d the
light with which he illuminated the records of the past, we must
remember that history is at best largely the impressions of
historians; and that if it be true that Froude does present one side,
it is the side on which the warnings to posterity are most distinctly
inscribed. A reading of the controversy between Froude and Freeman in
the calmer light of the present leads to the conclusion that the
_suppressio veri_ with which Froude was charged is not a _suggestio
falsi_, but an artistic selection of the characteristic. He felt a
certain contempt for the minute and meaningless fidelity to the
record, which is not writing history but editing documents. He
possessed, too, among his other literary powers, the rare one of being
able to individualize the man whose life he studies and of presenting
the character so as to be consistent and human. This power fills his
history and sketch with rare personalities. Thomas Becket, Henry III.,
Henry VIII., Queen Catharine, Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, are
more than historical portraits in the ordinary sense: they are
conceptions of individuals, vivified by the artistic sense. Whether or
not they are true to the originals as reflected in the contemporary
documents, they are at least human possibilities, and therefore truer
than the distorted automata that lie in state on the pages of some
historians. A human character is so exceedingly complex and so
delicately balanced with contradictory elements, that it is probable
that no two persons ever estimate it exactly alike. Besides, prominent
historical personages become in the popular imagination invested with
exaggerated attributes, and it is not likely that men will ever agree
even as to which of them was the hero and which the villain of the
drama. It was to be expected that Froude should be violently assailed
by those who accepted a traditional view of Henry VIII. and of Mary.
It was inevitable that he should differ from them, because he had more
than a view: he had a conception. His historical personages are
certainly possibilities, because they are human, and the traditional
figures are either monsters or saints; and humanity--at least Teutonic
humanity--does not produce unadulterated saints nor unrelieved
monsters.

While Froude's historical work has been criticized for lack of minute
accuracy in details, his books on Carlyle have been criticized for the
opposite fault of quoting too fully and literally; from letters a