Yet the whole effect of his comments must have been to make the readers of The Saturday Review think that Froude was attacking the Church, when he was attacking the Crown for its conduct to the Church.
-- + History of England, vol.xi.p.

321.
-- Freeman seemed to glory in his own deficiencies, and was almost as proud of what he did not know as of what he did.

Thus, for instance, Froude, a born man of letters, was skilful and accomplished in the employment of metaphors.

Freeman could no more handle a metaphor than he could fish with a dry fly.

He therefore, without the smallest consciousness of being absurd, condemned Froude for doing what he was unable to do himself, and even wrote, in the name of The Saturday Review, "We are no judges of metaphors," though there must surely have been some one on the staff who knew something about them.
Froude had a mode of treating documents which is open to animadversion.