Chapter 18

To think of the Germans is to think of industry. Freeman was a true Teuton in the mass of his production. Besides the seven thick volumes devoted to the Norman Conquest and William Rufus, the four thick volumes to Sicily, four large volumes of collected essays, and nine or ten smaller volumes on architectural subjects, on the English constitution, on the United States, on the Slavs and the Turks, he wrote an even greater quantity of matter which appeared in the _Saturday Review_ during the twenty years from 1856 to 1876, and it was by these articles, not less than by his books, that he succeeded in dispelling many current errors and confusions, and in establishing some of his own doctrines so firmly that we now scarcely remember what iteration and reiteration, in season and out of season, and much to the impatience of those who remembered that they had heard these doctrines often before, were needed to make them accepted by the public. Freeman's swift facility was due to his power of concentration. He always knew what he meant an article to contain before he sat down to his desk; and in his historical researches he made each step so certain that he seldom required to reinvestigate a point or to change, in revising for the press, the substance of what he had written.

In his literary habits he was so methodical and precise that he could carry on three undertakings at the same time, keeping on different tables in his working rooms the books he needed for each, and passing at stated hours from one to the other. It is often remarked that the growth of journalism, forcing men to write hastily and profusely, tends to injure literature both in matter and in manner. In point of matter, Freeman, though for the best part of his life a very prolific journalist, did not seem to suffer. He was as exact, clear, and thorough at the end as he had been at the beginning. On his style, however, the results were unfortunate. It retained its force and its point, but it became diffuse, not that each particular sentence was weak, or vague, or wordy, but that what was substantially the same idea was apt to be reiterated, with slight differences of phrase, in several successive sentences or paragraphs. He was fond of the Psalter, great part of which he knew by heart, and we told him that he had caught too much of the manner of Psalm cxix. This tendency to repetition caused some of his books, and particularly the _Norman Conquest_ and _William Rufus_, to swell to a portentous bulk. Those treatises, which constitute a history of England from A.D. 1042 to 1100, would be more widely read if they had been, as they ought to have been, reduced to three or four volumes; and as he came to perceive this, he resolved in the last year of his life to republish the _Norman Conquest_ in a condensed form. To be obliged to compress was a wholesome, though unwelcome, discipline, and the result is seen in some of his smaller books, such as the historical essays, and the sketches of English towns, often wonderfully fresh and vigorous bits of work. Anxiety to be scrupulously accurate runs into prolixity, and Freeman so loved his subjects that it pained him to omit any characteristic detail a chronicler had preserved; as he once observed to a distinguished writer who was dealing with a much later period, "You know so much about your people that you have to leave out a great deal, I know so little that I must tell all I know." The tendency to repeat the same word too frequently sprang from his preference for words of Teutonic origin and his pride in what he deemed the purity of his English. His pages would have been livelier had he felt free to indulge in the humour with which his private letters sparkled; for he was full of fun, though it often turned on points too recondite for the public. But it was only in the notes to his histories, and seldom even there, that he gave play to one of the merits that most commended him to his friends.

So far of his books. He was, however, also Regius Professor of History at Oxford during the last eight years of his life, and thus the head of the historical faculty in his own university which he dearly loved. That he was less effective as a teacher than as a writer may be partly ascribed to his having come too late to a new kind of work, and one which demands the freshness of youth; partly also to the cramping conditions under which professors have to teach at Oxford, where everything is governed by a system of examinations which Freeman was never tired of denouncing as ruinous to study. His friends, however, doubted whether the natural bent of his mind was towards oral teaching. It was a peculiar mind, which ran in a deep channel of its own, and could not easily, if the metaphor be permissible, be drawn off to irrigate the adjoining fields. He was always better at putting his own views in a clear and telling way than at laying his intellect alongside of yours, apprehending your point of view, and setting himself to meet it. Or, to put the same thing differently, you learned more by listening to him than by conversing with him. He had not the quick intellectual sympathy and effusion which feels its way to the heart of an audience, and indeed derives inspiration from the sight of an audience. In his election meetings I noticed that the temper and sentiment of the listeners did not in the least affect him; what he said was what he himself cared to say, not what he felt they would wish to hear. So also in his lecturing he pleased himself, and chose the topics he liked best rather than those which the examination scheme prescribed to the students. Perhaps he was right, for he was of those whose excellence in performance depends upon the enjoyment they find in the exercise of their powers. But even on the topics he selected, he did not take hold of and guide the mind of the students, realising their particular difficulties and needs, but simply delivered his own message in his own way. Admitting this deficiency, the fact remains that he was not only an ornament to the University by the example he set of unflagging zeal, conscientious industry, loyalty to truth, and love of freedom, but also a stimulating influence upon those who were occupied with history. He delighted to surround himself with the most studious of the younger workers, gave them abundant encouragement and recognition, and never grudged the time to help them by his knowledge or his counsel.

