He did not care to know.
He was "belabouring Froude." -- * Saturday Review, Nov.

24th, 1866.
-- Once Froude was weak enough to accept Freeman's correction on a small point, only to find that Freeman was entirely in error, and that he himself had been right all along.

After much vituperative language not worth repeating, Freeman wrote in The Saturday Review for the 5th of February, 1870, these genial words, "As it is, there is nothing to be done but to catch Mr.Froude whenever he comes from his hiding- place at Simancas into places in which we can lie in wait for him." The sneer at original research is characteristic of Freeman.

One can almost hear his self-satisfied laugh as he wrote this unlucky sentence, "The thing is too grotesque to talk about seriously; but can we trust a single uncertified detail from the hands of a man who throughout his story of the Armada always calls the Ark Royal the Ark Raleigh?
...

It is the sort of blunder which so takes away one's breath that one thinks for the time that it must be right.