Henry Thomas Buckle was born at Lee, in Kent, 24th November 1821, the son of a London shipowner, a Tory and a staunch churchman. A sickly child, he was for a very short time at an academy in Kentish-Town; no other school and no university claims credit for his education, which yet was liberal in the highest degree. In 1840 he found himself master of £1500 a year; by 1850 he knew eighteen foreign languages, and had amassed a library of 22,000 volumes, chosen mostly to help him in a magnum opus, which gradually took shape as “The History of Civilisation in England” (vols. i., ii., 1857–61). His health had been meantime shattered by the loss of an idolised mother; and on 29th May 1862, after six months’ wandering in Egypt and Palestine, he died of typhoid fever at Damascus. For over twenty years he had been reckoned one of the first chess players in the world. Buckle’s “Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works” were edited by Miss Helen Taylor (1872, new ed. by Grant Allen, 1885). See his Life by A. H. Huth (2 vols. 1880); and “Buckle and his Critics,” by J. M. Robertson (1896).

Personal

  I dined with Grote yesterday to meet Mr. Buckle, the literary lion of the day. He is not prepossessing in appearance, but he talks very well and makes a great display of knowledge and extensive reading, though without pedantry or dogmatism. There was a small party of literary men to meet him, and Lady William Russell and I acted the part of gallery.

  I live merely for literature; my works are my only actions; they are not wholly unknown, and I leave it to them to protect my name. If they cannot do that, they are little worth. I have never written an essay, or even a single line anonymously, and nothing would induce me to do so, because I deem anonymous writing of every kind to be an evasion of responsibility, and consequently unsuited to the citizen of a free country. Therefore it is that I can easily be judged. I have myself supplied the materials, and to them I appeal. So far from despising public opinion, I regard it with great, though not with excessive respect; and I acknowledge in it the principal source of such influence as I have been able to wield.

  Buckle, of course, was the card. He talked with a velocity and fulness of facts that was wonderful. The rest of us could do little but listen and ask questions. And yet he did not seem to be lecturing us; the stream of his conversation flowed along easily and naturally. Nor was it didactic; Buckle’s range of reading has covered everything in elegant literature, as well as the ponderous works whose titles make so formidable a list at the beginning of his History, and, as he remembers everything he has read, he can produce his stores upon the moment for the illustration of whatever subject happens to come up.

  Mr. Buckle’s costume was an old black dress-coat his butler, he said, would not have worn, a double-breasted cloth waistcoat, and winter trousers, all over thick flannel under-garments; a wide-awake, with an ample puggery, crowned his spare, stooping figure, covered his bald head, and shaded his unshaven face. He often further endeavoured to protect himself from the sun in a black burnous. I hinted once that all this was rather warm clothing for the Arabian deserts. He replied that, though the commoner sort of Arabs certainly wore nothing but a short shirt yet the great chiefs had several robes.

  I wish to say a word or two about the eminent person whose name is connected with this way of looking at History, and whose premature death struck us all with such a sudden sorrow. Many of you, perhaps, recollect Mr. Buckle as he stood not so long ago in this place. He spoke more than an hour without a note,—never repeating himself, never wasting words; laying out his matter as easily and as pleasantly as if he had been talking to us at his own fireside. We might think what we please of Mr. Buckle’s views, but it was plain enough that he was a man of uncommon power; and he had qualities also—qualities to which he, perhaps, himself attached little value—as rare as they were admirable.

  Nature had gifted him with a superlative aptitude for the game of chess, and he brought the powers of a rare intellect—clear, penetrating, and sagacious beyond that of most men—to bear upon it. His imagination was that of the poet, “all compact,” but subservient to the dictates of a logical judgment. His combinations accordingly, under such guidance, seldom, if ever, exhibited a flaw, and were characterized by exactitude of calculation and brilliant device. He excelled in pawn play, which he conducted with an ingenuity and deadly accuracy worthy of the renowned pawn general, Szen. He gave large odds, such as Rook and Knight, with wonderful skill and success, appearing to have a sort of intuitive knowledge of a strange opponent’s chess idiosyncrasy, which enabled him precisely to gauge the kind of risks he might venture to run. The rendering of heavy odds, as every experienced chess player knows, necessitates hazardous and unsound play on the part of the giver. These contests of his at odds, were always full of interest and entertainment to lookers-on, and a gallery two or three deep often surrounded his board in the Strand Divan, where it was his “custom in the afternoon” to recreate himself with his favourite game. I have occasionally seen roars of laughter elicited from the spectators by the crestfallen aspect of some poor discomfited Rook-player, who, with much care and solicitude, having obtained, as he fondly believed, an impregnable position, and suddenly found his defences scattered like chaff, and himself accommodated with a mate, after the sacrifice, by his keen-witted opponent, of two or three pieces in succession. Whether winning or losing, Mr. Buckle was a courteous and pleasant adversary, and sat quietly before the board, smoking his cigar, and pursuing his game with inflexible steadiness.

