had
none. Like every other writer, he made mistakes. But he was
laborious in research, a master of narrative, with a genius for
seizing dramatic points. Above all, he had imagination, without
which the vastest knowledge is as a ship without sails, or a bird
without wings. His objects, even his prejudices, were frankly
avowed, and his prejudices gave way to fresh facts or reasons. The
records at Simancas, for instance, completely changed, and changed
for the worse, his estimate of Queen Elizabeth's character, and he
admitted it at once with his transparent candour. To defend Froude
against mendacity seems like an insult to his memory, for if he
loved anything it was truth, though he sometimes spoke in a cynical
way about the difficulty of attaining it. But such monstrous charges
were made against him when he could no longer reply for himself that
I may be forgiven for quoting an authority which will command
general respect. Mr. Andrew Lang is as scrupulously accurate in
statement as he is brilliantly felicitous in style. He has studied
the history of the sixteenth century, especially in Scotland, and he
disagrees with Froude on many, if not on most, of the points in
dispute. Yet this is Mr. Lang's deliberate judgment:

"I have found Mr. Froude often in error; often, as I think,
misunderstanding, misquoting, omitting and even adding, but I have
never once seen reason to suspect him of conscious misrepresentation,
of knowingly giving a false impression. ... It is easy to show that
Mr. Froude erred contrary to his bias on occasion, and it must never
be forgotten that he did what no consciously dishonest historian could
possibly do. He deposited at the British Museum copies, in the
original Spanish, of the documents, very difficult of access, which he
used in his History. By aid of these transcripts, we can find him
slipping into errors, and his action in presenting the country with
the means of correcting his mistakes proves beyond doubt that he did
not consciously make mistakes. There is no way in which this
conclusion can be evaded. No historian was more honest than Mr.
Froude, though few or none of his merit have been so fallible."

How many historians of his merit have there been? He had no
contemporary rival in England, for Carlyle and Macaulay belonged to
a previous generation. There was certainly no one living when Froude
died who could have written the famous passage in the first chapter
of his History about the