Born, at Harborne, Staffordshire, 2 Aug. 1823. Educated at school at Northampton, 1831–37; at Cheam, 1837–39; with private tutor, 1840–41. Verses pubd. in “Cromer Telegraph,” 1834. Matric. Trinity Coll., Oxford, as scholar, 7 June 1841; B.A., 10 May 1845; M.A., 14 Jan. 1848; Fellow, May 1845 to April 1847; Reader in Rhetoric, 1846. Married Eleanor Gutch, 13 April 1847. Settled at Oaklands, Gloucestershire, 1849; removed to Lanrumney, Cardiff, 1855. Contrib. to “British Quarterly Rev.,” 1851–81; to “North Brit. Rev.,” 1854–66; to “Edin. Rev.,” 1856–65; to “National Rev.,” 1858–64; to “Fortnightly Rev.,” 1865–89; to “Macmillan’s Mag.,” 1870–92; to “Contemp. Rev.,” 1877–91, etc., etc. Hon. D.C.L., Oxford, 22 June 1870. Rede Lecturer, Camb., 1872. Hon. Mem. Hist. Soc. of Massachusetts, 1873. Hon. LL.D., Camb., 1874. Knight Commander of Greek Order of Redeemer, 1875. Corresp. Mem. of Imp. Acad. of Science, St. Petersburg, 1876. Hon. Fellow Trin. Coll., Oxford, 1880. Mem. of Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, 1881. Regius Prof. of Modern Hist., and fellow of Oriel Coll., Oxford, 1884. Hon. LL.D., Edinburgh, 17 April 1884. Ill health from 1886. Died, at Alicante, 16 March 1892. Buried in Protestant Cemetery there. Works: “Principles of Church Restoration,” 1846; “Thoughts on the Study of History,” 1849; “History of Architecture,” 1849; “Notes on the Architectural Antiquities of … Gower,” 1850; An “Essay on … Window Tracery in England,” 1850; “Remarks on the Architecture of Llandaff Cathedral,” 1850; “Poems” (with G. W. Cox), 1850; “The preservation and restoration of Ancient Monuments,” 1852; “Suggestions with regard to certain proposed alterations in the Universities” (with F. H. Dickinson), 1854; “The History and Conquests of the Saracens,” 1856; “The History and Antiquities of St. David’s (with W. B. Jones), 1856; “Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy,” 1857; “History of Federal Government,” vol. i. (no more pubd.), 1863; “Leominster Priory Church” (with G. F. Townsend) [1863]; “The History of the Norman Conquest of England” (6 vols.), 1867–79; “Old English History for Children,” 1869; “History of the Cathedral Church of Wells,” 1870; “Historical Essays” (4 series), 1871–92; “General Sketch of European History,” 1872; “The Growth of the English Constitution,” 1872; “The Unity of History,” 1872; “Comparative Politics,” 1874; “Disestablishment and Disendowment,” 1874; “History of Europe,” 1876; “Historical and Architectural Sketches,” 1876; “The Turks in Europe,” 1877; “The Ottoman Power in Europe,” 1877; “How the Study of History is let and hindered,” 1879; “A Short History of the Norman Conquest,” 1880; “The Historical Geography of Europe,” 1881; “Sketches from the Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice,” 1881; “An Introduction to American International History,” 1882; “The Reign of William Rufus,” 1882; “Lectures to American Audiences,” 1882; “English Towns and Districts,” 1883; Letterpress to “Cathedral Cities: Ely and Norwich,” 1883; “Some Impressions of the United States,” 1883; “The Office of the Historical Professor,” 1884; “Greater Greece and Greater Britain,” 1886; “The Methods of Historical Study,” 1886; “The Chief Periods of European History,” 1886; “Exeter,” 1887; “Four Oxford Lectures,” 1888; “William the Conqueror,” 1888; “Sketches from French Travel,” 1891; “The History of Sicily” (4 vols.), 1891–94; “Sicily: Phoenician, Greek and Roman,” 1892. Posthumous: “Studies of Travel” (papers from “Sat. Rev.,” “Pall Mall Gaz.,” and “Guardian,” ed. by F. Freeman), 1893. He edited: “Historical Course for Schools,” 1872; etc., “Historic Towns” (with W. Hunt), 1887 [1886], etc. Life: “Life and Letters,” by W. R. W. Stephens, 1895.

