—­ * Life and Letters of E. A. Freeman, vol. i. p. 381. + ibid. p. 382. —­

It does not appear to have struck him that he had done his best in The Saturday Review to make people think that, as Froude’s critic, he deserved the reputation which he thus frankly and in private disclaims.

Another curious piece of evidence has come to light.  After Freeman’s death his library was transferred to Owens College, Manchester, and there, among his other books, is his copy of Froude’s History.  He once said himself, in reference to his criticism of Froude, “In truth there is no kind of temper in the case, but a strong sense of amusement in bowling down one thing after another.”  Let us see.  Here are some extracts from his marginal notes.  “A lie, teste Stubbs,” as if Stubbs were an authority, in the proper sense of the term, any more than Froude.  Authorities are contemporary witnesses, or original documents.  Another entry is “Beast,” and yet another is “Bah!” “May I live to embowel James Anthony Froude” is the pious aspiration with which he has adorned another page.  “Can Froude understand honesty?” asks this anxious inquirer; and again, “Supposing Master Froude were set to break stones, feed pigs, or do anything else but write paradoxes, would he not curse his day?” Along with such graceful compliments as “You’ve found that out since you wrote a book against your own father,” “Give him as slave to Thirlwall,” there may be seen the culminating assertion, “Froude is certainly the vilest brute that ever wrote a book.”  Yet there was “no kind of temper in the case,” and “only a strong sense of amusement.”  I suppose it must have amused Freeman to call another historian a vile brute.  But it is fortunate that there was no temper in the case.  For if there had, it would have been a very bad temper indeed.

In this judicial frame of mind did Freeman set himself to review successive volumes of Froude’s Elizabeth.  Froude did not always correct his proofs with mechanical accuracy, and this gave Freeman an advantage of which he was not slow to avail himself.  “Mr. Froude,” he says in The Saturday Review for the 30th of January, 1864, “talks of a French attack on Guienne, evidently meaning Guisnes.  It is hardly possible that this can be a misprint.”  It was of course a misprint, and could hardly have been anything else.  Guisnes was a town, and could be attacked.  Guienne was a province, and would have been invaded.  Guienne had been a French province since the Hundred Years’ War, and therefore the French would neither have attacked nor invaded it.  As if all this were not enough to show the nature and source of the error, the word was correctly printed in the marginal heading.  In the same article, after quoting Froude’s denial that a sentence described by the Spanish Ambassador de Silva as having been passed upon a pirate could have been pronounced in an English court of justice, Freeman asked, “Is it possible that Mr. Froude has never heard of the peine forte et dure?” Freeman of course knew it to be impossible.  He knew also that the peine forte et dure was inflicted for refusing to plead, and that this pirate, by de Silva’s own account, had been found guilty.  But he wanted to suggest that Froude was an ignoramus, and for the purpose of beating a dog one stick is as good as another.