Christianity; but after much work he relinquished this because he saw that it could only be properly achieved by a well-trained Irish scholar; and it was not easy in 1860 to learn old Irish, even if time and inclination were present and unlimited. Plan after plan was taken up and dropped, till at last he settled upon a monograph on the Angevin Kings and Earls, or, 'what the book is in reality, "England and the Great Charter; a history of the final formation of the English people and the final settlement of English liberty and the English Constitution; in three volumes." For this he had read wide and deep, but he never lived to print his results. Another project gradually taking shape was a brief but comprehensive sketch of the development of the English nation; and this in time became the 'Short History.'

At the end of the year 1865 Green was made incumbent of St Philip's, Stepney, a parish of 16,000 people, with a nominal stipend of 3007., which various deductions reduce to two thirds of that amount.' It meant independent work, and as much of it as there was time for in the day. However he was now able, for the first time, to take holidays abroad. His journeys with Freeman to the places they knew so well from the chronicles were luminous episodes to Green. His companion marvelled at his enthusiasm and the flair with which he tracked out the things in which he was especially interested, and used to laugh at his enthusiasm for Italian municipal buildings-Johnny houses,' as he called them; while Green would reproach Freeman with caring more for German emperors than for Italian free cities. Some of the best work of both travellers was the result of their French and Italian journeys; and Freeman thanked Green in his own way both then and years after.

'Now, O Johnny, as I have been rambling over endless cities, telling the towers thereof, let me once more thank you for having first taught me to do a town as something having a being of itself, apart from the churches, castles, etc., within it.'

Meanwhile Green's health was getting worse; and it was becoming borne in upon him that he would not be able to stand the strain of his double work. The experience of human nature that his East-end incumbency

enforced, and the deepening knowledge of the past that he had gained in his historical studies, were ripening his critical faculties. The Voysey judgment stirred him deeply, and possibly quickened the revolution that would have been inevitable in any case by reason of the serious state of his lungs. It was without much of a struggle that he resigned his incumbency. The offer of the Lambeth librarianship (a titular office once held by Stubbs) was a graceful acknowledgment of his talent and his good services that he thankfully appreciated and accepted. He now had liberty and leisure; but the question before him, in the face of Clark's serious verdict, was whether he could maintain his strength long enough to do even a part of the work he had been preparing for years.

There was a curious irony about his position. At the age of thirty-two he was face to face with the chief work of his life, without a settled income, and without hope of advancement to one of those canonries that represent, in a haphazard way, the endowment of research in the English Church, with impaired health and the need of spending at least a quarter of every year away from libraries, with but few books at hand. But he faced it all cheerily, rejoicing, as he said, in the good side of his picture, and meeting the bad side without bitterness or illusion. He was going to write a history in his own way.

'I shall never be content till I have superseded Hume, and I believe I shall supersede him-not because I am so good a writer, but because, being an adequate writer, I have a larger and grander conception than he had of the organic life of a nation as a whole. If I fail I have at any rate fought.'

Through Macmillan's acceptance of his

'offer of a "Short History of the English People" (600 pp. 8vo), which might serve as an introduction to better things if I lived, and might stand for some work done if I didn't . . . for 3501. down and 1007. if 2000 copies sell in six months after publication,'

he was able to drop most of his 'Saturday Review' work and give his whole time to the work he wished to do.

He could not get the right pitch of 'Little Book' (as he called it) at first, and he wrote and rewrote till he was

better satisfied, in spite of his poor health and his isolation, for San Remo was not at its brightest during the winter of 1870-71. But he made the best of it all in his letters home; his wonderful spirits kept him up, and he made progress. By October, 1872, he had reached the end of The New Learning.'

'I must own' (he writes to Freeman from Florence) 'the more I have worked and thought over our own story as a whole-and I shall always thank "Little Book" for making me do this-the more its political history has seemed to me to spring out of and be moulded into form by the "social and religious" history you like to chaff me about. You see I shall die in my sins.'

In March, 1873, he was in Capri, home-sick, lonely, by no means reconciled to an invalid life, but cheery and helpful as ever to his beloved correspondents.

'I brighten up at the thought of a really merry companion. Why are people so grave, so solemn, so afraid of laughter, of fun, of irony, of quiz, of nonsense in all its delicious forms?... I wonder whether there will be another world where the people will be very amusing? It might make up a little for this.'

