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    MR . FORSTEll'S ESSAYS . Historical and Biographical Essays . By John Forster . 2 vols . Chapman and Hall . The reader who expects to iind in tliese volumes mere reprints of essays contributed to Quarterly Reviews -will be pleasurably disappointed . Mr . Forster has now published , for the first time , two essays , one of which , at least , will take rank among the standard works of reference for the history of England during the seventeenth century . We refer to that on the Grand Remonstrance . Of the historical essays , indeed , only one is a republication , and that has been developed by important additions . So far , Mr . Forster is justified in claiming for the contents of his first volume the character of origi nal contributions to history . Of the biographical essays , four have appeared m the Quarterlies , but all have been largely amplified and elaborately revised , and , as Mr . Forster says , they were from the first , not reviews m the

    ordinary sense , but independent biographical studies , illustrating the lives and works of favourite English writers from a point of view determined by the author" himselfj and thus superior an freshness , interest , and value , to any mere analyses of works upon a larger scale . " The many additions in the present publication , " says the preface , " are meant to give to the design greater scope and fulness . " They are most considerable in the memoirs of Foote and Steele , and in the former particularly the picture has been rendered more complete by citations judiciously selected , and accompanied by commentaries which prove Mr . Forster to be almost as much a master of the manners of the times as Foote himself . The biographical essays , we should remind the reader , treat of Daniel Defoe , Sir llicjhard Steele , Charles Churchill , and Richard Foote ; the historical , of the Grand Remonstrance , the Plantagencts and Tudors , and the Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell .

    Of the historical , that .-on the Grand Remonstrance is the most remarkable , iind avc wish to direct especial attention to the fact that they who read Mr . Porster ' s first volume will study in its pages a magnificent passage of English history which has never before been presented to their observation . They may have read L-ingard and Hume , Clarendon and May ; they may have thumbed a score of modern compilations without knowing what was that glorious Remonstrance which widened the foundations of English liberty , or how it struggled through parliament during two months of fierce and passionate debate . Those discussions in the House of Commons formed , perhaps , the most important series of events prior to the erection of the King ' s standard at Nottingham , and yet , as Mr . Forester shows , they have been unaccountably slurred over by historians . Not even the Grand Remonstrance itself is read or known . Mr . Forster has exhumed it from

    beneath the mighty monumental dulness of the ¦ Kus . hworth folios , where it bad lain undisturbed for more than two centuries—an obscurity to -which Clarendon had deliberately consigned it , for Hyde was a garbler by instinct , and from his falsified summary Hume and others have derived their imperfect and lnifrlcading versions . Eight or nine lines in Hallam , and a dozen lines in Lnngard , an . incidental mention in Macaulay , and a paragraph in Disraeli , have told the living generation what it knows of the Grand Remonstrance , and if we turn to Godwin we find , that he has not a word to say concerning that foundation of a new Magna Charta . Yet the State Paper itself exists , as it was signed and sealed on the Westminster Runnymede , breathing the fire of the old Parliamentarians , embodying their case against the King , and constituting the most authentic statement ever put forth , of the wrongs endured by all classes of the English people during the first fifteen years of

    the reign of Charles the First . Here it is , the most solid and unimpeachable justification of the great rebellion in existence . It pictures the condition of the three kingdoms at the time when the Long Parliament met ; it doscribes the measures taken to redress remediable wrongs , and deal out penalties to the wicked ; it appeals to tlie laws of the realm ; it warns the nation against factious intrigues ; it rebukes political backsliders ; it accuses the Romanising Bishops and the Papacy ; it calls upon the King to dismiss bis infamous counsellors , and declares for the re-establishment of public liberty , the rights of the Commons , the freedom and the purity of religion . At the same time it is a moderate and dispassionate appeal , though warm and rapid in its flow of argument , with " quick impatience of allusion , " a minute subdivision of details , a " passionate reiteration of topics . " Presenting the pith of this memorable but hnlf-fomotten document to the reader , Mr . Forster

    also undertakes to render it intelligible . " For by the use of manuscript records as yet unemployed by any writer or historian , it will be possible to illustrate the abstract to be given of the Remonstrance , by an account of the debates respecting it in the House of Commons , and these with relation as well to itself as to its antecedents and consequences , far more interesting " , because more minute and faithful , than any heretofore given to the world . " And what is Mr . Fors tor ' s authority ? The blurred and blotted manuscript of Sir Simond D'Ewes , bound up in five volumes in the British Museum , written often on the backs of letters , fragmentary , irregular , often all but illegible , and now and then entirely so . Certainly , the fac-simile accompanying the essay compels us to helieve that Mr . i'Wstei * encountered a most repulsive labour in deciphering those notes kept in parliament by Simond D'Ewcb from lo" 40 to 1045 ' .

    Mr . Jb orstor has not only supplied a full and critical analysis of the Grand Remonstrance , with an account of the circumstances under which it was introduced and debated , but he lias painted most carefully and suggestively the scenes in the House of Commons during that protracted discussion , furnishing u striking contrast with the parliamentary life of the present day . All this narrative has an interest—indeed n fascination—for those who cure to trace the vicissitudes of the English constitution during . the tempestuous epoch of the civil wars . WlniL a singular state of manners is disclosed by the anecdote of sm unknown messenger bringing to the House of Commons , forp yni , a letter containing a piece of rug that had covered a plague-wound , and designed to touch him with the inL ' ection , when one member objected to another taking notes , whe « i motions were not permitted to be inudu in the House of Commons after noon , when African pirates swept the coast of Cornwall , commanded in some cases by Englishmen —! Sir Francis Vurney being supposed to have established himself among the pirates of 'Innis"when the French scoured the Severn and the Dutch captured East Indiamen in the Channel , when Jilizabeth Oottrel was condemned to deutli for

