"Emperors and Popes, Sicilian Kings and Lombard Commonwealths, should be as familiar to him who would write The Life and Times of Thomas Becket as the text of the Constitutions of Clarendon or the relations between the Sees of Canterbury and York." If Froude had written an elaborate History of Henry II., as he wrote a History of Henry VIII., he would have qualified himself in the manner somewhat bombastically described.

But even Lord Acton, who seemed to think that he could not write about anything until he knew everything, would scarcely have prepared himself for an article in The Nineteenth Century by mastering the history of the world.

And if Froude had done so, it would have profited him little.

He would have forgotten it, "with that calm oblivion of facts which distinguishes him from all other men who have taken on themselves to read past events." He would still have written "whatever first came into his head, without stopping to see whether a single fact bore his statements out or not." "Accurate statement of what really happened, even though such accurate statement might serve Mr.Froude's purpose, is clearly forbidden by the destiny which guides Mr.Froude's literary career." These extracts from The Contemporary Review are samples, and only samples, from a mass of rhetoric not unworthy of the grammarian who prayed for the damnation of an opponent because he did not agree with him in his theory of irregular verbs.

Freeman, whose self-assertion was perpetual, represented himself throughout his libel as fighting for the cause of truth.