her 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 ask
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