hed; but I have now
no hesitation in saying that the internal evidence demonstrates that in
impartiality and love of truth Gardiner is the peer of Thucydides. From
the point of view of external evidence, the case is even stronger for
Gardiner; he submits to a harder test. That he has been able to treat so
stormy, so controverted, and so well known a period as the seventeenth
century in England, with hardly a question of his impartiality, is a
wonderful tribute. In fact, in an excellent review of his work I have
seen him criticised for being too impartial. On the other hand, Grote
thinks that he has found Thucydides in error,--in the long dialogue
between the Athenian representatives and the Melians. "This dialogue,"
Grote writes, "can hardly represent what actually passed, except as to a
few general points which the historian has followed out into deductions
and illustrations, thus dramatizing the given situation in a powerful
and characteristic manner." Those very words might characterize
Shakespeare's account of the assassination of Julius Caesar, and his
reproduction of the speeches of Brutus and Mark Antony. Compare the
relation in Plutarch with the third act of the tragedy, and see how, in
his amplification of the story, Shakespeare has remained true to the
essential facts of the time. Plutarch gives no account of the speeches
of Brutus and Mark Antony, confining himself, to an allusion to the
one, and a reference to the other; but Appian of Alexandria, in his
history, has reported them. The speeches in Appian lack the force which
they have in Shakespeare, nor do they seemingly fit into the situation
as well. I have adverted to this criticism of Grote, not that I love
Thucydides less, but that I love Shakespeare more. For my part, the
historian's candid acknowledgment in the beginning has convinced me of
the essential--not the literal--truth of his accounts of speeches and
dialogues. "As to the speeches," wrote the Athenian, "which were made
either before or during the war, it was hard for me, and for others who
reported them to me, to recollect the exact words. I have therefore put
into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion,
expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them; while at the
same time I endeavored, as nearly as I could, to give the general
purport of what was actually said." That is the very essence of candor.
But be the historian as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, he s