Much the same might be said of his lifelong friend and illustrious predecessor in the chair of history (Dr. Stubbs), whom Freeman had been generously extolling for many years before the merits of that admirable scholar became known to the public. Stubbs disliked lecturing; and though once a year he delivered a "public lecture" full of wisdom, and sometimes full of wit also, he was not effective as a teacher, not so effective, for instance, as Bishop Creighton, who won his reputation at Merton College long before he became Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge. But Stubbs, by his mere presence in the University, and by the inexhaustible kindness with which he answered questions and gave advice, rendered great services to the studies of the place. It may be doubted whether, when he was raised to the episcopal bench, history did not lose more than the Church of England gained. Other men of far less ability could have discharged five-sixths of a bishop's duties equally well, but there was no one else in England, if indeed in Europe, capable of carrying on his historical researches. So Dr. Lightfoot was, as Professor at Cambridge, doing work for Christian learning even more precious than the work which is still affectionately remembered in his diocese of Durham.

Few men have had a genius for friendship equal to Freeman's. The names of those he cared for were continually on his lips, and their lives in his thoughts; their misfortunes touched him like his own; he was always ready to defend them, always ready to give any aid they needed. No differences of opinion affected his regard. Sensitive as he was to criticism, he received their censure on any part of his work without offence. The need he felt for knowing how they fared and for sharing his thoughts with them expressed itself in the enormous correspondence, not of business, but of pure affection, which he kept up with his many friends, and which forms, for his letters were so racy that many of them were preserved, the fullest record of his life.

This warmth of feeling deserves to be dwelt on, because it explains the tendency to vehemence in controversy which brought some enmities upon him. There was an odd contrast between his fondness for describing wars and battles and that extreme aversion to militarism which made him appear to dislike the very existence of a British army and navy. So his combativeness, and the zest with which he bestowed shrewd blows on those who encountered him, though due to his wholesome scorn for pretenders, and his hatred of falsehood and injustice, seemed inconsistent with the real kindliness of his nature. The kindliness, however, no one who knew him could doubt; it showed itself not only in his care for dumb creatures and for children, but in the depth and tenderness of his affections. Of religion he spoke little, and only to his most intimate friends. In opinion he had drifted a long way from the Anglo-Catholic position of his early manhood; but he remained a sincerely pious Christian.

Though his health had been infirm for some years before his death, his literary activity did not slacken, nor did his powers show signs of decline. There is nothing in his writings, nor in any writings of our time, more broad, clear, and forcible than many chapters of the _History of Sicily_. Much of his work has effected its purpose, and will, by degrees, lose its place in the public eye. But much will live on into a yet distant future, because it has been done so thoroughly, and contains so much sound and vigorous thinking, that coming generations of historical students will need it and value it almost as our own has done.

[37] An excellent Life of Freeman has been written by his friend Mr. W. R. W. Stephens, afterwards Dean of Winchester, whose death while these pages were passing through the press has caused the deepest regret to all who had the opportunity of knowing his literary gifts and his lovable character.

[38] The scholars of Trinity were then (1843) all High Churchmen, and never dined in hall on Fridays. Fourteen years later there was not a single High Churchman among them. Ten or fifteen years afterwards Anglo-Catholic sentiment was again strong. Freeman said that his revulsion against Tractarianism began from a conversation with one of his fellow-scholars, who had remarked that it was a pity there had been a flaw in the consecration of some Swedish bishops in the sixteenth century, for this had imperilled the salvation of all Swedes since that time. He was startled, and began to reconsider his position.

