d champion proceeded to say that he knew nothing
about Froude's personal character, and that when he accused Froude of
stabbing his dead brother "in the dark" he only meant that the
brother was dead. When he says that Froude's article was "plausible,
and more than plausible," he is quite right. It is more than
plausible, because it is true. After vainly trying to explain away
some of the errors brought home to him by Froude, and leaving others
unnoticed, he complains, with deep and obvious sincerity, that Froude
had not read his books, nor even his articles in Encyclopaedias. He
exhibits a striking instance of his own accuracy. In his defence
against the rather absurd charge of not going, as Macaulay had gone,
to see the places about which he wrote, Froude pleaded want of means.
Freeman rejoined that Macaulay was at one time of his life
"positively poor." He was so for a very short time when his
Fellowship at Trinity came to an end. Unluckily for Freeman's
statement the period was before his appointment to be Legal Member of
Council in India, and long before he had begun to write his History
of England. The most charitable explanation of an erroneous statement
is usually the correct one, and it was probably forgetfulness which
made Freeman say that he did not hear of Froude's having placed
copies of the Simancas manuscripts in the British Museum till 1878,
whereas he had himself discussed it in The Pall Mall Gazette eight
years before. If Froude had made such an astonishing slip, there
would have been more ground for imputing to him an incapacity to
distinguish between truth and falsehood. Freeman's "Last Words on Mr.
Froude" show no sign of penitence or good feeling, and they end with
characteristic bluster about the truth, from which he had so
grievously departed. But Froude was never troubled with him again.

Although a refuted detractor is not formidable in the flesh, the evil
that he does lives after him. Freeman's view of Froude is not now
held by any one whose opinion counts; yet still there seems to rise,
as from a brazen head of Ananias, dismal and monotonous chaunt, "He
was careless of the truth, he did not make history the business of
his life." He did make history the business of his life, and he cared
more for truth than for anything else in the world. Freeman's
biographer has given no clue to his imperfect sympathy with Froude.
Green, true historian as he was, made more mistakes than Froude, and
the mista