Personal

  I am so delighted with your kind remembrance of me in your pretty letter, that I must write a line to tell you how much I continue to love you. I have sent you a few little tracts of my own writing, as I thought you would think them the better for that. I hope you continue fond of reading, and that you will make a wise choice in your books, on which your future character will much depend. You will therefore take the advice of the wise and the good, till you attain an age when you may be able to chuse for yourself. The Bible must have the pre-eminence of all other books. History opens a vast field to a youthful reader. But always inquire the character of the author. Poetry and polite literature must be deferred till the proper age.

  If I have not succeeded in showing that Mr. Freeman in bringing his charges against me has been more rash in his own statements, more mistaken in his facts, more unfair in his inferences, than he has shown me to be, nothing that I can add will be of the least avail. Mr. Freeman talks of an “incurable twist.” To me it seems that there is an “incurable twist” in Mr. Freeman whenever he has to speak of myself, and that where every object appears to him distorted the cause is in the eye which sees and not in the thing which is seen. If I were to argue from his own language as he has argued from mine, I should suppose him influenced by “fanatical hatred” of me. Here, so far as there is any personal controversy between myself and Mr. Freeman, the matter must end. His friend the Saturday Reviewer has pursued me for twenty years, secure in his coat of darkness, with every species of unfounded insinuation. He has himself appeared at last on the field in his own person, and I have desired him to take back his imputations. For the future he will take his own course; I shall not be a party in any further controversy with him. No one is more conscious than I am of the faults of my literary work. No one is less anxious to defend them. But, after thirty years of severe and I believe honest labour, I will not suffer a picture to be drawn of me in such colours as Mr. Freeman has been pleased to use without entering my own protest with such emphasis as I can command.

  In a room of small size, before a strictly University audience, without a sheet of paper between him and his hearers, with no lyceum-apparatus save a pointer and one or two outline-maps, prepared for the illustration of special matters, Mr. Freeman in plain English,—vigorous, and eloquent—set forth “the Eternal Eastern Question” in the light of past Politics and present History. He spoke of the Roman Power in the East; the Saracens and the Slavs; the final Division of the East and the West; the Turks, Franks, and Venetians; the Ottomans and the Beginnings of Deliverance. Probably no such telling, inspiring course was anywhere given by the English historian in his American tour.

  I belong to no profession; I can hardly be said to belong to any class. But I have points of contact with several classes. At once a Professor in Oxford and a justice of the peace in Somerset, I do not feel that I am exactly a country gentleman; still less do I feel that I am exactly an Oxford don; I suppose I am not a “literary man,” because I have never lived by writing; I suppose I am not a political character, because I have never sat in Parliament. But I feel that I have enough in common with all these classes and with other classes as well to understand all of them, without exactly belonging to any of them.

  The first time I saw Freeman was at Cambridge (the English Cambridge), on a fine day of May in 1872. He had come to deliver the Rede Lecture before the University, on “The Unity of History;” and as I had always had from my earliest days a passion for seeing any celebrated man, I made my way into the Senate House, where the great man was welcomed by a crowd of black-gowned university men and by a considerable gathering of the ladies who grace Cambridge with their presence in what has been conventionally termed the “merry month of May.” I was particularly struck with Freeman’s massive head, leonine aspect, and deep, full voice, which resounded in sonorous periods through that ugly, pseudo-classic building. I afterwards saw him, when the lecture was over, walking through the courts of St. John’s College with his friend Professor Babington, the venerable Professor of Botany, and was irreverently amused at the shortness of the historian’s legs, which rendered his walking not very unlike the waddling of a duck, while he was pointing all the time at the red brick gables of one of the older courts and probably gesticulating on architecture.

  To the faithful student of his works the tidings of Freeman’s death must have come like the news of the loss of a personal friend. To those who enjoyed his friendship even in a slight way the sense of loss was keen, for he was a very lovable man. Some people, indeed, seemed to think of him as a gruff and growling pedant, ever on the lookout for some culprit to chastise; but, while not without some basis, this notion is far from the truth.