[39] Having had about the same time a brush with George Anthony Denison (Archdeacon of Taunton), and a less friendly passage of arms with James Anthony Froude, he wrote to me in 1870: "I am greater than Cicero, who was smiter of one Antonius. I venture to think that I have whopped the whole _Gens Antonia_--first Anthony pure and simple, which is Trollope; secondly, James Anthony, whom I believe myself to have smitten, as Cnut did Eadric swiðe rihtlice, in the matter of St. Hugh; thirdly, George Anthony, with whom I fought again last Tuesday, carrying at our Education Board a resolution in favour of Forster's bill." Trollope and he became warm friends. Froude he heartily disliked, not, I think, on any personal grounds, but because he thought Froude indifferent to truth, and was incensed by the defence of Henry VIII.'s crimes.

It may be added that Freeman, much as he detested Henry VIII., used to observe that Henry had a sort of legal conscience, because he always wished his murders to be done by Act of Parliament, and that the earlier and better part of Henry's reign ought not to be forgotten. He was fond of quoting the euphemism with which an old Oxford professor of ecclesiastical history concluded his account of the sovereign whom, in respect of his relation to the Church of England, it seemed proper to handle gently: "The later years of this great monarch were clouded by domestic troubles."

[40] "The heart makes the theologian."

ROBERT LOWE VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE[41]

Had Robert Lowe died in 1868, when he became a Cabinet Minister, his death would have been a political event of the first magnitude; but when he died in 1892 (in his eighty-second year) hardly anybody under forty years of age knew who Lord Sherbrooke was, and the new generation wondered why their seniors should feel any interest in the disappearance of a superannuated peer whose name had long since ceased to be heard in either the literary or the political world. It requires an effort to believe that he was at one time held the equal in oratory and the superior in intellect of Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone. There are few instances in our annals of men who have been equally famous and whose fame has been bounded by so short a span out of a long life.

No one who knew Lowe ever doubted his abilities. He made a brilliant reputation, first at Winchester (where, as his autobiography tells us, he was miserable) and then at Oxford, where he was the contemporary and fully the peer of Roundell Palmer (afterwards Lord Chancellor Selborne) and of Archibald Tait (afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury). He was much sought after and wonderfully effective as a private tutor or "coach" in classical subjects, being not only an excellent scholar but extremely clear and stimulating as a teacher. He retained his love of literature all through life, and made himself, _inter alia permulta_, a good Icelandic scholar and a fair Sanskrit scholar. For mathematics he had no turn at all. Active sports, he tells us, he enjoyed, characteristically adding, "they open to dulness also its road to fame." When he left the University, where anecdotes of his caustic wit were long current, he tried his fortune at the Bar, but with such scant success that he presently emigrated to New South Wales, soon rose to prominence and unpopularity there, returned in ten years with a tolerable fortune and a detestation of democracy, became a leading-article writer on the _Times_, entered Parliament, but was little heard of till Lord Palmerston gave him (in 1859) the place of Vice-President of the Committee of Council on Education. His function in that office was to administer the grants made from the national treasury to elementary schools, and as he found the methods of inspection rather lax, and noted a tendency to superficiality and a neglect of backward children, he introduced new rules for the distribution of the grant (the so-called "Revised Code") which provoked violent opposition. The motive was good, but the rules were too mechanical and rigid and often worked harshly; so he was presently driven from office by an attack led by Lord Robert Cecil (now Lord Salisbury).

Though Lowe became known by this struggle, his conspicuous fame dates from 1865, when he appeared as the trenchant critic of a measure for extending the parliamentary franchise in boroughs, introduced by a private member. Next year his powers shone forth in their full lustre. The Liberal Ministry of Lord Russell, led in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone, had brought in a Franchise Extension Bill (applying to boroughs only) which excited the dislike of the more conservative or more timid among their supporters. This dislike might not have gone beyond many mutterings and a few desertions but for the vehemence with which Lowe opposed the measure. He fought against it in a series of speeches which produced a greater impression in the House of Commons, and roused stronger feelings of admiration and hostility in the country, than any political addresses had done since 1832. The new luminary rose so suddenly to the zenith, and cast so unexpected a light that everybody was dazzled; and though many dissented, and some attacked him bitterly, few ventured to meet him in argument on the ground he had selected. The effect of these speeches of 1866 can hardly be understood by any one who reads them to-day unless he knows how commonplace and "practical," that is to say, averse to general reasonings and historical illustrations, the character of parliamentary debating was becoming even in Lowe's time. It is still more practical and still less ornate in our own day.