    stealing one of the King ' s dishes , when the soap monopolists so adulterated their manufacture that they burnt the laundresses' fingers , and when , during the Irish rebellion , stripping , torture , mutilation , whipping , drowning , starvation— after the Persian fashion— -and the disembowelling of women , were among the punishments inflicted by Catholic fury upon Protestantism . As Mr . Forster says , the historian May is no exaggerated or partial writer , and the Grand Remonstrance authoritatively bears out his declarations . No one can pretend to study in its completeness the history of the period just antecedent to the great rebellion without carefully reading Mr . Forster's

    work—for a work of great research and ability it is—oa the Grand . Remonstrance . Pie describes the House of Commons as it sat in those days—the chamber itself , the arrangement of the benches , the clerks' ' seats , the Speaker ' s chair , the solemn , bearded , puritan reformers , the peaked and rufFed gentlemen , the steeple-hats and Spanish cloaks , the swords and bands , the forms of parliamentary procedure , and the progress of the debates . In what spirit Mr . Forster writes may be exemplified by a quotation of his last sentence : —" It was ibr iate generations to enjoy what was thus toiled for so gallantly , and only with infinite suffering and terrible drawbacks won at last . But the Leaders of the Lon

    remembrance and gratitude of their descendants ; and xt will bode all to the free institutions of England when honour ceases to be paid to the men whom Bishop Warburton truly characterized as the band of greatest geniuses for government that the world ever saw leagued together for one common cause . " In a similar tone , and with a similar intention , he has composed his brilliant Sketch of Constitutional History" on the Plantagenets and the Tudors , including the reigns of the Henrys , I ., II , III ., IV ., V ., VI ., VII ., and VIII ., and Edward I ., II ., and III . —the race that left the terrible legacy of prerogative and tyranny to the Stuarts . We need only add , that the admirable paper on the Civil Wars and Oliver Cromwell , suggested by M . Guizot ' s work , and originally published in the Edinburgh Beoiew , has been enriched with additions , and improved by valuable references and revisions . . ' ¦ ...

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    tHE ART OF WAR . Elementary History of tJie Progress of the Art of War . By Lieut .-Col . X J . Graham Bontley . The attention -which the public has of late years devoted to the army , and the impetus arising- therefrom to the cause of careful military education , has had some effect in producing the beginning of a military literature . General historj' deals with . military operations in the mass , and presents them to the reader as pictures in outline or simple records of results . The historian cannot find space for those details , nor has he often the capacity or knowledge requisite to , enable him to narrate them with that method which alone render such narratives useful to the soldier . Nor does he give maps and plans without which even good descriptions are of Little avail . To test this , let any one read one of the accepted histories of the campaign of 1815 , without other assistance than , an ordinary map , and then let him read

    Siborne . or Charras with special maps and plans . Or to take another instance , read the account of Frederick ' s campaigns written by himself and then read Napier ' s Peninsular War . The reader will then see that one will give hhrt clear and distinct conceptions and enable him to understand the reasons of the movements inside , the other will give him general and confused conceptions , unless he be a student of extraordinary capacity and military tastes . For the military student , indeed , it may be laid down as an axiom that no historical work on his profession is of any value unless it be illustrated with diagrams and plans . It is for this and other reasons equally cogent that a separate military literature becomes neeessaiy . But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the general reader will not find military literature interesting to him . Indeed , there is hardly any book more popular among educated men of all kinds than Napier ' s Peninsular War , and it may be said that wherever the style and ability of the writer is equal to the greatness of the subject the same result will follow . Civilians , however , will always read military works for pleasure and the enlargement ' of their minds . The soldier should read them as a duty , just as the lawyer masters the statutes , the principles of jurisprudence , and the technical rules of his profession . All soldiers should know something of the history of the art of war , something of the campaigns of the great captains from Hannibal to Napoleon . It is not necessary that all soldiers should understand minutely either the history of war or the higher branches of their profession . The ordinary regimental officer maybe the first of his kind , and yet far from a proficient in military science and military art . No greater error coxild be made by an administrator than would be made by 'him who . should seek to ovev-educate regimental oflicers . There are certain duties to be performed which do not require any gi'eat capacity , which require a clear head , indeed , but not a high intellect ; a quick eye , moral and physical courage , a manly character , but not either any extensive knowledge of the history or the principles of Avar . It is not necessary that every regimental oflicur should be capable of commanding armies or performing staff duties of any kind . If it were it would be unattainable ; and the effort to obtain it would deprive the army of the services of very valuable men . But far different is the case -with regard to the scientific branches , the stall " , and in most cases Lhe commanders of regiments . These should be us learned in their profession us the elite of the bar who become judges and chancellors ; the elite of our academies who become professors . In order to bring young men of great capacity out from the ranks of their brother oflicers , at least in the JLiuc and the Guards , we must offer them the inducements of stall' promotion and regimental eomnuitul . While the ordinary officer need only have a general knowledge of war and its history , and si minute and . special knowledge of all that concerns the management of his company , the extraordinary ollieer , seeing that advancement would be the fruit of labour and the development of his faculties , would go beyond the knowledge of regimental details , and . starting from them an from a base would make conquests in the higher branches ol" his profession , it is for him that we need a good military literature which , while it would improve all who were tempted to study it , would bo the armoury oV the man of ft

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    No . 424 , Mat _ 8 , 1858 . ] THE LEAPEB . 449

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 8, 1858, page 449, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2241/page/17/