they contain, but in so doing we do not feel that we are criticising Sir Francis Palgrave. We have no certainty that the statements themselves, still less that the forms in which they are put, are those which Sir Francis Palgrave's mature judgment would have finally given to the world. Not that we are at all sure that these parts of the book would always have been improved by receiving the author's final revision. In point of form, at all events, Sir Francis Palgrave's second thoughts were by no means always his best. We suppose that no one will read through these two volumes without acknowledging their vast superiority, as a book to be read, over the volumes which went before them. Of the merits and defects of Sir Francis Palgrave's way of writing we have spoken at large in two former articles. It is easy to see that, though the same merits and defects are there still, yet the merits are considerably heightened and the defects considerably softened down. In the unfinished portions the cause may partly be because they are unfinished, because the author had not time to spoil what he first wrote. But this is not all. In the finished parts the improvement is no less remarkable. Sir Francis Palgrave has, in a great measure, cast aside the strange grotesqueness of his first two volumes, and has largely fallen back upon the far better style of his earlier writings. He is still garrulous, he still loves a digression, he still loves to tell a story familiarly. But in these volumes he can tell a story familiarly without putting on the garb of a buffoon. The best things in these volumes are better than the best in their predecessors, and the worst things are by no means so bad as the worst. There are many passages which are absolutely beautiful; there are none perhaps which are absolutely ridiculous. Sir Francis is as fond as ever of stopping to tell us his mind about current events, or events which were current when he was writing. The space of time which has passed since much of the book was written gives to many of these passages a curious effect. It is startling to come suddenly, in a newly published book, on expressions which imply that Louis Philippe is still reigning in France, and that M. Guizot is still his Minister. Some of us may dispute the relevance of these digressions on recent affairs; some may dispute the wisdom of many of the opinions which they contain. But no one can deny that Sir Francis Palgrave's sentiments on all matters, whether sound or not, are the dictates of a warm and generous heart, and are invariably * Ed. Review, vol. xcv. p. 153; and Ed. Review, vol. cix. p. 486. expressed with vigour, earnestness, and thorough fearlessness. In point of mere beauty of composition some of those passages stand highest which have least to do with the subject of the book. And, if we recognise an improvement of this sort in the mere form of these volumes, we can recognise it equally in the matter. We find here more of Sir Francis Palgrave's strength and less of his weakness than in the earlier part of his history. That he is still an advocate and not a judge, a brilliant setterforth of one side of a disputed case, is what every reader of his earlier works will be prepared to hear. But his advocacy is by no means so unrestrained, his statement of his case is by no means so one-sided, as some of his writings, especially his small History, had led us to expect. His way of looking at things still requires to be checked by an opposite way of looking at them, but we now see, far more clearly than before, his immeasurable superiority to the chief maintainer of that opposite view. Thierry writes simply to set forth a theory; he lets that theory colour every sentence; it is never absent from his sight for a moment; in season and out of season he harps upon the one string which is in his mind the key-note of the whole history. It is not so with Sir Francis Palgrave. He too has a theory, a theory which we certainly look upon as exaggerated, but he does not allow it to give this sort of twist to every word that he writes. When we look back at former articles on these subjects, we feel surprised that we should have placed Thierry and Palgrave so nearly on a level. Such a judgment was a fair and natural one with the materials then within our reach, but it is one which we should certainly never have passed had the present history then been before us. We still hold that the true key to the phenomena of the time is to be found in a combination of Thierry's view with that of Sir Francis Palgrave. We still hold that exact truth is to be found at some point between the statements of Thierry and the statements of Sir Francis. We think still, as we have thought all along, that Sir Francis slurs over some facts on one side as Thierry slurs over some on the other. But, with these volumes before us, we must acknowledge that, though truth lies somewhere between the two, yet it lies far nearer to Sir Francis Palgrave than to Thierry. Though Sir Francis slurs over some points and gives an undue colouring to others, yet the degree in which this is done is trifling compared with that in which Thierry does it in every page. And, in saying *Ed. Review, vol. cix. p. 501; and Ed. Review, vol. cxii. p. 149. all this, we are not at all conscious of having changed our own judgment on these matters. It is simply that thirty years' further study and reflection have wrought in Sir Francis Palgrave that improvement which on a mind like his they could not fail to work. In one most important point, however, there is no advance, no improvement. We mean Sir Francis Palgrave's perverse way of sending a book into the world without a single reference. Against this practice we made our protest in our last article, but out of mere weariness of spirit we cannot help making it again. It is unfair alike to the author and to his reader. It makes it impossible to appreciate the real research, the almost unvarying accuracy, which lies at the bottom of all Sir Francis's eccentricities, without going through an amount of labour which no author has a right to impose on his readers. Sir Francis Palgrave has no reason to dread the severest scrutiny to which his narrative can be subjected. We often reject his inferences, we often object to his colouring, we often think the authority on which he relies insufficient to prove his point; but he has some authority, of some kind or other, for every word that he says. We have tested him so rigidly that we feel that we can safely say this, even though, as in his former volumes, his