Historians are Professional Readers
Retrieving the past
Excerpted from A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary. Find the LINK to the Introduction below.
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historian
the first and really essential business of a historian is to choose a good subject which will give pleasure to his readers
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Toynbee 1952) p. 185
it is the historian's task first and foremost to record with fidelity what actually happened and was said, however commonplace this may be. The historian's task is to instruct and persuade serious students by means of the truth of the words and actions he presents
(Polybius 1979) p. 168
Polybius described the historian’s task as: ‘to believe those worthy of belief and to be a good critic of the reports that reach him’ (12.4.5)
(Bauckham 2006) p. 480
Greek historians admire only their own achievements; Romans extol the past and are indifferent to our own times
(Tacitus 1990) p. 45
Herodotus is not fairly accused of lying, since he recorded facts for posterity in a straightforward and simple way, as he learned of them. Of him, as you know, Fabius Quintilian has this to say: Many have written splendid histories, but no one doubts that two are to be placed far above the rest, their different qualities having brought them almost equal fame. Thucydides is dense, succinct and always pressing forward. Herodotus is charming, clear and discursive. One is superior in strong, the other in calm emotions; one in speeches, the other in conversations; one in forcefulness, the other in his will to please
(Manuzio and Wilson 2016) p. 111
the sole task of the historian is to tell it just as it happened
Lucian (Brown 1997) p. 318
like an impartial historian: relating what was done; commending such things as are praiseworthy; preserving the memory thereof for the benefit of the readers
(Bede 1970) p. 130
Baudouin suggested that a historian should be like a lawyer: balancing conflicting accounts, trying to establish the exact sequence of events, treating 'witnesses' (documents) with dispassionate and objective suspicion
(Arnold 2000) p. 45
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) wrote sarcastically of, 'the Historian…loden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing himself… upon the histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of Heare-say'
(Arnold 2000) p. 29
Sir Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry makes good-natured fun of the claims of history, the more to exalt the Muse of his choice. ‘The historian, loden with old mouse-eaten records; authorising himself for the most part upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hear-say; having much ado to accord differing writers and to pick truth out of partiality; better acquainted with a thousand years ago than with the present age and yet better knowing how this world goeth than how his own wit runneth: curious for antiquities and inquisitive of novelties; a wonder to young folks and a tyrant in table talk; denieth in a great chafe that any man for teaching of virtue and virtuous actions is comparable to him’
(Tillyard 1962) p. 71
Paolo Sarpi believes that the task of the historian is scoprire, to discover (or rather, to ‘uncover’), unveil, unmask the truth; to make the latent causes manifest. It is his passionate attempt to penetrate the surface of historical reality, to discover the hidden causes, which makes Sarpi a great historian. This quality did not go unnoticed in his own century. Milton wrote in Areopagitica of ‘Padre Paolo the great unmasker of the Trentine Council’. The portrait of Sarpi in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, bears an inscription calling him Concilii Tridentini eviscerator – the man who ‘disemboweled’ the Council. Of course, Sarpi was not the first historian to notice that one cannot trust appearances in history; Tacitus, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini are celebrated examples to the contrary. But they did not do what Sarpi has done, and make this awareness the organizing principle of their historical works
(Sarpi 1967) p. xxxv
it should be the duty of historians to be exact, truthful, and dispassionate, and neither interest nor fear nor rancor nor affection should swerve them from the path of truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor
(Cervantes 1990) p. 27
Herodotus is reputed to have sung his history
(Clive 1989) p. 297
the first of historians who applied the science of philosophy to the study of facts was Tacitus
Gibbon (Jordan 1976) p. 53
Tacitus will endure as the philosophical historian whose writings will instruct the last generations of mankind
Gibbon (Clive 1989) p. 298
