany an equally ' panoramic survey ' would be hard to find, while in English no one has previously attempted the task set himself by Mr. Gooch. His book will prove useful as an introduction to the subject, and, as the very numerous citations are practically all given in English, readers unfamiliar with German will be duly grateful. Scholars, for whom perhaps this book is less particularly intended, will regret this banishment of the German text ; but the translations, even those in verse (for which Miss D. Henkel is mainly responsible), are in good style. With his copious extracts Mr. Gooch mingles skilful summaries of less important matter and comments which are usually sound, even though not very original. At p. 70 it is well said that though the early stages of the French Revolution aroused sympathy and even admiration in Germany, there was neither the desire nor the capacity to imitate it. Chapters i (' Before the Revolution ') and xxii (' Conclusion ') help to make the underlying causes plain ; the former is especially well done, although Mr. Gooch scarcely achieves the lapidary brevity of Dahlmann, whose phrase ' Friedrich hinterliess eingeschulte Arbeiter, keinen Mann von Charakter ' tells us so much in eight words. He rightly says at p. 207 : the two ruling conceptions of the eighteenth century were those of benevolent auto- cracy and cultured individualism ; and in both Goethe remained to the end the child of his age. He might have laid rather more stress, perhaps, on the third great con- ception, the sense of duty, which Kant did so much to intensify. Some of the best chapters deal with the less famous men, Gentz, Georg Forster, and, among the poets, Friedrich Holderlin, whom Mr. Gooch has thus helped to make better known in this country. In passing be it observed