  Rough as he could be with others—too rough, in truth—he was never rough with his trusted friends, and would bear from them criticisms and corrections which a less generous nature would have deeply resented. He might blurt out a loud “What d’ye mean?” accompanied with a fierce look, and would contest the point vehemently; but he was always amenable to reason, and gave in when he was shown to be in the wrong. But towards those who professed a knowledge, which he saw to be merely superficial and destitute of that groundwork of painstaking accuracy which characterises all his work,—“impostors” as he called them,—he sometimes manifested an intolerance which was not always kept within the bounds of courtesy and was painful to his victims and distressing to others…. Freeman was the most industrious and painstaking worker that I ever knew. I am certain that he never knew what it was to be idle. From early morning till the afternoon meal, and then again, after a period of exercise and relaxation and the society of his family, deep into the night, he was always either writing or gathering material for his writings. He had a happy power of snatching ten minutes’ sleep, which rested his sorely taxed brain, and from which he woke “like a giant refreshed with wine,” ready for fresh labours.

  Mr. Freeman was “a character.” With a heart that bled for rabbits and partridges, he reveled in trampling, armed with heavy boots of accurate citations, on the intellectual toes of other historians. About their feelings he “took no keep,” yet who so touchy as Mr. Freeman if you trifled gaily round any little error of his own? Nationalities (invariably “oppressed”), the English, the Germans, architecture, Charlemagne, the Burgundies, the Holy Roman Empire,—how much he told us about these things, with what laudable iteration! Mr. Freeman was always effervescent, and if any one whispered the word “urbanity,” he marked him not. Great must have been his joy when Mr. Froude ventured light-heartedly into his territory, and ran up his famous score of blunders over “Sainte-Ampulle,” “Saint-Croix,” les écrouelles, and other mysteries. In his letters we hear the old voice, rating, humorous, not really unfriendly. He reminds one, by his ways and his kind of usefulness, of the elephant: he moved mountains of erudition, he went fast and trampled his foes, he was kind to children, devotedly loyal to his friends, and, had he owned the gift of compression, he would have held a higher place than the high place he holds among historians.

  His intense dislike of unreality and pretence extended even to theatrical performances, and he could sympathize with the saying of good old Mrs. Blower in “St. Ronan’s Well,” “in my mind, Dr. Cacklehen, it’s a mere blasphemy for folk to gar themselves look otherwise than their Maker made them.” The occasional roughness and rudeness also of his manner, although sometimes the effect of shyness and mere awkwardness in the presence of strangers, was in the main due to that abhorrence of seeming to be what he was not, which made it impossible for him to acquiesce in conventional insincerities. For the same reason he was unable to write or speak politely of any one who pretended to more knowledge than he really had, or who enjoyed a reputation for learning which was undeserved. Nay more, he considered it to be a positive duty to expose such persons…. He entertained no ill-will whatever towards literary or political opponents…. The number of hours which he spent in reading and writing is carefully noted each day in his journal. Eleven is the maximum number recorded; but the average seems to have been about 7¹/₂. In his most vigorous days he used to begin work, in the summer, about 6 a.m., breakfasted at 8 or 8.30, and after a short walk in the garden worked on to the dinner hour, which for many years varied from 2 to 4 according to the length of the days. After dinner he went for a walk or ride, and wrote letters after his return till supper time, and then worked again from 10 or 11 to 12. In winter, dinner was commonly at 1.30, but at Oxford, and for some years before, he conformed to the practice of late dinners, and as his health became uncertain his hours of work were necessarily less regular.

