Polloi men narthekophoroi Bakchoi de te pauroi ["There are many officials, but few inspired.”  Zenobius, 5.77]

There are many writers of history, but very few historians.  Froude wrote with a definite purpose, which he never concealed from himself, or from others.  He believed, and he thought he could prove, that the Reformation freed England from a cruel and degrading yoke, that the things which were Caesar’s should be rendered to Caesar, and that the Church should be restricted within its own proper sphere.  Those, if such there be, who think that an historian should have no opinions are entitled to condemn him.  Those who simply disagree with him are not.  No man is hindered by any other cause than laziness, incompetence, or more immediately profitable occupations, from writing a history of the same period in exactly the opposite sense.

Froude’s earliest chapters were set in type, and distributed among a few friends whose judgment he trusted.  The most sympathetic was Carlyle, who pronounced the introductory survey of England’s social condition at the opening of the sixteenth century to be just what it ought to have been.  Carlyle’s marginal notes upon the first two chapters are extremely interesting, and doubly characteristic, because they illustrate at the same time his practical shrewdness and his intense prejudice.  For these reasons, and also because in many instances his advice was followed, it may be worth while to give some account of his pencil jottings, written when Carlyle’s hand was still firm, and as legible as they were fifty years ago.  Upon the first chapter as a whole, Carlyle’s judgment, though critical, was highly favourable.

“This,” he wrote, “is a vigorous, sunny, calm, and wonderfully effective delineation; pleasant to read; and bids fair to give much elucidation to what is coming.  Curious too as got mainly from good reading of the Statutes at large!  Might there be with advantage (or not) some subdivision into sections, with headings, etc?  Also, here and there, some condensation of the excerpts given—­condensation into narrative where too longwinded?  Item, for symmetry’s sake (were there nothing else) is not some outline of spiritual England a little to be expected?  Or will that come piece-meal as we proceed?  Hint, then, somewhere to that effect?  Also remember a little that there was an Europe as well as an England?  In sum, Euge.”  Such praise from such a man was balm to Froude’s wounds and tonic to his nerves.  Practically expelled from his college, regarded by his own family as almost a black sheep, he found himself taken up, and treated as an equal, by a writer of European fame, whom of all his contemporaries he most admired.  In deference to Carlyle he rewrote his opening paragraphs, and added useful dates.  European history and spiritual England do come into far greater prominence “as we proceed.”  The abbreviation and summary of extracts might, I think, have been carried farther