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PREFACE
Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon
the manly features of Charles Kingsley, features which Death had
rendered calm, grand, sublime. The constant struggle that in life
seemed to allow no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged
lion, shaking the bars of his prison, the mind striving for
utterance, the soul wearying for loving response,--all that was over.
There remained only the satisfied expression of triumph and peace, as
of a soldier who had fought a good fight, and who, while sinking into
the stillness of the slumber of death, listens to the distant sounds
of music and to the shouts of victory. One saw the ideal man, as
Nature had meant him to be, and one felt that there is no greater
sculptor than Death.
As one looked on that marble statue which only some weeks ago had so
warmly pressed one's hand, his whole life flashed through one's
thoughts. One remembered the young curate and the Saint's Tragedy;
the chartist parson and Alton Locke; the happy poet and the Sands of
Dee; the brilliant novel-writer and Hypatia and Westward-Ho; the
Rector of Eversley and his Village Sermons; the beloved professor at
Cambridge, the busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in
Westminster Abbey. One thought of him by the Berkshire chalk-streams
and on the Devonshire coast, watching the beauty and wisdom of
Nature, reading her solemn lessons, chuckling too over her inimitable
fun. One saw him in town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of godliness
and cleanliness, while smoking his pipe with soldiers and navvies.
One heard him in drawing-rooms, listened to with patient silence,
till one of his vigorous or quaint speeches bounded forth, never to
be forgotten. How children delighted in him! How young, wild men
believed in him, and obeyed him too! How women were captivated by
his chivalry, older men by his genuine humility and sympathy!
All that was now passing away--was gone. But as one looked on him
for the last time on earth, one felt that greater than the curate,
the poet, the professor, the canon, had been the man himself, with
his warm heart, his honest purposes, his trust in his friends, his
readiness to spend himself, his chivalry and humility, worthy of a
better age.
Of all this the world knew little;--yet few men excited wider and
stronger sympathies.
Who can forget that funeral on the 28th Jan., 1875, and the large sad
throng that gathered round his grave? There was the representative
of the Prince of Wales, and close by the gipsies of the Eversley
common, who used to call him their Patrico-rai, their Priest-King.
There was the old Squire of his village, and the labourers, young and
old, to whom he had been a friend and a father. There were Governors
of distant Colonies, officers, and sailors, the Bishop of his
diocese, and the Dean of his abbey; there were the leading
Nonconformists of the neighbourhood, and his own devoted curates,
Peers and Members of the House of Commons, authors and publishers;
and outside the church-yard, the horses and the hounds and the
huntsman in pink, for though as good a clergyman as any, Charles
Kingsley had been a good sportsman too, and had taken in his life
many a fence as bravely as he took the last fence of all, without
fear or trembling. All that he had loved, and all that had loved him
was there, and few eyes were dry when he was laid in his own yellow
gravel bed, the old trees which he had planted and cared for waving
their branches to him for the last time, and the grey sunny sky
looking down with calm pity on the deserted rectory, and on the short
joys and the shorter sufferings of mortal men.
All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew that
he had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his own.
Charles Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English colonies,
in America, where he spent his last happy year; aye, wherever Saxon
speech and Saxon thought is understood. He will be mourned for,
yearned for, in every place in which he passed some days of his busy
life. As to myself, I feel as if another cable had snapped that tied
me to this hospitable shore.
When an author or a poet dies, the better part of him, it is often
said, is left in his works. So it is in many cases. But with
Kingsley his life and his works were one. All he wrote was meant for
the day when he wrote it. That was enough for him. He hardly gave
himself time to think of fame and the future. Compared with a good
work done, with a good word spoken, with a silent grasp of the hand
from a young man he had saved from mischief, or with a 'Thank you,
Sir,' from a poor woman to whom he had been a comfort, he would have
despised what people call glory, like incense curling away in smoke.
He was, in one sense of the word, a careless writer. He did his best
at the time and for the time. He did it with a concentrated energy
of will which broke through all difficulties. In his flights of
imagination, in the light and fire of his language he had few equals,
if any; but the perfection and classical finish which can be obtained
by a sustained effort only, and by a patience which shrinks from no
drudgery, these are wanting in most of his works.
However, fame, for which he cared so little, has come to him. His
bust will stand in Westminster Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the
Baptist, by the side of his friend, Frederick Maurice; and in the
Temple of Fame which will be consecrated to the period of Victoria
and Albert, there will be a niche for Charles Kingsley, the author of
Alton Locke and Hypatia.
