Shut out from the law, he turned to literature, and became a regular reviewer.

There was not so much reviewing then as there is now, but it was better paid.
His services were soon in great request, for he wrote an incomparable style.
The origin of Froude's style is not obscure.

Too original to be an imitator, he was in his handling of English an apt pupil of Newman.
There is the same ease, the same grace, the same lightness of elastic strength.

Froude, like Newman, can pass from racy, colloquial vernacular, the talk of educated men who understand each other, to heights of genuine eloquence, where the resources of our grand old English tongue are drawn out to the full.

His vocabulary was large and various.