By August, 1873, he was able to say, 'I have now only about a chapter and a half to do, so far as writing goes, and about half the book is in type, and the rest printing fast.' Only the loneliness oppressed him. Italy and its blessed sunshine were in themselves delightful; but, to get this healing bliss, he must be an exile, and his thoughts were much with his friends at home. Success, at times, even accomplishment of his life's task, seemed small beside the common joys denied to him.

'With me Happiness means simply a Home and a wife and some wee things. If I don't get these I don't care for anything else, except a few friends and a little sunshine; and H. and W. and W. T. I shan't get.'

During the progress of his 'Short History' he pàid earnest attention to the criticisms (not always just) he got from friends who read his sheets, and he corrected freely.

'I have always said to myself that... the book may utterly fail, and that I ought not to grumble if it does. I give English

History in the only way in which it is intelligible or interesting to me, but it does not follow that others will find my rendering of it interesting or intelligible... It is quite likely people may turn away from a story which strives to put facts on a philosophical basis and to make events the outcome of social or religious currents of thought. Then, too, others may quite fairly feel that, however interesting the attempt to work in literary and moral influences may be, it is safer and less confusing to stick to a purely political mode of viewing things. I put aside. . . people who will condemn it as "superficial” because it is picturesque; or as partizan . . . because no party finds itself really represented in its pages.'

At last the 'Short History' was finished and published in 1874. It was successful far beyond its author's hopes. As Mr Bryce said, 'It was philosophical enough for scholars and popular enough for schoolboys.' It interested everyone that took it up. It sold largely on the railway bookstalls. It was read in trains and hotels as popular novels are read. And it deserved its popularity. Stubbs's verdict is worth citing.

'Green combined . . . a complete and firm grasp of the subject in its unity and integrity, with a wonderful command of details and a thorough sense of perspective and proportion. All his work was real and original work; few people besides those who knew him well would see, under the charming ease and vivacity of his style, the deep research and sustained industry of the laborious student. But it was so; there was no department of our national records that he had not studied, and I think I may say, mastered. . . . Like other people, he made mistakes sometimes; but scarcely ever does the correction of his mistakes affect either the essence of the picture or the force of the argument.'

Nor was Stubbs alone among good judges in his admiration of the book. The general view is that of a Whig writer; and here and there, as in the story of the American Rebellion, the Tories are maltreated; it is not, however, the book of a doctrinaire, but of a fair-minded man with strong opinions, trying to judge justly in matters that touch him nearly. There is no bigotry about it. It remains the best general history of England, and, when it comes to be superseded, it will be by a history on the lines of Green rather than on the lines of his critics. The

new book will have to be a constructive history also, not merely an uncoördinated array of facts.

No history-book since Macaulay's had been so successful in England. A well-deserved chorus of praise greeted it from the Press. Mr J. Rowley's articles in 'Fraser' (intended as a damaging attack from a partisan of Froude upon one who was regarded as of the school of Freeman) were only effective in so far as they supplied (not without mistakes of their own) a useful list of errata for Green's next edition. An enlarged Library Edition was at once called for and put in hand, while new editions of the 'Short History' itself have followed each other rapidly from that time till now."

Green had toiled for fifteen years, and had at last won an acknowledged position as a historian, and the probability of a competence. His success pleased him, though he took it coolly enough. The 'poor curate' of yesterday was elected to the Athenæum, under 'rule ii'; made an honorary fellow (along with his friend Dawkins and a far less illustrious person) in the college where he had suffered much in his struggling and sensitive youth; and created LL.D. by the generous and timely appreciation of Edinburgh University. He met all attacks upon his writings with admirable temper, but without budging from his own historic standpoint. In February, 1876, he analyses his critics thus:

"There is, for one thing, the natural reaction against success; then there are my own faults, which I strive to correct, but of which plenty are sure to remain; then there is the ill-will of the people who identify me with the " Freeman School"; then there is the inevitable hostility of the" pragmatic historians."... The rest I can bear, but I shall feel keenly the condemnation of these last, such as Gardiner. . . . I respect the men, and I know and have always owned how good and valuable their work is, nor do I think them at all unjust in denouncing me. It is very natural that, working as they do to bring out the actual political facts and clear away loose talk, they should look jealously at what is in effect a protest against their outside conception of history, and what must look, to many of them, an attempt to bring the loose talk back again. . . . For me,

...

* We are authorised by the publishers to state that upwards of 235,000 copies of the 'Short History' have been sold in this country, not to speak of sales in America.