Sooner or later a complete edition of his works will be wanted,
though we may doubt whether he himself would have wished all his
literary works to be preserved. From what I knew of him and his
marvellous modesty, I should say decidedly not. I doubt more
especially, whether he would have wished the present book, The Roman
and the Teuton, to be handed down to posterity. None of his books
was so severely criticised as this volume of Lectures, delivered
before the University of Cambridge, and published in 1864. He
himself did not republish it, and it seems impossible to speak in
more depreciatory terms of his own historical studies than he does
himself again and again in the course of his lectures. Yet these
lectures, it should be remembered, were more largely attended than
almost any other lectures at Cambridge. They produced a permanent
impression on many a young mind. They are asked for again and again,
and when the publishers wished for my advice as to the expediency of
bringing out a new and cheaper edition, I could not hesitate as to
what answer to give.
I am not so blinded by my friendship for Kingsley as to say that
these lectures are throughout what academical lectures ought to be.
I only wish some one would tell me what academical lectures at Oxford
and Cambridge can be, as long as the present system of teaching and
examining is maintained. It is easy to say what these lectures are
not. They do not profess to contain the results of long continued
original research. They are not based on a critical appreciation of
the authorities which had to be consulted. They are not well
arranged, systematic or complete. All this the suddenly elected
professor of history at Cambridge would have been the first to grant.
'I am not here,' he says, 'to teach you history. I am here to teach
you how to teach yourselves history.' I must say even more. It
seems to me that these lectures were not always written in a
perfectly impartial and judicial spirit, and that occasionally they
are unjust to the historians who, from no other motive but a sincere
regard for truth, thought it their duty to withhold their assent from
many of the commonly received statements of mediaeval chroniclers.
But for all that, let us see what these Lectures are, and whether
there is not room for them by the side of other works. First of all,
according to the unanimous testimony of those who heard them
delivered at Cambridge, they stirred up the interest of young men,
and made them ask for books which Undergraduates had never asked for
before at the University libraries. They made many people who read
them afterwards, take a new interest in old and half-forgotten kings
and battles, and they extorted even from unfriendly critics the
admission that certain chapters, such as, for instance, 'The Monk as
a Civiliser,' displayed in an unexpected way his power of
appreciating the good points in characters, otherwise most antipathic
to the apostle of Manly Christianity. They contain, in fact, the
thoughts of a poet, a moralist, a politician, a theologian, and,
before all, of a friend and counsellor of young men, while reading
for them and with them one of the most awful periods in the history
of mankind, the agonies of a dying Empire and the birth of new
nationalities. History was but his text, his chief aim was that of
the teacher and preacher, and as an eloquent interpreter of the
purposes of history before an audience of young men to whom history
is but too often a mere succession of events to be learnt by heart,
and to be ready against periodical examinations, he achieved what he
wished to achieve. Historians by profession would naturally be
incensed at some portions of this book, but even they would probably
admit by this time, that there are in it whole chapters full of
excellence, telling passages, happy delineations, shrewd remarks,
powerful outbreaks of real eloquence, which could not possibly be
consigned to oblivion.
Nor would it have been possible to attempt to introduce any
alterations, or to correct what may seem to be mistakes. The book is
not meant as a text-book or as an authority, any more than Schiller's
History of the Thirty Years' War; it should be read in future, as
what it was meant to be from the first, Kingsley's thoughts on some
of the moral problems presented by the conflict between the Roman and
the Teuton. One cannot help wishing that, instead of lectures,
Kingsley had given us another novel, like Hypatia, or a real
historical tragedy, a Dietrich von Bern, embodying in living
characters one of the fiercest struggles of humanity, the death of
the Roman, the birth of the German world. Let me quote here what
Bunsen said of Kingsley's dramatic power many years ago:
'I do not hesitate (he writes) to call these two works, the Saint's
Tragedy and Hypatia, by far the most important and perfect of this
genial writer. In these more particularly I find the justification
of a hope which I beg to be allowed to express--that Kingsley might
continue Shakspeare's historical plays. I have for several years
made no secret of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our
century, called to place by the side of that sublime dramatic series
from King John to Henry VIII, another series of equal rank, from
Edward VI to the Landing of William of Orange. This is the only
historical development of Europe which unites in itself all vital
elements, and which we might look upon without overpowering pain.
The tragedy of St. Elizabeth shows that Kingsley can grapple, not
only with the novel, but with the more severe rules of dramatic art.
And Hypatia proves, on the largest scale, that he can discover in the
picture of the historical past, the truly human, the deep, the
permanent, and that he knows how to represent it. How, with all
this, he can hit the fresh tone of popular life, and draw humourous
characters and complications with Shakspearian energy, is proved by
all his works. And why should he not undertake this great task?
