MR. FREEMAN AND THE "QUARTERLY

REVIEW."

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"We have but pointed out some of Mr. Freeman's errors, and we have endeavoured, as we purposed from the outset, to restrict ourselves to those, small or great, which are beyond the possibility of question."-Quarterly Review, July 1892.

I. GENERAL REMARKS.

URING the last few months most students of English history have been reading with mingled sensations of amusement and surprise the vigorous attack made in the pages of the Quarterly Review upon the historical accuracy of the late Professor Freeman. They have thought perhaps that a certain Nemesis of Fate was attending on the steps of one who, in his own day, had been so unsparing and capable a critic of other men's work, and that there was a certain "wild justice" in finding that the censor of other men's labours was himself not impeccable. How far this judgment is accurate may, so far as details are concerned, be left for later treatment. Here it may suffice to admit, once and for all, that the critic has found not a few errors in Mr. Freeman's pages. These errors, however, are for the most part errors of small and unimportant details, which, even if multiplied indefinitely, would hardly affect the value of such an enormous total of work. In one matter only does the Reviewer so much as attempt to lay hold upon an error of the first magnitude; here, however, he is very bold. He gleefully tells us that Mr. Freeman's account of the battle of Hastings is the very crown and flower of the historian's work; and it is here that he claims to prove the entire inadequacy of Mr. Freeman's work. On this occasion Mr. Freeman has not merely erred in detail; he is wrong, completely wrong, in his whole conception of the battle. He wrong in the name he gives it; he is wrong in the tactics he ascribes to the English hero; he is wrong, above all things else, in his distribution of the English troops. There ere no palisades at Hastings; that which Mr. Freeman takes as such was no artificial barricade of ash and other timber, but the overlapping shield-wall or

shield-front constructed in true Teutonic spirit, of the bucklers borne on that "awful day" by the long line of English footmen dashing back in this close array the otherwise irresistible onset of the Norman horse. At this point the Reviewer breaks out into impassioned prose. He will have no parleying with those waxen-hearted scholars who hold that at Hastings the English troops took shelter behind a barricade of wood; but, "face to face upon the unprotected hill slopes," he tells us that they met the Norman charge. Thus, to quote his own words, "We wipe away that libel upon 'God's Englishmen' who faced their foe on that awful day, standing as man to man.

A fortress Harold wrought; but he wrought it of flesh and blood; it was behind no ramparts that the soldiers of England awaited the onset of the chivalry of France." Such a contention, it will at once be perceived, is very different from any mere criticism of detail; it affects the centre and the very heart of Mr. Freeman's work. If he could blunder here in the most carefully elaborated passage of his whole history, he could blunder anywhere; his reputation for accuracy would be gone almost beyond hope of retrieving it. But, as we trust to show, here at least it is not Mr. Freeman who blunders; he has not gone a step further than his authorities warrant, and it is the Reviewer himself who must bear the blame-such as it is of misconstruing his French and misappreciating his evidence.

Before proceeding any further, we ought to say a few words as to the article itself: it is one of which, in many ways, it is impossible to speak too highly. It is worthy, and more than worthy, of thẹ Review in its younger and less responsible days, when it numbered amongst its contributors the Lockharts, the Crokers, the Giffords, and all the other light "auxiliar troops" that skirmished on the outskirts of that great literary army which is, if not the first, at least the second glory of our English land in the nineteenth century. And perhaps, even in those days, the great Tory organ never produced a paper so admirably planned, so skilfully constructed, and so brilliantly written. Every page shows it to be the work of a scholar thoroughly acquainted with the minutiae of his subject, and familiar with more than one aspect of medieval learning. There is little that is loose and indefinite in its charges; no attempt to substitute a brute force of strength and muscle for the delicate sword-play of argument and reason. In the whole paper, nothing is more worthy of remark than the skilful tactics displayed in singling out the weaker parts of Mr. Freeman's outposts for attack. One by one these petty outposts fall before the critic's mine, till the reader trembles to think what the result will be when the central stronghold of the historian's work is stormed as he sees from the very first is the critic's intention. Will it be able to hol out against so virulent and capable a foe, or must it crumble down into irreparable ruin?

II. THE REVIEWER'S MISTAKES.

1. Now, there is no question that the Reviewer himself conceives that he has shattered Mr. Freeman's reputation for historical accuracy and judgment. And it seems to be the general opinion-even among historical scholars that he has not only convicted Mr. Freeman of a few trifling blunders, such as are incidental to all historical work, but also that he has proved his antagonist to have erred in more than one important matter which concerns the very essence of his work. In these minor points we have no doubt that the Reviewer is generally, if not always, right. Doubtless, Mr. Freeman did misread 128 for 100; doubtless, in another passage, he or his type-setter did allow a three to take the place of a five; and elsewhere we can well admit that he did style Odo the King's Justiciar, when he should have written Geoffrey. But, after all is said and done, what is gained by convicting the late Professor of such trifling blunders? They are blunders which every prolific writer is bound to make-blunders of which Professor Freeman was only too conscious himself. Time after time did he lament-in print as well as by word of mouth-the lack of that gift of microscopic accuracy, the possession of which he envied so much in his fellow-historian, the Bishop of Oxford. Those who knew him best will recollect the halfhumorous persistence with which he would complain how, even in the most important work, his attention would go wandering, and "east" slip from his pen when he meant "west," the "former" when he meant the "latter." Nor was he alone in feeling such infirmities; they are common to most writers. It is easy to make much of such errors; far easier than to avoid them oneself. As I shall show, with all his skill, with all his care, and with all his knowledge, the Reviewer's pages abound in errors of a similar kind-errors far more serious than most of those he ascribes to his opponent. If we were inclined to measure out to him the same unmodified judgment that he metes out to Mr. Freeman, we might point to the very central passage of his criticism, where, with an eloquence which is more than its own justification, he uses the late Laureate's words to set off his comparison of the English at Hastings with the English at Waterloo, and rises up to a full enthusiasm as he paints the "English ranks," now broken and thin, once more "closing up stubbornly through the long, slow agony of that September day." This is true eloquence, worthy of its subject; it is the climax of a splendidly written review, and we should naturally expect that, here at least, the Reviewer would put forth all his power to see that there was no flaw in his ork. A mistake here is doubly fatal. And yet here a mistake there is of the most elementary kind. It was not in September that the great battle was fought, but, as we should have thought that most schoolboys knew, upon the

