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Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

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Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. Sir Archibald Alison (1792–1867) Born at Kenley, Shropshire, 29th September 1792, he entered Edinburgh University in 1805, and in 1814 was called to the Scottish bar. Within three years he was making £600 a year, which allowed him to form a fine library, and make four continental tours, till, in 1822, he was appointed advocate-depute, an office he held till 1830. He now began to appear as a writer on law, politics, and literature. Appointed sheriff of Lanarkshire in 1834, and in 1852 created a baronet, he died at Possil House, Glasgow, 23d May 1867. His “History of Europe during the French Revolution” (10 vols. 1833–42) was continued under the title of “The History of Europe from the Fall of Napoleon to the Accession of Louis Napoleon” (9 vols. 1852–59). He also published Lives of Marlborough and Castlereagh, “Principles of the Criminal Law of Scotland” (2 vols. 1832–33), &c., besides contributing to “Blackwood’s Magazine” a series of Tory articles. See his Autobiography.—Patrick and Groome, 1897, eds., Chambers’s Biographical Dictionary, p. 24.    

1 Personal

  I rose at eight, and heard my son his lessons till half-past nine. Breakfast was over at ten, and from that hour till half-past eleven I wrote at my History. I then walked in to Glasgow, which I reached at twelve, and worked at my law till half-past four or five, when I walked home and dined at six. Between dinner and tea I walked in the flower-garden, in winter read the newspaper or some light work, and at eight o’clock I began again at my History, and wrote till ten, or sometimes eleven. From either of these hours till the hour of retiring to rest arrived, at half-past eleven or twelve, I was reading either books and authorities connected with my work, or classical authors, such as Livy, Sallust, Tacitus, and Thucydides, on which I was anxious to form if possible its style. So far from feeling this allotment of time fatiguing, I found it the greatest alleviation of fatigue: recreation to an active mind is to be sought not so much in rest as in change of occupation. I never found that I could do more, either at law or literature, by working at it alone the whole day, than by devoting half my time to the other. The fatigue of the two was quite different, and neither disqualified for undergoing the opposite one. Often on returning home, after sitting twelve hours in the small-debt court, and finding no alleviation of the sense of fatigue by lying on the sofa, I rose up and said, “I am too tired to rest; I must go and write my History.”—Alison, Sir Archibald, 1867(?) Some Account of My Life and Writings, vol. I, p. 355.    

2   Alison was thoroughly amiable and loved in his domestic life, and preserved health and strength, having given up writing after dinner on finishing the “History” in 1842. He notes that on 9 Sept. 1862, that is, at the age of seventy, he walked twenty miles in five hours without fatigue. He enjoyed great popularity in Glasgow; attended to his duties on 10 May 1867, was taken ill next day, and closed a singularly industrious and thoroughly honourable life on 23 May. His funeral was attended by a crowd from 100,000 to 150,000 of the people of Glasgow.—Stephen, Leslie, 1885, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. I, p. 290.    

3 General

  Alison deserves all anybody can say of his negligence, and also of his coxcombical pomposity and preachification, and worst of all, his affectation of liberalism here and there by way of extenuating to the wicked his really good principles, political and religious. But he is a good old Tory, and a good, honest, amiable man, and he has spent twenty years on this big book, and looks to it (he thinks not in vain) for pecuniary help to a large family. I think, therefore, it would meet your wishes to be gentle to him—and certainly the contrary line would give me personal pain, we being very old acquaintances, and he the sheriff of my county, whom I must meet often whenever I go to Scotland. It occurs to me that you might do him a real kindness by pointing out his blunders; but it might be done in terms of respect and civility, and without any expression of severity mingled with regret. This is, however, if you could speak with general respect of his work—and I fear you could not; and if you could not—why, the article is all alive with interest and can spare a note, however good and however amusing. Is not he led wrongly by some prior writer or writers who might be shown up with a long whip, without calling the heavy sheriff by name into the ring?—Lockhart, John Gibson, 1843, Letter to Mr. Croker, Dec. 6; The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker, ed. Jennings, vol. III, p. 12.    

4 A book to bend an omnibus,   A style like Hullah’s Chorus; Rome may put up with Tacitus,   But Glasgow boasts Sonorus! —Lockhart, John Gibson, 1848, On Alison’s History of Europe, Life and Letters, ed. Lang, vol. II, p. 321.    

5   The fundamental stratum on which Sir Archibald Alison’s character, with all its feelings and faculties, is based, is that which is in all cases indispensable, but which in many instances has been wanting. That basis is thorough, fervent, well-applied honesty. He is a man who believes with the whole power of his soul. He is not cold and formal as Robertson; he is not tainted in his whole nature, as was Gibbon, by mistaking a sinewless phantom, called “philosophy”—evoked, like some Frankenstein, from vacancy, by the literary necromancy of French savants—for an embodiment of celestial truth: friends and foes alike respect the genuine fervor, linked with earth and with heaven, which pervades and animates the writings of Sir Archibald Alison. This it is which must, we think, make his works essentially pleasing to every honest man. In one place, we may question an inference; in another, we may detect an imperfect analogy; here we may smile at the identification of the advocates of organic reform (revolution) with the powers of hell; and there we may think the laws of chaste and correct imagery infringed; but we always feel that the company of this man is safe—that his breast holds no malice or guile—that he believes really, and believes in a reality. Such is the base of Sir Archibald’s character—a basis of adamant.—Bayne, Peter, 1858, Essays in Biography and Criticism, Second Series, p. 89.    

