chorus, "He that shall endure to the end," with its chaste and severely
beautiful melody, and the calm, invincible faith which it expresses.
After all the harrowing years of doubt and distress, the victory was
such in its magnitude as has been granted to but few mortals to win. He
lived to see his life's work done; the thought of his eighteenth year
was realized in his sixty-ninth; and its greatness had come to be
admitted throughout the civilized world. In September, 1893, his
seventieth year was completed, and his autumn in the lovely home at
Jamaica Plain was a pleasant one. On the first Sunday afternoon in
November he rowed on the pond in his boat, but felt ill as he returned
to the house, and on the next Wednesday, the 8th, he passed quietly
away. Thus he departed from a world which will evermore be the richer
and better for having once had him as its denizen. The memory of a life
so strong and beautiful is a precious possession for us all.
As for the book on which he laboured with such marvellous heroism, a
word may be said in conclusion. Great in his natural powers and great in
the use he made of them, Parkman was no less great in his occasion and
in his theme. Of all American historians he is the most deeply and
peculiarly American, yet he is at the same time the broadest and most
cosmopolitan. The book which depicts at once the social life of the
Stone Age, and the victory of the English political ideal over the ideal
which France inherited from imperial Rome, is a book for all mankind and
for all time. The more adequately men's historic perspective gets
adjusted, the greater will it seem. Strong in its individuality, and
like to nothing else, it clearly belongs, I think, among the world's few
masterpieces of the highest rank, along with the works of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Gibbon.
_February, 1897._
IX
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN
The sudden death of Professor Freeman, last March [1892], was a great
calamity to the world of letters. Although his achievements in the field
of historical writing had been so varied and voluminous, yet some of his
most important themes--some of those which had been slowly ripening and
most richly developed in his mind--were still awaiting literary
treatment at his hands, and at the time of his death he had just
finished the third volume of a colossal work which was still in its
earlier stages. His end was premature, and it is with a keen sense of
bereavement that we take this occasion to pay a brief word of tribute to
so dear and honoured a teacher.
Edward Augustus Freeman, son of John Freeman of Redmore Hall, in
Worcestershire, was born at Harborne, Staffordshire, August 2, 1823. His
life was always purely that of a scholar and teacher, and a chronicle of
its events would consist chiefly of the record of books published and
offices held at the University of Oxford. He was graduated at Trinity
College in 1845, and remained there as a Fellow until 1847. In 1857,
1863, and 1873 he served as Examiner in Modern History. In 1880 he was
chosen honorary Fellow of Trinity, and in 1884 Fellow of Oriel. In the
latter year he was appointed Regius Professor of Modern History,
succeeding Bishop Stubbs in that position. It is not necessary to
enumerate the honorary degrees which he received from Oxford and
Cambridge, and from universities in various European countries. At the
time of his death he was a member of learned societies in nearly all
parts of the world. For many years he had been a Knight Commander of the
Greek Order of the Saviour. He had also received honours of knighthood
from Servia and Montenegro. In 1868 he was a candidate for Parliament,
but failed of election; and that seems to have been his sole venture in
the world of politics. His travels upon the continent of Europe were
many and extensive. When at home he lived in rural seclusion,--"far from
the madding crowd,"--upon his estate at Somerleaze, near Wells and its
noble cathedral; only in these latter years he made a home for himself,
during the Oxford terms, at St. Giles in that city.
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 preëminent greatness of his historical work was
due. We see the combination already prefigured, and to some extent
realized, in his first book, "A History of Architecture," published in
1849, although this can hardly be called such a work of original
research as the books of his maturer years. Two years afterward appeared
the learned "Essay on the Origin and Development of Window Tracery in
England," a work which I do not feel able to criticise, but which I am
sure is very charming to read. I believe that this book was followed by
at least three others in the same department, "Architectural Antiquities
of Gower," "The Antiquities of St. David's," and "The Architecture of
Llandaff Cathedral," but I have never seen them. In the preface to the
essay on window tracery Mr. Freeman alludes to Rev. G. W. Cox as his
"friend and coadjutor in many undertakings," and I have heard of a
volume of poems "by G. W. C. and E. A. F." published in those days, but
I know no more about it. It is to be hoped that these early works,
which have become very scarce, will before long be collected and
reprinted.
