It was an age of mighty dramatists, of divine poets, of statesmen wise and magnanimous, if not great, of seamen who made England, not Spain, the ruler of the seas.

It was with the seamen that Froude began.

His essay on England's Forgotten Worthies, which appeared in The Westminster Review for 1852, was suggested by a new, and very bad, edition of Hakluyt.

It inspired Kingsley with the idea of his historical novel, Westward Ho! and Tennyson drew from it, many years later, the story of his noble poem, The Revenge.

The eloquence is splendid, and the patriotic fervour stirs the blood like the sound of a trumpet.