There is a time when the true poet, the prophet of the present, must
bid farewell to the questions of the day, which seem so great because
they are so near, but are, in truth, but small and unpoetical. He
must say to himself, "Let the dead bury their dead"--and the time has
come that Kingsley should do so.'
A great deal has been written on mistakes which Kingsley was supposed
to have made in these Lectures, but I doubt whether these criticisms
were always perfectly judicial and fair. For instance, Kingsley's
using the name of Dietrich, instead of Theodoric, was represented as
the very gem of a blunder, and some critics went so far as to hint
that he had taken Theodoric for a Greek word, as an adjective of
Theodorus. This, of course, was only meant as a joke, for on page
120 Kingsley had said, in a note, that the name of Theodoric,
Theuderic, Dietrich, signifies 'king of nations.' He therefore knew
perfectly well that Theodoric was simply a Greek adaptation of the
Gothic name Theode-reiks, theod meaning people, reiks, according to
Grimm, princeps {p1}. But even if he had called the king Theodorus,
the mistake would not have been unpardonable, for he might have
appealed to the authority of Gregory of Tours, who uses not only
Theodoricus, but also Theodorus, as the same name.
A more serious charge, however, was brought against him for having
used the High-German form Dietrich, instead of the original form
Theodereiks or Theoderic, or even Theodoric. Should I have altered
this? I believe not; for it is clear to me that Kingsley had his
good reasons for preferring Dietrich to Theodoric.
He introduces him first to his hearers as 'Theodoric, known in German
song as Dietrich of Bern.' He had spoken before of the Visi-Gothic
Theodoric, and of him he never speaks as Dietrich. Then, why should
he have adopted this High-German name for the great Theodoric, and
why should he speak of Attila too as Etzel?
One of the greatest of German historians, Johannes von Muller, does
the same. He always calls Theodoric, Dietrich of Bern; and though he
gives no reasons for it, his reasons can easily be guessed. Soon
after Theodoric's death, the influence of the German legends on
history, and of history on the German legends, became so great that
it was impossible for a time to disentangle two characters,
originally totally distinct, viz. Thjodrekr of the Edda, the Dietrich
of the German poetry on one side, and the King of the Goths,
Theodoric, on the other. What had long been said and sung about
Thjodrekr and Dietrich was believed to have happened to King
Theodoric, while at the same time historical and local elements in
the life of Theodoric, residing at Verona, were absorbed by the
legends of Thjodrekr and Dietrich. The names of the legendary hero
and the historical king were probably identical, though even that is
not quite certain {p2}; but at all events, after Theodoric's death,
all the numerous dialectic varieties of the name, whether in High or
in Low-German, were understood by the people at large, both of the
hero and of the king.
Few names have had a larger number of alias'. They have been
carefully collected by Graff, Grimm, Forstemann, Pott, and others. I
here give the principal varieties of this name, as actually occurring
in MSS., and arranged according to the changes of the principal
consonants:-
-
With Th-d: Theudoricus, Theudericus, [Greek text which cannot
be reproduced], Thiodiricus, Thiodericus, Thiodric, Thiodricus,
Thiodrih, Theodoricus, Theodericus, Theoderic, Theodrich, Thiadric,
Thiadrich, Thiedorik, Thiederic, Thiederik, Thiederich, Thiedorich,
Thiedric, Thiedrich, Thideric, Thiederich, Thidrich, Thodericus,
Thiaedric, Thieoderich, Thederich, Thedric.
-
With T-d Teudericus, Teudricus, Tiodericus, Teodoricus,
Teodericus, Teodric, Teodrich, Tiadric, Tiedrik, Tiedrich, Tiedric,
Tidericus, Tiderich, Tederich.
-
With D-d: [Greek text], Diodericus, Deoderich, Deodrich,
Diederich, Diderich.
-
With Th-t: Thiotiricus, Thiotirih, Thiotiricus, Thiotrih,
Theotoricus, Theotericus, Theoterih, Theotrih, Theotrich, Thiatric,
Thieterich, Thietrih, Thietrich, Theatrih.
-
With T-t: Teutrich, Teoterih, Teotrich, Teotrih, Tieterich,
Teatrih, Tiheiterich.
-
With D-t: Dioterih, Diotericus, Diotricus, Deotrich, Deotrih,
Dieterih, Dieterich, Dietrich, Diterih, Ditricus.
-
With Th-th: Theotherich, Theothirich.
-
With T-th: deest.
-
With D-th: Dietherich.
