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THE LATE LIEUT.-GENERAL PITT-RIVERS.
These volumes, descriptive of the Cranborne Chase explorations, are
most useful books of reference and exponents of the value of apparently
insignificant relics in providing material for filling in the missing pages of our
history. Nothing perhaps of their kind have been so thorough and so com-
pletely successful. The systematic care with which these researches were
carried out, the exact record of facts and absence of hastily drawn conclusions
are apparent from the books themselves, but only those who have actually
worked with General Pitt-Rivers can appreciate to the full how faithfully he
maintained the high standard he had set himself in these records, and how
steadily he refused to strain facts to fit preconceived hypotheses however
tempting they might appear. The present writer can fully testify to this,
having had the honour, during several years, to assist in these researches. No
discrepancy, no error, was tolerated. "A mistake," he would exclaim, "what
is a mistake ? In my profession Sir, a mistake is looked upon as a crime and
that is the idea I wish to inculcate in you." The importance of exactitude in
minor things was no doubt the more necessary where the evidence was often
of so slight a nature. Doubtless these works, in addition to their value as
books of reference, will exert a beneficial influence on future explorations, as
showing the importance of exact record of objects that appear in themselves
so little deserving of notice.
Gough in his History of Carausius remarks "The science of antiquities
has been involved in the systematical fatality of the age. Every research
after truth has degenerated into contest for an hypothesis. Of all enquirers
after it antiquarians, to whose discoveries some deference is presumed to be
due, should quarrel least. Much less should they substitute fancy and
imagination to that fiction and obscurity they labour to banish."
This desire to state only established and supported facts was a quality
possessed by the General in a very high degree, and he proportionately
despised those who speculate with insufficient data. "We are not without
our Stukeleys at the present time, when the progress of science has lessened
the excuse for us," he remarked in his address to the Royal Archaeological
Institute.
As characteristic of this love of truth there is a tale the villagers of
Tollard Royal delight to relate, how the Parson attempted in a sermon, at
which the General was present, to distort science to fit some passage of
Scripture, which extorted from him the emphatic protest of "That is a lie!"
There was never any desire to jump at conclusions ; he was always
prepared to wait quietly until all the evidence had been collected, before
formulating any generalisation. Alluding to this subject he says :—"I think
it undesirable to give expression to theories which one may afterwards feel
one's self committed to, as the investigation goes on "and again" I have often
noticed in my younger sporting days and it is a fact well known to sportsmen,
that some hounds are apt to give tongue before they have got a true scent,
whilst there are others whose voice can be relied upon. I am an old dog and
have always had a disposition to run mute."
It is this system, by which the record of a plain statement of just what
was found, unmixed with immature theorising, that gives such value to the
Cranbourne Chase volumes for those who may in future pursue this line of
archaeological enquiry, i.e., the history of the Early British Village. For
although there will be found the record of numerous barrows, the Anglo-Saxon