When, after these publications on architecture, Freeman began publishing
books and articles on ancient Greece and on the Saracens, I presume
there were many of his readers who thoughtlessly assumed that he had
changed his vocation; he must more than once have had to answer the
stupid question why he had gone over from architecture to history. But
in his mind the evolution of architecture was never separated from the
course of political history; and the effect of these early studies in
architecture, which were indeed never abandoned, but kept up with
enthusiasm in later years, was to give increased definiteness and
concreteness to his presentation of historical events. When I use such a
word as "evolution" in this connection, I do not mean that Mr. Freeman
was in any sense a "disciple" of the modern evolution philosophy. There
is nothing to show that he ever gave any time or attention to the study
of that subject, or that he had any technical knowledge even of its
terminology. Whether consciously or unconsciously, however, he was an
evolutionist in spirit. From the outset he was deeply impressed with the
solidarity of human history, and no student of political development in
our time has made more effective use of the comparative method.
From 1850 to 1863 Freeman's published writings were chiefly concerned
with Mediterranean history viewed on the broadest scale in relation to
all those movements of progressive humanity which have had that great
inland sea for a common centre. Here came those brilliant essays on
"Ancient Greece and Mediæval Italy," "Homer and the Homeric Age," "The
Athenian Democracy," "Alexander the Great," "Greece during the
Macedonian Period," "Mommsen's History of Rome," "The Flavian Cæsars,"
and others since collected in the second series of his "Historical
Essays." To this period also belongs the little book on the "History of
the Saracens," based upon lectures given at the Philosophical
Institution in Edinburgh.
From these Mediterranean studies may be said to have grown two of
Freeman's three great works,--both of them, unfortunately, left
incomplete at his death,--the "History of Federal Government" and the
"History of Sicily." Freeman was remarkably free from the common
habit--common even among eminent historians--of concentrating his
attention upon some exceptionally brilliant period or so-called
"classical age," to the exclusion of other ages that went before and
came after. Such a habit is fatal to all correct understanding of
history, even that of the ages upon which attention is thus unwisely
concentrated. Freeman understood that in some respects, if not in
others, the history of Greece is just as important after the battle of
Chæronea as before; and he became especially interested in the history
of the Achaian League and other Greek attempts at federation. Thence
grew the idea of studying the development of federal union as the
highest form of nation-building, beginning with its germs in the leagues
among Greek autonomous cities. The enterprise was arduous, involving as
it did the determination of obscure points in the history of many ages
and countries, more particularly Greece, Switzerland, and America. The
first volume, containing the general introduction and the history of the
Greek federations, was published in 1863, a stalwart octavo of 721
pages. It bore upon the title-page a motto from "The Federalist," No.
XVIII.,--"Could the interior structure and regular operation of the
Achaian League be ascertained, it is probable that more light might be
thrown by it on the science of federal government than by any of the
like experiments with which we are acquainted." This book is of
priceless value, and if Freeman had never published anything more, it
would have entitled him to a place in the foremost rank of historians.
It deals thoroughly with a very important portion of the world's
history to which no one before had even begun to do justice. Its
admirable philosophical spirit is matched by its keen critical insight
and its minute and exhaustive control of all sources of information. Its
narrative, moreover, is full of human interest. Yet it never became a
popular book. It was hard to make people believe that the Achaian League
could be interesting, and in order to realize the philosophical value of
the whole story most readers would need to have the later portions of it
set before their eyes.
But this noble work, in some respects the grandest of the author's
conceptions, was never completed. The first volume was all that ever was
published. For this fact I have sometimes heard Americans offer a
grotesque explanation. The volume published in 1863, in the middle of
our Civil War, bore the title "History of Federal Government, from the
Foundation of the Achaian League to the Disruption of the United
States." This title gave offence in America. It was too hastily taken to
indicate that the author wished well to the Southern Confederacy, and
regarded its independence as an accomplished fact. There can be no doubt
that the title was ill chosen; but to suppose, as some people did, that
chagrin at the success of the Union arms prevented Freeman from going
on with his book was simply ridiculous. It was not anything that
happened in America, but something that happened in Europe, which caused
him to defer the completion of his second volume. That volume was to
deal with federal government as exemplified in Switzerland and otherwise
in Germany; and the war of 1866 between Prussia and Austria marked the
beginning of organic changes in Germany which Freeman was anxious to
watch for a while before finishing his book.