  Edward Augustus Freeman was loved by many friends, and we see here how well he deserved their love; to them he was tender, affectionate and playful, with a somewhat elephantine playfulness. He said he was shy, but shyness veiled itself under an abrupt brutality of manner; he meant to be courteous, except to a fool, but then he unfortunately counted as fools most of those who did not know something of, and were not interested in, his special subjects; he once wrote, “I have always thought that the hardest precept—or rather implied precept—in the New Testament, is that which bids us to suffer fools gladly.” His rudeness was startling; he loved his fellow-creatures, but with some exceptions, and towards these exceptions he used ferocious expressions; though he would have shrunk from the practices his words implied…. He stood for parliament twice without success, and indeed was never likely to succeed in any country constituency; for though he became a Justice of the Peace, and took his part in county meetings, he was far from being a typical squire. The tenderness he showed for enslaved races he extended to hunted animals; he detested field sports of all kinds, and engaged in a rough and tumble contest with Anthony Trollope, in which it is difficult to say who hit the hardest; while both were unsubdued. But unprejudiced lookers-on must admit that Freeman had the best of the logical argument, even if illogical natures might sometimes sanction their following the hounds. With this exception, and this was of a public nature, Freeman was, as a rule, happy in his correspondents.

  He was a man of tremendous mental energy, and he was an advanced reformer in the truest sense of the word. Every cause which concerned the welfare of humanity had his strenuous support. There was a common impression among the general public that Professor Freeman was a man of rough, arrogant and overbearing manners. The writer of this History can only say that he never found anything rough, arrogant, or overbearing in Professor Freeman’s demeanour. Freeman was thought by some people to be a man who had little regard for the growth of his country’s empire, but as a matter of fact he had a regard above all other political desires for the reputation and the honour of his country…. He allowed no opinion to be with him a fetish, and, on the other hand, he recognized every opinion as a possible working instrument. He was emphatically a strong man, and his name will probably grow steadily with the growth of historical literature.

  Much has been heard about Mr. Freeman’s want of sympathy with modern Oxford, much that is mistaken and untrue. It is true that he loved most the Oxford of his young days, the Oxford of the Movement by which he was so profoundly influenced, the Oxford of the friends and fellow-scholars of his youth. But with no one were young students more thoroughly at home, from no one did they receive more keen sympathy, more generous recognition, or more friendly help. He did not like a mere smattering of literary chatter; he did not like to be called a pedant; but he knew, if any man did, what literature was and what was knowledge. He was eager to welcome good work in every field, however far it might be from his own. It is true that Mr. Freeman was distinctly a conservative in academic matters, but it is quite a mistake to think that he was out of sympathy with modern Oxford. No man was more keenly alive to the good work of the younger generation. Certainly no man was more popular among the younger dons. A few, in Oxford and outside, snarled at him, as they snarl still, but they were very few who did not recognize the greatness of his character as well as of his powers. It is not too much to say of those who had been brought into at all near relations with him that they learnt not only to respect but to love him. He was—all came to recognize it—not only a distinguished historian, but, in the fullest sense of the words, a good man. He leaves behind him a memory of unswerving devotion to the ideal of learning—which no man placed higher than he. His remembrance should be an inspiration to every man who studies history in Oxford.

  Though his temper was impatient, and he was apt to be rude to people who were distasteful to him, he was truly kind, generous-hearted, and loveable. Unsparing in his condemnation of false pretenders to learning, he would cheerfully interrupt his own work to enlighten the ignorance of an honest student. All cruelty to man or beast aroused his fiercest indignation, all suffering drew forth his pity, and he was liberal in his gifts. He was eminently truthful and expressed his thoughts and feelings without reserve. No more affectionate or constant friend ever lived…. His memory was excellent, his intellect clear, and his mind orderly and logical. His industry was amazing, he worked methodically and with an eager desire to get at the truth, and he loved his work with an intensity which rendered him limited in intellectual sympathy.