It is quite true that, strictly speaking, the forms with Th-d, are
Low-German, and those with D-t, High-German, but before we trust
ourselves to this division for historical purposes, we must remember
three facts: (1) that Proper Names frequently defy Grimm's Law; (2)
that in High-German MSS. much depends on the locality in which they
are written; (3) that High-German is not in the strict sense of the
word a corruption of Low-German, and, at all events, not, as Grimm
supposed, chronologically posterior to Low-German, but that the two
are parallel dialects, like Doric and Aeolic, the Low-German being
represented by the earliest literary documents, Gothic and Saxon, the
High-German asserting its literary presence later, not much before
the eighth century, but afterwards maintaining its literary and
political supremacy from the time of Charlemagne to the present day.
When Theodoric married Odeflede, the daughter of Childebert, and a
sister of Chlodwig, I have little doubt that, at the court of
Chlodwig or Clovis, his royal brother-in-law was spoken of in
conversation as Dioterih, although in official documents, and in the
history of Gregory of Tours, he appears under his classical name of
Theodoricus, in Jornandes Theodericus. Those who, with Grimm {p3},
admit a transition of Low into High-German, and deny that the change
of Gothic Th into High-German D took place before the sixth or
seventh century, will find it difficult to account, in the first
century, for the name of Deudorix, a German captive, the nephew of
Melo the Sigambrian, mentioned by Strabo {p4}. In the oldest German
poem in which the name of Dietrich occurs, the song of Hildebrand and
Hadebrand, written down in the beginning of the ninth century {p5},
we find both forms, the Low-German Theotrih, and the High-German
Deotrih, used side by side.
Very soon, however, when High-German became the more prevalent
language in Germany, German historians knew both of the old legendary
hero and of the Ost-gothic king, by one and the same name, the High-
German Dietrich.
If therefore Johannes von Muller spoke of Theodoric of Verona as
Dietrich von Bern, he simply intended to carry on the historical
tradition. He meant to remind his readers of the popular name which
they all knew, and to tell them,--This Dietrich with whom you are all
acquainted from your childhood, this Dietrich of whom so much is said
and sung in your legendary stories and poems, the famous Dietrich of
Bern, this is really the Theoderic, the first German who ruled Italy
for thirty-three years, more gloriously than any Roman Emperor before
or after. I see no harm in this, as long as it is done on purpose,
and as long as the purpose which Johannes von Muller had in his mind,
was attained.
No doubt the best plan for an historian to follow is to call every
man by the name by which he called himself. Theodoric, we know,
could not write, but he had a gold plate {p6} made in which the first
four letters of his name were incised, and when it was fixed on the
paper, the King drew his pen through the intervals. Those four
letters were [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], and though we
should expect that, as a Goth, he would have spelt his name
Thiudereik, yet we have no right to doubt, that the vowels were eo,
and not iu. But again and again historians spell proper names, not
as they were written by the people themselves, but as they appear in
the historical documents through which they became chiefly known. We
speak of Plato, because we have Roman literature between us and
Greece. American names are accepted in history through a Spanish,
Indian names through an English medium. The strictly Old High-German
form of Carolus Magnus would be Charal, A. S. Carl; yet even in the
Oaths of Strassburg (842) the name appears as Karlus and as Karl, and
has remained so ever since {p7}. In the same document we find Ludher
for Lothar, Ludhuwig and Lodhuvig for Ludovicus, the oldest form
being Chlodowich: and who would lay down the law, which of these
forms shall be used for historical purposes?
I have little doubt that Kingsley's object in retaining the name
Dietrich for the Ost-gothic king was much the same as Johannes von
Muller's. You know, he meant to say, of Dietrich of Bern, of all the
wonderful things told of him in the Nibelunge and other German poems.
Well, that is the Dietrich of the German people, that is what the
Germans themselves have made of him, by transferring to their great
Gothic king some of the most incredible achievements of one of their
oldest legendary heroes. They have changed even his name, and as the
children in the schools of Germany {p8} still speak of him as their
Dietrich von Bern, let him be to us too Dietrich, not simply the Ost-
gothic Theoderic, but the German Dietrich.
I confess I see no harm in that, though a few words on the strange
mixture of legend and history might have been useful, because the
case of Theodoric is one of the most luculent testimonies for that
blending of fact and fancy in strictly historical times which people
find it so difficult to believe, but which offers the key, and the
only true key, for many of the most perplexing problems, both of
history and of mythology.
