BOOKS.
DEAN STEPHENS'S LIFE OF E. A. FREEMAN.* DEAN STEPHENS has done his biographer's work excellently well. Where he has to speak for Freeman, he does it with all the frankness, good taste, and good sense that could be desired ; mostly, and in an increasing proportion as time' goes on, he makes Freeman speak for himself. He tells us in his preface that though many letters had been destroyed; "a vast residuum" remained, from which a selection for the purpose of this biography had to be made. It is here that the great charm of the book will be found, at charm which, we venture to think, will give it a lasting. attraction, will make it one of the biographies which, like Boswell's Johnson and Trevelyan's Macaulay, we shall take down from the shelf, sure, though we open it at random, o2 finding something good. For Freeman was an admirable letter-writer, admirable both in style, which was not elsewhere his strong point, and in matter. He is humorous, kindly, rich in illustration and allusion. He had, indeed, a curious habit in his letter-writing which must have vexed his corre- spondents now and then, but which added much to its value Most of us, if time or matter runs short, hurriedly finish and, despatch the epistle. This was not Freeman's way. He kept his letters for days, even weeks, and when the opportunity came, or the fresh subject presented itself, added something more. The document came to hand a little, or not a little after time, but it was well worth receiving.
Edward Freeman seems to have been a remarkably precocious- child. At five years old he surprised a clerical visitor by ask- ing him whether St. Paul wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews.
He is called the Apostle to the Gentiles. Why should he written to the Hebrews ?" He read Roman and English • The Life and Letters of Edward 4. Freeman. By W. B. W. Stephens, B.H. 2 vo s. Londm : Macmillan and Co. 1895.
history with intense pleasure at seven. At ten he sympa- thised with Don Carlos's attempt to win the throne of Spain as "being an assertion of the local rights of Navarre and the Basque Provinces." To his schools he does not seem to have owed much. He might have got some good at Shrewsbury, to which there was some talk of sending him. But he was unwilling to go, and was sent, at his own desire, to a private tutor. A lad of singular appearance, who played no game, and was interested at fifteen in the Quinquarticular con- troversy and Tracts for the Times, would probably have been out of place in a public school. What he missed by not going was the final polish in scholarship which such a teacher as Benjamin Hall Kennedy would have given him. The substance he possessed in no small degree ; he had great literary ability, and he was extraordinarily versatile and in- genious. He was elected to a Scholarship at Trinity College, Oxford, in June, 1841, the Trinity Scholarship being then second only to the Balliol. But he never won a Uni- versity Scholarship or prize, though he was good enough to come "into the running." In his first year he tried for the Ireland Scholarship, and is mentioned in a memorandum (found by Dean Church among his papers, and probably written by an examiner) as "most likely to get it another year." He graduated in 1845, being placed in the Second Class, and a few days afterwards was elected to a Fellowship at Trinity. It is strange that even when he was writing on the congenial subject of the "Effects of the Norman Conquest of England," he failed to win the prize, which went to Mr. Chichester Fortescue, now Lord Carlingford. It was, says his biographer, "the most severe of the many disappoint- ments which Freeman Buffered in his Oxford career." But he made the best of it. He wrote, in the very year of his death :—" The Norman Conquest was a subject that I had been thinking about, ever since I could think at all. I wrote for the Prize ; I had the good luck not to get it. Had I got it, I might have been tempted to think I knew all about the matter; as it was, I went on and learned something about it."
The question of a profession now presented itself. Orders and architecture were the alternatives. The idea of Orders was speedily dismissed, for he held by clerical celibacy, and he was engaged. Architecture was more reluctantly given up. But as he had a sufficient private income, he finally chose the life of learning and letters. Whatever his choice might have been, he could not have worked harder than he did,—witness the bibliography which Dean Stephens has appended to the Life. The list of works numbers nearly sixty. Some are but pamphlets or lectures, but others are of large dimensions. The six volumes of The History of the Norman Conquest contain a vast quantity of matter. There are more than a hundred papers contributed to reviews and magazines. The articles written for the Saturday Review are not included. These numbered 723 in the ten years, 1860-69. He wrote also for the Guardian, and for various archwological journals. When he severed his connection with the Saturday Review (in 1878, owing to a difference of opinion on the Eastern question), he gave up an income of 2500.