  During many years’ wanderings throughout the world, I have never met any one, whose general knowledge or conversational power could be compared for a moment with that of Buckle; whether in botanizing up Sinai, or geologizing at Petra, in astronomy, medicine, chemistry, theology or languages, everything and every subject appeared to me handled as if by a professional. And yet, however much one differed from him, his kindly mode of reasoning with me against what he believed to be erroneous views was always so pleasant and fascinating that I could not resist returning again and again to his arguments.

  There is hardly another instance in history of so great a leap from the complete literary obscurity to the highest pinnacle of literary fame. From the east and the west poured inquiries as to the antecedents of the gifted author, his fame was noised abroad, and in a few years there was hardly an educated man in the world who did not know his name, and what he had done…. By the year 1850, the total number of languages he knew was nineteen; namely,—1. English, 2. French, 3. German, 4. Italian, 5. Spanish, 6. Portuguese, 7. Dutch, 8. Danish, 9 Walloon, 10. Flemish, 11. Swedish, 12. Icelandic, 13. Frisiac, 14. Maorian, 15. Russian, 16. Anglo-Saxon, 17. Hebrew, 18. Greek, 19. Latin. All of them distinct languages, as he observed, though some of them are similar to each other. The first seven he knew well, and could converse in them or write them with ease. With the rest he had a sufficient acquaintance to be able to read them without trouble; and indeed, he never cared for a knowledge of any language excepting as a key to its literature.

History of Civilization, 1857–61

  This volume is certainly the most important work of the season; and it is perhaps the most comprehensive contribution to philosophical history that has ever been attempted in the English language. It is full of thought and original observations; but it is no speculative creation of a brilliant theorist. It is learned in the only true sense of the word. A mere glance at the matter accumulated in the notes will show the labour and reading which it has cost to quarry the materials. These are as judiciously selected as they have been widely sought, and make the volume, besides its proper merits, a most instructive repertory of facts. The style of the text is clear, and always easily followed. It is too diffuse and a little cumbrous; but it is never tedious.

  I read Buckle’s book all day, and got to the end, skipping of course. A man of talent and of a good deal of reading, but paradoxical and incoherent. He is eminently an anticipator, as Bacon would have said. He wants to make a system before he has got the materials; and he has not the excuse which Aristotle had, of having an eminently systematizing mind. The book reminds me perpetually of the Divine Legation.

  It is a remarkable book, as you say, and shows an astonishing amount of knowledge for a man of his years, and a power of generalization remarkable at any age. His views of what is connected with our spiritual nature are, no doubt, unsound, and his radicalism is always offensive. I have seldom read a book with which I have so often been angry, and yet I have learnt, I think, a great deal from it, and had my mind waked up by it upon many matters, for it has suggested to me a great variety of points for inquiry, of which I might otherwise never have thought.

  This is the most important work, in its line, from a British hand, which the world has seen for many a year…. Mr. Buckle has given us one of the most important contributions which any Englishman has yet made to the philosophy of human history. We wish we had adequate space to point out its excellencies in detail…. We congratulate the author on his success. We are sure the thoughtful world will give him a thoughtful welcome, and if his future volumes, which we anxiously look for, shall equal this, he is sure of a high place in the estimation of mankind.

