弗鲁德在英格兰的历史__CHARLES KINGSLEY.pdf

英文名著3000 本 Froudes History of England {1} by Charles Kingsley There appeared a few years since a Comic History of England, duly caricaturing and falsifying all our great national events, and representing the English people, for many centuries back, as a mob of fools and knaves, led by the nose in each generation by a few archfools and arch-knaves. Some thoughtful persons regarded the book with utter contempt and indignation; it seemed to them a crime to have written it; a proof of banausia, as Aristotle would have called it, only to be outdone by the writing a Comic Bible. After a while, however, their indignation began to subside; their second thoughts, as usual, were more charitable than their first; they were not surprised to hear that the author was an honest, just, and able magistrate; they saw that the publication of such a book involved no moral turpitude; that it was merely meant as a jest on a subject on which 1 英文名著3000 本 jesting was permissible, and as a money speculation in a field of which men had a right to make money; while all which seemed offensive in it was merely the outcome, and as it were apotheosis, of that method of writing English history which has been popular for nearly a hundred years. Which of our modern historians, they asked themselves, has had any real feeling of the importance, the sacredness, of his subject?--any real trust in, or respect for, the characters with whom he dealt? Has not the belief of each and all of them been the same--that on the whole, the many always have been fools and knaves; foolish and kna