He therefore turned aside and took up the third of his three great
works,--the only one that he lived to complete,--the "History of the
Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results." 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 Freeman was working at once. When it came to publishing,
volume followed volume with surprising quickness. Turning aside in 1866
from the second volume of the "Federal Government" when a large part of
it was already written, Freeman brought out the first volume of the
"Norman Conquest" in 1867, the second in 1868, the third in 1869, the
fourth in 1871, the fifth more leisurely in 1876. The proportions of
this work are eminently characteristic of the author's historical
perspective. In order to understand the Norman Conquest, a survey of all
previous English history, and especially of the struggle between
Englishmen and Danes, is essential; and the first volume carries us in
one great sweep from the landing of Hengist to the accession of Edward
the Confessor, while the early history of Normandy also receives due
attention. We now enter the region of proximate causes, which require
more detailed specification, and the second volume takes us through the
four-and-twenty years of Edward's reign. His death hurries the situation
to its dramatic climax, and the whole of the third volume is devoted to
the events of the single year 1066. The completion of the Conquest down
to the death of the Conqueror is treated with less detail, and the
twenty-one years are comprised within a volume. Finally, in summing up
the results of the great event, the last volume covers two centuries,
and leaves us in the reign of Edward I., the king who did so much to
make modern English history the glorious tale that it has been. In
finishing his work upon these proportions, Freeman encountered many
points in the reign of William Rufus that needed fuller treatment, and
so in 1882 he published in two volumes the history of that reign as a
sequel to the "Norman Conquest." Taken as a whole, the seven volumes
give us such a masterly philosophic analysis and such a picturesque and
vivid narrative of the history of England in the eleventh century that
it must be pronounced the monumental work upon which Freeman's
reputation will chiefly rest.
While these volumes were in course of publication, there was scarcely a
year when its busy author, from his wealth of knowledge, did not bring
out some other book. Sometimes it was what men count a slight affair,
such as a textbook,--albeit the textbook is perhaps the hardest kind of
book to write well; sometimes it was a brief monograph or course of
lectures; sometimes a collection of earlier writings. There was an "Old
English History for Children" (1869), a "Short History of the Norman
Conquest" (1880), and a "General Sketch of European History" (1873). The
"Growth of the English Constitution" was suggestively treated in a small
volume (1872). There was a "History of the Cathedral Church at Wells"
(1870), and there was a collection of "Historical and Architectural
Sketches," chiefly from Italy (1876), followed by "Sketches from the
Subject and Neighbour Lands of Venice" (1881). In these two last-named
volumes, illustrated chiefly from the author's own drawings, one sees
that his interest in Diocletian and Theodoric was scarcely less keen
than in Alfred of Wessex or William the Norman. No other modern
traveller has done such justice to Istria and Dalmatia. "I am not
joking," he writes, "when I say that the best guide to those parts is
still the account written by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus
more than nine hundred years back. But it is surely high time that there
should be another." Freeman's accurate knowledge of southeastern Europe
and its peoples, coupled with his wide and comprehensive study of the
contact between Christians and Mussulmans in all ages, led him to take
very sound and wholesome views of the unspeakable Turk and the
everlasting Eastern Question; and in 1877, when public attention was so
strongly directed toward the Balkans, he published a lucid and graphic
little volume on "The Ottoman Power in Europe." This book was a
companion to the "History of the Saracens," above mentioned, and the two
together make as good an introduction to Mussulman history in its
relations to Europe as the general reader is likely to find.
Among the host of side works which were issued during these years, two
call for especial mention. In the lectures on "Comparative Politics,"
given at the Royal Institution in 1873, Freeman analyzed and described
the different forms assumed by Aryan institutions among Greeks, Romans,
and Teutons. This book is his most distinct attempt to make his central
theme the career of an institution, such as kingship or representative
assemblies, rather than the career of a state or a people. In the
"History of Federal Government," the two kinds of treatment, analytical
and synthetical, were combined in a way that would, I think, have made
that his grandest work, had it been completed. In the lectures we get an
able analysis and comparison, full of fruitful suggestions, and in our
author's happiest style. There is not the originality of scholarship
here that we find in Sir Henry Maine, nor do we find the breadth of view
that can be gained only when the barbaric non-Aryan world is taken into
account. Such breadth was not to be expected twenty years ago, and
before the path-breaking work of the American scholar Lewis Morgan.
Freeman's outlook was confined to the Aryan domain; but he did not
attempt more than he knew. His task was conceived with so clear a
consciousness of his limitations, and every point was so richly
illustrated, that the "Comparative Politics" remains one of his most
useful and charming books.
The other work calling for especial mention is "The Historical Geography
of Europe," published in 1880. Its object was "to trace out the extent
of territory which the different states and nations of Europe have held
at different times in the world's history; to mark the different
boundaries which the same country has had, and the different meanings in
which the same name has been used." Such work is of great and
fundamental importance, because men are perpetually making grotesque
mistakes through ignorance or forgetfulness of the changes which have
occurred on the map; as, for example, when somebody speaks of Lyons in
the twelfth century as a French city, or supposes that Charles the Bold
invaded Swiss territory. Historical writings fairly swarm with blunders
based upon unconscious errors of this sort, and nowhere did Freeman do
better service than in pointing them out on every possible occasion. No
writer has so effectively warned the historical student against that
besetting sin of "bondage to the modern map." His exposition of
historical geography is a book of purest gold, and no serious student of
history can safely neglect it.
