ἱσχυρός καθωπλισμένος φυλάσσῃ τὴν ἑαυτοῦ αὐλήν, ἐν εἰρήνῃ ἐστὶν τὰ ὑπάρχοντα αὐτοῦ. ἐπὰν δε ἰσχυρότερς αὐτοῦ ἐπελθὼν νικήσῃ αὐτόν, τὴν πανοπλίαν αὐτοῦ αῒρει ἐφ' ᾗ ἐπεποίθει.

IT might well be thought the height of rashness to attempt criticism, even in detail, of Mr. Freeman's narrative of the Battle of Hastings. For its story, as his champion has well observed, is “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.” And indeed, it may fairly be described as Mr. Freeman's greatest achievement, the point where he is strongest of all. He himself described the scene as the “battle which is the centre of my whole history,” and reminded us that

That is the first point. The second is, that in his battle pieces our author was always at his best. Essentially a concrete historian, objective as Macaulay in his treatment, he loved incident and action; loved them, indeed, so well, that he could scarcely bring himself to omit the smallest details of a skirmish:–