His residences were successively Littlemore, where he settled on his marriage ; Oaklands, near Dursley; Lanrumney, near Cardiff ; and finally, Sumerleaze, near Wells, which he bought in 1860. It was a sufficiently convenient house, and its situation was ideally interesting, it was surrounded by historical localities, and lay itself on what was the boundary between Welsh and English territory before the victories of Cenwealh in the latter half of the seventh century. Here Freeman spent the principal part of more than thirty years. His travels were frequent, for he was no armchair historian. He loved to inspect the localities which occurred in the course of his work. It was this passion that took him on his fatal journey to Spain,—" Studio impulaus loca pernoscendi," as the epitaph which marks his resting-place at Alicante phrases it.
As at Oxford, so in later life, his chief ambitions missed fulfilment. He was a keen politician, and presented him- self to several constituencies. Only once did he go to the poll, when he stood for Mid-Somerset. He polled a respect- able number of votes, but never really had a chance. He "went on the stump," as he put it himself, with much vigour and no little enjoyment, and acquitted himself better than might have been expected. No one can regret that he was not returned. There was better work for him to do than Par- liament could supply. This was in 1868; eighteen years afterwards a seat which he could have secured was offered him. He accepted it, but withdrew his acceptance a few hours afterwards. Before this, the other desire of his life had found a tardy fulfilment. In 1884, on the appointment of Professor Stubbs to the Bishopric of Chester, the Professorship of Modern History was offered him. This also came too late. He found another Oxford, quite unlike that which he had left, and far less pleasing. This is not the place to discuss the ques- tion whether the University, as it was in 1848, or as it is now, is the better ordered. One thing is certain, that the golden age when the Professor was an indispensable part of the University life cannot be located in any time known to the memory of man or even to history, at least, post-media3val history. When Freeman was a student, where were the Professors ? They did not even lecture. When he came back to take the highest rank of the Academical hierarchy, they lectured indeed, but to benches very scantily filled. Dean Stephens is somewhat scornful of the "combined lecturer." But the "combined lecturer" at least talks about what he knows; whereas the obi tutor, for the most part, talked about many things, bat knew little of any. Anyhow, Oxford was a great disappointment to Freeman. In politics he was a Home-ruler, but with reserva- tions which much modify the significance of his judgment. Re insisted on the exclusion of the Irish Members from the Parlia- ment of Westminster; to any measure which retained them he was distinctly hostile. He found analogies to the relation which ought, he believed, to exist between England and Ireland, in the Channel Islands, and in the great self-governing Colonies. How he disposed of the argument that the Channel Islands are insig- nificant, and the Colonies remote, we are not told ; or whether he was prepared to accept the possibility of an Ireland shutting out British trade with protective tariffs, declaring itself independent, or even leaguing itself with hostile powers. For Imperial Federation, and for "Home-rule all round," he had no liking. He gave his support to the Disestabliehment of the Irish Church. To the proposed Disestablishment of the Church in Wales he was distinctly adverse. "I told a o. Morgan at Syracuse," he writes only six months before his death, "that I should be inclined to go with him if Wales were an island." The talk about Church property being national property he described as "a daring falsehood." For the "one man one vote" proposal he had no liking. As to Egypt, he said, "Leave it alone ; but if you must meddle, make a province of it." Right or wrong, he always carried an open mind, and stood absolutely detached from party. Faults he had, but they were faults of manner, possibly of temper. But a braver, more honest, more " dutiful " man there never was, and at the root of all was a sincere faith, of which he said little, but by which he lived.
Previous page
