He was the most laborious of students, and his History was as difficult to write as it is easy to read.

He had, as this hostile reviewer says, a "genuine love of historical research," and there is point in the same critic's complaint that his pages are "over-loaded with long quotations from State Papers." What, then, it will be asked, was the real gist of the charges made against Froude by The Edinburgh Review?
The question at issue was nothing less than the whole policy of Henry's reign, and the motives of the King.

The character of Henry is one of the most puzzling in historical literature, and Froude had to deal with the most difficult part of it.

To the virtues of his earlier days Erasmus is an unimpeachable witness.

The power of his mind and the excellence of his education are beyond dispute.