Mr. Purcell's biography, for to do so would have extended them beyond
the limits of a sketch. I have, moreover, found that the disclosures
contained in the biography do not oblige me to darken the colours of
the sketch itself. Taken all in all, these intimate records of
Manning's life tend to confirm the view that, along with his love of
power and pre-eminence, along with his carelessness about historic
truth, along with the questionable methods he sometimes allowed
himself to use, there lay deep in his heart a genuine and unfailing
sympathy with many good causes, such as the cause of temperance, and a
real tenderness for the poor and for children. If he was far removed
from a saint, still less was he the mere worldly ecclesiastic, crafty
and ambitious, who has in all ages been a familiar and unlovely type
of character.
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN[37]
Edward Freeman was born at Harborne in South Staffordshire on 2nd
August 1823, and died at Alicante on 16th March 1892, in the course of
an archaeological and historical journey to the east and south of
Spain, whither he had gone to see the sites of the early Carthaginian
settlements. His life was comparatively uneventful, as that of learned
men in our time usually is. He was educated at home and at a private
school till he went to Oxford at the age of eighteen. There he was
elected a scholar of Trinity College in 1841, took his degree (second
class in _literae humaniores_) in 1845, and was elected a fellow of
Trinity shortly afterwards. Marrying in 1847, he lost his fellowship,
and settled in 1848 in Gloucestershire, and at a later time went to
live in Monmouthshire, whence he migrated in 1860 to Somerleaze, a
pretty spot about a mile and a half to the north-west of Wells in
Somerset. Here he lived till 1884, when he was appointed (on the
recommendation of Mr. Gladstone) to the Regius Professorship of Modern
History at Oxford. Thenceforth he spent the winter and spring in the
University, returning for the long vacation to Somerleaze, a place he
dearly loved, not only in respect of the charm of the surrounding
scenery, but from its proximity to the beautiful churches of Wells and
to many places of historical interest. For the greater part of his
manhood his surroundings were those of a country gentleman, nor did he
ever reconcile himself to town life, for he loved the open sky, the
fields and hills, and all wild creatures, though he detested what are
called field sports, knew nothing of natural history, and had neither
taste nor talent for farming. As he began life with an income
sufficient to make a gainful profession unnecessary, he did not
prepare himself for any, but gave free scope from the first to his
taste for study and research. Thus the record of his life is, with the
exception of one or two incursions into the field of practical
politics, a record of his historical work and of the journeys he
undertook in connection with it.
History was the joy as well as the labour of his life. But the
conception he took of it was peculiar enough to deserve some remark.
The keynote of his character was the extraordinary warmth of his
interest in the persons, things, and places which he cared for, and the
scarcely less conspicuous indifference to matters which lay outside the
well-defined boundary line of his sympathies. If any branch of inquiry
seemed to him directly connected with history, he threw himself
heartily into it, and drew from it all it could be made to yield for his
purpose. About other subjects he would neither read nor talk, no
matter how completely they might for the time be filling the minds of
others. While an undergraduate, and influenced, like most of the abler
men among his Oxford contemporaries, by the Tractarian opinions and
sentiments then in their full force and freshness,[38] he became
interested in church architecture, discerned the value which
architecture has as a handmaid to historical research, set to work
to study mediaeval buildings, and soon acquired a wonderfully full and
exact knowledge of the most remarkable churches and castles all over
England. He taught himself to sketch, not artistically, but
sufficiently well to record characteristic points, and by the end of
his life he had accumulated a collection of hundreds of drawings made
by himself of notable buildings in France, Germany, Italy, and
Dalmatia, as well as in the British Isles. Architecture was always
thenceforward to him the prime external record and interpreter of
history. But it was the only art in which he took the slightest
interest. He cared nothing for pictures or statuary; was believed to
have once only, when his friend J. R. Green dragged him thither,
visited a picture-gallery in the course of his numerous journeys; and
did not seem to perceive the significance which paintings have as
revealing the thoughts and social condition of the time which produced
them. Another branch of inquiry cognate to history which he prized
was comparative philology. With no great turn for the refinements of
classical scholarship, and indeed with some contempt for the practice
of Latin and Greek verse-making which used to absorb much of the time
and labour of undergraduates and their tutors at Oxford and Cambridge,
he was extremely fond of tracing words through different languages
