request of publishers or editors to
fill some long-felt want; and finally the series of histories on
which, in the long run, the reputation of Freeman must rest. These, in
the order of merit and value, are the 'Norman Conquest'; the 'Reign of
William Rufus,' which is really a supplement to the 'Conquest'; the
'History of Sicily,' which the author did not live to finish.

The roll of his works is enough to show that the kind of history which
appealed to Freeman was that of the distant past, and that which dealt
with politics rather than with social life. Of ancient history he had
a good mastery; English history from its dawn to the thirteenth
century he knew minutely: European history of the same period he knew
profoundly. After the thirteenth century his interest grew less and
less as modern times were approached, and his knowledge smaller and
smaller till it became that of a man very well read in history and no
more.

Freeman was therefore essentially a historian of the far past; and as
such had, it is safe to say, no living superior in England. But in his
treatment of the past he presents a small part of the picture. He is
concerned with great conquerors, with military leaders, with battles
and sieges and systems of government. The mass of the people have no
interest for him at all. His books abound in battle-pieces of the age
of the long-bow and the javelin, of the battle-axe, the mace, and the
spear; of the age when brain went for little and when brawn counted
for much; and when the fate of nations depended less on the skill of
individual commanders than on the personal prowess of those who met in
hand-to-hand encounters. He delights in descriptions of historic
buildings; he is never weary of drawing long analogies between one
kind of government and another; but for the customs, the manner, the
usages, the daily life of the people, he has never a word. "History,"
said he on one occasion, "is past politics; politics is present
history," and to this epigram he is strictly faithful. The England of
the serf and the villein, the curfew and the monastery, is brushed
aside to leave room for the story of the way in which William of
Normandy conquered the Saxons, and of the way in which William Rufus
conducted his quarrels with Bishop Anselm.

With all of this no fault is to be found. It was his cast of mind, his
point of view; and the questions which alone concern us in any
estimate of his work are: Did he do it well? Wh