instead of condemning the Monkish Historians (as they are contemptuously styled) silently to moulder in the dust of our libraries, our candour and even our justice should learn to estimate their value, and to excuse their imperfections. Their minds were infected with the passions and errors of their times; but those times would have been involved in darkness, had not the art of writing, and the memory of events been preserved in the peace and solitude of the Cloyster
(Gibbon 1972) p. 535
late antique historians are particularly prone to mention their sources in order to refute or attack them. Classical historiography was born in polemic, with Herodotus criticizing Homer and Thucydides criticizing Herodotus in turn
(Rohrbacher 2002) p. 155
Shakespeare's history plays cast their audiences in the roles of historians. Taken in the order of their composition, the plays can be read as a long meditation on the difficulty of retrieving the past. The genre itself is largely Shakespeare's creation. The English history play ceased to be a popular genre soon after Shakespeare abandoned it. The vogue of the history play was intense but remarkably brief
(Rackin 1993) p. 28, 31
we follow Clarendon's great history through those long, rich, serpentine, polychromatic sentences which heighten its majestic quality, we see the double character of historian and politician, combined in his greatest virtue: his study of men. Like Boswell, Clarendon 'ever delighted in that intellectual chymistry which can separate good qualities from evil in the same person'
(Trevor-Roper 1957) p. 248
Professor Trevor-Roper has said of Clarendon that 'of all historians, he is probably the greatest master of disdain'
(Harris 1983) p. 396
without engaging in a metaphysical or rather verbal dispute, I know, by experience, that from my early youth I aspired to the character of an historian
Gibbon, Autobiography (Oliver 1958) p. 102
the theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings
Gibbon (White 1973) p. 65
diligence and accuracy are the only merits which an historical writer may ascribe to himself
Gibbon (Porter 1988) p. 72
tranquility of mind permits an historian to amass materials, to compare, judge them, and join to them just and impartial reflections
Gibbon (Craddock 1982) p. 268
early in the 1840s, Ranke noted that the historian needs three cardinal qualities, common sense, courage, and honesty
(Gay 1974) p. 92
for both Burckhardt and Macaulay, the road to history had led by way of poetry
(Clive 1989) p. 184
to be a really great historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions; the most valuable qualities of a historian, great diligence in examining authorities, great judgment in weighing testimony, and great impartiality in estimating characters
(Macaulay 1888) v.1, p. 270, 783
Macaulay declared that ‘to be a really great historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions’
(Barnes 1998) p. 198
prophet in reverse
Schlegel (Auden and Kronenberger 1962) p. 238
fuses past and present
(Nietzsche 1967) p. 49
the task of practicing lawyers is essentially similar to the historian's
Theodor Mommsen (Stern 1973) p. 195
the optimistic fatalism to which historians are liable. It is not the business of the historian, as we so often hear, to put his reader back in the past time, or to make him regard events as they were regarded by contemporaries. Where would be the use of this? Great events are commonly judged by contemporaries quite wrongly. It is in fact one of the chief functions of the historian to correct this contemporary judgment
(Seeley 1971) p. 17, 114
the law accepted by all historians in theory, but adopted by none in practice; which former ages called 'fate', and metaphysicians called 'necessity', but which modern science has refined into the 'survival of the fittest'
(Adams 1986) p. 343
history never happens as it should, historians exist to put it right
Mark Twain (Winks 1998) p. 628
although God cannot alter the past, historians can
Samuel Butler (Wedgwood 1989) p. 471
the only study which presents to all our endeavors and aspirations after higher intellectual cultivation, a fast middle-point and grappling place
John Gibson Lockhart (Clive 1989) p. 209
what is a historian? Someone who doesn’t write well enough to work on a daily. A historian is often only a journalist facing backwards
(Kraus 1986) p. 73
how far the study of history is really a study of historians, and how far history is what the historians have said it was, are questions to which the answers are not clear
(Thompson and Holm 1942) p. vii
action reveals itself fully only to the storyteller, that is, to the backward glance of the historian, who indeed always knows better what it was all about than the participants
(Arendt 1958) p. 192
it is the mark of a great history that sooner or later we become as much aware of the historian as of the events he relates
(Trilling 1976) p. 198
the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destinies of man