so as to establish the relations of the peoples who spoke them, and,
indeed, used to argue that all teaching of languages ought to begin
with Grimm's law, and to base his advocacy of the retention of Greek
as a _sine qua non_ for an Arts degree in the University on the
importance of that law. But with this love for philology as an
instrument in the historian's hands, he took little pleasure in
languages simply as languages--that is to say, he did not care to
master, and was not apt at mastering, the grammar and idioms of a
tongue. French was the only foreign language he spoke with any
approach to ease, though he could read freely German, Italian, and
modern Greek, and on his tour in Greece made some vigorous speeches
to the people in their own tongue. He had learnt to pronounce Greek in
the modern fashion, which few Englishmen can do; but how much of his
classically phrased discourses did the crowds that acclaimed the
distinguished Philhellene understand? So too he was a keen and
well-trained archaeologist, but only because archaeology was to him a
priceless adjunct--one might almost say the most trustworthy source--of
the study of early history. As evidence of his accomplishments as an
antiquary I cannot do better than quote the words of a master of that
subject, who was also one of his oldest friends. Mr. George T. Clark
says:--
He was an accurate observer, not only of the broad features of a
country but of its ancient roads and earthworks, its prehistoric
monuments, and its earlier and especially its ecclesiastical
buildings. No man was better versed in the distinctive styles of
Christian architecture, or had a better general knowledge of the
earthworks from the study of which he might hope to correct or
corroborate any written records, and by the aid of which he often
infused life and reality into otherwise obscure narrations.... He
visited every spot upon which the Conqueror is recorded to have
set his foot, compared many of the strongholds of his followers
with those they left behind them in Normandy, and studied the
evidence of Domesday for their character and possessions. When
writing upon Rufus he spent some time in examining the afforested
district of the New Forest, and sought for traces of the villages
and churches said to have been depopulated or destroyed. And for
us archaeologists he did more than this. When he attended a
provincial congress and had listened to the description of some
local antiquity, some mound, or divisional earthbank, or
semi-Saxon church, he at once strove to show the general evidence
to be deduced from them, and how it bore upon the boundaries or
formation of some Celtic or Saxon province or diocese, if not upon
the general history of the kingdom itself.... He thus did much to
elevate the pursuits of the archaeologist, and to show the relation
they bore to the far superior labours of the historian.
Freeman was always at his best when in the field. It was then that
the full force of his personality came into play: his sturdy
upright figure, sharp-cut features, flowing beard, well-modulated
voice, clear enunciation, and fluent and incisive speech. None who
have heard him hold forth from the steps of some churchyard cross,
or from the top stone of some half-demolished cromlech, can ever
cease to have a vivid recollection of both the orator and his
theme.
Freeman took endless pains to master the topography of any place he
had to deal with. When at work in his later years on Sicilian history
he visited, and he has minutely described, the site of nearly every
spot in that island where a battle or a siege took place in ancient
times, so that his volumes have become an elaborate historical
guide-book for the student or tourist.
But while he thus delighted in whatever bore upon history as he
conceived it, his conception was one which belonged to the eighteenth
century rather than to our own time. It was to him not only primarily
but almost exclusively a record of political events--that is to say,
of events in the sphere of war, diplomacy, and government. He
expressed this view with concise vigour in the well-known dictum,
"History is past politics, and politics is present history"; and
though his friends remonstrated with him against this view as far too
narrow, excluding from the sphere of history many of its deepest
sources of interest, he would never give way. That historians should
care as much (or more) for the religious or philosophical opinions of
an age, or for its ethical and social phenomena, or for the study of
its economic conditions, as for forms of government or battles and
sieges, seemed to him strange. He did not argue against the friends
who differed from him, for he was ready to believe that there must be
something true and valuable in the views of a man whom he respected;
but he could not be induced to devote his own labours to the
elucidation of these matters. He would say to Green, "You may bring in
all that social and religious kind of thing, Johnny, but I can't." So
when he went to deliver lectures in the United States, he delighted in
making new acquaintances there, and was interested in the Federal
system and in all institutions which he could trace to their English
originals, but did not care to see anything or hear anything about the
economic development or social life of the country.