  In truth, the title of the work, as far as it has proceeded, is a misnomer. It is not a history of civilization or of anything else but the statement of a system of doctrine borrowed in great part from the Positive Philosophy of Comte, and supported by a series of illustrations drawn at random from the history of all nations and all ages, and from the records of literature and science. Hence the work is eminently discursive and ill-digested, and might be prosecuted through a dozen more thick volumes, filled with the fruits of the author’s desultory reading, but having no more connection with the history of England than with that of China, and affording not even a glimpse of the writer’s theory respecting the nature of civilization. In point of mere style, the merits of the book are considerable, and even the rambling and desultory nature of its contents is a source of attractiveness and power. The language is clear, animated and forcible, sometimes rising very nearly to eloquence, and marked with the earnestness of one who thoroughly believes the doctrine which he expounds. Even the cool dogmatism of Mr. Buckle’s assertions, and his entire confidence in the truth of his opinions and the force of his arguments, are often as amusing as they are unreasonable. One who has no doubts to express, and no qualifications or exceptions to state, has a great advantage in point of liveliness of manner. Like his great master, Hobbes, he betrays a good deal of egotism also, a quality which adds much to the freshness and raciness of his style.

  It is long since any hand has taken such a grip of the thistle; it is long since the fierce little land has received such a rouser. Not, by any means, that it is all onslaught…. Mr. Buckle has been praised for his summaries of history; but I must say I think his summary of Scottish History as far as the fifteenth century exceedingly poor…. Now I challenge any one who knows anything of Scotland and the Scotch to say whether, in Mr. Buckle’s outline of Scottish History to the fifteenth century, there is any vision, any gleam, any wink, of Scotland and the Scotch at all. The sketch is featureless, feeble, confused. A few pages of Scott’s easiest slipshod, a few pages of old Barbour, or of Blind Henry, are, for the purpose of sheer science even, worth a score of it…. In two respects, it seems to me, he deserves the honour of real distinction among his literary contemporaries. In the first place, though not a rich thinker—though rather a man of three or four ideas which he uses as a constant and pronglike apparatus than a man of fertile invention from moment to moment—yet he is a thinker, and a thinker of real force. All that he writes is vertebrate, if one may so express it, with some distinct proportion or other, true or false; and there is consequently the same kind of pleasure in reading anything he writes that there is in reading a dissertation by Mr. John Stuart Mill, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or others of that select class. In the second place, he is characterized, in a singular degree, by moral fearlessness, by a boldness in speaking right out whatever he thinks.

  The most effective sketch of the intellectual and social state of France in the last century is given in Buckle’s “History of Civilisation,” vol. i; especially in ch. 8, 11, 12, and 14. His narrative only sets forth the dark side of the picture, and the Christian reader frequently feels pained at some of his remarks; but it is generally correct so far as it goes, and the references are copious to the original sources which the author used. I have therefore frequently rested content with quoting this work without indicating further sources.

  His style is flowing, but lax and utterly wanting in precision. He has not produced a single follower. His book, though readable, is already dead. The public have forgotten Mr. Buckle and Mr. Buckle’s speculations. That the public estimate of his work has changed is certain. Is the change just?… Mr. Buckle is in some respects now underrated as he was overrated sixteen years ago, but the verdict of 1873 is far more just than the verdict of 1857.

  It is seldom that so brilliant a success as Mr. Buckle’s has been even temporarily achieved by such superficial thinking and such slender scholarship. The immense array of authors cited in his book bears witness to the extent of his reading, but the loose, indiscriminate way in which they are cited shows equally how uncritical and desultory his reading was…. We find in Mr. Buckle’s book sundry commonplace reflections of quite limited value or applicability, such as the statements that skepticism is favourable to progress, or that over-legislation is detrimental to society. No doubt such commonplaces might be so treated as to acquire the practical value of new contributions to history. But to treat them so required subtle analysis of the facts generalized, and all that Mr. Buckle did was to collect miscellaneous evidences for the statements in their rough, ready-made form. Of generalizations that go below the surface of things, such as Comte’s suggestive though indefensible “Law of the Three Stages,” we find none in Mr. Buckle. The only attempt at such an analytic theory is the generalization concerning the moral and intellectual factors in social progress, wherein Mr. Buckle’s looseness and futile vagueness of thought is shown perhaps more forcibly than anywhere else in his writings. It is not of such stuff as this that a science of historic phenomena can be wrought.

