you would Then you would

regard it as a duty which lies at the bottom of all others to acquire them if I can. I think would do much to bring them home to you. The fact that it is not exactly what you proposed is an argument in its favour. I am always ready to submit to the consensus of others about what I am best fitted to do. The sum of the impressions which one produces on others shows what one really is: what one proposes to oneself shows what one would like to be. I think that I shall reach the second most surely by moving along the lines of the first. I believe that after a time at find yourself more ready for literary work. have to consider afresh whether you could do what you wanted to do there or not. No one knows till they have tried how a certain amount of practical, even of routine, work helps rather than hinders literary activity. It creates habits, it quickens the mind, it acts as a precipitate for thought. Ideas of study gained at night are suddenly brought into contact with some small detail in the morning. Often one smiles to find how a mighty theory crumbles at a touch. Often a fruitful conception is suggested by some trivial problem which one has to solve. I learned much history at a board of guardians.'

To Mr. J. W. Pease

'Cambridge: December 3, 1884.

'My dear Pease,-I was so much touched when you told me of the kind intentions of some of my Northumbrian friends that I could find nothing to say. My departure from Northumberland has filled me with humility when I see how much more highly people think of me than I deserve. I can never forget the kindness of many friends, whose friendship has taught me much, and whom I shall always value very highly. I feel as if no other place can be to me what Northumberland was, and I have no expectation that I shall ever again be as happy as I was at Embleton. I shall have other work to do, work which I thought it a duty to undertake, but I shall scarcely find again such warm friends or such cordial appreciation. To you and yours I can never sufficiently' express my gratitude. . . . I quite appreciate the form which the kindness of my friends has taken. I will choose for myself, and tell you what I have chosen.''

This refers to a present of money given him by a number of his Northumbrian friends, with which he bought a chiming clock

VOL. I.

T

CHAPTER IX

LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE

WE settled at Cambridge in the end of November 1884. There was some difficulty in getting a suitable house, and we finally bought an ugly villa residence in Brooklands Avenue, the only house we could find large enough to contain us. Its advantage was that it was pleasantly situated among beautiful trees, and had about three-quarters of an acre of garden. It was not easy to get accustomed to the small rooms and the confined space after the large vicarage and gardens at Embleton, and it was a real deprivation to one of Creighton's hospitable instincts to have but little room for visitors; but the house was made as pretty and comfortable as possible.

To Miss Dorothy Widdrington

'December 2, 1884.

'Yes, it was dreadful work leaving Embleton. I was surprised to find how much the people cared for me. I knew that I cared for them, but I felt as if I was useless to them, just as you say you do when you visit people; but I found out that in the course of years I had been woven into their lives.

'We have been settling down with difficulty into a little poky house, which, however, looks habitable at last. For a fortnight we have been toiling in cold weather amid innumerable workmen, and now I find it hard to resume a regular life. People here are very friendly, and I have much to learn before I understand a new University; but I am amazed at people's kindness. The most touching thing that has ever befallen me is the conduct of the Cambridge man who hoped to have been made Professor, when I was taken. He had for five years been preparing himself for it, and had written a book for the purpose. He is a simple student whose one aim in life it was, and who has no other prospect.

All this I did not know at the time; but he wrote to me immediately on my appointment, and I asked him to come and see me. He took to me, and has now formed a strong friendship for me. So far from bearing me a grudge, he says that my coming to Cambridge will be a greater boon to him than the Professorship. Where else are people so good and so unselfish? Still more wonderful, his wife agrees with him, and we are all fast friends.

'We are taking to dissipation, and spend our evenings in dinner parties. I have met some interesting people, especially Lord Justice Bowen and Sir Henry Maine, whose books about early society I dare say you never read. I also met Mrs. Benson, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, strange to say, is one of the wittiest and most amusing ladies I ever talked to. To-morrow I am going to London to meet at dinner Lord Acton, whom I have long been pining to see. He is a Roman Catholic, and is the most learned Englishman now alive, but he never writes anything. . . .'

Creighton went to Newcastle before Christmas to conduct the Ordination Retreat, and then came back to spend Christmas at home.

To Miss Dorothy Widdrington

'December 31, 1884.