  As an undergraduate he was slight in figure, retired in manner, and very shy and silent in the presence of strangers. The entries in his Journal, which be began to keep in Oxford, show that it was his habit to attend chapel twice a day; that almost invariably he went to hear the University sermon at St. Mary’s; and that not infrequently he attended the celebration of Holy Communion in that church. Sometimes he read all night, until two o’clock in the morning; at other times he rose early, even at four o’clock in the winter months; now and then he would fall asleep in his study chair, wake up again to read until four or five, go to bed and sleep, until the hour of morning chapel. In 1845 he wrote to his affianced wife; “after the requisite cursing and swearing—the former as usual directed against his Holiness—I knelt down before the President, and was admitted a Probationary Fellow of the noble Society (Trinity). Since then I have been chiefly engaged in investigating a great problem, as to wherein the duties of a Probationary Fellow consist; for, as far as I have yet done, my chief business is reading newspapers in the Common Room, and drinking ale out of a silver tankard instead of a crockery-ware mug.” His Fellowship was vacated by his marriage. His figure at this time, we are told, was still slight; and his old habit of skipping in his walk was not overcome. He had also, it seems, an odd way of flapping the sleeves of his Scholar’s gown like wings, which earned for him the nickname, among his fellow Fellows, of “The Bantam Cock.”

History of the Norman Conquest in England, 1867–79

  Mr. Freeman’s prejudices, strong as they may be, are an essential part of the man, and his book would be tame without them. His patriotic enthusiasm for his Saxon ancestors, who were presumably the ancestors of New England as well, is an element of the book which has positive value, if only because it is a healthy reaction against the old tendency to consider everything good in civilization as due to Rome and Greece, to Cicero, to Homer, and to Justinian. Even if it were not so, enthusiasm such as his would still make a dull subject amusing…. Most of Mr. Freeman’s critics had long ago pointed out the unquestionable fact that the patriotic object at which he aims would be much more effectually reached if he would consent to put ever so slight a curb upon the really rampant vivacity of his enthusiasm, and moderate his pace a little, merely to keep his breathless followers in sight. It seemed reasonable to turn to the page which contains the well-known character of Alfred, in the hope that the opinions expressed there might have been somewhat affected by criticism. But the sentence still stands:—“Alfred … is the most perfect character in history.”… It is not from any wish to contradict this statement that one ventures to question its propriety. Mr. Freeman is as safe as though he made the same assertion about Alfred’s progenitor Adam, or his other famous ancestor Woden. But although few English scholars will care to enter the lists in order to prove from the scanty pages of Asser and the Chronicle that Alfred was not the most perfect character in history, many will smile at what they will call the vivacity of Mr. Freeman’s hobby, and will wonder that authors of his eminence should not know their art better than to undertake to browbeat their readers by sheer dogmatism.

  Mr. Freeman’s “History of the Norman Conquest” may be ranked among the great works of the present century.

  One of the greatest monuments of English historical scholarship. It not only surpasses in importance every former work on the period, but for the purposes of the general student is of greater value than all former works combined…. The style of the author is remarkable for its perspicuity, and his learning is everywhere obvious. While he is the advocate of a particular theory, he furnishes the means by which those who differ from his conclusions may determine on what basis their own views rest. He is a firm believer in the continuity of the Saxon, or, as he prefers to call it, the English, element, maintaining that the Norman Conquest, instead of overthrowing the Saxon civilization, only modified it somewhat, and that its essential characteristics have continued to be predominant throughout the whole history of England.

  His “History of the Norman Conquest” with the companion work on William Rufus, is the most characteristic and influential production of his school. It is, moreover, the work of a real historian, not of a mere historical critic, one endowed with a sense of art and symmetry, and able to paint a battle or a man. Its defects are those incident to the author’s position as a pioneer in this field of history. He is compelled to argue while he narrates, and half his book reads like a commentary on the other half.

  Mr. Freeman may have admired Macaulay greatly, but he has certainly not caught his style. Freeman is always clear, but he is often clumsy, and he repeats himself so often as to become rather tedious. His manner of compiling a historical work like the “Norman Conquest” can scarcely be commended, as any one will say who has waded through those bulky tomes. There are notes, scores of pages long, which ought to have been incorporated into the text, so that over and over again the reader has to turn back in a state of mental confusion. The whole work, too, might have been considerably abridged with advantage.

  Upon this subject he had thought and studied for nearly twenty years, or ever since the time when he was publishing works on architecture. As one turns the leaves of these stout volumes, each of seven or eight hundred pages, crowded with minute and accurate erudition, one marvels that the author could carry along so many researches and of such exhaustive character at the same time. Alike in Greek, in German, and in English History, along with abundant generalizations, often highly original and suggestive, we find investigations of obscure points in which every item of evidence is weighed as in an apothecary’s scale, and in all these directions Mr. Freeman was working at once.