  Buckle had a high ideal of the historian’s duties, and he laboriously endeavored to realize it; but he fancied himself far more successful in the attempt than he really was, and greatly underrated what had been accomplished by others. He brought a vast amount of information from the most varied and distant sources to confirm his opinions, and the abundance of his materials never perplexed or burdened him in his argumentation, but examples of well-conducted historical inductions are rare in his pages. He sometimes altered and contorted the facts; he very often unduly simplified his problems; he was very apt when he had proved a favorite opinion true to infer it to be the whole truth. His intellect was comprehensive and vigorous, but neither classically cultured nor scientifically disciplined; it was amazingly stored with facts, but not rich in ideas; it was ambitious in inspiration, confident to excess in its own powers, and exceptionally unconscious of where its knowledge ceased and its ignorance began. It was deficient in imagination, poetical feeling, and sympathy.

  The author’s want of systematic training was itself an advantage for the immediate effect of his work; he knew nothing but the prejudices he had escaped, the facts he had accumulated, and the doctrines he had marshalled them to support; he addressed a public as ignorant as he had been, and as acute as his father had been. He had followed the scientific movement of his day, and observed with prophetic insight that the discussion of the transmutation of species was the weak point in Lyell’s great work on Geology, but he had not busied himself with the speculative movement then mainly political or theological. If he had done so he would have been in danger of losing himself in side issues. As it was he stated and illustrated clearly and weightily, so that the work will not have to be done again for any section of the Western world, the conception of an orderly movement of human affairs depending upon ascertained facts of all degrees of generality. This is his great service; his special theories were of value chiefly as they furnished headings under which facts could be classified.

  It would have been impossible to tell beforehand what view of history would be taken by the studious son of an English merchant, whose opinions were formed during the great agitation for free-trade. But, when we know by experience what view he actually did take, the theory seems to be in perfect harmony with a social environment of which it was most interesting, though not the most highly organised nor the most enduring expression. In endeavouring to represent Buckle’s philosophy as something more than a mere product of individual genius, I have been faithful, amid all differences, to that most general principle which it shares with every philosophy worthy of the name, and which it has contributed so powerfully to enforce. Twenty-five years ago the idea of law, universal and unbroken, was almost a paradox. It is now almost a commonplace; and among those by whose efforts so vast a change in public opinion was accomplished must be placed the name of this noble thinker, whose learning and eloquence have not often been singly equalled, and, in their combination, have never, to my knowledge, been approached.

  The appearance of the first volume of this celebrated work in 1857 raised the author at once from obscurity to literary and social renown. The book was everywhere talked of as a phenomenal work of a new genius. Nor was it until after the author’s death, in 1862, that the reading world recovered its equanimity sufficiently to estimate the work at its real value…. Though these volumes show great breadth and acuteness of reasoning, as well as an almost unrivalled amount of learning, it must be admitted that the more carefully they are read, the more inadequate do the proofs appear. Not only that, but they are not free from inconsistencies fatal to successful argumentation…. But, in spite of these defects, some portions of the work have great value. The chapters in the first volume on “France before the Revolution” may be read with profit by every student of that period. It should also be added that many students who even reject the author’s general conclusions have been filled by him with a glowing enthusiasm for historical study.

  The “History of Civilisation in England” won for its author a reputation which has hardly been sustained. The reasons are obvious. Buckle’s solitary education deprived him of the main advantage of schools and universities—the frequent clashing with independent minds—which tests most searchingly the thoroughness and solidity of a man’s acquirements. Specialists in every department of inquiry will regard him as a brilliant amateur rather than a thorough student.

  A work singularly effective in style, which failed of permanent influence mainly through the author’s ignorance of the theory of evolution. He had grasped too hastily at conclusions derived from mere statistics, and died ere he could remodel his book by the light kindled while its composition had absorbed him.

  Buckle had many of the distinctive faults of a young writer; of a writer who had mixed little with men, and had formed his mind almost exclusively by solitary, unguided study. He had a very imperfect appreciation of the extreme complexity of social phenomena, an excessive tendency to sweeping generalizations, and an arrogance of assertion which provoked much hostility. His wide and multifarious knowledge was not always discriminating, and he sometimes mixed good and bad authorities with a strange indifference. This is a long catalogue of defects, but in spite of them Buckle opened out wider horizons than any previous writer in the field of history. No other English historian had sketched his plan with so bold a hand, or had shown so clearly the transcendent importance of studying not merely the actions of soldiers, politicians, and diplomatists, but also those great connected evolutions of intellectual, social, and industrial life on which the type of each succeeding age mainly depends. To not a few of his contemporaries he imparted an altogether new interest in history, and his admirable literary talent, the vast range of topics which he illuminated with a fresh significance, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge and for freedom that pervades his work, made its appearance an epoch in the lives of many who have passed far from its definite conclusions.