Steven Runciman (Pelikan 1971) p. x
the historian is acquainted with the future of the past
(Gagnon 1982) p. 50
there is no such thing as a neutral or purely objective historian. To perform the function requires a view from the outside and a conscious craft. What his imagination is to the poet, facts are to the historian. The primary duty of the historian is to stay within the evidence. His exercise of judgment comes in their selection, his art in their arrangement. His method is narrative. His subject is the story of man's past. His function is to make it known. Selection is everything; it is the test of the historian. Selection is the task of distinguishing the significant from the insignificant
(Tuchman 1981) p. 27, 29, 30, 32, 73
the function of the historian is neither to love the past nor to emancipate himself from the past, but to master and understand it as the key to the understanding of the present. The historian is part of history
(Carr 1961) p. 29, 43
the position of the historian vis-Ã -vis his subject is quite comparable to that of the geologist
(Meyerhoff 1959) p. 89
there is no agreement among historians about what they are trying to do, or for that matter about what their subject-matter is. History is a very immature discipline in which there is no real consensus about what are the important and crucial basic problems; the historian himself is inside his subject. Anachronism is the greatest danger of the historian
(Hobsbawm 1997) p. 59, 67, 210
diligence and accuracy (it is averred) are the only merits an historian can properly ascribe to himself. The one virtue does not always guarantee the other. The more documentation, the more chances of error. Further, time and scrutiny will reveal misconceptions as well as mistakes. Conjecture cannot be avoided, otherwise the history is not worth writing, for it does not become intelligible. There are 'arcana' everywhere in the behavior of men and governments. The duty of the historian is not merely to register facts but to penetrate the recesses
(Syme 1958a) p. v, 520
it has yet to be proved that acerbity or gloom is detrimental in an historian. Historians are prone to complain about their subject-matter, alleging that it is arid, refractory, or hideous, rather than frankly to avow delight in their workmanship
(Syme 1958a) p. 206, 320
the operations of an historian on the borderland of fact and fraud are the most exacting test of his powers. Historians in all ages become liable through their profession to certain maladies or constraints. They cannot help making persons and events more logical than reality; they are often paralyzed by tradition or convention; and they sometimes fall a prey to morbid passions for a character or an idea. The author of the Annales presents characters and arranges events in undue coherence. That is the manner of historians in every age
(Syme 1958a) p. 399, 419, 434
the quality of a historian: style and the mastery of structure are not enough. One looks for accuracy, insight, integrity. Historians are selective, dramatic, impressionistic
(Syme 2002) p. 150, 240
exile or a setback can be the making of an historian. Even the enhancement of a grievance will help. Sallust would have been nowhere but for the vicissitudes in his career. Oppression being a useful school for historians, if it does not extinguish them
(Syme 1958b) p. 540
. A historian's choice of subject, and even more, his handling of it, is a deeply emotional affair. For the historian, an interpretation is a general explanation of events, nearly always providing a hierarchy of causes. The historian's craft is pervaded by paradox
(Gay 1974) p. 4, 143, 211, 215
the central institution of the society of historians is judgment by peers
(Hexter 1971) p. 82
concerned with the discovery, description and explanation of the social aspects and consequences of what men have done and suffered
(Berlin 2000) p. 5
no virtue, in a historian, is obvious, except style
(Trevor-Roper 2010) p. 221
one can learn from the great historians: first of all, about the nature of genius
(Clive 1989) p. ix
the glacial prose of historians
(Walcott 1984) XLII
historians have the capacity for selectivity, simultaneity, and the shifting of scale. As Michael Oakeshott pointed out, historians have a web-like sense of reality, in that we see everything as connected in some way to everything else. Historians trace processes from a knowledge of outcomes
(Gaddis 2002) p. 22, 64, 65
for historians, hindsight can be a treacherous ally. Enabling us to trace the hidden patterns of past events, it beguiles us with the mirage of inevitability, the assumption that different outcomes lay beyond the limits of the possible
(Foner 2002) p. 603
LINK to the Introduction to A Whirld of Words: A Reader's Commonplace Dictionary.
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