General

  It is Mr. Freeman’s great merit to rely on the power of argument in an age which delights in sentiment. It is also his great merit that he scarcely ever writes on any subject to which he has not devoted careful study; but neither of these virtues would have enabled him to fight the successful battles which he has fought against all historical wrong-doers, down from the heinous criminals who think Charlemagne was a Frenchman to the petty offenders who persist in using the term “Anglo-Saxon,” unless he had possessed another peculiar quality. This quality is a faculty for repetition. Men of equal ability with Mr. Freeman, when once they have propounded their doctrines to an unheeding world, often feel it an absolutely unbearable task to repeat what they have already said until they have attracted the attention of what Austin calls “the vast confederacy of fools.”… Mr. Freeman, in short, is a man who wields a sort of intellectual hammer, and who (as children say) “hammers and hammers and hammers” until he has forced his point upon even the most unwilling hearers.

  Among eminent English Radicals, Freeman, the historian, occupies a unique place. He goes forward by going backward. He is a Radical because he is a Conservative. He is a Democrat because he is a student of antiquity…. His politics and his religion like Gladstone’s inspire all his writings…. His mind is a peculiarly English mind, strong in facts and shrewd in inferences, but weak and timid in the application of first principles.

  One cannot but think that, like all ardent reformers, he has pushed his theory to an extreme.

  For myself, I may at once say frankly that my study of the works of the Regius Professor, so far as it has yet proceeded, has led me to question more and more, in the first place his supposed pre-eminent accuracy, and in the second, the soundness of his judgment, that quality so essential to the historian, when the truth has to be discovered from various, if not conflicting authorities. In the present article I have only space to adduce some instances on the matter of accuracy, the other question being, obviously, far too wide for such treatment. And I wish it clearly to be understood that I do not seek in any way to disparage Mr. Freeman’s true achievements, or to deny that his work on this period may have surpassed that of any predecessor. Into that question I do not enter. The power and vigour of Mr. Freeman’s style, his attractive enthusiasm for his great subject, may be left to speak for themselves. I merely seek to expose that “mischievous superstition,” as I have termed it, that his “accuracy” may be implicitly relied on, a superstition which is based on his formidable array of foot-notes and quotations from original authorities, and on his own criticisms of the efforts of others, and which has led the critics of our leading reviews to pronounce that the work he has done “need never to be done again.”

  From the very beginning Freeman’s historical studies were characterized on the one hand by philosophical breadth of view, and on the other hand by extreme accuracy of statement, and such loving minuteness of detail as is apt to mark the local antiquary whose life has been spent in studying only one thing. It was to the combination of these two characteristics that the pre-eminent greatness of his historical work was due.

  To have produced as much as he has done, on so many and diverse subjects—in books, lectures, magazines, and weekly Reviews—would have been a marvel of literary industry, even if it had come partly from the brains and partly from the pens of others. But Mr. Freeman never spared himself the labour of ascertaining his facts, of thinking out his conclusions, and of writing with his own hand. The next century will be better able to assign him his place among great historians. The present generation are indebted to him, more than to any other man, for the revival of history as a serious study in this country. Apart from the example of his own unwearied activity, we owe to him at least two doctrines of supreme importance: the continuity of man’s doings in Europe from the earliest times to the present day, and the value of geography and archæology as handmaids to the historian. Mr. Freeman had, indeed, the defects of his qualities, upon which this is not the occasion to dwell. If he was unrelenting in controversy where he thought that truth was at stake, he was also one of the staunchest of friends and most kind-hearted of men. Alike by his patriotic ambition for the future of Greater England, and by his sympathy with down-trodden nationalities, he represented in politics the nobler tendencies of the day. Never seeking popularity, and owing nothing to patronage, he preserved his independence as a public teacher, and reflected honour upon the profession of letters.

