voice, exquisitely modulated, never raised in talk,
was thoroughly Devonian. So too were his imperfect sense of the
effect produced by what he said upon ordinary minds, and his love,
which might almost be called mischievous, of giving small electric
shocks. In the case of Carlyle, however, the out-cry was wholly
unexpected, and for a time he was distressed, though never mastered,
by it. What he could not understand, what it took him a long time to
live down, was that friends who really knew him should believe him
capable of baseness and treachery. Now that it is all over, that
Froude's biography has taken its place in classical literature, and
that Mrs. Carlyle's letters are acknowledged to be among the best in
the language, the whole story appears like a nightmare. But it was
real enough twenty years ago, when people who never read books of
any kind thought that Froude was the name of the man that
whitewashed Henry VIII. and blackened Carlyle. Froude would probably
have been happier if he had turned upon his assailants once for all,
as he once finally and decisively turned upon Freeman. Freeman,
however, was an open enemy. A false friend is a more difficult
person to dispose of, and even to deny the charge of deliberate
treachery hardly consistent with self-respect. Long before Froude
died the clamour against him had by all decent people been dropped.
But he himself continued to feel the effect of it until he became
Professor of History at Oxford. That rehabilitated him, where only
he required it, in his own eyes. It was a public recognition by the
country through the Prime Minister of the honour he had reflected
upon Oxford since his virtual expulsion in 1849, and he felt himself
again. From that time the whole incident was blotted from his mind,
and he forgot that some of his friends had forgotten the meaning of
friendship. The last two years of his life were indeed the fullest
he had ever known. Forty-two lectures in two terms at the age of
seventy-four are a serious undertaking. Happily he knew the
sixteenth century so well that the process of refreshing his memory
was rather a pleasure than a task, and he could have written good
English in his sleep. Yet few even of his warmest admirers expected
that in a year and a half he would compose three volumes which both
for style and for substance are on a level with the best work of his
prime. It was less surprising, and intensely characteristic, that
his subjects shoul