write The Life and Times of Thomas Becket as the text of the
Constitutions of Clarendon or the relations between the Sees of
Canterbury and York." If Froude had written an elaborate History of
Henry II., as he wrote a History of Henry VIII., he would have
qualified himself in the manner somewhat bombastically described. But
even Lord Acton, who seemed to think that he could not write about
anything until he knew everything, would scarcely have prepared
himself for an article in The Nineteenth Century by mastering the
history of the world. And if Froude had done so, it would have
profited him little. He would have forgotten it, "with that calm
oblivion of facts which distinguishes him from all other men who have
taken on themselves to read past events." He would still have written
"whatever first came into his head, without stopping to see whether a
single fact bore his statements out or not." "Accurate statement of
what really happened, even though such accurate statement might serve
Mr. Froude's purpose, is clearly forbidden by the destiny which
guides Mr. Froude's literary career." These extracts from The
Contemporary Review are samples, and only samples, from a mass of
rhetoric not unworthy of the grammarian who prayed for the damnation
of an opponent because he did not agree with him in his theory of
irregular verbs. Freeman, whose self-assertion was perpetual,
represented himself throughout his libel as fighting for the cause of
truth. His own reverence for truth he illustrated quaintly enough at
the close of his last article. "I leave others to protest," said this
veracious critic, "against Mr. Froude's treatment of the sixteenth
century. I do not profess to have mastered those times in detail from
original sources." I leave others to protest! From 1864 to 1870
Freeman had continuously attacked successive volumes of Froude's
History in The Saturday Review. Yet he here makes in his own name a
statement quite irreconcilable with his ever having done anything of
the kind, and accompanies it with an admission which, if it had been
made in The Saturday Review, would have robbed his invective of more
than half its sting.

And now let us see what was the real foundation for this imposing
fabric. Freeman's boisterous truculence made such a deafening noise,
and raised such a blinding dust, that it takes some little time and
trouble to discover the hollowness of the charges. With four-fifths
of Froude's narrative he does n