  Curiously enough, however, this book of limited perceptions and scholastic origin struck the world with that sudden accidental and moral effect which sometimes makes a man with no particular right to distinction, awake to find himself famous.

  The book attained at once, and for some time kept, an extraordinary popularity which has been succeeded by a rather unjust depreciation. Both are to be accounted for by the fact that it is in many ways a book rather of the French than of the English type, and displays in fuller measure than almost any of Buckle’s contemporaries in France itself, with the possible exception of Taine, could boast, the frank and fearless, some would say the headlong and headstrong, habit of generalisation—scorning particulars, or merely impressing into service such as are useful to it and drumming the others out—on which Frenchmen pride themselves…. The worst fault of Buckle was the Voltairianism above referred to, causing or caused by, as is always the case, a deplorable lack of taste, which is not to be confined to religious matters.

  In accounting for Buckle’s failure, stress has often been laid upon the fact that his education was private. This is a little pedantic. Grote, whose history has been accepted at the universities as the best available, was of no university. Mill, one of the men who have most influenced thought in this century, was of none either. Gibbon, perhaps the greatest of historians, has put on record how little he owed to Oxford; and Carlyle has told us with characteristic vigour how unprofitable he thought his university of Edinburgh. The men who did not go to a university have done good work; and the men who did go to one have declared that they owed little or nothing to the education there received. In the face of such facts it is impossible to account so for the failure of Buckle. The real reason, besides the cardinal fact that the attempt was premature, is that Buckle, though he had the daring of the speculator’s temperament, had neither its caution nor its breadth.

  It is admittedly the result of a unique range of reading, and displays brilliant generalising powers. The question that has exercised critics is whether the generalisations are of a really scientific kind. Whether accepted or not, many of them have become familiar in current thought, and have had a decidedly stimulating effect.

  But the two volumes that were all of the author’s colossal plan he lived to execute, are crude and unsatisfactory.

  To the reader, who takes it up with a serious determination to understand its contents, it is extremely difficult, not indeed for want of clearness, for Buckle’s style, like that of most Englishmen, is very clear, but on account of the amount of thought which he crowds into a small space. In order to write one line, Buckle must often have been obliged to work his way through several volumes. The footnotes give but a slight indication of the enormous learning of the author.

General

  A great thinker, a great writer, and a great scholar.

  It may be inferred with tolerable certainty that it was during these eight years—from 1842 to 1850—that his gradually amassed knowledge of the great outlines of modern history, together with the experience he was acquiring of the tendencies of his own mind, led him to the choice of his subject. His literary style seems also to have been completely formed by this time, for all its main characteristics are to be found in the fragments on the reign of Elizabeth, written at least as early as 1850. One of its most marked characteristics, and one which principally contributes to its energy and, above all, to its picturesque charm, is his frequent use of those metaphors and of those rhetorical forms of speech to which all the world is accustomed, and which have become common-places in the language.

  Buckle, forsooth, bears witness…. Quote if you choose publicans on liquor laws, or slave-drivers on the capacities of blacks; cite Martial as a witness to purity, or Bacchus to sobriety; put Danton to conduct a bloodless revolution, or swear in the Gracchi as special constables; but do not set up Mr. Buckle as an arbiter of judicial measure or precision, nor let the fame of anything that is called a religion or a clergy depend upon his nod.

  A poor book—a very erroneous book—is sometimes the very best provocative of thought. Who is better for this than Mr. Buckle, and who is fuller of crude paradoxes and undigested knowledge? Of him unfortunately that was true which Bentley said of Warburton, that “there never was a man with so great an appetite and so bad a digestion.” You say Mr. Buckle himself was a great commonplace-book maker. Yes, but he didn’t half digest his commonplaces. Take them and digest them yourself.