'It seems very strange to have a Christmas without a church. But I listened on Christmas Day to one of the finest musical services in England at King's College Chapel. It is nearly perfect. Cambridge in vacation time is almost deserted, and festivities seem to have ended. I only dined out once for the last ten days. We have Miss Herbert staying with us and another young lady: I show them Cambridge. I go to the library: I get out books and read and write. My time passes quietly, and it is a great relief to me to feel that I can go on with my books and not feel that perhaps I ought to be doing something else, which always troubled me at Embleton. When I was at Newcastle the Bishop kept me hard at work. I preached seven sermons in three days. Don't you think the young men ordained must have had enough said to them in that time? I came back quite

worn out.'

Creighton gave his first course of lectures as Dixie Professor in the Lent Term of 1885. It was characteristic that he treated his inaugural lecture simply as the first of the course, and made no attempt to call attention to it, nor did he

publish it afterwards.1 Writing to a friend, he says: 'I give my first lecture to-morrow, and don't know how people will take me at all. I still feel very fresh and green, and do not know what is expected of me.' The subject of his first course of lectures was 'The Struggle about Investitures.' He had already explained his views in a letter to Mr. Gwatkin.

'Embleton Vicarage: July 16, 1884.

'My dear Gwatkin,-Thank you very much for your letter, which explains your views fully. Let me explain mine, such as they are at present, though I feel they ought to be subject to modification when I am better informed.

'I do not wish ever to lecture directly on any period offered for examination. I should prefer to take a subject within some such period, a subject concerned with ecclesiastical history, and show its general bearing on the problems of the time. For instance, I should treat Investitures as a phase of the permanent problem of the relations of Church and State. I should deal chiefly with Hildebrand, Anselm, and the Concordat of Worms. I dare say that half my course would be devoted to England, where the condition of the Church under Rufus serves admirably to illustrate the abuses which supplied Hildebrand with his strength to protest. I dare say such a course is not needed and will meet with scanty attendance; but I had rather have a class of two or three who were interested than a herd who were only anxious to get up enough for an examination and to be spared the trouble of reading themselves.

'I only contemplated one course on the Investitures, so as not to be lecturing on the period where you were. I apprehend that no one who came to the course which I have in my mind, would think himself exonerated from pursuing his period further. If I were very fortunate, I might have stirred some to want to know more about it; but this is Utopian.

My desire, however, is always to lecture in such a way that anybody may come if he likes, and will find a subject treated, not a period. If he is reading for an examination, it may make his own reading intelligent. If he only wants a little general knowledge, he may perhaps find it.

'Now do you think my course likely to interfere with yours? If so, away with it, and suggest something else within the limits which I wish to observe. You see my

It is now published in Lectures and Addresses (Longmans).

notion is that I want to teach Ecclesiastical History to anybody who wants to learn. I am willing to take a subject within a period prescribed for the History Tripos; but I don't want to commit myself simply to teach for that Tripos by taking a period as prescribed for examination, and above all things I don't want to derange your plans in any way.'

The moment in which Creighton began his Cambridge life was a critical one for historical study in the University. For some time a growing dissatisfaction with the regulations for the Historical Tripos had been felt by some of the leading teachers of history in the University. This Tripos had been established in 1873 under the auspices of J. R. Seeley, Regius Professor of History. It is probably true to say of both Seeley and his predecessor in the Chair, Charles Kingsley, that they were men of letters in the first place rather than historians. Seeley, in his inaugural lecture, had insisted on the principle that a knowledge of history, and especially of the most recent history, is indispensable to the politician. And with this view in his mind when the Historical Tripos was established, he infused into it a strong political element, and would have preferred to call it a Political Tripos. In 1884 letters were written to the Cambridge Review' by some examiners and teachers in history calling attention to the unsatisfactory character of the Tripos. It was said that its aim was practical rather than scientific, that it was political and hardly more than incidentally historical, that it called few mental faculties into play, that it was no preparation for a teacher, that a student might get a first class without ever having consulted an original authority, or learnt anything of the methods of historical research. Mr. Gwatkin asked whether the only object of the Tripos need be political, 'the training of public servants for the service of the State;' whether 'there might not be room for history even as an alternative.'

Professor Seeley's answer to these criticisms was to attack the view that the nature of the historical studies in Cambridge depended on the Tripos. 'I myself,' he wrote, 'have always regarded the Tripos as a thing which does not concern me, and which might conceivably, though it has not done so, mar the effectiveness of my teaching.' Mr. G. W. Prothero's rejoinder was obvious, that, whatever a professor might do,