BOOKS •
LONGMAN'S LIFE AND TIMES OF EDWARD III.* THE researches from which these volumes sprang had their origin, as the author tells us, in his preparations for a continuation of the popular lectures on the "history of England" which be had delivered to a local association for the improvement of the working-classes, and which were afterwards published. A change of residence altered, however, his original purpose, and he pursued his investigations into the reign of Edward III. with an enlarged conception of treatment, appealing to the historical student as well as to a more popular audience. The original plan and purpose of the lectures—for such they really are—is, however, exhibited in the present volumes more purely than the author himself was probably aware of, and it is evident that Mr. Longman's personal tastes and powers naturally belong to the narrative and mstlietie side of history, rather than the critical or disquisitional. There are not wanting, indeed, sufficient incidental proofs that facts and the course of events are not to him mere household stories, to interest and amuse, without any greater or deeper import ; and his judgments, when he feels called upon to pronounce them, are clear and sensible, and generally such as to command assent ; still, any one who compares the space which has been allotted to general reflections and leading views with that so lavishly bestowed on the details of military campaigns, will feel at once that the heart of the writer, and as a necessary consequence, to a great extent his peculiar forte, is in the telling of great deeds themselves, and not in searching out "causes of things from whence they flow."
This old-fashioned conception of the duties of an historian, in which the philosophy of facts holds a decidedly secondary place to accurate narrative of the facts, is so exceptional in these days that readers who have been brought up in the modern school may be inclined at first to turn away somewhat contemptuously from the volumes as a mere story-book. Nor can Mr. Longman hope to attract to his pages—to supply the place of these dissatisfied philosophers— that numerous class of unphilosophical readers who delight solely in the spectacle and the sensational element of history. With excellent taste in one who had so many temptations in his subject-matter to indulge in "purple tints" and theatrical blue and red lights, the author has preserved a pure and almost severe style of composition and colouring, which may disarm the unfriendly criticism of any literary purist, but will certainly send away disappointed some of our excitement-loving consumers of print. This is, in fact, in the main a history of the principal events of a memorable reign, simply, and clearly, and intelligently told, without affectation of style or meretricious appeals to leas cultivated tastes, with occasional comments of a more general character, pointed and well chosen, though less frequent and more brief than our own taste would perhaps expect and desire.
This " unp/a/usap/aca/ " style of treatment (as, compared with histories of a similar stamp in modern times, it will generally be called), to which some serious objections might be brought in the case of certain periods of history, is, in some respects, not ill adapted, even on philosophical principles, to the period which Mr. Longman has chosen for his theme. If ever a nation lived and the national thoughts and feelings were expressed in the active events of the campaign and the battle-field, it was the case with the English nation iu the Scotch and French wars of Edward III. The nobles found in them a more attractive and famous arena for the exercise of their chivalric accomplishments than in the mimic warfare of jousts and tournaments, and with a King and heir-apparent to the Crown at their head who were themselves the very ideals of the perfect Knighthood of the period, they lived, and their life,—so large an element then in the national one,—was expressed in these details of wars which may seem wearisome and comparatively unimportant to the more ciell—if not more civilize 1—tendencies of the present day. Even commerce— usually looked upon as the natural enemy of romantic war schemes and mere heroic glory—was won and fascinated to the
• The History 41I the Life and Times of Eduard III. By William Longman. 2 yo:s. London: Longmana, ilreen, and Co. PAW.
