has come to be used as a figure of speech, sometimes in strange
company with his betters .... But an historian he is not; four
volumes of ingenious paradox, eight volumes of ecclesiastical
pamphlet, do not become a history, either because of the mere number
of volumes, or because they contain a narrative which gradually
shrinks into little more than a narrative of diplomatic intrigues.
The main objections to Mr. Froude's book, the blemishes which cut it
off from any title to the name of history, are utter carelessness as
to facts and utter incapacity to distinguish right from wrong ....
That burning zeal for truth, for truth in all matters great and
small, that zeal which shrinks from no expenditure of time and toil
in the pursuit of truth--the spirit without which history, to be
worthy of the name, cannot be written--is not in Mr. Froude's nature,
and it would probably be impossible to make him understand what it is ....
How far the success of the book is due to its inherent vices,
how far to its occasional virtues, is a point too knotty for us to
solve. The general reader and his tastes--why this thing pleases him
and the other thing displeases him--have ever been to us the proroundest
of mysteries. It is enough that on Mr. Froude's book, as
a whole, the verdict of all competent historical scholars has long
ago been given. Occasional beauties of style and narrative cannot be
allowed to redeem carelessness of truth, ignorance of law, contempt
for the first principles of morals, ecclesiastical malignity of the
most frantic kind. There are parts of Mr. Froude's volumes which we
have read with real pleasure, with real admiration. But the book, as
a whole, is vicious in its conception, vicious in its execution. No
merit of detail can atone for the hollowness that runs through the
whole. Mr. Froude has written twelve volumes, and he has made himself
a name in writing them, but he has not written, in the pregnant
phrase so aptly quoted by the Duke of Aumale, 'un livre de bonne
foy.'"*

--
* The Duke was not, as Freeman implies that he was, referring to Froude.
--

By a curious irony of fate or circumstance Freeman has unconsciously
depicted the frame of mind in which Froude approached historic
problems. "That burning zeal for truth, for truth in all matters
great and small, that zeal which shrinks from no expenditure of time
and toil in the pursuit of truth--the spirit without which history,
to be worthy of the name, ca