The House of Commons then contained, and has indeed usually contained (though some Houses are much better than others), many capable lawyers, capable men of business, capable country gentlemen; many men able to express themselves with clearness, fluency, and that sort of temperate good sense which Englishmen especially value. Few, however, were able to produce finished rhetoric; still fewer had a range of thought and knowledge extending much beyond the ordinary education of a gentleman and the ordinary ideas of a politician; and the assembly was one so intolerant of rhetoric, and so much inclined to treat, as unpractical, facts and arguments drawn from recondite sources, that even those who possessed out-of-the-way learning were disposed, and rightly so, to use it sparingly. In Robert Lowe, however, a remarkable rhetorical and dialectical power was combined with a command of branches of historical, literary, and economic knowledge so unfamiliar to the average member as to have for him all the charm of novelty. The rhetoric was sometimes too elaborate. The political philosophy was not always sound. But the rhetoric was so polished that none could fail to enjoy it; and the political philosophy was put in so terse, bright, and pointed a form that it made the ordinary country gentleman fancy himself a philosopher while he listened to it in the House or repeated it to his friends at the club. The speeches, which, though directed against a particular measure, constituted an indictment of democratic government in general, had the advantages of expressing what many felt but few had ventured to say, and of being delivered from one side of the House and cheered by the other side. No position gives a debater in the House of Commons such a vantage ground for securing attention. Its rarity makes it remarkable. If the speaker who attacks his own party is supposed to do so from personal motives, the personal element gives piquancy. If he may be credited with conscientious conviction, his shafts strike with added weight, for how strong must conviction be when it turns a man against his former friends. Accordingly, nothing so much annoys a party and gratifies its antagonists as when one of its own recalcitrant members attacks it in flank. When one looks back now at the contents of these speeches--there were only five or six of them--and finds one's self surprised at their success, this favouring circumstance and the whole temper of the so-called "upper classes" need to be remembered. The bulk of the wealthier commercial class and a large section of the landed class had theretofore belonged to the Liberal party. Most of them, however, were then already beginning to pass through what was called Whiggism into habits of thought that were practically Tory. They did not know how far they had gone till Lowe's speeches told them, and they welcomed his ideas as justifying their own tendencies.

In themselves, as pieces either of rhetoric or of "civil wisdom," the speeches are not first-rate. No one would dream of comparing them to Burke's, in originality, or in richness of diction, or in weight of thought. But for the moment they were far more appreciated than Burke's were by the House of his time, which thought of dining while he thought of convincing. Robert Lowe was for some months the idol of a large part of the educated class, and indeed of that part chiefly which plumed itself upon its culture. I recollect to have been in those days at a breakfast party given by an eminent politician and nominal supporter of the Liberal Ministry, and to have heard Mr. G. S. Venables, the leader of the _Saturday Review_ set, an able and copious writer who was a sort of literary and political oracle among his friends, deliver, amid general applause, including that of the host, the opinion that Lowe was an intellectual giant compared to Mr. Gladstone, and that the reputation of the latter had been extinguished for ever.

This period of glory, which was enhanced by the fall of Lord Russell and Mr. Gladstone from power in June 1866--the defeat came on a minor point, but was largely due to Lowe's speeches--lasted till Lowe, who had now become a force to be counted with, obtained office as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Liberal Ministry which Mr. Gladstone formed in the end of 1868. From that moment his position declined. He lost popularity and influence both with the country and in the House of Commons. His speeches were always able, but they did not seem to tell when delivered from the ministerial bench. His financial proposals, though ingenious, were thought too ingenious, and showed a deficient perception of the tendencies of the English mind. No section likes being taxed, but Lowe's budgets met with a more than usually angry opposition. His economies and retrenchments, so far from bringing him the credit he deserved, exposed him to the charge of cheese-paring parsimony, and did much to render the Ministry unpopular. Before that ministry fell in 1874, Lowe, who had in 1873 exchanged the Exchequer for the Home Office, had almost ceased to be a personage in politics. He did nothing to retrieve his fame during the six years of Opposition that followed, seldom spoke, took little part in the denunciation of Lord Beaconsfield's Eastern and Afghan policy, which went on from 1876 till 1880, and once at least gave slight signs of declining mental power. So in 1880 he was relegated to the House of Lords, because the new Liberal Government of that year could not make room for him. Very soon thereafter his memory began to fail, and for the last ten years of his life he had been practically forgotten, though sometimes seen, a pathetic figure, at evening parties. There is hardly a parallel in our parliamentary annals to so complete an eclipse of so brilliant a luminary.