Born at Ropley, near Alresford, 4th March 1829, was our most eminent historian of later days. Educated at Winchester, he proceeded to Oxford in 1847, gaining a first class in Lit. Hum. in 1851. Moving to London, he began in 1855 the work that was to be his life’s labour, namely, the history of England from 1603 to 1660. By 1863 he had published two volumes, being for the period from the accession of James I. to the year 1616. At the same time that he was studying and reading, he was earning his livelihood; and in spite of the absolute indifference of the public, and the failure of any adequate return for his books, he continued publishing further parts of the history until, in 1883, some public recognition was made in a demand for a second edition of the work already completed. This was published in ten volumes under the title of “A History of England from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War,” 1603–1642. Meanwhile he had written many school books of history, besides filling several posts as lecturer or examiner. Among the text-books mentioned are “The Thirty Years’ War” (1874); “The First Two Stuarts” (1876); “An Outline of English History” (1881–83); and “A Student’s History of England” (1891). In 1894 he declined the Regius professorship of Modern History at Oxford, offered to him by Lord Rosebery, for he was determined not to be deflected from his life’s work. At intervals from 1886 until 1901 he issued further parts of his history, bringing up the period treated to 1656. He at last decided to complete the work to the death of the Protector, not to the Restoration, as originally intended. But death did not suffer the crowning volume to be added…. Besides the work above mentioned, Dr. Gardiner edited many collections of papers for the Camden Society, the Scottish History Society, and the Navy Records Society. For eleven years also, from 1890 to 1901, he was editor of the “English Historical Review.”

General

  Mr. Gardiner’s one defect is that he is more successful in laying bare the springs of action than portraying the actors.

  Has by his last work, published a few months ago, completed his laborious undertaking of giving a complete history of England during the seventeenth century. It is undoubtedly the most painstaking and we should say the most carefully accurate historical work that we have known; that it is not as interesting as some brilliant works that have been written with all the ardour of a partisan, is perhaps as much a praise as a censure. Human nature instinctively recoils from the even level of unbiased accuracy, but as a work of reference Professor Gardiner’s history will probably remain without a rival.

  Those who value the teaching of the past owe a deep debt to the luminous and judicial work of Leopold von Ranke. Beside that great and honoured name students of the Stewart age will gratefully place that of Samuel Rawson Gardiner. It is impossible for any one who works at this very difficult and complicated period adequately to acknowledge the enormous obligation under which he stands to Mr. Gardiner’s knowledge and patience and fairness. It is not the least of his services to the cause of truth that he has done more than any other living writer to enable men to critically examine and justly estimate the career of Laud.

  Is the greatest living authority on the period of English history between the death of Elizabeth and the Restoration…. The writer is careful to dissociate himself from the methods of Macaulay and Forster, who, he says, look at the events and the men embraced within their narrative through the political feelings and prepossessions proper to our own time. Professor Gardiner’s desire is to judge them as from their own standpoint, and if possible to see these times and events as they appeared to the main actors in them. It must be admitted that although dealing with the most exciting period of English history, his narrative wants fire. Interesting it could not fail to be, considering the nature of the subject. But, rightly or wrongly, the graces of style that lend such a charm to the pages of Macaulay and Froude are not to be found here. In plain, often prosaic fashion, the narrative goes on, but we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that the truth, as far as that can be ascertained, has been placed before us with absolute fidelity. For the first time we feel competent to pass a final judgment upon the many actors in our great English historical epic.

  The greatness of Gardiner’s work does not proceed from his power as a thinker or from his skill as a literary artist; it was by his passion for truth and accuracy, his candour and breadth of sympathy, his unwearying industry, that he achieved a work which must ever hold its place among the chief historical productions in English literature. In the same sense in which the expression is now employed, Gardiner was not, and did not desire to be, a “scientific historian.” He did not conceive it to be the duty of the historian to efface himself in the presentation of his materials, nor to eschew all expression of his own opinion on the events and actions he has to narrate. Everywhere he frankly pronounces his judgements, whether of condemnation or approval; and in so doing he held that he was discharging not the least important function of the historian. In his conception, if history was not directly didactic, the writing of it is a vain labour; and the true scientific historian is he who most conscientiously seeks to ascertain and present the lessons which the past has to offer.