  Severe as is the unflinching correctness of Mr. Freeman, he is not above the human weakness of picturesque writing. The “Norman Conquest” and the “Reign of William Rufus” would live by their literary power, if there was no more truth in them than in the leasings of Hector Boece, that most delightful of imaginative chroniclers. We bear Mr. Freeman grudge for introducing into the harmless English language various loathly distortions of familiar names, such as Eadwine and Ecghberht, which belong to no language known in the nineteenth century, and for whose accuracy if accurate these relics of barbarism be, the inveterate angliciser of every French name he uses can advance no defence. But he does not always write in early Gothic dialects, and the value of his historical writings cannot be disputed.

  The late professor rarely wrote anything which did not bear the mark of his masculine and independent mind, but it does not follow that everything he wrote is worth preserving in a permanent form…. With all the force of genuine conviction and all the courage which untiring industry, a powerful memory, and wide interest could give him, he put into practice his theory that history should be studied and taught as a whole. It may probably be said, without much fear of contradiction, that no historian of the century, except Leopold von Ranke, has so clearly grasped or so consistently maintained this doctrine.

  To Mr. Freeman “Truth” was the one object of historical study, and he would never have borne a grudge against those who pointed out his own mistakes. His only antagonism was towards the arrogance of ignorance that tried to pass itself off for knowledge.

  No one who has studied Mr. Freeman’s writings, or who has followed the story of his life, more especially in his correspondence, can fail to perceive that his merits as an historian depended upon certain moral qualities almost as much as upon his intellectual gifts. Devotion to truth, which counts no pains too great to ascertain it, courage in speaking it at all hazards, a deep sense of duty, and that power of appreciating whatever is truly noble in human character and action, which comes from keeping a high moral standard steadily in view—these qualities, which were most conspicuous in him, are indeed essential elements in the character of a really great historian.

  Freeman was pre-eminently an historical geographer. His published work in this field will probably long remain the best in the English world…. His writings upon English history are all based upon exact local studies of English topography. He extended his local observations to Normandy, France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, Sicily, and Spain. From first to last he was under the same irresistible impulse to see with his own eyes places of historical interest and to describe them minutely for the benefit of his countrymen.

  Mr. Freeman was a student of untiring energy, and will always deserve honourable memory as the first historian who recognised and utilised the value of architecture in supplying historical documents and illustrations. His style was at times picturesque but too diffuse, and disfigured by a habit of allusion as teasing as Macaulay’s antithesis or Kinglake’s stock phrases. That he was apt to pronounce very strong opinions on almost any question with which he dealt, was perhaps a less drawback to his excellence as a historian than the violently controversial tone in which he was wont to deal with those who happened to hold opinions different from his own. Putting defects of manner aside, there is no question that, for his own special period of English history (the eleventh and twelfth centuries), Mr. Freeman did more than any man had done before him, and as much as any man has done for any other period; while in relation to his further subjects of study, his work, though less trustworthy, is full of stimulus and information.

  His style has been called “architectural”; but the epithet is hardly just, for he shows little of the inspiration which his deep study of architecture might have given. His work is rather strong conscientious masonry, without that harmony of line and disposition of parts which reveal the mind of the artist. His natural emphasis of manner gives to certain themes a polemical, sometimes eloquent, expression. He is fond of the trick of repetition, especially in those passages which were written to be spoken, and, when once he is satisfied as to his facts, defends his view with the pertinacity of an advocate. In this way he weakens the judicial value of his work, which the reader, impressed by the learned investigation of fact and argument, is ready to assume. What of fervour he denies himself in description he makes good in polemic. It is there he is at his best: in strictly historical narrative he is unequal and irritatingly slow, but in the swing of political passion he may be impressive. His literary art is at the highest when it approaches the grandiloquent: he fails when he attempts a light and vivacious manner. His humour is ponderous and provokes a smile by reason of its ingenious pedantry.

  It must be confessed that great as Mr. Freeman’s authority is as an historian, his manner is often most unattractive; and that profound as is the respect paid him by the student of history called to work within the same fields, he is but little known or appreciated by the general reader. None the less will his name be handed down as that of one of the most industrious, widely learned, and reliable historians of this or any period. He grasped, as few have done, the conception of history as a unity that can only be properly studied when realised as a whole.