same policy, not merely by the general and paramount spirit of the age, but also by considerations of profit and permanent utility, which would be appreciated even now by the manufacturers of Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Flemish alliance, which formed so important a feature in Edward's foreign policy, was one which peculiarly affected and was of real and substantial importance to Englishmen of the middle and lower classes. The natural rivalry between industrial communities of a kindred, if not the same stock, and the jealousy inherent in every class of competition, might sometimes operate so far as to blind the English producers to the advantages of secure and profitable marts for their wools and other untnanufactured goods, but the immunity from piratical attacks which would follow on the reduction of Calais and other Continental ports must have been clearly seen ; and keen trading eyes followed the steps of Edward and his army, directed by minds in which personal and economical hopes and anxieties were blended largely with national and patriotic enthusiasm. In fact, the whole heart of England went forth with Edward and his brave son into the fields of France, and if the moors and hills of Scotland offered a career of more barren glory, the mass of English society was not insensible even here to the importance of terminating in the manner most flattering to national vanity the hostility of an enemy, almost at the very hearth itself, and of shutting the door finally against French ingress into one-half of the common island. It is therefore in the campaigns in Scotland and France that the largest part of the national interest, and consequently of that national life which it is the office of the historian to unfold, really did dwell during this reign, and some excuse may be asked even from the most philosophical civilian of the nineteenth century, for not enlarging on features of national life which to the fourteenthcentury mind were comparatively unimportant.
Still we think that Mr. Longman has carried the minuteness of detail in his accounts of the French campaigns (not of the Scotch) to a disproportionate excess, and that the leading interest of the campaign is sometimes overlaid, so as to be partially lost sight of in the careful record of the progress of petty sieges, which are not entitled to more than the briefest allusions. We should have been glad, also, if our author felt that he could do justice to the task, to have had something more like realized characters of the leading actors in this remarkable story. He confines himself, modestly, but somewhat disappointingly, to the mention of one or two qualities which he considers as established for or against them ; but he waives entirely any more elaborate and artistic attempt to place before us the men as wholes—in that general character of which these special good or bad qualities were but partial expressions. We are not insensible to the difficulty of such an undertaking, and it is no doubt better that it should be left undone than attempted in a weak and pretentious caricature. But, judging from his occasional remarks, we think Mr. Longman scarcely does justice to himself in confining himself thus narrowly to a summary of disconnected pros and cons. We should have liked, too, to have met in his volumes with some more comprehensive estimate of the character and sources of the peculiar social and religious upheavings which occurred in several parts of Europe during this century and the early part of the next, and of which the teaching of Widiff, the democratic utterances of Chaucer and Piers Plowman, the insurrection headed by Wat Tyler and John Ball, the civil convulsions in Paris under Marcel, followed by the Jacquerie, and the Hussite movement in Germany were all manifestations. The hollowness and injustice of the Code of Chivalry—then at its paramount authority and approaching downfall,—the reaction from an overstrained and arbitrary distinction of classes and class privileges ; the greater sense of grievance and oppression produced in the lowest class by the contrast with the growing commercial prosperity, wealth, and political independence of the middle-classes ; the absorption of the ecclesiastical element, which at one time was the natural ally of the oppressed commonalty, in mere aristocratic or foreign influences; the unseemly degradation of those ministers of the Church who were intended by their special functions and offices to rivet the hold of religion on the multitude ; and above all, the awakening perception of a divine democracy of common justice to all classes as the cardinal point of primitive and pure Christianity,—these and similar "causes of things" might with advantage have found an appropriate place in pages which record with clear and vivid faithfulness the outward features of a social state against which these democratic agitations were a solemn protest. We should have been glad also to have met with some attempt to elucidate the connection between Wicliff, the precursor and to some extent the prophet of this democratic and levelling outcry, and John of Gaunt, the essentially unchivalric son of the Prince of Chivalry, and the bugbear of the citizen class. At a time when the relations of the middle and lower classes are occupying so much of public attention, it would be an interesting study to ascertain how far the divergence of interests and feelings, which has undoubtedly more or less existed between them at many of our historical crises, had its origin in the events of the fourteenth century, and its causes in the peculiar circumstances of society at that period.
