In the world's broad field of battle, In the bivouac of life, Be not like dumb, driven cattle; Trust no future, howe'er pleasant: Lives of great men, all remind us Footprints, that perhaps another, Let us, then, be up and doing, HISTORY AND FICTION IN LITERATURETHACKERAY. (Present Period.) WHAT do we look for, in studying the history of a past age? Is it to learn the political transactions, and characters of the leading public men? is it to make ourselves acquainted, with the life and being of the time? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire? What character of what great man, is known to you? You can but make guesses as to character, more or less happy. In common life, don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behaviour, the cut of his hair or the tie of his neckcloth, may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or, at the end of years of intimacy, it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something, which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive, to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marlborough. I read Swift's History of the Times, in which he took a part— the shrewdest of observers, and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age―he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity; he speaks of Walpole, as a contemptible bore; and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again; I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of various languages, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into the secret motive, which I believe influenced the whole of Marlborough's career, which caused his wormings and windings, his opportune fidelity and treason, stopped his army almost at Paris' gate, and landed him finally on the Hanoverian side-the winning side; I get, I say, no truth, or only a portion of it, in the narrative of either writer, and believe that Coxe's portrait or Swift's portrait, is quite unlike the real Churchill. I take this as a single instance; prepared to be as sceptical about any other, and say to the Muse of History, "O, venerable daughter of Mnemosyne, I doubt every single statement you ever made, since your ladyship was a Muse! For all your grave airs and high pretensions, you are not a whit more trustworthy, than some of your lighter sisters, on whom your partisans look down. You bid me listen to a general's oration to his soldiers. Nonsense! He no more made it, than Turpin made his dying speech at Newgate. You pronounce a panegyric of a hero; I doubt it; and say you flatter outrageously. You utter the condemnation of a loose character; I doubt it, and think you are prejudiced, and take the side of the Dons. You offer me an autobiography; I doubt all autobiographies I ever read, except those, perhaps, of Mr. Robinson Crusoe, Mariner, and writers of his class. These have no object, in setting themselves right with the public, or their own consciences; these have no motive for concealment or half-truth; these call for no more confidence than I can cheerfully give, and do not force me to tax my credulity, or to fortify it by evidence. I take up a volume of Dr. Smollett, or a volume of the 'Spectator,' and say the fiction carries a greater amount of truth in solution, than the volume which purports to be all true. Out of the fictitious book, I get the expression of the life of the time, of the manners, of the movement, the dress, the pleasures, the laughter, the ridicules of society: the old times live again, and I travel in the old country of England. Can the heaviest historian do more for me?" As we read in the delightful volumes of the "Tatler and the "Spectator" the past age returns, the England of our ancestors is revivified. The May-pole rises in the Strand again, in London; the churches are thronged with daily worshippers; the beaux are gathering in the coffee-houses, the gentry are going to the drawing-rooms,- the ladies are thronging to the toy-shops,-the chairmen are jostling in the streets, the footmen are running with links before the chariots, or fighting round the theatre-doors. In the country I see the young squire riding to Eton with his servants behind him, and Will Wimble, the friend of the family, to see him safe. To make that journey to the squire's and back, Will is a week on horseback. The coach takes five days, between London and the Bath. The judges and the bar ride the circuit. If my lady comes to town in her post-chariot, her people carry pistols, to fire a salute at Captain Mackheath, if he should appear; and her couriers ride a-head, to prepare apartments for her at the great caravan saries on the road. Boniface receives her, under the sign of the Bell or the Ram; and he and his chamberlains bow her up the great stair to the state apartments, whilst her carriage rumbles into the courtyard, where the Exeter Fly is housed, that performs the journey in eight days (God willing), having achieved its daily flight of twenty miles, and landed its passengers for supper and sleep. The mate is taking his pipe in the kitchen; where the captain's man, having hung up his master's half-pike, is at his bacon and eggs, bragging of Ramillies and Malplaquet, to the townsfolk who have their club in the chimney-corner. The packhorses are in the great stable, and the drivers and ostlers conversing in the tap. And in Mrs. Landlady's bar, over a glass of strong waters, sits a gentleman of military appearance, who travels with pistols, as all the rest of the world do, and has a rattling grey mare in the stables, which will be saddled and away with its owner half an hour before the "Fly" sets out, on its last day's flight. And some five miles on the road, as the Exeter Fly comes jingling and creaking onwards, it will suddenly be brought to a halt by a gentleman on a grey mare, with a black vizard on his face, who thrusts a long pistol into the coach-window, and bids the company to hand out their purses. It must have been no small pleasure, even to sit in the great kitchen in those days, and see the tide of humankind pass by. We arrive in places now, but we travel no more. vel in those days (being of that class of travellers, I would have liked to tra |