In 1881 Mr. Freeman visited the United States, and gave lectures on "The
English People in its Three Homes" and "The Practical Bearings of
European History," which were afterward published in a volume. After
returning home he published "Some Impressions of the United States"
(1883), a very entertaining book because of the author's ingrained habit
of comparing and discriminating social phenomena upon so wide a scale.
Gauls and Illyrians, Wessex and Achaia, come in to point each a moral,
and show how to this great historian the whole European past was almost
as much a present and living reality as the incidents occurring before
his eyes.
In the same year, 1883, Freeman published his "English Towns and
Districts," a series of addresses and sketches in which he had from time
to time embodied the results of his antiquarian and architectural
studies in many parts of England and Wales. It is a book of rare
fascination as illustrating how largely national history is made up of
local history, and how it is impossible to understand the former
correctly without paying much attention to the latter. In further
illustration of the same point, Freeman projected the well-known series
of monographs on "Historic Towns," to which he himself contributed the
opening volume, on "Exeter" (1886).
Having been called to the Regius Professorship at Oxford in 1884,
Freeman's next publications were university lectures on "Methods of
Historical Study," "The Chief Periods of European History," "Fifty Years
of European History," "Teutonic Conquest in Gaul and Britain," "Greater
Greece and Greater Britain," and "George Washington the Expander of
England" (1886-88). Meanwhile, the colossal work on "Sicily" was rapidly
assuming its final shape. This topic obviously touched upon Freeman's
other two chief topics at two points. Ancient Sicily was part of that
Greek world which he had so thoroughly studied in connection with the
beginnings of federal government. Mediæval Sicily was one of the most
important of the Norman's fields of activity. But the thought of writing
the history of that fateful island did not come to Freeman as an
afterthought suggested by his other two great works. On the contrary,
the conception of the historic position of Sicily was among the first
that stimulated his philosophic mind to undertake comprehensive studies.
The contact between the Aryan and Semitic civilizations along the coasts
of the Mediterranean is surely the most interesting topic in the history
of mankind, as the reader will at once admit when he reflects that it
involves the origin and rise of Christianity. But, restricting ourselves
to the political aspects of the subject, how full of dramatic grandeur
it is! How stirring were the scenes of which Sicily has been the
theatre! There struggled Carthage, first against Greek, and then against
Roman; and in later times the conflict was renewed between
Arabic-speaking Mussulmans and Greek-speaking Christians, until the
Norman came to assert his sway over both, and to loosen the clutch of
the Saracen upon the centre of the Mediterranean world. The theme, in
its manifold bearings, was worthy of Freeman, and he was worthy of it.
His design was to start with the earliest times in which Sicily is known
to history, and to carry on the narrative as far as the death of the
Emperor Frederick II. and the final overthrow of the Hohenstaufen
dynasty. The scheme lay ripening in his mind for nearly half a century,
and its consummation was begun with characteristic swiftness and vigour.
Two noble volumes were published in 1891, and the third was out of the
author's hands by the end of last January. But for a death most
lamentably sudden and premature there was no reason why the whole task
should not have been soon accomplished. The author seems to have fallen
a victim to his superabundant zeal and energy. He had always been a
traveller, visiting in person the scenes of his narratives, narrowly
scrutinizing each locality with the eye of an antiquarian, exploring
battlefields and making drawings of churches and castles, running from
one end of Europe to the other to verify some mooted point. It was, I
believe, on some such expedition as this that he found himself, last
March, at Alicante, where an attack of smallpox suddenly ended his life.
To the faithful students 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, seem 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. Freeman's conception of the duty of a historian was
a high one, and he lived up to it. He had a holy horror of slovenly and
inaccurate work; pretentious sciolism was something that he could not
endure, and he knew how easy it is to press garbled or misunderstood
history into the service of corrupt politics. He found the minds of
English-speaking contemporaries full of queer notions of European
history, especially as to the Middle Ages,--notions usually misty and
often grotesquely wrong; and he did more than any other Englishman of
our time to correct such errors and clear up men's minds. Such work
could not be done without attacking blunders and the propagators of
blunders. Freeman's assaults were not infrequent, and they were apt to
be crushing; but they were made in the interests of historic truth, and
there were none too many of them. Like "Mr. F.'s Aunt," the great
historian did "hate a fool;" and it is clearly right that fools should
be silenced and made to know their place.