master of us all, are the prime requisites of a historian, so they
assert that he was deficient in literary style, he had no dramatic
power, his work is not interesting and will not live. Gardiner is the
product solely of the university and the library. You may visualize him
at Oxford, in the British Museum, or at work in the archives on the
Continent, but of affairs and of society by personal contact he knew
nothing. In short, he was not a man of the world, and the histories must
be written, so these critics aver, by those who have an actual knowledge
by experience of their fellow-men. It is profitable to examine these
dicta by the light of concrete examples. Froude saw much of society, and
was a man of the world. He wrote six volumes on the reign of Elizabeth,
from which we get the distinct impression that the dominant
characteristics of Elizabeth were meanness, vacillation, selfishness,
and cruelty. Gardiner in an introductory chapter of forty-three pages
restores to us the great queen of Shakespeare, who brought upon her land
"a thousand, thousand blessings." She loved her people well, he writes,
and ruled them wisely. She "cleared the way for liberty, though she
understood it not."[158] Elsewhere he speaks of "her high spirit and
enlightened judgment."[159] The writer who has spent his life in the
library among dusty archives estimates the great ruler more correctly
than the man of the world. We all know Macaulay, a member of Parliament,
a member of the Supreme Council of India, a cabinet minister, a
historian of great merit, a brilliant man of letters. In such a one,
according to the principles laid down by these critics, we should expect
to find a supreme judge of men. Macaulay in his essays and the first
chapter of the History painted Wentworth and Laud in the very blackest
of colors, which "had burned themselves into the heart of the people of
England." Gardiner came. Wentworth and Laud, he wrote, were controlled
by a "noble ambition," which was "not stained with personal selfishness
or greed."[160] "England may well be proud of possessing in Wentworth a
nobler if a less practical statesman than Richelieu, of the type to
which the great cardinal belonged."[161] Again Wentworth was "the
high-minded, masterful statesman, erring gravely through defects of
temper and knowledge."[162] From Macaulay we carry away the impression
that Wentworth was very wicked and that Cromwell was very good. Gardiner
loved Cromwell not