But his simple, manly, pious character was incapable of supporting his cause by personal slander.

Unlike Freeman, he had a rich vein of racy humour, which he indulged in a famous epigram on Froude and Kingsley, too familiar for quotation.

But he could appreciate Froude's learning and industry, for he was a real student himself.
The controversy between Froude and Freeman, however, was by no means at an end, and I may as well proceed at once to the conclusion of it, chronology notwithstanding.

In the year 1877, Froude contributed to The Nineteenth Century a series of papers on the Life and Times of Thomas Becket, since republished in the fourth volume of his Short Studies.

Full of interesting information, the result of minute pains, and excellent in style, they make no pretence to be, as the History was, a work of original research.