Originally nothing could be more different than the Dietrich of the
old legend and the Dietrich of history. The former is followed by
misfortune through the whole of his life. He is oppressed in his
youth by his uncle, the famous Ermanrich {p9}; he has to spend the
greater part of his life (thirty years) in exile, and only returns to
his kingdom after the death of his enemy. Yet whenever he is called
Dietrich of Bern, it is because the real Theodoric, the most
successful of Gothic conquerors, ruled at Verona. When his enemy was
called Otacher, instead of Sibich, it is because the real Theodoric
conquered the real Odoacer. When the king, at whose court he passes
his years of exile, is called Etzel, it is because many German heroes
had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila. That Attila died two
years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no difficulty to a
popular poet, nor even the still more glaring contradiction between
the daring and ferocious character of the real Attila and the
cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the poem of the
Nibelunge. Thus was legend quickened by history.
On the other hand, if historians, such as Gregory I (Dial. iv. 36)
{p10}, tell us that an Italian hermit had been witness in a vision to
the damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged, by the ministers
of divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming
mouths of the infernal world, we may recognise in the heated
imagination of the orthodox monk some recollection of the mysterious
end of the legendary Dietrich {p11}. Later on, the legendary and the
real hero were so firmly welded together that, as early as the
twelfth century, chroniclers are at their wits' end how to reconcile
facts and dates.
Ekkehard, in his Chronicon Universale {p12}, which ends 1126 A.D.,
points out the chronological contradiction between Jornandes, who
places the death of Ermanrich long before Attila, and the popular
story which makes him and Dietrich, the son of Dietmar, his
contemporaries.
Otto von Freising {p13}, in the first half of the twelfth century,
expresses the same perplexity when he finds that Theodoric is made a
contemporary of Hermanricus and Attila, though it is certain that
Attila ruled long after Hermanric, and that, after the death of
Attila, Theodoric, when eight years old, was given by his father as a
hostage to the emperor Leo.
Gottfried von Viterbo {p14}, in the second half of the twelfth
century, expresses his difficulties in similar words.
All these chroniclers who handed down the historical traditions of
Germany were High-Germans, and thus it has happened that in Germany
Theodoric the Great became Dietrich, as Strataburgum became
Strassburg, or Turicum, Zurich. Whether because English belongs to
the Low German branch, it is less permissible to an English historian
than to a German to adopt these High-German names, I cannot say: all
I wished to point out was that there was a very intelligible reason
why Kingsley should have preferred the popular and poetical name of
Dietrich, even though it was High-German, either to his real Gothic
name, Theodereik, or to its classical metamorphosis, Theodoricus or
Theodorus.
Some other mistakes, too, which have been pointed out, did not seem
to me so serious as to justify their correction in a posthumous
edition. It was said, for instance, that Kingsley ought not to have
called Odoacer and Theodoric, Kings of Italy, as they were only
lieutenants of the Eastern Caesar. Cassiodorus, however, tells us
that Odoacer assumed the name of king (nomen regis Odoacer
assumpsit), and though Gibbon points out that this may only mean that
he assumed the abstract title of a king, without applying it to any
particular nation or country, yet that great historian himself calls
Odoacer, King of Italy, and shows how he was determined to abolish
the useless and expensive office of vicegerent of the emperor.
Kingsley guesses very ingeniously, that Odoacer's assumed title, King
of nations, may have been the Gothic Theode-reiks, the very name of
Theodoric. As to Theodoric himself, Kingsley surely knew his real
status, for he says: 'Why did he not set himself up as Caesar of
Rome? Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and quasi-
vassal of the Caesar of Constantinople?'
Lastly, in speaking of the extinction of the Western Empire with
Romulus Augustulus, Kingsley again simply followed the lead of Gibbon
and other historians; nor can it be said that the expression is not
perfectly legitimate, however clearly modern research may have shown
that the Roman Empire, though dead, lived.
So much in defence, or at all events, in explanation, of expressions
and statements which have been pointed out as most glaring mistakes
in Kingsley's lectures. I think it must be clear that in all these
cases alterations would have been impossible. There were other
passages, where I should gladly have altered or struck out whole
lines, particularly in the ethnological passages, and in the
attempted etymologies of German proper names. Neither the one nor
the other, I believe, are Kingsley's own, though I have tried in vain
to find out whence he could possibly have taken them.
These, however, are minor matters which are mentioned chiefly in
order to guard against the impression that, because I left them
unchanged, I approved of them. The permanent interest attaching to
these lectures does not spring from the facts which they give. For
these, students will refer to Gibbon. They will be valued chiefly
for the thoughts which they contain, for the imagination and
eloquence which they display, and last, not least, for the sake of
the man, a man, it is true, of a warm heart rather than of a cold
judgment, but a man whom, for that very reason, many admired, many
loved, and many will miss, almost every day of their life.
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