grounds for some few statements have as yet escaped us. The reasons which may have led Sir Francis to this strange course we cannot pretend to guess. We can only say that while to read Sir Francis Palgrave through, simply as a narrative, is a process eminently pleasant, to compare him in detail with the original authorities is one of the most wearisome of labours, and a labour whose weariness is a wholly wanton infliction, which might have been saved by a far smaller amount of exertion on the part of Sir Francis himself. The scheme of Sir Francis Palgrave, if we rightly understand it, was to assume the earlier history of England as already given in his own smaller work, to write the history of Normandy down to the point at which the histories of the two countries converge, and from that point to continue the two as one whole. Unfortunately, as we before said, the scheme has broken down at the very point of union. We have in these volumes the reign of the three Dukes of Normandy who preceded William and of the King of England who followed him. But the reign of William himself is fragmentary, and a narrative of the turning-point of all is wanting. As we have no narrative of the great wager of battle in which William made good his claim, so we have no full discussion of the nature and value of that claim itself. Mr. Palgrave tells us that his father doubted whether to reprint this portion of the small History, as he has done himself, or to omit from this book what he had described before, or to rewrite the narra'tive.' We feel sure that Sir Francis Palgrave's final determination would have led him to the last choice of the three. We feel sure that he would not have been finally satisfied either to leave such a frightful gap in his story, or to fill it up with the immature production which he wrote so many years before. Many people will read that narrative as an integral part of the book, and will not think of making the necessary distinction between this part of the history and the rest. We are therefore bound to say that it is quite unworthy of the place in which Mr. Palgrave has put it. The story is pleasingly and vigorously told, but it really cannot be trusted. It is not merely that we differ from some of the conclusions contained in it; so we do from some of the conclusions contained in Sir Francis Palgrave's latest writings. But this earlier narrative contains, what his later writings do not contain, distinct and important positive errors. If Sir Francis Palgrave had rewritten or revised his narrative of the events which led to the Conquest, we do not at all suppose that his view of Edward, Harold, and William would have been altered into agreement with our view of them. But we do feel sure that he would have removed from his narrative all positive inaccuracies, great and small. We should, as in the rest of the book, have been able to trust his statements, however strongly we might dispute some of his inferences. As it is, we cannot do so; and we cannot but think that Mr. Palgrave would have done better to leave a mere gap, however ugly, rather than to fill it up with a substitute which the critical reader feels to be quite out of place. The book then consists of the reigns of the three Norman Dukes, Richard II., Richard III., and Robert the Devil, of a fragmentary history of William the Conqueror, and of a history of William Rufus in Sir Francis Palgrave's fullest and best manner. This last portion, including the accession of Henry I., fills up the whole of the fourth volume. We need not therefore say that it is told at infinitely greater detail than the reign of the Conqueror, which the author's final revision would doubtless have greatly expanded. What we propose to do in examining the book, is to deal mainly with the great subject of the Norman Conquest and its results as regards England. If this inquiry leads us across some of the weaker and less accurate portions of Sir Francis Palgrave's writings, we regret that such should be the case, but we do not see that it is fault of ours. any The Norman Conquest and its effects can be discussed now in a very different spirit from that which was brought to their discussion two hundred years back. The nature of the accession of William the Bastard was then looked upon as involving the most important of all political consequences. Was heWillelmus Conquæstor strictly William the Conqueror, or was he merely, in legal phrase, William the Purchaser? That he conquered' England, that his acquisition of the Crown was legally a Conquæstus,' nobody doubted, but grave questions might be raised as to the exact force and bearing of the word Conquæstus.' Was William, in short, Conqueror' in the common colloquial use of the word, in the sense in which Nebuchadnezzar was conqueror of Jerusalem or Claudius conqueror of Britain, or was he Conqueror' only in some technical legal sense, a sense in which conquest' is equivalent to 'purchase,' and in which a man may be said to conquer' any estate which he obtains otherwise than by direct inheritance? In short, was he a mere foreign invader who reigned only by the right of the sword, or was he a legal claimant who was driven to employ force only in the same way that a man may still have to enforce his rights by the help of the posse comitatus? We can now examine into both views and see that each contains half the truth. But no one now supposes that any direct practical consequences flow from either conclusion. It was not so in the days of Brady, Petyt, and Atwood. Nothing less than the liberties of England was held to depend on the decision. It was held in those days that, if William was really William the Conqueror, if he made an absolute conquest by the sword,' then all earlier laws, all earlier rights, perished, that all the later liberties of Englishmen were mere gifts of royal favour, which Kings had granted of their own freewill, and which, by the same reasoning, they might some day reclaim. But if William were merely William the Purchaser, if what he did at Hastings was not to conquer a nation but to overthrow a competitor for the crown, if he reigned, not by the sword, but by the bequest of King Edward or by the election of the Witan, then all older liberties survived his entry, and all new ones were held by the same tenure, as liberties inherent of right, not mere privileges conferred by favour. When the issue was so momentous, it was no wonder if a vast deal of ingenious research and argument was laid out on both sides. It was easy to find facts and expressions which, taken alone, |