at is its value? Did he
make a real contribution to historical knowledge? What are its merits
and defects? Judged by the standard he himself set up, Freeman's chief
merits, the qualities which mark him out as a great historian, are an
intense love of truth and a determination to discover it at any cost;
a sincere desire to mete out an even-handed justice to each and every
man; unflagging industry, common-sense, broad views, and the power to
reproduce the past most graphically.

From these merits comes Freeman's chief defect,--prolixity. His
earnest desire to be accurate made him not only say the same thing
over and over again, but say it with an unnecessary and useless
fullness of detail, and back up his statement with a profusion of
notes, which in many cases amount to more than half the text. Indeed,
were they printed in the same type as the text, the space they occupy
would often exceed it. Thus, in the first volume of the 'Norman
Conquest' there are 528 pages of text, with foot-notes occupying from
a third to a half of almost every page, and an appendix of notes of
244 pages; in the second volume, the text and foot-notes amount to
512, and the appendix 179; in the third, the text covers 562 and the
appendix 206 pages. These notes are always interesting and always
instructive. But the end of a volume is not the place for an
exhibition of the doubts and fears that have tormented the historian,
for a statement of the reasons which have led him to one conclusion
rather than another, nor for the denunciation or reputation of the
opinions of his predecessors. When the building is finished, we do not
want to see the lumber used as the scaffolding piled in the back yard.
Mr. Freeman's histories would be all the better for a condensation of
the text and an elimination of the long appendices.

With these exceptions, the workmanship is excellent. He entered so
thoroughly into the past that it became to him more real and
understandable than the present. He was not merely the contemporary
but the companion of the men he had to deal with. He knew every spot
of ground, every Roman ruin, every mediaeval castle, that came in any
way to be connected with his story, as well as he knew the topography
of the country that stretched beneath his study window, or the
arrangement of the house in which he lived.

In his histories, therefore, we are presented at every turn with
life-like portraits of the illustrious dead, bearing all the ma