  No historian has had a keener grasp of hard, solid facts, or is more able to make common-sense deductions from them.

  It is said that Froude worked up his authorities, inflamed his imagination, and then, with scarcely a note to help his memory, covered his canvas with a flowing brush. Freeman, on the other hand, is never out of sight of his authorities, and in many instances, through pages and pages, his volumes are simply a cento of paraphrases from the original chroniclers. He gained freshness, and, when his text was trustworthy, an extreme exactitude; but he missed the charm of the fluid oratory of narrative, the flushed and glowing improvisation of Froude. In consequence, the style of Freeman varies so extremely that it is difficult to offer any general criticism of it. In certain portions of the “Harold,” for instance, it reaches the very nadir of dreariness; while his famous “night which was to usher in the ever-memorable morn of Saint Calixtus” suggests how finely he might have persuaded himself to see and to describe. The cardinal gift of Freeman, however, was certainly not his painstaking treatment of documents, but the remarkable breadth of his historical view.

  His supreme merit as historian is to have insisted in season and out of season on the “Unity of History.” But his own practice did not altogether do justice to his great theory. Those who do not know his occasional essays and voluminous notes and articles might imagine that he confined himself to the grand struggle between English Danes and Normans. And it must be admitted that, with all his passion for having the whole of history read together as one continuous biography of Man, he speaks at times as if Gauls, the Latin races altogether, and modern men in general, were a poor and degenerate race, whose scuffles and vagaries need not detain “a serious historian” bent on attaining to the highest truth…. Freeman was a politician, as was his master Thomas Arnold, as was Macaulay, as was Gibbon, as were De Commines and Machiavelli. Freeman was a politician; and for all his vast learning and patient collation of every written authority, he looked at men and events with a political eye and with a grasp of a practical politician. It is unfortunately true that Freeman as a politician had many of the defects of that quality. He had prejudices—some really furious prejudices; he had race antipathies, religious odium, loathing of particular schools of thought, of nations, and writers. All this deeply discredited his impartiality as a general authority on universal history—a pretention indeed which he would have been the first to disclaim. It made several of his judgments unsound and some of them laughably unfair. His contemptuous ignoring of almost every deed, man, or movement in any member of the Latin races, later at least than the fifteenth century, his hatred of all Buonapartes (sic), his contempt for the eighteenth century and all its work in Europe, his loathing of Turks and all things Turkish—these things detract from his standing as a great historian, but happily they did not seriously affect his principal tasks…. If Freeman were not a philosophic historian, not even a great historian at all, he was a consummate master of historical research, and a noble inspirer of historical enthusiasm.

  Freeman felt himself to be a man of learning rather than an author and his style is in keeping with this. There are few passages in his works that are valuable as being artistic; but among them his account of the day of the battle of Hastings (Oct. 14, 1066), and the night which followed it must be so regarded.

  Industry came naturally to Freeman, because he was fond of his own studies and did not think of his work as task work. The joy in reading and writing about bygone times sprang from the intensity with which he realised them. He had no geographical imagination, finding no more pleasure in books of travel than in dramatic poetry. But he loved to dwell in the past, and seemed to see and feel and make himself a part of the events he described. Next to their worth as statements of carefully investigated facts, the chief merit of his books lies in the sense of reality which fills them. The politics of Corinth or Sicyon, the contest of William the Red with St. Anselm, interested him as keenly as a general election in which he was himself a candidate. Looking upon current events with an historian’s eye, he was fond, on the other hand, of illustrating features of Roman history from incidents he had witnessed when taking part in local government as a magistrate; and in describing the relations of Hermocrates and Athenagoras at Syracuse he drew upon observations which he had made in watching the discussions of the Hebdomadal Council at Oxford. This power of realising the politics of ancient or mediæval times was especially useful to him as a writer, because without it his minuteness might have verged on prolixity, seeing that he cared exclusively for the political part of history. It was one of the points in which he rose superior to most of those German students with whom it is natural to compare him. Many of them have equalled him in industry and diligence; some have surpassed him in the ingenuity which they bring to bear upon obscure problems; but few of them have shown the same gift for understanding what the political life of remote times really was.