mancas.
"I have worked in all," he said in his Apologia, "through nine hundred
volumes of letters, notes, and other papers, private and official, in five
languages and in different handwritings. I am not rash enough to say that I
have never misread a word, or overlooked a passage of importance. I profess
only to have dealt with my materials honestly to the best of my ability."
Few, indeed, have had to encounter such difficulties as met Froude in his
exploration of the archives at Simancas. "Often at the end of a page," he
wrote many years after, "I have felt as after descending a precipice, and
have wondered how I got down. I had to cut my way through a jungle, for no
one had opened the road for me. I have been turned into rooms piled to the
window-sill with bundles of dust-coloured despatches, and told to make the
best of it. Often have I found the sand glistening on the ink where it had
been sprinkled when a page was turned. There the letter had lain, never
looked at again since it was read and put away." Of these difficulties not
a trace is discoverable in Froude's easy and effortless narrative. When he
was approaching the completion of his _History_, he vowed that his account
of the Armada should be as interesting as a novel. He succeeded not only
with that portion of his task, but with all the stirring story that he set
out to narrate. But the ease of his style only concealed the real pains
which he had taken. Of Freeman's charge Froude has long been honourably
acquitted. The Simancas MSS. have since been published in the Rolls Series,
and Mr. Martin Hume, in his Introduction, has paid his tribute to the care,
accuracy, and good faith of their first transcriber. Long before this
testimony could be given, Scottish historians who disagreed with Froude's
conclusions on many points,--men such as Skelton and Burton--had been
profoundly impressed with the care, skill, and conscientiousness with which
Froude handled the mass of tangled materials relating to the history of
Scotland.

This does not mean that Froude is free from minor inaccuracies, or that he
is innocent of graver faults which flowed from his abundant quality of
imagination. He constantly quotes a sentence inaccurately in his text,
while it is accurately transcribed in a footnote. He is careless in matters
which are important to students of Debrett, as for instance, he
indiscriminately describes Lord Howard as Lord William Howard and Lord
Howard. But Froude w