6   Very little exception has been taken to the accuracy of his facts, as regards either omission or positive error—less than has been taken in the case of Macaulay’s “History of England;” adverse critics have confined themselves principally to his opinions. His style has been exposed to considerable animadversions: grammarians have cited from his pages numerous violations of grammar, and the “Edinburgh Review” charges him with verbosity, and with excessive pomp in the enunciation of his general reflections. These, however, are faults that occur chiefly to the critic and the cynic; and the critics of Sir Archibald’s style do not appear to have sufficiently accounted for the extraordinary world-wide popularity of the work. The “History of Europe,” widely circulated at home, has been translated into all European languages, and also into Arabic and Hindustani: in a work designed for general reading, such popularity may be taken as a proof of excellence, unless good reasons can be assigned to the contrary. The intrinsic interest of the events narrated, absorbing as that undoubtedly was, and the author’s industrious accuracy, great as that was, do not constitute a sufficient explanation; the interesting story is undeniably told with high narrative skill. When we disregard minute errors of structure, and look to general effects, we find many excellences of style that help to explain his popularity. The historian possesses a flowing command of simple and striking language, always equal to the dignity and spirit of the events related, and enlivened by happy turns of antithesis and epigram. He had a feeling for dramatic contrasts, and introduces them with striking effect. He visited the scenes of all the important engagements, and his descriptions have the freshness and animation of pictures drawn from nature. Finally, what is of prime importance in such a work, though he deals with highly complicated affairs involving the interaction of several different powers, he keeps the concurring streams of events lucidly distinct, and brings the reader without perplexity to their joint conclusion.—Minto, William, 1872–80, Manual of English Prose Literature, p. 525.    

7   Alison, as a historian, was one of the last of the school of writers who told a piece of history through, according to their bias of opinion, with some generalization, little or no original research, and superstitious belief in a way of writing that was once supposed to befit the dignity of the historian. His book covers one of the most important periods in human history, and has its use. His facts are arranged in a clear sequence, and fully set forth, although they are diffusely told by an interpreter without any conception of their meaning.—Morley, Henry, 1881, Of English Literature in the Reign of Victoria with a Glance at the Past, p. 263.    

8   This history is not only the most valuable in our language on the period described, but, although it is not without faults, it is a production of many good qualities. It was prepared with the utmost care, and its descriptions have the merits of minuteness and honesty. It would not be easy to show that any fact is suppressed or given less than its true force in order to strengthen the author’s position. But while the author obviously endeavors to be entirely fair in his statements of facts, he allows his political sympathies, those of a high Tory, to pervade every part of the production and give color to his interpretations. His strong prejudices draw him often into ardent political discussions, and the work is written in a style that shows a constant tendency to run into exaggerated and frothy declamation. But the thoughtful student has only to keep these characteristics in mind, in order to profit greatly by the work. As a description of the great events that intervened between the two Napoleons there is no other book in our language comparable with it.—Adams, Charles Kendall, 1882, A Manual of Historical Literature, p. 204.    

9   Sir Archibald Alison was not, by his own showing, a man of letters, or a moralist, or even an historian in the popular or the scientific sense. He was a man with “a mission” akin to that of Burke and Wordsworth before his time and of Mr. Mallock in our own day…. Altogether, Sir Archibald Alison appears to have been a kindly, well-intentioned gentleman and a diligent student, with a fair, if not a rich, mind. No student of the period covered by his historical works omits to read them, and no investigator of the social history of England during the earlier half of the present century will pass over his autobiography.—Wallace, William, 1882, The Academy, vol. 22, pp. 445, 446.    

10   It [“History”] is laborious and honest, though not unprejudiced. Disraeli sneeringly said that “Mr. Wordy” had proved by his twenty volumes that Providence was on the side of the Tories.—Walker, Hugh, 1897, The Age of Tennyson, p. 141.    

11   Alison’s great book was being published in successive volumes, and, large and cumbrous though it was, met with a constant and steady sale, as happens to some books which are the books of their time, even though their literary qualities are not of the first order.—Oliphant, Margaret O. W., 1897, William Blackwood and His Sons, vol. II, p. 206.    

12   He had energy and industry; he was much less inaccurate than it was long the fashion to represent him; a high sense of patriotism and the political virtues generally, a very fair faculty of judging evidence, and a thorough interest in his subject were his. But his book was most unfortunately diffuse, earning its author the sobriquet of “Mr. Wordy,” and it was conspicuously lacking in grasp, both in the marshalling of events and in the depicting of characters. Critics, even when they sympathised, have never liked it; but contrary to the wont of very lengthy histories, it found considerable favour with the public, who, as the French gibe has it, were not “hampered by the style,” and who probably found in the popular explanation of a great series of important and interesting affairs all that they cared for. Nor is it unlikely that this popularity rather exaggerated the ill-will of the critics themselves. Alison is not quotable; he is, even after youth, read with no small difficulty; but it would be no bad thing if other periods of history had been treated in his manner and spirit.—Saintsbury, George, 1898, A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, p. 218.    

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