HALLAM
(September 1828)

The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of
Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By HENRY HALLAM. In 2 vols.
1827

History, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound
of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind
by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents.
But, in fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have
never been known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length,
in our own time, they have been completely and professedly
separated. Good histories, in the proper sense of the word, we
have not. But we have good historical romances, and good
historical essays. The imagination and the reason, if we may use
a legal metaphor, have made partition of a province of literature
of which they were formerly seized per my et per tout; and now
they hold their respective portions in severalty, instead of
holding the whole in common.

To make the past present, to bring the distant near, to place us
in the society of a great man or on the eminence which overlooks
the field of a mighty battle, to invest with the reality of human
flesh and blood beings whom we are too much inclined to consider
as personified qualities in an allegory, to call up our ancestors
before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and
garb, to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables,