Chapter 17

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 £600 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.

Every one knows the maxim, _pectus facit theologum_,[40] a maxim accountable, by the way, for a good deal of weak theology. More truly may it be said that the merits of a great historian are far from lying wholly in his intellectual powers. Among the highest of such merits, merits which the professional student has even more reason to appreciate than the general reader, because he more frequently discerns the disturbing causes, are two moral qualities. One is the zeal for truth, with the willingness to undertake, in a search for it, a toil by which no credit will ever be gained. The other is a clear view of, and loyal adherence to, the permanent moral standards. In both these points Freeman stood in the front rank. He was kindly and fair in his judgments, and ready to make all the allowances for any man's conduct which the conditions of his time suggested, but he hated cruelty, falsehood, oppression, whether in Syracuse twenty-four centuries ago or in the Ottoman empire to-day. That conscientious industry which spares no pains to get as near as possible to the facts never failed him. Though he talked less about facts and verities than Carlyle did, Carlyle was not so assiduous and so minutely careful in sifting every statement before he admitted it into his pages. That he was never betrayed by sentiment into partisanship it would be too much to say. Scottish critics have accused him, perhaps not without justice, of being led by his English patriotism to over-state the claims of the English Crown to suzerainty over Scotland. J. R. Green, as well as the late Mr. C. H. Pearson, thought that the same cause disposed him to overlook the weak points in the character of Harold son of Godwin, one of his favourite heroes. But there have been few writers who have so seldom erred in this way; few who have striven so earnestly to do full justice to every cause and every person. Even the race prejudices which he allowed himself to indulge, in letters and talk, against Irishmen, Frenchmen, and Jews, scarcely ever appear in his books. The characters he has drawn of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, William the Conqueror and William the Red, St. Thomas of Canterbury (none of whom he liked), and, in his _History of Sicily_, of Nicias, are models of the fairness which historical portraiture requires. It is especially interesting to compare his picture of the unfortunate Athenian with the equally vigorous but harsher view of Grote. Freeman, whom many people thought fierce, was one of the most soft-hearted of men, and tolerant of everything but perfidy and cruelty. Though disposed to be positive in his opinions, he was always willing to reconsider a point when any new evidence was discovered or any new argument brought to his notice, and not unfrequently modified his view in the light of such evidence or arguments. It was this passion for accuracy and for that lucidity of statement which is the necessary adjunct of real accuracy, that made him deal so sternly with confused thinkers and careless writers. Carelessness seemed to him a moral fault, because a fault which true conscientiousness excludes. So also clearness of conception and exact precision in the use of words were so natural to him, and appeared so essential to good work, that he would set down the want of them rather to indolence than to incapacity, and apply to them a proportionately severe censure. Mere ignorance he could pardon, but when it was, as often happens, even in persons of considerable pretensions, joined to presumption, his wrath was the hotter because he deemed it a wholly righteous wrath. Never touching any subject which he had not mastered, he thought it his duty as a critic to expose impostors, and rendered in this way, during the years when he wrote for the _Saturday Review_, services to English scholarship second only to those which were embodied in his own treatises. It must be confessed that he enjoyed the work, and, like Samuel Johnson, was not displeased to be told that he had "tossed and gored several persons."

His determination to get to the bottom of a question was the cause of the censure he so freely bestowed both on lawyers, who were wont to rest content with their technicalities, and not go back to the historical basis on which those technicalities rested, and on politicians who fell into the habit of using stock phrases which muddled or misrepresented the principles involved. The expression "national property," as applied to tithes, incensed him, and gave occasion for some of his most vigorous writing. So the commonplace grumblings against the presence of bishops in the House of Lords, which may be heard from people who acquiesce in the presence of hereditary peers, led him to give the most clear and forcible statement of the origin and character of that House which our time has produced. Here he was on ground he knew thoroughly. But his habits of accuracy were not less fully illustrated by his attitude towards branches of history he had not explored. With a profound and minute knowledge of English history down to the fourteenth century, so far as his aversion to the employment of manuscript authorities would allow, and a scarcely inferior knowledge of foreign European history during the same period, with a less full but very sound knowledge down to the middle of the sixteenth century, and with a thorough mastery of pretty nearly all ancient history, his familiarity with later European history, and with the history of such outlying regions as India or America, was not much beyond that of the average educated man. He used to say when questioned on these matters that "he had not come down to that yet." But when he had occasion to refer to those periods or countries, he hardly ever made a mistake. If he did not know, he did not refer; if he referred, he had seized, as if by instinct, something which was really important and serviceable for his purpose. The same remark applies (speaking generally) to Gibbon and to Macaulay, and I have heard Freeman make it of the writings of Mr. Goldwin Smith, for whom he had a warm admiration.

Freeman's abstention from the use of manuscript sources was virtually prescribed by his persistence in refusing to work out of his own library, or, as he used to say, out of a room which he could consider to be his library for the time being. As, however, the original authorities for the times with which he chiefly dealt are, with few or unimportant exceptions, all in print, this habit can hardly be considered a defect in his historical qualifications. In handling the sources he was a judicious critic and a sound scholar, thoroughly at home in Greek and Latin, and sufficiently equipped in Anglo-Saxon, or, as he called it, Old English. Of his breadth of view, of the command he had of the whole sweep of his knowledge, of his delight in bringing together things the most remote in place or time, it is superfluous to speak. These merits are perhaps most conspicuously seen in the plan of his treatise on Federal Government, as well as in the execution of that one volume which unfortunately was all he produced of what might have been, if completed, a book of the utmost value. But one or two trifling illustrations of this habit of living in an atmosphere in which the past was no less real to him than the present may be forgiven. When careless friends directed letters to him at "Somerleaze, Wookey, Somerset," Wookey being a village a quarter of a mile from his house, but on the other side of the river Axe, he would write back complaining that they were "confusing the England and Wales of the seventh century." When his attention had been called to a discussion in the weekly journals about Shelley's first wife he wrote to me, "Why will they worry us with this _Harrietfrage_? You and I have quite enough to do with Helen, and Theodora, and Mary Stuart." So in addressing Somersetshire rustics during his election campaign in 1868, he could not help on one occasion referring to Ptolemy Euergetes, and on another launching out into an eloquent description of the Landesgemeinde of Uri.

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. Like Gibbon, Freeman was not a mere student, but also a man with opportunities of mixing in affairs, accustomed to bear his share in the world's work, and so better able than the mere student can be to comprehend how that work goes forward. Though he was too peculiar in his views and his way of stating them to have been adapted either to the House of Commons or to a local assembly, and would indeed have been wasted upon nineteen-twentieths of the business there transacted, he loved politics and watched them with a shrewdly observant eye. Though he indulged his foibles in some directions, he could turn upon history a stream of clear common sense which sometimes made short work of German conjectures. And he was free from the craving to have at all hazards something new to advance, be it a trivial fact or an unsupported guess. He was accustomed of late years to complain that German scholarship seemed to be suffering from the passion for _etwas Neues_, and the consequent disposition to disparage work which did not abound with novelties, however empty or transient such novelties might be.