feast of St. Calixtus, October 14. We do not mention this blunder in any carping spirit. Despite this little slip, the talent and knowledge of the Reviewer are apparent in every page. But we do mention it to show how easy it is for mentors-even when controlling a very limited field of operations to go wrong on the simplest points. Surely this might preach a lesson of forbearance towards the minor errors of one whose range of action was so enormous.

2. Let us now turn to another matter, and read what the Reviewer says about Mr. Freeman's theory, that Harold at Hastings surrounded his camp with palisades :

incredible though it may sound

"Mr. Freeman's fortress had absolutely no existence save, as he wrote of his predecessor Thierry, in the pages of romances like his own. Every allusion to this palisade throughout this hard-fought day is imaginary, and imaginary alone. .... Of course, Mr. Freeman's fortress has secured universal acceptance. Its 'palisades' and 'barricades' figure now in every history. We have fully discussed this statement respecting the 'palisades' because it affects, we shall find, this whole story of the battle. It is the very keystone of Mr. Freeman's description, and, if removed, brings with it the whole edifice to the ground."

It is clear, from these and similar words, that the Reviewer lays more stress on proving that Mr. Freeman's palisade theory is wrong than on any other part of his paper. It is, indeed, the one definite and important point on which he joins issue. Other of his points are definite, but not important; some are important, but not definite. To overthrow the Reviewer here is to render almost all that he says about the battle of Hastings nugatory; for it is all based, more or less, on the presumption that Mr. Freeman is wrong in the matter of the palisades. Now, before we come to the question of Mr. Freeman's accuracy on this point, let us notice what the passage quoted above really means. These words, if they mean anything, imply that Mr. Freeman invented the palisade; or, at all events, that this palisade formed no important feature in the accounts of the battle given by the most eminent historians before his date. Such an implication is, however, very far from representing the true state of the case.

Practically the truth seems to be as follows: In the narrative of Hastings we may distinguish two periods-that previous to 1827, and that subsequent to this year. This date is the watershed of the Hastings theory, for it is the year in which M. Pluquet published the first complete edition of Wace's "Roman de Rou." Previous to this publication we shall find, I believe, no recognition of the part played by palisades in this battle; after its publication I doubt if the Quarterly Review can point to any important work dealing with this battle from which the palisade theory is absent. But, to give examples. It is clearly impossible here to examine all the earlier accounts of Hastings. I must be content with the three most important,

those to which a reader would naturally turn if he were in quest of information upon this subject-Hume's "History of England," Lingard's ( History of England," and Sharon Turner's "History of the AngloSaxons." In none of these three works is there any mention of palisades, and the first two writers contain no allusion to the “Roman de Rou" at all. Turner does indeed refer to the "Chanson ” time after time. But he only knows it in the fragmentary form published by Lancelot in some work that I have never seen. He is plainly far from appreciating its full significance as a primary authority. The dates of these histories, I need hardly say, are 1761, 1810, and 1823. Probably, if I could refer to the first edition of M. Thierry's "Histoire de l'Angleterre sous les Normans," I should find a similar state of things. But I can only get access to the English translation, which seems to be of the enlarged and corrected edition of 1840, and not the first edition of 1825. So much for earlier. accounts of the great battle; now for the later ones.

In 1827 M. Pluquet published the first complete edition of the "Roman de Rou" in two volumes, accompanied with glossological notes and a marginal analysis. From this moment dates thehistorical revolution to which I refer. He annotates the crucial passage to which the Quarterly Reviewer makes such express reference as follows: "Les Anglais se retranchent au moyen de boucliers et de palisades" (Pluquet, ii. 205). In other words, he sees in these lines not only a shield wall, but also a wooden fortification. All the scholars who, from that date, threw themselves so vigorously into the fray, accepted this interpretation without reserve, so far as I have been able to examine their works. And these writers are the great authorities of their time. Thus, Lappenberg writes of the English as "surrounded with palisades" (1840). So too Mr. Taylor takes the passage in his translation of 1837; and M. Thierry speaks of the English as being "fortified on all sides with a rampart" (circa 1835). Nor has Sir Francis Palgrave any doubt upon the matter; for, according to him, "the English were strongly fortified by lines of trenches and palisades (1860). And lastly, Sir A. Malet, in his metrical version of the same year, renders the critical lines, "They made them a fence of bucklers and wattle-work well interlaced."

It may of course be pleaded that all this pov erful array of authority should be reduced in number from six to one, on the plea that all the last five merely reproduce cne man's (M. Pluquet's) view. But M. Pluquet was a Frenchman, and is understood to have been assisted in his work by no less eminent a scholar than M. Prevost, the editor Orderic Vitalis." It must also be admitted that historians of the eminence of Palgrave and Lappenberg were not exactly the kind of people to follow a blind leader along an absolutely foolish and

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