Other related topics at:
Literary Topics
32. History
"Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in
historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind
are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no
exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any high
degree; only about as much as is used in the lower kinds of
poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and colouring, will fit a
man for the task, if he can give the application which is
necessary."
Boswell: Life
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119. History
"We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real
authentick history. That certain Kings reigned, and certain
battles were fought, we can depend on as true; but all the
colouring, all the philosophy of history is conjecture."
Boswell: Life
Link
394. History; Life
"It seems to be almost the universal errour of historians to
suppose it politically, as it is physically true, that every
effect has a proportionate cause. In the inanimate action of
matter upon matter, the motion produced can be but equal to the
force of the moving power; but the operations of life, whether
private or publick, admit no such laws. The caprices of
voluntary agents laugh at calculation. It is not always that
there is a strong reason for a great event. Obstinacy and
flexibility, malignity and kindness, give place, alternately, to
each other; and the reason of these vicissitudes, however
important may be the consequences, often escapes the mind in
which the change is made."
Johnson: Thoughts on the Late Transactions Respecting
Falkland's Islands
Link
472. History; Knowledge
"To know anything ... we must know its effects; to see men we
must see their works that we may learn what reason has dictated,
or passion has incited, and find what are the most powerful
motives of action. To judge rightly of the present, we must
oppose it to the past; for all judgment is comparative, and of
the future nothing can be known. The truth is, that no mind is
much employed upon the present: recollection and anticipation
fill up almost all our moments. Our passions are joy and grief,
love and hatred, hope and fear. Of joy and grief the past is the
object, and the future hope and fear; even love and hatred
respect the past, for the cause must have been before the
effect."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
473. History
"The present state of things is the consequence of the former,
and it is natural to enquire what were the sources of the good
that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act only for
ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent: if we
are intrusted with the care of others, it is not just.
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be
properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might
prevent it."
Johnson: Rasselas [Imlac]
Note: If you haven't read it yet, please read this note of caution regarding quotes from
Rasselas.
Link
554. History; Vanity
"The miscarriages of the great designs of princes are recorded in
the histories of the world, but are of little use to the bulk of
mankind, who seem very little interested in admonitions against
errors which they cannot commit."
Johnson: Rambler #17 (May 15, 1750)
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685. History; Pleasure; Reading;
Writing
"It is not easy for the most artful writer to give us an interest
in happiness or misery, which we think ourselves never likely to
feel, and with which we have never been acquainted. Histories of
the downfalls of kingdoms and revolutions of empires are read
with great tranquillity; the imperial tragedy pleases common
auditors only by its pomp of ornaments and grandeur of ideas;
and the man whose faculties have been engrossed by business, and
whose heart never fluttered but at the rise or fall of the
stocks, wonders how the attention can be seized or the affection
agitated by a tale of love."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13, 1750)
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687. History; Moral Instruction
"The general and rapid narratives of history, which involve a
thousand fortunes in the business of a day, and complicate
innumerable incidents in one great transaction, afford few
lessons applicable to private life, which derives its comforts
and its wretchedness from the right or wrong management of
things, which nothing but their frequency makes
considerable."
Johnson: Rambler #60 (October 13, 1750)
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740. History; Research/Study
"To adjust the minute events of literary history is tedious and
troublesome; it requires indeed no great force of understanding,
but often depends upon inquiries which there is no opportunity of
making, or is to be fetched from books or pamphlets not always at
hand.
Johnson: Dryden (Lives of the Poets)
Note: The meaning of "adjust" which Johnson seems to mean is "To
reduce to the true state or standard; to make accurate." (Def'n 2
in his dictionary)
Link
790. History
"It is impossible to read the different accounts of any great
event, without a wish that truth had more power over
partiality."
Johnson: Idler #20 (August 26, 1758)
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895. Deceit; History; Innocence
"Historians are certainly chargeable with the depravation of
mankind, when they relate, without censure, those stratagems of
war by which the virtues of an enemy are engaged to his
destruction. A ship comes before a port, weather-beaten and
shattered, and the crew implore the liberty of repairing their
breaches, supplying themselves with necessaries, or burying their
dead. The humanity of the inhabitants inclines them to consent,
the strangers enter the town with weapons concealed, fall
suddenly upon their benefactors, destroy those that make
resistance, and become masters of the place; they return home
rich with plunder, and their success is recorded to encourage
imitation."
Johnson: Rambler #79 (December 18, 1750)
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984. History
"Characters should never be given by an historian, unless he knew
the people whom he describes, or copies from those who knew
them."
Boswell: Life of Johnson
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1,033. History; Perspective
"Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own,
should always doubt their conclusions."
Johnson: Milton (Lives of the Poets)
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1,154. History; Writing
"It is natural to believe ... that no writer has a more easy
task than the historian. The philosopher has the works of
omniscience to examine; and is therefore engaged in
disquisitions, to which finite intellects are utterly unequal.
The poet trusts to his invention, and is not only in danger of
those inconsistencies to which every one is exposed by departure
from truth, but may be censured as well for deficiencies of
matter as for irregularity of disposition, or impropriety of
ornament. But the happy historian has no other labour than of
gathering what tradition pours down upon him, or records treasure
for his use. He has only the actions and design of men like
himself to conceive and to relate; he is not to form, but copy
characters, and therefore is not blamed for the inconsistency of
statesmen, the injustice of tyrants, or the cowardice of
commanders. The difficulty of making variety consistent, or
uniting probability with surprise, needs not to disturb him; the
manners and actions of personages are already fixed; his
materials are provided and put into his hands, and he is at
leisure to employ all his powers in arranging and displaying
them. Yet, even with these advantages, very few in any age have
been able to raise themselves to reputation by writing
histories..."
Johnson: Rambler #122 (May 18, 1751)
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1,155. History
"Among the innumerable authours who fill every nation with
accounts of their ancestors, or undertake to transmit to futurity
the events of their own time, the greater part, when fashion and
novelty have ceased to recommend them, are of no other use than
chronological memorials, which necessity may sometimes require to
be consulted, but which fright away curiosity, and disgust
delicacy."
Johnson: Rambler #122 (May 18, 1751)
Link
1,310. Curiosity; History
"It is not easy to discover how it concerns him that gathers the
produce, or receives the rent of an estate, to know through what
families the land has passed, who is registered in the
Conqueror's survey as its possessor, how often it has been
forfeited by treason, or how often sold by prodigality. The
power or wealth of the present inhabitants of a country cannot be
much increased by an inquiry after the names of those barbarians
who destroyed one another twenty centuries ago, in contests for
the shelter of woods or convenience of pasturage. Yet we see no
man can be at rest in the enjoyment of a new purchase till he has
learned the history of his grounds from the ancient inhabitants
of the parish, and that no nation omits to record the actions of
their ancestors, however bloody, savage, and rapacious."
Johnson: Rambler #161 (October 1, 1751)
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1,759. Biography; History
"He that records transactions in which himself was engaged, has
not only an opportunity of knowing innumerable particulars which
escape spectators, but has his natural powers exalted by that
ardour which always rises at the remembrance of our own
importance, and by which every man is enabled to relate his own
actions better than another's."
Johnson: Idler #65 (July 14, 1759)
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1,760. History; Writing
"There are some works which the authors must consign unpublished
to posterity, however uncertain be the event, however
hopeless be the trust. He that writes the history of his own
times, if he adhere steadily to truth, will write that which his
own times will not easily endure. He must be content to
reposite his book till all private passions shall cease, and
love and hatred give way to curiosity."
Johnson: Idler #65 (July 14, 1759)
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