But in regretting that Mr. Longman has not done more with his subject, we must not be so unjust as to omit giving him full praise for doing his actual work in a very satisfactory manner. His style, as we have already intimated, is good and clear, and sufficiently emphatic if not dramatic for readers of a reasonable temperament in point of excitement. Without pretending to appeal to exclusive sources of information, he has given us a thoroughly good and reliable summary of what we may accept as the general events of the period, on the strength of the best recognized authorities ; and at this day, when access to some new source of information or misinformation is mistaken by so many writers for critical insight and discovery of historical truth, it is a real comfort to have the standard (and justly standard) authorities carefully and intelligently examined and employed.
In a chapter on Ireland, at the commencement of the second volume, on which the author has evidently bestowed especial care,
and which is the principal exception to the purely narrative character of the volumes, Mr. Longman gives an admirable outline of the history of Ireland from the Anglo-Norman conquest, and severely criticizes, while he explains, the causes of the anti-Irish policy of the English Government with respect to that country. Perhaps we may think that he has put the case too much from the point of view of the natives themselves and their would-be native associates among the Anglo-Norman settlers. Granting the first great injustice of the conquest itself, it seems difficult to see how the English Government could stand idly by and allow the reajly lower influences and customs of a scarcely civilized race to obliterate in the English settlers the civilization they had possessed in common with their brethren in England, and permit the whole country to relapse into a socially as well as politically alien state. Their measures seem unjust both to natives and settlers, but were they not under the circumstances absolutely necessary, and was their anintus so very evil? The portion of the volumes,—and, as we have said, it is a large one,—which deals with Continental affairs is peculiarly and distinctively valuable from the attention paid to Continental history and politics, and the geographical and political demarcations of principalities at various epochs. The maps with which the volumes are richly furnished are in this respect very acceptable, and are as useful as landmarks for the history as they are pleasant and attractive to the eye. We do not know of any modern book from which a better idea can be obtained within a moderate compass of the geographical relations of the numerous principalities into which feudalism and its ill-defined canons of suzerainty and vassalry had subdivided the natural monarchies of Europe. The condition of the quasi-English Duchy of Aquitaine, and the general relations between the South of France and Spain, which are too often neglected in histories of this period, are also brought into proper prominence.
Among the briefer sketches of home affairs we find several useful and some fresh contributions to a knowledge of the commercial system of England, at that period in its strength and weakness. The age of the Third Edward is indeed usually looked upon (a little incorrectly) as the origin of our commercial prosperity. It was rather the epoch of the first complete self-recognition and consolidation of commerce. The Guild system is of much older origin, and even its Plantagenet cast belongs to preceding reigns, but its ramifications probably never took within their grasp the whole social life of the burgher class till the reign of Edward. They then also seem, for the first time, to have been recognized by the sovereign as sufficiently solid in themselves and their natural strength to be courted as a separate power in the State. Hence the elevated status and increased influence of the House of Commons in this reign, when Princes of the Royal family did not scorn to head separate parties within this plebeian assembly.
Of the King himself and his sons our author is a thoroughly impartial biographer, and his 'verdict is, on the whole, not a very favourable one. Indeed, there is little great in the character of that King, nor can he for a moment (personally) be compared in intellect with his grandfather, the First Edward,or with Henry IL or Henry!. But he lived in most respects in happier times than they. Though not personally great, he was a true and full embodiment of the spirit of a magnificent and growingly prosperous age. He sympathized thoroughly with, as well as represented faithfully, the nation at whose head he was placed. If he had few great conceptions, he had few bad intentions ; and if he was too much of a Knight Errant to be always a good politician, he was also too much of a Ipolitician at times to be a mere Knight. His movements were stately, and a dignity of appearances sometimes covered and half atoned for a real ignobleness of action. His mind was not strong enough to check the premature overgrowth of senile weaknesses, and the seeds of disorder in the kingdom germinated with those of decay in the Sovereign. But the institutions on which he had impressed something of the stateliness of his own bearing survived the abeyance of their guardian, and the people whom his natural sympathies as well as his necessities had fostered in wealth and independence were not ungrateful in the retrospect which they cast on his reign, and have thrown over it in the popular tradition an undimmed lustre which the true history cannot justify, though the historian will easily understand, and readily excuse.
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