The same predominant liking for the political element in history made
him indifferent to many kinds of literature. It may indeed be said
that literature, simply as literature, did not attract him. In his
later years, at any rate, he seldom read a book except for the sake of
the political or historical information it contained. Among the
writers whom he most disliked were Plato, Carlyle, and Ruskin, in no
one of whom could he see any merit. Plato, he said, was the only
author he had ever thrown to the other end of the room. Neither,
although very fond of the Greek and Roman classics generally, did he
seem to enjoy any of the Greek poets except Homer and Pindar and, to
some extent, Aristophanes. His liking for Pindar used to surprise us,
because Pindar is peculiarly the favourite poet of poetical minds; and
I suspect it was not so much the splendour of Pindar's style and the
wealth of his imagination that Freeman enjoyed, as rather the
profusion of historical and mythological references. He was impatient
with the Greek tragedians, and still more impatient with Virgil,
because (as he said) "Virgil cannot or will not say a thing simply."
Among English poets his preference was for the old heroic ballads,
such as the songs of Brunanburh and Maldon, and, among recent
writers, for Macaulay's _Lays_. The first thing he ever published
(1850) was a volume of verse, consisting mainly of ballads, some of
them very spirited, on events in Greek and Moorish history. It may be
doubted if he remembered a line of Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, or
Tennyson. He blamed Walter Scott for misrepresenting history in
_Ivanhoe_, but constantly read the rest of his stories, taking special
pleasure in _Peveril of the Peak_. He bestowed warm praise upon
_Romola_, on one occasion reading it through twice in a single
journey. Mrs. Gaskell's _Mary Barton_, Marryatt's _Peter Simple_,
Trollope's _The Warden_ and _Barchester Towers_, were amongst his
favourites. Among the moderns, Macaulay was his favourite prose
author, and he was wont to say that from Macaulay he had learned never
to be afraid of using the same word to describe the same thing, and
that no one was a better model to follow in the choice of pure
English. Limitations of taste are not uncommon among eminent men. What
was uncommon in Freeman was the perfect frankness with which he avowed
his aversions, and the absence of any pretence of caring for things
which he did not really care for. He was in this, as in all other
matters, a singularly simple and truthful man, never seeking to appear
different from what he was, and finding it hard to understand why
other people should not be equally simple and direct. This directness
made him express himself with an absence of reserve which often gave
offence. Positive and definite, with a strong broad logic which every
one could follow, he was a formidable controversialist even on
subjects outside history. A good specimen of his powers was given in
the argument against the cruelty of field sports which he carried on
with Anthony Trollope. His cause was not a popular one in England, but
he stated it so well as to carry off the honours of the fray.[39]
The restriction of his interest to a few topics--wide ones, to be
sure--seemed to increase the intensity of his devotion to those few;
and thus even the two chief practical interests he had in life
connected themselves with his conception of history. One was the
discharge of his duties as a magistrate in the local government of his
county. While he lived at Somerleaze he rarely missed Quarter
Sessions, speaking seldom, but valuing the opportunity of taking part
in the rule of the shire. The other was the politics of the time,
foreign politics even more than domestic. He was from an early age a
strong Liberal, throwing himself into every question which bore on the
Constitution, either in state or in church, for (as has been said)
topics of the social or economic kind lay rather out of his sphere.
When Mr. Gladstone launched his Irish Home Rule scheme in 1886,
Freeman espoused it warmly, and praised it for the very point which
drew most censure even from Liberals, the removal of the Irish members
from Parliament. He was intensely English and Teutonic, and wished the
Gael to be left to settle, or fight over, their own affairs in their
own island, as they had done eight centuries ago. Even the idea of
separating Ireland altogether from the English Crown would not have
alarmed him, for he did not thank Strongbow and Henry II. for having
invaded it; while, on the other hand, the plan of turning the United
Kingdom into a federation, giving to England, Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales each a local parliament of its own, with an imperial parliament
for common concerns, shocked all his historical instincts.
In 1859 he was on the point of coming forward as a parliamentary
candidate for the borough of Newport in Monmouthshire, and again at
the election of 1868 he actually did stand for one of the divisions of
Somerset, and showed in his platform speeches a remarkable gift of
eloquence, and occasionally, also, of humour, coupled with a want of
those minor arts which usually contribute more than eloquence does to
success in electioneering. I went round with him, along with his and
my friend Mr. Albert Dicey, and few are the candidates who get so much
pleasure out of a contest as Freeman did. He was a strenuous advocate
of disestablishment in Ireland, the question chiefly at issue in the
election of 1868, because he thought the Roman Catholic Church was of
right, and ought by law to be, the national Church there; but no less
decidedly opposed to disestablishment in England, where it would have
pained him to see the uprooting of a system entwined with the ideas
and events of the Middle Ages. In his later years he told me that if
the Liberal party took up the policy of disestablishment in Wales, he
did not know whether he could adhere to them, much as he desired to do
so.
Similarly he disliked all schemes for drawing the colonies into closer
relations with the United Kingdom, and even seemed to wish that they
should sever themselves from it, as the United States had done. This
view sprang partly from his feeling that they were very recent
acquisitions, with which the old historic England had nothing to do,
partly also from the impression made on him by the analogy of the
Greek colonies. He held that the precedent of the Greek settlements
showed the true and proper relation between a "metropolis," or
mother-city, and her colonies to be one not of political dependence or
interdependence, but of cordial friendliness and a disposition to
render help, nothing more. These instances are worth citing because
they illustrate a remarkable difference between his way of looking
historically at institutions and Macaulay's way. A friend of his (the
late Mr. S. R. Gardiner), like Freeman a distinguished historian, and
like him a strong Home Ruler, wrote to me upon this point as
follows:--
Freeman and Macaulay are alike in the high value they set upon
parliamentary institutions. On the other hand, when Macaulay wants
to make you understand a thing, he compares it with that which
existed in his own day. The standard of the present is always with
him. Freeman traces it to its origin, and testifies to its growth.
The strength of this mode of proceeding in an historian is
obvious. Its weakness is that it does not help him to appreciate
statesmanship looking forward and trying to find a solution of
difficult problems. Freeman's attitude is that of the people who
cried out for the good laws of King Edward, trying to revive the
past.
Freeman was apt to go beyond his own dictum about history and
politics, for he sometimes made history present politics as well as
past.
By far the strongest political interest--indeed it rose to a
passion--of his later years was his hatred of the Turk. In it his
historical and religious sentiment, for there was a good deal of the
Crusader about him, was blended with his abhorrence of despotism and
cruelty. Ever since the beginning of the Crimean war he had been
opposed to the traditional English policy of supporting the Sultan.
Ever since he had thought about foreign politics at all he had
sympathised with the Christians of the East. So when Lord Beaconsfield
seemed on the point of carrying the country into a war with Russia in
defence of the Turks, no voice rose louder or bolder than his in
denouncing the policy then popular with the upper classes in England.
On this occasion he gave substantial proof of his earnestness by
breaking off his connection with the _Saturday Review_ because it had
espoused the Turkish cause. This cost him L600 a year, a sum he could
ill spare, and took from him what had been the joy of his heart,
opportunities of delivering himself upon all sorts of current
questions. But his sense of duty forbade him to write for a journal
which was supporting a misguided policy and a minister whom he thought
unscrupulous.
His habit of speaking out his whole mind with little regard to the
effect his words might produce, or to the way in which they might be
twisted, sometimes landed him in difficulties. One utterance raised an
outcry at the time, because it was made at a conference held in London
in December 1876 to oppose Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern policy. The
Duke of Westminster and Lord Shaftesbury presided at the forenoon and
afternoon sessions, and the meeting, which told powerfully on the
country, was wound up by Mr. Gladstone. Freeman's speech, only ten
minutes long, but an oratorical success at the moment, contained the
words, "Perish the interests of England, perish our dominion in India,
rather than that we should strike one blow or speak one word on behalf
of the wrong against the right." This flight of rhetoric was perverted
by his opponents into "Perish India"; and though he indignantly
repudiated the misrepresentation, it continued to be repeated against
him for years thereafter, and to be cited as an instance of the
irresponsible violence of the friends of the Eastern Christians.
The most conspicuous and characteristic merits of Freeman as an
historian may be summed up in six points: love of truth, love of
justice, industry, common sense, breadth of view, and power of vividly
realising the political life of the past.